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STACKHOOSE'S
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
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A HISTORY
THE HOLY BIBLE,
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD
ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY;
NUMEROUS NOTES
RECONCILING SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS, RECTIFYING MIS-TRANSLATIONS, &c.
/
BY THE REV. THOMAS STACKHOUSE, M. A.
LATE VICAR OF BEENHAM IN BERKSHIRE.
TOGETHER WITH
AN INTRODUCTION, ADDITIONAL NOTES, DISSERTATIONS,
AND COMPLETE INDEXES.
BY DANIEL DEWAR, D. D.
PRINCIPAL OF MARISCHAL COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITV, ABERDEEN.
COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS AND PLANS.
BLACKIE & SON, QUEEN STREET, GLASGOW;
SOUTH COLLEGE STREET, EDINBURGH ;
AND WARWICK SQUARE, LONDON.
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PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
The character, intention, and usefulness, of Stackhouse's HISTORY OF THE Bible, are so
well known, and so universally acknowledged, that it would be waste of time to enlarge on
them. The great object of the Work is to methodize, and bring down to the capacities of all
readers, the important historical truths narrated in the Scriptures ; to clear difficult passages
from seeming inconsistencies; to aid the infirmities of the human understanding by explana-
tion and illustration suited to the limited reasoning powers of man ; and to enable the devout
Christian to obtain the most satisfactory and comprehensive view of the benevolent purposes
of God in Christ, which is the sum and substance of Divine Revelation from the first page
to the last.
In proportion, however, as it is unnecessary to explain the design of the original Work,
and to insist on its usefulness, it is incumbent on the Publishers to state fully the object tlioy
had in view, and the ends they have achieved, by the publication of a New Edition of
this book.
A History of the Bible, while it comprises a systematic arrangement of the Scriptural Nar-
rative, is, at the same time, a condensation of the accumulated stores of human intellect
and research applied to the explanation of the Volume of Divine Revelation, and unveiling,
as it were, the vast effulgence of the Sacred Mind as therein made known to man. It must
be obvious, therefore, that a Work of this nature admits of improvement ; that facts daily
elicited, and inquiries continually pursued, will, in the course of time, furnish many new,
important, and striking illustrations, which could not have presented themselves to the writer
of the original book.
The attention of the good and learned has been directed in late years, no less than in for-
mer times, to the subject of Biblical criticism; and the results of their labours are seen in the
elucidation of many passages in Holy Writ, which, though reverently receiv, d as truth, being
from the Fountain of Truth, had previously been comprehended only to a limited extent
The facilities winch are now afforded for visiting the countries—
" Over whose acres walked those hlessed feet,
Which, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed
For our advantage to tho hitter cross;"
and the descriptions thence brought by travellers, both Christian and Sceptieal have tended
materially to increase the satisfaction of the pions mind, by fan g ri « rt* indfapmahte
proofs of the truth of those things which ignorance and infideUI y had , I I to scofl
and scorn; and demonstrating that the predictions of S»«edW„, have been so >
fulfilled, as to compel the doubter to acknowledge that they cnu d only have been utten d I un-
der the guidance of the Spirit of Him who 'declare.!, the end from ho bo,, and from
ancient times the things that are not yet done,' and to who. fa. all Unngs. «v» the I ghh
and the heart of man, are naked and bare.
ii PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
It has been the aim of the Editor and Publishers of this Edition of Stackhouse, to avail
themselves, to the fullest extent, of those sources of information adverted to in the preceding
paragraph ; and they trust it will be found to include new treasures of Biblical criticism,
many additional illustrations of Eastern manners and customs, and geographical and topogra-
phical descriptions of " the land of the Gospel," more definite and satisfactory than had been
previously given. As instances of the attention that has been paid to the last named depart-
ment, they may refer to the supplemental chapter, on the journeyings of the Israelites, and
to the copious descriptions of the mountains, lakes, and rivers of Palestine. But it would be
far beyond the compass of this Preface to advert particularly to the great body of information
that has been collected for the present Edition. They may only add, that, in the chronological
department they have availed themselves of Dr Hales' admirable Analysis of Chronology, — cer-
tainly the most successful work in rectifying mistakes, and explaining difficulties, arising
from the difference of dates, that lias yet appeared : and while alluding to the additions that
have been made, the Publishers take the opportunity of offering due acknowledgment to
a Friend of high attainments in Biblical learning, to whom they are indebted for much valua-
ble assistance in various departments of this Work, but whose name they are not at liberty
to make known.
It remains only briefly to notice the Indexes and Table of Scriptural Passages. The for-
mer of these will be found abundantly copious for all purposes, and great care has been taken
in the arrangement, to make them of easy and satisfactory reference. The Table of Scrip-
tural passages forms a most important feature in the book. It includes nearly Five Thous-
and Sacred Texts, which are closely applied, illustrated and explained in the course of the
Work.
The Editor and Publishers contemplate the close of their labours with much satisfaction :
they feel that they have rendered good service to the Christian cause by the publication of
this Enlarged and Improved Edition of Stackhouse, in which they have brought all the past
stores, and recent advances of human learning and research, to the illustration of the Sacred
Volume. Nor is it the least part of their gratification, that they have produced this valuable
book at a price, and in a form, that places it within the reach of all classes of the com-
munity.
GLASGOW, 1836.
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
The Holy Bible itself, being principally historical,
the history of an history may seem a solecism to those
who do not sufficiently attend to the nature of these
sacred writings, whose scope and method, and form of
diction, are vastly different from any modern composi-
tion : wherein the idiom of the tongue in which it was
penned, and the oriental customs to which it alludes,
occasion much obscurity ; the difference of time wherein
it was wrote, and variety of authors concerned therein,
a diversity of style, and frequent repetitions ; the inter-
mixture of other matters with what is properly historical,
a seeming perplexity ; the malice of foes, and negligence
of scribes, frequent dislocations ; and the defect of pub-
lic records, in the times of persecution, a long interrup-
tion of about four hundred years ; to say nothing that
this history relates to one nation only, and concerns
itself no farther with the rest of mankind, than as they
had some dealings and intercourse with them. Whoever,
I say, will give himself the liberty to consider a little
the form and composition of the Holy Bible, and the
weighty concerns which it contains, must needs be of
opinion, that this, of all other books, requires to be
explained where it is obscure ; methodized where it
seems confused ; abridged where it seems prolix ;
supplied where it is defective ; and analyzed when
its historical matters lie blended and involved with
other quite different subjects. This I call writing an
history of the Bible s and hereupon I thought, with my-
self, that if I could but give the reader a plain and suc-
cinct narrative of what is purely historical in this sacred
book, without the interposition of any other matter; if
I could but settle the chronology, and restore the order
of things, by reducing every passage and fact to its pro-
per place and period of time ; if I could but, by way of
notes, and without breaking in upon the series of the
narrative part, explain difficult texts, rectify liu's-trans-
lations, and reconcile seeming contradictions, as they
occurred in my way ; if I could but supply the defect of
the Jewish story, by continuing the account of their
affairs under the rule and conduct of the Maccabees; if
I could but introduce profane history as I went along,
and, at proper distances of time, sum up to my reader
what was transacting in other parts of the then known
world, while he was perusing the records of the Hebrew
worthies ; and at the same time, if 1 could but answer
such questions and objections as infidelity, in all ages,
has been too ready to suggest against the truth and
authority of the Scriptures; and witli all, discuss such
passages, and illustrate such facts and events as make
the most considerable figure in Holy Writ: If I could |
but do this, 1 say, I thought I had undertaken a uork
which might possibly be of public use and benefit ;
seasonable at all times, but more especially in the age
wherein we live, and, if I may be permitted to apply
to myself the apostle's words, such as might make me '
'unto God a sweet savour in Christ, in them that are
saved, and in them that perish; to the one the savour of
death unto death, and to the other the savour of life
unto life.'
I am very well aware, that several have gone before
me in works of the like denomination ; but 1 may boldly
venture to say, that none of them have taken in half that
compass of view which I here promise to myself. Blouie
has given us a very pompous book ; but besides that it
is no more than a bare translation of Sieur de lioy-
amont's History of the Old and New Testament , it
omits many material facts, observes no exact series in
its narration, but is frequently interrupted by insertions
of the sentiments of the fathers, which prove not always
very pertinent; and, in short, is remarkable for little or
nothing else but the number of its sculptures, which are
badly designed, and worse executed. El wood, in some
respects, has acquitted himself much better ; ha lias
made a pretty just collection of the Scripture account
of things ; but then, when any difficulty occurs, he usually
gives us the sacred text itself, without any explanatory
note or comment upon it; and so not only leave* his
reader's understanding as ignorant as he fouml it, but his
mind in some danger of being tainted by the unlawful
parallels he makes between the acts of former and later
times and by a certain levity which he discovert " upon
several occasions, not so becoming thfl sacredness of
his subject. Howel has certainh excelled all that Mart
before him, both in his design and execution of it. lie
has given us a continued relation . if Scripture tranaao
tions;has filled up the chasm between Malacbi andChriat;
has annexed some notes, which help to explain the diiii-
culties that are chiefly occasioned by the mi.-t ikea of
our translators: but in my opinion, he has been B little
too sparing in his notes, and, as aOBMwill haw ,i
pompous in his diction. He has Omitted many tl
that might justly deserve his noli. c, and taken ,
of others that seem not so considerable. SomeTerj re-
markable events he has thought lit to paai bj without
any comment; nor has he attempted to rindicate anch
passages as
on,
the lovers of infidelity are apt to laj hold
in order to entrench themselves the asfar.
» 2 Cor. ii. 15, Hi.
a Vid. his account of the plague of lice; .,f Pbtriol. and his
people; the story of Samsou's foxes, and that at Mb*.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
Whatever other men's sentiments might be, these
things I thought in some measure essential, and at this
time more especially, extremely necessary in an history
of the Bible; and to encourage my pursuit of this
method, I have several helps and assistances which those
who went before me were not perhaps so well accommo-
dated with.
The foundation of a lecture by the honourable Mr
Boyle has given occasion for the principles of natural
and revealed religion to be fairly stated and the objec-
tions and cavils of infidelity of all kinds to be fully
answered. The institution of another by the Lady Moyer
has furnished us with several tracts, wherein the great
articles of our Christian faith are strenuously vindicated,
and, as far as the nature of mysteries will allow, accur-
ately explained,
The uncommon licence which of late years has been
taken to decry all prophecies and miracles, and to ex-
pose several portions of scripture as absurd and ridicu-
lous, has raised up some learned men, (God grant that
the number of them may every day increase,) to contend
earnestly for the faith, and, by the help of critical know-
ledge in ancient customs and sacred languages, to
rescue from their hands such texts and passages as the
wicked and unstable were endeavouring to wrest, to the
perversion of other men's faith, as well as their own de-
struction. The commentaries and annotations we have
upon the scriptures, both from our own countrymen, and
from foreigners, have, of late years, been very solid and
elaborate, the dissertations or particular treatises on
the most remarkable facts and events, extremely learned
and judicious ; the harmonists, or writers, who endea-
vour to reconcile seeming contradictions, very accurate
and inquisite ; such as have wrote in an analytical way,
clear and perspicuous enough, and to pass by several
others, sacred geography has been fully handled by the
great Bochart, sacred chronology sufficiently ascertained
by our renowned Usher: and the chasm in the sacred
story abundantly supplied by our learned Prideaux ; so
that there are no materials wanting to furnish out a new
and complete history of the Bible even according to the
compass and extent of my scheme. That therefore the
reader may be apprized of the method I propose to my-
self, and what he may reasonably expect from me, I
must desire him to observe, that, according to several
periods of time, from the creation of the world to the
full establishment of Christianity, my design is to divide
the whole work into eight books. Whereof
The I. Will extend from the creation to the deluge.
The II. From the deluge to the call of Abraham.
The III. From the call of Abraham to the departure of
the Israelites out of Egypt.
The IV. From the departure of the Israelites to their
entrance into the land of Canaan.
The V. From their entrance into Canaan to the building
of Solomon's temple.
The VI. From the building of the temple to the Baby-
lonish captivity.
The VII. From the captivity to the birth of Christ. And
The VIII. From the birth of Christ to the completion
of the canon of the New Testament.
Each of these books I purpose to divide into several
chapters, and each chapter into three parts. The number
of chapters will vary, according as the matter in each
period arises, but the parts in each chapter will be con-
stantly the same, namely.
1st, A Narrative Part, which, in plain and easy dic-
tion, will contain the substance of the Scripture-history
for such a determinate time.
2dly, An Argumentative Part, which will contain an
answer to such objections as may possibly be made
against any passage in the history comprised in that
time. And,
3dly, A Philological Part, which will contain the
sentiments of the learned, both ancient and modern,
concerning such remarkable events or transactions as
shall happen in that time ; or perhaps a summary account
of what is most considerable in profane history, towards
the conclusion of each period.
That the reader may perceive how I gradually ad-
vance in the sacred history, and by turning to his Bible,
may compare the narrative with the text, and find a pro-
per solution to any difficulty that shall occur in the
course of his reading, I shall at the top of the page of
each section, set down the book and chapter, or chapters,
I have then under consideration, and the date of the
year, both from the creation, and before and after the
coming of Christ, wherein each remarkable event hap-
pened. And that all things may be made as easy a*
possible to the reader, I shall take care not to trouble
him with any exotic words in the text ; but where there
is occasion to insert any Hebrew expressions, for his
sake, I shall choose to do it in English characters, and
to reduce every tiling that I conceive may be above his
capacity, to the notes and quotations at the bottom of
the page.
The notes, besides the common references, will be
ordy of four kinds.
1st, Additional, when a passage is borrowed from any
other author, whether foreign or domestic, to confirm or
illustrate the matter we are then upon.
2dly, Explanatory, when by producing the right sig-
nification of the original, or inquiring into some ancient
custom, and the like, we make the passage under con-
sideration more intelligible.
3dly, Reconciliatory ; when, by the help of a parallel
place, or some logical distinction, we show the consis-
tency of two or more passages in Scripture, which, at
first view, seem to be contradictory.
4thly, What we call Emendatory , when, by consider-
ing the various senses of the original word, and select-
ing what is most proper, or, by having a due attention
to the design of our author and the context, the mistakes
in our translations are set right.
The chronological and other tables must be reserved
to the conclusion of the work.
CONTENTS.
Introduction to the old testament, vii.
BOOK I.
An account of things from the creation to the Flood.
Preliminary observations, page 1.
Section I.
Chap. I. Of the creation of the world The Introduction, 1.
- — Chap. II. The history, 4. — III. The objection, 8. — IV.
wisdom of God in the works of Creation, 12.
Section II.
Chap. I. Of the state of man's innocence, 15. — II. Difficulties
obviated and objections explained, 17. — III. Of the image of God
in man, 21.
Section III.
Chap. I. Of the fall of man, 24.— Chap. II. Difficulties obviated
and objections explained, 28. — III. On the sentiments enter-
tained by the ancients concerning the origin of moral evil, 37.
Section IV.
Chap. I. Of the murder of Abel and the banishment of Cain,
41. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 45. — HI.
Of the institution of sacrifices, 47. — IV. On the design of sacri-
fice.— On the sacrifices of the patriarchal dispensation, 50.
Section V.
Chap. I. Of the general corruption of mankind, 52 II. Diffi-
culties obviated and objections explained, 55. — III. Of the
heathen history, the chronology, learning, longevity, &c. of the
antediluvians, 61.
Section VI.
Chap. I. Of the deluge, 70. — II. Difficulties obviated and ob-
jections explained, 73. — III. The reality of the deluge proved
from natural history, 83. — IV. Of mount Ararat, 88. — V. Of
mount Ararat (supplemental) 92.
BOOK II.
An account of things from the flood to the call of
ABRAHAM.
Preliminary observations, 94.
Section I.
Chap. I. The remainder of what is recorded of Noah, to his
death, 94.— II. The history, 95.— III. Difficulties obviated and
objections answered, 97. — IV. Of the prohibition of blood, 103.
Section II.
Chap. I. Of the confusion of languages, 109.— II. Objections
answered and difficulties explained, 110. — III. Of the tower of
Babel, 116.
Section III.
Chap. I. Of the dispersion and first settlement of the nations,
121. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 123.
— III. Of the sacred chronology, and prolane history.
learning, religion, and idolatry, Stc. during this period, 130.
BOOK III.
An account of things from the call of abraha.m to ma
exodus of the Israelites.
Preliminary observations, 142.
Section I.
Chap. I. Of the life of Abraham from his call to bis death, 1 43.
— II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 15S.— I
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 1 76.
Section II.
Chap. I. Of the life of Isaac, from his marriage to his death, I 7 '
— II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 1S3. — 111.
Of Isaac's blessing Jacob, 187.
Section III.
Chap. I. Of the life of Jacob, from his going into Mesopotamia
to his return, 189. — II. Difficulties answered and obi . •
obviated, 198. — III. Of Jacob's ladder and pillar, 205.
Section IV.
Chap. I. Of the life of Joseph, including remainder of Jacob's
life, 20S. — II. Difficulties obviated and objection answered,
225.— III. Of the person and book of Job, 232.
Section V.
Chap. I. The sufferings of the Israelites in Egypt and their de-
livery, 236. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answi
248. — III. Of the sacred chronology, and proline history, l> arn-
ing, religion, idolatry, and monumental works, stc., (rtlWIy of
the Egyptians) during this period, 258.
BOOK IV.
An ACCOUNT OF things raoM [HI BODVfl ro TBI KM
INTO CANAAN.
Preliminary observations, 888.
Section I-
Chap. I. From the Exodus to the building of the tab. i
269. II. Objections obriatod snd difficulties explained,
—II I. Of the passage of the Red S, a. gS;,.— IV. < 'i
of the Red Sea, and the journe) -ings of the [anttitC*, IBS.
Section II.
Chap. I. Prom the building of the tabernacle to the death of
Koran, &c, 297. — II. Objections answered end difficulties ex-
plained, 3ti2.— HI- Of the Jewish tobernacle, &■•., 310.
Section 11 1.
Chap. I. From the death of Korah to the entrance into Cans**,
313, II. Objections answered ami difficulties explained, 328. —
III. On the character and conduct of Balaam, SS4V — 1^ .Of the
profane history, religion, government, fcc,, of sucl
the Israelites bad dealings with during thK piriod, 336. — Ou the
VI
CONTENTS.
land of Canaan, 341. — V. On the mountains of Canaan, 345. —
VI. On the lakes and rivers of Palestine, 352. — VII. On the
general fertility of Palestine, 355.
BOOK V.
An account of things from the entrance into Canaan, to
the building of solomon's temple.
Preliminary observations, 361.
Section I.
Chap. I. From their entrance to the death of Joshua, 363.' —
II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 373. — III. Of
the shower of stones, and the sun's standing still, 3S5. — Some of
the objections to the credibility of the Old Testament considered
and answered, 391.
Section II.
Chap. I. From the death of Joshua to the death of Samson, 395.
— II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 415. — III.
Jephthah's rash vow, 42S. — IV. The same (supplemental) 431.
Section III.
Chap. I. From the birth of Samuel to the death of Saul, 433.
——II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 455. — III.
On the Jewish Theocracy, 468. — Of Samuel's appearing to the
witch of Endor, 471.— IV. On the witch of Endor, 476.
Section IV.
Chap. I. From the death of Saul, to that of Absalom, 476. —
II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 491. — III. Of
the sacred chronology, and profane history during this period, 499.
Section V.
Chap. I. From the death of Absalom to the building of the
temple, 502. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered,
514. — III. Of the ancient Jerusalem and its temple, 523. — IV.
On the temple, 530.
BOOK VI.
An ACCOUNT OF THINGS FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE
TO THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY.
Preliminary observations, 533.
Section I.
Chap. I. From the finishing of the temple, to the reign of Jeho-
shaphat, 535. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered,
550. — III. Of Solomon's riches and his trade to Ophir, 556.
Section II.
Chap. I. From the reign of Jehoshaphat to the siege of Samaria,
559. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 578.
— III. Of the translation of Enoch and Elijah, 5S6.
Section III.
Chap. I. From the siege of Samaria to the death of Uzziah,
591. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 609.
— III. Of Jonah's mission to Nineveh, and his abode in the
whale's belly, 615. — IV. The same, (supplemental) 621.
Section IV.
Chap. I. From the death of Uzziah to the death of Josiah, 622.
— II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 640. — III.
On the dial of Ahaz, 647 — IV. Of the transportation of the ten
tribes and their return, 648.
Section V.
Chap. I. From the death of Josiah to the Babylonish captivity,
653. — II. Objections answered and difficulties obviated, 665
HI. Of the sacred chronology and profane history during this
period, 671.
BOOK VII.
An account of things from the Babylonish captivity to
the birth of Christ.
Preliminary observations, 679.
Section I.
Chap. I. From the Captivity to the death of Cyrus, 680 II.
Difficulties obviated and objections answered, 694. — III. On the
history of Cyrus, and the taking of Babylon, 707.— IV. Of the
pride and punishment of Nebuchadnezzar, 711.
Section II.
Chap. I. From the death of Cyrus to that of Nehemiah, 716.
— II. Objections answered and difficulties obviated, 734. — III.
Of Ezra's edition of the holy scriptures, and the institution of
synagogue worship, 740.
Section III.
Chap. I. From the death of Nehemiah to the death of Antiochus
Epiphanes, 746. — II. Objections answered, 762— III. Of the
Jewish Sanhedrim, 764.
Section IV.
Chap. I. From the death of Antiochus Epiphanes to that of John
Hyrcanus, 769. — II. Objections answered and difficulties obvi-
ated, 780. — III. Of the original, and tenets of the Jewish sects,
784.
Section V.
Chap. I. From the death of John Hyrcanus to the birth of Christ,
7S9. — II. Objections answered, 804. — III. Of the profane history
during this period, S06.
Introduction to the history of the new testament.
Chap. I. Judaism preparatory to Christianity, 821. — II. The
same, continued, 826 — III. On the genuineness and authenti-
city of the books of the Old and New Testaments, 831.
BOOK VIII.
An account of things from the birth OF CHRIST to the
completion of the canon of the new testament.
Preliminary observations, S39.
Section I.
Chap. I. From the birth of Christ, to the beginning of the first
passover, 840. — II. Difficulties obviated and objections answered,
867. — III. An account of the marriage ceremonies of the east,
882. — IV. Of the four evangelists, and their writings, 887. — V.
On Philo and Josephus, 895.
Section II.
Chap. I. From the beginning of the second passover to our
Lord's transfiguration, 900. — II. Difficulties obviated and ob-
jections answered, 922. — III. Of the prophecies relating to the
Messiah, and their accomplishment in our blessed Saviour, 937.
Section III.
Chap. I. An account of things from our Lord's transfiguration
to his last entry into Jerusalem, 944. — II. Difficulties obviated
and objections answered, 972. — III. Of our blessed Saviour's
miracles, and their excellency, 980 IV. On miracles, 985.
Section IV.
Chap. I. From our Lord's last entry into Jerusalem, to his as-
cension into heaven, 994. — II. Objections answered and diffi-
culties explained, 1028. — III. Of our blessed Saviour's doctrine,
and the excellency of his religion, 1046.
Section V.
Chap. I. From the ascension of Christ to the completion of the
canon of the New Testament, 1057. — II. Objections answered
and difficulties explained, 1114. — III. Of the profane history,
during this period, 1129.
Chronological table, 1145. — Tables of Jewish time, weights,
&c 1148. — Index of subjects, 1151. — Index of scriptural texts,
1170.
INTRODUCTION.
ON THE NECESSITY OF A DIVINE REVELATION, AND THE GENUINENESS, AUTHENTICITY,
INSPIRATION, &c. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES.
The collection of writings which is regarded by Chris-
tians as the sole standard of their faith and practice,
has been distinguished at different periods by different
appellations. Thus it is frequently termed the Scrip-
tures, the sacred or holy Scriptures, and sometimes the
canonical Scriptures. It is called the Scriptures, as
being the most important of all tvritings ; the holy
or sacred Scriptures, because the books composing it
were written by persons divinely inspired ; and the
canonical Scriptures, either because it is a rule of faith
and practice to those who receive it, or because, when
the number and authenticity of its different books were
ascertained, lists of these were inserted in the ecclesias-
tical canons or catalogue, in order to distinguish them
from such books as were apocryphal, or of uncertain
authority, and unquestionably not of divine origin. But
the most common appellation is that of the Bible — a
word derived from the Greek Bifito; (biblos) — which, in
its primary import, simply denotes a book, but which is
given to the writings of Moses and the prophets, of the
evangelists and apostles, by way of eminence, as being
the book of books, infinitely surpassing in excellence
and importance every unassisted production of the human
mind. — Lardner's Works, vol. vi. — John's Introduction
ad Vet. Feed, and Home's Introduction, vol. i. and ii.
That portion of Scripture which the Jewish church re-
ceived as of divine authority, is usually called ' The Old
Testament,' in order to distinguish it from those sacred
books which contain the doctrines, precepts, and pro-
mises of the Christian religion, and which are desig-
nated ' The New Testament.' The appellation of Testa-
ment is derived from 2 Cor. iii. 6, 14. where the words
ij n«A«/« Aict6rix.ri, and oj Kaivn Ai»6^x.n are, by the
old Latin translators, rendered antiquum testamentum,
and novum testamentum, instead of antiquum fesdus , and
novum fadus, the old and new covenant ; for although
the Greek word AiccOwx.*! signifies both testament and
covenant, yet in the Septuagint version it uniformly cor-
responds with the Hebrew word tv*a (Jberith,) which
always signifies a covenant. The term ' old covenant,'
used by St Paul in 2 Cor. iii. 14. is evidently applied to
the dispensation of Moses, and the term ' new covenant,'
in ver. G of the same chapter, is applied to the dispen-
sati on of Christ ; and these distinguishing appellations
were applied by the early ecclesiastical authors to the
writings which contained those dispensations, and from
them it has been transmitted to modern times. — Lard-
ner's works, vol. vi — Home's Introdtciion, vol. i. —
Bishop Tomlines El. of Theol.
The volume which is made up of the Old and New
Testament contains a great number of different narra-
tives and compositions, written by several persons, at
distant periods, in different languages, and on various
subjects. Yet all of these collectively claim to be .a
divine revelation : that is, a discovery afforded by God
to man, of himself, or of his will, over and above what
he has made known by the light of nature or reason.
The objects of our knowledge are of three kinds : —
Thus some things are discernible by the light of nature
without revelation ; of this kind is the knowledge of
God from the traces of his wisdom and power exhibited
in the works of creation, ' for his invisible things, even
his eternal power and Godhead since the creation of
the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the
tilings that are made,' (Rom. i. 20). Other tilings are
of pure and simple revelation, which cannot be known
by the light of nature ; such is the doctrine of the salva-
tion of the world by Jesus Christ. Others again are
discoverable by the light of nature, but imperfectly, and
therefore stand in need of revelation to give them further
proof and evidence ; of this sort are a future state, and
eternal rewards and punishments. But of what degree
soever the revelation may be, whether partial or entire ;
whether a total discovery of some unknown troth, or
only a fuller and clearer manifestation of truths imper-
fectly known by unassisted reason ; it must be super-
natural and proceed from God. — Bishop William's
Sermons at Boyle's Lectures.
No one who believes that there is a God, and that he
is a Being of infinite power, wisdom and knowledge,
can reasonably deny, that he can, if he thinks lit, make
a revelation of himself and of his will in an extraordin-
ary way, difierent from the discoveries made by men
themselves, in the more natural and ordinary use of their
own rational faculties and powers. For If the power
of God be almighty, it must extend to whatever does not
imply a contradiction, which cannot be pretended in
this case. Can it be supposed that the author of our
being has it not in his power to communicate ideas to
our minds, for informing and instructing us in those
Vlll
INTRODUCTION.
things which we are deeply concerned to know ; our in-
ability clearly to explain the manner in which this is
done, is no just objection against it. And as it cannot
reasonably be denied that God can, if he sees fit, com-
municate his will to man, in a way of extraordinary reve-
lation ; so he can do it in such a manner, as to give those
to whom this revelation is originally and immediately
made, a full and certain assurance that it is a true and
divine revelation. For if men can communicate their
thoughts by speech or language, in such a way as that
we may certainly know who it is that speaks to us, it
would be a strange thing to affirm, that God, on supposi-
tion of his communicating his mind and will to any per-
son or persons, in a way of extraordinary revelation,
has no way of causing his rational creatures to know
that it is he, and no other, who makes this discovery to
them. To admit the existence of a God, and to deny
him such a power, is a glaring contradiction. — Leland's
Advant. and Necess. of Revelation.
Since no man can presume to say that it is incon-
sistent with any of the attributes of a Supreme Being,
or unbecoming the wisdom of the Creator of all things,
to reveal to his creatures more fully the way to happi-
ness ; to make a particular discovery of his will to them ;
to set before them, in a clear light, the rewards and
punishments of a future state ; to explain in what man-
ner he will be pleased to be worshipped; and to declare
what satisfaction he will accept for sin> and upon what
conditions he will receive returning sinners : nay, since,
on the contrary, it seems more suitable to our natural
notions of the goodness and mercy of God, to suppose
that he should do all this, than not, it follows undeniably,
that itwas most reasonable and agreeable to the dictates
of nature, to expect or hope for such a divine revelation.
Accordingly we find it to have been the general belief
of mankind in every age, that some kind of commerce
and communication subsisted between God and man.
This was the foundation of all the religious rites and
ceremonies which every heathen nation pretended to
receive from their deities, and the generality of the
heathen world were so fully persuaded, that the great
rules for the conduct of human life must receive their
authority from heaven, that their chief legislators, such
as Minos, Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus,Numa, &c. &c.
thought it not a sufficient recommendation of their laws
that they were agreeable to the light of nature, unless
they gave out also that they received them from God.
Besides, the wisest and best of the heathen philoso-
phers, particularly Socrates and Plato, were not ashamed
to confess openly their sense of the want of a divine
revelation, and to declare their judgment that it was
most natural and truly agreeable to right reason, to
hope for something of that nature. — Clarke's Evid. of
Nat. and Rev. Relic/. Prop. vi. — Boyle's Lectures, vol.
ii. fol. ed.
Farther, a divine revelation was not only probable
and desirable, but also absolutely necessary.
The history of past ages clearly shows, that mankind,
by the mere light of nature, could never attain to any
certain knowledge of the will of God, of their own true
happiness and final destiny, or recover themselves from
that state of moral corruption and depravity into which
tliey had fallen.
If we examine the writings of the most celebrated
philosophers and sages of antiquity, we shall find, that
they were not only ignorant of many important points
in religion, but also that endless differences and incon-
sistencies prevailed among them with regard to points
of the greatest moment ; while some of them taught doc-
trines which directly tended to promote vice and wicked-
ness in the world, and the influence of all in rectifying
the notions and reforming the lives of mankind, was
altogether ineffectual. But in order to illustrate, and
confirm the point, we shall advance a few particulars.
1. The ancients were ignorant of the true origin of
the world, and of mankind.
Some of them asserted that the world existed from
eternity ; others admitted that the formation of the world
was owing to chance; others ascribed it to a plurality
of causes or authors ; while those who acknowledged
that it had a beginning in time, knew not by what grada-
tions, nor in what manner the universe was raised into
its present beauty and order.
2. They were ignorant of the origin of evil, and of the
cause of the depravity and misery which actually exist
among mankind.
The wisest and most judicious of the heathen philoso-
phers were not backward to complain, that they found
the understandings of men so dark and cloudy, their
wills so biassed and inclined to evil, their passions so
outrageous and rebellious against reason, that they
looked upon the rules and laws of right reason as
scarcely practicable, and which they had very little
hopes of ever being able to persuade the world to sub-
mit to. They saw that human nature was strangely
corrupted, but at the same time they were compelled
to confess, that they neither knew the origin of the
disease, nor could discover a sufficient remedy. They
could not assign any reason why mankind, who have the
noblest faculties of any beings on earth, should yet
generally pursue their own destruction with as much in-
dustry as the beasts avoid it. — Clarke's Evid. of Nat.
and Rev. Relig. Prop. vi. and Home's Introd, vol. i.
3. They were ignorant of the manner in which God
might be acceptably worshipped, and of the means by
which such as have erred from the paths of virtue, and
have offended God, might again be restored to his
favour ; they were utterly unable to discover any method
by which a reconciliation might be effected between an
offended God and his guilty creatures, and his mercy
exercised without the violation of his justice. The light
of nature, indeed, taught them that some kind of wor-
ship or other was due to the Supreme Being, but in what
particular manner, and with what kind of service he will
be Avorshipped, unassisted reason could never discover.
Accordingly, even the best of the heathen philosophers,
such as Plato and Cicero, complied with the outward
superstitious religion of their country, and advised others
to do the same, and while they delivered sublime and
noble sentiments concerning the nature and attributes
of the supreme God, they fell lamentably into the practice
of the most absurd idolatry.
The light of nature showed their guilt to the most
reflecting of the ancient philosophers, but it could not
show them a remedy. From the consideration of the
goodness and mercifulness of God, they entertained a
hope that he would show himself placable to sinners,
and might in some way be reconciled ; but what kind of
INTRODUCTION.
propitiation be would be pleased to accept, and in what
manner this reconciliation must be made, the light of
nature could not point out. Here nature fails, and ex-
pects with impatience the aid of some particular revela-
tion. That God will receive returning sinners, and ac-
cept of repentance, instead of perfect obedience, they
cannot certainly know to whom he has not made such
a revelation ; or whether God will not require something
further, for the vindication of his justice, and of the
honour and dignity of his laws and government, and for
more effectually expressing his indignation against sin,
before he will restore men to the privileges they had for-
feited ; they cannot be satisfactorily assured, without a
special revelation : for it cannot be satisfactorily proved,
from any of God's attributes, that he is absolutely
obliged to pardon all the sins of all his creatures at all
times, barely and immediately upon their repenting.
There arises therefore from nature, no sufficient comfort
to sinners, but anxious and endless solicitude about the
means of appeasing the Deity. Hence those various
ways of sacrificing and those numberless superstitions
which overspread the heathen world, but which were so
little satisfactory to the wiser part of mankind, even in
those times of darkness, that they could not forbear fre-
quently declaring, that they thought such rites and sacri-
fices could avail little or nothing towards appeasing the
wrath of an offended God, or making their prayers ac-
ceptable in his sight, but that something seemed to them
to be still wanting, though they knew not what. — Plato's
Alcibiades, 2. — Clarke s Evid. Prop. vi.
4. They knew little or nothing respecting the neces-
sity of divine grace, and assistance towards our attain-
ment of virtue and perseverance in it.
It was, indeed, a general practice among the heathens
to pray to their gods ; but then the things they ordinarily
prayed for were only outward advantages, or what are
usually called the goods of fortune : as to wisdom and
virtue, they thought every man was to depend upon himself
alone for obtaining them. The Stoics, who were the
most eminent teachers of morals among the heathens,
endeavoured to raise man to a state of absolute inde-
pendency, and some of them asserted that the will of
man is unconquerable by God himself. (Epictetus, b. i.
chap. 1.). Seneca represents it as needless to apply
to the gods by prayer, since it is in every man's own
power to make himself happy ; and speaking of virtue,
and a uniform course of life always consistent with it-
self, he says, ' This is the chief good which, if thou pos-
sessest, thou wilt begin to be a companion to the gods,
not a suppliant to them.' — Sen. Epist. 41. — Leland's
Advant. and Necess. of Revelation, vol. ii. chap. ix.
5. They had but dark and confused notions of the
summum bonum, or supreme felicity of man.
On this topic, Cicero tells us, there was such a dis-
agreement among the ancient philosophers, that it was
almost impossible to enumerate their different sentiments,
while he at the same time states the opinions of more
than twenty philosophers, all of which are equally ex-
travagant and absurd.
6. They had but weak and imperfect notions of the
immortality of the soul.
The existence of the soul after death was denied
by many of the Peripatetics, or followers of Aristotle,
and this doctrine seems to have been disbelieved by
Aristotle himself. The Stoics had no settled or con-
sistent scheme on this head, nor had the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul any prominent place among the
tenets of their sect But even among those philosophers
who expressly taught this doctrine, considerable doubt
and uncertainty appear to have prevailed. Thus Socrates,
a little before his death, tells his friends, ' I am now about
to leave this world, and ye are still to continue in it :
which of us shall have the better part allotted to us, God
only knows ;' from the scope of which passage, it appears,
that he was doubtful whether he should have any exis-
tence after death or not. And again, at the end of his
admirable discourse concerning the immortality of the
soul, he said to his friends, who came to pay him their
last visit, ' I would have you to know, that I have great
hopes that I am now going into the company of good
men; yet I would not be too presumptuous and confi-
dent concerning it.' In his apology to his judges, he
comforts himself with the consideration ' that there is
much ground to hope that death is good ; for it must
necessarily be one of these two ; either the dead man is
nothing, and has not a sense of anything; or it is only
a change or migration of the soul hence to another place,
according to what we are told. If there is no sense left,
and death is like a profound sleep and quiet rest nit fl-
out dreams, it is wonderful to think what gain it is to
die ; but if the things which are told us are true, that
death is a migration to another place, this is still a much
greater good.' — Plato in P/ued. Apolog. Socrat. in Jin.
The same doubts were entertained by Plato, the most
eminent of the disciples of Socrates. Cicero, who ranks
among the most eminent of the heathen philosophers,
laboured under the same uncertainty. After having
advanced a number of excellent arguments in behalf of
this doctrine, and stated several opinions concerning
the return and duration of the soul, he says, ' Which of
these two opinions is true, (that the soul is mortal or
immortal), God only knows, and which of these is most
probable, is a very great question.' — Cic. Tuscul. Q<sst.
b. i. In another place he says, ' I know not how, when
I read the arguments in proof of the soul's immortality,
methinks I am fully convinced, and yet after 1 have
laid aside the book, and come to think and consider of
the matter, alone by my myself, presently I find myself
slip again insensibly into my old doubts.' — Ibid. W hile
these great men and their followers were perplexed with
doubts on this great point, others of the heathens enter-
tained the most gloomy notions, some imagining that
they should, after death, be removed from one bod) into
another and be perpetual wanderers, and others con-
templating the grave as an eternal habitation, and death
as the complete termination of man's existence. —
Jortin's Discourses. — Home's Introduction, vol. i. —
Clarke's Evidences.
7. The ancient philosophers attained to no certainty
respecting the eternal rewards and punishments of a
future state, and of the resurrection of the body.
The poets indeed celebrated, in sublime and beautiful
verse, the joys of Elysium, or a state and place of future
bliss, and painted in dismal colours the miseries of
Tartarus, or hell, but these were only regarded as fabu-
lous representations : and although the philosophers
and legislators were sensible of the importance and
necessity of the doctrine of future punishments as well
b
INTRODUCTION.
as rewards, to the well being of society, yet, strange as
it may seem, they in general discarded this doctrine,
and represented all fears of future punishment as vain
and superstitious. Polybius complains that in his time
the belief of a future state was rejected by the great
men and by the bulk of the people, and to this disbelief
he ascribes the great corruption of manners ; but even
while Polybius blames the great men among the Greeks
for encouraging the people to disbelieve and despise
future punishments, he himself represents them as only
useful fictions. Caesar also treated the notions respect-
ing future punishments as fables, and Pliny, the natural-
ist, represents them as childish and senseless fictions of
mortals who were ambitious of never-ending existence.
As to the resurrection of the body, neither the philo-
sophers, nor the common people among the Greeks and
Romans, seem to have had any notion of it. For al-
though their poets made frequent mention of the ghosts
of departed men appearing in a visible form, and retain-
ing in the shades below their former shapes, yet by such
representations, if they mean any thing, they mean no
more than that the soul, after this life, passes into another
state, and is there invested with a body made up of light
aerial particles, quite different from those of which the
former body had been composed. When St Paul at
Athens spoke of the resurrection of the dead, we are
told his hearers mocked or treated it with contempt as
a strange doctrine. (Acts xvii. 18, 20, 32.) The Epi-
cureans and Stoics are particularly mentioned in this
passage, but the other sects of philosophers, even those
who argued most for the immortality of the soul, held
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in contempt.
They could not conceive that the gross matter which
they saw laid in the grave, or reduced to ashes on the
funeral pile, or blown away by the winds and scattered
in the air, should ever be raised or collected again and
revivified : neither did those who argued for the im-
mortality of the soul, believe that the resurrection of
the body, if it were possible, was desirable ; for they
looked upon the body as the prison of the soul, and
considered that the happiness of the soul consisted in
its being loosed and disengaged from the body.
When therefore we consider the ignorance and un-
certainty which prevailed among some of the greatest
teachers of antiquity, respecting those great and funda-
mental truths which are the chief barriers of virtue and
religion, it appears certain that the heathens had no per-
fect system of moral rules for the conduct of life, or for
the promotion of piety. Thus most of the philosophers
accounted revenge to be not only lawful but commend-
able. Pride and the love of popular applause were
esteemed the best and greatest incentives to virtue and
noble actions ; suicide was regarded as the strongest
mark of heroism, and the perpetrators of it celebrated
as men of noble minds. Theft, as is well known, was
permitted in Egypt and in Sparta. Plato taught the
expedience and lawfulness of exposing children in
particular cases. The exposure of infants, and the put-
ting to death of children who were weak or imperfect in
form, was permitted at Sparta by Lycurgus. At Athens
the women were treated and disposed of as slaves ; and
it was enacted that infants which appeared to be maimed,
should either be killed or exposed. Nothing could ex-
ceed the cruelties which were exercised against slaves
both among the Greeks and Romans. Among the
Spartans they were not only generally treated with
»reat harshness and insolence, but it was part of their
policy to massacre them on several occasions, in cold
blood, and without provocation ; the gratification of the
sensual appetites, and of the most unnatural lusts was
openly taught and allowed.
And not only did these sentiments and principles,
which were entertained and inculcated by the philoso-
phers and legislators of antiquity, lead to all kinds of
immorality and wickedness, but the very religious sys-
tems and established forms of worship of the heathens,
instead of being calculated to preserve men in the prac-
tice of morality and virtue, only served to plunge them
deeper in vice and degrading superstition. They paid
divine worship to oxen, crocodiles, birds and reptiles.
They metamorphosed beasts into gods, and conversely
transformed their gods into beasts, ascribing to them
drunkenness, unnatural lusts and the most loathsome
vices. Drunkenness they worshipped under the name of
Bacchus, lasciviousness under that of Venus. Monius
was with them the god of calumny, and Mercury the
god of thieves. Even Jupiter, the greatest of their
gods, they considered to be an adulterer and a rebelli-
ous son. The worship of avowedly evil beings at length
became prevalent among them, and hence many of their
rites were cruel and contrary to humanity, and hence
also the licentiousness and impurity of their whole re-
ligious system became notorious. Thus, to select one
or two instances out of many, the rites of the goddess
Cybele were no less infamous for lewdness than for
cruelty, cind the practice of these rites spread far and
wide, and formed part of the public worship at Rome.
The aphrodisia, or festivals in honour of Venus, were
observed with lascivious ceremonies in divers parts of
Greece ; and Strabo relates that there was a temple at
Corinth so rich that it maintained above a thousand
harlots sacred to her service. These abominable cus-
toms were not confined to Greece, for Herodotus in-
forms us that they were observed at Babylon, and other
authors relate that they existed in Syria and Africa.
The feasts of Bacchus were equally impure and licen-
tious, and according to Herodotus, many of the Egyp-
tian rites were cruel and shockingly obscene. The
offering up of human sacrifices was, for many ages, very
genera] in the heathen world. It obtained among the
Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabians, Carthaginians and other
people of Africa, and among the Egyptians till the
time of Amasis. The same thing we are told concern-
ing the Thracians, the ancient Scythians, the Gauls,
Germans and Britons. And though this horrible rite
was never so common among the Greeks and Romans, as
among some other nations, yet it continued for a long time
to be in use among them upon extraordinary occasions.
In short, when we examine the history of the Pagan
nations of antiquity, we cannot but be struck with the
accuracy of the description which the apostle Paul, in
the first chapter of the Romans, gives of these nations
generally, when he tells us that they were ' given up to
uncleanness and vile affections ; that they were filled
with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covet-
ousness, maliciousness ; that they were full of envy,
murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, back-
biters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inven-
INTRODUCTION.
XI
tors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without under-
standing-, covenant breakers, without natural affection,
implacable, unmerciful.' — LelancCs Necess. and Advant.
of Revelation. — Clarke's Evid. of Nat. and Rev. Relig.
—Gregory's Letters on Christ. Relig. — Hornets Inlrod.
vol. i. — Hartly on Man, vol. ii.
There were, indeed, among' the heathens some few
philosophers who cherished better principles and in-
culcated comparatively purer tenets than those already
alluded to ; and no doubt these men were raised up and
designed by God, who never left himself wholly without
witness, as instruments to reprove, in some measure, and
put some kind of check to the extreme superstition and
wickedness of the nations in which they lived, or at
least to bear witness against, and condemn these nations.
But still the instructions of these individuals were very
defective and inefficient. They never were able to re-
form the world, or to keep together any considerable
number of men in the knowledge and practice of virtue.
Their precepts were delivered to their own immediate
pupils and not to the lower orders of people, who con-
stitute the great mass of society. Besides, the ethical
systems of the philosophers were too refined for the
common people, most of their discourses upon morals
being rather speculative and learned, nice and subtle
disputes, than practical and universally useful instruc-
tions ; and even those things of which they were not
only certain themselves, but which they were also able
to prove and explain to others with sufficient plainness
and clearness, such as are the most obvious and neces-
sary duties of life, they had not sufficient authority to
enforce and inculcate upon men's minds so as to in-
fluence and govern the general practice of the world.
The truths which they proved by speculative reasoning
wanted still more sensible authority to back them, and
make them of more force and efficacy in practice ; and
the precepts which they laid down, however reasonable
and fit to be obeyed, were still destitute of weight, and
were but the precepts of men. They could present no
motives sufficiently powerful to animate men's minds
and stimulate them to the practice of true virtue, and
support them under the trials and calamities of life. In
fact, the philosophers never did nor could effect any re-
markable change in the minds and lives of men such
as was undeniably produced by the preaching of Christ
and his apostles. In the original uncorrupted state of
human nature, before the mind of man was depraved
with false and erroneous opinions, corrupt affections,
and vicious inclinations, customs and habits, right rea-
son may be supposed to have been a sufficient guide
and a principle powerful enough to preserve men in
the constant practice of their duty. But in the present
circumstances and condition of mankind, unassisted
reason is altogether insufficient to accomplish this end.*
* The four great propositions which the moderns almost uni-
versally concede to natural religion, as integral parts of it,
are, 1st, That there is but one God. 2d, That God is nothing of
those things which we see. 3d, That God takes care of all things
below, and governs all the world. 4th, That he alone is the great
Creator of all things out of himself. Now they are uncontro-
vertible facts, which cannot be too deeply engraven upon the mind
that none of the greatest and wisest men among the Greeks and
Romans held all these propositions, and that very few held any
of them firmly; that before the Christian era no people in the
world believed these propositions but the Jews; and that they
In short, the heathen philosophy was every way defec-
tive and erroneous, and if there was any thing excel-
lent or commendable in it, there is great reason to be-
lieve that it was not the genuine result of the mental
efforts of the philosophers, but derived from a higher
source, even from very ancient traditions, to which they
themselves usually assigned a divine original, or from
scattered portions of the revelations contained in the
scriptures, with which they had become acquainted
through various channels.
If we direct our attention to the heathen nations of
the present age, such as Tartary,the Philippine islands,
many parts of Africa, China, and Hindostan, we learn,
from the unanimous testimony of navigators and travel-
lers, that they are enveloped in the grossest ignorance
and idolatry, and that their religious worship, doctrines,
and practices are equally corrupt with those of the
Pagan nations of antiquity ; yet they also possess the
same light of reason which the ancient heathens enjoyed.
With regard to Hindostan in particular, the polytheism
is of the grossest and most debasing kind. There are not
fewer than three hundred and thirty millions of deities
claiming the adoration of their votaries ! The rites are
the most impure, the penances the most toilsome, the
modes of self-torture almost innumerable, and as extraor-
dinary and as exquisite in degree as human nature can
sustain. The burning or burying of widows,, infanti-
cide, the immersion of the sick or dying in the Ganges,
and self-devotement to destruction by the idol Jugger-
naut, are among the horrid practices which flow from
the system of idolatry established among them, and
which are exceeded in folly and ferocity by none to
which paganism has given birth. The manifest effects of
this system are an immersion into the grossest moral
darkness, and an universal corruption of manners. —
Asiatic Researches, vol. viii. And yet the inhabitants of
Hindostan are highly celebrated for their progress in
the useful arts, and for intellectual acuteness.
But notwithstanding all this mass of evidences in favour
of the necessity of a divine revelation, it has been as-
serted by modern deists, that the book of nature is the
only book to be studied, and that philosophy and right
reason are sufficient to instruct and to preserve men in
their duty. They cannot deny that great ignorance and
corruption prevailed in the whole heathen world, but
they contend that the ignorance and corruption of former
ages have always been owing, not to any absolute in-
sufficiency of the light of nature itself, but to the fault
of the several particular persons in not sufficiently im-
proving that light ; and that deists now, in places where
learning and right reason are cultivated, are well able
to discover and explain all the obligations and motives
of morality, without the aid of a revelation.
But granting it to be true that all the obligations and
notions of morality could possibly be discovered and
explained clearly by the mere light of nature alone, yet
even this would not at all prove that there is no need nf
revelation. For whatever the bare natural possibility
was, it is certain that the wisest philosophers of old
never were able to discover and explain those obliga-
tions and duties to any effectual purpose, but always
did not discover them, but received them by divine revelation
in the basis of the first four precepts of the decalogue.— Dr
Gregory's Jitters on the Christian Religion. — Ed.
INTRODUCTION.
willingly acknowledged that they still wanted some
higher assistance. And as to the great pretences of
modem deists, it is to be observed that the clearness of
moral reasonings was much improved, and the regard
to a future state very much increased even among hea-
then writers after the coming of Christ, and almost all
the things that have been said wisely and truly by
modern deists, are plainly borrowed from that revela-
tion which they refuse to embrace, and without which
they could never have been able to say the same things.
They have thus been guided by a torch snatched from
the temple of God, while both they and their followers
idly imagine their path is illuminated by light of their
own creating. Even the possibility of discovering and
explaining all the necessary obligations and motives of
morality, by the mere light of reason, we deny ; for there
are several truths of the highest importance to the
happiness of men, such as the method in which God might
be acceptably worshipped, the way in which he would
be reconciled to returning sinners, and a future state of
rewards and punishments, which could never have been
discovered with any certainty by unassisted reason.
Now, indeed, when our whole duty with its true motives
is clearly revealed to us, its precepts appear plainly
agreeable to reason, and conscience readily approves
what is good, as it condemns what is evil. Nay, after
our duty is thus made known to us, it is easy, not only
to see its agreement with reason, but also to begin and
deduce its obligations from reason ; but if we had been
destitute of all revealed light, the discovery of our duty
in all points by the mere light of nature, would have
been a work of extreme difficulty ; it would have been
like groping for an unknown path in the obscure
twilight. And what ground have these modern worship-
pers of reason to imagine, that if they themselves had
lived without the light of revelation, they should have
been wiser than Socrates, and Plato, and Cicero ? How
are they certain they should have made such a proper
use of their reason, as to have discovered the truth
exactly, without being in any degree led aside by pre-
judice or neglect ? If their lot had been among the
vulgar, how are they sure they would not have been in-
volved in idolatry and superstition ? If they had joined
themselves to the philosophers, which sect would they
have chosen to follow ? Or if they should have set up
for themselves, how are they certain that they would
have been skilful enough to have deduced the several
branches of their duty, or to have applied them to the
several cases of life by argumentation and force of
reasoning ? It is one thing to perceive that those rules
of life, which are beforehand plainly laid before us, are
perfectly agreeable to reason, and another thing to dis-
cover such rules merely by the light of nature. But sup-
pose that these idolizers of reason could by strength of
reason alone demonstrate to themselves all the neces-
sary truths of religion, with the utmost clearness and dis-
tinctness, yet all men are not equally capable of being
philosophers, though all men are equally obliged to be
religious. At least this much is certain, that the re-
wards and punishments of another world cannot be so
powerfully enforced, in order to influence the lives and
practices of all sorts of men, by one who shall under-
take to demonstrate the reality of them from abstract
reasoning, as by one who shall assure mankind of the
truth and certainty of these things, by showing sufficient
credentials of his having been commissioned by God
for that purpose. — Clarke's Evid. of Nat. and Rev. Re-
lig. — Gregory's Letters on the Christ. Relig. — Hornets
Introd. vol. i.
Besides, the contradictory and discordant specula-
tions of the modern opposers of revelation, who boast
that reason is their God, are so great, and so glaring,
and the precepts delivered by them for a rule of life
are so utterly subversive of every principle of morality,
as to demonstrate the absolute necessity of a divine re-
velation, now (supposing one never had been given), in
order to lead men to the knowledge and worship of the
true God, and also to impart to them the knowledge of
their duties to him and towards one another. If we
consult the writings of those, who, in the last century,
claimed to be received as the masters of reason, and the
opposers of revelation, we shall find ample confirmation
of the truth of this remark.*
Since, then, the history and actual condition of man-
kind in all ages concur to show, that a divine revelation
was absolutely necessary to recover them out of this
universal corruption and degeneracy, and to make
known to them the proper object of their belief and wor-
ship, as well as their present duties and future expecta-
tions ; it remains, that we consider the possible means
of communicating such revelation to the world.
There appear to be only two methods by which an ex-
traordinary discovery of the will of God may be made
to man : namely, 1. An immediate revelation, by in-
spiration, or otherwise, to every individual of the human
race ; or else, 2. A commission accompanied with in-
disputable credentials, bestowed on some to convince
others, that they were actually delegated by God, in
order to instruct them in those things which he is pleased
to reveal. But it cannot seem requisite, that the Almighty
should immediately inspire, or make a direct revelation
to every particular person in the world ; for either he
must so powerfully influence the minds and affections of
men, as to take away their freedom and choice of act-
ing, which would be to offer violence to human nature ;
or else, if we may judge, from the known infirmity and
depravity of our nature, men would, for the most part,
have continued in their evil courses and practices, and
have denied God in their lives, though their understand-
ings were so clearly and fully convinced of his will and
commandments, as well as of his eternal power and God-
head. Such revelations, therefore, so far as we can judge,
would have been needless and superfluous ; they would
have been unsuitable to the majesty and honour of God;
they would have been ineffectual to the ends for which
they were designed, and would have afforded occasion
for many more pretences to impostures than there are
now in the world ; for if every one had a revelation to
himself, every one might pretend to others what he
pleased ; and one man might be deluded by the pretence
of a revelation made to another, against an express re-
velation made to himself.
* See Leland's view of the deistical writers, where the con-
flicting opinions of the modern opposers of revelation are stated
at great length, and the pernicious effects which these opinions
are calculated to have on morals, clearly demonstrated. See also
Rankin's Institutes of Theology, ch. iii. sect. i. and Home's In-
troduction vol. i. pp. 21 — 31.
INTRODUCTION.
xin
The only other way by which we can suppose the divine
will to be revealed to man, is that which the Scriptures
affirm to have been actually employed ; namely, the
qualifying of certain individuals to declare that will to
others, by infallible signs and evidences that they are
authorised and commissioned by God.
But it was not only necessary that a divine revelation
should be communicated to mankind, in a way best cal-
culated to accomplish the end proposed, but also that
effectual means should be employed, in order to pre-
serve such revelation for the benefit of mankind, and to
deliver it down genuine and uncorrupted to posterity.
Now we know of no method better calculated for pre-
serving and transmitting a divine revelation, than that
of writing ; for oral tradition is in its own nature so
uncertain and insecure, that a revelation could not
really be preserved by such means, without a miracle,
without the occasional interposition of Almighty God to
renew the memory of it at particular intervals, or his
continual assistance and inspiration to keep it always
alive and vigorous.
Writing is a much more secure method of convey-
ance than tradition, inasmuch as it is neither so liable
to involuntary mistakes, through weakness of memory
or understanding, nor so subject to voluntary falsifi-
cations, suppressions or additions, either out of malice
or design. It is likewise a mode of conveyance
more complete and uniform, more general and diffusive.
Farther, experience shows that writing is a method of
conveyance more lasting than tradition. Every event
or matter of any consequence, we desire to commit to
writing. By this, laws are promulgated ; by this, arts
and sciences are propagated ; by this, titles and estates
are secured. And what do we know of ancient history,
but those memorials which have been transmitted to us
by books and writings ? The early accounts of nations
which tradition has handed down, are so full of fables
and prodigies, that it is impossible to separate truth
from mere fiction. Tradition passes away like the morn-
ing cloud, but books may live as long as the sun and
moon endure.
Besides, it is certainly more fair and open, more free
from suspicion of any fraud or contrivance, to have a
religion preserved in writing, there to be read and ex-
amined by all, than to have it committed only to a few,
to be by them communicated in discourses to others, and
so on, from age to age, as we find that no two persons
express the same thing exactly in the same manner, nor
even the same person at different times.
Hence we conclude that a divine revelation must
necessarily be committed to writing, otherwise it cannot
be preserved in its purity, or serve mankind as a certain
rule of faith, and of life: and we may add, that the im-
portance of the matter, the variety of the subjects, and
the design of the institutions, contained in those books
which Jews and Christians account to be sacred, are
additional reasons why they should be committed to
writing.
The necessity of a divine revelation having been
shown, as well a3 the probability, that such a revelation
would be given to mankind, and the most effectual mode
of communicating and transmitting it, the next point of
inquiry which naturally arises is, whether that collection
of writings which professes to be a revelation coming from
God, and which Christians have received as such, fur-
nishes sufficient evidence in support of its claims Homes
Introd. vol. i. — Bishop Newto?is Works, vol. iv.
Now any candid and reflecting person, when he first
directs his attention to this wonderful volume, and notices
the awful and authoritative language which it often assumes,
the sublimity and importance of the subjects of which it
treats, the wonderful events and transactions which it
records, and the promises and threatenings which it holds
forth, will be naturally impelled to inquire, Is this book
what it professes to be, the word of God ? Were its
various authors instructed and commissioned by God to
relate the histories, announce the doctrines, enforce the
precepts, predict the events, which are the subjects of
their respective books ? Were these holy men of God
who spake as they were moved by his Spirit, or were they
impostors? Or to reduce these inquiries into a methodical
form, it will be asked generally, Are the books of the
Old and New Testaments (excluding those which are
avowedly apocryphal) genuine ; that is, actually written
by the persons to whom they are ascribed? Are they
authentic ; that is, do they relate matters of fact as they
really happened ? Are they inspired ; that is, were they
written under divine influence and guidance, so as to
contain the words of God and not of man ?
In discussing these momentous topics, winters on the
evidences of religion generally prove, first, the genuine-
ness, authenticity and inspiration of the New Testament ;
and having established its divine authority, they thence
infer that of the Old Testament, for if the claims of the
New Testament to be received as a divinely inspired
book, be once admitted, no reasonable doubt can be enter-
tained of the divine inspiration of the Old Testament;
because the writers of the New Testament incessantly
appeal to it as the word of God, and make ample
quotations from it. This is perhaps the simplest and
shortest method, and will be adopted in the introduction
to the New Testament part of the present work. (Sec cb.
iii. p. 831). But as it has been the practice of modern
sceptics, to endeavour to shake the foundations of Chris-
tianity, by undermining the authority of the Old Testa-
ment ; and as their attacks have been particularly directed
against the genuineness and credit of the books of
Moses, upon which the other ancient Scriptures greatly
depend, it is of importance to prove, that the Pentateuch,
or five books of Moses, were really written by him, and
are of divine authority. And if we can establish the
genuineness, authenticity, and inspiration of these books,
the genuineness, &c. of the remaining books of the Old
Testament will follow as a matter of course, on account
of their mutual and immediate dependance ; and in this
way also, we might prove the truth of the New Testament,
because, if the Jewish Scriptures be true, the dispensation
which they contain being introductory to that contained in
the New Testament, the latter, as it is founded on, and the
perfection of the former, must of necessity be true also.
Let it not be supposed that the question, Whether the
books of the Old Testament are genuine or spurious, is
one of small importance ; for if these books were not
written by the authors to whom they are ascribed, or
nearly in ages to which they are supposed to belong,
but on the contrary, were written by authors who tired at
a milch later period, that is, if they were mppotititiotu or
sp?irioiis, the history which is related in them would
XIV
INTRODUCTION.
by no means be worthy of the great credit that is given
to it ; the design which pervades these books would have
been an imposition upon a later age, and the accomplish-
ment of that design in the New Testament would be alto-
gether an extraordinary and singular occurrence; the
miracles therein recorded to have been anciently per-
formed, would have been the invention of a later age,
or natural events would have been metamorphosed into
miracles ; the prophecies asserted to be contained in
those books would have been invented after the histori-
cal facts which are narrated in them ; and lastly, Jesus
Christ and his apostles would have approved and recom-
mended the works of impostors. Hence it is evident of
what great importance the question is, Whether these
books are genuine. It is also of equal importance,
to determine whether they are authentic, or relate mat-
ters of fact as they really happened, and in consequence
possess authority. For a book may be genuine that is
not authentic ; a book may be authentic that is not
genuine, and many books are both genuine and authen-
tic, which are not inspired. These three characteristics
of genuineness, authenticity, and inspiration, can meet
no where but in a divine revelation.
The books of the Old Testament are written in He-
brew, and they are the only writings now extant in that
language. The Old Testament, according to our Bibles,
consists of thirty-nine books, but among the Jews they
formed only twenty-two, which was also the number of
letters in their alphabet. They divided these twenty-
two books into three classes : the first class consisted
of five books, namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Num-
bers and Deuteronomy, which they called 'the Law;'
the second class consisted of thirteen books, namely,
Joshua, Judges and Ruth, in one book ; the two books
of Samuel, of Kings, and of Chronicles, respectively,
in single books ; Ezra and Nehemiah in one book ;
Esther, Job, Isaiah, the two books of Jeremiah, in one ;
Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor prophets, in one
book ; these thirteen books they called ' The Prophets ;'
the third class consisted of the four remaining books,
namely, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song
of Solomon, which four books the Jews called Chetubim,
and the Greeks Hagiographa, or holy writings ; this
class was also called the Psalms, from the name of the
first book in it. This threefold division was naturally
suggested by the books themselves ; it was used merely
for convenience, and did not proceed from any opinion
of difference in the authority of the books of the several
classes. In like manner, the minor prophets were so
called from the brevity of their works, and not from any
supposed inferiority to the other prophets. The books
are not in all instances arranged in our Bibles, accord-
ing to the order of time in which they were written ; but
the book of Genesis was the earliest composition con-
tained in the sacred volume, except, as some think, the
book of Job, and the book of Malachi was certainly the
latest. The five books of Moses, namely, Genesis, Ex-
odus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, usually
distinguished by the name of ' The Pentateuch,' from
two Greek words pente, five, and teuchos, volume, were
originally written in one continued work, and still re-
main in that form in the public copies read in the Jew-
ish synagogues. It is uncertain when this portion of
Scripture was divided into books, but probably the divi-
sion was first adopted in the Septuagint version, as the
titles prefixed are of Greek derivation ; the Pentateuch
was, however, distinguished as five books in the private
copies used by the Jews in the time of Josephus.
The book of Genesis, which may be considered as
an introduction to the rest of the Pentateuch, contains
the history of 2369 years, according to the common
chronology. It commences from the beginning of the
world itself, and concludes with the death of the patri-
arch Joseph. It has received the name of Genesis, be-
cause it describes the creation of the world, the genera-
tion of man, and of all other creatures. The book of
Exodus relates the tyranny of Pharoah, the bondage of
the Israelites under him in Egypt, and their miraculous
deliverance from this bondage, under Moses, from
which circumstance it derives its name. It describes
also the entrance of the Israelites into the wilderness of
Sinai, the promulgation of the law, and the building of
the tabernacle. It comprehends a period of about
145 years. The book of Leviticus has its name from
its giving an account of the Jewish service and worship,
the offices of the Levites, and the whole Levitical order.
It embraces only about the space of a month. The book
of Numbers relates several remarkable incidents in the
passage of the Israelites through the wilderness. It
has its denomination from the numbering of the tribes
by Moses, according to the command of God. It re-
cords the events of about thirty-eight years. The book
of Deuteronomy, which signifies a second law, contains
a summary repetition of the moral, ceremonial, and judi-
cial laws, which had before been delivered by Moses,
accompanied by certain additions and explanations.
It contains also many exhortations, admonitions, and
warnings, addressed to the Israelites, with the view of in-
citing them to obedience. The period of time comprised
in this book is, according to some, five lunar weeks, and
according to others, about two months. The first argu-
ment to be adduced in favour of the genuineness of the
Pentateuch, is the universal concurrence of all antiquity.
The rival kingdoms of Judah and Israel, the hostile sects
of Jews and Samaritans, and every denomination of early
Christians, received the Pentateuch, as unquestionably
written by Moses ; and we find it mentioned and referred
to by many heathen authors, in a manner which plainly
shows it to have been the general and undisputed opinion
in the pagan world that this book was the work of the
Jewish legislator. Nicholaus of Damascus mentions
the deluge, and the resting of the ark upon a high moun-
tain of Armenia, and the preservation of Noah by means
of the ark, and adds, this might be the man about whom
Moses the legislator of the Jews wrote, (Joseph. Antiq.
b. i. c. 3.). We are told that Alexander Polyhistor
mentioned a history of the Jews written by Cleodamus,
which was agreeable to the history of Moses the legis-
lator (Ibid. b. i. c. 15). Diodorus Siculus mentions
Moses as the legislator of the Jews in three different
places of his remaining works, and plainly ascribes to
him the laws delivered in the Pentateuch, stating also
that they were prescribed by divine authority. Strabo
speaks of the description which Moses gave of the deity,
and says that he condemned the religious worship of
the Egyptians. This statement, though not very ac-
curate, is sufficient to show that he considered the Penta-
teuch as written by Moses. Both Justin and Tacitus
INTRODUCTION.
admitted the Pentateuch to have been written by Moses.
Pliny the elder mentions ' a system of magic,' as he
calls it, which was derived from Moses. Juvenal the
satirist speaks of the volume of the law written by Moses.
Galen makes a reference to the book of Genesis. Nu-
menius, a Pythagorean philosopher of the second century,
says that Plato borrowed from the writings of Moses his
doctrines concerning the existence of a God, and the
creation of the world. Longinus, in his treatise on the
sublime, says " so likewise the Jewish legislator, who
was no ordinary person, having conceived a just idea
of the power of God, has nobly expressed it in the be-
ginning of his laws, 'And God said,' — What? 'Let
there be light, and light was. Let the earth be, and the
earth was.' " Porphyry, one of the most acute and learned
enemies of Christianity, admitted the genuineness of
the Pentateuch, and acknowledged that Moses was prior
to the Phoenician Sanchoniathon, who lived before the
Trojan war ; he even contended for the truth of Sancho-
niathon 's account of the Jews from its concidence with
the Mosaic history. Nor was the genuineness of the
Pentateuch denied by any of the numerous writers
against the gospel in the first four centuries, although
the Christian fathers constantly appealed to the history
•and prophecies of the Old Testament, in support of the
divine origin of the doctrines which they taught.
To this testimony from profane authors may be added
the positive assertions of the sacred writers both of the
Old and New Testament. Moses frequently speaks of
himself as directed by God to write the commands which
he received from him, and to record the events which
occurred during his ministry. (See Exod. xvii. 14. xxiv.
4. Num. xxxiii. 2.) And in Deut. xxxi. 9, 24. he speaks
of himself as the writer of the book of the law, in the
most express terms ; and it may safely be asserted, that
no person who had forged the Pentateuch, or even
written it in a subsequent age from existing materials,
would have inserted such passages, as they must have
excited inquiry, and have caused the fraud to be de-
tected. In many subsequent books of the Old Testa-
ment, the Pentateuch is repeatedly quoted and referred
to under the names of ' The Law,' and ' The book of
Moses ;' and in particular we are told that ' Joshua read
all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, ac-
cording to all that is written in the book of the law ;
there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which
Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel.'
(Josh. viii. 34, 35.) From which passage it is evident
that the book of the Law, or Pentateuch, existed in the
time of Joshua, the successor of Moses, and was acknow-
ledged by him. In the New Testament also the writ-
ing of the Law, or Pentateuch, is expressly ascribed to
Moses. In a variety of passages in the Gospels, Acts,
and Epistles, Moses is evidently considered as the
author of the Pentateuch, and every one of the five books
is quoted as written by him.
Thus the books of Moses have constantly been re-
ceived as his, and have been delivered down to us as his
by the consent of all ages, by Jews, Heathens, and
Christians ; nor was their genuineness ever denied or
questioned by those whose interest it was to deny it ;
by any of the Jews in their frequent apostasies, or by
the greatest enemies of the Jews, the Samaritans, and they
both certainly would have done so, if there had been
the least ground or pretence for it.— Bp. Tor/dine1*
Christ. Theol. part i. ch. 1 — Bp. Newton's Works, vol. i.
dissert. I — Grave's Lect. on the Pent.
It may be observed that we have the strongest possible
negative testimony to the authenticity of the Mosaic
history. The laborious Whiston asserts, and in support
of his assertion appeals to a similar declaration of the
learned Grotius, ' That there does not appear in the
genuine records of mankind belonging to ancient times,
any testimonies that contradict those produced from the
Old Testament ; and that it may be confidently affirmed
there are no such to be found.' — Grot. b. iii. sect. 13,
14, l(i. — Whist. Joseph. We are not however con-
fined to negative testimony ; for it would be easy to
bring forward evidence almost amounting to demonstra-
tion, to prove the positive agreement of antiquity with the
narrative of the sacred historian ; but we can only men-
tion briefly some of the leading facts, concerning which
the most ancient historians and earliest traditions very
remarkably coincide with the Pentateuch. Thus Mane-
tho, Cheremon, Apollonius, Lysimachus, and many
others testify that Moses was the leader of the Jews, as
well as the writer of their law, and conducted them
from Egypt where they served a3 slaves. Eupolemus,
Artapanus, Strabo, Trogus Pompeius, Chalridius, and
Juvenal speak of Moses as the author of a volume
which was preserved with great care among the Jews,
by which the worship of images, and eating of swine's
flesh, were forbidden, circumcision and the observance
of the sabbath strictly enjoined. Longinus, who has
been already quoted, expressly mentions the account of
the creation of the world, as having been written by
Moses the Jewish lawgiver. Diodorus Siculus in his
catalogue of those lawgivers who affected to have re-
ceived the plan of their laws from some deity, mentions
Moses as ascribing his to that God whom he calls Jaoh
or Jah. And further he speaks of Moses as a man il-
lustrious for his courage and prudence, who instituted
the Jewish religion and law, divided the Jews into
twelve tribes, established the priesthood among them
with a judicial power, &c. Numenius, a Pythagorean,
held the Jewish scriptures, and especially the books of
Moses, in such great esteem, that his books are full of
passages quoted from Moses and some of the prophets
with great reverence. He says,' Plato was only Mosea
speaking Greek,' and affirms that Moses by his prayers
brought dreadful calamities upon Egypt. Justin Martyr
enumerates many poets, historians, and lawgivers, and
philosophers of Greece, who mention Moses as the
leader and prince of the Jewish nation. Uerosus and
Abydenus mention the deluge ; Artapanus, Eupolemus,
and Abydenus, speak of the tower of liabel ; and the
latter of the failure of the attempt to build the tower.
Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Tacitus, Pliny, and Solinua,
give ah account of the destruction of Sodom and lm-
morrah, in the main, agreeable to that of Moses. Berosus,
Alexander Polyliistor, and others make express and
honourable mention of Abraham and some of his famil] ;
and even speak of his interview with Blelchisedec. —
Gregory's Letter* on Christ. Bel. let. v. To this enu-
meration of testimonies from the remains of early
writers in favour of the truth of the Mosaic writing*,
many others might be added. And whether we consider
the information to be found in the later works of
XVI
INTRODUCTION.
learned men, as derived from the Jewish scriptures, or
from other sources, the credit of the Mosaic history will
perhaps be equally established, since they quoted from
earlier authors.
For, let it be remembered that Josephus appeals to
the public records of different nations, and to a great
number of books extant in his time, but now lost, as in-
disputable evidence, in the opinion of the heathen world,
for the truth of the most remarkable events related in his
history, the earlier periods of which he professes to have
taken principally from the Pentateuch. For a more par-
ticular account of heathen testimonies in favour of the
truth of the Mosaic writings, see Bishop Newton's Works,
vol. i. — Stilling fleet's Orig. Sac. — Marsh on the Divine
Authority of the Pentateuch. — Faber's Hor. Mos. —
Bishop Tomline's El. of Christ. Theol.
Of the many traditions which accord with the Mosaic
history and which prevailed among the ancient nations,
and still exist in several parts of the world, the following
must be considered as singularly striking : that the world
was formed from rude and shapeless matter by the Spirit
of God ; that the seventh day was a holy day ; that man
was created perfect, and had the dominion given him over
all the inferior animals ; that there had been a golden age,
when man in a state of innocence had open intercourse
with heaven ; that when his nature became corrupt, the
earth itself underwent a change, that sacrifice was neces-
sary to appease the offended gods ; that there was an evil
spirit continually endeavouring to injure man and thwart
the designs of the good spirit, but that he should at last be
finally subdued, and universal happiness restored through
the intercession of a Mediator; that the life of man, during
the first ages of the world, was of great length ; that there
were ten generations previous to the general deluge ; that
only eight persons were saved out of the flood, in an ark,
by the interposition of the Deity : these, and many other
similar traditions, are related to have been prevalent in
the ancient world, by Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek and
Roman authors. — See St i I ling fleet' s Orig. Sac. — Marc-
rice's Hist, of India, and Home's Introd. vol. i.
It is no small satisfaction to the friends of revealed
religion, that this argument has of late years received
great additional strength, from the discovery of an almost
corresponding tradition, traced up among the nations
whose records have been the best preserved, to times
even prior to the age of Moses. The treasures of ori-
ental learning which Maurice collected with so much
industry, and explained with so much judgment, in his
History and Antiquities of India, supply abundance of
incontrovertible evidence for the existence of opinions
in the early ages of the world, which perfectly agree with
the leading articles of our faith, as well as with the prin-
cipal events related in the Pentateuch. In one passage
he says, ' Whether the reader will allow or not the inspira-
tion of the sacred writer, his mind, on the perusal, must be
struck with one very remarkable fact, namely, that the
names which are assigned by Moses to eastern countries
and cities, derived to them immediately from the patri-
archs, their original founders, are for the most part the very
names by which they were anciently known over all the
east; many of them were afterwards translated, with little
variation, by the Greeks, in their systems of Geography.
Moses has traced, in one short chapter, (Gen. x.) all the
inhabitants of the earth, from the Caspian and Persian
seas to the extreme Gades, to their original, and re-
corded at once the period and occasion of their disper-
sion.'— History of Hmdostan, vol. i.
This fact, and the conclusions from it, which are
thus incontrovertibly established by the lately acquired
knowledge of the Sanscrit language, were contended for
and strongly enforced by Bochart and Stillingfleet, who
could only refer to oriental opinion and traditions, as
they came to them through the medium of Grecian interpre-
tation. To the late excellent and learned Sir W. Jones,
we are chiefly indebted for the light recently thrown
from the east upon this important subject. The result
of his laborious inquiries into the chronology, history,
mythology, and languages of the nations, whence infidels
have long derived their most formidable objections, was
a full conviction that neither accident nor ingenuity
could account for the very numerous instances of similar
traditions and near coincidences, in the names of per-
sons and places which are to be found in the Bible, and in
ancient monuments of eastern literature. — Asiatic Re-
searches, and Maurice's History, vol. i. Whoever, in-
deed, is acquainted with the writings of Bryant and
Maurice, and with the Asiatic Researches, cannot but
have observed, that the accounts of the creation, the fall,
the deluge, and the dispersion of mankind, recorded
by the nations upon the vast continent of Asia, bear a
strong resemblance to each other and to the narration
in the sacred history, and evidently contain the frag-
ments of one original truth, which was broken by the
dispersion of the patriarchal families, and corrupted by
length of time, by allegory, and idolatry. From this
universal concurrence on this head, one of these things
is necessarily true : either that all the traditions must
have been taken from the author of the book of Genesis,
or that the author of the book of Genesis made up his
history from some or all of such traditions as were
already extant ; or lastly, that he received his know-
ledge of past events by revelation. Were then all
these traditions taken from the Mosaic history ? It has
been shown by Sir W. Jones and Maurice, that they were
received too generally and too early to make this sup-
position even possible ; for they existed in different parts
of the world in the very age when Moses lived. Was
the Mosiac history composed from the traditions then
existing ? It is certain that the Chaldeans, the Persians,
the most ancient inhabitants of India, and the Egyptians,
all possessed the same story ; but they had, by the time
of Moses, wrapped up in their own mysteries, and dis-
guised it by their own fanciful conceits : and surely no
rational mind can believe, that if Moses had been ac-
quainted with all the mystic fables of the East as well as of
Egypt, he could out of such an endless variety of obscure
allegory, by the power of human sagacity alone, have
discovered the real origin ; much less, that from a partial
knowledge of some of them, he could have been able to
discover the facts which suit and explain them all.* His
* It is highly probable, as will be shown afterwards, that both
Moses and the Israelites had acquired a knowledge of many of
the facts recorded in the book of Genesis from tradition ; that
Noah was acquainted with the principal events and transactions
relative to Antediluvian times; and that these were transmitted
by his son Shem to Abraham, from whom they passed to the
other patriarchs. Still, it is evident that the book of Genesis
could not have been compiled from materials drawn from these
traditionary sources ; much less from the corrupted traditions
here alluded to.
INTRODUCTION.
xvn
plain recital, however, of the creation, the fall, the deluge,
and the dispersion of mankind, does unquestionably
develope that origin, and bring to light those facts ; and
it therefore follows, not only that the account is the true
one, but there being no human means of his acquiring the
knowledge of it, that it was, as he asserts it to have
been, revealed to him by God himself.
We have now seen, from undoubted testimony, that the
Pentateuch has been uniformly ascribed to Moses as its
author ; that the most ancient traditions remarkably
agree with his account of the creation of the world, the
fall of man, the deluge, the dispersion of mankind,
and the departure of the Israelites from Egypt under
Moses ; that a people with such laws and institutions
as he professes to have given them, have existed from
remote antiquity ; and we ourselves are eye-witnesses
that such a people, so circumstanced, exist at this hour,
and in a state exactly conformable to his predictions
concerning them. But it may be observed, that the civil
history of the Jews is seldom contested, even by those
who imagine the Pentateuch to have been written in some
age subsequent to that of Moses, from a collection of
annals or diaries ; it is the miraculous part of it which
is chiefly disputed. To this observation, however, we
may oppose the conclusive argument of a professed
enemy to revealed religion, 'that the miraculous part of
the Mosaic history is not like the prodigies of Livy and
other profane authors, unconnected with the facts re-
corded ; it is so intermixed and blended with the narrative
that they must both stand or fall together.' — Lord Bol-
ingbroke. With respect to the annals which are men-
tioned as the supposed foundation of this history, they
must have been either true or false ; if true, the history
of the Israelites remains equally marvellous ; if false,
how was it possible for the history to acquire the credit
and esteem in which it was so universally held ? But
upon what is this supposition founded ? No particular
person is mentioned with any colour of probability as
the author or compiler of the Pentateuch ; no particular
age is pointed out with any appearance of certainty,
though that of Solomon is usually fixed upon as the most
likely. Yet why the most enlightened period of the
Jewish history should be chosen as the best adapted to
forgers or interpolation, nay, to the most gross imposi-
tion that was ever practised upon mankind, it is difficult
to conjecture. Was it possible, in such an age, to write
the Pentateuch in the name of the venerated law-giver
of the Jews, from a collection of annals, and produce
the firm belief that it actually had been written more
than 400 years before; and this not only throughout
the nation itself, but among all those whom the widely
extended fame of Solomon had connected with him, or
had induced to study the history and pretensions of this
extraordinary people ?
The truth of the Mosaic history receives farther con-
firmation from the character of Moses, from his qualifi-
cations as a historian, and from the opportunities he en-
joyed of becoming acquainted with the events and trans-
actions which he records.
Mose3 was well qualified to write his history, in conse-
quence of his having received a princely education in
the court of Pharaoh, and it is certain that Egypt was
the most famous school of learning in ancient times.
His parts and attainments are allowed to have been great,
even by his enemies, and several testimonies from heathen
authors, in favour of his character as a historian, and as a
sublime writer, have already been adduced. AVhether we
view him as a historian, as a prophet, as a poet, or as a
law-giver, we find him varying and accommodating his
style to his subject, and few writers excel in any one of
these characters so much as he does in them all. It is
evident also, that Moses had a chief concern in all the
transactions recorded in the four last books of the Penta-
teuch, as legislator and governor of the Jews. Every
thing was done under his eye and cognizance, and there-
fore he cannot be charged with ignorance of the facts
which he relates.
\\ ith regard to the book of Genesis, although there
are many things in it which could be derived only from
divine revelation, yet there are many other events and
facts which must have been known in the time of Moses
by tradition, and when this book was first delivered many
persons then living must have been competent to decide on
the fidelity with which he relates those events. They must
have heard of, and believed, the remarkable incidents in
the lives of the patriarchs, the prophecies which they ut-
tered, and the actions which they performed; for the lon-
gevity of man, in the earlier ages of the world, rendered
tradition the criterion of truth ; and in the days of Moses,
the channels of information must have been as yet uncor-
rupted ; for though ages had already elapsed, even 2432
years, before the birth of the sacred historian, yet those
relations were easily ascertained, which might have been
conveyed by seven persons from Adam to Moses ; and
that the traditions were so secure from error, we shall
immediately be convinced, if we consider that Methusa-
lem was 340 years old when Adam died, and that he
lived till the year of the flood, when Noah had attained
600 years. In like manner, Shem conveyed tradition
from Noah to Abraham, for he conversed with both for a
considerable time. Isaac also lived to instruct Joseph
in the history of his predecessors, and Amram, the father
of Moses, was contemporary with Joseph. The Israel-
ites then must have been able, by interesting tradition, to
judge how far the Mosaic account was consistent with
truth. — Gray's Key to the Old Testament, Introd. to
Genesis. As to the hypothesis which some have enter-
tained, namely, that Moses compiled the book of Genesis
from written records preserved in the family of Shem,
and extant in the time of Moses, we reject it as fanciful
and destitute of any proper foundation.
Moses was also an honest and disinterested writer,
and has given such proofs of impartiality and veracity . I J
are rarely to be found in the most faithful historians. In -
stead of flattering his countrymen, or courting their ap
plause, he rather exposes their infidelity and irickedneM :
and while he celebrates the virtues of some of their an-
cestors, he at the same time records the failings and
imperfections of the very best of them. He does not
spare even his own family and his nearest relations.
He freely relates the cruelty and barbarity of Leri, the
founder of his family, in the affair of the Slieehemites.
and the curse entailed upon him on account ol it. lie
gives an exact detail of the conduct of Aaron his brother,
with respect to the golden calf, and also of Aaron and
Miriam's sedition. Neither does he conceal his own
faults, but fairly acknowledges his want of faith and con-
fidence in God; and if at anytime he commends himself,
INTRODUCTION.
it is when he finds it necessary to do so in order to vindi-
cate himself from unjust calumnies.
No one can charge Moses with avarice, or with am-
bitious motives. He forsook all the pleasures and all
the honours of the court of Egypt, ' choosing rather to
suffer affliction with the people of God ;' and though he
was appointed to a high command, yet it was attended
with continual labour and pain, with great trouble and
vexation to himself, and with little profit or advantage
to his family. The priesthood he settled in the line
of Aaron, the supreme command he resigned to one of
another tribe, and his own family he reduced to the rank
of common Levites.
His excellent moral qualities furnish an additional
argument in proof of his fidelity as an historian. Not
only does he appear in all his writings to have had an
ardent zeal for the glory of God, but also for the service
and happiness of his countrymen. He delivered them
from the meanest and bitterest slavery in a foreign land,
and conducted them safely, through dangers and diffi-
culties, to a land of liberty. Often did he stand between
them and destruction, and rather than that they should
be cut off, as they had deserved, he prayed and entreated
that he himself might be blotted out of the book of life.
A man who had so sincere a love for his friends and
country, could not be a bad man ; and if he had been a
Grecian or Roman legislator, those who are now the
most forward to traduce him, would then, perhaps, have
been the most profuse and lavish in his praises. — Bishop
Newton s Works, vol. i. dissert, i. — See also Grave s
Lectures on the four last Books of the Pentateuch,
Lectures ii. iii. iv. — Blunfs Veracity of the Jive Books
of Moses. — Home's Introduction, vol. i.
But a more particular consideration of the contents
of the Pentateuch, as relating immediately to the Jews,
will furnish irrefragable arguments to prove its authen-
ticity, and the truth of its claims to inspiration. The
Pentateuch contains directions for the establishment of
the civil and religious policy of the Jews, which, it is
acknowledged, existed from the time of Moses ; it con-
tains a code of laws, which every individual of the
nation was required to observe with the utmost punctu-
ality, under pain of the severest punishment, and with
which, therefore, every individual must be supposed to
have been acquainted ; it contains the history of the an-
cestors of the Jews, in a regular succession, from the
creation of the world, and a series of prophecies which,
in an especial mariner, concerned themselves, and which
must have been beyond measure interesting to a people
who were alternately enjoying promised blessings, and
suffering under predicted calamities ; it contains not only
the wonders of creation and providence in a general view,
but also repeated instances of the superintending care
of the God of the whole earth over their particular nation,
and the institution of feasts and ceremonies in perpetual
remembrance of these divine interpositions ; and all
these things are professedly addressed in the name, and to
the contemporaries, of Moses — to those who had seen the
miracles he records, who had been witnesses to the events
he relates, and who had heard the awful promulgation
of the law. Let any one reflect upon these extraordin-
ary and wonderful facts, and surely he must be con-
vinced, that they could never have obtained the univer-
sal belief of those among whose ancestors they are said
to have happened, unless there had been the clearest
evidence of their certainty and truth. Nor were these
facts the transient occurrences of a single hour or day,
and witnessed only by a small number of persons ; on
the contrary, some of them were continued through a
space of forty years, and were known and felt by several
millions of people: the pillar of the cloud was seen
by day, and the pillar of fire by night during their whole
journey in the wilderness 5 nor did the manna fail
till they had eaten of the corn in the land of Ca-
naan. We see Moses in the combined characters of
leader, law-giver, and historian, not once or twice,
or as it were cautiously and surreptitiously, but avow-
edly, and continually appealing to the conviction of
a whole people, who were witnesses of these manifesta-
tions of divine power for the justice of their punishments,
and resting the authority of the Law upon the truth of
the wonderful history he records. And farther, in
order to preserve the accurate recollection of these
events, and prevent the possibility of any alteration in
this history, he expressly commanded that the whole
Pentateuch should be read at the end of every seven
years, in the solemnity of the year of release, at the
feast of tabernacles, in the hearing of all Israel, that all
the people, men, women, and children, and the strangers
within their gates, might hear, and learn to fear the Lord
their God, and observe to do all the words of the Law ;
and especially, that their children, who had not been eye-
witnesses of the miracles which established its claim to
their faith and obedience, might hear the marvellous his-
tory, which they were taught by their fathers, publicly
declared and confirmed, and learn to fear and obey the
Lord their God from the wonders of creation and provi-
dence, revealed to his servant Moses, and from the
supernatural powers with which he was invested. (Deut.
xxxi. 10, &c). Can we require a more striking proof
of the existence and designed publicity of the Law, than
the command to ' write all the words of the Law very
plainly on pillars of stone, and to set them up on the
day they passed over Jordan, the day they took posses-
sion of the promised land, and to plaster them over to
preserve them.' (Deut. xxvii. 2.) — See Patrick in loc.
They were commanded also to teach the Law diligently
to their children, and explain to them the testimonies,
and the statutes, and the judgments, and the history of
their forefathers ; to talk of them when sitting in the
house, when walking in the way, when they lay down, and
when they rose up ; to bind the words for a sign upon
their door posts and gates, and upon their hands, and
as frontlets between their eyes. (Deut. vi.) AVords
cannot express more strongly than these do, the general
obligation of the people to acquire an accurate know-
ledge of the Law, and to pay a constant, habitual atten-
tion to its precepts, whether these be taken in a literal
or figurative sense. These repeated injunctions with
regard to public and private instruction in the Law, also
manifestly imply that the book of the Law existed in
writing at that time, and that the people must have had
easy access to copies of it, and without doubt the office
of the Levite, whom every family was 'to keep within
their gates,' must have been to teach the law. The com-
mand that every king upon his accession to the throne,
should ' write him a copy of the law in a book, out of that
which is before the priests,' (Deut. xvii. 18.) is a proof
INTRODUCTION.
xix
not only that the Law existed in writing, but that there
was a copy of it under the peculiar care of the priests ;
that is, deposited in the tabernacle or temple.
Is it credible that any people would have submitted
to so rigorous and burdensome a law as that of Moses,
unless they had been fully convinced, by a series of
miracles, that he was a prophet sent from God ? And
being thus convinced of the divine mission of Moses,
would they have suffered any writing to pass under his
venerated name, of which he was not really the author ?
Had fraud or imposture of any kind belonged to any
part of it, would not the Israelites, at the moment of
rebellion, have availed themselves of that circumstance
as a ground or justification of their disobedience ? The
Jews were exceedingly prone to transgress the law of
Moses, and to fall into idolatry ; but had there been
the least suspicion of any falsity or imposture in the
writings of Moses, the ringleaders of their revolts would
have eagerly availed themselves of it, as the most plausi-
ble plea to draw them off from the worship of the true God.
Can we think that a nation and religion so maligned as
the Jewish were, could have escaped discovery if there
had been any deceit in their religious polity, when so
many lay in wait continually to expose them to all con-
tumelies imaginable ? Nay, among themselves in their
frequent apostasies, and occasions given for such a pre-
tence, how conies this to be never heard of, nor in the
least questioned, whether the law was undoubtedly of
Moses's writing or not ? What an excellent plea would
this have been for Jeroboam's calves in Dan and Bethel,
for the Samaritan temple on mount Gerizim, could any
the least supicion have been raised among them con-
cerning the authenticity of the fundamental records of
the Jewish commonwealth. And what is very remark-
able, the Jews, who were a people strangely suspicious
and incredulous while they were fed and clothed by
miracles, yet could never find ground to question this ;
nay, Moses himself, we find, was greatly envied by many
of the Israelites in the wilderness, as is evident from
the conspiracy of Korah and his accomplices, and that
on the very ground that he ' took too much upon him :'
how unlikely then is it, that amidst so many enemies he
should dare to enter any thing into public records which
was not most undoubtedly true, or undertake to prescribe
a law to oblige the people and their posterity, or that
after his own age any thing should come out under his
name, which would not be presently detected by the
emulators of his glory ? What then is the thing itself
incredible ? surely not, that Moses should write the re-
cords we speak of? Were the people not able to un-
derstand the truth of it ? What, not those who were in
the same age, and conveyed it down by a certain tradi-
tion to posterity ? Or did not the Israelites all con-
stantly believe it? What, not they who would sooner
part with their lives and fortunes, than admit any alter-
ation or variation as to their law ? — Stillingflcel' s Orig.
Sac. b. ii. c. i.
Can we have more undoubted evidence that there were
such persons as Solon, Lycurgus, and Nunia, and that
the laws bearing their names were theirs, than the history
of the several commonwealths of Athens, Sparta, and
Rome, which were governed by those laws ? When writ-
ings are not of general concernment, they may be more
easily counterfeited, but when they concern the rights,
privileges, and government of a nation, there will always
be a sufficient number of persons whose interest will
lead them to prevent impostures. It is no easy matter
to forge a magna c/iarta,and to invent laws ; the caution
and prudence of men are never so much on the alert as
in matters which concern their estates and privileges.
The general interest of men lies contrary to such im-
postures, and therefore they will prevent their obtaining
credit among them. Now the laws of Moses are incor-
porated with the very republic of the Jews, and their
subsistence and government depend upon them ; their
religion and laws are so interwoven the one with the
other, that one cannot be separated from the other.
Their right to their temporal possessions in the land of
Canaan depended on their owning the sovereignty of
God, who gave these possessions to them, and on the
truth of the history recorded by Moses, concerning the
promises made to the patriarchs ; so that on that ac-
count it was impossible that those laws should be coun-
terfeited on which the welfare of the nation depended,
and according to which they were governed ever since
they were a nation. — Stilliiigfleei's Orig. Sac. b. ii. c. i.
Let those then who are disposed to deny the genuine-
ness and authenticity of the Pentateuch, consider its real
importance to the Jewish people, and the high veneration
in which it was unquestionably held by them, and surely
they must be convinced of the impossibility of ignorance
or mistake concerning any fact relative to it ; and in
particular it will appear scarcely credible, that the Jews
should err in attributing it to any person who was not
its real author, or that they should not know who it was
that digested it into the shape in which we now have it
from materials left by Moses, had it been compiled in
that manner in some subsequent age. The silence of
history and tradition upon this point is a sufficient proof
that no such compilation ever took place. If we be-
lieve that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, why
should we not believe that he wrote the account of that
deliverance ? If we believe that God enabled Moses
to work miracles,* why should we not believe that he
also enabled hint to write the history of the creation ?
— Bp. Tomlines Elem. of Christ. Theol. part i. c. i.
The prophecies contained in the books of Moses
furnish undeniable evidence of his divine mission, and
consequently of the divine authority of these books.
These prophecies not only relate to former times, but
several of them have been fulfilled in later ages or are
fulfilling at this time in the world. God hath ' blessed'
and ' enlarged' the posterity of Shem and Japbet, and
Canaan, in his posterity, hath been ' a servant of servants
unto his brethren,' as Noah foretold. (Gen. ix. 25, 26,
27.) The posterity of Ishmael, the Arabs, are to this
day wild men ; their hand has been against every man,
and every man's hand against them, and they still sub-
sist a rude, unconquered race, notwithstanding the most
powerful efforts of their enemies to subdue them ; they
still dwell in the presence of all their brethren. (Gen.
xvi. 12.) The posterity of Abraham obtained posses-
sion of Canaan, according to the promise made to that
patriarch, 100 years before its fulfilment. The seed of
* The evidence on which the truth of the miracles recorded
by Moses, as well as those of our Saviour, rest, "ill l>e fully
stated in the New Testament part of this history. See b. viii.
sect ii. c. iv. |>. 985.
INTRODUCTION.
Abraham multiplied as the stars of heaven, and it is
computed that they are at this day as numerous as ever
they were in Canaan, although they are dispersed into
all parts of the world. (Gen. xv. 13. xxii. 17.) The
sceptre continued in Judah till the time of the coming
of Shiloh, and then departed, as Jacob foretold. (Gen.
xlix. 10.) The prophet foretold by Moses has appeared,
even Christ, the promised seed. (Deut. xviii. 15, &c.)
In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses foretold that the
Israelites should be blessed or cursed, according as they
were obedient or disobedient to the commandments and
statutes which he had given them; and all their subsequent
history abundantly confirms the truth of the prediction.
And what can be a stronger proof of the divinity of the
Law of Moses ? In particular, he foretold that a nation
shouldcomeagainstthem from far, swift as the eagle flieth,
a nation whose tongue they should not understand ; that
this nation should besiege them in their gates ; that they
should be greatly straitened and distressed in the siege ;
that they should be plucked from off their own land; that
they should become an astonishment, a proverb and a by-
word amongst all nations ; that they should be scattered
among all people, from the one end of the earth even to
the other ; and that their plagues should be wonderful, even
great plagues, and of long continuance, (Deut. xxviii.)
all which predictions the world has seen fulfilled, and
still sees at this very day. And how was it possible for
an author, who lived above three thousand years ago, to
foretel so many particulars, which are transacting in the
world even now, unless they were suggested by divine
inspiration? Surely all reasonable men must conclude
with the apostle, ' that prophecy came not in old time
by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost.' (2 Pet. i. 21 .) — Bishop
Neivton's Works, vol. i.
The intrinsic excellence of the Mosaic writings, and
their moral tendency, furnish another strong argument in
favour of their divine origin. They give such a descrip-
tion of the Supreme Being, as our natural conceptions
would lead us to acquiesce in. We behold him repre-
sented as infinite in wisdom, goodness, and power ; and
expecting from mankind that degree of submission and
homage, which, we must easily perceive, is a reasonable
service, and consonant with our notions of the relative
situations of the Creator and his creatures. They deliver
to the world things highly becoming of God to impart,
and absolutely necessary for man to know. They explain
the formation and origin of the universe, the creation of
man, his state of innocence, fall, and expulsion from the
seat of happiness ; they announce to a guilty world the
glorious promise of a deliverer, who should repair the
ruin produced by the fall ; they describe the propagation
of mankind, their general corruption, the deluge, the
confusion of tongues, the plantation of families, and their
separation into kingdoms ; they record the selection of
a particular family, out of which the Messiah was destined
to proceed ; they commemorate the miracles by which
God was pleased to redeem his chosen people from
servitude, and lead them through the midst of many dan-
gers and difficulties, to the land which he had promised
them as their future inheritance. The laws Avhich they
enumerate as prescribed by God for the use of his people,
are such as are consonant with his wisdom and goodness.
Whilst the religious precepts and ordinances required a
solemnity, purity, and decency in divine worship, unv
known to heathennations,orunpractised bythem,the other
institutions, both moral and political, were calculated to
promote the prosperity and comfort of all who lived
under them. They prohibited idolatry, perjury, theft,
murder, adultery, and every species of covetousness and
envy, and enforced the opposite virtues of justice, mercy,
chastity, and charity, with a due reverence towards our
natural parents and accidental superiors. In almost
every page, the people are exhorted to amendment and
submission to their God and king ; they are reminded of
their former murmurings and miscarriages, and com-
passionately forewarned of the grievous punishments
that should await their disobedience. The theology
of the Mosaic law was pure, sublime, and devotional.
The belief of one supreme, self-existent, and all-perfect
being, the creator of the heavens and the earth, was the
basis of all the religious institutions of the Israelites,
the sole object of their hopes, fears, and worship. His
adorable perfections, and especially the supreme provi-
dence of Jehovah, as the sole dispenser of good and
evil, and the benevolent protector and benefactor of
mankind, are described in the Pentateuch in unaffected
strains of unrivalled sublimity ; which while they are
adapted to our finite apprehensions, by imagery bor-
rowed from terrestrial and sensible objects, at the same
time raise our conceptions to the contemplation of the
spirituality and majesty of Him ' who dwelleth in light in-
accessible.' In the decalogue, we have a repository of
duty to God and man, so pure and comprehensive as to be
absolutely without parallel. AVe recognise in the ten com-
mandments, not the impotent recommendations of man, or
the uncertain deductions of human reason, but the dictates
of the God of purity, flowing from his immediate legis-
lation, and promulgated with awful solemnity.
The sanctions also of the remaining enactments of the
law, point out their divine origin, whilst the moral pre-
cepts which are scattered throughout the whole of the
Pentateuch, possess such intrinsic excellence, such dignity
and authority, as no human precepts ever possessed.
The rites and ceremonies prescribed in the law are at
once dignified and expressive ; they point out the holiness
of God, the sinfulness of man, the necessity of an atone-
ment. As to the punishments of the law, they are ever
such as the nature and circumstances of the crime ren-
der just and necessary ; and its rewards are not such as
flow merely from retributive justice, but from a fatherly
tenderness and regard, which make obedience to the
laws the highest interest of the subject. In short, the
Mosaic law is calculated not only to restrain vice, but
to infuse virtue. It alone, of all other laws, brings man
to the footstool of his Maker, and keeps him dependent
on the strong for strength, on the wise for wisdom, and
on the merciful for grace. It abounds with promises of
support and salvation for the present life, which no false
system dared even to propose. Every where Moses, in
the most confident manner, pledges his God for the fulfil-
ment of all the gracious promises with which his laws are
so plentifully interspersed. Who that dispassionately
reads the Pentateuch, that considers it in itself, and in
its references to that glorious gospel which it was intended
to introduce, (see Introduction to the New Testament, ch.
i. ii. p. 82G.)can for a moment deny it the palm of in-
finite superiority over all the systems ever framed or
INTRODUCTION.
xxi
imagined by man ?* — Bobison on Revealed Religion. —
Dr A. Clarke's Comment. — Home's Introd. vol. i. —
See also the Divine Authority of the four last books of
the Pentateuch, established from internal evidence in
Grave's valuable Lectures.
Thus we have given a brief statement of the leading
arguments in support of the genuineness, authenticity,
and inspiration of the five books of Moses. These
arguments will serve to confirm the faith of the believer,
and when combined together, they present a body of
evidence so strong, and so decisive, as cannot fail to
remove every reasonable doubt, and satisfy every candid
and unprejudiced inquirer, that the writings of Moses
are of divine authority, and were dictated by the Spirit
of the living God.
The same arguments which prove the genuineness,
authenticity, and divine authority of the Pentateuch, are
also applicable to the remaining books of the Old Testa-
ment, and the divine authority of the latter may be in-
ferred from that of the former ; for so great is their
mutual and immediate dependence upon each other, that
if the authority of the one be taken away, the authority of
the other must necessarily be destroyed. The books
that follow after Deuteronomy are all historical, devo-
tional, moral, or prophetical. The historical books are
those from Joshua to Esther, inclusive. Some of them
bear the names of distinguished prophets, and the rest
are universally attributed to writers invested with the
same character. They contain a compendium of the
Jewish history from the death of Moses to the reforma-
tion established by Nehemiah, after the return from the
captivity, being a period of more than 1000 years.
After the death of Moses, Joshua continued to record
those miraculous particulars which demonstrated the
divine interposition in favour of the Israelites, and to
commemorate the events that preceded and accomplished
their settlement in the land of Canaan. The period
which succeeded the death of Joshua, during which the
Hebrews were subjected to the government of the judges,
opened a large scope for the industry of the sacred
historians ; and Samuel, or some other prophet, appears
to have selected such particulars as were best calculated
to describe this period, and to have digested them into
the book of Judges, having doubtless procured much in-
formation from the records of the priests or judges, 1"
* With regard to the marks of a posterior date, or at least of
posterior interpolation, so often urged with an insidious design
to weaken the authority of the Pentateuch, it will be sufficient
to observe, that it may safely be admitted that Joshua, Samuel,
or some one of the succeeding prophets, wrote the account of
the death of Moses contained in the last chapter of Deuteronomy ;
and that Ezra, when he transcribed the history written by Moses,
changed the names of some places, which were then become
obsolete, to those by which they were called in his time, and
added, for the purpose of elucidation, the few passages which are
allowed to be not suitable to the age of Moses. Now surely,
when it is considered that these few passages are of an explana-
tory nature; that they are easily distinguished from the original
writings of Moses; and that Ezra was himself an inspired
writer, raised up by God to re-establish the Jewish church alter
the return from captivity, the cavils founded upon such circum-
stances can scarcely be thought deserving of any serious attention.
The leader, however, will find a complete answer to these ob-
jections in the Appendix to Grave's Lectures on the Pentateuch,
Sect. I.
+ It appears from the testimony of Josephus, (Cont. Apion,
i.) that public and circumstantial records were kept by the
priests, and other publicly appointed persons, and to such re-
some of whom were inspired, though prophetic revela-
tions were "scarce in those days," (I Sam. iii. 1.) and
divine communications were made by means of the
Urim and Thummim, (Exod. xxviii. 30. Lev. viii. 8.)
From the time of Samuel, the Jews seem to have been
favoured with a regular succession of prophets, who, in
an uninterrupted series, bequeathed to each other, with
the mantle of prophecy, the charge of commemorating
such important particulars as were consistent with the
plan of sacred history ; and who took up the history
where the preceding prophet ceased, without distinguish-
ing their respective contributions. It is possible, how-
ever, that the books of Kings and of Chronicles do not
contain a complete compilation of the entire works of
each contemporary prophet, but rather an abridgement
of their several labours digested by Ezra, in or after the
captivity, with the intention to exhibit the sacred history
at one point of view ; and hence it is that they contain
some expressions which evidently result from contem-
porary description, and others that as clearly argue
them to have been completed long after the occurrences
which they relate. Hence also it is, that, though parti-
cular periods are more diffusively treated of than others,
we still find throughout a connected series of events, and
in each individual book a general uniformity of style.
But although we cannot determine with certainty the
authors of the historical books, yet we may rest assured,
that the Jews, who had already received inspired books
from the hands of Moses, would not have admitted any
others as of equal authority, if they had not been fully
convinced that the writers were supernaturally assisted.
And although the testimony of a nation is far from being,
in every instance, a sufficient reason for believing its
sacred books to be possessed of that divine authority
which is ascribed to them, yet the testimony of the Jews,
in the present case, has a peculiar title to be credited,
from the circumstances in which it was delivered. It is
the testimony of a people, who having already in their
possession genuine inspired books, were the better able
to judge of others who advanced a claim to inspiration,
and who, we have reason to think, far from being
credulous with respect to such a claim, or disposed pre-
cipitately to recognise it, proceeded with deliberation
and care in examining all pretensions of this nature, and
rejected them when not supported by satisfactory evi-
dence— witness their rejection of the Apocrypha] i kg.
They were likewise forewarned that false prophets
would arise, and deliver their own fancies, in the name
of the Lord, and they were furnished with rules to assist
them in distinguishing a true from a pretended revela-
tion. (Deut. xviii. 20 — 2-2.) The testimony then of the
Jews, who, without a dissenting voice, have asserted the
inspiration of the historical books, authorises us to re-
ceive them as a part of the oracles of God, which were
committed to their care.
The object of the historical books was to communicate
instruction to his chosen people, and to mankind in gen-
eral: and to illustrate the nature of God's providence
in small as well as in great occurrences, in particular
instances as well as in general appointments; they
cords the sacred writers occasionally allude as bearing testimony
to their accounts; or refer to Hum for a more minute detail of
those particulars which they omit as inconsistent with their <1r-
si'iis. See Josh. x. IX 2 Sam. i. 18, and various other passages.
XX11
INTRODUCTION.
therefore often descend from the great outline of nation-
al concerns to the minute detail of private life. The
relations, however, of individual events that are occa-
sionally interspersed, are highly interesting", and ad-
mirably develope the designs of the Almighty, and the
character of those times to which they are respectively
assigned. Those seeming digressions likewise, in
which the inspired writers have recorded such remark-
able events as related to particular personages, or such
occurrences in foreign countries as tended to affect the
interest of the Hebrew nation, are not only valuable for
the religious spirit which they breathe, but are to be
admired as strictly consistent with the sacred plan.
Thus the histories of Job, of Ruth, and of Esther, though
apparently intrinsic appendages, are in reality connected
parts of one entire fabric, and exhibit, in minute de-
lineation, that wisdom which is elsewhere displayed in
a larger scale, as they likewise present an engaging
picture of that private virtue which, in an extended
influence, operated to national prosperity. These
books then constitute an important part of the sacred
volume, which furnishes a complete code of instructive
lessons, conveyed under every form, diversified with
every style of composition, and enlivened with every il-
lustration of circumstance.
The writers of the historical books everywhere dis-
play an acquaintance with the counsels and designs of
God; they develope the secret springs and concealed
wisdom of his government, and often reveal his future
mercies and judgments in the clearest predictions.
They invariably maintain a strict sincerity of intention,
and in their description of characters and events they ex-
hibit an unexampled impartiality ; and from these con-
siderations we derive another argument, that these his-
torians wrote under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
As to the book of Job, whether it was composed or
translated by Moses, or any subsequent prophet, it is
evident that it contains a true history, and that Job was
a real, not a fictitious personage. The real existence
of Job is affirmed by the concurrent testimony of all
eastern tradition. — Spanheitns Hist. Job. — Schaulter's
Com. in Job,) — and he is mentioned as a real character
by Ezekiel (ch. xiv.) and by St James (ch. v.). The
style of the author, his mode of introducing the subject,
the circumstantial detail of habitation, kindred and con-
dition, the names of the persons mentioned, and the
agreement of these circumstances with other accounts
of that age and country in which Job is generally sup-
posed to have lived ; furnish evidence that this book
contains a history of actual events. It is unquestion-
ably to be considered as an inspired work, since it holds
a place in the Jewish canon, and it likewise bears every
internal mark of a divine origin. It every where abounds
with the noblest sentiments of piety, uttered with the
spirit of inspired conviction, and discovers to us re-
ligious instruction shining forth amidst the venerable
simplicity of ancient manners. It is a work unrivalled
for the magnificence of its language, and for the beauti-
ful and sublime images which it presents. In the
wonderful speech of the Deity (ch. xxxviii. to xli. in-
clusive,) every line delineates his attributes, every sen-
tence opens a picture of some grand object in creation,
characterized by its most striking features. Add to this
that its prophetic parts reflect much light on the economy
of God's moral government, and every admirer of sacred
antiquity, every inquirer after religious instruction, will
seriously rejoice that the enraptured sentence of Job,
(ch. xix. 23.) is realized to a more effectual and unfore-
seen accomplishment ; that while the memorable records
of antiquity have mouldered from the rock, the prophetic;
assurance and sentiments of Job are graven in scripture,
which no time shall alter, no changes shall efface. —
Gray's Key to the Old Testament. — Dick on Inspiration.
The book of Psalms is a collection of hymns, or
sacred songs in praise of God, and consists of poems of
various kinds. They are the productions of different
writers, but are called the Psalms of David, because a
great part of them was composed by him, who, for his
peculiarly excellent spirit, was distinguished by the title
of ' the Psalmist,' (2 Sam. xxiii. 1.). Some of them
were perhaps penned before, and some after the time of
David. Most modern commentators understand the
different writers of them to have been Moses, David,
Solomon, Asaph, Heman, Ethan, Jeduthan, and the
three sons of Korah. Ezra probably collected these
Psalms into one book, and placed them in the order in
which they are now found. The Levites, as we learn
from Josephus, were enjoined to preserve in the temple
all such hymns as might be composed in honour of God,
and of these, doubtless, there must have been a large
collection from which the 150 Psalms we possess would
appear to have been selected ; but such only could be
admitted into the canon, as were evidently inspired
compositions, and we may judge of the scrupulous
severity with which they were examined, since the nu-
merous hymns of Solomon were rejected; and even, as
it is said, some of David's himself were not considered
as entitled to insertion. The divine authority of those,
however, which we now possess, is established not only
by their rank among the sacred writings, and by the un-
varied testimony of every age, but likewise by many
intrinsic proofs of inspiration. Not only do they breathe
through every part a divine spirit of eloquence, and of
the purest and most exalted devotion, but they contain
numberless illustrious prophecies that were remarkably
accomplished, and that are frequently appealed to by
the evangelical writers. But the sacred character of
the whole book is most completely established by our
Saviour and his apostles, who in various parts of the
New Testament appropriate the predictions of the
Psalms as obviously apposite to the circumstances of
their lives, and as intentionally preconcerted to describe
them. In the language of this divine book, the prayers
and praises of the church have been offered up to the
throne of grace, from age to age, and in this particular
there ever has existed, and we may say ever will exist,
a wonderful communion of saints. The Psalms may be
regarded as an epitome of the Bible, adapted to the
purposes of devotion. ' What is there necessary for
man to know,' says the pious Hooker, ' which the Psalms
are not able to teach ? from them we may learn heroic
magnanimity, exquisite justice, grave moderation, exact
wisdom, repentance unfeigned, unwearied patience, the
mysteries of God, the sufferings of Christ, the terrors of
divine wrath, the comforts of grace, the works of Provi-
dence over this world, and the promised joys of that
world which is to come. Let there be any grief or dis-
ease incident to the soul of man, any wound or sickness
INTRODUCTION.
xxni
named, for which there is not in this treasure-house a
present comfortable remedy at all times ready to be
found.' Whether the true believer be in joy or sorrow,
in prosperity or adversity, in health or in sickness;
whether he be a prince or a peasant, rich or poor, young
or old; whether he rejoice in the light of God's counten-
ance, or tremble at his rebuke, he will find some of these
exquisite songs of Zion adapted to his circumstances and
in harmony with his feelings.
The Proverbs, as we are informed at the beginning
and other parts of the book, were written by Solomon,
the son of David, a man, as the sacred writings assure
us, peculiarly endued with divine wisdom. Whatever
ideas of his superior understanding we may be led to
form, by the particulars recorded of his judgment
iind attainments, we shall find them amply justified on
perusing the works which he has left behind him. This
enlightened monarch, being desirous of employing the
wisdom which he had received from God to the advantage
of mankind, produced several works for their instruc-
tion. (1 Kings iv. 32.) Of these, however, three only
were admitted into the canon, the others being rejected
as uninspired productions. The book of Proverbs, the
book of Ecclesiastes, and that of the Song of Solomon,
are all that remain of him whose matchless wisdom
called forth the wonder and admiration of surrounding
nations. If, however, many valuable writings of Solo-
mon have perished, we may rest assured that the most
excellent have been preserved, and that we possess all
which the Spirit of God judged to be suitable for our
spiritual instruction.
The latter part of the book of Proverbs, from the be-
ginning of the twenty-fifth chapter, is considered to have
been collected after the death of Solomon, and added
to what would seem to have been more immediately
arranged by himself. The Proverbs in the thirtieth chap-
ter are expressly called, The words of Augur the son of
Jakeh ; and the thirty-first chapter is entitled The words
of king Lemuel. It seems certain that the collection
called the Proverbs of Solomon, was arranged in the
order in which we now have it by different hands; but it
is not therefore to be concluded that they are not the
productions of Solomon. The general opinion is that
several persons made a collection of them, perhaps as
they were uttered by him ; Hezekiah among others, as
mentioned in the twenty-fifth chapter : Augur, Isaiah,
and Ezra might have done the same. The claims of the
book of Proverbs, however, to be admitted into the
sacred canon, lias never been questioned. Besides the
internal evidence of inspiration which we discover in it,
the canonical authority of no other book of the Old Tes-
tament is so well ratified by the evidence of quotations
in the New Testament. The scope of this book is to in-
struct men in the deepest mysteries of true wisdom and
understanding, the height and perfection of which is the
true knowledge of the divine will and the sincere fear of
the Lord. To this end, the book is filled with the choic-
est sententious aphorisms, infinitely surpassing all the
ethical sayings of the ancient sages, and comprising in
themselves distinct doctrines, duties, &c, of piety to-
wards God, of equity and benevolence towards man, and
of sobriety and temperance ; together with precepts for
the right education of children, and for the relative
situations of subjects, magistrates and sovereigns. —
Gray's Key to the Old Testament. — Home's Introduce
lion, vol. iv.
The book of Ecclesiastes, although it does not bear
the name of Solomon, was penned by him, as is evident
from several passages. (Comp. ch. i. 12, l(i. ii. 4—9.
xii. 9, 10.) The beautiful descriptions which this book
contains of phenomena in the natural world and their
causes, and of the economy of the human frame, all show
it to be the work of a philosopher. It is generally sup-
posed to have been written by Solomon in his old age,
after he had repented of his sinful practices, and when,
having seen and observed much, as well as having enjoyed
every thing that he could wish, he was fully convinced of
the vanity of every thing except piety towards God. Its
canonical authority has always been recognised, and
indeed, there can be no doubt of its title to be admitted
into the sacred canon. Solomon was eminently distin-
guished by the illumination of the divine Spirit, and had
even twice witnessed the divine presence. (1 Kings iii.
5. ix. 2. xi. 9.) The tendency of the book is excellent,
and Solomon speaks in it with great clearness of the
revealed truths of a future life and of a future judgment.
It may be considered as a kind of inquiry into the chief
good or highest happiness of man ; an inquiry conducted
on sound principles, and terminating in a conclusion
which all must approve. — Gray's Key. — Home's Intro-
duction, vol. iv. — See also Holden's Prelim. Dissert,
to Ecclesiastes.
The Song of Solomon is universally allowed to have
been written by that monarch. Its divine authority rests
upon indubitable evidence, although some rash critics
have affirmed it to be merely a human composition. In
this book the royal author appears, in the typical spirit
of his time, to have designed to render a ceremonial
appointment, descriptive of a spiritual concern. Bishop
Lowth judiciously considers that the Song is a mystical
allegory; of that sort which induces a more sublime
sense on historical truths, and which, by the description
of human events, shadows out divine circumstances. The
sacred writers were by God's condescension authorised
to illustrate his strict and intimate relation to the church
by the figure of a marriage ; and the emblem must have
been strikingly becoming and expressive to the concep-
tions of the Jews, since they annexed notions of
peculiar mystery to this appointment, and imagined that
the marriage union was a counterpart representation of
some original pattern in heaven. It is unquestionable
that this beautiful composition had a predictive as well
as a figurative character. The whole of it is a thin veil
of allegory thrown over a spiritual alliance ; and we
discover every where through the transparent type! of
Solomon and his bride, the characters of Christ and Ins
personified church, pourtrayed with those graces and
embellishments which are most lovely and engaging to
the human eye. It requires, however, to be explained
with great caution, and some fanciful expositors, by their
minute dissection of the allegory, have exposed it to the
unmerited ridicule of profane minds, lint tlie grand
outlines, when soberly interpreted, in the obvious mean-
ing of the allegory, will be found to accord with the
affections and experience of every sincere Christian, and
the tendency of the whole must lie to purify the mind
and to elevate the affections from earthly to heavenly
things.
XXIV
INTRODUCTION.
As to its form, the Song* of Solomon may be considered
as a dramatic poem of the pastoral kind. For a full and
satisfactory proof of the divine authority of Solomon's
Song, as well as an elucidation of its scope and design,
the reader is referred to Home's Introduction, vol. iv.
part i. ch. iii. sect. v. See also Gray's Key to the Old
Testament, Br Good's Translation of Solomon's Song,
and Bishop Lowth's Prelections , where the structure of
the Poem is treated of.
It is universally acknowledged that the remaining
books of the Old Testament, namely, the sixteen pro-
phetical books and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, were
written by the persons whose names they bear. The
prophets profess themselves to be the respective authors
of these books, and their testimony has been confirmed
by the unanimous consent of Jews and Christians. The
prophets were raised up by God among the Israelites, as
the ministers of these dispensations. They flourished,
in a continued succession, for above a thousand years,
(reckoning from Moses to Malachi), all co-operating in
the same designs, and conspiring in one spirit to de-
liver the same doctrines, and to prophecy concerning the
same future blessings. Moses, the first and greatest of
the prophets, having established God's first covenant,
those who followed him were employed in explaining
its nature, in opening its spiritual meaning ; in instruct-
ing the Jews, and in gradually preparing them for the
reception of that second dispensation which it prefigured.
Their pretensions to be considered as God's appointed
servants, were demonstrated by the unimpeachable in-
tegrity of their characters, by the intrinsic excellence and
tendency of their instructions, and by the disinterested
zeal and undaunted fortitude with which they persevered
in their great designs. Their claims were still farther
confirmed by the miraculous proofs which they displayed
of divine support, and by the immediate completion of
many less important predictions which they uttered.
Such were the credentials of their exalted character
which the prophets brought forward to their contempo-
raries; and we, who having lived to witness the appear-
ance of the second dispensation, can look back to the
connection which subsisted between the two covenants,
have received additional evidence of the inspiration of
the prophets, in the attestations of our Saviour and his
apostles ; and in the retrospect of a gradually maturing
scheme of prophecy, connected in all its parts, and rati-
fied in the accomplishment of its great object — the advent
of the Messiah. We have still farther incontrovertible
proof of the inspiration of the prophetical books, from
the exact accomplishment, in these latter days, of
numerous predictions contained in them. History bears
indubitable testimony to the accurate fulfilment of many
of these predictions; others are gradually receiving their
accomplishment in the times in which we live, and afford
the surest pledge and most positive security for the
completion of those which remain to be fulfilled. The
past, the present, and the future, have a connected
reference to one great plan which infinite wisdom, pre-
science, and power, could alone form, reveal, and exe-
cute. Every succeeding age throws an increasing light
upon these sacred writings, and contributes additional
evidence to their divine origin. — Bp. Tomline's Elem. of
Christ. Theol. part i. ch. i. — Gray's Key See Newto?i
and Keith on the Prophecies.
There is an uncontradicted tradition in the Jewish
church, that about fifty years after the temple was re-
built, Ezra in conjunction with the great synagogue,
made a collection of the sacred writings, which had. been
increased since the Jews were carried into captivity, by
the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the prophecies of
Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, and Zechariah ; and as Ezra
was himself inspired, we may rest assured, that whatever
received his sanction, was authentic* To this genuine col-
lection, which according to former custom was placed in
the temple, were afterwards annexed the sacred com-
positions of Ezra himself, as well as those of Nehemiah
and Malachi, which were written after the death of Ezra.
This addition, which was probably made by Simon the
Just, the last of the great synagogue, completed the canon
of the Old Testament ; for after Malachi, no prophet
arose till the time of John the Baptist, who as it were
connected the two covenants. This complete collection,
or a correct copy taken from it, remained in the temple,
as Josephus informs us, till Jerusalem was taken by
Titus, and it was then carried in triumph to Rome, and
laid up with the purple veil in the royal palace of
Vespasian.
Thus while the Jewish polity continued, and nearly
500 years after the death of Ezra, a complete and fault-
less copy of the Hebrew canon was kept in the temple
at Jerusalem, with which all others might be compared.
(See Joseph. Antiq. Jud. b. iii. c. i. and b. v. c. i. Com-
pare Deut. xxxi. 26. 2 Kings xxii. 8.) And it ought to
be observed, that although Christ frequently reproved
the rulers and teachers of the Jews for their erroneous
and false doctrines, yet he never accused them of any
corruption in their written law, or other sacred books ;
and St Paul reckons among the privileges of the Jews
that unto them were committed the oracles of God,
(Rom. iii. 2.) without insinuating that they had been un-
faithful to their trust. After the final destruction of
Jerusalem by the Romans, there was no established
standard copy of the Hebrew Scriptures ; but from that
time the dispersion of the Jews into all countries, and the
numerous converts to Christianity, became a double se-
curity for the preservation of a volume held equally
sacred by Jews and Christians, and to which both con-
stantly referred as to the written word of God. They dif-
fered in the interpretation of these Scriptures, but never
disputed the validity of the text in any material point.
But though designed corruption was utterly impracti-
cable, and was indeed never suspected, yet the careless-
ness and inadvertence of transcribers, during a long
series of years, would unavoidably introduce some errors
and mistakes. Great pains have been taken by learned
men, especially by Kennicot and De Rossi, to compare
the existing manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and
the result has been satisfactory in the highest degree.
Many various readings of a trivial kind have been dis-
covered, but scarcely any of real consequence. These
differences are indeed of so little moment, that it is
sometimes absurdly objected to the laborious work of
Kennicot, which contains the collations of nearly 700
manuscripts, that it does not enable us to correct a single
important passage in the Old Testament ; whereas this
* See more on this subject, p. 740 of this history, where
an account of the institution of synagogues will be given.
INTRODUCTION.
very circumstance implies, that we have, in fact, de-
rived from that excellent undertaking the greatest ad-
vantage which could have been wished for by every
friend of revealed religion ; namely, the certain know-
ledge of the agreement of the copies of the Old Testa-
ment scriptures, now extant in their original language,
with each other, and with our Bibles. This point thus
clearly established, is still farther continued by the
general coincidence of the present Hebrew copies with
all the early translations of the Bible, and particularly
with the Septuagint version, the earliest of them all,
and which was made 270 years before Christ. There is
also a perfect agreement between the Samaritan and
Hebrew Pentateuchs, except in one or two manifest in-
terpolations, which were noticed immediately by the
Jewish writers, (see Prideaux, part i. b. (i.) and this is
no small proof of the correctness of both, as we may
rest assured that the Jews and Samaritans, on account
of their rooted enmity to each other, would never have
concurred in any alteration. Nor ought it to be omitted,
that the Chaldean paraphrases, which are translations of
the Old Testament, from the Hebrew into Chaldaic,
made for the benefit of those who had forgotten, or were
ignorant of the Hebrew after the captivity, (vide Nehem.
viii. 8.) are found to accord entirely with our Hebrew
Bibles. To these facts we may add, that the reverence
of the Jews for their sacred writings is another guarantee
for their integrity ; so great indeed was that reverence,
that, according to the statements of Philo and Josephus,
they would suffer any torments, and even deatli itself,
rather than change a single point or iota of the scriptures.
The books of the Old Testament have been always
allowed in every age, and by every sect of the Hebrew
church, to be the genuine works of those persons to
whom they are usually ascribed; and they have also
been universally and exclusively, without addition or
exception, considered by the Jews as written under the
immediate influence of the Divine Spirit. Those who
were contemporaries with the respective writers of these
books, had the clearest evidence that they acted and
spoke by the authority of God himself ; and this testi-
mony, transmitted to all succeeding ages, was in many
cases strengthened and confirmed by the gradual fulfil-
ment of predictions contained in their writings. (See
Joseph. Cont. Apion, b. i. sect. 8.) The Jews of the
present day, dispersed all over the world, demonstrate
the sincerity of their belief in the authenticity and divine
authority of the Hebrew scriptures, by their inflexible
adherence to the law. By the anxious expectation with
which they wait for the accomplishment of the prophe-
cies, though they have sadly mistaken the meaning of
these prophecies, and by the scrupulous care with which
they preserve their copies of the Old Testament scrip-
tures, and guard against corruptions in the text. It is a
great argument for the truth of the scriptures, that they
have stood the test, and received the approbation of so
many ages, and still retain their authority, though in-
fidels, in all ages, have endeavoured, by every means in
their power, to disprove them; and it is a still farther
evidence in behalf of these sacred records, that God has
been pleased to show so remarkable a providence in
their preservation. But the most decisive proof of the
authenticity and inspiration of the ancient scriptures, is
derived from the New Testament. Upon many occa-
sions, our Saviour referred to the Old Testament scrip-
tures collectively, as of divine authority, and both he and
his apostles constantly endeavoured to prove that Jesus
was the Messiah foretold in the writings of the prophets.
Christ tells his disciples that all things must be fullilled
which were written in the law of Moses, and in the pro-
phets, and in the Psalms, concerning him, (Luke xxiv.
44.) and by thus adopting the common division of the
law, the prophets and the Psalms, which comprehended
all the Hebrew scriptures, our Lord ratified the canon
of the Old Testament, as it was received by the Jews ;
and by declaring that those books contained prophecies
which must be fulfilled, he established their divine in-
spiration, since God alone can enable men to foretel
future events. (See also Mark vii. 13.) Both St Paul
and St Peter bear strong testimony to the divine au-
thority of the Jewish scriptures, in their collective capa-
city. (See in particular, 2 Tim. iii. 15. 2 Pet. i. 21.)
Besides, there is scarcely a book in the Old Testament
which is not repeatedly quoted in the New, as of divine
authority. — Bp. Tomline's Elem. of Christ. T/ieol.
part i. ch. i. The quotations from the Old Testament
in the New, are largely treated of in Home* Introd.
to the Bible, vol. ii. part i. ch. iv.
Such is a brief outline of the principal arguments in
proof of the genuineness, authenticity, and inspiration
of the Old Testament scriptures. Had our limits per-
mitted, we might have advanced many other arguments
of the most convincing nature. We might have pointed
out the admirable harmony, and intimate connection
which subsist between all the parts of scripture, the ex-
cellence of the doctrines and moral precepts which
they deliver, their tendency to promote the present and
eternal happiness of mankind, and their wonderful
adaptation to the circumstances and necessities of our
fallen race— these and many other particulars we might
have urged as strong evidences of the authenticity and
inspiration of scripture. Enough, however, has been
stated to satisfy every candid and unprejudiced in-
quirer, that the Old Testament scriptures are the word
of God,* and that those holy men of God who first de-
livered these writings to the world, spake and wrote as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Besides, many
points which we here omitted, or slightly touched upon,
will be discussed at length in the body of the work-
See Author's Preface.
Upon the whole, we conclude, that we have such a
number of evidences of the divine authority of the Old
Testament, as no man can resist, who duly ami impar-
tially considers them; and as to those who refuse to be
convinced by these evidences — who reject the testimony
of Moses and the prophets, it may be truly asserted of
them, that neither would they be persuaded though one-
rose from the dead.
When the gospel was established throughout (Ik- Ro-
man empire, and when churches were planted in every
nation, the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
were gradually translated into the vernacular tongue of
every country in which they were received. This we
* The genuJnaneae, authenticity, and inspiration «[ the New
Testament, will he proved in the Introduction t'> the New Testa-
iii, -Mt part of this history, and the nature and different degreei ol
i applicable to the writers of the Old and New
Testaments, will be there also pointed out.
d
XXVI
INTRODUCTION.
learn from a variety of testimonies ; but the following
passage from Theodoret, who lived in the beginning of
the fifth century, may be considered as alone decisive,
' We Christians are enabled to show the powers of apos-
tolic and prophetic doctrines, which have filled all
countries under heaven ; for that which was formerly
uttered in Hebrew, is not only translated into the lan-
guage of the Greeks, but also of the Romans, the Indians,
Persians, Armenians, Scythians, Samaritans, Egyptians,
and, in a word, into all the languages that are used by
any nation.1 — Theodor. ad Grcec. In fid. Serm. 5. The
sacred writings being the foundation of the Christian
religion, upon which they built the whole system of their
morality and doctrine, and which the Christians were
obliged to read both in public and private, the several
churches of the world could not be long without such
translations as might be understood by every individual.
It is impossible to ascertain the exact time at which
Christianity was introduced into this island, nor do we
know how soon there was a translation of the scriptures
into the language of its inhabitants. The earliest of
which we have any account is a translation of the Psalms
into the Saxon tongue by Adhelm, the first bishop of
Sherborne, about the year 706. Egbert bishop of
Landisfern, who died in the year 721, made a Saxon
version of the four gospels, and not long alter Bede
translated the whole Bible into that language. There
were other Saxon versions of the whole or parts of the
Bible of a later date ; and it appears indeed, that new
translations were made from time to time, as the lan-
guage of the country varied ; but when the Roman pon-
tiffs had established their spiritual tyranny in this as well
as in other countries of Europe, they forbade the read-
ing of these translations ; and in the 14th century, the
common people had been so long deprived of the use
of the scriptures, that the latest of the translations had
become unintelligible. Wicklifr', therefore, who was a
strenuous opposer of the corruptions and usurpations of
the church of Rome, and from whom we are to date the
dawn of the Reformation in this kingdom, between 13G0
and 1380 published a translation of the whole Bible in
the English language, then spoken, but not being suffi-
ciently acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek lan-
guages, he made his translation from the Latin Bibles,
which were at that time read in the churches. — Bp.
Tomline's Christ. Theol. — Gray's Key. — Lewis' Hist,
of Translat. of the Bible.
Tyndale was the first who undertook to translate the
scriptures into English at the reformation. He pub-
lished the New Testament at Antwerp in 1526, and the
Dutch reprinted three editions of it, with some altera-
tions by George Jaye, an English refugee, in 1527, 1528,
1530. Tyndale printed a second edition in 1534, and
having translated the Pentateuch and the historical
books as far as Nehemiah, they were printed at Halle,
1552, 1553. Coverdale at home laboured to complete
what Tyndale had begun, and in the year 1535 the whole
Bible was finished at the presf. In 1547 another edition
was published abroad, with some few corrections, under
the feigned name of Matthewe. In 1540 archbishop
Cranmer published a new edition, which he had cor-
rected in some places, and to which he wrote a preface.
This is called Cranmer 's Bible. In 1553 Edward the
sixth died, and was succeeded by Mary, who imme-
diately restored the popish service and sacraments, and
persecuted the friends of the reformation with such cruelty
that many of them fled into foreign countries, among
whom was Coverdale, who, in Edward's reign, had been
made bishop of Exeter. He and some others fixed
their residence at Geneva, where they employed them-
selves in making a translation of the Bible. They be-
gan with the New Testament, which they published in
duodecimo, printed with a small but beautiful letter, in
1557. This is the first printed edition of the New Testa-
ment in which the verses of the chapters are distin-
guished by numeral figures and breaks.
Strype, in the Annals of the Reformation, tells us, that
the Geneva brethren, after publishing their New Testa-
ment, proceeded to revise the Old. But not having
finished it when Elizabeth came to the throne, some of
them staid behind the rest to complete their design.
And having finished the Old Testament, they published
the whole Bible at Geneva, in quarto, in the year 1560,
printed by Rowland Hill. This is what is commonly
called the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was so
universally used in private families, that there were
above thirty editions of it, in folio, quarto, and octavo,
printed from the year 1560 to the year 1616.
Queen Mary dying in November, 1558, was succeeded
by Elizabeth, who, treading in the steps of her brother
Edward VI. suppressed the Romish superstition in all
her dominions, and filled the sees with Protestants.
After this, archbishop Matthew Parker, having repre-
sented to the queen that many churches either were with-
out Bibles, or had incorrect copies, she resolved that a
revisal and correction of the former translation should
be made, in order to publication. The archbishop
therefore appointed some of the most learned of the
bishops and others to revise the Bible commonly used,
and to compare it with the originals ; and to each of
them he assigned a particular book of scripture, with
directions not to vary from the former translation ex-
cept where it was not agreeable to the original, and to
add marginal notes for explaining the difficult texts,
reserving to himself the oversight of the whole. A re-
visal of the English Bible on the same plan had been
proposed by Cranmer, but it was never undertaken.
Parker was more successful in his attempt. The persons
employed by Parker performed their tasks with such
cheerfulness, that the whole was ready for the press
some time before the year 1568 : for in that year the
Bible of the bishops' revisal was printed in a very
elegant manner, with a beautiful English letter, on a
royal paper, in a large folio, by Richard Jugge, the
queen's printer. This Bible, on account of the correc-
tion which the bishops made, was called the Bishops'
Bible, and was authorized to be read in the churches.
In the year 1604, king James appointed a number
of learned men to revise and correct the Bishops' Bible.
From the injunctions or rules given respecting this work,
it is clear that the learned men employed were not left
to follow their own unbiassed judgment. The chief of
these were, first, the ordinary Bible read in the churches,
commonly called the Bishops' Bible, to be followed
and as little altered as the original would permit.
Third, the old ecclesiastical words to be kept: as the
word church not to be translated congregation, &c.
Fifth, the division of the chapters to be altered either
INTRODUCTION.
xwii
not at all or as little as might be. Sixth : no marginal
notes to be affixed, but only for explaining the Hebrew
and the Greek words, which could not be expressed in the
text without some circumlocution. Fourteenth: the trans-
lation of Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthewe, Whitechurch,
(the great Bible,) and Geneva, to be used where they
agreed better with the original than the Bishops' Bible.
From this statement it is clear that the authorized
version was only revised by the persons employed by
James ; but as this revision was made by some of the
most learned men of that period, it is probable that it
contains as faithful a representation of the original
scriptures as could then be made. But when we con-
sider, says Dr Marsh, the immense accession which has
been since made, both to our critical and to our philo-
logical apparatus ; when we consider that the whole class
of literature, commencing- with the London Polyglott
and continued to Griesbach's Testament, was collected
subsequently to that period ; when we consider that the
most important sources of intelligence for the interpre-
tation of the original were likewise opened after that
period, we cannot possibly pretend that our authorized
version does not require amendment. — Boolhroyds In-
trod- to his Bible, part i. c. iii. 8vo ed. 1836.
Whenever therefore it shall be judged expedient by
well advised and considerate measures to authorise a
revisal of our present version, it will certainly be found
capable of many and great improvements ; but this is a
work not likely to be taken in hand, and certainly no
single person is competent to the task. It should be the
production of collective industry and general contribu-
tion ; and the prejudices and mistakes which must char-
acterize the works of individuals, should be corrected by
united inquiry, dispassionate examination, and fair criti-
cism. AVe do not mean to disparage the labours of those
individuals who have already given new translations of
the Bible in whole or in part ;* they are entitled to the
public gratitude and encouragement, and their endea-
vours must contribute to illustrate the sacred pages, and
tend to facilitate the great work of a national transla-
tion. Till, however, the execution of this work shall
be judged expedient, every sincere and well disposed
Christian, who makes the holy oracles his chief study
and delight, may rest satisfied with the present transla-
tion, which is indeed highly excellent, being in its doc-
trines uncorrupt, and in its general construction faithful
to the original. In any attempt at a new translation of
the Scriptures, it should be one great aim to depart as
little as possible from the present version, which has
been familiarised by long use, and endeared by habitual
reverence, of which the style has long served as a stand-
ard of our language, and of which the peculiar harmony
and excellence could never be improved by any change
which refinement might substitute. — Gray's Key.
The books of the Old Testament are divided into
chapters and verses, to facilitate reference, and primarily
* Of the modern translations of the whole Bible, that of Dr
Boothruyd is undoubtedly the best, and may be considered as a
valuable help to the critical understanding ot the holy Scriptures.
The following translations of parts of Scripture by different in-
rtividuals are held in high estimation, namely, The book of Job,
by Dr Good, the Proverbs by Mr G. Holden, Isaiah by Lowth,
Jeremiah by Dr Blayney, Ezekiel by Ncwcome, Daniel by
Wjnth, Hosea by Horsely, the Minor Prophets by Newcome,
the Gospels by Campbell; and the Epistles by Macknight.
with a view to any natural division of the multifarious
subjects which they embrace: but by whom these divi-
sions were originally made is a question, concerning
which there exists a considerable difference of opinion.
That they are comparatively a modem invention is
evident from its being utterly unknown to the ancient
Christians, whose Greek Bibles, indeed, then had T/tAo<
and Y^i(pctha,ia. {Titles and Heads); but the intent of
these was rather to point out the sum or contents of the
text, than to divide the various books. They also differed
greatly from the present chapters, many of them con-
taining only a few verses, and some of them not more
than one. The invention of chapters has by some been
ascribed to Lanfranc, who was archbishop of Canter-
bury in the reigns of William the Conqueror and William
II. ; while others attribute it to Stephen Langton, who
was archbishop of the same see in the reigns of John and
Henry III. But the real author of this very useful
division was cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, who flour-
ished about the middle of the thirteenth century, and
wrote a celebrated commentary on the Scriptures. Hav-
ing projected a concordance to the Latin Vulgate ver-
sion, by which any passage might be found, he divided
both the Old and New Testaments into chapters, which
are the same we now have : these chapters he subdivided
into smaller portions, which he distinguished by the
letters A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, which are placed in
the margin at equal distances from each other, accord-
ing to the length of the chapters. The facility of re-
ference thus afforded by Hugo's divisions, having
become known to Rabbi Mordecai Nathan, (or Isaac
Nathan, as he is sometimes called.) a celebrated Jewish
teacher in the fifteenth century, he undertook a similar
concordance for the Hebrew Scriptures ; but instead of
adopting the marginal letters of Hugo, he marked every
fifth verse with a Hebrew numeral, thus, s I, fi 5, &C,
retaining, however, the cardinal's divisions into chapters.
This concordance of Rabbi Nathan was commenced a.d.
1438, and finished in 1445. The introduction of verses
into the Hebrew Bible was made by Athias, a Jew of
Amsterdam, in his celebrated edition of the Hebrew
Bible, printed in 16G1, and reprinted in lo'ii7. He
marked every verse with the figures in common use, ex-
cept those which had been previously marked by Nathan
with Hebrew letters, in the manner in which they at pre-
sent appear in Hebrew Bibles. By rejecting these
Hebrew numerals, and substituting for them the corre-
sponding figures, all the copies of the Bible in other
languages have since been marked. As, however, the
modern divisions and sub-divisions are not always made
with the strictest regard to the connexion of parts, it is
greatly to be wished that all future editions of the
scriptures might be printed after the judicious manner
adopted by Mr Beeves in his equally beautiful and
correct editions of the entire Bible : in which the numbers
of the verses and chapters are thrown into the margin,
and the metrical parts of scripture are distinguished from
the rest by being printed in verses in the usual manner.
— Homes Introd. vol. ii. part i. p. 69, 70: 7th ed.
When we consider the utility, excellence, and per-
fection of the holy scriptures, both of the Old and N< W
Testaments, since they are not merely the be*! gride we
can consult, but the onl) one that can make OS wi-
salvation, we must be convinced that it is the indis-
XXV111
INTRODUCTION.
pensable duty of all, carefully and constantly to peruse
these sacred oracles, that through them they may be
thoroughly furnished to every good work. This, indeed,
is not only agreeable to the divine command, and to the
design of the scriptures, but is further commanded to us
by the gracious promise made by Him who cannot lie,
to all true believers, that they shall all be taught of God.
What time is to be appropriated for this purpose, must
ever depend upon the circumstances of the individual.
It is obvious, that some time ought daily to be devoted
to this important study, and that it should be undertaken
with devout simplicity and humility ; prosecuted with
diligence and attention ; accompanied by prayer for the
divine aid and teaching ; together with a sincere desire
to know and perform the will of God, and, laying aside
all prejudice, to embrace all truths which are plainly de-
livered there, and to follow the scriptures wherever con-
viction may lead our minds. For it is indubitable, that
those who are anxiously desirous of the knowledge of
divine truth, will be assisted by the Spirit of God, in
searching out the meaning of scripture, particularly in
such subjects as have an especial reference to faith and
religious practice. In order, however, to study the
scriptures aright, it should be recollected that they are
not to be contemplated as one entire book or treatise.
The knowledge of divine truth, is, indeed, perfectly dis-
tinct from human science, in that it emanates immediately
from the fountain of Infinite Wisdom. Yet has it this
in common with human science, that it is made by its
heavenly author to flow through the channel of human
instruction. While, therefore, we receive it not as the
word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, we
must, nevertheless, examine it as it is delivered to us,
clothed in the language of men, and subject to the general
rules of human composition. The deference due to it
as a divine production, does not interfere with this pro-
vince of human learning ; it only exacts submission with
respect to the subject matter of the revelation, to which
the critical investigation is entirely subordinate.
But besides the paramount importance of the contents
of the holy scriptures, a farther motive to the diligent
study of them, presents itself in the facilities that are
offered to us for this purpose, by the numerous publica-
tions which have for their object the criticism, interpre-
tation, and elucidation of the sacred volume. In fact,
a willingness to know and to do the will of God, implies
a willingness to resort to all necessary helps for ad-
vancement in the truth, and for security against error.
The value of such helps was never questioned except
by those who chose to despise what they did not possess.
Only, it must ever be borne in mind, that although these
auxiliaries are valuable for guiding us to a knowledge
of the sense and literal meaning of scripture, they can
never stand in the place of the divine teaching, which is
the work of the Holy Spirit alone, and that without this
teaching, the knowledge which they impart can be of no
real or permanent value : ' For,' says the apostle,
'though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, or
Christian love, it is nothing.' — (1 Cor. xiii. 2.) — Van-
milderfs Bampton Lectures — Hornets Introd. vol. i.
The books of scripture, as every one must perceive,
are not arranged in our Bibles according to the order of
time in which the events that they relate happened, but
rather according to the nature of the subjects. This
arrangement is not peculiar to the English version, but
is adopted in most copies of the scriptures. The collo-
cation of the books of scripture, however, is not to be
regarded as of canonical authority, for we find a differ-
ent arrangement in the Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and
Latin versions. Neither have the sacred historians
always related events according to the order of time ;
some are introduced by anticipations, and others again
are placed first, which should be last.
From these circumstances, seeming contradictions have
arisen, which have been eagerly seized by the adversaries
of revealed religion, in order to perplex the minds and
shake the faith of those who are not able to cope with
their sophistries. Hence the utility of such a work as
Stackhouse's History of the Bible, which gives, in plain
and perspicuous language, a connected narrative of
bible history, according to chronological order ; and
which likewise, in a series of notes and dissertations, ex-
plains difficulties as they occur ; reconciles apparent
contradictions, and refutes the objections which infidels
have brought against various parts of scripture. Any
one who peruses this work with attention, will be con-
vinced of its importance, and of the valuable aid which
it affords in elucidating scripture history. — See the
Author's Preface.
Hence also chronology, or the science of computing
and adjusting periods of time, is of great importance
towards understanding the historical parts of scripture,
as it shows the order and connection of the events therein
recorded. It also enables us to ascertain the accom-
plishment of many of the prophecies, and sometimes
leads to the discovery and correction of mistakes in
numbers and dates which have crept into particular texts.
Considerable differences exist in the chronology of the
Hebrew scriptures, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Sep-
tuagint version, and Josephus, with regard to those
periods, which extend from the creation to the deluge,
and from thence to the calling of Abraham. These
differences have led to different chronological systems,
according as their authors have adhered to one or other
of these authorities, or selected from them all. — (See
this History, b. i. sect. v. ch. iii.) The chronology
which is adopted in our Bibles, is that of the Hebrew
scriptures, and is followed by Stackhouse. But of the
authenticity of this system doubts are entertained by the
best scripture critics, and Dr Hales, in his profound and
elaborate work on chronology, has, we think, satis-
factorily proved that the present system of Hebrew
chronology is an adulteration, planned and executed by
the Masorites,* in the fourth century, and that the
chronology of Josephus, when rectified by a comparison
with the Septuagint, and the other texts, is- that which
ought to be adopted. This system, which Dr Hales has
established with great success, is unquestionably to be
preferred to that in our Bibles, as it removes many of
the difficulties with which scripture history is encumbered,
when we follow the common system. Accordingly, in
this edition of Stackhouse's history, the chronology of
Dr Hales has been introduced, as far as could be done,
consistently with the author's plan.
Ancient profane history, when studied in connection
* For an account of the Masorites, see b. vii. sect. ii. ch. iii.
of this history.
INTRODUCTION.
XX IX
with the history of the Israelites, is of very great im-
portance to the elucidation of scripture. The Jews
were connected either in a hostile or pacific manner
with the Moabites, Ammonites, Philistines, Egyptians,
Assyrians, Medes, Babylonians, Persians, Arabians,
Greeks, Romans, and other ancient nations, and hence
a knowledge of the history of the nations is necessary
for illustrating many passages of scripture, in which
allusion is made to them. In the books of Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, we likewise find many predic-
tions relative to the heathen nations, which would be
utterly unintelligible without the aid of profane history.
The present work will be found valuable in this respect,
as it gives, along with the sacred narrative, a connected
view of profane history. The other works on the con-
nection of sacred and profane history, most worthy of
notice, are those of Shuckford, Prideaux, Russel, and
Jahn.
A knowledge of the peculiar rites, manners, and
customs of the Jews, and other nations that are either
alluded to, or mentioned in the scriptures, is indispen-
sably necessary to the right understanding of the sacred
volume. There are many things recorded both in the
Old and New Testament, which must appear to Europeans
either obscure, unintelligible, repulsive, or absurd, un-
less, forgetting our own peculiar habits and modes of
thinking, we transport ourselves, in a manner, to the
East, and diligently study the customs, whether political,
sacred, or civil, which obtained there. The first, and
most important source to which we must betake ourselves
for this purpose, is undoubtedly the Old and New Testa-
ments themselves, the careful collation of which, will
enable us to collect much information with regard to the
customs and modes of living which obtained among the
ancient Jews. The next sources of information are the
apocryphal books, the writings of Philo, Josephus, the
Talmudists, and the ancient history of eastern nations.
Finally, if to these sources we add an acquaintance with
the customs and manners which prevail in the east at
the present day, as they are related by travellers of
approved character, we shall have a sure and easy access
to the knowledge of scripture antiquities ; for as the
Orientals, from their tenacious adherence to old usages,
are not likely to differ materially from their ancestors,
we have no great reason to be apprehensive, from com-
paring the manners, &c. of the modern Syrians, Arabs,
and other nations of the East, with those of the Hebrews,
that we should attribute customs to them which never
obtained among tliein. The interpretation of the Bible,
therefore, is not a little facilitated by the perusal of the
voyages and travels of those who have explored the
East. In this department of sacred literature, the com.
pilations of Harmer, Burder, Paxton, and Home, are
particularly distinguished.
The knowledge of ancient geography, especially that
of Palestine, and the neighbouring countries, tends, as
is universally confessed, to illustrate almost innumerable
passages of scripture. The principal English works on
this subject are those of Wells, Mansford, Rosenmiiller,
(lately translated into English), Calmet's Dictionary
by Taylor, Paxton and Home. A pretty extensive
Scripture Gazetteer is now in the course of publication
by the Edinburgh Printing Company.
A knowledge of natural history enables us to explain
many otherwise obscure passages of scripture. Thus
frequent mention is made in scripture of animals, trees,
plants, and precious stones ; sometimes sentiments are
expressed, either in allusion to, or by metaphors taken
from some fact in natural history ; and sometimes
characters are described in allusion to natural objects,
and without the knowledge of these we cannot perceive
the nature of the characters intended. The natural
history of the Bible is expressly treated of by Paxton,
Harris, Carpenter, Home, and the Editor of Calmet's
Dictionary of the Bible.
There is one branch of natural history which requires
to be noticed here on account of the important bearing
which it is made to have, at the present day, on the
Mosaic history of the creation, we mean geology. It
is strenuously maintained by geologists, that, without
the aid of this science, as it is now improved by recent
researches and discoveries, the first chapter of Genesis
cannot be properly explained, nor the true origin of the
earth understood. It therefore becomes necessary, for
the biblical student to make himself acquainted with
the leading facts of modern geology, in order that he
may be able to judge whether or not these lofty claims
are well founded. The intelligent curiosity of many,
in every country of Europe, has been for some time, and
still continues to be directed to a minute examination of
the mineralogical contents and geological structure of
our globe, and with the most encouraging success. Sur-
prising discoveries have been made within the last fifty
or sixty years, the remains of numerous plants and animals
of a wonderful structure and size, have been found im-
bedded in the strata of the earth at a great depth, and
many important facts relative to the present surface of
the earth, and to the rocks and agencies immediately be-
low it, have been disclosed, trorn an examination of
the structure and size of these fossil remains, both of
plants and animals, aided by a knowledge of compara-
tive anatomy, and of the animal and vegetable kingdoms,
geologists have come to the conclusion that a large pro-
portion of them belong to species which now no where
exist either on the earth or in the ocean, and that it is
only in the superficial strata of the earth that the remains
of plants and animals now existing are deposited. From
a regular order in the superposition of the strata, re-
curring at distant intervals, and accompanied by a cur-
responding regularity in the order of succession of many
extinct races of animals and vegetables, and various
other facts, geologists farther conclude, that several de-
structions and subsequent new creations of animals and
plants have taken place all over the surface of our globe
since its original production out of nothing; that is, whole
•roups have been at once swept from existence by s ■
powerful catastrophe, and their places supplied by other
races called into existence by the creative fiat of the
Almighty. They also infer, from the thickness of the
strata containing the remains of extinct species, which
amounts to many miles, that immense periods of tune
were necessary to bring about these changes, and hence
that the materials of which the globe is composed, existed
through many ages; (>00,000 years according to some,
prior to the era of man's creation ; for that man mi not
witness to any of these changes, they consider evident
from the fact that no human remains have hitherto been
discovered along with those of extinct animals and vegct-
XXX
INTRODUCTION.
ables, or lower down than the loose sand and gravel that
cover the surface of the earth. This fact, however, has
been disputed. — See Turner's Sacred History, vol. i.
letter xviii. note 53 — BucklancCs Bridgewater Treatise,
vol. i. p. 103. Geologists also contend that none of the
fossiliferous strata can be attributed to the deluge re-
corded in scripture, because it is apparent, from their
structure and thickness, that they must have been deposited
by some watery mass remaining over them in a state of
tranquillity for a vastly longer period than the duration
of Noah's flood ; the traces of this latter catastrophe
being to be sought for near the surface of the earth. For
the evidences which geology furnishes in proof of the
reality of the Mosaic deluge, see b. i. sect. vi. ch. iii.
of this history.
As these conclusions seem to contradict the history of
the creation in the first chapter of Genesis, as it has
been interpreted by the generality of Christians in every
age, geologists have proposed various hypotheses with
the view of reconciling their opinions with the state-
ments of the Mosaic record. We can only find room to
mention two of these that have met with the greatest
support.
Several eminent geologists have supposed, that the
days of the Mosaic creation do not imply the same
length of time which is now occupied by a single revolu-
tion of the globe, but successive periods, each of great
extent, during which the different strata with their
organic remains were deposited. In confirmation of this
hypothesis, it has been asserted that the order of succes-
sion of the organic remains of a former world, accorded
with the order of creation as related by Moses. As,
however, more recent discoveries have shown that this
order does not hold in many cases, and as such an in-
terpretation of the word day contradicts the express de-
clarations of scripture, particularly that contained in
the fourth commandment, this hypothesis is now aban-
doned by most geologists, and even by some who were
its chief supporters. — See BucklancTs Bridg. Treat, vol.
i. pp. 17, 507. The prevailing hypothesis now is, that
the word beginning, as applied by Moses in Genesis i. 1.
expresses an undefined period of time which was ante-
cedent to the last great change that affected the surface
of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal
and vegetable inhabitants; during which period a long-
series of operations and revolutions have been going on ;
which, as they are wholly unconnected with the history of
the human race, are passed over in silence by the sacred
historian, whose only concern with them was barely to
state that the matter of the universe is not eternal and self-
existent, but was originally created by the power of the
Almighty. For a detail of the various arguments in sup-
port of this hypothesis, we must refer the reader to Buck-
land's work, already quoted (vol. i. ch. ii.), and although
it may be considered less objectionable than the former,
yet it is not free from difficulties, as the more candid
geologists allow. See Prof. Hitchcock's Tract on the
connection between geology and the Mosaic account of
the creation — Student's Cab. Lib. No. xix. We cannot
help thinking that geologists have been too premature
in drawing their conclusions, and framing theories with
respect to the origin of the earth. They should bear in
mind that speculations upon these points, where the sub-
ject matter is confessedly so mysterious, ought always to
be indulged in with extreme caution, as being liable to
the exaggerations and false conclusions of an excited
imagination. The science of geology is but of recent
origin, and although its progress has been wonderfully
rapid, will any one venture to affirm that it has already
arrived at full maturity, or that future researches may
not greatly modify, or even overturn many of the present
opinions ? Great stress has been laid upon the alleged
fact, that no fossilized human remains have been discover-
ed in juxtaposition with those of extinct animals and
vegetables ; but this, although it may be true with regard
to the continents of Europe and America, which alone
have been partially examined, does not establish the
conclusion intended ; namely, that these animal and
vegetable remains must be referred to a period much
more remote than the creation of man ; for it is highly
probable that our race did not exist out of Asia until
some time after the deluge. It is possible that fossilized
human remains may be found in those parts of Asia in-
habited by the antediluvians, and therefore geologists
ought at least to have explored the Armenian, Baby-
lonian, and Mesopotamian regions before they made
their decision. Let it be gTanted that the first verse of
the book of Genesis may bear the construction put upon
it by geologists, which is by no means certain, still it
seems inconsistent with the ideas which the Bible leads
us to form respecting the wisdom of the Creator, to sup-
pose that the earth which we inhabit was, during thou-
sands of ages, utterly abandoned to reptiles, lizards, and
hideous monsters, and all this to serve no beneficial
purpose which we can perceive. Can it be that such
loathsome and contemptible existences as these, were for
myriads of ages the lords of the creation, instead of the
image of the living God. — See Prof. Stuart's Tract on
the Modern Doctrines of Geology — Stud- Cab. Lib.
The remarks of an enlightened philosopher of the
present day, on these subjects, are so judicious and ex-
cellent, that we have great pleasure in giving them a
place here ' Although it is true that many of the
geological phenomena have been represented by these
observers, and others, to indicate that our earth has had
a much longer duration than the strictest import of the
terms used by Moses can allow, and especially in the
succession of its organized races, yet, after the most
patient comparison and consideration of their facts and
reasonings, I cannot but feel that they have not at all
advanced beyond plausible conjectures, as I also per-
ceive that they are mostly at variance with each other ;
and that as fast as one theory of this sort is set up, it
has been found to be wrong by a succeeding inquirer,
who attempts, in his turn, to establish a different one, of
the same tendency, in its stead. These are all fair
exertions of ingenuity, and arise from a desire to let no
fallacy stand, and from a love of exploring what has
baffled anterior research ; but these circumstances prove
that none of these theories are true, — that the right
theory has not yet been discovered,— that erroneous de-
ductions have been made from the phenomena which
have been seen, — and that these are not yet justly un-
derstood, nor their real bearings discerned. Hence, 1
continue in the belief, that whatever is true in fact and
correct in inference on this subject, will be in the end
found to be not inconsistent with the account of Moses,
nor with the common meaning of the expressions he
INTRODUCTION.
xxxi
uses. In studying' the scriptures, it is peculiarly de-
sirable that we should, on no occasion, depart any more
from the usual and natural meaning of the words and
phrases which there occur, than we do in reading- any
other author. They have been greatly disfigured by
the forced construction which most men seek to put upon
them ; and much dissatisfaction has by this conduct been
excited in the intelligent mind. The true construction
of every part must be, not the possibilities of meaning
which refining ingenuity may draw from the expression,
but that sense and purport which the author himself, in
penning them, intended that they should express. His
personal meaning at the time, and not the import which
our verbal criticism can now extract, should be the great
object of our attention. And therefore it appears to
me to be most probable, that whenever the right theory
on the fabrication of our earth, and on the era and suc-
cession of its organized beings, shall be discovered, it
will be found to be compatible with the Mosaic cosmo-
gony, in its most natural signification, But until this
desirable event arrives, there will be as much incongru-
ity between this ancient account and our modern specu-
lations, as there cannot but be between the devious ex-
cursions of an active imagination, and the simple and
solid, but unattractive reality. Our German contem-
poraries, in some of their reveries on ancient history,
are equally alert to prove that novelty of fancy is more
sought for by many than justness of thought, — that it is
easier to argue than to judge, — and that even truth be-
comes weariness when it ceases to be original, and has
lost the impression of its beauty by its habitual fami-
liarity. It is quite true that Moses did not profess to be
a geologist, and had no business to be so. His object
was, not to teach natural science, but to inculcate the
existence, the laws, the will, and the worship of God ;
and to found the polity and social manners and insti-
tutions of his countrymen, on this only true foundation
of national prosperity and of individual happiness.
But as he was the chosen organ of divine truth to man,
on his moral and religious duties, it is most probable
that what he expresses on other subjects, in those com-
positions which were to be the permanent guides of the
opinions and conduct of his nation, will be also what is
true and proper. It is most consistent with all that we
know of intelligent agency, to suppose that he who was
instructed or guided to be the lawgiver and sacred pre-
ceptor of his people, would be likewise so informed, or
influenced, as to avoid falsehood on every collateral
subject which it would be in the course of his narration
to notice. If we were directing or assisting any pupil
to write on any topic, we should certainly not suffer him
to insert any thing that we knew to be a fiction or a
fallacy. It is therefore most rational to suppose that
the same precaution was used by the Deity towards his
selected messenger. Hence, I am induced to believe
that what Moses expresses incidentally on other points
besides those of his divine legislation, is substantially
true, and will be found to be so, as soon as his judges
or readers have acquired competent knowledge. It is
our deficiency in this which hurries us to discredit, or
to doubt, or oppose him. But on no collateral point,
additional to his main subject, was he more likely to
have been correct, either from true human traditions of
preceding knowledge, or communications, or from new
supplementary aid, so far as that was needed, than in
his notices of the divine creation. This was indeed the
true basis of his mission and tuition ; and it is brought
prominently forward at once to our view, as if it were
meant to be so. His brief intimations are, therefore,
most probably the just outlines of all true geology; and
thus far we may affirm, that the more our materials of
judgment are increased by the multiplying labours of
our geological students, the less founded any op-
posing speculations appear to become. It is now
thirty-five years since my attention was first directed to
these considerations. It was then the fashion for science
and for a large part of the educated and inquisitive
world, to rush into a disbelief of all written revelation ;
and several geological speculations were directed
against it. But I have lived to see the most hostile of
these destroyed by their as hostile successors ; and to
observe that nothing which was of this character, however
plausible at the moment of its appearance, has had any
duration in human estimation, not even among the scepti-
cal. Augmented knowledge has, from time to time, over-
thrown the erroneous reasonings with which the Mosaic
account has been repeatedly assailed ; and has actually
brought to light more facts in its favour, than at this late
period of the earth could have been expected to occur.
Those which are of this description are enlarging in
number every year; and therefore my belief is, that the
veracity of the chief Hebrew historian will be ultimately
found to be as exact in what lie has recorded in the cos-
mogony with which he commences his work, as it is in
the account of his own legislation. There is certainly
no appearance as yet that any contradictory theory will
long survive its public enunciation. Magna est Veritas,
et prevalebit, is the everlasting axiom. Truth, and truth
only, will obtain any immortality in the intellectual, and
therefore in our literary and social world.' — Turner's
Sacred History, vol. i. pp. 30 — .34. London 1832.
Every lover of science, and every enlightened friend of
religion, must applaud the noble and zealous efforts
which so many learned and talented individuals of the
present day are making, to penetrate the recesses of
nature, and to discover the wonders that are hid in the
deep places of the earth. The book of nature and the
book of Revelation proceed from the same almighty and
all-wise source, and therefore what is contained in the
one must harmonize with what is contained in the other.
It is only our weak and erring understandings that
hinder us from perceiving this harmony in any particular
instance ; but we may rest assured, that the phenomena
of nature, when rightly interpreted, will, instead of
opposing and contradicting revelation, be found to con-
firm and support it. Already has geology lent its aid
in this way, — it has furnished indubitable evidence that
this earth could not have existed from eternity, but must
have had a beginning ; that it was originally in a state of
chaos, and its surface buried under the deep; and that
at a period less remote its surface was again swept over
by a deluge. (See b. i. sect. vi. ch. iii. of this history.)
These and several other circumstances recorded in scrip-
ture history, receive confirmation from the fad which
geology has disclosed, and there is reason to believe
that future inquiries will elicit additional evidence of this
kind. — See Prof. Hitchcock's Tract, Student* Cab. Lib.
No. xix. Let the geologist then pursue his researches
XXX11
INTRODUCTION.
with all possible zeal and ardour ; but let him do so in
a proper spirit, and by a patient investigation of facts ;
let him abstain from rash speculations, into which the
objects of his inquiries are, from their very nature, ex-
ceedingly apt to plunge him. Instead of attempting to
accommodate scripture to his own conclusions, let him
carefully examine whether these conclusions be accurate,
or whether they may not be so modified as to be in accord-
ance with the declarations of scripture, taken in their
most natural and obvious sense. In this way may he
reasonably hope to meet with success, and to arrive at
conclusions which shall harmonize with those parts of
Scripture, between which and geology there is at pre-
sent a seeming inconsistency.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK I.
CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THINGS FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD, IN ALL 1656 YEARS;
ACCORDING TO DB HALES 2256 YEARS.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
The Pentateuch or five books of Moses, designated
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,
contains the authentic history of the world during a
period of 2515 years. " It is a wide description, gra-
dually contracted; an account of one nation, preceded
by a general sketch of the first state of mankind. The
books are written in pure Hebrew, with an admirable
diversity of style, always well adapted to the subject,
yet characterised with the stamp of the sains author :
they are all evidently parts of the same work, and mu-
tually strengthen and illustrate each other.1
The name of the first Book of the Pentateuch, Genesis,
which signifies generation or production, has been given
to this portion of the Sacred Canon, because it contains
an account of the generation or production of all things.
" It narrates the true origin and history of all created
things, in opposition to the erroneous notions entertained
by the heathen nations ; the origin of sin, and of all moral
and physical evil; the establishment of the knowledge
and worship of the only true God among mankind ; their
declension into idolatry; the promise of the Messias;
together with the origin of the church, and her progress
and condition for many ages. It makes known to the
Israelites the providential history of their ancestors,
and the divine promises made to them ; and shows them
the reason why the Almighty chose Abraham and his
posterity to be a peculiar people, to the exclusion of all
other nations, — that from them should spring the Mes-
siah. This circumstance must be kept in view through-
out the reading of this Book, as it will illustrate many
otherwise unaccountable circumstances there related.
It was this hope that led Eve to exclaim, ' I have gotten
a man — the Lord.' The polygamy of Lamech may be
accounted for by the hope that the Messiah would be
born of some of his posterity, — as also, the incest of
Lot's daughters, — Sarah's impatienc3 of her barrenness,
— the polygamy of Jacob — the consequent jealousies
' Grny's Key to the Old Testament, p. 76.
between Leah and Rachel: — the jealousies between
Ishmael and Isaac, and especially Rebekah's preference
of Jacob to Esau."2
SECT. I.
CHAP. 1.— Of the Creation of the World.
THE INTRODUCTION.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4101; or. according to Hales, 5411. Gen. ch. 1.
ami part (it ch. 'i.
The chief design of the author of the Pentateuch is, to
give a short account of the formation of the earth, and
the origin of mankind; of the most remarkable events
that attended them in the infancy of the world ; and of
the transactions of one particular nation more especially,
from whence the Messias was to spring: and therefore
it cannot be well expected, that he should extend his
history to the creation of the supreme empyrean heaven,
which God might make the place of his own residence,
and the mansions of those celestial beings, whom be
constituted the ministers of his court, and attendants on
his throne," an immense space of time, perhaps, before the
2 Home's Introduction, &C, vol. iv., pp. .r>, (>.
a This i, no novel notion of "in- own, but whit has bet a con-
firmed by many great authorities, a- the learned ami ingenious
Dr Unmet testifies. For, speaking of some, who sup| o
the whole universe was created at one and the same time, and
the highe t heaven and angels included in the first day's work,
"It may be here proper," Bays he, "to present the words ol
Hieronymus." "The age of this globe hath not yet reached its
six thousandth year, and how many eternities, how many cyi l< b,
how maiiv centuries must we conceive to have i risted i rior to
that time, in which angels, thrones, dominions, aim
powers worshipped the omnipotent In a boob on the Trintty,
(either \<y Novation or Tertuliian), a world ■ ■■
()l,r firms I to have bi i n en -.;■ .1 bi • th< Mosaic
world, in these words, that in the higher sphen • God fa
ited angi Is, appoint) d spiritual pow<
thrones, dominions, &c.t and framed many other i
:,t this WOI d
been the latest than the sole work of the D.ity. In
: iM his time, that is, in I ol the
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, JBook I.
A. M. 1. A C. 4004; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5111. GEN. C!l. 1. AND PART OF CH. 2.
Mosaic account of the origination of this planetary world
begins.
In the introduction of the history indeed we are told,
that ' God created a the heaven and the earth : ' but when
it is considered, that heaven in Scripture language, is
Very commonly set to signify no more than the upper
region of the air; that we frequently read of ' 'the fir-
mament of heaven,2 the windows of heaven,3 the bottles
of heaven, and4 the hoary frost of heaven,' &c, none of
which extend beyond our atmosphere, we have no
grounds to conclude, that at one and the same time God
created every thing that is contained in the vast extra-
nundane spaces of the universe. On the contrary, when
we find him recounting to Job, that at the time D ' when
ho laid the foundations of the earth, the morning stars
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy,'
we cannot but infer, that these stars, and these sons of
God, were pre-existent; and consequently no part of the
Mosaic creation.
By the heaven therefore we are to understand no
more, than that part of the world which* we behold above
us: but then I imagine we have very good reason to
extend our conceptions of this world above us so far, as
to include in it the whole planetary system. h The
truth is, the several planets that are contained within the
magnus orbis, (as it is called), or the circle which Sa-
1 (Jen. i. 20. 2 Gen. vii. 11. 3 Job xxxviii. 37.
4 Job xxxviii. 29. 5 Ibid. ver. 4, 7.
fifth century, it was the common opinion of Catholics, that
before the beginning of the Geneseos, viz., the birth of the
Mosaic world: it was beyond a doubt God must have created all
these heavenly powers." Burnet's Arch. Phil. c. 8.
a By heaven, some understand in this place the highest
super-firmamentary heaven, and by the earth, that pre-existent,
matter whereof the earth was originally made; and so the sense
of the words will be — "that God at first created the matter
whereof the whole universe was composed, all at once, in an
instant, and by a word's speaking; but it was the supreme
heaven only which he then finished, and formed into a most
excellent order, for the place of his own residence, and the
habitation of his holy angels; the earth was left rude and indi-
gested, in the manner that Moses has described it, until there
should be a fit occasion for its being revised, and set in order
likewise."
b The better to understand this, and some other matters, in
our explication of the formation of celestial bodies, it is proper
to observe, that there are three more remarkable systems of the
world, the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and what is called the New
System, which astronomers have devised.
1. In the Ptolemaic, the earth and waters are supposed to be
in the centre of the universe, next to which is the element of
air, and next above that the element of fire; then the orb of
Mercury, then that of Venus, and then that of the Sun ; above
the sun's orb those of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn ; and above
them all, the orbs of the fixed stars, then the crystalline orbs,
and lastly, the cwlum empyreum, or heaven of heavens. All
these massy orbs, and vast bodies borne by them, are in this
system supposed to move round the terraqueous globe once in
twenty-four hours ; and beside that, to perform other revolutions
in certain periodical times, according to their distance from the
supposed centre, and the different circumference they take.
2. Id the Copernican system, the sun is supposed to be in the
mitre, and the heavens and earth to revolve round about it,
according to their several periods; first Mercury, then Venus,
then the Earth with its satellite the Moon; then Mars, then
Jupiter with its four moons; lastly, Saturn with its five, or
more moons revolving round it; and beyond, or above all these,
is the firmament, or region of fixed stars, which are all supposed
to be at equal distances from their centre the sun.
3. In the New System, the sun and planets have the same
Sue and position as in the Copernican; but then, whereas the
Copernican supposes the firmament ot' the fixed stars to be the
turn. Herscheil, or Urania describes about the sun, have
so near a similitude and relation : the same form, the
same centre, and the same common luminary with one
another, that it can hardly be imagined but that they
were the production of one and the same creation. And
therefore, though the historian seems chiefly to regard
the earth in his whole narration ; yet there is reason to
presume, that the other parts of the planetary world
went all along on in the same degrees of formation
with it.
2. It is to be observed farther, that this planetary
world, or system of things, was tiot immediately created
out of nothing, (as very probably the supreme heavens
were,) but out of somdfcsuch pre-existent matter as the
ancient heathens were wont to call chaos. And accord-
ingly we may observe, that in the history which Moses
gives us of the creation, he does not say, that God at
once made all things in their full perfection, but that
c ' In the beginning he created the earth,1 that is, the mat-
ter whereof the chaos was composed, which ' was without
form,' without atiy shape or order, ' and void,' without
any thing living or growing in it ; ' and darkness was
upon the face of the waters,' nothing- was seen for want
of light, which lay buried in the vast abyss.
According to tradition, then, and the representation
which this inspired author seems to give us, ^ this chaos
bounds of the universe, and placed at equal distance from its
centre the sun ; this new hypothesis supposes, that there are
many more systems of suns and planets, besides that in whieh
we have our habitation; that every fixed star, in short, is a sun,
encompassed with its complement of planets, both primary and
secondary, as well as ours; and that these stars, with their
planets are placed at regular distances from each other, and,
according tnitheir distances from us, seem to vary in their
respective magnitudes. — Derhanis Astro-theology, in the pre-
liminary discourse.
c What our translators render 'in the beginning' some
learned men have made ' in wisdom God created the .heavens
and the earth;' not only because the Jerusalem targum has it
so, but because the Psalmist, paraphrasing upon the works of the
creation, breaks forth into this admiration. 'O Lord! how
wonderful are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all,'
Ps. civ. 24. And again, exhorting us to give thanks unto the
Lord for his manifold mercies, he adds, ' who by wisdom made
the heavens,' Ps. exxxvi. 5. where, by wisdom, as some imagine,
he means the Son of God, by whom, says the evangelist, John
i. 3. ' all things were made, or all things created,' says the
apostle, Col. i. 1G. ' that are in heaven, and that are in the
earth;' and therefore the meaning of the jiluase must be, that
God, in creating the world, made use of the agency of his Sou.
Among the ancients (says Petavius, on the work of the six
days, B. 1., c. 1.) it was a well known and very common opin-
ion, that by the noun principiwn, or beginning, was signified
the Word or Son. And to this interpretation the word Elohim
in the plural number, joined with bara a verb singular, seems to
give some countenance ; though others are of opinion, that a
noun plural, governing a verb singular, is no more than the
common idiom of the Hebrew tongue; and for this idiom a very
considerable commentator assigns this reason: — That the
Hebrew language was originally that of the Canaanites, a people
strangely addicted to idolatry and polytheism ; and who there-
fore made more use of the plural Elohim, than of the singulai
Eloah; which usage the Jews continued, though they were
zealous assertors of the unity of the Godhead, and thereupon
most commonly joined a verb of the singular number with it,
pursuant to their notions of the divine unity. — Le Clercs dissert.
De ling. Hebraica.
d To mention one author out of the many which Grotius has
cited, Ovid, in the beginning of his Metamorphoses has given
us this description of it :
Before the appearance of the earth and sky
Which nwereth all things, Nature
Sect, l.j
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
A. M. I. A. C. 4004; OK, ACCORDING TO HAI.ES. 5411. ..K.\
was a fluid mass, wherein were the materials and ingTe-
dienls of all bodies, but mingled in confusion with one
another, so that heavy and light, dense and rare, fluid
and solid particles, were jumbled together, and the
atoms or small constituent parts of fire, air, water, and
earth, (which have since obtained the name of elements),
were every one in every place, and all in a wild confu-
sion and disorder. This seems to be a part of God's
original creation; but why he suffered it to continue .so
long, before he transformed it into an habitable world,
is a question oidy resolvable into the divine pleasure :
since, according to the ideas we have of his moral per-
fections, there is nothing to fix the creation of any thing
sooner or later, than his own .arbitrary will determined.
Only we may imagine, that, after the revolt of so man)
angels, God, intending to make a new race of creatures,
in order to supply their. place, and (ill up (as it were)
the vacancy in heaven; and withal, resolving to make
trial of their obedience before he admitted them into his
beatific presence, singled out one (as perhaps " there
might be many chaotic bodies in the universe) placed at
a proper distance from his own empyrean seat, to be the
habitation of the creatures he was about to form, and
might delay the fitting it up for them vuitil the time
which his infinite wisdom had determined for their crea-
tion was fully come.
3. It is to be observed farther, that though Moses
might have in his view the whole planetary system, and
know very well, that every day each planet advanced in
the same proportion, as the earth did in its formation :
yet what he principally chose to insist on (as a specimen
of all the rest) was this sublunary creation. He who
was versed in all ' the learning of the Egyptians,' could
not be unacquainted with the vulgar, or what is usually
called the Ptolemaic hypothesis, which came originally
from Egypt into Greece ; and yet, instead of expressing
his notions according to this, or any other system, we
find him giving us a plain narrative, how matters were
transacted, without asserting or denying any philosophic
truth. Had he indeed talked a great deal of globular
and angular particles, of centrical motion, planetary
vortices, atmospheres of comets, the earth's rotation,
and the sun's rest, he might possibly have pleased the
taste of some theorists better; but theories we know are
things of uncertain mode. They depend in a great
measure upon the humour and caprice of an age, which
Throughout the Universe had hut one form
Which men have named Chaos— 'Tu-as a
Raw ami shapeless mass — a heap of nature's
Discordant seeds wildly huddled together
Nor else but useless weight, &c.
a If matter existed as chaos before the beginning of the
Mo-aii- world, what was it? for what purpose, or in what place
did it exist before that time? 1 answer, that things such as
these are not too narrowly to he searched after, since, iii a great
measure, they exceed the ppwer of human investigation. Tims,
we sec at times stars arising in our hemisphere which never
before hail been apparent, hut wince pre-existence in some shape,
and in some quarter of the universe, cannot properly l»- doubted
And, also, comets are frequently discovered, concerning whose
origin and first place of abode the abilities of man cannot, elicit
the least dawning of information. In line, it is not to he sup-
posed tltat the heavens themselves are free from decay, — the
celestial as well as the terrestrial bodies must have their inver-
sions and transmutations; and by the lapse of time and return oi
chaos, the fixed stars may he converted into planets, and planet -.
when their deteriorated matter is consumed, in their turn may
become fixed star-, &c, — Burnet's Archeol. Phil., e. 9.
CH. 1. AND PART OF CH. 2.
is sometimes in love with one, and sometimes with an-
other. But this account of Moses was to last for ever,
as being the ground -work which God designed for all
his future revelations; and therefore i: site to
have it framed in such a manner, as that it might con-
descend to the meanest capacity, and jet not contradict
any received notions of philosophy.
The Jews, it must be owned, were a nation of no
great genius for learning; and therefore, if Moses had
given them a false system of the creation, such as a
simple people might be apt to fancy, he had both made
himself an impostor, and exposed his writings to the
contempt and derision of every man of understanding:
and yet, to have given them a particular explication of
the true one, must have made the illiterate look upon
him as a wild romancer, By God's direction, therefore,
he took the middle and wisest way, which was to -\ eak
exact truth, but cautiously, and in such general terms as
might neither confound the minds of the ignorant Jews,
nor expose him to the censure of philosophizing Chris-
tians: and we may well account it an evident token of
a particular providence of God overruling this inspired
penman, that he has drawn up the cosmogony in such a
maimer, as makes it of perpetual uBe and application;
forasmuch as it contains no peculiar notions of his own,
no principles borrowed from the ancient exploded phi-
losophy, nor any repugnant to the various discoveries
of the new.
4. It is to be observed farther, in relation to tin.-, ac-
count of Moses, that when God is said to give tie- word,
and every thing thereupon proceeded to its formation,
he did not leave matter and motion to do their best,
whilst he stood by (according to Dr Cudworth's expres-
sion) as an idle spectator of this .-port of atoms, and the
various results of it; but himself interposed, and, <■<..,-
ducting the whole process, gave not only life and I
but form and figure to every part of the creation.
The warmest abettors of mechanical principles do not
deny, but that l a divine energy at least must be admitted
in this case, where a world was to be formed, and a wild
chaos reduced to a fair, regular, and permanent system.
The immediate hand of God (they cannot but acfc
ledge) is apparent in a miracle, which is an infraction,
upon the standing laws of nature; but cert
miracles, the creation of the world is the greate
only as it signifies the production of matter ami motion
out of nothing, bm as it was lik. wging and
putting things into such order, as might make them
capable of the laws of motion which were to be ordained
for them. -For whatever notions we ma) have of the
stated economy of things now. it is certain that the laws
of motion (with which philosophers make such n<
could not take place before ever) pari of '..'.■' creation
was ranged and settled in its proper order.
It nun be allowed however eu in the Mosaic
account, there are some i .. sag is, such a-. ' U
earth brin-- forth grass, let the earth bring forth the living
creature alter lis kind, and it was BO,' thai wht
comes under the compass of mechanics might
possibl) be effected b) matter and motion, only i
work b) infinite wisdom, and sustained in their being
and operation by infinite power; but whatever is above
See fThitton't Thi wy.
See A?i . ■' nkind.
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF CH. 2.
[Book I.
the power of second causes, such as the production of
matter out of nothing, the formation of the seeds of all
animals and vegetables, the creation of our first parents,
and inspiring- them with immortal souls, &c, these we
affirm, and these we ought to believe, were the pure
result of God's omnipotent power, and are ascribed to
him alone.
To this purpose we may observe, that before our
author begins to acquaint us with what particular crea-
tures were each day successively brought into being, he
takes care to inform us, (as a thing essential and pre-
paratory to the work,) a ' that the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters.' For, whether by 'the
Spirit of God,' we are to understand * his holy and
essential Spirit, which is the third person in the ever-
blessed Trinity, whether that s plastic nature, which
(according- to some) was made subservient to him upon
this occasion, or any other emanation of the divine
power and energy, it is reasonable to suppose, that its
moving or incubation upon the chaotic mass, derived
into it a certain fermentation, impregnated it with several
kinds of motive influence, and so separated and digested
its confused parts, as to make it capable of the disposi-
tion and order it was going" to receive.
CHAP. II.— The History.
In this condition we may suppose the chaos to have
been, when the b fiat for light was given; whereupon all
the confused, stagnating particles of matter began to
range into form and order. The dull, heavy, and terrene
parts, which overclouded the expansum or firmament,
had their summons to retire to their respective centres.
They presently obeyed the Almighty's orders, and part
of them subsided to the centre of the earth, some to
Jupiter, some to Saturn, some to Venus, &c, till the
1 Cudu'ortK 's Intellectual System,.
2 Gen. i. 2. It is observed by some later Jewish, as well as
Christian interpreters, that the several names of God are often
given as epithets to those things which are the greatest, the
strongest, and the best of their kind ; and thereupon they think,
that since the word Ruach signifies the wind, as well as the
Spirit, Ruach Elohim should be translated a most vehement mind,
instead of 'the Spirit of God; ' and that this signification agrees
very well with Moses's account, which represents the earth so
mixed with the waters, that it could not appear, and therefore
stood in need of a wind to dry it. But besides that this sense
seems to be a sad debasing of the text, it is certain, that the
wind (which is nothing but the moving of the air) could not.
be spoken of now, because it was not created until the second
day.
a The word in the Hebrew, according to the opinion of some,
both ancient and modern, interpreters, signifies literally a brood-
ing upon the waters, even as a hen does upon her eggs ; but, as
there are only two places wherein the word occurs, Dent, xxxii.
II. and Jer. xxxiii. 9., Mr Le Clerc contends, that in neither
of these it will properly admit of this sense ; and therefore he
rather thinks it (as our Ainsworth seems to do) to be a meta-
phor taken from the hovering and fluttering of an eagle, or any
other bird, over its young, but not its sitting over, or brooding
upon them. A'distinetion of no great moment in my opinion.
h The words are, 'Let there be light,' which, as Longinus
takes notice, is a truly lofty expression ; and herein appears the
wisdom of Moses that he represents God like himself, com-
manding things into being by his word, i. e. his will: for where*
ever we read the words, he said, in the history of the creation,
the meaning must be, that he willed so and so. — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
globes of these several planets were completed. And
as the grosser parts subsided, the lighter, and more
tenuous mounted up ; and the lucid and fiery particles
(being lighter than the rest) ascended higher, and, by
the divine order, meeting together in a body, were put
in a circular motion, and in the space of a natural day,
made to visit the whole expansum of the chaos, which
occasioned a separation of the light from darkness, and
thereby a distribution of day and night : c and this was
the work of the first day. d
The next thing which God Almighty commanded, was,
that the waters, Avhich as yet were universally dispersed
over the face of the chaos, should retire to their respec-
tive planets, and be restrained within their proper limits
by several atmospheres. Hereupon all the aqueous
parts immediately subsided towards the centres of the
several planets, and were circumfused about their
globes ; by which means the great expansum was again
cleared off, and the region of the air became more lucid
and serene. And this is the operation which Moses
calls ' dividing the waters under e the firmament, from
the waters which are above / the firmament,' for the
waters under the firmament are the waters of the earth,
the waters above the firmament are those of the moon,
and other planets, which, in the second day's work, were
dismissed to their several orbs, but Avere confusedly
mixed, and overspread the whole face of the expansum
before.
Thus, on the second day, the delightful element of
air was disentangled and extracted from the chaos : and
one part of the business of the third, was to separate the
other remaining elements, ' water and earth.' For the
watery particles, as we said, clearing the expansum, and
falling upon the planetary orbs, must be supposed to
cover the face of the earth, as well as other planets,
when the great Creator gave the command for ' the
waters to be gathered into one place, and the dry land
c If we rather approve the Copernican hypothesis, we must
say, that the earth, having now received its diurnal and annual
motion, and having turned round about its axis, for about the
space of twelve hours, made this luminous body, now fixed in a
proper place, appear in the east, which, in the space of twelve
hours more, seemed to be in the west ; and that tlus revolution
made a distinction between day and night. — Bedford's Chrono-
logy.
d ' And the evening and the morning were the first day.' The
Mosaical method of computing days from sunset to sunset, and
of reckoning by nights instead of days, prevailed among the
polished Athenians. From a similar custom of our Gothic an-
cestors, during their abode in the forests of Germany, words
expressive of such a mode of calculation (such as fortnight, se'n-
night) have been derived into our own language. — Burder's
Oriental Customs, vol. i., p. 1. — Ed.
e Gen. i. 6. The seventy interpreters, in translating the
word Rakiagh, the firm, or solid, seem to have followed the
philosophy of the first ages: for the ancients fancied that the
heavens were a solid body, and that the stars were fastened
therein, which might likewise be the notion of Elihu, Job xxxvii.
18.; since he represents the heaven to be strong or solid, ' like
a molten looking-glass ; ' whereas, the proper sense of the Word
is something spread or stretched out. And to this both the
psalmist and prophet allude, when they tell us, that ' God
spreadeth out the heaven like a curtain,' Ps. civ. 2. and ' stretched
them out by his discretion,' Jer. x. 12.
/"Several commentators suppose ' the waters above the firma-
ment ' to be those which hang in the clouds ; but the notion of
their being planetary waters seems more reasonable, because at
this time, there wore no clouds, neither had it as yet rained on
the earth. See Gen. ii. 6.
gECT. i] FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
A. M. I. A. C. 40C4; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1
to appear.' Whereupon the mighty mountains instantly
reared up their heads, and the waters, falling every way
from their sides, ran into those large extended valleys,
which this swelling of the earth, in some places, had
made for their reception in others. The earth, being
thus separated from the waters, and designed for the
habitation of man and beast, (which were afterwards to
be created,) was first to be furnished with such things as
were proper for their support; grass for cattle, and
herbs and fruit-trees for the nourishment of man. Im-
mediately, therefore, upon the divine command, it was
covered with a beautiful carpet of flowers and grass,
trees and plants of all kinds, which were produced in
their full proportion, laden with fruit, and not subjected
to the ordinary course of maturation. For how great
soever the fecundity of the primogenial earth might be,
yet it is scarce to be imagined, how a trees and plants
could be ripened, into their full growth and burden of
fruit, in the short period of a day, any other way than
by virtue of a supernatural power of God, which first
collected the parts of matter fit to produce them ; then
formed every one of them, and determined their kinds ;
and at last provided for their continuance, by a curious
enclosure of their seed, in order to propagate their
species, even unto the end of the world: and this was
the work of the third day.
When God had (inished the lower world, and furnished
it with all manner of store, that mass of fiery light,
I which we suppose to have been extracted on the lirst
day, and to have moved about the expansion for two
days after,) was certainly of great use in the production
of the ether, the separation of the waters, and the rare-
faction of the land, which might possibly require a more
violent operation at first, than was necessary in those
lesser alterations, which were afterwards to be effected ;
and therefore, on the fourth day, God took and con-
densed it, and casting it into a proper orb, placed it at
a convenient distance from the earth and other planets ;
insomuch that it became a sun, and immediately shone
out in the same glorious manner, in which it has done
ever since.
After tliis God took another part of the chaos, an
opaque substance, which we call the ' moon ; ' and having
cast it into a proper figure, placed it in another orb, at a
nearer distance from the earth, that it might perpetually
be moving round it, and that the sun, by darting its rays
upon its solid surface, might reflect light to the terres-
trial globe, for the benefit of its inhabitants : and, at the
same time, that God thus made the moon, he made, in
like manner, ''the other five planets of the solar system,
a There are two things wherein the production of plant-, in
the beginning, differed from their production ever since. 1.
That they have sprung ever since out of their seed either sown
by us, or falling from the plants themselves; but in the begin-
ning, were wrought out of the earth, with their seed in them, to
propagate them ever after. 2. That they need now (as they
have ever since the creation) the influence of the sun, to make
them sprout ; but then they came forth by the power of God,
before there was any sun, which was not formed till the next
day. — Patrick's Comment, in loc.
b I am very sensible that the words in the text are, 'lie
made the stars also,' ver. 16; but the whole sentence cornel in
so very abruptly, that one would be apt to imagine, that after
Moses's time, it was clapped in by some body who had a mind
to he mending his hypothesis, or else was added, by way ol
marginal note, at first; and at length crept into the text itself,
AND PART OF CH. 2.
and their satellites. Nor was it only for the dispensa-
tion of light to this earth of ours, that God appointed
the two great luminaries of the sun and moon to attend
it, but for the measure and computation of time like-
wise: that a speedy and swift motion of the sun, (ac-
cording to the Ptolemaic system,) in twenty-four hours
round the earth, or of the earth (according to the Coper-
nican) upon its own axis, might make a day ; that the
time from one change of the moon to another, or there-
abouts, might make a month; and the apparent revolu-
tion of the sun, to the same point of the ecliptic line,
might not only make a year, but occasion likewise a
grateful variety of seasons in the several parts of the
earth, which are thus gradually and successively visited
by the reviving heat of the sunbeams : and this was the
work of the fourth day.
After the inanimate creation, God, on the fifth day,
proceeded to form the animate; and because fi.sh and
fowl are not so perfect in their kind, neither so curious
in their bodily texture, nor so sagacious in their instinct,
as terrestrial creatures are known to be, he therefore
began with them, and cout of the waters, that is, out of
such matter as was mixed and concocted with the water,
he formed several of different shapes and sizes ; some
vastly big,rf to show the wonders of his creating power;
and some extremely small, to show the goodness of his
indulgent providence. And (what is peculiar to this
day's work) here we have the first mention made of God's
blessing his creatures, and *' bidding them be fruitful
(as F. Simon has evidenced in several other instances.) For
the fixed stars do not seem to be comprehended in the six days'
work, which relates oidy to this planetary world, that has the
sun for its centre; /'a/rick's Commentary and NichoWs Confer'
ence, vol. i. See answer to the subsequent objection.
c From the words in Gen. oh. i. ver. 2iK 'Lei the waters
bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and
fowl, that may fly above the earth,' &c, some have started an
opinion, that fowl derive their origin from the water: and others,
from the words, 'Out of the ground God formed every beast of
the field, and every fowl of the air,' raise another, viz. thi
took their beginning from the earth: but these two texts are
easily reconciled, because neither denies what the other says,
though they speak differently; as when Moses -ays, 'Lit the
waters bring forth fowl,' he does not by that Bay, that the earth
did not bring forth fowl. It is raosl rea able thi n fbi e to think
that they had their original partly from the waters, and partly
from the earth; and this might r< nder the flesh of fowl h
than that of beasts, and more firm than thai of fishes. II
Philo calls fowl the kindred of fish; and thai they are so, the
great congruity there is in their natures (they being both ovl-
parous which makes them more fruitful than other
both steering and directing their course by' their tails i- a suf-
ficient indication.
d Moses instances in the "hale, because it i- supposed to be
the principal and largest of all fishes; but the original word de-
notes several kinds of great fish, as Bochart in kit tiierozom, p.
1. 1. 1. c. 7. observes at large; and shows withal the prodigious
bigness of some of them; hot he should have added, that the
word signifies a crocodile likewise, as well as a whale; Patrick
and !■'■ I 'lerc in loc.
e That fish and fowl should here have a Messing prm ounced
11)1011 them, rather than the beasts, which w, sixth
day, some have supposed this to be the reason; — that the pro-
duction of their young requires the particular care ol divine
providence, he ause they d it bring them forth pi rfi rtly formed
as tin- beasts do, but only la) their eggs, in which the young are
hatched and formed, even when thej '' from their
bodies: and "what a w lerful thing is this." says one, "that
when the womb (as we may call it i> separated from the
gonitor, a living creature like itself should he produced?" —
Patrick's Commentary.
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF CH. 2.
and multiply,' that is, giving them, at their first creation,
a prolific virtue, and a natural instinct for generation,
whereby they might not only preserve their species, but
multiply their individuals : and this was the work of the
fifth day.
Thus every thing being put in order ; the earth covered
with plants; the waters restored with fish; the air re-
plenished with foul; and the sun placed at a proper
distance, to give a convenient warmth and nourishment
to all; in order to make this sublunary world a still
more comfortable place of abode, in the beginning of the
sixth and last day, " God made the terrestrial animals,
which the sacred historian distributes into three kinds :
1. Beasts, by which we understand all wild and savage
creatiu-es, such as lions, bears, wolves, &c. 2. Cattle,
all tame and domestic creatures, designed for the benefit
and use of men, such as oxen, sheep, horses, &c. And,
3. Creeping things, such as serpents, worms, and other
kinds of insects.
Thus, when all things which could be subservient to
man's felicity were perfected; when the light had, for
some time, been penetrating into, and clarifying the
dark and thick atmosphere ; when the air was freed from
its noisome vapours, and become pure and clear, and fit
for his respiration; when the waters'were so disposed,
as to minister to his necessities by mists and dews from
heaven, and by springs and rivers from the earth ; when
the surface of the earth was become dry and solid for
his support, and covered over with grass and flowers,
with plants and herbs, and trees of all kinds, for his
pleasure and sustenance ; when the glorious firmament
of heaven, and the beautiful system of the sun, moon,
and stars, were laid open for his contemplation, and, by
their powerful influences, appointed to distinguish the
seasons, and make the world a fruitful and delicious
habitation for him; when, lastly, all sorts of animals in
the sea, in the air, and on the earth, were so ordered
and disposed, as to contribute, in their several capaci-
ties, to his benefit and delight: when all these things, *!■
say, were, by the care and providence of God, prepared
for the entertainment of this principal guest, it was then
a In the 24th verse of this chapter it is said, that God com-
manded the earth to produce such and such animals ; ' Let the
earth bring forth the living creature after his kind;' and yet, in
the very next verse, it follows, that ' God made the beast of the
earth, and every thing that, moveth after his kind:' but this
seeming contradiction is easily reconciled by putting together
the proper meaning of both these passages, which must certainly
be this — that God himself effectually formed these terrestrial
animals, and made use of the earth only as to the matter whereof
he constituted their parts. Some indeed have made it a ques-
tion, whether these several creatures were at first produced in
their full state and perfection, or God only created the seeds of
all animals, (i. e. the animals themselves in miniature,) and
dispersed them over the face of the earth, giving power to that
element, assisted by the genial heat of the sun, to hatch and
bring them forth; but for this there is no manner of occasion,
since it is much more rational to suppose, that God did not
commit the formation of things to any intermediate causes, but
himself created the first set of animals in the full proportion and
perfection of their specific, natures, and gave to each species a
power afterwards, by generation, to propagate their kind; for
that even now, and in the present situation of things any perfect
species cannot, either naturally or accidentally, be produced by
any preparation of matter, or by any influence of the heavens,
without the interposition of an almighty power, physical expe-
riments do demonstrate. — Patrick's Commentary; and Bentlcy's
Sermons at Boyle's Lecture. '
that man was created, and introduced into the world in
a manner and solemnity not unbecoming the lord and
governor of it. To this purpose we may observe, that
God makes a manifest distinction between him and other
creatures, and seems to undertake the creation, even of
his body, with a kind of mature deliberation, if not con-
sultation with the other persons of the ever -blessed
Trinity; h' Let us make man.'c
However this be, it is certain that the force and
energy of the expression denotes thus much — that the
production of mankind at first was so immediately the
work of Almighty God, that the power of no subordinate
intelligence could be capable of it: that the curious
b Gen. i. 26. The Jewish doctors are of opinion, that the
consultation was real, and held with such angelical beings as
God might employ in the work of man's creation; and they tell
a story upon this occasion which seems a little fictitious, viz.,
that as Moses was writing his book by God's appointment, and
these words came to be dictated, he refused to set them down,
crying out, O Lord! wouldst thuu then plunge men in error, and
make them doubt of the doctrine of the unity? Whereupon it
was answered by God, ' I command thee to write, and if any
will err, let them err.' Several modern expositors account it
only a majestic form of speech, as nothing is more common than
for kings and sovereign princes to speak in the plural number,
especially when they are giving out any important order or
command. It has been observed, however, that as there were
no men, and consequently no great men, when this was spoken;
so there was no such manner of speech in use among men ot
that lank for many ages after Moses. Their common custom
was, in all their public instruments and letters (the better to
enhance the notion of sovereignty) to speak in the first person,
as it was in our nation not long ago, and is in the kingdom of
Spain to this very day; and therefore, upon the authority of
almost all the fathers of the church: " For, from the very times
of the apostles, they all nearly coincide in faithfully declaring
that God the Father spake these words to the Son and Holy
Ghost, or at least to the Son." Whitby's Connexions of
Fathers. Others have thought that this language of Moses re-
presents God speaking, as he is, that is, in a plurality of persons.
c "God is represented to have concerted the formation of
man, in conjunction, it should seem, with other persons con-
sulting in secret counsel." This circumstance has been justly
received as furnishing evidence in favour of the doctrine of the
Trinity. " It is generally admitted also, that the manifestations
of the Divine Nature, which were made to the Patriarchs, to
Moses, to Joshua, and others, were made, in the person of
Christ," the Angel or " Messenger of the Covenant." Tliu*,
when the Lord appeared to Abraham, in the plains of Mamie,
it is said, that three men stood by him, yet the Patriarch ad-
dressed them as he would have accosted one Being, or directed
himself to one as superior — "Nay, my Lord, pass not away,"
Gen. xviii. When Jacob wrestled with the man who appeared
to him, he called the name of the place Peniel, "for I have
seen God face to face, and my life is preserved : " and when he
blessed the sons of Joseph, he expressed the hope that "the
angel which redeemed him from all evil would bless the lads,"
Gen. xlviii. 16. The angel which appeared to Moses at the bush,
said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob, Ex. iii. 6. When Manoah inquired the name ot
the angel who appeared unto him, the angel answered, " Why
askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?" — Using The
same Hebrew word which is applied to Christ by Isaiah, when
in his ninth chapter and sixth verse, he styles him " Wonderful.''
We are told that Manoah, when he knew that he was an angel
of the Lord, said unto his wife, " We shall surely die because we
have seen God," Judges xiii. IS.
It was the object of the Jewish dispensation to preserve men
from idolatrous propensities, and from following alter strange
gods. Moses and the prophets therefore insist principally on the
unity of God, though when led to refer to the offices of the other
persons of the Trinity, they could not but impart some notices
of a doctrine which was afterwards distinctly to be revealed." —
Gray's Comiexion, &c, pp. 121, 123. — En.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
A. M 1. A. C. 1H)I; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, 0111. GEN. CH. ,. AM) Part OF CH !
structure of man's body, the accommodation of it to
faculties, and the furnishing it with faculties that are
accommodated to it, (even as to its animal life,) im-
ports a wisdom and efficacy far above the power of any
created nature to effect. And this may possibly suggest
the reason, why, in the formation of his body, God made
choice of 'the dust of the ground,' viz., that from the
incongruity of the matter we might judge of the difficulty,
and learn to attribute the glory of the performance to
iiim alone. And if the creation of the body of our great
progenitor was a work of so much divine wisdom and
power, we cannot but expect, that the spiritual and im-
material nature, the immortal condition, active powers,
and free and rational operations, which, in resemblance
of the Divine Being, the soul of mail was to participate,
should require some peculiar and extraordinary conduct
in its production at iirst, and union with matter after-
ward; all which is expressed by God's 'breathing into
the man's "nostrils the breath of life,' that is, doing-
something analogous to breathing, (for God has no body
to breathe .with ,) whereby he infused a rational and im-
mortal spirit (for we must not suppose that God gave
any part of his own essence) into the man's head, as the
principal seat thereof; 'and ?man became a living
soul.'
As soon as Adam found himself alive, and began to
cast his eyes about him, he could not but perceive that
he was in -no small danger as being surrounded with a
multitude of savage creatures, all gazing on him, and
(for any thing he knew) ready and disposed to fall upon
and devour him. And therefore, to satisfy his mind in
this particular, God took care to inform him, that all the
creatures upon earth were submitted to his authority;
that on them he had impressed an awe and dread of
him; had invested him with an absolute power and do-
minion over them; and, to convince him of the full pos-
session of that power, he immediately appointed every
creature to appear before him, which they accordingly
did, and c'by their lowly carriage, and gestures of
respect suitable to their several species, evidenced their
submission ; and as they passed along, such knowledge
had Adam then of their several properties and destina-
tions, that he assigned them their names, which a small
skill in the Hebrew tongue will convince us, were very
proper, and significant of their natures.
This survey of the several creatures might possibly
occasion some uneasy reflections in Adam, to see every
one provided with its mate, but himself left destitute of
any companion of a similar nature; and therefore, to
a The original word, which our translators render nostrils,
signifies more properly the face or hen!.
b It is not to he doubted, hut, that Eve, the mailer of oil liv-
ing, was created hy Almighty God, ami inspired with a rational
and immortal soul, the same day with her husband; for so it is
siid, that in the sixth day, ' male and female created he tin in,'
Ten. 27; and therefore the historian only re-assumes the argu-
niint in the second chapter, to give us a more full and particular
account, of the woman's origin, which was hut briefly delivered,
or rather indeed hut hinted at in the first.
c Milton has expressed himself, upon this occasion, in the
fallowing maimer:
As thus he spake, each bird, ami beast, behold
Approaching:, two and two ; these cnw'riBg low
With blandishment ; each bird stonp'd on bis wing-.
1 nam'd them, as tbey pass'd, and understood
Their nature; with such knowledge God endu'd
My sudden apprehension.
answer his desires in this particular likewise, «<GM
caused a deep sleep to fall upon him,' which was in-
tended, not only as an expedient for the performance of
the wonderful operation upon him without sense of pain,
<*but as a trance or ecstasy likewise, wherein was re-
presented to hie imagination, both what wa.. done to
him, and what was the mystical meaning of it, and
wljereby he was prepared for the reception of that divine
oracle 2 concerning the sacred institution of marriage,
which presently, upon his awaking, he uttered.
While Adam continued in this sleep, God, who, with
the same facility wherewith he made him, could have
formed the woman out of the ' dust of tin; eacth,' (being
willing- to signify that equality and partnership, that love
and union, and tenderness of endearment, which •
to interfere between husband and wife,) took fart of tbfc
substance of the man's body/' near his side, ;ut:l closing
up the orifice again, out of that substance He /formed
the body of Eve, and then ' breathing- into her the breath
of life,' made her, in like manner, ' become a living
soul.'
This was the 8 conclusive act of the whole creation:
1 Gen. ii. 21. * Gen. ii. 23.
d In like manner, lie makes this sleep which fell upon Adam
to have been a kind of trance or ecstasy, (for so the S
translate it,) and thus he relates the occasion ami nature of it.
He ended, and I heard no more ; tor now
My earthly by hi- heavenly overpower'. I.
Which it had long stood under, >train'<! to th" height
In that celestial colloquy sublime,
(As with an object that excels the sense,
Dai/.'ed and spent.) sunk down, and Bought relief
Of Bleep, which instantly fell (in in.', call'd
I5y nature as in aid, and elos'd my eye-.
Mine eyes he chis'd, but open left the cell
Of fancy, my internal sight ; by which
(Abstract as in a trance) methought I saw,
Though sleeping, where I lay. ami saw the shape
Still glorious, before whom awake 1 >tood
Under his forming bands a cre.it ore grew
Man-like, but different sex ; so Lively luir.
That what Seem'd fair in all the world, seem'd now
Mean, or in her siunm'd op, in her < ontaiii'd.
And in her looks, which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before;
And into all things from her air inspir'd
The spirit of love, and nmoTOUS delight.
e As the original word does nol "<'■. and is all
along rendered by the Seventy /.tritr.r, a side, so I though)
improper to give it that construction, thereby to cut off
infidels an occasion for raillery, and to s|>an- them all their wit
about the redundant or defective rib of Adam.
/The original word signifies building at framing any thing
with a singular care, contrivani ortion; and hence
our bodies are in Scripture frequently called houses, Job Iv. I!».;
2Cor.v.l.j and sometimes temples, John ii. 15.; I Cor.iii. \<>.
g It is not very necessarj t.. determine at what i
year the world was made; yet it Beems most probable, that it
u the autumnal equinox, and that not onl]
trees were laden then with fruit, as th.' history tells it- a
parents did eat of them; hut because the Jews did then
their civil year (viz. in the month Titri, which answers to part
of ,.ur September and October) from whence th. ir sabbatical an.)
jubilee years- did commence, Exod. wiii. I'1. xxxiv.
22; Lev. xxv. 9. The month AMb (which answers t"
our -March and April) had indeed the honour afterwards to he
reckoned among the Jews the beginning of their
siastical matl irs, because th.- chili en of Israel, on that ti
came out of the land but from the >■ <'<<■
month Titri ••- 1 1 unted the first of th< ii
il was the general opinion of the anch nl
vrorld was created at the time of the autumnal equinox ; and for
this reason, the decs do still, in the era of tl
as in that of contracts, and other instruments, com;
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I,
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF CI-I.
and upon h general survey of such harmony risen from
principles ^o jarring and repugnant, and so beautiful a
variety and composition of things from a mere mass of
confusion and disorder, God was pleased with the work
of his hands ; and having- pronounced it good, or pro-
perly adapted to the uses for which it was intended, ' he
rested from all his work,' that is, he ceased to produce
any more creatures, as having accomplished his design,
and answered his original idea; and thereupon he
" sanctified, and set apart the next ensuing day, (which
was the seventh from the beginning of the creation, and
the first of Adam's life,) as a time of solemn rest and
rejoicing for ever after, to be observed and expended in
acts of praise and religious worship, and in commemora-
tion of the infinite wisdom, power, and goodness of
God, in the world's creation.
CHAP. III.— Tlie Objection.
1 ' Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the
earth? Declare if thou hast understanding. Where-
upon are the foundations thereof fastened, and who laid
the corner stone thereof?' is a question very proper to
be put to those who demand a reason for the actions of
God: for, if they cannot comprehend the works them-
selves, they are certainly very culpable in inquiring too
busily into the time and manner of his doing them. But
(to gratify the inquisitive for once) though we do not
deny, that all things are equally easy to Almighty
power, yet it pleased the divine Architect to employ the
space of six days in the gradual formation of the world,
1 Job xxxviii. 4, 6.
ginning of their year from the first ciay of Tisri. Herein, how-
ever, the Jews differ from us; that whereas they make the
world only 3760, most of the Christian chronologers will have
it to be much about 4000 years older than Christ ; so that by
them 5732 years, or thereabouts, are thought a moderate com-
putation of the world's antiquity. See Usher's Annals; Bed-
ford's Chronology; and Shuckford's Connection.
a, Whether the institution of the Sabbath was from the begin-
ning of the world, and one day in seven always observed by the
patriarchs, before the promulgation of the law ; or whether the
sanctification of the seventh day is related only by way of antici-
pation, as an ordinance not to take place until the introduction
of the Jewish economy, is a matter of some debate among the
learned ; but I think with little or no reason, for when we con-
sider, that as soon as the sacred penman had said, ' God ended
his work, and rested,' he adds immediately, in the words of the
same tense, ' he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it ; '
when we compare this passage in Genesis with the twentieth
chapter of Exodus, wherein Moses speaks of God's ' blessing and
sanctifying the Sabbath ' not as an act then first done, but as
what he had formerly done upon the creation of the world ; when
we remember, that all the patriarchs from Adam to Moses had
set times for their solemn assemblies, and that these times were
weekly, and of divine institution ; that upon the return of these
weekly Sabbaths, very probably, it was that Cain and Abel
offered their respective sacrifices to God ; and that Noah, the
only righteous person among the Antediluvians, Abraham, the
most faitliful servant of God after the flood, and Job, that per-
fect and upright man, who feared God, and eschewed evil, are
all supposed to have observed it; we cannot but think, that the
day whereupon the work of the creation was concluded, from the
very beginning of time, was every week (until men had cor-
rupted their ways) kept holy as being the birthday of the world,
(as Philo on the Creation of the World styles it,) and the univer-
sal festival of mankind. Bedford's Scripture Chronology, and
V'iirick's Commentary.
because he foresaw, that such procedure would be a
means conducive to the better instruction both of
men and angels. Angels (as we hinted before) were
very probably created, when the supreme heavens were
made, at least some considerable time before the pro-
duction of this visible world. Now, though they be
great and glorious beings, yet still they are of a finite
nature, and unable to comprehend the wonderful works
of God. There are some things (as 2 the apostle tells
us) that these celestial creatures ' desire to look into ; '
and the more they are let into the knowledge and wisdom
of God, the more they are incited to praise him. 3 That
therefore they might not want sufficient matter for this
heavenly exercise, the whole scene of the creation, ac-
cording to the several degrees and natures of things,
seems to have been laid open in order before them, that
thereby they might have a more full and comprehensive
view of the divine attributes therein exhibited, than they
could have had, in case the world had started forth in
an instant, or jumped (as it were) into this beautiful
frame and order all at once; just as he who sees the
whole texture and contrivance of any curious piece of
art, values and admires the artist more, than he who be-
holds it in the gross oidy.
God was therefore pleased to display his glory before
the angels, and by several steps and degrees, excite
their praise, and love, and admiration, which moved them
to songs and shouts of joy. By this means, his glory,
and their happiness were advanced, far beyond what it
would have been, had all things been created, and ranged
in their proper order in a moment. By this means they
had time to look into the first principles and seeds of
all creatures, both animate and inanimate; and every
day presented them with a glorious spectacle of new
wonders ; so that the more they saw, the more they knew,
and the more they know of the Avorks of God, the more
they for ever love and adore him. But this is not all.
By this successive and gradual creation of things, in
the space of six days, the glory of God is likewise more
manifest to man, than it would have been, had they been
made by a sudden and instantaneous production. The
heavens, and ' all the host of them,' we may suppose,
were made in an instant, because there were then per-
haps no other creatures to whom God might display the
glory of his works ; but as they were made in an instant,
Ave have little or no perception of the maimer wherein
they were made : but now, in this leisurely procedure
of the earth's formation, we see, as it were, every thing
arising out of the primordial mass, first the simple ele-
ments, and then the compounded and more curious
creatures, and are led, step by step, full of wonder and
admiration, until Ave see the Avhole completed. So that,
in condescension to our capacity, it A\as, that God
divided the creation into stated periods, and prolonged
the succession of Avhat he could have done in six mo-
ments, to the term of six days, that Ave might have clearer
notions of his eternal power and godhead, and every
particular day of the Aveek, neAV and particular Avorks,
for Avhich Ave are to praise him. And this, by the bye,
suggests another argument, founded on the institution of
the Sabbath day: For if, 'in six days, the Lord made
heaven and earth, and, resting on the seventh day, did
1 Va. i. 12.
Jenkins's Reasonableness of the C. Religion.
Sect. 1.]
FHOM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
A. M. 1, A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CII. 1. AND PART OF CH. 2.
bless and sanctify it,' this seems to imply, that God
obliged himself to continue the work of the creation for
six days, that showing himself (if I may so say) a
divine example of weekly labour, and sabbatical rest,
he might more effectually signify to mankind, what tri-
bute of duty he would require of them, viz. , that one day
in seven, abstaining from business and worldly labour,
they should devote and consecrate it to his honour, and
religious worship.
There is therefore no necessity of departing from the
literal sense of the Scripture in this particular. The
reiterated acts, and the different operations mentioned
by Moses, ought indeed to be explained in such a man-
ner, as is consistent with the infinite power, and perfect
simplicity of the acts of God, and in such a maimer, as
may exclude all notions of weakness, weariness, or im-
perfection in him; but all this may be done without
receding from a successive creation, which redoiuids so
much to the glory of God, and affords the whole intelli-
gent creation so fair a field for contemplation.
Some of the Jewish doctors are of opinion, that in the
first day, when God created light, at the same time, he
formed and compacted it into a sun ; and that the sun is
mentioned again on the fourth day, merely by way of
repetition; while others maintain, that this light was a
certain luminous body (not unlike that which conducted the
children of Israel in the wilderness) that moved round
the world, until the day wherein the sun was created.
But there is no occasion for such conjectures as these :
every one knows, that darkness has, in all ages, been
the chief idea which men have had of a chaos. ' Both
poets and philosophers have made Nox, and Erebus,
and Tartarus, the principal parts and ingredients of its
description; and therefore it seems very agreeable to
the reason of mankind, that the first remove from the
chaos should be a tendency to light. But then by light
(as it was produced the first day,) we must not under-
stand the darting of rays from a luminous body, such as
do now proceed from the sun, 2but those particles of
matter oidy, which we call fire, (whose properties we
know are light and heat,) which the Almighty produced,
as a proper instrument for the preparation, and digestion
of all other matter. For fire, being naturally a strong
and restless element, when once it was disentangled and
set free, would not cease to move, and agitate from top
to bottom, the whole heavy and confused mass, until the
purer and more shining parts of it being separted from
the grosser, and so uniting together, (as things of the
same species naturally do,) did constitute that light,
which, on the fourth day, was more compressed and
consolidated, and so became the body of the sun.
The author of the Book of Wisdom tells us indeed,
that 3' God ordered all things in measure, and number,
and weight;' but we cannot from hence infer, that in the
six days, he was so nice and curious, as to weigh out
to himself in gold scales (as it were) his daily work by
grains and scruples. We indeed, who are finite crea-
tures, may talk of the ' heat and burden of the day,' and,
in a weekly task, are forced to proportion the labour of
each day to the present condition of our strength ; but
this is the case of human infirmity, and j:o way compati-
ble to God. To omnipotence nothing can be laborious,
nor can there be more or less of pains, where all things
are equally easy. But, in the mean time, how does it
appear, that even, in human conception, the work of the
third day, which consisted in draining the earth, and
stocking it with plants; or even of the fourth day,
wherein the sun and moon, and other planets were made,
was more difficult, than that of the first, which is ac-
counted the simple production of light?
The compass of the chaos (as we supposed) took up
the whole solar system, or that space, which Saturn cir-
cumscribes in his circulation round the sun: and if so,
what a prodigious thing was it, to give motion to this
vast unwieldy mass, and to direct that motion in some
sort of regularity; in the general struggle and combus-
tion, to unite things that were no ways akin, and to sort
the promiscuous elements into their proper species : to
give the properties of rest and gravitation to one kind,
and of ascension and elasticity to another : to make
some parts subside and settle themselves, not in one
continued solid, but in several different centres, at pro-
per distances from each other, and so lay the foundation
for the planets; to make others aspire and mount on
high, and having obtained their liberty by hard conflict,
join together, as it were, by compact, and make up
one body, which, by the tenuity of its parts, and rapi-
dity of its motion, might produce light and heat, and so
lay the foundation for the sun; to place this luminous
body in a situation proper to influence the upper parts
of the chaos, and to be the instrument of rarefaction,
separation, and all the rest of the operations to ensue ;
to cause it, when thus placed, either to circulate round
the whole planetary system, or to make the planetary
globes to turn round it, in order to produce the vicissi-
tudes of day and night, to do all this, and more than
this, I say, as it is included in the single article of
creating light, is enough to make the first day, wherein
nature was utterly impotent, (as having motion then first
impressed upon her,) a day of more labour and curious
contrivance than any subsequent one could be, when
nature was become more awake and active, and some
assistance might possibly be expected from the instru-
mentality of second causes.
To excavate some parts of the earth, and raise others,
in order to make the waters subside into proper chan-
nels, is thought a work not so comporting with the dig-
nity and majesty of God; and therefore "some have
thought that it possibly might have I n effected l>y the
same causes that occasion earthquakes, thai is, 1>> sub-
terraneous fires and flatuses. What incredible effect!
the ascension of gunpowder lias, we ma\ see every da\ :
how it rends rocks, and blows op the mosl ponderous
and solid walls, towers, and edifices, so thai its force is
almost irresistible. And whj then might not such a
proportionable quantity of the like materials, set on lire
together, raise up the mountains, (how -Teat and weighty
soever,) and the whole superficies of the earth above the
waters, and so make receptacles for them to run into.
'Thus we have a channel for the sea. even l>> the inter-
1 Patrick's Commentary on the passage.
1 Nicholls' Conference, v. 1. 3 Wis. xi
20.
4 Pb. civ. 6, ;. B.
a This we may conceive to have been effected l>y some parti-
cles of tire still left in the bowels of the earth, wherel
ni'trosulphuxoBS vapours Were kindled, as nude an earthquake,
which both lifted up the earth, and also made receptaclei fee the
waters to nm into. Patrick's Commentary.
10
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004: OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF CM. 2.
vention of second causes : nor are we destitute of good
authority to patronize this notion; for, after that the
Psalmist had said, ' the waters stood above the moun-
tains,' immediately he subjoins, ' at thy rebuke they fled,
at the voice of thy thunder (an earthquake, we know, is
but a subterraneous thunder) ' they hasted away, and
went down to the valley beneath, even unto the place
which thou hadst appointed to them.'
However this be, it is probable, and (if our hypothesis
1 be right) it is certain, that on the fourth day, the sun,
moon, and planets, were pretty well advanced in their
formation. The luminous matter extracted from the
chaos on the first day, being a little more condensed,
and put into a proper orb, became the sun, and the
planets had all along been working oft', in the same de-
grees of progression with the earth ; so that the labour
of this day coidd not be so disproportionably great as is
imagined. It is true indeed, the Scripture tells us, that
God on this day, ' not only made the sun and the moon,
but that he made the stars also;' and, considering the
almost infinite number of these heavenly bodies, (which
we may discern with our eyes, and much more with
glasses,) we cannot but say, that a computation of this
kind would swell the work of the fourth day to a prodi-
gious disproportion: but then Ave are to observe, that
our English translation has interpolated the words, ' he
made,' which are not in the original; for the simple
version of the Hebrew is this — and 2 ' God made two
great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the
lesser light to rule the night and the stars ;' which last
words ' and the stars ' are not to be referred to the word
'made ' in the beginning of the verse, but to the word
' rule,' which immediately goes before them; and so this
sentence, ' the lesser light to rule the night, and the
stars:' will only denote the peculiar usefulness and pre-
dominancy of the moon above all other stars or planets,
in respect of this earth of ours ; in which sense it may
not improperly be styled (as a some of the most polite
authors are known to call it) the ' ruler of the night,'
and ' a queen,' or ' goddess,' as it were, among the stars.
With regard to us, therefore, who are the inhabitants of
the earth, the moon, though certainly an opaque body,
may not be improperly called ' a great light;' since, by
reason of its proximity, it communicates more light, (not
of its own indeed, but what it borrows from the sun,)
and is of more use and benefit to us than all the other
planets put together. Nor must we forget (what indeed
deserves a peculiar observation) that the moon, 3 by its
constant deviations towards the poles, a fiords a stronger
and more lasting light to the inhabitants of those forlorn
regions, whose long and tedious nights are of some
days', nay, of some months' continuance, than if its mo-
tion were truly circular, and the rays it reflects conse-
quently more oblique. A mighty comfort and refresh-
ment this to them, and a singular instance of the great
1 Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation. s Gen. i. 16.
3 Derhams Astro-theology, ch. 4.
a Gleaming glory of the Firmament. Crested queen of the
Constellations, Horace. Ornament of the Stars, Virgil. Bright
goddess of the shaded earth, Seneca. Cinthia, mistress of the
stilly hour, Statins' Thebais.
Creator's wisdom in contriving, and mercy in preserving
all his works !
St Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, makes all man-
kind (as certainly our first parent literally was) clay in
the hands of the potter, and thereupon he asks this ques-
tion ; * ' Nay but, O man, who art thou, that replies!
against God ? Shall the thing formed say to him that
formed it, why hast thou formed me thus ? Hath not the
potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make
one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour ?* It
but badly becomes us therefore to inquire into the reason
that might induce God to make the man and the woman
at different times, and of different materials; and it is
an impertinent, as well as impious banter, to pretend to
be so frugal of his pains. What if God, willing to show
a pleasing variety in his works, condescended to have
the matter, whereof the woman was formed, pass twice
through his hands, in order to b soften the temper, and
meliorate the composition? Some peculiar qualities,
remarkable in the female sex, might perhaps justify this
supposition : but the true reason, as I take it, is couched
in these words of Adam, 5 ' This is now bone of my bone,
and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called c woman, be-
cause she was taken out of man: therefore shall a man
leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife,
and they shall be one flesh.'
Since God was determined, then, to form the woman
out of some part of the man's body, and might probably
have a mystical meaning in so doing ; to have taken her
(like the poet's Minerva) out of the head, might have
entitled her to a superiority which he never intended for
her; to have made her of any inferior, or more dishon-
ourable part, would not have agreed with that equality
to which she was appointed; and therefore he took her
out of the man's side, to denote the obligations to the
strictest friendship and society : to beget the strongest
love and sympathy between him and her, as parts of the
same whole; and to recommend marriage to all man-
kind, as founded in nature, and as the re-union of man
and woman.
It is an easy matter to be sceptical ; but small reason,
I think, there is to wonder, why no mention is made in
this place of the inspiration of the woman's soul. What
Fhcebj borrowing still her brother's light,
And feigning Empress o'er the realms of nignt.
Maniliui.
4 Rom. ix. 20, 21. s Gen. ii. 23, 24.
b Milton has given us a very curious description of Eve's
qualifications, both in body and mind.
Though well I understand, in the prime end
Of nature, her th' inferior in the mind,
And inward faculties, which most excel ;
In outward also her resembling less
His image, who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion giv'n
O'er other creatures ; yet when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems,
So in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do, or say,
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.
All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded, wisdom in discourse with her
Loses discountenane'd, and like folly shows.
Authority and reason on her wait.
As one intended first, but after made
Occasionally ; and, to consummate all,
Greatness of mind, and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic plac'd.
c Jrius Montanus, renders the Hebrew word virago, in the
margin virissa, that is, she-man.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
11
A. M. I. A. C. 4004; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF C1I. >.
the historian means here, is only to represent a peculiar
circumstance in the woman's composition, viz. her
assumption from the man's side : and therefore what re-
lates to the creation of her soul must be presumed to go
before, and is indeed signified in the preface God makes
before he begins the work; 1 ' It is not good that man
should be alone, I will make him an help-meet for him,'
that is, of the same 2 essential qualities with himself. For
we cannot conceive of what great comfort this woman
would have been to Adam, had she not been endowed
with a rational part, capable of conversing with him;
had she not had, I say, the same understanding, will,
and affections, though perhaps in a lower degree, and
with some accommodation to the weakness of her sex, in
order to recommend her beauty, and to endear that soft-
ness wherein (as I hinted before) she had certainly the
pre-eminence.
Such is the history which Moses gives us of the origin
of the world, and the production of mankind: and if we
should now compare it with what we meet with in other
nations recorded of these great events, we shall soon
perceive, that it is the only rational and philosophical
account extant; which, considering the low ebb that
learning was at in the Jewish nation, is no small argu-
ment of its divine revelation. What a wretched account
was that of the Egyptians, (from whence the Epicureans
borrowed their hypothesis,) that the world was made by
chance, and mankind grew out of the earth like pum-
kins ? What strange stories does the Grecian theology
tell us of Ouranos and Ge, Jupiter and Saturn; and
what sad work do their ancient writers make, when they
come to form men and women out of projected stones ?
How unaccountably does the Phenician historian 3 make
a dark and windy air the principle of the universe; all
intelligent creatures to be formed alike in the shape of
an egg, and both male and female awakened into life by
a great thunder -clap ? The Chinese are accounted a
wise people, and yet the articles of their creed are such
as these — That one Tayn, who lived in heaven, and was
famous for his wisdom, disposed the parts of the world
into the order we find them; that he created out of no-
thing the first man Panson, and his wife Fansone ; that
this Panson, by a power from Tayn, created another
man called Tanhom, who was a great naturalist, and
thirteen men more, by whom the world was peopled, till,
after a while, the sky fell upon the earth, and destroyed
them all ; but that the wise Tayn afterwards created an-
other man, called Lotziram, who had two horns, and an
odoriferous body, and from whom proceeded several
men and women, who stocked the world with the present
inhabitants. But, of all others, the Mahometan account
is the most ridiculous; for it tells us, that the first things
which were created, were the Throne of God, "Adam,
1 Gen. ii. IS.
* So the original word means, and so the vulgar Latin has
translated it.
3 See Cumberland's Sanchoniatho.
a As to the formation of Adam's body, Mahometans tell us
many strange circumstances, viz., That after God, by long con-
tinued rains, had prepared the slime of the earth, out of which
he was to form it, he sent the angel Gabriel, and commanded
him, of seven layers of earth, to take out, of each an handful:
that upon Gabriel's coming to the Earth, he told her, that God
had determined to extraet that out of her bowels, whereof he
proved to make man, who was to be sovereign over all, and
Paradise, and a great pen, wherewith God wrote his
decrees : that this throne was carried about upon angels'
necks, whose heads were so big, that birds could not fly
in a thousand years from one ear to another ; that the
heavens were propped up by the mountain Kofi': that
the stars were firebrands, thrown against the devils
when they invaded heaven, and that the earth stands
upon the top of a great cow's horn; that this cow stands
upon a white stone, this stone upon a mountain, and this
mountain upon God knows what; with many more ab-
surdities of the like nature.
These are some accounts of the world's creation
which nations of "Teat sagacity in other respects have at
least pretended to believe. But alas ! how sordid and
trifling are they, in comparison of what we read in the
book of Genesis, where every thing is easy and natural,
comporting with God's majesty, and not repugnant to
the principles of philosophy ? Nay, where every thing
agrees with the positions of the greatest men in the
Heathen world, Hhe sentiments of their wisest philoso-
phers, and the descriptions of their most renowned poets.
So that were we to judge of Moses at the bar of reason,
merely as an historian; had we none of those superna-
tural proofs of the divinity of his writings, which set
them above the sphere of all human composition; had
his vicegerent: that, surprised at this news, the Earth desired
Gabriel to represent her fears to God, that this creature, whom
he was going to make in this manner, would one- day rebel
against him, and draw down his curse upon her: that Gabriel
returned, and made report to God of the Earth's remonstrances;
but God resolving to execute his design despatched Michael, and
afterwards Asraphel, with the same commission: that these two
angels returned in like manner to report the Earth's excuses
and absolute refusal to contribute to this work; whereupon he
deputed Azrael, who, without saying any thing to the Earth took
an handful out of each of the seven different layers or bids, ami
carried it to a place in Arabia, between Mecca anil Taief: that
after the angels had mixed and kneaded the earth whieh A/rael
brought, God, with his own hand, formed out of it an human
statue, and having left it in the same place lor some time to diy,
not long after communicating his spirit, or enlivening breath,
infused life and understanding into it, and clothing it in a won-
derful dress, suitable to its dignity, commanded the an.
fall prostrate before it, whieh Eblis (by wh they mean Luci-
fer) refusing to do/ was immediately driven out "i paradise.
N. B. The difference of tin' earth employed in the formation of
Adam, is of great service to the Mahometans in explaining the
different colours ami qualities of mankind who are derived from
it, some of whom are white, others black, others tawny, yellow,
olive-coloured, ami red: some of one humour, inclination, and
complexion, and others of a quite different. — Calme? * Dictionary
on t In1 word .Ilium.
b Tholes, whom the Greeks suppose to be the first who deeply
studied the causes of nature's work . asserts that the world IS the
work of God, and that. God of i i' things l- tin' most ancii n( since
he had m> beginning. Pyfkagurai - id. that as often as la- con-
templated the fabric ami beauty of this world, he seemed in hear
that word of God, by which it was commanded /« /«•. Vlato
thought that God did not form the world out of matter eternal
and coeval with himself, but that he made it nut of nothing, and
according to his good pleasure, be also believed, that n
not only made by God, but that he was made alter the Image H
God, ami had a spirit akin ami like to his Maker. Among the
Latin poets, / irgii speaks afti t the same mode, when he intro-
duces Silenu singing ham the tender ball ol earth grew out of
the compressed seeds or ingredients of all thii - '■ too,
when he tells .if the birth of heaven and earth, and of man Li big
formed after the Image of God; while among the Greeks, Betted,
in his Theogony, has celebrated, in most melodious lines., the
formation of all things quite according t" the dt I trine of MosoS.
— Hut tuts' Inquiries.
12
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF CH. 2.
his works none of that manifest advantage of antiquity
above all others we ever yet saw; and were Ave not
allowed to presume, that his living near the time which
he makes the era of the world's creation, gave him great
assistances in point of tradition; were we, I say, to
wave all this that might be alleged in his behalf ; yet
the very maimer of his treating the subject gives him a
preference above all others. Nor can we, without
admiration, see a person who had none of the systems
before him which we now so much value, giving us a
clearer idea of things, in the way of an easy narrative,
than any philosopher, with all his hard words and new-
invented terms, has yet been able to do ; and, in the
compass of two short chapters, comprising all that has
been advanced with reason, even from his own time to
this very day.
CHAP. IV. — The wisdom of God in the works
of the Creation.
Though the author of the Pentateuch * never once at-
tempts to prove the being of a God, as taking- it all
along for a thing undeniable ; yet it may not be impro-
per for us, in this place, to take a cursory view of the
Avorks of the creation, (as far at least as they come un-
der the Mosaic account,) in order to show the existence,
the Avisdom, the greatness, and the goodness of their
almighty Maker.
Let us then cast our eyes up to the firmament, Avhere
the rich handy -Avork of God presents itself to our sight,
and ask ourselves some such questions as these. What
power built, over our heads, this vast and magnificent
arch, and ' spread out the heavens like a curtain ? ' Who
garnished these heavens Avith such a variety of shining-
objects, a thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand
different stars, neAV suns, neAV moons, neAV Avorlds, in
comparison of Avliich this earth of ours is but a point, all
regular in their motions, and SAvimming in their liquid
ether ? Who painted the clouds Avith such a variety of
colours, and in such diversity of shades and figures, as is
not in the poAver of the finest pencil to emulate ? Who
formed the sun of such a determinate size, and placed it
at such a convenient distance, as not to annoy, but only
refresh us, and nourish the ground with its kindly Avarmth ?
If it Avere larger, it Avould set the earth on fire ; if less,
it Avould leave it frozen: if it Avere nearer us, Ave should
be scorched to death; if farther from us, Ave should not
be able to live for Avant of heat: Avho then hath made it
so commodious 2( a tabernacle (I speak wi'th the Scrip-
tures, and according to the common notion) out of Avhich
it cometh forth,' every morning, ' like a bridegroom out
of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant, to run his
course ? ' For so many ages past, it never failed rising
at its appointed time, nor once missed sending out the
dawn to proclaim its approach: but at whose voice does
it arise, and by Avhose hand is it directed in its diurnal
and annual course, to give us the blessed vicissitudes of
the day and night, and the regular succession of differ-
ent seasons ? That it should always proceed in the
same straight path, and never once be knoAvn to step
1 See Stillingfleet's Orig. Sacr., I. 3., c. 1. 2 Ps. xix. 4, 5.
aside ; that it should turn at a certain determinate point,
and not go forAvard in a space Avhere there is nothing to
obstruct it ; that it should traverse the same patli back
again in the same constant and regular pace, to bring
on the seasons by gradual advances: that the moon
should supply the office of the sun, and appear at set
times, to illuminate the air, and give a vicarious light,
Avhen its brother is gone to carry the day to the other
hemisphere ; 3 that it should procure, or at least regulate
the fluxes and refluxes of the sea, Avhereby the Avater is
kept in constant motion, and so preserved from putre-
faction, and accommodated to man's manifold conveni-
ences, besides the business of fishing, and the use of
navigation: in a Avord, that the rest of the planets, and
all the innumerable host of heavenly bodies should per-
form their courses and revolutions, Avith so much cer-
tainty and exactness, as never once to fail, but, for
almost this 6000 years r come constantly about in the same
period, to the hundredth part of a minute ; this is such a
clear and incontestable proof of a divine architect, and
of that counsel and Avisdom Avherewith he rides and
directs the universe, as made the Roman philosopher,
Avith good reason, conclude, " That4 A\hoever imagines,
that the Avonderful order, and incredible constancy of
the heavenly bodies, and their motions (Avhereupon the
preservation and Avelfare of all things do depend) is not
governed by an intelligent being, himself is destitute of
understanding. For shall Ave, when Ave see an artificial
engine, a sphere, a dial, for instance, acknoAvledge at
first sight, that it is the Avork of art and understanding ;
and yet, Avhen Ave behold the heavens, moved and
Avhirled about Avith an incredible velocity, most con-
stantly finishing- their anniversary vicissitudes, make any
doubt, that these are the performances, not only of rea-
son, but of a certain excellent and divine reason ? "
And if Tally, from the very imperfect knoAvledge of
astronomy, Avhich his time afforded, could be so confi-
dent, that the heavenly bodies AA'ere framed, and moved
by a Avise and understanding mind, as to declare, that,
in his opinion, whosoever asserted the contrary, was
himself destitute of understanding- ; 5 Avhat Avould he have
said, had he been acquainted Avith the modern discoveries
of astronomy ; the immense greatness of the Avorld, that
part of it (I mean) Avhich falls under our observation;
the exquisite regularity of the motions of all the planets,
Avithout any deviation or confusion; the inexpressible
nicety of adjustment in the primary velocity of the
earth's annual motion; the Avonderful proportion of its
diurnal motion about its oavii centre, for the distinction
of light and darkness ; the exact accommodation of the
densities of the planets to their distances from the sun :
the admirable order, number, and usefulness of the
several satellites, Avhich move about the respective
planets; the motion of the comets, Avhich are hoav found
to be as regular and periodical, as that of other plane-
tary bodies; and, lastly, the preservation of the several
systems, and of the several planets and comets in the
same system, from falling upon each other: Avhat, I say,
would Tully, that great master of reason, have thought
and said, if these, and other newly discovered instances
of the inexpressible accuracy and Avisdom of the Avorks
3 Hay's JVisdom of God in the Creation.
* Tully on the Nature of the Gods.
s Clarke's Demonstration of a God.
Sect. 1.1
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
13
A. M. 1. A C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF CII. 2.
of God, had been observed and considered in his days ?
Certainly atheism, which even then was unable to with-
stand the arguments drawn from this topic, must now,
upon the additional strength of these later observations,
be utterly ashamed to show its head, and forced to ac-
knowledge, that it was an eternal and almighty Being.
God alone, who gave these celestial bodies their proper
mensuration and temperature of heat, their dueness of
distance, and regularity of motion, or, in the phrase of
the prophet, * ' who established the world by his wisdom,
and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.'
If, from the firmament, Ave descend to the orb whereon
we live, what a glorious proof of the divine wisdom do
we meet with in this intermediate expansion of the air,
which is so wonderfully contrived, as, at one and the
same time, to support clouds for rain, and to afford
winds for health and traffic ; to be proper for the breath
of animals by its spring, for causing sounds by its mo-
tion, and for conveying light by its transparency ? But
whose power was it, that made so thin and fluid an ele-
ment, the safe repository of thunder and lightning, of
winds and tempests? By whose command, and out of
whose treasuries, are these meteors sent forth to purify
the air, which would otherwise stagnate, and consume
the vapours, which would otherwise annoy us ? And by
what skilful hand is the 2 water, which is drawn from the
sea, by a natural distillation made fresh, and bottled up,
as it were, in the clouds, to be sent upon the ' wings of
the wind' into different countries, and, in a manner,
equally dispersed, and distributed, over the face of the
earth, in gentle showers ?
Whose power and wisdom was it, that ' hanged the
earth upon nothing,' and gave it a spherical figure, the
most commodious that could be devised, both for the
consistency of its parts, and the velocity of its motion ?
That ' weighed the mountains in scales,' and ' the hills in
a balance,' and disposed of them in their most proper
places for fruitfulness and health ? That diversified the
climates of the earth into such an agreeable variety,
that, at the farthest distance, each one has its proper
seasons, day and night, winter and summer ? That clothed
the face of it with plants and flowers, so exquisitely
adorned with various and inimitable beauties, that even
' Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of
them ?' That placed the plant in the seed (as the young
is in the womb of animals) in such elegant complica-
tions, as afford at once both a pleasing and astonishing
spectacle ? That painted and perfumed the flowers, gave
them the sweet odours which they diffuse in the air for
our delight, and, with one and the same water, dyed
them into different colours, the scarlet, the purple, the
carnation, surpassing the imitation, as well as compre-
hension of mankind ? That has replenished it with such
an infinite variety of living creatures, 3so like, and at
the same time so unlike to each other, that of the in-
numerable particulars wherein each creature differs from
•ill others, every one is known to have its peculiar
beauty, and singular use ? Some walk, some creep,
some fly, some swim; but every one has members and
organs4 fitted to its peculiar motions. In a word, the
pride of the horse, and the feathers of the peacock, the
1 Jer. li. 15. * Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation.
* Dr Sam. Clarke's Sermons, vol. ii.
* Roy's Wisdom of God in the Creation.
largeness of the camel, and the smallness of the insect,
are equal demonstrations of an infinite wisdom and
power. Nay, a the smaller the creature is, the more
amazing is the workmanship ; and when in a little mite,
we do (by the help of glasses) see limbs perfectly well
organized, a head, a body, legs, and feet, all distinct,
and as well proportioned for their size, as those of the
vastest elephants; and consider withal, that, in every
part of this living atom, there are muscles, nerves,
veins, arteries, and blood; and in that blood ramous
particles and humours; and in those humours, some
drops that are composed of other minute particles:
when we consider all this, -I say, can we help being lost
in wonder and astonishment, or refrain crying out, with
the blessed apostle, bi O the depth of the riches both of
the wisdom, and knowledge of God! how unsearchable
are his works, and his ways of' creation and providence
' past finding out !'
But there is another tiling in animals, both terrestrial
and aqueous, no less wonderful than their frame; and
that is their natural instinct. In compliance with the
common forms of speech I call it so; but in reality, it
is the providential direction of them, by an all wise, and
all-powerful mind. For what else has infused into birds
the art of building their nests, either hard or soft, ac-
cording to the constitution of their young ? What else
makes them keep so constantly in their nests, while they
are hatching their young, as if they knew the philosophy
of their own warmth, and its aptness for animation?
What else moves the swallow, upon the approach of
winter, to fly to a more temperate climate, as it it un-
derstood the celestial signs, the influence of the stars,
and the change of seasons? What CISC'1 causes the
salmon, every year, to ascend from the sea up a river,
some four or five hundred miles perhaps, only to cast its
spawn, and secure it in banks of sand, until the young
be hatched, or excluded, and then return to the sea
again? How these creatures, when they have been
wandering, a long time, in the wide ocean, should again
find out, and repair to the mouth of the same rivers,
seems to me very strange, and hardly accountable,
without having recourse either to some impression given
s Rom. xi. 33. 6 Rap's Wisdom of God.
a " Where has nature disposed so many senses, as in B .
(says Pliny En his Natural History, when considering the body
of that insert,) " Where hath nature planted its organs oi sight,
and taste, and smell? where hath >he generated that angry and
shrill voice? and with "hat cunning adjointed Its wings,
lengthened its legs in front, and arranged thai hungry cavity
like a belly so greedy of Meed, especially human? with what
skill hath she pointed its sting for pricking the skin? and,
although its slenderness be so great as to render it bn isib
hath she made it so as to serve a doul.le purpose, being sharp-
ened in point for penetrating the skin, and at the same time
hollowed out for sucking up the Mood?" And it Pliny made
s,, many queries concerning the body ot a gnat, (which, by Ms
own confession, is none of the least of insed uldne,
in all likelihood, have done, had he Been the bodies oi these anl-
malculS3, which are discernible by glasses, to the numb r ol ten,
twenty, or thirty thousand in a drop of pepper-wat< r, not burger
than a grain of millet ? And if these creatun
small what must we think of their muscles, and other parts?
Certain it is, that the mechanism, by which nature performs the
muscular motion, is exceedingly minute and curious, and to the
performance of every muscular motion, in greater animals at
least, there are not fewer distinct parts concerned, than many
millions of millions, and these visible through a mieroscope*-
Ray's Wisdom of <>'od in the Creation.
u
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 1. AND PART OF CH. 2.
at their first creation, or the immediate and continual
direction, of a superior cause. In a word, l can we be-
hold the spider's net, the silk worms1 webs, the bees'
cells, or the ants' granaries, without being lost in the
contemplation, and forced to acknowledge that infinite
wisdom of their Creator, who either directs their unerring
steps himself, or has given them a genius (if I may so
call it) fit to be an emblem, and to show mankind the
pattern of art, industry, and frugality ?
If from the earth, and the creatures which live upon
it, we cast our eye upon the water, we soon perceive,
that it is a liquid and transparent body, and that, had it
been more or less rarefied, it had not been so proper for
the use of man: but who gave it that just configuration
of parts, and exact degree of motion, as to make it both
so fluent, and at the same time so strong, as to carry
and waft away the most unwieldy burdens ? Who hath
taught the rivers to run, in winding streams, through
vast tracts of land, in order to water them more plenti-
fully ; then throw themselves into the ocean, to make it
the common centre of commerce ; and so, by secret and
imperceptible channels, return to their fountain-head, in
one perpetual circulation ? Who stored and replenished
these rivers with fish of all kinds, which glide, and sport
themselves in the limpid streams, and run heedlessly
into the fisher's net, or come greedily to the angler's
hook, in order to be caught (as it were) for the use and
entertainment of man ? The great and wide sea is a
very awful and stupendous work of God, and the flux
and reflux of its waters are not the easiest phenomena
in nature. 2 All that we know of certainty is this, that
the tide carries and brings us back to certain places, at
precise hours : but whose hand is it that makes it stop,
and then return with such regularity ? A little more or
less motion in this fluid mass would disorder all nature,
and a small incitement upon a tide ruin whole kingdoms :
who then was so wise, as to take such exact measures in
immense bodies, and who so strong, as to rule the rage
of that proud element at discretion ? Even he, 3 ' who
hath placed the sand for the bound thereof, by a per-
petual decree, that it cannot pass;' and placed the
Leviathan (among other animals of all kinds) ' therein
to take his pastime, out of whose nostrils goeth a smoke,
and whose breath kindleth coals ; ' so that ' he maketh
the deep to boil like a pot, and maketh the sea like a
pot of ointment,' as the author of the book of 4 Job ele-
gantly describes that most important creature.
If now, from the world itself, we turn our eyes more
particularly upon man, the principal inhabitant that God
has placed therein, no understanding certainly can be so
low and mean, no heart so stupid and insensible, as not
plainly to see, that nothing but infinite wisdom could, in
so wonderful a manner, have fashioned his body, and
inspired into it a being of superior faculties, whereby
he * ' teacheth us more than the beasts of the field, and
maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven.'
Should any of us see a lump of clay rise immediately
from the ground into the complete figure of a man, full
of beauty and symmetry, and endowed with all the parts
and faculties we perceive in ourselves, and possibly far
more exquisite and beautiful ; should we presently, after
1 CharnoeFs Existence of a God.
Fcnclon's Demonstration of a God.
3Jer. v. 22. 4Jobxli. 31. 5 Job xxxv. 11.
his formation, observe him perforin all the operations of
life, sense, and reason ; move as gracefully, talk as
eloquently, reason as justly, and do every thing as
dexterously, as the most accomplished man breathing:
the same was the case, and the same the moment of time,
in God's formation of our first parent. But (to give the
thing a stronger impression upon the mind) Ave will sup-
pose, ti that this figure rises by degrees, and is finished
part by part, in some succession of time ; and that, when
the whole is completed, the veins and arteries bored,
the sinews and tendons laid, the joints fitted, and the
liquor (transmutable into blood and juices) lodged in
the ventricles of the heart, God infuses into it a vital
principle ; whereupon the liquor in the heart begins to
descend, and thrill along the veins, and an heavenly
blush arises in the countenance, such as scorns the help
of art, and is above the power of imitation. The image
moves, it walks, it speaks : it moves with such a majesty,
as proclaims it the lord of the creation, and talks with
such an accent, and sublimity of sentiment, as makes
every ear attentive, and even its great Creator enter into
converse with it : were we to see all this transacted be-
fore our eyes, I say, Ave could not but stand astonished
at the thing ; and yet this is an exact emblem of every
man's formation, and a contemplation it is, that made
holy David break out into this rapturous acknowledg-
ment 7 ' Lord ! I Avill give thee thanks, for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made ; marvellous are thy works, and
that my soul knoweth right Avell : thine eyes did see my
substance, yet being imperfect, and in thy book Avere all
my members Avritten.'
Nay, so curious is the texture of the human body, and
in every part so full of wonder, that even Galen himself,
(who Avas otherwise backward enough to believe a God,)
after he had carefully surveyed the frame of it, and
viewed the fitness and usefulness of every part, the
many "several intentions of every little vein, bone,
and muscle, and the beautiful composition of the whole,
fell into a pang of devotion, and Avrote an hymn to his
Creator's praise. 8And, if in the make of the body, Iioav
much more does the divine Avisdom appear in the crea-
tion of the soul of man, a substance immaterial, but
united to the body by a copula imperceptible, and yet
so strong, as to make them mutually operate, and sym-
pathize with each other, in all their pleasures and their
pains ; a substance endued with those wonderful facul-
ties of thinking, understanding-, judging, reasoning,
choosing, acting, and (Avhich is the end and excellency
of all) the poAver of knowing, obeying, imitating, and
praising its Creator ; though certainly neither it, nor
any superior rank of beings, angels, and archangels, or
6 Hale's Origination of Mankind.
7 Ps. exxxix. 14, 16. 8 Clarke's Sermons, v. 1.
a Galen, in his book, On the Formation of the Embryo, takes
notice, that there are, in a human body, above COO muscles, in
each of which there are, at least, ten several intentions, or due
qualifications, to be observed ; so that, about the muscles alone,
no less than COOO several ends and aims are to be attended to.
The bones are reckoned to be 284, and the distinct scopes, or
intentions of each of these, are above 40; in all, about 12,000;
and thus it is in some proportion with all the other parts, the
skin, ligaments, vessels, and humours; but more especially with
the several vessels of the body, which do, in regard of the great
variety and multitude of those several intentions required to
them, very much exceed the homogeneous parts.- — fJ'iUin's
Natural Religion.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
15
A. M. 1. A.C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, Mil. GEN. CH. 2. FROM VER. 8.
the ' whole host of heaven ' can worthily and sufficiently
do it; * ' for who can express the mighty acts of the
Lord, or show forth all his praise ?'
Thus, which way soever we turn our eyes, whether we
look upwards or downwards, without us, or within us,
upon the animate or inanimate parts of the creation ; we
shall find abundant reason to take up the words of the
Psalmist, and say, 2 ' O Lord, how wonderful are thy
works ! in wisdom hast thou made them all ; the earth is
full of thy riches.' 3 ' O, that men would therefore praise
the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that
he doeth for the children of men! that hey would offer
him the sacrifice of thanksgiving-, and tell out all his
works with gladness ! '
SECT. II.
CHAP. I. — Of the state of maris innocence.
THE HISTORY.
As soon as the seventh day from the creation (the first
day, as we said of Adam's life, and consequently the
first day of the week) was begun, Adam, awaking out
of his sleep, musing, very probably, on his vision the
preceding night, beheld the fair figure of a woman ap-
proaching him, a conducted by the hand of her almighty
Maker; and, as she advanced, the several innocent
beauties that adorned her person, the comeliness of her
shape, and gracefubiess of her gesture, the lustre of her
eye, and sweetness of her looks, discovered themselves
in every step more and more.
It is not to be expressed, nor now conceived, * what
a fidl tide of joy entered in at the soul of our first parent,
when he surveyed this lovely creature, who was destined
to be the partner and companion of his life ; when, by a
secret sympathy, he felt that she was of his own likeness,
and complexion, ' bone of his bone, and flesh of his
1 Ps. cvi. 2. 2 Ps. civ. 24. 3 Ps. cvii. 21, 22.
a It is the general opinion of interpreters, both Jewish and
Christian, that God himself, or, more particularly, the second
person in the ever-blessed Trinity, God the Son (who is there-
fore styled in Scripture, Isa. lxiii. 9. 'the angel of God's pre-
sence') appeared to Adam, on this and sundry other occasions, in
a visible glorious majesty, such as the Jews call the SckecAinah,
which seems to have been a very shining flame, or amazing
splendour of light, breaking out of a thick cloud, of which we
afterward read very frequently, under the name of the glory of
the Lord, and to which we cannot suppose our first parents to
have been strangers. We therefore look upon it as highly pro-
bable, that this divine Majesty first conducted Eve to the place
where Adam was, and not long after their marriage, conveyed
them both, from the place where they were formed, into the
garden of Eden. — Patrick's Commentary.
b Milton has expressed the joy and transport of Adam, upon
his first sight of Eve, in the following manner:
When out of hope, behold her ! not far off ;
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd
With what all earth, or heaven could bestow,
To make her amiable. On she came,
Led by her heavenly Maker (though unseen)
And guided by his voice ; not uninfonn'd
Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites.
Grace was in all her steps, heav'u in her eye,
In ev'ry gesture dignity and love.
I overjoy'd, could not forbear aloud.
" This turn hath made amends, thou hast fulfill'
Thy words, Creator bounteous, and benign !
Giver of all things fair ! but fairest this
Of all thy (rifts."
flesh,' his very self, diversified only info another sex ;
and could easily foresee, that the love and union which
was now to commence between them was to be perpetual,
and for ever inseparable. 4 For the same divine hand
which conducted the woman to the place where Adam
was, presented her to him in the capacity of a matri-
monial father; and, c having joined them together in the
nuptial state, pronounced his benediction over them, to
the intent that 5they might enjoy unmolested the do-
minion he had given them over the other parts of the
creation, and, being themselves d fruitful in the procrea-
tion of children, might live to see the earth replenished
with a numerous progeny, descended from their loins.
In the mean time God had taken care to provide our
first parents ewith a pleasant and delightful habitation
4 See Patrick's Commentary. 5 See Gen. i. 28, 29, 3D.
C The words of Milton upon this occasion are extremely line.
all heav'n,
And happy constellations, on that hour
Shed their selectest influence ; the earth
Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill :
Joyous the birds ; fresh gales, and gentle airs
Whisper'd it to the woods, and from their wings
Flung rose, flung odours, from the spicy shrub.
Disporting.
Nor can we pass by his episode upon marriage, which, for its
grave and majestic beauty, is inimitable.
Hail wedded love ! mysterious law ! true source
Of human offspring ! sole propriety
In paradise, of all things common else !
By thee adult'rous lust was clriv n from men,
Among the bestial herds to range ; by thee
(Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure)
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother, first were known.
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets
Whose bed is uudefil'd, and chaste prononne'd
Here love his golden shafts employs ; here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple n
Reigns here and revels
d The words of the text are, ' Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth:' whereupon some have made it a question,
whether this is not a command, obliging all men to marriage;
and procreation, as most of the Jewish doctors are of opinion?
But to this it may be replied. 1. That it is indeed a command
obliging all men so far, as not to sutler the extinction of man-
kind, in which sense it did absolutely bind Adam and Eve, as
also Noah, and his sons, and their wives, after the flood: but,
2. that it does not oblige every particular man to many, appears
from the example of our Lord Jesus, who lived and died in an
unmarried state; from his commendation of those who made
themselves ' eunuchs for the kingdom of God,' Mat. xix. IV.:
and from St Paul's frequent approbation of virginity, 1 Cor. \ii.
1, &c. And therefore, 3. it is here rather a permission than a
command, though it be expressed in the form of a command, as
other permissions frequently are. See Gen. ii. Hi. Detlt. xiv. 4.
— Poole's Annotations.
c The description which Milton gives us of the garden of
paradise, is very agreeable in several places, but in one mora
especially, where he represent- the pleasing rarietj of it.
Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view.
(.rove-, whose rich trees wept od'rous gams anil balm ;
Others, whose fruit biirnish'd with golden rind,
Hung amiable ; (Hesperian tables true.
If true, here only) and of delicious taste.
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and Bocks,
Gracing the tender herb, were interpos'd ;
Or palmy hillock, or the tlow'ry lap
Of some irrigUOUJ \ alley Spread her store.
Flowers of all hue. and without thorn the rose.
Another side umbrageous grots, and eaves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant. Meanwhile miirm'riog waters fall
Down the slope hills, ilispersd, or in a bike
(That to the fringed bank, with myrtle crown1.!.
Her crystal mirror holds) unite their streams.
I he bird ■ their choir apply. Airs, vernul airs,
16
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 2. FROM VER. 8.
[Book I.
in the country of Eden, l which was Avatered by four
rivers; by the Tigris, in Scripture called Hiddekel, on
one side, and by Euphrates on the other, which, joining
their streams together in a place where (not long- after
the Hood) the famous city of Babylon was situate, pass
through a large country, and then dividing again, form
the two rivers, which the sacred historian calls Pison,
and Gihon, and so water part of the garden of paradise,
wherein were all kinds of trees, herbs, and ilowers,
which could any way delight the sight, the taste, or the
smell.
Among other trees, however, there were two of very
remarkable names and properties planted ' in the midst,'
or most eminent part of the garden, to be always within
the view and observation of our first parents, ' the tree
of life,' so called, 2 because it had a virtue in it, not
only to repair the animal spirits, as other nourishment
does, but likewise to preserve and ° maintain them in the
same equal temper and state wherein they were created,
without pain, diseases, or decay ; and ' the tree of know-
ledge of good and evil,' so called, 3 not because it had
a virtue to confer any such knowledge, but * because
the devil, in his temptation of the woman, pretended
that it had ; pretended, that 4 as God knew all things,
and was himself subject to no one's control, so the
eating of this tree would confer on them the same degree
of knowledge, and put them in the same state of inde-
pendency : and from this unfortunate deception (whereof
God might speak-by way of anticipation) it did not im-
properly derive its name.
Into this c paradise of much pleasure, but some dan-
Biole History, by M. Martin.
2 Patrick's Commentary; and see c. iii. ver. 20.
Nicholh' Conference, vol. I.
4 Estius on the more difficult passages.
Breathing- the smell of fields, and groves, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan
Knit with the Graces, and the Hours, iu dance
Lead on the eternal Spring.
a Others think, that the 'tree of life' was so called, in a sym-
bolical sense, as it was a sign and token of that life which man
had received from God, and of his continual enjoyment of it,
without diminution, had he persisted in his obedience, and as
this garden, say they, was confessedly a type of heaven, so God
might intend by this tree to represent that immortal life which
he meant to bestow upon mankind himself, Rev. xxii. 2. accord-
ing to which is that famous saying of St. Austin, ' In the other
trees he had nourishment, in these an oath.' — Patrick's Comment-
ary.
b Others think the 'tree of knowledge' was so called, either
in respect to God, who was minded by this tree to prove our
first parents, whether they would be good or bad, which was to
be known by their abstaining from the fruit, or eating it; or in
respect to them, who, in the event, found by sad experience, the
difference between good and evil, which they knew not before ;
but they found the difference to be this, that good is that which
gives the mind pleasure and assurance ; but evil that which is
always attended with sorrow and regret. — Poole's Annotations,
and Young's Sermons, vol. 1.
c The word ' paradise,' which the Septuagint make use of
(whether it be of Hebrew, Chaldee, or Persian original) signifies
'a place enclosed for pleasure and delight :' either a park where
beasts do range, or a spot of ground stocked with choice plants,
which is properly a garden ; or curiously set with trees, yielding
all manner of fruit, which is an orchard. There are three places
in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, wherein this word is
found. 1. Nehemiah ii. 8. where that prophet requests of Ar-
taxerxes' letters to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, or
paradise; 2. in the Song of Solomon, iv. 18. where he says, that
the plants of the spouse 'are an orchard of pomegranates ;' and
ger, wherein was one tree of a pernicious quality, though
all the rest were good in their kind, and extremely salu-
tary, the Lord God conducted our first parents, who,
at this time, were naked, and yet not ashamed, because
their innocence was their protection. They had no
sinful inclinations in their bodies, no evil concupiscence
in their minds, to make them blush ; and withal, the
temperature of the climate was such, as needed no cloth-
ing to defend them from the weather, God having given
them (as we may imagine) a-survey of their new habita-
tion, shown them the various beauties of the place, the
work wherein they Avere to employ themselves by day,
and <*the bower wherein they were to repose themselves
by night, granted them to eat of the fruit of every tree
in the garden, except that one, ' the tree of knowledge
of good and evil,' which (how lovely soever it might
appear to the eye) he strictly charged them not so
much as to touch, upon the penalty of incurring his dis-
pleasure, forfeiting their right and title to eternal life,
and entailing upon themselves, and their posterity, e
mortality, diseases, and death.
With this small restraint which the divine wisdom
thought proper to lay upon Adam, as a token of his
subjection, and a test of his obedience, God left him to
the enjoyment of this paradise, where every thing was
3. in Ecclesiastes ii. 5. where he says, 'he made himself gar-
dens,' or paradises. In all which senses the word may very
fitly be applied to the place where our first parents were to live ;
since it was not only a pleasant garden and fruitful orchard, but
a spacious park and forest likewise, whereinto the several beasts
of the field were permitted to come. — Edwards' Survey of Reli-
gion, vol. 1. and Calmet's Dictionary on the ivord 'Paradise.'
d The description which Milton gives us of this blissful bower,
is extremely fine.
It was a place,
Chosen by the sov'reign Planter, when he frani'd
All thing's to man's delightful use : the roof
Of thickest covert, was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf. On either side
Acanthus and each od'rous bushy shrub,
Fenc'd up the verdant wall. Each beauteous flower,
Iris, all hues, roses, aud .jessamin,
Rear'd high their flourished heAds between, and wrought
Mosaic. : under foot the violet,
Crocus, aud hyacinth, with rich inlayt
Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone
Of costliest emblem. Other creatures here,
Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none;
Such was their awe of man !
e The words in our version are, ' In the day thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die ;' which seem to imply, that on the
day that Adam should eat of the tree of knowledge, he should
die ; which eventually proved not so, because he lived many
years after ; and therefore (as some observe very well) it should
be rendered, 'Thou shalt deserve to die without remission;' for
the Scripture frequently expresses by the future not only what
will come to pass, but also what ought to come to pass ; to which
purpose there is a very apposite text in 1 Kings ii. 37. where
Solomon says to Shimei, 'Go not forth hence (namely, from
Jerusalem) any whither; for in the day thou goest out, and pas-
sest over the brook Kidron, thou shalt surely die,' that is, 'thou
shalt deserve death without remission.' For Solomon reserved
to himself the power of punishing him when he should think fit;
and, in effect, he did not put him to death the same day that he
disobeyed, any more than God did put Adam to death the same
day that he transgressed in eating the forbidden fruit. This
seems to be a good solution ; though some interpreters understand
the prohibition, as if God intended thereby to intimate to Adam
the deadly quality of the forbidden fruit, whose poison was so
very exquisite, that, on the very day he eat thereof, it would
certainly have destroyed him, had not God's goodness interposed,
and restrained its violence.' — See Essay for a New Translation ;
and Le Clerc's Commentary,
Sect. II.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
17
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. •->. FROM VER. R
pleasant to the sight, and accommodated to his liking.
Not thinking it convenient however for him, even in his
state of innocence, to be idle or unemployed, here he
appointed him to dress and keep the new plantation,
which, by reason of its luxuriancy, would in time, he
knew, require his care. Here he was to employ his
mind, as well as exercise his body ; to contemplate and
study the works of God ; to submit himself wholly to the
divine conduct ; to conform all his actions to the divine
will ; and to live in a constant dependence upon the
divine goodness. Here he was to spend his days in the
continual exercises of prayer and thanksgiving ; and, it
may be, the natural dictates of gratitude would prompt
him to offer some of the fruits of the ground, and some
living creatures, by way of sacrifice to God. Here
were thousands of objects to exercise his intellective
faculties, to call forth his reason, and employ it; but
that wherein the ultimate perfection of his life was
doubtless to consist, was the union of his soul with the
supreme good, that infinite and eternal Being, which
alone can constitute the happiness of man.
1 O ! Adam, beyond all imagination happy : with un-
interrupted health, and untainted innocence, to delight
thee ; no perverseness of will, or perturbation of appe-
tite, to discompose thee ; a heart upright, a conscience
clear, and an head unclouded, to entertain thee ; a de-
lightful earth for thee to enjoy ; a glorious universe for
thee to contemplate ; an everlasting heaven, a crown of
never-fading glory for thee to look for and expect ; and,
in the mean time, the author of that universe, the King
of that heaven, and giver of that glory, thy God, thy
Creator, thy benefactor, to see, to converse with, to
bless, to glorify, to adore, to obey !
This was the designed felicity of our first parents.
Neither they nor their posterity were to be liable to
sorrow or misery of any kind, but to be possessed of a
constant and never-failing happiness ; and, after innum-
erable ages and successions, were, in their courses, to
be taken up into an heavenly paradise. For 2that the
terrestrial paradise was to Adam a type of heaven, and
that the never-ending life of happiness promised to our
first parents (if they had continued obedient, and grown
up to perfection under that economy wherein they were
placed) should not have been continued in this earthly,
but only have commenced here, and been perpetuated
in an higher state, that is, after such a trial of their obed-
ience as the divine wisdom should think convenient,
they should have been translated from earth to heaven,
is the joint opinion aof the best ancient, both Jewish
and Christian writers.
1 Revelation Examined) part 1
* Bull's State of Man before the Fall.
a This same learned writer, (namely, Bishop Bull) has com-
piled a great many authorities from the fathers of the first cen-
turies, all full and significant to the purpose, and to which I
refer the reader, only mentioning one or two of more remarkable
force and antiquity, for his present satisfaction. Justin Martyr,
speaking of the creation of the world, delivers not his own pri-
vate opinion only, but the common sense of Christians in his
days; "We have been taught," says ho, "that God, being good,
did, iii the beginning, make all things out of an unit
matter for the sake of men, who, if by thi Lr works they had ren-
dered themselves worthy of his acceptance, we presume, should
have been favoured with his friendship, and reigned together
with him, being made incorruptible, and impassaMe ;'' Apol. 2.
Athanasius, among other things worthy our observation, con-
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated, and Objection*
explained.
That learned men should differ in their opinion about
a question, which, it must be confessed, has its difficul-
ties attending it, is no wonderful thing at all ; but that
Moses, who wrote about 850 years after the flood, should
give us so particular a description of this garden, and
that other sacred writers, long after him, should make
such frequent mention of it, if there was never any such
place, nay, if there were not then remaining some marks
and characters of its situation, is pretty strange and
unaccountable. The very nature of his description
shows, that Moses had no imaginary paradise in his
view, but a portion of this habitable earth, bounded with
such countries and rivers as were very well known by
the names he gave them in his time, and (as it appears
from other passages in Scripture) for many ages after.
3 Eden is as evidently a real country, as Ararat, where
the ark rested, or Shinar, where the sons of Noah re-
moved after the flood. We find it mentioned as such in
Scripture, as often as the other two ; and there is the
more reason to believe it, because, in the Mosaic
account, the scene of these three memorable events is
all laid in the neighbourhood of one another.
Moses, we must allow, is far from being pompous or
romantic in his manner of writing ; and yet it cannot he
denied, but that he gives a manifest preference to this
spot of ground ahove all others ; which why he should
do, we cannot imagine, unless there was really such a
place as he describes : nor can we conceive, 4 what other
foundation, both the ancient poets and philosophers
could have had, for their fortunate islands, their elysian
fields, their garden of Adonis, their garden of the Hes-
perides, their Ortygia and Toprobane, (as described by
Diodorus Siculus,) which are but borrowed sketches
from what our inspired penman tells us of the first ter-
restrial paradise.
It is not to be questioned then, but that, in the antedilu-
vian world, there really was such a place as this garden
of Eden, a place of distinguished beauty, and more
remarkably pleasant in its situation ; otherwise we can-
not perceive, h why the expulsion of our first parents
3 Universal History, b. 1. c. 1. ( Ihutius' Inquiries.
cerning the primordial state of our first parents, has these re-
markable words: "He brought them therefore into paradise, and
gave them a law, that if they should preserve the grace then
given, and continue obedient, they might enjoy in paradise a
fife without grief, sorrow, or care; besides that tiny had a pro-
mi.' also of an immortality in the heavens;" Ox the fncama
Hon of the JFord. And therefore we need less wonder, thai we
lind it an article inserted in the common offices of the primitive
Church; and that in the mOSl ancient liturgy now extant, that of
Clemens, we read these words concerning Adam: "When thou
broughtest. him into the paradise of pleasure, thou gavesl him
free leave to eat of all other tree-, and forbadeSt him to ta-te ot
one only, lor the hope of better thin^ . that if he kepi the com-
mandment, he might receive immortality as the reward oi his
obedience." — 4post. Const, b. 8. c 12.
t> Eve's lamentation upon the order which .Michael brought
;',„• their departure oul of paradise, is \ ery '» autifnl, and affi
in Mil/on.
'O unexpected shook, worse fir than death '
Kail 1 Hois leave ll , Paradise, thus leave
Thee, native soil? Those happj walks i
Kit haunt Of gods I where I had hO| t to spend
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
18
THE HISTORY OP THE BIBLE,
A. M. I. A C. 4004 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 2. FROM VER. 8.
[Book I.
from that abode should be thought any part of their pun-
ishment ; nor can we see, what occasion there was for
placing- a 'flaming- sword' about the 'tree of life;' or
for appointing- an host of the cherubims to guard the
entrance against their return. The face of nature, and
the course of rivers, might possibly be altered by the
violence of the flood ; but this is no valid exception to
the case in hand : * because Moses does not describe the
situation of paradise in antediluvian names. The names
of the rivers, and the countries adjacent, Cush, Havilah,
&c, are names of later date than the flood ; nor can we
suppose, but that Moses (according to the known geo-
graphy of the world, when he wrote) intended to give
us some hints of the place, near which Eden, in the
former world, and the garden of paradise, were seated.
Now the description which Moses gives us of it, is
delivered in these words. — ~ ' And the Lord God plant-
ed a garden eastward in Eden ; and a river Avent out of
Eden to water the garden ; and from thence it was parted,
and became into four heads. The name of the lirst is
Pison ; that is it which compasseth the whole land of
Havilah, where there is gold : and the gold of that land
is good : there is bdellium, and the onyx-stone. And
the name of the second river is Gihon : the same is
it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. And the
name of the third river is Hiddekel ; that is it which goes
before Assyria: and the fourth is Euphrates.' So that
to discover the place of paradise, we must find out the
true situation of the land of Eden, whereof it was pro-
bably a part, and then trace the courses of the rivers,
and inquire into the nature of the countries which Moses
here specified.
The word Eden1, which in the Hebrew tongue (accord-
ing to its primary acceptation) signifies, ' pleasure' and
' delight ;' in a secondary sense, is frequently made the
proper name of several places, Avhich are either more
remarkably fruitful in their soil, or pleasant in their sit-
uation. Now, of all the places which go under this
denomination, the learned have generally looked upon
these three, as the properest countries wherein to in-
quire for the terrestrial paradise.
1. The first is that province which the prophet 3 Amos
seems to take notice of, when he divides Syria into three
parts, viz. Damascus, the plain of Aven, and the house
of Eden, called Ccelo-Syria, or the hollow Syria, be-
cause the mountains of Libanus and Antilibanus enclose
it on both sides, and make it look like a valley. But 4
(how great soever the names be that seem to patronise
it) this, by no means, can be the Eden which Moses
means ; not only because it lies not to the east, but to
the north of the place where he is supposed to have
Which must be mortal to us both '. O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
At even, which I had bred with tender hand
From the first, op'ning hud, and gave ye nam"- '
Who now will rear you to the sun, and rank
Your tribes, or water from the ambrosial fount '
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower, by me adorn'd,
With what to sight, or smell, was sweet ! from thee
How shall I part, and whether wander dmvu
Into a lower world .J
1 Shuckford's Connection, 1. 1. 2 Gen. ii. S, &c.
3 Amos i. 5. * Its chief abettors are Heidegger in his
History of the Patriarch; Le Ckrc in Gen. ii. S. ; P. Abram
in his Pharas Old Testament; and P. Hardouin in his edition
of Pliny.
wrote his book, but more especially, because it is desti-
tute of all the marks in the Mosaical description, which
ought always to be the principal test in this inquiry.
2. The second place, wherein * several learned men
have sought for the country of Eden, in Armenia, be-
tween the sources of the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Ara-
xis, and the Phasis, which they suppose to be the four
rivers specified by Moses. But this supposition is far
from being well founded, because, according to modern
discoveries; the Phasis does not rise in the mountains
of Armenia (as the ancient geographers have misin-
formed us,) but at a great distance from them, in mount
Caucasus : nor does it run from south to north, but di-
rectly contrary, from north to south, as some' 6 late tra-
vellers have discovered. So that, according to this
scheme, we want a whole river, and can no ways account
for that which (according to Moses's description of it)
' went out of the country of Eden, to water the garden
of paradise.'
3. The third place, and that wherein the country of
Eden, as mentioned by Moses, seems most likely to be
seated, is Chaldea, not far from the banks of the river
Euphrates. To this purpose, when we find Rabshakeh
vaunting out his master's actions, ' ' Have the gods of
the nations delivered them which my fathers have de-
stroyed, as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezepb, and the
children of Eden, which Avere in Telassar ?' As Telas-
sar, in general, signifies any garrison or fortification ;
so here, more particularly it denotes sthat strong fort
Avhich the children of Eden held in an island of the
Euphrates, toAvards the west of Babylon, as a barrier
against the incursions of the Assyrians on that side.
And therefore, in all probability, 9the country of Eden
lay on the Avest side, or rather on both sides of the
river Euphrates, after its conjunction Avith the Tigris, a
little beloAV the place Avhere, in process of time, the
famous city of Babylon came to be built.
Thus Ave have found out a country called Eden, which,
for its pleasure and fruitfulness, a (as all authors agree,)
answers the character which Moses gives of it ; and are
now to consider the description of the four rivers, in
order to ascertain the place Avhere the garden we are
in quest of was very probably situate.
' The first river is Pison, or Phison,' (as the son of
Sirach calls it,) that Avhich compasseth the land of Ha-
vilah. Noav, for the better understanding of this, Ave
must observe, that 1U when Moses Avrote his history, he
Avas, in all probability, in Arabia Petraea, on the east
5 The chief patrons of this scheme are Santon in his Atlas}
Reland in his Treatise on the Site of Paradise; and Calmet, both
in his Dictionary and Commentary on Gen. ii. 8.
G See Thavenot, and Sir John Char din's Travels.
1 2 Kings xix. 12. and Isa. xxxvii. 12.
See Bedford's Scripture Chronology.
Calvin on Gen. ii. 8. Avas the first starter of this opinion, and
is, with some little variation, followed by Marinus, Bochart,
Hvctius, Bishop of Auranches, and divers others.
lu See Wells's Geography; and Patrick's Commentary.
a Herodotus, Avho was an eye-witness of it, tells us, that
Avhere Euphrates runs out into Tigris, not far from the place
where Ninus is seated, that region is, of all that he ever saw,
the most excellent; so fruitful in bringing forth corn, that it
yieldeth two hundred fold ; and so plenteous in grass, that the
people are forced to drive their cattle from pasture, lest they
should surfeit themselves by too much plenty. — See Herodotus,
Clio; and Quintus Curtius, 1. 5.
San. II.]
FftOM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
19
A. M. 1. A. C. 1004; OR, ACCORDING TO
di which lies Arabia Deserta ; but the sterility of the
country will not admit of the situation of the garden of
Eden in that place ; and therefore we must go on east-
ward (as our author directs us) until we come to some
place, through which Euphrates and Tigris are known
to shape their course. Now Euphrates and Tigris,
though they both rise out of the mountains of Armenia,
take almost quite contrary courses. Euphrates runs to
the west, and passing through Mesopotamia, waters the
country where Babylon once stood ; whereas Tigris
takes towards the east, and passing along Assyria, wa-
ters the country where the once famed city of Nineveh
stood. After a long progress, they meet a little below
Babylon, and running a considerable way together in
one large stream, with Babylonia and Chaldea on the
west, and the country of Susiana on the east side, they
separate again not far from Bassora, and so fall, in two
channels, into the Persian gulf, enclosing the island
Teredon, now called Balsara.
Now, taking this along with us, we may observe far-
ther, that there are two places in Scripture which make
mention of the land of Havilah. In the one we are
told, that 1 ' the Israelites dwelt from Havilah unto
Shur, that is before Egypt ;' and in the other, that
2 ' Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou
goest to Shur, that is before Egypt ;' where, by the ex-
pression, ' from Havilah unto Shur,' is probably meant
the whole extent of that part of Arabia which lies
between Egypt to the west, and a certain stream or
river which empties itself into the Persian gulf, on the
east. That Havilah is the same with this part of Arabia,
is farther evinced from its abounding with very good
gold. For all authors, both sacred and profane, highly
commend the gold of Arabia ; tell us, that it is there
dug in great plenty ; is of so lively a colour, as to come
near to the brightness of lire ; and of so fine a kind, so
pure and unmixed, as to need no refinement. Bdellium
(which by some interpreters is taken for pearl, and by
others for an aromatic gum) is, in both these senses, ap-
plicable to this country : for the a bdellium, or gum of
Arabia, was always held in great esteem ; nor is there
any place in the world which produces finer b pearls, or
in greater quantities, than the sea about Baharen, an
island situated in the Persian gulf ; and as for c the onyx -
stone in particular, (if we will believe what Pliny tells
' Gen. xxv. 18. 2 1 Sam. xv. 7.
a Galen comparing the gum of Arabia with that of Syria, gives
some advantage to the former, which he denies to the other;
On Simp. Medic, b. b*. And Pliny prefers the bdellium of Ara-
bia before that of any other nation, except that of Bactriana.
—Pliny ', b. 12. c. 9.
b Nearchus, one of Alexander's captains, who conducted his
fleet from the Indies, as far as the Persian gulf, speaks of an
island there abounding in pearls of great value. — strain, B. 16'.
And Pliny, having commended the pearls of the Indian seas,
adds, that such as are fished towards Arabia, in the Persian gulf,
deserve the greatest praise. — B. 0. c. 28.
c Strabo tells us, that the riches of Arabia, which consisted in
precious stones and excellent perfumes, (the trade of which
brought them a great deal of gold and silver, besides the gold of
the country itself,) made Augustus send yElius Gallus thither,
either to make these nations his friends, and so draw to himself
their riches, or else to subdue them; b. 1(3. Diodorus Sicuhts
describes at large the advantages of Arabia, and especially its
precious stones, which arc very valuable, both for their variety
Did brightness of colour; b. 2. And (to name no more) Pliny
HALES, .,111. GEN. CII. ■>. FROM VLK. J,
us,) the ancients were of opinion, that it was no where
to be found but in the mountains of Arabia. It seems
reasonable therefore to conclude, (according to all the
characters which Moses has given us of it,) that that
tract of Arabia which lies upon the Persian gulf, was,
in his days called 'the land of Havilah,' and that the
channel which, after Euphrates and Tigris part, runs
westward into the said gulf, was originally called Pison ■
and this the rather, because (l some remains of its an-
cient name continued a long while after this account of
it.
' The second river is Gihon, that which compasseth,
or runneth along, the whole land of eCush.' Where
we may observe, that Moses has not artixed so many
marks on the Gihon, as he does on the Pison, and that
probably for this reason ; 3 because, having once found
out the Pison, we might easily discover the situation of
the Gihon. For Pison being known to be the first river,
in respect to the place where Moses was then writing,
it is but natural to suppose, that Gihon (as the second)
should be the river next to it; and, consequently, that
other stream, which, after the Euphrates and Tigris are
parted, holds its course eastward, and empties itself in
the Persian gulf. For all travellers agree, that the
country lying upon the eastern stream, which other na-
tions call Susiana, is by the inhabitants to this day,
/called Chuzestan, which carries in it plain footsteps
of the original word Cush, or (as some write it) Chus.
Though therefore no remains of this river Gihon are
to be met with in the country itself; yet, since it lies
exactly the second in order, according to the method
that Moses has taken in mentioning the four rivers ; and,
since the province it runs along and washes was for-
merly called ' the land of Cush,' and has at this time a
3 Wells's Historical Geography, vol. 1.
who is very curious in remarking the countries of precious stoni s,
assures us, that those of the greatest value came out of Arabia.
— B. last.
d It is a great while since both this river ami the river Gihon
have lost their names. The Greek and Roman writers call them
still, after their parting, by the names they had before they met,
Euphrates and Tigris; but there was some remainder of the
name of Pison preserved in the river Pisotigris, which i- Pison
mixed with Tigris (as Mr Carver observes.) By Xenophon
it is called simply P/iysetis, in which the name of Phisun is
plainly enough retained, and went under that name until tin;
time of Alexander the Great. For (J. Curtitu commonly calls
Tigris itself by the name of Phisis, and -ays it was so called by
the inhabitants thereabout, which, in all probability, v.
name of this other river Phiaon, but, in process of time, lost by
the many alterations which were made in it^ course, as Pliny
tells us. — Patrick's Commentary.
e The Seventy translation renders the Hebrew word Ctuk,
by the name of Ethiopia, and in this mistake is all along fol-
lowed by our English version, whereas by the land of Cush is
always meant some purr of Arabia,) which has I'd Jo
ami several others, Into a notion, that tin- river Gihon was the
Nile in Egypt; and supposing withal, that ihe country of Hav-
ilah was some pan of the East Indies, they have run into
another error, and taken Pison lor tJie Ganges, whereby they
make the garden >•>' Eden contain the greatest part of Asia, ami
some part of Africa likewise, which is a. supposition quite In-
credible.— Patrick, ib.; Bedford' a Scripture Chronolot
ShuchforoVs Connection,
/Benjamin of Navarre tells us, that the province of l'.lam,
whereof Susa is the metropolis, and which extends itself
as the Persian gulf, at the east of the mouth of the river Eu-
phrates, or Tigris, (as you please to term it,) is called by tliat
name. — Wells, ib.
20
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 2. FROM VER. 8.
[Book I.
name not a little analogous to it ; there is no doubt to
be made, but that the said easterly channel, coming
from the united stream of the Euphrates and Tigris, is
the very Gihon described by Moses.
' The third river is Hiddekel, that which goeth to-
wards the east of, or, (as it is better translated) that
which goeth along the side of Assyria.' It is allowed
by all interpreters, as well as the Seventy, that this river
is the same with Tigris, or which, as Pliny says, was called
Diglito, in those parts where its course was slow, but
where it began to be rapid, it took the other name.
And, though it may be difficult to show any just ana-
logy between the name of Hiddekel and Tigris ; yet, if
we either observe Moses's method of reckoning up the
four rivers, or consider the true geography of the coun-
try, we shall easily perceive, that the river Hiddekel
could properly be no other. 1 For as, in respect to the
place where Moses wrote, Pison lay nearest to him, and
so, in a natural order, was named first, and the Gihon,
lying near to that, was accordingly reckoned second ;
so, having passed over that stream, and turning to the
left, in order to come back again to Arabia Petrrea,
(where Moses was,) we meet, in our passage, with Tigris
in the third place ; and so, proceeding westward through
the lower part of Mesopotamia, come to Pherath, or
Euphrates, at last. For Tigris, we must remember,
parts Assyria from Mesopotamia, and meeting with
Euphrates a little below Babylon, runs along with it in
one common channel, until they separate again, and
make the two streams of Pison and Gihon, which, as we
said before, empty themselves into the Persian gulf.
' The fourth river was a Euphrates ;' but this lay so
near the country of Judea, and was so well known to
the inhabitants thereof, that there was no occasion for
Moses particularly to describe it. From the course of
these four rivers, however, which he manifestly makes
the bounds and limits of it, we may perceive, that the
land of Eden must necessarily lie upon the great chan-
nel which the Tigris and Euphrates make, while they
run together, and where they part again, must there ter-
minate : for so the sacred text informs us, namely, that ' a
river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from
thence it was parted, and became into four heads ;' which
words manifestly imply, that in Eden the river was but
one, that is, one single channel ; but ' from thence,' that
is, when it was gone out of Eden, it was parted, and
became four streams or openings, (for so the Hebrew
word may be translated,) two upwards, and two below.
For, supposing this channel to be our common centre,
A?e may, if we look one way, that is, up towards Babylon,
see the Tigris and Euphrates coming into it ; and, if we
look another way, that is, down towards the Persian
gulf, see the Pison and the Gihon running out of it.
1 Wells's Geography,
a Euphrates is of the same signification with the Hebrew
Pherath, and is probably so called, by reason of the pleasant-
ness, at least the great fruitfuLness, of the adjacent country. It
must not be dissembled however, that it is one of those corrupt
names which our translations have borrowed from the Septuaghit
version, and which probably the Greeks, as Reland on the Site
of Paradise judiciously observed, took from the Persians, who
often set the word ab or an, which signifies water, before the
names of rivers, of which word, and Frat, (as it is still called
by the neighbouring people,) the name Euphrates is apparently
compounded. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 1.
It seems reasonable then to suppose, that this countiy
of Eden lay on each side of this great channel, partly
in Chaldea, and partly in Susiana : and, what may con-
firm us in this opinion, is, the extraordinary goodness
and fertility of the soil. For, as it is incongruous to
suppose, that God would make choice of a barren land
wherein to plant the garden of paradise ; so all ancient
historians and geographers inform us, that not only
Mesopotamia, Chaldea, a good part of Syria, and other
neighbouring countries, were the most pleasant and
fruitful places in the world ; but modern travellers like-
wise particularly assure us, that in all the dominions
which the Grand Seignior has, there is not a finer coun-
try, (though, for want of hands, it lies in some places
uncultivated) than that which lies between Bagdad and
Bassora, the very tract of ground, which, according to
our computation, was formerly called the land of Eden.
In what precise part of the land of Eden the garden
of paradise was planted, the sacred historian seems to
intimate, by informing us, that it 2 ' lay eastward in
Eden :' for he does not mean, that it lay eastward from
the place where he was then writing, (that every body
might easily know,) but his design was to point out, as
near as possible, the very spot of ground where it was
anciently seated. If then the garden of paradise lay in
the easterly part of the country of Eden, and 3 ' the river
which watered it' ran through that province (as the
Scripture tells us it did) before it entered into the gar-
den, then must it necessarily follow, that paradise was
situated on the east side of one of the turnings of that
river, which the conjunction of the Tigris and Euphrates
makes, (now called the river of the Arabs,) and very
probably at the lowest great turning, which Ptolemy
takes notice of, and not far from the place where Aracca
(in Scripture called Erec) at present is known to stand.
Thus we have followed the path which * the learned
and judicious Huetius, bishop of Auranches, has pointed
out to us, and have happily found a place wherein to fix
this garden of pleasure. And, though it must be owned,
that there is no draught of the country which makes the
rivers exactly answer the description that Moses has
given us of them ; yet, it is reasonable to suppose, 4that
he wrote according to the then known geography of the
country ; that if the site, or number of rivers about Ba-
bylon, have been greatly altered since, this, in all pro-
2 Gen. ii. 8. 3 Gen. ii. 10. * Shuckford's Connection.
b Upon this occasion, it may not be improper to set down a
brief exposition of his opinion in his own words. " I assert
then that the terrestrial Paradise was situated on the chan-
nel formed by the united waters of the Tigris and Euphrates,
between the place of their junction and that of their separation
before falling into the Persian gulf; and as several large wind-
ings are made by this channel, I affirm with greater precision,
that Paradise was placed on one of these windings and appar-
ently on the southern side of the largest (which hath been mark-
ed by Agathodtemon in the geographical tables of Ptolemy) when
the river, after a long deflection to the west, again takes an
eastward course about 32° 39' N. Lat. and 80° 10' E. Lon. very
near where Aracca or the Erec of Scripture was placed. He
adds still farther that the four heads of this river are the Tigris
and Euphrates before their junction, and the two channels,
tlu'ough which it flows into the sea — of which channels, the
western is Pison ; and the country of Havilah which it traverses
is partly in Arabia Felix, and partly in Arabia Dcserta: the
eastern one which I have mentioned is the Gihon, and the
country called Chus is Susiana.'" — See Treatise on the Site of
Paradise, p. 16.
II.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
21
A. M. 1. V. C. 4004 ; OR, ACCORDING TO
oability, has been occasioned by the cuts and canals,
Ivhich the monarchs of that great empire were remark-
able for making ; and that all modern observators find
»r eater variations in the situation of places, and make
»r eater corrections in all their charts and maps, than
ne ed to be made in the description of Moses, to bring
A to an agreement even with our latest accounts of the
present country, and rivers near Chaldea. But I es-
pouse this opinion, without/any formal opposition to the
sentiments of other learned men, who doubtless, in this
case, are left to their own choice ; since the situation of
paradise, (as the learned Bishop concludes,) whether it
be in one part of the world, or in another, can never be
esteemed as an article of our Christian faith.
CHAP. III.— Of the Image of God in Man.
Whoever looks into the history of the creation, as it is
recorded by Moses, will soon perceive, that there was
something so peculiar in the formation of man, as to
deserve a divine consultation, and that this peculiarity
chiefly consists in that " divine image and similitude
wherein it pleased God to make him. This pre-emin-
ence the holy penman has taken care, xin two several
places, to remind us of, in order to imprint upon us a
deeper sense of the dignity of human nature ; and there-
fore it may be no improper subject for our meditation
in this place, to consider a little, wherein this divine
image or likeness did consist ; how far it is now impaired
in us : and in what measure it may be recovered again.
AVhat the image of God impressed upon man in the
state of his integrity was, it is as difficult a matter for
us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and
were all along bred up with the same infirmities about
us wherein we were born, to form any adequate percep-
tion of, 2as it is for a peasant bred up in the obscurities
of a cottage, to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours
of a court ; and therefore we have the less reason to
wonder, that Ave find such a variety of opinions concern-
ing it.
3 Some of the Jewish doctors were fond enough to im-
agine, that Adam at first had his head surrounded with
a visible radiant glory which accompanied him wher-
ever he went, and struck awe and reverence into the
other parts of the animal creation ; and that his person
was so completely perfect and handsome, that even God,
before he formed him, assumed a human body of the
most perfect beauty, and so, in a literal sense, made
him after his own image and resemblance. But there
needs no pains to refute this groundless fancy.
' Gen. i. 26, 27. z South'* Sermons, vol. 1.
3 Calmct's Dictionary on the word Adam,
a The words in the text are, in our image, after our likeness,
which seem to be much of the same import; only a learnt il Jew-
ish interpreter has observed, that the la>t wards, after oar like-
ness, give us to understand, that man was not created properly
and perfectly in the image of God, but only in a kind of resem-
blance of him; for he does not say, in oar likeness, as In1 does,
in our image; but, after our likeness; where the caph of simili-
tude (as they call it) abates something of the sense of wiiat fol-
lows, and makes it signify only an approach to the divine like-
oess, in understanding, freedom of choice, spirituality, immor-
tality, &c. — Patrick's Commentary.
HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 2. FROM VER. 8.
4 Philo is of opinion, that this image of God, was only
the idea of human nature in the divine understanding,
by looking on which he formed man, just as an archi-
tect about to build an house, first delineates the scheme
in his mind, and then proceeds to erect the fabric Hut
this opinion, how true soever, does not come up to the
point in hand; because it makes no distinction between
man and other creatures, (for they were likewise made
according to the ideal image in the divine intellect)
though it may be manifestly the intent of the Scripture
account to give him a particular preference.
* Origen, among ancient Christian authors, will have
it to be the Son of God, who is called 6'the express
image of the Father :' but there is no such restriction in
the words of Moses. They are delivered 7 in the plural
number ; and therefore cannot, without violence, be ap-
plied to one single person in the Godhead; ami, among
the modems, some have placed it in holiness alone ,
whilst others have thought it more properly seated in
dominion. But these are only single lines, and far from
coming to the whole portraiture.
The divine similitude, in short, is a complex thing,
and made up of many ingredients ; and therefore (to
give our thoughts a track in so spacious a field) we may
distinguish it into natural and supernatural ; and accord-
ingly, shall, 1. consider the supernatural gifts and orna-
ments ; and then, 2. those natural perfections and
accomplishments wherein this image of God, impressed
on our first parents, may be said to consist.
8 An eloquent father of the church has set this whole
matter before us in a very apt similitude, comparing
this animal and living effigies of the King of kings,
with the image of an emperor, so expressed by the hand
of an artificer, either in sculpture or painting, as to
represent the very dress and ensigns of royal majesty,
such as the purple robe, the sceptre, and the diadem,
&c. But as the emperor's image does represent, not
only his countenance and the figure of his body, hut
even his dress likewise, his ornaments and royal
ensigns ; so man does then properly represent in himself
the image and similitude of God, when to the accom-
plishments of nature (which cannot totally be extin-
guished) the ornaments of grace and virtue are likewise
added; when "man's nature (as he expresses it) is not
clothed in purple nor vaunts its dignity by a sceptre or
diadem, (for the archetype consists not in such things
as these,) but instead of purple, is clothed with virtue,
which of all others, is the most royal vestment : instead
of a sceptre, is supported by a blessed immortality ; and,
instead of a diadem, is adorned with a crown of righte-
ousness."
That our first parents, besides the seeds of natural
virtue and religion sown in their minds, and besides the
natural innocence and rectitude wherein they were
created, were endued with certain gifts and powers
supernatural, infused into them by the Spirit of (tod, is
manifest, not only from the authority of '■' Christian
writers, but from the testimony of Philo the .lew like-
wise who is very full of sublime notions concerning llio
4 On the World?! Formation.
■ Bee Edwards' Survey of Religion, vol. 1.
6 j ],.],. i. ;{. (,. I,, i. 36. I.rt as make Ml*.
Gregory Nyesen.cn Man's Form tion,c 4.
p Sec' Buffs State of Man before the FaU.
22
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 2. FROM VER. 8.
divine image, and, in one place more especially, expresses
himself to this purpose. l " The Creator made our soul,"
says he, " while enclosed in a body able of itself to see
and know its Maker ; but, considering how vastly advan-
tageous such knowledge would be to man, (for this is
the utmost bound of its felicity,) he inspired into him
from above something of his own divinity, which, being
invisible, impressed upon the invisible soul its own
character ; that so even this earthly region might not be
without some creature made after the image of God :"
and this a he asserts to be the recondite sense of Moses's
words in the history of man's creation.
And indeed we need go no farther than this history of
Moses, to prove the very point we are now upon. For,
whereas it acquaints us, that the first man, in his state
of integrity, was able to sustain the approaches of the
divine presence, and converse with his Maker in the
same language, it is reasonable to suppose, that it was
a particular vouchsafement to him, to confirm his mind,
and enlighten his understanding in this manner ; because
no creature is fit to converse with God without divine
illumination, nor is any creature able to bear his ma-
jestic appearance, that is not fortified and prepared for
it by a divine power.
Whereas it tells us, that 2 ' God brought every living
creature unto Adam, to see what he would call them,
and whatever, he called them, that was the name thereof ;'
it can hardly be supposed (considering the circumstances
of the thing) but that this was the effect of something
more than human sagacity. That, in an infinite variety
of creatures, never before seen by Adam, he should be
able on a sudden, without labour or premeditation, to
give names to each of them, so adapt .and fitted to their
respective natures, as that God himself should approve
the nomenclature, is a thing so astonishing, that we may
venture to say, *no single man, among all the philoso-
phers since the fall, no Plato, no Aristotle, among the
ancients, no Des Cartes, no Gassendus, no Newton,
among the moderns ; nay, no academy or royal society
whatever durst have once attempted it.
Whereas it informs us, that Adam no sooner saw his
'Lib. Quod det potion insid. soleat, p. 171. 2 Gen. ii. 19.
a "The great Moses," says he, "makes not the species of
the rational soul to be like to any of the creatures, but pronoun-
eeth it to be the image of the invisible God, as judging it then
to become the true and genuine coin of God, when it is formed
and impressed by the divine seal, the character whereof is the
eternal word. For God," saith he, " breathed into his face the
breath of life ; so that he who receives the inspiration must of
necessity represent the image of him that gives it, and for this
reason it is said that man was made after the image of God." —
Philo on the family of Noah.
b The knowledge of Adam is highly extolled by the Jewish
doctors. Some of them have maintained, that he composed two
books, one concerning the creation, and another about the nature
of God. They generally believe, that he composed the xci.
psalm ; but some of them go farther, and tell us, that Adam's
knowledge was not only equal to that of Solomon and Moses,
but exceeded even that of angels ; and, for the proof of this, they
produce this story — That tire angels having spoke contemptu-
ously of man, God made this answer, That the creature
whom they despised was their superior in knowledge; and, to
convince them of this, that he brought all the animals to them,
and bid them name them, which they being not able to do, he
proposed the thing to Adam, and he did it immediately: with
many more fancies of the same ridiculous nature. — Saurin's
Dissertations.
wife brought unto him, but 3 he told exactly her original,
and gave her a name accordingly, though he lay in the
profoundest sleep and insensibility all the while that God
was performing the wonderful operation of taking her
out of his side ; this can be imputed to nothing, but
either an immediate inspiration or some prophetic vision
(as we said before) that was sent unto him while he slept.
4 From the conformity of parts which he beheld in that
goodly creature, and her near similitude to himself, he
might have conjectured indeed, that God had now pro-
vided him with a meet help, which before he wanted ; but
it is scarce imaginable, how he could so punctually de-
scribe her rise and manner of formation, and so surely
prophesy, that the general event to his posterity would
be, for the sake of her sex ' to leave father and mother,
and cleave to their wives,' otherwise than by divine illu-
mination ; " which enabled him 5 (as one excellently ex-
presses it) to view essences in themselves, and read forms
without the comment of their respective properties ; which
enabled him to see consequences yet dormant in their
principles, and effects yet unborn, and in the womb of
their causes ; which enabled, in short, to pierce almost
into future contingencies, and improved his conjectures
and sentiments even to a prophecy, and the certainties
of a prediction.''
These seem to be some of the supernatural gifts, and
what we may call the chief lines, wherein the image of
God was so conspicuous upon Adam's soul ; and there
was this supernatural in his body likewise, that 6 whereas
it was made ' of the dust of the earth,' and its composi-
tion consequently corruptible, either by a power conti-
nually proceeding from God, whereof 7 ' the tree of life'
was the divine sign and sacrament, or by the inherent
virtue of the tree itself, perpetually repairing the decays
of nature, it was to enjoy the privilege of immortality.
8 Not such an immortality as the glorified bodies of saints
shall hereafter possess (for they shall be made wnolly
impassable, and set free from the reach of any outward
impressions and elemental disorders which may impair
their vigour, or endanger their dissolution,) but an im-
mortality by donation, and the privilege of an especial
providence, which engaged itself to sway and overrule
the natural tendency which was in man's body to cor-
ruption ; and, notwithstanding the contrarieties and dis-
sensions of a terrestrial constitution, to continue him in
life as long as he should continue himself in his obedience.
2. Another chief part of the divine image and simili-
tude in our first parents, was an universal rectitude in all
the faculties belonging to the soul. Now the two great
faculties, or rather essential acts of the soul, are the un-
derstanding and will ; which, though (for the clearer
conception of them) we may separate, are in their opera-
tion so blended and united together, that we cannot pro-
perly think them distinct faculties. It is the same indi-
vidual mind which sees and perceives, as well as chooses
or rejects the several objects that are presented to it.
When it does the former, we call it the understanding,
and when the latter, the will : so that they are both ra-
dically and inseparably the same, and differ only in the
manner of our conceiving them. Nay, the clearest and
3 Gen. ii. 23. 4 Bull's Sermons and Discourses.
° South's Sermons, vol. 1. 6 Hopkin's Dotirine of the Two
Covenants. ? Gen. ii. 9. s Edward's Survey »f Religion, vol. 1.
Srct. II.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 2. FROM VEK
23
A. M. I
nnlv distinct apprehension we are able to form of them,
(even when we come to consider them separately,) is
only this, that the understanding is chiefly conversant
about intelligible, the will about eligible objects ; so that
the one has truth, and the other goodness in its view and
pursuit. There are, besides these, belonging- to the soul
of man, certain passions and affections, which (accord-
ing to the common notion and manner of speaking) have
chiefly their residence in the sensitive appetite ; and,
however, in this lapsed condition of our nature, they may
many times mutiny and rebel, yet, when kept in due
temper and subordination, are excellent handmaids to
the ' soul. Though the Stoics look upon them all as
sinful defects, and deviations from right reason ; yet it
is sufficient for us, that our blessed Saviour (who took
upon him all our natural, but none of our sinful infirmi-
ties) was known to have them, and that our first proge-
nitor, in the state of his greatest perfection, was not
devoid of them. Let us then see how far we may sup-
pose that the image of God might be impressed upon
each of these*.
2 His soul itself was a rational substance, immaterial,
and immortal ; and therefore a proper representation of
that Supreme Spirit whose wisdom was infinite, and es-
sence eternal.
3 His understanding was, as it were, the upper region
of his soul, lofty and serene ; seated above all sordid
affections, and free from the vapours and disturbances of
inferior passions. Its perceptions were quick and lively ;
its reasonings true, and its determinations just. A de-
luded fancy was not then capable of imposing upon it,
nor a fawning appetite of deluding it to pronounce a
false and dishonest sentence. In its direction of the in-
ferior faculties, it conveyed its suggestions with clear-
ness, and enjoined them with power ; and though its
command over them was but suasive.yet it had the same
force and efficacy as if it had been despotical.
His will was then very ductile and pliant to the mo-
tions of right reason. It pursued the directions that
were given it, and attended upon the understanding, as a
favourite does upon his prince, while the service is both
privilege, and preferment : and, while it obeyed the un-
derstanding, it commanded the other faculties that were
beneath ; gave laws to the affections, and restrained the
passions from licentious sallies.
His passions were then indeed all subordinate to his
mil and intellect, and acted within the compass of their
proper objects. His love was centred upon God, and
flamed up to heaven in direct fervours of devotion. His
hatred (if hatred may be supposed in a state of inno-
cence) was fixed only upon that which his posterity only
love, sin. His joy was then the result of a real good,
suitably applied, and filled his soul (as God does the
universe) silently and without noise. His sorrow (if any
supposed disaster could have occasioned sorrow) must
have moved according to the severe allowances of pru-
dence ; been as silent as thought, and all confined within
ttii' closet of the breast. His hope was fed with the ex-
pectation of a better paradise, and a nearer admission
to the divine presence ; and (to name no more) his fear,
which was then a guard, and not a torment to the mind,
South' s Sermons, vol. 1.
South's Sermons, vol. 1.
Edward's Survey.
was fixed upon him, who is only to be feared, God, but
in such a filial manner, as to become an awe without
amazement, and a dread without distraction.
It must be acknowledged indeed, that the Scriptures
do not expressly attribute all these perfections to Adam
in his first estate ; but, since the opposite weaknesses
now infest the nature of man fallen, we must conclude
(if we will be true to the rule of contraries) that these,
and such like excellencies, were the endowments of man
innocent. And if so, then is there another perfection
arising from this harmony, and due composure of the
faculties, which we may call the crown and consumma-
tion of all, and that is a good conscience. For, as in
the body, when the vital and principal parts do their
office, and all the smaller vessels act orderly, there arises
a sweet enjoyment upon the whole, which we call health ;
so in the soul, when the supreme faculties of the under-
standing and will move regularly, and the inferior pas-
sions and affections listen to their dictates, and follow
their injunctions, there arises a serenity and complacency
upon the whole soul, infinitely beyond all the pleasures
of sertsuality, and which, like a spicy field, refreshes it
upon every reflection, and fills it with a joyful confidence
towards God.
These are some of the natural lines (as we may dis-
tinguish them) which the finger of God portrayed upon
the soul of man : and (so far as the spiritual being may
be resembled by the corporeal) 4the contrivance of man's
bodily parts was with such proportion and exactness, as
most conduced to its comeliness and service. His sta-
ture was erect and raised, becoming him who was to be
the lord of this globe, and the observer of the heavens.
A divine beauty and majesty was shed upon it, such as
could neither be eclipsed by sickness, nor extinguished
by death ; 5 for Adam knew no disease, so long as he
refrained from the forbidden tree. Nature was his phy-
sician, and innocence and abstinence would have kept
him healthful to immortality. And from this perfection
of man's body, especially that port and majesty which
appeared in his looks and aspect, there arose, in some
measure, another lineament of the divine image, viz. 6
that dominion and sovereignty wherewith God invested
him over all other creatures. For there is even still re-
maining in man a certain terrific character, (as 7 one calls
it,) which, assisted by that instinct of dread that he hath
equally implanted in their natures, commands their homage
and obeisance ; insomuch, that it must be hunger or com-
pulsion, or some violent exasperation or other, that
makes them at any time rebel against their Maker's vice-
gerent here below.
This is the best copy of the divine image that we can
draw : only it may not be amiss to add, 8 that the holi-
ness of man was a resemblance of the divine purity, and
his happiness a representation of the divine felicity. And
now, to look over it again, ami recount the several lines
of it. What was supernatural in it, was a mind fortified
to bear the divine presence, qualified for the divine con-
verse, fully illuminated by the divine Spirit ; and a body
that (contrary to the natural principles of its composi-
tion) was indulged the privilege of immortality. What
1 Bate's Harmony of the Divine Attributes. 5 South' s Ser~
mora, vol, I. ° Gen. i. 26. 7 Cornelius Jgrippa, vn Occult
Philosophy, s Bate's Harmony.
24
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
of bliss ; that, b in his state of exile, having lost all hopes,
and despairing of reconciliation with the Almighty, he
abandoned himself to all kinds of wickedness ; and, upon
the creation of man, out of pure envy to the happiness
which God had designed for him, resolved upon a pro-
ject to draw him into disobedience, and thence into ruin
and perdition ; but how to put his scheme in execution
was the question. The woman he perceived, as by
nature more ductile and tender, was the properer subject
for his temptations ; but some form he was to assume, to
enable him to enter into conference with her. 9 The
figure of a man was the fittest upon this occasion ; but
then it would have discovered the imposture, -because
Eve knew very well, that her husband was the only one
of that species upon the face of the earth. And therefore
considering', that the serpent, which before the fall was a
bright and glorious creature, and (next to man) c endued
was natural to it, was an universal harmony in all its
faculties ; an understanding fraught with all manner of
knowledge ; a will submitted to the divine pleasure ; af-
fections placed upon their proper objects ; passions cahn
and easy ; a conscience quiet and serene ; resplendent
holiness, perfect felicity, and a body adorned with such
comeliness and majesty, as might justly challenge the
rule and jurisdiction of this inferior world.
If it be demanded, how much of this image is de-
faced, lost, or impaired ; the answer is, that ! whatever
was supernatural and adventitious to man by the be-
nignity of Almighty God, (as it depended upon the con-
dition of his obedience to the divine command,) upon
the breach of that command, was entirely lost : what was
perfective of his nature, such as the excellency of his
knowledge, the subordination of his faculties, the tran-
quillity of his mind, and full dominion over other crea-
tures, was sadly impaired : but what was essential to his
nature, the immortality of his soul, the faculties of intel-
lection and will, and the natural beauty and usefulness
of his body, does still remain, notwithstanding the con-
cussions they sustained in the fall.
If it be asked, what we must do in order to repair this
defaced image of God in us ? the only answer we can
have in this case, is, from the sacred oracles of Scripture.
We must 2 ' be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and
put on the new man, which after God is created in right-
eousness and true holiness.' We must 3 ' be followers
of God as dear children ; grow in grace,' 4 ' be renewed in
knowledge,' and 5 ' conformed to the image of his Son.'
We must 6 ' give all diligence to add to our faith virtue ;
and to virtue, knowledge ; and to knowledge, temper-
ance ; and to temperance, patience ; and to patience,
godliness ; and to godliness, brotherly kindness ; and to
brotherly kindness, charity :' that we may be 7 ' complete
in him, who is the head of all principality and power -,1
and that 8 ' as we have borne the image of the earthly,
we may also bear the image of the heavenly Adam.'
SECT. III.
CHAP. I.— Of the Fall of Man.
THE HISTORY.
The sacred historian indeed gives us no account of Satan,
the chief of the fallen angels, and grand adversary of
God and man ; but, from several other places in Scrip-
ture, we may learn, that he at first was made like other
celestial spirits, perfect in his kind, and happy in his
condition, but that, through pride or ambition, as Ave may
suppose, falling into a crime, (whose circumstances to
us are unknown,) he thence fell into misery, and, toge-
ther a with his accomplices, was banished from the regions
Hale's Origination of Mankind. 2 Eph. iv. 23, 24.
Eph. v. 1. 4 Col. iii. 10. 5 Rom. viii. 29.
2 Peter i. 5, &c. ' Col. ii. 10. » I Cor. xv. 49.
a That profane, as well as saered writers, had the same notion
of the fall of wicked angels, is manifest from a tradition they
had (though mixed with fable) of the Titans and Giants invading
heaven, fighting against Jupiter, and attempting to depose him
from his throne, for which reason he threw them down headlong
into hell, where they are tormented with incessant fire; and
9 History of the Old and New Testament, by M. Martin.
therefore Empedocles, in the verses recited by Plutarch, makes
mention of the fate of some demons, who, for their rebellion,
were, from the summit of heaven, plunged into ^he bottom of
the great deep, there to be punished as they deserved. To
which the story of Ate, who once inhabited the air, but being
always hurtful to man, and therefore, hateful to God, was cast
down from thence, with a solemn oath and decree, that she
should never return again, seems not a little to allude. — Huetius
in the Alnetan Questions, b. 2.
b Our excellent Milton represents Satan within prospect of
Eden, and near the place where he was to attempt his desperate
enterprise against God and man, falling into doubts, and sundry
passions, and then, at last, confirming himself in his wicked
design.
But say I could repent, and could obtain,
By act of grace, my former state ; how soon
Would height recall high thoughts! how soon unsay
What feign'd submission swore ! Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void —
All hope excluded thus, behold, instead
Of us, outcast, exil'd, his new delight,
Mankind, created ; and for him this world,
So farewell Hope! and, with Hope, farewell fear'
Farewell Remorse ! all good to me is lost !
Evil be thou my good ! by thee at least
Divided empire with heaven's King I hold ;
By thee, and more than half perhaps, will reign :
As man, ere long, and this new world shall know.
c Milton, who is an excellent commentator upon the whole
history of the fall, brings in the devil, after a long search to find
out a beast proper for his purpose, concluding at last to make use
of the serpent.
Him, after long debate (irresolute
Of thought revolv'd) his final sentence chose.
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud in whom
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide
From sharpest sight: for in the wily snake
Whatever sleights, none would suspicions mark,
As from his wit, and native subtilty
Proceeding; which in other beast observ'd,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power
Active within, beyond the sense of brute.
The wisdom and subtilty of the serpent are frequently men-
tioned in Scripture, as qualities which distinguish it from other
animals ; and several are the instances, wherein it is said to
discover its cunning. 1. When it is old, by squeezing itself
between two rocks, it can strip ofi" its old skin, and so grows
young again. 2. As it grows blind, it has a secret to recover
its sight by the juice of fennel. 3. When it is assaulted, its
chief care is to secure its head, because its heart lies under its
throat, and very near its head. And, 4. When it goes to drink
at a fountain, it first vomits up all its poison, for fear of poison-
ing itself as it is drinking; with some other qualities of the like
nature. — Calmet's Dictionary.
But a modern author of our own has given us this further
reason for the devil's making use of the serpent in tills affair,
namely, — That as no infinite being can actuate any creature,
beyond what the fitness and capacity of its organs will admit ;
Sect. III.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
25
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3
with the greatest talents of sagacity and understanding,
would be no improper instrument for his purpose, he
usurped the organs of one of these, and through them, he
addressed himself to the woman, the first opportunity
when he found her alone.
• After a some previous compliments (as we may ima-
gine) and congratulations of her happy state, the tempter
put on an air of great concern, and seemed to interest
himself not a little in her behalf, by wondering why God,
who had lately been so very bountiful to them, should
deny them the use of a tree, b whose fruit was so tempting
to the eye, so grateful to the palate, and of such sove-
reign quality to make them wise, and when Eve replied,
that such was the divine prohibition, even under the
penalty of death itself, c he immediately subjoins, that
such a penalty was an empty threat, and what would never
be executed upon them ; that God would never destroy
the ' work of his own hands,' creatures so accomplished
so, the natural subtilty of the serpent, and perhaps the pliable-
ness, and forkiness of its tongue (which we know enables other
creatures to pronounce articulate sounds,) added to the advan-
tages of its form, made it the fittest instrument of delusion that
can be imagined. — Revelation Examined.
a Milton has very curiously described the artful and insinua-
ting carriage of the serpent, upon his first approach to speak to
Eve.
He, bolder now, uneall'd, before ber stood,
But, as in great admiring-; oft he bow'd
His turret crest, and sleek enamell'd neck,
Fawning ; and liek'd the ground whereon she trod.
His gentle dumb expressions turu'd at length
The eye of Eve, to mark his play ; he, glad
Of her attention gain'd, with serpent tongue
Organic, or impulse of vocal air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began.
b The first words in his address are, ' Yea, hath God said, ye
shall not eat,' &c, which do not look so much like the beginning,
as the conclusion of a discourse, as the Jews themselves have
observed: and therefore it is not improbable, that the tempter,
before he spake these words, represented himself as one of the
heavenly court, who was come, or rather sent, to congratulate
the happiness which God had bestowed on them in paradise ; an
happiness so great, that he could not easily believe he had denied
them any of the fruit of the garden. — Patrick's Commentary.
c Burnet, in his Philosophical Archaeology, has given us the
whole dialogue (as lie has framed it at least) between the serpent
and Eve; which, though a little too light and ludicrous for so
solemn an occasion, yet, because the book is not in every one's
hands, I have thought fit to set down in a translation of his own
words. " Serpent. Hail, fairest! what dost thou under this
shade? Eve. I am gazing at the beauty of this tree. .Serpent.
It is indeed pleasant to the sight, but to the taste its fruit is
much more so, hast thou yet tasted it, my mistress? Eve.
Verily not, God hath forbade us the use of that tree. Serpent.
What do I hear? Who is that God? who envies his own crea-
tines the innocent delights of nature, nothing is more sweet,
nothing more safe than that fruit, why should he forbid it, unless
by some foolish law of his own. Eve. Nay, he forbade it under
penalty of death. Serpent. Undoubtedly the matter is not
understood by thee, the tree possesses no deadly property, but
vather something divine and beyond the usual power of nature.
thte. I cannot answer thee myself, but I will go to my husband.
Serpent. Why shouldst thou interrupt thy husband for an aflair
of so small importance. Eve. Shall I taste the apple?
BOW beautiful its hue, how fragrant its smell, can it have a bad
flavour? Scrpo/t. Believe me, it is food not unworthy of the
angels, taste of it, and if the flavour be bad cast it from thee,
and deem me the most mendacious of liars. Ere. I will at-
tempt, indeed the flavour is most agreeable, thou hast nol de-
ceived me, give 'me another that 1 may b^ar it to my husband.
Serpent. That's well remembered! take this one, go to thy
husband — Farewell, child of happiness, meanwhile I will g i( e
away, she will manage the rest." B. ii. 1 hap. 7.
as they were, for so slight a transgression ; and that the
sole intent of this prohibition was, to continue them in
their present state of dependence and ignorance, and not
admit them to that extent of knowledge, and plenitude
of happiness, which their eating of this fruit would confer
upon them • for God himself knew, that d the proper
use of this tree was, to illuminate the understanding, and
advance all the other faculties of the soul to such a sub-
limity, that the brightest angels in heaven should not
surpass them ; nay that they should approximate the Deity
itself, in the extent of their intellect, and independence
of their being. In short, he acquainted Eve, that the
jealousy of the Creator was the sole motive of his pro-
hibition ; that the fruit had a virtue to impart, e an uni-
versal knowledge to the person who tasted it ; and that
therefore God, who would admit of no competitor, had
reserved this privilege to himself. Above all, he engaged
her to fix her eyes upon the forbidden fruit ; he remarked
to her its pleasantness to the sight, and left her to guess
at its deliciousness. Eve, in the very midst of the temp-
tation had a freedom of choice ; but the fond conceit of
' knowing good and evil,' of becoming like God, and of
changing her felicity (great indeed, but subordinate) for
an independent state of happiness, and especially the
deceitful bait of present sensual pleasure, blinded her
reason by degrees ; and as she stood gazing on the tree,
filled all her thoughts, and the whole capacity of her
soul. The sight of the fruit provoked her desire ; the
suggestions of the tempter urged it on ; her natural
curiosity raised her longing ; and the very prohibition
itself did something to inflame it ; so that, at all adven-
tures, she put forth her hand, and plucked, and eat.
Earth felt the wound, and nature, from her seat,
Sighing, tlu"ough all her works, gave signs of wo,
That all was lost. '
She, however, had no such sense of her condition ; but,
fancying herself already in the possession of that chime-
rical happiness, wherewith the devil had deluded her,
she invited her husband (who not unlikely came upon her
while she was eating) to partake with her. 2 The most
' Milton. * Saui-in's Dissertations.
d It is very well worth our observation, how ambiguous and
deceitful the promise, which the tempter makes our first parents,
was: for by ' opening the eyes,' she understood a further degree
of wisdom, as the same phrase imports, Acts xxvi. 18. ; and
Eph. i. 18.; but he meant their perceiving their own misery,
and confusion of conscience, as fell out immediately: by 'being
like ends,' she understood the happiness of God the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, as appears by the words of God himself, verse
22.; but he meant it of angels, (frequently styled Elohitn, that
is, go's,) and of such fallen angels as himself, who are called
'principalities and powers,' Col. ii. 15. And 'by knowing
good and evil,' she understood a kind of divine omniscience, or
knowing all manner of things (as the phrase frequently signi-
fies 0 but he meant it, that thereby she should experience the
difference between 'good and evil,' between happiness and
misery, which she did to her cost, A method this of cunning
and reserve, which he has practised in his oracular responses
evi r since. — AimwortVs Annotation*.
e The words 'good and evil,' when applied to knowledge,
comprehend every thing that is possible fol man to know, fox BO
the woman of Tekoa, in her address to king David, tells him t
Sam. xiv. 17. 'as an angel of God is my lord the king, to dis-
cern g 1 and bad;' and that by the terms 'good and bad,' we
are to understand 'all things,' the 20th verse of that chapter
will inform us, where she continues her compliment, and says,
• My lord is wise, according to the wisdom of BJ1 angel, to
know all things that are on the earth.'— Le Clerc's Commentary.
20
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
absurd arguments appear reasonable, and the most unjust
desires equitable, when the person who proposes them,
is beloved ; the devil therefore knew very well what he
did, when he made his first application to the woman.
Her charms and endearments, which gave her the as-
cendency over her husband's affection, would be of more
efficacy (he knew) than all the subtile motives which he
could suggest ; and therefore he made use of her to en-
gage him in the like defection : and after some small
reluctancy (as we may suppose) he, l like an uxorious
man, was by her entreaties prevailed on, (contrary to
the sense of his duty, and convictions of his own breast,)
to violate the command, merely because she had done it,
and to share whatever fate God's indignation for that
transgression should bring upon her. Thus the solici-
tations of the woman ruined the man, as the enchantments
of the tempter ruined the woman. She held forth the
fair enticing fruit to him ; and he, rather than see her
perish alone, chose to be involved in the same common
guilt. 2
Earth trembled from her entrails, as again
In pangs, and nature gave a second groan ;
Sky lowr'd, and, murmuring thunder, some sad drops
Wept, at completing of the mortal sin. 3
For as soon as they had eaten of the forbidden fruit,
a ' their eyes were opened,' but in a sense quite different
from what the tempter had promised them, namely, to
see their own folly, and the impendent miseries, and
make sad reflections upon what they had done. They
had acquired knowledge, indeed, but it was a knowledge
arising from sorrowful experience, that the serpent had
beguiled them both, and drawn them from the good of
happiness and innocence, which they knew before, into
the evil of sin and misery, which (until that fatal moment)
they had no conception of. * They saw a living God
provoked ; his grace and favour forfeited ; his likeness
and image defaced ; and their dominion over other crea-
tures withdrawn from them. They saw, very probably, the
heavens grow angry and stormy ; the angel of the Lord
standing with his sword, threatening them with vengeance ;
and the devil himself, who before had seduced them,
throwing oft- the disguise, and now openly insulting over
them. They saw that h ' they were naked ;' were stripped
l.A. C. 4001; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. C II. 3.
of all their intellectual and moral ornaments ; were sub-
jected to irregular appetites and inordinate lusts ; and
blushed to see their external glory so much debased, that
c they took and plaited together lig leaves, (which in
eastern countries are very large,) in order to make them-
selves d such coverings as might both protect them from
the injuries of the weather, and conceal their shame. Nor
was their guilt attended with shame only, but with fear
likewise, and many dismal apprehensions. e Before
they sinned they no sooner heard ' the voice of the Lord'
coming towards them, but they ran out to meet him, and,
with an humble joy, welcomed his gracious visits ; but /
now God was become a terror to them, and they a terror
1 Mede's Discourses. * Edward's Survey of Religion.
3 Milton. * Miller's History of the Church.
a he Clere observes, that it is reputed an elegancy in the
sacred writing to make use of the figure, which rhetoricians call
antanaclasis, whereby they continue the same word or phrase
that went before, though in a quite different sense ; as the learned
Grotius upon John i. 16., and Hammond on Matth. viii. 22.
have abundantly shown ; and for this reason he supposes, that
Moses repeats ' their eyes were opened,' which the devil had
used before, though he means it in a sense quite different from
the former.
b Those who take the word f naked' in a literal sense, sup-
pose, that upon the fall, the air, and other elements, immediately
became intemperate, and disorderly; so that our first parents
soon knew, or felt, that they were naked, because the sun
scorched them, the rain wet them, and the cold pierced them.
— See Patrick's Commentary ; and King on the Origin of Evil.
But others take the expression rather in a figurative sense,
namely, to denote the commission of such sins as man in his
senses may well be ashamed of: and to this purpose they have
observed, that when Moses returned from the mount, and found
that the people had made and consecrated a golden image, the
expression in Scripture is, ( That the people were naked,' that
is, were become vile and reprobate sinners, (for so the word
yvpvo; signifies in the New Testament, Rev. xvi. 15.;) ' for
Aaron had made them naked, unto their shame, among their
enemies,' Ex. xxxii. 25. — See Le Clerc's Commentary. Now
those who take it in this sense, have observed farther, that by
the word ' nakedness' according to the usual modesty of the
Hebrew tongue) are meant all the irregular appetites to venereal
pleasures, which Adam and Eve were strangers to in their state
of innocence, but began now first to experience, and which the
intoxicating juice of the forbidden tree might very probably ex-
cite.— Nicholls's Conference, vol. 1.
As witli new wine intoxicated both,
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
Divinity within them, breeding wings,
Wherewith to scorn the earth : but that false fruit
Far other operation first display'd.
Carnal desire inflaming: he on Eve
Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him
As wantonly repaid, in lust they burn. — Milton,
c Our translation indeed tells us, that our first parents ' sewed
fig-leaves together,' which gives occasion to the usual sneer,
What they could do for needles and thread? But the original
word tapar signifies no more than to put together, apply, or fit,
as is plain from Job xvi. 15., and Ezek. xiii. 28.; and the word
gneleh, which we render leaves, signifies also branches of trees,
such as were to make booths or bowers, Neh. xviii. 15. So that,
to adapt or fit branches (which is translated sewing leaves to-
gether) is only to twist and plat the flexible branches of the fig-
tree round about their waists, in the manner of a Roman crown,
for which purpose the fig-tree, of all others, was the most ser-
viceable, because, as Pliny tells us, b. 16. ch. 24., it had a leaf
very large or shady. — Patrick's Commentary.
d The word, in the translation is aprons ; but since in the ori-
ginal it may signify any thing that covers or surrounds us, it
may every whit as properly here be rendered a bower, or arbour,
covered with the branches of the fig-tree wherein the fallen pair
thought to have hid themselves from the sight of God ; to which
interpretation the subsequent verse seems to give some counte-
nance.— Le Clerc's Commentary. Nor is Milton's description
of the fig-tree uninclinable to this sense:
Such as at this day spreads her arms,
Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow-
About the mother-tree , a pillar'd shade
High overarch'd, and echoing walks between.
There oft the Indian herdsman shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
In loop-holes, cut through thickest shade.
e The word voice may be equally rendered noise: and since
God's usual way of notifying his presence afterwards was either
by 'a small still voice or noise,' 1 Kings xix. 12., or by a noise
like ' that of great waters,' Ezek. i. 24., or like the rustling of
wind in the trees,' 2 Sam. v. 24., we may reasonably suppose,
that it was either a soft gentle noise like a breeze of wind
among the trees of paradise, or a louder one, like the murmuring
of some large river, which gave Adam notice of God's approach-
ing.— Le Clerc's Commentary.
f Milton makes Adam, upon this occasion, express himself in
this manner: i
How shall I behold the face
Henceforth of God or angel, erst with joy
And raptures oft beheld ? O ! might I here
In solitude live savage, in some glade
Obscur'd, where highest woods (impenetrable
To star or sun-light) spread their umbrage broad,
And brown as evening ! Cover me, ye pines,
Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs
Hide me, where I may never see them more.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
A. M. 1. A.C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
27
to themselves. Their consciences set their sin before
them in its blackest aspect ; and, as they had then no
hopes of a future mediator, so there ' remained nothing
for them but a certain fearful looking for of judgment,
and fiery indignation ready to devour them.' And ac-
cordingly, no sooner did they hear the sound of God's
majestic presence drawing nearer and nearer to the place
where they were, (which happened towards the cool of
the evening,) but they immediately betook themselves to
the thickest and closest places they could find in the
garden, in order to hide themselves from his inspection ;
for so far were they fallen in their understanding, as
never to reflect, ' that all places and things are naked
and open to the eyes of him, with whom they had to do.'
Out of their dark retreat, however, God calls the two
criminals, who, after a short examination, acknowledged
their guilt indeed, but lay the blame of it, the man upon
the woman, and the woman upon the serpent : whereupon
God proceeds to pronounce sentence upon them, but
first of all, upon the devil, as being the prime offender.
The devil had made the serpent the instrument of his
deception ; and therefore a God first degrades it from
the noble creature it was before this fact, to a foul creep-
ing animal, which, instead of going erect, or flying in
the air, was sentenced to creep upon its belly, and there-
upon become incapable of eating any food but what was
mingled with dust. And to the devil, who lay hid under
the covert of the serpent, (and therefore is not expressly
named,) he decbtres, that how much soever he might
glory in his present conquest, a time should come, when
a child, descended from the seed of that very sex he had
now defeated, that is, the Messias, should ruin all his
new-erected empire of sin and death ; and, l ' having
spoiled principalities and powers, should make a shew of
them openly, triumphing over them in his cross.' This
could not fail of being matter of great comfort and
consolation to Adam and Eve, to hear of the conquest of
their malicious enemy, before their own sentences were
pronounced, ° which to the woman, was sorrow in con-
1 Col. ii. 15.
a Josepkus, in the beginning of his Antiquities, pretends, that
all creatures using the same language, and consequently being
endued with reason and understanding, the serpent, excited by
envy, tempted Eve to sin, and, among other things, received
this signal punishment, namely, that it should be deprived of its
feet, and ever after crawl upon the ground, which Aben Ezra,
and several other Rabbins, confirm: but what is certain in the
serpent's punishment, is this — that it actually eats the dry and
dusty earth, (as Bochart and Pliny tell us,) otherwise we can
hardly conceive how it could subsist in dry and sandy deserts,
to which God, in a good measure, has condemned it. — Revela-
tion Examined.
b It is remarkable, that a woman is the only creature we
know of, who has any sorrow in conception. This Aristotle ex-
pressly affirms, and only excepts the instance of a mare con-
ceiving by an ass, and, in general, where there is any thing
Knonstrous in the foetus. Other creatures, we find, are in more
perfect health, and strength, and vigour, at that time, than be-
fore; but Aristotle reckons up ten different maladies, to which
the woman is then naturally subject. And, as she is subject to
sickness in the time of her conception, so it is farther remark-
able, that she brings forth her offspring with more pain and
agony than any other creature upon earth, even though she has
some advantages in her make above other creatures, that might
promise her, in this case, an alleviation ; and therefore we may
suppose, that, upon God's saying to the woman, ' In sorrow thou
Shalt bring forth children,' a real effect did immediately accom-
pany the word spoken, and cause such a change in the woman's
ception, pain in childbirth, and constant subjection to
her husband's will ; to the man, c a life of perpetual toil
and slavery; and to them both, as well as all their pos-
terity, a temporal death at the time appointed.
Nor was it mankind only which felt the sad effects of
the induction of sin, but d even the inanimate part of the
creation suffered by it. The fertility of the earth, and
serenity of the air, were changed ; the elements began to
jar; the seasons were intemperate, and the weather grew
uncertain : so that to defend themselves against the im-
moderate heat, or cold, or wind or rain, which now began
to infest the earth, our first parents were instructed by
God e how to make themselves vestments of the skins of
body, as, in the course of nature, must have occasioned the ex-
traordinary pain here spoken of; for so we find, (that in the sen-
tence pronounced against the serpent, against the earth, and
against man, the word of God -was not only declarative, but
executive likewise, as producing a real change by a new modifi-
cation of matter, or conformation of parts. — Revelation Exam-
ine I ; and Bibliotheea Biblica, vol. 1.
c The words in the text are, ' In the sweat of thy face, shalt
thou eat bread,' ver. 19. From whence some conclude, that the
earth, before the fall, brought forth spontaneously, (as several of
the ancient poets have described the golden age,) and without
any pains to cultivate it; as indeed there needed none, since all
things at first were, by the divine power, created in their full
perfection. What labour would have been necessary in time,
if man had continued innocent, we do not know; only we may
observe from the words, that less pains would then have been
required, than men are now forced to take for their sustenance.
The wisdom, goodness, and justice of God, however, is very
conspicuous, in decreeing, that toil and drudgery should be the
consequence of departing from an easy and rational obedience ;
in making the earth less desirable to man, when his guilt had
reduced him to the necessity of leaving it; and in keeping in
order those passions and appetites which had now broke loose
from the restraint of reason, by subduing their impetuosity with
hard labour. — Patrick's Commentary; and Revelation Ex-
amined.
d Milton brings in God, soon after the fall, appointing his
holy angels to make an alteration in the course of the celestial
bodies, and to possess them with noxious qualities, in order to
destroy the fertility of the earth, and thereby punish man for his
transgression.
The sun
Had its first precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable ; and from the north to call
Decrepit winter ; from the south to bring
Solstitial summer's bant. To the blank moon
Hpr office they prescrib'd, to th' other rive
Their planetary motions and aspects
Of noxious efficacy, and when to.ioin
In synod iinhenign ; and taught the hx'd
Their influence malignant when to shower :
Which of them, rising with the sun. or falling-,
Should prove tempestuous. To the wiuds they set
Their corners, when with bluster to confound
Sea. air, and shore : the thunder then to roll
With terror through the dart aerial hall
These changes in the heavens, though slow, produce
Like change on sea, and land , sidereal blast,
Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot,
Corrupt and pestilent.
c It cannot be denied, but that the skins of beasts were a wry
ancient sort of clothing. Diodonu Sicuhis, b. 1., where he in-
troduces Hercules in a lion's skin, tells us no less; and the
author to the Hebrews makes mention of this kind of habit: but
the Jewish doctors have carried the matter so far, as to main-
tain, that as Adam was a priest, this coat of his was his priestly
garment which he left to his posterity: so that Abel, Noah,
Abraham, ami (he rest of the patriarchs, sacrificed in it, until
the time that Aaron was made high priest, and had peculiar
vestments appointed him by God. But all this fine fiction of
theirs falls to the ground, if we can but suppose with some, that
by the word which we render coats, we may not improperly
28
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. I. A. C 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CM. 3.
those beasts, which, very probably, they were appointed to
sacrifice, either in confirmation of the covenant of grace
couched in the sentence pronounced against the serpent,
or as a representation of that great expiatory sacrifice,
which, in the fulness of time, God might inform them, was
to be offered as a propitiation for the sins of all man-
kind: and, upon this account, it very likely was, that Adam
changed his wife's name (who, as some think, was called
Isscha before) into that of Eve, as believing that God
would make her the mother of all mankind, and of the
promised seed in particular, by whom he hoped for a re-
storation both to himself and his posterity, and to be
raised from death to a state of happiness and immortal
life.
Considering then a what a sad catastrophe this trans-
gression of theirs had brought upon human nature, and
that such a scene of complicated misery might not be per-
petuated by means of the tree of life, God in his great
mercy, found it convenient to remove them from the
garden of paradise into that part of the country lying
understand tents, or arbours, to defend our first parents from the
violence of the heats, and such hasty showers as were common
in the countries adjacent to paradise, and where the winter was
not so cold as to require coats made of skins, which would cer-
tainly be too warm. That they could not be the skins of slain
animals is very manifest, because as yet there were no more
than two of each species, male and female, nor had they propa-
gated. And therefore others have imagined, that if the original
word must mean coats, they were more probably made of the
bark of trees, which are called depkata, the skins of them, as
wrell as the hides of animals. — See Lc Clerc, and Patrick's Com-
mentary ; and Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.
a The words in the text are these, ' Behold the man is be-
come as one of us, to know good and evil ; and now, lest he put
forth his hand, and taste of the tree of life, and live for ever,'
Gen. iii. 22. The former of these sentences is held by most in-
terpreters to be an irony, spoken in allusion to the devil's man-
ner of tempting Eve, ver. 5. ; but, from the latter part of the
words, this question seems to arise, " Whether Adam and Eve,
if they had tasted of the tree of life, after their transgression,
should have lived for ever?" Now it is very manifest, that by
the violation of God's command, they had justly incurred the
penalty, ' In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,'
that is, shalt surely become mortal : from whence it follows, that
whether they had, or had not eaten of the tree of life, they
were, the moment they fell, subject to the necessity of dying,
nor could the virtue of the tree, be what it would, preserve them
from the execution of the sentence ; and therefore these latter
words, ' And now, lest he put forth his hand and taste of the
tree of life, and live for ever,' are, in like manner, spoken sar-
castically, and as if God had said, " Lest the man should vainly
fancy in himself, that by eating of the tree of life, he shall be
enabled to live for ever, let us remove this conceit from him, by
removing him from this place, and for ever debarring him from
any hopes of coming at that tree again." — Estius on Diff. Pas-
sages.
Examples of God's speaking by way of sarcasm, or upbraid-
ing, are not uncommon in Scripture: but considering that, in
'the midst of judgment, he here thinketh upon mercy;' that be-
fore the sentence against our first parents, he promises them a
restoration, and after sentence passed, does nevertheless provide
them with clothing; some have thought, that the words, by
taking the original verb (see Gell's Essay) to signify the time
past, (as it may well enough do,) are rather an expression of
pity and compassion, and of the same import as if God had said,
" The man was once, like one of us, to know good and to pursue
it ; to know evil, and to avoid it ; (for that is the perfection of
moral knowledge;) but behold how he is now degenerated!
And therefore, lest *this degeneracy should continue upon him,
unci he become obdurate, the best way will be to seclude him
Irom the tree of life, by expelling him from paradise." But this
opinion seems to ascribe too much to the power of the tree, and
Is nut supported with authority equal to the former.
towards the east, where at first he created them ; and
that he might prevent their meditating a return, he
secured every passage leading to it with a guard of an-
gels, (some of which flying to and fro in the air, in bright
refulgent bodies, seemed to flash out fire on every side,
or to resemble the * vibrations of a flaming sword) that
thereby lie might deter them from any thoughts of ever
attempting a re-entrance, until he should think fit to de-
stroy, and utterly lay waste the beauty of the place. Thus
fell our first parents, and, from the happiest condition
that can be imagined, plunged themselves and their pos-
terity into a state of wretchedness and corruption : for,
as from one common root, * ' sin entered into the world,
and death by sin ; so death passed upon all men, foras-
much as all have siimed,' and been defiled by this original
pollution.
CHAP. II.
-Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
How long our first parents continued in their state of
innocence, and in the possession of the garden of Eden,
is not so well agreed. The account of their fall in the
series of history, follows immediately their introduction
into their blissful abode ; whereupon 2 most of the Jewish
doctors, and some of the Christian fathers, were of opi-
nion, that they preserved their integrity but a very short
while : that in the close of the same day wherein they
were made, they transgTessed the covenant, and were the
very same day cast out of paradise.* But we are to con-
sider, that many circumstances are omitted in the Scrip-
tures concerning the state of our first parents, and the
manner of their transgression ; that Moses makes mention
of nothing but what is conducive to his main design, which
is to give a brief account of the most remarkable trans-
actions that had happened from the beginning of the
world to his time ; and that there are sundry good reasons
which may induce us to believe, that the state of mans
innocence was of a longer duration than those, who are
for precipitating matters, are pleased to think it.
God indeed can do what he pleases in an instant ; but
1 Rom. v. 12. 2 Edward's Survey, vol. 1.
b What is meant by the flaming sword represented to be in
the hands of the cherubim, at the entrance of the garden of
paradise, is variously conjectured by learned men: but, of all
essays of this kind, that of Tertullian, who thought it was the
Torrid Zone, is the most unhappy. — Tertul. Jpol. ch. 47. The
words of Lactantius are {Divine Justice, b. ii. ch. 12.) Jpsam
paradisum it/ne circumvallavit, He encompassed paradise with
a wall of fire: from whence a learned man of our nation, pre-
tending that the original word signifies a dividing flame, as well
as a flaming sword, supposes, that this flame was an ascension
of some combustible matter round about the garden, which ex-
cluded all comers to it, till such time as the beauty of the place
was defaced. — Nicholls's Conference, vol. 1. Some Rabbins are
of opinion, that this flaming sword was an angel, founding their
sentiments on that passage in the Psalms, where it is said, that
'God maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming
fire,' Ps. civ. 4. And hereupon another learned man of our
nation has imagined, that this flaming sword (which was ac-
counted by the Jews a second angel) was of a different kind
from the cherubim, namely, a seraph, or flaming angel, in the
form of a flying fiery serpent, whose body vibrated in the air
with lustre, and may fitly be described by the image of such a
sword. — Tennison of Idolatry.
Sect. III.
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
29
A. M. 1. A. C. 4001 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
man necessarily requires a succession of time to transact
his affairs in ; and therefore when we read of Adam, in
the same day that he was created, (and that was not until
God had made every beast of the field,) x inquiring' into
the nature of every living creature, and imposing on them
proper names ; falling" into a deep sleep, and, with some
formality, (without doubt,) receiving- his wife from the
hand of God ; removing into the garden of paradise, and
(as we may well suppose) walking about, and taking some
survey of it ; receiving from God both a promise and
prohibition, and thereupon (as we may suppose again) 2
ratifying the first great covenant with him : when we read
of all these things, I say, we cannot but think, that some
time must be required for the doing of them ; and there-
fore to suppose, after this, 3 that in the close of the same
day, the woman wandered from her husband, met the
serpent, entered into a parley with him, was overcome
by his insinuations, did eat of the forbidden fruit, did
prevail with her husband to do the same, and thereupon
perceiving themselves naked, did instantly fall to work,
and make themselves aprons : to suppose, that in the
same evening God comes down, summons the criminals
before him,hears their excuses, decrees their punishments,
drives them out of paradise, and places two cherubim to
guard all avenues against their return ; this is crowding
too long a series of business into too short a compass of
time, and thereby giving an handle to infidelity, when
there is no manner of occasion for it.
We, who are not ignorant of Satan's devices, and how
ready he is to wait for a favourable occasion to address
his temptations to every mans humour and complexion,
can hardly suppose, * that he would have set upon the
woman immediately after the prohibition was given ; and
not rather have waited, until it was in some measure
forgot, and the happy opportunity of finding her alone
should chance to present itself ; but such an opportunity
could not well instantly have happened, because the love
and endearments between this couple, at first, we may
well imagine, was so tender and affecting, as not to ad-
mit of the least absence or sepiiration : nor must we forget
(what the history itself tells us) that they were so much
accustomed to 5 ' the voice of God walking in the garden
in the cool of the day,' as not to account it any new thing ;
and so well acquainted with the nature and plantation of
the garden, as to run directly to the darkest thickets
and umbrages, in order to hide themselves from his sight ;
which must have been the result of more than an hour or
two's experience. And therefore, (if we may be allowed
to follow others in their conjectures) 6 it was either on
the tenth day of the world's age, that our first parents
fell, and were expelled paradise, in memory of which
calamity, 7 ' the great day of expiation,' (which was the
tenth day of the year,) wherein • all were required to
afflict their souls,' was, in after ages, instituted ; or (as
others would rather have it) on the eighth day from their
creation : 8 that as the first week in the world ended with
the formation of man and woman, the second was proba-
bly concluded with their fatal seduction.
When man is said to have been made according to the
1 Bunted Philosophical Archesology.
* Bull's State of Man before the Fall.
Wicholls' Conference, vol. 1. * Patrick's Commentary.
'' C'un. mil. 10. " Usher's Annals.
Lev. xvi. 29. "Edward's Survey, vol. 1.
likeness and image of God, it cannot be supposed, but
that he was created in the full perfection of his nature ;
and yet 9 it must be remembered, that « no created being
can, in its own nature, be incapable of sin and default.
Its perfections, be they what they will, are finite, and
whatever has bounds set to its perfections, is, in this re-
spect, imperfect, that is, it wants those perfections which
a being of infinite perfections only can have ; and what-
ever wants any perfection, is certainly capable of mis-
carrying. And as every finite creature is capable of
default, so every rational being must necessarily have a
liberty of choice, that is, it must have a will to choose, as
well as an understanding to reason ; because a faculty
of understanding, without a will to determine it, if left to
itself, must always think of the same subject, or proceed
in a series and connexion of thoughts, without any end or
design, which will be a perpetual labour in vain, or a
thoughtfulness to no purpose. And as every rational be-
ing has a liberty of choice, so, to direct that choice, it
must of necessity have a prescribed rule of its actions.
God indeed, who is infinite in perfection, is a rule to
himself, and acts according to his own essence, from
whence it is impossible for him to vary ; but the most
perfect creatures must act by a rule, which is not essential
to them, but prescribed them by God, and is not so in-
trinsic in their natures, but that they may decline from
it ; for a free agent may follow, or not follow, the rule
prescribed him, or else he would not be free.
Now, in order to know how it comes to pass, that we
so frequently abuse our natural freedom, and transgress
the rules which God hath set us, we must remember, that
,0 the soul of man is seated in the midst, as it were, be-
tween those more excellent beings, which live perpetually
above, and with whom it partakes in the sublimity of its
nature and understanding, and those inferior terrestrial
beings with which it communicates, through the vital
union it has with the body ; and that, by reason of its
natural freedom, it is sometimes assimilated to the one,
and sometimes to the other of these extremes. We must
observe further, that, u in this compound nature of ours,
there are several powers and faculties, several inclina-
tions and dispositions, several passions and auctions,
differing in their nature and tendency, according as
they result from the soul or body ; that each of these has
its proper object, in a due application of which it is
9 Clarke's Inquiry into the Original of Moral Enl.
10 Stillingfeet's Sacred Origins.
11 Clarke of the Original of Moral Evil.
a God, though he be omnipotent, cannot make any created
being 'absolutely perfect;' for whatever is absolutely perfect,
must necessarily be self-existent: but it is included in tin' rery
notion of a creature, as such, not to exist of itself, but of God. An
absolutely perfect creature therefore implies a contradiction; for it
would lie of itself, and not of itself, at the same time. Absolute
perfection, therefore, is peculiar to God ; and should he communi-
eate hi- own peculiar perfect ion to another, that ether would be
God. Imperfection must, therefore, be tolerated in creatures,
notwithstanding the divine omnipotence and goodness; for con-
tradictions are no objects of power. God indeed might have
refrained from acting, and continued alone self-sufficient, and
perfect to all eternity; but infinite goodness would by no means
allow of this; and iherei'ore since it Obliged him to produce c ster-
nal things, which things could not possibly be perfect, it preferred
Hum' imperfect things to none at all; from whence it follows,
that imperfection arose from the infinity of divino goodness. —
King's Est ay on the Origin of Evil.
30
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A C. 4004 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CII. 3.
easy and satisfied ; that they are none of them sinful in
themselves, but may be instruments of much good, when
rightly applied, as well as occasion great mischief, by a
misapplication ; and therefore a considerable part of
virtue will consist in regulating them, and in keeping
our sensitive part subject to the rational. This is the
original constitution of our nature : and since our first
parents were endued with the same powers and faculties
of mind, and had the same dispositions and inclinations
of body, it cannot be, but that they must have been liable
to the same sort of temptations ; and consequently liable
to comply with the dictates of sense and appetite, contrary
to the direction of reason, or the precepts of Almighty
God. And to this cause the Scripture seems to ascribe the
commission of the first sin. when it tells us that ' the wo-
man saw the tree, that it was good for food, and pleasant
to the eye, and desirable to make one wise,' that is, it
had several qualities which were adapted to her natural
appetites ; was beautiful to the sight, and delightful to
the taste, and improving to the understanding ; which
both answered the desire of knowledge implanted in her
spiritual, and the love of sensual pleasure resulting from
her animal part ; and these heightened by the suggestions
of the tempter, abated the horrors of God's prohibition,
and induced her to act contrary to his express command.
God indeed all along foreknew that she would fall in
this inglorious manner ; but his foreknowledge did not
necessitate her falling, neither did his wisdom ever con-
ceive, that a fallen creature was worse than none at all. '
The divine nature, as it is in itself, is incomprehensible
by human understanding : and not only his nature, but
likewise his powers and faculties, and the ways and
methods in which he exercises them, are so far beyond
our reach, that we are utterly incapable of framing just
and adequate notions of them. We attribute to him the
faculties of wisdom, understanding, and foreknowledge ;
but at the same time, we cannot but be sensible, that
they are of a nature quite different from ours, and that
we have no direct and proper conceptions of them.
AVhen we indeed foresee or determine anything, wherein
there is no possible matter of obstruction, we suppose
the event certain and infallible ; and, were the foreknow-
ledge and predetermination of God of the same nature
with ours, we might be allowed to make the same con-
clusion : but why may not it be of such a perfection in
God, as is consistent both with the freedom of man's
will, and contingency of events ? ' As the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are his ways far above our
ways :' and therefore, though it be certain that he who
made Eve, and consequently knew all the springs and
weights, wherewith she was moved, could not but foresee,
how every possible object, that presented itself, would
determine her choice ; yet this he might do, without him-
self giving any bias or determination to it at all : 2 just as
the man, who sees the setting of the chimes, can tell,
several hours before, what tune they will play, without
any positive influence, either upon their setting or their
playing. So that Eve, when she was tempted, could not
say, ' I was tempted by God,' for God tempteth none :
neither had the divine prescience any influence over her
choice, but 3 ' by her own lust was she drawn away, and
1 Bishop King's Servian of Predestination.
Young 's Sermons, vol. 1. 3 James i. It, &c.
enticed ; and when lust had conceived, it brought forth
sin, and sin, when it was finished, brought forth death.'
That some command was proper to be laid upon man
in his state of innocence, is hardly to be denied. 4 De-
pendence is included in the very notion of a creature ,
and as it is man's greatest happiness to depend on God,
whose infinite Avisdom can contrive, and infinite power
can effect whatever he knows to be most expedient for him ;
so was it Adam's advantage to have a constant sense of
that dependence kept upon his mind, and (for that reason)
a sure and permanent memorial of it, placed before his
eyes, in such a manner, as might make it impossible for
him to forget it.
And as this dependence on God was Adam's greatest
happiness, so it seems necessary on God's part, and
highly comporting with his character of a creator, that
he should require of his creatures, in some acts of ho-
mage and obedience, (which homage and obedience must
necessarily imply some kind of restraint upon their na-
tural liberty) an acknowledgment and declaration of it.
And if some restraint of natural liberty was necessary in
Adam's case, what restraint could be more easy, than the
coercion of his appetite from the use of one tree, amidst
an infinite variety of others, no less delicious ; and at
the same time, what restraint more worthy the wisdom
and goodness of God, than the prohibition of a fruit,
which he knew would be pernicious to his creature ?
The prohibition of some enormous sin, or the injunc-
tion of some great rule of moral virtue, we perhaps
may account a properer test of man's obedience ; but if
we consider the nature of things, as they then stood, we
may find reason perhaps to alter our sentiments. 5 The
Mosaic tables are acknowledged by all to be a tolerable
good system, and to comprise all the general heads of
moral virtue ; and yet if we run over them, we shall find
that they contain nothing suitable to man in the condi-
tion wherein we are now considering- him.
Had God, for instance, forbidden the worship of false
gods, or the worship of graven images ; can we suppose,
that Adam and Eve, just come out of the hand of their
Maker, and visited every day with the light of his glorious
presence, could have even been guilty of these ? Be-
sides that, the worship of false gods and images was a
thing which came into the world several hundreds of
years afterwards, either to flatter living princes, or supply
the place of dead ones, who, the silly people fancied,
were become gods. Had he prohibited perjury and vain
swearing ; what possible place could these have had in the
infant and innocent state of mankind? Perjury was
never heard of till the world was better peopled, when
commerce and trade came in use, when courts of judica-
ture were settled, and men began to cheat one another,
and then deny it, and so forswear it : and oaths and
imprecations could never have a being in a state of in-
nocence : they borrow their original manifestly from the
sinfulness of human nature.
The like may be said of all the rest. How could
Adam and Eve have ' honoured their father and their
mother,' when they never had any ? AVhat possible temp-
tation could they have to be guilty of murder, when they
must have acted it upon their own flesh ? How could
4 Revelation Examined.
5 Nicholls's Conference, vol. 1. and Jenkins's Rcasonallc-
ness. vol. *l.
Sect. 1 1 1- J
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
31
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
other animal : that a it did not creep on the ground, but
they commit adulter} , when they were the only two upon
the face of the earth ? How be guilty of theft when they
were the sole proprietors of all ? How bear false witness
against their neighbour, or covet his goods, when there
was never a neighbour in the world for them to be so un-
just to ? And so (if we proceed to Christian precepts) how
could they love enemies, how could they forgive tres-
passes, when they had no one in the world to offend
against them ? And the duties of mortification and self-
denial, &c, how could they possibly exercise these, when
they had no lust to conquer, no passion to overcome, but
were all serene and calm within ?
Since, therefore, all the moral precepts, that we are
acquainted with, were improper for the trial of man's
obedience in his state of innocence ; it remains, that his
probation was most properly to be effected, by his doing
or forbearing some indifferent action, neither good nor
evil in itself, but only so far good or evil, as it was
commanded or forbidden. And if such a command was
to be chosen, what can we imagine so natural and agree-
able to the state of our first parents, (considering they
were to live all their lives in a garden) as the forbid-
ding them to eat of the fruit of a certain tree in that
garden, a tree hard at hand, and might every moment be
eaten of, and would therefore every moment give them
an opportunity of testifying their obedience to God by
their forbearing it ? a wise appointment this, had not the
great enemy of mankind come in and defeated it.
Who this great enemy of mankind was, and by what
method of insinuation he drew our first parents into
their defection, Moses, who contents himself with relating
facts as they happened outwardly, without any comment,
or exposition, of them, or who, by a metonymy in the
Hebrew tongue, uses the instrumental for the efficient
cause, tells us expressly, that it was the serpent ; and for
this reason, some of the ancient Jews ran into a fond
conceit, that ' this whole passage is to be understood of
a real serpent; which creature, 2 they suppose, before
the fall, to have had the faculty of speech and reason
both. But this is too gross a conception to have many
abettors ; and therefore the common, and indeed the
only probable opinion is, that it was the devil; some
wicked and malicious spirit (probably one of the chief
of that order) who envied the good of mankind, the
favours God had bestowed upon them, and the future
happiness he had ordained for them, and was thereupon
resolved to tempt them to disobedience, thereby to bring
them to the same forlorn condition with himself, and his
other apostate brethren ; and that, to effect his purpose,
he made use of a serpent's body, wherein to transact his
fraud and imposture.
Why the devil chose to assume the form of a serpent,
rather than that of any other creature, we may, in some
measure, learn from the character which the Scripture gives
us of it, namely, that ' it was more subtle than any beast
of the field, that the Lord God had made ;' where the
word ' subtle' may not so much denote the craft and insidi-
ousness, as the gentle, familiar, and insinuating nature of
this creature. 3 That the serpent, before the fall, was
mild and gentle, and more familiar with man, than any
1 Lc Clerc's Commentary and Essays.
" Josrphus, and several others.
3 Medc's Discourses.
went with its head and breast reared up, and advanced :
that by frequently approaching our first parents, and
playing and sporting before them, it had gained their
good liking and esteem, is not only the sentiment both
4 of Jews and 5 Christians, but what seems likewise to
have some foundation in Scripture ; for when God says,
' That he will put enmity between the serpent and the
woman, and between his seed and her seed,' the impli-
cation must be, that there was some sort of kindness and
intimacy between them before.
There is no absurdity then in supposing that this crea-
ture was beloved both by Adam and Eve. She especially
might be highly delighted, and used to play and divert
herself with it. B She laid it perhaps in her bosom,
adorned her neck with its windings, and made it a brace-
let for her arms. So that its being thus intimate with the
woman, made it the properer instrument for the devil's
purpose, who sliding himself into it, might wantonly play
before her, until he insensibly brought her to the forbid-
den tree : and then, twisting about its branches, might
take of the fruit, and eat, to show her, by experience,
that there was no deadly quality in it, before he began
his address ; and his speech might be the less frightful or
surprising to her, who, in the state of her innocence, not
knowing what fear was, might probably think (as he might
positively affirm) h that this new-acquired faculty pro-
ceeded from the virtue of the tree.
But there is another conjecture still more probable, if
we will not allow, that the serpent was not of a com-
mon ordinary species, but one very probably something
like that fiery flying sort, which, we are told, are bred in
Arabia and Egypt. "' They are of a shining yellowish
colour like brass, and by the motion of their wings and
vibration of their tails, reverberating the sunbeams, make
4 Josep/tus's Antiquities. b.\. 5 Basil, Horn, on Paradise.
6 Mede's Discourses.
7 Tennison or Idolatry ; Patrick's Commentary ; and Nicholis1
Conference, vol. 1.
a The beauty of the serpent, which the devil made choice of,
is thus described by Milton : —
So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed
In serpent, inmate bad ! and toward Eve
Address'd his way : not with indented wave.
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear,
Circular base of rising- folds, that tower'd,
Fold above fold, a surging maze ! his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant : pleasing was his shape,
And lovely.
b Eve, upon hearing the serpent speak, inquires by what means
it was, that it came by that faculty; and is told, that it "a-* by
eating of a certain tree in the garden.
I was at fir=t, as other beasts that graze
The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low
Till on a day, roving the field, 1 chanced
A goodly tree far distant to behold,
Laden with fruit of various colours, mix'd
Kuddy and gold .
To satisfy the sharp desire I had
Of tasting these fair apples, I resolved
Not to defer
Sated at length, ere long, I might perceive
Strange alteration in me, to degree
Of reason in my inward powers ; and speech
Wanted not long, though to this shape retained.
Thenceforth to speculation high or deep
I turn'd my thoughts, and with capacious mind
Considered all things visible in heaven,
Or earth, or middle.
32
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. fiKN. CH. 3.
[Book I.
a glorious appearance. Now, if the serpent, whose body
the devil abused, was of this kind (though perhaps of a
species far more glorious,) it was a very proper crea-
ture for him to make use of. For these serpents we
find called in Scripture seraphs, or seraphim, which gave
the name to those bright lofty angels, who were frequent-
ly employed by God to deliver his will to mankind, and,
coming- upon that errand, were wont to put on certain
splendid forms, some of the form of cherubim, that is,
beautiful flying- oxen, and others the shape of seraphim,
that is, winged and shining- serpents. Upon this hypo-
thesis, we may imagine farther, that the devil, observing
that good angels attended the divine presence, and
sometimes ministered to Adam and Eve in this bright ap-
pearance, usurped the organs of one of these shining- ser-
pents, which, by his art and skill in natural causes, he
might improve into such a wonderful brightness, iis to
represent to Eve the usual shechinah, or angelical appear-
ance, she was accustomed to ; and, under this disguise, she
might see him approach her without fear, and hear him talk
to her without surprise, and comply with his seduction
with less reluctancy ; as supposing- him to be an angel of
God's retinue, and now dispatched from heaven to instruct
her in some momentous point, as she had often perhaps
experienced before during her stay in paradise.
A ' learned Jew has expounded this transaction in a
new and uncommon way. He supposes that the serpent
did not speak at all, nor did Eve say any tiling to it ;
but that, being a very nimble and active creature, it got
upon the tree of knowledge, took of the fruit and eat it;
and th.it Eve, having seen it several times do so, and not
die, concluded with herself that the tree was not of such
a destructive quality as was pretended ; that as it gave
speech and reason to the serpent, it would much more
improve and advance her nature ; and was thereupon
emboldened to eat.
This opinion is very plausible, and, in some degree,
founded on Scripture : for though the woman might per-
ceive by her senses, that the fruit was pleasant to the eye,
yet it was impossible she could know, either that it was
good for food, or desirable to make one wise, any other
May than by the example and experiment of the serpent,
which merely by eating of that fruit, (as she thought,)
was changed from a brute into a rational and vocal crea-
ture. This, I say, is a pretty plausible solution ; and
yet it cannot be denied, but that the text seems to ex-
press something more, and that there was a real dialogue
between the woman and the serpent, wherein the serpent
had the advantage. And therefore (to persist in our
former exposition) it is not improbable, that the tempter,
before ever he accosted Eve, transformed himself into
the likeness of an angel of light, and prefacing his speech
with some short congratulations of her happiness, might
proceed to insnare her with some such cunning harangue
as this :
" And can it possibly be that so good a God, who has
so lately been so bountiful to you, as to give you such
an excellent being, and invest you with power and do-
minion over all the rest of his creatures, should now envy
you any of the innocent pleasures of nature ? Has he
indeed denied you the use of the tree of knowledge ?
But why did he plant it at all ? Why did he adorn it
1 Isaac Aierbenel.
with such beautiful fruit ? Why did he place it on an
eminence in the garden, for you to behold daily, unless
he is minded to tantalize you ? The true design, both of
the prohibition and penalty which you relate, is to keep
you in ignorance, and thereby oblige you to live in per-
petual dependence on him. He knows full well, that
the virtue of this tree is to illuminate the understanding,
and thereby to enable you to judge for yourselves, without
having recourse to him upon every occasion. 2 To j udge
for himself is the very privilege that makes him God ;
and for that reason he keeps it to himself : but eat but
of this tree, and ye shall be like him ; your beings shall
be in your own hands, and your happiness vast and in-
conceivable, and independent on any other.1 What e fleet
it has had on me, you cannot but see and hear, since it
has enabled me to reason and discourse in this wise ; and,
instead of death, has given a new kind of life to my whole
frame. And, if it has done this to a brute animal, what
may not creatures of your refined make, and excellent
perfections, expect from it ? Why should you shrink
back, or be afraid to do it then ? You have here an
opportunity of making yourselves, for ever ; and the tres-
pass is nothing-. What harm in eating an apple ? Why
this tree of knowledge more sacred than all the rest ?
Can so gTeat a punishment as death be proportionate to
so small a fault ? I come to assure you that it is not ;
that God has reversed his decree, and eat you what you
will, ye surely shall not die."
3 Thus the serpent suggested to Eve, that God had im-
posed upon her, and she was willing to discover whether
he had or no. Curiosity, and a desire of independency,
to know more, and to be entire master of herself, were
the affections which the tempter promised to gTatify ; and
an argument like this has seldom failed ever since to
corrupt the generality of mankind : insomuch that few,
very few, have been able to resist the force of this temp-
tation, especially when it comes (as it did to Eve) clothed
with all the outward advantage of allurement. For
whoever knows the humour of youth, and how he himself
was affected at that time, cannot but be sensible, that as
the fairness of the fruit, its seeming fitness for food, the
desire of being independent, and under her own manage-
ment and government, were inducements that prevailed
with our first parents to throw oft' the conduct of God :
so this curiosity of trying the pleasures of sense, this
itch of being our own masters, and choosing for ourselves,
together with the charming face of sin, and our ignorance
and inexperience of the consequences of it, .are gene-
rally the first means of our being corrupted against the
good maxims and principles we received from our pa-
rents and teachers.
It is in the essential constitution of man, (as we said
before,) that he should be a free agent; and if we con-
sider him now as in a state of probation, we shall soon
perceive, that God could not lay any restraint upon him,
nor communicate any assistance to him, but what was
consistent with the nature he had given him, and the state
he had placed him in. God created man a free agent, 4
that he might make the system of the universe perfect,
and supply that vast opening which must otherwise have
* Bishop King's Discourse on the Fall, at the end of his Ori
gin of Evil.
s Bishop King's Sermon on the Fall.
* Bishop King's Essay on the Origin of Evil.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
33
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
happened between heaven and earth, had he not inter-
posed some other creature (endued with rationality, mas-
ter of his own elections, and consequently capable of
serving him voluntarily and freely) between angels and
brutes. In the very act of creating him, therefore, God
intended that he should be rational, and determined, as it
were by a law, that he should be free ; and having en-
grafted this in his make, it would have been a violation
of his own laws, and infraction on his own work, to have
interposed, and hindered the use of that faculty, which
by the law of nature, he had established. We do not
expect, that the situation of the earth, or the course of
the sun should be altered on our account, because these
seem to be things of great importance ; and we appre-
hend it unreasonable, that for our private advantage, the
order and harmony of things should be changed, to the
detriment of so many other beings. But to alter the will,
to stop the election, is no less a violation of the laws of
nature, than to interrupt the course of the sun, because a
free agent is a more noble being than the sun. The laws
of its nature are to be esteemed more sacred, and cannot
be changed without a great miracle : there would then
be a kind of shock and violence done to nature, if God
should interfere, and hinder the actions of free-will ; and
perhaps it would prove no less pernicious to the intel-
lectual system, than the sun's standing still would be to
the natural.
To apply these reflections to the matter now before
us. Had God, to prevent man's sin, taken away the
liberty of his will, he had thereby destroyed the founda-
tion of all virtue, and the very nature of man himself.
For virtue would not have been such, had there been no
possibility of acting contrary, and man's nature woidd
have been divine, had it been made impeccable. Had
God given our first parents then such powerful influences
of his Holy Spirit, as to have made it impossible for them
to sin, or had he sent a guard of angels, to watch and attend
them so as to hinder the devil from proposing any temp-
tation, or them from hearkening to any ; had he, I say,
supernaturally overruled the organs of their bodies, or
the inward inclinations of their minds, upon the least
tendency to evil ; in this case he had governed them, not
as free, but as necessary agents, and put it out of his
own power to have made any trial of them at all. All
therefore that he could do, and all that in reason might
be expected from him to do, was to give them such a
sufficient measure of power and assistance, as might en-
able them to be a match for the strongest temptation ;
and this, there is no question to be made, but that he
did do.
1 We, indeed, in this degenerate state of ovirs, find a
great deal of difficulty to encounter with temptations.
We find a great blindness in our understandings, and a
crookedness in our wills. We have passions, on some
occasions, strong and ungovernable ; and oftentimes ex-
perience an inclination to do evil, even before the temp-
tation comes : but our first parents, in their primitive
rectitude, stood possessed of every thing as advantage-
ous the other way. They had an understanding large
and capacious, and fully illuminated by the Divine
Spirit. Their will was naturally inclined to the supreme
good, and could not, without violence to its nature,
' Nicholas Conference, vol. 1.
make choice of any other. Their passions were sedate,
and subordinate to their reason ; and, when any difficul-
ties did arise, they had God at all times to have recourse
to : by which means it came to pass, that it was as hard
for them to sin, as it is difficult for us to abstain from
sinning; as easy for them to elude temptations then, as
it is natural for us to be led away by temptations now.
And therefore, if, notwithstanding- all these mighty ad-
vantages towards a state of impeccancy, they made it
their option to transgress, their perverseness only is to
be blamed, and not any want of sufficient assistance
from their bounteous Creator.
Great indeed is the disorder which their transgression
has brought upon human nature ; but there will be no
reason to impeach the goodness of God for it, if we take
but in this one consideration, That what he thought not
fit to prevent by his almighty power, he has, neverthe-
less, thought fit to repair by the covenant of mercy in
his Son Jesus Christ. By him he has propounded the
same reward, everlasting life after death, which we
should have had, without death, before ; and has given
us a better establishment for our virtue now, than we
could have had, had we not been sufferers by this first
transgression.
For let us suppose, 2 that, notwithstanding our first
parents had sinned, yet God had been willing that ori-
ginal righteousness should have equally descended upon
their posterity ; yet we must allow, that any one of their
posterity might have been foiled by the wiles of the
tempter, and fallen, as well as they did. Now had
they so fallen, (the covenant of grace being not yet
founded,) how could they ever have recovered them-
selves to any degree of acceptance with God ? Their
case must have been the same, as desperate, as forlorn,
as that of fallen angels was before : whereas, in the pre-
sent state of things, our condition is much safer. Sin
indeed, by reason of our present infirmity, may more
easily make its breaches upon us, either through ignor-
ance or surprise ; but it cannot get dominion over us,
without our own deliberate option, because it is an express
gospel promise against the power of sin, that 3it ' shall
not have dominion over us ;' against the power of the
devil, that * ' greater is he that is in you, than he that is
in the world ;' against the power of temptations, that *
' God is faithful, who will not suffer us to be tempted
above what we are able ;' against discouragement from
the presence of our infirmities, that 6 ' we may do all
through Christ that strengthens us ;' and, in case of fail-
ing, that 7 ' we have an advocate with the Father, and a
propitiation for our sins.' Thus plentifully did God
provide for man's stability in that state of integrity, thus
graciously for his restoration, in this state of infirmity.
In both cases, his goodness has been conspicuous, and
has never failed !
In like manner, (to absolve the divine nature from
any imputation of passion or peevishness, of injustice
or hard usage, in cursing the serpent and the earth ; in
driving our lapsed parents out of paradise, and in en-
tailing their guilt and punishment upon the latest pos-
terity,) we should do well to remember, that the serpent,
against which the first sentence is denounced, is to be
8 Young's Sermons.
5 1 Cor. x. 13.
3 Rom. vi. 14.
'.Phil. iv. 13.
1 John iv. 4.
I John ii. 1.
34
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C.4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
considered here in a double capacity ; both as an ani-
mal, whose organs the devil employed in the seduction
of the woman ; and as the devil himself, lying hid and
concealed under the figure of the serpent : for the sen-
tence, we may observe, is plainly directed to an intelli-
gent being and free agent, who had committed a crime
Avhich a brute could not be capable of.
Now if we consider what a glorious creature the ser-
pent was before the fall, we cannot but suppose that
God intended this debasement of it, 1 not so much to ex-
press his indignation against it, (for it had no bad in-
tention, neither was it conscious of what the devil did
with its body,) as to make it a monument of man's apos-
tasy, a testimony of his displeasure against sin, and an
instructive emblem to deter all future ages from the
commission of that which brought such vengeance along
with it. In the Levitical law we find, that if a man
committed any abomination with a beast, 2 the beast was
to be slain as well as the man ; and, by parity of reason,
the serpent is here punished, if not to humble the pride,
and allay the triumph of the devil, by seeing the instrument
of his success so shamefully degraded, at least to remind
the delinquents themselves of the foulness of their crime,
and the necessity of their repentance, whenever they
chanced to behold so noble a creature as the serpent
was, reduced to so vile and abject a condition, merely
for being the means of their transgression.
But God might have a farther design in this degrada-
tion of the serpent : he foresaw, that in future ages,
Satan would take pride in abusing this very creature to
the like pernicious purposes, and, under the semblance
of serpents of all kinds, would endeavour to establish
the vilest idolatry, even the idolatry of his own hellish
worship. That therefore the beauty of the creature might
be no provocation to such idolatry, it was a kind and
beneficent act in God to deface the excellence of the ser-
pent's shape, and, at the same time, inspire mankind with
the strongest horror and aversion to it. Nor can it be de-
nied, but that, 3 if we suppose the devil possessed the
serpent, and was, as it were, incarnate in it, the power
of God could unite them as closely as our souls and
bodies are united, and thereby cause the punishment
inflicted on the literal serpent to affect Satan as sensi-
bly as the injuries done our bodies do reach our souls ;
at least, while that very serpent was in being.
To consider Satan then under the form of a serpent,
Ave shall see the propriety of the other part of the sen-
tence denounced against him, and what comfort and
consolation our criminal parents might reasonably col-
lect from thence. That this part of the sentence, ' I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed : it shall bruise thy head, and thou
shalt bruise his heel,' '{is not to be understood in a lit-
eral sense, (because such sense is absurd and ridiculous,)
every reader of competent understanding must own :
1 Patrick's Commentary; and Mede's Discourses.
8 Lev. xx. 15. 3 Bishop King's Sermon on the Fall,
a Gen. iii. 15. ' It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
his heel.' The following traditions of the promised Messiah are
remarkable for their coincidence with the first promise ; and
must have had a higher origin than unassisted human invention.
In the Gothic mythology, Thor is represented as the first-born
of the supreme God , and is styled in the Edda, the eldest of sons ;
he was esteemed a "middle divinity, a mediator between God
and man." With regard to his actions, he is said to have
and therefore its meaning must be such as will best
agree with the circumstances of the transaction. Now
the transaction was thus. Adam, tempted by his
wife, and she by the serpent, had fallen from their obed-
ience, and were now in the presence of God expecting
judgment. 4 They knew full well, at that juncture,
that their fall was the victory of the serpent, whom by
experience, they found to be an enemy to God and
man : to man, whom he had ruined by seducing him to
sin ; and to God the noble work of whose creation he
had defaced. It could not therefore but be some com-
fort to them, to hear the serpent first condemned, and
to see that, however he had prevailed against them, he
had gained no victory over their Maker, who was able
to assert his own honour, and to punish this great author
of iniquity. Nor was it less a consolation to them to
hear from the mouth of God likewise, that the serpent's
victory was not a complete victory over even themselves ;
that they and their posterity should be able to contest
his empire ; and though they were to suffer much in the
struggle, yet finally they should prevail, bruise the ser-
pent's head, and deliver themselves from his power and
dominion over them.
This certainly is the lowest sense wherein our first
parents could have understood this part of the sentence
4 Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy.
wrestled with death, and, in the struggle, to have been brought
upon cme knee, to have ' bruised the head' of the great serpent
with his mace ; and in his final engagement with that monster
to have beat him to the earth, and slain him. This victory,
however, is not obtained but at the expense of his own life : " Re-
ceding back nine steps, he falls dead upon the spot, suffocated
with the floods of- venom, which the serpent vomits forth upon
him." {Edda, Fab. 11. 25. 27. 32.) Much the same notion,
we are informed, is prevalent in the mythology of the Hindoos.
Two sculptured figures are yet extant in one of their oldest pa-
godas, the former of which represents Chreeshna, an incarnation
of their mediatorial god Vishnu, trampling on the crushed head
of the serpent: while in the latter it is seen encircling the deity
in its folds, and biting his heel. {Mannie's History of Hindostan,
vol. ii. p. 290.) It is said that Zeradusht, or Zoroaster, predict-
ed in the Zendavesta, that in the latter days would appear a
man called Oshanderbeghti, who was destined to bless the earth
by the introduction of justice and religion ; that, in his time,
would likewise appear a malignant demon, who would oppose
his plans, and trouble his empire, for the space of twenty years ;
that afterwards, Osiderbegha would revive the practice of jus-
tice, put an end to injuries, and re-establish such customs as are
immutable in their nature: that kings should be obedient to him,
and advance his affairs ; that the cause of true religion should
flourish; that peace and tranquillity should prevail, and discord
and trouble cease. {Hyde on the Religion of the Ancient Persians,
c. 31.) According to Abulpharagius, the Persian legislator wrote of
the advent of the Messiah in terms even more express than those
contained in the foregoing prediction. " Zeradusht," says he,
" the preceptor of the Magi, taught the Persians concerning the
manifestation of Christ, and ordered them to bring gifts to him,
in token of their reverence and submission. He declared, that in
the latter days a pure virgin would conceive ; and that as soon
as the child was born, a star would appear, blazing even at noon-
day with undiminished lustre. " You, my sons," exclaims the
venerable seer, " will perceive its rising, before any other nation.
As soon, therefore, as you shall behold the star, follow it whither-
soever it shall lead you, and adore that mysterious child, ollering
your gifts to him with the profoundest humility. He is the
almighty Word, which created the heavens." (Cited by Hyde on
the Religion of the Ancient Persians, c. 31 .)
On the subject of the antipathy between serpents and the hu-
man race, see Mede's Works, b. i. disc. 39, p. 295. Franz
History of Animals, part iv. c. 1. Topsel's History of Serpents
p. C04.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
35
A. M. I. A. C. 4001 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
denounced against the serpent ; and yet this very sense
was enough to revive in them comfortable hopes of a
speedy restoration. For when Adam heard that the
seed of the woman was to destroy the evil spirit, he un-
doubtedly understood Eve to be that woman, and some
issue of his by her to be that seed ; and accordingly we
may observe, that when Eve was delivered of Cain, the
form of her exultation is, 1 ' I have gotten a man from
the Lord,' that is, I have gotten a man through the sig-
nal favour and mercy of God. 2 Now this extraordinary
exultation cannot be supposed to arise from the bare
privilege of bearing issue, for that privilege (as she
could not but know before this time) she had in common
with the meanest brutes ; and therefore her transport
must arise from the prospect of some extraordinary ad-
vantage from this issue, and that could be no other than
the destruction of her enemy.
Cain indeed proved a wicked man ; but when she had
conceived better expectations from Abel, and Cain had
slain him, she, nevertheless, recovered her hopes upon
the birth of Seth ; because 3God, saith she, ' hath ap-
pointed me another seed,' or one who will destroy the
power of Satan, instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
Thus we see, that the obscurity in which it pleased God
to foretell the destruction of the evil spirit, gave rise to
a succession of happy hopes in the breast of Adam and
Eve ; who (if they had known that this happiness was to
be postponed for four thousand years) would, in all pro-
bability, have inevitably fallen into an extremity of
despair.
But how necessary soever God might think it, to give
our first parents, some general hopes and expectations
of a restoration ; yet, being now fallen into a state of
sin and corruption, which must of course infect their
latest posterity, he found it expedient to deprive them
of that privilege of immortality, wherewith he had in-
vested them, and (as an act of justice and mercy both)
to turn them out of paradise, and debar them from the
tree of life : of justice, in that they had forfeited their
right to immortality, by transgressing a command,
which nothing but a vain, criminal curiosity could make
tiem disobey ; and of mercy, in that, when sin had en-
tailed all kinds of calamity upon human nature, in such
circumstances, to have perpetuated life, would have
been to perpetuate misery.
This, I think, can hardly be accounted the effect of
passion or peevishness : and, in like manner, God's
cursing the ground, or (what is all one) his depriving it
of its original fruitfulness, by a different turn given to
the air, elements, and seasons, was not the effect of
anger, or any hasty passion, (which God is not capable
of,) but of calm and equitable justice ; since it was man
(who had done enough to incur the divine displeasure)
that was to suffer by the curse, and not the ground itself :
for the ground felt no harm by ' bringing forth thorns
and thistles,' but Adam, who for some time had exper-
ienced the spontaneous fertility of paradise, was a suf-
ficient sufferer by the change, when he found himself
reduced to hard labour, and forced ' to eat his bread by
the sweat of his brows.'
It must be acknowledged therefore, 4 that there was
Gen. ir. I. 2 Revelation Examined, vol. 1. "Gen. iv. 25.
Revelatijn E.va mined.
good reason, why the penalty of the first transgression
should be greater than any subsequent one ; because it
was designed to deter posterity, and to let them see, by
this example, that whatever commination God denounces
against guilt will most infallibly be executed. We
mistake, however, the nature of God's laws, and do in
eflect renounce his authority, when we suppose, that
good and evil are in the nature of things only, and not
in the commandments and prohibitions of God. 5 What-
ever God is pleased to command or forbid, how indif-
ferent soever it be in itself, is for that very reason, so
far as it is commanded or forbidden by him, as truly
good or evil, as if it were absolutely and morally so,
being enacted by the same divine authority, which makes
all moral precepts obligatory. God, in short, is our
lawgiver, and whatever he commands, whether it be a
moral precept or positive injunction, so far as he enacts
it, is of the same necessary and indispensable obliga-
tion. Upon this it follows, that all sin is a transgres-
sion of the law, and a contempt of God's authority : but
then the aggravations of a sin do arise from the measure
of its guilt, and the parties' advantages to have avoided
it; under which consideration, nothing can be more
heinous than the sin of our first parents. It was not
only a bare disobedience to God's conmiand, by a per-
fect infidelity to his promises and threats ; it was a sort
of idolatry in believing the devil, and putting a greater
trust in him, than in God. It was an horrible pride in
them to desire to be like God, and such a diabolical
pride, as made the evil angels fall from heaven. Covet-
ousness, and a greedy theft it was, to desire and pur-
loin, what was none of his own ; and one of the most
cruel and unparalleled murders that ever was committed,
to kill and destroy so many thousands of their offspring.
6 Add to this, that it was a disobedience against God,
an infinite being, and of infinite dignity ; a God, who
had given them existence, and that so very lately, that
the impresses of it could not be worn out of their me-
mory ; that had bestowed so much happiness upon them,
more than on all the creation besides ; that had made
them lords over all, and restrained nothing from them,
but only the fruit of this one tree. Add again, that they
committed this sin, against the clearest conviction of
conscience, with minds fully illuminated by the divine
Spirit, with all possible assistance of grace to keep
them from it, and no untoward bent of nature, or unruly
passion to provoke them to it : ami, putting all this
together, it will appear, that this was a sin of the deep-
est dye, and that no man, now-a-days, can possibly
commit a crime of such a complicated nature, and at-
tended with such horrid aggravations.
It is the opinion of some, 7 that the fruit of the for-
bidden tree might be impregnated with some fermenting
juice, which put the blood and spirits into a great dis-
order, and thereby divested the soul of that power and
dominion it had before over the body ; which, by its
operation, clouded the intellect, and depraved the will,
and reduced every faculty of the mind to a miserable
depravity, which, along with human nature, has been
propagated down to posterity : 7 as some poisons (we
6 Jenkins's Reasonableness, vol. 2.
b Nit-hulls' s Conference) vol. i.
' Jenkins's Reasonableness, vol. 2.
36
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A C. 4004 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
know) will strangely affect the nerves and spirits, with-
out causing immediate death ; and 1 as the Indians (we
are told) are acquainted with a juice which will immed-
iately turn the person who drinks it into an idiot, and
yet leave him, at the same time, the enjoyment of his
nealth and all the powers and faculties of his body.
But whatever the effect of the fruit might be, and whe-
ther the corruption of our nature and death, (with all
the train of evils, which have descended to us,) lay in
the tree, or in the will of God, there is no question to
be made, but that our wise Creator might very justly
decree, that human nature in general should be affected
with it, and our happiness or unhappiness depend upon
the obedience or disobedience of our first parents. We
daily see, that children very often inherit the diseases
of their parents, and that a vicious and extravagant
father leaves commonly his son heir to nothing else but
the name and shadow of a great family, with an infirm
and sickly constitution. And if men generally now
partake of the bad habits and dispositions of their im-
mediate parents, why might not the corruption of hu-
man nature, in the first, have equally descended upon
all the rest of mankind ? 2 The rebellion of a parent,
in all civil governments, reduces his children to poverty
and disgrace, who had a title before to riches and hon-
ours ; and for the same reason, why might not Adam
forfeit for himself, and all his descendants, the gift of
immortality, and the promise of eternal life ? God
might certainly bestow his own favours upon his own
terms : and therefore, since the condition was obedience,
he might justly inflict death, that is, withhold immor-
tality from us ; and he might justly deny us heaven (for
the promise of heaven was an act of his free bounty)
upon the transgression and disobedience of our first
parents. We were in their loins, and from thence our
infection came : they were our representatives, and in
them we fell : but then, amidst all this scene of calamity,
we have one comfortable, one saving prospect to revive
us, namely, that 3 ' Adam was the figure of him that was
to come ; and therefore, as by the offence of one, judg-
ment came upon all mankind to condemnation, even so
by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all
men rnito justification of life.1
This is the account we have of the fall : and though
we pretend not to deny, that in some places there are
figurative expressions in it, as best comporting with the
nature of ancient prophecy, and the oriental manner of
writing ; yet this can be no argument, why we should
immediately run to an allegorical interpretation of the
whole.
That not only the poets, but some of the greatest
philosophers likewise, had a strange affectation for such
figurative documents, in order to conceal their true no-
tions from the vulgar, and to keep their learning within
the bounds of their own schools, we pretend not to deny :
and yet, since it is apparent, that Moses could have no
such design ; 4 since he had no reason to fear any other
philosophers setting up against him, or, running away
with his notions ; since he affects no other character,
1 Revelation Examined, vol. 1.
* Jenkins s Reasonableness, vol. 2.
1 Rom. v. 14, 18.
• Nicholis's Conference, vol. 1.
but that of a plain historian, and pretends to relate
matters just as they happened, without any disguise or
embellishment of art; since he orders his books (which
he endeavours to suit to the vulgar capacity) to be
' read in the ears of all the people,' and commands
' parents to teach them to their children ;' it cannot be
supposed, but that the history of the fall as well as the
rest of the book of Genesis, is to be taken in a literal
sense. All the rest of the book is allowed to be literal,
and why should this part of it only be a piece of Egyp-
tian hieroglyphic ? Fable and allegory, we know, are
directly opposite to history : the one pretends to deliver
truth, undisguised, the other to deliver truth indeed, but
under the veil and cover of fiction ; so that, if this book of
Moses be allowed to be historical, we may as well say, that
what Thucydides relates of the plague of Athens, or Livy
of the battle of Canna?, is to be understood allegorically,
as that what Moses tells us of the prohibition of the fruit
of the tree of knowledge, or of Adam and Eve's expul-
sion from the garden of paradise for breaking it, is to be
interpreted in a mystical sense.
Nay, we will put the case, that it were consistent with
the character of Moses to have amused the people with
fables and allegories ; 5 yet we can hardly believe, but
that the people retained some tradition among them
concerning the formation of our first parents, and the
manner of their defection. This they might easily have
had from their illustrious ancestor Abraham, who might
have deduced it from Noah, and thence, in a few suc-
cessions, from Adam himself : and if there was any such
tradition preserved among them, Moses must necessarily
have lost all his credit and authority, had he pretended
to foist in a tale of his own invention, instead of a true
narration. For the short question is, 6 Did the
children of Israel know the historical truth of the fall,
or did they not ? If they did know it, why should Mo-
ses disguise it under an allegory, rather than any of the
rest of the book of Genesis ? If they did not know it,
how came it to be forgotten in so few generations of
men, supposing it had ever been known to Adam's pos-
terity ? If Adam's posterity never rightly knew it, but
had the relation thereof always conveyed down in meta-
phor and allegory, then must Adam, in the first place,
impose upon his sons, and they upon succeeding gen-
erations ; but for what reason we cannot conceive, unless
that the most remarkable event that ever befell mankind
(except the redemption of the world by Christ) so came
to pass, that it was impossible to tell it to posterity any
other way than in allegory.
It can scarce be imagined, but that some of the ancient
writers of the Jewish church, as well as the inspired
writers of the New Testament, had as true a knowledge
of these distant traditions, as any modern espouser of
allegories can pretend to ; and therefore, 7 when we read
in the book of Wisdom, that 8 ' God created man to be
immortal, and made him to be the image of his own
eternity;' but that, ' through the envy of the devil, death
came into the world:' when the son of Sirach tells us,
that 9God,' at the first, ' filled man with the knowledge
5 Moses Vindicated. 6 Jenkins's Reasonableness, vol. 2.
7 See Bishop Sherlock's Dissertation 2. annexed to his Use
and Intent of Prophecy.
8 Wisrl. ii. 23, 24. 9 Ecclus. xvii. 7.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
37
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
of understanding, and, shewed him good and evil,' but
1 that ' error and darkness had their beginning, together
with sinners ;' that 2 ' death is the sentence of the Lord
over all flesh ;' 3 that ' the covenant, from the beginning,
was, Thou shalt die the death;' and that 4'of woman
came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die:'
when we read, and compare all these passages together, I
say, can there be any reasonable foundation to doubt in
Ahat sense the ancient Jewish church understood the
history of the fall ?
Nay more. When not only we find the wicked, and
the enemies of God represented under the image 5 of a
' serpent,' of a ' dragon,' of a ' leviathan, the crooked
serpent,' &c; and the prophet telling us expressly, that
6 ' dust shall be the serpent's meat ;' but our blessed Sa-
vio ur likewise declaring, that 7 ' the devil was a murderer
from the beginning, a liar, and a father of lies ;' St Paul
asserting, that 8the ' woman being deceived, was first in
the transgression,' and that "the 'serpent beguiled her
tlirough his subtilty;' and St John, in his Revelation,
10 calling that wicked and malicious spirit, the devil, or
the dragon, Satan, or the old serpent, indifferently ; we
cannot but perceive, that these passages are not only
plain references to the first deception of mankind under
the form of that creature, but that they virtually comprise
the sum and substance of the Mosaic account. u So that,
if we have any regard either to the tradition of the Jewish
church, or the testimony of Christ and his apostles, we
cannot but believe, that the history of man's fall, and the
consequences thereupon, were really such as Moses has
represented them.
And to confirm us in this belief, we may observe far-
ther, that the tradition of almost every nation is con-
formable to his relation of things : 12 That not only the
state of man's innocence, in all probability, gave rise to
the poet's fiction of the golden age ; but that the story
of Adam and Eve, of the tree, and of the serpent, was
extant among the Indians long ago, and (as travellers
tell us) is still preserved among the Brachmans, and
the inhabitants of Peru : l3 That, in the old Greek mys-
teries, the people used to carry about a serpent, and
were instructed to cry Eva, whereby the devil seemed to
exult, as it were, over the unhappy fall of our first
mother ; and that 14 in his worship in idolatrous nations,
even now, there are frequent instances of his displaying
this his conquest under the figure of a serpent : strong
evidences of the truth of the Mosaic account ! to say no-
thing of the rationale which it gives us of our innate
' pudor circa res venereas,' of the pains of childbirth,
of the present sterility of the earth, of the slowness of
children's education, of their imbecility above all other
creatures, of the woman's subjection to her husband, of
our natural antipathy to viperous animals, and (what
hath puzzled the wisest of the heathen sages to discover)
of the depravation of our wills, and our strong propen-
sity to what is evil.
1 Ecclus. xi. 7. » Ecclus. xli. 3. 3 Ecclus. xiv. 17.
4 Ecclus. xxv. 24. 5 Isa. xiv. 29. xxvii. 1. Mi can vii. 17.
6 Isa. lxv. 25. ' John viii. 44. 8 1 Tim. ii. 14.
9 2 Cor. xi. 3. 10 Rev. xii. 9., xx. 2.
11 Moses Vindicated. '* Grotius on Truth.
13 Nicho/ls's Conference, vol. 1.
14 See Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, vol. 1.
This origin of evil is a question which none of them
could resolve. They saw the effect, but were ignorant
of the cause ; and therefore their conjectures were absurd.
15 Some of them laid the whole blame on matter, as if its
union with the mind gave it a pernicious tincture. Others
imagined a pre-existent state, and that the bad inclina-
tions which exerted themselves in this world were first of
all contracted in another. 16 Several established two
principles, the one the author of all the good, and the
other the author of all the evil (whether natural or moral)
that is found in human nature : and, in prejudice to this
absurdity, many betook themselves to atheism, and
denied any first principle at all ; accounting it better to
have no God in the world, than such an unaccoimtable
mixture of good and evil. But now, had but these wise
men had the advantage of reading the Mosaic account,
they would never have taken up with such wild hypothe-
ses, but immediately concluded with our Saviour's argu-
ment, that 17 ' a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good
fruit;' because the explication of the rise of sin, by an
original lapse, is not only freed from these absurdities
wherewith other explications abound, but, according to
the sense which the author of the Book of Wisdom has
of it, sets the goodness of God in the creation of the
world in its proper light ; namely, that 13 ' God made not
death, neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the
living-. He created all things, that they might have
their being, and the generations of the world were health-
ful. There was no poison of destruction in them, nor
the kingdom of death upon the earth, until that ungodly
men called it to them ; 19 and so error and darkness had
their beginning together with simiers.
CHAP. III.— Ok the Sentiments entertained by the
Ancients concerning the Origin of Moral Evil.
(supplemental bt the eoitor.)
The opinions which were entertained by the ancients
concerning the origin of moral evil were various.
The operation of some injurious principle vitiating
the nature of man, and perverting his moral views, could
not be disputed ; and the influence of a malignant power
seemed even to have introduced disorder in the original
appointments of Providence, and to have counteracted
the beneficial tendency of his ordinances.
Popular convictions everywhere prevailed touching
the existence of some beings of the higher order, who
had revolted from the heavenly power which presided
over the universe. It is probable that these convictions
were originally founded on the circumstances referred
to in Scripture with respect to Satan and his angels, as
powerful but malevolent beings, who having first seduced
Adam from his obedience, incessantly labour to deceive,
corrupt, and destroy his descendants. The notion of
the Magi of Plutarch, and of the Manicheans, concern-
ing two independent principles, acting in opposition to
each other, was also founded on the real circumstances
'b Nit-hoik' s Conference, vol. 1.
,G Bishop King on the Origin of Evil. " Mat. vii. IS.
" Wis. i. 13, &c. '• Ecclus. xi. 16.
38
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
of the apostasy of angels, and of their interference and
influence in the affairs of men.
The original temptation, by which they drew our first
parents from their duty, and led them to transgress the
only prohibition which God had imposed, is described
in the first pages of Scripture ; and it is repeated under
much disguise, in many fables of classical mythology.
Origen considers the allegorical relations furnished
by Plato, with respect to Porus tempted by Penia to sin
when intoxicated in the garden of Jove, as a disfigured
history of the fall of man in paradise. It seems to have
been blended with the story of Lot and his daughters.
Plato might have acquired, in Egypt, the knowledge of
the original circumstances of the fall, and have pro-
duced them, under the veil of allegory, that he might
not offend the Greeks by a direct extract from the Jewish
Scriptures.
The particular circumstances also of the leader of the
evil spirits having envied man's happiness, and by disguis-
ing himself under the form of a serpent, occasioned his
ejection from paradise, was figured out in other accounts.
The worship established towards the evil spirit by his
contrivance, sometimes under the very appearance in
which he seduced mankind, is to be found among the
Phoenicians and Egyptians.
The general idea of the serpent as a mysterious sym-
bol annexed to the heathen deities, and particularly as-
signed to iEsculapius the god of healing, might have been
suggested by perverted representations of the agency of
the fallen spirit, who assumed the form of a serpent;
and the invocation of Eve in the Bacchanalian orgies,
(with the production of a serpent, consecrated as an
emblem, to public view,) seems to bear some relation to
the history of our first parents who introduced sin and
death into the world.
The tutelar deity of particular districts was sometimes
introduced in the same manner ; thus a serpent is repre-
sented by Virgil to have appeared to iEneas.
The first worship of Apollo was offered to him under
the representation of a serpent; but Apollo was gene-
rally regarded as the deity who had killed the serpent
Python, which word was probably derived from the
Hebrew word which signifies a serpent. The account
of Discord being cast out from heaven, referred to by
Agamemnon, in the nineteenth book of Homers Iliad,
has been thought to be a corrupt tradition of the fall of
the evil angels.
The original perfection of man, the corruption of hu-
man nature resulting from the fall, and the increasing
depravity which proceeded with augmented violence
from generation to generation, are to be found in various
parts of profane literature. Euryalus, the Pythagorean,
declared that man was made in the image of God. The
loss of that resemblance was supposed to have resulted
from the effects of disobedience, and was considered as
so universal that it was generally admitted, as is ex-
pressed by Horace, that no man was born without vices.
The conviction of a gradual deterioration from age to
age, of a change from a golden period, by successive
transitions to an iron depravity, of a lapse from a state
devoid of guilt and fear, to times filled with iniquity,
was universally entertained.1
' Grays Connexion, pp. 135 — 140.
CHAP. IV.— Of Original Sin.
Original sin indeed is a phrase which does not occur in
the whole compass of the Bible ; but the nature of the
thing itself, and in what manner it came to be committed,
are sufficiently related : so that those who admit of the
authority of the Scriptures, make no question of the fact.
The great matter in dispute is, what the effect of this
transgression was ; what guilt it contained ; what punish-
ment it merited ; and in what degree its guilt and punish-
ment both may be said to affect us.
Some have not stuck to affirm, 2 that in the beginning
of the world, there was no such thing as , any express
covenant between God and man ; that the prohibition of
the tree of knowledge was given to our first parents only,
and they alone consequently were culpable by its trans-
gression ; that Adam, in short, was mortal, like one of
us ; he was no representative for his posterity ; his sin
purely personal ; and that the imputation of guilt, down
to this time, for an offence so many thousand years ago
committed, is a sad reflection upon the goodness and
justice of God.
In opposition to this, others think proper to affirm,
that at the first creation of things, there was a covenant
made with all mankind in Adam, their common head
and proxy, who stipulated for them all ; that by a trans-
gression of this covenant, our first parents fell from their
original righteousness, and thence became dead in sin,
and actually defiled in all their faculties of soul and
body ; and that this corruption is not only the parent of
all actual transgressions, but (even in its own nature)
brings guilt upon every one that is born into the world,
whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and the
curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with
all the miseries that attend it, spiritual, temporal, and
eternal.
There is another opinion which concerns itself not
with the imputation of the guilt, but only with the punish-
ment of this transgression, and thereupon supposes, that
though Adam, as to the composition of his body, was
naturally mortal, yet, by the supernatural gift of God,
(whereof the tree of life was a symbol or sacrament,) he
was to be preserved immortal: from whence it is in-
ferred, 3That the denunciation of the sentence, ' In the
day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,' is to be
miderstood literally indeed, but then extended no farther
than natural death; which, considering the fears, and
terrors, and smnlry kinds of misery which it occasions,
maybe reputed punishment severe enough, though fairly
consistent with our notions of God's goodness and jus-
tice, because it is but a temporal punishment, and
abundantly recompensed by that eternal redemption
which all mankind shall have in Christ Jesus.
Others again do so far approve of this, as to think it
in part the punishment of original sin ; but then they
suppose, that besides this natural mortality, there is a
certain weakness and corruption spread through the
whole race of mankind, which discovers itself in their
inclination to evil, and insufficiency to what is good.
B Burnet on the Articles; and Taylors Polemical Discourses.
3 Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity ; and A Treatise on
the Divine Imputation of Original Sin, ly D. JVhitby.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
39
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This, say they, a the very heathens complain of ; this
* the Scriptures every where testify ; and therefore they
conclude that since man was not originally made in this
condition, (for God created him after his own image,)
he must have contracted all this from his fall ; and that
therefore the threatening- of death had an higher signifi-
cation than the dissolution of the soul and body, namely,
the loss of the divine favour, of all supernatural gifts
and gTaces, and a total defection of the mind from God,
which immediately ensued upon the transgression.
These are some of the principal opinions, (for the
little singularities are innumerable,) and, in the midst of
so many intricacies, to find out a proper path for us to
pursue, we may resolve the whole controversy into this
one% question : — " Whether human nature be so far cor-
rupted, and the guilt of our first parents' transgression so
far imputed to their posterity, that every person, from
the mother's womb, must necessarily go astray, and must
certainly fall into everlasting perdition, without the
means appointed in the new covenant for his preserva-
tion ?" And in searching into this, the sentiments of
the fathers, much more the alterations of the schoolmen,
will help us very little. c The former are so divided in
a St Austin, in his fourth book against Julian, brings in
Cicero, on Repub. b. 3., complaining " That nature, in bringing
forth man to existence, had behaved like a stepmother, and not
a mother, he possessing a body naked, weak, and soon subject
to decay ; with a mind, harassed by troubles, crushed by fears,
and sinking under oppressions ; in which, however, there exists
a latent divine flame of intellect " Whereupon the holy father
makes this remark, " That author saw the effect, but was igno-
rant of the cause, for he knew not there was a heavy yoke laid on
the sons of Adam ; he was not enlightened with the light of reve-
lation, and consequently original transgression was to him a
thing totally unknown."
b The Scriptures state the conniption of human nature in such
terms as these, namely, that ' by one man sin entered into the
world ' by whose ' disobedience many were made sinners,' Rom.
x. 19., that ' by nature ' therefore ' we are the children of wrath,'
Eph. ii. 3., and ' unable to receive the things of the Spirit, or to
know them because they are spiritually discerned,' 1 Cor. ii. 14.,
for 'what is born of flesh, is flesh,' John iii. 6.; and 'who can
bring a clean thing out of an unclean?' Job xiv. 4. The royal
Psalmist therefore makes, in his own person, this confession of
our natural depravity ; ' Behold I was shapen in wickedness, and
in sin did my mother conceive me,' Ps. Ii. 5., and St Paul makes
tins public declaration of our inability to do good ; ' I know that
in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will
is present with me, but to perform that which is good, I find
not; for though I delight in the law of God after the inward
man, yet I see another law in my members, warring against the
law in my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of
sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Rom. vii. 18., &c.
c Vossius, in Ins history of Pelagianism, assures us, that the
whole Catholic church was always of opinion, that the guilt of
Adam's sin was imputed to his posterity to their condemnation ;
so that children dying therein were consigned to everlasting
punishment, at least to an everlasting separation from God: and,
to confirm this assertion, he quotes a multitude of passages out of
almost all the doctors of the Greek church. Taylor anil Whitby,
and some other writers upon this argument, produce the testi-
mony of the same fathers to evince the veiy contrary position;
so that there is. no depending upon any thing where authors are
so inconsistent with themselves, and so repugnant to one an-
other. The truth is, before Pelagius appeared in the world,
most of the ancient writers of the church were veiy inaccurate,
both in what they thought and wrote concerning original sin and
free-will ; and it seems as if the providence of God permitted
that heretic, to arise, that thereby lie might engage the main-
tainors of orthodoxy to study those points more maturely.—
ff'hilakcr on Original Sin, b. 2.
their opinions, and the latter so abstruse in their argu-
ments upon this subject, that an honest inquirer will find
himself bewildered, rather than instructed ; and therefore
our safest recourse will be to the declarations of God's
will, explained in a maimer comporting with his attri-
butes.
That God, who is the fountain of our beino- is infi-
nitely pure and holy, and can therefore be neither the
author nor promoter of any sin in us, is obvious to our
first conceptions of him ; and therefore, if the corruption
of our nature be supposed to be such as necessarily and
unavoidably determines us to wickedness, without the
least tendency to good, to give it a counterpoise, those
who maintain the negative of the question, are in the
right so far as they stand in defence of God's immacu-
late purity, and are known to be asserters of the freedom
of human choice, without which the common distinctions
of virtue and vice, and the certain prospects of rewards
and punishments, are entirely lost. But when they carry
the point so far as to deny any alteration in human na-
ture now, from what it was at its first creation ; as to
deny, that Adam, in his state of uprightness, had any
gifts and graces supernatural, any clearness in his un-
derstanding, any strength in his will, any regidarity in
his affections, more than every man of maturity and
competent faculties has at this day ; when they adventure
to affirm, that there is no necessity of grace in our pre-
sent condition, to assist our hereditary weakness, to en-
lighten our minds, and incline our wills, and conduct
our affections to the purposes of holiness, but that every
man may do what is good and acceptable to God by the
power of his own natural abilities, they then run counter
to the common experience of human infirmity ; they
overlook the declarations of God's word concerning his
gracious assistance ; and seem to despise the kind over-
ture of that blessed agent, whereby we are ' renewed and
sanctified in the spirit of our minds.'
In like manner, when the maintainers of absolute
depravation contend, that man, in his present condition,
is far departed from original righteousness, and, of his
own accord, very much inclined to evil; that the order
of his faculties is destroyed, and those graces which
constituted the image of God, departed from him; that
in this state he is now unable to raise himself from the
level of common impotence, but requires the interven-
tion of some superior principle to aid and assist him in
his progress towards heaven; they say no more than
what experience teaches us, and what the sacred records,
which acquaint us with the dispensation of grace, are
known to authorize. But when they carry their positions
to a greater extent than they will justly bear; when they
affirm, that ever since the first defection, the mind of
man is not only much impaired, but grievously vitiated
in all its faculties, having a strong aversion to every
thing that is good, and an invincible propensity to what
is evil; not one thought, word, or wish, that tends to-
wards God, but the seeds and principles of every vice
that bears the image and lineaments of the devil, inhe-
rent in it : when they advance such doctrines as these,
I say, they debase human nature too low, and seem to
impute such iniquity to its Maker as can hardly be wiped
off* if every human soul be naturally inclined to all kind
of wickedness when it comes from the hand of his creat-
ing power.
40
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[Book I.
A. M. 1. A. C. 4004; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, 5411. GEN. CH. 3.
There is certainly therefore another way of account-
ing for these difficulties, without any prejudice to the
divine attributes, and that is this : — Not by ascribing any
positive malignity to human nature, but only the loss of
the image of God ; because a mere privation of recti-
tude, in an active subject, will sufficiently answer all the
purposes for which a positive corruption is pleaded.
1 The soul of man, we know, is a busy creature : by the
force of its own nature it must be in action; but then,
without grace, and the image of God assisting and
adorning it, it cannot act regularly and well. So that
the difference between Adam and us, is not that we have
violent inclinations to all manner of wickedness im-
planted in our nature, any more than he, in his inno-
cence, had in his; but that we, in our present condition,
want sundry advantages which he, in the height of his
perfection, was not without. He had the free power of
obedience ; he had the perfect image of his Maker in all
the divine qualities of knowledge and holiness, which
we have not; and therefore, when we say, that he com-
municated to his posterity a corrupted nature, it must
not be understood, as if that nature, which we receive,
was infected with any vicious inclinations or habits, to
sway and determine our mind to what is evil ; but the
meaning is, that he communicated to us a nature, which
has indeed a power to incline, and act variously, but
that he did not, withal, communicate to us the image of
God, nor that fulness of knowledge and power of obe-
dience, which were requisite to make all its actions and
inclinations holy and regular : and our nature is there-
fore said to be corrupted, because it is comparatively
bad; because it is reduced to its mere natural state,
•which at the best is a state of imperfection, and deprived
of that grace which should have restrained it from sin,
and of those other high endowments wherewith at first it
was invested.
This is a fair account of our original corruption: it
stands clear of the difficulties that attend the other opin-
ions, and is not inconsistent with the notions we have of
the divine attributes. For barely to withdraw those
extraordinary gifts, which were not essential to man's
nature, but such as God additionally had bestowed upon
him; and he, by his transgression, unworthily forfeited,
is what agrees very well with the wisdom and justice,
and holiness of God to do ; though to infuse a positive
malignity, or such a strong inclination to wickedness in
us, as induces a necessity of sinning, most certainly
does not.
That ' the Judge of all the world cannot but do right,'
and he, ' who keepeth mercy from generation to genera-
tion,' can have no hand in any cruel action, is a certain
truth, and what our first reflections on the divine nature
teach us. Those therefore who maintain, that Adam's
sin is not imputed to us to our damnation, or that chil-
dren unbaptized, are not the objects of divine vengeance,
nor shall be condemned to hell, or an eternal expulsion
from God's presence, for what was done many thousand
years before they were born, are so far in the right, as
they oppose an opinion which clouds the amiable attri-
butes of God, and represents him in a dress of horror,
and engaged in acts of extreme severity at least, if not
1 Hopkins on the Tzvo Covenants.
unrelenting cruelty. Hell certainly is not so easy a
pain, nor are the souls of children of so cheap and so
contemptible a price, as that God should snatch them
from their mother's womb, and throw them into perdition
without any manner of concern ; and therefore, when men
argue against such positions as these, they are certainly
to be commended, because therein they vindicate the
sacred attributes of God : but when they carry their op-
position to a greater length than it will justly go, so as
to affirm — that there was no such thing as a covenant
between God and Adam, or if there was, that Adam
contracted for himself only ; that his guilt consequently
was personal, and cannot in justice, be imputed to us;
that since we had no share in the transgression, there is
no reason why we should bear any part in the punish-
ment: that we are all born, in short, in the same state
of innocence, and are under the same favour and accept-
ance with Almighty God, that Adam, before the first
transgression, was: Avhen they advance such positions
as these, in maintenance of their opposition, they sadly
forget, that while they would seem advocates for the
mercy and goodness of God, they are taking away the
foundation of the second covenant; destroying the ne-
cessity of a divine mediator; and overlooking those
declarations in Scripture, which affirm, that 2'all the
world is become guilty before God;' that ' all men, both
Jews and Gentiles, are under sin; have come short of
the glory of God, 3 and are by nature the children of
wrath.'
To make an agreement then between the word of
God, and his attributes in this particular, we may fairly
allow, that there really was a covenant between God and
Adam at the first creation ; that in making that covenant,
Adam, as their head and common representative, stipu-
lated for all mankind, as well as for himself; and that,
in his transgression of it, the guilt and the punishment
due thereupon, were imputed to all his posterity. This
we may allow was the state and condition wherein Adam
left us ; but then we must remember, that 4 the whole
scheme of man's salvation was laid in the divine counsel
and decree from all eternity ; that God, foreseeing man
would fall, determined to send his Son to redeem him,
and determined to do this long before the transgression
happened : so that the wisdom and goodness of God had
effectually provided beforehand against all the ill con-
sequences of the fall, and made it impossible, that
Adam's posterity should become eternally miserable,
and be condemned to the flames and pains of hell, any
other way than through their own personal guilt and
transgressions. The redemption of the world was de-
creed, I say, from eternity, and was actually promised
before any child of Adam was born, even before the
sentence was pronounced upon our first parents ; and as
soon as it was pronounced, its benefits, without all con-
troversy did commence. So that, upon this hypothesis,
every infant that comes into the world, as it brings along
with it the guilt of Adam's sin, brings along Avith it like-
wise the benefits of Christ's meritorious death, ' which
God hath set forth, as a' standing ' propitiation for the
sins of the whole world.' Nor can the want of baptism
* Rom. iii. 9, 19, 23. s Eph. ii. 3.
4 Jenkins's Reasonabiencss, vol. 2.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
41
A. M. 128. A. C. 3876; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 100. A. C. 5311. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
be any obstruction to this remedy, since the remedy was
exhibited long before the rite was instituted ; and since
that rite, when instituted, (according- to the sense of
some learned fathers, was more a pledge of good things
to come, aa type of our future resurrection, a form of
adoption into the heavenly family, and of admission to
those 'rich promises of God, which are hid in Jesus
Christ,' than any ordinance appointed for the ' mystical
washing away of sin.'
In short, as long as St Paul's epistles are read, the
original compact between God and man, the deprava-
tion of human nature, and the imputation of Adam's
guilt, must be received as standing doctrines of the
church of Christ: but then we are to take great care, in
our manner of explaining them, to preserve the divine at-
tributes sacred and inviolate : and this may happily be
effected, if we will but suppose, that our hereditary cor-
ruption is occasioned, not by the infusion of any positive
malignity into us, but by the subduction of supernatural
gifts from us; that the covenant of grace commenced
immediately after the covenant of works was broken,
and has included all mankind ever since ; that the blood
of Christ shields his children from the wrath of God ;
and that the imputation of Adam's guilt, and obnoxious-
ness to punishment, is effectually taken away, by the
meritorious oblation of that ' Lamb of God which was
slain from the foundation of the world.'
SECT. IV.
CHAP. I. — Of the Murder of Abel, and the Banish-
ment of Cain.
THE HISTORY.
Our first parents, we may suppose, * after a course of
penance and humiliation for their transgression, obtained
a According to Chrysostom and Theodoret, infants are bap-
tized in order that that sacred rite may be to them an ark of
future benefits — a type of a coming resurrection — a communication
of our Lord's suffering, and that being born again from on high
and sanctified, they may be brought to the right of adoption, and
become co-heirs of grace by their participation in these sacred
mysteries. — JFhilby on Original Sin.
b The oriental writers are very full of Adam's sorrows and
lamentations upon this occasion. They have recorded the seve-
ral forms of prayer wherein he addressed God for pardon and
forgiveness ; and some of the Jewish doctors are of opinion, that
the thirty-second psalm, wherein we meet with these expres-
sions, ' I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have
I not hid; I said I will confess my transgression unto the Lord,
and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin,' was of his composing.
Our excellent Milton, to the same purpose, introduces Adam,
after a melancholy soliloquy with himself, and some hasty alter-
cations with Eve, proposing at length tlus wholesome advice to
her:
What hetter can we do, than to the place
Repairing where he jndg'd us, prostrate fall
Before him reverent ; and there confess
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg; with tears
Wat'rinir the ground, and with our sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeign'd, and humiliation meek?
Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn
From his displeasure : in whose looks serene,
When angry most he seem'd, and most severe,
What else but favour, grace, and mercy shone ?
the pardon and forgiveness of God ; and yet the corrup-
tion, which their sin introduced, remained upon human
nature, and began to discover itself in that impious fact
which Cain committed on his brother Abel. Cain was
the first child that was ever born into the world ; and his
mother Eve was so fully persuaded, that the promised
seed would immediately descend from her, that she sup-
posed him to be the person who was to subdue the power
of the great enemy of mankind ; and therefore upon her
delivery, she cried out, in a transport of joy, e' I have
gotten a man from the Lord,' and accordingly gave him
the name of Cain, which signifies possession or acquisi-
tion: never suspecting, that as soon as he grew up, he
would occasion her no small sorrow and disconsolation.
The next son that she bore, (which was the year fol-
lowing,) d was called eAbel, denoting sorrow and mourn-
ing ; but very probably he might not receive that name,
until his tragical end, which caused great grief to his
parents, verifying the meaning of it. Other children,
we may presume, were all along born to our first
parents; but these are the two, who, for some time, made
the principal figure ; and as they had the whole world
before them, there was small reason (one would think)
for those feuds and contentions, which, in after ages,
embroiled mankind. But the misfortune was, they were
persons of quite different tempers; and accordingly,
when they grew up, betook themselves to different em-
ployments ; Cain, who was of a surly, sordid, and avari-
cious temper, to the tilling of the ground; and Abel,
who was more gentle and ingenuous in his disposition,
to the keeping of sheep.
It was a customary thing, even in the infancy of the
world, to make acknowledgments to God, by way of
oblation, for the bountiful supply of all his creatures ;
and accordingly /these two brothers were wont to bring
c Ish eth Jehovah, which our translation makes ' a man from
the Lord,' should rather be rendered ' the man, the Lord,' Hcl-
vicus has shown, in so many instances in Scripture, that eth is
an article of the accusative case, that it seems indeed to be the
Hebrew idiom ; besides, that it is a demonstrative, or emphatic
particle, which points at some thing or person, in a particular
manner ; and therefore several, both Jewish and Christian doc-
tors, have taken the words in this sense: — That our grand-
mother Eve, when delivered of Cain, thought she had brought
forth the Messias, the God-man, who was to ' bruise the serpent's
head,' or destroy Satan's power and dominion according to the
promise which God had made her. — Edward's Survey of Reli-
gion, vol. 1.
d On this point, commentators differ, several suppose Abel to
be the twin brother of Cain. — Ed.
e Others derive the name from a ward which signifies vanity,
and are of opinion, that Eve intended thereby, either to declare
the little esteem she had of him, in comparison of her first bom;
or to show the vanity of her hopes, in taking Cain for the Mes-
siah; or to denote, that all tlu'ngs in the world, into which he
was now come, were mere 'vanity and vexation of spirit.' —
Patrick's Commentary, and S/iurin's Dissertatio?i.
fin the last verse of this chapter we read, that it was in the
days of Enos, when ' men first began to call on the name of the
Lord:' and yet, in the third and fourth verses tin reoff we find
that Cain and Abel brought their respective offerings to tin-
place (as we may suppose) of divine worship. Now, if the be-
ginning of divine worship was in the days of Enos, what worship
was tlus in the days of Cain and Abel? To have two begin-
nings for the same worship, is a thing incongruous, unless we
can suppose, that the two brothers, when they earn • ith their
oblations, did no! worship at all; neither opening their lips in
the divine benefactor's praise, nor invocating a blessing upon
what his bounty had sent them, which is higldy inconsistent
42
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A. M. 128. A. C. 3876; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 200. A. C. 5211. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
offerings, suitable to their respective callings : Cain, as
an husbandman, the fruits of the ground; and Abel, as
a shepherd, the firstlings, or (as some will have it) the
a milk of his flock. Upon some set and solemn occa-
sion then '(and not improbably at the end of harvest,)
as they were presenting their respective offerings, God,
who estimates the sincerity of the heart more than the
value of the oblation, 6gave a visible token of his ac-
ceptance of Abel's c sacrifice, preferable to that of Cain,
which so enraged, and transported him with envy against
his brother, that he could not help showing it in his
countenance. A
1 Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs.
with the character of worshippers. But in answer to this, we
must observe that the worship of God is of two kinds, public, and
private ; that the worship wherein these brothers were concerned,
was of the latter sort; for Cain is mentioned by himself, and
Abel by himself. They came to the place of worship severally ;
their sacrifices were not the same: neither were the offerers of
the same mind. But the worship which was instituted in the
time of Enos, was of a public nature, when several families,
under their respective heads, met together in the same place,
and joined in one common service, whether of prayers, praises,
or sacrifices. Though the phrase of ' men's beginning to call
upon the name of the Lord,' may possibly bear another con-
struction, as we shall show when we come to examine the place
itself. — Street's Dividing of the Hoof.
a It is a pretty common opinion, that the eating of flesh was
not permitted before the flood ; and it is the position of Grotius,
that no carnal sacrifices were at that time, offered ; because no-
thing, but what was of use to man, was to be consecrated to
God. The scarcity of cattle might veiy well excuse their being
slain in the worship of God ; and therefore since the same word
in Hebrew, Hhalab, or Hheleb, according to its different punc-
tuation, signifies both fat and milk, and accordingly is rendered
both ways by the Seventy, many learned men seem rather to
favour the latter, as finding it a custom among the ancient
Egyptians, to sacrifice milk to their deities, as a token and ac-
knowledgment of the fecundity of their cattle. — Le Clerc's
Commentary, and Saurin's Dissertation. But the learned
Heidegger is of an opinion quite the contrary. — See Essay 15,
on the Food of the Antediluvians.
b The Jews are generally of opinion, that this visible token of
God's accepting Abel's sacrifice, was a fire, or lightning, which
came from heaven, and consumed it. The footsteps of this we
meet with in a short time after, Gen. xv. 17., and the examples
of it were many in future ages, namely, when Moses offered the
first burnt-oflering according to the law, Lev. ix. 24.; when
Gideon oflered upon the rock, Jud. vi. 21.; when David stayed
the plague, 1 Chron. xxi. 2G.; when Solomon consecrated the
temple, 2 Chron. vii. 1.; and when Elijah contended with the
Baalites, 1 Kings xviii. 38, &c. And accordingly, we find the
Israelites, (when they wish all prosperity to their king,) praying,
that God would be pleased ' to accept ' (in the Hebrew, ' turn
into ashes ') ' his burnt sacrifice,' Ps. xx. 3. — Patrick and Le
Clerc's Commentary.
c Dr Hales is of opinion that these sacrifices were not offered
ill Cain and Abel were each about 100 years old. If so, they
ivere offered, according to his computation, about the year of the
world, 200 or 201 ; and 5210 or 5211 before Christ.— Ed.
d Gen. iv. 4. ' Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock.'
The universality of sacrificial rites will naturally produce an
inquiry into the source, from wlu'ch such a custom so inexplica-
ble upon any principles of mere natural reason could have been
derived. And here we are involuntarily led to the first institu-
tion of this ordinance, which is so particularly recorded in Scrip-
ture. When it pleased God to reveal his gracious purpose of
redeeming lost mankind by the blood of the Messiah, it would
doubtless be highly expedient to institute some visible sign, some
external representation, by which the mysterious sacrifice of
Mount Calvary might be prophetically exhibited to all the pos-
terity of Adam. With this view, a pure and immaculate victim,
the firstling of the flock, was carefully selected; and after its
blood had been shed, was solemnly appointed to blaze upon the
altar of Jehovah. When the first typical sacrifice was offered
God, however, in great kindness, condescended to
expostulate the matter with him, telling him, 2 " That his
respect to true goodness was impartial, wherever he
found it, and that e therefore it was purely his own fault,
that his offering was not equally accepted , that piety
was the proper disposition for a sacrificer ; and that, if
herein he would emulate his brother, the same tokens of
divine approbation should attend his oblations ; * that it
was folly and madness in him to harbour any revengeful
thoughts against his brother; because, if he proceeded
to put them in execution, /a dreadful punishment would
2 Patrick's Commentary. * Poole's Annotations.
up, fire miraculously descended from heaven, and consumed it;
and when this primitive ordinance was renewed under the Leviti-
cal priesthood, two circumstances are particularly worthy of ob-
servation— that the victim should be a firstling — and that the
oblation should be made by the instrumentality of fire. It is
remarkable that both these primitive customs have been faithfully
preserved in the heathen world. The Canaanites caused their
first born to pass through the fire, with a view of appeasing the
anger of their false deities ; and one of the kings of Moab is said
to have oflered up his eldest son as a burnt-oflering, when in
danger from the superior prowess of the Edomites, 2 Kings iii.
27. Nor was the belief, that the gods were rendered propitious
by this particular mode of sacrifice, confined to the nations which
were more immediately contiguous to the territories of Israel.
We learn from Homer, that a whole hecatomb of firstling lambs
was no uncommon offering among his countrymen. Iliad, iv.
ver. 202. And the ancient Goths, having " laid it down as a
principle, that the effusion of the blood of animals appeased the
anger of the gods, and that their justice turned aside upon the
victims those strokes which were destined for men," (Mallet's
North. Antiq. vol. 1. chap. 7.) soon proceeded to greater lengths,
and adopted the horrid practice of devoting human victims. In
honour of the mystical number three, a number deemed parti-
cularly dear to heaven, every ninth month witnessed the groans
and dying struggles of nine unfortunate victims. The fata)
blow being struck, the lifeless bodies were consumed in the
sacred fire, which was kept perpetually burning; while the
blood, in singular conformity with the Levitical ordinances, was
sprinkled partly upon the surrounding multitude, partly upon the
trees of the hallowed grove, and partly upon the images of their
idols. (Mallet's North. Antiq. vol. 1. chap. 7.) Even the remote
inhabitants of America have retained similar customs, and for
similar reasons.
e The words in our translation are, ' If thou doest well, shalt
thou not be accepted?' ver. 7. which some render, 'shalt thou
not receive,' namely, a reward? others 'shalt thou not be par-
doned?' and others again, 'thou shalt be elevated to dignity.'
But if we consider, what God says to Cain in the two foregoing
verses, 'that his countenance was fallen,' we cannot but per-
ceive, that in this he promises him, that if he did well, he should
have his face ' lifted up,' and that he should have no more rea-
son to be sad ; for so the Scripture frequently expresses a fearless
and cheerful state: 'If iniquity be in thine hand,' says one of
Job's friends, ' put it away from thee, and let not wickedness
dwell in thy tabernacles; for then thou shalt lift up thy face
without spot,' Job xi. 15. — Essay for a New Translation.
/The words in our translation are, ' Sin lieth at thy door:'
where, by ' sin,' the generality of interpreters mean, the pun-
ishment of sin, which is hard at hand, and ready to overtake the
wicked. But our learned Lightfoot observes that God does not
here present himself to Cain, in order to threaten, but to en-
courage him, as the first words of his speech to him do import;
and that therefore the bare description of ' lying at the door,'
does plainly enough insinuate, that the text does not speak
either of errors or punishment, but of a 'sacrifice for sin,' which
the Scripture often calls by the Hebrew word here, and which
was commonly placed before the door of the sanctuary, as may
be seen in several passages of Scripture. So that, according to
this sense, God is here comforting Cain, even though he did
amiss in maligning his brother, and referring him to the propi-
tiation of Christ, which, even then, was of standing force for
the remission of sin. — Essay for a New Translation. But this
sense of the word seems a little too far-fetched.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
43
A. M. 128. A. C. 387G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 201. A. C. 5210. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
immediately overtake him ; and that least of all he had
reason to be angry with him whose preference was oidy
a token of his superior virtue, and not intended to sup-
plant him of his birthright, which * should always be in-
violate, and his brother be obliged to apay him the re-
spect and homage that was due to his primogeniture ;
which, if he was minded to preserve, his wisest way
would be to be quiet, and not proceed one step farther
in any wicked design."
This was a kind admonition from God ; but so little
effect had it upon Cain, that instead of being sensible of
his fault, and endeavouring to amend, he grew more and
more incensed against his brother ; insomuch that at last
lie took a resolution to kill him ; but dissembled his de-
sign, until he should find a proper opportunity.
And, to this purpose, coming to his brother one day,
and pretending great kindness to him, he asked him very
friendly to take a walk with him in the fields, where,
having got him alone, l> upon some pretence or other,
he picked a quarrel with him, and so fell upon him, and
slew him, and afterward 2 buried him in the ground; to
prevent all discovery : but it was not long before he was
called to an account for this horrid fact. God appeared
to him, and having questioned him about his brother,
and received some sullen and evasive answers from him,
, ' Le Clerks Commentary. 2 Josephus's Antiq., b. 1. c. 3.
a The words in the text are ' unto thee shall be his desire,'
Gen. iii. 16., -which (however some expositors have clouded
them) will appear to be plain and easy enough, if we do but con-
sider, that there are two expressions, in the Hebrew tongue, to
si unify the readiness of one person to serve and respect another.
The one is (aine el yad) or ' our eyes are to his hand ;' the other
(teshukah el) or 'our desire is to him.' The former expresses
our outward attendance, and the latter the inward temper and
readiness of our mind to pay respect. Of the former we have
an instance in Ps. exxiii. 'The eyes of servants are to the
hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maiden are to the hand
of her mistress,' that is, they stand ready with a vigilant ob-
servance to execute their orders. We meet the other expression
in the place before us, and it imports an inward temper and
disposition of mind to pay respect and honour. ' His desire will
be unto thee,' that is, he will be heartily devoted (as we say in
English) to honour and respect you. And ' thou shalt (or may-
est) rule over him,' that is, you may have any service from him
you can desire. — Shuck/ord's Connexion, vol. 1.
b According to the English translation, Moses tells us, ver. 8.
that ' Cain talked with Abel his brother.' The words strictly
signify, ' Cain said unto Abel his brother;' after which there is
a blank space left in the Hebrew copies, as if something was
wanting. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuag. version
supply this, by adding the words, — 'Let us go into the fields;'
hut the Jerusalem Targum, and that of Jonathan, have supplied
us with their whole conversation: "As they went along, I
know, says Cain, that the world was created by the mercy of
■God, but it is not governed according to the fruit of our good
works, and there is respect of persons in judgment. Why was
thy oblation favourably accepted, when mine was rejected ?
Abel answered and said unto Cain, The world was created in
mercy, and is governed according to the fruits of our good
"oiks. There is no respect of persons in judgment; for my
oblation was more favourably received, because the fruit of my
works was better, and more precious, than thine. Hereupon
Cain in a fury breaks out, There is no judgment, nor judge, '
any other world ; neither shall good men receive any reward,
nor wicked men be punished. To which Abel replied, There is
a judgment and a judge, and another world, in which good men
shall receive a reward, and wicked men be punished." Upon
which there ensued a quarrel, which ended in Abol's death. So
that, according to this account, Abel suffered tor the vindication
oi the truth, and was, in reality, the first martyr. — Esthius on
the more Difficult Passages.
directly charged him with his murder; and then re-
presenting it, in its proper aggravations, as a crime
unpardonable, and what cried aloud to Heaven for ven-
geance, he proceeded immediately to pass sentence upon
him.
Cain's chief 3 design and ambition was, to make him-
self great and powerful, in favour with God, and in
credit with men, without any one to stand in competition
with him ; but in every thing he intended, he found him-
self disappointed, for attempting to accomplish his ends
in so wicked a manner. Instead of growing great and
opulent, the ground was sentenced ' not to yield him her
strength,' that is, he was to be unprosperous in his hus-
bandry and tillage : instead of enjoying God's favour
without a rival, he was banished from his presence, and
for ever excluded from that happy converse with the
Deity, which, in these first ages of the world, it was
customary for good men to enjoy : and instead of being
a man of renown among his family, he became ' a fugi-
tive and vagabond:' was banished from his native coun-
try, and compelled to withdraw into some distant and
desolate part of the earth, as an abominable person, not
worthy to live, nor fit to be endured in any civil com-
munity.
The same principle, which leads wicked men to the
commission of crimes, in hopes of impunity, throws them
into despair, upon the denunciation of punishment.
This sentence of Cain, though infinitely short of the
heinousness of his guilt, made him believe, c that he was
to undergo much greater evils than it really imported;
and that not only the miseries of banishment, but the
danger likewise of being slain by every one that came
near him, was ensuant upon it. But, to satisfy him in
this respect, God was pleased to declare, that his provi-
dence should protect him from all outward violence :
and, to remove the uneasy apprehension from his mind,
vouchsafed to give him a sign (very 4 probably by some
sensible miracle) that no creature whatever should be
permitted to take away his life; but, that whoever
attempted it should incur a very severe punishment ;
because God 5 was minded to prolong his days in this
wretched estate, as a monument of his vengeance, to
deter future ages from committing- the like murder.
Thus, by the force of the divine sentence, Cain left
his parents and relations, and went into a strange coun-
try. He was banished from that sacred place where
3 Shuckford's Introduction, vol. 1. 4 Universal History, No. 2
b Patrick's Commentary.
c The words in our translation are, ' My punishment is greater
than I can bear;' but as the Hebrew word (Avon) signifies ' ini-
quity,' rather than punishment, and the verb (Nosha) signifies
' to be forgiven,' as well as to 'bear,' it seems to agree better
with the context, if the verse be rendered either positively,
' My iniquity is too great to be forgiven,' or (as the Hebrew ex-
positors take it) by way of interrogation, ' Is my iniquity too
great to be forgiven?' which seems to be the better of the two.
— Shuck ford's Contusion, vol. 1. A learned annotator has ob-
served that as there are seven abominations in the heart ot him
that loveth not his brother, Prov. xxvi. "25., there were the like
number of transgressiems in Cain's whole conduct; tor, 1. he
sacrificed without, faith; 2. was displeased that God respected
him not; 3. hearkened not to God's admonition; -1. spake dis-
semblingly to his brother; 5. killed him in the field; G. denied
that he knew where he \va<; and, 7. neither asked, nor hoped
for mercy from God, but despaired and so fell into the condem-
nation of the devil. — Ainsvurth's Annotations.
44 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 128. A. C. 38V6; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 201. A. C. 5210. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
[Book I.
God vouchsafed a frequent manifestations of his glorious
presence ; and though by the divine decree no person
was permitted to hurt him, yet, being conscious of his
own guilt, he was fearful of every thing he saw or
heard : till having wandered about a long while in many
different countries, he settled at length with his wife and
family in the land of Nod; where, in some tract of time,
and after his descendants were sufficiently multiplied,
he built a city, that they might live together, and be
united, the better to defend themselves against incur-
sions, and * to secure their unjust possessions ; and this
place he called after the name of his son Enoch, which,
in the Hebrew tongue, signifies a dedication.
This Enoch begat Jarad; Jarad begat Mehujael;
Mehujael begat Methusael; and Methusael begat La-
mech, who was cthe first introducer of polygamy. For
he married two wives, Adah and Zillah, by the former
of which he had two children; Jabal, ^who made great
a Both Lightfoot, Heidegger, and Le Clerc, seem to be of
opinion, that what we render the ' presence of the Lord,' was
the proper name of that particular place where Adam, after his
expulsion from paradise, dwelt; and accordingly we find that
part of the country which lies contiguous to the supposed situa-
tion of paradise, called by Strabo (b. 16. prosopora.) However
this be, it is agreed by all interpreters, that there was ' a divine
glory,' called by the Jews Schechinah, which appeared from the
beginning, (as we said before, page 15, in the notes) and from
which Cain being now banished, never enjoyed the sight of it
again. If, after this, Cain turned a downright idolater, (as many
think,) it is very probable that he introduced the worship of the
sun (which was the most ancient idolatry) as the best resem-
blance he could find of the glory of the Lord which was wont to
appear in a flaming light. — Patrick's Commentary.
b The words of Josephus are these. " So far was Cain from
mending his life after his afflictions, that he rather grew worse
and worse, abandoning himself to his lusts, and all manner of
outrage, without any regard to common justice. He enriched
himself by rapine and violence, and made choice of the most
profligate of monsters for his companions, instructing them in
the very mystery of their own profession. He corrupted the
simplicity and plain dealing of former times, with a novel in-
vention of weights and measures, and exchanged the innocency
of that primitive generosity and candour for the new tricks of
policy and craft. He was the first who invaded the common
rights of mankind by bounds and enclosures, and the first who
built a city, fortified, and peopled it.". — Antiq. b. 1. c. 3.; and
Le Clerc's Commentary.
c Le Clerc, supposing that the increase of females at the be-
ginning of the world was much greater than that of males, is of
opinion that there might possibly want a man to espouse one of
the women which Lamech married; nor can he think that
Moses intended to blame him for what was the constant practice
of some of the most eminent of the postdiluvian patriarchs.
Bishop Patrick likewise makes this apology for him. " His
earnest desire of seeing that blessed seed," says he, "which was
promised to Eve, might perhaps induce him to take more wives
than one, hoping, that by multiplying his posterity, some or other
of them might prove so happy as to produce that seed. And
this he might possibly persuade himself to be more likely, be-
cause the right which was in Cain, the first-born, he might now
conclude, was revived in himself; and that the curse laid upon
Cain was by this time expired, and his posterity restored to the
right of fulfilling the promise." Both Selden and Grotius plead
for the lawfulness of polygamy before the Levitical dispensation ;
but the learned Heidegger (who has a whole dissertation upon the
subject) has sufficiently answered them, and proved at large, that
this custom of multiplying wives is contrary both to the law of God
and the law of nature. — History of the Patriarchs, Essay 7th.
d The words in the text are, — ' He was the father of such as
dwell in tents;' for the Hebrews call him the father of any tiling
who was the first inventor of it, or a most excellent master of
that art: and from the affinity of their names, as well as the
similitude of their inventions, learned men have supposed, that
improvements in the management of cattle, and found
out the use of tents, 1or movable houses, to be carried
about to places of fresh pasturage ; and Jubal, who was
the first inventor of all musical instruments, and himself
a great master and performer. By the latter he had
Tubal-Cain, the first who discovered 2the art of forging
and polishing metals, and thereupon devised the making
all sorts of armour, both defensive and offensive ; and
whose sister Naamah (a name denoting fair and beauti-
ful,) is supposed to have first found out the art of spin-
ning and weaving.
3 This is the register of Cain's posterity for seven
generations : and Moses, perhaps, might the rather
enumerate them, to show who were the reaj authors and
inventors of certain arts and handicrafts, 4 which the
Egyptians too vainly assumed to themselves : but then
he barely enumerates them, without ever remarking how
long any of them lived, (a practice contrary to what he
observes in the genealogy of the Sethites,) as if he
esteemed them a generation so reprobate as 5 not to de-
serve a place in the book of the living.
The murder of Abel had, for a long time, occasioned
a great animosity between the family of Seth and the
descendants of Cain, who, though at some distance, lived
in perpetual apprehensions that the other family might
come upon them unawares, and revenge Abel's untimely
death : but Lamech, when he came to be head of a peo-
ple, endeavoured to reason them out of this fear. For
6 calling his family together, e he argued with them to
' Le Clerc's Commentary.
2 Heidegger'' s History of the Patriarchs,
3 HoiveWs History of the Bible. * Le Clerc s Commentary.
5 Patrick 's Commentary. 6 Shuchford's Connection , vol. 1.
Jabal was the Pales ; and Jubal the Apollo ; Tubal-Cain (which
in the Arabic tongue, still signifies a ' plate of iron' or ' brass')
the Vulcan, and his sister Naamah the Venus, or (as some will
have it) the Minerva of the Gentiles. — Heidegger's History of
the Patriarchs; and Stillingfieet 's Origins, b. 3. c. 5.
e Tins speech of Lamech, as it stands unconnected with any
thing before it, is supposed by many to be a fragment of some
old record which Moses was willing to preserve ; and, because
it seems to fall into a kind of metre, some have thought it a
short sketch of Lamech's poetry, which he was desirous to add
to his son's invention of music, and other aits. Many suppose,
that Lamech, being plagued with the daily contentions of his
two wives, here blusters and boasts of what he had done and
what he would do, if they gave him any farther molestation.
Others imagine, that as the use of weapons was found out by
one of his sons, and now become common, his wives were fear-
ful, lest somebody or other might make use of them to slay him;
but that, in this regard, he desires them to be easy, because, as
he was not guilty of slaying any body himself, there was no rea-
son to fear any body would hurt him. The Targum of Onkelos,
which reads the words interrogatively, favours this interpretation
much? ' Have I slain a man to my wounding or a young man
to my hurt?' that is, I have done no violence or ofTence to any
one, either great or small, and have therefore no cause to be
apprehensive of any to myself. But the Rabbins tell us a tra-
ditional story, which, if true, would explain the passage at once.
The tradition is, — ' That Lamech, when he was blind, took his
son Tubal-Cain to hunt with him in the woods, where they
happened on Cain, who being afraid of the society and converse
of men, was wont to lie lurking up and down in the woods ; that
the lad mistook him for some beast stirring in the bushes, and
directed his father, how, with a dart, or an arrow, he might kill
him ; and this (they say) was the man whom he killed by his
wounding him ; and that afterwards, when he came to perceive
what he had done, he beat Tubal-Cain to death for misinforming
him: and this was the young man whom he killed by hurting
or beating him.' But besides the incongruity of a blind man's
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
45
A. M. 128. A. C. 3876; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 201. A. C. 5210. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
this purpose. " Why should we make our lives uneasy
with these groundless suspicions ? What have we done,
that we should be afraid ? We have not killed any man,
nor offered any violence to our brethren of the other fa-
mily ; and surely reason must teach them, that they can
have no right to hurt or invade us. Cain indeed, our
ancestor, killed Abel ; but God was pleased so far to
forgive his sin, as to threaten to take the severest ven-
geance on any one that should kill him ; and if so, surely
they must expect a much greater punishment, who shall
presume to kill any of us. For < if Cain shall be
avenged seven-fold, surely Lamech,' or any of his inno-
cent family, 'seventy-seven -fold."' And it is not im-
probable, that by frequent discourses of this kind, as
well as by his own example, he overcame the fears and
shyness of the people, and (as we shall find hereafter)
encouraged them to commence an acquaintance with
their brethren, the children of Seth. This is the sum of
what the Scripture teaches us of the deeds of Cain, and
his wicked offspring, who were all swept away in the
general deluge.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
Though it cannot be denied but that Moses might
principally design to give us a history of the Jewish
nation ; yet, in the beginning of his account, and till
they came to be distinguished from other nations in the
patriarch Abraham, he could not have that under his
peculiar consideration. He acquaints us, we find, with
the origination of the first of other animals, whence they
arose, and in what manner they were perfected ; and
when he came to treat of the formation of human crea-
tures, it is but reasonable to imagine, that he intended
likewise to be understood of the first of their kind.
Now, that Adam and Eve were the first of their kind,
the words of our Saviour, x ' from the beginning of the
creation God made them male and female,' are a full
confirmation ; because he produces the very same pre-
cept that was applied to Adam and Eve at their crea-
tion, ' therefore shall a man leave his father and his
mother, and cleave to his wife :' and that there could be
none before them, the reason why 2 ' Adam called his
wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all liv-
ing,' i. e. the person who was to be the root and source
of all mankind that were to be upon earth, is a plain
demonstration : for if she was the mother of all living,
there certainly was no race of men or women before her.
Mark x. 6.
Gen. III. 20.
going a hunting, this story is directly contrary to the promise of
God, which assured Cain, that no person should kill him, and
seems indeed to be devised for no other purpose, but merely to
solve the difficulty of the passage. Among the many interpre-
tations which have been made of it, that which I have offered
seems to be the most natural and easy, and is not a little coun-
tenanced by the authority or Josephus. " As for Lamech," says
he, " who saw as far as any man into the course and methods of
divine justice, he could not but find himself concerned in the
prospect of that dreadful judgment which threatened his whole
family, for the murder of Abel, and, under this apprehension, he
breaks the matter to his two wives." — Antiquities, b. 1. c. 3.
St Paul, while he was at Athens, endeavoured to con-
vince the people of the vanity of that idolatry into which
he perceived them fallen, by this argument, among
others, — that 3 ' God had made of one blood all nations
of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth.' 4 Some
Greek copies read it i'i ivog, ' of one man,' leaving out
clipccro;, wherein they are followed by the vulgar Latin :
but allowing the common reading to be just, yet still the
word xifcx, or blood, must be taken in the a sense
wherein it occurs in the best Greek authors, namely, for
the stock or root out of which mankind came ; and so
the apostle's reasoning will be—" That however men
are now dispersed in their habitations, and differ much
in language and customs from each other, yet they all
were originally the same stock, and derived their suc-
cession from the first man that God created." Neither
can it be conceived, on what account s Adam is called
in Scripture ' the first man,' and that ' he was made a
living soul of the earth, earthly,' unless it were to de-
note, that he was absolutely the first of his kind, and so
was to be the standard and measure of all that followed.
The design of Moses is not to give us a particular
account of the whole race of mankind descended from
Adam, 6 but only of those persons who were most re-
markable, and whose story was necessary to be known,
for the understanding of the succession down to his time.
Besides those that are particularly mentioned in Scrip-
ture, we are told in general, that ' Adam 7 begat sons
and daughters ; and if we will give credit to an ancient
eastern tradition, he had in all thirty-three sons, and
twenty-seven daughters, which, considering the primi-
tive fecundity, would in a short time be sufficient to
stock that part of the world at least where Adam dwelt,
and produce a race of mechanics able enough to supply
others with such instruments of husbandry as might then
be requisite for the cultivation of the ground. b For in
the infancy of the world, the art of tillage was not come
to such a perfection but that Cain might make use of
wooden ploughs and spades, and instead of knives and
hatchets, form his tools with sharp flints or shells, which
were certainly the first instruments of cutting. And
though in those early days there was no great danger of
Abel's losing his cattle by theft; yet, to provide them
with cool shades in hot climates, to remove them irom
place to place as their pasture decayed, to take care of
their young, and guard them from the incursions of
beasts of prey, (with many more incidental offices,) was
then the shepherd's province, as well as now.
According to the computation of most chronologers,
it was in the hundred and twenty-ninth year of Adam's
age, that Abel was slain ; for the Scripture says ex-
pressly, that Seth, 9 (who was given in the lieu of Abel)
was * born in the hundred and thirtieth year, (very likely
the year after the murder was committed,) to be a coui-
s Acts xvii. 26. 4 Stillingfleet's Sacred Origins, b. .'i. C. t
5 1 Cor. xv. 45. 6 Patrick's Commentary. ' Gen. v. 4.
8 NicholU'l Conference, vol. 1. * Gen. v. 3.
a Homer employs it in this acceptation : —
' Since mine thou art indeed, and of my blood.'
Thence those that are near relations are called by Sophocles, ' of
the same blood,' and accordingly Virgil uses sanguis, or blood, in
the same sense ; ' sprung from Trojan blood.'— Stillingflcit $ ti-
ered Origins, b. 3. c. 4.
46
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 128. A. C. 3876; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 203. A. C. 5211. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
fort to Lis disconsolate parents. So that Cain must have
been an hundred and twenty -nine years old when lie abdi-
cated his own country ; at which time there might be a
sufficient quantity of mankind upon the face of the earth,
to the number, it may be, of an hundred thousand souls.
For if the children of Israel, from seventy persons, in
the space of a hundred and ten years, became six hun-
dred thousand fighting men, (though great numbers of
them were dead during4 this increase,) we may very well
suppose, that the children of Adam, whose lives were so
very long-, might amount at least to a hundred thousand
in a hundred and thirty years, which are almost five
generations.
Upon this supposition, it will be no hard matter to
find Cain a wife in another country ; a though it is much
more probable that he was married before his banish-
ment, because we may well think that all the world
would abhor the thoughts of marriage with such an impi-
ous vagabond and murderer. Upon this supposition we
may likewise find him men enough to build and inhabit a
city ; especially l considering that the word Hir, which
we render city, may denote no more than a certain num-
ber of cottages, with some little hedge or ditch about
them : and this cluster of cottages (as was afterwards
customary) he might call by his son's name rather than
his own, which he was conscious was now become odious
every where. Upon this supposition, lastly, we may
account for Cain's fear, lest every one that lighted on
him would kill him ; for by this time mankind was
greatly multiplied, and 2 though no mention is made of
Abel's marriage, (as, in so short a compendium, many
things must necessarily be omitted,) yet he perhaps
might have sons who were ready to pursue the fugitive,
in order to revenge their father's death ; or some of his
own sisters, enraged against him for the loss of their
brother, might possibly come upon him unawares, or
when they found him asleep, and so dispatch him.
Various are the conjectures of learned men * concern-
1 Le Clcrc's Commentary. 2 Patrick's Commentary.
a There is an original tradition, that Eve, at her two first
births, brought twins, a son and a daughter ; Cain, with his sis-
ter Azron, and Abel, with his snter Awin : that when they came
to years of maturity, Adam proposed to Eve, that Cain should
many Abel's twin-sister, and Abel Cain's, because that was
some small remove from the nearest degree of consanguinity,
which even in those days, was not esteemed entirely lawful ; that
Cain refused to agree to this, insisting to have his own sister,
who was the handsomer of the two ; whereupon Adam ordered
them both to make their offerings, before they took their wives,
and so referred the dispute to the determination of God ; that
while they went up to the mountain for that purpose, the devil
put it into Cain's head to murder his brother, for Which wicked
intent his sacrifice was not accepted: and that they were no
sooner come down from the mountain, than he fell upon Abel,
and killed him with a stone. — Patrick's Commentary; and Uni-
versal History, No. 2.
b Almost all the versions have committed a mistake in trans-
lating ver. 15, that ' God had put a mark upon Cain, lest any
finding him should kill him.' The original says no such thing,
and the LXX have veiy well rendered it thus: ' God set a sign
before Cain, to persuade him, that whoever should find him should
not kill him.' This is almost the same with what is said in Ex.
x. 1., that 'God did signs before the Egyptians;' and Isa. lxvi.
19., that 'he would set a sign before the heathen;' where it is
evident, that God did not mean any particular mark which
should be set on their bodies, but only those signs and wonders
which he wrought in Egypt, to oblige Pharaoh to let his people
go; and the miraculous manner wherein he delivered them from
ing the mark which God set upon Cain, to prevent his
being killed. Some think that God stigmatized him on
his forehead with a letter of his own name, or rather set
such a brand upon him, as signified him to be accursed.
Others fancy that God made him a peculiar garment, to
distinguish him from the rest of mankind, who were
clothed with skins. Some imagine, that his head con-
tinually shaked ; others, that his face was blasted with
lightning ; others, that his body trembled all over : and
others again, that the ground shook under him, and
made every one fly from him : whereas the plain sense
of the words is nothing more, than that God gave Cain
a sign, or MTOiight a miracle before his face, thereby to
convince him, that though he was banished jnt'o a strange
land, yet no one should be permitted to hurt him ; and
to find out the land into which he was banished, is not
so hard a matter as some may imagine.
The description which Moses gives us of it is this : —
3 ' And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and
dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east side of Eden ; and
there he built a city, and called the name of it after the
name of his son Enoch.' Hereupon 4 tiie learned Huetius
observes, that Ptolemy, in his description of Susiana,
places there a city called Anuchtha ; and that the sylla-
ble tJia, which ends the word, is, in the Chaldee lan-
guage, a termination pretty common to nouns feminine,
and consequently no part of the name itself; from
whence he infers, that this Anuchtha, mentioned by
Ptolemy, is the same with the city Enoch mentioned by
Moses; especially since Ptolemy places it on the east
side of Eden, which agrees very well with what Moses
says of the land of Nod. 5 But though it be allowed,
that Anuchtha and Enoch be the same name, yet it will
not therefore follow, that there was no other city so
called but that which was built by Cain. It is certain,
that there was another Enoch, the son of .Tared, and fa-
ther of Methuselah, a person of remarkable piety, in the
antediluvian age ; and why might not the city, mentioned
by Ptolemy, be called after him, in respect to his illus-
trious character, and miraculous exemption from death ?
or rather, why might it not take its name from some
other Enoch, different from both the former, and living
some generations after the flood ? For it is scarce ima-
ginable, how the city of Enoch, built before the flood,
should either stand or retain its ancient name, after so
violent a concussion, and total alteration of the face of
nature.
Nor should it be forgot, that the province of Susiana,
Avhere Huetius places the land of Nod, is one of the most
fruitful and pleasant countries in the world ; whereas,
considering that Cain's banishment was intended by God
to be part of his punishment, it seems more reasonable
to think, that he should, upon this account, be sent into
some barren and desolate country, remote from the place
of his nativity, and separated by mountains, and other
3 Gen. iv. 16, 17. ' On the Site of Paradise.
s TFell's Geography.
the Babylonish captivity. This exposition is natural, and agree-
able to the methods of divine providence, which is wont to convince
the incredulous by signs and wonders; nor could any thing else
assure Cain, in the fear he was under, that the first who met
him should not kill him, after what God had said to him in the
exprobation of Ids crime, — Patrick's Commentary, ai-d Sawin't
Dissertation.
Skct. IV.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
47
A. M. 128. A. C. 3S7G, OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 200. A. C. 5211. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. ?:>.
natural obstructions, from the commerce of his relations.
For which reason the learned Grotius is clearly of
opinion, that the country into which Cain was sentenced
to withdraw, was Arabia Deserta : to the barrenness of
which, the curse that God pronounces against him, seems
not improperly to belong. x ' And now thou art cursed
from the earth, and when thou tiilest the ground, it shall
not, henceforth, yield unto thee her strength.' But after
all, their opinion is not to be found fault with, who sup-
pose, that the word Nod, which signifies an exile, or fu-
gitive, is not a proper, but only an appellative name ;
and that therefore, wherever the country was where Cain
took up his abode, that, in after ages, was called the
land of Nod, or the land of the banished man.
Thus the account, which Moses gives us of the mur-
der of Abel, stands clear of the imputation of all absur-
dity or contradiction, wherewith the lovers of infidelity
would gladly charge it. The time when his brother
murdered him, was in the 1 29th year of the world's cre-
ation, when, a according to a moderate computation,
their and their parent's descendants could not but be
very numerous. The manner in which he murdered him
might not be with a sword or spear (which perhaps then
were not in use,) b since a club, or stone, or any rural
instrument, in the hand of rage and revenge, was suffi-
cient to do the work. The place where he murdered
him, is said to be in the field, 2 not in contradistinction
to any large and populous city then in being, but rather
to the tents, or cottages, where their parents and off-
spring might then live. The cause of his murdering
him, was 3a spirit of emulation, which, not duly man-
aged, and made a spur to virtue, took an unhappy turn,
and degenerated into malice : and the true reason of
all (as the apostle has stated it) was, that *' Cain was of
that wicked one, and slew his brother, because his own
works were wicked, and his brother's righteous.'
' Gen. iv. 11. * Lc Clerc's Commentary.
3 Shuckford" s Connection. * 1 John iii. 12.
a Though we should suppose that Adam and Eve had no other
children than Cain and Abel in the year of the world 128, which
(as the best chronologers agree) was the time of Abel's murder;
yet, as it must be allowed, that they had daughters married with
these two sons, we require no more, than the descendants of these
two children, to make a considerable number of men upon the
earth in the said year 128. For, supposing them to have been
married in the 19th year of the world, they might easily have
had each of them eight children, some males, some females, in
the 25th year. In the 50th year there might proceed from them,
iu a direct line, 64 persons; in the 74th year, there would be
572; in the 98th, 4096; and in the 122d year, they would
amount to 32,768. If to these we add the other children, de-
scended from Cain and Abel, their children, and the children of
their children, we shall have in the aforesaid 122d year, 421,164
men, capable of generation, without ever reckoning the women,
both old and young, or such children as are under the age of 17
years. — See Chronological and Geographical Dissertation on the
Bible History, in the Journal of Paris, January, 1712, vol.
li. p. 6.
b There is an oriental tradition, that when Cain was confirmed
in the design of destroying his brother, and knew not how to go
about it, the devil appeared to him in the shape of a man, hold-
ing a bird in his hand; and that, placing the bird upon a rock,
he took up a stone, and with it squeezed its head in pieces.
Cain, instructed by this example, resolved to serve his brother in
the same way ; and therefore, waiting till Abel was asleep, he
lifted up a large stone, and let it fall, with all its weight, upon
his head, and so killed him : whereupon God caused him to hear
a voice from heaven, to this purpose, ' The rest of thy days shalt
CHAP. III.— Of the Institution of Sacrifices.
The first plain account that we meet with of sacrifices,
is here in the examples of Cain and Abel. Mention is
made indeed of the skins of some beasts, wherewith
God directed our first parents to be clothed ; but expos-
itors are not agreed, whether what we render skins
might not denote some other sort of covering, or shelter
from the weather ; or, if they were the real skins of
beasts, whether these beasts were offered unto God in
sacrifice or no ; whereas, in the Scripture before us, we
have oblations of both kinds, bloody and unbloody sac-
rifices, (as they are commonly distinguished;) the fruits
of the field, offered by Cain, and the firstlings of the
flock, by Abel. So that from hence we may very pro-
perly take an occasion, to inquire a little into the orig-
inal of sacrifices ; for what ends and purposes they were
at first appointed ; and by what means they became an
acceptable service unto God.
The Scriptures indeed make no mention of the first
institution of sacrifices ; and from their silence, in this
respect, some have imagined that they proceeded orig-
inally from a dictate of nature, or a grateful inclination
to return unto God some of his own blessings. But in
so short an account of so large a compass of time, (as
we have said before,) it may well be expected, that sev-
eral things should be omitted. To this purpose, there-
fore, others have observed, that Moses says nothing of5
Enoch's prophecy ; nothing 6 of Noah's preaching ;
nothing 7 of the peopling of the world ; though these be
referred to in other parts of Scripture : 8 nor does he
here introduce the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, with an
intent to inform us of the origin of that rite, but merely
to let us know what was the unhappy occasion of the
first murder that ever was committed in the world.
The 9 Jews indeed, to whom he primarily wrote, knew
very well, that their own sacrifices were of divine insti-
tution, and that God had manifested his acceptance of
them, at the very first solemn oblation after that insti-
tution, by a miraculous fire from the divine presence ;
nor had they any reason to doubt, but that they were so
instituted, and so accepted from the beginning : and
therefore there was less reason for Moses to expatiate
upon a matter, which had doubtless descended to them
in a clear and uninterrupted tradition.
A grateful sense of God's blessings will, at any time,
engage us to offer him the calves of our lips, (as the
Scripture terms them,) or the warmest expressions of
our praise and thanksgiving ; but what dictate of nature,
or deduction of reason, could ever have taught us, that,
to destroy the best of our fruits, or the best of our cat-
tle, would have been a service acceptable to God ?
Goodness, and mercy, and lenity, and compassion, are
the ideas we have of that infinite being ; and who would
then have thought, that putting an innocent and inoffen.
sive creature to torture, spilling its blood upon the
earth, and burning its flesh upon an altar, would have
15. ' See Gen. iv.
8 Revelation Examined.
* Jude 14. s 2 Pet. ii.
8 Outram on Sacrifices.
thou pass in perpetual fear.' — Calmefs Dictionary on the word
Abel.
48 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 128. A. C. 3876 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 200. A. C. 5211. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
[Book 1.
been either a grateful sight, or ' an offering of a sweet
smelling savour' to the Most High ?
No ' being, we know, can have a right to the lives of
other creatures, but their Creator only, and those on
whom he shall think proper to confer it : but it is evident,
that God, at this time, had not given man a right to the
creatures, even for necessary food, much less for unne-
cessary cruelty ; and therefore to have taken away their
lives, without God's positive injunction, would have
been an abominable act, and enough to desecrate all
their oblations. When therefore we read, that his ac-
ceptance of sacrifices of old was usually testified by
way of inflammation, or setting them on fire, by a ray
of light which issued from his glorious presence, we
must allow, that this was a proof of his previous insti-
tution of them ; otherwise we cannot possibly think, why
he should so far concern himself about them, as even
to be at the expense of a miracle, to denote his appro-
bation of them. 2 ' Who hath known the mind of the
Lord,' is the Apostle's way of arguing, ' or who hath
been his counsellor ?' And, in like manner, without a
divine revelation, it would have been the height of vanity
and presumption, to have pretended to determine the
way of reconciliation with him, and (without his order
and appointment) to have entered upon a form of wor-
ship, entirely new and strange, by killing of beasts, and
burning their fat. 3 ' No man,' says another Apostle,
' taketh this honour to himself, but he that is called of
God, as was Aaron ;' nor can any one lay hold on the
promise of forgiveness of sins (which is the great design
of all sacrificing) any other way than by symbols of
God's own institution.
In 4most nations indeed, the custom of sacrificing did
prevail : but that it did not arise from any principle of
nature or reason, is manifest from hence — 5that the
gravest and wisest of the heathen philosophers always
a condemned bloody sacrifices as impious, and unaccep-
table to their gods ; but this they would not have done,
had they looked upon them as any branch of natural
religion, which none were more warm in extolling
than they. It is no improbable conjecture, therefore,
that other nations might take the rite of sacrificing from
the Jews, to 6 which the devil, in heathen countries,
might instigate his votaries, purely to ape God, and imi-
tate his ordinances : or if this commencement of sacri-
1 Revelation Examined. s Horn. xi. 34. 8 Heb. v. 4.
* Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, Essay 1.
5 Edward's Survey of Religion, vol. 1.
6 Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, Essay 8.
a It is the opinion of Tertullian, Apol. c. 46. that none of
the ancient philosophers ever compelled the people to sacrifice
living creatures. Theophrastus is quoted by Porphyry in Euse-
bius' Evangelical Preparation, b. 1. c. 9. as asserting that the
first men offered handfuls of grass; that, in time, they come to
sacrifice the fruits of the trees: and, in after ages, to kill and of-
fer cattle upon altars. Many other authors are cited for this
opinion. Pausanias on Phrygian Crops, seems to intimate, that
the ancient sacrifice was only fruits of trees (of the vine espe-
cially,) and of honeycombs and wool. Empedocles on the
most Ancient Times, affirms, that the first altars were not stained
with the blood of creatures ; and Plat) on Laws, b. 6. was of
opinion, that living creatures were not anciently oflered in sac-
rifice, but cakes of bread, and fruits, and honey, poured upon
them ; for " The heavenly deities delight not in the sacrifice of
an ox," was an old position of more writers than Ovid. — See
ShuckforcTs Connection, vol. 1. b. 2
ficing among them is thought to be too late, why may
not we suppose, that they received it by tradition from
their forefathers, who had it originally from Adam, as
he had it from God by a particular revelation ? Now
that there was some warrant and precept of God for it,
seems to be intimated by the author to the Hebrews,
when he tells us, that 7 ' by faith Abel offered unto God
a more acceptable sacrifice, than Cain :' for 8 if ' faith
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,'
faith is founded on some word, and relieth on divine
command or promise ; and therefore, when Abel offered
the best of his flock in sacrifice, he did what was en-
joined him by God, and his practice was founded upon
a divine command, which was given to Adam, and his
sons, though Moses, in his short account of things,
makes no mention of it.
In fine, if it appears from history, that sacrifices have
been used all over the world, have spread as far, as
universally among men, as the very notions of a Deity ;
if we find them almost as early in the world as mankind
upon the earth, and, at the same time, cannot perceive
that mankind ever could, by the light of reason, invent
such notions of a Deity, as might induce them to think,
that this way of worship would be an acceptable service
to him ; if mankind indeed could have no right to the
lives of the brute creation, without the concession of
God ; and yet it is evident, that they exercised such
right, and God approved of their proceeding, by visible
indications of his accepting the sacrifices ; then must
we necessarily suppose, that sacrifices were of his own
institution at first ; and that they were instituted for
purposes well becoming his infinite wisdom and goodness.
For we must remember, that Adam and Eve were, at
this time, become sinners, and though received into
mercy, in constant danger of relapsing; that, by their
transgression, they had forfeited their lives, but as yet
could have no adequate sense, either of the nature of
the punishment, or the heinousness of the sin which pro-
cured it ; and that now they were to beget children, who
were sure to inherit their parents' corruption and infir-
mity. Since man, therefore, had forfeited his life by
his transgressions, and God, notwithstanding, decreed
to receive him into mercy, nothing certainly could bet-
ter become the divine wisdom and goodness, than the
establishment of some institution, which might at once
be a monition both of the mercy of God, and the pun-
ishment due to sin. And because God foresaw that
man would often sin, and should often receive mercy,
it was necessary, that the institution should be such as
might frequently be repeated; and in such repetition,
frequently remind man of his own endless demerit, and
of God's infinite goodness to him ; to which purpose the
institution of sacrifices for sin was of excellent use and
service.
Both from the commandment which at first was given
to Adam, and the sentence which was afterwards de-
nounced against him, we learn, that death was the pe-
nalty of his disobedience ; and since it was so, certainly
it was highly proper, that he should know what he was to
suffer ; and consequently that he should see death in u\\ its
horror and deformity, in order to judge rightly of the
evil of disobedience. And what could exhibit this evil
7 Heb. xi. 4.
8 Rom. x. 17.
Sect. 1"V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
49
A. M. 128. A. C. 387G; OR, ACCORDING TO HAT
more strongly, than the groans and struggles of inno-
cent creatures, bleeding to death for his guilt, before
his eyes, and by his own hands ? Sights of this kind
are shocking to human nature even yet, though custom
hath long made them familiar : with what horror then,
may we imagine that they pierced the hearts of our first
parents, and how was that horror aggravated, when they
considered themselves as the guilty authors of so much
cruelty to the creatures which were about them ? Nay,
when the groans of these dying animals were over, what
a sad, a ghastly spectacle must their cold carcasses
yield? and even after their oblation, how dismal a me-
ditation must it be, to consider the beauty and excel-
lency of these animate beings reduced to an handful of
dust ; especially, when they could not see them in that
condition, but under sad conviction, that they themselves
must follow the same odious steps to destruction ?
We can hardly conceive, how God could strike the
human soul with a deeper sense of misery from guilt,
or with more abhorrence of the sad cause of that misery,
than by this method of appointing sacrifices : nor can
we imagine how our first parents could have ever sus-
tained themselves under such afflicting thoughts, had not
God, in his infinite goodness, caused some ray of hope
to shine through this scene of mortality and misery, and
made sacrifices (at the same time that they were such
lively emblems of the horror of guilt) the means of its
expiation, and the seals of his covenant of grace.
That God entered into a covenant of mercy with
man, immediately after the fall, is evident from the sen-
tence passed upon the serpent, wherein that covenant is
comprised : and therefore, as we find that, in after ages,
his usual way of ratifying covenants of this kind was by
sacrifices ; so we cannot imagine that he failed to do so
at this time, when such mercy was more wanted than
ever it was since the foundation of the world. Sacrifi-
ces indeed have no natural aptitude to expiate guilt, in
which sense, the apostle affirms it 2 ' to be impossible
for the blood of bulls, and of goats, to take away sins.'
The death of a beast is far from being equivalent to the
death of a man, but infinitely short of that eternal death
to which the man's sinfulness does consign him : but
still, as sacrifices are federal rites, and one of those ex-
ternal means which God had instituted, under the ante-
diluvian dispensation, for man's recovery from sin, we
cannot but suppose, but that, when piously and devoutly
offered, they were accepted by him, for the expiation of
transgressions ; though it must be owned, that they did
not, of themselves, or by their own worthiness, atone for
any thing, but only in virtue of the expiatory sacrifice
of the Messias to come, whereof they were no more than
types and shadows. To speak strictly and properly,
therefore, these sacrifices did not really and formally,
but typically and mystically expiate, that is, they did
not pacify God's anger, and satisfy his justice, and
take away sin, by their own force and efficacy, but as
they were figures and representations of that universal
sacrifice, which (in the divine intention) ' was slain from
the foundation of the world,' and, ' in the fulness of
time,' was to come down from heaven, in order to fulfil
the great undertaking of ' making atonement for the sins
of all mankind.'
Revelation Examined.
Hob.
ES, A. M. 200. A. C. 5211. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
Thus to represent the horrid nature of sin, and to seal
the eternal covenant of mercy ; to be types of the great
expiatory sacrifice of Christ's death, and a standing
means of obtaining pardon and reconciliation with God,
seem to be some of the principal ends of God's insti-
tuting sacrifices at iirst : and what was of use to gain
them a favourable acceptance in his sight, we may, in
some measure, learn from the reasons, that are usually
alleged, for his rejection of Cain's, and approbation of
Abel's sacrifice.
Most of the Jewish interpreters have placed the dif-
ferent events of these two sacrifices in the external quan-
tity or quality of them. They tell us, that ' Cain brought
of the fruits of the ground ' indeed, but not of the first-
fruits (as he should have done,) nor the fullest ears of
corn, (which he kept for himself,) but the lankest and
latest ; and, even what he brought, 'twas with a niggardly
hand and grudging mind ; so that he raised God's aver-
sion 3 ' by offering to him of that which cost him nothing :'
whereas Abel found a kind acceptance, because 4 ' he
honoured the Lord with his substance :' he brought of
the ' firstlings of his flock,' and the very best and fattest
of them, as thinking nothing too good to be offered in
devotion and gratitude to him from whom he received all.
5 Allowing the maxim of the Jewish church, namely,
' that without blood there is no remission,' to have been
good, from the first institution of sacrifice, a very learned
writer supposes, that Abel came, as a petitioner for
grace and pardon, and brought the atonement appointed
for sin ; but Cain appeared before God as a just person,
wanting no repentance, and brought an offering in
acknowledgment of God's goodness and bounty, but no
atonement in acknowledgment of his own wretched-
ness ; and that upon this account his oblation was re-
jected, as God's expostulation with him seems to imply ;
' If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ? And if
thou doest not well, sin lieth at thy door,' that is, if thou
art righteous, thy righteousness shall save thee ; but if
thou art not, by what expiation is thy sin purged ? it
lieth still at thy door.
The author to the 6 Hebrews has given us, I think, a
key to this difficulty, when he tells us, that ' by faith
Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than
Cain.' 7 The faith (of which the apostle gives us several
instances in this chapter) is the belief of something de-
clared, and, in consequence of such belief, the perform-
ance of some action enjoined by God : ' By faith Noah,
being warned by God, prepared an ark,' that is, he be-
lieved the warning which God gave him and obediently
made the ark which he had appointed him, to make :
' By faith Abraham, when called ' to go into a strange
land, ' which God promised to give him for an inher-
itance, obeyed,' that is, he believed that God would give
him what he had promised, and, in consequence of such
belief, did what God commanded him : and thus it was,
that ' Abel, by faith, offered a better sacrifice than Cain,'
because he believed what God had promised, that ' the
seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head,'
and, in consequence of such belief, offered such a sacri-
3 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. 4 Prov. iii. 0.
5 Bishop Sherlock's Use of Prophecy, ilis. 3.
« Cliap. xi. vi v. 4. ' S/iurk/ord's Connection, vol. 1. b. 2.
50 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 138. A. C. 38335; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 200. A. C. 5211. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
[Book I.
Hce for his sins, as God had appointed to be offered,
until the seed should come.
1 In order to offer a sacrifice by faith then, there are
three things requisite. 1st, That the person who offers
should do it upon the previous appointment and direc-
tion of God. 2dly, That he should consider it as a sign
and token of the promise of God made in Christ, and of
remission of sins through his blood ; and 3dly, That,
while he is offering, he should be mindful withal (in the
phrase of St Paul) ' to present himself a living sacrifice,
holy, and acceptable unto God.' In the first of these
qualifications Cain was right enough, because he had
learned from his father, that, as God had appointed sa-
crifices, it was his duty to offer them : but herein was his
great defect, that while he was offering, he gave no atten-
tion to what he was about ; nor once reflected on the pro-
mise of God, made in paradise, nor placed any confidence
in the merits of a Saviour, to recommend his services; but,
vainly imagining that his bare oblation was all that was
required to his justification, he took no care to preserve
his soul pure and unpolluted, or to constitute his mem-
bers as ' instruments of righteousness unto God.' In
short, his oblation was the service of an hypocrite, lying
unto God, and using the external symbols of grace ' for
a cloak of maliciousness ;' whereas Abel's sacrifice was
attended with awful meditations on that ' seed of the
woman ' which was to become the world's Redeemer,
with warm applications to him for mercy and forgiveness,
and with holy resolutions of better obedience, of aban-
doning all sin, ' and always abounding in the work of
the Lord ;' and therefore there is no wonder, that their
services met with so different a reception. For, how-
ever sacrificing was an external rite, yet the rite itself
would by no means do, unless the attention of the mind,
and the integrity of the heart went along with it, 2 ' he
that killed an ox was as if he slew a man ; and he that
sacrificed a lamb as if he cut off a dog's neck ;' so de-
testable in the sight of God was a the richest oblation,
when the sacrificer was not a good man ; nay, so ready
was he to pass by all observances of this kind, if the
Avorshipper came but, in other respects, qualified : 3 ' For
he that keepeth the law bringeth offerings enough ; he
that taketh heed to the law ofiereth a peace-offering ; he
that requiteth a good turn ofiereth fine flour ; and he that
giveth alms sacrificeth praise. To depart from wicked-
ness is a thing pleasing to the Lord ; and to forsake un-
righteousness is a propitiation.'
1 Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, Essay V.
2 Isa. Ixvi. 3. 3 Ecclus. xxxv. 1, &c.
a That it is not the quality of the sacrifice, but the mind and
disposition of the sacrificer, which God regards, was the general
sentiment of the wisest heathens, as appears by that excellent
passage in Persius: —
' Justice upright, and sanctity of heart,
A polished mind, pure at its inmost core
A breast imbued with no dishonest art,
These I will yield, and duly Jove adore.'
Sat. 2.
And that other in Seneca: —
' It is not by victims, though they be most valuable and glitter
with gold, that honour is paid to the gods, but by worshipping
them with a pious and upright heart.' — On Old Age, 1. 6.
CHAP. IV.
On the Design of Sacrifice : — On the Sacrifices of the
Patriarchal Dispensation.
(supplemental by the editor.)
Scripture assures us that Christ was ' the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world.' But what meaning
are we to attach to these expressions, unless Ave under-
stand them as referring to the significant and emblema-
tical rite of sacrifice, instituted to prefigure the death
incurred by sin, and the atonement by Avhich its guilt
Avas to be expiated ? It is admitted that this atonement
had a retrospective efficacy ; that through it God de-
clared his righteousness for the remission of sins that
Avere past; and have Ave not, therefore, the best grounds
for regarding the institution of sacrifice as having been
intended from the beginning impressively to shoAv forth
the death of the Redeemer ? He is described as ' the
Lamb of God Avho taketh aAvay the sin of the world,' be-
cause he really fulfilled that Avhich the sacrifice of lambs
and of other animals prefigured.
In the first promise there is allusion to the sufferings
of the Mighty Deliverer. In order that the great truths
comprehended in this promise might be more clearly un-
derstood and deeply felt, Ave have every reason to be-
lieve that sacrifice Avas immediately and divinely insti-
tuted as an explanatory ordinance. Though the Avords
of the institution are not recorded, the fact cannot be
questioned ; because sacrifice constituted a part of the
Avorship of God from the fall of man ; and Ave must feel
assured that it could not be acceptably used in his wor-
ship but in consequence of divine appointment. AVe
knoAV that the inferior animals were not used as food, at
least Avith the divine permission, till after the flood ; and,
consequently, there could be no occasion for slaying
them, unless it Avere for sacrifice, till after that period.
Our first parents having been clothed at the expense of
life, and by the special interposition of God, had a
striking representation given them of the mode in Avhich
forfeited happiness should be restored, and of that per-
fect righteousness by Avhich they were justified before
God. It Avas an intimation to them that the Deliverer,
denominated the Seed of the Avoman, should redeem
them by his sufferings.
Thus have Ave presented to our vieAV immediately after
the fall, and before the first transgressors Avere expelled
from paradise, the two principal methods in Avhich God
unfolded to mankind the Avay of salvation, namely, pro-
phecy and typical sacrifice. Both these methods of
divine revelation were continued in the church Avith in-
creasing clearness and precision till the coming of
Christ ; and both Avere intended to direct the faith of the
people to the Substitute and Surety of sinners, Avho by
the one offering up of himself Avas to obtain eternal re-
demption. In the first promise Ave have the foundation
of that series of prophecies which Avas delivered from
age to age, Avhich announced the divine nature, the in-
carnation, the sufferings, death, and subsequent glories
of the Redeemer. In the first sacrifice we have the
basis of that series of typical observances, Avhich pre-
figured the mediation and atonement of the Son of God.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
51
A. M. 128. A. C. 3876; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 200. A. C. 5211. GEN. CH. 4. TO VER. 25.
Prophecy was the annunciation of what was future, ex-
pressed not by words but by signs. These signs were
indefinitely varied ; and, accordingly, the rites appointed
to be observed in the worship of God, and the vicissitudes
of the church in its trials and triumphs, recorded in the
Old Testament, were emblematical. They served unto
the example and shadow of good things to come. But
the most prominent of these emblems was sacrifice, which
by its direct reference to the atonement of Christ, aided
the faith and hope of believers, and which by its univer-
sal use, even when its original design was forgotten,
may have prepared mankind for that message of salva-
tion which, in the fulness of time, was sent to them
through a crucified Redeemer.
These views are confirmed by the circumstances re-
corded in Scripture regarding the sacrifice of Abel. By
faith we are told that Abel offered unto God a more ex-
cellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness
that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts. Cain
brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the
Lord : and Abel, he brought of the firstlings of his flock.
If we bear in mind the observations already made, we
shall readily perceive the ground on which the sacrifice
of Abel was accepted, while that of Cain was rejected,
Abel offered his sacrifice in faith, in strict accordance
with the command of God, and in firm reliance on his
promise : he acknowledged by the death inflicted on an
innocent animal his own desert as a sinner, and his trust
in the way of redemption and recovery which God had
mercifully provided : he thus as a true penitent ap-
proached God in worship, looking for pardon and re-
conciliation, renewing and sanctifying grace, through
an atonement. But Cain, viewing God merely as his
Creator and Preserver, offered the fruits of the earth as
an acknowledgment of his goodness, entirely overlook-
ing liis own character as a sinner, and disregarding the
divinely instituted sacrificial rite, the appointed emblem
of the new and living way of access to God. " In
short, Cain, the first-born of the fall, exhibits the first-
fruits of his parents' disobedience, in the arrogance and
self-sufficiency of reason, rejecting the aids of revela-
tion, because they fell not within its apprehension of
right. He takes the first place in the annals of deism,
and displays, in his proud rejection of the ordinance of
sacrifice, the same spirit, which, in later days, has ac-
tuated his enlightened followers, in rejecting the sacri-
fice of Christ."
The terms in which God expostulates with Cain con-
voy a rebuke for his not offering an animal sacrifice like
his brother Abel : ' If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted? and if thou doest not well, a sin-offering
lieth even at the door.' There is here a reference to
sin-offering as a known institution, the neglect of which
in Cain incurred the divine displeasure, and the obser-
vance of animal sacrifice is anew enforced. The sacri-
fice which Abel presented unto God was of this descrip-
tion. The reason of its acceptance, according to the
apostle Paul, was the faith in which it was offered ; faith
in the Redeemer promised under the appellation of the
seed of the woman. " Of this faith, the offering of an
animal in sacrifice, appears to have been the legitimate,
and consequently the instituted, expression. The insti-
tution of animal sacrifice, then, was coeval with the fall,
tad had a reference to the sacrifice of our redemption.
But, as it had also an immediate, and most apposite,
application to that important event in the condition of
man, which, as being the occasion of, was essentially
connected with, the work of redemption ; that likewise,
we have reason to think, was included in its sionifica-
tion. And thus, upon the whole, sacrifice appears to
have been ordained, as a standing memorial of the death
introduced by sin, and of that death which was to be
suffered by the Redeemer."
First, then, it is evident, that the offering of Abel was
different in its nature from that which was presented by
Cain; and that this difference constituted the principal
ground for the acceptance of the one, and the rejection
of the other. It was a more full, a more ample sacrifice,
that is, it partook more essentially of the nature of sacri-
fice, than the offering of Cain. It was ' of the firstlings
of his flock,' an animal slain in solemn sacrifice unto
God, in obedience to a known divine command, whereas
Cain offered merely of the fruit of the ground, as an ex-
pression of thankfulness to the bounty of God. Hence,
Secondly, Abel is said to have offered his more ex-
cellent sacrifice by faith. On this circumstance there is
much stress laid by the apostle, as he adduces it in the
eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, as an example illustra-
tive of the power and efficacy of faith. But what was
the object of this faith ? Unquestionably a divine reve-
lation, the promise of the Messiah, to which such frequent
allusion is made in Scripture, and in firm reliance on
which the patriarchs lived and died. ' These all,' Abel
and all the others whom the apostle had named, ' not
having received the fulfilment of the promises, but hav-
ing seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and
embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers
and pilgrims on the earth.' This could not be the pro-
mise of entering the land of Canaan, because to Abel,
Enoch, and Noah, no such promise was given, and be-
cause that even in regard to Abraham, the evangelist
(John viii. 56.) explains the expression of his seeing the
promises afar off, and embracing them, as signifying his
seeing the day of Christ and rejoicing. To the comple-
tion of the great promise of the coming of the Seed of
the woman, to accomplish the redemption of mankind,
Abel looked with firm reliance on the truth of God. In
the faith of this promise he offered unto God the kind of
sacrifice which had been enjoined as the evidence of de-
pendence on divine mercy, and as the typical expression
of that atonement which was to be made in the fulness of
time. And, therefore,
In the third place, he obtained the testimony of God
to the acceptableness of his sacrifice, and to his own per-
sonal justification before God. ' By which he obtained
witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts :
and by it, he being dead, yet speaketh.' He thus be-
came heir of the righteousness of God which is by faith,
' even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus
Christ unto all, and upon all them that believe.' It was
declared by God himself, that he was righteous before
him, by his visibly attesting the excellency and accepta-
bleness of his oblation.
AVe thus discover the reason for the difference in the
divine reception of the sacrifices of Cain and Aid.
This cannot be accounted for by those who deny the di
vine origin of sacrifice. Abel's sacrifice, as our author
remarks, was more excellent than his brother's, because
52
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 130. A. C. 3874 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 230. A. C. 5181. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VER. 13.
it was offered with faith in the great atonement, which he
believed was in due time to take away the sin of the
world ; and because it consisted of what had been
divinely instituted to prefigure the atonement in which
he appears to have reposed all his trust.
SECT. V.
CHAP. I. — Of the General Corruption of Mankind.
THE HISTORY.
Great a was the grief, no doubt, which our first parents
felt upon the loss of the righteous Abel, and the expul-
sion of their wicked son Cain ; but, to alleviate, in some
measure, this heavy load of sorrow, God was pleased to
promise them another son, whose fate should be differ-
ent, and himself a lasting comfort and consolation to
them : and therefore, as soon as Eve was delivered of
the child, she called his name Seth, which signifies sub-
stitute, because God had been so good as to send him
in the room of his brother Abel, whom Cain slew.
Adam, when he had Seth, was 130 years old: he lived
after that 800 years, and begat several other children
(though Moses makes no mention of them.) So that the
u whole of his life was 930 years.
A- Iv^35, Seth, when he was 105 years old, had a son
named Enos : after which time he lived 807
years ; so that the whole of his life was 912.
A. M 325, Enos, when 90, had a son named Cainan :
or 625. ' , I
after which he lived S15 years ; in the whole
905.
A. M. 395, Cainan, when 70, had a son named Mahala-
or 795. ' '
leel : after which he lived 840 years ; in all
910.
AMnVi60' Mahalaleel, when 65, had a son named Ja-
or 960. '
red : after which he lived 830 years ; in all
895.
a The Jewish, and some Christian doctors, say, that Adam
and Eve mourned for Abel one hundred years, during which
time they lived separate, Adam particularly, in a valley near
Hebron thence named the valley of tears. And the inhabitants
of Ceylon pretend, that the salt lake on the mountain of Colum-
bo, was formed by the tears which Eve shed on this occasion.
411 fiction. — Calmefs Dictionary.
b If it be asked, how it came to pass, that Adam, who was
immediately created by God, and, consequently, more perfect
than any of his kind, did not outlive Methuselah, who was the
eighth from him? the answer which some have given, namely,
that his grief and affliction of mind for the loss of paradise, and
the misery which, by his transgression, he had entailed upon his
offspring, might affect his constitution, and by degrees, impair
his strength, is not much amiss: but there is another reason
which seems to me better founded, namely, that, whereas Adam
was created in the full perfection of his nature, and all his de-
scendants, being born infants, did gradually proceed to maturity ;
subducting the time from their infancy to their manhood, we
shall find, that Adam outlived them all. For we must not
compute, as wre do now, (when the extent of man's life is usually
no more that seventy) that his complete manhood was at thirty,
or thereabouts. In the very catalogue now before us, we read
of none (except Enoch, and two others, who begat children before
they were ninety or upwards ;) and therefore, subtracting those
years (which we may suppose interfered between his birth and
his manhood) from the age of Methuselah, we may perceive, that
Adam surpassed him to the number of almost sixty. — On the
more Difficult Passages.
A'or\\r>2' Jareci> when 162, had a son named Enoch :
after which he lived 800 years ; in all 962.
AoM2877' Enoch, when 65, had a son named Methuse-
lah : after which he lived 300 : in all 365.
a. M .874, Methuselah, when 187, had a son named
or 14/4.
Lamech : after which he lived 782 : in all 969.
A' M,',1r^56' Lamech, when 1 82, had a son named Noah :
or 1050.
after which he lived 595 ; in all 777 : and
A- Mj;„ •556. Noah, when he was 500 years old, had three
or 22o6. ' ' '
sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, cfrom whom
the world, after the deluge, was replenished.
d This is the genealogy which Moses gives us of the
posterity of Adam, in the line of Seth, until the time of
the deluge ; but we must observe, that these! are far from
being all his progeny. In the case of our great progen-
itor Adam, he informs us, that after the birth of Seth,
1 ' he had several sons and daughters,' though he does
not so much as record their names ; and the like we may
suppose of the rest of the antediluvian patriarchs. For
1 Gen. v. 4.
c Of these three sons, the eldest was Japhet, as appears from
Gen. x. 21., the second was Shem, from Gen. x. 21., and the
youngest Ham, from Gen. ix. 24. Nevertheless, both here, and
a little lower, Shem is named first ; whether it was, that the
rights of primogeniture were transferred to him (though the sa-
cred historian says nothing of it,) or God was minded, thus early,
to show that he would not be confined to the order of nature, in
the disposal of his favours, which he frequently bestowed upon
the younger children ; or (what I think the most likely) because
the nation of the Jews were to descend from him, and he, and
his posterity, were to be the principal subject of this whole his-
tory.— Patrick and Le Clerc's Commentary, and Pool's Annota.
d From this catalogue we may farther observe, that the custom
in those times was, to give children their names according to the
occurrences in life, or expectations of their parents. Thus Seth,
being a good man, was grieved to see the great degeneracy in
other parts, though he endeavoured to preserve his own family
from the contagion ; and therefore called his son Enos, which
signifies sorrowful. Enos, perceiving the posterity of Cain to
grow every day worse and worse, was concerned for their ini-
quity, and began to dread the consequences of it; and therefore
called his son Cainan, which denotes lamentation. Though
Cainan had his name from the wickedness of Cain's family, yet
he himself was resolved to maintain the true worship of God in
his own ; and therefore called his son Mahalaleel, that is, a
praiscr and worshipper of God. In the days of Mahalaleel (as
the tradition tells us) a defection happened among the sons of
Seth, who went down from the mountains where they inhabited,
and adjoined themselves to the daughters of Cain: and therefore
he called his son's name Jared, which signifies descending.
Jared, to guard against the general corruption, devoted himself
and his descendants, more zealously to the service of God, and,
accordingly, called his son Enoch, which means a dedication.
Enoch, by the spirit of prophecy, foreseeing the destruction which
would come upon the earth, immediately after the death of his
son, called his name Methuselah, which imports as much ; for
the first part of the word, Methu, signifies he dies, and Selah, the
seyiding forth of water. Methuselah, perceiving the wickedness
of the world, in the family of Seth, as well as that of Cain, to
grow every day worse and worse, called his son Lamech, which
intimates a poor man, humbled, and afflicted with grief, for the
present corruption and fear of future punishment. And Lamech
conceiving better hopes of his son (as some imagine) that he
should be the promised seed, the restorer of mankind after the
deluge, or a notable improver of the art of agriculture, called his
name Noah, which denotes a comforter. — Bedford's Scripture
Chronology. We may observe, from this catalogue, however,
that the patriarchs, in those days, were not so superstitious, as to
think any thing ominous in names: and therefore we find, that
Jared feared not to call his son Enoch, by the veiy name of
Cain's eldest son, Gen. iv. 17., even a Methuselah called his son
Lamech, by the name of one of Cain's grandchildren, ch, iv.
i ver. 18. — Patrick's Commentary.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
53
A. M. 130. A. C. 3874; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
it is incongruous to think, that Lainech was 181, and
Methuselah, IS7, before they ever had a child, when it
so plainly appears that his father Enoch had one at 65.
The true reason then of this omission is, — that the his-
torian never intended to give us a catalogue of the col-
lateral branches (which doubtless were many) but only
of the principal persons by whom, in a right line, the
succession was continued down to Noah, and thence to
Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation.
Not long after the departure of Cain, the whole world
was divided into two families, or opposite nations : the
family of Seth, which adhered to the service of God,
« became more frequent in religious offices ; and, as
their number increased, met in larger assemblies, and in
communion, to perform the divine worship by way of
public liturgy ; and, ' for this their piety and zeal, were
styled the sons or servants of God, in distinction to the
family of Cain, which now became profligate and pro-
fane, renouncing the service of God, and addicting
themselves to all manner of impiety and lasciviousness ;
from whence they had the name of the ' sons and daugh-
ters of men.'
In this period of time, Enoch, one of the family of
Seth, and the seventh in a direct line from Adam, a per-
1 Heidegger 's History of the Patriarchs,
a The words in our translation are, — ' Then,' that is, in the
days of Euos, 'began men to call upon the name of the Lord,'
ch. iv. 26.; but, it being very probable, that public assemblies
fur religious offices, were held long before this time, and that even
when Cain and Abel offered their sacrifices, their families joined
with them in the worship of God; some men of great note, such
as, Bertram, Hachspan, aud Heidegger, take them in the same
sense with our marginal translation; ' then began men,' that is,
the children of Seth, ' to call themselves by the name of the
Lord,' that is, the servants and worshippers of the Lord, in con-
tradistinction to the Cainites, and such profane persons as had
forsaken him. It must not be dissembled, however, that the
word Hochal, which we translate began, in several places of Scrip-
ture signifies to profane ; and upon this presumption many of the
Jewish writers, and some of no obscure fame among us, have
taken the words so, as if Moses intended to intimate to us, that
men began now to apostatize from the worship of God, to fall into
idolatry, and to apply the most holy name, which alone belongs
to the great Creator of heaven and earth, to created beings, and
especially to the sun. But, considering that Moses is here speak-
mg of the pious family of Seth, and not of that of Cain ; that
when the Hebrew word signifies to profane, it has always a noun
following it; but when an affirmative mood follows, (as in the
passage before us,) it always signifies to begin ; and withal, that
the eastern writers represent this Enos as an excellent governor,
who, while he lived, preserved his family in good order, and,
when lie died, called them all together, aud gave them a charge
to keep all (Jod's commandments, and not to associate themselves
with the children of Cain: considering all this, I say, we can
hardly suppose that Moses is here pointing out the origin of idol-
atry, but rather the invention of some religious rites and cere-
monies in the external worship of God at this time, or the dis-
tinction which good men began to put between themselves and
such as were openly wicked and profane. For that the true
meaning of the expression Karabeshem, according to our mar-
ginal translation, is to call or nominate by, or after the name of
any one, is manifest from several instances in Scripture. Thus,
Ben. iv. 17, Jikra, he called the name of the city Jlcshem, by,
or after the name of his son, Numb, xxxii. 42. Jikra, he catted
it Nobukbe&hem, by, or after his own name ; and in Psal. xlix. 11.
Korean, they call their lands Bishmotham, by, or after their
own names; and the name here intimated is afterwards expressly
given them by Moses himself, Gen. vi. when he tells us, that
'the sons of God saw the daughters of men.' — Patrick's Com-
tnentury; and Catmct's Dictionary on the word Enos; and
Bhuckf aid's Connection, vol. 1. b. 1.
A. M. 230. A. C. 5181. GEN. CE 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.
son of singular piety and sanctity of life, not only took
care of his own conduct, u as considering himself always
under the eye and observation of a righteous God, but,
by his good advices and admonitions, endeavoured like-
wise to put a stop to the torrent of impiety, and reform
the vices of the age ; for which reason God was pleased
to show a signal token of his kindness to him ; for he
exempted him from the common fate of mankind, and,
without suffering death to pass upon him, translated him
into the regions of bliss.
In this period of time, Adam, who (according to the
sentence denounced against him at the fall) was to
return to his native dust, departed this life, and (as the
tradition is) having called his son Seth, and the other
branches of his numerous family about him, he gave
them strict charge, that they should always live separate,
b This seems to be the natural sense of the expression of
walking ivith God; and excellent to this purpose is this passage
of Seneca, if we take what he tells us of the presence of God in
a Christian sense: —
" Verily we must so conduct ourselves as if we lived in
God's presence, — we must so think as if some one could look
into the recesses of our hearts, and there is one who can, for
what availeth it that any thing be kept hid from man? nothing
is concealed from God; he is present in our minds, and knoweth
our thoughts." — B. 1. Epist. 83; Lc Clerc's Commentary.
But, considering how usual a thing it was, in these early
ages of the world, for angels to be conversant with good men,
it may not improperly be said of Enoch, and of Noah both, that
they walked with God in this sense, namely, that they had
oftentimes familiar converse with these messengers, who might
be sent with instructions from him how they were to behave
upon several occasions: for this answers the traditions of the
heathens, namely, that in the golden age, their gods had fre-
quent intercourse with men :
An endless life shall be his gift, and lie,
Great heroes with the gods convened shall see ;
While he by them with loving eyes beheld.
Virg. Ec. 4.
And to the same purpose: —
More oft of old th* inhabitants of heaven,
Were wont to show themselves to human eyes,
When piety not yet was held in scorn.
Catul. in Nup. Thet. et Pelei.
c Where Adam was buried cannot be collected from Scrip-
ture. St Jerome, in Matt, xxvii. seems to approve of the opin-
ion of those who imagine that he was buried at Hebron, in the
cave of Machpelah, or the double cave, which Abraham, many
ages after, bought for a burying place Uw himself and family,
Gen. xxiii. 3. &c. The oriental Christians say, that when
Adam saw death approaching, he called his son Seth, ami the
rest of his family to him, and ordered them to embalm his body
with myrrh, frankincense, and cassia, and deposit it in a certain
cave, on the top of a mountain, which he had chosen for the
repository of his remains, and which was thence called the cave
of All-Konnz, a word derived from the Arabian Kanaza, which
signifies to lay tip privately. And this precaution (as the Jews
will have it) was ordered by Adam to be taken, lest his posterity
should make his relics the object of idolatry. Several of the
primitive fathers believe, that he died in the place where Jeru-
salem was afterwards built, and that he was interred on Mount
Calvary, in the very Bpol where Christ was crucified; but others
are of opinion, that (though he did not die at Jerusalem,) yet
Noah, at the time of the deluge, put his body into the ark, and
took care to have it buried there by Melchisedec, the son of
Shem, his grandson. The Mahometans will have his sepulchre
to have been on a mountain near Mecca; and the ancient Per-
sians, in Serendil, or Ceylon: so ambitious is every nation to
have the father of all mankind reposited with them. When
Eve, the mother of all living, died is nowhere expressed In
Scripture; but there are some who venture to tell us, that she
outlived her husband ten years. — See the Universal History; and
Calmefl Dictionary on the word Adam,
54
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 10-12. A. C. 29G2 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 1070. A. C. 4311. GEN. CH. 5. AND C. TO VER. 13.
anil have no manner of intercourse with the impious
family of the murderer Cain.
In this period of time, Noah, the great-grandson of
Enoch, and a person of equal virtue and piety, was
born : and as it was discovered to Enoch at the birth of
Methuselah, that soon after that child's death, the whole
race of mankind should be destroyed for their wicked-
ness; so was it revealed to Lamech, at the birth of his
son,1 that he and his family should be preserved from
the common destruction, and so become the father of
the new world ; and for this reason "he called him Noah,
which signifies a comforter : though others imagine,
that the name was therefore given him, because his
father, by the spirit of prophecy, foreknew, that God,
in his days, would remove the curse of barrenness from
oft' the face of the earth, and, after the time of the deluge,
restore it to its original fertility.
After the death of Adam, the family of Seth (to fulfil
1 Bedford's Scripture Chronology.
a The substance of Lamech's prophecy, according to our trans-
lation, is this:— 'He called his son Noah, saying; This same
shall comfort us, concerning the work and toil of our hands, be-
cause of the ground which the Lord hath cursed ;' and the sense
of learned men upon it hath been very different. Some are of
opinion, that there is nothing prophetical in this declaration of
Lamech's, and that the only cause of his rejoicing was, to see a
son born, who might in time be assisting to him in the toil of
cultivating the ground. But in this there is nothing particular:
in this sense Lamech's words may be applied by every father at
the birth of every son ; nor can we conceive why a peculiar name
should be given Noah, if there was no particular reason for it.
The Jewish interpreters generally expound it thus: 'He shall
make our labour in tilling the ground more easy to us/ in that
lie shall be the inventor of several proper tools and instruments
of husbandry, to abate the toil and labour of tillage; and some
will tell us, that he therefore received his name, because he first
invented the art of making wine, a liquor that cheers the heart,
and makes man forget sorrow and trouble. But the invention
of fit tools for tillage, after that Tubal-Cain had become so great
an artificer in brass and silver, seems to belong to one of his
descendants, rather than Noah ; and as Noah was not the first
husbandman in the world, so neither can it be concluded from
his having planted a vineyard, that he was the first vine-dresser.
Another opinion, not altogether unlike this, is, — that Lamech,
being probably informed by God, that his son Noah should obtain
a grant of the creatures for food, Gen. ix. 5. and knowing the
labour and inconveniences they were under, rejoiced in foresee-
ing what ease and comfort they should have, when they obtained
a large supply of food from the creatures, besides what they
could produce from the ground by tillage. The restoration of
mankind by Noah, and his sons surviving the flood, is thought
by many to answer the comfort which Lamech promised him-
self and his posterity: but the learned Heidegger, after an exam-
ination of all these, and some other opinions, supposeth that
Lamech, having in mind the promise of God, expected that his
son should prove the blessed seed, the Saviour of the world, who
was to bruise the serpent's head, and, by his atonement, expiate
our sins, which are the works of our own hands, and remove the
curse which lay upon sinners. But this, in my opinion, is too
forced an exposition. Lamech, it is certain, in virtue of God's
promise, expected a deliverance from the curse of the earth, and
foresaw that that deliverance would come through his son: but
how came it through his son, unless it came in his son's days ?
And in what instance could it appear, unless it were something
subsequent to the flood ? And what could that possibly be, un-
less the removal of the sterility of the earth, and restoring it to
its original fruitfulness? For which reason we find God, after
the flood, declaring, that ' he will not curse the earth for man's
sake;' and solemnly promising, that 'while the earth remaineth,
seed-time and harvest shall not cease,' Gen. viii. 22. See
Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs; Patrick and Le Clerc's
Commentary; Poole's Annotations; Shucftford's Connection; and
liishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy, Dissertation 4.
their father's will) removed from the plain where they
had lived, to the mountains over against paradise, where
Adam is said to have been buried ; and for some time
lived there in the fear of God, and in the strictest rules
of piety and virtue. But as the family of Cain, daily
increased, they came at length to spread themselves
over all the plain which Seth had left, even to the con-
fines of the hill-country, where he had fixed his abode,
and there they b lived in all kind of riot, luxury, and
licentiousness.
The noise of their revellings might possibly reach the
holy mountain where the Sethites dwelt; whereupon
some of them might be tempted to go down, merely to
gratify their curiosity perhaps at first, but being taken
with their deluding pleasures, and "intoxicated with the
charms of their women, (who were extremely beautiful,)
they forgot the charge which their forefathers had given
them, and so took to themselves wives of the daughters
of Cain ; from which criminal mixture were born men ol
vast gigantic stature, who for some time infested the earth :
and, in a few generations after, the whole family ol
Seth (very probably after the death of their pious an-
cestor) followed the like example, and, forgetting their
obligations to the contrary, entered into society with the
Cainites, and made intermarriages with them ; from
whence arose another race of men, no less remarkable
for their daring wickedness than for their bold under-
takings and adventurous actions.
Evil communications naturally corrupt good manners ;
and so the example of the wicked family prevailed, and,
by degrees, eat out all remains of religion in the poste-
rity of Seth. Noah indeed, who was a good and pious
man, endeavoured what he could,2 both by his counsel
and authority, to bring them to a reformation of their
manners, and to restore the true religion among them ;
8 Josephus's Antiquities, b. I.e. 4.
b Some of the oriental writers have given us a large account
of their manner of living. " As to the posterity of Cain," say
they, "the men did violently burn in lust towards the women,
and, in like manner, the women, without any shame, committed
fornication with the men ; so that they were guilty of all manner
of filthy crimes with one another, and, meeting together in pub-
lic places for this purpose, two or three men were concerned
with the same woman, the ancient women, if possible, being
more lustful and brutish than the young. Nay, fathers lived
promiscuously with their daughters, and the young men with
their mothers; so that neither the children could distinguish their
own parents, nor the parents know their own children. So de-
testable were the deeds of the Cainites, who spent their days in
hist and wantonness, in singing and dancing, and all kinds of
music, until some of the sons of Seth, hearing the noise of their
music and riotous mirth, agreed to go down to them from the
holy mountain, and, upon their arrival, were so captivated with
the beauty of their women, (who were naked) that they imme-
diately defiled themselves with them, and so were undone. For
when they offered to return again to their former abodes, the
stones of "the mountain became like fire, and permitted them Ui
pass no farther." — Eutych. Annals, p. 27.
c Our excellent Milton describes the manner of their being
captivated with the daughters of Cain in these words:
-They on the plain
Long had not walk'd, when from their tents, behold,
A bevy of fair women, richly gay,
In gems, and wanton dress : to th' harp they sung
Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on.
The men, though grave, eyed them ; and let their eye3
Rove without win ; till in the amorous net
First caught, they Uk'd, and each his liking chose.
Sect. V.]
PROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
55
A. M. 1536. A. C. 2408; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 213G. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VEK. 13.
°but all he could do was to no purpose. The bent of
their thoughts had taken another turn ; and all their
study and contrivance was, how to gratify their lusts and
inordinate passions. In one word, the whole race of
mankind was become so very wicked, that one would
have really thought they had been confederated together
against Heaven, to violate God's law, to profane his
worship, and spurn at his authority ; so that his patience
and long-suffering came at length to be wearied out :
and though he is not a man that he should repent, or the
son of man, that he should grieve at any thing, yet his
concern for the general corruption is represented under
that notion, the better to accommodate it to our capacity,
and to express his fixed resolution of destroying all
mankind for their iniquity, and with them all other crea-
tures made for their use, *as if he had repented that
ever he made them.
Before he resolved upon their destruction, however,
we find him in great struggle and conflict with himself ; his
justice calling for vengeance, and his mercy pleading for
forbearance ; till at length his justice prevailed, and de-
nounced the sentence of condemnation upon the wicked
world : but still with this reserve — That if, c within the
a Josephus tells us, that Noah, for a long while, opposed the
growing impiety of the age ; but that at last, finding himself and
family in manifest danger of some mortal violence for his good-
will, he departed out of the land himself, and all his people;
— Antiq. b. 1. c. 4; and (as the tradition is,) he settled in a
country called Cyparisson, which had its name from the great
quantity of cypress-trees which grew there, and whereof (as we
shall observe hereafter) in all probability he built the ark.
b As languages were at first invented by such persons as were
neither philosophers nor divines, we caiuiot at all wonder, that
we meet with many improprieties in speech, and such actions
imputed to God, as no ways comport with the dignity of his
nature. Thus, when the Holy Scriptures speak of God, they
ascribe hands, and eyes, and feet to him ; not that he has any of
these members, according to the literal signification ; but the
meaning is, that he has a power to execute all those acts, to the
effecting of which, these parts in us are instrumental, that is, he
can converse with men, as well as if he had a tongue or mouth ;
can discern all that we do or say, as perfectly as if he had eyes
and ears ; and can reach us, as well as if he had hands or feet,
&C In like manner, the Scripture frequently represents him,
as affected with such passions as we perceive in ourselves, name-
ly, as angry and pleased, loving and hating, repenting and
grieving, &c. ; and yet, upon reflection, we cannot suppose, that
any of these passions can literally affect the divine nature ; and
therefore the meaning is, that he will as certainly punish the
wicked, as if he were inflamed with the passion of anger against
them ; as infallibly reward the good, as we will those for whom
we have a particular affection ; and that when he finds any alter-
ation in his creatures, either for the better or the worse, he will
as surely change his dispensations towards them, as if he really
repented, or changed his mind. It is by way of analogy and
comparison, therefore, that the nature and passions of men are
ascribed to God: so that when he is said to repent or grieve, the
meaning must be, not that he perceived any thing that he was
ignorant of before, to give him any uneasiness, (for ' known unto
him are all his ways from the beginning,'') but only that he altered
his conduct with regard to men, as they varied in their behav-
iour towards him, just as we are wont to do when we are moved
by any of those passions and changes of affections, we, ' who
dwell in houses of clay, and whose foundations are in the dust:'
for the very heathens can tell us, that " to alter what hath been
accomplished is a lessening of majesty, and a confession of error,
for of necessity the same tiling must always satisfy him whom
nothing but the best can please." Seneca in Prof. Nat. Quest.
—See Le Clerc's Commentary ; Bishop King on Predestina-
tion; and Ainsrvorth 's Annotations.
c This was the term allowed mankind for their repentance,
and prevention of their ruin : and yet, if wc compare cli. v. 32.
space of 120 years, (which was the term limited for their
reprival,) they should forsake their evil ways, repent,
and reform, his mercy should be at liberty to interpose,
and reverse their doom. All which he conununicated
to his servant Noah, who, for his justice and singular
piety in that corrupt and degenerate age, had found
favour in his sight; and for whose sake his family, which
consisted of eight persons in all, was to be exempted
from the general destruction.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
That God of his infinite wisdom might, for very good
reasons, think proper to create man at first, and in all
the full perfection of his nature, notwithstanding he
could not but foresee, that he would sadly degenerate,
and turn rebel to his will, is a question we have already
endeavoured to resolve, 1 when we treated of the fall of
Adam ; and by what means his posterity, in the succes-
sion of so few generations, as passed from the creation
to the flood, became so very corrupt, as to lay God
under a necessity to destroy them, may in a great mea-
sure be imputed to the length of their lives, and the
strength and vigour of their constitutions. For, sup-
posing all mankind, since the original defection, to be
born in a state of depraved nature, with their under-
standings impaired, their wills perverted, and their pas-
sions inflamed ; 2 we can scarce imagine any restraint
consistent with human freedom, sufficient to check their
unruly appetites in that height of vigour, and confidence
of long life. For if we, who rarely, and with no small
difficulty, stretch out the span of seventy years, are
hardly withheld from violence and villany by all the
dictates of reason and terrors of religion, what can we
conceive sufficient to have kept them back, in their
strength and security in sin from a continued series of
eight or nine hundred years ? No interposition of Pro-
vidence can be supposed available to the reformation of
mankind under these circumstances, unless it were such
as would either change their nature, or destroy their
freedom ; and therefore we have reason to believe, that
in the space of .about 1800 years from the creation, God
found them degenerated to such a degree, as if they
had lost all sense of their humanity ; for this some have
made the import of the text, ' my Spirit shall not always
strive with man, for that lie also is flesh,' that is, it is in
vain to use any farther methods of mercy, or monitions
of providence with man, who is now entirely given up
i see p_ 30. * Revelation E.vamimd, vol. I.
with ch. vii. 11., we shall find, that between this time and the
flood, there were but 100 years. How then did God perform
his promise? Now, in answer to tins >t may be said, that the
increasing wickedness of mankind might justly hasten their
ruin, and forfeit the benefit of this indulgence: but what I take
to be the true solution is this: — This promise (though men-
tioned after what we read in ch. v. 32.) seems nevertheless to
have been made 20 years before it: for that verse is added there
out of its proper place, only to complete the genealogy: and
therefore, after this narrative of the wickedness of the world it
is repeated here in its due order, in the 10th Terse: nor are
such tian-|uwitions uncommon in Scripture, without any dimin-
ution to its authority. — Poole's Annotations.
56
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.
to fleshly appetites, and by that means sunk down into
the lowest condition of brutality.
By what gradations man arrived at his height of cor-
ruption, is not so evident from Scripture : but there are
two passages, 1 * the earth was corrupt before God, and
the earth was filled with violence ;' which seem to point
out some particular vices : for by ' violence ' is plainly
meant cruelty, and outrage, and injustice of every kind ;
and by corruption, the Jews always understand, either
idolatry, or unlawful mixtures and pollutions ; the latter
of which seems to be denoted here because of the subse-
quent explication of the words, ' for all flesh had cor-
rupted his way upon the earth.'
Now, if Ave look into the history, we shall find, that
the first act of violence was committed by Cain upon his
brother Abel ; the first act of incontinence by Lamech,
in the matter of his polygamy ; and that as one of his
sons invented the instruments of luxury, so the other in-
vented the instruments of violence and war. As luxury
therefore naturally begets a disposition to injure others
in their property, and such a disposition, armed with
offensive weapons, in the hands of men of a gigantic
stature and strength, (as many of the antediluvians very
probably were,) tends to beget all manner of insolence
and outrage to our fellow-creatures ; so these two- car-
dinal vices might naturally enough introduce that train
of corruption which drew God's judgments upon the
inhabitants of the earth.
Had God indeed given them no intimations of this his
design, no calls to repentance, no means and opportun-
ities of becoming better, before he determined their
destruction, something might then be said in opposition
to the righteousness of this procedure ; but 2 since, from
the very beginning, he was pleased, in the sentence he
passed upon the serpent, to give them a remarkable pro-
mise, that the seed of the woman should destroy the
power of that evil spirit which brought sin into the world,
and consequently, 3 that all parents were obliged to train
up their children in the ways of virtue and religion, with-
out which it was impossible for any of them to be the
promised seed, which was to restore mankind to their
original perfections ; since he himself instituted sacrifi-
ces, as a means admirably well fitted to inspire mankind
with an horror of guilt, and be, at the same time, a per-
petual memorial of the divine mercy from generation to
generation ; since, in his expulsion of Cain from his
presence, and exaltation of Enoch into heaven, he made
an open declaration to all future ages, that his vengeance
should at all times pursue sin, but his bounty had always
in store an ample reward for the righteous ; since at this
time he exhibited himself to mankind in a more sensible
manner than he does now, causing them to hear voices,
and to dream dreams, and, by sundry extraordinary
means, convincing them of their duty, and giving them
directions for the conduct of their lives ; since, at this
time, they had the principles of religion (which were but
very few) conveyed to them by an easy tradition, which,
by Methuselah's living 248 years Avith Adam, and dying
but a little before the flood, in the compass of 1600 years
and more, had but tAvo hands to pass through : and,
lastly, since God appointed Noah in particular to be ' a
1 Gen. vi. 11. 2 Shuekford's Connection, vol. 1. b. 1
8 Revelation Examined, vol. 1.
preacher of righteousness,' 4 as the apostle styles him, to
exhort that Avicked race to forsake their sins, and return
unto him ; to warn them of their impending doom, if
they persisted in their provocations ; to give them notice,
that 120 years Avas the stated time of their reprieve, and
that, at the end of that period, his fixed determination
Avas to destroy them utterly, mdess their amendment
averted the judgment. Since these and many more
methods of mercy Avere all along employed by God (and
especially in the days that his long-suffering Avaited, Avhile
the ark Avas preparing) for the recovery of mankind,
before the deluge came upon them, they are sufficient to
vindicate the Avays of God Avith man, and to justify his
severity in bringing in the flood upon the Avorld of the
ungodly, which neither his restraints nor reAvards, nor
all the monitions and exhortations of his prophets, added
to his oaati declarations, institutions, inflictions, and
denunciations of vengeance, could reclaim, in the course
of so many centuries.5
Other living creatures, it is true, Avere not culpable in
this manner : they all ansAvered the ends of their produc-
tion, and man Avas the only rebel against his Maker.
But as, in an universal deluge, it Avas impossible to pre-
serve them alive Avithout a miracle ; so, having, in some
measure, been made instrumental to man's Avickedness,
innocent though they Avere, they Avere all to be destroyed,
in order to evince the malignity of sin, and God's
abhorrence of it. For the great end of his providence, in
sending the deluge was not so much to ease himself of
his adversaries, as to leave a perpetual monument of his
unrelenting severity, that thereby he might deter future
ages from the like provocations. And this is the infer-
ence Avhich the apostle draAvs from all his judgments of
old: 6' If God spared not the angels,' says he, 'that
sinned, but cast them doAvn to hell ; if he spared not the
old Avorld, but brought in a flood upon the ungodly ; if
he turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes,
and condemned them Avith an overthroAV ; these are an
ensample unto those, that after shall live ungodly ;' for
(hoAvever they may escape in this life) ' he hath reserved
the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.'
The Scripture indeed seems to impute all this iniquity
to the marriages between the sons of God and the daugh-
ters of men ; but the misfortune is, that several interpre-
ters, being led away by the authority of the LXX, A\ho
(according to Philo) did anciently render Avhat Ave style
the sons of God, by clyyihm tov Gsov, have supposed,
that Avicked and apostate angels assumed, at this time,
human bodies, and, having had carnal communication
Avith women, begat of them a race of giants ; and from
this original, the notion of incubi, or devils conversing
Avith women in the like manner, has ever since been de
rived. St Austin, " among many others, is very positive
4 2 Pet. ii. 5. 5 Le Clerc's Commentary. B 2 Pet. ii. 4, &c.
a Dr Whitby, in his Writings of the Fathers, page 5, has in-
stanced in almost all the lathers of the four first centuries, who
were of this opinion ; such as Justin Martyr, Irenceus, Athena-
goras, Clemens Alexandrinus , Tertidlian, St Cyprian, Lactan-
tius, Eusebius, &c, and supposes that this notion took its rise
from the vain traditions of the Jews ; because Ave find not only
Philo reading the word ayyiXoi, or angels, in the Septuagint
version, but Josephus likeAvise asserting, " that the angels of God
mixing with women, begat an insolent race (not much unlike
that of the giants in the Greek fables) overbearing right with
power." — Antiquities, b. 1. c. 4.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
57
A. M. 1530. A. C. 2466; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
in this opinion. * " Several people have had the trial,"
says he, " and several have heard it from those who
knew it to be true, that the silvani and fauni, commonly
called incubi, have been often fatal to women, and have
denied their bed. It is likewise affirmed with so much
confidence, that certain demons (called durii among the
Gauls) have not oidy attempted, but likewise perpetrated
these kinds of impure actions, that it would be foolish to
make any question of it." But besides the ^compati-
bleness of the notion of a spirit, and the nature of an
incubus, the sons of God are here represented under
circumstances quite different to what we may suppose of
any demons assuming human shape.
2 An incubus (if any such there be) can desire com-
merce with a woman, for no other reason, but only to
draw her into the gulf of perdition. Any carnal gratifi-
cation of his own cannot be his motive, because pleasure,
in an assumed body, if it is pretended to, must be ficti-
tious : but here the sons of God are said to be enam-
oured with the daughters of men, and (to satisfy their
lusts) ' to take to themselves wives of all that they chose,'
which denoting a settled marriage and cohabitation with
them, can hardly be imagined in the case before us.
From those marriages we may farther observe, that a
generation of living men, called in Scripture men of
renown, did ensue ; but it is impious to think, that God
would ever concur with the devil, violating the laws of
generation which he had established, and prostituting the
dignity of human nature, by stamping his own image
upon, or infusing an human soul into whatever matter a
fiend should think fit to ingenerate.
In prejudice taken to this opinion, therefore, several
interpreters have made choice of another, which, though
somewhat more reasonable, is nevertheless subject
to exceptions. It supposes, that, by the sons of God
in this place, are meant the princes, great men, and
magistrates in those times, who, instead of using their
authority to punish and discountenance vice, were them-
selves the greatest examples and promoters of lewdness
and debauchery ; taking the daughters of men, or of the
inferior and meaner sort of the people, and debauching
them by force. But 3 besides the harshness of the con-
struction, which (contrary to Scripture-phrase) makes all
great and powerful sons to be called the sons of God,
and all mean and plebeian women the daughters of men,
there is this error in the supposition, that the great men
we are now speaking of, did not offer any force or vio-
lence to these inferior women ; ' they saw that they were
fair, and made choice of them for wives.' They did not
take them merely to lie with them, and so dismiss them ;
but voluntarily entered into a state of matrimony and
cohabitation with them. And this being all the matter,
wherein is the heinousness of the offence, if men of a
superior rank marry with their inferiors, especially when
an excess of beauty apologizes for their choice ? Or,
why should a few unequal matches be reckoned among
some of the chief causes which brought upon the world
an universal destruction ?
The most common, therefore, and indeed the only
probable opinion is, that the sons of God were the
descendants of Seth, who, for the great piety wherein they
' On the Monarchy of God, b. 15. c. 23.
Heidegger's History of the Patriarch*. 3 [bid.
A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VER. 13.
continued for some time, were so called, and that
daughters of men were the progeny of wicked Cain. And
why the intermarriages of these two families (even though
there was no express prohibition from God) came to be
so provoking to him, and in the end so destructive to
themselves, is the next point of our inquiry.
It has been a question among the learned, whether or
no, in the ages before the flood, idolatry was practised ?
but there seems to be no great foundation for our doubt-
ing it, though some have endeavoured to establish it upon
incompetent texts. The only expression in Scripture
that bears a proper aspect this way is in Gen. vi. 5.
where we are told, ' That God saw, that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth, and that every imagina-
tion of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.'
The words seem parallel to that passage of the apostle,
4 ' they became vain in their imaginations, and their fool-
ish heart was darkened ;' — whereupon it follows, ' that
they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an
image, made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and
four-footed beasts, and creeping things.' Since there-
fore Moses makes use of *the like expression concern-
ing the age soon after the flood, men fell into idolatry,
until the true worship of God was again established
in Abraham's family, it seems very probable that he
intended us an intimation hereof in the manner of his
expressing himself. Nor can we imagine but that, when
St Peter compares the false teachers of his age with the
people of the antediluvian world, in the nature of their
punishment, he means to inform us, that they resembled
them likewise in the nature of their crime, in their
6 ' bringing in damnable heresies,' and abetting such doc-
trines, as ' even denied the Lord that bought them ;' or
that, when St Jude 7 expresses his indignation against
certain ungodly men in his days, ' who denied the only
Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ,' in such words as
these, ' Woe unto them, for they are gone in the way of
Cain ;' he leaves us to infer, that Cain and his posterity
were the first that threw off the sense of a God, and,
instead of the Creator, began to worship the creature.
Now if the Cainites were, at this time, not only pro-
fligate in their manners, but abettors of infidelity, and
promoters of idolatry ; for the family of Seth, who pro-
fessed the true worship of God, to enter into communion,
or any matrimonial compacts with them, could not but
prove of fatal consequence. 'Tis a solemn injunction
which God gives the Israelites, against all idolatrous
nations, 8 ' Thou shalt not make marriages with them ;
thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his
daughter shalt thou take mito thy son.' And, that this
is no special but a general prohibition, extensive to all
nations that profess the true worship of God, is evident
from the reason that is annexed to it ; ' for they will (urn
away thy son from following me, that they may serve
other gods.' This was what Balaam knew full well, and
therefore, perceiving that he could injure the children of
Israel no other way, he advised the Moabites to com-
mence a familiarity with them; whereupon it soon camo
to pass, that 9t The people began to commit whoredom
with the daughters of Moab, and they called the people
unto the sacrifices of their sod.-, and the people did eat,
and bowed down to their gods.'
•2 Pet ii. 1, 5.
9 Num. xxv. 1,2.
■ Rom. i. 21, 23.
' Ver. I, 11.
5 (ifii. viii. 21.
Dent, vii. 3, 4.
58
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M 1530. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HAT.ES,
'Twas tlte danger of seduction into a state of idolatry
that made Abraham, before the law, so very anxious and
uneasy, lest his son Isaac should marry a Canaanitish
woman ; and though we, under the gospel, l ' know,' very
well, ' that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there
is none other God but one,' yet we are admonished by
the same apostle, who teaches us this, ' Not to be un-
equally yoked together with unbelievers ; for what fel-
lowship,' says he, ' has righteousness with unrighteous-
ness, what communion hath light with darkness, or what
part hath he that believeth with an infidel ?' 2 From all
which it seems to follow, that the sin was very heinous
in the family of Seth, to mix with the wicked seed of
Cain, when they could not but foresee, that the conse-
quence would be their seduction from the true worship of
God ; and that the heinousness of their sin seems still to
be enhanced, if, what some oriental writers tell us be
true, namely, that God gave them this prohibition by the
mouth of their great forefather Adam, and that their
custom was, at certain times, to swear by ' the blood of
Abel ' (which was their solemn oath) that they would never
leave the mountainous country where they inhabited, nor
have any communion with the descendants of Cain.
How the commixture of the two different families came
to produce a set of giants is not so easy a matter to
determine. Those who pretend to reduce it to natural
causes, or the eager lust and impetus of their parents,
are vastly mistaken, 3 because giants there were among
the Canutes, before this conjunction, and we read of
several in other nations many ages after the flood. The
more probable opinion therefore is, *that God permitted
it in vengeance to their parents' crimes, and that the
children begotten by such unlawful mixtures might, (some
of them at least,) be accounted monstrous in their kind,
(for thus the word Nephilim a certainly signifies,) and so
become the abhorrence of all future generations.
It must be acknowledged, indeed, that translators
have not agreed in their notions of this word. Aquila,
instead of gic/antes, renders it 5 'men who attack, or fall
with impetuosity upon their enemies ; and Symmachus
will have it mean 6 violent and cruel men, the only rule
of whose actions is their strength and force of arms : and
from hence some have imagined, that the giants spoken
of in Scripture Avere famous for the crimes and vio-
A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND C. TO VER. 13.
lences they committed rather than the height or large-
ness of their stature. But to hinder this from passing
for a truth, we have the histories of all ages, both sacred
and profane, and several other remains and monuments,
to evince Hhe being of such prodigious creatures in
almost every country.
7 That there were multitudes of giants in the land of
promise, before the Israelites took possession of it, such
as Og king of Basan, and the Anakims, whom sthe
Moabites called Knims, that is, terrible men, and 9the
Ammonites, Zctmzummims. that is, tlte inventors of all
wickedness, whose posterity were in being in the days of
David, and whose bones were to be seen at Hebron, the
chief place of their abode, is manifest from the sacred
records. 1U' All the people,' say the spies who were
sent to take a survey of the land, ' are men of stature ;
and there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which
came of the giants,' so immeasurably large, that ' we
were but like grasshoppers ' in comparison of them. And
therefore we need less wonder, that we find u Josephus,
upon the same occasion, telling us, " That the race of
giants was not then extinct, who, on account of their
largeness and shapes (not at all to be likened to those
of other men) were amazing to see, and terrible to hear
of." Homer 12 speaks of the giants Otus and Ephialtes,
who, at the age of nine years, were nine cubits about,
and six and thirty in height ; he likewise describes 13 the
bigness of the Cyclops Polyphemus,who was of such pro-
digious strength, that he could, with the greatest facility,
take up a stone which two and twenty four-wheeled
chariots would scarce be able to move. This we allow
to be, in some measure, romantic, but still it confirms
the tradition, that several persons of old were of a
gigantic stature.
"That the Cyclopes and Lasstrigones," 14says Bochart,
" were once in Sicily, Ave have the account, not only in
the poets, Homer, Hesiod, and Euripides, Virgil, Ovid,
and Silius, but in the historians and geographers (I
mean Thucydides and Strabo) who Avere Grecians, and
in Tragus, Mela, Pliny and others, Avho Avere Romans ;
and that there was something of truth in the fables con-
cerning them, Ave are assured by those bones of giants,
which Avere dug out of the earth in the memory of our
fathers." c
1 1 Cor. viii. 4. " * 2 Cor. vi. 14, &c. 3 Gen. vi. 4.
4 See Heidegger s Lives of the Patriarchs, and Patrick's Com-
mentary.
5 'Et;!T(Vtowt£5. b Bta~oi.
a There Avere giants in the earth, or nephilim, from naphal,
" he fell." Those who had apostatized, or fallen from the true
r< ligion. The Septuagint translated the original word hy yiya.irii,
which literally signifies earth-born, and which we, following them,
term giants, without having any reference to the meaning of the
Avord, which Ave generally conceive to signify persons of enor-
mous stature. Hut the word when properly understood makes
a very just distinction between the sons of men and the sons of
God ; those were the nephilim, the fallen, earth-born men, with
the animal and devilish mind. These Avere the sons of God, who
were born from above ; children of the kingdom, because children
of God. It may be necessary to remark here, that our transla-
tors have rendered seven different Hebrew Avords by the one
term giants, namely, nephilim, gibhorim, enachim, rephaim,
r/nim and samzuvimim y by which appellatives are probably
meant in general, persons of great knowledge, piety, courage,
wickedness, &c., and not of men of enormous stature as is gen-
erally conjectured. — Dr A. Clarke, on Gen. vi. 4.
' Huetius's Inquiries. 8 Deut. ii. 1 1. 9 Ver. 21.
IU Num. xiii. 33. " Antiquities, b. 5. c. 2. 12 Odyss. b. 11.
13 Ibid. b. 9. »4 Cannan i. 30.
b Mr Whiston, in his Original Records, has a supplement con-
cerning the old giants, wherein, according to the apocryphal
book of Enoch, he divides the giants into three kinds, and in this
division thinks himself countenanced by the works of Moses,
Gen. vi. 2, &c; the first and lowest kind of which are called
eliudim, and are of stature from 4 cubits to 15; the second are
nephilim, from 15 to 40 cubits; and the third, or great giants,
40 cubits at leart, and many times above.
c Fazellus relates, and out of him Cluverivs, that, A. D.
1547, near Panormum in Sicily, the body of a giant was dug up,
about 18 cubits or 27 feet tall. The same authors relate, that,
A. 1). 1516, was dug up, near Mazarene in Sicily, the body of
a giant, 20 cubits or 30 feet tall. The same authors relate, that,
A. P. 1548, near Syracuse, was dug up another body of the
same dimension. They inform us, that, A. D. 1550, near En-
tella in Sicily, Avas dug up a body of about 22 cubits or 33 feet
high, whose skull Avas about 10 feet in circumference; and they
describe the corpse of a giant of portentous magnitude, found
standing in a vast cave, near Dreuanum in Sicily, A. D. 1342,
Sect. V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
59
A. M. 153G. A. C. 24G8; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
But 1 forbear more instances of this kind, and, a refer-
ring- the reader, for his farther conviction, to such authors
as have professedly handled this subject, shall only
crave leave to make this remark — * that, in all proba-
bility, no small part of the eldest cities, towers, temples,
obelisks, pyramids, and pillars, some of which are still
remaining, and deservedly esteemed the wonders of the
world, ° were the structure of these ancient giants ; and,
as they surpass the abilities of all later ages, so they
seem to me to be the visible and undeniable remains,
monuments, and demonstrations, not only of their exis-
tence, but of their prodigious stature and strength like-
wise ; since in an age, ignorant of mechanical powers
and engines, such vast piles of building could no other-
wise have been erected.
Without concerning ourselves then with the fictions
and fables of the poets, or 2 whether the giants of old
rebelling against heaven, were able to heap mountains
upon mountains, in order to scale it, or to hurl rocks,
and islands, and huge flaming trees against it^ in order
to shake, or set it on fire ; all that we pretend to say is,
that in ancient days, there were giants, in great num-
bers, who (excepting the largeness of their stature) were
formed and fashioned like other men, and waged no
other war with heaven, than what all wicked persons are
known to do, when they provoke the Divine Majesty by
their crimes and enormous impieties. This is the whole
of what the Scriptures assert, and I know no occasion
we have to defend the wild hyperboles of the poets.
Amidst the antediluvian corruption, and even while
these abominable and gigantic men were in being, Moses
makes particular mention of one person of eminent
sanctity, and who found a favour extraordinary, for hav-
ing preserved his innocence, and persisted in his duty,
notwithstanding the wickedness of the age wherein he
lived. Enoch was certainly, in other respects, an ex-
1 Jr/iiston's Supplement, part 2.
* Calmefs Dissertation on the Giants, vol. 2.
whose stafl* was like the mast of a ship, and the forepart of whose
skull would contain some Sicilian bushels, which are about a
third part of our English bushel.' — See Winston's Supplement
concerning the old giants, in his Authentic Records, part 2.
a That there have been giants in the world admits of no doubt,
but probably no nations of such giants as these. Tndeed, the
enormous bones of most supposed giants have, by subsequent and
more accurate observation, been found to be bones of animals, of
species which nowhere exist. — Bishop Gleig.
They that desire to see more instances of this kind may find
them cited by Hueiius in his Inquiries, &c, b. 2. ; Augustine
on the Government of ' God, b. 15.; Josephus' Antiquities, b. 1.
e. 5, IS.; Pliny, b. 1. ; Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs,
Essay II. ; Grotilts on Truth, b. 1.; Hackwell's Apology, b. 3.;
ff'histon's Original Retords, part 2.; and our Philosophical
Transactions, Nos. 234, 272, 274, 346, and 370.
b Tlie works of this kind which our author reckons up are, 1.
The Giants' Dance, upon Salisbury plain in England, now called
Stone-henge. 2. The Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland.
3, The Circular Gigantic, Stone at Ilavenna. 4. The Tower of
Babel. 5. The Two Obelisks mentioned by Herodotus. C. The
Temple of Diana in Egypt. 7. The Labyrinth in Egypt. 8. The
Lake Mnpris, 4S0 miles long, and dug by human labour, all by
the same Herodotus. 9. The Sphinx of Egypt. 10. The most
■ncient Temple in Egypt. 11. The Agrigentine Temple. 12.
The Pyramidal Obelisk, all mentioned by Diodorus Sieuhis.
13. The Temple of Solomon. 14. The Palace of Solomon at
Jerusalem. 15. That at Balbeck. 10. That at Tadmor. 17.
The Palace and Buildings at Persepolis. 18. The Temple of
Belus at Babylon. 19. The Temple at Chillembrum. And 20.
The first Temple of Diana at Ephesus. — JFhiston's Supplement.
13G. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G TO VER. 13.
traordinary person. 3St Jude distinguishes him as a
prophet : *the Arabians represent him as a great scholar ;
the Babylonians look upon him as the author of their
astrology ; the Greeks call him their Atla.;, and affirm-,
that he was the first who taught men the knowledge of
the stars ; but it was not for these rare qualities, so much
as for his singular piety and virtue, that God exempted
him from the common fate of mankind.
The Jewish doctors indeed will have the words of
Moses concerning him to import no more, than his sud-
den and untimely death, because he lived not near so
long as the other patriarchs. But the paraphrase which
St Paul gives us of them, 5' By faith Enoch was trans-
lated, that he should not see death, and was not found,
because God had translated him ; for, before his transla-
tion, he had this testimony, that he pleased God ;' this
paraphrase, 1 say, will not surfer us to doubt of the
truth of the Christian interpretation. And indeed,
0 unless die Christian interpretation be true, the whole
emphasis of Moses' words is lost, and they become a
crude tautology. For, if we say, that Enoch was not,
that is, was no longer living, because God took him,
that is, God caused Mm to die ; it is the same, as if we
should say, God caused him to die, because he took him
away by death, which is flat and insipid, a proof of the
same thing by the same thing, and hardly consistent with
common sense : whereas, if we interpret the words in
this manner — Enoch was not, that is, was nowhere to
be found, was seen neither among the living nor the dead
here on earth, for God took him, that is, because God
translated to another place, soul and body together,
without undergoing the pains of death ; here is a grace
and energy in the expression, not unbecoming the style
of an inspired penman.
The reason which Moses assigns for God's taking
him, in this wise, is, that ' he walked with God :' but if
God's taking him means no more than his hasty death, it
was far from being a divine attestation of his piety, (be-
cause length of days are the promised reward of that ;)
and therefore Ave may be allowed to infer, that his walk-
ing with God was not the cause of his ablation by death,
but of his assumption into glory. The truth is, ' about
fifty-seven years before this event, Adam, the father of
all living, had submitted to the sentence denounced
against him, and resigned his breath; and whatever
notions his posterity might have of a life immortal in
reversion, yet it seemed expedient to the divine wisdom,
at this time, in the person of Enoch, to give them, as it
were, anticipation of it, and to support and comfort
them under the sense of their mortality, with the pros-
pect, and assured hope, that after the dark entry of
death was passed, they were to be admitted into the
mansions of bliss.
Our Saviour, indeed, when he came upon earth,
(though declared from heaven to be the Son of God,)
was not exempted from the common condition of
onr mortality. 8< Forasmuch as the children are par-
takers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took
part of the same ; that through death he might destroy
3 Vcr. 14, &c. 4 Calmefs Dictionary on the word Enoch.
" 1 1 eh. xi. 5.
0 Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, Essay 9.
7 Patrick's Commentary. " Heb. ii. 11.
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VER. 13.
him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.' His
errand was to propitiate for our sins ; but since, * ' with-
out shedding of blood there is no remission,' the decree
was, that lie should die, which when he had satisfied he
rose again ; and after forty days' converse with his dis-
ciples ' even 2 while they beheld him,' we are told, ' he
was taken up into heaven, and a cloud received him out
of their sight.' And, in like manner, if the end of
Enoch's assumption was for the conviction of mankind
in that great article of faith, the reality of another world,
it seems reasonable to believe, that the thing was done
publicly and visibly ; that either some bright and radiant
cloud, guided by the ministry of angels, gently raised
him from the earth, and mounted with him up on high,
(which seems to be our Saviour's case,) or that a 3 ' strong
gust of wind,' governed by the same angelic powers, in
some vehicle or other, resembling a bright ' chariot and
horses,' transported him into heaven, (which seems to be
the case of Elijah,) and that, in his passage thither, his
body was transformed, his corruptible into incorruption,
his mortal into immortality ' in a moment, in the twink-
ling of an eye,' 4as we are told it will happen to those
who are alive, when the ' last trumpet shall sound.'
It is an idle conceit therefore of some of the Jewish,
as well as Christian doctors, that Enoch was not trans-
lated into the celestial, but only into the old terrestrial
paradise, wherein Adam, before his transgression lived.
Whether the beauty of that place went to ruin, or no, as
soon as our first parents were ejected, and no hand left
to dress it, it is certain, it could never withstand the vio-
lence of the flood ; and consequently Enoch must have
perished in it, unless we can suppose, a that he was pre-
served by some such miracle as the Israelites were, when
they passed through the Red sea, and that the waves,
towering up on all sides, surrounded it like a wall, and
kept that particular spot dry ; which is by too much bold
a supposition, especially when it contradicts that author-
ity, which tells us, that 5 ' the waters prevailed exceed-
ingly upon the earth, and that all the high hills, which
were under the whole heavens, were covered.'
Whatever therefore some may fancy to themselves, we
acknowledge now no other paradise, than what is repre-
sented in the Scriptures, as a place in which God gives
the brightest evidence of his presence, and communicates
his glory with the utmost majesty: a place which St
Paul calls 6 ' the third heaven,' whereunto Elijah was
translated, and wherein our blessed Saviour is now
7 ' preparing mansions for us, that where he is, we may
be also.' Into this happy place we suppose Enoch to
have been conveyed, and it is no mean confirmation of
the truth of the Mosaic account, that we find, among the
heathen world, notions of the like translation : that we
1 Heb. ix. 22. 2 Acts xix., and Luke xxiv. 51.
3 2 Kings ii. 11. 4 1 Cor. xv. 52. s Gen. vi. 19.
6 2 Cor. xii. 2. ' John xiv. 2, 3.
a Bonseriits says, "that it was probable that paradise had
been preserved free from rain, the waters having raised them-
selves completely around its borders, and become consolidated like
a wall, similar to the waters of the Red Sea during the passage
of the Israelites. But in this ease, no probability is requisite, where
a certainty may be averred. When no trace of a miracle is ap-
parent, we are not to support its having existed by any probable
assumption of our own." — Heidegger's Lives of the Patriarchs,
Essay on the Ablation of Enoch.
find Bacchus assuring Cadmus, that by the help of Mars,
he should live for ever in the isles of the blessed ; that
we find Aganympha made immortal by the favour of
Jupiter ; and, after the death of her husband, Hercules,
Alcmena, translated by Mercury, and married to Rhada-
manthus ; with many more allusions of the like nature. 8
And in like manner, it is far from being a bad argu-
ment for the truth and reality of the flood, 9 that we find,
almost every where in the Latin and Greek historians,
horrid descriptions of the lives of the giants, which occa-
sioned that heavy judgment: that we find Berosus the
Chaldean, as he is quoted by 1U Josephus, relating the
same things which Moses does, concerning the great
deluge, the destruction of mankind by it, and the ark, in
which Nochus (the same with Noah) was preserved, and
which rested on the tops of the Armenian mountains :
that we find Abydenus, the Assyrian (as he is cited n by
Eusebius) taking notice of the wood of the vessel, wherein
Xisuthrus (b for so he calls Noah) was saved, and tell-
ing us, that the people of Armenia made use of it for
amulets to drive away diseases, that we find Alexander
Polyldstor, in a passage produced 12by Cyril, informing
us of an Egyptian priest who related to Solon, out of
the sacred books of the Egyptians, (as he supposes,) that,
before the particular deluges known and celebrated by
the Grecians, there was of old an exceeding great inun-
dation of waters, and devastation of the earth : and (to
mention no more) that we find 13 Lucian giving us a long
account of an ancient tradition, which the people of
Hierapolis had of the deluge, c varying very little from
8 Huetius'' Inquiries, 8rc, b. 2. c. 10.
9 Grotius on Truth, b. 2. sect. 16. i0 Against Appion, b. 1.
11 Evangelical Preparation, b. 9. 13 Against Julian.
13 Concerning the Syrian Goddess.
b M. Le Clerc, in his notes upon Grotius on Truth, b. 1. sect.
16, seems to intimate, that Xisuthrus, Ogyges, and Deucalion,
are all names signifying the same thing in other languages, as
Noah does in Hebrew, wherein Moses wrote ; and that the
deluges which are said to have happened in their times, and are
thought to be different, were in reality one and the same.
c The account, though somewhat long, is not unpleasant, and
deserves our observation. This race of men (says he) which now
is, was not the first: these are of a second generation, and from
their first progenitor Deucalion, who increased to so great a
multitude as we now see. Now of these former men they tell
us this story. — They were contentious, and did many unrighteous
things; they neither kept their oaths, nor were hospitable to
strangers ; for which reason this great misfortune came upon
them. All on a sudden the earth disembowelled itself of a great
quantity of water, great showers fell, the rivers overflowed, and
the sea swelled to a prodigious height; so that all things became
water, and all men perished. Only Deucalion was left unto the
second generation, upon the account of his prudence and piety;
and the maimer in which he was saved was this: — He had a
great ark or chest, into which he came with his children and the
women of his house, and then entered hogs, and horses, and lions,
and serpents, and all other animals which live upon the earth,
together with their mates. He received them all, and they did
him no harm ; for by the assistance of heaven there was a great
amity between them, so that all sailed in one chest as long as the
water did predominate. This is the account which all the Greek
historians give of Deucalion. But what happened afterwards
(as it is told by the people of Hierapolis) is worthy our observa-
tion, namely, That in their country there was a chasm, into
which all this water simk, whereupon Deucalion built an altar,
and erected a temple over it, which he consecrated to Juno ; and
to verify this story, not only the priests, but the other inhabitants
likewise of Syria and Arabia, twice every year, bring abundance
of water which they pour into the temple, and though the chasm
be but small, yet it receives a prodigious quantity of it ; and when
Sect. V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
01
A. M. 1536. A. C. 24G8; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2I3G. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER 13.
what our sacred historian relates : when we find all this,
I say, we cannot but acknowledge, that these, and the
many more historians who are usually produced upon
this head, are a strong testimony of the truth and author-
ity of Moses ; and therefore, to conclude this reply, or
vindication of him, with the reflection of the learned
1 Scaliger upon the agreement he perceived between
Moses and Abyclenus, in the account they both give of
the dove and the raven which Noah is said to have sent
out; " Though the Greek historians," says he, " do not
always agree in particulars with the sacred one, yet they
are rather to be pitied for not having had the advantage
of true and authentic antiquities and records to set them
right, than to forfeit their value and authority, from such
slips and deviations from the truth of the story as render
their testimony and confirmation of the truth of the sacred
history much stronger, because much less to be suspected
than if they agreed with it in every circumstance."
CHAP. III. — Of the Heat/ten History, the Chronology,
Religion, Learning, Longevity, Sfc., of the Antedilu-
We are now arrived at a period, where it may be conve-
nient to take some notice of such heathen writers as have
given us an account of the times before the flood, through
which we have hitherto been tracing Moses : and those
that are esteemed of the best credit and repute, are only
three ; Berosus, who wrote the history of the Chaldeans ;
Sanchoniatho, who compiled that of the Phoenicians ;
and Manetho who collected the antiquities of Egypt.
The Chaldeans were certainly a nation of great and
undoubted antiquity. 2 In all probability they were the
first formed into a national government after the flood,
and therefore were more capable of having such arts and
sciences flourish among them as might preserve the
memory of eldest times, to the latest posterity : and yet,
even among these people, who enjoyed all the advan-
tages of ease, quiet, and a flourishing empire, we find
no credible and undoubted records preserved.^ Berosus,
their historian, was, (as 3 Josephus assures us) a priest
of Belus, and a Babylonian born, but afterwards flour-
ished in the isle of Cos, and was the first who brought
the Chaldean astrology into request among the Greeks :
in honour of whose name and memory, the Athenians
(who were great encouragers of novelties) erected a
1 Notes, &e.,for the Correction i f Dates.
8H llingjteet's Sacred Origins, b. 1. c. 3. 3 Against Appion, b. 1.
they do this, they relate how Deucalion first instituted this cus-
tom in memory of that calamity, and his deliverance from it.
a The common opinion that they were the descendants of
( Used, the nephew of Abraham, is at once unsatisfactory and
indefensible, for they were a nation before the call of that patri-
wch when he dwelt' with his father Terah in Ur of the Chaldees.
I hey are mentioned in the book of Job, not a very great portion
•■■ time after the call of Abraham, and if the hypotheses of Dr
I labs and the astronomical calculations of Dr Brindley be true,
the era of Job carries their antiquity still higher, as it is fixed by
both these gentlemen at upwards of 400 years before the call of
Abraham. If, with Jusephus and some of the rabbins, we sup-
hat the Chaldeans are the progeny of Arpbaxad, they may
'ii a nation long before the call of Abraham.— Bell's
tditwn ofRollin>s /anient History, \\ 10' 1.
statue for him with a golden tongue, a good emblem of
his history, 4 says one, which made a fair and specious
show, but was not within what it pretended to be, espe-
cially when it attempts to treat of ancient times. It
cannot be denied, however, but that some fragments of
it which have been preserved from ruin by the care and
industry of Josephus, Tatianus, Eusebius, and others,
have been very useful, not only for proving the truth of
Scripture history to the heathens, but for confirming like-
wise some passages relating to the Babylonish empire.
After a description of Babylonia, and a strange story
concerning a certain creature, which, in the first year of
the world, came out of the Red sea, and, conversing
familiarly with men, taught them the knowledge of let-
ters, and several arts and sciences, he proceeds to give
us a short account of ten kings which reigned in Chaldea
before the flood, and these corresponding with the num-
ber which Moses mentions, Alorus, the first, is supposed
to be Adam ; and Xisuthrus, the last, Noah ; and of this
Xisuthrus he pursues the story in this manner.
5 Cronus, or Saturn, appearing to him in a dream,
gave him warning, that on the fifteenth day of the month
Daesius, mankind should be destroyed by a flood, and
therefore commanded him to build a ship; and, having
first furnished it with provisions, and taken into it fowls
and four-footed beasts, to go into it himself, with his
friends and nearest relations. Xisuthrus did as he was
ordered, built a vessel, whose length was five furlongs,
and breadth two furlongs ; and having put on board all
that he was directed, went into it, with his wife, children,
and friends. When the flood was come, and began to
abate, he let out some birds, which finding no food, nor
place to rest on, returned to the ship again. After some
days, he let out the birds again, but they came back
with their feet daubed with mud ; and when, after some
days more, he let them go the third time, they never
came back again, whereby he understood that the earth
appeared again above the water, and so, taking down
some of the planks of the ship, he saw it rested upon a
mountain. This is the substance of what we have in
Berosus, who varies very little from our sacred historian
during this period.6
Sanchoniutlio is highly recommended both by Por-
phyry, the great adversary of Christianity, and by his
translator into Greek, Philo Biblius. Theodoret is of
opinion, that his name, in the Phoenician tongue, signi-
fies (pthx^dng, a lover of truth; which name, as Bochart
imagines, was given him when he first set himself to wi-ite
history : but how faithftd he has been in transcribing his
account of things from his records, we cannot determine,
unless Ave had the books of Taautus, and the sacred in-
scriptions and records of cities, from whence he pretends
to have extracted his history, to compare them together.
If we may judge by what remains of his writings, which
is only his first book concerning the Phoenician theology
extant in Eusebius, we shall hardly think him deserving
so large a commendation: but be that as it will, the
method wherein he proceeds is this. — After having de-
livered his cosmogony, or generation of the other parts
of the world, he tells us, that the first pair of human
creatures were Protogonus and .Son, (as Philo, his
4 See Universal History, and Shuekford's Connection, h. 1.
* Ibid. ■ Stiuing/ccl's Sacred Origins, b. 1. C 2.
62
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
TBook I.
A. M. 1536. A. C. 2108; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136
translator, calls them,) the latter of whom found out the
food which is gathered from trees : that their issue were
called Genus and Genea, who were the first that prac-
tised idolatry ; for, upon the occasion of great droughts,
they made their adorations to the sun, calling him Beel-
■■■ amen, which, in Phoenician, is the Lord of heaven; that
the children of these were Phos, Pur, and Phlox, that
is, light, fire, anAfla?ne, who first found out the way of
generating fire, by rubbing pieces of wood against one
an other : that these begat sons of vast bulk and stature,
wh ose names were given to mount Cassius Libanus, An-
tilibanus, and Brathys, whereon they seized : that of these
were begotten Memrumus, and Hypsuranius, the latter
of whom was the inventor of huts made of reeds and
rushes, and had a brother called Usous, the first wor-
shipper of fire and wind, in whose time women became
very abandoned and debauched : that many years after
this generation, came Agreus and Halieus,the inventors
of the arts of hunting and fishing : that of these were be-
gotten two brothers, the first forgers and workers in iron ;
the name of one is lost, but Chrysor (who is the same
with Vulcan) found out all fishing tackle, and, in a small
boat, was the first that ventured to sea, for which he was
afterwards deified : that from this generation came two
brothers, Technites and Autochthon, who invented the
art of making tiles ; from these Agrus, and Agrotes, who
first made courts about houses, fences, and cellars ; and
from these Amynus, and Magus, who showed men how
to constitute villages, and regulate their flocks. This
is the substance of what Sanchoniatho relates during
this period ; and how far it agrees with the account of
Moses, especially in the idolatrous line of Cain, our
learned bishop Cumberland has all along made his
observations.
Manetho Sebennita was high priest of Heliopolis in
the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, by whose order he
wrote his history ; but that which destroys the credit of
it, (though it gave him an opportunity of invention,) is,
that * he professes to transcribe his Dynasties from in-
scriptions on the pillars of Hermes (whom the Egyptians,
out of veneration, call Trismegistus) in the land of
Seriad, which land no one knows any thing of, and
which pillars being engraven before the flood, can hardly
be supposed to escape undefaced.
The plain truth is, the LXX translation was, not long
before this time, finished ; and when the Jewish antiqui-
ties came to appear in the world, the Egyptians (who
are mighty pretenders this way) grew jealous of the hon-
our of their nation, and were willing to show, that they
could trace up their memoirs much higher than Moses
had carried those of the Israelites. 2 This was the chief
design of Manetlio's making his collections. He was
resolved to make the Egyptian antiquities reach as far
backwards as he could ; "and therefore, as many several
names as he found in their records, so many successive
monarchs he determined them to have had ; never con-
A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.
sidering that Egypt was at first divided into three, and
afterwards into four sovereignties for some time, so that
three or four of his kings were many times reigning
together : which, if duly considered, will be a means to
reduce the Egyptian account to a more reasonable
compass.
° The substance of the accoimt however (as it stands
unexplained in Manetho) is this : — That there were in
Egypt thirty dynasties of gods, consisting of 113 gene-
rations, and which took up the space of 36,525 years ;
that when this period was out, then there reigned eight
demigods in the space of 217 years ; that after them
succeeded a race of heroes, to the number of fifteen,
and their reign took up 443 years ; that all this was be-
fore the flood, and then began the reign of their khigs,
the first of whom was Menes.
Now, in order to explain what is meant by this prodi-
gious number of years, we must observe, 3that it was a
very usual and customary thing for ancient writers to
begin their histories with some account of the origin of
things, and the creation of the world. Moses did so in
his book of Genesis ; Sanchoniatho did so in his Phoe-
nician history ; and it appears from Diodorvs, that the
Egyptian antiquities did so too. Their accounts began
about the origin of things, and the nature of the gods ;
then follows an account of their demigods, and terres-
trial deities ; after them came their heroes, or first rank
of men ; and last of all, their kings. Now, if their kings
began from the flood ; if their heroes and demigods
reached up to the beginning of the world : then the ac-
count which they give of the reigns of their gods, before
these, can be only their theological speculations put
into such order as they thought most philosophical.
To make this more plain, we must observe farther,
that the first and most ancient gods of the Egyptians,
and of all other nations, (after they had departed from
the worship of the true God,) were the luminaries of
heaven ; and it is very probable, that what they took to
be the period of time in which any of these deities
finished their course, that they might call the time of his
reign. Thus a perfect and complete revolution of any
star which they worshipped, Avas the reign of that star ;
1 Sec Stilttngfleef's Sacred Origins, b. 1. c. 2. No. 11.
2 Shuchford's Connection, jiart 1. b. 1.
a Allowing the thirty dynasties, which he described from
memoirs preserved in the archives of the Egyptian temples, to lie
successive, they make up a series of more than 5,200 years to
the time of Alexander the Gnat, which can be nothing but a
manifest forgery. — Roliin, p. 20.
3 Shuchford's Connection, b. 1.
a The accounts of Manetho seem at first sight so extravagan
that many great writers look upon them as mere fictions, and
omit attempting to say any thing concerning them ; though other
learned men (and more especially our countryman Sir John
Marsham, in his Canonical Chronology, p. 1.) not well satisfied
with this proceeding, have undertaken an examination of them
and with some success. The misfortune is, we have none of
the original works from whence they were collected, nor any one
author that properly gives us any sight or knowledge of them.
The historians Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus, did not examine
these matters to the bottom ; and we have no remains of the old
Egyptian Clironicon, or of the works of Manetho, except some
quotations in the works of other writers. The Chronographia of
Syncellus, wrote by one George, an abbot of the monastery of St
Simeon, and called St Syncellus, as being suffragan of Tarasius,
patriarch of Constantinople, is the only work we can have re-
course to. From these antiquities Syncellus collected the quo-
tations of the old Chronicons of Manetho, and of Eratosthenes, as
he found them in the works of jlfricanus and Euselius ; ana .'
the works of Afrieanus and Eusehius being now lost, (for it is
known that the work which goes under the name of Euscllius,
Chronicon is a composition of Scaligcr's) we have nothing to be i
depended upon but what we find in Syncellus above mentioned.
— Shttckfard's Connection.
"Sbct. V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
63
A. M. 1536. A. C. 21GS; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 213G. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VER. 13
.nul as a period of 36,525 years is what they call an
entire mundane revolution, that is, when the several
heavenly bodies come round to the same point, from
Which all their courses began ; so is it very remarkable,
that they made the sum total of the reigns of all their
several gods, to amount to the self-same space of time.
This I take to be a true state of the Egyptian dynasties :
and if so, it makes their history not near so extravagant
as has been imagined, and sinks their account of time
some hundred years short of the Jewish computation.
The Jewish computation indeed is not a little ambi-
guous, by reason of the different methods, which men
find themselves inclined to pursue. The three common
ways of computing the time from the creation to the
flood, are, that which arises from the Hebrew text,
from the Samaritan copies, and from the LXX. inter-
pretation.
THE COMPUTATION OF MOSES.
1. According' to
the Hebrew text.
Beean his
life in ihe
world
Had his son
yeU .',1 his
life
Lived after
Lived in all,
Died ii, the
year of the
world
Adam
1
130
800
930
930.
Seth
130
105
807
912
1042
235
90
815
905
1140
Cainan
325
70
840
910
1235
Mahalaleel....
395
65
S30
895
1290
4G0
162
800
962
1422
Enoch
622
65
300
365
987
Methuselah ...
687
187
782
969
1656
874
IS2
595
777
1651
Noah
1056
500
2. According' to
the Samaritau.
Kec»n his
life ii. Ihe
year of ihe
world
Had his s-n
yearns
Lived after
his son's
Lived in all,
years
Died in Ihe
world
Adam
1
130
800
930
930
Seth
130
105
807
912
1042
Eno?
235
90
815
905
1140
Cainan
325
70
840
910
1235
Mahalaleel....
395
65
830
895
1290
Jared
460
62
785
847
1307
Enoch
522
65
300
365
887
Methuselah....
587
67
653
720
1307
Lamech
654
53
600
653
1307
Noah
707
500
3. According to
the Septuagiut.
Began his
life in the
year of ihe
world
Had his ion
in Hi
life
Lived afier
his s-n'a
Lived in all,
years
DieJ in thb
ye.».r nl lbc
1
230
700
930
930
Seth
230
205
707
912
1042
Enos
435
190
715
905
1340
1535
Cainan
625
170
740
910
Mahalaleel....
795
165
730
895
1690
960
162
800
962
1922
1122
165
200
365
1187
Methuselah ...
1287
187
782
969
2256
1474
188
565
753
2227
Noah
1662
500
The difference between the Hebrew and Samaritan
computation is easily perceived, by comparing the two
former tables together ; nor will it be any hard matter
to reconcile them, if we consider what l St Jerome in-
forms us of, namely, that there were Samaritan copies
which made Methuselah 187 years old at the birth of
Lamech ; and Lamech 1S2 at the birth of Noah. Now,
if this be true, it is easy to suppose 62 (the age of Jared
at the birth of Enoch) to be a mistake of the transcriber,
who might drop a letter, and write 62 instead of 162 ;
and thus all the difference between the Hebrew and
Samaritan copies will entirely vanish.
But it is not so between the Hebrew and the Septua-
gint. The Hebrew, according to the highest calculation,
makes no more than 1656 years before the flood, but the
Septuagiut raises it to no less than 2262 ; so that in this
one period (without saying any thing of the wide differ-
ence between them in subsequent times) there is an
addition of a'uove 600 years, which can a hardly be ac-
counted for by any mistake of transcribers, because all
the ancient and authentic copies, both of the Hebrew
and Septuagint, agree exactly in their computation.
And therefore the generality of learned men, despairing
1 In his Inquiries on Genesis.
a Lud. Capellus, in his Sacred Chronology prepared by JJ'al-
ton for the Polyglot Bible, attempts to reconcile this difference
by telling us from St Austin, On the Government of God, c. 13.
that this edition was not made by the LXX. themselves, but by
some early transcriber from them, and probably for one or other
of these two reasons. 1st, Perhaps, thinking the years of the an-
tediluvians to be but lunar, and computing, that at this rate the
six fathers (whose lives are thus altered) must have had their
children at five, six, seven, or eight years old (which could Dot
but look incredible;) the transcriber, I say, finding this, might
be induced to add one hundred years to each in order to
them of a more probable age of manhood at the birth of their
respective children: or, 2ndly, If he thought the years of their
lives to be solar, yet still ho might imagine, that infancy and
childhood were proportionably longer in men who were to live
seven, eight, or nine hundred years, than they are in us: and
that it was too early in their lives for them to be fathers at sixty,
seventy, or ninety years of age; and for this reason, might add
one hundred yens, to make their advance to manhood (which is
commonly not till one-fourth part of life is over) proportionable to
what was to be the term of their duration. — Wmi ■■A/urWs Connec
tion, c. !.
61
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. I53G. A. C. 24C8; OR, ACCORDING TO HAI.ES, A. M. 213G. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND C. TO VER. 13.
of a reconciliation, have fairly entered the lists, and
taken the side which they thought most tenable.
Those who espouse the cause of the Greek version,
draw up their arguments in this rank and order. They
tell us, that the alteration in the Septuagint computation
must have been purposely made; because, where letters
must necessarily have been added, and where sometimes
both parts of a verse, and sometimes two verses together
are altered, and so altered, as still to keep them con-
sistent with one another ; this, whenever done, must be
done designedly, and for no other reason that they can
imagine, but rarely a detection of errors in the Hebrew
copies.
They tell us, that, though they have no positive proof
of such errors in the present Hebrew copies, yet they
have good grounds to suspect there are such, because
that, before the time of Antiochus, the Jews, while in
peace, were so very careless about their sacred writings,
that they suffered several variations to creep into their
copies ; that when Antiochus fell upon them, he seized
and burnt all the copies he could come at, so that none,
but such as were in private hands, escaped his fury;
that, as soon as that calamity was over, those copies
which were left, in private hands, the Jews got together,
in order to transcribe others from them; and that, from
these transcriptions, came all the copies now in use.
Now suppose, say they, that these private copies which
escaped the fury of Antiochus, but were made in an age
confessedly inaccurate, had any of them dropped some
numerical letters, this might occasion the present He-
brew text's falling short in its computations: and, to
confirm this,
They tell us, that Josephas, 1 who expressly declares,
that he wrote his history from the sacred pages, 2in
his account of the lives of the antediluvian patriarchs,
agrees with the Septuagint; and that the Greek histori-
ans before Josephus, such as Demetrius Plialerius,
Philo the elder, Eupolemus, &c, very accurate writers,
and highly commended by Clemens Alexandrinus, and
FAisebius, in their calculation, differ very much from
the common Hebrew: so that not only Josephus, but
these elder historians likewise must have either seen, or
been informed of certain Hebrew copies which agreed
with the Septuagint, and differed from what have de-
scended to us. In short,
They tell us, 3 that the whole Christian church, Eastern
and Western, and all the celebrated writers of the
church, are on their side ; that all the ancient manu-
scripts have exactly the same computations with the com-
mon Septuagint, except here and there a variation or
two, not worth regarding; and therefore they conclude,
that, as there is a manifest disagreement between the
Greek and Hebrew copies in this respect, the mistake
should rather be charged upon the Hebrew, than the
Septuagint; because, as the Hebrew is thought by some
to fall short, and the Septuagint to exceed, in its account
of the lives of the patriarchs, it is obvious to conceive,
that a fault of this kind may be incurred by way of omis-
sion rather than addition.
' Against Appion. " Antiquities, b. 1. c. 3.
3 Shuchfo riTs Connection; and Heidegger's History of the
Patriarchs.
Those who maintain the authority of the Hebrew text,
as the standard and rule of reckoning the years of the
patriarchs, oppose their adversaries in this manner.
They tell us * that the Hebrew text is the original, in
which the Spirit of God indicted the Scriptures of the
Old Testament, and being, consequently, authentic, is
better to be trusted than any translation made by men
liable to error, as the Seventy interpreters were ; and
that the Jews, to whom 5were committed these oracles
of God, used the greatest diligence to preserve them
pure and entire, insomuch, that in the course of so many
years (as 6 Josephus testifies in his time) no person durst
add, take away, or misplace any thing therein.
They tell us, that no reason can be assigned, why the
Hebrew text should be corrupted, but many very proba-
ble ones, why the Septuagint might; since, either to
exalt the antiquity of their own nation, or to conform to
the dynasties of the Egyptians, the Jewish interpreters
at Alexandria might falsify their chronology; since, in
this very point, there are so many different readings in
the Septuagint, and so many errors and mistranslations
in it, that 7the learned Dr Lightfoot (to whom, as yet,
no sufficient reply has been made) has proved it a very
corrupt and imperfect version.
They tell us that the Hebrew computations are sup-
ported by a perfect concurrence and agreement of all
Hebrew copies now in being; that there have been no
various readings in these places, since the Talmuds were
composed; that, even in our Saviour's time, this was the
current way of calculation, since the paraphrase of
Onkelos (which is on all hands agreed to be about that
age) is the same exactly with the Hebrew in this matter ;
that St Jerome and St Austin (who were the best skilled
in the Hebrew tongue of any fathers in their age) fol-
lowed it in their writings, and the vulgar Latin, which
has been in use in the church above 100 years, entirely
agrees with it.
They tell us, that Demetrius, the real historian, (for
aPhalerius was none,) lived not before the reign of
Ptolemy Philopater, the grandson of Philadelphus, near
seventy years after the Septuagint translation was
made : that Philo was contemporary with our Saviour,
wrote almost 300 years after the said translation, and,
living constantly at Alexandria, might very well be sup-
posed to copy from it; that Josephus, though a Jew,
and perfectly skilled in the Hebrew language, in many
instances, (which learned 8men have pointed out,)
4 Millar's Church History. s Rom. iii. 2.
6 Against Appion, b. 1.
7 See his Works, vol. 2. p. 932. edit. Utrecht, 1699.
8 See Cave's History; Litt. p. 2. in Joseph; and TFelVs Dis-
sertation upon the Chronicles of Josephus, pp. 19 — 21.
a Demetrius Plialerius was the first president of the college
of Alexandria, to which the library belonged, where the original
manuscripts of the Septuagint were reposited. He was a great
scholar as well as an able statesman and politician ; but I doubt
Bishop Walton is mistaken, when (in his ninth Preface to the
Polyglot Bible) he quotes him as one of those Greek historians
whose works might prove the Septuagint computation to be more
probable than the Hebrew. The Phalerian Demetrius lived a
busy, active life, was a great officer of state, both at home and
abroad, and I do not find that ever he wrote any history. It was
Demetrius the historian therefore, that the Bishop should have
quoted ; but he, living in the time that I mentioned, does not
make much to this purpose. — Shuchford's Connection, b. J.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
65
A. M. 153G. A. C. 21G8; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VER. 13.
adheres to the Greek in opposition to the Hebrew; and
that the fathers of the first ages of the church, though
they were very good men, had no great extent of learn-
ing; understood the Greek tongue better than the He-
brew; and for that reason gave the preference to the
Septuagint computation.
In this manner do the advocates for the Hebrew text
defend its authority: and, since it is confessed, there
has been a transmutation somewhere, if that transmuta-
tion was designedly and on purpose done, (as the ad-
verse party agrees,) it is indifferent l whether it was done
by way of addition or subtraction : only as it is evident,
that the Greeks did compute by numerical letters,
whereas it is much questioned, that the Hebrews ever
did, the mistake or falsification rather seems to lie on
the side of the Greek translators, the very form of whose
letters was more susceptible of it.
This is a true state of the controversy, wherein the
arguments for the Hebrew computation do certainly
preponderate; though the names, the venerable a names,
on the contrary side, have hitherto been more numerous. 6
It might be some entertainment to the reader, could
we but give him any tolerable view of the religion,
1 Heidegger 's History of the Patriarchs,
a The names for the Septuagint computation, which the learned
Heidegger, in his History of the Patriarchs, (as he takes them
from Baronius,) has reckoned up, are such as these: Theophi-
lus, bishop of Antioch, St Cyprian, Clemens Alexandrinus,
Hippolytus, Origen, Lactantius, Epiphanius, Philastrius, Orosius,
Cyril, the two Anastasii, Nicephorus, and Suada ; to whom he
might add several more, as Heidegger suggests, while those
among the ancients who contended for the Hebrew calculation,
were only St Austin and St Jerome, but men of great skill and
proficiency in the Hebrew language. — On the Age of the Patri-
archs, Essay 10.
b Such may have been the case 100 years ago: but it certainly
is not so now. Dr Hales has proved, with the force of demon-
stration, that there was originally no difference between the
Hebrew genealogies and those of the Greek version; that the
computation of Josephus was, in his own time, conformable to
both; and consequently that the chronology either of the original
Hebrew, or of the Greek version of the Scriptures, as well as of
the writings of Josephus, has been since adulterated. That the
wilful adulteration took place in the Hebrew rather than in the
Greek copies, is rendered highly probable by the reasons which
follow. According to Dr Hales, who has bestowed much
pains on the question, the Masorites, who published the edition
of the Hebrew Bible which is now in use, deducted a century
from the age at which each of the patriarchs — Adam, Seth,
Enos, Cainan, Mahaleel, and Enoch — had their respective sons
whose genealogy is decided by Moses. Their motive for this
.'induct he states from Ephrem, Syrus, who lived about the period
at which the change was made, and of whom the learned Cave
says (Hist. Lit.) — "From his earliest years he exercised him-
self in monastic philosophy, and with all his energy so perfected
himself in the studies of the more learned sciences, that with
case he could understand the most difficult theorems." Such a
man was not likely to write at random of a fact, of which he had
the best possible opportunity of ascertaining either the truth or
the falsehood. That Ephrem. had such an opportunity is unques-
tionable ; for he died A. D. 378 ; and the corruption of the He-
brew chronology, though it began as early as A. D. 130, appears
not to have made any considerable progress for two centuries,
Eusebius having found, in the Hebrew copies which he con-
sulted, different accounts of the same times, some following the
longer, and others the shorter computations. Now Ephrem
affirms, that the Jews " subtracted 600 years from the genera-
tions of Adam, Seth, &c, in order that their own books might
not convict them concerning the coming of Christ: he having
been predicted to appear for the deliverance of mankind after
6500 years.
The reader will look in vain for this prediction in the books of
the Old Testament; but the Cabbalists found in the first chapter
of the book of Genesis, that the world would last 6000 years,
because the letter Alcph, which stands for 1000, occurs six times
in the first verse ; because God was six days about the creation ;
and because with him 'a thousand years are but as one day!'
after this, they taught that there was to be "a seventh day, or a
millenary sabbath of rest." Now it being certainly foretold that
the Messiah should be sent in the last times, it appears that the
Rabbis inferred his advent to be about the middle of the sixth
millenary, or the 5500th year of the world ; and to find a pre-
tence for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, it occurred to them to
alter the generations of the patriarchs, by which the age of the
world might be known, by subtracting a century from Adam's
age until the birth of Seth, and adding the same to the residue
of Iris life, and doing the same thing with respect to the genera-
tion of many others of Adam's descendants down to Abraham.
By this device their computation showed that Jesus Christ was
manifested near the middle of the fifth, instead of the sixth,
millenary of the world, which according to them was to last 7000
years ; and they said, We are still in the middle of the time, and
the time appointed for the Messiah's advent is not yet come.
Those Rabbis, however, were obliged to leave the ages at
which Jared, Methuselah, and Lamech had their several sons,
as they found them. " Had these been cm-tailed, like the rest,
and the century taken from each added to the subsequent life of
the patriarch as is done in other cases, Jared would have sur-
vived the deluge 66 years; Methuselah 200 years; and Lamech
95 years. Not daring, therefore, to shorten the lives of these
three patriarchs, the Jews were forced to let the original amounts
of their generations remain unaltered."
" The tradition of the Jews respecting the age of the world
was found also in the Sybilline Oracles; in Hesiod; in the writ-
ings of Darius Hystaspes, the old king of the Medes, derived
probably from the Magi ; and in Hermes Trisrnegistus, and was
adopted by the early Christian fathers. Its prevalence therefore
throughout the Pagan, Jewish, and Christian world, whether well-
founded, or otherwise, was a sufficient reason for the Jews to invali-
date it, by shortening their chronology." Tills probability is height-
ened by the testimony of Justin Martyr and Irenasus, who were
both eminent Christian writers of the second century, the former
a Samaritan by birth, and well skilled in the Hebrew tongue, as
well as in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Now, in Iris cele-
brated conference with Trypho the Jew, Justin expressly charges
the Rabbis with having expunged many passages out of the
Septuagint version; whilst Irenmus affirms of the same Rabbis,
that if they had known the use that was to be made of their
Scriptures, they would not have hesitated to burn these Scrip-
tures? The Septuagint version was indeed their abhorrence,
because it was generally referred to by the Christian writers;
and, in order to bring it as much as possible into disrepute, they
instituted, in the beginning of the second century, a solemn fast
on the 8th of Tebeth (December) to curse the memory of its
having been made! Had it been in their power, there cannot
be a doubt, but that, with these dispositions, they would have
destroyed that version entirely ; but this was not in their power,
whilst it was easy to alter the chronology of the Hebrew text, so
as to make it suit their own purposes.
" In the course of the Jewish war," says Dr Hales, "until
the final destruction of Jerusalem, and expulsion of the Jews
from Judea in the reign of Adrian, vast numbers of the Hebre f
copies must have been lost or destroyed, besides those that were
taken away by the conquerors among other spoils; and the few,
that were left, were confined in a great measure to the Jews
themselves, as the Hebrew language was not generally under-
stood like the Greek. Whereas, of the Greek copies, even if
all, that were possessed by the Hellenistic Jews, not only in
Palestine, but throughout the world, had been destroyed, which
was far from being the case, yet the copies of the Septuagint, in
the possession of the Christians everywhere, rendered any mate-
rial adulteration of the Greek text, at least in so important a case
as that of the genealogies, well nigh impossible." The Jews did
however all that they could to deprive the Christians of the argu-
ments with which it furnished them in proof of Jesus of Nazareth
being the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. They set
up three other Greek versions in opposition to the Septuagint,
66
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1536. A. C. 24C8; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 213G. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VER. 13.
polity, and learning, of the antediluvian people : but the
sacred history, in this respect, is so very short, and the
framed on the Hebrew text curtailed in the manner which has
been already mentioned. The first was that of Aquila, pub-
lished about A. D. 12S — two years before the Seder Olam
Rabba; the second by Symmachus; and the third by Theodo-
tion. Aquila was originally a pagan priest, and afterwards a
Clu-istiaii; but being excommunicated for the irregularity of his
conduct, he became a Jew, and the most rancorous enemy of
the gospel of Christ. By Epiphanius he is charged with wrest-
ing the Scriptures, in order to invalidate their testimonies to the
claim of our Lord to the character of the Messiah; and, in an
unpublished Greek tract in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, it is
said — " Wherever you find in the Hebrew (for even there he
also obliterated) or in the Greek, the testimonies concerning
Clirist disguised, know that it was the insidious contrivance of
Aquila.''
That he might be able to perform these exploits, Aquila, when
lie became a Jew, put himself under the tuition of the famous
Rabbi Akiba, who, for forty years was president of the Sanhe-
drim, and had 40,000 pupils, which qualified him to become one
of the most subtile and formidable as well as most malignant
adversaries of Clu-istianity. It was under the auspices, and by
the instigation of this famous Rabbi, that in the year ISO, was
published or " sealed," says Dr Hales, " the Seder Olam
Rabba, or Jewish curtailed system of chronology; and as
Aquila' s version agrees with it, there can be little doubt, but
that in this exploit, he was aiding to his master. These facts
were undoubtedly known to Usher and other eminent chronolo-
gers; but, as Dr Hales observes, "the superstitious veneration
for what was called the Hebrew verity, or supposed immaculate
purity of the Masorite editions of the Hebrew text, which gene-
rally prevailed among the most eminent divines and Hebrew
scholars of the last age, precluded all discussions of this nature."
" But the inspection of various editions since, and the copious
collations of the Hebrew text with a great number of MSS. col-
lected from all parts of the world, by the laudable industry and
extensive researches of Kennicotl De Rossi, and other learned
men, have proved that the sacred classics are no more exempt
from various readings than the profane." Errors many and
great have crept into the chronology of the Scriptures as well in
the original Hebrew as in the Septuagint version; nor have the
antiquities of Josephus by any means escaped the confusion with
respect to dates, which disfigures the Sacred Oracles from which
those antiquities were transcribed.
It is, however, chiefly by the means of some genuine dates
and numbers which still fortunately subsist in the work of Jose-
phus, that our author has been enabled to restore the Scripture
chronology to its original state. This he has done by strictly
following the analytical method of investigation, which, he truly
observes, is at least as applicable to chronology as to natural
philosophy. The leading elementary date, by reference to which
he has adjusted the whole range of sacred and profane chrono-
logy, " is (I quote his own words) the birth of Cyrus, before
Christ 599, which led to his accession to the throne of Persia,
B. C. 559; of Media, B. C. 551 ; and of Babylonia, B. C. 536 ;
for, from these several dates carefully and critically ascertained
and verified, the several respective chronologies of these king-
doms branched oil'; and from the last especially, the destruction
of Solomon's temple by Nebuehadnezzer, B. C. 5S6, its correcter
date, which led to its foundation, B. C. 1027; thence, to the
Fvode, B. C. 1648; thence to Abraham's birth, B. C. 2153;
thence to the reign of Nimrod, 2554; thence to the deluge,
B. C. 3155; and thence to the creation, B. C. 5411. And this
date of the creation is verified, by the rectification of the systems
of Josephus, and Theophilus, who was bishop of Antioch,
A. D. 169, and the first Christian chronologist." By the same
patient and analytical investigation, Dr Hales has ascertained
the genealogies of the antediluvian patriarchs, to have been very
different from what they are represented to have been in the
present Hebrew; and though it would undoubtedly be presump-
tuous to say that his system is without errors, it appears to ap-
proach so near to perfection, that the following computation,
which differs widely from those of the Hebrew, Samaritan, and
Septuagint texts at present, must, I think, be acceptable to the
reader. It may he considered as the original computation of
hints suggested therein, so very few, and so very obscure
withal, that, during this period, we are left, in a great
measure, in the dark. However, we cannot but observe,
that it is a mistaken notion of some authors, who affirm,
that at the beginning of the world, for almost 2000
years together, mankind lived without any law, without
any precepts, without any promises from God; and that
the religion from Adam to Abraham was purely natural,
and such as had nothing but right reason to be its rule
and measure. The antediluvian dispensation indeed
was, in the main, founded upon the law of nature ; but
still it must be acknowledged, that there was (as we
showed before) a divine precept concerning sacrifices;
that there was a divine promise concerning the blessed
Seed ; and that there were several other precepts and
injunctions given the patriarchs, besides those that were
built upon mere reason.
The law of sacrifices (which confessedly at this time
obtained) was partly natural, and partly divine. As
sacrifices were tokens of thankfulness and acknowledg-
ments, that the fruits of the earth, and all other crea-
tures, for the use and benefit of man were derived from
God; they were a service dictated by natural reason,
and so were natural acts of worship : abut, as they carried
with them the notion of expiation and atonement for the
souls of mankind especially as they referred to the
Messias, and signified the future sacrifice of Christ,
they were certainly instituted by God, and the practice
of them was founded upon a divine command.
It is not to be doubted, l but that Adam instructed his
children to worship and adore God, to commemorate his
goodness, and deprecate his displeasure; nor can Ave
suppose, but that they, in their respective families, put
his instructions in execution; and yet we find, that in
1 Edward's Survey of Religion, b. 1.
Josejihus rather than that of Dr Hales, and therefore the
computation of Moses.
According to
Hales, &C.
Began
his life
in the
yea, of
the
world
Had his
•he year
»l his life
Lived after the
birlh .•! his sun—
years
Lived in ill—
Died in the yen
of the world
1
230
700
930
930
2. Seth
230
205
707
912
1142
3. Euos
435
190
715
905
1340
625
170
740
910
1534
5. Mahalaleel
795
1G5
730
895
1690
960
162
800
9G2
1922
1122
1G5
200
365
1487
8. Methuselah
1287
187
782
9G9
2256
1474
182
Heb. (595
LXX. 15G5
Heb. C777
LXX. J.753
Heb. C2251
LXX. 12227
10. Noah
1G5G
500
225G
GOO
Gleig's Edit.
a This seems inconceivable, though it is an opinion that has
been held by men of the highest eminence in the church, as well
for learning as for piety. Whilst men possessed no notion of
property, what could lead them to offer gifts to God? And
though they must have been all conscious of guilt, is it possible
that they could hope to propitiate the Creator by taking away the
life of his, not their, guiltless creatures. For complete proof ol
the Divine institution of all kinds of sacrifice, the reader may
have recourse to Magee's Discourses and Dissertations on the
Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and Sacrifice. — Gleig's Edit
Sect. V.]
PROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
67
A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.
the days of Enos, (besides all private devotion) a public
form of worship was set up ; that the people had the
rites of their religion, which God had appointed, fixed,
and established; and that, very probably, as Cain built
cities for his descendants to live in, so Enos might
build temples, and places of divine worship, for his to
resort to. a
The distinction of clean and unclean animals was
another divine injunction under this dispensation. God
refers Noah to it, as a thing well known, when he com-
mands him ' to put into the ark se»en pairs of clean, and
two of unclean creatures: and2 though, in respect of man's
food, this distinction was not before the law of Moses,
yet some beasts were accounted fit and others unfit for
sacrifices from the beginning. The former were esteemed
clean, and the latter unclean : and it seems safer to make
a positive law of God the foundation of this distinction,
than to imagine that men, in such matters as these, were
left to their own discretion.
The prohibition of marrying with infidels or idolaters,
was another article of this dispensation, as appears from
God's angry resentment when the children of Seth en-
tered into wedlock with the wicked posterity of Cain.
And, to mention no more, under this period were given
those six ' great precepts of Adam' (as they are generally
called) whereof the Jewish doctors make such boast ;
* and of these the 1. was of strange worship, or idolatry;
the 2. of cursing the most holy name, or blasphemy ; the
3. of uncovering the nakedness, or unlawful copulation ;
the 4. of bloodshed, or homicide ; the 5. of theft and
rapine ; and the 6. of judgment, or the administration
of justice in the public courts of judicature. So that,
from the very first, ' God did not leave himself without
a witness' (as the apostle terms it) but, in one degree or
other, made frequent manifestations of his will to man-
kind.
That government of one kind or other, is essential
to the well-being of mankind, seems to be a position
r founded in the nature of things, the relation wherein
1 Gen. vii. 2. 2 Patrick's Comtnenlary.
a These conjectures are without all foundation. The pious
family of Seth undoubtedly worshipped God in public as well as
in private, from the very beginning; though it was not till the
days of Enos that they began to "call themselves by the name
of the Lord," or to assume the denomination of "the sons of
God," to distinguish themselves from the profane race of Cain.' —
See Hales's Analysis, &c, vol. ii. p. 34. ; Bishop Gleiy's Edit.
b The commandments given to the sons of Noah are the same
with these. They are an abridgment of the whole law of
nature ; but have one positive precept annexed to them ; and are
generally placed in this order. 1. "Thou shalt serve no other
gods, but the Maker only of heaven and earth. 2. Thou shalt
remember to serve the true God, the Lord of the world, by
sanctifying his name in the midst of thee. 3. Thou shalt not
shed the blood of man created after the image of God. 4. Thou
shalt not defde thy body, that thou mayest be fruitful and multi-
ply, and, with a blessing replenish the earth. 5. Thou shalt be
content with that which thine is, and what thou wouldst not
have done to thyself, that thou shalt not do to another. 6. Thou
shalt do right judgment to every one, without respect to persons.
7. Thou shalt not eat the flesh in the blood, nor any thing that
hath life, with the life thereof." This is the heptalogue of Noah,
fi- Hie seven words, which, as the Jews tell us, were delivered
to his sons, and were constantly observed by all the uncircum-
cjsed worshippers of the true God. — Bibliothesa Biblica, Occa-
tional Annotations, 15. vol. 1.
e To this purpose Cicero {On Laws, b. 3. c. 1.) tells us, that
men, at first, stood towards one another, and the several
qualifications in them, which, in a short time, could not
but appear. The first form of government, without all
controversy, was patriarchal; but this form was soon
laid aside, when men of superior parts came to distin-
guish themselves ; when the head of any family either
outpowered or outwitted his neighbour, and so brought
him to give up his dominion, either by compulsion or
resignation. Government, however, at this time, seems
to have been placed in fewer hands, than it is now : not
that the number of people was less, but their communi-
ties were larger, and their kingdoms more extensive,
than since the flood; 3 insomuch, that it may well be
questioned, whether, after the union of the two great
families of Seth and Cain, there was any distinction of
civil societies, or diversity of regal governments at all.
It seems more likely, that all mankind then made but
one great nation, living in a kind of anarchy, and
divided into several disorderly associations ; which, as
it was almost \he natural consequence of their having, in
all probability, but one language ; so it was a circum-
stance which greatly contributed to that general corrup-
tion which otherwise perhaps could not so universally
have prevailed. And for this reason we may suppose,
that no sooner was the posterity of Noah sufficiently
increased, but a plurality of tongues was miraculously
introduced, in order to divide them into distinct socie-
ties, and thereby prevent any such total depravation for
the future.
The enterprising genius of man began to exert itself
very early in music, brass-work, iron-work, and every
science, useful and entertaining, and the undertakers
were not limited by a short life. They had time enough
before them to carry things to perfection : but whatever
their skill, learning, or industry performed, all remains
and monuments of it have long- since perished.
4 Josephus indeed gives us this account of Seth's great
knowledge in astronomy, and how industrious he was to
have it conveyed to the new world. " Seth, and his
descendants ;" says he, " were persons of happy tem-
pers, and lived in peace, employing themselves in the
study of astronomy, and in other searches after useful
knowledge ; but, being informed by Adam, that the world
should be twice destroyed, first by water, and afterwards
by fire, they made two pillars, the one of stone, and the
other of brick, and inscribed their knowledge upon
them, supposing that the one or other of them might
remain for the use of posterity." 5 But how strangely
improbable is it, that they, who foreknew that the de-
struction of the Avorld shoidd be by a flood, shoidd busy
themselves to write astronomical observations on pillars,
for the benefit of those who should live after it ? Could
they think, that their pillars would have some peculiar
exemption, above other structures, from the violence
3 Universal History, b. 1. c. 2. * Antiquities, b. 1. c. 2.
5 Stillingfleet's Sacred Origins, b. 1. c. 2.
" Without government, neither family, nor nation, nor mankind,
nor the world, nor the universe, could last." Seneca asserts
that, " it (government) is the chain by which the state is held
together, it is the vital breath which these numerous thousands
of citizens inhale, who would, of their own accord, immediately
sink into nothing but an inert mass and easy prey, were tluit
spirit of order withdrawn.'"
68
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
and outrage of the waters? If they believed that the
flood would prove universal, for whose instruction did
th^y write their observations ? If they did not, to what
ei . did. they write them at all, since the persons who
survive , might communicate their inventions to whom
i ^y pleased ? The plain truth is, * Josephus, who fre-
quently quotes heathen authors, and Manet ho in parti-
cular, to this story of Seth's pillars from the pillars of
Hermes mentioned in that historian : for, as the Jews
had an ancient tradition concerning Seth's pillars, Jose-
phus, in reading Manetlio, might possibly think his
account misapplied, and thereupon imagine, that he
should probably hit on the truth, if he put the account of
the one and the tradition of the other together ; and this
very likely might occasion his mistake.
2 The eastern people have preserved several traditions
of very little certainty concerning- Enoch. They be-
lieve, that he received from God the gift of wisdom and
knowledge to an eminent degree, and that God sent him
thirty volumes from heaven, filled with all the secrets of
the most mysterious science. St Jude, it is certain,
seems to cite a passage from a prophecy of his ; nor
can it be denied, but that in the first ages of Christianity,
"there was a book, well known to the Jews, that went
1 Shuckford's Connection, b. 1.
3 Calmet's Dictionary on the word Enoch.
a Joseph Scaliger, in his annotations upon Eusebius's Ckroni-
con, has given us some considerable fragments of it, which
Heidegger in his History of the Patriarchs, has translated into
Latin, which the curious, if they think proper, may consult: but
the whole seems to be nothing but a fabulous collection of some
Jew or other, most unworthy the holy patriarch. Tertullian,
however, has defended it with great warmth, and laments much,
that all the world is not as zealous as himself, in the mainten-
ance of its authenticity. He pretends, that it had been saved
by Noah in the ark, from thence transmitted down to the church,
and that the Jews, in his days, rejected it, only because they
thought it was favourable to Christianity. — Miller's History of
the Church; and Saurin's Dissertations. The great objections
against this book are, that neither Philo, nor Josephus, (those
diligent searchers into antiquity,) make any mention of it; and
that it contains such fabulous stories as are monstrous and absurd.
But to this some have answered, that such a book there certainly
was, notwithstanding the silence of these Jewish antiquaries:
and that after the apostle's time, it might be corrupted, and
many things added to it by succeeding heretics, who might take
occasion from the antiquity thereof, and from the passage of
Michael's contending with the devil about the body of Moses, to
interpolate many fables and inventions of their own. — Raleigh's
History of the World. — That there is still extant a very ancient
book called The Prophecies of Enoch is a fact which will admit
of no controversy ; but it is not from that work, but from another
J ewish book called The Assumption of Moses, which, though
now lost, was extant in the time of Origen, that the passage
about Michael's contention with the devil appears to have been
quoted by the apostle St Jude. Of The Prophecies qf Enoch
Mr Bruce gives us the following account:
" Amongst the articles I consigned to the library at Paris,
was a wry beautiful and magnificent copy of The Prophecies of
Enoch in large quarto; another is amongst the books of Scrip-
ture, which I brought home, standing immediately before the
book of Job, which is its proper place in the Abyssinian Canon ;
and a third copy I have presented to the Bodleian Library at
Oxford. The more ancient lustory of that book is well known."
The church at fust looked upon it as apocryphal, and it was
never admitted into any ancient canon of Scripture that I have
seen or heard of.
" We may observe that Judo's appealing to the apocryphal
hooks did by no means import, that either he believed, or war-
ranted, the truth of them." No man ever supposed that St Paul
warranted the truth of all that Aratus the poet had written, or
A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND G. TO VER. 13.
under his name : but besides that this piece is now gene^
rally given up for spurious, there is no need for us to
suppose, that St Jude ever quoted any passage out of
this, or any other book of Enoch.
3 Enoch was a prophet, we are told, and as such was
invested with authority, ' to cry aloud, and spare not,
to reprove the wicked, and denounce God's judgments
against them ; and as he was a good man, it was easy
for St Jude to imagine, that he would not sit still, and
see the impieties of the people grow so very exorbitant,
without endeavouring to repress them, by setting before
them ' the terrors of the Lord.' He could not discharge
the office of a good man, and a prophet, without fore-
warning them of the 4 ' Lord's coming, with ten thousand
of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to con-
vince all that were ungodly among them : and because
this was his office and duty, the apostle infers, (as by
the Spirit of God he might certainly know,) that he did
so, though he might not make that inference from any
passage in his prophecy; because it is a known obser-
vation, that *many things are alluded to in the New
Testament, which were never perhaps in any book at
all.
Of all the strange matters that occur in this period of
time, there is nothing which looks so like a prodigy as
the longevity of those men who at first inhabited the
earth ; nor is any event so apt to affect us with wonder,
3 Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs. * Jude 14, 15.
even that he believed that we are the offspring of God in the very
sense in which that poet probably taught that we are ; but he
appealed to him as sufficient authority among the Athenians in
support of his own doctrine, that all men have sprung from
one origin. It was an argument ad hominem, such as " our
Saviour himself often makes use of. You, says he to the Jews,
deny certain facts, which must be from prejudice, because you
have them allowed in your own books, and believe them there.
And a very strong and fair way of arguing it is; but this is by
no means any allowance that these books are true. In the same
manner you, says St Jude, do not believe the coming of Christ
and a latter judgment ; yet your ancient Enoch, who, you sup-
pose, was the seventh from Adam, tells you this plainly, and in
so many words long ago. And indeed the quotation is word for
word the same, in the second chapter of the book. All that is
material to say farther concerning the book of Enoch is, that it is
a Gnostic book, containing the age of the Emims, Anakims, and
Egregores, (descendants of the sons of God, when they fell in
love with the daughters of men), who were giants." The editor
of Bruce' s Travels says, I know not on what sufficient authority,
that, "the book in question was originally written in Greek by
some Alexandrian Jew ;" but I suspect that he confounds with
The Prophecies of Enoch, The Assumption of Moses, of which
fragments may be found perhaps in different authors, and which
was certainly written in Greek. The question, however, is of
no importance ; for it appears from the summary of its contents
given by the editor, that The Prophecies of Enoch, received into
the Sacred Canon by the Abyssinian church, are indeed, what he
calls them — an absurd and tedious work. — Bruce's Travels, vol.
2. p. 412. ed. 3. ; Bishop Gteig's Edit
I There are many instances in the New Testament of facts
alluded to, which we do not find in any ancient books. Thus the
contest between Michael and the devil is mentioned, as if the
Jews had, some where or other, a full account of it. The names
of the Egyptians, Jannes, and Jambres, are set down, though
they are nowhere found in Moses' history. St Paul tells us,
that Moses exceedingly quaked and feared on Mount Sinai ; but
we do not find it so recorded anywhere in the Old Testament.
In all these cases, the apostles and holy writers hinted at things,
commonly received as true, by tradition, among the Jews, with-
out transcribing them from any real book. — Shuckford's Connec-
tion, b. 1.
Skct. V.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
G9
A. M. 1536. A. C. 2468; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
as the disproportion between their lives and ours. We
think it a great tiling, if we chance to arrive at fourscore,
or an hundred years ; whereas they lived to the term of
seven, eight, nine hundred, and upwards, as appears a by
the joint testimony both of sacred and profane history.
The only suspicion that can arise in our minds upon this
occasion, is, that the computation might possibly be
made, not according to solar, but lunar years; but this,
instead of solving the difficulty, runs us into several
gross absurdities.
The space of time, between the creation and the flood,
is usually computed to be 1656 years, which, if we sup-
pose to be lunar, and converted into common years, will
amount to little more than 127 ; too short an interval, by
much, to stock the world with a sufficient number of in-
habitants. From one couple we can scarce imagine,
that there could arise 500 persons in so short a time ;
but suppose them a thousand, they would not be so many
as we sometimes have in a good country village. And
were the floodgates of heaven opened, and the great
abyss broken up, to destroy such an handful of people ?
were the waters raised fifteen cubits above the highest
mountains, throughout the face of the whole earth, to
drown a parish or two ? This certainly is more incredi-
ble than the longest age which the Scriptures ascribe to
the patriarchs ; besides that, this short interval leaves no
room for ten generations, which we find from Adam to
the flood; nor does it allow the patriarchs age enough,
(some of them, upon this supposition, must not be above
five years old,) when they are said to beget children.
If is generally allowed, and may indeed be proved by
the testimony of Scripture, that our first fathers lived
considerably longer, than any of their posterity have
done since; but, according to this hypothesis, (which
depresses the lives of the antediluvians, not only below
those who lived next the flood, but even below all fol-
lowing generations to this day,) Methuselah, who was
always accounted the oldest man since the creation, did
but reach to the age of seventy-five, and Abraham, who
is said to have died in a good old age, was not com-
pletely fifteen.
The patrons of this opinion therefore would do well
to tell us, when we are to break off this account of lunar
years in the sacred history. If they will have it extended
no farther than the flood, they make the postdiluvian
fathers longer -lived than the antediluvian, but will be
puzzled to assign a reason, why the deluge should occa-
sion longevity. If they will extend it to the postdilu-
vians likewise, they will then be entangled in worse
iifficulties; for they will make their lives miserably
short, and their age of getting children altogether in-
congruous and impossible.
From the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that the
years whereby Moses reckons the lives of the antedilu-
vians, were solar years, much of the same length with
what we now use ; and that therefore there must be a
reason, either in their manner of life, their bodily con-
iii tint, who wrote the story of the Egyptians; Berosus,
rote tin: Chaldean history; those authors, who give us an
account of the Phoenician antiquities; ami among the Creeks,
Hellanicus, Ephorus, &e., <!o unanimously
igree, that in the first ages of the world, men lived 10UO years.
— lUimit's Theory, b. 2. c. 4.
A. M. 2136. A. C. 3275. GEN. CH. 5. AND 6. TO VER. 13.
stitution, the temperament of the world wherein they
lived, or (what is most likely) the particular vouchsafe-
ment of God, to give them this mighty singular advan-
tage above us.
Some have imputed this extraordinary length of life
in the antediluvians to the sobriety of their livin"- and
simplicity of their diet ; that they eat no flesh, and had
no provocations to gluttony, which wit and vice have
since invented. l This indeed might have some effect
but not possibly to the degree we now speak of; since
there have been many moderate and abstemious people
in all ages, who have not surpassed the common period
of life.
Others have ascribed it to the excellency of the fruits,
and some unknown quality in the herbs and plants of
those days : but the earth, we know, was cursed imme-
diately after the fall, and its fruits, we may suppose,
gradually decreased in their virtue and goodness, until
the time of the flood ; and yet we do not see, that the
length of men's lives decreased at all during that in-
terval.
Others therefore have thought, that the long lives of
the men of the old world proceeded from the strength of
their stamina, or first principles of their bodily consti-
tution ; which, if they were equally strong in us, would
maintain us, as they think, in being, as long : but though
it be granted, that both the strength and stature of their
bodies were greater than ours, and that a race of strong
men, living long in health, will have children of a pro-
portionally strong constitution ; yet, that this was not
the sole and adequate cause of their longevity, we have
one plain instance to convince us, namely, that Shem,
who was born before the deluge, and had in his body all
the virtue of an antediluvian constitution, fell 300 years
short of the age of his forefathers, because the greatest
part of his life was passed after the flood.
The ingenious theorist whom I have quoted, for this
reason, imagines, that before the flood, the situation of
the earth to the sun was direct and perpendicular, and
not, as it is now, inclined and oblique. From this posi-
tion he infers, that there was a perpetual equinox all the
earth over, and one continued spring ; and thence con-
cludes, that the equality of the air, and stability of the
seasons were the true causes of the then longevity ;
whereas the change, and obliquity of the earth's posture,
occasioned by the deluge, altered the form of the year,
and brought in an inequality of seasons, which caused a
sensible decay in nature, and a gradual contraction in
human life.4
1 Burnet's Theory of the Earth, b. 2. c. 4.
b This is a perfectly groundless fancy warranted neither by
Scripture nor by philosophy.
"At the creation, the two great lights, the sun and the moon,
were ordained, among other uses, to be for signs, and for sea-
sons, and for days, and For years, Gen. i. II. 15at seasons and
years are produced by this obliquity. If, then, seasons and year.;
the deluge, so must the obliquity. But that they
did, is evident from the history; for the duration of time, from
the creation to the deluge, is measured by the years of the gene-
rations of the patriarchs from Adam to Noah, Gen. v. And
when (Jed promised Noah, that ' while the earth remained, seed-
time and harvest, or (spring and autumn), cold and heat, or
(winter and summer), and day and night should not cease,'
plainly signifying, that the world should go on after the deluge
70
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1C56. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
His reasoning, upon this point, is very elegant.
" There is no question," says he, " but every tiling upon
earth, and especially the animate Avorld, would be much
more permanent, if the general course of nature was
more steady, and more uniform. A stability in the
heavens makes a stability in all things below ; and that
change, and contrariety of qualities which we have in
these regions, is the fountain of corruption — the ether
in their little pores, the air in their greater, and the
vapours and atmosphere that surround them, shake, and
unsettle their texture and continuity ; whereas, in a fixed
state of nature, where these principles have always the
same constant and uniform motion, a long and lasting
peace ensues, without any violence, either within, or
without to discompose them. We see, by daily expe-
rience," continues he, " that bodies are kept better in
the same medium, (as we call it,) than when they are
sometimes in the air, and sometimes in the water, moist
and dry, hot and cold, by turns ; because these different
states weaken the contexture of their parts. But our
bodies, in the present state of nature, are put in an hun-
dred different mediums, in the course of a year ; the
winds are of a different nature, and the air of a different
weight and pressure, according as the weather and
seasons affect them. All these things are enough to wear
out our bodies soon, very soon, in comparison of what
they would last, if they were always encompassed with
one and the same medium, and that medium were always
of one and the same temper."
This is all very pretty : but the author's grand mistake
is, that it was not so in the primitive earth. He has no
authority to show, that how high soever the waters might
swell at the deluge, the centre of the earth gave way ' or
the foundations of the round world were shaken.' The
earth, no doubt, had, before, as well as after the flood,
an annual as well as diurnal motion. 1 It stood to the
sun in the same oblique posture and situation, and was
consequently subject to the same seasons and vicissi-
tudes that the present earth is ; and if the air was more
mild, and the elements more favourable at that time, this
we may account the peculiar blessing of God, and not
the result of the earth's position to the sun, or any
fancied stability in the weather. The truth is, whatever
we may attribute to second causes, why bodies that are
naturally mortal and corruptible should subsist so long
in the primitive ages of the world ; yet the true cause of
all is to be ascribed to the will of God, who impregnated
our first parents with such vigour, and gave their pos-
terity for some time such robust constitutions, as de-
pended not upon the nature of their diet, the stability of
the seasons, or the temperature of the air. After the
flood, God soon made a sensible change in the length of
man's days. For, perceiving the general iniquity to
increase again, and thereupon designing to make an
alteration in the world's continuance, he hastened the
period of human life, that the number of souls he intended
1 See KeilVs Examination of Burnet's Theory.
as it had done before, and that the same vicissitude of seasons
should prevail as of day and night; how is it possible to repre-
sent, that God found it necessary to forewarn Noah that he must
:,xpect successive changes of seasons, and vicissitudes of heat and
cold, such as he had never yet experienced!" — Hales's Analysis,
8vo, vol. l.p. 324.— Ed.
to send into the world before the consummation of all
things, might have a speedier probation. Man's age
accordingly went on sinking by degrees, until a little
before David's time, it came to be fixed at what has been
the common standard ever since. 2 ' The days of our
age are threescore years and ten : and though some men
be so strong, that they come to fourscore years, yet is
their strength then but labour and sorrow, so soon passeth
it away, and we are gone.' This is our stated period;
and therefore for us, who live in this postdiluvian world,
and have the term of our trial so much shortened, the
subsequent prayer of the devout Psalmist will always be
necessary, always seasonable ; ' So teach us to number
our days, that Ave may apply our hearts inito wisdom.'
SECT. VI.
CHAP. I.— Of the Deluge.
THE HISTORY.
God (as Ave said before) had given mankind a reprival
for an hundred and twenty years ; but when he saAV
that all his lenity and forbearance tended to no purpose,
except it Avas to make them more bold and licentious in
their sins, he declared to his servant Noah, that within a
short time his resolution Avas to destroy them, and with
them all other creatures upon the face of the earth, by a
flood of Avaters ; but a assured him, at the same time, that
since he had comported himself better, and approved his
fidelity to his Maker, he Avould take care to preserve him
and his family, and Avhatever other creatures Avere neces-
sary for the restoration of their species from the general
calamity.
To this purpose he gave him orders to build a kind of
vessel, not in the form of ships iioav in use, but rather
8 Ps. xc. 10.
a The words in our translation are, With thee will I establish
my covenant: but 1st, by the Avord covenant, Ave are not here to
understand a mutual compact or agreement, but only a simple
and gracious promise, as it is likeAvise used, Numb, xviii. 19,
xxv. 12, and in several other places; which promise, though
only mentioned here, was doubtless made before, as may easily
be gathered from these Avoids, and some foregoing passages, and
from the necessity that Noah should have some such support and
encouragement during all the time of his ministry. 2dly. Tin's
covenant of God might relate to his sending the promised seed,
and redemption of mankind by the Messias ; and in this sense
Avill import, that as the Messias Avas to come out of Noah's loins,
so the divine providence would take care to preserve him an've.
But, 3dly. A learned and right reverend author is of opir ion,
that tliis covenant of God relates to his reinstating the earth in
its primitive fertib'ty in Noah's lifetime. To which purpose he
observes, that as soon as the flood Avas over, God declares, ' I
will not again curse the ground for man's sake ;' from Avhich de-
claration it appears, (says he) 1st, That the flood Avas the effect
of that curse which Avas denounced against the earth for man's
sake ; and 2dly, That the old curse Avas fully executed and ac-
complished in the flood ; in consequence of Avhich, a iicav blessing
is immediately pronounced upon the earth, Gen. xiii. 22. ' While
the earth remaineth, seed-time, and harvest, and cold, and heat,
and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.' —
Poole's Annotations, and Bishop Sherlock'1* Use and Intent of
Prophecy
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
71
A. M. 1G5G. A. C. 2349 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
inclining- to the fashion of a a large chest or ark, and
himself prescribed the plan whereby he was to proceed.
— That to make the vessel firm and strong, and able to
endure the pressure of the waves, the wood most proper
for that purpose * should be cypress ; and that to prevent
the waves from penetrating, or the sun from cracking it,
as well as to secure it from worms, and make it glide
more easy upon the water, his business would be, as soon
as it was finished, c to pitch it, or rather smear it all
over with bitumen, (whereof there was plenty in the coun-
try), both within and without ; that to make its propor-
tion regular, its length should be six times more than its
breadth, and ten times more than its height; and to give
it capacity enough, the first of these should be d 300
cubits, that is, in our measure, 450 feet; the second 50
cubits, or 75 feet ; and the third 30 cubits, or 45 feet ;
that to make it commodious for the reception of every-
thing, it was to consist of three stories or decks, of equal
a The word thebath, which we render ark, is only read here,
and in another place, where Moses, when an infant, is said to
have been put into one made of bulrushes, Exod. ii. 3. It is
supposed to come from a root which signifies ' to dwell or inhabit ;'
and may therefore here denote ' a house, or place of abode.' And
indeed, if we consider the use and design, as well as the form
and figure of this building, we can hardly suppose it to be like
an ark or chest, wherein we usually store lumber, and put things
out of the way ; but rather like a farm house, such as are in seve-
ral countries, where the cattle and people live all under one roof.
As soon as men began to hew down timber, and to join it toge-
ther, for the purpose of making houses, nothing can be supposed
a more simple kind of edifice than what was made rectangular,
with a bottom or floor, to prevent the dampness of the ground ; a
sloping cover or roof to carry off the rain that should fall ; stalls and
cabins for the lodgment of man and beast ; and to keep out wind and
weather effectually, a coat of bitumen or pitch. Of this kind
was this building of Noah's, and may therefore rather be termed
a place of abode, than an ark or chest, properly so called. — Le
Clerc's Commentary on the Passage.
b The timber whereof the ark was framed Moses calls gopher-
woodj but what tree this gopher was, is not a little controverted.
Some will have it to be cedar, others the pine, others the box,
and others (particularly the Mahometans) the Indian plane-tree;
but our learned Fuller in his Miscellanies, has observed, that it
was nothing else but that which the Greeks call Kuvrtieitrtro;, or
the cypress-tree; for taking away the termination, cupar, and
gopher differ very little in the sound. This observation the great
Buchart has confirmed, and shown very plainly, that no country
almonds so much with this wood as that part of Assyria which
lies about Babylon. And to this we may add the observation of
Theophrastus, who, speaking of trees that are least subject to
decay, makes the cypress-tree the most durable of all ; for which
Vitruvius gives us this reason, viz. that the sap, which is in
every part of the wood has a peculiar bitter taste, and is so very
Offensive that no worm or other corroding animal will touch it:
so that such works as are made of this wood will in a manner
last for ever. — See Universal History; Patrick's Commenta/ry;
Bochart's Annotations, b. 1. c. 4y and Bedford's Scripture
Chronology, b. ]. c. 9.
c The Arabic translation says expressly pitch it with pitch,
but the bitumen (which was plentiful in that country, and as
others think intended here) was of the same nature, and served
to the same use as pitch, being glutinous and tenacious, and
proper to keep things together. — Patrick's Commentary.
d A cubit is the measure from the elbow to the finger's end,
containing six hand-breadths, or a foot and a half: so that 300
cubits make exactly 450 feet. There are some, however, who
take these tor geometrical cubits, every one of which contain six
W the common; but there is no need for any such computation,
since, taking them for common cubits, it is demonstrable (as
will appear hereafter) that there might be room enough in the
ark for all sorts of beasts and birds, together with Noah's family
and their necessary provision.— -Ainsivorth's Annotations; and
Patrick's Commentary,
height each, and each divided into stalls and apartments
proper for the things that were to be put into it ; that for
turning oft" the rain, the roof was to be made sloping ; that
for letting in of light e there were windows to be so and
so disposed, or /some other conveniency answerable to
them ; and that, for the more easy induction of the many
things it was to contain, a door or entry-port was to be
made in its side.
These were the instructions which God gave Noah,
who accordingly went to work, and being" assisted with
the hands of his family, (for S the rest of the world doubt-
less derided him,) in the time that was appointed him, and
seven days before the rain began to fall, h he had com-
e There are various translations of the word zohar which
occurs but once in the whole Bible in this sense. It seems to be
derived from a root in the Chaldee, which signifies ' to shine,'
or ' give light ;' and therefore our version renders it a window;
but if so, it must be collective, and mean several windows,
because it is not likely that there should be but one in so vast a
building, and from the following words, ' in a cubit shalt thou
finish it above,' some have supposed, that the window was to be
a cubit square, or but a cubit high, which would have been much
too small. But the relative ' it' being, in the Hebrew, of the
feminine gender, and zohar of the masculine, these two words
cannot agree ; and therefore the proper antecedent seems to be
the ' ark,' which was covered with a roof raised a cubit high in
the middle. This, however, in the original, may signify no
more than an injunction to build the ark by the cubit, as the
common measure, by which the work was to be marked out and
directed. — See Universal History; Saurin's Dissertation; and
Lamy's Introduction,
f What that other conveniency was, we shall have occasion
to show when we come to treat of the word zohar, (which we
here render ' window,') in answer to the subsequent objection.
g The Apostle to the Hebrews (xi. 7.) mentions Noah's build-
ing the ark as an heroic act of faith; ' By faith Noah,' says he,
' being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with
fear, prepared an ark, to the saving of his house, by which he
condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which
is by faith:' for we may well imagine, that this work of his was
not only costly and laborious, but esteemed by the generality very
foolish and ridiculous; especially when they saw all things con-
tinue in the same posture and safety for so many scores of years
together; whereby Noah, without doubt, became all that while
the song of drunkards, and the sport of the wits of the age. —
Poole's Annotations. The Mahometans have a tradition, that
when he began to work upon this famous vessel, all that saw him
derided him, and said, " You are building a ship; if you can
bring water to it, you will be a prophet, as well as a carpenter;"
but he made answer to these insults, " You laugh at me now, but
I shall have my turn to laugh at you : for at your own cost yon will
learn, that there is a God in heaven who punishes the wicked.'
— Calmct's Dictionary on the word Noah.
h It is somewhat strange, that the torrent of interpreters
should suppose, that Noah was 120 years about this work, when
he gives no intimation to that purpose, but sufficient reasons to
believe, that he was not near so long as is imagined. It is plain
from Scripture that ' he was 500 years old when he begat Shein,
Ham, and Japheth,' (Gen. v. 32), and that when he received the
command for building the ark, the same sons were married; for
the text says expressly, ' Thou shalt come into the ark, thou and
thy sons, and thy wife, and thy suns' wives with thee,* (Gen. vi.
IS.) So that all the time between the birth and marriage el' tint
said sons must at least be supposed to intervene before the com-
mand to build the ark was given; and between the command
and the execution of it, must not be so longas is imagined, with-
out a concurrence of miracles, to prevent that part of it which
was first built from being rotten and decayed before the last part
of it was finished. Saurin s Dissertation. If the wocid was of
the nature described in a preceding note, no miracle would oe
necessary to preserve it during the period, 120 years, employed
in building it; and from its immense size, and great tannage,
as shown before, it is not wonderful that so much time should be
occupied in its construction. If this was the case, Noah began it
in his 480th year; while he was childless; a striking proof of his
72 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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[Book I.
ploletl the whole. Whereupon God gave him instructions
that he should take into the ark every living thing of all
flesh, both cattle, and beasts of the field, birds and fowls
of the air, and reptiles of all kinds ; a of the unclean,
one pair only, but of the clean seven pair ; that when
the general desolation was over, they might increase
again, and replenish the earth ; and that when every
thing was thus settled and disposed of, himself and his
family should likewise go into the ark, and take up their
apartments.
Pursuant to these directions, Noah and his family went
into the ark, leaving the rest of the world in their security
and sensuality, in the 600th year of his age, much * about
the middle of September ; when in a few days after, l the
whole face of nature began to put on a dismal aspect, as
if the earth were to suffer a final dissolution, and all
1 Howell's Complete History.
implicit faith, both in the divine threatenings and promises: for
his eldest son, Japheth, (Gen. x. 21.) was not born till twenty
years after, in the 500th year of his age, (Gen. v. 32.) ; and his
second, Shem, two years after, (Gen. xi. 10.) Such is the apostle
Paul's description — ' By faith, Noah, having been instructed
by the divine oracle, concerning tilings not yet seen, (the ensuing
deluge, &c.) moved with fear, prepared an ark, for the saving of
his house,' or future family, (Heb. xi. 7.) — Ed. In what place
Noah built and finished his ark, is no less made a matter of dis-
putation. One supposes that he built it in Palestine, and planted
the cedars whereof he made it in the plains of Sodom : another takes
it to have been built near Mount Caucasus, on the confines of
India: and a third in China, where he imagines Noah dwelt before
the flood. But the most probable opinion is, that it was built in
Chaldea, in the territories of Babylon, where there was so great a
quantity of cypress in the groves and gardens, in Alexander's
time, that that prince built a whole fleet out of it, for want of
other timber. And this conjecture is confirmed by the Chal-
dean tradition, which makes Xisuthrus (another name for Noah)
set sail from that country See Universal History, b. 1. c. 1.
a The distinction between beasts that were clean and unclean,
being made by the law, has given some a colour to imagine,
that Moses wrote this book after his coming out of Egypt, and
receiving the law, but to this it may be answered, that though,
with respect to man's food, the distinction of clean and unclean,
was not before the law, yet some were accounted fit for sacri-
fices, and others unfit, from the veiy first beginning; and then
unclean beasts, in this place, must denote such as are rapacious
which were not to be offered to God. In short, since the rite
of sacrificing was before the flood, we may very well be allowed
to suppose that this distinction was also before it: and to sup-
pose farther, that as the rite was undoubtedly of God's institution,
so the difference of clean and unclean creatures to be sacrificed,
was of his appointment likewise. But there is a farther doubt
arising from this passage, and that is — whether there went into
the ark but seven of eveiy clean, and two of every unclean spe-
cies, or fourteen of the first, and two of the last. Some adhere
to the former exposition, but others to the latter, which seems to
be the natural sense of the Hebrew words, seven and seven, and
(wo and two. Besides, if there were but seven of the clean beasts,
c ne must have been without a mate ; and if it be suggested, that
(he odd one was for sacrifice, it is more than Moses tells us,
who, on the contrary, repeats it, that the animals all went in by
pairs. — Patrick's Commentary; Poole's Annotations; and Uni-
versal History, c. 1.
i The words in the text are, In the second month; but, for
the better understanding of this, we must remember, that the
year among the Hebrews, was of two kinds; the one ecclesias-
tical, which began in March, and chiefly regarded the observa-
tion of their fasts and festivals, of which we read Exod. xii. 2.
and the other civil, for the better regulating of men's political
afiairs, which began in September. Accordingly the second
month is thought by some to be part of April, and part of May,
the most pleasant part of the year, and when the flood was least
expected, and least feared; but by others part of October, and
tilings return to their primitive chaos. c The cataracts
of heaven were opened, the abyss of waters, in the cen-
tre of the earth poured out, and the sea, forgetting its
bounds, overspread the earth with a dreadful inundation.
Too late does wretched man perceive the approach of
his deserved fate : and in vain does he find out means
for his preservation. The tops of the hills, the tallest
trees, the strongest towers, and the loftiest mountains,
can give him no relief : it is but a small reprieve at
most that they can yield him; for as the waters swell,
and the waves come rushing on, hills, trees, towers,
mountains, and every little refuge, must disappear with
him. Noah himself cannot help him. Though he might
now remember his predictions, and so flee to him for
succour, yet God has shut the door of the ark, and it
cannot be opened ; 2 and so it shall be to every one, at
the last great day, who shall not be found in Christ, the
only ark of our salvation.
For forty days and nights together, without the least
intermission, did the clouds continue raining ; when at
length the ark began to float, and to move from place to
place as the waves drove it. And though there might be
some short cessations afterwards, yet at certain intervals,
the rain continued falling, and the waters swelling,
till in process of time, the flood began to cover the
mountains, and, by a gradual increase, came at last to
2 Millar's History of the Church; Patrick's Commentary; and
Poole's Annotations.
part of November, a little after that Noah had gathered in the
fruits of the earth, and laid them up in the ark : so that the flood
came in with the winter, and was by degrees dried up in the fol-
lowing summer. And this opinion seems to be more probable,
because the most ancient, and first beginning of the year, was in
September; and the other beginning of the year in March, was
but a later institution among the Jews; with respect to then-
festivals and other sacred afiairs, wliich are not at all concerned
here. — Poole's Annotations. Dr Hales, however, is of opinion,
and from the evidence he has adduced, it seems correctly, that
the deluge began in spring, and that the second month was reck-
oned by the sacred year, which began about the vernal equinox ;
and as Noah was a year and ten days in the ark, himself, family,
and the animals would leave it at the beginning of May, the
season most suited for the enjoyment of animal life, and before
winter, ample provision woidd be produced for their support, the
heat also would have so dried the moisture from the earth as to
make it a healthy and comfortable residence. — See Hales' Anal.,
vol. 1. 322— 332.— Ed.
c Ovid, who is supposed to have extracted most of the be-
ginning of his Metamorphoses out of the sacred records, has
described both the induction and retreat of the waters in a man-
ner very conformable to the original, from whence he had them
Their induction thus : —
The south wind quick on moistened wings darts forth,
Its fearful face iu pitchy darkness shaded ;
And as its mighty arm the hanging clouds oppress'd,
A crash is made ; dense rains rush down from heaven.
The Ocean-king his trident poised and struck the earth,
Which trembled and laid hare the waters' gulfs.
The rivers boundless rush along the plains ;
And 'long with crops drag trees, and kine, and men.
And hallowed domes, and shrines, and sacred things.
Their retreat thus : —
The clouds he struck, and rains drove to the north,
When earth to heaven was shown and heaven to earth ;
The sleepless ocean now can boast a shore,
The channel too contains its brimming streams,
The floods are lulled, the hills seem to arise,
The ground appears, aud with the waves' decrer.se
All parts increase, when now, the long day done,
The hidden trees their naked tops present,
And on their branches bear the clammy clay.
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
73
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raise its surface fifteen cubits (above twenty-two feet of
our measure) higher than the tops of the highest of them.
In this elevation the flood continued until the latter
end of March : when, as one friend is apt to remember
another in distress, (the Scripture here speaks in the
style of men, so God,) reflecting upon Noah, and the
poor remains of his creation, floating in the ark, caused
a drying north wind to arise, the floodgates of heaven
to be stopped, and the eruption of the waters out of the
womb of the earth to cease ; by which means the deluge
began to abate, and the waters subside, so that in a short
time, the ark, which must have drawn great depth of
water, stuck on a mountain, named Ararat, and there
rested ; and not long after the tops of other mountains
began to appear.
This happened in the beginning of May, when the
summer was coming on apace : but Noah, wisely con-
sidering, that although the mountains were bare, the
valleys might still be overflowed, waited forty days
longer before he attempted any farther discovery ; and
then a opening the window, he let go a raven, as sup-
posing that the smell of dead bodies would allure him
to fly a good distance from the vessel ; but the experi-
ment did not do ; the raven, after several unsuccessful
flights, finding nothing but water, returned to the ark
again. Seven days after this, he let fly a dove, a bird
of a strong pinion, and, from the remotest places always
accustomed to come home, and therefore proper to make
farther discoveries. But she finding nothing but water
likewise, immediately returned to the ark, and was taken
in. After this he waited seven days more, and then
a It is very observable, that the words which we render
« window' in vi. 16., and viii. 6. of Genesis, are far from being
the same : in the former place, the word is zohar, (the nature of
which we shall liave a proper occasion to explain) in the latter,
it is hhalon, which signifies indeed ' an oval hole ' or ' window '
in any building, but here is a window of a peculiar denomination.
That it was customary among the Jews to have a room in the
upper part of their houses set apart for divine worship, in Hebrew
called Bcth-alijah, or simply alijah, in Greek bniw^ov, and in
Latin oratorium; and that, in this place of prayer, tiiere was
always an hhalon, an hole or window, which pointed to the
kibla, or place whereunto they directed their worship, is evident
from several passages in Scripture. Among the Jewish consti-
tutions, in the code, called Beracoth, there is a certain canon
grounded upon this custom, namely, ' That no man shall pray,
but in a room where there is an hhalon opening towards the holy
city:' and of Daniel it is particularly related, that when he knew
that the decree for his destruction was signed, ' he went into
the house, and his ' hhalon, ' his window being open in his
chamber towards Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three
times a day, as he did aforetime,' Dan. vi. 10. for that this was
not a common window, but one dedicated to religious Worship,
is plain from the people's discerning, by its being open, that he
was at prayers. Nor is it improbable that this window might
have some visible sign, either of the name of God, or of the holy
city, or of the sanctuary, or the like, inscribed on it; because it
is a constant tradition, that these oratories or rooms for prayer
were always so made as to have their angles answer to such cer-
tain points of the heaven, and to have the mark of adoration so
evidently distinguished, that none might mistake it, if they cast
but tkeir eye upon the wall. Now, as the practice among the
Jews of worshipping in upper rooms, with their faces towards a
hole or window in the wall, was never introduced by any positive
law, and yet universally prevailed, it is reasonable to believe,
that at first it was derived from Noah, and that the windows in
their oratories were made in imitation of tin's hhalon, or point of
adoration in the ark. — Bibliothcca Biblica, vol, 2.; Occasional
Annotations in the Appendix.
sent her forth again ; and she, in the evening, brought
in her mouth an olive branch, the emblem of peace, and
a token to Noah that the waters were abated much.
AYhereupon he waited seven days more, and then let her
fly the third time ; but she finding the waters gone, and
the earth dry, returned no more ; so that he was now
thinking of uncovering the roof, and going out of the
ark himself; but having a pious regard to the divine
providence and direction in all things, he waited 55
days longer, and then received orders from God for
him and his family to quit the vessel, but to take care at
the same time that every other creature should be brought
forth with him.
Thus ended b Noah's long and melancholy confine-
ment; which, by a due computation from the time of
his going into the ark, to that of his coming out, was
exactly the space of a solar year.
CHAP.
II. — Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
How many wise ends the providence of God might have
in bringing this destruction upon the earth, it is impos-
sible for us to find out : but even supposing that he had
but this one, namely, to rid himself of a generation that
was become profligate, and past all hopes of amend-
ment ; yet the number of mankind, which, before the
b Mr Basnage (in his Jewish Antiquities, vol. 2. p. 299.) has
given us the calendar of this melancholy year of Noah's confine-
ment.
The Year of the World's Creation, 1656.
I. September. Methuselah died at the age of 969 years.
II. October. Noah and his family entered the ark.
III. November the 17th. 'The fountains of the great deep
were broken open.'
IV. December the 26th. The rain began, and continued
forty days and forty nights.
V. January. All the men and beasts that were upon the
earth were buried under the waters.
VT. February. The rain continued.
VII. March. The waters remained in their elevation till the
27th, when they began to abate.
VIII. April the 17th. The ark rested on Mount Ararat.
IX. May. They did nothing while the waters were retreat-
ing.
X. June the 1st. The tops of the mountains appeared.
XL July the 11th. Noah let go a raven, which (as Basnage
thinks) returned to him no more.
The 18th. He let go a dove, which returned.
The 25th. He let go the dove again, which returned
with an olive branch.
XII. August the 2d. The dove went out the third time, and
returned no more.
I. September the 1st. The dry land appeared.
II. October the 27th. Noah went out of the ark with his
family. During this long continuance in the ark, the form of
prayer, which some oriental writers make Noah to have offered
unto God, runs in this manner: "0 Lord, thou art truly great,
and there is nothing so great as that it can be compared to thee ;
look upon us with an eye of mercy, and deliver us from the
deluge of waters. I entreat this of thee for the love of Adam,
thy first man; for the love of Abel, thy saint; for the righteous-
ness of Seth, whom thou hast loved. Let us not be reckoned in
the number of those, who have disobeyed thy commandments ;
hut still extend thy merciful care to us, because thou bast hitherto
been our deliverer, and all thy creatures shall declare thy praise,
— Amen." — Calmci's Dictionary on the words Deluge and
Noah.
74
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 165C. A. C. 2349 j OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. ri. 12. TO fat. 20.
flood, was vastly superior to what the present earth per-
haps is capable of sustaining, caused every place to be
inhabited, and that none might escape the avenging
hand, caused every place to be overflowed. And in-
deed, if we consider the longevity of the first inhabitants
of the earth, and the pretty near equality of their ages
(which seem to have been providentially desig-ned for
the quick propagation of mankind) we shall soon per-
ceive, that, in the space of 1G00 years, mankind would
become so numerous, that the chief difficulty would be
where we should find countries to receive them. For if,
in the space of about 266 years (as the sacred history
acquaints us) the posterity of Jacob, by his sons only,
(without the consideration of Dinah his daughter)
amounted to 600,000 males above the age of twenty, all
able to bear arms, what increase may not be expected
from a race of patriarchs, living six, seven, eight, or nine
hundred years apiece, and some to the 500th year of their
lives begetting sons and daughters. For, 1 if we sup-
pose the increase of the children of Israel to have been
gradual, and proportionate through the whole 206 years,
it will appear, that they doubled themselves every four-
teen years at least ; and if we should continue the like
proportion through the entire 114 periods (Avhich the
space from the creation to the deluge admits) the product,
or number of people on the face of the earth at the deluge,
would at least be the 100th in a geometric double pro-
portion, or series of numbers, two, four, eight, sixteen,
&c, where every succeeding one is double to that before
it : and to how an immense sum this proportion would
arise, a those who know any thing of the nature of geo-
metric progressions, will soon perceive. So that had
1 Whiston's Theory of the Earth, b. 3. c. 3.
a The ingenious Br Burnet (in his Theory of the Earth, b.
1.) has computed the multiplication of mankind in this method.
" If we allow the fust couple," says he, " at the end of 100 years,
or of the first century, to have left ten pair of breeders (which
is no hard supposition) there would arise from these, in 1500
years, a greater number than the earth was capable of containing,
allowing every pair to multiply in the same decuple proportion,
that the first pair did. But, because this would rise far beyond
the capacity of the earth, let us suppose them to increase, in the
following centuries, in a quintuple proportion only, or, if you
will, only in a quadruple, and then the table of the multiplica-
tion of mankind, from the creation to the flood, would stand
thus :
the antediluvians only multiplied as fast before, as it is
certain the Israelites did since the flood, the number of
mankind actually alive and existing at the deluge must
have been not only more than what the present earth
does contain, but prodigiously more than what the whole
number of mankind can be justly supposed, ever since
the deluge ; nay indeed, with any degree of likelihood,
ever since the first creation of the world. Upon which
account, though this calculation must not at all be
esteemed real, or to exhibit in any measure the just
number of the posterity of Adam alive at the time of the
deluge, yet it certainly shows us how vastly numerous
(according to the regular method of human propagation)
the offspring of one single person may be • how plenti-
fully each duarter of the world must then have been
stocked Avith inhabitants ; and that consequently, to
destroy its inhabitants, the inundation must have fallen
upon every quarter, and encompassed the whole globe. •
Aid accordingly, if we take the circuit of the globe,
and inquire of the inhabitants of every climate, we shall
find, 2 that the fame of this deluge is gone through the
earth, and that in every part of the known world there
are certain records or traditions of it ; that the Ameri-
cans acknowledge, and speak of it in their continent;
that the Chinese (who are the most distant people in
Asia) have the tradition of it ; * that the several nations
of Africa tell various stories concerning it ; and that, in
the European parts, the flood of Deucalion is the same
with that of Noah, only related with some disguise. So
that we may trace the deluge quite round the globe, and
(what is more remarkable still) every one of these peo-
ple have a tale to tell, some one way, some another,
concerning the restoration of mankind, which is a full
proof that they thought all mankind were once destroyed
in that deluge. c
Century 1—10
2—40
3—160
4—640
5—2560
6—10210
7—40960
8—163840
Century 9— 655360
10—2621440
11—10485760
12_4194S040
13—167772160
14_ 67108S640
15—2684354560
16—10737418240
Tins product is excessively too high, if compared with the present
number of men upon the face of the earth, which I think is com-
monly estimated to between three and four hundred millions;
and yet this proportion of their increase seems to be low enough,
if we take one proportion for all the centuries. For though in
reality the same measure cannot run equally through all the
ages, yet we have taken this as moderate and reasonable between
the liighest and the lowest; but if we had only taken a triple
proportion, it would have been sufficient (all things considered)
for our purpose. — These calculations, however, are founded on
the Hebrew computation, which represents the patriarchs before
the flood as having children at an age by much too early. All
animals whose lives are of long duration appear not to arrive at
puberty till an age of proportional length ; sometliing similar or .
at least analogous is observable in the vegetable kingdom ; and | found in any language
2 Burnet's Theory.
according to the computation of the Septuagint version and of
the amials of Josephus, the same law regulated the generations
of mankind before and after the flood. It was chiefly this con-
sideration that influenced Eusebius to prefer the computation of
the Septuagint version to that of the Hebrew text : and it is one
of the many cogent reasons which induced Br Hales to reject
the Hebrew chronology as it appears in the present text of the
Masorites.
" Dividing human life," says this learned author, " into three
periods, it appears from observation and experience, that the
generative powers continue in full vigour during the second
period. — It is not probable, therefore, that the age of puberty
among the antediluvians, who lived to 900 years and upwards,
began sooner than at the age of 160 or 170 years, corresponding
to 14 or 15 years at present.'' If, as is probable, there was
likewise a longer period, in that age, between the births of chil-
dren in the Same family than is common in the present con-
tracted span of human life, though the earth might have been
fully peopled before the deluge, there would be no danger of its
being overstocked with inhabitants, as it must have been, accord-
ing to the calculations of our author, and Br Burnet from the
present Hebrew genealogies. — Bishop Gleig's edition.
b The Hindoo mythology is in a great measure founded on it;
and it is the commencement of their present era or caliyug. Sir
William Jones says expressly that, in Hindoo mythology, "the
three first avatars, or descents of Veeshnu, relate to an universal
deluge, in which only eight persons were saved." — See /Forks of
Sir W. Jones, vol. 1. p. 29. 4to, 1799.
c For the truth of all this, see Bryant's Mythology, Maurice's
Indian Antiquities, and Howard's Thoughts on the Structure of
the Globe. On the whole controversy concerning the deluge,
nothing superior to this last work or more satisfactory is to be
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
75
A. M. 1C5G. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 225G. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
Nay, instead of the surrounding globe, we need only
turn aside the surface a little, and look into the bowels
of the earth, and we shall find arguments enough for our
conviction. For athe beds of shells which are often
found on the tops of the highest mountains, and the
petrified bones and teeth of fishes which are dug up
some hundreds of miles from the sea, are the clearest
evidences in the world, that the waters have, some time
or other, overflowed the highest parts of the earth ; nor
can it, with any colour of reason, be asserted, that these
subterraneous bodies are only the mimickry or mock
productions of nature, for that they are real shells, the
nicest examination both of the eye and microscope does
evince, and that they are true bones, may be proved by
burning them, which (as it does other bones) turns them
first into a coal, and afterwards into a calx.
These considerations bid fair for the universality of
the deluge ; but then, if we take in the testimony of
Scripture, this puts the matter past all doubt. For
when we read, that, by reason of the deluge, le every
living substance was destroyed, which was upon the face
of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping
things, and the fowl of the heaven ;' that during the deluge,
2 ' the waters exceedingly prevailed, and all the high
hills that were under the whole heavens were covered ;'
and that, when the deluge was over, God made a cove-
nant with Noah, that 3 ' there should be no more a flood
to destroy the earth, and to cut oft' all flesh ;' we cannot
but conclude, that every creature under heaven, except
what was preserved in the ark, was swept away in the
general devastation.
And, indeed, unless this devastation was general, we
can hardly conceive what necessity there was for any
ark at all. *Noah and his family might have retired
into some neighbouring country, as Lot and his family
saved themselves by withdrawing from Sodom, when that
city was to be destroyed. This had been a much better
expedient, and might have been done with much more
ease, than the great preparations he Avas ordered to
make, of a large vessel, with stalls and apartments for
the reception of beasts and birds. Beasts might have
possibly saved themselves by flight ; but if they did not,
'Gen. vii. 23. ■ Gen. vii. 19. 8 Gen. ix. 11.
' Burnet's Theory, b. 1.
a A learned author, who has lately undertaken an examination
of revelation, has enforced this argument with a good deal of life
and spirit. " Whereas Moses assures us," says he, " that ' the
waters prevailed fifteen cubits above the highest mountains,' let
the mountains therm, 'Ives be appealed to for the truth of this
assertion. Examine the highest eminences of the earth, and
they all, with one accord, produce the spoils of the ocean, depo-
sited upon them on that occasion, the shells and skeletons of sea-
fish and sea-monsters of all kinds. The Alps, the Appenines, the
Pyrenees, the Andes, and Atlas, and Ararat, every mountain of
every region under heaven, from Japan to Mexico, all conspire,
in one uniform, universal proof, that they all had the sea spread
over their highest summits. Search the earth, and you will find
the moose-deer, natives of America, buried in Ireland; ele-
phants, natives of Asia and Africa, buried in the midst of Eng-
land: crocodiles, natives of the Nile, in the heart of Germany;
shellfish never known in any but the American seas, together
with entire skeletons of whales, in divers countries ; and what is
more, trees and plants of various kinds, which are not known to
grow in any region under heaven. All which are a perfect
demonstration that Moses' account of the deluge is incontestably
true." — Part I. Dissertation 2.
Noah might, after the deluge, have furnished himself
from other places, which this desolation had not reached ;
and as for the birds, they, without much difficulty, might
have flown to the next dry country, perching upon trees,
or the tops of mountains, by the way, to rest themselves
if they were tired, because the waters did not prevail
upon the earth all on a sudden, but swelled by degrees
to their determinate height.
Now, if the swelling of these waters to a height, supe-
rior to that of the loftiest mountains, was only topical,
we cannot but allow, that unless there was a miracle to
keep them up on heaps, they would certainly flow all
over the earth ; because these mountains are certainly
high enough to have made them fall every way, and join
with the seas, which environ the earth. All liquid bodies,
we know, are diffusive : their parts being in motion,
have no tie or connexion one with another, but glide,
and fall off" any way, as gravity and the air press them ;
and therefore, when the waters began to arise at first, long
before they could swell to the height of the hills, they
would diffuse themselves every way, and thereupon all
the valleys and plains, and the lower parts of the earth,
would be filled all the globe over, before they could
rise to the tops of the mountains in any part of it. So
vain and unphilosophical is the opinion of those, who,
to evade the difficulty of the question, would fain limit
or restrain the deluge to a particular country, or coun-
tries. For if we admit it to be universal, say they,
where shall we find a sufficient quantity of water to
cover the face of the earth, to the height that Moses
mentions ?
Some indeed have thought it the best and most com-
pendious way, to call in the arm of omnipotence at
once, and to affirm, That God created waters on purpose
to make the deluge, and then annihilated them again,
when the deluge was to cease. But our business is not
here to inquire what God could work by his almighty
power ; but to account for this event, in the best manner
we can, from natural causes. s Moses, it is plain, has
ascribed it to natural causes, the continued rains for
forty days, and the disruption of the great abyss ; and
the manner of its gradual increase and decrease, wherein
he has represented it, is far from agreeing with the
instantaneous actions of creation and annihilation.
Others, instead of a creation, have supposed a trans-
mutation of element, namely, either a condensation of
the air, 6or a rarefaction of the waters; but neither of
these expedients will do : for, besides that air is a body
of a different species, and (as far as we know) cannot,
by any compression or condensation, be changed into
water, even upon the supposition that all the air in the
atmosphere were in this manner condensed, it would not
produce a bed of water over all the earth, above 32
feet deep; because it appears, by undoubted experi-
ment, that a column of air from the earth to the top of
the atmosphere, does not weigh more than 32 feet of
water : much less would the spirit of rarefaction answer
the purpose, 'because, if we suppose the waters but
fifteen times rarer than they naturally are, (as we most
' Burnet's Theory, b. 1. C. 3.
(; Kircher on the Ark of Noah, b. 2. c. 4.
7 Burnet's Theory, and I c Gere'* Commentary.
76
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349 ; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO is. 20.
certainly do, to make them reach the tops of the
highest mountains,) it will be difficult to conceive,
how they could either drown man or beast, keep alive
the fish, or support the heavy bulk of the ark. The
truth is, Moses, in his account of the deluge, says not
one word of the transmutation of elements : the forty
days' rain, and the disruption of the abyss, are the only
causes which he assigns ; and these, very likely, will
supply us with a sufficient quantity of water when other
devices fail.
1 A very sagacious naturalist, observing, that at
certain times, there are extraordinary pressures on the
surface of the sea, which force the waters outwards
upon the shores to a great height, does very reasonably
suppose, that the divine power might, at this time, by the
instrumentality of some natural agent, to us at present
unknown, so depress the surface of the ocean, as to force
up the water of the abyss through certain channels and
apertures, and so make them a partial and concurrent
cause of the deluge. It cannot be denied, indeed, but
that the divine providence might, at the time of the
deluge, so order and dispose second causes, as to make
them raise and impel the water to an height sufficient
to overflow the earth ; but then, because there must be
another miracle required to suspend the waters upon the
land, and to hinder them from running off again into the
sea, our author seems to give the preference to another
hypothesis, which, at the time of the deluge, supposes
the centre of the earth to have been changed, and set
nearer to the centre or middle of our continent, where-
upon the Atlantic and Pacific oceans must needs press
upon the subterraneous abyss, and so compel the water
to run out at those wide mouths, and apertures, which
the divine power had made in breaking up the fountains
of the great deep. Thus the waters being poured out
upon the face of the earth, and its declivity changed by
the removal of the centre, they could not run down to
the sea again, but must necessarily stagnate upon the
earth, and overflow it, till upon its return to its old
centre, they in like maimer would retreat to their former
receptacles. But the misfortune of this hypothesis is,
that besides the multitude of miracles required in it, it
makes the deluge topical, and confined to our continent
only, whereas, according to the testimony of the Spirit
of God in the Holy Scriptures, it was certainly universal.
2 A very ingenious theorist seems to be of opinion
himself, and labours to persuade others, that the a deluge
1 Ray's Physico-Theolugical Discourse concerning the Deluge.
a Dr Burnet,
a To have a more perfect idea of the author's scheme, we
must remember, that he conceives the first earth, from the
manner of its formation, to have been externally regular and
uniform, of a smooth and even surface, without mountains, and
without a sea; and that all the waters, belonging to it, were
enclosed within an upper crust, which formed a stupendous vault
around them. This vast collection of waters he takes to have
been the great deep, or abyss of Moses, and that the disruption
of it was the chief cause of the deluge. For he supposes, that tiie
earth being, for some hundreds of years, exposed to the continual
heat of the sun, which, by reason of the perpendicular position,
which, as he imagines, the earth's axis then had to the plane of
the ecliptic, was very intense, and not allayed by the diversity
of seasons, which now keep our earth in an equality of temper;
its exterior crust was, at length, very much dried, and when the
heat had pierced the shell, and reached the waters beneath it,
was occasioned by the dissolution of the primeval earth ;
the dissolution of the earth by the fermentation of the
enclosed waters ; the fermentation of the waters by the
continued intense heat of the sun ; and the great heat of
the sun, by the perpendicular position of the axis of the
earth to the plane of the ecliptic. But allowing the
position of the earth to be what he imagines, 3yet it
seems difficult to conceive, how the heat of the sun should
be so intense, as to cause great cracks in it, and so
raise the waters in it into vapours ; or how the waters, thus
rarefied, should be of force sufficient to break through
an arch of solid matter, lying upon them some hundred
miles thick. It is much more probable, that if the action
of the suit was so strong, the abyss (which the theorist
makes the only storehouse of waters in the first earth)
would have been almost quite exhausted, before the time
of the deluge: nor can we believe that this account
of things is any way consonant to the Mosaic history,
which describes a gradual rise and abatement, a long
continuance of the flood, and not such a sudden shock
and convulsion of nature, as the theorist intends, in
which, without the divine intervention, it was impossible
for the ark to be saved.
4 Another learned theorist endeavours to solve the
whole matter, and supply a sufficiency of water from the
trajection of a comet. For he supposes, " That, in its
descent towards the sun, it pressed very violently upon
the earth, and by that means, both raised a great tide in
the sea, and forced up a vast quantity of subterraneous
waters ; that, as it passed by, it involved the earth in its
atmosphere for a considerable time ; and, as it went off,
left a vast tract of its tail behind, which (together with
the waters, pressed from the sea, and from the great
abyss) was enough to cover the face of the whole earth,
for the perpendicular height of three miles." But (to
pass by smaller objections) that which seems to destroy
his whole hypothesis is this — 5 That it is far from being
clear, whether the atmosphere of a comet be a watery
substance or not. The observations of the most curious
inquirers make it very probable, that the circle about
3 Keifs Examination of Burnet's Theory. * Mr TFhiston.
5 Kelt's Ansiver to Winston's Theory; and Nicholas Confer-
ence, vol. 1.
they began to be rarefied, and raised into vapours; which rare-
faction made them require more space than they needed before,
and finding themselves pent in by an exterior earth, they pressed
with violence against the arch to make it yield to their dilata-
tion: and as the repeated action of the sun gave force to these
enclosed vapours more and more, so, on the other hand, it
weakened more and more the arch of the earth, that was to resist
them, sucking out the moisture that was the cement of its parts,
and parching and chapping it in sundry places; so that, there
being then no winter to close up its parts, it every day grew
more and more disposed to a dissolution, till at length, when
God's appointed time was come, the whole fabric broke; the
frame of earth was torn in pieces, as by an earthquake ; and
those great portions or fragments, into which it was parted, fell
down into the abyss, some in one posture, some in another.
Thus the earth put on a new form, and became divided int6
sea, and land; the greatest part of the abyss constituting our
present ocean, and the rest filling up the cavities of the earth.
Mountains and hills appeared on the land, islands in the sea, and
rocks upon the shore, so that, at one shock, providence dissolved
the old world, and made a new one out of its ruin. See the
Universal History, b. 1. c. ]. where this extract out of Burnet's
Theory is made.
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
Tt
A. M. 1C56. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 225G. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20
the body of a comet is nothing- but the curling or wind-
ing round of the smoke, rising at first to a determinate
height, from all parts of the comet, and then making oft"
to that part of it which is opposite to the sun ; and if
this opinion be true, the earth, by passing through the
atmosphere of a comet, ran a greater risk of a confla-
gration, than a deluge.
These are the several expedients which the wit of men
have devised, to furnish a sufficient quantity of water, in
order to eft'ect a deluge, but all incompetent for the
work. Let us now turn to the sacred records, and see
what the two general causes assigned therein, ' the open-
ing of the windows of heaven,' and ' the breaking up of
the fountains of the great deep,' are able to supply us
with, upon this occasion..
1. By 'the opening of the windows of heaven,' must
be imderstood the causing the waters which were sus-
pended in the clouds, to fall upon the earth, not in
ordinary showers, but in floods, or (as the Septuagint
translate it) in cataracts, 1 which travellers may have the
truest notion of, who have seen those prodigious falls of
water, so frequent in the Indies, and where the clouds
many times do not break into drops, but fall, with a
terrible violence, in a torrent.
How far these treasures of waters in the air might
contribute to the general inundation, we may, in some
measure, compute from what we have observed in a
thunder-cloud, 2 which in the space of less than two
hours, has sometimes poured down such a vast quantity
of water, as besides what sunk into the dry and thirsty
ground and filled all the ditches and ponds, has caused a
considerable flood in the rivers, and set all the meadows
on float.
Now, had this cloud (which for ought we know moved
forty miles forward in its falling) stood still, and emptied
all its water upon the same spot of ground, what a sudden
and incredible deluge would it have made in the place ?
What then must we suppose the event to have been, when
the floodgates of heaven were all opened, and on every
part of the globe, the clouds were incessantly pouring
out water with such violence, and in such abundance,
for forty days together ?
It is impossible for us indeed to have any adequate
conception of the thing, 3 though the vast inundations
which are made every year in Egypt, only by the rains
which fall in Ethiopia, and the like annual overflowings
of the great river Oroonoque in America, whereby many
islands and plains, at other times inhabited, are laid
twenty feet under water, between May and September,
may uive us a faint emblem, and be of some use to cure
our infidelity in this respect.
2. The other cause which the Scripture makes mention
of, is the ' breaking up of the fountains of the great
deep,' whereby those waters, which were contained in
vast quantities in the bowels of the earth, were forced
out, and thrown upon the surface of it. 4 That there is
a mighty collection of waters inclosed in the bowels of
the earth, which constitutes a large globe in the interior
or central part of it ; and that the waters of this globe
communicate with that of the ocean, by means of certain
' Patrick's Commentary. 8 Ray on the Deluge.
' Patrick's Commentary. * If'ovdward's Natural History.
hiatus, or apertures, passing between it and the ocean,
«is evident from the Caspian and other seas, which re
ceive into themselves many great rivers, and having no
visible outlets, must be supposed to discharge the water
they receive, by subterraneous passages into this recep-
tacle, and by its intervention, into the ocean again.
The 5 Mediterranean in particular, besides the many
rivers that run into it, has two great currents of the
sea, one at the straits of Gibraltar, and the other at the
Propontis, which bring in such vast tides of water, that,
many ages ago, it must have endangered the whole
world, had it not emptied itself, by certain secret pas-
sages, into some great cavity underneath. And for this
reason, some have imagined, "that the earth altogether
is one great animal, whose abyss supplies the place of
the heart in the body of the earth, to furnish all its
aqueducts with a sufficiency of water, and whose sub-
terraneous passages are like the veins of the body,
which receive water out of the sea, as the veins do blood
out of the liver, and in a continued circulation, return
it to the heart again.
However this be, it is certainly more than probable,
(because a matter of divine revelation,) that there is an
immense body of water inclosed in the centre of the
earth, to which the Psalmist plainly alludes, when he
tells us, that 7'God founded the earth upon the seas,
and established it upon the floods ;' that 8 ' he stretched
out the earth above the waters ;' that 9 ' he gathered up
the waters as in a bag, (so the best translations have it,)
' and laid up the deep as in a storehouse.' Nay, there
is a passage or two in the Proverbs of Solomon, (where
Wisdom declares her antiquity, and pre-existence to all
the works of the earth,) which sets before our eyes, as it
were, the very form and figure of this abyss : 10 ' When
he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a
compass upon the face of the deep, and strengthened the
fountains of the abyss.' Here is mention made of the
abyss, and the fountains of the abyss; nor is there any
question to be made, but that the fountains of the abyss
here are the same with those which Moses mentions, and
which, as he tells us, were broken up at the deluge.
And what is more observable in this text, the word which
Ave render compass, properly signifies a circle, or circum-
ference, or an orb, or sphere: so that, according to the
testimony of Wisdom, who was then present, there was
5 Nicholas Conference, vol. 1. 6 Stillingfleefs Sacred Or/gins.
7 Ps. xxiv. ii. 8 Ps. exxxvi. 6. 9 Ps. xxxm. 7.
10 Prow viii. 27, 28.; Sir Walter Raleigh's History,
a The Caspian sea is reckoned in length to be above 120
German leagues, and in breadth, from east to west, about 90 ot
the same leagues. There is no visible way for the water to run
out: and yet it receives into its bosom near 100 large rivers,
and particularly the great river Wolga, which of itself is like a
sea for largeness, and supposed to empty so much water into it
in a year's time, as might suffice to cover the whole earth; and
yet it is never increased nor diminished, nor is observed to ebb
or (low, which makes it evident, that it must necessarily have a
subterraneous communication with other parts of the world.
And accordingly, Father Avril, a modern traveller, tells us, that
near the coast of Xylam there is in this sea a mighty whirlpool,
which sucks in every thing that comes near it, and consequently
has a cavity in the earth into which it descends.— See JttoUt
Geography at the end of Persia in Asia, p. 67; SHUmgfleete
Sacred Origins, b. 3. c. 4.; and Bedford's Scripture Chronology,
c. 12.
78
THE HISTORY OP THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. 1C56. A. C. 2349 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO Ix. 20.
ill the beginning a sphere, orb, or arch, set round the
abyss, by the means of which, the fountains thereof were
strengthened; for we cannot conceive, how they could
have been strengthened any other way, than by having a
strong cover or arch made over them.
If such then be the form of this abyss, that it seems to
be a vast mass or body of water lying together in the
womb of the earth, it will be no hard matter to compute
what a plentiful supply might have been expected from
thence, in order to effect an universal deluge. * For, if
the circumference of the earth (even according to the
lowest computation) be 21,000 miles, the diameter of it
(according to that circumference) 7000 miles ; and con-
sequently from the superficies to the centre, 3500 miles ;
and if (according to the best account) a the highest
mountain in the world (taking its altitude from the plain
it stands upon) does not exceed four perpendicular miles
in height ; then we cannot but conclude, that in this abyss
there would be infinitely more water than enough, when
drawn out upon the surface of the earth, to drown the
earth to a far greater height than Moses relates. In a
word, since it is agreed on all hands, that in the time of
the chaos, the waters did cover the earth, insomuch that
nothing of it could be seen, till God was pleased to
make a separation : why should it be thought so strange
a thing, that, upon a proper occasion, they should
be able to cover the earth again ; 2 especially when the
waters above the firmament came down to join those
below, as they did at the beginning?
3 Seneca, treating- of that fatal day (as he calls it)
when the deluge shall come, (for he supposed that the
world was to be destroyed alternately, first by water,
and after that by fire,) and questioning how it might be
effected, whether by the force of the ocean overflowing
the earth, by perpetual rains without intermission, by the
swelling of rivers, and opening of new fountains, or
(what he rather supposes) by a general concourse and
combination of all these causes, concludes his inquiry at
last with these remarkable words, " There are vast
lakes," says he, " which we do not see, much of the
sea which lies hidden and concealed, and many rivers
which glide in secret ; so that there may be causes of a
deluge on all sides, when some waters flow under the
earth, others flow round about it, and being long pent
up, may overwhelm it. And as our bodies sometimes
dissolve into sweat, so the earth shall melt, and, without
the help of other causes, shall find in itself what shall
drown it. — There being in all places, both openly and
secretly, both from above and from beneath, an eruption
of waters ready to overflow and destroy it."
1 Patrick's Commentary. ' See b. 1., c. 1. p. 6.
3 Natural Inquiries, 3. c. 27.
a If we measure mountains from the plain on which they stand,
as proposed by the learned author, the above will be found rather
to exceed than to be below the truth ; as no mountain has yet
been discovered of such an height. If, however, we measure
them from the level of the sea, which is the proper method, it
will be found that there are many which exceed this height.
When our author wrote, the Peak of Tenerili'e was esteemed the
highest mountain in the world, but subsequent discoveries have
completely disproved that opinion. The English mile contains
5280 feet, so that the Peak of Teneriffe being 12,672 feet above
the level of the sea, was little more than two miles high. In
the Andes, in South America, however, there are mountains
which far exceed tins in height; as, the Sorata, 25,400 feet, the
But whatever solutions we may gather, either from
sacred or profane authors, it seems necessary, after all,
to call in the divine power to our assistance. * For
though the waters which covered the earth at the creation
might be sufficient to cover it again ; yet how this could
be effected by mere natural means, cannot be conceived
Though the waters, suspended in the clouds, might fall
in great torrents for some time, yet, when once their store
was exhausted, (as at this rate it could not last long,)
nothing but an almighty voice could have commanded a
fresh supply of forty days' continuance from those other
planetary spaces where he had settled their abode ; and
though the subterraneous stores did certainly contain a
fund sufficient to complete the deluge, yet there wanted
on this occasion an almighty hand, either to break down
the arch which enclosed the abyss, or by some secret
passages to force the waters out of it upon the surface
of the earth ; and so stopping the reflux, suspend them
for such a determinate time, at such an elevation. There
needed some almighty hand, I say, to do this: and
accordingly we may observe, that though Moses makes
mention of two natural causes that might be conducive
to the work, yet he introduces God as superintending
their causes, and assuming indeed the whole perform-
ance to himself : for ' behold I, even I, do bring a flood
of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is
the breath of life, from under heaven, and every thing
that is on the earth shall die.'
Thus, with the help and concurrence of God, we have
found a sufficient quantity of water for the destruction
of the old world : let us now consider the make and
capacity of the vessel wherein the several animals that
were to replenish the new were to be preserved.
5 Could we but imagine, that by some strange revolu-
tion the whole art of shipping should como to be lost in
this part of the world, and that there happened to remain
such a short account of one of our largest ships (the
Royal Anne, for instance) as that it was so many feet
long, broad, and deep ; could contain in it some hun-
dreds of men, with other living creatures, and provisions
for them all during several months ; and that the strength
of it was such, that it was not broken in pieces all the
time that the great storm endured ; would it not be very
pleasant for any one to conclude from hence, that this
ship, according to the description of it, was nothing but
an oblong square, without any more contrivance than a
common chest made by the most ignorant joiner? And
yet such are some men's inferences when they talk of
this noble structure.
Moses indeed makes mention of little else but the
dimensions of the ark, its stories, and capacity to hold
the things to be placed in it ; but it does not therefore
follow, but that it might have the convexity of a keel,
(as many large flat-bottomed vessels have,) as well as a
prow, to make it cut the waters more easily. The design
4 Universal History, b. 1. c. 1.
5 Bibliotheca Biblica; Occasiotial Annotations, 13.
Illimanni, 24,250, or between four and five miles above the level
of the sea. The highest mountains in the world yet discovered,
are in the Himalayan range, between Hindostan and Thibet, in
Asia; the highest peak of which is 29,000 feet, or between five
and six miles above the level of the sea. In the same range
there are the Dhawalaghiri, 28,104 feet, Swetachar, 25,261 feet,
and various others above 20,000 feet. — Ed.
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
79
A. M. IS56. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 225G. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
of the vessel however was not to make way, (as they call
it at sea,) but to preserve its inhabitants ; and this it was
more capable of doing (as amay be proved to a demon-
stration) than if it had been built according to the most
modern model, even supposing the waters, from the first
to the last, to have been never so boisterous. But this
they were not: whatever storms and convulsions there
might be in particular places, when the floodgates of
heaven were at first opened, and the fountains of the
great deep broken up, (and then the ark was not afloat,)
the sacred text takes no notice of any rough weather till
after the 150 days of the flood's gradual increase, when,
upon the ceasing of the rains from above, and the waters
from beneath, God sent forth a strong driving wind, but
then the ark was at rest. So that all the time that the
ark was aflo.it, or (as the Scripture expresses it) while
it ' went on the face of the waters,' the winds were asleep,
and the weather, though rainy, was free from all storms
and angry commotions. Upon the whole, therefore, we
may conclude, that, be the structure of the ark what it
will, it was certainly suited both to the burden it was to
carry, and the weather it was to live in ; and on this,
and sundry other accounts, * upon experiment, perhaps
it may be found to be the most complete and perfect
model that ever was devised.
Had we never seen a ship, and should be told what a
number of men, and what a quantity of provision and
merchandise one of the largest rates will carry, it would
seem no less incredible to us than what Moses tells us
of the things which were contained in the ark. The
ark, according to his account, was 300 cubits in length,
50 in breadth, and 30 in height; and if we suppose the
cubit, here mentioned, at the lowest computation, to be
but a foot and a half long, yet was the length of it
(according to that proportion) 450 feet, the breadth 75,
and the height 45 ; and consequently the whole capacity
1,580,750 cubical feet, which was space enough, in all
conscience, to receive every thing, and much more than
a For let us suppose, that without any addition of art, it was
notliing more than an oblong square, whose length was sextuple
to the breadth, and decuple to the height; it is demonstrable,
that a piece of wood of that proportion being lighter than the
water, will be always supported by it. For instance, take a
plank of oak exactly square, let it be one foot broad, six feet
long, and seven or eight inches thick, answering the proportion
of the ark ; there is nobody, I believe, will say, that any waves
or winds will be strong enough to break this piece of timber,
notwithstanding its right angles. Now, let any solid of this
fashion be multiplied in a decuple, centuple, or millecuple pro-
portion, and let the force of the waves, and the invasive power of
the wind, be multiplied also with it in the same proportion, the
resistance of a rectangular solid (which is perfectly impenetrable,
and exactly the case of the ark) will be proof against any given
force whatever. — Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.; Occasional Anno-
tations, 13.
4 About the beginning of the last century, Feter Janson, a
Dutch merchant, caused a ship to be built for him, answering
in its respective proportions, to those of Noah's ark, the length
of it being 120 feet, the breadth of it 20, and the depth of it 12.
At first this ark was looked upon no better than as a fanatical
vision of this Janson, (who was by profession a Menonist,) and,
Whilst it was building, he and his ship were made the sport of
the seamen, as much as Noah and his ark could be. But after-
wards it was found that ships built in this fashion were, in the
time of peace, beyond all others most commodious for commerce ;
because they would hold a third part more, without requiring any
more hands, and were found far better runners than any made
before. —Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.
every thing that was to be contained in it. For it ap-
pears from the sacred text, that the form of the ark was
rectangular; *and being intended only for a kind of
float to swim above the water, the flatness of its bottom
did render it much more capacious. It appears from
the same text, that this ark consisted of three stories,
and the whole height of it being 45 feet, it may well be
supposed that this height was equally divided among the
three stories, and so each story was 15 feet high, oidy
deducting a foot and a half, or one cubit, for the slope
of the roof, or the cover of the upper story. 2 It is
likewise pretty well agreed by interpreters, that the
lowest story was appointed for four-footed animals, as
most commodious for them ; the middle story for their
provender, and what they were to live upon ; and the
upper story partly for the birds, and what they were to
eat, and partly for Noah and his family, together with
their utensils : and that each of these stories was spacious
enough to receive what was to be put therein, will ap-
pear to any one who will give himself the trouble cof
making a geometrical calculation.
He who looks upon the stars, as they are confusedly
scattered up and down in the firmament, will think them
to be (what they are sometimes called) innumerable, and
above the power of all arithmetic to count ; and yet,
when they are distinctly reduced to their particular con-
stellations, and described by their several places, mag-
nitudes, and names, it appears, that of those which are
visible to the naked eye, there are not many more than
1000 in the whole firmament, and few more than half so
many (even taking in the minuter kinds of them) to be
seen at once in any hemisphere. And in like manner,
he who should put the question, How many kinds of
beasts or birds there are in the world ? would be an-
swered, even by such as in other respects are knowing-
and learned enough, that there are so many hundreds of
them as cannot be enumerated ; whereas, upon a distinct
1 Wilhins's Essay towards a Real Character.
FFells's Geography, vol. 1. c. 2.; Laviy's Introduction,
c Buteo has plainly demonstrated, that all the animals con-
tained in the ark could not be equal to 500 horses ; (the learned
Heidegger, from Tetnporarius, makes them 400 oxen ;) and yet
it is not to be questioned, but that a building very near as long
as St Paul's church, and as broad as the middle isle of that
church is high within, is capable of affording stabling for such a
number of horses. — See Dr Bundy's translation of Lamy's In-
troduction. Kircher (in his Ark of Noah, c. 8.) has given us
large calculations of the dimensions of the ark, and from thence
concludes, that this vessel was capacious enough to receive, not
only Noah and his family, all other creatures and their food, but
even an entire province likewise. Wilkins, (in his Essay to-
wards a Real Character), and from him Wells (in his Geography
of the Old Tes'ament) have both entered into a large detail of
things, and given us an exact and complete idea of the capacity
of the ark, and of its proportion, together with what it might
contain. Le Pcletier (in his Essay on the Ark of Noah) follows
another English author, Bishop Cumberland, who, in his Dis-
covery of the weights and measures of the Jews, has proved, that
the ancient cubit of the Jews was the old derah of Memphis;
whereupon Peletier allows 1,781,377 cubical feet of Paris for the
whole contents of the ark, so that it might hold (as he pretends)
42 413 tons of lading. But a certain anonymous author has
published a dissertation upon the same principles, wherein he
compares the ark to our modern ships, and computes it-; measure
according to the tons it might contain, and thereupon makes it
larger than forty ships of 1000 tons each. — See Dissertation,
Historical, Chronoltgical, Geographical, &C. d. 2 ; Journal of
Paris for January, 1712, vol. 51. p. 9.
80
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[ Book L
A. M. 165G. A. C. 2349 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN, H. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
inquiry into all such as are yet known, or have been
described by credible authors, it will appear, that they
are much fewer than is commonly imagined, 'not an
100 sorts of beasts, and not 200 of birds.
And yet, out of this number, as small as it is, we must
except all animals that are of equivocal generation, as
insects; all that are accustomed to live in water, as fish
and water -fowl ; all that proceed from a mixture of dif-
ferent species, as mules ; and all that, by changing their
climate, change their colour and size, and so pass for
different creatures, when in reality they are the same.
We must observe farther, that all creatures of the ser-
pentine kind, the viper, snake, slow-worm, lizard, frog,
toad, &c, might have sufficient space for their recep-
tion, and for their nourishment in the hold or bottom of
the ark, which was probably three or four feet under
the floor, whereon the beasts are supposed to stand:
and that the smaller creatures, such as the mouse, rat,
mole, &c, might find sufficient-room in several parts of
the ark, without having any particular places or cells
appointed for them : so that the number of the several
species of animals to be placed in the first, or lowest
story, upon the foot of this deduction, stands thus :
Beasts which live on Hay.
On Fruits and
Roots.
On Flesh,
Horse
Stone-buck
Hog
Lion
Stoat
Ass
Shamois
Baboon
Bear
Weasel
Camel
Antelope
Ape
Tiger
Castor
Elephant
Elk
Monkey
Pard
Otter
Bull
Hart
Sloth
Ounce
Dog
Urus
Buck
Porcupine
Cat
Wolf
Bison
Rein-deer
Hedge-hog
Civet-cat
Fox
Bonasus
Roe
Squirrel
Finet
Badger
Buffalo
Rhinoceros
Guinea-pig
Polecat
Jackall
Sheep
Caraelopard
Ant-bear
Martin
Caraguya.
Strepsiceros
Hare
Armadilla
Broad-tail
Rabbit
Tortoise
Goat
Marmotte
Now, concerning these creatures God gives Noah this
injunction ; 2 ' Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee
by sevens, the male and the female ; and of beasts that
are not clean, by two, the male and the female. Taking
the words then in their highest acceptation, namely, that
Noah was to receive into the ark one pair of every spe-
cies of unclean animals, and seven pair of every species
of clean ; yet, considering that the species of unclean
animals, which were admitted by pairs only, are many in
comparison of the clean, and the species of large animals
few in comparison of the smaller ; we cannot but perceive
(as by a short calculation it will appear) that this lower
story, which was ten cubits high, three hundred long, and
fifty broad, that is, 225,000 solid feet in the whole, would
be capable of receiving with all manner of conveniency,
not only all the sorts of beasts that we are acquainted
with, but probably all those other kinds which are any
where to be found under the copes of heaven.
It is a pretty general opinion, and what seems to be
founded on Scripture, that before the flood, both men,
beasts, and birds fed only upon fruits and vegetables.
3 ' Behold I have given you every herb,' says God, ' bear-
ing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and
every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to
you it shall be for meat; and to every beast of the earth,
and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that
creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life ; I have
1 Wilkins's Essay,
Gen.
' Gen. i. 29, 30.
given every green herb for meat : ' a Nor do there want
instances in history of some very ravenous creatures that
have been brought to live upon other kind of food than
flesh. So that there was no necessity for Noah's pro-
viding so many supernumerary sheep (as some would have
it) to feed the carnivorous animals for a whole year. 4 The
same divine providence which directed all the animals, of
whatever country, to make towards the ark, which took
from them their fierceness, and made them tame and
gentle upon this occasion, might likewise beget in them a
loathing of flesh, (supposing they eat it before,) and an
appetite for hay, corn, fruits, or any other eatables thaf
were most obvious in this time of distress. And as they
were shut up, and could not spend themselves by motion,
but might have their stomachs palled with the continued
agitation of the vessel, they may well be supposed to
stand in need of less provision than at other times.
If then (to make our computation) we should say, that
5 all the beasts in the lower story of the ark were equal,
in their consumption of food, to 300 oxen (which is more
by a great deal than some calculations have allowed,)
that 30 or 40 pounds of hay are ordinarily sufficient for
an ox for one day ; and that a solid cubit of hay, well
compressed, will weigh about 40 pounds ; then will this
second story, being of the same dimensions with the other,
that is, 225,000 solid feet, not only allow a space for a
sufficient quantity of hay, but for other repositories of
such fruits, roots, and grain, as might be proper for the
nourishment of those animals that live not upon hay ; and
for such passages and apertures in the floor as might be
necessary for the putting down hay and other provender
to the beasts in the lower story.
Upon the whole therefore it appears, that the middle
4 Heidegger 's History of the Patriarchs, Essay 17.
5 Jnikins's Essay, part 2. C. 5.
a It is not to be denied, but that several learned men have taken
great pains to provide flesh for the carnivorous animals shut up
in the ark, when it is beyond all controversy that the stomachs of
such animals are fitted for the digestion of fruits and vegetables:
that such food would be more salutary both for them and their
keepers, and would create a less demand of drink throughout the
course of so long a confinement ; and yet there is not the least
foundation from the text to suppose, that any such provision was
made for creatures of such an appetite, but several instances in
history do show, that even the most rapacious of them all may be
brought to live upon other diet than flesh. Thus Philostratus, in
his Apollonius, b. 5, tells us of a lion in Egypt, which, though it
went into the temple constantly, would neither lick the blood of
sacrifices, nor eat any of the flesh when it was cut in pieces, but
fed altogether on bread and sweet-meats ; and Sulpitius Severus
[Dial. 1. c. 7.] gives us this account of a monk of Thebais.
" When we came to the tree, whither our courteous host led us,
we there perceived a lion, at the sight of which I and my guide
began to tremble ; but as the holy man went directly up to it,
we, though in no small fright, followed after. The beast at oiu
approach modestly retired,, and stood very quiet and still, while
the good man gathered it some brandies of apples, and as he held
them out, the lion came up and eat them, and so went off." The
like story is told by Phocas in his Description of the Holy Land,
c. 13, of some lions beyond the river Jordan, whom an Ancho-
rite, named Iberus, fed with pulse and crusts of bread ; and to |
the animals in the ark, feeding in this manner, the prophet
Isaiah, speaking of the times of the Messiah, (ch. xi. 6, 7,) is
supposed by our author to allude. ' The wolf shall dwell with
the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid, and the calf,
and the young lion, and the fatting together, and a little child
shall lead them ; and the cow and the bear shall feed, their young
ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw with the
ox.' — Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, Essay 17.
Sbct. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
81
A. M. 1G5G. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2255. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
story of the ark was likewise large enough to hold all
that was requisite to be put therein : and as for the third
and upper story, there can no manner of doubt be made,
but that it was sufficient to hold all the species of birds,
even though they were many more than they are generally
computed. The accurate Bishop Wilkins a has divided
them into nine sorts, and reckons them to be 195 in
the whole , but then the greatest part of them are so
very small that they might well enough be kept in
partitions or cages piled one upon another. The food
necessary for their sustenance would not take up any
great proportion of room, and the remainder of the
story would make a commodious enough habitation for
Noah and his family, together with little closets and
offices, wherein to dispose of their several domestic
matters and utensils.
Upon the whole inquiry then, says the same learned
prelate, it does, of the two, appear more difficult to as-
sign a sufficient number and bulk of necessary things to
answer the capacity of the ark, than to find sufficient
room in it for the convenient reception of them ; and
thereupon he truly, as well as piously, concludes, l
" That had the most skilful mathematicians and philoso-
phers been set to consult what proportions a vessel de-
signed for such an use as the ark was, should have in the
several parts of it, they could not have pitched upon any
other more suitable to the purpose than these mentioned
by Moses are ; insomuch, that the proportion of the ark
(from which some weak and atheistical persons have
made some poor efforts to overthrow the authority of the
sacred Scriptures) does very much tend to confirm and
establish the truth and divine authority of them. Espe-
cially, if we only consider, that in these days men were
less versed in arts and sciences ; at least, that the ark
was, in all probability, the first vessel of any bulk that
was made to go upon the water : whence the justness of the
proportion observed in its several parts, and the exact-
ness of its capacity to the use it was designed for, are
reasonably to be ascribed, not to bare human invention
and contrivance, but to the divine direction, expressly
given to Noah by God himself, as the sacred historian
acquaints us."
Thus Ave have placed the several kinds of creatures in
the ark, and furnished them with a competent stock of
provision.
And now, if it should be asked, How came they all
thither ? the reply in that case will be this — 2 That the
1 Wilkins? s Essay.
8 Revelation Examined, part 1.
a The manner of his reckoning them up is this:
1. Carnivorous birds, ....
2. Phytivorous birds of short wings,
'.]. Phytivorous birds of long wings,
4. Phytivorous birds of short thick bills,
5. Insectivorous birds the greater,
6. Insectivorous birds the less,
7. Aquatic birds near wet places,
Aquatic fissipedes,
9. Aquatic plenipedes,
66
17
18
16
15
12
17
16
18
In all, 195
To these perhaps may he added some exotic birds; but as the
number of these is but small, so we may observe the carnivorous,
which is the largest species, that they were reputed unclean, and
consequently but two of each sort admitted into the ark. — Bed-
ford's Scripture Chronology, 2, 12.
country of Eden is very reasonably supposed by learned
men to be next adjacent to die garden of that name, from
whence Adam was expelled; and that, as all early ac-
counts of that country point it out to us, as one of the
most fruitful and delicious regions in the earth, (though
now greatly changed,) there is no reason to imagine that
Adam sought for any habitation beyond it. There,
according to many concurring circumstances, was this
famous ark built ; there is gopher -wood (very reasonably
supposed to be cypress) found in great abundance ; there
is asphaltus, wherewith the ark, to defend it from the
impression of the waters, was daubed and smeared both
within and without ; and not far from thence is mount
Ararat, where the ark as the waters began to abate, is
known to have rested ; and in this situation, there is not
any reason to imagine, that any one species of animals
could be out of Noah's reach. 3 There they were all
natives of the same country, and he perhaps, some time
before the flood, might have tamed some of every kind,
so that, when the deluge came on, they might easily be
brought to the ark, and every one ranged in its proper
place, before that Noah shut it up.
But now that they are all shut up, what shall we do for
air to keep them alive, or for light to direct them in what
they are to do ? Mention indeed is made of a window,
left in the upper part of the ark ; but this is said to be
no more than a cubit square, and what is this in propor-
tion to so vast a fabric ? Either, therefore, we must
devise some relief for them in this exigence, or we shall
soon find the poor remains of the creation in utter dark-
ness, and in the shadow of death.
4 As the word ZoJiar, which we render window, is never
mentioned in the singular number through the whole com-
pass of the Bible, but only this once, it perhaps may be
no very easy thing to find out its true signification.
Whether the LXX. interpreters understood the meaning
of it ; whether they knew, in the Greek language, any
word capable of expressing it ; or whether they might
think it of so sacred a nature, as not proper to be pub-
lished at all ; but so it is, that they prudently have omitted
it in their translation, and will have the precept or direc-
tion, which God gives Noah, to mean no more than that
he should finish the ark, by closing it on the top, and
compacting it well together.
The word has its original from a verb which signifies
to burn, or shine like oil; and indeed wherever it occurs
(as it sometimes occurs in the dual number,) it always
signifies some bright and luminous body: and accordin gly
some of the Jewish doctors were of opinion, that this
must have been a kind of precious stone or carbuncle,
which was hung up in the midst of the ark, to give light
all around : and to this purpose R. Levi tells us, that
" during the whole 12 months that Noah was shut up in
the ark, he needed neither the light of the sun by day, nor
the light of the moon by night ; for there was a jewel
belonging to him which lie hung up in the ark; and as it
waxed dim, he knew that it was day, but as its lustre was
more intense he knew that it was night." But this opi-
nion is not well founded : because such authors as have
written best upon the qualities of precious stones, do all
3 Howell's History, vol. 1. b. 1.
* See Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1 ; Occasional Annotation*.
82 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. I65G. A. C. 2319; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 225G. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
[Book I.
agree, that (whatever the ancients may say,) there is no
such thing as a night-shining carbuncle to be found in
nature.
That it is possible to make a self-shining substance,
either liquid or solid, the hermetical phosphor of Bal-
duinns, the aerial and glacial noctilucas of Mr Boyle,
and several other preparations of the like sort, together
with the observations of the most accurate philosophers
upon the production and propagation of light, and the
prodigious ejaculation of insensible effluviums, are suf-
ficient demonstration. The most surprising substance of
this kind was the pantarba of Jarchus, " which shone in
the day as fire, or as the sun, and at night, did discover
a flame or light, as bright as day, though not altogether
so strong ; which was, in short, of that fiery and radiant
nature, that if any one looked on it in the daytime, it
would dazzle the eyes with innumerable gleams and cor-
uscations ;" nor can we well doubt but that Noah, who
(as oriental traditions say) was a profound philosopher ;
who was certainly a person of much longer experience
than any later liver can pretend to ; (and what is more)
was under the peculiar favour and direction of God, per-
ceiving the necessity of the thing, should be equally able
to prepare some perpetual light, which should centrally
send forth its rays to all parts of the ark, and by its kind
effluviums, cherish every thing that had life in it. Now,
if this be allowed, (and this is more consonant to the
letter of the text a than any other interpretation that has
hitherto been advanced,) then will all the difficulties,
which either are, or can be raised about the manner of
subsistence, in a close vessel, by creatures of so many
different species, vanish immediately. But, if it be not
allowed, then it is impossible without admitting a whole
train of miracles, to give the least account, how respira-
tion, nutrition, motion, or any other animal function
whatever, could be performed in a vessel so closely shut
up ; and therefore it is the safest to conclude that,
according to the divine direction, there must have been
something placed in the ark, which by its continual
emanation, might both purify and invigorate the includ-
es P. Lamy, to evade some difficulties that he could not so
well solve, tells us, that the form of the ark, is so little ascer-
tained by Moses, that every one is left to his own conjectures
concerning it; and therefore he supposes, that as the ark was
divided into three stories, or floors, and the word Zohar, which
we translate ivindoiv, signifies, splendour, light, noon, &c, the
whole second story (in which he places the animals) was quite
open all round except some parts, which were grated to hinder
the birds from flying in and out; otherwise, he cannot conceive
how they could have had sufficient light, and air, and a free
passage for it, to prevent stagnations, and many other in-
conveniences which, upon this supposition, would have been
removed. The lower story indeed was included within wooden
walls, and well guarded with pitch, as being all under water ; but
the two upper stories, being above water, were either entirely
open, or secured with lattices and grates ; and the top or open
parts, covered with goat skins, or sheep skins, sewed together, as
the tabernacle afterwards was, which Noah could easily let down,
or roll up, according as rain, or storm, or a want of air, made it
necessary. And then, as for keeping the beasts clean, he sup-
poses, that the stalls were so open and shelving at the bottom,
that water might have been let in high enough to have washed
the feet of the cattle, and to have cleansed the stalls of itself. —
See his Introduction to the Holy Scriptures, b. I.e. 3: and
Bedford's Scripture Chronology, c. xi. But all this is pure
imagination, and inconsistent with the notion which the sacred
history gives us of it.
ed air) might correct and sweeten all noxious vapours,
and exhalations ; and, like the sun, send such a vivifying
light, that nothing should die that was within the ark,
that is, so far as the beams thereof did reach.
Thus we have rescued Noah and his family from the
danger of suffocation in their confinement, by the supply
of a vicarious light to purify the air and dispel all vapours,
as well as enable them to go about their work : but
now that the waves swell, and the vessel mounts on high,
even above the top of the highest hills under heaven,
they run into another quite different danger, namely, that
of being starved to death, amidst the colds, and extreme
subtilty of the air, in the middle region, wherein no
creature can live. ' But the middle region of the air,
we ought to remember, is not to be looked upon as a fixed
point, which never either rises or falls. It is, with re-
spect to us, more or less elevated, according to the greater
or less heat of the sun. In the cold of winter it is much
nearer to the earth, than in the warmth of summer ; or,
(to speak more properly) the cold which reigns in the
middle region of the air during the summer, reigns like-
wise in the lower region during the winter. Supposing
the deluge then to out-top the highest mountains, it is
evident, that the middle region of the air must have risen
higher, and removed to a greater distance from the earth
and waters ; and, on the contrary, that the lower region
must have approached nearer to both, in proportion as
the waters of the deluge increased or decreased ; so that
upon the whole, the ark was all alone in the lower region
of the air, even when it was carried fifteen cubits above
the highest mountains ; and the men and beasts which
were enclosed in it, breathed the same air, as they would
have done onetarth, a thousand or twelve hundred paces
lower, had not the deluge happened.
But during this whole course of the ark, since Noah
was shut up in so close a place, where he was not capa-
ble of making any observations, where indeed he could
see neither sun, moon, nor stars, for many months,
it may very well be wondered, how he could possibly
have any just mensuration of time, had we not reason
to suppose, that he certainly had within the ark a
chronometer of one kind or other, which did exactly
answer to the motion of the heavens without. The in-
vention of our present horological machines indeed, and
particularly of the pendulum watch, (which is the most
exact corrector of time,) is but of modern date ; but it
does not therefore follow, but that the same or other
equivalent pieces of art might, in former ages, have been
perfectly known to some great men. Suppose that Mr
Huygens, or some other, was the inventor of pendulums
in these parts of the world, yet it is more than probable,
that there was a pendulum clock made many years
before at Florence, by the direction of the great Galileo ;
and that, long before that, there was another at Prague,
which the famous Tycho Brahe made use of, in his astro-
nomical observations. And therefore, unless we fondly
imagine, that we postdiluvians have all the wit and inge-
nuity that ever was, we cannot but think, that Noah, who
not only had long experience himself, but succeeded to
the inventions of above 1600 years, which, considering
the longevity of people then, were much better preserved
See Calmet's Dictionary on the word Deluge.
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
83
A. M. 1656. A. C. 2319; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2266. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
than they can be now,) was provided with horological
pieces of various kinds, before he entered the ark. Or,
if we can suppose him destitute of these, yet what
we have said of the zo/iar, is enough to evince, that by
the observation of that alone, there could be no difficulty
in distinguishing the nights from the days, and keeping a
journal accordingly.
But now, that the flood subsides, and the ark is landed,
and all its inhabitants are to disembark, how can we
suppose, that several of the animals shall be able to find
their way from the mountains of Armenia, into the dis-
tant parts of the West Indies, which (as far as we can
find) are joined to no other part of the known world, and
yet have creatures peculiar, and such as cannot live in
any other climate ? This is a question that we must own
ourselves ignorant of, ' in the same manner, as we pre-
tend not to say, by what means that vast continent was at
first peopled. But by what method soever it was that its
first inhabitants came thither, whether by stress of weather,
or designed adventure, by long voyages by sea, or (sup-
posing a passage between one continent and another) by
long journeyings by land, it is plain, that by the same
means, some creatures at first might have been conveyed
thither : and as their number at that time could be but
small, we may suppose that, by a promiscuous copulation
with one another, they might beget a second sort, which
in process of time, the nature and temperature of the
climate might so far alter, as to make them pass for a
quite different species, and so affect their constitution as
to make them live not so commodiously in any other
climate. To convey either men or beasts, all on a sud-
den, from the warmest parts of Africa, to the coldest
places in the north, would be a probable means to make
them both perish ; but the case would not be so, if they
were to be removed by insensible degrees, nearer to these
places ; nor can we say, that there never were such crea-
tures in those parts of Asia, where Noah is thought to
have lived, as are now to be found in America ; because
it is very well known, that formerly there have been many
beasts of a particular species in some countries, such as
the hippopotami in Egypt, wolves in England, and bea-
vers in France, where at present there are few or none
of them to be found.
If, after all, it should be asked, why God made use of
this, rather than any other method, to destroy the wicked,
and preserve the righteous? the proper answer is, that
whatever pleaseth him, that hath he done, both in heaven
and in earth ; for as his will is not to be controlled, so nei-
ther is it to bedisputed. For argument's sake, however, let
us suppose, for once, that instead of drowning the world,
God had been pleased to destroy by plague, famine, or
some other sore judgment, all mankind, except Noah
and his sons, who were to be eye-witnesses of this terrible
execution, to live to see the earth covered with dead
bodies, and none left to bury them, the fields unculti-
Tated, and the cities lie waste and desolate without
inhabitants, who can conceive what the horror of such a
sight would have been ? And who would have been con-
tent to live in such a world, to converse only with the
images of death, and with noisome carcasses ? But God,
1 See Universal History. Of this, however, we shall give the
Conjectures of the learned, when we come to treat of the disper-
sion of nations in our next book.
in mercy, shut up Noah in the ark, that he should not see
the terrors and consternations of sinners when the flood
came ; and he washed away all the dead bodies into the
caverns of the earth, with all the remains of their old habi-
tations. So that when Noah came out of the ark, he saw
nothing to disturb his imagination, nor any tokens of that
terrible vengeance which had over run the world, to offend
his sight : only, when he looked about him, and saw every
thing gone, he could not but fall into this contemplation,
that God, 'when he enters into judgment with the wicked,
2 will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy.
He will dash them one against another, even father and
son together, and 3 cause his fury to rest upon them,
until his anger be accomplished.'
CHAP. III. — The Reality of the Deluge proved from
Natural History.
(supplemental by the editor.)
" I conclude," says the illustrious Cuvier, " that if there
be a fact well established in geology, it is this, that the
surface of our globe has suffered a great and sudden
revolution, the period of which cannot be dated farther
back, than five or six thousand years. This revolution
has, on the one hand, engulphed and caused to disappear,
the coun tries formerly inhabited by men, and the animal
species at present best known ; and on the other, has laid
bare the bottom of the last ocean, thus converting its
channel into the now habitable earth."
1. Of the reality of this mighty deluge, we have uni-
versal evidence. Nearly the whole table lands, and
gentle acclivities of the mountains, are covered with
deposits of gravel and loam, to the production of which
no cause now seen in action is adequate, and which can
therefore be referred only to the waters of a sudden and
transient deluge. It is from this circumstance that the
deposit alluded to is termed diluvium by geologists. In
it, the pebbles and loam are always promiscuously blend-
ed, whereas among the regular secondary and tertiary
strata, they occur separate in alternate beds. On the
contrary, the marl, sand, and gravel deposited by exist-
ing rivers and lakes, or plains exposed to occasional
inundation, is called alluvium.
" In the whole course of my geological travels," says
DrBuckland, " from Cornwall to Caithness, from Calais
to the Carpathians, in Ireland or in Italy, I have scarcely
ever gone a mile, without finding a perpetual succession
of deposits of gravel, sand, or loam, in situations that
cannot be referred to the action of modern torrents,
rivers, or lakes, or any other existing causes ; and with
respect to the still more striking diluvial phenomenon
of drifted masses of rocks, the greater part of the nor-
thern hemisphere, from Moscow to the Mississippi, is
described by various geological travellers, as strewed on
its hills, as well as valleys, with blocks of granite and
other rocks of enormous magnitude, which have been
drifted, mostly in a direction from north to south, a dis-
tance, sometimes, of many hundred miles from their
11.
3 Ezek. v. 13.
84
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
fBoos I.
A. M. IG56. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 31o5. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
native beds, across mountains and valleys, lakes and seas,
by a force of water, which must have possessed a velo-
city to which nothing that occurs in the actual state of
the globe affords the slightest parallel."
According to the theory of Hulton, the mountains of a
former earth, were worn down and diffused over the bot-
tom of a former ocean. There they were exposed to
the power of subjacent internal fire ; and after due
induration were heaved up by the explosive violence of
the same force, into the inclined or nearly vertical
positions, in which the great mountain strata now
stand. " How often," says Mr Playfair, in his eloquent
illustrations of this theory, " these vicissitudes of decay
and renovation have been repeated, is not for us to de-
termine ; they constitute a series, which, as the author of
this theory has remarked, we neither see the beginning
nor the end."
This theory is now demonstrated to be a mere phan-
tom. The circumstance that gneiss and mica slate,
allowed to be primitive rocks, and to have been formed,
as the Huttonians suppose, at the bottom of the sea, by
the same process as the calcarious and other secondary
strata that are full of shells; the circumstance that gneiss
and mica slate are barren of animal exuviae, proves the
falsehood of this theory. Whence do these organic
ruins come, and why are they absent in the former class
of rocks, both of them formed in the same sea, and under
similar circumstances ?
The Huttonians ascribe the excavation of every great
valley on the globe, to the disintegrating power of the
stream or river by which they have been traversed. But
this is often a mere thread compared to the sloping width
of the valley, and should, at the utmost, have produced
merely a narrow and precipitous glen. The observed
action of streamlets is rather to fill up the dell through
which it glides, than to enlarge its dimensions. An
example will hardly be found of a valley, which can be
legitimately ascribed to the action of the stream that is
seen passing through it. This is not the place to enlarge
on this subject. Suffice it to remark, that even though
the lands adjoining the valleys were composed of loose
matter ; the waters now running along the bottom, could
not have scooped out the valleys, supposing them to have
a tenfold force, above what they actually possess ; the
slope of the existing surface not being sufficiently great
to give these masses of water the rapidity requisite to
produce that effect, and to carry off the loose soil which
filled either the valley or the gorge. Finally, the actual
waters, so far from having contributed to form the long
and numerous depressions which furrow the surface of
the earth, continually tend to fill up these hollows. In
short, to the production of the great valleys of the globe
no cause now seen in action is adequate, and they can
be referred only to the waters of a sudden and mighty
deluge.
The reality of this universal catastrophe is attested by
the fact, that rocks replete with marine remains are spread
over two-thirds of the surface of every part of our con-
tinents which have been explored. They abound at great
elevations, rising to the loftiest summits of the Pyrenees,
nearly 1 1,000 feet above the level of our present ocean,
and to still loftier points in the Andes. It is remarkable
tiiat the true geographical summits of the Pyrenee ridge
are composed of secondary shell-limestones, which sur-
pass the granite, gneiss, and mica slates, in elevation,
and may have been deposited over the primitive rocks
while they stood under the primeval ocean.
In addition to this, it may be remarked, that on the
secondary mountains of the Jura, particularly the slopes
facing the Alps, a great many loose fragments of primi-
tive rocks are strewed over the surface, at heights of
2,500 feet above the Lake of Geneva. They have un-
doubtedly travelled across the line of these valleys, their
composition proving clearly the mountain ridges from
which they came. We may hence infer, that at the
period of their transfer from the Savoy Alps, the Lake
of Geneva did not exist, otherwise they must have
remained at its bottom, instead of being found on its
opposite bounding mountain at a great elevation.
This, and similar facts indicate the scooping out of
the valleys between the mountains, by the pressure of
the diluvial deflux. Analogous phenomena abound in
England. There are found among the diluvial strata
of England large blocks and pebbles, the fragments of
various primitive and transition rocks, which Dr Buck-
land supposes to have been drifted from the nearest
continental strata of Norway.
" The Alps and Carpathians, and all the other moun-
tain regions I ever visited in Europe," says this respect-
able writer, " bear in the form of their component hills
the same evidence of having been modified by the force
of water, as do the hills of the lower regions of the
earth ; and in their valleys also, where there was space
to afford it a lodgment, I have always found diluvial
gravel of the same nature and origin with that of the
plains below, and which can be clearly distinguished
from the postdiluvian detritus of mountain torrents or
rivers. The bones of the Mastodon are found in diluvial
gravel in the Camp de Geans in South America, 7,800 feet
above the level of the sea ; and in the Cordilleras at an
elevation of 7,200 feet, near the volcano of lmbaburra,
in the kingdom of Quito. M. Humboldt found a tooth
of an extinct species of fossil elephant at Hue-huetoca,
on the plain of Mexico. Our high mountains in Europe
are so peaked that animal remains, though drifted round
their summits, could hardly be expected to lie upon
them, but would be washed down their steep slopes. In
central Asia, bones of horses and deer which were found
at a height of 16,000 feet above the sea, in the Himmala
mountains, are now deposited at the Royal College of
Surgeons in London. These facts attest, that all the
high hills that were under the whole heavens were
covered by the waters of the deluge."
It is now maintained by geologists of the highest
eminence, that the rounded blocks of granite to which I
have alluded as spread over the Jura and neighbouring
countries, were rolled into their present situations at the
time of the rising from below of Mont Blanc and the
Alpine mountains, to which they belong in composition
— mountains considered by Von Buck as the latest of all
mineral formations, and newer than even the tertiary
strata. Hence they are contemporaneous with the
deluge, indicating at once its transcendent causes and
effects. In support of this conclusion, M. Deluc, of
Geneva, published in the memoirs of the Physical So-
ciety of that city for May, 1827, a similar opinion ; —
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
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that the Alpine ridges have been formed after the ter-
tiary rocks ; and that the blocks of granite have been
dispersed by that mighty upheaving of the land. The
great masses remain nearest the parent mountains, and
being least travelled, are more angular • the smaller and
lighter ones, having been proportionally more violently
agitated, and rolled to greater distances, have become
rounded by the attrition.
In the stratum of mingled sand and gravel, which
forms the detritus of the deluge, and to which the name
diluvium has been given, are usually found the fossil
bones of ancient animals. Skeletons, or their parts,
have been also discovered in great numbers in the lime-
stone caves of this and many other countries, which are
supposed with much probability, to have been the dens
of antediluvian animals, the last tenants of which were
drowned in the universal deluge. The species so com-
mon in the diluvial detritus, namely, the elephants, the
rhinoceroses, the horses, are very rare in the bone caves
of Germany. In this respect, the Kirkdale cave in
Yorkshire differs widely from the others, since it abounds
as much in the bones of the great and little herbivorous
animals as those of the carnivorous. The elephant,
rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, are found at Kirkdale ;
as well as bones of oxen, deer, down to rats and birds.
No marine animals of any species have left their bones
either in the Kirkdale or German caves.
There are only three general causes which can be
possibly imagined to have introduced the bones in such
quantities into these vast subterranean vaults ; first, they
are either the remains of animals which dwelt and died
peaceably in these chambers ; or, second, of animals
which inundations and other violent causes carried in :
or, third, of the animals which had been enveloped in
the stony strata, whose watery solution produced the
caverns themselves, but the soft parts were dissolved
away by the agent that scooped out the mineral substance
of the caves. This last hypothesis is refuted by the
circumstance, that the strata themselves in which the
grottoes are excavated contains no bones ; and the
second, by the entire state of preservation of the smallest
prominences of the bones, which precludes the idea of
their having been rolled. Even if some bones are worn
smooth, as Br Buckland has remarked, they are so only
on one side ; which at the utmost merely proves that
something has polished their surface in the bed where
they lay. We are therefore compelled to resume the
first supposition, and to regard these caverns as the dens
of antediluvian carnivora, which dragged in thither and
devoured the animals, or parts of animals, that fell in
their way. Professor BucklancFs writings furnish nu-
merous proofs and illustrations of the truth of this
position.
These few observations may suffice to illustrate the
nature and extent of that evidence which is furnished by
science in proof of the reality of the mighty deluge
mentioned in the Mosaic record. The works of Cuvier,
Buckland, and Br lire's New Systi m of Geology, will
put the student in possession of the means of enlarging
his knowledge of this highly interesting subject. I shall
now advert
II. To what may have been supposed to have been the
physical cause of this catastrophe. This, I conceive, to
be a proper and useful subject of inquiry, since we know
that God usually accomplishes his purposes by means or
second causes ; and especially since such inquiry may
enable us to answer objections and remove difficulties.
At the same time, it should be remembered that even
though we were incapable of assigning any secondary
causes for the production of the deluge, the evidence for
the reality of this event would not be thereby aflected.
All power is God's ; and whatsoe'er he wills, — the will
itself omnipotent fulfils.
The theory which appears to me to come nearest the
truth on this subject is that which ascribes the phenomena
of the deluge to the operation of forces acting under the
bottom of the primeval ocean by which its waters were
rolled over the ancient continents, many of which were
broken down and sunk in the sea, whilst new territories
were upheaved and laid bare. Sir H. Bavy^s discovery
of the metallic bases of the earths and alkalis proves
that such latent forces do exist in the bosom of the
earth ; and from the phenomena of volcanoes we may
form some conjecture of their tremendous power. The
metals of the alkalis and earths, from their affinity for
oxygen, could not possibly exist on the surface of the
earth ; on this principle, volcanic fires would be occa-
sioned whenever these metals were extensively exposed
to the action of air and water.
The upheaving of the bed of the ocean, and the
depression of the dry land, would occasion the deluge.
When the barriers of the ocean began to give way before
the explosive forces, the water would invade the shores,
and spread over the sunken land, augmenting greatly
the evaporating surface, and thus bringing the atmosphere
to the dew-point, a state of saturation to which, previ-
ously, it could seldom, and in few places, attain, on
account of the area of the dry land being great, relative
to that of the sea. From this cause, as well as from the
immense quantity of vapours which are known to rise
from water, into the higher and cooler regions of the air,
at the period of eruptions, a great formation of cloud
and deposition of rain would ensue.
At each successive upheaving of the submarine strata,
the inundation would advance farther on the land,
drowning in their places the animals which had been
driven for shelter into their dens ; and washing aw ay by
its reflux, the tenants of the plains, into the slimy
channel of the deep. By such a retiring billow in the
dreadful earthquake of 1755, three thousand inhabitants
of Lisbon were suddenly swept off'its quay, and swamped
in the bed of the Tagus. In the progress of the eleva-
tion of submarine strata, and submersion of what previ-
ously had been dry land, the stage of equilibrium would
arrive, when the circumfluent waves would roll over the
loftiest pinnacles of the globe. The destruction of the
human race, with the exception of the eight individuals
enclosed in the ark, would thus be completed.
According to the principles of Mr Penn, the ratio ol
land to water was inverted by the deluge, for he assumes
that our actual seas correspond in surface to the ante-
diluvian lands; and our actual lands to the antediluvian
seas. But the researches of Professor Buckland on the
Kirkdale and Franconia caves ; as well as those of
Baron Cuvier on the grotto of Oiselles, concur to prove
that these were dens inhabited by antediluvian quadru
86 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
[Book I.
peds, and therefore must have formed a portion of its
dry land.
I am disposed then to consider volcanic agency as a
main cause of the phenomena of the deluge. This
power has now a limited range in comparison of its
ancient extent. There are at present two hundred and
five burning volcanoes on the globe. One hundred and
seven of these are in islands, and ninety-eight on conti-
nents, but ranged mostly along their shores. The
American volcanoes are among those most distant from
the sea. In Peru, they are about seventy miles from it.
The position of all our active volcanoes in the neigh-
bourhood of the ocean, is a very striking fact. It
becomes much more so when we observe submarine vol-
canoes burning in the very bosom of the sea.
The most remarkable volcano ever described is in the
island of Hawii. It is near the base of Mouna Roa, a
mountain 15,000 feet high. An interesting account of
it is given by Mr Ellis in his Polynesian Researches.
" A whole lake of fire was seen to open suddenly up, in
a part at a little distance. This lake could not have been
less than two miles in circumference, and its action was
more horribly sublime, than any thing I ever imagined
to exist, even in the idler visions of unearthly things.
Its surface had all the agitation of an ocean. Billow
after billow tossed its monstrous bosom into the air, and
occasionally the waves from opposite directions met
with such violence, as to dash the fiery spray in the
concussion forty or fifty feet high."
In order to produce the deluge it was only necessary
that the Creator should remove restraints from those
forces which actually exist in the earth. These forces
under the direction of infinite wisdom, operating in the
manner already described, seem to be sufficient to verify
the account of this mighty catastrophe recorded by
Moses. ' The same day were all the fountains of the
great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were
opened. And the waters prevailed, and were increased
greatly upon the earth ; and the ark went upon the face
of the waters.' I shall now consider
III. The alleged objections to the truth of the Mosaic
account of the deluge. I shall only here advert to those
which relate to natural phenomena.
1. While the bones of the lower animals have been
found abundantly in the diluvium and caves of the earth,
in no instance have the remains of man been discovered.
Human bones moulder as slowly in the earth as those of
the inferior tribes ; yet not one of them has been found
of a truly fossil character. This circumstance is felt by
many as a difficulty ; and is regarded by some as fur-
nishing an objection to the reality of the deluge.
The two following considerations furnish a satisfactory
solution of this difficulty. First, that the greater part,
if not the whole of the portion of the earth which was
inhabited by the human race prior to the deluge, is now
at the bottom of the ocean. It is admitted by all, that
part of the antediluvian earth is now submersed. It is
equally certain that mankind had occupied but a com-
paratively small part of the globe. From the prodigious
herds of wild beasts which prowled through these northern
regions, it is confidently inferred that human society was
not established there. Indeed the only authentic data
from which we can form any conclusion on the subject
lead to the belief that primeval population had not
rapidly advanced. The average period which each of
the primeval patriarchs lived before his eldest son was
born, was 117£ years. Judging from these data, the
only ones we have, the increase of population must have
been slow ; divine mercy limiting the victims of guilt
and perdition. Multiplying in this ratio, the race of
man could not spread widely over the world, thinned as
the members must also have been by mutual violence.
It is highly probable that the portion of the earth
inhabited by the family of man is now at the bottom of
the sea ; especially as we know from the physical con-
stitution of the globe, as well as from principles already
alluded to, that at least a great part of the bed of the
antediluvian ocean is now dry land, and that, conse-
quently, the dry land of the primeval world is, to a
considerable extent, at the bottom of the sea.
A second consideration is, that mankind was confined
to Asia and the east prior to the deluge ; and that the
interior of the earth in those parts of the world, have not
yet been explored. It is only of course in those portions
of the earth which were inhabited by the antediluvians
that we are to look for traces of their former existence ;
and on the supposition that the sea does not now cover
all the early dwelling places of the race, we are certain
that they have not yet undergone a particular examina-
tion.
2. The change in regard to the longevity of man said
to be introduced at the deluge is calculated, it is alleged,
to awaken suspicion in regard to the truth of the Mosaic
account of that catastrophe. Prior to that era men
lived to the age of seven, eight, or nine hundred years ;
but immediately after, the period of human life was
greatly shortened. How are we to account for so great
a change ?
It is a sufficient solution of this difficulty to say, that
the Great Author and Lord of life can limit its duration
as it pleaseth him. Without presuming to say, whether
the changes which the deluge produced on the globe
were sufficient, as natural causes, to shorten the mortal
existence of man, it is certain that such a revolution was
effected in the constitution of our globe, as rendered its
surface much colder and moister than it had previously
been. From the circumstances which fully establish this
position Ave may select the two following.
First, the almost incredible number of bones of fossil
elephants found in northern Siberia, which indicate no
marks of having been rolled or transported from a dis-
tance, attest the existence formerly on its plains, of huge
herbivorous animals. These demonstrate that a vigor-
ous vegetation clothed countries now covered with frost
a great part of the year, when even in summer sterilizing
cold and humidity perpetually reign, and where at
present the rein-deer can hardly pick up from beneath
the snow its scanty mouthful of moss. Pallas informs
us that in those northern regions there is scarcely a
river, on the banks of which, bones of the ancient ele-
phant may not be found. They are imbedded in, or
loosely covered with diluvial matter, intermixed with a
few marine productions. The immense supply of food
requisite to the sustenance of the elephant, the rhino-
ceros, the hippopotamus, the mastodon, and the tapir,
could only be produced in a warm climate.
Sect. VI.] FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
A. M. 1G5G. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 225G. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
87
Secondly, the ruins of vegetable life buried in our
frozen circumpolar strata, clearly attest the genial
climate which prevailed, and cherished their growth on
the primeval earth. The numerous examples of this
kind which occur furnish proofs that the hyperborean
region where they occur, at one time displayed the
noble scene of a luxuriant and stately vegetation.
3. It is objected to the Mosaic history that it repre-
sents the rainbow as formed after the flood, and as the
sign of a covenant then made ; whereas, as a natural
phenomenon, the rainbow must have been occasionally
exhibited from the beginning of the world. In answer
to this it may be remarked, in the first place, that there
is nothing absurd in fixing on a natural phenomenon as
a sign and memorial of peace and reconciliation. The
very best purpose was served by the rainbow, expressed
by the sacred historian, when he represents God as say-
ing, ' This is the token of the covenant, which I will
make between me and you, and every living creature
that is with you for perpetual generations :' for natural
and inanimate objects, such as pillars and heaps of
stones, were considered as tokens, and even a kind of
witnesses, in the contracts of all the civilized nations of
remote antiquity. Of this we have several instances in
the books of the Old Testament, but surely not one so
apposite as that of the rainbow. Noah and his sons
undoubtedly knew, — either by the science of the ante-
diluvian world, or by the immediate teaching of God, —
that the rainbow is a physical proof, as long as it is
seen, that a general deluge is not to be dreaded : and
therefore, if their minds, filled with terror and astonish-
ment at what they had escaped, should ever have become
fearfully apprehensive of a future deluge, the sight of
the bow would immediately dissipate their fears.
But, in the second place, philosophers are now of
opinion that the rainbow, from the constitution of the
primeval atmosphere, could not have been formed till
after the deluge. Immediately after the flood, the sea-
soaked lands would send up universal exhalations round
the chilly globe ; whence showers and rainbows would
become, for some time at least, almost daily appearances.
This conclusion of physical research, coincides well with
our ancient history of the new drained earth. ' And
God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make
between me and you, and every living creature that is
with you for perpetual generations : I do set my bow in
the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant
between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass
when 1 bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall
be seen in the cloud. And the waters shall no more
become a flood to destroy all flesh.' The ark preserved
eight intelligent witnesses, come to mature age, of ante-
diluvian skies and seasons. It is inferred, both from the
emphatic words in which the sign of Heaven's favour is
j announced, as well as from the purpose which it was
ordained to serve, that it must have been equally strange
as it was glorious in their sight. In such clouds as might
often be stretched in the cooler upper regions of their
skies, no bow could be set. Heavy dews, deposited
during the night and early dawn, from the well known
influence of ground chilled by calorific radiation, would
supply the place of rain for vegetable sustenance ; as
now happens in Lima and many other regions of our
present globe. It is alleged that this theory receives
support from the following declaration of the sacred his-
torian. ' For the Lord God had not caused it to rain
upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
But there went up a mist from the whole earth, and
watered the whole face of the ground.'
The rainbow thus becomes a most significant emblem
of God's providential regard to man. It is a phenome-
non which results from, and declares the remodelled
constitution of the terraqueous sphere. It is a type of sin
and suffering ; of reconciliation and of peace ; a memo-
rial of the sublimest truths of revelation and science.
' While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and
cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and
night, shall not cease.'
IV. It is alleged that Hindoo chronology, founded on
astronomical observation, is irreconcilable with the era
of the deluge according to the sacred historian ; and the
inference deduced from this allegation by those who
advance it is, that the Mosaic record is false.
In a commentary on Bailly's Treatise on the Hindoo
Chronoloc/y , by Professor Play fair, read before the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, and published in their Trans-
actions, he announced the following conclusions : — " The
observations on which the astronomy of India is founded
were made more than 3000 years before the Christian
era, (consequently more than b'50 years before the deluge
by the Hebrew chronology) , and in particular, the places
of the sun and moon, at the beginning of the Calyougham,
(the age of misfortune 3102 a. c.) were determined by
actual observation." — " It is through the medium of
astronomy," continues Professor Playfair, " alone, that a
few rays from those distant objects (the ancient inhabit-
ants of the globe) can be conveyed in safety to the eye
of a modern observer, so as to afford him a light, which,
though it be scanty, is pure and unbroken, and free from
the false colouring of vanity and superstition."
In this opinion, so confidently annoimced, Professor
Playfair was singularly unfortunate, since its falsity has
been fully proved by La Place and Delambre. "Every
thing," says the former, " leads us to conclude that they
(the Indian tables) are not of high antiquity. They have
two principal epochs which go back, one to the year
3102, and the other to 1491 years before the Christian
era. These are linked together by the mean movements
of the sun, moon, and planets, so that one of the epochs
is necessarily fictitious. The celebrated author (M.
Bailly) to whom I refer, has tried to establish in his
Treatise on Indian Astronomy, that the first of these
epochas is founded on observation. Notwithstanding
his proofs, expounded with all the interest which he could
bestow on the most complex subjects, I consider it very
probable, that this epocha has been invented for the
purpose of giving a common origin upon the zodiac to
the movements of the celestial bodies. In fact, if we
assume for our point of departure, the epocha of 1491,
and go back by means of the Indian tables, to the year
3102 before the Christian era, we obtain a general con-
junction of the sun, moon, and planets, as these tallies
suppose ; but this conjunction differs too much from the
result of our best tables, to have taken place, demon-
strating that the epocha to which it refers, is not grounded
on observation. The tables altogether, and particularly
88
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book I.
A. M. JC5G. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
the impossibility of the conjunction which they suppose
at the same epocha, prove on the contrary that they have
been constructed in modern times.
" The whole system of the Indian tables," says Cuvier,
" so elaborately conceived, falls to pieces of itself, now
that it has been proved that this epocha was adopted at
an after period from calculations retrospectively made,
the result of which is false. Mr Bentley has discovered
that the tables of Tirvalour, on which the assertions of
Bailly were principally founded, must have been com-
puted towards the year 1281 of the Christian era, (only
547 years ago,) and that the Sourya-Siddhanta, which
the Brahmins esteem their most ancient scientific trea-
tise on astronomy, pretending that it was given by
revelation, more than twenty millions of years since,
could have been composed only 767 years before our
own time."
Delatnbre speaks with equal decision, and to the same
effect, in his History of Astronomy, Ancient and Modern.
" The extensive treatise on Indian astronomy," says he,
" by Bailly, has been laboured with more care than any
of his other works. We regret only to remark too fre-
quently in it, that spirit of system which predominates in
all his productions. Instead of giving a simple exposi-
tion of facts, which may enable us afterwards to consider
them in every point of view, he espouses an opinion to
which he makes every thing conform. If Ave be al-
lowed to hazard a conjecture, we would say, that Bailly
never writes but to prop a system formed beforehand ;
that he glances slightly over the writings of the ancients,
reading them in bad translations ; and, that he runs
over all the calculations in order to pick out obscure
passages, which may lend some countenance to his ideas.
When we inquire why the Indians chose the remote
and fictitious epoch of Cole-youg, or misfortune, we
perceive, in the first place, that it was from national
vanity; and in the next, that they might make all the
planets start from one point, a conjunction which their
method of calculation required. If we further ask, why
they adopted a complicated method, which employs divi-
sions and multiplications of enormous numbers, with so
many additions, subtractions, reductions, and different
precepts, the answer is, that they did not wish for written
tables ; they wanted numbers which could be put into
technical verses, even into songs, so that the calcula-
tions might be performed without opening a book. These
facts, now well known through the labours of the Asiatic
Society, are alone sufficient to subvert the whole system.
" Mr Playfair acknowledges that the Indians have not
actually demonstrated either of the two processes which
they point out for these calculations. I would be tempt-
ed to believe that they were ignorant of these demonstra-
tions ; if they had known the principle, their table would
have been probably a little better. Mr Playfair has not
calculated it anew ; he has not even had the discernment
to perceive the error of the divisor 225, substituted, pro-
bably by an error of the copy, for the true divisor 235.5 !"
" The idea of the Hindoo system, given by Mr Bent-
ley" says M. Delambre, " is so natural, that I am
astonished it did not occur to Mr Bailly, and make the
pen fall from his hand. It occurred to myself on the
first persusal of Mr Bailly's book, before the publication
of the first volume of the Asiatic Researches ; and it
made such an impression on my mind, that I could never
place the least reliance on the pretended proofs that he
adduced, nor would I have ever seriously entered into
the discussion could I have avoided it in this history of
astronomy.
" Finally, it appears that there does not exist at pre-
sent a single Hindoo book, which can possess an anti-
quity higher than 1300 years; and that none of the
romances called pour anas date farther back, from the
present time, than 604 years, while some of them are
more modern still. Their great geographical treatises
are merely a tissue of the most incredible absurdities." '
With respect to the knowledge which prevailed among
heathen nations of the general deluge, it maybe observed,
that the destruction of mankind which was effected by
this catastrophe, was so signal and so extensive a .judg-
ment, that the remembrance of it was every where retained,
and traditions of it every where preserved. Express
mention of this memorable infliction of divine wrath, is
to be found in the earliest writings, and the accounts of
its general or partial operation appear in various rela-
tions. Berosus and Abydenus speak of it in histories
of the Medes and Assyrians ; and records of the event
extended through the east, and thence were circulated
through every country, exciting a peculiar interest in
those lands in which some memorial and vestige of it
were to be found.
The Egyptians had a sacred ship, called Baris, which
represented the ark ; and the story of the Argos is sup-
posed, somewhat fancifully, by Bryant, to have been
derived from Egypt, and to have a relation to the ark,
represented by the sacred ship of Osiris. An allusion
to the ark is to be found also in many sacred rites of
antiquity. Nonnus, who was born at Persepolis in Egypt,
in the fifth century, and who collected in his Dionysica,
scattered remnants of knowledge, from the hieroglyphical
descriptions and ancient hymns of the country, alludes to
the circumstances of the deluge. Relations respecting
this event were to be found in various parts of Greece.
Aristotle speaks of its effects in Epirus. The Thessa-
lonians believed it to have prevailed in their country.
The people of Phocis supposed the ark to have rested
on Parnassus. Lucian, a native of Samosata, gives also
an account of the flood. Not only did a general belief
prevail, that a deluge had taken place, but the history of
the world among the heathens seems to take its origin
from that period, insomuch that many blended the idea
of a creation with that of the universal flood; and sup-
posed the system of the world to arise from a chaos of
elements, of which water was the primary principle."2
CHAP. IV.— Of Mount Ararat.
Before we conclude this chapter, and this book toge-
ther, it may not be improper to give the reader some
account of the mountains of Ararat in general : in what
part of the world that particular one which is here in-
tended is said to be situate ; and, according to the rela-
tions both of ancient geographers and modern travellers,
1 History of Ancient Astronomy, vol. 1. p. 500. lire's Geology.
s Gray's Connection, &c. pp. 147 — 152.
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
89
A. M. LG56. A. C. 2319; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 225G. A. C. 3155. GEN. CM. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
of what form and magnitude this mountain is. But in
this inquiry some difficulties will arise, l>y reason of the
different traditions concerning it.
The author of the verses " which go under the name
of the Sibylline Oracles, places the mountains of Ararat
in the borders of Phrygia, not far from Celaenae, at the
head of the two rivers Marsyas and Meander : but it
appears from good authorities, that there is in reality no
mountain at all in that place, or at most, but a small hill,
an eminence made by art, and not by nature ; and there-
fore the learned Bochart has happily found out the ground
of this mistake, when he tell us, that not far from this city,
Gelaenae, there is another town called Apamea, and sur-
named K^a-it or the ark ; not from any tradition that
Noah's ark ever rested there, but purely on account of its
situation ; because it is encompassed with three rivers,
Marsyas, Obrimas, and Orgas, which give it the resem-
blance of a chest or ark, in the same manner that the
port of Alexandria was so called, by reason of the bay
which enclosed the ships.
Sir Walter Raleigh, ' and from him some later writers
3 are of opinion, that the mountains of Ararat were those
of Caucasus, towards Bactria and Saga Scythia. This,
as they imagine, agTees with the general notion, that the
Scythians might contend for the antiquity of their origi-
nal with any other nation; with the Chaldean tradition,
concerning the actions of their great man Xisuthrus,who
is commonly supposed to be the same with Noah ; with
the language, learning, and history of the Chinese, who
are thought to be Noah's immediate descendants ; and
with the journey which some of his other descendants are
said to have taken, namely, 3 'from the east to the land
of Shinar.' A modern chronologer has endeavoured to
prove, that the place where Noah built the ark was called
Cyparisson, not far from the river Tigris, and on the
north-east side of the city of Babylon ; that while the
flood continued, it sailed from thence to the north-east,
as far as the Caspian sea, and when the flood abated,
the north wind brought it back by a southern course, and
landed it upon Mount Caucasus, east of Babylon, and
about nine degrees distant from it in longitude ; and that
this opinion, as lie imagines, is more agreeable to the
course which the ark, by meeting with contrary currents,
would be forced to make ; to the sense of Scripture, in
bringing the sons of Noah from the east, and in settling
the children of Shem (who went not to Shinar) in this
place, and to the great conveniency of Noah's landing not
too far from the country, where he lived before the flood.
1 Histor of the World.
' Heylins ' .• and SAuckford's Connection, b. 2.
8 Gen. xi. 2.
a The verses, as they are set down by Gallcous, de Sibyllis, p.
5-^0, are these: —
There is upon the Phrygian borders blaclc,
A steep, far- stretching mount, called Ararat,
Where rise the founts of Marsyas' mighty stream,
Twas on its lofty ridge where stood the ark,
Rut. that which shows the spuriousm ss of these verses, is this: —
That the Sibyl, speaking of herself as contemporary "ith Noah,
lakes notice of the river Marsyas, which, whatever name it had
■y first, was certainly, after the death of Midas, called the foun-
biin of Midas, and r< tnim i! that name until the time el' M
hy whom it was altered; am! this must be iong after the death of
tlii- Sibyl, — ; \ dford's Scripture Chronology, b. 2. c. ''..
that thereby he might be capable of giving better direc-
tions to his family now to disperse themselves, and to
replenish the new world as occasion did require. But
besides that there appears little or no authority for all
this ; the observation of travellers into those countries
may make it be questioned, whether such a vessel as the
ark is represented, drawing much water, and very unfit
for sailing, could be able to reach Mount Caucasus
from the province of Eden (where it is generally thought
to have been built) in the space of the flood's increase,
which was no more than 150 days. The most pro-
bable opinion therefore is, that by the word Ararat,
the Holy Scriptures denote that country which the ,
Greeks, and from them other western nations, do call
Armenia. In this sense it is taken by the Septuagint,
by the Chaldee paraphrase, by the Vulgate, by Theodo-
ret and by divers others. The learned Bochart has
brought together a multitude of arguments, all tending
to the same conclusion ; but then the question is, on what
particular mountain it was that the ark landed ?
1. The most prevailing opinion for some time was,
that one of the mountains which divide Armenia on the
south from Mesopotamia, and that partof Assyria, which
is inhabited by the Curds, (from whence the mountains
took the name Curdu,) which the Greeks changed into
Cordiasi, h and several other names, was the place where
the ark landed : and what makes for this opinion is, that
whereas the deluge was in a great measure occasioned
by the overflowing of the ocean, as the Scriptures tell
us, that flux of waters which came from the Persian sea,
running from the south, and meeting the ark, would of
course carry it northward upon the Cordia?an mountains,
which seems to be voyage enough for a vessel of its bulk
and structure to make in the stated time of the flood's
increase.
The tradition which affirms the ark to have rested on
these mountains must have been very ancient, since it is
the tradition of the Chaldeans themselves, and in former
ages was very little questioned, till men came to inquire
into the particular part of these mountains whereon it
settled, and then the authors seemed to place it out of
Armenia ; Epiphanius on the mount Lubar, between (he
country of the Armenians and Cerdueans ; and all the
eastern authors, both Christian and Mahometan, on mount
Themanin, or Al-Judi, which overlooks the country of
Diarrhabia, or Moussal, in Mesopotamia.
To confirm this tradition, however, we are told that
the remainders of the ark were to be seen upon these
mountains. Bcrosus and Abyd nus !;<>;h declare, that
there was such a report in their time ; the former observes
farther, that several of the inhabitants thereabouts scrap-
ed the pitch oft' the planks as a rariiy, and carried it
about them for an amulet ; and the latter says, that they
used the wood of the vessel against several diseases with
wonderful success : as the relics of this ark were like-
wise to '■■>■ - ■•■ :'i the time of Epipkanius, if we may
believe him. The town of Themanin, which signifies
l, The Greek and Latin writers name thi m C rdu hi, <
Corduei, The orientals
call mem likewise Cardan, < \irud, &c. Bochart sap*
bat they are the same which are called by mi-take ::i
,-..,... — S e Universal History; ami Phalegomcna
l). I. c. :;.
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eight, situated at the foot of the mountain Al-Judi, was
built, we are told, in memory of the eight persons who
came out of the ark ; and formerly there was a monas-
tery, called the monastery of the ark, upon the Curdu
mountains, where the Nestorians used to celebrate a fes-
tival, on the very spot where they supposed the ark
stopped ; but in the year of Christ 776, that monastery
was destroyed by lightning, together with the church, and
a numerous congregation in it ; and since that time, the
credit of this tradition has in some measure declined,
and given place to another, which at present prevails.
2. This opinion places mount Ararat towards the mid-
dle of Armenia, near the river Araxes, or Aras, above
280 miles distant from Al-Judi, to the north-east. ' St
Jerome seems to have been the first who hath given us an
account of this tradition. " Ararat, says he, is a cham-
paign country, incredibly fertile,through which the Araxes
flows at the foot of mount Taurus, which extends so far ;
so, that by the mountains of Ararat, whereon the ark
rested, we are not to understand the mountains of Ar-
menia in general, but the highest mountains of Taurus,
which overlook the plains of Ararat." Since his time,
its situation in this place has been remarked by several
other writers ; and all the travellers into these places
now make mention of no other mount Ararat than what
the Armenians call Masis, (from Amasia, the third
successor of Haikh, the founder of their nation,) and
what the Mahometans do sometimes name Agri-dagh, that
is, the heavy or great mountain, and sometimes Parniak-
dagh, the Finger -mountain, alluding to its appearance ;
for as it is straight, very steep, and stands by itself, it
seems to resemble a finger, when held up.
The mount Ararat, which the Armenians, as we said,
call Masis, and sometimes Mesesoussar, (because the ark
was stopped there when the waters of the flood began to
abate,) stands about twelve leagues to the east (or rather
south-east) of Erivan, (a small city seated in the upper
Armenia, four leagues from Aras, or Araxes, and ten to
the north-west of Nakschivan ; which, because nak, in
Armenian, signifies a ship, and scltivan, stopped or set-
tled, is supposed to have its name from the same occa-
sion. This mountain is encompassed by several little
hills, and on the top of them are found many ruins, which
are thought to have been the buildings of the first men,
who might fear, for some time, to go down into the plains.
It stands by itself in the form of a sugar-loaf, in the
midst of one of the greatest plains that is to be seen, and
separated from the other mountains of Armenia, which
make a long chain. It consists of two hills, whereof the
less is more sharp and pointed ; but the larger (which is
that of the ark) lies north-east of it, and rears its head far
above the neighbouring mountains. It seems so high
and big indeed, that when the air is clear, it does not
appear to be above two leagues from Erivan, and yet
may be seen some four or five days' journey off"; but from
the middle to the top, it is always covered with snow,
and for the space of three or four mouths in the year, has
its upper part commonly hid in the clouds.
The Armenians have a tradition, that on the summit
of this mountain there is still a considerable part of the
ark remaining, but that it is impossible to get up to the top
1 Isaiah xxxvii.
of it. 2 For they tell us of one traveller, a person of
singular piety, who endeavoured to do it, and had
advanced as far as the middle of the mountain ; when,
being thirsty and wanting water, he put up a prayer to
God, who caused a fountain to spring out of the ground
for him, and so saved his life ; but at the same time, he
heard a voice, saying, ' Let none be so bold as to go up
to the top of this mountain.'
How difficult the ascent of this mountain is (without
any particular revelation) we may inform ourselves from
the following account which Mr Tournefort gives of it.
" About two o'clock in the afternoon," 3 says he, " we
began to ascend the mountain Ararat, but not without
difficulty. We were forced to climb up in loose sand,
where we saw nothing but juniper and goats-thorn.
The mountain, which lies south and south-south-east
from Eimiadzim, or the three churches, is one of the
most sad and disagreeable sights upon earth ; for there
are neither trees nor shrubs upon it, nor any convents
of religious, either Armenians or Franks. All the
monasteries are in the plain, nor can I think the place
inhabitable, in any part, because the soil of the moun-
tain is loose, and most of it covered with snow
" From the top of a great abyss, (as dreadful an hole
as ever Mas seen,) opposite to the village of Akurlu,
(from whence we came), there continually fall down
rocks of a blackish hard stone, which make a terrible
resound. This, and the noise of the crows that are
continually flying from one side to the other, has
something in it very frightful ; and to form any notion
of the place, you must imagine one of the highest moun-
tains in the world opening its bosom, only to show one
of the most horrid spectacles that can be thought of.
No living animals are to be seen but at the bottom, and
towards the middle of the mountain. They who occupy
the lowest region, are poor shepherds and scabby flocks.
The second region is possessed by crows and tigers,
which passed by, not without giving us some dread
and uneasiness. All the rest of it, that is, half of it, has
been covered with snow ever since the ark rested there,
and these snows are covered half the year with very
thick clouds.
" Notwithstanding the amazement which this frightful
solitude cast us into, we endeavoured to find out the
monastery we were told of, and inquired whether there
were any religious in caverns. The notion they have in
the country, that the ark rested here, and the veneration
which all the Armenians have for this mountain, (for
they kiss the earth as soon as they see it, and repeat
certain prayers after they have made the sign of the
cross), have made many imagine, that it must be filled
with religious. However, they assured us that there
was only one forsaken convent at the foot of the gulf :
that there was no fountain throughout the whole mount ;
and that we could not go in a whole day to the snow,
and down again to the bottom of the abyss ; that the
shepherds often lost their way; and th.it we might judge
what a miserable place it was, from the necessity they
were under to dig the earth from time to time, to find a
spring of water for themselves and their flocks ; and in
short, that it would be folly to proceed on our way,
2 La Boulaye's Voyages
Sec his Voyages into the Levant, Letter VII
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
91
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because they were satisfied our leys would fail us ; nor
would they be obliged to accompany us for all the trea-
sures of the king- of Persia.
" When we considered what the shepherds had told
us, Ave advised with our guides; and they, good men,
unwilling to expose themselves to the danger of dying
for thirst, and having no curiosity, at the expense of
their legs, to measure the height of the mountain, were
at first of the same sentiments with the shepherds ; but
afterwards concluded, that we might go to certain rocks,
whicii were more prominent and visible than the rest, and
so return by night to the place where we were ; and with
that resolution we went to rest. In the morning, after
that we had ate and drunk very plentifully, we began to
travel towards the first ridge of rocks, with one bottle of
water, which, to ease ourselves, we carried by turns;
but notwithstanding we had made pitchers of our bellies,
in two hours' time they were quite dried up ; and as
water shook in a bottle is no very pleasant liquor, our
hopes were, that when we came to the snow, we should
eat some of it to quench our thirst.
" It must be acknowledged, that the sight is very
much deceived when we stand at the bottom, and guess
at the height of a mountain ; and especially, when it
must be ascended through sands as troublesome as the
Syrtes of Africa. It is impossible to take one firm step
upon the sands of mount Ararat ; in many places, in-
stead of ascending, we were obliged to go back again
to the middle of the mountain ; and, in order to continue
our course, to wind sometimes to the right, and some-
times to the left.
" To avoid these sands, which fatigued us most in-
tolerably, we made our way to the great rocks, which
were heaped upon one another. We passed under
them, as through caverns, and were sheltered from all
the injuries of the weather, except cold, which was here
so keen and intense, that we were forced to leave the
place, and come into a very troublesome way, full of
large stones, such as masons make use of in building-,
and were forced to leap from stone to stone, till I, for
my part, was heartily weary, and began to sit down, and
repose myself a little, as the rest of the company did.
" After we had rested ourselves, we came about noon
to a place which afforded us a more pleasing prospect.
We imagined ourselves so near, that we could have even
touched the snow (we thought) with our teeth; but our
joy lasted not long ; for what we had taken for snow,
proved only a chalk-rock, which hid from our sight a
tract of land above two hours' journey distant from the
snow, and which seemed to have a new kind of pave-
ment, made of small pieces of stones broken ofi' by the
frost, and whose edges were as sharp as flints. Our
guides told us, that their feet were quite bare, and that
ours in a short time would be so too; that it grew late,
and we should certainly lose ourselves in the night, or
break our necks in the dark, unless we would choose to
«it down, and so become a prey to the tigers. All this
seemed very feasible; and therefore we assured them,
that we would go no farther than the heap of snow,
which we showed them, and which, at that distance, ap-
peared hardly bigger than a cake; but when we came to
it, we found it more than we had occasion for ; the heap
Was above thirty paces in diameter. We every one eat
as much as we had a mind for, and so, by consent,
resolved to advance no farther. It cannot be imagined
how much the eating of snow revives and invigorates :
we therefore began to descend the mountain with a great
deal of alacrity ; but we had not gone far, before we
came to sands, which lay behind the abyss, and were
full as troublesome as the former ; so that about six in
the afternoon we found ourselves quite tired out and
spent. At length, observing a place covered with
mouse-ear, whose declivity seemed to favour our de-
scent, we made to it with all speed, and (what pleased
us mighty well) from hence it was that our guides
showed us (though at a considerable distance) the
monastery, whither we were to go to quench our thirst.
1 leave it to be guessed, what method Noah made use of
to descend from this place, who might have rid upon so
many sorts of animals, which were all at his command :
but as for us, we laid ourselves upon our backs, and slid
down for an hour together upon this green plat, and so
passed on very agreeably, and much faster than we
could have gone upon our legs. The night and our
thirst were a kind of spurs to us, and made us make the
greater speed. We continued therefore sliding in this
manner, as long as the way would permit ; and when we
met with small flints which hurt our shoulders, we turned
and slid on our bellies, or went backwards on all-four.
Thus by degrees we gained the monastery ; but so dis-
ordered and fatigued by our manner of travelling, that
we were not able to move hand or foot."
I have made my quotation from this learned botanist
and most accurate traveller the longer, not only because
it gives us a full idea of the mountain, so far as he
ascended, but some distrust likewise of the veracity 1 of
a certain Dutch voyager, who seems to assure us, that
he went five days' journey up mount Ararat to see a
Romish hermit; that he passed through three regions of
the clouds, the first dark and thick, the next cold and
full of snow, and the third colder still ; that he advanced
five miles every day, and when he came to the place
where the hermit had his cell, he breathed a very serene
and temperate air ; that the hermit told him, he had per-
ceived neither wind nor rain all the five and twenty
years that he had dwelt there ; and that on the top of
the mountain there still reigned a greater tranquillity,
which was a means to preserve the ark without decay or
putrefaction.
There is one objection which may be made to all that
we have said concerning the situation of this famous
mountain, and that is, — Whereas the sons of Noah, when
they quitted the country where the ark rested, are said
to 2' journey from the east into the land of Shinar,' it is
plain, that if they removed from any part of Armenia,
they must have gone from the north or north-west : but
this Ave shall take occasion to examine when Ave come to
treat of their migration. In the mean time, it is worthy of
our observation, and some argument of our being in the
right, 3that the situation of Ararat, as Ave have supposed
it, whether it be mount Mask, or the mountain of Curdu,
was very convenient for the journey of the SOUS ol Noah,
because the distance is not very great, and the descent
Sb '"A Voyages, c. 17.
Universal History, b. 1.
» Gen. xi. 2.
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[Book I.
A. M. 1656. A. C. 2349; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2256. A. C. 8155. GEX. CEI. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
easy, especially from the latter, into the plains of Meso-
potamia, whereof Shinar is a part. Nor should we for-
get, that the neighbourhood, which the sacred history,
by this means, preserves between the land of Eden,
where man was created ; that of Ararat, where the remains
of mankind were saved ; and that of Shinar, where they
fixed the centre of their plantations, is much more natu-
ral, ftnd seems to have a better face and appearance of
truth, than to place these scenes at so vast a distance,
as some commentators have done.
One inquiry more, not concerning mount Ararat only,
but every other mountain that is dispersed over the
whole earth, is this, — Whether they were in being before
the induction of the flood ? The ingenious author of
the Theory, so often quoted, is clearly of opinion, that
1the face of the earth, before the deluge, was smooth,
regular, and uniform, without mountains, and without a
sea; and that the rocks and mountains which every where
now appear, Avere made by the violent concussions which
then happened, and are indeed nothing else but the ruins
and fragments of the old world. But all this is confuted
by the testimony of Divine Wisdom, who declaring her
own pre-existence, 2' I was set up from everlasting,'
says she, ' from the beginning, or ever the earth was :
when there were no depths, I was brought forth ; when
there were no fountains abounding with water, before the
mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought
forth : while as yet God had not made the earth, nor the
fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.' So
that, according to this declaration, not only the foun-
tains of waters which we see upon the face of the earth,
but even mountains (which some have accounted its
greatest deformities) and all hills, were part of the ori-
ginal creation, and contemporary with the first founda-
tions of the earth ; and though a deluge can scarce be
supposed to overspread the globe, without making some
transmutation in it, yet that it could not shock the pillars
of the round world, or cause a total dissolution in nature,
we have the same divine testimony assuring us, that at
the time of the first creation, 3i God laid the foundation
of the earth so sure, that it should not be removed for
ever.'
It is a groundless imagination, then, to ascribe the
origin of mountains and other lofty eminences to a cer-
tain disruption of the earth in the time of the deluge ;
when God, from the very first beginning, designed them
for such excellent purposes. For, besides that several
of these rocks and mountains (as well as the broad sea)
are really an awful sight, and Jill the mind with just
notions of God's tremendous majesty, which a small
river or a smooth surface does not do so well ; and
besides, that they yield food for several animals formed
by nature to live upon them, and supply us from without
with many wholesome plants, and from within with many
useful metals ; by condensing the vapours, and so pro-
ducing rain, fountains, and rivers, they give the very
plains and valleys themselves the fertility which they
boast of. For this seems to be the design of hills, (says
4 a learned inquirer into the original of springs and
fountains,) " That their ridges, being placed through the
1 Burnet's Theory b I., c. 5.
a Ps. civ. 5.
2 Prov. viii. 23, &c.
1 I)r Baltey.
midst of the continent, might serve, as it were, for alem-
bics,, to distil fresh water for the use of man and beast;
and their heights to give a descent to those streams
which run gently, like so many veins of the microcosm,
to be more beneficial to the creation."
5 Nay, we may appeal to the sense of mankind, whe-
ther a land of hills and dales has not more pleasure and
beauty both, than any uniform flat, which then only
affords delight when it is viewed from the top of an hill.
For what were the Tempe of Thessaly, so celebrated
in ancient story for their unparalleled pleasantness,
but a vale divided by a river, and terminated with hills ?
are not all the descriptions of poets embellished with
such ideas, when they would represent any places of
superlative delight, any blissful seats of {he muses and
nymphs, any sacred habitations of gods and goddesses ?
They will never admit that a wild flat can be pleasant,
no not in the aElysian fields: they too must be diversi-
fied. Swelling descents and declining valleys are their
chief beauties ; nor can they imagine ° even paradise a
place of pleasure, or heaven itself cto be heaven without
them. So that such a place as our present earth is,
distinguished into mountains, rivers, vales, and hills,
must, even in point of pleasure, claim a pre-eminence
before any other, that, presenting us with no more than a
single scene, and, in one continued plain superficies,
must of necessity pall the prospect. But then, if we
consider farther the riches that are reposited in these
mountains, the gold and precious stones, the coal, the
lead, the tin, and other valuable .minerals that are dug-
out of their bowels, all useful in their kinds, and fitted
for the accommodation of human life, we shall be apt to
overlook the fantastical pleasantness of a smooth out-
side, and to think with Moses, the man of God, that
6 ' Blessed of the Lord is any land for the chief things
of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of
the lasting hills.'
CHAP. V.— Of Mount Ararat.
(CONTINUED B¥ THE editor.)
The following interesting- account of Blount Ararat is
taken from the description of the recent journey of
Professor Parrot to that mountain.
" Ararat has borne this name for 3300 years : we find
it mentioned in the most ancient of books, the History
of the Creation, by Moses, who says, ' the ark rested in
the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of- the month,
upon the mountains of Ararat.' In other passages of
the Old Testament, written several centuries later, in
Isaiah xxxvii. 38., 2 Kings xix. 37., we find mention of
a land of Ararat, but in Jeremiah li. 27., of a kingdom
of Ararat ; and the very credible Armenian writer,
Moses of Chorene, states that this name was borne by a
5 Bentley's Sermons at Boyle's Led. 6 Deut. xxxiii. 13, 15.
a But fiitlier Anchises 'midst a valley green —
Climb that ridge — a rising ground lit- gains.
Ii Flowers worthy of paradise, which not wise art,
In beds and curious knots, but nature's boon,
Pour'd forth profuse, on hills, and dale, and plain.
c For earth bath this variety from heaven
Of pleasure, situate on hill or dale.— Milton's Paradise L>!st, b. i.
Sect. VI.]
FROM THE CREATION TO THE FLOOD.
93
A. M. 1656. A. C. 23J9; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES
whole country, and that it was so called after an old
Armenian king-, Arai the Fair, who lived about 1750
years before Christ, and fell in a bloody battle against
the Babylonians on a plain of Armenia, which is hence
called Arai-Arat, that is, the ruin of Arai. It was for-
merly called Amasia, after the ruler Amassis, the sixth
descendant from Japhet, and from him Mount Massis
also derives its name. This is the only name by which
it is now called among- the Armenians, for though the
Armenian translation of the Old Testament always calls
it Mount Ararat, yet the people (to whom the Bible can
be no authority, since they do not read it) have retained
the name of Massis, and do not know it by the other ;
so that if we were to ask an Armenian, even if he came
from the Holy Mountain itself, respecting- Mount Ararat,
he would be as ignorant as if we were to ask a European
respecting- Mount Massis as a place of note. To the
Turks and Persians, the name of Ararat is of course
unknown. By the first it is called by the Arabic name
Agridagh, that is, Steep Mountain, and as the Arabic is
almost a universal language in those parts, it is known
to the Koords, Persians, and even the Armenians, by
this name. It is said that some of the Persians call it
Kuhi-Nuh, tiiat is, Noah's Mountain, but on this I am
not competent to decide, as I spoke to only a few
Persians, and these invariably called it Agridagh.
" The mountains of Ararat rise at the southern extre-
mity of a plain, which the xYraxes traverses in a consid-
erable bend, and which is about 50 wersts in breadth,
and more than 100 in length. Ararat consists of two
mountains, namely, the Great Ararat, and its immediate
neighbour, the Little Ararat, the former lying to the
north-west, the latter to the south-east, their summits
ten wersts and a half apart from each other in a right
line, and the base of both mountains united by a broad
level valley. This is occupied by the herdsmen for the
pasturage of their flocks, and was formerly used as a
safe retreat by the predatory Koords, by which they
were enabled to keep up an easy and safe communica-
tion between the northern and southern provinces.
" The summit of tha Great Ararat is situated in 39°
42' north latitude, and G L° 55' east longitude from Ferro ;
its perpendicular height is 10,254 Paris feet, or nearly
five wersts above the level of the sea, and 13,530 Paris
feet, or rather more than four wersts, above the plain of
the Araxes. The north-eastern declivity of the moun-
tain may be estimated at twenty, its north-western at
thirty wersts in length. In the former we recognise, at
some distance, the deep black chasm, which many have
compared to an extinct crater, but which has always
appeared to me to resemble a cleft, as if the mountains
had once been split from above. From the summit, for
about one werst in a perpendicular, or four wersts in an
oblique direction, it is covered with a mantle of eternal
snuw and ice, the lower edge of which is indented
Recording to the elevation or depression of the ground.
This is the hoary head of Ararat. The Little Ararat
lies in 3!)" : .!)' north latitude, 62° 2' east longitude from
Perro. Its summit is elevated 12,284 Paris feet, above
the level of the sea.
" The impression which the sight of Ararat makes on
every one whose mind is capable of comprehending the
stupendous works of the Creator, is awful and mysteri-
A. M. 2256. A. C. 3155. GEN. CH. vi. 12. TO ix. 20.
ous, and many a sensitive and intelligent traveller has
endeavoured, with glowing pen and skilful pencil, to
describe this impression; and in the feeling, that no
description, no delineation, can come up to the sublime
object before him, every one who has made such an
attempt, must certainly have experienced how difficult
it is to avoid, both in language and in sketching, every-
thing that is poetical in expression or exaggerated in
form, and to keep strictly within the bounds of the truth.
" All the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's
ark exists to the present day on the summit of Mount
Ararat, and that in order to preserve it, no person is
permitted to approach it. We learn the grounds of this
tradition from the Armenian chronicles in the legend of
a monk of the name of James, who was afterwards
patriarch of Nisibis, and a contemporary and relative
of St Gregory. It is said that this monk, in order to
settle the disputes which had arisen respecting the cre-
dibility of the sacred books, especially with reference
to their account of Noah, resolved to ascend to the top
of Ararat to convince himself of the existence of the ark.
At the declivity of the mountain, however, he had several
times fallen asleep from exhaustion, and found on awak-
ing that he had been unconsciously carried down to the
point from which he first set out. God at lenglh had
compassion on his unwearied though fruitless exertions,
and during his sleep sent an angel with the message,
that his exertions were unavailing, as the summit was
inaccessible, but as a reward for his indefatigable zeal,
he sent him a piece of the ark, the very same which is
now preserved as the most valuable relic in the cathedral
of Etschmiadsin. The belief in the impossibility of
ascending Mount Ararat has, in consequence of this tra-
dition, which is sanctioned by the church, almost become
an article of faith, which an Armenian would not renounce
even if he were placed in his own proper person upon
the summit of the mountain."
On the 27th of September, O. S., 1829, this intrepid
traveller stood on the summit of Mount Ararat.
We have lately received an account of an ascent of
Mount Ararat, in the middle of August, 1834, accom-
plished by a Mr Antonomoff, a young man holding an
office in Armenia, who was induced to make the attempt
partly to satisfy his own curiosity, and partly out of
regard for the reputation of professor Parrot ; whose
having actually reached the summit of the mountain is
still obstinately denied, particularly by the inmates of
the convent, who fancy that the truth would lower the
opinion of the people with regard to the sanctity of their
mountain. Mr Antonomoff succeeded in reaching- the
summit; the large cross set up by Mr Parrot was nearly
covered with snow; the smaller cross planted on the
summit was not to be found, and was probably buried in
the snow. One of his guides, who had also accompanied
Mr Parrot, showed him the spot where it had been set
up. He asked some persons to look while he was at
the top, and try if they could see him. On his coming
down, however, nobody would admit having seen him
there; they all affirmed that to reach the summit was
impossible ; and though he and his guides agreed, the
magistrates of the village refused not only to give him
a certificate of his having ascended the mountain, but
even of his guides having declared that he had done so.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK II.
CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THINGS FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM, IN ALL 426 YEARS
AND 6 MONTHS.— ACCORDING TO DR HALES 1007 YEARS.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
The great object of the Sacred Historian, is to fur-
wish a brief historical survey of the gradual discovery of
the plan of redeeming- mercy. We must bear this in
mind in order to account for his brevity in regard to
many things, and his silence in respect to others. He
notices those facts and events which bear on his design ;
and for this reason he hastens forward from Noah to
Abraham, the great progenitor of the Messiah.
By many successive works and dispensations of God,
all tending to one great end and effect, all united as the
several parts of a scheme, and altogether making up one
great work, — was the most High unfolding the plan of
redemption, and preparing the way for its full accom-
plishment by the atoning sacrifice of the Redeemer.
Like a house or temple that is building ; first the work-
men are sent forth, then the materials are gathered, then
the ground fitted, then the foundation is laid, then the
superstructure is erected, one part after another, till at
length the top stone is laid, and all is finished. The
great works of God in the world during the whole space
of time from the fall to the coming of Christ, were all
preparatory to this. There were many great changes
and revolutions in the world, and they were all, only
the turning of the wheels of Providence in order to this,
to make way for the coming of Christ, and what he was
to do in the world. They all pointed hither, and all
issued here. Hither tended especially all God's great
works towards his church. The various dispensations
under which the church was placed, were to prepare the
way for his coming. God wrought many lesser saluta-
tions and deliverances for his people before the coming
of the Great Deliverer. These salvations were all but
so many images and forerunners of the great salvation
which Christ was to work out for his people. All ante-
rior revelations were only so many forerunners and
comets of the great light that he should bring, who
came to be the light of the world. That whole space
of time, was, as it were, the time of night, wherein the
church of God was not indeed wholly without light ; but
it was like the light of the moon and stars, a dim light
in comparison of the light of the sun : ' It had no glory
by reason of the glory that excelleth.'
With these views, we proceed to the interesting details
recorded in the following book.
SECT. I.
CHAP. I. — The Remainder of what is recorded of
Noah to his death.
A. M. 1G57, A. C. 2347; or, according to Hales, A. M. 2257. A. C. S154.
Gen. viii. 20. to the end of ch. ix.
It may perhaps be thought a little strange, that Noah,
who lived so long in this period of time, and was himself
the principal person after the flood, should bear so small
a share, and have his name so seldom mentioned in the
subsequent actions related by Moses. He was certainly
alive a great while after the confusion of Babel, for the
Scriptures make mention of his death, not till three
hundred and fifty years after the flood ; and yet surely,
if either he had been present at Babel, or lived in any
of the countries, whereinto mankind was dispersed after
that confusion, a person of such eminence could not, at
once, have sunk to nothing, and been no more mentioned
in the history and settlement of these nations, than if
he had been quite extinct. To account for this difficulty
(which is chiefly occasioned by the silence of Scripture)
1 some learned authors of late have attempted to find
out mount Ararat in another place. They suppose, that it
was Caucasus, not far from China, where the Ark rested,
and near which Noah settled, when he came out of it;
that only part of his descendants travelled into Shinar,
the remainder continued with him ; and that the reason,
why Moses mentions neither him, nor them, is, because
1 Dr Alix's Reflect, on the Books of the Holy Scripture;
Winston's Chronology of the Old Testament ; Shuckford's Con-
nection, and Bedford's Scripture Chronology.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
95
A. M. 1G57. A. C. 2347 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
they lived at so great a distance, and had no share in
the transactions of the nations round about Shinar, to
whom alone (after the dispersion of mankind) he is known
to confine his history. This opinion, which seems to
solve the difficulty at once, is supported by some such
arguments as these : that the Mosaic history is altogether
silent, as to the peopling of China at the dispersion, and
confines itself within the bounds of the then known world ;
that the Chinese language and writing are so entirely
different from those among us, introduced by the con-
fusion at Babel, that it cannot well be supposed they
were ever derived from them ; that the learned sciences
seem anciently to have been better known in China, than
in these parts of the world, their government and con-
stitution much firmer, and better settled, and their
histories more certain and authentic than ours ; that
(taking the first king Fohi and Noah to be the same
person) Fohi is said to have had no father, which agrees
well enough with Noah, because the memory of his father
might be lost in the deluge ? that Fold's mother conceived
him as she was encompassed with a rainbow, which
seems to be an imperfect tradition of the rainbow's first
appearance to Noah after the flood ; and that the reign
of Fohi is coincident with the times of Noah, and the
lives of his successors correspondent w ith the lives of the
men of the same ages, recorded in Scripture.
But as this opinion is conjectural only, the histories
and records of China of a very uncertain and precarious
authority, and such as are reputed genuine, of no older
date than some few centuries before the birth of Christ,
the major part of interpreters have thought fit to reject
this account of things as fabulous, and have thereupon sup-
posed either that Noah, settling" in the plains of Armenia,
did not remove from thence, and had, consequently, no
hand in the building of Babel ; or that, if he did remove
with the rest into the plains of Shinar, being now super-
annuated and unfit for action, the administration of things
was committed to other hands, which made his name and
authority the less taken notice of.
Jt must be acknowledged however, that the design of
the sacred historian is to be very succinct in his account
of the affairs of this period, because he is hastening- to
the history of Abraham, the great founder of the Jewish
nation, whose life and adventures, upon that account, he
thinks himself concerned to relate more at large : for
what he has farther told us of the patriarch Noah, amounts
to no more than this.
CHAP. II.— The History.
As soon as Noah and his family were landed, and all
the creatures committed to his charge were come safe
out of the ark, he selected some of every kind, both
beasts and birds, but such only as were clean, and, by
God's appointment, proper for sacrifice ; and having
built the first altar that we read of, restored the ancient
rite of Divine worship, and a offered burnt-sacrifices
a Josephus tells us, that Noah, in a persuasion, that God had
doomed mankind to destruction, lay under a mortal dread for
fear of the same judgment over again, and that it would end in
ft anniversary inundation; so that he presented himself before
Ihe Lord with sacrifices and prayers, " humbly beseeching him,
2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. i.x.
thereon. And this he did with so grateful a sense of
the Divine goodness, and so reverential a fear of the
Divine Majesty, as procured him a gracious acceptance,
and, in testimony of that acceptance, several grants and
promises.
God's promises were, that, l> though mankind were
naturally wicked and apt to go astray from the very
womb, yet, be their iniquities ever so great, he would
not any more destroy the earth c by a general deluge,
or disturb the order of nature, and d the several seasons
of the year, and their regular vicissitudes : and in con-
firmation of this, he appointed the rainbow for a token,
which, (whether it used to appear before the flood or no;
was now to be the ratification of the truth of his promise
and his faithful witness in heaven.
The grants which God gave Noah and his sons were,
in mercy, to preserve the order of the world in its frame ; to
punish the guilty, and spare the lives of the innocent; and not to
proceed with rigour, for the wickedness of some particulars, to
the destruction of the whole ; otherwise, the survivors of this
calamity would be more wretched, than those that were washed
away in the common rain. If, after having suffered horror of
thought, and the terror of so dismal a spectacle, they should only
be delivered from one calamity to be consumed by another."
Antiq. b. 1. c. 4. But that this should be the purport of his
prayer, is not very likely, because we find no such indications of
terror in Noah, who knew the great and criminal causes of the
deluge to be such as could not happen every year, and who,
having found favour in the eyes of God, and a miraculous preser-
vation from a general destruction, can hardly be supposed to have
cast awpy his confidence in him so soon, and, instead thereof, to
be possessed with an abject and servile fear: and therefore we
may conclude, that the nature of his prayer and sacrifice was
eucharistical, and not deprecatory. — Heidegger 's History of the
Patriarchs, Essay 19.
b The words, in our translation are, ' I will not again curse the
ground any more for man's sake,' for ' the imagination of man's
heart is evil;' which is certainly very injuriously rendered, because
it makes the sacred author speak quite contrary to what he designed,
and is an affront to the justice, goodness, and wisdom of God,
who, by this translation of ' for,' instead of ' though,' might seem
to bless man for his evil imaginations. — Essay for a New Tran-
slation.
c For particular inundations there have been at several times,
in divers places, whereby towns and countries have been over-
whelmed with all their inhabitants.. — Poole's Annotations.
d All the versions do manifestly, in this place, confound the
four seasons of the year, which Moses exactly distinguishes.
For the Hebrew word kor, which they render cold, signifies the
winter, because of the cold that then reigns. The word chom,
which they render heat, signifies the spring, because of the
heat which abounds in Judea about the end of the spring, in the
months of May and June, which is the harvest time in that
country. The word kajts, which they render summer, does
indeed signify so; but when the word coroph, which they term
the winter, should be rendered autumn, which is the time ol
ploughing, and cultivating the ground, as may be seen, Prov. xx.
4. So that the whole sentence, which contains the promise
of God, Gen. viii. 22. if rendered justly, should run thus —
' While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, winter and
spring, summer and autumn, day and night, shall not cease.' —
An Essay for a New Translation. We Cannot but observe how
ever, that this vicissitude of times and seasons, which is here
promised as a blessing to mankind, is a full confutation of the
dreams of such writers as are apt to fancy, " That in the
primordial earth there was every where a perpetual spring and
equinox; that all the parts of the year had one and the same
tenor, face, and temper; and that there was no winter or sum-
mer, seed-time or harvest, but a continual temperature of the
air, and verdure of the earth;" which, if it were true, would
make this promise of God a punishment, rather than a blessing
to mankind. — See Burnet's Theory, b. 2. c. 3. and Heidegger's
History of the Patriarchs, Essay 19.
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
A. M. 1657. A. C. 2317; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2257. A. C. 31M. RF.N. CII. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. ix.
not only a the same dominion which our first parents,
before the fall, had over the animal creation, and a full
power to keep them in submission and subjection, but a
privilege likewise to kill any of these creatures for food ;
only with this restriction, that they were not to ° put
them to unnecessary torture, or to eat any part of their
blood, which might be a means to introduce the shedding
of human blood. The human kind, notwithstanding
their apostasy, did still retain some lineaments of the
Divine similitude ; and, therefore, whosoever murdered
any of them did thereby deface the image of God ; and
whether it were man '" or beast, stranger or near rela-
te A learned, and right reverend author, to show the renovation
of the earth after the deluge, and its deliverance from the curse
inflicted upon it by reason of Adam's transgression, runs the
parallel between the blessings and privileges, granted to Adam,
soon after his creation, and those restored to Noah and his
posterity, soon after the flood. To our first parents it is said,
' Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over evciy living thing that moveth on the earth,'
Gen. i. 28. To Noah and his sons it is said, ' The fear of you,
and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and
upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the
earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea, into your hand are they
delivered,' Gen. ix. 2. To Adam and Eve are granted for food
' every herb bearing seed ; and every tree, in the which is the
fruit of the tree, yielding seed/ Gen. i. 29. But Noah and his
sons have a large charter, ' Every moving thing that liveth, shall
be meat to you, even, as the green herb, have I given you all
things,9 Gen. ix. 3. The blessing upon the earth, at the creation,
w-as, ' Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed,
and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind,' Gen. i. 11. The
blessing after the flood is, ' While the earth remaineth, seed-time
and harvest shall not cease,' Gen. viii. 22. In the beginning,
' the lights in the firmament were appointed to divide the day
from the night, and to be for seasons, and for days, and years,'
Gen. i. 14. After the flood, the new blessing i*, ' That spring
and autumn, summer and winter, and day and night, shall not
cease,' Gen. viii. 22. Whereupon our author asks, what is be-
stowed in the first blessings, that is wanted in the second? What
more did Adam enjoy in his happiest days? What more did he
forfeit in his worst, with respect to this life, than that which is
contained in these blessings? If he neither had more, nor lost
more, all these blessings you see expressly restored to Noah and his
posterity: and, from all this, laid together, he concludes, that
the old curse upon the ground was, after the deluge, finished and
completed. — Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy.
b The words in the text are, — " But flesh with the life thereof,
which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat.' This the Hebrew
doctors generally understand to be a prohibition to cut ofl' any limb
of a living creature, and to eat it while the life, that is, the
blood was in it; whilst yet it lives and palpitates, or trembles, as
a modern interpreter has truly explained their sense: and in this
they are followed by several Christians, who think (as Maimonides
did) that there were some people in the old world, so savage and
barbarous, that they did eat raw flesh, while it was yet warm
from the beast, out of whose body it was cut piecemeal. Plutarch
tells us, that it was customary, in his time, to run red hot spits
through the bellies of live swine, to make their flesh more
delicious; and I believe some among us have heard of whipping
pigs, and torturing other creatures to death, for the same purpose.
Now these things could not be committed, if such men thought
themselves bound in conscience, to abstain from all unneci ary
cruelties to the creatures, and to bleed them to death, with all the
dispatch they could, before they touched them for food. — See
Patrick's Commentary, and Revelation Examined, vol. ii. p. 20.
c If it here should be asked, how any beast that is neither
capable of virtue nor vice, can be deemed culpable, in case it
should chance to kill any man? the answer is, — That tliis law was
ordained for the benefit of men, for whose use all beasts were
created. For, 1st, such owners, as were not careful to prevent
such mischiefs, were hereby punished. 2dly, Others were
admonished by their example to be cautious, Silly, God thereby
instructed them, that murder was a most grievous crime, whose
tion, was appointed by the magistrate to be put to death:
and, with these grants and promises, he gave them
encouragement (as he did our first progenitors) to " be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." which
was now left almost destitute of inhabitants.
But how much soever the deluge might deprive the
earth of its inhabitants, it had not so totally destroyed
the trees, and plants, and other vegetables, but that in a
short time they began to appear again ; and being
encouraged by the kindly warmth of the sun, discovered
their several species by the several fruits they bore.
Noah before the flood d had applied himself to hus-
bandry, and now, upon the recovery of the earth again,
betook himself to the same occupation. Among his
other improvements of the ground he had planted a vine-
yard, and perhaps was the first man who invented a
press to squeeze the juice out of the grape, and so make
wine. Natural curiosity might tempt hiin to taste the
fruit of his own labour ; but, being either unacquainted
with the strength of this liquor, or through age and in-
firmity unable to bear it, so it Mas, that, drinking a little
too freely, he became quite intoxicated with it ; and so
falling asleep in his tent, lay with his body uncovered,
and, in a very indecent posture, was exposed to the eyes
of his children.
Ham, who espied his father in this condition, instead
of concealing his weakness proclaimed it aloud ; and to
his other two brothers, Shem and Japhet, made him the
subject of his scorn and derision. But so far were they
from being pleased with his behaviour in this respect,
that taking a garment, and laying it upon both their
shoulders, they went backward till, coming to their
father, they dropt the garment upon him, and so cover-
ed the nakedness which their pious modesty would not
permit them to behold. Nor is it improbable that, to
prevent the like indecency, they watched him during the
remaining time of his sleep, and might possibly, upon
his awaking, acquaint him with what had happened :
whereupon, perceiving how unworthily his son Ham had
served him, e he cursed his race in the person of Canaan
his grandson ; and reflecting how respectfully his other
two sons had behaved, he rewarded their pious care
punishment extended even to beasts; and 4thly, the lives of men
were hereby much secured, when such beasts, as might do the
like mischief another time, were immediately dispatched, and
taken out of the way. — Patrick's Commentary.
d Anciently the greatest men esteemed nothing more honour-
able, and worthy their study, than the art of agriculture. Nihil
homine libero dignius, nothing more becoming a gentleman, was
the saying of the Roman orator; and for the truth of this the
Fabii, the Catos, the Varros, the Virgils, the Plinys, and other
great nam<;s are sufficient witnesses. — Bibliotheca Bildica, vol.
i. p. 251.
c It is a tradition among the eastern writers, that Noah, having
cursed Ham and Canaan, the effect of his curse, was, that not
only their posterity were made subject to their brethren, and
born, as we may say, in slavery; but that likewise, all On a sud-
den, the colour of their skin became black ; for they maintain, that
all the blacks descended from Ham and Canaan; that Noah
seeing so surprising a change, was deeply affected with it, and
begged of God, that he would be pleased to in pire Canaan's
masters with a tender and compassionate love for him ; and that
his prayer was heard. For, notwithstanding we may still, at this
day, observe the effect of Noah's curse, in the servitude of Ham's
posterity; yet we may remark likewise the effect of his prayer,
in that this sort of black slaves is sought for, and made much of i
in most places. — Calmvt's Dictionary on the word Ham.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
97
A. M. 1657. A. C. 2347; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
with each one a blessing, which, in process of time, was
fulfilled in their posterity.
This is all that the Scripture informs us of concerning
Noah, only we are given to understand, that he lived 350
years after the deluge, in all 950 ; and, if we will
believe the tradition of the orientals, he was buried in
Mesopotamia, where, not far from a monastery, called
Dair-Abunah, that is, the monastery of our father, they
show us in a castle a large sepulchre, which they say
belonged to him ; but as for the common opinion of his
dividing the world among his three sons before his death,
giving to Shem, Asia, — to Ham, Africa, — and to Japhet,
Europe, there is no manner of foundation for it either in
Scripture or tradition.
CHAP. III. — Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
It is a sad perversion of the use of human understanding,
and no small token of a secret inclination to infidelity,
when men make the condescensions of Scripture an
argument against its Divine authority; and from the
figures and allusions which it employs in accommoda-
tion to their capacities, draw conclusions unworthy of its
sacred penmen, and unbecoming the nature of God.
In relation to sacrifices, Ave find God declaring him-
self very fully in these words : l ' Hear, O my people,
and I will speak ; I will testify against thee, O Israel,
for I am God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee,
because of thy sacrifices, or for thy burnt-offerings,
because they were not always before me. I will take no
bullock out of thine house, or he-goats out of thy fold ;
■ — for thmkest thou that I Mill eat bull's flesh, or drink
the blood of goats ? Offer unto God thanksgiving, and
pay thy vows unto the most High, and call upon me in
the time of trouble, so will 1 hear thee, and thou shalt
praise me.' So that it is not the oblation itself, but
the gratefid sense and affections of the offerer, that are
acceptable to God, and which, by an easy metaphor,
may be said to be as grateful to him2 as perfumes or
sweet odours are to us.
And indeed, if either the sense of gratitude or fear,
if either the apprehension of God's peculiar kindness, or
of his wrathful indignation against sin, did ever produce
a sincere homage,3 it must have been upon this occasion
when the patriarch called to remembrance the many
vows he had made to God in the bitterness of his soul,
and in the midst of his distress ; when, coming out of
the ark, he had before his eyes the ruins of the old
world, so many dreadful objects of the divine vengeance ;
and at the same time saw himself safe amidst his little
family, which must have all likewise perished, had they
not been preserved by a miraculous interposition. And
with such affections of mind as this scene could not but
excite, it would be injurious not to think that his prayers
and oblations were answerably fervent, and his joy and
thanksgiving such as became so signal a deliverance.
But it was not upon account of these only that his
service found so favourable a reception. Sacrifices, 4 (as
1 Psalm 1. 7, &c. * Patrick's Commentary,
* Saui in's Dissertations. * See p. 47, &c
2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. be.
we showed before) were of Divine institution, and pre-
figurative of that great propitiation, which God, in due
time, would exhibit in the death of his Son. Whatever
merit they have, they derive from Christ, 5 ' who gave
himself for us, as an offering and a sacrifice to God for
a sweet smelling savour.' It was in the sense of this,
therefore, that Noah approached the altar which he had
erected, and while he was offering his appointed sacri-
fices, failed not to commemorate ' this Lamb of God
which was slain from the foundation of the world,' and
so found his acceptance in the Beloved ; for he is the 6
' Angel which comes and stands at the altar, having a
golden censer, and to whom is given much incense, that
he may oiler it with the prayers of the saints upon the
golden altar which is before the throne.' a
5 Eph. v. 2. 6 Rev. viii. 3.
a At the command of God, Noah, and all who were with him
in the ark came out of it, when the earth again became habitable.
He first employed himself in an act of worship, expressive of his
thankfulness to God for his preservation, and of his dependence
for life and acceptance, on the atonement of the promised Deliver-
er. ' He built an altar unto the Lord ; and took of every clean
beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the
altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour ; and the Lord said
in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for
man's sake : for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his
youth.' It is evident from these words,
First, that Noah had received the institution of sacrifice from
his ancestors, and not from immediate revelation. This was an
ordinance in use in the worship of God with which lie appears to
have been familiar: and though its observance is not expressly
mentioned in the period that intervened between the time of
Abel and the flood, we cannot doubt that it was used by the
faithful as the expression of their belief in the truth of the great
promise. Noah erected an altar, on which he presented to God
the divinely appointed typical sacrifice of propitiation.
Secondly, the typical sacrifice was acceptable to God. ' The
Lord smelled a sweet savour.' But how could the slaughter of
animals in honour of the Deity be pleasing in his sight? Has he
not said, ' every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon
a thousand hills? I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the
wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not
tell thee: for the world is mine and the fulness thereof. Will I
eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' We must
therefore consider the burnt-offerings of Noah as acceptable to
God only as they were designed to testily and show forth the
offering and sacrifice which Christ presented unto God for a
sweet-smelling savour; and because they were so regarded by
Noah when he practised them in the worship of his Maker, as the
expression of his faith and hope, and confidence. This view is
fully established,
Thirdly, by a consideration of the nature of the covenant
which was founded upon, and connected with, the sacrifice of
Noah. The covenant established with this patriarch, on occasion
of presenting his sacrifice, was a positive engagement without
any re-stipulation, the absolute promise of good to himself and to
his posterity. He gave to Noah a new grant of the earth and of
the inferior animals, different from that which had been originally
conveyed to Adam, inasmuch as this was founded upon the
covenant of grace, or upon the great atonement by which the
provisions of that covenant are secured. To this grant was
annexed a promise, that the earth should no more be visiti d with
such an overwhelming calamity, but should be preserved till the
consummation of all 1 ■
There was included in the covenant made with Noah, an
express grant of animal food to man. While to Adam was given
for meat, every herb upon the face of all the earth, and every tree
in the which is the fruit of a tree, to Noah it ^a~ said, ' Every
moving thing that liveth shall be meat for yon: even asthi
herb have I given you all things.* But while animal food was
permitted, the eating of blood was prohibited, chiefly, I appre-
hend, on account of its being used by divine appointment to
make atonemi nt.
Fourthly, the distinction of animals into clean ;md unclean,
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A. M. 1657. A. C. 2347; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. ix.
Wu mistake the matter however very much, if we
imagine that the merit of Noah's sacrifice, (even when
purified with the blood of Christ) was the procuring cause
of the covenant here mentioned. The covenant was in
the divine counsel from everlasting, and God only here
takes an occasion to acquaint Noah with it : but then we
may observe, that he expresses himself in such terms as
lay no restraint upon him from sending a judgment of
waters, or from bringing a general conflagration upon
the world at the last day. He binds himself only " never
to smite any more every living thing in the manner he
had done," that is, with an universal deluge ; but
if any nation deserves such a punishment, and the
situation of their country well admits of it, he may, if
he pleases, without breach of this covenant, bring a local
inundation upon them ; though it must be acknowledged,
that whenever we find him threatening any people with
his ' " sore judgments," he never makes mention of this.
It was a general tradition among the heathens, that
the world was to undergo a double destruction, one by
water and the other by fire. The destruction by fire St
Peter has given us a very lively description of. 2' The
heavens and the earth which are now,' says he, ' are kept
in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment;
for then shall the heavens pass away with a great noise,
and the elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth
also, and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up.'
But all this is no infraction upon the covenant made with
Noah, which relates to the judgment of a flood : and,
though this catastrophe will certainly be more terrible
than the other, yet it has this great difference in it, 3 that
it is not sent as a curse, but as a blessing upon the earth,
not as a means to deface and destroy, but to renew and
refine it ; and therefore the same apostle adds. 4 ' Never-
theless Ave, according to his promise, look for new hea-
vens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.'
Thus the covenant of God standeth sure : but then, in
relation to the sign or sacrament of it, whether it was
previous or subsequent to the deluge, this has been a
matter much debated among the learned. It cannot be
denied indeed, but that a this curious mixture of light
and shade discernible in the rainbow, arises naturally
1 See Ezek. xiv. 21. s 2 Pet. iii. 7, 10.
3 Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, vol. i. Essay 19.
4 2 Pet. iii. 13.
recognised by Noah, tends to prove the divine institution of
sacrifice. For, since animal food was not in use, at Least by
divine permission, before the deluge, such distinction can be
conceived only in reference to sacrifice. Accordingly, we find
the first use to which this distinction is applied in Scripture, is
tiiat of sacrifice: Noah having taken of every clean beast, and of
every clean fowl, and offered burnt-oflerings.. The question is,
how was this difference first made? Was it by the common
reason of mankind which led them to determine that ravenous
creatures were unfit for sacrifice? Are we not rather warranted
to believe that it was introduced by God at the same time that
lie instituted sacrifice. " Whoever considers carefully," says
Dr Kennicott, " will find, that the law is part a republication of
antecedent revelations and commands, long before given to man-
kind."— Dcwar on the Atonement, pp. 40 — 45.
a The learned Heidegger has given an account of the nature
and colours of the rainbow, and by what different causes they
are produced, in these very expressive words, " The chief cause
of the rainbow is the sun, or the solar ray received into a vapoury
cloud, and in it refracted by the various mediums composing the
mass — one of which, the more rare, is the air itself; another,
more dense, is the vapour which both receives the solar ray and
from the superficies of those parts, which constitute a
cloud, when the rays of the sun from the adverse part of
the hemisphere are darted upon it ; and for this reason, s
whenever there is the like disposition of the sun to the
cloud, it may be imagined that the same phenomenon
may be seen, and consequently at certain times has been
seen, not from the deluge only, but from the first foun-
dation of the world. b But as this opinion has nothing
in Scripture to enforce it, so are there no gTounds in
nature to give it any sanction, unless we will assert this
manifest untruth, — That every disposition of the air, and
every density of a cloud, is fitly qualified to produce a
rainbow.
This meteor (as the Scripture informs us)* was appoint-
5 See Brown's Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
6 Dr Jackson upon the Creed, b. 1. c. 16.
reflects it back on the retina of the eye ; — so that in a rainbow
there is partly anaklasis, or the refraction of a ray of light in the
massy deptli of the vapour, and partly diaklasis, or the reflection
of that ray on the eye, — which circumstances cannot be found
united unless in a cloud that is dewy and just about to dissolve
itself into rain, — for it must be only so rare as that a solar ray
can somewhat penetrate it, and at the same time so dense, that
when the ray hath sunk in it a little, the cloud may repel it. —
Its form is circular and bent, by reason of the sun's form; for a
rainbow always appears in the quarter of the heavens right opposite
to that luminary, formed by some cloud reflecting back its rays.
— The colours of the rainbow arising from the various mixture
of light and shade, are three in number, phoinikeos, or purple
and red — prasinos, leek-green or green, and alourgos, blue,
sea-coloured ; — for when the solar rays first enter the cloud,
because less of the opaque is passed through, the colour shown
is red or purple ; when it hath entered somewhat farther, the glow
of the colour is diminished, and thus arises green ; but having
sunk into the mass of the vapour as far as the lowest bend of the
arch, the colour from want of transparency is blue. — Essay 19th.
This description is pretty lively, and gives us some idea of this
strange phenomenon ; and yet we must own, that the nature of
refraction, on which the colours of the rainbow do depend, is one
of the abstrusest things that we meet with in the philosophy of
nature. Our renowned Boyle, who wrote a treatise on the sub-
ject of colours, after a long and indefatigable search into their
natures and properties, was not able so much as to satisfy himself
what light is, or (if it be a body) what kind of corpuscles, for
size and shape, it consists of, or how these insensible corpuscles
could be so differently, and yet withal so regularly refracted ; and
he freely acknowledges, that however some colours might be
plausibly enough explained, in the general, from experiments
he had made, yet whensoever he would descend to the minute
and accurate explication of particulars, he found himself very
sensible of the great obscurity of things. Dr Halley, the great
ornament of his profession, makes the same acknowledgment;
and, after having, from the given proportion of refraction,
accounted both for the colours and diameter of the rainbow, with
its several appearances, he could hence discern (as he tells us)
farther difficulties lying before him: particularly, from whence
arose the refractive force of fluids, which is a problem of no small
moment, and yet deservedly to be placed among the mysteries of
nature, nor yet subject to our senses or reasoning. And the
noble theorist of light himself, after his many surprising discov-
eries, built even upon vulgar experiments, found it too hard for
him to resolve himself in some particulars about it ; and, not-
withstanding all his prodigious skill in mathematics, and his
dexterous management of the most obvious experiments, he
concludes it at last to be a work too arduous for human under-
standing, absolutely to determine what light is, after what manner
refracted, and by what modes and .actions it produceth in our
minds the phantasies of colours. — Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 2.
Occasional Annotations 2. in the Appendix.
6 That tliis rainbow was thought to be of somewhat more than
mere natural extraction, the physical mythology of the ancient
heathens seems to testify, and it is not improbable, that, from
the tenor of God's covenant, here made with Noah, which
might be communicated to them by tradition, Homer, the great
Sect. I.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
99
A. M. 1(557. A. C. 2347; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
ed by God to be a witness of his covenant with the new
world, and a messenger to secure mankind from destruc-
tion by deluges ; so that, had it appeared before the
flood, the sight of it afterwards would have been but a
poor comfort to Noah and his posterity, whose fear of
an inundation was too violent ever to be taken away by
a common and ordinary sign.
For, suppose that God Almighty had said to Noah, '
" I make a promise to you, and to all living creatures,
that the world shall never be destroyed by water again ;
and for confirmation of this, behold I set the sun in the
firmament ;" would this have been any strengthening of
Noah's faith, or any satisfaction to his mind ? " AVhy,"
says Noah, " the sun was in the firmament when the deluge
came, and was a spectator of that sad tragedy ; and as
it may be so again, a what sign or assurance is this
against a second deluge ?" But now, if we suppose, on
the other hand, that the rainbow first appeared to the
inhabitants of the earth after the deluge, nothing could
be a more proper and apposite sign for Providence to
pitch upon, in order to confirm the promise made to
Noah and his posterity, that the world should no more
be destroyed by water. The rainbow had a secret con-
nexion with the effect itself, and so far was * a natural
1 Burnet's Theory,
father of Epic poetry, does by an easy and lively fiction, bring
in Jupiter, the king of heaven, sending Iris, his messenger, with
a peremptoiy command to Neptune, the prince of waters, to
desist from any farther assisting the Grecians, and annoying the
Trojans; and, at the same time, that Iris is sent with this mes-
sage to the watery deity, the poet has so contrived the matter,
that Apollo, or the sun, which is the parent and efficient cause
of the rainbow, be sent with another message to Hector, and
the Trojans, in order to encourage them to take the held again,
and renew their attack. The meaning of all which fine
machinery, is no more than this, — that, after a great deal of
rain, which had caused an innundation, and thereby made the
Trojan horse useless, the sun began to appear again, and the
rainbow in a cloud opposite to the sun, which was a sure prognos-
tic of fair weather. — Bibliothcca Biblica, vol. 1.; Occasional
Annotations, 2. in the Appendix.
a When God gives a sign in the heavens, or on the earth, of
any prophecy or promise to be fulfilled, it must lie by something
new, or by some change wrought in nature, whereby he testifies
to us that he is able and willing to stand to his promise. Thus
God puts the matter to Ahaz, ' Ask a sign of the Lord, ask it
cither in the depth, or in the height above ;' and when Ahaz
would ask no sign, God gives him one unasked; ' Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son.' Thus when Abraham asked a
sign, whereby he might be assured of God's promise, that Ins
seed should inherit the land of Canaan, it is said, that ' when the
sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and
a burning lamp passed between the pieces' of the beasts, which
hi' had cut asunder, Gen. xv. 17. And, in like manner, in the
KgD given to Ilezekiah for his recovery, and to Gideon for his
victory, in the former case, ' the shadow went back ten degrees
in Ahaz's dial, Isa. xxxviii. 8. and, in the latter, ' the fleece was
wet, and all the ground about it dry;' and then, to change the
trial, 'it was dry, and all the ground about it wet,' Judges vi.
38, 39. These were all signs, proper, significant, and satisfactory,
having something new, surprising, and extraordinary in them,
denoting the hand and interposition of God: hut where every
Cling continues to be as it was before, ami the face of nature, in
all its parts, the vary same, it cannot signify anything new, nor
any new intention of the author of nature; and, consequently,
cannot be a sign or pledge, a token or assurance of the accom-
plishment of any new covenant, or promise made by him. —
Hit Diet's Theory, b. 2. c. 5.
b Common philosophy teaches us, that the rainbow is a natural
sign, that there will not be much rain after it appears, but that
the clouds begin to disperse: for, as it never appears in a thick
cluud, but only in a thin, whenever it appears after showers which
2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF Cll. ix.
sign ; and as it appeared first after the deluge, and was
formed in a thin watery cloud, there is,methinks, a great
easiness and propriety of its application for such a pur-
pose. For if we suppose, that while God Almighty was
declaring his promise to Noah, and what he intended for
the sign of it, there appeared at the same time in the
clouds c a fair rainbow, that marvellous and beautiful
meteor which Noah had never seen before, it could not
but make a most lively impression upon him, quickening
his faith, and giving him comfort and assurance that
God would be stedfast to his purpose.
For God did not " set this bow in the clouds for his
own sake," to engage his attention and revive his
memory, whenever he looked on it (though that be the
expression which the Holy Spirit, speaking after the
manner of men, has thought fit to make use of), but for
our sakes was it placed there, as an illustrious symbol
of the Divine mercy and goodness, and to confirm our
belief and confidence in God : and therefore, whenever
2 ' Ave look upon the rainbow, we should do well to
praise him who made it ; for very beautiful is it in the
brightness thereof. It compasseth the heavens with a
glorious circle, and the hands of the Most High have
bended it.'
And as the goodness of God was very conspicuous to
Noah and his posterity, in giving them a new sign for the
confirmation of his promises ; so it was no less remark-
able in the new charter which he granted them, for the
enlargement of their diet. That our first parents, a in
their state of integrity, had not the liberty of eating flesh
is very evident, because they were limited by that injunc-
tion which appoints herbs and fruits for their food : 3
' Behold I have given you every herb, bearing seed,
* Ecclus. xliii. 11, 12. 3 Gen. i. 29, 30.
come from thick clouds, it is a token that they now grow thin;
and therefore the God of nature made choice of this sign, rather
than any other, to satisfy us, that he would ne\ er sutler the
clouds to thicken again to such a degree as to bring another de-
luge upon the earth. — Patrick's Comment. A rainbow is formed
from the opposite sun darting its rays on a cloud that is not
thick ; it therefore naturally signifies, that by the command of
God the rain will no more overwhelm the world; for how can it
take place, since neither is the heaven totally overspread with
clouds, nor are those clouds which exist exceedingly dense. —
Valesius on Sacred Philosophy , c. 9.
c The ingenious Marcus Marci is of opinion, that the rainbow
which first appeared to Noah after the flood, ami was so particu-
larly dignified by God, as to be consecrated fora divine sign, was
not the common one, but a great and universal iris, inimitable by
art, which he has defined by a segment of a circle, dissected into
several gyrations (or rounds) by the diversity of the colours,
differing one from another, begotten by the sunbeams refracted
in the atmosphere, and terminated with anopaque superficies. But
whether this serves to explain the matter any better, or whether
the common rainbow In- not an appearance illustrious i nougb to
answer the purposes for which it was intended, we Leave the
curious to inquire; and shall only observe farther, thai, whether
it was an ordinary or extraordinary how which appeared to Noah,
it is the opinion of son e, that the time of its firs! appearing, was
not immediately after he had sacrificed, (as is generally supposed,)
but on the 15('th day of the flood, when God remembered Noah,
upon which very day of the year they likew ise cal< ulate the birth
of Christ (as pretypified thereby) to have exactly fallen out, and
tl,at even the glorj; of the Lord, which shone round about the
shepherds, was a gracious phenomenon, corresponding with this
sign of the covenant. — Bibliotheca Biblica, ibid.
t/This notion the Pagan poets ami philosophers had received.
For Ovid in his description of these times, gives us to understand
that they ful on no flesh, hut lived altogether on herbs and
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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A. M. 1G57. A. C. 2347; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. ix.
which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in
the which is the fruit of a tree, yielding seed ; to you it
shall be for meat.' Nay, so far was mankind from being
indulged the liberty of eating flesh at that time, that we
find ' the beasts of the field,' creatures that in their
nature are voracious, ' and the fowl of the air, and every
thing that creeped upon the earth,' under the same
restraint, as having nothing allowed them for their food
but the herbage of the ground ; because it was the
Almighty's will that, in the state of innocence, no
violence should be committed, nor any life maintained
at the loss and forfeiture of another's.
This was the original order and appointment, and so
it continued after the fall ; for we can hardly suppose
that God would allow a greater privilege to man, after
his transgression, than he did before. On the contrary,
we find him 1 cursing the ground for man's sake, and
telling him expressly, that ' in sorrow he should eat of it
all the days of his life ;' and though it should bring forth
thorns and thistles to him, yet here the restriction is still
continued, ' Of the herbs of the field thou shalt eat,'
which is far from implying a permission to make use of
living creatures for that purpose.
Nay, farther, Ave may observe, that such a permission
had been inconsistent with God's intention of punishing
him by impoverishing the earth ; since, had God indulged
him the liberty of making use of what creatures he pleased
for his food, he might easily have made himself an amends
for the unfruitfulness of the earth, by the many good
things which nature had provided for him. The dominion,
therefore, which God at first gave mankind over brute
animals could not extend to their slaying them for food,
since another kind of diet was enjoined them ; nor could
the distinction of (dean and unclean respect them as
things to be eaten, but as things to be sacrificed. The
first permission to eat them was given to Noah and his
sons, and is plainly a distinct branch of power, from
what God grants when he tells them, 2 ' The fear of
you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of
the earth,' &c.
If it be asked, For what reason God should indulge
Noah and his posterity in the eating of flesh after the
flood, which he had never permitted before it ? the most
probable answer is — That he therefore did it, because
1 Gen. iii. 17, IS. -' Gen. ix. 2.
fruits, when he introduces Pythagoras, a great inquirer into the
ancient and primitive practices oi' the world, expressing himself
in this manner; —
But th.it old time which we the golden rail,
Was blessed with every useful fruit, and all
Those fiowery herbs which beautify the ground,
By Nature's hand were thickly strewn around.
No land was then defiled with human gore,
The birds unhurt through airy space might soar ;
The timorous bare might widely, dauntless, roam,
Gambol its fill, make every field its home ;
No wily fisher snared the finny tribe,
Lured from their homes by his deceitful bribe ;
Fraud and deceit were wholly yet unknown.
On every hind peace raised her golden throne.
Met. 50. IS.
Porphyry, in his book on Abstinence, asserts the same thing,
namely, that in the golden age no flesh of beasts was eaten, and
lie is to be pardoned in what he adds afterwards, namely, that
war and famine introduced this practice. He was not acquainted
with Genesis ; he knew not that. God's order to Noah after the
flood was, ' that every living creature should be meat for him.' —
Edtvards' Surrey of Religion, vol, I. p. 117.
the earth was corrupted by the deluge, and the virtue of
its herbs, and plants, and other vegetables, sadly impair-
ed by the saltness and long continuance of the waters,
so that they could not yield that wholesome and solid
nutriment which they did before : Though others rather
think, that God indulged them in this, 3 ' because of the
hardness of their hearts ;' and that, perceiving the eager-
ness of their appetites towards carnal food, and design-
ing withal to abbreviate the term of human life, he gave
them a free license to eat it ; but knowing at the same
time that it was less salutary than the natural products
of the earth, he thence took occasion to accomplish his
will and determination of having the period of human
life made much shorter. Nor is the reason which *
Theodoret assigns for God's changing the diet of men
from the fruits of the earth to the flesh of animals much
amiss, viz., "That foreknowing, in future ages, they
would idolize his creatures, he might aggravate the
absurdity, and make it more ridiculous so to do, by their
consuming at their tables that to which they sacrificed at
their altars ; since nothing is more absurd than to
worship what we eat."
It cannot be denied, indeed, but that the grant of
dominion which God gave Adam in his state of innocence
is now much impaired ; and that the creatures, which to
him were submissive through love, by us must be used
with severity, and subjected by fear. But still it is no
small happiness to us that we know how to subdue them ;
that the horse and the ox patiently submit to the bridle
and the yoke ; and such creatures as are less governable,
we have found out expedients to reclaim. For though
man's strength be comparatively small, yet is there no
creature in the earth, sea, or air, but what, a by some
stratagem or other, he can put in subjection under him.
But 5 ' canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook ?
or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down ?
Canst thou put an hook into his nose ? or bore his jaw
through with a spear ? Will he make many supplications
unto thee ? Will he speak soft words unto thee ? Wilt
thou take him for a servant for ever ?' All these questions,
how expressive soever of the several qualities of this
portentous creature, may nevertheless be answered in
the affirmative, viz. That how large soever in bulk, and
how tremendous soever in strength this animal may be,
yet the Greenland fishermen, who every year return with
a Matt. xix. 8.
4 In Gen. Qurest. 55. p. 44.
5 Job xli. 1., &c.
a This superiority of man over all other creatures, his holding
them in subjection, and making them subservient to his uses,
we find elegantly described by Oppianus, in the following
verses: —
There is not in the universe a noMer thing than man.
The deathless sons of heaven alone before him take the van ;
The potentate of all below, he holds his regal rod,
And earth with all its habitants bend to his lofty nod.
How manya fury-breathing brute, that roams the mountain brow,
Has fallen a prey to ravenous birds, struck by his deadly blow ;
How many of these winged tribes that sweep the clouds and sky.
Are victims to the shaft of death, aimed by his piercing eye.
Though pigmy be his form, indeed, yet the lion's lordly might.
Can't free it from his well-wrought snares, nor th' eagle's airy
flight
Ensure it freedom from his grasp ; the strongest feel his chain.
The elephant, whose monstrous bulk rolls o'er the eastern plain,
Must yield to him its boundless strength — a slave for evermore
The patient labour-bearing mule, must still its fate deplore.
B. 5. llttlieictican.
Shct. l.'J
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
101
A. M. 1657. A. C. 2347; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. ix.
its spoils, do literally perform what our author seems to
account impossible ; they * ' fill his skin with barbed
irons, and his head with fish-spears, and so they play
with him as with a bird ; they bind him for their maidens,
and part him among their merchants.'
In short, God has implanted in all creatures a fear
and dread of man. 2 This is the thing which keeps
wolves out of our towns and lions out of our streets ; and
though the sharpness of hunger, or violence of rage, may
at certain times make them forget their natural instinct
(as the like causes have sometimes divested man of his
reason), yet no sooner are these causes removed, but
they return to their ordinary temper again, without
pursuing their advantage, or combining with their fellow-
brutes to rise up in rebellion against man, their lord and
master.
a Some modern writers of no small note are clearly
of opinion, that the Ararat where the ark rested was
mount Caucasus, not far from China, where Noah and
some part of his family settled, without travelling to
Shinar, or having any hand in the building of Babel ;
and the arguments they alleged for the support of this
opinion are such as these : — That the Mosaic history is
altogether silent as to the peopling of China at the dis-
persion, and wholly confines itself within the bounds of
the then known world ; that the Chinese language and
writing are so entirely different from those among us
(introduced by the confusion at Babel), that it cannot
well be supposed they were ever derived from them ;
and that (taking their first king Fohi and Noah to be the
same person) there are several * traditions relating to
them, wherein they seem to agree, that the reign of Fohi
coincides with the times of Noah, and the lives of his
successors correspond with the men of the same ages
recorded in Scripture ; and from hence they infer, that
the true reason why Moses makes so little mention of
Noah, in the times subsequent to the flood, is this, That
he lived at too great a distance, and had no share in the
transactions of the nations round about Shinar, to whom
alone, after the dispersion of mankind, he is known to
confine his history. This indeed is solving the difficulty
at once : but then, as this opinion is only conjectural,
the histories and records of China are of a very uncer-
tain ami precarious authority, and such as are reputed
genuine of no older date than some few centuries before
the birth of Christ, c the major part of the learned world
has supposed, either that Noah, settled in the country of
1 Job xii. 5, &c. * Miller's Histoiy of the Church, b. I.e. 1.
a Dr Alix, in his Reflections on the Books of the Holy Serip-
iires. Mr Winston, in his Chronology of the Old Testament.
Bhuckford in his Connection, and Bedford, in his Scripture
Chronology.
b Thus, in the Chinese histoiy, Fohi is said to have had no
father, which agrees well enough with Noah, because the memory
of his father might be lost in the deluge; that Fohfs mother
Conceived him as she was encompassed with a rainbow, which
Minis to allude to the rainbow's first appearing to Noah after the
Bood; and that Fohi carefully bred up seven sorts of creatures
which he used to sacrifice to the supreme Spirit of heaven and
earth, which is an impi rfect tradition of Noah's taking into the
ark of every clean least by sevens, and of his making use of none
but. these in all his burnt-ofli rings.— Shuckford's Connect, b. 2.
c There seems to lie no foundation whatever for the hypothesis
that Noah was the founder of the Chinese monarchy, or indeed
tnat he ever .-aw the country known by that name. Sir William
Armenia, did not remove from thence, nor had any con-
cern in the work of Babel, and so falls not under the
historian's consideration ; or that, if he did remove with
the rest into the plains of Shinar, being now superan-
nuated and unfit for action, the administration of things
was committed to other hands, which made his name and
authority the less taken notice of.
It must be acknowledged, however, that the design of
the sacred penman is to be very succinct in his account
of the affairs of this period, because he is hastening to
the history of Abraham, the great founder of the Jewish
nation, and whose life and adventures he thinks himself
concerned, upon that account, to relate more at large.
However this be, it is certain, from the tenor of his
writing, that he is far from leading us into any suspicion
of his having a private malignity to Noah's character.
He informs us, that, amidst the corruption of the
antediluvian world, he preserved himself immaculate,
and did therefore ' find favour in the sight of God,' ami
was admitted to the honour of his immediate converse :
that, to preserve him from the general destruction, God
instructed him how to build a vessel of security, undertook
the care and conduct of it himself, and, amidst the ruins of
a sinking world, landed it safe on one of the mountains
of Armenia ; that, as soon as the deluge was over, God
accepted of his homage and sacrifice, and not only
renewed to him the same charter which he had originally
granted to our first progenitor, but over and above that,
gave him an enlargement of his diet which he had not
granted to any before ; and with him made an everlasting
covenant, never to destroy the world by water any more,
whereof he constituted his bow in the clouds to be a
glorious symbol. In this point of light it is that Piloses
has all along placed the patriarch's character ; and
therefore, if in the conclusion of it he was forced to
shade it with one act of intemperance, this, we may
reasonably conclude, proceeded from no other passion
but his love of truth ; and to every impartial reader must
be d a strong argument of his veracity, in that he has
Jones lias shown it to be in the highest degree probable that the
Chinese empire was not founded at an earlier period than the
12th century before the Christian era; and that the people them-
selves, far from being aborigines, are a mixed race descended
from Hindoos and Tartars. During the life of Noah, he and his
family, are supposed to have lived agricultural lives, in the fer-
tile plain of Armenia, at the foot of mount Ararat, which
according to Tournefort, is a most delightful region— still famous
for its vines ; and there the venerable patriarch died 350 years after
the deluge, but long before the impious rebellion of part of his de-
scendants in the plain Shinar, which introduced into the world
the confusion of tongues. Where Dr Shuckf ord met with the
Chinese history which he quotes I know not ; but Sir William
Jones has proved, by the testimony of Confucius himself, that no
historical monument then existed in China of events of an earlier
date than 1100 years before our era. The stories of Fohi's
conception by the rainbow, and his having reared seven sorts of
animals for sacrifice, certainly do not appear to have been derived
by tradition from Noah's preservation in the ark ; but that tra-
dition passed into China horn Hindostan. where, in the most
ancient, writings, man)' accounts of the deluge are still preserved.
See ^Isiutir Researches, \ol. ii. mem. 25. and Hates' s Analysis,
&c. vol. 1.— En.
rfTo confirm in some measure, the truth of this account
of Moses, we have an heathen story, which seems to have
sprung from some tradition concerning it; for it tells us, that
on a certain day, Myrrha, wife, or (.as others say) nurse to
Hammon, and mother of Adonis, having her son in her company,
found Cynistaa sleeni '•■'. ill uncovered, and in an
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interspersed the faults with the commendations of his
worthies, and, through his whole history, drawn no one
character so very fair, as not to leave some blemishes,
some instances of human frailty still abiding on it. And
indeed, if we consider the thing rightly, we shall find it
an act of singular kindness, and benefit to us, that God
has ordered the faults and miscarriages of his saints so
constantly to be recorded in Scripture ; since ' they are
written for our instruction,' to remind us of our frailty,
and to alarm our caution and fear.
Noah, we read, had escaped the pollutions of the old
world, and approved his fidelity to God in every trying
juncture ; and yet we see him here falling of his own
accord, and shamefully overcome in a time of security
and peace, when he had no temptations to beset him,
nor any boon companions to allure him to excess : and
therefore his example calls perpetually upon * ' him that
thinketh he standeth, to take heed lest he fall.' More
especially it informs us, that 3 ' wine is a mocker, strong
drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is
not wise ;' and therefore it exhorts, in the words of the
wise man, 3 ' Look not thou upon wine when it is red,
when it giveth its colour in the cup, when it moveth
itself aright. At the last it will bite like a serpent, and
sting like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange
women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things : yea,
thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the
sea, and as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.'
There is not however all the reason that is imagined
to suppose that Noah was drunk to any such excessive
degree. The same word which is here used occurs * in
another place in this book of Genesis ; where we read,
that Joseph's brethren drank and were merry with him ;'
and yet the circumstances of the entertainment will not
suffer us to think that they indulged themselves in
any excess, in the presence of him whom, as yet, they
knew to be no other than the governor of Egypt. And,
in like manner, if we may be allowed to take the word
here in an innocent sense, its import will only be, that
Noah drank of the wine plentifully perhaps, but not to a
debauch, and so fell asleep. For we must observe, that
Moses's design is, not to accuse Noah of intemperance,
but only to show upon what occasion it was that the
Canaanites, whom the people under his command were
now going to engage, were accursed, and reprobated by
God, even from the days of Noah, and consequently in
more likelihood to fall into their hands.
Without perplexing ourselves therefore to find out
such excuses as several interpreters have devised ; as,
that Noah was unacquainted with the nature of the vine
in general, a or with the effects of this in particular, or
1 1 Cor. x. 12. * Prov. xx. 1. 3 Prov. xxiii. 31, &c.
4 Ch. xliii. 34.
indecent posture. She ran immediately, and informed Hammon
of it ; he gave notice of it to his brothers, who, to prevent the
confusion which Cynistas might be in to find himself naked,
covered him with something. Cynistas, understanding what
had passed, cursed Adonis, and pursued Myrrha into Arabia ;
where, after having wandered nine months, she was changed into
a tree, which bears myrrh. Hammon and Ham are the same
person, and so are Adonis and Canaan. — Culmcfs Dictionary on
the word Ham.
a It is a Jewish tradition or allegory, that the vine which Noah
planted was not of ordinary terrestrial growth, but was carried
down the river out of Paradise, or at least out of Eden, and found
that the age and infirmity of his body, or the deep con-
cern and melancholy of his mind, made him liable to be
overcome with a very little ; we may adventure to say,
that he drank plentifully without impeaching his sobriety ;
and that, while he was asleep, he chanced to be uncov-
ered, without any stain upon his modesty. There is a
great deal of difference between satiety and intemper-
ance, between refreshing nature and debauching it ; and
considering withal that the fashion of men's habits was at
that time loose, (as they were likewise in subsequent
ages before the use of breeches was found out) such an
accident might have easily happened without the imputa-
tion of any harm.
5 The Jewish doctors are generally of opinion, that
Canaan,6 having first discovered his grandfather's naked-
ness, made himself merry therewith, and afterwards
exposed it to the scorn of his father. Whoever the per-
son was, it is certain that he is called the younger,6 or
little son of Noah, which cannot well agree with Ham,
because he was neither little, nor his younger son, but
the second, or middlemost, as he is always placed : 7 nor
does it seem so pertinent to the matter in hand, to men-
tion the order of his birth, but very fit (if he speaks of
his grandson) to distinguish him from the rest. So that,
if it was Canaan who treated his grandsire in this unwor-
thy manner, the application of the curse to him, who was
first in the offence, is far from being a mistake in Noah.
It is no random anathema, which he let fly at all adven-
tures, but a cool, deliberate denunciation, which pro-
ceeded not from a spirit of indignation, but of prophecy.
The history indeed takes notice of this malediction,
immediately upon Noah's awaking out of his sleep, and
being informed of what had happened; but this is occa-
sioned by its known brevity, which (as we have often
remarked) relates things as instantly successive, when a
considerable space of time ought to interfere. In all
s Calmet's Diet, on the word Canaan. ° Gen. ix. 24.
7 Patrick's Commentary,
by him ; and, as some have imagined, that the tree of know-
ledge of good and evil was a vine ; so by the description given
thereof, and the fatal consequences attending it, there seems to
be a plain allusion to it, and some reason to believe, that it was
one and the same tree, by which the nakedness both of Adam
and Noah was exposed to derision. — Targ. Jonath.
b Interpreters have invented several other reasons, why the
curse, which properly belonged to Ham, was inflicted on his son
Canaan; as, 1st, When Canaan is mentioned, Ham is not
exempted from the malediction, but rather more deeply plunged
into it, because parents are apt to be more affected with their
children's misfortunes than their own ; especially if themselves
brought the evil upon them by their own fault or folly. 2dly,
God having blessed the three sons of Noah at their going
out of the ark, it was not proper that Noah's curse should inter-
fere with the divine blessing, but very proper that it should be
transferred to Canaan, in regard to the future extirpation of the
people which were to descend from him. But, 3dly, Some ima-
gine that there is here an ellipsis, or defect of the word fathei,
since such relative words are frequently omitted, or understood
in Scripture. Thus, Matt. iv. 21, James of Zebedee, for the son
of Zebedee ; John xix. 25, Mary of Cleopas, for the wife of
Cleopas ; and Acts vii. 16, Emmor of Sychem, for the father of
Sychem, which our translation rightly supplies; and, in like
manner, Canaan may be put for the father of Canaan, as the
Arabic translation has it, that is, Ham, as the Septuagint here
render it. And though Ham had more sons, yet lie may here
be described by his relation to Canaan, because in him the curse
was more fixed and dreadful, reaching to his utter extirpation,
whilst the rest of Ham's posterity, in after ages, were blessed
with the saving knowledge of the gospel. —Poole's Annotations.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
103
A. M. 1657. A. C. 2317; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
probability these predictions of Noah, which point out
the different fates of his posterity, were such as1 we find
a Jacob pronouncing- over his sons a little before his
death; and it is not unlikely that the common opinion,
of Noah's dividing- the earth among his, might take its
Original from these last words that we read of him, which
were certainly accomplished in their event.
The curse upon Canaan b is, that he should be a servant
to Sheiu: and,2 about 800 (or, according to Dr Hales,
I54(i) years after this, did not the Israelites, descend-
ants of Shem, take possession of the land of Canaan,
subdue thirty of its kings, destroy most of its inhabitants,
lay heavy tributes upon the remainder, and, by oppres-
sions of one kind or other, oblige some to flee into
Egypt, c others into Africa, and others into Greece ? He
was doomed likewise to be a servant to Japhet ; and
did not the Greeks and Romans, descended from Japhet,
utterly destroy the relics of Canaan, who fled to Tyre,
built by the Sidonians ; to Thebes, built by Cadmus ; and
to Carthage, built by Dido? For who has not heard of
the conquests of the Romans over the Africans?
The blessing upon Japhet is, that his territories should
be enlarged: 3 and can we think otherwise, when (as we
shall show anon) not only all Europe, and the Lesser
Asia, but Media likewise, and part of Armenia, Iberia,
Albania, and the vast regions towards the north, which
anciently the Scythians, but now the Tartars, inhabit, fell
to the share of his posterity ? It was likewise declared,
tluit he should dwell in the tents of Shem ; and is it not
notorious that the Greeks and Romans invaded and
1 Gen. xlix. i Patrick's Commentary in locum.
3 Patrick's Commentary.
a That which may confirm us in this opinion is, — That Jacob,
when he ealleth his children together, acquaints them, that his
purpose is ' to tell them that which shall befall them in the last
days;' and that he does not always presage blessings, but some-
times ill luck to their posterity, and (in the same manner that
Noah does) now and then drops a note of his displeasure, accord-
ing as their behaviour has been; for thus he says of Simeon and
Levi, in regard to the slaughter of the Shechemitcs, 'Cursed be
their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel,'
Gen. xlix. 7.
b Dr Hales, who perfectly agrees with our author, that the
curse was pronounced on Canaan only, and not on Ham and
his descendants generally, and who has a long dissertation on the
subject, second edition, pp. 344 — 348, justly remarks, that the
curse denounced against Canaan's posterity, to be ' servant of
servants,' the lowest of servants, even slaves, to their brethren
in general, did not affect individuals, nor even nations, so long
as they continued righteous. In Abraham's days Melchisedek,
whose name was expressive of his character, signifying ' king
of righteousness,' was a worthy and revered 'priest of the most
high (iod.' And Abimelech, whose name denotes 'parental
king,' pleaded the integrity of his heart, and righteousness of
his nation before God ; and his plea was accepted. Yet they
appear to have been Canaanites. (See Gen. xiv. 18 — 20; xv.
l(i; xx. 4 — 9.) At the same time the impieties and abomina-
tions of their neighbours, in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,
&c, drew down the signal vengeance of Heaven in their over-
throw.— Ed.
c Procopius (on the Vandal war, b. ii. c. 10) tells us, that, in
the province of Tingitana, and in the very ancient city of Tingis,
which was founded by them, there are two great pillars to be
seen, of white stone, erected near a large fountain, with an
inscription in Phoenician characters, to this purpose, " We are
people preserved by flight, from that rover Jesus, the son of Nave,
whn pursued us." And what makes it very probable that they
bent their flight this way, is the great agreement, and almost
identity, of the Punic with the Canaanitish, or Hebrew language.
— Calmet's Dictionary on the word Canaan.
2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. ix.
conquered that part of Asia where the posterity of Shem
had planted themselves; that both Alexander and Caesar
were masters of Jerusalem, and made all the countries
thereabout tributary ? " You," says * Justin Martyr,
(speaking to Trypho the Jew concerning his nation,)
" who are descended from Shem, according as God had
appointed, came into the land of the children of Canaan
and made it your own; and, in like manner, according
to the Divine decree, the sons of Japhet (the Romans)
have broken in upon you, seized upon your whole coun-
try, and still keep possession of it. Thus the sons of
Shem," says he, "have overpowered and reduced the
Canaanite ; and the sons of Japhet have subdued the sons
of Shem, and made them their vassals ; so that the pos-
terity of Canaan are become, in a literal sense, servants
of servants."
But, in the blessing bestowed upon Shem, why the
God of Shem, you will say, and not the God of Japhet?3
They were both of them equally observant of their father,
and joined in the pious office that they did him. The
preference, if any, was due to the first Jiorn; and there-
fore we may presume, that if the blessing here, peculiar
to Shem, had been any part of a temporal covenant, or
any thing in the power of his father to bestow, he would
have conferred it on Japhet. But as the apostle to the
Hebrews tells us,6 'that he was heir of righteousness
which is by faith,' he foresaw that in Seth's family God
would settle his church; that of his seed Christ should
be born according to the flesh; and that the covenant
which should restore man to himself and to his Maker,
should be conveyed through his posterity. And this
accounts for the preference given to Shem ; for Noah
spake not of his own choice, but declared the counsel of
God, Avho had now, as he frequently did afterwards,
' chosen the younger before the elder.'
Thus it appears upon inquiry, that these prophecies of
Noah were not the fumes of indigested liquor, but7 the
words of truth and soberness: and though their sense
was not so apparent at the time of their being pro-
nounced, yet their accomplishment has now explained
their meaning, and verified that observation of the apostle
(which very probably alludes to the very predictions now
before us). ' No prophecy is of any private interpreta-
tion, for the prophecy came not of old time by the will
of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved
by the Holy Ghost.'
CHAP. IV.— Of the Prohibition of Blood.
The grant which God was pleased to give Noah and his
posterity, to eat the flesh of all living creatures, has this
remarkable restriction in it, e ' But the flesh, with the life
thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not cat. ''
Whether this prohibition related to the eating of things
•Dial, contra Tryp. Jud. p. 288.
5 Bp. Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy, p. 103.
6 Heb. xi. 7. ' Acts xxvi. k6. Mien. ix. 4.
d Mr Bruce has given a very satisfactory account of the prac-
tice of eating blood in Abyssinia. '1 Ins custom, so prevalent in
several places, is forbidden in the Scriptures. A recital of the
narrative will probably suggest to the reader the reasons of the
prohibition. Mr Bruce tells us, that not long after our losing
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A. M. 1G67. A. C. 2347 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
strangled, and such as died of themselves, in which the
blood was settled,1 as some will have it, or to the eating of
the flesh of creatures reeking in blood, and their limbs cut
off, while they themselves were yet alive, 2as others imagine,
is not so material here to inquire, since the former was
prohibited by subsequent laws, both 3 in the Jewish and
Christian church, and the latter was a practice too ab-
horrent to human nature, one would think, to need any
prohibition at all. Whether, therefore, it be blood con-
gealed, or blood mingled in the flesh, that is here pri-
marily intended, the injunction must at least equally ex-
tend to blood simple and unmixed ; nor can any inter-
pretation imaginable be more natural and obvious than
this : ' Though I give you the flesh of every creature,
that you shall think proper to make use of for food, yet
I do not, at the same time, give you the blood with it.
The blood is the life, or vehicle, or chief instrument of
life in every creature ; it must therefore be reserved for
another use, and not be eaten.'
This is the true sense of the prohibition, compared
with those parts of the Levitical law, wherein we find it
re-enjoined : but then the question is, whether this in-
2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. ix.
I junction be obligatory upon us now, under the dispensa-
tion of the gospel ? or whether the gospel, which is the
law of liberty, has set us free from any such observance ?
and a question it is, that ought the rather to be deter-
mined, because some have made it a matter of no small
scruple to themselves, whilst others have passed it by
with neglect, as a law of temporary duration only, and
now quite abrogated.
That therefore the reader may, in this matter, chiefly
judge for himself, 1 shall fairly state the arguments on
both sides ; and, when I have done this, by a short exa-
mination into the merits of each evidence, endeavour to
convince myself and others, on which side of the ques-
tion it is that truth preponderates, and consequently,
what ought to be the practice of every good Christian in
relation to this law.
Those who maintain the lawfulness of eating blood, do
not deny, but that this prohibition obliged Noah and his
posterity, that is, all mankind, to the time of the promulga-
tion of the law ; do not deny, but that, at the giving of the
law, this prohibition was renewed, and more explicit rea-
sons were given for the observation of it ; nay, do not deny,
1 St Chiysostom, and Ludovicus de Dieu.
8 Maimonides, and our Selden de Jure Gentium.
3 See Lev. xvii. 12, and Acts xv. 20.
" sight of the ruins of this ancient capital of Abyssinia, we over-
took three travellers driving a cow before them; they had black
goat skins upon their shoulders, and lances and shields in their
hands ; in other respects they were but thinly clothed ; they ap-
peared to be soldiers. The cow did not seem to be fatted for
killing, and it occurred to us all, that it had been stolen. This,
however, was not our business, nor was such an occurrence at all
remarkable in a country so long engaged in war. We saw that
our attendants attached themselves in a particular manner to the
three soldiers that were driving the cow, and held a short conver-
sation with them. Soon alter, we arrived at the hithermost bank
of the river, where I thought we were to pitch our tent : the
drivers suddenly tript up the cow, and gave the poor animal a
very rude fall upon the ground, which was but the beginning of
her sufferings. One of them sat across her neck, holding down
her head by the horns, the other twisted the halter about her fore
feet, while the third, who had a knife in his hand, to my great
surprise, in place of taking her by the throat, got astride upon
her belly, before her hind legs, and gave her a very deep wound
in the upper part of the buttock. From the time I had seen them
throw the beast upon the ground I had rejoiced, thinking that
when three people were killing a cow, they must have agreed to
sell part of her to us ; and I was much disappointed upon hearing
the Abyssinians say, that we were to pass the river to the other
side, and not encamp where I intended. Upon my proposing
they should bargain for part of the cow, my men answered, what
they had already learned in conversation, that they were not then
to kill her ; that she was not wholly theirs, and they could not
sell her. This awakened my curiosity ; I let my people go for-
ward, and staid myself, till I saw, with the utmost astonishment,
two pieces, thicker and longer than our ordinary beef steaks, cut
out of the higher part of Ahe buttock of the beast : how it was
done, I cannot positively say." — Travels, vol. Hi., p. 142.
" We have an instance in the life of Saul, that shows the pro-
pensity of the Israelites to this crime. Saul's army, after a battle,
Hew, that is, fell voraciously upon the cattle they had taken, and
threw them upon the ground to cut off their flesh, and eat them
raw ; so that the army was defiled by eating blood, or living ani-
mals, 1 Sam. xiv. 33. To prevent this, Saul caused to be rolled
to him a great stone, and ordered those that killed their oxen, to
cut their throats upon that stone. This was the only lawful way
of killing animals for food ; the tying of the ox, and throwing it
upon the ground, was not permitted as equivalent. The Israelites
did probably in that case, as the Abyssinians do at this clay; they
cut a part of its throat, so that blood might be seen on the ground,
but nothing mortal to the animal followed from that wound ; but
after laying his head upon a large stone, and cutting his throat,
the blood fell from on high, or was poured on the ground like
water, and sufficient evidence appeared that the creature was
dead, before it was attempted to eat it. We have seen that the
Abyssinians came from Palestine a very few years after this, and
we are not to doubt, that they then carried with them this, with
many other Jewish customs, which they have continued to this
day." — Bruce's Travels, vol. Hi., p. 299.
To corroborate the account given by Mr Bruce, in these ex
tracts, it may be satisfactory to affix what Mr Antes has said upon
the subject, in his observations on the manners and customs of
the Egyptians, p. 17. " When Mr Bruce returned from Abys-
sinia, I was at Grand Cairo. I had the pleasure of his company
for tlu-ee months almost every day; and having, at that time, my-
self an idea of penetrating into Abyssinia, I was very inquisitive
about that country, on hearing many things from him which
seemed almost incredible to me ; I heard many eye-witnesses
often speak of the Abyssinians eating raw meat. I shall proceed
to relate one of those occurrences which Mr Pearce himself wit-
nessed.
" On the 7th of February, he went out with a party of Lasta
soldiers on one of their marauding expeditions, and in the course
of the day they got possession of several head of cattle, with which,
towards evening, they made the best of their way back to the
camp. They had then fasted for many hours, and still a consi-
derable distance remained for them to travel. Under these cir-
cumstances, a soldier attached to the party, proposed cutting out
the " ghulada" from one of the cows they were driving before
them, to satisfy the cravings of their hunger. This term Mr
Pearce did not at first understand, but he was not long left in
doubt upon the subject; for, the others having assented, they laid
hold of the animal by the horns, threw it down, and proceeded
without farther ceremony to the operation. This consisted in cut-
ting out two pieces of flesh from the buttock, near the tail, which,
together, Mr Pearce supposed, might weigh about a pound. As
soon as they had taken these way, they sewed up the wounds,
plastered them over with cow dung, and drove the animal forwards,
while they divided among their party the still reeking steaks.
They wanted Mr Pearce to partake of this meat, raw as it came
from the cow, but he was too much disgusted with the scene to
comply with their offer; though he declared he was so hungry at
the time, that he could without remorse have eaten raw flesh, had
the animal been killed in the ordinary way ; a practice which I
may here observe, he never could before be induced to adopt,
notwithstanding its being general throughout the country. The
animal, after this barbarous operation, walked somewhat lame,
but nevertheless managed to reach the camp without any appa-
rent injury, and immediately after their arrival it was killed by
the Worari, and consumed for their supper." — Salt's Voyage to
Abyssinia, p. 295.
Sect. I.J
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
A. M. 1647. A. C. 2347 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
but that under the gospel it was enjoined by a very com-
petent authority, to some particular Christians at least,
for some determinate time. But then they contend, that,
during these several periods, there could be no moral
obligation in the injunction, but that, (setting aside the
divine authority,)1 'neither if they did eat, were they the
worse, neither if they did not eat, were they the better.'
For, if there was any moral turpitude in the act of eat-
ing blood, or things commixed with blood, how comes it
to pass, say they, that, though God prohibited his own
people the Jews, yet he suffered other nations to eat2 any
thing that died of itself, and consequently had the blood
settled in it ? If3 meat commendeth us to God, the same
Providence, which took care to restrain the Jews4 (for is
he the God of the Jews only, is he not also of the Gen-
tiles ?) from what was detestable to him, as well as ab-
horrent to human nature, would have laid the same inhi-
bition upon all mankind; at least he would not have
enjoined his own people to give to a proselyte of the
gate, or to sell to an alien, or heathen, such meat as
would necessarily ensnare them in sin.
The law, therefore, which enjoined Noah and his chil-
dren to abstain from blood, must necessarily have been a
law peculiar to that time only. 5Cain, in the first age of
the world, had slain Abel, while there were but few per-
sons in it : God had now destroyed all mankind except
eight persons ; and, to prevent the fate of Abel from
befalling any of them, he forbids murder under a capital
punishment ; and to this purpose, forbids the use of
blood, as a proper guard upon human life in the infancy
of the world. Under the Mosaic covenant he renews this
law, indeed, but then he establishes it upon another
foundation, and makes blood therefore prohibited, be-
cause he had appointed it6 ' to be offered upon the altar,
and to make an atonement for men's souls ; for it is the
blood,' saith he, ' that maketh an atonement for the soul •'
and what was reserved for religious purposes, was not at
that time convenient to be ate. But now that these purposes
are answered, and these sacrifices are at an end, the
reason of our abstinence has ceased, and consequently
our abstinence itself is no longer a duty.
Blood, we allow, had still something more sacred in
it ; it Mas a type of the sacrifice of Christ, who was
to be offered upon the altar of his cross ; but that obla-
tion being now made, the reason of its appropriation,
and being withheld from common use, is now no more.
And though the council at Jerusalem made a decree, even
subsequent to the sacrifice of Christ, that the brethren,
who were of the Gentiles, should abstain from things
strangled, and from blood ; yet before we can determine
any thing from this injunction, the occasion, place, time,
and other circumstances of it, must be carefully looked
into.
The occasion of the decree was this — while Paul and
Barnabas were preaching the gospel at Antioch, certain
persons, converted from Judaism, came down from Jeru-
salem, and very probably pretending a commission from
the apostles, declared it their opinion, that whoever em-
braced the Christian religion, was obliged, at the same
time, to be circumcised, and observe the whole law.
1 1 Cor. viii. 8. * Deut. xiv. 21. 3 1 Cor. viii. 8.
Rom. iii. 29. * Miscellanea Sacra, vol. 2. 6 Lev. xvii. 11.
105
2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CM. i.v.
The place, where the question arose, was Antioch,
where (as Josephus tells us) there was a famous Jewish
university, full of proselytes of the gate, as they were
called, and who, in all probability, were converted by
the men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who were among those
that were dispersed at the first persecution,7 which imme-
diately ensued the martyrdom of Stephen.
The persons who moved this question, were 8 some of
the sect of the Pharisees, converted to Christianity, but
still so prejudiced in favour of their old religion, or at
least of the divine rite of circumcision, that they thought
there was no coming to Christ without entering in at that
gate.
The persons to whom the question related, were pro-
selytes of the gate, that is, Gentiles by birth, but who
had renounced the heathen religion, as to all idolatry,
and were thereupon permitted to live in Palestine, or
wherever the Jews inhabited ; and had several privileges
allowed them, upon condition that they would observe
the laws of society, and conform to certain injunctions,
that10 Moses had prescribed them.
The time when this question arose, was not lono- after
the conversion of Cornelius ; so that this body of prose-
lytes was, very probably, the first large number of Gen-
tiles that were received into the Christian church, and
this the first time that the question was agitated, whe-
ther the proselytes of the gate, who, as the zealots pre-
tended, could not so much as live among the Jews, with-
out circumcision, could be allowed to be a part of the
Christian church without it ?
Under these circumstances the council at Jerusalem
convened, and accordingly made their decree, that the
proselytes of the gate (for it is persons of this denomi-
nation only which their decree concerns) ' should11 ab-
stain from the meats offered to idols, and from blood,
and from things strangled, and from fornication ;' the
very things which,12 according to the law of Moses, they
engaged themselves to abstain from, when they were first
admitted to the privilege of sojourning among the Jews.
So that, in effect, the decree did no more than declare
the opinion of those who made it, to those to whom it
was sent, namely, that Christianity did not alter the con-
dition of the proselytes in respect of their civil obliga-
tions, but that, as they were bound by these laws ot
Moses before their conversion, so were they still ; and,
consequently, that the sense of St Paul is the same with
the sense of the council at that time ; la ' let every one
abide in the calling,' that is, in the civil state and con-
dition wherein he is called. But, supposing the decree
to extend farther than the proselytes of Antioch, yet
there was another reason why the council at Jerusalem
should determine in this manner, and that was, the strong
aversion which they knew the Jewish converts would
have conceived against (he Gentiles, had they been in-
dulged the liberty of eating blood ; and, therefore, to
compromise the matter, they laid on them this prudent
restraint, from the same principle that we find St Paul
declaring himself in this manner :u ' Though I am free
from all men, yet have I made myself a servant unto all,
that I might gain the more. Unto the Jew, I became as
7 Acts xi. 20. 8 Acts xv. 5. 9 Miscellanea Sacra, vol. 2.
10 Lev. xvii. " Acts xv. 29. '» See Lev. xvii. and xviii.
'* 1 Cor. Til. 20. '« 1 Cor. ix. 19, 20, 22.
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a Jew, that I might gain the Jew ; to the weak, became
I as weak, that I might gain the weak. I am made all
things to all men, that I might, by all means, save some.'
Nay, admitting the decree was not made with this view,
yet, being founded on laws which concerned the Jewish
polity only, it could certainly last no longer than the
government lasted ; and, consequently, ever since the
temple worship has expired, and the Jews have ceased
to be a political body, it must have been repealed ; and
accordingly, if Ave look into the gospel, say they, we
may there find a repeal of it in full form. For therein
we are told,1 that ' the kingdom of God is not meat and
drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost ;'2 that ' meat commendeth us not unto God ;'3 that
' what goeth into the mouth, defileth not the man ;' 4that
' to the pure, all things are pure ; and5 ' that there is
nothing unclean of itself, but only to him, that esteemeth
it to be unclean, it is unclean ; for every creature of God
is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it be received
with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified with the word of
God and prayer ;' 6 and therefore we are ordered,7 that
' whatever is sold in the shambles, even though it be a
thing offered to idols, that to eat, asking no questions for
conscience sake ;' and are told, that8 ' whoever command-
eth us to abstain from meats, which God has created to
be received with thanksgiving of them that believe, and
know the truth,' ought to be ranked in the number of
seducers.
In a word, the very genius of the Christian religion,
say they, is a charter of liberty, and a full exemption
from the law of Moses. It debars us from nothing but
what has a moral turpitude in it, or at least, what is too
base and abject for a man, that has the revelation of a
glorious and immortal life in the world to come : and,
as there is no tendency of this kind in the eating of blood,
they therefore conclude that this decree of the apostles,
either concerned the9 Jewish proselytes only, who, in
virtue of the obedience they owed to the civil laws of
Palestine, were to abstain from blood ; or obliged none
but the Gentiles of Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, to whom
it was directed; was calculated for a certain season only,
either to prevent giving offence to the Jews, who were
then captious, or to reconcile Gentile and Jewish con-
verts, who Avere then at some variance ; but A\as to last
no longer than till the JeAvs and Gentiles Avere formed
into one communion. So that noAV the prohibition given
by God to Noah, the laws given by Moses to the Israel-
ites, and the decree sent by the apostles to the Chris-
tians at Antioch, are all repealed and gone, and a full
license given to us to eat blood Avith the same indiffer-
ence as any other food; if so be Ave thereby10 ' give no
offence to our Aveaker brethren, for whom Christ died.'
Those Avho maintain the contrary opinion, namely, that
the eating of blood, in any guise Avhatever, is Avicked
and unlawful, found the chief of their arguments upon
the limitation of the grant given to Noah, the reasons
that are commonly devised for the prohibition, and the
literal sense of the apostolic decree.
11 When princes give grants of lands to any of their
1 Rom. xiv. 17.
4 Tit. i. 15.
2 1 Cor. viii. 8.
5 Rom. xiv. 14.
5 Matth. xv. 11.
1 Tim. iv. 4, 5.
U Cor. x. 25, 28. "lTim. iv. 1,3. 'Miscellanea Sacra, vol.2.
10 1 Cor. viii. 11, &c. » See Revelation Examined, vol. 2.
subjects, say they, they usually reserve some royalties
(such as the mines, or minerals) to themselves, .as memo-
rials of their own sovereignty, and the other's depen-
dance. If the grant, indeed, be given Avithout any reserve,
the mines and minerals may be supposed to be included
in it ; but when it is thus expressly limited, ' You shall
have such and such lordships and manors, but you shall
not have the mines and minerals Avith the lands, for seve-
ral good reasons specified in the patent,' it must needs
be an odd turn of thought to imagine that the grantee
has any title to them ; and yet this is a parallel case :
for, Avhen God has thus declared his will to the children
of men, ' You shall have the flesh of every creature for
food, but you shall not eat the blood Avith it,' it is every
Avhit as strange an inference, to deduce from hence a
general right to eat blood.
The commandment given to Adam, is,12 'Of every tree
in the garden thou shalt freely eat ; but of the tree of
knoAvledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat.' This is
the first laAV ; and the second is like unto it,13 ' Every
moving thing, that moveth, shall be meat for you ; even
as the green herb, have I given you all things ; but flesh,
Avith the life thereof, Avhich is the blood thereof, shall you
not eat.' This, upon his donation both to Adam and
Noah, God manifestly reserves to himself, as an acknow-
ledgment of his right to be duly paid; and Avhen it Avas
relaxed or repealed, say they, Ave cannot tell.
Nay, so far from being repealed, that it is not only in
his Avords to Noah that God has declared this inhibition,
but in the Liav, delivered by his servant Moses, he has
explained his mind more fully concerning it. M ' Whatso-
ever man there is, of the house of Israel, or of the stran-
gers, that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of
blood, I will even set my face against that soul, and will
cut him off from among his people.' This is a severe
commination, say they ; and therefore observe, how oft,
in another place, he reiterates the injunction, as it Avere
Avith one breath. 15 ' Only be sure that thou eat not the
blood, for the blood is the life, and thou mayest not eat
the life with the flesh. Thou shalt not eat it; thou shalt
pour it upon the earth, as Avater ; thou shalt not eat it,
that it may go Avell with thee and thy children after thee.'
Noav there are several reasons, continue they, Avhy God
should be so importunate in this prohibition : for, having
appointed the blood of his creatures to be offered for the
sins of men, he therefore requires, that it should be reli-
giously set apart for that purpose; and, having prohibited
the sin of murder under a severe penalty, he therefore
guards against it, by previously forbidding the eating of
blood, lest that should be an inlet to savageness and
cruelty.
The Scythians (as 16 Herodotus assures us) from drink-
ing the blood of their cattle, proceeded to drink the
blood of their enemies ; and Avere remarkable for nothing
so much as their horrid and brutal actions. The animals
that feed on blood are perceived to be much more furious
than others that do not ; and thereupon they observe that
blood is a very hot, inflaming food, that such foods create
choler, and that choler easily kindleth into cruelty.
Nay, they observe farther, that eating of blood gave
occasion to one kind of early idolatry among the Zabii
12 Gen. ii. 1G, 17. M Gen. ix. 3, 4. M Lev. xvii. 10.
15 Deut. xii. 23, &c. 16 Book 4.
Shot. I.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
107
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in the east, namely, the worship of demons, whose food,
as they imagined, was blood ; and therefore they who
adored them, had communion with them by eating the
same food. Good reason, therefore, say they, had God
in the gospel, as well as the law, to prevent a practice,
which he could not but foresee would be attended with
such pernicious effects.
For the apostolic decree, as they argue farther, did
not relate to one sect of people only, the proselytes of
the gate, who were lately converted to Christianity; nor
was it directed to some particular places only, and with
a design to answer some particular ends, the prevention
of offence, or the reconciliation of contending parties ;
to subsist for a determinate time, and then to lose all
its obligation: but it concerned all Christians, in all
nations, and in all future ages of the church, was enacted
for a general use and intent, and has never since been
repealed. And to support these assertions, they proceed
in this method : —
Before the passing of this decree, say they, St Paul
preached Christianity to the whole body of the Gentiles
at Antioch. For he had not long preached in the syna-
gogues, before the Gentiles l besought him, that he would
preach to them the same words, that is, the doctrine of
Jesus Christ, on the next Sabbath-day ; and accordingly
we are told, that, on ' the Sabbath-day, came almost the
whole city together to hear the word of God ;' which cer-
tainly implies a concourse of people, more than the pro-
selytes of the gate, nay more than the whole body of the
Jews, who were but a handful in comparison of the
rest of the inhabitants of that great city ; and that this
large company was chiefly made up of Gentiles, the
sequel of the history informs us. For when the 2 ' Jews saw
the multitude they were rilled with envy, and spake
against those things which were spoken by Paul, contra-
dicting and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas
waxed bold, and said, it was necessary that the word
of God shoidd first have been spoken to you, but seeing
ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of
everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath
the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a
light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldst be for salvation
unto the ends of the earth. And Avhen the Gentiles heard
this they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord ;
and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed ;
and the word of the Lord was published throughout all
the region.'
Now this transaction at Antioch, say they, happened
seven years before the decree against blood and things
strangled was passed at Jerusalem ; and therefore as the
Gentiles, not in Antioch only, but in all the region round
about, were no strangers to the doctrine of Jesus Christ,
there is reason to suppose that this decree, when passed,
was not confined to one particular set of men, but
directed to all Gentile converts at large. For hear what
the president of the council says upon this occasion ; 3
' therefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them,
who from among the Gentiles are turned to God ; but
that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions
of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled,
and from blood : for Moses of old time hath in every
1 Acts xiii. 42, &c. - Acts xiii. 45, &c. 3 Acts xv. 19—22.
2257. A. C. 3154. GEN. CH. viii. 20. TO THE END OF CH. ix.
city them that preach him, being read in the synagogue
every Sabbath-day.'
My sentence (says the apostle) is, that ye write unto
the Gentile converts upon these points ; ' For Moses has
those of old in every city that preach him,' that is,
there is no necessity of writing to any Jewish convert,
or any proselyte convert to Christianity, to abstain from
these things, because all that are admitted into syna-
gogues (as the proselytes were) know all these things
sufficiently already. And accordingly, upon this sen-
tence of St James, the decree was founded and directed
(according to the nature of the thing) to those whom it
was fitting and necessary to inform in these points, that
is, to those who were unacquainted with the writings of
Moses.
The letter, indeed, which contained the decree, was
directed to the brethren at Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia;
but it would be shocking and unchristian to think, that
the precepts of an apostolic epistle were obligatory to
those only to whom the epistle was directed. The pur-
port of it concerned all. It was to apprise the heathen
converts to Christianity, that they were exempted from
the observance of the law of Moses, except in four
instances laid down in that canon; and as it was of
general concern for all converts to know, the apostles,
we may presume, left copies of it in all the churches :
for so we are told expressly of St Paul and his com-
panions, that,4 'as they went through the cities, they
delivered them the decrees to keep, which were or-
dained of the apostles and elders that were at Jerusa-
lem; and so were the churches established in the faith,
and increased in number daily.'
The apostles, say they, out of Christian prudence,
might do many things to prevent offences, and to accom-
modate matters to the people's good liking : but certainly
it looks below the dignity of a synod to meet, and
debate, and determine a question with the greatest solem-
nity, merely to serve a present exigence ; to leave upon
record a decree which they knew would be but of tem-
porary obligation ; and yet could not but foresee would
occasion endless scruples and disputes in all future ages
of the church. If it was to be of so short a continuance,
why was not the repeal notified, and why were not so
many poor ignorant people saved, as died martyrs in
the attestation of it ? But, above all, how can we sup-
pose it consistent with the honour and justice of the
apostles, to impose things as necessary, which were but
of transient and momentary duration ?
Observe the words of the decree, cry they, ' It seemed
good unto the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you
no greater burden than these necessary things, namely,
that ye abstain from meats ottered to idols, and from
blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication.'
If these abstinences were only intended to be enjoined
for a season, could they properly be enjoined umlcr the
denomination of necessary things? Is that the appella-
tion for duties of a transient and temporary observation?
Did neither the apostles nor the Holy Ghost know the
distinction between necessary and expedient? Or, sup-
pose it not convenient to make the distinction at that
time, how conn' things of a temporary, and those of an
* Acts xvi. 4, 5.
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eternal obligation, to be placed upon the same foot of
necessity in the same decree ? Or, were fornication and
idol-pollutions to be abstained from only for a season,
in compliment to the infirmity of the Jews ; or in order
to make up a breach between some newly initiated con-
verts? These are absurdities, say they, which cannot be
avoided, when men will assert the temporary obligation
of this decree.
Some general declarations in Scripture, especially in
St Paul's epistles, seem indeed like a repeal of it; but
then, if we consider the scope and occasion of these
declarations, we shall soon perceive that they were
intended to be taken in a limited sense ; otherwise they
are not consistent with the decree itself. Our blessed
Saviour, for instance, tells the people, that not that
which goeth into the mouth derileth the man, but that
which cometh out of it.' But now, if this declaration of
his destroys the validity of the apostolic decree, it will
folloAv, 1st, That this decree was repealed just twenty
years before it was made, which is a supposition some-
what extraordinary ; and, 2dly, That the whole body of
the apostles did, after full debate, make a most solemn
decree, and that under the influence of the Spirit of God,
in direct contradiction to the express declaration of their
Lord and Master, which is a little too contiguous to
blasphemy ; and therefore let us consider the occasion of
our Saviour's words.
The Pharisees, it seems, were offended at his disciples
for sitting down to meat before they had washed their
hands, as being a violation of one of their traditional
precepts. Whereupon our Saviour tells the company,
' Not. that which goeth into the mouth derileth the man' —
never meaning to give them a permission to eat any
tiling prohibited by the law, but only to instruct them in
this, — That there was not all that religion, or profanation
of religion, which the Pharisees pretended, in observing,
or not observing the tradition of the elders, by eating with
washed or unwashed hands ; that the thing itself was
of an indifferent nature ; nor could a little soil taken in
at the mouth, by eating with dirty hands, defile the man,
because nothing of that kind could properly be called a
pollution.
St Paul himself, was one of the council of Jerusalem
when the prohibition of blood was ratified by the Spirit
of God, and imposed on the Gentiles, who were con-
verted to the Christian faith ; and therefore we can hardly
think that, in his epistles, which were written not
many years after, he should go about to abolish the
observation of those precepts, which, after mature deli-
beration, were enacted by a general assembly of the
church ; and therefore, when he tells us that the kingdom
of God, that is, the Christian religion, ' consisteth not of
meat and drink, and that meat commendeth us not unto
God,' he must be understood in a comparative sense,
namely, that it neither consists in, nor commendeth us
so much, as holiness and purity of life. When he
declares, ' that every creature of God is good, that nothing-
is unclean of itself, and that to the pure all things are
pure,' &c, he must necessarily be understood with this
restraining clause — In case there be no particular statute
to the contrary ; for where there is one , all the sanctity
in the world will not give a man a toleration to break it :
and when he complains of some men's commanding us to
abstain from certain meats, as an infringement upon our
Christian liberty, and a branch of the doctrine of devils ;
the meats which they forbade must be supposed to be
lawful in their kind, and under no divine prohibition ;
otherwise we bring the apostles, who inhibited the use of
blood, under the like imputation.
It cannot be denied, indeed, that1 St Paul allows
Christians to eat things offered to idols, which may seem
to invalidate this apostolic decree. But, the answer
to this, is — 2 That the plain intention of the council
at Jerusalem, in commanding to abstain from meats
offered to idols, was to keep Christians from idolatry,
or, as St James expresses it, ' from pollutions of idols :'
and the true way to effect this, they knew, was by prohi-
biting all communion with idols and idolaters in their
feasts, which were instituted in honour of their idols, and
were always kept in their temples. But how is this com-
mand defeated by St Paul's permitting the Corinthians
to eat any part of a creature sold in the shambles, or set
before them in private houses, (though that creature
might chance to have been slain in honour to an idol,)
since the Christian, who ate it in this manner, did not
eat it in honour to the idol, but merely as common
food ?
To illustrate this by a parallel instance. Suppose
that the apostolic decree had commanded Christians to
abstain from things stolen. Would not any one conceive
that the design of this command was to prohibit theft,
and all communion Avith thieves in their villany ? Yes,
surely. Suppose then that any one of the council should,
after this, tell the people whom he preached to, that they
might buy any meat publicly sold in the shambles, or set
before them in private houses, asking no questions for
conscience sake, though possibly the butcher or the host
might have stolen the meat ; would any one think that
this permission was intended to invalidate the decree of
abstaining from things stolen ? And if such a construc-
tion Mould be absurd in the one case, why should it not
be deemed so in another ? Especially when St Paul
himself so expressly, so solemnly, deters Christians from
all participation in idolatrous feasts.3 ' The things which
the Gentiles sacrifice,' says he, ' they sacrifice to devils,
not to God ; and I would not that ye should have fellow-
ship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord
and of devils, ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table
and of devils.'
In a word, say they, whatever the sense of certain
passages in St Paul's writings may seem to be, they can-
not be supposed to contradict the decree at Jerusalem :
a decree to which himself consented, nay, which he him-
self principally occasioned, and which he himself actu-
ally carried about, and deposited with the several
churches. For to imagine that, with his own hands, he
deposited the decree in one church, under the sanction
of a canon ratified by the Spirit of God, and then imme-
diately went to another, and preached against that very
canon, and decried it as inconsistent with Christian
liberty, is to charge the apostle with such an inconsis-
tency of behaviour, folly, and prevarication, as but badly
comports with the character of an ambassador of Jesus
1 Cor. x. 27.
2 Revelation Examined, vol. 2, p. GG.
1 1 Cor. x. 20, 21.
Sect. II.] FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
A. Bff. 1757. A. C. 2247; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2857. A. C. 2554. GEN. CH. xi. TO VER. 10.
109
Christ : and, therefore, unless ive are minded to impair
the authority, and sap the foundation of revealed reli-
gion, we must allow the decree to be still in force ; and
the command, which prohibits the eating of blood, still
chargeable upon every man's conscience. A command
given by God himself to Noah, repeated to Moses, and
ratified by the apostles of Jesus Christ ; given immedi-
ately after the flood, when the world, as it were, began
anew, and the only one given on that occasion ; repeated
with awful solemnity to the people whom God had sepa-
rated from the rest of the world to be his own ; repeated
with dreadful denunciations of Divine vengeance upon
those who should dare to transgress it ; and ratified by
the most solemn and sacred council that was ever assem-
bled upon earth, acting under the immediate influence of
the Spirit of God ; transmitted from that sacred assembly
to the several churches of the neighbouring nations by
the hands of no meaner messengers than two bishops and
two apostles ; asserted by the best writers and most phi-
losophic spirits of their age, the Christian apologists,
and sealed with the blood of the best men, the Christian
martyrs ; confirmed by the unanimous consent of the
fathers, and reverenced by the practice of the whole
Christian church for above 300 years, and of the eastern
church even to this very day.
These are some of the chief arguments on both sides
of the question : and, to form a judgment hereupon, we
may observe — That, though this prohibition of eating
blood can hardly be deemed a commandment of moral
obligation, yet is it a positive precept which cannot but
be thought of more weight and importance, for being so
oft, and so solemnly enjoined; that though the reasons
alleged for its injunction are not always so convincing,
yet the prevention of cruelty and murder, which is imme-
diately mentioned after it, will, in all ages, be ever
esteemed a good one ; and though the liberty granted in
the gospel seems to be great, yet it can hardly be under-
stood without some restriction.
It seemed once good to the Holy Ghost, among other
necessary things, to prescribe an abstinence from blood;
and when it seemed otherwise to him, we are nowhere,
that 1 know of, instructed. Could it be made appear,
indeed, that this prescription was temporary and occa-
sional, designed to bind one set of men only, or calcu-
lated for the infant-state of the church, the question
would be then at an end : but since there are no proper
marks in the apostles' decree to show the temporary
duration of it ; and the notion of proselytes of the gate,
to whom alone it is said to be directed, (how commodi-
ous soever it may be to solve all difiiculties,) upon
examination is found to be groundless or uncertain, the
obligation, I fear, lies upon every good Christian still.
But as this is not every ones sentiment ; ! 'as one
believeth that he may eat all things, and another thinketh
it the safe side of his duty to abstain ; so let not him that
eateth, despise him that eateth not ; and let not him that
eateth not, judge him that eateth ; but judge this rather,
lhat no man put a stumbling-block, or an occasion to
fall, in his brother's way. Let us therefore follow after
the things which make for peace, and things wherewith
one may edify another.'
1 Rom. xiv. 2, S, 13, 19.
SECT. II.
CHAP. I. — Of the Confusion of Languages.
THE HISTORY.
It is reasonable to believe, that, for some years after the
flood, Noah and his family lived in the neighbourhood
of the mountains of Armenia, where the ark rested ;
thence removed into the countries of Syria ; then cross-
ing the TigTis into Mesopotamia, and so shaping their
course eastward, came at length to the pleasant plain of
Babylon, on the banks of the river Euphrates. The fer-
tility of the soil, the delightfulness of the place, and the
commodiousness of its situation, made them resolve to
settle there ; and to build a city which should be the
metropolis of the whole earth, and in it a vast high tower,
which should be the wonder of the world ; for the present
use, a kind of pharos, or landmark, and, to future ages,
a monument of their great tower and might. °
By this project they promised themselves mighty mat-
ters ; but that which chiefly ran in their heads, was their
keeping together in one body, that, by their united
strength and counsels, as the world increased, they
might bring others under their subjection, and make
themselves universal lords : but one great discourage-
ment to this, their project, was — That in the place, which
they had chosen for the scene of all their greatness, there
was no stone to build with. Perceiving, however, that
there was clay enough in the country whereof to make
bricks, !> and plenty of a pitchy substance called bitumen,
a It is the opinion of many eminent critics, that the whole of
Noah's descendants were not engaged in the rebellious project of
building the tower of Babel — but only the descendants of Ham,
or a portion of them; and this they ground chiefly on the
opinion, that it is not likely the whole family of Noah would
leave the fertile regions of Armenia, but that portions of them
would emigrate as their number increased. During the life of
that patriarch, and the lives of his sons, Dr Hales is of opinion
that the whole of his descendants occupied Armenia, extending
themselves gradually into the adjacent fertile and pleasant
regions of Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Media. The same
learned chronologer is likewise of opinion that the regions
destined for the respective possessions of the families of Shem,
Ham, and Japheth, were pointed out by Noah himself a little
before his death, in that famous prophecy relative to the curse upon
Canaan, that he should be a servant to Shem (spoken by Noah
on awakening from his disgraceful sleep) which has been already
considered ; and he supports this opinion by apostolical authority.
" We learn," says he, " from St Paul, (Acts xvii. 26,) that the
division of the earth among the sons of Noah was not made at
random," but that ' God made of one blood all nations of men,
to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, having ordained the
predetermined seasons, and the boundaries of their respective
settlements." This important event took place, according to
the same author, B. C. 2G14, about 191. years after the death of
Noah, and about 29 years after the death of Shem, when Japheth
and I lam were probably dead likewise. — Ed.
b The word which our translators make slime, is in Hebrew
hhemar, in Greek &r$a\vot, in Latin bitumen; and that this
plain did very much abound with it, which was of two kinds,
liquid and solid; that liquid bitumen here swam upon the
waters ; that there was a cave and fountain which was continu-
ally casting it out; and that this famous tower, at this time, and
the no less famous walls of Babylon were afterwards built with
this kind of cement, is confirmed by the testimony of several
profane authors. For thus Strabo tells us, " In Babylonia much
bitumen abounds; there are two kinds of ft," says Eratosthenes,
110
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[Book II.
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which would serve instead of mortar, with one consent
they went to work, and, in a short time, every hand was
employed in making bricks, building the city, and laying
the foundation of a prodigious pile, which they purposed
to have carried up to an immense height, and had already
made a considerable progress in the work, when God,
dissatisfied with their proceedings, thought proper to
interpose, and, at the expense of a miracle, quashed all
their project at once, insomuch, that this first attempt of
their vanity and ambition became the monument of their
folly and weakness.
The blessing which God had given Noah and his sons,
to increase and multiply, and replenish the earth, had
now, for above an hundred years, (according to Hales,
540 years,) exerted itself to good purpose ; but, though
the number of their descendants was very large, yet the
language which they all spake was but one, the same
which had descended to them « from their great progeni-
tor, Adam, and very probably was pronounced in the same
common manner. To frustrate their undertaking, there-
fore, God determined with himself4 to confound their
" a liquid and a solid — the liquid kind is called Naphtha, and
arises in the plain of Susa, but the solid, which also has the pro-
perty of growing hard, is found in Babylonia, in a fountain nigh
to the Naphtha," b. 16. Thus Justin, speaking of Semiramis,
says, " She built Babylon, and covered over the wall of the city
with bricks, instead of sand, bitumen being used — the latter
substance in several parts of that country arises out of the earth,"
b. 1. And thus Vitruvius, who is elder than either, says, "In
Babylon there is a place of vast magnitude, having liquid bitu-
men swimming on its surface, with that bitumen and bricks
Semiramis surrounded the wall of Babylon which she built," b. 8.
To these we may add some modern testimonies, which tell us
that these springs of bitumen are called oyum Hit, the fountains
of Hit ; and that they are much celebrated by the Persians and
Arabs. All modern travellers, except Rauwolf, who went to
Persia and the Indies by the way of Euphrates, before the dis-
covery of the Cape of Good Hope, mention these fountains as a
very strange and wonderful thing. — See Biblioth. Bib. vol. i.
p. 281.y Heidegger's Hist. Patr. Essay 21, and Univers. Hist. b. i.
c. 2.
a That the children of Noah did speak the same language with
Adam is very manifest; because Methuselah, the grandfather of
Noah, lived a considerable time with him, and questionless spake
the same language: and that this language was no other than the
Hebrew is very probable from this argument — that Shem, the
son of Noah, was for some time contemporary with Abraham,
who descended from him, and whose family continued the same
language that they both spake until the time of Moses, who
recorded the history of his own nation in his native language ; so
that, what we have now in the Pentateuch, according to the
opinion of all Hebrew, and most Christian writers, is the very
same with what God taught Adam, and Adam his posterity. —
Patrick's Commentary . It is, however, very doubtful whether
Shem was contemporary with Abraham — according to the chro-
nology of Hales, he was not. — Ed.
b Some commentators, from the word confound, are ready to
infer, that God did not make some of these builders speak new
different languages, only that they had such a confused remem-
brance of the original language they spake before, as made them
speak it in quite a different manner: so that, by the various
inflections, terminations, and pronunciations of divers dialects,
they could no more understand one another, than those who
understand Latin can comprehend those who speak French, Ita-
lian, or Spanish, though these languages do certainly arise from
it. But this we conceive to be a great mistake — not only
because it makes all languages extant to be no more than so many
different dialects of the same original, and, consequently redu-
cible to it ; but because, Upon examination, it will appear that
there are certain languages in the world, so entirely different from
each other, that they agree in no one essential property what-
ever, and must, therefore, at this time, have been of immediate
infusion.
language ; by which means it came to pass, that though
their tongues still retained the faculty of speech, yet,
having lost the pronunciation of their native language,
on a sudden they were so changed and modified to the
expression of another, (which was of a sound quite dif-
ferent,) that the next stander-by could not comprehend
what his neighbour meant, and this, in a short time, ran
them into the utmost disorder and confusion : for these
different dialects produced different ideas in the minds
of the builders, which, for want of understanding one
another, they employed to improper objects, and so were
obliged to desist from their enterprise ; and, not only
that, but being by this means deprived of the pleasure
and comfort of mutual society, except with such as spake
the same language, all those who were' of one dialect
joined themselves together, and leaving the devoted
place, (as they then thought it,) departed in tribes, c as
their choice or their chance led them, to seek out fresh
habitations. Thus God not only defeated their design,
but likewise accomplished his own, of having the world
more generally, and more speedily peopled, than it
otherwise would have been. And, to perpetuate the
memory of such a miraculous event, the place, which was
first called Babel, and, with small variation, afterwards
Babylon, from this confusion of languages, received its
denomination.
This confusion of tongues, if not dispersion of the
people, is supposed by most chronologers to have fallen
101 years after the flood; for Peleg, the son of Eber,
who was great grandson to Shem, was certainly born in
that year, and is said to have had the name Peleg given
him, because that in his time the earth was divided. — To
this short period, between the deluge and the confusion
of tongues, however, no countenance is given in Sacred
Scripture. It is not said that the earth was divided at
Peleg's birth, but in his time, or days. Now if, as our
author reasonably supposes in the succeeding chapter,
that the confusion of tongues, and the consequent disper-
sion of the people, did not take place till Peleg was
100 years old, there was abundance of time, even
according to the Hebrew chronology, for such a multi-
plication of mankind, as an attempt like that of the
building of Babel seems to imply. Dr Hales, however,
seems to have sufficiently proved that Peleg was not
born till 401 years after the deluge, and that the division
did not take place till he was 140 years old. Conse-
quently there was a period of 541 years, from the deluge
till the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of man-
kind.— Ed.
CHAP. II. — Objections answered and Difficulties
explained.
Those, who have undertaken to settle the geography of
the Holy Scriptures, tell us that the land of Shinar was
c The dispersion of Noah's sons was so ordered, that each
family and each nation dwelt by itself; which could not well be
done (as Mr Mede observes) but by directing an orderly division,
either by casting of lots, or choosing according to their birth-
right, after that portions of the earth were set out, according to
the number of their nations and families ; otherwise, some would
not have been content to go so far north as Magog did, whilst
others were suffered to enjoy more pleasant countries.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
Ill
A. M. 1757. A. C. 2247; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2857. A. C. 2554. GEN. CH. xi. TO VER. 10.
all that valley, which the river Tygris runs along, from
the mountains of Armenia northwards to the Persian
Oulf, or at least to the southern division of the common
channel of the Tygris and Euphrates. l So that the
country of Eden was part of the land of Shinar : and
as Eden was probably situate on both sides of the afore-
mentioned channel, so it is not unlikely, that the valley
of Shinar did extend itself on both sides (but on the
western side, without all doubt) of the river Tygris.
Now the mountains of Armenia, according to the
account of most geographers, lie north, and not east
from Shinar and Assyria ; but then it may be supposed,
2 either that Moses, in this place, followed the geogra-
phical style of the Assyrians, who called all that lay
beyond the Tygris, the east country, though a great
part of it, towards, Armenia, was really northward ; or
(as 3 some others will have it) that as mankind multiplied,
they spread themselves in the country eastward of
Ararat ; and so making small removes from the time of
their descent from the mount, to the time of their jour-
neying into the land of Shinar, they might properly
enough be said to have begun their progress from the east.
But, without the help of these solutions, and taking-
Moses in a literal sense, he is far from being mistaken.
* Most geographers indeed have drawn the mountain of
Ararat a good way out of its place, and historians and
commentators, taking the thing for fact, have been much
perplexed to reconcile this situation with its description
in Scripture : whereas, by the accounts of all travellers,
for some years past, the mountain which now goes under
the name of Ararat, lies about two degrees more east,
than the city of Shinar or Senjar, from whence the plain,
in all probability takes its name ; and therefore, if the
sons of Noah entered it on the north side, they must of
necessity have journeyed from the east, or, which is the
saint thing, have travelled westward from the place,
where they set out, in order to arrive at the plain of
Babylon. a
Historians, indeed, as well as commentators, have
generally given in to the common opinion, that Shem
and his family were not concerned in this expedition,
but for what reason we cannot conceive, since there is
no fact in all the Mosaic account more firmly established
than this — That the whole race of mankind then in being-
were actually engaged in it.
1 Wells' Geography, vol. 1. p. 210.
* Bochart's Phaleg. b. 1. c. 7. 3 Kereher's Turns Babel, p. 12.
4 Universal History, I). I.e. 2.
a The Chaldean historian Berosus, informs us, that " they pro-
reeded circuitously to Babylonia." And Mr Penn (Remarks on
the Eastern origination of mankind, Oriental Collect, vol. ii.
Nos. 1 and 2,) guided only by a geographical view of the
country, happily conjeetures, that they followed the course of the
great river Euplu-ates ; which rising in the mountains of Armenia,
flows at first in a westerly direction : then it turns to the south,
and at length bending eastward, it reaches Babylon from the
north-west. Its progress therefore is circuitous; and as the ap-
proach to Shinar would be most easily ami naturally effected by
following its winding course; so, in that case, the route of the
emigrants would minutely correspond with Berosus and with
Scripture, which represent them as travelling from the original
settlement, eastward of the springs of the Euphrates, whose cir-
cuitous course, according to the ingenious remarks of Faber, is
described in the Sanscrit word Uratta, pronounced Unit, and
signifying a circle, so nearly analogous to the Hebrew name of
the river Phrat. — Halcs's Analysis, vol. I. p. 368, second
edition.— Ed.
As soon as Moses has brought the three sons of Noah
out of the ark, he takes care to inform us that * ' of them
was the whole earth overspread :' after he has given us
the names of their descendants, at the time of their dis-
persion, he subjoins, and 6 ' by these were the nations
divided in the earth after the flood :' and then proceeding
to give us an account of this memorable transaction, he
tells us, that 7 ' the whole earth was of one language, and
of one speech,' and that as they, namely, the whole earth,
8 journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land
of Shinar, and dwelt there, &c, 9 so that, from the
beginning to the end of this transaction, the connexion
between the antecedent and relative is so well preserved,
that there is no room to suppose, that any less than all
mankind, were gathered together on the plain of Shinar,
and assisted in the building of Babel : nor seems it
improbable that Moses has made these unusual repeti-
tions, to inculcate the certainty of that fact, and to take
away all ground for supposing that any other branch of
Noah's posterity was in any other part of the earth, at
that time. 4
The time indeed when this transaction happened, is
very differently computed by chronologers, according
as they follow the LXX interpreters, who make it 531,
or, as rectified by Dr Hales, 541 ; the Samaritan copy,
which makes it 39G ; or the Hebrew, which allows it to
be no more than 101 years from the flood, to the confu-
sion of tongues, and less, we may suppose, to the first
beginning to build the tower. If we take either of the
former computations, the thing answers itself : upon a
moderate multiplication, there will be workmen more
than enough, even without the posterity of Shem : but if
we submit to the Hebrew account of time, we shall find
ourselves straitened, if we part with one third part of our
complement, in so laborious a work. There is no neces-
sity, however, to suppose, I0 with some, that every one of
these progenitors, as soon as married, (which was very
early) had every year twins by his wife, which, according
to arithmetic progression, would amount to no less than
1,554,420 males and females, in the shortest period
given. Half the number would be sufficient to be employed
on this occasion, and n half the number will be no
unreasonable supposition, considering- the strength of con-
stitution men had then, and the additional blessing which
God bestowed upon them, and whereby he interested his
peculiar providence, that for the increase of the human
race, for the restoration of a desolated world, there should
be some peculiar fruitfulness granted to man ; that even
to boys, breaking the appointed laws of nature, power
5 Gen. ix. ID ° Gen. x. 32. ' Gen. xi. 1. 8 Ibid. vcr. 2.
n Universal History, b. 1. c. 2.
JU Temporarius in Uemonst. Chronol. b. 2.
11 Usher's Chron. Sacra, p. 27.
b If we adhere to the Hebrew chronology, then this reasoning
of our author cannot be admitted as conclusive; for, according to
that chronology, not only Shem, Ham, and Japheth, but even
Noah himself, were alive at this time; and it is surely impossible
to believe that they could join in such a rebellious project, while
the recollection of the deluge must have been fresh in their minds.
The chronology of the Septuagint, which Dr Hales thinks cor-
rect, removes this difficulty, by dating the confusion of tongues
at 541 years after the flood, but at this time mankind would be
so much increased, that it is doubtful whether they could be all
assembled on the plain of Shinar. — See previous note, nage 109.
— Eu.
112
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[Book II.
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should be given of replenishing the earth, * as Petavius
elegantly expresses it.
But, after all, there seems to be no occasion for sup-
posing an extraordinary increase of people, or for con-
fining the first undertaking of this great building to the
compass of one hundred years after the flood. In the
tenth chapter of Genesis it is said indeed, that unto Eber
were born two sons, and that the name of one was Peleg,'
which being derived from an Hebrew word, that signifies
to divide, has this reason annexed to it, for in his days
was the earth divided. Now by the subsequent account
of Peleg's ancestors we find that he was born in the 101st
year after the flood ; from whence it is concluded that
the earth began to be divided at his birth. But
this is a conclusion, that by no means results from the
text, which only says, that ' in his days was the earth
divided ;' words which can, with no manner of propriety,
imply that this division began at his birth.
His name, indeed, was called Peleg ; but it does not
therefore follow that this name was given him at his birth ;
it might have been given at any time after, from his being
a principal agent among his own family, in the division
made in his days ; as several names have throughout all
ages been given upon the like accidents, not only to
private persons but to whole families. Or suppose the
name to be given at his birth, yet no reason can be as-
signed why it might not be given prophetically, as well
as that of Noah, from an event then foreseen, though it
might not come to pass for some considerable time after
the name was given.
2 Since Peleg, then, according to the sacred account,
lived 239 years, and his younger brother Jocktan, and
his sons, were a considerable colony in the distribution
of the world, it is much more rational to suppose, that
this distribution did not begin till a good part of Peleg's
life was expended. Suppose it however to be no more
than an hundred years after his birth, yet we may still
retain the Hebrew computation, and have time and
hands enough for carrying on the great work of Babel
before this distribution, since mankind might very well
be multiplied to some millions in the compass of two
hundred years.
Putting all these considerations together, then, we can
hardly imagine that there wanted a sufficient number of
men to go upon an enterprise, which, though not strictly
chargeable with sin, because there was no previous com-
mand forbidding it, yet, in the sense of God himself,
bold and presumptuous enough :3 ' Behold the people is
one, and they have all one language, and now this they
begin to do :' this is their first attempt, and after this
nothing a will be restrained from them ; they will think
1 Doct. Temp. b. 9. c. 14.
8 Revelation Examined, vol. 2. Dissert. 3. Gen. xi. 6.
a The common versions say of the builders of the tower of
Babel, ' And now nothing will or shall be restrained from them
which they have imagined to do.' But this is false in fact ; be-
cause God soon put a stop to their design by confounding them,
and ' scattering them abroad from thence, over the face of the
earth.' We may observe, therefore, that the same particle which is
indeed sometimes taken negatively, is evidently here to be taken
interrogatively, and is equal to the most express affirmation: and
therefore the text should thus be translated, ' Shall they not be
restrained in all they imagine to do?' Yes, they shall; which
accordingly was immediately executed. — Essay fur a New Trans-
lation.
themselves competent for any thing, that they shall have
a fancy to do. For though God could have no reason
to apprehend b any molestation from their attempts (as
the poets make heaven all in an uproar, upon the inva-
sion of the giants,) yet, since they were contrary to his
gracious design of having the earth replenished, it was
an act highly consistent with his infinite wisdom and
goodness to see them disappointed.
The divine purpose was that men should not live
within the limits of one country only, and so be exposed
to perpetual contentions, while every one would pretend
to make himself master of the nearest and most fertile
lands ; but that, possessing themselves of the whole, and
cultivating almost every place, they might enjoy a pro-
portionable increase of the fruits of the earth. 4 Thorns
and briars were springing up every where ; woods and
thickets spreading themselves around ; wild beasts
increasing ; and all this while the sons of Noah gatherino-
in a cluster, and designing so to continue ; so that it was
highly seasonable for God to confound their mistimed
projects, and disperse them.
Their purpose was to make themselves a name by
enslaving others. c But God foresaw, 5 that absolute
power and universal empire were not to be trusted in any
mortal hand ; that the first kings would be far from being
the best men ; but as they acquired a superiority by
fraud and violence, so they would not be backward to
maintain it by oppression and cruelty : and therefore,
to remedy such public grievances, he determined with
himself that there should be a diversity of governments
in the world ; that if the inhabitants of any place chanced
to live under a tyrannical power, those that were no
4 YVaterland's Scripture Vindicated, part 1.
5 Le Clerc's Dissertation.
b What their attempts were, the historian has represented in
their own words: 'and they said, Go to, let us build us a city,
and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven,' Gen. xi. 4. But
far be itfrom any one to imagine, that these builders could be so stu-
pidly ignorant, as ever to think by this means to climb up to heaven,
or that they would not have chosen a mountain rather than a
plain or a valley for this, if they could once have entertained so
gross an imagination. It is a common hyperbole this in the
Sacred Writings, to signify any great and lofty building, as may
be seen in Deut. i. 18., Dan. iv. 8., and in several other places ;
nor is the like manner of expression unusual among profane
authors likewise: for Homer, speaking of the island of Cal) \ so,
tells us, that in it was a place
where a various sylvan scene
Appeared around, and groves of living green,
Poplars and alders ever quivering played,
And nodding cypress formed a fragrant shade,
Whose lofty branches waving swept the sky, &c.
Odgss- v. 238.
By a literal interpretation of the Hebrew idioms, however, it is
a common thing for the greatest absurdities to be received by the
unwary for realities ; and not at all a wonder, that the misunder-
standing the text should give rise to what we are told of the
giants in the fable attempting to scale heaven, and of the expedi-
tion of Cosigna and his companions, who had contrived ladders for
that end ; hoping that so they might make their nearer addresses to
the queen of heaven. And thus even the silliest of the Pagan
tales may be traced up to their original ; for there is generally some
foundation for them in truth, either misunderstood or misapplied.
— See Lc Clerc's Commentary; Voss. Hist. Grac. b. 1. c. 3. and
Bibliotheca Biblica ad locum.
c By this remark our author evidently implies that (he whole
of mankind were not engaged in this enterprise. For if the
whole race were so, there could have been no others to enslave : it
is therefore surprising that a few paragraphs before, he should have
asserted this to be the case. — Ed.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
113
A. M. 1757. A. C. 2247
longer able to endure the yoke, might flee into other
countries and dominions (which they could not do if the
whole was one entire monarchy) and there find a shelter
from oppression. And as he knew how conducive the
bad example of princes would be towards a general
corruption of manners, he therefore took care to provide
against this malady, by appointing several distinct
kingdoms and forms of governments, at one and the
same time ; that if the infection of vice got ascendency,
and prevailed in one place, virtue and godliness, and
whatever is honourable and praiseworthy, might find a
safe retreat, and flourish in another. Thus all the mis-
chiefs which might possibly arise from an universal
monarchy, and all the advantages that do daily accrue
from separate and distinct governments, were in the
divine foresight and consideration, when he put a sur-
prising stop to the building of these men, and their
ambitious schemes of empire together.
For in what manner soever it was that he effected this ;
a whether it was by disturbing their memories, or
perverting their imaginations, by diversifying their hear-
ing, or new-organizing their tongues, by an immediate
infusion of new languages, or a division of the old into
so many different dialects ; and again, whether these
tongues, or dialects of tongues, * were few or more ;
whether there were only so many originals at first, (as
a Since Moses has nowhere acquainted us, says the learned
Heidegger (in Hist. Patriar. b. 1. Essay 211) in what manner the
confusion of languages was effected, every one is left to follow
what opinion he likes best, so long as that opinion contains nothing
incongruous to the received rule of faith: nay, it may not be
inconvenient to produce several opinions upon this subject, to the
intent that every one may embrace that which seems to him
most conformable to truth. And therefore he instances in the
opinions of several learned men, but in those more particularly
of Julius Sealiger, who ascribes this event to a confusion of notions
which God miraculously sent among the builders ; and that of
Isaac Casaubon, who will needs have all the different languages
now extant to be no more than derivatives from the Hebrew.
Scaliger's words, as Heidegger quotes them, are these: — " For
they (the Hebrews) say that in order to put a stop to their impi-
ous undertaking, God the omnipotent and aU-wise caused, that
to him who asked for a stone, one would bring mortar, another
sand, another pitch, another bitumen, and another water, I even
think, that perhaps there would not be wanting some who would
think that a reproach was meant to them, and who on that account
would quarrel and fight when some signal act of cunning befell
them. For, if to him that sought for a stone, one brought one
thing, others other things, and all different things, the mode of
one sound, increased to a diversity of species, would seem to
have entered into different understandings: therefore one old
language would still remain, though indeed of various meanings."
The words of Casaubon are as follows: "If at Babel languages
became totally different, the Chaldeans and Assyrians should of
necessity retain these strangely-begotten tongues. But we see
that the very contrary has happened ; for other languages have
preserved and still preserve traces of a Hebrew origin, just the
more evident and explicit in proportion as they are farther
removed from the ancient and first abode of man. For every
tribe that in situation is nearest to the Hebrew nation, uses a
language most akin to its language, and the greater the distance
is from it, the greater is the difference. This is evident
from a comparison of the Syriac, Chaldaic, Arabic, Carthaginian
languages, with that of the Hebrews, and still more evident
on a diligent inspection of the Greek language. The Greeks at
first dwelt in Asia. Thence the Ionians (or as iEschylus, in a
Hebrew manner calls them Javones,) passed into Europe. In
the most ancient writers of the Greeks there are many Hebrew
wcmls which afterwards became obsolete, or somewhat changed.
V> e observe also, that the Greeks of Asia Hebrewized more than
those of Europe."
o It is not to be thought thai th< re were n- many several dialects
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2S57. A. C. 2554. GEN. CII. xi. TO VER. 10.
many perhaps as there were either tribe's or heads of
families,) and all the rest were no more than derivatives
from them, the operations of an Almighty power are
equally visible, and the footsteps of divine wisdom
apparent, in the very method of his disappointing these
ambitious builders.
1 He could, no doubt, with the same facility, have sent
down fire from heaven to consume them ; but then that
would have been but a momentary judgment, whereof we
should have known nothing but what we read in the dead
letter of a book ; whereas, by this means, the remem-
brance of God's interposition, is preserved to all future
ages, and in every new language that Ave hear we
recognise the miracle.
2 It was equally the finger of God, we allow, whether
the minds or the tongues of the workmen were con-
founded ; but then, in that case, the miracle does not so
plainly and so flagrantly appear, nor would it have had
so good an effect upon the builders themselves ; because
men may quarrel, and break offsociety without a miracle,
whereas they cannot speak with new tongues by their
own natural strength and ingenuity.
Nor was the formation of a new language only more
miraculous, but to the imaginations of the persons, upon
whom it is wrought, incredibly more surprising than any
disagreement in opinion, or any quarrel that might
thereupon ensue. And therefore I have always thought,
that this account of the confusion of tongues which God
wrought at Babel, would scarce have been told so parti-
cularly, and represented as God's own act and deed, had
it only arisen from a quarrel among the builders, which
obliged them to leave on*' their work, and scatter them-
selves over the face of the earth. For when God is here
described as coming down in person to view their work,
something- almost as solemn as the creation, full as
solemn as the denunciation of the flood, when Noah was
commanded to build the ark, is certainly intended by
that expression : and therefore, when Moses acquaints us,
that ' there was but one language at that time,' the cir-
cumstance would be impertinent, if he did not intimate
withal, that very soon after there were to be more.
1 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 1. Essay 21.
2 Wotten on the Confusion of Languages at Babel.
as there were men at Babel, so that none of them understood one
another. This would not only have dispersed mankind, but utterly
destroyed them; because it is impossible to live without society,
or to have any society without understanding one another. It is
likely therefore that awry family had its peculiar dialect, i ir
rathei- that some common dialect, or form of speaking, was given to
those families whom God designed to make one colony in the
following dispersion. Into how many languages the people were
divided it is impossible to determine. The Hebrews fancy seventy,
because the descendants of the sons of Noah, as they are enume-
rated in Scripture, are just so many: the Greek fathers make
them seventy-two, because the LXX. version adds two more,
(Elisa among the sons of Japheth, and Canaan among the sons of
Shero,) and the Latin fathers follow them. But this is all con-
jecture, and what is built upon a very weak foundation. For,
in many places so many people concurred in the use of tl
speech that of the seventy scarce thirty remained distinct, as
Bochart has observed: and amongthese, others have supposed thi t
the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic, in the cast; the Greek and
Latin in the west; and the Finnish, Selavonian, Hungarian,
Cantabrick, and the ancient Gaulish in the north, are gen, rally
reputed originals ; besides some more that might be discoi ered in
Persia, China, the East Indies, the midland parts of Africa, and
all America, if we had but a sufficient knowledge of the history
people.— See Patrick's Commentary and fFoltenontht
Confusion of Languages at Babel.
114
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
A. M. 1757. A. C. 2247; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2857. A. C. 2554. GEN. CH. xi. TO VER. 10.
The prophet Isaiah, indeed, speaking of the conver-
sion of some Egyptians to the Jewish faith, tells us, that
' in that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak
the language (or lip, as it is in the margin) of Canaan,
and swear to the Lord of Hosts.' Speaking the
language of Canaan1 is thought by some to mean no
more than being of the same religion with the Jews,
who inhabited the land of Canaan, but why may it not be
interpreted literally, as it is in our translation ? Might
not these five cities particularly, to show the value and
reverence that they had for the religion of the Jews,
learn their language ; especially since they would thereby
be better enabled to understand the books of Moses and
the prophets, which were written in that tongue ? Do
not the Mahometans, whatever they are, Turks, Tartars,
Persians, Moguls, or Moors, all learn Arabic, because
Mahomet wrote the Alcoran in that language ? Why,
then, should we be offended at the literal sense of the
words, when the figurative is so low and flat in compari-
son of it? g< In that day Egypt shall be like a woman ;
it shall be afraid and fear, because of the shaking of the
hand of the Lord of Hosts ;' 3 ' the Lord of Hosts shall
be a terror unto Egypt,' and 4 ' in that day shall there be
an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt,'
that is, they shall become proselytes to the law of Moses ;
and, that they may not mistake in understanding the
sense of the law, which they shall then embrace, they
shall agree to learn the language in which it is written.
This is an easy and genuine sense of the words : but in-
stead of that, to fly to a forced and abstruse one, merely
to evade the evidence of a miracle, savours of vanity at
least, if not of irreligion.
In short, all interpreters, both Jewish and Christian,
understood this confusion of Babel to be a confusion of
languages, not of opinions. They saw the texts, if liter-
ally understood, required it ; they observed a surprising
variety of tongues essentially different from one ano-
ther ; and they knew that this was not in the least incon-
sistent with the power of God. They did not question,
but that he, who made the tongue, could make it speak
^hat and how he pleased ; and they acquiesced (as all
wise and honest interpreters should) in the literal expli-
cation, perceiving that nothing unworthy of God, or
trifling or impossible in itself, resulted from it.
But why should we have recourse to miracles, say
they, when the business may as well be done without
them ; when it is but supposing, that all languages, now
extant, sprung originally from one common root ; and
that they are no more than different forms or dialects of
it, which the force of time, assisted with some incidental
courses, without the intervention of any superior power,
naturally produces.
To give this objection a satisfactory answer, we shall
be obliged to look a little into the nature of languages
in general, that thereby we may show, that there are some
languages, now extant in the world, Avhich are essentially
different from each other ; that languages, when once
established, are not so subject to variation as is pre-
tended ; and that, in the ages subsequent to this extraor-
dinary event, they could not, in any natural way, undergo
: Isa. xix. 1G.
1 Le Clerc's Commentary.
3 Isa. xix. 17. 4Isa. xix. 19.
all the alterations we now perceive in them, supposing
them all descended from one common stock.
Now, in order to this, we must observe, that every lan-
guage consists of two things, matter and form : the mat-
ter of any language are the words, wherein men who speak
the language express their ideas : and the several ways
whereby its nouns are declined, and verbs conjugated,
are its form.
The Latins and Greeks vary their nouns by termina-
tions, as, vir,viri,viro, virum,oL6(ia7rog, dv9(>a7rov,ct!>()i°k,-
iru, clvS^uTrov. We decline by the prepositions of, to,
from, the, in both numbers ; but the Hebrews have no
different terminations in the same number, and only vary
thus, — ish, man ; islam, men ; ishah, woman ; ishoth,
women : the rest are varied by prepositions inseparably
affixed to the words, as, ha-ish, the man ; le-ish, to the
man ; be-ish, in the man, &c, which prepositions thus
joined make one word with the noun to which they are
affixed, and are herein different from all those lan-
guages which come from a Latin, or Teutonic original.
The western and northern people consider every tran-
sitive verb, either actively or passively, and then they
have done ; as amo, in Latin is, I love ; amor, I am
loved ; and so in Greek, dyetira, oLyot.Kap.eii: but in He-
brew, every word has, or is supposed to have, seven
conjugations ; in Chaldee and Syriac six ; and in Arabic
thirteen, all differing in their significations.
The western languages abound with verbs that are
compounded with prepositions, which accompany them
in all their moods and tenses, and therein vary their sig-
nification ; but in the eastern there is no such thing. For
though they have, in Arabic especially, many different
significations, some literal and some figurative, yet still
their verbs as well as nouns are uncompounded.
In the Greek, both ancient and barbarous, in the Latin,
and the dialects arising from it, and in all the branches
of what we call the old Teutonic, the possessive pronouns,
my, thy, Ids, yours, theirs, &c, make a distinct word
from the noun to which they are joined, as Uoityiq ijftav,
Pater noster, /acfer vor, our father, &c. But in all ori-
ental tongues the pronoun is joined to the end of the
noun, in such a manner as to make but one word. Thus,
ab, in Hebrew, is father ; abi, my father ; abinu, our
father. In Chaldee, from the same root, abouna, is our
father ; in Syriac, abun ; in Arabic and Ethiopic the
same.
Once more. All Avestern languages mark the de-
gree of comparison in their adjectives, by proper termi-
nations, as, wise, wiser, wisest ; sapiens, sapientior, sa-
pient issimus ; ao(po;, ao(pariQog, ao<paTccTog : but none of
the eastern tongues, already mentioned, have any thing
in them like this.
These are some of the marks and characters which
distinguish the eastern from the western languages ; and,
what is farther observable, these characters have none of
them disappeared, or shifted from one to another, for
near three thousand years. They appear in every book
of the Old Testament, from Moses down to Malachi ; in
the Chaldee paraphrasts, in the Syriac versions, in the
Misna, in the Gemara, and in every other rabbinical
book, down to the Jewish writers of the present age :
but, on the other side, if we consider Homer's poems,
which are the oldest monuments we have of the Greek
Sbct. II.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
115
A. M. 1757. A. C. 2247; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2857. A. C. 2554. GEN. CH. xi. TO VER. 10.
language ; if we take Theocritus for the Doric dialect ;
Euripides, or Thucydides, for the Attic; Herodotus,
or Hippocrates, for the Ionic; and Sappho for the
JSolic, and so descend to the Greek, which is spoken at
this day, we shall see the general marks of western
languages running through them all. These idioms
show themselves, at first sight, to be nothing more than
dialects manifestly springing from the same common root,
which never did, and (as far as we may judge from the
practice of above two thousand years) never will, conju-
gate verbs, decline nouns, or compare adjectives, like
the Hebrew or Arabic. These languages did always
compound verbs and nouns with prepositions, which
essentially alter the sense. These languages had never
any possessive pronouns affixed to their nouns, to deter-
mine the person, or persons, to whom of right they be-
long ; nor do they affix any single letter to their words,
which may be equivalent to conjunctions, and connect
the sense of what goes before with what follows, which
any person, but tolerably initiated in the eastern lan-
guages, must know to be their properties.
And, indeed, if we cast but our eye a little forward
into the sacred history, it will not be long before we may
perceive some instances of this difference between lan-
guages. For, when Jacob and Laban made a covenant
together, they erected an heap of stones, on which they
ate, and Laban called it Jegar-Sahadutha, but Jacob,
Gal-ed, which words signify (those in Chaldee, which
are Laban's, and the other in Hebrew, which are Jacob's)
an heap of witnesses ; and, in like manner, Pharaoh calls
Joseph, Tsophnatk-Paaneahh, which words are neither
Hebrew nor Chaldee : so that here we see three distinct
dialects formed in Jacob's time ; and yet we may observe,
that the world was then thin, commerce narrow, and
conquests few, so that the people were constrained to
converse with those of their own tribe, and consequently
could keep their dialect far more entire than it is possi-
ble to do now, when commerce, conquests, and colo-
nies, planted in regions already peopled with nations
that speak distinct languages, may be supposed to bring
in a deluge of new words, and make innumerable
changes. But nations seldom trade much abroad, or
make invasions upon their neighbours, or send forth
plantations into remote countries, until they are pretty
well stocked at home, which could hardly be the case of
any one country for several ages after the dispersion.
It is a mistaken notion which some have imbibed, that
every little thing, be it but the change of air, or difference
of climate (which at most can but affect the pronuncia-
tion of some letters or syllables) can make a diversity in
languages. Small and insensible alterations, which per-
haps will appear in an age or two, will undoubtedly hap-
pen, but unless people converse much with strangers,
their language will subsist, as to its constituent form, the
same for many generations.
The Roman language, for instance, was brought to a
considerable perfection before Plautus's time ; and
though now and then some obsolete words may appear
in his writings, yet any man that understands Latin may
read the books that were written in it, from Plautus down
to Theodoric the Goth, which was near seven hundred
years ; and had not the barbarous nations broken into
Italy, it might have been an intelligible language for
several ages more. And, in like manner, we may say,
that had not the Turks, when they overrun Greece,
brought darkness and ignorance along with them, the
Greek tongue might have continued even to this day;
since it is manifest, from Homer's poems, and Eusta-
thius's commentaries upon them, that it subsisted for
above two thousand years, without any considerable
alteration ; for the space of time between the poet and his
commentator was no less.
And if the languages which we are acquainted with
remained so long unchanged, to any great degree, in
times of more commerce and action than what could be
subsequent upon the dispersion ; there is reason to
believe, that (though it be difficult to define the number
of them) there are many more original languages in the
world than some men imagine : for, if we consider theii
great antiquity, their mutual agreement in the funda-
mentals (which we have described) can be no argument
that any one of them is derived from the rest ; since it is
natural to suppose, that when God confounded the
speech of the builders of Babel, he made the dialects of
those people, who were to live near one another, so far
to agree, that they might, with less difficulty, and in a
shorter space of time, mutually understand each other,
and so more easily maintain an intercourse together.
For though their association, considering the ends that
engaged them in it, was certainly culpable, yet perhaps
it might not deserve so severe a punishment as an entire
separation of every tribe among them from their nearest
kindred, with whom they had hitherto spent all their time.
To sum up the force of this argument in a fewr words.
If we consider the time since the building of the tower of
Babel, not yet 4000 years,0 and the great variety of
languages that are at present in the world ; if we consider
how entirely different some are to others, so that no art
of etymology can reduce them to the least likeness or
conformity ; and yet, in those early days, when the world
was less peopled, and navigation and commerce not so
much minded, there could not be that quick progression
of languages ; and if we examine the alterations which
such languages as we are acquainted with have made in
two or three thousand years past, where colonies of dif-
ferent people have not been imported, we shall find the
difference between language and language to be so very
great, and the alteration of the same language in a con-
siderable tract of time to be so very small, that we shall be
at a loss to conceive whence so many and so various
Languages could have proceeded, unless we take in the
account of Moses, which unriddles the whole difficulty,
and justly ascribes them to the same Almighty power,
which taught our first parents to speak one tongue in the
beginning, and, in after ages, inspired the apostles of
Jesus Christ with the gift of many. b
a According to Hales, 4363.
h From the most ancient and most authentic of all historical
records, the Sacred Scriptures, we know the fact, that all mankind
were originally descended from a single pair, and that our great
progenitor did undoubtedly possess and make use of articulate
language. What the particular language was which was thru em-
ployed, we have no means of ascertaining. We are, however,
sufficiently wan-anted to conclude, that mis primeval language
must have consisted at first of very few and simple sounds, and
that it was gradually extended as the new situation of men i;i
society required new modes of exoression. The primitive*
language, in aJl probability, continued radically the same, though
116
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CHAP. III.— Of the Tower of Babel.
That there really was such a building as the tower of
Babel, erected some ages after the recovery of the earth
enlarged by accessions closely related to the parent stock during
the whole antediluvian ages; and there is little reason to doubt,
when we take into view the longevity of the patriarchs, affording
opportunities to men of different generations to mingle together,
that from Adam down to Noah the language first made use of
suffered no essential change. When the tremendous event of the
deluge reduced the whole population of the earth to a single
family, the primitive language, as received and used by the
patriarch Noah, would still be preserved in his family, and form
the only language then used among men. In this state, we find
that language continued till the confusion of tongues at Babel,
before which period we are assured by the sacred historian, ' the
whole earth was of one language and of one speech.' Whether
this primitive language was the same with any of the languages
of which we have still any remains, has been a subject of much
dispute. That the primitive language continued at least till the
dispersion of mankind, consequent upon the building of Babel,
there seems little reason to doubt. When by an immediate inter-
position of divine power, the language of men was confounded, we
are not informed to what extent the confusion of tongues prevailed.
It is unnecessary to suppose that the former language was com-
pletely obliterated, and entire new modes of speech at once intro-
duced. It is quite sufficient if such changes only were effected,
as to render the speech of different companies, or different tribes,
unintelligible to one another, that their mutual co-operation in
the mad attempt in which they had all engaged might be no
' longer practicable. The radical stem of the first language might
therefore remain in all, though new dialects were formed, bear-
ing among themselves a similar relation with what we find in the
languages of modern Europe, derived from the same parent stem,
whether Gothic, Latin, or Sclavonian. In the midst of these
changes, it is reasonable to suppose that the primitive language
itself, unaltered, would still be preserved in some one at least of
the tribes or families of the human race. Now in none of these
was the transmission so likely to have taken place, as among that
branch of the descendants of Shem from which the patriarch
Abraham proceeded. Upon these grounds, therefore, we may
conclude that the language spoken by Abraham, and by liim
transmitted to his posterity, was in fact the primitive language,
modified, indeed, and extended in the course of time, but still
retaining its essential parts far more completely than any other
of the languages of men. If these conclusions are well founded,
they warrant the inference, that in the ancient Hebrew there are
still to be found the traces of the original speech. Whether this
ancient Hebrew more nearly resembled the Chaldean, the Syrian,
or what is now termed the Hebrew, it is unnecessary here to
inquire: these languages, it has never been denied, were origi-
nally and radically the same, though, from subsequent modifica-
tions, they appear to have assumed somewhat different aspects.
We may conceive the original language of the family of Noah
spread in various directions : carried by one set of colonies
through Armenia, Persia, and the adjacent territories, into all
the regions of the east, as far perhaps as Tartary anil China,, and
forming the groundwork of the Armenian, the ancient Persian,
the Sanscrit, perhaps, too, of the originally spoken Chinese, as
well as of all the languages related to each of them ; carried by
another set into the regions of Arabia, Egypt, Abyssinia, and
the remote parts of Africa, and there giving origin to the old
Egyptian, the Coptic, the Ethiopic, and their related tongues;
and earth d by a third set to Scythia, or the Russian territory,
Asia Minor, Ionia, Greece, Italy, and gradually tlirough the
farther parts of Europe, and there constituting the radical ground-
work of the old Pelasgic, the Gothic, the Celtic, and all their
kindred or derivative dialects. Among those families whose
migrations were least extensive, this primitive tongue, undergo-
ing fewest changes, would retain most of its original form; and
thus it is probable, that in the language of Jacob and his descend-
ants, of the Phoenicians, the Chaldeans, and the communities
(i injected with them, more of the primitive form and character
remained, than among the remoter and more widely scattered
tribes that spread through Africa and Europe.
from the deluge, is evident from the concurrent testimony
of several heathen writers. For when, besides the par-
ticular description which l Herodotus, the father of the
Greek historians, gives us of it, we rind Abydenus, as
he is ~ quoted by Eusebius, telling us, " That the first
race of men, big with a fond conceit of the bulk and
strength of their bodies, built in the place where Baby-
lon now stands, a tower of so prodigious an height, that
it seemed to touch the skies, but that the winds and the
gods overthrew the mighty structure upon their heads."
When we find Eupolemus, as he is 3 cited by Alexander
Polyhistor, leaving it upon record, " That the city of
Babylon was first built by giants who escaped from the
flood ; that these giants built the most famous tower in
all history ; and that this tower was dashed to pieces bv
the almighty power of God, and the giants dispersed and
scattered over the face of the whole earth." And lastly,
when4 we find Josephus mentioning it as a received
doctrine among the Sybils, " That at a certain time, when
the whole world spake all one language, the people of
those days gathered together and raised a mighty tower,
which they carried up to so extravagant an height, that it
looked as if they had proposed to scale heaven from the
top of it; but that the gods let the winds loose upon it,
which, with a violent blast, beat it down to the ground,
and at the same time struck the builders with an utter
forgetfulness of their native tongue, and substituted new
and unknown languages in the room of it." — AYhen we
find these, and several other authors, I say, that might
be produced, bearing testimony to Moses in most of the
material circumstances attending the building of this
tower, we cannot but conclude, that the representation
which he gives us of the whole transaction is agreeable to
truth.
The short is, all the remains now extant of the most
ancient heathen historians (except Sanchoniatho) concur
in confirming the Mosaic account of this matter, and
the sum of their testimonies is, 5 That a huge tower was
built by gigantic men at Babylon ; that there was then
but one language among mankind ; that the attempt was
offensive to the gods ; and that therefore they demolished
the tower, overwhebned the workmen, divided their
language, and dispersed them over the face of the whole
earth.
There is one circumstance, indeed, wherein we find
these ancient historians differing with Moses, and that is,
in affirming that the tower was demolished by the anger
1 Book i. c. 181. aPneparat. Evang. b. ix. c. 14.
3Alex. Polyhist. apud Euseb. Pnep. Evan. b. ix. c. 18.
4 Antiq. b. i. c. 5.
See Josephus's Antiq. b. i. c. 5. Eusebius's Pnepar. Evang.
b. ix. c. 14, &e. and Huetius's Quaest. Alnetan. b. ii. p. 189.
If these theoretical views of the filiation of tongues cannot be
fully and directly confirmed by the immediate comparison of the
different languages as they now are found to exist, this is not in
the least to be wondered at, considering the inevitable changes
many of them must have undergone in their progress tlu-ough
different countries; but if we attentively mark the precise man-
ner in which such changes might be expected to operate, and
make the necessary allowances on that account, in comparing the
apparent groundwork of the languages scattered over the globe,
a coincidence will be found, far closer and more striking than
could at first be supposed. — Br Dewar's Dissertation on Language,
in the 7th volume of the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions,
Edin. Enclycopadia, Article Language; Townsend's Character
of Moses, vol. iii.
Sect. ii] FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
A. M. 1757. A. C. 2217; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2857. A. C. 2551. GEN. CH. xi. TO VEU. If).
117
of God, and by the violence of the winds. But as it
seems more consistent with the divine wisdom (for the
admonition of posterity) to have such a monument of
men's folly and ambition for some time standing ; so we
may observe that, in confirmation of our sacred penman,
who speaks of it as a thing existing in his time, Herodo-
tus, the Greek historian, tells us expressly that he him-
self actually saw it, as it was repaired by Belus, or some
of his successors ; Pliny, the Latin historian, that it was
not destroyed in his days ; and some modern travellers,
(whom by and by we shall have occasion to quote,) that
there are some visible remains of it extant even noAV :
and, therefore, the fancy of its being beat down with the
winds is taken up, in pure conformity" to some Persian
tales recorded of Nimrod, whom these historians suppose
to be the first projector of it. It cannot be denied,
indeed, but that the generality of interpreters, meeting
with the expression of1 the children of men, whereby
they understand bad men and infidels, as opposed to the
children of God, which usually denote the good and the
faithful, are apt to imagine, that none of the family of
Shem, which retained (as they say) the true worship and
religion, were engaged in the work, but some of the
worser sort of people only, who had degenerated from
the piety of their ancestors. But by the children of men
in that place, it is evident that we are to understand all
mankind, because in the initial words of the chapter they
■are called 2 the whole earth. Nor can we well conceive
how, in so short a time after that awakening judgment of
the deluge, the major part of mankind, even while Noah
and his sons were still alive, should be so far corrupted
in their principles, as to deserve the odious character of
unbelievers.
3 Josephus, indeed, and some other authors, are clearly
of opinion that Nimrod, a descendant from the impious
Hani, was the great abettor of this design, and the ring-
leader of those who combined in the execution of it.
But, though the undertaking seems to agree very well
with the notion which the Scriptures give us of that ambi-
tious prince, yet, besides that4 others, extremely well
Gen.
i. C. 5.
xi. 15. 2 Gen. xi. 1. 3 Antiq. b
4 Bochart's Phaleg. b. i. C. 10.
a The author of the book called Malem tells this story: —
That when Nimrod saw that the fire, into which he caused Abra-
ham to be east for not submitting to the worshipping of idols, did
him no damage, he resolved to ascend into heaven, that he might
see that great God whom Abraham revealed to him. In vain
did his courtiers endeavour to divert him from this design;
he was resolved to accomplish it, and therefore gave orders
for the building of a tower that might be as high as possible.
They worked upon it for three years together, and, when he went
up to the top, lie was much surprised to see himself as far from
heaven as when he was upon the ground: but his confusion was
tench increased, win n they came to inform him next morning that
hi*; tower was fallen and dashed in pieces. He commanded them
then that another should be built, which might he higher and
Stronger than the former; but when this met with the same fate,
ami he still continued an obstinate persecutor of those who wor-
shipped the true God, God took from him the greatest part of his
subjects, by the division and confusion of their tongues, and those
who still adhered to him he> killed by a cloud of flies, which he
lent amongst them. — Calmet's Dictionary on the word Nimrod.
The poets, in like manner, having corrupted the tradition of this
event with fictions of their own, do constantly bring in Jupiter
defeating the attempts of the Titans in this maimer: — " Jupiter,
from the citadel of heaven, hurling his thunderbolts, overturned
the ponderous masses on their founders,"' &c. — Or/'/.
versed in all Jewish antiquities, have made it appear
that Nimrod was either very young at the time, or even
not yet born, when the project of building the tower and
city was first formed, there is reason to believe (even
supposuig him then alive, and in great power and autho-
rity among his people,) that he was not in any tolerable
condition to undertake so gTeat a work.
The account which Moses gives us of him is — that he5
began to be a mighty one in the earth ; which the best
writers explain, by his being the first who laid the foun-
dation of regal power among mankind ; but it is scarce
imaginable how an empire, able to effect such a work,
could be entirely acquired, and so thoroughly established,
by one and the same person, as to allow leisure for
amusements of such infinite toil and trouble.
e Great and mighty empires, indeed, have seemingly
been acquired by single persons ; but when we come to
examine into the true original of them, we shall find,
that they began upon the foundations of kingdoms
already attained by their ancestors, and established by
the care and wisdom of many successive rulers for seve-
ral generations, and after a long exercise of their people
in arts and arms, which gave them a singular advantage
over other nations that they conquered. In this manner
grew the empires of Cyrus, Alexander, and all the great
conquerors in the world ; nor can we, in all the records
of history, find one large dominion, from the very foun-
dation of the world, that was ever erected and established
by one private person : and, therefore, we have abundant
reason to infer that Nimrod, though confessedly the
beginner of sovereign authority, could, at this time, have
no great kingdom under his command.
But admitting his kingdom to be larger than this sup-
position ; yet, from that day to this, we can meet with
no works of this kind attempted but from a fulness of
wealth and wantonness of power, and after peace, luxury,
and long leisure had introduced and established arts : so
that nothing can be more absurd than to attribute such a
prodigious work to the power and vanity of one man, in
the infancy both of arts and empire, and when we can
scarce suppose that there was any such thing as artificial
wealth in the world.
Since, then, this building Avas undoubtedly very ancient,
as ancient as the Scripture makes it, and yet could not
be effected by any separate society in the period assigned
for it, the only probable opinion is, that it was (as we
said before) undertaken and executed by the united
labours of all the people that were then on the face of
the earth. It is not unlikely, however, that after the
dispersion of the people, and their leaving the place
unfinished,7 Nimrod and his subjects, coming out of
Arabia, or some other neighbouring country, might, after
their fright was over, settle at Babel, and there building
the city of Babylon, and repairing the tower, make it the
metropolis (as afterwards it was) of all the Assyrian
empire.
To this purpose there is a very remarkable passage8
in Diodorus Siculus, where he tells us, " That on the
walls of one of the Babylonian palaces was portrayed
a general hunting of all sorts of wild beasts, with the
fin'iire of a woman on horseback piercing a leopard, and
• (Gen. x. 8. * Revel. Examined, vol. ii. dissert. :>.
7 Bochart's Phaleg. b. i. c. 10. B Ibid, b. i.
118
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
A. M. 1757. A. C. 2247; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2857. A. C. 2554. GEN. CH. xi. TO VER. 10
a man fighting with a lion ; and that on the walls of the
other palace were armies in battalia, and huntings of
several kinds." Now of this Nimrod, the sacred histo-
rian informs us, that he was a great and remarkable hun-
ter, so as to pass into a proverb ; and this occupation he
might the rather pursue as the best means of training up
his companions to exploits of war, and of making him-
self popular by the glory he gained, and the public good
lie did, in destroying those wild beasts, Avhich at that time
infested the world. And as tins was a part of his cha-
racter , the most rational account that we can give of these
ornaments in the Babylonian palaces is, that they were
set up by some of Nimrod's descendants in their ances-
tor's imperial city, in memory of the great founder of
their family, and of an empire which afterwards grew so
famous.
1 Eutychius, patriarch of Alexandria, will needs have
it, that Nimrod was the first author of the religion of
the Magians, the worshippers of fire : and from hence,
very probably, * a late archbishop of our own has
thought that this tower of Babel (whose form was pyra-
midal, as he says, and so resembling fire, whose flame
ascends in a conic shape) was a monument designed for
the honour of the sun, as the most probable cause of
drying up the waters of the flood. " For though the
sun," says he, " was not merely a god of the lulls, yet
the heathens thought it suitable to his advanced station
to worship him upon ascents, either natural, or where
the country was flat, artificial, that they might approach,
as near as possibly they could, the deity they adored."
This certainly accounts for God's displeasure against
the builders, and why he was concerned to defeat their
undertaking ; but as there is no foundation for this con-
jecture in Scripture, and the date of this kind of idola-
try was not perhaps so early as is pretended, the two
ends which Moses declares the builders had in view, in
forming their project, will be motives sufficient for their
undertaking it.
For, if we consider, that they were now in the midst
of a vast plain, undistinguished by roads, buildings, or
boundaries of any kind, except rivers ; that the provision
of pasture, and other necessaries, obliged them to sepa-
rate, and that, when they were separated, there was a
necessity of some landmark to bring them together again
upon occasion, otherwise all communication, and with
it all the pleasures of life, must be cut off; we can
hardly imagine any thing more natural, and fit for this
purpose, than the erection of a tower, large and lofty
enough to be seen at great distances, and consequently
sufficient to guide them from all quarters of that immense
region ; and when they had occasion to correspond, or
come together, nothing certainly could be more proper
than the contiguous buildings of a city for their recep-
tion and convenient communication.
If we consider, likewise, that all the pride and magni-
ficence of their ancestors were now defaced, and utterly
destroyed by the deluge, without the least remains or
memorial of their grandeur ; that consequently the earth
was a clear stage whereon to erect new and unrivalled
monuments of glory and renown to themselves ; and that
at this juncture they wanted neither art nor abilities,
1 Calmet's Dictionary on the word Nimrod.
2 Tcnison on Idolatry.
neither numbers nor materials, to make themselves mas-
ters of what their vanity projected ; we may reasonably
suppose, that the affectation of renown was another
motive to their undertaking ; since it is very well known,
that this is the very principle which has all along gov-
erned the whole race of mankind, in all the works and
monuments of magnificence, the mausoleums, pillars,
palaces, pyramids, and whatever has been erected of
any pompous kind, from the foundation of the world to
this very day. So that, taking their resolution under the
united light of these two motives, the reasoning of the
builders will run thus : — " We are here in a vast plain ;
a our dispersion is inevitable ; our increase, and the ne-
cessaries of life demand it. We are strong and happy
when united ; but, when divided, we shall be weak and
wretched. Let us then contrive some means of union and
friendly society, which may, at the same time, perpetuate
our fame and memory. And what means so proper for
these purposes as a magnificent city, and mighty tower,
whose top may touch the skies ? The tower will be a land-
mark to us, through the whole extent of this plain, and a
centre of unity, to prevent our being dispersed ; and the
city, which may prove the metropolis of the whole earth,
will at all times afford us a commodious habitation. Since
then we need fear no dissolution of our works by any
future deluge, let us erect something that may immortal-
ise our names, and outvie the labours of our antediluvian
fathers." And that this seems to have been the reason-
ing of their minds, will further appear, if we come now
to take a short survey of the dimensions of the building,
according to the account which the best historians have
given us of it.
It is the opinion of the learned 3 Bochart, that what-
ever we read of the tower, enclosed in the temple of
Belus, may very properly be applied to the tower of
Babel ; because, upon due search and examination, he
conceives them to be one and the same structure. Now
of this tower 4 Herodotus tells us, that it was a square of
a furlong on each side, that is, half a mile in the whole
circumference, whose height, being equal to its basis,
was divided into eight towers, built one upon another ;
but what made it look as divided into eight towers, was
very probably the manner of its ascent. The passage
to go up it, continues our author, was a circular or
winding way, carried round the outside of the building,
to its highest point :5 from whence it seems most likely
that the whole ascent was, by the benching-in, drawn in
a sloping line from the bottom to the top eight times
round it, which would make it have the appearance of
eight towers one above another. This way was so exceed-
ing broad, that it afforded space for horses and carts,
and other means of carriage, to meet and turn ; and the
towers, which looked like so many stories upon one
another, were each of them seventy-five feet high, in
which were many stately rooms, with arched roofs sup-
3 See Phaleg. part 1. b. i. c. 9. 4 Book 1.
5 Prideaux's Connection, part ] .
a Here they speak as if they feared a dispersion : but it is hard
to tell for what cause, unless it was this: — That Noah, having
projected a division of the earth among his posterity, (for it was
a deliberate business, as we noted before,) the people had no mind
to submit to it, and therefore built a fortress to defend themselves
in their resolution of not yielding to his design; but what they
dreaded, they brought upon themselves by their own vain attempt to
avoid it. — See Patrick's Commentary, and Usher to A. M. 1757.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
119
A. M. 1757. A. C. 224'
ported by pillars, which were made parts of the temple,
after the tower became consecrated to that idolatrous
use ; and on the uppermost of the towers, which was held
more sacred, and where their most solemn devotions
ivere performed, there was an observatory, by the benefit
»f which it was, that the Babylonians advanced their skill
in astronomy beyond all other nations.
Some authors," following a mistake in the Latin ver-
sion of Herodotus, wherein the lowest of these towers is
said to be a furlong thick, and a furlong high, will have
each of the other towers to be of a proportionate height,
which amounts to a mile in the whole : but the Greek of
Herodotus (which is the genuine text of that author) says
no such thing, but only that it was a furlong long, and a
furlong broad, without mentioning any thing of its height ;
find ' Strabo, in his description of it, (calling it a pyra-
mid, because of its decreasing or benching-in at every
tower,) says of the whole, that it was a furlong high, and
;i furlong on every side ; for to reckon every tower a
furlong high, would make the thing incredible, even
though the authority of both these historians were for, as
they are against it. Taking it only as it is described by
Strabo, it was prodigious enough ; since, according to
his dimensions only, without adding any farther, it was
one of the most wonderful works in the world, and much
exceeded the greatest of the pyramids of Egypt, though
it was not built of such durable materials.
In this condition continued the tower of Babel, or the
temple of Belus, until the time of Nebuchadnezzar ; but
he enlarged it by vast buildings, which were erected
round it, in a square of two furlongs on every side, or a
mile in circumference, and enclosed the whole with a
Avail of two miles and an half in compass, in which were
several gates leading to the temple, all of solid brass,
which very probably were made of the brazen sea, the
brazen pillars, and the other brazen vessels which were
carried to Babylon, from the temple of Jerusalem ; for
so we are told, that all the sacred vessels which Nebu-
chadnezzar carried from thence, he put 2 into the house
of his god in Babylon, that is, into the house or temple
of Bel, for * that was the name of the great god of the
Babylonians, surrounding it with the pomp of these addi-
tional buildings, and adorning it with the spoils of the
temple of Jerusalem. This tower did not subsist much
above an hundred years, when Xerxes, coming from his
* See Phalog. b. 16. "2 Chron. xxxvi. 7. Dan. i. 2.
a The words of Herodotus are, " In the midst of the temple
there is built a solid tower, eight furlongs in length and breadth;
upon this tower another one is erected, and still on till altogether
they are eight in number." Now, though it be allowed that the
word ftr,ic<i; may signify height as well as length, yet it is much
better to take Herodotus in the latter sense here, otherwise the
tower (if every story answers the lowest) will rise to a prodigious
height, although nothing near to what Jerom (b. 5. Commentary
on Isaiah) affirms, from the testimony of eye-witnesses, as he
says, who examined the remains of it very carefully, namely,
that it was no less than four miles high. — Universal History,
b. 1. c. 2.
b Bel is supposed to have been the same with Nimrod, and to
have been called Bel from his dominion, and Nimrod from his
rebellion; for Bel, or Baal, which is the same name, signify
Lord, and Nimrod rebel, in the Jewish and Chaldean language.
The former was his Babylonish name, by reason of his empire in
that place, and the latter his Scripture name, by reason of his
rebellion, in revolting from God to follow his own wicked designs.
Pritleau.v's Connection, part 1. b. 2.
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. '2857. A. C. 2554. GEN. CH. xi. TO VER. 10.
Grecian expedition, wherein he had suffered a vast loss
of men and money, out of pretence of religion/ as being
himself a Magian, and consequently detesting the worship
of God by images,3 but in reality with a design to repair
the damages he had sustained, demolished it, and laid it
all in rubbish ; having first plundered it of all its immense
riches, among which were several images or statues of
massy gold, and one*1 particularly of forty feet high,
which very probably was d that which Nebuchadnezzar s
consecrated in the plains of Dura.
Thus fell this great monument of antiquity, and was
never repaired any more ; for though Alexander, at his
return to Babylon after his Indian expedition, expressed
his intention of rebuilding it, and accordingly set ten
thousand men on work to rid the place of its rubbish ;
yet, before they had made any progress therein, that
great conqueror died on a sudden, and has ever since left
both the city and tower so far defaced, that the very
people of the country are at a loss to tell where their
ancient situation was. Since some late travellers, hew-
ever, have, in their opinions, found out the true ruins,
and remains of this once renowned structure, we shall
not be averse to gratify our reader's curiosity 6 with an
account of what one, of the best authority among them,
has thought fit to communicate to the public.
" In the middle of a vast and level plain," says he,
" about a quarter of a league from Euphrates (which in
that place runs westward), appears an heap of ruined
buildings like a huge mountain, the materials of which
8 Prideaux's Connection, part 1. 4 Diodorus Siculus, b. 2.
5 Dan. iii. 1. 6 See Vi Aggi di Pietro della Valle, part 2. b. 1 7.
c The two great sects of religion among the Persians were the
Magians and Sabhms. The Sabians worshipped God through sen-
sible images, or rather worshipped the images themselves. The
Babylonians were the first founders of this sect ; for they first
brought in the worship of the planets, and afterwards that of
images, and from thence propagated it to all other nations where
it prevailed. The Magians, on the contrary, worship no images
of any kind, but God only, together with two subordinate
principles; the one, the author and director of all good, and
the other, the author and director of all evil. These two sects
have always had a mortal enmity to each other; and therefore it
is no wonder that Xerxes, who had always the Archimagus
attending him in his expeditions, with several other inferior
Magi, in the capacity of his chaplains, should by them be pre-
vailed on to take Babylon in his way to Susa, in order to destroy
all the idolatrous temples there.
d Nebuchadnezzar's golden image is said indeed in Scripture
to have been sixty cubits, that is, ninety feet high, but that must
be understood of the image and pedestal altogether. For that
image being said to have been but six cubits broad or thick, it is
impossible that the image could have been sixty cubits high; for
that makes its height to be ten times its breadth or thickness,
which exceeds all the proportions of a man, forasmuch as no
man's height is above six times his thickness, measuring the
slenderest man living at the waist. But where the breadth of this
image was measured it is no! said : perhaps it was from shoulder
to shoulder, and then the proportion of six cubits' breadth will
bring down the height exactly to the measure which Diodorus
has mentioned. For the usual height of a man being four and
an half of his breadth between the shoulders, it must, according to
this proportion, have been twenty-.-cven cubits high, which is
forty feet and an half. Nor must it be forgot what Diodorus
further tells us, namely, that this image contained a thousand
Babylonish talents of gold, which, upon a moderate computation,
amounts to thn c millions and an half of our money. But now,
if we advance the height of the statue to ninety feet without the
pedestal, it will increase the value to a sum incredible; and
therefore it is necessary to take the pedestal likewise into the
height mentioned by Daniel.— i'ri'./c n.v's Connet tion, part 1 . b. 2.
120
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
A. M. 1757. A. C. 2247; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2857. A. C. 2554. GEN. CH. xi. TO VER. 10.
are so confounded together that one knows not what to
make of it. Its figure is square, and rises in form of a
pyramid with four fronts, which answer to the four quar-
ters of the compass, but it seems longer from north to
south than from east to west, and is, as far as I could
judge by my pacing it, a large quarter of a league. Its
situation and form correspond with that pyramid which
Strabo calls the tower of Belus ; but even in his time it
had nothing remaining of the stairs and other ornaments
mentioned by Herodotus, for the greatest part of it was
ruined by Xerxes and Alexander, who designed to have
restored it to its former lustre, but was prevented by death.
" There appear no marks of ruins round the compass
of this rude mass, to make one believe that so great a
city as Babylon ever stood here. All that one can dis-
cover, within fifty or sixty paces of it, is only the
remains here and there of some foundations of buildings ;
and the country round about it is so flat and level, that
one can hardly conceive it should be chosen for the situa-
tion of so noble a city, or that there ever were any
considerable structures on it. But considering withal,
that it is now at least four thousand years since that city
was built, and that in the time of Diodorus Siculus, as
he tells us, it was almost reduced to nothing, I, for my
part, am astonished that there appears so much as there
does.
" The height of this mountain of ruins is not in every
part equal, but exceeds the highest palace in Naples. It
is a misshapen mass, wherein there is no appearance of
regularity. In some places it rises in points, is craggy,
and inaccessible, in others it is smooth, and of easy
ascent. — Whether ever there were steps to ascend it, or
doors to enter into it, it is impossible at present to dis-
cover ; and from hence one may easily -judge, that the
stairs ran winding about on the outside, and that, being
the less solid parts, they were the soonest demolished,
so that there is not the least sign to be seen of them now.
" In the inside of it, there are some grottos, but so
ruined that one can make nothing of them ; and it is
much to be doubted, with regard to some of them, whether
they were built at the same time with the work, or made
since by the peasants for shelter, which last seems to be
more likely. It is evident from these ruins, however,
that the tower of Nimrod (so our author calls it) was
built with great and thick bricks, as I carefully observed,
causing holes to be dug in several places for that pur-
pose ; but they do not appear to have been burned, but
only dried in the sun, which is extremely hot in these
parts.
" In laying these bricks, neither lime nor sand was
made use of, but only earth tempered and petrified ; and
in those parts which made the floors, there had been
mingled with the earth, which served instead of lime,
bruised reeds or hard straws, such as large mats are
made of, to strengthen the work. In several other places,
especially where the strongest buttresses were to be, there
were, at due distances, other bricks of the same size, but
more solid, and burnt in kilns, and set in good lime or
bitumen, but the greater number were such as were dried
in the sun."
This is the most of what this sedulous traveller could
discover; and yet, upon the foot of these remarks, he
makes no doubt to declare, " That this ruin was the
ancient Babel or the tower of Nimrod (as he calls it),
for besides the evidence of its situation, it is so acknow-
ledged to be, and so called by the inhabitants of the
country to this very day." Notwithstanding some others
are of a contrary opinion, namely,1 that this and some
other ruins not far distant from it, are not the remains of
the original tower, but rather some later structures of the
Arabs.
We cannot dismiss this subject, however, without
making some reflections on the vanity and transitoriness
of all sublunary things, as well as the veracity of all
God's predictions ; since that goodly city, which was
once the pride of all Asia, and the designed metropolis
of the whole universe, according to the words 2 of the
prophets, ' is fallen, is fallen low, very low, and become a
dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hiss-
ing without an inhabitant ;' and that stately tower, which
once reared its head on high, and seemed to menace the
stars, is brought down to the ground, even to the dust ;
insomuch, that the place of it is to be seen no more ;
or, if by chance found out by some inquisitive traveller,
the whole is now become only a confused heap of rub-
bish, according to the word of God by the same pro-
phet ; 3 ' 1 will roll thee down from the rocks, and make
thee as a burnt mountain, and they shall not take of thee
a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations, but
thou shalt be an everlasting desolation, saith the Lord.'*1
1 Universal History, b. 1. c. 2. 2 Isa. xxi. 9. and Jer. li. 37.
3 Jer. li. 25, 26.
a Various have been the conjectures respecting the reasons
which induced the human race to unite, as one man, in tins great
enterprise. Some have supposed that their design was to raise a
tower so high as to enable them to climb up to heaven ; a strange
opinion, founded upon a literal interpretation of these words in
Scripture : — ' Let us build a city, and a tower whose top may
reach unto heaven;' an expression evidently intended to signify
no more than that its height was to be uncommonly great. Similar
expressions arc to be found in Deut. i. 28, and ix. 1, where the
cities of the heathen nations, who inhabited the land of Canaan,
are described as ' great, and walled or fenced up to heaven.'
Nor was it uncommon for the Greek poets to use the expressions,
high as heaven, or reaching to the sun, when they wished to
describe things of an extraordinary height. Josephus and some
others have thought that it must have been designed to preserve
them from a second deluge, which they greatly dreaded ; but had
that been the case, they would have betaken themselves to the
mountains, and not made choice of the low country, for building
a place of security. A third opinion is, that, as the tower was in
the form of a pyramid, to the figure of which the flame of fire bears
a resemblance, it was a monument designed in honour of the sun,
to whose influence they ascribed the drying up of the flood. But
there is no foundation in Scripture for that conjecture, and the
date of that species of idolatry was probably not so early as it
supposes. The reason assigned in Scripture is, ' Let us make
us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole
earth.' The most probable conjecture, therefore, seems to be,
that, as they were now in a vast plain, undefined by any build-
ings, or roads, or any distinct boundaries; and as they must soon
separate to attend their flocks, or go in quest of provisions, or
perhaps dreading a dispersion, in consequence of Noah's pro-
jected division of the earth among his posterity; — they built this
tower, as & pharos, or landmark, to enable them to find their way
back to the surrounding city; which, with its immense tower,
they believed would be a lasting monument of their fame, and
transmit their name with honour to posterity. In this view, their
design had been to make the whole world one kingdom, and
Babel its metropolis.
This interpretation seems also to account for the reason of thr
divine frustration of their great design, and of their consequent
dispersion. It is given in these words, ' Behold the people ii
one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do
and now nothing will be restrained fr»m them which they hav<
imagined to do;' that is, not as some have explained the words
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
121
A. M. 1759. A. C. 2215, OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 2859
SECT. III.
CHAP. I. — Of t he Dispersion and First Setth
of the Natiotis.
THE HISTORY.
In what manner the children of Noah were admitted to
the possession of the several countries they afterwards
tame to inhabit, the sacred historian has not informed us ;
but this we may depend on, that l this great division of
the earth was not the result of chance, but of mature
deliberation ; not a confused irregular dispersion,
wherein every one went where he pleased, and settled
himself where he liked best, but a proper assignment of
such and such places, for every division and subdivision
of each nation and family to dwell in. a Japheth, as we
said before, though usually mentioned last, yet was in
reality the eldest son of Noah, and accordingly has his
1 Mede's Discourses, 49, 50. b. 1.
— if this scheme shall succeed, the divine plan for the govern-
ment of the world 'will be frustrated ; but, as the words more
naturally signify, this their first attempt, and if they succeed in
it, they will think themselves able for any undertaking, — no
enterprise will appear too great for them. Accordingly, the very
dispersion which they dreaded, they brought upon themselves, by
their vain attempt to avoid it. ' The name of it was called
Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all
the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad
upon the face of all the earth.' — Ancient Universal History,
vol. 1. Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, article Babel.
a According to the Armenian tradition, recorded by Abal-
faragi, Noah distributed the habitable earth from north to south
between his sons, and gave to Ham the region of the blacks; to
Shem the region of the tawny (fuseorum) ; and to Japheth the
region of the ruddy (ruborum). p. 9. And he dates the actual
division of the earth in the 140th year of Peleg, A. C. 2G14, or
541 years after the deluge, and 191 years after the death of Noah,
in the following order: — To the sons of Shem was allotted the
middle of the earth, namely, Palestine, Syria, Assyria, Samaria,
(Singar or Sliinar,) Babel (or Babylonian), Persia, and Hegar
(Arabia). To the sons of Ham, Terman (or Idumea, Jer. xlix.
7), Africa, Nigritia, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Sciudid, and
India, (or India east and west of the river Indus.) To the sons
of Japheth, also Garbia (the north), Spain, France, the countries
of the Greeks, Sclavonians, Bulgarians, Turks, and Armenians,
(Annals, p. 11.) In this curious and valuable geographical chart,
Armenia, the cradle of the human race, was allotted to Japheth
by right of primogeniture; and Samaria and Babel to the sons
of Slum. The usurpation of these regions, therefore, by Nimrod,
and of Palestine by Canaan, was in violation of the divine decree.
Though the migration of the three primitive families from the
central regions of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, began
about A. C. 2614, or 541 years after the deluge; yet it would
be a considerable length of time before they all reached their des-
tinations. Sir* William Jones conjectures that the migration
lasted about four centuries, (Asiatic Researches, vol. 4. p. 4.)
in the course of which, by successive colonizations, they established
far distant communities, and various modes of society and govern-
ment. The Phoenicians, Arabians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and
Lybians, southwards: the Persians, Ethiopians, Indians, and Chi-
nese, eastwards; the Scythians, Celts, and Tartars, northwards;
and the Goths, Greeks, and Latins, even as far as the Peruvians
and Mexicans of South America, and the Indian tribes of North
America, westwards. All these various inhabitants of the globe
retain a striking affinity in the leading principles of their lan-
guage, customs, and religions, however diversified in process of
time, from each other, by local circumstances; such affinity
evincing their common descent from one and the same parent
stock. — Hales 's Analysis, vol. 1. p. 351. and vol. 2. p. 50.
Second edition. — En.
t The following account of the plantations of the three sons of
A. C. 2552. GEN. CH. x. ; AND CH. xi. VEK. 10. TO THE END.
descendants here placed in die front of the genealogy.
He had l> seven sons : Gomer, who seated himself in Phry-
gia ; Magog, in Scythia ; Madai, in Media ; Javan, in
Ionia, or part of Greece ; Tubal, in Tibarenc ; Mashech,
in Moschia, (which lies in the north-east parts of Cap-
padocia) ; and Tiras, in Thrace, Mysia, and the rest of
Europe towards the north.
The sons of Gomer were Ashkanaz, who took posses-
sion of Ascania, (which is part of Lesser Phrygia) ;
Riphah, of the Riphasan mountains ; and Togarmagh, of
part of Cappadocia and Galatia.
The sons of Javan were Eliskah, who seated himself
in Peloponnesus ; Tarshish, in Spain ; Kittim, in Italy ;
and Dodanim 2 (otherwise called Rhodanim) in France
not far from the banks of the river Rhone, to which he
seems to have given the name. By these, and the colo-
nies which in some space of time proceeded from them,
not only a considerable part of Asia, but all Europe and
the islands adjacent were stocked with inhabitants ; and
the several inhabitants were so settled and disposed of,
that each tribe or family who spake the same language
kept together in one body ; and (though distant in situa-
tion) continued, for some time at least, their relation to
the people or nation from whom originally they sprang.
Shem, the second son of Noah, (and from whom the He-
brew nation did descend,) had himself five sons ; whereof
Elam took possession of a country in Persia, called after
himself at first, but in the time of Daniel it obtained the
name of Susiana ; Assur, of Assyria ; Arphaxad, of
Chaldea ; Lud, of Lydia ; and Aram, of Syria, as far
as the Mediterranean Sea.
The sons of Aram were Uz, who seated himself in the
country of Damascus ; Hid, near Cholobatene in Arme-
nia ; Mash, near the mountain Masius ; and Gether, in
part of Mesopotamia.
Arphaxad had a son named Salah, who settled near
Susiana, and begat Eber, (the father of the Hebrew
nation,) who had likewise two sons : Peleg, whose name
imports division, because in his days mankind was divided
into several colonies ; and Jocktan, who had a large
offspring to the number of thirteen sons, all seated in
Arabia Felix, and who, in all probability, were the pro-
genitors of such people and nations as in those parts, in
after ages, had some affinity to their several names. For
here it was that the Allumcpota;, who took their name from
Almodad, the Selapeni, from Sheleph, and the Abalita?,
from Obal, &c, lived, namely, from that part of Arabia
which lies between Musa (a famous sea -port in the Red
Sea), and the mountain Climax, which was formerly
called Sephar, from a city of that name built at the bot-
tom of it, and then the metropolis of the whole country.
Ham, the youngest son of Noah, had four sons :
whereof Cush settled his abode in that part of Arabia
which lies towards Egypt ; Mizraim, in both Upper
1 1 Chron. i. 7.
Noah and their descendants, is extracted from Bochart's Phaleg. ;
Heidegger's Historia Patriarehum, vol. 1. Essay 22 j Wells'
Sacred Geography, vol. 1 ; Bedford's Scripture Clu-onology, b. 2 ;
Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1 ; Parker's Bibliotheca Biblica, vol.
1 ; the Authors of the Universal History, b. 1 ; Le Clerc and Pa-
trick's Commentaries; Poole and Ainsworth's Annotations, with
other authors of the like nature; from whom we have made use
of the most probable conjectures, and to whom we refer the reader,
rather than encumber him with a multitude of explanatory notes.
122
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and Lower Egypt ; Phut, in part of Lybia ; and Canaan,
in the land which was afterwards called by his name, and
in other adjacent countries.
The sons of Cush, were Seba, who settled on the
south-west part of Arabia ; Havilah, who gave name to
a country upon the river Pison, where it parts with
Euphrates, to run into the Arabian Gulf; Sabtah, who
lived on the same shore (but a little more northward)
of the Arabian Gulf ; Raamah, who, with his two sons,
Sheba and Dedan, occupied the same coast, but a little
more eastward ; and Sabtecha, who (we need not doubt)
placed himself among the rest of his brethren. But
among all the sons of Cush, Nimrod was the person who
in those early days distinguished himself by his bravery
and courage. His lot chanced to fall into a place that
was not a little infested with wild beasts ; and therefore he
betook himself to the exercise of hunting, and, drawing
together a company of stout young fellows, not only
cleared the country of such dangerous creatures, but,
procuring himself likewise gTeat honour and renown by
his other exploits, he raised himself at length to the
dignity of a king (the first king that is supposed to have
been in the world) , and, having made Babylon the seat
of his empire, laid the foundation of three other cities,
namely, Erech, Accad, and Calneth, in the neighbouring
provinces; and so, passing into Assyria, and enlarging
his territories there, he built Nineveh, Rehoboth, Calah,
and Resen, (Larissa,) situate upon the Tigris. But to
return to the remainder of Ham's posterity.
Mizraini, his second son, became king of Egypt,
which after his death was divided into three kingdoms
by three of his sons ; Ananim, who was king of Tanis or
Lower Egypt, called afterwards Delta ; Naphtulim, who
was king of Naph or Memphis in Upper Egypt; and
Pathrusim, who set up the kingdom of Pathros or Thebes
ui Thebais. Ludim and Lehabim peopled Lybia.
Caslubim fixed himself at Cashiotis, in the entrance of
Egypt from Palestine ; and having two sons, Philistim
and Caphterim, the latter he left to succeed him at
Cashiotis, and the former planted the country of the
Philistines, between the borders of Canaan and the
Mediterranean Sea. The sons of Canaan were Sidon,
the father of the Sidonians, who lived in Phoenicia ; Heth,
the father of the Hittites, who lived near Hebron ; Emor,
the father of the Amorites, who lived in the mountains of
Judea; and Arvad, the father of the Arvadites, not far
from Sidon : but whether the other sons of Canaan
settled in this country cannot be determined with any
certainty and exactness ; only we must take care to place
them somewhere between Sidon and Gerar, and Admah
and Zeboim ; for these were the boundaries of their
land.
Upon the whole, then, we may observe, that the pos-
terity of Japheth came into the possession, not only of all
Europe, but of a considerable portion of Asia ; * for two
of his sons, Tiras and Javan, together with their de-
scendants, had all those countries which from the Medi-
terranean Sea, reach as far as Scandinavia northward ;
and his other sons, from the Mediterranean extending
themselves eastward over almost all Asia Minor,
and part of Armenia, over Media, Iberia, Albania,
and those vast regions towards the north, where for-
1 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 1. Essay 22. Sect. 1.
merly the Scythians, but now the Tartars dwell : that
the posterity of Ham held in their possession all Africa,
and no small part of Asia ; 2 Mizraim, both the Upper,
Lower, and Middle Egypt, Marmorica, and Ethiopia,
both east and west ; Phut, the remainder of Africa,
Lybia Interior and Exterior, Numidia, Mauritania,
Getulia, &c. ; Cush, all Arabia that lies between the
Red Sea and the Gulf; beyond the Gulf, Carmania, and
no small part of Persia ; and towards the north of Arabia
(till expelled by Nimrod), Babylonia, and part of
Chaldea : and Canaan, Palestine, Phoenicia, part of
Cappadocia, and that large tract of ground along the
Euxine Sea, even as far as Colchis : and that the pos-
terity of Shem had in their possession part both of the
Greater and Lesser Asia ; 3 in the Lesser, Lydia, Mysia,
and Cciria ; and in the Greater, Assyria, Syria, Meso-
potamia, Armenia, Susiana, Arabia Felix, &c, and
perhaps eastward all the countries as far as China.
These are the plantations 4 ' of the families of the sons
of Noah in their generations,' and after this manner
' were the nations dividetl in the earth after the flood.'
And now to descend to a more particular account of the
posterity of his son Shem, from whom the Hebrews (who
are the proper subjects of our history) were descended.
A. M. 1G58, Two years after the flood, when Shem was
or 2258
100 years old, he had a son named Arphaxad ;
after which time he lived 500 years ; so that the
whole of his life was 600.
A.M. 1693, Arphaxad, when 35 (135),° had asonnamed
or 2393
Salah, after which he lived 403 (303) ; in all
438.
A.M. 1723, Salah, when 30 (130), had a son named
or 2523.
Eber (from whom his descendants were called
Hebrews), after which he lived 403 (303) years ;
in all, 433.
a. M. 1757, Eber, when 34 (134), had a son named Pe-
leg, in whose time (as we said) the earth came
to be divided ; after which he lived 430 (330)
years ; in all, 464.
a.m. 1787, Peleg, when 30 (130), had a son named
Reu, after which he lived 209 (109), years ; in
all, 239.
A. M. 1819, Reu, when 32 (132), had a son named Se-
rug ; after which he lived 207 (107) years ; in
all 239.
A. M. 1849, Serug, when 30 (130), had a son named
Nahor, after which he lived 200 (100) years ;
in all 230.
A. M. 1878, Nahor, when 29 (79), had a son named
Terah ; after which he lived 119 (69) years; in
all 148. But of all these persons, it must be
remarked, that they had several other children
of both sexes, though not recorded in this his-
tory.
a. M. 1918, Terah, when 70 (130), had three sons, one af-
ter another, Abram, Nahor, and Haran; whereof
Haran, the eldest, died, before his father, in his
native country of Ur, leaving behind him one
son, whose name was Lot, and two daughters,
2 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 1. Essay 22. Sect. 2.
3 Ibid. Sect. 3. 4 Gen. x. 32.
« All the dates within ( ) are taken from Dr Hales's Analysis,
Skct. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
123
A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. Ch. x. ; AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO I HE END.
whereof the elder, namely, Milcah, was mar-
ried to her uncle Nahor, and the younger, m
whose name was Sarai, was married to her
uncle Abrain ; but at this time she was barren,
and had no children.
The corruption of mankind was now become general,
and idolatry and polytheism began to spread like a con-
tagion ; b the people of Ur in particular, l as is supposed
by the signification of the name, worshipped the element
of fire, which was always thought a proper symbol of the
sun, that universal god of the east. Terah, the father
of Abrain, 2 was certainly a companion (some say a
priest) of those who adored such strange gods ; nor was
Abram himself (as it is generally imagined) uninfected.
But God being minded to select this family out of the
rest of mankind, and in them to establish his church,
ordered Terah to leave the place of his habitation, which
was then corrupted in this manner ; which accordingly
he did, and taking with him his son Abrain and his wife,
together with his grandson Lot, left Ur, with an intent
to go into Canaan, but in his journey fell sick at c Haran
(which Stephen calls Charran) a city of Mesopotamia,
where being forced to make his abode for some time, d
in the 145th (205th) year of his age he died.
1 See Calmet's Dictionary on the word Ur.
2 Jos. xxiv. 2, 14.
a It is very probable that Sarai was called Iscah, before she
left Ur ; because, in the 29th verse, we read that Haran had a
daughter of that name ; and yet we cannot suppose but that, had
she been a distinct person, Moses would have given us an account
of her descent, because it so much concerned his nation to know
from whom they came both by the father and mother's side. —
Patrick's Commentary.
b The city of Ur was in Chaldea, as the Scripture assures us
in more places than one ; but still its true situation is not so well
known. For some think it to be the same as Camarina in Ba-
bylonia; others confound it with Orcha, or Orche in Chaldea ;
while others again take it for Ura or Sura, upon the banks of the
river Euphrates. Bochart and Grotius maintain that it is Ura,
in the eastern part of Mesopotamia, which was sometimes (as it
appears from Acts vii. 2, 4.) included under the name Chal-
dea ; and this situation seems the more probable, not only
because it agrees with the words of St Stephen in the above-cited
place, but with the writings of Ammianus Marcellinus likewise,
v/lio himself travelled this country, and mentions a city of this
name, in the place where Bochart supposes it, about two days'
journey from Nisibis. — Wells' Geography, vol. 1.
c Haran, which is likewise called Charan, according to the
Hebrew, and Charran, according to the Greek pronunciation,
was a city situated in the west or north-west part of Mesopota-
mia, on a river of the same name, which very probably runs into
the river Chaboras, as that does into the Euphrates. It is taken
notice of by Latin writers, on account of the great overthrow
which the Parthians gave the Roman army under the command
of Crassus, and, as some think, had its name given by Terah, in
memory of Haran, his deceased son. But others think it is much
better derived from the word Hharar, which denotes its soil to
be hot and adust, as it appears to he from a passage out of Plu-
tarch, in the life of Crassus, and several other ancient testi-
monies.— See Calmet's Dictionary, Wells' Geography, and Le
Clcrc's Commentary in locum.
d St Stephen (in Acts vii. 4.) tells us, that after the death of
his lather, Abraham removed from Haran, or, as he calls it Char-
ran, to the land of Canaan. In Gen. xii. 4. we are told that
Abraham was ' seventy-live years old when he departed out of
Charran. ' In Gen. xi. 26. it is said that Terah was 'seventy
years old when he begat Abraham ;' and yet, in verse 32. of the
same chapter, it is affirmed, that ' he died, being two hundred
and five years old.' But at this rate Terah must have lived 60
years after Abraham's going from Haran: for 75 (the number of
Abraham's years when he left Haran) being added to 70, the
number of Terah's years when he begat Abraham, make 145
CHAP. II. — Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
It may seem not a little strange to some, perhaps, why
Moses, in his account of the times, both preceding and
subsequent to the flood, should be so particular in setting
down the genealogies of the patriarchs ; but he who
considers that this was the common method of recording
history in those days, will soon perceive that he had
reason sufficient for what he did, namely, to give content
and satisfaction to the age wherein he wrote. We
indeed, according to the present taste, think these
genealogies but heavy reading ; nor are we at all con-
cerned who begat whom, in a period that stands at so
distant a prospect ; but the people, for whom Moses
wrote, had the things either before their eyes, or recent
in their memories. They saw a great variety of nations
around them, different in their manners and customs, as
well as their denominations. The names whereby they
were then called, were not to them so antique and
obsolete as they are to us. They knew their meaning,
and were acquainted with their derivation. And there-
fore it was no small pleasure to them to observe, as they
read along, the gradual increase of mankind ; how the
stem of Noah spread itself into branches almost innu-
merable, and how, from such and such a progenitor, such
and such a nation, whose history and adventures they
were no strangers to, did arise. Nor can it be less than
some satisfaction to us, even at this mighty distance, to
perceive, that, after so many ages, the change of lan-
guages, and the alteration of names, brought in by
variety of conquests, we are still able to trace the foot-
steps of the names recorded by Moses ; by the help of
these can discover those ancient nations which descended
from them, and with a little care and application, the
particular regions which they once inhabited ; whereof
the best heathen geographers, without the assistance of
these sacred records, were never in a capacity so much
as to give us a tolerable guess.
But there is a farther reason for our historian's writing
in this manner. God had promised to Adam, and, in
him, to all his posterity, a restoration in the person of
the Messiah. This promise was renewed 3 to Noah, and
afterwards confirmed to Abraham, the great founder of
3 See Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy,
years only; whereas the account in Genesis is, that he lived 205.
This therefore must certainly proceed from a fault crept into the
text of Moses; because of the 205 years which are given to
Terah, when he died at Haran, he only lived 1 45, according to
the Samaritan version, and the Samaritan chronicle, which,
without doubt, do agree with the Hebrew copy, from which tiny
were translated. — An Essay for a New Translation. But, as
Dr Hales justly remarks, the chronology of this period has been
considerably embarrassed by the vulgar error that Abraham was
the eldest of Terah's sons, because he is first named, The con-
sequence of this has been, that the date of his birth is usually
assigned to the seventieth year of Terah, because it is said that
Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor. and Haran,
" But this is the date of the birth of Haran, who was undoubtedly
the eldest sou; because his daughters, Milcah and Iscah (the
latter surnamed Sarai and Sarah) were married to their uncles,
Nahor and Abram respectively; and Sarah was only ten years
younger than her husband, Gen. xvii. 17. ; Abram was probably
the youngest son, born by a second wife, Gen. xx. 18, when
Terah was 130 years old, Gen. xi. 38; xii. 4." — Analysis, tic
vol. 2. p. 107, second edition. — Ed.
124
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318
the Jewish nation. Fit therefore it was, in this regard,
that he should record exact genealogies, and that all
other sacred historians should successively do the same :
nor can we sufficiently admire the divine wisdom, in
settling such a method, in the beginning of the world, by
Piloses, and carrying it on by the prophets, as might be
of general use, as long as the world should last. For,
as the expectation of the Messiah put the Jews upon
keeping an exact account of all their genealogies ; so,
when Christ came into the world, it was evident, beyond
dispute, that he was of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe
of Judah, and of the lineage of David, according to the
promises, which had, from time to time, been recorded
of him.
It is well worth our observation, however, that, in the
catalogue which Moses gives us of the descendants of
Noah, he makes mention of no more than sixteen sons
of the three brothers, or principal founders of so many
original nations ; nor of any more than seven of these
sixteen, of whom it is recorded that they had any
children ; and even of these seven, there is one (we may
observe) whose children are not numbered. ' But it is
not to be imagined, that in two or three hundred years,
upon a moderate calculation, or even but in one hundred
years, at the lowest account, Noah should have had no
more than sixteen grandsons, and that, of these too, the
majority should go childless to the grave ; it is much
more likely, or rather self-evident that the nine grand-
sons, of whom we find nothing in Scripture, were
nevertheless fathers of nations, as well as any of the
rest, and not only of original nations called after their
names, but of lesser and subordinate tribes, called after
their sons' names ; and (what makes the amount to seem
much less) there is reason to suppose, that how many
soever the grandchildren of Noah were, we have, in this
tenth chapter of Genesis, the names of those only who
were patriarchs of great nations, and only of such
nations as were in the days of Moses known to the He-
brews. For, if we read it attentively, we shall perceive,
2 that the design of the holy penman, is not to present
us with an exact enumeration of all Noah's descendants,
(which would have been infinite) no, nor to determine
who were the leading men above all the rest ; but only
to give us a catalogue, or general account of the names
of some certain persons, descended of each of Noah's
children, who became famous in their generations ; and
so pass them by, as having not space enough in his
history to pursue them more minutely. For we may
observe, that the constant practice of our author (as it is
indeed of all other good authors) is to cut things short
that do not properly relate to his purpose ; and when
le is hastening to his main point, to mention cursorily
such persons as were remarkable (though not the subject
he is to handle) in the times whereof he treats.
Thus, in the entrance of his history, his business was
to attend to the line of Seth, and therefore, when he
comes to mention the opposite family of Cain, 3 he only
reckons up eight of them, and these the rather because
they were the real inventors of some particular arts,
which the Egyptians vainly laid claim to. And, in like
1 Blbliotheca Biblira, vol. 1., Occasional Annotations, 17.
8 Shuckford's Connection, b. 3.
J Gen. iv.
A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
manner, when he comes to the life of Isaac, Jacob's was
the next line wherein his history was to run, and there-
fore he contents himself with giving us a catalogue of
some of Esau's race, but such of them only as were in
after-ages 4 ' the dukes of Edom, according to their
habitations in the land of their possession,' as he expres-
ses it. Unless, therefore, we would desire it in an
author, that he should be luxuriant and run wild, we
cannot, with any colour of reason, blame the divine
historian for stopping short upon proper occasions ; for
had he pursued all the families descended from Noah
into their several plantations, and there given us the
history of all their various adventures, the world, we
may almost say, would not have contained the books
which he must have written. ,
What grounds there may be for the supposition I
cannot tell ; but to me there seems to be no reason why
we should be obliged to maintain, that all the parts of
the habitable world were peopled at once, immediately
after the confusion of languages. The historian, indeed,
speaking of the persons he had just enumerated, gives
us to know, that * ' by these were the nations divided after
the flood ;' but how long after the flood he does not inti-
mate: so that there is no occasion to understand the words,
as though he meant, that, either by these only, or by
these immediately, or by these all at once, was the earth
replenished ; but only, that among others (unmentioned
because not so well known to the Jews) there were so
many persons of figure descended from the sons of
Noah, who, some at one time, and some at another,
became heads of nations, and had, by their descendants,
countries called after their names ; so that B by them the
nations were divided, that is, people were broken into
different nations on the earth, not all at once, or imme-
diately upon the confusion, but at several times, as their
families increased and separated after the flood.
For, considering that the number of mankind was then
comparatively small, and the distance of countries, from
the place of their dispersion, immensely wide ; it is more
reasonable to think that these several plantations were
made at different times and by a gTadual progression.
Moses indeed informs us, that the earth was portioned
out among the children of Noah after their tongues : sup-
posing, then, that the number of languages was, accord-
ing to the number of the heads of nations, sixteen, these
sixteen companies issued out of Babel at separate times,
and by separate routes, and so took possession of the
next adjacent country whereunto they were to go.
Here they had not settled long before the daily increase
of the people made the bounds of their habitation too
narrow ; whereupon the succeeding generation, under
the conduct of some other leader, leaving the place in
possession of such as cared not to move, penetrated
farther into the country, and there settling again, and
again becoming too numerous, sent forth fresh colonies
into the places they found unoccupied ; till, by this way
of progression on each side, from the centre to every
point of the circumference, the whole world came in time
to be inhabited in the manner that we now find it. If
then the several parts of the globe were, by the sons of
Gen. xxxvi. 43. 5 Gin. x. 32.
H Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1. b. 3.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
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Noah, gradually and at sundry times peopled, there
wanted not all at once so many ; and if several of the
sons of Noah, who had their share in peopling the globe,
are not taken notice of by Moses, there might possibly
be many more to plant and replenish the earth, than we
are aware of. Let us then see what their number, upon
a moderate computation, might at this time be supposed
to be.
To this purpose we are to remember, that we are not
to make our computation according to the present
standard of human life, which, a since the time of the
flood, is vastly abbreviated ; that the strength of constitu-
tion, necessary to the procreation of children, which, by
a continued course of temperance and simplicity of diet,
then prevailed, is now, by an induction of all manner of
riot and excess, sadly impaired ; and that the divine
benediction which, in a particular manner, was then
poured out upon the children of Noah, could not but
prove effectual to the more than ordinary multiplication
of mankind ; so that length of days, assisted by the
blessing of God, and attended with a confirmed state of
health, could not but make a manifestly great difference
between their case and ours.
* Various are the ways which have been attempted by
learned men, to show the probable increase of mankind
in that period of time : but, for our present purpose, it
will he sufficient to suppose 1 that the first three couples,
that is, Noah's three sons and their wives, in twenty years'
time after the flood, might have thirty pair, and, by a
gradual increase of ten pair for each couple in forty
years' time, till the three hundred and fortieth year after
1 Bishop Cumberland's Origines Gentium, Tract. 4, and
Millar's Church History, ch. 1. part 2.
a In the Mosaic history we find by what degrees the long
lives which preceded the flood were after it shortened. The
first three generations recorded in Scripture after the deluge,
Arphaxad, Salah, and Heber, lived above 130 years ; yet not so
lung as their ancestor Shem, who, being born 100 years before
the flood, lived above 500 after it. The three next generations,
releg, Ken, and Serug, lived not much above 230 years; and
from their time, only Terah lived about 200. All the others
after him were below that number. Moses came not to be above
120; and, in his days, he complains, that the age of man was
shortened to about seventy or eighty years ; and near this stan-
dard it has continued ever since. — Millar's Church History, p. 35.
I> Petavius (do Doct. Temp. b. ix. c. 14.) supposes that the
posterity of Noah might beget children at seventeen ; and that
each of Noah's sons might have eight children in eight years after
the flood ; and that every one of these eight might beget eight
more : by this means in one family (as in that of Japheth, 238
years after the flood) he makes a diagram, consisting of almost
an innumerable company of men. Temperarius, (as the learned
Usher in his Chron. Sacra, ch. 5. tells us,) supposes that all the
posterity of Noah, when they attained twenty years of age, had
every year twins; and hereupon he undertakes to make it appear,
that in 102 years after the flood, there would be in all 1,534,400;
rot, without this supposition of twins, there would, in that time,
,605 males, besides females. Others suppose, that each
"I the sons of Noah had ten sons, and, by that proportion, in a few
■ "lis, the amount will rise to many thousands within a
century. And others again insist on the parallel between the
multiplication < if the children of Israel in Egypt, and thereupon
compute, that, if from seventy-two men, in the space of 215 years,
mere were procreated 600,000, how many will be born of three
men in the space of 100 years? But what method soever wo
Jmw to come to a probable conjecture, we still have cause to
«Mve, that there was a more than ordinary multiplication in the
Parity of Noah after the flood.— SMinqflecfi Origines Sacra-,
«■ ni. c. 4.
the flood, in which Peleg died, there might rise a suffi-
cient number (c as appears by the table under the page)
to spread colonies over the face of the whole earth.
And, if to these the several collateral descents of Noah's
posterity were taken in ; if the children which Noah him-
self might possibly have in the 350 years he lived after
the flood ; which Shem and his two brothers might have
in the last 160; which Salah and his contemporaries
might have in the last 100 ; and which Heber and his
contemporaries might have in the last 19 1 years of their
lives, which are not reckoned in the account, together
with the many more grandsons of Noah and their progeny,
which in all probability (as we observed before) are not
so much as mentioned in it ; it is not to be imagined
how much these additions will swell the number of man-
kind to a prodigious amount above the ordinary calcula-
tion.
But allowing the number at this time to be not near
so large as even the common computation makes it ; yet
we are to remember that, at the first planting of any
country, an handful of men as it were took up a large
tract of ground. 2 At their first division they were
scattered into smaller bodies, and seated themselves at
a considerable distance from one another, the better to
prevent the ' increase of the beasts of the field upon them.'
These small companies had each of them one governor,
who, in Edom, seems to be called 3 a duke, and in
Canaan, 4 a king, whereof there were no less in that
small country than one and thirty at one time : but of
what power or military force these several princes were,
we may learn from this one passage in Abraham's life,
namely, that 5 when Chedorlaomer, in conjunction with
three other kings, had defeated the kings of Sodom and
Gomorrah, with three kings more that came to their
assistance, plundered their country, and taken away Lot
and his family, who at this time sojourned in these
parts; Abraham, with no more than 318 of his own
domestics, pursues the conquerors, engages them, beats
them, and, together with his nephew Lot, and all his
substance, recovers the spoil of the country which these
confederate kings were carrying away. A plain proof
this, one would think, that this multitude of kings which
were now in the world were titular, rather than real ; and
that they had none of them any great number of subjects
under their command. For though Canaan was certainly
a very fruitful land, and may therefore be presumed to
be better stored with inhabitants than any of its neigh-
bouring provinces ; yet we find that when Abraham and
Lot first came into it, though6 'they had flocks and herds,
and tents, that the land was not able to bear them, that
they might dwell together ;' yet, as soon as they were
2 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. i. c. 5.
3 Gen. xxxvi. to the end 4 Jos. xii. 9 to the end.
5 Gen. xiv. 6 Ccn. xiii. 5, 6.
C Yrs of the World. Vrs alter the Flood. Pairs of Men and Women.
1676
20
30
1716
CO
300
1756
100
3,000
1796
1 10
30,000
ls.-jri
J80
300,000
L876
220
.••,('(1(1,0(10
1916
260
: 0,000,000
1956
300
300,000,000
1!IL)0
;,io
00,000,000
126
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
and as the Scripture expresses it, 6 ' stirred up the spirit
separated, they found no difficulty to settle in any part
thereof, with the rest of its inhabitants.
How gTeat soever the growth of the Assyrian monarchy
became at last, yet we have too little certainty of the
time when it began, ever to question, upon that account,
the truth of the population of the world by the sons of
Noah. Ninus, whom profane history generally accounts
the first founder of it, is placed, x by one of our greatest
chronologers, in the 2737th year of the world, according
to the Hebrew computation ; so that, living in the time
of the Judges, he is supposed to have been contemporary
with Deborah, but 2 others think this is a date much too
early. Nimrod, we must allow, founded a kingdom at
Babylon, and perhaps extended it into Assyria, but this
kingdom was but of small extent, if compared with the
empires which arose afterwards ; and yet, had it been
ever so much greater, it could not have been of any
long continuance, because the custom in those early
days was for the father to divide his territories among
his sons. After the days of Nimrod, we hear no more
in the Sacred Records of the Assyrian empire till about
the year 3234, when we find Pul invading the territories
of Israel, and making Menahem tributary to him. It is
granted indeed, that the four kings who, in the days of
Abraham invaded the southern coast of Canaan, came
from the countries where Nimrod had reigned, and per-
haps were some of his posterity who had shared his
conquests ; but of what small significance such kings as
these were, we are just now come from relating. Sesac
and Memnon, two kings of Egypt, were great conque-
rors, and reigned over Chaldea, Assyria, and Persia;
and yet in all their histories there is not one word of
any opposition they received from the Assyrian monarchy
then standing : and though Nineveh in the time of
Joash king of Israel, was become a large city, yet it
had not yet acquired that strength, as not to be afraid
(according to the preaching of Jonah) of being invaded
by its neighbours, and destroyed within forty days.
Not long before this, it had freed itself indeed from the
dominion of Egypt, and had got a king of its own, but
what is very remarkable, 3 its king was not as yet
called the king of Assyria, but only * the king of
Nineveh ; nor was his proclamation for a fast published
in several nations, no nor in all Assyria, but only in
Nineveh, and perhaps the villages adjacent; whereas,
when once they had established their dominion at home,
secured all Assyria properly so called, and began now
to make war upon their neighbouring nations, their kings
were no longer called the kings of Nineveh, but began
to assume the title of the kings of Assyria. These, and
several more instances which the author I have just now
cited has produced, are sufficient arguments to prove
that the Assyrians were not the great people some have
imagined in the early times of the world ; and that if they
made any figure in Nimrod's days, it was all extinguish-
ed in the reigns of his successor, and never revived
until God, for the punishment of the wickedness of his
own people, Avas pleased to raise them from obscurity,
1 Usher's Annot. Vet. Test. A. M. 2737.
* Stillingfleet's Origines Sacra, b. iii. c. 4. and Sir Isaac New-
ton's Chronology.
3 Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology, cli. 3. 4 Jonah iii.
of Pul, and the spirit of Tiglathpilneser, king of Assyria.
And in like manner we may observe, that, whatever
noise has been made in the world with the astronomical
observations of the Chaldeans, which Aristotle is said to
have sent into Greece, and which Alexander is thought
to have taken at Babylon, the whole is a mere fiction and
romance. There is nothing extant (as b a very good judge
of ancient and modern learning tells us) in the Chaldaic
astrology of older date than the era of Nabonassar, which
begins but 747 years before Christ. By this era the Chal-
deans computed their astronomical observations, the first
of which falls about the 27th year of Nabonassar, and all
that we have of them are only seven eclipses of the
moon, and even these but very coarsely set down, and
the oldest not above 700 years before Christ. And, to
make short of the matter, the same author informs us
farther, that the Greeks were the first practical astrono-
mers who endeavoured in earnest to make themselves
masters of the sciences ; that Thales was the first who
could predict an eclipse in Greece, not 600 years, and
that Hipparchus made the first catalogue of the fixed stars
not above 650 years before Christ. a
What the history of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, and
their boasted antiquity is, we have had occasion to take
notice 7 elsewhere, and need only here to add, that,
bating that strange affectation wherein they both agree,
of being thought so many thousand years older than they
have any authentic testimonies to produce, there is a
manifest analogy between Scripture history and what
Berosus has told us of the one, and Manetho of the
other. Referring therefore to what has been already
said of them, we have only to observe, that8 the genealo-
gy which the Chinese — another people pretending to
high antiquity — give us of the family of their first
man, Puoncuus, seems to carry a near resemblance
to Moses' patriarchal genealogies ; Thienhoang, their
second king's civilizing the world, answers very well to
Seth's settling the principles and reforming the lives of
men ; and Fohi's fourth successor, whom they accuse of
destroying their ancient religion and introducing idola-
try, is plainly copied from the history of Nimrod, who
was probably the first establisher of idol worship. So
that from these, and some other particulars in their his-
tory, we may be allowed to conclude that the ancient
Chinese (as all other nations did) agreed in the main
with Moses in their antiquities ; and that the true reason
of their chronological difference is, that the reigns of the
Chinese kings (in the very same manner as the Egyptian
dynasties) were not successive, 9 but of several contem-
porary princes, who at one and the same time had dif-
ferent and distinct dominions.
5 1 Chron. v. 26. s Wotton's Reflections, ch. xxiii.
7 See Apparatus, p. 43, and the History, p. 61.
8 Bibliotheea Biblica, in the Introduction, p. 77.
9 M. de Loubere's History of Siam.
a The most ancient astronomical observations known to us are
Chinese, next to them are the Chaldeans or Hindoos, both of whom
had made considerable progress in astronomy at a very early
period ; to them succeed the Egyptians, who in placing their
pyramids exactly facing the four cardinal points of the compass;
and, by the zodiacs discovered in Egypt, are proved to have
made considerable progress in the science ; and, after the Egyp-
tians, came the Greeks, who certainly made greater progress in.
the science than any of their predecessors. — Ed.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
127
A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318
The want of certain records of ancient times, and,
consequently, the gross ignorance which some nations
laboured under as to their original, has thrown several
into a wild notion and conceit that they were self-origi-
nated, came never from any other place, and had never
any primordial founder or progenitor. But now, what-
ever hypothesis they are minded to take ; whether they
suppose a beginning or no beg inning of human generation ;
whether they suppose men to have sprung out of the sea or
out of the land ; to have been produced from eggs cast
into the matrix of the earth, or out of certain little pustulaj
or fungosities on its surface ; to have been begotten by the
anima mundi in the sun, or by an anima terra;, pervad-
ing the body of this terraqueous globe ; to have been
sent forth into the world silently and without noise, or to
have opened the womb of their common mother with loud
claps of thunder : and, whether they suppose the succession
of generations of mankind a parte ante, to have been
infinite, indefinite, or finite, and the geniture, or origi-
nation of mankind, to have been either the same with the
geniture of the gTeat world, or later, or heterogeneous,
or quite foreign to it : take they which of these hypo-
theses they will, I say, and when they once come to
reason upon it, they will soon find themselves hampered
and entangled with absurdities and impossibilities almost
innumerable.
All nations to whom the philosophers, in search after
knowledge, resorted, had memorials, we find, left among
them of the first origin of things ; but the universal tra-
dition of the first ages was far better preserved among
the eastern than western nations, and these memorials
kept with greater care by the Phoenicians and Egyptians,
than by the Greeks and Romans. l Among the Greeks,
however, when they first undertook to philosophize, the
beginning of the world, with the gradual progression of its
inhabitants, was no matter of dispute ; but that being
taken for granted, the inquiry was, out of what material
principles the cosmical system was formed ; and Aris-
totle, arrogating to himself the opinion of the world's
eternity as a nostrum, declared that all mankind before
him asserted the world's creation.
From this wild notion of Aristotle, in opposition to an
universal tradition and the consent of all ages, the poets
took occasion to turn the histories of the oldest times
into fables ; and the historians, in requital and courtesy
to them, converted the fables which the poets had
invented into histories, or rather popular narratives ; and
most of the famous nations of the earth, that they might
not be thought more modern than any of their neigh-
bours, took occasion too of forging certain antiquities,
foolish genealogies, extravagant calculations, and the
fabulous actions and exploits of gods and heroes, that
they might thus add to their nobility, by an imaginary
anticipation of time, beyond the possible limits that could
be made known by any pretence of certainty.
The wiser sort of men, however, saw into this, and
from the ordinary increase and propagation of mankind,
the invention and growth of arts and sciences, and the
advancements carried on in civil discipline and govern-
ment, could discern the folly and superstition of all such
romantic pretensions : but then, having lost the true
Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, c. 17.
A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
ancient tradition, they were driven to the necessity of a
perpetual vicissitude, either of* general or particular
deluges ; by which, when things were come to their crisis
and perfection, they were made to begin again, and all
preceding memoirs were supposed to be lost in these
inundations. But this is all a groundless conjecture, a
mere begging of the question, and a kind of prophesying
backwards of such alterations and revolutions as it is
morally impossible for them to know any thing of.
Since, therefore, an eternal succession of generations
is loaded with a multitude of insuperable difficulties,
and no valid arguments are to be found for making the
world older than our sacred books do make it ; since the
presumed grandeur of the Assyrian and other monarchies,
too soon after the flood to be peopled by Noah's chil-
dren, is a gross mistake, and the computations of the
Chaldeans and other nations, from their observations of
the celestial bodies, groundless and extravagant ; since
all the pretensions of the several aborigines are found to
be ridiculous, and the more plausible inventions of suc-
cessive revolutions entirely imaginary ; since neither the
self-originists, nor the revolutionists, even upon their
own principles, can account for what is most easily
accounted for by the writings of Moses ; and (what is a
farther consideration) since a there are many customs and
usages, both civil and religious, which have prevailed in
all parts of the world, and ean owe their original to
nothing else but a general institution ; which institution
could never have been, had not all mankind been of the
same blood originally, and instructed in the same com-
mon notices before they were divided in the earth : —
since the matter stands thus, I say, we have all the rea-
son in the world to believe, that this whole narration of
Moses concerning the origination of mankind, their
destruction by the flood, their renovation by the sons of
Noah, their speedy multiplication to a great number,
their dispersion upon the confusion of languages, and
their settling themselves in different parts of the world
according to their allotments, is true in fact ; because it
is rational and consistent with every event, consonant
to the notions we have of God's attributes, and not
repugnant to any system of either ancient or modern
geography that we know of.
Time, indeed, and the uncertain state of languages ; the
different pronunciation of the same word, according to the
dialect of different nations ; the alterations of names in
several places, and substitution of others of the like im-
portance in the vernacular tongue ; the disguising of an-
cient stories in fables, and frequently mistaking the idiom
of oriental languages ; the inundation of barbarism in
many countries, and the conquests and revolutions gene-
rally introductive of new names, which have happened
a Such are, 1. The numbering by decades ; 2. The comput-
ing time by a cycle of seven days; 3. The sacredness of the
seventh number, and observation of a seventh day as holy; 4.
The use of sacrifices, propitiatory and eucharistical ; 5. The
consecration of temples and altars ; 6. The institution of sanc-
tuaries and their privileges; 7. Separation of tenths and firsts
fruits to the service of the altar; 8. The custom of worshipping
the Deity discalceated or barefooted ; 9. Abstinence of husbands
from their wives before sacrifice; 10. The order of priesthood,
and the maintenance of it; 11. Most of the expiations and pol-
lutions mentioned by Moses, in use among all famous nations ;
12. An universal tradition of two protoplasts, deluges, and re-
newing mankind afterwards. — Bibliutheva Biblica, vol. 1. p. 296.
128
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 5003 GEN. CH.
A. M. 1097. A. C. 200'
almost in all ; these, and several other causes, create some
perplexity in determining the places recorded by Moses,
and ascertaining the founder of each particular nation :
but still, notwithstanding these disadvantages, we may,
in some measure, trace the footsteps of the sons of Noah,
issuing out from Babel into the different quarters of the
world, and, in several countries, perceive the original
names of their founders preserved in that of their own.
For though the analogy of names be not, at all times,
a certain way of coming to the knowledge of things ; yet,
in this case, I think it can hardly be denied, but that the
Assyrians descended from Assur ; the Canaanites, from
Canaan ; the Sidonians, from Sidon ; the Lydians, from
Lud ; the Medes, from Madai ; the Thracians, from
Tiras; the Elamites, from Elam; the Ionians, from
J avan ; with several others produced by 1 Grotius, 2 Mon-
tanus, 3 Junius, 4Pererius, and, more especially, 6by
Bochart, that most splendid star of France, (as 6one
calls him upon this occasion,) who, with wonderful
learning and industry, has cleared all this part of sacred
history, and given a full and satisfactory account of the
several places where the posterity of Noah seated them-
selves after the deluge.
How the large continent of America came to be
peopled (since no mention of it is made in the writings
of Moses, and so vast a sea separates it from every other
part of the known world,) is a question that has exercised
the wit of every age since its first discovery. It is
worthy our observation, however, that though all the
great quarters of the world are, for the most part, separ-
ated from each other by some vast extensive ocean ; 7 yet
there is always some place or other, where some isthmus
or small neck of land is found to conjoin them, or some
narrow sea is made to distinguish and divide them. Asia
and Africa, for instance, are joined together, by an isthmus
which lies between the Mediterranean sea and the Ara-
bian gulf. Upon the coasts of Spain and Mauritania,
Europe and Africa are divided by no larger a sea than
the Fretum Herculis, or straits of Gibraltar ; and above
the Palus Moeotis, Europe has nothing to part it from Asia
but the small river Tanais. America, as it is divided
into north and south, is joined together by a neck of
land, which, from sea to sea, is not above eighteen
leagues over : what separates North America from the
northern parts of Asia is only the straits of Anien ; qr
South America, from the most southern parts of Asia,
is only the straits of Magellan. And therefore, since
Providence, in the formation of the earth, has so ordered
the matter, that the principal continents are, at some
places or other, either joined together by some little
isthmus, or generally separated by some narrow sea ;
and (what is further to be observed) since most of the
capital islands in our part of the hemisphere, such as
Sumatra in Asia, Madagascar in Africa, and England in
Europe, are generally at no great distance from the con-
tinent ; we have some reason to presume that there may
possibly be a certain neck of land (though not as yet
discovered) which may join some part of Asia, or per-
haps some part of Europe, to the main continent of
America. Or, if we may not be allowed that supposition,
AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
1 See Annot. b. i. de Verit. 2 Phaleg. 3 Gen. x. 4 Ibid.
5 Phaleg. 6 Heidegger.
' Heidegger's Hist. Patriarcharum, vol. i. Essay 22.
yet8 why might not there formerly have been such a
bridge (as we may call it) between the south-east part of
China and the most southern continent of this new world,
though now broken off (as 9 some suppose England to
have been from France) by the violent concussions of
the sea; as indeed the vast number of islands which lie
between the continent of China and New Guinea (which
are the most contiguous to each other) would induce one
to think, that once they were all one continued tract of
land, though, by the irruption of the sea, they are now
crumbled into so many little islands ?
The difference, however, between the inhabitants of
South and North America is so remarkably great, that
there is reason to imagine they received colonies at first
from different countries; and therefore some are of
opinion, that as the children of Shem, being now well
versed in navigation, might, from the coasts of China,
take possession of the southern parts; so might the chil-
dren of Japheth, either from Tartary pass over the straits
of Anien, or out of Europe, first pass into Norway, thence
into Iceland, thence into Greenland, and so into the north-
ern parts of America. And this they think the more pro-
bable, because of the great variety of languages which
are observed among the natives of this great continent; a
good indication, as one would imagine, of their coming
thither at different times and from different places. °
8 Patrick's Commentary. 9 See the New General Atlas.
a The discoveries of Captain Cook and other celebrated navi-
gators, whilst they have detected the mistakes that prevailed in
the days of our author respecting a southern continent and im-
mense oceans in the north, have rendered it much less difficult
now than it was then to trace the population of America from
Asia and Europe. It appears from Cook's and King's Voyage,
vol. 3. p. 272, " that the continents of Asia and North America are
usually joined together by ice during the winter. In Behiing's
Straits, at a place about 66° N. the two coasts are only thirteen
leagues asunder, and about midway between them lie two islands,
the distance of which from either shore is short of twenty miles.
At this place the natives of Asia could find no difficulty in pass-
ing over to the opposite coast, which is in sight of their own.
That in a course of years such an event would happen cannot
admit of a doubt. ' The canoes which we saw,' says Mr Dam-
well, ' among the Tschutski were capable of performing a much
longer voyage ; and however rude they may have been at some
distant period, we can scarcely suppose them incapable of a
passage of six or seven leagues. People might even have been
carried over by accident upon floating ice; they might also have
travelled across on sledges or on foot, for we have reason to
believe that the straits are entirely frozen over in the winter; so
that during that season the continents, with respect to the com-
munication between them, may be considered as one."
North America might likewise have been peopled from
Europe. The Lutheran and Moravian missionaries, who first
settled in Greenland, have informed us that the north-west coast
of that country is separated from America by a very narrow
strait: " that at the bottom of the bay into which this strait con-
ducts, it is highly probable that they are united; that the inha-
bitants of the two countries have some intercourse with one
another; that the Esquimaux of America perfectly resemble the
Greenlanders in their aspect, dress, and mode of living; that
some sailors, who had acquired the knowledge of a few words in
the Greenlandish language, reported that these were understood
by the Esquimaux ; that, at length, a Moravian missionary, well
acquainted with the language of Greenland, having visited the
country of the Esquimaux, found, to his astonishment, that they
spoke the same language with the Greenlanders, that they were
in every respect the same people; and he was accordingly
received and entertained by them as a friend and a brother."
There can therefore be no doubt, but that either that part of
America, which is occupied by the Esquimaux, was first peopled
from Greenland, or Greenland from North America. The great
historian, however, from whose works these extracts are immedi.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
129
A. M. 1997. A. C. 20O7; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
We, indeed, according to the common forms of speech,
call those places islands, which are on every side sur-
ately taken, justly observes, that the Esquimaux are the only
tribe of Americans who can be rationally supposed to have emi-
grated from the north of Europe. All the other American
nations, from Cape Horn to the northern confines of Labrador,
appear to have migrated from the north-east of Asia. " There
is (says he) such a striking similitude in the form of their bodies,
and the qualities of their minds, that notwithstanding the diver-
sities occasioned by the influence of climate, or unequal progress
in improvement, we must pronounce them to be all descended
from one source. It is remarkable, that in every peculiarity,
whether in their persons or dispositions, which characterize the
Americans, they have some resemblance to the rude tribes scat-
tered over the north-east of Asia, but almost none to the nations
settled in the northern extremities of Europe. We may there-
fore refer them to the former origin, and conclude that their
Asiatic progenitors, having settled in those parts of America
where the proximity of the two continents have been discovered,
spread gradually over its various regions. This account of the
progress of population in America coincides with the traditions
of the Mexicans concerning their own origin, which, imperfect
as they are, were preserved with more accuracy, and merit
greater credit than those of any other people in the New World.
According to them, their ancestors came from a remote country,
situated to the north-west of Mexico. The Mexicans point out
their various stations as they advanced from this into the interior
provinces, and it is precisely the same route which they must
have held if they had been emigrants from Asia. The Mexi-
cans, in describing the appearance of their progenitors, their
manners, and habits of life at that period, exactly delineate those
of the rude Tartars, from whom I suppose them to have sprung."
— Robertson's History of America, book iv.
This is undoubtedly such an account of the peopling of the
New World as ought to satisfy every candid reader. It is, how-
ever, true, as Dr Hales observes, that South America may have
been peopled by means of the great chain of lately discovered
islands scattered between the two vast continents, and succes-
sively colonized from Asia; and also on its eastern side, by ves-
sels driven by storms, or trade winds and currents, from the
shores of Europe and Africa. There can, indeed, be little
doubt, as the same learned author observes, but that such of the
tropical isles, in the great South Sea or Pacific Ocean, as are
inhabited, were colonized by the Malayans, those Phoenicians, as
he calls them, of the oriental world ; for the Malayan language
is found to prevail in some degree through all the various clus-
ters of those isles, from Madagascar westwards, near the African
coast, to the remotest of Captain Cook's discoveries, the Mar-
quesas and Easter island, towards South America. Nor let any
man object to this theory, by asking what could induce the Ma-
layans first to undertake voyages of discovery in so immense an
ocean. The discoveries were probably made by ships driven far
out of their intended course, to islands from which those who had
unexpectedly arrived at them could never return ; and this is
now well known to have actually happened to barbarians less
likely than the Malayans to undertake voyages of discovery.
Captain Cook, in his last voyage, when carrying back Omai to
his native country, discovered the island called Wateeoo; and
had scarcely landed with his passenger on the beach, when Omai
recognised among the crowd three of his own countrymen, na-
tives of the Society Isles. The Society Isles are distant from
Wateeoo about two hundred leagues; and the account which
those men gave of their arrival at that island is extremely affect-
ing, while its truth could not be questioned. " About twenty
persons of both sexes had embarked on board a canoe at Otaheite,
to cross over to the neighbouring island Alixtea. A violent and
contrary wind drove them they knew not whither, to a distance
from both islands. They had all perished but four men, when
their vessel was overset in sight of Wateeoo, when canoes came
off and carried them ashore." Had all the persons, male and
female, who left Otaheite, been thus driven on a desert island,
who can entertain a doubt but that in a short time they would
have peopled it; and if a few barbarians were thus carried, in a
wretched canoe, not intended for voyages out of sight of land, to
an island distant COO miles, there is surely no difficulty in con-
ceiving that the oriental Phoenicians, in better vessels, and with
greater skill in seamansliip, may have successively colonized the
rounded by the sea ; but the Hebrews were wont to give
that name to all maritime countries, such as either had
several islands belonging to them, or such as had no
islands at all, provided they were divided from Palestine
or from Egypt by the sea, and could not conveniently be
gone to any other way. 1 Such are the countries of the
Lesser Asia and the countries of Europe, where the de-
scendants of Japheth were seated ; and that by these are
denoted the isles of the Gentiles," might be evinced
from several parallel passages in Scripture. At present
we need only take notice, that as the Lesser Asia was from
Babel the nearest place of Japheth 's allotment, it is very
probable that he and his sons continued there for some
time, till the increase of their progeny made them send
out colonies, which not only peopled the isles of the Me-
diterranean and jEgean seas, but, passing into Europe,
spread themselves farther and farther, till at length they
came to take possession of the very island wherein we
now live.
To this purpose the writers on this subject have made
it appear, that, from their original country, which was
Asia Minor, they sent a colony to the Mceotic Lake, on
the north of the Euxine sea, and as they were called
Cinunerii in Asia, so they gave the name of Bosphorus
Cimmerius to the straits we there meet with ; that, after
this, spreading farther they fell down the Danube, and
settled in a country, which b from them was called Ger-
many; that from Germany they advanced still farther,
till they came into France, for the inhabitants of France
(as b Josephus tells us) were anciently called Gomerites ;
and that from France they came into the south part of
Britain, and therefore we find that the Welsh (the ancient
1 Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1.
* Antiq. b. i.
islands between Asia and South America, and at last America
itself. Indeed if there be any credit due to the Peruvian tradi-
tions concerning the founders of their empire, Manco Capac and
his wife must have been far advanced in civilization; and were
probably some enlightened Asiatics driven on the Peruvian coast.
— See Hales' Analysis of Chronology, and Prichard's Researches
into the Physical History of Man — one of the most satisfactory
works on the colonization of the earth, and the varieties of the
human species, that I have ever seen.
a Thus the prophet Isaiah (ch. xi. ver. 10, 11) speaking ol
the calling of the Gentiles, and of the restoration of the Jews,
has these words—' The Lord shall recover the remnant of his
people from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar,
Hamah, and from the isles of the sea:' where, by the isles of the
sea (which is the same with the isles of the Gentiles) we must
necessarily understand such countries as are distinct from the
countries which are here expressly named; namely, Assyria,
Egypt, &c, and, therefore, most likely the countries oi Lesser
Asia and Europe. The same prophet, in order to show God's
omnipotency, speaks in this manner—' Behold the nations are as
a drop of the bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the
balance ; behold he takes up the isles as a very little thing,' ch. xl.
15. Where, if by isles we mean those which we call strictly
so,' the comparison of the disparity is lost, because those which W9
call isles are indeed very little things ; and therefore the proper
signification of the word in this place must be those large coun-
tries which were beyond the sea, in regard to Egypt whence
Moses came, or Palestine whither he was now going.— // MM
Geography, vol. 1. p. US.
h The people of this country are called Germeoru, and they
call themselves Germen, which is but a small variation and easy
contraction for Gomeren, that is, the Gomtrtamt for the ter-
mination en is a plural termination in the German language, and
from the singular Dumber Gamer is formed Gemren, by the
same analogy that from brother we form brethren. — Well* Geo-
graphy, vol 1. p. 1-27, and Bedford's Script. Chrom. b. ii. c 4.
130 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book II.
A. M. 1907. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
inhabitants of this isle) call themselves Kumero or Cym-
ro ; call a woman Kumeraes, and the language they
speak Kumeraeg- ; which several words carry in them
such plain marks of the original name from whence they
are derived, that if any regard is to be had to etymolo-
gies in cases of this nature, we cannot forbear conclud-
ing that the true old Britons, or Welsh, are the genuine
descendants of Gomer. And since it is observed that
the Germans were likewise the descendants of Gomer,
particularly the Cymbri, to whom the Saxons, and espe-
cially the Angles, were near neighbours, it will hence
likewise follow that our ancestors, who succeeded the
old Britons " in the eastern part of this isle, were in a
manner descended from Gomer, the first son of Japheth.
Thus we see 1 that the plantations of the world by
the sons of Noah and their offspring, recorded by Moses
in this tenth chapter of Genesis, and by the inspired
author of the first book of Chronicles, are not unprofit-
able fables, or endless genealogies, but a most valuable
piece of history, which distinguishes from all other
people that particular nation of which Christ was to
come ; gives light to several predictions and other pas-
sages in the prophets ; shows us the first rise and origin
of all nations, their gradual increase and successive
migrations, cities building, lands cultivating, kingdoms
rising, governments settling, and all to the accomplish-
ment of the divine benediction, — a ' Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth ; and the fear of you
and the dread of you shall be upon every other creature.'
CHAP. III. — Of the Sacred Chronology and Prof ane
History, Letters, Learning, Religion, and Idolatry,
&c, during this period.
Before we enter upon the history of the world, as it is
delivered in some heathen authors, from the time of the
flood to the calling of Abraham, it may not be improper to
settle the sacred chronology ; and that the rather, because
the difference is very considerable, as appears by the
subsequent table, according as we follow the computation
of the Hebrew text, of the Samaritan copies, of the
Greek interpreters, or of Josephus. But, before we
come to this, we must observe, that in the catalogue
which we refer to, Moses takes notice of no other branch
1 Millar's Church History, ch. i. per. 2. 2 Gen. ix. 1, 2.
a To show how the western part of our island came likewise
to be peopled, the above-cite^| author of Scripture chronology
supposes, that when Joshua maHe his conquests in the land of
Canaan, several of the inhabitants of Tyre, being struck with the
terror of his arms, left their country, and being skilled in the art
of navigation, sailed into Africa, and there built a city called
Carthage, or the " city of the wanderers," as he interprets the
word ; that the Syrians and Phoenicians, being always consider-
able merchants, and now settling in a place convenient for their
purpose, began to enlarge their trade; and, coasting the sea
shore of Spain, Portugal, and France, happened at length to chop
upon the islands called Cassiterides, now the islands of Scilly,
whereof he gives us a description from Strabo; that, having here
fallen into a trade for tin and lead, it was not long before they
discovered the Land's End, on the west side of Cornwall, and
finding the country much more commodious than Scilly, removed
from thence, and here made their settlement. And this conjec-
ture he accounts more feasible, by reason of the great affinity
between the Cornish language and the ancient Hebrew Phoeni-
cian.—B. ii. e. 4, p. 195.
of Noah's family, but only that of Shem and his descen-
dants in a direct line to Abraham ; and the different
computations 3 relating to them may be best perceived
by the following table : —
After the flood
1: Shem was..
2. Arphaxad...
Heb
Sam
Jusephiu
Sept restored
by Hales.
Heb !Sam
1
Sept
Jo»ephns
Heb Sam
1
Jnsephm
by Hale.
33
0
30
34
30
32
30
29
70
135
0
13B
134
130
132
130
79
70
135
130
130
l.v)
130
132
130
79
70
2
135
0
130
134
130
132
130
59
70 at ihe
birth of
Haran,
130 at the
b.rth of
Abraham.
500
103
0
403
430
aua
2117
200
119
500
303
0
303
270
109
107
100
(iJ
500
330
330
330
270
209
207
200
129
500
3113
11
303
270
109
107
100
69
205
Oil i
438
0
433
104
239
239
230
148
205
000
433
433
40+
239
239
230
I4ti
205
5. Peleg
8. Nahur
9. Terah the
lather of Abra-
ham.
In all
292
942
1072
1002
1
1
Before they bad
children.
After they had
children.
At their deaths.
Now, whoever casts his eye into this table may easily
perceive, that except the variations which may possibly
have been occasioned by the negligence of transcribers,
4 the difference between the Samaritan and Septuagint
chronology, and that of Josephus, is so very small, that
one may justly suspect that the Samaritan lias been
transcribed from the Septuagint, on purpose to supply
some defect in its copy, and that Josephus had, for some
reason or other, adopted the chronology of the same
version ; but that the difference between the Greek and
Hebrew chronology is so very great, that the one or
other of them must be egregiously wrong ; because the
Seventy do not only add a patriarch, named Cainan,
never mentioned in the Hebrew, and so make eleven
generations from Shem to Abraham instead of ten ; but,
in the lives of most of these patriarchs, they insert 100
years before they came to have children, that is, they make
them fathers 100 years later than the Hebrew text does,
though (to bring the matter to a compromise) they
generally deduct them in the course of their lives.
On both sides have appeared men of great learning ;
but they who assert the cause of the Septuagint, are not
unmindful to urge the testimony of St Luke, who, s
between Arphaxad and Salah, has inserted the name of
Cainan, which (as he was an inspired writer) he could
never have done, had not the Septuagint been right in
correcting the Hebrew Scriptures : besides that, the
numbers in the Septuagint give time for the propagation
of mankind, and seem to agree better with the history of
the first kingdoms of the world.
On the other hand, they who abide by the Hebrew
text, cannot think that the authority of the Septuagint
is so sacred as their adversaries imagine. Upon
examination they find many things added, many things
omitted, and, through the whole, so many faults almost
every where occurring, that " were a man to recount
them all " as St Jeroin 6 expresses it, " he would be
obliged not only to write one, but many books ;" " nor
need we seek for distant examples of this kind,"7 says
Bochart, " since this very genealogy is all full of
anachronisms, vastly different both from the Hebrew
and the vulgar version."
s Usher's Chron. Sacr.c.2. 4 Shuckford's Connection, vol. l.b. 3.
5 Ch. iii. 36. 6 On Jeremiah xvii. ' Phaleg. b. ii. c.2.
a This is according to the Alexandrian manuscript ; in the
Vatican it is 125.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
131
A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi.VER. 10. TO THE END
Editions moreover there were of an ancient date,
which, in imitation of the Alexandrian manuscript pre-
served by Origen in his Hexapla, had none of this
insertion. Both Philo and Josephus, though they make
use of the Septuagint version, know nothing- of Cainan ;
and Eusebius and Africanus, though they took their
accounts of these times from it, have no such persons
among their postdiluvians ; and therefore * it is highly
reasonable to believe, that this name crept into the
Septuagint through the carelessness of some transcriber,
who, inattentive to what he was about, inserted an ante-
diluvian name (for such a person there was before the
flood) among the postdiluvians, and having no numbers
for his name, wrote the numbers belonging to Salah
twice over.
Since therefore the Hebrew text, in all places where
we find Noah's posterity enumerated, takes not the
least notice of Cainan, but always declares Salah to be
the immediate son and successor of Arphaxad ; 2 we
must either say that Moses did, or that he did not know
of the birth of this pretended patriarch : if he did not,
how came the LXX. interpreters by the knowledge of
what Moses, who lived much nearer the time, was a
diligent searcher into antiquity, and had the assistance
of a Divine spirit in every thing he wrote, was confessedly
ignorant of? If he did know it, what possible reason can
be assigned for his concealing it, especially when his in-
sertion or omission of it make such a remarkable varia-
tion in the account of time, from the flood to the call of
Abraham, unless he was minded to impose upon us by a
false or confused chronology, which his distinct obser-
vation of the series of the other generations, and his just
assignment of the time which belonged to each, will not
suffer us to think.
Rather, therefore, than impeach this servant of God
(who has this testimony upon record, that4 'he was faithful
in all his house)' either of ignorance or ill intent, we may
affirm (with Bochart and his followers) that ISt Luke never
put Cainan into his genealogy, (for as much as a it is not
to be found in some of the best manuscripts of the New
Testament) but that some transcribers, finding it in the
Septuagint, and not in St Luke, marked it down in the
margin of their copies as an omission in the copies of
St Luke; and so later copiers and editors, finding it
thus in the margin, took it at last into the body of the
text, as thinking, perhaps, that this augmentation of
years might give a greater scope to the rise of kingdoms,
which otherwise might be thought too sudden : whereas
(if we will believe a very competent judge of this matter)
" 5 those who contend for the numbers of the Septuagint,
must either reject, as some do, the concurrent testimony
of the heathen Greeks, and the Christian fathers, con-
cerning the ancient kingdoms of Assyria and Egypt, or
must remove all those monarchies farther from the flood.
Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, vol. 2. Essay 1.
* Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1. b. 2.
s Heidegger's History of the Patriarchs, vol. 2. Essay I.
4 Heb. iii. 2.
* Bishop Cumberland's Origin. Antiquis. p. 177, &c.
a The ancient manuscript of the Gospels and Acts, both in
Greek and Latin, which Beza presented to the university of
Cambridge, wants it; nor is it to be found in some manu-
scripts which Archbishop Usher, in his Chron. Sacr., p. 32,
makes mention of. — Millar's History </ the Church, ch. i.
period 2.
Nor must the testimony of Varro be overlooked, which
tells us, that there were but KiOO years between the first
flood and the Olympiads ; whereas this number is exceed-
ed seven or eight hundred years by the Septuagints
account. These, and several other considerations, '
says he, " incline me to the Hebrew numbers of the
patriarchs generating, rather than to the Septuagint's
because, by the numbers of the Septuagint, there must be
about 900 years between the flood and the first year of
Ninus, which certainly is too much distance between a
grandfather and a grandchild's beginning to rei<>n."
Thus it seems reasonable to suppose, that the inter-
polation of the name of Cainan in the Septuagint version,
might be the work of some ignorant and pragmatical
transcriber : and in like manner, the addition and sub-
traction of several hundred years, in the lives of the
fathers beforementioned, might be effected by such
another instrument, 6 who, thinking perhaps that the
years of the antediluvian lives were but lunar ones,
and computing that at this rate the six fathers (whose
lives are thus altered) must have had their children at
five, six, seven, and eight years old, which could not
but look incredible, might be induced to add the 100
years, in order to make them of a more probable age of
manhood, at the birth of their respective children. Or,
if he thought the years of their lives to be solar,
yet still he might imagine, that infancy and childhood
were proportionably longer in men, who were to live 7,
8, or 900 years, than they are in us ; and that it was too
early in their lives for them to be fathers at sixty, seventy,
or eighty years of age ; for which reason he might add
the 100 years, to make their advance to manhood (which
is commonly not till one fourth part of our days is near
over), proportionable to what was to be the ultimate term
of their lives. *
" Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1. b. v. ex Lud. Capelli, Chron.
Sacra in Apparatu Walton ad Bibl. Polyglot.
b This last observation respecting the proportion that the length
of the period before puberty bears to the longevity of men and of
all other animals, is well founded, has been already shown in the
discussion concerning the antediluvian chronology of the Hebrew
Scriptures; and it is almost needless to observe, that the Jews
who corrupted the Hebrew chronology, had the very same reason
for curtailing the period between the flood and the birth of
Abraham, as for shortening the distance between the origin of
the human race and the flood. Their object in both cases, was
to prove by the authority of their own Scri] tun--, to which the
Christians as well as they appealed, that Jesus <>i Nazareth had
come into the world a thousand years earlier than the period
decreed for the advent of the Messiah promised to their fathers.
With this view, as they had sunk 600 years in the successive
generations of the antediluvian patriarchs, they chose to sink 7<|i>
in the generations of those descendants of Shem, from whom had
sprung Abraham, the founder of their own nation, and the ances-
tor as well of Jesus of Nazareth as of the promised .Messiah.
Notwithstanding all that has been said in favour of the imma-
culate purity of the Hebrew Scriptures, the postdiluvian gen
of those Scriptures in their present state, furnishes internal
evidence of its own corruption more striking perhaps than i ren
that by which the corruption of the antediluvian gi
been detected. In the antediluvian genealogy tin- sums total of
the lives bJ the several patriarchs are uniformly given; but in the
postdiluvian genealogy, they are all, except the life of Abraham,
as uniformly omitted, though retained in the Samaritan espy.
This cannot have been done but for some sinister purpose: and
indeed the absurdity in which the editors of the present text hav«
involved themselves in their genealogy of Terah and Abraham,
shows how unsafe it would have been to persist in their short
generations, and at the same time to give the ages of the seveihi
132
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book II.
A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 33!
This seems to be the only method of reconciling the
difference between the Septuagint version and the
Hebrew text, in point of chronology ; and now to proceed
to what we find recorded in profane history, during this
period.
After the dispersion of nations, the only form of
government that was in use for some time, was paternal,
when fathers of nations were as kings, and the eldest of
families as princes; but as mankind increased, and their
ambition grew higher, the dominion which was founded
in nature, gave place to that which was acquired and
established by power.
In early ages, a superiority of strength or stature was
the most engaging qualification to raise men to be kings
and rulers. The Ethiopians, l as Aristotle informs us,
made choice of the tallest persons to be their princes ;
and though Saul was made king of Israel by the special
appointment of God, yet it appears to have been a cir-
cumstance not inconsiderable in the eyes of the people,
8 ' that he was a choice young man, and goodly, and
that there was not, among the children of Israel, a
goodlier man than he :' but when experience came to
convince men that other qualifications, besides stature
and strength were necessary for the people's happiness,
they then chose persons of the greatest wisdom and
prudence for their governors. 3 Some wise and under-
standing men, who knew best how to till and cultivate
the ground, to manage cattle, to prune and plant
fruit trees', &<:., took into their families, and promised
1 Re Repub. b. 4. e. 4. 2 1 Sam. ix. 2.
3 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. G.
patriarchs at their respective deaths. The omission, however,
it must be confessed, appears to have prevailed at an early period
in the Hebrew text; for, as Dr Hales observes, it occurs also in
the present copies of the Septuagint, and in all the other ancient
versions.
" Still, however, the Septuagint furnishes evidence of the
omission, by retaining the last words, found uniformly in the
Samaritan text, xai a.<xiQu.vsv — and he died, throughout the whole.
There cannot, therefore, remain a doubt, that the total lives were
originally inserted in the ancient Jewish Hebrew copies, as well
as in the Samaritan; no less than the total lives of the antedilu-
vian patriarchs, in both Hebrew texts, and in all the ancient
versions. And the centenary addition to the generations of the
first seven patriarchs after the flood, is now fully established, by
the triple evidence of the Samaritan text, the Septuagint version,
and Josephus."
The same learned chronologer has proved likewise that the
short Hebrew computation is absurd in itself, and inconsistent
with history sacred and profane. 1. Eusebius well remarks;
"The error of the Jewish Hebrew text is evident from this;
that it makes Abraham and Noah contemporaries; for since,
according to that text, there are no more than 292 years from the
flood to Abraham; and since, according to the same text, Noah
survived the flood 350 years; it follows that he lived to the
fifty-eighth year of Abraham, which is absurd. 2. Upon this
supposition, idolatry must have begun and prevailed, and the
patriarchal government have been overthrown by Nimrod and
the builders of Babel, during the lifetime of the second founder
of the human race, and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth,"
which is surely in a high degree improbable. 3. " If Shem
lived until the 1 10th year of Isaac, and the fiftieth of Jacob, why
was not he included in the covenant of circumcision made with
Abraham and his family?" Or, it' this was not compatible with
God's general scheme of revelation, " Why was Shem passed
over without notice in the history of the most illustrious members
of his own family, with whom he was contemporary?" 4. " How
could the earth be so populous in- Abraham's days, or the mighty
kingdoms of Assyria and Egypt be so soon established after the
deluge?"
8. A. C. 2093. liKN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE KND.
to provide for such as would become their servants,
and submit to their directions : and thus, in continuance
of time, heads of families became kings; their houses,
together with the near habitations of their domestics,
became cities ; their servants, in their several occupations
and employments, became wealthy and considerable
subjects ; and the inspectors and overseers of them,
became ministers of state, and managers of the public
aflairs of the kingdom.
In the first beginning of political societies, almost
every town (as we may suppose) had its own king-, 4
who, more attentive to preserve his dominions than to
extend them, restrained his ambition within the bounds
of his native country ; till disputes with neighbours
(which were sometimes unavoidable) jealousy of a more
powerful prince, an enterprising genius, or martial
inclination, occasioned those wars which often ended in
the absolute subjection of the vanquished ; whose posses-
sions, falling into the power of the conqueror, enlarged
his dominions, and both encouraged and enabled him to
push on his conquests by new enterprises.
Nimrod was the first man we meet with in Scripture,
who made invasions upon the territories of others : for
he dispossessed Ashur, the son of Shem, who had settled
himself in Shinar, and obliged him to remove into
Assyria, whilst himself seized on Babylon, and having
repaired, and not a little enlarged it, made it the capital
of his kingdom.
s This city was situated on both sides of the river
Euphrates, having streets running from north to south,
1 Justin, b. i. c. 1. * Prideaux's Connection.
To this last question, our author produces a reply from Sir
Isaac Newton's chronology, which is certainly not one of the
most valuable of that immortal author's works. To prove that
the world was but thinly peopled in the days of Abraham, Sir
Isaac observes that four great kings with their armies were pur-
sued and beaten by Abraham, though the whole force that he
and the princes in alliance with him brought into the field
amounted only to 318 men. But, answers our author, we learn
from the joint testimony of Scripture and Josephus, that Abraham
and his theee friends defeated the enemy by stratagem ; for they
overtook them on the fifth night, and attacked them on two
different sides of their camp, when they were oppressed by sleep
and wine. Newton proceeds to say, that at the birth of Moses,
Egypt was so thinly peopled, that Pharaoh said the Israelites
were more numerous and mighty than the Egyptians, and there-
fore ordered their male children to be drowned as soon as born;
but this is not what Pharaoh is, in Scripture, represented as having
said of the Israelites. We are there told, that he said, ' Come
let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply; and it come to
pass, that when there falleth out war, they join themselves to
our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the
land.' Here it is evident that Pharaoh did not then consider
the Israelites as more or mightier than the Egyptians, or that
he was even afraid of their ever becoming so without foreign
aid ; and the multitudes, with whom he pursued them when they
afterwards actually got up out of the land under the command of
the same Moses, furnish a complete proof that Egypt must have
been, not only then, but for many generations, a populous and
powerful kingdom.
The present Hebrew computation of time from the flood to the
birth of Abraham is therefore undoubtedly erroneous; but the
computation of the Septuagint is not to be followed implicitly.
The insertion of Cainan between Arphaxad and Salah is unques-
tionably an interpolation; and it is not without other errors.
The computation that comes nearest to the truth is that of
Josephus as restored by Dr Hales; and on that account it has
been inserted into the preceding table in addition to the Hebrew,
Samaritan, and Septuagint computations published in all the
former editions of this work. — Bp. Glcij.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
133
A. M. OUT. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318.
parallel with the river, and others from east to west. a
The compass of the wall, which was surrounded with a
vast ditch filled with water, was 430 furlongs, that is, about
sixty miles ; the height of it, 350 feet, and the breadth so
vastly great, that carts and carriages might meet on the
top of it, and pass one another without danger. Over
the Euphrates (which cut the city into two equal parts,
from north to south) there was a stately bridge, and at
each end of the bridge, b a magnificent palace, the one of
four and the other of eight miles' circumference ; and
belonging to the larger palace, were those hanging
gardens, which had so celebrated a name among the
Greeks. They were made in form of a square of 400
feet on every side, and. were carried up aloft into the
air, in the manner of several large terraces, one above
another, till they came up to the height of the walls of
the city. They were sustained by vast arches built upon
arches, one above another, and strengthened by a wall
on every side, that was twenty-two feet thick ; and as
they wanted no plants or flowers fit for a garden of
pleasure, so there are said to have grown in them trees,
which were no less than eight cubits thick in the body,
and fifty feet in height. But this among other pompous
things appertaining to this city, was the work of ages,
subsequent to Nimrod, and built by Nebuchadnezzar, to
gratify his wife Amytis, who, being the daughter of
Astyages, king of Media, and much pleased with the
mountainous and woody parts of her own country, was
desirous of having something like it in Babylon.
From the Assyrians, this great and noble city came
into the hands of the Persians, and from them into the
hands of the Macedonians. Here it was that Alexander
the Great died; but not long after his death the city be-
gan to decline apace, by the building of Selucia, about
forty miles above it, by Seleucus Nicanor, who is said to
have erected this new city in spleen to the Babylo-
nians, and to have drawn out of Babylon 500,000
persons to people it ; so that the ancient city was,
in the time of Curtius the historian, lessened a fourth
part ; in the time of Pliny, reduced to desolation ;
in the days of St Jerom, turned into a park, wherein the
kings of Persia used to hunt ; and, according to the rela-
tion c of some late travellers, is now reduced to one
a It must be observed, however, that all this compass of ground
was not really built upon, for the houses stood at a considerable
distance, with gardens and fields interspersed ; so that it was a
large city in scheme, rather than in reality. — Pridcaux's Connec-
tuiti, part 1. b. 2.
b The old palace (which was probably built by Nimrod) stood
on the east side of the river, and the new one (which was built
by Nebuchadnezzar) exactly over against it, on the west side. —
ibid.
e Mr Reuwolf, who, in 1574, passed through the place where
this once famous city stood, speaks of the ruins of it in the follow-
ing manner: — " The village of Elugo is now situate where here-
tofore Babylon of Chaldea stood. The harbour, where people go
Whore in order to proceed by land to the city of Bagdad, is a quarter
of a league distant from it. The soil is so dry and barren, that they
cannot till it; and so naked, that I could never have believed that
this powerful city, once the most stately and renowned in all the
world, and situated in the fruitful country of Shinar, could have
stood there, had I not seen, by the situation of the place, by
many antiquities of great beauty, which are to be seen round
about, and especially by the old bridge over the Euphrates,
Whereof some piles and arches, of incredible strength are still
remaining, that it certainly did stand there. The whole front of
the village Elugo is the hiil upon which the castle stood, and the
A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. ; AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
tower only, called the tower of Daniel, from whence
may be seen all the ruins of this once vast and splendid
city.
It can hardly be imagined that the first kings were
able either to make or execute laws with that strict-
ness and rigour which is necessary in a body of men so
large as to aflbrd numerous offenders: and for this rea-
son it seems to have been a prudent institution in Nim-
rod, when his city of Babylon began to be too populous
to be regulated by his inspection, or governed by his
influence, to d lay the foundation of other cities ; by
which means he disposed of great numbers of his people,
and, putting them under the direction of such deputies
as he might appoint, brought their minds by degrees to
a sense of government, until the beneficial use of it came
to be experienced, and the force and power of laws
settled and confirmed. He is supposed to have begun
his reign A. M. 1757, to have reigned about 148 years,
and to have died A. M. 1905. e
About the beginning of Nimrod's reign, Ashur,/ one
of the descendants of Shem, being driven from Babel,
as most suppose, by the invasion of Nimrod, led his
company on the Tigris, and so settling in Assyria,
laid the first foundation of Nineveh, which in process of
time exceeded even Babylon itself in size. For, whereas
we observed of Babylon, that it was in circuit 488
ruins of its fortifications are still visible, though demolished.
Behind, and some little way beyond, is the tower of Babylon,
which is half a league diameter, but so ruinous, so low, and so
full of venomous creatures, which lodge in the holes they make
in the rubbish, that no one durst approach nearer to it than
within half a league, except during two months in the winter,
when these animals never stir out of their holes. — Calmefs Dic-
tionary.
d The cities which he founded are said to be Erec, Accad, and
Calne. Erec was the same that occurs in Ptolemy, under the
name of Arecca, and which is placed by him at the last, or most
southern turning of the common channel of the Tigris and
Euphrates. Accad lay northward of Erec, and very probably at
the common joining of the Tigris and Euphrates. And Calne
(which is said to be the same with Ctesiphon) upon the Tigris,
about three miles distant from Seleucia, and was for some time
the capital city of the Parthians ; for that it was the same with
Ctesiphon, seems to be confirmed by the country which lies
about it being called Chalonitis, which is evidently derived from
Chalne, or Chalno, whereby we find it called in different parts of
Scripture. — Wells' Geography, vol. 1. c. 5.
e According to Dr Hales, Nimrod began his reign A. M.
2S57, reigned about 98 years, and died A. M. 2955. — Ed.
/ Many authors have imagined that Nineveh was not built by
Ashur, but by Nimrod himself, because they think it not likely
that Moses should give an account of the settlement of one of the
sons of Shem, where he is expressly discoursing of Ham's family ;
and therefore they interpret (as the marginal note directs) Gen.
x. 11, ' out of that land went forth Ashur,' he, that is Nimrod,
went forth into Assyria, which is the explanation that 1 have in
some measure followed; but others imagine that Moses is not so
exactly methodical, but that, upon mentioning Nimrod and his
people, he might hint at a colony which departed from under his
government, though it happened' to be led by a pent f another
family; that the land of Ashur and the land of Nimrod are men-
tioned as two distinct countries in Mieah v. (i, and that il
Nimrod had built Nineveh, and planted Assyria, Babylon and
Assyria would have been but one empire, nor could the one be
said to have conquered the other with any propriety: whereas we
are expressly told by Diodorus, thai the Assyrians conquered the
Babylonians; and may thence infer, that before Ninus united
them, Babylonia and Assyria were two distinct kingdoms, and
not the plantation of one and tin- same founder. — Shuckfordi
Conn* ttinii, vol. 1. b. 4.
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A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GKN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THL END.
furlongs, l the description which Diodorus gives us of
Nineveh is, that it was 1 50 furlongs, that is, near nineteen
miles in length ; ninety furlongs, that is, somewhat
above eleven miles in breadth ; and 480 furlongs, that is,
just sixty miles in circumference ; and for this reason it
is 2 called ' an exceeding great city of three days' jour-
ney,' according to the common estimation of twenty
miles to a day's journey. And equal to the gTeatness
was the strength of this city: for its walls were 100 feet
high, and so very broad, that three carts might go abreast
on the top of them ; whereon were raised 1500 turrets,
and each of them 200 feet high, and so very strong, that
the place was deemed impregnable, 3 till Nabopolassar,
king of Babylon, having made an affinity with Astyages,
king of Media, entered into a confederacy with him
against the Assyrians, and hereupon joining their forces
together, they besieged Nineveh, and after having taken
the place, and slain the king thereof, to gratify the
Medes, they utterly destroyed that ancient city, and
from that time Babylon became the metropolis of the
Assyrian empire.
Such was the rise and fall of this great city, where
Ashur governed his subjects much in the same manner as
Nimrod did his in Babylon ; for as they increased he
dispersed them in the country, anda having built some
other cities along the Tigris, he there settled them under
the government of deputies or viceroys.
Whilst Nimrod and Ashur were settling their people
in their respective countries, Mizraim, the second son of
Ham, b and who, by heathen writers, is constantly called
1 Wells' Geography. 2 Jonah iii. 3.
3 Prideaux's Connection, vol. 1.
a The cities which Ashur is said to have built were Rehoboth,
Resen, and Calah. The word Rehoboth, in the Hebrew tongue,
signifies streets; and the sacred historian seems to have added
the word city, on purpose to show that it was here to be taken as
a proper name. Now, as there are no footsteps of this name in
these parts, but a town there is, by Ptolemy called Birtha, which
in the Chaldee tongue denotes the same as does Rehoboth in the
Hebrew, in an appellative or common acceptation; it is hence
probably conjectured, that Rehoboth and Birtha are only two dif-
ferent names of one and the same city, which was seated on the
Tigris, about the mouth of the river Lyeus. Resen is supposed
by most learned men to be the same city which Xenophon men-
tions under the name of Larissa, and that not only because the
situation of this Larissa well enough agrees with the situation of
Resen, as it is described by Moses, lying between Nineveh and
Calah; but because Moses observes in the same text, that Resen
was a great city; in like manner, as Xenophon tells us, that
Larissa, though then ruinated, had been a large city, of eight
miles' circumference, with walls 100 feet high and twenty-five feet
broad. And whereas Larissa is a Greek name, and in the days
of Xenophon there were no Greek cities in Assyria; for this they
account by supposing, that when the Greeks might ask, What
city those were the ruins of ? the Assyrians might answer Lare-
sen, or of Resen, which Xenophon expressed by Larissa, a name
not unlike several cities in Greece. And, lastly, as to Calah, or
Calach, since we find in Strabo a'country about the head of the
river Lycus called Calachene, it is very probable that the said
country took this name from Calach, which was one of the capital
cities of it. Ptolemy makes mention likewise of a country called
Calaciue in these parts: and whereas Pliny mentions a people
called Classitte, through whose country the Lycus runs, there is
some reason to suppose, that Classite is a corruption of Calachitie.
— f Fells' Geography, vol. 1.
h The person whom Moses calls Mizraim, is, by Diodorus and
other heathen writers, commonly called Menes, by Syncellus,
Mestraim. Menes is supposed to be the first king of Egypt by
Herodotus, b. 2. by Diodorus b. 1. by Eratosthenes and Afri-
Menes, seated himself at first near the entrance of Egypt,
and there perhaps built the city of Zoan, which was
anciently the habitation of the kings of Egypt ; but from
Zoan he removed farther into the country, and took pos-
session of those parts, which were afterwards called
Thebais, where he built the city of Thebes, and, as Hero-
dotus will have it, the city of Memphis likewise. He
reigned sixty -two years, and died A. M. 1943. c
Belus succeeded Nimrod, and was the second king of
Babylon ; but whether he was related to his predecessor
or not, is a thing uncertain. It seems most likely, that
as Nimrod, though a young man in comparison of many
then alive, was advanced, for some merit or other, to
the regal dignity ; so when he died, Belus might appear
to be the most proper person, and for, that reason was
appointed to succeed him : for he is represented a prince
of study, the inventor of the Chaldean astronomy, and
one who spent his time in cultivating his country and
improving his people. He reigned sixty years, and died
A. M. 1969. <*
Ashur, king of Nineveh, dying much about this time,
Ninus became the second king of Assyria, and proved a
man of an ambitious and enterprising spirit. Babylonia
lay too near him not to become the object of his desire;
and, therefore, making all military preparations for that
purpose, he invaded it, and as its inhabitants had no
great skill in war, soon vanquished them, and laid them
under tribute. His success in this attempt made him
begin to think of subjecting other nations ; and, as one
conquest paved the way for another, in a few years he
overran many of the infant states of Asia, and so, by
uniting kingdom to kingdom, made a great accession to
the Assyrian empire. His last attempt was upon Oxyartes,
or Zoroastres, king of Bactria, where he met with a
brisker opposition than he had hitherto experienced ; but
at length, by the contrivance and conduct of Semiramis,
the wife of one Memmon, a captain in his army, he
took the capital, and reduced the kingdom ; but being
hereupon charmed with the spirit and bravery of the
woman, he fell in love with her, and prevailed with her
husband (by giving him his own daughter in lieu of
Semiramis in marriage) to consent to his having her for
his wife. By her he had a son named Ninyas ; and after
a reign of fifty-two years he died A. M. 2017. e
Ninyas was but a minor when his father died ; and
therefore his mother, who all along had a great sway in
the administration of public affairs during her husband's
canus from Manitlio; by Eusebius and Syncellus in Chro.
Euseb. ; and the time of Menes coincides very well with (hose of
Moses' Mizraim, as Sir John Marsham [in his Can. Chron.
p. 2.] has pretty clearly evinced. — Hhuch/ord's Connection,
vol. 1. b. 4.
c According to Hales's chronology, Mizraim settled in Egypt
A. M. 279S ; hut whether Mizraim the son of Noah was the same
person with Menes, called by the Greek writers the first king of
Egypt, is uncertain. According to the same chronologist, Menes
began his reign, B. C. 2412; that is, A. M. 2999.
d Dr Hales, and Bishop Gleig following him, think that Belus
and Nimrod were the same person; this, however, is doubtful*
See Bell's Dissertation on the Origin of the Assyrian Empire,
Rulthi, vol. J. pp. 117— 122.— Ed.
e The Ninus of whom all this is said, was not the son of either
Ashur or Nimrod, but Ninus II. who succeeded to the Assyrian
throne B. C. 1252, and A. M. according to Hales's chronology,
4159.
Sect. III.] FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
A. M. 1937. A. C. 2007 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318 A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH xi VER
lifetime, continued in the government, with the a consent
and approbation of her subjects. She removed her court
from Nineveh to Babylon, which she encompassed with
the wall we mentioned before, and adorned with many
public and magnificent buildings; and, having- thus
finished the seat of her empire, and settled all the neigh-
bouring- kingdoms under her authority, she raised an
army, with an intent to conquer India : but after a long
and dangerous war, being tired out with defeats, she was
obliged, with the small remainder of her forces, to return
home, where, finding herself in disgrace with her people,
she resigned the crown and authority to her son, after
she had reigned forty-two years, and soon after died,
A. M. 2059. *
Her son Ninyas began his reign full of a sense of the
errors of his mother's administration, and engaged in
none of the wars and dangerous expeditions wherein she
had harassed and fatigued her people : but though he
was not ambitious to enlarge his empire, * yet he took
all due care to regulate and settle upon a good foun-
dation the extensive dominions which his parents had
left him. By a wise contrivance of annual deputies over
his provinces, he prevented many revolts of distant
countries, which might otherwise have happened, and his
taking up that state of being difficult of access (which
was afterwards much improved by eastern monarchs)
might perhaps procure him a greater veneration from his
subjects. However this be, it is certain that most authors
have represented him as a weak and effeminate prince,
which might naturally arise, without any other founda-
tion, from his succeeding- a father and mother, who were
rather too active to enlarge their dominions ; as well as
from the disposition in most writers to think a turbulent
and warlike reign, if victorious, a glorious one, and to
overlook an administration that is employed in the silent
but more happy arts of peace and good government.
In Egypt, Mizraim had three sons, who, after his
death, became the kings of the several parts thereof.
Ananim, or rather Anan, was king of the Lower Egypt,
or Delta ; Naphtuhim, or Naph, of Middle Egypt, or the
country about Memphis ; and Pathrusim, or Patrus, of the
Upper Egypt, or the country of Thebais ; and agreeably
hereunto, from these three kings did these several coun-
tries take their ancient denominations. Of the first of
these, namely, Ananim, we have nothing remaining but
1.35
10. TO THE END.
1 Diodorus Siculus, b. 2.
a Justin, in his history of this woman, informs us, that upon
the death of her husband, she made use of the stratagem of per-
sonating her son to obtain the empire to herself; but Diodorus,
with more probability, ascribes her advancement to her conduct,'
fernery, and magnanimous behaviour. When she took upon her
to be queen, the public affairs were put in the hands to which
Ninus, when alive, used generally to commit them; and it is not
likely that the people should be uneasy at her governing, who had
for several years together, by a series of actions, gained herself a
great credit and ascendant over them ; especially if we consider,
that when she took up the sovereignty, she still pressed forward
in a. course of action which continually exceeded the expectations
of her people, and left no room for any to be willing to dispute
her authority. — Shuckford's Cunnectiun, vol. 1. b. 4.
I There is no reason to believe that the Semiramis, who
enlarged and beautified the city of Babylon, was the wife of
Nmus II. Ctesias and Justin, from whom this story is taken,
are authors of no credit. It is probable that the great Semiramis
was cither the mother or the wife of Nabonassar, who really
walled Babylon, about B. C. 747, as we learn from Herodotus.
Hales, vol. 4. p. 51, second edition.
only his name and the time of his death : for a
had reigned sixty-three years, according to Syncellus,
he died A. M. 200G.
Of the second, namely, Naphtuhim, we are told that
he was the author of the architecture of those ages had
some useful knowledge of physic and anatomy,' and
taught his subjects (as he learned it from his brother
Pathrusim) the use of letters ; for to this Pathrusim (whom
they call Thyoth) the Egyptians indeed ascribe the inven-
tion of all arts and sciences whatever. The Greeks
called him Hermes, and the Latins, Mercurius ; and
while his father Mizraim lived, he is supposed to have
been his secretary, and greatly assistant to him in all his
undertakings. When his father died, he instructed his
brothers in all the knowledge he was master of ; and as
for his own people, he made wholesome laws for their
government ; settled their religion and form of worship ;
and enriched their language by the addition of several
words, to express several things which before they had
no names for. c
This is the best account that we can give of the Baby-
Ionian or Assyrian empires, and of the kings that ruled
E&ypt> for some ages next after the dispersion of man-
kind. Other nations, no doubt, were settled into regular
governments in these times : Canaan was inhabited rather
sooner than Egypt; and,8 according to Moses, Hebron,
in Canaan^ was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt ;
but as none of those nations made any considerable
figure in the first ages, their actions lie in obscurity, and
must be buried in oblivion. The few men of extraordi-
nary note that were then in the world lived in Egypt and
Assyria ; and for this reason we find little or no mention
of any other countries until one of these two nations
came to send out colonies, which by degrees polished
the people they travelled to, and instructed them in such
arts and sciences as made them appear with credit in
their own age, and (as soon as the use of letters was
made public) transmitted their names with honour to
posterity.
The knowledge of letters cannot have been of any
long standing among us Europeans, who are settled far
from the first seats of mankind, and far from the places
which the descendants of Noah first planted. " None of
the ancient Thracians," 3 says Elian, " knew any thing
of letters ; nay, the Europeans in general thought it dis-
reputable to learn them, though in Asia they were held
in greater request." The Goths, according to the express
testimony 4 of Socrates, had their letters and writings
* Numb. xiii. 11. 3 Universal History, b. 8. c. 6'.
1 Hist. Eccles. b. 4. c. 33.
c It is well observed by Dr Hales, that the Egyptian chrono-
logy, at this early period, is a labyrinth, in which the most emi-
nent scholars and antiquaries have lost their way and misled their
readers. Unquestionably the best account of it that has fallen
in my way, is that which he has furnished himself; but to give,
in a note on this work, any abridgment of the discussions by
which he endeavours to render it consistent with the chronology
of Scripture, or indeed with itself, is impossible. Suffice it t>>
say here, that if Pathrusim be the same with Thotfa or Thyoth,
he was the son and minister, not of Mizraim the son of Ham, but
of Menes, whom our laborious chronologer has proved to hare
begun his reign, B. C. 2412, and A. M. 2999; that is, at a
period earlier, by D!)0 years, than that at which our author fixes
the death of Pathrusim's elder brother. See Sales' Analysis,
second edition, vol. 4. pp. 400 et seq. as quoted by Bishop Gleig.
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A. M. 1937. A. C. 2007
from Ulphilas their bishop, A. D. 370. The Sclavonians
received theirs from Methodius, a philosopher, about
A. D. 856. The people of Dalmatia had theirs not till
St Jerom's, and those of Illyria, not till St Cyril's days,
towards the end of the fourth century.
The Latins, who were more early, received their
letters (as most authors agree) from the Greeks, and were
taught the use of them, either from some of the followers
of Pelasgus, who came into Italy about one hundred and
fifty years after that Cadmus came into Greece, or from
the Arcadians, whom Evander led into those parts about
sixty years after Pelasgus.
Among the Greeks, the Ionians were the first who had
any knowledge of letters ; and they, in all probabi-
lity, had them from the Phoenicians, who were the fol-
lowers of Cadmus when he came into Greece ; but from
whom the Phoenicians had them, has been matter of some
dispute. Many considerable writers have derived them
directly from Egypt, and are generally agreed, that
Thyoth, or Mercury, was the inventor of them. In the
early ages, when mankind were but few, and these few
employed in the several contrivances for life, it could be
but here and there one that had leisure, or perhaps incli-
nation, to study letters : the companies that removed
from Babel were most of them rude and uncultivated
people ; they followed some persons of figure and emi-
nence, who had gained an ascendant over them ; and
these persons, when they had settled them in distant
places, and came to teach them such arts as they were
masters of, had every thing they taught them imputed to
their own invention, because the poor ignorant people
knew no other person that was versed and skilled in them.
Though, therefore, the Egyptians had confessedly the
use of letters very early among them, and though their
Thyoth or Mercury might be the first avIio taught others
their use, and for that reason be reputed the inventor of
them ; yet I cannot but think, that Noah and his sons,
who had learned them in the old world, taught them to
their posterity in the new. For, since mankind subsisted
1600 [probably 2256] years before the flood, it is not very
probable that they lived all this while without the use of
letters. If they did, how came we by the short annals
which we have of the antediluvian ages ? But if they did
not, it is not unlikely that Noah, being well skilled in the
knowledge and use of them, might teach them to his
children; andif we pursue the inquiry, and ask from whence
Noah attained his knowledge, the most proper reply will
be, that he had it from the instruction of his parents, as his
parents might have it in their several successions from
Adam, and as Adam might have it from God.
And indeed if we consider the nature of letters, it
cannot but appear something strange, that an invention
so surprising as that of writing is, should be found out
in an age, so near the beginning of the world. , Nature
may easily be supposed to have prompted men to speak,
to try to express their minds to one another by sounds
and noises ; but that the wit of man should, among its
first attempts, find out a way to express words in figures
or letters, and to form a method by which they might
expose to view all that can be said or thought, and that
within the compass of 16, 20, or 24 characters, variously
i Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1. b. 4.
placed, so as to form syllables and words ; that the wit
of man, I say, could immediately and directly fall
upon a project of this nature, is what exceeds the most
exalted notions we can possibly form of his capacity,
and must therefore remit us to God (in whom are hid all
the treasures of infinite wisdom) for the first invention
and contrivance of it.
As soon as the use of letters, whether of divine or
human invention, came generally to be known, it is rea-
sonable to think, that all arts and sciences would from
thence receive a powerful assistance, and in process of
time begin to take root and flourish. But this was a
period a little too early to bring them to any great per-
fection. 2 For though Noah and his sons had doubtless
some knowledge of the inventions of the antediluvians,
and probably acquainted their descendants with such of
them as were most obvious and useful in common life ;
yet it cannot be imagined that any of the more curious
arts, or speculative sciences, were improved to any degree
(supposing them to be known and invented) till some
considerable time after the dispersion. On the contrary,
one consequence of that event seems to have been this —
that several inventions known to their ancestors were
lost, and mankind gradually degenerated into ignorance
and barbarity, till ease and plenty had given them lei-
sure to polish their manners, and to apply themselves to
such parts of knowledge as are seldom brought to per-
fection under other circumstances.
The inhabitants of Babylon indeed are supposed to
have had a great knowledge in astronomical matters,
much about this time ; s for when Alexander the Great
took possession of that city, Callisthenes the philosopher,
who acconiDanied him, upon searching into the treasures
of the Babylonian learning, found that the Chaldeans
had a series of observations for 1903 years backwards
from that time; that is, from the 1771st year of the
world's creation forwards. But this is a notion that Ave
have already confuted ; as indeed the nature of the thing
will teach us, that upon the first-settlement in any country,
a nation could not but find employment enough (at least
for some ages) in cultivating their lands, and providing
themselves houses and other necessaries for their mutual
comfort and subsistence.
Ninus and Semiramis are supposed to have improved
vaa
for,
tly the arts of war and navigation about this period ;
a We read of armies consisting of some millions of
2 Universal History, b. I.e. 2.
3 Simplicius de Ccelo, b, 2. com. 46.
a The history of the Assyrian empire, as we have it in Die-
dorus Siculus, b. 2, c. 1—22, and in Justin, b. 1, c. 1, 2, is, i"
the substance of it, to this efi'ect :— The first who extended tins
empire was Ninus, who being a warlike prince, and desiring to
do great things, gathered together the stoutest men in the coun-
try, and having trained them up to the use of arms, entered into
an alliance with Arireus, king of Arabia, by whose assistance he
subdued the Babylonians, and imposed a tribute on them, after
he had taken their king captive, and killed him with his children.
Then having entered Armenia with a great army, and destroyed
several cities, he so terrified the rest, that king Barzanes sub-
mitted to him. After this he vanquished Pharnus king of
Media in battle, crucified him and his wife, and seven children ;
and in the space of seventeen years overcame all Asia, except
India and Bactria; but no author declares the particulars of his
victories. Of the maritime provinces, he subdued, according to
Ctesias, whom we follow, (says Diodorus,) Egypt, Phoenicia, the
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
137
A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318.
horse and foot ; and of fleets and galleys with brazen beaks,
to transport the forces over a river only, to the number
of two thousand. But all that narration of Diodorus and
Justin, as it is acknowledged to be taken from Ctesias
(whom " all the best critics of antiquity look upon as an
author deserving no credit) may very justly be accounted
false and fabulous. And though it cannot be denied
that the invention of shipping, which was not before the
flood (for had it been before, more than Noah and his
family might have saved themselves from the waters)
is a great step towards the improvement of commerce ;
yet, as the dispersion of mankind made it more difficult to
trade with nations who spoke a different language, so
the method whereunto we may suppose they entered at
Lower Syria, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia ; and besides these, Caria,
the Phrygias, Lydia, Mysia, Troas, together with the Propontis,
Bithynia, Cappadocia, and all the barbarous nations, as far as the
Tanais ; with Persia, Susiana, Caspiana, and many other nations
that we need not here enumerate. From this last expedition, as
soon as he returned, he built a city which he called by his own
name, Ninus, not far from the river Euphrates : and being after-
wards enamoured with the beauty and valour of a woman
of uncertain birth, named Semiramis, the wife of Menon,
the prefect of Syria, he took her to wife, and by her advice
and direction governed all things with success. For having
gathered together an army of seventeen hundred thousand foot, and
two hundred and ten thousand horse, and six hundred thousand
armed chariots, (numbers incredible in those days,) with these he
advanced against Oxyartes, king of Bactria, who met him with
an army of lour hundred thousand men ; but the Bactrians being
defeated, and their capital, by the valour and direction of Semira-
mis, taken, she was thereupon advanced by Ninus to the honour of
being made queen, which occasioned her husband Menon, to hang
himself. After Ninus had thus settled his affairs in Bactria, his
wife Semiramis had a son whom he named Ninyas, and not
long after died, leaving the administration of the kingdom in
his wife's hands ; who, to raise her own glory, built a stately
monument for her deceased husband, built the city of Babylon,
and other remarkable places ; and then, having brought Egypt,
Ethiopia, and Lybia, all the way to the temple of Jupiter Ham-
mon, under her jurisdiction, returned into Asia ; where she had
not been long before, bearing that Staprobates or Staurobates,
king of India, governed a rich country, she resolved to take
it from him. To this purpose she prepared a great army and
fleet; but being told what mighty elephants there were in India,
in order to have something like them, she caused three hundred
thousand hides of oxen to be dressed and stuffed with straw, under
which there was a camel to bear the machine, and a man to
guide it, which at a distance made a kind of resemblance of these
vast creatures. Her army consisted of three millions of foot, one
million of horse, and an hundred thousand chariots ; of an hundred
thousand of those that fought on camels; of two hundred thousand
camels fur the baggage, and two thousand galleys with brazen
heads, to transport her army over the river Indus. But all this
must be false and fabulous; because it is incredible to think,
either that her own country should supply, or that the country
whereinto she was marching, should be able to sustain such an
immense number of men and other creatures as are here related.
Besides that it is false in fact, that the kings of Assyria ever
governed all Asia, or stretched their conquests over Egypt and
Libya. — Millar's History of the Church, c. 1, part 3.
a This Ctesias was a native of Cnidus, and physician to Arta-
xerxes Mnemnon. He wrote a Persian history in three and twenty
books, of which there remain only a few fragments preserved by
Photius. But very valuable authors, who have seen Ctesias when
prefect, give him no commendable character. Plutarch (in
Artaxerxes) calls him a fabulous vain man, and a great liar. A.
< Ml ins (Noctes Attica;, b. !). c. 4.) reckons him among the
fabulous writers; and Aristotle (in his Historia Animalium)
says, that he was an author who deserves no credit; as indeed it
we will judge either by the incredible things in his story, or by
what he says of the Indian or Persian affairs, in his fragments that
remain, we shall have reason to conclude that these great men
have not given him this character without good grounds. —
Millar's History, ibid.
A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. A ND CH. xi.VER. 10. TO THE END.
first, extended no farther than this : — That the colonies
who planted new countries, not only perceiving their own
wants, from the conveniences they had left behind them,
but finding likewise something useful in their settlements
which were before unknown to them or their founders,
fetched what they wanted from the parts where they for-
merly dwelt, and in exchange for that carried what they
had discovered in their new plantations thither, and this
seems to have given the first rise to traffic and foreign
trade, whose gradual advances we may have occasion to
take notice of hereafter. In the mean time, we shall con-
clude this book and this chapter together, with an account
of the religion which at this time obtained in the most
famous nations of the world, and observe withal by what
means it came to degenerate into idolatry, and other
wicked and superstitious practices.
Now, besides the common notion of a God, which men
might either learn from tradition, or collect by their own
reflection ; the very history of the deluge, which had not
so long ago befallen the world, could not but instruct
and confirm the generations we are now treating of, in
several articles of their religion. If they had the account
of this remarkable judgment transmitted to them in all
its circumstances, they could not but entertain these con-
ceptions of God. That he takes cognizance of the things
which are done here on earth ; that he is a lover of virtue,
and a severe punisher of vice ; that he is infinite in
power, by commanding the winds and rains, seas and
elements, to execute his will ; that he is likewise infinite
in mercy, in forewarning the wicked of their ruin (as
he did the old world) several years before its execution ;
and that therefore a being of such a nature and disposi-
tion was to be served, and worshipped, and feared, and
obeyed. So that the sum of religion, in the ages subse-
quent to the flood, even to the promulgation of the law,
must have consisted in the belief of a God, and his sacred
attributes ; in the devout worship of him, by the oblation
of prayers and praises, and such sacrifices as he himself
had instituted ; and in the observance of those eternal
rules of righteousness, of justice and mercy, of sobriety
and temperance, &c, which, if not expressly delivered to
the sons of Noah, were nevertheless deducible from the
nature of things, and the relations wherein mankind
stood toward one another.
And now, if we look into the principal nations which
were at this time existing, we shall find, that ' the Per-
sians, above all other people, were remarkable for having
amongst them a true account of the creation of tin- world ,
and its destruction by water ; which they strictly adhered
to, and made the foundation of their religion ; nor have
we any reason to think but that they were for some
time, very zealous professors of it, though by degrees,
they came to corrupt it, by introducing novelties and
fancies of their own into both their faith and practice :
we shall find - that many of the ancient Arabians pre-
served the true worship of God for .several ages, whereof
Job who perhaps lived in the days now under consider-
ation was a memorable instance ; as was likewise
Jethro,the priest of Midian, in the days of Moses : we
shall find, that the Canaanites of old were of the same
religion with Abraham ; for though he travelled up
1 Hyde's Rellg. Vet P< rsaruni, c '■'■
2 Shuckford's Connection^ vol. 1. b. S.
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and down many years in their country, yet was he
respected by the inhabitants of it as a person in great
favour with God ; and Melchisedek, the king of Salem,
who was the ' priest of the most high God,' and conse-
quently of the same religion, received him with this
address, l ' Blessed be Abraham, servant of the most high
God, possessor of heaven and earth :' we shall find from
Abimelech's prayer, upon his receiving intimation that
Sarah was Abraham's wife, that among the Philistines
there were some true worshippers of the God of heaven,
2 ' Lord, wilt thou slay a righteous nation ? said he unto
me, she is my sister ; and she, even she herself, said, he
is my brother : in the integrity of my heart and innocency
of my hands have I done this:' we shall find, that the
Egyptians allowed no mortal creature to be a god; pro-
fessed to worship nothing but their god Cneph, 3 whom
the) affirmed to be without beginning and without end ;
and though in the mythologic times, 4 they represented
this deity by the figure of a serpent with the head of an
hawk, in the middle of a circle, yet they affirmed at the
same time, that the god whom they thus represented was
the creator of all things, — a being incorruptible and
eternal, with several other attributes becoming the Divine
nature. In short, we shall find that all the nations then
known in the world, not only worshipped the same God,
whom they called the Maker and Creator of the universe,
but worshipped him likewise in the same form and man-
ner ; that they had all the like sacrifices, either expia-
tory, to make atonement for their sins ; precatory, to
obtain favours from Almighty God ; propitiatory, to
avert his judgments ; or eucharistical, to return thanks
for his extraordinary mercies ; and that all these sacri-
fices were every where offered upon altars, with some
previous purifications, and other ceremonies to be
observed by the offerer : so that religion in every
nation, for some time after the flood, both in principle
and practice, was the same, till some busy and pragma-
tical heads being minded to make some improvements
(as they thought), added their own speculations to it,
and so both destroyed its uniformity, and introduced it3
corruption.
When this corruption of religion was first introduced,
is not so easy a matter to determine, because neither
sacred nor profane history have taken any notice of it.
Those, s who account idolatry one of the sins of the
antediluvian world, suppose that Ham being married into
the wicked race of Lamech, retained a strong inclination
for such a false worship ; and that, after he was cursed
by his father Noah, and separated from the posterity of
Shem, he soon set it up. Those 6 who imagine that the
f ower of Babel was a monument intended for the honour of
the sun, which had dried up the waters from off" the face
of the earth, must suppose that the worship of that
planet began when the remembrance of the deluge was
fresh in men's minds ; but those 7 who are of opinion
that the difference of men's dialects, and the difference
of their sentiments concerning God might not impro-
perly commence together, must date the first institution
1 Gen. xiv. 19. * Gen. xx. 5.
3 Plutarch de Iside et Osiride , p. 359.
* Eusebhis's Pnep. Evan. b. I.e. 10.
5 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, 1). 2. c.
6 See Tennison on Idolatry.
' Cyril Alex, contra Julian, b. 1.
of idolatry not a great deal lower than the time of the
dispersion.
s The generality of Christian fathers, as well as orien-
tal writers, are positive in their assertions, that the first
appearance of idolatry was in the days of Serug : " Be-
cause as Enoch," say they, " was the seventh from Adam,
in whose time the general impiety before the flood is said
to have begun ; so Serug, being in like manner the seventh
from Noah, lived at a proper distance for such a cor-
ruption of religious worship to be introduced and grow."
but this is a reason too trifling to be taken notice of.
" Nor can I see," 9 says our learned Selden, " how they
can be able to maintain their opinions, who determine
so peremptorily concerning a matter of so distant and
uncertain a nature."
But whatever the date of idolatry might be, it is cer-
tain that it had its first birth, not in Egypt, as some have
maintained, but in Chaldea, as the most reverend author
of the Treatise of Idolatry has evinced ; 10 and that
because in the days of Abraham we find all other nations
and countries adhering to the true account of the creation
and deluge, and worshipping the God of heaven accord-
ing to what had been revealed to them ; whereas the Chal-
deans had so far departed from his worship, and were
so zealous in their errors and corruptions, that upon
Abraham's family refusing to join with them, they
expelled them their country, and " cast them out from
the face of their gods."
The Chaldeans indeed, by reason of the plain and
even situation of their country, which gave them a larger
prospect of the heavenly bodies than those who inhabited
mountainous places, had a great conveniency for astro-
nomical observations, and accordingly were the first
people who took any great pains to improve them. And
as they were the first astrologers, '2 so learned men have
observed, that lying on the ground, or else on flat
roofs all night, to make their observations, they fell in
love with the lights of heaven, which in the clear firma-
ment of those countries, appeared so often and with so
much lustre ; and perceiving the constant and regular
order of their motions and revolutions, they thence began
to imagine that they were animated with some superior
souls, and therefore deserved their adoration ; and as
the sun excelled all the rest, so the generality of learned
men have with good reason imagined, that this bright
luminary was the first idol in the world.
Among the Egyptians, I3 Syphis king of Memphis was '
the first who began to speculate upon such subjects. He
examined what influence the sun and moon had upon
the terrestrial globe ; how they nourished and gave life
and vigour to all things ; and thereupon, forgetting what
his ancestors had taught him, namely, that ' in the begin-
ning God created the heavens, as well as the earth,'
the sun and moon, as well as the creatures of this lower
world, he concluded that they were two great and mighty
deities, and accordingly commanded them to be wor-
shipped.
The Persians perhaps 14 were never so far corrupted as
to lose entirely the knowledge of the Supreme God.
s Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 1.
0 De Diis Syris, prolog. 3.
10 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1. b. 5.
11 Judith v. 8. ,2 Tennison on Idolatry.
13 Diodorus, b. 1. ,4 Hv' 's Relig. Vet. Persarum, c. 1.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
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They saw those celestial bodies running their courses,
as they thought, day and night, over all the world, and
reviving and invigorating all the parts and products of
the earth ; and though they kept themselves so far right,
as not to mistake them for the true God, yet they imagined
them to be his most glorious ministers ; and not taking
care to keep strictly to what their forefathers had taught
them, they were led away by their own imaginations, to
appoint an idolatrous worship for beings that had been
created, and by nature were not gods.
What kind of idolatry was current among the Canaan-
ites, Moses sufficiently intimates in the caution he gives
the Israelites, just going to take possession of it, namely,
that * ' when they lifted up their eyes to heaven, and saw
the sun and moon, and stars, even all the hosts of heaven,'
they should not, as the inhabitants of the country were,
be driven to worship and to serve them. And that this
was the customary worship among the Arabians, the
justification which Job makes of himself is a sufficient
proof; 2 ' If I beheld the sun, when it shined, or the
moon, walking in brightness, and mine heart hath been
secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand,' that
is, if with devotion of soul, or profession of outward
respect, I have worshipped those heavenly bodies, which
by their height, motion, and lustre, attract the eye and
ravish the senses, ' this also were an iniquity to be punished
by the judge ; for then 1 should have denied the God
that is above.' And therefore the account 3 which the
Greek historian gives us of the origin of this kind of idola-
try is more than probable, namely, that the most ancient
inhabitants of the earth, (meaning those who lived not
long after the flood, and particularly the Egyptians,)
" contemplating on the world above them, and being
astonished with high admiration at the nature of the uni-
verse, believed that they were eternal gods, and that the
two principal of them were the sun and the moon, the
former of which they called Osiris, and the latter Isis :"
since, of later years, upon the discovery of America,
though many different idols were found in different places,
yet as for the sun, it Avas the universal deity both in
Mexico and Peru.
But whatever the first idol might be, it soon multiplied
into such a prodigious number as to fill both heaven and
earth with its progeny ; insomuch, that there are not three
parts of the creation but what in one nation or other had
their worshippers. 4 They worshipped universal nature,
the soul of the world, angels, devils, and the souls of men
departed, either separate and alone, or in union with
some star or other body. They worshipped the heavens,
and in them both luminaries and constellations ; the
atmosphere, and in it the meteors and fowls of the air ;
the earth, and in it beasts, birds, insects, plants, groves,
and hills, together with divers fossils and terrestrial fire.
They worshipped the water, and in it the sea and rivers,
and in them fishes, serpents, and insects, together
with such creatures as live in either element. They
worshipped men both living and dead ; and in them the
faculties and endowments of the soul, as well as the seve-
ral accidents and conditions of life. Nay, they wor-
shipped the images of men ; the images of animals, even
1 Deut. iv. 10. « Job xxxi. 26, 27.
3 Diodorus Sic. b. 3. c. 11.
4 Temiison on Idolatry.
the most hateful, such as serpents, dragons, crooodiles,
&c, and descended at last so low, as to pay a religious
regard to things inanimate, herbs and plants, and the
most stinking vegetables.
How men came to part with the religion of their
ancestors for such trash, and 5 'to change the glory of
the incorruptible God into the image of corruptible man,
and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things,'
the apostle who remonstrates against the indignity, has in
some measure supplied us with a reason, when he tells
that this state of things, so gross and strange soever it
was, was introduced under the pretences of wisdom, or
by men professing to be wise.
It was the wise amongst them that formed the design ;
and, addressing the multitude with a grave appearance,
prevailed (as we may conceive) by some such form of
arguing as this, 6 u We are all aware, ye sons of Noah,
that religion is our chief concern, and therefore it well
becomes us to improve and advance it as much as possi-
ble. We have indeed received appointments from God
for the worship which he requires ; but if these appoint-
ments may be altered for his greater glory, there is no
doubt but that it will be a commendable piety so to alter
them. Now our father Noah has instructed us in a reli-
gion which in truth is too simple, and too unafl'ecting.
It directs us to the worship of God abstractly from all
sense, and under a confused notion, under the formality
of attributes, as power, goodness, justice, wisdom, eter-
nity, and the like ; an idea foreign to our affections, as
well as our comprehensions ; whereas in all reason we
ought to worship God more pompously and more exten-
sively, and not only to adore his personal and essential
attributes, but likewise all the emanations of them, and
all those creatures by which they are eminently repre-
sented. Nor can this be any derogation from his honour ;
since his honour is certainly more amply expressed
when in this manner we acknowledge that not only him-
self, but all his creatures likewise are adorable. We
ought therefore (if we will be wise) to worship the host
of heaven, because they are eminent representations of
his glory and eternity. We ought to worship the ele-
ments, because they represent his benignity and omni-
presence. We ought to worship princes, because they
sustain a divine character, and are the representatives of
his power upon earth. We ought to worship men famous in
their generation, even when they are dead, because their
virtues are the distinguishing gifts and communications
of God ; nay, we ought to worship the ox and the sheep,
and whatever creatiu-es are most beneficial, because they
are the symbols of his love and goodness ; and with no
less reason, the serpent, the crocodile, and other animals
that are noxious, because they are symbols of his awful
anger.
This seems to be a fair opening of the project, and by
some such cunning harangue as this we may suppose it was
that the first contrivers of idolatry drew in th<> ignorant
and admiring multitude. And indeed, considering tin'
natural habitude of vulgar minds, and the strong
inclinations they have in matters of an abstruse consid-
eration, to help themselves by sensible objects, it s<cius
not so difficult a task to have drawn them in.
s Rom. i. 22, 23.
Young's Sermons, vol. 2. Si rm, I.
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Those who worshipped universal nature, or the system
of the material world, perceived lirst, that there was
excellency in the several parts of it, and then (to make
up the grandeur and perfection of the idea) they joined
them altogether in one Divine Being. Those who labour-
ed under a weakness and narrowness of imagination,
distributed nature into its several parts, and worshipped
that portion of it which was accounted of most general
use and benefit. Usefulness was the common motive,
but it was not the only motive which inclined the world
to idolatry : for upon farther inquiry, we shall find, that
whatever ravished with its transcendent beauty, what-
ever affrightened with its malignant power, whatever
astonished with its uncommon greatness, whatever, in
short, was beautiful, hurtful, or majestic, became a deity,
as well as what was profitable for its use. 1 The sun,
men soon perceived, had all these powers and properties
united in it : its beauty was glorious to behold, its motion
wonderful to consider, its heat occasioned different
effects, barrenness in some places, and fruitfulness in
others ; and the immense globe of its light appeared
highly exalted, and riding in triumph, as it were, round
the world. The moon, they saw, supplied the absence
of the sun by night ; gave a friendly light to the earth,
and, besides the great variety of its phases, had a won-
derful influence over the sea and other humid bodies.
The stars they admired for their height and magnitude,
the order of their positions, and celerity of their motions,
and thence were persuaded either that some celestial
vigour or other resided in them, or that the souls of
their heroes and great men, were translated into them
when they died ; and upon these, and such like presump-
tions, they accounted all celestial bodies to be deities.
2 The force of fire, the serenity of air, the usefulness of
water, as well as the terror and dreadfuhiess of thunder
and lightning, gave rise to the consecration of the
meteors and elements. The sea, swelling with its proud
surface, and roaring with its mighty billows, was such
an awful sight, and the earth bedecked with all its plants,
flowers, and fruits, such a lovely one, as might well affect
a pagan's veneration ; when for the like motives, namely,
their beneficial, hurtful, delightful, or astonishing pro-
perties, beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and even vegetables
themselves, came to be adored. a
The pride and pomp of the great, and the low and
abject spirits of the mean, occasioned first the flattery,
and then the worship of kings and princes as gods upon
earth. Men famous for their adventures and exploits,
the founders of nations or cities, or the inventors of
1 Tennison on Idolatry.
2 Herbert's Ancient Religion of the Gentiles.
a The extent of idol worship, and the similarity of the system
of idolatry in all the countries in which it has been practised, are
truly amazing. From these circumstances, some learned writers
have been led to trace it up to the plains of Shinar, and to main-
tain that it issued from thence, and accompanied the progress of
the human race over the globe. Whatever truth there may be
in this opinion, the history of mankind amply proves, that man,
without the light of revelation, is prone to idolatry, and to give
to the creature, or to the deifications of his own mind, the worship
which is due to God. This proneness had widely shown itself
so early as the time of Abraham, when it was necessary to separ-
ate that patriarch and his posterity, to preserve the knowledge
of the living and true God. — See on the Nature and History of
Idolatry, Dewar's Moral Philosophy, vol. 2. ch. vi.
useful arts and sciences, were reverenced while they
lived, and after death canonized. The prevailing notion
of the soul's immortality, made them imagine that the
spirits of such excellent persons either immediately
ascended up into heaven, and settled there in some orb
or other, or that they hovered in the air, whence, by
solemn invocations, and by making some statue or image
resemblant of them, they might be prevailed with to
come down and inhabit it.
Whether the idolatry of image worship was first begun
in Chaldea or in Egypt, we have no grounds from
history to determine : but wherever it had its origin, the
design of making statues and images at first was
certainly such as 3 the author of the book of Wisdom
has represented it, namely, to commemorate an absent or
deceased friend, or to do honour to some great man or
sovereign prince ; which (whether so intended or no at
first) the ignorance and superstition of the people turned,
in time, into an object of religious adoration ; " the
singular diligence of the artificer," as our author expres-
ses it, " helping to set forward the ignorant to more
superstition : For he, peradventure, willing to please
one in authority, forced all his skill to make the resem-
blance of the best fashion ; and so the multitude, allured
by the grace of the work, took him now for a god, who,
a little before, was but honoured as a man."
We cannot but observe, however, with what elegance and
fine satire it is that the Scripture sets off the stupidity
and gross infatuation both of the artificer and adorer.
' The carpenter heweth down cedars, and taketh the
cypress, and the oak. He stretcheth out his rule, he
marketh it out with a line, he fitteth it with planes, he
marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the
figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man. — He
burneth part thereof in the fire ; with part thereof he
eateth flesh ; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied ; yea, he
warmeth himself, and saith, Aha ! I am warm, I have seen
the fire ; and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even
his graven image. He falleth down unto it, and worship-
ped) it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for
thou art my god ; never considering in his heart, nor
having knowledge or understanding to say, I have burnt
part of it in the fire ; yea, also I have baked bread upon
the coals thereof : I have roasted flesh, and eaten it ; and
shall I make the residue thereof an abomination ? Shall I
fall down to the stock of a tree ? He feedeth on ashes :
a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot
deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right
hand ? '
That rational creatures should be capable of so wretch-
ed a degeneracy as this amounts to, may justly provoke
our wonder and amazement : and yet we may remember,
that these people (who may possibly be the object of
our scorn and contempt) had the boasted light of nature
to be their guide in matters of religion : nay, they had
some advantages that we apparently want : they lived
much nearer the beginning of the world ; had the terrors
of the Lord in the late judgment of the deluge, fresh in
their minds ; had the articles of their religion comprised
in a small compass ; and (what is no bad friend to reason
and sober recollection) lived in more simplicity, and
3 Ch. xiv. 15, &c.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE FLOOD TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
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less luxury than these later ages can pretend to ; and
yet, notwithstanding these advantages, so sadly, so
shamefully did they miscarry, that the wit of man would
be at a loss to devise a reason for their conduct, had
not the divine wisdom informed us, that 1 ' they alienated
themselves from the life of God, and lightly regarded
the counsels of the Most High ; that they forsook the
guide of their youth, and rejected those revelations,
which at sundry times, and in divers manners,' were
made to their forefathers, for the rule and measure of
their faith and practice. We indeed, had we lived in
those days, may be apt to think that we would not have
been carried away with the common corruption ; that the
light of nature would have taught us better than to pay
our devotions to brute beasts, or to look upon their
images as our gods. But alas ! we little consider,
what the power of reason, of mere unassisted reason, is
against the force of education and the prevalence of
custom, engaged on the side of a false but flashy and
popular religion. Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, were, in
after ages, some of the greatest reasoners that the world
has produced, and yet we find them complying with the
established worship of their country : what grounds have
1 Eph. iv. 18.
A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.
we then to imagine, that, in case we had been contem-
poraries with them, we had acquitted ourselves any
better ? Our reason indeed now tells us that we should
have died rather than submitted to these impious modes
of worship : but then we are to remember, that reason is
now assisted by the light and authority of a Divine
revelation ; that therefore Ave are not competent judges
how we would act without this superior aid ; but that in
all probability, 2 taking away the direction and restraint
of this, reason would relapse into the same extrava«an-
cies, the same impiety, the same folly and superstition
which prevailed on it before. And therefore (to con-
clude in the words of our blessed Saviour, spoken
indeed upon another, but very applicable upon this
occasion), 3 ' Blessed are the eyes which see the things
which ye see,' a full and perfect rule of faith and man-
ners contained in that Holy Bible, which is in every
one's hands ; ' for I tell you that many prophets and
kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and
have not seen them ; and to hear those things which ye
hear, and have not heard them.'
* Roger's Necessity of a Divine Revelation.
3 Luke x. 23, 24.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK III.
CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THINGS FROM THE CALLING OF ABRAHAM TO THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE
OUT OF EGYPT, IN ALL 430 YEARS.— ACCORDING TO DR HALES 1015 YEARS.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
Abraham was born only two a years after the death of
Noah, from whom he descended in the line of Seth. Of
Abraham the sacred historian gives us little information
till he was seventy -five years old, when the Lord called
him to leave his father's house and his native country.
Promises were added, for his encouragement, respecting
his posterity, that from him should arise a numerous and
powerful people ; and respecting himself, that God
would so highly honour him, as not only to make his
name great, but also to render his life a general blessing
to mankind.
In wisdom and in mercy God called Abraham, the
person in whose family he intended to uphold the true
religion, out of his own country, which was the land of
Chaldea, and from his kindred, to a far distant land,
that his posterity might there remain, a people separate
from the rest of mankind, that so the true religion might
be maintained and preserved. A foundation was thus
laid, and means were thus provided, for upholding the
church of Christ in the world till he should come. For
the world having become idolatrous, it was necessary
that the people of God should be thus separated, that
they might receive and preserve the types and prophe-
cies that were to be given concerning Christ ; that they
might be the depositaries of the Oracles of God ; and
that, at the appointed time, the light of the gospel
might shine forth from them to the rest of the world.
As Abraham was the person in whom this foundation, as
it were, was laid, he is represented in Scripture as
though he were the father of all the church, the father of
all them that believed, — the stem whence the visible
church thenceforward through Christ rose, as a tree
distinct from all other plants, — and from which, after
a That is reckoning according to the common or Hebrew
computation ; but, according to Joseplms and Dr Hales, Noah
died B.C. 2805, and Abraham was born B.C. 2153; conse-
quently, a period of 652 years intervened between the death of
the former and birth of the latter. — Ed.
Christ came, the natural branches were broken off, and
the Gentiles were grafted in their stead.
At this era there was given a more full and clear
discovery of the plan of redemption than had previously
been enjoyed by the church. There had been given, on
two particular occasions, disclosures of the covenant of
grace y — one to our first parents immediately after the
fall — the other to Noah and his family soon after the
flood. There is now a third, and a more particular
revelation given of the provisions of that covenant,
which, in due time, was to be sealed and ratified by the
blood of Christ. It was now revealed, not only that
Christ should come into the world, but that he should be
of the seed of Abraham, and that in him all the families
of the earth should be blessed.* In the institution of
circumcision, there was appointed a seal of the covenant
of grace, — ' a seal of the righteousness of faith.' This
sacrament distinguished Abraham's seed from the world,
and kept up a distinction and separation in future ages.
It was in consequence of the clearer vision which was
vouchsafed to this patriarch, that he rejoiced to see the
day of Christ, and was glad.
Nor should we omit to notice, in our survey of the
period on which we are now entering, the preservation
of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, during
their sojournings in the land of Canaan. For the
inhabitants of that country were exceedingly wicked ;
so much so, that Abraham, when he was old, could not
be content till he had made his servant swear that he
would not take a wife for his son of the daughters of the
land. When we consider that the lives of those holy
men formed a continual reproof of the wickedness of the
Canaanites, and that they were strangers and sojourners
among them, we cannot but admire the remarkable dis-
pensation of providence in their preservation.
In the course of this period, we have presented to
our view an extraordinary and visible manifestation of
God's displeasure against sin, in the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain.
I See Dewar on the Atonement, p. 30.
gECT. i.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2083. A. C. 1921 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3333. A. C. 2078. GEN. CH. xii-xxv. 11.
143
The destruction of the world by the flood served to
exhibit the terrors of the law, and manifest the wrath of
God ; and thus to make men sensible of the absolute
necessity of redeeming mercy. But this was now, in a
great measure, forgotten; and God was pleased again,
in a most striking manner, to show his abhorrence of
sin, and his determination to punish it; which tended to
pnrince men of the necessity of redemption, and so to
prepare the way for the accomplishment of that great
work.
Bearing in mind that the sacred history is the history
af the gradual and progressive unfolding of the plan of
redemption, we shall not fail to mark, in our survey of
this period, the renewal of the covenant of grace to
Isaac and to Jacob. God said to Isaac,1 ' And I will
perform the oath which I swore unto Abraham thy father ;
and I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of
heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries;
and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed.' This covenant was repeatedly confirmed to
Jacob , more especially at Bethel, in his vision of
the ladder that reached to heaven, which was a symbol
of the way of salvation by Christ : — ' Thy seed shall be
as the dust of the earth ; and thou shalt spread abroad
to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to
the south ; and in thee, and in thy seed, shall all the
families of the earth be blessed.'2
Besides these particulars, the reader Avill observe
included in the section of the sacred history on which
we are now entering, the preservation of the family
from which Christ was to descend, by the instrumentality
of Joseph, who was a type of the Great Deliverer ; the
remarkable prophecy respecting the coming of the
Messiah, and the gathering of the people to him,3 and
the upholding of the children of Israel, the visible
church of God, in Egypt, notwithstanding the grinding
oppression and deep affliction which they suffered.
CHAP. I.
SECT. I.
■ Of the Life of Abraham, from his Call
to his Death.
A. M. 2083, A. C. 1921, or, according to Hales, A. M. 3333, A. C. 2078,
from Gen. xii — xxv. 11.
THE HISTORY.
After the death of his father Terah, Abram, who, by
God's appointment, had not long before left Ur in
Chaldea, was now ordered to leave Haran, and go into
a country a whereunto God would conduct him, and
who, at the same time, gave him assurance, that he
<;.
3, 4.
2 Gen. xxvi ; xxxv. 10., &c.
3 Gen. xlix. 10.
a It is veiy probable that this was done by some appearance
or ot In]- ot the Shekinah going before him, even as afterwards
Us posterity was conducted in the way thither; since, passing
over rivers, climbing mountains, and travelling through a dan-
gsrous and vast desert, he had certainly need of an extraordinary
ovine direction, and of some sensible exhibition or token of it,
while lie had nothing but the promise of God to support him in
so lor.g and so hazardous a journey. — Biblivtheca Biblica, vol. 1.
would bless, protect, and multiply his posterity in an
extraordinary manner, and that 4 ' in his seed all the
families of the earth should be blessed.'
Abram was fully persuaded of the truth of all God's
promises ; and therefore, without any hesitation, taking
his wife and family, and all his erVects, together with his
nephew Lot, and his substance with him, he pursued his
journey, ' not knowing whither he should go,' until, by
the divine guidance,0 he came into the land of Canaan ;
and being minded to make some survey of the country,
proceeded d to the famous Oak of Moreh, not for from
b Some interpreters have imagined, that these words require
no higher sense than this, — that all nations should see the pros-
perity of Abraham and his seed so evidently, that they should
bless themselves; and others, in some such form as this: —
" God make thee as great as Abraham and his seed." But,
besides the incongruity of supposing that God's everlasting
covenant, as he calls it, Gen. xvii. 19, was given only to produce
a proverbial form of speech, it is plain matter of fact, that the
posterity of Abraham, in the line of Isaac, was far from being
the most prosperous, as to temporal affairs, of all the other
branches of his family; and therefore this promise must of
necessity be supposed to relate to some more spiritual and dis-
tant blessing, just as St Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians, has
explained it: ' Now to Abraham and to his seed were the pro-
mises made ; he saith not, and to seeds, as of many, but as of
one, and to thy seed, which is Christ.' Gal. iii. 16. — See
Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy.
c The land of Canaan lies between the Mediterranean sea
and the mountains of Arabia, and extends from Egypt to Phoe-
nicia. It is bounded to the east by the mountains of Arabia;
to the south by the wilderness of Paran, Idumea, and Egypt ; to
the west, by the Mediterranean, called in Hebrew the Great
sea; and to the north, by the mountains of Libanus. Its length
from the city of Dan (since called Caesarea Philippi, or Paneadis,
which stands at the foot of these mountains) to Beersheba, is
about seventy leagues, and its breadth, from the Mediterranean
sea to the eastern borders, is, in some places, thirty. It was
first called the land of Canaan, from Cainan the son of Ham,
whose posterity possessed it. It was afterwards called Palestine,
from the people which the Hebrews call Philistines, and the
Greeks and Romans corruptly Palestines, who inhabited the
sea coasts, and were first known to them. It likewise had the
name of the. Land of Promise, from the promise God made Abra-
ham of giving it to him ; that of the land of Israel, from the
Israelites having made themselves masters of it; that of Judah,
from the tribe of Judah, which was the most considerable of the
twelve; and lastly, the happiness it had of being sanctified by
the presence, actions, miracles, and death of Jesus Christ, has
given it the name of the Holy Land, which it retains to this day.
— Lainy's Introduction.
d The city of Sichem, or Sechem, or Sychar (for it had all
these names), was at this time so called by way of anticipation
(for as yet it was not founded), and is a town of Samaria, in the
borders of Ephraim, which stands in a narrow valley, between
Gerazim on the south, and Ebal on the north, being built at the
foot of the former. At present it is called Naplossa, and con-
sists only of two streets, lying parallel under mount Gerazim,
and is far from being in the flourishing condition it was once,
though it is still full of people, and the seat of a bashaw. The
true name, which was given it by Abram, was Moreh, or Allon
Moreh, which our translation renders the plain of Moreh; i'V
St Jerome, the illustrious vale ; by the Jerusalem Targum, the
Valley of Vision, because of God's appearing to Abraham here;
and by others, the Oak of Moreh, or the Illustrious Oak, 6c.,
though it seems very probable that there was in this place, not
only one single tree, but a whole grove of them; and therefore
it is called Allon, or Aulofi, being a corruption from Eton, in
Latin Esculetum, that is, an oaken grove, or forest ofevei
oaks. And since this was the place "here Abraham, at his first
coming into the country, built an altar, we have great reason to
be of the same opinion with the learned and Bagacious Mr
Mede, namely, that this Allon Moreh was a place of divine
worship, iproteueha, or open oratory, in imitation <■! which the
Jewish prusciuha: (which were certain spaces of ground, with
144
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2083. A. C. 1921 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3333. A. C. 2078. GEN. CH. xii— xxv. 11.
the city of Sichem, then a inhabited by the Canaanites.
Here he took up his abode for some time, and here
built an altar, in order to pay his devotions to God ;
who, pleased with his behaviour, appeared to him again,
as he had done at Haran before, and gave him fresh
assurances of his favour, and a promise inviolable, that,
in process of time, the whole land, where he then
dwelt, should be the portion of his posterity.
From Sichem he removed * into the mountainous
country, which lies between Bethel and Hai, where he
likewise built an altar for a place of divine worship, (as
he did in all other countries where he came), and from
Bethel he was travelling farther to the south, when he
was stopped by a famine, which grew grievous in the
land, and obliged him to go down to c Egypt, the only
place for provision in such like exigencies. But as he
came to the confines of Egypt, he began to be not a
little uneasy upon the account of his wife, who, though
an altar in the midst, encompassed with a wall, or some other
enclosure, and open above, but shaded with trees) in after ages
were set up. — See Wells' Geography of the New Testament,
vol. 1, and Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations,
18; where the reader may meet with a particular enumeration,
upon how many accounts more this place was in former times
xery famous.
a The words in the text are, ' Abram passed through the
land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh, and
the Canaanite was then in the land :' from whence some have
raised an objection, that Moses could not be the author of this
book of Genesis, because the words seem to import that the
writer of them lived after that the Canaanites were driven out of
the land, which was after Moses' death. But, in answer to this,
it may be observed, that as by 'the land' here we are not
obliged to understand the whole country, but only that part of it
which layabout Sichem, so by 'the Canaanite' we need not
mean the whole posterity of Canaan, or all the Canaanitish
tribes, but only one particular tribe of them, as in the very next
chapter, ver. 7, is more distinctly expressed. And the reason
why this is taken notice of by the sacred historian, is best ac-
counted for in that ancient tradition in Epiphanius (Hares. 66.
N. 84.), if we will allow it to be true, namely, that according
to the original settlement and distribution among the sons of
Noah, Palestine was not allotted to any of the sons of Ham, but
wa* usurped by Canaan from the children of Shem, to whom it
<!id of right belong; so that these words, 'the Canaanite was
then in the land,' signify, that they had already invaded the land,
before Abraham came thither ; and therefore God's promising
to give it him, was only in order to restore that to the posterity
o! Shem, which the children of Ham had wrongfully, seized. —
Patrick's Commentary, and Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.
b What our author here means is mount Ephraim, which lay
between Bethel, a town not far from Jerusalem, northwards,
and Hai, which is situate towards the west of Bethel. — Wells'
Geography, vol. 1. — Bethel was situated, according to Eusebius,
twelve miles north of Jerusalem, toward Sichem, on the confines
of Ephraim and Benjamin. Hai, or Ai, lay a little east of
Bethel ; and Eusebius and Jerome tell us that, in their time,
they were shown some small remains of its ruins. Masuis says
that Ai was tlu-ee leagues from Jericho, and Bethel one from
Ai.— Ed.
c Josephus tells us " that Abraham, understanding that there
was a great plenty in Egypt, resolved upon a journey thither ;
net only to partake of their plenty, but also to consult the priests
in their profession in divine matters, with an impartial desire
and disposition to find out the truth, and either to give or re-
ceive satisfaction, according as the subject in question did
require; that here he gained himself infinite credit, not only for
the solidity of his judgment, and an admirable felicity of elocu-
tion, but for his instructive talent of informing and convincing
his hearers at once ; and that here he read lectures of astronomy
and arithmetic, which the Egyptians understood nothing ot until
Abraham brought them with him out of Chaldee into Egypt,
from whence they passed into Greece." — Antiquities, b. 1. c. 9.
she had passed the sixty-fifth year of her age, retained
still beauty enough to endanger the man's life who
should pass for her husband in that country. And
therefore, after some deliberation, concluding, that the
safest way would be for her to conceal her marriage,
he took an opportunity to acquaint her with his fears,
and, with a small entreaty, prevailed with her, in all
places where they were to sojourn, to go under the
notion of his sister.
They had not been long in Egypt before Abram's fears
were found to be true. His wife's charms had captivated
several, and her beauty was become the common topic
of conversation ; insomuch, that in a short time it reached
the court, and the high commendations which every one
gave the king of it, raised his curiosity to see this ami-
able stranger. Immediately therefore she was brought
to court, and taken in to the king's apartment, as de-
signed for one of his royal concubines ;d while her pre-
tended brother was treated with great civility for her
sake, and loaded with many valuable presents from the
king.
It is hardly to be imagined, what a sad distress both
the patriarch and his consort must have been in, upon
this occasion. She was a beautiful woman, in the power
of a loose and vicious prince, and destitute of all pro-
tection but God's ; and her lord not so much as daring
to own her his wife, knowing how certain and sudden
must be the destruction of an helpless man, that provokes
passion and power, rage of lust, and security of gratify-
ing it.
While matters were in this dangerous position, the
providence of God interposed in her behalf, and to
deter e Pharaoh and his nobles from any dishonourable
attempts upon her virtue, /infested them with such
plagues, as made them not insensible upon whose account
it was that they suffered; even upon hers who, though she
d When a woman was brought into the seraglio or harem of
the eastern princes, she underwent for a considerable time certain
purifications before she was brought into the king's presence. It
was in this interim that God plagued Pharaoh and his house witli
plagues, so that Sarai was restored before she could be taken to
the bed of the Egyptian king. — Clarke's Commentary. — Ed.
e Pharaoh was the common name for all the Egyptian kings
for above 3300 years (as Josephus tells us, Antiquities, b. 8 c. 2.),
but what its proper etymology is, the learned are not so well
agreed. Bochart thinks that the word Pharaoh signifies a croco-
dile, and that Ezekiel alludes to it in these words: 'Behold I am
against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth
in the midst of the river,' Ezekiel xxix. 3. M. Le Clerc fancies
that the Arabic word Pharaoh, to be raised on high, or to be
superior to, is the true root of the name. Kircher does indeed
derive the word from the same root, but will have it to signify to
deliver, or to free; and that Pharaoh therefore signifies to be \
e.rempt from the jurisdiction of the laws. And, to name no more,
the learned Rtnaudot thinks that Pharaoh is the same with the
Egyptian Pourro, or Pooro, which signifies a king. — Calmet on
the word.
f Some of the Hebrew interpreters think that they had griev-
ous ulcers in their secret parts, which made both him and them
incapable of enjoying either her or any other woman; and in the
punishment inflicted upon Abimelech and his people, upon the same
account, Gen. xx. 18. they suppose that there were such swell-
ings in their privy parts, as that the men could neither enjoy
their wives, nor the women who were with child he delivered. —
Patrick's Commentary. — Whatever the plagues were, it is evident
they were understood by Pharaoh as proofs of the disapprobation of
God; and consequently, even at this time, in Egypt there was
some knowledge of the primitive and true religion. — Clarke's
Commentary. — Ed.
SSCT. I.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
145
A. M. 2083. A. C. 1921 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3333. A. C. 2078. GEN. CH. xii— xxv. 11.
passed for a single, was in reality a married woman ; so
that the king, immediately calling for Abram, expostu-
lated with him on the ill consequences that might have
ensued from the method he had taken ; and after some
few exprobations, returned him his wife, and gave orders
that they might safely depart his kingdom, without any
the least molestation, either to their persons or posses-
sions.
Abram, after this, tarried not long in Egypt; for
understanding that the famine was ceased in Canaan, he
returned thither by the same way, and on the altar which
he had built before, offered a sacrifice of thanks for his
happy escape and safe return. Lot and Abram had
hitherto lived together ; but by this time their substance
was so much increased, that they found it inconvenient
to be any longer near one another. Their cattle mingled ;
■ their herdsmen quarrelled ; and their flocks, when toge-
ther, required a larger tract of ground to feed and sup-
port them than they could take up, without interfering
with the property of the inhabitants of the land wherein
they sojourned. Upon these considerations, Abram
resolved, in a friendly manner, to separate from Lot ;
and having given him his choice of the whole country
that lay before him, Lot chose the fertile and pleasant
plains of Sodom and Gomorrah,6 which he saw were well
watered by the streams of Jordan, and so parted from
a The Jews here tell us, that the herdsmen of Abraham were
commanded by their master not to go near the Canaanites, or the
Perizzites, nor to come into the grounds which they had taken,
either for culture or pasturage, so that they might not appear to
do the least injury to any of them; and that, in obedience to his
cummand, they took especial care to confine all their cattle, and
to watch their flocks with a strict eye, so that none might go
astray, and so trespass upon the natives ; but that Lot's herdsmen
were herein vary negligent, and suffered their cattle to go beyond
their bounds, and to feed in the fields which belonged to the
Canaanites and Perizzites, who dwelt then in the land, and
claimed the sovereignty of it. — Eihliotheca Biblica, vol. I,
b The words in the text are these: ' The plain of Jordan was
well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and
Gomorrah (even like the garden of the Lord, like the land of
Egypt) as thou goest to Zoar.' The last clause, ' as thou goest to
Zoar,' has much perplexed commentators, whilst they refer it to
the land of Egypt in the clause immediately preceding; whereas,
if what is said by way of comparison of the plain of Jordan to the
garden of the Lord, that is, the garden of Eden, and to the land
of Egypt, be understood as inserted by of parenthesis, the diffi-
culty will be taken away, and the import of the last clause will
be plain and easy ; for then the meaning of the verse will amount
to this, — " That before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,
the plain of Jordan was well watered every where, as thou comest
unto Zoar," that is, in the parts where Sodom and Gomorrah
stood, or in short, in the vale of Siddim. But there is another
interpretation which supposes the word Zoar to be a false reading
for Zoan, a city that was once the capital of Egypt, situate at the
lower part of the river Nile, where it divides itself into several
branches, and so waters the country more plentifully thereabouts
than in any other part. According to which reading, the import
of the verse will be this: — That the plain of Jordan was well
watered every where about Sodom and Gomorrah, before the
Lord destroyed them ; yea, the plain was so well watered, that
it was in this respect as the garden of Eden, or as the land of
Egypt, and particularly as thou goest to Zoan, that is, in the parts
about Zoan, where the Nile is divided into several branches. —
tFells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1. The river
Jordan, called by the Arabs El Sharia, which runs through this
plain, is of so great note in the Sacred Writings that we must not
pass it by without this observation, — that it derives its name (as
some assert) from the Hebrew word Jor, which signifies a spring,
and Dan, which is a small town near the source of this river. But
the misfortune is, that the name of Dan is much more modern
than that of Jordan. From its source, in Anti-Libanus, about
his uncle. Abram, continuing, for some time, in the
place where Lot had left him, had a vision imparted to
him, wherein God was pleased to renew the promise of
enlarging his posterity ; and bidding him cast his eyes
round the horizon, confirmed the gift of all the land which
he beheld to him and his posterity. Not long after this
he left Bethel, and went to dwell at c the Oak of Mamre
which is not far from Hebron, Avhere he built an altar
unto the Lord, and in a short time contracted an acquaint-
ance witli three of the greatest men there, Mamre, Aner,
and Escol ; the first of whom communicated his name to
all the country.
This alliance proved very serviceable to him, but
more especially upon the following occasion. d Chedor-
laomer, king of Elam, had held five petty princes in a
tributary subjection to him for some years, of which
number the king of Sodom was one. At length they
shook off their yoke, and confederated against him
which provoked him (in conjunction with three other
kings, his allies) to march directly with a powerful army
against them. The revolted kings, seeing the enemy
drawing towards them, took the field with the resolution
to try the fate of a pitched battle. The valley of Sid-
dim was the place where the armies were to meet ; and
twelve miles north of Cfesarea Philippi, now Banias, it runs
through a space of fifty leagues, till it discharges itself into the
Dead Sea, otherwise called the Asphaltite lake, where Sodom and
Gomorrah, and the other cities of the plain, that were destroyed
with fire from heaven, once stood. About five or six leagues'
distance from its spring it forms the lake Semechon, or waters of
Merom, now Houle, and from thence it enters the lake Tiberias,
or Gennesereth, passes quite through it, and is lost in the Dead
Sea. Its water, in the summer time, is very shallow; but about
the time of the barley-harvest, or the feast of the passover, it
constantly overflows its banks, and greatly fructifies the plain. —
Calmefs Dictionary.
c What we translate the plain should be rendered the Oak of
Mamre; because the word elon signifies an oak, or tree of long
duration. Sazomen tells us that this tree was still extant, and
famous for pilgrimages and annual feasts, even in Constantine's
time; that it was about six miles distant from Hebron; that some
of the cottages which Abraham built were still standing near it ;
and that there was a well likewise of his digging, whereunto both
Jews, and Christians, and Heathens, did at certain seasons resort,
either out of devotion or for trade, because there was held a great
mart. As for Hebron, or Chebron, it was accounted one of the
most ancient cities in the world, having been built seven years
before Tanis, the capital of Lower Egypt. It was situate on an
eminence, twenty miles southward from Jerusalem, and twenty
miles north from Beersheba, and had its name very probably from
the word Chavar, to couple or join; because these married couples,
Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, were
buried there. — Calmet's Dictionary, and Universal History, in
the Notes, b. 1. c. 7.
d We meet no where in profane history with the name of
Chedorlaomer, nor with any of those names of the kings that
were confederate with him ; and the reason hereof is, that
Ctesias, (from whom the profane historians took the names of
these kings) did not use the original Assyrian names In his his-
tory, but rather such as he found in the Pei-ian records. How-
ever, since the date of this transaction falls four years before the
death of Ninyas, there are good grounds to infer, that Ninyas,
who then lived in Persia, was the Chedorlaomer of Moses, at
that time the head of the Assyrian monarchy : that Amraphel
was his deputy at Bahylon in Shinar; and Arioch and Tidal his
deputies over some other adjacent countries: for it is remarkable
that Ninyas was the first who appointed under him such deputies ;
nor is there any absurdity in Moses to call them kings, since it
is observable, from what Isaiah hinted afterwards, ch. x. 8, that
the Assyrian boasted his deputy princes to be equal to royal
governors, ' Are not my princes altogether kings ?' — HliucttfonTt
c-.'tuK'ction, vol. 2. b. 8.
146
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2083. A. C. 1921 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3333. A. C. 2078. GEN. CH. xii-xxv. 11.
as it w.is full of pits of bitumen, it might have made the
engagement more difficult and dangerous to the enemy's
horse : but so it was, a that the five kings were put to the
rout ; one part of their army was cut in pieces, and the
other fled to the neighbouring- mountains, leaving their
cities a prey to the conquerors. Lot, who at this time
resided at Sodom, was involved in the calamity of the
city; was plundered of all he had, and himself carried
away among the rest of the captives. As soon as Abram
had intelligence of this by an express messenger, he
inunediately sends to his three friends, desiring their
assistance at this critical juncture ; and putting- himself at
the head of three hundred and eighteen of his own domes-
tics, all well prepared, and men of resolution, he began
his pursuit, and after a march of almost seventy leagues,
coming up with the enemy, and dividing his forces into
small parties, he fell upon them by night, and charging
them on all sides at once, put them in such a terror and
consternation, that they took to their heels and fled,
leaving all the booty and captives behind them, among
whom he happily recovered Lot, and brought him back
with all his substance to his former habitation.
The first person who came to congratulate Abram
upon this victory, was the king of Sodom, (very proba-
bly the son of him1 who perished in the slime-pits,) who,
in thankful acknowledgment of the benefits he had
received from his valour and assistance, offered him all
the booty which he had retaken, and desired only his
subjects, the prisoners, to be restored. But Abram
was too generous to take the advantage of the misery
of war ; and, therefore, saving to his confederates such
a proportion of the plunder as by the law of arms
belonged to them, he returned all the rest, both prisoners
and goods, to the king of Sodom ; having before resolved
to keep no part of them, that it might be said he under-
took that enterprise, not for any private advantage, but
purely for the public good, which every man of honour
should have always primarily in his view.
The next who congratulated him upon this occasion,
was Melchizedek king of Salem ; who, upon his return
from the battle, had provided plenty of all things neces-
sary for his refreshment and his men's in their march ;
and as he was a priest, as well as a king, he both blessed
Abram for being the instrument of so public a deliver-
ance in the hands of God, and God himself, who had
given such uncommon success to his arms ; whereupon
Abram, in return, presented him with the tenth part of
the spoils which he had taken from the enemy in this
expedition.
Abram's deportment, upon this occasion, was so very
acceptable to God, that he was pleased to appear to
him again in a vision, and to give him fresh assurances
of his special favour, and of his intention to be his shield
of defence in all dangers, and for all the good acts
which he performed his exceeding great reward.
1 Gen. xiv. 10.
a As the text tells us, that the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah
fell into some of the slime pits, with which the valley of Siddim
abounds, and takes no notice of their coming out of them, it is
more rational to suppose that they perished there, than that
Abraham staid to take them up, as the Jews vainly imagine ; and
that therefore the king of Sodom, who afterwards came out to
congratulate Abraham, must have been the son of the deceased.
Hitherto, indeed, the patriarch had listened to God's
promises without any expression of distrust ; but upon
this fresh assurance, he ventured, for the first time, to
expostulate with him, not knowing how these things pos-
sibly could be accomplished whilst himself continued
childless, and, to all appearance, must be obliged to
leave the bulk of his substance to Eliezar, his household
steward. This, indeed, was a modest way to try whe-
ther God designed to bless him with a child ; and God
did not leave him long in suspense. He told him, that
not his servant, but a son of his own, begotten of his
body, should be his heir, and should have a race descend-
ing from him as innumerable as the stars.
This was such joyful news, as gave Abram fresh
courage, even to request of God some sensible and visi-
ble token, whereby he might be assured of this blessing ;
and accordingly God was pleased to comply with his
request. That, therefore, they might enter into a formal
covenant upon this occasion, he ordered hiin to take an
heifer, a goat, and a ram, of three years old each, with
a pigeon and a turtle-dove, and to offer them up.
Abram did as he was ordered ; and having killed the
four-footed beasts, he * cut them in two, and laid the
halves at proper distances, directly opposite to each
other, but the fowls he left whole ; and so passing be-
tween the dissected bodies, (as the manner of covenant-
ing then was,) he made his solemn vows of perpetual
obedience to God ; and then sitting down, in expectance
of what God would do on his part, he took care to drive
away all birds of prey from settling upon the sacrifice.
As soon as the sun began to set, a deep sleep, c at-
tended with an horrible darkness and dread of spirits,
fell upon him ; during which it was revealed to him that
he was not to expect an immediate accomplishment of
b The only place, besides this, where we have any intimation
given us of this custom of making covenants, by dividing the
beasts then to be sacrificed, and by the parties who covenanted
passing between the parts of the beast so divided, is in Jer. xxxiv.
18, 19. 'I will give the men that have transgressed my cove-
nant, which have not performed the words of my covenant, which
they had made before me, when they cut the calf in twain, and
passed between the parts thereof; the princes of Judah, and the
princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the
people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; I
will even give them into the hands of their enemies, and into the
hand of them that seek their life ; and their dead bodies shall be
for meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and unto the beasts of the
earth.' This certainly was a very ancient custom ; and accord-
ingly we find in Homer, that making a solemn covenant by oaths
and sacrifices, literally, cutting faithful oaths, is a very common
phrase, upon which his commentator Eustathius has this observa-
tion, " that in matters of great moment, oaths or covenants were
generally made by dividing the animals, which upon such occa-
sions were sacrificed ;" and the design of this rite (as the learned
Mede, in a discourse upon the subject, has expressed it) was as
much as to say, ' Thus let me be divided, and cut in pieces, if I
violate the oath which I have now made in the presence of God.'
— Patrick and Le Gere's Commentary.
c That horror and dread of spirits do frequently seize on those
who see visions, is evident from what Daniel tells us of himself,
' I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained
no strength in me ; for my.comeliness was turned in me into cor-
ruption, and I retained no strength' (chap. x. 8); but the descrip-
tion which we have in Job of this matter, is, in itself, very awful
and affecting. ' In thoughts from the visions of the night, when
deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me and trembling,
which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before
my face, the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could
not discern the form thereof; an image was before mine eyes,
there was silence, and I heard a voice ;' ch. iv. 13, &c.
Sect. 1.1 FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. 11 2083. A. C. 1921 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3341. A. C. 2070. GEN. CH. xii— xxv. 11.
H7
the divine promises ; for though a himself was to die in
peace, and in a good old age, yet his posterity were
after that to sojourn, and be afflicted in a strange coun-
try i> for the space of four hundred years ; at the expira-
tion of which God would punish their oppressors, and
conduct them safe to the land which he had promised
them. And for his confirmation in this, he caused the
symbol of his divine presence, namely, c ' a smoking fur-
nace and a burning lamp,' to pass between the divided
pieces of the victims, and consume them, in ratification
of his part of the covenant.
Ten years had Sarai expected the performance of
God's promise, and judging now, by the course of nature,
that her husband's issue must proceed from some other
woman, and not from her own body, she prevailed with
him to take her handmaid rt Hagar to be his secondary
a The expression in the text is, ' Thou shalt go to thy fathers
in peace,' which some will have to be no more than an oriental
phrase for going to the grave; but since it cannot be said of
Abraham that he did, in this sense, go to his fathers (forasmuch
as his body was so far from being laid with them in the sepulchre,
that it was deposited in a country that had no manner of com-
munication with that of his fathers,) it must be allowed, that from
this text an argument may justly be drawn for the separate exist-
< nee of human souls. The expression, however, of ' going to our
fathers,' seems to have been formed from some such notion as
this, — That the souls of the deceased do go to a certain place,
where those of the same family, or same nation at least, are sup-
posed to live together, and in communion: which notion cer-
tainly arises from that natural desire, which all men, who think
their better part immortal, have to see and converse with such of
their relations or countrymen as have left behind them a great
and lasting fame. " For if the soul of Socrates," says one, " were
permitted to go where it desired, it would certainly associate
with the worthies of Greece, with Orpheus, Musreus, Homer,
and those ancient demigods, who, in their several generations,
were so renowned." — See Le Clerc's Commentary; and Biblioth.
Biblica, vol. 1. in locum.
b Expositors have been very much divided in their opinions,
how to make it out that Abraham's posterity was in a state of
servitude and affliction for the space of four hundred years. It
may be observed, however, that all this difficulty is removed, if
we suppose that their state of affliction is to be reckoned from the
time of Isaac's birth, which, to the deliverance out of the Egyp-
tian bondage, was just four hundred and five years; but the five
odd years are therefore not mentioned, because it is a common
custom among all writers to take no notice of broken numbers
(as they call them) when they name a round sum. And if there
be supposed a farther difficulty, in that their sojourning is (in
Exod. xii. 40) said to have continued four hundred and thirty
years; in these years, the time of Abraham's sojourning (which
was exactly twenty-five years from his coming into the land of
Canaan to the birth of Isaac) may be comprehended, and then
all the difficulty vanishes; because these twenty-five years,
added to the four hundred and five before mentioned, exactly
make up the four hundred and thirty. — Patrick's Commentary.
c By this symbol God designed to represent to Abraham,
cither the future state of his posterity, the ' smoking furnace' sig-
nifying Israel's misery in the land of Egypt, and 'the burning
lamp' their happy escape and deliverance; or (what seems more
probable) to notify his own immediate presence, since both smoke
and fire are, in several parts of Scripture, mentioned as emblems
and representations of the divine appearance. And, therefore,
as it was a thing customary, and especially in Chaldea, (from
whence Abraham came,) for persons covenanting together to pass
between the pieces of the sacrifice ; so God, who had no body to
do it visibly for him, did it in this type and emblem. — Poole's
Annotations ; and Bibliotheca Biblica, in locum.
d Iu concubinage, these secondary, or wives of a lower order,
wen' accounted lawful and true wives; had an equal right to the
marriage bed with the chief wife, and their issue was reputed as
legitimate; but in all other respects they were inferior. And as
they had no authority in the family, nor any share in household
government; so, if they had been servants in the family before
wife, pleasing herself with the thoughts, that if her maid
should conceive by her husband, the child would be
reputed hers, and her house be established in the com-
pletion of the divine promise.
It was not long before Hagar accordingly did con-
ceive ; and forgetting now the former condition of her
life, she began to value herself upon it, and to treat her
mistress with insolence and ill-manners. Sarai, impa-
tient to see herself insulted by a slave, could not for-
bear breaking out into bitter complaints against her to
her husband ; but he, willing" to make her easy, and withal
to discountenance any disrespectful carriage towards
her, left her to treat her maid just as she pleased. This
license gave Sarai an opportunity of expressing her
resentment with too much severity, which the other not
able to bear, she stole from her master's house, and was
making the best of her way to her own country, which
was Egypt ; when, in her travels through the wilderness,
meeting with a fountain, she tarried to rest and refresh
herself there. As she was revolving her sorrows in her
mind, an angel came to her, and, after some previous
questions, advised her to return home, and be subject to
her mistress, because it would not be long before she
should be delivered of a son, (whom he ordered her to
name e Ishmael,) whose posterity would be very numer-
ous, a stout and warlike people, living upon plunder in
the deserts, and apt to annoy others, though not easily
vanquished themselves. /
they came to be concubines, they continued in that state after-
wards, and in the same subjection to their mistresses as before
— Howel's History of the Bible.
e Ishmael is compounded of the words Jishmag and El, the
Lord hath, or the Lord will hear; and the reason of the name is
immediately subjoined by the angel, namely, because the Lord
hath heard her complaint.
/Gen. xvi. 12. ' His hand will be against every man, and
eveiy man's hand against him.' " The one is the natural, and
almost necessary consequence of the other. Ishmael lived by prey
and rapine in the wilderness ; and his posterity have all along
infested Arabia and the neighbouring countries with their rob-
beries and incursions. They live in a state of continual war
with the world, and are both robbers by land and pirates by sea.
As they have been such enemies to mankind, it is no wonder
that mankind have been such enemies to them again ; that several
attempts have been made to extirpate them; and even now as
well as formerly, travellers are forced to go with arms, ami in
caravans or large companies, and to march and keep watch like
a little army, to defend themselves from the assaults of these
freebooters, who rim about in troops, and ro.i and plunder all
whom they can by any means subdue. These robberies they also
justify, by alleging the hard usage of their father Ishmael, who
being turned out of doors by Abraham, had ti pen plains and
deserts given him by God for his patrimony, with permission to
take whatever he could find there; and on this accounl they think
they may, with a safe conscience, indemnify themselves, as well
as they can, not only on the posterity of Isaac, but also on every
body else ; always supposing a kind ot kindred between them-. Ives
and those they plunder; and in relating their adventures of this
kind, they think it sufficient to change the expression, and instead
of / roltbed a man of .such and such u iking, to say, / gained it."
Sale's Preliminary Discourse, 1,0. — Neivton on the Prophecies,
vol. 1. p. 42.
" The Arabs have never been entirely subdued, nor has any
impression been made en them, except en their borders ; where,
indeed, the Pbenicians, Persians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and in
modern times, the Othman Tartars, have severally acquired
settlements; but, with these exceptions, the natives of Hejai and
Yemen have preserved forages the sole dominion el th< ir i
and pas. res, their mountains and fertile valleys. Thus, apart
from the rest of mankind, this extraordinary p. ..pie have retain, d
their primitive language and manners, features and characters, as
148 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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[Book III.
Hagar, hearing this comfortable news, was soon per-
suaded to take the angel's advice, and in memory of this
surprising- vision, having called first the fountain where
she sat, Beer-lahai-roi, which signifies ' the well of him
that lives and sees me,'" she made what haste she could
home ; and in a short time after her return, was delivered
of a son, according to the angel's promise.
At the birth of Ishmael, Abram was eighty-six years
old ; and lest, in the excess of his joy, he should mistake
this child for the heir of the promises which had been
made to him, about thirteen years after, Ood renewed
his covenant i> with him ; instituted the rite of circumcision
upon a severe penalty ; changed c his name from Abram
to Abraham, and his wife's from Sarai torf Sarah, (where
the difference in sense is much more than in sound,) and
long and as remarkably as the Hindoos themselves. — Sir IV.
Jones's Discourse on the Arabs. JVorks, vol. 3. p. 49. — Ed.
a Gen. xvi. 13. • And she called the name of the Lord that
spake unto her, Thou God seest me.' The religion of names was
a matter of great consequence in Egypt. It was one of their
essential superstitions: it was one of their native inventions, and
the first of them which they communicated to the Greeks. Thus
when Hagar, the handmaid of Sarai, who was an Egyptian
woman, saw the angel of God in the wilderness, 'She called the
name of the Lord that spake unto her, ELROI, the God of vision,
or the visible God,' that is, according to the established custom
of Egypt, she gave him a name of honour; not merely a name of
distinction, for such all nations had (who worshipped local tutelary
deities) before their communication with Egypt; but after that
they decorated their gods with distinguished titles, indicative of
their specific office and attributes. Zechariah (chap. xiv. 9.)
evidently alluding to these nations, when he prophesies of the
worship of the supreme God, unmixed with idolatry, says, ' in
that day shall there be one Lord, and his name shall be one.' Out
of indulgence, therefore, to this weakness, God was pleased to give
himself a name. 'And the Lord said unto Moses, I am that Tarn.
Exod. iii. 14. — IVarlurton's Divine Legation, b. 4. sec. 6. — Ed.
b Gen. xvii. 10. ' This is my covenant.' Covenants were
anciently made in the eastern countries by dipping their weapons
in blood (as Xenophon tells us,) and by pricking the flesh, and
sucking each other's blood, as we read in Tacitus; who observes
(p. 1. Annal.) that when kings made a league, they took each other
by the hand, and their thumbs being hard tied together, they
pricked them, when the blood was forced to the extreme parts,
and each party licked it. This was accounted a mysterious cove-
nant, being made sacred by their mutual blood. How old this
custom had been we do not know; but it is evident God's
covenant with Abraham was solemnized on Abraham's part by
his own and his son Isaac's blood, and so continued through all
generations, by circumcision: whereby, as they were made the
select people of God, so God, in conclusion, sent his own son,
who by this very ceremony of circumcision, was consecrated to
be their God and Redeemer. — Patrick, in locum. — Ed.
The ceremony of laying a knife or sword upon the altar, was
the usual mode of ratifying grants before the invention of seals;
and it appears that it was not entirely laid aside afterwards. King
Stephen's last charter to the nuns at Barking, in Essex, was
executed at the monastery by the ceremony of laying his knife
upon the altar of the Virgin Maiy and St Ethelburgh!— Dysons'
Environs of London, vol. 3. p. t>0. — Ed.
c Abram is compounded of two Hebrew words, Ab and Ram,
which signify high father; and Abraham is commonly derived
from three, namely, Ab-Ram-Hamon, the father of a great multi-
tude. But this is forced and un grammatical, having nothing to
support it but oidy the reason which God gives in the text, for
changing Abram into Abraham, namely, because he was to make
of him 'a father of many nations,' as indeed he was; for not only
the twelve tribes, but the Ishmaelites, the Edomites, and all the
posterity of Keturah, descended from his loins.
a Sarai signifies mi; princess, or princess of my family only;
but Sarah, the name now given her, denotes a princess indefi-
nitely, and at large, according to the prediction concerning her,
' a mother (or princess) of many nations shall she be, and kings
oi people shall come of her. ' Gen. xvii. 16.
to complete his happiness, gave him a promise that his
wife Sarah should bear him a son. This seemed a thing so
strange, and almost impossible, that Abraham, falling on
his face, began to intercede for the life and preservation of
Ishmael, as thinking it unreasonable to ask, or wish for
any thing more ; but the Almighty soon assured him, that
these great blessings were not designed for Ishmael, but
for a son to be born of the once barren Sarah, (and there-
fore to be named* Isaac,) which would certainly come to
pass within the compass of a year. That he might not, how-
ever, seem wholly to neglect his request for Ishmael, he
promised to make him a great nation, and the father of
twelve princes, though the son begotten of Sarah should
alone be entitled to the covenant and promise of ' making
all the nations of the earth blessed.' This was the pur-
port of the vision ; and as soon as it was'ended, Abraham
delayed not (according to the divine command) to cir-
cumcise himself, his son, and all the males in his family ;
an ordinance which the Hebrews have ever since obser-
ved very religiously.
Abraham continued still to dwell at Mamre ; and, as
he was sitting one day at the door of his tent,/ he espied
three persons, whom he took to be travellers, coming
towards him.ff He therefore went out to meet them ; and
having, in a very civil and respectful manner, invited
them to take a small refreshment with him, (which they
consented to,) he immediately gave orders for an * enter-
e Isaac, or, according to the Hebrew, Ischack, signifies he or
she has, or shall laugh; and this name Sarah gave him, because
when the angel promised that she should become a mother,
though she was not of an age to have children, she privately
laughed at the prediction; and when the child was born, she said
' God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh
with me.' Gen. xxi. C. — Calmct's Dictionary .
f Gen. xviii. 1. ' And he sat in the tent door in the heat of
the day.' Those who lead a pastoral life in the east, at this day,
frequently place themselves in a similar situation. At ten minutes
after ten we had in view several fine bays, and a plain full of
booths, with the Turcomans sitting by the doors, under sheds
resembling porticoes; or by shady trees, surrounded by flocks of
goats."— Chandler's Travels in Asia Minor, p. ISO. — Ed.
g Gen. xviii. 1 — S. When a party belonging to Captain Cook
(in his last voyage) went ashore on an island near that of Man-
geea, in the South Seas, they were forcibly detained by the natives
a considerable time, which much alarmed them. But this deten-
tion proceeded, as they afterwards found, from pure motives of
hospitality; and continued only till such time as they had roasted
.a hog, and provided other necessaries for their refreshment. " In
reviewing this most curious transaction," says the writer of that
voyage, " we cannot help calling to our memory the manners of
the patriarchal times. It does not appear to us that these people
had any intention in detaining us, different from those which
actuated the patriarch in a similar transaction." — Ed.
h The following quotations seem to illustrate the nature and
manner of this entertainment: — Gen. xviii. 4, ' Let a little
water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet.' One of the
first rites of hospitality observed towards strangers amongst the
ancients, was washing the feet: of this there are many instances
in Homer. Gen. xviii. G. ' And Abraham hastened into the
tent unto Sarah, and said, make ready quickly three measures
of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.
These instructions are quite similar to the manners of the
place, which even at present are little if any thing altered
from what they anciently were. Thus Dr Shaw relates,
{Travels, p. 29,) "That in cities and villages, where there'
are public ovens, the bread is usually leavened; but among
the Bcdoweens as soon as the dough is kneaded, it is made into
thin cakes, which are i ither immediately baked upon the coals,
or else in a txjen, a shallow earthen vessel like a hying pan."— -
2 Sam. xiii. 8. 1 Chrun. xxiii. 29. Gen. xviii. 7. ' jf\bi aliani
Sect. 1.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
149
A. M. 2107. A. C. 1897 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3357. A. C. 2054. GEN. CH. xu— xxv. 11.
t;ii;mient to be made ready, a which accordingly was
served in, and himself waited at the table, under the
covert of a shady oak.
While they sat at table, b one of the guests, inquiring
after Sarah, and being told that she was in the tent, he
then addressed himself to Abraham, and assured him that
he had still in remembrance the case of his wife Sarah,
who, at the end of the year, should certainly have a son.
Sarah, who was listening at the tent door, and thought
herself far enough past child-bearing, 'could not refrain
from laughing within herself; and when the stranger asked
the reason of it with such a serious air as struck her
ran into the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good.' Abra-
ham appears to have taken a very active part in preparing to
entertain the angels. But when it is said that ' he ran to the
herd, and fetched a calf,' we must not understand him as
descending to an office either menial or unbecoming his rank,
since we are informed, that M the greatest of these countries is
not ashamed to fetch a lamb from his herd, and kill it, whilst the
princess is impatient till she hath prepared her fire and kettle to
dress it." — Shaw's Travels, p. c.01.
. " As the Panther was, at two o'clock, too far off to give us
any hope of dining on board, we applied to our friendly Dola,
who readily undertook to give us the best the island could afford.
A fine young kid was killed, and delivered to his wife, who per-
formed the office of cook, in an inner room, where we were not
permitted to enter. In about two hours the whole was served up
in very clean bowls of wood ; and instead of a table-cloth, we had
new mats. The good lady had also made us some cakes with
juwany and ghee: pepper and salt were laid beside them. It
was excellently roasted ; and I do not know that I ever enjoyed a
dinner more." — Lord Valentias Travels, vol. 2. p. 323. — Ed.
a The Scripture informs us, Gen. xviii. 8, ' that Abraham
took butter and milk, and the calf, (that is, the choicest parts of
the calf) and set it before them, and they did eat ;' where the
eating of these angels must be understood according to the nature
of the bodies we may suppose them to have assumed. It their
bodies were aerial, their eating must have been in appearance
only: if substantial, their eating might have been real; that is,
they might have received the meat into their bodies, which after-
wards, by a divine power, was consumed there. — Poole's Anno-
tations and Le Clerc's Commentary.
b It is very observable, that one of these angels (as the apostle
to the Hebrews calls them, chap. xiii. 3) appeared more honour-
able and superior to the other two; and therefore Abraham makes
his address to him as the chief, and the historian styles him
Jehovah, which the generality both of Jews and Christians do
look upon as the incommunicable name of God; and therefore it
is believed by the far greatest part of the latter, that it was the
Son of God who appeared in that form. There are others, how-
ever, (particularly some modern ones,) who maintain, that it was
no more than an angel who spoke to him in the person of God :
though it hardly seems probable, either that Moses should call an
angel by that name, or that Abraham should intercede with him,
as he does, when he saith, ' That be far from thee, to destroy the
good with the wicked: shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right ?' Or that an angel slwuld peremptorily say, ' If I
find forty righteous men in the place, for their sakes I will not
destroy it.' So that the most probable opinion is, that it was
Christ himself, who is emphatically called ' the Judge of all the
earth." — Universal History. The Jews, however, have a maxim,
that no angel performs two ministries, or is sent upon two mes-
sages at once ; and therefore they think, that these three angels (as
they suppose them) were dispatched for different purposes; one
of them, who was the chief, to bring a confirmation of the birth
of Isaac ; another, to conduct Lot safe out of Sodom; and the
tln'r.l, to overthrow the cities of the plain: and therefore, when
one nt' them had delivered his message to Abraham, there were
but two that held on their course to Sodom. — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
c In the preceding chapter (ver. 17.) we read, that Abraham
laughed upon the same occasion, and yet was not reproved; but
the difference of their conduct might be this, — that Abraham
laughed for joy upon hearing the glad tidings of a sun, bill
Sarah's laughter proceeded from a spirit of distrust and infidelity.
Poole's Annotations.
with terror, and she endeavoured to deny it, he dismissed
her with this gentle reproof,— That it was highly wrong
in her to mistrust what he had said unto her, since
nothing was impossible with God.
Upon this the conversation ceased, and the three
heavenly guests rising up to proceed on their journey,
Abraham very courteously attended them some part of
the way. Their way lay towards Sodom, whither two of
the guests advanced with more haste, but the third, con-
tinuing with Abraham, began to reveal a most dreadful
secret, namely, that the iniquity of Sodom, and the other
neighbouring cities, was come to such a prodigious
height, that he was now going down with an intent to
destroy them, d if, upon inquiry, he found their abomin-
ations equal to the report of them. This condescension
of God, in communicating his design to Abraham, gave
him encouragement to make intercession for the wicked
inhabitants of these cities, which, in six petitionary pro-
positions, he managed so well, as, by a gradual decrease
of the number every time, to bring him at last to a con-
cession, that if even ten just persons were found in
Sodom, he would not destroy it : and witli this condi-
tional promise he left Abraham.
In the mean time, the other two guests, (who a3 we
said went before, and were indeed the ministering
angels whom God had appointed to execute his judgments
upon the Sodomites,) held on their course towards the
city, where they arrived in the evening, when Lot was
sitting in the gate. As soon as he saw them, he rose up to
meet them, and, after proper salutations, e invited them
d Here is a wonderful instance of God's patience and good-
ness, who, though he knew all without inquiry, yet would not
condemn even the most flagitious, without good examination
and trial. Before the flood, God proceeded against the old world
upon ocular evidence. ' God saw that the wickedness of man was
great,' Gen. vi. 5, 12. At the building of Babel, it is said that
' the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the
children of men had built,' Gen. xi. 5. And now again, before the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, though the cry against them
was great, because of the grievousness of their sin, yet the Lord
would not proceed against them upon common fame: 'but I
will go down,' saith he, ' and see, whether they have done accord-
ing to the cry of it; and if not, I will know,' Gen. xviii. 21.
And hereupon we may observe, that the appearing of gods in the
manner of strangers, to punish or reward men, was a common
tradition among the heathens.
e In the eastern countries of late indeed, some few caravansa-
ries have been set up; but in the time we are now speaking of,
there was no such tiling as inns for the accommodation ot
strangers; and therefore all travellers, when they came to a town,
if they were not entertained in a private house, were forced to
abide all night in the streets. It was therefore a customary thing
for those of the better sort to receive such wayfaring men (whether
they knew them or knew them not) into their houses, and there
entertain them with great civility. And this is the reason why,
both in sacred and profane authors, we meet with such large
commendations of this act of hospitality, and particularly in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, (ch. xiii. 2,) have a precept tothisefli 1 1,
alluding to the very historical passage now before us. ' he not
forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertauietl
angels unawares.— ■£« Clerc's Commentary. Thus we read in
Homer that Minerva, coming in the shape oi Mentor, to make
Telemachus a visit, descends in the realm of Ithaca, and stands
in the portal of Ulysses, until he saw her, and thereupon went to
her, and very kindly invited her in: thus, ;is Pop1' has it,
While Ma fond soul these landed triumphs swell'. I ,
Tin1 stranger uMn->t tlie royal youth beheld.
Grieved that the visitant so long should vn t.
Unasked, unhonoured, at a monarch's gai^ ;
Instant lie Dew with hospitable haste,
And the new fi leud with courteous air asahnfc I. 0\lyu. 2.
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to his house to refresh and repose themselves that night ;
which at first they declined, but afterwards, on some
importunity, complied with. "■ But before it was time to
go to rest, the inhabitants of the city, both young and
old, being informed that Lot had strangers with him, and
in all probability tempted with the beautiful forms which
the angels had assumed, encompassed the house, and
demanded of him to deliver them up, b that they might
abuse them.
Lot thinking by mild and soft words to appease his
outrageous neighbours, steps out of the door, and shut-
ting it after him, entreats them to offer no affront to his
guests ; nay, rather than have the laws of hospitality
violated, he offers to give up his two virgin-daughters to
their discretion. But all would not do ; they threatened
to use him worse than his guests, a pragmatical
stranger that pretended to control them in any thing !
and were pressing forward to break open the door, when
the two angels, with more than human strength, forced
their way out, took in their host again, and then shutting
the door, c struck all that were round it with blindness,
so that they were not able to find any more where it
was.
Whilst they were thus groping about in vain, the two
angels acquainted Lot with their commission ; that their
errand was to execute the divine vengeance upon that
execrable place ; and therefore they advised him, if he
had any friends, for whose safety he was concerned, that
he would immediately let them know their danger, and
warn them to depart in time. Lot had no relations, but
only <* two sons-in-law, to whom his daughters were
a Gen. xix. 1,2. ' And there came two angels to Sodom at
even, and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them
rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward
the ground. And he said, behold now, my lords, turn in, I
pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and
wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways.'
The eastern people have always distinguished themselves by their
great hospitality. Of very many instances the following is a truly
characteristic one : — "We were not above a musket shot from
Anna, when we met with a comely old man, who came up to
me, and taking my horse by the bridle, ' friend,' said he,
'come and wash thy feet, and eat bread at my house. Thou art
a stranger, and since I have met thee upon the road, never
refuse me the favour which I desire of thee.' We could not
choose but go along with him to his house, where he feasted us
in the best manner he could, giving us, over and above, barley
for our horses ; and for us he killed a lamb and some hens."' —
Tavernier's Travels, p. 111. See also Gen. xviii. 6. Judges
xvii. 7, Rom. xii. 13, 1 Tim. iii. 2, 1 Pet. iv. 9.— Ed.
i'That is, in an unnatural and preposterous manner, which
was afterwards expressly forbidden in the law: Lev. xviii. 22, and
thereby made capital, ch. xx. 13, which vile sin continued among
the Gentiles even in the apostles' time, (as may be gathered from
Rom. i. 27, and 1 Cor. vi. 9,) and was so generally practised
among the people of Sodom, that from thence it took the name
of Sodomy, and the practisers of it are called Sodomites, both in
the Holy Scriptures and our English laws, which (as did the law
of God of old) do still make the punishment of it to be death.
— Howell's History.
c It is a probable opinion, that these men were struck not with ac-
tual blindness, but with a dizziness, which disturbed their sight, and
represented objects falsely, and in confusion, in the same manner
as the Syrians were, when sent to take Elisha, 2 Kings vi. IS.
And this was no hard matter for the angels to do, by making
a small alteration either in their sight, or in the air, whereby
either the door might appear to them like the solid wall, or the
several parts of the wall like so many doors. — Poole's Annota-
tions and Lc Clerc's Commentary.
(/Several translators, as well as some Rabbins, suppose that these
contracted ; but these, when he went to them early in the
morning, desiring them to go along with him, and leave
that accursed place, took the old man to be crazy, or
beside himself, and made a banter and ridicule of all
that he said.
In the morning, as soon as it was day, one of the an-
gels observing Lot to linger, (possibly to pack up some of
his most valuable goods,) took him, his wife, .and his two
daughters by the hand, and carried them in a manner
forcibly out of the city, bidding them to fly for their
lives ; and, lest they should be involved in the common
ruin, to make the best of their way to the mountains.
Lot looking before him, and perceiving the mountains to
be at a good distance, began to fear that he should not
be able to reach them in time, and therefore entreated
the angel, that he might be permitted to escape to a small
city not far from Sodom, then called Bela, but afterwards
Zoar, which he accordingly granted, and for his sake
spared the city ; but then he urged them to be expedi-
tious, and to make all possible haste thither, because they
could not begin to execute their commission until he was
safely arrived.
What the angels enjoined them at their departure
was, neither to tarry in the plain nor to look behind
them. But before they got to Zoar, so it was, that
Lot's wife, either out of forgetfulness of the prohibition,
or out of love to the place of her habitation, looking
back, was turned into a pillar of e metallic salt, a
lasting monument of God's vengeance on obstinate and
unbelieving offenders:/ and no sooner were the rest
were the husbands of some other of Lot's daughters, who were
actually married, and had left their father's house; which seems
to be confirmed by the angels ordering him to take his wife, and
his two daughters that were there present: but the original words,
which in our version are rendered ' his sons-in-law which married
his daughters,' may be translated, according to the interpreta-
tion of Onkelos 'his sons-in-law which were to many,' &c, the
contract having been passed, but the marriage not consummated
by cohabitation. — Universal History, b. 1, c. 4.
e It is not agreed by commentators what was the crime for
which Lot's wife was so severely punished. Some are of opinion
that she deserved it, merely for disobeying the commandment of
the angel, and expressing too much concern for a people that
deserved no compassion. Others say, that being anxiously soli-
citous for her daughters that were married there, and turning
about to see whether they followed her, she saw the divine She-
chinah, or majestic appearance of God, descending to destroy the
place, which was the occasion of her metamorphosis. Others
suppose that, being in confederacy with the Sodomites, she told
them that her husband was distracted, and gave them notice,
when any strangers came to lodge with him, by a sign of smoke
by day, and of fire by night; whilst others again imagine, that
the Scripture does not represent the fate which she met with as
a punishment for any crime, but as a thing merely accidental. —
Universal History, b. 1. c. 4. There is one circumstrnce,
however, in the text, namely, that ' she looked from behind her
husband,' whom she followed, which seems to be mentioned as
the reason of this her presumption, because she could do it
without her husband's observation or refroof; to which she
seems to have had a greater regard, than to the all-seeing eye of
God.— Poole's Annotations.
f Gen. xix. 26. ' A p'l'ar of salt;' or, as some understand it,
'an everlasting monument;' whence, perhaps, the Jews have
given her the name of Adith (R. Elieser, chap. 25.), because
she remained a perpetual testimony of God's just displeasure.
For she standing still too long, some of that dreadful shower of
brimstone and fire overtook her, and falling upon her, wrapped
her body in a sheet of nitro-sulphureous matter, which congealed
into a crust as hard as stone, and made her appear like a pillar
of salt, her body being, as it were, candied in it. Kimchi calls
Sect. I.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
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151
arrived at Zoar, but the angry heavens began to pour
down showers of liquid fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah,
and the other wicked cities of the plain, which, within a
short time, so totally consumed them, that when Abra-
ham, the next morning, looked towards the country, he
saw it all in a smoke, like the smoke of a large
furnace.'1
The judgment indeed was so very terrible, that Lot,
not thinking himself safe at Zoar, withdrew to the
mountains, to which he was first directed, and for want
of houses lived there, with his two daughters, in a cave.
it a heap of salt, which the Hebrews say continued for many
ages. Their conjecture is not improbable who think the fable
of Niobe was derived hence, who, the poets feign, was turned
into a stone upon her excessive grief for the death of her chil-
dren.— Patrick, in locum. — Ed.
a Gen. xix. 24. 'The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon
Gomorrah brimstone and fire.' These cities are said by Moses,
on account of their abominable impurities, to have been over-
whelmed with a torrent of liquid fire, rained down upon them
from heaven. This narrative is equally confirmed by profane
historians and by modern travellers. Diodorus Siculus mentions
th.' peculiar nature of the lake which covered the country where
these towns were formerly situated. " The water of it is bitter
and fetid to the last degree, insomuch that neither fish nor any
other aquatic animals are able to live in it." {Biblical History,
b. xix. p 734.) Tacitus relates that a tradition still prevailed
in his days of certain powerful cities having been destroyed by
thunder and lightning, and of the plain in which they were
situated having been burned up. He adds, that evident traces
of such a catastrophe remained. The earth was parched, and
had lost all its natural powers of vegetation; and whatever
sprung up, either spontaneously or in consequence of being
planted, gradually withered away, and crumbled into dust.
{Tacit. Hist. b. 5. c. 7.) Strabo, after describing the nature of
the lake Asphaltis, adds, that the whole of its appearance gives
an air of probability to the prevailing tradition, that thirteen
cities, the chief of which was Sodom, were once destroyed and
swallowed up by earthquakes, fire, and an inundation of boiling
sulphureous water. (Strab. Geog. b. 16.) Maundrell visited
the lake Asphaltis in the year 1(397, and makes the following
observations upon it: — " Being desirous to see the remains, if
there were any, of those cities anciently situated in this place,
and made so dreadful an example of the divine vengeance, I
diligently surveyed the waters as far as my eye could reach; but
neither could I discern any heaps of ruins, nor any smoke
ascending above the surface of the water, as is usually described
in tlit; writings and maps of geographers. But yet I must not
omit, what was confidently attested to me by the father-guardian
ami procurator of Jerusalem, both men in years, and seemingly
not destitute either of sense or probity, that they had once actu-
ally seen one of these ruins ; that it was so near the shore, and
the waters so shallow at that time, that they went to it, and
found there several pillars, and other fragments of buildings.
The cause of our being deprived of this sight was, I suppose, the
height of the water." {Travels, p. 85.) The account which
Thevenot gives is much to the same purpose. " There is no
sort of fish in this sea, by reason of the extraordinary saltness of
it, which burns like fire when one tastes of it. And when the
fish of the water Jordan come down so low, they return back
again against the stream; and such as are carried into it by the
current of the water immediately die. The land within three
leagues round is not cultivated, but is white, and mingled with
salt and ashes. In short, we must think that there is a heavy
curse of God upon that place, seeing it was heretofore so pleasant
a country." {Travels, vol. 1. p. 194.) See also Pocovke's Tra-
vels, vol. 2. p. 1. ch. 9. and Shaw's Travels, p. 346, 4to.— Ed.
The curious VVormius tells of the raining of brimstone, May
16, 1646. " Here, at Copenhagen, when the whole town was
overflowed by a great fall of rain, so that the streets became
impassable, the air was infected with a sulphureous smell; and
when the waters were a little subsided, one might have collected
in some places a sulphureous powder, of which I have preserved
t part, and which, in colour and every other quality, appeared
to be real sulphur." — Alus. Worm. b. 1. c. 2. sec. 1. — Ed.
His daughters had lost their espoused husbands in
Sodom ; and now despairing of having any other, they
plotted together to deceive their father, and have issue
by him. The elder was the forwarder of this wicked
contrivance ; and therefore representing to her sister the
condition they were in, she proposed the expedient of
making her father drunk with wine ; and accordingly
one evening they put their project in execution : for,
having intoxicated the old man, they put him to bed,
and the elder lying with him, without his privity, ob-
tained her end. The next night they employed the same
artifice, and the younger had her turn ; so that, in the
event, they had each of them a son from this incestuous
commerce, whereof the elder's was called Moab, and
the younger's Amnion, from whom the Moabites and
Ammonites, both bitter enemies in after times to Israel,
were descended.* But to return to Abraham.
After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, he re-
moved from Mamre (probably to avoid the stench of the
vale of Siddim), and came and dwelt not far from
c Gerar, a city of the Philistines, at a place named
afterwards Beersheba, between Kadesh and Shur, where
the same adventure happened to him which he had met
with in Egypt. The king of Gerar, supposing Sarah to
be no more than Abraham's sister (for here likewise
she passed under that character), d notwithstanding her
advanced age, saw charms enough in her to invite her
unto his bed ; but God appeared to him in a dream, and
b Moab settled himself in the parts adjoining eastward to the
Salt Sea, or Lacus Asphaltites, and in the neighbouring tract on
the river Jordan eastward ; for we plainly learn, that great part
of the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amorites, did formerly
belong to the Moabites, Numb. xxi. 21. Ammon seated him-
self in the parts adjoining to Moab; for it is evident from Scrip-
ture, that the Ammonites were formerly possessed of the parts
on the east of Jordan, about the river Jabbok, or of the northern
part of that which was afterwards the kingdom of Sihon. See
Numb. xxi. 13.; Josh. xiii. 25.; and Judg. xi. 13, 23. But
these things we shall have occasion to illustrate more fully,
when we come to describe the course of the travels of the Israe-
lites out of Egypt into the land of Canaan. — Wells' Geography
of the Old Testament, vol. 1.
c Gerar was a regal city, situate not far from the angle where
the south and west sides of Palestine meet, twenty-five miles
from Eleutheropolis, beyond Daroma, in the south of Juda ; and
the country, to which it gave the name, extended itself pretty
far into Arabia Petraa. Beersheba signifies ' the well of the
oath,' because here Abraham made a covenant with Abimelecn
king of Gerar, concerning a well which he had digged haul by.
Here he likewise planted a grove, and instituted an oratory, or
place of divine worship; and in process of time here was a city
or considerable town built, which is taken notice ol by heathen
authors under the name of Berzimma or Bersaba. Kadesh was
a city, lying on the edge of the land of Canaan, to the south ol
Hebron; Shur was the name of that part ot Arabia Petaea
which joins Egypt and the Red sea; and Bomewhere between
these two was that well mar which Abraham, when he left
Mamre, fixed his habitation.— Weihf Geography of the Old
Testament, vol. 1. . .
d Sarah was now ninety years old when Ahimclccli took DOT
into his family; whence it may seem very strange, that a woman
of her a°e should look so very well, as to be desired by a king,
who in those days might have commanded the most youthful
beauties in his whole dominions. But, according to some in-
terpreters, people of ninety then were as fresh and vigorous as
those of forty now; and Sarah might, even in that respect, excel
her coevals, by reason of her sterility, which is a great preserver
of beauty; though others are of opinion, that God, having taken
away her sterility, her beauty ret. unci with her Iru.tlulness ;
for by this time il is computed that she had conceived her son.
— Hotvell's lliitory, b. 1.
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threatened him with immediate death, if he did not
return her untouched to her husband. Whereupon
Abimelech (for that was the common name in those
days of all the kings of Palestine) calls for Abraham,
and expostulates the matter with him, who, in excuse
for the fiction, alleged his fears lest the beauty of his
wife should have endangered his life ; though it was not
altogether a fiction, as he said, because she was so near
a relation to him, especially by his father's side, as
might properly enough be called a sister. a This apo-
logy pacified the king ; so that he not only restored him
his wife, but giving her b a thousand pieces of silver,
desired her c to buy a veil with the money, which might
a Gen. xx. 12. ' And yet indeed she is my sister ; she is
the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother:
and she became my wife.' This peculiar mode of contracting
marriage appears, in after ages, to have become a common
practice. It prevailed at Athens. It was lawful there to marry
a sister by the same mother. Montesquieu {Spirit of Laws, vol.
1. p. 54.) says that this custom was originally owing to repub-
lics, whose spirit would not permit that two portions of land, and
consequently two inheritances, should devolve on the same
person. A man that married his sister only by his father's side,
could inherit but one estate, that of his father ; but by marrying
his sister by the same mother, it might happen that this sister's
father, having no male issue, might leave her his estate, and
consequently the brother that married her might be possessed of
two.
Among the Egyptians, it was lawful for the brother to marry
the sister of either of the whole or the half blood, elder or
younger; for sometimes brother and sister are bom twins. And
this license, in process of time, descended also to the Grecians.
For the example, drawn from Isis, obtained among the Mace-
donians. To justify this incestuous use by yet more illustrious
examples, the Grecians as well as the Latins say the gods them-
selves aflected such marriages. — Ed.
b The original word does not so properly mean pieces as
weight, because money was then paid by weight; and may,
therefore, be interpreted a thousand shekels of silver, that is,
about fifty-seven pounds in the value of our present money. —
Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 3. c. 4.
c The words in the text, according to our translation, are
these:— ' And unto Sarah he said, Behold, 1 have given to thy
brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, he is to thee a
covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and to all
others: thus she was reproved.' Where we must observe, in
the first place, that the word which we render reprove, does
more properly signify to instruct, which must certainly be the
right sense of the word here, considering that Abimelech had
already accepted of Abraham's apology, and was so far from
irritating either him or Sarah by reproaches, that, on the con-
trary, he was endeavouring to win their friendship with very
considerable presents. But then, as to the covering of Sarah's
eyes, this may be variously expounded, according as the words
refer either to Abraham or to the pieces of silver. If they refer
to Abraham, then the meaning of the king's words will be,
" Thou needest no other defence of chastity than he; nor hast
thou any reason hereafter to say, he is thy brother ; for so dear
is he to God, that God will defend him, and he will defend thee ;
and not only him, but all that are with thee, and that even
among strangers, without any such shifts and equivocations as
you have hitherto thought fit to make use of." But if the words
refer to a present of a thousand pieces, then the sense must be,
" I have given him that sum of money to buy thee a veil, that
all who converse with thee here, or in any other country where
thou shalt come, may know thee to be a married woman." This
sense, indeed, is countenanced by the LXX.; but others have
thought that it might better be rendered thus: — "This money,
which I have paid thy husband as a mulct for my having endea-
voured to take thee from him, will be a means to deter all
others from having any concern with thee, when once they shall
hear how much I have suffered upon that account." The reader
is left to his own option ; but we should rather think that the
last of these interpretations is preferable. — Patrick and Le
Cteiv's Commentary.
not only be a covering to her face, but in every country
an indication likewise of her being a married woman,
because he held it inconvenient for her any more to
pass for her husband's sister. On her husband he be-
stowed, in like manner, plenty of other kind of wealth,
and made him a free offer to live where he pleased in
his dominions ; which generous treatment engaged
Abraham to intercede with God d to remove the disabi-
lity which he had inflicted on the king, in order to re-
strain him from Sarah ; and to restore the queen and the
other women of the nation to their wonted fertility,
which for some time seems to have been obstructed.
A year was now passed, and the time appointed come
when Sarah brought forth a son, whom Abraham, accord-
ing to the divine direction, called Isaac, and circumcised
him the eighth day. They were now in the zenith of
their happiness. Sarah suckled the child herself, and e
weaned him at the usual time ; and Abraham upon this
joyful occasion made a great feast : but in the midst of
their festivity, Sarah perceiving that Ishmael treated her
son with contempt and derision, was so enraged against
him, that she never ceased importuning her husband to
turn both mother and son out of doors. Abraham had
the tenderness of a father to his child. He loved
Ishmael, and was loth to part with him; and therefore
applied himself to God, in this arduous juncture, for
direction. But God confirming what Sarah had request-
ed, and promising moreover to make of Ishmael (because
he was his son) a populous nation, though his portion
and inheritance was not to be in that land, which was all
along designed for the descendants of Isaac, he was at
last prevailed on to send him and his mother away. /
Calling Hagar therefore, one morning to him, he
ordered her to take her son, some water, and other pro-
visions with her, to go into the neighbouring wilderness,
and to tarry by the side of a certain fountain she would
meet with there, until she should hear farther from him.
d The text tells us, that ' God had fast closed up all the
wombs' of the house of Abimelech; which phrase in Scripture
does frequently denote barrenness ; but that it cannot do so here,
is pretty plain from hence, that the history of this transaction is
of too short a continuance to give space for a discovery of this
kind, namely, whether the women, by God's infliction, were
become actually barren or not. And therefore the other opinion,
noticed in note/, p. 144, is more probable.
e It is not easy to guess how long it was that women gave
suck in those days, because the ancient Hebrews are divided
about it : some affirming that Isaac was weaned when he was
two, some five, and others not till he was twelve years old. If
however we will judge by what the young Maccabee's mother
said to him, ' My son, remember I have suckled thee three years,'
2 Macch. vii. 27. that time will appear the most probable. For
there is no reason to believe that Isaac was weaned before the
usual term, for want of care or aflection in his mother — Patrick'i
Commentaries, and Universal History, b. 1. c. 7.
/ Gen. xxi. 10. ' Wherefore she said unto Abraham, cast out
this bond woman and her son ; for the son of this bond woman shall
not be heir with my son.' The following extract will exhibit to
the reader a striking similarity of practice with tliat to which the
above cited passage alludes, and that amongst a race of people
very remote, both as to local situation and time. " The Alguo-
quins make a great distinction between the wife to whom they
give the appellation of the entrance of the hut, and those whom
they term of the middle of the hut; these last are the servants of
the other, and their children are considered as bastards, and of infe-
rior rank to those which are born of the first and legitimate wife.
Among the Caribs also, one wife possesses rank and distinction
above the rest." — Babie's Travels among Savage Nations^ in
Universal Magazine, for Feb. 1802, p. 84. — Ed .
Sect. 1.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2108. A. C. 189G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3358. A. C. 2053. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11.
She did as she was ordered; but mistaking- their way,
and missing of the fountain, they had quite exhausted
the little water they had, and her son being in a high
Fever, and ready to die with thirst, to shade him a little
from the scorching heat, she placed him under a tree,
whilst herself, despairing to find any succour in the
place, and not bearing to see him expire before her eyes,
withdrew a little, and began to bemoan her hard fate,
while with earnest cries and tears, she was imploring the
divine help and commiseration. The divine help was
not long a coming ; for suddenly an angel from heaven
bids the weeping mother dry up her tears, and fear not ;
tells her, that God had heard the child's prayer, and
would make of him a great nation ; and, for their present
relief, points to her a well of water, which she had not
perceived before ; and directs her how to cure her son.
Refreshed with this water, and supported with other
things which Abraham (very probably) from time to time
might send them ; instead of going into Egypt, as they
first intended, they here took up their abode in the
wilderness of Paran, where Ishmael, in a short time
growing a very expert archer, was able to get pro-
visions both for himself and his mother ; and when he
grew up unto man's estate, his mother, who was herself
an Egyptian, married him to a woman of her own
country, by whom he had twelve sons, who dwelt from
Havilah unto Shur, that is, in several parts of Arabia
Petraea, whereof the western part, towards Egypt, is in
Scripture called Shur, and the eastern part towards the
Persian gulf, Havilah. a
Abraham, in the mean time, having accepted of
Abimelech's oft'er, continued to live in the land of Pales-
tine, and, as his riches and power every day increased,
Abimelech, fearing lest, at some time or other, he might
attempt something in prejudice of him, or his successors
in the government, came with the general of his forces,
whose name was Phicol, and made a solemn league of
friendship with him. b Some c little difference had
153
a The names of these sons are Nabajoth, Kedar, Adbeel,
Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadar, Tenia, Jethur,
Naphish, and Kedemah, 'twelve princes according to their na-
tion-,' ( It-ii xxv. 1 3, &c. ; and as their descendants were, from their
father, denominated by the common name of Ishmaelites, so from
Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, they are also called Hagarens, or
Hagaritcs, under which name we find some footsteps of them in
heathen authors; but certain it is, that the Arabians do, to this
very day, value themselves upon their being descended from
Ishmael. — Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1.
b Gen. xxi. 23. ' Swear unto me here by God.' This land of
oath appears not only to have been generally in use in the time
of Abraham, but also to have descended through many genera-
tions and ages in the east. When Mr Bruce was at Shekh
Anuner, he entreated the protection of the governor in prosecut-
ing his journey. Speaking of the people who were assembled
together at this time in the house, he says, (Travels, vol. 1. p.
1 Is. '• The great people among them came, and, after joining
hands, repeated a kind of prayer, of about two minutes long, by
Which they declared themselves and their children accursed, if
ever they lifted up their hands against me in the tell, or field in
the desert; or in case that I, or mine, should fly to them for
refuge, if they did not protect us at the risk of their lives, their
families, and their fortunes, or, as they emphatically expressed
it, to the death of the last male child among them." — See also
Gen. xxvi. 28, 29.— Ed.
c It will not seem strange that Abraham should look upon
the losing of a well as a matter of such consequence, considering
how ill furnished these eastern countries were with water; and
it was highly prudent of him to complain of grievances now, before
he entered into covenant with Abimelech, that they being once
arisen between Abimelech's servants and Abraham's,
about a well which Abraham's servants had digged.
But after a little expostulation, they quickly came to a
good understanding. The well was restored to Abraham,
and the place where they entered into this solemn cove-
nant was thenceforth called Beersheba. Here Abraham,
intending to end his days, unless God should otherwise
dispose of him, planted a grove for a place of religious
worship, and built an altar, and called on ' the name of
the Lord, the everlasting God,' who was minded d to
make one trial more of his faith and fidelity, and a
severe trial it was.
God had ordered him to send away Ishmael, and
given him assurance, that the blessings promised to his
posterity were not to take place in any part of that
branch of his family, but that Isaac should be the son of
the promise, and his descendants heirs of that happiness
and prosperity which he had made over to him ; and now
he was pleased to require him with his own hands, to
destroy this his son, his only son Isaac. A cruel in-
junction ! But Abraham, we see, never stayed to expos-
tulate about the severity or unlawfulness of it ; but on
the very next morning, without saying a word to any of
his family, gets all things ready, and leaving it to God
to make good his own promises, resolves to obey. e
redressed, there might remain no occasion of quarrel afterwards —
Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1 Wells of water were of great con-
sequence in those hot countries, especially where the flocks were
numerous ; because water was scarce, and digging to find it was
attended with much expense of time and labour. In Arabia, the
wells are generally dug in the rocks ; their mouths are about six
feet in diameter, and they are from nineteen to twenty feet in
depth, (but many of them, says Niebuhr, are 160 to 170 feet
deep.) Strife between the different villagers and the different
herdsmen here, exists still, as in the days of Abraham and Lot ;
the country has often changed masters; but the habits of the
natives both in this and other respects, have been nearly station-
ary.— Dr Richardson's Travels, vol. 2. p. 196. — Ed.
d The words in the text are, ' that God did tempt Abraham ;'
but God is said to tempt no man ; and therefore all that he could
be supposed to do in this case, was only to make trial of him ;
and that too, not to inform himself of the sincerity and steadiness
of his faith, but in order to the holy patriarch's own justification,
and to make him an illustrious pattern of an entire dependence
on the Almighty, to future saints and confessors. The Jews
reckon up ten trials of Abraham, of which the last was the
greatest. 1. God's command to him to leave his country. 2.
The famine which forced him to go into Egypt. 3. Pharaoh's
taking his wife from him. 4. His war with the four kin<;s.
5. His despair of having Isaac by Sarah, and marrying Hagar on
that account. 6. His circumcision in his old age. 7. His wife's
being again taken from him by Abimelech. 8. The expulsion of
Hagar when she was with child by him. 9. His expulsion of
her and Ishmael. And 10. His oblation of his only son Isaac—
Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.
e Gen. xxii. 3. 'Saddled his ass.' There is no ground Foi
supposing that the ancient eastern saddles were like our modern
ones. Such were not kn^un to the Greeks and Romans till
many ages after the Hebrew judges. " No nation ot antiquity
knew the use of either saddles or Btirrups;" (Goguet's Origin „J
Laws, vol. 3. p. 172. English Edit.) and even in our own times
Hasselquist, when at Alexandria, says, " 1 procuredan equipage
which 1 had never u-'d before; it was an ass with an Arabian
saddle which consisted only of a cushion on which 1 could sit,
and a 'handsome bridle." (Travels, p. 52.) Buteven thecushion
seems an improvement upon the ancient eastern saddles, which
were probably nothing mure than a kind of rug girded to the
beast. — Parkhitrsfs HA. Lem. p. 213.
Instead of saddles the ancients used a kind of housing or horse
cloth which the Greeks called sage and the Latins sogum. '1 his
housing is to be seen upon the horses represented on Trajan s
pillar, and in many Other monuments of antiquity.— Ld.
154
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
[Book III.
A. M. 2108. A. C. 189G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3358. A. C. 2063. GEN. CH. xx— xxv. 11.
To that purpose, taking1 his son Isaac with him, and
some servants, with provisions and instruments proper
for the sacrifice, he sets out ; and a in three days' time,
came within sight of b mount Moriah, the place which
God had appointed for that dreadful scene. Here,
leaving his servants behind, that they might not disturb
him with their intercessions or lamentations, he goes up
to the mount without betraying any sign of grief or con-
cern that might raise a suspicion in his son. His son,
on the other hand, laden with the wood, and the other
materials for a burnt-offering, but perceiving nothing-
proper for a victim, could not forbear asking his father,
where it was ? Such a question, at such a time, was
enough to have staggered any heart less firm than
Abraham's, who only answered calmly, ' That God would
provide himself with one,' little thinking how propheti-
cally he spake : for he had no sooner bound his son
upon the wood, c and stretched out his hand to give the
fatal blow, d but God was pleased to stop him short by
a voice from heaven, forbidding him to do it, e and
a The better to explain how Abraham came to know the place
which God had appointed, the Jews have a tradition, that when
God bade him go thither, and offer his son, he asked how he
should know it? To which the answer was, that wheresoever he
should see the glory of the Lord, that should be the place ; and
that accordingly, when he came within sight of mount Moriah,
he beheld a pillar of fire, reaching from the earth to the heavens,
whereby he knew that that was the place — Hottingeri Historia
Orient, p. 36.
b This mountain whereon Abraham was ordered to offer his
son Isaac, was certainly the same on which the temple was after-,
wards built by Solomon, and on part of which, namely, mount
Calvary, Christ did afterwards actually offer himself unto God for
the redemption of mankind: which offering of his, as it seems
to have been designedly prefigured by the intentional ofiering cf
Isaac, so it might seem good to Divine reason to assign the same
for the typical offering of Isaac, where in due time, the Antitype,
our Redeemer, was to be offered. But instead of Moriah, the
Samaritans read Moreh, and pretend that God sent Abraham
towards Sechem, where certainly was Moreh (Gen. xii. 6 ; and
Deut. xi. 30.) ; and that it was upon mount Gerizim that Isaac
was brought in order to be sacrificed. But this, in all probability,
is no more than a contrivance to enhance the gloiy of their
temple. — Wells' Geography; and Calmet's History.
c The words of God are, ' Lay not thy hand on the child,
neither do thou anything unto him,' Gen. xxii. 12; and yet in
Heb. xi. 17, we are told, ' that Abraham offered up Isaac when
he was tried.' But this is easily reconciled, if we do but remem-
ber that God always takes that for done (whether in the commis-
sion of sin, or performance of duty) where there is a will and
intention to do it, supposing the person to have an opportunity. —
Street's dividing the Hoof.
d Gen. xxii. 9. ' And bound Isaac his son.' Both his hands
and his feet, as it is explained in R. Elieser, c. 31. When
the Gentiles offered human sacrifices, they tied both their hands
behind their backs. — Ovid. 1. 3. He Pont. Eleg. 2. Patrick, in
locum. — Ed.
e The words in the beginning of the chapter are, ' that God
tempted Abraham,' bidding him to go and sacrifice his son; but
in ver. 11. it is said, that the angel of the Lord forbade him to
do it : from whence some may infer, that A braham obeyed the
angel, who bade him spare his son, against the command of God,
.vho bade him slay him. But to solve this difficulty, (if it be
thought any,) we must observe, that whenever the Holy Scrip-
tures tell us, that God said any thing, or that an angel spake,
we are always to understand both of them to have been present ;
for the angels ever attend upon the Divine Majesty, and, being
his ministers, do nothing but by his order: so that when he is
said to speak, it is by them ; and when they are said to speak, it
is from him. It is the Lord, therefore, that speaks, whosoever
be the minister. — Patrick's Commentary. And the speech
which God makes to Abraham, upon this weighty occasion, the
Jewish historian comments upon in this manner: " Hold thy
declaring a satisfaction in this last test of his obedience.
Surprised at the voice, Abraham turns about to see
whence it came, and spies a ram caught by the horns in
a thick bush, which he immediately took, and offered
up for a burnt-offering instead of his son ; and, in
memory of the whole transaction, called the place where
it was done Jehovah-jireh, in allusion to the answer
which he gave to his son's question, ' God will provide
himself a lamb.'
Thus having performed an act of such perfect and
heroic obedience as engaged God to renew his promise
with great amplifications, and to confirm it to him with
an oath, he went and rejoined his servants ; and return-
ing to Beersheba, was no sooner arrived, but he was
welcomed with the joyful news of the increase of his
family, namely, that Milcah, his brother Nahor's wife,
/had born him a numerous issue, which g determined him,
at a proper time, to send thither for a wife for his son
Isaac ; but h before he did that, it happened that his own
wife Sarah died, in the L27th year of her age, at Kir-
jatharba, afterwards called Hebron, in the country of
Canaan.
1 Abraham was then probably at Beersheba ; but being
informed of her death, he came to Hebron, there to
mourn, and perform his last offices for her ; but what he
wanted was a convenient burying-place. He therefore
addressed himself to the people, assembled in a bodyi at
hand, and spare thy son, for I did not require it of thee, out of
any delight I take in human blood, or that I would make a father
the assassin of the very child which I myself have given him ;
but to see how far thou wouldst submit to thy God in a self-denial
to thine own inclination and nature: but now, since I find thy
piety to be proof against all temptations, I do here confirm over
again to thee all my former promises," &c. — Joseph. Antiq. b.
1. c. 14.
f The children of Nahor hy Milcah were Huz, Buz, Kemuel,
Chezed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel, who begat Re-
becca, the wife of Isaac ; and by his concubine, whose name was
Reumah, lie had Tebah, Gaham, Thahash, and Maachah, from
whom the city of Maachah, or Abel-Beth-Maachah, whose terri-
tories are supposed to have been situate between the two Leba-
nons, might probably receive its name, Gen. xxii. 20, &c.
g Nahor very probably either removed with his father Terah,
as Abraham did, from Ur in Chaldea, and settled at Haran in
Mesopotamia, or not long after followed them thither; because,
after that the family left Ur, the first news that we hear of him
is, that he was settled at Haran, and there had got a numerous
family ; and it is upon the account of his brother's residing there,
as well as that himself had once lived there, that Abraham calls
it his ' own country,' and the place 'where his kindred dwelt,'
Gen. xxiv. 4.
h Some of the Arabian writers tell us, that when Sarah heard
that Abraham had taken her only son unto the mountain, to
sacrifice to God, she fell into a very great agony, which brought
on a fit of sickness whereof she died. Etdychii Annales, p. 74.
Josephus, indeed, informs us that she died soon after this event;
but if (as he says) Isaac was five and twenty years old when his
father would have sacrificed him, Sarah was ninety years old
when she bore him, and 127 when she died, she must (accor-
ding to his own calculation) have lived eleven or twelve years
after it, and this our learned Usher makes the difference between
his sacrifice and her death. — Calmet's Dictionary.
i There is something of obscurity in tin's passage of the history.
Sarah is said to have died at Hebron ; and yet we have no notice
of Abraham removing from Beersheba to that place; so that,
upon some occasion or other, we must suppose them to have been
parted, and that Sarah went to Hebron, while Abraham kept still
in his own habitation : for to say that Abraham came from his
own tent to that of his wife, to make lamentation for her, is not
consistent with the sequel of the text.
j The gates of the cities in these days, and for many ages after,
Skct. I.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
155
A. M. 2103. A. C. 189G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES. A. M. 33«3. A. C. 2028. GEN. CH. xx— xxv. 11.
the gate of the city, entreating tliem to allow him the
liberty of burying- his wife among them ; for as he was a
stranger in the country, and had no hand then of his own,
he could pretend to no right of giving honourable inter-
ment to his dead in the sepulchres of the country, without
the consent of the proprietors. He therefore desired
Ephron, one of the principal inhabitants," to sell him the
field called Machpclah,6 with the cave and sepulchre
belonging to it. The purchase was made before all the
people of Hebron, c at the price of 400 shekels of silver,
that is, about sixty pounds sterling ; A and there he
buried Sarah, after that he had mourned for her/ accord-
ing to the custom of the country.
were the places of judicature, and common resort. Here the
governors and elders of the city met to hear complaints, admi-
nister justice, and make conveyances of titles and estates, and,
in short, to transact all the public affairs of the place. And from
hence is that passage in the Psalmist, ' They shall not be ashamed
when they speak to their enemies in the gate,' Ps. cxxvii. ver. ult.
that is, when they are accused by them before the court of magis-
trates. It is probable that the room or hall where these magis-
trates sat was over the gate, because Boaz is said to go up to the
gate ; and the reason of having it built there, seems to have been
for the conveniency of the inhabitants, who being all husband-
men, and forced to pass and repass every morning and evening,
as they went and came from their labour, might be more easily
called as they went by, whenever they wanted to appeal- in any
business. So that from the whole it appears that Abraham could
not have made his purchase from Ephron, without his having
recourse to the city gates. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 7.
a It is an observation of all those who have written about the
sepulture of the ancients, that their dormitories or burying- places
were never in cities, much less in temples or churches, but
always in the fields or gardens. The use of grottos or vaults is
certainly very ancient. — Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.
b The word in Hebrew signifies double, whence it is supposed
by some, that there was one cave within another, or two or more
contiguous to each other, in one of which Sarah was buried, and
afterwards Abraham in another. But those who derive it from
the Arabic tell us, that in that language it signifies shut up, or
walled up, which, in eastern countries, was a common way of
making their tombs, to prevent thieves from harbouring in them,
or to hinder them from being in any manner violated or profaned.
And if this be the right derivation, then may the cave of Mach-
pelah he translated the cave that was shut up. — Calmefs Dic-
tionary.
c Gen. xxiii. 11. 'In the presence of the sons of my people.'
Contracts, or grants, were usually made before all the people, or
their representatives, till writings were invented. — Patrick, in
locum. — Ed.
d Gen. xxiii. )6. ' And Abraham weighed to Ephron the
silver.' Ancient nations have discovered a singular coincidence
in the management of their money. The Jews appear to have
u-ed silver in lumps, perhaps of various dimensions and weights;
and certainly, on some occasions at least, impressed with a par-
ticular stamp. The Chinese also do the same. For " there is
no silver coin in China, notwithstanding payments are made
with that metal, in masses of about ten ounces, having the form
of the crucibles they were refined in, with the stamp of a single
character upon the in, denoting their weight." — Macartney, p.
|b0, vol. 2. ]). 266, 8vo edition. — Ed.
* What the rites of mourning for the dead in those days were,
it is hard to determine, because we have as yet no particulars of
it recorded in Scripture. From the subsequent practice, how-
ever, we may infer, that they shut themselves up from company,
neglected the care of their bodies, and abstained from their ordi-
nary food. They fasted, and lay upon the ground ; they wept,
tore their clothes, smote their breasts, went barefoot, and pulled
Off their hair and beards. The time of mourning was usually for
seven days ; but it was commonly lengthened or shortened, accord-
ing to the state or circumstances wherein they Lund themselves ;
and, during this period, they did not dress themselves, nor make
their beds, nor cover their heads, nor shave themselves, nor cut
their uails, nor go into the bath, nor salute any body, nay, nor so
By this time Abraham was well advanced in years ;
and being desirous to see his son Isaac married, and
settled in the world before he died, he called Eliezer the
steward of his household, and /having taking an oath of
him S (in case he died first) to procure his son a wife of
his own kindred, h and not of the Canaanites, he sent
him into Mesopotamia, with full instructions and autho-
rity to conclude the marriage, and with a train suitable
to such an embassy.
Eliezer, in coming to Haran, the place where his mas-
ter's relations dwelt, stopped at the public well (whither
it was customary for the young women of the place to
come every morning and evening for water) to rest, and
refresh his camels ; » and being pensive and solicitous
how to perform his message to his master's satisfaction,
much as read the book of the law, or say their usual prayers.
Patrick's Commentary, and Calmet's Dictionary, under the word
Mourning.
f The form in which Eliezer took his oath was, we are told,
by putting his hand under his master's thigh. This is the first
time we read of that ceremony, which was afterwards used by
Jacob and Joseph when they were a dying, and the oddness of it
has inclined some judicious authors to think, that it implies a
more solemn mystery than men are aware of. Some suppose
that it was swearing by the Messias, (who was to come out of
Abraham's loins or thigh, Gen. lxvi. 26.) others, by the cove-
nant of circumcision, the part circumcised being near the thigh.
But the most probable conjecture is, that as it could not well be
done but in a kneeling posture, so it was a token of subjection
and homage from a servant to his lord, he sitting, and his ser-
vant putting his hand under him; and thereby implicitly declar-
ing, I am under your power, and ready to do whatever you shall
think fit to command me. The custom, however, afterwards, in
swearing, was ' to lift up the hand to heaven,' Gen. xiv. 22, and
upon account of both these ceremonies, the Greek word opxo;,
which signifies an oath, is supposed to be derived from the
Hebrew jereck, a thigh, as the word cpvuv, to swear, is supposed
to come from the Hebrew jamin, which is the right hand. —
Ainsu'orth's Annotations.
g Gen. xxiv. 2, 3. < And Abraham said unto his eldest ser-
vant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, put, I pray
thee, thy hand under my thigh, and I will make thee swear by
the Lord.' The present mode of swearing among the Moham-
medan Arabs, that live in tents as the patriarchs did, according
to De la Rocpje — (Voy. dans la Pal. p. 152) — is by laying their
hands on the Koran. They cause those who swear to wash their
hands before they give them the book ; they put their left hand
underneath, and the right over it. Whether, among the patri-
archs one hand was under, and the other upon the thigh, is not
certain ; possibly Abraham's servant might swear, with one hand
under his master's thigh, and the other stretched out to heaven.
As the posterity of the patriarchs are described b : coming out of
the thigh, it has been supposed this ceremony nad some relation
to their believing the promise of God, to bless all the nations of
the earth, by means of one that was to descend from Abraham. —
Harmer, vol. 4. p. 477. — Ed.
h Not but that Laban end his family were idolaters, as well as
the Canaanites, but then he was much better than they, because
he still retained the worship of the true God, as appears from tin-
sequel of the history, (eh. xxiv. 37,) though blended and cor-
rupted with very gross mixtures and additions of his own;
whereas the Canaanites had utterly revolted from it. — GroU Par.
i Gen. xxiv. 11. 'At the time of the evening, even the time
that women go out to draw water.' Homer mentions the same
custom of women being employed in drawing water among the
Pha'aeians and Lsestrygonians. — (Odf/ss. \ ii. go. <t x. 105. : Iliad,
vi. 459.) — Dr Shaw, speaking of the occupation of the M Mi
women in Barbary, says, " To finish the day, at the time of the
evening, even at the time that the women go out to draw wat* r,
they are still to fit themselves with a pitcher or goat akin, and
their sucking children behind them, trudge it in t J i i — mam er
two or three miles to fetch water.'- — (Travels, p. 4210 — ^'r
Forbes (Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. p. 79) likewise mentions the
practice of women drawing water, and tending cattle to the lakes
and rivers. — Ed.
156
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2108. A. C. 1896 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398 A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. sx-xxv. 11.
he made a mental prayer to God, that lie would be
pleased to give this token of the successfulness of his
journey, namely, That the person designed for his young-
master's wife might discover it by some token of courtesy
to him. In the mean time a Rebecca came to the well ; 4
and when Eliezer desired her to give him a draught of
her water, she offered her service, not only to draw for
him, but for his camels likewise, which (being the very
sign he requested of God) lie permitted her to do, for
his fuller conviction. c
While he saw her thus employed, he took notice that
the damsel was exceeding beautiful ; and having inquired
into her relations and family, he found that she was his
master's brother's grand-daughter : whereupon he imme-
diately took out a pair of gold ear-rings, to the weight
of two shekels, and a pair of bracelets, which weighed
about ten, with which he presented her, desiring, at the
same time, that if they had any room at her house he
might be permitted to lodge there that night. ^ Her
answer was, that that he might do very conveniently :
and so accepting of the presents, she made haste home
to acquaint the family with this adventure, leaving Eli-
ezer full of contemplations and acknowledgments to the
divine favour, for this happy, surprisingly happy inci-
dent.
a Great were the simplicity and humility of those early days,
when persons of the best rank, and of the female sex too, did not
disdain to be employed in such servile offices. Thus, in the fol-
lowing age, Jacob found his cousin Rachel watering her father's
sheep; and several ages after that, the seven daughters of Jethro,
who was a prince, as well as a priest of Midian, kept their
father's flocks, and used to draw water for the cattle. So well
has our author expressed that simplicity of manners, which we
may observe in Homer, or Hesiod, or any of the most ancient
writers. — Howell's History, b. 1.
b Gen. xxiv. 15. ' Rebecca came out, with her pitcher upon
her shoulder.' The same custom prevailed in ancient Greece.
Homer represents Minerva meeting Ulysses as the sun was going
down, under the form of a Phteacian virgin, carrying a pitcher of
water, that being the time when the maidens went out to draw
water.
" When near the fara'd Ph;eacian walls he drew,
The beauteous city, op'ning to his view,
His step a virgin met, and stood before ;
A polished um the seeming- virgin bore."
Odyssey, b. vii. 25, Pope.
See also Odyssey, b. x. 105.
A similar custom prevailed also in Armenia, as may be seen
in Xenophon s Anabasis, b. iv. — Ed.
c Gen. xxiv. 20. ' And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher
into the trough.' In some places where there are wells, there
are no conveniences to draw water with. But in other places
the wells are furnished with troughs, and suitable contrivances
for watering cattle. The M. S. Chardin tells us, that " there
are wells in Persia and Arabia in the driest places, and, above
all, in the Indies, with troughs and ba-ins of stone by the side of
them." Gen. xvi. 14. Exod. ii. 16. — Harmer, vol. 1. p. 431.
-Ed.
d Gen. xxiv. 22. ' And it came to pass as the camels had
done drinking, that the man took a golden ear-ring of half a
shekel' weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels
weight, of gold.' The weight of the ornaments put upon Rebecca
appears extraordinary. But Chardin assures us, that even
heavier were worn by the women of the east when he was there.
He says that the women wear rings and bracelets of as great
weight as this, through all Asia, and even heavier. They are
rather manacles than bracelets. There are some as large as the
finger. The women wear several of them, one above the other,
in such a manner as sometimes to leave the arm covered with
them from the wrist to the elbow. Poor people wear as many
of glass or horn. They hardly ever take them o:l. They are
their riches.'* — Harmer, vol. 2. p. 50C.. — Ed.
As soon as Laban had heard what his sister had to tell
him, he went immediately, and inviting the stranger into
his house, ordered all proper provision to be made for
the civil reception both of himself and his retinue. At
his first introduction, Eliezer opened to the family the
occasion of his coming ; acquainted them with the suc-
cess that had attended him in his journey ; and gave
them a full account of the circumstances of his master's
family ; of the wealth and prosperity wherewith God had
blessed him ; of the son and heir which he had given him
in his old age ; and of the large expectances which this his
heir had, not only from the prerogative of his birth, but
from the donation and entail of all his father's posses-
sions. And, having in this manner delivered his creden-
tials, he demanded immediately, even before he did
either eat or drink with them, their positive answer.
e Laban and Bethuel were both of opinion, that the
divine providence was very visible in this whole affair ;
and therefore concluding, that it would be mighty wrong
to refuse Rebecca upon this occasion, they consented
that he should carry her to her intended husband as soon
as he pleased : so that matters being thus far agreed on,
he thought it now proper to present her with the jewels
of silver and gold, and fine raiment which he had brought
for her ;/ and he having at the same time made some
considerable presents to her mother, and brethren, the
remainder of the day they devoted to feasting and mirth.
In the morning Eliezer, who began to think the time
long till his master was acquainted with the good success
of his negotiation, desired to be dismissed. The request
a little startled them. They promised themselves, that
at least he would stay ten days longer : but he persisting
e This Bethuel could not be her father, because, had he been
so, it would have been improper to have had Laban, either
named before him, or giving answer to Abraham's messenger
when his father was by; and, therefore, since Josephus makes
the damsel tell Eliezer that her father had been dead long ago,
and that she was left to the care of her brother Laban, this
Bethuel, who is here named after Laban, and is never more
taken notice of during the whole transaction, must have been
some younger brother of the family. — Universal History, b. 1.
c. 7.
f Gen. xxiv. 53. " Jewels of gold and raiment.' Among the
several female ornaments which Abraham sent by his servant,
whom he employed to search out a wife for his son Laac, were
' jewels of silver, and jewels of gold,' exclusive of raiment, which
probably was \cry rich and valuable for the age in which Abra-
ham lived. Rich and splendid apparel, especially such as was
adorned with gold, was very general in the eastern nations from
the earliest ages: and as the fashions and customs of the Orien-
tals are not subject to much variation, so we find that this pro-
pensity to golden ornaments prevails, even in the present age,
among the females in the countries bordering on Judea. Thus
Mungo Park, in the account of his travels in Africa, mentions
the following singular circumstance, respecting the ornamental
part of the dress of an African lady: " It is evident from the
account of the process by which negroes obtain gold in Mandir.g,
that the country contains a considerable portion of this precious
metal. A great part is converted into ornaments for the women :
and, when a lady of consequence is in full dress, the gold about
her person may be worth, altogether, from fifty to eighty pounds
sterling."
We find also that the same disposition for rich ornamental
apparel prevailed in the times of the Apostles; for St Peter
cautioned the females of quality in the first ages of Christianity,
when they adorned themselves, not to have it consist, ' in the
outward adorning, of plaiting the hair, and of wearing gold, or
of putting on apparel.' 1 Pet. iii. 3. See also Psalm xlv. 9, 13.
' Upon thy right hand did stand the queen, in gold of Ophir. He?
clothing is of wrought gold.' — Ed.
Skct. I.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
157
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in his resolution, the thing was referred to Rebecca, who
consented to go with him as soon as he pleased : so that
all things being- presently made ready, and having0 the
bridal blessing bestowed upon her, she took her leave
and departed, with her nurse, b (whose name was Debo-
rah,) and other servants appointed to attend her.
Whilst Eliezer was conveying his fair charge to his
master's house, Providence had so ordered the matter,
that Isaac, taking a solitary walk in the (ields that eve-
ning, happened to espy his servants and camels upon
the road, and thereupon went forwards to meet them.
As soon as Rebecca was informed who he was, she
alighted, and c throwing her veil over her face (as the
banner of women then was) she waited to receive his
first compliments. rf Isaac, with great respect, addressed
himself to her, and conducted her into his mother's tent,
which was litted up for her apartment. Not long after
they were married together, and Isaac grew so fond of
her, that the love he had for his wife helped to alleviate
a The blessing is comprised in these words; ' Be thou a
mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate
of those that hate them ;' which was afterwards made a solemn
form of benediction in leading the bride to the bridegroom.
Gen. xxiv. 60. ' And they blessed Rebecca.' Nuptial bene-
dictions were used both by the Jews, Greeks, and Romans.
That of the Jews was in this form — " Blessed be thou, O Lord,
who hast created man and woman, and created marriage," &c.
This was repeated every day during the marriage week, provided
there were new guests. — Ed.
b Gen. xxiv. 59. ' And they sent away Rebecca their sister,
and her nurse.' Nurses were formerly held in very high esteem,
and considered as being entitled to constant and lasting regard.
" The nurse in an eastern family is always an important person-
age. Modern travellers inform us, that in Syria she is consi-
dered as a sort of second parent, whether she has been foster-
mother or otherwise. She always accompanies the bride to her
husband 's house, and ever remains there, an honoured character.
Thus it was in ancient Greece.'' — Siege of Acre, b. 2. p. 35,
note.
In Hindostan the nurse " is not looked upon as a stranger,
but becomes one of the family, and passes the remainder of her
life in the midst of the children she has suckled, by whom she is
honoured and cherished as'a second mother." — Furbes's Oriental
Memoirs, vol. 3. p. 134.
" In many parts of Hindostan are mosques and mausoleums,
built by the Mahommedan princes, near the sepulchres of their
nurses. They are excited by a grateful affection to erect these
structures, in memory of those who, with maternal anxiety,
watched over their helpless infancy; thus it has been from time
immemorial. How interesting is the interview which Homer has
described between Ulysses and Euryclea." — lb. 3. p. 141. — Ed.
c The use of the veil was the universal practice among all
nations, as far as history can inform us, except the Spartans, who
are reported to have been singular, in that their virgins were
permitted to appear without a veil, but after they were married,
they were never to be seen in public without it. It was from
this practice of veiling the bride, when she was brought to the
bridegroom, in token both of modesty and subjection, that the
presents which he made her upon this occasion, were by the
Greeks called ivaxaXwrryi^a, : and thus the poets, in celebrating
the marriage of Proserpine to Pluto, have this fiction — That,
upon unveiling his bride, he presented her with the island of
Sicily, in lieu of her veil, which he took from her. — BibUotheca
Biblica, vol. 1.
d It may seem a little strange, that upon so singular an occasion
no mention should be made of Abraham, who was a principal
party concerned herein; but for this some account by supposing
that Abraham, before this, had married Keturah (though, not to
break iu with the account of his son's marriage, the history
relates it later) and resigned his estate, and the government of
his family, into the hands of Isaac, choosing to live the remain-
der of his days in retirement with his new consort.
A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx-xxv. 11.
the grief he had long conceived for the loss of his
mother.
After this happy marriage of his son, Abraham still
finding himself strong enough to make a new addition
to his family, took another wife, 'whose name was
Keturah, by whom he /had six sons: but lest they
should interfere with Isaac in his inheritance of Canaan
as they grew up, he portioned them off, and sent them
away towards the east, where, settling in Arabia and
Syria, they became in time heads of different nations ;
whereof we have footsteps both in sacred and profane
history.
This is the substance of what the sacred history re-
lates concerning the great patriarch Abraham. S At
length, laden with honours and outworn with age, after
he had lived the space of an hundred and seventy-five
years, he took leave of this world; and by his two sons,
Ishmael and Isaac, was buried in the cave of Machpelah
(where, above forty years before, he had reposited the
remains of his beloved wife Sarah), leaving a name
famous to all posterity behind him.
e Keturah is supposed, by some Jewish interpreters, to he the
same with Hagar, whom Abraham, after his wife's death, sent
for again, and by her had all the six sons here mentioned : but,
besides that Hagar must by this time have been above eighty
years of age, and consequently too old to bear so many children,
the text itself seems to be against this supposition; for it informs
us, that Abraham added, or proceeded to take another wife,
which is a different thing to his recalling the old one. The
more probable opinion therefore is, that this Keturah was a
domestic of his own, a Canaanite perhaps, whom he had con-
verted to the true religion; but then the difficulty is, how
Abraham could dispose of so many sons, in so short a space as
that which intervened between his wife's and his own death.
To solve this, some have supposed that this Keturah became his
wife, that is, wife of the second order, long before the death of
Sarah, even immediately after he parted with Hagar ; but then
this supposition is contrary to the sense of the original; and
therefore, if we are minded to adhere to that, we must say, that
Abraham's living almost. forty years after Sarah's death gave
him time enough to dispose of the sons begotten of Keturah, as
the renovation of his strength, which was certainly miraculous,
(for forty years before he is said to have been dead to all such
purposes, Rom. vi. 19.) enabled him to beget them. — Cut/net's
Dictionary, Ainsworth's Annotations, and Universal History,
b. 1. c. 7.
f His sons were, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ish-
bak, and Shuah, whereof Jokshan had Sheba and Dedan ; Dcdan
had Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim ; and Midian had Ephah,
Epher, Hanoch, Abidah, and Eldaah, Gen. xxv. 2, &c. And
the footsteps we find of these in history, according to the best
conjectures, are such as follow. From Zimran, in all probabi-
lity, were descended the Zamarcns, a people mentioned by
Pliny {Natural History, b. 6. c. 28.) FromSheba, the Sabeans,
mentioned in Job i. 15. From Dedan, the Dedanim, men-
tioned in Isaiah xxi. 13. From Midian, the Midianites, men-
tioned in several places. From Shuah, the Shuites, mentioned
in Job ii. 11. From Ephah, was a town of the same name,
mentioned by Isaiah lx. 0'. From Hanoch, a country culled
Canauna, mentioned by Pliny {Natural History, b. (i. c. 880
And, to name no more, from Medan, a country called Medians,
in which is the famous city of Mecca, where Mahomet was
born. Bedford's Chronology, b. 3. c 4. and (Fells' Geography
of the Old Testament, vol. 1.
a This account of Abraham's death is given by way of antici-
pation; for when the text has recited his sons and their settle-
ment, it brings him and Ishmael to their graves; not that they
died before the birth of his two grandsons, Jacob and Esau, as
the text has placed things (for Abraham lived till they were
fifteen years old, and Ishmael till they were Bixty-three), but
having no more to say of the father and the son, Moses here
concludes their history at once. — Lightfoot.
158
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2108. A. C. 1897 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx.-xxv. 11.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
But we certainly judge wrong- of the merits of any
author, when we suffer our prejudice to blind our under-
standing, and to hinder it from attending to its chief
drift and design. The great end which Moses had in
writing this part of his history was, to instruct the Jews
in their rise and original, their election and separation
from the rest of mankind; and therefore fit it was, when
he entered upon the history of their great founder
Abraham, in whom they became a peculiar people, a
chosen generation, and a royal priesthood, as the
apostle ! styles them, that he should lay aside his usual
conciseness, and endeavour to expatiate a little upon so
useful and so agreeable a subject.
The Spirit of God very well foresaw that Abraham's
character would become renowned in future generations ;
that not only the Jews, but several other nations, would
lay claim to him as their progenitor ; that not only the
saints and prophets in the Old Testament would make
him the chief pattern of faith and obedience to God's
commands, but that, even under the New, his example
would be propounded for our imitation, and 2 ' his
bosom' be made the happy receptacle of the souls of
the righteous between their death and their resurrection ;
and therefore it is no wonder that he led the holy pen-
man into a longer recital of the life and adventures of a
person who is styled ' the friend of God,' and ' father of
the faithful ;a who was the great founder of the very
nation he was now writing to ; whose sons were to be
kings and princes in their several distant countries, and
' in whose seed all the nations of the earth were to be
blessed.'
AYe must observe, however, that one great error in
those that have undertaken to vindicate the Holy Scrip-
1 1 Pet. ii. 9. 2 Matt. viii. 11.
a The Jewish writers tell us that Abraham was bred up in
the religion of the Zabii, who in those early times made images
or representations of the sun, moon, and stars to worship, and
that his father Terah was a maker and seller of these images ;
that Abraham, being well skilled in the astronomy of those
times, learned from thence that the celestial bodies could neither
make nor move themselves by their own power, but that there
was one only God, who created, preserved, and governed all
other things, and that therefore they ought to worship him
alone; that his father Terah going from home about particular
business, and leaving Abraham in the shop to sell the images,
he in his absence broke them all, except the largest of them ;
that upon this Terah, being angry, brought Abraham before the
chief king of the Assyrian monarchy, to be punished for this
crime; that the king, being one of the Magi, commanded
Abraham to worship the fire; and upon his refusal, ordered him
to be thrown into a hot burning furnace; but that Abraham
came out unhurt, in the presence, and to the admiration of them
all. Maimonides in Mor. Nevoc. b. 2. c. 29; Jad. Chaz. de
Jdololatria, c. 1. ; Shalsheleth, p. 8. ; Ii/chasin, part 9. fol. 1. —
But some think that this whole story lose from taking the word
Ur to signify the fire, as it is in the Hebrew, and thence inter-
preting the saying of God to Abraham in this manner: — 'I am
the Lord, that brought thee out of the fire of the Chaldeans, to
give thee this land to inherit it.' Since it is expressly said,
however, (Gen. xi. 31.) that Terah, Lot, Abraham, and Sarah
his wife, came all forth together out of Ur of the Chaldees, it
may therefore very properly be taken for a city dedicated to the
fire, which was there principally worshipped, and from thence
it might take its name.
tures is, their unwillingness to suppose any faults in the
lives of the ancient patriarchs ; and therefore they study
to apologize for every thing they did, and sometimes
labour even to consecrate their very vices. Their
opinion is, that the Holy Spirit has prescribed them as
patterns every way worthy of our imitation ; and there-
fore they think it a disparagement to the Scriptures
themselves if any blemish or defect should occur in
these men's characters, whereas the Scriptures have no
manner of concern in any such thing. Their purpose
is to represent mankind as they are, clothed with infir-
mities, and beset with temptations to sin; and it is a
glorious instance of their truth and veracity, when we
find the faults and failings of some of their greatest
worthies related as they really happened, and set in a
true light, without extenuation or excuse. " The most
celebrated of the saints of God," 3says St Austin, " are
not impeccable ; and from their faults there is no
arguing to the prejudice of the book in which, as we
find them recorded as matter of history, so we find them
condemned as matter of morality. God has informed
us," says he, " of what passed, but not authorized it,
and set the example before us, not for a pattern, but for
a warning."
Abraham, in the age wherein he lived, was certainly
accounted a man of great piety and worth. * We have
the testimony of several heathen authors in his favour ; *
and Berosus in particular,5 as he is quoted by Josephus,
gives us this character of him, namely, that in the tenth
generation after the flood there was a man among the
Chaldeans who was very just, and great, and sought
after heavenly things. But notwithstanding this, it must
be acknowledged, that in this instance of denying his
wife Sarah, he was guilty at least of a manifest dissi-
mulation.
It is in vain to say, c that she was really his sister by
another wife, whom his father Terah might marry after
the death of his mother; for this brings upon him the
charge of incest. It is in vain to say, 7 that as he was
a prophet, he was directed by the Holy Spirit to make
use of this subterfuge, in order to preserve his life ; for
this is making God the author of sin. It is in vain to
say, 8 that what he declared was truth, though not the
whole truth ; that he concealed what was proper, and
told nothing that was false ; because his declaring her
to be his sister was in effect denying her to be his wife,
which was a direct falsehood. Men certainly have a
right to conceal their sentiments, upon several occa-
sions, by a prudent silence; but whenever they make
3 Faustus, b. 22. c. 41. 4 See Grot, de Verit. b. 3. s. 16.
s B. 1. c. 8. 6 Calmet's Dictionary under the word Sarah.
7 See Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2, Essay 4.
8 Waterland's Scripture Vindication, part 1.
b Profane authors, if possible, say more in the praise and
commendation of Abraham than do the sacred ; but there is
reason enough to believe that their accounts are loaded witfl
fictions. Some have averred that he reigned at Damascus;
others, that he dwelt a long time in Egypt, and taught the
Egytians astronomy and arithmetic. Some say that he invented
letters and the Hebrew language ; that he was author of several
works, and, among others, of a famous book entitled "Jezira,''
or "the Creation:'" and among the Persians, so great a man
was he accounted, that the Magi, or worshippers of fire, believe
Zoroastres, who was their prophet, to be the same with the
patriarch Abraham. — Calmet's Dictionary.
Sect. I.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
159
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use of words, and pretend thereby to discover their
thoughts, they impose upon their hearers, if they do not
really express what they pretend ; and in this the very
formality of lying does consist, namely, in a settled
intention to deceive others. 1 "For whatever is said,
whether in itself it be true or false, whether it agrees
with the thoughts of the speaker or not, yet if it plainly
tends to deceive the hearer ; if he who says it perceives
the tendency, and accordingly uses it to this end, how-
ever disguised it is, under whatever forms it is expressed,
it is, to all intents and purposes, a lie."
It is in vain, then, to pretend to assoil the patriarch
from the imputation of lying or dissimulation in this
case ; but then this may be said in extenuation of his
fault, that it proceeded from a weakness of faith, and a
prevalency of fear, which are sometimes found to be
incident to the best of men. He considered himself as
a stranger among a licentious sort of people, and ex-
posed to the power of an arbitrary government; and,
from a principle of worldly caution, both to preserve
his own life and his wife's modesty, he concluded that
this would be the best expedient ; but much more wisely
had he done, had he committed the whole matter to
God's management, in reliance on his promises, and in
confidence of his protection.
It cannot, however, with any tolerable construction be
charged upon him, that he went about to betray his wife's
chastity, since, according to his present sentiments, he
took the most effectual method to prevent it. 2 For, in
declaring her to be his sister, he made it known that she
was committed to his care and disposal ; and from hence
he supposed it would come to pass, that if any of the
country was minded to make his addresses to the sister,
he would, of course, come and apply himself to the
brother. The first motions of love he knew were most
impetuous, and apt to hurry men into violence and out-
rage ; and therefore he thought with himself, that if he
should pass for her husband, such as were in love with
her would have no other way of accomplishing their
desires but at the expense of his life ; whereas, if he
passed for her brother, time might be gained, the
treaty of marriage prolonged, and several unforeseen
accidents happen, that might give the divine providence
a seasonable opportunity to interpose in his favour, as
we find it did.
Nor can the presents which both Pharaoh and Abime-
lech gave Abraham, upon the delivery of his wife, with
any justice, be imputed to his management ; since they
were voluntary acknowledgments for his interceding for
them ; oblations of gratitude for their recovery from the
eore plagues wherewith God had afflicted them ; and a
kind of commutation for the injury and affront they had
put upon persons so highly favoured by God, that 3 ' at
what time they went from one nation to another, from
one kingdom to another people, he suffered no man to
do them wrong, but reproved even kings for their
sakes.'
Hagar, according to the opinion of some of the rab-
bins, who love to magnify every matter, was one of the
daughters of Pharaoh king of Egypt, whom he sent along
1 Bishop Smalridge's Sermon on Lying.
' Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 4.
3 Psalm cv. 13, 14.
with Abraham, when he dismissed him so honourably.
She was an Egyptian indeed, very probably one of those
servants that were given to Abraham, and was employed
about Sarah's person as her waiting-maid : but we have
no grounds to think, that a woman of her extraction (had
she been Pharaoh's daughter) would have condescended
to serve in any capacity. However this be, Sarah see-
ing herself now grown old and barren, and knowing that
God had promised a numerous posterity to Abraham, be-
lieved that, in order to contribute to the accomplishment
of these promises, she ought to give her servant to him for
a wife ; and accordingly she is introduced as making the
first offer : * ' Behold now the Lord hath restrained me
from bearing, I pray thee go in unto my maid ; it may be,
that I may obtain children by her.' This proposal (as St
Chrysostom 5 observes,) and the soft manner of making
it, discovered a very uncommon love and respect to her
husband ; that she herself should persuade and urge him
to this expedient, in order to make him easy in that par-
ticular, which gave him so much disturbance, the want of
issue, the default of which she supposed to be owing to
herself: a and it was purely in compliance to this soli-
citation of hers, that he took Hagar to his bed. Sarah,
undoubtedly, was by far the more beautiful woman, at
least if so good judges as the king of Egypt and his sub-
jects may be depended on. Abraham had now lived many
years, without giving any occasion to have his modesty
and continence suspected. Hagar too was no more
than his wife's servant, and inferior to her in person as
much as in condition. In a short time after, when, upon
her conception, she grew undutiful to her mistress,
Abraham never interposed in her favour, but left her
entirely to her lady's discretion : from all which circum-
stances it appears that his taking Hagar to be his
concubinary wife, was not from any motive of sensuali-
ty, but from a true principle of conjugal affection to
Sarah.
6 God had indeed promised him the land of Canaan,
and a numerous issue to succeed him ; but whether the
son, from whom that issue was to spring, was properly
to be his own, or only adoptive ; or if his own, whether
begotten of Sarah or of some other woman, was not re-
vealed to him. Seeing, therefore, he had no children of
his own, and yet stedfastly believed the promises of
God, the only way that he could devise whereby to have
these promises accomplished, was by way of adoption ;
and therefore he says, 7 ' Lo ! one born in my house is
my heir ;' upon which God clears the first of these doubts
to him, namely, whether his seed was to be natural or
adoptive ; s ' This shall not be thine heir, but one that
4 Qen xv; 2. s I" Locum, Horn. 38.
6 Augustinus contra Faustum, b. 22. c. 32.
7 Gen. xv. 3. 8 Gen. xv. 4.
a The words of St Austin upon this occasion are very nervous and
very significant .— " Abraham used Hagar to rear an ofisprmg ; tor
him not to gratify his lust: he did not insult but rath.'.- complied
with the wishes of his wife, who believed that it would be a run-
fort for her barrel SB, if he should go in unto herrnaid, amce she
herself was incapacitated by old age. There is here no desire ol
wantonness— no disgraceful criminality; for the sake >of offspring
the maid is given by the wife to tf-fl husband, and, for tt
reason, is she ..reived by him."— De Civil. Dei, b. 16. c. «i
where he concludes with these exclamatory words, "Ovuum
viriliter utentem foeminis, conjuge temperanter, ancilla obtem-
perauter, nulla intemperanter."
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shall come forth out of thine own bowels, shall be thine
heir :' but still the second doubt remained, whether he
was to be his heir by Sarah, or by some other woman,
which, for the farther trial of his patience, God thought
proper to conceal. No wonder then if Abraham, (hav-
ing no longer hope of issue by his wife, finding her indeed
as impatient for a child as himself, and desirous to have
such a child as she might account her own, being begot-
ten by her husband and her maid,) yielded to her
importunity, not so much to please himself as to gratify
her desire. And this seems to be the reason why Sarah
made choice of a slave (as Hagar is called in the text)
rather than a free woman, to bring to her husband's bed,
namely, ' that the child which the former might happen
to bear, might, imputatively at least, be accounted hers ;
whereas one conceived by a woman that was free, would
properly belong to the mother herself.
Whether polygamy, in the age of the patriarchs, was
innocent or no, is a question that has much employed
the pens of the learned. a Most of the ancient fathers
of the church maintain its lawfulness, and 2 some of
our latter divines can hardly persuade themselves, that
a practice which the most holy and venerable men
ordinarily engaged in, and during that engagement
continued an intimate conversation and familiarity with
God ; a practice which God never blamed in them, even
when he sharply reproved other vices, and for which they
themselves never showed the least remorse or tokens of
repentance, should be detestable in the sight of God.
Our blessed Saviour, who has restored matrimony to its
primitive institution, has certainly declared it to be
criminal ; but whether it was so, under a less perfect
dispensation, is not so well agreed. At present, if we
suppose it only tolerated by God in the time of the pa-
triarchs, we shall soon perceive another inducement for
Abraham's complying with his wife's request ; and that
is, namely, the passionate desire for a numerous progeny,
which, in those days, was very prevalent ; so very pre-
valent that we find men accounting of their children as
their riches, their strength, their glory, and several
families reckoning them up with a sort of pride, and
placing the chief of their renown in the multitude of
them ; a ' For children, and the fruit of the womb, are an
heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord ; like as furrows
in the hand of a giant, so are young children. Happy
is the man that has a quiver full of them ; he shall not be
ashamed when he speaketh with enemies in the gate.'
1 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay C.
* See Saurin in Dissertation 19. 3 Ps. cxxvii. 3, &c.
a The words of St Ambrose, b. I.e. 4, concerning the patri-
arch Abraham, are very remarkable, and comprehend indeed the
sentiments of most of the rest: — " Let us consider, in the first
place, that before the existence of the law of Moses and the gos-
pel, no interdict was laid on adultery. The punishment of a
crime begins with the promulgation of a law prohibiting that crime.
It is not before but after the existence of a law, that there is any
condemnation of a culprit. Therefore Abraham did not sin
against a law, he only anticipated it. Although the Almighty
applauded the married state in paradise, yet he did not condemn
adultery." Durandus, Tostatus, Selden, Grothis, and others, are
clearly of opinion, that before the promulgation of the law, poly-
gamy was no sin ; but as their error turns upon this, that the
first institution of marriage between one pair in paradise was
not designed by God for a law, so have they received an ample
confutation from the learned Heidegger, in his Historia Patriar.
vol. I. Essay 1, and Essay 7. and vol. 2. Essay 6.
Thus the desire of a numerous issue, the entreaty of a
beloved wife, and the supposed innocence of concubinage
in that age, may, in some measure, plead Abraham's
excuse in assuming Hagar to his bed. But then, what
shall we say for his turning her away so abruptly, and in
a starving condition, after she had lived so long with him
in the capacity of a wife, and had borne him a son ? To
clear up this matter, we must inquire a little into the
time and occasion, as well as the manner and conse-
quence of this her dismission.
The whole account of this transaction is thus related
by the sacred historian. 4 ' And the child (meaning the
child Isaac) grew, and was weaned, and Abraham made
a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. And
Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had
born unto Abraham, mocking ; wherefore she said unto
Abraham, cast out this bond-woman and her son, for the
son of the bond-woman shall not be heir with my son,
even with Isaac. And the thing Mas very grievous in
Abraham's sight, because of his son. And God said unto
Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight, because of
the lad, and because of thy bond-woman ; in all that
Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice ; for
in Isaac shall thy seed be called : and also of the son
of the bond-woman will I make a nation, because he is
thy seed. And Abraham rose up early in the morning,
and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto
Hagar (putting it on her shoulder) and the child, and
sent her away, and she departed, and wandered in the
wilderness of Beersheba.'
What the manner of celebrating this weaning feast, or
feast of initiation was, we can only conjecture from
certain circumstances, and some parallel passages and
customs. There are no more than the weaning of Isaac,
and the weaning of Samuel, (two very extraordinary
persons, both foretold by the spirit of prophecy, and
both miraculously born,) which are taken notice of in the
sacred history. And (if we may be allowed to suppose
a parallel between them) as the feast at the weaning of
Samuel was a sacred feast, and kept 5 before the Lord,
(for the child was brought by his mother to the sanctuary,
there presented, and there initiated, or dedicated by the
high-priest, whereupon a sacrifice lirst, and then a feast
did ensue); so we may suppose, B I. That at the weaning
feast of Isaac, there was a burnt sacrifice, which Abraham,
as priest and prophet, might early in the morning- offer,
in order to sanctify both the feast and those that were to
communicate in it : 2. That there were changes of
raiment given to all the guests, and to all the servants,
to ke*p the feast in, and that, without the festival robes,
no one was allowed to sit down at the table : 3. That a
new sort of vesture was given to Isaac, as an habit of
distinction, by which he was declared heir of the family,
and the most honourable, next to his father : 4. That
there was a dedication of the child, or an holy initiation
of him, in a very religious and solemn maimer, performed
by both the parents : 5. That there was probably a
commemoration of the entertainment of angels in pil-
grim's habit, and of the joyful message then brought,
together with the killing of the fatted calf, and other
provisions made for them : and, 6. That upon this occa-
4 Gen. xxi. S, &c. 5 1 Sam. i. 24.
d Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, 24.
Sbct. I.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES,' &c.
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161
sion, there was certainly a sumptuous entertainment
made for their guests, suitable to the character of the
master of the feast, who was a prince as well as a pro-
phet, and answerable to the end and design of it, which
was to commemorate the highest divine blessing that
could be given, not to one family only, but to all the
generations of the world.
On this festival occasion, it was very probable, that
Sarah perceived Ishmael treating her son with contempt
and derision. The initiation of Isaac, and his father's
declaration concerning him, which Ishmael, who thought
he had a prior right, was not able to bear, was enough
to exasperate his rough nature to commit such rudeness,
as could not but break the merriment of the feast, and
thereupon provoke Sarah to exert her authority, by
showing the difference between the son of a bond-woman,
and the heir apparent of the family. I say, to exert her
authority ; l for as Hagar was Sarah's dotal maid -servant,
she was entirely at her disposal. Abraham had no cog-
nisance of her ; from his jurisdiction she was exempt, and
by marriage-articles (as we call it) reserved to her
mistress in property ; and therefore we find God inter-
posing in the affair, and advising Abraham, in all that
(I Sarah should say unto him, a to hearken to her voice.'
The expulsion of Hagar and her son is represented
indeed, by our translation, under circumstances some-
what dolorous ; but if Ave inquire into particulars, we
shall find them not near so full of distress as this repre-
sentation seems to make them. Abraham is said to have
sent them away early in the morning ; but this might be
done on purpose to prevent what might pass between
them, at so sorrowful a parting, from being observed by
too many eyes. He is said to have ' given them bread
and a bottle of water ;' but as bread and water include
eatables and drinkables of all kinds ; so there is no
doubt to be made but that Ishmael was able enough to
carry a handsome competency of provision for a few
days, or that his mother might very well carry a large
bottle of water, or other liquid, to support them for a
week or so, while they were travelling through the
wilderness. Their whole misfortune was, in mistaking
their way, and wandering about in the desert until their
water was consumed ; but this was a mere accident,
wherein Abraham had not the least concern.
Ishmael indeed is, in several places, called a child,
and from thence we may suppose, that he was a burden
and incumbrance to his mother : but if we look into his
age, we shall find that when Isaac was born, he was
fourteen ; and therefore, allowing two years between
Isaac's birth and his weaning, he could not be less than
sixteen when Abraham sent him and his mother away,
and was consequently a youth capable of being a support
and assistance to her. 3 For the circumstances of the
world we may observe, at this time, were such, that it
was an easy matter for any person to find a sufficient
and comfortable livelihood in it. Mankind were so few,
that there was in every country ground to spare ; so that
any one who had flocks or a family might be permitted
to settle any where to feed and maintain them, and so
grow, and increase, and become wealthy ; or creatures
1 Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, 32. Sec
also the note at the end of the Objection, c iii. of this book.
* Gen. xxi. 12. 3 Shuekl'oid's Connection, vol. 2. b. 7.
in the world were so numerous, that a person who had
no flocks or herds might, in the wilderness and unculti-
vated grounds (as Ishmael we find became an archer)
find game enough of all sorts whereby to maintain him-
self and his dependants, without doing any injury or
being molested for so doing.
Ishmael indeed had for sixteen years continued in
Abraham's family, and at first perhaps it might be dis-
puted, whether he or his brother Isaac should succeed to
their father's inheritance : but after that this point was
determined, and God himself had declared in the favour
of Isaac, he must of course have become Isaac's bond-
man or servant, had he continued in Abraham's family.
So that it was both kindly and prudently done of his
father, to take occasion, from Sarah's disgust against
him, to emancipate and set him free, by sending him
abroad to acquire an independent settlement, which was
all the provision that parents in those days could make
for their younger children. It was the same provision
that his father Abraham made for the sons which he after-
wards had by his wife Keturah ; for so we are told, that
4 ' he gave all that he had unto Isaac, but unto the sons
of his concubines he gave gifts, and sent them away from
Isaac his son, eastward, unto the east country.' Nay,
it was the same provision which Isaac made for his son
Jacob, though ho was the heir of the blessing. AVhen
he went from his father's house to Padan-Aram, we read
of no servants or equipage attending him, nor any accom-
modations prepared for his journey. He was sent (as
we call it now-a-days) to seek his fortune, s only
instructed to seek it among his kinsfolk and relations,
and he went to seek it upon so uncertain a foundation,
that we find him most earnestly praying to God to be
with him in the way he was to go, not to suffer him to
want the necessaries of life, but to ' give him bread to
eat, and raiment to put on ;' and yet we see, that by
becoming an hired servant to Laban, e he both married
his daughters, and in a few years became master of a
very considerable substance.
It is our mistake, in the customs of the times therefore,
that makes us imagine that Hagar and Ishmael had any
hard usage in their ejectment. Whatever the nature of
their offence might be, or whatever grounds Sarah might
have for her indignation against them, there is no reason
to accuse Abraham's conduct in this affair, since what he
did was pursuant to a divine direction, which he durst
not disobey ; was agreeable to the practice of the times
wherein he lived ; and no more than what all other fathers,
in those days, imposed upon their younger sons : since
the hardships they suffered were accidental, but the
benefits which accrued to them were designed : since
Abraham, by this means, rescued them from a state of
servitude for ever ; and, according to the divine predic-
tion, was persuaded that this would be the only expedient
to make of Ishmael a flourishing nation.
Abraham's great readiness to sacrifice his son, upon
the first signification of the divine pleasure, is an instance
of duty and obedience, not to be equalled in all the
records of history. Sanchoniatho indeed, (as be is
quoted by 7 Eusebius) tells us of one Chronus, king of
Phoenicia, who, in a time of great distress, and extreme
4 Gen. xxv. (i.
5 Gen. xviii.
Prasp. Evan. b. I. c JO.
x
a Gen xxx. 43.
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peril of war, took his son Jeud (which, according to the
Phoenician language, means only-begotten,) ami with
his own hand, sacrificed him on an altar of his own
erecting. But as a this action was certaiidy subsequent to
the times we are now speaking of, there are good reasons
to believe, that the whole account of it is no more than
a relation of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac,
bating some additions and mistakes. 1 For whereas it
is said of this Chronus, that he was the son of a father
who had three children ; that himself had one son only
by his wife, but more by other women ; that he circum-
cised himself and his family ; and that he sacrificed his
only son with his own hands ; all these circumstances
concur in the case of Abraham : the chief difference is,
that Chronus is by the Phoenicians called Israel, which
was properly the name of Abraham's grandson ; but this
is a small mistake, considering that most of the heathen
writers had a general notion, that Israel was the name
of some one famous ancestor of the Israelites, but were
not exact in fixing it upon the right person.
2 The only instance which seems any way to come near
the case before us, is that of Agamemnon's consenting
that his daughter Iphigenia should be sacrificed ; but the
disparity soon appears, if we consider that Agamemnon,
in all probability, had other children, and a queen neither
barren nor old, and yet, sore against his will, did he
comply, and perhaps for fear of provoking his subjects
in arms ; nor could he bear the sight of his daughters
last minutes, though he attained thereby his end, namely,
the gratification of his ambitious views in the war wherein
he was embarked. Whereas Abraham had no other, nor
could expect any other children by his wife, but this son,
who was a pledge from heaven of all the glorious bless-
ings that God had promised him ; and yet, upon this
harsh command, we find him in no uneasiness or confu-
sion, but perfectly composed and easy, fixed and resolved
to put it in execution, and waving the weapon in his own
arm, stretched out to take away his own child's life ;
though he could not but foresee, that by such an inhuman
act, he would not only exasperate his own family against
him, but expose himself likewise to the hatred and indig-
nation of all the nations round about him.
The truth is, several examples there have been, espe-
cially of persons of a public character, who have sacri-
ficed themselves, or their nearest relations : but what has
it been to ? even to desperation, or the apprehension of
human force and power ; to a wicked and superstitious
custom ; to pride and vainglory ; or to the hopes of
preventing or stopping some dreadful and public cala-
mity ; but the case of Abraham is so singularly circum-
stantiated, that none of all these can be imputed to it :
the only motive we can possibly imagine, must have been
1 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 6.
s Bibliotheea Biblica, vol. 1. Occas. Annot. 28.
a A learned author, in his ' Connection of Sacred and Profane
History/having by two different ways of computation, proved that
Abraham was older than Chronus, subjoins these words: " And
thus, by both these accounts, Chronus cannot be more ancient
than Abraham, rather Abraham appears to be more ancient than
he: and this must be allowed to be more evidently true, if we
consider that it was not Chronus the son of Ouranus, who made
this sacrifice of his only son, but rather Chronus who was called
Israel, and was the son of Chronus called Illus; and therefore
still later by one generation." — Vol. 2. b. 6.
his earnest desire to testify his obedience to God in all,
even his most arduous commands.
How he could certaiidy know that such a command
came from God will best appear, by inquiring a little b
into the several ways wherein we find God revealing
himself to this beloved patriarch. And to this purpose
we must observe, that at first he left his own country and
kindred by the express command of God, and went into
a strange land which God had promised to give his pos-
terity. We are not told, indeed, in what manner God
appeared to him, when he gave him this command ; but
we can hardly think that a person of his gravity and
years would incline to seek unnecessary adventures ; nor
can we imagine why his aged father should accompany
him in them, unless there was a manifest conviction that
the call was from God.
After he had been for some time settled in Haran,
long enough to have his family and fortune increased in
it, and probably long enough to like it, and be contented
with it, God commands him thence into another strange
country, in all appearance no better than that where he
then was, and consequently none of his own option ; and
there he appeared to him the second time, and renewed
his former promise of giving him the land whereunto he
had thus conducted him.3
After this, when he was driven by famine into Egypt,
God sufficiently manifested his signal protection of him,
2 Revelation Examined, vol. 2. Dissertation 8.
b The usual ways recorded in the Old Testament, of God's
revealing himself to his servants, were by dreams, by voices, and
by apparitions. 1. Dreams are, in some places, called visions,
and visions of the night; because persons, under this form of
revelation, saw things, and heard voices, as plainly, to all ima-
gination, as if they had been awake: but what sort of ideas and
images affected their minds at such a time, and how they dis-
tinguished divine dreams from such as were purely natural, we
are nowhere told ; only, if we may be allowed to conjecture,
1st, Such dreams as were divine had none of those confused and
idle phantoms which are found in other dreams, but distinctly
represented to their minds whatever things or beings God was
pleased to send, without any mixture of foreign images or words:
2dly, They were more lively than any other dreams; their
images were strong and vigorous, and fixed deeply in the soul;
and, 3dly, They were either attended with the voices of God, or
angels speaking distinctly to them, or had some particular instinct
always accompanying them. 2. Voices were frequently heard,
without any appearance or representation, and proceeded some-
times from the clouds, from out of the fire, out of the whirl-
wind, &c, in which cases, to judge of the veracity of a reve-
lation, it was generally thought that when the voice was
greater than any human voice, (as it was on the top of the
mountain when God delivered the law,) or proceeded from a
place where no human creature was, (as in the instance before,)
that it came either from God himself, or from some messenger
sent from heaven. 3. At other times, a figure, or resem-
blance has appeared to persons awake, talked with them, and
done several things in their company, as if it had been a
human creature ; and yet the event has shown, that it was either
God himself, or an angel concealed in human shape. And in
this case, the way of discerning them seems to have been, either
by the air and majesty of their looks, (as in the angel that
appeared to Manoah's wife,) or by some miraculous actions that
were above the power of human performance (as in that whicll
appeared to Gideon.) In any of these methods of revelation,
where these several circumstances concurred, it was always pcr-
sumed, that the dream, or voice, or vision, was from God: since
it is not to be supposed that He, who sees and hears all things,
and himself is a lover of truth, would ever suffer those that love
and fear him, to be imposed upon by evil spirits, or even per-
plexed by the fantastical operations of nature itself. — See my
Body of Divinity, part 2. c. 3. — Ed.
Sect. I.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES' &<
IGCJ
A. M. 2018. A. C. 1897 ; OK, ACCORDING TO HALliS
by plaguing Pharaoh and his house upon his account.
Upon his return to Canaan, he renewed his assurance of
giving him the promised land ; and then it is said, that
' die word of the Lord came to him in a vision,' wherein
the promise of an heir, and a numerous posterity, is
added to that of Canaan ; and as Abraham requested a
sign in confirmation of all this, so God was pleased to
comply with his request ; and accordingly again he
appears to him in a vision, repeats again the promise to
him, supports the promise by a miracle, and confirms a
covenant by fire from heaven, to consume the sacrifice
which he had commanded him to offer.
Again, when Abraham was ninety-nine years old, God
appeared to him ; and that his appearance was in some
visible form or figure, is sufficiently clear from the text ;
which tells us, ' that Abraham fell upon his face while
God conversed with him.' Here Isaac is promised, and
circumcision instituted, a painful, hazardous rite, which
the patriarch would never have complied with, but from
a full conviction of a divine command.
After this he appeared unto him under the tree of
Mamre, in the shape of a pilgrim ; and by his whole
conversation with him, concerning the fate and iniquity
of Sodom, discovered himself to be God, or (to speak
more properly) the Messias in human shape. Soon after
iliis he appeared to Abimelech in Abraham's behalf, and
inflicted a distemper upon his whole house, which was
removed upon Abraham's prayer ; and, soon after this,
God's promise of an heir was fulfilled, in the birth of a
son from a barren woman, which was a proof equivalent
to a thousand miracles.
Once more, God commanded Abraham to comply with
his wife's request, in casting out Hagar and her son,
though the text implies that he loved them both very
tenderly. This was a command so seemingly cruel and
severe, that nothing but a full conviction of its coming
from God could have exacted Abraham's submission to
it : and now, after all these manifestations of himself to
the patriarch, God commands him to offer up his son
Isaac ; and will any one say that Abraham, by this time,
had not sufficient evidence that this command was of the
same original with the rest? God had, some way or
other, appeared and manifested himself to him nine times
before this command. Twice in vision, twice in miracle,
twice under some sensible appearance, thrice in some
manner not explained. He had given him three preced-
ing commands, which no man in his senses could obey,
without full assurance that they were enjoined from
above. He had often before this time called to him,
spoken to him, conversed with him, and, on one occasion,
very familiarly and long ; and, as we may reasonably
suppose, that he always spoke with the same voice,
there is no doubt to be made, but that he certainly knew
that it was God who spake to him upon this occasion.
For why should Abraham suspect that God Almighty
would suffer an evil spirit to delude him into the greatest
and most irretrievable calamity, acting in the honesty
and sincerity of his heart, and from a principle of the
most exalted obedience to the divine will ? In so long
a succession of miracles, discourses, and appearances,
he must have acquired as certain and perfect a know-
ledge of the Deity, whenever he vouchsafed to reveal
himself to him, as another man has of his friend, when he
A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CM. xx-xxv. II
hears his voice, and converses in his presence. And if
Abraham was fully satisfied in this, his obedience could
not fail of being built upon a good foundation.
It is allowed, indeed, that there is something shocking,
at first sight, in the idea of a parent's taking away
the life of his own child; but then an express ,„.,.-
mand from a competent authority alters the case, and
makes that, which otherwise would be a sin, become a
duty. It may justly be said, that he is a barbarous
parent, who commands his children to be beat to death
with rods before his eyes. — This position is undoubtedly
true in the general ; but does it follow, from hence, that,
the first Brutus was either a bad man or a bad parent,
for commanding his sons to be served in this Banner,
when the duty he owed to his country required it ? And
did Abraham owe less duty to God than Brutus owed \<>
his country? A captain, who would command his
valiant and victorious son to be put to death, for exirt-
ing his prowess upon the enemies of his country, must
surely be a monster among men. This position, laid
down without any limitation, is undeniably true : but will
it therefore follow, that Manlius was a monster, though
he put his son to death for killing Geininius, general of
the Latins, contrary to the discipline of the war ? And
yet it would badly become us to say, that the discipline
of war is a stronger obligation than an express, positive,
unerring command, from the great Ruler of the world,
the sovereign Arbiter of life and death.
So good a man as Abraham is represented could not
but antecedently be satisfied, that a Being of infinite
wisdom and goodness could give no command that
would ultimately terminate in calamity upon innocence
and obedience; and, therefore, when a command of an
intricate and mysterious nature was given him, what had
he to do but to obey? He knew this son whom God
now demanded was given him in an extraordinary man-
ner, and why might he not be taken away in a manner as
extraordinary? And when he was taken away, he very-
well knew that God could again restore him in a manner
yet more extraordinary ; and that raising him from the
grave had no more difficulty with infinite power than
raising him from the womb of a woman barren at lirst,
and now, by the course of nature, long past the power of
conception; which makes St Raul's reflection a lively
comment upon the principles of Abraham's obedience <m
this occasion: l< By faith Abraham, when he m tried,
offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises
offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said,
that in Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting that
God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from
whence also he received him in a figure.1
And this, by the bye, suggests g reason why the belj
patriarch, who, in other cases, was charitable enough t<>
intercede for the wicked, does not so much as oiler up
one petition for the life of his innocent son. He had
that true sense of the power and veraciu of God, mat
he was fully persuaded, that the fate of hil child, and
the tenor of God's promises, would, one way or oilier,
be made consistent : and, therefore, he left it upon Lis
infinite wisdom to find out the means of unravelling this
intricate affair, without ever once murmuring, or making
tli.' lea-t remonstrance. But, supposing that Abraham
■Heb. xi. 17, fcc.
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had taken upon him to expostulate with God upon this
hard injunction ; yet 1 what could he have urged, but that
the person whom he ordered him to slay was his son, his
only son, his son whom he tenderly loved, and that he
could not, without the greatest force upon paternal affec-
tion, lay violent hands upon him. But now, all pleas of
this kind were fully anticipated by the divine command,
' Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
Iovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer
him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains,
which I will tell thee of;' that is, " notwithstanding he
is thy son, thine only son, and a son thou hast set thine
heart upon, yet must thou sacrifice him unto me."
In the case of Sodom, Almighty God is represented
as deliberating and undetermined ; and there Abraham's
humanity and the rectitude of his mind were at liberty,
nay, were engaged to interpose ; but in the case of his
own son, God appeared fixed and determined, and there
his humility, and the deference due to his God, forbade
him to expostulate. Not to say, that if he erred in the first
case, he knew it was the error of an upright, a humane,
and a generous spirit ; but an error in the latter would be
the effect of partiality and self-interest ; and Abraham's
heart was too honest, and too enlarged, to allow him in
a conduct that could any way fall under the suspicion of
such mean and sordid principles. This seems to vindi-
cate the conduct of Abraham in paying a ready obedi-
ence to the divine command ; but then, what shall we
say to the goodness and justice of God in imposing it ?
God indeed governs himself by the eternal rules of
reason ; and can give no command in contradiction to
them ; but then common sense tells us, that these are
rules not of human reason, but divine ; and consequently
such rules as must result from the relation which the
whole universe, and all the parts thereof, have to one
another ; an immense compass and variety of things,
which nothing but infinite wisdom can comprehend !
And therefore we take quite wrong measures, when we
estimate the nature and perfections of God from Avhat we
find in ourselves ; for ' as the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways, and his
thoughts higher than our thoughts.'
Upon the supposition, however, that God really in-
tended that Abraham should have taken away his son's
life, there could have been no injustice in the injunction ;
since God, who is the author and giver of life, has .an
undoubted right to resume it, when, and in what manner
he thinks fit ; and his infinite wisdom and goodness
secure us from all suspicion of his taking it away arbi-
trarily or unlawfully : so that had the command been
.actually executed, we must have supposed it to have been
wise, just, and good; because a divine command neces-
sarily implies wisdom, and justice, and goodness, in the
highest degree, though the reason of that command should
not not appear to such limited, short-sighted creatures
as we are.
But this was not the case. God never intended that
this command should be put in execution. His only
purpose was, to make a trial of Abraham's obedience,
not to inform himself, in any thing, who was omniscient,
and knew beforehand, both what was in Abraham's
heart, and how he would acquit himself in this important
1 Revelation Examined, vol. 2. Dissertation S.
juncture ; but to make him more perfect by suffering, and
his example more conspicuous, s ' that the trial of his
faith,' as the apostle words it, ' being much more pre-
cious than of gold, that perisheth, (though it be tried by
fire,) might be found unto praise, and honour, and
glory ;' and that all future generations, reading the his-
tory of his patience and perseverance, his courage and
constancy, his faith and hope, and magnanimity, might
glorify God in him, and look upon his example as a
shining light, which the hand of Providence has set up
in the firmament of his church, to guide succeeding saints
in the intricate and arduous paths of their duty.
Those who would gladly find any flaw in our patri-
arch's character, are apt to suggest, that his desiring of
God a sign concerning the land of Canaan, which had
been so lately promised to him, (3 ' whereby shall I know
that I shall inherit it ?') proceeded from a defect of faith,
for which, as some pretend, he was so renowned. But
without straining any point to get over this difficulty, we
may fairly own, that Abraham is here doing no more
than what many worthies of old are known to have done
after him, when they were put upon any difficult services ;
namely, requesting of God some outward token or repre-
sentation, to strengthen and confirm his faith concerning
the divine promises, which is an argument of modesty,
not of any diffidence in the divine veracity ; and there-
fore the words are very properly paraphrased by St
Chrysostom : " I firmly believe, that what thou hast pro-
mised shall come to pass ; and therefore I ask no ques-
tions out of distrust ; but I shall be glad to be favoured
with some such token or anticipation of it, as may
strongly affect my senses, and raise my poor weak ideas
and imaginations about it."
Those that are disposed to find faults are always pro-
vided with an handle ; otherwise one would wonder that
Abraham's making groves the constant place of divine
worship, should be ever brought as an accusation against
him, merely because, in after ages, they came to be
perverted into scenes of the grossest superstition and
idolatry : or that, because his intention to offer up his son
gave umbrage to human sacrifices afterwards, he should
be thought chargeable with the event. The groves of
Moreh and Mamre, which were the principal ones that he
planted, were 4 (as we hinted before) certain oratories
or sanctuaries, exposed to the open air, 5 but planted with
trees for the benefit of their shade, and for the more
solemn composure of the mind, and recollection of the
thoughts for heavenly contemplation. Before the institu-
tion of more commodious receptacles for divine worship,
these, and such like places, were usually frequented for
that purpose ; and therefore they had sometimes the
name given of ' the houses of God,' ' the courts of God,'
and their trees were called ' the trees of God.' In these
places it was that Abraham offered up his morning and
evening sacrifice with acceptance; and if, in after ages,
they came to be applied to abominable purposes, he is
no more to be blamed for that abuse, than Moses was for
setting up a brazen serpent in the wilderness, which was
afterwards perverted to idolatry, though in its primary
intendment, it was sanative and medicinal.
And in like manner, if the custom of sacrificing chil-
8 1 Pet. i. 7. 3 Gen. xv. 8. 4 See p. 143, in the notes.
5 Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, 20.
Sect. L] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. ML 2I0S. A. C. 1897; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx.-xxv. u.
165
dren took its origin from some tradition founded on the
history of Isaacs being offered, wherein, I pray, is
either Abraham to be blamed, or God, for appointing
him to this office ; since, whether the custom was prior
or subsequent to this transaction, God has herein taken
an effectual care to discountenance it ?
1 For if, as some imagine, this impious and abomin-
able rite obtained at this time, it is evident that nothing
could be better calculated to abolish it than this command
to Abraham, which was a plain document to the whole
world, that human sacrifices were not acceptable to God :
for if they could be acceptable from any hand, they must
certainly have been so from his, who, of all men in the
world, stood highest in the favour of Almighty God.
And therefore, when it appears in the event, that this
command was only in trial of obedience ; and that when
it came to the point of execution, Abraham was expressly
forbid to execute it by a voice from heaven ; and (to
show God's aversion to human sacrifices) by his appoint-
ment, a brute animal was substituted in the place of
Isaac ; when all this is considered, I say, we can hardly
think of a clearer monition to mankind upon this head,
than God's own prohibition of that practice by a com-
mand from heaven, and a miraculous interposition of a
vicarious oblation.
On the other hand, if this impious custom had not yet
obtained, but God, in his great knowledge, foresaw that
superstition would soon introduce it ; what could be a
more effectual means, either to prevent or repress it, than
the attestation of all Abraham's dispersed servants and
descendants,- vouching every Avhere with one voice, that
God himself had prohibited their master from practising
it. And it is not improbable (from the fable of the god-
dess Diana's substituting a deer in the room of Iphigenia,
who was to be offered,) that the memory of God's prohi-
biting all human sacrifices was handed down to late
posterity.
Thus we have endeavoured to vindicate some passages
in Abraham's life which seemed most liable to exception ;
rind come now to inquire into the obnoxious part of the
conduct of his nephew Lot.
2 It is not to be doubted, but that Lot, who, by the
assistance of his uncle Abraham, had done such signal
services to the Sodomites, was by this time become a per-
son of some eminence among them; had probably
married a woman of a principal family, and was admit-
ted into some considerable post of honour and authority.
The Jewish doctors will needs persuade us, that he was
now one of the judges in Sodom, and, as such, sat at
the gate of the city, where the courts of judicature were
usually held. His sitting at the gate, however, seems
rather to have been (according to the hospitality of those
days) with an intent to invite strangers into his house,
the better to secure them from the libidinous outrage of
his neighbours.
Two strangers (who afterwards proved two angels) he
had now under his roof, when the inhabitants, from all
parts of the city, docking together, stormed the house,
and demanded the two strangers to be brought out to
them, that they might abuse their bodies : whereupon
Lot, deeply concerned lest the right of hospitality should
1 Revelation Examined, vol. 2. Dissertation 8,
3 Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, 21.
be violated, is resolved to expose both himself and his, to
the utmost peril, rather than those whom he bad taken un-
der his protection should come to any harm. Upon this
principle he ventures out of doors alone among this lewd,
licentious rabble, that he might calmly expostulate the
matter with some of the chief of tln-m, and divert them
if possible, from the violence they intended against his
guests.
The offer which he made them upon this occasion,
namely, to give up his two daughters to their hist,
to be a strange one ; but then we are to consider, that bi
it was made in the utmost perplexity of mind, and out of
a vehement desire to secure his guests ; so may it, after
all, imply no more than this, — " God forbid, my friends,
that you should make yourselves guilty of a crime of so
high a nature, as to offer the least indignity to these
noble strangers whom I have received into my house, and
whom I therefore cannot put in your power upon any
terms whatever. Much rather had I part even with iny
own dear daughters, who are in my power, and who are
also marriageable, than with those whom I am not
authorized to dispose of. therefore, I beseech \ on,
brethren, deal not so foolishly in this matter, but consi-
der what you are now going to do ; and since, of two
evils, it is better to commit the less than the greater, are
there not women among you whom ye may choose for tin-
satisfying the desires of your flesh, and not sin against
the order of nature ? But if there are none found that
can please you, and you will nevertheless persist, I pro-
test to you, sirs, I will sooner lose my own children,
with all that I have in the world, than even once consent
to depart from my word, which I have given to these
worthy persons. Therefore do as you please w ith me
and mine, seeing that I am in your hand ; only touch
not these." a This seems to be, in a great neaaUTO,
the purport of Lot's proposal to the men of Sodom : and
yet, with all this mollification, it has not unjustly incurred
the censure of 3 St Austin. " We must not consider,"'
says he, " the offer which Lot. made to the inhabitants
of Sodom, as proceeding from a wise, sober, and a | 're-
meditated design, but rather as a speech which dropped
from a man struck with horror at the thoughts of the
abominable sin they were going to commit, and who, I>y
the surprise and trouble that he was in, had lost the use
of his reason and discretion. For if once we lay
it down for a rule, that there may be a enmpensation of
sin (as he calls it,) that is, that we may commit less sins,
in order to prevent others from running into greater,
we shall in a short time lay waste all bounds, and sea
every manner of wickedness come rushing in upon us
without control."
;l In Cell. vol. 4. Qu:est. 16 ; el coiitia Meiidatinm, e. 9, it e. 7.
a Le Clerc, in liis commentaries upon 1 1 •« ■ [dace, uslgns soo-
ther reason why Let might, with better courage, males an ofikr
of his daughters t.. the Sodomites. Per, supposing him to be a
considerable man in US eity. and hi. daughter! both be)
fas we find they were betrothed, Gen. six. 14.} to two young
gentlemen of eminence, lie might safety propose the th
knowing very well that they neither durst, nor would ;>•
it That they durst not, for hex of punishment Gram pi i
their rank and authority; and that they would not,
then in Iniquity (however outrageous they maj be against others)
affect always to maintain tome form ,.f decency between thera-
selvea Bui it is hard, to say what persona of tl" ir eon.,
would either have been afraid. or ashamed to do, had the '
their inclination tended that way.
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After the destruction of Sodom, and Lot's departure
from Zoar, he retired, we are told, into a cave, where
his two daughters betrayed him into the double sin of
drunkenness and incest ; and with what design they did
it, ' the authors who would fain apologize for their con-
duct do generally run into this strain, namely, that
these two maids having some notions of a general con-
flagration of the world, and seeing their own city and
country consumed by fire, were fully persuaded that the
divine indignation, which had consumed the Sodomites,
had fallen over the face of the whole earth, and that
their father was the only man left from whose body
mankind was to be repropagated. They were young
and inexperienced, say they, and might therefore very
well be ignorant that several parts of the earth were
inhabited, as well as the plain of Sodom had been. As
far as their eye would reach, they saw nothing but sul-
phureous flames, and a wide theatre of perdition ; and
this they looked upon as the final catastrophe which, as
they had been told, was to put a period to nature.
They had unaccountably lost their mother too ; so that
they concluded that they and their father were the only
survivors of human nature (as Noah and his family had
been after the flood), and that therefore it was their
duty to take care to prevent the extinction of the species.
And though they knew it to be a very grievous sin in
itself, to betray their own father into a carnal knowledge
of themselves; yet they thought they should be more
inexcusable, if they should rate the chasteness of their
bodies so high, as not to part with it rather than man-
kind should be no more.
But all this is no more than a plausible fiction,
without any foundation to support it. They had lately
left Zoar, and knew that it was well inhabited; and
were therefore convinced that they and their father were
not the only three persons left alive in the world : but
this they knew very well, 8that there was not so much
as one of all their kindred left, by whom they could
raise up seed or successors to their father; those of
their father's side being at a vast distance from them;
and those of their mother's, every one destroyed in the
conflagration of Sodom.
Now, it was at that time an universal law, which
became afterwards a particular one of the Jews, that
marriages should be contracted within the family, to
preserve inheritances, and to avoid the mixture of seeds ;
so that the two sisters here argued very justly upon the
principles then universally admitted, that is, upon the
general law of nations. For seeing they had no brother
to keep up their name and family, and their father had
lost their mother, by whom he might have had other
children, and they themselves their husbands, before
consummation, in the common destruction, there was no
apparent possibility of preserving their father's family
from utter extinction after their three lives, or of avert-
ing the sad curse of excision, but by the very method
which at last they concerted between them. So that
they had the plea of necessity on their side, to excuse,
if not to justify them ; and that they were not led by
any spirit of uncleanness to this action, we have these
1 Origen's Horn. 5. p. 15. col. 2.; St Ambrose de Abrahama,
b. 1.; and St Chrysostom's Horn, in locum.
* Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1.; Occasional Annotations, 23.
presumptions to believe; — that in the midst of all the
impurities of the most wicked city under heaven, they
had preserved their innocence and virginity ; that they
unanimously joined together in the same contrivance,
whereas vicious intrigues are seldom communicated,
and whenever they are, always occasion quarrels ; that
which they did once they never repeated, and so cannot
be suspected of having been incited by brutal lust; and,
lastly, that they were so far from being conscious to
themselves of having acted upon any base and sinful
inducement, that in the names of their children they
took care to perpetuate the memory of it to posterity,
which they never would have done had they thought it a
reproach to their father's name.
Their father too, in the matter of incest, may in some
measure be excused, forasmuch as he offered no violence
to his daughters, but was altogether passive, and im-
posed upon by them ; but then, it must be considered,
that had he not allowed himself to drink to excess, it
had not been in the power of his daughters to deceive
him. The daughters indeed, without this expedient,
could not have attained their end; but then the unjusti-
fiableness of the means desecrates the end, even though
it were good and laudable before. The short is, both
father and daughters, in this whole transaction, were
not without sin : and therefore, whatever may be said in
mitigation of their faults, we mistake the matter widely
if we think that the sacred history, in barely relating
them, means either to approve or commend them.
It cannot be denied, indeed, but that sundry difficul-
ties occur in the character of Melchizedek, as he is
described in the Holy Scriptures ; but there is certainly
no incongTuity in his being both king and priest in one
person. For if we cast our eye into any ancient writer,
we shall find that, before the institution of a separate
order of men, the regal and sacerdotal offices both went
together; and that lie who was appointed to govern the
affairs of the state, had always a right to minister about
holy things. This is an observation that the wTitings of
Homer will verify in almost innumerable instances ; but
(to mention but one out of each of his poems) after
Agamemnon was constituted the head of the Grecian
army,3 we find him every where in the public sacrifices
performing the priest's office, and the other Grecian
kings and heroes bearing their parts under him in the
administration : and 4 when Nestor made a sacrifice to
Minerva, Stratius and the noble Echephron led the bull
to the altar ; Aretus brought the water and canisters of
corn ; Perseus brought the vessel to receive the blood ;
Thrasymedes, son of Nestor, knocked down the ox ; but
Nestor himself acted as priest, and performed the rest
of the ceremony.
If we look into some of the best historians, we shall
find this point more confirmed. For among the Lace-
demonians, whenever they went to battle, the king,
according to 5 Plutarch, always performed the sacrifice ;
and in the army, as Xenophon6 informs us, his chief
business was, to have the supreme command of the
forces, and to be their priest in the offices of reli-
gion. In the time of the heroes, says Aristotle,7 the
custom was for one and the same person to be general
3 Iliad 3. Iliad 8. et in aliis locis. * Odyss. 3.
In Lycurgo. 6 De Ilupub. Lacedcem. ' Polit. b. I.
Skct. I.]
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of the forces, judge, and high priest, according- to that
known verse in l Virgil, " Anius, both king of men and
priest of Apollo." So that, in short, from any thing
that appears in history, we have no reason to think that
until some ages after Homer, mankind had any other
public ministers in religion but those who were the kings
and governors of the state.
There were indeed, in ancient times, many little
islands and small tracts of land where civil government
was not set up in form ; but the inhabitants lived
together in peace and quiet, under the direction of some
eminent person, who ruled them by wise admonitions,
and by instructing them in the great principles of reli-
gion ; and the governors of these countries aftected a to
be called priests rather than kings. But if, at any time,
tiiey and their people came to form a political society,
upon more express terms and conditions, then we lind
these sort of persons called both priests and kings.
These small states, indeed, could have but little power
to support themselves against the encroachment of their
neighbours. Their religion was their greatest strength :
and therefore it was their happiest circumstance that
their kings or governors were reputed sacred by their
neighbours, and so highly favoured by God for their
great and singular piety, that it was thought a dangerous
thing to violate their rights, or injure the people under
their protection.
Such a king as this was the great Melchizedek, who
came out to congratulate the patriarch Abraham : and it
is no bad conjecture of some, that he was called the
king of Salem, not so much upon account of Salem's
being the proper name of any determinate place, the
seat of his dominion, as that in general it signified
peace ; and that therefore Melchizedek was ' the king
of peace,' or ' the peaceable king ;' because the sacred-
ness of his character secured him from being invaded
by his neighbours, and his wise administration kept all
things in good order, so that he was never molested by
his subjects.
This, however, is no more than a conjecture ; because
it is certain that there were two places in Palestine
which went under that name ; the one, the same with
that which was afterwards called Jerusalem, and the
other, a town lying upon the banks of the river Jordan,
not far from the place 2 where John (our Saviour's
forerunner) is said to have baptized. Here formerly
were seen the ruins of the palace of this Melchizedek,
which in the time of St Jerome, as he tells us, discovered
the magnificence of its structure ; and, upon that father's
authority, several modern authors have gone into the
opinion that this place was the metropolis of that prince.
But since that city, even according to the testimony of
the same St Jerome, was quite demolished by Abime-
lech, it is hardly conceivable how such remarkable
remains should be of so long continuance, and yet
escape the observation of Josephus, who was no uudili-
gent inquirer into the antiquities of the Jewish nation ;
1 Mn. iii. v. 80. ■ John iii. 22.
a Thus Jethro is called by Moses, not the king, hut the
priest of Midian; and thus Chryses, the priest of Apollo at
Clnysa, and not the king of Chrysa, though both he and Jethro
were the governors of the countries whore they lived. — *!iuclt-
ford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 6.
and yet his express declaration is, that Melchizedek
8 W88 king of Solyma, which is now called Jerusalem.
It is the much more probable opinion, therefore, 4 that
this palace was built by Jeroboam, when he repaired
Salem, and that the inhabitants (possibly the Samaritans)
in after ages, either devised or promoted a false tradi-
tion, that it originally belonged to Melchizedek. For
the general consent of the ancients give it clearly for
Jerusalem, as duly considering that Abraham's route, in
returning from the territories of Damascus to Hebron,
was directly through its coasts, (whereas the other Salem
lay devious to the north,) and that there was a kind of
propriety in the mystery, and what the analogy of the
thing seemed to require, that Melchizedek should be
king of that very place in which the true Prince of Peace
(whereof he was a type and representation) was in future
ages to make his appearance.
Who this Melchizedek was, is still an hard question
that has puzzled most interpreters. The author to the
Hebrews indeed has recorded a description of him : but
this is so far from giving us any light, that it has, in a
great measure, been the occasion of leading some into a
persuasion, 5 that the person here called Mclchi/edrk
was an angel ; others, that he was the Son of God ; ami
others, that he was the Holy Ghost, in the shape and
appearance of man ; because they cannot conceive how
the qualities ascribed to this excellent personage can
comport with any human creature. The phrase, however,
made use of by the apostle, dyevsx'ho'yiiTo;, without
descent, or without genealogy , explains what the apostle
means by, ' without father, and without mother,' that is,
b without any father or mother mentioned in the genealo-
gies of Moses, where the parents of all pious worthies
are generally set down with great exactness: 7 10 tint
there being no genealogy at all of Melchizedek recorded
in Scripture, he is introduced at once ; even like a man
dropped down from heaven, for so the description goes
on, ' having neither beginning of days, nor end of life,'
that is, in the history of Moses, which (contrary to its
common usage when it makes mention of great men)
takes no notice at all of the time either of his birth or
death ; and herein ' he is made like unto the Son of <""!.
that is, by the history of Moses, which mentions him
appearing and acting upon the stage, without either
entrance or exit, as if, like the Son of God, he had
abode a priest continually.
This is the common, and c the best approved interpre-
II,
3 Antiquities, b. I. c. 11.
4 Heidegger's Hist. Patriarch, vol. 1. Essay 2.
5 See Calmet's and Saurin's Dissert on M.Uhi/edek.
degger's Hist. Patriarch, vol. 8.
6 From the times of Epiphanius then were nanus invented
for the father and mother of Melchisedek. To Ul father m
given the name of Heraclas, or Heracles ; to his niuthtr that of
Astaroth, or Astaria.— Caluu-t's Dutuman/.
7 Scott's Christian Life, part %, C ?.
c The learned Heidegger, in my opinion, ha- taken lbs right
method to explain tin's difficult passage of St Paul to the Hebrews.
He supposes (as there n ally is) a twofold Melchisedek, the one
historical, whereof Moms gives "- an account in the l Ith chapter
of Genesis, as thai bs was the king as well as priest ol Jerosa.
lem; the other allegorical, whom St Peal describes in Ike words
now under consideration, and thai allegorical person is Christ.
The word Mttddmedtk, simply considered, means tts king ef
righteousness; and from tin- sense of the word, in its ap|
acceptation, and the remembrance of this person's being a priest
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tation of the apostle's words ; but still the question
returns upon us, to whom can this character, even with
this comment, belong.
The Jews are generally of opinion, and herein are
followed by some Christians, that Melchizedek was the
same with Shem, one of the sons of Noah, whom they
suppose alive in the days of Abraham, the only person
upon earth, say they, who could, with justice, be called
his superior, and whom the description of the apostle
could, in any tolerable manner, befit, as being a person
of many singularities, born before the deluge, having
no ancestors then alive, and whose life had been of an
immense duration in comparison of those who came after
him. But not to dispute the fact, whether Shem was
at that time alive or no, l it seems very incongruous to
think that Moses, who all along mentions him in his
proper name, should, upon this occasion, disguise his
sense with a fictitious one ; and very incompatible it is
with what we know of Shem, that he should be said to be
' without father,' and ' without mother,' when his family
is so plainly recorded in Scripture, and all his progeni-
tors may, in a moment, be traced to their fountain-head
in Adam. Besides, had Melchizedek and Shem been
the same person, the apostle would hardly have made
him of a family different from Abraham, much less would
he have set him in such an eminence above the patriarch,
or thereupon broke out into this exclamation concerning
him : — f Consider how great this man was, unto whom
even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of his spoils !'
These arguments seem to evince, that Melchizedek
and Shem were different persons ; and much more reason
have we to suppose that he and Ham, that wicked son of
Noah, were so. For who, upon deliberate thoughts, can
believe, that this cursed person Avas the priest of the
most high God, from whom Abraham so joyfully received
the sacerdotal benediction, that he returned it with the
1 Bochart's Phaleg. b. 2. c. 1.
as well as a king, the apostle took occasion to draw the compari-
son between him and Christ, m order to show the pre-eminence
of the Christian above the Aaronical priesthood ; and what he
ascribes to the historical Melchizedek, upon this account, is
only to be understood in an imperfect and improper sense, that is
really and literally true only in the person of Christ. The apostle
was minded, in short, to illustrate his argument with some com-
parison ; and writing at this time to the Jews, (who were well
acquainted with this allegorical way of arguing,') he could meet
with none, in the whole compass of their law, so commodious for
this purpose, as this Melchizedek ; and therefore as Christ, the
heavenly Melchizedek, was ' without father, without mother,
without descent' here on earth, in respect of his divinity, ' having
neither beginning of days, nor end of life;' so the like properties
may, in some measure, be applied to the earthly Melchizedek;
forasmuch as, in the book of Genesis, wherein all great men's
genealogies are supposed to be recorded, there is no mention
made, either of his birth, family, or death; only he was invested
with a royal priesthood, which assimilates him to Christ. He
had a father and mother, no doubt, and was bom, and died like
other men; but because these things are not related by Moses,
the apostle looks upon them as though they had never been: so that
the whole hinge of comparison turns upon the silence of the
sacred historian, who, in a book (wherein it might be expected
otherwise) makes no manner of mention, either of the beginning
or ending of Melchizedek's life or priesthood ; and it is for this
reason, that he who wrote by the guidance of the blessed Spirit
was directed to conceal these matters ; that, in this situation, this
same Melchizedek might be a more proper type of so sublime a
thing as that of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. — Hist. Patriar.
vol. 2. Essay 2.
payment of his tithes ? x\nd much less can we believe,
that one of his ill character was the type of the blessed
Jesus. Jesus, indeed, himself, if he be taken for Mel-
chizedek, appearing to Abraham in an human shape, (aa
he is often supposed to do in Scripture,) will answer all
the character which the apostle gives of this extraordi-
nary person : but then the wonder is, that the historian
should never give us the least intimation of this ; that
Abraham should express no manner of surprise upon such
an interview ; and (what is more) how the type and the
antitype can possibly be represented the same. 2 For
this is the case : here Melchizedec was a representa-
tive of our Saviour, according to that of the apostle,
' Jesus was a priest after the order of Melchizedek,'
which he explains in another place, ' after the similitude
of Melchizedek there ariseth another priest;' as much
as to say, Melchizedek and Christ were like one ano-
ther in several things, and thereupon one was designed
to be a fit type of the other ; but as it is unreasonable
and absurd to say, that a person is like himself, so we
cannot rationally imagine that Christ, who, as St Paul
says, was ' after the similitude of Melchizedek,' was in
reality the same person with him.
Thus we have looked into a some of the chief conjec-
tures concerning- this great man, which seem to have any
plausibility in them ; and after all must content ourselves
with what the Scriptures nakedly report of him, namely,
that this Melchizedek was both a king and a priest (for
these two offices were anciently united) in the land of
Palestine, in the city of Jerusalem, descended, not
improbably, b from wicked and idolatrous parents, but
2 Edward's Survey of Religion, vol. 1.
a The sole question concerning the person of Melchizedek
would supply matter for a whole volume, even though one should
do no more than recite the catalogue of the different opinions to
which it has given rise, and the reason upon which each conjec-
turer has endeavoured to establish his own. The Melchizedek-
ians, a sect in the early times of the church, maintained that he
was a certain divine power superior to Christ; Hieraxes the
Egyptian, that he was the Holy Ghost, because compared to the
Son of God ; the Samaritans, and many Jews, that he was Shem,
the son of Noah; M. Jurieu, (in his Hist. Critique des Dogmes,
6(C. b. 1.) of late, that he was Ham, another son of his; Origen,
that he was an angel ; Athanasius, that he was the son of Melchi,
the grandson of Salaad ; Patricides, that he was the son of Phaleg;
Irenreus, that he was king of Jerusalem ; St Jerome, that he was
king of Salem in Scythopolis; and a certain anonymous author,
that he was a man immediately created by God, as was Adam.
And because he is said to have had no relations, some have giveir
out, that the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them all
lip ; whilst others, because he is said to have no end of life, sup-
pose that he was translated, and is now with Enoch and Elias,
in a state of paradise. — Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay
2. But all these opinions are at present reduced to these two:
whether this Melchizedek was a mere mortal man, or the Son
of God in human shape ; which the reader may find supported
with arguments on both sides, in both Saurin's and Galmet's
dissertations upon this subject.
b Those who make him to be the son of Melchi, an idolatrous
king, and of a queen named Salem, have an ancient tradition,
that Melchi, having resolved to offer a sacrifice to his gods, sent
his son Melchizedek to fetch him seven calves, that he might
sacrifice them; but that, as he was going, he was enlightened by
God, and immediately returned to his father to remonstrate to him
the vanity of idols. His father in wrath sent him back to fetch
the victims, and while he was gone, offered up to his gods his
own son, who was the elder brother of Melchizedek, with a
great number of other children. Melchizedek returning, and
conceiving a great horror at this butchery, retired to mount
Sect. I.]
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169
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himself a person of singular virtue and piety, ' the priest
of the most high God,' but perhaps the lirst and the
last of his race who was so, which might give occasion
to the apostle to describe him under such ambiguous
terms : for the whole of these (according to the judgment
of a learned author) a may not improperly be reduced to
this single proposition, * that Melchizedek was the most
illustrious of his family, and had neither predecessor nor
successor in his employ.
We readily grant indeed, that there is something very
strange and uncommon in the prophecy relating to
Ishmael ; but the question is not concerning the singu-
larity, but the reality rather, of the matters contained in
it. If these are explicable in themselves, and upon
examination found to be true, then is the prophecy so
far from losing its credit upon the account of its strange-
ness, that for this very reason it demonstrates its divine
origin ; because nothing but an omniscient mind could
foresee things so strange and unaccountable ; and nothing
but an almighty power and providence could bring these
tilings to pass, and make the event exactly agree with
the prediction.
Now, in order to explain the prophecy itself, and thence
to observe how perfectly it has all along been fulfilled,
it must be remembered, that (according to the known
style of the Old Testament) what is here said of Ishmael
must be chiefly understood of his descendants, in the
same manner 2 as what Jacob predicts of Judah and the
rest of his sons, was to relate to their posterity, and be
indeed the characteristic of their several tribes. And
therefore (to take notice of two of the most odd and
1 Outram de Sacrifices.
Gen. xlix.
Tabor, where he lived for seven years without clothes, and
without any other food but wild fruits, or any other drink but the
dew that he sucked up from the plants ; till at length Abraham,
by the direction of God, went up to the mount, found out Mel-
chizedek, clothed him, and brought him down with him. But
those who would have him be the son of Phaleg, relate a still
stranger story, namely, that Noah, upon his deathbed, charged
his son Seth to take Melchizedek, the son of Phaleg, with him,
and go to a place which the angel of the Lord should show them,
and there bury the body of Adam, which he had preserved in the
ark dining the flood: that in that place Melchizedek should fix
his habitation, lead a single life, and entirely addict himself to the
practice of piety, because God had made choice of him fur his
priest, but allowed him not to shed the blood of any animal, nor
to oiler any other dilation to him, but that of bread and wine
only; that Seth and Melchizedek did as Noah had enjoined them,
and buried Adam in the place which the angel pointed out; that
upon their parting, Melchizedek betook himself to the monastic
course of life which Noah had prescribed him; but that twelve
neighbouring kings, hearing of his fame, and desirous of his
acquaintance, consulted together, and built a city, whereof they
constituted him king and governor, and, in honour to his merit,
called it Jerusalem. — See Sclden de Jure Nat. b. 3. c. 2. ; and
Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay.
a The same learned author, who makes the Melchizedek
spoken of in Scripture, in one sense to be historical, and in
another allegorical, defines the historical in these words. " He
was a real and mere man, descended from Adam and Noah, by
his son Ham and grandson Canaan — a king of Jerusalem, priest
of the true God, regenerated and sanctified by the grace common
to all the faithful — sealed up both to a happy resurrection and an
eternal life." And the allegorical in these of St Paul, — ' Who was
king of righteousness and peace, without father, without mother,
without descent, a priest abiding continually and having a testi-
mony of no end of life. All which kings as we have affirmed,
says he, agree with Melchizedek in a more minute and allegori-
cal sense, but more emphatically and really correspond with
Christ." — Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 2.
unaccountable branches of his character) ' he will be a
wild man,' or a man like ' a wild ass ;' this (from Un-
known properties of that creature) several interpreters
have resolved into these qualities, — fierce and cruel,
loving solitude, ami hating conlinement of any kind.
How far this part of the character was verified in
Ishmael, who lived in the wilderness, and became an
expert archer, his very condition of life shows us : and
how properly it belongs to his posterity, the Arabian,
who in every nation have very justly obtained the
appellation of wild, a small inspection into history will
inform us.
To this very day (as 3 modern travellers inform us)
great numbers of them live in the deserts, and wander
about from place to place, without any certain habitation.
They neither plough the ground, nor apply themselves
to any kind of husbandry, though there are several fruit-
ful places in the wilderness that would repay their pains.
Their whole occupation (besides spoiling their neigh-
bours) lies in hunting and killing wild beasts, in which
there are but few that make use of fire-arms. The much
greater part of them make use of the bow , and do herein
imitate their great progenitor, that they are the most
exquisite archers in the world.
Before the introduction of Mahometanism, they were
as vagrant in their lust, and as little restrained in the use
of females, as the brutal herd : and even now, they take
as many wives as do the Turks, that is, as many as they
can keep, whom they purchase of their parents, use with
indifference, and dismiss at pleasure. They rove about
like the fiercest beasts of prey, seeking continually whom
they may devour ; insomuch that the governor of Grand
Cairo is forced to keep a guard of four thousand horse-
men every night on the side of the city next the wilder-
ness, to secure it against their incursions. Nor is the
wilderness only the scene of their depredations. They
rove all over the southern and eastern seas, visit every
creek and coast, and island, and (as the 4 historian
compares tliein) come sousing like a hawk, with incredible
swiftness, upon their prey, and are gone again in an
instant. And as they have always thus preyed upon
mankind, the necessary consequence is, that they have
always been at variance and hostility with them; and
therein have made good the other branch of Ishmael's
character, 'His hand shall be against every man, and
every man's hand against him.'
There is not the least hint in Scripture, nor any man-
ner of reason to believe, that Ishmael dwelt in a personal
state of hostility with his brethren ; nor is it conceivable
how he could have maintained himself against their united
forces, had he so done; ami therefore this prediction
can not otherwise be understood, than as it relates to his
posterity, the Arabians. Now, that any One nation should
be of so singular ami perverse a character, as to set
themselves in open opposition to the rest of the world,
and live in perpetual professed enmity with all mankind;
and that they should continue to do BO, not for < age
or two only, but for four thousand years together, is
surely me strangest ami most astonishing prediction that
ever was read or heard of. And yet, if WO attend a
to the history of these people, (as soon as historj I
■> See Rauwi • l'art2.
Lord Vatentia'B, etc.
:;. Brui •
' Ammianaa MarceUinus.
170
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A. M. 2108. A. C. 1897; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx.— xxv. 1!.
notice of them,) we shall find, in several instances, a full
accomplishment of it.
When Alexander and his victorious army overran a
great part of the east, the Arabians, (as we are told by
Arrian and Strabo,) of all the Asiatics, were the only
people who sent him no ambassador, nor made any sub-
mission to him ; which indignity lie intended to have
revenged in a particular expedition against them, but
was prevented by death.
1 What Alexander intended, Antigonus, the greatest
of his successors, attempted ; but he was repulsed with
disgrace, and the loss of above 8000 men ; and when
enraged at this repulse, he made a second attempt upon
them with a number of select men, under the command
of his valiant son Demetrius, the resistance he met with
was so obstinate, that he was forced to compound the
matter, and leave them in the quiet possession of their
liberty and peace.
Wiien the Romans and Parthians were rivals for the
empire of the east, the Arabians joined, and opposed
each nation as they thought tit, but were never entirely
devoted to either ; for their character always Avas, that
they were fickle, if not faithless friends, and fierce
enemies, who might be repulsed, and repressed for a
season, but could never be totally vanquished or subdued.
Men of this character soon became the objects of the
Roman enmity and ambition, which coidd endure nothing
that was free and independent ; and accordingly several
attempts were set on foot by Pompey, Crassus, and other
great generals, in order to enslave them ; but all proved
successless : and though they are sometimes said to have
been defeated, yet is there no account that we can
properly depend on, until we come to the expedition
which Trajan is known to have made against them.
2 Trajan was certainly a long experienced and suc-
cessful warrior. He had subdued the German, humbled
the Parthian, and reduced already one part of Arabia
into a province ; and yet, 3 when he came to besiege the
city of the Hagarenes, upon every assault a his soldiers
were so annoyed with whirlwinds and hail, and so fright-
ened with thunder and lightning, and other apparitions
in the air, (whilst their meat was spoiled and corrupted
with flies, even as they were eating it,) that he was forced
to give over the siege, and was not long after seized with
a disease, whereof he died.
About eight years after this, the emperor Severus, a
very valiant and prosperous Wcirrior, whom Herodian
makes no scruple to prefer even before Cajsar, Marius,
and Sylla, disdaining, as Trajan had done, that the
1 See Dr Jackson on the Creed. 3 Dio, Hist. b. 68.
3 Revelation Examined, vol. 2. Dissertation 4.
a The above recited author, from whom I have compiled this
account, assures his reader, that he had, with all the care he
could, examined all the accounts of Arabia that came in his way,
to see whether the phenomena and calamities here mentioned by
Dio to have distressed the Roman army were frequent in that
region, and that he had never been able to meet with any instance
of one of them, except sometimes storms of wind. If hail,
frightful appearances in the air, and food infested with flies, were
ordinary calamities in this region, all the accounts of the caravans
that travel through the deserts would necessarily be full of them ;
whereas it is notorious, that the best writers who have left us
faithful diaries of these affairs, do not so much as mention any of
them; and therefore they must certainly have proceeded from a
divine interposition in favour of the Hagarenes, in accomplishment
of the prediction concerning Ishmael and Ids posterity.
Hagarenes should stand out still against the Romans,
when all the rest about them had yielded, besieged their
city, though it was but a small one, twice, and was
twice repulsed with shame and great slaughter of his
men. In the second assault, indeed, he beat down
some of their city wall, and thereupon sounded a retreat,
in hopes that they would have capitulated, and surren-
dered up the hidden treasure, supposed to be consecrated
to the sun. But when they continued resolute a whole
day, without giving any intimations of a treaty for a
peace, on the morning following the Roman army was
quite intimidated. The Europeans, who were gallant
men before, refused to enter the breach ; and the
Syrians, who were forced to undertake that service, had
a grievous repulse. Whereupon the emperor, J without
making any fresh attack, decamped from before the
city, and departed to Palestine. Thus God delivered
the city, says Dio, recalling the soldiers by Severus,
when they might have entered, and restraining Severus
the second day by the soldiers' backwardness.
There are only these two things more, which we may
observe from our historian, worthy our notice upon this
occasion. The first is, that the Arabians stood single,
in this their extremity, against the whole Roman power ;
for none of their neighbours would assist them. The
other thing is, that the emperor had soldiers of all
nations in his army; for " whereas other emperors,"4
says our author, " were contented with guards of four
different European countries, Severus filled the city
with a mixed multitude of soldiers of all kinds, savage
to look on, frightful to hear, and rude and wild to con-
verse with." So that, considering all things, I think
we may fairly conclude, that every man's hand was at
this time against Ishmael, and his hand, his only hand,
against every man ; and yet he dwelt, and still dwelletli,
in the presence of all his brethren : for, not long after
this, it is very well known that the Ishmaelites joined
the Goths against the Romans, and having afterwards
overcome both, c under the name of Saracens, they
erected a vast empire upon their ruins ; and thus Ish-
mael, in the full extent of the prophecy, ' became a
great nation.'
4 Ammianus Marcellinus.
b The historian tells us farther, that after the breach was
made, the conquest of the city was deemed so easy, that a cer-
tain captain of the army undertook to do it himself, if he might
have but 550 European soldiers assigned him. But where shall
we find so many soldiers ? says the emperor, meaning it of the
disobedience of the army, to which he imputed his not carrying
that place. But now, how a commander, who was at once
beloved and revered, almost to adoration, by his soldiers, could
not, with all his authority, influence them to assault, when they
were in a manner at his mercy, this can be nowise reconciled,
without the supposition of that mighty Being occasioning it,
' who poureth,' when he pleases, ' contempt upon princes, and
bringcth their counsels to nought.'
c The Ishmaelites, as some imagine, upon the reproaches of
the Jews, who upbraided them with bastardy, became ashamed
of their old names, derived from Hagar and Ishmael, which
carried an odium in the sound, and took upon them the name of
Saracens, desiring to be accounted as the descendants of Abra-
ham by his wife Sarah; but what destroys this etymology is
this, that the ancients called them Sara ker.oi, and not Sarte-
noi, as they must have -been called, if their name had been
derived from Sarah; and therefore the learned Scaliger supposes
the word to come from the Arabic word wrack, which signifies
to steal ox plunder. — Calmefs Dictionary.
Sect. I.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
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171
Circumcision is the cutting off the foreskin of the
member which in every male is the instrument of gene-
ration ; and whoever considers the nature of this opera-
tion, painful if not indecent in those of maturity, and to
such as live in hot countries highly inconvenient, if not
dangerous ; a an operation wherein Ave can perceive no
footsteps of human invention, as having no foundation
either in reason, or nature, or necessity, or the interest
of any particular set of men, we must needs conclude,
that mankind could never have put such a severity upon
themselves, unless they had been enjoined and directed
to it by a divine command. Nay, this single instance
of Abraham, who, at the advanced age of ninety-nine,
underwent this hazardous operation, and the very inde-
cency of it in a man of his years and dignity ; these two
considerations are in the place of ten thousand proofs,
that it was forced upon him ; but nothing but the irresis-
tible authority of God could be a force sufficient, in
those circumstances. So that the strangeness and sin-
gularity of this ordinance is so far from being an argu-
ment against it, that it is an evident proof of its divine
institution ; and what was originally instituted by God
cannot, in strictness, be accounted immodest, though
we perhaps may have some such conception of it, since
1 ' unto the pure all things are pure, but unto them that
are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but even
their mind and conscience is defiled.'
The Egyptians indeed, as 2 Herodotus informs us,
pretended to practise this rite, from no other principle
but that of cleanliness ; and possibly, at that time, they
might so far have lost the memorial of its true origin as
not to retain any other reason for their observation of it.
But since it is evident, to a demonstration, that they
might, to all intents and purposes, be as clean without
this rite as with it, it is absurd to suppose that any man of
common sense should undergo pain, and hazard himself,
and force the same inconveniences upon his posterity,
' Tit. i. 15. 2 B. 2.
a The manner of this ceremony's being performed, whether
in the public synagogue or in private houses, is this: — The
person who is appointed to be the godfather sits down upon a
seat, with a silk cushion provided for that purpose, and settles
the child in a proper posture on his knees, when he who is to
circumcise him (which, by the bye, is accounted a great honour
among the Jews) opens the blankets. Some make use of silver
tweezers, to take up so much of the prepuce as they design to
cut off, but others take it up with their lingers. Then he who
circumcises the child, holding the razor in his hand, says,
" Blessed lie thou, O Lord, who hasc commanded us to be cir-
cumcised ;" and while he is saying this, cuts off the thick skin
of the prepuce, and then, with bis thumb nails, tears off a finer
skin still remaining. After this he sucks the blood, which
flows plentifully upon this occasion, and spits it out into a cup
full of wine; then he puts some dragon's blood upon the wound,
some coral powder, and other tilings to stop the bleeding, and so
covers up the part affected. When this is done, he takes up the
rup wherein he had spit the Mood, moistens his lips therewith,
and then blessing both that and the child, gives him the name
whicli his father had appointed, and at the same time pronounces
these words of Ezekiel, ' I said unto thee, when thou wast in
thy blood, live,' Ezek. xvi. 6. ; after which the whole congrega-
tion repeats the 128th Psalm, ' Blessed is every man that fcareth
the Lord,' &c. ; and so the ceremony concludes. Only we must
observe, that besides the seat appointed for the godfather, there
is always another left empty, and is designed, some say, for the
prophet Elias, who, as they imagine, is invisibly present at all
circumcisions. — Calmet'r Dictionary, under the word Circum-
cision.
merely for the attainment of an end which could as fully
and perfectly have been accomplished without it.
There is a passage, indeed, in the same Herodotus,
wherein he tells us, "That the Colchians, the I
tians, and the Ethiopians, were the only nations that
circumcised from the beginning, and that the Syrians
and Phoenicians, who lived in Palestine, acknowledged
they borrowed that rite from them."' lint here the
historian is less to be blamed for having run into this
error, since the Egyptians were a people naturally so
vain and conceited of their antiquity, that they chose
rather to impose upon him by a false information (for
all this account he had but from information) than con-
fess that they received circumcision from any other
people. In the other part of the story, it is manifest
that they did impose upon him, when they told him that
the inhabitants of Palestine, whom he calls Syrians and
Phoenicians, confessed that they received circumcision
from them ; whereas there were no inhabitants in Pales-
tine circumcised but the Jews, and these always pro-
fessed to have received it directly from Abraham.
3 Herodotus, indeed, in all his writings, has shown
that he was a great stranger to the affairs of the Jews,
and much more to the history of the patriarchs, who so
long preceded the institution of their republic. What
he tells us of the origin of circumcision, namely, that it
was among the Egyptians from the beginning, is in a
loose and vagrant expression accidently dropt from
him, or rather contrived on purpose to conceal his
ignorance of the matter : whereas Moses, who was long
before him, knew the history of the patriarchs, and parti-
cularly that of Abraham ; and therefore he does not con-
tent himself with popular or fabulous reports, or endea-
vour to conceal his meaning under indefinite and general
expressions, but marks out the particular period, and
o-ives us a plain and full account both of the causes and
circumstances of the whole institution. The truth is,
there is no comparison between the two historians in
this particular ; and therefore, if we will credit tin-
sacred penman, in a point wherein his knowledge could
hardly be defective, so far were the Egyptians from
prescribing to the Hebrews, in the rite of circumcision,
that when Abraham was in Egypt, there was no such
custom then in use.
It was twenty years after his return from that country
that God enjoined him the rite of circumcision : and
then it is said, that 4 * Abraham took Ishmael his BOO,
and all that were born in his house, and all thai wore
bought with his money, ami circumcised the flesh of
their foreskin.' Now it is evident, that when he came
out of Egypt he brought men-servants and maid-servants
with him in abundance ; and therefore, unless we can
suppose that all these Egyptian men-servants died
within twenty years, when the ordinary period of life
was at least an hundred : or that, when thej died, none
of them left any male issue behind them : we cannot but
conclude, that circumcision was not known in Egypt in
Abraham's time, because it is express!) said, that
'every male among the men of Abraham's house was
circumcised' at the same time that he was. which could
never have been, had they undergone that operation
before.
• Basnsge's rlisti rj of the Jews. ' Gen. x\ii. U( 85, K
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At what time the rite of circumcision obtained in
Egypt, is not so easy a matter to determine : there is a
passage, however, in the prophet Jeremiah, which, if
taken in a literal sense, is far from encouraging any
high pretensions to antiquity : ' ' Behold the days come,
saith the Lord, that I will punish all them that are cir-
cumcised with the uncircumcised ; Egypt, and Judah,
and Edom, and the children of Amnion, and Moab, &c>
for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house
of Israel are uncircumcised in their heart' — the plain
sense of which word is this, — that God would visit the house
of Israel like strange nations ; because, as the latter were
uncircumcised in the flesh, so the former were in the
heart. Not but that, in the days of Jeremiah, the rite of
circumcision was known and practised among the Egyp-
tians, as well as among other nations ; but then it was
not so common and general, nor was it at all used any
where till long after Abraham's days.
One probable opinion therefore is, that the Arabians
received it from the Ishmaelites ; that the Egyptians
received it from the Arabians, or perhaps from Abra-
ham's children by Keturah ; and that from the Egyptians
the people of Colchis, knowing themselves to be of
Egyptian extract, embraced it, in imitation of their illus-
trious ancestors. But even suppose that this custom was
not established in Egypt by the posterity either of Hagar
or Keturah ; yet why might not Joseph, in the course of
a most absolute ministry for fourscore years together, be
able to introduce it ? 2 It is the practice, we know, nay,
it is the pride of slaves, to imitate their master's manners,
especially if he seems solicitous to have them do so ;
and therefore we need not doubt, but that, upon the least
intimation of his pleasure, the Egyptians would readily
embrace the religious rites of so great, so wise, so
powerful a minister, who had preserved every one of
their lives, who had saved the whole kingdom from ruin
and was himself so visibly and so remarkably guided by
the Spirit of God. But whensoever, or from whomsoever
it was, that the Egyptians learned this rite, it is certain,
that the reason of its institution was not with them the
same that it was among the Jews ; and therefore the
circumcision itself must not be accounted the same.
Whoever looks into the life of Abraham, will soon
perceive, that God did all along design him for a pattern
of faith and perfect obedience to all succeeding genera-
tions. 3 The more his faith was tried, the more illustrious
it became, and the more obstacles there were raised in
the accomplishment of the divine promises, the more the
good patriarch showed (in surmounting these obstacles)
the high conception he had entertained of him from whom
these promises came. For after a promise of a numerous
posterity, why was it so long before he gave him any son
•it all? After the birth of Ishmael, why so long before
the promise of an heir by his wife Sarah ? And after
that promise was given, who so long, even till the thing
was impossible, in the ordinary course of nature, before
the promise was accomplished, and the child sent ? All
this was to exercise his faith, and to give him an oppor-
tunity of showing to the world, how fully he was con-
vinced, that, notwithstanding all these impediments and
1 Jer. ix. 25, 26.
2 Revelation Examined, vol. 2. Dissertation 4.
3 Saurin's Dissertation 15.
delays, God would certainly, by one means or other,
effectually make good his promises. The like may be
said of the command of circumcision. God did not only
defer, for the space of twenty whole years, the birth of
that son, who was so solemnly promised, and so impa-
tiently desired, but even when that time was expired,
and Abraham might now justly hope to see the promise
accomplished, and his faith crowned, God was pleased
to cross it again, by requiring of him the performance
of an act, which, in all appearance, would be a total
defeat to all his hopes. For this injunction, ' My cove-
nant shall be in your flesh,' to a man of advanced age,
seems as opposite to the promise of having a son, as that
other of ' taking his son, his only son Isaac, and offering
him up for a burnt-sacrifice,' was to the promise of his
being the father of a numerous posterity.
But Abraham's faith triumphed over this, as well as all
other obstacles. He immediately performed the opera-
tion, notwithstanding its oddness, its danger, its seeming-
indecency, and the apparent opposition it had to the
divine promises ; and it is to preserve the remembrance
of the faith of their great ancestor, who, in so many
discouraging circumstances, ' waited patiently on God,
and against hope believed in hope,' (as the apostle ex-
presses it,) that God prescribed to the Jewish nation the
sacrament of circumcision. For this was a farther end
of its institution, not only to be a mark of distinction
between the posterity of Abraham and all other nations,
but a token likewise of God's covenant made with him,
and his posterity, and a note of commemoration to put
those who bore it continually in mind whose offspring
they were, and what advantages entitled to upon that
account, provided they took care not to degenerate from
the glories of that stock from whence they sprang.
And indeed, considering that Abraham was the first
we read of whom God rescued from the general corrup-
tion of faith and manners, which the world had now a
second time relapsed into ; and considering, withal, that
this person and his posterity were singled out for a
chosen generation, the repository of truth, and the recep-
tacle of God incarnate ; there was reason in abundance,
why tins remembrance should be very grateful to them ;
and apt enough, it is plain, upon all occasions, they
were to value themselves, and despise others, upon the
account of so particular an honour. 4 But the misfortune
was, the most useful part of the reflection, namely, the
eminent faith and ready obedience of so renowned an
ancestor, and the noble emulation of his virtues, which
such a pattern ought to have inspired ; this they were too
apt to overlook, though any considering man (as the
apostle 5 excellently argues) could not but perceive that
the only valuable relation to Abraham is not that of con-
sanguinity and natural descent, but the resemblance of
his virtues, and claiming under him as the ' father of the
faithful.'
And this suggests another, and indeed none of the
least considerable ends for which circumcision was insti-
tuted, namely, to be a sign of inward virtue, and to
figure out to us some particular dispositions of mind
which bore resemblance to the outward ceremony, and
were required to render it effectual ; for which reason ii
4 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels. 5 Rom. iv. 11.
Sect. l.J FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c
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173
is that we read so much in the old law l * of circumcis-
ing- the foreskin of the heart,' and hear the apostle so
frequently telling us in the new, 3 ' of putting- oft' the body
of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ ;'
* ' for he is not a Jew, who is one outwardly, neither is
that circumcision which is outward in the flesh : but he is
a Jew who is one inwardly : and circumcision is that of
the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter ; whose praise
is not of men, but of God.'
It may seem a little strange at first, perhaps, that
Abraham, whose course of life was retired and philoso-
phical, should all on a sudden commence so great a
warrior, as to be able to defeat four kings at once, and
their victorious armies, with a small number of his
domestics, and some assistance that was given him by
his neighbours. His own men were 318 ; and what force
his confederates, the three Phoenician princes, brought to
his assistance, we do not find mentioned. We may pro-
bably enough suppose, that they did not exceed his own
domestics ; but then we are not obliged to affirm, that he
fell upon the whole body of the Assyrian army with this
small retinue. This certainly would have been too bold
an attempt for the little company which he commanded ;
and therefore the more likely supposition is, that coming
up with them by night, he divided his men into two or
three parties, the better to make a diversion, and conceal
his strength ; that with one party himself might attack the
headquarters of king Chedorlaomer, where the chief
feasting and revelling was kept for joy of their late vic-
tories ; that with another he might fall upon those who
were appointed to guard the captives and the spoil ; and
with a third might be beating up other quarters ; so
that the Assyrians, being fatigued in their late battle,
surprised at finding a new enemy, and not knowing what
their number or strength might be, or where their princi-
pal attack was to begin, might endeavour to save them-
selves by flight ; which Abraham perceiving, might take
the advantage of their fright, and pursue them, until he
had made himself master of the prisoners and the spoil,
and then retire himself, as not thinking it advisable to
follow them until the daylight might discover the weak-
ness of his forces.
All this might well enough be done by a common
stratagem in war, without any miraculous interposition
of providence : but it is much more likely, that the same
God, * who in after ages instructed one of his posterity,
even with such another little handful of men, not only to
break an army of about 200,000 or 300,000, but to kill of
them upon the spot, no fewer than 120,000 ; to disperse
at least as many more ; to vanquish after this a party of
15,000 that had retired in a body ; and at last to take all
the four kings, who were the leaders of this numerous,
or rather numberless army ; ' it is much more likely, I
say, that the God of Abraham would not be wanting to
his servant in his counsels and suggestions upon this
important occasion ; and if a party of 300 men, under
the conduct of a person every way inferior to Abraham,
was by a stratagem in the night, and by the help of a
sudden panic which God injected, enabled to defeat
four mighty princes, and to make such a prodigious
1 Deut. x. 16. * Col. ii. 11. 3 Rom. ii. 28, 29.
4 Judges, at the 7th and Btfa chapters.
6 Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1. Occasional Annotations, 19.
CH. xx-xxv. 11.
slaughter in their camp ; I cannot see, why a person of
that consummate wisdom, and so highly favoured bj God
with extraordinary monitions upon all remarkable emer-
gencies, as Abraham was, might not, bj God's advice,
make use of some such stratagem as Gideon did, though
the Scripture is herein silent, that the success might be
imputed to the operation of faith in him, and not t<> the
agency of second causes, or what some call the chance
of war.
Of what age Isaac was, when Abraham was ordered to
offer him up, is nowhere declared in Scripture. The
opinion of some b^irned Jews, that he was but twelve
years old, is ridiculous ; since at that age, it would have
been impossible for him to have carried such a load of
wood, as was requisite upon that occasion ; and others
run into a contrary extreme, by supposing that he iras
then seven and thirty years of age, which must have been
the year wherein his mother died ; and yet she is said to
have been alive when this transaction happened. Jose-
phus indeed makes him five and twenty, and some
Christian (both ancient and modern) commentators sup-
pose that he was past thirty; but whatever his age might
be, it is acknowledged, that he was capable of making
resistance, and would certainly have done it, had he not
been very well satisfied that the command came from
God. To this purpose the "■ Jewish historian introduces
Abraham as making a very tender and pathetic speech
to his son ; inspiring him with a just contempt of life ;
and exhorting him to a due submission to the divine
order and decree ; to all which Isaac attended, says our
author, with a constancy and resignation becoming the
son of such a father : and upon this their mutual behavi-
our, 6 a very elegant father of the Greek church has made
this beautiful reflection : — " All the strength of reluctant
love could not withhold the father's hands; and all the
horror of a dissolution could not tempt the son to move
for his own preservation. Which of the two, shall we
say, deserves the precedence in our wonder and vene-
ration ? For there seems to be a religious emulation or
contest between them, which should most remarkably
signalize himself ; the father, in loving God more than
6 Gregor. Nyss. De Deitate Fil. ct Spirit. Sand, p. 908.
a The words wherein Josephtis makes Abraham addn
son upon this occasion are these: — "My dear son. thou hast
been the child of my prayers to me, and since thy coming into
the world, I have spared for nothing in thy nurture and educa-
tion. There is not any happiness 1 have more « I I
to see thee settled in a consummated state of age and reason; sad
whenever God shall take me to himself, to leave thee in |
sion of my authority and dominions. But since it baa been the
will of Gud, fust to bestow thee open me, and DOT t" call thee
back again, my dear sen. acquit thyself generously under bo pious
a necessity. It is to God that thou ait dedicated and delivered
up on this occasion, and it is the same God that DOT requires
thee of me, in return for all the blessings and favours he hath
showered down upon us, both in war and peace. Ii hi agreeable
to the law of nature, for ever) One that i- bOTD, t.. die; and a
more glorious end thou canst never have, than to lali by the band
of thy own father, a sacrifice to ih«' G<*l and Father of tie- uni-
verse, who hath rather chosen to receive thj ioul Into a I
eternity, upon the wing- of prayer and ardent ejaculations,
than to suffer tier to be taken away in sickness, war, passion, or
any other of the common ehauee> of mankind. Consider it "ell,
anil thou «ilt find, that in that heavenly station, to wbJl I
art now called, thou mayest make thyself the support oftl ■
father, and that instead of my son Isaac, I shall have God luia-
self for my guardian." — y/«/"/'"'"'s b. I. c. 14,
174
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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which is found in this tract of ground now, was the j
effect of divine vengeance, and showered down upon
it, when God destroyed Sodom, and its neighbouring
cities. They therefore suppose, that the woman stand-
ing still too long to behold the destruction of her
country, some of that dreadful shower, in the manner
of great Hakes of snow, fell upon her, and clinging to
her body, wrapped it all over, as it were in a sheet of
nitrosulphureous matter, which congealed into a crust
as hard as a stone, and made her appear like a statue
or pillar of a metallic salt, having her body enclosed,
and, as it were, candied all over with it. And to main-
tain this their hypothesis, they assert, that all indurated
bodies (as chemists well know) are) as they speak,
highly saturated with a saline principle, and all coagu-
lations and concretions, in the mixture of bodies, are
effected by this means : so that it was not possible to
express such a transmutation as Lot's wife underwent,
whether it was simply by incrustation, or by a total
penetration, more properly than Moses has done. They
produce instances from the best historians of several
petrifactions, both of men and cattle, (almost as won-
derful as this of Lot's wife,) standing in the very same >.
posture wherein they were found at the instant of their
transmutation, for several generations afterwards ; and,
for the confirmation of this in particular, they vouch the
testimony of the author of the book of Wisdom, who
makes mention of a standing pillar of salt, as a monu-
ment of an unbelieving soul, and the authority of the
Seventy interpreters, who expressly render it so. Among
Jewish writers, they cite the words 5 of Josephus, who i
tells us, that Lot's wife, casting her eye perpetually back
upon the city, and being too much concerned about it,
contrary to what God had forbidden her, was turned into
a pillar of salt, which I myself (as he tells us) have seen.
They cite the words of Philo, who frequently takes notice |
of this metamorphosis, and, in his allegories of the law
more particularly, declares, that for the love of Sodom, ,
Lot's wife was turned into a stone. And among Chris-
tian writers, they produce that passage of Clemens, in
his epistle to the Corinthians ; ' Lot's wife went along
with him, but being of a different spirit, and not persist-
ing in concord with him, she was therefore placed for a
sign, and continues a statue of salt to this very day;' .
together with the testimony of Irenajus, and several other
fathers of the church.
The accounts which modern historians and travellers
give us of this matter are so very different and uncertain,
that we cannot so well tell where to fix our belief.
Bochart, in his description of the Holy Land, tells us,
that he gave himself the fatigue of a very troublesome
journey to behold this statue, but was not so happy as
his own child, and the son, in the love of duty above his
own life."
This is a gallant instance of a profound submission to
the divine will ; and yet (not to detract from the merit of
it) if we consider the matter coolly, it was no more than
what many martyrs, even under the Jewish economy,
equally have performed. They have given themselves
up, in testimony of their love to God, to deaths as cruel
as terrible, as this which Isaac was to suffer : ' ' They
were stoned, were sawed asunder, were tortured ; and
yet they accepted not deliverance, that they might inherit
a joyful resurrection.'
The metamorphosis of Lot's wife is one of the most
wonderful events in Scripture ; and therefore those who
are unwilling, as they say, to multiply miracles without
a cause, from the different senses which the words in the
text are capable of, have endeavoured to affix another
interpretation to them. Thus the word which we render
jiiHar, or statue, besides its obvious signification, may,
in a metaphorical sense, be applied to denote any thing
that, like a pillar or stone, is immoveable and hard ; and
according to this acceptation, these interpreters suppose
that Moses might intend no more than that Lot's wife
was struck dead with fear or surprise, or any other cause,
and so remain motionless, like a stone.
In like manner, 2 the word which we render salt, be-
sides its common signification, does sometimes denote a
dry and barren soil, such as is found about the asphaltic
lake ; and thus the sense of the words, applied to Lots
wife, intimates, that the place of her death was in a bar-
ren country, or in a land of salt. At other times it
signifies a long space, or continuance of time, because 3
we find an everlasting covenant called a covenant of
salt, (salt being therefore an emblem of eternity, because
the things that are seasoned therewith continue incorrupt
for many years,) and in this sense Lot's wife may be
said to become an 4 everlasting monument of the divine
displeasure, without any consideration either of the form
or matter whereinto she was changed ; and from these
significations of the words, they draw this explication of
the passage : — " That Lot's wife, either looking back
upon the city when she saw it all in smoke, and fire from
heaven pouring down upon it, was struck dead with the
frightful sight, in a country that was afterwards barren
and unfruitful : or that, not only stopping, but returning
towards the city, (when the angel was gone,) she was
suffocated by some poisonous vapour, and perished in
the common conflagration." And this, as they saj,
saves a miracle, and answers the end of providence full
as well as if the woman had actually been turned into a
pillar of salt, which never was, and never will be proved
by any authentic testimony.
All this is plausible enough ; and yet those Avho
adhere to the literal sense of the words, have this to
say in their vindication — That the vale of Siddim,
where Sodom, and the other cities stood ; was originally
a very fruitful soil, (as most bituminous countries are,)
which induced Lotto make choice of it for the pasturage
of his cattle ; but is at present the very reverse, a poor
barren land, full of sulphur and salt-pits : and hence
they infer, that all the sulphureous and saline matter,
1 Heb. xi. 35, 37.
3 Numb, xvi
8 See Le Clerc's Dissert, in locum.
19. 4lKut. xxix. 23.
3 Antiq. b. 1. c. 12.
a Most of the interpreters have observed to us, that we must
not take the salt here mentioned for common salt, which water
soon dissolves, and could not possibly continue long, being ex-
posed to the wind and rain ; but for metallic salt, which was
hewn out of the rock like marble, and made use of in building
houses, according to the testimony of several authors. Watsius,
MiscelL vol. 1. and Pliny, b. 31. c. 7, tell us, that in Africa, not
far from Utica, there are vast heaps of salt, like mountains, which,
when once hardened by the sun and moon, cannot be dissolved
with rain or any other liquor, nor penetrated with any kind of
instrument made with iron. — Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol.
2. Essay 8.
Sect. I.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
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175
to satisfy his curiosity ; for the inhabitants assured him
the place was inaccessible, and could not be visited
without apparent danger of death, because of the prodi-
gious beasts and serpents that .abounded there, but more
especially, because of the Biduini, a very savage and
inhuman sort of people, that dwelt near it ; and yet, if
we will believe other writers of this kind, they will tell
us expressly, that there is some part of it remaining, and
to be seen between Engaddi and the Dead Sea.
We will suppose however for once, that the long
duration of this monument is an imposition of the inha-
bitants upon the credulity of strangers ; yet it will not
therefore follow, that there never was any such thing in
being, unless we can think it inconsistent with the nature
of God to work a miracle for the punishment of a wicked
woman. Miracles indeed are not to be multiplied,
unless there be occasion for them ; but when the plain
sense of the words leads us to such a construction, it is a
niceness, I think, no way commendable, to endeavour
to find out another, merely for the sake of avoiding the
iniraculoiisness of the fact ; as if the Scriptures were
more valuable for containing nothing but obvious matters,
and the majesty of God any way magnilied by seeming
to exert as little of its omnipotent power as possible.
The short of the matter is this, — We have a clear
account in a book full of wonders, of a woman confes-
sedly guilty of disobedience and ingratitude, struck dead
by the hand of God, and turned into a statue of salt, for
a monument of terror to future generations. And is there
any thing in this so repugnant to reason, or so incongru-
ous for God to do, that we must immediately fly to
another interpretation, and to make the matter easy,
resolutely maintain that the whole purport of the thing
is only this, — That the poor woman either suddenly died
of a fright, or indiscreetly fell into the fire ? God certainly
may work a miracle lvhen he pleases, and punish any
wicked person in what manner he thinks fit ; nor is there
any more wonder in the metamorphosis of Lot's wife,
than there was in changing the rod of Moses into a ser-
pent. The same power might do both ; and since the
same history has recorded both, there is the same reason
for the credibility of both. Nay, of the two, the trans-
formation of Lot's wife seems more familiar to our con-
ceptions, a since we want not instances, as I said before,
a Bisselius (in his Argon. Amerie. b. 14. c. 2.) has a very
remarkable story to this purpose. lie tells us, that Badicus
Almagrus, who was the first man that ever marched an army
over the mountains between Peru and Chili, by the extremity of
the cold, and unwholesomi ncss of the air, lost in that expedition
a great many men. Being obliged, however, some few months
after, to return the same way, what the historian tells us upon
this occasion is very wonderful. The horsemen and infantry,
who five months ago were frozen to death, were still standing
Untouched, uncorrupted, in the same condition and shape thai
they were in when they were laid hold of by the sudden grasp of
death, one lay flat with his face on the ground, another stood
erect, a third seemed to shake the bridle, which he still retained
in liis hand. In a word, he found them exactly as he left them;
they had no fulsome odour, and their colour was altogether
different from that of corpses. In line, unless that the soul had
been long ago in another world, they were in other respects more
like tho living than the dead. To the like purpose it is related
by Aventinus (Annot. Bavar. b. 7.), a credible historian, that in
his time above fifty country people, with their cows and calve-,
in Carinthia, were all destroyed at once by a strong suffocating
exhalation, which immediately after an earthquake (in tho year
1348) ascended out of the earth, and reduced them to saline
of persons struck with lightning, and killed with cold
vapours, that have immediately petrified in the same-
manner.
Why she was turned into a body of salt rather than
any other substance, is only resolvable into the good
pleasure of God. The conjectures of Jewish writers upon
this head, we acknowledge, are trilling ; nor are we
responsible for the reveries of such Christian commenta-
tors as would crowd in a multitude of palpable absurdi-
ties, merely to make the miracle more portentous : but
why God exacted so severe a penalty for an ofiem
seemingly small, is not so hard to be resolved ; because,
according to the light wherein we are to consider this
woman, her disobedience to the divine command had in
it all the malignity of an obstinate and perverse mind,
unthankful to God for his preservation of her, and too
closely attached, if not to the wicked customs, at lei
to the persons and things which she had left behind her
in that sink of sin and sensuality.
But there is another observation which we may draw '
from our Saviour's application of this story, as well as a
the angel's expression to Lot, namely, that she loitered bj
the way, if not returned to the city ; ami if so, it i- DO
wonder that she suffered when she was found within the
compass of the sulphureous streams from heaven ; nor
can God be blamed for his exemplary punishment of her,
unless we think it reasonable for his providence, in this
case, to have interposed, and wrought a miracle for her
preservation, who had so little deserved it, and had rim
herself voluntarily into the jaws of destruction.
Thus we have endeavoured to vindicate the character
of the patriarch Abraham, and to account for several
transactions and passages in Scripture, which seem t<>
give umbrage to infidelity during the compass of his life.
And for the confirmation of all this, we might now
produce the testimony of profane authors, ami make it
appear, that Abraham's fame for a just, virtuous, ami
religious man, is spoken of by Berosus in a fragment
preserved 3 by Josephus : tli.it his being horn in I > of the
Chaldees, his removal into Canaan, and afterwards
sojourning in Egypt, is related by Eupolemos, as he is
quoted4 by Eusebius : that the captivity of his nephew
Lot, his victory over the four kings, and honourable
reception by Melchizedek, king of the sacred citj i .
Argarize, and priest of God, are recorded by the same
author: that his marrying two wives, one an Egyptian,
by whom he had a son, who was the father of twelve
kings in Arabia, and the other a woman of his own kin-
dred, by whom he had likewise one son. whose name in
Greek was Tskas, which answers exactlj to the Hebrew
word Isaac; and that this Isaac he was commanded to
sacrifice, but when lie was going to hill him, was stopped
by an angel, and offered a ram in his stead ; all this is
related by Antipanus, as he is quoted1 bj the same
Eusebius: that the ancient custom of circumcision is
taken notice of 6 by Herodotus. Diodorus, Strabo
others: that the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, and
* Gen. xix. 22.
' Proper. Bvang. b. B.C. 17.
0 Hug. Grot, da Veritota
1 Luke xvii. 31, 32.
3 Anti'i. b. I. c B.
• Prepar. Evang. b. 9. <•. is
statues, neb as that of Lot's wife, which he tells i
both by himself and by the cha Austria.— WU>
. vol. l. Occasional Annotation , 22.
176
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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A. M. 2108. A. C. 189G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx— xxv. 11.
the strange waste it has made in a once most beautiful
country, is described.1 by Strabo, Tacitus, and SoJinus :
that 2 Isaac's being born to a father when old, and to a
mother incapable of conception, gave occasion of the
story of the miraculous birth of Orion, by the help of the
gods, even when his father Hyreus had no wife at all :
that Lot's kind reception of the two angels in Sodom,
his protecting them from the insults of the people, and
escaping thereupon the destruction that befell them, are
all well delineated in the common fable of Baucis and
Philemon : and (to mention no more) that the fate of his
wife, for her looking back upon Sodom, and her being
thereupon changed into a statue of metallic salt, gave
rise to the poet's fiction of the loss of Eurydice, and her
remission into hell for her husbands turning to look
upon her, and of Niobe's being changed into a stone for
resenting- the death of her children. So well has infinite
wisdom provided, that the sacred truths of divine revela-
tion should not only be supported by the attestation of
all ancient history, but preserved likewise even in the
vanity and extravagance of fables ; for even ' they, O
Lord, shew the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy
power ; that thy power, thy glory, and the mightiness of
thy kingdom, might be known unto men.'
CHAP. II. — Of the Destruction of Sodom and Go-
morrah.
Of all God's judgments upon the wicked, next to that
of the universal deluge, the destruction of Sodom, and
the neighbouring cities in the plain of Jordan, seems to
be one of the most remarkable, and the most dreadful
interpositions of providence ; and may therefore in this
place deserve a particular consideration.
That this catastrophe (as 3 the apostle calls it) did
really happen, according to the account which Moses
gives us of it, we have the concurring testimony of all
historians, both ancient and modern, to convince us.
4 Diodorus Siculus, after having given us a description
of the lake Asphaltites, (which now fills the place where
these cities once stood,) acquaints us, that the adjacent
country was then on fire, and sent forth a grievous smell,
to which he imputes the sickly and short lives of the neigh-
bouring inhabitants. s Strabo, having made mention of
the same lake, pursues his account, and tells us, that the
craggy and burnt rocks, the caverns broken in, and the
soil all about it adust, and turned to ashes, give credit to
a report among the people, that formerly several cities
stood there, (whereof Sodom was the chief,) but that by
earthquakes, and fire breaking out, there were some of
them entirely swallowed up, and others forsaken by the
inhabitants that could make their escape. 6 Tacitus de-
scribes the lake much in the same manner with these
other historians ; and then adds, that not far from it are
fields, now barren, which were reported formerly to have
been very fruitful, adorned with large cities which were
burned by lightning, and do still retain the traces of their
destruction. T Solinus is clearly of opinion, that the
' Hug. Grot, de Veritate.
1 2 Pet. ii. 6.
BB. 5.
2 Hutt. Qiisest. Alnctan. b. 2.
B. 19. * B. 10.
' C. 35.
blackness of the soil, and its being turned into dust and
ashes, is a sure token of its having suftered by fire from
heaven ; and if we may believe the report, of 8 a late tra-
veller, according to the account which he had from the
inhabitants themselves, some of the ruins of these ancient
cities do still appear whenever the water is low and
shallow.
What the number of these cities were, is a matter
wherein we can have no absolute certainty. Moses, in
the text, makes no mention but of two, Sodom and Go-
morrah; but in another place he enumerates four, and
gives this description of their dreadfid punishment
9 ' When the generations to come shall see the plague of
that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid
upon it, and that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and
salt, and burning like the overthrow of Sodom, and Go-
morrah, Admah, and Zeboim, (which the Lord overthrew
in his anger, and in his WTath,) even all the nations shall
say, Wherefore hath the Lord done this unto the land ? '
Nay, if we will believe luthe historian above cited, and who
perhaps might have an account of the thing lrom some
Phoenician WTiter, the number of the cities which at this
time were destroyed were thirteen ; and to this there is a
passage in the prophet, which seems to give some coun-
tenance, though not as to the precise number of them
11 'As I live,' saith the Lord God to Jerusalem, ' Sodom,
thy sister, has not done, she nor her daughters ' (that is,
the cities which were built round it, and were tributary to
it) ' have not done, as thou and thy daughters have done.
But whatever the number of the cities might be, it will be
proper for us, before we come to inquire in what manner
they were destroyed, to give some account of their
situation.
12 The plain of Jordan includes the greatest part of the
flat country, through which the river Jordan runs, from
its coming out of the sea of Galilee, to its falling into
the Asphaltite lake, or Salt Sea. But we are not to
imagine, that this plain was once a continued level,
without any risings or descents. The greatest part of it
indeed was champaigne country, (and for this reason was
commonly called ' the great field,') but therein we read
13 of the valley of Jericho, and 14 of the vale of Siddim ;
in the latter of which these cities stood, in a situation so
very advantageous, that we find it compared 15to the land
of Egypt, even to the garden of paradise, upon account
of its being so well watered. And well it might, seeing
it had (as the Lacus Asphaltites has to this day) not only
the streams of the river Jordan running quite through it,
but lb the river Arnon from the east, 17 the brook Zered,
and the 18 famous fountain Callirrhoe from the south, fal-
ling into it. Now. since all this water had no direct pas-
sage into the sea, it must necessarily follow, either that
it was conveyed away by some subterraneous passage, or
was swallowed up in the sands, that everywhere encom-
passed it; which might the more easily be done, because
the inhabitants of those hot countries used to divide their
rivers into several small branches, for the benefit of
watering their fields.
And as this plenty of water gave gTeat riches to the
s Maundrell's Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem.
9 Deut. xxix. 22, 23, 24. I0 Strabo, b. 16. >• Ezek. xri. 48|
12 Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1. 13Deut. xxxiv. 3.
14 Gen. xiv. 3. I5 Gen. xiii. 10. See page 145, in the notes.
16 JosephusAntiq.b. 4.c.4. "Num.xxi. 12. >8pliny, b.5. c. 16.
Sect. I.]
A. M. 2108
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. C. 18%; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. JO 13. GEN. 111. xx-xxv 11
177
soil, and fertility to the country, so wealth and abun-
dance of all tilings (as mankind are too apt to abuse
God's gifts) made Sodom and the neighbouring cities
very infamous for their wickedness and impiety. The
prophet Ezekiel gives us a description of them : ' ' Be-
hold this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom; pride,
fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, was in her
and in her daughters ; neither did she strengthen the hand
of the poor and needy, but was haughty, and committed
abomination before me;' which 2 Josephus might have in
his eye when he gave us this account of them. " The
Sodomites (says he) waxed proud, and, by reason of
their riches and wealth, grew contumelious towards men,
and impious towards God ; so that they were wholly
unmindful of the favours they received from him. They
were inhospitable to strangers, and too proud and arro-
gant to be rebuked. They burned in unnatural lusts
towards one another, and took pleasure in none but such
as ran to the same excess of riot with themselves."
These, and other abominable enormities, provoked the
Divine Ruler of the world to destroy their cities, whose
cry was now grown great for vengeance ; and the manner
wherein it was effected, Moses has recorded in these
words : 3 ' Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon
Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of hea-
ven, and he overthrew the cities, and all the plain, and
all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon
the ground ;' and for the better understanding of this,
we must observe, 1st, 4 That in the vale of Siddim (the
tract of ground which was now destroyed) there were a
great many pits of bitumen, which being a very combusti-
ble matter, 5 is in some places liquid, in others solid ;
and not only found near the surface of the earth, but lies
sometimes very deep, and is dug from the very bowels
of it. 2dly, We must observe, that the brimstone and
fire which the Lord is said to rain upon Sodom and Go-
morrah, means brimstone inflamed ; that, in the Hebrew
style, brimstone inflamed signifies lightning ; and that
the reason why lightning is thus described, no one can be
ignorant of, that has either smelt the places which have
been struck with thunder, or "read what learned men
have wrote upon the subject. 3dly, We must observe
further, that God is not only said to have ' rained down
brimstone and fire,' but brimstone and fire from the
Lord ; where the addition of ' from the Lord,' which at
first sight may appear to be superfluous, or to denote a
plurality of persons in the Deity, (as most Christian in-
terpreters would have it,) does more particularly describe
the thunderbolt, * which by the Hebrews, as well as other
1 C. xvi. 49, 50. 2 Antiq. b. 1. c. 12. 3 Gen. xix. 24, 25.
' Le Clerc's Commentary. 5 Pliny's Natural IIistury,b. 25. c. 15.
a Tims thunder and lightning, says Pliny, (b. 25. c. 15.) have
tlie smell of brimstone, and the very light and flame of them is
sulphureous. And Seneca (Qurest. Nat. b. 2. c. 21.) tells us, that
all things which arc struck by lightning have a sulphureous smell ;
as indeed our natural philosophers have plainly demonstrated, that
what we call the thunderbolt, is nothing else but a sulphureous
exhalation. Persius, in his second satire, calls it sulphur sa-
crum.— ' When it thunders, the oak is not more rapidly rent
uunder by the sacred sulphury flame than you and your house.'
And for this reason the Greeks, in their language, eall brimstone
divine, because the thunderbolt, which it assimilates, is supposed
to come from God. — Le Clerc's Dissertation.
b Thus, in the second book of Kings, ' the fireofGop came
down from heaven and devoured them," ch. i. 12. And Isaiah
nations, is frequently called the fire of God, the (ire from
God, &c. ; and the reason is,— Because, men having no
power over this kind of meteor, ami it being impossible
for them, by any kind of contrivance, to ascend up to
the clouds, God is therefore supposed to dwell there, and
to cast down his bolts from thence.
Now, from these observations put together we may
in some measure, form a notion to ourselves, how this
destruction came to be effected. For though Moses
does not inform us, after what manner the lightning and
thunderbolts from above subverted these cities and their
adjacent territories ; yet, since he plainly makes mention
of them, we cannot comprehend how it could happen any
otherwise than that the lightning and thunderbolts,
falling in great abundance upon some pits of bitumen, c
the veins of that combustible matter took fire immediate-
ly, and as the fire penetrated into the lowermost bowels
of the bituminous soil, these wicked cities were subverted
by a dreadful earthquake, which was followed with a sub-
siding of the ground ; and that, <* as soon as the earth
was sunk, it would unavoidably fall out, that the waters
running to this place in so great an abundance, and
mixing with the bitumen,which they found in great plenty,
would make a lake of what was a valley before, and a
lake of the same quality with what e the Scripture (alls
the Salt Sea.
This lake, according to the account we have of it, is
enclosed to the east and west with exceedingly high
mountains ; on the north it is bounded by the plain of
Jericho, on which side it receives the waters of Jordan ;
uses the same expression, ch. Ixvi. 16. ' He shall be punished
with the fire of the Lord ;' to which the passage in the Latin poet
exactly agrees: — ' He, swifter than the bolt of Jove and the speed
of falling stars, leaped from the dreary banks,' Stat. Theb. b. 1.
Some however have remarked it, as a peculiar elegancy in the
Hebrew tongue, that it very often makes use of the antecedent
instead of the relative, or the noun instead of the pronoun, espe-
cially when it means to express a thing with great vehemence,
or to denote any action to he supernatural or miraculous. — Hei-
degger's Hist, l'atriar. vol. 2. Essay 8.
<• In Lycia, the IIeph;i::,(ian mountains, says Pliny (l>. 2. c.
106) if you do but touch them with a lighted torch, immediately
take fire; nay, the very stones in the rivers and Bands in the
waters bum. If you take a stick out of these waters, and draw
furrows upon the ground with it (according to the common
report) a tract of fire follows it. — Le Clerc's Dissertation.
d Strabo in his first, and Pliny in his second book, "ill fur-
nish us with several examples of this kind. Strabo, i ut i.:' PosJ-
donius, tells us, (p. 40.) that '•' in Phoenicia, a certain city
situated above Sidon, was absorbed by an earthquake; and out of
Demetrius Scepsius, that several earthquakes hare happened in
Asia Minor, by which whole to»ns hare been devoured, the
mountain Siphylis overthrown, and the marshes turned into
standing lakes:" and Pliny (b. "J. c. 88) '' -lilies, that " bf a lire
which suddenly broke out el' it, the mountain BpopOS "as h\ ell, d
to the ground, and a town buried in the deep; for the arch
that supported the ground, breaking iii. the matter underneath
being wholly consumed, the -"il aboremusl of necessity Hn|vMnd
be swallowed up in these caverns, it they were of any large ex-
tent — Le Clerc's "Dissertation.
e The account given in the text of the Salt or Dead Sea dif-
fers somewhat, though "ut much, from the descriptions of modern
travellers. According to the analysis of Dr Marcet, the speei-
fic gravity of the water i^ 1. 211, that of fresh water being K'ii|i
Thus it. is able t" support bodies that would sink eta where. It
is Impregnated with mineral substances, and a fetid air often
exhales from the water. Recent travellers may hue found A
few shellfish nil the shore, or seen a few birds CTO - its B
hot these form only exceptions to the general absence of animal
life. Every thing around bears that dreary and fearful character
that marks the malediction of Heaven,
178
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2108. A. C. 189 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3398. A. C. 2013. GEN. CH. xx— xxv. 11.
on the south it is open, and extends beyond the reach of
the eye, being twenty-four leagues long, and six or seven
broad. Its water is extremely deep and heavy ; so
heavy, that a man cannot, without difficulty, sink in it ;
but of so nauseous a taste, and noisome smell, that nei-
ther fish nor fowl, unaccustomed to the water, can live
in it. It is full of bitumen, which at uncertain seasons
boils up from the bottom in bubbles, at which time the
superficies of the lake swells, and resembles the rising
of a hill. Adjoining to the lake are fields, which for-
merly (as we showed from Tacitus) were fruitful, but are
now so parched, and burned up, that they have los* their
fertility, insomuch, that every thing, whether it grow
spontaneously, or be planted by man, whether it be
herb, fruit, or flower, a as soon as it is compressed,
moulders away immediately into dust ; and to this ' the
author of the book of Wisdom seems to allude, when he
tells us, that ' of the wickedness of those cities, the waste
land that smoketh to this day is a testimony, and the
plants bearing fruit, that never come to ripeness.'
" The cinders, brimstone, and smoke," a says Philo,
" and a certain obscure flame, as it were of a fire burn-
ing, still perceivable in some parts of the country, are
memorials of the perpetual evil which happened to it:"
and, as 3 Josephus adds, " the things that are said of
Sodom are confirmed by ocular inspection, there being
some relics of the fire, which came down from heaven,
and some resemblance of the five cities, still to be seen."
And it is the duration of these monuments of divine
wrath perhaps, which gave occasion to St Jude to say,
that the wicked inhabitants of these cities were ' set forth
for an example, suffering the vengeance of an eternal
fire,' that is, of a fire, whose marks were to be perpe-
tuated unto the end of the world : b for it is a common
thing in Scripture, to express a great and irreparable
vasta,tion, whose effects and signs shall be permanent to
the latest ages, by the word ulamog, which we here
render eternal.
Thus, in all probability, were the cities of the plain of
Jordan overthrown ; nor is there any doubt to be made
but that the miraculous hand of God was employed in
1 Chap. x. 7. 2 In Vita Mosis, b. 2.
3 De Bello Jud. b. 5. c. 27.
a Whether there be any truth in this part of the account of
Tacitus, it is hard to tell. As for the apples of Sodom (to which
he seems to allude) Mr Mauudrell tells us, that he never saw nor
heard of any thereabouts, nor was there any tree to be seen near
the lake from which one might expect such kind of fruit; and
therefore he supposes tire being, as well as the beauty of that fruit,
a mere fiction, and only kept up because it served for a good
allusion, and now and then helped poets to a pat similitude. —
Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem.
b Thus God threatens to make the people of Israel • a perpe-
tual desolation,' Ezek. xxxv. 9; 'a perpetual hissing,' Jer. xviii.
16 ; and ' an everlasting reproach,' Jer. xxiii. 40 ; and this more
especially is threatened where the destruction of a city or nation
is compared to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah ; ' it shall
never be inhabited,' Isa. xiii. 20. Whether Sodom really un-
derwent this fate or sometime after was rebuilt, is a question that
has exercised the learned. It is certain, that in the Notitia,
express mention is made of Sodom, as an episcopal city ; and
among the bishops of Arabia, there is found one Severus, a bishop
of Sodom, who subscribed to the first council of Nice ; Mr Re-
land, however, cannot persuade himself that this impious place
was ever rebuilt ; and therefore he believes that the word Sodom,
which is read among the subscriptions of that council, must be a
fault of the copiers. — Ccdmet's Dictionmy on the word Sodom.
sending down this heavy judgment. For 4 though in a
soil impregnated with bitumen, the cities which are built
thereupon may be shaken with an earthquake, and swal-
lowed up by a sudden hiatus ; though thunderbolts may
fall, and set the veins of sulphur and bitumen on fire,
which afterwards breaking out, and mingling with the
water, may, in a low valley, easily cause a lake, full of
asphaltus : though these things, I say, in process of time
might have come to pass in an ordinary course of
nature ; yet, if they were done before their natural causes
were in a disposition to produce them ; if they would
not have been done that instant, unless it had been
for some extraordinary interposition of God or his
blessed angels ; it ought to be reputed no less a miracle
than if every particular in the transaction had plainly
surpassed the usual operations of nature. And that the
judgment now before us happened in this manner, 5 the
two angels despatched by Almighty God, upon this
important occasion, 6 God's foretelling Abraham his
design, the angel's acquainting Lot with the errand
about which they came, and their urging and instigating
him to be gone, 7 to make haste and ' escape to Zoar,
because they could do nothing until he was come thither,'
are arguments sufficiently convincing, that the thunder
and lightning, or (as 8 others will have it) , the showers
of liquid fire, or rather 9 storms of nitre and sulphur,
mingled with fire, which fell upon these wicked places,
were immediately sent down by the appointment of God,
and by the ministry of his angels, who, knowing all the
meteors of the air, and their repugnant qualities, did
collect, commix, and employ them, as they thought fit,
in the execution of God's just judgment upon a people
devoted to destruction.
Thus we have considered the manner of the destruc-
tion of the cities of the plain, how far natural causes
might be concerned, and wherein the miraculous hand of
God did intervene. Whether a deluge or a conflagration
be the more formidable judgment of the two, we cannot
tell ; our imaginations will hardly reach the dreadfulness
of either ; and to enter into the comparison, is a task
too shocking. As the history, however, of those who
suffered these punishments, is recorded in Scripture for
our admonition, 1U 'that we should not lust after evil
things even as they lusted;' so the apostle has set both
their examples before us, and laid it down for a sure
proposition, — .That u ' if God spared not the old world,
but brought in a flood upon the ungodly, and if he,
turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes,
condemned them with an overthrow,' or (according to la
St Jude) condemned them to ' the vengeance of eternal
fire ;' we need not doubt, but that, as he is in all age3
the same, a God of justice, as well as mercy, no iniquity
can ultimately escape. For though, upon every occasion,
lie does not lay bare his vindictive arm, though 13 ' he is
strong and patient, so that he seldom whetteth his sword,
and prepareth the instruments of death ;' yet a few of these
remarkable, these monumental instances of his severity
against sin, are enough to convince us, that ' he hath
reserved the unjust (however they may escape now) unto
the day of judgment to be punished.'
4 Le Clerc's Commentary in locum.
5 Gen. xviii. 22. 6 Ver. 17. ' Gen. xix. 22.
8 Howell's History. ' Patrick's Commentary.
10 I Cor. x. 6. " 2 Pet. ii. 5. 12 Ver. 7. 13 Ps. vii. 12, &c.
Sect. II.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
179
A. M. 2148. A. C. 1656;
SECT. II.
CHAP.
I. — Of the Life of Isaac from his Marriage
to his Death.
THE HISTORY
Isaac was forty years old a when he married Rebecca,
the daughter of Bethuel ; but his mother Sarah's misfor-
tune attended his wife, namely, that she was without
issue for almost twenty years together, till God at last
was pleased to hear * his earnest prayers, and grant him
the blessing he so much longed for. Rebecca, however,
had not many months conceived before the struggles of
the two children (for she had twins) in her womb, gave
her such pain and uneasiness, that she began, in a man-
ner, to wish herself not with child again ; and when she
went c to consult the divine oracle, what the meaning of
this uncommon conflict might be, she had it returned for
answer, that the two children which she then bore, were
a How old Rebecca was when she was married to Isaac, the
Scripture does nowhere inform us ; but the conjectures of most of
the Jewish commentators make her to be extremely young. The
oldest that they will allow her to be, is not above fourteen, which
was a thing hardly customary in those days: and yet, considering
her absolute management of all alfairs, even when Isaac was
alive, we cannot but suppose, that although she lived not so long,
she was a considerable deal younger than he. — Heidegger's Hist.
Patriur. vol. 2. Essay 11.
b The word in the original signifies to pray with constancy,
vehemence, and importunity; and the Jews hereupon have a
traditional explication, which is preserved in Jonathan's Targum,
namely, that he carried his wife to the place of the altar, upon
mount Moriah, where he himself was once bound to be sacrificed,
and there made a most solemn invocation, by the faith of his
father Abraham, and by the oath of God, that she, though barren
by nature, might conceive by virtue of the covenant and super-
natural blessing; and accordingly he prevailed with God to grant
him his request. What we render ' for his wife,' may likewise
signify in the presence of his wife: and so the import of the
words will be, that besides their more private devotions, they did
oftentimes, in a more solemn manner, and with united force,
pray for the mercy wherein they were equally concerned: nor
could there be any presumption in their thus petitioning what at
present was denied them, because they knew very well, that
God's purpose and promise did not exclude, but rather require
the use of all convenient means for their accomplishment. —
Poole's Annotations, and Bibliotheca Bibliea in locum.
c The most early and common method of inquiring of the
Lord, was, by going to some one of his prophets, and consulting
him; but then the question is, who the prophet was whom
Rebecca, upon this occasion, consulted? Some of the Jewish
doctors are of opinion, that she went to the school, or oratory of
Shem, («hom they suppose then alive,) or to some other person,
constituted by him, and called of God to that ministration. Some
Christian commentators imagine, it was Melchizedek ' the priest
of the Most High God ' whom she consulted; but if it were any
priest or prophet, that then she applied to, her father-in-law,
Abraham, who was certainly then alive, and is expressly called
'a prophet,' Gen. xx. 7, seems to have been the most proper
person, not oidy because he was highly interested in her concerns,
but had likewise the Shechinah, or Divine appearance (as most
imagine) continually resident with him. But as there was
another manner besides that of answering by prophets, customary
in those days, namely, by dreams and visions, their opinion seems
to bo most probable, who suppose, that Rebecca retired into some
secret place, and there having poured out her soul before God in
ardent prayers, received an answer, not long after, either in a
dream or vision, by a voice from heaven, or by the information
ot an angel sent for that purpose. — See Le Clcrc's Commentary,
Bibliotheca Bibliea in locum, and Heidegger's His!. Patriar.
Vol. 2. Essay 11.
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3418. A. C. 19U3. GliN. C1I. xxv. ?0-xxv,ii. 8.
to be the heads of two different nations, should long
contest it for superiority, but that at length the younger
should get the dominion over the elder.
When the appointed time for their birth was come, the
child which Rebecca was lirst delivered of, was all
covered over with red hair, for which reason his parents
<* called him Esau ; and the other came after him so very
close, that he took hold of his heel with his hand, ami
was therefore called Jacob, to denote (what he afterwards
proved) the supplanter of his brother ; and as th.\
advanced in years, their tempers and occupations were
quite different. Esau was a strong and active person,
who delighted much in hunting, and thereby supplying
his father with venison very frequently, won his particular
affection ; while Jacob, who was of a more gentle and
courteous disposition, by staying at home in the tent,
and employing himself in family offices, became his
mother's darling.
One day, when Jacob had made him some lentil pot-
tage, Esau, returning from his sport, quite spent with
hunger and fatigue, was so taken with the looks of it,
that he earnestly desired his brother e to let him eat with
him : but his brother, it seems, being well instructed l>y
his mother, refused to do it, unless he would make him
an immediate dedition of his birthright. Esau, con-
sidering' to what a multitude of dangers his manner of
life, in encountering wild beasts, did daily expose him,
made no great esteem of what Jacob required : and
Jacob, perceiving his disposition to comply, (that he
might have the right more firmly conveyed to him) /
proposed his doing it by way of oath, which the other
never scrupled, and after the bargain was made, fell 1<>
eating very greedily, never once reflecting on what a
vile and scandalous thing it needs must be, to sell his
birthright, and s all the great privileges thereunto
belonging, for a mess of pottage.
d The meaning of the word Esau is somewhat obscure, unless
we derive it from Htussah, to make or be perfect ; because he was
of a stronger constitution than ordinary infants, as having hair
all over him, which is an indication of manhood, whereas other
children are bom with hair only on their heads: and as for Jacob,
it is derived from an Hebrew word, which signilieth to itq. plant,
and by the addition of the letter Jod, one of the formativi - ol
nouns, it denotes a supplanter, or one that taheth hold of, and
trippeth up his brother's heels. — Poole's Annotations,
Universal History, c. 7.
e Lentils were a kind of puke, somewhat like our vetches, or
coarser sort of pease. St Austin, upon Psalm )\\i. says, that
these were Egyptian lentils, which wire in great esteem, and
very probably gave the pottage a red tincture. — The Inhabitants
of Barbery still make use of lentils bailed and stewed with oil
and garlick, a pottage of a chocolate colour; this was the red
pottage for which Esau, from thence called Edom, -old Us birth,
right. — Show's Travels, \>. 140.— En.
/Some imagine that Esau did not know what Bus 1. mil soup
was, and therefore be only called it by its colour, 'give me of
that red, that same red,' »- it i- in the II' brew; for which
he was likewise called Edom, which signifies red. Hut then- is
no occasion to suppose, that 1»- wa- Ignorant of what lentil- were,
only his repeating the word red, without adding the nan
thing, denota d hi- greal hunger, and eagerness of appi kite, which
was probably still more irritated by the colour of the soup. —
Bibliotheca Bibliea.
# The birthright, or right of primogeniture, had many privi-
leges annexed to it. The Brst-born was consi crab d to the Lord,
Exod. x\ii. 2'.*; had a double portion of the estate allotted him,
Deut. xxi. 17; had a dignity and authority hut hk brethren,
Gen. slix. '■>: nicceeded in the government of the family or
kingdom, 2 Chron. xxi. X ; and as tome with c,h-kI reason
180 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book III.
A. M. 2148. A. C. 1856; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3418. A. C. 1993. GEN. CH. xxv. 20-xxvUL 8.
In Abraham's time the famine was so severe in Canaan,
that he was forced to remove into Egypt ; and upon the
same account his son Isaac had now left his habitation,
near the well Lahairoi, and was come as far as Gerar,
a where Abimelech at this time was king, in order to pro-
ceed in his journey ; but while he was deliberating what
to do, God admonished him in a dream not go down into
Egypt, but to tarry in the country where he then was ;
and at the same time assured him, that he would not only
secure him from the danger of the famine, but, in. per-
formance of the oatli which he had sworn to his father
Abraham, his faithful and obedient servant, would cause
his family (to which he would give the whole land of
Canaan in possession, and from which the Messias, the
desire of all nations, should descend) to multiply exceed-
ingly-
Isaac, according to the divine direction, went no far-
ther than Gerar ; and here it was that he fell into the
same weakness that his father had formerly done in the
same place, namely, his making his wife pass for his
sister, for fear that some wicked man or other might be
tempted to destroy him, in order to enjoy her. But so
it was, that the king, from his window, observing some
familiarities pass between them that did not so well
comport with the character of a brother, sent for him im-
mediately, complained of his dissimulation, charged him
with being married, and (not unmindful, very probably,
of what had befallen the nation upon the account of
Sarah) with a design of entailing guilt, and therewith a
judgment of God upon his subjects, in case any attempt
had been made upon her virtue. Fear of death, and the
desire of self-preservation, were the only apology that
Isaac made for his conduct ; which Abimelech was pleased
to accept, and accordingly issued out an edict that none,
upon pain of death, should dare to offer any injury,
either to Isaac or his wife.
The great accession of wealth, however, wherewith
God had blessed him during his stay in Gerar, raised the
envy and indignation of the Philistines. That very year
wherein he thought of going down into Egypt for fear of
the famine, he sowed a piece of ground, and to the great
surprise of his neighbours, received b an hundredfold
imagine, succeeded to the priesthood, or chief government in
matters ecclesiastical. He had a right to challenge the particular
blessing of his dying parent. He had the covenant which God
made with Abraham, that from his loins Christ should come,
consigned to him. And, what is more, these prerogatives were
not confined to his person only, but descended to his latest pos-
terity, in case they comported themselves so as to deserve them.
— Poole's Annotations, and Le Clerc's Commentary .
a It is not unlikely that this Abimelech might be the son of
that Abimelech, king of Gerar, with whom Abraham had for-
merly made a covenant, supposing Abimelech to be here the
proper name of a man. But it is much more probable, that at
this time it was a common name for the king of the Philistines,
as Cffisar was for the Roman emperors, and Pharaoh for the kings
of Egypt.
b This hundredfold increase in one year was given by God
unto Isaac for a sign of his purpose to fulfil the covenant made
with his father, and lately renewed to him; particularly for the
confirmation of the truth and reason of the warning against his
going down to Egypt, as he was inclined, according to the natural
prospect of things. Such an increase was at this time a singular
blessing of God, after there had been a considerable dearth; and
the soil perhaps that afforded so large a crop not so rich ; other-
wise we may learn from Varro {Be Re Rustica, h. 1. c. 44.) that
in Syria, near Gadcra, and in Africa, about Byzacium, they
produce from it ; so that Abimelech 's subjects began all
to malign him, and, to oblige him to depart the country,
filled up the wells which his father's servants had digged.6'
Nay, the very king himself, to satisfy the resentment of
his people, desired of him to leave the city of Gerar,
and to find him out another habitation ; for that, in his
opinion, d he had improved his fortune sufficiently while
he had been among them : so that, to secure himself, as
well as make the king easy, he retired into the valley of
Gerar, where his father had formerly fed his cattle, and
there began to open the wells which his father had caused
to be dug, but the Philistines had filled up, and called
them by their ancient names. But the people of the
country, thinking him too well situated there, quarrelled
with his shepherds, took away their wells, and put him to
many inconveniences ; so that being quite tired with their
repeated insults, he removed farther from them, and went
and lived in the most distant parts of their country.
Here it was that he dug another well ; and meeting
with no opposition, called it Rehoboth, that is, room, or
enlargement, because God had now delivered him from
the straits and difficulties he had lately been in, by reason
reaped an hundred bushels from one ; nay, Bochart (in Canaan,
b. 1. c. 25.) shows from several good authors, that some places in
Africa are so veiy fruitful, that they produce two or three hundred
fold, which makes this account of Moses far from being incredible.
{Bibliotheca Biblica, and Patrick's Commentary.} The author
of the history of the piratical state of Barbary observes, that the
Moors of that country are divided into tribes like the Arabians,
and like them dwell in tents, formed into itinerant villages: that
" these wanderers farm lands of the inhabitants of the towns, sow
and cultivate them, paying their rent with the produce, such as
fruits, corn, wax, &c. They are very skilful in choosing the
most advantageous soils for every season, and very careful to
avoid the Turkish troops, the violence of the one little suiting
the simplicity of the other," p. 44. It is natural to suppose that
Isaac possessed the like sagacity when he sowed in the land of
Gerar, and received that year an hundredfold. His lands appear
to have been hired of the fixed inhabitants of the country. On
this account the king of the country might, after the reaping of
the crop, refuse his permission a second time, and desire him to
depart. — Harmer, vol. 1. p. 85. — Ed.
c The same mode of taking vengeance which is here men-
tioned, has been practised in ages subsequent to the time here
referred to. Niebuhr {Travels, p. 302.) tells us, that the Turkish
emperors pretend to a right to that part of Arabia that lies
between Mecca and the countries of Syria and Egypt, but that
their power amounts to very little. That they have, however,
garrisons in divers little citadels built in that desert, near the
wells that are made on the old road from Egypt and Syria to
Mecca, which are incended for the greater safety of their cara-
vans. But in a following page (p. 330) he gives us to under-
stand, that these princes have made it a custom to give annually
to every Arab tribe which is near that road, a certain sum of money
and a certain number of vestments, to keep them from destroying
the wells that lie in that route. — Harmer, vol. 4. p. 247. — Ed.
d The words of Abimelech, according to our translation, are
these, ' Thou art much mightier than we ;' but certainly he could
not mean that Isaac was more powerful than the whole people of
Palestine, or that he had a larger family or more numerous atten-
dants than himself had, and consequently was in a condition, if
he had been so minded, to disturb the government. This we can
by no means conceive to be possible ; and therefore the words in
the original (cignatza/rrypta mimennu) do not mean, ' because
thou art mightier than we,' but ' because thou art increased, and
multiplied from us, or by us,' that is, thou hast got a great deal
by us ; while thou hast continued amongst us, thou hast made a
great accession to thy substance, and we do not care to let thee
get any more ; so that the Philistines did not fear him, but envy
him ; they grudged that he should get so much among them, and
therefore desired him to absent their country. — Shuchjord's Con-
nection, vol. 2. b. H.
Sect. II.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
181
A. M. 2148. A. C. 1856; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3418. A. C. 1993. GK X. (II.
kxy. 20 -xxviii.
of a scarceness of water, and not long after settled his
constant abode at Beersheba ; where he had no sooner
arrived, but that very night God appeared to him in a
vision, promising him his favour and protection, and that
he would bless him, and multiply his seed for his servant
Abraham's sake : so that Isaac, intending to continue
here, built him an altar and place of religious worship,
and cleared out the well a which his father had formerly
dug.
Nor had he been long here before Abimelech, consci-
ous of the peculiar manner wherein God had blessed him,
sensible of the ill usage be had received from his sub-
jects, and apprehensive, perhaps, that in time he might
think of revenging the injuries he had suffered, came
attended with l> the chief of his nobility, and with the
captain -general of his forces, either to renew the old
league which had formerly been made with his father
Abraham, or to enter into a new one.
It was but proper that Isaac, upon this occasion, should
in some measure resent the indignities that were offered
him : and therefore at first he expostulates the matter
with them, and seems to wonder why they came to visit
Lim whom they had so lately expelled their country.
\bimelech made the best excuse for their behaviour that
the nature of the thing would bear ; told him, that he had
all along perceived that the divine favour attended him
in all his undertakings, and that therefore, that he might
not be thought to oppose God, he was come to renew the
covenant depending between his people and Abraham's
posterity, and was ready to engage in the same condi-
tions and obligations. This speech, so full of submis-
sion and acknowledgments, soon pacified Isaac, who
was naturally of a quiet and easy disposition ; so that,
having entertained the king and his attendants in a very
respectful and generous manner that night, the next
morning c they confirmed the league wit!) the usual cere-
monies, and Abimelech took leave and returned home :
but before he departed, Isaac's servants brought him
word, that in the well which they had been clearing out,
a The reasons that induced Isaac, to open the old wells, rather
than dig new ones, might be, 1. Because he was sure to find a
tyring there, which he could not be certain of in other places;
8. Because it was easier, and less liable to censure and envy ; 3.
Because he had a right to them, as they were his father's pur-
chase and property ; and 4. Because he was minded to preserve
and do honour to his father's memory, for which reason he called
them by the same names that his father had done before him. —
Btbliotheca JU/ilira, in locum.
b The two that are mentioned here are Phicol and Ahazzah.
Phicol is of the same name, and bore the same office which he
had who is mentioned ch. xxi. 22; but we must not suppose that
lie was the same man, any more than Abimelech was the
;ame king. The word properly signifies face or head ; and as
the captain-general is head of the forces he commands, so some
have imagined that it is the appellative name (like that of trihu-
nus, or dictator, among the Romans) for eveiy one among them
that were advanced to that dignity. And in like manner, though
the Septuagint seem to make Ahazzah a proper name, and call
him the para-nymph, or bride-man, to Abimelech, which was
always accounted a post of the first honour; yet 1 shall rather
choose, with Onkelos, to make the word signify ' a train, or great
number of nobility which came in attendance on Abimelech, and
to do the patriarch the greater honour upon t\\\i occasion. — Le
(Merc's Commentary, and Howell's History.
e The articles were agreed upon over night, and, by a mutual
I nath, ratified in the monring. And the reason why men took
i'liblic oaths in the morning fasting, seems to have been »/> reve-
rentiam jiirirmrnti, as the Jews call it, because they looked upon
(Mm as very solemn and sacred things. — Btbliotheca Biblica.
1 and which Abraham in former times had bought of the
king of Gerar, they had happily found a spring of water .
for which reason, in the hearing of Abimeledl and all
the company, he called it again by the nam.- of Beer-
sheba, the well of the oath, " that is, the well wherein
water was discovered on the day that Abimelech and 1
entered int^> a treaty of peace, and ratified the game with
the solemnity of oaths."
By this time Isaac's two sons were arrived at the un
of forty ; and Esau, who had contracted an acquaintance
with the people of the land, had married two wives, Ju-
dith, the daughter of Beeri,and Bethsheiuath, the daugh-
ter of Elon, both Hittites, which was no small affliction
to his parents. This in a manner quite alienated his
mother's heart from him ; but as for his father, his affec-
tions continued the same. And therefore, finding himsell
"tow old and feeble, and his eyes quite dim with age,
and apprehending his death to be nearer than really it
was, he called him one day, and declared to him his pur-
pose of giving him his paternal benediction before he
died ; but wished him withal to take his hunting instru-
ments, and go into the fields, and kill him a little veni-
son, and dress it to his palate, that when he had eaten
thereof, and refreshed nature, he might bless him with a
more tender affection, as well as a more becoming pathos.
Rebecca overheard all this discourse ; and as sunn as
Esau was well gone, she called Jacob, and acquainted
him with what was transacting ; that his father was going
to bestow a benediction, which was final and irrevocable,
upon his brother ; but that, if he would listen to her, and
do what she ordered hint, she had an expedient, by sub-
stituting him in his room, to turn aside the blessing where
she desired it. Jacob was willing enough to comply w ith
his mother's request; but if he was to personate his bro-
ther, the difference of his skin and voice made him ap-
prehensive that his father might discover the imposture,
and thereupon be provoked, instead of his prayers and
best wishes, to load him with imprecations. But so con-
fident was his mother of success in this matter, that die
took all the curses upon herself, and encouraged him to
follow her directions. Hereupon Jacob hastened to the
fold, and brought two fat kids from thence, which his
mother immediately took, and dressed the choice pieces
of them with savoury sauce, like venison ; and so having
covered his neck and his hands with the skins of the kids,
d and arrayed him with Esau's best robes, ' she sent him
in trembling with the dish to his father.
d Gen. xxvii. 16. ' Put the skin of the kids of the goats.' It
is observed by Hoehart, that in ihe ea-tem countries goat's hair
was very like to that of men; so thai Isaac might rery easily be
deceived, when bis eyes Mere dim, and hi- feeling DO less
decayed than his sidit.
e The Jews have a fancy, that it was the robe of Adam, which
bad been transmitted down from father to - in the line of
blessing, as they call it, till it came to Abraham, who left it to
Isaac, and he designing Esbu, is bis eldest, for his wo
gave it to him. Son fthem imagine, thai it was ■ sacerdotal
habit, wherein Ivan, in bis father's Illness, was supposed to
officiate, and fortius reason it might be kept in Isaac's tent, near
to which, wry likely, was the place of religious worship. In all
probability it was a restraent of some distinct! which the heir
of the familv, upon some solemn occasions, was used to put on;
and Jacob being at this time to personate his brother. th. re was
a necessity for him to have it. But bow his mother should come
by it, or why she should have the keeping of it, when K-au bad
wives of his own, is a question that Mnsculus raises, and meat
182 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, iBook III.
A. M. 2148. A. C. 185G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3418. A. C. 1993. GEN. CH. xxv. 20— xxviii. 8.
His father was lying upon the bed when Jacob entered
the room, and upon his demanding who he was, he roundly
answered, that he was his elder son Esau, who had brought
him some venison to eat. Surprised at the great expedi-
tion he had made, and not knowing indeed what to think,
the old man put several times the question to him, whe-
ther he was in reality his son Esau or no ? to which he
as often answered in the affirmative and desired him, in
short, to arise, and taste of what he had prepared for
him, since God, who knew his zeal to obey his father,
had brought it into his hands much sooner than he could
otherwise have expected.
The difference between Jacob's and Esau's voice was
so remarkable, that Isaac coidd not but suspect some
delusion in the case ; and therefore he desired him to
draw nearer, that he might be the better satisfied ; and
when he had felt the hairy skin on his hands and neck,
lie owned that ' the hands were the hands of Esau, though
the voice was the voice of Jacob.'
Thus satisfied, or rather thus deluded, he arose, and
ate heartily of his son's pretended venison ; and as soon
as he had dined, and drank a a cup or two of wine, he
bid him draw near, that he might now bestow upon him
his promised blessing. The smell of Jacob's garments
contributed not a little to Isaac's cheerfulness. He
smelled and praised them. In a kind of ecstasy of plea-
sure, he embraced and kissed his pretended first-born ;
and after having * wished him all heavenly and earthly
blessings, he at length dismissed him.
Jacob was scarce jrot out of the tent, when Esau, having
returned from hunting, and just made ready his venison,
came and invited his father, in the same dutiful manner
that his brother had done. Surprised at this address, his
father asked who he was ? and, when he understood that
it was his elder son Esau, he was quite in a maze, and
began to inquire who, and where that person was, who
had been there before, and taken away the blessing which
he neither could nor would revoke. Esau, too well
perceiving that it must have been Jacob who had thus
answers it, by saying, — That because Esau had married these
wives without the consent of his parents, especially his mother,
she, for this reason, refused to give it him, and perhaps reserved
it for this very occasion. But, in my opinion, there seems to be
no necessity for this supposition, since it was sufficient for her
purpose, that she knew where it was in Esau's apartment. —
Bibliotheca Biblica, in locum.
a There is a tradition among the Jews, that Jacob having
omitted to bring wine for his father, an angel prepared it and
brought it into his apartment; that he gave it into Jacob's hands,
and Jacob poured it out for his father; that the wine was the
same with the wine of paradise, which had been laid up from the
beginning ; and that his father, having drank of it, kissed him, and
blessed him, as one now filled with the Spirit, even with the
Spirit of prophecy and blessing. But the custom of the Jewish
doctors is to magnify every little matter.
b The prayer which Josephus makes Isaac oiler up to God
upon this occasion is in words to this effect. " Eternal God, the
Creator of all things that are made ; thou hast been so gracious
and bountiful to my father, to myself, and to our offspring, pro-
mising, and possessing us of all things, and giving us assurances
of greater blessings to come: Lord, make thy words good to us
by effects, and do not despise thy servant for his present infirmi-
ties, which make him the more sensible of his need of thy support.
Preserve tins child from all evil in thy mercy and infinite good-
ness: give, him a long and happy life: bless him with all worldly
enjoyments that may be for his good: and make him a terror to
his enemies, and an honour and comfort to his friends." — Antiq.
b. 1. c. IS.
supplanted him, complains of his double perfidy : first,
in extorting his birthright from him, and now in robbing
him of his father's blessing ; and then seems to wonder
very much that his father's store should be so far exhausted,
as (since he would not revoke the other) not to have
reserved one blessing for him.
Isaac was willing enough to gratify his son's request ;
and it grieved him, no doubt, to hear his bitter lamenta-
tions ; but what could he do ? all the choicest of his
blessings he had bestowed upon Jacob ; and as they
were gone he could not recall them. However, that he
might in some measure pacify Esau, by the same prophetic
spirit he acquaints him, " That though c his posterity
should not enjoy a very plentiful country, yet they should
become a great people, and mighty warriors, who should
live by the dint of their sword ; and though they should
sometimes become subject to the descendants of Jacob,
yet, in process of time, they would d shake off their yoke
and erect a dominion of their own.
Esau was now become so sensible of what he had lost
by the fraud and deceptions of his brother, that he was
resolved, at a proper season, to be revenged on him.
His regard to his father would not permit him to express
his resentment in any violent act as yet ; but as he sup-
posed that he could not live long, he was determined to
kill his brother, as soon as his father was dead. Some
speeches of this kind had accidentally dropped from him,
which were brought to his mother's ears. Whereupon she
acquainted her favourite son with the bloody design his
brother had conceived against him ; told him that the
wisest way would be for him to withdraw somewhere,
c The words in our translation carry a sense quite different to
what we have here suggested; ' Behold thy dwelling shall be of
the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven.' But besides
that this makes the blessing the same with that which was given
to Jacob, ver. 28, which Isaac professes himself incapable of
doing; it is manifest, that Idumea, where the descendants of
Esau dwelt, was far from being a fat and fruitful country. Had
it been so, there had not been that reason for the subsequent
words, ' by thy sword thou shalt live ;' for a rich and plentifut
country would have secured them from livingby spoil and plunder,
as it is manifest the people of that country did, if we can credit
the character which Josephus, both in his history of the Anti-
quities, b. 13, and of the Wars of the Jews, b. 4, gives us of
them. — Le Clerc's Commentary; and Universal History.
d The Edomites, or Idumeans, who were the posterity of
Esau, for a considerable time were a people of much more power
and authority than the Israelites, till, in the days of David, they
were entirely conquered, 2 Sam. viii. 14; they were thereupou
governed by depvities or viceroys appointed by the kings of Judah:
and whenever they attempted to rebel, were for a long time
crushed, and kept under by the Jews. In the days of Jehorani.
the son of Jehoshaphat, they expelled their viceroy, and set up fc
king of their own, 2 Kings viii. 20 ; and though they were
reduced at that time, yet for some generations after this, they
seemed to have lived independent on the Jews; and when the
Babylonians invaded Judea, they not only took part with them,
but violently oppressed them, even when the enemy was with-
drawn; so that, remembering what they had suffered under Joab
in the days of David, they entered into the like cruel measures
against the^ Jews, and threatened to lay Jerusalem level with the
ground. Their animosity against the posterity of Jacob seems
indeed to be hereditary; nor did they ever cease, for any consi-
derable time, from broils and contentions, until they were con-
quered by Hyrcanus, and reduced to the necessity of embracing i
the Jewish religion, or quitting their country. Hereupon, con- I
seating to the former, they were incorporated with the Jews, anil; J
became one nation ; so that in the first century after Christ, tin
name of Idumean was lost, and quite disused. — Le Clerc's Com-
1 nicniary, and Universal History, b. 1. c. 4.
Sect. II.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES
A. M. 2148. A. C. 1856; OR, ACCORDING TO HAXES
until his fury was assuaged : and the properest place for
that purpose would he his uncle Laban's, in Mesopota-
mia ; that thither he might retire a little while, and
as soon as his brother's passion was over, she would not
fail to recall him;. that to part with him indeed was no
small affliction to her, but nothing comparable to the
misery that would ensue, if in one day she should be
bereaved of them both ; of him by the hand of his brother
and of his brother, by the hand of justice.
Jacob, who was of a mild, if not of a timorous temper,
readily complied with his mother's proposal ; but then
his father's consent was to be had ; and this Rebecca
undertook to obtain by artful insinuations to her husband,
that Esau's Hittite wives were a perpetual grief and
trouble to her; that the whole comfort of her life would
be lost, if Jacob should chance to marry in the like
unhappy manner ; and therefore, to prevent this disaster,
she thought it not amiss, if she might have but his appro-
bation therein, that he should go to her brother Laban's
in Mesopotamia, and there see if he could fancy any
one of his daughters for a wife.
Isaac was unacquainted with the main drift of her dis-
course ; but being himself a pious man, and knowing
that the promise made to Abraham, and renewed iii him,
was to be completed in the issue of Jacob, called him to
him, and upon his blessing, gave him a strict charge not
to marry with any Canaanitish woman, but to go to
Padan-Aram, to the house of his uncle Laban, and there
provide himself with a wife ; which if he did, " God would
bless him," he said, " and raise him up a numerous pos-
terity, and give that posterity the possession of that very
country, where now they were no more than sojourners,
according to the promise which he had made to his
grandfather Abraham."
With these words he dismissed Jacob to go to his
uncle's in Mesopotamia ; and of the patriarch Isaac we
read no more, only that he was alive at his son's return,
and lived three and twenty years longer still ; that he
had removed from Beersheba, where his son left him,
and dwelt now at Mainre, not far from Hebron ; where,
at the age of 188 years, he died, and was buried in the
same sepulchre with his father Abraham, by his two sons
Esau and Jacob.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
Nothing can be more obvious, than that the promises
which God was pleased to make to the patriarchs, were
not to be accomplished in their persons, but in their pos-
terity. Abraham had but one son by his primary wife,
and Isaac but two ; and therefore the blessing of a
numerous offspring could not be verified in them ; but
in Jacob it began to operate. He had twelve sons ; and
these, when in Egypt, notwithstanding all lets and im-
pediments to the contrary, mightily increased ; and upon
their return from thence, made up r.n army sufficient to
expel the old inhabitants, and to take possession of the
land of promise, for thus it is that Moses bespeaks the
people : ' ' Thy fathers went down into Egypt, with
' Duut. x. 22
See. 183
A. M. 3113. A. C. 1093. GEN. C II. xxv. m_xxviii. 8.
threescore and ten persons, and now fee Lord fej God
hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude :'
wherein he alludes to the very words in which the pro-
mise, the original promise was made.
If then the numerous posterity with which God Messed
theJewishpatriarchs,did,inadue course ol\ ears, though
not immediately ensue, there is no foundation for our
calling in question his truth and veracity; but then bifl
wisdom and almighty power are much more conspicuous
in raising so large an increase from so small a begin-
ning. For besides that the long sterility of these holy
matrons gave a proper occasion for the exercise of faith
and patience, and reliance on God, 2 it tended not a
little to illustrate the nobility of the Jewish extraction,
when it came to be considered, that their progenitors
were descended from women that were coinplexionally
unfruitful, and brought into the world at no less an
expense than that of a miracle. It showed plainly, that
the multiplication of the promised seed was not effected
by any natural succession, but by the divine favour and
benediction. It prepared the way for the coming of the
Sonof God in the flesh, and, as St Chryseetom8 expresses
it, predisposed the world to the belief of the miraculous
conception of the Virgin Mary. It administered com-
fort to such married women as were childless, giving
them encouragement still to hope on, and restraining
them from murmuring, or being impatient at any retard-
ation ; and therefore we find the angel, in his address to
the blessed virgin, (both to enforce the credibility of the
message he brought her, and to revive the hope of such as
were destitute of children,) expressing himself in this
manner ; * ' Behold thy cousin Elizabeth, who was called
barren, she also hath conceived a son in her old age,
for with God nothing shall be impossible ;' and it is a
glorious demonstration of the sovereign power of God,
when (according to the apostle's manner of expression)
5 ' he causes the weak things of the world, to confound
the things that are mighty, the base things of the world,
and the tilings that are despised, yea and the things that
are not, to bring to nought the things that are, that DO
flesh should glory in his presence.'
The same apostle, in relation to the subject we are
now upon, has, by a familiar similitude, evinced the right
which the great Ruler of the world has to make a discri-
mination (as to the temporalities I mean only) between
man and man ; for * hath not the potter power over the
clay,' says he, ' of the same lump, to make I vessel
unto honour and another unto dishonour r" He who has
a present intuition of all things future, knows how every
person when born into the world, will comport himself;
and therefore, as he has the right, so he is the only being
that is duly qualified to allot men their different stations
in life ; but it is their dillerent stations in life that God
thus determines, and not un\ MSnftj of their happy or
unhappy condition in the next.
Esau and Jacob were doth in the womb, when <i<"1
thought lit to declare his choice of the one, rather than
the other, to be the founder of the Jewish nation, and 01
'whom, according to the lash, Chri.-t should OOBBO :'
and as this was a favour of a temporary consideration
only, and no way affected their eternal state, 1 SHOW
* Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 8.1
* In Gen. ch. xlix. 'Luki -'•
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of no attribute of God that could restrain him in this
option. Loving and hating are terms of a strong sig-
niiication sometimes ; but that here they can bear no more
than a bare preference of one before another, is plain
from the whole tenor of the apostle's discourse. The
truth is, * his words, as well as those of Moses, relate,
(as we said before) not to the persons, but to the poste-
rity of Jacob and Esau, or not to them personally, but
nationally considered. As to their persons, it was never
true, that the elder did serve the younger, but only as
to their posterity, when the 2 Edomites became tributary
to David : and therefore the apostle cannot be supposed
here to discourse of any personal election to eternal life,
or any absolute love or hatred of these two brothers, with
respect to their interest in another world, but only of the
election of one seed or nation before another, to be
accounted and treated as the seed of Abraham, which is
all that the apostle's argument drives at.
In a word, the case of these two patriarchs has nothing
to do with the election, or reprobation of particular per-
sons. It shows us indeed, that God may make choice
of one nation rather than another, to be his peculiar
people ; but to apply this to particular persons, or to
suppose that the condition of men's souls, even before
they come into the world, is determined by an irrevoca-
ble decree, is foreign to the apostle's meaning, and
abhorrent to his word, who has so plainly declared him-
self to be 3 ' no respecter of persons, but that in every
nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness,
shall be accepted of him.'
4 Some are of opinion, that the chief prerogative of
the primogeniture was nothing else but a double portion
of the father's estate, and that this was all that Esau
parted with to his brother : but had this been so, we can-
not see wherein he is so mightily to blame, or why the
apostle, who certainly understood the meaning of the
birthright, as well as any modern commentator, should
give him the hard name of a ' profane person,' merely
for selling the reversion of a temporal estate, to save his
life, in a time of the greatest exigence. Had the birth-
right, I say, consisted chiefly in this, Ave cannot see how
Jacob could have been reduced to such straits as we after-
wards find him in, or Esau, as to his outward fortune,
have flourished more prosperously than his brother did.
When his father Isaac died, and he came from mount Seir
to assist in his funeral, upon his departure from his bro-
ther, he is said to have * ' carried away with him all the
substance which he had gotten in the land of Canaan.'
6 Now it is plain, that he had no substance in the land of
Canaan of his own getting, for he lived at Seir in the
land of Edoni, beyond the borders of Canaan ; and there-
fore the substance which was gotten in the land of Canaan,
must be the substance which Isaac died possessed of,
and which Esau, as his heir, took along with him. So
that, after the birthright was sold, he was still heir to
his father's substance ; and therefore a right to this was
not the thing which Jacob purchased of him. Others are
of opinion, that the birthright was the blessing promised
to the seed of Abraham ; and this the author of the Epis-
tle to the Hebrews seems, in some measure, to favour ;
1 Whitby on Rom. ix. 2 2 Sam. viii. 14. 3 Acts x. 34, 35.
' Bibliotheca Bihlica. s Gen. xxxvi. 6.
0 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1. b. 7.
' Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, a*.
Esau, who, for a morsel of meat, sold his birthright.
For we know how that afterwards, when he would have
inherited the blessing, he was rejected :' where, ' not
inheriting the blessing,' seems to have been connected with
his ' having sold his birthright ; as if, having parted with
the one, he could not possibly obtain the other : but it is
much to be questioned, whether this be the true sense of
the passage. Esau himself, when he sold his birthright,
did not imagine that he had sold, at the same time, his
right to the blessing ; for when his father told him, that
his brother had come with subtlety, and taken away the
blessing, his answer was, ' Is he not rightly named Jacob,
for he hath supplanted me these two times; he took
away my birthright, and behold now he hath taken away
my blessing ?' Had he apprehended that the blessing and
birthright were things inseparable, having sold the one,
he would never have laid any claim to the other ; whereas
the defrauding him of his blessing is another hardship he
complains of, distinct and different and independent on
the former : and therefore Esau's birthright was most
probably his right of being priest, or sacrificer for his
brethren ; and parting with this he is justly termed pro-
fane, because he hereby showed himself not to have a
due value and esteem, for the religious employment that
belonged to him.
But though this employment might better comport
with Jacob, yet we cannot pretend to justify him in his
method of obtaining it. ' Moses, who records the story,
does not commend him for it; and therefore we are left
at our liberty to pass what censure upon it we think
reasonable. God indeed, before he was born, designed
and promised this privilege to him ; but 8 then he should
have waited until the divine wisdom had found out the
means of executing his promise in his own way, as
David did, till God gave him possession of Saul's
kingdom, and not have anticipated God, and snatched
it by an irregular act of his own. In the whole affair,
indeed, Jacob acted with a subtlety not at all becoming
an honest man. He knew that delays were dangerous,
and that his brother's consideration, or second thoughts,
might possibly spoil his bargain ; and therefore he
required haste, both in the sale and in his oath, and
thereby incurred another sin, in hurrying his brother
into an oath, by precipitation, which he neither should
have taken, nor Jacob have advised him to take, without
mature advice and deliberation.
And in like manner, as to his interception of the
blessing, which his father designed for his brother Esau ;
it is in vain to have recourse to a forced constructions,
7 Bedford's Scripture Chronology. B Poole's Annotations.
a Upon Jacob's answering his father, that he was Esau his
first-born, the rabbins are put to great perplexity, how to assoil
the patriarch from the sin of lying; and therefore some of them
paraphrase the words thus:— "I am, that is, he, who brings
thee something to eat, but Esau is thy eldest son ;" while others
understand them in this manner rather: — " I am Esau, that is,
I am in his stead, because he has sold me his birthright;" for
by this sale, as they tell us, a proper permutation being made of
persons and titles, the first became really last, and the last first;
the elder became the younger, and the younger the elder, as to
the style, and all the privileges of eldership; so that Jacob was
in reality as much the heir and successor of Isaac, as if Esau
had been actually dead. And though Esau was still alive, and
had the name of Esau, yet Jacob was properly, what his brother
Sect. II.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2148. A. C. 1856; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. 11 3418. A. C. 1993. GKN. in. xxv 0-xxviii
185
or to plead the lawfulness of mental reservations, in
order to excuse him in the lying and dissimulation,
wherein he was certainly culpable. The best way is,
upon this occasion, to lament the iniirmity of human
nature, which cannot always stand upright, and to ad-
mire the impartiality of the sacred writings, in which the
very blemishes and transgTessions of such as are de-
signed to make the top-figure therein are not forgotten
to be recorded.
1 It cannot be denied indeed, but that both Jacob and
his mother were justly to be praised for having a due
esteem of the paternal benediction, and for their endea-
vouring to attain it ; since this could proceed from no
other motive than a full persuasion of the truth of God's
promises and covenant with Abraham. For as the
paternal blessing was thought to be a means instituted
by God for the conveyance of this covenant, it could
not but deserve their care and assiduity. It cannot be
denied farther, but that, if this blessing was, as some
imagine, an appendage to the birthright, Jacob, in pur-
chasing the one, had acquired a lawful title to the other,
a title established not only upon the express designation
of God, but by a deed of sale likewise, executed and
ratified by a most solemn and sacred oath. It cannot
be denied likewise, but that, pursuant to this divine
designation, Isaac was obliged to have conferred his
blessing upon Jacob ; and therefore his wife, perceiving
that he was going to promise the blessing of Abraham
where his affection led him to wish it, and not where she
knew that God had designed to bestow it, laid a scheme
which induced her husband to do that unwittingly which
God had pre-ordained was to be done, but what she
knew her husband would not do willingly without some
uneasiness. Nay, it cannot be denied, once more, but
that a when her artifice had succeeded, and Jacob was
accordingly blessed, Isaac was so far from being dis-
pleased with his wife, or angry with Jacob for imposing
upon him, that we find him fully satisfied in what he had
1 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 14.
* Shuckibrd's Connection, vol. 2. b. 7.
had been, his first-born Esau, since Esau was reduced to the
station of a younger brother only. St Austin (Ad Consentium
de Mendacio, c. 10.) pretends, that Jacob's words have a figure
in tliem much in the same nature with that in the gospel, where
John the Baptist is called 'the Elias that shall come;' but the
misfortune is, that there was a great similitude between Elias
and the Baptist, as to their spirit and office ; but between Jacob
and Esau there was none at all ; and therefore some other fathers,
seeing the impossibility of explaining the words by any of these
subterfuges, have boldly asserted that there was no iniquity in
the lies which Jacob told, because they did not proceed from any
malevolent intent, but from a design of promoting the greatest
good ; for which end it was as lawful for a wise man to employ
Officious lies, as it is to make use of physic for the preservation
pf health. And from such dangerous positions as these the Jesui-
tical doctrine of equivocation and mental reservation has, in a
great measure, proceeded. " What shall we do with men of a
description so base," says our author, "that they are not afraid
to give full scope to all sort of lying and deceit ? there will be
an end to all fidelity in contracts and treaties, even to the bonds
of all human society. And if the holy patriarch should awake
from his rest, he would undoubtedly resist, and strongly con-
demn, the impiety of these most audacious men, — so far is he
from making himself an accomplice in their blasphemous foolish-
ness. Though Jacob stumbled, it was through human weakness ;
and he never in the least employed that artful, affected, ami
Jesuitical kind of lying." — Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2,
Essay 14.
done ; I have blessed him,' says he, < yea, and he shall
be blessed. Which sudden change of mind can be
imputed to nothing else but some divine inspiration,
which at that time opened his understanding, and con-
vinced him that he had given the blessing to the ri^ht
person.
Thus, from the consideration of Jacob's right and
Isaac's duty, the goodness of the end, the pre-ordina-
tion of God, and his approbation of the thing when
done, may be drawn some arguments to alleviate their
crime ; but still we must ingenuously own 4 that
Rebecca was guilty of a fault, in suggesting such dan-
gerous advice to her son ; that Jacob committed another,
in suffering himself to be seduced by so bad a guide;
and that both of them presumed to limit the power of
God, by thinking that a complication of frauds was
necessary for the accomplishment of a divine prophecy.
5 Had Rebecca, indeed, put her husband in remembrance
of this prophecy, and shown how Esau had forfeited the
blessing by selling his birthright, and by marrying
strange wives, this had been a much more honourable
proceeding; but therefore she was left to pursue her
own indiscreet method, that God might have the honour
of serving his own purposes by the follies of men.
But how culpable soever Rebecca may be thought, in
this instance, yet there is not the like imputation upon
her in hiding from her husband the true reason of her
sending away Jacob. B It is certainly a point of great
prudence to conceal truth, when the discovery of it will
occasion more harm than good; and therefore, that she
might not afflict her husband's old age with the unwel-
come news of his son Esau's wicked intent against his
brother, and thereby provoke his indignation against
him, she covered the dismission of Jacob with a reason
that was true indeed, but not that chief and latent one
which gave her the most uneasiness ; and which, if
communicated to her husband, might have been a moans
of ' bringing his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.'
So that, in the whole, and according to the proverbs of
the wise man, she acted the part both of a careful ami a
prudent woman ; for 7 ' the tongue of the wise used)
knowledge aright ;' and she e * that is of a faithful spirit
concealeth the matter.'
When Abraham sent his servant into Mesopotamia to
negotiate a marriage for his son Isaac, he had an equi-
page appointed him suitable to the dignity of his master,
that God might be more honoured by so line an appear-
ance, and his veracity publicly justified in the advance-
ment of that Abraham who had quitted all to follow him :
but we shall soon perceive, that there was not the like-
reason for Isaac's sending away his son Jacob with
such an honourable retinue, if we do but consider, "that
the family of Nahor was already sufficient!] apprized of
the divine blessing which had attended Abraham and his
family; that as Rebecca was sister to Laban, the bead
of the family, there was no need of any farther recom-
mendation than that of a letter to her brother; lli.it in
this affair it was prud c to make Jacob appear n-
3 Gen. xwii. 33. ' Saurin's Dissert
5 Millar's History of tin' Church, e, I. period .'-.
'• Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. roL 2. Essaj 14,
7 l'rov. xv. 2. 8 PrOT. xi. IS,
8 Bibliothcca Biblica, in Gen. xxviii. j.
2 A
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little as might be, in order to give the less umbrage to
his brother, and if possible to appease his resentment ;
that it was highly expedient for Jacob to tread in the
steps of his grandfather Abraham, whose heir he was
now become, and should therefore depart from his
father's house, and cast himself entirely upon the provi-
dence of God for his subsistence, even as he had done ;
and that it was necessary for him to give a demonstra-
tion that it was not merely, as some suppose, an earthly
inheritance which he had purchased, or a secidar bles-
sing which he had acquired, but that there was some-
thing far greater, though not discernible by every com-
mon eye, which he had in view in this acquisition: for
1 his confessing in this manner, ' that he was a stranger
and pilgrim on earth,' notwithstanding the right of pri-
mogeniture in him, declared plainly that, as heir of the
promise with Abraham and Isaac, he was seeking a
better country than either that from which he departed,
or that whereunto he was sent, that is, an heavenly.
From these, and such like considerations, and not
from any family poverty, it was, that Jacob was sent
into Mesopotamia all alone, and without any attend-
ance. And, in like manner, when Esau, upon his return
from hunting, complains of his extreme hunger, we can
scarcely suppose that he found nothing at home to eat,
except the pottage which his brother had made. Fru-
gality, indeed, was a virtue of much more esteem among
the ancients than it is among us ; but it is hard to ima-
gine how Isaac, who was a man confessedly of a plen-
tiful estate, and had doubtless a large family to main-
tain, should keep a house utterly destitute of all manner
of eatables. Provision there was, no doubt, enough ;
but Esau's fancy ran upon something else. He longed,
greedily longed, for the soup, and the soup he would
have, whatever it cost. Its flavour and colour had
enticed him, and every thing he resolved to part with,
rather than not gratify the present cravings of an intem-
perate appetite. And accordingly we may observe,
2 that his reasoning upon this occasion was not, that he
was ready to die for famine, and therefore would part
with his birthright; but that, according to his course of
life, and the perils which he every day ran in hunting,
in all probability he would not survive his father, and
his birthright of consequence would avail him nothing ;
and therefore, having but a slender opinion of what was
to come hereafter, he made his conclusion much in the
same form with the epicurean in the prophet, 3 ' Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
Whoever considers the chronology of that transaction,
will find that 4 Isaac lived about forty years after his
parting with his prophetical blessing ; and consequently,
s that it was not old age, but some sickness and indis-
position of body, that at this time had seized him, and
made him apprehensive of his approaching death. In
this condition it is no uncommon thing, we know, for
men's thoughts to run upon one kind of meat rather than
another, and when the stomach is depraved, or anywise
out of order, generally to long for such things as are of
a savoury taste : and if venison in those countries was
more particularly adapted to that purpose, wherein, I
1 Heb. xi. 9, 10.
8 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 12. s Isa. xxii. 13.
4 Gen. xxxv. 28, 29. 5 Le Clerc's Annotations.
S, A. M. 3418. A. C. 1903. GKN. CH. xxv. 20— xxviii. 8.
pray, is Isaac to be blamed, for loving a son who took
such pains, and exposed himself to such dangers, that he
might show his respect to his aged father, and procure
him now and then some little thing to please his palate,
and humour his sickly appetite ? Those who think
proper to blame the patriarch's kind resentment of such
assiduity, seem to have forgot the workings of human
nature, and how apt the very wisest of parents are to
have their affections won every day more and more, by
the sedulity and ofticiousness of their children.
The dressing of this venison is represented indeed as a
province which Esau himself took upon him ; and to have
the eldest son and heir of a family stand cook, as we
call it, seems to portend no great wealth or magnificence
in it ; but when we urge this, we forget the simplicity of
the times wherein Moses wrote, and wherein it was cus-
tomary for men of the first rank to submit to offices much
meaner than this. Herein then do the truth and autho-
rity of the sacred history most eminently appear, that
all its accounts and descriptions of things agree with
the sense of the most ancient writers, and are found
conformable to the manners and customs that then pre-
vailed.
And in like manner, we may say, that 6 it is our igno-
rance of the patriarchal manner of living which makes
us think it unaccountable to hear, in those early days, of
so many contests about wells. For were we to take a
nearer inspection into the thing, we should soon find, that
in those hot countries, where water was so very scarce,
a well or fountain of living water was a possession of
inestimable value ; and for this reason we find Moses,
in magnifying the divine bounty to the children of Israel,
among other parts of the inventory, reckoning up, not
only 7 ' great and goodly cities which they built not, but
wells likewise digged which they digged not.'
8 Nor was it only for the benefit of the water that these
wells were held in so high esteem, but for the memory of
the events and transactions likewise which were known
to have happened near them. For at these wells angels
had appeared, miracles had been wrought, religious
assemblies held, treaties transacted, marriages celebrat-
ed, and towns and cities built ; and therefore no wonder
that the ancients, looking upon them as sacred, as well
as profitable places, should be so ready to contest their
right to them, or that frequent notice should be taken of
them in so compendious an history as that of the patri-
archs.
The truth is, these, and perhaps some other occur-
rences in the life of this patriarch, though to us they
may seem strange and incongruous, do not argue any
want or poverty, but are exactly agreeable to that tem-
perance and simplicity of living, which, in his days, were
in vogue. He was in a manner sole heir of his father
Abraham, (who was a a king in the opinion of some, but
in all accounts a person of great affluence of fortune,)
and who himself had made additions to it, enough to be
6 Bibliotheca Biblica, Occasional Annotations.
7 Deut. vi. 11. 8 Shuckibrd's Connection, vol. 2. b. 7.
a The words of Nicholaus Damascenus, (as they are quoted
by Josephus) are these, — ' Abraham reigned in Damascus, being
a stranger, who came out of the land of Chaldea, beyond Baby-
lon. His name is at this day famous about the country ol
Damascus, and they show us the town, which from him is called
Abraham's dwelling." — Grotius de Pent. b. 1. sect. 16.
S*ct. 1I.J FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2148. A. C. 18G5; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3118. A. C. 1993. GEN. CH. U,2I. j
187
envied even by neighbouring princes, could not possibly
want any necessary accommodation of life, nor would
he concern himself with things of a trilling consideration.
But what we call trifles, might, in those times, be matter
of the last importance ; and what we account indications
of poverty, might proceed from no other cause but that
of frugality and parsimony, a which, in the primitive ages,
were in high repute, before they came to be discoun-
tenanced by the present schemes of expense and studied
luxury. And therefore, when we find, ' in ancient his-
tory, the Arcadians feeding upon acorns ; the Argives
upon apples ; the Athenians upon ligs, &c; when we
lind b a set of the most renowned heroes in the Grecian
army, even in the great Achilles' tent, dining upon a
loin of mutton, and an hock of bacon ; and the godlike
man Patroclus lighting the lire, while the master of the
feast was spitting the meat ; our wonder may cease, if,
in ages before this, we meet with such an homely dish as
lentil pottage in a patriarch's house, and the two sons
of the family condescending to cook their own victuals.
This we must own is not the practice among us ; but it
is a much more consistent and credible account of things
than if Moses had represented Isaac's tent like a royal
palace, and every thing served up there iii the same
splendid manner as when the king ind his family dine
in public
CHAP. III. — Of Isaac's Blessing to Jacob.
THE HISTORY.
From the time that God made the covenant with Abra-
ham, and promised blessings extraordinary to his seed,
it was customary for the father of each family, some time
before he died, to call together his children, and to
inform them, according to the knowledge which it pleased
God then to give him, how, and in what manner the
blessing of Abraham was to descend among them.
Whence this custom had its original, whether from the
immediate appointment of God, or from some secret
impulse, wherewith the patriarchs, upon the approach of
their departure, found themselves affected, the silence
of Scripture will not suffer us to determine ; but this Ave
may safely infer, 2 that this benediction was different
from those private blessings which the patriarchs gave
their children upon sundry occasions, and different
likewise from those public blessings which the priests,
and others in authority, were wont to distribute among
1 iElian de Varia Historia, b. 3.
8 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 7.
a The manner of living in the early ages of the world set ins
to be very well expressed by the Roman satirist. " When Saturn
was king, I believe that chastity dwelt on earth, and was seen for
a long time; when the cold grotto gave to men a home, a hearth
and place for their household god; when one common shade
enclosed both the cattle and their owners, and when the unso-
phisticated wife strewed for her husband, a woodland conch of
leaves and straw and skins of wild beasts." — Juvenal, Sat. 6.
h When the Grecians sent an embassy to Achilles, desiring
him to be reconciled to Agamemnon, and to return to the camp,
the deputies appointed for this purpose were l'liunix, Ajax, and
Ulysses: and the simple entertainment which Achilles upon this
occasion gave them, is by Homer beautifully described.
the people. It proceeded from u, extraordinary illu-
mination, and had the prospect of futurity (so far M WM
necessary for its purpose) submitted to' its inspection.
The persons upon whom it came had for that time the
spirit of divination, and what they uttered under its influ-
ence was deemed a prophetic oracle, den. .tin- infallible
events, and extending to the utmost period of time.
The Jews indeed have a proverbial saying, that tho
spirit of prophecy does not fall upon the melancholic;
and thence they suppose, that as good eating and drink-
ing are known to exhilarate the spirits, the patriarch, by
sending his son to take venison, was minded to make use
of that expedient, that he might be the better disposed
to receive the divine inspiration, and to pronounce the
prophetical benediction with cheerfulness, ami with |
warmth and emotion sufficient to excite that attention
which the prophecy he was about to deliver did require.
3 But as no one in his senses can imagine, that a person
when perfectly sober, is not as capable of the spirit of
prophecy as he that has plentifully dined ; others, from
the phrase, ' that I may bless thee before the Lord,'
suppose 4 that Isaac's eating, in order to receive the
spirit of benediction, was by him designed to be sacra-
mental, and accompanied with some religious rites and
solemn invocations, though they happen not to be here
mentioned. But this supposition being as precarious as
the other, the safest way is to resolve the whole matter
into the providence of God, 5 who put Isaac into the
head of sending out Esau for venison, neither to refresh
his spirits by eating, nor to perform any religious act,
but merely, by his absence, to give Jacob an advanta-
geous opportunity of appropriating the blessing to him-
self.
Isaac, indeed, meant not this, neither was it in his
heart to bless Jacob ; and therefore, if we suppose that
Rebecca had acquainted Iiini with the prophecy which
directed him to transfer the blessing upon Jacob, we
must suppose withal, 6 that he had now forgot it, or never
rightly understood it, or apprehended that it was to be
accomplished, not in the persons of Esau and Jacob, but
in their posterity, 7 for it is much better to charge the
patriarch with want of attention or understanding, than
with disobedience and prevarication.
However this be, the blessing which he pronounces
over Jacob by mistake, is conceived in these words : —
' God give thee of the dew of heaven,' (because, in hot
countries, where showers were less frequent, the morn-
ing and evening dews were a great refreshment to the
earth, and productive of much plenty,) ' and the fatne.-s
of the earth,' (because Canaan, the lot <>f his inheritance,
was a fruitful, and therefore s by the prophet called 'a
fat land,') ' and plenty of com and wine,' (abundance
of every product of the earth.) ' Let people serve thee,'
(that is, the Idumeans, who shall descend from thy bro-
ther Esau, as they did in the days of David.) ' and
nations bow down unto thee,' (the kingdoms of Arabia
and Syria, who are sprung from llagar and Keturah:)
' be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's ton bow
down unto thee,' (have thou the dominion and preroga-
tive in thine own family.) ' Cursed be every one that
3 Le Clerc's Commentary.
■ Poole's Annotations,
' Saurin's Dissertations.
i B lotheca Biblict.
• [bid.
' Neh. ix. 25.
188
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cursetli thee, and blessed be every one that blesseth beloved wife, and the supposed untimely death of his
thee ;' for God shall so far interest himself in thy cause,
as to esteem those his friends or foes, who shall behave
themselves as such to thee. So that the blessing con-
sists properly of three branches : in the first is contained
worldly plenty and prosperity ; in the second, domi-
nion and empire ; and in the third, family pre-eminence,
as well as the divine protection : but then the question
is, in what sense is all this to be understood, and to
what branch may the peculiar blessing of Abraham, which
is doubtless comprised herein, be supposed to belong?
If we look back l to the call of Abraham, and the
promises which attended it, there we shall find, s that
after enumerating the temporal blessings which were to
descend from Abraham to his posterity, one blessing is
added, in which all the world has an interest, and which
was conveyed to them through Abraham and his seed.
' In thee,' says God, ' shall all the families of the earth
be blessed.'
If we proceed to the blessing which he was pleased to
give to his son Isaac, we shall find a recital of the same
kinds of temporal prosperity ; a numerous progeny pro-
mised ; the grant of the land of Canaan renewed ; the
oath given unto Abraham confirmed ; and then follows
the great and distinguishing promise, 3 ' in thy seed shall
all the nations of the earth be blessed.' And in like
manner we cannot but imagine, that in this great and
solemn blessing which Isaac is giving his son Jacob,
there must be something of a spiritual nature comprised,
though couched under terms which seem to denote
norldly felicity only.
The author of the Hebrews tells us, that * ' by faith
Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to
come ;' and what we are to understand ' by faith,' he
instructs us in the conclusion of his discourse ; ' and
these all' (meaning the patriarchs he had mentioned
before) ' having obtained a good report through faith,
received not the promise, God having provided some
better things for us, that they, without us, should not be
made perfect.' So that this faith did chiefly relate to
the blessed seed which was promised in the beginning,
and from continued tradition and divine revelation, in
every succeeding age, embraced by the faithful ; and
therefore we can hardly suppose, but that, in this great
prophetical benediction, there must be something con-
cerning this seed implied at least, if not expressed.
Whoever takes but a cursory view of some of the chief
passages of Jacob's life, will soon perceive that had his
father's blessing consisted of worldly advantages only,
it was in a manner quite lost upon him, since few men
enjoyed a less share of that than lie, who was forced
from his home, into a far country, for fear of his brother ;
deceived and oppressed by his uncle ; and 5 after a servi-
tude of above twenty years, compelled to flee from him ;
while, at the same time, he was in imminent danger,
either of being pursued and brought back by Laban, or
fallen upon, and murdered by Esau. These fears were
no sooner over, but the baseness of his eldest son, in
defiling his couch ; the treachery and cruelty of the two
next in relation to the Shechemites ; the loss of his
Gen. xii. * Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy.
3 Gen. xxvi. 4. * Heb. xi. 20.
5 Universal History, b. I.e. 7.
son Joseph ; to say nothing of his being compelled by
famine to go down into Egypt, and there die : these, and
many more instances, are proofs sufficient, that his
father's blessing was of a different nature. For suppos-
ing it to relate to temporal prosperity and dominion only,
wherein can we say that Jacob had the pre-eminence
above his brother ?6 If Jacob was ' blessed with the dew
of heaven, and the fatness of the earth,' Esau's blessing
(at least according to our translation) in this respect, is
not inferior : ' Thy dwelling,' says his father, ' shall be
the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from
above.' If ' nations were to bow down to Jacob,' Esau
likewise ' was to live and prevail by his sword.' If
Jacob's brethren were to ' bow down to him ;' yet the
time would come, when ' Esau should have dominion,
and break even this yoke from oft' his neck.' Thus, if
we interpret the whole blessing of temporal prosperity
only, the two brothers seem to stand upon an equality ,
and yet it is evident, from the whole story, that the chief
blessing which their father had to bestow, was fallen
upon Jacob ; and therefore he tells Esau, when he
pressed him for a blessing upon himself likewise,' Behold I
have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given
unto him for servants, and with corn and wine have I sus-
tained him, and what shall 1 do now unto thee, my son ?'
And when Esau still urges his father, and his father there-
upon blesses him, we may observe, that of corn and wine,
and temporal power, he gives him a full and an equal share ;
but then there is this limitation in the blessing, ' Thou
shalt serve thy brother :' so that whatever was peculiarly
given to Jacob, was contained in the grant of ' being-
lord over his brethren ;' and yet the history of the two
brothers will not allow us to expound it of any temporal
dominion ; for if Ave should, see how the case will stand.
7 ' Jacob is to rule over Esau ;' and yet no sooner is the
blessing given, but he flies his country for fear of Esau ;
he lives abroad for many years ; and when he returns,
the fear and dread of his brother returns with him ; so
that his only refuge, in this his distress, was to God ;
8 ' Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother,
from the hand of Esau.' When he sends a message to
him, he styles himself, 9 ' Thy servant Jacob :' when he
meets him, 10 ' he bows himself to the ground seven times,
until he comes near to Esau ;' when he speaks to him,
he calls him ' lord ;' and when he is kindly received by
him, he says, u ' I have seen thy face, as though I had
seen the face of God, and thou wert pleased with me.'
What is there in all this that shows any rule and domi-
nion given to Jacob over his brother Esau ?
And, in like manner, if we imagine the prophecy
relates to temporal dominion only, and yet was fulfilled
in the posterity of these two brothers, the question will
be, how the case, upon this supposition, stands ? n The
family of Esau was settled in power and dominion many
years before Jacob's family had any certain dwelling-
place. The dukes and kings of. Esau's house are
reckoned up ; and the historian tells us, that 13 ' these are
6 Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy, Discourse 5.
7 Ibid. 8 Gen. xxxii. 11. » Gen. xxxii. 20.
10 Gen. xxxiii. 3. ,i Gen. xxxiii. 10.
12 Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy, Discourse 5.
13 Gen. xxxvi. 31.
Sect. III.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2149. A. C. 1855; OR, ACCORDING TO HALE
the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before there
reigned any king over the children of Israel.' When
the appointed time was come for establishing the house
of Israel, and giving them the land and possessions of
their enemies, the family of Esau were, by a particular
decree, exempted from the dominion of Israel ; for so
the Lord commanded Moses, * ' Ye are to pass through
the coast of your brethren, the children of Esau. Take
ye good heed unto yourselves therefore ; meddle not with
them ; for I will not give you of their land ; no, not so
much as a foot-breadth.' In the time of David, indeed,
2 ' they of Edom became his servants :' but in the
days of Jehoram they recovered again, 3 and made a
king over themselves ;' and in the time of Ahaz they
revenged the affront, 4 ' by smiting Judah, and leading
them away captives.' So that this variety of fortune,
between the children of Jacob and Esau, could never be
the thing intended or meant to be described, when the
promise was given to Jacob, ' that his mother's children
should bow down unto him.'
What then is the hidden purpose of the words, and in
what sense are they to be taken ? Why it seems pretty
evident, that the blessing given to Jacob, and expressed
in words implying a rule over his brethren, was a con-
veyance of his birthright to him, in the family of Abra-
ham ; that the birthright in Abraham's family, besides
the promise of the land of Canaan, respected the special
blessing given to Abraham by God, and that this special
blessing denoted no other than that person in whom all
families of the earth were to be blessed, and that is
Christ. For 5 that the regard of all nations to the seed,
in which they were all to be blessed, should be expressed
by their ' bowing down to him,' is no hard figure of
speech ; and that the superiority of Jacob's family should
one day be broken (as the promise to Esau sets forth) when
Jews and Gentiles should equally become the people of
(Jod, and all nations be equally blessed, is no more than
what the original covenant contains. Upon the whole,
then, we may observe, that this prediction had its full
accomplishment, neither in the person of Jacob, nor in
his posterity in general, but only in one, who, as to his
human nature, in the fulness of time, descended from
him, and 6 ' who being in the form of God,' as the apostle
acquaints us with both his natures, ' and thinking it no
robbery to be equal with God, made himself of no repu-
tation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was
made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion
as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also
hath highly exalted him, and given him a name, which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus ever knee
should bow, of things in heaven, and things in the earth,
and things under the earth, and that every tongue shall
confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father.'
Since this part of the blessing, then, which Isaac be-
stowed upon Jacob, was of such high import, as to refer
ultimately to the person of our blessed Saviour, and his
exaltation into glory ; this may suggest a reason to us,
1 Dcut. ii. 4, 5. '2 Sam. xviii. 1 1.
* 2 Kintjs viii. 20. 4 2 Chron. xxviii 17.
Bishop Sherlock's lTso and Intent of Prophecy, Dis. 5.
b Phil. ii. f>. &c.
ISO
iS, A. M. 3195. A. C. 19ia SEN. CH. xxvlii. 10 -xxxvil.
why, though it was certainly obtained by glide, it mu
not afterwards revoked, but ratified rath.:- and confirmed,
even when his father came to understand the imposture.
For if7 'prophecy came not in old time by the will
of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved
by the Holy Ghost,' 8 then is Isaac, in this action
to be considered only as the instrumental, and God
as the principal cause ; the efficacy of the l>l
therefore must be supposed to depend, not on his will
and intention, but on God's ordination and appointment :
and consequently Isaac could have no right or authority
to disannul the blessing, had he been minded bo to do.
9 But it is much more likely, that the remembrance of
the prophecy concerning the two children, which Rebecca
had vouchsafed her, before they were born, might at this
time come to strike him ; and seeing he had in his bless-
ing, though not designedly, confirmed the same, he
might very well impute it to an overruling providence,
and so be concluded by the divine determination ; in
which sense that passage relating to Esau, in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, is most proper to be applied : w ' \\ e
know, how that afterwards, when he would have inherited
a blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of
repentance, though he sought it carefully ivith tears.'
But how was ' Esau rejected from inheriting a blessing,1
when we find, that upon his importunity with his father,
he obtained one ? He obtained a blessing indeed, but
not that which, by hereditary right, belonged to the first-
born, and abounded with blessings both spiritual and
temporal. This his brother Jacob had supplanted him
of; and yet he could not prevail with his father to
revoke it. He could not bring him to change his mind,
(as it is in the margin,) and repent of the blessing he
had given to Jacob, (for, " it is Isaac's repentance, not
Esau's, that is here under consideration,) although he
sought it with tears ; and the reason is, — because his
father knew, both by the conduct of providence in this
whole affair, and by a particular inspiration at that time,
that the peculiar blessings promised to Abraham and his
seed, did not belong to him, but, by the divine appoint-
ment were now consigned to his brother and bis
posterity; and therefore, to silence all further clamour,
he tells him with a more than ordinary emphasis and
inflexibility,12' I have blessed him, yea, and he shall be
blessed,'
SECT. III.
CHAP. 1.— Of tin- life of Jacob, from hi* 90*9 inio
Mesopotamia, '<> hi*
1 HK HisV. BT.
As soon as Jacob had received his father's charge and
blessing, he departed privately from Beeraheba, and ■
made the best of his way to Haran; but after bis first
'2 Pet. i. 21. ' Heidegger's Hist.PatrJ
• Le cierc'a Commentary. I0 Heb. \ii. 17.
11 Heidegger's Hist Patriar. toL 8. Essay 1 1. "Gen. u 1
„ The .lews tell of s.v-ral miracle, which they sm; .
have been wrought on uwTerydaytbel Jacob set out troi
uheba; bnl one more especially, namely, that God shortened the
190
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day's journey, a happening to be benighted, he was forced
to take up his lodging in the open air, with the spangled
sky to be his canopy, and an hard stone his pillow.
However, while he slept, he thought he saw a ladder
iixed upon the earth, and reaching up unto heaven, with
angels ascending and descending on it ; and from the top
of tins ladder he heard God speaking unto him, and pro-
mising him, even as he had done his forefathers, the
land of Canaan for his inheritance ; a large and numer-
ous posterity ; the Messias to descend from his family ;
a safe return to his native country ; and the divine pro-
tection and preservation every where to attend him.
This, in all probability, was the first vouchsafement
of the kind which Jacob ever had ; and his dream had
made such impression upon him, that as soon as he
awaked, he paid an awful reverence to the place, and
after a short contemplation of what had passed, broke
out into this rapture of wonder and admiration : — " How
venerable is this place, over which are vertically the
palace of God, and the gate of heaven, through which the
holy angels are continually issuing out, to execute the
divine commands !" And when he arose, he erected the
stone whereon he slept, and, as the custom of those
times was, b poured oil upon it, and then in pious com-
memoration of the heavenly vision, called the place,
which before was called Luz, by the name of Bethel,
that is, the house of God. c But before he went from
hours, by causing the sun to go down before its time ; and yet we
are told, that from Beersheba to Luz, where he lodged the first
night, were about 48 English miles, which was no inconsiderable
day's journey. If there be any meaning therefore in this fiction
of theirs, it must consist in this : — That Jacob was sent away
with his father's blessing, and, in virtue of that, was filled with a
certain divine power, which supported and carried him on with
pleasure, so that the day might thence seem shorter to him; and
though his father sent no friend or domestic along with him, yet
there is no doubt to be made, but that there was a companion and
guardian of a far nobler order assigned him, who led him by the
hand, as it were, and kept him in all his ways. — Bibliotheca
Biblica, in locum.
a The place where Jacob took up his lodging, was near Luz,
which signifies an almond, and might very likely have its name
from the many groves of almond-trees which were thereabouts ;
and under some of which it is not unlikely that Jacob might take
up his lodging, because the largeness of their leaves, in that
country, would afford no incommodious shelter from the weather.
Jacob, upon account of the vision which he had in this place,
called it Bethel; and the Israelites, when they conquered
Canaan, in remembrance of the same, continued the name. It
lay to the west of Hai, about eight miles to the north of Jerusa-
lem, in the confines of the tribes of Ephraim and Benjamin. So
that upon the revolt of the ten tribes, it belonged to the kingdom
of Israel, and was therefore one of the cities where Jeroboam set
up his golden calves, whence the prophet Hosea (ch. iv. 15)
alludingto thename given to it by Jacob, calls it Bethavan, instead
of Bethel, that is ' the house of vanity or idols,' instead of ' the
house of God.' — Patrick's Commentary, and /Fells' Geography of
the Old Testament, vol. 1.
b Hence it seems evident, that Jacob did not leave his father's
house, without being first provided for his journey ; for it cannot
be thought, that if he wanted other necessaries, he would have
carried oil along with him, and that in such plenty, as to pour it
out, in such a seemingly profuse manner, upon an inanimate sub-
ject.— Bibliotheca Biblica.
c Gen. xxviii. 18. ' And Jacob rose up early in the morning,
and took the stone that he had set up for his pillar, and poured
oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place
Bethel.' This passage evinces of how great antiquity is the
custom of considering stones in a sacred light, as well as the
anointing them with consecrated oil. From this conduct of
Jacob, and this Hebrew appellative, the learned Bochart, with
thence, he made a d solemn vow to God, " That if he
would protect and prosper him in his journey, provide
him with e common necessaries in his absence, and grant
him an happy return to his father's house ; to him alone
would he direct his religious worship ; in that very place
where the pillar stood, upon his return, would he make-
his devout acknowledgments, and oft'er unto him /the
tenth of whatever he should gain in the land of Mesopo-
tamia."
great ingenuity and reason, insists that the name and veneration
of the sacred stones, called baetyli, so celebrated in all pagan anti-
quity, were derived. These baetyli were stones of a round form;
they were supposed to be animated with a portion of the Deity:
they were consulted on occasions of great and pressing emergency,
as a kind of divine oracles. Thus, the setting up of a stone by this
holy person, in grateful memory of the celestial vision, probably
became the occasion of the idolatry in succeeding ages, to these
shapeless masses of unknown stone, of which so many astonishing
remains are scattered up and down the Asiatic and the Europeaii
world. — Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. 2. p. 355.
d Several annotators have observed, that this is the first vow
that we read of in Scripture ; but this is no reason for our sup-
posing that Jacob was the first who worshipped in this manner,
but rather, that in this, he did no more than what his fathers,
Abraham and Isaac, had done before him, and as they had
instructed him both by example and precept. And as for Abra-
ham, though there be no mention made expressly of a vow, yet
very certain it is, that in effect he did the same thing. For when
the Lord is said to have made a covenant with him, Abraham,
on his part, must be supposed to express his consent and accep-
tation of it, and not only so, but to vow and promise to perform
the conditions, in order to attain the benefit of it. And in like
manner, when Isaac is said to have entreated the Lord for his
wife, it is highly probable, that he vowed a vow to God, that upon
his performance of the promise of multiplying his seed, &c, he
would, on his part, as an acknowledgment of it, make some
or other suitable return ; for the word which we render entreat,
in its original, has a much stronger signification, and denotes a
soliciting of favours, whether from God or man, by gifts, vows,
or promises. So that we may justly conclude, that his son did
not do this of his own head, or an immediate revelation com-
manding him so to do, but that he was before taught and
instructed by his father in this solemnity, as a part of both
natural and positive religion. — Bibliotheca Biblica.
e Jacob's words upon this occasion are, ' If Gud will give me
bread to eat, and raiment to put on,' which two articles comprise
all the necessaries of life, and therefore we find them, in the
writings of the philosophers, always put together. For these
are the bounds, says Seneca, (Ep. 4.) which nature has set us,
that we should not hunger, nor thirst, nor be cold. For our diet
and dress, .says Tully, should contribute to our health and
strength, not to luxury or pleasure (De Offic. b. 1. c. 13.) We
may observe, however, farther, that by the patriarch's covenant-
ing here with God only for food and raiment, does appear the
gross mistake of those who pretend that he supplanted his brother
for covetous ends ; as if his father's estate, and the possession of
a rich country for himself and his heirs, were the things which
he had only in view. — Le Clercs Commentary, and Bibliotheca
Biblica, in locum.
f This is the second mention of tithes or tenths, and the first
dedication of them to God ; and from this place we may fairly
conclude, that Jacob, the grandchild of Abraham, vowing the
tenth of all, (as Abraham had given the tenth of the spoil,) was
induced to do it by the custom which then prevailed among reli-
gious people. How they came to pitch upon this portion, rather
than a fifth, a sixth, or any other quantity, is not so easy to be
resolved ; but they seem to speak with much reason, who observe,
that in this number ten, all nations in a manner do end their
account, and then begin again with compound numbers, or, as
others phrase it, that this is the end of less numbers, and the
beginning of the greater, for which reason it was looked on as the
most perfect of all other, and accordingly had in great regard:
but after all, it seems most likely, that they had some divine pre-
cept and direction for it. At this time it is certain that the order
of priesthood was not instituted ; and therefore the only purposes to
Sect. TII.j
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
191
A. M. 2149. A. C. 18).-. ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALE
Having- thus performed his devotions, he a proceeded
in his journey, and, after some weeks, arrived at Haran.
As he came near the town, he saw some shepherds with
their flocks, not far from a well which was covered with
a large stone ; and while he was inquiring- of them con-
cerning Laban and his family, he was given to under-
stand, that they were all well, and that it would not be
long before his daughter l> Rachel would be there with
her flock. Nor had this discourse long passed before she
came ; whereupon Jacob, having- very obligingly rolled
away the stone, and watered her sheep for her, took
occasion to let her know who he was ; and as he pro-
ceeded to salute his cousin, was in a manner ready to
weep for joy ; while she made what haste she could home,
in order to inform her father of what had passed. He
immediately came to meet his nephew, and received him
with all the kindness, and all the tenderness imaginable,
whilst he related to him c the occasion of his leaving his
father's family, and what adventures he had met with in
the way.
Jacob had not been long- in his uncle's house before
he applied himself to busuiess ; and having now served
him for the space of a month in the capacity of a shep-
herd, his uncle one day took an occasion to discourse
which Jaeob could appropriate the tithes he gave, were either for
the maintenance of burnt-sacrifices, and other pious uses, or
perhaps for the relief of the poor. But how, and when, he actu-
ally performed his vow, does nowhere appear in Scripture, unless
it was upon his return from Padan-Aram, (Gen. xxxv. 7 — 14.)
' when he built an altar at El Bethel, and set up a pillar in the
place where God had talked with him, and poured a drink-offering
and oil thereon.' — Patrick's Commentary.
a The words in the text are, ' And came into the land of the
people of the east,' Gen. xxix. 1.; which makes some imagine
that he travelled eastward. But this is a mistake, because Meso-
potamia, and particularly Haran, lay northward from Bethel.
Babylon, however, lay eastward from both places ; and therefore
Mesopotamia being part of the Babylonish dominions, the Baby-
lonians might well be called ' the people of the east,' and Jacob
is only said to have gone into a country of which they were lords
and masters. — Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 3. c. 4.
6 Rachel, in the Hebrew tongue, signifies a sheep: nor need
we wonder at her being called so, since it was a common thing
among the ancients- to give names,, not only to particular persons,
but even to considerable families, (as the words Porcius, Ovilius,
Caprilius, Equilius, &c, mentioned by Varro, De Re Rustica,
1.2. c. 1. sufficiently shows,) from cattle, both great and small.
Much less reason have we to wonder, that we find her keeping
her father's sheep, since that employment, in those early days,
was accounted very honourable, as from Homer and other ancient
writings is sufficiently evident. We need not suppose, however,
that the whole drudgery of the work lay upon her ; she had those
under her who took this oft' her hands, and her business was only,
as the chief shepherdess, to inspect over them.' — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
c The things which Jacob informed his uncle Laban of at this
time, may be supposed to be such as related to the occasion of
his journey; as particularly all that had passed between his bro-
ther and him as to the right of primogeniture; the purchase
which he had made of it, and what ensued; their two different
manners of living; the design of his father with respect to them ;
the management of the mother, to procure him the blessing; the
resentment of his brother at his disappointment; the prudent
dismission of himself thereupon, both by father and mother; the
displeasure they had conceived at his brother's matching himself
into strange families ; and the strict orders they had therefore
given him to take a wife out of his own kindred, and of the house
of his mother's father, which was the reason of his coming
thither; and, lastly, the wonderful occurrences he had met with
on his journey, more especially as to the whole affair of Bethel,
and the happy meeting of his daughter at the well, to his great
and surprising satisfaction. — Bibliotheca Biblica.
8, A. M. 3105. A. C. 1916. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10-xxxyii.
him, and to let him know, that he neither expected, nor
thought it reasonable, to hare hia labour for nothing,
and therefore desired him to name what wages he would
have. The lovely shepherdess had abends captivated
Jacob's heart; and therefore he names her for th<-
reward d of his seven years' service, which her father
readily consented to, and he as readily entered noon,
because the love which he had to his Rachel made him
account the longest time short. e
Laban, we must know, had another daughter, named
Leah, older than Rachel, but not so beautiful, baring
some blemish or soreness in her eyes ; and when the
time of Jacob's servitude was expired, and he demanded
his wife, his father-in-law seemed to solemnize the
d It was a custom which had prevailed almost in all ages, that
in contracting marriages, as the wife brought a portion to the
husband, so the husband should be likewise obliged to give her
parents money or presents, (which sometimes in Scripture are
called the dowry,) in lieu of this portion. Hut Jacob being desti-
tute of money, oners his uncle seven years' service, which must
needs have been equivalent to a large sum; and being so, it is
more to be wondered at, that he did not send over to his parents
for a supply upon this occasion, rather than bind himself a servant
for so long a term. But, from the custom in use among us, there
is no judgment to be made what the custom and practice vtus
then. — Bibliotheca Biblica, and Le Clerc's Commentary.
e Dr Hales states the age of Jacob when he went to Charran
at 77 years, which lie collects from Scripture thus: When Jacob
had been 14 years in Charran, Joseph was bom, Gen. xxx. 25;
Joseph was 30 years old when made regent of Egypt, Gen. sli.
46; and in the ninth year of his regency, brought his father and
family to settle in Egypt, Gen. xli. 53, 54. xlv. 6; the amount
of these sums, 14-f 30-f-9=:53 years from the time Jacob went to
Charran; which being subducted from 130 years, his age when
he stood before Pharaoh, Gen. xlvii. 9, leaves 77 years for his
age when he went to Charran. And this confirms the account
of Abulfaragi and Demetrius. Dr Hales farther agrees with
Usher, Lloyd, Clayton, &c, in supposing that Jacob's marriage
with Leah took place about a month after his arrival in Charran,
at the beginning of the seven years, and his marriage with
Rachel the week after, and thinks that Jacob's demand, Gen.
xxix. 21, ' Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled,' relates
to the days of courtship, which by a decorous usage were a month,
during which a bride, though betrothed, might put off the con-
summation of her marriage, a privilege which was afterwards
extended by the Mosaic law even to a female captive, who was
granted this respite to bewail " her father and mother," Dent.
xxxi. 13. And further, considering the advanced age oi Jacob
when he went to Charran, as stated above, it is not probable that
he would have waited patiently seven years before be married;
and the selfish policy of Laban would prompt him to secure bis
attachment and services by a speedy connexion with his family.
That he married at the beginning of the Hr-t seven years, is
further demonstrated by AbaJfaragi, who dates the birth of his
son Levi, in his eighty-second year, or in the fifth year of his
service. On this hypothesis, Dr Hates gives the following
of the birth of Jacob's children by his wiies and concubines.
The first date is Jacob's age, the second the year before Chi i-t
ii. C,
1 R • 1915
2
3
4 Judah, .
5 Dan Bilhah,> M 1909
$ s;j 1908
Reuben ") 78 1915
Simeon ( 80 1913
Levi .Leah. C B8 I9U
.T.iitoh ' B3 liiio
C Napbtbali 3 85
7 Gad '
8 Asher,...
'i [aaachar,.
in Zebulon, ■
II Dinah,.
Zilpah, i H
5 i
i \ Jo epfa Rachel, \
13 Benjamin 5
88..
89 ..
90 ..
0] ..
1901
1908
l' 05
L904
1908
njamin 3 104 1889
Hales' Anafytit qf Cktmo/ogy, vol. 2. pp. 132, 138 — 137,
second edition. — En.
192
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2149. A. C. 1855; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3495. A. C. 191G. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10— xxxvii.
nuptials with great magnificence, but in the evening- he
put an unfair trick upon him ; for instead of the beau-
teous Rachel, he a brought the blear-eyed h Leah to his
bed; which when Jacob perceived next morning, and
thereupon made just remonstrances, the father had his
answer ready, and in a magisterial tone told him, —
' That it was an unprecedented thing in that country,
and would have been deemed an injury to her sister,
to marry the younger before the elder ; but (continued
he, in a milder tone) if you will c fulfil the nuptial
week with your wife, and consent to serve another seven
years for her sister, I am content to take your word for
it, and to give Rachel to you as soon as the seven days
are ended.1' Jacob could not but be troubled at such
unfair procedure, but he loved Rachel too well not to
obtain her at any price ; and therefore he consented
to these hard conditions, and, at the week's end, was
married to Rachel likewise.
But though he preferred Rachel much before Leah,
yet God put quite another difference between them, by
making the latter the mother of four sons, Reuben,
Simeon, Levi, and Judah, before her sister had one. d
This was so great a trouble to Rachel, that she came
one day, in a fit of melancholy, and told her husband,
a The modesty of those times made them bring the bride to
her husband's bed veiled, and without lights, which gave Laban
an opportunity to impose upon Jacob, and made it a thing almost
impossible for him to discern the deception until next morning.
— Howell's History, and Patrick's Commentary.
b Dr Clarke thinks that the word mm raccoth, rendered
• tender-eyed' in the common version, means soft, delicate,
lovely; and that the meaning is just the reverse of the significa-
tion usually given to it. The design of the inspired writer is to
compare both sisters together, that the balance may appear to be
greatly in the favour of Rachel. The chief recommendation of
Leah was her soft and beautiful eyes; but Rachel was iNfi Xisi
yephatk toar, beautiful in her shape, person, mien, and gait, and
runo ns"" yephatk morch, beautiful in her countenance. The
words plainly signify a fine shape and fine features, all that can be
considered as essential to personal beauty. — Clarke's Commentary
on Gen. xxxix. 17. — Ed.
c Some are of opinion, that by ' her week ' (as it is in the text)
we are to understand a week of years, or seven years, and con-
sequently, that to ' fulfil her week ' was as much as to say, that
Jacob was to serve other seven years for Rachel, before he was
to marry her. Some old English versions render it thus : but
the order of the story seems to gainsay it. For though Jacob
lived with Laban twenty years, it is plain, that at the end of
the fourteenth year, he proposed to part, and return home ; and
yV h may observe, that Rachel (though she had been a good
while barren) had born Joseph before that time, which could not
have been, had not she been married before the end of his second
seven years' service. Since Laban then (as we read Gen. xxix.
22.) had invited a great deal of company, and the custom in those
days was to devote a whole week to the nuptial solemnities, the
plain sense of his words to Jacob (according to Seidell's short
comment on them, De Jure Nat. b. 5. c. 5.) is this, — " Since
marriages are to be celebrated, according to custom, by a seven
days' feast, complete this marriage thou hast begun with Leah,
and then upon condition of another seven years' service, thou shalt
marry Rachel also, and keep her wedding feast seven days."
And the reason why Laban was so desirous cf this, was, that a
week's cohabitation with Leah might be a means, either to knit
Jacob's affection to her, or at least to confirm the marriage so,
that it should not be in his power to disannul it — Le Clerc's and
Patrick's Commentaries, Howell's Hhtory and Poole's Annota-
tions.
d Gen. xxix. 32. ' And Leah conceived and bare a son, and
she called his name Reuben.' It seems probable that in common
the mother gave the name to a child, and this both among the
Jews and the Greeks, though perhaps not without the concur-
rence of the father. In the age of Aristophanes, the giving of a
that unless he gave her children also, she should certainly
die with grief. Which speech seeming to lay the blame
of her sterility upon him, so provoked him, that he sharply
rebuked, and told her, " That it was not in his power to
work miracles ; that God, who had shut up her womb,
was alone able to open it; but that such uneasy and
discontented behaviour was the way to prevent, rather
than obtain such a favour." This mortifying answer
made her bethink herself of supplying the defect of
nature by her grandmother Sarah's expedient, and there-
fore she desired her husband to take her handmaid
Bilhah for a concubinary wife, and by that means to try
to make her a mother ; which he consenting to, had by
her a son, whom Rachel named Dan,iand, in a proper
space of time, another, whom she called Naphthali. After
which Leah, supposing herself to have left oft' child-
bearing, and Avilling to imitate her sister's policy, gave
her maid Zilpah to her husband, by whom she had like-
wise two sons, Gad and Ashur.
About this time it so fell out, that Reuben, Jacob's
eldest son, going into the fields about the time of wheat
harvest, chanced to meet with some mandrakes, which he
gathered, and carried to his mother Leah. Rachel no
sooner saw them, but desiring to have some of them,
received from Leah a forbidding answer ; " That having
robbed her of her husband's affections, she could not
expect to have any part in her son's present." It was e
Rachel's turn that night to have her husband's company ;
and therefore, to compromise the matter, she tells her
sister, that in case she would oblige her with some of her
son's mandrakes, she would wave her pretensions, and
consign the right of his bed to her. Upon Jacob's com-
ing home, Leah calls upon him to confirm the bargain,
which accordingly he did, and the consequence was, that
she conceived again, and had a fifth son, whom she
called Issachar ; after him another named Zebulun ; and
last of ail, a daughter, whose name was Dinah, the
feminine of Dan.
Rachel had hitherto no issue of her own body ; but
now it pleased God to remember her, and to bless her
with a son, whom she called / Joseph. And it was not
long after his birth, that his father Jacob, having now
served out his last seven years, began to entertain
thoughts of returning into his own country, and accord-
ingly desired of his uncle to dismiss him and his family.
But Laban, who had found by experience no small advan-
name to the child seems to have been a divided prerogative
between the father and the mother. Homer ascribes it to the
mother : —
Him oi. his mother's knees, when babe he lay,
She nam'd Arnaeus on his uatal day.
Odyssey, xviii. G. Pope.
e The custom of those countries, where polygamy was allowed,
was for the husband to take his wives by turns. The kings of
Persia (if we believe Herodotus) were not exempt from that rule:
which makes it more probable that Rachel sold her turn to her
sister for that night, than that she directed her husband which of
the four he should lie with. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 7.
f Joseph signifies increase; and the reason why Rachel named
him so, is said to be, because God ' had taken away her reproach ;'
for to be barren was formerly reckoned a disgrace, for these three
reasons. 1. Because fruitfulness proceeded from the blessing of
God, who said, < increase and multiply.' 2. Because barren'
people seem to be excluded from the promises of God made to
Abraham concerning the vast multiplication of his seed. And,
3. Because the Messias could nut proceed from them. — Poole 'J
Annotations.
feKCT. III.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
193
A. M. 21 19. A. C. 1S55 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
iage by having sucl) a servant, begged him to stay with
him a little longer ; and promised him upon that condition,
to give him whatever wages he should think fit to name.
Hereupon Jacob took an occasion of reminding him how
much his substance had increased since it was put under
his care, but that it was now high time for him to make
some provision for his own family ; and that therefore he
was resolved to return to Canaan, unless he could show
him some way of improving his fortune in Mesopotamia.
Lalian could not bear the thoughts of parting ; and there-
fore he pressed him to stay, and offered him his own
terms, which at last were resolved into this agreement,
— That in the whole flock, both of sheep and goats, a
separation should be made between the speckled and the
white ; that the spotted cattle should be given to Laban's
sons to keep, and that Jacob siiould have the care of
the white ; and that whatever a spotted or brown sheep
or goats should, from that time forward, be produced
out of the white flock, which he was to keep, should be
accounted his hire. Laban was very well satisfied with
these conditions. Accordingly the flocks were parted ;
the spotted cattle were delivered to Laban's sons ; the
remainder that were white, were given to Jacob ; and,
that there might be no possibility of intermixing, they
were sent three days' journey apart.
Whether it was from his own observation of the power
of fancy in the time of conception, or (what seems more
likely) from some private suggestion of the divine
wisdom, that the project proceeded ; but so it was, that
by Jacob's taking twigs of green wood, peeling oft" the
rinds in slips, and so laying them in the watering places,
when the flocks came to drink ° about coupling time,
these speckled twigs struck the eyes of the females, and
so made them conceive and bring forth party-coloured
young ones. But it was not to all the flock that Jacob
did this, only to such as were the ablest and strongest ;
for those that were weak and languid he left to their
natural course, that his artifice might be the less suspect-
ed, when it appeared that the number of his father-in-
law's cattle was not too much diminished.
His father-in-law, however, envying his prosperity,
repented of his bargain, and several times altered the
agreement, which God, as many times, turned to Jacob's
advantage ; till at length, observing in his carriage a
coldness and indifference, and overhearing, at a certain
time, his sons grudging and complaining, that he had
raised himself an estate out of their fortunes, he began
a The sacred historian makes use of four different words to
denote the cattle which should properly belong to Jacob. The
first is nakod, which we translate speckled; for the word signifies
little points or pricks, which the Greeks call aTiypaTK. The
second is tain, which signifies such broader and larger spots as
we frequently see in cattle. The next is akod, which signifies
spotted with divers colours, or rather with rings or circles about
the feet or legs. And the last is barud, which signifies whitish
spots like hail ; which seems to take in all the kinds of variega-
tion.— Patrick's Commentary.
b Several ancient commentators are of opinion, that Jacob laid
these streaked rods before the cattle only in spring time, when
the sun was ascending, and the cattle lusty and vigorous, but let
them alone when the cattle came to couple in September, or the
decline of the year. But as there is no certainty in this, our
moderns have thought it more reasonable to suppose, that he laid
the rods before the young and lusty sheep and goats, but left the
old and weak to take their chance, by which means the best
lambs and kids came to his share, and the worst to Laban's. —
Universal History, b. 1. c. 7. and Patrick's Commentary.
M. 3495, A. C. 1910. OKN. (II. xxviii. 10-xxnvm.
to form a resolution of retiring into his own country with
his family and eftects, which God in a vision confirmed
him in: but before he put it in execution, he thought
it proper to advise with his two principal wires, and
to endeavour to gain their consent. To t!ii- pur
he sent for them into the field, that lie might have an
opportunity of discoursing the matter with more freedom
and privacy; and then told them that for some time-
he had observed that their father's carriage had been
altered, but for what reason he could not devise. I '
appealed to them concerning his fidelity and diligence,
and their father's unworthy requital of him ; reminded
them of God's goodness in defeating his c contrivances
against him, and converting them to his great advan-
tage and increase ; acquainted them, that the same God
who had thus blessed him, had appeared to him, as he
did at Bethel, in his passage from Canaan thither, and
commanded him to return to his native country, which
command he was resolved to obey. They heard him
with a willing mind, declared their opinion concerning
their father, in the same manner as he had done, and
professed themselves ready to attend him, when be
pleased to set out. Jacob, therefore, preparing all
things for the journey, mounting his wives and children
upon camels, and taking the advantage of his father-in-
law's absence (which gave Rachel an opportunity like-
wise of stealing away his gods), himself went along
with the cattle, and all the other substance which he had
acquired at Haran : he had now passed rfthe Euphrates,
and gained * the mountains of Gilcad, as they were
afterward called, before Laban had intelligence of his
flight, and was able to overtake him. Laban, no doubt,
at his first setting out after Jacob, pursued him with a
mind whetted with revenge ; but God, who appeared to
him that night in a dream, was pleased to avert it, by
threatening him severely, if he committed any hostility
or violence against him : so that the next morning,
when he and the relations he had with him came to
c In the complaint which Jacob makes to his wives, there i-
one particular article against their father, namely, that be ' bad
changed his wages ten times,' Gen. xxxi. 7, and yet be lived in
contract with him only six years. But to solve this difficulty,
we are to observe, that the cattle in Mesopotamia bred twice
every year; and therefore, supposing that for the first
Laban stood to his bargain, but Beeing bia son-in-law thrive
exceedingly, altered the form of it the ni xt, and n continiH d !-■
do every half year, till the sixth \var came about, wh< n
thought proper to leave him, the several times wherein he
changed his wages will be exactly ten; though then
necessity for this exact calculation, when it is m common a
figure of speech, to put a certain lor an uncertain number.- U
Clerc'saad Patrick's Commmtary.
d Though the text does not my whsi river be passed, yet it i-
plain it could be no other than the Euphrates, which the Scrip-
ture sometimes calls the river Perth, somethnea tha
River, and sometimes emphatically MS rit.r; either 1
that and the Nile were the amy t»<> considerable <•<■
Israelites knew, or because it WU one of the four rtvj
paradise: or, lastly, because it «a^ tha boundary of tha promised
IgnJ. — Cuircrsal History, b. I. 0. 7-
e The heap of stones which Laban and Jacob i am In
memory of their agreement and con Gllead,
that Is, on asoy </ isttassse^ ami In after
to the whole country thereabout, which lies on thi
sea of Galilee, being part of thai ridge of mountains which ran
from mount Lebanon southward on the ea I of the Holj I
and included the mountainoas region, called In tin Not rests
ment Trachonitis. — Wtttf < '
2 b
194
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2149. A. C. 1835 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3495. A. C. 1916. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10— xxxvii.
speak with Jacob, he only expostulated with him, that
lie had stolen away, without giving him an opportunity
to take his leave of his children and grandchildren, or
to send them home with an equipage suitable to their
rank, or with the usual ceremonies of music and dancing.
Jacob, on the other hand, was not without his complaints.
The cheat which Laban had put upon him, in making
him serve so long for a woman he did not love; the
changing his salary so many times, and his late strange
behaviour towards him and his family; all these, and
many more, he answered him, were but ill requitals for
his care and diligence, as well as the blessings which
God had heaped upon him for his sake.
Laban had yet another thing to lay to his charge,
namely, the stealing of his gods : but Jacob, who knew
nothing of Rachel's theft, desired him to make the most
diligent search for them throughout his family ; assuring
him withal, that the person on whom they were found
ehould immediately be put to death. Hereupon Laban
went and searched every place ; but as he entered into
Rachel's tent (who had hid them under the camel's
furniture, and set herself down upon them), she kept her
sitting, and alleged in excuse that the condition she was
in allowed her sex to be excused from the usual cere-
monies. Laban, not suspecting the fallacy which his
daughter had put upon him, in point of modesty,
desisted from any farther search, and so went and
acquainted his son-in-law with his bad success ; where-
upon Jacob, appealing to his very friends, sharply
upbraided him with his unjust suspicion; and then,
recounting the long servitude he had held him in, and
the many hardships he had made him undergo, both day
and night, together with the cruel and unequal terms ne
had all along put upon him, he concluded with these
words, ' Except the God of my father had been with me,
surely thou hadst sent me away empty.'
This charge of Jacob's was so just, that Laban could
make no defence for himself; and therefore he thought
it best to let fall the debate, and to enter upon a more
agreeable subject, which was to make an alliance be-
tween them, and to erect a a monument as a standing
witness of it to all future ages. At the same time, they
took mutual oaths that neither of them should, at any
time, invade the other ; and Jacob in particular, that he
would use his wives and children with all becoming
tenderness and affection.
When this ceremony was over, and a sacrifice in con-
firmation of it offered, Jacob feasted the whole company
for the rest of the day ; b and in the morning, Laban
a This monument Jacob seems to have erected after the
same manner as he did that at Bethel. It must not be supposed
to have been a heap of loose stones; for then it could not have
continued long in the same position, nor given a name to the
country around it. It was, doubtless, a regular and permanent
building; but then, what the form and figure of it was, it is not
so easy to determine. Had it been only for a memorial to
posterity, and not for some present transaction also, the figure
either of a column or pyramid would have been very proper:
but we find that the present use of it was, to eat and sacrifice
upon; and therefore we may imagine that it was made in the
figure of a table, and have some authority to think of a round
table, because the name which Jacob calls it by is taken from a
verb which signifies to turn round, as the word Gilal is properly
the circumference of a circle. — Bibliotheca Biblica.
b Gen. xxxi. 46. ■ And Jacob said unto his brethren,
gather stones; and they took stones, and made an heap, and
having embraced and blessed the whole family, returned
home to Padan-Aram.
Jacob had no sooner parted with his father-in-law,
but the remembrance of his brother's ancient grudge
against him began to give him fresh uneasiness ; but the
vision of a great c number of angels, sent from heaven
to protect him, which he had in his way to Canaan (at a
place which he therefore called d Mahanaim, that is,
tivo camps, namely, one of the angels, and the other of
his own retinue), did dissipate his anxiety for a while.
As he approached to his brother's country, however, his
fears and uneasiness returned upon him ; and therefore
he thought it advisable, before he advanced any farther,
to send him a submissive message, in order to discover
at least how he stood affected to him. Esau, when
Jacob was gone to Haran, understanding how strictly
his father had charged his brother not to marry a
Canaanitish woman, began to be dissatisfied with his
own marriages; and therefore went to Ishmael, and
having married one of his daughters, settled in mount e
Seir, in the land of Edom. Hither it was that Jacob
sent some of his / chief servants, with instructions to
they did eat there upon the heap.' It might be thought to tend
more strongly to impress the mind, when this feast of reconci-
liation was eaten upon that veiy heap that was designed to be
the lasting memorial of this renewed friendship. — Ed.
c Interpreters are generally of opinion that these were two
hosts or armies of angels, whereof one was that of the guardian
angel of Mesopotamia, who, with his company, conducted Jacob
safe to the confines of Canaan, where the guardian angel of
Canaan, with his company, received him into their care ; and
this is inferred from the necessity of such protection, by Jacob's
being exposed to the treachery of Laban, and the cruelty of
Esau, which made providence more particularly careful of him
to whom the promises were made. But it is sufficient to the
purpose of giving the patriarch comfort and encouragement
under his uneasy apprehensions, that besides his own family,
which was pitched here in order like a camp, a certain number
of angels were represented to him, as drawn up like another
army, ready and prepared for his defence. — Patrick's and Le
Clerc's Commentaries.
d This place was situated between mount Gilead and the
river Jabbok, not far from the banks of the latter, and very near
the confines of Gad, and half tribe of Manasseh, which was on
the east of Jordan. It became in time a city of great strength,
and for this reason was made choice of by Abner for the seat-
royal of Ishbosheth the son of Saul, when he made war against
David, and for a retiring place by David himself, during the
rebellion of his son Absalom.' — Wells' Geography of the Old
Testament, vol. 1. c 13.
e The mountains of Seir lay on the east and south of the
Dead sea, and the country extended itself from thence to the
Arabian gulf. It is certain from Gen. xxxvi. 21, 22, that in
Abraham's days the Horites, who were the descendants of Seir,
had the possession of this region ; and therefore we may suppose,
that after the departure of Jacob, Esau, who, according to the
prediction concerning him, was to 'live by his sword,' expelled
the old inhabitants, and made himself prince thereof, before his
brother returned from Mesopotamia. From Gen. xxxii. 13,
xxxiii. 4, xxxvi. 8, 9, and Deut. ii. 12, we may learn that
Esau made war with these people with great success, though we
have of it no particulars in the writings of Moses. — Calmet's
Dictionary, under the word Seir.
f Several commentators have taken notice of Jacob's great
wisdom and prudence, in the order and disposition of this his
embassy to his brother. He sent his servants, and not his sons,
though that would have been doing a great deal more honour;
but then it would have been running too great a risk. In the
present which he sent, he put a space between drove and drove,
that the more time was taken up in their passing by Esau, his
passion might still grow cooler and cooler; that the present itself
might make so much the greater appearance ; and that if the
Sect. III.}
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES ' &c.
195
A. M. 2149. A. C. 1855; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3495. A. C. 1916. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10-xxxvii.
acquaint his brother, that after a stay of twenty years in
Mesopotamia, and the acquisition of all manner of
wealth there, he was now upon his return to his native
country ; but that he could not pass over Jordan, without
notifying his arrival to him, and imploring his favour
and friendship.
The messengers went, and soon returned again, but
with this melancholy news, that his brother was coming to
meet him at the head of four hundred men ; which made
him to conclude, that this must be with an hostile
intent, and in order to destroy both him and all that
belonged to him. In this situation what could he do ?
To fight he was not able, and to fly, his retinue was too
cumbersome. At length he came to this resolution, to
divide his company into two bands, that if Esau should
fall upon one, he might have a possibility of escaping
with the other. And having done this, he addressed
himself to God in a very humble and submissive prayer ;
acknowledging " his great mercies to him, and his own
unworthiness of them ; imploring his future protection
against his brother's sword ; and that he would be so
gracious as to fulfil all his former promises to him."
Jacob had acquainted his brother how God had enriched
him : that therefore his first message might not look like
an empty piece of formality, he ordered a present of the
choice of his docks and herds to be sent before, in
several droves, and charged the drivers, whenever they
met his brother, they should tell him, that they were
presents sent by Jacob to his lord Esau, in hopes
of obtaining his favour and good-will ; and after this he
sent his wives, and children, and all his substance, over
the brook" Jabbok, early next morning, before it was day,
whilst himself, all alone, b tarried behind for some time.
And here it was that an angel, in the shape of a man,
appeared to him, and began to wrestle with him. The
contest was certainly unequal ; but so it was, that the
angel did not overcome him ; but, to show how easily he
might have done it, at one touch he put his thigh out of
joint. He then told him the symbolical intent of his
wrestling with him ; and after he had blessed him, gave
him c the additional name of Israel, which signifies, ' a
droves which went first were not well accepted by him, those
who came later might be at distance enough to hasten back to
their master, and give him intelligence of what lie was to
expect. In the form of address, he ordered them all to make
use of the same words; first, that the repetition of them might
strike the deeper, and make the stronger impression upon Esau;
secondly, that they might not spoil the compliment, or not
speak so properly, if left to their own expression; and, thirdly,
that Esau might know, by the very turn and elegancy of them,
that the words of the message came from Jacob. (Masculus,
Ainsu-orth, Patrick, &e.) The appellation he gives his brother,
of being his lord, and himself his servant, we shall take notice of
hereafter.
a This is a small river, which is by all agreed to flow from the
adjacent mountains ol Gilead; but some make it ran into the sea
of Galilee, others into the river Jordan, below, or south of that
sea. — JVells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 1. c. I.
b Though the reason which made the patriarch, after he had
forded the river, to try if it was passable for his family, return
back again, and not go along witli them, be not expressed by
Musis, it is very natural to suppose, that he stayed some time
behind his family in the place of vision, which he afterwards
called Peniel, to recommend himself and them in prayer, as the
danger approached nearer and nearer, to the protection of
Almighty God. — Musculus, Patrick, ami BioUatheea BibHca,
c The words in the text, according to our translation, are,
man that has prevailed with God ;' and this occasioned
Jacob to call the place where this transaction happened
Peniel, or the face of God, because he c sluded that
it was God, or some of his angels, who had bad this con-
flict with him.
As soon as the angel was gone, Jacob, though lam.-,
made what haste he could to join his company ; and it
was not long before he saw his brother afar off coming
towards him with a large retinue, which made him betray
some fresh tokens of distrust : and therefore, to prepare
for the worst, he divided his family into three companies
and placed them at equal distances; the two maids, and
their sons went first; Leah and her children next ; and
Rachel and Joseph, who was then about six years old,
as farthest from danger, were the last; whilst himself
marched in the front of all, and, as he approached his
brother, bowed himself to the ground seven times.
Whatever apprehensions Jacob might conceive of
Esau's resentments, he had the happiness to meet him in
a much better temper than he expected. At lirst sight
he ran to meet him ; he embraced him with the greatest
tenderness ; he wept over him with tears of joy ; and
seeing his wives and children prostrate themselves before
him one after another, and in the same order wherein
Jacob had disposed them, he returned their civilities
with the same tenderness that he had his brother's. The
presents indeed which Jacob had sent him he kindly
acknowledged, but desired to be excused from accepting
of them, because they were superfluous to him, who had
enough of every thing ; but Jacob pressed him so
earnestly, that at length he prevailed : and therefore to
make liini a recompense, Esau invited him to Seir, and
proffered his services to accompany him thither. Jacob,
however, had no design to accept of the invitation, and
yet was afraid directly to refuse ii ; and therefore he
represented the tenderness of his children and flocks,
and that they could not travel with expedition, lie
begged that they might not confine him to their slow
movements, but that he would return home at his own pace ;
and promised withal, that they would follow as fast as
they could conveniently. Esau then offered to leave him
a sufficient number of his men, that might guard and con-
duct him into his territories; but this compliment like-
wise Jacob, in an handsome manner, evaded, and .-..
they d parted; Esau went to Seir, and expected his
1 Thy name shall DO more be called Jao b, bill I ■ ■•
it is certain, that this patriarch «a< wry frequently, nay.
very next verse but one, is called Jacob; and therefore thi^ m ic-
ing contradiction may be amended, by rendering the *
instead of wo mow, not only} or, not to mm I J ltnd\
because it is certain, that in his posterity at least (who were
called Israelites, but never Jacobites) the latter name abolished
the former. Israelis certainly derived from the word Sar, «lii- b,
as St Jerome observes, signifies a prince, with the Jod, which
is the common note of a proper nam,-; but there Is tomi
,-ity in our translation, as to the latter pan ol the verse, ' as a
prince hast thou power with God, and with men, and b
vailed;' which should rather be translated, 'Thou bast I
prevailer with God, and with men tin o powerfully
prevail.' This Is the literal version of the words; is n
to the vulgar Latin, Onkelos, and the Septuagint ; and very justly
expresses the true sense of the place.— Patricm't Oemmtntoty,
and Shuciford'i Connection, vol 2. b. 7. c, 7.
d After this, Moses glva us do forther account of Esau and bis
family, only thai he was assisting at his lather's funeral, and hud
three wives, whereof it i- proper to take notice, that wl
mentions these wives, (as in Gen. xwi. 34. and Gen. ixvtli.U.)he
196
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A.. M. 2U9. A. C. 1855; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3195. A. C. 1916. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10— xxxvii.
brother to follow him ; but his brother turned another
way, and, by easy journeys, came to Succoth, which in
Hebrew signifies booths, and there, intending to settle
for some time, he built a house for his family, and pro-
per conveniences for the reception of his cattle. But in
a short time he removed from hence, and a safely arrived
at Shechem, where having purchased a piece of ground
of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for an hundred * pieces
gives them quite other names than what he does when he comes
to speak of the posterity which Esau had by them, Gen. xxxvi. ;
which may lead an unwary reader to think tliat he had more
than tliree, especially when the fathers of the two first are likewise
called by different names. Thus his first wife Judith, the
daughter of Beeri, is afterwards called Adah, the daughter of
Elon the Hittite; the second, namely, Bathshema, the daughter
of Elon, is again called Aholi Bamah, the daughter of Ana, the
daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; and the last, called in one place
Mahalah, is now called Bathshemah; but what shows these two
latter names mean the same person, and that the same thing may
be supposed of the other two, is, that in both places she is called
' the daughter of Ishmael, the sister of Nabajoth.' All the
account that can therefore be given of this difference is, that they
had two names, and that it was usual to call them sometimes by
one and sometimes by another; in the like manner, as we find
the mother of Abijam, king of Jutfah, in one place called
Maacah, the daughter of Abishalon, (1 Kings xv. 2.) and in
another, Michaiah, the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah, (2 Chron.
xiii. 2.) with many more instances of the like nature. After
having taken this notice of Esau's wives, Moses enumerates his
children, and some of their descendants, the princes of the tribes
of the Edomites ; the kings that succeeded them, and the chiefs
who governed after the kings ; but as to the order of succession,
wherein they are to be placed, there is some dispute among the
learned. One remark more that we shall make before we part
with Esau, is, that, all things considered, he was not that very
bad man which some would make him. His generous and open
temper appears in his affectionate deportment towards his brother,
and his speedy and utter oblivion of the slights and perfidies he
had received from lum; and, though St Paul calls him a profane
person, and says that he was hated of God, yet all that he means
by the word hatred, is no more than a bare postponing. For the
apostle's purpose is to show, that God had all along bestowed the
favours which lead to the Messiah on whom he pleased: on Abra-
ham, not on Lot ; on Jacob, not on Esau ; on the Jews, not on the
Gentiles. And he therefore calls him profane, not because he
was more wicked than other men of his age, but because he
seems not to have been so mindful of the promises made to his
family as Jacob was, and consequently was not so fit to be the
heir of the mercies peculiar to it. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 4.
and Skuckford's Connection, vol. 2. c. 7.
a The words in our translation are, that ' Jacob came to Sha-
lom* a city of Shechem:' but, besides that there was no such
place as Shalem in the confines of Shechem, (which seems itself,
at this time, to have been but a small town, without any depen-
dant villages,) since the word Shalem is so frequently taken
adjectively, to denote any thing safe and sound, as we call it, and
as Onkelos, and some of the best Jewish interpreters have it, it
may very properly be rendered so here. And this soundness, as
some imagine, may have reference to Jacob's halting, which was
perfectly cured before he reached Shechem ; as his safety has re-
spect either to his having escaped all danger, at his interview with
his brother, or rather to his having met with no evil accident of any
sort, since he left Laban: and this observation Moses might the
rather be induced to make, because he was just going to relate a
sad disaster, that not long after his arrival at Shechem, befell his
family. Shechem, by the by, otherwise called Sichar, was a
city of Samaria, situate among the mountains belonging to the
tribe of Benjamin, ten miles from Shiloh, forty from Jerusalem,
and fifty-two from Jericho, near which was Jacob's well or foun-
tain, where our blessed Saviour entered into conversation with
the Samaritan woman, John iv. 7. — Le Clerc's and Patrick's
Commentary, Calmcfs Dictionary, and JVclls' Geography of the
Old Testament.
h The word kesldtah, which is here rendered ' a piece of money,'
signifies likewise a lamb, from whence the Septuagint, Vulgate,
Oleaster, and others, (me translated it ' an hundred lambs:' but
of money, he pitched his tents in the place, and there
built an altar to the Lord, whom he called ' El Elohe-
Israel,' or ' the mighty God of Israel.'
Here Jacob might have lived peaceably and happily,
being beloved by all the people, had not c Dinah's
curiosity of visiting the women of the city proved
the cause of much mischief, and obliged her father to
withdraw. Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, who
was prince of that country, saw her, fell in love with
since, long before this, money was in use, and made the instru-
ment of traffic, (Gen. xxiii. 16.) which must of course destroy
the method of exchanging one commodity for another, it is mucn
more probable, that it was some sort of coin, though of what
value it is uncertain, which had a lamb stamped upon it, andwa3
called by that name, as we do call an angel, from the stamp it
bears of one. {Universal History, b. 1. c. 7. and Patrick's Com-
mentary in locum.) — There is great reason to believe, that the
earliest coins struck, were used both as weights and money; and
indeed this circumstance is in part proved by the veiy names of
certain of the Greek and Roman coins. Thus the Attic mina
and the Roman libra, equally signify a pound: and the stater of
the Greeks, so called from weighing, is decisive as to tins point.
The Jewish shekel was also a weight as well as a coin: 3000
shekels, according to Arbuthnot, being equal in weight and value
to one talent. This is the oldest coin of which we any where
read, for it occurs, Gen. xxiii. 16, and exhibits direct evidence
against those who date the first coinage of money so low as the
time of Croesus or Darius, it being there expressly said that
' Abraham weighed to Ephron four hundred shekels of silver,
current money with the merchant.' With respect to the stamp
or impression which the first money bore, the primitive race of
men being shepherds, and their wealth consisting in their cattle,
in which Abraham is said to have been rich, for greater conve-
nience, metals were substituted for the commodity itself. It Mas
natural for the representative sign to bear impressed the object
which it represented ; and thus accordingly the earliest coins
were stamped with the figure of an ox or a sheep. For proof that
they actually did thus impress them, we can again appeal to the
high authority of Scripture: for there we are informed that Jacob
bought a parcel of a field for an hundred pieces of money. The
original Hebrew, translated ' pieces of money,' is kesitoth, which
signifies lambs, with the figure of which the metal was doubtless
stamped. (Maur. Ind.Aniiq. vol.vii. p. 470.) It is certain that in
many countries the coin has had its name from the image it bore ;
so, among our ancestors, a coin was called an angel because it bore
the image of an angel ; hence, also, a Jacobus, a Carolus, a Louis
(Louis d'or), a Joe, a Napoleon, because certain coins in Eng-
land, Spain, France, and Portugal, bore on one side the image
of the kings of those countries, James, Charles, Louis, Joseph,
Napoleon. The Athenians had a coin called (iovs, an ox, because
it was stamped with the figure of an ox. Hence the saying in
•iEschylus' Agam. v. 36, " 1 must be silent concerning other
matters ; a great ox has come upon my tongue," to signify a person
who had received a bribe for secrecy, that is, a sum of money on
each piece of which an ox was stamped. The word opes, riches,
is a corruption of oves, sheep, because, these animals, in ancient
times, constituted the principal riches of their owners ; but when
other cattle were added, the word pecunia, (from pecus, cattle,)
which wo translate money, and from which we still have cur
English term pecuniary, appears to have been substituted ioroves,
because pecus, pecoris, and pecus, pecudis, were used to signify
all kinds of cattle, large and small. Among our British and
Saxon ancestors we find coins stamped with the figure of an ox,
horse, hog, goat, &c, and this custom arose in all probability,
both among them and other nations, from this circumstance, that
in primitive times the coin was the ordinary value of the animal
whose image it bore. — Clarke's Comment. Gen. xxxiii. 19. — En.
c At what time this misfortune happened to Dinah, the Scrip-
tures gives us no account: it is presumed, however, from the
bold exploit of her two brothers to avenge her dishonour, (which
implies that they were men grown,) that she could not be less
than fifteen or sixteen years of age ; and the occasion of her run-
ning herself into this premunire, Josephus tells us, was a great
festival then held at Shechem, which she, desirous to see the fine
sights and fashions of the place, adventured to go to. — Antiqui-
ties, b. I. c. 21.
Sect. III.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &
M. 2149. A. C. 1855; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. 11 3495. A. C.
197
her, and having gained a secure opportunity, ravished
her. But notwithstanding this dishonourable act, his
soul was so enamoured with her charms, that he de-
sired nothing more earnestly than to marry her ; and
to this purpose prevailed with his father, to enter upon
a treaty with her friends. Jacob soon heard of the
rape committed upon his daughter, but concealed the
matter until his sons were come home ; and when he had
made them acquainted with it, their resentment grew to
such an height, that they vowed severely to revenge the
dishonour done unto their family. In the mean time,
Shechem having prevailed with his father to obtain him
the damsel, they both went together to make the proposal
to her father ; promising to give her as large a a dowry,
and her relations as costly presents as he should desire ;
and alleging withal, that if his family were to inter-
marry with the Shechemites, it would prove the most
effectual means to make them both live together in per-
fect harmony and friendship. This was a fair offer ; but
the treacherous sons of Jacob, who meditated nothing but
the most bloody revenge, made them this reply : " That
it was not lawful for them to contract an affinity with any
uncircumcised nation, but that, if he and his people would
consent to be circumcised, as they were, they would then
come into his proposal."
Hamor and Shechem agreed very readily to this con-
dition ; and when they returned to the city, and had
convened the inhabitants : " They commended the Israel-
ites highly for a peaceable and good-natured people,
from whom they might reap many great advantages, and
in process of time make all their substance (which was
very considerable) their own, if they were to intermarry
with them ; but that this would not be done without a
general consent to be circumcised." How averse soever
the people might be to such an operation at first, yet the
thirst of gain, joined with the powerful interest which
Shechem had among them, soon won their consent,
insomuch, that on that very day, every male of them was
circumcised. But * three days after this, when their
wounds had made them incapable of making any resist-
ance, Simeon and Levi entered the city, and having put
all the men to the sword, made search in Shechem's
house, where they found their sister Dinah, and brought
her away. After which they re-entered the town, plun-
dered the houses, took both women and children captives,
a This shows more fully, that the custom of those times was,
as we noted before, for men to give money for their wives, and
to give it generally to their parents. The money, or presents so
given, were by the Greeks called ?sSva; for so we find Vulcan,
when he had caught his wife Venus in an act of incontinency, tell-
mghcr and her paramour, that he would not let them go " until
the mother shall have given him back the whole of the bridal gifts
presented by him for the impudent damsel." But there was a
great reason for a dowry now, and a large one too, that he might
make compensation for the wrong he had done. There is to be
observed, however, a natural equity in the subsequent law of
Moses, (Exod. xxii. 16. and Deut. xxii. 28.) by which a man
was bound to make satisfaction to the father, if, either by entice-
ment or violence, he had abused his daughter. — Le Clerks and
Patrick's Commentary.
b The third day, as physicians take notice, was the time
when fevers generally attend circumcision, occasioned by the
inflammation of the wound, which was generally more painful
then, as the Hebrews observe, than at anytime else; and for this
Uason, the sons of Jacob took the opportunity of falling upon the
Shechemites, when they were least of all in a condition to deli ml
themselves,— Howell's History.
1916. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10-xxxvii
and carried away all the cattle that they found in the
neighbouring plans.
Jacob was much concerned at the furious proceeding!
of his sons, for which he justly reproved then. II.- mi
apprehensive indeed, that the inhabitants of the land
would unite against him, and destroy his familj for this
violent outrage ; but Simeon and Levi, who were tin-
chief actors in the tragedy, were BO warmed win the
thoughts of the dishonour done to their sister and fainilx
that they did not think they had carried their resentment
in the least too far for so base an injury. Jacob, how-
ever, thought it advisable, for his own security, to tarry
no longer there, but to shift into some other part of tin-
country. And accordingly, having received particular
directions from God to remove to Bethel, and there to
build an altar, (whereon to perform the vow which he
made when he fled from his brother Esau,) In- set bit
resolution to go thither: but before he did mat, being
willing to carry nothing that might lie offensive to God,
to so sacred a place, he found it necessary to Bake a
reformation in his family. To this purpose be com-
manded all that proposed to go along with him, to bring
out their idols; which they not only did, but gave up
their c ear-rings likewise, which they were used to wear
as spells or amulets against sickness, and other misfor-
tunes. These he took and buried privately in a deep
hole, which he caused to be dug under an oak, near
Shechem ; and so having purified d themselves, even to
c It was a custom in several countries, for the men as weD as
the women, and for the meaner as well as the better sort, to W MT
ear-rings, and therefore we find Plautus in his play called Pa nu-
lum, Act v., taking this notice of some Carthaginian slaves, —
"That their hands should be without fingers, one would think,
because they wore their rings in their ears." But, he-ides tho
rings designed for ornament, it was a common thing for idola-
trous nations to wear others for superstitious uses. These, as
some say, were made in form of a semicircle, anil reached on I
the forehead from ear to ear. They had astronomies] characters
and signatures engraven upon them, and to them they imputed
a thousand supernatural virtues. They were always di
to some false deity; and therefore St Austin, in several
exerts himself with a becoming zeal, against sueliini]
and tells his countrymen, the Africans, (among whom this ens*
torn had got some footing,) that in this execrable superstiaei
calls it, they did aot design to dress themselves oat to ptoses dm d,
so much as to serve and please devils. And then B
highly to be commended for destroying these relics of idolatry,
which his haste to he gene, both according to God's command,
and his own apprehensions of danger, made him bury under ground,
rather than stay to melt them down. — In i nd Patrick's
Commentary; Heidegger's Hist Patriar. vol 8. Essay 18; and
Calmefs Dictionary under the word R
rfThe manner wherein Jseob required of bis domestics to
purify themselves, \vas by washing their whl d put-
ting on clean and fresh apparel: and thai this was aenstom among
ether nations as well as the Jews, when they si
and religious office, is plain from that passage In Euripides where
Alcestis, being to perform seme hoi* rites in behalf of her chil-
dren, •• In the waters of the stream she laved their lily skin, and
from the cedar-wood balls bringing beautiful gaudily
bedecked them,— then, standing before the shrine, she pi
But of all ethei nati.m-, the Egyptians, as Herodotus U
b 1. c. 87,) and more especially their priests, were most r mark-
able' lei- this Mil of cleanliness. "They shaved t
over every third day; they bathed thsmselvea In cold water twice
a day, and twice anight; and wore constantly nothing but linen
vestments, and shoes made of papyrus; forthi
they were the most proper to be washed." No4 l
are to suppose that <e-d respects a worshipper for his sprues
in ;, Bee i- polluted within. In
appearance, so long as his con
198 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book III.
A. M. 2149. A. C. 1855; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 34D5. A. C. 191G. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10— xxxvii.
tlie washing and changing of their garments, they set
forward to Bethel, and arrived there safe, and without
any disturbance, because God had struck such a terror into
the cities round about them, that, notwithstanding the late
provocation in the matter of Shechem, nobody offered to
molest or pursue them.
As soon ds Jacob came to Bethel, where a Deborah,
his mother's nurse, happened to die, he erected an altar,
as God had commanded him, whereupon he performed
his vow; and not long after, God appeared to him
again, confirming the change of his name, and giving
him fresh assurances of his design to multiply his pos-
terity, and to give him the inheritance of the land of
Canaan; which induced him to erect a pillar of stone,
whereon he poured a drink-offering and oil, as a lasting
monument of his gratitude and devotion.
The desire which Jacob had to visit his aged father
made his stay in Bethel not long; and therefore, remov-
ing from thence, he intended to have reached b Ephrah,
which was not far distant, that night, but was prevented
by Rachel's falling in labour of her second and last
child, for of him she died as soon as she was delivered,
sordidness indeed there is something distasteful, and it is an
unseemly thing to appear before a great man in dirty apparel:
but the principal design of God's appointing this outward clean-
liness, was to be a sign and memorandum to the person approach-
ing his presence, what the inward temper and complexion of his
mind should be ; and therefore we find the royal Psalmist, in
allusion to this very custom, declaring his pious purpose, ' I will
wash my hands in innocency, and so will I go to thy altar,' Ps.
xxvi. 6. — Le Clerc's and Patrick's Commentary.
a In Gen. xxiv. 59, we read that Deborah went along with
her mistress Rebecca, when Isaac's steward was sent to conduct
her out of Mesopotamia; how is it, then, that we find her here
in Jacob's retinue so long afterwards, and when he was returning
from the same place? The Jewish doctors tell us, that Rebecca,
having promised her son at his departure that she would send
for him again, as soon as she found him out of danger, did now
send Deborah to fetch him back. But, besides that a younger
messenger would have been much more proper, we do not find
that Jacob was sent for, but that he left the country, by God's
appointment, and upon the bad usage of his father-in-law.
Some Christian commentators are, therefore, of opinion, that
after she had brought her mistress Rebecca to her marriage, and
seen her well settled in her family, she went back to Haran
again, and there dwelt in Laban's house, till, upon Jacob's
returning home, she, having a desire to see her old mistress once
more, put herself under his convoy. Others again suppose, that
Jacob had been at his father's house before this time ; or that,
after Rebecca's death, Deborah hearing of his return into
Canaan, might be desirous to spend the remainder of her life
with his wives, who were her countrywomen. Any of these
conjectures may be sufficient to solve the difficulty of her being
found in Jacob's family ; and the reason why Moses takes notice
of her death is, not so much because it was a circumstance of
moment enough to be preserved in history, as that it was of use
to assign the reason why the oak near which she was buried,
and which perhaps was still standing in his days, came by its
name. But what will in some measure serve, both to vindicate
the sacred historian, and to show, at the same time, how much
these nurses and women, who had the care and education of
persons of birth and quality, were honoured and esteemed in
those early days, is this passage, upon the like occasion, in the
poet Virgil: — "Thou Caieta, nurse of ^Eneas, hast also con-
ferred eternal renown on our shores ; even still the memory of
thy tomb exists, and thy name points out thy grave in the great
Hespcria!" — JEneid, b. 7.
b This place was afterwards called Bethlehem, a city about
two leagues distant from Jerusalem, famous for the birth of
David, king of Israel, but infinitely more so for the birth of
Christ, the Son of God, and Saviour of the world. — Caimet's
Dictionary.
and had just time to name him Benoni, that is, ' the son
of sorrow ;' but his father, unwilling to perpetuate tha
remembrance of so melancholy a subject, called him
c Benjamin, which signifies ' the son of my right hand,
or ' my strength.' She was buried in the way to Ephrah,
where her husband built d a monument of stone over her
grave, which the sacred historian tells us was extant in
his days. But this was not the only misfortune which
attended Jacob in this place : his eldest son Reuben,
having taken a liking to Bilhah, the concubinary wife
which Rachel had given him, made no scruple to commit
incest with her ; which thing grieved his father so, that,
though he forbore taking any present notice of it, yet
he could not but * resent it at his dying hour. Soon
after this Jacob left this melancholy place, and came at
length to Mature, the place of his father's abode, who
was doubtless not a little overjoyed at the return of his
son, after so long an absence.
CHxVP. II. — Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
The worst accusation against our patriarch is that of
his purloining, as some may call it, or appropriating to
himself a considerable part of Laban's substance ; and
shame light on him who pretends to apologize for this,
in order to give countenance to any trick or collusion
in matters of commerce. The Scripture only relates
the fact, without either censure or approbation ; and we
read it to wrong purpose if, because we find a thing
recorded of a patriarch, and yet not censured by the
holy penman, we therefore immediately conclude it to
be right.2 Men will be men, full of imperfections, and
governed by their passions, so long as they live in this
world : nor are the examples propounded in Scripture
to beget in us humility and watchfulness, upon every
remembrance of human frailty, but the laws contained
1 Gen. xlix. 4. 2 Scripture Vindicated.
c From the different names which the father and mother
gave this son of theirs, some have observed, that names are
ofttimes strangely adapted to things, and the presages of parents
have anciently been observed to be fulfilled: " Alas, the auguries
of parents are never unfulfilled !" Which was certainly nowhere
more than in the fate of Benjamin's posterity, since no tribe in
Israel was more valorous, and yet none more subject to disasters,
than his; since it was almost quite extirpated in the time of the
Judges, ch. xx., and yet, before the conclusion of that age,
became so powerful as to have the first king of Israel chosen out
of it. — Patrick's Commentary.
d The learned Bochart is of opinion that this monument of
Rachel's, which is the first that we read of in Scripture, was a
pyramid, curiously wrought, and raised upon a basis of twelve
large stones, whereby Jacob intended to intimate the number of
his sons. It was certainly standing in the time when Moses
wrote, ver. 20, and just before Saul was anointed king there is
some mention made of it, 1 Sam. x. 2. But that the present
monument cannot be the same which Jacob erected, is very
manifest from its being a modern and Turkish structure. Mr
Le Brun, who was at the place, and took a draught of it, says
that the tomb is cut into the cavity of a rock, and covered with
a dome, supported by four pillars, on fragments of a wall, which
open to the sepulchre. The work is rude enough, and without
any ornament ; but the whole is as entire as if it had been but
just made, which makes it hard to imagine that it had subsisted
ever since Jacob's time. — MaundrelVs Travels, and Cahnet's
Dictionary.
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199
therein, which are true and righteous altogether, to be
the rule and measure of our conduct. We readily grant,
therefore, that this action of Jacob's, considered in
itself, according to the rules of strict justice, can hardly
be vindicated; but then we are to remember, that there
was a much superior agent, even the great Proprietor
of the world, and who has an undoubted right to transfer
possessions where he pleases, by whose direction it was
done.
For suppose we allow (what some great men, both
physicians and philosophers, are wont to maintain) that
the fancy of the dam, in the time of conception, is of
power sufficient to influence the form, and shape, and
colour of the young, and to produce the effect which it
had upon Laban's cattle ; yet we cannot imagine that
Jacob knew anything of this secret. Men had not as
yet inquired into the powers of nature, and observations
of this kind were not much regarded. l Religion and
the worship of God Avas, in these days, the wisdom of
the world ; and a simplicity of life, and integrity of
manners, more studied than any curious and philoso-
phical speculations. If study and philosophy had
helped men to this knowledge, how came Laban and
his sons to be utter strangers to it ? And yet, had they
not been strangers, they could not but apprehend that
Jacob might by art variegate the cattle as he pleased,
and would not therefore have made so weak a bargain
with him. They certainly, therefore, had no notion
that any such thing could be done, neither had Jacob
any intelligence of it when he made the contract with
Laban ; but being resolved to be contented with what
the divine providence should allot him, he made choice
of the speckled cattle merely to put an end to all cavils
about wages, as not doubting but that God would so
order matters that in the event he should have enough :
and therefore his words, ' So shall my righteousness
answer for me in the time to come,' are just as if he had
said, 2 " I may be thought to have acted imprudently in
naming this hire, as if it were impossible for cattle that
are all white to bring forth any but such as are like
themselves ; but in the result it will appear that God had
respect to my just dealing, and this you will plainly see
when you come to pay me my wages."
But though Jacob at first might be ignorant of the
secret, yet we cannot deny but that, after the bargain
was made, God might give him some intimation of it,
and perhaps might enjoin hiin to put it in execution ;
and yet, after all, he might not apprehend any natural
efficacy in the thing. Instances there are, more than
enough, in Scripture, of God's requiring persons to
perform such actions as might testify their faith and
reliance on his promises, in order to receive such bles-
sings as he intended for them. Thus Naaman the Syrian,
when he came to beg of God a cure of his leprosy, was
directed 3< to wash seven times in Jordan.' Washing
in Jordan was to be an evidence of his believing that
God would heal him, and upon his giving this evidence
he was cured ; which was the case of Jacob here before
us. God had told him that 4 ' he had seen all that
Laban had done unto him,' but that he would take care
1 Shuekford's Connection, vol. 2. b.
* Bililiotheca Biblica, vol. 1.
• 2 Kings v. 10. 4 Gen. xxxi.
12.
that he * should not hurt him;' that all Leban'l contri-
vances to defraud him of his wages he would turn so
much to his advantage, as that they should tend to the
increase of his prosperity; and then, very probably M
a token of his belief and dependance on him, he com-
manded him to take peeled rods, and use them sj he
directed. Jacob believed, and did ae he was commanded :
but all this while he might no more think th.it the peeling
of rods of green boughs, and laying them in the watering
places where the flocks were to drink, was ;i natural
way to cause them to bring forth spotted and speckled
young ones, than Naaman did, that washing in a river
was a cure for a leprosy. But even suppo.-e the case,
that Jacob had the notion that party-coloured rods
might be a natural means to produce party-coloured
cattle; yet if he used them, in obedience to the divine
command, and not merely as a means to enrich himself
at the expense of another, Ave cannot perceive a\ herein
he was culpable. God Almighty determined to punish
Laban for his injustice, and to reward Jacob for his
fidelity. He revealed to Jacob the manner in which he
designed to bless him, and ordered him to do an action
as a token of his reliance on him, for the performance
of his promise. Jacob faithfully observed the orders
that Avere given him, and the event proved accordingly.
Here Avas no trick, no circumvention in the matter ;
though it must be allowed, that had it been lawful for
any private person to make reprisals, the injurious
treatment he had received from Laban, both in imposing
a Avife upon him, and prolonging his servitude without
Avages, Avas enough to give Jacob both the provocation
and privilege so to do. God Almighty, however, was
pleased to take the determination of the whole matter
into his oaati hands; and therefore the true conclusion
is, Avhat Jacob himself expresses in his speech to his
tAvo Avives, ' Ye knOAV, that with all my poAver, 1 have
served your father, and your father hath deceived me,
and changed my Avages ten times; but God suffered him
not to hurt me. If he said thus, the speckled shall he
thy Avages, then all the cattle bare speckled ; and if he
said thus, the ring-streaked shall be thine hire, then hare
all the cattle ring-streaked. Thus God hath taken away
the cattle of your father, and hath given them to me.'
A man so highly favoured by God, and so sensible of
his peculiar goodness, can scarce be supposed cm aide
of making any voav with a mercenary riow, <t "f
neglecting to perform it, when made. The vow v\hieh
the patriarch made upon his journey into Mesopotamia,
is conceived in these terms. b ' If God will be with DM,
and keep me in this way that I go, and will give DM
bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that 1 come again
to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be ".a
God;' that is, I will religiously worship and serve him :
but it is an unfair construction to say. that Unless God
did bring him ho in peace, he would not worship him.
The right which God has to the service ami homage of
his creatures, is absolute and nnalienalde : hi.- dominion,
his power, his goodness, covenant , and promises, do all
require this of US : and therefore the words mu.-t mean,
either that besides God's natural property; in him, ha
should have also a farther demand of duty upon BUS, in
s Gen. **viii. 20, 8tc
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consequence of this vow ; or ■ that he would perform
some signal service to him, and worship him with a more
than ordinary devotion, consecrating (as it follows) the
place where he then stood to his honour ; offering him
sacrifices, and giving him the tenth of all he had, to
maintain this worship.
Such is the sense of the vow ; and the conditions
relating to it seem to denote the secret wish and desire
of his soul, and not any express stipulation with God.
Man certainly cannot insist on terms with his Maker, but
he may desire and humbly hope for a supply of his
wants. More than this the patriarch does not expect ;
and less than this God never intended to give. ' Our
heavenly Father knows that we have need of food to eat,
and raiment to put on,' and it is a renunciation of our
dependance upon his providential goodness not to ask
them. To serve God for no consideration, but that of
his own glory, is a notion that may well enough comport
with our future exalted state, when we shall ' hunger no
more, neither thirst any more,' and where our service
will always be attended with vision ; but while we are
invested with these weak and frail bodies, they and their
concerns will tenderly affect us, and God, who considers
whereof we are made, expects no other than that they
should.
Considering then the circumstances that Jacob was in,
leaving now his own, and going into a strange country,
we need not much wonder that we find him solicitous for
his daily bread. With his staff he passed over Jordan ;
and when he returned with a great retinue, the grateful
acknowledgment which he makes upon that occasion, he
expresses in these words : 2 ' I am not worthy of the
least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou
hast shewed unto thy servant ;' and a temper like this
would never have neglected to pay its vows unto the
Most High, had not the patriarch either met with obstruc-
tions, that made it not safe for him to go, or waited till
God, who had all along conducted him hitherto, should
direct him to go to the place appointed for such oblation.
Before he came to that place indeed, we are told that
he 3 ' commanded his household, and all that were with
him, to put away the strange gods that were among them.'
And from hence it may be presumed, that there were
several of his family (and possibly Rachel herself)
addicted to idolatry, which he might connive at ; but this
is a mistake, which arises purely from the faultiness of
our translation. There the word strange is supposed to
refer to gods, and to be another name for idols : whereas
the words ( Elohei-hcm-necar ) do properly signify ' the
gods of the stranger that was among them,' that is, the
gods of the Shechemites, whom they had taken captive,
and brought into Jacob's family. This alters the sense
of the words quite, and throws the charge of idolatry,
not upon Jacob's household, but upon the strangers that
were in it. The captives of Shechem, which his sons
had taken, were now to be incorporated into his family,
and put under new restrictions. Whatever singularities
were in their dress or ornaments, or in the rites and
usages of religion they had been accustomed to, these he
intended to abrogate, and to reduce them all to the same
purity of worship, and simplicity of life and manners,
which he designed to keep up among them. And this is
♦Patrick's Commentary. 2 Gen. xxxii. 10. s Gen. xxxv. 2.
so far from being a stain upon his conduct, as if he were
a tame conniver at impiety, that we find him undertake
the reformation even of strangers, as soon as they were
come under his roof, with a spirit and resolution not
unlike that of holy David : 4 ' Mine eyes look unto such
as are faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me,
and whoso leadeth a godly life, he shall be my servant.*
Some writers have made it a question, how Jacob,
upon his return home, should know where his brother
Esau dwelt, and why he should send him so humble and
submissive a message : but 5 we can hardly imagine that
Jacob should be so imprudent as to carry his wives,
children, and substance into Canaan, without knowing
whether he might safely venture thither. ' It is presuma-
ble, therefore, that while he rested at Gilead, he sent
messengers to inquire, whether his father was alive ;
what condition he was in ; how the people of the land
were affected to him ; and whether he might come and
live with security near him. From these messengers he
might learn the place of his brother's habitation ; and
when he found that he should meet with no obstruction,
if he could but reconcile Esau to him, he very prudently
sent to him likewise, with an intent if he found him
inexorable, to bend his course another way. And indeed,
if we consider what had passed between Esau and Jacob,
before the latter went from home, we shall soon find
reason enough why Jacob should send to him, before he
adventured to come, and sit down with his substance
near his father. Esau still expected to be his father's
heir, especially as to his temporalities ; and therefore if
Jacob had returned home without Esau's knowledge,
this, at their father's death, would have laid the founda-
tion of a greater misunderstanding than ever : for Esau
would then have thought, that his brother had been
inveigling his father, and drawing a great part of his
substance from him. He could never have imagined,
that any person, in a state of servitude, could have
acquired so large a fortune ; and therefore when he came
to see all that wealth, which he knew nothing of before,
he must have concluded that he had defrauded him.
It was not from pride or vanity, therefore, or to gratify
an ostentatious humour, that Jacob sent his brother an
account of his prosperous circumstances, but partly to
recognise the goodness of providence, which had so
prospered him, and partly to let him know, that he was
not come to raise any contributions, either upon him, or
the family ; that he had brought his substance with him
from Haran, and was not going into Canaan to do,hiin
any wrong.
The whole design of this interview with Esau was to
procure a firm reconciliation with him ; and therefore it
is no wonder that Jacob should make use of such terms
as were most likely to ingTatiate. He knew his brother's
rugged and haughty temper, and considered him as a
person, who, by his valour and conduct, had raised him-
self to a principality and dominion, whilst himself, for
twenty years together, had lived in no better capacity
than that of a servant; and therefore he might justly
think, that this difference of appellations did not misbe-
come their different conditions of life.
By the divine direction indeed, he was constituted
Esau's lord ; nor did he forego that prerogative by
4 Ps. ci. 8, 9.
5 Shuckt'ord's Connection, vol. 2. b. 8.
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201
calling himself Esau's servant. Lord and servant were
no more then, than (what they are now) certain modes of
civility, which passed between persons of good breeding,
without ever adhering to their strict acceptation ; and
therefore Jacob might make his addresses to Esau in
this manner, without any derogation to his spiritual pre-
eminence, and confining himself to the bounds of nature,
might reverence him as his elder brother.
But how jealous soever we may be of Jacob's honour,
it is certain, that the Almighty approved of his conduct,
by himself interposing to bring about the desired recon-
ciliation. Before this interview with his brother, and
while he lay under terrible apprehensions of his displea-
sure, * the ' angels,' we are told, met him. They met him,
that is, they showed themselves to him, to assure him of
their custody ; and by and by we see what followed ;
8 his brother Esau, contrary to his natural roughness,
and avowed revenge, comes and treats him in a most
friendly manner ; which sudden change in Esau, we may
reasonably suppose, was occasioned by one of those
angels who appeared ; and who, working upon his
humours and fancy, sweetened him into a particular
benignity of temper, so that Jacob, by his humble and
submissive behaviour, gained his end.
There is this peculiar hardship upon Jacob, that in the
matter of Leah, he was perfectly imposed upon ; that he
had no design of having any communion with her ; was
contracted to her sister ; and in all probability, had he
enjoyed her first, would never have had concern with any
other. But the misfortune was, that, in the other's nuptial
night, he had carnal knowledge of her, and thereupon
was induced to think, that he could not honestly leave her.
Her sister Rachel was all this while (bating consumma-
tion) his lawful wife to whom he was contracted, to whom
he was solemnly married ; and therefore he could not in
justice relinquish her neither. In this dilemma he was
in a manner under a necessity of adhering to both ; and
as polygamy was not at that time interdicted, he thought
he might do it without any violation of the laws of God.
The only question is, whether he did not incur the sin of
incest in so doing ? And to this some Jewish doctors
answer, that the prohibition of marriages, within such
degrees of consanguinity, was restrained to the land of
Canaan only ; and that therefore it was not unlawful for
Jacob in Haran to take two sisters, nor for Amram in
Egypt to take his father's sister : and to this purpose they
observe farther, that in the Mosaic law itself, and parti-
cularly in the 20th chapter of Leviticus, where the
sentence of excision is pronounced against incestuous
marriages, there is no punishment assigned to him who
shall marry two sisters ; which, as they will have it, was,
for the honour of Jacob, omitted. However this be, it
is certain that there is no such toleration under the
Christian dispensation ; and therefore he who pretends
to pronounce any thing upon a case so singular as this
of our patriarch's is, should consider the different state
of tilings, before the promulgation of the law, during the
obligation of it, and since the commencement of the
gospel ; which undoubtedly prohibits both a plurality in
wives, and consanguinity in marriages, and requires of
its votaries the strictest chastity, from a consideration
and motive which neither the law of nature, nor the law
1 Gen. xxxii. 1. 2 Young's Sermons, vol. 2. Sermon 6.
of Moses, knew any thing 0f : » < Ye are DOl your own,
for you an- bought with a price; therefore glorifj tied
in your body, and in jour spirit, which are GodV
Of all the adventures whi,|, bappe I to Jacob, thai of
his wrestling is deservedly reckoned one of the Btrangest,
and has therefore been made a matter of doubt, whether
it was a real event, or a vision only. * Maimouides, and
some other Hebrew, as well as Christian interpn
are of opinion, that all this was transacted only in Jacob's
imagination. They suppose, that the patriarch, being
strongly possessed with the sense of the danger he was
going to encounter, saw, in a vision, a man nomine to
him, and who, after some altercations, began to wrestle
with him ; that the conflict between them continued till
break of day, when his antagonist, not able to get tie-
better, desired to be gone, &c. ; and that, as a proof
that this vision was more than an ordinary dream, it
seemed to him, that the angel touched his thigh : and in
effect, as soon as he awoke, he found himself lame.
probably by the force of his imagination.
If this explication be admitted, the whole difficult] is
at an end. It is natural, perhaps, fo^a man, under the
apprehensions of a dreadful foe, to dream of ti^htim: ;
and to dream, at the same time, that he comes oil' no-
torious, might be accounted an happy omen. But it must
be confessed, that the analogy of the story, and more
especially Jacob's lameness, which was consequent upon
his conflict, will not suffer us to think that all this was
only in a. dream. The more general therefore, and
indeed the more rational opinion is, that this wrestling
was real, and that Jacob was actually awake, when
engaged in it; but then the question is, who die person
was that did encounter him ?
Origeii, 1 think, is a little singular, and no ways to be
justified in his conceit, when he tells us, that the person
with whom Jacob wrestled, was an evil angel, in allusion
to which he thinks that the apostle grounds his exhorta-
tion : 5 ' Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and
in the power of his might, for we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.' But that
Jacob, who at this time was so iiuniediatel\ under the
divine protection, should be submitted to the assault of
a wicked angel ; that he should merit the name of Israel,
that is, the conqueror of God, for overcoming such an < ,
or call the place of combat Penirl, th.it is, tl„ j
God, in commemoration of his conflict with such an one,
is very absurd, if not an impious suggestion. Those who
espouse this opinion, may possibly be led into it from a
thought, that the person here contending with Jacob.
was an enemy, and come with a malevolent intent against
him; whereas nothing ..in be more evident, (especial!]
by his blessing him before the\ parted,) that he CSSM
with a quite contrary design. " Among the people Of
the Bast, from whence the (.recians r.uue. and brought
along with them several of their customs, wrestlinf
an exercise in great vogue, as highly conducive i"
health and strength : and a rnnmion tiling i: was tor two
' 1 Cor. \i. l<», 20.
• See Heidegger's Ili-t. Patriar. rot. 2. Eaaaj IT. and La
Clare's Commentary, and Calmet'i Dictionary.
J Eph. vi. H", 11, 18. " La Clan i 'otum
2 e
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friends, when they met together, to amuse and recreate
themselves in this way. The Jewish doctors, therefore,
seem to be much in the right, when they maintain, that
the person who contended with Jacob was a good angel ;
and as their settled notion is, that those heavenly spirits
sing every morning the praises of God, at the approach
of day ; so the request which his antagonist makes, 1
' Let me go, for the day breaketh,' shows him to be one of
the angelic host, who had stayed his prefixed time, and
was now in haste to be gone, in order to join the heavenly
choir : for the prophet Hosea, I think, has determined
the matter very plainly, when speaking of Jacob he tells
us, that 2 ' he took his brother by the heel in the womb,
and by his strength he had power with God, yea he had
power over the angel, and prevailed.'
How Jacob, who was an hundred years old, could be
enabled to do all this, must be imputed to some invisible
power that assisted him. 3 An angel is here, in an
extraordinary manner, sent to encounter him, and he, in
an extraordinary maimer, is enabled to withstand him.
The whole scene is contrived to cure him of his uneasy
fears ; and a proper medium to do this was to let him see,
that an old man might contest it even with an angel, and
yet not be foiled ; and the power, he might reasonably
conclude, which assisted him in this (if the matter were
to come to blows with his brother Esau) would so invi-
gorate his little army of domestics, as to make them
prevail and become victorious.
It was a common custom among eastern nations, as
appears from several passages in Scripture, to convey
the knowledge of things by actions as well as words.
To this purpose we find Zedekiah * ' making him horns
of iron,' thereby to portend victory to Ahab ; and Elias,
ordering Joash 5 'to strike the ground with arrows,' thence
to presignify his triumph over the Syrians. Nay, even
Hannibal himself, (as the historian ti tells us,) perceiving
that his soldiers were not to be encouraged with words,
made a public show for them, not so much to entertain
their sight, as to give them an image and representation
of their own condition. In like manner, we may sup-
pose, that God made use of this expedient to cure Jacob
of his dejection ; and though Moses (who cannot be
supposed to insert every thing) says nothing of the angels
giving him this intimation, yet we find it 7 in Josephus,
that no sooner was the wrestling ended, but a voice
called out to him, and said, " Comfort thyself in what
thou hast done, for it is not a common adversary that
thou hast foiled, but an angel of the Lord : take it for a
presage, therefore, that thy posterity shall never fail, and
that thou thyself shalt never be overcome."
' O Lord God of my father Simeon, to whom thou
gavest a sword to take vengeance of the strangers, who
loosened the girdle of a maid to defile her, and polluted
her virginity to her reproach : Therefore thou gavest
their rulers to be slain, so that they dyed their bed in
blood, being deceived. Thou gavest their wives for a
prey, and their daughters to be captives, and all their
spoils to be divided among thy dear children, who were
moved with thy zeal, and abhorred the pollution of their
1 Gen. xxxii. 26. 2 Hosea xii. 3, 4.
3 Le Clerc's Commentary. 4 1 Kings xxii. 11.
2 Kings xiii. 18. " Livy, b. 21. ' Antiq. b. 1. c. 20.
blood, and called upon thee for aid.' 8 This is the pre-
face to the prayer which Judith makes to God, in the
apocryphal book that goes under her name. And indeed
were there no other arguments to prove this book spuri-
ous, this one passage is enough, where we find the most
abominable massacre called a divine work, and perfidy,
murder, and rapine, gilded over with the specious names
of zeal for God, and indignation against vice. The
abhorrence which Jacob expressed of the cruelty of his
sons, the sharpness of the reproach uttered against them,
the remembrance of it even to the end of his life, and the
care he took to recapitulate it upon his death-bed, give
us a much juster idea of it, than the writings of some 9 of
the rabbins, who have undertaken, not' only to excuse,
but even to commend it. As to the probability of the fact,
however, we are not to suppose, that because Simeon
and Levi are only mentioned, they therefore were the
only persons who had any hand in this wicked exploit.
They indeed are only mentioned, because being own
brothers to Dinah, both by father and mother, and conse-
quently more concerned to resent the injury done to her
honour, they are made the chief contrivers and conduc-
tors of it; but it is reasonable to think, that the rest of
Jacob's sons, who were old enough to bear arms, as well
as the greatest part of the domestics, were engaged in
the execution of it : because it is scarcely conceivable,
how two men alone should be able to master a whole
city, to slay all the men in it, and take all the women
captives, who, upon this occasion, may be supposed more
than sufficient to have overpowered them.
Nothing is more known and common in history, than
to ascribe an action (especially in military affairs) to the
chief commanders in it, how many under agents soever
they may think proper to employ : and we should deny
Moses the common privilege of an historian, if we should
account that a fault and omission in him, which, in other
writers of the like nature (especially where they study
brevity) , is reputed a great beauty and perfection. Moses
however is far from pleading his privilege in this respect;
for having made mention of Simeon and Levi, as the
principal leaders in the action, he then proceeds and
tells us, that 10 ' the sons of Jacob,' meaning the rest of
his sons who were of competent age (and with them very
reasonably their attendants) ' came upon the slain, and
spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister.'
It is very remarkable of the Jewish historian Josephus,
that he gives us no manner of account of Reuben's incest,
for fear that his recording so vile an action might leave
some blot of infamy upon that patriarch and his posterity.
But Moses has given us a better proof of his truth and
integrity, in that he not only mentions this abomination
once, but even in the benediction which his father gives
Reuben, makes a remembrance and recital of it. And
this he did, that he might give us a true account, why the
right of inheritance, which was originally in him, came
to be conferred on Joseph ; and the kingdom, or right
of dominion, which was forfeited by his transgression,
came to be translated to the tribe of Judah. This he J
did, that he might furnish his countrymen with matter
sufficient for their humiliation, who by this and many
more instances of the like nature, are given to under-
8 Judith ix. 2, &c.
9 Selden de Jur. Nat. b. 7. c. 5.
Gen. xxxiv. 27.
Sect. III.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', See.
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203
stand, that it was not their merit, but purely God's
mercy, which advanced him to the honour of being his
peculiar people ; and this he did, that he might acquaint
us all, how God was pleased to make these great, these
elect heads and fathers, instances of human frailty and
sin, in order to show, that there is nothing, even nothing
in man, unless God by grace be with him ; that 1 ' of
ourselves (as the apostle words it) we are not sufficient
to <lo any thing, as of ourselves, but all our sufficiency
is from God.'
For the same reason, we may imagine it was, that
Moses makes mention of Rachel's stealing away her
father's gods, as a probable intimation, that she was not
entirely cured of the idolatrous superstition of the country
from whence she came.
The Jewish doctors are generally agreed, that the
word teraphim, which we render gods, is not of Hebrew
extraction. The Septuagint translates it sometimes an
oracle, and sometimes vain idols ; and several commen-
tators will have it to be a word borrowed from the
Egyptians, and to import the very same with their Sera-
pis. 2 The Jews indeed pretend, that this idol was the
head of a first-born son, plucked off from the neck, and
embalmed ; under the tongue of which was fastened a
golden plate, with the name of some false deity engraven
upon it, which being placed in a niche, with lighted
candles before it, gave vocal answers to such as came
to consult it : but others rather think, that it was the
same with what the Persians call telephim, more generally
known by the name of talismans, that is, images in
human form of different sizes, and different metals, cast
under certain constellations, with the figures of some
planets and magical characters engraven upon them ;
whereas others are of opinion, that the teraphim which
Rachel stole were the dii penates, or household gods of
her father Laban, namely, the images of Noah, the
restorer of mankind, and of Shem, the head of his family ;
and therefore they observe, that Laban, by way of dis-
tinction, calls them his gods, that is, the gods of his
family. That these teraphim were statues, or images of
a human shape and figure, is manifest from 3 Michal's
putting one of them into her husband's bed, when she
favoured his escape : that at their first institution, their
intent was innocent, to be emblems or representations
only of some renowned ancestor, whose memory the
family was desirous to perpetuate ; but that, in process
of time, they came to be looked upon as the lares or dii
tutelares of the house, were made objects of religious
adoration, and at length perverted to all the vile pur-
poses of necromancy, a learned author, 4 who has
examined this matter to the full, has proved beyond
exception.
But whatever men or fictitious deities these figures
were made to represent, it is certain, that the use they
were chiefly applied to, was to foretel future events, and
discover what was hid or lost ; and for this purpose were
consulted and prayed to as oracles, at certain times, and
under some particular aspects of the planets. Among
other reasons, therefore, for Rachel's stealing away her
father's teraphim, this is generally supposed to be one,
1 2 Cor. iii. 5. a Calmet's Dictionary and Commentary ;
et Jurieu, Histoire des Cultes et des Dogmes.
* 1 Sam. xix. 13. * Jurieu, Histoire des Cultes et des Dogmes.
— That he might not, by inquiring of them, jrain intelli-
gence which way it was that Jacob had taken his flight
The truth is, there seems to have been in Laban ;i!i
odd mixture of religion. In big conversation with
Abraham's steward, when he came to negotiate a match
for Isaac, he seems to express a very devout sense of the
being and providence of God ; and yet, at his first coming
up with Jacob, he seems to be chiefly solicitous for tin;
loss of his gods, as he calls them, which were but
dumb and senseless idols. In the treaty which be makes
with Jacob, he invocates the God of Abraham, which ifl
allowed to be the great God of heaven and earth : and
yet we can hardly forbear thinking, that he must hare
believed a plurality of gods, in subordination to the
supreme, by reason of his anxious concern for these
images. Jacob, no doubt, during bia abode with him,
used all the interest he had in the family, to rectify his
notions, and convince him of his error ; but he was not
able to prevail ; and therefore some imagine, that Rachel
stole away his idols, that she might remove the occasion
of his superstitious worship, and hinder him from going
on in his impiety.
These idols, we may presume, were made of gold, or
some very valuable substance ; and therefore it may be
supposed that she took them along with her, not only to
destroy them, but to make herself t*i reparation likewise
for the wrongs she had received from him ; and whereof
we find both the sisters making this complaint : s ' Is
there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father's
house ? Are we not counted of him strangers ? for he
hath sold us, and hath quite devoured also our money.'
But even supposing the worst of the case, that Rachel
did take with her these idols, because she still retained
an hankering after the religion of her ancestors; yet
Jacob is not to be discommended for marrying one of
his own family, who adhered to the true worship of God,
though mixed with some superstitious customs, which be
might easily reclaim in time, rather than any of the
Canaanitish line, which was every day sinking more and
more into idolatry ; and for that idolatry, and otlier
flagitious practices, were in process of time to undergo
an utter excision : especially considering, that when he
came into the land of Canaan, where he had full liberty
of acting as he pleased, he made a thorough reformation
in his family, and had all these little emblems of her
former superstition taken from her and destroyed.
The word dudaim, which we render " mandrakes, is
•Gen. xxxi. 14, 15.
a Calmet in his Dictionary, givei us a description of this
plant, as it is found in the French kin-'- gwhnub— It*
white, and somewhat rough; Is two or three timet as big again
as its stem, and always grows taper. Generally, it MAM distance
from its upper part, it divides int.. us,. Branches, which M As
reason that this root 1ms something of the figure of n man, whose
two Hughs are represented by the two branches. Prom tl i
of the root proceed a peal number of small fibres, In
places which serve to Imbibs the juice of the earth, lor the
nourishment of the plant. Prom the irises a round
and Smooth stem, of H pretty deep red j and at the lop "t' li ■
grow four brnnchoty whinh spread at equal distances from each
other. Every branch lias five leaves, which are Indented, of a
dark green, and terminate in a point. From the centra •
branches proceeds another eery straight sad n • * • stem, at tho
extremity of which grows ■ knob of about twenty-four fruits, round,
and of a beautiful red : and within tliis tViiit it a kind of nut, much
of the figure with a lentil. This not inclcdts in ill.
201
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one of those terms, whose true signification the Jews, at
this time, pretend not to understand. There is but one
place more in Scripture, wherein it occurs, and that is in
the 7th chapter of Canticles, wherein the bridegroom
invites his spouse to go with him into the fields: ' Come,
my beloved, let us get up early to the vineyard, let us
see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grapes appear,
and the pomegranates bud forth. The mandrakes give
a smell ; and at our gates are all manner of fruits, which
I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.' Here we find
i*. placed among the most delicious and pleasant fruits,
the grape, the pomegranate, &c, and represented as
very fragrant and odoriferous in its smell ; but the man-
drake, say some, is a stinking and ill scented fruit, of a
bad taste, and a cold narcotic quality ; and therefore
they have rendered the word ' fine and lovely flowers ;'
and some of them will have it to be the violet or jessa-
mine, (which suit very well with the season of the year
here mentioned ;) whilst others contend very strongly
for the lily, which, in Syria, grew in the fields, and was
of a most agreeable beauty and smell.
That passage in Solomon's Song, however, will not
sutler us to doubt but that it was a fruit, of some kind
or other ; and Ludolft',1 in his History of Ethiopia, will
needs have it to be what the Syrians call mauz, a fruit
much about as big as a small cucumber, that hangs in
clusters, sometimes to the number of forty upon the
same stalk, and is, in figure and taste, not unlike the
Indian fig.
It is not to be doubted, indeed, but that the mandrake
in Palestine is of a different kind to what we have in
these climates. St Austin, who thought it a great
curiosity to see one, tells us that it was very beautiful to
the eye, and of a fragrant smell, but utterly insipid; so
that he wonders what should make Rachel set so high a
value upon it, unless it were its scarceness and rich
scent. In the province of Pekin in China, we are
informed, that there is a kind of mandrake so valuable,
and when mixed in any liquor makes so rich a cordial,
that a pound of its root (for in the root lies all the
virtue) is Avorth thrice its weight in silver.
It Mas a general opinion among the ancients, that
there was a certain quality in the juice of mandrakes to
excite amorous inclinations ; and therefore they called
them the apples of love, as the Hebrew word clod, from
whence comes cloclaim, is frequently set to signify love.
Thus, whether we consider this fruit as pleasant to the
'B. ]. c. 17.
plant, which dies and grows again every year, and has nothing
valuable in it but the root, whose virtues are wonderful. Of this
plant (as Dioscorides informs us) there are two sorts: one is
black, and called the female mandrake, having leaves not unlike
lettuce, though less and narrower, which spread upon the ground,
and are of a very disagreeable scent. It bears something like
services, which are pale, and of a strong smell, with kernels
within, like those of a pea. It has two or three very large roots,
twisted together, black without, but white within, and covered
with a thick rind. The other sort, or the male mandrake, pro-
duces berries as big again as those of the female, of a good scent,
and a colour not much unlike saflion. Its leaves are large,
white, broad, and smooth, like the leaves of a beech tree, audits
root resembles that of the female, but is much thicker and bigger,
and the quality of them both is to stupify and make sleepy those
that take them — B. b'. c. 61. (This plant, though once in great
repute in medicine, is now deservedly deemed of none, — it is of
no use incases of barrenness, and is even dangerous to be eaten.)
eye, smell, or taste, or as a restorative to nature, and
helpful to conception, any of these reasons are sufficient
why Rachel should take such a fancy to them : and
why she purchased them at so strange a rate, was chiefly
occasioned by Leah's sullen reply, that she had ' taken
away her husband's affections from her,' which provoked
the other, who, according to the established order of
succeeding to his bed, had certainly the property in trim
that night, to resign him to her.
Moses, however, only mentions this circumstance to
let his reader know upon what occasion it was that Leah,
after she had done child-bearing, as she thought, came
to conceive again. 2 It had been below the dignity of
such a sacred historian as he is to take notice of such
trivial matters, had there not been something of great
consideration in them ; and what could that be, but
chiefly the birth of the ' blessed seed,' which was the
object of the hopes of all pious people in these days ?
It is evident, from the conduct both of Rachel and her
sister, that it was children they desired, and not merely
the company of their husband ; nor would their husband
have ever been determined by their blind bargains, had
it not been matter of pure indifference to him whether
of their embraces he went to, so long as his family was
but increased and multiplied.
That it was a very ancient custom, not only among
the Hebrews, but with many other nations, and particu-
larly the Greeks and Romans, in the marriages both of
their sons and daughters, and especially of the latter,
for the parents to give with the bride and bridegroom,
as part of the portion or dowTy, a servant, to abide in
their power and property, is a matter so plain, a from
sundry examples, that it needs no contesting. The
great difficulty is, for what reason it was that these
matrons of old were so very desirous that their husbands
should have commerce with these their dotal maids, in
case they had no children of their own : and for the
solution of this we must observe, that according to the
principles of the oldest philosophy, spirit is the universal,
efficient cause in nature, but especially in generation,
and in human generation most of all ; so that a spiritual
conception must, of necessity, precede and direct every
bodily one, insomuch that there can be no corporeal
conception without a spiritual one ; but a spiritual there
may be without a corporeal one, that is, when the matter
or medium is not adapted to that purpose. Now, this
position being laid down, it may be observed farther,
2 Patrick's Commentary.
a In the tragedy of Euripides, which is called Iphigenia in
Aulis, Clyterr.nestra is brought in, as preparing and hastening all
things for the nuptials of her daughter, who, unknown to her,
was devoted for a sacrifice, and addressing herself in this man-
ner:— " I the bridemaid am come, but away ye and bring from
the chariots those gifts which I am about to present with the girl;
with expedition fetch them to the hall." Old Demrcnetus, ia
the Asinaria of Plautus, is told by his slave, " Thy spouse, who
had more in her hand than you, brought a slave as a marriage
gift." These servants among the Greeks were called <pi^ai,
from whence is derived the Latin vcrna ; and by the Romans,
dotales, receptitii, or receplitia:. They had likewise the name
of XaTtnt given them, and their service was expressed by the
word Xar^ua, which signifies the service due from man to
Almighty God; which is wout to be distinguished from any
other sort of service, and denotes that such persons were entirely
at their mistresses' devotion. — Bibliotheca Bi'ilica, vol. 1. An-
notation 32.
Shot. III.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
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205
tliat these matrons very probably were not ignorant that
the mother contributes nothing, of herself, towards the
formation of the foetus, and much less to its inspiration
with life, but merely the bearing it in the womb ; and
hence they might infer, that the bearing it in the womb
was not sufficient of itself to confer a right to the fruit
of it, which came thither they knew not how, which they
had no hand in the fashioning of, and which they were
no more able to quicken, than they were to enliven a
dead body. It being, therefore, no strange thing, in
these days, for one man to raise up seed for another, or
to propagate by another, by parity of reason they might
conclude, that one woman might as well do the same
for another, or bear in her stead, under such and such
circumstances, by the union and co-operation of their
wills, and strong attraction of the imagination in two
consociating into one. And this was the consideration
which moved them to press this matter so very earnestly
as they did : when finding that, after they had spiritually
conceived of their husbands, by taking them into an
ideal image for elaboration, there was wanting strength
in them to bear, and to work out what they had received,
they could afterwards have no greater pleasure than to
appoint one who should faithfully supply that part,
wherein they themselves were defective, and thereby be
able, not only to remedy the reproach of their barren-
ness, but to establish a stronger interest in the family
for themselves, and for all that they could call their
own.
1 ' The bearing upon the knees,' therefore, as the ex-
pression is in Moses, must certainly denote something
more than that Rachel designed to make herself a nurse
to her maid, or set a child upon her knees, as her own,
in which she had no part or portion ; but that her servant
should conceive, and become with child through her, as
in her presence, and as it were ' upon her knees,' to the
end that her mistress might be made a mother, by her
instrumentality, and might have children, whom she
could call her own, though not born of her body. And
accordingly we may observe, that Rachel herself had
this notion of the matter ; for upon the birth of her first
son, born to her by her substitute, she expressly declares
that God had given her a son, and, as the custom for
mothers then was, herself imposed on him a name, as a
mark of her thinking him really to be hers.
Thus have we endeavoured to silence some of those
cavils, which may be made against particular passages
in the Mosaic history, during this period of time ; and
for the farther confirmation of its truth and authority,
we might produce the testimony of several heathen
writers, 2 such as Sanchoniatho, Berosus, Hecatauis,
Eupolemus, and others, as they are quoted by Eusebius
in his Pr.eparatio Evangelica. The fiction of Jupiter's
chain in Homer, reaching from heaven to earth, as it
relates to the divine providence, had its original from
Jacob's ladder. The memory of his wrestling with an
angel has been preserved, ever since, by a whole
nation's abstaining from a particular part of the thigh,
which, without that supposition, cannot be accounted
for. Jacob's living with his uncle Laban in the capacity
of a servant, gave rise to the story of Apollo's being
1 Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1
*See Grot, do Verit. b. 1.
Occasional Aiiiiutat'uns .''.'!.
reduced, when expelled from his father's house, to the
necessity of turning Admetus's shepherd. The fable of
the Bethleans, which ■> Eusebius takes out of Philo
Biblius, came undoubtedly from the altar of Bethel :
and, to name no more, the whole business of Jacob's
arrival at Shechem upon his return from .Mesopotamia,
of his daughter Dinah's rape by the prince of the
country, and of the terrible revenge which Imp brothers
took for that indignity, is related by Alexander Poly-
histor, as he is quoted by the same father, much in tie-
same order, and with the very same circumstances, tint
we find it recorded in the works of Moses.
CHAP. III.— Of Jacob's Ladder and Pillar.
To judge of the occasion of Jacob's vision, wherein this
emblematical ladder was represented to him, we must
imagine that we saw the heir of a powerful famih taking
his leave of his aged parents, and for fear of an angry
brother departing from his father's house ; beginning a
journey of 450 miles, into a strange country, all alone,
on foot, and without any servant to attend him ; travel-
ling all the day with a pensive heart, and forced at
night to take up his lodging in the open air, and with
nothing better than an hard stone to be his pillow : if
we suppose Jacob in this condition, I say, we shall
soon perceive the reason why God thought it convenient,
at this time, to give him comfort and consolation in the
way of a dream.
That dreams, or nocturnal visions, were a common
way of God's revealing himself to mankind of old, is
evident from instances almost innumerable; and the
reason of his making choice of this method might be,
either 4 to convince them of his omnipresence, that ' he
was about their bed, and about their paths, and spied
out all their ways;' or to convince them of his constant
care, and that he was not unmindful of them, even when
they little thought of him, and were most absent from
themselves; or to convince them of his unlimited power
over their souls, when even sleep itself could not hinder
his access to them; or because that the mind, in the
dead and silence of the night, was fitter to receive
divine impressions, when nature was hush, and the
passions asleep, and no variety of thoughts to distract
its attention.
But whatever God's reasons might be for conveying
things by dreams, it is certain that the vision of tie-
ladder, and the comfortable words which he spoke from
the top of it, made such a lively impression 0] Jacob,
that he proceeded in his journej with cheerfulness and
alacrity: "Behold I am with tl , and I will keep
thee in all places whither thoa goest, and will bring
thee asrain into this land: for I will not leave thee,
until I have d< that which 1 haw spoken to thee of.'
These are the verbal a.-sn ranees which God gives Jacob j
and therefore we ma\ presume that the representation
of tin1 ladder had something analogous in it.
This ladder, according to the sense of the
• Pnep. Evan. b. 0. a 21.
4 Watsii MiscelL 3 nil-, voL I.
Mien, \wiii. 15. ' Maimonides Mors N
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interpreters, is an emblem of the divine providence,
which governs all things. Its being ' set upon the
earth' denotes the steadiness of providence, which
nothing is able to unsettle ; its ' reaching up to heaven '
signifies its universality, or that it extends to all things ;
the ' several steps of the ladder ' are the motions and
actions of providence ; the ' angels going up and down'
show, that they are the great ministers of providence,
never idle, but always employed in the preservation of
the just ; ' their ascending ' means their going up to
receive the divine orders and commands ; and ' their
descending,' their coming down upon earth to put them
in execution. So that, in this hieroglyphic, God signi-
fied to Jacob, now full of care and uneasy apprehen-
sions, that the man who was under the custody and
protection of divine providence wanted not company in
a wilderness ; wanted not security in the midst of
dangers ; wanted not direction in the most difficult
undertakings ; since there were so many ministering
spirits holding correspondence between earth and
heaven, and daily and hourly x ' sent forth ' from God's
presence ' to minister unto them who shall be heirs of
salvation.'
Other interpretations there are in great numbers, but
too a full of fancies and conceits to be here taken notice
of. One, however, seems a little more solid, and may
not undeserve our observation. 2 The promise, we may
remember, which God is introduced as making to Jacob
from the top of the ladder, does chiefly relate to his
covenant with Abraham, which was principally founded
in Christ, that chosen seed, ' in whom all the families of
the earth were to be blessed:' and the analogy of the
thing may induce us to believe that this ladder was
designed for a type and emblem of the covenant of
grace, which was in force from the time of man's first
apostasy, but began to be put in execution at the
incarnation of our Saviour Christ, that only Mediator,
who opened an intercourse between earth and heaven ;
by whose intercession, plenty of all spiritual blessings
descend to us, and by whose merits and doctrines our
natures are sanctified, and so become meet to be
' partakers with the saints in light,' or to ascend into
heaven. And to this mystical meaning of the ladder
1 Heb. i. 14.
2 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay ] 6.
a The rabbins, having given us long chimerical descriptions
of this ladder, will have it represent almost every thing that
comes into their fancies. Some pretend that the ascending
angels were those who had the care of Jacob in his going; the
descending, those whose business it was to secure him in his
returning from Mesopotamia. Another (Jarchi on Gen. xxviii.
12.) is of opinion, that God designed hereby to point out the
place where he would have the temple built one day ; and to
reconcile this opinion to geography, he affirms that God at this
time transported to Luz the hill of Sion, upon which the temple
at Jerusalem was afterwards built. Philo, who certainly believed
a metempsychosis, tells us, that the angels which Jacob saw are
emblems of souls, whereof some descend to animate bodies,
whilst others ascend, having quitted the bodies which they once
animated. St Austin will have this ladder to represent the cross
of Christ; and some of the mystical divines, making it an
emblem of a contemplative life, do maintain, that the angels
ascending the ladder are those believers whom they call perfect,
as having the faculty of causing their affections to soar up to the
highest heavens, and that the descending represented those
mean and abject souls whose centre is the earth, and whose
delight consists in fleshly things. — i>aurin's Dissertations.
our Saviour himself may be thought to allude, when he
tells us, that 3 ' Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and
the angels of God ascending and descending upon the
Son of Man ;' which 4 a learned commentator has in this
manner paraphrased : — " Ye have heard, no doubt, of
those of old, that several things relating to the Messias
have been represented by Jacob's ladder ; and ye are
to know, that they are all now to be accomplished in
me, and shall every day be more and more accomplished,
until the time of my assumption into heaven. Ye shaJJ
know that heaven, which by the sin and corruption of
mankind was shut in Adam, shall by my dispensation
and doctrine be opened again ; and that God, being
reconciled to the world by me, shall continue in cove-
nant with them for ever. Ye shall know, that I am that
ladder and way to heaven, by which ye may gain admit-
tance to the Father ; for I am he that unites heaven and
earth together, so that from henceforward the angels
shall continually be passing from the one to the other.
In short, ye shall know, that I am the Lord, not only
of the visible creation, but the Prince likewise of angels
and all invisible spirits, even the true God. This, I
say, ye shall henceforth more fully know, by my
doctrine, my miracles, my death, my glorious resurrec-
tion, and triumphant ascension into heaven."
Thus, according to the declaration which God makes
from the top of the ladder, it seems reasonable to
imagine, that he might have a twofold design in making
this representation to Jacob, namely, by a proper type,
to prefigure the incarnation of his Son, which, like this
ladder, joined heaven and earth, the divine and human
natures, together ; and by a proper emblem of the angels
ascending and descending upon it, to give him an
evidence of the watchful providence of God that at-
tended him. The former of these designs might perhaps
be a little too abstruse for Jacob's comprehension at
present, but the latter he immediately understood ; and
therefore we find him, as soon as he arose, out of a
grateful sense of the divine goodness in sending him a
vision so full of consolation, erecting and consecrating
a pillar, in order to perpetuate the memory of so
momentous an event.
It is the opinion of some commentators, indeed, that
to preserve the memory of this heavenly vision, Jacob
took the stone whereon his head lay, and wherein they
discern nothing extraordinary, and set it up for a monu-
ment or pillar upon the top of some other stones, which
he had gathered and heaped together : but, besides that
the fancy of an heap of stones seems unworthy of the
Holy Scriptures, and betrays us into a low and trifling
idea of this great affair, there is not the least gTound
from the text itself, nor from this symbolical way of
transmitting facts to future generations, to suppose that
there was any more than one single stone.
The word matzebah, which our interpreters render a
pillar, is by the Septuagint translated 2tijA»?, by the
vulgar Latin, titulus ; and from hence several, both
ancients and moderns, have supposed that there was an
inscription upon this pillar. The manner of consecrat-
ing this pillar was by pouring oil upon it, which Jacob
might have by him, without a miracle, considering how
3 John i. 51.
4 Bullinger's Commentary.
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207
common the use of oil was in these hot countries, to
refresh the limbs when weary with travelling', and how
necessary, upon that account, it was to carry some with
him in his journey : nor is there any reason to suppose,
that Jacob made use of this form of consecration in
compliance with the custom of the country where he
then was. It is uncertain whether this custom was
established in Jacob's time ; but if it was, it is hardly-
credible that a pious man, as he is represented, would
have adopted a superstitious ceremony into the worship
of the true God. 1 The much more probable opinion,
therefore, is, that as the rites of sacrificing and circum-
cision were instituted before the promulgation of the
law, so this manner of consecrating things, by way of
unction or libation, was at first enjoined the patriarchs
Abraham and Isaac by God, and either by precept or
tradition from them, came afterwards to be practised by
Jacob. Nor is it unlikely but that Jacob's practice in
this particular, and the great veneration which was
afterwards paid to his monumental pillar, might give
occasion a to the worshipping such erected stones in
future ages, and, upon such abuse, of God's so strictly
prohibiting any to be set up : 2 ' Ye shall not make ye
any idols or graven image, neither shall ye rear up any
matzebah,' statue or pillar, ' to bow down unto it, for I
am the Lord your God.'
In the religious sense of the word, then, matzebah
may properly signify a large consecrated stone, erected
pillarwise, before which prostrations and adorations
were made, and upon which oblations and libations, but
not any bloody sacrifices, were presented : but then the
question is, how Jacob could think to secure this monu-
ment from being thrown down by the natives or passen-
gers ; or how he could impose a new name upon it, and
establish that name in future ages, when the place had
a name before, and no person was present to bear
testimony of what he did. This, indeed, the Scripture
gives us no manner of account of; and therefore, if we
do it but modestly, we are left at liberty to make our
own conjectures.
According to the ancient versions of the word, we
may suppose that there was upon this stone some legible
and intelligible title or inscription ; nor is it improbable
that the title should be, Avhat the patriarch in a sort of
ecstasy called it, ' Bethel,' or ' the house of God.' How
Jacob might be provided with an iron pen, or style, for
the purpose of engraving this title, can be no difficult
thing to imagine, if we do but consider that the style
was the common instrument of writing in those days,
which every scholar used to carry about with him, and
which Jacob, * having led a studious and contemplative
1 Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. 3 Lev. xxvi. 1.
a From Jacob's pouring oil upon the stone of Bethel did arise
the superstition of the ancients for their betuli, which were stones
rnointed and consecrated to the memory of great men after tin ir
death. Sanchoniatho, or rather Porphyry, the author of the
fragment which Eusebius has preserved under the name of
Sanchoniatho, attributes the invention of these betuli to Saturn ;
but the best account that can be given of this absurd practice is
from hence, and a sufficient demonstration it is how the best Bad
noblest acts of piety may be perverted, and degenerate into mere
stupidity, by a fond, superstitious imitation Calmet's Dic-
tionary, under the word Bethel} and Bibliothcca Biblica, vol.
1.; Occasional Annotations, SO.
I That Jacob was a man of learning, and of an extraordinary
xxviii. 10-xxxvii.
life under his father and grandfather, and. as MMM
suppose, under Melchizedek likewise, was not unquali-
fied to make use of; and that the very ancient, if not
universal custom of erecting, anointing, and conaecrat-
ing such like stones, with an inscription, either literal
or hieroglyphical, and sometimes both, could hardly
have any other foundation than this practice of his.
But besides the bare inscription of the name and title
of the stone, there might probably be yet something more
to attract the eyes of the traveller, and to raise a
ration for the place. And, therefore, admitting the st
to be square, we find that there were two oaths, as it
were, taken upon it, by the covenanting parties, that is,
the oath of God to Jacob, repeating the substance of
what he had sworn to his fathers, and limiting it to him
and his seed ; and the oath of Jacob to God, obliging
himself and his posterity to such a constant homage as
is therein specified ; and hereupon we may infer, that for
the better preservation of the memory of this great
league, there might be written, on one side, the obliga-
tion of God, exactly in the terms of the 13th, 1 ltli, and
15th verses ; and on the opposite, the obligation of
Jacob, as expressed by him in the three last verses of the
28th chapter of Genesis. And, because it- was necessary
that the name of the person who erected and consecrated
the stone should be preserved, we may further suppose,
that as God's signing this covenant on his part might be
in this form, Ani Jehovah, Elohe Abraham, Elohe
Isaac, I the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac; by parity of reason, Jacobs signing might run
thus, Ani Jacob, Ben Isaac, Ben Abraham, / Jacob, the
son of Isaac, the son of Abraham.
On the vacant sides of the stone, we may suppose
again, that the other awftd sentences which Jacob upon
this occasion pronounced, 3 ' How dreadful is this place '
This is the gate of heaven, and verily the Lord is in
this place !' were engraven. And because a very early
custom of crowning such public pillars with garlands
might very likely take its rise from Jacob's practice at
this time, we may therefore be allowed to make one
conjecture more, namely, that as Luz, near which this
transaction happened, had its name from a grove "I
almond-trees, not far distant from it: BO Jacob might
think it very decent, in memory of the divine favours
there received, to crown and adorn the top of this titular
stone, with a garland of almond branches taken from
thence. All this, we allow, is no more than supposition
and conjecture ; but, without some such contrivai •
this, how could this stone have been an instrument to
perpetuate the memory of an event? Hon a ana of
Jacob's imposing a new nam.- upon a place that was
entirely in the possession of others? Well might the
natives or proprietors ask, by what authority this was
• Sen. \wi;i. 16, 17.
genius, is not only a general tradition of the Jews, i nl bu]
likewise by some lines In the character which the p< n of M -
gives us of him. He had certainly v.a advantages under Ins
father and grandfather, who justly deserved a name among the
eldest oriental philosophers; and therefore he la deecrl
the . astern rtyte, aa • a man dwelling in trots" «* »"" •
na who leads a philosophical and contemplative r
minister or student of the house of learning, u the Ta
truly interpret the phnue.—JBibluthea BUUca, vol. I..
sional A ■ 86.
203
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2149. A. C. 1855; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3405. A. C. 1916. GEN. CH. xxviii. 10-xxxvii.
done ? And since Jacob was not there to give them an j child, as being the son of his dear departed Rachel, and
0 a youth of a very promising and extraordinary genius.
As a mark of his peculiar love, the fond father gave him
clothes richer than he did the rest, and among others, c
one coat more especially, which was made of a change-
able or party-coloured stuff*. This made his other bro-
thers envy him not a little ; and what gained him no
good-will among them, was their looking upon him as a
spy, because he had told his father some things wherein
the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah/ with whom he was chiefly
conversant, e had grossly misbehaved, which made them
answer, his only way could be to leave the history and
occasion of it engraven upon the very stone.
And indeed, without some such supposition, why
should this stone, even by different nations, be accounted
such a valuable piece of antiquity ? AVhy should the
Jews be so fond to have it thought that they had it in the
sanctuary of their second temple, and that upon it the
ark of the covenant was placed ? Since the destruction
of their temple, why should it be their custom, one day
in a year, with great lamentation, to go and anoint this
stone, in remembrance of their father Jacob, and the
covenant made with him ? And why should the Maho-
metans pretend, that they have this stone (though by
mistake of one patriarch for another, they call it the
stone of Abraham) set up at their temple at Mecca,
which they make their common Kibla, or point of wor-
ship, and before which the pilgrims pay their solemn
devotions ?
These, we allow, may be no more than false pretences ;
but still they are an evidence, that this pillar was once
held in high veneration, which it could hardly have been,
but must very soon have been buried in oblivion and
rubbish, had it been no more than a large ragged stone,
without any thing to distinguish it, that is, without any
sculpture or inscription on it. And therefore, notwith-
standing the silence of Scripture, we have sufficient reason
to conclude, that this pillar was erected in order to pre-
serve the remembrance of the heavenly vision which God
in this place vouchsafed Jacob ; that to this purpose it
was engraven with such inscriptions as might give pos-
terity sufficient intelligence upon what occasion it was
erected ; that by means of such inscriptions, it came
to be recognised as Jacob's pillar, and held in great
esteem in future generations ; that this pillar thus
engraved, as it was the first of its kind that we have upon
record, gave probably the origin to the invention of
stylography, or the ancient manner of writing upon
stone, ever after ; and that the consecration of this stone,
and the imposition of a new name upon the place where
it stood, is enough to justify the practice of sanctifying
places appointed for religious worship, by some solemn
form of separation ; of calling them ' the house of God,'
and imputing to them a relative holiness ; in Christian
countries, of dedicating them to the memory of departed
saints and martyrs ; and every where, of observing that
wholesome and devout advice of the preacher : l ' Keep
thy foot when thou goest into the house of God, and be
more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools.
Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be
hasty to utter any thing before God, for he is in heaven,
and thou upon earth ; therefore let thy words be few.'
SECT. IV.
CHAP. I.— Of the Life of Joseph,11 which includes
the rest of Jacob's.
THE HISTORY.
Jacob had not been long with his father before there
befell him another sad disaster. Joseph was his beloved
1 Eccles. v. 1, 2.
a Two reasons arc generally assigned, why Moses
prolix in relating the adventures of Joseph than of any other of
Jacob's children: both because his life is a bright example of
piety, chastity, meekness, and prudence ; anci because it was liy
the means of Joseph that Jacob went down into Egypt: and as
his going down gave occasion to the wonderful departure of the
children of Israel from thence, so the history of the Jews would
have been sadly imperfect, and indeed altogether unintelligible,
without a longer account than ordinary of Joseph's life and trans-
actions there. — Heidegger 's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 20.
b Most versions, as well as ours, have made Jacob to love
Joseph, because he was the son of his old age; whereas had this
been the cause of his affection, he must have loved Zebulun, as
much as Joseph, because he was of the same age, and Benjamin
much more, because he was above fifteen years younger [only
thirteen years, according to Dr Hales' table given before.] It
seems, therefore, as if they had confounded the words Bcn-
Zekenim, the son of senators, or elders, as he is called here, with
Ben-Ziknah, the son of old age ; whereas the former has a signi-
fication quite different. According to the Hebrew idiom, it signi-
fies ' the son, or disciple of senators,' that is, one endued with an
extraordinary wisdom and prudence; accordingly the Samaritan,
Arabic, and Persian versions have rendered it, ' because he was a
wise and prudent son,' though even this comes short of the energy
of the idiom, and might more properly be rendered, ' because he
was as wise and prudent as a senator.' And this justifies the
reason of Jacob's extraordinary love to Joseph, because it is
natural for parents, especially for fathers, to admire those children
who show any degree of wisdom above their years; whereas, to
be fond of a child begotten in one's old age, and for no other
reason, is no more than a piece of dotage, which Moses would
hardly have thought worth recording. — Universal History, b. 1.
c. 7, and Howell's History, b. 1.
c The coat whereby Jacob distinguished his son Joseph from
the rest of liis brothers, is generally thought to signify a garment
that was wrought with threads of divers colours, or made up of
pieces of silk or stuff, which had much variety in them ; but the
word passim, which is here made use of, according to some
learned annotators, does properly signify a long garment, down
to the heels or ankles, with long sleeves down to the wrists,
which had a border at the bottom, and a facing, as we call it, at
the hands, of a colour different from the garment, which was
accounted noble, as well as beautiful, in ancient times. — Patrick s
Commentary.
d He chose the sons of his father's concubines, rather than
those of his wife Leah, to be his companions, on purpose, perhaps,
to avoid the ill consequences of the latter's envy and emulation
against him. For it is not unlikely that Leah's sons, consider-
ing the excessive love which their father had for him, might
be ready to suspect, that he designed to bequeath the right ol
primogeniture to him, which each of them thinking they had a
better title to, might thereupon be tempted to malign and mal-
treat him: whereas, among the sons descended from concubines,
as having not the like ambition, he might find better quarter,
and to their company the rather resort, out of a principle ol
humility and condescension, and to discountenance the haughty
behaviour of the sons of Leah towards the sons of the concubines.
— Patrick's Commentary, and Bildiotheca Biblica in locum.
e The Hebrew and the Alexandrian Septuagint have it, ' they
brought unto their father an evil report,' or ' grievous complaints
against Joseph,' that is, they began their base and barbarous treat-
ment of him with lies and calumnies. However, Aquila,
Symmachus, and the Syriae, make Joseph the accuser; but of
what crime it was, that he accused them to Iris father, and
whether it consisted in deeds or words only, is a subject that had
Sbct. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 227G. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
treat him so very surly, that whenever he spake to them,
they would scarce give him a civil answer. But that
which completed their envy and resentment, or rather
turned them into an irreconcilable hatred, was his inno-
cently telling them some of his dreams, which seemed
to portend his advancement in the world above them.
He told them that one night he dreamed, that as lie and
they were binding sheaves together in the Held, his sheaf
stood upright, while theirs fell prostrate before it, as if
they had been doing obeisance ; and that another time,
he fancied himself mounted on high, and the sun, moon,
and eleven stars, doing him the like homage. This
raised the indignation of the rest, as thinking it a dispar-
agement to have a younger brother their superior : which
their father perceiving, in hopes of mitigating their
resentment, a thought fit to discountenance him in the
interpretation of his dreams, by telling him, that they
were vain and chimerical, and what could never come to
pass ; though, in himself, he could not but think, that
there was something extraordinary and ominous in them.
His brothers, however, instead of abating their hatred,
grew every day more and more exasperated ; so that
they resolved at last to cut him off, and only waited for
a convenient opportunity.
It happened, at this time, that Joseph's ten brethren
(for Benjamin was as yet too young for any business)
were keeping their flocks not far from Shechem, when
their father not having heard from them for some time,
and * being not a little anxious for their welfare, sent
Joseph to find them out, and know how they did. As
lie drew near to Shechem, he was informed by a person
whom he met with by accident, that they had removed
from thence, and were gone about twenty miles farther
north to a place called c Dothan. Thither Joseph went
occasioned a great variety of conjectures among critics and
commentators. Some will have it, that Joseph told of their
unkindness and asperity to him ; others, of their quarrelling and
contentious way of living. Some, of their committing sodomy
or bestiality ; while those who confine it to words only, suppose
it to be passionate and undutifu] reflections they might make
upon their father, for loving Joseph more than themselves. But
whatever it was, it may be gathered, from their prepense malice
to him, that it was no small crime, because that for his telling it,
and which he might do with no other intent, but only that his
father's rebukes and admonitions might reform them,) they hated
him even unto death. — Bibliuthcca Biblica and Howell's History.
a St Chrysostom, in his homily upon the place, has given us
this farther reason. — " Besides," says he, " lie might think it
convenient to give this calm check to a spirit so much elated, as
this young man must be, by those great and certain expectations
which God was pleased, in so extraordinary a manner, to set
before him. The foreknowledge of all that greatness and glory,
which was one day infallibly to be his portion, might have put
him upon a wrong bias of behaviour; might have tempted him
to antedate his superiority ; and fail, or waver, more or less in
his duty to his elder brethren, if not to his father himself; and
this seems to be the meaning of Jacob's mentioning his mother,
who was dead, and did not so well comport with his dream.
But at the same time, that in prudence he was willing to prevent
any vain aspiring conceits, or tumours in his son, in faith he was
persuaded, that the fact would prove such as it was foretold."
b The reason of Jacob's uneasiness, and of sending his son
Joseph upon this errand, will be very obvious, if it be remem-
bered, that the sons of Jacob had so incensed the neighbouring
places by the massacre of the Shechemites, that Jacob was obliged
immediately to quit the country, for fear of a general insurrec-
tion upon him, as we read, Gen. xxxiv. 30.
c. It was a town about twelve miles to the north of the city of
Samaria, as Eusebius informs us. — Wells' Geography of the Old
Testament, vol. 1.
. 209
A. M. 3.V2G. A. ('. 1888. cr.N. en. xxxvij. T() THH END
after them ; and no sooner did they see him appro* hing,
but their old malice revived, and immediately they
resolved to make away with this master-dreamer, as
they called him, and to persuade their father that some
wild beast had devoured him.
This resolution, barbarous as it was, had certainly
been put in execution, d had not Reuben, who waa tlm
eldest, interposed, and, dissuading them from imbruing
their hands in his blood, advised rather to throw him into
the next pit, with a design himself to draw him out
privately, and convey him safe home to Ida (after.
Reuben's advice was liked ; and therefore, as soon as
Joseph came up to them, they immediately seized him
pulled off his fine coat, and threw him into a pit, whirh,
at that time, chanced to be dry ; whereupon Reuben with-
drew, to contrive some means for rescuing his brother,
whilst the others, as if they had done some glorious act,
sat down to eat, and drink, and regale themselves.
In the mean time * a caravan of Ishmaelites, who
were travelling from Mount (jilead into Egvpt with
spices and other merchandise, appeared in sight, which
put Judah in the thought of taking their brother out of
the pit, and selling him to these merchants, which would
every whit answer their purpose as well, or better. The
proposal was no sooner made, than it was approved :
Joseph was taken out of the pit, was sold to the merchants,
and the merchants sold him again to Potiphar, one of
the king's chief officers, and captain of his guards.
Reuben being absent while this was done, came to the
pit not long after, in order to rescue his brother ; but
finding him not there, he began to bewail and lament
himself to such a degree, that his brethren, to pacify his
d He either thought himself most concerned to save his brother,
as being the first-born, and therefore like to be the first in the
blame; or he might hope, by thus piously and compassionately
preserving the favourite Joseph, to recover that place in his
father's affection, which he had lost by his incest with Bilhah,
his concubinary wife. The speech which Josephm Introduces
him as making upon this occasion, is very moving and very
rhetorical. "It were an abominable wickedness," says be, •• to
take away the life, even of a stranger, but to destroy a kinsman
and a brother, and, in that brother, a father and a mother too,
with grief for the loss of so good, and so hopeful a son. Bethink
yourselves, if any thing can be more diabolical. Consider that
there is an all-seeing God, who will he the avenger, as well as
witness of this horrid murder. Bethink yourselves, 1 say, and
repent of your barbarous purpose. Yon must never expect to
commit this flagitious villany, and the divine vengeance not
overtake you; for God's providence is everj where, in the wilder-
ness, as well as in the city, and the horror- of a guilty conscience
will pursue you wherever you go. Bat, pal the ease, rourbrotbaf
had done you some wrong; jret is it not our duty to | a-s over the
slips of our frii oils ? When the simplicity nfhisyouta may justly
plead his excuse, his brothers certainly, of all men living, should
be his friend, and guardians, rather than his murderers ; a«j 1 1
when the ground of all your quarrel is this, that Cod loves your
in-oilier, and your brother loves God." — J—epkm, 1>. ?. <•. :i.
S ThOUgh we name the Ulimaeliles only, yet lure m,i.
two, if not three sorts of merchants mentioned in this f
the [ghmaelites, the Midamites, and Medanitae, ias they are
called in the Hebrew, Gen. \\\Nii. 86. who were a distinct
people from the Midianltes, as descended from Medea, one ot
Abraham's sonsbi Keturah, ami brother to Midtan, Gen. sav. '-'•
But as the} and the Miilianites lived near together in Aiabia,
not far from the Uunaelitsf, ihey all join., In this
caravan, as one SOdety of merchant-.; a- it i- the cnStBSB •>«■
to this day, in thSM ea-tern countries, for morrhan
to travel through the deserts in larse compel i< -. ;' : !i "r "' "ll<l
beasts or robbers.— Patriot's fmnmn.: ■'■- dmmtm-
tiuns.
-J o
210
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grief, were forced to tell him in what manner they had
disposed of him ; whereupon Reuben, finding it impossi-
ble now to recover him, joined with them in contriving
how to manage the matter with their father, so as to take
off from themselves all manner of suspicion.
To this purpose they killed a kid, and dipping
Joseph's coat in the blood of it, a sent it to their father,
as if they had found it in the Held, and were fearful that
it was their brother. Their father soon perceived whose
coat it was; and supposing that some wild beast or
other had slain his son, bhe rent his clothes, and put on
sackcloth, and began to mourn for his death. In vain
did the rest of his children endeavour to comfort him ;
his grief would admit of no remedy ; his resolution was
to c lament his loss to the hour of his death ; nor did he
ever cease this disconsolate way of life, until he was
told the surprising news of Joseph's advancement in
Egypt.
From the time that Joseph had admission into Poti-
phar's family, he showed such diligence and fidelity,
and proved so successful in every thing he undertook,
that his master soon took notice of him, and in some
time, having made him his steward, d put all his affairs
under his management.
In this condition Joseph might have lived very happy,
a In one and the same verse it is said, that ' they sent the
coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father:' but
this seeming solecism is easily resolved, only by saying, that they
sent it by the hands of persons who brought it to their father ; or
that they sent it by a messenger, as being afraid to be present at
the first gust of their father's passion, and afterwards brought
or produced it, when one of them, as Judah is supposed to have
been their spokesman, related the tale which follows: by which
artifice they seemed to give themselves an air of compassion,
since it was no uncommon thing afterwards (as in the case of
Julius Cresar, and Julia his daughter, the wife of Pompey), on
mournful occasions, to produce such affecting relics and remains.
— Bibliotheca Biblica.
b Rending the clothes was an eastern way of expressing either
grief for calamity or horror for sin. Reuben was the first we read
of, who, to denote his exceeding sorrow, rent his clothes; and as
Jacob we find does the like, we may well suppose that it was an
usual manner of expressing all grief and uneasiness of mind in
those days ; and by putting on sackcloth, which Jacob is here
the first precodent of doing, but was aftenvards commonly used
upon all mournful occasions, he seemed to signify, that since he
had lost his beloved son, he looked upon himself as reduced to
the meanest and lowest condition of life. — Bibliotheca Biblica,
Howell's History, and Burder's Oriental Customs.
c Jacob expresses his sorrow in these words, ' I will go down
unto the grave unto my son.' But if by the grave we are here
to understand a place of sepulture, how could Jacob say that he
would go down thither to his son, when he presumes here that
he was not buried, but torn to pieces by wild beasts. To solve
this difficulty, some imagine that the particle el should not, in
this place, be rendered to, but, as it sometimes means, for, or
in the stead of; and so the sense is, ' I will go down to the
grave instead of my son,' who, unhappy child as he was, had no
burial: but since the word scholah, in Greek aUns, in Latin
infernum, signifies veiy frequently the state of the dead in
' general, the much clearer sense of the words will be, ' I will
.iot cease mourning until I die, and be laid in my grave.' — Le
Clerc's Commentary.
d The words in the text are, ' he knew not aught he had,
save the bread which he did eat;' which is one of the highest
expressions of confidence that we can imagine: for it signifies,
that he was utterly careless about any thing that concerned his
estate, not minding what his expense or receipts were ; but
taking his ease, left all to Joseph's honesty. In short, he
thought of nothing, but only to enjoy what he had, without care
or trouble. — Patrick's Commentary.
had it not been for an adventure of a nature someAvhat
singular. He was now in the bloom of his youth, and
of a beauty and comeliness so extraordinary, that his
master's wife could not forbear conceiving an irregular
passion for him. Upon several occasions, she had
given him indications enough of her ardent desire to
draw him into a wanton familiarity with her, but he was
blind to her signs, and deaf to her soft speeches ; so
that she was at last resolved to break through the rules
of her sex, and court him in plain terms. But how
great was her surprise when, instead of a ready compli-
ance, as she probably expected, she found herself not
only denied, but severely reprimanded likewise for her
disloyal passion ! Being willing, however, to hope that
another opportunity would prove more favourable, after
several fruitless attempts, she at last laid hold on one,
when all the family was abroad, and / accosted him in
so violent and passionate a manner, that she would not
hear any farther denial. In vain it was for him S"to
e Joseph at this time was about seven and twenty years old.
For he was seventeen when he was sold to Potiphar, Gen.
xxxvii. 2, and he was committed to prison immediately upon
his noncompliance with his mistress's temptation; where, as far
as it appears, he had not been long before he interpreted the
dreams of the two disgraced courtiers ; and two years after that
he was released and promoted, namely, when he was thirty
years old : so that we may reasonably conclude that this tempta-
tion befell him about three years before his releasement, that is,
in the twenty-seventh year of his age. At this time it is sup-
posable that he was a comely person enough, and the saying is,
that "a comely person is a silent recommendation ;". but the
stories relating to his excessive beauty, as they are recorded by
the Talmudists, are ridiculous, and not much better than what
Mahomet, in his history of the patriarch, tells us, namely, that
his mistress having invited the ladies of the town to a splendid
entertainment, ordered Joseph to be called for, but that, as soon
as he appeared, they were amazed at his beauty, and so con-
founded, that they knew not what they did, but instead of eating
their meat they ate their fingers, and said among themselves,
" This is not a man, but an angel." — Bibliotheca Biblica i?i
locum, and Alcoran, chap, of Joseph.
f Josephus tells us, that Potiphar's wife took the opportunity
of a certain festival, when all the people were gone a merry-
making, to tempt Joseph; that, feigning herself sick, she
decoyed him by that means into her apartment, and then
addressed herself to him in words to this effect: — " It had been
much better for you," says she, "had you complied with my
first request; if for no other consideration, in regard at least to
the dignity of the person who is become your petitioner, and to
the excess of my passion. Besides, it would have saved me the
shame of condescending to some words and expressions, which
I am still out of countenance when I think of. You might
perhaps make some doubt before, whether I was in earnest ; but
this is to satisfy you that I mean no ill by my persisting in the
same mind. Take, therefore, your choice now, whether you
will improve this opportunity of present satisfaction, in the
embraces of a creatine that loves you dearly, and from whom
you may expect still greater things; or stand the shock of my
hatred and revenge, if you will presume to value yourself upon
the vain conceit of your chastity more than my favour," &c. —
Antiquities, b. 2. c. 4.
g Josephus, however, brings in his namesake expostulating
the matter with his mistress, and reminding her of her duty to
herself and her husband, to piety, and common fame. " What
signifies," says he, "a momentary pleasure, with a certain
repentance immediately to ensue ; an heaviness of heart for a
thing once done, and an utter impossibility of recalling and
undoing it, together with perpetual fears of discovery and dis-
grace ? What does all this signify, I say, in balance of the
most substantial comforts, and the most necessary duties of
human life ? Whereas, in a conjugal state, the selfsame delights
are all free, safe, innocent, and warrantable, both before God and
man. Consider again, how it would lessen your authority, to
Sect. IV.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2216. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3826. A. C. 1885. GEN. CII. xxxvii. TO Till . 1 N 1)
211
expostulate the heinousness of the crime : her appetite
was eager and impatient; and therefore she caught him
by the cloak, and pressed him to lie with her ; and he
having- no other way to escape, left his cloak in her
hand, and fled.
Whether it was that she feared, by his manner and
behaviour, that he might accuse her to her husband, or
that she was enraged at the slight put upon her proffered
love ; but so it was, that she resolved his immediate
ruin : and accordingly she began with a setting up a
most horrid outcry, which immediately brought in all
that were within hearing, and then showing them
Joseph's cloak, which she pretended he put off in order
to lie with her, she told them that he had made so
furious an attempt upon 'ier virtue, that nothing but her
loud cries could have saved her.
By the time that her husband came home, J she had
dressed up her story so well, and expressed the pre-
tended indignity put upon her with such an air of resent-
ment, that her credulous husband, little suspecting his
wife's treachery, was so prepossessed with the circum-
stance of the cloak, that, without any farther inquiry,0 he
make your servant your equal, by a shameful participation in
one common crime ; and pray, is it not better to trust to a good
conscience, that fears no light, than to commit wickedness in
the dark, and then live all your days in a restless dread of being
detected," &c. — Antiquities, b. 2.c. 4.
a There is something not unlike this revengeful artifice in
Potiphar's wife, in the representation which the poet makes of
Phtedra, when, in an affair of the like nature, she finds herself
rejected by her son-in-law Hippolytus: — "I myself will retort
the crime, and spontaneously accuse him of an illicit love ;
favour me, ye faithful band of servants, lend me thine aid, thou,
&c. Lo, rapidly he tied, and in his consternation left behind
his sword; still yet we hold the token of his crime." — Seneca,
Ilippol.
b Upon Potiphar's coming home, Josephus makes his wife
break out into these words: — " You will never deserve to live,
husband, unless you make an example of that perfidious wretch,
your man. He has forgotten what he was when you took him
into your house, how kindly and respectfully he has been treated
here, to a degree beyond his very hope, as well as his desert.
The charge of your whole family is committed to him, the
command of the rest of your servants, and the trust of all you
harve. What will you think of this fellow now, who, in requital
of all your bounty and good offices, could have the impudence to
attempt the violation of your bed, and to take the opportunity of
this festival day, when you were out of the way, to break in
upon my privacy, and press the enjoyment of his beastly ends.
You have made him, in effect, master of all things under your
roof; and would nothing serve him, but he must have your wife
likewise ? Here is the ungrateful villain's cloak, which, in his
fright, he left behind him, when I cried out, as he was going to
force me." — Antiquities, b. 2. c. 4.
c It is somewhat wonderful, that if Potiphar believed his wife's
story, he did not immediately put him to death; but there is one
thing which might check the violence of his passion, and that
was the great opinion he had for some time been continued in,
of Joseph's virtue and integrity. Joseph, he saw, was young and
beautiful, and therefore he might think it a thing not impossible
for a lady of distinction to be in love with him, and upon a dis-
appointment to be exasperated: as therefore he would net inflict
any capital or corporal punishment on him, so he thought it pru-
dent to hurry him away to prison unheard, lest, being allowed to
speak in his own vindication, he might clear himself, and thereby
bring discredit upon his family. It must not be denied, howevi r,
what St Chrysostom has observed, that here again was a special]
and as it were a miraculous intervention of the divine power,
which preserved his life as it did before, when he was cast into
the pit. The superior influence which softeni d the heart of
Reuben, restrained the hand of Potiphar, in order to make our
patriarch a more glorious example, and to complete thi se i v< nts
hurried poor Joseph away, and dapped bin up in the
king's prison ; where we shall leave him for a while, to
take a view of what passed in his father's family.
d Before the time that Joseph was sold int.. Egypt,
Judah, his father's son by Leah, had married « a Canaan-
itish woman name Shuah, by whom he had three bom,
Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er being cut off for his wicked-
ness before he had any children by his wife Thamar
Judah ordered his second son Onan, according to die
custom of the country, to marry her, and f to raise a
posterity to his brother. Onan seemingly obeyed his
father, but not brooking the thought that an\ of his chil-
dren should inherit his brother's name who was dead, lie
took such a wicked and unnatural way to prevent ha\ rag
any, that God was provoked to punish him with sudden
death likewise. His third son Shelah was not yel lit for
marriage ; and therefore Judah desired his daughter-in-
law to retire to her father's house, and there live a widow,
until he became adult, and then he would make him her
husband. Thamar did so, and waited till Shelah waa
come to man's estate; but finding no performance of
Judah 's promise, (as indeed he never heartiK intended
any,) she was resolved to make herself amends some
other way, which she did by the following stratagem.
Judah had lately buried his wife ; and as soon as the
usual days of mourning were over, he took a particular
friend with him, and went to Timnah, to divert himself a
in the course of his life, which God had predetermined and fore-
told.— Chrys. Horn, in locum.
d Though the latter part of Judah's story, relating to the incest
with his daughter Thamar, was acted after Joseph was sold, and
while he was in Egypt; yet the former part of it relating to his
marriage, and the birth of his three sons, must Deeds fall out
before Joseph was sold. For since there wire but two and
twenty, or at the most, but three and twenty yens between
Joseph's being sold into Egypt, and Jacob's going down
thither, it could no ways be, that in so short a space of
time, Judah could marry a wife, have three sons at three
several times by her, many two of her sons successively to one
woman ; defer the marriage of the third son to the same woman,
beyond the due time; afterwards himself have sons by the game
woman his daughter-in-law; and one of these sons, I':
beget two sons, Hezron and Ilamul, Gen. xlvi. IS. It can 00
ways be, I say, that all these transactions should be comprised in
so short a time. And therefore we must suppose, that tin- busi-
ness of his being married, and having children, was prior, to
Joseph's being sold; but that Moses, net willing to Entermingle
the story of the two brothers too much, brings all he bad
concerning Judah into the compass of one chapter, ami so con-
cludes his adventures, before he proceeds to those ol Joseph. —
Howell's History, b. 1 ; Universal History, b. 1. e. 7 ; and Jtibtio-
tkeca Biblica in locum.
e It was not so bad for a man circumcised to marry the daughter
of one uncircumcised, as it was for an Israelite t" ghrs adaughti r
in marriage to an uncircumcised husband, Gen. \\\i\. 14 j
an uncircumcised man was accounted unclean, though I
renounced idolatry; but a woman, bornof ondrcumciaed |
if she embraced the true religion, was not so accounted. And
such an one we may suppose Judah's wife to base been; other-
wise he had offended bis lather, as much as Esau did Isaac, by
marrying the daughter of Eieth. — Patrick'* Commentary.
/This is the first mi ntion we have of this custom, whicl
theless seems to have been a rery common one, and well under-
stood even by young Oi an; for lie knew that the lii t-li i n child
was not to be accounted his, tut his deceased brother's, w
called by his name, and iulu i it bis e-lati . For thi-.
Hebrew doctors, waa an ancient custom in force before las law
of Moses, that when a man died without issm . his i"' lh« t thetdd
marry his wife, and that the first SOO, upon such main'.:
to be reputed her deceased husband's heir.-— Pair
cii re's Commentary.
212
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
little at the shearing feast. Thamar had intelligence of
this ; and therefore, putting off" her widow's weed, and
dressing herself like a courtezan, she threw a veil over
her face, and planted herself between two ways, where
she knew her father-in-law, in his way to Timnah was
obliged to pass.
Judah no sooner saw her, but taking her to be what
she appeared, he began to make his addresses to her.
What she insisted on was only a reward for her compli-
ance, which he readily agreed to, and promised to send
her a kid ; but she having a farther design upon him,
demanded a pledge for the performance of his promise,
which was his signet, his bracelet, and his staff; and so,
being agreed, they went together, had their enjoyment,
and she proved with child.
Judah, according to his promise, sent by his friend
Hirah (for th.at was his name) a kid to redeem his pledge ;
but when Hirah came to the place, the woman was gone,
nor could he find, upon his best inquiry, that any such
person as he described had ever been there : so that
Judah, when he told him his ill success, thought it the
wisest way to let her go off with the pledges, rather than
run the hazard of his reputation, by making any farther
search.
About three months after this, word was brought him,
that his daughter-in-law had played the harlot, and was
certainly with child. Judah, though glad perhaps at the
news, because her death would free him from the promise
of giving his son Shelah to her, pretended however to be
highly enraged at her incontinency, and ordering her to
be brought forth,™ condemned her to be burnt according
to the laws of the country. Thamar, instead of being
surprised at this dreadful sentence pronounced against
her, only sent the pledges to Judah, with this message,
That the owner of these things was the person by whom
she was with child : whereupon, struck with confusion,
and reflecting on the injury he had done her, in with-
holding his son, he acknowledged her b less culpable in
a Among eastern nations, as well as elsewhere, women, who
were guilty of adultery, were more severely punished than the
men : whether it was that the injury done the husband was reputed
to be more heinous, or that the men, having the power of making
aws, took care to enact them in favour of themselves. Thus God
is said, ' for the hardness of their hearts,' to have indulged the
Jews in the matter of divorcing their wives; but the wives had
not the like privilege over their husbands. In many places a man
mfght have as many wives as he could maintain, but the women
were to be content with one husband. And in like manner, here
Judah, we find, condemns Thamar, though a widow, for her
crime, to be burnt; whilst himself, in the same state of widow-
hood, thought fornication a very pardona'ile crime. It is ques-
tioned, however, by what right and authority he could pass this
sentence upon her: and to answer this, it is supposed, that every
master was judge and chief magistrate in his own family; and
that therefore Thamar, though she was a Canaanite, yet being
married into Judah's family, and having brought disgrace upon
it, was properly under his cognizance. His cognizance, however,
according to the opinion of some, did not extend so far as to have
her burnt at the stake, as we call it, but only branded in the
forehead for a whore ; though others deny that his authority ex-
tended even so far: for being in a strange place, it can hardly be
thought, that the power of life and death, or indeed of any other
penalty, was lodged in him: and therefore they think that the
words mean no more than this, — That she should be brought before
a court of judicature, and sentenced according to the laws of the
country. — Selden de Jure Nat. b. 7. c. 5, Le Qerv's and Patrick's
Commentary, Howell's and Universal History.
b The words in the text are, ' She hath been more righteous
A. M. 3526. A. C. 1885. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
the whole affair than himself, and from that moment took
her home to his house; but had never any more com-
munion with her.
When the time of her delivery was come, she was
brought to bed of twins, but the manner of their birth
was somewhat surprising ; for though one of them put
forth his hand, about which the midwife tied a scarlet
thread, to distinguish him for the first-born ; yet as he
withdrew it, his brother got before him, and so came first
into the world ; which occasioned his name to be P/iarez,
that is, one breaking forth, as the other with the thread
on his hand was called Zarali.
To return to Joseph. He had not been long in prison,
before his virtuous and obliging deportment gained him
the favour of the keeper, insomuch that he was intrusted
with the management of the affairs belonging to the pri-
son, and with the custody of the prisoners themselves.
At this time there were two persons of note, the king's
cupbearer, and his chief baker, for some offence or
other, committed to the same prison where Joseph was,
and by the head-keeper, intrusted to his care and attend-
ance. To this purpose, Joseph coming to their apartment
one morning, and finding them both pensive and melan-
choly upon the account of a dream which each of them
had had the night before, and under more concern still,
because in that place, they could have no person to
interpret for them ; to allay their superstitious humour,
in trusting to diviners and soothsayers, he told them, in
the first place, that the interpretation of dreams did not
depend upon rules of art, but if there were any certainty
in it, it must proceed from a divine inspiration, and then
desired to know what it was that they dreamed.
The cupbearer began, and told him that in his sleep
he fancied he saw a vine, with three branches, which all
on a sudden budded, then blossomed, and so bore ripe
grapes ; and that he had in his hand the king's cup, into
which having squeezed the juice of the grapes, he gave
it 'to the king, and the king drank it from his hand as
usual. To this Joseph replied, that as the three branches
denoted three days, it would not exceed the compass of
that time, before the king, c having made an inquiry into
than I :' not more virtuous or chaste, for she knowingly committed
adultery and incest when he designedly did neither; but more
just, in that he, by withholding Shelah from her, had provoked
her to lay this trap for him. So that, though Thamar was
wickeder in the sight of God, yet she may be said to be juster
before Judah, or to have done no more in drawing him into this
scrape, than what he justly deserved. — Poole's Annotations.
c The expression which Joseph here makes use of concerning
the king's cupbearer and baker, ' Pharaoh shall lift up thy head,'
seems somewhat too literally translated, since the words in the
original mean no more, than that Pharaoh would have them
brought forth and examined. The ancients, we are to know, in
keeping their reckonings or accounts of time, or their list of
domestic officers or servants, made use of tables with holes bored
in them, in which they put a sort of pegs or nails with broad
heads, exhibiting the particulars, either number or name, or what-
ever it was. These nails or pegs the Jews call heads, and the
sockets of the heads they call bases. The meaning therefore of
' Pharaoh's lifting up his head' is, that Pharaoh would take out the
peg which had the cupbearer's name on the top of it to lead it ; that
is, would sit in judgment, and make examination into his accounts.
For it seems very probable, that both he and the baker, had been
either suspected or accused of having cheated the king, and that,
when their accounts were examined and cast up, the one was
acquitted, while the other was found guilty. And though Jo-
seph uses the same expression in both cases, yet we may observe,
Sect. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
the conduct of his servants, would restore him to his
favour and his post again. Only he desired, that if his
interpretation proved true, he would, in his prosperity, a
be pleased to remember him, and to recommend his case
to the king- ; since the truth was that he had been fraudu-
lently taken * from his own country and cast into prison
without any fault or offence of his.
c Hearing so happy an interpretation of this dream,
the baker was the readier to propose his, which was to
this effect : — That while, as he thought, he had on his
head three wicker baskets, in the uppermost of which
were several kmds of baked meats for the king's table,
the birds came and ate them out of the basket. To which
Joseph immediately replied, that the three baskets, even
as the three branches had done, signified three days ; but
that in the space of that time, the king having made
scrutiny into his behaviour, and found him guilty,
would order him to be hanged upon a gibbet, for the
fowls of the air to devour his flesh. And as Joseph
foretold, so it came to pass : for three days after this,
the cupbearer was restored and the baker hanged. The
cupbearer, however, when himself had got into prospe-
rity again, thought little of Joseph, till, in about two
years after this, an accident happened which forced him
in a manner to call him to remembrance.
that speaking to the baker, he adds, that ' Pharaoh shall lift up
thy head from off thee,' that is, shall order thy name to be struck
out of the list of his servants by taking the peg out of the socket.
—Bibliotheca Biblica in locum.
a There is nothing of a distrust of God's goodness, justice, or
power, in making use of human means. The release of the king's
cupbearer appeared to Joseph to be a good opportunity, pointed
out by providence, for him to lay hold on, and lie would have
been wanting to his own preservation, had he not employed it.
Though therefore it may be thought, that his asking this court-
Dfficer to represent his case to the king, might be in reward or
compensation for his prediction ; yet even herein he may be jus-
tified by apostolical authority, which in cases of this nature
instructs, (1 Cor. ix. 4. and Gal. vi. 6.,) that temporal advan-
tages may very lawfully be both asked and received. In the
cupbearer's not remembering him, however, we may observe
something that seems providentially to have turned to his advan-
tage, since had he been discharged before Pharaoh's dream, he
might many ways have missed of that prodigious favour and
advancement, which by this means he attained Bibliotheca
Biblica in locum.
b The words in the text are, ' from the land of the Hebrews,'
which some men suppose were added by Joshua, or some other
writer, after the death of Moses ; because in Moses' days, and
much less in Joseph's, Canaan was not known by that name. It
is not the whole land of Canaan, however, that Joseph here means,
but only that part of it which lay about Hebron, where Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, had for a long while lived; (Gen. xxii. 1, 2.
xxxv. 27. xxxvii. 14.) It is said, indeed, that they were strangers
and sojourners in the country; but then they were strangers of
great note and high renown, who were treated as princes, lived
by their own laws, and made leagues not only with private men,
but with cities and with kings ; (Gen. xxiii. (>. xxi. 22. xxvi. 28.
xxxiv. 6.;) the fame of whose deeds could not but be spread
abroad, both by the victory which Abraham got in a battle over
several kings, and by the sacking of Shechem, which their neigh-
bours durst not revenge; all which might very well make that
part of the country wherein they, for three generations, had
resided, not improperly be called 'the land of the Hebrews.' —
Patrick's Commentary.
c As flush as the chief baker was with hopes, there is this
obvious difference between his and the cupbearer's presage,
namely, that he was not an agent, but a sufferer in his dream :
for he did not give a cake or a confection to the king as the other
did the cup, but the fowls of the air descended upon his basket,
and fled oft' with the dainties that were in it. — Patrick's Comment.
TO THE ISRAELITES', &c. 213
A. M. 3539. A. C. 1872. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
The king his master had, in one night, two very pur.
tentous dreams, which gave him the more tineas
because none of the d Egyptian Magi could give him the
least light into their meaning. Seeing the king there-
fore in this perplexity, the cupbearer could not forbear
telling him, that while he and the chief baker were under
his majesty's displeasure in prison, cadi of tin m, in the
same night, had a dream, which a young man, an Hebrew
then in prison with them, interpreted cxai tly. and as the
event happened ; and that, in his opinion, he had a talent
that way much superior to any that had hitherto been
consulted.
Pleased with this discovery, and eager to have his
dream explained, the king gave orders immediate I \ for
Joseph to be sent for ; who, after he had shaved ami
dressed himself, was introduced into his presence, where
he had not been long, before the king related his dream
to him, namely, " That as he was walking on the banks
of the river Nile," as he thought, " he saw seven fat kiue,
which fed in the meadows. And soon after that, seven
others, exceeding lean, and frightful to behold, which
came and ate up the fat ones, and yet looked not a bit
the better ; and that, after this he dreamed again, and
fancied that he saw seven full ears of corn, proceeding
all from the same stalk, which were in like manner
devoured by seven others, that were blasted and
withered."
As soon as the king had ended, Joseph, giving him
first to understand that it e was by the assistance of God
alone that he was enabled to be an interpreter of dreams,
told him, that the seven kine, and seven ears of corn,
signified the same thing, and the repetition of the dream
d The Chaldeans of old were the most famous people in the
world for divination of all kinds; and therefore it is very proba-
ble that the word Ilhartoumim, which we render mqoict
not of Hebrew, but Chaldee origin. The roots, however, from
whence it springs (if it be a compound word, as probably it is]
are not so visible; and therefore commentators are perplexed to
know by what method men of this profession proceeded in their
inquiry into secret things; whether they pretended lo expound
dreams, and descry future events, by natural observations, by the
art of astrology, which cam.' much in request in future ages, by
such rules as are now found in the books of oneirocritics ; or by
certain characters, images, pictures, and figures which wm
engraved with magical rites and ceremonies. It i- not to be
doubted indeed but that the magicians, whom Pharaoh consulted
for the interpretation of his dreams, made use of some at
not all these arts; and the Jewish doctors would make us believe,
that after several attempts of divers kind-, they came at last to
this exposition, that Pharaoh's daughters (for thej supposed him
to have seven) should die. and that be should bare sevi n
born to him in their stead ; but this being not at all satisfactory
to their master, put the cupbearer in mind ol Joseph -
abilities that way.— Ac Ck res and Patrick's Commentary.
e The words wherein Joseph prefaces bis interpretation ol
Pharaoh's dreams, are much of the same kin.! with what we find
Daniel addressing Nebuchadnesar upon the like occasion :—
'The secret which the king bath demanded, cannot the wise
men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, show onto
the king; bul there Is a God In heaven, who revealeth
and makethknown unto the king what shall be In the lattei
days.'— (Dan. li. 87, K.) Both these holy nun Insinuate, that
the interests of princes are re especially the care ol divine
,,ro\ idence, and that therefore, for their admonition, he Ereqw ntly
sends dreams and visions upon them. And ibis declai
previous to the exposition, was perfectly proper, and ol n
force to bespeak the king's attention and regard, at tin
time that Joseph was asserting the being and Interposition of
Almighty God In the guidance of human affairs. — I* < -
Commentary , and Bibliotheca BUIica in locum,
214
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3539. A. C. 1872. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
only denoted the certainty of the event ; that therefore,
as the lean kine seemed to eat up the fat, and the
withered ears to consume the full and flourishing, so,
after seven years of great plenty, other seven years of
extreme famine should succeed, which would lay waste
all the country, and leave no signs of the former plenty :
and therefore, since it had pleased God thus to inform
the king what seasons he intended to bring upon the
earth, he hoped he would make a right use of the infor-
mation, by appointing a wise and prudent man over his
whole kingdom, who should take care to build granaries,
and appoint officers under him in every province, who
should collect and lay up a a fifth part of each plentiful
year's product against the succeeding years of famine.
b This interpretation, and the good advice given upon
it, made the king conceive so gTeat an opinion of Joseph's
wisdom, that he thought no one could be so fit to manage
the office of collecting the corn in the years of plenty as
he who had suggested a scheme so very beneficial. He,
therefore, in a short time, made him his deputy over the
land of Egypt, and to that purpose invested him with the
usual ensigns of that station ; gave him his own signet
from off his finger ; caused him to be clothed in a robe
of fine linen, and put a golden chain about his neck ;
ordered him to ride in a chariot next to his own ; and
wherever he went, heralds to go before, and, in token
that the viceroy was coming, to proclaim to the people, c
a Since there were to be as many years of scarceness as of
plenty, some have made it a question why Joseph advised no
more than a fifth part of the corn, in plentiful years, to be laid
up: but to this it may be replied, that the greater and richer
sort were used, in time of plenty, to fill their storehouses with
provision against a scarcer year, which sometimes happened ;
that in the times of famine, men were wont to live more frugally
and parsimoniously, as the Egyptians at this time, according to
Josephus, were obliged to do by Pharaoh's special command ;
that, even in the years of famine, tillage went on, and the harvest
might be something, (though not mentioned by reason that the
product was comparatively inconsiderable,) especially in the lands
lying near the Nile ; and that, as the tenth part was an ordinary
tribute due to the kings of Egypt, in the years of extraordinary
plenty, (when the fifth was no more than the tenth in other
years,) Pharaoh might think it proper to double this charge, or,
what is rather to be supposed from a good king and a good coun-
sellor, to buy as much more as was his tribute, which he might
do at an easy rate, when such a vast plenty made com extremely
cheap . — Patrick 's Commentary.
b Here we may observe again, that Joseph directs Pharaoh to
look up to God as the author of all these events, and that not in
an ordinary, but extraordinary manner, since such fertility and
such famine did not proceed from mere natural causes, but from
an overruling providence, which made the river Nile overflow
its banks so largely for seven years together, and so occasion a
great plenty; and then, for the next seven years, overflow very
little, if at all, and so produce a very sore and long famine. Nor
can it be objected to Joseph that he was guilty of presumption
or boldness in giving his advice to Pharaoh concerning the pro-
vision that was to be made against the ensuing scarceness, since
he was conscious to himself that he was best able to give such
advice, and would have been guilty of the sin of omission, had
he neglected to do it, in so great and so general a concern. —
Patrick's Commentary, and Bibliotheca Biblica in loctim.
c Annotators are much at a loss to determine of what original
the word abrech is, some pretending that it is altogether Hebrew,
while others make it a compound of Hebrew and Syriac, and
others contend, at the same time, that it is purely Egyptian.
Those who pretend that it is Hebrew, besides the signification
of bowing the knee, which it very well bears, by dividing it into
two words, make it import a tender father, and suppose that
Joseph might very properly be called a father in point of his
consummate wisdom, and young or tender in regard to his
' bow the knee.' Nor was this all : for to attach him
still closer to his service, and make him forget the very
thoughts of ever returning to his own country, d he
changed his name to that of Zaphnah-paancah, which
signifies a prime minister, and matched him into a
noble family, to Asenah, the daughter of e Potipherah,
priest or prince of On ; by whom he had two sons, the
former of whom he called Manasseh, intimating that God
made him forget all his toils ; and the other Ephraim,
because he had made him fruitful in the laud of his
aliiiction.
In the mean time, Joseph being now about thirty
years old when he was raised to this height of power,
took a progress through the whole kingdom ; built
granaries, appointed proper officers in every place, and,
in short, ordered all things with such prudence and
years. Those who make it a mixture of Hebrew and Syriac,
divide it, in like manner, into two words, and suppose that as
ab, in the Hebrew, is father, so rech or rack, in the Syrian
tongue, is king, in the same sense that Joseph says of himself,
and perhaps with allusion to this very name, ' God has made me a
father unto Pharaoh,' (Gen. xlv. 8.) that is, in giving him whole-
some counsel, even as a father does his children: but those who
contend for its being purely Egyptian, do freely confess, that at
this distance of time, and under such obsoleteness of that lan-
guage, it is next to impossible to find out the genuine significa-
tion of an honorary term, as this very probably was; and
therefore they observe, that as the Jewish historian makes no
mention of this circumstance in Joseph's story, he might be in-
duced to that omission by reason of his not understanding this
word of exotic growth. In this uncertainty of opinions, there-
fore, we have thought it the best way to follow that translation
which some of the best Hebrew interpreters, the Septuagint and
Vulgate versions have approved. — Heidegger's Hist. Patriar.,
vol. 2. Essay 20.
d It was an ancient custom among eastern princes, upon their
promotion of any favourite, to give him a new name. Nebu-
chadnezzar, we read, (Dan. i. 7.,) imposed new names upon
Daniel and his companions in Babylon ; and it was the custom of
the Mogul never to advance a man, but he gave him anew name,
and that significative of something belonging to him: but here
the question is, what the meaning of the name which Pharaoh
gave Joseph is ? In the Hebrew text it is Zaphnah-paaneah,
but in the Egyptian and Greek Pentateuch it is Pson-thon-
phaneck. The oriental versions, however, are pretty unanimous
in rendering it — a revealer of secrets, but there are some reasons
why this should not be its true interpretation. For the time
when Pharaoh gave the patriarch this name, was when he
advanced him from the condition of an imprisoned slave to that
of a ' ruler throughout all the land of Egypt ;' and, therefore, it
is reasonable to suppose that he gave it in commemoration of
such promotion, rather than of his expounding dreams ; because
to have called him an interpreter of dreams only, had been
degrading him to the level of magicians. Now if Pharaoh gave
him this name in memory of his promotion, it is very likely
that this name was strictly and properly Egyptian, otherwise the
common people could not have understood it, though Moses,
in his recording it, might endeavour to accommodate it to the
Hebrew idiom ; and if it was Egyptian, the word in that lan-
guage signifies what we call a prime minister; or strictly the
first, or prince of the lords. — Bibliotheca Biblica, Occasional
Annotations, 41.
e The reader must remember not to confound this name with
Potiphar, who bought Joseph of the Ishmaelites, because their
names in Hebrew are not differently written. The one, how-
ever, is called the captain of the guards, the other the prince or
priest of On ; so that the former must have had his residence in
the capital, to be always about the king; but the latter lived at
On or Heliopolis, about twenty miles distant from Memphis,
the. metropolis of the kingdom : nor can we suppose that Joseph
would ever have married his master's daughter, lest she should
have proved not unlike her mother, for whose incontinence he
had so severely smarted. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 7
Sect. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL
A. M. 227G. A. C. 1728; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES,
application, that before the seven years of plenty were
expired, he had amassed together an immense quantity
of corn, enough to supply both Egypt and the neigh-
bouring countries ; so that when the years of famine came
on, and the people applied themselves to Pharaoh, he
remitted them to Joseph, who, when he saw it (it, opened
his stores, and sold provision to all that came.
In the second year of the famine, Jacob, who was not
exempt from the common calamity, hearing that there
was corn to be bought in Egypt, sent ten of his sons
thither to buy some, who, upon their arrival, were directed
to apply to Joseph for an order, and as soon as they
saw him, prostrated themselves before him, and begged
tli.it they might be supplied with corn.
Joseph, at first sight, knew his brethren, but being
minded to terrify them a little, would not, as yet, dis-
cover himself to them ; and therefore, choosing to speak
by an interpreter, with a severe look and angry tone,
he asked them whence they came, and upon their answer-
ing from the land of Canaan, he charged them with
being a spies who were come to discover the weakness of
the country. To which they replying, that they came
with no other intent, than purely to buy corn for their
numerous family, being all the ° sons of one man, who
once indeed had twelve, but that the youngest was left at
home, and the next to him dead : he immediately catched
at their words, and put their honesty upon this probation :
—That since, as they said, they had a younger brother,
a These words, ' Ye are spies,' are not to he looked upon as a
lie, because they are not spoken by way of affirmation, but 01" pro-
bation only, in tiie manner that judges speak, when they examine
suspected persons, or inquire into a crime, of which men are
accused ; and have therefore the force of an interrogation, ' Are
ye not spies ?' or I must take you to be such, until you prove the
contrary. This, though it was but a pretensive charge of Joseph,
had yet the better colour, because Egypt was defenceless and
liable to incursions only on that side from whence his brethren
came ; for what with the interposition of large deserts, and shallow
seas, it was pretty well secured on all other quarters. (Le derc's
and Patrick' s Commentaries in locum.) — To conceive the full force
and heinousness of this charge, says Dr Hales, it is necessary to
state briefly the situation of Egypt at the time. In the reign of
Timaus, or Thamuz, about B. C. 2159, Egypt had been invaded
and subdued by a tribe of Cushite shepherds, from Arabia, who
cruelly enslaved the whole country, under a dynasty of six kings,
until, at length, the native princes, weary of their tyranny,
labelled, and after a long war of thirty years, shook oil' the yoke,
and expelled the shepherds to Palestine, where they became the
Philistines, (from Pallesthan, " the shepherd land/' in the San-
scrit, or primitive Syriac,) about B. C. 1899, or twenty-seven
years before Joseph's administration. But the memory of their
tyranny was still fresh in the minds of the Egyptians, so that
' any shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians,' Gen. xlvi.
34; and ' they could not endure to eat bread with the Hebrews.'
because they were shepherds, and came from the neighbourhood
of Palestine. And they were greatly apprehensive, that the
Philistines, who were a warlike people, might attempt to regain
a footing in Egypt, weakened as it had been by so long a war;
and when the land of Goshen, which had been their principal
settlement, the best pasture land in Egypt, was now in a great
measure waste. (Hales' Analysis, vol. 2. p. 141, second edition.)
This circumstance most probably, at a subsequent period, gave
rise to the dread of the Hebrews becoming more powerful than
them, and again enslaving them. — Ed.
b By this they suggested the impossibility of their being spies,
since no man, in his wits, would send so many and all his own
sous, upon so dangerous and capital an enterprise ; nor was it
probable that one man could have a design upon Egypt, but all
the great men in Canaan must have joined in it, and then they
would have sent men of different families, and not all of one only.
~— Patrick's Commentary.
TO THE ISRAELITES', &c. 215
A. M.3539. A. C. 1872. GEN'. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
some one of them should be dispatched to briag him,
whilst the rest were kept in custody . otherwise he should
look upon them (and there he spake with a seeming
earnestness) as no other than spies and enemies : and SO
ordered them all to prison, until they should come to ■
resolution.
After three days' confinement, however, he sent f.»r
them again, and then, with a milder air, told them thai :.-
himself feared God, and was willing to act justly by them,
he was loath thai their family should want provision or
that they themselves should sutler, if innocent : he there
fore propounded this expedient to them : — " That one
of them should be confined, as an hostage for the rest,
while they returned with corn for the family ; and that
when they came again, and brought their youngest
brother with them, the confined should be released, and
all of them reputed honest men."
For persons in their circumstances there was no expos-
tulating with one who had them at his mercy ; and there-
fore they consented to do whatever he required. Hut in
the interpreter's absence, they supposing that no one
else understood their language, began to bewail their
unrelenting cruelty to poor Joseph, and to condemn
themselves severely for it; while Reuben, who was not
so culpable in the matter, put them in mind, that all this
mischief might have been prevented, had they listened to
his counsel, and not acted so inhumanly to their innocent
brother, for whose sake, it was no more than what they
might expect, that vengeance at one time or other would
certainly overtake them.
Their discourse, in short, was so very dolorous and
affecting, that Joseph could no longer contain himself,
and was therefore forced to withdraw a little to give ins
tears vent, and then coming in again, commanded '
Simeon to be bound and sent to prison : but Betting th ■
rest at liberty, he ordered the officer who distributed the
corn to supply them with what they wanted, and at the
same time, as a fresh matter for their surprise, d to put
each man's money into the mouth of his sack. 1 1 is orders
were accordingly obeyed ; and therefore, when they came
to bait, and to give their beasts provender, e they were
c It may be supposed, perhaps, that because Reuben was the
eldest, he, upon this occasion, had been the properesl I
but Reuben, we may observe, had showed himself averse to those
lengths of wickedness and inhumanity, in which most <>l the
other brothers were agreed, again-t Joseph. Reuben, in short,
resolved to save him; and as Judah was inclined 1" »v< ur him,
had Simeon joined with them, their authority mighl haw pre*
vailed for his deliverance; but Simeon was the person who was
most exasperated against him. He w„s the eldest oi th who
had proposed to murder him. and was therefore a 61 proxy for
the rest; the man, as the Hebrews say, who put Joseph ... the
pit, and was now very justly to be served in his kinds though
they who tell us this, have a tradition, that as M U bij bro-
thers were gone, Joseph had him unbound, and ordered aim
what provisions and conveniences ha pleased, during 1
(moment— Patrick's Commentary, and BilMothm JiM,ca m
drThis Joseph might do, without defreodtag Pharaoh: forhs
might either supply them out of that stock oi provis s which
belonged properly to himself j or it the provisions wr.ethe kin| s,
he mfght pay for them nut of hdi 0WO pens. NOI is there any
occasion to conceive, that a persons,, entirely in fovour an.l con-
fidence with bis prince ns Joseph was, had his hands ttad up
,,,„„ dlspasmg, at his „w„ discretion and ptoesore, ol »,■""
a boon as this to his friends, for their relief and minim t —
Mutcvhu. . , , , .. _«j.
e If it should be made a question, why Joseph s brethren made
216
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 227fi. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
not a little frightened to find their money returned ; nor
failed they to make all the dismal reflections hereupon
that their fears could suggest, concluding that the
haughty viceroy had done this, that he might have a
pretence to make them his slaves at their next coming
down.
As soon as they were got home, they acquainted their
father with all these adventures ; they told him the treat-
ment they had received from the king's prime minister,
and how he suspected them of being spies, of which they
had no way to clear themselves, but by leaving Simeon
bound in prison, as a pledge, till they should bring
Benjamin, to show that what they told him of their family
was true. These were sad tidings, indeed, and what
made their poor afflicted father break out into this
melancholy complaint: — " That one way or other, him
they had deprived of his children ; that Joseph was dead,
Simeon was left in Egypt, and now they were going to
take Benjamin from him likewise, which were things too
heavy for him to bear."
In vain it was for Reuben, in order to prevail with his
father to comply, to offer, as he did, that if he did not
return him safe, he might take his two sons, and kill them
if he pleased : the death of a grandson was no compen-
sation for the loss of a child ; and therefore, instead of
assuaging, this did but augment his grief, and make him
absolutely resolve not to trust Benjamin with them : for
" his brother is dead," says he, " and he is left alone ; if
any mischief should befall him by the way, then will ye
bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave."
In such debates as these they spent the time, till the
famine every day increasing, and their stock of provision
being well nigh gone, necessity put them in the thoughts
of going down again into Egypt. This their father like-
wise reminded them of, but without taking any notice of
their obligation to the viceroy to bring their younger
brother with them ; which, when Judah suggested to him,
and set before him withal the utter impossibility of their
going into Egypt, without his complying with that con-
dition, he began to complain again, that he thought him-
self hardly used in their telling the viceroy any thing of
the state of his family, or that they had another brother ;
which Judah endeavoured to excuse, by assuring his
father, that what was said upon that head, proceeded
from the simplicity of their hearts, and in answer to the
interrogatories which the viceroy put to them, without
ever dreaming that he intended to make such a cruel
handle of it ; and then perceiving his father to waver a
little in hi3 resolution, a he reiterates the necessity of
use of their own stocks, and especially in a time of so great
scarcity, in a public inn ? the answer is obvious, — That the inns,
or resting-places in those parts of the world, neither were, nor
are as yet, such as we meet with in England, and some other
parts of Europe. They afforded no accommodation of any kind,
but barely house-room. The passengers who travelled in those
countries, carried most, if not all of their provisions with them;
nor did they make any other use of these public houses, but only
to repose themselves in at the end of their stages. (Musculus.)
> — The khan or caravansara is seldom more than four bare walls,
open at top, and perfectly exposed ; if there are cells, nothing is
found but bare walls, dust, and sometimes scorpions, the only
refreshment being the water generally found in the vicinity ; nor
are even these empty mansions always to be met with.
a In the text, the words wherein Judah delivers himself to
his father, are these, — ' If thou wilt send our brother with us, we
will go down and buy thee food ; but if thou wilt not send him,
A. M. 3539. A. C. 1872. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
their going again, and presses him to consent, witli
this solemn promise, that at the hazard of his OAvn life,
he would take care and return him safe : ' ' Of my
hand shalt thou require him,' says he ; ' if I bring him
not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear
the blame for ever.'
But it was not so much his son's importunity, as the
necessity of affairs, which induced Jacob to comply ; and
therefore, perceiving that there was now no remedy, he
delivered up Benjamin ; but before they departed, in-
structed them what to do, namely, to take a double
quantity of money with them, for fear that there was
some mistake made in the other that was returned, b and
some such presents as the country afforded, and what
they imagined would be most acceptable to the viceroy :
and so having entreated Heaven for their success, he
sent them away, with an aching heart, but a resolved
acquiescence in God's good providence, let the event be
what it would.
As soon as they arrived at Egypt, they went directly
to the king's granaries, and presented themselves before
Joseph, who seeing their brother Benjamin with them,
gave orders to his steward to conduct them to his house,
where he designed they should dine that day. Here
again they began to fear, lest this might be a contrivance
against them upon account of the money which was
returned in their sacks ; and therefore, before they
entered the house, they acquainted the steward with the
whole affair, and to demonstrate their honesty, told him,
1 Gen. xliii. 9.
we will not go down,' Gen. xliii. 4, 5 ; which, at first view, seem
to have an air of undutifulness in them, but upon a nearer inspec-
tion, will admit of this apology, namely, that this was not the
first proposal made to Jacob by his sons, to have Benjamin go
with them into Egypt. Reuben had once before offered his two
sons for pledges, and received a repulse. Upon Jacob's renewing
his orders therefore for them to go, Judah only had courage to
engage in this fresh remonstrance. He reminds his father, first of
the solemnity and earnestness with which Joseph had pretended,
that without Benjamin, ' they should not see his face:' then he
offers to go very willingly in obedience to his father's command,
but desires to insist upon the condition of Benjamin's going
with them, as finally, indispensably, and absolutely necessary.
For the words, compared with those of Gen. xliv. 26, do plainly
denote as much, ' We will not go down,' that is, it is impossible,
impracticable, unallowable for us to go. For the future tense,
according to the Hebrew idiom, will bear this signification, and
consequently will acquit Judah from all suspicion of rebellion or
undutifulness towards his father. — Bibliotheca Biblica, on Gen.
Annotation 45.
b The present which Jacob ordered his sons to cany down to
Joseph is thus particularized in our translation ; ' a little balm,
a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts and almonds,' Gen.
xliii. 11. But there is reason to suspect, that some of these are
not the real things which the original words intend. Balm,
indeed, which we may suppose was that of Gilead, was of great
price all the world over, and a small quantity of it was a present
worth acceptance ; but unless the honey in Canaan was better
than ordinary, there doubtless was no want of it in Egypt : and
therefore, it is much more likely that this part of the present
consisted'of dates, since the Hebrew expresses both by the same
name ; and in Judea, especially about. Jericho, as both Josephus
and Pliny tell us, there was a great plenty of them. The word
nckoth, which is rendered spices, should rather signify storax,
which is an aromatic, gum put into all precious spicy ointments.
And the word loth, which is translated myrrh, would come nearer
the original if it were called laudanum. Botnim, which we read
nuts, are what we call pistachios, which were highly esteemed
by the ancients as a delicious food ; and with these almonds
might not improperly be joined together. — Universal History,
and Patrick's Commentary.
Sect. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 227G. A. C. 1728 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
that besides the money which they found returned, they
had brought more along with them, to buy a fresh quan-
tity of provisions.
The steward, on the other hand, being let into the
secret, and perceiving the concern they were in, bade
them dismiss all uneasy apprehensions ; told them, that
what they found in their sacks they ought to look upon
as a treasure sent them from heaven ; owned that he
himself had fairly received their money ; and gave them
assurance that they should never hear any more of it ;
and, that they might believe his words to be true, he
went and brought Simeon unbound to them ; acquainted
them that they were to dine with his lord that day ; and
showed them, in the mean while, all the tokens of civility
that were fitting for welcome guests.
Joseph was to return by noon, and therefore his
brothers took care to have their present in readiness ;
and when he was come, introduced it in the handsomest
and most submissive manner they could. He received
them all with a friendly countenance; inquired much
concerning the health and welfare of their aged father ;
and then turning to Benjamin, asked them, if he was the
younger brother they had mentioned to him ; and without
staying for their answer, saluted him in these words,
' God be gracious to thee, my son.' But finding his
.affections begin to work, and fearing lest he should
discover himself too soon, he retired into his chamber,
and there vented his passion in a flood of tears ; which
when he had done, he washed his face, and returned to
the company, and ordered the dinner to be served up.
Three tables were spread in a large dining-room ;
one for himself alone, by reason of his dignity ; another
for his Egyptian guests, a who hate to eat with people
of a different nation ; and a third for his brethren, who
were amazed to find themselves placed in exact order,
according to their seniority, and did not a little wonder
what this unexpected civility might end in.
Joseph, however, during the whole entertainment,
behaved very courteously. From his own table h he
a The reason which some assign for the Egyptians refusing to
eat with the Hebrews, was their sacrificing some creatures which
the Egyptians worshipped ; but though, in after ages, they cer-
tainly did worship several kinds of animals, yet there appears
nothing from the story that they did so in Joseph's days ; for
their worship of the famous ox, called Apis, was a much later
invention, as many learned men have demonstrated. It is much
more likely, therefore, that this great abhorrence should be
resolved into their different manner both of dressing and eating
their victuals. No people, as Herodotus tells, (even where he treats
of their manner of feasting, Euterpe, c. 41.) were more tenacious
of their old customs than the Egyptians. They would not use
those of any other nation whatever; and therefore the Hebrews
were not the only people they had an aversion to. For, as the
same historian informs us, an Egyptian man, or woman, would
not kiss the mouth of a Greek ; would not make use of a spit or
a pot belonging to them; nor eat any meat that was cut witli
one of their knives. — Patrick's and Le Clerc's Commentary.
b The manner of eating among the ancients was not for all
the company to eat out of one and the same dish, but for e\i'ry
one to have one or more dishes to himself. The whole of these
dishes were set before the master of the feast, and he distributed
lo every one his portion. As Joseph, however, is here said to
have had a table to himself, we may suppose that he had a gnal
variety of little dishes, or plates, set before him; and as it was a
custom for great men to honour those who were in their favour,
by sending such dishes to them as were first served up to them-
selves. Joseph showed that token of respect to his brethren j
but to express a particular value for Benjamin, he sent him five
dishes to their one, which disproportion could not but be mai vel-
217
A. M. a58a A. C. 1872. ©BN. CM. xxNvii.TO THE IND.
sent dishes to every one of his brothers, but to Benjamin
he sent five dishes for each of their one; which was
another mystery they could not unriddle ; however, for
the present, they were very cheerful and merry.
After they had ate and drank very plentifully, they
began to think of taking their leave, and of going about
the affair for which they came: but Joseph had om»
fright more in reserve for them ; and therefore he ...
his steward, when he filled their sacks with coi
return their money, as he bad done before, but into
Benjamin's sack, not only to put his money, but the
silver cup likewise, wherein he himself used to drink,
and after they were gone a little way out of town,
and overtake them, and charge them witli felony.
The steward did as he was commanded : and, v,l,
he came up with Joseph's brethren, upbraided them with
ingratitude, in so badly requiting his lord's civility, as
to steal away his cup. c Conscious of their own inno-
cence, and disdainful of so vile a charge, they put the
matter upon this short issue : — That whoever, upon search
ahould be found to have the cup, should be given up to
suffer death, and themselves become all his lord's bend
slaves. So said, so done : the beasts were unloaded —
the sacks were searched — and to their great astonish-
ment and surprise, the cup was found in Benjamin's.
To no purpose it was for the poor youth to say any
thing in his own defence : upon such a demonstration
none would believe him: and yet, being all concerned
in the disgrace, they loaded their asses again, and in a
mournful manner returned to the city.
Joseph was at home expecting their return, and when
they came before him, reprimanded them very sharply,
while they lay prostrate at his feet, and '' acknowledged
lous and astonishing to them, if what Herodotus tells u- be true,
b. vi. c. 27., namely, " that the distinction in this case, even to
Egyptian kings themselves, in all public feasts and banquet
no more than a double mess." — Patrick's Commentary, and
Bibliotheca Biblica.
c Gen. xliv. 5. ' Whereby indeed he divineth.' Grotillfl
thinks that Joseph meant by this speech, that he used this cup
in his drink-offerings, when he sacrificed to prepare himself t"
receive divine presages; but I think we had better say, than
was a kind of divination by cups, though we know not "hat it
was, as we are certain there was by many other things among
the Greeks, who borrowed much of their religion from tin'
Egyptians. Such vessels as were used in divine service were
not used in their own, being held Bacred, and therefore separated
from common use, and kept so safe, no doubt, that it WSJ i ■ • -t
easy to steal them. He speaks, therefore, of some divination
that was used at their meals, which doth nut dgnifj thai Ji
practised it. But the words are still capable of a more simple
interpretation, for machasM sometimes signifies do mors than u
make an experiment, as in the words of Labsn, Gen. na
and so the meaning may !»■, " Might you not bare considered
that thy master made a trial, by laj ing mi- in your way, whether
you were honest men or filchers." — Patrick'* Commentary em
Genesis,
d Judah, in behalf of himself and his brethreu, naif
well have pleaded in defence, that they received tb
the officer tied up a- they were, without ever once opi ningthem;
and that the same hand which now, for these t"" timi
returned their money, "as the most likely t" have conveyi
cup into them : but sine.' then was a manifest juggle in the
thing, In- was fearful "i Irritating the governor if he should xo
ahoul to detect it; and therefbn In- thought thai the l"
I'm- him and his brethren to escape was to acknow It dge tin' crime,
though th'V' WOW innocent of it, and, a> it they bad 00 ]•
tionol the trick that was pat upon them, to impton hi- pity
and compassion, bj taken from othai topics. — Le
Clerc's ' ommt at. in/.
218
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 227G. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3539. A. C. 1872. GEN. CH. xxxvii TO THE END.
their guilt; but, in the conclusion of his speech, he
assured them, that the person only who was detected in
the theft should remain a slave ; the rest might return
home when they pleased to their father.
Judah,who had taken Benjamin under his care, being
by this time recovered from his surprise, drew near, and
addressed Joseph in the most submissive and pathetic
terms. He acquainted him with the whole case between
them and their father, in relation to their bringing Benja-
min into Egypt, to take away the suspicion of their being-
spies. He described very passionately their father's
melancholy condition for the loss of his son Joseph ; the
extreme fondness he had for his son Benjamin ; the
difficulty they were under to prevail with him to trust
him with them, so that he himself was forced to become
security for his safe return ; and that, if he should go
home without him, his father's life was so wrapt up in
the child, that he would certainly die with grief. Rather
therefore than see this grief of his aged father, and his
grey hairs with sorrow descending to the grave, he
offered himself an equivalent for his brother : ' ' Now,
therefore, I beseech thee, my lord, let me, thy servant,
abide here a slave, instead of the lad, and let him go
up with his brethren ; for how shall I see my father
without him? ' This moving speech, and generous offer,
were what Joseph's soul coidd not withstand ; and there-
fore, being able to contain himself no longer, he
ordered all the company to leave the room, that he
might have a more affectionate freedom in discovering
himself to his brethren.
But no sooner had he told them that he was Joseph
their brother, which was all that his full heart would let
him utter, than, reflecting upon what they had once
done to him, they were all struck with such a surprise
and confusion, that for a long time they could make him
no answer.
As soon, however, as he had recovered himself, he
desired them to draw near unto him : he embraced them
all round with an unfeigned tenderness ; and to dispel
all farther apprehensions, told them, that their selling
him into Egypt was directed by an unforeseen provi-
dence ; that therefore, they had no reason to be angry
with themselves for doing it, since they were no more
than the instruments in God's hand to bring- about what
his eternal purpose had determined ; that he had no
reason to resent it, since by that means he had been
advanced to the honour and dignity of being governor
of all Egypt ; nor his father or any of his family to
murmur at it, since God had appointed this method for
the preservation of their lives. For five years more, he
told them, there were to be of the famine ; and, there-
fore, he bid them hasten into Canaan, and tell his father
of all his glory and greatness, and desire him to come
down, that he might take care of him, and feed him in
this time of dearth, and provide him with a country,
even the land of Goshen, not far distant from him, and
very commodious for such as led a pastoral life. All
this, he owned, would be strange .and surprising for them
to tell ; but their father would hardly doubt the testimony
of so many eye-witnesses ; above all, he would not fail
to believe what his favourite Benjamin told him : and
with that, he threw himself upon Benjamin's neck, kissed
1 Gen. xliv. 33, 34.
him, and wept over him for joy ; and having treated
all the rest in the same kind manner, and as a person
that was perfectly reconciled to them, they began to
take courage, and conversed more familiarly with him.
A rumour, in the mean time, was spread through the
court, that Joseph's brethren were come to buy corn ;
which, when Pharaoh heard, he sent for him, and told
him, that since his father's family was so numerous, and
the famine as yet not half over, his best way would be
to send for them, and place them in what part of the
country he thought fit ; for that they should never want
provisions or any other favour that he could show them.
He put him in mind likewise to send them a fresh supply
of corn, and whatever else he thought would be necessary
in their journey, with chariots and wagons to bring
down their wives and children, and the best of their
moveables.
Joseph gladly obeyed the king's command : and,
besides the chariots and provisions, sent to his father
ten asses, laden with the choicest commodities of Egypt ;
to his brethren he gave each of them changes of gar-
ments, but to Benjamin he gave five, with three hundred
pieces of silver ; and so dismissed them with this kind
charge, that they should not ' fall out by the way.'
With hearts full of joy they proceeded in their journey
to Canaan, and were gladly received by their good old
father, especially upon the return of his two sons,
Simeon and Benjamin, whom he scarce expected to have
seen any more. But when they informed him that his
son Joseph was likewise alive, and in what pomp and
splendour he lived ; that he was the very man, the king's
prime minister and governor of Egypt, who had put
them into so many deadly frights, being" not able to bear
so much good news at once, he fainted away in their
arms : but when he came to himself again, and they
showed him the presents which Joseph had sent, and the
chariots and carriages which were come to take him and
his goods away, his spirits revived, his doubts and his
fears vanished, and in an ecstasy of joy, he cried out,
2 ' It is enough ! Joseph my son is yet alive ; I will go
and see him before I die.'
To see so dear a son, for whom he had mourned so
long-, in all his Egyptian state and glory, was enough to
make him hasten his journey; but as his gratitude to
God for all his late mercies vouchsafed unto him, and
his farther want of the divine protection to accompany
him into Egypt, required some fresh act of religion from
him, he chose to go to Beersheba, and there offer some
sacrifices, both because it was the place where Abraham
and Isaac had lived so long, and because it was in the
way to Egypt, as being the utmost boundary of Canaan
towards'the south.
Here it was that God appeared to him again in a
vision ; bid him a not fear to go down into Egypt, since
* Gen. xlv. 28.
a It is not unlikely, that the good old man had promised him-
self the comfort of spending the remainder of his days in the
land whirhGod had been pleased to promise him; and therefore,
after so much labour of life, and change of place, when he thought
himself at the end of his pilgrimage, and perhaps depended upon
the patriarchal line being put in possession before his death, to
be obliged to leave his land, and to go into a foreign one, was
not a little discouraging, especially if he retained in his mind
the melancholy prediction to his grandfather. Gen. xv 13,
Sect. IV.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. I8G3. GEN. Ul. xxx,,i TO Ti, i
219
he would be with him, and protect him, and in due time
bring his posterity out of it again to enter into the pos-
session of the promised land ; and that, as to his own
particular, he should live near his beloved Joseph, die
in his arms, a and have his eyes closed by his hand.
So that, encouraged by this divine promise, Jacob left
Beersheba, and cheerfully pursued his journey into
Egypt, where, when he arrived, b he and his family
made up in all just c the complement of seventy persons.
As soon as he came within the borders of Egypt, not
far from the land of Goshen, he sent Judah before to
acquaint his son Joseph with his arrival ; who instantly
took his chariot, with a retinue suitable to his high station,
I Know of a surety, that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land
that is not theirs, four hundred years, and shall serve them.' —
Bibiiotheca Biblicu in locum.
a Gen. xlvi. 4. — This appears to have been a veiy ancient
and general custom, as there are evidences of its existence
among the Jews, Greeks, and Romans. Homer describes
Ulysses thus expressing himself on the death of Socus : —
All, wretch! no father shall thy corpse compose,
Thy dying eyes no tender mother close. II. xi. — Pope.
There seems to be something of a reason in nature why
inch a particular regard should be had at death to the eyes, and
that is, because they are in life so eminently serviceable both to
body and mind. We close the eyes of the dead, because no part
of the body looks so ghastly after death, whereas nothing was so
sprightly and beautiful before : and the reason why the nearest
in blood or friendship should have this office is too obvious to
need any explication. — " I entreat that the gods may ordain that
when I am doomed to pay the debt of nature, he may be there
to close my eyes and thine." — Penel. ad Ulyss. de Telcmach.
b The whole account of Jacob's sons and grandsons, who went
along with him into Egypt, stands thus : — By Leah 32; by
Zilpah 1(3; by Rachel 11; by Bilhah 7: in all 66, exclusive of
Jacob himself, and of Joseph, and his two sons, which make up
the 70 : and it was necessary indeed that these genealogies
should be exactly registered, not only to distinguish each tribe,
and thereby discover the Messias when he came, but, as it is in
the case before us, to make it apparent, that the increase of
Israel, even under oppression, should bear a fair proportion to the
promise made to Abraham, namely, ' That his seed should be
even as the stars of heaven, and as the sand upon the sea-shore
for multitude.' — Universal History, and Bibiiotheca Biblica.
c There are three difierent accounts in Scripture of the num-
ber of Jacob's family, when they came down into Egypt. In
Gen. xlvi. 26, it is said, that ' all the souls which came with
Jacob into Egypt, were threescore and six :' in the very next
verse, and in Deut. x. 22, it is said, that ' they were threescore
and ten ;' and yet St Stephen, in Acts vii. 14, tells us expressly
that they were seventy-five. Now, in order to reconcile these
seeming contradictions, we must observe, that in each place
there is a difierent manner of computation. In the first cata-
logue, Moses speaks of those persons only who came out of
Jacob's loins, that is, his children and grandchildren that went
into Egypt with him ; and these exclusive of Jacob himself, and
Joseph and his two sons, who were in Egypt before, were exactly
sixty-six : whereas, including Jacob himself, together with
Joseph and his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who, though
they were in Egypt before, yet living there as strangers only,
and having their original from the land of Canaan, may be
reckoned as if they had come into Egypt with Jacob, the number
is exactly seventy. The difference between Moses and St
Stephen is a little more difficult to reconcile; and yet, if we
suppose that St Stephen follows the fust number of Moses,
namely, sixty-six, out of which he excludes Jacob, Joseph, and
his two sons, and to which he adds only nine of his sons' wives,
for Judah's wife was already dead, and Benjamin is supposed to
be still unmarried, and Joseph's wife out of the case, these nine
wives, I say, which though out of Jacob's blood, yet belonged
to his family, and to Joseph's kindred, which is the very I
prcssion St Stephen makes use of, added to the number ol
sixty-six other persons, will amount exactly to seventy-five, —
Patrick's Commentary, Universal and IIozvcll's Histories.
and with infinite satisfaction, congratulated his arriv;il
at a place where he had it in big power to make hie life
happy and comfortable. What the expressions of filial
duty, and paternal affection were upon Una occasion,
words cannot describe : tears of joy Sowed from both
sides; and while the son was contemplating the good-
ness of God, in bringing him to the eight of his aged
father, the father, on the other hand, thought all hie
happiness upon earth completed in this interview : and
therefore, > ' Now let ine die,' says he to his son,
I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.'
As soon as these tender greetings, and the solemn
rejoicings which followed upon them, were over, Joseph
proposed to his father and brethren, to go and acquaint
Pharaoh with their arrival : and as he supposed that the
king would have a curiosity to see sonic of them, he
gave them in charge, that in case he should ask them
what occupation they were of, their answer should be,
that they were shepherds, as their ancestors, for many
generations, had been before them ; by which means he
might d secure for them the land of Goshen, which would
be a separate habitation, and a happy retreat from the
insults of the Egyptians, who were known « to have an
utter detestation to shepherds.
1 Gen. xlvi. 30.
d By the general consent of ancient geographers, the land of
Goshen is situate in the eastern part of Egypt, between the Red
Sea and the river Nile, upon the borders of Canaan. It was a
fruitful spot of ground, very fit for pasturage; and therefore
Josephus tells us that Pharaoh's own cattle were kept there, and
accordingly we find him ordering Joseph to make one of bis
brothers the inspector-general over them. The country was
separate from Egypt: and for this reason the Israelites inhabiting
it, might keep themselves in a body, without endangering
religion or manners, by intermixing with the Egyptians, and
without incurring their envy or odium, as they would lia\ i
had they lived among them, and shared any power or pn lit
in the government. They came down into Egypt upon a parti-
cular exigency, and were to return again to take possesion of
the promised land; and therefore a country, that lay in a manner
contiguous to it, was the most convenient for their abode, that
they might be in readiness to remove whenever God should order
them to leave it, which they would not have found n
thing to do, had they been settled in the heart of Egypt. — PooU't
Annotations.
e The country of Egypt, as Diodorus tells us, b. 1., was div Ided
into three parts, whereof the priests had one, the kin^ a n cond,
and the soldiery a third; but under these there were three other
ranks of men, shepherds, husbandmi u, and artificers. The bu--
bandmen served the king, and the oil, or two orders, in tilling the
ground for very small wages, and so did the shepherds, In their
capacities; for the Egyptians, we must remember, bad shi i
oxen, as well as horses and asses, which they sold unto Joseph, in
the time of the famine. It cannot bethought, therefore, that they
abominated all shepherds in general, but only Mich sh.pl,.
were foreigners, and for what reason it was that they did this, is
not so easy a matter to resolve. Some are of opinion, thai
herds were held in detestation, because they were a people in
those days addicted to robberj . which made them very od
the Egyptians; but others Imagine, that theft among the I
tianswas not reputed so abominable a crime; and tl
think, that the i probable rea for I bis aversion toshe|
and to the Hebrews, as men, was the great oppression and ! .
under which they bad lately -roan, d, when the Pho
herds penetrated Egypt, wasted their cities, burnt their )• i
murdered the inhabitants, and seated themselves foi a considi
while in the possession of it. (See nob
whatever account ll was, thai the Egypt '"" to
shepherds, it certainly was an Instance of Josi
and love of truth, that be was not ashamed ■ pment,
so mean in it--
minded to make the most of the matter, be might have
220
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 18G3. GEN. CH. xxxvii.TO THE END.
With this caution he took five of his brothers along
with him; and having informed Pharaoh that his father
and family were come as far as Goshen, he presented
his brothers to the king, who for his sake received them
very graciously ; and when he asked them what profession
they were of, they told him that they were shepherds, as
their family for many generations had been ; that want
of pasture for their cattle, and of sustenance for them-
selves, had made them leave Canaan ; but that since, as
they understood, his majesty had been so hospitable, as
to give them reception in his dominions, they humbly
prayed, that they might be allowed to settle in Goshen,
as a country most convenient for their purpose : which
he readily granted, and offered moreover to make any
one of them, whom Joseph should appoint, his royal
shepherd.
Not long after this, Joseph, in like manner, presented
his father to Pharaoh, who seeing him look very hale and
hearty, and desiring to know of what age he might be,
was informed by Jacob, that he was a an hundred and
thirty ; which, when the king seemed to wonder at, he
told him moreover, that his life was not as yet, near so
long as that of some of his ancestors, because his fate
had been to have too large a share of troubles and
fatigues to harass and wear him out ; and so, Avishing his
majesty abundance of health and prosperity, he returned
to Goshen, where Joseph took care to supply him, and
all his family, Avith such a plentiful provision of corn,
and other necessaries, from the king's storehouses, as in
the time of the greatest scarceness made him insensible
of any want.
But Avhile Jacob .and his family lived in plenty, the
Egyptians found the sad effects of the famine, Avhich
increased daily upon them, and Joseph holding up his
corn at a high rate, in a short time brought all their
money into the king's coffers ; and Avhen their money
Avas gone, they Avere all, except the priests, avIio Avere
furnished from the king's stores, obliged to part Avith
instructed his brothers to have concealed their way or business
of life ; or if he was aware that they would follow the same in
Egypt that they had done in Canaan, he might nevertheless have
put into their mouths the high dignity of their descent, and the
wonderful history of their family, namely, that Abraham Avas
their great-grandfather, a prince renowned for his defeat of four
confederate monarchs ; that Isaac was their grandfather, whose
amity and alliance had been courted by kings ; and that Israel
was their father, Avho once gained a victory even over a mighty
prince of the celestial host ; all great men in their generations,
and dignified with the conversation of God himself. This, and
a great deal more, had Joseph been minded to serve the purposes
of vanity, he might have suggested to his brethren ; but by this
open declaration, we may perceive, that his pleasure and ambi-
tion was, that the wonderful chain of the divine measures and
counsels, in bringing him from an humble condition of life, to
such a sublimity of power and figure, might be as conspicuous
as possible. — Poole's Annotations, Patrick's Commentary, and
Bibliotheca Biblica in locum.
a Pharaoh's question to Jacob, and Jacob's ansAver, we may
suppose, Avere not all the discourse that passed between them,
but only what most deserved to be mentioned ; because as the
learned Pererius observes this answer of Jacob's is the very
hinge upon Avhich the Avhole chronology of the patriarchal times
turns. The same excellent commentator remarks, that though
Jacob lived seventeen years after this, yet, even at last, he did not
attain ' to the days of the years of the life of his father,' since his
father Isaac lived an hundred and fourscore years, and his grand-
father Abraham to an hundred and seventy-five. — Bibliotheca
Biblica.
their cattle, their houses, their lands, and b at length,
their very selves, for provisions. All these Joseph pur-
chased of the people in the king's name, and for the
king's use ; and to let them see that the purchase Avas in
earnest, and that their liberties and properties Avere now
become the king's, he transplanted them from their former
places of abode, into distant and different parts of the
kingdom, that they might in time lose the very remem-
brance of their ancient possessions. c
This, in another person, might have been thought an
immoderate zeal for an absolute poAver in the king, and
an advantage unjustly taken of the necessities of the
subject ; but Joseph so managed the matter as to gain
the commendation of both prince and people ; for Avhen
the seventh and last year of famine Avas come, he
acquainted them that they might noAV expect a crop
against next year ; that the Nile Avould overfloAV, and
the earth Avould bring forth her fruits as usual. Here-
upon he distributed fresh lands, cattle and corn to them,
that they might return to their tillage as before ; but upon
this condition he did it, that from thenceforth the fifth
part of all the product of their lands should go to the
king, and the rest be theirs. To these conditions the
people willingly consented, as imputing the preservation
of their lives entirely to Joseph's care ; and from that
time it passed into a laAv, that the fifth part of the pro-
duct of the land of Egypt should always belong to the
crown.
While Joseph was enjoying the fruits of his great
success and policy, his family at Goshen, Avhichhe failed
not frequently to visit, became very Avealthy, and very
numerous, till at length his father Jacob, finding himself
groAV old and feeble, and perceiving that his latter end
Avas near approaching, sent for him, and to this purpose
addressed himself to him : " Though the desire of see-
ing a son, so dear to me as you are, raised to the height
of Egyptian glory, joined to the raging famine Avhich
then visited our land, made me Avillingly come doAvn into
this strange conntry ; yet Canaan being the inheritance
Avhich God promised to Abraham and his posterity, and
Avhere he lies interred with my father Isaac, and some
others of our family, in the ground which he purchased
of the inhabitants for that purpose ; my last, and dying
request to you is, d that you Avill not suffer me to be
b When the Egyptians were driven to this last extremity, in
our translation it is said to be in the ' second year;' but this must
not be understood to be the second year of the seven years of
famine, but the second after that last mentioned, Avherein they
had sold their cattle, Avhich Avas in reality the last year of the
famine ; because he noAV gave them corn for seed, as Avell as for
food ; whereas in the first years, there was neither sowing nor
reaping. Gen. xlv. 6. — Poole's Annotations.
c See note on this subject in the following chapter. — Ed.
d Though there be something of a natural desire in most men
to be buried in the places where their ancestors lie ; yet Jacob's
aversion to have his remains deposited in Egypt seems to be
more earnest than ordinary, or otherwise he would never have
imposed an oath upon his sons, and charged them all Avith his
dying breath, not to suffer it to be done. For he very Avell
knew, that had his body been buried in Egypt, his posterity,
upon that very account, would have been too much Avedded to
the country, ever to attempt the acquisition of the promised
land ; and therefore, to wean them from the thoughts of continu-
ing in Egypt, and fix their minds and affections in Canaan, he
ordered his body to be carried thither beforehand, in testimony
that he died in full persuasion of the truth of the promises Avhivli
were given to him and his ancestors: nor Avas it inconvenient,
Sect. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
221
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
burled here, but swear to see me carried to Machpelah,
and there deposited with my ancestors. Your great
power with the king will easily obtain that favour, which
is the last I have to ask/' Joseph was not long before
he gave his father a satisfactory answer. He promised,
and he swore to him, that he would fulfil his desire,
which pleased the good old man to that degree, that "
he bowed, and made his acknowledgment for this kind
assurance.
Joseph, who could not be long absent from court, took
his leave of his father, but not without giving strict
charge to some of the family, that upon the very first
appearance of danger, they should immediately send for
him. Accordingly, as soon as word was brought him,
that his father was a dying, he took his two sons, Ma-
nasseh and Ephraim with him, and went to visit him ;
who when he heard that his favourite son was come, sum-
moned all his spirits together, and was so far revived
as to be able to sit up in his bed.
Here he began with recapitulating all the glorious
promises which God had formerly made him, concerning
his numerous posterity's inhabiting the land of Canaan,
and concluded b with the death of his dear Rachel.
that future generations, after their return to Canaan, should have
before their eyes the sepulchre of their forefathers, for a record of
their virtues, and an incitement to the imitation of them. But
the strongest motive of all for Jacob's desiring to be buried in
Canaan, supposing that he foreknew that our Saviour Christ
was to live and die, and with some others, rise again in that
couutry, was, that he might be one of that blessed number; as it
was indeed an ancient tradition in the church, that among those
4 who came out of their graves after our Lord's resurrection,'
Matth. xxvii. 53, the patriarch Jacob was one. — Poole s Anno-
tations, and Hibliotheca Biblica.
a The words in our translation are, ' he bowed himself upon the
bed's head,' (Gen. xlvii. 31,) where some expositors, presuming,
that his bowing was a religious action, will by no means have it
directed to Joseph, but to God only, for the assurance which Jo-
seph had given him, that he should be buried according to his
desire. But if the word must be translated ' bowed,' there is no
necessity to make it an act of adoration, but only a common form
of civility, wherewith the father might comply, without any dimi-
nution to his superiority over his son. What led these expositors
into this conception, was the version of the Septuagint, and the
Words of the apostle to the Hebrews, where Jacob is said, in al-
lusion, as they suppose, to this passage, to have ' worshipped on
the top of his star]',' Heb. xi. 21. But the plain truth is, that the
■jostle here speaks of another thing, not of what Jacob did now,
when Joseph swore unto him, but of what he did when he blessed
his other children. In the former case, he seems to have kept
08 bed ; but in the latter, to have received fresh spirits, and sat
uii'ii it, though leaning perhaps 'upon his staff.' So that the
apostle's words are not taken from those of Moses, but are a reflec-
tion of his own, whereby he signifies the strength of Jacob's faith,
< ■ vi'ii when he was so weak as not to be able to bow himself and
worship, without the help of his staff. This clearly removes the
difficulty, and reconciles Moses and the apostle very perfectly.
But there seems to be a more compendious way of doing this; lor
since the word Shacah, which signifies to bow the body, may, in
like manner, be rendered to lie or fall down, the most easy
translation seems to be, he laid himself down upon his pillow, B£
weak men are wont to do, after they have sat up a while, to des-
patch some business. — Patrick's and Le Gere's Commentary.
b Since Jacob had so strictly insisted upon his being buried
with his fathers, and bound Joseph with an oath to see if done, it
was proper for him to explain and clear himself, as to what might
he Becretly objected to his not interring Rachel, Joseph's own
mother, and Ins best beloved consort, in that burying-place, where
he so earnestly desired to lie himself; ami for his excuse in this
respect he had two things to offer: 1st, That he was then upon
his journey, and in his return from Padan ; and, 2dly, That he had
erected a monumeutal pillar upon her grave, in a very public
A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GliN. CU. xxxvii. TO TIM- IINR
" How tenderly I loved her," continued lie, " all my
family can testify ; but this farther proof I design tfl gW«
you of my affection to her. You have two BOM horn
in a foreign country, and who, according to the BBU*]
order of inheritance, should have onli the portion of
grandchildren, in the division of the promised laud: hut
from this day forward, they shall be .ailed b] my name,
be esteemed my sons, and as heads of two distinct
(for they shall not be called the tribe of Joseph, but the
tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh) receive a double por-
tion in that allotment. But it must not be so with the
other sons which you beget after these : they come in
only for the portion of grandchildren: and to yon in
particular, I bequeath that tract of ground, which, by
force of arms, I took from the Amorites, that it may
descend to your tribe for ever."
All this while Jacob, whose sight was very much de-
cayed, talked to his son concerning his children. U if
they had been absent ; but when he perceived that they
were in the room, he rejoiced not a little, and ordered
them to be brought near him. Joseph placed them in a
position according to the order of their age, to receive
his father s blessing ; but Jacob, crossing his bands, laid
his right, which carried with it the preference, upon the
younger, and his left upon the elder of them ; ' which
and frequented place; to which a right reverend commenta-
tor has added a further apology, — That, as she died in childbed,
and Jacob in his travels might not have all things neces-ary to
preserve her body long, he was constrained to bury her sooner
perhaps than otherwise he would have done. — Patrick's Commen-
tary, and Bibliothecu BiLlica in locum.
c Gen. xlviii. 14. 'And Israel stretched out his right hand,
and laid it upon Ephraim's head.' Imposition of hands »a~ a
Jewish ceremony, introduced, not by any divine authority, but
by custom: it being the practice among these people, whenever
they prayed to God for any person, to lay their hand on his head.
Our Saviour observed the same custom, both when he conferred
his blessing on children, and when he healed the sick, adding
prayer to the ceremony. The apostles likewise laid hands open
those upon whom they bestowed the Holy Ghost. The priests
observed the same custom when anyone was received into their
body. And the apostles themselves underwent the impoaitii n of
hands afresh every time they entered upon any new design. In
the ancient church imposition of hands was even practised n] i n
persons when they married, which custom the Abyssinians still
observe. The ceremony of the imposition of bands en the bead of
the victim, has been usually considered, in the case of 1
sacrifices, as a symbolical translation of the mo- of the ofli ndl i
iilion the head of the sacrifice; and as a mode ofde] recal
evil das to his transgressions. So we find it represented by
Abarbinel, in the introduction to his commentarj on Lt videos,
{Dc /7c/, p. 301,) and so the ceremony of the scape-goat, in
Levit. xvi. 21, seems directly to assert. And it is certain that
the practice of imprecating on the bead of the victim, the I I
which the Bacrificer wished to avert from himself, was usual
amongst the heathen, as appears particular!} from Herodotus,
(h. ii. c. 89.) "I"1 relates this of the Bgyi tians, ami at the nine
time asserts thai no Egyptian would so mm I, as tests the I
any animal, hut under the inllmr.oe of this religious custom,
Hung it into the river. (' ssdon of Bin WBS alwaj I'd
with piacular sacrifices. (Levit v. 5.; svi. SI.; Numl
The particular forms of confession u-« d in the different I
piacular sacrifices are handed down to us by the Jewish «"'• ' -•
and an, given by Outram, (Ds&er.b. I.e. 16, 10, 11
,-,„.,„ prescribed for the individual presenting his uwn n<
seems particularly significant "OGod, 1 nave sinned, I
done perversely, 1 have trespassed before thee, and I
and so. I..', no" 1 repent, and r.m trulysoiT) !• i I
Lei then this victim be my t xplation." These last *»ords wi re
accompanied by the action of laying hands onthevictin
were considered by the Jews as equivalent to this, " Let the ei
which injustice should have fallen on my bead, light ep* the
222
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 227G. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
Joseph supposing to proceed from a mistake, he was go-
ing to rectify, but was told by his father, that what he did
was by divine direction, and so made Ephraim not only
the first in nomination, but gave him a blessing much
more extensive than what he gave his brother.
By this time Jacob, finding himself grow faint, and
the hour of his departure near approaching, called the
rest of his sons together, to take his farewell of them,
and distribute his blessing, or rather to foretell what
should befall them and their posterity in future ages :
and so directing his speech to them severally, he began
with Reuben the eldest, and told him, — That for the
crime of incest, in polluting his father's bed, he and
his tribe were degraded a from the privileges of his
birthright. He told Simeon and Levi, whom he joined
together upon this occasion, that for their impious
massacre of Hamor and his people, * their tribes should
for ever be separated and dispersed among the other ; but
then turning to Judah, he prophesied of him, that to
his tribe should the sovereignty belong, c and they be r!
situated in a very fruitful country ; that from his name
head of this victim." — See Outram De Sacr. b. 1. c. 22. 5, 6, 9.
Jlagee on Atonement and Sacrifice, vol. 1. p. 341.
a The prerogatives of the birthright consisted chiefly in the
honour of the priesthood, in the rule and government of the family,
and in a double portion of the inheritance, which at this time
were all taken away from Reuben, and divided severally ; since
it appears, in the sequel of the history, that the tribe of Reuben
continued all along in obscurity, while the priesthood was conferred
on Levi, the government on Judah, and the double portion on
Joseph, to descend to their respective tribes. — Howell's History
of the Bible.
b Jacob's words, in this place, may imply a double dispersion,
namely, of the two tribes from each other: and of their being
interspersed among the rest: and accordingly that of Levi had no
inheritance among his brethren in the land of Canaan, but only
a certain number of cities assigned to them in every tribe. And
as for that of Simeon, they had properly no more than a portion
of Judah's inheritance, (Josh. xix. 1.) if we except some few
places which they got upon mount Seir, and in the wilds of the
valley of Gedor, 1 Chron. vi. 39, &c. — Universal History,
b. 1. c. 7.
c Gen. xlix. 8. ' Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine ene-
mies.' This expression denotes triumph over an enemy, and
that Judah should subdue his adversaries. This was fulfilled in
the person of David, and acknowledged by him. ' Thou hast
also given me the necks of mine enemies, that I might destroy
them that hate me,' Ps. xviii. 40. Treading on the neck of a
vanquished foe has been a very common practice. Amongst the
Fianks it was usual to put the arm round the neck as a mark of
superiority on the part of him that did it. When Chrodin, de-
clining the office of mayor of the palace, chose a young nobleman,
named Gogen, to fill that place, he immediately took the arm of
that young man, and put it round his own neck, as a mark of his
dependance on him, and that he acknowledged him for his gene-
ral and chief. " When a debtor became insolvent, he gave him-
self up to his creditor as his slave, till he had paid all his debt:
and to confirm his engagement, he tock the arm of his patron,
and put it round his own neck. This ceremony invested as it
were, his creditor in his person." — Stockdale's Manners of the
Ancient Nations, vol. 1. p. 356. See Gen. xxvii. 40. Deut.
xxviii. 4S. Isa. x. 27. Jer. xxvii. S. Josh. x. 24. Lam. v. 5.
d The country which the tribe of Judah was to inhabit is
thus described by Jacob: ' Binding his foal unto the vine, and his
a=s unto the choice vine ; he washed his garments in wine, and his
clothes in the blood of grapes,' (Gen. xlix. 11,) which are expres-
sions somewhat hyperbolical : for they imply, that vines in this
country should be as common as thorns in other places ; and wine
as plentiful as water; but were, in a great measure, answered
in that fertile land which fell to the tribe of Judah's share. For
here was the valley of Escol, a bunch of whose grapes was
brought by the spies as a specimen of the fruitfulness of the land,
Numb. xiii. 23. Here was a brook or torrent of the same name,
should the whole nation of the Jews derive their appel-
lation ; and that the form of government which he then
instituted, should endure among them until the Messiah
came. e Of Zebulun / he foretold that his tribe should
be planted near the sea-coasts ; and of s Issachar, that
his should prove a pusillanimous people, and be lovers
of inglorious ease, more than of liberty and renown.
From Leah's sons the patriarch passes to those of his
two concubinary wives ; and h of Dan's posterity he
foretells, that though they were descended from an hand-
maid, yet they should have the same privileges with the
other tribes, should become a politic people, and greatly
versed in the stratagems of war ; of i Gad's, that they
should be frequently infested with robbers, but overcome
them at last ; of Asher's, that they should be situated in
a fruitful and exuberantly rich soil ; and * of Naphtali's,
that they should spread their branches like an oak, and
multiply exceedingly.
along whose banks were the most delicious pasture-grounds for
cattle ; and, as modem travellers tell us, here are very large
grapes still to be met with, especially in the valley of Hebron,
which in all probability is that through which this torrent
runs. — Poole's Annotations, Bibliotheca Biblica, and Universal
History, b. 1. c. 7.
e Gen. xlix. 10. 'The sceptre shall not depart from Judah.'
Sceptres, or staves of some kind or other, have been among almost
all nations the ensigns of civil authority, as they are to this day,
being in themselves very proper emblems of power extended, or
acting at a distance from the person. Achilles, who was the
chief of a Grecian tribe or clan, is described in Homer as holding
a sceptre or stan", which
The delegates of Jove, dispensing laws,
Bear in their hands.
This remarkable prophecy fixes the date of the Saviour's
coming, which was not to exceed the time that the descendants
of Judah were to continue an united people, — that a king should
rule over them — that they should be governed by their own laws,
and that their judges were to be from among their brethren. — Ed.
f Had Jacob been present at the division of the land of Canaan
he could hardly have given a more exact description of Zebulun's
lot than we find him doing two hundred and fifty years before it
happened. For it extended from the Mediterranean sea on the
west, to the lake of Genezareth on the east, and lay therefore
very commodiously for trade and navigation. The foretelling so
precisely and distinctly the situation and employment of this
tribe, though, at first appearance, it may seem a matter of no
great moment, yet will be found to be quite otherwise, when it
is considered, that such particularities as these could not but be
\ery convincing to the Israelites that it was not chance, nor
power, nor policy, that put them in possession of the land of
Canaan, but ' God's right hand and his arm, and the light of his
countenance, because he had a favour unto them.'
g No less remarkable is the description of Issachar's tribe,
since, though they were a very laborious people in all rural em-
ployments, yet they had no great inclination to war; and were
therefore frequently infested and subjected by strangers, especially
in the time of the judges.
h The Jews think, that the prophecy of Dan's destroying his
enemies by craft was more particularly fulfilled when Sampson,
who was of that tribe, pulled dc^vn the temple, which crushed
himself and the Philistines to death.
i Gad's lot happened on the other side of Jordan, where they
were continually exposed to the incursions of the bordering
Arabs; but, by their watchfulness and bravery, they not only
prevented them, but several times caught, and plundered them
in their turns, insomuch that, in one battle, they took from them
fifty thousand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep,
besides an hundred thousand men prisoners. — Deut. xxxiii.
22., &c.
k The words in our translation, ' Naphtali is a hind let loose,
he giveth goodly words,' are very obscure, and scarce intelligible.
For though the former part of the prediction is commonly applied
to Barak's overcoming Sisera, and the latter to that noble canticle
Sect. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES' &-<
223
A. M. 227C. A. C. 1728 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
Jacob had reserved the sons of his beloved Rachel
to the last ; and therefore turning to a Joseph at the
same time that he recollects his past troubles, and sets
forth the future gTeatness of his tribe, he pours down
upon him, and in him, upon his posterity, benedictions of
all kinds. " The Lord, even the God of thy father,"
says he, " shall bless thee ' with the dew of heaven,'
and with the ' fatness of the earth,' with the ' fruit of the
womb,' that is, with a numerous posterity, and with the
' fruit of the breast,' with plenty of all sorts of cattle.
May all the blessings promised to me and my forefathers
be doubled upon Joseph's royal head ; may they out-top
and outstretch the everlasting- mountains, and prove to
him more fruitful and more lasting than they."
Whether Jacob might foresee no merit nor happiness
extraordinary in the tribe of Benjamin, or that its being
afterwards blended with the tribe of Judah might make
it partake of the same blessing ; but so it was, that he
contented himself with describing its J fierce and war-
like disposition, which, like a ravenous ' wolf, would
shed the blood of its enemies, and in the evening divide
their spoil.'
Thus the good old patriarch having given his e bless-
which Deborah made upon that occasion; yet the exposition
which the learned Bochart gives us of this passage, ' He shall be
like a tree that shooteth out pleasant branches,' is both more
agreeable to the original, and more answerable to the event;
*ince no tribe multiplied so wonderfully as this of Naphtali, who
had but four sons when he came into Egypt, and yet could
muster upwards of fifty-three thousand men fit to bear arms,
when he came out of it, that is, in less than 220 years. — Essay
towards a Neto Translation.
a In the benediction which Jacob gives his favourite Joseph,
there are two remarkable titles which he confers upon him. 1st,
' That he was the shepherd, and the stone of Israel/ which seems
to be a thankful recognition of Joseph's kindness to his father
and family, in keeping and feeding them, even as a shepherd
does his sheep ; by which means he became the foundation or
basis, as it were, of the house of Jacob, by preserving them from
perishing by famine, and continuing them settled in the best part
of the Egyptian kingdom, for a considerable time: though some
refer it rather to his virtuous resisting the temptations of his
mistress, and patiently enduring the master's severity, to both
of which he remained as immoveable as a stone. 2d, The other
title is, that he was ' separate from his brethren :' where, though the
word nazir signifies to separate, as Joseph was certainly separated
from his brethren, when he was sold into Egypt, yet, as it is
hardiy snpposable, that Jacob would couch so cruel an action in
so soft a term, it is rather to be thought that he used the word
nazir, which signifies crowned, in allusion to the superintendents
of the king's household in all the eastern countries, who were
called nazirs, and wore probably some kind of diadem about
their heads, by way of distinction and grandeur. And as for
the fruitfulness promised to Joseph, this was exemplified in the
Jargc extent of his twofold tribe, Ephraim and Manasseh, which,
at their first numbering, yielded seventy-two thousand seven
hundred, Num. i., and at their second, eighty-five thousand and
two hundred men, all able to go out to war. Num. xxvi.
b How brave and warlike a body of men, and how veiy expert
in feats of arms, this tribe became, we may conceive from what
we are told of them, namely, that ' there were seven hundred
chosen men among them, left-handed, every one of whom could
sling stones at an hair's breadth, and not miss.' (Judges xx. lfi.)
And how pertinacious they were in their undertakings of this
kind is manifest, both from the fierce battles which they fought
against all the other tribes, though in a very bad cause, (Judges,
xix.) wherein they twice came off conquerors; and from the long
opposition which the house of Saul, descended from this tribe,
made against the accession of David to the throne, and which
could not be suppressed until Abner, the general of their forces,
forsook them. Judges and 1 Sam. passim.
c Besides these prophecies of Jacob, which were sufficiently
A. M. 3518. A. C. 18C3. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE ESI),
ing to his children, according to the divine direction
and not according to his own inclination, reminded (I,,,,,
all, but Joseph more especially, to bury hi,,, among
Ins ancestors, d in the cave of Machpelah; and bo lav ml
himself down in his bed again, in a ehorl time expired
after he had lived 147 years in all, and seventeen of
these in Egypt.
The loss of so good a father was doubtless lamented
by all his family, but by none with more sincere <••
sions of filial sorrow than by Joseph. At ]•
remembering his dying charge, he ordered his phygi!
cians, « according to the custom of the count
verified by their events, the Jews ascribe some other works
to him, namely, a treatise entitled The Ladder to H
and another called Jacob's Testament, which Pope Gelasius
reckons among the Apocrypha; together with some fo]
prayer, which tue Jews u-h: ev^-y night, and pretend thai they
were composed by him. As to the commendations which they
so plentifully bestow upon this patriarch, these, in a great
measure, are justified by the character which the author i
clesiasticus gives him, chap. xliv. 23. And as the Mahometans
allow him not only to be a prophet, but the father likl n
all the prophets, except Job, Jethro, and Mahomet; -
believe, that the royal dignity did not depart from hi- posterity,
until the times of John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ; and that
from him the twelve tribes of the Jews did spring, even as th, ir
own twelve did from Ishmael — Calmefs Dictionary, urn!
word Jacob.
d Gen. xlix. 29. ' And he charged them, and said unto them,
I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my lathers.'
Princes and persons of quality, who died in foreign parts, frere
usually carried into their own country, to be buried with their
fathers. That this was practised in the patriarchal times,
appears from the injunction which Jacob laid upon his children
respecting his interment. It was also the custom of the < I
Homer represents Juno as thus speaking concerning Sai-pedon :
Give the bold chief a glorious fate in fight ;
And when th' ascending- soul has winsfd her Bight;
Let sleep and death convey, by thy i-oramai.d.
The breathless body to his native land.
For this reason, such as died in foreign countries had usually
their ashes brought home, and interred in the sepulchre- of their
ancestors, or at least in some part of their native country; it
being thought that the same mother which gave them U
birth was only fit to receive their remains, and aflbrd then, a
peaceful habitation after death. Hence ancient authors afford
us innumerable instances of bodies conveyed, sometimes
command of oracles, sometimes by the good-will of their i.
from foreign countries to the sepulchres of their lathers, and with
great solemnity deposited there. Thus Theseus was removed
from Scyrus to Athens, Orestes from Tegea, ami his MO 1
menes from Helice to Sparta, and Aristomenes from Rle i
Messene. — Ed.
e Gen. 1. 2. ' And Joseph commanded his servant-, the physi-
cians, to embalm his father.' Concerning thi | bysjc
in Egypt, Herodotus says that it was di\ ided amongst the faculty
in this manner — "Every distinct distemper hath it- own physi-
cian, who confines himself to the study and care of that
and meddles witli no other: so that all places are crowded with
physicians; for one class hath the cure of the eyes, another of
the head, another of the tieth. another of the region of the bellj .
and another of occult distempers,'1 (b. t. c, M. After I
shall not think it strange that Joseph's physicians are rej n
as a number. ,\ body of these domestics would now appi
extravagant piece of state, even in a tir-t minister. But then it
could not be otherwise, where each distemper bad it- ■■
physician; so that every great family, as weD as city, must
needs, as Herodotus expn ass it, swarm with the faculty. I
is a remarkable passage in Jeremiah (chap. xlvi. 11.), where,
foretelling the overthrow of Pharaoh's army at the Bupl
he desci ibes Bgypi by this characteristic of her -kill in m> i
' Go up into Gilead, and take balm,' (or b ,)«Ovir|
daughter of Egypt ; in Tain shalt thou use many n
thou saalt not be cured.' — fFarburton't I I ■ b. 4.
b ■. 3.
221
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 227G. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
" embalm his father's body, and all preparations for his
funeral to be made. For the space of seventy days they
continued their mourning for him ; in which time it being-
improper for Joseph to appear at court, he desired some
of the officers about the king-, to acquaint his majesty,
that his father, before his death, had obliged him, upon
oath, to bury him in a sepulchre belonging to their family,
in the land of Canaan ; and that therefore he begged
leave to go and fulfil his last commands, and would,
without delay, return again. * The king readily con-
sented to his request, and ordered moreover the chief
officers of his household, and some of the principal nobi-
lity of the kingdom, to attend the funeral, who, joined
with his own and his father's whole family, some in
chariots, and some on horseback, made c a very large
and pompous procession.
a The manner of embalming among the Egyptians according
to Herodotus, Diodorus, and others, was as follows. When a
man died, his body was carried to the artificers, whose business
it was to make coffins. The upper part of the coffin represented
the person who was to be put in it, whether man or woman ;
and, if a person of distinction, was generally adorned with such
paintings and embellishments as were suitable to its quality.
When the body was brought home again, they agreed with the
embalmers; but according to the quality of the person, the prices
were different. The highest was a talent, that is, about three
hundred pounds sterling: twenty mince was a moderate one;
and the lowest a very small matter. As the body lay extended,
one of them, whom they called the designer, marked out the
place on the left side where it was to be opened, and then a dis-
sector, with a very sharp Egyptian stone, made the incision,
through which they drew all the intestines, except the heart and
kidneys, and then washed them with palm wine, and other strong
and binding drugs. The brains they drew through the nostrils,
with an hooked piece of iron, made particularly for that purpose,
and filled the skull with astringent drugs. The whole body they
anointed with oil of cedar, with myrrh, cinnamon, and other
drugs, for about thirty days; by which means it was preserved
entire, without so much as losing its hair, and sweet, without
any signs of putrefaction. After this it was put into salt about
forty days ; and therefore when Moses says, that forty days were
employed in embalming Jacob, (Gen. 1. 3.) he must mean the
forty days of his continuing in the salt of nitre, without including
the thirty days that were spent in the other operations above
mentioned ; so that, in the whole, they mourned seventy days in
Egypt, as Moses likewise observes. Last of all, the body was taker,
out of this salt, washed, and wrapped up in linen swaddling bands
dipped in myrrh, and rubbed with a certain gum, which the
Egyptians used instead of glue, and so returned to the relations,
who put it into the coffin, and kept it in some repository in their
houses, or in tombs, made particularly for that purpose. — Calmet's
Dictionary, under the word Embalm, and ff^arburton's Divine
Legation, vol. 2. b. 3.
b It was against rule for any person, how great soever, in
mourning apparel, to appear in public, and especially in the royal
presence, because in that state they were looked upon as defiled ;
and therefore Joseph does not go himself, but desires some of the
courtiers to carry his request to the king; and this request he
ivas the rather bound to make, because the retinue and guard
which the pomp of the funeral, and the danger of molestation
from enemies, made necessary, could not be obtained without
the king's leave. — Musculus.
c The splendour and magnificence of our patriarch's funeral
seems to be without a parallel in history. What hitherto has
most affected me in the comparison, were indeed the noble obse-
quies of Marcellus, as Virgil has described them, but how do
even these, with all their parade of poetry about them, fall short
of the plain and simple narrative before us? For what are the
six hundred beds for which the Roman solemnities on this occa-
sion were so famous, in comparison of that national itinerant
multitude, which swelled like a flood, and moved like a river, to
all Pharaoh's servants, to the elders of his house, and all the elders
of the land of Egypt, that is, to the officers of his household, and
deputies oi his provinces, with all the house of Joseph, and his
As soon as they were entered into the land of Canaan,
they made an halt at d the thrashing-floor of Atad, and
there continued mourning, and lamenting the death of
their friend and father seven days ; which made the
Canaanites, perceiving that the company came from
Egypt, call the place Abel-mizraim, or the mourning of
the Egyptians, ever after. They thence continued their
march till they came to the field of Machpelah, where e
they deposited Jacob in the cave with his ancestors, and
so returned to Egypt again.
As soon as their father was buried, Joseph's brethren
began to reflect on the wrongs they had formerly done
him, and were not a little apprehensive, that as ho
certainly had it in his power, he might now have it in
his intention, to avenge himself of them : and therefore
they consulted together, and framed this message, —
That it was his father's earnest request, that he should
forget all past injuries, and continue them under his
protection, as formerly. This, when Joseph heard, such
was his compassionate temper, that he could not refrain
from weeping ; and therefore, to remove their fears, he
sent immediately for them, and receiving them with the
same kind affection as when their father was alive, excused
the actions committed against him, in such an obliging
manner, and gave them such assurances of his future
love, and adherence to them upon all occasions, as made
them return to their families full of joy and satisfaction.
/ The sacred history gives us no further account of
brethren, and his father's house, conducting their solemn sorrow
for near three hundred miles into a distant country. — Bibliotheca
Biblica, Occasional Annotations, 46.
d The words in the text are, — ' And they came to the thrash-
ing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan,' Gen. 1. 10. Where
this place was, we cannot determine from any account in Scrip-
ture ; but it is very probable, that it lay not far from the place
where Jacob was buried, and so not far from Hebron. For since
it is absurd to suppose, that the corpse of Jacob was carried to
the cave of Machpelah such a round about way as the Israelites
went afterwards into the land of Canaan, namely, through Arabia
Petraea, quite on the eastern side of Jordan, it remains to suppose,
that these places are said to be beyond Jordan, not in respect of
Egypt, from whence Jacob's corpse was brought, but in respect
of the place where Moses was, when he wrote the history, that
is, in a country on the east of Jordan ; and consequently the
places beyond Jordan must be such as lay on the west of Jordan;
but why they made the thrashing-floor of Atad, rather than the
place of interment, the scene of their lamentations, is not so easy
to resolve. Perhaps it was a place more convenient to stay in
for seven days, than the field of Machpelah; or perhaps it might
be the custom, at the very entrance of the country, where they
carried the corpse to be buried, to fall into lamentations, which
they might repeat at the grave again, though no mention be
made of it here. — U'ells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol.
1.; and Patrick's Commentary.
e The Jewish doctors have a tradition of a bloody fight which
Joseph had at his father's funeral, with one Tzepho, the son of
Eliphaz, who would have opposed his burying him in the cave of
Machpelah, as disputing his title to the ground, but that Joseph,
and his men, having overcome him, carried him away with them
into Egypt, and kept him there prisoner as long as Joseph lived ;
however, as soon as he was dead, Tzepho found means to escape
into Italy. — Universal History, in the notes, b. 1. c. 7.
f The author of Ecclesiasticus has given us an encomium of
the patriarch Joseph in these words, ' Of Jacob was this man of
mercy born, who found favour in the eyes of all flesh. He was
bom to be the prince of his brethren, and the support of his
family ; to be the head of his kinsmen, and the firm support of
his people. His bones were visited, and prophesied after his
death,' (xlix. 15.) His meaning is, that his bones were removed
out of Egypt, and that this fell out as a consequence of his pro-
phecy, that God would visit the Hebrews, and bring them into
Sect. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
2'25
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS, A. M. 3548. A. C. 18C3. GEN. CII. xxxvii. TO TI1K END.
any particulars in Joseph's life, though he lived fifty-
four years after his father's death. It informs us, that
he lived to see himself the happy parent of a numerous
offspring in his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, even
to the third generation ; and all this while we may pre-
sume, that he continued in high favour with his prince,
and in weighty employments under him. But when he
grew old, and found his death approaching, he sent for
his brethren, and with the like prophetic spirit, that his
father Jacob had done, told them, that God, according
to his promise, would not fail to bring their posterity
out of Egypt into the land of Canaan ; and therefore he
made them swear to him, as he had done to his father,
that when it should please God thus to visit them, they
would not forget to a carry his body along with them :
and to this purpose, as soon as he was dead, which was
in the hundred and tenth year of his age, they had his
body embalmed, and b kept in a coffin, c until the time
their deliverance should come.
the promised land. The Jewish rabbins have taken a great
latitude in ascribing several particulars to this great man, which
have not the least foundation in Scripture. They make him the
inventor of all the arts and sciences, for which the Egyptians
afterwards became so famous : and attribute to him the composi-
tion of several books, such as Joseph's Prayer, Joseph's Mirror,
&c. which do not so much redound to his credit. Mahomet, in
his Coran, (Surat. 12.) relates his history at length, but blends
it with many fabulous circumstauces, which have been much
improved by the eastern people ; for they made him in a manner
greater than the Jewish doctors do. They tell us equally that
he taught the Egyptians the most sublime sciences, and particu-
larly geometry, which was highly necessary in their division of
the land. They suppose, that all the wells, and baths, and
granaries, which go under his name, nay, that all the ancient
pyramids and obelisks, though they do not, were of his erection;
and they believe, that he had all along upon his shoulder a point
of light, like a star, which was an indelible mark of the gift of
prophecy ; with many more fictions of the like nature. — Calmet's
Dictionary, under the word Joseph.
a There are several reasons which might induce Joseph not to
have his dead body immediately carried into Canaan, and buried,
as his father was. 1st, Because his brethren, after hfs decease,
might not have interest enough at court to provide themselves with
such things as were necessary to set off the pomp and solemnity of
a funeral befitting so great a personage. 2dly, Because he might
foresee, that the Egyptians, in all probability, as long as their
veneration for his memory was warm, would hardly have suffered
his remains to have been carried into another country. 3dly,
Because the continuance of his remains among them, might be
a means to preserve the remembrance of the services he had done
them, and thereby an inducement to them to treat the relations he
had left behind him with more kindness. 4thly, And chit fly,
because the presence of his body with the Israelites might be a
pledge to assure them, and a means to strengthen and confirm
their faith and hope in God's promises to their progenitors, that
he would infallibly put their posterity in possession of the land
of Panaan: and accordingly, when Moses delivered them out of
Egypt, he carried Joseph's body along with him, (Exod. xiii. I'».)
and committed it to the care of the tribe of Ephraim, who buried
it near Shechem, (Josh. xxiv. 32.) in the field which Jacob, a
little before his death, gave to Joseph, as his peculiar property.
—Pererius' and Patrick's Commentary; Poole's Annotations, and
Calmet's Dictionary under the word.
b The Jewish rabbins have a story, that the Egyptian magi-
cians came and told Pharaoh, that if he had a mind to keep the
Hebrews in his dominions, he must hide Joseph's body in some
certain place where they should never find it, because it would
be impossible for them to go out of Egypt without it ; that there-
upon his body was put into a chest of 6000 lb. weight, which was
sunk in the mud of one of the branches of the river Nile; and
that Moses was forced to work a miracle to get it out, and carry
it away. — Calmet, ibid.
c Gen. 1. 26. ' So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
The most material objection we have placed last ; and
because it relates to a passage in Scripture, which is
known to have its difficulties, it may not be improper,
in order to give it a clear solution, first to cite the pa
sage itself, and then to explain the terms contained in it :
1 ' The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-
giver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto
him shall the gathering of the people be.'
1. Now the word slievet, which we render sceptre
both a literal and a figurative signification. In its literal,
it denotes a rod, a wand, a sceptre, a shepherd \s <
&c, and in its figurative, it either implies the correction
and punishment, whereof tiie rod, or the authority and
power, whereof the sceptre is the ensign. It cannot be
doubted, I think, but that the word is to be taken in a
figurative sense here ; and yet it cannot be supposed to
signify punishment, because the tribe of Judah was so
far from being in a state of affliction, that it always
flourished exceedingly, and even in the time of its cap-
tivity, enjoyed its ow'n form of government. The word
must therefore, in this place, be put for that power ami
dominion whereof the sceptre, in ancient times, mu
thought a fitter representation than either the crown or
diadem.
2. The word mecliokek, which wo translate lawgiver,
is not synonymous with the former, but has two distinct
significations. It sometimes signifies, not a person
who has power to make laws himself, but only to teach
and instruct others in those laws that are already made :
and in this sense it differs very little from the scribes,
and doctors, and teachers of the law, whereof there is so
much mention made in our Saviour's days. At other
times, it denotes a person invested with power and
authority even to make laws, but then this authority of
his is inferior to that of a king ; so that properly ho may
be called an inferior magistrate or governor set over a
people by the license of some monarch, and, by his com-
mission appointed to rule : and in this sense the word
should rather be taken here, because there were such
governors and deputies set over the Jews, after their
return from the Babylonish captivity.
1 Gen. xlix. 10.
old- and they embalmed him, and he was |>.U in n coffin in
Egypt.' When Joseph died he was not wily embalmed, but put
into a coffin.' This was an honour appropriated to personaof dis-
traction, coffins not being universally used in I e pt MaiUet,
speaking of the Egyptian repositories of the dead, having given
an account of several niches thai are found th-
ootbe imagined, that the bodies depoaited in these gtoomyapartr
ments wee all enclosed in chests, and placed ... niches; toe
greatest part were rimply embalmed, and swathed affair that
manner that everyone hath same notion of; afterwhieh Umj
laid them .me by the ride of another, without any ceremony:
some were even put Into these tombs without any embalr.
:>r such a slight one, that there remains nothing ol men m
all
and tho-c
linen i.. which they were wrapped but the bones,
hatf rotten,* (Letter vii. p. 881.) Antique coffins
sycamore wood, are Mill to be seen in Egypt l'
Bomewere form rly made of a kind of pa
folding and gluing cloth togethi r, a great number ol
were curiously plastered and painted with hierogrjrpuW.--*"*'
venot, part 1. p 1ST.
2 i
226
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1803. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
3. The phrase which we render ' between his feet,'
according to the modesty of the Scripture expression,
means nothing else, but of his seed or posterity ; and so
the intendment of this part of the prediction must be,
that ' the tribe of Judah shall have lawgivers of their own
to the very last times.'
4. From whatever radix it is that the word Shiloh is
derived, both Jews and Christians are agreed in this, that
by the person to whom this title is applied, the patriarch
intended the great Saviour of the world, who is called
the Messias, or Christ.
5. By Judah here, there is not an absolute necessity to
understand the people of that tribe only, but all those
likewise who were afterwards called Jews. And,
6. Whether we refer the gathering of the people to
the tribe of Judah, as they did in the times of the cap-
tivity, or to Shiloh, when he should come, as to the
main of the prophecy, there is not a great deal of differ-
ence ; since the main of the prophecy is, — ' That the
Messias shall come, before the Jewish government would
totally cease.' And therefore the question is, whether
there was any form of government subsisting among the
Jews, and particularly in the tribe of Judah, at the time
when Christ was born ?
The form of government which Jacob, upon his death-
bed instituted, was that of dividing his family into tribes,
and making his own, and the two sons of Joseph, heads
over their respective houses. This government was pro-
perly aristocratical ; but in times of some extraordinary
exigence, all authority was devolved in the hands of a
judge, who, when the end for which he was appointed
was effected, in the same manner as the Roman dictator
did, resigned up his power, and became no more than
*' one of the princes of the tribes of his fathers.'
The abuse of this judicial power, however, in the
hands of Samuel's sons, made the people desirous of a
regal government ; and in that form it continued, from
the time it came into David's hands, who was of the
tribe of Judah, for the space of 470 years. The division
of the kingdom made a great alteration in the fortunes
of the people ; for the Assyrian captivity was the ruin of
the ten tribes. They lost their government, and from
that time never recovered it ; but it was not so with the
kingdom of Judah, in the Babylonish captivity. 1 For
if we consider that the Jews were carried to Babylon,
not to be slaves, but were transplanted as a colony, to
people that large city ; that they were commanded there-
fore, 2 by the prophet, to 'build houses,' and ' plant
gardons,' and to seek the ' peace of the city' in which they
were captives ; and that, upon the expiration of their
seventy years' captivity, many of them were so well set-
tled in ease and plenty, that they refused to return to
their own country again. If we consider farther, that
the Jews lived at Babylon as a distinct people, and were
governed, in their own affairs, by their own elders ; that
they appointed feasts and fasts, and ordered all other
matters relating to their civil and ecclesiastical state
among themselves ; and that, upon their return from Ba-
bylon, they were thought a people considerable enough
to be complained of to Artaxerxes ; we cannot but con-
1 Bishop Sherlock's third dissertation, annexed to his Use and
li-tent of Prophecy.
* Jer. xxix. 5, 7.
elude, that they made all along a figure far from com-
porting with the condition of mere slaves, subjected
entirely to a foreign yoke, without any law or govern-
ment of their own.
After the time of this captivity, indeed, the Jews were
never so free a people as they had been before. They
lived under the subjection of the Persian monarch, and
under the empire of the Greeks and Romans, to their
last destruction ; but still they lived as a distinct people,
governed by their own laws ; and the authority of the
Persian, and other kings over them, destroyed not that
rule, which, in all the vicissitudes that befell them, they
still possessed.
How the case stood in the time of, the Asmonean
princes, may be collected from several passages in the
Maccabees : and that the like government subsisted,
to the very death of Christ, may in like manner be
evinced from many instances in the gospel ; but one or
two of these will be enough to illustrate the thing.
When our Saviour tells the Jews, 3 ' The truth shall
make you free,' and they reply, ' We are Abraham's chil-
dren, and w ere never in bondage to any man,' surely they
had not forgot their captivity in Babylon, much less could
they be ignorant of the power of the Romans over them
at that time ; and yet they accounted themselves free ;
and so they were, because they lived by their own laws,
and executed judgment among themselves. When our
Saviour foretels his disciples, that they 4 ' should be deli-
vered up to councils, and scourged in the synagogues,' he
shows, at the same time, what power and authority were
exercised in the councils and synagogues of the Jews :
and, to mention but one instance more, when Pilate, will-
ing to deliver Jesus, says to the Jews, 5 ' Take ye hiin,
and crucify him ;' and again, 6 ' Take ye him, and judge
him according to your own law;' he likewise shows, that
the Jews lived under their own law, and had the exer-
cise of judicial authority among themselves.
By this deduction, it appears evidently that the sceptre,
placed in the hand of Judah by his father Jacob just
before his death, continued in his posterity till the very
death of Christ. From that time all things began to
work towards the destruction of the Jewish polity, and
within a few years, their city, temple, and government,
were utterly ruined, and the Jews not carried into a gen-
tle captivity, to enjoy their laws, and live as a distinct
people, in a foreign country ; but were sold like beasts
in a market, became slaves in the strictest sense, and
from that day to this, have neither prince nor lawgiver
among them : so that, upon the whole, 7 the sense of
Jacob's prophecy, with relation to Judah, as it is now
fulfilled, may not improperly be summed up in this para-
phrase : —
" The power and authority which shall be established
ill the posterity of Judah, shall not be taken from them,
or at least they shall not be destitute of rulers and
governors, (no, not when they are in their declining con-
dition,) until the coming of the Messiah. But when he
is come, there shall be no difference between the Jews
and Gentiles, who shall be all obedient to the Messiah ;
and after that, the posterity of Judah shall have neither
king nor ruler of their own, but their whole common-
3 John viii. 32, 33. « Mat. x. 17. s John xix. 6.
* John xviii. 31. 7 Patrick's Commentary in locum.
Sect. IV.] FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES , &c.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 18G3. GEN. CU. xxxvii. TO THE END
makes Cyrus speak) at the point of death bee;
227
wealth shall quite lose all form, and never recover it
again."
The bequest which Jacob makes to his son Joseph,
runs into this form : — 1 ' Moreover, I have given to thee
one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the
hand of the Amorite, with my sword, and with my bow.'
But when did we ever read of Jacob's being- a military
man ? His sons indeed invaded Shechem, and took, not
from the Amorites,but the Hivites, the adjacent country,
as we may suppose ; but so far is he from approving of
what they did, that to his very dying hour, we find him
severely remonstrating against it, and must therefore be
supposed too conscientious, either to retain himself, or
to consign to his beloved son, a portion of land acquired
by such wicked and sanguinary means.
The tract of ground, therefore, which he mentions,
must certainly be that 2 which he purchased of Hamor,
the father of Shechem ; which he gave Joseph for a
burying-place, and where Joseph, in consequence of that
donation, 3 was afterwards buried, and not in the field of
Machpelah, the common repository of most of his ances-
tors. And to resolve the difficulty of his saying, that
he took it from the Amorite by force of arms, when it is
manifest that he bought it of Hamor the Hivite, for an
hundred pieces of silver, we may observe, that the per-
sons who are called Hivites in one place, may, without
any impropriety, be called Amorites in another, foras-
much as the Amorites, being the chief of all the seven
nations in Canaan , might give denomination to all the rest,
in like manner as all the people of the United Provinces
are, from the pre-eminence of that one, commonly called
Hollanders : and then, if we can but suppose, that after
Jacob's departure from Shechem, for fear of the neigh-
bouring nations, some straggling Amorites came, and
seized on the lands which he had purchased, and that he
was forced to have recourse to arms to expel the
invaders and maintain his right, all the difficulty or
seeming repugnance of the passage vanishes.
4 Jacob, we allow, was a man of peace, but his sons
were warriors ; and to them he might the rather give
permission to recover the possession of what he had
bought, because he looked upon it as an earnest of his
posterity's future possession of the whole land. 5 And
though we read nothing- in the foregoing history, either
of the Amorites invading Jacobs property, or of his
expelling them thence ; yet this is far from being the
only instance of things being said to be done in Scrip-
ture, 6 whose circumstances of time, place, and persons,
we find nowhere recorded ; and a much easier supposi-
tion it is, than to make, as some have done, the sword
and the bow, here mentioned, to signify the money
wherewith he purchased this small territory.
Jacob is the first, that we read of, who particularly
declared the future state of every one of his sons, when
he left the world ; but it has been an ancient opinion,
that the souls of excellent men, the nearer they approach
to their departure hence, the more divine they grew, had
a clearer prospect of things to come, and (as ' Xenophon
1 Gen. xlviii. 22.
1 Gen. xxxiii. 19, compared with Joshua xxiv. 32
3 Josh. xxiv. 32. * Poole's Annotations.
6 Patrick's Commentary. 6 To this purpose, see Gen.
xlviii. 22. Deut. ii. 9, 10, 11. Josh. xxiv. 11. ' B 8.
... aine pro-
phetic. Though, therefore, the last words which we find
our patriarch uttering to his sons,. nay be rather account-
ed prophecies than benedictions; yet since the text
assures us, that 8 < he blessed every one with a separata
blessing,' we may fairly infer, that though he found
reason to rebuke the three eldest very sharply : yet if |,jd
rebukes, and the punishment pronounced against then
had the good effect to bring them to a due sense of their
transgressions, it was a blessing to them, though nut a
temporal one ; though, even in this last sense, ft cannot
be said but that he blessed them likewise, sinoa he
assigned each of them a lot in the inheritance of the
promised land, which it was in his power to have de-
prived them of.
However this be, 3 it is certain that all impartial cri-
tics have observed, that the style of these blessings or
prophecies, call them which we will, is much more lofty
than what we meet with in the other parts of this book •
and therefore some have imagined, that Jacob did not
deliver these very words, but that Moses put the sense of
what he said into such poetical expressions. But to me
it seems more reasonable to think, that the spirit of pro-
phecy, now coming upon the good old patriarch, rained
his diction, as well as sentiments ; even as Moses him-
self is found to have delivered lu his benedictions in a
strain more sublime than what occurs in his other writings.
It is true, indeed, that in the predictions of the
patriarch, as well as in the benedictions of Moses, sever-
al comparisons do occur, which are taken from brute
animals. Thus Judah is compared to a lion, lasacoar
to an ass, Dan to a serpent, Benjamin to a wolf, and
Naphtali to an hind let loose. But this is so far from
being a disparagement to the prophetic spirit, that it is
a commendation of it ; since, if the lion be a proper
emblem of power and strength ; if the ass be an image
of labour and patience ; if the serpent, an hieroglyphic
of guile and subtlety; if the wolf, a symbol of violence
and outrage ; and if a hind let loose be no bad repre-
sentation of a people loving liberty and freedom ; then
were these qualities, which nothing but a Divine Spirit
could foresee, abundantly specified, as their respective
histories show, in the posterity of the several heads of
tribes to which they are applied.
And as these comparisons are a kind of testimony of
the divine inspiration of the holy patriarch upon this
occasion, so are they far from being any diminution of
the dignity of the subject he was then treating of J HUM
a man must be a stranger to all compositioiM of this
kind, who is not persuaded, thai comparisons taken from
the animal world, are, as it were, the -incus and support
of what we call the sublime; and who finds not himself
less inclined to cavil at Jacob's manner of expression,
when he perceives the lofty Homer comparing US heroea
so frequently to a lion, a wolf, an ass, a torrent, or a
tree according to the circumstances be places them En,
or the different point of light wherein he thinks proper
to take them. And I mention it as an argument of lbs
truth and excellency of the Mosaic history, that WS 'i"d
its author adhering to the original simplicity, and pur-
suing that very method of writing, which wai certainly
'Ceii. xlix. 28.
* Patriek's Commentary.
Dent, \wiii.
228
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2270. A. C. 1728 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HADES, A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
in vogue, when the most ancient books that we know
any thing of were composed.
Moses' method of writing, as we have had occasion
more than once to take notice, is very succinct ; and
therefore when he tells us, that upon Joseph's coming
into Egypt, and being sold to Potiphar, captain of the
guard, he commenced steward of his household, we
must not suppose, that there did not a sufficient space of
time intervene to qualify him for that office. What
therefore some of the Jewish doctors tell us, seems
not improbable, namely, that his master, as soon as he
bought him, sent him to school, and had him instructed,
not in the language only, but in all the learning of the
Egyptians. However this be, it is certain that there is
no small affinity between the Hebrew and Egyptian
tongue ; so that a person of good natural parts, and of
an age the fittest that could be for learning any thing,
might, with a little diligence and application, make him-
self master of it in a very short time.
Joseph, indeed, as we may observe, talked to his
brethren by an interpreter ; and that he might do, though
the difference between the two tongues was not very
great. 1 A Frenchman, we see, is not understood at
first by an Italian or Spaniard, though all the three
languages are derived from the same original ; but when
once he is let into the knowledge of this, and comes to
perceive their different formations and constructions,
what was foreign to him before, soon becomes familiar.
And in like manner, Joseph, with a small matter of
instruction, and some observation of his own, might be
let into the secret of the Egyptian language, the nature
of their accounts, and the customs of the country, and
so become every way qualified to give the content, we
find he did, in the place to which he was advanced.
z The notion that Ave have of an eunuch, is a person
who has lost his virility; and therefore to assign him a
wife, as we find Potiphar had a very naughty one, may
seem a manifest incongruity ; but for this there is an easy
solution to be given. The word Saris indeed denotes
equally an ' eunuch,' and any ' court minister ;' and the
reason of this ambiguity is, — That, as eastern kings, for
their greater security, were wont to have slaves, who
were castrated, to attend the chambers of their wives
and concubines, and upon the proof of their fidelity, did
frequently advance them to the other court employments,
such as being privy-counsellers, high-chamberlains, cap-
tains of their guards, &c, it hence came to pass, that the
title of eunuch was conferred on any who Mere promoted
to those posts of honour and trust, even though they were
not emasculated. And indeed, when we read, in the
books of Kings and Chronicles, so frequent mention
made of eunuchs about the person of David, and other
Jewish princes, we must be far from supposing, that
these were all eunuchs in reality, since it was unlawful,
3 according to their historian, in that nation, to castrate
even a domestic animal ; and according to the institution
of their law, an express prohibition it was, that * ' he who
had his privy members cut of!) should not enter into the
congregation of the Lord.'
Both the Arabic version, and the Targum of Onkelos,
1 Le Clerc's Commentary in Gen. xlii. 23.
* Heidegger's Hist. Patriar. vol. 2. Essay 20.
3 Joseph. Aotiq. b. 4. c. 8. J Deut. xxiii. 1.
are therefore very right in rendering the word, a prince
or minister of Pharaoh : for if we compare the several
parts of his history, we shall find, 5 that Potiphar had
the chief command of the forces that guarded the person
and palace-royal ; that as such he presided in all courts
and causes that had a more immediate relation to these ;
that he had power under the king, of judging and deciding
all cases within those walls, of imprisoning and releas-
ing, of life and death, and of hastening or suspending
the execution of capital punishments.
And if Potiphar was a person invested with all this
authority, it may seem a little strange, why he did not
immediately put Joseph to death ; since, had his wife's
accusation been true, his crime deserved no less a pun-
ishment. But whether it was that Joseph had found
means to vindicate himself, by the mediation of the
keeper of the prison, who was Potiphar 's deputy, though
there is no account of it in Scripture ; or God, in behalf
of the righteous, might interpose to mollify the heart of
this great man, and restrain his hand from doing violence ,
the issue of the matter shows, that he was in a short time
convinced of his innocence, or otherwise it cannot be
believed that he would have suffered him to be made so
easy, and to be invested with so much power in the
prison ; though at the same time, he might not think
proper to release him, for fear, that so public an acquit-
ment might bring disreputation both to his wife and
himself.
Joseph could not but foresee, that to live in the palaces
of kings, and to accept of high posts and honours, would
be very hazardous to his virtue. 6 But when he per-
ceived the hand of providence so visible in raising him,
by ways and means so very extraordinary, to eminence,
and an office wherein he would have it in his power to
be beneficial to so very many, he could not refuse the
offers which the king made him, without being rebellious
to the will and destination of God. To him therefore
who had secured him hitherto, he might in this case com-
mit the custody of his innocence, and accept of the usual
ensigns of honour, without incurring the censure of vanity
or ostentation.
And though, in after ages, all marriages with infidels
were certainly prohibited, yet there seems to be at this
time a certain dispensation current, forasmuch as Judah
to be sure, if not more of Joseph's brethren, had done
the same : besides that, in Joseph's case, there was
something peculiar. 7 For as he was in a strange
country, he had not an opportunity of making his
addresses to any of the daughters of the seed of Abra-
ham; as the match was of the king's making, he was not
at liberty to decline it, without forfeiting his pretensions
to the royal favour, and consequently to the means of
doing so much good ; and as it is not improbable that
he might be advised to it by a particular revelation, so
it is highly reasonable to believe that he converted his
wife, at least to the worship of the true God, before he
espoused her : even though there should be nothing in
that opinion of the rabbins, that he made a proselyte
likewise of her father, the priest of On, who could not
but be desirous to purchase at any rate so advantageous
5 Bibliotlitca BibSica on Gen. vol. 2. Occasional Annota-
tions, 39.
I 6 Heidegger's Hist. Patiiar., vol. 2. Essay 20. 3 Ibid
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229
an alliance, anil took this occasion to establish the rite
of circumcision, if not in all Egypt, at least among per-
sons of the sacred order, who, according to the account
of those who wrote the history of that country, in very
early days certainly were not without it.
Some may imagine, that the better to personate an
Egyptian lord, and thereby conceal himself from his
brethren, or rather to comply with the language of the
court, in this particular, ' Joseph swore by the life of
Pharaoh,' in the same manner as the Romans, in adula-
tion to their emperor, were wont to swear by his genius.
It must be acknowledged indeed, that, as every oath is a
solemn appeal to God, to swear by any creature what-
ever must needs be an impious and idolatrous act ; and
therefore the proper solution of this matter is, — not that
oaths of this kind were allowable before the institution
of Christianity, but that Joseph, in making use of these
words, did not swear at all. 1 For since every oath im-
plies in it either an invocation of some witness, or a
postulation of some revenge, as our great Sanderson
terms it, to say that Joseph appealed to the life of
Pharaoh as a witness is ridiculous ; and without a very
forced construction indeed, the Avords can never be sup-
posed to include in them a curse, and therefore their
most easy signification must be, what we call indicative :
I By the life of Pharaoh,' that is, as sure and certain as
Pharaoh liveth, 'ye are spies ;' just as we say, ' By the
sun that shines, I speak truth,' that is, as sure as the sun
shines ; neither of which can with any propriety be called
oaths, but only vehement asseverations.
The words which Joseph's steward, sent to apprehend
his brethren, makes use of, are, 2 ' Is not this the cup in
which my lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth ?'
and the words wherein Joseph accosts them, when they
are brought before him, are , 3 ' What deed is this that ye
have done ? Wot ye not, that such a man as I can cer-
tainly divine ?' And from hence 4 some have imagined,
that Joseph was a person addicted to magical arts, and
by virtue of this single cup, could discover strange and
wonderful things. But in answer to this, others have
observed, s that the word nashah, which we render to
divine, was formerly of an indefinite sense, and meant
in general to discover, or make a trial of; and accord-
ingly they have devised a double acceptation of the
steward's words, as if he should say, — By this cup (viz :
left in a careless and negligent manner) my master was
minded to make an experiment, whether you were
thieves, or honest men ; or say, — By this cup, wherein
he drinketh, my a master discovers and finds out the
temper and dispositions of men, when they are in liquor.
But both of these senses seem a little too much forced,
and are far from agreeing with the other words of Joseph.
It must be acknowledged, therefore, that as magical
arts of divers kinds were in use among the Egyptians,
many years before Joseph's time of coming thither; and
that as Joseph, by his wonderful skill of interpreting
1 Sanderson's Praelec. 5. sect. 7. 8 Gen. xliv. 5.
1 (Jen. xliv. 15. 4 See Saurin's Dissertation 3S.
5 Poole's Annotation', and Patrick's Commentary.
a What may seem to give some small sanction to this sense,
is tout known passage in Horace : — " Kings are said to have sup-
plied liberal potations to him whom they wished to scrutinize,
if he was worthy of their friendship."
dreams, had gained a great reputation for knowledge,
and perhaps among the populace, might pass fur a
diviner, he took an occasion from hence, in order to
carry on his design, to assume a character thai did net
belong to him. There is no reason, however, to infer from
the words, that A the art of divining l.y the cup, as it tame
afterwards to be practised, was then in use in Egypt'
b because the words before us, according to the sense ,,f
the best interpreters, do not relate to this cup as the
instrument, but as the subject of divination ; not u the
thing with which, but as the thing concerning which tkk
magical inquiry was to be made. And so the sense of the
steward's words will be, " How could you think, but that
my lord, who is so great a man at divination, would use
the best of his skill to find out the persons who had
robbed him of the cup, which he so much prizes ?" And
this tallies exactly with the subsequent words of Joseph,
' Wot ye not that such a man as I,' " I, who have raised
myself to this eminence, by my interpretation of dreams,
and may therefore well be accounted an adept in all
other sciences, should not be long at a loss to know who
the persons were that had taken away my cup?" This
seems to be the natural sense of the words ; the only
one, indeed, that they will fairly bear : 7 and though
they do not imply that Joseph was actually a magician,
yet they seem to justify the notions of those men who
think, that he carried his dissimulation to his brethren so
far, as to make them believe that he really had some
knowledge that way.
The royal psalmist, in his description of the Bufferings
of Joseph, 8 tells us, that he was not only sold to lie a
' bond-servant,' but that ' his feet were hurt in the stocks,
and iron entered into his soul,' which signifies at least that
he endured very hard usage, before 'the time came that
his cause was known,' and his innocence discovered;
and of all this his brethren, when they sold him into
slavery, were properly the occasions. So that, could
we conceive, that any angry resentments could harbour
in a breast so fully satisfied of a divine providence in
all this dispensation, we might have imagined that
Joseph took this opportunity to retaliate the injuries
which were formerly done to him ; but this lie did not
He desired indeed to be informed in the circumstances
of their family, without asking any direct question : and
therefore he mentions his suspicion of their beii g spies,
merely to fish out of them, as we call it, whether hi
vol
IT, 18.
6 Heidegger's Hit. Patriar
' Sauiin'^ l)i^-ei lotions.
b Julius Serenus tells us that H»' method «( divining by
the cup, among the A ■■ -■ <
to fill it first with water, (leu to throw Into it thin plal
£1.1.1 and silver, together with some precious stones, whereon
were engraven certain characters; and after that, the :
who came to consult the oracle, used certain finis of incanta-
tion, and so calling upon the devil, were won! to receive their
answers several ways: sometimes by articulate Bounds; some-
times by the characters which were in the cup rising upon the
surface of Hie water, and by their arrangement forming the
answer: and many times by the visible appearing of tie |
themselves, about whom the arack was consulted. Cornelius
Agrippa, (De Occult Philoa. l>. 1. c. 57.) tells i
that the manner of some wis, to pour melted wax Into tl
wherein was water, which wax would range ItssU in order, and
so form answers, according to tie- questions | ' """'•«
Dissertation oS ; and £ V *<*■
230
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IU.
A. It 227G. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
father, and his younger brother were yet alive. For
upon their return, we may perceive, especially consider-
ing- that it is the first minister of a mighty state that
speaks to a company of poor indigent shepherds, a
wonderful tenderness in his expressions : • ' Is your
father well ; the old man of whom you spake, is he still
alive ?' besides the instructions which he plainly gave
his steward to bid them be ' of good cheer.' When he
understood that his father and brother were both alive,
and as yet had not matters prepared for the removal of
his father and family, the eagerness of his affections may
perhaps be thought to have carried him a little too far,
in demanding his brother to be brought to him ; but we
are not to doubt but that Joseph, by the Divine Spirit
wherewith he was endowed, did certainly foresee what
would happen,2 and that his father's grieving a little time
for Benjamin, would be so far from endangering his
health, that it would only increase his joy, when he saw
him again, and dispose him the better for the reception
of the welcome news of his own advancement in Egypt ;
which, had it come all upon him at once, and on a
sudden, might have been enough to have bereaved him
of his senses, if not of his life itself, by a surfeit of joy.
Upon their second dismission, after a very kind enter-
tainment, it may be thought perhaps a piece of cruelty
in Joseph, to have his cup conveyed, of all others, into
Benjamin's sack, and thereupon to threaten to make him
a bond-slave for a pretended felony : but herein was
Joseph's great policy and nicety of judgment. He
himself had been severely treated by the rest when he
was young, and therefore was minded to make an expe-
riment, in what manner they would now behave towards
his brother ; whether they would forsake him in his dis-
tress, and give him up to be a bond-slave, as they had
sold him for one ; or whether they would stand by him
in all events, make intercession for his release, or ad-
venture to share his fate.
This, perhaps, may be thought, was carrying the matter
a little too far : but, without this conduct, Joseph could
not have known whether his brethren rightly deserved
the favour and protection which he might then design,
and afterwards granted them. Without this conduct we
had not had perhaps the most lively images that are to
be met with in Scripture, of injured innocence, of meek-
ness and forbearance, and the triumphs of a good con-
science in him ; and of the fears and terrors, the convic-
tions and self-condemnations of long concealed guilt in
them. Without this conduct, we had not had this lovely
portraiture of paternal tenderness, as well as brotherly
affection ; we had never had those solemn, sad, and
melting words of Jacob, 3 ' If I am bereaved of my
children, I am bereaved,' enough to pierce a tender
parent's heart; or those words, 4 ' Joseph is yet alive, I
will see him before I die,' enough to raise it into joy and
exultation again. In a word, without this conduct, we
had never had that courteous, that moving, that pleasingly
mournful speech, wherein Moses makes Judah address
Joseph, in behalf of his poor brother Benjamin, which
exceeds all the compositions of human invention, and
a flows indeed from such natural passions, as art can
A. M. 3548. A. C. 18G3. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
never imitate. So that, upon a review of his whole con-
duct, Joseph is far from deserving blame, that all this
seeming rigour and imperiousness of his did eventually
produce a great deal of good ; and was in reality no
more than the heightening the distress, or thickening the
plot, as we call it in a play, to make the discovery, or
future felicity he intended his family, more conspicuous
and agreeable.
It must be acknowledged, indeed, that Moses has done
justice to the history of Joseph, and employed most of
the tender passions of human nature to give it a better
grace ; but we must not therefore infer, either that he
hath transcended truth or committed an error, in record-
ing the quality of the persons employed to embalm his
father. What has led some into a great mistake con-
cerning the origin of physic, and that it was of no
vogue in the world until the days of Hippocrates, was
the great superiority of skill and genius which he
demonstrated both in his practice and writings. The
truth is, the divine old man, as 5 one expresses it, did so
totally eclipse all who went before him, that as posterity
esteemed his works the canon, so did it look upon him
as the great father of medicine. But if we will credit
the testimony of 6 Galen, who, though a late writer, was a
very competent judge, we shall find, that he was far from
being the first of his profession, even among the Greeks.
Homer, indeed, in his poem of the Trojan war, seems
to have cut out more work for surgeons than physicians ;
and therefore we find the chief of the faculty only em-
ployed in healing wounds, extracting arrows, preparing
anodynes, and other such like external operations ; but
if we look into his other work, which is of a more pacific
strain, we shall soon discern the use of internal applica-
tions, when we find Helen brought in as giving Telema-
chus a preparation of opium, which, as the poet informs
us, she had from Polydamna, the wife of Thon, an
Egyptian physician of great note. And well might the
physicians of Egypt be held in great esteem, " when (as
Herodotus relates the matter) every distinct distemper
had its proper physician, who confined himself to the
study and cure of that only ; so that one sort having the
cure of the eyes, another of the head, another of the
teeth, another of the belly, and another of occult diseases,
we need not wonder, that all places were crowded with
men of this profession, or that the physicians of Joseph's
household should be represented as a large number."
True it is indeed, that these physicians, and the very
1 Gen. xliii. 7. 2 Universal History, b. 1. c. 7.
* Gen. xliii. 14. 4 Gen. xlv. 28.
o The observation of a learned author upon the dialogue be-
tween Jacob and his sons, as well as the soeech of Judal- is well
5 Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses, vol. 2. b. 4. sect. 3.
6 Meth. Medic, b. 1.
worth our notice and serious consideration " Since such pas-
sages are related by men, who affect no art. and who lived long
after the parties who first uttered them, we cannot conceive bow
all particulars rould be so naturally and fully recorded, rvh;ss
they had been suggested by his Spirit, who gives mouth and
speech to man; who, being alike present to all successions, is able
to communicate the secret thoughts of forefathers to their children,
and put the very words of the deceased, never registered before,
into the mouths or pens of their successors, for many geneiutions
after, and that as exactly and distinctly as if they had been caught,
in characters of steel or brass, as they issued out of their mouths:
for it is plain every circumstance is here related, with such
natural specifications, as he terms it, as if Moses had heard them
talk ; and therefore could not have been thus represented to us,
unless they had been written by his divine direction, who knows
all things, as well forepast, as present, or to come." — Br Jackson
on ths Creed, b. I.e. 4.
Skct. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
231
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS,
best of them, were employed in embalming the dead ; but
then there was a wise designation in this, * namely, not
only to improve them in the knowledge of anatomy, but
to enable them likewise to discover the causes of such
disorders as were a baffle to their art. And therefore
it was the custom of the kings of Egypt, as Pliny
informs us, to cause dead bodies to be dissected, on
purpose to find out the origin and nature of all diseases.
Thus it appears from the concurring testimony of other
historians, that the practice of physic was a common
thing in Egypt, as early as the days of Joseph ; that the
multitude of its professors makes it no strange thing his
having a number of them in his family ; and that the
nature of the thing, as well as the order of the state,
obliged the very best of them to become dissectors and
embalmers.
This may serve for a vindication of what the sacred
historian has related of our patriarch in his private life,
and we come now to consider him in his public capacity.
As soon as he had foretold the king the long famine
that was to befall Egypt, he gave him advice to have the
fifth part of the product of the country laid up in store
against the ensuing want. The tenth part, according
to the constitution of the nation, belonged to the king
already, and to advise him to purchase as much more,
for seven succeeding years, was to consider him as the
public father of his people, for whose support and wel-
fare he was concerned to provide. When himself was
appointed to the offlce of gathering in the corn, he took
care, no doubt, to have his granaries in fortified places,
and as the scarceness increased, to have them secured
by a guard of the king's forces, to prevent insurrections
and depredations. When he came to open his store-
houses, he sold to the poor and to the rich ; and was it
not highly reasonable, that he who bought the corn,
should likewise sell it ? or that the money, which by the
king's commission and order, had been laid out for such
a stock of provisions against the approaching necessities
of his subjects, should return to the king's coders again,
to answer his occasions ? When their money was gone,
they brought him their cattle ; but this they did of their
own accord, without any compulsion or circumvention ;
and might he not as legally exchange corn for cattle, as
he did it for money before ? His com he kept up perhaps
at a high rate ; but had he sold it cheap, or given it
gratis, the people, very likely, would have been profuse
and wanton in the consumption of it ; whereas his great
care and concern was, to make it hold out the whole time
of the famine. He obliged the inhabitants of one city
and district to remove, or make room for those of
another ; but this he might do, not so much to show their
subjection to Pharaoh, as to secure the public peace, by
disabling them in this way from entering into any sedi-
tious measures and combinations.
It cannot be imagined, indeed, but that, in a time of
such general want and calamity, men's minds would be
ripe for rapine, violence, and mutiny ; and yet we meet
with no one commotion, during the whole period of his
critical ministry ; which bespeaks the skill of the mariner,
when he is found able to steer steady in the midst of so
tumultuous a sea. In line, after he had a long while
executed his high trust, and the years of famine were
1 Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses, b. 4. sect. 3.
A. M. 8648. A. C. 18C3. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
come to a conclusion, he gave the people back their
liberties and estates, reserving to the king no more than
a double tenth out of the produce of their lands, as a
tribute of their vassalage ; which, considering the rich-
ness of the soil, and the little pains required in cultivat-
ing it, was an imposition far from being burdensome to
the subject, or vastly disproportionate to the benefit they
had received. a
There is but one thing more that I find objected to
Joseph, in this public station, ' and that is, his favour
and indulgence to the priests, and priests that nw
idolaters, in sparing their lands, and laying no tax upon
them.
The Jewish doctors have a tradition, that when Joseph
was in prison, and his master had bad designs against
him, it was by the interest of the priests that he was set
free, and that, consequently, in gratitude, he could not
do less than indulge them with some particular marks of
his favour, when he came into such a compass of power.
But there is no occasion for any such fiction as this.
2 The priests of Egypt were taken out of the chief fami-
lies of the nation ; they were persons of the first quality ;
* Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol. 3. Miscel. 3.
3 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 7.
a This is rather a feeble attempt to vindicate the conduct of
Joseph as viceroy of Egypt ; but fortunately that conduct stands
in need of no other vindication, than to be fairly stated. If credit
be due to Diodorus Siculus, all the land of Egypt wa«, prior to
this period, divided, in equal shares, among the king, the priest-
hood, and army. The people therefore must have been, from
the beginning, adscriptitii ylebce; and they were not likely to
suffer by being transferred with the soil, which they cultivated,
from the vassalage in which they had hitherto been held by a
fierce soldiery to the common sovereign and father of his people.
But let us suppose, that Diodorus was mistaken, and that not
the army but the people at large, shared the soil in equal
portions with the king and the priests. Even on this supposi-
tion they were gainers by the new regulation of Joseph; for
they henceforth enjoyed four-fifths of two-thirds of the produce of
the whole kingdom, instead of one-third as formerly. Indeed
whatever was the state of the Egyptians before this famine, it was
happy for them that the minister, whom they acknowledged to
have saved their lives, was not on that occasion influenced by
modern notions of civil and political liberty. — " By the policy of
Joseph, the whole of the land of Egypt, not occupied by tho
priests, became the property of the sovereign, and the people with
their children his slaves; an event, which, however impropitious
it might be in any other country, was necessary there, where
every harvest depended on the Nile, and where the equal distri-
bution of its waters could alone produce a general cultivation.
When the lands of Egypt were private property, would it be
possible to induce individuals to sacrifice their own possessions,
that they might be turned into canals for the public benefit ? or,
when the canals were constructed, would it be poaeiblc to prevent
the inhabitants of the upper provinces from drawing oil more
water than was requisite for their own use, ami thereby injuring
the cultivators lower down ? But when the whole belonged to
one man, the necessary canals would be constructed ; the distri-
bution of water would be guided by prudence ; each district would
receive its necessary proportion; and the collateral branches
would then, as they are now, be opened only when the height "i
the river justified such a measure for the public benefit." (Lora
J'alentia's Travels, vol. .'i, p. S48.J — Our author's supposition,
that the people who had sold their lands to preserve their lives,
were transplanted into cities far from their former places of abode,
that they might, in time, lose the remembrance of their ancient
possessions, is a groundless dream. Granaries were formed, and
cities and villages built in every district of the kingdom; and
when cultivation ceased, the people were transplanted, lor tho
easiness of distribution, from the country into such of those cities
as were nearest to them: and when the famine ceased, they were
sent back, with seed to sow their former fields.
232
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
were consulted upon all .affairs of consequence ; and,
upon a vacancy, generally some one of them succeeded
to the crown. It was not likely, therefore, that persons
of their high rank and station wanted Joseph's assistance
to strengthen their interest, for the obtaining- of any
immunities ; nor is it apparent that they had it. On the
contrary, it seems evident from the text, that whatever
peculiar favours they were vouchsafed, proceeded all,
not from Joseph's good-will, but from the king's imme-
diate direction and appointment ; for the ' land of the
priests bought he not,' says Moses, (ci chok le cohanitn
meeth Pharaoh) because Pharaoh had made a decree
expressly against it, or, in analogy to our translation,
' became there was an appointment for the priests, even
from Pharaoh ; and the portion, which he gave them, they
did eat, and therefore sold not their lands.'
Why Pharaoh, when he thought tit to lessen the pro-
perty of his common subjects, did not, at the same time,
attempt to reduce the exorbitant riches of the priests, we
may in some measure account for, if we consider, that
according to the constitution of the kingdom, the Egyp-
tian priests were obliged to provide all sacrifices, and to
bear all the charges of the national religion, which, in
those days, was not a little expensive ; so very expen-
sive, that we find, in those countries where the soil Mas
not fruitful, and consequently the people poor, men did
not well know how to bear the burden of religion ; and
therefore Lyctirgus, when he reformed the Lacedemonian
state, instituted sacrifices, the meanest and cheapest that
he could think of. But Egypt, we know, was a rich and
fertile country, and therefore, in all probability, the king
and people being desirous that religion should appear
with a suitable splendour, made settlements upon the
priests from a the very first institution of government
among them, answerable to the charges of their function.
Add to tliis, that the priests of Egypt were the whole
body of the nobility of the land ; that they were the king's
counsellors and assistants in all the affairs which con-
cerned the public; 1 were joint agents with him in some
things, and in others, his directors and instructors. Add
again, that they were the professors and cultivators of
astronomy, geometry, and other useful sciences ; that
they were the keepers of the public registers, memoirs
and chronicles of the kingdom ; and, in a word, that
under the king, they were the supreme magistrates, and
filled all prime offices of honour and trust : and consider-
ing them under these views, we may possibly allow, that
Pharaoh might think that they .had not too much to support
the station they were to act in, and for that reason
ordered that no tax should be raised upon them.
Thus we have endeavoured to clear the sacred history
from all imputations of improbability or absurdity, as
well as Joseph's conduct, both private and public, from
all unjust censure, during this period of time ; and may
now produce the testimony of several heathen writers,
in confirmation of many particulars related herein.
A. M. 3M8. A. C. 18C3. GEN. CH. xxxv'ii. TO THE END.
Tiiat the memory of Joseph, and of the wonderful
benefits he did, during the time of his administration,
was preserved among the Egyptians, under the worship
of Apis, Serapis, and Osiris ; that the Egyptian manner
of interpreting dreams was taken from what occurs in
his history ; and that the Charistia, mentioned by 2 Vale-
rius and 3 Ovid, namely, festival entertainments, either
for confirming friendship, or renewing it when broken,
were transcripts of the feast which Joseph made for his
brethren, is the general opinion of such learned men as
have made the deepest inquiry into these matters.
That the patriarch Jacob went down with his whole
family into Egypt, where he found his son Joseph in
great power and prosperity, is reported by several pagan
writers, who are cited 4 by Eusebius ; that the Egyptians,
according to what Moses tells of them, had an unaccount-
able antipathy to shepherds, especially foreigners, is
related 5 by Herodotus ; that the priests in that country
enjoyed several high privileges, and were exempted from
paying all taxes and public imposts, is every where
apparent 6 from Diodorus ; and that Joseph was just
such a person as Moses has represented him, the testi-
mony 7 of Justin, with which we conclude the patri-
arch's story, is enough to convince us. " Joseph, the
youngest of his brethren," says he, " had a superiority
of genius, which made them fear him, and sell him to
foreign merchants, who carried him into Egypt, where
he practised the magic art with such success as rendered
him very dear to the king. He had a great sagacity in
the explanation of prodigies and dreams ; nor was there
any thing so abstruse, either in divine or human know-
ledge, that he did not readily attain. He foretold a
great dearth, several years before it happened, and
prevented a famine's falling upon Egypt, by advising
the king- to publish a decree, requiring the people to
make provision for divers years. His knowledge, in
short, was so great, that the Egyptians listened to the
prophecies coming from his mouth, as if they had pro-
ceeded, not from man, but from God himself."
1 Diodorus Siculus, b. 1.
a It is the opinion of some, that Mizraim, the founder of the
Egyptian monarchy, might, in memory of some Noachical tradi-
tion, set apart, at the very first, a maintenance for the priesthood,
however degenerate and corrupt. Be this as it will, it is certain,
that, in process of time, their allotment increased to such a
degree, that they became possessors of one-third part of the whole
land, according to Diodorus, b. 1,
CHAP. III.— Of the Person and Book of Job.
That Job was a real person, and not a fictitious char-
acter, and his story matter of fact, and not a parabolical
representation, * is manifest from all those places in
Scripture where mention is made of him; and, there-
* Diodorus Siculus, b. 2. c. 1. 3 De Fast. b. 2.
4 Prep. Evan. b. 9. 5 lb. b. 2. c. 47. 6 lb. b. 1. 7 lb. b. 36. c. 2.
b Nay, upon the supposition that the whole book were a dram-
atic composition, this would not invalidate the proofs which we
have from Scripture, of the real existence of this holy patriarch,
or the truth of his exemplary stoiy. On the contrary, it
much confirms them; seeing it was the general practice of
dramatic writers, of the serious kind, to choose any illustrious
character, and well known story, in order to give the piece
its due dignity and eflicacy; and yet, what is very surprising,
the writers on both sides, as well those who hold the book of Job
to be dramatical, as those who hold it to be historical, have fallen
into this paralogism, that, if dramatical, then the person and:
history of Job is fictitious : which nothing but their inattention j
to the nature of a dramatic work, and to the practice of dramatic!
writers, could have occasioned. — JJ'arburton's Divine Lenation,
vol. 3. b. C.
IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c
233
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fore when, in the Old Testament, we find Job put in
company with Noah and Daniel, and equally dis-
tinguished for his righteousness, as in the New he is
commended for his patience, we cannot well suppose
that the Spirit of God, in both these places, intended to
delude us with a phantom, instead of presenting us with
a real man.
Whether we allow that the book of Job is of divine
revelation or not, we cannot but perceive, that it has in
it all the lineaments of a real history ; since the name,
the quality, the country of the man, the number of his
children, the bulk of his substance, and the pedigree of
his friends, together with the names and situations of
several regions, can give us the idea of nothing else ;
though it must not be dissembled, that in the introduc-
tion more especially, there is an allegorical turn given to
some matters, which, as they relate to spiritual beings,
would not otherwise so easily affect the imagination of
the vulgar.
1 Job, according to the fairest probability, was in a
direct line, a descended from Abraham, by his wife Ke-
turah : for by Keturah, the patriarch had several sons,
whom he, being resolved to reserve the chief patrimony
entire for Isaac, portioned out, as we call it, and sent
them into the east to seek their fortunes, so that most of
them settled in Arabia ; and for this reason perhaps it is,
that the author of his history records of Job, that before
his calamities came upon him, 2 ' he was the greatest of
all the men of the east.'
The character which God himself gives of Abraham is
this, 3 ' I know him that, he will command his children,
and his household after him, and that they shall keep
the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment ;' which
may well afford another argument for Job's being
descended from the house of Abraham, since we find
dispersed everywhere in his speeches, * such noble sen-
timents of creation and providence, of the nature of
angels and the fall of man, of punishments for sin and
justification by grace, of a redemption, resurrection, and
final judgment, — notions which he could never have
struck out from the light of nature, but must have had
1 Spanheim's History of Job, c. 5. 8 Job, 1. 3.
* Gen. xviii. 19. 4 Spanheim's History of Job, c. 10.
a At the end of the Greek, the Arabic, and Vulgate ver-
sions of Job, we have this account of his genealogy, which is
said to have been taken from the ancient Syriac: — "Job dwelt
in Ausitis, upon the confines of Idumea and Arabia. His name
at first was Jobab. He married an Arabian woman, by whom
he had a son called Ennon. For his part, he was the son of
Zerah, of the posterity of Esau, and a native of Bozrah ; so that
he was the filth from Abraham. He reigned in Edom, and the
kings before him reigned in this order: — Balak, the son of Beor,
in the city of Dinhabah; and after him, Job, otherwise called
Jobab. Job was succeeded by Hushair., prince of Teman ;
after him reigned Hadad, the son of Bedad, who defeated the
Midianites in the field of Moab. Job's friends, who came to visit
him, were Eliphaz, of the posterity of Esau, king of Teman;
Bildad, king of the Shuhites ; and Zophar, king of the Naama-
thites." According to this account, Job must be contemporary
with Moses, and the three friends who came to see him must be
kings. But the learned Spanheim, who has examined this
matter to the bottom, finds reason to think, that Job was a dis-
tinct person from Jobab; was sprung from Abraham by his wife
Keturah; and lived several years before the time of Moses. —
Calmet's Dictionary, on the word Job; and Spanheim's Life of
dim.
them originally from the instruction of his parents, as
they successively derived them from the first ' father of
the faithful,' who had them immediately from God. But,
what is an undoubted matter of fact, by his wife Ketu-
rah, s Abraham had a son, whose name was Shuah ; and
therefore when we read of a Bildad the Shuhite, we may
well suppose, that he was a descendant from that family ;
who living in the neighbourhood perhaps, might think
himself obliged by the ties of consanguinity, to go and
visit his kinsman, in such sad circumstances of distress.
In what part of the world the land of Uz lay, various
opinions have been started, according to the several
families from whence Job is made to descend ; but, upon
supposition that he sprung from one of Keturah's sons,
his habitation is most properly placed in that part of
Arabia Deserta which has to the north, Mesopotamia
and the river Euphrates ; to the west, Syria, Palestine,
and Idumea ; and to the south, the mountains of the
Happy Arabia. And this description receives some
farther confirmation from the mention which the history
makes of the Chaldeans and Sabfeans plundering his
estate, who were certainly inhabitants in these parts.
In what age of the world this great exemplar of suf-
fering lived, the difference of opinions is not small, even
though there be some criterions to direct our judgment
in this matter. ' That Job lived in the world much
earlier than has been imagined, is, in some measure,
evident from his mentioning with abhorrence, that ancient
kind of idolatry, the adoration of the sun and moon, and
yet passing by in silence the Egyptian bondage, which,
upon one occasion or other, could have hardly escaped
the notice either of him or his friends, had it not been
subsequent to their times. That he lived in the days of
the patriarchs therefore is very probable, from the long
duration of his life, which, continuing an hundred and
forty years after his restoration, could hardly be less in
all than two hundred ; a longer period than either Abra-
ham or Isaac reached. That he lived before the law,
may be gathered from his making not so much as one
allusion to it through the whole course of his life, and
from his offering, even with God's order and acceptance,
such sacrifices in his own country as were not allowable
after the promulgation of the law, to be offered in any
other place, but that 8 ' which the Lord had chosen in
one of the tribes of Israel ;' and that he lived after
Jacob may be inferred from the character given him by
God, namely, that for uprightness and the fear of God,
there was none 'like unto him upon the earth,' which
large commendation could not be allowed to any
whilst Jacob, God's favourite servant, was alive ; nor
can we suppose it proper to be given to any, even while
Joseph lived, who, in moral virtues and other excel-
lencies, made as bright a figure as any in his time. •
Gen. xxv. 2.
7 Spanhi im, c. 3.
6 Job ii. 11.
8Deut. xii. 13, 14.
b The Rev. Dr Hales, from a, variety of historical and astro-
nomical deductions, calculates the time of Job's trial as happening
B. C. 23.17. or 818 years after the deluge, 184 years before the
birth of Abraham, 474 years before the settlement of Jacoo s
family in Egypt, and G89 years before their departure from that
country. Taking this view of the era of Job — and it ia tl
supported of any yet advanced — the deduction in the text from
the words, ' and there was none like unto him upon the earth,'
■2 u
234
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 227G. A. C. 1728; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
Thus may the computation be reduced to a very narrow
compass ; and though it be extremely difficult to point
out the precise time, yet the general opinion is, that he
lived in the time of the children of Israel's bondage,
and therefore his birth is placed in the very same year
wherein Jacob went down into Egypt, and the beginning
of his trial in the year when Joseph died ; ' though it
might probably be less liable to exception, if his birth
were set a little lower, much about the time of Jacob's
death ; and then Joseph, who survived his father about
four and fifty years, will be dead about sixteen years,
at which time Job might justly deserve the extraordinary
character which God gave him, and have no man then
alive, in virtue and integrity, able to compare with him.
How considerable a figure Job made in the world,
both in temporal and spiritual blessings, the vastness of
his stock, which was the wealth of that age, consisting
of seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five
hundred yokes of oxen, and five hundred she-asses ; the
largeness of his family, consisting of seven sons and
three daughters; and the excellency of the character
which God was pleased to give him, together with the
greatness of his sentiments, and the firmness and con-
stancy of his mind in all he suffered, are a sufficient
demonstration : and yet we see, that as soon as God
submitted him to the assaults of his spiritual enemy, what
a sad catastrophe did befall him. The Sabfeans ran
away with his asses ; the Chaldeans plundered him of
his camels ; a fire from heaven consumed his sheep and
servants ; a wind overwhelmed all his children ; and
while the sense of these losses lay heavy upon his spirits,
his body was smitten with a sore disease, insomuch
that he who but a few hours before, was the greatest man
in the country, in whose ' presence the young men were
afraid to appear, and before whom the aged stood up,'
to whom princes paid the most awful reverence, and
whom nobles, in humble silence, admired ; divested of
all honour, sits mourning on a bed of ashes, and instead
of royal apparel, has 2 ' his flesh clothed,' as himself
expresses it, ' with worms and clods of earth,' and is all
overspread with sores and ulcers.
According to the symptoms which Job gives us of
himself, his distemper seems to have been a leprosy, but
a leprosy of a more malignant kind, as it always is in
hot countries, than our climate, blessed be God, is
acquainted with ; and those who would have it to be a
malady of a more opprobrious name, lose all the sting
1 Howell's Histoiy of the Bible. * Job vii. 5.
that lie must have lived after Jacob, because such " large com-
mendation could not be allowed to any whilst Jacob, God's
favourite servant, was alive," cannot hold, but must rather be
applied to prove, that he lived before Jacob, or any of the patri-
archs of Israel. It may be observed, however, that, according
to scripture idiom, the passage may be construed to signify merely,
that there was none like Job in the land of Uz. Among other
reasons for assigning to Job the high antiquity given him by Dr
Hales, may be mentioned the following: He is silent respecting
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which cities lay near
Idumea, whore the scene of his sufferings is laid. He lived to
a patriarchal age, surviving his trial 140 years, while he must
have been old when that took place. The manners and customs
described correspond critically with all that is known of that early
period. But, above all, the astronomical allusions of Job have
enabled astronomers to determine his era (as given above) by
calculating the precession of the equinoxes. — Ed.
A. M. 3548. A. C. 1863. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
of the sarcasm, when they are told, that this distemper,
be it what it will, was not of Job's contraction, but of
Satan's infliction, not the effect or consequence of his
vice, but the means appointed for the trial of his virtue.
Their opinion, however, seems to be well founded, who
make this distemper of Job not one simple malady, but
a complication of many. For since the great enemy of
mankind, saving his life, had a full license to try his
patience to the uttermost, it is not to be questioned but
that he played all his batteries upon him ; and accord-
ingly we may observe, that 3 besides the blains pustulated
to afflict his body, the devil not only instigated his wife
a to grieve his mind, but disturbed his imagination like-
wise to terrify his conscience. For when the holy man
complains, 4 ' Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest
me with visions,' the analogy of the history will not suf-
fer us to interpret, that God himself did inject these
affrightening dreams, but that the devil, to whose tempta-
tions he had submitted him, did raise gloomy thoughts,
and frame horrid and ghastly objects in his imagination,
thereby to urge him to melancholy and despair.
How long this load of various calamity lay upon him,
is nowhere mentioned in Scripture ; and therefore since
it is submitted to conjecture, they who, to magnify the
sufferings, prolong the duration of them to a year, and,
as some do, to seven, s seem to be regardless of the
tender mercies of the Lord ; especially when there are
some circumstances in the story, which certainly do
countenance a much shorter time. The news of the mis-
fortunes which attended his goods and family, came close
upon the heels of one another, and we cannot suppose
a long space before he was afflicted in his body. * His
three friends seem to have been his near neighbours ; and
they came to visit him, as soon as they heard of the ill
news, which usually flies apace. When they saw his
misery, seven days they sat with him in silence ; after
this, they entered into a discourse with him, and at the
end of this discourse, which could not well last above
another week, God healed his sores before his friends
who being men of eminence in their country, may be
supposed to have business at home, as soon as this
melancholy occasion was over) were parted from him.
8 Young's Sermons, vol. 2. 4 Job vii. 14.
5 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 3. c. 4.
a Some of the Jewish doctors imagine, that Dinah, the daugh-
ter of Leah, was this wife of Job's ; but this seems to be a mere
fiction. The moroseness and impiety of the woman, as well as
the place of her habitation, do no ways suit with Jacob's daugh-
ter; and therefore the more probable opinion is, that his wife
was an Arabian by birth, and that though the words which we
render ' curse God and die,' may equally bear a quite contrary
signification, yet are they not here to be taken in the most favour-
able sense, because they drew from her meek and patient husband
so severe an imprecation, ' Thou speakest as one of the foolish
women speaketh. What ! shall we receive good at the hand of
God, and shall we not receive evil ?' (Job ii. 10.) — Spanheim's
History of Job, c. 6.
b Eliphaz, the Temanite, was the grandson of Esau, and son
of Teman, who dwelt in a city of the same name in Idumea, not
far from the confines of Arabia Deserta. Bildad, the Shuh'ite,
was descended from Shuah, the son of Abraham and Keturah.
It is almost impossible to find out who Zophar the Naamathite
was, though some will have him descended from Esau ; but as for
Elihu, who comes in afterwards, he was the grandson of Buz, the
son of Nahor ; lived in the southern parts of Mesopotamia ; and
upon the supposition of Job's being sprung from Abraham, was
his distant relation.. — Spanheim's Life of Job, c. 11.
Sect. IV.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2276. A. C. 1728 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
Now, since all this may be included in the space of a
month, and a month may be thought time enough for
God to have made trial of his faithful servant ; when
once such trial was made, we have reason to believe, that
he would withdraw his heavy hand, because his character
in Scripture is, that " ' he doth not afflict willingly nor
grieve the children of men.'
The unaccountable greatness of Job's calamities had
led his friends into a misconception of him, and made
them surmise, that it must be the vindictive hand of God,
either for some deep hypocrisy, or some secret enormity,
that fell so heavy upon him ; and therefore Eliphaz, in
three orations, Bildad in as many, and Zophar in two,
argue from common topics, that such afflictions as his
could come from no hand but God's ; and that it was
inconsistent with his infinite justice to afflict without a
cause, or punish without guilt ; and thereupon charging
Job with being either a grievous sinner, or a great hypo-
crite, they endeavoured by all means to extort a confes-
sion from him. But Job, conscious of his sincerity to
God, and innocence to man, confidently maintains his
integrity ; and in speeches returned to every one of theirs,
refutes their wicked suggestions, and reproves their
injustice and want of charity ; but always observes a
submissive style and reverence when he comes to speak
of God, of whose secret end, in permitting this trial to
come upon him, being ignorant, he often begs a release
from life, lest the continuance of his afflictions should
drive him into impatience.
During these arguments between Job and his friends,
there was present a young man, named Elihu, who hav-
ing heard the debates on both sides, and disliking both
their censoriousness, and Job's justification of himself,
undertakes to convince them both, by arguments drawn
from God's unlimited sovereignty and unsearchable wis-
dom, that it was not inconsistent with his justice to lay
his afflictions upon the best and most righteous of the
sous of men ; and that therefore, when any such thing
came upon thein, their duty was to bear it without mur-
muring, and to acknowledge the divine goodness in every
dispensation.
When every one had spoken what he thought proper,
and there was now a general silence in the company, the
Lord himself took up the matter, and out of a whirlwind
directed his speech to Job ; wherein with the highest
amplifications, describing his omnipotence in tiie forma-
tion and disposition of the works of the creation, he so
effectually convinced him of his inability to understand
the ways and designs of God, that with the profoundest
humility he breaks out into this confession and acknow-
ledgment : ' Behold, 2 I am vile, what shall I answer
thee ? I will lay my hand upon my mouth. Once have
I spoken, but I will not answer: yea twice, but I will
proceed no farther.' This acknowledgment pleased God
so well, that he declared himself in favour of Job against
his injurious friends, and hereupon putting an end to his
sufferings, a cured him of all his grievances, and reward-
1 Lam. iii. 33. 2 J0b xl. 4, 5.
a The eastern people have a tradition, that upon God's pro-
posing to make no farther trial of Job, the angel Gabriel de-
scended from heaven, took him by the hand, raised him from the
place where he was, struck the ground witli his foot, and caused
a fountain of the purest water to spring out of it, where Job hav-
ing washed his body, and drank a cup or two of it, found himself
235
A. M. 3548. A. C. 18C3. GEN. CH. xxxvii. TO THE END.
ed his faith and piety, with a portion of earthly felicity,
double to what he had before, and with the prolongation
of his life, beyond the common extent of those times.
This is a brief analysis of the book of Job : and who-
ever looks into it with a little more attention, will soon
perceive, that the author of it, whoever he was, a has pot
in practice all the beauties of his art, to make the four
persons, whom he brings upon the stage, keep up each
his proper character, and maintain the opinions which
they were engaged to defend ; will soon perceive, that
for its loftiness of style, and sublimeness of thoughts, for
its liveliness and energy of expression, for the variety of
its characters, the fineness of its descriptions, and the
grandeur of its imagery, there is hardly such another
composition to be found in all the records of antiquity,
which has raised the curiosity of all ages to find out the
person who might possibly be the author of it.
Some have imagined, that as it has been no uncom-
mon thing in all ages, for persons of distinction to write
their own memoirs, Job himself, or some of his friends
at least, who bore a part in the series of this history,
might set about the inditing it, if not for any other rea-
son, at least in compliance to his request. 4 ' Oh that
my words were now written, that they were printed in i
book!' But though some family records may possibly
be kept of events so remarkable as those that occur in
Job's life, b yet the poetical turn which is given to the
latter part of the book more especially, seems to savour
of a more modern composition than suits with the era
wherein we suppose Job to have lived.
Others therefore suppose, that the story of Job was at
first a plain narrative, written in the Arabian tongue, but
that Solomon, or some other poetical genius like him,
gave it a dramatic cast ; and in order to make the subject
more moving, introduced a set of persons speaking
alternately, and always in character. But though this
was certainly the mode of writing then in vogue, yet ho**1
there came so much of the Arabian and Syrian dialect tt>
creep into a book that was composed at a time when the
Hebrew tongue was in its very height of perfection, we
cannot conceive ; nor can we be persuaded, but that, in
J Universal Histoiy, b. 1. c. 7. * Job xix. 23.
perfectly cured, and restored to health again. — Calmet's Dic-
tiunary under the word Job.
b St Jerome, in his preface to the book of Job, informs us, that
the verse, in which it is chiefly composed, is heroic. From the
beginning of the book, to the third chapter, he say-., it i- prose j
but from Job's words, ' Let the day perish wherein I was born,
&c, (chap. iii. 3.) unto these words, ' Wherefore I abhor my-
self, and repent in dust and ashes,' (chap. xlii. G.) the v< I
hexameter, consisting of dactyls and spondees, like the Greek
verses of Homer, and the Latin of Virgil. Marianus Victo-
rius, in his note upon this |a-sage of St Jerome, says, that
he has examined the hook of Job, and finds St Jerome's observa-
tion to be true. Only we must observe, that the several
sentences directing us to the several speakers, such as these,
' Moreover, the Lord answered Job and said,' (chap. xl. 1.)
'Elihu also proceeded and said,' (chap, xxxvi. 1.) ' F.lilm spake
moreover and said,' (chap. xxxv. I., &c.) are in pros, aid DO) in
verse. St Jerome makes this hither remark, that the verses in
the book of Job do not always consist of dactyls and spondeOB,
but that other feet ilu frequently 00007 instead of them; that we
often meet in them a word of four syllables, instead of a dactyl
and spondee; end that the measure of the verses frequently dif-
fers in the number of the syllables of the several bet, bol allowing
two short syllables to be equal to one long, the sums of the mu-
snre of the verses are always the same. — skuckford't (Jonmitiui*,
vol. >. b. 9.
23G
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. Ill 2433. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3683. A. C. .728. EXOD. CH. i.-xiii.
[Book III.
reading the whole, we taste an antiquity superior to that
of David or Solomon's time. And yet, this notwith-
standing, l some have endeavoured to bring down the
author of the book of Job to the times of the Babylonish
captivity, and suppose the book to have been written for
the consolation of the captives in distress. But if we
suppose it mitten for the sake of the Jews, is it not
strange, that in a discourse of such a kind, there should
not be one single word of the law of Moses, nor so much
as one distant allusion to any rite or ceremony of it, or
to any of the forms of idolatry, for which the Jews
suffered in the time of their captivity ? The Jews, I say,
certainly suffered for their iniquity ; but the example of
Job is the example of an innocent man, suffering for no
demerit of his own. Now apply this to the Jews in their
captivity, and the book contradicts all the prophets
before, and at the time of their captivity, and seems to
be calculated, as it were, to harden the Jews in their
sufferings, and to reproach the providence of God for
bringing them upon them. Without troubling ourselves
therefore to examine, whether the conjectures of these, 2
who carry the date of this book even lower than the
captivity, and impute it 3 to Ezra, that ready scribe in
the law of Moses, as he is styled, have any good foun-
dation to support them, we may sit down contented with
what is the common, and as far as I can see, as probable
an opinion as any, namely, that* Moses, as soon as God
put it in his heart to visit his people, either while he
continued in Egypt, or while he lived in exile in Midian,
either translated this book from Arabic, in which some
suppose it was originally, or wrote it entirely by a divine
inspiration for the support and consolation of his coun-
trymen the Jews, groaning under the pressure of the
Egyptian bondage ; that by a proper example, he might
represent the design of providence in afflicting them,
and at the same time give them assurance of a release
and restoration in due time.
This is what most of the Jews, and several Christian
writers have affirmed, and believed, concerning the book
of Job; but the author from whom I have compiled a
great part of this dissertation, has by several arguments,
hardly surmountable, gone a great way to destroy the
received opinion, and left nothing to depend on but this,
— That the writer of this book was a Jew, and assisted
therein by the Spirit of God ; that it has alwavs been
esteemed of canonical authority ; is fraught with excel-
lent instructions ; and, above all, is singularly adapted
to administer comfort in the day of adversity. Not to
quit therefore this subject without an exhortation to this
purpose, 5 ' Ye have heard of the patience of Job,' says
the apostle, ' and have seen the end of the Lord :" and
therefore, B when we find our spirits begin to flag under
the sense of any affliction, or bodily pain ; when our
patience begins to be tired with sufferings, which are
greater than we can bear, and our trust in God to be
shaken, because he pours down his judgments upon us;
let us enliven our fainting courage, by setting before us
6iich noble patterns as this ; and let us be ashamed to
1 Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy, Dissertation 2.
s Warburton's Divine Legation, vol. 3. b. 6; et Seiitimens
de quelques Tlieol. de Hoi. p. 183, &c.
3 Ezra vii. 6. * Spanheim's Life of Job, c. 13.
* James v. 1 1. G Bishop Smalridge's Sermon of Trust in God
ink under our burdens, in their weight far dispropor-
tionate to those, which a man made of the same flesh and
blood as we are, and supported by no other helps than
are afforded us, without murmuring against God, without
lessening his confidence in him, without impeaching his
justice, and without desponding of his goodness, both
patiently endured, and triumphantly overcame.
SECT. V.
CHAP. I. — The sufferings of the Israelites, and the
means of their Deliverance out of Egypt.
THE HISTORY.
Not long after the death of Joseph, there happened a
revolution in Egypt, and a new king, who had no know-
ledge of the great services which Joseph had done the
crown, perceiving the vast increase of the Israelites,
began to fear, that in case of an invasion, they possibly
might side with the enemy, and depose him ; and therefore
he called a council, wherein it was resolved, not only to a
impose heavy taxes upon the people, but to confine them
likewise to the hard labour of bearing burdens, and
digging clay, making bricks, and b building strong cities
a The original words, scire massim, which we translate task-
masters, do properly signify tax-gat' erers, and the burdens are
afterwards mentioned as distinct things, under another name ; so
that the resolution in council was, both to lay heavy tributes
upon them to impoverish, and heavy burdens to weaken them.
Philo, in his life of Moses, tells us, that they were made to cany
burdens above their strength, and to work night and day, that
they were forced at the same time to be workers and servers
both; that they were employed in brick-making, digging, and
building; and that if any of them dropped down dead under
their burdens, they were not suffered to be buried. Josephus in
his Jewish Antiquities, (b. 2. c. 9.) tells us in like manner,
that they were compelled to learn several laborious trades, to
build walls round cities, to dig trenches and ditches, to drain
rivers into channels, and cast up dykes and banks to prevent
inundations. And not only so, but that they were likewise put
upon the erection of fantastical pyramids, which were vast piles
of building, raised by the kings of Egypt in testimony of their
splendour and magnificence, and to be repositories of their bodies
when dead. Thus, by three several ways, the Egyptians endea-
voured to bring the Israelites under; by exacting a tribute of
them, to lessen their wealth; by laying heavy burdens upon
them, to weaken their bodies ; and by preventing, by this means,
as they imagined, their generating and increasing.
b The two cities here mentioned, namely, Pithom and Raam-
ses, are said, in our translation, to be treasure-cities, but. not
places where the king reposited his riches, but rather his grain
or corn ; for such repositories seem to have been much in use
among the Egyptians ever since the introduction of them by
Joseph. Considering, however, the name and situation of these
two cities, that Pithom, according to Sir John Marsham, was the
same with Pelusium, the most ancient fortified place in Egypt,
called by Ezekiel, (xxx. 15,) 'the strength of Egypt;' and by
Suidas, long after him, ' the key of Egypt,' as being the inlet
from Syria; and that Raamses, in all probability, was a frontier
town which lay in the entrance of Egypt from Arabia, or some
of the neighbouring countries; it seems hardly consistent with
good policy to have granaries, or store cities in any other than
the inland parts of a country; and therefore, as these were
situated in the out parts of Egypt, it is much more likely that
they were fortified places, surrounded with walls, and towers, and
deep ditches, which would cost the Hebrews an infinite deal of
labour in building, than that they were repositories, either for
coin or treasure. — Patrick's Commentary, and Wells' Geography
\ of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
237
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3683. A. C. 1728. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
for the king; thereby to impoverish their spirits, as well I but saved male and female alike ; and when the kin"
sent for them, and reprimanded them for their disobedi-
as wear out and enfeeble their bodies.
This resolution of council was soon put in execution,
and task -masters accordingly set over the people, who
should keep them to drudgery, and use them with cruel-
ty, and do all they could, in short, to make their lives
miserable ; but such was the goodness of God to them,
that the more they were oppressed, the a more they multi-
plied ; insomuch that the king, finding that this expedient
would not do, sent for two of the most eminent of their
midwives, whose names were Shiphrah andPuah, and gave
them strict charge, that whenever they were called to do
their office to any Hebrew woman, they should privately
strangle the child, ° if it was a male, and leave only the
* females alive. But they abhorring such a cruel and
impious practice, had no regard to the king's command,
a Commentators observe, that in this passage of Scripture,
where Moses describes the vast increase of the Israelites, he em-
ploys a great variety of words in expressing it; and because the
words he makes use of are six in all, some of the Hebrew exposi-
tors have thence concluded, that the women brought forth six
children at a birth, Aristotle, indeed, in his history of animals,
(b. 7. c. 4.) tells us that the country of Egypt, where the Hebrew
women bred so plentifully, was so strangely prolific, that some
of their women, at four times, brought twenty children. But
without having recourse to such prodigious births as happened
but seldom, we need but suppose, that the Israelites, both men
and women, were very fruitful ; that they began soon, and con-
tinued long in begetting; and then there will be no impossibility
for 70 males, in the compass of 215 years, to have multiplied to
the number specified, even at the rate of one child every year.
For according to Simler's computation, 70 persons, if they beget
a child every year, will, in 30 years' time, have above 2000
children; of which, admit that one third part only did come to
procreate, in SO years more, they will amount to 9000. The
third of them will, in 30 years more, be multiplied to 55,000;
and, according to this calculation, in 210 years, the whole
amount will be at least 2,760,000. So that, if there was any
thing miraculous or extraordinary in all this, it was, that they
should be able to multiply at that rate, notwithstanding their hard
labour and cruel bondage. — Patrick's Commentary, and Uni-
versal History, b. I.e. 7.
b Josephus tells us, that there was a certain scribe, as they
called him, a man of great credit for his predictions, who told the
king, that there was a Hebrew child to be born about that time,
who would be a scourge to the Egyptians, and advance the glory
of his own nation, and if he lived to grow up, would be a man
eminent for virtue and courage, and make his name famous to
posterity; and that by the counsel and instigation of this scribe
it was, that Pharaoh gave the midwives orders to put all the
Hebrew male children to death. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 2. c. 9.
c For this distinction in his barbarity the king might have
several reasom. As, 1. To have destroyed the females with the
males had been an unnecessary provocation and cruelty, because
there was no tear of the ' women's joining to the king's enemies,
and fighting against him.' 2. The daughters of Israel exceeded
very much their own women in beauty, and all advantages of
person; and therefore their project might be to ha\r them
preserved for the gratification of their lust. Philo tells us, that
they were preserved to be married to the slaves of the Egyptian
lords and gentry, that the children descended from them might
be slaves even by birth. But suppose they were married to
freemen, they could have no children but such as would be
hall Egyptians, and in time be wholly ingrafted into that
nation. But, 3. Admitting they married not at all, yet as the
female sex, among the Hebrews, made a very considerable figure
in Egypt for their sense and knowledge, the care of their families,
and application to business, and for their skill and dexterity in
many accomplishments that were much to be valued for the use
a<id ornament of life, such as the distatl'and the loom, dyeing,
painting, embroidering, &c, such women as these would make
excellent servants and domestics for the Egyptian ladies, who
had no relish of spending their time any other way than in idle-
ness and Dleasure. — Biblioihcca Jiiblica in locum.
ence, they had this answer in readiness : — <* That the
Hebrew women being of a much stronger constitution
than the Egyptian, were generally delivered before they
came.
This was a piece of service not unacceptable to
God, but to Pharaoh it seemed no more than a mere
evasion ; and therefore resolving upon a more effectual
method to extirpate the Hebrews, he published an edict
wherein he commanded all their male children to be
thrown into the river ; and that they might be more sub-
ject to the inspection of his searchers, <-' he built them
houses, and obliged them to live in settled habitations.
Some years before this edict, Amram, who was of the
d It is generally supposed that the midwives, upon this occa-
sion, told a lie ; but there is no reason for such a supposition,
though possibly they might conceal some part of the truth, which
is not unlawful, but highly commendable, when it is to preserve
the innocent; for many of the Hebrew women might be such as
are here described, though not every one of them. The answer of
the midwives therefore is so far from being a sneaking lie to save
their lives, that it is a bold confession of their faith and piety, t»
the hazard of them, namely, that they saw so plain an evidence
of the wonderful hand of God, in that extraordinary vigour in the
travail of the women, that do what Pharaoh would, they durst
not, would not, strive against it, because they would ' not strive
against God.' — Lightfoot's Sermon on 2 Sam. xix. 29.
e The ' making the midwives houses,' is, by most interpreters,
ascribed to God, and the thing is supposed to have been done in
a metaphorical sense, that is, God gave them a numerous oH-
spring or family, and a very lasting succession or posterity. For
there are five things, say they, which go to complete the great-
ness or eminence of a family, as such; its largeness, its wealth,
its honours, its power, and its duration. And therefore, since
the midwives hazarded their own lives to save those of the He-
brew children, and to preserve the Israelites a numerous pri
and posterity, the God of Israel, in return, not only made their
own lives long and prosperous, but gave them very numerous
families, and an enduring posterity, in whom they might be said
to live after death, even from generation to generation. But all
this is a very forced construction, and what the original words
will by no means bear. We should therefore rather think, these
houses were built, not for the midwives but for the Israelite-,
and that it was not God, but Pharaoh, who built them. The
case seems to be this: — Pharaoh had charged the midwives to
kill the male children that were born of the Hebrew women;
the midwives feared God, and omitted to do what the king had
commanded them, pretending in excuse for their omission, that
the Hebrew women were generally delivered before they could
get to them. Pharaoh hereupon resolving to prevent their in-
crease, gave charge to his people to have all the male children oi
the Hebrews thrown into the river; but his command could Dot
be strictly executed, whilst the Israelites lived up and down the
fields in tents, which was their ancient and customary way of
living; fur they would shift here and there, and ledge the women
in childbed out of the way, to save their children. Pliaraoh
therefore built them houses, and obliged them to a inure settled
habitation, that the people whom he bad Bet over them might
know where to find evvry family, and to take an account of all
the children that should be born. So that this was a very cunning
contrivance of Pliaraoh, in order to have hi- charge more strictly
and effectually executed than it could otherwise have been done;
and was a particular too remarkable not to be Inserted in Most i'
account of this affair. The only seeming difficulty is to recon-
cile the words in the text to what has been here advanced; but
this will be none at all, if the words be rightly translsti
the verses rightly distinguished in this manner: — Exod. i. 20.
'And God dwelt with the niiduives, and the people multiplied,
and waxed very mighty, and tlu's happened ' (or was to, or came
to pass,) 'because the midwives feared God.' Ver. 81, 22.
' And Pharaoh built them ' (that is, the Israelites.' 'houses, and
charged all his people, saying, Every son that is bom, ye thai]
cast into the ri\er, and every daughter ye shall save alive . —
Shuck for £* Connection, vol. 2. b. 7.
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A. C. 1571 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3683. A. C. 1728. EXOD. CH. i-xiii.
[Book III.
house of Levi, had married a woman named a Jochebed,
of the same tribe, and by her had a daughter, whose
name was Miriam, and four years after that, a son whom
they called Aaron ; and in the time of this cruel perse-
cution, his wife was again delivered of a line lovely boy,
whom she was very desirous to preserve. For three
months therefore she * kept him concealed ; but fearing
at length a discovery, she resolved to commit him to the
providence of God: and accordingly having made a
little basket or boat of rushes, she plastered it within
and without with bitumen or pitch, to make it keep out
the water. Into this she put the poor infant ; and leav-
ing it among the flags, by the bank of the river, she
placed his sister at a proper distance to observe the
event.
As Providence ordered it, Pharaoh's daughter at-
tended with her maids of honour, in a short time after,
came to the river to bathe herself; and spying the basket
at some distance, she ordered one of the company to
go and fetch it out ; which when she had uncovered, the
surprising beauty of the infant, weeping and making its
little moan, so moved her heart with compassion, that
she immediately declared her intention to have it
brought up, notwithstanding she perceived it was cer-
tainly one of those children whom her father, in his edict,
had ordered to be drowned.
By this time Miriam, the child's sister, had conveyed
herself into the company ; and c hearing the princess
a Jochebed was not only of the same tribe, but own aunt like-
wise to Amram. For the Septuagint, Vulgate, and, after them,
many learned expositors, both pnpists and protestants, have
thought that she was no more than his uncle Kohath's daughter,
and consequently his cousin-german, because the marriage of an
aunt was afterwards forbidden in the Levitical law ; yet the plain
matter of fact is repugnant to all this. In Exod. vi. 18. it is
said expressly, that Kohath, the father of Amram, was the son
of Levi. In Num. xxxvi. 59, it is said, that Jochebed was
Levi's daughter, and born in Egypt ; and here again, in Exod.
vi. 20, it is said, that Amram ' took him Jochebed, his father's
sister, to wife: and therefore, without subverting the natural
sense of these texts, we cannot but conclude, that the nephew
married his aunt. For the prohibitions made upon the degrees
of consanguinity, do not flow from the law of nature, but only
oblige by virtue of the command of God ; and therefore, before
the command took place, relations of a nearer affinity were
allowed to be joined together. Nor can the supposed difference
of their age be any argument to the contrary, since Levi might
have her when he was an hundred years old, and she, conse-
quently, be very little, if any at all, older than her nephew. —
Sawin's Dissertation, 43.
b Josephus tells us this stoiy: — That Amram finding his wife
with child, and being solicitous about the king's edict, prayed
earnestly to God to put an end to that dreadful persecution; and
that Cod appeared to lum, and told him, that he would in due
time free bJS people from it; and that the son who shortly would
be bom unto him, should prove the happy instrument of their
glorious deliverance, and eternize his own name thereby : — That
this made him conceal him as long as he could; but fearing a
discovery, he resolved to trust him to the care of providence,
arguing in tins manner, — That if the child could be concealed,
BS it was very difficult to do it, and hazardous to attempt it, they
must be in danger every moment; hut as to the power and
veracity of God, lie did not doubt of it, but was assured, that
whatever he had promised he would certainly make good ; and
with this trust and persuasion, he was resolved to expose him. —
Jewish Antiquities, b. 2. c. 9.
c The princess is called by Josephus Thermuthis; by Arta-
phanes, as he is cited by Eusebius, (Prarp. b. 9 c. 4.) Mercis;
and in the Alexandrian Chronicle, Myrrinu. But Josephus adds
farther, that Thermuthis having sent for several wet nurses, one
inquire for a nurse, offered her service to go and fetch
one out of the neighbourhood ; which when she was or-
dered to do, she hastened to her mother, who came with
all speed, and took the child from the princess, who pro-
mised to see her well paid for her care in nursing it.
When the child was of an age fit to be weaned, his
mother carried him to court, to show him to the princess ;
who d soon grew so fond of him, that she adopted him
for her own, and in remembrance of his being taken out
of the river, gave him the e Egyptian name of Moses.
But his father and mother, / who brought him up in his
after another, the child turned its head scornfully from their
breasts, and would not suck: whereupon Miriam told the princess,
that if the nurse and child were of different i nations, her milk
would never agree with it, but that if an Hebrew woman was
fetched, he would probably take the breast from her ; and that,
upon this, she was bid to go for one, and immediately brought
her own and the child's mother, whom he fell a sucking \ery
greedily, to the admiration of all the by-standers. — B. 2. c. 9.
d And well might the princess be fond of the child, who,
according to Josephus, had charms enough to engage any one's
affections. "For, as he grew up, he showed a pregnancy of un-
derstanding much above those of his years, and did every thing
with such a grace, as gave the world to understand what they
might in time expect from him. After three years of age, he
was such a miracle of a child for beauty and comeliness of stature,
that people would stop and stand gazing on him with delight and
admiration wherever they saw him, and his carriage and behavi-
our was so very obliging, that he won upon the most morose and
unsociable sort of men. Thermuthis herself," continues our
author, " being as much delighted as any, wanting issue of her
own, and having resolved to adopt him for her son, brought him
one day to her father, and in merriment told lum, that she came
to present him with a successor, in case he wanted one. The
king received him with an affectionate tenderness, and to gratify
his daughter, took oft' his crown and placed it upon the child's
head ; but so far was he from being pleased with it, that he threw
it upon the ground, and trampled upon it with his feet. This
action was looked upon as an ill omen to the king and his gov-
ernment, insomuch that the scribe we mentioned before, being
then in the company, cried out to have the child killed : ' For
this is the child,' says he to the king, ' which I foretold your
majesty would be the destruction of Egypt, and he hath now
confirmed the prophecy, by the affront he hath put upon your
government, in treading the crown under his feet. In short this
is he by whose death alone you may promise yourself to be secure.
For take him but out of the way, the Hebrews shall have nothing
more to hope for, and the Egyptians nothing more to fear.' This
speech gave some uneasiness to Thermuthis; and therefore she
immediately took the child away, without any opposition from the
king, whose heart God had disposed not to take any notice of
what the scribe had said." — B. 2. ibid.
e Both Philo, Josephus, and Clemens Alexandrinus, will have
the word Moses to be derived from the Egyptian mo, which, ac-
cording to them, signifies water, and ises or yses, which means
preserved, as much as to say, saved from, the waters, or pre-
served from drowning. It is very likely indeed that the
princess should give the child a name from no other language
than her own; but then it is to be considered, that the Hebrew
word moshah, from whence the name naturally flows, and to
which the princess herself owns she alludes, might have the same
signification in her tongue as it has in the Hebrew, where it al-
ways signifies a drawing out of the water, (2 Sam. xxii. 17;
Ps. xviii. 16; and Isa. xliii. 2.) It cannot be doubted but that
Moses had another name given him by his own parents at the
time of his circumcision ; but what that name was, we have no
certainty, nor can we tell from what authority it is that Clemens
informs us that it was Joachim. — Patrick's Commentary .
f Besides the education which his own parents gave him,
Philo acquaints us, that from his Egyptian masters, he was taught
arithmetic, geometiy, physic, music, and hieroglyphics, otherwise
called enigmatical philosophy ; that from the Chaldeans he learned
astronomy; from the Assyrians their character or manner of
writing; and from the Grecians all their liberal arts and sciences.
But that was not a time for the Egyptians, who excelled the res?
Skct. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
239
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 ; OR, ACCORDING TO H
infancy, had taken care to instruct Iiim in such tilings as
related to the religion and history of his ancestors ; and
therefore when he arrived to maturity, he left the court,
and coming to live among his brethren, was himself an
eye-witness at what a merciless rate the Egyptian task-
masters treated them.
This raised his resentment and indignation to such a
degree, that seeing one day an Egyptian abuse a Hebrew
in a very gross manner, he stepped in to his assistance,
and perceiving nobody near, slew the Egyptian, and
buried his body in the sand.
The next day, as he walked out again, he found two
Hebrews in contest with one another; whereupon he
admonished them to consider that they were brethren,
and would have decided the quarrel between them : but
he who was the aggressor, rejected his arbitration with
contempt, and upbraided him with the murder of the Egyp-
tian the day before. This gave Moses some uneasy
apprehensions, that as the thing was now blown, it might
not be long before it reached Pharaoh's ear, and endan-
ger his life ; so that he thought it the a best way to leave
of the world in all sorts of learning, to send for masters from
Greece, which rather stood in need of Egyptian teachers; for to
1 be learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,' as St Stephen
asserts of Moses, (Acts vii. 22,) was to have the best and most
liberal education that the whole world could at that time afford.
a Josephus, who has given us several particulars of Moses'
life, which in modesty perhaps he might not think proper to re-
cord of himself, has assigned a farther reason for his leaving
Egypt, of which it may not be improper, in this place, to give
the reader this short abstract. " When Moses was grown to
man's estate, he had an opportunity offered him of showing his
courage and conduct. The Ethiopians, who inhabited the upper
land on the soutli side of Egypt, had made many dreadful incur-
sions, plundered and ravaged all the neighbouring parts of the
country, beat the Egyptian army in a set battle, and were become
so elated with their success, that they began to march towards
the capital of Egypt. In this distress, the Egyptians had re-
course to the oracle, which answered, that they should make
choice of an Hebrew for their general. As none was more pro-
mising than Moses, the king desired his daughter to consent that
he should go, and head his army; but she, after having first
expostulated with her father, how mean a thing it was for the
Egyptians to implore the assistance of a man whose death they had
been complotting, would not agree to it, until she had obtained a
solemn promise upon oath, that no practices or attempts should be
made upon his life. When Moses, by the princess's persuasion,
had at last accepted the commission, he made it his first care to
come up with tlie enemy before they were aware of him; and to
this purpose, instead of marching up the Nile as the custom was
before, he chose to cross the country, though the passage was very
dangerous, by reason of the poisonous flying serpents which in-
fested those parts: but for this he had a new expedient. The
bird ibis, though very friendly to every other creature, is a mortal
enemy to all serpents ; and therefore having got a sufficient num-
ber of these, he carried them along with him in cages, and as soon
as they came into any dangerous places, he let them loose upon
the serpents, and by their means and protection, proceeded with-
out any harm or molestation. He entered the enemy's country,
took several of their cities, and obliged them at last to retreat
into Saba, the metropolis of Ethiopia. Moses sat down before it ;
but as it was situate in an island, with strong fortifications about
it, in all probability it would have cost him a longer time to carry
it, had notTharbis, the king of Ethiopia's daughter, who had the
fortune once to see him from the walls behaving himself with the
utmost gallantry, fallen in love with him. Whereupon she sent
privately to let him know, that the city should be surrendered to
him upon condition that he would marry her immediately after.
Moses agreed to the proposal ; and having taken possession of
the place, and of the princess, returned with his victorious army
to Egypt. Here, instead of reaping the fruits of his great achieve-
ment, the Egyptians accused him of murder to the king, who
having already taken some umbrage at his valour and great
ALES, A. M. 3683. A. C. 1728. EXOD. CI1. i xiii.
Egypt, and to secure himself by flying into the country
of Midian beyond the Red Sea.
In the plains of Midian, there is a well, common to
all the natives of the place : here it was that Moses had
stopped to refresh himself, when seven of the daughter!
of Jethro, * the chief man of the country, came to draw
water for their flocks; but when they had filled their
troughs, a parcel of rude shepherds, being minded to
serve their own turn first, seized on their water, and
frightened the damsels away ; which Moses perceiving
went to their assistance, and forcing the shepherds to
retire, drew the young virgins more water, and gave it
to their flocks.
Hereupon taking their leaves, they made haste home ;
and while their father was wondering at their speedy
return, they informed him how civil a certain stranger
had been, both in watering their flocks, and protecting
them from the insults of the rustics ; which made Jethro
send and invite him to his house, and treat him in a
maimer suitable to the civility he had shown to his
daughters ; insomuch that Moses, after he had tarried
there some time, was so pleased with his courteous
reception, that he expressed a willingness to take up his
abode with him, c and become his shepherd. This pro-
reputation, was resolved to rid himself of him ; but Moses having
some suspicion of it made his escape, and not daring to go by
the common roads, for fear of being stopped by the king's guards,
was forced to pass through a great desert to reach the land of
Midian."
b The word cohen signifies indifferently either priest or prince;
and accordingly, in these early ages, both these offices were
frequently united in one and the same person. It seems, how-
ever, that Jethro was scarce a prince in that country; far then
one would think that the shepherds would not have dared to have
been so insolent to his daughters; and yet if he was a priest, it
is made a matter of some contest between two farm us rabbins,
whether he was an idolater, or a worshipper of the tnie God.
Abcn Ezra is of opinion, that as he was descended from Midian,
the son of Abraham, by Ketuiah, in all probability he professed
the true religion ; nor can he suppose that Moses would have
married his daughter, had he been bred up in a faNe one:
whereas Moses, it is plain, not only owns his alliance with bis
family, but, upon his arrival in the camp of Israel, invites him to
offer sacrifices to the Lord, (Exod. xviii. 11, 12.) as one who
adored the same God with the Israelites. Kinuhi, however, "ii
the other hand, affirms, that at first he was an idolatrous priest,
but afterwards, when became to Moses in the wilderness, and
was particularly informed of all those great and wonderful things
which God had wrought in Egypt for the deliverance of Uv
Hebrews, he became a convert to the worship of the true (Jul;
and for this he produces a passage in the same chapter, TOT. 1 1,
' Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods; far in the
thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them.' Hut besides
this, there is a farther difficulty in relation to this Jethro. In
Exod. iii. 1. he is expressly called ' the father-in-law of M
and yet the father of the young women, whom Moses defended
at the well, and whereof be certainly married one, is said to be
Reuel, (ii. 18,) and not Jethro: either therefore this Reuel
must be their grandfather, who, being head of the family, might,
in a larger sense, be called father, as we find instances of the like
nature in Gen. xxxi. 43; 2 Kings riv. 14, &<'.: or, as others »ill
have it, this Reuel, or Jethro, was one and the same person,
under different denominations. Upon supposition, therefor
he was descended from the family of Cush, it i- imagined, that
while he continued in [dumtea, his name might be Reuel, but
Upon bis removal into Midian, to avoid tin- wall and tumults in
his own country, he came to be called Jethro, as being the only
remainder (for so the word signifies) of the Cushites in that
country. — BXbHafkica BUlica, and Bedford's Scriphm Ckroa*
olotjy, b. 3. c. I.
e It can hardly he supposed, but that a person of Mom -' educa-
tion would, in the space of forty year-, which he abode in Midian
210
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A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3683. A. C. 1728. EXOD. CH. i-xiii.
posal Jethro very readily embraced ; and to attach him
the more to his interest, gave him his a daughter Zip-
porah in marriage, by whom he had two sons, whereof
the elder he named Gershom, which signifies a stranger,
alluding to his own condition in that country ; and the
younger Eliezer, importing, God my help, in grateful
acknowledgment of God's having delivered him from the
hands of Pharaoh, who sought his life.
While Moses lived in the family of Jethro, the king,
who was upon the Egyptian throne when he left the
country, died ; but his successor, who was no less a
tyrant, and oppressor of the Israelites, laid such heavy
burdens upon them, as made their lives extremely
miserable, till at length their complaints reached heaven ;
and as the time of their deliverance grew near, God
remembering the covenant which he hgd made with their
forefathers, began to look upon them with an eye of pity
and compassion.
Moses was to be his instrument in bringing about their
deliverance : and therefore, while he was feeding his
father-in-law's flock, and as they wandered in their
feeding, followed them as far into the desert as * Mount
find some other employment for himself than keeping sheep ; and
therefore some have imagined, that in this time he wrote the book
of Job, as we mentioned before, to comfort the Israelites, by the
example of his admirable patience, under their heavy oppression
in Egypt, and the book of Genesis likewise, that they might the
better understand what promises had been made to their ancestors,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that the time for their accom-
plishment was approaching. Nor can we suppose, but that the
several arts and sciences, which he had been taught in his youth,
lie took care, in this place of happy retirement, to cultivate and
improve. — Patrick's Commentary.
a It may be made a standing observation, that divine authors
do not relate all the passages of a story, as other authors delight
to do, but such only as are most material. We may therefore
suppose, that a great many things intervened between Moses'
entrance into Jethro's family, and his marriage to his daughter ;
especially considering that his children were so young at the
time of his return into Egypt. The observation of Philo, how-
ever, is not altogether to be neglected, namely, " That men of a
great genius quickly show themselves, and are not made known
by length of time;" and therefore he thinks, " That Jethro,
being first struck with admiration of his goodly aspect, and then
of his wise discourse, immediately gave him the most beautiful
of all his daughters to be his wife, not staying to inquire of any
body who he was, because his own most excellent qualities
sufficiently recommended him to his affection." — Be Vita Mosis,
b. 1.
b Horeb is a mountain in Arabia Petraa, at so small a distance
from Mount Sinai, that they seem to lie no more than two tops
belonging to the same mountain. Sinai lies to the east, and
Horeb to the west; but we find them frequently in Scripture
used promiscuously. For, whereas the author of the Hebrews
several times asserts, that God gave his law to the Israelites at
Horeb, though other places expressly say, that it was at Sinai,
tiii- iv easily agreed, by observing, that they both made but as it
were one mountain with two tops, whereof that of Sinai is much
the higher, though that of Horeb exceeds it in fruitfulness and
pleasure. It is not for that reason, however, no nor yet for its
vast height, that it obtained the title of the mount of God.
Josephus indeed tells us, (b. 2. c. 12.) that the people of the
country had a tradition, that God, in a more particular manner,
dwelt there ; and that therefore, in reverence to the place, they
always declined feeding their flocks upon it: but the true reason
of its being so called is, that, in after ages, it became famous for
sundry events, and at this time received its name by way of
anticipation. For here it was, 1. That God appeared to Moses
in the bush ; 2. That he manifested his glory at the delivery of
the law; 3. That Moses, with his rod, brought water out of the
ruck ; 4. That by lifting up his hands, he made Joshua prevail
asainst the Amalekites; 5. That here he fasted twice forty days
Horeb he saw a bush on fire, and. as he thought, flaming
for a considerable while, but, what occasioned his
astonishment, not in the least damaged or consumed.
c This raised his curiosity to go a little nearer, and see
if he could discover the cause of it ; but as he was
approaching, d he heard a voice out of the bush, calling
unto him, and ordering him to e pull oft' his shoes,
and forty nights; 6. That from hence he brought the two tables
of the law; and, 7. That here Elijah was vouchsafed a noble
vision; with some others of the like nature. — Calmefs Diction-
ary, Universal History, b. 1. c. 7, and f fells' Geography of the
Old Testament, vol. 2.
c Exod. iii. 2. ' And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him
in a flame of fire.' The traditionary notion of a miraculous light
or fire being the token of a divine presence, prevailed among the
Greeks in the time of Homer; for after relating that the goddess
Minerva attended on Ulysses with her golden lamp, or rather
torch, and afforded him a refulgent light, he makes Telemachus
cry out to his father in rapture,
What miracle thus dazzles with surprise ?
Distinct in rows the radiant columns rise.
The walls, where'er my wondering sight I turn,
And roofs, amidst a blaze of glory burn :
Some visitant of pure ethereal race
With his bright presence deigns the dome to grace. — Ed.
d In the text it is said, that ' the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of the bush,' Exod.
iii. 2. But whether it was a created angel, speaking in the person
of God, or God himself, or, as the most received opinion is,
Christ the Son of God, has been matter of some controversy
among the learned. Those who suppose it no more than an
angel, seem to imply, that it would be a diminution of the majesty
of God to appear upon every occasion, especially when he has
such a number of celestial ministers, who may do the business as
well. But considering that God is present everywhere, the
notification of his presence, by some outward sign, in one deter-
minate place, which is all we mean by his appearance, is, in our
conception, less laborious (if any thing laborious could be con-
ceived of God) than a delegation of angels, upon every turn, from
heaven, and seems in the main to illustrate, rather than debase,
the glory of his nature and existence. But however this be, it
is plain, that the angel here spoken of was no created being, from
the whole context, and especially from his saying, ' I am the
Lord God, the Jehovah,' &c, since this is not the language of
angels, who are always known to express themselves in such
humble terms as these, ' I am sent from God, I am thy fellow
servant,' &c. It is a vain pretence to say, that an angel, as God's
ambassador, may speak in God's name and person; for what
ambassador of any prince ever yet said, ' I am the king ?' Since
therefore no angel, without the guilt of blasphemy, could assume
these titles, and since neither God the Father, nor the Holy
Ghost, are ever called by the name of an angel, that is, a mes-
senger, or person sent, whereas God the Son is called by the
prophet Malachi, chap. iii. 1, ' the angel of the covenant,' it
hence seems to follow, that this angel of the Lord was God the
Son, who might very properly be called an angel; because, in
the fulness of time, he was sent into the world in our flesh, as a
messenger from God, and might therefore make his temporary
apparitions, presages, and forerunners, as it were, of his more
solemn mission. — Poole's Annotations.
e Justin Martyr, in his second apology, is of opinion, that the
custom of putting off the shoes, both among the Jews and Gen-
tiles, before they began to officiate in holy things, took its rise
from this precept given to Moses; but our learned Mr Mede
seems to be of a different opinion, namely, that Moses did not
give the first occasion to this rite, but that it was derived from
the patriarchs before him, and transmitted to future ages from
that ancient general tradition. It is certain that Pythagoras,
who took his institutes chiefly from the Egyptians, delivers it as
a rule in his Rubric, "he who sacrifices, should put off his shoes,
and so approach to the holy ordinance ;" and therefore God, in
compliance to an ancient custom, then in practice among the
Egyptians, might speak to Moses, who was a person well
acquainted with their ceremonies, to decalceate, as very well
knowing, that it would be a means to create in him a greater
Sfxt. V.j
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
241
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1671 ; OK, ACCORDING TO HA
because the ground whereon he stood was holy. Moses
obeyed ; and while the voice went on to declare itself
the God, who had all along been kind to his ancestors,
and had now with compassion seen the afflictions of his
brethren, and was come down to deliver them from their
oppressors, he fell down upon the ground, and covered
his face with his garment, as being unable to sustain the
refulgency of the divine presence.
Moses, by this time, had entirely laid aside all
thoughts of rescuing his brethren, the Israelites, from
their thraldom ; nor had he any opinion of his own abili-
ties, if he should make the attempt, to succeed in so
difficult an undertaking ; and therefore, when God pro-
posed the thing to him, and opened the whole manner and
method in which he would have it executed, he began to
excuse himself, by urging his meanness and insufficiency
to take upon him the character of a divine ambassador.
This difficulty God endeavoured to remove, by assuring
him that he would be with him, and assist him in every
step he took ; that he would enable him to accomplish
the thing, though never so perplexed and arduous ; and
for a token of his veracity herein, that within a small
compass of time, he should see that very people, who
now were in slavery, set free, and worshipping him on
that very mountain.
Moses, still unwilling to undertake the thing, desired
to know what he was to say to the people, and by what
name he was to call the person Avho sent him upon this
message. To which request God was pleased to reply, —
That he who sent him was an eternal, independent, self-
existent being, a the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
by which name he gloried to be called ; and therefore
he required him, first to assemble the elders of Israel
together, and acquaint them with his design, and then to
go directly to the king, and demand of him a dismission
of the Israelites, at least for three days' journey into the
wilderness, in order to sacrifice to their God ; which,
though at the first he knew he would be far from grant-
ing, yet in the end, would be glad to consent to, when
he should see the divine power exerted upon sundry
occasions, and so many miracles wrought before his
eyes as would compel him to let them go.
Such a solemn assurance as this from the mouth of
God himself, was enough, one would think, to have
gained a ready compliance ; but Moses still demurs to
the thing, and makes it an objection, that the people,
when he came to them, might possibly question his cre-
dentials ; and therefore, to obviate this, God promises
to enable him to work miracles for their conviction.
Ami for a specimen of this, when he bade him throw the
reverence to the divine presence, and a more awful attention to
what he was going to say. — Patrick's and Le Clerc's Commen-
taries.
a God no doubt was the God of Noah, and of ail the holy
patriarchs, who lived before these three were bom; hut for a
peculiar reason is he called their God, because of his covenant,
and the promise made to each of them, that the blessed seed
should spring from their loins, in opposition to the pretensions of
Other neighbouring people, who, as the learned Dr Alix observes,
were their rivals in that hope. And so the word will denote, as
lin)ch as if he had said, the God of Abraham, and not of Lot, as
the Ammonites and Moabites pretended; the God of Isaac, and
not of Ishmael, as his posterity pretended ; and the God of Jacob,
and not of Esau, as the Edoniites boasted — Patrick's- Commen-
tary.
LES, A. M. 37->3 A. C. JC8S. EXOD. Ca i— xiii.
rod that was in his hand upon the ground, it instantlv
became a serpent terrible to behold ; but when he ordered
him to take it up, it resumed its former shape ; when he
put his hand into his bosom, * upon pulling it out. it was
all over leprous, but upon putting it in, and pulling it
out again, it became as dean as before ; and, as if this
were not enough, to gain him a further credit among the
people, he gave him a standing power to convert water
into blood, whenever there was occasion.
Jiiit the promise of all this miraculous power could
not prevail with Moses to accept of this office. He
alleged in excuse, his want of eloquence, and r the
natural impediment he had in his speech. But this
b It is no improbable conjecture, that as God commandi d
Moses to work all his wonders before Pharaoh, this miracle of
the leprosy gave occasion to the fabulous story, which was invent-
ed in after ages, 'namely, That Aloses was a leper, and the
Israelites a scabby race, whom the Egyptians were forced to
drive out of their country, for fear of the infection. This
defamation is fust met with in Manetho's Egyptian History;
from Manetho it descended to Apion, the Greek historian; and
from him Justin and Tacitus, two noted Roman authors, un-
doubtedly took it. But as Manetho might not at first male
devise it out of his own head, so those writers from whom he
compiled his history, might derive it from this passage of Mo es'
appearing with a leprous hand before Pharaoh, which w
sently noised about the country, without the other part of his
being immediately cured. For, according to the argument of
Josephus, "there needs no other proof of his being no leper,
than what arises from his own words, namely, that no lepers
should be admitted into any towns or villages, but live apart in
a distinct habit by themselves; that whoever touched a leper,
or lodged under the same roof with him, should be reputed
unclean ; and that whoever should come to be cured of that dis-
ease, should pass through certain purifications, wash himself with
fountain water, shave oil' all his hair, and offer such and sueli
sacrifices, before he should be received into the holy city. Now
if Moses," says he, "had been afflicted with this distemper
himself, it is incongruous to think, that he would ever have 1 ei :i
so severe upon others for it." The leprosy indeed was a dis-
temper in a manner peculiar to the Egyptians. " The leprosy
is a disease which arises by the banks of the Nile in Middle
Egypt, and nowhere else," as both Lucretius (b. G.) and Plutarch
tell us; and if it was so in Moses" time, he may be presumed
to have made laws more strict against it, with an intention to
excite the people's carefulness to avoid a distemper which they
had already seen so much of, but had now, together with the
other calamities of their bondage, happily escaped. For that the
people, at this time, were in good health, is evident from the
long journey they undertook, and which on all hands is agreed,
they did perform; and that they were not expelled bj the Egyp-
tians, but went away from them sore against their will, their
pursuit of them to the Red Sea, and losing all their lives with
a purpose of retaking them, facts that are attested l>\
heathen authors, are an abundant demonstration.— -J
contra Apion, Plutarch's Quast. Nat., BibUotheca JULli,
2. Essay 4. and Patrick'* Commentary.
c .Moses here tells us of himself, that he was slow of speech,
which most interpret to be a stammerer, or stutterer; and yet
St Stephen (Acts vii. :!■>.' declares of him, that ' hi
in words as well as deeds;' but this admits of an easy reconcilia-
tion, if we do but suppose, that the mum- of what be spake was
great and weighty, though his pronunciation was nol answerable
To it. As God, however, tells him, fExod. iv. 11.) that he it was
who made the mouth, and could consequently give to at
what faculties he thought convenient, or remove any impediment
he might have, it seems nut im] robable, that eithi r by use and
exercise, or else l>v God's immediate core of his detect. Moses
had acquired a better facility in delivering his mind, sit
find him making several speeches to the people, <
excellent discourse before his death, in the beginning of Di uti r-
onomy; as he has likewise, where his Bong occurs towan
latter end, given an ample demonstration, that he wanted ant
; words when he pleased to employ them. — Patrick's
Commentary .
2 H
242 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 ; OK. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3723. *. C. 1G83. EXOD. OH. i-xiii.
defect likewise God promises to supply in an extraor-
dinary manner ; and as he was the great author of
human nature, to give him all the faculties that were
sary for the business he put him upon. So that,
driven from all his subterfuges, Moses was at last com-
pelled to declare downright, that he had no inclination
to the office ; and therefore desired of God to let him
alone, and iind out some other that was fitter for his
purpose.
So blunt a refusal was not so pleasing- to God, and
might have been resented with indignation; but instead
of that, he resumed the objection, and told Moses, that
as to his defect of utterance, this his brother Aaron, who
would be fond of the office, and was already set out from
home to meet him, would be sufficiently capable of sup-
pi} ing-. To him, therefore, he bid him impart the whole
affair, and to make use of him as his orator, but to reserve
the chief conduct of it to himself, and not to forget a to
take along with him his rod, wherewith he would enable
him to work all miracles.
By these persuasions, and demonstrations of a mira-
culous power to assist him, Moses, at last, was prevailed
on to accept the commission, and accordingly went to
his father-in-law, and, h without telling him the occasion,
requested leave to go and visit his brethren who were in
Egypt. His father-in-law readily consented to it ; so
that, taking his wife and children along with him, he was
proceeding on his journey, when, to his great surprise,
[Book III.
a Wonderful are the stories which the Hebrew doctors tell
us of this rod, namely, that it originally grew in paradise, was
brought away hy Adam, from him passed to Noah, and so through
a succession of patriarchs, till it came to be transplanted into
Jethro's garden, and there took root again, God knows how;
that it was called Zaphir, whence Ziphorah his daughter had her
name, and had the Tetrogrammaton written upon it; that when
Zipporah fell in love with Moses, her father consented that she
should have him, it' he could pluck up this Zaphir-rod, at the
same time published a proclamation, that whoever did it first
should marry his daughter; that hereupon several lusty young
men came, and tried their strength in vain ; but that Moses, by
being acquainted with the true pronunciation of the name of God,
in virtue thereof, did it with ease, and so not only obtained his
daughter, but this rod into the bargain, with which he wrought
afterwards all his wonders in Egypt. But how fictitious soever
all this may be, it is certain that in Exod. iv. 20. tliis staff is
called ' tin' rod of God ;' and that partly because it was appro-
priated to God's special service, to be the instrument of all his
glorious works, and partly to show that, whatever was done by
that rod, was not done by any virtue in it, or in the hand of
Moses, but merely by the power of God, who was pleased, for
the greater confusion of his enemies, to use so mean an instru-
ment. Nor is it an improbable conjecture, that the wands which
ministers are wont to carry in their hands, in token of their
power and office, were originally derived from this of Moses. —
Universal History, b. 1. c. 7. and Poole's Annotations.
a lie was, both iu justice and decency, obliged to acquaint his
father-in-law with hi; intention to leave Midian, and go into
. because he had humid himself by an oath to live with
him, and was resolved now to take his wife and children, as In jng
well assured of a speedy return. But he thought fit to conceal
from him the errand upon which God sent him, lest hi; should
endeavour to hinder or discourage him from so difficult and
dangerous an enterprise. So that Moses, in this instance, has
given us a rare example of piety and prudence, in that he took
rue to avoid all occasions and temptations to disobedience to the
divine commands; as well as of a singular modesty and humility,
in that such glorious and familiar converse with God, and the
high commission with which he had honoured him, made him
neither forget the civility and duty which he owed to his father,
nor break out into any public and vainglorious ostentation of such
t privilege. — Poole's Annotations.
an angel appeared to him in the inn where he lodged,
and, with a stern countenance, and flaming sword in his
hand, threatened to kill him, because, by the persuasions
of his wife, or his own indulgence, he had neglected to
circumcise his younger son ; which when his wife per-
ceived, she immediately took a knife, made of a sharp
c flint, and therewith circumcising the child, pronounced
over him the usual form of admission into the pale ol
the church ;d which when she had done, the angry vision
disappeared, and gave signs that God was appeased.
While Moses was on his way to Egypt, Aaron, by a
divine revelation, was informed thereof, and ordered to
go and meet him in the wilderness. Not far from the
mount of Horeb they met ; and, after mutual embraces
and endearments, Moses began to open unto him the
purport of his commission, the instructions he had re-
ceived from God, and the miraculous works he was
empowered to show : and thus proceeding to Egypt,
the two brothers called an assembly of the chief elders
of the people, wherein Aaron declared unto them the
message which God had sent by Moses, while Moses, to
confirm the truth of his divine mission, wrought the
several miracles which God had appointed him, before
their eyes ; insomuch that they were all fully convinced
that he was a true prophet, come from the God of their
fathers, who had at length commiserated their afflictions.
and sent now to deliver them from their bondage : and
with this persuasion, they kneeled down upon their
knees, and worshipped God.
Not many days after, Moses and Aaron went to court,
and having obtained admission to the king, requested of
him that he would give the Israelites leave to go three
days' journey into the wilderness, in order to perform
a solemn service to the Lord their God. But Pharaoh
was so far from complying with their request, that, know-
c Whether it was required that the instrument made use of
in the circumcision of children, was to be of stone or flint, and
whether the Hebrews never used any other, is a question very
learnedly discussed by Pererius, in his disputation on this place.
That the heathens performed such sort of abscisions with sharp
flints or stones, is evident from several authors; and though
Pererius determines against the constant use of the flint among
the Hebrews in circumcision, and against its being prescribed or
enjoined in the institution, yet there is great reason to presume,
that this operation was never done with any other kind of instru-
ment, before that of Joshua's circumcising the Israelites in the
wilderness. — Bibliotheca Biblica in locum.
d Exod. iv. 25, ' A bloody husband art thou to me.' The
learned Joseph Mede, (Dissertation xiv. p. 52,) has given to these
words of Zipporah the following singular interpretation. He
says that it was a custom among the Jews to name the child
that was circumcised, by a Hebrew word, signifying a husband.
He builds his opinion upon the testimony of some rabbins. He
apprehends that she applied to the child, and not to Moses, as
most interpreters think, the words .above mentioned. Chaton,
which is the term in the original, is never used to denote the
relation between husband and wife, but that which is between i.
man and the father or mother of the person to whom he is mar-
ried: it signifies a son-in-law, and not a husband. A person
thus related is a son initiated into a family hy alliance. It is in
this view of initiated, that Zipporah says to her son, 'a bloody
husband art thou to me;' that is to say, it is I who have initiated
thee into the church by the bloody sacrament of circumcision.
He endeavours to justify his criticism upon the word chaton, by
the idea which the Arabians affix to the verb from whence this
noun is derived. The Chaldee Paraphrast also annexes the same
notion to the words of Zipporah. Saurin, (Dissertation on Old
Test. vol. 1. p..371,) does not seem altogether satisfied with this
interpretation of the passage: whether it be just or not, must be
left to the decision of the learned reader. — En.
Sect. V.J
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &C.
213
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 :
ing no being' superior to himself, he profanely questioned
the existence of their God ; or if there was such a thing ',
he could not see why they might not serve him in Egypt,
as well as elsewhere; and therefore he positively refused
to let them go.
The truth is, he suspected that they had a design of
revolting from his service, and had been laying schemes
to get out of his dominions. This to him was an argu-
ment that they had too much leisure ; and an effectual
way to check their indulging themselves in such contri-
vances, was to take care to leave them fewer vacant
hours ; and therefore he ordered greater tasks, and more
work to be laid upon them. a He reprimanded Moses
and Aaron for going among the people, and interrupting
them in their employments. He gave their taskmasters
charge, not to allow them any more b straw, and yet to
a The words of Pharaoh are, ' Why do ye, Moses and Aaron,
let the people from their works ? Gel ye to your burdens.9
Which words seem to be directed, not so much to the elders of
Israel, who might possibly go along with them, as to Moses and
Aaron themselves: and so the sense of the reproof will be : — "So
far am I from granting the liberty which you desire for the peo-
ple, that, as a just punishment upon you for your seditious
attempt, I command you also to go with the rest, to take your
share in their burdens, and to perform the ta^k which shall be
required of you." And that so cruel a tyrant did not proceed
farther against them, must be ascribed to the mighty power of
God, who governs the spirits, and restrains the hands of the
greatest kings, when he pleases. This seems to be a better
account than what some of the Jewish fictions give us of it,
namely, that when Moses and Aaron came into Pharaoh's
presence, they were raised to a taller stature than they had
before; had a splendour in their countenances, like that of the
sun; and appeared with such majesty, as quite struck him with
terror and astonishment. — Poole's Annotations, and Patrick's
Commentary.
h What the use of straw was in making bricks, is variously
conjectured. Some think it was of no other use than to heat the
kilns wherein they were burnt; others, who will have it that
they were never burnt at all, imagine that it served only to cover
them from the too intense heat of the sun, and that they might
he baked gradually; but as it is evident that they were burnt in
kilns the most probable opinion is, that straw was mixed with
the clay, to make them more solid For, according to a passage
in Lucilius, mentioned by JJonius Mareellus, straw was an-
ciently employed to this purpose. " For what forms the Mile i>
made up of nothing more than common clay, mixed with straw,
and mud mixed with chaff."
On this subject take the following accounts of modem tra-
vellers:— " The use of the chopt straw and stubble in making
bricks," (Exod. v.) "was not a^ fuel to burn or bake them with,
for which purpose surely neither of these is proper, but to mix
with the clay, in order to make the bricks, which were dried, or
baked in the sun, cohere." So Pltilo, who was himself of Alex-
andria in Egypt, expressly informs us, in Vit.Mosis, And from
Dr Shaw, {Travels, p. 136,) we Learn, that " some of the Egyp-
tian pyramids are made of bricks, t ho composition whereof is
only a mixture of clay, mud, and straw, slightly blended and
kneaded together, and afterwards baked in the sun. The straw
which keeps these bricks together, and still preserves its original
colour, seems to be a proof that these bricks were never burnt or
made in kilns." And as to the Egyptian manner of building
in modern times, Mr Baumgarten, in his Travels, c. L8, speak-
ing of Cairo in Egypt, says, "The houses for the most part are
of brick that are only hardened by the heat of the sun, and mixed
with straw to make them firm." (Collection of Voyages and
Travels, I vols, folio, vol. 1. p. 443. See also, Complete System
of Geography, vol. 2. p. 177, col. 1. ; Hasselguist's Travels,
p. 100.) It is said that the unburnt bricks of Egypt formerly
"ere, and still are, made of clay mixed with straw. Th
tian pyramid of unburnt bricks Dr Pococke (Observations mi
Egypt, p. 53,) says, seems to be made of the earth brought by
the Nile, being a sandy black earth, with some pebbles and shells
in it: it is mixea up with chopped straw, in order to bind the
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37C3. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. i— xih
exact the same tale of bricks from them without abate-
ment.
This charge the taskmasters, who were Egyptians,
communicated to their under officers, who wen- Hebrews.
And when the people, being forced, for want of straw,
to wander all the country over to pick up Btubble, haul
not time to make as many bricks as were exacted, these
Hebrew officers were called to an account, anil beaten.
They, however, not well knowing from whence this
unreasonable severity proceeded, whether from the royal
edict, or the rigour of the taskmasters, addressed the
king himself, and laid their grievances before him in the
most humble manner. But so far were they from receiv-
ing any redress, that the answer returned them was,
" That the king would have his edict executed, be it
never so severe; and would exact from them their full
number of bricks, though he was resolved to allow them
no straw."
This answer was enough to run them to the utmost
despair: and therefore, as they returned from the king,
meeting Moses and Aaron, they discharged their grief
and anger, though very unjustly, upon them ; telling
them, " That they had taken care to infuse an odium into
the king against them, and given him a plausible handle
to destroy them, which they wished in God might fall
upon their own heads." These bitter expressions
afflicted Moses to that degree, that he expostulated the
matter with God, for suffering Pharaoh to be so exas-
perated against his people, and for having not in (he
least mitigated their afflictions, since the time that he
iirst went to him.
His concern for the oppression of his brethren made
him certainly forget die promise which God had given him,
and the perverseness of Pharaoh, which he had foretold
him : but, notwithstanding this, God was pleased to give
him fresh assurances, that now the time was come,
wherein he would manifest his almighty power, and
exert the full force of the e name which he had taken
clay together. The Chinese have great occasion for ^traw in
making bricks, as they put thin layers of straw between them,
without which they would, a* they dried, run or adhere togi tin r.
— Macartney's Emb., p. 269. — En.
c The words of God upon this occasion are, — ' 1 appeared
unto Abraham, unto [saac, and unto Jacob, by the name ol l.i-
Shaddai, the Almighty God; but by my name Jehovah was I
not known to them," (Exod. vi. li.) But how can tin-; he, when
long before Moses' time, God is so frequently called by that
name ? For did not the sons of Seth ' call themselves by the
of Jehovah,' Co. iv. 26. ? ' Did Dot Abraham swear,
and lift up his hands to Jehovah,' Co. \i\. 22. ? Did not be
call the place «l:ere he went to offer I aac, ' Jehovah-jireh,'
Ceu. xxii. I 1. ? Did not the Lord say unto him, ' I am t
Jehovah, that brought thee out of Ut of the I Beu. xr.
7. ? And when, in a vision, Jacob saw him stand before hint,
did not he Bay, ' I am Jehovah,the Cod of Abraham, thy father,
and the Cod of Isaac.'Gen. xxxviii. IS. ? These passages make
it impossible for God not to he known to the patriarchs under
that name: and therefore several learned writers upon this ti \?
prehended a fault in our transit tion, and would I
latti r part of the vi rse t" he taken interrogate ly, thus, • B
name Jehovah was 1 not known unto them ?' If we t
., ntence \vely, say they, every one w i
plainly intimates, that the Lord had revealed himself u to them
by this name, which is agreeable to the scripture i
patriarchs' knowledge and worship of him; but to take the words
without the interrogation, and suppose them to Intend, i
Lord who appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, "a- net known
to them by his name Jehovah, cannot he reconcili d
express passages in the book of Genesis; unless we can suppose,.
244 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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[Book III.
upon himself, in the deliverance of his people from their
bondage, and in the performance of the promises made
to their forefathers, by giving them the land, the rich
and plentiful land of Canaan in possession. With this
Mod appointed Moses to acquaint the children of Israel,
and to promise them, moreover, that he would make them
his peculiar people, and take them under his immediate
protection ; so that in the event they should plainly see,
that their deliverance and admission to the inheritance
he had spoken of, was effected by that God who is
always faithful to his promises. But though Moses
failed not to carry these tidings to the people, yet such
was their affliction of mind, upon the increase of their
servitude, that they gave little or no attention to him.
God, however, pursuing the ends of his providence,
commanded Moses to go again to the king, and demand
the release of his people ; and when he endeavoured to
decline the office, upon pretence of the a impediment in
that as Genesis was not written when God revealed this his name
to Moses, Moses makes use of it by way of anticipation, because
at the time when he wrote, the Jews commonly used it, though
in the days when the patriarchs, whose lives he was giving some
account of, lived, it was a thing utterly unknown. There is
another way, however, of expounding these words, if, by the name
Jehovah, we understand not the letters or syllables, but what is
properly the import of it, namely, not only God's eternal existence,
but his omnipotent power likewise, and unchangeable truth, which
give being, as we may say, to his promises by the actual per-
formance of them. That this is the sense of the word Jehovah,
is apparent from several passages in this very book of Exodus.
Thus, chap. vii. 5, 17, ' And the Egyptians shall know that I arn
Jehovah; for behold, I will strike with the rod, that is in thine
hand, upon the rivers, and they shall be turned into blood:' so
that the meaning of the whole passage will fairly be, — " That
though God gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, such demonstra-
tions of his power as could not but convince them that he would
certainly perform his promises; yet they did not live to see the
accomplishment of them, which he was now going to set before
the Israelites. They believed in these things, but they did not
experimentally know them. They had dreams and visions indeed,
but -Moses was the first that wrought miracles and prodigies. By
these he made the name of the Lord known unto the world."
Ami thereibre Maimonides well concludes from this place, that
I .. prophetic spirit of Moseswas more excellent than that which
bad been upon any before his time. {Poole's Annotations, Le
Clrrc's and Patrick's Commentaries, and More Nevoch; part 2.
e. 35.). — See an elaborate dissertation on this subject, by Mr
Bell, in his edition of Rollin, vol. 2. p. 524, et seq. Ed.
a The phrase in the text is, ' uncircumcised in lips;' for as
among the Jews, circumcision of any part denoted its perfection,
50 uncircumcision "as set to signify its defectiveness, or inepti-
tude to the purposes for which it was designed. Thus the prophet
Bays of the Jews, that ' their ear was uncircumcised,' and adds
an explanation of it, because ' they cannot hearken,' Jer. vi. 10.
Again he tells us, that ' the house of Israel were uncircumcised
:ear',' that is, would not understand and learn their duty,
Jer. ix. 26. And in like manner here, ' uncircumcised lips'
111 " I mean a person that was a bad speaker, and wanted eloquence ;
ami what might possibly induce Moses to make use of this meta-
phor, rather than any other, might be the consideration of his
ig ;o lately neglected to circumcise his son. Some are of
opinion, that the word circumcision carries in it an idea of some-
tliing superfluous in the pan, and that therefore Moses' tongue
be i ither too long, or too big for his mouth, and that this
occasion either an inelegance or hesitation in his speech:
but tlte more probable opinion is, that he was what we call
tongue-tied, which his parents, either in their fright might not
perceive, or in the gi neral hurry and destruction of the children,
might not dare to send for a proper person to remedy, until it
0 late. However this be, it is certain, that as circumcision
was the first and greatest sacrament among the Jews, so uncir-
cumcision was esteemed by than the greatest scandal and dis-
grace; and therefore Moses perhaps thought it some disparage-
his speech, which he might possibly think was the reason
why his own countrymen did not hearken unto him, and
how then could he expect that Pharaoh should do it, in a
matter so much to his loss ? God, to remove this objec-
tion, told him, — b That there was no occasion for him-
self to speak unto Pharaoh, seeing he had constituted
Aaron to be his interpreter ; that he must not be
discouraged at some few repulses ; that Pharaoh, he
knew, was a man of so obstinate a temper, that the more
he was punished, the less he would relent, but that the
less he relented, the more would his wonders be shown on
him and his people ; that to this purpose, he had invested
him with the power of working miracles, which would
make him justly terrible ; and that therefore, when they
came into Pharaoh's presence, ai.d he demanded a proof
of the truth of his mission, ho should direct Aaron to
cast his rod upon the ground, and it should immediately
become a serpent.
With these instructions, Moses and Aaron came again
to the king, and repeated the demand of his dismissing
the Israelites ; whereupon, when the king desired them
to show him some miracle, thereby to induce him to
believe, that the God whom they spake so much of, had
really sent them, Aaron threw down his rod, which was
instantly changed into a serpent ; but, to confront this
miracle, the king sent for the magicians and sorcerers
of Egypt, and ordered them to try, if by their magical
arts, they could cause the like transmutation. They
attempted, and succeeded ; they changed their rods into
serpents, as the other had done, but with this remarkable
difference, that Aaron's rod swallowed up all the rods
of the magicians, which was enough to have convinced
the proud monarch of the superior power of the God of
Israel, had not his heart been so averse to the thoughts
of parting with the Hebrews, that he did not let this
circumstance make any due impression upon his mind.
Some time after this, Moses and Aaron put themselves
ment to him, that he was not able himself to deliver his mind in
an handsome manner to Pharaoh; and therefore made mention of
this again, to engage the divine majesty to circumcise his lips,
as they term it, to remove this impediment in his speech, as we
have some reason to believe that he did. — Pererius, Patrick's,
and Le Clcrc's Commentaries.
b God, to silence the objection which Moses had more than
once made of his defectiveness in speech, tells him, ' I have
made thee a gcd to Pharaoh, and Aaron shall be thy prophet,'
Exod. vii. 1 ; by which he does not only mean, that he had
invested him with an authority to require of Pharaoh an obedience
to his commands, and upon his refusal, to inflict such punish-
ments on him, as none but God could inflict; but that in execut-
ing the commission he was putting him upon, there was no
occasion for him to speak to Pharaoh himself. That he had
appointed Aaron to do; and therefore he might keep himself
upon the reserve, and Pharaoh at an awful distance, just as God
delivers his oracles to the people by the mediation of his prophets.
Only there is one objection against the passage itself, which
some imagine cannot be genuine, because Moses makes use of
the word nabi, for a prophet, which in his days, must have been
expressed by another: for so in 1 Sam. ix. 9. it is said that he
who was now called nabi, a prophet, was before that time called
roeh, a seer; which seems to imply, that nabi was not a word in
use till Samuel's days. But this is vety far from Samuel's
meaning, whose plain sense is this, — That he who foretold
things to come, or discovered secrets, was anciently called a seer,
not a prophet ; for a prophet heretofore signified only, an inter-
preter of the divine will; but that now, in Samuel's days, they
began to apply the word nabi, or prophet, to those who could
reveal any secret, or foresee things to come. — Poole's Annotations,
Le Cltn's and Patrick's Commentary.
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES' &c.
245
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OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3703 A. C. 1G4S. EXOl). CH. i_xiii.
in the way of Pharaoh, as he was walking- out to the «
river Nile, and urging again the demand they had made
for the departure of their brethren, as a farther sign that
God had really sent them, upon Aaron's stretching out
his hand, and touching the waters of the river with his
rod, all the waters of the land of Egypt were turned into
blood, and continued so for seven days ; so that ° the
fish died, and the inhabitants had no water to drink, but
were forced to dig in new places for some to allay their
thirst. But Pharaoh, finding that his magicians did turn
a The river Nile has its fountain-head in Upper Ethiopia, and
flows through Nubia and Egypt. Below Cairo, where it is 1000
yards wide, it divides into two main branches, which again
separate into several arms, the extreme eastern and western of
which give to the lower part of Egypt the form of a delta. There
were anciently reckoned seven principal mouths hy which its
waters were poured into the Mediterranean ; only those of
Damietta and Rosetta are at present navigable ; the others have
been choked up. The name Nile, according to Spineto {Lectures
on Hieroglyphics), is Greek; the Egyptians calling it merely
Iaro, which means river. The true Nile is formed by the con-
fluence of the Bahr-el-Abiad (white river) and the Bahr-el-Azrek
(blue river), in lat. 15° 40' N. The former, rising in Abyssinia,
to the south-west of lake Dembea, comes from the south-east,
and was considered by Bruce as the Nile. The latter, however,
which comes from the south-west, and is supposed to rise in the
Mountains of the Moon, brings down the greatest mass of water,
and is considered by Cailliaud as the true Nile. This is a mere
dispute about words. In lat. 17° 40', it receives the Tacazze
from the east, enters Egypt in 24°, following nearly a northern
course, and below Cairo (30° 15' N.) divides into the two main
arms above-mentioned, the Damietta, or the eastern, and the
Rosetta, or western branch. The distance from the confluence
of its two head branches to the sea is about 1500 miles; from its
highest sources, probably not far from 2500 miles. The cataracts
so much celebrated by the ancients, modern discoveries have
shown to be insignificant; they appear to be hardly any thing
more than what, in America, are called rapids. In Upper Egypt,
it is confined between two ranges of mountains, which leave only
a narrow strip each side of the river. Near Cairo, the river valley
widens, and the level nature of the country below allows it to
spread itself over a wide plain. In Upper and Middle Egypt, there
are great numbers of canals on the left bank of the river, which
serve to irrigate the country: the principal, called the canal of
Joseph, communicates with lake Moeris. This is the only river in
Egypt, and contains all the water the inhabitants have to drink,
which made the turning it into blood an heavy judgment upon the
people. The overflowing of the river, which most impute to the great
rains which fall, and melt the snow in the mountains of Ethiopia,
is the cause of all the plenty and fruitfulness of the whole country ;
and therefore Plutarch and several others tell us, that nothing
was had in so much veneration among the Egyptians ; that they
adored and invocated it as the greatest of gods, not only under the
name of Osiris, but of Orus and Jupiter likewise, and instituted
in its honour the most solemn of their feasts: and therefore their
conjecture, who think that Pharaoh went to pay his morning
devotions to the river Nile, is much more plausible, than that of
the Chaldee Paraphrast, namely, that he went to observe divin-
ation upon the water as a magician, when in all probability his
business was no more than to bathe himself, as the custom among
the Egyptians was to do almost every day. — Calmet's Dictionary,
H'flts' and Moll's Geographies, and Bedford's Scripture Chron-
ology, b. 3. c. 4.
b Diodorus Siculus, in his description of Egypt, (b. 1. p. 320
informs us, that the river Nile abounded with all manner of fish,
though later travellers tell us, that there are not at present many
in it, whether this be attributed to the muddiness of its water, or
to the havock which the crocodiles and other monsters of this
river may be supposed to make in it. But whether ancient or
modern geographers are right in this particular, it is certain, that
this putrefaction of the water, and slaying the fish, "as a heavy
judgment upon the Egyptians, who abstained from the. eating ol
most animals, whose liquor was generally' (rater, and whose
constant food was the fruits of the earth, and the fish of this riv< r.
— Le Clerc's Commentary , and /f'e/is' Geography of the t id
Testament, vol. 2.
water into Mood likewise, and supposin- the thing on
both sides to be equally performed hy magical skill,
was not convinced by the miracle, and so refused to let
the Israelites depart.
When the seven days were expired, Moses and Aaron
came again unto him, requiring the dismission of the
people, and withal assuring him, that if he did not pant
their request, they should bring a plague of '■ frogs upon
all the land ; and when the king .seemed to set them at
defiance, Moses ordered Aaron to stretch his rod again
over the waters ; upon doing of which there came up
abundance of frogs, so as to cover the whole land of
Egypt, and to swarm in their houses, their chambers,
their beds, and the very places where their victuals were
dressed; but here it also happened, that the magicians
likewise performed the same, so that Pharaoh was not
much influenced by this miracle. Only, as his magicians
could not remove the frogs, he was forced to apply him-
self to Moses for relief, who, upon his address to God,
had them all destroyed the next day, according to tin-
time that he had prefixed ; but when they were gathered
into heaps, their number was so great, that before they
could well be disposed of, they infected the air, and
made the whole land stink.
There were several other miracles wrought by Mosess
and Aaron in the like manner. The swarms of '' lice
which the magicians could not imitate ; the murrain, or
mortality among their cattle, wherein the Israelites were
exempted ; e the plague of flies ; the boils inflicted upon
c The river Nile naturally produces frogs; but ^o great an
abundance appearing on a sudden, tilling the country, and leaving
the rivers and fields, to go into the cities and houses, was really
miraculous. How they got into the cities and houses is not so
hard a matter to conceive ; for if expert generals, according to
both ancient and modern history, have sometimes surprised an
enemy by entering cities through the common sewers, with much
less difficulty might the frogs, these armies of the divine ven-
geance, find a conveyance into the cities, which stood all upon
the banks of the river, by aqueducts and subterraneous communi-
cations; and being got into the cities, they might find apertures
in the walls of the houses, which the inhabitants never perceived
before. — Bibliotheca BibUca in locum.
d Some would have the word cinnim, which we render lice, to
signify gnats. The Septlttgint calls them K>)»<Ti>-; but what
kind of creatures these were, is not so certainly known. Other-,
would have them to be a new species of animals, called analogi-
cally by an old name; or if they were lice, that tiny were -in h
as had wings, and cruelly Stung and ulcerated the Egyptians.
But upon the supposition that they were no worse than common
lice, this was plague enough to the Egyptians, who affected neat-
ness to such a degree, that, tiny bathed themselves everyday,
and Mime ,,f them frequently shaved their bodies all over, for fear
df such vermin. Those who pretend tint these lice were a uei
species, make this a reason why the magicians could not counter-
feit this miracle, because, though they could easily provide the
serpents, the blood, and the frogs, yet this sort of animal was DOW
nowhere to be had : and therefore, as the organs of Bight an- more
liable to be imposed upon than those of feeling, the magicians
might impose upon the king, and the other spectators, with fan-
tastical blood and I'm--, but. Visionary lice could net \.\ and
torment the body: 80 that now it was time for the enchant, i- to
desist, and to own their inability to mimic Moses any I
But supposing, that what the magicians did, in the three form* i
miracles, was not illusion and imposition upon the sensi
reality, the true reason why they could proceed do ntrtht
thai God Almighty bad laid bis restraint and prohibition up<
evil spirits, who bad hitherto been subservii at to them, that tin y
might not a"i-t them any longer. — l.c Clerc's Commentary, and
Bibliotheca Biblica in locum.
e The word arai, which we render fly in general, is by the
Int call.. I Kufouvim, that is, day-fly, from its biting ;
246 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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[Book II L
the magicians themselves ; a the terrible thunder and
lightning, b rain and hail, which destroyed the fruits of
fcstens its teeth so deep in the flesh, and sticks so very close, that
it oftentimes makes cattle run mad ; and the congruity of this
plague seems to be greater, because one of the Egyptian deities,
which they call Anubis, bore the head of a dog. The Psalmist
indeed tells us, that ' God sent divers sorts of Hies among them,
which devoured them,' Ps. lxxviii. 45. So that, according to
him, it was not one particular kind, but all sorts of flies mingled
together in one prodigious swarm or conflux. Some translate it,
a mixture of beasts, which they suppose went into Egypt to infest
and destroy the country: but this is not so probable a construc-
tion, because the punishments hitherto inflicted were nauseous
and trouble ome. rather than mortal ; though this plague of infinite
numbers of small tormentors, is so great a one, that God calls it
' his army.' Joel ii. 25; and the Greeks thought fit (as Pliny,
b. 20. c :'<, tells us) to have a god to deliver them from it, under
the style of Myiagros, or Myiodes, even as Beelzebub signifies the
lord or god of flies. — Bochart, Hier. part 2.
a The Hebrew word shechin properly signifies an inflamma-
tion, which first makes a tumour or boil, as we translate it, and
thence turns a grievous ulcer. Dr Lightfoot indeed observes,
that, in the hook of Job, chap. ii. 7, 8, where the same word
occurs, it signifies only a burning itch, or an inflamed scab;
an intolerable dry itch, which Job could not scratch off with
his nails, and was therefore forced to make use of a potsherd;
but then he confesses that this shechin here spoken of, was more
rancorous than that, having blains and ulcers that broke out with
it, which Job's had not. So that the Egyptians, according to
this, must have been vexed with a triple punishment at once,
a punishment fitly calculated for the mortification of a delicate
and voluptuous people, aching boils, nauseous ulcers, and a burn-
ing itch: and to this that commination of Moses to the people,
in case they proved disobedient, does, without all peradventure,
allude, ' The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and
with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof
thou canst not be healed.' Deut. xxviii. 27.
Exod. ix. 8. 'And the Lord said unto Moses and unto
Aaron, take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let
Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven, in the sight of Pharaoh.
And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and
shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon
beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.' " It is said, that when
tin - evil was to be brought upon the Egyptians, Aaron and Moses
were ordered to take ashes of the furnace, and Moses was to
scatter them up towards heaven, that they might he wafted over
the iaee of the country. This mandate was very determinate,
and to the last degree significant. The ashes were to be taken
from that fiery furnace, which in the scriptures was used as a
type df the Israelites' slavery, and of all the cruelty which they
experienced in Egypt. The process was still a farther allusion
to an idolatrous and cruel rite, which was common among the
Egyptians, and to which it is opposed as a contrast. They had
several cities styled Typhonium, such as Heliopolis, Idithyia,
Abarei, and lJusiris; in these, at particular seasons, they sacri-
ficed men. The objects thus destined were persons of bright
hair, and a particular complexion, such as were seldom to be
found amongst the native Egyptians. Hence we may infer that
they w,re foreigners; and it is probable, that while the Israelites
resided in Egypt, they were chosen from their body. They
were burnt alive upon an high altar, and thus sacrificed for the
'I the people. At the close of the sacrifice, the priests
gathered together the ashes of their victims, and scattered them
upwards i,, the air, [ presume with this view, that where any
atom of this dust was wafted, a blessing might be entailed. The
like was done by Moses with the ashes of the fiery furnace,
but with a different intention; they were scattered abroad, that
where any the smallest portion alighted, it might prove a plague
and a curse to this ungrateful, cruel, and infatuated people.
Thus, there was a designed contrast in these workings of pro-
^ idence— an appan nt opposition to the superstition of tlie times."
—Bryant on the Plagues of Egypt, p. no'. Mages on Atone-
ment and Sacrifices, Diss. 5. Ki>.
I> This infliction was the more terrible in Egypt, because,
according to tlie account of Herodotus, (l>. .">. c. 10,) a very rare
t-'ing it was to sec any rain, aud much more, any hail, in that
the earth ; the plague of the c locusts, or grasshoppers,
which devoured what escaped from the hail ; and that of
thick d darkness, which covered all Egypt for three days,
climate; and accordingly he mentions it as a kind of prodigy,
that in the reign of Psammenitus, there happened to he a shower
in Thebes, which was never known before in the memory of
man, nor ever after, to the age wherein our author wrote. Tlie
psalmist has given us a very poetic description of this judg-
ment: 'he destroyed the vines with hail, and the sycamore
trees with frost; he gave up the cattle also to the hail, and their
flocks to hot thunderbolts.' Ps. lxxviii. 47, 48. And from the
plain account of Moses, where he mixes thunder, hail, and fire
together, (Exod. ix. 23,) the observation is obvious, that here
were no less than three of the elements in confederacy against
Pharaoh's obstinacy; the air in the thunder; the water in the
hail ; and the fire in the lightning, all jointly demonstrating and
proclaiming, that the God of Israel was the God of nature.
c This is the creature which we properly call the grasshopper;
and wonderful is the account which several authors give of them.
Thevenot, in his Travels, tells us, " That in that part of Scythia
which the Cossacks now inhabit, there are infinite numbers of
them, especially in dry seasons, which the north-east wind brings
over from Tartary, Circassia, and Mingrelia, which are seldom
or never free from them ; that they fly in the air all compact
together, like a vast cloud, sometimes 15 or 18 miles long, and
about 10 or 12 miles broad; so that they quite darken the sky,
and make the brightest day obscure; and that wherever they
light, they devour all the com in less than two hours' time, and
frequently make a famine in the country. These insects," says
he, "live not above six months; and when they are dead, the
stench of them so corrupts and infects the air, that it very often
breeds dreadful pestilences." God, as We hinted before, calls the
locust, 'the canker-worm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer-
worm, his great army,' which he sends amongst a wicked and
rebellious people, (Joel ii. 25.) And how proper the expression is,
in relation to the locust in particular, will appear from the account
which Aldrovandus and Fincelius give us of these animals,
namely, "that in the year of our Lord 852, an infinite number
of them was seen to fly over twenty miles in Germany in one
day, in the manner of a formed army, divided in severai
squadrons, and having their quarters apart when they rested ;
that the captains marched a day's journey before the rest, and
chose the most opportune places for their camp ; that they never
removed until sunrising, at which time they went away in as
much order as an army of men could do: that at last, having
done great mischief wherever they passed, after prayers made to
God, they were driven by a violent wind into tlie lielgie ocean,
and there drowned ; but that, being cast by the sea upon the
shore, they covered 140 acres of land, and caused a great pesti-
lence in the country:" which is enough to show how dreadful a
punishment this was, especially considering, that these locusts
were such as were never known before. — Le Clerc's Commentary.
d The Septuagint, and most translations, render it, ' a dark-
ness which miglit be felt,' that is, consisting of black vapours
and exhalations, so condensed, that they might be perceived by
the organs of touch. But some commentators think, that this is
carrying the sense too far, since, in such a medium as this,
mankind could not live an hour, much less for the space of three
days, as the Egyptians are said to have done ; and therefore they
imagine, that instead of a darkness that may be felt, the Hebrew
phrase may signify a darkness wherein men were groping airl
feeling about for every thing they wanted. And in this sense
the author of the life of Moses certainly takes it. " For in this
darkness," says he, " they who were in bed durst not get up;
aud such as their natural occasions compelled to get up, went
feeling about by the walls, or any other thing they could lay hold
on, as if they had been blind." What it was that occasioned
this darkness, whether it was in the air, or in their eyes; whether
it was a suspension of light from the sun in that country, or a
black and thick vapour, which totally intercepted it; there is
reason to think, that the description which the author of the book
of Wisdom gives us of their inward terrors and consternation is
not altogether conjectural, namely, 'That they were not, only
prisoners of darkness, and fettered with tlie bonds of a long night,
but were horribly astonished likewise, and troubled with strange
apparitions; for while over them was spread an heavy night, they
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
247
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while the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, was
enlightened as usual. All these miracles, performed by
the word of Moses, did not a little perplex the king'.
He found that all the power and learning of the magi-
cians could not equal them. Upon attempting one of
them, they themselves confessed that it was done by
the finger of God ; and in the case of another, they were
equally sufferers in the common calamity : so that the
king's heart was several times almost overcome. He
offered the Israelites leave to perforin their religious
offices to their God, provided they would do it in Egypt ;
hut their religion, as Moses told him, was so very dif-
ferent from the Egyptian, that were they to do what (tod
required of them in Egypt, the inhabitants would a rise
up against them, and stone them. The king, after this,
offered that they might go out of the kingdom, provided
adult persons only would go, and leave their children
behind, as pledges for their return ; but to this Moses
peremptorily replied, that none should be left behind,
the young and the old should go together ; which enraged
Pharaoh so, that with some severe menaces, he ordered
him to depart from his presence. However, as he found
the plagues increase upon him, he came to a farther con-
cession, and was willing that the people should go, but
only that their flocks and their herds should be stayed,
as rightly supposing, that this might be a means to acce-
lerate their return : but Moses positively insisted, that
all their substance should be taken with them, and not
one hoof be left behind; whereupon Pharaoh grew so
exceeding angry, that he charged him to be gone from
his presence, and never attempt to see him more, for
that, if he did, he would certainly put him to death.
Moses, however, by the divine command, went once
more to Pharaoh, with the severest message he had ever
brought him ; and represented to him, that at midnight
God would strike dead the first-born of every family
throughout all the land of Egypt, and that thereupon
there should be such a dread, and terror among the
Egyptians, that they would come to him in the most sub-
missive manner, and beg of hitu to lead the people out
of the land; and after that, said he, I shall go: which
put Pharaoh into such a rage, that Moses, having no
intention to incense and provoke him farther, turned
away, and left him.
Four days before this, God had instructed Moses and
Aaron to direct the people to prepare the passover,
which was to be a feast in commemoration of their de-
parture out of Egypt ; because the night before they left
it, the destroying angel, who slew the first-born of the
Egyptians, passed over the houses of the Israelites,
without doing them any harm, they being marked with
were to themselves more grievous than darkness.' — Wisdom,
xvii. 2, 3, 21; Le Clerks Commentary, and P/iilo's Life of
Moses.
a The words in the text are, ' Lo, shall we sacrifice the
Abominations of the Egyptians before thejr eyes, and shall they
not stone us ?' Exod. \ iii. 26. Where the interrogation, having
in it the full force of an affirmation, makes the sense of the
words to be this: " If we should oiler those creatures which the
Egyptians worship for gods, as the ox and the sheep, they doubt-
less will be affronted to see us sacrifice their gods to our God."
For that the Egyptians did look upon several animals with a
sacred veneration, is evident from that known passage in the
satirist: — " The fleece-bearing animals are served up on notable ;
and it is a crime to butcher their young.'' — Juven. sat. lo.
the blood of the lamb, which was killed the evening
before. And the injunction which Moses gave the
people, was to this effect: — That * every family of
Israel, or if the family was too little, two neighbouring
families joining together, should on the tenth day of tin?
month, take a Iamb or a kid, c and shut it up until the
fourteenth day, and then kill it ; that the lamb was to be
a male, not above a year old, and without any manner
of blemish ; that when they killed it, they should catch
its blood in a vessel, and with a bunch of hyssop dipped
in it, sprinkle the lintel and side posts of the outer door,
and so not stir out of the house until next morning ; that.
in the mean time, they were to eat the lamb or kid,
dressed whole, and without breaking a bone of it, neither
raw nor sodden, but roasted with unleavened bread, and
bitter herbs ; that if there was more than they could dis-
pense with, no stranger was to eat of it, and therefore they
b Some learned men are of opinion, that God, in the insti-
tution of the passover, had respect to these impious rites,
which either then did prevail, or in a short time were to
prevail, among the Egyptians, and other nations where the
Israelites were to dwell. Thus they tell us, "That God appoint-
ed a lamb to be slain, and eaten, and the month Nisan or March
to be the particular time of eating it, iii contempt of the Egyp-
tians, who at that time, when the sun first entered into Aries,
began their solemn worship and adoration of this creature, and
that celestial sign; that lie forbade the people to eat tin- flesh of
the paschal lamb raw, or sodden, to break its bones, or leave any
fragment of it, because, in the profane feasts of Bacchus, it was
a custom to eat the raw flesh of the victims, which the) •
to that god, and to break all their bones; and in the adoration of
the 'iloui, whom the Egyptians, and from them the Athenian-,
reputed goddesses, they boiled all their sacrifices, and carried con-
stantly some part of them home, as a good | reservative
misfortunes." But there is no need, one would think, for such
i laborate explications, when, considering the situation thi I
ites were in, sorely oppressed by the Egyptians, and shortly to
be- released, and sent away with all speed, the nature and quality
of the paschal sacrifice, as well as the manner of dressing and
mannei- of eating it, may perfectly be accounted for. Tim . if
was to hi1 a male, because a more excellent species than the
female; ' without blemish,' to render it acceptable to God ; '
a year old," Otherwise it could not properly be called 'a lamb;'
and 'set apart from the rest of the flock/ that it might be in
readiness when the people came in haste to oiler it. ' i
it was to be, and not boiled,' because roasting was the speedier
way of dressing it; but ' roasted thoroughly,' because the whole
was to be eaten; and 'the whole was to be eaten,' that none
might be left, for the Egyptians to profane. It was t,. 1 ..
• standing, and in haste,' and with other circumstances of men
every moment expecting to begin their journey; 'with bitter
herbs' to put them in mind of their cruel servitud
'unleavened bread,' in memory of their deliverance from it, so
suddenly, that they had net even time to leaven thi ir bread for
their journey: which is all that the Israelites understood, and all
perhaps that God at that time intended they should me'.
by the directions which he gave them COncen likable
ordinance — Spencer de R«. Heb, Tom. 1. b. •-'. c, -I.
c Exod. xii. 3. ' In the tenth day of this month, they shall
take to themselves every man a lamb;' VW. 6. 'and \.
keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month.'
hence it appears that the lamb was to be taken from th(
four days before it was killed. For thi- the rabbi- assign the;
following reasons: that the providing of it might net, thi
hurry of business, especially at the time of their departure from
Egypt, be neglected till it was too late: that by having it before
their eyes so considerable a time, they might be mere c ffectually
reminded of the mercy of their deli\ crauce out.'.
likewise to prepare them for so Meat a solemnity as the ;•; .
ing feast On these accounts, rabbis h us,
ii wa ■ customary to have the lamb tied these four days to their l ed
posts: a rite which they make to be necessary and i — ntial t i the
passover in all ages. — Jennings' Jewish .-hit. vol, '-■ p. 187. — Ed,
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[Book HI.
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were to burn it ; and, lastly, that the posture in which
they were to eat it, was to be in a hurry, with their
clothes on, and their staves in their hands, as if they
were just upon the point of going. a
When every thing was thus in readiness for their
departure, God, in the middle of the night, by his
destroying angel, * slew the lirst-born of every house in
a Exod. xii. 15. ' Seven days shall ye cat unleavened bread.'
As by the law of Moses, no leaven of any kind was to be kept in
the houses of the Israelites for seven or eight days, it might have
been productive of great inconvenience, had they not been able by
other means to supply the want of it. The MS. Chardin informs
us, that they use no kind of leaven whatever in the east, but
dough kept till it is grown sour, which they preserve from one
day to another. In wine countries, they use the lees of wine
as we do yeast. If, therefore, there should be no leaven in all
the country for several days, yet in twenty-four hours, some
would be produced, and they would return to their preceding
state. (Htiniifi; vol. 1. p. 253.) — 'The first day ye shall put
away leaven out of your houses.' Concerning this matter the
modern Jews are euperstitiously exact and scrupulous. The
master of the family makes a diligent search into every hole and
crevice throughout the house, lest any crumb of unleavened bread
should remain in it; and that not by the light of the sun or moon,
but of a candle. And in order that this exactness may not
appear altogether superfluous and ridiculous, care is taken to
conceal some scraps of unleavened bread in some corner or other,
the discovery of which occasions mighty joy. This search,
nevertheless, strict as it is, does not give him entire satisfaction.
After all, he beseeches God, that all the unleavened bread that
is in the house, as well as what he has found, may become like
the dust of the earth, and be reduced to nothing. They are also
veiy exact and scrupulous in making their bread for the feast,
lest there should be anything like leaven mixed with it. The
corn, of which it is made, must not be carried to the mill on the
horse's bare back, lest the heat of the sun should make it ferment.
The sack in which it is put, must be carefully examined, lest
there should be any remainder of old meal in it ; the dough must
be made in a place not exposed to the sun, and must be put into
the oven immediately after it is made, lest it should ferment
itself. — Jennings' Jewish Ayit. vol. 2. p. 211. — Ed.
b The word Bekor, signifies sometimes aperson of some emi-
mence or excellence, as well as the first-born: and therefore it
may n<'t. be an unreasonable supposition, that where a family had
im first-born, the principal or most eminent person was smitten
with death; which is certainly better than to imagine, with
some, both Jewish and Christian interpreters, that the words of
Moses are only applicable to an house that had a first-born, or
with St Austin, that Providence did so order it at this time, that
every house had a first-born. Since this, however, is the con-
cluding judgment which Cod sent upon the Egyptians, it may
not he improper here to inquire a little how long Moses was in
working all these miracles. According to Archbishop Usher,
then, who has included them all within the space of one month,
we may suppose, that about the 18th of the sixth month, was
sent the plague of the ' waters turned into blood,' which ended
seven days after. On the 25th came the second plague of fro°s
which was removed the day following, and on the 27th, that of
the lice. About the 28th, Moses threatened the fourth plague of
(lies and inflicted them on the 29th. On the 1st of the°next
month, which was afterwards made the first month of the year,
In' foretold the plague of the murrain, and inflicted it the
next; and on the 3d, the sixth plague of boils, which fell upon
the magicians themselves. About the 4th day, he foretold the
seventh plague of thunder and hail, and on the 5th inflicted it.
On the 7th, he threatened the eighth plague of locusts, and hav-
ing sen! them the day following, removed them on the 9th. On
the ldth, he instituted the feast of the passover, and brought
upon Egypt the ninth plague of darkness, which lasted for
three days; and on the 1 1th he ton told th,> tenth, namely, the
destruction of all their first-born, which came to pass the night
following. This seems to be a reasonable period of time; and
the gradual increase of these judgments are somewhat remarka-
ble. The four first plagues were loathsome, rather than fatal to
the Egyptians; but after that of the flies, came the murrain,
which chiefly spent its rage upon the cattle; the boils and blains
Ejrypt, from the prince who sat upon the throne, to the
meanest slave ; but among the Israelites none was hurt,
because the bloody mark upon the door-posts, was a
token for the angel not to strike there. At midnight
there was a sudden outcry and confusion among the
Egyptians : the dying- groans of their children awoke
them ; and when they perceived that in every family,
without exception, the first-born, both of man and beast,
were dead, they came immediately to Moses, in a great
fright, and terror, and desired him to get the people
together, and to take their flocks, and their herds, and
all that belonged to them, and be gone, because they
could not tell where such dreadful judgments would end.
Moses, had beforehand, according- to God's order,
directed the Israelites to borrow of the Egyptians silver
and gold vessels to a great value ; and God had, at this
time, disposed the hearts of the Egyptians to lend them
every tiling they asked for. The truth is, they were in
a manner frighted out of their wits, and so urgent were
they to have the Israelites gone, that they would not let
them stay, so much as to bake their bread, but obliged
them to take the dough, raw as it was, along with them,
and bake it, as well as they could, upon the road. c From
whence it came to be a law, that during the whole eight
days of the passover, no other bread than what was un-
leavened, was to be eaten. d
CHAP. II.
-Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
To account, in some measure, for the occasion of the
sufferings of the Israelites in the land of Egypt, Ave must
reached both man and beast, though there was still a reserve for
life. The hail and locusts extended, in a great measure, even to
life itself; the first by an immediate stroke, and both conse-
quently by destroying the fruits of the earth. That of darkness
added consternation to their minds, and lashes to their con-
sciences ; and when all this would not reclaim, at length came
the decisive blow ; first the excision of the first-born, and then
the drowning of the incorrigible tyrant and all his host: ' Great
and marvellous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty! just and
true are thy ways, thou King of saints!' — Rev. xv. 3.
c Exod. xii. 34. ' And the people took their dough before it
was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their
clothes upon their shoulders.' The vessels which the Arabs
make use of for their kneading the unleavened cakes which they
prepare are only small wooden bowls. {Shaw's Travels, p. 231.)
On these they afterwards serve up their provisions, when cooked.
It is not certain that these wooden bowls were the kneading-
troughs of the Israelites ; but it is incontestable that they must
have been comparatively small and light, to be so easily carried
away. The original word may denote a kind of leathern utensil.
such as the Arabs still use, when spread out for a tablecloth, and
which, when contracted like a bag, serves them to cany the
remnants of their victuals, and particularly sometimes their meal
made into dough. (See Harmers Observations, vol. 2. p. 447,
&c. ) So Niebuhr, speaking of the manner in which the Bedow-
een Arabs near mount Sinai live, says, " a round piece of
leather serves them for a tablecloth, and they keep in it the
remains of their victuals." — Ed.
d Exod. xii. 26, 27. ' Your children shall say unto you, what
mean ye by this service?' A custom obtained among the Jews,
that a child should ask the meaning of the passover, and that the
person who presided, should then give an account of its intent
and origin, that so the remembrance of God's mercy, might be
transmitted to their latest posterity. This was called the declara-
tion, or shoivinr; forth. — Ed.
St.ct. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &,-.
249
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observe, that in the fifth year of Concharis, (whom
Josephus, from Manetho, calls Timeus,and who, accord-
ing to Syncellus, was the twenty-fifth king of the land of
Tanis, or Lower Egypt,) there came a numerous army of
unknown people, and invaded Egypt on a sudden. They
overran both the Upper and Lower Egypt ; burned the
cities, killed the inhabitants, and, having in a little time
subdued all before them, made one of their leaders, whose
name was Salatis, their king ; who, as soon as he was
settled on a throne, laid the land under tribute, made its
ancient inhabitants his slaves ; and gave the possession
of their estates to his own people. Who this Salatis and
his followers, who called themselves pastors or shep-
herds, were, is not so easy a matter to discover. The
most probable conjecture is, that they were some of the
Horites, whom the children of Esau drove out of Seir,
a country which lay to the east and south of the Dead
Sea, because the Horites were a people who lived by
pasture, and happened to be expelled their own country
much about this time. Egypt indeed was a very-
flourishing kingdom, but so far from being famous for
war, that we read of none of their exploits of this kind
from the time of their first establishment to this very day.
They consumed their time in ease and wealth, and
luxury ; and therefore the Horites, if they were the
Horites, might easily conquer them, and gain themselves
a settlement in their kingdom, even as the Arcadians did
in Thrace, and the Pelasgi, and afterwards the Trojans,
in Italy.
However this be, the government of Egypt being by
this means subverted, the protection and happiness which
the Israelites enjoyed perished with it. This new kins',
as the Scripture calls him, knew nothing of Joseph, nor
did he regard any establishment which he had made.
He had forced his way into Egypt with his sword, and
settled his people by conquest, in such a manner and
upon such terms as he thought fit : only as the Hebrews
were a great and increasing people, inhabiting those
parts which he most suspected, and fearing lest, if any
invasion should happen from the east, or any insurrec-
tion among the ancient inhabitants, they possibly might
join with them, and so endanger his new acquisition,
he thought it a point of good policy to use all proper
means to keep them effectually under.
One of the great mysteries in the dispensations of pro-
vidence is, God's making choice of the children of Israel
for his peculiar people, when it is so manifest, as Moses
roundly tells them, that they were a stiff-necked nation.
and l ' had been rebellious from the very first day that
he knew them.' 2 ' God will be gracious to whom he will
be gracious, and will shew mercy to whom he will shew
mercy :' but upon supposition that the children of Israel
did not behave so well during their abode in Egypt, that
they neglected the worship of the true God, and com-
plied too much with the idolatrous customs of the country,
this will afford us reason enough, why God might suffer
their sorrows to be multiplied, ' and their enemies to
ride over their backs.' 3' He does not,' indeed, ' afflict
willingly, nor grieve the children of men ;' and there-
fore we may presume, that this severe chastisement of
his rod was to make them smart for some great and
national defection; was to remind them of their sail
1 Duut. ix. 24.
' Exod, xxxiii. 19.
S3.
C. IG48. EXOD. CH. i-xiii.
degeneracy from the virtue of their ancestors ; and so, in
the phrase of the prophet, 4 * to look unto the rock whence
they were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence they
were digged; to look unto Abraham their father, and
unto Sarah that bore them.'
But even putting the case that they had not been thus
culpable; yet, since 5' whom the Lord loveth he chas-
teneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth '
who can say, but that God might justly permit such cala-
mities to befall a people whom he had adopted for his
own, the more to exercise their virtue and patience, and
resignation to the divine will ; 6 the more to keep up a dis-
tinction between them and the Egyptians, which a friendly
usage might have destroyed; the more to prepare and
make them willing to leave Egypt, whenever God should
send them an order to depart : and the more to heighten
the relish of their future deliverance, and to make them
more thankful, more obedient to him, and his. injunctions,
upon every remembrance of that house of bondage,
wherein they had suffered so much, and been so long
detained ?
Of all the writers of the histories of their own times,
there is none to be compared to Moses in this regard,
that he reveals his own faults and blemishes, which he
might have easily concealed, and conceals many things
recorded in other authors, which might have redounded
to his own immortal honour. He might have concealed
the near consanguinity between his father and mother,
which, in after ages, made marriages unlawful, though
then perhaps it might be dispensed with. He might have
concealed his murder of the Egyptian, and, for fear of
apprehension, his escape into Midian. He might have
concealed his aversion to the office of rescuing his bre-
thren from their bondage ; the many frivolous excuse.-, he
made, and the flat denial he gave God at last, till God
was in a manner forced to obtrude it upon him. lie
might have concealed his neglect in not circumcising his
son, which drew God's angry resentment against him, so
that he met him and would have slain him. He might
have concealed some peevish remonstrances he made to
God when Pharaoh proved obstinate, and refused to
comply. Above all, he might have concealed the whole
story of the magicians, their working three miracles
equally with him, and every other circumstance that
seemed to eclipse his glory : but instead of this, we may
observe, that as he makes a large chasm in his life, from
his childhood to his being forty years old, and from forty
to fourscore; so he has left us nothing of the incompa-
rable beauty and comeliness of his person ; nothing
excellency of his natural parts, and politeness of his
education ; nothing of his Ethiopian expedition, the con-
quests he made there, and the posts of honour which he held
in the Egyptian court : nothing indeed of all his transae-
tions of the preceding part of hi-; life, hut wl
author to the Hebrews has taken care to transmit, name!) .
7 ' that when he came to yean, he refused to be i
the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to
affliction with the people of God, than t<> enjoy the
pleasures of sin for a season.' So that here we have a
signal evidence of the truth and honest) of our historian,
that in the passages of his own life, he conceals such ns
* la. li. I, :?. 8 Hcli. xii. 0. * Slii-rluiki.il I
•' Hell
250
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[Book III.
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 ; OR, ACCORDING TO H
ail* impostor, would be found to emblazon, and discovers
others which any man of art and design would be glad to
conceal ; though even some of these passages, which at
first sight may seem to deserve some blame, upon a
farther inquiry, may be found to be excusable at least,
if not to be justified.
Whoever was the author of the book of Job, it is cer-
tain, that he was a writer of great antiquity, and yet he
makes it a part of the character of that righteous man,
that he l 'delivered the poor, when he cried, and the
fatherless, and him that had no helper ;'that ' he brake the
jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.'
If this may be thought to relate to Job, as a public magis-
trate only, there is a direction in the Proverbs of Solo-
mon, which seems to be of a more general concernment;
- ' If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto
death, and those that are ready to be slain ; if thousayest,
Behold, we knew it not ; doth not he that pondereth the
heart consider it ? And he that keepeth thy soul, doth
not he know it ? And shall not he render to every man
according to his works ?' If this be thought again not to
affect Moses at all, as being at this time an inhabitant
of Egypt ; there was in Egypt likewise a law, 3 which
perhaps at this time was in force, and obligatory upon all,
namely, " That whoever saw his fellow creature either
killed by another, or violently assaulted, and did not
either apprehend the murderer, or rescue the oppressed
if he could ; or if he could not, made not an information
thereof to the magistrate, himself should be put to
death.'' Now the history tells us, that 4 ' when Moses
went out unto his brethren, he looked on their burdens,
and spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew.' So that it
is but supposing-, that this Egyptian was one of the
taskmasters, as the burdens here mentioned seem to
denote, who so barbarously treated the Hebrews, and
was now going to beat one of them to death ; and accord-
ing to the law of the land, which seems indeed to be the
law of all nations, then in being-, he was obliged to inter-
pose ; and if, upon his interposition, the Egyptian turned
upon him, and assaulted him briskly, which is no hard
matter to imagine, he was obliged, in his own defence,
to slay him.
5 To complain to the magistrate in this case, and im-
plore the assistance of the law, was to no manner of
purpose. The whole civil power was lodged in such
hands as had secret instructions from court to vex and
ill treat the Israelites ; and when matters were come to
this crisis, that oppression ruled, and the government
was turned into a mere latrociny, private force upon any
proper occasion, must be deemed lawful in all, but in
Moses much more so, since he was either moved and
animated thereunto by a divine impulse, or invested before
it happened, (as G St Stephen's comment upon the place
gives us reason to think he was so invested,) with the
title and office of deliverer of the people of God.
That the names both of persons and things were of the
greatest importance to be rightly understood, in order
to attain the truest knowledge that could be had of their
natures, was the opinion both of Jews and heathens ;
and some of the earliest writers of the Christian church
1 Jobxxix. )-.'. 17. 2Pn.v. xxiv. 11, 12.
3 Diodorus Siculus, l>. 1. p. 69. 4 Exod. ii. 1.
4 Le Clare's Commentary in locum. ' Act, vii.25.
ALES, A. M. :37G3. A. C. 1618. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
have speculated upon this subject, with so much philoso-
phical subtlety, as to build thereon many foolish fancies
and ridiculous errors. It cannot be denied, indeed, but
that God, in giving some names that are recorded in
Scripture, had respect to the nature and circumstances of
the persons to whom they belonged ; and that, in imita-
tion of him, men endeavoured, even from the beginning,
to give names as expressive of the properties of the
things named, as human wisdom could direct them ; and
therefore, without troubling ourselves with what the an-
cients have offered concerning the science of names, we
may from hence deduce the true reason why Moses
desired to be informed, at this time more especially,
what the name of God was.
If we consider the small advances which philosophy
had made, we cannot imagine that men at this time had
a sufficient knowledge of the works of the creation, to
be able thereby to demonstrate the attributes of God ;
nor could they by speculation form proper and just
notions of his nature. Some of them, indeed, the philo-
sophers of that age, thought themselves wise enough to
attempt these subjects ; but what was the success ? 7
' professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God.' After
they had speculated never so long on any element, the
fire, air, or water, the convex of the firmament, the circle
of the stars, or the lights of heaven, not forming true
notions of their natures, they were either delighted with
their beauty, or astonished with their power, and so
framing very high, but false estimates of them, they lost
the knowledge of the work-master, and took the parts of
his workmanship to be God.
Moses, indeed, might be a man of excellent parts ; but
we carry our compliment too far, if we think him not
liable to have fallen into these, or perhaps more danger-
ous errors, had he endeavoured to form his notions of
God, either from the Egyptian, or any other learning
that was then extant in the world. Faith, or a belief of
what God had revealed, was the only principle upon
which he could hope rightly to know God ; and this was
the principle which Moses here desires to go upon. For
as the revelation which God had hitherto made of himself
was but short and imperfect ; so Moses, by desiring to
know God's name, desired that he might have some reve-
lation of his nature and attributes vouchsafed him ; for
that the name of God does frequently signify the divine
nature and attributes, is evident from several passages
in Scripture.
When Moses desired to see God's glory, he obtained,
that the name of the Lord should be proclaimed before
him, and the proclamation was, 8 ' The Lord, the Lord
God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant
in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.' And in like
manner, Isaiah, prophesying what the Messiah should be,
declares his name to be, 9 ' Wonderful, Counsellor, the
Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace.' In both these places, and many more that might
be produced to the same purpose, the name denotes the
nature of God ; and therefore the design of Moses, in
asking God's name, was to obtain an information of the
divine attributes, in order to carry a report of them to
' Rom. i. 22, 2?. H Exod. xxxiv. 0, 7. 9 Isa. ix o.
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES' &c.
251
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO
his brethren. And indeed, considering- th.it Moses was
the first that ever carried a message from God to man, it
was natural for the Israelites to ask him by what name or
peculiar attribute, he had made himself known unto him,
so as to authorize him to speak to them in such a manner
as no man before had ever done ; which question he could
not pretend to answer, unless God by revelation thought
fit to enable him ; and therefore he desired to be con-
firmed, as far as the divine goodness would be pleased
to discover, what name he would be called by, as know-
ing very well, that, by obtaining this, he might form
proper notions of his nature and perfections.
And accordingly we may observe, that this great
appellation which God is here pleased to give of him-
self, expresses his incomprehensible nature in such open
and proper character, that St Hilary, as he tells us of
himself, lighting on these words before he was a Chris-
tian, and as he was musing about God and religion, was
struck with admiration, because he could think of nothing
so proper and essential to God, as to be. God himself,
however, chooses to express the word in the future tense,
on purpose, as some imagine, to show that he is the only
being that can truly say, " I shall, or will be, what I
am ;" forasmuch as all other beings derive their exist-
ence from him, and may be deprived of that existence
whenever he pleases.
What knowledge the wisest of the heathen world might
have of this incommunicable name of God, without the
help of revelation, is a matter of great uncertainty. It
it more than probable that Plato's definition of a God,
namely, " a being that is always, and had no beginning,"
was borrowed from these words of Moses : but there is a
passage in Plutarch, which mentions an inscription in the
temple of Delphos, consisting of these letters EI, a
contraction, as some imagine, of EIMI, / am, which
(according to the opinion of ' a great judge in those
days) was one of the most perfect names and titles of
the Deity, seeing it imported, that " though our being is
uncertain, precarious, temporary, and subject to change,
so that no man can say of himself, in a strict and abso-
lute sense, lam; yet we may with great propriety give
the Deity this appellation, because God is independent,
immutable, eternal, always and everywhere the same :"
for, 2 ' I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
ending, the first and the last, saith the Lord, which is,
and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.'
But all this would not work upon Moses to undertake
the ollice to which God called him ; and yet when we
come to consider his case, we cannot altogether accuse
him of perverseness or obstinacy. About forty years
before, he had felt some extraordinary motion in himself,
ai.d as he was then in the fervour of his youth, he took
it for a certain indication that God intended to make use
of him as an instrument for his people's deliverance ;
but then he was a far greater man than now. The prin-
cess (if alive) who had adopted him for her son, supported
his interest at court ; or if dead, had in all probability
left him a fortune sufficient to procure himself one. But
now age had made him cool and considerate. The loss
of his patroness had quashed all aspiring thoughts. A
long habitude had perfectly reconciled him to an obscure
course of life : and therefore, as one loath to be roused
HALES, A. M. 3768. A. C. 1CI8. EXOI). CII. i-xiii.
from his solitude, 3 ' Who am I,' says he, ' that 1 should
go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the chil-
dren of Israel out of Egypt ?'
He had already experimentally known the ingratitude
and disingenuity of the Hebrews : * < Y\ hen he supposed
they would have understood, that God, b\ his hand,
would have delivered them,' he voluntarily offered his
service; but their rejection of him, when in the height
of his power, upon so great an alteration in his circum-
stances, took away all hopes of success in so difficult an
enterprise. So that the principal error which Moses in-
curred upon this occasion, was no more than a distemper
incident to the generality of mankind, namely, the mea-
suring of God by himself, and judging of events from
the probabilities or improbabilities of second causes.
But there is another reason not to be dissembled, which
might possibly deter Moses from returning into Egypt,
and that was the blood of the man for which he had tied
into Midian, and his certain knowledge of the laws of
that land, namely, s that "whoever killed another, whe-
ther he was bond or free, was not to escape with his
own life." Just before God appeared to him in the bush,
and had this discourse with him, we read, that ■ the king
of Egypt died, that king, to wit, in whoso reign he had
slain the Egyptian, and who sought to apprehend him,
that he might put him to death. But as Moses kept no
manner of correspondence with Egypt, the news of this
king's death might not have reached his ears, or if it had,
he might reasonably think, that some surviving relation
of the slain man might enter a process against him for
the murder. So that here he fell into a passion, which
is hardly separable from human nature, namely, the love
of life and dread of punishment ; and which in him was
the more excusable, because God as yet had not cleared
his mind from the fear and suspicion it lay under.
It must not be denied then, but that there were some
tokens of human frailty in Moses' last refusal of the
commission which was offered him ; but then there is this
to say in excuse, that the most excellent persons are the
least forward to embrace the offers of great preferment.
For if no authority (according 7 to Plato) is designed
for the benefit of him that governs, but of those that aro
governed, no wise and considerate man will voluntarily
take upon him the government of a people, but must
either be hired or compelled to it; and therefore Moses,
considering the great weight of the employment, out of
a due sense of his own infirmities, declined it as long as
he could. And though mention is made in the Scripture of
the 8 ' Lord's being angrj with him,' yet this anger could
amount to no more than such a displeasure as a father
conceives at his child, when, notwithstanding all that can
be said and done to create in him a just confidence, he
Still continues bashful and diffident of himself.
It may be thought perhaps bj some a farther excuse
for Moses' backwardness, or at least no great encou-
ragement to his undertaking, that God makes the sign
wherewith he would seem to ratil\ his promise, ofa date
subsequent to his commission : " ' 1 will certainl) he with
thee, and this shall be a token unto thee, that I L.i'-e
sent thee: when thou bast brought forth tin- penile OUtof
Ann
i. B, 11.
' Exod. iii. 11.
' Diodorus Siculus, !>. I . p
: Dc Repub. b. I.
•Acts vil.
70. 'Exod.ii. 88.
lv. 14. 9 Exod. iii.
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Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.' For
how can a future event serve for a sign of the accom-
plishments of a present promise ? The common solu-
tion of this difficulty is, — That God designed this for a
token to Moses, in order to root out of his heart all
remains of infidelity, which might perhaps he found in
him, even after he had delivered the Israelites out of
bondage ; hut this is a sense by no means allowable.
For how can Ave suppose, that after God had brought out
his people with an high hand, and a stretched out arm,
by making himself justly terrible to Pharaoh and all
his court ; by turning rivers of water into blood ; by
changing the day into night ; by slaying all the first-
born in Egypt ; and by causing the king and his whole
army to be swallowed up in the same waves of the sea,
which ' ' were a wall on the right hand and on the left,'
and opened a way for his own people to pass ; how can
we suppose, I say, that this faithful servant of his should
have the least doubt whether this mighty deliverance was
to be ascribed to providence or chance ? Or, if there
was any further occasion for tokens, why should a smaller
than any of the foregoing be proposed ? Or, when pro-
posed, why should it be presumed sufficient to produce
an effect which others, much more considerable, were
found incompetent to do ?
To evade these questions, some of the Jewish doctors
have devised a new partition of the words ; and when
God says to Moses, ' This shall be a token unto thee,'
they think he means it of the bush, from whence he spake,
all on names without consuming, which was, question-
less, token enough that God had sent him ; and there-
upon, they make the subsequent words the beginning of
a fresh sentence, and declarative of a farther purpose,
for which God would bring forth his people out of
Egypt, even that from that mountain he might give them
a law, which was to be the rule and directory of their
religious worship and service. But there is no necessity
for this subterfuge, when the difficulty may be fairly
resolved, by distinguishing the promises of God into
two kinds ; those that depend on certain conditions, and
those that have no conditions at all.
To be the messenger of the former kind of promises,
is exercising a glorious ministry ; but then it is a ministry
attended with danger. He upon whom God confers it,
may live in perpetual fear of promising something with-
out effect ; because they to whom the promise is made
may forfeit it by not performing the requisite condition :
but nothing can discourage the man to whom God has
given a commission of the latter kind ; because the
infallibility of the event supports him against all the
obstacles that can possibly arise.
Now to apply this to the case in hand. When God
promises Moses a deliverance of his people, Moses
might fear that their impiety or unbelief might be a bar
and obstruction to their deliverance ; and therefore God,
in order to cure him of this fear, endeavours to make
him sensible that the promise he now gives him, was not
indefinite and general, like those which depended on
certain conditions ; but that it was one of those whose
accomplishment was decreed in the Divine councils,
independent on any event, or any condition : and there-
fore he not only promises, but forctels, and particularizes
1 Exod, &h
the nicest and minutest circumstances. He not only
acquaints him, that his people shall be delivered, but he
describes to him the exact place where, after they found
themselves set at liberty, they were to pay their homage
to their deliverer : and this detail is the token that God
gives him of the certainty of the event.
To illustrate this by a parallel instance. When the
armies of Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem, Hezekiah
began to fear that they would take it : to secure him
against that fear, Isaiah promises him an approaching
deliverance. Hezekiah is afraid lest the sins of the
people should stand between him and the Divine good-
ness : to secure him against this apprehension likewise,
and to convince him that the resolution God had taken
to deliver his people was irrespective and infallible ;
?< ' This shall be a sign unto thee,' says he, ' ye shall eat
this year such things as grow of themselves ; and in the
second year, that which springeth of the same ; and in
the third year, sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards,
and eat the fruit thereof.' To return to Moses.
Had this promise indeed been the only sign which
God had given him, it might have administered some
umbrage of suspicion ; but when it was attended with
several other signs and mighty wonders, it could not but
be of great use for the confirmation of his faith in his
present undertaking, since he knew it was as certain as
if it had already been effected ; because it proceeded
from the mouth of the Almighty', whose promises, when
absolute and unconditional, are always ' yea and amen.'
I know of few passages more difficult to be under-
stood, than that which contains the adventure of Moses'
family in the inn, 3 ' where the Lord met him, and sought
to kill him, until Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut
off" the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and
said, surely a bloody husband art thou to me.' Zipporah
is commonly represented as a perverse and forward
woman, who looked upon circumcision as a cruel and
unnecessary ordinance ; and therefore prevailed with
her husband, who, perhaps, might be too indulgent to
her in the case of her younger son, to omit it. But it
ought to be considered, that as she was a Midianitish
woman, and descended from Abraham by his wife Ketu-
rah, she could not have any aversion to the rite of
circumcision, in which she acquiesced in the case of her
elder son Gershom, and in which she was so expert, that
upon her husband's incapacity, she herself performed
the operation upon the younger.
The Midianites might perhaps, in this respect, imitate
their neighbours the lshmaelites, who did not circumcise
their children until they were thirteen years of age ; and,
for this reason, some have imagined that Moses' son
had not as yet undergone the operation : but Moses
knew very well that there was a limitation of time in
the institution of the ordinance ; and therefore the more
probable reason for this omission seems to be, that they
were now upon their journey, when Zipporah was brought
to bed, and that therefore they might think that the
danger of the wound to the infant might excuse the
deferring of his circumcision, as it excused the Israelites
afterwards in the wilderness.
But as it does not appear that Moses lay under any
necessity of taking his family, especially his wife with
2Ki
3 Exod. iv. 2lf 25.
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
253
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child, along- will) him, so this omission of circumcising
his son might be imputed to him .as a greater fault than
ordinary, because he may be supposed to have under-
stood the will of God concerning this rite more perfectly
than any other man, and was, but just before, reminded
of the benefit of that covenant whereof this ordinance
was a seal, and some part of which he was going now to
take possession of.
But how absurd would it have been for Moses to be
made a lawgiver to others, when himself lived in an open
violation of God's laws ? or to be appointed a chief
ruler and instructor of the Israelites, to whom he was to
inculcate the obligation of this ordinance, and on whom
he was to inflict pains and penalties for their neglect of
it, when himself was guilty of the same sin ? Nor was
this omission only a great sin in itself, but a great
scandal likewise to the Israelites, who, by his example,
might very likely be led into the same miscarriage,
and be tempted to suspect the call of a person who
showed such a visible contempt of God's law. As Moses
therefore was a public person, and just invested with a
commission from God, his disobedience to a known law
was more enormous, his example might have done more
mischief; and therefore God's severity against him,
either in afflicting him with some sudden sickness, or
aft'rightening him with some terrible apparition, was
necessary to remind him of his duty. And accordingly,
whatever the means was, we find, that it brought to his
wife's remembrance the neglect of their not having cir-
cumcised the child : but we injure her character, if we
think that the words which she is made to utter upon
this occasion, were any angry taunt or exprobation to
her husband, since, according to the exposition 1 of a
very learned writer upon the text, they are not directed
to him, but to her son ; and are not the effect of any
angry resentment, but a solemn form of speech made use
of at the time of any child's circumcision.
Several of the Jewish doctors tell us, that it was a
custom of the Hebrew women to call their children,
when they were circumcised, by the name of Chatan,
that is, spouse, as if they were now espoused to God.
And to this custom the apostle perhaps might allude,
when he tells his Corinthians, 2i I am jealous over you
with an holy jealousy, for 1 have espoused you to one
husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to
Christ. However this be, 3 Zipporah, who was an Ara-
bian woman, might the rather make use of this term, and
apply it to her son, because the Arabians, whose language
has a great affinity to the Hebrew, and who themselves,
as descendants from Abraham, did all along use the rite
of circumcision, make the word chatan signify to circum-
cise, and cliiten, circumcision, as manifestly appears in
their translation of the New Testament ; which can no
otherwise be accounted for than from this custom of
calling a child chatan when he is circumcised, even as
we, because a child in baptism is made a christian, use
the word christen for to baptize.
If Zipporah's words then were directed, not to her
husband, but the child whom she had just now circum-
cised, their proper meaning must be, "I, by this cir-
cumcision, pronounce thee to be a member of the church."
Mede's Discourse 14. * 2 Cor. xi. 2.
3 Mede, b. 1. Discourse 1 I.
EXOD. CH. i-xiii.
" For the child, on the day of his circumcision," says
Eben Ezra upon this text, " was used to be (ailed chatan,
because he was then first joined to the people of God,
and as it were espoused unto God." And if this be tlio
sense of the matter, Zipporah was so far from expressing
any angry resentment, or giving her husband any oppro-
brious language upon this occasion, that she onK did
the office of circumcising her son, when she perceived
that the delay of it had given offimce to God, and in
doing that office, pronounced the words over him, which
used to be pronounced whenever that ceremony was duly
performed.
This is an interpretation which not only the Septua-
gint and Chaldee Paraphrasts seem to countenance, but
what most modern masters of Jewish learning hare
approved. And as it seems to clear the character of
Zipporah, so may it receive some farther confirmation
from the subsequent behaviour of the angel, who, as soon
as he saw the ceremony performed, and heard the solemn
form pronounced over the child, 4 ' let Moses go, and
did not slay him ;' whereas had the operation been done
in the manner that some pretend, grudgingly, and of
necessity, with inward regret and words of reproach to
her husband, this, one would think, would have incensed
the angel, either to have continued the punishment, be it
what it will, upon Moses, or rather to have transferred
it to his wife, who, upon this supposition, seems most
justly to have deserved it.
Upon the whole therefore it appears, that the words of
Zipporah were addressed to her son, and not her husband,
•and were the usual*1 form of admission into the Jewish
church ; that it was at the child's feet that she laid the
foreskin, and did not throw it at her husband in anger,
when she spake the words .above-mentioned ; and that in
this whole affair, there was neither any squabble between
Moses and his wife, nor any indecent behaviour, or
opprobrious language used by her.
It cannot be denied, indeed, but that God, from the
very first day that he appointed Moses to go to Pharaoh,
intended to deliver his people from their captivity, and
when once they were departed out of Egypt, that they
should never return again ; and yet they are directed to
demand only to go ' three days' journey into the wilder-
ness.' This was not the whole of what was intended •
but Moses lay under no obligation to let so liitter an
enemy as Pharaoh into his whole design. It is sufficient
to absolve him from any imputation of disingenuitj , that
he acted according to the instructions which God gave
him; 5 and God certainly was not obliged to acquaint
Pharaoh with all his mind, but only SO far as he thought
proper: and for wise and good reasons, he thought
proper to make the demand no higher at lirst, than
' three days' journey into the wilderness,' that by his
denial of so modest a request, he might make his tyranny
more manifest, and the divine vengeance upon him more
just and remarkable.
It must be acknowledged again, that the expression of
' flowing with milk and honc\ ,' when applied to any
country, like that of king Solomon's ' making silver to
be in Jerusalem like stones,'1 is h\ perbolical. Itdei
very rich pastures and grounds which should feed cattle
• Exod. iv. 26.
5 Poole's Annotations in locum.
• 1 Kinys x. ;'.:
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A. M. 2133. A. C. 1571 ; OR, ACCORDING TO H
yielding abundance of milk, and which should produce
great plenty of flowers and plants, for the bees to make
honey. It represents indeed a general fruit fulness all
the country over; for which Palestine, according to the
account of writers of no mean character, was certainly
once famous, however it came into Strabo's head to
disparage it. For, to mention an author or two of some
note, Aristeus, who was there to bring the seventy inter-
preters into Egypt, tells us that immense and prodigious
was the produce and plenty it afforded of trees, fruits,
pasture, cattle, honey, besides the spicery, gold, and
precious stones, imported from Arabia, ' Josephus
describes the country as it was in his time, that is, in the
time of our Saviour and his apostles, as most remarkably
fruitful and pleasant, and abounding in the very choicest
productions of the earth. Bochart, much later, and since
the country has been inhabited by the Turks, lived in it
for the space of ten years, and as he was particularly
curious and diligent in informing himself in everything,
speaks the greatest things imaginable of the richness of
its soil, and the choiceness of its products : and to name
no more, our own countryman, Mr Sandys, who, in the
beginning of the last century, travelled through it, gives
it the character of " a land adorned with beautiful
mountains, and luxurious valleys ; the rocks producing
excellent waters, and no part empty of delight or profit."
And certainly those who either were natives, or have
sojourned a long time in a country, may be supposed to
have a more perfect knowledge of it than a foreigner,
who lived at a distance, as Strabo did.
The truth is, if we consider of whu>t a small compass
the land of Canaan is, and yet what a prodigious number
of inhabitants, both before and after the Israelites became
masters of it, it maintained, we must conclude, it could
not but deserve the character which the authors above
cited have given us of it; and the barrenness and poverty
of its soil, which some modern travellers seem to com-
plain of, must be imputed either to its want of tillage and
cultivation, (which the Turks, its present inhabitants, are
utterly ignorant of,) or to the particular judgment of
God, who, for the wickedness of any nation, has
frequently performed what he threatened to the Jews of
old : * ' 1 will break the pride of your power, and 1 will
make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass, and
your strength shall be spent in vain ; for your land shall
not ) ield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land
) ield their fruits.'
Several things are said in Scripture to be done by God,
which are only permitted by him to come to pass in their
ordinary course and procedure : and thus God may be
said to harden Pharaoh's heart, only because he did not
interpose, but suffered him to be carried, by the bent of
his own passions, to that inflexible obstinacy which proved
his ruin. That Moses, to whom God used these expres-
sions concerning Pharaoh, understood them in this sense,
is evident from many parts of his behaviour to him, and
especially from his earnestly entreating him to be per-
suaded, and to let the people go. 3 Had Moses known,
or even thought that God had doomed Pharaoh to
unavoidable ruin, it had been an unwarrantable presump-
' Antiquities, b. 5 r's Pis^ah-Sisht of Palestine.
" Levit. xxvi. 10, 20. " Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 9.
ALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. i-xiii.
tion in him to have persuaded him to have avoided it :
but that Moses, with all possible application, endeavoured
to make an impression upon Pharaoh for his good, is
manifest from this passage, 4 ' glory over me,' that is, do
me the honour to believe me, ' when I shall entreat for
thee, and for thy servants ;' wherein he makes an earnest
address to Pharaoh, to induce him to be persuaded to
part with the people, which he certainly never would
have done, had he been satisfied that God himself had
prevented his compliance, on purpose to bring him to
ruin.
It is farther to be observed, therefore, that not only in
the Hebrew, but in most other languages, the occasion of
an action, and what in itself has no power to produce it,
is very often put for the efficient cause thereof. Thus in
the case before us, ' God sends Moses to Pharaoh, and
Moses, in his presence, does such miraculous works as
would have had an effect upon any other : but because
he saw some of the miracles imitated by the magicians ;
because the plagues which God sent came gradually upon
him, and by the intercession of Moses, were constantly
removed; he thence took occasion, instead of being
softened by this alternative of mercy and judgment, to
become more sullen and obdurate. When ' Pharaoh,' as
the text tells us, ' saw that the rain, and the hail, and
the thunder ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened
his heart.' The mercy of God, which should have led him
to repentance, had a contrary effect upon him, and made
him more obstinate : 6 " for an hardened heart (as one
expresses it) is neither cut by compunction, nor softened
by any sense of pity. It is neither moved by entreaties, nor
yields to threatenings, nor feels the smart of scourges. Itis
ungrateful to benefactors, treacherous to counsels, sullen
under judgments, fearless in dangers, forgetful of things
past, negligent of things present, and improvident for
the future :" all which bad qualities seem to have con-
centered in Pharaoh. For whatever might have contri-
buted to his obduration at first, it is plain, that in the
event, even when the magicians owned a divine power,
in what they saw done, and were quite confounded when
they felt themselves smitten with the boils, and might
thereupon very likely persuade him to surrender, he is
so far from relenting, that he does not so much as ask a
remove of the plague. It was therefore entirely agree-
able to the rules of divine justice, when nothing would
reclaim this wicked king, when even that which wrought
upon the ministers of Satan made no impression upon
him, to let his crime become his punishment, and to leave
him to ' eat the bitter fruit of his own ways, and to be
filled with his own devices.'
The Israelites, Ave own, did carry out of the land of
their captivity several things of great value, which they
had from the Egyptians. But then we are to consider.,
that the word which our translators render borrow, does
more properly signify to ask of one; rnd what they
render to lend, is as literally to give. For the case stood
thus between the two nations. '' The Egyptians had been
thoroughly terrified with what had passed, and especially
with the last terrible plague upon their first-born, and
were now willing to give the Hebrews any thing, or
4 Exod. viii. 9. s jje cierc's Commentary.
c Patrick's Commentary ' Scripture Vindicated, part 2.
Sect. V.]
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every thing, only to get quit of them. They therefore
bribed them to be gone, and courted them with presents,
so very profusely, as even to impoverish themselves.
But for this the Israelites were not at all culpable,
because they only accepted of what the others gave them,
and what was freely given, they doubtless had a right to
detain.
But suppose that the strict sense of the word was, that,
they really did borrow many valuable things of the
Egyptians ; yet it is a truth allowed on all hands, that
God, who is the supreme Lord of all things, may, when
he pleases, and in what manner he pleases, transfer the
rights of men from one to another. Considering, then,
that God was now become the king of the Israelites, in
a proper and peculiar manner ; and considering farther
what insufferable wrongs the king and people of Egypt
had done to this people of God, who were now become
his peculiar subjects and proprietary lieges ; this act of
spoiling the Egyptians, even in the harshest sense of the
word, was, according to the laws of nations, more justi-
fiable than royal grants of letters of marque, or other such
like remedies, as kings are accustomed to make use of
against other powers that have wronged their subjects,
or suffered them to be wronged by those that are under
their command, without making a proper restitution. In
short, whatever the Hebrews took from the Egyptians,
they took and possessed it by the law of reprisals, that
is, by virtue of a special warrant from the Lord himself,
who was now become, not their God only, but their
peculiar king.
a That some compensation was due, in strict justice,
from the Egyptians to the Hebrews, for the great services
they had done them, is what can hardly be denied : but
supposing this borrowing and lending between them had
Oeen without any such regard, yet if the Israelites ac-
quired a right to these things afterwards, there was then
no obligation for them to make any restitution. Now,
that they acquired such a right, is manifest from the
Egyptians pursuing them in a hostile manner, and with
a purpose to destroy them, after they had given them
free liberty to depart ; by which hostility and perfidious-
ness they plainly forfeited their right to what they had
only lent before. For this hostile attempt, which would
have warranted the Israelites to have fallen upon the
Egyptians, and spoiled them of their goods, did cer-
tainly warrant them to keep them when they had them ;
a In the Gemarah of the Sanhedrim, there is a memorable
story concerning the transaction. In the time of Alexander the
Great, the Egyptians brought an action against tin; Israelites,
Desiring that, tiny might have the land of Canaan, in satisfac-
tion for all they had borrowed of them when they went out of
Egypt. To this Gibean Ben Ko am, who was advocati
Jews, replied, — That before they made this demand, they must.
prove what they alleged, namely, that the Israelites borrowed any
thing ot their ancestors. To which the Egyptians thought it
Sufficient to say, that they found it recorded in their own I ks.
Well thru, says the advocate, look into the same books, and ye
will find that the children of Israel lived four hundred and thirty
years in Egypt; (Exod. xii. 40,) pay us then, said he, lor all the
labours and toils of so many thousand people, as you employed us
all that time, and we will restore what we borrowed; to which
they had not a word to answer. (Patrick's Commentary.) It is
to be observed, however, that this passage in Exodus, which the
advocate refers to, had respect to all the pilgrimages of A
and his posterity from the time of his setting out from Charran
in Mesopotamia, to this their departure out of Egypt, as we shall
have occasion to show very soon.
C. ids. EXOD. CH.i— xffi.
so that now they became the rightful possessors of what
the; had only upon loan, and could not have detained
without fraud and injustice before.
Thus, in what view soever we contemplate this fact,
whether it be a voluntary donation made by the Egyp-
tians, or an act of reprisal made by the Hebrews, or a
deed of forfeiture -which the former incurred by an unjust
invasion upon the latter, the Hebrews will be found not
so culpable as some would make them : nor can we see
where the pretended ill tendency of such a precedent
can be, since it is allowed on all hands, that it is in no
case to be followed, unless it be evidently commanded
by the same divine authority.
Miracles indeed, we own, are the seals and attestations
of God, to evidence the truth of any thing that he is de-
sirous the world should believe ; but if magicians, by the
assistance of evil spirits, have power to impose upon our
senses, or to work such wonders, as seem altogether
miraculous, we are left under a great uncertainty how to
determine our judgment in this case : and therefore, to
give a full solution to this part of the objection, we
shall first premise something concerning the nature of
magic, and how far its powers may extend towards the
operation of miracles ; thence proceed to inquire who
the particular magicians were who pretended to oppose
Moses, and upon what account it was that Pharaoh sent
for them ; thence to consider whether the miracles they
seemingly wTOUght were real or fictitious, or if real,
why God permitted them to perform them ; and thence
to examine whether this permission tended any way to
prejudice the evidence of Moses' mission from God, or
rather not to confirm it, seeing the difference between
them and Moses, in this contest of working miracles,
was so visible and conspicuous.
Those who have professedly treated of the magic art,
have generally divided it into three kinds, natural, artifi-
cial, and diabolical. ' The first of these is no other than
natural philosophy, but highly improved and advanced,
whereby the person that is well skilled in the power and
operation of natural bodies, is able to produce many
wonderful effects, mistaken by the illiterate for diabolical
performances, even though they lie perfectly within the
verge of nature. Artificial magic is what we call I
demain, or slight of hand, whose effects are far from
being what they seem. They are deceptions and impos-
tures, the very tricks of jugglers, (as we corrupt the word
joculatores ,) far from exceeding the power of art. and
yet what many times pass with the vulgar for diabolical
iikewise. Diabolical magic is that which is done l.\
the help of the devil, who having great skill in natural
. and a large command over the air, and other
elements, may assist those that are in league and
nant with him (in Scripture called wizards, BOT
diviners, enchanters, Chaldeans, and such as had fami-
liar spirits) to do man) Btrange and astonishing things.*
To deny that there ever were such men as these, is to
1 Bishop Wilkins' Tract on Magic; ami Edward's Body ol
Divinity, vol. 1.
// The Scripture warrant i the belief, that, in early ages, i re
the coming of the Messiah, God permitted, in w>me in
evil demons to league with mortals, but after the divine advent,
that power seems to have been restrained, and a belii l in it i> now
altogether discarded by every intelligent Christian. In the relation
given by Mo as of the miracles performed before Pharaoh, to in-
duce him to allow of the departure of the Israelites, we read tr.;.t
256
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 ; OK, ACCOKDING TO H
slight the authority of all history ; and to guess at the
probable rise and original of them, we may suppose it to
be this, — ■* That God being pleased to admit the holy
patriarchs into conference with him, the devil endeavour-
ed to do the same ; and to retain men in their obedience
to him, pretended to make discoveries of secret things ;
and that when God was pleased to work miracles for the
truth, he in like manner directed those who were familiar
with him, how to invoke his help, for the performance of
such strange things as might confirm the world in their
error.
Under which of these denominations, natural, artifi-
cial, or diabolical, the magicians who set themselves in
opposition to the servants of the Most High God, are to
be ranked, we have no instructions from Scripture ; but
it seems highly probable, that neither would Pharaoh
have called together those of the least capacity and
repute, neither would the devil, as far as his power ex-
tended, have been backward to assist his votaries upon
such a solemn and momentous occasion as this.
AVhothe principal of these magicians were, our sacred
historian makes no mention ; but several, both Jewish
and heathen authors, (from whom 2 St Paul without
doubt borrowed their names,) have informed us, that
among the Egyptians they were called Jannes, and Jam-
bres. which to give them a Latin termination, would be
Johannes and Ambrosiutt , of whom Numenius (as he is
quoted by Eusebius) 3 has given us this remarkable
account, namely, — " That they were the scribes in reli-
gious matters among the Egyptians ; that they flourished
in Egypt at the time when the Jews were driven from
thence ; that they did not give place to any body in the
science of magical secrets ; and for this reason were
chosen unanimously by all Egypt to oppose Museus, (so
he calls Moses,) a leader of the Jews, and whose prayers
were very prevalent with God."
Now, supposing that these, and whoever else accom-
panied them, acted from the highest principles in magic,
there are two ways wherein we may imagine it in the
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, fBooK IH
ALES, A. M. 37G3. A. C. IMS. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
1 Patrick's Commentary in locum.
2 2 Tim. iii. 8. 3 Prsepar. Evang. b. 9. c. S.
' Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and his servants, and
it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh called also the wise men
and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in
like manner with their enchantments: for they cast, down every
man Ins rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swal-
lowed up their rods,' (Exod. vii. 10, 11, 12.) The apparent
miracle of the Egyptian magicians can be thus explained. The
asp of Egypt when approached or disturbed, like the cobra da
atpello, elevates its head and body to a considerable degree, ex-
tends the sides of its neck, and appears to stand erect to attack
the aggressor. That circumstance led to the employment of the
asp as a dancing serpent by jugglers, either for exhibition as a
source of profit, or to impose upon vulgar credulity. The asps
tor this purpose are carefully deprived of their fangs, which en-
ables their owners to handle them with impunity. When they
are to be exhibited, the top of their cage, commonly a wicker-
basket, is taken oil, and at the same moment, a flute or pipe is
played. The asp immediately assumes the erect position, and
the balancing motions, made during its protracted efforts to
maintain this attitude, arc what is called dancing. A really
curious circumstance is stated, on good authority, relative to the
asp, which is, that the jugglers know how to throw it into a sort
of catalepsy, in which condition the muscles are rigidly contract-
ed, and the whole animal becomes still ami motionless. This is
done by compressing the cervical spine between the finger and
thumb. The trick is called ' changing the serpent into a rod or
stick.' — Ed.
power of the devil to be assistant to such persons a^
tend to work miracles.
The first is, by raising false images and appearance
things ; which may be done either by affecting the br
or confusing the optic nerves, or altering the medium
which is between us and the object. That he did some
such thing as this to our blessed Saviour, Avhen from the
top of an high mountain he pretended 4 ' to shew him all
the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them in a
moment of time,' is very plain from the convexity of the
earth, which bounds the horizon, and admits of no such
unlimited prospect ; so that all he could be presumed
capable of doing in this case (as our Saviour was not
insensible what he did do) was to make fictitious repre-
sentations of gay and magnificent things in the air.
Secondly, The other way wherein the devil may be
supposed able to assist these magicians, is by making use
of the laws of nature, in producing effects which are not
above the natural power of things, though they certainly
exceed what man can do. Thus to transport a body, with
inconceivable rapidity, from one place to another ; to
bring together different productions of nature which sepa-
rately have no visible effect, but when united work wonders ;
to make images move, walk, speak, and the like ; these
may come within the compass of the devil's power,
because not transcending the laws of nature, though we
cannot discern by what means they are effected.
Thirdly, There is a farther supposition " of some
learned men, namely, that, under the divine permission,
wicked spirits have a power to work real miracles, of
which they perceive e some intimations given us in Scrip-
ture, and in the nature of the thing no reasons to the
contrary ; and therefore the question is, whether what
the magicians here performed, were real miracles or not ?
Some learned writers have imagined, that there was
not any real transmutation, when the rods of the Egyptian
magicians were pretended to be changed into serpents,
nor any real miracle exhibited, when the water was
turned into blood, and the frogs produced ; but that
either the magicians played their parts well, as dexterous
jugglers, or that they did it by their knowledge of some
secret art ; or that some demons assisted them, who by their
power over the air, enabled them to a deceive the sight of
4 Mat. iv. 8.
5 Stillingfieet's Orig. Sacra, p. 236. Le Clerc's Commentary.
6Deut. xiii. 1. Matth. xxiv. 24. 2 Thess. ii. 9.
a The Mahometans, in the account they give us of these
transactions, seem to think them legerdemain tricks, rather than
any real miracles in the magicians ; for they tell us, that Moses
having wrought some miracles before the king of Egypt, which
not a little surprised him, he was advised by his council to amuse
him with fair hopes, until he had sent for some of his most
expert sorcerers from Thebais. Accordingly Sabour and Gadour,
two brothers, renowned for their magic skill, were sent for; and
before they came to Pharaoh's court, they went to consult the
manes of their father about the success of their journey ; acquaint-
ing him withal, that the two magicians which they were sent for
to oppose, had a rod, which they turned into a serpent, and
devoured all that made head against it: to which their father's
ghost answered, that if that rod turned itself into a serpent
whilst they were asleep, they must never expect to prevail
against them. However, this did not hinder them from appear-
ing before Pharaoh, at the head of his other magicians, to the
number, as some say, of 70,000. All these had prepared their
rods, and cords tilled with quicksilver, which, when heated by the
sun, imitated the winding of a serpent: but Moses' serpent soon
destroyed them, to the great surprise of all the spectators:
&ECT. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &c.
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1618. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
257
. t"|^»eholders. It is to be observed, however, that in the
nint which Moses gives us of the miracles performed
*\)y himself and Aaron, and of what the magicians did by
( flWir enchantments, he docs not hint any manner of
difference, as to the reality of the performance of either
of them. In the case of their rods being turned into
serpents, he does not say, that they made them to appear
to be such, by a deception of the sight, but that, l ' they
flung down every man his rod, and they became serpents ;'
and so of the other two miracles, which Moses exhibited,
1 that the magicians did so with their enchantments.'
2 Now, from the knowledge of natural causes and effects,
which by the help of experiment and philosophy, has of
late been introduced, we may venture to say, that no
effects like what these men pretended to accomplish by
enchantments, can be produced by any or all the powers
of nature. No art, no study of occult sciences, can
enable a man really to change a rod into a living
serpent. There are no enchantments, no rules in sor-
cery sufficient to make a living frog, or to change water
into real blood ; and to suppose that the magicians went
about to impose upon Pharaoh, and the rest of the spec-
tators, by mere artifice and slight of hand, was giving
Moses and Aaron, whom we cannot but suppose inquisi-
tive upon this occasion, the fairest opportunity imagin-
able to detect the cheat, and expose them to the contempt
and derision of the whole company.
Their only recourse, in this case, can be to the assist-
ance of devils, deluding the company with false appear-
ances of serpents, frogs, and blood : but let any one try
to give a satisfactory account, how any magician could,
by his power over the air, either by himself, or by the
assistance of a demon, represent to the naked view of
beholders, in opposition to a true miracle, serpents,
frogs, and water converted into blood ; nay, and so
represent them, as that the fictitious appearance should
not be distinguishable from the real, but should bear to
be seen with them, at one and the same time, in the same
light, in the same view ; for so the magicians' rods turned
into serpents certainly were, when Aaron's rod swal-
lowed them up : I say, let any one try to give a reason-
able account of this fancy, and he will quickly see, that
he may more reasonably suppose the magicians able to
perform a true and real transmutation, than to ascribe to
them such imaginary powers as this supposition requires,
and which (if they could be conceived) can tend only to
destroy the certainty of all appearances whatever.
If then the magicians could have no knowledge of
any mystic arts, or powers of nature, whereby to work
miracles ; if they could not deceive the spectators by
any slight of hand, nor obtain any assistance from evil
spirits, sufficient to impose upon them by false appear-
ances ; the consequence seems to be, that the miracles
which they wrought were equally true with those which
Moses and Aaron did. But then, as the magicians had
no power inherent in themselves, they could not tell,
even when they set about imitating Moses, what the
success of their attempt would be. Their rods were
1 Exod. vii. 11, 12. 2 Shuckforcrs Connection, vol. 2. b. 9.
whereupon Sabour and Gadour renounced their profession, and
embraced the religion of Moses, which gave Pharaoh such a dis-
gust, that he had them both put to death, as holding secret cor-
respondence with Moses. — Herbelofs Biblioth. Orient, p. 64S,
and Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Jewries.
turned into serpents, they saw, but how that was effected ,
they could not tell. Had they had any certain rules of
art or science to work by, or any superior help or assist-
ance to depend on, they would at once have known what
to attempt, and what not, and not have exposed them-
selves to scorn, by not being able to produce lice , u
well as frogs. If what they did was by the agency of
evil spirits, it is plain, that that agency was under the
divine control, and could go no farther than the God of
Israel permitted it; and the reasons of his permitting it
might be these :
The learned in Egypt thought, that miracles, prodi-
gies, and omens, were given by the planetary and ele-
mentary influences; and that students, deeply versed in
the mysteries of nature, could cause them by art and
incantation. Pharaoh Blight possibly be of this opinion ;
and therefore, seeing Moses do very strange things,
and knowing that his magicians were great adepts in
these sciences, he thought proper to send for them, in
order to know whether the wonders which Mose3 wrought
were the effect of the art of man, of the power of nature,
or of the finger of God ; for he seems to have argued
thus — If his magicians could perform what Moses did,
Moses was such an one as they, and endeavoured to
delude him with artificial wonders, instead of real
miracles. Fit therefore it was, that these practitioners
should be suffered to exert the utmost of their power
against Moses, in order to clear him from the imputation
of magic, or sorcery, which, considering the prevailing
notions of that age, both Hebrews and Egyptians might
have been apt to entertain, had not this competition hap-
pened, and his antagonists thereupon acknowledged the
superiority of the principle by which he acted, in com-
parison of which, all their arts and knowledge of occult
sciences availed nothing.
The Israelites, it must be owned, were a people of a
very suspicious, diffident, and desponding temper. AVhen
Moses came to them with a message from God, at first
they seemed to receive him gladly, and to rejoice at
their approaching deliverance ; and when he had shown
them the credentials which God appointed him to exhibit,
it is said, 3 ' that the people believed, and when they
heard that the Lord had looked upon their affliction,
they bowed their heads, and worshipped :' but within tin-
space of a day or two, when they saw that every thing
did not answer their expectation, but that their petition,
to an imperious tyrant was rejected with scorn : how
is their tone changed to their very deliverers, and the
blame of all their grievances laid upon them! * ' The
Lord look upon you, and jndge, because \ou have
made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh,
and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword into
their hands to slay us:' and therefore, for the confirma-
tion of the faith of these wavering and uncertain people,
it was highly necessary that this contest between RIOOM
and the magicians should be permitted, thai the disparity
of persons acting by the power of God, and bj the power
of Satan, in such a contraposition, might lie more COD-
spicuous.
And indeed, what could more contribute to raise in
the Israelites a confidence in God's promises, and I
joyful hope of a speedy deliverance, than to see the
* Exod. It. 31.
* Exod. v. 21.
258
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2133. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO H
great disparity between the opposers and maintainors of
their cause ? To see, I say, that though, by the Divine
permission, the magicians could change their rods into
serpents, yet, as a manifest token of superiority, Moses'
rod devoured all theirs ; though they could turn water
into blood, yet it was above their skill to restore it to
its former nature ; though they made a shift to produce
frogs, yet they were utterly unable to clear the Egyptian
palaces and houses of them ; though they did, in short,
some things, which only contributed to the calamities of
Egypt, yet they could do no one thing to redress them,
no even to relieve themselves against the plague of the
boils ? So true, and so severe withal, is that observa-
tion of the author of the book of Wisdom, ' " As for the
illusions of the art magic, they were put down, and their
vaunting in wisdom was reproved with disgrace : for they
who promised to drive away terrors, and troubles from a
sick soul, were sick themselves of fear, and worthy to be
laughed at."
But now Moses not only does such miracles as the
magicians never pretend to do, (the storm and hail, the
thunder and lightning, and thick darkness, &c, they
never once attempted to imitate,) but, supposing that
Pharaoh might be addicted to astrologers, who fancied
that all things here below might be governed by the
motion and influence of the stars, he very frequently
gives him the liberty to name the time when he would
have any plague removed, that thereby he might know
that God alone was the author of them, and that conse-
quently there was no day or hour under so ill an aspect,
but that he could prevail with him, at whatever moment
he should assign, to rescue and deliver him.
Had Moses met with no opposition in working his
miracles, Pharaoh had neither had so strong a convic-
tion, nor could Moses himself have exhibited so clear a
testimony of his divine mission. 2 As the nature of the
Egyptian learning then was, the king might have sus-
pected that the prophet's miracles proceeded, if not from
natural means and enchantment, at least from the influ-
ence of some planetary or elementary powers : but when
men of equal skill and abilities- in all points of abstruse
learning, were brought to contest the matter with him,
and acknowledged their inability to proceed in a con-
flict where their adversary had a divine power apparently
assisting him ; this established the truth of Moses' pre-
tensions, though it made the other's obstinacy and infi-
delity inexcusable ; and 3 a signal instance of God's
wisdom it was, to permit these sorcerers to proceed for
eorue time in their contest with his servant, which added
disgrace to the one's defeat, as it did no small glory to
the other's conquest.
Thus we have endeavoured to satisfy the objections
which are usually advanced against some parts of the
Scripture history comprised in this period; and for the
farther satisfaction of our reader, shall conclude with
the testimony of some heathen writers, who, in all ages,
have more or less taken notice of the birth, life, and
several adventures of Moses, so far as we have hitherto
advanced. 4 That of his being taken out of the river
Nile, for instance, is sung by the author of the Orphic
ALES, A. M. 37G3. A. C. 1G48. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
verses, under the title vloyivvi;, or born of the ivater :
that the beauty and gracefulness of his person, which
recommended him to every one's affection, is remembered
by Justin 5 out of Trogus Pompeius, and that6 the whole
fable of Venus falling in love with Adonis, in all pro-
bability arose from the story of Moses and Pharaoh's
daughter : that the wonder of the burning bush is recorded
by Antipanus, with a small variation, as he is cited 7 by
Eusebius : that several of the plagues upon Egypt are
mentioned in the fragments of Eupolemus, preserved 8
by the same Eusebius ; and that the slaughter of their
first-born, in particular, is commemorated in that mourn-
ful feast of Osiris, wherein they rise at midnight, light
candles, and go about weepmg and groaning: that
Moses' calling the God of heaven Jao, or Jehovah, is
mentioned 9 by Biodorus Siculus : that the names of
Jannes and Jambres, and the opposition they made
against him, is preserved 10 in Eumenes, u Pliny, and
12 Apuleius ; and, to go no farther, that the Israelites'
departure out of Egypt, and settling in the land of
Canaan, is I3 by Tacitus, who took it from some Egyp-
tian authors, thus related. " The Hebrews were de-
scended from the Assyrians, and possessing a great part
of Egypt, led the life of shepherds : but afterwards being-
burdened with hard labour, they came out of Egypt
under the command of Moses, with some Egyptians
accompanying them, and went through the country of the
Arabians, into Palestine Syria, and there set up rites
contrary to those of the Egyptians." So fully does the
testimony of aliens tend to the confirmation of thy
revelations, O God !
1 Wisdom xvii. 7, 8. 2 Shuckford's Connection, vol.2, b. 9.
3 Stillingfleet's Origin. Sacra.
4 Eusebius1 Prop. Evang. I>. 13. c. 12.
CHAP. III. — Of the sacred chronology , and profane
history, learning, religion, idolatry, and monumental
works, Sfc, but chiefly of the Egyptians, during this
period.
Before we enter upon the historical matters which are
contained in this period, between God's call to Abra-
ham out of Mesopotamia, and the children of Israel's
departure out of Egypt, it may not be improper to settle
its chronology, and to take notice of some exceptions
that may possibly be made to it.
The difference between the Hebrew, Samaritan, and
Septuagint computations, in the former periods of time,
ran wide ; and it was some part of our care, either to
determine which was most probably in the right, or to
reconcile the seeming opposition between them : but in
this the variation is so small, that they seem almost
unanimously to agree, that 14 from the promise made to
Abraham, to his posterity's exodus out of Egypt, are 430
years, which, according to the learned Usher, may very
properly be divided into two halves.
1. 15 From the time of the promise, when Abraham was
in the 75th year of his age, to the birth of Isaac, are
25 years ; 16 from the birth of Isaac to the birth of Jacob,
60 years ; from the birth of Jacob to his descent into
* B. 36. c. 2. 6 Huetius' Dem. Evang. prop. 4. c. 3.
Eusebius' Pirep. Evang. b. 9. c. 22. * Ibid.
9 B. 1. 'o Eusebius, b. 8. c. S. :1 B. 30. c. 1.
J* Apolog. 2. » B 5 14 Exod xii 40>
i * Gen. xii. 4.— xxi. 5. '« Gen. xxv. 26.
Skct. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAEL 1TES', &c.
259
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO H
Egypt, with his whole family, 130 years ; so that the
whole of this division amounts to 215 years.
2. The other part of the division is thus reckoned up.
Joseph, the son of Jacob, was 30 years old when he
expounded Pharaoh's dreams : the seven years of plenty
were run out, and * the third year of famine begun, when
his father came down into Egypt : so that by this time
Joseph was 39. Now, 39 years taken from the 1 10
which Joseph lived, will make the time which the Is-
raelites had continued in Egypt, before Joseph's death,
to be 71 : and as * from the death of Joseph to the birth
of Moses, are precisely 64 years ; so 3 from his birth to
the time of the Israelites' departure, .are 80 years. The
several articles of this division, therefore, being put
together, amount in like manner to 215 years ; and the
two gross sums make exactly 430.
The history indeed tells us, that 4 ' the sojourning of
the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was 430
years :' but it does not therefore follow that they dwelt
in Egypt all that time. They came into Egypt with
Jacob, A. M. 2298, according to Hales, A. M. 3548,
and went out of Egypt, A.M. 2513, Ibid. 3763; so
that they lived in it just 215 years. Their sojourning,
therefore, must not be limited to their living in Egypt,
but be taken in a more general sense, and extended
equally to the time of their living in Canaan, which
being added to the time of their continuance in Egypt,
makes exactly the number of 430 years.
That this is the sense of the divine historian, is mani-
fest from the authority of the Samaritan text, which has
the whole verse thus : ' Now the inhabiting of the children
of Israel, and their fathers, whereby they inhabited in
the land of Canaan, and in the land of Egypt, were four
hundred and thirty years ;' whereupon the learned Dr
Prideaux 5 has this observation, " That the additions
herein do manifestly mend the text; they make it more
clear and intelligible, and add nothing to the Hebrew
copy, but what must be understood by the reader
to make out its sense :" and upon this presumption it
may very reasonably be supposed, b that the ancient
Hebrew text was, in this verse, the same with the present
Samaritan, and that the words which the Samaritan has
in this place more than the Hebrew, have been dropped
by the negligence of some transcribers.
Again in the promise which God makes to Abraham,
he tells him, 7 ' That his seed should be a stranger in a
land which was not theirs ; that there they should serve the
inhabitants, and they afflict them for four hundred years ;
but that, in the fourth generation, they should return to
Canaan again ;' whereas four hundred years are not the
number specified in the place just now examined, nor are
four generations equivalent to the space of time wherein
the Hebrews sojourned in strange countries. It is to
be observed, however, that both in sacred and profane
authors, a common thing it is, to mention only the large
6um, and drop the less, especially when, to preserve the
exactness of chronology, the precise number is in other
places inserted : and that though a generation does usually
denote a term of an hundred years ; yet, taking the words
to relate to the whole sojourning of the Hebrews, from
1 Gen. xlvii. 4. 2 Compare Gen. xli. 4fi. with xlv. (i.
3 Exod. vii. 7. 4 Exod. xii. 40.
' Connection, vol. 2. part 1. b. 6. p. 000.
6 Shucjfbrd's Connection, vol.2, b. 9. ' Gen. xv. 13; 10.
ALES, A. M. 37C3. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
their going into Canaan to their going out of Egypt,
the odd number of thirty years may here be supposed to
be omitted, to make it a round sum, as well as in the
former sense : but then taking a generation to mean no
more than one descent, the matter of fact is, that from
the Israelites' going down into Egypt, until the time of
their leaving it, in some of the sons of Jacob, (particu-
larly in Levi, who begat Cohath, and Cohath, Amrani,
and Amram, Moses, who conducted the people out of
Egypt,) there were no more than four descents.
Whether, therefore, we take the word generation to
denote an age of years, or a succession of lives, there is
plainly no incongruity in the expression ; because, bating
the odd number of thirty, Abraham and his posterity
sojourned in a strange land for the space of 400 years,
and yet, allowing it to be meant of a descent of lives,
at the Israelites' return to Canaan, from the time of their
going down to Egypt, several persons of the fourth
generation were not extinct.
Egypt indeed was the most considerable nation with
whom the Israelites had any intercourse during tin's
period : what dealings they had with the several parts of
Canaan, will be best related when we come to treat of
the history of that country. In the mean time we cannot
but lament our want of the ancient records of those
times, which forces us, instead of a continued history, to
present our reader with nothing but a jejune catalogue
of the succession of the Egyptian kings, which, as far as
they relate to our present purpose, we have thought pro-
per «to subjoin at the bottom of the page ; and shall only
a In the year of the world 1849, reigned in Thebais, or the
Upper Egypt, Menes, whom the Scripture calls Mizraim, 62
years: in the year 191 J, Athothes, 59 years: in the year 1970,
Athothes II., 32 years-, in the year 2002, Diabies, 19 years: in
the year 2021, Pemphos, 18 years: in the year 2039, Tegar
Amachus, 79 years: in the year 2118, Stoechus, 6 years: in the
year 2 124, Gofermies, 30 years : in the year 2454, Mares, 26 years.
In the time .of these flourished the royal shepherds in the
Lower Egypt; and in the year of the world 1920, Salatis, the
first pastoral king, reigned 19 years: in the year 1939, Beon, the
second pastoral king, 44 years: in the year 1983, Apachnas, the
third pastoral king, 36 years: in the year 2020, Apophis, the
fourth pastoral king, Cl years: in the year 2081, Janias, the
fifth pastoral king, 50 years and one month; and alter these He-
rules Assis, 49 years and two months.
Then follow the Tlieban kings in this order. In the year of
the world 2180, Anoypb.es, (who by Archbishop Usher is nam-
ed Tethmosis, and is said to have expelled the royal shepherds,
reigned 20 years: in the year 2200, Sirieius, 18 years: in the
year 2218, Cneubus Cneurus, 27 years: in the year 2245, Ra-
mims, 13 years: in the year 2268, Biyris, lOyears: in the year
2268, Saophis, 29 years: in the year 2297 Sensaophis, 27 years:
in the year 2324, Moscheris, 31 years: in the year 2.'>55, Mar-
tin's, 33 years: in the year 2388, Pamnus Arcbadnes, whom
Usher calls Etatholis, 35 years: and in the year 2423, Apaxus
Maximus, 100 years. After the expulsion of the race of the royal
pastors, in the year of the world 2205, Chebron succeeded to the
kingdom of the Lower Egypt, and reigned IS years: in the year
2218, Amenopliis, 20 Tears and 7 months: in theyeai
Ameses, 21 years and 9 months: in the year 2261, Mephres, 12
years and 9 months: in the year 8273, Mi-phiagmuthis, 25
years and 10 months: in the year 2899 Thmosis, 9 years and
8 months: in the year 2309, Amenophis 11. 80 years and HI
months: in the year 2340, OrUB, 36 years and 5 months: in tli«
year 2376, Aehenchres 12 years and 1 month: in the year
2388, Rathotis, 9 years: in the year 2;(97, Aeeneheies, 12 years
and 5 months: in the year 2410, Aeeneheies II. 12 years and
3 months: in the year 2422, Acmais, 4 years and 1 month; In
the year 2426, Ramesses, I year and 3 months: In the year
2427, Ramesses Miamun, 66 years and 2 months: and in the
year 2493, Amenophis III. 19 years and (i months: "ho is the
J&st we meet with in this period.
260
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1048. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
take notice here in particular, that A. M. 2084, when
Abraham and his nephew Lot, went down into Egypt,
Te«ar Amachus was then upon the throne ; that A. M.
2260, when Joseph was born,Biyris was king; and when he
was sold into Egypt, about seventeen years after, Saophis
had succeeded ; that this Saophis was the prince whose
dreams he expounded, and by whom he was promoted to
great honour in the kingdom ; that he died, however,
before his dreams were accomplished, for it was A. M.
2298, that the first year of the famine began, when Sen-
saophis, who was probably his son, and held Joseph in
equal favour, swayed the sceptre ; that this was the prince
to whom Jacob and his sons, upon their coming down
into Egypt, in the third year of the famine, were pre-
sented, and with whom Israel had the conversation above
mentioned ; that A. M. 2369, when Joseph died, Masthis
was king, by whom, and some of his successors, the
Israelites were well treated, in remembrance of the ser-
vices he had done the public, until there happened a
revolution in the government, which some choose to place
about this time ; that A. M. 2427, the Israelites began
to be oppressed, and severely treated by Ramesses
Miamun, in whose reign Moses was born, slew the
Egyptian, and fled into Midian ; that A. M. 2493,
Amenophis succeeded his father in his kingdom and in
his cruelty to the Israelites ; but that being compelled
at last, by the mighty hand of God, to let them go, he,
and all his army, in endeavouring to retake them, were
A. M. 2513, swallowed up in the Red Sea.
Salatis, and his successors, not only oppressed the
Israelites, as we said before, but by the violence of their
conquests, so terrified the ancient inhabitants of the land,
that many persons of the first figure thought it better to
leave their native country, than to endeavour to sit down
under such calamities as they saw were coming upon
them. Cecrops, about this time, departed from Egypt;
and after some years' travel in other places came at
length to Greece, and lived in Attica, where he was
kindly received by Actaeus, the king of the country ;
married his daughter, and upon his demise succeeded to
his throne ; and thereupon he taught the people, who
were vagrant before, the use of settled habitations ; re-
strained all licentious lusts among them ; obliged each
man to marry one wife ; and, in shoit, gave wise rules
for the conduct of their lives, and the exercise of all
civil and religious offices. About thirty years after the
death of Cecrops, Cadmus " came, either directly from
Egypt, as some think, or rather from Phoenicia, as others
will have it, and with several people that followed his for-
tune, 6 of which some authors gives us a strange account
a The true account of Cadmus is, — That his father, whose
name is unknown, was an Egyptian, who left Egypt about the
time that Cecrops came from thence, and obtained a kingdom in
Phoenicia, as Cecrops did in Attica; and that his two sons Phoe-
nix and Cadmus, were born after his settlement in that country:
and hence it came to pass that Cadmus, having had an Egyptian
father, was brought up in the religion, and was well acquainted with
the history of that country, which occasioned several writers of
his life to account him an Egyptian ; and at the same time being
born and educated in Phoenicia, he became master of the lan-
guage and letters of the country, and had likewise a Phoenician
name, which has induced several others that have wrote of him,
to conclude, with good reason, that he was a native of that coun-
try,— Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 8.
b The account which Ovid, in his Metamorphosis, (b. 3. fab.
1.) gives us of this matter is,— That Cadmus' followers were all
having expelled the ancient inhabitants, settled himself
in Bceotia, and built Thebes.
Danaus was another considerable person, who, about
this time, left Egypt and came into Greece. He was
originally descended from a Grecian ancestor, and being
now at Argos, when the crown was vacant, he stood can-
didate for it against Galenor, the son of Sthenelus, and,
c by the superstition of the people who were his electors,
carried it. But of all the refugees who quitted Egypt
much about this time, Belus, the son of Neptune, seems
to be the most famous. He, with some Egyptian priests,
went to Babylon, and there obtained leave to settle, and
cultivate their studies in the same manner, and with the
same encouragement that had been granted them in their
own country.
The chief aim of the ancient astronomers seems to
have been, to observe the times of the rising and setting
of the stars ; and the first and most proper places that
they could think of for that purpose were very large and
open plains, where they could have an extensive view of
the horizon, without interruption ; and such plains as
these were the observatories for many generations. But
the Egyptians had, for above three hundred years before
the time of this Belus, invented a method to improve
their views by the building of pyramids, from the top of
which they might take a prospect with greater advan-
tage ; and therefore it is no improbable conjecture, that
Belus taught the Babylonians the use of such structures,
and might possibly project for them that lofty tower
which was afterwards called by his name.
For this tower seems to have been an improvement of
the Egyptian pyramids. It was raised to a much greater
height ; had a more commodious space at top, more
devoured by a serpent, which when Cadmus had killed, and sown
its teeth in the ground, there sprang up from them a number of
armed men, who, as soon as they appeared above ground, fell a
fighting one another, and were all killed exceptfive, who, surviving
the conflict, went with Cadmus, and helped him to build Thebes.
And the mythologic sense of all this story, according to the con-
jecture of a learned author, is no more than this, — That when
Cadmus came into Boeotia, and had conquered the inhabitants of
it, it might be recorded of him in the Phoenician or Hebrew lan-
guage, which anciently was the same, that he Nashah Chail Cha-
rnesh Anoshim, Noshehim be Shenei Nachash; but now there
being several ambiguities in these words, where the vowels were
not originally written, (Chamesh, for instance, may signify five,
as well as warlike; Shenei, teeth, as spears; and Nachash a ser-
pent, as well as brass,) a fabulous translator might say, " lie
raised a force of five men, armed with the teeth of a serpent ;"
whereas the words should be rendered, " he raised a warlike force
of men armed with spears of brass ;" and it is no wonder that the
Greeks, who were so fond of disguising all their ancient accounts
with fable and allegory, should give the history of Cadmus this
turn, when the words, in which his actions are recorded, give
them so fair an opportunity. — Shuckford's Connection, vol.
2. b. 8.
c The dispute between Danaus and Galenor, concerning their
titles to the crown, was argued, on both sides, for a whole day ;
and when Galenor was thought to have offered as weighty and
strong arguments for his pretensions, as Danaus could for his,
the next day was appointed for the further hearing and deter-
mining their claims, when an accident put an end to the dispute.
For not far from the place where the people were assembled, there
happened a fight between a wolf and a bull, wherein the wolf got
the better. This was thought a thing not a little ominous; and
therefore, as the wolf was a creature they were less acquainted
with than the bull, they thought it was the will of the gods,
declared by the event of this accidental combat, that he who was
the stranger should rule over them.— Shuckford's Connection,
vol. 2. b. 8.
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &i
2G1
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G3. A. C. 1618. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
useful and large apartments within ; and yet was a less
bulky building, and raised upon a narrower foundation :
so that the contriver of this seems to have been well
acquainted with the Egyptian pyramid and its defects,
and to have herein designed a structure much more
excellent, which can be ascribed to none, with so great
a show of probability, as to the Belus we are now
speaking of.
That the Egyptians, in the early ages of the world,
were very famous for wisdom and learning, is evident
from many ancient writers, as well as the testimony of
the Scriptures themselves ; for when, among other things,
to the honour of Moses, it is said, that ' ' he was learned
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians ;' and to magnify the
knowledge of Solomon, we are told, that 3 'he excelled
all the wisdom of Egypt ;' we cannot but infer, that this
nation, above all others, had gained a reputation even
for the invention of several useful sciences.
The tillage of the ground made the study of astronomy
absolutely necessary, in order to their knowing, from
the lights of heaven, the times and seasons for the several
parts of agriculture ; and the nature of their country,
overflowed every year by the Nile, and every year losing
its land marks, made it of continual use to them to study
geometry ; and, as a necessary handmaid to that, to
make themselves expert in arithmetic.
It is not to be supposed, however, that hitherto they
had carried the study either of astronomy or geography
to any great height. They observed the places of the
stars, tind the periodical motions of the planets. They
kept registers of their observations for a long course of
years, and took account of the weather and seasons that
followed their several observations. They recorded the
times of sowing and reaping this or that grain, and, by
their long experience, became able prognosticators of
the weather and the seasons, and excellent directors for
the tillage of the ground : and in like manner, by their
knowledge in geometry, they contrived very proper
methods of marking out, and describing the several
parts of their country, and were very careful, no doubt,
in making draughts of the flow and ebb of their river
Nile every year ; but when it is considered, that the
Egyptians did not as yet apprehend that the year con-
sisted of more than 3(i0 days, and that a both Thales
and Pythagoras, many ages after these times, made
great improvements in geometry beyond what they had
learned in Egypt ; that Thales was the first who ven-
tured to foretell an eclipse ; and Eudoxus and Ptolemy
to reduce the heavenly motions into tables ; we can
hardly think, that cither astronomy or geometry were as
yet carried to any great perfection.
1 Kings iv. 30.
Egypt for the sake of thei
I Acts vii. 22.
a Thales, who travelled into
learning, after his return home, sacrificed an ox to the gods for
joy that he had hit on the method of inscribing a rectangled
triangle within a circle; and Pythagoras uo less than a whole
hecatomb, for his finding out the proportion of the longest side
of a right-angled triangle to the other two, which is no more than
a common proposition of the first book of Euclid ; and yet these
two philosophers could not have the invention of these things from
the Egyptians, unless we suppose, either that the Egyptians did
not teach them all that they knew, or that the disciples concealed
the thing, and vainly arrogated to themselves what, in strict truth,
they had borrowed from their masters. — Biog. Laert. in Pjfthog.
tt Thaletc.
The science of physic is generally imputed to jEscu-
lapius ; which name was given to Sethorthrus, a king of
Memphis, who stands second in the third dynasty of
Manetho, for his great skill in that art ; and though no
great credit is to be given to h their boasted proficiency
in chemistry, yet it is reasonable to believe, from their
constant practice of dissections, that they could not well
fail of a competent knowledge in anatomy.
The science, however, for which they were most
famous, and for which indeed they valued themselves
most, was magic, though the whole structure of it had
no other foundation than a superstitious belief of the
great influence which heavenly bodies are supposed to
have upon this inferior world. To this purpose they
imagined, that the seven planets governed the seven
days of the week ; and pretended, that, by a long ob-
servation of the motion of the celestial bodies, they had
obtained the art of foreseeing future events. They
believed, in short, that the sun, moon, stars, and ele-
ments, were endued with intelligence, and appointed by
the supreme Deity to govern the world ; and though
they acknowledged that God might, upon extraordinary
occasions, work miracles, reveal his will by audible
voices, visions, dreams, prophecies, &c, yet they ima-
gined also, that, generally speaking, prodigies were
caused, oracles given, and visions occasioned in a natural
way, by the observation, or influence of the courses of
the heavenly bodies, or by the operations of the powers
of nature ; and therefore they conceived, that their
learned professors could work miracles, obtain omens,
and interpret dreams, merely by their skill in natural
knowledge, which, though strange and unaccountable to
the vulgar, was very obvious to persons of science and
philosophy.
In later ages indeed, and when the Egyptians began
to worship their departed princes, a notion prevailed
that spirits or demons, of a nature superior to men, were
employed in the government of the world, and had their
several provinces appointed them by God. To this
honour they imagined that the souls of departed heroes
and extraordinary persons were admitted ; and for this
reason they supposed, that they were not only endowed
with powers far exceeding those of mortal men, but had
likewise miracles, visions, oracles, and omens, submitted
to their ministry and direction ; and consequently, in all
their demands or exigencies of this kind, made them the
objects of their incantations and prayers.
These were some of the chief arts and sciences (for
b Some modem assertors of the great antiquity of chemistry,
tell us of a medicine used onlj by the Egyptian priests, and
kept secret, even from most of the natives, thai i> of efficacy
almost to do any thing but restore the dead to life again. This,
say they, was the grand elixir, or chemical preparation made
with the philosopher's stun.-, the Invention of Hermes, by the
help of which the Egyptian kings were enabled to build the
pyramids, with the treasures which their furnaces afforded them;
but these fables me sufficiently confuted by the profound silence
of all antiquity in this matter. They are indeed built upon sus-
picious authorities, uncertain conjectures, and allegorical Inter-
pretations of the fabulous stories of the Greeks, which these men
will have to i»- chemical secrets In disguise; insomuch that they
fancy that the golden fleece, which Jason fetched from Cokhls,
Was Only a receipt to make the philosopher's stone; and that
Medea restored ASsou's father to his youth again, by the grand
elixir.— r/»iver«aj History, 1>. 1. c. '.i; and fFettm't Re/Uttoms
on Amicnt and Modem Learning, c. 9.
262 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1G48. EXOD. CH. i-xiii.
[Book III.
their architecture, painting, sculpture, and mechanics of
all kinds, for which they were so justly famous, Ave have
but just room to mention) that flourished at this time
among the Egyptians ; and we come now to observe a
little by what means it was that this learning of theirs
came to be preserved and transmitted to posterity.
The Egyptian language was certainly one of the most
ancient in the world ; for considering its structure and
constitution, " wherein it widely differs from all oriental
and European languages, it must needs be an original,
or mother tongue, formed at the confusion of Babel.
Their most ancient way of writing was by hieroglyphical
figures b of various animals, and plants, the parts of
human bodies, and mechanical instruments ; for in these
things did the hieroglyphics both of the Ethiopians and
Egyptians, whereof Hermes is said to have been the
inventor, most certainly consist : but, besides these, they
made use likewise of literal characters, whereof they had
two kinds, calling the one the sacred letters, in which
their public registers, and all matters of an higher nature
were written ; and the other the vulgar, which every one
a For the Copts neither decline their nouns nor conjugate
their verbs, not even those of foreign extract, otherwise than by
prefixing particles, sometimes of one or more syllables, and some-
times of a single letter, which denote case, gender, number, and
person, several of which are often joined together in one word,
and the primitive word usually placed last: so that the difficulty
of this language consists in the incredible combination of the
words and particles, in the change of the vowels in transposing
tlir middle part of the word, and adding superfluous letters,
whicl it requires no small labour and skill to distinguish. —
Wilkin's Dissert, de Lingua Coptica, p. 120.
b Of these there were three kinds among the Egyptians, which
seem to have more or less art in them, according to the period of
their invention. The lrfwas, to make the principal circumstance
of thi' subject stand for the whole. Thus, when they would
describe a battle, or two armies in array, they painted two hands,
one holding a shield, and the other a bow: when a tumult, or
popular insurrection — an armed man casting arrows, &c: when
a siege — a scaling ladder. The 2d was, to put the instrument
hi' tin- thing, whether real or metaphorical, for the thing itself.
Thus an eye, eminently placed, was designed to represent God's
omniscience: an eye and sceptre — a monarch: and a ship and
pilot — the governor of the universe. The 3d was, to make one
thing represent another, where there was perceived any quaint
analogy, or similitude between the representative and the thing
properly intended. Thus, the universe was designed by a serpent
in a circle, whose variegated spots signified the stars ; and the
rising of the sun by the two eyes of a crocodile, because they
seem to emerge from his head ; a tyrannical king was represented
by an eagle; and a cruel or improvident parent, by a hawk.
Thus, from the nature of the things themselves, or their resem-
blance to something else, from the principal circumstance of any
action, or the chief instrument employed in doing it, hierogly-
phic at first seem to have been invented. But whether their
invention was prior to that of letters, has been matter of some
debate among the learned; though one can hardly forbear think-
ing, that a picture character, as hieroglyphics are, would scarce
In' intelligible unless men could be supposed to delineate the
form-; and pictures of things more accurately than can well be
imagined: but even if that were granted, they would at best
have been but a very imperfect character, since they could only
hit of?' the idea <>i' things visible, and must therefore be defective
in a multitude of signs to express the full meaning of a man's
mind : for which reason some have supposed, that even the Egyp-
tians themselves were wont to intermingle letters with hiero-
glyphics, to fdl up and connect sentences, and to express actions
mure fully than pictures were found to do. These hieroglyphics
"err at first in common use, but in process of time were appro-
priated to sacred and religious matters, and wrote and understood
by the priests only. — Warburton's Divine Legation, h. 4. and
Shtickford's Connection, b. 8.
made use of in their common business. But both these
characters are at present lost, unless they remain in
some old inscriptions, that are unintelligible, and cannot
be deciphered.
Not only the Egyptians, but several other nations,
used to preserve the memory of things by inscriptions on
pillars. The columns of Hermes, upon which he is said
to have wrote all his learning, are mentioned by several
writers of good note ; and from them both the Grecian
philosophers and Egyptian historians are supposed to
have taken many valuable hints : but to these inscriptions
succeeded the sacred books, which contained not only
what related to the worship of the gods, and the laws of
the kingdom, but historical collections likewise, yea,
and all kinds of miscellaneous and philosophical matters
of any moment, which the priests or sacred scribes were
obliged to insert in these public registers, in order to be
transmitted to posterity.
A nation so renowned for their knowledge and learn-
ing, and who had such certain methods of preserving the
traditions of their ancestors, might have kept the original
religion, one would think, with more than ordinary
purity ; at least would not have run into the same excess
of idolatry and polytheism, that other people at this time
were so strangely addicted to : and yet, if we look a
little into their history, we shall soon find more corrup-
tion of this kind among them than in any other nation.
Some of their wiser sort, indeed, are said to have
acknowledged one supreme God, the Maker and Ruler
of the world, whom they sometimes called by the name of
Osiris, or Serapis ; sometimes by that of Isis ; and at
other times by that of Neith, on whose temple at Sais
was the following remarkable inscription — " I am all
that has been, is, or shall be, and my veil hath no mortal
yet uncovered." But though some parts of Egypt might
at first be free from all idolatrous worship ; yet when the
humour once began to spread, it soon overran the whole
kingdom. The heavenly luminaries were the first objects
of profane adoration ; and in Egypt, the sun and the
moon went under the denomination of Osiris and Isis.
After these, the elements, and other parts of nature, such
as Vulcan, meaning thereby the fire ; Ceres, the earth ;
Oceanus, the water ; and Minerva, the air, were admitted
into the number of their deities.
But, besides the celestial, they had terrestrial gods
likewise ; for most of their princes who had merited well
of the people, were after their death canonized and invo-
cated under the names of Sol, Saturnus, Rhea, Jupiter,
Juno, Vulcanus, Vesta, and Mercurius ; which, according-
to Diodorus, were the eight first hero gods which the
Egyptians worshipped. Nay, and what is scarcely cred-
ible, they came at last to give divine honours to several
animals, and that with so great a variety and disagree-
ment among themselves, that, except some of the principal
deities which were honoured all the kingdom over, there
was almost in every town or village a different god held
in veneration in one place, and detested in the next,
which often occasioned bitter animosities, and sometimes
inveterate quarrels, and dangerous wars.
Now the reason why the Egyptians adopted such a
variety of animals into the number of their gods, was not
so much from any consideration of their subserviency to
human life, as from a certain similitude they perceived
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &<
263
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1071 ; OR, ACCORDING TO H
between them and the deity to whom they were devoted.
Thus the hawk was made sacred to Osiris, as an emblem of
the supreme Deity, by reason of its piercing sight and swift-
ness ; the crocodile and river-horse were sacred to Typho,
the evil principle ; Anubis was said to be thedogstar, and
the dog was sacred to him ; the serpent or dragon was con-
secrated to Nephthe ; and other suitable animals to their
respective gods: nor is the conjecture a of our learned
countryman ' at all to be rejected, namely, That the use of
the hieroglyphical figures of animals, might introduce this
strange worship which the Egyptians in process of time
came to pay them. For as those figures were made choice
of according to the respective properties of each animal,
to express the qualities and dignities of the persons they
represented, which were generally their gods, princes,
and great men, the people became gradually accustomed
to these figures which they used to place in their temples
as the images of their deities ; and from hence it is not
absurd to imagine, that they came at length to pay a
superstitious veneration to the living animals themselves.
But whatever might be the reason or inducements to
this kind of idolatry, nothing was so remarkable in the
Egyptian religion, as the preposterous worship which
that nation paid to animals, such as the cat, the dog, the
ibis, the wolf, the crocodile, and several others which
they had in high veneration, not when they were alive
only, but even after they were dead.
"Whilst they were living, they had lands set apart for
the maintenance of each kind, and both men and women
were employed in feeding and attending them. The
children succeeded their parents in the office, which was
so far from being declined, or thought despicable among
the Egyptians, that they gloried in it as an high honour ;
and wearing certain badges to distinguish them at a dis-
tance, were saluted by bending the knee, and other
demonstrations of respect.
If any person killed any of these sacred animals
designedly, he was punished with immediate death ; if
involuntarily, his punishment was deferred to the discre-
tion of the priests ; but if the creature slain was a cat, a
hawk, or an ibis, whether the thing was done with design
1 Sir John Marsham, Can. Chron. p. 38.
a This conjecture the learned author of the Divine Legation of
Moses abundantly confirms ; for having enumerated the several
things that might give occasion to brute-worship among the Egyp-
tians, such as, I. A grateful sense of the benefits received from
animals. 2. The considering these animals as symbols of the divine
nature. 3. The notion of God's pervading, and being present in
all things, 4. The Egyptian use of asterisms, or denoting constel-
lations by the name of animals. 5. The doctrine of metempsy-
chosis, or human souls transmigrating into the bodies of animals.
And, 6. The invention of some Egyptian king or other, for his
private ends of policy. All these causes or occasions, I say, our
author having examined and refuted, carries the point somewhat
farther than the learned Marsham, and concludes, that the true
original of brute-worship among the Egyptians, was their use of
symbolical writing; for which he assigns a further reason,
namely, That when the use of writing by letters, as much more
commodious than the other, came generally to prevail, the priests
still continued the hieroglyphic characters in their works of
science and religion; and as the other grew abstruse and obsolete
to the vulgar, to make them more sacred, the priests in a short
time were the only persons that could read them, and then to
make them more sacred and mysterious, gave it out, that the
gods themselves were the inventors of them, which might easily
induce a deluded people to worship the very creatures, as having
something extraordinary in them, which their gods had thought
proper to delineate. — B. 4.
ALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1C48. EXOD. CH. i-xiii.
or no, * the person was to die without mercy, and some-
times without any formal trial or process. The extra-
vagant worship which they paid to some of these animal
deities, (as to the bull at Memphis, the goat at Mendes,
the lion at Leontapolis, c the crocodile at the lake
Moeris ; and to many others at different places,) exceeds
all belief; for they were kept in consecrated enclosures,
and well attended on by men of high rank, who at great
expense provided victuals for them, which consisted of
the greatest dainties. Nor was this all ; for these crea-
tures were washed in hot baths, and anointed with the
most precious ointments, and perfumed with the most
odoriferous scents. They lay on the richest carpets, and
other costly furniture ; and, that they might want nothing
to make their lives as happy as possible, they had the
most beautiful females of their several kinds, to which
they gave the name of concubines, provided for them.
When any of these animals died, the Egyptians
lamented them as if they had been their dearest children,
and frequently laid out more than they were worth in
their burials. If a cat died in any house, all the family
shaved their eyebrows ; and if a dog, their whole body ;
and thus, putting themselves in mourning, they wrapped
the dead body up in fine linen, and carried it to be
embalmed ; where, being anointed with oil of cedar and
other aromatic preparations to keep it from putrefaction,
it was buried with great solemnity in a sacred coffin.
So true is that reflection 8 of the apostle, and with
regard to these Egyptians certainly it was made, that
' though they knew God, yet they glorified him not as
God ; but changed the glory of God into the image of
four-footed beasts, and his truth into a lie ; and worship-
ped and served the creature more than the Creator, who
is blessed for ever. Amen.'
Before we leave Egypt, the sacred historian seems to
remind us to take a view of some of the monumental
works that are found there, and which, having been built
within the compass of the period we are now upon, may
well be presumed to be the product of some of the bur-
dens and hard labour which the Egyptian kings laid upon
the Israelites.
d The pyramids were justly reckoned one of the won-
2 Rom. i. 21, 23,25.
b Herodotus gives us an instance of this in a Roman, who hap-
pening accidentally to kill a cat, the mob immediately gathered
about the house where he was, and could neither by the entrea-
ties of some principal men sent by the king, nor by the fear of
the Romans, with whom they were then negotiating a peace, be
prevailed on to spare his life. And, what may seem still mow
incredible, it is reported that at a time when there was a famine
in Egypt, which drove the inhabitants to such extremity, that
they were forced to bed on one another, then- was no one person
accused of having tasted of any of these sacred animated— I «*■
versal History, b. 1 . C 3.
c The crocodile seems to be the last animal to which mankind
could be tempted to pay divine adoration; but that this might be
done with more safety, ane of these creatures "as trained up to
be tame and familiar for the purpose, and bad bis ears adorned
with strings of jewels and gold, and his |„re teet with chains. \W
wasfedwith consecrated provisions at the public charge: and
when strangers went to Bee him, which often happened oul ol
curiosity, they also carried him a present of a cake, dn I meat,
and nine, or a drink made with honey, which was oflered toJnm
by the priests; and when he died bis body was embalmed, «na
buried in a sacred coffin at AntDM.—Herodotv*, b. 2. and Stra-
ta, b. 17. .. . . . ,
d It is a common opinion, that the word pyrtmud is denvea
from the Greek pyr or pur, Jire; end that these structures were
264
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 ; OR, ACCORDING TO H
ders of the world, and there is more of them now remain-
ing, than of all the other six, which have been so much
celebrated. Not far from the place where Memphis once
stood, there are three of these structures at no great
distance from each other ; two of which are shut up, but
the third, which is the largest, and stands open for the
inspection of travellers, we shall here describe, as a
probable specimen of all the rest. a
so called from their shape, which ascended from a broad basis,
and ended in a point like a (lame of fire. Others, whose opinion
Vossius seems to approve, say that the name comes from the word
pyros, which, in the same language, signifies wheat, because they
suppose them to have been the granaries of the ancient Egyptian
kings. But a late writer, versed in the Coptic tongue, has given
us another etymology from that language, wherein pouro signifies
a king, and mist, a race or generation, and the reason why the
pyramids had this name given them, was, as he tells us, because
they were elected to preserve the memory of the princes, who
were their founders, and their families. — JFilkins' Dissert, de
Ling. Copt. p. 108.
a We shall here give the result of the investigations of modern
travellers, regarding the pyramids of Egypt. The three largest
are situated at Geez or Djiza, nearly opposite to Grand Cairo,
and are named from their supposed founders, Cheops, Chephren,
and Mycerines. Their height has been differently represented,
and, owing to incorrectness, or different standards of measure,
has been stated at all the gradations from about 800 to 500
feet. The following dimensions, however, taken by the French
engineers may be given as \ery nearly accurate: That of
Cheops, 448 feet in height, and 728 on each side of the base;
Chephren, 398 feet in height, and C55 on each side of the
base; and Mycerines, 162 feet in height, and 280 on each side
of the base.
The pyramid of Cheops, which is the largest, is ascended by
an uninterrupted series of steps, diminishing from four to two
and a half feet high in approaching the top. The breadth of each
step is equal to its height. Upon the top there is a platform
thirty-two feet square, consisting of nine large stones, about a ton
each, though inferior to some of the other stones, which vary
from five to thirty feet long, and from three to four feet high.
From this platform Dr Clarke saw to the south the pyramids of
Saccara, and on the east of these, smaller monuments of the
same kind nearer to the Nile. He remarked also an appearance
of ruins which might be traced the whole way from the pyramids
of Djiza to those of Saccara, as if the whole had once constituted
one great cemetery. The stones upon this platform, as well as
most of the others employed in constructing the decreasing
ranges from the base upwards, are of soft limestone, of the same
nature as the calcareous rock upon which the pyramids stand.
The pyramids are built with common mortar externally, but no
appearance of mortar is discerned in the more perfect masonry
of the interior. It has been calculated, that this pyramid was
built 490 years before the first Olympiad, or about 3000 years
ago. It was explored by Mr Davidson in 1763; and with more
success by Captain Caviglia in 1817.
The second pyramid, that of Chephren, is thought to have
been covered by stucco of gypsum and flint. Belzoni discovered
its entrance in the north front, in 1818. Advancing along a nar-
row passage, 100 feet long, he found the great chamber forty-six
feet long hy sixteen wide, and twenty-three high, cut out of the
solid rock. It contained a granite sarcophagus, half sunk in the
floor, with many bones, some of which have proved to be those
of the bull. A little to the east of this pyramid is the sphynx,
cut out of the same sort of rock upon which the pyramids are
built; its height from the knees to the top of the head is thirty-
eight frit.
To the south of these pyramids there are others, which shoot
far into the deserts of Libya, and are generally called the pyra-
mids of Saccara. These erections appear to be more ancient
than those about Geez. They are less perfect, and some of them
are formed of unburned bricks. The most ancient bricks of Egypt
were only dried by the heat of the sun ; and that they might stick
more closely together, the clay was mixed with chopped straw;
and hence the Israelites, while in slavery in Egypt, made use of
straw in making bricks. Some of these pyramids are rounded
at the top, and are like hillocks cased with stone. One of thera
AXES, A. M. 37G3. A. C. 1G48. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
It is situate on a rocky hill, which, in a gentle and
easy ascent, rises 100 feet, in the sandy desert of Libya,
about a quarter of a mile from the plains of Egypt. Its
basis is generally supposed to be an exact square, and
every side, according to those that have been as careful
as possible in its mensuration, about 693 English feet :
so that the whole area of it contains 480,249 square
feet, or something more than eleven acres of ground.
has steps like that of Cheops. The ranges or steps are six in
number, each range being twenty-five feet high and eleven feet
wide. The total height of this pyramid is 150 feet.
According to Herodotus, the pyramids were formed by dis-
tinct courses of stone, which successively diminished in size as
the proportions of the edifices required it. Every course was so
much within that immediately below it, as to make each front of
the pyramid form a sort of stair. This agrees with the descrip-
tions of modern travellers. A very simple machine, according
to the same author, placed upon the first course, served to raise
the stones destined for the construction of the second. The second
being finished a similar machine was fixed upon it, and so on for
the rest, one or more of the machines being always left upon each
of the courses already laid, to serve successively for raising the
stones from step to step. It is pretty certain, that the pyramids
had all originally an outward coat either of square flags of marble
or of bricks, so that they presented to the eye a perfectly even
slope ; but much of this has disappeared, through the dilapidation
of time and other causes.
Many unsatisfactory conjectures have been formed, and theories
adopted, with regard to the original design or use for which pyra-
mids were built. The greater number of writers on the subject
are of opinion, that they were erected for the tombs of kings and
conquerors, to preserve their remains inviolate, and hand down
their memory to the latest posterity. Herodotus states, that the
Egyptians considered thepyramidal form as emblematical of human
life, the broad base on the earth representing the commencement,
and the gradation to a point, the termination of our existence.
The emblem, if inverted, would bear an equally natural inter-
pretation: yet this is the reason he alleges for pyramids being
used for sepulture. That they were erected for astronomical
purposes is a fanciful conjecture, although it is certain that they
are constructed on scientific principles, and give evidence of some
progress in astronomy, for their sides are accurately adapted to
the four cardinal points. That they were meant for altars to the
gods, their tapering form being in imitation of flame, as the Per-
sians and other nations worshipped fire ; or that they were con-
structed as a permanent memorial of the proper length of the cubit,
of which it is said, that all their dimensions contain a certain
number of multiples, appear to be conjectures equally strained
and fanciful. Still less were they adapted to the purpose of
granaries, as some have supposed. That they were originally
intended to remedy the disadvantage of the Delta, and particu-
larly Upper Egypt, by attracting the clouds and eliciting a dis-
charge of rain, may be considered as in some measure sanctioned
by the enormous sphinx found in their vicinity, and its relation
to the fertilizing of Egypt by the waters of the Nile, the sphinx,
representing the head and bosom of a woman with the body of a
lion, being designed to symbolize the annual inundation, which
takes place while the sun passes through the signs of the zodiac,
denominated the Virgin and the Lion. But whatever their ori-
ginal destination was, or whether they ever served any purpose
farther than gratifying the vanity of their builders, they now, as
has been well remarked, harmonize admirably with a dewless
heaven, a sandy waste, a people that have been. There is now a
sublimity in their uselessness. Standing on the same earth which
has entombed so many thousand generations, pointing to the same
sky which heard the cry of the oppressed when they were build-
ing ; they no longer belong to Cheops or Sesostris, Pharaohs or Pto-
lemies, Mamelukes or Turks, but to the imagination of mankind.
" The humblest pilgrim," says Dr Clarke, "pacing the Libyan
sands around them, while he is conscious that he walks in the
footsteps of many mighty and renowned men, imagines himself to
be, for an instant, admitted into their illustrious conclave. Persian
satraps, Macedonian heroes, Grecian bards, sages, and historians,
all of every age, and nation, and religion, have participated, in
common with him, the same feelings, and have trodden the same
ground." — En.
Sect. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES' &f
265
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1G48. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
Its altitude, if measured by its perpendicular, is 481 I are all made of vast and exquisite tables of Thebaic
feet, but if taken according to the inclination of the
pyramid, as it ascends, it is exactly equal to a side of
its basis.
The ascent to the top of this structure is by degrees,
or steps, which run round the whole pyramid in a level,
and if the stones were entire on every side, would make
a narrow walk. The first of these steps is near four feet
in height and three in breadth ; but the higher one ascends,
they proportionably diminish. They are made of massy
and polished stone, so very large, that the breadth and
depth of every step is one single stone ; but as the weather
has in many places worn these steps, this pyramid cannot
be ascended without some difficulty. According to the
computation of most modern travellers, the steps are 207
or 208 in number, which end a on the top, in a handsome
platform, covered with nine stones, besides two that are
wanting at the corners, of sixteen or seventeen feet
square, from whence you have a pleasant prospect of
Old Cairo, and the adjacent country.
On the sixteenth step from the bottom of this pyramid,
there is a door or entry of three feet and a half in height,
and a little less in breadth, through which you descend
insensibly, much about seventy-six feet, and then come
to another passage, which very probably is of the same
dimensions with the first entrance, but is so choked up
with the sand, which the wind blows in, that it is no
easy matter for a man of any bulk to squeeze himself
through it. Having passed this strait, however, you
meet with nothing deserving observation, till on the left
hand you enter a passage which leads into a gallery 16
feet high, and 1G2 feet long; a very stately piece of
work indeed, and not inferior either in curiosity of art,
or richness of materials, to the most sumptuous and
magnificent buildings ! The stone of which this gallery
is built, is a white polished marble, very evenly cut into
large tables, and jointed so close, as hardly to be per-
ceived by the most curious eye : but what adds a grace
to the whole structure, though it makes the passage the
more slippery and difficult, is the acclivity or rising of
the ascent, which, however, is not a little facilitated by
certain holes made in the floor, about six hands1 breadth
from one another, into which a man may set his feet,
while he holds by a bench of marble, which runs all
along the gallery, with one hand, and carries his light in
the other.
As soon as you come to the end of this gallery, you
enter another square hole, much of the same dimensions
with the former, which brings you into two little rooms,
lined with a rich kind of speckled marble ; and thence
you proceed into the chamber of the tombs or sepulchres,
which is very large and spacious, 32 feet long, l(i feet
wide, and 19 feet high. This room stands, as it were,
in the heart and centre of the pyramid, equidistant from
all the sides, and almost in the midst between the basis
and the top. The floor, the sides, and the roof of it
a On this platform Proclus supposed that thu Egyptian priests
made their astronomical observations; hut it is far from being pro-
bable that these structures were designed for observatories, and it
is scarce to be conceived that the priests would take the pains to
ascend so high, when they might make the same observations
with more case, and as much certainty below, having as free and
open a prospect of the heavens, and over the plains of Egypt,
from the rock whereon it was built, as from the pyramid itself.
— Universal History.
marble, which, if they were not sullied with the steam of
torches, would certainly appear very bright and shining.
From the top to the bottom of the chamber, there are
about six ranges of this stone, which being all sized to
an equal height, run very gracefully round it. The roof
is flat, and consists but of nine stones, whereof seven
in the middle, are each four feet wide, and 16 feet long,
but the other two, which are at each end, appear not
above two feet broad apiece, because the other half of
them is built into the wall. The stones lie athwart,
over the breadth of the chamber, with their ends resting
upon the walls on each side.
At the end of this glorious room stands an empty
tomb, three feet and an inch wide, and seven feet two
inches long ; the stone which it is made of is the same
with the lining of the room, a beauteous speckled marble,
above five inches thick, and yet, being hollow within,
and uncovered at the top, whenever it is struck it sounds
like a great bell : which is just such a wonder as the
surprising echo that is heard in this place, and, as some
travellers tell us, will repeat the same sound some ten
or twelve times together. The figure of this tomb is like
an altar, or two cubes finely set together. It is cut
smooth and plain, exquisitely finely polished, but without
any sculpture or engraving. It is not to be doubted,
but that the tomb was placed here before the pyramid
was finished ; and one reason for its want of ornaments
may be what the inhabitants of the country tell US,
namely, that it was built for the sepulchre of a king who
was never buried in it ; and the common opinion is, that
it was the same Pharaoh who, by the just judgment of
God, was drowned in the Red Sea.
These are the principal things that have been observed
of this pyramid ; only, to give us a still fuller idea of
the vastness of its structure, Pliny has taken care to
inform us, that it was 20 years in building; that 37,000
men were, every day, employed in the work ; and that
1800 talents were expended upon them merely for
radishes and onions. Which last article may seem in-
credible perhaps to those that were never in the country ;
but when it is considered, that this is the ordinary f I
of the common people, and that almost all those who
were employed in raising these great piles were slaves
and mercenaries, who, besides bread and water, had
nothing but radishes and onions, there will be no occa-
sion for any surprise or wonder at the supposed large-
ness of this account.
A building of the like date, and not of inferior gran-
deur, was the labyrinth which stood in the Heracleotic
Nome, or province, near the citj of Arainoe, and not far
from the lake Moeris. The design of this structure
seems to have been both for a pantheon, or universal
temple for all the gods that were worshipped in the
several places of Egypt, and also for a general con-
vention-house, for the states of the whole nation to meet,
and enact laws, and determine causes of great import-
ance : and therefore it is said by some to bare been
built at the common charge of the twelve kings who, in
those days, reigned all at once in Egypt, as a monument
of their magnificence, and a place for their sepulture.
To this purpose Herodotus ' tells u-\ that each prn-
• B.
2 i
266
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book III.
A. M. 2433. A. C. 15V1 ; OK, ACCORDING TO HA
vince or nonie had, in this building, a distinct hall, where
its principal magistrates used to meet ; that these halls
were vaulted, were surrounded with pillars of white
stone, finely polished, and had an equal number of doors
opposite to one another, six opening to the north, and
six to the south, all encompassed by the same wall ;
that there were three thousand chambers in this edifice,
fifteen hundred in the upper part, and as many under
ground ; and that he viewed every room in the upper
part, but was not permitted by those who kept the palace,
to go into the subterraneous part, because the sepulchres
of the holy crocodiles, and of the kings, who built the
lain rinth, were there. What he saw there, as he reports,
seemed to surpass the art of man ; so many ways out,
by various passages, and infinite returns, afforded a
thousand occasions of wonder, as he passed from a spa-
cious hall to a chamber, from thence to a private closet,
then again into other passages out of the closet, and out
of the chambers, into more spacious rooms, where all
the walls and roofs were not only encrusted with marble,
but richly adorned likewise with figures of sculpture.
To this description of Herodotus, others add, that this
edifice stood in the midst of an immense square, sur-
rounded with buildings at a great distance; that the
porch was of Parian marble, and all the other pillars of
the marble of Syene; that within it were the temples of
the several deities, and galleries to which one ascended
by !)0 steps, adorned with many columns of porphyry,
images of their gods, and statues of their kings, of a
monstrous size ; that the whole edifice consisted of
stone, the floors were laid with vast tables, and the roof
looked like one continued field of stone ; that the pas-
sages met and crossed one another with so much intri-
cacy, that it was impossible for a stranger to find his
way, either in or out, without a guide ; and that several
of the apartments were so contrived, that upon opening
the doors, there was heard within a terrible noise of
thunder.
Such was the strength of this wonderful building, that
it withstood, for many ages, not only the rage of time,
but that of the inhabitants of Heracleopolis, who, wor-
shipping the ichneumon, or water-rat, the mortal enemy
of the crocodile, which was a peculiar deity of Arsinoe,
bore an inconceivable hatred to the labyrinth, which was
the sepulchre, as we said, of the sacred crocodiles; and
therefore assaulted and demolished it, though a there
a The remains of this noble structure are thus described by
our author. M The first thing you see is a large portico of marble,
facing the rising sun, and sustained by four great marble pillars,
but romposed of several pieces. Three of these pillars are still
standing, but one of the middle ones is half fallen. In the middle
is a door whose sides and entablature are very massy; ;md above
is a frieze, whereon is represented an head with wings, stretched
out along the frieze, and several hieroglyphics underneath
Passing through this portico, you enter into a fine large hall,
above 10 feet high, all of marble The roof consists of twelve
tables of marble, exquisitely joined, each 25 feet long, and
three broad, which cross the room from one end to the other;
and as the room is not arched, but flat, you cannot but he struck
with admiration at the boldness of its architecture, since it is
scarcely conceivable how it could continue so many ages in a
position so improper to support so prodigious a weight. At the
end of this hall, over against the first door, there is a second por-
tico, with the same ornaments as the first, but less, by which you
enter into B second hall, not SO big as the first, but covered with
eight stones. At the end of this room, straight forwards, there is
LES, A. M. 3703. A. C. 1C48. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
are some remains of it still to be seen, which retain
manifest marks of its ancient splendour.
One building more, supposed to be the work of tin's
period, though, according to modern accounts, it still
stands firm and entire, is the well of the patriarch
Joseph. It is entirely hewn out of a rock, in a kind of
an oval or oblong form, being eighteen feet wide, twenty-
four long, and in the whole two hundred and seventy-six
deep. The depth is properly divided into two parts,
which we may call the upper and the lower well ; and to
each of these there is a wheel, which being turned round
by two oxen in each place, draws up the water by a long
chain, to which are fastened several leathern vessels,
that fill and empty themselves alternately as the wheel
goes round.
To go down to the second well, as we call it, which
is but fifteen feet long, and nine wide, there is a stair-
case of so easy a descent, that some say the oxen which
draw the water below, are every day drove down and up
it ; though others report, that they are let down and
drawn up upon a platform. However this be, it is cer-
tain that the staircase turns twelve times round the well,
for which reason the Arabs call it the well of the wind-
ing staircase, and of these turnings, six have eighteen
steps each, and the other six have nineteen, which make
two hundred and twenty -two steps in all : and to secure
you from falling, as you go down, you have, on the left
hand, the main rock, and on the right, some of the same
rock left, which serves both as a wall to the well on the
inside, and on the other side as a wall to the staircase,
which, at convenient distances, has windows cut in it,
that convey the light down from the mouth of the well.
When you go down to the lower well, which has like-
wise a staircase, but neither so wide, nor so deep as the
other, and no parapet on the side of the well, which
makes the descent dangerous, it is here that you see the
oxen at work, turning the wheel, and drawing the water
from a spring at the bottom, about eight or nine feet
deep ; which water, passing through a pipe into a large
cistern, is from thence drawn up again by two other
oxen, which turn the wheel above ; and so from a re-
servoir at the top of the well, the water is conveyed into
all the apartments of the castle of Grand Cairo, which,
by the bye, as Thevenot tells us, both for strength and
beauty, is one of the finest palaces he ever saw ; a work
not unworthy the ancient Pharaohs and Ptolemies who
built it, and which conies not behind the pomp and mag-
nificence of the pyramids.
There are some other buildings in this place, such as
Joseph's hall, Joseph's prison, Joseph's granaries, &c,
which the inhabitants ascribe to that patriarch, as they
do indeed every fine piece of antiquity : but as there is
a third portico, still less than the second, as well as the hall into
which it leads, though it has sixteen stones to roof it; and at the
end of this third hall, there is a fourth portico set against the
wall, and placed there for symmetry only, and to answer the
rest. The length of these three halls i.3 the whole depth of the
building, in its present condition. It was on the two sides, and
especially under ground, that, the prodigious number of rooms
and avenues, mentioned by the ancients, were built. — What
is now remaining of it seems to be no more than a fourth part of
the inner edifice, which, in all probability, had four fronts,
and twelve halls answering to them : the rest are decayed by
time, or demolished by design, as appears from the prodigious
ruins which are to be seen all around it. — Lulus'1 Voyugts, b.
2. p. IS., &c.
Sfxt. V.]
FROM ABRAHAM'S CALL TO THE ISRAELITES', &<
267
A. M. 2433. A. C. 1571 ; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALKS, A. M. 37G3. A. C. 1018. KXOD. CH. i— xiii.
little or no probability that any of these came under the
period we are now upon, we must refer the reader, who
is minded to satisfy his curiosity in this matter, 1 to the
authors who have purposely treated of them ; and shall
only take notice farther, that the great Selden in his
Arundel Marbles, reckons the fabulous stories of Greece,
such as the flood of Deucalion, the burning- of Phaeton,
the rape of Proserpine, the mysteries of Ceres, the story
of Europa, the birth of Apollo, and the building of
Thebes by Cadmus, together with the fables of Bacchus,
Minos, Perseus, iRsculapius, Mercury, and Hercules,
to have fallen out under this period ; and it is certain
1 See Delia Valle, Thevenot, Le Bruyn, Lucas, Marco Gri-
mani, &c. travels; and Well's Geography of the Old Testament,
vol. 2.
that2 the learned Spanheiiu makes several ancient king-
doms, as that of the Argives, the Cretans, the Phrygians,
the Ethiopians, the Phoenicians, the Midianites, Cannan-
ites, Idunueans, and Nabatheans, either to have been
founded, or to have flourished in this time. But as
these, and other heathen nations, had no historian or
chronologer of their own, and the Greeks, who under-
took to write for them, for want of a certain knowledge
of their affairs, have stuffed their accounts with the rapes
and robberies of their gods ; we thought it more proper
to stop here than to enter into a barren land, where the
country for a long way lies waste and uncultivated . or
if perchance any fruit is to be seen, like the famed ficti-
tious apples about the banks of the Dead Sea, it crumbles
at the very first touch into dust and ashes.
* See Hist. Vet. Test.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK IV.
CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THINGS FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE OUT OF EGYPT, TO THEIR
ENTRANCE INTO THE LAND OF CANAAN, IN ALL FORTY YEARS.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
In contemplating the extraordinary deliverance of the
Israelites from Egypt, we must advert to the instrument
employed by divine providence in its accomplishment.
Moses, who was called to this difficult and perilous task,
was pre-eminently fitted by his talents and his temper
for its performance. ' There arose not a prophet like
unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, in all
the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do in
the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants,
and to all his land, and in all that mighty land, and in
all the great terror, which Moses showed in the sight of
all Israel.' He himself having been rescued when an
infant from the most imminent danger, was preserved to
be the deliverer of his nation.
The redemption of the Israelites from the land of
Egypt, is the greatest type of Christ's redemption, of
any providential event whatsoever. It was intended to
shadow forth that greater redemption from the captivity
of sin and Satan, which was wrought out by the Son of
God, when he destroyed principalities and powers, and
made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in
his cross.
Nor can we fail to observe in the narrative of the
period on which we are now entering, how much the
giving of the law at Sinai tended to prepare the way for
the accomplishment of this great redemption. It is here
seen how the covenant of works operates as a school-
master in leading us to Christ; how the law which is
holy, just, and good, shuts us up to the faith of the
gospel. That it might have full effect in this way, God
was pleased to institute at the same time the ceremonial
law — full of various and innumerable typical represen-
tations of good things to come ; by which the Israelites
were directed every day, month, and year in their religi-
ous actions — in all that appertained to their ecclesias-
tical and civil state, so that the whole nation by this law
was, as it were, constituted in a typical state. The
great outlines of gospel truth were thus held forth to the
nation ; and the people were thus directed, from age to
age, to look for salvation to the Lamb that was slain
from the foundation of the world.
We must also observe the wisdom and the goodness
of God in giving, for the first time, a written communi-
cation from himself. That written and infallible word,
with its subsequent accessions of infallible wisdom, was
the means, as it was designed to be, of carrying on in
the world the work of redemption. The word of God
had previously been transmitted from age to age by tra-
dition ; but now the ten commandments, the five books
of Moses, and probably the book of Job, were, by the
special command of God, committed to writing, and were
laid up in the tabernacle, to be kept there for the use of
the church.
That the church might derive instruction from typical
representation, in the character and actions of intelli-
gent beings, the progress of the redeemed through
this world to that rest which remaineth for them in the
heavenly Canaan, was shadowed forth by the journey of
the children of Israel through the wilderness, from
Egypt to Canaan. The low and wretched condition
from which they are delivered, — the price paid for their
redemption, — the application of that redemption in their
conversion to God, — the various trials, difficulties, and
temptations which' they have to encounter in their chris-
tian course, — the manner in which they are safely con-
ducted through this world by their great Leader, to their
immortal inheritance, are all typified and represented in
the history of Israel from their departure out of Egypt,
to their entrance into the promised land. ' All these
things happened unto them for ensamples, and they were
written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the
world are come.' *
These typical representations were at the time accom-
panied with clearer predictions of Christ than had before
been given. ' I will raise up a prophet, ' says God unto
Moses, ' from among their brethren, like unto thee, and
will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto
them all that I command him.' It is unnecessary to say,
» 1 Cor. x. 11.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
269
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1491 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1048. EXOD. CH. xiii— xxxiv. 24.
bow clearly the mediatorial office of the Redeemer is
pointed out in this remarkable prophecy. Balaam,
also, during this period bore testimony to Christ, in the
sublime prediction which he uttered concerning him in
the well known words — ' There shall come a star out of
Jacob, and a sceptre shall arise out of Israel : — Out of
Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion.'
Finally, we ought to notice in the narrative of God's
procedure towards his ancient people, on which we are
about to enter, the outpouring of his Holy Spirit on
the young generation in the wilderness, or that genera-
tion which entered into Canaan. Concerning this gen-
eration God had said to their fathers — ' But your little
ones, which you said should be a prey, them will I bring
in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.'
This generation was, accordingly, brought into Canaan.
They were distinguished for their piety, and their zeal-
ous adherence to all the will of God.
SECT. I.
CHAP. I. — From their Departure to the Building of
the Tabernacle.
THE HISTORY.
When the Israelites set out from Egypt, they made
Rameses, the chief city of Goshen, the place of their
general rendezvous ; and from thence, on the 15th day
of the first month, they travelled about ten or twelve
miles to Succoth, where they made a stop, and reviewed
their company, which consisted of 600,000 persons,
besides children and strangers ; for strangers of several
nations, having seen the wonders which were wrought
for their deliverance, left Egypt at the same time, with
a purpose to accompany their fortunes.
While the sense of their deliverance, and God's judg-
ments was fresh in their minds, Moses was commanded
to let the people know, that when they came to be settled
in the land of Canaan, the first-born both of man and
beast, in remembrance of God's having spared their
first-born when he destroyed the Egyptians, should be
set apart and dedicated to him : and as Joseph, dying
in the faith of this their deliverance, had laid an injunc-
tion upon his brethren, whenever they should go from
thence, to carry his bones out of Egypt, so Moses " took
care to have the coffin, wherein he had lain for above
140 years, not left behind.
6 From Succoth their nearest way to Ciinaan was
certainly through the country of the Philistines ; but for
a The Jews tell us, that upon the Israelites' departure out of
Egypt, every tribe took care to bring along with them the huiies
of the ancestor of their family; but though they are not always
to be credited in matters of this nature, and Josephus does not
seem to have dreamed of any such act of filial piety, or else he
would, in all probability, have recorded it; yet St Stephen,
(Acts vii. 15, 16,) seems to allude to some tradition among
them, when he tells us, that ' Jacob and the fathers went down
into Egypt, aud were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the
sepulchre which Abraham had bought of the sons of Emmor.' —
Universal History, b. 1. c. 7.
b It is somewhat difficult to make out the geography of the
places where the Hebrews encamped, between their palling from
Rameses and their arrival at the Red Sea; but the account of
fear that a people unaccustomed to war should, in case
of any opposition, repent of their deliverance, and take
it into their heads to return into Egypt, God ordered
them to take their route along the coasts of the Hod Sen ;
and for their greater encouragement and securiu , himself
undertook to guide and direct tfaem, both in their marches
and encampments, by the wonderful appearance <>f a
cloud, in the form of a large column, which shaded them
from the heat of the sun by day, and in the night-tuna
became a pillar of fire, or a bright cloud, to supply the
sun's absence, and illuminate their camp. By this means
they were enabled, upon any occasion, to march both day
and night : and, under this auspicious guide, proceeding
from Succoth, they came to Etham, which gives name to
the wilderness on whose borders it is situated, and there
they encamped.
In the mean time the c king of Egypt had information
brought him, that the Israelites, instead of returning to
his dominions, were attempting their escape into the
deserts of Arabia, by the cape of the Red Sea; and
therefore grieving at the loss of so many useful slaves,
and supposing that by speedy marches he might overtake
those who have wrote upon the subject is, — That though there
are two places named Rameses, which are a little differently
pointed, yet they are but one and the same, or, at the most, tha'.
they dirler only in this, that the one was the province, and the
other the chief city of it ; that Succoth, not far from Rameses,
in the way to the Red Sea, had its name from the tents (for so
the Hebrew word signifies) which the Israelites pitched here, as
we find upon the like occasion another place between Jordan and
the brook Jabbock, so named: that Etham lay on the confines of
Egypt and Arabia Petraea, not far from the Red Sea, and gave
the denomination to the wilderness adjacent: that Pi-hahiroth,
which in our English, and some other translations, is rendered as
one proper name, is by the Septuagint made part of it an appel-
lative, so as to signify a mouth, for so the word pi may mean, or
a narrow passage between two mountains, lying not far from the
western coast of the Red Sea: that magaol was probably a tower
or castle, for the word carries that signification in it, upon the top
of one of these mountains, which might give denomination to the
city, which, as Herodotus informs us, lay not far distant from it ;
and that Baal-Zephon was by some learned men thought to be an
idol set up to keep the borders of the country, and to hinder slaves
from making their escape. Baal, indeed, in the Hebrew tongue,
signifies lord; and hence the name is generally applied to the
eastern idols ; and the word zephon is thought to be derived from
the radix zapah, to watch or spy; and from hence it is conjectured,
that this idol has its temple on the top of some adjacent mountain,
and that the sacred historian particularly takes notice of it, to
show how unable it was, whatever opinion the Egyptians might
have of it, to hinder the Israelites from going out of Egypt.
There is but small certainty, however, to be gathered from the
etymology of words; and 'therefore the authority of Eusebius
should ponderate with us, who makes it not an idol, but a town,
standing upon the northern point of the Red Sea, where the
ancients, especially the Jews, think that the Israelites pawed it.
and where there stands to this day a Christian monastery.—
Patrick's and Calwefs Commentaries, his Dissertation on the
Passage of the Red Sea, and /felts' Geography </ the Old Testa-
ment, vol. 2.
e It is not unlikely, that some of the mixed multitude (Exod.
xii. 38.) which went along with the Israelite-, observing this alter-
ation in their route, and not being able to perei i\e the reason of
it, might forsake them, and returning to Pharaoh, inform him,
that they had lost their way, and were entangled among the
mountains; or, what is more likely, some spies, which Pharaoh
had upon them, seeing them Nave the way to I Ion b, where they
desired to go three days' journey, in order to oner sacrifio
eluded that they never intended to return to Egypt, but were
running quite away, aud might therefore bring Pharaoh the news
thereof, as we may suppose, upon the i ighte* nth day.— Paleidft
Commentary.
270
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1491 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G3. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. xiii-xxxiv. 24.
and recover them, he mustered up what forces he could,
and for the greater expedition, a considerable quantity
of a chariots and horsemen, and with these * put himself
upon the pursuit. But God, who well understood what
measures were taking in Pharaoh's court, instead of
suffering the Israelites to march round the point of the
c Red Sea, as they probably intended, ordered them to
o Josephus, who loves to magnify matters, when they tend to
the glory of his countrymen, as well as conceal what would
occasion their disgrace, tells us, that the Egyptian army consisted
of GOO chariots, 50,000 horse, and 200,000 foot: but how so
large a number could be raised in so short a time, or what need
there was of so vast an armament against a weak and defenceless
people, is hardly conceivable. As therefore we may presume,
that the haste which the Egyptians were in, lest the Israelites
should get out of the straights wherein they were entangled, or
make their escape some other way, before they came up with
them, made them pursue them with chariots and horsemen for
the greater expedition; so we may observe, that the chariots they
employed in tins pursuit, are called chosen chariots, which most
interpreters imagine to be such as were armed with scythes,
which being drawn with horses, and filled with men, who threw
darts and spears and other offensive weapons from them, could
not but make a strange havock wherever they came ; and the
number which the Scripture mentions, under proper captains,
who might have the direction of them, was enough to destroy all
the Israelites, being worn with hard bondage, wearied with march-
in-, destitute of arms, strangers to war, and now encamped in a
very disadvantageous situation. — Josephus' Antiquities, b. 2. c.
15., Ainsworth's Annotations, and Howell's History.
b " Of all the infatuated resolutions," to use the words of the
learned Dr Jackson, b. 10. c. 11., " that either king or people
adventured on, the pursuing the Israelites with such a mighty
army, after they had so irritated and urged them to leave their
country, may well seem, to every indifferent reader, the most
stupid tliat ever was taken." And so indeed the author of the
Book of Wisdom, c. xix. 3., justly censures it: " For whilst they
were yet mourning," says he, " and making lamentation at the
graves of the dead, they added another foolish device, and
pursued them as fugitives, whom they had entreated to be gone."
But how much soever it was that the Egyptians had suffered for
detaining the Hebrews ; yet, now that they were gone, they possibly
might be of the same mind with the Syrians, (1 Kings xx. 23.)
who fancied, that the God of Israel might not be alike powerful
in all places; or, if he was, they might nevertheless think, that
Moses' commission extended no farther than the meridian of
Egypt, or that if it did, it might however have no power over
mighty hosts and armies. They knew, at least, that the Israelites,
as we said, had no skill in military matters, no captains of infantry,
no cavalry at all, no weapons or engines of war; whereas they
were well furnished and equipped with eveiy thing of this nature ;
and upon these and the like presumptions, it was that they became
foolhardy, and desperately resolute, either to bring back the
Israelites to their slavery, or to be revenged upon them for all
the losses they had sustained, and the penalties they had suffered.
— Patrick's Commentary.
c The Red Sea, called by the ancients Sinus Arahicus, and
now Gulfo de Mecca, is that part or branch of the southern sea
which interposes itself between Egypt on the west, and Arabia Felix
and some part of Petrcea on the east; while the northern bounds
of it touch upon Idumea, or the coast of Edom. Edom, in the
Hebrew tongue, signifies red, and was the nickname given Esau
for Belling his birthright for a mess of pottage. The country
which his posterity possessed was called after his name, and so
was the sea which adjoined to it; but the Greeks, not understand-
ing the reason of the appellation, translated it into their tongue,
and called it l? vfyx (aXaatrn ; thence the Latins, Mare Rubrwm,
and we, the Red Sea. The Hebrews call it the sea of Suph, or
Flags, by reason of the great abundance of that kind of weed,
which grows at the bottom of it; and the Arabs at this day name
it Buhr el Chalsem, that is, the Sea of Clysma, from a town
situate on its western coast, much about the place where the
Israelites passed over from the Egyptian to the Arabian shore.
But as the word clysma may denote a droivning or overflowing
with water, it is not improbable that the town built in (his place,
as well iis this part of the sea, might have, such a name given it,
advance along the coasts of it, until they came to Pi-
hahiroth, which lies between Migdol and the sea, and
there to encamp.
By this time Pharaoh and his army were come up with
them ; and when the Israelites perceived themselves
hemmed in on every side, with the sea in their front,
huge mountains on their flanks, and the Egyptian army
in the rear, they began to despair of any means of
escape, and to clamour against Moses for having
induced them to leave Egypt, and for bringing them into
the wilderness to be sacrificed. Moses, however, being
apprized of God's design, instead of d resenting their
reproaches, endeavoured to comfort them by giving them
assurance that God himself would certainly fight for them,
and by his almighty power bring matters to such an
issue, that these very Egyptians, of whom they were so
much afraid, should not one of them live to molest them
any more.
With these comfortable words, he ordered them to
advance towards the sea-side ; and as they were advanc-
ing, the miraculous cloud, we were speaking of, removed
from the front to the rear of the Israelites' camp, and so
turning its dark side towards the Egyptians, made them
incapable of knowing what they were about ; while by
its bright or fiery side, which it turned to the Israelites,
it gave them a sufficiency of light, and kept the two
camps from joining that night.
As soon as the Israelites came to the brink of the sea,
Moses waved his sacred rod, and immediately a strong-
east wind blew, and drove the waves back from the land,
and by dividing the waters, which stood suspended as it
were a wall on each hand, made a dry and safe passage
for the Israelites, until they had gained the other shore.
The Egyptians, in the mean while, never suspecting but
that they, with their chariots and horsemen, might safely
follow, where they saw the Israelites go on foot, entered
after them into the midst of the sea ; but about break of
day they began to see their error, and e their whole army
in memory of the fate of the Egyptians, who were drowned
herein. — JFells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
d The words which Moses makes himself speak upon this
critical occasion, (Exod. xiv. 13, 14.) discover a wonderful spirit
and bravery; and it is no bad comment which the Jewish histo-
rian has given us of them. " Put the case," says he, " that you
had deposited some great trust in the hands of a person that had
hitherto managed all well and wisely for you, might not you
reasonably depend upon that man for the same care and kindness,
and in the same case too, over again ? What a madness is it for
you to despond then, where God himself has taken you under his
protection, and of his own free bounty, performed every thing by
me that can contribute to your freedom and security ? Nay, the
very difficulty of the case you are in, is an argument to inflame
your hope rather than discourage it. He hath brought you into
this distress, on purpose to show Iris power and kindness in bring-
ing you out again, even to the surprise and admiration of your-
selves, as well as your enemies. It is not God's time to interpose
with his almighty power in small matters, but in great and tiying
calamities; when all hopes of human help fail us, that is the
season for him to work out the deliverance of those who cast
themselves upon him. And therefore fear nothing, so long as
you have him for your protector and defender, who is able to
raise the lowly and oppressed, and to lay the honour of their
persecutors in the dust. Be not afraid of the Egyptian armed
troops, neither despond of your lives and safeties, because you are
at present locked up between the sea and the mountains, and have
no visible way in nature to come off; for the God whom you
serve, is able to level all these mountains, and lay the ocean dry.
His will, in fine, be done." — Josephus' Antiquities, b. 2. c. 15.
e The expression in the text is, that ' God troubled the host of
Sect. I.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, Sec.
A. M. 2.M3. A. C. 1491 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G3. A. C. 1G48. EXOD. CM. xiii-xxxiv. 24.
271
in the utmost confusion. Their chariots were some of
them broken, others ran into quicksands, and others
cast off their carriages ; so that, perceiving- the hand of
God against them, they were turning about, and offering
to flee, but all in vain. As soon as the Israelites were
all landed, Moses, by the divine command, stretched out
his rod again over the sea : whereupon the roaring waves
break loose from their invisible chain, and come rushing
upon Pharaoh and his army, and overwhelm them all :
while the Israelites, beholding with wonder and amaze-
ment, the carcasses and rich spoils of their enemies
thrown upon the sea-shore, began, at least seemingly, to
fear God, and to reverence his servant Moses ; who, to
celebrate this joyful deliverance, having composed a
triumphant hymn, wherein he extols the greatness of
God's power, and his amazing mercy to his people dis-
played on this occasion, divided the company into two
great choirs ; and, setting himself and his brother Aaron
at the head of the men, and his sister Miriam with a
timbrel in her hand, at the head of the women, they sung
and played alternately, and in the height of their joy
intermixed dances.*
But notwithstanding all these thankful acknowledg-
ments of God's goodness, scarce had the Israelites
travelled three days from the Red Sea into the wilderness
of Shur, before their excessive thirst, and want of water,
put them out of all patience : and when in a short time
they met with some, at a place which is called Marah,
it proved so * bitter, that they could not drink it. This
the Egyptians;' and to enforce the strength of this expression, the
Jew Mi historian tells us, that before God let loose the waves upon
the Egyptians, fierce winds and tempests, storms of hail and rain,
terrible thunderings and lightnings, and whatever else could make
their condition horrible, were sent down upon them from above;
and therefore it is not without good reason, that these words
or the Psalmist have been applied to this occasion, ' The waters
saw thee, 0 (id, the waters saw thee, and were afraid; the
depths also were troubled : the clouds poured out water, the air
thundered, and thine arrows went abroad. The voice of thy
thunder was heard round about, the lightning shone upon the
ground, the earth was moved and shook withal. Thy way is in
the sea, and thy paths in the great waters, and thy footsteps are
not known:' whereupon it follows, ' thou leadest thy people like
sheep, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.' — Josephus's Antiquities,
b. 2., and Psal. lxxvii. Hi. &c.
a Exod. xv. 20. ' And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of
Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out
after her with timbrels and with dances.' Lady M. \\ . Mon-
tague, speaking (if the eastern dances, says, " Their manner is
certainly the same that Diana is said to have danced on the banks
of Eurotas. The great lady still leads the dance, and is followed
by a troop of young girls, who imitate her steps, and, it she sings,
make up the chorus-. The turns arc extremely gay and lively,
yc! with something in them wonderfully soft. Their steps are
varied according to the pleasure of her that leads the dance, but
always in exact time." {Letters, vol. ii. p. 45.) This ghes us
a different apprehension of the meaning of these words than we
should otherwise form. Miriam the prophetess, the sister ol
Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out
after her, with timbrels and dances. She led the dance, and
they imitated her steps, which were not conducted by a set well
known form, but extemporaneous. Probably David did not
dance alone before the Lord, when the ark was removed, but led
the dance in the same authoritative kind of way. (2 Sam. vi. 14.
Judges xi. 34. 1 Sam. xviii. G.) Representations similar to this
arc frequently to be met with in the ancient writers. — Sec
Chandler's Life of David, vol. 2. p. 116. — Ed.
b The word Marah, in the Hebrew language, signifies bitter-
ness} and it was from the taste of the waters that the place
received its name. That there arc several fountains of bitter
water not far from the Red Sca,*at some small distance- from the
disappointment inflamed their thirst, and exasperated
their murmurings against Moses, until, by the divine
direction, he made use of the wood of a certain tree.
which as soon as it was thrown into the water, changed
its offensive quality, and made it sweet.6
From Marah they went, and encamped at d Elini,
where there were twelve wells of water, and a good
quantity of palm or date trees, and here they continued
for some time. From hence they removed towards the
wilderness of Sin; but before they entered it, the .sup-
posed scarceness of provisions made them begin to dis-
trust God, and to repent from their very hearts, that they
had suffered themselves to be decoyed from the plenty
they enjoyed in the land of Egypt, into a barren wild
waste, where they could have no other prospect but to
die with hunger : and therefore, to convince these mur-
muring people of his almighty power and providence,
God was pleased to inform them, tiiathe would take can-
to supply them with food from heaven, which accord-
ingly came to pass. For that very evening, he caused
• quails to fall among them in such great quantities, as
city Arsinoe, is attested by Strabo, Diodorus, and most modem
travellers; but then the question is, whether it was by the
miraculous power of God, or by the natural virtue of the weed to
which Moses was directed, that these bitter waters were at this
time made sweet? The author of that excellent book called
Ecclesiasticus, seems to be of the latter opinion: for, having
treated of the honour and esteem due to a physician, he adds,
' The Lord has created medicines out of the earth, and he that is
wise will not abhor them. Was not the water made sweet with
wood, that the virtue thereof might be known !' Ecek-s. xxxviii.
5. But, notwithstanding the authority of this writer, we have
reason to think, that there was no tree in these parts of this vir-
tue, because had its virtue once been known, there is mi question
to be made, but that others, as well as Moses, would have made
use of it to the same purpose ; but that the writers who make
mention of these bitter waters, would have told us, at the sarin?
time, of a tree or trees growing hard by, which had a medicinal
quality to correct the taste of them; but since we meet with
nothing of this kind, we may reasonably suppose that the author
of Ecclesiasticus, a book of modern composition in comparison of
Moses' writings, speculating in tin- chapter upon the medicines
which God had provided for man's u>e, offered this hint purely from
his own fancy, and without any authority for it ; and consequently
we may conclude, that the correction of the quality of this tri ' i
is in be ascribed, not so much to the virtue of the wood, as to the
power of God, who used it rather as a sign to the Israelites, than
a^ an instrument to himself in doing it. — Ac Clerc*s Comm
and Poole's Annotations, and Shuckford's Connection,
b. 10.
c Exod. xv. 23. 'And when the)- came to Marah, they
could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.'
Dr Shaw {Trav. p. 314.) thinks that these waters may I ■
perly fixed at Corondel, where there is a small rid, «hich, mil.-,
it be dilated by the dews and rain, is very brackish. Anotbi r
traveller tells us that, at the lent of the untain of Hamamel
Far on, a small but most delightful valley, a place called Garondi e,
is a i ivulel that comes f i the mountain, the water of which is
tolerably good and sufficiently plentiful, bul i- Utter, thong
clear. Pococke says, there i- a mountain known to this day by
the name of Le Marah, and toward the 368 is a -alt well called
Birhammer, which is probably the tame here called Marah.— En.
d In remarking the si vera! stations of the Israelites, from the
Kid Sea, until tiny came to the Mount Sinai, we must obsei *■ ,
that Moses does not sei down every place where they encamped,
as hi' does in Numbi rs, i bap. xxxiii., but only th win n
remarkable thing was don.-: but Blim, when- tiny wire new
encamped, was esteemed a pleasant and fruitful place, al Ii
conipari-ou of the desert and barren parts about it: anil that [In:
desert of Sin, which was their eighth station. ai;d Re| hidim tin ir
tenth, lav at equal distances, in their way to the boly mountain.
— Wells' Geography if the old Testament, voL 2.
c The word which we render quail, according to the Colifes-
272
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1491 ; OR,
quite covered their camp ; and on the next morning, as
soon as the dew was gone, there lay upon the ground a
little white round thing, much in the shape of a coriander
seed, Avhich when the people saw, they were struck with
admiration, and said one to another, a ' What is this ? '
And from whence they gave it the name of ' manna.'
This was the bread which the Israelites were to eat
for the space of forty years ; and therefore God was
pleased to give these special directions concerning it, —
That it was to be gathered by measure, an homer for
every head, according to the number of each family ;
but this direction some persons slighting, and gathering
above the proportion that was allowed them, found
their quantity miraculously lessened, while the more
moderate had theirs increased : that it was to be gathered
fresh every morning, and all that was gathered consumed
that day ; which precept some persons likewise neglect-
ing, and keeping a part of it until the next morning,
found that it was putrefied and stunk: that on the
seventh day, which was the * Sabbath, there was none
sion of the Jews themselves, is of uncertain signification, and
may denote a locust as well as a quail. But what should rather
incline us to the latter acceptation, is that passage of the Psal-
mist, (lxxviii. 27,) where he tells us, that 'God rained flesh
upon them, as thick as dust, and feathered fowls, like as the sand
of the sea;' which cannot, with any tolerable propriety, be applied
to insects. But here we must remember, that this was done in
the middle of April, when these birds are known to fly out of
Egypt cross the Red Sea in vast quantities; so that the sum of
this miracle will consist, not so much in the prodigious number
of them that fell in the Israelites' camp, as in God's directing
them thither, and in that very evening too, according to his
promise, and his servant Moses' prediction. — Universal History,
b 1. c. 7.
a Our translation, and some others, make Moses fall into a
plain contradiction, in relating this story of the manna, which
they Hinder thus: ' And when the children of Israel saw it, they
said one to another, it is manna, for they wist not what it was,'
(Ex. xvi. 15.) whereas the Septuagint, and several authors both
ancient and modern, have translated the text according to the
original, 'The Israelites seeing this, said one to another, what
is this? for they knew not what it was?' For we must observe,
that the word by which they asked, ' what is this?' was, in their
language, man, which signifies likewise meat ready prepared} and
therefore it was always afterwards called man or manna. Various
are the conceits which the Jewish writers have entertained con-
cerning the taste of this manna, and some of them not unlikely have
been borrowed from the author of the book of Wisdom, where he
tells us of manna, "that it was able to content every man's
delight, agreeing to every taste, and attempering itself to every
man's liking." (Wisd. xvi. 20, 21.) Whereupon some have
affirmed, that it, had the taste of any sort of fish or fowl, accord-
ing to the wish of him that ate it; but these are idle fancies ;
what we know of certainty is this, -■- That here, in Exodus,
Moses tells us, that its ' taste was like wafers made with honey,'
and in Numbers, he says, that the cakes made of it had the ' taste
>ii fresh oil,' (c. xi. 8.) so that we may conjecture, that it had
a sweetness, when gathered, which evaporated in the grinding,
and baking. It tasted like honey, when taken oft' the ground,
but the cakes made of it were as cakes kneaded with oil. — Essay
for a New Translation; and Shuck/or d's Connection, vol.3, b. 10.
b This seems to be the first time that the ' rest on the seventh
day ' was solemnly appointed. God, indeed, from the very first
intended to preserve tlie memory of the creation in six days, by
appointing the seventh day to be kept holy; but when, before the
flood, men grew so wicked as to neglect the thoughts of God,
they very little regarded the distinction between this day and
others; and after the flood, the dispersion of mankind very much
blotted it out of their minds, as it did many other good things.
In the family of Abraham, we may presume, the remembrance
of it was preserved, though not with such a strict abstinence from
all labour as was afterwards enjoined; and therefore we read
nothnig of their resting from their travels upon that day, before
ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37C3. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. xiii— xxxiv. 24.
to he found ; and therefore, on the sixth they were to
gather a double portion, which being laid up, according
to God's direction, against the ensuing day, was never
once known to corrupt : and that, to perpetuate the
memory of this e miraculous bread, wherewith God had
fed their forefathers in the wilderness so long, an homer
of it should be put in a pot, and reposited in the ark of
the covenant within the sanctuary.
From the desert of Sin, the Israelites had not advanced
many days' journey towards Horeb, until coming to Re-
phidim, and finding no water there, they fell into their
old way of distrusting God's providence, and murmuring
against Moses ; but on this occasion they seemed to be
more mutinous and desperate than ever. ' It was in vain
for Moses to endeavour to persuade them to be patient
a little, and wait God's leisure. His words did but
inflame and carry them to such a height of rage, that
they even threatened to stone him ; so that he was forced
to have recourse to God, who was soon pleased to dis-
sipate his fears, by promising to signalize that place by
a miraculous supply of water, as he had lately done
another by a miraculous supply of food. d Taking,
therefore, the elders of the people, who might bear tes-
timony to the fact, along with him, Moses, as he was
commanded by God, went to a certain rock on the side
of Mount Horeb, which was distinguished from all the
rest by the divine appearance resting upon it, and no
sooner had he smitten it with his rod, but water in
abundance gushed out at several places, and joining
in one common stream, e ran down to the camp at
their coming out of Egypt. The truth is, they were kept under
such severe servitude, and day and night so pressed by their
taskmasters to hard labour without intermission, that all obser-
vation of the Sabbath was, very likely, laid aside ; but when God
brought them out of slavery, he renewed his commandment for
it, with this addition, in memory of the Egyptian bondage, that
they should rest from all manner of labour upon that day. —
Patrick's Commentary.
c Whether this manna had those extraordinary qualities in it
or no, which some imagine, it must be allowed to be truly mira-
culous upon the following accounts. 1. That it fell but six days
in the week. 2. That it fell in such prodigious quantity as sus-
tained almost three millions of souls. 3. That there tell a double
quantity tvery Friday, to serve them for the next day, which
was their Sabbath. 4. That what was gathered on the first five
days stunk, and bred worms, if kept above one day ; but that
which was gathered on Friday kept sweet for two days. And
lastly, That it continued falling while the Israelites abode in the
wilderness, but ceased as soon as they came out of it, and had
got corn to eat in the land of Canaan. — Universal History, b. 1.
c. 7.
d Exod. xvii. 12. ' The elders of Israel.' Not only fathers,
but old men, had great authority among the Israelites, and all
the people of antiquity. They everywhere, in the beginning,
chose judges for private affairs, and counsellors for the public,
out of the oldest men. Thence came the name of senate and
fathers of Rome, and that great respect for old age which they
borrowed from the Lacedemonians. As soon as the Hebrews
began to be formed into a people, they were governed by old
men. — En.
e It was this same water which served the Israelites, not only
in this encampment of Rephidim, and in that of Mount Sinai,
but in their other encampments likewise, perhaps as far as
Kadesh-Barnea, For the Jews have a tradition, that as these
waters were granted for the sake of the merits of Miriam,
Moses' sister, so they happened to fail as soon as she died: and
hence it is, that at the encampment of Kadesh-Barnea, which
was soon after the death of Miriam, we find the people falling
into murmurings again for want of water. St Paul, speaking of
this miraculous rock, which he makes the type of Jesus Christ,
tells ii, that ' it followed them.' (1 Cor. x. 4.) And from hej.ce
Skct. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
273
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llephidim. a This station, however, because it was so
infamous for the mutiny of the people, and their distrust
of God, Moses, as a caution and remembrance to them
for the future, thought proper to have called Massah
and Meribah, which signify temptation and contention. b
While the Israelites continued at Rephidim, they were
alarmed by the approach of an army of Amalekites, who
were just upon their heels, and ready to fall upon them.
Hereupon Moses ordered Joshua, a valiant young man
who was always about him, to draw out a party of the
choicest men in the camp, against next morning-, and to
give the Amalekites battle. When the next morning
came, Moses, attended by Aaron and Hur, went to the
top of an eminence, from whence they might have a view
of the field of battle ; and as the two armies were en-
gaged, so it was, that while Moses held up his hands to
God in prayer, and in one of them his wonder-working
rod, the Israelites prevailed ; but when, through weari-
ness, his hands began to drop, the Amalekites had the
better ; which Aaron and Hur perceiving, set him down
upon a stone, and supported his hands upon each side,
until the going down of the sun, in which time the Ama-
lekites were quite routed, and put to the sword.
This good success, in their first martial enterprise,
gave the Israelites great encouragement ; and the action
some have inferred, either that the streams which gushed out of
the rock formed themselves into a kind of river, which followed
them through all their encampments, or that they carried the
rock itself in a cart, like a great tun always full, and always open
to those that had an inclination to drink. But these are idle
fictions, drawn from words that are n^t to be understood in a
literal sense; what we may learn of certainty from modern tra-
vellers is, — That at the foot of the Mount Horeb, there is still
to be seen a brook of water, but as for the rock itself, which is a
vast large stone standing separate by itself, there is no water
that now runs from it, though there are, at present, to be seen
twelve holes or mouths, as it were, from whence the water did
flow heretofore. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Rephidim,
and Morizcm's J'oyagcs, b. I.e. 1.
a Exod. xvii. 1. ' Rephidim.' " After we had descended, with
no small difficulty, the western side of Mount Sinai, we came
into the other plain that is formed by it, which is Rephidim.
Here we still see that extraordinary antiquity, the rock of Meri-
bah, which hath continued down to this clay, without the least
injury from time or accident. It is a block of granite marble,
about six yards square, lying tottering, as it were, and loose in
the middle of the valley, and seems to have formerly belonged to
Mount Sinai, which hangs in a variety of precipices all over this
plain. The waters which gushed out, and the stream which
flowed, have hollowed, across one corner of this rock, a channel
about two inches deep and twenty wide, appearing to be encrusted
all over, like the inside of a tea-kettle that had been lung in use.
Besides several mossy productions that are still preserved by the
dew, we see all over this channel a great number of holes, some
of them four or five inches deep, and one or two in diameter, the
lively and demonstrative tokens of their having been formerly so
many fountains. It likewise may be further observed that art
or chance could by no means be concerned in the contrivance,
for every circumstance points out to us a miracle; and in the
same manner with the rent in the rock of Mount Calvary at
Jerusalem, never fails to produce a religious surprise in all who
see it." — Shaw's Travels, p. 'A5:i. — Ed.
b Exod. xvii. 6. ' Thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall
come water out of it.' This remarkable interposition of God for
the Israelites appears to have been imperfectly known in other
countries; and the remembrance of it is still retained in some
of the heathen fables. There is a manifest allusion to it in Euri-
pides, (Baccha:, 703.) where he makes one smite the rock at
Citharon, and waters gush out. Smiting rocks, and producing
water, is recorded among the fabulous miracles of heathen mytho-
logy.— Callimachus, Ilymu 1. v. 31. — Ed.
indeed was so very remarkable, that to transmit it to
posterity, Moses was ordered to record it in a book, for
Joshua's future instructions, and to offer a sacrifice of
thanksgiving : whereupon, he raised upon the spot an
altar, which he called Jehovah Nissi, the Lord in my
banner, as never doubting but that God, who had com-
manded him to denounce c incessant war against the
Amalekites, would not fail to crown it with success.
The defeat of the Amalekites opened a way for the
Israelites to Mount Sinai, where God at lirst appeared
to Moses in the burning bush, and not far from the place
where his father-in-law Jethro dwelt ; <l who having hoard
what mighty things God had done for him and the peo-
ple he conducted, took his daughter, Zipporah, Moses1
wife, and the two sons Gershom, and Eliezar, which he
had by her, and brought them to the lsraclitish camp ;
where, after mutual salutations and embraces, Moses
c The Amalekites were a people descended from Amalek, the
son of Eliphaz, the son of Esau, by a concubine, (Gen. xxxvi.
12.) And the ground of their enmity against the Israelites is
generally supposed to have been an innate hatred, hum the
remembrance of Jacob's depriving their progenitor, botli of his
birthright and blessing. Their falling upon them, however,
and that without any provocation, when they saw them reduced
to so low a condition by the fatigue of their march, and the ex-
cessive drought they laboured under, was an inhuman action,
and justly deserved the defeat which Joshua gave them; but
then the reason why God thought fit to denounce a perpetual
war against them is to be resolved into this, — That knowing the
Israelites were pre-ordained by God to be put in possession of
the land of Canaan, they came against them with an armed
force, in hopes of frustrating the designs of Providence come ru-
ing them. And this is the reason which Moses himself assigns
for this declaration of war, ' because liis,' that is Amalek's, ' hand
is against the throne of God,' that is, against God himself,
' therefore the Lord will wage war against him from one genera-
tion to another,' (Exod. xvii. 1G.) The injury done the Israelites
was not so much as the affront offered to the divine Majesty;
and therefore God threatens utterly to extirpate the designers of
it. Universal History, b. I. c. 7, and Patrick I Commentary.
d When it was that Jethro came from Midian to visit his
son-in-law Moses, whether immediately after the fight with the
Amalekites, as it is here set down, or some time after, when the
Israelites were better settled, is a matter much controverted
amongst interpreters. The Jews are generally agreed, and to
them do some other great names, as well as the learned Usher
and Selden, assent, that this visit happened after the promul-
gation of the law, in the first year of their coming from Egypt,
and in the month Tisri, say the Jews, above three months after
God gave Moses the second tables; though others "ill have it
to have b( < 11 in the second year. It sums reasonable to think,
however, that Jethro would take the first opportunity I
Moses, and to bring him and so near relations tog) th( r, whi n
once he had heard the news of their departure from Egypt, and
passingtheRedSea: which he, as a borderer upon the wild
could not long be a stranger to. It is to be observed farth
had the law been given before Jethro'a arrival in the Israi litista
camp, Moses could hardly have escaped saying something oi the
most remarkable passage of all others, God's glorious app
upon Mount Sinai, and the decalogue which be pronounced from
thence: whereas all that he relates at this meeting is, wl
had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians; in what maimer he ' bad
delivered his people;' and • what travail had come upon them by
the way,' which comprehend their passage of the Red Sea, their
want of water and broad, their engagement with the Amalekites,
and, in short, whatever we read in the foregoing chapters. Hut
of the most momentous thing of all, we find him making no
mention, nor Jethro, in the congratulations which he gives Ion,.
takin" any manner of notice; which we can hardly sup]
would, on either side, have been omitted, had they Ix en | | ioi to
this interview; nor can we eoiie, i\ , , 1. r what reaSOO MoM
should place the account of this interview in ilium diate succes-
sion, bad it not followed the fight with the Amalekites.- Pa-
trick's Commentary.
2 M
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A. M. 2513. A. C. 149!; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. IG48. EXOD. CH. i— xiii.
day, for that within three days, b he would come dowr
upon the mountain, and make a covenant with them. In
the mean time he gave him strict charge to set bounda-
ries about the foot of the mountain, which none might
adventure to pass, under the severest penalties ; c and
when he had thus done, and the people had prepared
themselves according to the divine injunction, on the
third day they saw early in the morning, the mountain
surrounded with a thick cloud, out of which proceeded
such terrible thunder and lightnings as rilled them with
horror and amazement.
The signal for the people to approach the mountain,
was upon the first sounding of the trumpet ; and there-
fore as soon as it began, Moses brought them out of the
camp, as near to the mountain as the barrier would per-
mit, and there they observed the whole top of Sinai
covered with fire and smoke, while the foundations of
it seemed to tremble and shake under them. d In the
entertained him with a particular account of every thing
that had befallen him during his absence ; and in return,
Jethro, who was a devout man, offered up solemn praises
to God, and joined with Moses, and the rest of the elders
of Israel, in sacrifices, and such holy rejoicings as were
thought proper upon this occasion.
While Jethro staid in the camp, he could not but per-
ceive the great weight of business, in hearing complaints,
and determining differences among so numerous a peo-
ple, which Moses must necessarily labour under ; and
therefore he gave him advice, to substitute under him a
certain number of officers, men of parts and men of cou-
rage, such as ' feared God, and hated covetousness,' to
be rulers, some over thousands, some over hundreds,
some over fifties, and some over tens, with proper autho-
rity for them to hear, and determine a all such matters,
as they were able ; but where causes were too difficult
for their decision, these to refer to him ; which in the
event, as he told him, would prove a great ease and ad-
vantage both to himself and the people : and this advice
of his, as soon as he saw put in execution, Jethro took
leave of his son-in-law, and returned into his own
country.
It was three months after their departure out of Egypt,
when the Israelites came, and encamped in the wilder-
ness of Sinai, before the mount of God : and they had
not been long there, before God called Moses to come
up to him on the mount, and there charged him to remind
the Israelites of the many wonders he had wrought in
their favour ; and that, notwithstanding their frequent
murmurings and distrust of his providence, if, for the
future, they would become obedient to his laws, he would
still look upon them as his peculiar people, a favourite
nation, and a royal priesthood.
Upon his descent from the mount, Moses made a
report to the elders, and they to the people, of the gra-
cious message which God had sent them ; which as soon
as the people heard, they promised in return all possible
obedience to the divine commands. With this answer of
the people's Moses ascended the mountain again, and
received a command from God, that all the people should
purify themselves, and be in readiness against the third
a The words of the text are, ' Every great matter they shall
bring to thee, but every small matter they shall judge,' (Exod.
xviii. 22.) And from hence some have imagined, that there were
several sorts of causes, that might not at first be brought before
inferior courts, and these they make to be four. 1. All sacred
matters, or things relating to God and religion. 2. All matters
of equity, where the rigour of the law was to be mitigated. 3.
All capital cases, and, lastly, all such cases as the rulers of
thousands referred to Moses. What the other rulers referred to
him was indeed properly under his cognizance, because it sup-
posed an incapacity in them, either for the want of some law, or
a non-agreement among themselves, to determine it; but where
nothing of this happened, they had a full power to judge finally.
Neither was it the people, when a cause was thought intricate,
that were to bring it primarily before Moses, but when any such
difficulty arose, as they were not able to surmount, the judges,
as Moses himself directs them, (Deut. i. 17.) were the persons
that were to order the appeal to him: ' Bring it to me,' says he,
' and I will hear it ;' which shows that the cause had been before
the bar of inferior courts before, ouly they were not skilful enough
to determine it. So that the words in the text do not intimate,
that there were some causes which the other judges might not try,
if they were able ; but only where the causes were heavy, and
they incompetent to decide, them, these they were to refer to
Moses. — Patrick's Commentary.
b It must be observed here, as also in other places of the like
nature, that the Scripture, suiting itself to man's common way
of speaking and thinking, assigns such things to God, as are only
proper to the effects. Thus it is said that God ' descended on
the mountain,' because he made his presence more visible there
by sensible and surprising effects ; and whereas it is said by the
protomartyr, St Stephen, (Acts vii. 53,) ' that the Jews receiv-
ed the law by the disposition of angels:' and by St Paul to the
Galatians, (iii. 19,) ' that the law was ordained by angels in the
hand of a mediator ;' there is in these, and the like passages, no
contradiction between the new and old testament, which assigns
all this dispensation to God himself. For though it was God
who descended, in the sense we have explained it, upon the
mount, yet the angels, these courtiers of heaven, attended him, and
made up his train ; and though he himself pronounced the law,
yet the thunder and lightnings, and noise resembling the sound
of a trumpet, which were preparatory to such pronunciation,
may not improperly be ascribed to the ministry of angels. The
intent, however, of these passages in the new testament, is only
to oppose the gospel to the law in this respect, namely, that when
God gave the law, he was surrounded with an awful host of angels,
but when our Lord delivered the gospel, he was clothed in our
flesh, and adapted himself to our weakness. — Howell's History of
the Bible, and Millar's Church History.
c Exod. xix. 13. 'He shall surely be stoned.' To be stoned
to death was a most grievous punishment. When the offen-
der came within four cubits of the place of execution, he was
stript naked, only having a covering before, and his hands being
bound, he was led up to the fatal place, which was an eminence
twice a man's height. The first executioners of the sentence
were the witnesses, who generally pulled off their clothes for the
purpose: one of them threw him down with great violence upon
his loins: if he rolled upon his breast he was turned upon his
loins again, and if he died by the fall, there was an end ; but if
not, the other witness took a great stone and dashed upon his
breast, as he lay upon his back ; and then, if he was not des-
patched, all the people that stood by threw stones at him till he
died. — Lewis' Origines Hebriea, vol. 1. p. 74. — Ed.
d Of all the descriptions that I ever read, there is no one seems
to me so awful and tremendous, as this descent of God upon
Mount Horeb, and the amazing phenomena that attended it.
The pomp pretended to by pagan deities, even when set off with
the grandeur of poetiy, and the magic of numbers, is uncouth,
ridiculous, and profane. The procession of Bacchus, as it is de-
scribed by Ovid, (b. 3.) is neither more nor less, than a downright
drunken riot, or the brutal pastime of a disorderly country wake.
The boisterous expedition of Neptune, even as it is painted by
the great master Homer, (Iliad, 13,) seems to represent nothing
more august than the roaring of London bridge, or a rabble of sea
monsters frisking in a storm ; nay, that very famous speech of
Jupiter, (Iliad, 18,) where he maintains his supereminence, by
shaking Olympus with his imperial nod, and menacing his re-
fractory offspring, in case they should rebel, though it certainly
be embellished with the utmost force of words and stretch of art,
is at the best but a lame and imperfect copy, in the main strokes
of it, from the native majesty of this unlaboured prose, in the
Skgt. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
275
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midst of this dreadful scene, the trumpet was heard to
sound louder and louder, claps of thunder and flashes of
tire were more and more ingeminated, till all on a sud-
den every thing was hush and silent, and then God was
heard from the midst of the fire and smoke (which
still continued) to pronounce the law of the decalogue,
or a ten commandments, which is indeed a complete
system of the moral part of the Jewish institutes, and in
few but significant words, comprehends their duty to
God, to their neighbour, and to themselves.
In the mean time the people, astonished at what they
saw and heard, removed farther oft'; and as soon as the
divine voice had ceased speaking, came to Moses, and
in the height of their fear and surprise, besought of him,
that for the future, he would speak to them in God's
stead, and whatever he enjoined them they would obey,
because they were conscious, that were they to hear his
dreadful voice again, they should certainly die with
horror and astonishment This motion, as it bespake
their reverence and respect, was not displeasing to
Moses ; and therefore he assured them, that all this
wonderful scene was not exhibited to them with a design
to create in them any slavish fear, but a iilial confidence,
and submission to such laws as the divine wisdom should
hereafter think fit to enjoin them : and with these words
he went up to the mount again, where, in addition to the
decalogue, he received from God several other laws,
both ceremonial and political, which seem to have been
calculated with a wise design to preserve the people in
their obedience to God, to prevent their intermixture
with other nations, and to advance the welfare of their
commonwealth, by securing to all the members of it a
quiet enjoyment of their lives and properties.*
19th chapter of Exodus. It must be owned, however, that our
English poet Milton, has in several places described the usual
display of the divine Majesty, in a very magnificent manner.
Clouds began
To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll
In dusky wreaths, reluctant flames, the sight
Of wrath awaked : nor with less dread the loud
Ethereal trumpet from on high 'gan blow,
At which command the powers militant,
That stood for heaven, in mighty quadrate joined
Of union irresistible, moved on
In silence their bright legions to the sound
Of instrumental harmony.
Again,
He on his impious foes right onward drove.
Gloomy as night : under his burning wheels
The stedfast empyrean shook throughout,
All but the throne of God.
And
again,
He ended, and the sun gave signal high
To the bright minister that watched : He blew
His trumpet, heard on Oreb since perhaps
When God descended, and perhaps once more
To sound the general doom. . —
Paradise Lost, b. 6. and 11.
a These ten commandments, as contained in the 20th chapter
of Exodus, are so very well known, that there is no occasion here
for the repetition of them : and in what manner they are to be
disposed of in the two tables, whether four are to be placed in
the first, and six in the second table, which is the common dis-
tribution, or an equal number is to be appropriated to each table,
as Philo and his followers among the Jewish rabbins contend, is
not a question of moment enough to be discussed in this place.
b Exod. xx. 12. ' That thy days may be long upon the land.' As
disobedience to parents is, by the law of Moses, threatened to be
punished with death, so on the contrary long life is promised to
the obedient; and that in their own country, which God most
peculiarly enriched with abundance of blessings. Heathens also
gave the same encouragement, saying, that such children should
With this body of laws, which were all that God for
the present thought lit to enjoin, Moses returning from
the mount, erected an altar to God, c and offered burnt-
sacrilices and peace-offerings upon it ; and having
caused the contents of this new covenant to be read to
all the people, and exacted a solemn promise from them,
that they would keep it faithfully, he confirmed this
covenant, by sprinkling the altar, the book, and the
people with the blood of the victims which were slain
upon this occasion ; and then ordered twelve pillars to
be raised, according to the number of the twelve tribes,
as a standing monument of this alliance between God
and them.
As soon as Moses had made an end of this ceremony,
he took Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Israel, some part of the way towards the mountain,
where, without incurring any hurt, they were vouchsafed
a prospect of the divine presence, and where, having
committed the care of the people to them, he took
Joshua along with him, and went up higher to the top
of the mount, where he continued for the space of forty
days.
Here it was that God, calling him nearer to himself,
and into the cloud where he then resided, instructed
him in what manner the tent or tabernacle, wherein
he intended to be worshipped, was to be made. He
described to him the form of the sanctuary, the table for
the shew-bread, the altar of frankincense, the altar for
burnt-offerings, the court of the tabernacle, the basin to
wash in, the ark, the candlestick, and all the other sacred
utensils. He gave him the form of the sacerdotal vest-
ments, and taught him how the priests were to be conse-
crated ; what part of the oblation they were to take, and
in what manner the perpetual sacrifice was to be offered.
He named the two chief men, Bezaleel, of the tribe of
Judah,and Aholiah, of the tribe of Dan, who were to be
the builders of the tabernacle ; and having recommended
a strict observation of the Sabbath, d he gave him the two
be dear to the gods, both living and dying. So Euripides. It
was also one of their promises, thou shalt live long, if thou
nourish thy ancient parents. — Patrick in locum. — En.
c Exod. xx. 24. ' An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me.'
This command certainly imports, that the altars of the Lord were
to be as simple as possible. They were to be made either of sods
and turfs of earth, which were easily prepared in most places,
while they strayed in the wilderness, or of rough and unpolished
stone, if they came into rocky places, where no sods were to be
obtained; that there might be no occasion to grave any imago
upon them. Such altars, Tertullian observes, [Apolog. ■
were among the ancient Romans in the days of Numa; when, as
they had no sumptuous temples, nor images, so they had only
altars hastily huddled up of earth, without any art. — Patrick in
locum. — Ei>.
d Exod. xxiii. 12. ' On the seventh day thOU Shalt rest ; that
thine, ox and thine ass may rest.' We should here observe the
great clemency of God, who by this law requires sonic goodness
and mercy to be exercised even to brute animals, that be might
remove men the farther from cruelly to each other. The slaughter
of a ploughing ox was prohibited by a law common to the Phry-
gians, Cyprians, and Romans, as we find recorded by Varro,
Pliny and others. The Athenians made a decree that, a mole
worn out. by labour ami age, ami which used to accompanj
mules drawing burdens, should be fed at the public expense.
Exod. xxiii. 16. 'The feast of ingathering, which i-- in the end
of the year, when thou has) gathered in thy labours oul ol the
field.' The same custom prevailed among the Gentiles, "ho at
the end of the year, when they gathered in their fruits, offered
solemn sacrifices, with thanks to God for his blessings. Aristotle
276
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[Book IV.
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a tables of stone, wherein with his own hand, at least by
his own direction, were written the ten great command-
ments, which were the sum and substance of the moral
law.6
While Moses was conversing with God on the mount,
and Joshua waiting- for his return, the people in the
{Ethic, b. viii.) says, that the ancient sacrifices and assemblies
were after the gathering in of the fruits, being designed for an
oblation of the first-fruits unto God. — Ed.
a Who was the first inventor of letters, and what nation had
the invention soonest among them, is variously disputed by the
learned. The invention seems to be a little too exquisite to have
proceeded from man; and therefore we have, not without reason,
in a former page, derived its original from God himself, who might
teach it Adam, and Adam his posterity. As to particular nations,
however, some say that the Phoenicians, others the Ethiopians,
and others again that the Assyrians, had the first invention of
them ; but upon better grounds, it is thought by Eusebius (in his
Pnepar. Evan. b. IS.) that Moses first taught the use of letters to
the Jews, ami that the Phoenicians learned them from them, and the
Grecians from the Phoenicians. The matter whereon men wrote in
ruder times was different; some on the rinds of trees, others on
tiles, and others on tables ; which last was chiefly in use among
the Jews; and probably from this example given them by God.
The instrument wherewith they wrote, was not a pen, but a kind
of engraver made of iron or steel, called a stylus, which was
sharp at one end, for the more convenient indenting, or carving
the character, and broad at the other for the purpose of scraping
it out. To perpetuate the memory of any thing, the custom of
writing on stone or brick was certainly very ancient, and (as
Josephus, in the case of Seth's pillars, tells us, Antiquities, b. 1 1.)
older than the time of the flood. The words of the decalogue,
spoken by God himself, were such as deserved to be had in ever-
lasting remembrance ; and therefore God was willing to have
them engraved upon durable matter ; but then the question is,
whether it was God himself, with his own finger, as we say, or
some other person from God's mouth, who wrote them. In
Exod. xxxiv. 27, 2S. we are toki, that ' the Lord said unto
Moses, Write thou these words ; for after the tenor of these words
have I made a covenant with thee and with Israel;' and that
accordingly ' he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant,
even the ten commandments.' Now since it is a common form
of speech, that what a superior commands to be done, that he does
himself; the meaning can be no more, than that the words of
the decalogue were written by the hand of Moses, but by the
direction and dictation of God. — Howell' 's and Universal History.
b Exod. xxiv. 11. ' And upon the nobles of the children of
Israel he laid not his hand.' It is usually said that God ' laid not
his hand' in a way of terror, or anger, on these nobles on account
of their intrusion: but in the Monthly Magazine for January,
1804, is the following description of the appearance at court of
the Mogul's officers, who partake of his bounty or rewards.
" Those officers of the districts, whose time has expired, or who
have been recalled from similar appointments, repair to the
imperial presence, and receive the reward, good or evil, of their
administration. When they are admitted into the presence, and
retire from thence, if their rank and merit be eminent, they are
called near to his majesty's person, and allowed the honour of
placing their heads below his sacred foot. The emperor lays his
hand on the back of a person, on whom he means to bestow an
extraordinary mark of favour. Others from a distance receive
token of kindness, by the motion of the imperial brow or eyes."
Now if the nobles of Israel were not admitted to the same near-
ness of approach to the Deity as Moses and Aaron, perhaps this
phrase should he taken directly contrary to what it has been.
' lie laid not his hand ' in a way of special favour, nevertheless
they saw God, and did eat and drink in his presence. This sense
of laying on the hand is supported by a passage in Bell's Travels
tn Persia, p. 103. " The minister received the credentials, and
laid them before the Shah, who touched them with his hand, as a
mark of respect. This part of the ceremony had been very diffi-
cult to adjust; for the ambassador insisted on delivering his
letters into, the Shah's own hands. The Persian ministers, on
the other hand, affirmed that their king never received letters
directly from the ambassadors of the greatest emperors on earth."
— Theological Magazine, vol. iv. p. 140. — En.
camp, who by reason of his long absence began now to
<>"ive him over for lost, assembled themselves in a riotous
manner about Aaron's tent, and demanded of him to
make them some gods to go before them. The demand
was astonishing, and such was his weakness, and want of
courage, that instead of expostulating the matter with
them, he tamely submitted to their request; nay, he con-
tributed not a little to their idolatry, by ordering thein
to bring a sufficient quantity of their golden ornaments,
which when he received from them, c he tied in a bag, and
thereof made them a molten calf. Nor was this all, for
seeing them so highly delighted with their new made
god, he set it upon a pedestal, in full sight of the camp,
built an altar before it, and appointed the next day for a
solemn festival, which was begun with offering of sacri-
fices to it, and concluded with feasting and dancing, and
all d kinds of noisy mirth.
God, in the mean time, who knew what had passed in
the camp, acquainted his servant Moses, that the people
whom he had brought out of Egypt had so soon forgot
their promises and engagements, that at that very time
they had made them a molten image, and were worship-
ping a golden calf; a defection so provoking, that he
threatened to extirpate the whole nation of them, but at
c The words in the text are these, ' All the people brake off
the golden ear-rings which were in their ears, and brought them
unto Aaron, and he received them at their hands, and fashioned
it with a graving tool, after he had made it into a molten calf,'
Exod. xxxii. 3, 4. But here seems to be a great mistake in
most versions as well as our own, and what but few critics and
expositors have yet espied. For it may very well be asked, who
taught Aaron to engrave, or how could this idol be engraven so
soon, since it is said that Aaron presented it to the people on
the morrow ! If the custom of engraving molten work was then
known, how comes it, that we hear nothing of it even in Solomon's
time, since it may be presumed, that the furniture of Solomon's
temple was wrought with much more art than the figure of
Aaron's calf? The whole foundation of this mistake seems to
lie in the ambiguity of the Hebrew word Tsour, which sometimes
signifies to fashion, and sometimes to bind or tie, and of the word
Chereth, which signifies a graving tool, and sometimes a sack or
bag, 2 Kings v. 23. And therefore the nature and circumstances
of the thing here spoken of might have directed the translators to
think of putting the great quantity of ear-rings, which were
brought to Aaron, into a bag ; which would have prevented the
incongruity that the Geneva version has incurred, of engraving
the calf before it was molten ; for so it runs, ' he fashioned the
ear-rings with a graving tool, and made a molten calf of them.'
Essay for a New Translation.
d The words in the text are, (Exod. xxxii. C.) ' the people sat
down to eat, and to drink, and rose up to play ;' and from hence
some have supposed their sense to be, that after the Israelites
had eaten of the sacrifices offered to this new idol, and drunk
very plentifully, they committed fornication, after the manner of
heathen worshippers, and as in after ages they were induced to
do in the case of Baal-peor, Numb. xxv. 1, 2. It cannot be
denied, indeed, but that those sacrificial feasts among the heathens
were usually attended with drunkenness and lasciviousness, which
generally go together; and that the word which we render play,
is the same which Potiphar's wife makes use of, when she tells
her husband, that his Hebrew slave came in to mock her, that
is, violate her chastity ; but since there is no intimation of this
in the story, but only of their singing and dancing, it is hardly
presumable, that they could become so very profligate the very
first day of their setting up idol-worship. Much more reasonable
it is therefore to suppose, that all this merriment of theirs was
in imitation of the Egyptians, who, when they had found out
their god Apis, whereof this golden calf was designed as an
emblem, were used to bring him in solemn pomp to Memphis,
the royal city, with children going before in procession, and
all the company singing a song of praise to the Deity. — Pat-
rick's Commentary.
Sect. 1.1
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
277
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1491; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. xiii— xxxiv. 24.
the same time promised to make him the father and
founder of a nation as numerous, and more powerful
than these ungrateful rebels were. But so far was Moses
from seeking his own interest in their destruction, that
he threw himself at the feet of the Lord, and interceded
for their pardon with so much importunity, that having
obtained a kind of promise of it, he took the tables and
his servant Joshua with him, and so hastened down from
the mount.
As soon as they were come to the bottom, Joshua hear-
ing the noise which the people were making, expressed
his apprehensions, that possibly there might be some
alarm or engagement in the camp; but Moses, who knew
what had happened, told him that the noise seemed to
be an indication of joy, rather than of war ; and as they
drew near, and saw the golden calf, and the people sing-
ing and dancing about it, Moses, for indignation throw-
ing down the tables he had in his hands, brake them in
pieces ; and then taking the idol calf, he put it in the
fire, and melted it, and so a reducing it to powder, and
mixing the powder in water, to make them more sensible
of their folly in worshipping that for a god which was to
pass through their bodies, he made them drink it up.
After this, Aaron was called to give an account how
he came to indulge the people in this idolatrous humour ;
but all the excuse that he could make turned upon their
tumultuous, and his timorous temper, which compelled
him to comply with their demand. But Moses' business
was, to take vengeance on the idolaters ; and therefore
turning from his brother Aaron, he called such to his aid
as had not been guilty in the late rebellion ; and seeing
some of the tribe of Levi adjoin themselves to him, b he
appointed them to take their swords, to go through the
camp, and without any respect to age or quality, friend-
ship or consanguinity, to kill all the ringleaders of this
a This action of Moses, in melting, grinding, and pounding
this golden idol, in order to make the people drink it, is by some
thought contrary to our present philosophy, and t'.ic account which
alehymists give us of the nature of gold. The goldbeater can
reduce gold to the thickness of one fifteen hundredth part of an
inch, in the form of leaves, which may be easily heat into pow-
der, thrown into a liquid, and drunk. A strong current of
electricity being made to play upon gold, will cause it to bum,
and be dissipated in the form of a very fine purple powder, which
may also be thrown into water and drunk. Gold may also be
dissolved in nitru-muriatie acid and drunk? By the help of
a file, Moses might grate it into a dust, as fine as flour that is
ground in a mill. But the rabbinical reason for his giving the
people this gold powder to drink, namely, that he might distin-
guish the idolaters from the rest, because as soon as they had
drunk, the beards of the former turned red, is a little too
whimsical to be regarded. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 7.
b This may be thought too hazardous an undertaking, and, for
a few Levites to kill 3000 of the people impracticable ; but as
they had God's warrant for what they did, and knew at the same
time how timorous guilt is apt to make men, they might be
confident, that none would have courage to oppose them. Before
that Moses called any avengers to his assistance, the text tells
us, that 'he saw that the people were naked, for Aaron had
made them naked to their shame,' (Exod. xxxii. 25.) where, if
by ' nakedness ' we are, with some expositors, to understand their
want of arms, which they had laid aside, that they might be
more light and nimble to dance about the idol, it is plain, that
the Levites might have less trouble in slaying such a number of
people, loaded with liquor perhaps, and, as it usually happens in
the conclusion of a festival, weary with dancing and sports,
and without any weapons about them to make resistance. —
Patrick's and Lc Clercs Commentaries.
idolatrous defection, and their adherents; which the
Levites accordingly executed; so that at this time there
were about three thousand persons slain. Nor did the
Levites, in consideration of this their laudable zeal and
obedience, go long unrewarded ; for, upon the instituti on
of the priesthood, they were appointed to the honour
and emoluments of that office, though in subordination
to that of Aaron and his posterity.
The people, in the mean time, having seen this dread-
ful example on the delinquents, were not in ? little fear
and consternation. But Moses, the next day contented
himself with reproving them for their ingratitude and
extreme folly, and at the same time promised them that
he would go up to the mount again, and try c how far
his prayers would prevail with the divine mercy, to avert
the punishment which they justly deserved. To show,
however, how highly they had ofiended God by their
wicked apostasy, he took a tent, and pitching it out of
the camp at a good distance, he called it ' the tabernacle
of the congregation,' whither the cloudy pillar, (to let
them see that God would no longer dwell among tlieni.)
immediately repaired ; and whither Moses, whenever he
wanted to consult the divine oracle, was wont to resort.
Nor was it long after this, that God, to comfort and
encourage him under all the fatigue that he had with an
obstinate people, granted his request, and showed him
as much of his glory as his nature was able to bear, and
gave him fresh orders to prepare two other tallies of
stone, and to come up again to turn on the mountain all
alone. Moses, accordingly, early next morning, repair-
ed to the mountain, with the two tables, and having
prostrated himself before God, implored of him to par-
don the sins of his people; which God graciously con-
descended to do, and withal to make a farther covenant
with them, upon condition that they would keep his
commandments ; would observe his Sabbaths, his pass-
over, and other appointed festivals ; and would not
worship the gods of the Canaanites, nor make any
alliances with the people of the country.
CHAP. II. — Objections answered and Difficulties
explained.
That in the deserts of Arabia, and such extended [Jains
(for there were no cities, rivers, or mountains for land-
marks,) it was a general custom, before the invention of
the compass, to carry lire before armies, in order to
direct their march ; and that, notwithstanding the present
use of the compass, the guidance of fire is practised
c Moses indeed was by lineage and descent of the tribe of
Levi, which though it forfeited the primogeniture and regalia,
by being concerned in the blood of the Shechcmites, was never-
theless dignified with the priesthood, which gave him ■ right of
approaching God, as an Intercessor for a rebellious and backslid-
ing people. Aaron, in strictness, "as both the high priesl ;'.<»!
his elder brother, but besides that, he, by his imi indent com-
pliance in the business of the golden calf, had at this time not
only forfeited the honour of mi diation, bnt Btood himself in need
of an atonement: there seems to be something in I
that is given of Moses' singular meekness, that might entitle
him to the spirit of Intercession, and make the younger, in tins
office, be preferred before the elder. — />'// /,'.•//«< </ BibUca Ap-
pend, i >f t lie Chens. Annul.
278
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1491 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G3. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. xiii— xxxiv. 24.
among the caravans in the east, and by the great number
of pilgrims, who go every year from Grand Cairo in
Egypt, to Mecca in Arabia, cannot, by any one that is
acquainted either with ancient or modern history, be
denied ; and had the sole intent of the cloudy pillar
been to guide and conduct the Israelites in their journeys,
there might have been more grounds for asserting, that it
was a mere machine of human contrivance, and had nothing
miraculous or supernatural in it. But when it shall
appear, that this pillar of a cloud was of much greater use
to the children of Israel than barely to conduct them ;
that in it resided a superior power, upon whom the name
and attributes of God are conferred ; that from it pro-
ceeded oracles, and directions what the people were to
do, and plagues and punishments, when they had done
amiss ; and that to it are ascribed such motions and
actions, as cannot, with any propriety of speech, be
applied to any natural fire ; it will from hence, I hope,
be concluded, that this guidance of the cloud was a real
miracle ; its substance quite different from that of porta-
ble fire preceding armies ; and its conductor something
more than a mere man.
The first mention that is made of this phenomenon is in
the thirteenth chapter of Exodus, where Moses, describ-
ing the route which the Israelites pursued, tells us that '
' they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped
at Etham, at the edge of the wilderness, and the Lord
went before them, by day, in a pillar of a cloud, and, by
night, in a pillar of fire :' and what we are to understand
by ' the Lord, that went before them,' we are advertised
in another place ; 2 ' Behold I send my angel before
thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the
place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey
his voice ; provoke him not, for he will not pardon thy
transgression, for my name is in him,' that is, my name
Jehovah, which is the proper and incommunicable title
of God. Another place wherein we find this pillar of
a cloud mentioned, is in the 14th chapter ; 3 and ' the
angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel,
removed, and went behind them, and the pillar of the
cloud went from before their face, and stood behind
them, and it came between the camp of the Egyptians,
and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud and darkness
to them, but it gave light to these.' There is, in the
same book, another place where this pillar is taken notice
of, and that is in the 33d chapter, where God being
highly offended at the people's impiety in making the
golden calf, refuses to conduct them any longer himself
and proposes to depute an angel to supply his place :
* ' When the people heard these evil tidings, they mourn-
ed ; — and it came to pass, as Moses entered into the
tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the
door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses.
All the people saw the cloudy pillar at the tabernacle
door, and they rose up, and worshipped, every man
at his tent door. We have occasion to mention but
one place more, and that is in the 10th chapter of Num-
bers, where the people murmured for the loss of Korah
and his company : 5 ' And it came to pass, that when the
congregation was gathered against Moses, and against
Aaron, they looked towards the tabernacle of the con-
1 Exod. xiii. 20, 21. * Exod. xxiii. 20, 21.
" Ver. 19, 20. 4 Chap, xxxiii. -1, &c 5 Num. xvi. 42, &c.
gregation, and behold the cloud covered it, .and the
glory of the Lord appeared, and Moses and Aaron came
before the tabernacle of the congregation, and the Lord
spake unto Moses, saying, Get you up from among this
congregation, that I may consume them, as in a moment,
and they fell upon their faces ; and Moses said unto
Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from oft* the
altar, and put on incense, and go quickly into the con-
gregation, and make an atonement for them, for there is
wrath gone out from the Lord, the plague is begun.'
Now, from a bare recital of these passages, we cannot
but observe, that the Israelites' pillar made quite another
appearance than any combustible matter, when set on
fire, and carried upon a pole, can be supposed to do ;
that in this pillar resided a person of divine character
and perfections, and therefore called ' the Lord, the
angel, the angel of the Lord, and the angel of his pres-
ence,' &c. ; that this person was invested with a power
of demanding homage and observance, of both punishing
and pardoning transgressions, and to whom even Moses
and Aaron, as well as the rest of the congregation,
might fall down on their faces, and pay obeisance, with-
out the imputation of idolatry. The whole tenor of the
narration, in short, seems to denote, that every one in
the congregation looked upon the pillar as something
awful and tremendous, and the person residing therein
above the rank and dignity of any created essence : and
therefore, the most general opinion is, that he to whom
these divine appellation", divine powers, and divine
honours are ascribed, was the eternal Son of God, with
a troop of blessed angels attending him in bright and
luminous forms ; and who, either by the display or con-
traction of their forms, could make the cloud they
inhabited either condense or expand itself, either put on
a dark or radiant appearance, according as the great
Captain of their host signified his pleasure. For to
suppose that mere lire, without any supernatural direc-
tion, could appear in different forms at the same time,
with darkness to one sort of people, and light to another,
is a thing incongruous to its nature.
For how many purposes this miraculous pillar might
serve the Israelites, it would be presumption to deter-
mine ; but this we may say with safety, — That besides
its guiding them in their journey, 6it was of use to
defend them from their enemies, that they might not
assault them ; of use to cover them from the heat of the
sun in the wilderness, where there were few trees, and
no houses to shelter them ; and of use to convey the
divine will, and to be, as it were, a standing oracle
whereunto they might resort upon all occasions. In
this cloud, we are told expressly, that 7 the Lord ap-
peared from the tabernacle ; from this cloud, that 8 he
called Aaron and Miriam to come before him ; and out
of this cloud again, that he sent forth the expresses of
his wrath, as well as the tokens of his love, among the
whole congregation : and therefore this cloud could,
at that time, be nothing else but the vehicle of God, as
we may call it, or the place of his majestic appearance.
Nor is the conjecture improbable, that from this very
instance the poets first took the hint of making their
gods descend in a cloud, and arrayed with a bright
efiulgency.
6 Patrick's Commentary. 7 Deut. xxxi. 15. 8 Num. xii. 5.
Sect. I.]
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279
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his 3 ' sending down manna upon them, and giving them
However this be, it is certain, that the Jews were
persuaded of the divinity of their guide ; otherwise they
would not have expressed such undissembled sorrow and
concern upon hearing the news of his intention to leave
them : nor could Moses, with all his authority, have
ever prevailed with them to wander so long in the wil-
derness, exposed to so many dangers and hardships,
had they been satisfied that it was no more than a man,
with some tire, elevated upon a pole, that was their con-
ductor. It may be allowed, indeed, that a multitude of
such fiery machines might be of service to an army in a
march ; but the thing is utterly inconceivable, how a
company of six hundred thousand men, besides women
and children, and no small number of associates,
together with all their cattle, could receive any great
benefit from only one of these, which, at a moderate
distance, would diminish into a small light, and at a
larger be quite lost ; or every moment was in danger of
being blown aside by the wind, or extinguished by the
rain.
The Scriptures everywhere represent the Israelites
going out of Egypt with a high hand, marching in a
regular order, and 1 ' covered by God, in the day, with a
cloud, and led, all the night through, with a light of fire ;'
but a sufficient company of link boys, placed in a regular
order to illuminate each column as they moved, would
have certainly been of more use, and made a much
better appearance, than this pretended mixture of smoke
and flame, smothering from an iron pot, at the end of a
long pole. For from my heart 1 cannot conceive what
manner of comparison there can be between the dark,
fuliginous smoke arising from a culinary fire, and the
glorious, heavenly, and bright appearance of 2 ' that
burning pillar of fire, which,' as the author of the book
of Wisdom expresses it, ' was both a guide of their
unknown journey, and an harmless sun to entertain them
honourably.'
The Scripture indeed assigns but one reason for God's
conducting the Israelites by the way of the wilderness,
which was so much about, to the land of Canaan, and
that is, — An apprehension that the Philistines, through
whose country they were to go, being a bold and warlike
people, would, in all probability, have disputed the
passage with them, which the others, destitute of arms
as they were, and having their spirits broken with a long
servitude, were in no condition to make good : but as
the almighty power of their conductor was sufficient to
make them superior to all such obstacles, Ave may well
suppose, that a farther end which the divine Providence
might have herein, was to manifest his glory and good-
ness by his constant attendance upon them in this
luminous appearance, and by the many wonderful works
which he did to oblige them to his service.
According to the course of the country, Moses might
have marched the people a much shorter way ; but then,
we had heard nothing of the ' angel of God's presence'
visibly preceding them ; nothing of his dividing the sea
to facilitate their passage ; nothing of his overwhelming
their enemies in those very floods, which to them were
a kind of wall on each side ; nothing of his drawing
out rivers of water from the stony rock; nothing of
food from heaven :' nothing of his ' raining flesh, u thick
as dust, and feathered fowls, like as the sand of the sea ;'
nothing of his amazing descent upon Mount Sinai, when,
in the lofty words of the Psalmist, * ' he bowed the
heavens and came down, and it was dark under his feel ;
he rode upon the cherubim, and did fly ; he came flying
upon the wings of the wind ; he made darkness his secret
place, his pavilion round about him with dark water, ami
thick clouds to cover him ; there went a smoke out of his
presence, hail-stones, and coals of lire, so that the earth
trembled and quaked, the very foundations also of the
hills shook, and were removed.' The wilderness, in
short, was the scene which God had made choice of for
the display of his almighty power and goodness : there
it was, that he ' laid bare his arm,' as he calls it, to the
Israelites ; that every day he took care of their meat
and drink, and indeficiency of their clothing ; and had
he not detained them there so long, he had not been so
kind. It may be considered farther, that before this
people were to be admitted into the possession of the
inheritance which God had promised them, all matters
were to be adjusted between him and them ; and to this
purpose laws were to be given, ordinances instituted,
and covenants sealed ; but a work of this importance
could nowhere be so commodiously transacted as in the
retirement of the wilderness. Here it was that God, in
the bush, talking with Moses, gave it as a token of his
promise, that the people after their deliverance should
come to Mount Horeb, and ' there worship him ; and lit
it was, that such an engagement on God's part should
now receive its accomplishment. And since it was no
more than requisite, that a nation designed for such
peculiar favours from God, should be held some time in
a state of probation, before they were admitted to it,
and until the people, whom they were appointed to reject,
had filled up the measure of their iniquity, and were ripe
for extirpation; therefore it is, that Moses calls upon
them s ' to remember all the way, which the Lord their
God led them, for these forty years, in the wilderness,
to humble them, and to prove them, and to know what
was in their hearts, whether they would keep his com-
mandments or no.'
These commandments, it must be owned, were deli-
vered to the Israelites with all the ensigns of horror,
which the Psalmist, so lately quoted, has described ; but
that there is no ground to suspect any deceit i" this
wonderful occurrence, is manifest from Moses' dealing
so openly with the people in this matter, and suffering
them to go up into the mountain, after the Lord had
departed from it. 7 ' When the trumpet sonndeth long,
they shall come up to the mount.' This is the signal
which God himself gives them ; whereas, had there been
any fallacy in the phenomenon, Moses would have
debarred them from going up for ever. And therefore,
as we need not doubt but that several upon this signal
went up, we cannot but think, that the cheat would hare
soon been discovered, had there been any marks of a
natural eruption of fire discernible upon the top of the
mountain.
Those who give u.^ an account of volcanos, or burning
1 Ps. lxxviii. 14. and cv. 39.
* Wisil. xviii. 3.
3 Ps. lxxviii. 2J, &r.
6 Deut.
* Ps. xviii. 9, &c.
2. " Exod. xix.
I'.xud.
12.
IS.
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mountains, do all agree in this, as the nature of the thing
indeed seems to require it, 1 that on their tops they have
always an open mouth, which the ancients called crater,
through which they belch out their flames ; and that after
the fire is expended, it will still appear in the form of a
monstrous gap, even unto the end of the world. And
therefore, since all travellers, both ancient and modern,
who have taken an accurate survey a of the Mount Sinai,
could never discern the least appearance of any such
gap, bvit, on the contrary, a continued surface, whereon
there stands at present a little chapel of St Catherine ;
all this supposed contrivance of Moses, to make a
natural volcano pass upon the people for the majestic
presence of God upon the sacred mount, can be deemed
no other than a crude, nonsensical fiction, wherein the
lovers of infidelity are found to show their ignorance, as
well as their malice, when they pretend to tax this rela-
tion of Moses, representing God's appearance in a flame
of fire, in thunder, and lightning, &c, with any incon-
gruity, or invent any groundless stories to account for
it ; since nothing can be more agreeable to the ancient
divinity, or common notions of the heathen world, *than
that the apparition of their gods, whenever they descend
1 Nicholls' Conference, part 2. p. 279.
a The mountains of Sinai and Horeb are promiscuously used
by the sacred historian, by reason of their contiguity ; and yet it
is certain, that they are two different places. Sinai, which the
Arabians at this day call Tor, or the Mountain, by way of emi-
nence, or otherwise, Gibel Mousa, the Mount of Moses, stands
in a kind of peninsula, formed by two arms of the Red Sea,
one of which stretches out towards the north, and is called the
Gulf of Kolsom ; the other towards the east, and is called the
Gulf of Elan, or the Elanitish Sea. Sinai is at least one-third
part higher than Horeb, and of a much more difficult ascent;
whose top terminates in an uneven and rugged space, capable of
containing about sixty persons. Here, as we said, is built the
little chapel of St Catherine, where it is thought that the body of
this saint rested for 330 years, but was afterwards removed to
the church which is at the foot of the mountain. Not far from
this chapel issues out a fountain of good fresh water, which is
looked upon as miraculous, because it is not conceivable how water
can rise from the brow of so high a mountain. Horeb is to the
west of Sinai, so that at sunrising the shadow of Sinai entirely
covers Horeb. At the foot of this mount there is a fountain, which
supplies water to the monastery of St Catherine, and about five
or six paces from it, they show us a stone, about four or five feet
high, and three broad, which, as they tell us, is the very same
from whence Moses caused the waters to gush out. It is of a
spotted grey colour, stands by itself, as it were, and where no
other rock appeals, and has twelve holes about a foot wide, from
whence it is thought that the water came forth which the Israelites
did drink. — Calmrt's Dictionary, under the word Sinai.
b That fire and lightning should attend the presence of God,
is a notion so frequent in the most ancient and oriental theology,
that it might possibly give occasion to the worship of fire among
the Chaldeans and Persians; to the Magi, among the Cappado-
cians called Purrethi, which Strabo mentions, and to the vestal
fires among the Greeks and Romans, as well as ancient Britons.
" V, hen yen l» hold the formless sacred flame boundingly gleam-
ing from earth's black abysses, then hark to the voice of Fire,"
say the Chaldaic oracles: and as for earthquakes, or shaking of
mountains, this is no more than what all nations suppose have
ever come to pass, upon God's manifesting himself at any time;
for it is not only the Psalmist who tells us, that ' the earth shook,
and the heaven dropped at the presence of God;' but in the
description which Virgil gives us of the approach of Phoebus, he
does in a manner translate the words of Moses,—" All things
seemed on a sudden to quake, even the halls and laurel trees of
the god ; the whole mountain around was trembling, and the
tripos groaned in the inner recesses of the temple." — See
Nicholls' Conference, part 2.
upon the earth, is usually attended with such like harb
ingers.
Sundry lawgivers, no doubt, have pretended to a fami-
liarity with their respective deities, as well as Moses did
with the God of Israel ; but, besides the attestation of
miracles in his favour, which none of them laid any claim
to, we may venture to put his character upon this issue,
namely, the excellency of his laws, above what Athens,
or Lacedemon, or even Rome itself ever had to produce.
For what a complete system of all religious and social
virtues do the ten commandments, delivered on the
Mount, contain, taking them, as we ought to do, in their
positive as Avell as negative sense. In the second of
these, indeed, there is a passage, of ' God's visiting the
sins of the fathers upon the children,' which seems to
bear a little hard upon his mercy and justice ; but this is
entirely owing to the mistake of our translation. For if
the preposition lamed, and hal, which we there render
upon, may, 2 according to the sense of some critics, be
rendered by, or in favour of; then may the words now
under consideration be properly translated, " God's
punishing the wickedness of the father, by or in favour
of the children." In the former of these senses,3
David's murder and adultery was justly punished by his
favourite, but wicked son Absalom ; and in the latter,
the meaning will be, that God frequently inflicts remark-
able judgments upon a wicked father, in order to deter
his children, even to the third and fourth generations,
from the like provocations.
What more just, as well as merciful constitution could
there be devised, than to ordain cities of refuge for the
innocent manslayer to fly to, thereby to avoid the rage
and ungovernable fury of the dead man's relations, who,
according to the custom of those times, were wont imme-
diately to revenge their kindred's death, and thereby to
gain time to prepare a plea in his own vindication ;
which, if it was found insufficient, and the man adjudged
guilty of wilful murder, could not, according to the tenor
of the same law, secure him from being dragged even
4 ' from the horns of the altar ?'
' An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' may
seem to us, who live under a milder dispensation, a rigid
and severe decree ; but then we may observe, that it was
no more than what was thought reasonable in other
nations, and obtained a place among the c celebrated
Roman laws of the twelve tables. It was in some measure
necessary to restrain quarrelsome and unruly tempers
from violence ; and in case that death did not ensue, the
law was always mitigated, and the talio commuted for a
pecuniary mulct.
Several of the Jewish laws, which to us may seem
frivolous, had a valid reason for their institution at first,
if it were but to discriminate them from other nations,
and to guard them against the common infection of idol-
atry. The wearing of linsey-woolsey was probably a
proud, fantastical fashion of the heathens at that time,
which the Jews were forbid to imitate. An ox and an
ass were not to be coupled together in the same carriage,
2 Le Clerc's Commentary in locum.
J 2 Sam. xi. and some following chapters. * Exod. xxi. 14.
c Aulus Gellius sets down this law of the twelve tables in this
manner: — " Whoever breaketh a member of the body, uidess he
come to terms with the injured, let him suffer the same punish-
ment."
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
281
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with this merciful intent, th.it one beast of greater
strength might not strain a poor creature of less beyond
its ability ; and as sowing the ground with mixed seeds,
in some men's opinion, is an effectual way to wear it out,
it was therefore a practice prohibited, in commiseration,
if I may so say, to our mother earth, as well as to set
bounds to the husbandman's covetousness ; though, as
others imagine, these three injunctions, as they stand
altogether in the same place, might perhaps have some-
thing emblematical in them, besides the precept, to make
men have a greater abhorrence of all venereal mixtures,
contrary to nature.
It is an injunction which God often inculcates to his
people the Jews, ' ' After the doing of the land of Egypt,
wherein ye dwelt, ye shall not do : and after the doing
of the land of Canaan, whither 1 bring you, ye shall not
do : I am the Lord your God, ye shall therefore keep
my statutes and my judgments ;' which words seem to
imply, not only that the idolatrous rites of the Gentiles
were forbidden, but that those of God's appointment
were made in direct opposition to them ; and to this
purpose we find 2 the Roman historian representing the
Jews as a people whose religious rites were so contrary
to all the world besides, that what in others was most
sacred, they accounted profane, and allowed as lawful
what other nations were wont to abominate.
Now, if the Mosaic laws and ceremonies were given to
the Jews, as barriers against idolatry, and formally
repugnant to the customs of the heathens, we may
appeal to any sober and considerate man, whether it be
consistent with good sense, or congruous to truth and
reason, that God should make laws exactly contrary to
the Egyptians and other pagan nations, showing thereby,
that he hated the very semblance of their rites, and yet
at the same time take the rise of his institutions from the
customs and practice of these pagans : nay, whether it
gives us not such an idea of God, as reverence to his
tremendous majesty will not suffer me to name, 3 to
represent him making up all the vain, ludicrous, super-
stitious, impious, impure, idolatrous, magical, and diabo-
lical customs, which had been first invented, and after-
wards practised by the most barbarous nations, and
out of these patching up a gre.it part of the religion
which he appointed his own people.
It cannot well otherwise be, but that, in matters of
tradition, which have equally descended among all nations
perhaps from Noah, a man of some learning and fancy
may form a similitude between the religious rites and
usages of one people with another ; but it would really
rack ones invention to find out the great agreement
between the Jewish high priest and the Egyptian chief
justice ; since the Urim and Thuiumim "■ of the one was ;i
piece of cloth, about a span square, beset with jewels,
but the Alathea, as they call it, of the other, was a
golden medal, representing the figure of a bird ; since
i Lev. xviii. 3, 4. * Tacitus, b. viii. e. 4.
3 Edwards' Survey of Religion, vol. 1.
a Exod. xxviii. 30. ' The Urim and the Thummim.' There
Was a remarkable imitation of this sacred ornament among the
Egyptians; for we learn from Diodorus, (I). 1. p. fi8. ed. II hod.)
and from /Elian, {Far. Hist. b. 14. c. 34.) that " their chief
priest, who was also their supreme judge in civil matters, wore
About his jieck, by a golden chain, an ornament of precious
stones called truth, and that a cause was not opened till the
supreme judge had put on this ornament." — Ed.
C. 1GIS. EXOD. CH. xiii-xxxiv. 24.
the robe of the one was made of scarlet, blue, and
purple woollen cloth, only embroidered with wreaths of
fine linen; but the garment of the other was made of
linen only, because it was unlawful,4 as Herodotus tells
us, for the Egyptian magistrates to wear any thing else.
When the tables of the covenant were delivered to
Moses, it seems no more than requisite, that souk; care
should be taken of them : and if so, what could ho a i •<■
apposite contrivance for that purpose than a chest ?
Moses, even by his enemies, is reputed a very cunning
man ; but they certainly mean it as a compliment, and
not his due, if they think him not capable of so small a
contrivance as this, without copying from the Egyptian
cista, wherein the priests were wont to lock up their
religious trinkets from the eyes of the vulgar; and as
for the cherubim which overshadowed this ark, there
certainly seems nothing analogous, but rather a parti-
cular opposition in these to the Egyptian idolatry.
For, whereas their temples were generally filled with
the images of monkeys, calves, and serpents, the repre-
sentations of real animals, which, according to the
natural deism of those times, they fancied to be parts
and exhibitions of the Deity ; Moses here * orders figures
to be made, which had little or no resemblance of any
thing in the world, and were expressive of the angelical
nature only, which every one knew was subordinate to
God's. So little cong-ruity is there to be found between
the Egyptian and Jewish laws and ceremonies, '-' less
4 B. 2. c. 37.
b What the particular figure of these cherubim was, it is hard
to imagine at this distance. Grotius, indeed, and some others,
have ingeniously conjectured, from the creatures seen by Ezekit I
in his vision, c. i. 5. and x. 15., which he calls cherubim, that
they had the lace of a man, the wings of an eagle, the mane of a
lion, the feet of an ox; and by this they will have the dispensa-
tions of divine providence, by the ministry of angels, symbolically
represented; the lion exhibiting the severity of Ins justice; the
eagle the celerity of his bounty; the man his goodnes-. ami
mercy; the ox the slowness of his punishment; which comes, as
the Greek proverb says, fioilu t«$<, with an ox's foot. — Nichollt'
Conference, part 2.
c To this purpose, we are informed, that the brahmins, the
Indian priests, wear bells about them like the Jewish high priest,
were alone allowed to go into the inward part of the temple, and
were like him obliged to marry virgins. Slaves then' have their
ears bored through; a perpetual light is kept in their templi s, and
cakes are set before their idols like shewbrcad. Nay. even the
barbarous Tartars have many things not unlike the Jews; for they
celebrate their new moons with songs and computations; they
bewail their dead thirty days; they breed no hogs, and puuisb
adultery with death. The like may be Baid of (he people of
the new world. Those of Jucatan are circumcised; thine of
Mexico keep a perpetual fire in the temples; and the Charibeane
celebrate the new moon with the sound of a trumpet, and abstain
from swine's flesh: and therefore if a similitude in ceremonies i-
admitted as a valid argument, we may as well say that the
Jews had their laws and religious ordinances from any of these,
as that they had them from the Egyptians. — NicAolls' Confer-
ence, part 2.
Exod. xxviii. 33. ' Hells." " The bell seems to have been a
sailed ulciisil of very ancient use in Asia. Golden I" II- formed
a part of the ornaments of the pontifical robe of the Jewish high
priest, with which he invested himself upon those grand and
peculiar festival1-', when he entered Into the sanctuary. Thai robe
was very magnificent, it was ordained to be of sky bine, and the
border of it. at the bottom, was adorned with pomegranates and
gold bells intermixed equally, and at equal distances. The use
and intent of tlie-e hells is evident from these word-: — ' And it
shall be upon Aaron to minister, and his Bound Bhall be 1m aid
when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord, ami when
he coineth out, that he die not.' The sound of the numerous
•2 N
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perhaps than might be discovered in several other
nations, were we disposed to be prolix upon this sub-
ject. But let us return to their legislator.
That God, who is a pure spirit, eternal and omni-
present, has neither body nor parts, nor any affections
thereunto belonging, is a proposition which our reason
cannot but assent to ; and yet when we set ourselves to
explain, as we call it, the divine nature and attributes,
we soon find ourselves under a necessity to borrow
expressions from corporeal beings, the better to accom-
modate the loftiness of our subject to our reader's com-
prehension. For unless we could contrive a perfect set
of new words, there is no speaking at all of the Deity
without using our old ones in a tralatitious sense. Pro-
vidence and mercy, for instance, are two known attri-
butes of God ; but if we respect their original use, and
do not take them in a metaphorical meaning, they are
altogether as absurd, when applied to God, as are his
eye, or hand, or back parts, in their grossest sense.
For how improper is it, literally speaking, to say, that
Ood looks before him, like men when they act cautiously ;
or that he has that relenting of heart, or yearning of
bowels, which merciful men feel at the sight of a miser-
able object? The truth is, languages were composed to
enable men to maintain an intercourse with one another,
and not to treat of the nature of that Being who dwelleth
in light that is inaccessible. No form of words, be they
ever so exquisite and well chosen, can reach those trans-
cendent perfections that are unutterable ; and therefore if
we consider the low capacity of the people to whom the
real poverty of the language, in which, and the vast
sublimity of the subject, about which Moses wrote, we
shall have less occasion to blame this metaphorical way
of expressing the divine nature, which upon experiment
he certainly found the best adapted, both to inform the
understanding, and animate the affections of the people ;
while a number of dry, scholastic and abstracted terms,
would have lain flat upon their minds, and served only
iv> amuse and confound them.
Though therefore it must be acknowledged, that there
is indeed an impropriety in language, when corporeal
parts or actions are imputed to the Deity ; yet since the
narrowness of the Hebrew tongue would not furnish
Moses with a sufficiency of abstract terms, and the
dulness of the people, had he had a sufficiency, would
not have permitted him to employ them, he was under
a necessity of speaking according to the common usage,
which was secured from giving the people any gross
lulls that covered the hem of his garment, gave notice to the
assembled people that the most awful ceremony of their religion
had commenced. When arrayed in this garb, he bore into the
sanctuary the vessel of incense; it was the signal to prostrate
themselves before the Deity, and to commence those fervent
ejaculations which were to ascend with the column of that incense
to the throne of heaven." " One indispensable ceremony in the
Indian Pooja is the ringing of a small bell by the officiating
brahmin. The women of the idol, or dancing girls of the pagoda,
have little golden lulls fastened to their feet, the soft harmonious
tinkling of which vibrates in unison with the exquisite melody of
their voices." {Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. 5. p. 189.) —
•• The ancient lungs of Persia, who, in tact, united in their own
nersons the regal and sacerdotal office, were accustomed to have
the fringes of their robes adorned with pomegranates and golden
hells. The Arabian courtesans, like the Indian women, have
little golden hells fastened round their legs, neck, and elbows, to
Lie sound of which they dance before the king. Ed.
ideas of God, because these phrases were always under-
stood to be spoken with the feelings of a man ; and
therefore l a Jewish rabbin acquaints us, that whenever
they meet with an expression concerning the Deity, of
this nature, they are used to interpose a cabiacal, or, if
/ may so speak.
Interpreters indeed are at some variance what we are
to understand by the hand, face, and hinder parts of God.
" The face of God," 2 says an ingenious glossary, " sig-
nifies his essence, before the beginning of the world, and
his hinder parts, his creation and providence in the
government of the world :" but 3 Maimonides is of opi-
nion, that these words may be interpreted according to
the Targum, namely, that God made his majesty, that is,
an exceedingly bright representation of himself, though
not in its full glory, pass before Moses, in so much
splendour as human nature could bear, which may be
termed his back parts ; but not in his unveiled bright-
ness, which may signify his face, and, as the apostle
speaks, is inaccessible ; and 4 the hand, wherewith God
covered him, while he passed by, may probably denote
a cloud, which God cast about him, that he might not be
struck dead by the inconceivable force and refulgency
of those rays, which came from the face or full lustre of
the divine Majesty.
In this sense the ancient Jews could not but under-
stand their legislator, when they found him conveying
sublime truths under outward and sensible representa-
tions. For, to clear him from all unjust imputation, we
need but call to mind the glorious descriptions he gives,
almost everywhere, but especially in Deuteronomy, of
the Deity, and what pains he takes to deter them from
making any representation of it, under any form what-
ever, by reminding them, that when God was pleased to
display his glory upon Mount Sinai, at the delivering of
the ten commandments, they saw no shape or likeness,
but only heard his dreadful voice. 5 These so frequent
inculcations may therefore be looked upon as so many
intimations given them, in what sense they were to
understand all those other expressions which he had been
forced to accommodate to their capacity, that is, not in a
literal, but in such a one, as was becoming the Deity,
and suitable to the dignity of the subject.
Moses, no doubt, was a good governor, and zealously
affected for the welfare of his people : but we injure his
memory much, if we think him either so ignorant of a
future state, or so negligent of his own salvation, as to
wish himself damned, in his deprecation of God's judg-
ments, for their salvation. The case is this, — The
Israelites, in making a golden calf to worship, had
highly offended God : God renounces all relation to
them, and in his displeasure, threatens either to abandon
or destroy them ; whereupon Moses intercedes for their
pardon, and among other motives, makes use of this : 6
' Oh, my God, this people have sinned a great sin, and
have made them gods of gold ; yet now, if thou wilt,
forgive their sins ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out
of the book which thou hast written :' 7 not that God
stands in need of a book wherein to register or recoid
'Quoted by Hottinger in his Dissert. Theolog. Philol.
8 Elias Cretensis. 3 More Nevoch. part 1. c. 21.
4 Patrick's Commentary on Exod. xxxiii.
* Universal History, b. 1. c. 7. 6 Exod. xxxii. 32.
' Patrick's Commentary in locum.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
2S3
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1491 :
any of his purposes : a but the Scripture makes use of
this form of expression, in allusion to the custom of
numbering the people, and setting down their names in
a scroll or register, 1 as Moses did at their coming out
of the land of Egypt. The same method was likewise
observed at the return from the Babylonish captivity, as
may be seen in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah ; and
those who were enrolled in this book, are said a ' to be
written for life,' or ' among the living,' because every
year they blotted out of this catalogue the names of those
that were dead.
According to this construction of the phrase, and this
is certainly the true construction, Moses can by no means
be supposed to wish his own damnation, which would
look like an enthusiastic rant, rather than divine inspir-
ation ; which would be impious for him to ask, and
unrighteous for God to do ; but only that, " rather than
live to see the calamities which would befall the people
in case God should either desert or destroy them, he
desires to be discharged from life, that so he may escape
the shock of so woeful, so terrible a spectacle."
In a former communion with God, wherein he threatens
either to extirpate or disinherit his people, he promises
Moses to 3 ' make him a greater nation, and mightier than
they ;' but instead of that, Moses here desires to die with
them ; and, as a learned father of the church observes, 4
" there is a great deal of pious art and policy in the
petition, or proposal, as we may call it, which this great
favourite and confident of God offers to him. He does
not make it at all adventures, as one less acquainted with
the divine mind might do ; nor does he make it out of a
slight and contempt of life, as one whose circumstances
had brought him into despair might do. He knew God's
goodness was infinite, as Avell as his justice ; so that, in
this alternative, ' either be thou pleased to slay me and
them together, or to spare them and me together,' he was
sensible he should engage God's mercy to pardon the
criminals, whilst, on their behalf, he devoted himself at
the same time to that justice which cannot be supposed
capable of hurting the innocent."
One great commendation which we have frequently
remarked of the author of the Pentateuch, above any
other historian, is, that he consults truth more than plau-
sibility in his narrations, and conceals no material point,
even though it tends to the dishonour of the people whose
actions he is recording. Josephus wrote the Jewish
history of these times as well as Moses ; and yet, when
1 Num. i. * Is. iv. 3.
3 Numb. xiv. 12. 'Paulin. epist. 21.
a To this purpose the royal Psalmist, in relation to his own
formation in the womb, bespeaks God, and says, ' Thine eyes did
see my substance, yet being imperfect, and in thy book were all
my members written,' as if God kept a catalogue of the children
that were bom, (Ps. cxxxix. 16.) And again, speaking of
wicked men, he says, ' Let them be wiped out of the book of
the living, and not be written among the righteous, (Ps. lxix.
28.) Nor is this form of speech to be found only among sacred
writers, but even Plautus himself, having occasion, in one of his
prologues, to take some notice of the divine Providence, makes
use of these words: — " Those who by false witnesses wish to gain
unjust pleas, those who in a suit deny by oath money which they
owe, have their names inscribed in the rolls of Jupiter; he
knoweth every day who here ask for what is unjust. The wicked
who wrongfully entreat to gain their suit, who obtain false deci-
sions from the judge, he hath marked in one tablet, — the good
are enrolled in another." — Le Clerc's Comment. <id Exod, c. 32.
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37C3. A. C. 1648. EXOD. CH. xiii-xxxiv. 24.
he comes to the proper period, he quite conceals their
blind idolatry in worshipping the golden calf, whereas
Moses relates it in all its aggravating circumstances,
and seems to fix, in a manner, the whole odium of it upon
his brother Aaron. And therefore, to inform ourselves
how far Aaron was culpable in this particular, we must
attend a little to the probable occasion of it.
AYhile Moses was gone up into the Mount, he appointed
Aaron and Hur to be the rulers of the people in his
absence ; but as his absence proved longer than was
expected, the people began to be uneasy. They saw
'the glory of the Lord, which was like a devouring lire
on the top of the mount,' and thereupon they concluded
that Moses, who tarried so long, was certainly destr«i\ ed
in the flames. They saw too that the ' pillar of the
cloud,' which used to conduct them in their marches was
gone, and in no likelihood of returning again ; and here-
upon having lost their guide, and the visible token of
God's presence among them, they came unto Aaron, and
in a tumultuous manner, demanded of him to make them
another representation of the divine presence, in the
room of what was departed from them. 5 Up, say they,
and make us gods, or (as the Hebrew text will bear *>,)
' make us a god which shall go before us.' 6 Not that
they were so stupid as to imagine, that the true God
could be made by any man, or that any image could be
a means of conducting them, either forward into Canaan,
or back again into Egypt; but what they wanted, was
some outward object to supply the want of the cloud, by
being a type and symbol of the Deity, and where they
might depose the homage which they intended to pay to
the supreme God ; for so some of the Jewish doctors have
expounded the text of Moses : 7 ' They desired a sensi-
ble object of divine worship to be set before them, not
with an intention to deny God, who brought them out of
Egypt, but that something, in the place of God, might
stand before them, when they declared his wonderful
works.'
The commandment against making images had so
lately, in so terrible a manner, been enjoined by God
himself, that though some reason may be given win the
children of Israel were so forward to make the demand,
yet none can be imagined, why Aaron should comply
with it, without making any remonstrance 5 and yet \\<-
meet with no refusal recorded by Moses. All that we
have in extenuation of Aaron's fault, is from the sug-
gestion of the rabbins, who pretend that his compli-
ance proceeded from his fear ; that the people had ' mur-
dered Hur the other deputy, for opposing their desire ;
5 Exod. xxxii. 1. * Saurin's Dissertations.
7 R. Jehudah, in b. Cozri, part 1. Beet. 97.
b It has been argued by some learned men, thai the Israelites
intended here to fall entirely Into the Egyptian religion, and that
the Deity they made the calf to, was some god of the Eg] ptians:
but to me this seems not to be the fact In this calf the Israelites
evidently designed to worship the < i»«l who brought them OUl 01
the land of Egypt, and accordingly their feast was proclaimed,
not to any Egyptian deity, but to the Lord, to Jehovah, their
own God, (Exod. xxxii. 4.) So that their idolatry consisted not
in really worshipping R false deity, but in making an image of
the true and living God, which the second commandment ex-
pressly did Uubid.—Skuckford't Connection, vol. 3. b. 11.
c What authority they had for these assertions, 1 cannot say;
but if what they offer be true, this dues not at all prove Aaron
to be innocent; because 00 obstinacy of the people COldi
forced him without his own fault, and he should have been will-
284
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2813. A. C. 1401; OR, ACCORDING TO HALl
that to discourage them from pursuing their design,
Aaron demanded all their golden ear-rings, in hopes
that they would not insist upon having an idol which
would cost them so dear ; but that when nothing would
avail, he took their gold, and cast it into the fire, and,
contrary to his intention, by some magical or diabolical
art, there immediately came out a calf, which much
increased the people's superstition. But this, and abun-
dance more of the like nature, seem to be conceits
invented for the excuse of Aaron, who is plainly enough
said to have l ' made this molten calf,' which he could
not have done, without designing it, and running the
gold into a mould of that figure.
The word which we here render calf, ?' does, in other
places of Scripture, signify an ox : and as an ox's head
was, in some countries, an emblem of strength, and the
horns a common sign of kingly power ; so 3 a learned
prelate, out of a design to apologize for Aaron, is will-
ing to insinuate, that his design in making an ox the
symbol of the divine presence, was to remind the Israel-
ites of the power of God, and to express the great tokens
which they had seen of it, in their wonderful deliverance.
But how ingenious soever this hypothesis may be, it
wants this foundation for its support, that this hierogly-
phic of the divine power was not in use in the time of
Moses ; for if it was, we cannot imagine why Aaron,
when called to an account by his brother, should forget
to plead it in excuse for himself; or why God should be
so highly incensed against him, had his design been only
to exhibit a symbol of the divine power and authority to
a people of too gross sentiments, without such a visible
representation, ever to comprehend it.
Another learned prelate of our own, 4 equally inclined
to excuse this action of Aaron, supposes that he
took his pattern from part of what he saw on the holy
mount, when the Shechinah of God came down upon it,
attended witli angels, some of which were cherubim, or
angels appearing in the form of oxen : but this opinion
is inconsistent with the great care which was taken on
Mount Sinai, not to furnish any pretext for idolatry, and
the caution which Moses gives the people to that pur-
pose. * ' Take ye therefore good heed to yourselves, for
ye saw no manner of similitude, on the day that the
Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the
tire, lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven
image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of any
male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the
earth ; the likeness of any winged fowl that ilieth in the
air ; the likeness of any thing that creepeth on the
ground ; the likeness of any fish,' &c. where the Holy
Spirit enumerates animals of all kinds, and positively
assures us, that none of their forms or figures appeared
upon the mount.
The most common therefore, and indeed the most
probable opinion is, that Aaron made choice of the
1 Exod. xxxii. 35. s Ps. cvi. 20.
J Patrick in his Commentary in locum.
4 Tennison on Idolatry, c. 6. 5 Dent. iv. 15, &c.
ing, and adventured to die, rather than, hy a timorous compli-
ance, have made himself partaker of their sins. "Neither the
instigation of citizens shouting for crime, nor the stern look of
the oppressive tyrant, ran move from his rooted determination,
the man upright and resolute in his purpose," &e. — Bur. Carm.
dc 3.
iS, A. M. 37G3. A. C. IG48. EXOD. CH. xiii— xxxiv. 24.
figure of an ox or calf, in compliance to the prejudice of
the people, and because that creature was worshipped
in Egypt. That the Israelites were sorely infected with
the idolatry of the Egyptians, we have many plain proofs
6 from Scripture to convince us, that all sorts of animals
were worshipped by the Egyptians, and among the ter-
restrial, more especially the ox, is what ' the several
authors, who have treated of the affairs of Egypt, do
abundantly testify ; and that the idolatry of animals, and
more especially of the ox, was established in Egypt
during the sojourning of the Israelites in that land, is
more than probable from these words of Moses to
Pharaoh ; 8 ' If we sacrifice the abomination of the
Egyptians before their eyes ;' that is, if we sacrifice to
our God, oxen, sheep, and goats, which the Egyptians
worship and adore, and consequently make an abomina-
tion to the Lord, ' will they not stone us ? ' So that it
seems most rational to suppose, that this image was
made in compliance to the giddy humour of the people,
who, upon the supposed death of Moses, were probably
all for turning back again, and in imitation of the
Egyptians, who worshipped their idol Apis, or Serapis,
not only in a living ox, but in an image made after the
similitude of an ox, bethought themselves of the like
representation of a deity to go before them : the only
question is, whether the worship of the Egyptian Apis
was prior to the formation of this golden calf? which
happens to be a point wherein 9 the learned are not so
well agreed.
Thus we have endeavoured to give a full answer to
several objections which have been raised against the
sacred historian, during the period which is at present
under consideration : and for a further confirmation
hereof, we might now produce some foreign testimonies
and traditions concerning the truth and veracity of his
narrations. That the miraculous pillar, for instance,
which conducted the Israelites in the wilderness, very
probably gave rise to the ancient fables, lu how Hercules
and Bacchus, (who under different shapes, are both sup-
posed to denote Moses,) set up pillars in testimony of
their travels and expeditions ; that the Israelites' safe
passage over the Red Sea, upon its being divided by
the rod of Moses, and the tradition which the people of
Memphis have thereupon, are related by Antipanus, as
he is quoted u by Eusebius ; that upon the return and
conrlux of the waters, the armies which pursued them
were swallowed up in the deep, is mentioned 12 by Dio-
dorus, as a current story among the people inhabiting
the western coast of the Red Sea ; that on this coast
there are several lakes and springs of a salt and brackish
taste, in the manner that Moses has recorded, and no
such thing found on the other side of the sea, is testified,
u by Orosius, as well as several ancient geographers ,
that God's sending down manna for bread to the Israel-
ites, and great plenty of quails for meat, is mentioned
by Antipanus, as he is cited again M by Eusebius ; that,
from Moses' striking the rock with his rod, the fable of
B See Josh. xxiv. 14. Ezek. xx. 7, S. and xxii. 3, 8.
7 See Straho, h. 17. de Egyptians templis, Herod, b. 2. Diod.
b. 1. et Plutar. de Iside et Osiride. 8 Exod. viii. 2(5.
9 See Ger. Vos. de Idolat. c. 9. Borhart Hieros. part 1 . b.
2. and Tennison on Idolatry. '"Huetius Qucest. Alnet. b. 1.
11 Pr»p. Evan. b. 9. ,2 Prtep. Evan. b. 3. p. 174.
r Huetius Quicst. Atiiet. b. 2. M Prap. Evan. b. 9, c. 27.
Sect. I.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1191; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3763. A. C. 1C48. EXOD. CH. xiii
285
Bacchus' doing the same with his Thyrsus, in order to
extract water for the relief of the virgin Aura, had its
original : and, to name no more, that from Moses'
receiving the law on Mount Sinai, most of the lawgivers
of other nations took the hint to borrow their institutions
from some god or goddess or other ; Minos, from Jupi-
ter ; Lycurgus, from Apollo ; Zeleucus, from Minerva ;
Numa, from Egeria, &c. ; so well was the world per-
suaded of the truth and authority of the Jewish legisla-
tor, when they seemed to agree in this, — That even a
distant imitation of him was enough to give sanction to
their several fictions.
CHAP. III. — Of the Israelites passing the Red Sea.
The passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea is
what we have reserved for the subject of our dissertation,
because it is one of the most remarkable events in this
period, if not in the whole Jewish history ; and yet has
had the misfortune to meet with more suggestions against
its miraculousness, than any other that we find upon
record.
AVhat has contributed to this perverseness, may not
unlikely be the fond conceits which some ancient
doctors, both of the Jewish and Christian church, have
been pleased to affix to this miracle, namely, that God
divided the sea into twelve passages, according to the
twelve tribes ; that to facilitate their passage, he pulled
up the weeds, removed huge stones, levelled the rugged
places, and made the sand at the bottom as hard as a
rock ; that the waters, upon being divided, were imme-
diately congealed, and stood in array, like a wall of
glass ; and that some fragments of the Egyptian chariot-
wheels may even to this day be seen at the bottom, as
far as the sight can reach. For it is not improbable,
that in prejudice to these extravagant fancies, others
have exercised all their wit and learning to depreciate
the miracle by asserting, — That there was no more in it,
even as Josephus himself seems to insinuate, than in
Alexander's passing the sea of Pamphylia ; * that the
Red Sea, especially in the extreme part of it, where the
Israelites passed, is not above two or three miles over,
and very often dry, by reason of the great reflux of the
tide ; and that Moses, who perfectly understood the
country, and had made his observations upon the flux
and reflux of the sea, led down his men at the time of
ebb, when, being favoured by a strong wind blowing
from the shore, he had the good luck to get safe to the
other side ; while Pharaoh and his army, hoping to do
the same, but mistaken in their computation, had the
misfortune to be lost. And therefore, to give this matter
a fair hearing, we shall first endeavour to establish the
truth of the miracle, and then examine into the preten-
sions of those who are willing either to ascribe it to
natural causes, or to compare it with other events, as
they suppose, of the like nature.
Without entering far into Moses' character, we will
suppose him at present a man of common sense, and who
1 See Lc Clcvc's Dissertation concerning
Red Sea.
the Passage of the
xxxiv. M.
had some honour and modesty in him ; and yet if he had,
we can hardly conceive how he durst have recorded so
palpable an untruth, supposing this passage to have
nothing miraculous in it, when there was such a multi-
tude of living witnesses to confront him ; or L' what pos-
sible artifice he could use to persuade above two millions
of persons that God, by his hand, had wrought a stupen-
dous miracle, when they knew as well as lie that there
was no such thing transacted. Among such a contuma-
cious and mutinous set of people, Moses must necessarily
have made himself ridiculous, and his authority despi-
cable, had he ever once attempted to foist such a fable
upon them. And therefore, when Ave find other sacred
writers bearing testimony to what he relates, and relating
the matter in the like lofty expressions ; when we find
the royal Psalmist assuring us, that 3 ' God dividing the
sea, made the waters to stand up on an heap, and caused
the Israelites to pass through ;' when we find the prophet
Isaiah demanding, 4 ' where is he, that brought them up
out of the sea, that led them by the right hand of Moses,
by his glorious arm dividing the water before him, to
make him an everlasting name ?' when we find the pro-
phet Habakkuk declaring upon this occasion, that5' the
Lord made himself a road to drive his chariot and horses
cross the sea, across the mud of the great waters :' and
when we find the author of the book of Wisdom thus re-
cording the story ; " ' Where water stood before, dry
land appeared ; out of the Red Sea a way without im-
pediment, and out of the violent stream a green field,
where-through all the people went, that were defended
by thy hand, seeing thy marvellous strange wonders ; for
they went at large like horses, and leaped like lambs,
praising thee, O Lord, who hadst delivered them :' when
we find these, I say, and several more writers of great
authority, asserting the wonderfubiess of this passage,
unless we can suppose that they were all combined to
impose upon us, we cannot but assent to the truth of the
fact itself, how poetical soever we may think the words
of that sacred hymn to be wherein Moses endeavours to
display it : "' ' By the blast of thy nostrils the waters
were gathered together, the flood stood upright as an
heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the
sea.'
In an event so wonderful and so unaccountable to
human reason, it cannot be expected but that traditions
should difler, and accounts be various : but certainly it
is no small confirmation of the testimony which the sacred
writers give us of it that we find Antipanus, in his history
of the Jews, as he is quoted1 by * Eusebiua, and ' Cle-
mens of Alexandria, giving us this narration of the
matter. " The people of Memphis tell us, that Moses,
who was acquainted with all the country, knowing the
time when the tide would be out, carried over all his
army at low water : but those of lleliopolis say other-
wise, namely, that the king, following the Jews going
away with what they had borrowed of the Egyptians,
carried witli him a great army J but that Moses, by an
order from heaven, struck the sea with a rod, whereupon
the waters immediately separated, and he led over his
s Calmet's Dissertation on the Passage of the Red Sea.
:! IV. Iwviii. IS. " Is. lxiii. 12. ' Hal', iii. 15.
'■ \\ i-.i. xi\. 7, be. rExod. x\. B.
s Pnap. Evan. l>. !>. c. 27. ■ Strom. i». I.
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forces in a dry track ; but that the Egyptians, attempting
the same passage, were dazzled by lightning, and as the
sea returned upon the paths they were in, were all
destroyed either by fire or water." So that if the joint
testimony both of friends and foes can have any weight
with us, we cannot but believe that this passage of the
Israelites, as it is recorded by Moses, was certainly matter
of fact, and a fact so very wonderful and miraculous,
that nothing in history can stand in competition with it.
The passage of Alexander the Great over the sea of
Pamphylia bears no manner of resemblance to this of the
Israelites. Alexander, as * Arian, a and others relate
it, was to march from Phaselis, a seaport, to Perga, an
inland city of Pamphylia. The country near Phaselis,
upon the shore of the Pamphylian sea, was mountainous
and rocky ; so that he could not find a passage for his
army, without either taking a great compass round the
mountains, or attempting to go over the strand between
the rocks and the sea. The historian remarks, that there
is no passing along this place unless when the wind
blows from the north ; and therefore Alexander, when
he came to Phaselis, perceiving that the wind blew from
this quarter, laid hold of the opportunity, and having
sent some of his army over the mountains, went himself
with the rest along the shore. But now what miracle
was there in all this, unless we call the wind's blowing
opportunely for Alexander's purpose a miracle ? It is
certain that, according to Plutarch's account of the
thing, Alexander himself thought that there Mas nothing
extraordinary in it ; and therefore we may justly wonder
h at Josephus' comparing this passage with that of the
1 Exped. Alex. b. 1 ; and Shuckford's Connection, vol. 2. b. 9.
2 In Alexand. p. 674.
a Strabo relates the matter thus. " About Phaselis there are
straits towards the sea, through which Alexander passed his
army. There is also a mountain called Climax, which lies to
the Pamphylian sea, leaving a strait passage to the shore,
which is quite bare in good weather, but when the waves arise,
it is for the most part covered with them. Now, the road by
the mountain is about, and difficult; and therefore, in calm
weather, they go by the shore. But Alexander coming hither
in stormy weather, and trusting to his fortune, would go over
before the waves were abated, which made his soldiers go all day
up to the navel in water." (b. 14.) And much to the same
purpose is the account which Plutarch gives us. " The march
through Pamphylia," says he, "has been the subject to many
historians of mighty wonder, and fine declamation, as if the sea
by order of the gods, gave place to Alexander, which almost
always is rough there, and does very rarely open a smooth pas-
sage under those broken rocks. But Alexander himself, in his
epistles, speaks of no miracle, but only says, that he passed by
Climax, as he came from Phaselis." {Vita Mex.) Now, by the
joint authority of these two excellent historians, this passage is
no more than an ordinary thing; but the Mosaic transit must
still remain a miracle, until we find as good historians to -vouch
for a passage over the Red Sea. — Nicholls' Conference, part 2.
b The words of Josephus are these. " I have been more par-
ticular in these relations, because I find them in holy writ; and
let no man think this story incredible of the sea's dividing to
save the Hebrews, for we find it in ancient records, that this
hath been seen before, whether by God's extraordinary will, or
by the course of nature, it is indifferent. The same thing hap-
pened one time to the Macedonians, under the command of
Alexander, when, for want of another passage, the Pamphylian
sea divided to make them way, God's providence making use of
Alexander at that time as his instrument for destroying the
Persian empire." (b. 2. c. 10.) But it is evident that Josephus
was ignorant of the account of the above cited historians, other-
wise he would have said nothing of the Pamphylian sea's dividing
Israelites, when there is so manifest a disparity between
them. The Israelites crossed over a sea, where no his-
torian makes mention of any persons, but they, that ever
found a passage ; whereas Alexander only marched
upon the shore of the sea of Pamphylia, where the several
historians who most magnify the divine providence in
protecting him, do all freely allow, that any one may at
any time go, when the tide retreats, and the same wind
blows that favoured him.
What the breadth of the Red Sea may be at the place
where the Israelites passed over, is not so easy a matter
to determine, c because both geographers and travellers
mightily differ in their computations. But if, according
to some of the lowest accounts, we suppose it to be much
about two leagues, most writers agree, that the sea in
this place is very boisterous and tempestuous, which is
hardly consistent with a shallowness, much less a total
desertion of water, upon any hasty reflux. The wind,
it must be owned, if it blew from a right quarter, might
both forward the ebb, and retard the flux ; but the wind,
which blew at this time, we are told, was an east wind,
whereas it must have been a west, or north-west wind, to
have driven the water from the land's end into the main
body of the sea, as any one who looks into a map may
easily perceive. But now the east wind blows cross the
sea, and the effect of it must be, to drive the waters
partly up to the extremity of the bay, and partly down
to the ocean, which probably is the meaning, if we must
allow an hyperbole in the expression, of the waters
' being a wall to the Israelites on their right hand, and
on their left,' because they so defended them on both
sides, that the Egyptians could no way come at them,
but by pursuing them in the same path which they took.
Why they ventured to pursue the Israelites, the sacred
historian seems plainly to intimate, when he tells us, 3
that ' the angel of the Lord, which went before the camp,
removed, and went behind them : it came between the
camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and was
a cloud and darkness to the one, but gave light by night
to the other :' so that the true reason why the Egyptians
went in after the Israelites into the midst of the sea,
was, that they knew not where they were. They imagined,
perhaps, that they were still upon the land, or at least
upon the shore, whence the sea had retired ; the dark-
ness of the night, and the preternatural darkness of the
cloud, not suffering them to see the mountains of water
on each side. But 4 ' when the Lord looked on the host
of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire,' that is, when
he turned the bright side of the cloud upon them, to let
them see the danger they were in, and at the same time,
as Josephus adds, poured out a storm of thunder and
lightning, and hailstones upon them from the cloud, 5
» Exod. xiv. 19, 20. 4 Exod. xiv. 19. 5 Exod. xiv. 25.
for the passage of the Macedonian army, when the matter of
fact was no such thing.
c One affirms that the sea is six leagues wide at this place ;
another makes it but fifteen furlongs; one says it is narrow, and
long like a river, and another allows it to be the breadth of one
league. Thevenot makes it eight or nine miles in breadth, but
Andricomius will have it to be no more than six. The transit
most probably took place at the embouchure of the valley of Bedea,
or about twenty miles below Suez, at which point, according to
Bruce, the gulf is three leagues over, with fourteen fathoms of
water in the channel.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
2S7
A. M. 2513. A. C. 1 191 ; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37C3. A. C. 1G48. EXOD. CH. xiii
* Let us flee,1 cried they, ' from the face of Israel, for
the Lord fighteth for them.'
It is not to be questioned, but that Moses was a per-
son of excellent judgment : by his being so long a
general of an army, he could not but know the proper
advantages that might be made in marches and retreats ;
and yet he seems to give no great specimen of his skill,
by declining the mountains, which possibly were inac-
cessible to the chariots and horsemen, and marching his
men along the sea coasts, where Pharaoh's army might
make after him, as we find they did, had not God com-
manded him to take this route, and foretold him the
event. Upon the approach of the Egyptian army,
Moses has sufficiently described the consternation which
the Israelites were in ; and can any one suppose, that
such a situation of tilings was matter of their own choice,
or that their leader would of his own head have brought
them into a place where there was no possibility of
escaping the fury of their enemies, without crossing the
sea ? l Had Pharaoh laid hold of this advantage, and
nothing but a miraculous interposition could have hin-
dered him, how could Moses, with all his sweet words,
and address, have prevailed with his people to run into
the sea ? Or, supposing that he trusted to the tide at
ebb, how could he know for certainty, that this ebb
would begin precisely at the close of the day, and that
the Egyptians would allow him time to decamp, without
their guards giving them intelligence, or their forces
pursuing him in his retreat ; which had they done, to
what dismal extremities must he and his people have
been reduced ? If we suppose that this was an hasty
resolution, which the difficulties he found himself in
compelled him to take ; yet we shall still be at a loss to
know, how lie could possibly answer for the event, or
with what face he could promise the people, that ~ ' the
Lord would fight for them ; that they should stand still
and see the salvation which he would show them ; '
and that the Egyptians, who had given them so much
molestation, ' they should see them again no more for
ever ?'
He might not be ignorant perhaps of the course of the
tide, and might easily discern the favourable disposition
of the wind ; but was there never a man in all the great
army which Pharaoh brought with him, of equal observa-
tion and skill ? It is incongruous to think, that the
Egyptians, who excelled at that time all other nations in
their knowledge and observation of celestial bodies,
should be ignorant of the fluxes and refluxes of the sea,
in their own country, in their own coast, and in their
own most trading and frequented ports and havens, and
if they were not ignorant of the time of the reflux, it is
hardty to be imagined, that any eagerness of pursuit
would have made them venture into the gulf, when they
could not but be sensible, that in case they niiscomputed,
the returning waves would devour, and swallow them up.
But the truth is, their taking the tide at the ebb would
serve the purposes, neither of the Israelites escaping,
nor the Egyptians pursuing them. That it badly answer-
ed the design of the Egyptians is plain from the event ;
and that the Israelites could promise themselves no
1 Calmet'.s Dissertation on the Passage of the Red Sea.
2 Exod. xiv. 13, 14.
xxxiv. 24.
security by it, is evident from the nature of its motion.
3 Every one knows, that in the flux of the sea, its waters
come on gradually, and for the space of six hours, swell
higher and higher upon the banks ; and then continuing
in this state for about a quarter of an hour, they sink by
degrees for six hours more, and retreating from tin-
shores, which is called the reflux, they remain at their
lowest ebb, as long as they had done at their highest
flux, and then begin to change their course, and creep
in towards the shore again; and in this revolution they
always go on, with the variation only of three quarters
of an hour, and some minutes, in each tide.
That the Red Sea does ebb and flow like other seas
that have communication with the main ocean, we readily
grant ; but then we are told by those who have made the
exactest observations, that the greatest distance that it
falls from the place of high water, is not above three
hundred yards, and that these three hundred yards, which
the sea leaves uncovered at the time of low water, can-
not continue so above half an hour at most ; because,
during the first six hours, the sea does only retire by
degrees, and in less than half an hour, it begins to flow
again towards the shore ; so that upon a moderate com-
putation, the most that can be allowed, both of time and
space of passable ground, is but about two hundred
yards, during six hours, and an hundred and fifty during
eight. But now it is plain, that a multitude of above
two millions of men, women, and children, encumbered
with great quantities of cattle and household stuff', could
never be able to cross, even though we suppose it to be
that arm or point of the sea, which is not far distant
from the port of Suez, and allow them withal a double
portion of time, and a double space of ground to perform
it in ; whereas the general tradition is, that the place
where the Israelites entered the Red Sea on the Egyp-
tian side, is two or three leagues below this northern
point, at a place called Kolsum ; and the place where
they came out of it, on the Arabian side, is at present
called 4 Corondal, where the sea is about eight or nine
miles in breadth.
From the breadth of the sea, and the Israelites coming
out of it at a place * of the same name with that of
their entrance, some have imagined, that they did not
cross from shore to shore, but only took a short compass
along the strand that was left dry at low water, and BO
came out a little farther in the bay, which the Egyptians
attempting to do, by the unexpected return of the tide,
were all lost. Now, besides the incongruity, as we said
before, of supposing the Israelites better judges of the
tide than the Egyptians were, we do not find, that the
Scriptures any where determine the length of time which
the former employed in passing this sea. ' In the morn-
ing watch,' which continued from two to six in the
morning, it is said indeed, that 6 ' the Lord troubled the
host of the Egyptians, and took oft* their chariot wheel- ;'
but how long the Israelites might have entered the
channel, before the Egyptians met with this obstrui tion,
is nowhere said ; so that the computation of time will
depend upon the supposed breadth of the sea.
Supposing then, as we said before, that the breadth of
' Calmet's Dissert, ibid. " Theveoot'a Voyage de Levant
s Compare Exod. xiii. '20. with Num. xxxxiii. <', «•
«Exod. xiv. -2\, :*5.
288
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1100; OH, ACCORDING TO HAI.ES, A. M. 3704. A. C. 1G47. EXOD xxxiv. 28-NUM. xviii.
the sea, was about eight miles in all, we cannot but
imagine, that a people, ' full of strength and vigour, as
the Psalmist represents them, pursued by so dreadful and
enraged an enemy, would make the best of their way :
nor can we see any absurdity, in an event so abounding
with miracles, to suppose one more. 2 Now, if God
interposed his power to disable the chariots of Pharaoh,
lest the return of the waters should excite the Egyptians'
fears, and their fears, by improving their diligence,
save them from destruction, why might not God interpose
the same power, if there was occasion, to quicken and
accelerate the Israelites, and make them perform their
passage in due time ? Nay, if we will allow his own
words to be a good comment upon his actions, we cannot
but suppose that he did so, when we find him, after all
was over, recounting his kindness to them thus : 3 ' Ye
have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I did
bear you on eagle's wings,' where the expression cer-
tainly denotes some extraordinary assistance given them
in their passage, ' and brought you unto myself.' It can-
not be denied, indeed, but that some ambiguity may arise
as to the place where the Israelites came on shore, since
they were at Etham but two days before, and now landed
in a wilderness of the same name ; yet if we will but sup-
pose that there were two Ethams, the one a town where
they encamped on the Egyptian side, and the other, on
the Arabian side, a wilderness ; or if we will needs have
the wilderness of Etham denominated from the town,
supposing that the town was situated near the upper part
of the Red Sea, and gave denomination to a great
desert, which surrounded the head of the bay, and reached
down a considerable space on both sides of it, we may
easily perceive that though the Israelites, in the evening,
marched from the wilderness of Etham cross the gulf,
yet, upon their landing in the morning, they would but
be in another part of the wilderness of Etham still.
Upon the whole, therefore, it appears, that the Israelites
coasting it along the Egyptian shore, in a kind of semi-
circle, is both a needless and groundless supposition.
For had this been all, upon the return of the tide the
drowned Egyptians must have been brought back upon
their own shore ; whereas the scripture account of this
matter is, that, as soon as * ' Moses stretched out his
hand over the sea, it returned to its strength, and the
waters returned, and covered the Egyptians who fled
against them ;' which certainly can denote no less, than
that the mountains of waters were first dissolved where
they were first congealed, that is, on the Egyptian side,
and that there beginning to reunite, in order to stop the
Egyptians' return, they came rushing upon them in vast
inundations, and of course swept them away to the
contrary, that is, the Arabian shore, where all the host
of Israel was safely arrived.
Thus we have endeavoured to evince the reality of
this miraculous event, and to examine the pretences of
those who have either compared it with others recorded
in profane story, or ascribed it to natural causes, or
espied some seeming contradictions in it ; and have
nothing now more to do, but, with the grateful Psalmist,
to acknowledge upon this occasion, 5 ' Thy way, O Lord,
is in the sea, and thy paths in the great waters, and thy
footsteps are not known. Thou art a God that doest
wonders, and hast declared thy power among the people.'
Ps. p.v. 37. * Saurin's Dissert. 3 Exod. \ix. -1.
* tixod. \iv. 27, 2S. 5 Ps. lxxvii. 11, 1.).
CHAP. VI. — On the passage of the Red Sea, and
journeyings of the Israelites.
SUPPLEMENTAL.
The following very satisfactory article on the geography
of the Israelites' route from Egypt to Canaan, is taken
from Mansford's Scripture Gazetteer, the best recent
work on Scripture geography that we hav,e met with.
"The Almighty having punished the Egyptians for
their blindness and obduracy by the plagues which they
had suffered, and prepared his people, by their mira-
culous preservation during these scenes of terror, to
place an unlimited confidence in their leader, moved
the hardened mind of Pharaoh that he should order their
departure in the middle of the night. ' And Pharaoh
rose up in the night, he and all his servants ; and he
called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise
up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye
and the children of Israel, and go, serve the Lord as
ye have said. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the
people, that they might send them out of the land in
haste : for they said, We be all dead men. And the
children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth.'6
Rameses was a city built by the Israelites in the land of
Goshen, a little to the south of the Babylon of the Per-
sians, the Grecian Letopolis, and about six or eight
miles above the modern Cairo. Here they assembled,
and from hence they took their departure ; making their
first march towards the east, or to Succoth, which is
estimated to have been about thirty miles.
In this first part of their route, they were obliged to
incline a little to the north, to round the mountain called
the mountain of Arabia, which shuts in the valley of
Egypt on the eastern side through its whole length, and
which sinks into the plain towards the north at a line
nearly parallel with the point of the Delta. Succoth
implies nothing' more than a place o pens or booths ;
and was probably either a halting-station in the route
towards the Desert, or an enclosure for cattle during the
inundation of the Nile. Their stay here appears to have
been short. ' And they took their journey from Suc-
coth, and encamped in Etham, on the edge of the Wil-
derness.' This was a long march of not less than sixty
miles, according to the present computed distance ;
which, as no intervening place of halt is mentioned,
must be considered as having been performed at once.
But it must be remembered, that they were flying from
a treacherous and inexorable enemy, whose pursuit they
had reason to fear ; and that they were besides experi-
encing the particular protection and support of that
power which could as easily prevent their being wearied
in a forced march of sixty miles, as he could save their
shoes from being worn out, or find them a passage
through the Red Sea. But the real distance was probably
not then so much by twelve or fifteen miles as at the
6 Exod. xii.
Sect. L] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3764. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 24-NUM. xviii.
289
present day ; as, according to the concurrent reports of
travellers, there are undoubted marks of the gulf having
extended several miles in a north-west, or N.N.'NV.
direction beyond its present limits. This was precisely
in the route of the Israelites, and was just so much
taken from their day's march, reckoning to where Suez
now stands ; the traveller having now to bend consi-
derably to the south-east, to arrive at that place, after
rounding the Arabian mountain, or Djibel Atakka.
Etham is said to have been in, or upon, the edge of
the wilderness. But it must not be imagined from
hence that the wilderness began here. It is probable
that the whole way from Succoth to this place was, as it
is at this day, the same kind of parched and stony
desert : but here, at the northern extremity of the Red
Sea, it first assumed the name of Etham ; which it bore
for some distance to the north, east and south. Arrived
at this place, the Israelites may be said to have been
safe from all fear of the Egyptians, as another such a
march as that from Succoth would carry them into the
heart of a desert, where no army, without a miracle,
could subsist. They were now on the high road to
Canaan, with nothing to interrupt their progress : but
in the midst of their hopes and rejoicings, an order
comes to turn. This must have been a grievous disap-
pointment : such an order, indeed, as no body of people
in their senses, unless convinced of the Divine appoint-
ment and supernatural power of their leader, would ever
have complied with. Just congratulating one another
on their escape, they were directed to return in the very
face of their enemy ; and not only so, but to place them-
selves in a situation where they would be rendered inca-
pable either of resistance or of flight. ' And the Lord
spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of
Israel, that they turn, and encamp before Pi-hahiroth
(or Phi-Hiroth), between Migdol and the sea, over
against Baal-Zephon ; before it shall ye encamp by the
sea.' The situation into which their obedience to this
decree brought them, was a narrow delile, shut in by the
mountains on the west, the sea on the east, and (dosed
up on the south by a small bay or inlet of the latter :
they were, indeed, " entangled in the land." Some of
them, at least, must have been acquainted with the posi-
tion they were about to occupy ; but they entered, and
gave vent to no murmur until they saw themselves all at
once in the power of their enemy, who stood before them
in the only opening by which, without a miracle, it was
possible to escape. At this sight their faith and courage
failed ; ' and they said unto Moses, Because there were
no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in
the wilderness ?' But the God who brought them there,
was about to show his power by again interposing in
their behalf. ' And the Lord said unto Moses, Speak
unto the children of Israel that they go forward : but
lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the
sea, and divide it; and the children of Israel shall go
on dry ground through the midst of the sea. And Moses
stretched out his hand over the sea ; and the Lord caused
the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night,
and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea
upon the dry ground : and the waters were a wall unto
them on their right hand and on their left.' While the
Egyptians, hardened as usual, and blind to the power of
the God of Israel, ventured to pursue, and were quickly
overwhelmed in the water.
The precise site of this miracle has much engaged the
attention of travellers and of the learned ; who have
differed more or less according to their respective views
and prejudices. The first step in our inquiry for the
situation of this place, must obviously be to fix that of
the previous encampment. Before taking up this en-
campment, it will be recollected that the last position
was at Etham, at the bottom of the gulf, which will be
found in the map twelve miles north-west of its present
termination at Suez; and which carries up that position
to meet the road towards Caanan, and makes the subse-
quent'turn' completely retrograde. This turn was to
bring them by another day's march beside Pi-hahiroth,
before Migdol, and over against Baal-Zephon. The
Hebrew word Pi answers to the modern Fum of the
Arabic, and implies an opening in the mountains. Pi-
hahiroth, then, means an opening or cleft in the moun-
tain leading into the valley of that name. If, then, such
an opening at a proper distance from Etham can be
found, the situation of Pi-hahiroth may be considered as
fixed. Just such an opening, and no other, presents
itself about twenty miles to the soutii of Suez, and thirty -
two or thirty-five from the ancient position of Etham :
which answers exactly to the required distance ; and
being the only one of the kind, leaves little doubt of its
identity. Into this opening, which runs quite through the
mountains to the valley of Egypt, an inlet of the Red
Sea, now dry, extended itself; closing up all possibility
of advance in that direction. The situation of Migdol
and Baal-Zephon are not so clear ; but from the preci-
sion with which that of Pi-hahiroth can be fixed, their
exact recognition is not so material. .Migdol implies a
fortress ; and nothing can be more likely than that tin;
Egyptians should station a garrison at this important
entrance into their country. Such might be inferred
from strong probability ; but there are, in fact, distinct
historical traces of such a fortress in this situation. Mr
Bryant, in his learned Dissertation on the Egyptian
Plagues, cites a passage from Harduin's Notes on Pliny
to the following purpose : " At this present time, in the
cosmography which was made during the consulships of
Julius Cajsar and Mark Antony, 1 find it written, that a
part of the river Nile flows into the Red Sea, near the
city Ovila and the Camp of Monseus {Monsci):' the la.-a
word is evidently a misprint for Muusct. This document
is invaluable from the traditional evidence it bears of
the situation of the miracle being at this place ; and the
" Camp of Moses " must imply either the place of en-
campment of the Israelites, or the fortress which always
existed at the embouchure of the valley, to which the
natives might probably enough have given the name of
Moses. Mr Bryant thinks die former : but here, too, on
the same spot, were the iI>»ot/f<&v, or 1'ra sidiuni Clysmatis
of Ptolemy, and the Castrum Clysmatis of Hicrocles ;
both undoubtedly referring to the same fortress, or Mig-
dol of the Egyptians.
Of Baal-Zephon we have no traces. The name implies
the god of tlir watch-tower; and it was probably a
beacon for mariners on the opposite coast, over against
which the camp was to be pitched. The position of this
camp is now determined. It was in front of Pi-hahiroth,
or the gorge in the mountains opening into the valley of
2 o
290
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR
Hiroth ; which extended through the mountains all the
way to the valley of the Nile. It was also in front of
Migdol, which we have the strongest reasons to believe
was a fortress at the opening of the valley, at the north-
ern angle of the mountains, to defend it on the side of the
Arabian Desert, for from the south there was no approach.
Something remains yet to be said in illustration of
the topography of this interesting spot. Thus far the
Israelites had advanced without meeting with any ob-
stacle ; but how came they to be stopped at this precise
spot, without the possibility of proceeding another mile ?
How came they just here to be so " entangled in the
land " that, without a miracle, they must have fallen an
immediate prey to their enemies ? for neither in the
maps, nor in the general accounts given of this miracle,
is there any explanation of this difficulty. After quitting
Etham, they entered a lengthened defile, in which they
advanced about thirty miles, having the mountains on
their right hand and the sea on their left — both impas-
sable. Arrived thus far, their further progress southward
was arrested, either by the impracticable nature of the
country beyond, or by an estuary of the Red Sea, which
ran up into the valley of Hiroth ; from which inlet, it
appears by the above cited passage from Harduin, a
canal of communication was, in the time of the Ptole-
mies, carried on to the Nile. The latter opinion the
reader will find ably maintained by Mr Bryant, in the
work already referred to. This estuary probably came
so close to the foot of the mountains, as to admit only
of a difficult passage in that direction ; which was
guarded by the fortress of Migdol. Besides, if it had
been free of access, the Israelites could have had no
inclination to take such a course, which would only have
led them back again into the heart of Egypt. They were
accordingly hemmed in, in a kind of cul de sac, which
rendered the subsequent miracle for their deliverance as
necessary as it was signal.
The place of this estuary is now dry ; having been,
in the course of ages, partly filled up by the fallen
materials of the mountains, and partly left dry by the
retreat of the sea itself : it is called Bedea by the Arabs
— a name which may be referred to the same origin with
the Phrygian word BsSy, water. The inlet itself, some
remnant of which perhaps existed in the time of the
Greeks, was by them denominated Clysma ; which like-
wise signifies water, or an inundation, and might refer
either to the place or the miracle. From the inlet, the
name A\as transferred to a town and fortress on its
borders ; which was probably in the same situation as
the Migdol of the Egyptians, and was subsequently the
Kolsum of the Arabs, a word denoting drowning, and
which gave its name to the adjoining sea, which is still
called Bayer-al-Colsum.
The position and agreement of these places are, how-
ever, not so clear, but that some authors of eminence
have entertained a different opinion. Mr Bryant, and
more recently Mr Home, adopting the arguments of the
former, contend that Clysma and Kolsum were not the
same place ; and that the mistakes of former writers
from confounding the two, and thereby embarrassing
the attempts to fix the precise place of passage, may by
this means be rectified. It is possible, indeed, that they
might not have been the same place ; and the difficulties
arising out of their supposed identity, and the situation
ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3764. A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
of Kolsum at Suez, would thus be obviated. But with
deference to the learned authorities who have espoused
this opinion, the grounds on which it is formed are not
to be depended upon ; and new and equal difficulties
will be found to attach to them. Mr Bryant, confiding
in the astronomical observations of Ptolemy and Ulug
Beg, makes a distance of seventy miles from Herman
to Clysma, but of only twenty-two or twenty-three to
Kolsum ; thus separating them by nearly fifty miles of
latitude. According to Ptolemy, the latitude of Herouiu
was 29° 50', and that of Clysma 28° 50'. According to
Ulug Beg, the latitude of Kolsum was 29° 30'. Now if
the reader will take the trouble to consult a map, he will
perceive that these positions are impassible ; that of
Herouni would be 7' south of the present head of the
gulf at Suez, while that of Clysma would be far down
the gulf, where no town and no communication with the
interior ever existed. These observations of Ptolemy
then must be erroneous, and permit no well-founded
argument to be derived from them. But the position
assigned to Kolsum by Ulug Beg is, in fact, within a
few minutes of a degree of that of Clysma, and the dif-
ference is on the south instead of the north. Whether
Heroum ever stood on the gulf, as Mr Bryant infers, or,
in other words, whether the gulf ever extended up to
that city, is not here of consequence. The canal of
Ptolemy Philadelphus passed by it in its way to the Red
Sea ; but it cannot be shown that it ever stood on its
shores. AVhether it did or not, does not, in fact, affect
the calculations in question ; the latitudes are evidently
erroneous, and all conclusions derived from them must
be erroneous also. The actual distance, however, given
by Ptolemy, between Heroum and Clysma, may be cor-
rect, though not on the meridian. This distance is, in
fact, corroborated by Antoninus, who makes it sixty-eight
miles ; but then it is not in a direct line from north to
south, but in a south-eastern one, which diminishes the
amount in point of latitude one-half, or to thirty-four
miles, equal as near as may be to half a degree.
D'Anville has placed Clysma in 29° 40' north latitude,
and Heroum, or Heroopolis, in 30° 17'; difference 37',
equal to about forty -three English, or forty-seven Roman
miles; to which, if half of the amount, or 23.} miles be
added for the easting, it comes as near the distance of
Antoninus as can be expected.
Nothing, then, in these calculations affects the true
position of either Clysma or Kolsum, or the arguments
founded on their identity. One thing, indeed, is clear :
that no measurement from Heroum, on the Trajanus
Amnis, to Kolsum at Suez, will give the required dis-
tance between the former and Clysma ; and as to the
difficulties which have been supposed to have arisen out
of the identity of the two places, they may, it is hoped,
be shown to be far from formidable. These difficulties
have chiefly arisen from the frivolous and sceptical
arguments of the celebrated traveller Niebuhr ; which
are altogether founded in misconception, and in a cul-
pable inattention to the scope and letter of the sacred
history ; and which from a writer of less repute would
be totally undeserving of notice.
In the first place, then, this author, overlooking the
obvious route of the Israelites round by Etham, which
he himself places at the head of the gulf, makes them
pass through the valley of Bedea to the sea ; and then
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT &;c.
291
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALE
wonders how they could be said to be ' entangled in the
land, and stmt in by the wilderness,' with the way open
before them straight up to Suez. This obvious difficulty
is sufficient alone to show that this was not their route.
Yet the intelligent Bruce has fallen into the same error.
Niebuhr reasons on the march of the Israelites as on that
of a modern caravan ; and intimates, that as no mention
is made of their being apprized that a miracle would he
wrought for their deliverance, it is not likely that they
would suder themselves to be led blindfold into such a
snare. " Amongst so many thousand persons," says
he, " some would be well acquainted with the way, and
would surely have opposed the design of Moses, if he
had made them take a route which plainly led to their
destruction. One need only travel with a caravan which
meets with the least obstacle, a small torrent for instance,
to be convinced that the Orientals are not deficient in
intelligence, and that they do not suffer themselves to
be led like fools by their Caravan-Baschi," or leader.
After indulging in this style of reasoning, our author,
wishing to diminish the force of the miracle, though not
entirely to destroy it, contends for a higher passage
near Suez, where the channel is narrower, and the pas-
sage itself may be supposed to have come more within
the reach of natural causes ; and here, to give some
countenance to his argument, are the ruins of a town
called Kolsum. And as the Arabic tradition has always
placed the site of the miracle near that town ; as the
name of this town is also supposed to be only a variation
of Clysma ; and has, further, been taken by travellers to
be the same with Arsinoe, or Suez ; Mr Bryant took the
above-mentioned mode of proving- that they were not
the same : in doing which he proved too much. But if
the ruins in question be indeed those of a town called
Kolsum, there is nothing conclusive to be drawn from
thence. The original town of this name was very pro-
bably built on the true site of Clysma ; from whence, in
course of time, for greater convenience of trade, or to
be nearer water, or for many purposes with which we
may be unacquainted, it was removed to the site of the
present ruins, carrying its name along with it. This is
nothing more than what is perfectly analogous to what
has happened in every country. Or if these ruins be
those of the first and only town of Kolsum, what is there
improbable in the supposition that this name should have
been given to it ? The distance from Clysma is com-
paratively insignificant : the event which the name re-
cords was too stupendous to be forgotten ; while the
precise spot in which it occurred, might, to the unlettered
Arabs, though known to be near, be totally lost.
We again, then, come to the conclusion, that the posi-
tion of this town, and its being or not the same as
Clysma, cannot mislead us. Niebuhr, then, stands inex-
cused, even upon this principle, in endeavouring to fritter
the miracle down to nothing, by placing it in a narrow
and shallow part of the channel; and the following
argument, like most of his others on this subject, admits
as little of palliation : " Pharaoh," says he, " would not
appear to me to have been inconsiderate in attempt-
ing to pass the sea at Suez, where it is not above half a
league over ; but he must have lost all prudence, if, after
seeing such prodigies in Egypt, he ventured to enter the
sea where it was more than three leagues in breadth."
These remarks of Niebuhr were called forth by some
S, A. M. 8764. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 28-SUM. xviii.
sceptical queries proposed by the celebrated critic Mi-
chaelis; namely, " Whether there were not some ridges
of rocks where the water was shallow, so that an army at
particular times may pass over? Secondly, Whether
the Etesian winds, which blow strongly from the north-
west, could not blow so violently against the sea as to
keep it back on aheap, so that the Israelites might have
passed without a miracle ?" How different to those of
Niebuhr are the observations of the sensible Bruce to
whom the same queries were proposed ! These observa-
tions are indeed inimitable ; and the author quotes them
at length with the greater pleasure as he has more than
once, in the course of the present work, found occasion
to dissent from his opinions.
" I must confess," says Mr Bruce, "however learned
the gentlemen were who proposed these doubts, 1 did
not think they merited any attention to solve them. This
passage is told us by Scripture to be a miraculous one;
and if so; we have nothing to do with natural causes. If
we do not believe Moses, we need not believe the trans-
action at all, seeing that it is from his authority alone
we derive it. If we believe in God that he made the
sea, we must believe he could divide it when he sees
proper reason; and of that he must be the only judge.
It is no greater miracle to divide the Red Sea, than to
divide the river Jordan.
" If the Etesian wind, blowing from the north-west in
summer, could keep up the sea as a wall on the right, or
to the south, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would
remain of building the wall on the left, or to the north.
Besides, water standing in that position for a day, must
have lost the nature of fluid. Whence came that cohesion
of particles which hindered that wall to escape at the
sides ? This is as great a miracle as that of Moses. If
the Etesian winds had done this once, they must have
repeated it many a time before and since, from the same
causes. Yet Diodorus Siculus, ' says, the Troglodytes,
the indigenous inhabitants, of that very spot, had a tradi-
tion from father to son from their very earliest ages, that
once this division of the sea did happen there ; and that
after leaving its bottom some time dry, the sea again
came back, and covered it with great fury. The words
of this author are of the most remarkable kind : we can-
not think this heathen is writing in favour of revelation :
he knew not Moses, nor says a word about Pharaoh and
his host; but records the miracle of the division of the
sea in words nearly as strong as those of Moses, from
the mouths of unbiassed, undesigning pagans.
" Were all these difficulties surmounted, what could we
do with the pillar of fire ? The answer is, — We should
not believe it. Why then believe the passage at all?
We have no authority for the one : but what is for the
other: it is altogether contrary to the ordinary nature of
things : and if not a miracle it must be a fable,"
The instrument employed by the Almighty lor the
division of the sea. IS said to be ' a Btrong east wind.'
But it is remarkable that there is no such thing as a na-
tural east w inil in all this country : the monsoon blows
invariably half the year from the north, or north-north-
west, and the other half from the opposite points.
Some authors have supposed, thai Moses having lived
long in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea. had become
1 B. :i. p. 1 K.
292
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3764. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 28.— NUM. xviii.
acquainted with the phenomena of its tides, and took
advantage of the time of ebb to pass ; while Pharaoh,
less acquainted with them, rashly ventured in and was
swallowed up. It was thus that the priests of Memphis
explained the miracle. But this subterfuge falls at once
to the ground, as the tides in this sea are exceedingly
trilling ; the difference between high and low water at
Suez never being more, according to Nicbuhr, than from
three to four feet.
In the maps and descriptions accompanying Calmet's
dictionary, the Israelites are represented to have crossed
the gulf at Kolsum, or Suez, where Niebuhr places the
pas-age. Baal-Zephon is made to be Suez ; Migdol,
Magdolus, far to the north in the isthmus ; and Pi-hahi-
roth, the mouth of the gullet now filled up with sand.
Without entering into any further discussion on the
situation of these places than has already been done,
there are two weighty arguments, in addition to those
before advanced, against such an opinion. The first is,
That in this position the Israelites were in an open
country, with no natural barriers by which they could
have been said to have been so ' entangled in the land'
as to be considered a certain and easy prey to the
Egyptians ; nor could the latter doubt but that their ad-
vance through such a country would be perceived by the
Israelites, time enough to evade the pursuit, and to effect
a retreat into the Desert, by resuming their tract, and
rounding the head of the gulf. But the position twenty
miles lower down, shut in on all sides by the sea and by
mountains, except a narrow opening towards the north,
precluded, in the eyes of the Egyptians (who made no
attempt to pursue them, till informed of their critical
situation), all possibility of escape, if they could reach
unperceived the entrance to this defile, which, under
cover of the long mountain barrier, on the west, acting
as a screen, they were enabled to do.
The next objection to the above opinion is, that the
gulf narrowing as it advances northwards, the point at
which the passage is supposed to have been effected,
is, according to the scale of the maps in question, scarcely
a mile in width ; which takes much from the sublimity at
least of the miracle, if not from the reality of it. And
if it be contended that the passage through a mile of
water is no less a miracle than that of nine, which is not
denied, or than that of the Jordan, of far less breadth,
where without an equal miracle a passage could certainly
not have been effected ; it is replied, that we have not
merely to seek a body of water, the division of which
was sufficient to amount to a miracle, but an expanse,
the returning surge of which could bury at once the
numerous army of the Egyptians, consisting of ' six hun-
dred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt,' with
horse and foot, amounting no doubt to many thousands.
It is impossible to estimate the .number implied by all
the chariots of Egypt ; but if we may judge by those with
which Shishak invaded Judea, they were not less than
1200 : the proportion of horsemen to which was 60,000,
with people on foot out of number. Even supposing the
whole army not to have exceeded this number, it is im-
possible to conceive such a body, together with 1200
chariots with their horses, impacted in the closest order
in which it is possible for an army to move on the line
of march, and with every allowable extension laterally,
6hould all be engulfed together in the waters of a sea a
mile wide, and where, from the sandy and shelving nature
of the beach on both sides, the centre only would afford
sufficient depth. For it is to be observed, that the front
of Pharaoh's army was still standing on the bed of the
sea, when the rear had also entered it.
Nor does it appear that the original channel of the
gulf, to the north of its present termination, has been
filled up by sand, as supposed. There is a remarkable
statement of Burckhardt, when crossing this tract, which
renders this supposition next to impossible. He ob-
served the ground, about five miles north of Suez,
and beyond the present high water mark in the marshy
creek, covered with a saline crust, and traversed, in the
direction of the ancient channel, with a layer of small
white shells, about a quarter of a mile over ; while still
farther to the north are salt marshes. These are un-
doubted proofs that the sea once extended over this
ground ; and that the cause of its retreat is not the influx
of sand, but the gradual recession of the sea itself — a
phenomenon common to all inland seas. If the former
had been the case, the shells which mark the true bed of
the sea, which once covered them, as well as the saline
crust, must have been buried also. But the inference
from these discoveries, the most to our purpose in the
present inquiry, is, that although this part was once
covered by the waters of the gulf, the change has been
effected by a very trifling subsidence of its level. If
sand had been the agent employed in effecting this change
it might be contended that the channel had been filled
up to an indefinite depth ; but the shelly bed refutes this
idea, and shows that the present level of the ground was
at some time or other the true bed of the estuary, which,
it cannot be doubted, a rise of a few feet above the pre-
sent level of the sea would again cover, as well as the
marshes beyond it. To draw accurate conclusions from
these premises it should also be known, by other marks,
what the actual fall of the sea has been : but as the coun-
try for a considerable extent on both sides, is represented
as a plain, and the saline crust is limited to a stripe in
the centre, it may be inferred that the fall cannot have
been great. The canal of Ptolemy Philadelphia also
taking this direction, shows how little was the inclination
of the ground.
All these difficulties are removed by fixing the pas-
sage where it has been placed above, namely, twenty
miles below Suez, opposite the valley of Bedea : where
every thing conspired at once to cover the advance of
Pharaoh, and to render the escape of the Israelites im-
possible without a miracle ; where the channel was
sufficiently deep and broad to make that miracle worthy
of its author and its object ; and where without a second
miracle, was sufficient space to receive the entire host
of the Egyptians, so that they should be at once over-
whelmed, without the escape of a single man.
The precise place of the transit may, then, with as
much certainty as we can ever hope to arrive at, be fixed
at the embouchure of the valley of Bedea, or about twenty
miles below Suez ; where, according to Bruce, the gulf
is three leagues over, with fourteen fathoms of water in
the channel ; and where the division of the waters would
indeed form ' a wall' of fearful aspect, on the right hand
and on the left. It may also be added, on the authority
of the same traveller, and as an additional corrobora-
tion, that the north cape of the bay, opposite the valley
Sect. I.J
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
293
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
of Bedea, which marks the place of the ancient creek of
Clysma, is called Ras Musa, or the cape of Moses.
Arrived on the opposite shore, the Israelites entered
the desert of Etham ; where is a sandy and gravelly
plain, called by Niebuhr, Etti, and by Burckhardt, El
Alitha — both bearing- sufficient vestiges of the ancient
name of the country. In this wilderness they went three
days' journey, which brought them to Marah ; whose bit-
ter waters were rendered sweet for their use. The posi-
tion of Marah answers to that of the bitter well of
Howara, about eighteen hours from Suez. Burckhardt
says, that this is the usual, and, as it appears, the exclu-
sive route to Mount Sinai. He says also that there is no
other road of three days' march in the way ; nor any
other well absolutely bitter on the whole of this coast as
far as Ras Mohammed, at the entrance of the gulf.
Burckhardt, indeed, has adopted the error of Niebuhr in
supposing the transit to have been near Suez, and reckons
his three days to Howara accordingly. But his argu-
ments with respect to this place will answer equally well
if we deHuct twenty miles, or about six hours, for the
difference in the distance between Suez and the true
place of passage. There will then remain twelve hours,
or three days of four hours, equal to about twelve miles
for each day's journey — a rate of progress which may be
considered as sufficiently suited to the condition of a
people who had just escaped from the presence of an
enemy ; who now could have no doubt of their perfect
safety ; and had nothing to impel them to the forced
marches which they had made from Rameses to Clysma.
The next journey was to Elim ; where were ' twelve
wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees.' Both
Niebuhr and Burckhardt agree in placing Elim in the
Wady Gharendel, distant three hours from Howara ;
which answers very well with the rate of march above
assumed, in a country, too, where the position of the
encampments must be regulated very much by the situa-
tion of water. In the wady or valley of Gharendel,
which is about a mile broad, are date or palm trees,
tamarisks, and acacias ; and a copious spring. This
single spring, unusually abundant for this arid country,
may be considered rather as a confirmation of the opinion,
than as an argument against it ; as Niebuhr attests, that
water may easily be obtained any where by digging for
it, although the apertures will quickly be rilled up again
by the sands. To search, in fact, after a lapse of 3500
years, for the identical twelve wells of Elim, rudely con-
structed in a sandy soil, is little better than absurd. The
wells of rocky countries, indeed, are perhaps the most
durable of all the monuments of antiquity, and serve to
fix with unerring certainty the scene of many a memor-
able event ; but the case is widely otherwise on a moving
surface of sand, where the shallow excavations, and the
simple masonry of Arabs, would not require centuries to
obliterate : or, which is frequently the case, the wells
may have been wantonly destroyed in the dissen-
sions of the tribes. It is sufficient that water exists
here in abundance, and is to be obtained in as many
wells as the traveller chooses to dig; while the accord-
ance of this position with the next movement from
Howara, and the absence of any other springs that could
be relied upon for a distance of many hours in the same
route, leave little doubt of its being that of Elim. Former
travellers, indeed, amongst whom are Monconys, Theve-
A. M. 37G4. A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
not, Pococke, and Shaw, considered a valley near Tor,
where are date-trees and springs, to be Elim ; an opi-
nion which has been supported by Mr Bryant, who
endeavours also to show that this position was the same
witli the Phoenicon, or palm-grove, of Strata and Diod-
orus, which it probably was ; but it cannot, with strict
attention to the route of the Israelites, be considered ai
Elim. In the first place, the distance from Howara to
Tor is little less than a hundred miles ; and as all the
stations in this part of the journey appear to be laid
down with great accuracy ; as no mention is made of any
between Marah and Elim; and as the Israelites were
hastening to mount Sinai, we have no reason to conclude
that any halt did actually take place ; and with still less
reason can we suppose this distance to have been per-
formed in a single march. In the next place, if Elim be
Tor, the four encampments between that place and Sinai
will be crowded into a space which it is difficult to recon-
cile with any motive, or with any similar rate of progress
in other parts of the march. After quitting Elim, the
Israelites encamped by the Red Sea; then in the wilder-
ness of Sin ; then at Dophkah ; then at Alush ; then at
Rephidim ; and then in the wilderness of Sinai. Now
the rocky region which constitutes the desert of Sinai,
extends to within twenty miles of the coast ; so that the
four encampments, from that on the Red Sea, to Rephi-
dim, at the edge of the desert, could not have been more
than four or five miles apart : a series of petty move-
ments across the barren plain of El Kaa, i\hich, if they
had been making their approaches to a fortress, might
have had some object, but which, in the situation in which
they were, must have been frivolous and vexatious, and
without a parallel elsewhere. Nor is it likely, as Sinai
was their destination, that they should have retrograded
without any mention being made of such a course, or
any cause assigned for it. Lastly, the position of Elim
at Tor is incompatible with the situation of the desert of
Sin. This desert is expressly said (Exod. xvi. I.) to
have been between Elim and Sinai ; but it could only
have formed a small part of the distance, as only one of
the live intervening encampments took place within its
limits. In Num. xxxiii. 10 — 12, it is said, that the
Israelites ' removed from Elim, and encamped by the
Red Sea; and they removed from the Red Sea, and
encamped in the wilderness of Sin ; and they took their
journey out of the wilderness of Sin, and encamped at
Dophkah.' Now the whole space between Tor and the
encampment of the desert of Sinai, is a plain, hearing
one name, and but of one day's journey, bounded BTOTJ
way to the north by the group of Sinai ; so that the
Israelites quitting the wilderness of Sin after a single
encampment in it, must either have retraced their .steps
towards Elim, or have proceeded towards the ea-tern or
Elanitic gulf of the lied Sea, beyond Sinai altogether:
of neither of which circumstances is an) intimation given;
on the contrary, both are at variance with the order of
the route, and the destination of the people, which was
Sinai, to receive the law. But in the Datura! and estab-
lished route, the whole is conformable with the scripture
narrative, and confirmed by the local knowledge we
p088eSS of the country.
From the desert of Etham to the second march beyond
Elim, the road, as it does now, ran parallel with the gulf
of Suez, and at DO great distance from it. At the end
294
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES
of the first day's march from Elim, an indentation of the
coast brought them at once upon the sea, where was the
encampment mentioned. Towards the end of the second,
the coast, which had hitherto inclined in a south-east
direction, turning directly to the south, quite away from
the direct road to Sinai, obliged them to quit the vicinity
of the sea, which they had hitherto constantly had on
their right hand, and to enter farther into the heart of
the desert ; which in that part bore the name of Sin.
This is precisely the route pursued at the present day ;
and near the point where the road leaves the coast, at
the south-west foot of the mountainous ridge called El
Tyh, is the sandy plain of El Seyh, extending two days'
journey eastward. The western extremity of this plain
only would the Israelites have to cross, which they would
soon traverse, and have only one encampment to make
on its surface ; when the remaining- stations of Dophkah,
Alush, and Rephidim, would bring them, by marches of
fifteen or sixteen miles, to the borders of the desert of
Sinai.
Of Dophkah and Alush, we can only know the relative
situations; and as nothing more is said of them than'
their bare mention as places of passage, it is of little
consequence. But to Rephidim much interest is attached.
Here, or hard by, the miraculous supply of water took
place ; and here the Israelites were, for the first time,
attacked by their implacable enemies the Amalekites. It
is not a little curious, that a person of Mr Bryant's
sagacity should have found it necessary, in order to
explain this attack of the Amalekites, to carry Rephidim
far up to the northward, towards the borders of that
people. There is nothing surely surprising in a people,
who were probably apprized of the ultimate destination
of the Israelites, wishing to carry the war from their
own homes, and, by advancing on their enemy, to attack
him at a disadvantage. But in Exod. xvii. 8, it is said,
that Ainalek ' came and fought with Israel at Rephidim.'
And in 1 Sam. xv. 2, ' Thus saith the Lord of hosts, 1
remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid
wait for him in the way when he came up from Egypt:'
that is, that he came down to Rephidim, and took the
Israelites by surprise. It could not have been repre-
sented in this way, if the latter had approached the terri-
tories of the Amalekites. To set this question at rest,
however, the Israelites were encamped at Rephidim
when they were miraculously supplied with water from
Horeb ; consequently it must have been close to that
mountain, or, in other words, on the edge of the desert
of Sinai, where it has already been placed.
The next encampment, after that at Rephidim, was in
the desert of Sinai itself, where the people arrived in
the third month, and where they remained encamped
eleven months, during which time the law was delivered.
At length, on the 20th day of the second month, in the
second year, the signal for removing from Sinai was
given by the pillar of the cloud being removed from the
tabernacle, and preceding the line of march into the
wilderness of Paran ; into which, or at least from their
encampment in the desert of Sinai, the Israelites
advanced for three days before a convenient resting-
place, for any time, was found them, in all probability
for want of water. The lirst station in this wilderness
of Paran, ' that great and terrible wilderness,' which
extended all the way from Sinai to the borders of
A. M. 37C4. A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
Canaan, and in which they spent the greatest part of the
time they were condemned to wander, was at Taberah,
or Kibroth-hattaavah : the former name being given by
Moses, because here many of the people were consumed
by lire from heaven for their complaining ; and the latter,
because, at the same place, the people lusted for flesh,
and many more died while the quails, which had been
miraculously sent them, were yet in their mouths. From
this place, the stations mentioned northwards are Hazer-
oth, Rithmah, Rimmon-parez, Libnah, and Kadesh-
barnea, where the camp was lixed while the spies were
sent to explore the promised land ; from whose evil
report the people were so intimidated, and so unmindful
of the promises they had received, and the protection
they were under, that, as a punishment for their ingrati-
tude and disobedience, they were ordered to turn back,
and ' get them into the wilderness, by the way of the
Red Sea,' Numb. xiv. 25. This retrograde movement
carried them back southwards, through the same wilder-
ness of Paran, but by a more eastern route, nearer mount
Seir, to Eziongeber, on the eastern gulf of the Red Sea.
The stations enumerated in this route are, Rissah, Kehe-
lathah, mount Shapher, Haradah, Makkeloth, Tahath,
Tarah, Mithcah, Hashmonah, Moseroth, Bene-jaakan,
Hor-hagidgad, Jot-bathah, Ebronah, and Ezion-geber.
What space of time was spent in these several encamp-
ments is not mentioned. The cloud resting on the
tabernacle was the guide for the people : when and
where that moved, thither they followed, and rested
where it rested ; and ' whether it were two days, or a
month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the taber-
nacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode
in their tents, and journeyed not ; but when it was taken
up, they journeyed,' Numb. ix. 22.
In the map of this route, in the last edition of Cal-
met's dictionary, it is made to extend westward, towards
Egypt, instead of southward, towards the Red Sea.
Libnah, stated in the description to be west of Mount
Hor, is yet supposed to be the same Libnah which
Joshua smote. (Josh. x. 29, 30.) This Libnah, which
was evidently in the tribe of Judah, is placed by Eusebius
and Jerom in the district of Eleutheropolis ; and Lachish,
the next place taken by Joshua, only seven miles south
of that city. In fact, the places successively captured
by Joshua in his march southwards after Makkedah,
were, first Libnah, then Lachish, then Eglon, and then
Hebron ; consequently both Libnah and Lachish were
north of the last mentioned city. Rissah, the next place
in the route, is supposed to be El Arish, and mount
Shapher mount Casius, on the confines of Egypt ; but
this track along the coast of the Mediterranean would,
with more propriety, have been termed " by the way of
the Great Sea," than of the Red Sea. Besides, this
route would have brought the Israelites again to the very
edge of Egypt, and within reach of their incensed ene-
mies, who may be supposed in this interval to have
recruited their armies, and might have attacked them in
this situation to much greater advantage than they did at
Pi-hahiroth. But if no danger was to be apprehended
from hostile attack, there was another of greater con-
sideration. ' Let us,' said the Israelites just before,
disheartened at their sentence of retrogradation, and
wearied with the privations and monotony of the desert,
' Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.'
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
29Z
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1480; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES. A. M. 37G4. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
This was their ready cry on all occasions ; and it is not
likely that God in his providence, or Moses in his
policy, would have trusted them so near a country whose
idols, and whose fleshpots, they were ever hankering
after, and from which such mighty efforts and miracles
had been employed to deliver them.
In the continuation of this supposed route, Moseroth
is conjectured to be the present Fountains of Moses, so
called, or Ain-el-Mousa, seven or eight miles from Suez.
This would bring them again nearly into their old track
in the desert of Etham or Shur ; and it is strange that no
mention should be made of these well-known places.
But Moses says, that, after leaving Kadesh-barnea,
' they turned, and took their journey into the wilderness
by the way of the Red Sea ; and they compassed mount
Seir many days,' Deut. ii. 1 : plainly implying, that the
retrograde route was not by the Mediterranean and
towards Egypt, but towards the nearest point of the Red
Sea in the route next designed for them ; stretching
along the western side of the desert of Sin and mount
Seir to Ezion-geber. AY hat is meant by the way of the
Red Sea, is further distinctly told us in Numbers xxi. 4;
where it is said, that the Israelites, departing from Mount
Hor, ' journeyed by the way of the Red Sen, to compass
the land of Edom ;' or, in other words, to get to the
eastern side of that mountainous country by crossing the
plain of Elath and Ezion-geber. The whole of this
scheme of the western route of the Israelites is, in fact,
founded in a misconception of the true extent and posi-
tion of mount Seir. It is true, that the precise situation
of Libnah,or of either of the other stations in the desert
after leaving mount Sinai, cannot be accurately known ;
but the general course of the route from Sinai to Kadesh-
barnea, and from thence to Ezion-geber, is sufficiently
indicated.
There is a curious anachronism in the above map. It
was published in 1808 ; but has the route of Burckhardt
in 1812 marked on it, without, however, adopting any
of the improvements indicated by his discoveries. It
retains, indeed, all the old errors ; the insulated and
northern position of Mount Hor — the double peak of a
single mountain, representing Sinai and Horeb' — the
forked extremity of the gulf of Elali or Acaba — and the
undefined position of the desert of Sin ; while Mount
Seir is laid down, by letters only, transversely across the
desert of Paran. The labours of Burckhardt have en-
abled us to correct these errors ; while the description of
Moses directs us where to trace the course from Kadesh-
barnea to Ezion-geber.
Thus far all is clear : but the ensuing part of the
journey is, for the most part, but ill explained by com-
mentators ; nor lias any map come within the inspection
of the author, in which it is intelligibly laid down. The
passage from the western to the eastern side of Mount
Seir, round by Ezion-geber, is uniformly represented as
one continuous route ; Mount Seir itself is variously dis-
torted from its true position ; Mount Hor, an eminence
of the former, is carried high up towards the borders of
Moab, where it will be seen that it could not possibly
have been ; and very confused notions are entertained of
the true situation of the desert of Sin. These inaccu-
racies have arisen, in part, from a strange inattention
to the scripture narrative, and, in part, from the geo-
graphical errors more or less inseparable from the
want of a correct knowledge of the true features of a
country.
With respect to the first cause of error, it will be the
author's fault, and not any want of precision in the
scripture account, if this part of the journey lie not ren-
dered sufficiently perspicuous ; and to obviate the latter,
Burckhardt has furnished us with abundant information
It will be found, indeed, that, instead of a Bingle pa
through the plain of Elath and Ezion-geber, this plain
was twice passed, or at least, that the places situated in
it were twice visited; and that Mount Seir, instead of
having been merely doubled by a straight course, down
one side and up the other, was four times skirted at its
southern extremity, well illustrating the passage which
says ' Ye have encompassed this mountain long enough.1
In Numbers xxxiii. 3(i, 37, after the Israelites are des
cribed as having descended to Ezion-geber from their long
sojourn in the desert on the north, it is said, ' And they
removed from Ezion-geber, and pitched in the wilder-
ness of Sin, which is Kadesh, and they removed
from Kadesh, and pitched in Mount Hor, in the edge of
the land of Edom.' In chapter xx. 1, 22, it is said,
' Then came the children of Israel, even the whole
congregation, into the desert of Sin, in the first month ;
and the people abode in Kadesh. And the children of
Israel, even the whole congregation, journeyed from
Kadesh, and came unto Mount Hor :' where Aaron died,
and was buried : and where a thirty days' mourning
was performed for him. In chapter xxi. 4, it is said,
'And they journeyed from Mount Hor by the wa\ of
the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom.' In other
words, the children of Israel, from their first descent to
Ezion-geber, ascended northwards, up the desert of Sin,
to Kadesh; and from Kadesh to Mount Hor, 'in the
edge of Edom;' where having buried Aaron, and paid
the last respects to his memory, they turned again south-
wards, to the plain of Elath and Ezion-geber, to compass
the land of Edom, and enter the plains of Midian.
In order to the better understanding of the relative
position of these places, it will lie necessary first to
describe that of Mount Seir; which will form a key to
the rest. Mount Seir of Edom is a mountain chain,
which, under the modern names of Djebel Sherar, Djebel
Hesma, and Djebal, extends from the southern extremity
of the Dead Sea to the northern one of the eastern gulf
of the Red Sea, about a hundred miles. On its western
side, it rises boldly from a valley which accompanies its
whole length; but sinks by an easier slope towards the
east, into the elevated plains of Arabia Petrtea. Its
western border is so strong, as to be easily defended ;
so that the Israelites, when denied a passage bj the king
of Edom, dared not make any attempt to force one, but
were compelled to return, and get round the mountain
by the plain of Iv/ion-gcber. It was on a conspicuous
eminence on this western border, called 1 lor. about forty
miles north from the plain of Elath, that Aaron died, and
was buried by the Israelites — an office in which, either
not alarmed, or informed of their pious intention, the
Edomites do not appear to have molested them. Tra-
dition has preserved the situation of this mount : which
is still visited as the tomb of Aaron, by both ."Mali c-
tans and Christians.
This description of Mount Seir will facilitate that of
the desert of Sin. There is, as was observed, a valley
296
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
stretching along- the whole western side of Mount Seir ;
which, like it, extends from the Dead Sea on the north,
to the Red Sea on the south. This valley is a sandy
plain, at a low level, having the chain of Mount Seir on
the east, and a ridge of hills, of a lower elevation than
those of Seir, on the west, and separating it from the
desert of Paran. It is about five miles across ; and is
at present known in its northern part, by the name of El
Ghor, and in its southern, by that of El Araba : it appears
before the catastrophe of Sodom, to have afforded a
course for the Jordan into the Red Sea. This can be
no other than the desert of Sin, or Kadesh ; with which
it accords in all the required conditions. It had no
water ; neither is there any there now : — from hence
messengers were sent to request a passage through the
country of the Edomites ; and from hence only, with any
show of purpose, could such a request be sent : — from
hence, also, the Israelites ascended Mount Hor ; and
from hence only could the ascent of that mountain be
made without penetrating the whole breadth of Edom
from the opposite side, where it is clear that they never
yet had been : — and, lastly, into this desert it was that
the Israelites entered from the plain of Elath and Ezion-
geber ; and this valley does strictly open from that plain,
and is the only desert region answering to the name and
the narrative into which they possibly could enter : they
could not, in fact, move from their encampment at Ezion-
geber in any other direction, without passing to the east
of Mount Seir, which, as has been shown, they did not
do till after their return from Mount Hor, or retracing
their steps into the desert of Paran, which it is equally
certain they did not do.
This desert was likewise called Kadesh : in which
also was a place more particularly so termed, and
situated in the ' uttermost border' of Edom, that is to
say, at the very foot of the chain, bordering on the
desert; from whence the Israelites sent messengers to
the king of Edom to solicit a passage through his
country. No situation can be allotted more probable as
the position of this place, than that by which the modern
road passes from Maan, on the east of Mount Seir, by
the AVady Mousa, through the mountains, and across the
valley of the Ghor or desert of Sin, to Gaza — the very
route, in fact, of the Nabathasi from their capital Petra.
As this is one of only two or three routes, at great dis-
tances, which penetrate the region of Seir ; as it passes
close by mount Hor ; and as that mountain would be
most easy of access by its means from the valley below ;
we cannot hesitate in fixing the position of Kadesh
Proper at the point where the road, quitting the moun-
tains, enters on that valley.
To recapitulate. The children of Israel having arrived
at Ezion-geber from the desert of Paran, and at the
southern foot of Mount Seir, made a detour northwards
up the desert of Sin, or El Araba, on the western side
of that mountain, and separated from the desert of
Paran by a ridge of hills, but which formed no part of
Mount Seir. This course they pursued to Mount Hor,
' in the edge of Edom,' a mountainous eminence rising
abruptly from the eastern side of the desert of Sin, and
standing on the western edge of Seir. Here they staid
to bury Aaron, and to complete their mourning for his
loss. The purpose for which they entered the desert of
Sin was obviously to obtain a shorter and better passage
A. M. 37GI. A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
across Mount Seir, or through the land of Edom, to
Canaan. Defeated in this object, nothing was left for
them but to return to the plain of Ezion-geber, and to
make the circuit of the mountain on its southern side.
The next encampment mentioned, after the return from
Mount Hor, is at Zalmonah. Where Zalmonah was is
not known ; but it was probably in or near the plain of
Elath, as there was no water in Sin. This was a long
march ; but the people could not tarry in a region which
was destitute of the most indispensable article of sub-
sistence. Besides, the period of their wandering was
now drawing to a conclusion ; and they were hastening
with confidence to the termination of their fatigues and
privations in the promised land. The same reason led
them, by stages of thirty miles, by Punon, Obotli, and
Ije-abarim, to the brook Zared ; where they arrived at
the end of the thirty-eighth year from the time of their
leaving Kadesh -barnea, and the fortieth from their de-
parture from Egypt, and when all the adults then living
were dead. This brook, which appears to be the Wady
Beni Hammed, descends from the mountains of Kerek,
and falls into the Dead Sea near the middle of its
western shore. From the Zared, the Israelites made
one march across the Anion, the Modjeb of modern
geography, to Dibon Gad ; the ruins of which, under
the name of Diban, are shown about four miles to the
north of the river. From Dibon, the encampments of
Beer, Almon-diblathaim, Mattanah, Nahaliel, and Ba-
moth, brought them to the mountains of Abarim, on the
east of the Jordan ; which mountains they crossed at
Pisgah, a part of the chain, where Moses was indulged
with a bird's-eye view of the promised land, and where
he died. Descending from these mountains, they pitched
between Beth-jesimoth and Abel-shittim, on the banks
of the Jordan a itself ; whose waters, deep and rapid,
were divided for their passage, as those of the Red Sea
had been. And thus this extraordinary journey of forty
years terminated with a similar miracle to that with which
it commenced.
There are two facts worthy of mentioning in this
place. The first is, that the whole of the tribes, during
their wanderings in the desert, had sustained a decrease
of only 1820 ; their numbers being at this time 601,730,
and before, 6*03,550. The other fact alluded to is, that
as all the males above twenty years of age at Kadesh-
barnea fell subsequently in the wilderness, none who
crossed the Jordan, with the exception of Joshua and
Caleb, could exceed fifty -eight ; consequently the whole
of the adult males may be considered as effective for the
purposes of war.
The map, illustrative of the journeyings of the Israel-
ites, has been carefully constructed, so as to exhibit the
physical features of the country, as laid down by Burck-
a The average breadth of tin's celebrated stream may be com-
puted at thirty yards, and its depth about nine feet; but from
the rapidity of its current, it discharges a much greater body of
water than many rivers of larger dimensions ; it rolls, indeed, so
powerful a volume of deep water into the Dead Sea, that the
strongest and most expert swimmer would be foiled in any
attempt to swim across it at its point of entrance. Its banks are
beautifully picturesque, being shaded by the thick foliage of
closely planted trees, and so beset with tamarisks, willows.
oleander, and other shrubs, that the stream is not visible, except
on the nearest approach. Its waters are generally turbid, and
its annual overflowing takes place in the first month, which
answers to our March.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &<■..
297
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS
hardt and others ; and the line of route has been taken
from the map which Mr Mansford constructed to accom-
pany the preceding- article, in his Scripture Gazetteer.
SECT. II.
CHAP. I. — From the Building of the Tabernacle to
the Death of Korah, fyc.
THE HISTORY.
For full forty days and forty nights, Moses continued
upon Mount Sinai, as he had done before, without either
eating or drinking ; and when he came down from
thence his face had contracted such a lustre, by his hold-
ing so long a conference with God, that the people were
not able to approach him ; and therefore, whenever he
talked with Aaron, or any of them, he was accustomed
to put a veil over his face, as long as the lustre lasted,
but never made use of any when he went into the taber-
nacle to receive the divine commands.
While he was on the mount, God gave him the ten
commandments, written in two tables, and withal full
instructions in what manner the tabernacle, intended for
his own habitation among them, and all its sacred uten-
sils, were to be made ; which he now conununicated to
the people, and at the same time exhorted them to bring
in their several offerings to that purpose. This they did
in such abundance, that he thought it convenient, by a
public proclamation, to restrain their further liberality ;
and having thus made a sufficient collection of all kinds
of materials, he gave them to Bezaleel and Aholiab, the
two great artists in building, and all manner of work-
manship, whom God had before made choice of.
In less than six months the tabernacle and all its rich
furniture were finished, and on the first day of the first
month, in the second year after the Israelites' departure
out of Egypt, it was set up : when, as soon as this was
done, the ' pillar of the cloud,' ° which is called ' the
glory of the Lord,' covered, and quite filled it, so that
Moses for some time was not able to enter in. How-
ever, when he entered in, he received instructions from
a 'The glory of the Lord,' what the Jews call Shekinah, was
a particular manifestation of the divine presence, appearing
usually in the shape of a cloud, but sometimes breaking out into
a bright and refulgent fire. For we must not suppose that the
cloud and the glory of God were two different things, but one and
the same, even as tin' pillar of thecloud and fire were ; for outwardly
it was a cloud, and inwardly afire. And, in like manner here,
the external part of it covered the tabernacle without! while the
Inward part of it shone in full glory within the house; in which
sense the account of this ap|>uaraiice (Exod. xvi. 10.) is to be
understood: the glory of 'the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai,
and the cloud covered it,' that is, covered the glory of the Lord, not
the mount, 'six days;' for on the seventh day, this glory broke
through the cloud, and appeared like a devouring tire in the
sight of all the people, (Exod. xxiv. 17.) This wonderful ap-
pearance, whether occasioned by the presence of angels, or, as
others imagine, by the residence of the second person in the
ever blessed Trinity, took possession of the tabernacle, on the
day of its consecration, and, as the Jews believe, passed into the
sanctuary of Solomon's temple, on the day of its dedication,
where it continued to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple
by the Chaldeans; after which time it was never more seen. —
Calmefs Dictionary, under the word Shekinah; and Patrick'*
Commentary.
A. M. 3704. A. C. L647. EXOD. \>:mv. 28- NUM. xviii.
God, which he communicated to the people, in what
manner, according to this new institution, he was to be
worshipped by sacrifices and oblations; ; what festivals
were to be observed, and how celebrated; what meats
were forbidden ; what the instances of uncleannees
were; and what the degrees of consanguinity prohibited
in marriage. And having appointed these and sum.'
other ordinances, he solemnly consecrated Aaron to tin-
high priest's office ; his sons, and in them their posterity ,
he made priests ; and to these he adjoined the whole
tribe of Levi, to serve in the tabernacle, with particular
allowances for their subsistence, and some restraining
laws, as to their persons, their conduct, and marriages.
Eight days after his consecration, Aaron offered hie
first burnt-sacrifice for himself and the people, which
God was pleased to manifest his acceptance of, in the
sight of all the people, by sending down fire from
heaven, which, by consuming the offering, struck them
with such reverence, that they all fell prostrate, in
humble adoration, before the divine Majesty. The fire,
thus miraculously kindled, was, l by the divine com-
mand, to be * kept perpetually burning, and no other to
be used in all the oblations that were made to God
But Nadab and Abihu, two unhappy sons of Aaron,
unmindful of this command, took common fire on their
censers, and so entering the tabernacle, began to offer
incense; but by this their profane approach, the] so
offended God, that he immediately struck them dead with
lightning ; and to inject terror to the rest, ordered them to
be carried forthwith out, and there buried without any
mourning or funeral pomp. And much about the same
time, he gave another instance of his severity against
sin, in a certain person, the son of an Israelitish woman
indeed, but whose father was an Egyptian, who, (ur his
cursing and blaspheming the name of God, was l>\ him
directly ordered to be stoned to death ; from which it
became a standing law, .*' though there was no es
1 Lev. vi. 12, 13.
l> If it be asked how this fire could be preservi d, when both the
tabernacle, and the altar whereon it burnt, were in motion !
they evidently were, when the Israelites journeyed in Is
derness,) I see no reason why we may not suppose, thi I
these occasions, there might be a certain portable conser
of this sacred lire, distinct from the altar: and that then
some such vessel made use of, seems manifest from the injunc-
tion, that at such times ' the ashes should be removed from i I
the altar, and a purple cloth spread over it,' Num. h.
Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. 1, Occasional Annotations 2.
c The criminal, and his offence, are only thus recorded by
Moses: ' The son of an Israelitish woman, whose li
Egyptian, and a man of Israel, strove together in thi ■
the Israelitish woman's sou blasphemed the name ■
and cursed,1 (Lev. xxiv. 1 1 1 Hut the Jews, in explaining
these words, have followed either that superstitious respeel which
they pay to the name Jehovah, or their wonted humour ol
supplying the silence of the sacred history, with circumstances
nowhere to be found but in their own imaginations. In pur-
suance to their superstition, they fancy, that the crime I
blasphemer consisted simply in hi- pronouncing the nami
van, forasmuch a- they Bup] , that there can be no blasphemy
without such pronunciation; and in pursuance to their humour
of supplying the silence ol Scripture, they have invented i
alogy for this blasphemer. For they tell US, that hi
of one of those taskmasters who were set on r the
Egypt, and of that very taskmaster, «bo, by pet onati
i, violated the chastity of the Jewish matron Shelometh,
and was afterwards slain by Moses, for using the tame husband
with great barbarity; that the sen, who is hue mentioned, quar»
298 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book IV.
A. M 251 I. A C. 1 190; OR, ACCORDING TO HAEES, A. M. 31CA A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 23-NUM. xviii.
precept to that purpose before, that whoever was guilty
of the like offence, whether stranger or Israelite, was to
undergo the same punishment.
Nay, and not long after this, another instance of the
divine severity was upon a man, who by a post-fact-law
was likewise adjudged to be stoned to death, for violat-
ing the Sabbath, which God had so strictly enjoined to
be observed, by gathering some sticks on that day. There
was no penalty annexed to the violation of this com-
mandment ; and therefore the people who brought him
before Moses, were ordered to keep him in custody, until
he should know the divine pleasure concerning Sabbath-
breakers ; and when he acquainted them, that such trans-
gressors were to be punished with death, * they immedi-
ately led him out of the camp, and there stoned and
buried him.
While the Israelites lay encamped in the wilderness
of Sinai, God appointed Moses first a to renew the ordi-
nance of the passover, and then, with the help of Aaron,
and the heads of each tribe, to make a general muster of
the men that were able to bear arms ; which accordingly
was done, and the Avhole number, exclusive of the tribe
of Levi, which were appointed to attend the service of
the tabernacle, amounted to six hundred and three thou-
sand five hundred and fifty men ; and upon this muster,
God appointed their encampment, ever after, to be in
this manner.
The whole body of the people were disposed under
four large battalions, so placed as to enclose the taber-
nacle, and each under * one general standard. TI»o
' Num xv. 31, &c.
nlling with a man of the tribe of Dan, because he would not let
him encamp in the same district, brought his cause before Moses ;
but that being condemned at his tribunal, he began, out of mere
rage and madness, to blaspheme. Of all this, however, Moses
nimself says nothing, out of a scruple, as we may well suppose, to
relate the circumstances of a crime which his very thoughts
detested. — Sawrin's Dissertatio?is, 58.
a During the sojourning of the children of Israel in the wilder-
ness, they seem to have had a divine dispensation from observing
the ordinances both of circumcision and the passover. Circum-
cision did not consist with their itinerant course of life, and for
the celebration of the passover, they had not, in every encamp-
ment, all the materials that were necessary. But having now
rested in the confines of the holy mount for almost the space of a
whole year, after the tabernacle was set up, the high priest con-
secrated, and his first oblation honoured with a gracious accept-
ance, God thought it not an improper time to re-ordain the
celebration of the passover, that so remarkable a deliverance as
their escape out of Egypt, which, by their repeated desires' of
returning thither, seemed, in a great measure, to have been for-
gotten, might not be altogether obliterated. And if it should be
asked, whence they could have a sufficiency of lambs and kids for
so wast a multitude to feast on; there is no reason to deny, even
supposing they had not a supply of their own, but that they
might traffic with the Ishmaelites, and ancient Arabs inhabiting
these part-, for such a number of small cattle, and being not far
distant from Midian, (Exod. iii. 1.) by the interest of Jethro,
might from thence be furnished with such a quantity of meal for
ened bread, as this one passover, as this was the only one
they kept in the wilderness, may be presumed to require. — Le
Clerc's Commentary, anil Poole's Annotations.
b All the twelve tribes were distinguished from one another by
particular standards, and each staudard is supposed by some to
have been of the colour of that stone in Aaron's pectoral, upon
which the name of the tribe « hereunto it belonged «as written.
The figures on the standards of the four principal tribes that we
have mentioned, are these, — In that of Judah was borne a lion ;
in that of Ephrajm, an ox ; in that of Reuben, the head of a man ;
and in that of Dan, an eagle and a serpent in his talons; which
standard of the camp of Judah was first. It consisted oi
the tribes of Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, the sons ol
Leah, which pitched on the east side of the tabernacle,
towards the rising of the sun. On the south side Mas the
standard of the camp of Reuben, under which were the
tribes of Reuben and Simeon, the sons of Leah like-
wise, and that of Gad, the son of Zilpah, her maid. On
the west side was the standard of the camp of Ephraim,
under which Avere the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and
Benjamin. And on the north side was the standard of
the camp of Dan and Naphtali, the sons of Bilhah,
Rachel's maid, and that of Asher the son of Zilpah.
Between these four great camps and the tabernacle, were
pitched the four less camps of the priests and the
Levites, who had their attendance about it. On the east
side encamped Moses and Aaron, and Aaron's sons, who
had the charge of the sanctuary. On the south side were
the Kohathites, a part of the Levites descended from
Kohath, the second son of Levi. On the west side were
the Gershonites, another part of the Levites, descended
from Gershon, Levi's eldest son ; and on the north side
were the Merarites, the remaining part of the Levites,
who sprang from Merari, Levi's youngest son.
This was the order of the Israelites encamping ; and
in like manner, the method of their marching Avas thus,
— Whenever they Avere to decamp, Avhich always Avas
Avhen the pillar of cloud Avas taken up from the taber-
nacle, the trumpet sounded, and upon the first alarm,
the standard of Judah being raised, the three tribes which
belonged to it set forward ; Avhereupon the tabernacle
Avas immediately taken down, and the Gershonites and
the Merarites attended the Avagons, Avith the boards and
staves of it. When these Avere on their march, a second
alarm was sounded, upon Avhich the standard of Reuben's
camp advanced Avith the three tribes under it ; and after
them folloAved the Kohathites bearing the sanctuary,
Avhich, because it Avas more holy, and not so cumbersome
as the pillars and boards of the tabernacle, Avas not put
into a Avagon, but carried upon their shoulders. Next
folloAved the standard of Ephraim's camp, with the three
tribes belonging to it; and last of all, the other three
tribes under the standard of Dan brought up the rear.
After that the Israelites had, for some time, continued
in ease and rest, not far from the skirts of Mount Sinai,
the pillar of the cloud gave them a signal to decamp ;
but they had not marched above three days into the
Avilderness, before they began to complain of the Aveari-
ness of their journey, and to murmur against God ;
Avhich so provoked him, that he c sent doAvn fire, and
destroyed the loiterers, and such as Avere found in the
extreme parts of the camp ; so that though, upon
Moses' intercession, the fire ceased, the place never-
are indeed the four most perfect animals, forasmuch as the lion is
the most noble among wild beasts; the ox among beasts of labour;
the eagle among birds ; and the man among all other creatures.
— Lamy's Introduction, b. 1.
c The fire winch God sent upon the Israelites, came either
immediately from heaven like lightning, or did issue from the
pillar oi the cloud Avhich Avent before the tabernacle; or, accord-
ing to the conjecture of a learned commentator, that which is here
called fire, might be a hot burning wind, in these desert places
not unusual, and many times very pestilential, and on this occa-
sion pretematurally raised in the rear of the army, to punish the
stragglers, and such as, out of a pretence of weariness, lagged
behind. — Lr Clerc's Commentary.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &■<
299
A. M. 3514. A. C. 1490; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G1. A. C. 1647. EXOl). xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
theless obtained the name of Taberah, wbich signifies
burning.
This fresh instance of the people's stubbornness made
Moses apprehensive, that though he had certainly eased
himself, in some measure, by constituting such magistrates
as Jethro his father-in-law had advised him to ; yet the
work of governing so numerous, and so mutinous a
people, would still be an overmatch for him ; and there-
fore, by God's immediate direction, "■ he made choice
of seventy of the chief of the elders of the people, men
of renown for their wisdom and integrity, and every way
tit to be erected into a supreme court.
To these God imparted a portion of the same spirit
that he had given unto Moses, which enabled them to be
highly assistant to him in the government of a people,
which almost every day were discovering a spirit of dis-
content. For no sooner were they removed from Ta-
berali, but they began to murmur at the manna they had
so long ate, and to regret the flesh-pots of Egypt they
had parted with ; and hereupon they beset Moses' tent
on all sides, and in a tumultuous manner demanded of
him a supply of flesh, instead of manna; which, how
unreasonable soever it was for them to request, God
nevertheless promised Moses to perform ; and ac-
cordingly caused the south wind to arise, which drove
vast quantities of quails from the sea coast to within a
mile of the camp where they lay, about a yard thick upon
the ground. But while they were regaling themselves
with these dainties, the anger of the Lord fell upon them,
and smote a great number of them with a sore disease,
whereof they suddenly died ; in memory of which the
place came to be called Kibroth-Hattaavali, that is, the
graves, or sepulchres of lust and concupiscence.
From this place the people took their journey to Ha-
zeroth, where another unhappy accident befell them. For
Aaron and his sister Miriam, observing what great power
their brother Moses had with the people, and that God
chiefly made use of him in the delivery of his oracles to
a It may be supposed, indeed, that Moses had no occasion for
any more assisting magistrates after what had been constituted by
the advice of Jethro, his father-in-law: but it is higlily probable,
that those of Jethro's advising were appointed to hear and judge
only in smaller causes; whereas all weighty and difficult [joints,
as well as last appeals in smaller matters, still were left upon
Moses; and that it was to ease himself of this burden, that he
made choice of these seventy, as men of superior capacity and
understanding, anil who wire to be assisted by the Spirit of God
in their judgments and determinations. This assembly of the
seventy elders, not only the Jews, but even Grotius, and some
other Christians, will needs have to be the same with that famous
council which afterwards obtained the name of Sanhedrim. The
rabbins have left no stone unturned to prove, that the Sanhedrim
did constantly subsist ever since its first institution by Moses, and
that the members of it always assembled themselves before the
tabernacle, wherever that was set up, either in the wilderness,
or in the promised land, till the erecting of the temple by Solo-
mon, who, at the same time, built them a stately room or hall
to convene in. They add farther, that this supreme court was
continued in Babylon, during their captivity there, and that, at
their return, it had the same place rebuilt in the second temple,
and so continued till its total extinction under the Romans. But
as they bring no authority for these, and many other particulars
relating to this assembly, but merely their own traditions, they
are justly rejected by the major part of Christians, who can find
no footsteps of any such high court, either in the times of Joshua,
of the Judges, or of the Kings, nor indeed after the Babylonish
captivity, till the time of the Maccabees. — Gdbnefs Disserta-
tions sur la police des Ancient Hebcrauxf and Universal History,
b. 1 c. 7.
them, began to envy him ; but to give some colour to
their quarrel, they pretended to fall out with him upon
account of his marrying a foreigner, whom they called in
contempt an Ethiopian. This Moses could not but per-
ceive ; but as it was a personal pique, he took no notice
of it. God, however, would not suffer it to go off so ;
and therefore calling Moses, Aaron, and Miriam before
the door of the tabernacle, he sharply rebuked the two
latter. He gave them to understand the disparity 6 in
point of divine revelation, between them and him, ami,
to leave a brand upon their contumaciously affecting an
equality, he immediately smote Miriam e witli a leprosy ;
and though, upon Moses' intercession, lie promised to
remove it, yet because the offence was public, he ordered
her to be turned out of the camp for seven days, in the
manner of any common leper, that others might be deter-
red from the like seditious practices. After several
encampments, the people came at length to d Kadesh-
Barnea, on the frontiers of Canaan, where Moses was
commanded to choose twelve fit men, out of each tribe
one, among whom were Joshua and Caleb, to take a view
of the country : and accordingly, having received their
instructions from him, to examine diligently into the
strength of its cities and inhabitants, the nature and fer-
b The Jewish commentators make the difference between
Moses and other prophets, to consist in these particulars: 1st,
That God spake to others by a mediator, that is, as they explain
it, by some angel; but to him by himself, without the interven-
tion of any other. 2dly, That they never prophesied, but their
senses were all bound up, either in visions or in dreams ; whereas
he was perfectly awake as we are, when we discourse one with
another. 3dly, That after the vision was over, they were often-
times left so weak and feeble, that they could scarce stand upon
their feet, (as appears from Dan. viii. 18 ;) whereas Moses spake
with the divine Majesty without any consternation or alteration.
And 4thly, That no prophet but he could know the mind of God
when he pleased, because he communicated himself to them only
when he thought proper; whereas Moses might at any time have
recourse to God, to inquire of him, and receive an answer. — Pa-
trick's Commentary.
c A leprosy, as well as all other distempers, such as the scurvy,
ring-worm, itch, &c, which bear resemblance to it, does pro-
cci <l originally from a previous ill disposition both in the Mi nil
and juices, but the more immediate cause of it is an infinity of
small imperceptible worms, that insinuate themselves between
the Besh and skin, which first prey upon the Scarf-skin and
then upon the inner skin, and afterwards upon the extremities of
the nerves and muscles, from whence arises a total COITUpUi D oi
the whole mass of blood, ami all the other symptoms attending
it. Hut the leprosy here inflicted upon Miriam »i> sudden
and instantaneous. The juices of her body were not corrupted
by a gradual decay, but turned at once into these corroding ani-
mals. And as this was a lit punishment fur her pride and
detraction, so by its being inflicted on her, and not on Aaron, it
seems not improbable that she was first in the tran-giosjon, and
drew Aaron, who seems in some instances to be a person of too
much facility, over to her party. Aaron indeed, by his office,
was appointed to judge ofleprosy, which he could not have done
had himself been infected»with it; ami as he was lately conse-
crated his high priest, Cod. for the preservation of his authority,
might net think it proper I" make him so soon become vile and
contemptible in the eyes of the people, as this distemper was
known to make i — Calmefs Dissertation sur In Suture, Ac.,
dc la Leprej ami Patrick's Commentary,
,/ Most ei matins and geographers are of ..pinion, that
whatever is said of Kadesh, in the travels of the Israelites, i- to
be understood of one ami the same place; whereas the
history plainly makes mention ol two places, of the same name,
one adjoining to the wilderness of Paran, which is mentioned
Num. xiii. 26, ami the other lying in the wilderness of Sin,
mentioned in Num. \\. 1. and xwiii. 36,—lTeBs' Geography if
Testament, vol. 2.
300
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
tility of its soil, and the like, tliey set out upon their
progress, and finished it in forty days.
At their return they passed through a valley, which,
for its fertility in vines, is called the valley of Es/tcol,
which signifies a cluster of grapes ; and here they cut
down a branch with but one cluster upon it, which, a by
reason of its immoderate largeness, as well as to pre-
serve the grapes from being bruised, they hung upon a
pole, and carried between two men's shoulders. Nor
was this the only product of that happy soil ; the golden
fig, and beautiful pomegranate, adorned the trees, and a
variety of other fruits, of which they brought samples
along with them, loaded the luxuriant branches.
Being at length happily arrived in the camp, they
went and made their report to Moses and Aaron, in the
presence of the elders, and of all the people. They
began indeed with extolling the riches of the land,
and showed them a specimen of some of the fruits which
it produced ; but when they perceived that this account
had fired the people with a desire to become the happy
possessors of it by a speedy conquest, ten of them then
began to alter their tone, and to represent it as a
thing impossible, both by reason oi the strength of its
fortified towns, and the valour and gigantic stature of its
inhabitants.
Joshua and Caleb were the only two that remained
true to their report, and gave them all imaginable en-
couragement that the enterprise was practicable ; but the
cowardly account of the other ten had got such a power-
ful possession of them, that they cried out, one and all,
that they could never hope to overcome such powerful
nations, in comparison of which they looked upon
themselves as mere grasshoppers and reptiles ; and
their murmuring, in short, grew to such a height
by the next morning, * that a return to Egypt was
thought more advisable, than to face such an enemy.
Nay, in the hearing of Moses and Aaron, of Caleb
and Joshua, who endeavoured to dissuade them all
they could, even to the hazard of being stoned by
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book IV.
A. M. 37G4. A. C. IG47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
a That there are vines and grapes of a prodigious bigness in
those eastern and southern parts of the world, is a matter recorded
by several writers. Stralio tells, that in Margiana, and other
neighbouring countries, there were vines so very thick about,
that two men could scarce fathom them, and that they produced
bundles of grapes of two cubits long. Pliny informs us, that in
the inland parts of Africa there are bunches (if grapes bigger than
young children. Olearius, in his travels into Persia, acquaints
us, that not far from Astracan, he saw vines which a man could
hardly grasp with both his arms, and a cluster which produced
three Scotch gallons of wine ; and the learned Huetius affirms
that in Crete, Chios, and other islands in the Archipelago, there
iii' bunches of grapes from ten to forty pounds in weight. —
Quasi. Alnet. b. 2., and Lc Clerc's Commentary.
b Though they might in their raging tits speak of returning
into V.y. i>t ; yet it is an amazing thing, that they should continue
in their madness, and deliberate about it, nay actually appoint
them a leader, as Nehemiah (ix. 17.) says they did. For how
could they get thither without food, which they could not expect
that God would send from heaven, when they had thus shame-
fully forsaken him ? How could they hope to find their way,
when the cloud which directed them was withdrawn from them, or
think oi' coping with such nations as would oppose their passage,
in case they should hit upon the right way? And after all, if
they came into Egypt, what reception could they expect from a
;ieople, whose king, and princes, and first-born had lately been
destroyed upon their accounts? Nothing can be said in answer to
these questions, but that outrageous discontent infatuates men's
minds, and will not suffer them to consider any thing but that
wuit'ti grieves them.— Patrick's Commentary.
them, they were deliberating upon a proper person to
reconduct them into the land of their former thraldom ;
when, all on a sudden, the glory of God appeared in a
brighter lustre than ordinary, in the tabernacle, and from
thence was heard to speak to Moses in such threatening
terms as gave the people cause to fear that some speedy
and terrible judgment would be the reward of their
rebellion and ingratitude.
Here Moses was forced again, as at several other
times, to become their intercessor, and made use of such
powerful arguments, and expostulations, as did in some
measure avert the divine vengeance ; but, as their in-
gratitude and infidelity were become intolerable, not-
withstanding God's constant care in providing against
their wants, screening them from their enemies, and
preserving them from all dangers, he solemnly declared,
that none of that generation, above twenty years of age,
except c Joshua and Caleb, who received his commen-
dations for their fidelity, should enter into the promised
land, but should Avander from place to place in the wil-
derness, for the space of <* forty years ; and as for the false
spies, the immediate authors of this rebellion, they were
all destroyed by a sudden death,1 and became the first
instances of the punishment denounced against the whole
nation.
This severe punishment, joined with the sentence of
exclusion from the promised land, gave the humours of
the people soon another turn : for, supposing that their
forwardness now would make some atonement for their
former cowardice, they assembled themselves together
next morning, and offered to go upon the conquest.
Moses endeavoured what he could to dissuade them from
so rash an enterprise, by telling them that it was contrary
to God's express command, and therefore could not
prosper ; that, by their late undutiful behaviour, they
had forfeited his assistance and protection, without
which it was impossible for them to succeed ; and that,
as the Amalekites and Canaanites had gained the passes
of the mountains before them, there was no fighting them
Num. xiv. 36, 37.
c Josephus introduces Joshua and Caleb, in order to pacify
the tumultuous people, delivering themselves in words to this
effect. " How is it possible for you, good people, to distrust the
veracity and goodness of God, and at the same time to give
credit to stories and amazements about the land of Canaan, that
are propagated on purpose to abuse you ? Why should not you
rather believe and follow those who have taken so much pains to
put you into the possession and enjoyment of the blessings you
desire ? What is the height of mountains, or depths of rivers, to
men of undaunted spirits, and of honourable resolutions ; espe-
cially when God is both their protector and defender ? Where-
fore let us advance and attack the enemy, without ever
questioning the event. Only trust God for your guide, and fol-
low us where we shall lead you." — Jewish Antiquities, b. 3. c. 14.
d Moses here makes use of a round number, in allusion to the
forty days of the spies searching the land; though it is plain,
that the children did enter into the land of Canaan in less than
thirty-nine years after this sentence was pronounced against their
fathers. The truth is, Moses reckons the time past since they
came first into the wilderness, which was a year and a half; so that
the meaning of the sentence is, — That they should wander for
forty years in all, before they went out of the wilderness: which,
however, is not to be understood so precisely, as to want nothing
at all of it: for since they came out of Egypt on the 15th day of
the first month, and arrived in Canaan, and pitched their tents
in Gilgal, on the tenth day of the first month, of the one and
fortieth year after their departure out of Egypt, (Josh. iv. 19,)
it is plain, that there wanted five days of full forty years. — Uni-
[ versal History, 1>. 1. c. 7.: and Patrick's Commentary.
Skct. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT.
301
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G4. A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28- NUM. xviii.
upon the par. But all this admonition had no weight
with them, notwithstanding the ark of the covenant
went not with them, notwithstanding Moses their general
was not at the head of them, yet out they marched to the
top of the mountains, where the enemy surprised, de-
feated, and having slain many of them, pursued the rest
as far as Hormah.
While the people continued in the wilderness, many
remarkable occurrences befell them, and seditions almost
innumerable were daily fermenting ; but one in parti-
cular was hatched, with the utmost deliberation, in the
breast of one of the chiefs of the tribe of Levi, and
countenanced by some of the most considerable men in
the whole camp.
a Korah, the great grandson of Levi by his father
Jahar, and consequently one of the heads of that tribe,
impatient to behold Aaron and his family raised to the
highest office in the priesthood, to which he thought him-
self had an equal title, was always caballing against
him, until he had drawn a considerable number of emi-
nent persons into his interest, and among these, Dathan,
Abiram, and On, who were heads of the house of Reu-
ben. As soon as things were ripe for an open rupture,
Korah appeared at the head of the faction, and publicly
upbraided Moses and Aaron with an unjust ambition, in
usurping upon the liberties of the people, in engrossing
all power into their own hands, and excluding every
body else.
Surprised at the boldness of this accusation, Moses,
for concern, fell prostrate upon his face ; but when he
rose again, he desired that the determination of their
controversy might be left to God, and for that purpose
appointed them to appear on the morrow at the door of
the tabernacle, with every man his censer in his hand :
and then addressing himself to Korah, and the rest of
the Levites, he put them in mind of their ingratitude and
arrogance, in not being content with the dignity and
privileges which God had annexed to their tribe, without
aspiring at the high priesthood, which he had reserved
lo Aaron and his posterity.
Dathan and Abiram were at some distance when Moses
thus talked with the rest ; .and therefore supposing that
they had been drawn into the conspiracy by Korah's
insinuations, he sent privately to them, with a design to
argue the case more calmly with them ; but instead of a
civil answer, he received a haughty message, wherein
a At what time, or in what encampment this rebellion of
Korah and his adherents happened, the sacred history has not
informed us; but as the general opinion is, that the cause of the
mutiny was his resentment upon the advancement of Aaron and
his family to the office of the high priest; so we find Josephus
introducing him, as addressing himself to his accomplices in
words to this purpose: "A scandal it is, and a thing nut to be
endured, for Moses to take upon him at this rate; to carry on
his ambition thus, under the mask of holiness and religion, and
by that means to raise himself a reputation to the wrong of other
men. He gave lately the priesthood, and other dignities, to his
brother Aaron, without any right or colour for it. No consent
of the people was asked, nor any pretence of authority produced,
save only his own arbitrary will and pleasure — for what has he
to say for himself for so doing ? If God lias annexed the honour
to the tribe of Levi, I myself may pretend a right to the pre-
ference, being of the same stock with Moses, and his superior
both in riches and years : or if it be to pass by seniority, it be-
longs to the tribe of lteuben, viz. to Dathan, Abiram, and Phalu,
who are the seniors of that tribe, and men of eminent credit every
way among them." — Jewish Antiquities, b. 1. c. 2.
they upbraided him with a non-performance of his
promise, and " that he had decoyed the whole nation
from the rich and fertile land of Egypt, under the pre-
tence of bringing them into a much better, hut instead of
that, had only detained them in a barren wilderness
there to domineer and tyrannize over them."' At which
message Moses was so highly provoked, that he ap-
pealed to God against the injustice of it, and at the
same time requested of him not to regard the prayers
and offerings of such ungrateful wretches.
Early next morning, Moses and Aaron went towards
the tabernacle, whither Korah, at the head of his party,
with each man a b censer in his hand, attended with a vast
promiscuous multitude, which came in all probability to
be spectators of this famous contest, failed not to repair.
The first thing that drew their eyes was the amazing
splendour which issued from the cloud over the taber-
nacle, from which God called to Moses and Aaron to
withdraw from that rebellious crew, lest they should
be swallowed up in the destruction which he was going
to bring upon them. Hereupon Moses having first
requested of him not to slay the innocent with the guilty,
advertised the people, if they consulted their own safety,
to separate themselves from the company of these wicked
men ; and then bespake the assembly to this purpose : —
" That if these rebels died in the common way of nature,
he would give them leave to call in question his divine
mission ; but that if the earth did immediately open
itself in a miraculous manner, and swallow them up alive,
he then hoped that they would look upon him only as an
instrument in God's hand, and sufficiently authorized for
all he did." And no sooner had he ended these words,
but the earth clave asunder under their feet, and swal-
lowed them up alive, together with their families, and
all their substance ; while at the same time, Korah, and
his company, who stood with their censers before the
court of the tabernacle, were all destroyed by a miracu-
lous fire from heaven ; and to perpetuate the memory of
this judgment, as well as to deter, for the future, any
but the sons of Aaron, from presuming to burn incense
before the Lord, Eliezar was ordered to gather up the
censers of the dead, and to have them beat into broad
plates for a covering of the altar.
So terrible a punishment, one would think, might have
been sufficient, for some time at least, to have kept the
Israelites within the bounds of their obedience ; but no
sooner were they recovered from their fright, than they
began to murmur afresh, and to accuse Moses and Aaron
for having 'murdered the people of the Lord,' as they
were not ashamed to call that seditious crew. Blosea
and Aaron were well aware of the unruly temper of the
people, and therefore fearing to what degree of madness
b The 250 princes had not as y.t ofiered any incense,
because they were prevented by death; however, it may be pre-
sumed, that they had lighted their censers at the holy Are, by
which they obtained. at least in the opinion ot" the people, a kind
of consecration; ami therefore, to kei p up among them a reputa-
tion and esteem for things consecrated, a- well aa to show the
difference between his own institution and men's contrivances,
God ordered all these brazen censers to be wrought into broad
plates, anil to cover the altar with them; that being polished
bright, they might by their belie put the people in mind of the
offence ot those who wen- once owners of them, and so caution
others against the like oil. nee. — BowcU't History of the Bible,
b. :.'.
302 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3764. A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
.mil outrage they might proceed, they took sanctuary in
the tabernacle ; where they had no sooner entered, but
God threatened to destroy all the rest of the congrega-
tion, as it were, in a moment, and had already sent out
a plague amongst them ; which Aaron, at his brother's
directions, endeavoured to assuage by his interposing,
with a censer of incense, between the dead and the
living ; but the plague, in this short time, had raged so
violently, that no less than fourteen thousand and seven
hundred persons, besides those that perished in the
sedition of Korah and his company, were carried off
by it.
This was enough, in all reason, to establish the autho-
rity, civil and ecclesiastical, in the hands of the two
brothers : however, to put Aaron's claim beyond all
manner of dispute, God was pleased to confirm it by one
miracle more. Aaron, on the one side, and the heads
of every tribe on the other, were ordered to bring each
man his rod, with their respective names written upon
them, and these were to be deposited in the tabernacle,
until the next morning ; by which time God would decide
in favour of that family on whose rod some miraculous
change should be seen. Accordingly, when they came
to examine them next morning, a Aaron's rod alone was
found not only to have budded, but blossomed likewise,
and brought forth ripe almonds ; in memory of which
remarkable decision, God ordered the rod to be laid b
a Some will needs have this rod of Aaron's to have been the
same with that of Moses, wherewith he wrought so many mira-
cles in Egypt and at the Red Sea; but there is this argument
against them, that the miracle of its blossoming had not been a
sufficient conviction to the Israelites, if so be that Aaron's rod
bad not been of the same kind of the rest. For whatever had
come to pass, they might have ascribed it to the singular quality
and virtue of the rod, especially had it been Moses' wonder-
working rod, and not to the special hand of God interposing to
establish the authority of Aaron; whereas, on the contrary, we
rind that the miracle had its intended effect, and silenced for
ever the pretences of other people to the priesthood. It is pre-
sumed therefore by some learned men, that the rods which the
several princes brought Moses, were neither their common
walking staves, nor any such wands as were a badge of their
I ower and authority in their respective tribes, but rather certain
twigs that were cut of from some almond-tree, and not improba-
bly from one and the same tree, that there might be no manner
of difference between them The difference, however, next
morning, appeared in this: — That on the twig which bore
Aaron's name, there was, in some places, an appearance of buds
coming forth; in others, the buds were opened, and shot forth
into blossoms; and in others, the blossoms were knotted, and
grown into almonds. — Le Gere's and Patrick's Commentaries.
h It is made a matter of some inquiry, whether this rod of
Aaron's was put within the ark of the covenant, or only by it.
God commanded Moses to put it only in the tabernacle (Num.
xvii. -4.) to be preserved there; but St Paul in Heb. ix. 4, says,
that it was placed within the ark, with a pot of manna, and the
t iblea of the law. Others affirm, that it was not put within, but
only by the side of the ark; and for their opinion they allege a
;c in I Kings viii. 9, which seems to intimate, that there
was nothing in the ark but the tables of the law; but then their
adversaries contend, that St Paul, in that passage to the Hebrews,
is to be understood literally; that there could be no hinderance
for its being put into tin' ark, since the ark was five feet lung,
and could not be but of capacity enough to hold it; and there-
fore, when the Scripture says, that there was nothing in the ark
but the tables of the law, they conceive that it may be under-
stood with this limitation, — That nothing else was originally in
it, because the ark was primarily intended for that use; but this
need not hinder but that afterwards other tilings likewise might
be put in it. How Ion,; this wonderful rod continued in this
repository, is nowhere mentioned in Scripture. When the ark
up in the ' ark of the covenant,' and gave an express
prohibition, that none but the sons of Aaron should
presume to come into the tabernacle, under pain of
death.
CHAP. II. — Objections Answered and Difficulties
Obviated.
In this state of our infirmity, indeed, we are obliged to
repair the gradual decays of our bodies with a supply of
daily food : but in that of a greater perfection, there
will be no occasion for these weak supports of human
nature. In the mean time we .are assured, that x ' man
doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God,' by whose command
our natural perspiration may be so shut up, and the instru-
ments of our digestion so retarded, as to make a small
quantity of meat subsist us for a considerable time.
Elijah, we read, had 2 but ' a cake baken on the coals,
and a cruise of water' for his whole repast, even when
he was going to undertake a long journey ; and yet we
find, that both under the fatigue of body, and expense
of spirits, which travelling must necessarily occasion,
he was enabled to ' go in the strength of that meat forty
days and forty nights.' And for the like reasons we
may suppose, that Moses being now received within the
cloud on Mount Sinai, might find no uneasy cravings of
appetite during his stay, and long conversation with God.
The Jews have a proverb, with relation to this long
fasting of his, 3 which tends to this purpose, that above,
where there is neither eating nor drinking, Moses staid
eighty days, namely, at two different times, and became
like the angels ; and below, where men do eat and
drink, ministering angels come down and eat and drink
like them." Whereby they seem to impute this altera-
tion of appetite in both to a change of climate, rather
than a miracle. But whether the climate contributes to
it or no, it is certain, that God, by influences and ema-
nations from himself, can support a man as long as he
thinks fit, and keep up his spirits in their just height,
without the common recruits of any kind of aliment.
It is another notion of the Jews, 4 that as eating and
drinking are actions which prejudice the understanding,
God, who intended to prepare his servant for the recep-
tion of the revelations he was going to communicate,
withheld all meat and drink from him, that by depressing
his bodily faculties he might exalt his intellectual. In
the case of Daniel, it is certain, that in order to dispose
him for the heavenly vision, s ' he did eat no pleasant
bread, neither came flesh or wine in his mouth, for three
whole weeks together,' as himself testifies ; and there-
fore, considering the many wonderful things which God
intended to impart to Moses, there seems to be a pro-
priety at least, if not an absolute necessity, of his being
1 Mat. iv. 4. * 1 Kings xix. 6, 8. 3 See Buxtorf.
' Patrick's Commentary. 5 Dan. x. 3
was brought into Solomon's temple, (1 Kings viii. 9.) there is no
notice taken of it; and yet it seems reasonable to think, that it
should have been preserved for some considerable time, and
preserved in that very verdure, wherein it. now appeared, with
its buds, blossoms, and fruit, for the conviction of posterity.—
CalmeVs Dictionary, under the word Rod.
Sf.ct. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &-c.
303
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1-190; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES,
put under the like regimen, to enable him, with more
facility, to comprehend them.
St Paul is supposed to speak of himself, though
modesty makes him conceal it, when he expresses his
visions in these words : — l ' I knew a man in Christ,
above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I cannot
tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell, God
knoweth,) such an one caught up to the third heaven ;
and I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of
the. body I cannot tell, God knoweth,) how he was
caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words
which it is not lawful,' or, as the marginal note has it,
' not possible for man to utter.' Now wherever the divine
presence is, there is paradise, and there is heaven : and
therefore, if St Paul, when he was in a vision, and
thought himself translated to the regions above, in the
contemplation of the wonderful things he saw and heard
there, lost all sense of his body, and perception of its
affections ; why may we not suppose, that the joy and ecs-
tasy where with Moses was transported, upon the like occa-
sion, made him never think of once eating or drinking ?
A man must be a stranger to deep study and medita-
tion, who has not experienced in himself a total forget-
fulness for some time, not only of the nimble minutes, as
they passed away, but of the necessities of nature likewise,
as they came upon him ; and even found, at length, that
his recollection, and sensation of these things, proceeded
from an imbecility of his mind, which was not able to
endure a continued intention, or stretch of thought, more
than any natural call, which seems to have been sus-
pended as long as his superior faculties were thus agree-
ably employed. With much more reason, therefore, we
may conclude, that in the presence of God, where the
mind might be impregnated with a power to sustain the
fatigue of close perpetual thinking, the variety of objects
which presented themselves would be so great, and the
entertainment of its intellectual faculties so very strong,
as would quite absorb all corporeal desires and appetites.
Had Moses therefore been employed in no farther
capacity, than barely in contemplating the many amaz-
ing wonders of God's infinite being, which the irradia-
tions from his beatific presence must have transfused upon
his mind, this had been enough to suspend all other oper-
ations, and engross, as it were, the whole complex of his
faculties. But besides this, the Scripture informs us,
that * he took a review of the model of the tabernacle,
and its furniture, which God had showed him when he
waa with him before, and, as we may suppose, received
fresh instructions from God. This could not but take up
some portion of his time ; as most of the remainder of it
seems to have been spent in 3 prayer and intercession
with God for the people, that he would restore them
entirely to his favour, and bring them, in his good
appointed time, to their inheritance.
Upon the whole, therefore, it appears, that as Moses
was in the presence of God all the while that he con-
tinued on the mount; had a full employ for his mind
and thoughts during that time ; and by the divine influ-
ence, had his spirits sustained in their proper height, and
his animal part preserved without wasting ; he could have
1 2 Cor. xii. 2, &c.
'' From the beginning of the 25th chapter of Exodus to tin end
of i he 30th chapter.
' Dent. ix. 18, 10, 25, 20. and x. 10.
A. M. 3764. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 28.— NUM. xviii.
no leisure to think of eating and drinking, or that, had
he thought thereon, he could find in himself no rail or
occasion for it.
The word karan, which our translators have mado
alibiing, is by the Vulgate rendered cornutus, or horned}
and from this misapplication of ideas, painters verj
probably have been induced to draw Moses with a pair
of horns branching, as it were, out of his forehead ;
whereas the proper representation of him should be with
a glory covering his head, in the manner that the
are painted in the Roman church ; for it is not improb-
able, that the hair of his head was interspersed with rays
of light, at tin: same time that a certain beauteous In-
proceeded from his face, and dazzled the eyes of its
beholders.
Moses was certainly in this, as well as many other
things, an eminent type of our Saviour Christ, and the
change of his countenance an emblem of our Lord's
transfiguration upon the mount, when 4 ' his face (as the
evangelist relates the matter) did shine as the sun, and
his raiment was white as the light.' In both rase-, if
was the glorious being 5 within the cloud, that transfused
this radiant splendour around his Son and servant : but
the reason why Moses, at his first time of being upon the
mount, and conversing with God, did not contract this
wonderful brightness, seems to be this, — That he had
not then seen the divine Majesty in so great a splendour
as he did now. He was obliged then to keep at a more
awful distance from the tremendous throne of God, and
not come within the circle of its refulgency; but now,
upon his humble petition, God was pleased to vouchsafe
him such a sight of his glory as his human nature could
bear. So that, by being permitted to come within the
circumference of it, he carried off', though unknown to
himself, a such a beamy lustre from the divine refulgency
as, like the lambent fires wherewith the poets adorn the
temples of their heroes, played about his head and face,
and there was permanent for some considerable time :
for Moses being now to bring down the tables of the
covenant from the mount, that the people might not
suspect him of any fallacy or collusion, or think that his
pretence to a correspondence with the Deity, as that of
some subsequent lawgivers proved, was vain ami ficti-
tious, God was pleased to send along with him this testi-
mony, as it were, of his having held communion with
God. For the miraculous radianc] wherewith he was
adorned, showed in what company he had been during
his absence; confirmed his message to the people ; and
in every respect carried new credentials in it.
It may seem a little strange, indeed, why a people --'<
immediately under the guidance of God, should every
day stand in need of so man] new credentials, and upon
every little emergency, fall a murmuring and rebelling
aeainst the God of Israel, ami his servant Moses. Si
1 .Mat. xvii. •>. ' M«t *»"• 5.
a It was a custom amongst the ancient heathens, and probably
derived from what here i- represent ti
beamy glory around their heads, /<- Kirry rays about their
as Lucian De Ded Syria has it. And hence it was, that the
Roman emperors, who were raised bo much above tin
mankind, that tiny were honoured as a sort of deities, were thus
represented, as appears from the testimony "t Pliny,among many
more, "ho, in his panegyric to Trajan, n iiatum
pomitiam "</<<t the subject <>t' some banti i .— I
tary.
304
THE HISTORY QF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1130; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3764. A. C. 1G47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
Stephen, in quoting the prophet Amos, has let us into
the cause of this people's frequent prevarications : ' ' 0
ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts
and sacrifices, by the space of forty years in the wilder-
ness ? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, a and
the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to
worship them.' By Moloch, the learned are pretty well
agreed, that we are to understand the image of the sun,
and by Remphan, that of the planet Saturn ; and that
the worship of these idols was a common thing among
the Israelites, in the time of their sojourning in the wild-
erness, is manifest from that passage of the prophet,
where he introduces God thus complaining of the per-
verseness of that people : 2 ' In the day that I chose
Israel, and lifted up my hand unto the seed of the house
of Jacob, to bring them forth out of the land of Egypt,
unto a land that 1 had espied for them, flowing with milk
and honey, then said I unto them, " Cast ye away every
man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not your-
selves with the idols of Egypt : I am the Lord your
God." But they rebelled against me, and would not
hearken unto me ; they did not every man cast away the
abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake
the idols of Egypt.' Nay, so far were they from forsak-
ing the idols of Egypt, that we find them adopting
strange gods from every other neighbouring nation,
which occasioned that severe commination in God : a ' I
will set my face against that man, and will cut him off
from among his people, because he hath given his seed
unto * Moloch, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my
1 Acts vii. 42, 43. 2 Ezek. xx. 5, &c. 3 Lev. xx. 3, &c.
a Thus the Seventy, from whom St Stephen took this pas-
sage in Amos, translate it; but the import of the Hebrew text is
this, ' Ye have borne the tabernacle of your kings, and the
pedestal (so the word Chiun signifies) of your images, the star of
your gods, which ye made to yourselves.' So that it seems very
probable that the LXX read Rephan or Revan, instead of Chiun
or Chevan, and thereby mistook the pedestal for a god. Kircher,
however, and Salmasius assert, that Kiion is Saturn; that his
star is called Keiran among the Persians and Arabians, and that
Remphan, or Rephan, signified the same thing among the
Egyptians ; and therefore they suppose, that the Septuagint, who
made their translation in Egypt, changed the word Chiun into
that of Remphan, because they had the same signification.
llemphan is generally supposed to have been an Egyptian god ;
and Hammond, in his notes upon Acts vii. 43, is of opinion, that
this was the name of a certain king of Egypt, who, after his death,
was deified by his subjects: but of what make and figure the
image of this idol was, or in what manner he was worshipped,
we can nowhere learn. — Calmct's Dictionary, under the words
Chiun and Remphan.
b The rabbins assure us, that the idol Moloch, which was the
same as Baal, the sun, or Lord of heaven, worshipped by all the
people in the east, had its image made of brass, sitting upon a
throne of the same metal, having the head of a calf, adorned
with a royal crown, and his arms extended as it were to embrace
any thing; but what the children's passing through the fire means,
they are not so well agreed. Some of them are of opinion, that
parents, in the worship of this idol, did not actually burn their
children, but only caused them to leap through tire that was
lighted before it, or to pass between two fires placed opposite to
each other, by way of lustration; but the expressions of David
are a little too Strong to admit of this interpretation. For when
lie tells us, that ' they sacrificed their sons and daughters unto
devils, and that they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their
sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,'
Fs. cvi. 37, 3S, we cannot but infer, that they did actually
murder their children in this execrable way. When any infants
were to be sacrificed, the idol was made hot by kindling a great
fire in the inside of it ; and when it was heated to a most intense
holy name.' And if any one fail to punish this idolater,
' then will I set my face,' says God, ' against that man,
and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that
go a whoring after him, from among their people.'
Now, if idolatry was a practice which the Israelites
retained, and in some instances improved, after their de-
parture out of Egypt, there is great reason to presume that
these idolaters were the very murmurers also who infected
the camp with their infidelity. They might believe, be-
cause they saw so many manifestations of it, the residence
of a God among them , but then it is not unlikely, that
they thought of him, as most of the heathens thought of
their gods, that he was a local and limited deity, who
had done something for them indeed, but, could not do
all they wanted ; who had brought them into the wilder-
ness, but had not the power to conduct them into
Canaan.
In this manner it is, that the Psalmist represents them
reasoning with themselves. 4 ' Shall this God of ours
prepare us a table in the wilderness ? He smote the
stony rock indeed, that the water gushed out, and the
streams flowed withal ; but can he give bread also, and
provide flesh for his people ? Many of these miracles
they saw wrought before their eyes ; but then they might
look upon Moses who did them, 5 to be no more than a
mere magician, though perhaps of a better sort than
those of Egypt ; and consequently might be apprehensive
that upon every new turn and exigence, his art would
fail him ; and therefore having no better notions of God,
and so gross a conception of their leader, it is no man-
ner of wonder that they ran into murmuring and discon-
tent, into riot and disorder, upon every little difficulty
that pressed them.
Two times Ave find them complaining for the want of
such food as they desired ; once 6 in the wilderness of
Sin, a few days after their passage of the Red Sea, and
again at the encampment 7 of Kibroth-Hattaavah, not
long after their departure from Mount Sinai ; and at
both of these times God thought proper to send them
quails; not out of any destitution or scarcity of other
provision, 'for 8 all the beasts of the forest are his, and
so are the cattle upon a thousand hills ; he knows all the
fowls upon the mountains, and the wild beasts of the
field are in his sight,' but for this very reason, — that how
willing soever he might be to supply his people's neces-
sities, he had no design to pamper their appetites with a
needless variety, or to multiply miracles without any
just occasion. And therefore, as both these events hap-
pened in the spring, when quails, which are found in
great quantities upon the coasts of the Red Sea, are
accustomed to pass from Asia into Europe, God caused
a wind to arise, which in their Might drove them towards
the camp of the Israelites, and, 9 as the eastern tradition
has it, was so very violent, that it broke their wings, and
made them fall at a convenient distance, and in proper
condition to be taken up.
4 Ps. lxxviii. 20. 21.
5 Bibliothi ea Biblica, vol. iv. Occasional Annotations, 5.
6Exod. xvi. 3, 13. 7 Num. xi. 34. 8 Fs. 1. 10, 11.
9 See Bibl. Orient, p. 749, col. 1.
degree, the miserable victim was put into its arms, and soon
consumed by the violence of the heat; but that the cries of the
children might not be heard in their extremities, the people w< re
wont to make a noise with drums and other instruments about
the idol. — Calmet's Dictionary, and Dissertations.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &<
305
A. M. 2511. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
That quails among us are very excellent food, cannot
be denied ; but the same tradition informs us, that these
birds in Arabia Felix, do vastly surpass all others, and
as our author expresses it, have neither bones, veins, nor
sinews in them, that is, are very fat and tender, some-
thing like our fig-peckers and ortolans. And, therefore,
though God refused to gratify their palates with a pro-
fuse variety of dainties, yet is there no fault to be found
with his provision, since the food he sent them was deli-
cious in its kind, and a whole year had now intervened
between the former and latter flight of quails, to whet
their appetites, and prevent any danger of being cio\ed
with the same dish.
Something, however, there was in their behaviour,
which provoked God in this their latter, more than their
former complaint for want of flesh, to punish them so
severely. ' The desire of flesh for food is in itself but
natural, and, absolutely speaking, far from being cri-
minal, or provoking to the Author of nature, who created
every appetite of man, as well as his understanding ;
but when this breaks out into murmuring, mutiny, and
disorder, the case is then entirely altered. In the former
of these cases, the people were in want of bread, and
really pinched with hunger ; but in the latter, they had
bread from heaven in abundance, and may therefore be
said to complain not out of need but wantonness. Their
discontent in the former case was expressed, compara-
tively, in modest terms ; but here their tone is, 2 ' Who
shall give us flesh to eat ? We remember the fish which we
did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers, and the melons,
and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick ; but now
our soul is dried away ; there is nothing- at all besides
this manna before our eyes.' This same contempt of
the manna, which God so miraculously sent from heaven,
especially in persons so well instructed in the divine will,
was such an instance of baseness and ingratitude, as
justly deserved the punishment it met with.
In the former time of their complaining, God winked
at their ignorance, and pitied their distress ; he had not
then given them his laws for the rule of their actions and
appetites ; and therefore, never looking to reap, where
he had not sowed, he was not so extreme as to mark
what they had done amiss ; but after he had published
his precepts from the holy mount, and many more in-
structions from the tabernacle, he then expected that
their obedience should keep pace with their knowledge,
and was more provoked at their backslidings than before,
because they proceeded not from the ignorance of their
minds, but the perverseness of their wills : for this was
the true and the just cause of their 3 ' condemnation, that
even when light was come into the world, they loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil.'
In the 11th chapter of the book of Leviticus, we have
a catalogue of the beasts, fishes, and fowls, which God
either permitted, or prohibited the Israelites to eat.
From his first making choice of them, God's purpose was
to distinguish them from other nations, and more espe-
cially from the Egyptians, among whom they had long-
lived, had contracted their manners, and were too tena-
cious of their customs ; and therefore, in opposition to
1 Bibliotheca Biblica, vol. iv. Occasional Annotation?, 3,
a Num. :xi. 5, &e. 3 John iii. 19.
A. M. 37G4. A. C. 1C17. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
these, he enjoined them to eat such creatures as were
worshipped in Egypt, which would be an effectual means
to render the pretences of these sham deities contempti-
ble ; as, on the contrary, he ordered them to abstain from
those that were held in the greatest delicacy anions
them. And because the Egyptians would have nothing
to do with such animals as had hoofs and horns, the Jews
were allowed to eat none but what parted the hoof, as
well as chewed the cud.
It is to be observed farther, that in the very make and
nature of some animals, there are certain qualities which
prejudice mankind against them, and seem as it were to
desecrate their use ; that some, for instance, are mon-
strously big, others very ugly and deformed ; some conic
from heterogeneous mixtures, others feed upon dead
bodies, and to others most men have an inbred antipathy ;
so that, in the main, what the law forbad;; the Jews in
this regard, was nature's aversion before : but then the
question is, — Why the things which they were naturally
averse to, and would have refrained without it, were
made the matter of a divine interdiction ?
Now, if we trace the history of this people, we shall
find, that they had their seasons of affliction and scarcity
as well as of prosperity and plenty. At the very time
when these prohibitions were given them, they were tra-
velling, and were to continue travelling for many yean
in a waste and barren desert, Avhich being destitute of
the conveniences, and necessaries of life, might tempt
them to make experiment upon the flesh of some of those
animals that they naturally abhorred, but upon this occa-
sion, as they thought, might innocently make use of : and
therefore, to set a stronger guard upon human nature,
God thought proper to confirm this their innate aversion,
by the sanction and establishment of laws, which were to
last beyond the term of their continuance in the wil-
derness.
The truth is, this people, by their gross impieties, and
prevarications with God, brought frequently upon them-
selves famines, and sieges, and other calamities, wherein
they suffered very grievously. To pass by the famines,
which happened 4 in Judea, '' in the times of the Judges,
and 6 in David's days ; in the reign of Ahab there was a
dreadful one in Samaria, when an ' ass's head sold for
fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab
of doves' dung (it should be rendered pulse) lor fire
pieces of silver;' and, what is more lamentable still,
when mothers entered into compact about eating their
own children. But the most tragical account of all, is
that which their own historian has recorded of them, at
the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, when wires snatched
the necessaries of life from their husbands, children from
their parents, and parents from their children; ' when
mothers were forced, for their own .support, to defraud
their infants of the little milk which was in their breasts,
while the infants were dying in their arms for want of it ;
when hunger and necessity turned every thing into vic-
tuals and, what is shocking to human nature but barely
to think on, 9 made one Jewish lady of quality eat her
own child.
Bibliotheca Bibliea, voL iii. < (crasional Annotations, 3.
5 Ruth i. 1. 6 2 Sam. xxi. 1. ' 2 Kings vi. 26.
8 Joseph. De Bello Jud. b. 5. c. 10.
» Joseph. De Bello Jud. h. fi. c. 3.
2q
306
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3764. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
Now the use that I would make of this melancholy
part of their history, is this, — That as to God's pre-
science, were present from everlasting all the wicked-
nesses and rebellions of this people ; so were those
penalties and judgments which his infinite wisdom deter-
mined to be most suitable to them. For what method
can be thought more proper to make an impression upon
those that forsake God, than that he should forsake them,
that is, so far at least, as to withdraw the succours of life
from them ? And considering his prohibition of certain
animals for food under this view, it was certainly a kind
and generous warning- to his people, not to bring- them-
selves, in consequence of these provocations, (which he
foreknew, and against which he had so strictly cautioned
them,) into such circumstances, as would oblige them
either to forbear the very last means of sustaining life,
or to break more of God's commandments than they had
done before.
But there is a farther reason arising from the quality
of animals, why God might enact a discrimination of
meats, and that is, — to give his people therein a mystical
system of morality. Thus the birds which were allowed
to be eaten, the pigeon, the dove, the partridge, for
instance, were either tame, or of gentle nature, feeding
on grain or pulse ; whereas all the species that lived on
prey, and such as gorge themselves with flesh and blood,
were utterly forbidden, thereby to bring into reputation
justice and mercy, and moderation, and at the same time
to discountenance the contrary disposition to rapine,
oppression, and cruelty. It is a noted allegory, that in
Homer, of Circe's changing Ulysses' friends into hogs.
By Circe, the poet intends that we should understand
sensual pleasures ; by Ulysses, reason and discretion ;
and by his retinue, the inferior faculties and powers ;
and in like manner, the prohibition of swine's flesh, was
designed to restrain the Jews from such lusts as Avar
against the spirit, as pollute and debase human nature,
like that creature's wallowing in the mire : for, as a
learned author observes, 1 the Jewish law was more
remarkably strict in its prohibitions of things that were
sordid and slovenly ; wherein it seems to have had an
especial aim to the training and forming of a people that
had lived uncultivated, by reason of their long slavery
in Egypt, and their dirty work in clay and bricks, to an
elegancy and politeness of manners, as well as a detes-
tation of all filthy and brutal lusts, ' that being set free
from sin,' as the apostle expresses it, 2 ' they might
glorify God in purity and holiness, both in their bodies,
and in their spirits, which were his.'
The same apostle, in his epistle to the Hebrews, has
informed us, ' that 3 the law made nothing perfect, but
the bringing in of a better hope, by which we draw nigh
unto God, did.' The Jewish high priest was a type of
our blessed Saviour, and his entrance into the holy of
holies, of our Lord's ascension into heaven, after his
resurrection. The sacrilices which were offered under
the Levitical law, were previous representations of the
death of Christ ; and the redemption of mankind by the
effusion of his blood was exhibited every day in the
several oblations in the tabernacle : ' 4 for if the blood of
bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling
' Spencer tie Legilms Heb.
3 Ch. vii. 19.
2 1 Cor. vi. 20.
4 Heb. ix. 13.
the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh ;
how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God,
purge the conscience from dead works, to serve the liv-
ing God ?' Now, besides the arguments which might be
drawn from the grossness of the Jews' understanding,
and their incapacity to receive a more spiritual dispen-
sation, God might have this farther design in setting
before them the mystery of man's redemption under such
typical representations, namely, that thereby he might
excite their industry, and give a fuller scope to the
exercise of their faith. For that the faith, and hope,
and other graces of the patriarchs and devout Jews,
were more effectually proved by the exhibition of things
ambiguous and obscure, than if they had been altogether
opened in the fullest and plainest propositions, is a
matter that can hardly be contested. To rest assured,
that God would bring to pass what he had expressly and
circumstantially foretold, showed indeed a sincere and
true faith in general ; but to be persuaded, that faint
resemblances, and the remotest hints were pregnant with
certainty and solidity, and would, in their proper time,
be gloriously completed, how unintelligible soever they
might be at present, was, if we may so call it, a special ad-
vance of heroic faith, and rendered their dependence and
resignation as complete as possible. And accordingly
the apostle, having enumerated several ancient worthies,
who by faith extended their views, and looked upon the
dispensation they were under, as no more than a system
of types and shadows of the good things to come, con-
cludes their character in the following manner : 5 ' And
these all, having obtained a good report through faith,
received not the promise : God having provided some
better thing for us, that they without us should not be
made so perfect.' So that the Jewish religion and
worship was, in some respects, adapted to the capacity
and genius both of the learned and ignorant : of the
ignorant, as being made up of pomp and show enough
to attract their attention ; and of the learned, as abound-
ing with shadows and emblems of higher matters, enough
to exercise their deepest contemplation.
What the sin of ' offering" strange fire before the Lord
was,' and upon what account it raised the divine indig-
nation against Nadab and Abihu,the two sons of Aaron,
will best appear by attending a little to the probable
occasion of it. After the consecration of Aaron and his
sons to the priestly office, we are told, that a miraculous
' fire from the Lord,' that is, a fire which either came
immediately down from heaven, or out of the cloud
which covered the tabernacle, consumed the first victim
which Aaron offered for a burnt-offering ; that God had
expressly commanded, that 6 ' the fire which was upon
the altar should not be suffered to go out,' which, accord-
ing to the consent of most interpreters, signifies, that
the said miraculous fire which had confirmed the instal-
lation of Aaron and his sons after so surprising a man-
ner, should be kept alive, and burning- with the utmost
care ; and that, as at this very fire, Aaron was 7 required
to light the incense which he offered to God in the most
holy place, on the greiit day of expiation ; so may we
take it for granted, that the like injunction was imposed
5 Heb. ix. 39, 40.
Lev.
12.
Lev. xvi. 12.
Sect. II. J
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
307
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37UI. A. C. 1GI7. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
on the inferior priests, with relation to the incense which
they were to offer every day before God in the holy
place. We have indeed no mention made of such a law ;
but the history we are commenting upon gives us a
strong presumption, that the use of this Hre only was
permitted ; and therefore the words ' in the text, ' which
he commanded them not,' is thought to imply an express
prohibition of any other.
The crime then of Nadab and Abihu consisted in their
kindling the incense, which their office of priests obliged
them to offer every morning and evening, with fire difier-
ent from that which was continually on the altar of burnt-
oft'erings ; and consequently different from what God
ordered them to use. a Other offences indeed have been
laid to their charge. Some pretend, that they endea-
voured to intrude into the most holy place, which was
not permitted them to enter ; because immediately after
the recital of the manner of their death, Moses, in
another place relates, that God commanded him to speak
unto Aaron, 2 ' That he should not come, at all times,
into the holy place, within the veil, before the mercy-
seat, that he died not;' but others insinuate, that they
were guilty of intemperance, at the entertainment made
at their installation, because after the account of their
fatal end, Moses, by God's order, gives this injunction
to Aaron, and the remainder of his sons : 3 ' Do not
drink wine, nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with
thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation,
lest ye die. R shall be a statute for ever through your
generations, that ye may put difference between holy
and unholy, between unclean and clean.' Rut these
are no more than bare surmises, that iiave no proper
foundation in the foregoing texts ; nor is there any
occasion to hunt out for passages to augment these
offenders' crime.
Nadab and Abihu had not only been admitted, in com-
mon with the rest of their brethren, to the honour of the
priesthood, which among the Jews was a dignity of no
small esteem ; but had particular motives which the
others had not, to the observance of all God's com-
mandments, as having had the privilege of seeing the
symbols of the divine presence, on the formidable
mount from whence his laws were promulged, with-
out being consumed. The higher therefore their station
was, and the more distinguishing the favours they had
received, the more provoking was their affront, in
attempting to adulterate an ordinance of God's institu-
tion. Common fire, they thought, might serve the
purpose of burning incense, as well as that which was
held more sacred : at least, in the gaiety, or rather
naughtiness of their hearts, they were minded to make
the experiment, even in opposition to the divine com-
1 Lev. x. 1. * Lev. xvi. 2. 3 Lev. x. 9, 10.
a The author of the Connexion so often cited, supposes another
kind of innovation to have been the occasion of their untimely
death. God as yet, says he, had given no law for the offering
of incense in censers: all that he had been commanded about it,
was that Aaron should bum it upon ' the altar of incense ' every
morning and every evening; hut these men took upon them to
begin, and introduce a service into religion, which was not
appointed, and which if it had been suffered, would have opened
a door to great irregularities; and therefore God, by an exemplary
judgment upon the first offenders, put an effectual stop to it. —
Shiukford, vol. iil. b. 11.
mand, and therefore 4 it was just and requisite in God,
especially in the beginning of the priesthood, and when
one alteration of a divine precept might, in process of
time, be productive of many more, to inflict an exem-
plary punishment, that others might ' hear, and fear, and
not commit the like abomination.'
And for this reason, namely, the injection of terror
into others, Moses is commanded to make no lamenta-
tion or funeral pomp for them; which among the JeMTSi
who, of all other nations, were so very sumptuous in
their obsequies of their deceased friends, was accounted
a sore judgment. In the case of Jehoiakim the king of
Judah, the connnination of God is thought very terrible.
5 They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah ! my brother,
or ah ! sister : they shall not lament for him, saying, ah '
lord, or ah ! his glory. He shall be buried with the
burial of an ass, drawn, and cast forth beyond the gates
of Jerusalem.' Temporal judgments, however, are not
always sure indications of the final condemnation of the
persons on whom they fall ; and therefore Aaron had no
occasion utterly to despond : on the contrary, lie might
presume that the justice of God being satisfied with the
present punishment of his sons, might be appeased with
relation to their eternal state ; and that though their
6 ' flesh was destroyed, yet their spirits might be saved
in the day of the Lord.' He knew too, how much him-
self had offended in the matter of the golden calf, and
might justly think, that God had called his sin to remem-
brance in the destruction of his two sons. He acknow-
ledged, therefore, the righteousness of God, in all that
he had brought upon him, and in the phrase of Scripture,
7 ' was dumb, and opened not his mouth, because it was
the Lord's doing.'
What the occasion of the difference between Moses
and his brother Aaron, and sister Miriam was, is not so
very evident. The history indeed tells us, that 8 ' they
spake against Moses, because of the Ethiopian or rather
Arabian woman, whom he had married.' The generality
of interpreters suppose this woman to be Zipporah,
the daughter of Jethro, whom he married in Midian ; for
those who imagine her to have been another, can hardly
get over this difficulty, — Why Moses should set so bad
an example as to marry, at two several times, a foreigner,
rather than one of the daughters of his people. The
first time, indeed, that he did so, was when he lived in
a state of exile, but was nevertheless kindly received in
a family of the best distinction in the place, which might
be inducement enough for his matching himself with one
of the daughters, since no express precept against
matches of this kind was then in force. Hut now that
he was set at the head of a people, who wen to be
separated from the rest of mankind, and was conducting
them into a country, with whose inhabitants they were to
have no matrimonial intercourse, for fear of introducing
idolatry, it would have been highly indecent and unpo-
pular, ail affront upon his own countrywomen, as well
as a dangerous inlet to impiety, for him to hive married
into an idolatrous nation: nor would his brother and
sister have been the only persons to clamour against
him, but the whole congregation would have risen up in
1 Le Clerc's Commentary. 'Jen xnm- IS If.
6 1 Cor. v. 5. 7 Ps. xxxix. 9. Num. xii. 1.
308
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[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3764. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
arms, upon so notorious a provocation. Since, therefore,
we hear of no such commotion, we may reasonably con-
clude, that this Cushite, or Arabian woman, was the
same Zipporah, whom he had married some forty years
before. But then why they should quarrel with him
upon her account, at this time, and no sooner, is the
difficulty.
Now, to resolve this, we must observe, that when
Jethro, his father-in-law, was in the camp, it was by his
advice that Moses I instituted judges to determine lesser
causes; and that he found his son Hobab so very ser-
vice able to him in the capacity of a camp-master-general,
that a he earnestly entreated him to continue with him,
and received him, no doubt, into great confidence. It is
to be observed farther, that in the foregoing chapter, we
have an account of the creation of the office of the seventy
ol ders to assist in the administration, and that these elders
were nominated by Moses, without ever consulting Aaron
or Miriam. As therefore this story of their quarrelling
with him is immediately subjoined, it seems very likely,
that taking themselves to be neglected, in so great an
alteration made in the government without their advice,
they were very angTy ; but not daring to charge Moses
directly, they fell foul upon his wife, giving her oppro-
brious names, and complaining to the people, very pro-
bably, that she and her brother had too much power
and influence over Moses.
Josephus, in his Jewish history, makes no mention of
this family difference, as thinking that it might reflect
discredit upon his nation ; but Moses was an author of
more veracity than to conceal any action which was
proper for mankind to know, even though it tended to
the lasting disgrace of his own family. For he does
not affect to aggrandize the thing, or to make his family
appear more considerable, when he introduces God as
arbitrating- the difference between them ; but purely to
acquaint us, that as the Israelites lived then under a
theocracy, God himself being their immediate King,
undertook to decide the controversies depending upon
such of his chief ministers as were not accountable to
any other judge ; nor was the divine Majesty any more
debased in condescending to make this decision, than
any earthly prince would be, by interposing his authority
to determine a controversy between two of his great and
powerful subjects.
1 Exod. xviii. 21, 22.
a Moses' words to Hobab are these : ' Leave us not, I pray
thee, forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the
w'ilderness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes,' (Num. x.
31.) But if the being which resided in the miraculous cloud
was their guide, what need was there for Hobab's stay ? Now
the design of the cloud was to direct the people when to decamp
and where to encamp again: but for the securing of their camp
against all hostile force, they were left to human means: and
therefore Hobab, having lived long a borderer upon the wilder-
ness, was well acquainted with every part of it, and the better
able to advise them, both whence to provide themselves with
such things as they wanted, and how to secure themselves against
any neighbouring powers that should attempt to assault them;
and for these reasons Moses was so pressing for his staying
with him ; though the Septuagint understand the passage as if he
desired him to continue to be what he had hitherto been in the
wilderness, namely, a good adviser, like his father Jethro, and
withal assured him, that he would look upon him as an elder.—
Patrick's Commentary.
Moses indeed inserts a passage to show that the occa-
sion of this family quarrel was not from him ; that he
was a man of a meek and peaceable disposition ; and
therefore not addicted to strife and contention, especially
with those of his own kindred ; and why might he not
insert this, when it was no more than what was due to
his character, and perhaps at that time necessary for his
own vindication ? St Paul, to clear himself from some
aspersions which the malice of his enemies had cast upon
him, enters upon his own commendation, though it be
with some reluctancy, and to give it a better gloss, tries
all the powers of eloquence in working it up. s ' Where-
insoever any is bold,' says he, ' I speak foolishly, I am
bold also. Are they Hebrews ? So am I. Are they
Israelites ? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham ?
So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I speak
as a fool, I am more : In labours more abundant, in
stripes above measure : In prisons more frequent : In
deaths often. — In perils of waters, in perils of robbers,
in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the
heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness,
in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren : In
weariness andpainfulness,in watchings often ; in hunger
and thirst, in fastings often ; in cold and nakedness ;
besides those things that are without, that which cometh
upon me daily, the care of all the churches.' These are
the words of our apostle, setting oft* the faithful discharge
of his ministry ; and yet no one ever suspected the genu-
ineness of this his epistle to the Corinthians upon that
account : as little reason have we, therefore, to call in
question the authenticity of this book of Moses, because
we find a passage or two that speaks favourably of him.
That all historians, both ancient and modern, when
they come to speak of the part and concern they had in
such and such actions, are commonly accustomed to
speak in the third person ; and that the most modest man
upon earth may sometimes see occasion to magnify his
office, or vindicate himself, without deserving the impu-
tation of vanity or arrogance, cannot be denied. Now,
considering what share it was that Moses himself bore in
the facts which he relates, and that the narrations, laws,
and admonitions which he recorded, were not designed
for that age only, but directed to all succeeding
generations of the world ; and withal considering, that
the seditious and turbulent behaviour of his brother
and sister at that time obliged him to justify and clear
himself ; there was no imaginable way more proper
for him to express himself in, than that which he made
use of, even had it been a matter of his own study
and contrivance : but then, if we suppose that he wrote
by divine inspiration, the commendation that is given of
his natural lenity and good nature, must be looked upon
rather as the Holy Ghost's testimony concerning Moses,
than Moses' testimony concerning himself.
Though Moses was certainly a good-natured man,
and therefore could not live long at variance with his
brother Aaron, yet we can hardly suppose, that his love
and affection for him Mould ever prevail with him to enter
into any fraudulent measures, in order to raise him to
the pontificate. The rod which gave Aaron the prefer-
ence, was not, as we noted before, Moses' wonder-
8 2 Cor. xi. 21, &c
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
309
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES;
working rod, but, in all probability, one of the same tree
from whence the princes of the other tribes cut theirs.
All these rods, with the names of the several tribes
engraved upon them, were delivered to Moses in the face
of the whole congregation, and by him were instantly
carried into the tabernacle : and that he did not palm upon
the people, when his back was turned, and put an almond
twig into the place of Aaron's rod, is evident from what
is related of it, namely, that it had leaves, buds, blos-
soms, and ripe fruit upon it, all at one time, which no
tree of any kind ever was known to have before.
Some of the vulgar, and less curious, might perhaps,
at a cursory review, have been imposed upon by a sham
appearance of these things painted on Aaron's rod ; but
Moses knew very well, that he had the heads of each
tribe to deal with ; men of sagacity and observation, and
who were too nearly concerned in the experiment to let
any pretence to a miracle go unexamined : and therefore
we may very well imagine that when he brought forth all
the rods the next morning, they surveyed every one very
carefully, and made diligent search into the alteration
which had passed upon that which belonged to Aaron ;
and had they found any deception in it, would have
exposed the two brothers to contempt and ridicule, or
rather have deposed them from all rule and power for
the future, as a couple of vile and impious impostors.
But instead of that, we rind that this miracle silenced all
cavils for ever after against Aaron and his family ; con-
firmed the authority of Moses ; and made the people,
when he told them, that by God's appointment, he had
laid up Aaron's rod to be a witness against them, that if
they murmured any more, they should most certainly be
destroyed, break out into this doleful complaint : 1 ' Be-
hold we die, we perish, we all perish, and shall be con-
sumed with dying :' for they began now to believe God's
threatenings, and to fear, that at one time or other they
should experience some heavy and severe punishment,
as by this new sign he had convinced them that they had
justly deserved it.
Thus I have endeavoured to answer most of the
material objections which have industriously been raised
against the sacred history of this period ; and were it any
farther confirmation of its truth and authority, I might
add, 2 that the whole matter of Korah, how he rebelled
against Moses, and made a defection among the people,
for which he suffered the very judgment that the Scrip-
ture relates, was doubtless of standing tradition in the
east, which the Mahometans have borrowed, and given
us at second hand : that the consumption of Aaron's
{Sacrifice, 3 ' by the fire which came from the Lord,'
raised the report, " that, in ancient times, men did not
kindle fire upon their altars, but called it down from
heaven by prayer, and that the Hame was produced by
the deity to whom the sacrifice was offered : that the irra-
1 Num. xvii. 12, IS.
* Calmet's Dictionary under the word Korah.
3 Lev. ix. 24.
a Servius in JEiwid, b. 12. v. 200. and Patrick's Comment-
ary in locum. From the fire of the altar, which, in the Mosaic
language, was called ' the fire of the Lord,' as it came down
from heaven, and was perpetually kept burning, it is obvious, at
first sight, that the Greeks derived, in the way of etymology,
their ict'io., and the Romans their vestal fire, SO famous in all
history. — Bibliothcca Biblica on Num. Annot. 2.
A. M. 3704. A. C. 1C47. EXOD. xxxiv. 28— NUM. xviii.
diation of Moses' face, when he came down from the
mount, introduced the custom among the heathens, of
adorning the images of their gods and heroes with a
beamy glory about their heads : that the veneration paid
to his wonder-working rod, established an usage which
prevails almost every where, 4 for the great ministers of
state to carry in their hands wands, as ensigns of their
office, whenever they appear at court; and that the bud-
ding of his brother Aaron's rod, in all probability, uave
rise to J the fable of Hercules' club, when left in the
ground, striking root downward, and so reviving and
repullulating. But I choose rather, in this place, to
remark the great affinity between the divine and human
laws, so far as they relate to what we call the decalogue,
insomuch, that whatever the ancient heathen lawgivers
have enacted about these matters, seems little more than
a transcript from the ten commandments, which Moses
delivered to the Jews.
Thus the unity of God, and the folly of making any
image of him, which constitute the two first command-
ments, was an B institution of Numa, which lie took from
Pythagoras, who maintained, that there was only one
supreme Being, and that, as he is perfectly spiritual, and
the object of the mind only, no visible representation
can be made of him. The reverence of God's holy name,
which is the subject of the third, was recognised by the
heathens in all their solemn contracts, promises, and
asseverations ; and for this reason Plato, in his book
de Legibus, acquaints us, that " it is 7 an excellent
lesson, to be very cautious and tender, in so much as
mentioning the very name of God." The setting apart
one day in seven, and the observation of it for religious
purposes, was a practice so general in the pagan world,
that, according to Philo, this seventh day was truly called
Ecqtvi Trcfjhri/x.o; , or the universal festival, and by the
Athenians, according to the laws then in force, was
observed with the utmost strictness, anil such as admitted
of no servile work. The honour and respect due to
parents was secured by that excellent law made by Solon,
which declares, 8 " that if any one strike his parents, or
do not maintain them, and provide them a dwelling,
and all things necessary, let him be utterly disregarded,
and banished from all civil society." The prohibition of
murder is confirmed by the laws of Athens, which make
its punishment capital, when wilfully committed : banish-
ment, when by chance medley; and for every maim
designedly given, imposes both a confiscation of goods,
and a proscription from the city where the injured person
dwells. The prohibition of adulter) was sufficiently
enforced by Solon, when he left the guilt) persons, when
deprehended in the fact, to the mercy of the injured
husband, who, if he suffered them to escape with their
lives, had license to handle the man very roughly,9
and to divorce the woman, who for her crime \\;i- ex-
cluded from all places of public concourse, and reduced
below the condition of a slave. The prohibition of theft
was supported by a law of Draco's, which made felons
of what denomination soever lose their lives for their
* Huet. Quest Aln.t. Hui I. ibid.
6 Clem. Alex. Strom, b. 5; ami Bibliothera Biblica on Bxod.
xx. 4. 7 De I. eg. b. ■>.
K Bibliotheca Biblica mi Deut. Dissertation 3.
■Archbishop 1'ottei's Greek Antiquities.
310 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G4. A. C. 1647. EXOD. xxxiv. 28.— NUM. xviii.
crime ; but this being thought too severe, Solon's insti-
tution was, that every petty larceny should be punished
with double restitution, and sometimes imprisonment,
but every greater robbery, to the value of fifty drachms,
with death. The prohibition of false witness was, l rati-
fied by the Athenian laws, which not only punished the
o (tenders with fines, confiscation of goods and banish-
ment, but degraded them likewise from all dignity, as
persons extremely ignominious, and who, according 2 to
the law of the twelve tables, deserved to be thrown from
the Tarpeian rock. The prohibition of covetousness of
all kinds, which is the tenth and last commandment, no-
where occurs in the edicts of any ancient legislator; for,
as 3 a pious bishop well observes, " all the laws that
were ever made by any governors upon earth, respected
only the words and actions, or the outward carriage and
behaviour of their subjects. None ever offered to give
laws to the minds or hearts of men, what they should think,
or love, or desire, or the like ; and it would have been
ridiculous and absurd to have done it, because they could
never have known whether such laws were observed or no;"
so proper is the question, which their great lawgiver puts
to the Jews, 4 ' What nation is there so great that hath
statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which
1 set before you this day ?' So just the commendation
which the royal Psalmist gives of it : ' The law of the
Lord is an undefiled law, converting tire soul : the testi-
mony of the Lord is sure, and giveth wisdom unto the
simple. Moreover by them is thy servant taught, and in
keeping of them there is great reward.'
CHAP. lU.—Ofthe Jewish Tabernacle, fyc.
From the very first beginning of time, God had always
some place appropriated to the solemn duties of religi-
ous worship. 5 Even during the small space of his con-
tinuance in paradise, Adam had6 where to present himself
before the Lord ; and after his expulsion from thence,
his sons in like manner, had 7 whither to bring their
oblations and sacrifices. The patriarchs, both before
and after the flood, used 8 altars, and 9 mountains, and
1U groves, for the self-same purpose. Here they had
their proseucha;, or places for prayer, which were certain
plats of ground, encompassed with a wall, or some other
enclosure, and open above. But since the first place
of this kind, that made any considerable figure, was the
tabernacle which God ordered Moses to erect in the wil-
derness, as an habitation for his majestic presence to
reside in, it may not be improper, in this place, to give
some account of it, and the other holy things appertain-
ing to it.
The tabernacle was a tent covered with curtains and
skins, but much larger than other tents. It was in the
form of an oblong square, thirty cubits in length, and ten
in height and breadth, and was properly divided into two
parts, namely, the holy place, and the holy of holies.
1 Bibliotheca Biblica on Deut. Dissertation 3.
* A. Gell. b. 12. c. 1. s Bishop Beveridge upon the
Catechism. * Deut. iv. S. and Ps. xix. 7, &c.
Hooker's Ercles. Polity, b. 5. 6 Gen. iii. 8. ' Gen. iv. 3.
8 Gen. xiii. 4. 9 Gen. xxii. 1. 10 Gen. xxi. 33.
The holy place was twenty cubits long, and ten wide,
where stood the table of shewbread, the golden candle-
stick, and the altar of incense. The holy of holies, which
was likewise called the sanctuary, was ten cubits long,
and ten broad, contained the ark of the covenant, and
was separated from the holy place by a veil, or hanging,
made of rich embroidered linen, which hung upon four
pillars of shittim or cedar wood, that were covered with
plates of gold, but had their bases made of brass ; and at
the entrance of the tabernacle, instead of a door, there
was a veil of the same work, sustained by the like pil-
lars, which separated it from the outward court.
The boards or planks whereof the body of the taberna-
cle was composed, were in all forty-eight, each a cubit
and a half wide, and ten cubits high. Twenty of them
went to make up one side of the tabernacle, and twenty
the other, and at the west end of it were the other eight,
which were all let into one another by two tenons above
and below, and compacted together by bars running from
one end to the other ; but the east end of it was open,
and only covered with a rich curtain.
The roof of the tabernacle was a square frame of planks,
resting upon their basis ; and over these were coverings
or curtains of different kinds. Of these the first, on the
inside, was made of fine linen, curiously embroidered in
various colours of crimson and scarlet, and purple and
hyacinth ; the next was made of goats' hair neatly woven
together ; and the last of sheep and badgers' skins,
(some dyed red, and others of azure blue,) which were
to preserve the rich curtains from wet, and to protect
the tabernacle itself from the injuries of the weather.
Round about the tabernacle was a large oblong court,
an hundred cubits long, aud fifty broad, encompassed
with pillars overlaid with silver, and whose capitals were
of the same metal, but their bases were of brass. Ten
of these pillars stood towards the west, six to the east,
twenty to the north, and twenty to the south, at five
cubits distance from each other ; and over these hung-
curtains made of twined linen thread, in the manner of
net-work, which surrounded the tabernacle on all sides,
except at the entrance of the court, which was twenty
cubits wide, and sustained with four columns, overlaid
with plates of silver. These columns had their capitals
and bases of brass ; were placed at proportionable dis-
tances, and covered with a curtain made of richer
materials.
In this court, and opposite to the entrance of the
tabernacle, stood the altar of burnt-offerings in the open
air, that the lire, which was kept perpetually upon it, and
the smoke arising from the victims that were burnt there,
might not spoil the inside of the tabernacle. It was five
cubits long, as much in width, and three cubits high ;
was placed upon a basis of stone work, and covered both
within and without with brass plates. At the four cor-
ners of this altar there was something like four horns,
covered with the same metal, and as the altar itself was
hollow, and open both at top and bottom, from these
horns there hung a grate made of brass, fastened with
four rings and four chains, whereon the wood and the
sacrifice were burnt ; and as the ashes fell through, they
were received below in a pan. At a very small distance
from this altar there stood on the south side, a brazen
vessel, which, on account of its extraordinary size, was
called the brazen sea, in which the priests were used to
Sect. 11.1
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
311
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
wash their feet, whenever they were to offer sacrifice, or
to go into the tabernacle.
In that part of the tabernacle which was called the
holy place, there was on the north side, a table made of
Shittim or cedar wood, covered with gold, two cubits
long, one in breadth, and one and a half in length.
About the edge of it was an ornament, or border made
of gold, together with a crown of gold in the middle,
and at each end was placed the offering of the shew-
bread, namely, six loaves in a pile to represent the
twelve tribes. The bread was changed every Sabbath-day,
and not allowed to be eaten by any one but the priests.
Over against this table, on the south side, stood the
candlestick, which was made of pure gold, upon a basis
of the same metal, and had seven branches on each side,
and one in the middle. These branches were at equal
distances, adorned with six flowers like lilies, with as
many knobs like apples, and little bowls like half almond
shells, placed alternately ; and upon each of these
branches there was a golden lamp, which was lighted
every evening, and extinguished every morning.
Betwixt the table and the candlestick, was placed the
altar of incense, which was but one cubit in length and
breadth, and two cubits high ; but was covered with plates
of gold, and had a crown of gold over it. Every morn-
ing and evening, the priest in waiting for that week,
offered incense of a particular composition upon this
altar, and to this end carried a smoking censer, filled
with fire, which he took from the altar of burnt-offerings
into the tabernacle, and so placing it upon this other
altar, retired.
The persons appointed to officiate about holy things
were of three kinds, the high priest, priests, and Levites :
and, what is very remarkable, in the first of this order,
is the singularity of his vestments, which were the breast-
plate, the ephod, the robe, the close coat, the mitre, and
the girdle. The ephod, the robe, and the close coat
were all of linen, and covered the whole body from the
neck to the heel. Over these was a purple or blue
tunic, which reached not so low, but was curiously
wrought all over, and at the bottom of it had pomegra-
nates, and bells, intermixed at equal distances. The
pomegranates were made of blue, purple, and crimson
wool, and <* the bells of gold.
a What the number of bells worn by the high priest was, the
Scripture is silent, and authors are not so well agreed; but the
sacred historian has let us into the use and intent of them in
these words : ' And it shall be upon Aaron to minister: and his
sound shall be heard when he goeth into the holy place before the
Lord, and when he cometh out, that he die not.' The kings of
Persia are said to have the hem of their robes adorned, like the
Jewish high priest, with pomegranates and gold bells. The
ladies who are about his person, and whose business it is to please
and divert him, have little gold bells fastened to their legs, their
neck, and elbows, and when they dance, the sound of these make
a very agreeable harmony. The Arabian princesses wear large
hollow gold rings, which are filled with little Mints, and make a
sound like little bells when they walk ; and besides these, they
have abundance of little fiat bobs fastened to the ends of their hair;
which make a noise as often as they stir, and give notice that the
mistress of the house is going by, that so the servants of the
family may behave themselves respectfully, and strangers retire,
to avoid seeing the person that is passing. It was therefore in
all probability, witli a design of giving notice, that the high priest
was passing by, that he too wore little bells on the hem of his
robe ; or rather it was, as it were, a kind of public notice, that
A. M. 3764. A. C. 1C47. EXOD. xxxiv. 2S.-NUM. xriii.
The ephod was a kind of girdle, made of gold thread,
and other threads of divers colours, which being brought
from behind the neck, and over the two shoulders,
was put cross upon the stomach ; then carried round the
waist, and brought back again about the body, did i;ird
the tunic like a sash, and so fell down before, and hung
as low as the feet. Upon that part of the ephod, which
came upon the high priest's shoulders, were two large
precious stones, whereon were engraven the names of
the twelve tribes of Israel, on each stone six ; and where
the ephod crossed the high priest's breast, there w.is a
square ornament, called the pectoral, or rational,
wherein were twelve precious stones set, with the names
of the twelve tribes engraven on them, on each stone
one. The mitre was of fine flax : it covered the head ;
and on the forehead was a plate of gold, whereon were
engraved these words, Holiness to the Lord, which
was tied behind the head with two ribbons fastened to
its ends.
These were the chief of the solemn ornaments which
belonged to the high priest. The other priests had only
a simple tunic, a linen mitre, and a girdle ; but th<\ all
of them wore linen or cotton breeches, which covered
their legs and thighs, and reached up to their waist. The
Levites had no peculiar habit in the ceremonies of reli-
gion ; but about the sixty-second year of Christ, they
obtained of king Agrippa leave to wear a linen tunic,
as well as the priests.
The high priest was at the head of all religious affairs,
and the ordinary judge of all the difficulties which
related to them. He only had the privilege of entering
into the sanctuary once a year, which was on the day of
solemn expiation, to make atonement for the sins of the
whole people. The ordinary priests attended the sor\ ice
of the tabernacle ; they kept up a perpetual lire upon
the altar of burnt-offerings ; lighted and extinguished
the lamps of the golden candlestick ; made the loaves
of shewbread ; offered them on the golden altar in the
sanctuary ; changed them every Sabbath-day ; and every
day, at night and morning, carried in a smoking censer
of incense, and placed it upon the golden table, which,
upon this account, was likewise called the altar of
incense.
iStit the chief business of the priests was to offer sacri-
fices, of which there were four kinds. I. The burnt-
offering, which was totally consumed by fire upon tin-
altar, after that the feet and entrails had been washed.
•2. The peace-ofiering, whereof the inward fat , or tallow,
made up with the liver and kidneys, was onU burnt upon
the altar: the breast and right shoulder was the perqui-
site of the priests, who were obliged to eat them in the
holy place ; and the remainder belonged to tin- person
who offered the sacrifice. 3. The sacrifice for sin. com
mitted either wilfully or ignorantly : and in this the
priest took some of the blood of the rictim, dipped hi
he was going into the sanctuary; for as in the king of P
court, no one was suffered to «nter the apartments, without giv-
ing notice thereof by the Bound of something; so the high priest,
out of respect to the divine presence, residing in the holy of
holies, did, by the sound of little hells, fastened to the botfa in of
bis robe desire, as it were permission to enter, that the sound
of the bells might he heard, and he not punished with death, lor
an unmannerly intrusion. — Calmed Dictionary under the word
lid!.
312
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G4. A. C. 1647. EXO.TX xxxiv. 28-NUM. xviii.
finger in it, and sprinkled it seven times towards the
veil of the sanctuary. The same parts of the victim
were burnt on the altar in this as in the former sacrifice.
The rest, if the sacrifice was offered for the sin of the
high priest, or for the people, was carried without the
camp, and there burnt ; but if it was for a private person,
the victim was divided, as we said before, between the
priest and the offerer. 4. The sacrifice of oblation was
either fine flour, or incense, cakes of fine flour, and oil
baked, or the first-fruits of new corn. Oil, salt, wine,
and frankincense went always along with every thing
that was offered. All the frankincense was cast into
the fire ; but of the other things the priest only burnt a
part, and the rest he reserved to himself.
Thus we have taken a cursory view of the Jewish
tabernacle, and its utensils ; of the Jewish priesthood,
and its offices ; and have nothing more to do, but to
inquire a little for what a ends and uses God was pleased
to institute these things. To this purpose St Paul in-
forms us, that the Jewish law was an imperfect dispen-
sation from the very first, and ' ' atlded only because of
transgressions, until the seed should come, to whom the
promise was made :' that in great condescension, it was
adapted to the weakness of the Jewish people, whom he
compares to an heir under a tutor or governor ; for these
are his words : 2i I say then, that an heir, as long as he
is a child, diftereth nothing from a servant, though he be
lord of all: Even so we, when we were children, were
in bondage, under the elements of the world ;' so that
3 ' the law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ,'
and 4 ' having only a shadow of good things to come,
and not the very image of the things, it could never,
1 Gal. iii. 19.
2 Gal. iv. 1, &c.
4 Heb. x. 1.
3 Gal. iii. 24.
a Josephus, having treated of the tabernacle, and the several
things appertaining to it, makes the use and design of them a
little too mystical and allegorical. " Let but a man consider,"
says he, " the structure of the tabernacle, the sacerdotal vest-
ments, and the holy vessels that are dedicated to the service of
the altar, and he must of necessity be convinced, that our law-
giver was a pious man. — For what are all these but the image of
the whole world ? The tabernacle consisting of thirty cubits,
and being divided into three parts, whereof two are for the priests
in general, and of free access, resembles the earth and the sea ;
while the third, where no mortal, except the high priest, is per-
mitted to enter, is an emblem of heaven, reserved for God alone.
The twelve loaves of shewbread upon the table, signify the twelve
months in the year. The candlestick, -which is made up of
seventy pieces, refers to the twelve signs of the zodiac, through
which the seven planets take their course ; and the seven lamps,
on the top of the seven branches, bear an analogy to the planets
themselves. The curtains with the four colours that are wrought
in them, represent the four elements. — By the high priest's linen
garment is designed the whole body of the earth; and by the
violet colour, the heavens. The pomegranates answer to light-
ning; and the noise of the bells to thunder. The four-coloured
ephod bears a resemblance to the very nature of the universe,
and the interweaving it with threads of gold, to the rays of the
sun, which give us light. The pectoral or rational, in the midde
of it, intimates the position of the earth in the centre of the
world; the girdle about the priest's body, is the sea about the
globe of the earth; the two sardonyx stones, on the shoulders,
represent the sun and moon ; and by the twelve other stones on
the breast, may be understood either the twelve months, or the
twelve signs of the zodiac." But all this is too light and fanciful,
one would think, for so grave an author as Josephus, had not
this way of allegorizing thiugs been the prevailing custom of the
age. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 3. c. 7.
with those sacrifices which were offered, year by year
continually, make the comers thereunto perfect.' In
order therefore to illustrate this point, namely, that the
Jewish religion was, in a great measure, intended to
typify and prefigure the more perfect dispensation of
the gospel, we shall instance in some of its particulars
already enumerated.
Thus the tabernacle itself was a type of the Redeemer
dwelling in our nature ; for so St John tells us, that
5 ' the AVord was made flesh, and lax.v\vuatv iv iiftlv, dwelt
among us,' as in a tabernacle. The altar of burnt-
offerings in the court, pointed out the death and sacrifice
6 of our Lord, by the shedding of whose blood our sins
are pardoned, and we received into merpy and favour.
The altar of incense within the holy place denoted our
Lord's powerful intercession for us, in his exalted state
of glory ; and the ' ark of the covenant in the holy of
holies,' was an eminent emblem of him, from whose
mouth we received a law, ' founded upon better
promises ;' by whose intercession we have access to the
' throne of grace with all boldness ;' and whose satisfac-
tion to the divine justice is our true propitiatory or
mercy-seat.
What a manifest type the Jewish high priest was of
our Lord and Saviour, the author to the Hebrews has
declared in more instances than one. The Jewish high
priest was the only man who was permitted to enter into
the ' holy of holies ;' and 7 ' we have such an high priest,'
says the apostle, ' who is set on the right hand of the
throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the
sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord
pitched, and not man.' The Jewish high priest offered
a solemn expiatory sacrifice once a year ; our Lord
8 ' appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin
by the sacrifice of himself.' After the expiatory sacri-
fice, the Jewish high priest went into the holy place,
there to offer incense on the golden altar ; our Lord,
' when he had purged our sins, 9 sat down on the right
hand of the Majesty on high,' there 10 ' to appear in the
presence of God,' and by the incense of his merits, to
make continual intercession for us.
In like manner, whether we consider the several qua-
lifications of the sacrifices under the law, or the several
sorts of them, we shall find them to be types and prefigu-
rations of Christ. The conditions of a Jewish sacrifice
were, — That it should be without blemish, publicly pre-
sented before the congregation, substituted in the sinner's
room, and the iniquities of the sinner laid upon him.
With relation to these properties, our Saviour is said to
be ' holy, harmless, undefiled, and separated from sin-
ners.' That he might ' sanctify his people,' he is said
' to have lI suffered without the gate, bearing our re-
proach ;' and that I2 ' he, who knew no sin, became sin
for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him.'
And so, if we look to the several sorts of sacrifices
appointed under the law, we shall soon perceive that
these equally lead us to Christ. For he was the trespass-
offering, in that ' he was made sin for us ; ' the peace-
offering because 13 ' he made peace by the blood of his
5 John i. 14. 6 Heb. xiii. 10. ' Heb. viii. 1, 2.
8 Heb. ix. 26. 9 Heb. i. 3. «• Heb. 9. 24.
11 Heb. xiii. 12, 13. ™ 2 Cor. v. 21. ,3 Col. i. 20.
Skct. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c. 313
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G5. A. C. 1G4C. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
that religion, which in its essence is always the same,
cross;' the meat and drink offering, for ''his flesh is
meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed ;' the scape-
goat, for he hath carried away our sins, 2 never to be more
remembered against us ; the paschal lamb, for 3 ' Christ,
our passover, is sacrificed for us ; the great sacrifice of
atonement,' for 4 ' Jesus Christ the righteous is both our
advocate with the Father, and a propitiation for our sins : '
and in line, 5 ' his blood, who, through the eternal Spirit,
offered himself to God, without spot, is more effectual
than the blood of bulls and goats, to purge our con-
sciences from dead works, to serve the living God.'
Thus it appears, that the chief end of the several in-
stitutions relating to the ceremonial part of the Jewish
worship, was to prefigure the person and transactions of
our blessed Saviour, 6 ' when the fulness of time was
come that God should send forth his Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, to redeem those that were
under the law, that we might receive the adoption of
sons.' And therefore, since the ceremonies of the
Jewish law could never be of any esteem in the sight of
God, any otherwise than as they promoted this end, and
prepared men's minds for the reception of a more per-
fect institution of religion, it is manifest, that when this
more perfect institution was once settled, the former and
more imperfect was, of course, to cease ; 7 ' there being
necessarily a disannulling of the commandment going
before, for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.'
And from hence we may finally infer, that though the
essence of religion be eternally and immutably the same,
yet the form and institution of it may be, and often has
been, changed. 8 The essence of all religion is obedi-
ence to that moral and eternal law, which obliges us to
imitate the life of God in justice, mercy, and holiness,
that is, ' to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this
present world.' This is the sum of all natural religion,
as appears from the discourses of those wiser heathens,
who were freest from prejudice and superstition. This
was the sum of the Jewish religion, as appears from the
frequent and earnest protestations of God to that people
by his servants the prophets ; and this likewise is the
sum of the Christian religion, as the apostles every-
where inculcate. But though religion itself is thus im-
mutably the same, yet the form and institution of it may
be different.
When natural religion, by reason of its obscurity, in
this corrupt estate of human nature, proved ineffectual
to make men truly religious, God left them no longer to
the guidance of their reason only, but gave them first
the patriarchal, and afterwards the Mosaic dispensation ;
and when, through the incumbrance with so many ritual
observances, this latter proved ineffectual to the same
great end, God abolished this form of religion likewise,
and instituted the Christian. In all which proceeding,
there is no reflection at all upon the immutable nature
of God. For as the divine nature is, in the truest and
highest sense, unchangeable ; so religion itself, in its
nature and essence, is likewise unchangeable. But as
the capacities, the prejudices, and the circumstances of
men are different, so the institution and outward form of
may, with the good pleasure of God, be changed ; even
as a careful nurse, to use a scripture comparison upon
this occasion, adapts the diet to the strength and consti-
tution of the person she attends : ' For every one that
usetli milk,' as the elements of the Jewish dispensation
were, ' is unskilful in the word of righteousness, for he
is a babe ; but strong meat,' or a religion of a greater
perfection, as the Christian is, ' belongeth to them that
are of full age ; even those, who, by reason of use, have
their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.'
1 John vi. 55.
4 1 John ii. 1, 2.
r I Id), vii. IS.
» John i. 29. 3 1 Cor. v. 7.
•• Heb. ix. 13, 14. "Gal.iv. 4, 5.
s Dr Samiu'l Clarke's Sermon, vol. x.
SECT. III.
CHAP. I. — From the Death of Korah, to the Israel-
ites' Entrance into Canaan ; in all, 38 years.
THE HISTORY.
After the establishment of the high priest's office in
Aaron, and his family, the Israelites moved about from
place to place, in the deserts of Arabia, but chiefly about
the mountains of Idumsea, until God, " shortening the
period of human life, had taken away almost all that
generation, 9 ' of whom he had sworn in his wrath,' as the
Psalmist expresses it, ' that they should not enter into
his rest.' And indeed, good reason had he to be angry
with them, since during the remainder of their peregrina-
tion they were guilty of many more murmurings and
idolatries than Moses has thought proper to record, which
are nevertheless mentioned, with no small severity, 1U
by other inspired writers.
As the time, however, for their entrance into the Holy
Land now drew near, from Ezion-geber they advanced
towards Kadesh in the wilderness of Sin, designing very
probiibly to enter the country through those narrow pas-*
sages, which, at that time were called, ' tiie ways of the
spies;' but u they were repulsed by the king of Arad,
who coming out against them with a strong force, slew a
considerable number, and took from them much booty.
In their second attempt, however, they succeeded better ;
for they defeated the king's army, sacked some of his
towns, and vowing at another opportunity (* which hap-
pened in the time of 12 Joshua) the utter destruction of
9Ps. xcv. 11.
10 See Amos v. 26 ; Ezek. and Ps. passim ; Acts Tii. 13.
" Num. xxi. 1, 11. n Josh. xxii. 14.
a After the many judgments and calamities sent U|
by reason of their rebellions against God, Moses perceiving the
divine threatenings to be daily accomplished bj Ihe frequent
deaths of those who came out of Egypt, and 'whose carcassei
were to fall in the wilderness,1 composed the ninetieth psalm,
wherein he mentions, the reduction of human life to the term ad
years wherein it has ever sinee slopped, and makes
wholesome reflections thereupon: 'The days of our age are
threescore years and ten : and though nun be so strong, thai they
come to fourscore yeai , yel is their strength then but labour and
sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone. <• teach os
therefore to number our days, that we may apply our heart- unto
wisdom.' — Vex. 10, 11.
/< The Jews have a tradition, founded on an express text in
Deuteronomy, (chap. \\. 10, &c,)thal the Israelites were obliged
t<> send an herald to offer peace in their name, to every city and
people, before they attempted to conquer them by the sword; that
in case they accepted it they only became tributaries to them;
2it
311
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2515. A. C. U80j OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1G4G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
the whole nation, they took their route for the present
another way, and so arrived again at Kadesh.
Here it was that Miriam, the sister of Moses and
Aaron, (" who was older than either of them,) in the
hundred and thirty -third year of her age died, was buried
with great pomp, and by the Israelites lamented for the
space of a whole month. Here it was that the people fell
again into their old way of murmuring for want of water,
which God ordered Moses to supply, by speaking only to
a certain rock ; but some way or other he deviating from
his instructions, either through impatience or diffidence,
offended God to such a degree, as to deserve a denun-
ciation, that neither he, nor his brother Aaron, who seems
to have been equally in the offence, should be permitted
to enter into Canaan. Hence likewise it was, that Moses
sent an embassy to the king of Edom, desiring a free pas-
sage through his country, and promising to commit no
hostilities, nor give the least molestation to any of his
subjects. But the haughty Edomite was so far from
granting his request, that he came out with a strong army
to oppose him ; which Moses, no doubt, would have
resented as the thing deserved, had not God, whom he
consulted upon this occasion, ordered him, for the pre-
sent, not to engage with the Edomites : so that decamp-
ing from Kadesh, he came to Mount Hor, not far from
the borders of Edom, where God gave Aaron notice of
his approaching death, and not long after, commanded
Moses to take him and Eleazar his son, who was to suc-
ceed him in the office of the high priest, to the top of the
mount, and there to strip Aaron of his sacerdotal robes,
and put them upon his son : which when Moses had done,
Aaron h died on the top of Mount Hor, being an hundred
out if they refused their offer, they were then to be vowed to
destruction. Maimouides has taken great pains to prove, that
all those nations which were cut on" by the Israelites, owed their
destruction to their choosing to try the fortune of war, rather
than accept of peace upon such terms. There is one objection
however, which seems to stand a little in his way, and that is, —
the stratagem which the Gibeonites made use of to obtain peace
from Israel, which would have been needless, had the latter
been obliged to offer it before they began any hostilities: but to
this the learned Rabbi answers, — That the reason of the Gibeon-
ites' policy was, that they had in common with their neighbours,
refused the first offer of peace, and were consequently doomed to
the same fate with them ; and that, for the prevention of this,
their ambassadors feigned themselves to come from a country
vastly distant from any of the other seven, and by that means
obtained the desired peace. — Maimon. ap. Cunceum; et Basnag,
Rep. Hob. vol. i. b. 2. c. 20.
a Miriam was older than either Aaron or Moses. Moses was
the youngest: and when he was bom she might probably be about
twelve years of age, because when he was exposed upon the banks
of the river Nile, she, we find, had address enough to offer her
service to Pharaoh's daughter, to go and fetch her a nurse, which
can hardly be supposed of one younger. Some of the ancient
fathers are of opinion that she .died a virgin, and was the legisla-
trix or governess of the Jewish women, as Moses was of the men;
but the more probable opinion is, that she was married to Hur,
a man of chief note in the tribe of Judah, and on several occa-
sions a person of great confidence with Moses: but it does not
appear that she had any children by him. She was buried, as
Josephus tells us, with great solemnity, at the charge of the pub-
lic, and her sepulchre, a> Eusebius reports, was extant in his time
at Kadesh, not far distant from the city Petra, the metropolis of
Arabia Petraea. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 7; and Calmet's
Dictionary.
b The Mount Hor was on the coast of the land of Edom, to-
wards the east, in some part of that tract, which was afterwards
denoted by the Mount Seir. In Deuteronomy (ii. 12.) we are
and twenty -three years old ; and when the people under-
stood that he was dead, c they bewailed him thirty days.
As soon as the days of mourning were over, they
removed, and encamped at Zalmanah, which took its
name from the image of the serpent, which Moses caused
to be set up there. For the Israelites, being tired with
the length of their journey, the narrowness of their
passes, and the barrenness of the country, began to
relapse into their old humour of murmuring and repining,
which provoked God to send great d swarms of fiery
told expressly that the Horims dwelt in Seir before-time; and ac-
cordingly we read (Gen. xiv. 6.) that Chedorlaomer, king of Elam,
with his confederates, smote the Horites in their Mount Seir.
Now it seems very probable, that as places at first were wont to
take their names from their inhabitants, both this place, and the
people might derive their names from one Hor, whom they de-
scended from, and who in the early ages of the world, inhabited
this country ; and that though, in process of time, the name of
Mount Seir came to be used to denote the same tract, yet the old
name of Mount Hor was preserved in that part of it, where stood
the mountain here so called by Moses, and on which Aaron died.
There seems to be however no small difficulty in reconciling this
passage in Numbers xx. 23 — 28, with what we read in Deuter-
onomy x. 6. That ' the children of Israel took their journey from
Beeroth, of the children of Jaakan, to Mosera: there Aaron died,
and there lie was buried.' So that Moses seems to have forgot
himself, when in one place he tells us, that his brother Aaron
was buried on Mount Hor, and in another in Mosera. To re-
concile this, some have supposed that Mount Hor was so near to
Mosera, where the Israelites had their encampment when Aaron
died, that either place might, with propriety enough, be called
the place of his death and his interment. It seems, however,
from the account which we have of their encampments, in Num-
bers xxxiii. very plain, that Mount Hor and Mosera were two
distinct places ; and therefore others have maintained, that the
sixth and seventh verses in the tenth chapter of Deuteronomy,
in the common Hebrew text, have been extremely corrupted by
the ignorance of some transcribers, because the Hebrew Samari-
tan or old Hebrew text, makes the account in Deuteronomy x.
6, 7, exactly agree with the order of the encampments, mentioned
in Numbers xxxiii. 32, 38. and there it is said that Aaron died,
and was buried in Mount Hor. — Wells' Geography of the Old
Testament, vol. ii.
c The author of Ecclesiasticus, having given us a long com-
mendation of Aaron, and his vestments, comes at last to tell us,
that " God chose him out of all men living, to offer sacrifices
to the Lord, incense, and a sweet savour, for a memorial, and
to make reconciliation for his people ; that he gave unto him the
commandments and authority in the statutes of judgments,
that he should teach Jacob the testimonies, and inform Israel
in the laws; that strangers conspired together against him,
and maligned him in the wilderness — this the Lord saw, and it
displeased him, and in his wrathful indignation, they were con-
sumed.— But he made Aaron more honourable, and gave him
an heritage, and divided unto him the first-fruits of the increase ;
so that he did eat the sacrifices of the Lord, which he gave unto
him and to his seed," &c. He died in the arms of Moses his
brother, and Eleazer his son, and successor in the high priest-
hood. They buried him in some cave belonging to Mount Hor,
and kept the place of his interment from the knowledge of the
Israelites, perhaps from an apprehension that in after ages they
might pay some superstitious worship to him ; or rather, that the
Arabians, among whom they then dwelt, might not at any time
take it in their heads to violate the sanctity of his grave. —
Ecclus. xlv. 13, &c.
d Some authors are of opinion, that these serpents were only
little worms, which bred in the skin, and were of so venomous
a nature, that they immediately poisoned those who were infecttd
by them. But it is very evident, that not only the original words,
tiecashim seraphim, signify a burning or winged serpent, but
that these creatures are very common both in Egypt and Arabia,
insomuch, that there would be no living in those countries, if
these serpents had not by Providence been debarred from multi-
plying as other serpents do. For the Arabians tell us, that after
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, cVc"
315
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
serpents among them; but after the death of several,
and upon the humiliation of the rest, he commanded
Moses to cast a a brazen serpent, of the same size and
figure with those that infested them, and to lix it upon a
pole, situate on some eminent ground, that as many as
were bitten by the living serpents, might look up to the
brazen one, and be healed. Which accordingly was
done, and had its intended miraculous effect.
Several were the marches and encampments which the
Israelites, without committing the least hostilities, made
between the countries of Moab and Amnion, till they
came at length to the country of the Amorites. And
from hence Moses b sent ambassadors to Sihon their
king, demanding a passage through his country, and
offering to pay for all manner of necessaries, without
giving him the least disturbance. e But the Amorite
that they had coupled together, the female never fails to kill the
male, and that her young ones kill her, as soon as they are
hatched. Herodotus, who had seen several of those serpents,
tells us, that they very much resemble those which the Greeks
and Latins call hydra ; and Bochart has quoted a great Dumber
both of ancient and modern authors to prove that they really are
tin- hydra. They are but short, are spotted with clivers colours,
and have wings like those of a bat. The ibis is their mortal
enemy ; and Herodotus tells us, that at Butos in Egypt, he had
Been a vast quantity of their skeletons, whose flesh these birds
had devoured. They love sweet smells, frequent such trees as
bear spices, and the marshes where the aromatic reed, or cassia,
grows; and therefore, when the Arabians goto gather the cassia,
they clothe themselves with skins, and cover all their heads over,
except their eyes, because their biting is very dangerous. —
Bochart de Animal. Sacr. part 2. b. 3. c. 13.
a The brazen serpent continued among the Jews above 700
years, even to the time of Hezekiah, king of Judah; but when
it came to be made an object of idolatry, and the people for some
time had paid their incense and adoration to it, that pious prince
caused it to be broken in pieces; and by way of contempt, called
it nehughtan, that is to say, a brazen 1m wide, or trifle. At
Milan, however, in the church of St Ambrose, they pretend to
show you a serpent made of brass, which they tell you is the
same with that of Moses. But every one may believe of this as
lie pleases. — Calmets Dictionary, under the word Serpent.
b It may here be proposed as a difficulty, how Moses came to
ofTer the Amorites terms of peace, considering that the Israelites
were commanded to destroy them, and to take possession of their
country. But to this it lias been answered by some learned
men, that notwithstanding God had expressly doomed this people
to an extermination, yet Moses thought himself at liberty to in-
dulge his usual meekness, and to begin with gentle and amicable
ires, though In- might at the same time lie persuaded, that
they would avail nothing; and this probably at the suggestion of
God himself, to cut off all occasions or pretence of complaint
from the Amorites, as if they had not been honourably and fairly
dealt with, and that the equity and righteousness of God's pro-
ceeding with a prince of so savage and obstinate a temper, might
appear in a stronger light, when tin; consequence of his refusing
a free passage to the Israelites, and bringing his army into the
field against them, should happen to be his own defeat and
destruction.' — Bibliotheca Biblica on Num. xxi. 21.
c Grotius, in his second book on the Right of War and
Peace, C. 'I. sect. 13, is of opinion, that according to the law of
nations, the highways, seas, and rivers of every country, ought
to be free to all passengers upon just occasions. He produces
several examples from heathen history of such permission being
granted to armies, and thence he infers, that Sihon and Og,
denying the Israelites this privilege, gave a just ground of war:
nor does lie think that the fear which these princes might con-
i'i ive is any excuse at all for not granting the thing, because no
man's fear can take away another man's right, especially when
several ways might have been found out to have made their passage
sal'i- mi both sides. But when all is said, it seems not clear that
all men have such a right as this great man thinks they may
claim. No man, we know, can challenge a passage through a
M. 3765. A. C. 1G1G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEDT.
prince, not thinking it safe to receive so numerous a
people into the heart of his kingdom, not only denied
them a passage, but, accounting it better policy to attack,
than to be attacked, gathered what forces he could
together, and marched out to give them battle. Bui not
far from Jahaz, where the engagement was, the Israelites
overthrew him : and having made themselves masters of
his country, put all, both man, woman, and child to the
sword : and not long after this, Og, d king of Bashan
e a man of a prodigious gigantic size, attempting to
obstruct their passage, underwent the same fat.'. For
they seized his country, and utterly destrovod the inha-
bitants thereof, reserving only the cattle, and spoils of
the cities, as a prey to themselves, as they had done
before in the case of Sihon.
Encouraged by these successes, the Israelites marched
to the plains of Moab, and encamped on the banks of
the river Jordan, opposite to Jericho. This put Balak,
who was then king of Moab, into a terrible consterna-
tion ; for supposing himself not able to engage the
mighty force of Israel, he had not only made a strong
alliance with the Midianites and Ammonites, his neigh-
bours, in order to stop their progress, but thought it
advisable likewise, before he began any hostilities
against them, to try how far the power of Balaam's en-
chantments (a noted magician in Pethor, a <it\ of Meso-
potamia) might go, in turning the fortune of the war
towards his side.
To this purpose he despatched a select number of his
nobles, with costly presents to /Balaam, entreating him
private man's ground without his leave: and every prince has
the same dominion in all his territories that a private man lias
in his land. As for the examples, therefore, of those who had
permitted armies to pass through their kingdoms, they are ex-
amples of fact rather than of light, and of such as were net in a
condition to refuse what was demanded of them. For the thing
is notorious, that several countries have suffered very grievously
by granting this liberty ; and therefore no prince, who ci
his subjects' safi tv, is to be blamed for not granting it; nor was
the war with the Amorites founded upon this reason, as we shall
see hereafter. — Patrick's Com/mentary.
d The land of Banian was one of the most fertile C8J
Canaan, which reached on the east to the river Jordan, en the
west to the mountains of Gilead, on the south to the brook dab-
bock, and on the north to the land of Geshur. The who •
dom took its name from the hill of Bashan, which is situate in
it, and has since bei u called liattanaa. It had no less than sixty
walled towns in it, besides villages. It afforded an excellent
breed of cattle, and Stately oak-, and was, in shell, a plentiful
and populous country. — Universal History, b. I.e. ,.
e The description of this gigantic king, who was the
the race of the Rephaims, or <■- t prodigious nun. we have in
Deuteronomy iii. ll., and from the size of hi- bad, which was
preserved a leu- time in the city of Rabbatb, the capital of the
Ammonites, we may guess at his stature. It was nine cubits
long, and four cubits broad, that is. fifteen feet loir in. 'lies and a
half long, and six feet ten inches bread. Bot the Jewish di
imt content with Burn pigmy wonders, have improved the story
tii their own liking. For they tell us, that this bed of nine CUbitl
could I,,, no more than bis cradle, aince himself was si\ - *
cubits high, whin full grown; that he lived before the fiood, and
that the waters of it. « ben at the highest, reached only up to his
knees; that, however, bethought proper to g< t u] the top o
the roof of the ark, where Noah supplied him with provision,
not out of any compassion to him, but that the nun who came
aftei. t]„. , i,t see how great the | ower ol God was, wh i
had destroyed such monsters from the fece of the earth. — '-'ti-
met and Munsttr in Pent. c. S.
f I,, t Pel i ii. 15, Balaam is said to be the son at
Bosor, according to our version; but as the words, ' the son,' are
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in the king's name to come, and curse him a people
who were arrived upon the borders of his territories ; but
God for that time, would not permit him to go : where-
upon Balak, supposing either, that the number and qua-
lity of his messengers did not answer Balaam's ambi-
tion, or the value of the presents his covetousness, sent
messengers of a more honourable rank, with larger pro-
posals, and promises of high promotion, if he would but
gratify him in this one thing.
1 ' Balaam loved the wages of unrighteousness ;' and
therefore blinded with this passion, he addressed God
for leave to go ; which God in his anger granted, but
tinder such restrictions, as would necessarily hinder all
his fascinations from doing the Israelites any harm.
With this permission he set forward with the princes of
Moab ; but as he was on the road, an angel met him, whom,
though he perceived him not, his ass plainly saw, and
therefore turned aside into the field to avoid him. With
much ado, Balaam beat his ass into the road again ; but
when the angel stood in a narrow passage between two
walls, which enclosed a vineyard, the ass for fear ran
against one of the walls, and crushed Balaam's leg,
which provoked him so, that he beat her again. At
last, the angel removed, and stood in a place so very
narrow, that there was no possibility of getting by him,
whereupon the ass fell down under her rider, and would
go no farther. This enraged the prophet still more ; and
as he was beating and belabouring the poor creature
most unmercifully, God was pleased to give the ass the
faculty of speech, wherein she expostulated the hard
usage she had met with ; and as Balaam was going to
justify himself, he was likewise pleased to open the
prophet's eyes, and let him see the angel standing in the
way with a naked sword in his hand, which so terrified
him, that he fell down upon his face, asked pardon for
his trespass, and offered to return home again, if so be
his journey was displeasing to God. a
1 2 Peter ii. 15.
not found in the original, but were inserted by the transla-
tors, to supply the sense, as they imagined, the word Bosor may
denote a place as well as a person; and accordingly Grotius
understands St Peter's words, not as if Bosor was the father, but
the city of Balaam ; for what was anciently called Pethor, the
Syrians in after ages called Bosor, by an easy change of two
letters, which is a thing not unusual. — Universal History, b. 1.
c. 7.
a Num. xxii. 31. ' Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam,
and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way.' There
are several instances to be found, both in the scriptures and in
profane authors, where the eyes have been opened by a divine
power to perceive that which they could not see by mere natural
discernment. Thus the eyes of Hagar were opened, that she
might sec the fountain, Gen. xxi. 19. Homer also presents us
with an example of this kind. Minerva says to Diomede,
Go, while the darkness from thy sight I turn,
That thou alike both God and man discern. — Sotheby.
And in Virgil, Venus performs the same office to iEneas, and
shows him the gods who were engaged in the destruction of Troy.
Now cast your eyes around: while I dissolve
The mists and films that mortal eyes involve,
Purge from your sight the dross, and make you see
The shape of each avenging deity. Dryden.
Milton seems likewise to have imitated this, when he makes
Michael open Adam's eyes to see the future revolutions of the
world, and the fortunes of his posterity.
Then purged with euphrasy and rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see.
And from the well of life three drops instill'd.
I'ar.idiie Lost, b. II. 41!.- ED
That his journey was displeasing to God, he himself
could not be ignorant, because, in his first address, God
had expressly interdicted his going. Being resolved,
however, out of the man's wicked inclination, to raise
some kind of advantage, and to make him, who was
hired to curse, the instrument of pronouncing a blessing
upon his people, God gave him now free leave to pro-
ceed. When Balak understood that Balaam was on the
road, himself went to receive him upon the confines of
his dominions ; and having, in a friendly manner, blamed
him for not coming at his first sending, which Balaam
excused upon account of the restraint which God had
laid on him, he conducted him to his capital city, and
there entertained him publicly, with his' princes and
nobles that day ; and the next morning carried him to
the high places consecrated to ° Baal, that from thence
he might take a view of the extremity of the Israelitish
camp. Whilst they were here, the prophet ordered
c seven altars to be erected, d and seven oxen, and
seven rams to be got ready ; and having « offered an
b The word Baal signifies Lord, and was the name of- several
gods, both male and female, as Selden (De Diis Syris, c. 1.)
shows. The god of the Moabites was Chemosh, but here very
probably is called by the common name of Baal. And as all
nations worshipped their gods upon high places, so this god of
Moab, having more places of worship than one, Balak carried
Balaam to them all, that from thence he might take the most
advantageous prospect of the Israelites. These high places were
full of trees, and shady groves, which made them commodious
both for the solemn thoughts and prayers of such as were devout,
and for the filthy inclinations and abominable practices of such as
affected to be wicked. — Patrick's Commentary.
c According to the account which both Festus and Servius give
us of ancient times, the heathens sacrificed to the celestial gods
only upon altars: to the terrestrial, they sacrificed upon the
earth; and to the infernal, in holes digged in the earth. And
though the number seven was much observed among the
Hebrews, even by God's own appointment, Lev. iv. 6, yet we
do not read of more than one altar built by the patriarchs,
when they offered their sacrifices, nor were any more than one
allowed by Moses: and therefore, we may well suppose, that
there was something of heathen superstition in this erection of
seven altars, and that the Moabites, in their worship of the sun,
who is here drincipally meant by Baal, did at the same time
sacrifice to the seven planets. This was originally a part of the
Egyptian theology; for as they worshipped at this time the lights
of heaven, so they first imagined the seven days of the week to be
under the respective influence of these seven luminaries. Belus,
and his Egyptian priests, having obtained leave to settle in
Babylon, about half a century before this time, might teach the
Chaldeans their astronomy, and so introduce this Egyptian notion
of the influence of the seven ruling stars, which Balaam, being
no stranger to the learning of the age and country he lived in,
might pretend to Balak to proceed upon in his divinations and
auguries. — Le Clerc's Commentary in locum, and Shuckford s
Connection, vol. 3. b. 12.
d Num. xxiii. 1. • Build me here seven altars, and prepare
me here seven oxen and seven rams.' The ancients were very
superstitious about certain numbers, supposing that God delighted
in odd numbers.
Around his waxen image first I wind
Three woollen fillets, of three colours joined ;
Thrice bind about his thrice devoted head,
Which round the sacred altar thrice is led.
Unequal numbers please the gods. En.
e In the text it is said, that Balak and Balaam ' offered on
every altar a bullock and a ram,' Num. xxiii. 2. But though it
was customary, in those early days, for kings to officiate as priests,
yet it is rather to be supposed, that Balak only presented the
sacrifices, and that Balaam performed the office of sacrificing
them ; but then it may be made a question, to whom the sacri-
fices were offered. And to this it may be answered, that they
might both have a different intention; that Baiak might suppli-
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317
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
ox and a ram on each altar, he left Balak to stand by
the sacrifices, while himself withdrew to consult the
Lord; and upon his return, acquainted the king, " How
impossible it was for him to do the thing- that he might
expect from him, namely, the cursing of a people who were
so signally under the protection of heaven ; and so mag-
nifying their prosperity and increase, he concludes with
a wish, that his fate might be theirs, both in life and
death."
Balak, at these words, expressed no small surprise ;
but still not discouraged, he hoped that the change of
the place might possibly produce some better luck ; and
therefore taking Balaam to the top of Mount Pisgah, he
tried whether he might not be permitted to curse them
from thence. But all in vain. The same number of
altars were erected, the bullocks and rams were offered,
and the prophet withdrew to consult God, as before ;
but still he returned with no better news : for the purport
of his declaration was, " That God was fixed and immut-
able, in his favour to the Israelites ; that he would not
suffer any bloody designs, or any frauds or enchant-
ments to prevail against them, but would finally make
them victorious wherever they came."
This was so great a mortification to Balak, that to
silence Balaam, he forbade him either to curse or bless ;
but he soon changed his mind, and desired him to make
a further trial at another place. Accordingly another
place was made choice of. Fresh altars were raised,
and fresh sacrifices offered ; but all to no purpose :
Balaam perceiving that God was resolved to continue
blessing Israel, without retiring, as aforetimes, under pre-
tence of consulting God, at the first cast of his eye upon
the tents of the Israelites, brake out into ejaculations of
praise ; and then, in proper and significant metaphors,
foretold their extent, fertility, and strength, and that
' those that blessed them, should be blessed, and those
that cursed them, should be cursed.'
By this time Balak, enraged to hear Balaam, whom he
had sent for to curse the children of Israel, thus three
times successively bless them, could no longer contain
himself, but smiting his hands together, he bade him
haste and be gone, since, by his foolish adherence to
God'a suggestions, he had both abused him, and de-
frauded himself. a Balaam had recourse to his old excuse,
M. 8765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
of not daring to transcend the divine commands ; but
being willing to gratify the king, and in compliance to
his covetous temper, to gain some reward to himself,
he offered to advertise him of what the Israelites would
do to his people in subsequent ages ; but still, against
his own inclination, he bestowed blessings on Israel,
and prophesied, ' That a star * should conic forth from
Jacob, and a rod from Israel;' that it should smite
the chiefs of Moab, and destroy the children of Seth :
that Edom should fall under its power ; and that the
Anialekites and Kenites should be extirpated : in fine,
that the western nations, the Greeks and Romans,
should vanquish the Assyrians, destroy the Hebrews, and
perish themselves.
After these predictions, as if vexed at his own disap-
pointment in missing the reward he expected, and with
a purpose to revenge himself on the Israelites, as the
occasion of it, he instructed the Moabitesand Midianites
in a wicked c device ; which was to send their daughters
rate Baal, while Balaam was making his addresses to the Lord,
though with such superstitious ceremonies, as it is likely, were
used liy the worshippers of Baal. Or why may not we suppose,
that Balaam, telling Balak, that he could effect nothing without
the Lord, the God of Israel, persuaded him to join with him at
that time in his worship, that they might more powerfully pre-
vail with him to withdraw his presence from the Israelites ? For
there is no reason to imagine, that Balaam would go to inquire
of the Lord, immediately after he had sacrificed to other gods.
— Patrick's Commentary.
a Josephus brings in Balaam making his apology for himself,
in order to pacify Balak's rage, for his having blessed the Israel-
ites, instead of cursing them, "And does king Balak think,
that where prophets are upon the subject of fatalities, or things to
come, they are left to their own liberty, what to say, and what
not, or to make their own speeches ? We are only the passive
instruments of the oracle. The words are put in our mouths;
and we neither think nor know what we say. I remember well,
says he, that I was invited hither with great earnestness, both by
yourself and by the Midianites; and that it was at your request
1 came, and with a desire to do all that in me lay, for your ser-
vice. But what am I able to do against the will and power of
God ? I had not the least thought of speaking one good word oi
the Israelites' army, or of the blessings which God hath in store
for them; but since God has decreed to make them great and
happy, I have been forced to speak, as you have heard, instead
of what I had otherwise designed to say." — Jewish Antiquities,
b. 4. c. C.
b Num. xxiv. 17. ' There shall come a star out of Jacob.'
This prophecy may possibly in some sense relate to David, but
without doubt it belongs principally to Christ. Hire the meta-
phor of a sceptre was common and popular, to denote a ruler,
like David: but the star, though, like the other, it signified in
prophetic writings a temporal prince or rider, yet had a secret
and hidden meaning likewise. A star in the Egyptian hiero-
glyphics denoted God. Thus God in the prophet Amos, reprov-
ing the Israelites for their idolatry on their first Cuming out of
Egypt, says, ' have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in
the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel ? but ye have borne
the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun, your images, the star
of your god which ye mai'e to yourselves,' Amos v. 25, 2t>. The
star of your God is a noble figurative expression to signify the
image of your god; for a star being employed in the hierogly-
phics to signify God, it is used here with great elegance to signify
the material image of a god: the words, the star of your god,
being only a repetition of the preceding, Chiun, your image; and
not, as some critics suppose, the same with your god star. Henco
we ((include that the metaphor here used by Balaam of a star
was of that abstruse, mysterious kind, and so to be understood,
and consequently that it related only to Christ, the eternal Son
of God." (JVarhurton' s Divine Legation, b. iv. sec. 4.)— Bishop
Newton, however, is of opinion, that the literal meaning oi the
prophecy respects the person and actions of David. — DtSSt rtatiuns
on the Prophecies, vol. 1 . p. 1 39. — Ed.
c Though Moses makes no mention of this contrivance, where
he describes the interview between Balaam and Balak; yet in
the .-i I st chapter of Numbers, ver. 16, he lays the whole blame
upon Balaam: and Josephus accordingly informs us that after he
had gone as far as the river Euphrates, In- bethoughl himself of
this project, and having sent for Balak, and the princes of Midian,
he thus' addressed himself to them. " To the end that kin- Ba-
lak," says he, " and you the princes of Midian, may know the
great desire I have to please you, though, in seine sort, against
the will of God; I have thought of an expedient, that may perhaps
be for your service. Never flatter yourselves that the Hebrews
are to be destroyed by wars, pestilence, famine, or any othi r of
ommon calamities; for they are BO secure under God's
special providence, thai they are never totally to be extinguished
by any ef these depopulating judgments: but if any small and
temporary advantage against them will give you any satisfaction,
hearken to my advice. Send into their camp a procession ol the
loveliest virgins you can pick up; and to improve nature, dress
them up with all the omami Mi J of art, and give them thi ir li -sens
hew td behave themselves upon all occasions of courtship and
amour, [ftheyoung men shall make love, and proceed to any
importunities, let them threaten immediately to be gone, unless
they «iil actually renounce their country's laws, and the honour
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into the camp of the Israelites, in order to draw them
first into lewdness, and then into idolatry, the sure me-
thod to deprive them of the assistance of that God who
protected them. This artifice succeeded ; (for the very
next account we have of the Israelites is, that they lay
encamped at Shittim, where many of them a were deluded
by these strange women, not only to commit whoredom
with them, but to assist at their sacrifices, and worship
their gods, even * Baal-peor,) which was a crime so detes-
table to God, that he punished it with a plague, which, in
a short time, carried off c about 2 1,000 of the offenders.
This, however, was not the only punishment which God
exacted ; for he commanded Moses d to erect a court of
of that God who prescribed them, and finally engage themselves
to worship after the manner of the Midiam'tes and Moabites.
This, says he, will provoke God, and draw vengeance upon their
heads/' — Jewish Antiquities, ibid.
a The Jewish doctors tell us, that on a great festival, which
the Moabites made in honour of their god Baal-peor, some Israel-
ites, who happened to be there, casting their eyes upon their
young women, were smitten with their beauty, and courted their
enjoyment ; but that the women would not yield to their motion,
upon any other condition than that they would worship their gods.
Whereupon pulling a little image of Peor out of their bosom, they
presented it to the Israelites to kiss, and then desired them to
cat of the sacrifices, which had been offered to him. But Jose-
phus, tells the story otherwise, namely, that the women, upon
some pretence or other, came into the Israelitish camp, and when
they had enamoured the young Hebrews, according to their in-
structions, they made a pretence as though they must be gone ;
but upon passionate entreaties, accompanied with vows and oaths
on the other side, the subtle enchantresses consented to stay with
them, and grant every thing that they desired, upon condition
that they would embrace their religion. — Patrick's Commentary,
and Jusephus, ibid.
b The Jewish doctors are generally of opinion, that this Baal-
peor was the same with Priapus, the idol of Turpitude ; and that
the worship of him consisted in such obscene practices, or postures
at least, as were not fit to be named. Others have asserted that
this god was the same with Saturn, a deity adored in Arabia; nor
is it unlikely, that the adventure related of Saturn, and his cas-
tration by his own son, may have introduced the obscenities that
are practised in the worship of this idol. But others, with great
assurance maintain, that Peor was the same with Adonis, whose
feasts were celebrated in the manner of funerals, but the people
who observed them at that time, committed a thousand dissolute
actions, particularly when they were told that Adonis, whom they
had mourned for as dead, was returned to life again. However
this be, it is xcry probable that as Peor was the name of a moun-
tain in the country of Moab, the temple of Baal stood upon it,
and thence he was called Baal-peor. — Calmct's Commentaries and
Dissertations; Patrick's Commentary; and Selden De Siis
Syriis.
c St Paul, in his observation upon the judgments which befell
the Israelites in the wilderness, tells us expressly, that the num-
ber of those who were cut off in this plague was no more than
2.'S,000, (1 Cor. x. 8.) Whereas Moses makes them no less than
24,000. But this difference is easily reconciled, if we do but
consider, that in the 24,000, which Moses computes, the thou-
sand who were convicted of idolatry, and thereupon were slain
with the sword, 'in the day of the plague,' (Num. xxv. 5, IS,)
are comprehended ; whereas the apostle speaks of none but those
that died of the pestilence. — Patrick's Commentary.
d According to our translation, the command which God gave
Moses, runs thus, — ' Take all the heads of the people, and hang
them up before the Lord, against the sun, that the fierce anger of
the Lord may be turned away from Israel,' (Num. xxv. 4.) But
unless we can suppose that the heads of each tribe were guilty of
this lewdness and idolatry, the sentence here denounced would
have been highly unjust: and what others allege, that they were
guilty of a shameful neglect in not opposing the growing mischief,
and punishing the offenders; this might be very probably out of
t!>. ir power, since even Moses himself, very frequently found
then too headstrong for him. It was somewhat strange, tin re-
judicature consisting of the heads of all the families,
and to try and hang all that had been guilty of this
whoredom and idolatry, without respect to friendship or
kindred ; which was accordingly done, and about 1000
more were in this manner put to death.
By this time, the greatest part of the people being
come a little to themselves, were bewailing their folly
and wickedness, at the door of the tabernacle ; when
they were surprised with « an instance of the most unpa-
ralleled boldness in one of the chiefs of the tribe of
Simeon, named Zimri, who, in the sight of Moses, and
the whole congregation, had brought a young Midianitish
princess, whose name was Cozbi, into the camp, and
was leading her into his tent. Their impudence, how-
ever did not go unpunished ; for Phinehas, the son of
Eleazar the high priest, fired with a just indignation and
holy zeal, followed them into the tent, with a javelin in
his hand, where, in the very act of whoredom, /he thrust
fore, that our translators should take the passage in this sense,
when the Samaritan copy, the Jerusalem Targum, most of the
ancient translations, and several later commentators of great note,
have made the word otl.am, that is, them, not to refer to the
heads of the people, but to such as had joined themselves to Baal-
peor: and so the meaning of the command will be, that the heads
of the people should divide themselves into several courts of judg-
ment, and examiue who had committed idolatry, and, after con-
viction, cause them to be hanged, that is, hanged after they were
stoned: for among the Hebrews none were hanged alive, but in
the cases of idolatry or blasphemy, were first stoned, and then
hanged up against the sun, that is, publicly and openly, that all
the people might see, and fear to sin. — Patrick's Commentary.
e When the Israelites, at the instigation of the strange women
they had received into the camp, were fallen from lust into idol-
atry, Moses, according to Josephus, perceiving that the infection
began to spread, called the people together, and, in a general
discourse, reminded them how unworthy a thing it was, and how
great a scandal to the memory of their ancestors, for them to
value the gratifying of their lusts and appetites above the rever-
ence they owed to their God, and their religion ; how incongruous
a thing, for men that had been virtuous and modest in the desert,
to lead such profligate lives in a good country, and squander away
that in luxury which they had honestly acquired in the time of
their distress ; and thereupon he admonished them to repent in
time, and to show themselves brave men, not in the violation of
the laws, but in the mastery of their unruly affections. This he
spoke without naming any one: but Zimri, who took himself to
be pointed at, rose up, and made the following speech: — " You
are at liberty, Moses," says he, " to use your own laws : they have
been a long time in exercise, and custom is all that can be said for
their strength or credit. Were it not for this, you would, to your
cost, have found long since, that the Hebrews are not to be im-
posed upon ; and I myself am one of the number, that never will
truckle to your tyrannical oppression. For what is your business
all this while, but under a bare pretext, and talk of laws and
God, to bar us not only from the exercise, but the very desire of
liberty ? What are we the better for coming out of Egypt, if it
be only in exchange for a more grievous bondage under Moses?
You are to make here what laws you please, and we are to abide
the penalties of them, when at the same time, it is you only that
deserve to be punished for abolishing such customs as are autho-
rized by the common consent of nations, and setting up your own
will and fancy against general practice and reason. For my own
part, what I have done, I take to be well done, and shall make no
difficulty to confess and justify it. I have, as you say, married a
strange woman. I speak thr» with the liberty of an honest man ;
and I care not who knows it. I never meant to make a secret
of it, and you need look no farther for an informer. I do ac-
knowledge too, that I have changed my way of worship, and
reckon it very reasonable for a man to examine all things, that
woidd find out the truth, without being tied up, as if it were in a
despotic government, to the opinion and humour of one single
man." — Jewish Antiquities, b. 4 c. G.
/Upon this fact the Jews found what they call the judgment
Sact. III.]
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319
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
them both through the body, and by this action, not only
obtained an high commendation from God, but an estab-
lishment likewise of a the Aaronical priesthood in him,
and his posterity, for ever after.
As soon as this disorder was quieted, and the offenders
punished, Moses began to bethink himself of revenging
the indignity which the Moabitesand Midianites had put
upon Israel ; and to this purpose commanded a detach-
ment of 12,000 choice men, that is, b 1000 out of every
tribe to go against them ; among whom was the gallant ''
of zeal, which authorized such as were full of this holy fervour,
to punish any violent offenders, those, to wit, who blasphemed
God, or profaned the temple, &<•., in the presence of ten
men of Israel, without any formal process. But this example
of Piiinehas countenances no such practice; nor can this
action, done upon an extraordinary occasion, by a person in a
public authority, moved thereunto by a strong divine impulse,
and (what is a circumstance that some people add) in a common-
wealth not perfectly settled, be made a precedent tor private
men, under a different situation, to invade the office of a magis-
trate, and witli an enthusiastic rage, to persecute even those that
are most innocent; as we plainly find it happened among the
Jews, when, in the latter times of their government, they put
this precedent in execution; of which St Stephen whom they
inhumanly stoned, and St Paul whom they vowed to assassinate,
without any form of justice, are notorious instances. — Patrick's
and Le Clcrc's Commentaries.
a This, however, is to be understood with a certain limitation ;
because it is manifest, that after some successions in the line of
Phinehas, the priesthood came, for a while, into the family of Eli,
who was descended from Ithamar, the youngest son of Aaron.
The reason of this interruption is not mentioned in Scripture ;
but some great sin, it is reasonable to suppose, provoked God to
set aside the line of Eleazar for some years, till Eli's sons like-
wise became so wicked, that the priesthood was taken from them,
and restored, in the days of Solomon, to the posterity of Phine-
has, with whom it continued as long as the priesthood lasted.
And this is enough to verify the promise of an everlasting priest-
hood, since the words everlasting, perpetual, and the like, in a
general and indefinite sense, denote no more than a long duration.
But there is another way of solving this difficulty: God had,
before this time, limited the priesthood to Aaron and his de-
scendants, and to them it was to be ' an everlasting priesthood
throughout their generations,' (Exod.xl. 15.); upon this account
it might properly enough be called, as limited to that family,
' the everlasting priesthood.' So that God does not here promise
Phinehas, and his seed after him, an everlasting grant of the
priesthood, as some commentators take it; nor a grant of an
everlasting priesthood, as our English version renders it, but
rather a grant of the everlasting priesthood, that is, of the
priesthood limit, d to Aaron and his descendants by that appella-
tion.— Selden de Success, Pontif. b. 1. c. 2. Shuckford's Con-
nection, vol. 3. b. 12.
b The Scripture gives us no account of the order of battle be-
tween these two armies; but, in all probability, they were dis-
posed according to the metiu>d of the ancient people of Asia:
and therefore we may range the Israelites upon one line, formed
of twelve corps, consisting of a thousand men each, at the head
of which was the ' ark of the covenant,' surrounded by the priests
and Levites, whose business it was to sound the charge, as well
as defend the ark. The Midianites, we may suppose, were, in
like manner, ranged in a phalanx, upon one line, and as the
Israelites were doubtless much inferior in number to their ene-
mies, they made much larger intervals between the corps of a
thousand men each, in order to penetrate the enemy's line in
different places. This was the constant practice of the Jews,
whenever they wore inferior in number to their enemies. — Cut-
tact's Dictionury, under the word Midianites.
c Whether this Phinehas was sent to command the troops
which were appointed by God to take vengeance on the Midian-
ites, or whether he went along with the army only to perform
such sacred offices as should be required by the general, who,
with more probability perhaps, is thought to be Joshua, are
questions arising from the silence of Scripture concerning the
chief commander. Phinehas, indeed, was a man of great com age,
M. 37C'». A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
Phinehas, who took with him the ark, and what wag
reposited therein, together with the sacred trumpets, to
blow in the time of action, in order to animate the
men. The Jewish army was but small in comparison
with the vast numbers they marched against; but God,
who put them upon the expedition, blessed them with
such success, that they slew five kings, and, among
them, the wicked prophet Balaam; put every to the
sword, except women and children ; and returned to
Moses with a very considerable booty ; one fiftieth part
of which ho ordered to be given to the priests, another
fiftieth to the Levites, and the rest to be divided among
the soldiery.
The remembrance, however, of what damage the
Midianitish women had done, by alluring the Israeli;.
to idolatry, made him think it unsafe to spare their
lives; and therefore, he ordered all those that had ever
known man, as well as all the '' male children to h ■
and had lately performed a singular piece of service, which had
gained him great reputation, and from hence some have imagined
that he was the fitter person to be sent with an army ' to avenge
the Lord of Midian;' as it is certain, that in after agi
cabees, who were of the family of the priests, wen- ap]
chief commanders. But then it must be considered, that the a
Maccabees were the supreme governors of the people, and as
such, had a right to the military command; that in the war with
the Amorites, Moses had sent the forces under Joshua1
duct : anil that Phinehas, ill short, had another prot ince appoint, d
him, which was to take care of the holy instruments: but what
these instruments were, is another question. Several interpre-
ters are of opinion, that tluy were the [Trim and Thummim
which Phinehas might take along with him, in order to I
God, in case of any difficulty that might arise in the manage-
ment of the war; and to countenance this, they supp
Eleazar was superannuated, and his son substituted in his room.
But it may be justly doubted whether Phinehas, being the only
son of the high priest, and not yet capable of that office, could be
substituted to perform this great charge, which belonged to the
high priest alone-, nor do we find any warrant for consulting the
Lord by Urim and Thummim, but only before the tabernacle.
It seems, therefore, much more likely, that by the holy Instru-
ments, Moses means the ark of the covenant, and what was in-
cluded in it, which, in the following ages, was went to be carried
into the field, when the people went to fight against their ene-
mies. Nay, Joshua himself, not long after this, ordered the ark
to be carried with priests blowing trumpets before it, when ho
surrounded Jericho, (Josh. vi. 4, &c) ; and therefore, since the
holy instruments are here joined with the trumpets, it lot
probable that they should signify the ark. Nor can we ap]
that Moses ran any risk in venturing the ark u] on this '
because God had assured his people, that they should obtain a
complete victory over the Midianites. It mu I
ever, that the ark is never thus expressed in any other part of
Scripture; and therefore, perhaps the; give as true a Bense of the
words as any, who make the holy Instruments and trump
one and the same thing, ami the latter no more than an I I
tion of the former; which trumpets the priests were commanded
to take with them, that they might sound a charge when the
engagement began, according to their direct! Num. a
and as the prat tice was in futurt . 2 Chron. xiii. I
d Moses ordered the male children to be -lain, that then lb) i 8
might extirpate the whole nation, as far BS lay in his DOT
prevent their avenging the death of their parents, in cm
were suffered to live to man's ,• Late. Tor it Is no hard man. r
to conceive how dangerous Buch a number of slaves, conscious
that they were born \\<c. and had lost their liberty with the ma -
sacre of their parents, might have proved to a commonwealth,
every where Burrounded with enemies. Why be was bo severe
!!„■ women, we need not wonder, if we do but consider,
that either bj prostituting themselves or their daughters, they
had been the chief Instruments of drawing the Israelii
idolatry. — " Though no illustrious fame is got bj taking
I on a woman, and Mich a victory is attended with i
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immediately despatched, and none a but virgins to be saved
alive ; and yet, what shows the greatness of the victory,
the virgm captives amounted to 32,000, and the plunder
of cattle and flocks consisted of 675,000 sheep, 72,000
oxen, and 61,000 asses, besides a great quantity of rich
goods and ornaments : and, what makes the victory still
more miraculous, not 6 one man on the Israelites' side,
as appears from the report of the officers made upon the
muster, was lost in this engagement.
The officers of the army were very sensible, that in
saving the captive women alive, they had transgressed
their commission ; and therefore c they presented a great
quantity of jewels, and other rich spoils, both as an
expiatory offering to atone for their offence, and for a
gratulatory offering, in acknowledgment of God's good-
ness, in giving them so great and signal a victory.
The Israelites, by this time, had made themselves
masters of the country that lay on the Midianitish side
of Jordan ; and the tribes of d Reuben and Gad, together
shall I be praised for having put an end to what is base, and in-
flicted deserved punishment."' — Virg. JEn. b. 2. v. 5S3, &c.
Bibliotkeca Biblica, and Le Clerc's Commentary on Num. xxxi.
17.
a The Jews have a tradition, that in order to find out who
were real virgins, the young women were placed at a proper
distance with other women, and all commanded to fix their eyes
upon the high priest's mitre ; whereupon those who had known
man turned instantly as pale as ashes, and those that had not
became as red as fire. But there seems to be no great occasion
for this miracle, when either the appearance of an unqualified
age, or the examination of some select matrons, might determine
the matter as well. — Bibliotkeca Biblica on Num. xxxi. 18.
b In the fifth chapter of the 1st book of Maccabees, we have
an account of another victory of the like nature, when Judas,
after having several times defeated Timotheus, the heathen
general, assaulted the city of Ephron a whole day and a night,
and all without the loss of a man. For ' they went up to mount
Sion with joy and gladness, where they offered burnt-offerings,
because not one of them was slain, until they had returned in
peace.' And, if other historians may be credited, the like has
happened among other nations. After the famous and bloody
battle of Leuctra, the Lacedemonians and Arcadians had a \ery
sharp engagement, in which the latter lost many thousands of
men, and the former not one ; and in a sea engagement, between
the Portuguese and the Indians, Osorius Lusitanus tells us, that
the Portuguese admiral, Pacheco, succeeded so well, that he
killed above 1500 of the infidels, without the loss of one man.
{Be Rebus Emman, b. 3.) But whether this had any thing
miraculous in it, or was only the effect of God's ordinary provi-
dence, we shall not pretend to determine. — Bibliotkeca Biblica
on Num. xxi. 49.
c The Jerusalem Targum supposes, that when these officers
made their offerings, they addressed themselves to Moses in the
following manner. ' Forasmuch as the Lord has delivered the
Midianites into our hands, and we have subdued the country,
entered into their chambers, and seen their fair and charming
daughters, took their crowns of gold from off their heads, their
rings from their ears and fingers, their bracelets from their arms,
and their jewels from their necks and bosoms; therefore far be
it from us to have turned our eyes towards them. We had no
manner of concern or conversation with them, lest we should
thereby die thedeath of the wicked in Gehenna. And let this
lie had in remembrance on our behalf, in the clay of the great
judgment, to make a reconciliation for our souls before the Lord.'
</ In the division of the country, which the Israelites took from
Sihon and Og, two vanquished kings that lived on the east side
of Jordan, and whose dominions extended from the river Anion
even as far as mount Ilermon, (Deut. iii. S.) Moses gave to
the tribe of Reuben the southern, or rather the south-west part of
the country, so that they were bounded to the south with the
river Anion; to the west with Jordan, and to the north and east
with the tribe of Gad. In this tribe stood Heshbon, the capital
with the half tribe of Manasseh, observing that the coun-
try was fertile, and stored with good pasturage, desired
of Moses that they might be permitted to settle there, as
a place very commodious for them, who had large stocks
of cattle ; which, upon condition that they should go over
Jordan, and assist their brethren in the conquest of the
land of Canaan, Moses consented to. And as they were
now in the neighbourhood of Canaan, and just ready to
enter upon the possession of it, he took this opportunity
to appoint the limits of what they were to conquer, and
the distribution of it by e way of lot, which he committed
to the management of Joshua and Eleazar, at the head
of the chiefs of each tribe.
Joshua was appointed by God to succeed Moses in
his commission ; and therefore, to prevent any contest
after his death, he first laid his own hands upon him, and
then presented him to Eleazar the high priest, who in a
solemn form of admission, and in the presence of all the
people invested him with the office of being the leader
and general of all Israel, after Moses had given him
several directions relating to his office, and one more
especially, which concerned his consulting of God by
way of Urim and Thummim upon every great emergency.
In the division of the country, Moses assigned eight and
forty cities, together with their suburbs, for the Levites
to live in, and withal ordered, that six of these should
be made cities of refuge, whither / the innocent man-
city of the kingdom of Sihon, situate on the hills over against
Jericho, about twenty miles distant from the river Jordan. The
tribe of Gad was bounded with the river Jordan to the west ;
with the half tribe of Manasseh to the north; with the Ammon-
ites to the east; and with the tribe of Reuben to the south. In
this tribe stood Ashtaroth, the capital city of the kingdom of Og,
which very likely obtained its name from an idol, which was
much worshipped in those times and parts. How the half tribe
of Manasseh came to choose to stay on the east side of Jordan,
the sacred history makes no mention ; but it is reasonable to sup-
pose that after they found that the tribes of Reuben and Gad had
succeeded in their petition, they likewise might represent to Moses
the great stock of cattle which they had ; that the country would be
equally commodious for them, and was over large for two tribes
alone to occupy ; nor is it to be doubted, but that Moses was
inclinable to listen to their allegation, because the sons of Machir
the son of Manasseh, had by their valour subdued a great part of
the country, where they settled ; which was bounded by the tribe of
Gad to the south ; with the sea of Cinnereth, afterwards called
the lake of Gennesareth, or the sea of Galilee, together with the
course of the river Jordan, from its head to the said sea to the
west; with Mount Lebanon, or more peculiarly Mount Hermon,
to the north and north-west; and with the mountains of Gilead
to the east. — Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
e Nothing could more prudently be contrived, than this par-
tition of the country by lot, and making Joshua and the high
priest superintendents of it ; since it was the only one that could
effectually prevent all murmurings and quarrellings among such
an obstinate people as the Jews were. However, as the Jots
were to bear a proportion to the bigness of each tribe and family,
it is supposed from what followed, that every tribe first drew its
lot for its own canton, and that then there were proper persons
appointed to measure out a quantity of land for each family,
according to their bigness ; but whether this last was done by this
or any other method; whether the subdivisions between the
families were likewise carried on by lot or otherwise, sure it is.
that we read of no broils or jealousies that it ever occasioned
among them. — Universal History, b. 1. c. 7.
f The person, who without any premeditated malice, killed
his neighbour accidentally had the best provision imaginable
made for his escape. For the ways that led to the cities of
refuge, were to be made very plain and broad, and kept in good
repair. Two students of the law were to accompany him, that
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
321
A. M. 2515. A. C. USD: OR. ACCORDING TO HALES. A.
slayer, who had killed his neighbour by chance, might
betake himself and live ; though at the same time he
made all proper provision, that the wilful murderer
should certainly be put to death ; but in this, and all
other capital cases, he made it a law, that none should
be convicted upon the evidence of one single person.
The nearer that Moses approached his death, the more
he expressed his concern for the welfare of the people ;
and therefore, on the first day of the eleventh month,
which answers to our January, and in the fortieth year
from their departure out of Egypt, being then encamped
on the plains of Moab by the banks of the river Jordan,
he called them all together, and at different times made
two very tender and pathetic speeches, wherein he briefly
related to them all that had befallen their fathers, since
the time they left Egypt ; the gracious dealings of God
with them ; their continual murmurings and rebellions
against him ; and the many severe judgments that had
followed thereupon, even to his own exclusion from the
promised land. He gave them a summary of all the
laws which the divine goodness had calculated for their
happiness ; and having repeated the decalogue almost
word for word, he reminded them of the solemn and
dreadful manner in which it was delivered from mount
Sinai, and of the manifold obligations they lay under
to a strict observance of it. He encouraged them to be
faithful to God, by assuring them, that if they kept his
commandments, they should not fail of having innumer-
able blessings heaped upon them, and by threatening them
with all manner of calamities, if so be they departed
from them. He renewed the covenant which their fathers
had made with God at Horeb ; commanded them to
proclaim on a the mountains of Gerizim and Hebal
beyond Jordan, blessings to those that observed, and
curses to those that broke this covenant ; and to erect
an altar there, whereon they were to * write, in a legible
character, the terms and conditions of it.
if the avenger of blood should overtake him before he got to the
city, they might endeavour to pacify him by wise persuasions;
and that he might not miss his way to the place, whither lie
intended to flee, there were posts erected, where two or three
ways met, with the word Miklul, that is the city of refuge,
inscribed on them, to direct him into the right road that led to
it. — Patrick's Commentary on Num. xxxv. 13.
a These two mountains are situate in the tribe of Ephraim,
near Shechem, in the province of Samaria, and are so near to one
another, that nothing but a valley of about two hundred paces
wide parts them; so that the priests, standing and pronouncing
the blessings and curses, that were to attend the doers or violators
of the law, in a very loud and distinct manner, might well
enough be heard by the people that were seated on the sides of
the two hills, especially if the priests were advanced upon pulpits,
as Ezra afterwards was, (Neh. viii. 4.) and had their pulpits
placed at proper distances. — Patrick's and Calmet's Commentary
in Deut. xxvii.
b In this twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy, the Israel-
ites were commanded to write upon certain stones, all the words
of the law very plainly, ver. 8. How many these stones were,
the Scripture makes no mention; but some are of opinion, that
they were twelve, according to the number of the pillars which
Moses employed (Exod. xxiv. 4.) when he made the covenant
between God and his people. Knew we for certainty the number
of the stones, we might better guess what part of the law it was
which Moses ordered to be engraven upon them, since, by reason
of this uncertainty, some will have it to be the whole Pentateuch ;
others, no more than the decalogue; some, that summary of the
laws which is contained in this book of Deuteronomy ; and others,
the curses which follow from Deut. xxvii. 15. to the end of
chap, xxviii. which seems to be more likely, because they con-
M. 3765. A. C. 1C4G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DKUT.
These, and several other directions relating to their
future conduct in the land of Canaan, Moses not only
delivered to the people by word of mouth, but ordered
to be written in a book which he committed to the care
and custody of the Levites, who, by God's appointment,
laid it up on the side of the ark, there to remain a wit-
ness against the children of Israel, in case they should
rebel. And that they might never want a proper fund o f
devotion, he composed a song, or poem, which he not
only repeated to the people, but gave orders likewise
that they should all learn it by heart : for therein he hail
expressed in a very elegant manner, the many benefits
and favours of God to his people ; their ingratitude and
forgetfulness of him ; the punishments wherewith he had
afflicted them ; and the comminations of greater judg-
ments, if they persisted to provoke him by a repetition
of their follies.
Such was the care and concern of the Jewish lawgiver
for the welfare of the people after he was gone : and
therefore, perceiving that the time of his dissolution was
now at hand, he called them together ; and having taken
a solemn farewell of them, in a prophetic blessing, which
he pronounced upon each tribe, as Jacob had done just
before his death, he went e up to the top of Pisgah, over
against Jericho, from whence he might take a full view
of the country which God had promised to Abraham's
posterity. For though he was an hundred and twenty
years old, yet his natural strength and vigour was not
impaired, nor had his eyesight in the least failed him ; so
that he was able to survey the beauteous prospect, which
the delightful town and plains of Jericho, and the fair ditTs
and lofty cedars of Lebanon aflbrded him ; and having
done this, he resigned his soul into the hands of seraphim,
who were waiting to convey it into a happier Canaan
than what he had been surveying; and to prevent the
danger of the people's idolizing him when he was gone/*
tain select precepts, and the last of them seems to comprise the
whole law, ver. 26. and Josh. viii. 34. But however we under-
stand this, it is certain, that before the use of paper was found
out, the ancients, particularly the Phoenicians and Egyptians,
were wont to write their minds upon stones, as several authors
mentioned by Huetius {Dcmonstrat. Emu. prop. 1. chap. 2.) do
abundantly testify. Nay, he observes, that this custom continued
lung after the invention of paper, especially if men desired that
any thing should be publicly known and transmitted down (0
posterity. — Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12, and I'utrick't
Commentary.
c The mountains of Abarim were a ridge of hills between the
two rivers Anion and Jordan. One part of these mountains wis
distinguished by the name of Nebo, as it appears from Deut \xxii.
19; and comparing this with Dent. xx\n. I. we shall find that
Nebo and Pisgah were one and the same mountain, and that if
there was any distinction between the name-, it was probably
this, that the top of the mountain WM more peculiarly calk. I
Pisgah, because it comes from a root which signifies to elevate, or
raise up, and so may very properly denote the top or tummU ol
any mountain. Not far from Nebo, was Beth-peer, which very
probably was so called from Borne deity of the same name, that
was worshipped there. But of all these mountains it must he
observed, that though they arc said to be in the land ol Moab,
yet. they reallv Stood in the territories nf Sihon, kfalg of the Amo-
rites, however they retained their old names, because once they
hell. lined to the .\ I oahi tes. — Num. \\i. SB.
,/This very reason we have m Ft. Levi Ben Gershom,
" Future generations," says he, " might perhaps have made a
god of him, because of the fame of his miracles; for do we not
see how some of the [am litem erred in the brazen serpent which
Moses mad.' ? And what then would they not have done, had
they but known where his remains were laid ?" For this n u- on,
Ss
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God himself took care to bury his body in so secret a
manner, in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor, that
the place of his a sepulchre was never yet discovered.
Thus died b Moses, the e illustrious prophet and servant
very likely it was, that how much soever Moses was in love with
Canaan, he did not desire to be carried thither to be buried with
his ancestors, as Joseph did ; because his interment in that
country might have proved of dangerous consequence, if in their
distress, especially in the captivity of the land, the children of
Israel should have run to his sepulchre, and begged of him to
pray for them, whose prayers and intercession, in their behalf,
they had found in his lifetime so \ery prevalent. — Patrick's
Commentary on Deut. xxxiv. 6.
a But notwithstanding all this precaution of God, the Christians
boast, that they have discovered the sepulchre, which has been
kept secret for so many ages. For in the year 1655, some goats
that were separated from the rest of the flock, went to feed in a
certain place, in the mountain Nebo, and returned from thence
so odoriferous and perfumed, that the shepherds, astonished at so
wonderful a prodigy, ran presently to consult with the patriarch
of the Maronites, who sent thither two monks from Mount Leb-
anon, and they discovered a monument, on which was this in-
scription, " Moses, the servant of the Lord." But there is too
much reason to think that this is all a fiction, on purpose to raise
the reputation of the Maronites, as Basnage in his history and
religion of the Jews has sufficiently proved. — B. 4. c. 17.
b Nothing can be plainer from the text, than that Moses did
die, and was really buried ; nay, Josephus tells us, that the
Scripture affirms that he died lest people should think, because of
the excellency of his person, that he was still alive, and with
God. And yet, notwithstanding this, some of the Jewish doctors
do positively affirm, that he was translated into heaven, where he
stands and ministers before God : and of those who admit of his
death, and that his soul and body were really separated, the
major part will not allow that he died a common death; for their
notion is, that his soul departed with a kiss, because he is said to
die al pi, at the mouth (as it is literally in the Hebrew, that is,
according to the word) uf God; but if there be any sense in the
expression, it must be that he parted with his soul with great
cheerfulness and serenity of mind. — interns' Miscel. Sacra.
c The commendation which the author of Ecclesiasticus gives
Moses, is conceived in these words: — ' Moses was beloved of
God and men, and his memorial is blessed. The Lord made him
like to the glorious saints, and magnified him so, that his enemies
stood in fear of him, and by his word he caused the wonders to
cease, and he made him glorious in the sight of kings, gave him
ordinances for his people, and showed him part of his glory. He
sanctified him in his faithfulness and meekness, and chose him
out of all men. He made him to hear his voice, and brought
him into the dark cloud, and gave him commandments before his
face, even the law of life and knowledge, that he might teach
Jacobins covenant, and Israel his judgments,' chap. xlv. 1, &c.
The character which Josephus gives him is to this effect: — " He
was a man of admirable wisdom, and one that made the best use
of what he understood : an excellent speaker, and no man better
skilled in moving the affections of the people than himself; and
so great a master of his passions, that he lived as though he had
none, or as if he only knew them by their names, or by observ-
ing them in otlicrs. Never was there a greater captain, nor a
prophet equal to him; for all his words were oracles." So true
is the character which the sacred writer has given of him.
' There arose not a prophet since in Israel, like unto Moses,
whom the Lord knew face to face, in all the signs, and the
wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt,
to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all the land, and in all
that mighty hand, and in all that great terror which Moses
showed in the sight of all Israel,' Deut. xxxiv. 10, &c. " Nor
was he less famous to posterity for his writings, than he was to
the age he lived in for his actions." For besides the Pentateuch,
winch is all of his own composition, except the conclusive chapter,
(he ancients generally thought, that he was author of the book of
Job, and of eleven psalms, which begin at the 90th, and end
with the 100th; as thru? were once other books, as his Lesser
Genesis, the Revelation of Moses, the Ascension of Moses, the
Assumption of Moses, and the mysterious books of Moses, cited
by some ancient writers, which were likewise ascribed to him.
And though they have long since lost their authority, and been
of God ; and when the people of Israel came to under-
stand that he was dead, with great solemnity, they
lamented for him for the space of thirty days. a
CHAP. II. — Objections Ansvjered and Difficulties
Explained.
Both Philo and Josephus are of opinion, that the
account of Moses' death and burial, of the mourning
which the Israelites made for him, and of the character
which, in the conclusion of Deuteronomy, we find re-
corded of him, was penned by Moses himself, in conse-
quence of the prescience which God was pleased to com-
municate to him : and the reason ' which Josephus gives
for his thus relating the circumstances of his death before-
hand, is, that the people, out of the great veneration
they had for his person, might not imagine that he was
translated.
But suppose this account to have been written after
the death of Moses, by Joshua, Eleazar, or the seventy
elders, or, as some imagine, much later, by Samuel, or
even by Ezra himself, who, after the Babylonish cap-
tivity, made a revisal of the sacred books ; suppose it, I
say, to have been written by any other hand whatever,
yet this can no ways affect the authority of the rest of
the Pentateuch, or imply that Moses was not the writer
of it, unless we will be so perverse as to say, that the
addition of some few lines, or even of a whole page, as
an appendix to another man's book, makes the book
no longer his.
There is another opinion, which seems very conso-
nant both to reason, and matter of fact, and that is, that
the last of the books of Moses, namely, the book of
1 Jewish History, b. 4. c. 7.
exploded as spurious ; yet are they still an argument of the great-
ness of his name, when so many authors, to recommend their
own performances, were so ambitious to assume it." — Josephus'
Antiquities, b. 4. c. 8., and Calmet's Dictionary under the word
Moses.
The noblest trait of his moral character, was his patriotic dis-
interestedness. He twice refused the tempting offer of the
aggrandizement of his own family, when God threatened to reject
the Israelites for their rebellions, and make of him ' a great
nation ' in their stead. And he left his sons without rank or
patrimony, as private Levites, to subsist on the national bounty
in common with their brethren ! And, melancholy to relate, his
grandson, ' Jonathan the son of Gershom,' and his family, became
idolatrous priests to the Danites, until the capture of the ark bv
the Philistines, Judges xviii. 30; where the Masorite doctors
to hide the disgrace to his memory, changed ' Moses' into ' Man-
assus,' by interpolating the letter N in the present copies of the
Hebrew text. The posterity of his son Eliezer, were numerous
in Solomon's time, and some of them high in office. I Chr.
xxiii. 14 — 17; xxvi. 24, 25 — Hales' Analysis, vol. 2. p. 25G,,
8vo edition. — En.
d It was usual in the east to mourn for such persons as weie
absent from home when they died, and were buried at a distance
from their relations. Irwin relates, [Travels, p. 254,) that one
of the inhabitants of Ghinnah being murdered in the desert, gave
birth to a mournful procession of females, which pressed through
the different streets, and uttered dismal cries for his death. Jos-
ephus expressly declares it was a Jewish custom, and says, that
upon the taking of Jotapata it was reported that he (Josephus)
was slain, and that these accounts occasioned very great mourn-
ing at Jerusalem. It was after this manner that the Israelites
lamented the death of Moses. He was absent from them when
he died, neither did they carry him to the grave, but they wept
for him in the plains of Moab. — Harmer, vol. 3. p. 392. — Ed.
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
Deuteronomy, ended with this prophetic blessing" upon
the twelve tribes, * ' happy art thou, O Israel ! AVho is
like unto thee, O people, saved by the Lord,' &rc. ? and
that what makes now the last chapter of Deuteronomy,
was formerly the first of Joshua, but thence removed and
adjoined to the other by May of supplement.
Before the invention of sections, and other divisions,
or so much as of pauses, and points of distinction ; and
when sometimes several books were connected together
and following each other upon the same roll, as the an-
cient method of writing was, it is no hard matter to
conceive, how easily the beginning of one book might
be transferred to the end of another, and, in process of
time, make that to be reputed the conclusion of Deuter-
onomy, which was originally intended for the introduc-
tion to the book of Joshua. And if this be the case, it is
no wonder that we meet with several passages in this
introduction which were in reality wrote by a later hand
than Moses. But then, by whomsoever, or at what time
soever, these passages were wrote, whether before or
after the destruction of the first temple, they can no way
invalidate the authority of the other parts of the book of
Deuteronomy, to which imprudently, and by way of
mistake perhaps, they came to be annexed : nor can the
canonicalness of these very passages be called in ques-
tion ; since it is agreed on all hands, that they Mere
written by a person of a prophetic spirit, and had in all
ages the sanction of the great synagogue.
But whoever was the author of this additional chapter
in Deuteronomy, it cannot well be accounted an impos-
sible thing for God to show Moses the compass of the
land of Canaan, from the top of Mount Nebo. The
Jews indeed have a notion, that God laid before him a
map of the whole country, and showed him therein how
every part of it was situate ; where each valley lay, each
mountain stood, each river ran, and for what remarkable
product each place was renowned : but if this had been
all, we cannot see for what reason Moses was ordered to
go upon the highest part of the mount, since in the lowest
plains of Moab, he might have given him a demonstration
of this kind every whit as well.
It was for some purpose, therefore, that the sacred
historian has informed us, that though Moses was 120
years old, ' yet his eyes were not dim :' and if we sup-
pose that upon this occasion God strengthened them
with a greater vigour than ordinary, to enable him to take
a larger prospect of the country, so that from this emin-
ence, he might see Dan and Mount Lebanon, to the
north ; the lake of Sodom and the city of Zoar to the
south ; the Mediterranean sea to the west ; and, as the
town and country of Jericho were just at hand, he might
easily discern the land of Gilead to the north-east. This
indeed may be a compass above the stretch of human
sight ; but if God was pleased to assist his visive facul-
ties a little, the matter might easily have been done ; and
accordingly 2 some of the Jewish doctors have been wise
enough in putting together both the natural clearness of
Moses' eyes, and the additional strength which God at
this time vouchsafed to give them: " For God showed
him," say they, " the whole land as in a garden-plot ;
1 Deut. xxxiii. 29. * Patrick's Comment, on Deut. xxxiv.
a All the tribes are blessed, except the tribe of Simeon, and his
is included in what is said concerning Judah.
323
M. 3705. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
and gave his eyes such power of contemplating it, from
the beginning to the end, that be saw hills and dales,
what was open and what was enclosed, remote or nigh'
at one single view or intuition."
The Talmudists have a very odd conceit, that the great
sin for which Moses was hindered from going into the land
of Canaan, was, because he called the people of God J
rebels ; and from thence they have formed a maxim, that
"he who treats the church, which ought to be honoured
with contempt, is, as if he blasphemed the name «>f (iod."
But in opposition to this, it should be considered, that
Moses on this occasion, uses the very same language that
God himself does, when he bids him 4 ' lay up the rod of
Aaron, as a token against the rebels ;' and that if this
was the thing wherein he offended God, he not long after
committed the same thing, which he would hardly have
done, considering already that it had cost him so dear,
when he told the people plainly, s ' Ye have been rebel-
lious against the Lord, ever since I knew you.1
Several Christians, as well as Jewish expositors, think,
that the transgression of Moses lay in smiting the rock,
when his instructions only were to speak to it ; and for
the support of this, they allege that God is an absolute
sovereign, expecting an absolute obedience, and exact-
ing punishment even of his gTeatest favourites, when they
pretend to vary from his commands, or to mix their own
conceptions with his directions : and that there was some
such prevarication in the conduct of Moses and Aaron,
seems to be implied in God's remonstrance, which imme-
diately follows; 6 ' because ye believe me not,' or, as
it should be translated, because ' ye were not faithful to
me, to' (sanctify and) 'glorify me in the eyes of the
children of Israel; therefore ye shall not bring this con-
gregation into the land which I have given them.'
It is granted, indeed, that God ordered Moses to take
his rod with him, and why should he take it, unless it
were to strike the rock, as he had done before ? But
the Israelites perhaps began now to entertain a super-
stitious fancy of the virtue of this rod, which had been the
instrument of so many miracles wrought before them ; and
therefore God was minded to give Moses an opportunity
of convincing them of their folly, by making it appear,
that neither himself, nor Aaron, nor the rod, was of any
importance; that he alone was the worker of miracles,
which he was able at any time to do, by a words speak-
ing. This had been doing justice to the honour of (mil,
but instead of this Moses spake and acted ' unadvisedly.
that is, he spake and acted of himself, and what he had
no commission to do, and thereby gave the Israelites an
opportunity to imagine, that the suppl] of water might
come from him, from his power and ability to procure
it The truth is, the divine writers, who have touched
upon this history, have made mention of two defaults in
Moses, namely, his impatience and his infidelity; and
therefore we may suppose, that (the water now ceasing
at the time, 8 when his sister Miriam died) he was exceed-
ingly troubled on both these accounts ; that unexpectedly
assaulted by the people, who ought to have paid him
more reverence, especially in a time of mourning, he
fell into a greater commotion of anger and indignation,
than was usual in him ; and that this anger gave such a
3 Num. xx. 10.
* Num. xx. 12.
4 Num. xvii. 10.
7 Ps. cvi. :tf.
5 Deut ix. 24.
8 Num. xx. 1.
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A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
disturbance to his mind, and so disordered his thoughts,
that when God bade him ' take his rod, and go, and
speak to the rock,' he fell into some doubt, whether the
divine goodness would grant the people the same favour
he had done before ; that therefore he struck the rock
with diffidence, believing it improbable that such worth-
less and rebellious wretches should deserve a miracle ;
and that the water not issuing out at the first stroke, his
diffidence increased into unbelief, and a settled persua-
sion that they should have none at all.
There is one conjecture more of a very learned ' man,
which I shall but just mention, namely, that Moses began
to distrust God's promise of entering into the land of
Canaan at the end of forty years, and to imagine, that if
he brought water again out of the rock, it must follow
them as long as the other had done, and engage them again
in the like wanderings ; and therefore the comment which
he makes upon Moses' words is this : — " What, ye rebels,
must we bring water out of the rock, as we did at Horeb ?
Are all our hopes and expectations of getting out of the
wilderness come to this ? We never fetched water out of
the rock but once, and that was, because we were to stay
a long time in the wilderness ; and must Ave begin our
abode here again, when we thought we had attained to
the end of our travels ? And with that he smote the rock
in a passion twice ; whereas God had commanded him
only to speak to it. But whichsoever of these conjectures
we are inclined to think most plausible, there are few
writers who are not disposed to extenuate the fault of
Moses, as not deserving so severe a punishment, had not
God, in passing the sentence of exclusion upon him,
considered the eminence and dignity of a person in his
station, in whom a transgression of any kind could not but
be far more grievous and inexcusable, than in an ordi-
nary man.
For this reason we may observe, that when Moses has
related the wickedness and punishment of Zimri, he
takes care to inform us 2 of his family, his titles, and his
high station in life. He was the prince of a tribe, the
head of thousands in Israel, and one of the renowned
men of the congregation. In this capacity he had a right
to be an assessor with Moses and Aaron, and the other
rulers in the government of the people ; and consequently
could not regularly be brought under the sentence of
those judges who were inferior to him. This he knew full
well ; and therefore, in defiance of the laws, and in
contempt of all authority, 3 while ' the children of Israel
were weeping before the door ot the congregation in the
sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the people, he
brought a Midianitish woman into his tent. Moses had
ordered the 4 'judges to slay every one his men that
were joined to Baal-peor ;' but we hear of none that
were punished for this wickedness, except this Zimri,
and those that afterwards died in the plague : the trans-
gression was become too universal to be corrected by a
judiciary proceeding, and the example of so leading a
man was enough to bear all down before it, and make
the infection spread. God had already ordered, that
the persons who committed this great offence should 3 be
punished in a very exemplary manner : in regard to God,
1 Lightfoot's Chronica Temp. s Num. xxv. 14.
3 Num. xxv. 0'. * Num. xxv. 5. * Num. xxv. 4
M. 37G5. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
therefore, Zimri was under sentence of condemnation,
and as his guilt was too glaruig and notorious to need
conviction, and the judges were found timorous and re-
miss in the execution of their office, there was certainly
wanting, on this important occasion, a proper person to
supply their place.
Now, that the act of Phinehas in slaying Zimri was not
the effect of zeal, and warm resentment only, but of a
divine impulse and instigation so to do, I think is evident
from the testimony of God himself, when he declares to
Moses, ' that Phinehas,' by the death of Zimri, 6' had
made an atonement for the children of Israel.' For
what atonement could he pretend to make, unless God
had appointed him ? 7 ' No man taketh this honour upon
himself,' neither can any one perform this office to good
purpose, ' but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.'
And therefore, there is no propriety in the words, unless
we suppose that God ordered Phinehas to make a pro-
pitiatory sacrifice of the blood of the offenders ; and for
the confirmation of this, we find God requiring of Moses
to say to the people, 8 ' Behold I give unto him my
covenant of peace ;' or, as it should more truly be
rendered, ' Behold it was 1 who gave unto him my cove-
nant of peace:' the intent of which declaration is to
inform the congregation, that Phinehas had not done a
rash action out of his own mere motion and warmness of
heart, but that he had the immediate direction and ap-
pointment of God for what he did ; that God had made
a previous covenant with him to that purpose ; and given
him positive assurance, that upon the death of Zimri and
Cosbi, slain by his hands, the wickedness that had
been committed in the camp should be forgiven. And
therefore we find God espousing the deed, and in a kind
of exultation, declaring 9 ' Phinehas, the son of Eleazar.
the son of Aaron, the priest, in being thus zealous for
my sake, hath turned away my wrath from the children
of Israel.' In this view of the fact all is clear ; nor can
this example lay any foundation for a dangerous imita-
tion, because it will in no Avise prove that an illegal
action, though proceeding from a most upright heart,
zealously affected in a good thing, is ever to be justified,
unless God, by an express and well-attested revelation
from heaven, declares his patronage and acceptance
of it. a
The Jews, who love to magnify miracles sometimes
beyond their proper bounds, have a current tradition
that the clothes grew bigger according as the children
themselves increased in bulk and stature : but there is
no occasion for any such supposition as this ; since the
younger, in their proper degrees, might succeed to the
vestments of the elder, and the miracle still remain
wonderful enough, that God should preserve these vest-
ments from decaying, or their feet, by so long travelling
in hot and stony places, from swelling, or being callous,
as some translate it, for the space of forty years. Some,
indeed, will have the phrase to denote that their feet
6 Num. xxv. 13. 1 Heb. v. 4.
9 Num. xxv. 11.
8 Num. xxv. 12.
a It may be remarked, that God had pronounced sentence of
death against all who had ofi'ended, or should offend, as Zimri
had done, (ver. 3, 5.) ; and that Phinehas in slaying him, did
nothing but what it was the duty of any man to do, who had
courage to undertake it. — Ed.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
325
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37C5 A. C. 164G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT
But how well soever God might provide for the Israel
ites in this, and all other instances of his paternal care,
were not sensible of any uneasiness or fatigue, through
the whole vast length of their journey ; but this construc-
tion is plainly repugnant 1 to the Scripture account we
have of their travels ; and therefore the easier interpre-
tation will be, if, by way of nietonomy, we take the shoe
for the foot, and so make the latter agree with the former
part of the verse, and bring the whole to this meaning,
namely, " that as their clothes which covered the whole
body, did not become useless through age, so neither
did their shoes decay, or burst, or grow out of shape,
(for in all these senses may the original word be taken,)
though they were engaged in so tedious a march."
It is to be observed, however, that the Hebrews wanted
neither flocks nor herds in the wilderness ; and the
hangings, and other works belonging to the tabernacle,
sufficiently show that they were no strangers to the art
of weaving. But supposing they did not manufacture
their own clothes, they might, however, purchase them
from the Arabians, and other neighbouring nations, and
could therefore be under no want of a sufficient supply
of this kind of necessaries. And, from these considera-
tions, ?a learned commentator concludes, that the sense
of the words, ' thy raiment waxed not old upon thee,'
must be — That in the deserts of Arabia, the Israelites
had so great a plenty of clothes, and so many changes
of raiment, that they were under no more necessity to
wear them tattered, or threadbare, than if they had lived
in one of the most plentiful, rich, and cloth-working
countries. And thy feet did not swell, or grow callous,
as poor people's feet are wont to do, when the soles of
their shoes are worn out, and they forced to tread upon
the hard ground ; for so it is explained in another place,
3 ' thy shoe did not wax old upon thy foot,' that is, thy
poverty did not oblige thee to wear thy shoes (as poor
people do) until they were old, and grown so very thin,
that in hard and stony ways they hurt thy feet, and made
them swell. Poverty, we know, necessarily occasions a
meanness of apparel ; but men of large fortunes have a
variety of suits, and commonly cast their clothes ofl*
before they are too far worn : and, in like manner, the
historian's design is, in this instance of raiment, to sig-
nify to us, that the Israelites, while they abode in a
barren wilderness, lived like men of affluence ; * ' for
the Lord their God was with them,' as he tells us else-
where, 'and they lacked nothing.' a
' See Deut. viii. 4., and xxix. 5.
* Le Clerc's Comment, in Deut. viii. 4. ' Dent. xxix. 5.
4 Deut. ii. 7.
a The common opinion, that the raiment and shoes of the
Israelites wore not, is certainly absurd. That they had carvers,
engravers, silversmiths, and jewellers among them, plainly ap-
pears from the account we have of the tabernacle and its utensils ;
and that they knew how to spin and weave, is evident from Exod.
xxxv. 25, 26. The meaning therefore is, that God provided
them with all sufficient clothing. On any other supposition lie
would require, not one miracle, but a chain of the most astonish-
ing miracles ever wrought to account for the thing; for as there
were not less than 600,000 males born in the wilderness, it would
imply that the clothes of the infant grew up with the increase of
his body to manhood, which would require a miracle to be con-
tinually wrought on every thread, and on every particle of matter
of which that thread was composed. And this is not all: it
would imply that the clothes of the parent became miraculously
lessened to fit the body of the child, with whose growth they were
again to stretch and grow, &c. No such miraculous Interference
was necessary. — Ed.
yet we cannot think with some predestinarians, that, like
an over-fond parent, he was blind to their faults. The
word area, which we translate iniquity, and the word
amal, which we render perverseness, do both ver\ fre-
quently signify in Scripture the highest kind of wicked-
ness, that is, idolatry; and so the reason which Balaam
assigns why God had blessed the Israelites, and would
not curse them, is, that they had not as yet incurred the
sin of idolatry. * Some private men might perhaps be
guilty of it, but it was not yet become national and epi-
demical ; nor were there any hopes that God would ever
deliver them into the power of their enemies, unless,
some way or other, they should be seduced into that
sin ; and therefore Balaam advised the prince of Moab,
by the allurements of some beautiful women, to entice
them into it, as the likeliest way to deprive them of the
divine protection.
Others take the words in a common sense, to denote
sin, or wickedness in general; but then, by the words
see, or behold, they understand such an observation of
this wickedness as marks it out for punishment. Ac-
cording to this observation, they make the meaning of
the phrase to be, that " though the Israelites were con-
fessedly guilty of many great crimes, yet since they
were not universally so, God would have more regard to
his own promises than to the sins of some particulars ;
because he is a God of perfect veracity, and the unbelief
and impiety of ill men shall not have force enough with
him to recall and annul his promises to the good."
There is another signification of the word, which we
render behold, and that is, ' to look upon with pleasure
and approbation :' and 5 therefore, as the particle belli
does frequently signify against, as well as in, and ' so
occurs in several parts of Scripture, the sense of the
words will naturally run thus, " God does not approve
of any wicked designs or practices against Jacob ;" for
the words which we render iniquity and perverteneu,
do equally signify outrage or oppression, deceit, or
machinations of any kind, which God declares he would
not suffer to be attempted against his people. And
therefore Balaam, upon a review of the many blei
and deliverances which God had vouchsafed them, breaks
out into this reflection, and therewith concludes his pro-
4 An Essay towards a New Version of tin' Scripture,
"See Exod. xiv. 25 — xx. 16; Num. xii. 1 — uiii. 23, <t alibi.
b Boothroyd, following the Samaritan and Syriae versions,
translates the verses here referred to (Num. xxiii. 80, B 1 0 thus: —
Behold ! 1 have received a command to blesa ;
For God hath blessed, and 1 cannot revoke it.
I behold no trouble in Jacob,
Nor do I see distress in Israel.
Jehovah their God Ii witb them.
And to liim they ibout as their kinir.
This preserves the order of the narrative ; and the two latter
lines contain the reason of their happy circumstances The
common version is at variance » ith the « hole narrative oi Moses.
How frequently are WS told of their iniquities and pn.r-e-
ness. (Boothroyd on the passage.) The TsrgUm of OnkeloS,
however, supports die vis* given in tin' text, and paraphrases
the verse thus: — " 1 see thai there are none who worship idols
in the DOUSe of" Jacob, (and there appears to have Keen i ■
that period,) nor any ttrvants of trouble or i anity," n idols wers
called in Israel. — See also Patrick's Commentary, and Taylor t
Hebrew Concordance. — Ei>.
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photic speech : 1 ' Behold, the people shall rise up as a
great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion ; he shall
not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink of the
blood.'
Thus, in what sense soever we take the words, whether
as relating to idolatry, of which the Israelites, in the
main, were not at that time guilty ; or to wickedness in
general, which God's promises to the forefathers re-
strained him from punishing-, though they might be
guilty ; or to the evil designs and practices against his
people, which his justice and goodness both obliged
him to disapprove ; we shall have no reason to accuse
him of a blind partiality towards them, but much, very
much, to cry out with the inspired writers, a ' Righteous
art thou, 0 Lord, and true is thy judgment ; 3 with the
holy, thou shalt be holy ; and with the upright man thou
shalt be perfect; for the Lord knoweth who are his, and'
can rightly distinguish ' between those that serve him, and
those that serve him not.'
Of the number of those who served not God, Balaam
was certainly one ; and yet we have reason to presume,
that he nevertheless was a real prophet. The Jews,
indeed, are generally of opinion, that he was a busy and
pretending astrologer, who, observing when men were
under a bad aspect of the stars, pronounced a curse upon
them ; which sometimes coming to pass, gained him, in
some neighbouring nations, a reputation in his way.
Several of the ancient fathers suppose him to be no more
than a common soothsayer, for so he 4 is called, who
undertook to foretell future events, and discover secrets,
&c, but by no good and justifiable arts. Origen will
needs have it, that he was no prophet, but only one of
the devil's sorcerers : and that of him he went to inquire ;
but God was pleased to prevent him, and a to put what
answers he pleased into his mouth. It cannot be denied,
however, but that s the Scripture expressly calls him a
prophet ; and therefore some later writers have imagined,
that he had been once a good man, and a true prophet,
till loving the wages of iniquity, and prostituting the
honour of his office to covetousness, he apostatized from
God, and betaking himself to idolatrous practices, fell
under the delusion of the devil, of whom he learnt all
his magical enchantments ; though at this juncture, when
the preservation of his people was concerned, it might
consist with God's wisdom to appear to him, and vouch-
safe his revelations.
Balaam indeed was a man of no great probity, and
might by profession be a diviner ; but by the free access
he had to God, it seems to be apparent, that he was no
common sorcerer, or prophet of the devil : for did ever
any sorcerer address his prayers to the supreme God,
and receive answers and instructions from him ? Did ever
1 Num. xxiii. 24. • Vs. cxix. 137. 3 Ps. xviii. 25.
4 Num. xxii. 5. and Josh. xiii. 22. s 2 Pet. ii. 16.
a To this purpose Philo, in his life of Moses, brings in an
angel discoursing with Balaam to this effect. " It will be in
vain for you to contend ; lor I, without your privity or know-
ledge, will guide the organs of your mouth, and make you speak
what upon this occasion is fit and proper. I will direct your
speech, and cause you to utter prophecies, though you know
nothing of the matter." Several passages to the same purpose,
are likewise to be found in Josephus, (Antiquities, b. 4. c. 7.)
though there is no foundation for them in what Moses tells us
concerning these adventures of Balaam.
any sorcerer prescribe a law to himself, to say nothing
less or more than what the Spirit of God should dictate ?
The Spirit of God, when did it ever come upon an
enchanter ? Or was it ever known, that an oracle, upon
a remote event, and what God alone was capable of
revealing, should be declared by a mere magician ?
When God was pleased to give answers to his inqui-
ries, to make his angel appear to him, and to put the
word of prophecy in his mouth, on all these occasions,
we find him expressing no surprise at all, as if he had
been perfectly well acquainted with these several ways
of divine communication ; and therefore, bad as he was,
and a slave to his passions, he must nevertheless be
deemed a true prophet of God. The tinly suspicious
passage in his conduct, is his having recourse to enchant-
ments ; for 6 ' what concord hath God with Belial ?' Or
what service could he possibly promise himself by
making use of these ? But to this it may be replied,
that 7 the arts of magicians, and their incantations to
procure oracles and prodigies, were, by the greatest
philosophers of those times, held in great veneration,
and by them reputed to be true. Though therefore this
Balaam was really a prophet, yet as a man of learning,
he might not be a stranger to the theory of what human
science, and the then reputed natural knowledge had
advanced upon these subjects : and as Saul, though he
had before 8 ' put away those that had familiar spirits,
and the wizards out of the land ;' was yet induced, ' when
the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by
Urim, nor by prophets, to go to a woman that had a
familiar spirit, and inquire of her ;' so Balaam finding
nothing but a full disappouitment in all his views, in the
several revelations which God was pleased to make to
him, and being warmly inclined to purchase, if he might
with any colour be able to do it, the advancement which
Balak had offered him, was tempted to try what might be
the event, if he used some of the arts which most learned
nations held in the highest repute, and esteemed to be
of the greatest efficacy. He tried, but ' found 3 no
enchantment against Jacob, nor any divination against
Israel.'
To enter therefore into the character of this true pro-
phet and enchanter both, we must observe, 1st, That
before the giving of the law, and the conquest of the
promised land, there were other * true worshippers of
God, besides the descendants of Abraham, dispersed
over the face of the earth. 2dly, That this worship of God
c was frequently mixed with such superstition and idol-
atry, even among them who professed to adore that one
God of heaven and earth. 3dly, That this odious mixture
did not hinder God d from revealing himself to those
who practised such a monstrous and motley religion.
4thly, That supernatural gifts in general, and those of
prophecy in particular, though they enlightened the
6 2 Cor. vi. 15. 7 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12
8 1 Sam. xxviii. 3, &c. 9 Num. xxiii. 23.
b Thus Job and his friends dwelt in Arabia; Jethro and his
posterity in the country of Midian ; and Abraham's abode in
Mesopotamia, where Balaam lived, might leave behind him some
proselytes to the true religion.
c The Teraphim of Laban proves this.
d Abimelech and Nebuchadnezzar are instances of this, Gen.
xxvi. and Dan. ii. 1.
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minds of the prophets, yet, * many times, did not sanctify
their hearts and affections. And, 5thly, That the greatest
weakness or wickedness of prophets never went so far,
as to make them pronounce oracles contrary to what
was dictated to them by the Spirit of God : ' ' If Balak
would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot
go beyond the word of the Lord, to do either good or
bad of my own mind, but what the Lord saith that must
I speak.'
It is not to be questioned, therefore, but that Balaam
was conscious of his own inspiration, and did knowingly
obey the divine will ; but still he could have wished, for
Balak's sake, as well as his own, that he might have been
permitted to pronounce different things, to what he did;
even as the prophets of Israel, in future ages, when
ordered to denounce judgments against the people,
would have desired liberty, no doubt, to prophesy things
of a more grateful relish ; but as they could not have
that permission, they obeyed, though with some reluc-
tancy, and when they came to the point, did nevertheless
pronounce boldly what they were ordered to promulge.
And this, by the way, will, in some measure, account
for the odd mixture in Balaam's behaviour, namely, his
seeking for enchantments in one minute, and falling into
a fit of devotion in the next. For besides that the words
which he utters upon this occasion, are not properly his
own, but infused into him by the Spirit of God, and for
\v Inch, consequently, he is not responsible, to hear a wicked
man sometimes come out with a pious wish, or holy ejacu-
lation, can be no incongruous thing at all. 2 The char-
acter of virtue is so very beautiful, its end so comfort-
able, and the odour of its memory so sweet, that even
wicked men cannot see and hear it, without secretly pre-
ferring it, and inwardly sighing for it, and wishing at
least that it were their own : and therefore it is no
wonder, that even Balaam, under some sudden compunc-
tion of mind, or conviction of the amiableness and
happy estate of virtue, both here and hereafter, should
desire to die the righteous man's death. But there is
something more to be said for Balaam in this respect,
than for other wicked men ; and that is, the business he
was now about. The whole series of his behaviour
indeed shows him to be a vain and ostentatious man.
By the preamble to his prophecies, 3 ' Balaam, the son
of Beor, hath said, and the man whose eyes are open,
who knew the knowledge of the most High, and saw
the vision of the Almighty, hath said,' &c, he would
make us believe, that he was a man of no small
consideration, vastly familiar with God, and '' quite
superior to the little pretenders of his age ; and as we
may farther observe, tli.it in all his intercourse with
Balak, he never pretended to consult any but God, we
cannot but think, that to seem to be in earnest about the
matter, and now and then drop a religious sentence, was
Num. xxii. 3s. * Young's Sermons, vol. 2.
3 Num. xxiv. 15, IG.
a For so we read, ' the heads of God's people judge for reward,
and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof
divine for money,' Mirah iii. II.
A The Jerusalem Targum paraphrases Balaam's words in a
manner that shows his ostentatiousness : " The man said, who
was honoured above his brethren, to whom that was revealed,
which was hidden from all the prophets." — Patrick's Commen-
tary on Num. xxiv. 3.
no more than what became the business he was upon, and
the character he thought proper to assume, even suppos-
ing the words to have been of his own invention, which,
as we said before, were of divine inspiration.
Of all the prophecies which God at this time delivered
from the month of Balaam, there was one of a more emi-
nent and peculiar nature : 4 ' I shall see him, but not
now ; I shall behold him, but not nigh ; there shall come
a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall arise out of
Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy
all the children of Seth.' All opinions agree in this,
that Balaam here speaks of a king and conqueror ; and
perhaps in calling him a star, he accommodates himself
to the long established notion, • that the appearances of
comets denoted either the exaltation or destruction of
Ju'ngdoms : but the great question is, of what king or
conqueror is it that he speaks ?
s Some have applied the prophecy entirely to David,
the most illustrious of the Jewish monarchs, who extend-
ed his conquests far and wide. 6 Others have applied it
as entirely to the Messiah, supposing that the metaphor
of a star comports better with him, and his celestial origin,
than with David ; and that the main strokes of the pro-
phecy resemble an heavenly, more than an earthly con-
queror. The matter, however, may be compromised, if
we will but allow : of a learned man's observation,
namely, that the most remarkable prophecies in the Old
Testament, bear usually a twofold sense ; one relating
to the times before the Messiah, and the other, either ful-
filled in the person of the Messiah, or in the members of
his body, the church, of which kind we may justly esteem
the preceding prophecy. For though its primary aspect
may be towards David, yet whoever considers it atten-
tively shall perceive, that its ideas are too full to extend
no farther, and must therefore, in a secondary and more
exalted sense, refer us to Christ, ' whose kingdom rulcth
over all,' and ' to whom all things are put in subjection
under his feet.'
In this sense, the generality of Jews as well as Chris-
tians, have all along understood it; and it is no ini| ro-
bable conjecture, d whatever some may think of it, that
by the strength of this prophecy, kept upon record among
the oriental archives, the magi of that country, at our
Saviour's nativity, were directed to Jerusalem, and
inquired, 8 ' Where is the king of the Jews, for we have
seen his star in the east ?' And, upon a farther suppo-
sition, that these very magi were descended from Balaam
in a direct line, he might then, with propriety enough,
* Num. xxiv. 17.
1 he Gere s Commentary on Num. xxiv.
6 Patrick's Commentary, ibid. r Grotlus in Mat.i. 22.
8 Mat. ii. 2.
c Justin, in his history, speaking of Mithridates, tells us that
in the several years of his birth and accession to his kingdom, ■
comet slume with such a lustre, as ii the whole heavens had l*en
afire; (b. 37. c. 2.) Lucau, iu the description which he gives
us of the civil wars of Rome, among the several prodigies which
were seen both Oil earth and III heaven, reckons lip this; "The
locks Olh (bead planet, and a comet shaking the kingdoms ol the
earth." And Diodorus Siculus delivers it as a doctrine cum »t
among the Chaldeans, that the rising of comets is either benefi-
cial or hurtful not only to nations and states, but even to kiligl
themselves, and sometimes to private persons. — B.2. p. I "'•
</ Witsius, in his Miscel. Sacra, h. i. IG. seems to explode lliu
conjecture of Origen's, but act upon sufficient grounds.
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pronounce of the Messiah, ' I shall see him,' that is, see
him in my posterity, ' but not now ; I shall behold him
but not near.'
The promise or prediction which God orders Moses to
make to the Israelites, is this, ' ' I will raise them up a
prophet, from among their brethren, like unto thee, and
will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto
them all that I command him.' Now in order to dis-
cover wherein the similitude between Moses and this
prophet was to consist, we must inquire into the particu-
lars that distinguished Moses from the rest of the pro-
phets ; and accordingly we rind God himself, upon a
small sedition that Aaron and his sister were engaged in
against him, making this declaration in his favour : 2 ' If
there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make my-
self known to him in a vision, and will speak unto him in
a dream ; but my servant Moses is not so, who is faithful
in all his house, with him will I speak mouth to mouth,
even apparently, and not in dark speeches :' and what
he means by speaking apparently, we find explained,
when we are told, ' that 3 the Lord spake to Moses face
to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.' This was the
distinguishing character of Moses, and in this particular
neither Joshua, nor any of the succeeding prophets could
pretend to be like unto him. They never saw God's
glorious presence, nor heard him speak distinctly. He
did not converse familiarly with them, but whatever he
had to communicate, he did it by way of visions, or
dreams, or some dark and enigmatical expressions.
* They indeed had no special commission, no new in-
stitutes of religion to publish, nor had they usually any
extraordinary credentials to produce. Their business
in short, was to explain and inculcate the law which
Moses gave, and even in this it is hardly supposable,
that they were always infallibly directed, because it is
said of several of them, that 5 ' they erred in vision, and
stumbled in judgment.' So that with no propriety can it
be affirmed of them that ' they were like Moses,' much
less can that additional character belong to them ' 1 will
put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them
all that I shall command him ;' which certainly implies
an extraordinary commission to publish something that
was not revealed before.
But now, when it is said of the blessed Jesus, that lie
was 8 ' a teacher sent from God, for that no man could
do the miracles which he did, except God were with him ;'
that he came, to 7 ' declare God,' or what is all one, to
reveal a new religion, 8 'which was confirmed by signs
and mighty wonders ;' and to qualify him for this, that
he 9 ' was from the beginning- with God,' and 10 ' is in the
bosom of the Father :' when it is expressly said, that he
is lI ' the mediator of a new covenant in his blood, for
the redemption of the transgressions of the former cove-
nant ;' and ls ' as Moses was faithful in all his house, as a
servant, for a testimony of these things which were to be
spoken after; so he, as a Son, was faithful to him that
appointed him, and was counted worthy of more glory
than Moses, inasmuch as he, who hath built the house,
hath more honour than the house :' when all this, I say,
Deut. xviii. 18, 2 Num. xii. 6, &c. "Exod. xxxiii. 11.
4 Sykes' Essay upon the truth of the Christian Religion.
1 Is. xxviii. 7. 6 John iii. 2. ' John i. 18. * Acts ii. 22.
f John i. 2. 10 John i. l». " Heb. viii. 6. ls Heb. iii. 2, &c,
is affirmed and verified of Christ, it is manifest, that the
great lines of the prophetical description we are now
considering, in their true primary sense, meet only in
him, who is the ' express image of his Father, 13 in whom
are hid all the treasures of wisdom, and knowledge.'
But to return to Balaam.
Whatever opinion we may have of the matter, it is
certain, that some of the wisest nations among the hea-
thens had a great conception of the power of their pro-
phets, and thought that they were persons in high favour
and esteem with their gods, who were always inclinable to
listen to and ratify either their benedictions or execrations.
a The imprecations of these men, as 14 Plutarch informs us,
were by the Romans held so very efficacious, that whoever
was under them, could not possibly escape ; and therefore
we need not wonder, that in conformity to this custom, we
find Balak sending for ' Balaam to come and curse' the
Israelites for him, since it was his settled persuasion, 1S
' that he whom he blessed was blessed, and he whom he
cursed was cursed.'
But though Balak acted according to the prevailing
prejudices of that age, in sending for Balaam, yet God
had sufficient reason to be angry with him for going.
He had once consulted God about cm-sing the people
of Israel, and had received a very full and peremptory
answer, forbidding him to go about it ; ' Thou shalt not
curse the people, for they are blessed.' This reason,
however, he kept to himself ; for had he communicated
it to the ambassadors at first, in all probability, they
would not have importuned him anew to go : but his
covetousness urged him on, and the rich presents and
promises which the messengers the second time brought,
began to operate so very powerfully, that he forgot his
reverence to the divine Majesty, and presumed once more
to consult him about going.
Upon this occasion the sacred historian relates the mat-
ter thus : — lfl ' And God came unto Balaam at night, and
said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up and
go with them : and Balaam rose up in the morning, and
saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab, and
God's anger was kindled because he went.' AVhat, angry
for what himself commanded him to do ? ir Our trans-
lators indeed thus render the text ; but the Hebrew words
13 Col. ii. 3. 14 [n vita Crassi, p. 553. ,B Num. xxii. 6.
16 Num. xxii. 20. ,r Shuckfortl's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12.
a The Romans were of opinion, that by a certain form of im-
precation, they could demolish towns, and defeat whole armies
of their enemies: and what the usual form for this purpose was,
Macrobius has taken care to leave us in these words: — " O father
Pluto, or Jove, or by whatever other name it is proper to address
thee, I entreat that thou mayest load with fear, alarm, and con-
sternation, the whole of that city and army, which I feel that I
am pronouncing; and may thou drag hence and deprive of the
light of life all those who bear arms against us, our legions, and
armies: destroy these armies, these foes, these men, their terri-
tories, and all who dwell in their dominion, in town or country.
Deliver up to the hands of their enemies, the cities and territo-
ries of those whom I feel that I now pronounce ; reckon as
accursed and damned the whole of their cities, lands, and persons ;
granting assurance and safety to mc, my fealty, and office, — to
the legions and armies engaged in performing these purposes; —
for myself, oath, office, and the Roman people, their legions, and
armies I deliver up and devote in our stead, these enemies, as
substitutes for punishment. II these things are done, in testi-
mony thereof, I do vow that I will offer in sacrifice, three black
sheep to thee, O mother Earth, and thee, O Jupiter, father of
the gods.'' — Saturn, b. 3. r. 9.
Skct. III.]
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329
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are clear of this absurdity ; for they tell us, that ' God's
anger was kindled,' not ci lialalc, ' because he went,' but
ci halak hua, ' because he went of himself,' that is, without
staying for Balak's messengers to come in the morning
to call him. He had told them over night, that an ' house
full of silver and gold ' could not tempt him to go counter
to what God should direct him to do ; and by this vaunt-
ing speech they very possibly might think their master's
offers neglected, and be tempted to go away next morn-
ing without him ; but so full were his head and heart of
expectations from the journey, that he would not run the
hazard of their calling ; but rose up early in the morn-
ing, went himself to them, which was acting directly
contrary to God's express order, for which reason he sent
his ' angel to stand in his way for an adversary against
him.' By the mouth of his angel, however, God per-
mitted him to go, as knowing very well that his journey
would tend to his confusion, and the manifestation of his
people's glory. For though there was nothing but
malice in the prophet's heart, and a fixed determination
to do all the harm he could to the Israelites ; yet God,
by his overruling providence, directed his words so, as
to make them, upon every essay to curse, pregnant with
blessings. Had not God forbidden the prophet to go
upon his first application for leave, he had not declared
his aversion to Balak's wicked project : had he not
allowed him to go upon his further importunity, he had
not exposed his folly and madness, as well as the weak-
ness of his magical arts, so effectually : but now, in the
wise method which he took, he defeated the designs of
the wicked, and ' made the wrath of man to praise him ;'
he hath shown us, that no enchantments, no machina-
tions can prevail, where he undertakes to protect; and1
has left us this lesson of instruction, " That when men
are foolish and self-willed, and in the pursuit of their
corrupt views, will follow their own ways, notwithstand-
ing many kind hints and admonitions to the contrary,
God then abandons them to their own imaginations,
which, in the event, very frequently prove their ruin."
It cannot be denied, indeed, but that God gave Balaam
sundry admonitions, not to follow, in this headstrong
manner, the pursuit of his avarice. His enjoining him
not to go, when the princes of Moab first came for him ;
his sending an .angel in the road to rebuke him for his
rash and unadvised proceeding ; and when he was come
to Balak, his overruling his words upon three different
attempts, and making him pronounce what was least of
all his intention, were sufficient remembrancers, that his
ways could not possibly be right before God. But of all
others, the speaking of his ass was such a miraculous
incident, as would have made any considering man, one
would think, retract his purpose.
This indeed is so wonderful an instance, that several
of the Jewish doctors, who, upon other occasions, are
fond enough of miracles, seem as if they would hardly
be induced to assent to this. Philo, in his life of Moses,
passes it over in silence ; and 2 Maimonides pretends,
that it only happened to Balaam in a prophetic vision.
An inspired writer in the New Testament assures us,
that it was a real fact, as Moses relates it. Moses saj s,
that ' the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she
said unto Balaam ;' and St Peter tells us, that the ass,
Scripture Vindicated, part 2. 3 More Nevoch. part 2. c. 24.
TO THE END OF DEUT.
' speaking with man's voice, forbade the madness of the
prophet ;' an human voice came out of (he mouth of the
ass; but I do not apprehend, that this voice proceeded
from her own sentiments. Her tongue was miraculously
moved, not by any power of hers so to move it, and it
spake what it was moved to utter, without any connex-
ion of her words and sentiments, and without her under-
standing the very words she uttered upon this occasion.
This seems to have been the fact, and the severest philo-
sophy, 1 hope, cannot deny, that God is as able to make
creatures, destitute of understanding, pronounce articu-
late and rational words, as it is for a musician, by the
different touches he gives any instrument, to make it
express a variety of notes.
It may seem a little strange indeed, that Balaam
should show no kind of surprise, when he heard his ass
speak like a human creature : but to this 3 some reply,
that Balaam might probably have imbibed the doctrine
of the transmigration of souls, which was certainly very
common in the east, and from thence might be less
astonished to hear any brute speak ; whereas 4 others
suppose, that he was in such a rage and fury at the sup-
posed perverseness of his beast ' crushing his foot,' and
' falling down under him,' that for the present, he could
think of nothing else ; though the conciseness of Moses'
narration, that must be presumed to have omitted many
circumstances, which if rightly known would dispel this,
and many more difficulties that may be imagined in this
transaction, does certainly furnish us with a better and
more satisfactory answer. For, 5 though we could not
assign a sufficient reason why God thought fit to work
this miracle, yet who shall therefore dare to infer that it
was never wrought ? The account which we have here
even of the most ancient times is very short ; nor can we
rightly form a judgment what the prevailing sentiments
of the world might be, in the age when Balaam lived.
The counsels of God are likewise a great deep, nor can
any man so far penetrate into them, as to pronounce
what is proper or improper for him to do. Upon this
occasion, however, there seems to be some reason for his
giving the ass the faculty of speech, namely, that thereby
he might convince the princes of Moab, who are sup-
posed to be in company with Balaam, how easy a thing
it was for him, who had opened the mouth of this dumb
creature, to stop that of its owner, or to direct his words
to what purposes he pleased ; and c how weak and impo-
tent was the man in whom they confided, when, with all
his curses and imprecations, he could not gel the better
of a poor brute, and much less then of the people, so
immediately under the divine protection.
The Scripture indeed informs US, that after his fruit-
less negotiation with Balak, 7< he returned to his own
place:' and so he might return to Mesopotamia, and
yet when he heard of the success of his advice against
the Israelites, and how many thousands of them had I n
cut off in consequence of it, he might go back again to
the Midiauiles in hopes of obtaining an ample reward
for his services; or when war was declared against them,
; ;( i- l,r Clere's ('nmnii'iitary.
* Sec Patrick's Commentary in locum.
■■ I.. Clere's Commentary in Num. wiii.
0 Bibliotheca Biblica in Num. xxii.
' Ibid, in Num. xxiv. 14, 25.
9 T
330
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the Midianites themselves might possibly send for him
again, and he be the rather inclined to go, because now
he might have some hopes of cursing the Israelites with
success, since they had apostatized from the worship of
their God, and fallen into idolatry, which while they
stood clear of, he knew he would not be permitted to
do ; and it is not imlikely, that for this purpose he was
carried into the field of battle, and there became a sacri-
fice to his own evil policy.
It is a sad perversion of the sense of Scripture, when
God, in condescension to our capacities, is pleased to
make use of human words and phrases, to account that
condescension, not only an impropriety of speech, but a
disparagement likewise to the divine nature and perfec-
tions. The Scripture indeed makes mention of God's
' swearing in his wrath ;' but who would ever think, that
the form of this expression should give any disgust, or
1 the sense of it be thought repugnant to the natural
notions we have of God ? He that at all considers the
end and intent of an oath, must allow it to be a solemn
asseveration, made as strong and binding as possible,
in order to beget faith and confidence in others, or to
procure a sure belief of what is so affirmed. When men
swear, nothing can make their asseveration so strong and
binding, as the invocation of God to be their witness, or
avenger : and in like manner, when God himself is said to
swear, we are to suppose, that he enforces and strengthens
his asseveration as much as possible, or as much as is
proper, to beget the highest trust and confidence in his
revelations, not by invoking a superior, for that, we may
say, is not in his power, but by condescending to make
use of human forms of swearing, with such proper alter-
ations as the case requires. Thus, when God swears
2 by himself, or 3 by his great name, or 4 by his life,
or 5 by his right hand, or 6 by his holiness, or 7 by his
truth, or 8 his excellency, or any other of his attributes
or perfections, the meaning of these expressions is much
the same, namely, that he thereby declares the thing
to be as certain, and as surely to be depended on,
as his own being or attributes are. This, I say, is the
whole purport of the thing ; and God is therefore said to
make use of this manner of speaking, only because it is
more awful and solemn, and consequently apt to make
deeper impressions, and beget a stronger confidence in
the hearers than a naked declaration can.
It is the manner of the Scripture to ascribe to God
hands, eyes, and feet ; but the design is not that we
should believe that he has any of these members accord-
ing to the literal signification ; but only that he has a
power to execute all those acts, to which these members
in us are so very subservient. It is the manner of the
same Scripture, to represent him as affected with the like
passions that we feel in ourselves, when we are angry or
pleased, have our hearts attendered or provoked to re-
venge ; and yet, upon reflection, we cannot think that
any of these passions are inherent in the divine nature ;
but the meaning only is 9 that God will as certainly
punish the wicked, as if he were inflamed with the pas-
sion of anger or revenge ; and as infallibly relieve or
1 See Christianity as old as the Creation, p. 250.
a Gen. xxii. 16. 3 Jer. xliv. 26. * Jer. li. 14.
s Is. lxii. 8. c Amos iv. 2. i Ps. lxxxix. 40.
8 Amos. viU. 7. 9 Bishop King's Sermon of Diviiuj Pred.
reward the good, as we will those for whom we have
tender compassion or affectionate love. So that it i8
only by way of analogy and comparison, that the nature
and passions of men are ascribed to God ; and therefore
certainly, when he is pleased to express himself in ac-
commodation to our capacities, instead of making it a
matter of cavil and reproach, we ought to be thankful
for his condescension, and to interpret his words in a
sense suitable to his divine Majesty.
It cannot be denied, indeed, but that the utter extirpa-
tion of the Canaanites carries a face of rigour and
severity, not so very consistent with God's frequent
declarations of his mercy and long-sufterjng ; but then
it should be considered, that as he is full of lenity and
mercy to those that endeavour to please him, so he has
thought fit to declare with the same breath, that he will
10 ' by no means clear the guilty.' Let us then see how
the case stood between God and these nations, when the
Israelites were sent to dispossess them.
There is no question to be made, but that most of
these people had at first the true worship of God insti-
tuted amongst them, and that their several progenitors
took care to leave behind them worthy conceptions of
him ; but notwithstanding this, in the days of Moses we
find their notions so corrupted, and all kinds of idolatry
so publicly established, that the land is said to have
been defiled with them, and like a stomach overcharged
with unwholesome diet, to have nauseated, " ' and spued
them up.'
In denouncing the sentence of their excision, there-
fore, ISs Ye shall smite them, and utterly destroy them,
and save alive nothing that breatheth,' God intimates the
reason of his severity by the enumeration of these par-
ticulars ; a ' Ye shall destroy their altars, and break
down their statues, and cut down their groves, and burn
their graven images with fire ;' even the images of Che-
mosh, and Peor, and Moloch, and other detestable idols,
to whom they are said to have offered human sacrifices,
and to have I4'made their seed pass through the fire.'
Nor was their idolatry less provoking, than the corrup-
tion of their morals, since adultery and bestiality of all
kinds, incest, and all manner of uncleanness they both
avowedly practised, and 15 ' took pleasure in those that
did them.'
The Midianitish women, in particular, by prostituting
their bodies, in order to draw the young Israelites into
idolatry, had given sufficient evidence of their incor-
rigible attachment to wickedness, and how impossible it
would be for the people whom God had selected from
the rest of the world to preserve their integrity, if these,
and such like public seducers, were permitted to live
among them ; and therefore God assigns this as another
reason for their extirpation : I6 ' Because thou art an holy
people unto the Lord thy God, and he hath chosen thee
to be a special people unto himself, above all people
that be upon the face of the earth ;' 17 therefore ' shalt
thou consume all the people, which the Lord thy God
shall deliver into thy hands ; thine eyes shall have no
pity upon them, lest they turn thee away from following
10 Num. xiv. 18. " Lev. xviii. 28.
12 Deut. vii. 2., and xx. 16. 13 Deut. vi
14 Lev. xviii. 21. 1S Rom. i. 32. 16 Deut.
17 Deut. vii. 16., and Exod. xxiii. 33.
5.
vii. 6.
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331
me, to serve other gods, which will surely be a snare
unto thee.'
Now, if either the incorrigible wickedness of any peo-
ple, or the danger of their corrupting others by their
enticements and bad examples, may be deemed a suffi-
cient reason, as it is in all civil governments, to cut oft*
obnoxious members, for God to rid himself of any nation
that has incurred his highest displeasure, the Israelites,
who were only instruments in God's hands, are no more
to be blamed for executing the Almighty's commands,
than the person who apprehends a malefactor, and brings
him to condign punishment, is to be thought culpable by
the laws of the land. And though the malefactor may
possibly plead for himself, that he never did the appre-
hender, or even the executioner, any wrong ; yet this
will be of no weight or significance to the magistrate,
when he calls upon the inferior officer to do his duty.
1 Do but then allow the high and mighty magistrate of
heaven and earth as much right as his deputies have that
act under him, and a judgment sufficient to determine
what concerns the public good, and then certainly the
Israelites, acting by his orders, had at least as clear a
right to destroy the Canaanites as any executioner can
have to take away life by command of authority.
There is something, perhaps, that we may think more
affecting in the case of the innocent children, which fell
in this common devastation ; but then we are to con-
sider, that as the lives of all mankind are in the hands
of God that gave them, so may he demand them back
again, when, or in what manner he pleases ; and as well
may we quarrel with his providence, for sending a de-
stroying angel armed with a famine, a deluge, or a
pestilence, which sweeps away young and old together,
as we may with his deputing the Hebrews to be the
agents of his high behests, in a general and promiscuous
slaughter of such nations, as his divine justice and wis-
dom had predestinated to destruction.
The Jews, it must be owned, have several rules of life,
and customs peculiar to themselves, and by a rigorous
observance of these, they contracted among other nations
the character of being a sullen and unsociable people,
haters of the rest of mankind, and averse to all civil
society and commerce. Thus Manetho, as he is quoted
2 by Grotius, lays this heavy charge upon them, " That
they would hold no manner of correspondence with any
mortal that was not initiated into their religion." Ta-
citus says of them, " That though they are courteous
enough to one another, yet they pursue foreigners with
the utmost rage of exasperated enemies." And, to name
no more, Diodorus relates, " That they were the only
people in the world who rejected all commerce and
friendship with foreigners ; and not only so, but treated
them as enemies." But all this must certainly be a gross
mistake, because the law of Moses expressly commands
those that live under it to do good to mankind in
general ; not only to lovo their neighbours, 3 but ' to
love the stranger' likewise, and in ' no case 4 to vex or
oppress him,' for this very reason, ' because they were
s*xangers in the land of Egypt :' and therefore Josephus,
in his book 5 against Appion, tells us, that though their
lawgiver would not admit those who came occasionally
1 Scripture Vindicated, part 2.
3 Dent, x. 19. * Exod.
* Annot. in Doiit. vii.
xxii. 21. * B. 2.
only to the solemnities of their religion ; yet, among
other things, these he enjoined as necessary, and almost
essential clauses in his law, namely, to supply every one
with fire, water, and provisions, that was in want, and to
direct the traveller in the road ; which plainly contra-
dicts the representation which the " Roman satirist
thought fit to give of them.
If we consult the practice of the first founders of the
Jewish nation, we shall find Abraham G making an alli-
ance with Abimelech, king of Gerar, at Beersheba, and
assisting even the impious Sodomites, when he thought
them unjustly invaded by their enemies : we shall find
Isaac 7 entering into a covenant with the same, or another
king of the same name, at the same place ; and Jacob 8
signing articles of agreement with Laban, his father-in-
law. Nor can we think, that the promulgation of the
Jewish ordinances made any alteration in this particular,
or laid any restraint upon their votaries from joining in
treaties of commerce, or any other negotiations that
tended to the benefit of human society. For, had this
been the case, we cannot conceive how 9 both David and
Solomon could have ventured to make a league with
Hiram, king of Tyre, without offending God ; which
they were so far from doing, that Solomon in particular,
as 10 the sacred history informs us, was directed by ' that
wisdom, which he received from God,' when he made his
confederacy with this heathen prince.
Excepting then those several people whom God had
appointed the Israelites, at their entrance into Canaan,
to destroy, and some other kings and nations afterwards,
against whom he had sent out his prophets to denounce
vengeance for their sad impieties, the Jews were for-
bidden to maintain a civil intercourse with none ; but,
on the contrary, were frequently excited to use kindness
and hospitality to aliens, as well as others, that all the
world might see, as " Josephus puts the words into
Solomon's mouth, at the dedication of the temple, " That
the Hebrews were not so inhuman, as to envy strangers
the common dispensations of the author and fountain of
all our happiness."
And for this very reason, 12 1 am confident it was, that
the Hebrews are so often reminded by God of their
having been strangers and bond-slaves in the land of
Egypt, that by their hospitality and charity, they might
comfort and relieve those who were in the like condition :
that, in the words of the prophet, u ' the] might draw out
their soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul :
that they might bring the poor that were cast out. to their
houses ; cover the cold and naked, and not hide them-
selves from their own flesh.' Per thifl eaOM are th<\ m
frequently called upon, in the words of the same pro-
phet 14 ' to look unto the rock whence they were hewn,
and to the hole of the pit whence they were digged, to
look unto Abraham their father, and to Sarah that bare
them :' that the happy change of their circumstances
might beget in them a perpetual gratitude to their great
•Gen. xxi. 22. 7 Gen. \\\i. 83.
8 Gen. xxxi. 44. ■ t Sam. v. ll » I Kings t. 12.
" Jewish Antiq. l>. riii. c, '-.
"See Exod. xxii. 21 ; Lev. xxv. 42, 55; and !>"'!. >■ Ift
13 Is. lviii. 10, 7. M Is. li. 1, 2.
a " Not to point out the way to any one, unli" ;i worshipper of
the same sacred things, and to conduct the circumcised alone to
the wished-fbr fountain." — Jhv. Sat. 14.
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benefactor, and the obscurity of their origin teach them
to be humble.
It is part of the admonition of Moses to the Israelites,
1 ' Thou shalt remember all the way, which the Lord thy
God led thee, these forty years, in that terrible wilder-
ness, wherein were fiery serpents, to humble thee, and to
prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, and whether
thou wouldest keep his commandments or no.' What
restrained the serpents, which were so numerous in the
wilderness, from stinging- the Hebrews, was doubtless
that great and sovereign being, who resided in the pillar
of the cloud, to cover the camp in their march, and make
every noxious creature flee before them. 2 Several
authors are of opinion, that the serpents which bit the
Israelites, were of the flying kind, and might be called
fiery, by reason of their colour. Herodotus informs us,
that Arabia produced this sort of serpents in great abun-
dance ; and the time of the year wherein the Israelites
were under this calamity was in the season when these
creatures usually are upon the wing, to visit the neigh-
bouring and adjacent countries ; and might now be direct-
ed into the camp of the Israelites as a great army ; for
so God 3 calls ' the locust, the canker-worm, the catter-
pillar, and the palmer-worm, his great army,' to destroy
and depopulate without control. For however the divine
presence had protected them before, the people were
now in a state of rebellion ; they were murmuring at the
tediousness of their journeyings, and at their want of
provisions, though every day fed by providence at the
expense of a miracle. So that God, being angry with
them, had removed their heavenly safeguard; and no
sooner was it removed, than things were left to their
natural course. The serpents resumed their venom ;
and * as it was now in the heat of summer, when
creatures of this kind are naturally most poisonous,
they raised such sores, and sudden inflammations where-
ever they fell, as occasioned death in some of the most
guilty, and violent pains in all, until God was pleased
to provide them with a remedy of a nature somewhat
extraordinary. a
1 Deut. viii. 2. * Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12.
3 Joel ii. 25. 4 Patrick's Commentary on Num. xx.
a The fiery serpeut mentioned Num. xxi. C. Deut. viii. 15.
Is. xiv. 29. was so called, probably from the burning sensation
which its bite occasioned. Plutarch thus speaks of a similar kind
of reptiles : " The inhabitants of the country round the Red Sea,
were tormented in such a manner as was never heard of till that
time. Little dragons bit their arms and legs: and if you touched
them ever so lightly, they fixed themselves to the flesh, and their
bite was intolerably painful, and like fire." The Hebrew
original signifies also a winged serpent; and we are told that
such were very common both in Egypt and Arabia. The learned
Bochart describes them as short, spotted with divers colours, and
with wings resembling those of the bat. The heathen writers
concur in testifying that the deserts wherein the Israelites jour-
neyed produced serpents of so venomous a kind, that their bite
was deadly beyond the power of any art then known to cure it.
The ancients observed in general, that the most sandy and barren
deserts had the greatest number, and the most venomous of ser-
pents.
The viper is one of the deadliest among the serpent tribes, as
appears from the allusion of Zophar: ' the viper's tongue shall
slay the wicked ;' that is, he shall as certainly die as if a viper
had bitten him. Every touch of the viper's tongue is instant
death; for when the barbarians in Malta saw the venomous
reptile leap from the fire, and fasten upon the hand of Paul, they
looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead sudden-
ly. (Acts xxviii. 6.) The prophet Isaiah mentions it among the
M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii— TO THE END OF DEUT.
Whether the sight of brass, as some naturalists say, be
hurtful or no in such cases, this is certainly a prescrip-
venomous reptiles, which in extraordinary numbers infest the
land of Egypt: ' from whence come the young and old lion, the
viper and fiery flying serpent.' (Is. xxx. 6.) In illustrating the
mischievous character of wicked men, and the ruinous nature of
sin, he thus alludes to the dangerous creature: "they hatch
cockatrice eggs, and weave the spider's web ; he that eateth of
their eggs dieth ; and that which is crushed breaketh out into a
viper." The cockatrice here undoubtedly means the viper; for
the egg of one creature never produces, by any management, one
of a different species. When the egg is crushed, the young
viper is disengaged, and leaps out, prepared for mischief. It
may be objected, that the viper is not an oviparous but a vivipar-
ous animal; and consequently, the prophet must refer to some
other creature. But it is to be remembered, that although the
viper brings forth its young alive, they are hatched from eggs,
perfectly formed in the belly of the mother. The viper alone
of all terrestrial animals, produces within itself an egg of an uni-
form colour, and soft like the eggs or roe of fishes. This curious
natural fact, reconciles the statement of the sacred Scripture,
with the truth of natural history.
The certain and speedy destruction which follows the bite of
this creature, clearly proves the seasonable interposition of
almighty power for the preservation of the apostle Paul. Exas-
perated by the heat of the fire, the deadly reptile, leaping from
the brushwood, where it had concealed itself, fixed the canine
teeth, which convey the poison into the wound which they had
made, in his hand. Death must have been the consequence, had
not the power of God, which long before had shut the lions'
mouths, that they might not hurt the prophets, neutralized the
viper's deadly poison, and miraculously preserved the valuable
life of his servant. The viper, on this memorable occasion,
exhibited every symptom of rage, and put forth all its powers:
the deliverance of Paul, therefore, was not accidental, nor the
effect of his own exertion, but of the mighty power of that Master
whom he served, whose voice even the deadly viper is compelled
to obey. This conclusion was in effect drawn by the barbarians
themselves: for when 'they had looked a great while, and saw
no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said, that
he was a god:' they did not hesitate to attribute his preservation
to divine power ; they only mistook his real character, not the
true nature of that agency which was able to render the bite of
the viper harmless.
To the deadly malice with which the scribes and Pharisees
persecuted the blessed Redeemer and his followers after his
ascension into heaven, John the Baptist pointedly alludes in these
words: ' O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee
from the wrath to come!' And our Lord addresses them in
the same terms : ' ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can
ye escape the damnation of hell?'
The fiery flying serpents : — The brazen figure of this creature
was a type of our blessed Redeemer, who, for our salvation, was
lifted up upon the cross, as the serpent was elevated in the camp
of Israel, for the preservation of that people. It is the only
species of serpent which the Almighty Creator has provided with
wings, by means of which, instead of creeping or leaping, it rises
from the ground, and, leaning upon the extremity of its tail,
moves with great velocity. It is a native of Egypt and the
deserts of Arabia; and receives its name from the Hebrew verb
saraph, which signifies to bum, in allusion to the violent inflam-
mation which its poison produces, or rather its fiery colour,
which the brazen serpent was intended to represent.
Bochart is of opinion, that the seraph is the same as the
hydrus, or, as Cicero calls it, the serpent of the waters. For in
the book of Isaiah, the land of Egypt is called the region from
whence came the viper and flying seraph, or burning serpent.
iElian says, they came from the deserts of Lybia and Arabia,
to inhabit the streams of the Nile; and that they have the form
of the hydrus.
The existence of winged serpents is attested by many writers
of modern times. A kind of snakes were discovered among the
Pyrenees, from whose sides proceeded cartilages in the form of
wings ; and Scaliger mentions a peasant who killed a serpent of
the same species which attacked him, and presented it to the
king of France. Le Blanc, as quoted by Bochart, says, at the
head of the lake Chiamay, are extensive woods and vast marshes,
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
333
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
tion of physicians, that such people as are bitten with
any venomous beast, should be kept from the sight of
the very image of the beast from which they received
such hurt ; and therefore God might take occasion, from
the incongruity of the means, to magnify his own power,
making use of this kind of remedy, that the Israelites
might know, and be convinced, that both the disease and
medicine came from him. When our blessed Saviour
cured the blind man in the gospel, ' he spit on the ground
and made clay, and spread it all over his eyes,' which
some standers by might be apt to believe was a likelier
way to put them quite out, than to recover them ; but
when they saw the thing have its effect, they glorified
God, and said, ' ' How can a man that is a sinner do
such miracles ?' because they could not but perceive,
that it was a greater miracle to work the cure by
incompetent or incongruous means, than by none at all.
And in like manner, if, instead of setting up this brazen
serpent upon a pole, God had ordered the Israelites to
apply a leaf of any common herb to the bite of these
poisonous serpents, as he did Hezekiah to 8 ' lay a lump
of figs for a plaster upon his boil,' the cure might have
been the same ; but then the singularity of it had not been
so remarkable. Men might have imputed it to some secret
1 John ix. 16. 2 Is. xxxviii. 21.
which it is very dangerous to approach, because they are infested
by very large serpents, which, raised from the ground on wings
resembling those of bats, and leaning on the extremity of their
tails, move with great rapidity. They exist, it is reported,
about these places in such great numbers, that they have almost
laid waste the neighbouring provinces.
The original term (Mespheph) does not always signify flying
with wings; it often expresses vibration, swinging backwards
and forwards, a tremulous motion, a fluttering; and this is pre-
cisely the motion of a serpent, when he springs from one tree to
another. Niebuhr mentions a sort of serpents at Bassorah ; they
commonly keep upon the date trees; and as it would be laborious
for them to come down from a very high tree, in order to ascend
another, they twist themselves by the tail to a branch of the
former, which making a spring by the motion they give it,
throws them to the branches of the second. Hence it is that the
modern Arabs call them flying serpents. Admiral Anson also
speaks of the flying serpents that he met with at the island of
Quibo, but which were without wings.
The hydri, it is true, are produced and reared in marshy
places; not in burning and thirsty deserts, where the people of
Israel murmured because they could find no water. But although
that people might find no water to drink, it will not follow, that
the desert contained no marshy place. Besides, it is well known,
that when water falls, these serpents do not perish, but become
chersydri, that is, seraphim, or burners. These chersydri, it is
extremely probable, were the serpents which bit the rebellious
Israelites; and in this state they were more terrible instruments
of divine vengeance; for, exasperated by the want of water, and
the intense heat of the season, they injected a deadly poison,
ami occasioned to the miserable sufferers more agonizing torments.
The time of the year when Jehovah sent these serpents among
his people, proves that this is no vain conjecture. According to
Nicander, the hydri became chersydri, and beset the path of the
traveller, about the dog-days. Now, Aaron died on the first day of
the tilth month, that is, the month Abib, which corresponds with
the nineteenth day of July. The Israelites mourned for him thirty
days: immediately after which, they fought a battle with Arail,
the Canaanite, and destroyed the country: then recommencing
their journey, they murmured for want of water, and the serpents
were sent. This, then, must have happened about the end of
August; the season when the hydri become seraphim, and inflict
the most cruel wounds. The words of Moses seem to countenance
the idea, that the hydri employed on this occasion, were not
generated on the spot, but sent from a distance. ' And the Lord
sent fiery serpents, or seraphim, among the people.' (Num. xxi.
6.) From these words it is natural to conclude, that they came
M. 3765. A. C. 1616. NUM. xviii. TO THE KM) OP DEUT.
virtue in the plant, which now can he ascribed to nothing
but the superlative power of God, who, even by contrary
means, can bring about what ends he pleases.
The design of those men, however, can hardly be
good, who, to rob God of the glory of the cure, would
impute it to some secret quality in the brazen serpent
itself. 3 A talisman, which, according to (he common
account, is a certain piece of metal, made under the
influence of such and such planets ami constellations.
with a wonderful power to beget love, and overcome
enemies ; to drive away noxious animals, and cure dis-
eases, &c, is a chimerical notion ; and 4 to resemble the
figure which God appointed Moses to set up, to any of
these vain devices, is a scheme that " deserves our scorn,
more than our confutation. The author of the book of
Wisdom, addressing himself to God, and speaking of
the Israelites, has imputed the virtue of this serpent to
its true cause. 5 ' He that turned himself towards it,
was not healed by the thing which he saw, but by thee,
who art the Saviour of all.' And accordingly, in the
foregoing verse, he calls it ' a sign, or symbol of salva-
tion, to put them in remembrance of the commandment of
the law.
The only considerable difficulty in the whole transac-
tion is, why God, who had forbidden all manner of
images, should, on this occasion, command one to be
made. This the Jewish doctors, as b Justin Martyr
3 Saurin's Dissertations.
4 Le Clerc's Commentary on Numbers xxi.
5 Wisd. xvi. 7.
from that land of rivers, through which the congregation had
lately passed. Nor will this be reckoned too long a journey,
when it is recollected, that they travel from both the Lybian and
Arabian deserts, to the streams of the Nile.
They inflicted on this memorable occasion an appropriate
chastisement on the perverse tribes. That rebellious people had
opened their mouth against the heavens; they had sharpened
their tongues like serpents; and the poison of asps was under
their lips; therefore they were made to suffer by the burning
poison of a creature which they so marly resembled. In this
state of helplessness, they had recourse to him whom they had
provoked, and whose patience and goodness they had so long
experienced; they entreated Moses to intercede for them with
God, that he might forgive' their sins, and remove this calamity.
lie recommended Moses to make a brazen serpent in exact
resemblance to the fiery serpent, and to raise it on a pole in the
view of the people, so that the wounded might look to it, and be
healed. There seemed to be no connexion between the means
and the end, between a piece of brass, whatever might be its
shape, and the cure which the looking to it, was designed to
effect. But it was the appointment of God, and a just concep-
tion of his character would at once lead to the conclusion, that he
who can accomplish his purposes without means as easily as with
them, would not fail to render his own institution efficacious.
Accordingly, when Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it
upon a pole, it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man,
when he beheld the serpent of bra-, he lived. Our Lord has
taught us, ' that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the w ilderness,
even so must the Son of man be lilted up; that whoso belicvclh
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'— En.
a Sir John Maraham has collected several passages from the
profane writers, which bint at charms and enchantments to cure
the bite of solvents; and he BB.V8 the Hebrews made n-e of
enchantments for this very purpose j "Inch assertion he endea-
vours to support by a citation from Ps. Iviii. J, 6j by another
from EcclesiasteB, chap. x. 8j and by a third from Jeremiah,
chap. viii. 17: and from the whole of what hi' offers, he would
intimate, that the cure of the Israelites was not miraculous, lot
that the brazen Borpeul "a- properly a charm for thecalan
an amulet for the distemper; but it would be trifling to refute
this opinion. — ShuckfortFt Connection, vol. ,'J. b. 12.
h In his book against Trypho, he insists upon this serpent as
S34
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[Book IV.
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 164G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
observes in his days, could give no account of ; but had
they known Jesus Christ, and hint crucified, they might
have soon perceived, ' that God intended it for a type
of the death of Christ, and the manner in which he was
to die ; and that the effects of the brazen serpent upon
them who looked on it, did represent the virtue received
by true believers from the death of their Redeemer. For
so we find our Saviour himself applying the mysterious
meaning of it : 2 ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up ;
that whoso believeth in him, should not perish, but have
eternal life.'
Thus we have answered the several doubts and objec-
tions that have been made to that part of the history of
Moses which includes this period of time : and if the
attestation of profane writers, may be thought any con-
firmation of what has been said, we have the practice of
most subsequent lawgivers, in imitation of this great Jew-
ish leader, pretending to a familiarity with some fictitious
deity or other, and thence deriving their institutions : and
whoever compares the sacred and fabulous account of
tilings together, will find a near resemblance between
Aaron and the heathen Mercury ; and that as this false
deity is said to have been an Egyptian by birth, the mes-
senger and interpreter of the gods, and is generally
painted with a caduceus, or wand in his hand twisted about
with snakes ; so Aaron was himself born in Egypt, and
appointed by God to be 3 an interpreter to his brother
Moses, and a messenger to Pharaoh and the Egyptians,
in whose presence he threw down his wonder-working
rod, and it immediately became a serpent.
The whole history of Balaam, as romantic as it seems.
is still upon record in the ancient oriental writers, from
whence the present Mahometans have borrowed many
things. It is not improbable that the speaking of his
ass gave handle to the fiction of several other brute
creatures, upon less momentous occasions, accosting
their masters. That the deserts wherein the Israelites
journeyed, were infested with serpents of so venomous
a kind, that their biting was deadly, and above the power
of art to cure, both Strabo and Diodorus testify. And,
to instance no farther, the worship of Jilsculapius, the
known god of physic, under the form of a serpent, a and
what some late travellers tell us of the Indians carrying
about a wreathed serpent upon a perch, to which they
pay their adorations every morning, had manifestly their
original from some tradition or other of this serpent's
image, which Moses was directed to set up. So true is
the character, confirmed by testimony of all kinds, which
the sacred writers give us of this Moses, the servant of
the Lord, that both as the leader, the lawgiver, and
historian of his people, 4 ' he was found faithful in all
his house.'
Kidder's Demonstration, p.
s Exod. vii. 1, 2.
2 John iii. 1-1, 15.
4 Heb. iii. 5.
a type of Christ, and appealing to the company, what reason
(exclusive of that) could be given of this matter, one of the Jews
confessed that he was in the right, and that he himself had
inquired for a reason among the Jewish masters, and could meet
with none. — Kidder's Demonstration, p. 73.
a There is something very remarkable, and truly horrid, in
what Clemens Alexandrinus mentions — that in the orgies of
Bacchus Maenolis (or the mad) his worshippers were crowned
with serpents, and yelled out Eve, Eve, even her by whom the
♦ransgression came.
CHAP. III. — On the Character and Conduct of
Balaam.
[SUPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.]
Different opinions have been entertained in regard to
the real character of Balaam. The opinion of bishop
Patrick, Dr Waterland, bishop Butler, bishop Horsley,
and Dr Hales, is, that he was a true prophet of Jehovah,
to whom, on this occasion, he offered the sacrifices which
he had desired Balak to prepare. Others maintain, that
he was merely an eminent soothsayer or diviner, who,
it was supposed, could influence the fate of individuals
and nations by his enchantments. Origen, Chrysostoni,
Basil, and Augustine, among the ancients, and Bryant
and bishop Gleig, among the moderns, were of the latter
opinion.
It is certain, as bishop Gleig has observed, that there
is nothing recorded in Scripture which has excited more
profane ridicule among arrogant jnfidels than the story
of Balaam rebelling, or striving to rebel, against his
God ; reproved for that rebellion by a contemptible
animal ; blessing the people whom he was requested to
curse, and whom he wished to curse ; advising the
seduction of that people to idolatry and fornication,
immediately after blessing them, under the influence of
the Spirit of God, for their abstinence from these vices ;
praying that he might himself die the death of the
righteous, and soon afterwards falling in battle with
those who, at his instigation, had provoked to war that
very people to whom in his prayer he alludes as the
righteous. That a true prophet, long blessed with a
familiar though supernatural intercourse with Jehovah,
and such Balaam is supposed to have been, should have
persisted, to the end of his life, in deliberately thwart-
ing, as far as he was able, the very designs of Jehovah
which he declared were revealed to himself, and that he
should at last have enticed to idolatry those whom he
had been compelled to bless because they were not
idolaters, and have taken up arms against them with
whom he had prayed with such apparent earnestness
that he might live and die, is an extraordinary picture
of human nature.
Is this really the picture of Balaam exhibited by the
inspired lawgiver of the Hebrews? If Balaam was a
prophet of Jehovah, by whom he had long been inspired
with the knowledge of future events, and whom he
named as the only true God, it certainly is : but if he
was an idolatrous diviner or soothsayer, as he is else-
where styled, and compelled, on this occasion, to bless
where he intended to curse, and to foretell, in language
not his own, future events of the highest and most
general importance, the character and conduct of
Balaam, as described by Moses, will be found perfectly
consistent with itself ; whilst those who have attended
to the import of the miracles which were wrought in
Egypt for the deliverance of Israel, will at once per-
ceive the wisdom of making the ass the instrument of
rebuking the madness of this diviner.
My own opinion is, that Balaam was originally a
diviner, or magician of great renown ; but having ac-
quired some knowledge of the true God, perhaps by
hearing of the wonderful works performed by Moses in
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
335
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO BALES, A.
his name, he endeavoured to render this knowledge sub-
servient to his interested and ambitious purposes, by
professing- himself a prophet of Jehovah, and uttering
divinations as revelations from him. Thus the exorcists,
observing how efficacious the name of Jesus proved in
the mouth of the apostle, attempted to cast out devils,
'adjuring them by Jesus whom Paul preached:' and
thus Simon Magus, finding the miracles of Philip so
much superior to the effects of his magic, embraced
Christianity ; and afterwards ottered Peter money to
confer on him the same power which he exercised,
doubtless intending to enrich or aggrandize himself by
it. On this supposition, Balaam's case of incantations,
even in seeking Jehovah, was the natural effect of the
association of his old practices with his new pretensions.1
There is no evidence that God had ever spoken to him,
or by him, before this event : but there is ample proof
that he lived and died a wicked man, and an enemy of
God and his people. This, however, has not been a
singular case. 2 Balaam dwelt in or near Mesopotamia ;
but his reputation had reached so far, and he was so
celebrated, that he was sent for, as it appears, in conse-
quence of the counsel given to Moab by the elders of
Midian ; being the only person who was able to contend
with Moses, the prophet of Israel. For we may suppose
that they ascribed to the superior skill of Moses in some
unknown arts all that power by which Israel had been
brought out of Egypt, notwithstanding Pharaoh's deter-
mined opposition ; had subsisted for so many years in
the wilderness, and had obtained their late victories over
the Ammonites.
Bishop Patrick does not think that Balaam was, at
the time when visited by the messengers of Balak, either
a true prophet, or a devout worshipper of Jehovah ; but
that he had formerly been both, till becoming so covet-
ous as to love the wages of unrighteousness, he addicted
himself to superstitious rites and ceremonies, making
use of teraphim, which had been of ancient practice in
his country, and worshipping God perhaps by other
images. No evidence, however, can be adduced in sup-
port of these suppositions : for we know nothing of
Balaam but from what is related of him in the book of
Numbers, and in other books of sacred Scripture, which
allude to the circumstances which are there mentioned.
My own opinion is, that Balaam was a soothsayer ;
and yet that he was inspired by the Spirit of God to
utter important predictions. He was probably one of
those early idolaters who did not entirely renounce the
true God, or cease to worship him, but only associated
with him, in their vain imaginations, a number of subor-
dinate divinities, to whom they supposed that he had
committed, under his own superintendence, the adminis-
tration of the affairs of this world, assigning to the care
of different deities different countries. To these fictitious
beings, of whom they soon found images, they paid a
kind of subordinate worship, without, however, neglect-
ing the worship of Jehovah. Of this we have one instance
in the case of Laban, who, while he appears to have
acknowledged the supreme divinity of Jehovah, worship-
ped certain inferior gods, of which his daughter Rachel
contrived to carry away the images. Such appears
likewise to have been the state of religion in Egypt,
Aits
* Mat. vii. 21—23, and 1 Cor. xiii. 1—1.
M. 3705. A. C. 1G4G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF 1)1 I I
when Joseph was first carried thither : for it was the
true God that sent to Pharaoh the dreams which Joseph
interpreted, for the good of the country of which Pha-
raoh was the sovereign; and such was the case in
Canaan, during the reign of the two Abimelechs, of
whom we read in the book of Genesis.
Balaam, as it appears to me, was an idolater who
never was a true prophet of the true God ; but who had
heard of Jehovah, and acknowledged not only his exist-
ence, but even his power as the tutelar God of the
Israelites, though he may have been doubtful at first, as
the Syrians were at a later period, whether the God of
Israel, or his own god, were most powerful. The
ancient idolaters never hesitated to acknowledge each
others' gods, or to worship, along with their own, the
gods of those nations in which they had occasion to
reside ; and the Jews and Christians would never have
been persecuted by the Roman emperors for worshipping
the true God, had they not refused to worship together
with him, the idol deities of the empire.
According to Mr Bryant, the goat, the baboon, the
ass, and the ram, were all considered sacred, and all for
the same reason, by the Egyptians, and some other
eastern nations. All these animals were considered, in
the countries in which Baal-peor was the favourite deitj ,
as emblems of that god, who was, in different temples,
worshipped under their different similitudes.
On a sacred ass then, Balaam, the priest of Peor,
zealous for the cause of his own god, and eager to gain
the wages of iniquity, was prosecuting his journey to
curse the worshippers of the true God, when he was
encountered by an angel on the way. After various
attempts to escape, the ass fell down before the angel,
who had displayed himself to her, though not yet to her
rider : that is, the emblem of the god of Balaam bowed
down before the servant of the God of Israel ; and at
last, words proceeded from her mouth expressive of the
severest reproof that could be given to the madness and
obstinacy of the soothsayer of Pethor. It was a rule
with the God of Jacob to display his supremacy to his
people, by making all other deities and their agents
subservient to his will. On this account, lie often forced
their representatives, and their prophets, to be (he un-
willing ministers of his commands ; to attest the supe-
riority of his power; and even to execute his vengeance
on their own votaries. This was remarkably the case
in all the miracles wrought by the ministry of ."Moses in
the land of Egypt, when Jehovah made the gode <>f that
country the instruments of his vengeance <>n Pharaoh
and his host. In every step of his progress, Balaam
was foiled at his own weapons. The instrument by
which he was first rebuked on the way , though contemp-
tible in our eyes, was sacred to the god in whom he
trusted; and therefore the speaking ass, though it hafl
often been the subject of ridicule among ignorant infi-
dels, affords one of the most illustrious proofs of the
divine wisdom. God, if he had pleased, might hare
reproved Balaam in the way without the intervention of
the ass ; when the soothsayer arrived at the end of his
journey, he mighl have Keen compelled by the over-
powering influence of the Spirit of God, to pour forth
all the predictions which he afterwards uttered, without
having recourse to any one of his enchantments ; but the
proof of Jehovah's superiority over the gods of Midian
338
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[Book IV.
A. M. 2515. A. C. 14S9; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37C5. A. C. 1C46. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
and Moab would not have been so conspicuous to the
grovelling minds either of those nations or of the
Israelites themselves, had a single circumstance been
omitted which actually took place. Balaam was every-
where compelled to bless the people whom it was his
wish to curse : and to foretell the future destruction, by
that people, of all the nations which worshipped the
gods of Egypt, Midian, and Moab. *
CHAP. IV.— Of the Profane History, Religion, Go-
vernment, fyc., of such nations as the Israelites had
dealings with during this period.
Towards the conclusion of the foregoing book, we
carried the succession of the Egyptian kings down to
the reign of Amenophis, who, according to the most
received accounts, was that obstinate prince, that in
pursuit of the Hebrews, together with all his army, was
lost in the waves of the Red Sea : nor should we, as yet,
concern ourselves any farther with the history of that
nation, but that his son and successor, Sesostris, a who
1 See Gleig, Horsley, Butler, and Bryant, on the character
of Balaam.
a It is a matter of no small dispute among chronologers, in
what time it was this Sesostris lived. The seeming analogy of
the name makes Sir John Marsham think, that Sesostris was the
same with Shishak, ' king of Egypt, who, in the days of Reho-
boam, came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures
of the house of the Lord, the treasures of the king's house, and
all the shields which Solomon had made,' &c. (1 Kings xiv. 25,
26.) What confirms him in this opinion, is a passage in Jose-
phus, wherein he tells us, that " God avenged himself upon
Rehoboam, by the hand of Shishak, king of Egypt, concerning
whom Herodotus (being mistaken) ascribes what he did to Se-
sostris." (Jewish Antiquities, b. 8. c. 4.) But what if, in this
matter, Josephus himself should he mistaken, and not Herodo-
tus ? Josephus certainly took his antiquities from the records
of the Jews, which gave a full account of what happened to
Abraham and his posterity, both before and after they inherited
the land of Canaan ; but gave no account at all of that country
while it was in other hands, and particularly while the Israelites
were in the wilderness: and therefore it is more probable, that
Josephus knew of no conquest of the land of Canaan by the
Egyptians, before the time of Rehoboam. For when he applies
what Herodotus says of Sesostris' setting up several infamous
pillars, to stigmatize the countries which he conquered for
cowardice, to Shishak, after his expedition against the Jews, he
plainly gives us to understand, that he knew of no other expedi-
tion from Egypt against the land of Canaan before that. And
indeed these very pillars are enough to decide the matter, that
our Sesostris was not Shishak. Shishak made an irruption into
Judea, plundered the temple and the country, and so went back
again into Egypt. Now, had he set up such pillars, as a per-
petual mark of infamy upon the Jews, can we imagine that they
would have let them stand, even to be seen in Herodotus' time,
and not immediately pulled them down upon his retreat ? But, on
the other hand, if Sesostris, who succeeded the Pharaoh that was
drowned in the Red Sea, conquered Canaan, and set up such
pillars, there is good reason to think, that they might continue
a long while, because the Canaanites, who were a conquered
people, dared not pull them down in his reign, and in the time
of the deputies who governed under him ; and the Israelites, who
knew that these pillars were no reflection on them, but, only on
their enemies, would be inclinable enough to let them stand. It
is much more probable then, that the mistake belongs to Jose-
phus, and not to Herodotus ; because Herodotus, in what he
asserts of Sesostris, agrees with Diodorus and others: but, to fix
the actions of Sesostris upon Shishak, there is no one ancient
author that will agree with Josephus. Aristotle affirms, (Polit.,
V>. I.e. 10.) that the kingdom of Sesostris was much older, in
lived in the time of the Israelites' peregrination in the
wilderness, and may therefore properly take his place
here, was a person of so distinguished a character, that
to pass him by in silence would be doing an injury to
our reader.
As soon as Sesostris was born, some historians tell
us, that Vulcan appeared to his father, in his sleep, and
informed him, that his son should conquer the whole
world : upon which presumption it was, that he took so
much care, not of his education only, but of every male
child's likewise that was born on the same day with him,
even through all his kingdom of Egypt. The number of
these is said to have amounted to 1700 in all,; and the king
gave orders that they shoidd be trained up in the same
point of time, than that of Minos iu Crete, which every one owns
was in the time of Joshua. Pliny maintains, (Nat. Hist., b. 37.
c. 8.) that Troy was taken in the time of Ramesses, who was
the third descendant from Sesostris. Strabo avers, (b. ult.) that
Sesostris was long before the Trojan times ; and Sir John
Marsham, and in general all the writers of the Argonautic ex-
pedition, owa plainly, that the colonies of Sesostris had been at
Colchis before that, which all agree to have been a century
before the fall of Troy. And, if to these we may add two
moderns, both the learned prelate Usher, and the learned bishop
Cumberland, do unanimously agree in making Sesostris to be the
son of that Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea; which
the latter of these has given several arguments to prove, (San-
ction., p. 402.) But these the learned author of the Connection of
the Sacred and Profane History has endeavoured to invalidate ; and
thereupon concludes, "That Sesostris should be the son of Pha-
raoh who was drowned in the Red Sea, and that in the state
which his father's misfortunes must have reduced Egypt to, he
should immediately find strength sufficient to subdue kingdom
after kingdom, and to erect himself a large empire over many
great and flourishing nations; this must be thought, by any one
who duly considers things, at first sight, a most romantic
fiction;" (vol. 3. b. 11.) Shuckford is undoubtedly right when
he says, in his Connection, that Sesostris could not have been
the son of Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea. For
it seems self-evident that the son of that monarch could not
have been in a condition to attempt the conquests which Sesostris
is known to have achieved. Had Sesostris returned flushed
with victory, and known that the Israelites were wandering in
the desert, as our author supposes, there is little doubt but that,
in his thirst for universal empire, he would have attempted to
reduce them again to bondage ; and as the desert in which the
Israelites spent the time of their journeyings was close upon
Egypt, it would not have been a very difficult task to one who had
carried an army through so many inhospitable countries, to have
penetrated the desert and attacked the Israelites, and had he
done so unsuccessfully, Moses would undoubtedly have recorded
his defeat. But Dr Hales has shown, that there was not less
than seventeen kings between the date of the exode of the
Israelites and Sesostris, whose joint reigns amounted to 340
years. During all this period, there seems to have been no king
of any note except Amenophis, or Moeris, the father and imme-
diate predecessor of Sesostris, who seems to have been one of the
best and wisest of the Egyptian kings. The formation of the
lake that goes by his name is ascribed to him ; but the extent of
it, and other circumstances, make it evident that it could not
have been excavated by human labour. But he seems to have
opened a communication between the river and this vast natural
basin, eighty stadia in length, and three stadia, or a hundred
yards in breadth, according to Diodorus; and this converted the
lake into a vast reservoir for the redundant waters of the river
while inundated. A stupendous work, and far more glorious than
either the pyramid or labyrinth, if we consider its various and
important uses for agriculture, commerce, fishery, &c. At
present this canal is called Bahr Jussuf, or " Joseph's river,"
and is vulgarly ascribed to the patriarch Joseph, while regent of
Egypt; but was most probably repaired and denominated from
the famous sultan, Joseph Saladin, who made that wonder of
Cairo, called " Joseph's well." — See Hales' Analysis, vol. 4. p.
431, 8vo second edition. — Ed.
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
337
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
discipline and exercises with his son, as justly supposing
that they who had been the constant and equal com-
panions of his childhood and youth, would prove his
most faithful ministers, and affectionate fellow soldiers.
1 Having therefore provided tutors and masters, and
every thing necessary for this purpose, he had them, by
degrees, inured to laborious and manly exercises, as
weil as instructed in all liberal and useful sciences, that,
as they grew up, by the strength of their bodies, and the
cultivation of their minds, they might be equally fitted
either to command or execute.
Amenophis, after he had been at this vast expense
and trouble in laying the foundation of his son's future
grandeur, resolved to give him and his companions an
opportunity of displaying the good effects of their edu-
cation ; and accordingly sent him, and them along with
him, at the head of an army into Arabia. In this expe-
dition, the young" Sesostris surmounted all the dangers
of serpents and venomous creatures, all the wants and
hardships of a dry and barren country, and in the end,
conquered the Arabians, a rude and barbarous people,
that had never been vanquished before.
From Arabia his father ordered him westward, where
he subdued the greatest part of Africa; but while he was
engaged in this expedition, news was brought him, that
his father, and all his army, were drowned in the Red
Sea, which made him desist from his conquests, and
hasten home with his army, in order to secure his suc-
cession to the kingdom. AYhether it was that he called
to mind the prediction of the god Vulcan, or was in-
structed by Mercury, who prepared him for the war ;
was assured of success by divination, by dreams in tiie
temple, or prodigies in the air, or persuaded to it by his
daughter Athyrte, a young lady of uncommon under-
standing, and who made it out to her father that the
thing was practicable ; but so it was, that no sooner was
he settled upon the Egyptian throne, but his thoughts
began to swell, and his mind to grasp at an universal
monarchy.
His own country indeed he found but in a lamentable
estate. The Israelites, who were their slaves, were
gone. All their veteran soldiers, with their arms,
chariots, and horses, were lost: the first-born of every
family was slain, the cattle killed, the fruit of the earth
destroyed, and nothing but famine was to be expected :
and yet, notwithstanding all this discouragement, he was
resolved to put in practice his scheme for a general
conquest. But then considering that this would oblige
him to be long absent, and far distant from Egypt, he
could not but deem it necessary to gain the love and
affection of his subjects, that those who followed him
might lay down their lives more cheerfully in his service,
and they whom he left behind might not be induced to
attempt any innovations while he was gone.
To this purpose he endeavoured, in the first place, to
oblige every one to the utmost of his power ; some by
largesses in money ; others by donations in land ;
many by the concession of free pardons ; and every
one by fair speeches, and a courteous and aflable
behaviour upon all occasions. Those that were con-
demned for high treason he released with impunity, and
1 The chief of this account is taken from Diodorus Siculus,
ted Herodotus in his Euterpe, b. 1.
M. 3705. A. C. 1C4G. NUM. xviii. TO THE EST) OF DEUT.
by paying what they owed, discharged such as were in
prison for debt. In the next place, he resettled the
ancient division of the country into six and thirty parts,
which the Egyptians call nomi, or provinces ; assign-
ed a governor to each of these; and constituted his
brother Armais, (whom the Greeks called Danaus,)
supreme regent. Him lie invested with ample power and
authority, but restrained him from wearing the crown,
from offering any injury to the queen and her family, and
from having any dealings with the royal concubines.
Having thus settled the government, he proceeded in
the last place, to raise an army equal to the vastness of
his design, which consisted of 600,000 foot, 21,000
horse, and 27,000 warlike chariots. His principal
officers were taken out of those brave men who were
trained up with him in martial exploits ; and that they
might always be in readiness, without submitting to any
mean employ, to attend him to the wars, he took care to
bestow on them large estates in land, in some of the
richest and most fertile parts of Egypt. AVith this army
he marched at first against the Ethiopians, whom he soon
conquered, and made them pay a tribute of ebony, gold,
and elephants' teeth. But his land forces alone were
not answerable to the conquests he intended ; and there-
fore he fitted out two fleets of tall ships, somewhat
resembling our modern form, one in the Mediterranean
Sea, and the other in the Arabian Gulf. With the Me-
diterranean squadron he conquered Cyprus, the sea
coasts of Phoenicia, and several of the Cyclades ; and
from the Arabian Gulf, he sailed into the Indian Sea,
and there subdued all the coasts thereof, till happening
to come into a shallow, and his ships drawing more
water than usual, he either was unable or afraid to go
any farther, and so returned into Egypt.
But he had not been long returned, before his ambition
began to operate afresh ; and therefore advising with
his priests, he recruited his army, and marched into Asia.
The Israelites were at this time in the deserts of Arabia,
and therefore it may look a little strange, why a man of
Sesostris' spirit should not have been tempted to pursue
them. But besides the barrenness of the country, which
could never support so vast a multitude as he carried
with him, he could not but relied on his father's fate :
and therefore dreading the like miraculous OTerthrow, he
declined the Israelites, and marched directly Bgl ins
Canaan, which, without the least opposition, at once
submitted to him; so that, imposing an annual tribute
upon the people, and putting governors in all their
principal towns, he proceeded in the course of his con-
quests, and in a short time overran all Asia and some
parts of Europe.
He passed the river Ganges, and pierced through all
India; as far as the main ocean eastward: then "he
a Though Herodotus, Diodorus, and others, relate, that he was
victorious in these countries; jret some "ill have it thai lie met
with a repulse, Bed from the Scythians, ami was worsted by the
Colchians. For Justin tells us that Vexoris, or Sesostris, despatch-
ing ambassadors before him to summon the Scythians to surren-
der, they sent back bis messengers with contempt, and threats, and
defiance, Slid immediately took up arms; that Sesostris bt ing in-
formed Uiat they were advancing tow aids him, by hasty mat
suddenly turned about, and lied from before them, leaving all his
baggage and warlike apparel to the pursuers, who followed him
till he came on the borders of Egypt (b. 2. C. 3.) Pliny relates
(b. 33. c. 3.) tiiat lie was overthrown by the king of Colchis; tnd
Su
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subdued the Scythians, as far as the river Tanais, which
divides Europe from Asia: here he brought into subjec-
tion the other parts of Asia ; and from hence lie went
into Thrace in Europe ; but as he was marching along
the deserts, he was in danger of losing his army through
the want of provisions, and difficulty of passes ; and
therefore "■ erecting, as his custom was, his pillars there,
he adventured to proceed no farther : though the occa-
sion of his return may rather be imputed to the news
which he received from the Egyptian high priest, of his
brother's revolt and usurpation.
For, encouraged with his long absence, and great dis-
tance, Armais had done every thing that was interdicted
him ; had assumed the diadem, violated the queen, made
promiscuous use of the king's concubines, and by the
advice of his false friends, was now meditating to main-
tain his usurpation by force of arms : but hearing of his
brother's return, he feigns himself of another temper ;
meets him at Pelusium, a frontier town, before he could
have certain intelligence of what had passed ; and there
received him with all the appearance of submission and
joy, but with a real design, not only to take away his
life, but quite extirpate his whole family. To this end
he invited the king his brother, the queen, and her chil-
dren, to a banquet, which he had prepared for their
refreshment ; but when they had all drank very plenti-
fully, and were now gone to rest, he caused a great
quantity of dried reeds, which he had before prepared
for that purpose, to be laid round the king's pavilion,
and set on fire, in hopes to destroy them all. Sesostris
perceiving the danger he Avas in, and expecting no assis-
tance from his guards, who were all overcome with wine,
* lifted up his hands, and implored the gods in behalf of
his wife and children, he rushed with them through the
flames ; and being thus unexpectedly preserved, he made
oblations to several of the gods, but more especially to
Vulcan, by whose protection he thought himself delivered.
The traitor Armais being thus defeated in his wicked
design, betook himself to arms, but was soon discomfited
by Sesostris, and forced to flee into Greece, where he
settled at Argos, and not long after was chosen king ;
Valerius Flaccus insinuates, that he was repulsed with great
slaughter, and put to flight in these parts. — Argonaut, b. 5.
a It was the custom of this great warrior, to set up pillars in
every country he conquered, with an inscription to this effect, —
" Sesostris king of kings, and lord of lords, subdued this coun-
try by the power of his arms." If the nation had, without
opposition, ignobly submitted to him, besides the inscription, he
caused the privities of a woman to be carved, as a mark of their
effeminacy and baseness; but if they had defended themselves
bravely, the pillars bore the distinction of the contrary sex, in
testimony of their courage. Besides these, he left statues of him-
self behind him, two of which were to be seen in Herodotus' time,
one on the road between Ephesus and Phocsea, and the other
between Smyrna and Sardis. They were armed after the Ethio-
pian and Egyptian manner; held a javelin in one hand, and a
bow in the other; and across the breast, had aline drawn from
shoulder to shoulder, in which was this inscription: — "This
region I obtained by these my soldiers." — Universal History,
b. I.e. 3.
l> Herodotus adds one circumstance more: that waking out of
sleep, and finding his danger, he consulted with his qaeen what
to do in this extremity, who advised him to throw two of his
children into the flames that they might serve as a bridge for all
the rest; which he accordingly did, and so they all escaped. But
this is generally deemed a mistake in our historian, or a circum-
stance crept in, on purpose to make the distress appear more
affecting. — Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 4. c. 5.
while his victorious brother, after nine years' absence,
returning in triumph to Egypt, adorned the temples with
rich spoils : and having disbanded his army, after he had
rewarded them according to their merit, he began to ap-
ply his mind to such stupendous works as might immor-
talize his name, and everlastingly contribute to the public
good.
He built a temple in every city in Eg-ypt, and dedi-
cated it to the peculiar god of the place. This was a
work wherein he employed none but captives ; and there-
fore he had it inscribed upon each temple, " None of the
natives were put to labour here." He raised vast mounts
and hills of earth, to which he removed the cities that
had before too low a situation, in order t6 secure both
man and beast from the danger of the Nile's inundations.
All the way, from Memphis to the sea, he dug canals,
which from the Nile branched out, and not only made an
easier conveyance from place to place, but greatly ad-
vanced the trade and prosperity of the kingdom. All
the towns that were upon the frontiers, and lay before
exposed to any superior number of forces, he fortified
against the incursions of enemies, and made them of
difficult access. He defended the east side of Egypt
against the irruptions of the Syrians and Arabians, with
a wall drawn from Pelusium, through the deserts, as far
as Heliopolis, which is at least 1500 furlongs. He
caused a ship of 2S0 cubits long, to be built all of cedar,
gilded over with gold without, and lined with silver with-
in ; and to perpetuate the memory of his actions, he
erected two obelisks of polished marble, 120 cubits high,
on which was inscribed an account of the extent of his
empire, the value of his revenue, and the number of the
nations which he had conquered. One thing, however is
reported of him, which argues an horrid insolence, in so
great a man, and tarnishes his character not a little, and
that is, that at set times his custom was, to have the tri-
butary kings, and such as held their dominions under his
favour, to come into Egypt to pay their homage ; and
though he received them at first with all signs of honour
and respect, yet on certain occasions, he would have his
horses unharnessed, and some four or more of these kings
yoked together, and made to draw his chariot : but, bat-
ing this opprobrious piece of arrogance, c and whereof
he was cured before he died, he was certainly in all
respects, the greatest prince that ever sat upon the
Egyptian throne ; and (what some have accounted an
augmentation of his greatness) after he had reigned
three and thirty years, he lost his eyesight, and out of
disgust, laid violent hands upon himself, thereby making
his magnanimity in death, as they call it, equal to the
glorious actions of his life.
After that the children of Israel had left the Egyp-
c The manner in which he was cured is said to be this: — One
day, as some of these tributary kings were drawing him along, he
perceived one of them to look back upon one of the wheels, with
a very great stedfastness; and thereupon inquiring what might be
the subject of his thoughts, or the occasion of his deep attention,
he received an answer to this effect: — " The going round of the
wheel, O king, calls to my mind the vicissitudes of fortune: for
as every part of the wheel is uppermost and lowermost by turns,
so it is with men, who one day sit on a throne, and on the next
are reduced to the vilest degree of slavery." Which answer
struck the king with such compunction, that for ever after he gave
off this inhuman practice. — Diodorus, b. 1 ; and Universal His-
tory, b. 1. c. 3.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
339
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tians in the Red Sea, the first people that gave them any
molestation were the Amalekites. Amalek was the son
of Eliphaz, by his concubine Tinuia, as Eliphaz was the
first-born of Esau.a He gave name both to the people
and country where he lived, and notwithstanding- the
spuriousness of his birth, is, l in the catalogue of the
dukes of Edom, reckoned as one of them.. The country
of the Anialekites lay somewhere between Egypt and
Palestine, and was therefore very probably bounded by
Canaan to the north ; by Egypt or its dependent terri-
tories to the south ; by Edom, or the land of Seir, to the
east ; and by the deserts towards the sea, or perhaps by
the margin of the sea itself, to the west.
Their religion was at first no doubt the same that was
taught in the house of Abraham ; but in process of time
they were carried away with the general corruption,
and fell into the same idolatry that their brethren the
Edomites practised. And as to their commerce or trade,
the situation of their country might favour them, as much
as their neighbours, and the superiority of the power and
greatness to which they had advanced themselves, looks
as if they had improved it more than others.
Their form of government was monarchical ; and as
it appears that the first, at least one of the first, and the
last of their kings was called Agag, it is no unlikely
supposition, that all their intermediate kings bore the
same name. However this be, it is certain, that at this
time they were a flourishing nation, and grown up to such
a * sudden height of power and grandeur, that their king
is spoken of as much superior to any other ; and therefore,
when Balaam foretels the future majesty of the Jewish
state, he expresses himself, that a ' their king should be
higher than Agag,' and styles them the ' first of the
nations :' which seems to countenance the wonderful
1 Gen. xxxvi. 12. * Num. xxiv. 7.
a This genealogy of the Amalekites seems to be altogether
erroneous. The Amalekites are mentioned (Gen. xiv. 7.) as a
people of some consequence at the time of the wars of Chedor-
laomer, and must therefore have been a nation before the era of
Abraham and Lot, which is a proof that they did not derive their
origin from Amalek, the grandson of Esau, but from some older
stock. That stock, according to the Arabian writers, was
Amalek, or Amlak, a son of Ham, and, of course, grandson of
Noah. This account of the origin of the Amalekites certainly
agrees better than our author's, with the description of them by
Balaam as the first of the nations in that part of the world ; for
had their common ancestor been a grandson of Esau, they must,
in the days of that soothsayer, have been a nation of no antiquity.
It must be confessed, however, that there is no Amalek or Amlak
mentioned by Moses among the sons of Ham ; but that is a very
slight objection to the Arabian account, it being universally
admitted that it is only of the family of Shem that the Jewish
legislator gives a full and minute genealogy. — See Bishop New-
ton's Dissertation on the Prophecies of Balaam.
b The kingdom of Edom commenced much about the time of
the Israelites' departure out of Egypt; and that of Amalek could
not be much, if any thing at all, older; and therefore when
Balaam expressed himself in so high a strain, concerning Agag,
and his monarchy, it could not have been much above forty years'
standing. The expression of Amalek's being 'the first of the
nations,' our version turns otherwise in the margin, ' the first of
the nations that warred against Israel ;' and if we compare what
is said of Agag, but thirteen verses before, we shall not be at a
loss for the right, at least for a natural, explication of the words,
namely, that they were the greatest and most noble nation at that
time; and accordingly Le Clerc's version styles them, 'the first-
fruits of the nations,' by which in his Commentary, he under-
stands them to have been the most ancient and potent nation of
any of those which proceeded from the loins of Abraham and Lot.
— Universal History, b. I. c. 4.
things which the Arabian historians tell us of these peo-
ple, namely, that they once conquered Egypt, and pos-
sessed the throne of that kingdom for several genera-
tions. The truth is, these Anialekites were a bold and
daring people from the very first. No sooner had the
Israelites set foot upon the Arabian shore, but they con-
spired against them, and falling on their rear, in their
march to Horeb, made some slaughter among them,
which Joshua, as soon as he had got his fighting men in
order, took care to repay ; though it must be confessed,
that Ood for some time, was pleased to make use of this
nation, in conjunction with some of the Canaanites, to
3 'be scourges in the sides, ami thorns in the eyes,' that
is, his instruments for the punishment of the diffidence
and disobedience of his own people.
Esau, who either from the colour of his hair and com-
plexion, or for selling his birthright to Jacob for a mess
of red pottage, had the name of Edom given him, was the
progenitor likewise of this people. Their ancient king-
dom, when in its meridian, was bounded on the north by
the land of Canaan and the Salt Sea ; on the south by the
Arabian gulf ; on the east, by the land of Midian ; and
on the west, by the kingdom of Amalek: and in this
compass of ground, they had several remarkable cities,
besides two eminent sea-ports, Elath and Ezion-geber,
on the Arabian gulf; but the latter of these became so
infamous for the many wrecks which befell the shipping
that frequented it, that in time it came to be disused.
The people were naturally bold and courageous ;
jealous of their rights, and always in a disposition to
maintain them ; as those who claim the empire of the
sea, in the manner that they did, should always be. As
they were descended from Abraham, we are not to doubt,
but that their belief and practice were right at first,
though, by degrees, * they fell into idolatry, and if we
can suppose that the book of Job was of as ancient date
as is pretended, and that he himself lived among these
people, we cannot but acknowledge, that the * invention
and use of constellations in astronomy, c the art of writ-
ing, 7 the art of navigation, and many more parts of
truly useful knowledge, were begun, and cultivated
among them.
The form of their civil constitution seems to have
varied according to the exigencies of the times. The
Horites, who very early inhabited this country, MN
ruled, at first, by their respective patriarchs, or heads of
families; "till being overcome by Chedorlaomor, king
of Elam, who swept them before him with other nations,
they, to secure themselves for the time to come, changed
the constitution into an elective monarchy; and it was
under this form of government that Ksau and his family
lived for some time sojourners in this land. The mon-
archy, however, did not last above seven or eight .suc-
cessions, till, some way or other, it came to be divided
into several little independent principalities, or duke-
doms; and as the posterity of Esau exceeded all others
in the number of their dukes, it cannot 08 incongruous
to suppose, that they had the greatest hand in bringing
about this revolution, and the largest share in the gov-
ernment that was founded thereupon.
3 Josh, xxiii. 13. ' -2 Kings riii. 20. it 8.
Job \i\. 24. 7 Job ix.
8 Bishop Cumberland's < >i i y . Gent Ant.
340
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And as they had the largest share in the government, not permitted to mix or intermarry with the Hebrews ; but
it is not unreasonable to suppose farther, that in conse-
quence of their power, they soon expelled the Horite
dukes, and at the same time might force Amalek, or his
spurious offspring, to leave their dominions. For in the
next generation, the posterity ofEsau,who are styled abso-
lute dukes of Edom, were only eleven in number, and in
all the country had no rivals. But as the approach of the
children of Israel put them, and every nation else, in a
great consternation, they thought it most conducive to
as the Midianites, whose history we are now come to, were
more particularly instrumental in seducing them to idola-
try, their punishment, for the present, was more severe.
Midian, the fourth son of Abraham by his wife Ketu-
rah, is generally reputed to have given name to the
country, and to have been the progenitor of the Midian-
ites, who, in the early ages of the world, were confounded
with 2 the Ishmaelites, and soon after seem to be con-
joined with the Moabites, as if they had been both one
their «-eneral safety, to unite under one common head ; nation ; when the true reason of this seeming commix
and thereupon having made choice of a king, they ture was, that according as they lived to the northern
resolved to maintain their ground against any invasion.
It was to this nameless king, or perhaps his successor,
that Moses sent ambassadors, desiring a free passage
through his country, which he absolutely denied, and to
let him see that he was in earnest, immediately took the
or southern parts of the country, of course they joined
themselves either to the Moabites or Ishmaelites ; and
upon that account are oftentimes promiscuously mention-
ed in Scripture.
What the limits of their country were, it is not so easy
field • but as his design was to act upon the defensive a matter to perceive. Its boundary on the east is un
only, and not distress a people that were his brethren, in
matters wherein he could relieve them, without danger
to himself, ' he supplied them, for their money, with
whatever necessaries they wanted. And thus far the
history of the Edomites, during this period, goes.
Moab, the son of Lot, by an incestuous commerce
with the elder of his daughters, was the progenitor of
this people, and gave name to their country ; which was
bounded on the east by the deserts of Arabia ; on the
west, by the mountains that lie east from the Dead Sea ;
on the north, by the country of the Ammonites, the
descendants of Lot by his younger daughter ; and on the
south, by the brook or little river Zerid, which runs into
the Dead Sea ; so that, in the whole, it is about forty
miles in length, and as much in breadth.
That the people had once the knowledge of the true
God, can hardly be doubted ; but in time they loved not
to retain that knowledge, but introduced the worship of
false gods, with such monstrous and obscene ceremonies,
as are not fit to be named. Their principal idols were
Chemosh and Baal-peor ; and to these they sacrificed,
on mountains dedicated to that service, and in temples
built in their cities, not only oxen and rams, but upon
extraordinary occasions, human victims.
The form of their government was regal, and the first
inhabitants of their country were the Emims, a great and
powerful people, of extraordinary strength and stature,
very probably the descendants of Ham, and of the same
gigantic race with the Anakims and Rephaims, though
the Moabites called them by the name Emims, which, in
Hebrew signifies terrible. And too terrible an enemy
had they been for the Moabites, had not Chedorlaomer
and his allies, by their frequent incursions, much weak-
ened them, and made them an easy prey. The Moabites,
however, when they had thus dispossessed them, kept not
their new dominions long entire ; for Sihon king of the
Amorites, who bordered on them eastward, fought against
the king of Moab, and took from him all his kingdom to
the north of the river Arnon.
The successor to this king was Balak, who was then
upon the throne, when the Israelites came and encamped
in the neighbourhood of his country. His tampering with
the infamous Balaam was the reason why his people were
1 Deut. ii. 28, 29.
certain, but on the west, it was contiguous to the land of
Edom ; on the north to the country of Moab ; and on
the south, to the Red Sea.
Its inhabitants were very numerous, and may be dis-
tinguished into two sorts, shepherds and merchants. The
shepherds moved up and down in tents ; they drove their
cattle before them, even when they went to war ; and
seem to have had few or no fixed habitations, except
some strongholds near the borders of their country.
The merchants, in like manner, travelled from place to
place in companies, or caravans, as it is the custom in
those parts even to this day, and the only settlements
they seem to have had were their marts, and stations, in
places convenient for their trade.
By these two different employs, however, the whole
nation flourished to a great degree. The merchants
grew excessively rich ; and the shepherds by exchanging
with them, their cattle for gold, and jewels of all kinds,
were enabled to make a much better appearance than
other nations. But as their affluence in these things soon
introduced luxury, they were a people remarkable for all
kinds of vanity, riot, and excess. Though their learning-
could not be great, yet their merchants Avere obliged to
know something of writing and arithmetic, in order to
keep their accounts ; and as they were traders, and situate
on the Red Sea, it can hardly be supposed but that they
applied themselves to ship-building, in order to explore
not only their own coasts, but those of other countries
likewise, that lay contiguous to them ; and consequently
could not be without some tolerable skill in geography
and geometry.
Their religion differed according to the part of the
country which they inhabited. These Avho lived in the
north of Midian, fell into all the abominations of the
Moabites, and in their endeavour to corrupt the Israel-
ites, quite exceeded them. But those that were placed
more towards the south, if we may take Jethro, who is
said to have ruled over a people near the Red Sea, for
a pattern, retained just notions of God, and of the form
of worship which he had prescribed to their forefathers ;
for they offered up praises, and thanksgivings, and sacri-
fices to him, though their religious rites and ceremonies
are not specified.
Gen. xxxvii. 25, 28.
i Gen. xxxvi. 35.
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311
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Their form of government, might, in the like manner,
be different, according to the part of the country which
they inhabited, though in the main, it looks as if it had
been aristocratical rather than monarchical. Jethro,
indeed, in our translation is called a priest, and because
the word in the original does equally signify a prince,
it has generally been concluded, that he had the honour
of being both. Mention is likewise made of other
princes ; and the five who fell by the hand of Israel, are
sometimes styled kings, and sometimes dukes of Midian :
so that this nation seems to have been governed by a
multitude of dukes, or petty princes, who, perhaps, in
their own jurisdiction, were independent on each other,
and yet some way or other, were in Moses' time, 1 feu-
datory under Sihon, king of the Aniorites. Sihon had
indeed made a conquest from the Moabites of the best
part of the country he then possessed, and having settled
himself in their place, made several of the neighbouring
princes tributary to him ; but refusing a passage to the
Hebrews, and coming without a any provocation to at-
tack them, he himself was slain, and his whole army
routed ; Heshbon, his capital city, was taken, and all the
rest of his dominions distributed among the Israelites.
There were the several nations on the other, that is,
on the east side of Jordan, which God delivered into the
hands of his people ; and more we shall have to say of
them, as they meet us in our way. In the mean time the
progress which the Israelites have hitherto made, the ene-
mies they have vanquished, and the kingdoms they have
seized and divided among themselves, notwithstanding
all the artifices to prevent them, do sufficiently verify that
conclusion, at the end of their leader's last exhortation :
2 ' Happy art thou, O Israel ! Who is like unto thee, O
people, saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help ; and
who is the sword of thy excellency ! Thine enemies
shall be found liars unto thee, and thou shalt tread upon
their high places. The fountain of Jacob shall be upon
a land of corn and wine, and his heavens shall drop
down dew.'*
' Josh. xiii. 21.
2 Deut. xxxiii. 28, 29.
a It is reckoned good policy in a general, when he has any
great design in agitation, which cannot so well be executed
without passing through a neutral country, not to ask leave at
first, because too much civility would lay him under the suspicion
of fear; but first of all to enter the prince's country, and then to
send and desire permission for his troops to march through it.
But this was not Moses' practice. He first sent ambassadors to
the king of the Amorites, with this peaceable message: ' Let me
pass through thy land, we will not turn into the fields, or into the
vineyards; we will not drink the waters of the well; but we will
go along by the king's highway, till we be past the borders ?
Thou shalt sell me meat for money, that I may eat, and give me
water for money, that I may drink; only I will pass through on
my feet,' Num. xxi. 22. After so civil a message as this, if
Sihon thought not proper to let the children of Israel pass through
his country, he might have contented himself with so doing,
because it does not appear that the Israelites ever threatened to
force their passage. But when, instead of acting upon tin1 defen-
sive, which was all that in reason he should have done, he gets
himself at the head of his forces, and marches out to fight, the
war must be deemed unjust on his side, and the fate he met
with no more than his desert. — Calmet's Dictionary.
b In hot countries where showers were less frequent, the morn-
ing and evening dews were a great refreshment to the earth, and
productive of much plenty, as was fully exemplified in the blessed
land of Canaan, which was fruitful and abounding with every
product of the earth.
M. 3765. A. C. 1C4S. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
CHAP. IV.— On the Land of Canaan.
BY THK EDITOR.
Though reference has already been made, both in a typo-
graphical and historical point of view, to Canaan, we
think it may be instructive to insert a few additional
paragraphs on the same subject. The land of Canaan
is, on many accounts, entitled to more particular consi-
deration ; but chiefly because it was the residence of the
chosen seed, and the theatre of our redemption.
When the Maker of heaven and earth appointed to the
nations their inheritance, the country which is bounded
on the west, by the Mediterranean, on the east by the
river Jordan, the lake Asphaltites, and the sea of Tibe-
rias, on the north by the mountain Antilibanus, and on
the south by ldumea, fell to the lot of Canaan, one of
the sons of Ham. It extends about 200 miles in length
and 80 in breadth. From the grandson of Noah, by whom
it was peopled, it was first called the land of Canaan.
It has since been distinguished by other names, as the
land of promise, the holy land, Judea, from the tribe
of Judah, which possessed its finest and most fertile
divisions, and Palestine, from the Philistines, by whom
a great part of it was inhabited.
The descendants of Canaan, the original possessor of
this highly interesting country, are thus enumerated by
Moses : — ' Canaan begat Sidon, his first-born, and Heth,
and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite,
and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Senite, and the
Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite.' All
these families were settled at first within the limits of
Canaan, but the increase of population, or what is more
likely, the spirit of emigration and adventure, which is
strongly felt in countries where much land remains to be
occupied, soon carried them beyond the prescribed limits
of their paternal inheritance. The original extent of
the land of Canaan, is accurately stated by Moses in
these words : — ' The border of" the Canaanites was from
Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza ; and astbotl
goest unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Ze-
boini, even unto Lasha.'3 But the sacred historian
informs us, that several Canaanitish families, in process
of time, settled in the circumjacent countries : his words
are — ' And afterwards were the families of the Canaanitea
spread abroad,' namely, beyond their original bounds,
which he then proceeds to describe.
The true situation of the inheritance of Sidon. the
first-born of Canaan, is clearly determined by the famous
city of that name. Sidon was one of the most ancient
cities in the world, and Long the wealthiest and greatest
of which Phcr-nicia could boast. It was very strong both
by nature and art. On the north side, a citadel, built
on an inaccessible rock, and environed on all sides by
the sea ; and on the south side, another fort defended
the mouth of the harbour. Secured on all sides against
the assaults of her enemies, and enriched by the exten-
sive commerce which *l>e carried on with the surrounding
nations of Asia and Europe, her inhabitants lived ill
profound security, and indulged, without restraint, in
every voluptuous gratification. So great was their
1 Den. x. 19.
342
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
luxury, that ' to live after the manner of the Sidonians,'
became a sort of proverbial phrase for living quietly and
securely in ease and pleasure. l But their wealth and
luxury do not seem, at least for several ages, to have
enervated their minds, and destroyed their powers of
exertion, and habits of industry ; for we know, from the
testimony of an inspired writer, that in the days of Solo-
mon, ' none were skilled to hew timber like the Sidon-
ians.' They are represented by writers, both sacred and
profane, as excellent artificers in several other profes-
sions or trades ; and in proof of this fact, many of them
were retained in the pay of Solomon, and employed
as his principal workmen in building the temple of Je-
hovah. a
Though the Tyrians were accustomed to boast of the
great antiquity of their city, it cannot be doubted that
Sidon can trace her history to a still remoter date ; for
in the same chapter, where the prophet Isaiah records the
vain boast of the Tyrians, he expressly calls Tyre the
daughter of Sidon ; 2 by which he means that the Tyrians
were a colony of the Sidonians. Indeed, Tyre rose by
degrees to a height of greatness and splendour, which
her illustrious parent was never able to reach ; yet it is
evident from ancient writers, that she was for several
ages greatly her inferior. The former was distinguished
by the name of the strong city, so early as the days of
Joshua ; but in the very same passage, the latter receives
the more significant and honourable title of ' the great
Sidon,' to intimate that she was then the capital of Phoe-
nicia. Nor ought it to be forgotten, that Homer never
mentions Tyre in any part of his writings, while he often
celebrates the ingenuity and industry of the Sidonians.
Many years after Sidon was built, says an ancient wri-
ter, the Sidonians being attacked by the king of Ascalon,
1 Judges xviii. 7. *Is. xxiii. 7, 12.
a Sidon was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, who, however, con-
sented to receive the submission of the Sidonians, and permitted
them to retain their own kings. Entering afterwards into a league
with Nectanebu*, king of Egypt, against Darius Ochus, king of
Persia, they were besieged by the latter ; when in despair they burnt
their ships and their city ; in which latter was so great a quantity
of gold and silver melted down by the fire, that Ochus sold the
ashes for a considerable sum of money. The city was, however,
soon rebuilt ; as about eighteen years after, we find it submitting
to Alexander. It subsequently shared in the fortunes of the rest
of Phoenicia, being alternately oppressed by the Grecian kings of
Syria and Egypt; while its trade, together with that of Tyre, was
diverted to Alexandria ; though its declension was never so com-
plete as that of the latter city. After the subversion of the
Grecian empire by the Romans, Sidon fell into the hands of the
latter ; who, to put an end to the frequent revolt of the inhab-
itants deprived it of its freedom. It then fell successively
under the power of the Saracens, the Seljukian Turks, and the
Sultans of Egypt, who in 1289, that they might never more afford
shelter to the Christians, destroyed both it and Tyre. But it
again recovered, and has ever since been in the possession of the
Ottoman Turks. Sidon, at present called Saide, is still a consi-
derable trading town, and the chief mart for Damascus and
Upper Syria ; but the port is nearly choked up with sand. Though
presenting an imposing appearance at a distance, as it rises from
the water's edge, it is like all Turkish towns ill-built and
dirty, and full of ruins; having still discoverable, without the
walls, some fragments of columns and other remains of the ancient
city. Mr Conner made the number of inhabitants 15,000; of
.vhom 2000 are Christians, chiefly Maronites, and 400 Jews,
who have one synagogue. They are principally employed in
spinning cotton ; which, with some silk, and boots and shoes,
er slippers, of Morocco leather, form the chief articles of com-
merce.— En.
M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
escaped in their ships, and laid the foundation of Tyre,
sometime before the destruction of Troy. b This event
happened, according to Josephus, about 240 years before
the building of Solomon's temple. But after the taking
of Sidon, by the Persians, the city of Tyre rapidly in-
creased in wealth and greatness, and became in a short
time, the capital of Phoenicia, and the mart of the whole
earth. At the time it was besieged by Alexander, it was
in every respect, the greatest commercial city in the
world. Including ancient Tyre it was nineteen miles in
circuit : the houses were spacious and magnificent, con-
sisting of several stories, and higher that those of Rome.
Pre-eminent in riches and splendour, rose the mag-
nificent temples of Olympian Jove, Astarte, and other
deities adored by the Tyrians, constructed by Hiram,
adorned with pillars of gold, glittering with precious
stones, and enriched with the splendid offerings of many
kings. The city was defended by a wall of gTeat
height, formed of huge stones cemented with lime.
Two harbours received its innumerable vessels, one
looking towards Sidon, the other to Egypt. Strabo
places it nearly at the distance of twenty-five miles
from Sidon, its renowned parent. The inhabitants of
Tyre, like the Sidonians, from whom they derived their
origin, were distinguished for the acuteness and ver-
satility of their genius. They were skilled in arith-
metic and astronomy : but in the mechanical parts they
were scarcely equalled, certainly not surpassed, by any
people. For the brilliant colour known to the an-
cients by the name of the Tyrian purple, the kings of
the east were indebted to their ingenuity. The fabrics
produced in the Sidonian looms rivalled the fine linen
of Egypt; while the productions of the artificer in iron,
in brass, and in crystal, were not less remarkable for
the beauty of the device, than for the delicacy of the
execution. It is, therefore, a true account which the
inspired prophet has given of the greatness and splen-
dour of Tyre. Isaiah calls her, ' a mart of nations ; the
crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose
traffickers are the honourable of the earth ; ' andEzekiel,
who alluding to old Tyre, places her ' at the entry of
the sea;' and in another passage, to the new city, 'in
the heart of the seas,' recounts the various nations that
carried on a lucrative commerce with the Tyrians.
But the pride and luxury which her unrivalled power
and riches produced among all ranks of, her citizens, and
above all, the cruel and unbrotherly triumph in which the
Tyrians indulged, when the chosen people of God yield-
ed to the arms of Nebuchadnezzar, and were led away
captive beyond the river of Babylon, excited against
them the displeasure of heaven. As a just punishment
of their crimes, continental Tyre was taken and destroy-
ed by the Chaldeans, after a siege of thirteen years ; c
b But from the mention of it in the time of Joshua, (chap. xix.
29,) noticed above, it must have been much more ancient than
this. — Ed.
c At the end of this long period, continental Tyre was taken
by assault and utterly destroyed, the ruins of which were after-
wards called Pake Tyrus, or Old Tyre. But before this was
effected, the inhabitants, foreseeing what must happen, and the
blockade of Nebuchadnezzar, for want of a navy to second his
land operations, being incomplete, transported all their valuable
effects into a small island about a third of a mile from the shore,
where they laid the foundations of New Tyre, which, by the Vcist
resources of its trade, rose in a few years to an equal eminence
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
313
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G5
and remained in a state of ruin and desolation seventy
years, a term of equal duration with the captivity of
Judah, whom they had so barbarously insulted in the hour
of her distress. At the end of that period, Tyre recovered
her wealth and splendour ; an event which the prophet
Zechariah describes in these striking terms : ' and Tyrus
did build herself a stronghold, and heaped up silver as the
dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets. But with her
commerce and prosperity, her wickedness returned ; and
the judgments of God quickly followed. In fulfilment of
ancient prophecies which sealed her doom, and even de-
scribed the manner of her future destruction, Alexander
besieged, and took, and set the city on fire : but so gTeat
was the forbearance of heaven, so numerous and efficient
were her resources, that in the short period of nineteen
years, she was able to withstand the fleets of Antigonus,
and to sustain a siege of fifteen months before she was
taken. But the time of her final desolation at length
arrived ; and nothing could divert or retard the full accom-
plishment of the divine purpose long before expressed by
an inspired prophet : ' Thus saith the Lord God, behold I
am against thee, 0 Tyrus, and will cause many nations
to come up against thee, as the sea causeth her waves to
come up : and they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus,
and break down her towers ; I will also scrape her dust
from her, and make her like the top of a rock : it shall
be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of
the sea, for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.' *
To show the certainty of this fearful sentence, it is
repeated : ' I will make thee like the top of a rock ;
thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon ; thou shalt be
built no more ; for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the
Lord God.' And again ; ' I will make thee a terror, and
thou shalt be no more ; though thou be sought for, yet
shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God.'2
The exact fulfilment of this prediction in all its parts, is
attested by so many travellers of unimpeachable veracity,
who beheld and examined the ruins of this once great,
powerful, and splendid city, that the most stubborn
unbeliever is awed into silence."
The descendants of Heth, or the Hittites, the second
family of Canaan mentioned by Moses, were planted
about Hebron, in the southern division of the country.
Moses informs us, that Sarah died at Hebron, and
* Abraham spake to the sons of Heth' about the purchase
1 Ezek. xxvi. 3. * Ezek. xxiii. 3 — 5.
with the old city which had been destroyed. The rage of
Nebuchadnezzar was so great at finding the place almost deserted,
and entirely cleared of every thing valuable, that lie razed the
buildings to the ground, and killed every inhabitant that could be
{bund. Two hundred years afterwards, Alexander, by forming
a causeway from the mainland to the island, reduced New Tyre,
after a seven months' siege. — Ed.
a Tyre has again partially revived: Mr Buckingham, who
visited it in IS 16, represents it as containing 800 substantial
stone built houses, and from 5000 to 8000 inhabitants. But
Mr Jowett, on the authority of the Greek archbishop, reduces
this number to less than 4000; namely, 1200 Greek catholics,
100 Maronites, 100 Greeks, 1000 Moutonalis, and 100 Turks.
Mr Jowett observed numerous and beautiful columns stretched
along the beach, or standing in fragments, half buried in the
sand that lias been accumulating for ages. ' The broken aqueduct,
and the ruins which appear in its neighbourhood, exist as an
allecting monument of the fragile and transitory nature of earthly
grandeur." The old, or continental Tyre, has long since: dis-
appeared, and its \ery site, like that of Nineveh and Babylon,
cauuot now be accurately recognised. — Ed.
C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DBUT.
of a burying-place ; and adds in a subsequent verse,
' Abraham stood up and bowed himself to the people of
the land, even to the children of Heth ;' which sufficient-
ly proves their claim to that part of the family inheri-
tance. The principal settlements of the Hittites, were
in the mountainous part of the country ; for the Hittites
are mentioned with the Jebusites as dwelling in the
mountains.
The city of Hebron was originally called Kirjath
Arba, or the city of Arba, a great man among the Ana-
kirns. 3 It was a place of gTeat antiquity ; for, according
to Moses, it was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt,
the naval city of the Pharaohs, the ancient kings of
Egypt ; and was one of the oldest cities in that kingdom.
Hebron was situated among the mountains, on the ridge
which runs southward from Jerusalem. It became
famous for the long residence of Abraham in its neigh-
bourhood, and for being the burying-place of his family.
In succeeding times, it was the chosen abode of David
during the first seven years of his reign ; and is supposed
to have been the dwelling-place of Zacharias and Elisa-
beth, the parents of John the baptist. Hebron was also
one of the cities of refuge, and was given to the tribe of
Levi, by the appointment of Jehovah.
In the immediate neighbourhood of this city, was the
plain of Mamre, called in another passage of Scripture,
the vale of Hebron. It lies on the south side of the
town, at a distance of about two miles ; and is represent-
ed as remarkably fertile and pleasant ; a circumstance
sufficiently attested by the protracted residence of the
venerable patriarch, who had a right to select the richest
pastures of Canaan. His tent was pitched under the
shade of a spreading oak, from whence, reposing at his
ease, he could see his flocks and his herds feeding at
large on the surrounding hills. But what chiefly recom-
mended Mamre and its umbrageous oak to him, was the
vision of angels with which he was honoured, on their
way to execute the vengeance of God in the cities of the
plain ; a circumstance which has rendered that fertile
vale memorable to every succeeding age.*
Next to the Hittites in the same tract of country, were
planted the sons of Jebus, who seem to have been its
original inhabitants. The capital city of their posses-
sions was called Jebus, in honour of their venerable
founder; a name which it afterwards exchanged for
Jerusalem, one of the most celebrated on the records of
history. These facts are explicitly stated b) the inspired
writer: 'And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem
which is Jebus ; where the Jebusites were the inhabitants
of the land.'4 This city is first mentioned in Scripture
under the name of Salem, which is by interpretation,
peace; the capital of the kingdom over which Bfelchi-
zedek reigned. The name by which it was afterwards
known seems to be compounded of both Jebus and
8 Josh. xiv. 15. 1 1 (In- si. I-
b It is at present called Hebroun and Khalyl, Is situated in a
hilly country, twenty mil''- Bouth of Jerusalem, at tin- !■>■ I
eminence, on which are some ruins, the misshapen remain
ancienl castle. The adjacent country is ■ sort of oblong hoUow,
6, or 6 leaguesin length, and not disagreeably varied by rocky
hillocks, groves of fir-trees, and often plantations ol vines and
olive-trees. Hew are some small manufactories of cotton, soap,
and trinkets; in consequence of which, Hebron is the most
powerful village in this quarter — Ed.
344.
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1G46. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
Salem, and to have been originally written Jebussalem,
but, for the sake of the sound, afterwards softened into
Jerusalem. In Hebrew the word assumes the dual
form, and is commonly read .lerusalaim ; probably to
denote that the city consisted of two parts, of which one
was the old city, where Melchizedek and the Jebusites
dwelt ; and the other the new city built by David and
his successors on the throne of Israel and Judah, which
for its extent might be regarded as a new city, or new
Jerusalem. This term, the Greeks, adapting it to their
language, according to their usual practice, changed
into Hierosolyma, which literally signifies the sacred
city.
The old city founded by the Jebusites before Abra-
ham arrived in Canaan, is styled by some writers the
city of Melchizedek, not because he was the founder,
but because it was the seat of his government. This
ancient city was so strongly fortified both by nature and
art, that the people of Israel could not drive out the
Jebusites, its original inhabitants, but were reduced to
live with them at Jerusalem. The armies of Israel
indeed seized the city ; but the Jebusites kept possession
of the strong fort which defended the town, till the reign
of David, who took it by storm, and changed its name
to the city of David, to signify the importance of the
conquest, and to perpetuate the memory of the event.
Having chosen Jerusalem for the place of his residence
and the capital of his kingdom, he adorned the fortress
with a royal palace for his own accommodation, and a
variety of other buildings, which, from the continual
additions made to them in succeeding reigns, increased
to the size of a considerable city, and covered nearly
the whole of Mount Zion. The largeness of the city of
David, may be inferred from the expression of the
sacred historian : ' David built round about from Millo
and inward.' * This passage, and particularly the word
Millo, has greatly exercised the genius and divided the
sentiments of commentators ; and is therefore entitled
to more particular notice. That Millo was situate in
the city of David, the inspired historian expressly
asserts.2 It seems to have been a public building,
where the king and his princes met in council about
affairs of state. The words of the historian are : ' And
this is the reason of the levy (or tax) which king Solo-
mon raised ; for to build the house of the Lord, and his
own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and
Hazor. and Megiddo, and Gezer.' But every ground
of hesitation is removed by the sacred writer of the
second book of Kings, who calls it expressly ' the house
of Millo.'3 That it was a public building, in one of
whose apartments the council of state met to deliberate
upon public affairs, is rendered extremely probable by
one of the kings of Judah losing his life there by the
hands of his princes ; for we are told, that ' the servants
of king Joash arose and made a conspiracy, and slew
him in the house of Millo,' whither he had probably come
to consult with his princes and other principal persons
upon some affairs of state.
This interpretation is greatly strengthened by a pas-
sage in the book of Judges, which informs us, that ' all
the men of Shechem gathered together, and all the house
of Millo, and went and made Abimelech kinff.' The
1 2 Sam.
3 2 Chron. xxxii. 5. 3 2 Kings xii. 20.
city of Shechem then had also its house of Millo, and a
great number of persons connected with it, whom the
sacred writer distinguishes from the men of the city.
Now, since both were concerned in making Abimelech
king, it is natural to conclude, that the men of the city
were the inferior inhabitants, and the house of Millo the
chief men of the place : both of whom on this occasion
met in the senate -house, to set the crown upon the head
of their favourite.
The house of Millo upon Mount Zion, appears to
have been a place of great strength, and essentially
connected with the defence of Jerusalem ; for when
Hezekiah discovered that Sennacherib meditated the
reduction of Jerusalem, ' he strengthened himself, and
built up all the wall that was broken, and raised it up to
the towers, and another wall without, and repaired Millo
in the city of David, and made darts and shields in
abundance.'* From the intimate connexion between
the repairing of Millo and the making of darts and other
implements of war, it has been conjectured by some
writers that one part of that public building was occupied
as an armoury, in which there is nothing improbable.
The possessions of the Philistines were divided into
five lordships, denominated from their chief towns,
Gaza, Ashdod, Eshkalon, Gath, and Ekron.
Gaza lay in the southern extremity of that narrow
strip of country which submitted to the arms of the Phil-
istines ; and the city of Gaza, from which the lordship
took its name, stood in the south-west angle of the land
of Canaan. This was the city whose gates Samson
carried away to the top of the hill, and where he was
kept in prison by his cruel and ungenerous enemies.
It was famous for the temple of Dagon, which the
renowned Israelite pulled down upon himself and his
unfeeling tormentors, in revenge for the loss of his
sight and his liberty. This place was afterwards chosen
by the Persians, to be the treasury where they deposited
the tribute of the western provinces of their immense
empire ; whence all riches received, at length, among
the people of those countries, the name of Gaza. It
was destroyed by Alexander the Great, as the prophet
had foretold, and consigned to perpetual desolation.
The city built by Constantine, and called by the name
of Gaza, is nearer to the sea than the ancient city, and
by consequence does not affect the truth of the prediction.
Next to Gaza, northward, rose the city of Askelon,
styled by the Greeks and Latins, Ascalon, and situate
also on the sea shore. It is said to have been famous
among the idolatrous nations of antiquity, for a temple
dedicated to Decreto, the mother of Semiramis, who
was adored here under the form of a mermaid ; and for
a temple of Apollo, in which Herod, the father of Anti-
pater, and grandfather of Herod the great, officiated as
priest.
Above Ascalon, still farther to the north, stood the
city of Ashdod, called by the Greeks, Azotus, and men-
tioned under that name in the Acts of the Apostles. It
lies near the shores between Gaza and Joppa, and was
distinguished by the temple of Dagon. Into this temple
the captive ark of Jehovah was brought, by the triumph-
ant idolaters, and set by the side of their unsightly idol.
But their joy was of short duration, the object of their
4 2 Chron. xxxii. 5.
Sbct. Ill] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
3ti
A. M. 2M5. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO H LES, A.
stupid veneration was cast prostrate before the symbol
of the divine presence, and broken in pieces, and a
severe but righteous vengeance inflicted on themselves,
for their presumption. The passage is too important to
be omitted. ' And when they of Ashdod rose early on
the morrow, behold Dagon was fallen on his face to the
earth, before the ark of the Lord : and they took Dagon
and set him in his place again. And when they rose
earlyr on the morrow morning, behold Dagon was fallen
on his face to the ground, before the ark of the Lord ;
and the head of Dagon, and both the palms of his hands
were cut oft' upon the threshold, only the stump of Dagon
was left to him.' Nor was this all ; ' The hand of the
Lord was heavy upon the men of Ashdod ; and he de-
stroyed and smote them with emrods, even Ashdod, and
the coast thereof. And when the men of Ashdod saw
that it was so, they said, The ark of the God of Israel
shall not abide with us ; for his hand is sore upon us,
and upon Dagon our god. They sent, therefore, and
gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them, and
said, What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel ?
And they answered, Let the ark of the Gotl of Israel be
carried about unto Gath. And they carried the ark of
the God of Israel thither.' l
Gath, lying- still farther to the north than Ashdod, was
memorable in the history of the Old Testament, for being
the birthplace of the giant Goliah,who defied the armies
of the living God, and suffered the punishment due to
his impiety, from the hand of David. The city was dis-
mantled by this prince, but was afterwards rebuilt by
Rehoboam his grandson, and after being again disman-
tled by Azias, king of Judah, was totally destroyed by
Hazael, king of Syria. But from this catastrophe it
gradually recovered, and retained its ancient name in
the days of Eusebius and Jerome, who place it about
four miles from Eleutheropolis, towards Diospolis, or
Lydda.
Gath suffered severely while the ark of the covenant
was detained within its walls : ' The hand of the Lord,'
says the sacred writer, ' was against the city with a very
great destruction ; and he smote the men of the city,
both small and great ; and they had emrods in their secret
parts. Therefore they sent the ark of God to Ekron.' z
This city was placed in the northern extremity of the
country, which submitted to the yoke of the Philistines.
It was called by the Greeks Accaron ; was a place of
great wealth and power, and held out a long time against
the armies of Israel. Ekron is frequently mentioned in
the holy Scriptures, and particularly for the idolatrous
worship of Beelzebub, that is, the lord of flies ; a name
given him by the Jews, either in contempt of his divinity,
and the rites of his worship, or in allusion to the numer-
ous swarms of flies which attended his sacrifices. But
whatever might be the reason for distinguishing by this
name, certain it is, in this city was the principal seat of
his worship : here he was held in the highest honour, and
is therefore called in Scripture, ' the God of Ekron.'
The inhabitants of Ekron, less hardened in crime, or
less insensible to danger than their neighbours, were the
first that advised the Philistines to restore the ark of
Jehovah, the God of Israel. ' The Ekronites cried
M. 37G5. A. C. 1C4G. NUM. xviii. TO THE BKD OF DEUT.
out, saying, They have brought about the ark of the
God of Israel to us, to slay us and our people. So
they sent and gathered together all the lords of the
Philistines, and said, Send away the ark of the God of
Israel, and let it go to its own place;' and the destruc-
tive calamity which hung over their devok'cl fcfty was
averted.
The land of Canaan was reserved by the wisdom and
goodness of Heaven, for the possession of his peculiar
people, and the display of the most stupendous wonders.
The theatre was small, but admirably situated fur the
convenient observation of the human race, — at the junc-
tion of the two great continents of Asia and Africa, and
almost within sight of Europe. From this highly favoured
spot, as from a common centre, the report of God's won-
derful works, the glad tidings of salvation through the
obedience and sufferings of his eternal Son, might he
rapidly and easily wafted to every part of the globe, and
circulated through every nation, When the most High,
therefore, fixed the boundaries of the post-diluvian king-
doms, he reserved the inheritance of Canaan, for the
future seat of his glory ; and while powerful states, and
extended empires rose and flourished, in the circumja-
cent regions, his secret providence parcelled out the
land of promise among a number of petty kings, whose
individual weakness and jarring interests, gave them an
easy prey to the armies of Israel. To this arrangement
the inspired prophet certainly refers in these words, ' Re-
member the days of old, consider the years of many
generations ; ask thy father, and he will show thee, thy
elders, and he will tell thee.' When the most High
divided to the nations their inheritance, when he sepa-
rated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people,
according to the number of the children of Israel. Ca-
naan and his posterity were directed to take possession
of Palestine, rather than any other branch of Noah's
descendants, because he had already fallen under the
solemn malediction of his grandfather Noah, for his un-
natural conduct; and they were permitted to fill up the
measure of their iniquity by a general corruption of
manners, and particularly, by departing from the know-
ledge of the true God, to the service of idols : and
therefore might be justly driven out, when the time fixed
in the divine purpose arrived, to make room for the
chosen people of Jehovah. ' Their bounds,' Bays the in-
spired writer, ' he set, according to the number of the
children of Israel;' for Canaan anil his eleven sons
exactly correspond with the twelve bribes, into which the
family of Jacob was divided. 3
1 Sam. v. 2-
1 Sam. v. <>, iO.
CHAP. V. — On the Mountains of Canaan.
BY THE EDITOR.
Palestine is, in general, a mountainous country: even
the whole of Syria, of which the Holy hand U reckoned
a part, is in some degree a chain of mountains, branching
oft* in various directions, from one great and leading
ridoe. Whether the traveller a| proacfa it from the sea,
■ Paxton'a [Omtntians, vol. l. p. Tir— IU
2x
346
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[Book IV.
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 37G5. A. C. 1G4G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
or from the immense plains of the desert, he beholds,
at a great distance, a lofty and clouded chain running
north and south as far as the eye can reach ; and as he
advances, sees the tops of the mountains sometimes
detached, and sometimes united in ridges, uniformly
terminate in one great line, towering above them all.
This line, which extends without interruption, from its
entry by the north quite into Arabia, runs at first close
to the sea, between Alexandretta and the Orontes ; and
after opening a passage to that river, proceeds to the
southward, quitting for a short distance the shore, and
in a chain of summits stretches as far as the sources of
the Jordan ; where it divides into two branches, to
enclose, as it were, in a capacious basin, this river and
its three lakes. During its course, a countless number
of branches separate from the main trunk, some of which
are lost in the desert, where they form various enclosed
hollows, as those of Damascus and Haran; while others
advance towards the sea, where they sometimes end in
steep declivities as at Carmel, or Nekoura, or by a gentle
descent sink into the plains of Antioch and Tripoli, of
Tyre and Acre.
Such is the general appearance of the country which
Moses taught his people to expect, while they traversed
the burning and dreary wilderness : ' for the land whither
thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt,
from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed,
and wateredst it with thy foot as a garden of herbs : but
the land whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills
and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.' 1
The striking contrast, in this short but glowing descrip-
tion, between the land of Egypt, where the people of
Israel had so long and so cruelly suffered, and the
inheritance promised to their fathers, where Jehovah
reserved for them and their children every blessing that
a nation can desire, must have made a deep impression
on their minds. In Egypt, the eye is fatigued with wan-
dering over an immense fiat plain, intersected with stag-
nant canals, and studded with mud-walled towns and
cottages ; seldom refreshed with a single shower ; exhib-
iting, for three months, the singular spectacle of an
extensive sheet of water, from which the towns and
villages that are built upon the higher grounds, are seen
like islands in the midst of the ocean, marshy and rank
with vegetation for three others — and parched and dusty
the remainder of the year. They had seen a population
of naked and sunburnt peasants, tending their buffaloes,
or driving their camels, or sheltering themselves from
the overwhelming heat beneath the shade of the thinly
scattered date or sycamore trees ; below, natural or
artificial lakes, cultivated fields, and vacant grounds of
considerable extent — overhead, a burning sun, darting
his oppressive rays from an azure sky, almost invariably
free from clouds. In that " weary land," they were
compelled to water their corn fields with the foot ; a
painful and laborious employment, rendered necessary
by the want of rain. Those vegetable productions which
require a greater quantity of moisture than is furnished
by the periodical inundations of the Nile, they were
obliged to refresh with water drawn out of the river by
machinery, and lodged afterwards in capacious cisterns.
"When the melons, sugar canes, and other vegetables
1 Dent. xi. 11.
that are commonly disposed in rills, required to be
refreshed, they struck out the plugs which are fixed in the
bottoms of the cisterns ; and then the water gushing out,
is conducted from one rill to another by the husbandman
who is always ready, as occasion requires, to stop and
divert the torrent, by turning the earth against it with his
foot, opening at the same time with his mattock a new
trench to receive it. 2 Such is the practice to which
Moses alludes ; and it continues to be observed without
variation to this day. But from this fatiguing uniformity
of surface, and toilsome method of watering their
grounds, the people of Israel were now to be relieved ;
they were going to possess a land of hills and valleys,
clothed with woods, beautified and enriched with foun-
tains of water, divided by rivers, streams, and brooks,
flowing cool and pure from the summits of their moun-
tains, and, with little attention from the cultivator,
exciting the secret powers of vegetation, and scattering
plenty wherever they came.
Sometimes the drought of summer renders frequent
waterings necessary even in Judea. On such occasions,
the water is drawn up from the wells by oxen, and
carried by the inhabitants in earthen jars, to refrigerate
their plantations on the sides of the hills.3 The necessi-
ty to which the Jewish husbandman is occasionally
reduced, to water his grounds in this manner, is not
inconsistent with the words of Moses, which distinguish
the Holy Land from Egypt, by its drinking rain from
heaven, while the latter is watered by the foot. The
inspired prophet alludes, in that passage, not to gardens
of herbs, or other cultivated spots on the steep declivities
of the hills and mountains, where, in so warm a climate
as that of Canaan, the deficiency of rain must be supplied
by art, but to their corn fields ; which, in Egypt, are
watered by artificial canals, in the manner just described ;
in Canaan by the rain of heaven.
The most remarkable mountains in Palestine, are those
of Lebanon, so frequently celebrated in the holy Scrip-
tures. This lofty range, described by ancient and
modern historians under the names of Libanus and
Antilibanus, is the highest point of all Syria, and serves
equally as a boundary to Judea and Assyria ; but, so
frequent mention is made of them in the writings of the
prophets, that they are generally included within the
confines of the land of promise. They reach their highest
elevation to the south-east of Tripoli ; and their tower-
ing summits capped with clouds, are discerned at the
distance of thirty leagues. The superior height of
Lebanon, is ascertained by the course of the rivers.
The Orontes, flowing from the mountains of Damascus,
loses itself below Antioch ; the Kasmia which, north of
Balbec, shapes its course towards Tyre ; the Jordan,
forced by the declivities towards the south, prove this to
be the highest point. Next to Lebanon, the highest part
of the country is Akkar, which becomes visible as soon
as the traveller leaves Marra in the desert. It appears
like an immense flattened cone, and is constantly seen
for two days' journey. The height of these mountains
has not been ascertained by the barometer ; but we may
deduce it from a circumstance mentioned by every
traveller who visits the land of promise. In winter,
their tops are entirely covered with snow, from Alexan-
2 Shaw's Travels
Pococke's Travels.
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c
347
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
dretta to Jerusalem, but after March, it melts, except on
Mount Lebanon ; where, however, according to Volney,
it does not continue the whole year, unless in the highest
cavities, and towards the north-east, where it is sheltered
from the sea breeze, and the rays of the sun. In this
situation, that traveller saw it at the very time he com-
plains of being nearly suffocated with heat in the valley
of Balbec. Now since it is fully ascertained, that snow
in this latitude, requires an elevation of fifteen or sixteen
hundred fathoms, we may conclude that to be the height
of Lebanon. It is therefore much lower than the Alps,
or even than the Pyrenees : Mont Blanc, the loftiest of
the Alps, is estimated at two thousand four hundred
fathoms above the level of the sea ; and the peak of
Apian in the Pyrenees, at nineteen hundred.
Lebanon, which gives its name to the extensive range
of the Kessauan, and the country of the Drusez, presents
to the traveller everywhere majestic mountains. At
every step, he meets with scenes in which nature displays
beauty or grandeur, sometimes romantic wildness, but
always variety. The sublime elevation and steep ascent
of this magnificent rampart, which seems to enclose the
country ; the gigantic masses which shoot into the clouds,
inspire him with astonishment and reverence. Should
he scale these summits which bounded his view, and
ascend the highest point of Lebanon, distinguished by
the name of the Sannin, the immensity of space which
expands around him, becomes a fresh subject of admira-
tion. On every side, he beholds a horizon without
bounds ; whilst, in clear weather, the sight is lost over
the desert, which extends to the Persian gulf, and over
the sea, which washes the coasts of Europe. He seems
to command the whole world ; while the wandering eye,
now surveying the successive chains of mountains, trans-
ports the mind in one instant, from Antioch to Jerusalem ;
and now, approaching the surrounding objects, observes
the distant profundity of the coast, till the attention at
last fixed by distincter objects, more minutely examines
the rocks, the woods, the torrents, the sloping sides of
the hills, the villages and the towns ; and the mind
secretly exults at the diminution of objects, which
formerly appeared so great. He sees the valleys
obscured by stormy clouds, with fresh delight, and smiles
at hearing the thunder, which so often burst over his
head, growling beneath his feet ; while the threatening
summits of the mountains are diminished, till they ap-
pear like the furrows of a ploughed field, or the steps
of an amphitheatre, and he feels himself gratified by an
elevation above so many lofty objects, on which he now
looks down with inward satisfaction. l
On visiting the interior parts of these mountains, the
roughness of the roads, the steep descents and preci-
pices, strike him at first with terror ; but the sagacity of
the mule which he rides, the only beast of burden which
can traverse them with safety, soon relieves him, and he
calmly surveys those picturesque scenes that entertain
him in quick succession. There he travels whole days
together, to reach a place which was in sight at his
departure ; he winds, descends, skirts the hills, and
climbs their precipitous sides ; and in this perpetual
change, it seems as if magic herself varied for him at
every step, the decorations of the scenery. Sometimes
1 Volney 's Travels, vol. 1. p. 203.
M. 3765. A. C. 1C4G. NUM. .wiii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
he sees villages gliding from the steep declivities on
which they were built, and so arranged, that the terraces
of one row of houses, serve as a street to those above
them. Sometimes he sees the habitation of a recluse,
standing on a solitary height; here a rock, perforated
by a torrent, and become a natural arch ; there another
rock, worn perpendicular, resembles a high wall. On
the sides of the hills, he frequently sees beds of stones
uncovered and detached by the waters, rising up like
artificial ruins. In many places, the waters meeting
with inclined beds, have excavated the intermediate
earth, and formed caverns ; in others, subterraneous
channels are formed, through which flow rivulets for a
part of the year. These subterraneous rivulets are
common throughout Syria ; they are found near Damas-
cus, at the sources of the Orontes, and at those of the
Jordan. That of the Mar-Kanna, near the village of
Shouair, opens by a gulf called Elbaloisa, or the
Swallower. It is an aperture of about ten feet wide,
in the middle of a hollow ; at the depth of fifteen
feet, is a sort of first bottom, but it only hides a very
profound lateral opening. Some years before Volney
visited Lebanon, it was shut, as it had served to conceal
a murder. The winter rains coming on, the waters
collected and formed a pretty deep lake ; but some
small streams penetrating among the stones, they were
soon stripped of the earth which fastened them, and the
pressure of the mass of water prevailing, the whole
obstacle was removed with an explosion like thunder ;
and the re-action of the compressed air was so violent,
that a column of water spouted up, and fell upon a house
at the distance of at least two hundred paces. The
current thus occasioned, formed a whirlpool, which
swallowed up the trees and vines planted in the hollow,
and threw them out by the second aperture.
These picturesque situations often become tragical.
By thaws and earthquakes, rocks have been known to
lose their equilibrium, roll down on the neighbouring
houses, and bury the inhabitants. This happened about
twenty years before Volney 's visit, when a fragment of
the mountain, slipping from its base, overwhelmed a
whole village, without leaving a single trace where it
formerly stood. Still more lately, and near the sane
place, says that traveller, the entire side of a hill covered
with mulberries and vines, was detached by a sudden
thaw, and sliding down the rock, was launched like a
ship from the rocks, into the valley below. It might be
supposed, that such accidents would disgust the inhabi-
tants of these mountains; but, besides that they happen
seldom, they are compensated by an advantage, which
makes them prefer their perilous habitations, to (he most
stable and fertile plains, — the security they enjoy from
the oppressions of the Turks. This security is esteemed
so great a blessing by the inhabitants, that they have
discovered an industry on these rocks, which we may
elsewhere expect in vain. By mere art and labour, they
have fertilized a rocky soil. Sometimes to gain water,
they conduct it by a thousand windings along the decli-
vities, or stop it by dams in the valleys ; while in other
places they support the ground, ready t<> crumble down,
by walls and terraces. Almost all these mountains cul-
tivated in this manner, have the appearance of a flight
of stairs, or an amphitheatre, every step of which is a
row of vines or mulberry trees. Our author computed
348
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[Book IV.
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3705. A. C. I64G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
from one hundred to one hundred and twenty of these
gradations on the same declivity. In many places,
their summits are flattened and stretched into vast plains ;
which reward the toil of the cultivator with luxuriant
crops of corn and all kinds of pulse. Numerous rivulets
of excellent water intersect these elevated regions, and
diffuse on every side the nicest verdure. The soil which
covers the declivities, and the narrow valleys which
separate them, is extremely fertile, and produces in
abundance, corn, wine, and oil, which D'Arvieux pro-
nounces to be the best in Syria.
These mountains consist of a hard calcareous, whitish,
stone, sonorous like freestone, and disposed in strata
variously inclined. This stone has nearly the same ap-
pearance in every part of Syria : sometimes it is quite
bare and peeled ; such, for instance, is that of the hills
on the north side of the road from Antioch to Aleppo,
and that which serves as a bed to the upper part of the
rivulet which passes by the latter city. In travelling
from Aleppo to Hama, veins of the same rock are con-
stantly to be met with in the plain ; while the mountains
on the right present huge piles, which appear like the
ruins of towns and castles. The same stone, under a
more regular form, likewise composes the greater part
of Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon, the mountains of the
Drusez, Galilee, and Mount Carmel, and stretch to the
south of the lake Asphaltites. The inhabitants every-
where build their houses, and make lime with it. Of
this beautiful stone was the temple of Jehovah built,
and the other splendid edifices with which Solomon
adorned the capital of his kingdom. He ' had three-
score and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore
hewers in the mountains ; and the king commanded, and
brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones,
to lay the foundations of the house. And Solomon's
builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the
stone-squarers.' *
Volney never heard that these stones contained any
petrified shells in the upper regions of Lebanon ; but
he found between Batround and Djebail, in the Kes-
raonan, not far from the sea, a quarry of schistus stone,
the flakes of which bear the impressions of plants, fish,
shells, and particularly the sea onion. The bed of the
torrent of Azkalon, in Palestine, is also lined with a
heavy stone, porous and salt, which contains many small
volutes and bivalves of the Mediterranean. Pococke
found a large quantity of them in the rocks which border
on the Lead Sea. These are indubitable remains of
the antediluvian world, and afford an additional proof,
if any were needed, of the existence and prevalence of
the deluge over the surface of our globe.
So famous was this stupendous mountain (Lebanon)
in the days of Moses, that to be permitted to see it, was
the object of his earnest desires and repeated prayers ;
and, as the strongest expression of his admiration, he
connects it in his addresses to the throne of his God,,
with Zion the future seat of his divine glory. ' I pray
thee, let me go over and see the good land that is
beyond Jordan ; that goodly mountain and Lebanon.'
The storms and tempests which, gathering on the
highest peak of Lebanon, burst on the plains and val-
leys below, are often very severe. When De la Valle
1 1 Kings v. 15, 17, 18.
was travelling in the neighbourhood of that mountain,
in the end of April, a wind blew from its summit so
vehement and so cold, with so great a profusion of snow,
that though he and his companions were in a manner
buried in their quilted coverlets, yet it was sensibly felt,
and proved very disagreeable. It is not, therefore,
without reason that Lebanon, or the white mountain, as
the term signifies, is the same by which that lofty chain
is distinguished ; and that the sacred writers so fre-
quently refer to the snow and the gelid waters of Leba-
non. They sometimes allude to it as a wild and deso-
late region ; and certainly no part of the earth is more
dreary and barren than the Sannin, the region of per-
petual snow. On that naked summit, the^ seat of storm
and tempest, where the principles of vegetation are
extinguished, the art and industry of man can make no
impression ; nothing but the creating power of God him-
self, can produce a favourable alteration. Thus, pre-
dicting a wonderful change, such as results from the
signal manifestations of the divine favour to individuals
or the church, the prophet demands, ' Is it not yet a
very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a
fruitful field ? ' 2 The contrast in this promise between
the naked, snowy, and tempestuous summit of Lebanon,
and a field beautified and enriched with the fairest and
most useful productions of nature, expresses with great
force, the difference which the smiles of Heaven produce
in the most wretched and hopeless circumstances of an
individual or a nation.
Lebanon was justly considered as a very strong barrier
to the land of promise ; and opposing an almost insur-
mountable obstacle to the movements of cavalry and
chariots of war. When Sennacherib, therefore, in the
arrogance of his heart, and the pride of his strength,
wished to express the ease with which he had subdued
the greatest difficulties, and how vain was the resistance
of Hezekiah and his people, he says, ' By the multitude
of my chariots am I come up to the height of the moun-
tains, to the sides of Lebanon ; and I will cut down the
tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir-trees thereof; and
I will enter into the height of his border, and the forest
of his Carmel.' What others accomplish on foot with
much labour and the greatest difficulty, by a winding
path cut into steps, which no beast of burden, except the
cautious and surefooted mule, can tread, that haughty
monarch vaunted he could perform with horses and a
multitude of chariots. Surrounded by crouching slaves,
and accustomed to see every obstacle vanish before him,
he vainly supposed he could gratify the most inordinate
desire ; and what the world accounted physical impos-
sibilities, must yield to his power.
The lofty summits of Lebanon were the chosen haunts
of various beasts of prey ; the prints of whose feet,
Maundrell and his party observed in the snow. To
these savage tenants of the desert, the prophet Habakkuk
seems to allude in that prediction : ' For the violence
of Lebanon shall cover thee, and the spoil of beasts,
which made them afraid, because of men's blood, and
for the violence of the land.' 3 The violence of Leba-
non is a beautiful and energetic expression, denoting
the ferocious animals that roam on its mountains, and
lodge in its thickets ; and that, occasionally descending
11 Is. xxix. 1*
Hab. ii. 8.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
319
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
into the plain in quest of prey, ravage the fold or seize
upon the unwary villager. To such dangers Solomon
expressly refers, in the animated invitation which, in the
name of the Redeemer, he addresses to the church :
' Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from
Lebanon : look from the top of Aniana, from the top of
Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the
mountains of the leopards.'1 AYith these fierce and
ravenous animals, the prophet Jeremiah joins the wolves
of the evening, and sends them to lay waste the habita-
tions of his guilty and unrepenting nation : ' Wherefore
a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of
the evening shall spoil them ; a leopard shall watch over
their cities, every one that goeth out thence shall be torn
in pieces ; because their transgressions are many, and
their backslidings are increased.' Near the base of the
mountains, the traveller is entertained with a more
pleasing sight than the lion slumbering in his den, or
the print of his feet in the snow ; he sees the hart or the
deer shooting from the steep, to quench his thirst in the
stream. a It was when David wandered near the foot of
Lebanon, driven by his unnatural son Absalom from
Zion and the fountain of Israel, the scenes of divine
manifestation, that he marked the rapid course of these
animals to the rivulets which descended from the sides
of the mountains. He saw the hart panting for the
water brooks, and the sight reminded him of his former
enjoyments, while the circumstances of the creature bore
a striking analogy to his own situation and feelings at
the time. The passage, in which, prompted by the
casual incident, he poured out the ardent longings of
his soul for the waters of life, is wonderfully beautiful
and tender : ' As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
so pants my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth
for God, the living God ; when shall I come and appear
before God ?' 3
Though the upper regions of Lebanon are unfit for
the habitation of man, they still contribute to his advan-
tage. From their accumulated snows descend a thousand
streams of pure and wholesome water, to irrigate the
fields below, to clothe them with verdure, and enrich
them with the choicest products. The fountains and the
streams of Lebanon, furnish accordingly a number of
pleasing figures to the inspired writers. The church is
described in the Song of Solomon, as a fountain of
gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from
Lebanon. * And the prophet, in reproving the folly and
perverseness of his people, demands, ' A\ ill a man
leave the snow of Lebanon which cometh from the rock
of the field ? or, shall the cold flowing waters that come
from another place be forsaken?'* No man, in the
sober exercise of reason, would leave the pure and re-
freshing streams which descend from the sides of that
stupendous mountain, for the miry puddle or the insipid
waters of the cistern ; yet, with still greater absurdity
than such conduct betrays, had the chosen people of
God forsaken the worship of his name, for the degrading
and unprofitable service of idols.
The approach to Lebanon is adorned with olive plan-
tations, vineyards, and luxuriant fields ; and its lower
regions, besides the olive and the vine, are beautified with
1 Song iv. 8.
' Ps. xlii. J.
" Maundrcll's Travels.
4 Son" iv. 15. 5 Jer. xviii. I J.
M. 37C5. A. C. 164G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
the myrtle, the styrax, and other odoriferous shrubs ; and
the perfume which exhales from these plants is increased
by the fragrance of the cedars, which crown the summits,
or garnish the declivities of the mountain. The great
ravine, which runs a long way up into the mountain, and
is on both sides exceedingly steep and high, is clothed
from the top to the bottom with fragrant evergreens, and
everywhere refreshed with streams, descending from the
rocks in beautiful cascades, the work of divine wisdom
and goodness. These cool and limpid streams, uniting
at the bottom, form a large and rapid torrent, whose
agreeable murmur is heard over all the place, and adds
greatly to the pleasure of that romantic scene. 6 The
fragrant odours wafted from the aromatic plants of this
noble mountain, have not been overlooked by the sacred
writers. The eulogium which Christ pronounces on the
graces of the church, contains the following direct
reference : ' The smell of thy garments is like the smell
of Lebanon;' and the prophet Hosea, in his glowing
description of the future prosperity of Israel, converts
the assertion of Solomon into a promise : ' His branches
shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree,
and his smell as Lebanon.'
The richness and llavour of the wines produced in its
vineyards have been celebrated by travellers in all ages.
Rauwolf declares, that the wine which he drank at
Canobin, a Greek monastery on Mount Libanus, far
surpassed any he had ever tasted. His testimony is
corroborated by Le Bruin, who pronounces the wines of
Canobin better and more delicate than are to be found
any where else in the world. 7 They are red, of a beauti-
ful colour, and so oily that they adhere to the glass ;
these are so excellent, that our traveller thought he
never tasted any kind of drink more delicious. The
wines produced on other parts of the mountain, although
in much greater abundance, are not nearly so good. To
the delicious wines of Canobin, the prophet Hosea cer-
tainly refers in this promise : ' They that dwelt under
his shadow shall return ; they shall revive as the corn,
and grow as the vine : the scent thereof shall be as the
wine of Lebanon.' 8
In striking allusion to the scenery and productions of
that mountain, it is promised in the sixth verse : ' His
branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the
olive-tree, and his smell (or his memorial, as the original
term signifies,) as Lebanon.' His branches shall spread
like the mighty arms of the cedar, every one of which is
equal in size to a tree; his beauty shall be as the olive-
tree, which is admitted by all who have seen it, to he
one of the most beautiful productions of nature ; and his
smell, his very memorial, shall be as the wine of Leba-
non, which delights the tatte, and the very recoiled inn
of which excites the commendation of those that have
drunk it, long after the banquel is over. The meaning
of these glorious figures undoubted!) is. that the righte-
ous man shall prosper by the distinguishing favour «>f
Heaven ; shall become excellent, ami useful, and highly
respected while he lives ; and after his death, his memory
shall be blessed, and embalmed in the affectionate recol-
lection of the church, f. >r the benefit of many who h.nl
not the opportunity of profiting by his example.
6 Maundrell'a Travels, 7 Harmer'a Observations.
8 Ilosca xiv. 7.
350
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book IV.
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1 189 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
The fragrant odour of the wines produced in the vine-
yards of Lebanon, seems chiefly to have attracted the
notice of our translators. This quality is either ficti-
tious or natural. The orientals, not satisfied with the
fragrance emitted by the essential oil of the grape, fre-
quently put spices into their wines to increase their
flavour. To this practice Solomon alludes in these
words : ' I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of
the juice of my pomegranate.'1 But Savary, in his
Letters on Greece, affirms, that various kinds of naturally
perfumed wines are produced in Crete ; and the wine of
Lebanon, to which the sacred writer alludes, was pro-
bably of the same species.
The cedar of Lebanon has, in all ages, been reckoned
an object of unrivalled grandeur and beauty in the veget-
able kingdom. It is accordingly one of the natural
images which frequently occur in the poetical style of
the Hebrew prophets, and is appropriated to denote
kings, princes, and potentates of the highest rank. Thus,
the prophet Isaiah, whose writings abound with meta-
phors and allegories of this kind, in denouncing the
judgments of God upon the proud and arrogant, declares,
that 2 ' the day of the Lord of hosts, shall be upon all
the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and
upon all the oaks of Bashan.' The king of Israel used
the same figure, in his reply to the challenge of the
king of Judah : 3 ' the thistle that was in Lebanon, sent
to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy
daughter to my son to wife : and there passed by a wild
beast that was in Lebanon, and trod down the thistle.'
The spiritual prosperity of the righteous man, is com-
pared by the psalmist to the same noble plant : ' The
righteous shall flourish as the palm-tree ; he shall grow
as the cedar in Lebanon.' Whatever is majestic and
comely in the human countenance ; whatever commands
the reverence, and excites the love of the beholder, —
Lebanon and its towering cedars are employed by the
sacred writers to express.
To break the cedars, and shake the enormous mass on
which they grew, are the figures that David selects, to
express the awful majesty and infinite power of Jehovah :
4 ' The voice of the Lord is powerful : the voice of the
Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh
the cedars : yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Leb-
anon. He makes them also to skip like a calf : Leb-
anon and Sirion like a young unicorn.' This descrip-
tion of the divine majesty and power, possesses a char-
acter of awful sublimity, which is almost unequalled,
even in the page of inspiration. Jehovah has only to
speak, and the cedar which braves the fierce winds of
heaven is broken, even the cedar of Lebanon, every arm
of which rivals the size of a tree ; he has only to speak,
and the enormous mass of matter on which it grows,
shakes to its foundation, till, extensive, and lofty, and
ponderous as it is, it leaps like the young of the herd in
their joyous frolics, and skips like the young unicorn,
the swiftest of the four-footed race.
The stupendous size, the extensive range, and great
elevation of Libanus ; its towering summits capped with
perpetual snow, or crowned with fragrant cedars ; its
olive plantations ; its vineyards producing the most deli-
M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
cious vines ; its clear fountains aud cold-flowing brooks ;
its fertile vales and odoriferous shrubberies, — combine
to form in Scripture language, ' the glory of Lebanon.'
The extensive forests of cedars which adorned and per-
fumed the summits and declivities of those mountains,
have almost disappeared. Only a small number of these
' trees of God,' which, according to the usual import of
the phrase, signally displayed the divine power, wisdom,
and goodness, now remain. Their countless number,
in the days of Solomon, and their prodigious bulk, must
be recollected, in order to feel the force of that sublime
declaration of the prophet : 5 ' Lebanon is not sufficient
to burn, nor the beasts thereof for a burnt-oftering.'
Though the trembling sinner were to make choice of
Lebanon for the altar ; were to cut down all its forests
to form the .pile ; though the fragrance of this fuel,
with all its odoriferous gums were the incense ; the
wine of Lebanon pressed from all its vineyards the liba-
tion ; and all its beasts the propitiatory sacrifice ; all
would prove insufficient to make an atonement for the
sins of men ; would be regarded as nothing in the eyes
of the supreme Judge for the expiation of even one
transgression. The just and holy law of God requires
a nobler altar, a costlier sacrifice, and a sweeter perfume,
— the obedience and death of a divine person to atone
for our sins, and the incense of his continual intercession,
to secure our acceptance with the Father of mercies, and
admission into the mansions of eternal rest.
The conversion of the Gentile nations from the worship
of idols and the bondage of corruption, to the service
and enjoyment of the true God, is foretold in these
beautiful and striking terms : fi ' The wilderness and the
solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the desert
shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom
abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing ; the
glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency
of Carmel and Sharon : they shall see the glory of the
Lord, and the excellency of our God.7 In the animated
description which the same prophet gives of the pros-
perity to which the kingdom of Christ was destined to
rise in the New Testament dispensation, the following
allusion to the glory of Lebanon again occurs : 7 ' And
it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain
of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the
mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all
nations shall flow into it.' By these words, the prophet
meant to inform his nation, what the event has fully veri-
fied, that the church of the Gentiles was to be of great
extent, like the range of Lebanon, intersecting the
country in various directions ; was to be firmly estab-
lished in the earth, like a fortress built upon the summits
of a steep and lofty mountain ; was to overcome all
opposition, set at defiance the hostile movements of all
her enemies, and regard with indifference or contempt,
the envious exertions of every competitor ; for she shall
be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow
into her. The rapid growth of the New Testament
church, her great extent, and the countless number of her
converts, are fully described in the figurative language
of the psalmist : 8 ' There shall be an handful of corn
in the earth upon the top of the mountains ; the fruit
1 Song viii. 2.
4 Is. ii. 12, 13.
4 Ps. xxix. 4 — 6.
2 Kings xiv. 9.
5 Is. xl. 16.
6 Is. xxxv. 1. — 6.
8 Ps. lxxii. 16.
7 Is. ii. 2.
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351
thereof shall shake like Lebanon ; and they of the city
shall flourish like grass of the earth.' The forests of the
east, always near the point of ignition, under the intense
beams of a vertical sun, from the carelessness or malice
of those who take shelter in their recesses, are frequently-
set on fire ; and the devouring element sometimes con-
tinues its ravages, till extensive plantations are consumed.
To such a terrible conflagration, the prophet justly com-
pares the destructive operations of the Roman armies
under the command of Vespasian and Titus, against the
nation of the Jews, when the nobles and rulers were
slaughtered, the city and temple reduced to ashes, the
people either put to the sword or sold into slavery, and
the whole country laid waste. ' ' Open thy doors, O
Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars. Howl,
fir-tree, for the cedar is fallen ; because the mighty is
spoiled : howl, O ye oaks of Bashan ; for the forest of
the vintage is come down.'
The north-east part of this mountain, adjoining to the
Holy Land, is in Scripture distinguished by the name of
Hermon. It lies on the east of Jordan ; and is known in
Scripture by different names : the Sidonians call it
Sirion, and the Amorites Shenir. This Mount Hermon
is thought, not without some probability, to be the same
with Mount Hor, mentioned by Moses in his description
of the promised land.2
Besides this Mount Hermon in the northern border of
the country beyond Jordan, we read of another mountain
of the same name, lying within the land of Canaan, on
the west of the river Jordan, not far from Mount Tabor.
To this mountain the holy psalmist is thought to refer in
these words : ' The north and the south, thou hast created
them : Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name.'
And in the following passage, ' As the dew of Hermon,
and as the dew that descends about the mountains of
Zion.'
Another branch of Lebanon, which extended for a
considerable way along the eastern coast of the country
beyond Jordan, is mount Gilead, where Laban overtook
Jacob in his return to his father's house ; and being
warned of God in a dream, not to injure the patriarch,
made a covenant with him, and in witness of the solemn
transaction, in conjunction with his son-in-law, made a
heap of stones, and entertained their followers upon it,
in token of sincere and lasting friendship. From this
incident, the place was called Galeed, the heap, or
circle of witness, and Mizpah, a beacon or watch-tower ;
for, said Laban to his son-in-law, 3 ' The Lord watch
between me and thee, when we are absent one from
another, if thou shalt afflict my daughters, or if thou
shalt take other wives beside my daughters : no man is
with us; see, God is witness between me and thee.'
That this was done in a mountain, we are expressly told ;
and from the name given to the heap of stones con-
structed on that occasion, the whole mount, together with
the circumjacent country, received in succeeding times,
the name of Gilead. It lies on the east of the sea of
Galilee, forming part of the ridge of mountains which
run from Mount Lebanon toward the south, on the east
of Canaan ; and included the mountainous region, called
in the New Testament, Trachonitis.
The mountains of Abarini lie beyond Jordan, in the
Zee. xi. 1, 2 Num. xxxiv. 7, 8.
Gen. xxxi. •! — 8.
southern division of the country. One part of these
mountains, or hills, was distinguished by the names of
Mount Nebo and Pisgah. God said unto Moses, 4 ' (Vet
thee up into'this mountain Abarini, unto Mount Nebo,
which is in the land of Moal>, over against Jericho.'
And that this was the same as Pisgah, from whose sum-
mit Moses obtained a sight of the promised land, and
where he terminated a career of greater glory than ever
fell to the lot of any mortal, may be inferred from the fol-
lowing words : 5' And Moses went up from the plains of
Moab, unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah
that is over against Jericho.' From this account it
seems probable that Pisgah, was the highest pinnacle of
Nebo, a mountain in the great range of Abarini ; for tho
term Pisgah may be derived from a root which signifies
to elevate, or raise up ; and therefore may justly denote
the top of the loftiest peak of that mountain.
On the south of Canaan lay Mount Seir, whither Esau
retired from the presence of his brother Jacob. This
mountainous country was originally inhabited by the
Horites, or Horims, the descendants of Hor, or Hori,
from whom the mountain was afterwards called Mount
Hor. It was on a mountain of this name, by the coasts
of Edom, that Aaron died. It is therefore probable,
that the whole tract was formerly called Mount Hor ;
since we find that the inhabitants were formerly called
Horites.
Gilboa was, according to Jerome and Eusebius, a
ridge of mountains, six miles from Bethshan, among
which stood a town of the same name. These mountains
were remarkable for the death of Saul and Jonathan, and
the total defeat of their forces, in a general battle with
the Philistines; an event which the holy psalmist laments
in the most tender elegiac strains. •' The beauty of
Israel is slain upon thy high places : how are the mighty
fallen! Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew,
neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offering,
for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the
shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with
oil.'
The only remarkable mountain on the western border
of Canaan, is Carmel, which lies on the B68 coast, at the
south end of the tribe of Asher, and is frequently men-
tioned in the sacred writings. On this mountain, which
is very rocky, and about 2000 feet in height, the prophet
Elijah fixed his residence. The fields around it have
been celebrated in all ages, for the extent of their pas-
tures, and the richness of their verdure. So great was
the fertility of this region, that, in the language of tho
sacred writers, the name Carmel is often equivalent to a
fruitful field.
Tabor is a lofty mountain of a conical form, which
rises in the plain of Es.lraelon, at two hours' distance
eastward from Nazareth. On the lofty summit of thif
beautiful mountain, by the constant and universal Buflragl
of antiquity, our Saviour was transfigured before his
disciples : when the fashion of his countenance was
altered, his face shone like the sun. and liis raiment be-
came white and glistering.
The rough mountainous trait, ! \ i n u between the hills
of Gilead and the river .Ionian, was called Bashan. I;y
the (.reeks it was named Trarhonitis. It furnishes the
' Dent, xxxii. 49.
1 Deut xxxiv. 1. 6 1 Sam.i. 19.
352
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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sacred writers with many beautiful allusions, and apt
illustrations. So beautiful and stately were the oaks of
Bashan, that the prophet Isaiah classes them with the
cedars of Lebanon. l ' The day of the Lord of hosts shall
be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon
every one that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low:
and upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and
lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan.'
Bashan was celebrated for the extent and luxuriance
of its pastures ; so much so, that, when the prophet Mi-
cah foretells the restoration of his people, and their
rapid prosperity under the fostering care of Jehovah,
he exclaims, ' Let them feed in Bashan and in Gilead,
as in days of old.' The cattle that grazed on these ver-
dant mountains, were remarkable for their size, their
strength, and fatness. Moses, in his dying song, makes
butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs and
rams of the breed of Bashan, a distinguished part of the
portion which God bestowed on his peculiar people. The
oppressors of Israel are frequently compared to the
strong and fierce cattle reared in the same region :
s ' Strong bulls of Bashan,' cried the psalmist, in the name
of the Saviour, ' have beset me round.'
Salmon is a mountain which stood in the neighbour-
hood of Shechem. Its declivities were clothed with lofty
woods, and its summits were capped with snow. To
both these circumstances there are allusions in Scrip-
ture. 3
With respect to the hills in or near Jerusalem, the
most celebrated is Mount Zion, on whose summit stood
the city of David, and where the ark of the covenant
rested under the tent which that pious monarch pitched
for it. The holy hill of Zion stood, according to some
writers, in the north part of Jerusalem ; but the more
probable and general opinion is, that it is the same hill
which is taken for Zion in modern times, situate on the
south of the present city, for the most part without the
walls. But when Jerusalem was in the height of her
power and splendour, in the reign of Solomon and
David, Mount Zion was enclosed within the walls, and
formed the southern district of that celebrated metro-
polis.
The only other eminence deserving of notice is the
mount of Olives ; a a name certainly derived from the
number of olive trees with which it was covered. It is
a part of a long ridge of hills extending from north to
south, with three summits. The mount of Olives is cele-
brated in the history of our Lord. To this mountain it
was his custom to retire in the evening, after he had
spent a laborious day in teaching the multitudes that
attended his ministry in Jerusalem: it was from one of
its summits that he beheld the city, and wept over it, and
predicted its final destruction ; in the garden which lay
at the bottom, he commenced the scene of his last suffer-
ings, for the sins of his people ; and from the highest
peak, as is generally supposed, after he had finished the
work of our redemption on earth, he ascended into his
Father's presence with unspeakable joy and glory. 4
1 Is. ii. 10—14. ■ Ps.xxii. 3 Judg. ix. 47; Ps. lxviii. 14.
4 Paxton's Illustrations, &c. vol. 1. p. 118.
a It lies to the east of Jerusalem, beyond the brook Kedion, and
on it still grows abundance of that plant, from which it is named ;
on its summits are the remains of some ancient edifices. It is
without, mount Moriah being alone within the city.
CHAP. VI. — On the Lakes and Rivers of Palestine.
BY THE EDITOR.
The only considerable lakes in the land of promise,
are those of Tiberias, and the salt sea. The lake of
Tiberias was also known to the sacred writers by the
name of the sea of Galilee, and the lake of Gennesa-
reth. It was called the sea of Tiberias from a town of
that name on its western border ; the sea of Galilee,
from the province of Galilee, in general ; and the lake
of Gennesareth, from that particular tract of Galilee
which skirted its western shore. The breadth of this
lake or sea is stated by Josephus at 40, and the
length at 1 40 furlongs. Mr Buckingham says it is twelve
to fifteen miles in its greatest length, and a variable
breadth from six to nine miles. Its water is limpid,
sweet, and wholesome ; and lying upon gravel, is softer
than the water either of a river or fountain ; and, at the
same time, so cold, that, says the Jewish historian, it
cannot be Avarmed by exposure to the sun, in the hottest
season of the year. It abounds in a great variety of
fish, which, for taste and shape, are peculiar to itself.
The lake of Tiberias is properly a dilatation of the river
Jordan, which through the middle of it pursues his course
to the Dead Sea. The country on both sides is uncom-
monly fruitful and pleasant. So fertile is the soil, that
every plant thrives in it ; and so great is the felicity of
the climate, that nuts, palms, figs, and olive-trees,
flourish here in great profusion, although they naturally
require a quite different temperature ; which, observes
the historian, looks as if Providence took delight in this
place, to reconcile contradictions ; and as if the very
seasons themselves were in a competition which should
be most obliging. The durable character of the fruits
produced in this delightful region, is not less remarkable
than their great variety and excellence. Figs and
grapes continue in season there ten months in the year ;
and other fruits the whole year round. Gennesareth is
not more celebrated for its delicious air and tempera-
ture, than for a spring of living waters, clear as crystal,
to which the nations give the name of Capernaum. The
length of the country along the lake is about four miles,
and the breadth four miles and a half. This district
was, in the time of Josephus, inhabited by a skilful and
industrious people, who wisely availing themselves of
the singular advantages which the soil and climate of
their highly favoured country afforded them, carried the
improvement of their lands to the highest degree of per-
fection. From the extraordinary fruitfulness of this
tract, some conjecture that the word Gennesareth is
compounded of two words, Gan and Sai ; of which the
first denotes in Hebrew a garden, the last a prince, and
consequently the compound, the garden of a prince, or
a princely garden. But, although the name in this view
sufficiently corresponds with the nature of the country,
it is more probable that the word Gennesareth, in the
New Testament, owes its existence to the term Chin-
nereth, or Cinnereth, in the Old .• for, in the days of
Joshua, Cinnereth was a fortified city in the tribe of
Naphtali ;' and it is evident from a passage in the first
5 Josh. xix. 35.
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FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
353
A. M. 2515. A. C. 1489 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 164G. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
book of Kings, that it gave its name to the surrounding
country. l The Jewish legislator in several parts of his
writings, and Joshua in the history of his proceedings,
place the city uf Chinnereth on the shore of the lake
Tiberias, calling it by the same name, the sea of Chin-
nereth. 2 Hence, it is more than probable, that Genne-
sareth in the New Testament, is only a corruption of
Cinnereth, the name by which the city and the Jake on
which it stood were known to the ancient Israelites.
The city had indeed perished in the wars between the
kings of Syria and Israel, long before the coming of
Christ, which is the true reason that no mention is made
of it in the New Testament, while the district where it
stood retained its name for many ages after its fall.
The date of its destruction may, with great probability,
be fixed in the reign of Baasha king of Israel, about
958 years before Christ, when Benhadad king of Syria
invaded his dominions, and ' smote Ijon and Dan, and
Abel-beth-maachah, and all Cinnereth, with all the
land of Naphtali.' Upon the ruins of ancient Cinne-
reth afterwards arose the city of Capernaum, deriving
its name from the excellent fountain already mentioned,
near which it was built ; but the lake and the adjacent
lands were permitted to retain their ancient name, till,
in the lapse of ages, or by a change of dialect, it was
moulded into Gennesareth. It was a common saying
among the Jews, in reference to the lake of Gennesareth,
that " God loved that sea more than all the other seas."
And, in one sense, the observation is quite correct ; for
it was honoured, above all others, with the presence of
our blessed Lord and Saviour, both before and after his
resurrection. He made choice of Capernaum, which
stood upon the margin of the lake, as his ordinary place
of residence, on account of which it is called ' his own
city.' 3 On its shores he found several of his apostles
pursuing the humble employment of fishermen, and called
them to be witnesses of his mighty works, and the heralds
of his kingdom. It was on this sea he came to them,
walking upon the waters ; where he rebuked the winds
and the waves, and the furious storm was in a moment
changed into a profound calm ; and where he filled their
nets with a miraculous draught of lishes. a On the shore
of this lake he appeared to his disciples after his resur-
rection, and after rebuking Peter for his unfaithfulness,
and exacting a threefold confession, corresponding to
his threefold denial, restored him to his office as an
apostle, and to his station as a pillar in the church.
The only other lake connected with the illustration of
Scripture, is that called by modems the Dead Sea, from
a tradition commonly but erroneously received, that no
I Kings xv. 20. * Num. xxxiv. It ; Dent. iii. 17 ; Josh. xii. 3.
8 Mat. ix. 1.
a Tn the time of our Saviour, it is plain that ships sailed on
the surface of this lake; and during the wars between the Jews
and Romans, fleets of some force were stationed here, and bloody
battles fought between them. But the case is greatly altered
now, as not a boat is found to disturb its waters. Mr Bucking-
ham says, " This fine piece of water abounds with a great variety
of excellent fish ; but from the poverty, and one must add, the
ignorance, and the indolence of the people who live on its hin-
ders, there is not a boat or a raft, either largo or small, throughout
its whole extent. Some three years since, a boat did exist here,
but this being broken up from decay, has never been replaced, so
that the few fish taken, are caught by lines from the shore, nets
never being used.
living creature could exist in its saline waters. It was
anciently called the Sea of the Plain.4 from its situation
in the great hollow or plain of Jordan ; the Salt Sea,"
from the extreme saltness of its waters : and tin- East
Sea,6 from its situation relative to Judea. It is like-
wise called by Josephus, and by the Greek and Latin
writers, Lacus Asphaltites, from the bitumen found in it ;
and is at present known in Syria by the names of Abuo-
tanah and Bahar Loth. This remarkable expanse of
water covers the fruitful vale where once flourished the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, with the other cities of
the plain; a vale so rich and beautiful, that the sacred
historian compares it to the garden of paradise.7 It
was changed into its present condition by an immediate
interposition of God. ' The Lord rained upon Sodom
and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord
out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all
the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that
which grew upon the ground.' The destruction was
complete and irreparable ; the country was in a manner
extinguished, by converting it into a deep lake ; so fierce
was the indignation, so terrible the overthrow.
The learned Michaelis ascribes the destruction <>f
those cities to material causes. It is possible that the
sovereign Ruler of the universe employed the operation
of such causes on that occasion. Sodom was built upon
a mine of bitumen, as we know from the testimony of
Moses and Josephus, who speak of wells abounding with
bitumen in the valley of Siddim. Lightning, pointed by
the hand of Omnipotence, kindled the combustible mass,
and the cities sunk in the subterraneous conflagration.
Nor is the ingenious suggestion of 31. Malte Brun to be
omitted, that Sodom and Gomorrah themselves might
have been built of bituminous stones, and set in Haines
by the fire of heaven.
The lake Asphaltites is enclosed on the east and west
with exceeding high mountains ; on the north it is bound-
ed with the plains of Jericho, on which side it receirel
the waters of the Jordan ; on the south it is open, and
extends beyond the reach of the eye." It is said to be
seventy miles long, and twenty miles broad ; and is
fringed in some places with a kind of coppice of bushes
and reeds. In the midst of this border, not a furlong
from the sea, rises a fountain of brackish water, which
4 Deut. iii. 17. iv. 19. 5 Deut. iii. 17; Jos. xn. 5.
6 Ezek. xlvii. 18; Joel ii. 20. '• Gen. xlii. 10.
a This opening leads into the valley of El Ghor, which
with a southern continuation called El Araba, both Inspected by
Burckhardt, descends uninterruptedly to the Elanitic Gulf of the
Red Sea; which it joins at Akaba, the rite of the indent Bzun-
geber. This Mr Burckhardt supposes to be the prolongation of
the ancient channel of the Jordan, which discharged itself into
the sea before its absorption in the expanded lake of Sodi m.
This is extremely probable; and there cai t be a man Inter* it
ing country in the world than this to be made tie' subject of an
accurate geological sun. v. N 8 may infer, however, this much
from what we know, that before the face of the country "as
changed by the judgment that fell upon it, tin' ground now
covered by the water of the Dead Sea, was an e\ti n-i\e valley,
and through "huh the Jordan flowed in its course to i
That it flowed through the vale, may be Inferred from the great
fertility of the latter; and that it passed beyond it, is equally to
be inferred from the want of space over which the (rater could
expand to be exhausted by evaporation. But the discover; of
the opening on the southern border of the lake, and the inclined
valley leading from thence to the sea, have rendered these
inferences almost conclusive. — ^fansford.
354
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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was pointed out to Maundrell by his Arab conductor ; a
sure proof that the soil is not equally impregnated with
saline particles. The ground, to the distance of half an
hour from the sea, is uneven, and broken into hillocks,
which Mr Maundrell compares to ruinous lime kilns ;
but whether these might be the pits at which the kings of
Sodom and Gomorrah were overthrown by the four kings
who invaded their country, he could not determine.
The water of the lake is intensely salt, extremely
bitter, and nauseous, and very heavy ; a its depth seems to
be altogether unknown ; nor does it appear that a boat
has ever navigated its surface. No verdure is to be
seen on its banks ; but it is not true that its exhalations
are as pestiferous as to kill birds that attempt to fly
over it. Mr Maundrell saw several birds flying about,
and skimming the surface of the waters, without any
visible harm. The same fact is attested by Volney, who
states it as no uncommon thing to see swallows dipping
for the water necessary to build their nests. The soil
around it, impregnated also with salt, produces no
plants ; and the air itself, which becomes loaded with
saline particles from evaporation, and which receives
also the sulphureous and bituminous vapours, cannot be
favourable to vegetation : hence the deadly aspect which
reigns around the lake. The ground about it, however,
is not marshy, and its waters are limpid and incorrupti-
ble, as must be the case with a dissolution of salt.1 Mr
Maundrell questions the truth of the common tradition,
which is admitted by Volney in all its extent ; that the
waters of the Dead Sea are destructive to animal exis-
tence, having observed on the shore, two or three shells
of fish, resembling oyster shells. That respectable
traveller, willing to make an experiment of its strength,
went into it, and found it bore up his body in swimming,
with an uncommon force ; but the relation of some
authors, that men wading into it, are buoyed up to the
top as soon as the water reaches to the middle, he found
upon experiment untrue.
A recent traveller, on visiting the lake, found a crust
of salt covering the surface of the ground, and resem-
bling a snowy plain, from which a few stunted shrubs
reared their heads. No murmur, no cooling breeze
1 Volney's Travels, vol. 1.
a The water of this sea is far more salt than that of the ocean ;
containing one fourth part of its weight of saline contents in a
state of perfect desiccation, and forty-one parts in a hundred in a
state of simple crystallization ; that is to say, a hundred pounds
by weight of water, will yield forty-one pounds of salt; while the
proportion of saline contents in the water of the Atlantic is not
more than l-27th part in a state of dryness, and about six pounds
of salt in a hundred of the water. The specific gravity of the
water is 1-211; that of common water being 1000. A phial of
it having been brought to England by Mr Gordon of Clunie, at
the request of Sir Joseph Banks, was analyzed by Dr Marcet,
who states that this water is perfectly transparent, and does not
deposit any crystals on standing in close vessels. Its taste is
peculiarly bitter and pungent; the contents of 100 grains of the
water were as follows.
Muriate of Lime, . . . 3-920
Muriate of Magnesia, . 10246
Muriate of Soda, . . . 10-3G0
Sulphate of Lime, . . 0"054
By this it appears that the water of this sea is in fact, a mineral
water ; while the excessive quantity of solid contents, and its con-
sequent greater specific gravity, enable it to support on its surface
substances that would sink in any other water; a circumstance
■which has given rise to many marvellous tales.
announced the approach to its margin. The strand,
bestrewed with stones was hot, the waters of the lake
were motionless, and absolutely dead along the shore :
he found it impossible to keep the water in his mouth ;
it far exceeded that of the sea in saltness, and produced
upon the lips the effect of a strong solution of alum.
Before his boots were completely dry, they were covered
with salt; his clothes, his hat, his hands, in less than
three hours, were impregnated with this mineral. About
midnight he heard a noise from the lake, and was inform-
ed by the Arabs, that it proceeded from legions of small
fish, which come and leap about on the shore.
The extreme saltness of this lake, has been ascribed
by Volney to mines of fossil salt in the side of the
mountains, which extend along the western shore, and
from time immemorial have supplied the Arabs in the
neighbourhood, and even the city of Jerusalem. He
does not attempt to invalidate the credit of the Mosaic
narrative ; but only insinuates, that these saline deposi-
tions were either coeval with the mountains in which they
were found, or entered into their original conformation.
The extraordinary fruitfulness of the vale of Siddim,
before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, is
asserted by Moses in terms so clear and precise, that
the veracity of the sacred writer must be overthrown,
before a reasonable doubt can be entertained of the fact.
No disproportionate quantity of saline matter, could
have been present either in the soil or the surrounding
mountains. That it abounded with bitumen, some have
inferred from the assertion of Moses, that the vale of
Siddim was full of slime pits : where the Hebrew word
chemar, which we render slime, others, and particularly
the seventy interpreters, render bitumen. But gopfmith
and c/temar, is the word Moses employs to denote brim-
stone, in his account of the judgment that overwhelmed
the cities of the plain ; and by consequence, brimstone
is not meant, when chemar is used, but bitumen, a very
different substance. Hence the brimstone which now
impregnates the soil of the salt sea, and banishes every
kind of vegetation from its shores, must be regarded,
not as an original, but an accidental ingredient, remain-
ing from the destruction of the vale by fire and brimstone
from heaven. The same remark applies to the mines of
fossil salt, on the surrounding mountains ; the saline
matter was deposited in the cavities which it now occu-
pies at the same time, else the vale of Siddim, instead
of verdant pastures, and abundant harvests, had exhibited
the same frightful sterility from the beginning, for which
it is remarkable in modern times. Bitumen, if the
Hebrew word chemar denotes that substance, abounds
in the richest soils ; for in the vale of Shinar, the soil of
which, by the agreement of all writers, is fertile in the
highest degree, the builders of the tower of Babel used
it for the mortar. The ark of bulrushes in which Moses
was embarked on the Nile, was in like manner daubed
with bitumen, chemar, and pitch ; but the mother of
Moses, considering the poverty of her house, cannot be
supposed to have procured it from a distance, nor at any
great expense : she must therefore have found it in the
soil of Egypt, near the Nile, on whose borders she lived.
It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose, that bitumen
abounded in Goshen, a region famed for the richness of
its pastures. Hence it may be fairly concluded, that
the vale of Siddim, before its destruction, in respect of
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c.
355
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natural fertility, resembled the plain of Shinar, and the
land of Egypt along the Nile. But it is well known,
that wherever brimstone and saline matter abound, there
sterility and desolation reign. Is it not then reasonable
to infer, that the sulphureous and saline nifitters, dis-
covered in the waters and on the shores of the lake As-
phaltites, are the relics of the divine vengeance executed
on the cities of the plain, and not original ingredients in
the soil
If we listen to the testimony of the sacred writers,
what was reasonable hypothesis rises into absolute cer-
tainty. Moses expressly ascribes the brimstone, the
salt, and the burning, in the overthrow of Sodom, to the
immediate vengeance of heaven. ' When they see the
plagues of that land, — that the whole land is brimstone,
and salt, and burning ; that it is not sown, nor beareth,
nor any grass groweth thereon, (like the overthrow of
Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the
Lord overthrew in his anger and in his wrath) ; even all
nations shall say, Wherefore has the Lord done thus unto
this land ? What meaneth the heat of this great anger ?' '
In this passage, the brimstone, salt, and burning, are true
and proper effects of the divine wrath ; and since this
fearful destruction is compared to the overthrow of
Sodom and Gomorrah, the brimstone and salt into which
the vale of Siddim was turned, must also be the true and
proper effects of divine anger. This, indeed, Moses
asserts in the plainest terms : ' Then the Lord rained
upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire
from the Lord out of heaven ; and he overthrew those
cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the
cities, and that which grew upon the ground.' 2 But
since the brimstone and the fire were rained from heaven,
so must the salt, with which they are connected in the
former quotfition ; and this is the opinion received by
the Jewish doctors. The frightful sterility which follow-
ed the brimstone, salt, and burning, in the first quotation,
is in the same manner represented as an effect of the
divine judgment upon the vale of Siddim ; ' it is not
sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon.'
The barrenness and desolation that result from the
action of brimstone and salt, are introduced by the pro-
phet in these words : ' Thus saith the Lord, cursed be
the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm,
and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall
be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when
good cometh, but shall inhabit the parched places in the
wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.' 3 In
this passage, the salt is assigned as the cause that the
parched places in the wilderness remain in a state of
perpetual sterility. In the judgments which the prophet
Zephaniah was directed to predict against the kingdom
of Moab, he alludes expressly to the punishment of
Sodom and Gomorrah, and intimates that one part of
that punishment consisted in the vale being turned into
salt : ' As I live, saith the Lord, surely Moab shall be
as Sodom, and the children of Amnion as Gomorrah,
even the breeding of nettles and salt pits, and a perpetual
desolation.'4
Some writers suppose the Dead Sea to be the crater
of a volcano, but this opinion is entirely without founda-
tion : for all extinguished volcanoes exhibit the same
characters, that is to say, mountains excavated in the
form of a tunnel, lava and ashes, which exhibit incon-
testible proofs of the agency of fire. The Dead Sea, on
the contrary, is a lake of great length, curved like a
bow, placed between two ranges of mountains, which
have no natural coherence in form, no homogeneousness
of soil. They do not meet at the two extremities of the
lake ; but continue, and run northward as far as the lake
of Tiberias ; the other is lost in the sands of Yemen.
The rugged mountains and spacious caverns on the
south-west shore of the lake Asphaltites, the chosen
refuge of the oppressed in every age, acquired additional
celebrity from the secure retreat which they afforded to
David and his men, from the violence of Saul. ' It was
told Saul, saying, behold, David is in the wilderness of
En-gedi. Then Saul took three thousand chosen men
out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men
upon the mountains of the wild goats.'
The rivers that water the land of promise, are not so
remarkable as the mountains and the lakes which diver-
sify its surface. The greater part of them, as the Kidron,
the Jabbok, and the Arnon, are only brooks or moun-
tain torrents, some of which are dry for the greater part
of the year, or only run with a flowing stream during the
melting of the snows on the peaks of Lebanon, or the
fall of the former and the latter rain.
But the largest and the most celebrated stream in
Palestine is the Jordan. It pursues its course through
the whole extent of the Holy Land from north to south ;
and empties itself into the lake Asphaltites. It may be
said to have two banks, of which the inner marks the
ordinary height of the stream ; and the outer its eleva-
tion during the rainy season, or the melting of the
snows on the summits of Lebanon. *
CHAP. VII.— The General Fertility of Palestine.
BY THE EDITOR.
1 Deut. xxix. 22.
*Jer. xvii. 5,6.
»Gen. xix. 21.
4 Zeph. ii. 9.
The early promises which were made to Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, with respect to the multiplication of their
seed, seem to imply a proportionable fertility in the land
of Canaan, which it was foretold at the same time should
be given to them. The prophetic assurances, also,
which described the land, spoke of it as abounding with
cattle and productions favourable to the support of
human life.
Jacob, in expressing his blessing to Judah, promises
not, as to Issachar or Asher, that 'the land .-hall be
pleasant, or his broad fat,' but that, ' binding his foal
unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine, he
shall wash his garments in wine, and his clothes in tin-
blood of grapes ; that his eyes shall be red with wine
and his teeth white with milk ;' and when God appeared
to Moses, he declared that ' he would bring the Israelites
into a good land and a large, into a land flowing with
milk and honey ;' 6 figures expressive of abundance, and
the luxuries only of a simple state.
» Paxtan's Illustrations, vol. 1. p. 100. Clark.'-; Trawls.
Gen. xlix. IS; Cant. v. 12; Gui. xlix.S; >\»t. n on UV Proph.
356
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The whole history of the Jews tends to demonstrate
the accomplishment of the promises, with respect to the
wonderful increase of this peculiar people. Notwith-
standing- the frequent Avars in which the nation was
engaged, and the wasting dispersions by which they were
scattered, the country continued to maintain prodigious
numbers in every age, excepting- during- the captivity.
The support of those numbers required a very large
produce, and Judea appears to have displayed a consid-
erable fertility. The sacred writers describe, in inter-
esting pictures, the multitude of its cattle, covering the
hills, the luxuriance of its trees, and the rich produce of
its vineyards. The grapes brought to Moses exhibited
an early proof of the fidelity of the prophetic descrip-
tions ; and the vast multitudes of people which are
enumerated on various occasions confirmed the assurance.
The people, not addicted to commerce, cultivated the
soil with regular industry, and with that attachment
which resulted from the nature of a tenure, which could
not be alienated permanently, as the land reverted to its
original proprietor every fifty years.
That the divine blessing increased its exuberance may
reasonably be supposed, as indeed it was especially
promised ; and a miraculous plenty must have been im-
parted every sixth year, or the land could not have
remained uncultivated on the sabbatical year, as we
learn even from heathen writers, that it did ; who men-
tion also many particulars which tend to confirm the
report which has been given.
Notwithstanding these testimonies, however, Mons. de
Voltaire, in order to indulge a sarcastic vein against the
historical accounts of the Old Testament, gives vent to
some remarks upon the subject which are not founded on
accurate information, and which do not authorize any
supposition of exaggeration in the sacred accounts.
This writer in his history of the crusades, represents
Judea to have been, as he describes it to be at present,
one of the worst of all the inhabited countries of Asia,
as almost entirely covered with parched rocks, with one
layer of soil, and such as, if cultivated, might be com-
pared to Switzerland.
It is to be observed, however, that this unfair writer
has totally overlooked many circumstances which explain
and confirm the accounts of the sacred historian, and it
would tend but little to justify his remarks, even if he
could prove that the soil of Judea is now barren ; since
it would not be unwarrantable to contend, that the divine
favour might have conferred extraordinary fertility upon
it in former times, and the divine curse have afterwards
condemned it to sterility ; but in truth, there is no proof
that it is now barren, while there is sufficient evidence,
that it was formerly very productive, and capable of
sustaining its vast population."
a If the untitled and waste places at the present day afford no
very prepossessing appearance, it ought to be remembered, that
they were predicted by Moses, Deut. xxix. 22, et seq. and that
the country lias been laid waste successively by Assyrians, Chal-
deans, Syrians, Persians, Saracens, the European crusaders, the
Turks, and Moguls, and that it now groans under the dominion
of the Turks, who neither protect the agriculturist from the in-
cursions of the Arabs, nor afford him any encouragement, but the
contrary. And yet it is the unanimous testimony of travellers,
in regard to this country, that, where it is cultivated, it is ex-
tremely fertile. It produces all sorts of fruit trees; and vines
The great number of inhabitants which this country is
represented to have supported, was not more than the
exertion of the nation and their wars might seem to have
required ; and indeed, the accounts on this subject are
confirmed by heathen testimonies, and by Josephus.6
Tacitus describes the climate as dry, and the soil as
fruitful, exuberant in its produce, like that of Italy, and
bearing the palm and the balsam, x the former of great
size and beauty : this account is attested by Pliny, and
Galen, 2 not to mention Josephus, who represents, the soil
to have been rich and fruitful, 3 as does also Aristasus. 4
Strabo describes part of the country as rocky, but
commends that about Jordan and Jericho.5 Hecatasus,
mentioned by Josephus, speaks of the soil as being very
fertile. Whatever sterility and want of population may
be complained of at present, should be attributed in a
great measure, to the influence of political changes, to
the vexatious tyranny and bad policy of the government,
and to the consequent neglect of the inhabitants, and
their want of industry and of numbers to work the soil.
It is to be observed also, that in the time in which
great population prevailed in Judea, it was sustained
under favourable circumstances, resulting from simpli-
city of manners, and the frugal habits of the people.
The land was not covered by those masses of buildings,
and those extensive gardens, woods, and parks, which
occupy such large spaces of productive ground in other
countries, in modern times. All was open to cultivation
or to pasture.
As the people also were interdicted from commerce,
and few devoted themselves to the arts of refinement or
to science, no class was exempted from the employ-
ments of industry, and every part of the land was culti-
vated.
If the country was mountainous, it is to be considered
that the extension of the surface thence resulting, (con-
taining, according to Hecatceus, 3,000,000 of acres,)
afforded great range for cattle in climates of the latitude
of Judea ; it is the mountain which affords the short and
rich pasture, in which the herds particularly delight, and
1 Hist. b. v. sec. 6.
2 Plin. Hist. Nat. 13. 19; Galen de Alimentis, b. xvi. p. 761.
edit. Par. p. 1104—1195.
3 De Bell. Jud. b. ii. sec. 234. * Cont. Apion, b. i.
5 See also Plin. Hist. Nat. 13. 19; Galen de Alimentis, b.
xvi. p. 761, edit. Par. p. 1104 — 1195.
are not wanting although the Mahometans do not drink wine.
— John's Archaology . — Ed.
b Josephus (Jewish War, b. iii. c. 3. sec. 3.) praises Perea,
which at the present time is a desert, for its vines and its palm
trees ; and particularly celebrates the region near the lake of
Gennesareth, also the plains of Jericho, which are now uninhab-
ited, and desolate, (b. iii. c. 10. sec. 8. b. iv. c. 8. sec. 3.)
Indeed we are informed by Josephus, that in Galilee there were
204 cities and towns, that the largest of the cities had 150,000,
and the smallest towns 15,000 inhabitants. Hence we can
account for it, that Josephus himself, in this small province, short
of forty miles long and thirty broad, collected an army of nearly
100,000 men. (Jewish War, b. ii. c. 20. sec. 6.) As so many
people were collected in such a small extent of country, it is clear
that the arts and commerce must have been patronized, and con-
sequently the sciences; which leaves us to conclude, that the
miracles of Jesus were performed in a country where they could
be examined and fairly discussed. The reproach, which is cast
upon Galilee, in John vii. 22., has no reference to the character
of its soil or climate, but only to the fact, that the prophet or
Messiah was not to be expected from that part of Palestine.
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &c. 357
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by which their milk and flesh are improved, and hence
it was that Hebron was granted to Caleb as a favour.
It is not to be conceived that writers who addressed
tlieir countrymen, and who professed to reveal the pro-
mises of God, and to relate their accomplishment, could
describe that as fertile, which in fact was barren, or
speak of a population which did not exist, and there are
still sufficient proofs of its fruitfulness to justify this per-
suasion.
Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to rest on
the vague and hasty reports of some travellers who have
visited this country in later times, and to set them up,
even when contradicted by others more intelligent a in
the present day, in opposition to the description of those
who were contemporaries and witnesses of the particu-
lars which they relate, and who, if they had stated false-
hoods, eould not have excited the respect which they
received.
greater quantity. Josephus, accordingly calls Jericho
the honey-bearing country. The great abundance of
wild honey is often mentioned in Scripture, a memor-
able instance of which occurs in the first book of
Samuel : ' And all they of the land came to a wood, and
there was honey upon the ground ; and when the people
were come to the wood, behold the honey dropped.'1
This circumstance perfectly accords with the view which
Moses gave of the promised land, in the song with which
he closed his long and eventful career : ' He made him
to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty
rock.'4 That good land preserved its character in the
time of David, who thus, celebrates the distinguishing
bounty to his chosen people : ' He would have fed them
also with the finest of the wheat, and with honey out of
the rock, would I have satisfied thee.'4 In these holy
strains, the sacred poet availed himself of the most valu-
j able products of Canaan, to lead the faith and hope of
The barrenness, or scarcity rather, of which some his nation to bounties of a higher order, of greater
authors may either ignorantly or maliciously complain, ' price, and more urgent necessity, than any which the
does not proceed, in the opinion of Dr Shaw, from the soil even of that favoured region, stimulated and sus-
incapacity or natural unfruitfulness of the country, but
from the want of inhabitants, and from the great aversion
to labour and industry in those few by whom it is pos-
sessed. The perpetual discords and depredations
among the petty princes who share this fine country,
greatly obstruct the operations of the husbandman, who
must have small encouragement to sow, when it is quite
uncertain who shall gather in the harvest. It is in other
respects a fertile country, and still capable of affording
to its neighbours, the like ample supplies of corn and
oil, which it is known to have done in the time of
Solomon, who gave yearly to Hiram, twenty thousand
measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty
measures of pure oil.
The parts about Jerusalem particularly, being rocky
and mountainous, have therefore been supposed to be
barren and unfruitful: yet, granting this conclusion, which
is, however, far from being just, a country is not to be
characterized from one single district of it, but from the
whole. And besides, the blessing which was given to
Judah, was not of the same kind with the blessing of
Asher, or of Issachar, that ' his bread should be fat or
his land pleasant,' but that ' his eyes should be red with
wine, and his teeth should be white with milk.'2 In the
estimation of the Jewish lawgiver, milk and honey, the
chief dainties and subsistence of the earlier ages, as they
still continue to be of the Bedouin Arabs, are the glory
of all lands; these productions are either actually
enjoyed in the lot of Judah, or at least, might be obtain-
ed by proper care and application. The abundance of
wine alone, is wanting at present ; yet, the acknowledged
goodness of that little, which is still made at Jerusalem
and Hebron, clearly proves, that these barren rocks, as
they are called, would yield a much greater quantity, if
the abstemious Turk and Arab would permit the vine to
be further propagated and improved.
Wild honey, which formed a part of the food of John
the Baptist in the wilderness, may indicate to us the great
plenty of it in those deserts ; and, that consequently
taking the hint from nature, and enticing the bees into
hives and larger colonies, it might be produced in much
tained, as it certainly was, by the special blessing of
heaven, produced, — the bounties of sovereign and re-
deeming mercy, purchased with the blood, and imparted
by the Spirit of the Son of God.
As the mountains of Palestine abound in some places
with thyme, rosemary, sage, and other aromatic plants,
in which the bee chiefly delights ; so, in other places,
they are covered with shrubs and a delicate short gTass,
which is more grateful to the cattle, than that which
the fallow grounds or the meadows produce. The graz-
ing and feeding of cattle is not peculiar to Judea, it is
still practised all over Mount Libanus, the Castravan
mountains, and Barbary, where the higher grounds are
appropriated to this purpose, while the plains and
valleys, are reserved for tillage.
But even laying aside the profits which might arise
from grazing, by the sale of butter, milk, wool, and the
great number of cattle, which were to be daily disposed
of, particularly at Jerusalem, for common fooil and for
the service of the temple ; these mountainous tracts
would be highly valuable on another account, especially
if they were planted with olive-trees, one acre of which
is of more value than twice the extent of arable ground.
It may be presumed, in like manner, that the vine was
not neglected in a soil and exposure so well adapted to
its cultivation.
Few traces are now to be found, except at Jerusalem
and Hebron, of those extensive vineyards, which in
better times adorned the lulls of Canaan, and so amply
rewarded the labours of the cultivator : but this is owing
not to the ungratefulness of the soil, but to the llotfa and
bigotry of the present possessors. The vine is not of so
durable a nature as the olive, and requires, besides, an
unceasing culture and attention; while the supersti-
tious Turk scruples to encourage the propagation si a
plant, whose fruit may be applied to uses forbidden by
the rules of his religion. But the general benefit arising
from the olive-tree, and its longevity and hardiness,
have been the means of continuing down to the present
times, clumps <>l several thousands, to mark out to us
the possibility, as they are undoubtedly the remains, of
1 As Shaw, Maundrell, &c.
» Gen. xlix. 12.
» 1 Sam. xiv. 25.
' Dtut. xxxii. 1J.
Ps. lxxxi. 16.
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more extensive plantations. Now, if to these produc-
tions be joined several plots of arable ground, which
lie scattered all over the valleys and windings of the
mountains in the lot of Judah and Benjamin, we shall
find, that the inheritance even of these tribes which are
supposed to have had the most barren part of the coun-
try, fell to them in pleasant places, and that theirs was
a goodly heritage.
Besides the great quantity of grapes and raisins, says
Dr Shaw, in a note, which are brought daily to the
markets of Jerusalem and the neighbouring villages,
Hebron alone sends every year to Egypt, three hundred
camel loads of the robb which.they call dabash, the same
word which is simply rendered honey in the sacred
volume ; as in the command of the patriarch Jacob to
his sons : ' Carry down the man a present of the best
things of the land, a little balm and a little honey :' for
honey, properly so called, could not be a rarity there,
so great as dabash must be, from the want of vineyards
in Egypt. Several different substances appear to have
obtained the name of honey among the ancient Israelites,
which may be inferred from this precept : l ' Ye shall
burn no leaven, nor any kind of honey in any offering.'
Besides the honey of grapes, of bees, and of the palm,
the honey of the reed, or sugar, might be of great anti-
quity.
The mountainous parts of the Holy Land are so far
from being inhospitable, unfruitful, or the refuse of the
land of Canaan, that in the division of this country, the
mountain of Hebron was granted to Caleb as a parti-
cular favour : 2 ' Now therefore, give me this mountain,
of which the Lord spake in that day.' In the time of
Asa, the ' hill country of Judah ' mustered five hundred
and eighty thousand men of valour ; 3 an argument
beyond dispute, that the land was able to maintain them.
Even in the present times, though cultivation and im-
provement are exceedingly neglected, while the plains
and valleys, although fruitful as ever, lie almost entirely
desolate, every little hill is crowded with inhabitants.
If this part of the Holy Land was composed, as some
object, only of naked rocks and precipices, why is it
better peopled than all the plains of Esdraelon, Rama,
Acre, or Zabulon, which are all of them extremely fertile
and delightful ? It cannot be urged that the inhabitants
live with more safety on the hills and mountains, than on
the plains, as there are neither walls nor fortifications to
secure their villages and encampments ; and except in
the range of Lebanon, and some other mountains, few
or no places of difficult access ; so that both of them are
equally exposed to the insults of an enemy. But the
reason is obvious ; they find among these mountainous
rocks and precipices, sufficient conveniences for them-
selves, and much greater for their cattle. Here they
have bread to the full, while their flocks and their herds
browse upon richer herbage, and both man and beast
quench their thirst from springs of excellent water, which
is but too much wanted, especially in the summer season,
through all the plains of Syria. This fertility of Canaan
is fully confirmed by writers of great reputation, whose
impartiality cannot justly be suspected. Tacitus calls it
a fruitful soil, and Justin affirms, that in this country the
Lev. ii. 11. 2 Josh. xiv. 12.
2 Chron. xiv. S.
purity of the air, and the fertility of the soil, are equally
admirable.
The justice of these brief accounts, Dr Shaw, and
almost every modern traveller, fully verifies. When he
travelled in Syria and Phoenicia, in December and Jan-
uary, the whole country, he remarks, looked verdant and
cheerful : and the woods particularly, which are chiefly
planted with the gall-bearing oak, were every where be-
strewed with a variety of anemones, ranunculuses, col-
chicas, and mandrakes. Several pieces of ground near
Tripoli were full of liquorice ; and at the mouth of a
famous grotto, he saw an elegant species of the blue
lily. In the beginning of March, the plains, particularly
between Jaffa and Rama, were every where planted with
a beautiful variety of fritillaries, tulips of innumerable
hues, and a profusion of the rarest and most beautiful
flowers ; while the hills and the mountains were covered
with yellow pollium, and some varieties of thyme, sage,
and rosemary.*
The account which has now been given of the soil and
productions of Canaan, will enable the reader to per-
ceive with great clearness, the force and justice of the
promise made by Moses to his nation, a little before he
died : 5 ' The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good
land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths,
that spring out of valleys and hills ; a land of wheat and
barley, and vines and fig-trees, and pomegranates, a
land of olive oil and honey.'
If to the natural fertility of this highly favoured
country be added, the manner in which it was divided
among the tribes of Israel, it will furnish an easy and
satisfactory answer to the question which the infidel has
often put : " How could so small a country as Canaan
maintain so immense a population, as we find in the
writings of the Old Testament ?" That rich and fertile
region was divided into small inheritances, on which the
respective proprietors lived and reared their families.
Necessity, not less than a spirit of industry, required
that no part of the surface should be suffered to lie waste.
The husbandman carried his improvements up the sides
of the steepest and most rugged mountains, to the very
top ; he converted every patch of earth into a vineyard,
or olive plantation ; he covered the bare rocks with soil,
and thus turned them into fruitful fields ; where the steep
was too great to admit of an inclined plane, he cut away
the face of the precipice, and built walls around the
mountain to support the earth, and planted his terraces
with the vine and the olive. These circles of excellent
soil were seen rising gradually from the bottom to the
top of the mountains, where the vine and the olive, shad-
ing the intermediate rocks with the liveliest verdure, and
bending under the load of their valuable produce, amply
rewarded the toils of the cultivator. The remains of
these hanging gardens, these terrace plantations, after
the lapse of so many centuries, the revolutions of empire,
and the long decline of industry among the miserable
slaves that nowr occupy that once highly favoured land,
may still be distinctly traced on the hills and mountains
of Judea. Every spot of ground was in this manner
brought into a state of cultivation ; every particle of soil
was rendered productive ; and by turning a stream of
* Shaw's Travels.
5 Deut. viii. 7.
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT, &(
A.M. 2515. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
water into every field where it was practicable, and lead-
ing the little rills into which they divided it, to every
plantation, every tree and every plant, they secured for
the most part, a constant succession of crops. Such was
the management which Virgil recommended to the culti-
vators of Italy. " Then on the springing corn drives
the stream, and ductile rills. And when the field is
scorched with raging heat, the herbs all dying, Jo, from
the brow of a hilly tract he decoys the torrent, which
falling down the smooth-worn rocks, awakes the hoarse
murmur, and with gurgling streams allays the thirsty
lands." »
" This much is certain," says Volney, " and it is the
advantage of hot over cold countries, that in the former,
wherever there is water, vegetation may be perpetually
maintained, and made to produce an uninterrupted suc-
cession of fruits to flowers, and flowers to fruits. In
cold, nay even in temperate climates, on the contrary,
nature benumbed for several months, loses in the sterile
slumber the third part, or even half the year. The soil
which has produced grains, has not time before the de-
cline of summer heat to mature vegetables ; a second
crop is not to be expected ; and the husbandman sees
himself condemned to a long and fatal repose. Syria is
exempt from these inconveniences ; if, therefore, it so
happens that its productions are not such as its natural
advantages would lead us to expect, it is not less owing
to its physical, than its political state."
On this question we have to add the temperament of
the people to the physical powers of the country. The
Israelite lived upon his own farm, in all the simplicity
of rural life ; was content with the produce of his own
fields ; a little wheat in the ear, or in meal, a few grapes
and olives, dates or almonds, generally constituted his
repast ; and the great heat of the climate imperiously
required him to lead a frugal and abstemious life. It
is well known, that the inhabitants of warm countries
subsist on much less and much lighter food than the peo-
ple of colder latitudes, and by consequence, are capable
of living in more crowded habitations. If all these cir-
cumstances are duly considered, the countless numbers
of people, which, according to the Old Testament writ-
ers, once inhabited the land of promise, will neither
appear incredible nor exaggerated.
The extraordinary fruitfulness of Canaan, and the
number of its inhabitants, during the prosperous times of
the Jewish commonwealth, may be traced to another,
and still more powerful cause, than any that has been
mentioned, — the special blessing of heaven, which that
favoured people, for many ages, exclusively enjoyed.
We know from the testimony of Moses, that the tribes of
Israel reposed under the immediate care of Jehovah,
their covenanted God and king, enjoyed his peculiar
favour, and were multiplied and sustained by a special
compact, in which the rest of the nations had no share.
* The Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the
fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in
the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord sware
unto thy fathers to give it.' 2 But the blessing of Jeho-
vah converts the desert into a fruitful field ; for thus it is
promised, (and what God promises he is able also to
359
M. 37G5. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
perform,) ' The wilderness and the solitary place shall
be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blos-
som as the rose ; it shall blossom abundantly, and
rejoice even with joy and singing ; the glory of Lebanon
shall be given unto it, the excellency of Camel and
Sharon ; they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the
excellency of our God ; for in the wilderness shall the
waters break out, and streams in the desert, and the
parched land shall become a pool, and the thirsty land
springs of water : in the habitations of dragons, where
each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes.' 3 In
this passage the blessings of salvation as exhibited in the
present dispensation of grace, are certainly intended ;
but the use of these figures would be quite improper if
the special favour of God could produce no such impor-
tant changes on the face of nature.
Indeed the divine blessing has not bestowed the same
degree of fruitfulness on every part of Canaan. This
fertile country is surrounded by deserts of immense ex-
tent, exhibiting a dreary waste of loose and barren sand,
on which the skill and industry of man are able to make
no impression. The only vegetable productions which
occasionally meet the eye of the traveller in these fright-
ful solitudes, are a coarse sickly grass, thinly sprinkled
on the sand ; a plot of senna, or other saline or bitter
herb, or an acacia bush ; even these but rarely present
themselves to his notice, and afford him little satisfac-
tion when they do, because they warn him that he is yet
far distant from a place of abundance and repose. Moses,
who knew those deserts well, calls them ' great and ter-
rible,' ' a desert land,' ' the waste howling wilderness.'
But the completest picture of the sandy desert is drawn
by the pencil of Jeremiah, in which, with surprising force
and brevity, he has exhibited every circumstance of
terror, which the modern traveller details with so much
pathos and minuteness : ' Neither say they, where is the
Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that
led us through the wilderness, a land of deserts and of
pits, a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a
land which no man passed through, and where no man
dwelt.' 4
Besides these inhospitable deserts which environ the
land of promise, the inspired writers mention several
wildernesses within its proper limits. In sacred lan-
guage, a mountainous or less fruitful tract, where the
towns and villages are thinly scattered, and single habita-
tions few and far between, is distinguished by the name
of the wilderness. The forerunner of our Lord resided
in the wilderness of Judah till he commenced his public
ministry. We are informed in the book of Genesis, that
Ishmael settled in the wilderness of Paran, and in the
first book of Samuel, that David took refuge from the
persecution of Saul, in the same desert, where it ap-
pears the numerous flocks of Nabal the Carmelite were
pastured. Such places, therefore, were not absolute de-
serts, but thinly peopled, or less fertile districts. l?ut
this remark will scarcely apply to the wilderness, where
our Lord was tempted of the devil. It is B most miser-
able, dry, and barren solitude, " consisting <>f high rocky
mountains, so torn and disordered, .is if the earth had
here suffered some great convulsion, in which its very
'Geor. b. 1. I. 110.
>Deut. xxviii. 1, 2.
" Is. xxxv. 7.
* Jor. ii. <i.
350
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
[Book IV.
A. M. 25J5. A. C. 1489; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3765. A. C. 1646. NUM. xviii. TO THE END OF DEUT.
bowels had been turned outwards." ' A more dismal
and solitary place can scarcely be found in the whole
earth. About one hour's journey from the foot of the
mountain which environs this wilderness, rises the lofty
Quarantania, which Maundrell was told is the mountain
to which the devil carried our blessed Saviour, that he
might show him all the kingdoms and glory of the world.
1 Maundiell's Travels.
It is, as the evangelist styles it, * an exceeding high
mountain,' and in its ascent both difficult and dangerous.
It has a small chapel at the top, and another about half-
way up, founded on a prominent part of the rock. Near
the latter are several caves and holes in the sides of the
mountain, occupied formerly by hermits, and even in
present times, the resort of religious devotees, who repair
to these lonely cells to keep their lent, in imitation of
our Lord's fasting in the wilderness forty days.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK V.
CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THINOS FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTRANCE INTO TIIK LAND OF CANAAN, TO
THE BUILDING OF SOLOMONS TEMPLE, IN ALL 447 YEARS,— ACCORDING TO DR HAI.11S, 681 YEARS.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
Thk people of Israel are at length settled in Canaan,
under the guidance of Joshua. While we were contem-
plating the character of Moses, we beheld that astonish-
ing dispensation, the deliverance of the whole nation of
the Hebrews from the bondage of Egypt, their passage
through the Red Sea, and their miraculous support and
guidance in the wilderness for forty years. This indeed
was the Lord's doing ; and it is marvellous in our eyes.
But Moses was employed as the chief instrument of exe-
cuting the wondrous plan, — for the entire regulation of
every thing was committed to him. While the Israelites
were yet on the other side of Jordan, and had not entered
the promised land ; while they were preparing to attack
their strongest and most formidable enemies ; in that
very critical and dangerous situation, their leader and
commander was taken from them, and we were ready to
ask, what now will become of Israel ? — not remembering
that He who had raised up Moses for their deliverance,
and had fitted him for every service to which he had been
called, is all-sufficient.
The" history of Joshua, the successor of Moses, who
had been nominated to his charge by the Lord himself,
is contained chiefly in the book which bears his name,
written probably by himself. Here, though we read of
battles and conquests, in which we may seem to have no
concern, we shall perceive the divine perfections dis-
played and exercised in a very eminent degree. The
power of God is exhibited, altering the course of nature
for the defence of his people ; his justice taking signal
vengeance on the wicked inhabitants of Canaan, when
they had filled up the measure of their iniquities ; his
veracity giving the Israelites the possession of Canaan
in completion of his promises and his holy covenant ;
and his grace and mercy, encouraging and assisting them
in all their diliiculties, till he had granted them rest and
deliverance from their enemies.
The Lord did all this for his people by his servant
Joshua, who was an eminent type of Christ, and who
with a reference to him was distinguished by the same
name, — the Hebrew of Jesus being- Joshua. In two
passages 1 we read Jesus, where the Israelitish general
is intended, and the word should more properly have
been translated Joshua. The office which this name
denotes, (Saviour,) Joshua did not take to himself; but
he was expressly called to it, and invested with it by the
highest authority. He received his commission immedi-
ately from God, and entered upon his work with the
strongest assurances of the divine direction and support.
Our exalted Leader, in like manner, was constituted the
Head of the church by a particular designation; and
therefore he declared that " he came down from heaven,
not to do his own will, hut the will of Him that sent
him." Though, according to his original state, he
was equal with God, anil possessed the same glory as
the Father, yet he submitted for our sakes to become a
servant; and in his mediatorial character, as if he had
been an inferior, he was set apart for his gTcat under-
taking, and furnished with full powers for its execution.
It is allowed that Joshua was qualified for his office,
as being possessed of all necessary abilities. And shall
we not maintain that Jesus was every way fitted for his
great undertaking? His power, wisdom, love, and faith-
fulness, have all been demonstrated with unquestionable
evidence. We rejoice then that he is able to save to the
uttermost, that he will finish the work in righteousness,
and that he will not fail, nor be discouraged, till be have
set judgment in the earth, ami fully accomplished the
salvation of his people.
If Joshua in a triumphant manner conducted th>
of Israel into Canaan, assigned to the various tribes
their respective portions, and saw them settled in peace
and prosperity around him, — lesu.-, ' the Captain of the
Lord's hosts,' stands engaged to bring all bis followers
into heaven — to put them in the secure possession of the
kingdom which was prepared for them from the founda-
tion of the world. For the accoraplislunenl of his pur-
pose, he relinquished the throne of his glory, became
obedient to the law, was made ■ curse, died, went down
into the grave, and rose again : and be is now carrying
on the same work : with a particular regard to it, he will
1 Acts vi
•15. 1Kb. It. 8.
-J /.
362
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2.153. A. C. 1451; OK.
continue to maintain universal dominion, until the
redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise
of his glory. Not one of his faithful followers shall
fail of attaining the eternal inheritance ; for it is reserved
in heaven for them, and they are kept by the power of
God through faith unto salvation. His grace and truth
are pledged for their present security, and for their
final admission into the joy of their Lord. They shall
sit with him in his throne, and shall reign for ever and
ever.
The circumstances which claim the particular attention
of the reader during this period are, — the regular observ-
ance of divine ordinances in Canaan, as these had been
instituted in the wilderness ; — the preservation of Israel
from this time forward, when all the males went up, three
times in the year, to the place which God had chosen for
the celebration of the great festivals which he had
commanded them to observe : — their preservation, too,
although they were so often subdued, and brought under
the dominion of their enemies ; — and the preservation of
true religion, notwithstanding their frequent apostasies.
Nor should we fail to observe the frequent appearance of
Christ during this period, in the form of that nature
which he took upon him in his incarnation. He appeared
in this form to Moses when God spake to him face to
face, as a man speaketh to his friend, and he beheld the
similitude of the Lord.1 In this form he appeared to the
seventy elders ; 2 to Joshua, when he was near the walls of
Jericho ; 3 to Gideon ; 4 to Manoah.s Christ thus appeared,
time after time, in the form of that nature which he was
afterwards to assume for our redemption, because he was
now carrying on that mighty design, and preparing the
way for its accomplishment.
It was in this period that the school of the prophets
was first instituted. In Samuel there was begun a suc-
cession of prophets, that was maintained continually from
that era till the spirit of prophecy ceased about the time
of Malachi ; and therefore Samuel is spoken of in the
New Testament as the beginning of this succession of
prophets. 5 ' And all the prophets from Samuel, and those
that follow after, as many as have spoken have fore-
told of these days.' The young men that belonged
to these schools were called the sons of the prophets.
At first they were under the tuition of Samuel ; after-
wards of Elijah, Elisha, and others. They were often
favoured with a degree of inspiration, while they con-
tinued under tuition in the schools of the prophets ; and
God commonly, when he called any one to the constant
exercise of the prophetical office, or to any extraor-
dinary service, took them out of these schools, though not
always. For the prophet Amos informs us that he
had not been educated in the schools of the prophets,
and that he was not one of the sons of the prophets.
The main design of this institution was to foreshow
the great Redeemer, and the glorious redemption that
he was to accomplish by his obedience unto death.
' To him gave all the prophets witness, — those things
which God before had showed by the mouth of all his
prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.'
There had before been occasional prophecies of Christ :
but now as the time was drawing nearer when the Re-
deemer should come, it pleased God to appoint a certain
Num. xii. 8. * Exod. xxiv. f) — 1 ].
4 Judges iv. 11. 5 Judges xiii. 17 — 21
ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1C08. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
order of men, in constant succession, whose main busi-
ness it should be to foreshow Christ and his redeeming
work, and as his forerunners to prepare the way for his
coming.
In the latter part of this period the scripture history
leads us to consider God's providence towards that par-
ticular person whence Christ was to proceed, namely,
David. It pleased God to select that person for whom
Christ was to come, from all the thousands of Israel, and
to put a most honourable mark of distinction upon him,
by anointing him to be king over his people. But we
are required to look up to him with veneration, as a
preacher of righteousness, a prophet of the Lord, and
one of the inspired penmen of the holy scriptures. His
poetical compositions evince the sublimity of his genius :
but they are to be regarded as superior to the produc-
tions of mere human abilities ; for they are the word of
God : it was the Holy Ghost who spoke by the mouth
of David. These divine hymns were intended, not for
instruction only, but as models of prayer and praise for
the church in all ages, to assist us in our private and
public devotions. They describe more clearly than any
other portion of the Old Testament, him who was to
come, — ' the consolation of Israel.' They teach us
with great fulness, the high dignity and mysterious per-
son of Christ, who is David's son, and David's Lord ;
wheat office he sustains for his people, as their prophet,
priest, and king ; their shepherd, leader, and interces-
sor ; that we are to view him in the different stages of
his humiliation, assuming our nature, making his abode
on earth in circumstances of poverty, contempt, and
persecution, and at last closing a suffering life by a
painful and ignominious death. The very manner in
Avhich he was to be betrayed, mocked, scourged, and
crucified, is pointed out with astonishing exactness. We
hear the derision of his enemies, and his own heavy
complaints in his sufferings. We are led with him to the
grave ; but we also observe him rising from the dead,
before he saw corruption. We are also told that he
ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, that he
has received gifts for men, even for the rebellious, also,
that God the Lord might dwell among them.
It is certain that David was an eminent type of Christ ;
and that he frequently spake as concerning himself, what
was applicable only to the great Antitype. In the Old
Testament the Messiah is pointed out by the name of
David, not merely because it was designed that in his
human nature he should descend from the same family,
but because there should be a designed resemblance in
him to that illustrious progenitor. The blessings of
redemption are on this account, called ' the sure mercies
of David.' For the same reason also, long after that
prince was laid in the dust, it was declared that the na-
tion should be recovered from their captivity, and serve
the Lord their God, and David their king.' 7 ' And I
will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed
them, even my servant David.' In the New Testament
Christ is called ' the root and offspring of David.'
The covenant of grace was solemnly renewed with
David, that covenant which was all his salvation, and all
his desire. This was the fifth establishment of the cove-
nant of grace after the fall ; the first was with Adam, the
second was with Noah, the third was with the patriarchs,
Josh. v. 13, 14.
6 Acts iii. 24.
7 Jer. xxx. 9 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
363
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1 151 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES. A. M. 3803. A. C. 1G08. JOSH. i. TO THE F.XD.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fourth was in the wil-
derness by Moses, and now the fifth is made with
David. It is to this that a large portion of the eighty-
ninth psalm refers.
Finally, the reader should take notice that, towards the
close of the period on the narrative of which he is now
entering, God chose a particular city out of .all the
tribes of Israel, to place his name there. There is men-
tion made in the law of Moses, of the children of Israel's
bringing their oblations to the place which God should
choose, l but God had never proceeded to do it till
now. The city of Jerusalem having been entirely
taken from the Jebusites by David, the ark was brought
thither, and the very spot was pointed out by divine
direction on which the temple of God, should be built.
This city, as the city of God, the holy place of his
rest for ever became a type of the church of Christ,
the habitation of God. This was the city in which
the scattered followers of Christ were gathered toge-
ther after his resurrection ; in which the apostles and
primitive Christians were favoured with that remarkable
outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost; and
in which was formed the first Christian church, which is
the mother of all other churches throughout the world.
2 ' Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the
Lord from Jerusalem. The Lord shall send the rod of
thy strength out of Zion : rule thou in the midst of thine
enemies. The Lord hath chosen Zion : he hath desired
it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever : here will
I dwell ; for I have desired it.'
CHAP. I.
SECT. I.
-From their Entrance to the Death of
Joshua.
THE HISTORY.
Upon the death of Moses, Joshua, who had a long while
been his prime minister, by the command of God, under-
took the conduct of the children of Israel: and as it was
a very momentous charge, he was not a little anxious
how he should be enabled to execute it. He saw himself
indeed at the head of six hundred thousand fighting men;
but then the nations which he was to subdue, were a war-
like and gigantic people, that had already taken the
alarm, and therefore made early preparations for a
defence ; had fortified their cities, and confederated their
forces against him. And while he was musing on these
things, to give him encouragement in his undertaking, a
God was pleased to assure him, that he would not fail to
1 DeuU xii. 5 — 7.
* Is. ii. 1 — 3; Ps. ex. 2; exxxii. 13, 14.
a It is the opinion of most interpreters, that whenever God is
said to speak to Moses, to Joshua, or any other pious man in the
Old Testament, he does not do it by himself, but by an angel
only. This perhaps might be his most common way of commu-
nicating himself; but there want not several instances in Scrip-
ture, where God himself, or, as others will have it, the eternal
Logos, converses with his servants. And this he may do, either
by a mental locution, wherein he objects to their minds the ex-
press idea of what such a number of words would convey; or by
a corporal locution, when he assumes an appareut body, and
protect and assist him in it, in the same manner as ho
had done his predecessor Moses, and provided he took
care to obey his laws, as Moses had done, make the
whole land of Canaan a cheap and easy conquest to him :
and therefore without perplexing his mind any further,
he ordered him immediately to set about the work.
b The city of Jericho was just opposite to the place
where he was to c pass the river Jordan ; and as it was
the first that he intended to attack, he thought it advis-
speech, in the same manner that men speak. But in the place
before us, whether it were an angel, or God himself, he seems to
have spoken to Joshua out of the sanctuary, from whence he liad
spoken to him a little before Moses' death, and gave him encour-
agement to perform strenuously what he is now putting upon
him. — Dent. xxxi. 14, 23.
b Jericho was a city of Canaan, which afterwards fell to the
lot of the tribe of Benjamin, about seven leagues distant from
Jerusalem, and two from Jordan. Moses calls it likewise ' tho
city of palm trees,' Deut. xxxiv. 3, because there were great
numbers of them in the plains of Jericho ; and not only of palm
trees, but as Josephus tells us, (Antiquities, b. 4. c. 5.) balsam
trees likewise, which produced the precious liquor in such high
esteem among the ancients. The plain of Jericho was watered
with a rivulet, which was formerly salt and bitter, but was after-
wards sweetened by the prophet Elisha, 2 Kings ii. 21 , 22 ; where-
upon the adjacent country, which was watered by it, became not
only one of the most agreeable, but most fertile spots in all that
country. As to the city itself, after it was destroyed by Joshua,
it was, in the days of Ahab king of Israel, rebuilt by Hiel the
Bethelite, 1 Kings xvi. 34 ; and in the times of the last kings of
Judea, yielded to none, except Jerusalem. For it was adorned
with a royal palace, wherein Herod the Great died; with an
hippodromus, or place where the Jewish nobility learned to ride
the great horse, and other arts of chivalry, with an amphitheatre
and other magnificent buildings; but during the siege ot Jeru-
salem, the treachery of its inhabitants provoked the Romans to
destroy it. After the siege was over there was another city built,
but not upon the same place where the two former stood ; for the
ruins of them both are seen to this day. Of what account and
bigness it was, we have no certain information; but some later
travellers inform us, that at present it is no more than a poor,
nasty village of the Arabs. — /Fells' Geography of the Old and
New Testament, and MavndreU's Journey from Aleppo.
This village, called Rieha, or Itihha, was long supposed to be
situated on the site of ancient Jericho. But Mr Buckingham
has shown that the real site of the ancient city was about four
miles higher up the valley, where he traced to a considerable
extent the boundary of its walls, and found portions of ruined
buildings, shafts of columns, &c, scattered about over the wider/
extended heaps of this ruined city, which seemed to carer a sur-
face of a square mile. The once celebrated " City of Palms
cannot now boast of a single tree of any kind, either palm or
balsam; and there is scarcely any verdure or bushes to be Been
about the site of this deserted city. But the desolation with which
its ruins are surrounded, Mr Buckingham observes, is rather t..
be attributed to the cessation of the usual agricultural laboun OB
the soil, and the want of a distribution of water over it by the
aqueducts, the remains of which evince that they were chiefly
constructed fur that purpose, tban to any change in the climate
or soil. — Ed.
c Jordan is supposed te derive its name from the Hebrew
word Jor, which signifies a spring, and Dan, which is a small
town, and not far from the fountain-head of this river. It is
certainl\ a ri\er of very great DOta in li'.iy \M'it, and ol it the
Jewish historian gives us the billowing account; "The head of
this river has bei n though! to be Pinion ; but, in troth, it i imea
hither under ground, and tin- BOUTCC of it is l'hiala, an hundred
and twenty furlongs from Cseserea Phihppi, a little on the right
hand, and not much out of the way to Tracheitis, from the
cave of Panion it crosses the bogs and fens of the lake Bemecho-
nitis, and alter a course of an hundred and twenty farloaff
further, passes under the city of Julias, or Bethsaida, and
the lake C.ennesareth, or Tiberias, and then running along
through a wilderness or deqert, it empties fiseif Into the lake
Asphaltites, or the Dead Sea." New Bfnee the cave Panion lies
at the foot of Mount Lebanon, and the lake Asphaltites reaches
3G4
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3S03. A. C. 1608. JOSH
able to send two spies thither, to take a view of the situ-
ation and strength, and avenues of the place. As soon
as the spies were gone, he bade the officers go through
the camp, and give the people notice, that within three
days they were to pass the Jordan, in order to take pos-
i. TO THE END.
to the very extremity of the south of Judea, the river Jordan
must extend its course quite from the northern to the southern
boundary of the holy land. [Burckhardt, however, who visited
its source, does not notice this distribution; but says, that it rises
an hour and a quarter, or about four miles, north-east from
Banias, or Cresarea Philippi, in the plain, near a hill called Tel-
el-Kadi. There are, he says, two springs, near each other, one
smaller than the other, whose waters unite immediately below.
Both sources are on level ground, amongst rocks, of what Burck-
hardt calls tufwacke. The larger source immediately forms a
river twelve or fifteen yards across, which rushes rapidly over a
stony bed into the lower plain. The few houses at present inhab-
ited near this spot, are called Enkeil. It is soon after joined by
the river of Banais, which rises on the north-east of the city.
Over the source of this river is a perpendicular rock, in which
several niches have been cut to receive statues ; the largest of which
is above a spacious cavern, beneath which the river rises. This
niche, the editor of Burckhardt sensibly conjectures, contained a
statue of Pan ; whence the name of Paneas given to the city, and
of Uatuov to the cavern. This explains the error of Josephus ;
who considered this to be, not the source of a distinct river, but
the second head of Jordan, after emerging from its subterraneous
channel.] But the largeness of this river is far from being equal
to its extent. It may be said indeed to have two banks, whereof
the first and uttermost is that to which the river does, or at least
anciently did, overflow at some seasons of the year ; but at pre-
sent, (whether the rapidity of the current has worn its channel
deeper, or its waters are directed some other way) so it is, that
it seems to have forgot its ancient greatness: for " we," says Mr
Maundrell, " could discern no sign or probability of such overflow-
ing, though we were there on the 30th of March, which is the
proper time for its inundations. Nay, so far was the river from
overflowing, that it ran at least two yards below the brink of its
channel. After you have descended the outermost bank, (con-
tinued he,) you go about a furlong upon the level strand, before
you come to the immediate bank of the river, which is so beset
with bushes and trees, such as tamarisks, willows, oleanders, &c,
that you can see no water, until you have made your way through
them. In this cover of the banks, lions, and other wild creatures
are said to hide themselves in summer, but upon the inundation
of the river, they are forced to dislodge." To which the prophet
seems to allude in these words, ' he shall come like a lion from
the swelling of Jordan,' (Jer. xlix. 19). — Wells and Maundrell.
The course of the Jordan is about one hundred miles; its
breadth and depth are various. Dr Shaw computed it to be
about thirty yards broad, and three yards or nine feet in depth;
and states that it discharges daily into the Dead Sea about
6,090,000 tons of water. Viscount Chateaubriand, who travelled
nearly a century after him, found the Jordan to be six or seven
feet deep close to the shore, and about fifty paces in breadth.
The late count Volney asserts it to be scarcely sixty paces wide
at its embouchure. Messrs Bankes and Buckingham, who crossed
it in January, 1816, pretty nearly at the same ford over which the
Israelites passed on their first entering the promised land, found
the stream extremely rapid ; and as it flowed at that part over a
bed of pebbles, its otherwise turbid waters were tolerably clear,
as well as pure and sweet to the taste. The passage of this deep
and rapid river by the Israelites, at the most unfavourable season,
when augmented by the dissolution of the winter snows, was more
manifestly miraculous, if possible, than that of the Red Sea; be-
cause here was no natural agency whatever employed ; no mighty
winds to sweep a passage as in the former case; no reflux in the
tide on which minute philosophers might fasten to depreciate the
miracle. It seems, therefore, to have been providentially designed,
to silence cavils respecting the former: it was done at noonday, in
the presence of the neighbouring inhabitants; and it struck terror
into the kings of the Amorites and Canaanites westward of the
river, 'whose hearts melted, neither was there any spirit in them
any more, because of the children of Israel.' (Josh. v. 1.) The
place where the Israelites thus miraculously passed this river, is
supposed to be the 'fords of Jordan ' mentioned in Judg. iii. 28.
— Ed.
session of the promised land, and were therefore a to
provide themselves with victuals for their march. b The
spies who were sent upon this hazardous expedition, got
safe into the city, and took up their lodgings in a public
house that was kept by a widow woman, whose name
was Rahab. But they had not been long there, before
intelligence was brought to the king, so that he ordered
the gates to be shut, and search to be made for the men :
but their hostess, having had some notice of it, hid them
undersome hempen stocks, which lay dryingfupontheroof
of her house, and when the king's officers came, she told
them, " that there had indeed been two strangers there,
who had made a short stay at her house, but that, a little
before sunset, they went away, but might easily be over-
taken, because they had not been long gone:" where
upon they sent out messengers after them, as far as the
fords of Jordan ; but in vain. Having thus eluded the
king's officers, Rahab goes up to the spies, and tells
them, " That she was very confident their God, who
was the only true God, both in heaven and earth,
had delivered that country into their hands ; that the
actions which he had done for them, in making all
opposition fall before them, had struck a panic fear into
all its inhabitants ; and that therefore, as she was confi-
dent that this would be the event, and had, in this
a The Israelites' usual food, while they sojourned in the wil-
derness, was manna: but as they approached the promised land,
where they might have provision in the ordim ry way, that mira-
culous bread did perhaps gradually decrease ; and in the space of
a few days after this, was totally withdrawn. They were now in
the countries of Sihon and Og, which they had lately conquered,
and the victuals which they were commanded to provide them-
selves with, were such as their new conquest afforded: for being,
after three days, (Josh. iii. 1.) to remove very early in the morn-
ing, they might not perhaps have had time to gather a sufficient
quantity of manna, and to bake it, before they were obliged to
march. — Patrick's Commentary.
b The eastern writers tell us, that these spies, whom they make
to be Caleb and Phineas, were valiant and religious men, and in
the prime of their youth; that to pass unobserved, they changed
their habits, as if they had come from a distant country; and if
any one asked them any questions, their reply was to this effect:
" We are people from the east, and our companions, have heard
of this powerful people, who were forty years in the wilderness,
without either guide or provision: and it was reported to us, that
they had a God whom they called ' the King of heaven and
earth,' and who, as they say, hath given them both your and our
country. Our principals have therefore sent us to find out the
truth hereof, and to report it to them. We have likewise heard
of their captain, whom they call Joshua the son of Nun, who put
the Amalekites to flight, who destroyed Sihon and Og, the kings
of Midian and Moab. Wo therefore be to us, and you, and all
that flee to us for shelter ! They are a people who pity none,
leave none alive, drive all out of their country, and make peace
with none. We are all accounted by them infidels, profane,
proud, and rebellious. Whoever of us or you, therefore, that in-
tend to take care of themselves, let them take their families and
be gone, lest they repent of their stay, when it is too late." By
this means they imposed upon the people ; and, as Josephus informs
us, went whither they would, and saw whatever they had a mind
to, without any stop or question. They took a view of the walls,
the gates, the ramparts, and passed the whole day for men ot
curiosity only, without any design. So that if any credit may
be given to this account, it was but just that they who thus im-
posed upon the Canaanites should, in the same manner, be im-
posed upon by the Gibeonites. — A Samaritan Chronicle written
in Arabic, p. 65, and Josephus' Antiquities, b. 5. c. 1.
c The roofs of houses were then very flat, and having prob-
ably battlements round them to secure people from falling oft", as
the manner of building was afterwards among the Jews, Deut.
xxii. 8, were made use of for places to walk, or at any time to
fry any kind of goods upon.
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365
instance, shown them uncommon kindness, her only request
was, that when they came against the city, they would, in
return, spare hers and her family's lives ; for which she
desired of them some assurance." An offer so generous
and so unexpected, joined with so liberal a confession,
could not but engage the two spies to a compliance with
what she requested ; and therefore they promised, and
solemnly swore to her, that whenever they became
masters of the city, not only she, and her family, but
every one else that was found in her house, should be
exempted from the common ruin.
The gates were so closely shut and guarded, that there
was no possibility for making their escape that way ; but
Rahab's house being happily situated upon the city wall,
as soon as it was conveniently dark, she first charged
them to make to the neighbouring mountains, where they
might keep themselves concealed, until the messengers
were returned, and then let them down by a silken cord
from one of her windows, which faced the country. But
before they parted, they agreed that this same cord, hung
out at her window, should be the token between them ;
and therefore they desired, that whoever she was minded
to save, might, when their army approached the city, be
kept within doors. The spies, having thus luckily
escaped, took Rahab's advice, and concealed themselves
in the mountains, until those who were sent out to pursue
them were returned to the city, and then they made the
best of their way to the camp ; where they informed
Joshua of their whole adventure, and withal gave him to
understand, that the general consternation which they
found the people in, was to them a sure omen that God
Almighty intended to crown their arms with success.
Pleased with this news, Joshua gave orders for the
army to decamp ; but before he did that, he reminded
the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of
Manasseh, of the promise they had made to Moses to
assist their brethren in the conquest of Canaan ; ° which
they readily consented to do, and not only in that, but in
every thing else he commanded them to do, promised to
obey him with the same cheerfulness that they had done
Moses : so that forty thousand of them decamped with
him, and fell down to the banks of the Jordan.
It was now in the time of the barley-harvest, which in
these hot countries falls early in the spring, when, by
reason of hasty rain, and the melting of the snow upon
Mount Lebanon, the river is generally full of water, and
sometimes overflows its banks : and as soon as the army
was come within a small distance of the place where it
was intended they should cross, Joshua sent and com-
municated to every tribe the order that was to be observed
in this solemn march. The priests, bearing the ark,
were to begin the procession ; each tribe, in the order in
a The two tribes and an half had the countries which had
been lately conquered, and were now given to them in possession,
to preserve against the attempts of the nations from whom they
had taken them; and can hardly be supposed to go, one and all,
along with their brethren, to the conquest of the countries which
lay on the other side of the river Jordan. In the last muster of
the army, they consisted of above an hundred thousand able
soldiers; and we can hardly suppose that at this time their num-
ber was decreased. The forty thousand that went over Jordan,
were but a part of them, and the rest were left behind to guard
their new conquests against the vanquished nations, that had
abundant reason to become their enemies. — Saurin, vol. M, Dis-
sertation I.
which they used to march, were to follow. When the
priests were got into the middle of the channel, the*
they were to stand still, till the whole multitude was got
safe to the other shore ; ami that this wonderful passage
might be more regarded, they were all enjoined to sanc-
tify themselves, by washing their clothes, avoiding all
impurities, and abstaining from matrimonial intercourse
the night before.
Before they crossed the river, Joshua, by God's direc-
tion, appointed twelve men, out of every tribe one, to
choose twelve stones, according to the number of their
tribes, in the midst of the channel, where the priests, with
the ark, were ordered to stand, and * there to set them
up, that they might be seen from each side of the river,
when the waters were abated, as a monument of this mat
miracle ; and to bring twelve more ashore with them for
the like purpose.
With these orders and instructions, the army set for-
ward. The priests with the ark led the van ; and as soon
as they touched the river with their feet, the stream
divided. The waters above went back, and rose up on
heaps as far as the city c Adam; whilst those that were
below, continuing their course towards the Ded Sea,
opened a passage of above sixteen or eighteen miles for
the Israelites to cross over, and all the time that they
were thus crossing, the priests with the ark stood in the
middle of the channel, till every thing was done that
Joshua commanded ; and then, upon their coming out of
it, the river returned to its wonted course.
By this miraculous passage, Joshua having gained the
plains of Jericho, encamped in a (! place which was after-
wards calledGifc>al;and while the whole country la) under
a great terror and consternation, God commanded ' the
I It has been a custom in all nations to erect monuments of
stone, in order to preserve the memory of covenants, victories,
and other great transactions ; and though there was no inscrip-
tion upon these stones, yet the number of them, and the place
where they lay, which was not at all stony, was sufficient to
signify some memorable thing, which posterity would not fail to
hand down from one generation to another. — Patrick's Commen-
tary on Joshua iv. 7.
c Adam, or Adorn, is a place situate on the hanks of the
river Jordan, towards the south of the sea of Cfnnereth, orthoses
of Galilee. — JJ'dL-' Geography of Ike Old Testament.
d Gilgal, the place where the Israelites encamped fat some
time after their passage over the river Jordan, was so called,
because here the rite of circumcision, which had long been dis-
used, was renewed: whereupon ' the Lord said unto Joshua, this
day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt (thai Is, uncircum-
cision) from off you; wherefore the name < -i' the place is called
Gilgal (that is, rolling) unto this day,' Josh. v. >). Prom this
expression the place received its name, and if we look into its
situation, we shall find, that as the Israelites passed over ' Jordan
right against Jericho,' Josh. iii. Mi. and encamped iii Gilgal, ill
the eastern border of Jericho, it is plain, that (iileal must be
situated between Jordan and Jericho; anil therefore, -ino Ji -
phus tells us, that Jericho was sixty furlongs distant from Jordan,
atul the camp of Gilgal was fifty furlongs from the same river; it
hence follows, that Gilgal was ten furkmgS that i-. about a mile
and a quarter) from Jordan eastward. Hut is some learned nun
have observed, that five of the furlongs used by Josephus make
up an Italian mile, so the distance between Gilgtl ami Jericho
will be just two mile-; which exactly agrees with the testimony
of Si Jerome, "ho make- it two miles distant from Jericho, and a
place h.ld in great veneration by the inhabitants oi the country
in his days. — JPelW Geography, vol. •>. <•. -I.
r The command which God gives Joshua, concerning the rite
of circumcision, i- tin-, — • Make thee sharp knms, and circum-
cise the children of Israel the second time,' Josh. v. '„'. Aad after
366
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Boon V.
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3303. A. C. 1608. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
rite of circumcision, which for the space of almost forty
years had been intermitted, to be renewed, that the
people might be qualified to partake of the ensuing
passover. This was the third time of their celebrating
that festival : the first was at their departure out of
Egypt ; the second at the erection of their tabernacle,
at the foot of Mount Sinai ; and now that they were
arrived in a country wherein there was a sufficient pro-
vision of corn for unleavened bread, God insisted upon
the observance of his ordinances : he was minded, in-
deed, that all things now should go on in their regular
way; and therefore, for the future, he left them to the
provision which this land of plenty afforded them, and
ceased to supply them any longer with manna.
Gilgal was much about two miles from Jericho, and
therefore Joshua might possibly go out alone to recon-
noitre the city, and to think of the properest way of
besieging it ; when, all on a sudden, there a appeared to
the rite was performed, God said, ' This day have I rolled away
the reproach of Egypt from off you,' ver. 9. Both of which pas-
sages have given no small trouble to commentators. The sharp
knives are allowed to be, what our marginal notes call them,
knives of flint, which stones could not but be plentiful in the
mountains of Arabia, and when made very sharp, were the knives
commonly made use of in the eastern countries: but St Jerome
himself, as great an Hebraist as he was, could not find out what
was this circumcision, which was to pass upon the Israelites a
second time. Some of the Jews from these words of Jeremiah,
' I will punish the circumcised that lias a foreskin,' c. ix. 25.
have undertaken to prove, that it was possible to bring the fore-
skin again by art, which the Israelites had done, during then-
abode in the wilderness, and for this reason were ordered to
be circumcised afresh ; and those Christians who have embraced
this notion, pretend to support it by the words of St Paul, ' If
any man is called being circumcised p.h \inirsa.ix6ai, let him not
become uncircumeised.' But whether the recovery of a prepuce
be a thing probable or not, it is certain, that all the difficulty of
the words arises from the misunderstanding the idiom of the
original, and may easily be removed, if they were translated, or
paraphrased thus, — Let the ceremony of circumcision, which has
been so long discontinued, be renewed, as it was heretofore.
While the Israelites lived in Egypt, we do not read of any
neglect of this rite of circumcision among them ; but while they
abode in the wilderness, there are several reasons that might
oblige them to omit it, until they arrived in the promised land,
when they were to renew the ordinance of the passover, and,
previous to that, were all to be circumcised ; because no uncir-
cumeised person, nor any one who had a son or a man-servant
in his house uncircumeised, was capable of being admitted to it,
(Exod. xii. 43.) 2d. 'The rolling away the reproach of Egypt,'
is supposed by some to relate to the reproaches which the Egyp-
tians used to cast upon the Israelites, namely, that the Egyptians,
seeing the Israelites wander so long in the wilderness, reproached
and flouted them, as if they were brought to be destroyed there,
and not conducted into the promised land, from which reproaches
God now delivered them, when, by enjoining circumcision, he
gave them assurance, that they should shortly enjoy the country
which no uncircumeised person might inherit. Our learned
Spencer thinks the reproach of Egypt to be the slavery to which
they had long been there subject, but were now fully declared a
free people, by receiving a mark of the seed of Abraham, and
being made heirs of the promised land. But the most common
opinion is, that by the ' reproach of Egypt ' is meant nothing else
hut uncircumcision, with which the Israelites always upbraided
other people, and particularly the Egyptians, with whom they
had lived so long, and were best acquainted ; and admitting this
to be the true (as it is the most unconstrained) sense, this pas-
sage is a plain proof, that the Israelites could not learn the rite
of circumcision from the Egyptians, as some pretend, but that
the Egyptians, contrariwise, must have had it from them. —
Universal History, b. 1. c.7 ; Spencer De Leg. Heb. b. 1. c. 4;
Patrick's Commentary; and Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12.
a Who this persou was that appeared to Joshua, is not so well
him a person clothed in armour, and standing at some
distance, with a drawn sword in his hand. Undaunted
at this unusual sight, Joshua advances to him, and having
demanded of what party he was, the vision replied, that
he was for the host of Israel, whose captain and guardian
he was ; and as Joshua, in humble adoration, was fallen
prostrate before him, he ordered him, in the manner he
had done Moses at the burning bush, to loose his sandals
from off" his feet, and then proceeded to instruct him in
what form he would have the siege carried on, that the
Canaanites might perceive that it was something more
than the arm of flesh that fought against them.
The form of the siege was this : — All the army was to
march round the city, with seven priests before the ark,
having in their hands trumpets made of rams' horns, six
days successively. On the seventh, after the army had
gone round the city seven times, upon a signal given,
the priests were to blow a long blast with their trumpets,
and the people on a sudden set up a loud shout ; at which
instant the walls of the city should fall so flat to the
ground, that they might directly walk into it without any
let or obstruction. These orders were put in execution ;
and accordingly, on the seventh day, the walls fell, and
the Israelites entered. They put every one, men, women,
and children, nay the very beasts to the sword, and
spared no living creature, but Rahab only, and such
relations as she had taken under the protection of her
roof, according to the stipulation which had been made
with her. For Joshua had given the two spies a strict
charge beforehand, that when the town was going to be
sacked, they should repair to her house, and convey
everything safe out that belonged to her ; which accord-
ingly they did, and then the whole army fell on, and set
fire to the city, and destroyed every thing in it, except
the silver and gold, and such vessels of brass and iron
as were to be put into the treasury of the house of the
Lord, as they had done once before ' in a case of the
like nature : and that it might never be rebuilt again,
Joshua b denounced a prophetic imprecation on the man
' Num. xxxi. 22, 23.
agreed among commentators. Some are of opinion that it was
an angel, who, because the Hebrew calls him Gcbir, is supposed
to be Gabriel ; but there are several reasons, in this very account
of his apparition, which denote him to be a divine, and not a
created being. For, in the first place, besides his assuming the
title of ' the captain of the host of the Lord,' an image under
which God himself is frequently represented in Scripture,
Joshua's calling him 'Jehovah,' or the ' Lord,' a name which
neither Joshua should have given, nor he accepted of, had he
been no more than an angel; his falling down and worshipping
him, which he durst not have done, since God alone is to be
adored, nor would the other have permitted, but rather have
reproved him, as we find one of them did St John, (Rev. xxii.
10.) are the surest evidence of the divinity of his person. For,
when instead of reproving him for doing him too much honour,
we find him commanding him to do more, by requiring him to
loose ' his shoes from oft' his feet,' insisting upon the highest ac-
knowledgment of. a divine presence that was used among the
eastern nations, we cannot but think ourselves obliged (with a
learned rabbin) freely to confess, " That this angel who suffered
himself to be worshipped, and by whose presence the place where
he appeared was sanctified, so that Joshua was commanded to
' put oil his shoes,' no doubt was the veiy same whom all the
angels of heaven do worship." — Joh. a Cock, upon the Gemara
of the. Sanhedrim, vol. 3. Dissertation 2.
b The words of Joshua's execration are these : ' Cursed he
the man before the Lord, that raiseth up, and buildeth this city
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367
(namely, that it should occasion the utter ruin of his
family) that should attempt it.
a Ai was a little city, about twelve miles distant from
Jericho ; and as Joshua knew that it was neither popu-
lous nor well defended, he detached a small body, of
3000 men only, to go and attack it. But, contrary to
their expectation, the inhabitants of the place sallied
out upon them, and having- slain some few, put the rest
to flight, and pursued them as far as their own camp.
This defeat, how small soever, struck such a damp upon
the people's courage, th.it * Joshua was forced to have
recourse to God, who immediately answered him, (by
Jericho; he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and
in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.' (Josh. vi. 2b'.)
"This anathema," says Maimonidos, " was pronounced, that the
miracle of the subversion of Jericho might be kept in perpetual
memory; for whosoever saw the walls sunk deep into the earth,"
as he understands it, " would clearly discern, that, this was not
the form of a building destroyed by men, but miraculously thrown
down by God." Hiel, however, in the reign of Aiiab, either
not remembering, or not believing this denunciation, was so
taken with the beauty of its situation, that he rebuilt Jericho,
and, as the sacred history informs us, ' laid the foundation thereof
in Abiram, his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his
youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which
he spake by Joshua, the son of Nun.' (1 Kings xvi. 34.) How-
ever, after that Hiel had ventured to rebuild it, no scruple was
made of inhabiting it ; for it afterwards became famous upon
many accounts. Here the prophet sweetened the waters of the
spring that supplied it and the neighbouring countries. Here |
Herod built a sumptuous palace. It was the dwelling-place of
Zaccheus ; and was honoured with the presence of Christ, who
vouchsafed likewise to work some miracles here. — Universal
History, b. 1. c. 7.
a We have this plare mentioned in the history of Abraham,
who both before and after his going into Egypt, pitched his tent
between Bethel and Ai, or Hai, as it was then called ; and from
both Gen. xii. 8. and Josh. vii. 2. it appears that this city lay to
the east of Bethel, about three leagues from Jericho, and one
from Bethel, as Masias informs us; and the reason why Joshua
sent so small a detachment against it was, because the place in
itself was neither strong nor large. For when it was taken, the
number of the slain, both in it and Bethel, which, as some think,
was confederate with it, were 'hut twelve thousand, both of men
and women.' (Josh. viii. 25.) The providence of God, however,
was very visible, in sending so small a party against Ai: for if
the flight of three thousand men put the Israelites into such a
consternation, as we read Josh. vii. 5, G., what a condition would
they have been in if all the people had been discomfited, as doubt-
less it would have happened, while the guilt of Achan's sacrilege
remained unpunished. — Wells'1 Geograjihy, vol.2, c. 4.
b The spirits of the army, as Josephus tells us, were so sunk
upon this disorder, and cast down into such a desperation of
better things to come, that after they had spent the whole day
in fasting, weeping, and mourning, Joshua addressed himself,
with a more than ordinary importunity, to Almighty God, in
words to this effect: " It is not any temerity, O Lord, or
ambition of our own, that has brought us hither to make war
upon this people, but a pure deference and respect to the
persuasion of thy servant Moses, that has incited us to this
undertaking, and not without a warrant of many signs and
miracles, to convince us, that he had reason and authority on his
side, when he told us, that thou thyself hadst promised us the
possession of this country, and to give us victory over all our
enemies. But what a change is here, all on a sudden, in the
disappointment of our hopes, and in the loss of our friends ! As
if either Moses' prediction had not been of divine inspiration, or
otherwise thy promises and purposes variable. If this be the be-
ginning of a war, we cannot but dread the further progress of it,
for fear that this miscarriage, upon the first experiment, should
prove only the earnest of greater evils to come. But, Lord, thou
alone, that art able to give us relief, help us, and save us.
Vouchsafe unto us comfort and victory; and be graciously pleased
to preserve us from the snare of despairing for the future.'- Jew-
ish Antiquities, b. 5. c. I.
Urim as is supposed,) that his commands had been sa-
crilegiously infringed ; and therefore ordered him to have
the orlender punished with death, and directed him to
a method how to discover who he was.
Before the taking of Jericho, ' Joshua had cautioned
the people not to spare any thing that was in it, but to
burn and destroy all that came in their way, except sil-
ver and gold, and brass, and iron, which were to In; con-
secrated to the Lord : but notwithstanding his strict
charge against reserving any thing that was either devot-
ed to this general destruction, or consecrated to the
Lord, a man of the tribe of Judith, whose name was
Achan,tOok some of the rich plunder anil concealed it in
his tent. To find out the person therefore, Joshua, early
next morning, called all the tribes together before the ta-
bernacle, where, d by casting the lot, lirst upon the tribes,
and so proceeding from tribe to family, from family to
household, and from household to particular persons, the
criminal was at last found to be Achan ; who upon
Joshua's admonition, confessed the fact, namely, that he
had secreted d a royal robe, two hundred shekels of sil-
ver, and a large wedge of gold ; and when upon search,
the things were produced in the presence of all the peo-
ple, they took him, and all his family, his cattle, his
tent, and all his moveables, and carrying them to a
neighbouring valley, which, from that time, <•' in allu-
1 Josh. vi. 18, 19.
c Some Jewish doctors are of opinion, that in the discovery of
the guilty person, there was no use made of lots at all, but that
all Israel being ordered to pass by the high priest, who, on this
occasion had his pectoral on, in which were the twelve stones,
with the names of the twelve tribes engraven on them, when the
tribe to which the guilty person belonged, was called, the stOUB
in which was the name of that tribe, changed colour, and
turned black; and so it did when the family, the household, and
the person was called. But this is a mere fiction. There is
much more probability in the opinion of those who suppose that,
at first, twelve lots or tickets were put into one urn, on each
of which was written the name of one of these twelve tribes: that
when one of the twelve tribes was found guilty, then were there as
many lots put in as there were families in that tribe; alter that,
as many as there were householders in that family; and at la^t,
as many as there were heads in that household, until the criminal
was detected. But others will have it, that this was dune by the
high priest alone, who, by a divine inspiration, at that time, was
enabled, without any more to do, to declare who the culpable
person vtas. — Saurins Dissertations, vol. 3. I.e Clerc's ai
trick's Commentaries on Joshua vii.
(/ In the original, this robe is called a garment of Shinar, that
is, of Babylon; and the general opinion is, that the rlchni
excellency of it consisted not so much in tin- B tuff whereat
made, as in the colour whereof it «as t\yit\, which most suppose
to have been scarlet, a colour in high esteem among the ancients
and fur which the Babylonians were justly famous. Bochart,
however, maintains, that the colour of this robe was Tartan
not all of one sort ; that the scarlet colour the Babylonians & I
received from Tyre, but the parly colour, whether so woven or
wrought with the needle, was of their own invention, for which
hi' produces many passages oul of heathen anthers. Such as: —
' I would net prefer the gaudily coloured Babylonian robes, which
are variegated with Egyptian needlework." (Mart. Bp. b. 80
••The land et" Memphis affords these gifts; the comb ol I
is superior to the Babylonian needle," (Ibid. b. 14.) with many
more citations out of several other writers. However mis be,
it is certain that the robe could not fail of being a very rich and
splendid one, and therefore captivated either Achan's piide.it
rather covi tousness; since bis purpose seems to havi been, not ■■
much to wear it himself, as to sell it fur a large pi ice. — />'.-
chart's Phaleg. b. I.e. 9. ; Samrim, b. '.i. Dissertation 3.
e Though his name was primarily Achan, yet, < ver alter I is
execution he was called Achar, (so the Syriac version, Josephus,
368
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sion to that man's name, was called the valley of A<:har,
" there they stoned him, and those belonging to his
family, as accomplices in his crimes. Whatever goods
or utensils he had, these they consumed with fire, and
so raised a great heap of stones over all, that thereby
they might perpetuate the memory of the crime, and deter
others from the like provocation.
After this execution of the divine justice, God ordered
Joshua to attempt the conquest of Ai once more, and
promised him success ; which might best be obtained, as
he told him, by laying an ambuscade somewhere behind
the city, towards Bethel. b 30,000 men were there-
fore drawn out, and sent away by night upon this expe-
dition, with instructions to enter the city as soon as the
signal, which was to be a spear with a banner upon it,
was given them : and early next morning, he himself
marched with the remainder of his forces against the city.
As soon as the king of Ai perceived him, he sallied
hastily out of the town, with all his troops, and all his
people, and fell upon the Israelites, who, at the first on-
set, fled as if they had been under great terror. But this
was only a feint, to draw the enemy into the plain ; and
therefore as soon as Joshua saw, that, by stratagem, the
city was pretty well emptied, he gave the signal to the
ambuscade ; which finding it now defenceless, imme-
diately entered, and set it on fire.
By the ascent of the smoke, Joshua discerned that his
men had got possession of the town ; and therefore
facing about, he began to charge the enemy very briskly ;
who, little expecting that the Israelites would rally, began
now to think of retreating to the city ; but when they
saw it all in flames, and the party which had set it on
fire issuing out, and just going to fall upon their rear,
they were so dismayed and dispirited, that they had
power neither to fight nor flee. So that all the army
was cut to pieces ; the city was burned, and made an heap
of rubbish; every soul in it, man, Avoman, and child,
were put to the sword ; and the king, who was taken pri-
soner, was ordered to be hanged upon a gibbet till
Athanasius, Basil, and others mentioned by Bochart, name him,)
which signifies the troubler of Israel. — Patrick's Commentary on
Joshua viii.
a. Since the law against sacrilege condemns transgressors to the
flames, and God commanded the person here guilty to be burned
accordingly, (Josh. vii. 18.) the Jews affirm that Achan was
actually burned: and whereas it is said in the text that ' he was
stoned,' they think that this was done not judicially, but acciden-
tally, by the people, who were so highly provoked, that they could
not forbear casting stones at him as lie was led to execution. — See
MunH. on Joshua vii.
b Some are of opinion, that this detachment of thirty thousand
made up the whole force that was employed in this expedition
against Ai: and that, out of these, 5000 were sent to lie in am-
bush, that, at a convenient time, they might set fire to the city:
but this is so directly contrary to God's command, of Joshua's
' taking all the people of war with him,' which accordingly in
chap. viii. 3, 11, we are told he did, that there is no foundation
for it. And therefore it is reasonable to suppose, that the whole
body designed for the ambuscade consisted of 30,000 men; and
that the 5000 mentioned in the 12th verse, was a small party
detached from these, in order to creep closer to the city, while
the 25,000 kept themselves absconded behind the mountains,
until a proper signal was given, both from the city, when this
small party had taken it, and from the grand army, when they
had repulsed the enemy, that then they might come out from
their ambush, and intercept them as they were making their
flight. — Patrick's Commentary on Joshua viii.
sunset, when he was taken down, thrown in at a gate of
the city, and a great heap of stones raised over him.
After this action was over, the cattle, and all the spoil
of the city was, by God's appointment, given to the sol-
diers ; and as Joshua was now not far distant from the
mountains of Gerizim and Ebal, this reminded him of
the command which 1 Moses had given about reading the
law, with the blessings and curses thereunto annexed,
from those two mountains ; which he not only order-
ed to be done, but had an altar likewise erected, whereon
not only sacrifices were offered, to give God the glory
of all his victories, but c an abridgment of the law, or
some remarkable part of it, was likewise engraven, at
the same time that the whole of it was read in a large
assembly of all the tribes.
Joshua's success against the two towns of Jericho and
Ai, and the terrible slaughter he had made among their
inhabitants, had ,l so alarmed the kings on that side the
Jordan, that they confederated together, and entered
into league for their mutual defence ; but the Gibeonites,
foreseeing the destruction that was hastening upon them,
endeavoured by a stratagem to gain a peace with the
Israelites, which they effected in this manner.' — They
chose a certain number of artful men, who e were
1 Deut. xi. 29. and xxvii. 1 — 13.
c It is a question (as we said before, p. 321, in the notes)
among the learned, what it was that was written upon these
stones. But besides other conjectures already enumerated, some
think it not unlikely to have been a copy of the covenant, by
which the children of Israel acknowledged that they held the land
of Canaan of God, upon condition that they observed his laws, to
which they and their posterity had obliged themselves; for this
was the third time that the covenant between God and his people
was renewed, and therefore the contents of that covenant, might
be very proper at this time to be thus monumentally recorded. —
Patrick on Deut. xxvii. 3. and Josh. viii. 32.
d The Jews in the Talmud tell us likewise, that a farther
cause of the Gibeonites' fear was, the inscription which they had
met with upon Mount Ebal, where, among other parts of the law
which Joshua, as they pretend, wrote upon stones, they found
the orders which both he and Moses had received from God,
utterly to extirpate all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. —
Saurin, b. 3. Dissertation, 4.
e It is a question among the casuists, whether the Gibeonites
could, with a good conscience, pretend that they were foreigners,
and tell a lie to save their lives ? And to this Puflendorf, (Droit
de la Nature,) b. 4. c. 2, thus replies ; " The artifice of the
Gibeonites," says he, "had nothing blameable in it, nor does it
properly deserve the name of a lie: for what crime is there in
any one's making use of an innocent fiction, in order to elude
the fury of an enemy that would destroy all before them? Nor
did the Israelites indeed properly receive any damage from this
imposture ; for what does any one lose in not shedding the blood
of another, when he has it in his power to take from him all his
substance, after having so weakened and disarmed him that he
is no more able to rebel against him?" But the opinion of this
great man seems to be a little erroneous in this case. Had the
Israelites indeed been a pack of common murderers, who, with-
out any commission from heaven, were carrying blood ana
desolation into countries where they had no right; or had the
Gibeonites been ignorant that a miraculous providence conducted
these conquerors, the fraud which they here put upon them
might then be deemed innocent: for there is no law that obliges us
under the pretence of sincerity, to submit to such incendiaries, and
merciless usurpers, as are for setting fire to our cities, and putting
us and our families to the edge of the sword. But the case of the
Gibeonites was particular; and if in other things they went con-
trary to truth, in this they certainly adhered to it, when they told
Joshua, ' We are come, because of the name of the Lord thy
God, lor we have heard of the fame of him, and all that he did iu
Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites, that
Skct. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
3G9
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HAI
instructed to feign themselves ambassadors come from a
far distant country, in order to obtain a league with
the people of Israel ; and, to gain credit to this their
pretence, they dressed themselves in old clothes, had old
clouted shoes on their feet, carried dry musty bread in
their bags, and the bottles wherein they kept their wine,
were a all sadly tarnished and torn. 6 In this plight
were beyond Jordan,' &c. (Josh. ix. 9, 10.) The idea which
they had conceived of the God of Israel should have put them
upon some other expedient than that of lying and deceit. They
should have inquired, as far as the obscure dispensation they were
under would have permitted them, into the cause of God's
severity against them. They should have acknowledged, that
it was their grievous sins which drew down this heavy judgment
upon their nation; and after they had repented thereof in sack-
cloth and ashes, they should have committed the rest to providence,
never doubting, but that he who had changed the very course
of nature to punish the guilty, would always find out some means
or other to save the penitent; but this they did not do; and
therefore they were culpable. — Suurin, vol. 3. Dissertation 4.
a These bottles were not of glass, or clay, as those in use
among us, but were made of leather, in which they formerly,
and even now in some countries, kept their wine.
b Chardin informs us that the Arabs, and all those that lead
a wandering life, keep their water, milk, and other liquors, in
leathern bottles. ** They keep in them more fresh than other-
wise they would do. These leathern bottles are made of goat-
skins. When the animal is killed, they cut off its feet and its
head, and they draw it in this manner out of the skin, without
opening its belly. They afterwards sew up the places where the
legs were cut off, and the tail, and when it is filled they tie it
about the neck. These nations, and the country people of Persia,
never go a journey without a small leathern bottle of water
hanging by their side like a scrip. The great leathern bottles
are made of the skin of an he goat, and the small ones that serve
instead of a bottle of water on the road, are made of a kid's skin."
These bottles are frequently rent when old and much used, and
are capable of being repaired when bound up. This they do,
Chardin says, "sometimes by setting in a piece; sometimes
by gathering up the wounded place in manner of a purse; some-
times they put in a round flat piece of wood, and by that means
stop the hole." Maundrell gives an account exactly similar to
the above. Speaking of the Greek convent at Bellmount, near
Tripoli, in Syria, he says, " the same person we saw officiating
at the altar in his embroidered sacerdotal robe, brought us the
next day, on his own back, a kid and a goat's skin of wine, as a
present from the convent." (Journey, March 12.) These bottles
are still used in Spain, and called borrachas. Mr Bruce gives a
description of the girba, which seems to be a vessel of the same
kind as those now mentioned, only of dimensions considerably
larger. "A girba, is an ox's skin, squared, and the edges
sewed together very artificially, by a double seam which does
not let out water, much resembling that upon the best English
cricket balls. An opening is left at the top of the girba, in the
same manner as the bung-hole of a cask. Around this the skin is
gathered to the size of a large handful, which when the girba is
full of water, is tied round with whipcord. These girbas gener-
ally contain about sixty gallons each, and two of them are the
load of a camel. They are then all besmeared on th itside
with grease, as well to hinder the water from oozing through, as
to prevent its being evaporated by the heat of the sun upon the
girba, which in fact happened to us twice, so as ti> put US in
imminent danger of perishing with thirst." {Travels, vol. iv.
p. 3:31.) See Harmer, vol. 1. p. 132.
Homer mentions wine being brought in a goat's skin. (11. iii.
217. Odys. vi. 78.
Now, to confirm the solemn pledges ?ivpn,
Ami ratify the vows address'd to heaven,
The herald bore the lambs to feed the inline,
And goatskins charged with consecrated wine.
Sutheby.
Her mother placed rich food the chest within.
And charged with wine the goat's capacious skin.
Sotheby.
Herodotus, ii. 121. refers to the same custom. — Ed.
ES, A. M. 38(13 A. C. 1G0S. JOSH. i. TO TUP. TNT),
they came to the camp at Gilgal : and being introduced
to Joshua, they iota him, ' That the fame of many mira-
cles which God had wrought lor them in the land of
Egypt, and the wonderful successes wherewith he had
blessed their arms against every power that had opposi d
them in their coining to that place, had reached oven
their remote and distant country ; for which reason their
states and rulers had sent them a long way, that by all
means imaginable, they might obtain a peace with a
people so renowned all the world over, and so favoured
and honoured by God.' And then showing their clothes,
shoes, and other tokens of the long journey the\ had
taken, they solemnly assured them, that all these things
were quite new when at first they sei out from home, and
thence left them to judge how distant and remote their
country was.
This plausible story, confirmed, as they thought, by
so many evidences, gained credit with the Israelites, so
that they entered into an amicable alliance with them :
and the other took care to have the treaty immediately
ratified, both by Joshua and all the princes of the con-
gregation. In three days' time the imposture was dis-
covered ; and they who pretended to come from a distant
country were found to be near neighbours, and some of
those very people whom Joshua was commissioned to
destroy. So that when the thing came to be rumoured
about, the people began to murmur against their princes
for their indiscretion, and were for having the league
cancelled ; but as it was confirmed by a solemn oath,
this they could not do without incurring the divine dis-
pleasure. And therefore, though they might not take
away their lives, they might, nevertheless, hold them in
a state of servitude, and, as long as they lived, make
them useful drudges, hewers of wood, and drawers of
water, and the like, which would both punish them much,
and prove fully as beneficial to the commonwealth ; and
with this apology the people were appeased. Joshua,
however, sent for some of the chief of the GibeoniteS; and
having expostulated the cheat with them, which they
excused upon the score of saving their own lives, he told
them what the determination of the princes was, naraelj .
that they should remain in a state of perpetual bondage :
which they received without any manner of murmuring,
and humbly acquiesced in whatever was thought proper
to be imposed upon them.
The confederate princes, hearing of this separata
treaty which the Gibeonites had made with Israel, wen-
resolved to be revenged of them for their desertion of
the common cause; and accordingly, joining all their
forces together, they came and invested their town.
The Gibeonites in this distress, not daring to tru-t to
their own strength, sent an express to Joshua i»r speed)
help; who set out with an expedition, and, b) quick
marches, and the favour of the night, came upon the
enemy sooner than they expected, and early next morning
fell upon them, and routed them. In this expedition
God had all along encouraged Joshua, and promised
him success; and therefore, as the confederate forces
were endeavouring to escape, and save themselves by
flight, he poured such a storm of hail '" upon them as
destroyed more than what perished 1>\ the sword.
,. x. 11. The common English translatii
'The Lord cast down greet stones from heaven.' Seme
ii a
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Joshua, on the other hand, was very desirous to make
the most of this happy opportunity ; and therefore, in
full chase of victory, he addressed himself to God, that
the sun and moon might stand still, and so prolong the
day until he had completed his victory ; which God was
pleased to grant. So that this was the most memorable
day that ever happened, wherein the ' Almighty listened
to the voice of a man,' to change the course of nature,
and stop the motion of those rolling orbs.
The confederate kings being thus put to flight, and
either frightened at the storm of hail, or at the close
pursuit of the enemy, made to a cave near a Maldcedah,
and there ran in to hide themselves. But Joshua, having
intelligence of it, commanded the cave to be blocked
up, and a guard to be set over it, and so continued his
pursuit, that he might cut oft' as many as he possibly
could before they reached to their fortified towns. In
his return he ordered the cave to be opened, and the
kings to be brought forth ; and when execution was done
upon them, he caused their bodies to be hanged upon
several trees until the evening, when they were taken
down, and cast into the cave, where they thought to have
hid themselves ; so that the place of their intended
sanctuary became their sepulchre. After this signal
victory, Joshua took all the southern parts of Canaan ;
which afterwards belonged to the tribes of Judah,
Simeon, Benjamin, Dan, and Ephraim : and having thus
ended his second campaign, he returned with his army
to the camp at Gilgal.
Here he continued for some time without entering
upon any fresh action, until several princes of the north
of Canaan, under Jabin king of Hazor, confederated
together, and raised a vast number of forces, which
encamped not far from b the waters of Merom ; and what
writers are of opinion that this was hail, of which violent
storms frequently occur in Arabia, but that this was larger, and
more violent than usual; others maintain that Joshua is to be
understood literally of a shower of stones ; such a circumstance,
so far from being impossible, has several times occurred. The
Romans, who looked upon showers of stones as very disastrous,
have noticed many instances of them. Under the reign of
Tullus Hostilius, when it was known to the people of Rome,
that a shower of stones had fallen on the mountain of Alba, at
first it seemed incredible. They sent out proper persons to
inquire into this prodigy, and it was found that stones had fallen
after the same manner as a storm of hail driven by the wind.
{Tit. Liv. b. 1. decad. 1. p. 12.; Idem, b. xxv. xxx. xxxiv.
xxxv. et alibi passim) Some time after the battle of Cannrc,
there was seen upon the same mountain of Alba, a shower of
stones, which continued for two days together. In 153S, near
a village in Italy, called Tri pergola, after some shocks of an
earthquake, there was seen a shower of stones and dust, which
darkened the air for two days, after which they observed that a
mountain had risen up in the midst of the Lucrine Lake.
(Monfaucon Diar. Italic, c. 21.) Dr A. Clarke, in his commen-
tary on this passage, has given a long and interesting account of
various showers of stones and hail which have fallen in various
places, and to which the curious reader is referred. As a most
stupendous miracle was wrought in this instance, in causing the
sun and moon to stand still, there can be no doubt that the shower
of stones whether hail or otherwise was also miraculous. — Ed.
a It was a city in the tribe of Judah, about eight miles distant
from Elcutheropolis; which place, though it is nowhere men-
tioned in the Scripture history, because it was built after the
destruction of Jerusalem, is nevertheless frequently taken notice
of by Eusebius and Jerome, as a point from whence they measure
the distances of other places. Its name imports a ' free city,'
and was itself situate in the tribe of Judah. — Wells' Geography
of the Old Testament, vol. 2. c. 4.
b These waters are generally supposed by learned men to be
'made the army more formidable, was the great number
of horses and d armed chariots they had, whereas the
Israelites were all on foot. This, however, did not in
the least discourage Joshua, who, in pursuance of the
instructions which God had given hiin, immediately took
the field, inarched directly towards the enemy, fell sud-
denly upon them, and put all, except e those that made
the lake Semechon, which lies between the head of the river
Jordan and the lake of Gennesareth ; since it is agreed on all
hands, that the city Hazor, where Jabin reigned, was situate
upon this lake. But others think, that the waters of Merom, or
Merome, were somewhere about the brook Kishon ; since there
is a place of that name mentioned in the account of the battle
against Sisera, Judg. v. 21. And it is more rational to think,
that the confederate kings advanced as far as the brook Kishon,
and to a pass which led into their country, to hinder Joshua from
penetrating it, or even to attack him in the country where he
himself lay encamped, than to imagine, that they waited for him
in the midst of their own country, leaving all Galilee at his
mercy, and the whole tract from the brook of Kishon, to the lake
Semechon. — Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3. c.
5; Rcland's Palest, b. 1. c. 40; and Cahnet on Josh. xi. 5.
c Their whole army, according to Josephus, was computed to
amount to three hundred thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and
two thousand chariots; and to oppose against these the Israelites
had no horse in their armies, because God had interdicted them,
(Deut. xvii. 16.) lest a traffic into Egypt for that sort of cattle
should be a snare to entangle them in idolatry ; or lest, having a
quantity thereof, they should put their confidence rather in them,
than in the divine assistance; for which reason the prophet de-
nounces a ' woe upon them that go down into Egypt for help,
and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many ;
and in horsemen, because they are strong, but they look not to
the Holy One of Israel, neither seek they the Lord.' — Is. xxxi. 1.
d The chariots, which the ancient historians usually call currus
falciferi, coisini falciferi, quadriga falcatce, (scythe-bearing
chariots,) &c, are described after the following manner: — " The
beam to which the horses were fastened, was armed with spikes
with iron points, which projected forward: the yokes of the horses
had two cutting falchions, of three cubits' length: the axle-trees
had fixed to them two iron spits, with scythes at their extremities ;
the spokes of the wheels were armed with javelins, and the very
felloes with scythes, which tore every thing they met with to
pieces. The axle-tree was longer, and the wheels stronger than
usual, that they might be the better able to bear a shock,' and the
chariot less liable to be overturned." The charioteer, who was
covered all over with armour, sat in a kind of tower made of
very solid wood, about breast high, and sometimes men well
armed were put into the chariot, and fought from thence with
darts and arrows. So that a dreadful slaughter these machines
must at first have made, when they met v/ith the enemy's troops ;
but in time, when men came to find out the way of declining
them, they did not do so much execution, and were consequently
disused.' — See Diodorus Sieulus, b. 17; Quint. Curtius, b. 4;
Xenophon. Cyropced. b. 6 ; Lucretius de Iter. Nat. b. 6.
e Some Jewish authors will needs have it, that when Joshua
went into the land of Canaan, he proposed three things to the
inhabitants thereof, either that they should leave the country, or
come and make their submission, or take up arms and fight him.
But this is said, in some measure to excuse the Jewish general,
and to mollify the rigour of his proceedings. His express com-
mand from God was, to extirpate the seven nations, without
making any treaty, or giving quarter: and though the Gibcunites
by guile had obtained a kind of league with him, yet the condi-
tions which he thereuponA»posed were so very hard, that they
could not but deter others from making the like attempt. It is
not therefore to be wondered, that the Canaanites, who saw them-
selves driven to the necessity either of death or slavery, after
they had tried the fate of their arms so often to no purpose, should
endeavour to make their escape from a people everywhere vic-
torious, arM who were enjoined to be cruel and remorseless by
their very God who had given them this success. Nor can we
suppose but that God, who was minded to make room for his
own people, did (according to his promise, Exod. xxiii. 27.) inject
upon this occasion a terror so extraordinary into the natives of
the country, and make them desire to be gone. And when they
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &-<•.
371
A.M. 2553. A. C. 1151; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803 A. C. 1608. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
their escape into other countries, to tlie sword ; ham-
strung their horses, and burned their chariots with (ire.
Jabin had been the head of the confederacy against him ;
and therefore he killed him, and caused his city to be
burned to the ground ; but the other cities, whose inhabit-
ants were slain in battle, he left standing, and gave the
plunder of them to the soldiers.
Thus Joshua subdued all the land of Canaan a by
degrees. He put its inhabitants, its kings, who were
one and thirty in number, and all the giants that dwelt
therein, except some few that still remained among the
Philistines, to the sword ; and having now extended his
conquest as far as it was convenient at that time, he began
to think of dividing the country among the tribes that
were yet unprovided for, and of dismissing the two tribes
and an half who had accompanied him in the wars, but
had their habitations already settled by Moses, on the
east side of the river Jordan. To this purpose he
appointed commissioners, who should take an exact sur-
vey of the country, and bring in a full report without delay;
which when he had done, * the country was divided into
were desirous to be gone, they had the ports lying upon the
Mediterranean sea very commodious for their purpose. For
whether thy towns of Tyre and Sidon were at this time built or
no, it is certain, that the places where these towns stood, could
not but be proper harbours for shipping; and as the Phoenicians
were still masters of the sea coasts, by their assistance the
Canaanites might make their escape into what part they pleased.
The Phoenicians, much about this time, did certainly send out
a vast many colonies; but as it cannot be supposed, that so small
a country should produce such swarms, the greatest part of them
are presumed to be the refugees of Canaan, who made their escape
by shipping to all the coasts which lay round the Mediterranean
arid ^igean seas, and even to other parts of Europe, Asia, and
Africa, as the learned Bochart has given us a large account in
his Canaan, from page 345 to page C99. — Cahnet's Dissertation
on the country where the Canaanites, pursued by Joshua, saved
themselves.
a These great achievements may be allowed to have taken up
some years. The history indeed informs us, that ' Joshua made
war a long time with all these kings,' Josh. xi. IS. And from
the words of Caleb, wherein he gives Joshua an account of his
age, and that it was five and forty years since he was sent a spy
to Kadesh-Barnea, there cannot be well less than between six
and seven years spent in this war; and why the war was so long
continued, God himself assigns this reason: — ' I will not drive
them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become
desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee: by
little and little will I drive them out from before thee, until thou
be increased and inherit the land,' Exod. xxiii. 29, 30.
6 Those who are minded to know what particular towns and
territories fell to each tribe, had best consult what Josephus, in
his Jewish Antiquities; Jerome, de Locis Hebraicis; 'Roland de
Uibibus et Vieis Palestine; Masius, in Joshuam ; Fuller, in his
Pisgah-sight ; Raleigh, in his History, part 1. b. 2.; Wells, in his
Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.; Patrick, Poole, Le
Clerc, and several others, in their commentaries, have said on
this subject. We shall make this one remark, which Masius, in
his rich Commentary upon Joshua, furnishes us with, namely,
that as Jacob and Moses, at the approach of their deaths, fore-
told the very soil and situation of every particular country that
should fall to each tribe; so, upon this division by lots, It accord-
ingly came to pass. To the tribe o^anlah there fell a country
abounding with vines and pasture grounds (Gen. xlix. 11.) To
that of Ashur, one plenteous in oil, iron, and brass, (Deut. xxxiii.
24, 25.) To that of Naphtali, one extending from the west to
the south of Judea, (Deut. xxxiii. 23.) To that of Benjamin, one
in which the temple was afterwards built (Deut. xxxiii. 12.) To
those of Zebulun and Issachar, such as had plenty of seaports,
(Gen. xlix. 13.) To those of Ephraim and Manasseh, such as
were renowned for their precious fruits, (Deut. xxxiii. 14.1 And
to those of Simeon and Levi, no particular countries at all; tol-
as much as the former had a portion with Judah, and the other
was interspersed among the several tribes. Since, therefore, as
equal portions, for which each tribe, according ' to God's
directions, cast lots. But because some tribes W6M
larger, and some territories richer than others, Joshua
and Eleazar, together with the princes of the people,
took care to adjust the proportion of the land to the
largeness of the tribe, and in subdividing that, to con-
sider the number of each family and household : pursuing
exactly the orders which God gave to his .servant Moses :
2 'Unto these the laud shall be divided for an inherit-
ance, according to the number of names. To many thou
shalt give the more inheritance; and to few, thou Bhalt
give the less inheritance. — Notwithstanding, the land
shall be divided by lot; — according to lot shall the pos-
session thereof be divided among many, and few.'
Having thus divided the country on the west side of
the Jordan, Joshua had a little place given him for his
own habitation, not far from Shiloh, where, after the wars,
the tabernacle was set up, that he might have an oppor-
tunity of consulting <iod upon any occasion ; and, after
all things were in this manner regulated, he called
together the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half tribe of
Manasseh, who had served for almost seven years, as
auxiliaries in the war3 of Canaan, and gave them an
honourable dismission. " He acknowledged that they
had duly executed the condition which they promised
to Moses, in accompanying their brethren, and helping
them to subdue their enemies, and commended their
courage and fidelity for so doing. He exhorted them,
now that they were going to separate from the taber-
nacle, never to neglect the service of God, but to beat
always in mind those venerable laws which he had given
them by his great legislator. He advised them to dis-
tribute a share of the rich booty they had taken from the
Canaanites, among their brethren on the other side of
Jordan ; because, though they had not partaken of the
peril of the late war, they had nevertheless done them
great service, in protecting their families from the insults
of their enemies on every side." And c with these
acknowledgments and exhortations, together with many
sincere wishes for their prosperity and welfare, d he sent
1 Josh. xiv. 2.
8 Num. xxvi. 53, &c.
our commentator reasons, each particular lot answered '.exactly
to each prediction, it must needs be the height of Insolence er
stupidity not to acknowledge the divine inspiration in these i re-
dictions, and the divine direction in these lots.
c Josephus, in the speech which he introduces Joshua i
to the Reubenites, 8ic, at their parting, concludes with then
words:— "But, I pray yen, let no distance of place set limits to
our friendship. The interposition of rivers must never divide
our affections; for on which bank soever, wears ail Hebrews
still. Abraham was the common father of us nil, let our abode
be where it will. It was from one and the same God that all
em- forefathers received their being; and that God we are all to
worship, according to the ordinances and institutions Mi us by
Moses. So long a^ we stand lii iii to that way "i" religion, we
maybe sure of the favour and protection <'t' that God !"i our
comfort; but whenever you apostatise into an hankering after
strange sods, the God of your lathers "ill cast you off." — Jewitk
Antiquities, b. 5. c. 1.
rfThe Chroni Samaritanum, If we may believe what it
reports, pages 92, 93, tell- us that when Joshua sent thi
benites'away, he appointed Nephiel to be his deputy on thi
side of Jordan; that he clothed him with a royal robe,
crown on bja head, and mad.' him ride OD a bone of stall-, whiUt
a crier went before him. proclaiming, "This is the king ol the
two tribes and a half, the president of justice, the director ol
allairs, and the general in the camp. Let his determination be
conclusive. In all difficult casus let him desire an answer from
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them away ; but they had not been long- gone, before a
sad misunderstanding had like to have happened between
them and the other tribes.
Upon their arrival on the other side of Jordan, they
erected an altar near the place where they and their
brethren had miraculously passed over, not for any
religious use, but as a memorial to succeeding genera-
tions, that though they were parted by the river, yet they
were of the same extract and religion, and held an equal
right to the tabernacle at Shiloh, and to the worship of
God performed there, that the inhabitants of the other
side had. But whether those on the other side were
misinformed or misapprehended their intent, so it was,
that they fell into a violent rage against them, as apos-
tates from the true religion ; and immediately took up
arms for the vindication of the worship and religion of
their forefathers, and to avenge the cause of God upon
the heads and chief authors of this defection. But before
they proceeded to these extremities, they were advised
by their rulers to suspend the execution of their wrath,
until they had sent a deputation to them in order to know
the reason of their building such an altar ; which accord-
ingly they did, and made choice of Phinehas, the son of
Eleazar, with ten other persons of eminent distinction,
to go upon the embassy. As soon as they were come
into the land of a Gilead h they represented the great
surprise that the rest of the tribes were in at their build-
ing this altar ; and told them very roundly, that they
feared it portended a defection into idolatry. To dis-
suade them, therefore, from that, they put them in mind
of the calamities which God had formerly sent upon
them for their worship of Baal-peor ; and that if so lately
he had been so severe upon them for the offence of one
man, namely, Achan only, what might they not expect
when two tribes and a half were going to make a general
revolt ! And as they suspected that the absence of the
Elea/ar the high priest; and if any one shall contradict his sen-
tence, or withdraw from his allegiance, it shall be lawful for any
one to kill that man, and the whole congregation shall be
blameless."
a Gilead, which took its name from Gilead the son of Maehir,
and grandson of Manasseh, is often put for the whole country
that lies on the east side of Jordan, which the children of Israel
took from the Moabites, Midianites, &c.
b Josephus makes Phinehas the speaker upon this occasion, who
delivers his commission in words to this effect: — " We are very
sensible that the crime charged upon you at present is too heinous
to be punished by words only; but we have not taken up arms,
hand over head, to execute a vengeance according to the degree
of the iniquity. For it is out of respect to our allies, and in
hopes that second and sounder thoughts may bring you to better
reason, that we are engaged upon this embassy, and speak in
this assembly. We do but desire to be sincerely informed, upon
what motives, and with what design you have now raised this
altar. If you have done it out of any pious end, we have no
quarrel with you; but if you are gone over to a false worship, it
is for our God, and our religion, that we must draw our swords
against you. We speak our fears: for we cannot think it credible
yet, that a people so well instructed in the will and in the laws
of God, our friends and allies that we have but just now parted
with ; a people newly established in the lot of a plentiful posses-
sion by God's special grace and providence: we cannot, I say,
believe you to be so insensible and ungrateful, as to abandon the
holy tabernacle, the ark, the altar, and the worship of your fore-
fathers, to join with the Canaanites in the worship of false gods.
Or, if unhappily you should have been so misled, do but repent,
and disclaim your error, and return to that reverence you owe
to the laws of God, and of your country, and you shall be still
received," &c. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 5. c. 1.
tabernacle might give some occasion to this innovation,
they invited them to come and live among them, where
they might not want an opportunity of serving God,
according to the custom of their ancestors.
Concerned to hear the ill opinion which their brethren
had thus conceived of them, the Reubenites, Gadites, and
Manassites, c protested their innocence of any idola-
trous intention, and made a solemn appeal to God, that
so far were they from setting up any altar in opposition
to his, that the only design of that structure Avas, to per-
petuate their title to the service of the tabernacle, and
to prevent their latest posterity from being excluded from
it. Which when Phinehas and the rest of the deputies
heard, they expressed no small satisfaction ; and as they
related the account of the whole matter upon their return,
the people were infinitely pleased with the result of their
embassy, and changed their angry thoughts of war into
the tender affections of brotherly love and peace : while
the Reubenites, on the other hand, to take away all
further umbrage of suspicion, called the altar by the
name of Ed, as being intended for a standing witness,
(for so the word signifies,) that, though they lived at a
distance from the rest of their brethren, yet had they both
but one origin, and one God, who was the common God
and father of all Israel.
Thus were the Israelites, on both sides of the river
Jordan, settled in a quiet possession of their conquests :
when Joshua, being now grown old, and perceiving the
time of his death approaching, called a general as-
sembly of the princes and magistrates, and as many
of the common people as could be got together upon
this occasion, to Shechem ; and having, in a very
tender and affectionate speech, enumerated the many
blessings which God's providence had bestowed upon
them and their ancestors ; how he had preserved them
in all their dangers and distresses, and relieved
them in all their wants ; and had made them victori-
ous over all their enemies, and from a mean begin-
ning, raised them to the highest degree of reputation,
and brought them into the quiet possession of a land that
abounded with all manner of plenty ; in gratitude to so
great a protector and benefactor, he exhorted them to a
faithful observance of his laws, and invited them to a
solemn renewal of the covenant which their forefathers
had made with him. Which when they had done, he not
only recorded the covenant in the book of the law, but
c If we can suppose any truth in the Samaritan tradition, Ne-
phiel, who is said to have been Joshua's lieutenant over the two
tribes and a half, may very properly be thought the person who
answered Phinehas in these words, which Josephus thus puts in
his mouth : — " We are not conscious of having ever departed
from our alliance, neither are we, in any sort, guilty of that atlec-
tation of novelty, in erecting this altar, which is now charged upon
us. We know but one God, and that God is the God of all the
Hebrews ; and but one altar, which is the brazen altar before the
tabernacle. As for this altar here, which we are suspected for,
it was never intended for any religious use, but only for a civil
memorial to future times of our friendship and alliance, and
rather to keep us steady in our ancient religion, than to be any
ways introductive to the violation of it. We can safely appeal to
God, that we had no such thought in setting up this altar as is
imputed to us : and therefore let us intreat you to have a better
opinion of your brethren for the future, than to think us guilty of
so mortal an apostasy from the rights and customs of our proge-
nitors, a sin not to be expiated in any of the sons of Abraham,
but with the loss of his life." — Jewish Antiquities, b. 5. c. 1.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
373
A. M. 2514. A. C. 1490; OR, ACCORDING TO HALE
set up a great stone likewise, under an oak, near a place
of religious worship, as a testimony against them, in case
they should prevaricate from God's service ; and being
now in the 110th year of his age, a not long after this he
died, and was buried at Timnath-serah, in Mount
Ephraim, a place which the Israelites, in acknowledg-
ment of his great services, had given him. b
In a short time after, Eleazar the son of Aaron, the
priest, who lived near Joshua, and died soon after him.
was buried not far from him, in one of the hills of
Ephraim, c a place which the Israelites had in like man-
as Jesus the son of Sirach gives us a long commendation of
Joshua, (Ecclus. xhi. 1,) &C. ; but Josephus is more concise in liis
character, where he tells us, — " That he was a man of political
prudence, and endued also with a singular felicity of popular elo-
quence in expressing his thoughts; brave and indefatigable in war;
and no less just and dexterous in peace ; and, in short, that he was
a person qualified for all great purposes." He is generally re-
puted to be the author of the book that goes under his name. In
the 2Cth verse of the last chapter it is expressly said, that ' he
wrote these things,' (Ecclus. xlvi. 1.) The son of Sirach has made
him successor to Moses in the prophetic ministry. And both
the church and synagogue have all looked on the book as canoni-
cal. The truth is, Joshua was the only sacred penman we know
of that the Israelites had in his age. After he had finished the
division of the land, it is said, chap, xxiii. 1. that he had many
years of great leisure, which he very probably employed in giv-
ing an account of the death and burial of Moses, and from thence
continued a narrative of what had been transacted under his own
administration, filling it up with a general terrier of the settle-
ments of the tribes, which was highly expedient for the Israelites
to have recorded, in order to prevent confusion about their inhe-
ritances in future ages. Now if this supposition be right, the
work of Joshua must begin where that of Moses ended, namely at
the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy, and ended at the 27th verse
of the 24th chapter of Joshua. For as Joshua at the end of
Deuteronomy, added an account of Moses' death ; so what we
find horn the 28th verse of the 24th chapter of Joshua to the end
of that book, was unquestionably not written until Joshua andal!
tin- riders his contemporaries were gone off the stage, and was
therefore added to the end of the book of Joshua by some sacred
penman, (most probably by Samuel,) who was afterwards em-
ployed to record the subsequent state of allairs of Israel. — Shuck-
ford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12; and Patrick's Commentary, on
Josh. xxiv. 33. 13ut there is not the like certainty of another
book of Joshua's, which the Samaritans preserve with much re-
spect, and make great use of in the support of their pretensions
against the Jews; neither can we tell whether Joshua was the
author of that prayer which the Jews repeat as oft as they go into
the synagogues, and begins thus : — " It is our duty to praise the
Lord of the universe, and to celebrate the creation of the world ;
for he hath not made us like unto the nations of the earth, but
hath prepared for us an inheritance infinitely richer and greater,
&c. — WagensaWs Fiery Darts of Satan, p. 223; and Calmct's
Dictionary, under the word.
b Josh. xxiv. SO. ' And they buried him in the border of his
inheritance, in Timnath-serah.' This place is in Judges called
Timnath-hteres, because of the image of the sun engraven on his
sepulchre, in memory of that famous day when the sun stood still
till he had completed his victory, (chap, x.) This is asserted by
several of the Jewish authors. Memorials alluding to particular
transactions in the lives of great men, were frequently made use
of to adorn their tombs. Tully has recorded concerning Archi-
medes, that a sphere and a cylinder were put upon his monument.
—Patrick in locum.
c This place is, in the Hebrew called the hill of Phinchas; it
being customary in those days for men to call places by the name
of their eldest son. But then the question is — To whom did the
Israelites give this hill? The most probable answer is, that, they
gave it to Eleazar; for he being the high priest at the time of the
division of the land, they thought proper to give him a peculiar por-
tion, distinct from other cities of the priests, which were all in the
tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Simeon, and none in the tribe of
Ephraim, (Josh. xxii. 9, 17, 19.) And they made choice of this
country the rather, that he might be near the tabernacle, which
S, A. M. 3714. A. C. 1G47. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
ner presented him with, and which afterwards descended
to Phinehas, his son and successor in the priesthood.
And as the funerals of these two great men, so near the
same time and place, called to remembrance the bonefl
of Joseph, which, at his request, '' had been brought out
of Egypt, but not yet interred ; the two tribes of Ephraim
and Manasseh took this opportunity to perform their
obsequies to the remains of their great progenitor, in a
parcel of ground near Shecheni, which Jacob having
formerly bought, had ' given to his son Joseph, and was
now become the inheritance of his posterity.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
2 ' AVho is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods ? Who
is like unto thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises,
doing wonders ? Thou, in thy mercy, hast led forth the
people, whom thou hast redeemed ; thou hast guided
them in thy strength, unto thy holy habitation. The
people shall hear and shall be afraid ; sorrow shall take
hold on the inhabitants of Palcstina. The elders of Edom
shall be amazed ; the mighty men of Moab shall tremble,
and all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.
Fear and dread shall fall upon them. By the greatness
of thine arm they shall be still as a stone, till thy people
pass over, O Lord till thy people pass over, whom thou
hast purchased : thou shall bring them in, and plant them
in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, 0
Lord, which thou hast made for them to dwell in ; in the
sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hand hath established.'
These words are part of that triumphant song, which
Moses made upon the destruction of the Egyptians in
the Red Sea. They are plain predictions of what befell
the Israelites forty years after, and a declaration they
are, that the conquest of their country, was not only by
the order and appointment, but by the immediate help
and assistance of God ; 3 ' for,' as the Psalmist expresses
it, ' they got not the land in possession through their
own sword, neither was it their own arm that helped
1 Gen. xlviii. 22. ■ Exod. xv. 11, &C 3 Ps. xliv. 3, 4.
was at Bhiloh, and near to Joshua, who lived at Shecheni, to be
ready on all occasions, to advise him and consult the oracle forhim.
But then against this there lies an objection, namely, tha< m l
or priest was to have any portion in the ili\ IsJon of the land ; and
therefore it is a received" opinion among the Jews, that . itli.-i
Eleazar or Phinehas had this inheritance in right of his wife:
though we cannot see why the high priest especially, who was
certainly the second peiM.n in the gOI eminent, might not have
a mansion-house, ami some domains allotted him, for the g
state and dignity of his living, without any great infringement
upon the general laws. — Patrick's Commentary on Joshua xxiv.
38. , ,
d It may reasonal ly be thought, that the bodies a the rest of
the sons of Jacob, from whom the twelve tribes descended, were
brought into Canaan, to be 'here interred, as JosephlU
from ancient tradition, Antiqu&u. b. 2. c. 1:) and a- -
phen confirms it, (Acts vii. 16.) Por though Joseph excelled
them in all dignity, and gave this special charge about hi- body,
vet every tribe, no doubt, bad a- great a regard for their progeni-
tor, and would be inclined to do the same tor their fathers, that
Joseph's descendants did for him: but whether they buried them
in the sepulchre of Machpelah, or in some eminent | lace in their
own tribe, a- Joseph was, there is no one that gives ls an/
account. — Patrick's Commentary on Joshua xxiv. 'M.
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them ; but thy right hand, and thine arm and the light
of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto
them.' And if God so immediately concerned himself
in the conquest of the country, we need not wonder, that
Ave hear of the people who were to defend it, being
amazed, and trembling, and melting- away for fear. The
Jewish doctors have a tradition, that the vast heaps of
waters, piled upon one another, while the Israelites
passed over the river Jordan, being seen by the people
of Jericho, and other adjacent places, occasioned so
general a consternation that they never once thought of
maintaining the pass. And indeed their consternation
must have been very great, when we find them inclosing
themselves within their walls, and suffering the Israelites
to surround them seven days successively, without even
once attempting to make a sally. They saw, in short,
that a power, superior to all human opposition, was
engaged against them ; and therefore whatever prior
measures they had taken for their mutual defence, upon
the approach of an army commanded by one, who, when
he pleases, 1 ' maketh the devices of the people ineffec-
tual, and casteth out the counsels of princes,' they were
all broken and disconcerted.
It cannot be denied, indeed, but that in ancient times,
there Mas a great affinity between the business of an
hostess and an harlot. Those who kept inns, or public
houses for the entertainment of strangers, made no
scruple of prostituting- their bodies ; and for this reason
perhaps it is, that, in the Hebrew tongue, there is but
one word, namely, zonafi, to denote persons of both
professions. For this reason very likely it was, that the
Septuagint, speaking of Rabab, gives her the appellation
of an harlot, and, as the Septuagint was at this time the
common translation of the Jews, for this very reason,
the two apostles, 2 St Paul, and St 3 James, as they
found it in the translation, might make use of the same
expression. It is to be observed, however, that as the
expression is capable of another sense, the Chaldee
paraphrast calls her by a word, which comes from the
Greek ■zcci/Zoxsvtqi'c&, or, a woman that kept a public
house, without any work of infamy ; and therefore charity
should incline us to think the best of a person, whom
both these apostles have ranked with Abraham, the
father of the faithful, and propounded as an example of
faith and good works ; who was admitted into the society
of God's people ; married into a a noble family of the
tribe of Judah ; and of whose posterity Christ, the
Saviour of the world, was born.
To save the lives of the innocent is certainly a very
commendable thing ; but whether it may be done by the
help of dissimulation and falsehood, or whether Rahab,
in concealing the spies, and pretending to the king's
messengers, that they were just gone, did not incur the
sin of wilful lying, is a question not so very easy to be
resolved. Men, as they are members of a civil society,
have certainly a right to truth, and the very design of
speech is to be the conveyance of our real sentiments to
1 Ps. xxxiii. 10. Heb. xi.31. 3 James ii. 25.
a Rahab married Salmon, a prince of Judah, by whom she
had Boaz. Boaz was father of Obed, Obed of Jesse, and Jesse
of king David ; so that Jesus Christ did not disdain to reckon
this Canaanitish woman among his ancestors. — Calmefs Diction-
ary,
one another ; but some casuists are of opinion, that cir-
cumstances may so happen, as to make it both lawful
and necessary, not only to disguise the truth, but to
impose upon others by a false information. Suppose a
madman, for instance, with a drawn sword in his hand,
should pursue a friend of mine, with a full intent to kill
him ; and my friend, by the benefit of some short turning,
gives him the drop, so that, having lost sight of him, he
comes and demands of me, which way he took; but I,
instead of setting him right, point the assassin another
way ; in this case, I presume, I commit no crime,
because the man, in these circumstances, has forfeited
all right to truth ; nor could I indeed impart it to him,
without making myself instrumental to niy friend's mur-
der. This, in a great measure, was Rahab 's case. Her
design was to save the spies from the hands of those
that were sent to apprehend them ; but in vain had she
formed such a design, unless she was resolved to put it in
execution ; and yet, what other way had she of executing
it, but by telling a lie ? It had been to no purpose for
her to have hid them on the roof of her house, if, for the
sake of truth, she had thought herself obliged to discover
the place of their concealment ; if her silence had given
any umbrage of suspicion to their pursuers ; if she had
not, in short, by a bold assertion, diverted their inquiry
some other way. In this case the design, and the means
of executing it were inseparable. And yet, since a
design, which could no ways be executed without the
help of a lie, is both praised and proposed in the Scrip-
ture, as a pattern for the church to imitate, what right
have we to condemn it ? Or, upon what presumption
can we imagine, that Rahab would have acted more
agreeably to the mind of God, in discovering the spies
out of respect to truth, than she did, in preserving them
byr virtue of a feigned story ? * But there is another
way of accounting for Rahab 's conduct, and that is this :
4 The author of the epistle to the Hebrews informs us,
that 5 ' by faith she perished not with them that believed
not, when she had received the spies with peace ; where
the Greek words are not to7; d7riaroi;, with the unbeliev-
ers, but <rois dLTzsiGyioaot, with the disobedient, or those
that were not persuaded of the truth of what was told
them. But how the inhabitants of Jericho can be said
to be unconvinced or disobedient, if God had revealed
nothing to them, or required nothing of them, we cannot
conceive. Some information must have been given
both to them and Rahab, otherwise they could not be
condemned for disobedience, nor she commended for
her faith, that is, for believing and acting according to
the will of God, made known unto her. Upon the sup-
position, then, that the design of God towards the inha-
bitants of Canaan was some way or other revealed to
4 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12. 5 Heb. xi. 31.
b The first part of our author's attempt to vindicate the con-
duct of Rahab is very little to the purpose; his supposed mad-
man would have no right to truth, but unquestionably the king
and magistrates of Jericho had: the remaining portion of his
remarks are much more to the purpose ; but in fact there is no
need for any elaborate inquiry, how far she may be considered
guilty, or how far she may be excused in this circumstance ; the
inspired writer sets down the fact as it stood, without making
the Spirit of God responsible for her dissimulation; and though
it is intimated in other places of the Scriptures, that she was
rewarded for her conduct, it is evident that she was rewarded
for her hospitality and faith, not for her lie. — En.
Sect. I.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2553. A. C. US! ; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3S03. A. C. lfifiS. JOSH. i. TO TIIF. END.
375
the king" ami people of Jericho, and both he and they
had been sufficiently warned to save themselves from the
destruction that was coming upon them, if they would
not obey ; but if Rahab did and acted conformably to
the information that was given her, her whole behaviour
will not only stand clear of every criminal imputation,
but be highly commendable, and justly deserve a rank
among those illustrious patterns which the apostle pro-
poses to our imitation, as being a person justified not
only by her faith, I but her works likewise, ' when she
received the messengers, and sent them out another way.'
The declaration which their kind protectress makes to
them, ~ ' I know that the Lord hath given you the land,
and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the
inhabitants of the land faint because of you, for the Lord
your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth be-
neath,' bespeaks the full persuasion of her mind ; and
therefore, not doubting, but that the Ruler of the universe
had an uncontrollable right to dispose of all kingdoms
and countries according to his good pleasure, she judged
it reasonable ' to obey God rather than man,' and there-
upon endeavoured, as much as in her lay, to deliver up
the land to the true owners, to those whom God, by his
donation, had made its rightful proprietors.
An order from heaven most certainly releases the sub-
ject from his allegiance to his prince, and the citizen
from the engagement he lies under to those that are of the
same society ; and therefore Rahab, having such an order,
or at least what was equivalent to it, was at full liberty
to espouse what party she pleased, and must have been
perfidious to God, and forgetful of her own preservation,
if she had acted otherwise than she did. For s even
setting aside her faith, a for which she is so justly com-
mended in the gospel, if she had heard of the destruc-
tion of Pharaoh in Egypt, and of the other two kings on
the east side of Jordan, the king of Jericho can hardly
be supposed to be ignorant of their fate : and therefore
it was as natural for her to be terrified at it, and to pro-
vide for her safety, as it was for him to make a brave
resistance, or perish in the attempt. If therefore what
the Scripture seems to intimate be true, namely, that
Joshua was obliged to offer peace, before he made use
of the sword against any of the Canaanitish nations ; it
was as lawful for her, or any other subject, to accept
this peace, as it was glorious perhaps for a monarch to
refuse it. At least we cannot but think, that the refusal
of such advantageous terms from an irresistible con-
queror, at the risk of being all infallibly massacred by
him, for the sake of a king, who, for aught that appears
to the contrary, might be a petty tyrant, or for the sake
of a people whom fear had rendered incapable of making
any tolerable resistance ; when perhaps the difference of
being under the natural monarch, if he was really such,
or the conqueror, was inconsiderable, or, it may be, on
the side of the latter : we cannot but think, 1 say, that
6uch a refusal would have been an instance of patriotism,
not to be expected from a Canaanite, and much less
from such a young hostess, as Rahab must have been,
' Jam. ii. 25. * Josh. ii. 9, 11. 3 Univers. Hist. b. 1. c. 7.
a This is rather a strange suggestion. If we set aside her
faith, her conduct cannot be vindicated. And as it was lor her
faith she was rewarded, as the apostle assures us, we can neither
doubt it nor set it aside. — Ed.
since we read of her being the mother of Boaz, above
thirty years after this. So that, upon the whole, she
acted a part that might naturally be expected from her,
no ways inglorious in itself, and highly agreeable to the
will of God, when she adjoined herself to those, who,
by his almighty arm, were so visibly supported ; and
abandoned the interests of those, who, upon so many
accounts, were very justly devoted to destruction.
AVhat the Spirit says unto the church at Thyatira, * ' I
gave her space to repent of her fornication, but she
repented not; behold, I will cast her into a bed, and
them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation,
and I will kill her children with death, and give unto
every one according to his works,' is very applicable to
the several nations in the land of Canaan. Four hun-
dred years were to intervene between the commencement
of the promise to Abraham, and this completion of it;
and the reason which God gives for this long delay is,
that 5 ' the iniquity of the Amorites,' and by the Amorites
he means all the other nations of Canaan, ' was not yet
full : " And 6 even though,'* as the author of the book
of AVisdom argues, " he could have destroyed them all
with one rough word, yet executing his judgments by
little and little, he gave them place of repentance, not
being ignorant that they were an haughty generation,
and that their malice was bred in them, and their cogita-
tion would never be changed." For instead of reform-
ing, the only effect which this delay had, was to make
them more confirmed in wickedness, and' because 7 'this
sentence against their evil works was not speedily
executed, therefore were their hearts the fuller set in
them to do evil.'
What the nature and heinousness of their iniquities
were, we may best learn from 8 the many precautions
which God gives his people against them ; " for he
hated them," as the 9 same author has drawn up the
articles of accusation against them, " for doing most
odious works of witchcraft, and wicked sacrifices, for
their merciless murdering of children, devouring of man's
flesh, and feasting upon blood ; " and if we may suppose
that God, some way or other, had given these nations
sufficient notice of his intended severity against them if
they did not repent; had abundant reason to preserve
his own people from the infection of the abominations :
and before their extirpation was executed, did "' bj his
servant Joshua, offer them conditions of peace : though
the divine counsels are a secret to us, yet, even upon
this face of things, wo cannot find any fault with his
treatment of them, since when he had given them ' space
to repent, and they repented not." his justice was certainly
then at liberty to take what vengeance his divine wisdom
should think fit.
And indeed this seems to be one of the reasons why
God divided the river for the Israelites, who were to be
the instruments of this his vengeance, to pass over, name.
ly, that thereby he might inject a terror into the inhabi-
tants of Canaan, ami so facilitate the conquest of their
country. On the side of Jordan, the kings of the neigh-
bourhood feared no invasion. The depth of the river,
especially at the time of its overflowing, which was in
* Rev. ii. 21, &c. ' Gen. xv. Ifi. » WlsA. \ii. 0, 10.
7 Be. viii. 1 1. " See Lev. xviii. 4. ; Deirt. ix. 4, lie.
9 W'isd. xii. 4, 5. ,0 Dent. xx. 10, 11.; Josh. xi. llJ.
376
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2J53 A. C. 1151; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3S03. A. C. 1608. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
the harvest, when the Israelites l passed it, was barrier
sufficient, they thought, against all that the Israelites
could do. For in those days, pontoons were things
never heard of in military expeditions ; and the a stream
is, even at this day, allowed to be too fierce and rapid
for any one to swim over : and therefore, as they
expected no danger from that quarter, and might for that
reason draw out no forces to defend that side of their
frontier ; so the sacred historian has taken care to inform
us, that, 2 ' when all the kings of the Amorites which were
on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the
Canaanites which were by the sea, heard that the Lord
had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the
children of Israel, until they were passed over, their
hearts melted, neither was there spirit in them any more.'
And as this miraculous passage could not but iill their
enemies with confusion, so it added, no doubt, fresh
courage to the Israelites, when they came to consider,
that the same God, about forty years before, had wrought
the like miracle for them in their passage of the Red
Sea ; that then he divided the waves, 3 to confirm the
commission which he had given Moses, and now had
parted the stream, to strengthen the authority of his suc-
cessor, Joshua, and to give them assurance that 4 ' he
would be with the one, as he had been with the other,
and empower the latter to make good their possession of
' the land of promise,' even as he had enabled the former
to accomplish their deliverance ' out of the land of
bondage.'
In all rivers whatever, there questionless are some
shallower places than ordinary, or some passages, either
by boats or bridges, that may be called fords ; but that
the Jordan, at this time, was either so vastly overflown
as to render these fords impassable, or that the Israel-
ites crossed it at places which the enemy never thought
of, and where none of these passes were to be found, is
pretty evident from the Canaanites making no prepara-
tion to defend their coasts on the river side, and from
the gTeat consternation we find them in, when once they
understood that the Jewish army had got over. For,
whatever opinion we, at this distance of time, may have
of the matter, they justly inferred, that the suspension
of a river's course could be effected no other way than
1 Josh. iii. 15; 1 Chron. xii. 15; and Ecclus. xxiv. 26.
8 Josh. v. 1 .
3 Saurin's Dissertation on the Passage of the Jordan. 4 Josh. i. 17.
a That the sacred writings do constantly represent this river as
not fordable, except at some particular places, very probably made
by art, that the countries on each side may have a freer com-
munication, is plain from the passages to which these several
citations, (Josh. ii. 2; Judg. iii. 28, and xii. 5; 2 Kings ii. 14,)
do refer. That it was not a poor and inconsiderable stream, such
as some have represented it, is evident from the account of
Thevenot, (in his Travels, p. 193,) who himself went near the
place where the Israelites passed over, and describes it to be
' half as broad as the Seine at Paris, very deep, and very rapid ;'
which agrees very well with what Maundrell (in his Journey
from. Aleppo, p. 83) says of it, namely, " That its channel is
twenty yards over, deeper than a man's height, and runs with
such a current, that there is no swimming against it:" and that,
whatever the present condition of Jordan may be, it is certain,
when the Israelites came into Canaan, it was a much larger river
than now it is; for even in Pliny's time (Natural History, b. 5.)
its channel was much larger than what it now runs in, having
then the title of Amnis Ambinosus ; and in the days when Strabo
wrote, (according to his Geoff, h. 16,) even vessels of burden
might navigate in it. — Shuc/iford' 's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12.
by a divine power, either immediately acting itself or by
the instrumentality of its angels. And though there pos-
sibly may be some instances in history, wherein, by the
violence of adverse winds, the course of rivers has either
been retarded, or * driven back ; yet as we read of no
such wind concerned in this event, the prediction of
Joshua, and the promises of God concerning this miracle,
the time in which he chose to work it, and the analogy
it bears with what before was wrought at the Red Sea ;
these, and several other circumstances, make this trans-
action beyond compare, and rank it, not only among
those prodigies which very rarely come to pass, but
among those stupendous works, which, contrary to the laws
of nature, the great Author and Ruler of the universe,
for the preservation of his people, and the manifestation
of his own glory, is sometimes observed to do.
5 ' He that is born in thy house, or he that is bought
with thy money, must needs be circumcised, and my
covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting cove-
nant ; and the uncircumcised man-child, whose flesh of
his foreskin, is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off
from his people ; he hath broken my covenant.' These
are the words of the precept, and they seem to be so
very urgent and express, that one would really think
the ordinance was intended not only for a distinction
between Jew and Gentile, but for an institution likewise,
to take away the guilt of original sin. And yet, eveu
upon this supposition, 6 the people's frequent moving
from place to place, the uncertainty of their decamp-
ments, and the inconvenience of their travelling, which
would make it dangerous for children to be circumcised
before a march, might be some apology for their omit-
ting the observation of this rite, even though they had
no divine dispensation for it.
7 It is one of the general rules among the Jews, that
no precept, (always meaning no ceremonial precept, for
some precepts there are that were to be observed, even
at the expense of their lives,) whose observation occa-
sions death, is to be attended to because the Scriptures
say, that ' he who observeth these laws shall live,' not
die, ' by them.' But how frivolous soever this reason
may be, it is certain, that in case they apprehended any
danger from the operation, they carried this dispensation
so far, as to exempt the next child from having this ordi-
nance pass upon him, if so be that his brother before him
died of the wound which he received in circumcision.
And for a farther excuse, they add, that during their
5 Gen. xvii. 13, 14.
6 Saurin's Dissertation on the taking of Jericho.
7 Lightfoot's Hor. Heb. in 1 Cor. vii. 19.
h Something of this nature seems to have happened in Augus-
tus' time, according to that known passage in Horace: — " Wo
saw the yellow Tiber, with its waves violently beaten back on
the Etrurian shore, rush forth to cover the monuments of the
king, and the temples of the Vestal Virgin." — B. 1. Ode 2.
Granting that we admit the truth of the poetical story, which
would be stretching our belief to its utmost limits; and supposing
it possible that the waters of the Jordan, running at such a rapid
rate as they are known to do, (see note, pp. 3(33-4,) could have been
kept back by a wind blowing against the course of the stream; it
is evident that it would have been impossible for a multitude of
men, women, and children, to have marched across in the course
of that wind. The simplest way, therefore, is to admit the
miracle on the testimony of the inspired writer, and not search
for natural causes, which involve us in a labyrinth of difficulties.
—Ed.
Skct. LI FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 j OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1G08. JOSH. i. TO THE END
377
sojourning in the wilderness for one crime or other, their
forefathers were generally under the divine displeasure,
in which condition it would have been a profanation of
the sacrament to have administered it.
But then, if the other notion of this ordinance be admit-
ted, namely, that it was no more than a note of distinction
between the Israelites and other nations, as the Israelites
were now alone in the wilderness, there was no danger
of their mixing with others, and consequently less reason
for their observation of this distinguishing rite, until they
should enter upon the possession of a country where
every kind of idolatry surrounded thorn on all hands.
Thus, whether we look upon the rite of circumcision
as a sacrament of initiation into the Jewish church, or a
character of distinction only between them and other
people, the Israelites might, without the imputation of
much guilt, omit the outward observance of it, if so be
that they did but attend to what was the true intent and
meaning of it, namely, * ' the circumcising the foreskin
of their hearts ;' 2 ' for he is not a Jew (as St Paul excel-
lently argues) who is one outwardly, neither is that cir-
cumcision, which is outward in the flesh ; but he is a Jew,
who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of, the
heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is
not of men, but of God.'
In like manner, the observation of the Sabbath-day
was a precept of severe injunction ; but whether the
destruction of Jericho happened on that day, or any
other of the week, as the Israelites were ordered to com-
pass the city for seven days successively, it is certain
that one of these days must necessarily have been the
Sabbath ; and yet we must not suppose that they com-
mitted any great offence in what they did, because the
same authority which made the law for the observation
of it, gave now a full license for the profanation of it.
The person who met Joshua, and prescribed the form of
the siege of Jericho, by his assumption of divine honours
and appellations, was doubtless the same who delivered
the law from Mount Sinai : and therefore we need not
question but that now he acted in as full power in sus-
pending, since his orders could not be executed without
such suspension, as he then did in enjoining the observ-
ation of the Sabbath ; and it is in allusion, as some
imagine, to this very passage, that our blessed Saviour
pronounced that maxim in the gospel, 3 ' the Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.'
However this be, it is certain, that before our Saviour's
'lays, the Jews carried the observation of the Sabbath to
a great degree of rigour. In the time of the Maccabees,
they would not so much as defend themselves against the
assault of their enemies on that day, 4 but yielded their
throats to be cut, rather than stir a hand in their own
vindication : whereas this example of their forefathers
investing, if not sacking, Jericho on the Sabbath-day,
blight have taught them, one would think, that in cases of
this nature, it was allowable, not oidy to defend them-
selves, but to prevent their enemies annoying them, nay
even to fall upon and destroy them, whenever a favour-
able opportunity presented itself on that day.
In the conquest of Jericho, however, some have ima-
gined that rams' horns were not proper materials whereof
1 Deut. x. 16. 2 Rom. ii. 28, 29. " Mark ii. 27.
4 Pritkaux's Connection, part 2. vol. 4.
to make trumpets ; that they are not so easily perforated,
nor can they ever be brought to make a sound shrill and
extensive enough for their particular purposes; and
therefore they conceive, that brass or silver, or any
other metal, had been more convenient for this use ■
whereupon 5 they derive the word Jobel, in the singular
which we render a ram's horn, not from the Arabic, which
signifies a ram, but from Jubal, the name of him who
was the first inventor of musical instruments : and accord-
ing to this sense, the trumpets which the priests upon
this occasion used, may be said to have been fashioned
according to those which Jubal first invented."
This interpretation of the words, which is no bad one,
removes all the incongruity that may seem to arise from
the matter whereof those trumpets were composed: but
then, it is to be considered, that as the first instruments
of this kind were probably made of horns, so has the
notion of the impossibility of boring a rams horn been
sufficiently confuted by our learned Spencer. The truth
is, every one knows, that in the inside of it there is a
softer part, which may be drawn out by art ; after which
it is hollow all the way up, except four or five inches
towards the top, part of which is sawed off, to make it
broad enough for the mouth, and then the rest is easily
bored. But whether there is any foundation for that
fancy of the Jews, that these horns were retained in the
proclamation of some of their greatest festivals, in
memory of Isaac's being rescued from his father Abra-
ham's knife, by the substitution of a ram in his stead, is
a point that we leave to the speculations of the curious.
Whatever materials these trumpets were made of, it is
impossible to conceive that there should lie any power in
their sound to demolish cities ; and though the noise of
a great number of people might be very loud, yet still it
would require a miracle in Joshua to know what the just
proportion was between their noise, and the strength of
the walls of Jericho, since the least deviation in this
respect would have defeated the whole experiment.
What the effect of gunpowder, or of other sulphureous
matter fired under ground, or in the bowels of the earth,
is, no one that has seen either the springing of a mine,
or felt the convulsions of an earthquake, d Is be told ;
but that no stratagem of this kind could be employed in
the siege of Jericho, is manifest, because the invention
of gunpowder is a novel thing; nor had the Israelites
been long enough on the western side of Jordan, to have
undermined its walls, even though they had bad the
secret of some inflammatory stratum, to have lodged
under them. On the contrary, the whole process of this
siege, if we may so call it, was managed at such a rate,
as plainly discovered an expectance of a miracle to In-
wrought : for had not this been the case, instead of saun-
tering-about the walls for seven da\s. they should have
5 Masius in Josh. \ i. • ; Bochart's 1 1 i< i ••-. b, 'I. c. 4.'!; and
Calnict in locum.
a Boothroyd, following Coverdale, renders the phrase translated
in the common text, ' trumpets of rams' horns,' jubilee trumpets;
and Parkhursl observes, " I cannot find that the word Lz •
ever signifies " mm; nor have tin- Septuagint, Vulgate, or other
ancient versions, ever so rendered it: (Exod. \i\. 13,) is plain
against this rabbinical sense of the word." [n the in\i verse
tiTey an- called horns, but this might be their form. 01 whati ver
materials they might be, they were such as were used at the
Jubilee, according to the Vulgate. — Ed.
3b
378 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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[Book V.
been working in their trenches, and carrying on their
approaches, as we now call it.
The art of war was then but in its infancy ; and as the
manner of undermining and blowing up the most ponder-
ous bodies, was what the ancients were unacquainted
with, so was the battering-ram an invention of a later
date than some imagine. ' Pliny indeed seems to say,
that Epeus first made use of it at the siege of Troy ; but
in all probability, 2 Ezekiel is the earliest author that
mentions this machine, and perhaps the first time that it
was employed was under Nebuchadnezzar, at the siege
of Jerusalem.
But there is no need to ransack history for the confu-
tation of this system, which 3 they who propose it do
nevertheless acknowledge, that though the walls of
Jericho might have fallen without any extraordinary act
of divine power, yet by the circumstances of the whole
account, it appears that this event was altogether mir-
aculous. Nor should Joshua's denouncing an anathema
over the vanquished city be thought a thing unprece-
dented, or a token of a furious and implacable spirit,
since the like practice has been observed by some of the
greatest generals of other nations ; forasmuch as 4 Aga-
memnon, after he had taken Troy, denounced a curse
upon those who should, at any time, attempt to rebuild
it ; the Romans published a decree of execration against
them who should do the like to Carthage ; and when
* Crassus had demolished Sidon, which had been a lurk-
ing-place to the tyrant Glaucias, he wished the greatest
evils imaginable upon the head of that man who should
but so much as build a wall about the place where it once
stood. a
Of all the questions in the Jewish schools, there is
none more difficult than What we are to understand by
the Urim and Thunnuim, which Moses takes notice of as
something belonging to the attire of the high priest, and
withal enabling him to give responses to such as, by his
mediation, came to consult God. 6 The two words are
variously translated ; but in the main, all the transla-
tions amount much to the same purport ; and as this
sacred thing, be it what it will, was to be placed on the
high priest's breast, it very properly reminded him of the
1 B. vii. c. 56. 2 Ezek. iv. 1, 2. and xxi. 22.
s P. Mersenne, in his Commentary on Genesis, and D. Geo.
Merhof. de Scypho vitreo per certum humans vocis tonum
fracto.
4 Strabo, b. 13. p. 898. s Zonarae Annal. b. 9. p. 409.
6 Edwards' Inquiry into Difficult Texts, part 2.
a All these events were long posterior to the destruction of
Jericho, and though they had not, the conduct of Agamemnon or
Crassus could have served nothing to the vindication of Joshua.
The case appears to have been this, — Jericho was taken and
destroyed in so singular a manner that it seems to have been the
wish of the Hebrew leader, approved by God, to preserve a
memorial of one of the greatest miracles that were wrought for
Israel, by leaving the ruins of the city as a monument, to the
latest posterity, of the power of the God of Israel, and his hatred
of polytheism, and of such vices as sprang from polytheism, and
were practised in Jericho. Accordingly Joshua adjured the
ciders of the people, or made them bind themselves by a solemn
oath, to leave the ruins of the city as a perpetual warning to
their posterity of the consequences of idolatry and vice ; and to
give additional sanctity to the oath, he pronounced a curse upon
any one of them or their descendants, by whom it should be viol-
ated. It was one of the many extraordinary precautions taken
to preserve the Israelites from worshipping the idol deities of the
surrounding nations. — Bhhcp Glcig. — Ei>.
great qualifications requisite in those of his order ; light,
or sufficiency of spiritual knowledge ; and perfection, or
the virtue and sanctity of his life.
The general opinion indeed is, that this Urim and
Thummim were one and the same thing. But an ' inge-
nious writer of our own nation, conceives them to be two
different oracles, and applied to different purposes ; that
Urim was the oracle whereby God gave answer to those
who consulted him in difficult cases, and Thummim,
that whereby the high priest knew whether God did
accept the sacrifice or no ; that therefore the former is
called ' light,' as giving knowledge, which dispels the
darkness of our minds ; and the other ' int^grity,' or ' per-
fection,' because they whose sacrifices God accepted,
were accounted Thummim, that is,' just and righteous in
his sight :' in short, that by the former, the Jews were
ascertained of the counsel or will of God ; by the latter,
of his favour and good acceptance. But this distinction
has not met with a general approbation, because, how-
ever there may be 8 passages where the one is mentioned
without the other, yet in this case, the one, which is
generally the Urim, may well enough be supposed to
include both.
The Jewish doctors are mostly of opinion, that the
Urim and Thummim were nothing else but the precious
stones, which were set upon the breastplate ; and that
9 by the shining or protuberating of the letters in the
names of the twelve tribes, engraven upon the twelve
stones, the high priest when he came to consult God,
could read the answer : but in this opinion there are some
difficulties hardly to be surmounted. For besides that
all the letters in the Hebrew alphabet are not to be found
on the pectoral, since there are four, namely, Hcth, Teth,
Zade, and Koph, manifestly wanting ; 1U the question is,
by what rules the high priest could make a combination
of these letters, supposing there were enough of them,
and so put them together, as to spell out the divine ora-
cle ; because it is not pretended that these letters moved
out of their places, but only swelled, or raised themselves
above the rest ? Suppose, for instance, that any six of
these letters should have swelled, or shone with a more
than ordinary lustre, yet how should the high priest know
to dispose of them in right order, and which should
be first, and which last ? If it be said — By the spirit of
prophecy ; this vacates all the necessity of the Urim and
Thummim ; because a prophetic spirit would teach him
what he desired to know, without any farther assistance.
11 Christophorus a Castro, and from him 12 Dr Spencer
will needs have it that this Urim and Thummim were
two little images, (much of the same make with the Gen-
tile teraphim,) which being folded in the doubling of the
breastplate, did from thence give oracular answers by
an audible voice, and that this device was taken from
the Egyptians. But besides that the word teraphim, to
which these others were compared, is seldom or never
taken in a good sense, it seems a little improbable, that
in a matter so solemn and sacred, the Jews should be
left to follow the example of the idolatrous Egyptians. 13
" Mcde's Discourse 35. 8 Num. xxvii. 21 ; 1 Sam. xxviii. 6.
9 Prideaux's Connection, part 2. b. 3.
10 Calmtt's Dictionary under the word Urim.
" De Vatiiinio. 12 Dissert. De Urim tt Thummim.
13 Edwards' Inquiry, part 2.
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379
Tlie sacred records indeed inform us, that the Jews
borrowed of the Egyptians 'jewels of silver, and gold,
and raiment :' but they nowhere intimate, that the .Jewish
high priest borrowed his pontifical, and particularly his
oracular habit, from them ; and therefore to think that
God who declares himself so positively against the idola-
trous practice of the Gentiles, should, by these images
of pagan invention, take the ready way to give them
countenance and encouragement ; or to think, that the
Jews, who were expressly commanded not to ' learn the
way of the heathen,' and ' ' after the doings of the land
of Egypt, where they had dwelt, not to do ;' were per-
mitted, nay, commanded to make use of this magical and
superstitious rite, is such a heap of odd and wild con-
ceits, as no unprejudiced mind can ever entertain.
Others therefore are of opinion, that it was the tetra-
granmiaton, or ineffable name of God ; and others, that
it was no more than the two plain words Urim and
Thunnnim, written or engraved on some plate of gold or
precious stones, which, when placed upon the pectoral,
would give it an oracular power : - but the most proba-
ble opinion is, that it was no corporeal thing at all, but
only a certain virtue, which God was pleased to give to
the breastplate, at its consecration, of obtaining an ora-
cular answer from him, whenever the high priest should
put it on in order to ask counsel of him, in the manner
that he had appointed ; and that the names of Urim and
Thummim were given it, only to denote the clearness
and perspicuity which those answers of God had, namely,
that they were not like the heathen oracles, enigmatical
and ambiguous, but plain and manifest, and such as never
fell short of perfection, either in the fulness of the answer,
or the certainty of the truth of it.
Whether this oracle was only consulted in the great
and important affairs of the state, or might be advised
with in questions of a low nature, is not entirely deter-
mined by the learned ; but the most prevailing opinion is,
that the high priest, who was the only officiating minister
in this ceremony, was not allowed to address it for any
private person, but only for the king, the president of
the sanhedrim, the general of the army, or some other
public governor in Israel ; and that not upon any private
affairs, but such only as related to the public interest of
the nation, whether in church or in state.
AVhen therefore any such matter happened, wherein it
was necessary to consult God, the custom was for the
high priest to put on his robes and breastplate, and so
present himself, not within the veil of the holy of holies,
for thither he never entered but once a year, on the great
day of expiation, but without the veil in the holy place,
and there standing with his face directly towards the ark,
or mercy-seat, whereon the divine presence rested, he
propounded the matter ; and at some distance behind
him, but without the holy place, stood the person for
whom the oracle was consulted, in devout expectation of
the answer, which (as 3 it seems most congruous to the
thing) was given him in an audible voice from the mercy-
seat, which was within behind the veil.
Here it was that Moses went to ask counsel of God in
all cases ; and from hence he was answered in an audi-
ble voice : and in like manner, when the high priest
1 Lev. xviii. 3. * Prideaux's Connection, part I. b. 3.
1 Prideaux's Connection, part 1. b. 3.
presented himself before God, according to the prescrip-
tion of the divine law, it is reasonable to believe, that
God gave him an answer in the same way that he did
Moses, that is, by an audible voice from the inercy-eeat :
and for this reason it is, that such address for counsel is
called ' inquiring at the mouth of God,' and the holy of
holies (the place where the mercy-seat stood, and from
which the answer was given) is so often in scripture
styled, 4 'the oracle;' because from thence were the
oracles of God delivered to such as came to ask counsel
of him.
" Such was the standing oracle which the Israelites
might have had recourse to upon all important occasions ;
and if, in their league with the Gibeonites, they were loo
hasty and precipitate, their unadvisedness is only to be
blamed, and not the insufficiency of that means which
God had appointed for their better information. The
short of the matter is, the pretended foreign ambassadors
drew them in by a wile and artilice. The story of their
old shoes and mouldy bread was so well contrived, and
seemed so very plausible, that they took the thing for
granted, as we say. 5 ' They took of their victuals,' as
the text expresses it, or received them without any far-
ther inquiry, upon the account of the staleness of their
provision, and 6 ' asked not counsel of the mouth of the
Lord ;' and therefore, no wonder that God should suffer
them to be outwitted, when they had an infallible direc-
tor so near at hand ; and yet in a matter of such moment
as that of entering into a national treaty, never once
bethought themselves to consult him.
But there was a greater error in their conduct with
relation to the Gibeonites. The orders and directions
which God gave them, when they entered into a state of
war, were to this effect — 7 That to all cities which, upon
their summons surrendered to them, they were to give
quarter ; to save their lives, but at the same time to make
them their slaves and tributaries ; but that to such as
slighted their summons, and stood upon their defence,
they were not to use the same treatment. If they were
a distant nation, or not belonging to the country of
* Exod. xxv. 18, 20; chap, xxvii. G; Lev. x\i. 2; 1 Kings
vi. 5, &e. ; 2 Chron. iii. 16 ; chap. iv. 20, &e. ; Ps. xxviii. 2.
4 Josh. ix. 14. « Ibid. ' Pent. xx. 18, &C.
a The Jewish doctors think, that the custom of consultfi
by Urim ami Thummim continued no longer than under (lie
tabernacle: for it is a maxim among them, that the I lily Spirit
spake to the children of Israel by Trim and Thummim, while the
tabernacle lasted; under the first temple, that is, the temple of
Solomon, by the prophets; and under the second temple, oi after
the captivity of Babylon, by the bath-col, or daughter of the voice,
by which they mean a voice sent from heaven, such as ua-; heard at
our Saviour's baptism and transfiguration, (.Mat. iii. 17.) Our
learned Spencer seems to have adopted this opinion, and endea-
vours to support it by these arguments, namely: That the Urim
and Thummim were a consequence d the theocracy of the He-
brews ; for while the Lord immediately governed bis people, ft
was necessary, that there should always be a means at hand,
whereby to consult him upon aiiairs that concerned the common
interest of the whole nation ; but since the theocracy ceased, when
the kingdom became hereditary in the person and family i
man, and the Interest of the nation coaeod to be cemmi n
the division of Israel into two monarchies, the a ades of the I rim
and Thummim must necessarily cease. And accordingly, ii HI
consult the sacred history, »c shall meet with no footstep! of thus
applying to God, from tlie building of Solomon's temple, to the
time of its destruction ; and after its destruction, all are sen ' d,
that this oracle was never restored again. — Spencer De Urim et
Tfiummim, c. 2.
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Canaan, upon their taking any place, they were to put
the men only to the sword, sparing- the women, and
children, and other living- creatures that were found in
it ; but if they were a neighbouring, or Canaanitish state
that stood out and resisted, they were to destroy all without
exception ; and save alive nothing that breathed. In the
whole, however, there was this injunction, that of what
country soever the people were, and whether they
resisted or resisted not, the Israelites were to make no
1 ' covenant with them, nor with their gods ;' and the
reason hereof is this, — 2 That as a league between two
nations implies, in the very notion of it, their having
upon some terms given their faith to each other, to
observe punctually what had been stipulated between
them ; and as, when such public faith was given and
taken, the parties to the treaty swore solemnly to each
other by their respective gods ; the Israelites, who
looked upon the gods of these nations as vanity and
nothing-, who were obliged to 3 ' overthrow their altars,
burn their groves, hew down their images, and utterly
extirpate their religion, were totally debarred from
entering into any treaty or alliance with them, because
they could not recognise their idols as gods, nor take
any public faith from the worshippers of them. For so
the people seem to say to the Gibeonites, at their first
coming into the camp to propose a treaty, ' peradventure
you dwell among us,' " are some of those neighbouring
nations, whom we are ordered to destroy, whose gods we
are to drive out, and whose country we are come to take
possession of," ' and how shall we make a league with
you?' " The interdiction we are under will not permit
us; and therefore, if you pretend to impose upon us in
this matter, the covenant of course is null and invalid :"
and so in reality it was.
It is reasonable, however, to imagine, that after the
fraud of the Gibeonites was discovered, the princes of
Israel might reflect upon their neglect, in not consulting
the divine oracle before ; and as the peace, which they
had entered into was plainly repugnant to God's com-
mand of exterminating all the Canaanites, the question
was, what they should do in this case ? whether abide by
the treaty, and so postpone the command ; or execute
the command, and so disannul the treaty ? The whole
stress of the question turns upon this, — 4 Whether God
commanded the Israelites to destroy all the people of
Canaan absolutely, and without exception ; or whether
he allowed them to spare such as voluntarily submitted
themselves, and came to implore their pity and protec-
tion ? The words of the injunction in this case are full,
and express enough : 5 ' When thou goest nigh unto a
city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it, and
if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee,
then shall all the people that are found therein be tribut-
aries to thee, and shall serve thee. Thus shalt thou do
unto all the cities which are very far ofF from thee, and
which are not of these Canaanitish nations. But of the
cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give
thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing
that breatheth, but shalt utterly destroy them, that they
teach thee not to do all their abominations, which they
have done to their gods.' But here some great writers
have observed, that this utter extinction of the Canaan-
itish nations, considering the reasons that are given for
it, both here and 6 elsewhere, is to be looked upon 7 as a
permission, rather than a positive command, and should,
at least, s be understood with this limitation : ' unles.«
they immediately submitted, renounced their idolatry,
and did every thing that was enjoined them.' And to
this purpose 9 the Jews have a tradition, that Joshua,
before he declared war against the seven nations, wrote
letters to them, wherein he offered them three condi-
tions,— that if they were minded to depart, they should
quit the country immediately ; if they were desirous to
make peace, they should come and treat with the Israel-
ites ; but that if they intended to fight it out, they might
betake themselves to their arms : and they farther add,
that the first of these conditions the Girgashites embraced,
and fled into Egypt ; the second the Gibeonites accepted,
and made a league with Joshua ; and the third the con-
federate kings made their choice, when they took up arms
against the Israelites, and were all defeated.
But this is no more than a bare hypothesis, invented
on purpose to solve the difficulty, and seems not to have
near so good a foundation as that which supposes that
the princes of Israel, remembering their former omission,
and their insecurity in acting upon their own bottom,
might, in this perplexity, have recourse to God for
advice, and that this answer might be, ' that the league
should be ratified.' Of this indeed we have no express
mention in Scripture ; but in so short a history of such
a variety of transactions as that of Joshua is, we may
well imagine, that several circumstances may be omitted.
For that some such ratification of this treaty was deter-
mined by God, we have great presumption to believe,10
from the severe punishment which he afterwards inflicted
upon the Israelites, and the posterity of Saul, for his
having slain some of the descendants of these Gibeonites,
not improbably u at the sacking of the town of Nob. For
though this action of Saul's was cruel and inhuman,
because the decree for the extirpation of the Canaanites
was now extinct ; yet what made it more heinous and
provoking to God, was the infraction of the treaty, which
had subsisted about four ages, and which cost the lives
of seven of that bloody prince's sons and grandsons to
atone.
The heathens, it must be owned, had no small respect
and veneration for oaths : whenever they took one, it
was in the most solemn and religious manner. 12 They
looked upon the gods as inspectors and witnesses of
what they said, more especially at such a time as this.
They believed that the furies were appointed to be
avengers of all perjury ; and that as 13 disgrace attended
it in this world, so destruction would pursue it in the
next. And as this was the general notion of most heathen
nations, so the Gibeonites, who had hitherto conceived
a good opinion of the God of Israel, would have been
strangely scandalized, a had they found his people pre-
1 Exod. xxiii. 32. * Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12.
3 Deut. xii. 3.
* Fuffendorf de Jure Gent. I). 4. c. 2. sec. 7. de Juramentis, &c.
5 Deut. xx. 10, &c.
6 Exod. xxiii. 33; and Deut. vii. 4. 7 Puffendorf, ibid.
8 Grotius de Jure Belli, b. 2. c. 13.
3 Saurin's Dissertation on the Artifice of the Gibeonites, vol. 3.
10 2 Sam. xxi. ] , &c "1 Sam. xxii. 19.
12 See Hesiod. Dies, v. 38, &c.
13 The divine punishment of perjury is destruction ; the human,
disgrace.
a St Ambrose, treating of this story, speaks of it in this
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381
varicating with their oaths, even though they were made
upon a false supposition. For fear, therefore, lest any
dishonour should fall ultimately upon that divine
Majesty whose servants they were, the princes of the
congregation unanimously agree, and there seems to be
something of a divine inspiration in this their unanimity,
and declare it as their joint opinion, ' ' We have sworn
unto them, by the Lord God of Israel,' and therefore
without breaking our oath, or forfeiting his favour, ' we
may not touch them.'
It was the same commendable zeal for the honour of
God, that made the Israelites on one side of Jordan
conceive such angry resentments against their brethren
on the other, upon suspicion that they had apostatized
from his worship into the idolatry of the nations that
were round about them. The two tribes and a hall",
upon their return from the wars, erected an altar, in
memory of their relation to the tribes and tabernacle
which they had left behind them.2 This altar, it seems,
was of an height somewhat extraordinary ; and as it was
the custom for heathens to worship their gods, which
were generally celestial bodies, upon high places, as
presuming that thereby they made nearer approaches to
them ; their brethren on the west side of the river conjec-
tured from thence, that this was an altar raised for the
worship of the sun, or some other planetary god. But if
even they were mistaken in that conjecture, sufficient
reason they had to suspect that it was intended for no good
purpose, since God had expressly forbidden them to offer
their sacrifices at any other place but the tabernacle, or
upon any other altar but that which was built by his
appointment : for these are directions which Moses gives
them : 3 ' Ye are not yet come to the rest, and to the
inheritance which the Lord your God giveth you : but
when you shall be put in possession of it, ' ye shall not do
after all these things, that we do here this day, every man
whatsoever is right in his own eyes : but in the place which
the Lord shall choose, in one of thy tribes, there shalt
thou otter thy burnt-offerings ; thither shalt thou come,
and there shalt thou do all that I command thee.'
Now when they had sufficient reason, as they thought,
to suspect their brethren of a defection into idolatry,
what should they do? Why, herein they punctually
follow the rules which God himself had prescribed them
in such a case: 4 ' If thou shalt hear say, in one of thy
cities which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell
there, saying, Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone
out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants
of their city, saying, Let us go, and serve other gods,
(which ye have not known,) then shalt thou inquire, and
make search, and ask diligently ; and behold, if it be truth,
and the thing certain, that sucli abomination is wrought
among you, thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that
city with the edge of the sword ; destroying it utterly,
and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the
edge of the sword ; and thou shalt gather all the spoil of
1 Josh. ix. 19. 2 Saurin's Dissertation on Joshua's dismissing
the Reuhenites.
» Dent. xii. 9, 8, 14. * Deut. xiii. 12, 13, &c.
manner: — " Joshua did not think fit to break the peace which
he had granted, because it was confirmed by the awful solemnity
of an oath, lest, whilst he was blaming the perfidiousoess oJ
others, he himself should be worse than his word, and forfeit his
own honour." — Be Ojfkiis, b. 3, c. 10.
it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with
fire the city and all the spoil thereof, every whit, for the
Lord thy God ; and it shall be a heap for ever, it shall
not he built again.' And if the Israelites on the west of
Jordan, having this cause of suspicion, pursued these
orders to a tittle, who shall say that they did amiss, or
that their zeal for God's glory was rash and precipitate ?
They took the properest method, which was sending an
embassy, for the discovery of the truth ; and if, upon
inquiry, their fears were found to be groundless, yet it
seems to be an error on the better side, as we commonly
say, and an instance of no contemptible prudence, in
matters of so dangerous a consequence, always to sus-
pect the worst.
It may be doubted perhaps, whether the Israelites were
a people of the greatest bravery in the world, but it may
truly be said, that there was no necessity for their being
so; because, upon all occasions they had the Lord of host3
to protect them, and to fight their battles for them. Sup-
ported by his aid, * how did one of them chase a thou-
sand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their
rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up ?'
But when this was the case, no wonder at all, that '
' the hearts of the people melted away and became like
water. '
The short of the story was this, — They had all along
hitherto been victorious ; had subdued a country beyond
Jordan ; passed that river, and conquered the capital of
the adjacent province by miracle : and now having sent
out a party to summon a small place to surrender, upon
the first sally that the inhabitants make, they are all on a
sudden seized with a panic, forget their courage, and
flee, without so much as striking a stroke. This they
could not but perceive was the effect of God's displeasure,
and therefore, considering themselves in an enemy's
country, they had just reason to dread, that if God
should desert them in this situation of their affairs, the
people of the land, hearing the report of their defeat,
would come, and, as Joshua expresses it, 7 ' environ them
round, and cutoff their name from the earth.'
Good reason therefore had the Israelites to be dis-
consolate, when they found that God, to whom they owed
all their valour and victories, had forsaken them. But in
the mean time, how did they behave upon this occasion ?
AVhy ' they fell to the earth upon their knees,' in humble
supplication to God for mercy ; they continued .ill the
day long in fasting and praying, and expressed their
sorrow, and (he sense of their unworthiness with the usual
tokens of grief. And was not this better than to become
obdurate under (.oil's afflicting hand, as were the Egyp-
tians? Nay, was not this the very behaviour 1>\ which
the Ninevites moved the divine mercy to reverse the
sentence of excision that had gone out against them ' Be
that, all things considered, the Israelites, in this regard
are not to be blamed ; since the} who had lost ' the rock
of their might,' and had 'the terrors of the ford set in
array against them, were far from fearing where no fear
was.'
And in like manner, if to the reasons we have already
alleged for their conduct at .lericlio, we add this OOO
consideration, namely, that they were ju.-t now entering
Upon their conquests ; that this was the lirst city the] had
5 Duut. xxxii. 30.
0 Josh. >ii. 5.
7 Jo-h. vii. 9.
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taken on the west side of Jordan ; and that the people
they had to contend with, were to be terrified into sub-
mission rather than entreated, we cannot but be of this
opinion, that an example or two of high severity, at the
first setting out, was no less than necessary to reduce the
country more speedily, and with a less effusion of blood ;
as well as to verify the promise of him who appointed
them : l ' This day will I begin to put the dread of thee,
and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the
whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall
tremble and be in anguish because of thee.'
in any crime, is as culpable as the person who commits
it ;" and therefore, if we suppose that Achan's family
was privy to what their father had done, and did con-
ceal it, there could be no injustice in including them in
the punishment. It may be pretended, perhaps, that
some of them were infants, and so must be deemed inno-
cent ; but the text says nothing of this : it only calls
them 4 ' sons and daughters ;' and considering- that
Achan, in all probability, was an old man, as b being
the fifth descendant from Judah, it seems most likely,
that his children 6 were grown up, and so capable of
Without entering therefore into any farther vindica- knowing, and of either concealing or discovering the
tion of the Jewish nation, we may safely say, that in the
cases we have had under consideration, they were neither
zealous nor timorous, nor cruel without a cause ; that in
the first of these cases, they expressed their concern for
fact.
But, after all, there is no occasion for our running
ourselves into any difficulty. The text does not say,
neither is it any way implied, that Achan's sons and
God's honour ; in the second their dread of his departing daughters were executed with him. In the sentence de-
froin them ; and in the third, their obedience to his com- | nounced against him, we find no mention made of them,
mand.
It is a law of God's own enacting, that a ' the fathers
shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall
the children be put to death for the fathers, but every
man shall be put to death for his own sin :' but then we
are to consider, that this law was given to man, and not
to God, who has certainly a more absolute right and
sovereignty over men, than one man has over another.
That as the Israelites at this time lived under a theocra-
cy, and in a proper sense had God for their civil governor,
every wilful transgression, such as Achan's was, must
have been deemed, not only a violation of the divine
command, but a crime of lese majesty likewise ; and that
in crimes of this kind, the practice of all " governments,
ancient as well as modern, has been, to make children
suffer for the iniquity of the parent, (as in cases of at-
taint of blood, and confiscation of estate,) and that with
the reputation of the highest equity. Upon the supposi-
tion then that Achan's family were not accessory to their
father's crime, yet God who gave them life, had undoubt-
edly a full power to take it away, at what time, or in
what manner he thought fit ; and if in cases of high
treason among men, it is thought reasonable to devolve
some part of the parent's penalty upon the children, there
is this farther argument why Achan's family should be made
to suffer with him, because God could not express his
severity against sin, nor take their lives away, at a more
convenient opportunity than in the beginning of a new
empire, and when each man's right and property was
going to be settled ; that such a dreadful example of his
indignation against stealth might deter others, if not for
their own, at least for their dear children's sake, to ab-
stain from such dangerous and pernicious practices. 3
The Jews have a maxim, " That he who is an accomplice
1 Deut. ii. 25. 2 Deut. xxiv. 16.
* Saurin's Dissertation on the Crime of Achan.
a Thus Cicero, to excuse the confiscations decreed against Lepi-
dus, which aiTected his children, the nephews of Brutus, has these
words: — " I well observe how cruel it is that children should be
punished for the crimes of their parents, but this has been beau-
tifully explained by the laws, that a love for their children might
render the parents more friendly to the state." (To Brutus,
b. 1. Epis. 12.") And again, — " In which there seems to be
something cruel, that punishment should be inflicted on the
children, who have never committed any crime : but it is a law
as ancient as it is general." (Epis. 15.) — Warhurton's Divine
Legation, b. 5. sec. 5. note 2.
and why then should we suppose that they were partakers
in his punishment, any other ways than as they were
brought out to be spectators of it ? * And a piercing sight
no doubt it was, for persons so nearly related to behold
the sad fate of their chief, first stoned to death, and then
with all his goods and chattels, as well as those accursed
things for which he was condemned, committed to the
flames. His oxen, and asses, and sheep, are here taken
notice of, to let us see that Achan was a wealthy man,
and therefore was inexcusable in committing this fact.
And though they were not capable of sin, nor conse-
quently of punishment properly so called ; yet as they
were made for man's use, they might fairly die for his
instruction, namely, to convince him of the sad and con-
tagious nature of sin, which even involves innocent
creatures in its plagues ; and emblematically to show
him, how much sorer punishments are reserved for man,
who having a law given for the conduct of his life, and
the gifts of reason and will to restrain him from the
transgression of it, will adventure upon things forbidden,
and thereby contract greater guilt, and draw upon him-
self severer expressions of the divine wrath.
God indeed styles himself ' The Lord of hosts,' and
had so immediate a hand in the conduct of Israel, that
every military achievement of theirs might very properly
be ascribed to him : but when he ordered Joshua 7 ' to go
up against Ai, and to lay an ambuscade behind it,' he
might, notwithstanding this, leave the whole glory of the
invention and execution of it to him as an able and
expert general ; for if he had always wrought miracles
in favour of his people, and left nothing for Joshua to
perform, we cannot see how he could have merited the
character of an extraordinary man.
In other events, where the whole may be said to be
under the guidance of God, he takes care to direct every
particular of the transaction. In passing the river
Jordan, and surrounding the walls of Jericho, he pre-
scribes the form and order of the people's march, and
how, upon every occasion, they were to behave ; but
* Josh. vii. 24.
« Poole's Annotations.
Josh. vii. 1.
7 Josh. vii.
b Bishop Patrick, Dr A. Clarke, and others, take the same
view as our author, and it seems to be the correct one. Achan's
family were brought out to the valley, that they might see and
fear, and be for ever deterred, by their father's punishment, from
following his example. — Ed.
Skct. I.
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &f
383
A. M. 2.-S53. A. C. 1451; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1608. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
here, in the affair of Ai, he contents himself with merely
suggesting the means, as things that Joshua was no
stranger to, and leaves to him the contrivance and appli-
cation of them. This stratagem indeed is the first that
we find any mention of in Scripture ; but we must not
from thence infer that there was never any before put in
execution. The art of war began very soon, and was
carried on, no doubt, with great application. The whole
excellence of its management consists in circumventing
and doubling upon the enemy with dexterity ; and there-
fore, no question but that the wits of mankind were
always employed in taking advantage of each other, and
in gaining a victory with the least expense of blood on
their own side. ' The Romans fell frequently into the
snares which were laid lor them, because their generals
were men of no military skill ; and therefore, to excuse
their ignorance, they alleged that they made war like
honest men, without deceit or artifice. And if Alex-
ander disclaimed the use of stratagems, it was because
he knew the cowardice of his enemies, and how easy a
matter it was to gain a conquest in a fair and open field.
For it is not to be doubted, but that had he been to attack
any other nation, except the effeminate Persians, he
would have taken his friend Parmenio's advice, and,
without blushing at a victory gained by good manage-
ment, fallen upon his enemy under cover of the night.
However this be, that stratagems are lawful in war
we have good presumption to think, from God's directing
Joshua to make use of one ; and though he does not, as
other warriors do, employ any of these at a pinch, or
because he cannot accomplish his designs without them ;
though he could, with one single act of his will, have
destroyed the city of Ai, and all the inhabitants thereof,
and without suffering his people to strike one blow, have
put them in possession of the promised land ; yet choosing
to act by secondary means, he proceeded in the ordinary
way, and leaving a good deal to Joshua's skill and
management, assisted him only at some critical con-
junctures, that, by a prolongation of the war, the repu-
tation of his people might be raised, and more frequent
opportunities occur for the display of his miraculous
works.
2 Josephus, indeed, seems not to have consulted the
honour of Joshua much, when he ascribes the delay of
the conquest of Canaan to the weakness of his army, and
the impregnable strength of the places he was to attack.
But 3 some other Jews make the matter much worse,
when they tell us, that he desired to prolong the war,
not only to retain the office and dignity of being cap-
tain-general, but because he was informed by the oracle,
that as soon as the conquest was finished, he himself was
to die. God, however, seems to have given us much better
reasons for this retardation, when he acquaints Moses
with his intention : 4 ' I will not drive the Canaanites
out from before thee in one yecir, lest the land become
desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against
thee ;' and when he complains of their sad defection
after the death of Joshua, s ' 1 will not henceforth drive
out any from before them of the nations which Joshua
1 Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Ai.
2 Antiquities, l>. 5. c. 1.
3 See Scholar. Bibliotheoa of Old and New Test. vol. 2. p. 402.
* Exod. xxiii. 29, 30. *Judg. ii. 21, 22.
left when he died, that through them I may prove Israel,
whether they will keep the May of the Lord to walk
therein, as their fathers did keep it, or no:' whereupon,
the historian tells us, that God accordingly ' did leave'
these nations without driving them out ;' ami a. I. Is
another reason for their continuance in the country
namely, that the Israelites, by having an enemy to con-
tend with, might be trained up in the art and mystery of
war: for B ' these are the nations,' says be, ' which the
Lord left to prove Israel, that by them they might teach
those war, who before knew nothing of it.'
So that here are three reasons given us, why God de-
layed the entire subjection of Canaan, namely, because
the children of Israel were as yet too few in number to
replenish the whole country ; because God by keeping
the Canaanites in being, was willing both to make trial
of his people's obedience, and to train them and their
posterity, for some ages, up in military discipline and
exercise.
But there is another reason which Joshua, in his dying
speech, assigns for their not enlarging their conquests ti-
the utmost bounds which God had given them : ' ' Take
good heed therefore,' says he, ' unto yourselves, that \o
love the Lord your God; else if ye do in anywise go
back, and cleave unto the remnants of these nations,
even those that remain among- you, and shall make
marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to
you ; know for a certainty, that the Lord voir God will
no more drive out any of these nations from before you.'
So that the promise which God made to the Israelites
was conditional ; and as they manifestly falsified their
part of the obligation, by engaging first in affinity, and
then in idolatry with the nations, which they were bound
to destroy ; so God might very well think himself releas-
ed from his, and under no farther concern for their suc-
cess, or the enlargement of their conquest ; 8 but as
they had been the ministers of his vengeance, in punish-
ing the disorders of the Canaanites, they, in their turn,
were now made the instruments of his chastising the
disobedience of his own people : 9 ' They shall be snares
and traps to you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns
in your eyes, until ye perish from the good land which
the Lord your God hath given you.'
And indeed if we consider how violently, in alter
ages, the Israelites were opposed l>\ their enemies, and
by many battles and captivities, harassed and diminished
in their numbers, we shall find no necessity of enlarging
their possessions ; because the country which the] con-
quered in the first six years, was spacious enough to
contain them. 10 The promise, however, which God
made was sufficiently accomplished in the reigns of
David and Solomon, when the kingdom of Israel was in
its zenith ; and though its territories did not extend to
the Euphrates, yet its dominion did, since all that tract
of land between Jerusalem and that great river was
either subdued, or made tributary to them.
Upon the whole therefore it is evident, that the author
of the book of Joshua, be he who he will, in the three
instances which we have been considering, has left no
imputation upon God : forasmuch asthoughhe commanded
6 Judp. iii. 1. 2. 7 Jo*. odH. 11, &c.
H Seurm's Dissertation, vol. 3. Dissertation 10.
» josh. xxiii. 13. ,0 Toole's Annotation*.
384
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1C08. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
Achan to be put to death, yet it does not appear that
his children suffered with him ; or if they did, there is
presumption to believe that they were accomplices in his
crime : though he ordered the taking of Ai by a strata-
gem, yet the whole form and contrivance of it he left to
the general ; and though the Israelites did not actually
possess all that he had promised them, yet this was
occasioned by their own disobedience and cowardice,
and the falsification of those conditions, upon which the
full conquest of the land of Canaan was suspended.
There is but one objection more, in the course of this
period, which is usually alleged against the sacred
history, and that is, the seeming contradiction of the
ark's being said to be at Shechem, when it was, in reality,
at Shiloh ; but in answer to this, some have imagined,
that as Joshua was now grown old and infirm, the ark '
upon this occasion, was removed from Shiloh, the settled
place of the divine residence, to Shechem, the place of
Joshua's habitation, that he might with greater solemnity,
and m the presence of God, whereof the ark was the
proper emblem, deliver his charge to the people. But
other learned men have observed, that by a ' the sanctu-
ary of the Lord,' we are to understand, not the ' ark of
the covenant,' but only some certain place of religious
worship, such, very probably, as the Jewish oratories
were. That the holy ark was not, on this occasion set
up here at Shechem, is evident, they say, from that pro-
hibition given by God, 3 ' Thou shalt not plant a grove
of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God,
which thou shalt make thee, neither shalt thou set up a
pillar, which the Lord thy God hateth :' whereas in this
sanctuary, we read both of an oak planted, and a pillar,
or statue erected under it ; which is certainly such a
violation of the divine command, as Joshua, upon no
occasion, can be supposed capable of incurring. 4 It
is a very probable opinion, therefore, that the place
where Joshua set up this monumental pillar, was one of
those which the tribe of Ephraim, to whom Shechem
belonged, had consecrated, and set apart for a proseucha,
or a place to assemble in for public prayer ; and that
they made choice of this rather than any other, to per-
form their devotions in, because it was that particular
spot where God appeared to Abraham, and promised
his posterity the possession of the land of Canaan.
a That there were such oratories, or places of public
1 Poole's Annotations and Patrick's Commentaries.
* Josh. xxiv. 26. 3 Deut. xvi. 21, 22. 4 Mede's Dis. 8.
a Epiphanius, who was a Jew bred, and born in Palestine,
speaking of some heretics, (b. 1. hceres. 61.) whom he calls
Massalians, and who, according to his account, were neither
Jews, Christians, nor Samaritans, but pagans, tells us, that they
nevertheless pretended to worship the one true God, and for that
purpose had certain open places, which they called proseuchre.
And that the Jews, as also the Samaritans, had places for religious
worship of the same denomination, he proves from the Acts of
the Apostles, (chap. xvi. 13.) where Lydia is said to have met
St Paul, and to have heard him preach in that place, which
' seemed to be a place of prayer.' There is also at Shechem,
which is now called Neapolis, continues he, about a mile with-
out the city, a proseucha, a place of prayer, like a theatre,
which was built in the open air, and without a roof, by the
Samaritans, who affected to imitate the Jews in all things.
Juvenal, in his third satire, describing the manner in which
prayer among the Jews, and that they were generally
beset, or shaded with trees, is evident from such a variety
of testimonies, that it can hardly be contested; but
whether they were of so early a date as Joshua's time,
or not rather introduced after the captivity of Babylon,
is a question not easy to determine. In the main, how-
ever, we may conclude, that whether the ark of the
covenant was occasionally brought to Shechem, or at
Shechem there happened to be such an oratory, as in
after ages became frequent in Judea, there can be no
incongruity in the sacred penman's saying, that the sanc-
tuary of the Lord (since either the ark or the oratory
might merit that name) was at Shechem. There is
another solution, however, of this difficulty, which ought
not to be disregarded. 5 Shechem and Shiloh were about
twelve miles distant from each other, and in the midway
between them, was Timnath-serah, the place where Joshua
lived. Since, therefore, the text informs us, that 6 ' he
gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called
for their elders, for their heads, for their judges, and for
their officers, and they presented themselves before God ;'
we may reasonably suppose, that though all the people
met at Shechem, yet their elders and chief officers only
presented themselves before God. That so great a mul-
titude could not meet together, and encamp in anyplace
but where there is a proportionable compass of ground,
is a matter self-evident ; and that, in the confines of
Shechem, there was a large and open country, extending
5 Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3. b. 12. 6 Josh. xxiv. 1.
ately in what unprotected niche I will seek you ;" whereby he
either intimates, that he was some poor wretch, who dwelt in a
house that could not keep out wind and weather, but, like the
Jewish proseuchte, was all open above ; or he alludes to the state
of the Jews at that time, who were banished out of Rome by
Domitian, and had no place of shelter, but their oratories, which
were without the walls of the city. For that the Jews had their
proseuchae about the city of Rome, is evident from that passage
in Philo, (de Legatione ad Caium) . wherein he commends the
clemency and moderation of Julius Csesar, who knew that the
Jews had such places of public worship, where they always assem-
bled on the Sabbath-day, and yet gave them no molestation, as
Caius had done. Josephus (in his life, sect. 54.) makes mention
of a proseucha at Tiberias in Galilee, and in several places of the
New Testament, the same term is made use of in the same sig-
nitic.ation ; (see Mede's Discourse 18.) But then the question is,
whether it be not a mistake in some learned men, to apply a
usage, that is mentioned at such and such a time, to a people
who lived many ages before.
Philo Judieus, (de Legatione ad Caium,) speaking of the bar-
barous outrage of some Gentiles against the Jews, dwelling then
at Alexandria, acquaints us, " That of some of their proseuchte,
they cut down the trees, and others they demolished to the very
foundations." The poet Juvenal alludes to the very same cus-
tom of having trees planted where the Jewish oratories were,
when, speaking of a fortune-teller of that nation, he thus describes
her: — "The trembling Jewess secretly importunes for alms,
though she be the interpreter of her country's laws, — the great
priestess of the tree — and the faithful ambassadress of high
heaven." (Sat. 6.) And in auother place, complaining that
through the corruption of the times, the once sacred grove of
Capena, which had formerly been the habitation of the muses,
and the place where Numa was wont to meet the goddess y£ge-
ria, was now let out to the beggarly Jews for a proseucha, his
expressions are these: — " Here, where Numa used to meet his
mistress by night, are now to be found groves and shrines sacred
to the Jews, the whole furniture of which is but a coffer and
some hay ; for every tree is commissioned to give a hire, and the
muses being now expelled from it, the wood is gone a begging."
some wild young fellows were wont, in their drunken frolics, to (Sat. 3.) For it is hard to conceive what affinity there should
affront and abuse every poor man they met with in the streets in be between Jews and trees, unless it be from the custom, that
the uight time, brings them in speaking thus; " Tell me immedi- | their oratories were usually shaded with them.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
385
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1608. JOSH, i
perhaps as far as Shiloh, and very commodious for their
reception, we have the attestation of holy writ. But
then, since it is impossible for one man to speak to such
a number of people and be heard, Joshua very probably
singled out the chief and principal of them, such as he
foresaw would succeed him in the government after his
demise, and these he took with him to Shiloh, a place
in the neighbourhood, where was the ark, or sanctuary
of the Lord, that he might there, with the greater solem-
nity, give them his final charge, which they, in their
turns, might deliver to their respective tribes.
Thus we have endeavoured to satisfy the several ob-
jections, which are usually made against sonic passages
in the sacred history, during the government of Joshua :
and if profane testimonies would be of any force, we
might produce the accounts which their historians give
us of Neptune's drying up the river Inachus, and of
Agamemnon's denouncing a curse against any one that
should repair Troy, to justify the narrative we have in
Scripture of the miraculous passage of Jordan, and the
resentment and indignation which Joshua conceived
against Jericho. The ancient Hercules was certainly
the same with Joshua. He is said to have waged war
in behalf of the gods, against Typhosus, and the rest of
the giants of old, even as Joshua fought the battles of the
Lord against the inhabitants of Canaan, men of a vast
stature, and at that time under the displeasure of heaven.
In conformity to the sacred record of God's destroy jng
the confederate army of the Amorites with hailstones,
the ancient heathens say, that Hercules was thus assisted
in his war against the sons of Neptune; and Plutarch,
in his life of Timoleon, tells us, that a terrible storm of
bail, in the face of the Carthaginian army, gave him,
though he had but very few forces to encounter them, a
complete victory over them. The sun standing still is
no new story. Callimachus a represents him as stopping
the wheels of his chariot to hear the melody of a chorus
of nymphs, wherewith he was so delighted, that it made
him prolong the day : and though they are mistaken in
the cause, yet the ancient poets discover a tradition of
this miraculous event, * when they describe the heaven's
blushing, and the sun's standing still at the sight of the
unnatural murder which Atreus committed. For if
Statius mistake not, this bloody fact happened in the
time of the Theban war, which, according to the best
chronologists, was much about the time of Joshua's con-
quest of Canaan. Hut even supposing Statius, or any
other author from whom lie took the hint, are mistaken
in their chronology, '' the time of Phaeton's life, whose
story of misguiding the chariot of the sun, is supposed
to take its rise from hence, will synchronize with the
a His words are these: — " Jupiter Apollo never came near
that beauteous choir, but checking his chariot, lie would gaze in
ecstasy, and cause the morning rays to linger." — CaUimdchus
to Diana.
b " Jupiter more slowly rolled away the darkness from the
humid sky, and, as I think, with merciful care, delayed the
driven-back air, while the fates forbade it; but the unaccustomed
darkness remained only till the sun hail resumed his usual
strength." — Statins' Thebais, b. 1 and 5.
c The sun stood still in the days of Joshua, A.M. 2551,
when Phaeton was about twenty-four years r.ld, an age of ambi-
tion enough to desire, though not of ability to execute, the diffi-
cult province which ho undertook.— Shuckford's Connection,
v. 3. b. 12.
TO THE BMD.
year of the sun's standing still in the days of Joshua.
So that, as to the most wonderful transactions which in
this space of time we meet with in holy writ, God has
not left himself without a witness : forasmuch as the
heathen writers, though with some variation or disguise
according to the humour of their mycologists, are blown
to relate the same things.
CHAP. III..
■Of the Shower of Stones, and the Surfs
standing still.
Of all the miraculous things that happened in Joshua's
wars with the people of Canaan, the shower of stones
which God sent upon his enemies, while they lied, and
the stop which he put to the course of the sun, that he
might have a longer space to destroy them in their flight,
are the most remarkable, and do therefore deserve a
more particular consideration.
The former of these events the sacred history repre-
sents in this manner, — ' ' And it came to pass that as
they,' namely, the army of the Amorites, ' lied from
before Israel, and were in the going down u> Beth-
horon, the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon
them unto Azekah, and they died. They were more
which died of the hailstones, than they whom the children
of Israel slew With the sword.' Put the difference
among commentators is, whether we are to understand
this miracle of a shower of stones, propterh so (ailed, or
of a shower of hail.
The learned Calmet, in a dissertation prefixed to his
commentary upon Joshua, has taken a great deal of pains
to show, that the stones, which the Lord is said to have
cast upon the Amorites, were not ordinary hailsl s;
(since it would be incongruous, as he thinks, to interest
God in so common an occurrence,) but real solid stones,
which he supposes, might have been engendered in the
air by a whirlwind carrying up sand or gravel into a
cloud, and there mixing it with some such oil) <>r nitro-
sulphureous matter as might consolidate, and form it
into a combustible body ; that so, when by frequent agi-
tation, it came to be fired, it might burst through the
cloud, and scattering itself upon the explosion, might fall
down upon the earth in the nature of a perfect shower of
stones.
That great quantities of stones have in this manner
been discharged from the clouds, is evident from -■
historians. DiodorUS Siculus -' informs us, lh;it as the
Persian army was on their march to plunder the temple
at Delphos, thunder and lightning, and a violent storm
of stones fell in their camp, ami destroyed a great ,mm_
berofmen. 3 In the reign of Tullus Hostilius,.when news
was brought to the government, lli.it it had rained stones
upon mount Alba, those who were sent to inquire into
the matter, brought word, not only that the fad was true,
but that these stones had fallen from the skies with, an
impetuosity equal to the most violent storm of hail. ' Not
Ion"- after the battle of (ann.e, the same author I
us, that a storm id' the same kind, fell on the same moun-
tain, which lasted for two whole days; and events oT this
1 Josh, x. 1). 2 Vol. ii. b. li. 5 Liv. b. l.dsc l.
4 Liv. h.25, 30, 34.
3c
386
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 : OR,
nature, attested by the best authors, have been so fre-
quent at Rome, at Capua, at Lavinium, and several
other places in Italy, that a man must be destitute of all
modesty, who pretends to deny them absolutely.
Nay, not only great quantities of smaller stones, but
sometimes stones of a prodigious size, have been known
to fall from the clouds, whereof this learned author, 1
among many others, gives us several instances, both of
ancient and modern date. But then it is justly to be
questioned, whether these authors have not suffered them-
selves to be imposed on by the too confident narrations
of others. We may suppose indeed, that whirlwinds, or
hurricanes, may raise the sand or gravel, and carry it on
high, or some sudden irruptions of subterraneous fire may
discharge gTeat quantities of cinders, or ashes, into the
air, where meeting with some exhalations of a sulphu-
reous oily, or nitroline quality, they may, by the pressure
of the clouds, be condensed and hardened into a stony
substance ; yet, how any cloud should be able to sup-
port such a quantity of smaller stones, much more of vast
massy ones, as would be necessary to destroy the army
of the five confederate kings, and to continue falling
down upon them from Beth-horon' to Azekah, places
which lay in different tribes, and can hardly be supposed
less than twelve or fourteen miles distant, (to say nothing
of the many apertures in the earth, which must have been
seen afterwards in these parts, upon the supposition that
the thing was effected by volcanoes,) is a matter not
altogether so credible. a
1 See Saurin's Dissertation likewise, who has given us a large
account hereof.
a Since our author wrote much light lias been thrown on the
disputed subject as to showers of stones, either large or small;
and the fact has been established that the descent of such bodies
is by no means uncommon. They are solid semi-metallic sub-
stances which fall from the atmosphere, and are known by the
name of aerolites, or meteoric stones. As it is possible that such
bodies were employed by the Almighty in this instance to effect
his purpose, we subjoin a short account of them, and the conjec-
tures as to their origin. The larger stones have been seen as
luminous bodies moving with great velocity, descending in
oblique directions, and frequently with a loud hissing noise,
resembling that of a mortar-shell when projected from a piece of
ordnance ; they are sometimes surrounded with a flame, tapering
off to a narrow stream at the hinder part, are heard to explode,
and seen to fly in pieces. Of course these appearances have been
observed only in the night; when the stones have fallen in the
daytime, the meteor has not been observed, but the report
and the shower of stones only have been noticed. The same
meteoric mass has often been seen over a great extent of country ;
in some instances 100 miles in breadth, and 500 in length, which
implies that they must have had a great elevation. Indeed from
various calculations, it appears, that during the time in which they
are visible, their perpendicular altitude is generally from 20 to 100
miles; and their diameter has, in some instances, been estimated
to be at least half a mile. Their velocity is astonishing. Though
rarely visible for more than a minute, yet they are seen to traverse
many degrees in the heavens. Their rate of motion cannot ac-
cording to calculation, be generally less than 300 miles in a
minute. From the dimensions of these moving bodies, which
certainly have not been overrated, since they have been known
to illuminate, at once, a region of one or two hundred miles in
extent, we are warranted in the conclusion that the stones which
come to us from them, form but a very small portion of their
bulk, while the main body holds on its way through the regions
of the heavens. The velocity with which the pieces strike the
earth is very gra*t, frequently penetrating to a considerable
depth, and when taken up, they have been found, in some cases,
still hot, and bearing evident marks of recent fusion. Such falls
have happened in cloudy as well as in clear weather, which leads
ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1608. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
The truth is, there is no reason for carrying this
miracle so high ; since a shower of hailstones will not
only do the work every whit as well, but seems to be the
genuine import of Joshua's words, who having acquainted
to the belief that they are wholly unconnected with the state of
the atmosphere. The most remarkable circumstance respecting
them is, that they invariably resemble each other in certain easily
cognizable characters, both as respects their external properties
and chemical composition, so as to render it possible for a mine-
ralogist or a chemist to recognize them with certainty, though he
should have no information of their origin or fall. Those speci-
mens in which earthy matter preponderates, resemble pretty
closely certain varieties of the trachytic rocks, or ancient lavas,
but they invariably contain, disseminated through their substance
an alloy of iron and nickel, which has as yet never been disco-
vered among the productions of our earth. The earthy minerals
of which they are composed, are feldspar, olivine, and augite —
the former greatly preponderating; and of metallic substances,"
besides the native iron, magnetic iron pyrites is a frequent in-
gredient. The alloy of iron and nickel often contains chrome,
manganese, and cobalt, in minute proportions-. This alloy va-
ries in the proportion which it bears to the earthy matters, in
stones which have fallen at different times: sometimes it is
scarcely to be detected without the aid of the microscope ; at
other times it forms more than one half the bulk of the stone,
and immense masses are found consisting entirely of native iron:
such masses are called meteoric iron, while the expression me-
teoric stones is applied more strictly to those in which the earthy
minerals preponderate. These last are invariably coated on the
outside with a thin black incrustation, and have in general a
spherical figure in which we often observe indentations, similar
to those which are presented by a mass that has been impressed
with the fingers. These constant characters, as respects their
fall, and chemical and mechanical composition, indicate a com-
mon origin, and have given rise to a variety of hypotheses to
account for their phenomena. We can only hint at these hypo-
theses. Some attribute them to terrestrial, and others to lunar
volcanoes. They have again been supposed to be concretions
formed in the regions of our atmosphere ; while others have con-
sidered them as small planets circulating about the sun or earth,
which, coming in contact with our atmosphere, take fire from the
resistance and friction which they meet with in passing through
it. With regard to the first supposition, namely, that these
stones proceed from terrestrial volcanoes, it will be sufficient to
observe, that no remarkable irruption has been known to have
happened at or near the time of their fall ; and that such bodies
have been found at the distance of some thousand miles from any
known volcano; besides the immense force that would be neces-
sary to project bodies of such enormous dimensions as these
meteors are known to possess, far exceeds any force that we can
conceive of, not to notice the want of similarity between meteoric
stones and ordinary volcanic exuvice. As to the theory that they
proceed from volcanoes in the moon, it has a greater degree of
probability. The same force that would project a body from the
moon to the earth, would not, if it were exerted at the earth's
surface send the same body to the distance of ten miles, in con-
sequence of the superior gravity of our planet and the density of
the atmosphere. It is computed that a body projected from a
favourable spot on the moon's surface, — say the centre of her disk
opposite the earth, — with a velocity about four times that com-
monly given to a cannon ball, or 8220 feet per second, would
carry it beyond the centre of attraction, and consequently into the
sphere of the earth's activity ; whence it must necessarily either
fall to the surface of the earth, or circulate about us as a satellite.
A body so projected from the moon to the earth, would take three
days in its passage ; which is not so long but that it might retain
its heat, particularly as it is doubtful whether in passing through
a vacuum, or very attenuated medium, it would be possible for
the caloric to escape, not to say that it might acquire a fresh
accumulation of heat, by passing through the denser parts of our
atmosphere. Besides, eruptions, resembling those of our volca-
noes, have been frequently observed in the moon ; and her atmo-
sphere is extremely rare, presenting but little resistance to
projected bodies. This theoiy might perhaps be tenable if we
had only to account for those showers of stones which come to our
earth's surface; but these it has been seen, are a very trilling
part of the main masses from which they descend, and which are
Sect. 1.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
3V7
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1G08. JOSH
us that the Lord cast down great stones upon the Ainor-
ites, adds, by way of explication, 'that they were more
that died by the hailstones than by the sword ;' where
it is reasonable to suppose, that had there been great
stones as well as hail, the death of the greater numbers
of those that perished would not have been attributed to
the hail only.
It is some confirmation of this exposition, that we find
the Septuagint, in both places of the text, translating it
Aidovs XaAa^Vjj, which Josephus 1 calls " a violent tem-
pest of hailstones of a prodigious size ;" and the author
of" Ecclesiasticus thus recounts the whole matter : " With
hailstones of a mighty power he made the battle to fall
violently upon the nations, and in the descent of Betli-
horon, he destroyed them that resisted."
The prophet Ezekiel, in his predictions against Gog,
1 Antiquities, b. 5. c. 1. ! Chap. xlvi. G.
believed to be in some instances more than a mile in cir-
cumference. And since it is conceived that we experience a
shower of these stones every few months in some part of the
world, it is obvious that at this rate the whole mass of the
moon most soon be shot away. Nor is this all. Among a num-
ber of bodies, thrown at random from the moon, it is not probable
that one in 10,000 would have precisely that direction and that
rate of motion which would he requisite to cause it to pass through
our atmosphere, without falling to the ground. With regard
to the theory of these bodies being concretions formed in the
air, there is one principal objection, namely, that the velocity
with which they strike the earth, estimated by the depth to which
they have been known to penetrate, is so great as to indicate their
having fallen from heights far exceeding the limits of the terres-
trial atmosphere. The remaining theory, especially that modi-
fication of it which conceives these meteoric masses to be
terrestrial comets, appears encumbered with fewer difficulties
than either of the others. The solar comets, it is well known,
revolve round the sun in very eccentric orbits. In fine part of
their revolution, they sometimes come so near as almost to strike
his body. They then move oft* far beyond the orbits of all the
planets; and in some instances are gone hundreds of years before
they return. The earth, it is imagined, in like manner is fur-
nished with its system of comets, whose size and periods of revo-
lution are proportioned to the comparative smallness of the primary
body about which tiny revolve, and which like the solar comets,
fly off in very elliptical orbits ; and during the greatest part of
their circuit are too far distant to be visible. In their approach
to the earth, they fall within our atmosphere ; by the friction ot
the air they are heated, and highly electrified, and the electricity
is discharged with a very violent report, accompanied with the
detachment of a portion of the mass, which descends in fragments
to the earth. This hypothesis certainly accounts, in a very
happy manner, for most of the phenomena attending the fall of
aerolites. The velocity of the meteor corresponds with the mo-
tion of a terrestrial comet, passing through the atmosphere in an
elliptical orbit. A body moving near the earth with a velocity less
than 300 miles in a minute, must fall to its surface by the power
of gravitation. If it move in a direction parallel to the horizon,
more than 430 miles in a minute, it will tly oil' in the curve of
a hyperbola; and will never return, unless disturbed in its motion
by some other body besides the earth. Within these two limits
of 300 miles on the one hand, and of 430 on the other (some
allowance being made for the resistance of the air, and the mo-
tion of the earth), the body will revolve in an ellipsis, returning
in regular periods. Now, the velocity of the meteors, which
have been observed, lias generally been estimated to be rather more
than 300 miles in a minute. In some instances it is perhaps too
great to sutler the body ever to return; but in most cases, it is
calculated to be such as would be necessary in describing the
lower part of an elliptical orbit. Various lists of the periods,
places, and appearances of these showers of stones have been given
from time to time in the scientific journals. One of the latest and
most complete is that published in the first volume of the Edin.
Phil. Jour., compiled partly from a printed list by Chladni, and
partly from a manuscript one of Mr Allan, read some years ago,
at the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
TO THE END.
introduces God as threatening, that 3 ' lie would plead
against him with pestilence, ami with blood, with an
overflowing rain, and great hailstones, lire, and brim-
stone.' And in another place, speaking of false pro-
phets, who seduced his people, into an opinion of their
security, as if they had been fortified within a wall, he
pursues the metaphor, and tells those who daubed it
with untempered mortar, 4 ' that it should fall : for there
shall be an overflowing shower,' says he, ' and ye, <>
great hailstones, shall fall, and a stormy wind shall
rent it.' So that from these and several other passages
of the like nature, we may learn, that in executing his
judgments upon the face of the earth, hailstones arc very
frequently arrows in the hands of the Almighty : and of
what force they are to do execution, we are advertised
in what befell the Egyptians, when, as the sacred history
has related it, 5 ' The Lord sent thunder and hail, and
the fire ran upon the ground : and the Lord rained hail
upon the land of Egypt; so there was hail, and lire
mingled with hail, very grievous, such as there was none
like it in all the land of Egypt, since it became a nation.
And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt, all
that was in the field, both man and beast : it smote every
herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.' Nor
are there examples of a later date wanting, especially
in our philosophical transactions, of the vast havock and
destruction that hailstones (from 8 one to five pounds
weight) have done in several places ; killing both man
and beast, and laying the whole country waste, for some
sixty or seventy miles round. And therefore, since it
is agreed on all hands, that hailstones have frequently
fallen large enough to destroy never so great a Dumber
of people, when naked and defenceless against their
blows, what need is there for our having recourse to any
other solution ?
A shower of hail, indeed, may be supposed to proceed
from a mere natural cause ; but when the event happened
at the very instant wherein God promised to assist his
people against their enemies ; when, though it might
have annoyed either army, it fell only on that which
God had before determined to ruin; and fell BO rerj
heavily upon it, as to destroy more than the sword of
the conquerors had done; such an event as this, 1 Bay,
cannot but be looked upon as a miraculous interposition
of providence, how fortuitous soever the concourse 01
second causes may be. In working miracles. God
usually employs natural causes ami productions. He
does not create any new tiling for tin- purpose : bul
makes use of what is already created, in a new and
extraordinary manner ; and therefore, though the shower
of hail, and probably the wind too. which made it fall
with such impetuosity, were both of diem natural: yet
the sending them at the very nick of time, and directing
them to fall upon the enenrj only, in this there was
manifestly the hand of God, and something supernatural.
The other miracle is thus related in holy writ.
" < Joshua said, in the sight of ail Israel, Sun, stand thou
still upon
Gibeon, and thou moon ill the valle\ of
Ajalon : and the sun stood still , and the moon sta\ cd,
until the people had avenged themselves of their en<
■ Ezek. xxxviii. 28. * Ezek. xiii. 11.
» Bxod. ix. 23, &c.
« Saurin's DisserUtiou on the defeat of the five Kings.
\. IS, be.
388
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1608. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
Is not this written in the book of Jasher ? So the sun
stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to
go down about a whole day ; and there was no day like
that, before or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto
the voice of a man ; for the Lord fought for Israel.'
Now, for the better understanding of these words, we
must observe,
1. That nothing is more common in Scripture, than
to express things, not according to the strict rules of
philosophy, but according to their appearances, and
the vulgar apprehension concerning them. The sun and
moon, for instance, are called x 'two great lights;' but
however that title may agree with the sun, it is plain,
that the moon is but a small body, much less than
many others in the planetary system, and that it has
no light at all, but what it borrows, and reflects from the
rays of the sun ; and yet, because it is placed near us,
it appears to us larger than other heavenly luminaries,
and from that appearance the holy Scriptures give it
such an appellation.
And in like manner, because the sun seems to us to
move, and the earth to be at rest, the Scriptures speak a
great deal of the pillars, and bases, and foundations of
the earth, and of the sun's 2 'rejoicing-, like a giant, to
run his race,' and of 3 ' his arising and going down, and
hasting to the place where he arose,' &c. Whereas it is
certain, that * if the sun were made to revolve round
about the earth, the a general law of nature would there-
by be violated ; the harmony and proportion of the
heavenly bodies destroyed ; and no small confusion and
disorder brought into the frame of the universe : but, on
the contrary, if the earth turning upon its own axis every
day, be made to go round the sun in the space of a year,
it will then perform its circulation, according to the
same law which the other planets observe ; and, without
the least exception, there will be a most beautiful order
and harmony of motions everywhere preserved through
the whole frame of nature. As therefore the Scriptures
were designed to teach us the art of holy living, and not to
instruct us in the rudiments of natural knowledge, it can
be deemed no diminution either to their perfection, or
divine authority, that they generally speak according- to
the common appearance of things, and not according to
their reality or philosophic truth. The plain matter of
1 Gen. i. 10. * Ps. xix. 5.
* Keil's Astronomical Lectures.
Ec. i. 5.
a Besides tin's general argument of Mr Keil's, Mr Winston
has one, which he accounts no less than a demonstration : " If
the earth," says he, "have an annual revolution ahout the sun,
it must affect the apparent motion of all the other planets, and
comets; and notwithstanding the regularity of their several
motions in their own orbits, must render these regular motions,
to >is, as living upon the moving earth, sometimes direct, and
that swiftly or slowly; sometimes stationary, and sometimes
retrograde, and that swiftly or slowly also; and all this, at such
certain periods, in such certain places, for such certain durations,
and according to such certain circumstances, as geometry and
arithmetic will certainly determine, and not otherwise. Now
that this is the real case in fact, and that every one of these par-
ticulars are true in the astronomical world, all that are skilful in
that science do freely confess, even those who do not think fit to
declare openly for this annual revolution of the earth, which yet
is the natural and certain con&equence of that concession."
(JFhiston's Astron. Princ. of Relig.) Tire reader that is desirous
to know more both of the annual and diurnal motion of the earth,
may consult Dr Derham's Prelim. Disc, to his Astro-Theol.
fact is, that in the early ages, both before, and long after
the days of Joshua, the most learned astronomers had
no notion of the improvements which our modern pro-
fessors have since attained to. They never once dreamed
of the earth's rotation, upon its own axis ; but according
to common appearance, were fully persuaded, that the
sun and moon, had their respective courses. Upon this
supposition they formed their schemes, and thought
themselves able to answer every phenomenon by them.
And therefore, if God had prompted Joshua to desire
the prolongation of the day in a manner more agreeable
to our new astronomy, or to record the miracle in terms
more suitable to it, this would have been a plain con-
trariety to all the rules of science then in use. The
people who heard him utter the words, ' Earth, rest upon
thy axis,' would have thought him distracted, and those
who read his account of what had happened, if related
in suitable expressions, would have decried it as false in
fact, or passed it by with contempt and disregard, as a
wild fancy or blunder of his own.
2. In relation to the places over which the two heaven-
ly bodies were to stand, the sun ' over Gibeon,' and the
moon ' over the valley Ajalon,' we must observe, that,
even upon the supposition of the sun's motion, the Jew-
ish general cannot be thought to speak in a proper and
philosophic sense. For since the sun is almost a
million of times bigger than the earth, and some millions
of miles distant from it, to justify the strict sense of the
words, a line drawn from the centre of the sun to that
of the earth, must exactly pass by Gibeon, which we
know it cannot do, because no part of the Holy Land
lies within the tropics : and therefore Ave must conclude,
that Joshua here speaks according to the outward
appearance of things, which makes the sense of his
words plain and intelligible.
Wherever we are, if so be we are not hindered by
objects immediately surrounding us, we can cast our eye
upon part of the surface of the earth, and at the same
time take into our prospect some small extent of the
firmament of heaven, which seems, as it were, to cover
the other ; and each celestial body, which we perceive
in this extent above, appears to us to be directly over
such and such part of the earth, as we alternately turn
our eyes to : and it was thus, that the sun, when Joshua
spake, seemed to him, and to those that were with him, to
' be over Gibeon, and the moon to be over the valley of
Ajalon.' This valley, in all likelihood, took its name
from some adjacent town ; but then, as there are three
Ajalons mentioned in Scripture, one 5 in the tribe of
Ephraim, another in 6 Zebulun, and another in 7 Dan, it
is reasonable to think, that the place here spoken of
was in Dan, the most remote province from Gibeon ; for
we must suppose that these two places were at some con-
siderable distance, otherwise Joshua could not see the
sun and moon both appear at the same time, as it is
probable they were both in his eye when he uttered these
words.
3. In relation to the time when this miracle began,
and how long it lasted, the Scripture expression is,
that the ' sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and
hasted not to go down about a whole day :' which words
can import no less, than that the sun stood still in the
5 Chron. vi. 69.
Judg. xii. 12.
7 Josh. xix. 42.
Sbct. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
389
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451; OR, ACCORDING TO HAL
meridian, or much about noon, and that in this position
it continued for the space of a civil or artificial day, that
is, for twelve hours. But ' Maimonides is of opinion,
and in this he is followed 2 by some Christian writers,
that there Mas no such cessation of the sun and moon's
motion, but that the whole purport of the miracle was
this : — " That God, at Joshua's request, granted him and
his soldiers such a degree of spirits, activity, and des-
patch, as enabled them to gain a complete victory, and
do as much execution in one day as might otherwise have
taken up two." But this is a construction so repugnant
to the genuine sense of the words as to need no formal
confutation.
There is something more, however, to be said to the
notion of other learned men, who with regard to the time
when Joshua might send up his request, and the miracle
begin, think it more probable that he should pray for a
longer day, when he perceived the sun just going to
leave him, than when it was in its height. But Joshua,
no doubt, had reasons for what he did : he was an old
experienced general, eager for a complete victory, and
able to compute what time it would take to achieve it : so
that his fear of losing any part of the present advantage ,
might make him pray that the day might be thus pro-
longed until he had obtained the whole. If the sun, in
its declension, had stopped its course, it might have
answered his purpose perhaps ; but then it had given a
juster handle to the suggestions of those who would
deny the whole merit of the miracle. For, if the retard-
ation of the sun had not happened until it was going to
set, s Spinosa might, with a much better grace, hare
attributed the extraordinary length of this day to the
refraction of its rays from the clouds, which at that time
were loaded with hail ; or 4 Peirerius, to some aurora
borealis, or par helium, which, after the setting of the
sun, might appear about the territories of Gibeon, and
so be mistaken for the sun's standing still : but now, by
fixing it in its meridian point, all these cavils are effec-
tually silenced ; and 5 God, no doubt, who heard him so
readily, inspired the Hebrew general with that wish or
prayer, which otherwise perhaps would never have come
into his head.
4. In relation to the book of Jasher, (or of just and
upright men,) which Joshua quotes as a voucher of the
truth of this miracle, the opinions of learned men are
much divided. ° Some think, that it was the book of
Genesis, which is here so called, because it treats of the
lives of Abraham, Isaac*, and Jacob, three of the most
righteous men that the world then knew. The Targum
of Jonathan calls it ' the book of the law,' as containing
not only the chief precepts which God gave his people,
but several promises likewise of the wonders which he
Btended to work for them. 7 Josephus, and some inter-
preters after him, will have it to be certain annals of the
lives and particular adventures of some Jewish worthies,
and of other things remarkable that happened to that
nation ; though others again suppose that this was only a
collection of some verses, which the Israelites thought
themselves concerned to learn by heart, the better to
1 More Nevoch. part 2. c. 39. 2 Grotius and Masius in locum.
3 Tract. Theolog. Politic, c. 2. * Pnedam. b. 1. c. (i.
5 Calmet's Dissertation on the Commandment, &c.
6 J. Jarcli. in Jos. x. 13. 7 Antiquities, b. 10. c. 17.
ES, A. M. 3R0.1. A. C. 1C08. JOSH. i. TO THE BKD.
remember the miracles which God had been pleased to
vouchsafe them. But whatever the subject of this book
was, or « whether it was composed in prose or rerse, it
is a groundless conjecture to say, ' that it was wrote in a
figurative and hyperbolical style, or that the quotation
which Joshua lakes from it, is so to be undersl I. The
design of the quotation is only to confirm what Joshua
affirms, that the sun did stand still, that of Jasher in
what style soever it was written, must necessarily be
supposed to do the same ; otherwise it would have
to no purpose to have cited it.
It cannot be denied, indeed, but that, upon some occa-
sions, the sacred penmen do use figures, and poetical
expressions; but then the sense and chain of the dis-
course do easily discover it when they do so. When-
ever they intend to express themselves in a figurative
manner, there is usually something going before, which
prepares the reader for it ; ami besides that figurative
expressions cannot be long continued, there is always
something apparently in them, that can li\ no means be
reduced to a literal sense. But now, in the Scripture
account of this transaction, where do we perceive any
thing like this? 9 Joshua, seeing the enemy put to the
rout, begs of God to give him a complete victory, and,
at the same time, out of the zeal and fervour of his mind,
commands the sun and moon not to advance any farther,
until he had effected his desire. The sacred historian
tells us, that, at his command, these heavenly luminaries
actually did stand still ; and to evince the credibility of
a thing so marvellous, having produced the testimony of
another author that makes mention of the same event,
he thereupon concludes, that ""there was no day like
that, before it or after it, that God hearkened to the
voice of a man.' Here, we see. are all the tokens ima-
ginable of a simple, literal, and historical narration :
and the reader must therefore lie stronglj prejudiced
against the belief of all miracles whatever, who can
possibly distort such plain and uniform expressions into
any figurative or metaphorical sense, in order to evade
the force of this.
" Hut if there really was such a miracle wrought, it is
somewhat strange, that the author of the epistle to the
Hebrews, when he certainly makes mention of things of
less moment, should entirely forget this, or that we
should have no memorial of it recorded b) any profane
8 Gmtius ami Le Clerc in locum,
9 Calmet's Dissertation on the Commandment, 8ic. 'Josh. x. 14.
a M. Le Clerc has taken the pains t<> versify the two places
where mention is made of the sun's standing still,
position of some words, in order to make i: appeal al less!
alile, that the auth.ir of the book of Joshua, In quoting them cut
of that of Jasher, had only reduced them to historical pr by
tlic contrary transposition. Bui besides the difficulty of telling
us what kind of mi-.- these aref since the art of scanning
Hebrew poesy has been l"-t as long a- St Jerome's days, it he
supposes tin-in to i ily rhymes and cadences, it is no uncommon
thing, we know, to meet with several passages both in tin' scrip-
tural and other prase writers, which, with a small reflation of
the text, are capable of till— harmonious turn, and \ el Wl r Igin-
ally never so intruded. It is tn lie observed, however, that
though the words, ' so the bud stood still in the midst et I
and hastened not to go down about a whole day.' are probably
cited from some ancient record, yet the preceding ones, ' and
the Bun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people hail
avenged themselves upon their enemies, ' (Josh. s.
anther's own, "herein he talks, net in the loftiness of a pi
in the plainness and simplicity of an historian: and therefore it
390
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3803. A. C. 1G08. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
writer. God is not so prodigal of his miracles, one
would think, as to reverse the whole order of nature, and
stop the sun in its regular course, merely that a victory
might be obtained in one day, which, every whit as well,
might have been gained in two ; though it cannot be
denied, but that, if it was so, his ' hearkening to the
voice of Joshua,' gave him a pre-eminence far above
Moses, forasmuch as all his miracles were nothing in com-
parison of this, even though the Scriptures say expressly,
that * ' there rose not a prophet, in all Israel, like unto
Moses, in all signs and wonders, which the Lord sent
him to do in the land of Egypt, and in the wilderness.'
The author of the epistle to the Hebrews, in 2 the
chapter now under debate, meant no more, than to give
his reader some notable instances of the wonderful power
of faith. To have been too curious in the choice of
these instances, especially when he wrote to persons of
the same nation, and who were as well acquainted with
these things as himself, wjuld have savoured too much
of art and human wisdom, which inspired authors always
professedly avoid ; and to have been too prolix in the
commemoration of them, would have spoiled the form of
his epistle, by swelling that part of it beyond its due
proportion.
The apostle himself seems to be sensible of this ; and
therefore we find him cutting himself short, omitting
some, and reckoning up several other instances in the
gross ; and 3 ' what shall I more say ? For the time
would fail me, to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of
Samson, and of Jephtha ; of David also, and Samuel,
and all the prophets.' You see, that in the catalogue
of his worthies, he observes no great method in enu-
merating them, nor does he so much as mention Joshua,
though his character be vastly superior to that of Gideon,
and others that he takes notice of ; and therefore, if his
omitting this particular of the ' sun's standing still ' may
be deemed a sufficient argument against its reality, by
parity of reason, all the other miraculous transactions
which he has thought proper not to mention, such as the
plagues of Egypt, the wonders in the wilderness, the
passage of Jordan, and several others of the like nature,
must be reputed destitute of truth, how frequently soever
they may be recorded in other parts of holy writ.
And in like manner, though we find no mention made
of this wonderful event in heathen writers, yet this is no
valid objection against it, because it happened many
ages before there were any historians or chronologers,
that we know of, extant to record it. Or if we think
that a fact so very remarkable could have hardly escaped
a general observation, why may we not suppose, that
the public archives or monuments wherein it was re-
1 Deut. xxx i v. 10, 11.
2 Hub. xi.
3 Heb. xi. 32.
is, at least, a bold assumption to say, that a writer, who barely
appeals to another for the truth of a single instance, has taken
the whole from him. The most that can be fairly concluded from
such an appeal is, that the fact is equally affirmed by both, either
in the same or equivalent terms; whereas, had the terms of the
' sun's standing still in the midst of heaven' been intended to
mean no more, than that there remained so much light after its
setting, occasioned by some unusual refraction, as made the
whole army think it was still above the horizon, no honest man,
for fear of imposing on his reader, would have cited them, without
modifying their sense, or giving them an explanation. — Saurin's
Dissertation on the Defeat of the Five Kings, and Universal
History, b. 1. c. 7.
corded, in the long and obscure time that intervened
before any of our present historians arose, have been
lost ; and that nothing has been transmitted to us, (ex-
cept what we have in sacred writ,) but an uncertain
tradition, clouded with fable, and poetical fictions.
It can hardly be thought, indeed, but that the humour
which the poets had, a of imputing to magic the power
of stopping the stars in their courses, and what they
relate of their heroes and demigods being able to
lengthen days or nights, as it best served their military
or amorous purposes, proceeded from something : and
to what can we ascribe it more properly, than to a glim-
mering knowledge which they might from tradition have
of this miraculous event? But however this be, it is
certain that the argument drawn from the silence of
heathen authors,, can be of no validity against the truth
of this miracle, since it did not happen in any age when
the earliest of them lived, and might therefore be what
they knew nothing of ; since all their works have not
descended to us, and in what is lost, they perhaps might
have related it, as in what is extant, we are sure they
say nothing to contradict it.
4 It must be reckoned a point of justice then, and a
kind of right belonging to all nations, to be determined,
in what concerns the history of any country, by the
history of those people, who are presumed to be better
acquainted with their own affairs than any strangers can :
and therefore we cannot, without apparent prejudice,
deny this privilege to the Hebrew writers, even though
we find some heathen testimonies not entirely according
with them. But when nothing of this is pretended ; on the
contrary, when as far as those dark times would permit,
there is a concurrence and harmony between them, there
can be no shadow of reason for calling in question their
veracity, unless the things which they relate be either
impossible or contradictory, which, in the case before
us, can never be affirmed ; because it is sure and self-
evident, that the Author of nature, who gave being and
motion to the sun and stars, may stop that motion, and
make them stand still, when, and as long as he pleases ;
especially when their rest will contribute to his glory,
as it certainly did in this instance, as much as their con-
tinued motion does.
God indeed never Avorks any miracle, but upon a just
and proper occasion ; but then we ought to remember,
that this battle against the confederate kings, was fought
not offensively, but defensively, on the side of Israel, in
order to save a people whom they had solemnly taken
under their protection. The Gibeonites, as is generally
supposed, were a commonwealth, for which reason they
might not enter into a league with the five kings ; and as
a free people, they had a right, no doubt, to take all
proper measures for their safety. Joshua, therefore,
could not but look upon the confederacy against them as
cruel, and unjust, and himself obliged in honour not to
refuse the oppressed the succours they requested of him,
upon any pretence whatever ; since God's honour was
likewise concerned in the preservation of a people who
had entered into an alliance with his own inheritance,
* Calmet's Dissert, on the Commandment, &c.
a " At the charms of her song, the vicissitudes of nature
stopped, time stood still in a lingering darkness; the air obeyed
no law, and the listening world fell into a torpid trance." — L«-
can's rhursalia, b. 6'.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &-c.
391
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and had their alliance ratified by the mouth of his high
priest, and with the sanction of his most blessed name.
Upon these considerations, Joshua loses no time, but
marches all the night to their assistance ; and on the
next day, God is pleased to reward his faithfulness and
zeal with a most miraculous victory, whereby he not
only rescued his allies, but made all the land of Canaan
sensible likewise, that a gTeater and more powerful Grod
was on Israel's side than any whom they worshipped, '
by stopping the sun and moon (which were two of the
principal deities whom those idolatrous people adored)
in the midst of their course.
God might, no doubt, in the compass of two days,
have enabled the Israelites to have gained a complete
conquest over their enemies, without the expense of a
miracle, as these men call it. But then, had this been
obtained by the dint of the sword only, it would have
been imputed to their superior valour and strength, and
deemed no more than the common fate of war : or had
there nothing more remarkable happened in it, than a
shower of large hailstones, this might have been thought
owing- to chance, or natural causes, or at most, been only
known in that neighbourhood ; whereas, the stopping of
the two great luminaries, in the height of their career,
(which could not but be universally seen and felt,) was
enough to convince these poor deluded people, that the
gods, whom they trusted in, were subject to the God of
Israel, and at the same time deter the Israelites from
falling into the like idolatry, from 2 ' kissing their hand,
as Job expresses that form of worship, ' when they be-
held the sun as it sinned, or the moon walking in its
brightness ;' to convince them, I say, that 3 ' the gods of
the heathens were but idols,' and that it is the Lord who
made, and who ruleth in the heavens.
It cannot be questioned but that the fame of this
miracle raised Joshua's reputation to an high degree,
nor 4 can we see any inconvenience in admittuig, that
this was a more remarkable miracle than any which
Moses ever did ; because it does not therefore follow,
that Joshua, in other respects, was .a person of greater
eminence than Moses. Our blessed Saviour tells his
disciples, 5 ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that be-
lieveth on me, the works that I do, shall he do also, and
greater works than these shall he do : because I go unto
my Father. And yet he gives us to understand, in ano-
ther place, that B ' the disciple is not above his master,
nor the servant above his lord.'
Elisha was the servant and attendant on the prophet
Elijah, and yet it is certain, that, according to our esti-
mate, he did more and greater miracles than his master
did : for even 7 " after his death his body prophesied ;"
as the son of Sirach expresses it ; " he did wonders in
his life, and at his death were his works marvellous."
And therefore we need not account it a strange thing,
that we find Joshua here doing a miracle, which in our
opinion surpasses all that ever Moses did : because
God's making use of the ministry of one man, rather than
another, in his surpassing works of wonder, is no certain
proof of the man's superior merit ; since in this, as well
1 Patrick's Commentary in locum.
2 Job xxxi. 26. 3 Ps. xcvi. 5.
< Calmet's Dissertation on the Commandment, &c.
John xiv. 12. 6 Mat.x. 24. " Ecclus. xlviii. 13, 14.
as any other dispensation, he is at perfect liberty 8 ' to
choose,' if he pleases, ' the weak tilings of the world to
confound the things that are mighty; yea, and base things,
and things that are not, to bring to nought things that
are, that no flesh should glory in his presence.
But after all, we talk of greater and less miracles, when
in reality, there are no such degrees of comparison be-
tween them. For what is it that makes us account one
work of this kind greater than another ? if it be, because
we conceive more difficulty in doing it ; this, with regard
to God, the sole author of all miracles, is a great mis-
take, for as much as all things are equally easy to his
almighty power. The motion, and other properties of
every created being were at first impressed by him :
9' He spake, and it was done ; he commanded, and it
stood fast ;' and with the same facility, he can retard or
suspend their operations ; for they have no power of
resisting the very first beck of his will. Since every
thing, therefore, that is contrary to the ordinary course of
nature requires the interposition of an almighty power,
and whatever is not impossible in itself, is equally pos-
sible to God ; with him there can be no difference
between passing the Jordan and passing the Red Sea,
between drawing water out of the stony rock and arrest-
ing the sun in the firmament of heaven ; 10for 'whatever
he pleased that did he, in heaven, and in the earth, in
the sea, and in all deep places.'
Some of the Objections to the Credibility of the Old
Testament Considered and Answered.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
Some of the objections which infidels have advanced
against the credibility and divine authority of the Old
Testament scriptures, and more especially against the
part of them that has now been surveyed, are frivolous ;
others are founded on a mistranslation of the original ;
and all of them may be easily and satisfactorily an-
swered.
1. The first which I shall notice, is the command of God
to the Israelites, to destroy the seven nations of Canaan,
and to take possession of their land. The transaction
to which this injunction refers, is explained by Bishop
Watson in his Apology for the Bible, in a manner which
most persons consider to be satisfactory. The dispen-
sation complained of, and which is supposed to be irre-
concilable with the justice and the benevolence of
the Deity, is as consistent with these attributes of the
divine nature, as many occurrences which happen in the
ordinary course of providence. " If it be consistent,"
as has been remarked, " with the justice and benevolence
of the Supreme Being, that the Jewish nation, his own
peculiar people, should, on account of the enormity of
their sins, be in their turn attacked in their inheritance ;
be subjugated to a foreign power ; become the prey and
plunder of a long succession of capricious, cruel, and
avaricious tyrants ; have their city and temple at length
assaulted; be loaded with every possible calamity which
1 Cc
9 Ps. xxxiii. 9.
27, &c.
10 Ps. exxxv. G.
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pestilence, famine, and torture, their own mutual treache-
ries and animosities, and the implacable enmity and
ingenuity of their adversaries, could invent, during the
continuance of this tremendous siege ; if it be consistent
with the same adorable attributes, that upwards of a
million of them should fall victims to so complicated a
scourge, and that the wretched remnant who escaped,
should be suffered to wander about as outcasts and vaga-
bonds over the face of the whole earth, equally despised
and derided by every nation among whom they might
acquire a temporary abode ; if it be consistent with
these attributes, that this terrible visitation should be
persevered in for a period of at least eighteen centuries,
thus punishing from age to age, the children for the sins
of their fathers ; if the case before us, which we cannot
but believe, be consistent with the justice and benevo-
lence of the Deity, surely the case recorded, a case of
far inferior vengeance, demands no great credulity to
obtain our assent, nor strength of reasoning to reconcile
it with the moral perfections of the Supreme Being." x
Jt is not the fact, however, that the Canaanites were all
destroyed. The Gibeonites and Jebusites, were per-
mitted to live. Rahab was saved, because she professed
her faith in God.
It is to be observed, that the destruction of the nations
of Canaan was not an arbitrary infliction of vengeance,
but the merited punishment of their wickedness. This
is fully proved by the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus,
where, after mentioning their corrupt and abominable
practices, it is said, ' In all these the nations are defiled
which I cast out before you ; for all these abominations
have the men of the land done.' They were early
idolaters ; sacrificed their infants to idol deities ; they
were addicted to unnatural lusts, and sunk in every kind
of vice. It was on account of these enormities, which
were general and habitual among them, that the nations
of Canaan were destroyed. This is expressly affirmed :
' In all these, the nations are defiled which I cast out
before you : and the land is defiled : therefore I do
visit the iniquity thereof upon it. — Ye shall not commit
any of these abominations, that the land spue not you
out also, as it spued out the nations which were before
you.'2 The very land is represented as sick of its in-
habitants ; of their odious and brutal practices ; of their
corruption and wickedness. This was the reason for
destroying them ; and not, as has been imagined, to
make way for the Israelites.
God's treatment of the persons guilty of those crimes
was impartial, without distinction, and without respect
of nations or individuals. The words which point out
the divine impartiality, are those in which Moses warns
the Israelites against falling into any of the like wicked
courses : ' That the land,' says he, ' cast not you out
also, when you defile it, as it cast out the nations that
were before you ; for whoever shall commit any of these
abominations, even the souls that commit them, shall be
cut oft" from among their people. — Ye shall not walk in
the way of the nations which I cast out before you : for
they committed all those things, and therefore I abhorred
them ; as the nations which the Lord destroyed before
' Dr GoodV Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr Alex.
Geddes.
* Lev. xviii. 28.
your face, so shall ye perish : because ye were not obe-
dient unto the voice of the Lord your God.'
Nor were the Canaanites destroyed without warning,
and much patience and long-suffering on the part of
God. The stroke was suspended during several genera-
tions, till their wickedness rendered its infliction inevi-
table. In the 15th chapter of Genesis, God says to
Abraham that his descendants of the fourth generation
should return into that country, and not before : ' for
the iniquity of the Amorites,' says he, ' is not yet full.'
Even when this period arrived, they were still per-
mitted to flee elsewhere, as in fact many of them did, or
to renounce their idolatries, and serve, the God of
Israel ; in which case it appears that mercy was exercised
to them. The case of the Gibeonites, and of Rahab,
already referred to, would seem to favour this view of
the subject. We are told 3 ' that there was not a city that
made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites,
the inhabitants of Gibeon ; all other they took in battle :'
from which words it is inferred, that the Canaanites
might have had peace, if they had thought proper to
accept the proposed terms. Had they submitted to these
terms, they would have turned from idols to the worship
of God ; ceased from the practice of wickedness, and
consequently would not have been a snare to Israel, by
teaching them to do after their abominations.'1
The objection therefore is not, and cannot be, to the
destruction of the Canaanites : because, when God, for
the wickedness of a people, sends an earthquake, or a
fire, or a plague amongst them, there is no complaint of
injustice, especially when the calamity is known, or
expressly declared beforehand, to be inflicted for the
wickedness of such a people. It is rather regarded as
an act of exemplary penal justice, and, as such con-
sistent with the character of the moral Governor of the
universe. The wickedness of the Canaanites accounts
for their destruction. To that merely no objection can
therefore be made. The manner in which this was
effected is that which is complained of. But where is
the great difference, as Dr Paley observes, even to the
sufferers themselves, whether they were destroyed by an
earthquake, a pestilence, a famine, or by the hands of
an enemy ? Where is the difference, even to our imper-
fect apprehensions of divine justice, provided it be, and is
known to be, for their wickedness that they are destroyed?
But this destruction, you say, confounded the innocent
with the guilty. The sword of Joshua, and of the Jews,
spared neither women nor children. Is it not the same
with all other national visitations ? Would not an
earthquake, or a fire, or a plague, or a famine amongst
them, have done the same. Even in an ordinary and
natural death, the same thing happens. God takes away
the life he lends, without regard, that we can perceive,
to age, or sex, or character. But, after all, promiscu-
ous massacres, the burning of cities, the laying waste of
countries, are things dreadful to reflect upon. Who
doubts it ? So are all the judgments of Almighty God.
The effect, in whatever way it shows itself, must neces-
sarily be tremendous, when the Lord, as the Psalmist
expresses it, moves out of his place to punish the wicked.
But it ought to satisfy us — that it was for excessive,
wilful, and forewarned wickedness, that all this befell
Josh. xi. 10, 20.
'Dent. xx. 10—19.
Sect. 1.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
393
A. M. 2553. A. C. 1451 ; OK. ACCORDING TO HAI
them, and that it is all along so declared in the history
which recites it.
Besides, satisfactory reasons may be assigned for
giving- to the mode in which the Canaanites were
punished the preference to every other. The superiority
of their own gods above the gods of the nations which
they conquered was, in the opinion of the people of
those early ages, evinced, by their giving them victory
in war. This being the actual persuasion which then
prevailed in the world, how were the neighbouring
nations, for whose admonition this dreadful example
was intended, how were they to be convinced of the
supreme power of the God of Israel above the pretended
gods of other nations, and of the righteous character of
Jehovah — that is, of his abhorrence of the vices which
prevailed in the land of Canaan : how were they to be
convinced so well, or at all indeed, as by enabling the
Israelites, whose God he was known and acknowledged
to be, to conquer under his banner, and drive out before
them, those who resisted the execution of that commis-
sion with which the Israelites declared themselves to be
invested, namely, the expulsion and extermination of
the Canaanitish nations ? This convinced surrounding
countries, and all who were observers or spectators of
what passed, first, that the God of Israel was a real
God : secondly, that the gods which other nations wor-
shipped were either no gods, or had no power against
the God of Israel : and, thirdly, that it was he, and he
alone, who possessed both the power and the will to
punish, to destroy, and to exterminate, from before his
face, both nations and individuals, who gave themselves
up to the crimes and wickedness for which the Canaanites
were notorious. Nothing of this sort would have
appeared, or with the same evidence, however, from an
earthquake, or a plague, or any natural calamity. These
might not have been attributed to divine agency at all,
or not to the interposition of the God of Israel.
First, the destruction of the Canaanites, then, was an
act of penal justice. It was merited by their Avickedness.
Secondly, the infliction of this punishment by the instru-
mentality of the Israelites, made it more manifestly
appear to proceed from the God of Israel, by whose
miraculous power the devoted nations were subdued.
Thirdly, their general destruction was not only just, but
it was rendered necessary, to prevent the pernicious
example of their crimes from gradually seducing the
children of Israel to the practice of their vices and
.abominations. ' Thou shalt utterly destroy them, that
they teach you not to do after all their abominations,
which they have done unto their gods.' Fourthly, the
supreme moral Governor of the world was impartial in
this exercise of punitive justice, because he threatened
his chosen people with similar retribution, if they should
be guilty of similar crimes. Fifthly, this dispensation
regarding the Canaanites, which has been the subject
of cavil and complaint, is shown to be as consistent with
the justice and benevolence of God, as many occurrences
which happen in the ordinary course of providence.
Sixthly, the circumstances of the Jews when they inflicted
this punishment on the Canaanites, prove that they acted
by divine commission. If we suppose the contrary, we
must believe that Moses in this instance indicated a line
of conduct directly opposed in its tendency to the
peaceful habits which the facility given to the Jews
ES, A. M. 3S03. A. C. 1G08. JOSH. i. TO THE END.
required and implied. " Up to a certain point they
were to be trained in the worst possible discipline for
peaceful citizens ; to encourage every disposition
opposite to those inculcated by the general spirit of the
law. Those who were to be merciful to the meanest
beast — who were not to exercise any oppression what-
ever towards a stranger of another race, on the capture
of a Canaanitish city, were to put all to the sword. —
At a given point their arms were to fall from their hands,
the thirst of conquest subside ; and a great unambitious
agricultural republic, with a simple religion, an equal
administration of justice, a thriving and industrious
population, brotherly harmony and mutual good-will
between all ranks, domestic virtues, purity of morals,
gentleness of manners, was to arise in the midst of the
desolation their arms had made, and under the very roofs,
in the vineyards and corn fields, which they had obtain-
ed by merciless violence."
II. Another class of objections made to the divine
authority of the Scriptures of the Old Testament is
founded on a mistranslation of the original. Thus,
1 God is said in the authorized version to have directed
the Israelites to borrow of the Egyptians : it should
have been rendered, to ask or demand. They were
instructed to ask that which was their due: and the
minds of the Egyptians were so overruled that they
readily complied with the demand which was made.
2 ' My (that is God's) breach of promise.' This is highly
improper : it should have been rendered, my displeasure
or indignation. 3 According to the common translation
Jephthah is represented as promising to ofl'er his daughter
in sacrifice : but when the particle ") van, is translated
or instead of and, the objection founded on this passage
falls to the ground. ' Jephthah vowed a vow unto the
Lord, and said, if thou shalt surely give the children of
Amnion into my hand, then it shall be, that whatsoever
cometh out of the doors of my house to meet me, when
I return in peace from the children of Amnion, shall
either be the Lord's, or, I will offer it up for a burnt-
offering.' That is, if what meets me on my return, be
what the law allows for a burnt-offering, I will ofl'er it,
if not, it shall be, in as far as the nature of the case
will admit, consecrated to God. 4 The dying charge of
David to Solomon, relative to Shimei, has been often
the subject of cavil to sceptics : but the objection is
founded on a mistranslation : the Hebrew word should
be read disjunctively, as in the former passage ; and
then we have, ' Neither hold him guiltless, for thou art a
wise man : nor his hoary head bring thou down to the
grave with blood.' That is, he is an artful, designing,
dangerous person, who requires to be strictly watched ;
but nevertheless spare his life, and do not let him die by
the hand of justice.
The conduct of David towards the Ammonites, as
described 2 Sam. xii. 31, in 'putting them under saws
and harrows of iron,' has been represented as an instance
of extreme cruelty. The subject of complaint is founded
on a mistranslation. The Hebrew prefix ^, (ovth)
signifies to as well as tender} and to put the people to
saws, harrows, axes, and the brick kiln, means no more
than to employ them in the most menial and laborious
Exod. xi. 'I. xii. ,'i").
3 Judgea xi. 30, '.'A.
- Num. xiv. 31.
4 I Kinjrs ii. 9.
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offices. " This form of expression," as Mr Home
remarks, "is an Anglicism as well as a Hebraism; and
we still say to put a person to the plough, to the
anvil. We render the passage thus : ' He,' David,
' brought forth the people that were therein, and put
them to saws and to harrows of iron, or iron mines,
and to axes of iron, and made them pass through the
brick kiln.' In a similar passage, ' Dr Kennicott
has proved, that in place of the word, ait ivith saws,
the word he put them should be inserted : so that this
passage must be rendered and understood in the same
manner as the former.
Finally, we are always to bear in mind that the
character of this was peculiar to itself, in its not being
intended to recover violated rights, or to procure indem-
nity for past injuries, or security against future ; but to
vindicate the cause of God against the incorrigible, and
to exhibit them as examples of divine retribution.
Regard to the interests of those who engaged, was not
the only, or the prevailing principle of this war. The
main object was, the manifestation of the righteousness
and honour of God as the supreme moral Governor of
the world. His authority, his attributes, and even his
being had long been treated with the utmost indignity ;
and this was the peculiar method which he prescribed
for their full vindication.
III. A third class of objections is founded on alleged
contradictions to morality. An acquaintance with the
manners and customs of eastern nations, so different
from those of the moderns, will account for the circum-
stances which have been adduced either from ignorance
or from design, as offensive to the feelings of delicacy.
It is also necessary to recollect the peculiar and extra-
ordinary constitution of the Jewish polity and govern-
ment. God was the immediate and temporal sovereign
of the Jews, whose laws were enforced by present
rewards and punishments. There were certain sins, such
as idolatry, which were regarded as a renunciation of his
authority, as high treason against the state, and which
were therefore punished with death.
IV. It is alleged, that some of the things which are men-
tioned in the Old Testament are contradicted by philoso-
phy. In consequence of the progress of science, this objec-
tion is now seldom advanced, at least by well informed
persons. AVe have already adduced proofs from natural
history of the reality of the deluge. Science also furnishes
evidence in confirmation of the truth of the Mosaic account
of the creation. " The structure of the earth," says Pro-
fessor Jamieson, " and the mode of distribution of extra-
neous fossils or petrifactions, are so many direct evidences
of the truth of the Scripture account of the formation of
the earth ; and they might be used as proofs of its author
having been inspired, because the mineralogical facts
discovered by modern naturalists were unknown to the
sacred historian. Even the periods of time, the six days
of the Mosaic description, — are not inconsistent with our
theories of the earth." 2 Nor are the phenomena of the
heavenly bodies at all contradictory to the Mosaic his-
tory. To the objection, that the historian speaks of
light before the creation of the sun, and calls the moon
a great light, when every one knows it to be an opaque
1 1 Chron. xx. 3.
1 Preface to Kerr's Translation ofCuviers Essay on the Earth.
body, modern philosophy furnishes the answer. It has
discovered, that the sun is not the original source of
light; and therefore Moses does not call either the sun
or the moon a great light, though he represents them both
as great luminaries or light-bearers. Surely the moon
is as much an instrument of conveying light, as the
reflector placed behind the lamps of a light-house, for
the purpose of transmitting to the mariner at sea the
light of those lamps which would otherwise have passed
in an opposite direction to the land. Though the moon
is not a light in itself, yet is that secondary planet a
light in its effects, as it reflects the light of the sun to us.
And both the sun and the moon are with great propriety
called great, — not as being absolutely greater than all
other stars and planets, but because they appear greater to
us, and are of greater use and consequence to this world.
And now, after all our improvements in philosophy and
astronomy, we still speak of the light of the moon, as
well as of the sun's motion, rising, and setting. And
the man who in a moral, theological, or historical dis-
course,should use a different language, would only render
himself ridiculous.
In like manner, had objectors referred to the original
Hebrew of Gen. i. 6, 7, 8, (which in our English author-
ized version, as well as in other modern versions, is
erroneously rendered firmament, after the Septuagint
and Vulgate Latin versions,) they would have rendered
it expanse ; and they might have known that it meant
the air or atmosphere around us, in which birds fly
and clouds are formed, and that it had no reference
whatever to a solid firmament ; though such an idea was
entertained by the ancient Greek philosophers, who,
with all their boasted wisdom, were nearly as ignorant
of the works, as they were of the nature of God. And
does not this circumambient air divide the waters from
the waters, the waters of the sea from the waters which
float above us in clouds and vapours ? For 3 ' there is a
multitude of waters in the heavens, and He causeth the
vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth.'
Moses also represents the earth at first in a state of
fluidity. 4 ' The Spirit of God,' says he, ' moved upon
the face or surface of the waters.' The apostle Peter
also speaks of the earth as being formed out of a fluid :
' The earth standing out of the water and in the water.'
The same tradition reached also some of the ancient
heathen philosophers ; and Thales, in particular, one of
the seven wise men, and the wisest of them all, as Cicero
informs us, said that all things were made out of the
water. Others, after him, taught the same doctrine ; and
is it in the least degree contradicted or disproved by
modern discoveries ? On the contrary, is it not more and
more confirmed and illustrated by them ? It is well known
that if a soft or elastic globular body be rapidly whirled
round on its axis, the parts at the poles will be flattened,
and the parts on the equator, midway between the north
and south poles, will be raised up. This is precisely
the shape of our earth ; it has the figure of an oblate
spheroid, a figure bearing a close resemblance to that of
an orange. Now, if the earth was ever in a state of
fluidity, its revolution round its axis must necessarily
induce such a figure, because the greatest centrifugal
force must necessarily be near the equatorial parts, and
' Jer. x. 13.
4 Gen. i. 2.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
395
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3849. A. C. 1564. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
consequently there the fluid must rise and swell most.
It has been demonstrated by experiment, that the earth
is flattened at the poles and raised at the equator : and
thus do the Scriptures and philosophy agree together,
and confirm each other. The Scriptures assert that the
earth was in a state of fluidity ; and philosophy evinces
that it must have been in such a state from its very figure.
It has been alleged also that the circumstance of the
sun and moon standing still, which is recorded in
Joshua x. 12, is contrary to philosophy. Let it, how-
ever, be recollected that the sacred historian expressly
relates it as a miracle: it is therefore impossible to
account for it on philosophical principles ; it must be
resolved wholly into the power of God, who hearkened
to the voice of a man, to stop the luminaries in their
diurnal courses, or perhaps the earth's rotation, and by
prolonging the day of battle, to make them fight for
Israel. From the circumstances of the narrative, we
may collect the time of the day and of the month when
it happened, namely, soon after sunrise, and when the
moon was rather past the full.
Joshua, when summoned by the Gibeonites to come to
their succour against the confederate kings, went up
from Gilgal all night, and came suddenly (we may con-
clude about daybreak) upon the enemy, whom he dis-
comfited with great slaughter, and chased along the way
from Gibeon to Beth-horon, in a westerly direction, the
Lord co-operating in their destruction by a tremendous
shower of great hailstones, Avhich slew more than the
sword of the Israelites, but did not touch the latter. In
this situation, the sun appeared to rise over Gibeon east-
ward, and the moon to set over Ajalon westward, near
the Mediterranean sea, in the tribe of Dan ; when
Joshua, moved by a divine impulse, uttered this invoca-
tion in the sight of Israel : — ' Sun, stand thou still over
Gibeon, and thou Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.' So
the sun stood still in the hemisphere, and hasted not to
go down about a whole day, — which in that climate, and
shortly after the vernal equinox, might have been about
thirteen hours long, thus giving him daylight for the
destruction of his enemies for twenty -six hours, during
which he took the city of Makkedah, and slew the five
kings who hid themselves in a cave near it. 1
Many inquiries have been made concerning the way
in which this miracle was wrought, and many difficulties
and objections have been urged against understanding
it literally. But the fact, as far as we are concerned
about it, is authenticated by the divine testimony ; and
the maimer in which it was accomplished, lies entirely
out of our province, because beyond our discovery and
comprehension. Is any thing too hard for the Lord ?
This question forms a sufficient answer to ten thousand
difficulties which puny objectors, under the assumed title
of philosophers, have, in every age, been starting
against the truth of God in his written word. If the
earth's diurnal motion was gradually stopped, it does
not appear that it would, in respect of the dry land,
make a more sensible difference to the inhabitants, than
casting anchor, when a ship is under full sail, does to
the mariners : and the power which caused the deluge,
was sufficient to prevent the effects of this change, on
i Josh. x. 1—2.-!. Dr Hales, Dr A. Clarke's Note on the
Passage, Home's Introduction, vol. 1. p. o'5S — 602.
the seas and oceans, and keep them from overflowing
any part of the globe. 2 As there are no records of pro-
fane history so ancient as this event, it cannot be any
cause for wonder, that pagan authors have not mentioned
it. Though some intimation of it seems given, in the
fable of Phaeton driving the chariot of the sun, and
throwing all things into disorder, so that there was one
day wholly unlike all before or after it. This extraor-
dinary miracle not only gave Israel an opportunity of
completing their victory, but rendered Joshua honourable
in the eyes of all the people ; and both him and them
terrible to the surrounding nations. It was also a
public; attestation, that the God of Israel was the Lord
of the whole earth, and of the heavens ; and a protest
against idolatry, whilst the sun and moon, the worship
of which formed the most ancient and plausible kind of
idolatry, were obedient to the commands of the servants
of Jehovah, the God of Israel. 3
With respect to the shower of stones, I am inclined
to believe with bishop Gleig, that the stones were meteoric
stones, and not ordinary hailstones. Hailstones are
not only natural, but common phenomena, and, there-
fore, were not calculated to make such an impression
on the minds either of the Israelites or of the Gibeonites
as a shower of fire-balls, or ignited stones. There
seems, indeed, to be little room for doubt, but that the
one kind of stone is formed in the atmosphere by some
natural process, as well as the other ; but in what man-
ner, or by what law of nature the ignited metallic stones
are formed, is, I believe, equally unknown to the philo-
sopher and to the peasant. One of the most scientific
chemists of the present day, after describing a great
variety of such metallic stones, which are to be found in
every quarter of the globe, says, that we may consider
them all as fragments of fire-balls, which have burst in
the atmosphere ; but that the origin and physical cause
of those fire-balls, will, perhaps, for ages, baffle all the
.attempts of philosophers to investigate them. The
pouring down of such a shower of stones, by whatever
process formed, on the army of the Canaanites con-
federated against Israel, was a miracle admirably cal-
culated to convince the Israelites and Gibeonites of the
superiority of Jehovah, over the gods of Canaan.
SECT. II.
CHAP. I. — From the Death of Joshua to the Death
of Samson.
THE HISTORY.
After the death of Joshua," no particular person, that
we read of, succeeded him in the government ; and
8 Gen. vii. 10—12.
3 Dent. iv. 19. See Scott on the passage.
a The Samaritan Chronicle tells us, indeed, that in the last
assembly which Joshua held he nominated twelve chiefs, of
every tribe one, and put it to the lot, who should succeed him
in the government ; that the lot fell upon Ins nephew Abel, whom
lie accordingly Crowned, and invested with other ensigns of
honour, &c, but this is thought to be no more than a fabulous
account, invented to fill up this void Space of time — Saurtn'i
DtSStr. on llrjlon, king of the MoabtUs, ivho wus killed, &c.
396
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3849. A. C. 1564. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
therefore, the most probable opinion is, that every tribe
was governed by their respective heads, or elders, (which
form of government subsisted about thirty " years,) and
a Dv Hales, following the chronology of Josephus, with some
collections, makes the whole period from the time of Joshua and
the elders who survived him, to the election of Saul, 498 years,
which he accounts for thus: — In the general introduction of his
Analysis of Scripture Chronology, lie endeavours to show that
the interval from the exodus to the foundation of Solomon's
temple, was 021 years; from which, subtracting 123 years,
namely, forty years from the exodus to this return, eighty years
from the two reigns of Saul and David, and the first three years
of Solomon, the remainder is 498 years. " But," says the
learned and indefatigable doctor, "although we are indebted to
Josephus for this, and for supplying some material chasms in the
sacred annals, such as, 1st, the administration of Joshua and the
elders, 25 years; 2d, the ensuing anarchy, 18 years; 3d, the
administration of Shamgar, 1 year; and, 4th, of Samuel, 12
years; still his detail of the outline there given requires cor-
rection.
For, 1. The year ascribed to Shamgar's administration is too
short, as is evident from Deborah's account, (Judges v. 6.) ; I
have therefore included it, with David Ganz, in Ehud's enormous
administration of 80 years, and transferred the one year to
Joshua's, making that 26 years. 2. I have restored Abdon's
administration of 8 years omitted by Josephus, and deducted it
from the 18 years he assigns to the anarchy, thereby reducing
the latter to its correct length of 10 years. 3. I have dated the
first division of the conquered lands in the sixth year, which
Josephus reckoned in the fifth year; because Caleb was 40 years
old when Moses sent him as one of the spies from Kadesh-barnea,
in the second year after the exode ; consequently he was 39
years old at the exode, and therefore 79 years old, 40 years
after, at the arrival in Canaan; but he was 85 years old when he
claimed and got the hill of Hebron for an inheritance, which
therefore must have been six years after the arrival in Canaan.
Compare Num. x. 11 ; xiii. 6., with Josh. xiv. 6 — 15. 4. Jo-
sephus has omitted the date of Samuel's call to be a prophet,
(1 Sam. iii. 1 — 19.) which St Paul reckons 450 years after the
division of lands, (Acts xiii. 19, 20.) ; and which, therefore,
commenced with the 10 last years of Eli's administration of 40
years. This last most important chronological character, from
the New Testament verifies the whole of this rectification ; while
it demonstrates the spuriousness of the period of 480 years in
the present Masorite text of 1 Kings vi. 1., from the exode to
the foundation of Solomon's temple.''
Following the chronology of Josephus, in preference to the
Hebrew text, his table of the Judges is as follows: —
1 Joshua and the Elders, .
First division of lauds, .
Second do. do.
Anarchy, or interregnum,
I. Servitude to the Mesopotami
2 Othniel,
II. Servitude to the Moabites,
3 Ehud and Shamgar,
III. Servitude to the Canaanites,
4 Deborah and Barak,
IV. Servitude to the Midianites,
5 Gideon,
(3 Abimelech, .
7 Tola, ....
8 Jair, ....
V. Servitude to the Ammonites
9 Jephthah,
10 Ib/an,
11 Eton
12 Abdon,
VI. Servitude to the Philistines,
13 Samson, . ,
14 Eli, ....
Samuel called as a prophet,
VII. Servitude to the Philistines,
15 Samuel,
Years.
B.C.
2b'
1008
1602
1595
10
1582
ans, S
1572
40
1564
18
1524
80
1506
20
1426
40
1406
7
1366
40
1359
3
1319
23
1316
22
1293
, 18
1271
6
1253
7
1247
10
1240
8
1230
40, 20
1222
20
1202
40, 30
1182
JO
1152
20
1142
12
1122
Saul elected king,
498
1110
that, in their wars with the Canaanites, they made them
their commanders. For several of the Canaanitish
kings remaining still unconquered, the Israelites unani-
mously resolved to set about their reduction ; ant1
accordingly repaired to the oracle at Shiloh, to ask
directions of God, which tribe should begin the war.
God's orders were, that the tribe of Judah should begin ;
and therefore, they, taking to their assistance the tribe
of Simeon, first set upon the cruel ° king of Bezek :
sacked the town, killed ten thousand of its inhabitants,
and, as he was endeavouring to make his escape, seized
him, and cut c oft' his thumbs and great toes, in the like
manner as he had done to no less than 'seventy little
kings d or princes, whom he compelled to gather their
meat, like dogs, under his table : so that the similitude
of his punishment made the tyrant reflect upon his own
cruelty, and acknowledge the justice of God in what he
had brought upon him.
After the conquest of Bezek, the two united tribes e
invested Jerusalem, and having taken it, put the inhabi-
tants to the sword, and set the place on fire. They
thence marched to Hebron, and having made themselves
masters of it, went to attack Debir, which was part of
" The only alteration here made in the present text of Jose-
phus is the insertion of Tola, and his administration of 23 years,
(Judges x. 1, 2.), which are inadvertently omitted between
Abimelech and Jair, {Ant. 5, 7, 15;) but evidently were included
in the original scheme of Josephus, as being quite requisite to
complete the period of 621 years. To Abdon no years are
assigned by Josephus, {Ant. 5, 7, 15.), perhaps designedly, for
Clemens Alexandrinus relates, that some chronologers collected
together the years of Abathan and Ebron, (Abdon and Elon,) or
made them contemporaries. But we may easily reconcile Jose-
phus with Scripture, by only deducting eight years from the IS
years' interregnum after Joshua, which will give Abdon his quota
of years, and leave that interregnum its juster length of 10 years.
" It is truly remarkable, and a proof of the great skill and
accuracy oi Josephus in forming the outline of this period, that
he assigns, with St Paul, a reign of 40 years to Saul, (Acts xiii.
21.), which is omitted in the Old Testament. His outline also
corresponds with St Paul's period of 450 years, from the division
of the conquered lands of Canaan, until Samuel the prophet." —
See Dr Hales' Chronology, vol. 1. p. 298; vol. 2. p. 257. ct scq.
second edition. — En.
b There is another place in Scripture, namely, 1 Sam. xi. 8.
where Bezek, is mentioned ; and since Eusebius and Jerome
tell us, that there were in their days two towns, about seventeen
miles from Shechem, of the same name, and not far distant from
each other, we see nothing of moment to hinder them from being
both but one city in former times. — Wells' Geography of the
Old Testament, vol. 2.
c The reason of their mutilating him in this manner, was to
make him incapable of war any more, being unable to handle
arms, by reason of the loss of his thumbs, or to run swiftly,
which was a notable quality in a warrior in those days, by the
loss of his great toes. — Patrick's Commentary in locum.
d From this it seems very probable, that the different
Canaanitish tribes were convened by a sort of chieftains, similar
to those among the claus of the ancient Scottish Highlanders.
—En.
e We do not read that Jerusalem was ever taken by Joshua,
though it seems highly probable, that when he took the king of
Jerusalem, he did to it as he did to the rest of the cities belong-
ing to those kings, (Josh. x. 3 — 23.) But when he was gone
to conquer other parts of the country, it is likely that the o'd in-
habitants returned again, and took possession of it, for the laud
was not then divided among the^lsiaelites. But as Joshua, a
little before his death, divided the land, and this city fell, in
part, to the share of the tribe of Judah, they dispossessed the Jehu-
sites that dwelt there, of all but the strong fortress on the top of
mount Sion, which held out till the clays of David. — Patrick s
Commentary.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
397
A. M. 2561. A. C, 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
Caleb's allotment, though the Canaanites at that time
had possession of it. Caleb, a who in all probability was
general in these wars, being- resolved to storm the place,
made proclamation in the camp, that whoever should
attack and carry it, should have his daughter Achsah as a
reward of his valour ; which his gallant nephew Othniel,
son to his younger brother Kenaz, achieved, and so, not
only obtained the beauteous damsel for his wife, but
with her a large estate likewise, in a well-watered coun-
try, which, at her request, her father very generously
bestowed on him.
Thus the tribe of Simeon assisted that of Judah to
subdue the mountainous parts about Jerusalem, and the
southern parts adjoining to the wilderness of Paran ; and
when this was done, the tribe of Judah in like manner,
assisted the Simeonites to take Gaza, Askelon, and
Zephah, which was then called Hormah ; so that these
places, in after ages, came into their possession. * En-
couraged by these successes, the family of Joseph
undertook the conquest of Bethel ; and to this purpose
sent out spies, to take a survey of the town, and to gain
what intelligence they could. They perceiving a man
coming out of it, immediately seized him, but promised
to spare his life, upon condition that he would give them
the best information he could, in what way the town was
approachable. The man did so ; and by his informa-
tion they succeeded so well, that sending for their forces,
they entered the place, and put all the inhabitants to the
sword, except the man who had given them intelligence,
and his family.
The other tribes had equally good success in gaining
the possession of the lands that were allotted them ;
only the tribe of Dan was compelled to quit the plains
for fear of the Amorites, and to retire into the mountain-
ous parts of the country, where they were pent up for
some time, until the family of Joseph came to their
assistance ; and having restrained the insolence of their
enemies, reduced them to a narrower tract of land than
what they had at first.
One great default, however, in those that were suc-
cessful against the Canaanites, was, that they did not
make a right use of their victories, but either through a
misplaced lenity, or covetousness, instead of destroying
them, (as they were commanded,) suffered them to live
promiscuously among them, and contented themselves
with making them tributary ; which so far incensed God,
a Who was their general upon this occasion, is not expressly
mentioned either in Scripture, Josephus, or any other ancient
historian ; and yet it is hardly to he questioned, hut that Caleh
was tht! person. He was of the tribe of Judah, older than any
other by twenty years; and yet, like Moses, he continued in his
lull strength and vigour. lie and Joshua, were the only two
spies, who, having searched out the land, gave a true report of it;
and therefore, as Joshua was the first general, he had the greatest
right to succeed him; and this might be the reason why Joshua,
at his death, named no other. He and Joshua, were the only
two persons to whom the Israelites gave inheritances for their
signal services; and as his inheritance lay uneonquered in this
tribe, he had the greatest reason to be active in reducing it.
His name alone is mentioned in all these wars, and as his son-
in-law, Othniel, was the fust deliverer of the Israelites from their
oppressions, he seems to have Succeeded Caleb in this dignity, as
his nearest and most valiant relation. — Bedford's ScrijiiioT
Chronology, b. 5. c. 3.
b The Septuagint in this place, (Judges i. IS,) reads, 'But
Judah did tint possess Gaza nor the coasts thereof; neither Aska-
lon uor the coasts thereof; neither Ekron. nor the coasts thereof;
M. 3849. A. C. 1564. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
that he sent an e angel from Gilgal, to expostulate the
matter with them ; to remind them of the favour which
he had vouchsafed them, in delivering them out of Egypt,
and bringing them into that happy land, of his punctual
performance of all the promises he had made them, and of
their vile ingratitude in rejecting his precepts, for which
he had very justly withdrawn his protection from them.
The reproof made the people, for the present, a little
sensible of their transgression, so that they fell into a
general lamentation ; and deploring the wretchedness of
their condition, offered sacrifices to God, in order to ap-
pease his wrath. But no sooner was this fit of humilia-
tion over, but continuing still their correspondence with
the Canaanites, indulging themselves in their loose con-
versation, and making intermarriages with them, they fell
into idolatry, and worshipped Baal and Ashtaroth, and
other idols of the heathen, which so provoked the Lord,
that he left them to themselves ; and they, without his
protection, made so weak a defence, that they were often
taken, and enslaved by their enemies.
The first oppressor that the Israelites had, was named
Chushan Rishathaim. He was king of Mesopotamia,
and when he invaded the territories of Israel, he made
an easy conquest, and imposed a tribute on them, which
lasted for eight years ; but at the expiration of that time,
God raised up Othniel, Caleb's son-in-law, (who was the
first of those whom the Scripture calls Judges,) and
inspired him with courage and resolution to take up arms
against the king of Mesopotamia, whom he soon defeated,
and settled the Israelites in a state of peace and tran-
quillity, which lasted for forty years. But during this
space of time, the people fell into a general apostasy,
and corruption of manners, whereof the <l two following
stories are sad and remarkable instances.
neither Azotus nor its adjacent places: and the Lord was with
Judah.' This is the reading of the Vatican and other copies
of the Septuagint; but the Alexandrian MS., and the text of the
Complutensian and Antwerp polyglots agree more nearly with
the Hebrew text. St Augustine and Procopius read the same
as the Vatican MS. ; and Josephus expressly says, the Israel-
ites took only Askelon and Azotus, but did not take Gaza nor
Ekron. And the whole history shows that these cities were not
.in the possession of the Israelites, but of the Philistines; and if
the Israelites did take them at this time, as the Hebrew text
states, they certainly lost them in a very short time after. — Dr
A. Clar/te. — Ed.
c The Jews are generally of opinion, that by this angel, we
are to understand a prophet who was sent by God as a messen-
ger which the very word often imports; and this messenger they
commonly take to have been Phinehas, who was employed upon
this errand. We can see no reason, however, fur their departing
from the usual signification of the word, especially when there is
no absurdity in it, and the sense of the context seems to require
our retaining it. Nay, there is reason to say, that the person
who here reproves the Israelites, was something more than a
created angel; for who but Goil can speak in this style, ' I made
you to go out of Egypt?' No prophet, nor any created angel
durst have been so bold; and therefore the opinion of most Chris-
tian interpreters is, that it was the Son of God, who is frequently
in Scripture called ' the angel of the covenant.' And lit it was I"!'
him to appear now, as coming from Gilgal, to put them in mind
of his illustrious appearance near that place once before, of the
assurance he then gave them of his presence with them in the
conquest of the land, and of the solemn covenant he made with
them, by renewing of circumcision. The angel's coming up
from Gilgal is therefore mentioned as a very pertinent cir-
cumstance, to upbraid tin; Israelites with their base ingratitude to
God, and with their sloth in not endeavouring to expel the Ca-
naanites.— Patrick'* Commentary.
(/These two stories are related in the 17th, 18th, and VM\
398
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
The tribe of Dan, as we said before, being pent up in
the mountainous parts, found their territories much too
narrow for them ; and therefore they sent out of their
body five spies, to survey the country, and bring them in
intelligence, in what part of the regions round about,
they might most likely extend their bounds. The spies,
in their journey, came to the house of Micah of Mount
Ephraim, whose mother, thinking it too much trouble to
go to Shiloh to worship, and ofi'er sacrifices there, had
made an idol, and placed it in a private chapel of her
son's building : for her son had an a ephod and teraphim,
and for some time, had consecrated one of his own sons
to be his priest ; until a Levite, who had dwelt some
time at Bethlehem-Judah, travelling from thence to seek
a better settlement, happened to call at Micah's house,
and by him was hired to execute that office ; whereupon
the man was fond enough to believe, that God would
prosper him not a little, now that he had got a Levite to
be his priest.
It so happened, that some of these spies being acquaint-
ed with this Levite, and, after some discourse, understand-
ing in what capacity he served Micah, desired of him to
ask counsel of God, what success they might possibly
promise themselves in the enterprise they were going
upon, and with the encouragement which he gave them,
they proceeded on their search, until they came to Laish \b
chapters of Judges, and being so placed, they may seem to be-
long to the latter part of this period ; whereas, in the judgment
of most learned men, they were transacted much about this time.
It is plain from the text, (chap. xvii. 6.) that these things hap-
pened ' when there was no king,' that is, no ruler, for properly
speaking there had hitherto been no king, ' in Israel, but every
man did what was right in his own eyes ;' and the reason why
Samuel, or whoever was the author of this book, places them here,
is because he was not willing to break the thread of his history, by
intermixing these matters with it, but reserved them to be re-
lated apart by themselves. — Patrick's Commentary.
a That the divine service might be performed with a greater
resemblance of what was done at the tabernacle in Shiloh, he made
priestly ornaments ; for so some learned men take the ephod to
comprehend, not only the breastplate adjoining to it, but all the
rest of the vestments used by the high priest. His intention was
to set up an oracle in his own house, in imitation of the sanc-
tuary of Moses ; and therefore, to make the conformity the greater,
it is supposed that he erected a kind of ark, whereon he placed
two teraphim, to answer the two cherubim in the tabernacle, as
he caused the priest who officiated for him to wear an ephod, in
the manner that the high priest did when he consulted God.
Mr Selden (in his Syntagma 1. de diis Syriis, c. 2,) well
observes, that the worship of the true God, and of idols, was here
blended together. The ephod and the Levite, which Micah
afterwards provided, were intended, no doubt, for the service of
the true God; but the graven image and teraphim, by which
the children of Dan desired the Levite to inquire of God,
belonged unto demons. They neither trusted to the ephod
alone, which related to God, nor to their teraphim alone, which
was their own invention, but thought it necessary to join both
together in divine worship: and thus began idolatry in Israel,
by the superstition of an old woman, who put this in her son's
head. This woman, many of the Jews suppose to be the same
with Delilah, who, having got so much money of every one of
the lords of the Philistines, thought it expedient to employ some
of it in expressing her devotion. But this is an idle conceit,
that has no other foundation, than Delilah's being mentioned in
the foregoing chapter; whereas Micah was some hundred years
prior to her. — Patrick's Comvuntary , and Jarieu's History of
Doctrines and TForship, part 3.
b The text reads, ' Then the five men departed, and came to
Laish, and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt
careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure ;
and there was no magistrate in the landj that might put them to
M. 3849. A. C. 1564. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
where observing a pleasant and fruitful country, and
the people living in a secure and negligent manner,
without any rule or discipline among them, they returned
to their brethren, and gave them an account, how fruitful
the country was, and how easily, in their opinion, the
place might be taken by surprise.
Upon this, the Danites drew out a party of six hun-
dred men, and sent them to take possession of the city
Laish ; but in their way through Mount Ephraim, they
called at Micah's house, and, in his absence, seized the
Levite, the ephod, and teraphim, and other images that
Micah had made ; and as the Levite was remonstrating
against what they had done, they soon pacified him, by
representing the advantage of being a priest to a whole
tribe rather than any one family ; and with the hopes of
that he went very willingly along with them.
Micah returning home, and understanding that his
priest and his gods were gone, musters up his friends,
and pursues the Danites ; but when he came up with
some of the hindmost of them, and was making his com-
plaint against the injury they had done, they wished
him to be gone ; for that if he persisted to irritate the
rest of the party, it would certainly cost him and his
friends their lives : and so continuing their march, on
the third day they came to Laish, where finding it un-
guarded, they burnt the city, destroyed the inhabitants,
and took possession of the country ; but in a short time
after, they rebuilt the city, which, after the name of their
father, was called Dan, and here setting up the images
which they had stolen from Micah, they made this same
Levite, whose name was Jonathan, their priest ; and in
this state of idolatrous worship they continued for about
three hundred years, even unto the time c that the ark of
shame in any thing; and they were far from the Zidonians, and
had no business with any man.' The following remarks of Dr
A. Clarke, throw much light on this passage; he thinks that
probably the people of Laish or Leshem were originally a colony
of Sidonians, who were an opulent people ; and being in posses-
sion of a strong city lived in a state of security, not being afraid
of their neighbours. And that in this the Leshemites imitated
them, though the sequel proves that they had not the same reason
for confidence — that being a Sidonian colony they might naturally
expect succour from their countrymen ; but being far from Sidon
the Danites saw they could strike the decisive blow before the
news of the invasion could reach Sidon, and consequently before
the Leshemites could receive any succours from that city. The
last clause, 'and had no business with any man,' in the most
correct copies of the Septuagint reads, ' and they had no transac-
tions with Syria.' Now it is evident that instead of cna, Adam,
man, they read di», Aram, Syria; words so nearly similar that
the difference which exists is only between the 1 resk, and T
dalcth; and this both in MS. and printed books is often {indiscer-
nible. This reading is found in the Codex Alexandrinus, in the
Complutensian polyglot, in the Spanish polyglot, and in the
edition cf the Septuagint, published by Aldus. It may be proper
to observe that Laish was on the frontiers of Syria; but as they
had no intercourse with the Syrians, from whom they might have
received the promptest assistance, this was an additional reason
why the Danites might expect success. — Ed.
c The words of the text are ; — ' And the children of Dan set
up the graven image, and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son
of Manasseh, he and his sons, were priests to the tribe of Dan,
until the day of the captivity of the land,' (Judges xviii. 30.)
But then the question is, what we are to understand by the capti-
vity of the land? Now there are two times mentioned in Scrip-
ture, when the children of Israel were carried away captive, by
Tiglath-Pileser, when he ' took Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee,
all the land of Naphtali, and carried them into Assyria,' (2 Kings
xv. 29 ;") and 2dly, by Salmonasser, who ' carried Israel away,
and plated them in Halah. and in Habor, by the river Gozan,
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
399
A. M. 25G1. A. C. M43; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 3849. A. C. 15G4. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
God was taken captive by the Philistines, which was in
the days of Samuel.
Not long- after this, the war of the Benjamites broke
out, which is another tragical piece of history, and as
pregnant a proof of the people's immorality, as the
other is of their apostasy. The substance of the story
is this. — a A Levite of Mount Ephraiin, having- taken a
wife out of Bethleheiu-Judah, who proved a lewd woman,
she made an elopement from her husband to her father's
house, where she continued for some months. The
Levite, however, being willing- to be reconciled to her,
went to bring- her home ; but, in his return happening- to
be benighted, he was obliged to turn * into Gibeah,
where an old man of Mount Ephraim, who was only an
inmate there, after some conversation, received him into
his lodgings. But while they were at supper, the men
of the city beset the house, and demanded to have the
stranger brought out to them, that according to the sin
and in the cities of the Medes,' (2 Kings xviii. 11.) And to one
of these, the words of the text are supposed by some learned men
to refer; hut then it must necessarily follow, that this hook was
written in later times, even after the former of these captivities at
least. It can hardly he supposed, however, that these images
should be suffered to continue in" the days of David, who was a
man after God's own heart, and studied to advance true religion
to the utmost of his power all the country over, from Dan to
Beer-sheba; and therefore others, with good reason conclude,
that by ' the captivity of the land,' is meant the taking of the ark
hy the Philistines, and carrying it captive into the temple of
Dagon; for so the Psalmist expressly calls that unlucky event:
'he forsook the tabernacle in Shiloh, even the tent that he had
pitched among them ;' he delivered their power into captivity,
and their beauty into the enemies' hands,' (Ps. lxxviii. (iO, 61.)
(Patrick's and Le C/erc's Commentaries.) Instead of Manasseh,
as observed in a former note, we should read Moses, as it is
found in some MSS., the Vulgate and the concession of the most
intelligent Jews. U. D. Kimchi acknowledges that the Jews
have changed Moses into Manasseh, because they think it would
be a great reproach to their legislator to have had a grandson
who was an idolater; that Gershom the son of Moses is here
intended, is very probable. See the arguments urged by Dr
Kennicott, (Dissertation 1. p. 55, &c. ;) and the Var. Lect. of
de Rossi on this place. We may add the following in support of
the opinion, that by ' the captivity of the land,' the taking of the
ark is meant. Hubigant contends that, instead of tptm kaarets,
the LAND, we should read rmtn haaron, the ark; for nothing is
easier than for the i van, and { final nun, to be mistaken for the v
final tsadc, which is the only difference between ' the captivity of
the land,' and the ' captivity of the ark ;' and this conjecture is the
more likely, because the next verse tells us that Micah's graven
image continued at Dan all the time the house of God was at
Shiloh; which was till the ark was taken hy the Philistines. —
See Calmet, Poole's Synopsis, and Dr A. Clarke. — En
a Josephus relates this story with a good deal of variation
from the sacred history ■ — That the Levitc's wife was not a lewd
woman, but one who did not well agree with her husband, for
which reason she left him, and went to her father; that the young
men of Gibeah, seeing her to be a very beautiful woman, took
notice of the house where she went in, and came and demanded
her, and not the Levite himself, as the Scripture has it; that the
Levite did not turn her out, but that the young men took her by
force, and carried her to their own quarters, where they spent
the whole night in all manner of bestial liberties, and then sent
her hack again next morning; that upon her return, she fell into
such a confusion of thought, for what had befallen her that night,
that, what between shame and indignation, she sank down upon
the ground, and expired; that the Israelites met in convention,
sent to the Benjamites to deliver up the malefactors, who had
committed this brutal violence upon the Lcvite's wife, which they
refused to do, as thinking it dishonourable, for fear of a war, to sub-
mit to rules of other people's prescribing, &c — Josephus, b. 5. c. 2.
b Gibeah lay north of Jerusalem, about twenty or thirty fur-
longs from it, and was built upon a hill, as its name imports. —
Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. W.
of Sodom, they might know him. It was vain to use
entreaties to so rude a rabble. The good old man
offered them his own daughter who was a virgin ; and,
at length, by consent the Levite's wife was turned out
among them. They abused her all that night ; and the
next morning, she was found dead at the threshold, which
enraged her husband to such a degree, that taking her
home with him, he cut her dead body into twelve parts
and sent one to every tribe, with an account of the in-
hospitable treatment he met with at Gibeah ; that so in
a general assembly of Israel, it might be resolved, what
method of revenge it was proper to take upon this dis-
mal occasions
The assembly agreed, that never so inhuman an act
had been known in Israel since the time they left Egypt ;
and thereupon came to a resolution to bring the offenders
to condign punishment, and in order to that, sent mes-
sengers to them demanding the men that had committed
this outrage ; but they refused to deliver them, and in
order to defend the criminals, mustered up all their
forces. The army of the Benjamites consisted but of
six and twenty thousand, whereas that of all Israel
amounted to four hundred thousand men ; and yet, in
two several engagements, the Benjamites had the better
of them ; for in the former, they killed them twenty-two
thousand, and in the latter eighteen thousand men. But
the misconduct of the Israelites upon this occasion was,
that being too confident of the goodness of their cause,
c Judg. xix. 29. ' And when he was come into his house,
he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her,
together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all
the coasts of Israel.' Interpreters say but little concerning the
real views of the Levite in this transaction : they merely inti-
mate, that it was done to excite a general indignation against
the authors of the injury he had sustained. His motives certain-
ly were good and regular. He intended to unite the whole
nation in vengeance against a crime, in which it was interested:
but as they might be checked in the extent of the punishment by
the number, the credit, and the power of the offenders; by the
natural commiseration which is felt for those who are of the
same blood; or by an aversion to involve the city in destruction;
he sought and seized a method which put them to the indispen-
sable necessity of espousing his cause. The only part which he
had to take was, to cut in pieces the body of his wife, which In;
did, or else that of an ox, or other like animal, which had either
been devoted, or offered in sacrifice, and to send a part of it to
each tribe. In consequence of this, every tribe entered into an
indissoluble engagement to see justice done him for the injury lie
had received. This is what the interpreters of Scripture seem
not to have known, and which it is necessary to explain.
The ancients had several ways of uniting themselves together
by strict ties, which lasted for a stipulated time: amOngst these
may be noticed the sacrifice of Abraham, the circumstances of
which are mentioned, Gen. xv. 9, &C. Another method was,
to take a bullock offered or devoted in sacrifice, Cut it in pieces
and distribute it. All who had a piece of this devoted bullock
were thenceforward connected, and were to concur in carrying mi
the affair which had given occasion for the sacrifice; but as this
devoting and dividing was variously practised, it also produced
different engagements. If he who was at the expense of the
sacrifice, were a public person, or in lii",li office, he sent of his
own accord a piece of the victim to all who were subject to him;
and by this act obliged them to enter into his views. If the
sacrifice were offered by a private person, those only who volun-
tarily took a piece of the sacrifice, entered into a strict engage-
ment to espouse his interest.
These circumstances, compared with the account given of the
Levite's conduct, and the subsequent behaviour of the tribes.
clearly point out, that the method used hy the Levite to obtain
redress, was consistent with the established usages of tin- times,
and effected the retribution he desired to see accomplished. —
Bur dor's Orient. Custom*, vol. 1. p. 182. — En.
400
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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and the superiority of their numbers, wherf they went to
consult God, they only inquired of him which of the
tribes should lead the van, without placing their confi-
dence in him, or depending- upon his assistance for suc-
cess, which these repeated defeats brought to their
remembrance ; and therefore, before the third engage-
ment, they humbled themselves in a proper manner
before God, and from his encouragement, attacked the
Benjamites once more. But to make their victory the
more secure, they laid an ambuscade behind the city,
which, while they pretended to fly, entered it, and set it
on fire ; whereupon the main body of the Israelitish
army faced about, and charged so furiously upon the
Benjamites, that they slew five and twenty thousand of
them, set fire to their city, and destroyed all that belonged
to them. It so happened, however, that six hundred of
them, which were all that remained of the tribe, made
their escape into the wilderness, and sheltered themselves
in the fortress of Rimmon.
When the heat of the action was over, and the Israel-
ites began to reflect coolly on what they had done, they
were grieved not a little ; and that the rather, because at
the beginning of this war, they had all taken a rash oath
not to marry their daughters to any of the Benjamites :
so that how to recruit the tribe they could not tell, until
they bethought themselves of these two expedients.
When the war first broke out, they had bound themselves
by oath, to put all to the sword who would not join them
in the common cause against the Benjamites ; and find-
ing by their muster-roll, that the people of Jabesh-Gilead
had neglected to come, they despatched twelve thousand
men, with orders to put man, woman, and child to the
sword, except such virgins as Avere marriageable, whom
they intended to give to the Benjamites for wives. For
by this time the Benjamites were reconciled to the rest
of the people, had left their stronghold, and were come
into the camp ; so that when the men returned from the
slaughter of the Gileadites, they brought four hundred
virgins along with them, which were immediately given
to the Benjamites ; but as the Benjamites were six
hundred in number, there was not for every man one, and
therefore they betook themselves to another expedient.
Once every year, a there was a festival kept at Shiloh,
whither the young women of the country used constantly
a All the three great festivals were to be observed in the place
where God settled his habitation, which was now at Shiloh;
and therefore some are of opinion, that the feast here mentioned
was one of these ; particularly they think it was the feast of taber-
nacles, because this was a season of great joy, for having newly
gathered their vintage, and the only season wherein the Jewish
virgins were allowed to dance. At this time they dwelt in booths
too, behind which the Benjamites, as they fancy, might very
conveniently conceal themselves, and so watch an opportunity of
carrying away the virgins: but what seems to make against this
opinion is, that at any of these public festivals, the concourse of
people would have been too great for a design of this nature to be
put in execution, since the violence which must of course have
been offered to the young women would hardly have met with a
general connivance. It is much more probable, therefore, that
this was some festival peculiar to the people of Shiloh, which the
Benjamites perhaps might know nothing of, and were therefore
put in mind of it by ' the elders of the congregation.' Josephus
tells us that it was celebrated thrice every year: and on this
festival it might be a custom for the young women to go out into
the fields, and there dance by themselves, which might give their
ravishers the very opportunity they wanted. — Le Clerc's Com-
mentary.
to come and dance. The Israelites therefore suggested
to the Benjamites, that as many as wanted wives might
at this time repair to the place, and concealing them-
selves in the vineyards, seize upon the young women as
they came out adancing, and carry them oft' to their
own habitations. The Benjamites accordingly pursued
their instructions ; and, watching their opportunity, took
every one his damsel away with him : so that, having by
this means got themselves wives, they settled again in
their own country, and began by degrees to recruit their
tribe.
After the death of Othniel, the Israelites again revolted
from the service of God, and God, to chastise them for
it, suffered Eglon, king of Moab, to subdue them ; so
that, for eighteen years together, they were forced to be
tributary to him. But upon their humiliation and repent-
j ance, he raised them up a man, even out of the dimi-
] nished tribe of Benjamin, who wrought their deliverance,
but in a method no ways to be justified, under a less
supposition than that he had a divine commission for so
doing.
Every year it was customary for the Israelites to send
a present or tribute to the king- of Moab, and for that
year Ehud, the son of Gera, was appointed to go with it.
He was a left-handed man ; and having a design either
to free his country from this oppression, or perish in the
attempt, he had for this purpose provided himself with a
poniard, which he concealed on his right side. After he
had delivered the present, pretending he had something
of great importance to communicate to the king, he
obtained a private audience of him, when, taking his
opportunity, he stabbed him with the poniard to the
heart, and so shutting the door after him, had time to
make his escape. For as the king was a very corpulent
man, his attendants supposed that he was either reposing
or easing himself, and therefore forbore to enter into
his apartment until Ehud was quite gone. As soon as he
came to Mount Ephraim, he gathered together the Israel-
ites that lay nearest him ; acquainted them with what he
had done ; and then securing the fords of Jordan, that
none of them might escape, he fell upon the Moabites,
and destroyed them all ; so that, after this conquest, the
eastern part of the land of Canaan enjoyed a settled
peace ' for the space of fourscore years.
b There are two ways wherein ' the land,' as it is in the text,
may be said to have ' had rest fourscore years.' If by the ' laud,'
we understand the whole kingdom of Israel, the meaning must
be, that it rested about fourscore years, or the greatest part of
fourscore years. Because it is a very common thing in Scrip-
ture to use numbers in this latitude, and instead of a minute
computation, to make mention of the round sum. Thus the
Israelites are said ' to bear their iniquities forty years in the
wilderness, (Num. xiv. 33.) when there wanted almost two years
of that number; and to 'dwell in Egypt four hundred and
thirty;' when, strictly speaking, there wanted several of it: and in
like manner, the land is here said ' to have had rest fourscore years,'
when it is declared at the same time, that the people served the
king of Moab eighteen of them ; nor is it any uncommon thing in
other authors, as well as the sacred, to use this form of expression.
But, 2dly, if by the land, we understand only such or such a part
of it, the solution is easy. For it is but supposing that there were
scarce any of the judges who ruled over the wholecountry of Israel,
but some in one part, and some in another ; so that, at the same
time, there were several judges in the land, and peace in one
part, when there was war in another; and then we may, with
the learned Sir John Marsham, understand here, by ' the land
which had rest fourscore years,' not the whole laud of Israel, but
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &rc.
401
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3849. A. C. 1564. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
But though the eastern coast was at rest, yet the west
part of the kingdom was sadly molested by the incur-
sions of the Philistines, who dwelt upon the same shore
of the Mediterranean sea. Upon this occasion, a Sham-
gar, the son of Anath, asserted the cause of Israel ; and
having received extraordinary vigour from above, with
no better weapon than an ox-goad, b slew, at divers
times, six hundred of these invaders, and preserved the
peace of the country for eight years.
In the north part of the country, however, the idola-
try, which Micah began, propagated apace ; so that God
being highly incensed at the people's impieties, per-
the eastern part of it only, which had shaken off the yoke of
Moab, while, in the mean time, the Philistines invaded the
western parts, even as Jabin afflicted the northern, as we may
see in the following chapter. — Poole's Annotations, and Patrick's
Commentary.
a Of what tribe this valiant person was, we are nowhere in-
formed ; but it is not unlikely, that he was one of those tribes
which bordered upon the Philistines, Judah, Dan, or Ephraim,
because what he did was against them. It is disputed by some,
whether he is to be reckoned among the number of the judges;
but for this, 1 think, there is no foundation. The short account
which the Scripture gives of him, is this: — 'And after him,'
that is, after Ehud, ' was Shamgar, the son of Anath, which
slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad, and
also delivered Israel.' (Judges iii. 31.) After Ehud was Sham-
gar, that is, he succeeded him in the office of a judge, for this is
the natural sense of the words; and 'he also delivered Israel,'
which is the very phrase whereby the judges are described. It
is not said, indeed, from what oppressions he delivered them;
but he is a deliverer who preserves a nation from being oppressed,
as well as he who rescues them from an oppression when they
groan under it. This, in all probability, was Shamgar's case,
who, when the Philistines invaded his country, gave them a re-
pulse, with the loss of COO of their men, which was enough to
discourage them from all future attempts. And indeed, the
great slaughter which he made among them, with a weapon, in
all appearance, so incompetent for the work, argues him to have
been a judge, and possessed of a divine power, as much as Sam-
son was, who slew 1000 of his enemies ' with the jaw-bone of
an ass.' (Patrick's and Le Clerc's Commentaries.) — Dr Hales
supposes Shamgar's administration in the west to be included in
Ehud's administration of 80 years in the east ; and as Shamgar's
administration might have been of some continuance, so this ser-
vitude of the Philistines, which is not noticed elsewhere, might
have been of the same duration, as may be incidentally collected
from Deborah's thanksgivings Ed.
b Judges iii. 31. ' And after him was Shamgar, the son of
Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an
ox-goad.' Mr Maundrell, (Journey, at April 15,) has an obser-
vation which at once explains this transaction, and removes
every difficulty from the passage. He says, " The country
people were now every where at plough in the fields, in order to
sow cotton. It was observable, that in ploughing they used
goads of an extraordinary size; upon measuring of several, I
found them about eight feet long, and at the bigger end, six
inches in circumference. They were armed at the lesser end
with a sharp prickle for driving the oxen, and at the other end
with a small spade, or paddle of iron, strong and massy, for
cleansing the plough from the clay that encumbers it in working.
May we not from hence conjecture, that it was with such a goad
as one of these that Shamgar made that prodigious slaughter
related of him, Judges iii. 21. I am confident that whoever
should see one of these instruments, would judge it to be a
weapon not less fit, perhaps fitter, than a sword for such an
execution. Goads of this sort 1 saw always used hereabouts,
and also in Syria; and the reason is, because the same single
person both drives the oxen, and also holds and manages the
plough ; which makes it necessaiy to use such a goad as is above
described, to avoid the incumbrance of two instiuments."
From Homer, (Iliad vi. line 130, &c.) it should seem that, the
ox-goads used in his time and country were of a similar kind ;
since he there describes the votaries of Bacchus as pursued and
slaiu by Lycurgus with an ox-goad. — Ed.
mitted Jabin, who, at that time, assumed the title of king
of Canaan, and c had fixed his imperial seat at Hazor,
to oppress them with great severity for forty years.
This prince had made Sisera, d an experienced soldier
no doubt, general of his forces, wherein, besides great
store of other military munition, there were 900 armed
chariots, which terrified the Israelites to such a degree,
that e several tribes, 1 despairing of relief, sat still under
their oppression, and some of them were going* to trans-
port themselves into other countries. For their enemies
were so very cruel to them, that they durst not travel the
common roads, nor dwell in villages, for fear of being
murdered or plundered ; and having no arms left to
defend themselves, they were forced to retire to fortified
places, and there live together, in the utmost conster-
nation.
In the midst of this distress, / Deborah, the prophetess,
' Judges v. 15, 16.
2 Judges viiii 17.
c It is very certain that Jo;hua burnt the city Hazor, and
slew the king thereof, whose name in like manner was Jabin,
which might possibly be the common name to all the kings of
the country, as those of Egypt were called Pharaoh. But it
seems not improbable, that this Hazor might be retaken, and
rebuilt by its ancient inhabitants, and this king mijffit be a
descendant of the other. Some, indeed, interpret the words
thus: That this Jabin was king of that part of Canaan which lay
in the country where Hazor formerly stood, and whose seat then
was at Harosheth of the Gentiles; for they understand this place
to be mentioned in the text, as the dwelling-place, not of Sisera,
but of Jabin himself, whose general Sisera was. But there is no
reason for this inversion of the order of the words, since the
Canaanites might, between the time of Joshua and Deborah,
find frequent opportunities, considering the corruption and idle-
ness of the Israelites, to re-establish their ancient kingdom in
these parts, to rebuild their former capital, and to set up one of
the old royal line to be their king ; who, according to the common
usages of those ages, retained one and the same name with his
predecessors. — /fells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
c. (5.
d This Sisera, as Josephus informs us, was a very great
favourite of the king, for the services he had done in reducing
the Israelites, whom he worsted upon several encounters, time
after time, and would never give over the pursuit, till he brought
them at last to be absolute slaves, and tributaries to his master.
— Antiquities, b. 5. c. 6.
e This is the sense of those obscure passages in the song of
Deborah : ' For the divisions of Reuben there were great
thoughts of heart. Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to
hear the bleatings of the flocks ? Gilead abode beyond Jordan,
and why did Dan remain in ships ? Asher continued on the
sea shore, and abode in his creeks,' &c. (Judges v. 15, &c.)
f The words prophet and prophetess, are of very ambiguous
signification in both Testaments : sometimes they denote persons
extraordinarily inspired by God, and endued with the power of
working miracles, and foretelling things to some ; and sometimes
they are used for persons endued with special, though not mira-
culous gifts or graces, for the better understanding and explaining
the word of God ; and of this sort were the sons of the prophets,
or such as were brought up in the schools of the prophets. As,
therefore, we read nothing of any miraculous action that Deborah
did, she perhaps was only a woman of eminent holiness, and
prudence, and knowledge of the holy Scripture, by which she
was singularly qualified to judge the people, that is, to determine
causes and controversies among them, according to the won!
of God. For though Jabin oppressed them sorely, yet it was
lather by rigorous taxations, than infringing their laws, which
he still suffered to be administered by their own officers: and of
this he might take the less notice, because the supreme judicature
was exercised by a woman, from whose power and authority he
thought there was no reason to apprehend any danger; though
this certainly gave her an opportunity of endearing herself to the
people, and made lit r, by this means, the fitter an instrument
to rescue them from oppression. — Poole's Annotations.
3e
402
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2361. A. C. 1143; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES,
a woman of great eminence, and who, for some time
had administered justice to the neighbouring tribes, sent
to Barak, the son of Abinoam, a message from God,
that he should get together 10,000 men of the tribes of
Zebulun and Naphtali, and march them to a Mount
Tabor, whither Sisera, with all his numerous army,
coming to give him battle, should infallibly be routed.
Barak readily agreed to the motion, upon condition that
the prophetess would go with him : and so having mus-
tered up all his complement of forces, they both went
together, and posted themselves upon Mount Tabor.
Sisera had soon intelligence of this, and, getting a
powerful army together, he made hasty marches from
6 Harosheth ; passed the ° river Kishon ; and encamped
a Tabor is a very remarkable mountain in Galilee, not far
from Kadesh, in the tribe of Zebulun, and in the confines of Issa-
char and Naphtali. It has its name from its eminence, because
it rises up in the midst of a wide champaign country, called ' the
valley of Jezreel,' or ' the great plain' (Esdraelon), two leagues
south-east of Nazareth. Josephus tells us, that the height of this
mountain is thirty stadia, and that on the top of it, there is a
•beautiful plain of twenty stadia in circumference. — [According
to the statements of Burckhardt and Buckingham, it appears
to be 1400 or 1500 feet high, and is represented as entirely cal-
careous. Dr Richardson describes it as a dark-looking, insulated,
conical mountain, rising like a tower to a considerable height
above those around it. — Ed.]
By all which it appears how commodious a place this mountain
was, to be the rendezvous of Barak's forces, since it stood upon
the confines of so many different tribes, was not accessible by the
enemies' horses and chariots, and had, on the top of it, a spacious
plain, where he might conveniently marshal and discipline his
army. What modern travellers tell us of this mountain is much
to the same purpose : — " After a very laborious ascent," says Mr
Maundrell, " we reached the highest part of the mountain, which
has a plain area at top, fertile and delicious, and of an oval figure,
about one furlong in breadth, and two in length. This area is
enclosed with trees on all parts, except towards the south, and
from hence you have a prospect, which (if nothing else) well
rewards the labour of ascending it; for it is impossible for the eyes
of man to behold any greater gratification of tlus nature. The
top of this mountain was anciently environed with walls and
trenches, and other fortifications, of which some remains are still
visible; and, for many ages, it has been believed that here it was
that our blessed Saviour was transfigured, in the presence of his
three apostles, Peter, James, and John, though some late writers
have made a doubt of it. — Calmet's Commentary, Poole's Anno-
tations, and Maundrell's Journey from, Aleppo to Jerusalem.
b A place situate upon the lake Semechon, in the Upper Gali-
lee, and is in Scripture called ' Harosheth of the Gentiles,'
because the people of several nations fled thither to be under
Jabin's protection, when they heard that he had possessed him-
self of that country, and kept the Israelites out of it. — Wells'
Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
c This river rises up out of Mount Tabor, and passing along
the valley of Jezreel, now the plain of Esdraelon, empties itself
into the Mediterranean Sea. Some geographers will needs have
it, that this river runs two ways, partly westward into the Medi-
terranean, and partly eastward, into the Sea of Galilee ; but this
is a thing incredible, and what is known of no other river in the
world ; and therefore, if there be any thing in it, tiie matter must
be this, — that, from Mount Tabor, as it happens from many other
hills, there flow waters out of its two sides, some shaping their
course westward, to the Mediterranean, and others eastward,
into the Sea of Galilee: so that there are two spring heads, and
two distinct rivers, though both arising from the same mountain,
and perhaps both called by the same name. But whatever becomes
of the river that runs eastward, it is plain, from another passage,
that the Kishoa which is mentioned in Scripture, ran westward
into the Mediterranean sea ; for when Elijah had convinced the
people assembled together at Mount Carmel, that Baal was not
the true God, he enjoined them to seize all his priests, and to
bring them down to the brook Kishon, there to he slain (1 Kings
xviii.) So that the brook Kishon, which rises out of Mount
A. M. 3985. A. C. I42G. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH,
at the foot of the mountain, in hopes of cutting ofi'Barak1s
retreat. Upon this Deborah advised Barak not to stay
till Sisera came up to him, but early next morning, to
march directly down, and fall upon him, with all the
assurance imaginable of success. The Hebrew general
followed her directions ; and coming down upon the
enemy before they were aware, he charged them with
such fury, d whilst God, at the same time, by a driving
storm of rain and hail in their faces, struck with such
terror, that they were not able to stand before the
Israelites, but were soon broken, and put to flight. The
pursuit, however, continued all day ; and as the night
approached, the stars shone with an uncommon bright-
ness, to give light to the pursuers ; and the river Kishon,
e being swelled with the hasty rain, drowned the pursued,
and carried the dead bodies away towards the Mediter-
ranean sea.
Sisera, in the mean time, seeing his whole army
broken and dispersed, quitted his chariots, and was mak-
ing his escape on foot, when Jael, the wife / of Heber
Tabor, must run by Mount Carmel, which stands on the sea-
shore: and as Carmel stands west of Mount Tabor, the course of
this river, which extends from the one to the other, must be so
likewise. — Wells'1 Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2. c. 6.
[After a course of thirty miles it falls into the Mediterranean
at a place called Caipha, in a gulf formed by Mount Carmel and
the Point of Acre. Near the mouth of this river, in the same
gulf, another smaller stream discharges itself, which was called
by the ancients Belus, and was celebrated for its sands, which
were used in making glass. It is at present called Nahr Haloro.]
—Ed.
d Josephus relates the matter of God's interposition in this
action in the following words: — " The armies were no sooner
engaged, but there arose a violent wind, with a most impetuous
tempest of hail and rain along with it. The storm, driving just
in the face of the Canaanites, made not only their bows and
slings useless, but their weapons likewise designed for close fight ;
for they could not so much as open their eyes against the weather ;
and their fingers were so benumbed with cold, too, that they
could not handle their arms. In the conclusion, it came to pass,
that the Canaanites' army was broken, dispersed, and cut to
pieces : so that betwixt those that fell by the sword, and those
that were trampled to death under the horses' feet, those that
were torn to pieces by the chariots, and those that fled away,
and fell into the hands of the Israelites in their flight, this pro-
digious army, which, according to our author, consisted of thirty
thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and three thousand armed
chariots, was, in effect, totally destroyed." — Antiquities, b. 5. c. 6.
e Mr Maundrell tells us, that in the condition wherein he saw
this river, its waters were low and inconsiderable ; but in passing
along the side of the plain, he discerned the tracts of many lesser
torrents falling down into it from the mountains, which must
needs make it swell exceedingly upon sudden rains. — Journey
from Aleppo to Jerusalem.
f He was of the posterity of Hobab, the son of Jethro, father-
in-law of Moses, and is here called a Kenite, because originally
he descended from those people who dwelt westward of the Dead
Sea, and extended themselves pretty far into Arabia Petrsea.
The word Ken, from whence they took their name, signifies a
nest, a hole, or a cave ; and to this the prophet might allude,
when he addresses himself to them in these words: ' Strong is
thy dwelling place, and thou puttest thy nest on a rock: never-
theless the Kenite shall be wasted, until Ashur shall cany
thee away captive, Num. xxiv. 21. These Kenites, indeed,
were some of the people whose lands God had promised to
the descendants of Abraham; nevertheless, in consideration
of Jethro, all that submitted to the Israelites were permitted
to live in their own country. In Num. x. 29, we find that
Hobab was invited by Moses to accompany him into the land
of Canaan, and, in all probability, he accepted the invita-
tion. At their first coming, they settled themselves in
the territories of Jericho; but having contracted a particular
friendship with the tribe of Judah, they removed with them into
Shct. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
403
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
the Kenite, seeing him coming, went to meet him, and
invited him into her tent ; a which he readily accepted,
as apprehending no danger from her whose husband was
his master's ally. The fatigue of the day had made him
very thirsty, and therefore he entreated Jael to give him
a little water ; but when, instead of water, she had given
him as much milk as he desired ; * and he had strictly
charged her to deny him, in case that any body should in-
quire for him, he laid himself down to rest. No sooner
was he well asleep, but Jael, taking an hammer and a
long tent-nail, set it to his temple, and, struck with
such a force, that it quite pierced through his head, and
pinned him to the ground ; and when Barak, in pursuit
of him, came that way, she called him in, and showed
him the place and posture in which his enemy lay.
This victory, which was followed c with new successes
every day, put an end to the oppression of the north
for forty years. It proved the utter ruin of this king-
dom of the Canaanites in Hazor : and, upon many
accounts, was attended with so many signal events, that
the prophetess Deborah composed a triumphant song in
commemoration of it, rf wherein she magnifies the deliv-
the country that fell to their lot, (Judges i. 16.) Every family
of them did not so: for this Heher we find, for some reasons that
are not mentioned, had settled his habitation in the tribe of Naph-
tali, (Judges i. 11.) The Kenites indeed, although they were
proselytes, and worshipped the true God according to the Mosaic
law, yet being strangers by birth, and so not pretending to any
right or title to the land of Canaan, held it best policy, in these
troublesome times, to observe a neutrality, and maintain peace,
as well as they could, both with the Israelites and Canaanites;
and upon this foot it was, that there was a peace between king
Jabin and the house of Heber, and that Sisera, in his distress,
lied to Heber's tent for protection, and put confidence in the
feigned civilities of his wife. — Howell's History of the Bible.
a Judges iv. 17 — 20. Pococke, giving an account of the man-
ner in which he was treated in an Arab tent, in his journey to
Jerusalem, says, his conductor led him two or three miles to his
tent, and that there he sat with his wife and others, round a fire.
"The Arabs are not so scrupulous as the Turks about their wo-
men, and ihough they have their harem, or women's part of the
tent, yet such as they are acquainted with come into it. I was
kept in the harem for greater security; the wife being always
with me, no stranger ever daring to come into the women's
apartment, unless introduced." (Vol. 2. p. 5.) Nothing can lie
a better comment on this passage than this story.
b Judges iv. 19. ' And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave
him drink.' Jael certainly showed her regard to Israel by de-
stroying Sisera, but it is as certain that she did not do it in the
most honourable manner; there was treachery in it; perhaps in
the estimation of those people, the greatest treachery. Among
the later Arabs, giving a person a drink has been thought to be
the strongest assurance of their receiving him under their pro-
tection. When Guy de Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, was taken
prisoner, and was conducted before Saladin, he demanded drink,
and they save him fresh water, which he drank in Saladin's pre-
sence: but when one of his lords would have done the same,
Saladin would not sutler it, because he did not intend to spare
his life; on the contrary, advancing to him, after some expostu-
lation, he cut off his head. — D'Heruelot, p. 371; Harmer, vol.
2. p. 469, p. 175.
c Josephus farther acquaints us, that immediately after this
victory, Barak marched with his army towards Hazor, where he
encountered Jabin by the way, and slew him; and having killed
tin- king, laid the city level with the ground, and afterwards go-
verned Israel for a matter of forty years. — Antiquities, 1). 5. c. 6.
d Dr Hales, in his Analysis of Chronology, vol. ii. second
edition, has given a new and beautiful translation of this song,
more literal and elegant than the common English version. The
translations of Boothroyd and Kennicott are also excellent,
although the arrangement of the latter is too artificial; there is
nothing more elegant and sublime than this song in the whole
. M. 3085. A. C. H2G. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
erance it wrought, by recounting the many calamities
which the Israelites before laboured under ; acknow-
ledges its proceeding from the same divine Being, who
descended in great majesty to give the law on Mount
Sinai ; calls upon all those who partook in the benefits
of it, to join in the praises of its great Author ; commends
those tribes that came readily to the war, and upbraids (
all those who declined their country's service.
During this forty years' peace, the, people again
rebelled against God, and God took the punishment of
them into his own hands, by sending upon them a griev-
vous famine, wherein several were forced to remove
into strange countries ; and, among the rest, / one
Elimelech, a man of Bethlehem, with his wife Naomi,
and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, went into the land
of Moab to live. Elimelech died there, and his relic
married her sons to two women of the country, whose
names were Orpah and Ruth. About two years after
this, Naomi's two sons died, and she, resolving to return
to her own country, desired her daughters-in-law to
remain in Moab. Orpah, with tears, took leave of her
mother ; but Ruth could, by no means, be persuaded to
part with her ; and therefore she accompanied her to
Bethlehem, where, by S her mother's art and contrivance,
she so managed the matter, that she married Boaz, by
whom she had Obed, who was the father of Jesse, and
the grandfather of David, and from whom, according to
the flesh, the Saviour of the Avorld was lineally de-
scended.
range of sacred poetry, and neither Homer nor Virgil have come
near it. — Ed.
c Judges v. 30. ' Have they not divided the prey: to Sisera
a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of
divers colours of needlework on both sides.' This allusion in the
triumphant song of Deborah is to the richest part of the spoil, which
was highly esteemed by the people. Pliny mentions a great va-
riety of them, both in his own and in ancient times; for lie takes
notice, that Homer speaks of painted garments, which shone in
flowers and trees in beautiful colours. The Phrygians afterwards
wrought these with needles, and Attalus invented the interweav-
ing of gold into them. But, for these garments, Babylon was
above all places famous ; from whence they had the name of Baby-
lonish garments, and were much valued, (Josh, vii.) It ;<\ pi are
from Homer, (II. vi. line 2S9, &c.) that the women of Sidon
were famous for such kind of variegated works before the Trojan
war. We find that Helen and Andromache were employed on
such at their looms.— Ed.
/The book of Ruth, which takes its title from tiie person whose
story is there principally recorded, is properly an appendix to the
book of Judges, and an introduction to that of Samuel; and is
therefore not only placed between them, but supposed to be wrote
by one and the same hand. Its subject is very different from
the rest, and is therefore made a distinct treatise. It is indeed
of so private a nature, that at the time of its being wrote, the
generality of the people might have thought it not worth record-
ing; but we Christians may plainly see the wisdom of God in
having it done. It had been foretold to the Jews, that the Messiah
should be of the tribe of Jlldah, and it was afterwards revealed far-
ther, that he should be of the family of David : and therefore it was
necessary, for the full understanding of these prophecies, that the
history of the family of David, in that tribe, should be written
before these prophecies were reveak d, that so there might not be
the least sivpicion of any fraud or design. And thus this book,
these prophecies, and the accomplishment of them, serve to illus-
trate and explain < ach other. — Bedford's Scrip. Chtvn., b. 5. c. 5.
a The whole management of this allair i« recorded in the book
of Ruth, to which we refer our reader, having less reason to be
prolix in a matter that concerns a private family only, and what
had not been related ill such a particular manner, but for the
reasons that we have already assigned.
404
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
After the death of Deborah and Barak, the Israelites
fell again into their old impiety, and were again given
up into the hand of their enemies. The Midianites were
a people situated on the east side of the river Jordan,
whom the children of Israel, in their passage to the land
of Canaan, l had almost totally destroyed ; but it is not
improbable, that some of that nation, saving themselves
by flight into other countries, and after the Israelites
were settled in Canaan returning thither again, might,
in the space of 200 years, repossess the land where
they dwelt before, and still retain the name of Midian-
ites. These people, together with their neighbours, the
Amalekites, « and some other eastern nations, for seven
years, kept the Israelites in such subjection, that they
were forced to betake themselves to the mountains, and
to dwell in dens and caves, and fortified places, from
whence, as the spring came on, they stole out to cultivate
and sow their land ; but all to no purpose : for towards
the time of harvest, these enemies made inroads into the
country, and having destroyed the increase of the
earth, and killed all the cattle which fell into their
hands, they then returned home, and left the poor
Israelites nothing to support themselves withal. Upon
this sore calamity, the people began to be sensible of
their apostasy, and to humble themselves under the
afflicting hand of God ; whereupon God * sent them a
prophet who reproached them sharply with their base
ingratitude ; but at the same time, c sent his angel to
1 Num. xxxi. 7, &c.
a Though the Midianites were the principal people concerned
in these invasions and inroads, yet, besides the Amalekites, they
had other confederate nations, who are called ' the children of the
east, (Judges vi. 3, 3-3,) by whom we may understand the Am-
monites and Moabites, as lying east of the land of Israel, if not
the Ishmaelites, and others that inhabited the parts of Arabia.
The children or people of the east, in Gen. xxix. 1. denote the
inhabitants of Mesopotamia; but these seem to be too far distant
to have any part in these incursions ; and therefore since we
read, (Gen. xxv. G.) that Abraham sent away the sons of his con-
cubines, particularly the sons of Keturah, one whereof was Midian,
the father of the Midianites, eastward, into the east country, it
may not improbably be inferred, that by 'the children of the
east,' in this history of Gideon, are denoted the descendants of
the other sons of Keturah, and of the oilier brothers of Midian,
who had settled themselves in the eastern parts adjoining to Mi-
dian.— Wells' Geography of the. Old Testament.
b Who this prophet was, we have no manner of intimation
given us. The Jews generally fancy that he was Phinehas ;
but Phinehas must by this time have been above five hundred
years old, which far exceeded the stated period of human life
then. St Austin is of opinion, that he was the same with the
angel which soon after appeared to Gideon; but it is far more
likely, that God still continued other prophets among the Israel-
ites, besides the high priest, to put them in mind of their duty,
and to call them to repentance, when they forsook him: for, from
the case of Deborah, who is said to have had the spirit of pro-
phecy, it appears, that at least in extraordinary cases, God failed
not to raise up such persons among them. It is remarked,
however, of this prophet, be he who he will, that he gave the Israel-
ites no hopes of the divine assistance, but only upbraided them
with their sins. However, when he tells them, that their cala-
mities were occasioned by their idolatry, he plainly intimates,
that if they would return to the true worship of God, he would
hgairi look graciously upon them and deliver them; and accord-
ingly we find, that the history of their deliverance immediately
follows. — Patrick's and Le Clcrc's Commentaries.
c That he was not a mere created angel, is plain from the
incommunicable name, Jehovah, which he assumes, and where-
by he sutlers himself so frequently to be called, (Judges, vi. 14,
1<>, 23, 24, 25, 27.) And therefore the Jews, according to
tlnir Targum, which styles him 'the Word of the Lord,' look
M. 3985. A. C. 142G. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
Gideon, the son of Joash, who dwelt at d Ophrah, and
was then thrashing out his corn, in a private and unsus-
pected place, the better to conceal it from the depreda-
tion of the enemy.
To him the angel signified the purport of his message,
which was to acquaint him, that the Lord had made
choice of him for the deliverance of his people. Gideon
at first excused himself upon account of the obscurity of
his family and fortune ; and when the angel urged the
thing, he desired of him some token of the divine mission,
and at the same time, requested him to accept of a small
entertainment from his hands. e The angel seemed not
to refuse the invitation, whereupon Gideon hastened, and
having boiled a kid, and made some unleavened cakes, he
spread a table, and set them before him ; but the angel
ordered him to take them hence, and place them upon a
rock hard by, and so pour the broth upon them, which,
though it might seem a little strange, Gideon did ; and,
as soon as the angel had touched them with the staff that
was in his hand, immediately there issued fire out of the
rock, which consumed them, whilst himself, at the same
time, vanished out of sight.
Convinced by this miracle, that it was a messenger
from heaven who appeared to him, Gideon began to fear,
as the notion then was, that he should not long survive
it ; but being assured by the angel, though then invisible,
that no harm should befall him, he built a monument,
which he called Jehovah-shalom, that is, the Lord of
peace, in commemoration of this gracious interview ;
and being that night admonished in a dream to destroy
the altar of Baal, and cut down the grove that surrounded
it ; to build an altar to God upon the top of this wonder-
ful rock, and to offer a burnt-sacrifice to him with one
of his father's bullocks, he readily obeyed : and taking
ten of his father's servants with him, he demolished the
one, and erected the other by next morning ; choosing
the night to do it in, that he might meet with no obstruc-
upon this angel, not merely as an heavenly messenger sent horn
God, but as the Son of God himself, appearing in the form of an
angel. — Patrick's Commentary.
d Gideon was of the family of Abiezer, of the tribe of Manas-
seh ; and so the Ophrah where he dwelt must be understood to be
situated in the half tribe of Manasseh, on the west side of Jordan ;
and for this reason it is styled ' Ophrah of the Abiezrites,'
(Judges viii. 32.) to distinguish it from another Ophrah that lay
in the tribe of Benjamin. — /Fells' Geography of the Old Testa-
ment, vol. 3. c. 6.
e Judges vi. 19. And Gideon went in, and made ready a
kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour: the flesh he put
in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out
to him under the oak, and presented it.' There is one passage
in Dr Shaw, that affords a perfect commentary on this text. It
is in his preface, (p. 12.) " Besides a bowl of milk, and a basket
of figs, raisins, or dates, which, upon our arrival, were presented
to us to stay our appetites, the master of the tent where we
lodged, fetched us from his flock, according to the number of our
company, a kid, or a goat, a lamb, or a sheep ; half of which was
immediately seethed by his wife, and served up with cuscasoce:
the rest was cut into pieces and roasted ; which we reserved for
our breakfast or dinner next day.
May we not imagine that Gideon, presenting some slight
refreshment to the supposed prophet, according to the present
Arab mode, desired him to stay till he could provide something
more substantial for him; that he immediately killed a kid,
■Seethed part of it, cut into pieces and roasted another part of it,
and when it was ready, brought out the stewed meat in a pot,
with unleavened cakes of bread which he had baked ; the roasted
pieces in a basket for his carrying away with him for some after
repast in his journey. — Harmer, vol. 1. p. 330. — Ed.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
405
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3985. A. C. 1426. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
tion. On the morrow, when the people understood that
Gideon was the person who had put this affront upon
Baal, they came and demanded him of his father, that
they might put him to death ; but, instead of complying
with their demand, his father's answer was, ' that a if
Baal was a god, it was his business, and not theirs, to
avenge his own quarrel ;' and from this answer, where-
with he appeased the tumult, Gideon ever after obtained
the name of Jerub-baal, that is, the opposer of Baal.6
About this time the Midianites and their company, c
passing over the river Jordan, came and encamped in
d the valley of Jezreel ; upon which Gideon, being
moved by a divine impulse, summoned all those of his
own family to take up arms first, and then sent messen-
gers to several adjacent tribes, exhorting them to shake
oft' the yoke of the Midianites, and to join with him ;
which accordingly they did, and came in such numbers,
that, in a short time, his army amounted to two and
thirty thousand men, though small in comparison of the
enemy's forces, which consisted of no less than a hun-
dred and thirty-five thousand.
As soon as each tribe's complement of men was arrived,
Gideon, being willing to satisfy them that he did not act
this on his own head, but was the person appointed by
heaven to be their leader and deliverer, desired of God
to give them some token of his commission ; and the
token which he made choice of was, — that upon his lay-
er It is generally supposed that Gideon's father had been a
worshipper if not a priest of Baal ; and therefore it is not unlike-
ly, that he had by tins time been convinced by his son, that God
had given him a commission to recover his people, and to begin
with this reformation ; and this made him appear so boldly in
his son's cause, because he knew it was the cause of God. —
Poole's Annotations, and Patrick's Commentary.
b Boothroyd renders this passage, (Judges vi. 31,) as follows:
' And Joash said to all that stood against him, will ye contend
for Baal? Should ye preserve him who hath contended with
him, he will die ere morning. If he be a god he will con-
tend for himself, with him who hath broken down his altar.'
And adds in a note ; " I have adhered to the order of the text, and
the sense given, I am satisfied, is that intended. The common
version is contradictory ; it makes Joash propose, that he who
pleadeth for Baal, should be immediately put to death, and then
assert that Baal would plead for himself." " I have followed
Menochius, (see Poole) and consider the meaning to be, ' If
Baal be really a god, ye need not avenge his quarrel, or desire
the death of my son: Baal will speedily avenge himself; and
you will see the demolisher of his altar die a sudden death.'" —
En.
c That is, ' the Amalekites and the children of the east.' (Jud.
vi. 3.) This included the posterity of Abraham's sons by Ketu-
rah, of whom the Midianites were the principal nation, and
appear to have taken the lead in the enterprise here recorded.
(Jud. xxv. (J.) It also included the Ishmaelites, (Jud. viii. 24.)
who had settled in the vicinity of the Midianites in the wilder-
ness of Paran. (Gen. xxxvii. 28. xxi. 21.) — Ed.
d The city of Jezreel, which gave name to the valley, belonged
to the half tribe of Manasseh, on the west of Jordan, and lay in
the confines of that half tribe and the tribe of Issachar, as appears
from Josh. xix. 18. In the history of the kings of Israel, this
city is frequently made mention of, where, by reason of the
pleasantness of its situation, some of them had a royal palace,
though their capital was Samaria. The vale of Jezreel, which,
as we said before, is now called the plain of Esdraelon, is, accord-
ing to Mr Maundrell, of a vast extent, [It is estimated at thirty
miles in length and twenty in breadth.] very fertile, but uncul-
tivated, and only serving the Arabs for pasturage: but some have
supposed, that the valley of Jezreel here mentioned, denotes
some other lesser valley, lying between Mount Hermon and
Mount Gilboa. — Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
c. 6.
ing a fleece of wool on the ground, e the dew might be
upon the fleece only, and the earth round about it be dry,
which accordingly happened ; and then, inverting the
former manner, he desired that the fleece might be dry,
while the ground all around it was wet; which accord-
ingly came to pass likewise. / Confirmed by these
signs, that it was the will of God that he should enter
upon action, Gideon marched directly to the camp of
the Midianites, who then lay in the plain of Jezreel ;
but before he came thither, God rightly foreseeing, that
if this army conquered the Midianites, they would vainly
impute it to their own courage or numbers, and not to
his assistance, ordered Gideon to make proclamation in
the camp, that whoever was diffident of the success of
the undertaking, should have liberty to return home. S
Whereupon 22,000 quitted the field, so that 10,000 only
remained with him. It might be thought possible, how-
ever, for these 10,000 to defeat the army of the Midian-
ites ; and, therefore, God, resolving that the glory of
the whole victory should be accounted his own, ordered
e He supposed that the dew which was distilled from heaven,
was a divine gift, as the Scripture after testifies, and therefore
he desired that it might be directed by God, that though it
commonly falls everywhere, by his extraordinary providence, it
might now water only his fleece. Some are apt to think, that he
chose a fleece for this purpose, not only because it was ready at
hand, but the better to express how the land was shorn by the
Midianites, even as the sheep had been !-y him; that when he
begged the dew, as a sign of the divine favour, might fall upon
the fleece, it was to represent the kindness of God to him; and
when he begged it might fall upon the whole ground, to repre-
sent his favour to all the people. But there is farther reason
why he might desire to have the miracle inverted : for, as it is
in the very nature of the wool to draw moisture to it, some might
be apt to think, that there was no great matter in this ; and,
therefore, he requested of God a second miracle, which was
contrary to the former.' — Patrick's Commentary.
f Judges vi. 3S. ' And it was so : for he rose up early on the
morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wrung the dew out
of the fleece, a bowl full of water.' It may seem a little impro-
bable to us, who inhabit these northern climates, where the dews
are inconsiderable, how Gideon's fleece, in one night, should
contract such a quantity, that when he came to wring it, a bowl
full of water was produced. Irwin, in his voyage up the Red
Sea, when on the Arabian shores, says, "difficult as we find it
to keep ourselves cool in the daytime, it is no easy matter to
defend our bodies from the damps of the night, when the wind
is loaded with the heaviest dews that ever fell ; we lie exposed
to the whole weight of the dews, and the cloaks in which we
wrap ourselves, are as wet in the morning as if they had been
immersed in the sea " — p. 87.
g The text reads, ' Whosoever is afraid let him return, and
depart early from Mount Gilead.' Gideon, however, was cer-
tainly not at Mount Gilead at this time, but rather mar Mount
Gilboa. Gilead was on the other side of Jordan. Calmet thinks
there must either have been two Gileads, which does not from
Scripture appear to be the case, or that the Hebrew text is here
corrupted, and that for Gilead, we should read Gilboa. This
reading, though adopted by Houbigant and Le Clerc, whom
Boothroyd follows, is not countenanced by any MS., nor by any
of the versions. Dr Hales endeavours to reconcile the passage
as it stands with the circumstances of the case, by the supposition
that there were in Gideon's army many of the eastern Manas-
sites who came from Mount Gilead; and that these probably
were more afraid of their neighbours, the Midianites, than the
western tribes were; and therefore proposes to read the text thus:
' Whosoever from Mount Gilead is fearful and afraid, let him
return (home) and depart early. So there returned (home) 22,000
of the people.' Dr Adam Clarke thinks this perhaps, on the
whole, the best method of solving the difficulty — the intelligent
reader will form his own opinion. — See Clarke and Boutin oyd
on the passage, and Hales' Analysis, vol. 1. p. 424 — 425, and
vol. 2. p. 281.— Ed.
406
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1143 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3985. A. C. 142G. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
Gideon a to lead the soldiers down to the water to drink,
where he would give him a signal what men were fit for
his purpose, and what not ; and the signal was this, —
That they who * took up water in their hands, and lapped
it, should go with him ; but they who laid themselves
down to drink, should be dismissed ; which experiment
reduced them to no more than 300.
These 300 men he ordered to hold themselves in
readiness, and to have every one a trumpet, a lamp, and
an empty pitcher to conceal the light which the lamp
would otherwise give ; and while they were providing
themselves with these, he took his servant with him, and
went down to the enemies' camp, where he heard a
Midianite relating his dream to his companion, which
the other interpreted in Gideon's favour ; so that return-
ing to the camp, he drew his men out, and dividing them
into three companies of 100 men each, he came upon the
enemy c in the dead time of the night. The watchword
was, ' the sword of the Lord and of Gideon ;' and as every
a Mr Le Clere is of opinion, that the sacred historian has
omitted one circumstance, which, nevertheless, in the very
nature of the thing is implied, namely, that Gideon, when he
led his men down to the water, did forbid them to make use of
any cup or pot, or such like thing : for lie thinks it incongruous
(as well he may) that among such a number as 10,000 men, no
one should be furnished with some drinking vessel or other.
But then, had any of these been permitted to be used upon this
occasion, the experiment could not have been made. — Comment.
on Judges vii. 6.
b Interpreters arc at a sad puzzle to conceive, for what possible
reason God made a distinction between the soldiers who lapped
water in their hands, and those that laid themselves down to
drink. Some of the Jewish doctors are of opinion, that all
except 300 who lapped, had been accustomed to the worship
of Baal, which they unwarily discovered by their kneeling
to drink: but this is a groundless and far-fetched conceit.
The notion of those who impute these 300 men's lapping,
some to their sloth and laziness, and others to their timorousness,
and the great fear they were in of being surprised by the enemy,
is of no more validity: for though God, if he thought fit, might
have employed the most dastardly among them upon this expedi-
tion, that the glory of the victory might entirely redound to him-
self; yet, since we are told all the fearful persons were dismissed
before, and since it but badly befits the character of the courage-
ous to be lazy, this action of lapping is rather to be accounted a
token of their temperance, and of the nobleness of their spirit,
which made them so desirous to engage the enemy, that they
would not stay to drink, but, though they were very thirsty, con-
tented themselves to moisten their mouths, as we say, with a
little water; whereas the rest indulged themselves so far, as to
drink their bellyful. But, after all, the true reason and design
of this method seems to be only this, — That God was minded to
reduce Gideon's army to a very small number, which might
very likely be done by this means. For, as the season of the
year was hot, and the generality of the soldiers weary, thirsty,
and faint, it was most probable, that they would lie down, as
indeed they did, and refresh themselves plentifully, and scarce
to be expected that any great number would deny themselves in
this matter. — Patrick's Commentary, and Sawtin's Gideon's de-
feat of the Midianites.
i The expression in the text is, ' in the beginning of the
middle watch:' for though the Romans, in after ages, divided the
night into four watches, (Mat. xiv. 25.), yet, in the eastern
parts, and in more ancient times, it consisted but of three,
whereof the first began at six, and continued four hours. The
second, therefore, is called the ' middle watch,' and began at
ten; so that we may suppose, that it was some time after
this, that Gideon alarmed the Midianitish camp; and the reasons
why he chose this part of the night to do it in, are obvious, be-
cause the trumpets would then seem to sound louder, and the
lights to shine brighter, and so both increase the consternation of
the enemy, and conceal the smallness of his own army. — Poole's
Annotations.
soldier had directions to do as his general did, they
all broke their pitchers, brandished their lamps, and
sounded their trumpets together.
The Midianites, hearing so many trumpets, and seeing
so many lights at once, supposed themselves to be
attacked by a formidable army ; and so rising in a
fright, and mistaking their friends for their enemies, d
they fell upon one another, until they had put every
thing into the utmost confusion. By this means, Gideon
having obtained an easy victory, sent to the rest of the
army, who, upon his proclamation, had withdrawn them-
selves, some to pursue the routed enemy, and others to
secure the passes of the river Jordan, in order to prevent
their retreat.
The passes, however, could not all be secured ; so
that some of the enemy's troops having made a shift to
cross the river, Gideon, with his 300 men, pressed hard
after them, while the other part of the army destroyed
those who stayed behind ; and having taken the two
Midianitish princes, e Oreb and Zeeb, they cut off their
heads, and sent them to Gideon.
Gideon, in the mean time, and his small party, were in
full chase of two other princes of Midian, Zeba, and Zal-
munna ; and when he came to Succoth and Penuel, two
towns on the other side of Jordan, in the tribe of Gad,
he desired of them some provision for his men, because
they were faint and weary ; but instead of giving him
any refreshment, they ridiculed the smallness of his army,
for which insolence he vowed to be revenged of them,
upon his return. Continuing his pursuit, therefore, with
his small fatigued party, he came up with the enemy at
Karcor, where the two Midianitish kings, thinking that
they had now sufficiently escaped, were regardless of all
danger ; but Gideon falling upon them unexpectedly,
surprised and defeated them, and having taken them pri-
soners, carried them in triumph with him into Succoth,
where he executed the vengeance which he had threatened,
by crushing the princes of that place to death, under
thorns and briars, killing the people of Penuel, and de-
molishing its fortifications. Zeba and Zahnumia, in their
march, had laid all the country waste, and put many to
the sword, otherwise Gideon was inclinable to have
shown them some mercy ; but understanding by their own
confession, that they had slain his brethren at Tabor, he
d There might be several reasons for their doing this: —
Either because the night was so dark that they could not dis-
tinguish friends from foes ; or because the thing was so sudden,
that it struck them with horror and amazement; or because they
suspected treachery, as they might easily do, since the army
consisted of several nations, (Jud. vi. o,), or because God had
infatuated them, as he had many others on the like occasions. —
Poole's Annotations.
e As the language of the Ishmaelites, the Midianites, and the
Amalekites, who dwelt in Arabia, was originally the same, be-
cause they all descended from Abraham, their common father ;
so we may infer, that there was little or no difference in them
at this time. Oreb, in the Hebrew, signifies a crote, and Zeeb,
a wolf; and these are no improper words to represent the saga-
ciousness and fierceness which should be in two such great com-
manders. Nor was it an uncommon thing for great families, in
ancient times, to derive their names from such like creatures,
either as omens, or monuments of their undaunted courage and
dexterity in military achievements. But after all, it seems
every whit as probable, that these were only nicknames, which
the Israelites gave these two princes of Midian, to denote their
fierceness and rapaeioumess of prey. — Bedford's Scripture
Chronology, b. 5. c. 3; Lc Clcrc's Commentary.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING INTO CANAAN, &c.
407
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443: OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
ordered his son Jether to fall upon them, but as he
was but a youth, and seemed a little timorous, « he him-
self despatched them with his own hand, having first or-
dered them to be stripped of their royal ornaments, u and
their camels of their rich trappings and furniture.
These great and glorious actions, in defence of his
country's liberty, raised Gideon's name to such a height
that the people came, and voluntarily offered to settle
the government upon him and his family ; which he mo-
destly and generously rejecting, and desiring only, as
an acknowledgment of his services, to have the pendants
or ear-rings taken in the plunder of the Midianites given
him, the people readily consented, and, over and above
these, threw in the costly ornaments, and the robes of the
kings, together with the golden c chains, which were
about the camels' necks, the whole amounted to a prodi-
gious value ; and of these rich materials he made an
ephod, and placed it in the city of Ophrah, as a monu-
ment only of his victory, though in after times, it came
to be perverted to a bad use, gave occasion to a fresh
apostasy, and proved the ruin of Gideon's family.
Gideon, while he lived had several wives, by whom,
in all, he had seventy sons, besides one by a concubine,
d whom she named Abimelech. As soon as his father
was dead, this Abimelech, who was a bold aspiring youth,
a In ancient times, it was as much a custom for great men to
do execution upon offenders, as it is now a usual thing for them
to pronounce sentence upon them. They had not then, as we
have now, such persons as the Romans called carnifices, or public
executioners; and therefore Saul bade such as waited on him
kill the priests; and Doeg, one of his chief officers, did it, (1
Sam. xxii. 17, 18.) But the reason why Gideon would have had
his son do this execution, was that he might be early animated
against the enemies of Israel, even as Hannibal is reported, when
he was a boy, to have been incensed against the Romans. {Pa-
trick's Commentary^) In these ages it would be thought barba-
rous for a king to command his son to perform an execution like
that mentioned in this passage: but anciently it was thought no
dishonour. Homer (Odyss. b. xxii.) represents Ulysses as en-
joining such a task upon his son, which was instantly performed.
See also Virgil, /En. xi. 15. — Ed.
b Judges viii. 26. ' And purple raiment that was on the
kings of Midian.' Purple seems anciently to liave been appro-
priated to kings, and to them only on whom they bestowed it.
It is here mentioned by the sacred historian as being found on
the Midianitisli kings. A garment of fine linen and purple is
given to a favourite by king Ahasuerus, (Esther viii. 15.) The
Jews made a decree that Simon should wear purple and gold, and
that none of the people should wear purple, or a buckle of gold,
without his permission, in token that he was the chief magistrate
of the Jews, (1 Maccab. xlii.) Thus also Homer describes a
king;—
Iu ample mode
A robe of military purple llow'd
O'er all his frame: illustrious on his breast,
The double clasping- gold the king confess'd.
Odyss. xix. 261. Pope.
c The word which we render chains, is in the original, little
moons, which the Midianites might wear strung together about
their camels' necks, either by way of ornament or superstition,
because they, as well as all other people of Arabia, were very
zealous worshippers of the moon. — Le Clerc's Commentary.
d What the name of his other sons were, we have no mention
made in sacred writ; but the name of this one is particularly
set down, because the following story depends upon it: and not
only so, but his mother perhaps might give him this name,
which signifies, my father a king, out of pride and arrogance, that
she might be looked upon as the wife of one who was thought to
deserve a kingdom, though he did not accept it: and it is not
improbable, that the very sense of this might be one means to
inflame the mind of her son afterwards, to affect the royal dignity.
— Patrick's Commentary.
M. 4045. A. C. 1366. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH,
tampered with the people of Shechem, the place of his
nativity, and where his mother's family had no small in-
terest, to make him their king. They, by his persuasions,
were inclinable to do it; and, that he might not want
money to carry on his design, furnished him with some
out of the treasury of « their god Baal-berith, wherewith
he hired a company of profligate fellows to attend him.
With these he repaired to his father's at Ophrah, and
having seized all his brethren, except Jotham the young-
est, who made his escape, he slew them all /upon one
stone, and when he returned to Shechem, instead of
meeting with detestation for this unnatural murder, was
in a general assembly of the people elected their king.
AY hen young Jotham heard of tliis, he went upon
Mount Gerizim, which overlooks the city of Shechem,
and from thence, in a parabolic speech, represented to
s the people his father's modesty and self-denial, in refus-
e The learned Bochart is of opinion, that the Baal here men-
tioned was the same with Beroe, the daughter of Venus and
Adonis, desired in marriage by Neptune, but given to Bacchus:
and that she gave her name to Berith in Phoenicia, where she
was much worshipped, and thence translated a goddess into
other parts. But though the word Baal, as he maintains,
be frequently used in a feminine sense, yet it can hardly
be imagined, but that the sacred historian, if he had been
minded to express a goddess, might have found out some way of
distinguishing her; might have called her, for instance, Bahalah-
berith, the lady, or goddess of Berith, without making both the
words of a masculine termination. And therefore the most sim-
ple and natural manner of explaining the name, is to take it in
general for the god who presides over covenants and contracts, to
whom it belongs to maintain them, and to punish all those that
violate them. For it is to be observed, that the most barbarous
as well as the most knowing, the most religious as well as the
most superstitious nations, have always looked upon God as the
witness, as well as the vindicator of oaths and covenants ; that the
Greeks had their Zeus Horkios, as well as the Latins their Jupi-
ter Pistius, or Deus Fidius, or Fecialis, whom they looked upon
as a god of honesty and uprightness, always superintending in
treaties and alliances. And for this reason not improbably, the
house of their god Berith was the citadel, the arsenal, and the trea-
sury of the Shechemites, even as Plutarch informs us, that in the
temple of Saturn the Romans reposited both their archives and
public wealth. — Bochart, Canaan, b. 2. c. 17. ; Poole's Annota-
tions in locum ; Calmet's Dictionary under the word Baal-berith}
and Jurieu's History of Dogmas and Religions, part 4. c. 1.
/This stone some will have to be an altar, which Abimelech
dedicated to the idol Berith, and erected in the same place where
his father Gideon had destroyed his altar before; and so they ac-
count that this slaughter of his sons was designed for an expiatory
sacrifice of their father's crime in demolishing the altar and grove
dedicated to that idol. But this is a little too far-fetched, though
there is hardly any other reason to be given, why they should
all be murdered upon one and the same stone. — Patrick's Com-
mentary, and Poole's Annotations.
g This is the first fable that we find any where upon record ;
and from hence it appears, that such fictions as these, wherein
the most serious truths arc represented, were in use among tin-
Jews, as they are still in the eastern countries, long before
the time of iEsop, or any other author that we know of. Various
are the reasons that may be assigned for the first invention of
them; but these two seem to be the principal: 1. Because men
would sutler themselves to be reprehended in this guise, when
they would not endure plain wards; and, 2. Because they heard
them with delight and pleasure, and remembered them better
than any grave or rational discourses.
' The trees went birth on a time, to anoint a king over them,'
(so that anointing was in use 2CO years before the first kings of
Israel:) ' and they said unto the olive-tree, Reign over US. But
the olive-tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, where-
with by me they honour Goil and man,' (because oil was ofiered
in sacrifice to God, and fed the lamps of his house, besides all the
other uses wherein it was serviceable to man,) ' and go to be pro-
408
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
LBook V.
A. M. 3561. A. C. 1413; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4045. A. C. 1366. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
irig- to have the government settled on him and his family,
which they had now conferred on one, as much inferior
in virtue and honour to Gideon, and his lawful sons, as
the bramble is to the olive-tree, the fig-tree, or the vine.
And then expostulating the injury done his family, and
upbraiding them with their ingratitude, he appeals to their
consciences, whether they had done right or not, and
denounces a curse against them for their siding with
Abimelech in all his wicked deed .
Having thus delivered himself to the Shechemites,
Jotham made his « escape to Beer, where he lived secure
from Abimelech's rage ; and it wa not long before his
curse began to operate. For the people of Shechem, b
moted over the trees ? And the trees said to the fig-tree, Come
thou and reign over us. But the fig-tree said to them, Should I
forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, (an apt representation
of that content and fulness of pleasure which may be enjoyed in
a private life, and cannot without folly be exchanged for the
troubles and cares that men meet with in the management
of public affairs,) ' and go to be promoted over the trees ?
Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou and reign
over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine,
which cheereth God and man,' (a form of speech imitated by
heathen authors, especially by Virgil, (Georg. b. 2,) where,
speaking of some generous wine, he terms it " even beloved by
the gods in their carousals," since wine, as well as oil, was used
both in Jewish and heathen sacrifices,*) 'and goto be promoted
over the trees ? Then said all the trees unto the bramble,' (the
meanest of all trees, good for nothing but to be burned, and there-
fore fitly resembling Abimelech, from whom the Shechemites
could expect no manner of benefit, but a great deal o. trouble and
vexation,) ' Come thou, and reign over us. And the bramble
said unto the trees, If, in truth, ye anoint me king, then come
and put your trust in my shadow,' (an apt emblem of Abime-
lech's ridiculous vanity, to imagine that he should e able to
maintain the authority of a king, any more than the bramble
could afibrd a shadow or shelter,) ' and if not, let fire come out
of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon (words that
carry a lively image of Abimelech's ostentatious spirit, and me-
naces to take severe vengeance on the nobles of Shechem, such as
the house of Millo, who had been chiefly instrumental in his pro-
motion, in case they should desert him.) This is the parable,
and, in some measure, the interpretation. The only difficulty is,
to know whom these trees are set to signify. And here, some
have thought, that by the olive-tree we are to understand Othniel;
by the fig-tree, Deborah; and by the vine Gideon; for to the two
former, they suppose the offer of the kingdom was made for the
services done their countiy, and by them rejected, as well as by
the last. But for this there is no authority ; neither is there any
necessity in the explication of such fables, to assign a particular
reason for every image that is drawn in them. It is sufficient if
we can but hit off their main intendment, which, in this of
Jotham, was to convince the Shechemites of their folly in choos-
ing a man for their king, who was no more able to protect them,
than a bramble was to cover other trees that should resort to it,
under the shadow of its branches. — Saurin's Dissertations, and
Patrick's Commentary.
b This was a city that stood on the northern frontiers of the
tribe of Judah, about twelve miles from Jerusalem, in the way
to Shechem and Napoloze, which did not acknowledge Abime-
lech for king; and therefore Jotham knew, that he might have
sure refuge and protection there. Dr Richardson says, Beer
seems to have been once a place of considerable consequence. It
has a well of good water, and close to it are the mouldering walls
of a ruined Khan, and on the top of the hill two large arches of
a ruined convent. — Ed.
b In the text the expression is, ' Then God sent an evil spirit,
or spirit of discord, between Abimelech and the men of Shechem,'
(Judg. ix. 23,) which, in Scripture, is an usual form of speech,
and denotes not any positive action, but a permission only, or, at
must, a direction from God. It is observed, however, that this
manner of expression may possibly have given rise to some
notions in the theology of the heathens, when they suppose, that
* Wine, as the Jewish doctors assert, was not only used in their sacrifices, but till the
diiiuVotte. ing was poured out, they did not sing the hymn that was then sung to God.
growing jealous and distrustful of their new king, were
for apprehending and killing him, which made him leave
the place, and escape for his life. As soon as he was
gone, they set up another vile wretch, Gael, the son of
Ebed, to be their governor. Under his protection, the
people ventured out to reap the fruits of the earth, and
having upon this occasion, made themselves merry, they
expressed their detestation of Abimelech, and none was
more forward than Gael to speak contemptibly of him,
and make his boasts what he would do with him, if he
could but once catch him. Zebul, whom Abimelech
intrusted with his concerns in his absence, gave him
intelligence of all that passed, and advised him to come
with some forces, before it was too late. ' Accordingly,
he marches all night, divides his army into four parts,
and early in the morning had beset the city. Gael, though
a very coward, seeing matters reduced to this extremity,
marched out with what forces he had, but was soon
defeated and slain. Abimelech, next day, stormed the
place, and killed all the inhabitants that came in his way ;
but some having betaken themselves to a fort belonging
to the temple of their god Berith, he set fire to it, and
destroyed them all together.
During these times of confusion, the town of Thebez,
not far distant from Shechem, revolted ; and Abimelech,
being now flushed with victory, besieged and took it ;
but the inhabitants flying to a strong tower, c he endea-
voured to burn that, as he had done the other, but not
with the same success. For while he was encouraging
his men, and helping them to set the gate on fire, <* a
woman threw down a piece of millstone upon him, which
the furies are appointed by the gods to sow the seeds of discord
among men.
Thus having said, she sinks beneath the ground,
With furious haste, and shoots the Stygian sound,
To rouse Alecto from the infernal seat
Of her dire sisters, and their dark retreat.
This Fury, fit for her intent, she chose ;
One who delights in wars and human woes.
And a little lower,
'Tis thine to ruin realms, o'erturu a stale,
Betwixt the dearest friends to raise debate,
And kindle kindred blood to mutual hate.
Now shake, from out thy fruitful breast, the seeds
Of envy, discord, and of cruel deeds :
Confound the peace establish'd, and prepare
Their souls to hatred, and their hands to war.
f'iroil, Mn. 7.
c Jud. ix. 51. ' But there was a strong tower within the
city, and thither fled all the men and women, and all they of the
city, and shut it to them.' Besides fortified towns and cities,
we find that in the time of the croisades they had towers for the
people of open towns to fly to in time of danger. Thus in the
reign of Baldwin the Second, when the strength of the kingdom
was collected together to the siege of Tyre, the people of As-
kalon suddenly invaded the country about Jerusalem, and put to
the sword the greatest part of the inhabitants of a town called
Mahomesia, five or six miles from Jerusalem. But tlie old men,
the women, and the children, betaking themselves to a tower,
escaped. {Gesta Dei, per Francos, p. 840.) Towers of this sort
appear to have been in use in very early times. — Harmer, vol. 2.
p. 2m.
d Thus Plutarch relates, that Pyrrhus, at the siege of Argos,
was killed by a woman throwing a tile upon his head ; but there
is something more remarkable in Abimelech's death by a stone,
because, as he slew all his brethren upon one stone, for him to
die by no other instrument carried some stamp of his sin upon it.
The manner of his death, however, puts me in mind of what the
same author records of the Spartan general Lysander, who fell
ingloriously under the walls of Haliartus. " Thus he died," says
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c
409
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
fractured his skull ; so that finding himself mortally
wounded, he called to his armour-bearer to put an end to
his life, that it might not be said he died by the hand of
a woman. Thus God, in his abundant righteousness,
punished both Abhnelech and the men of Shechem
according to their deserts ; and within the space of three
years after their crimes were committed, made them the
instruments of each others' destruction.
After the death of Abimelech, Tolah the son of Puah,
an eminent man of the tribe of Issachar, undertook the
government, and continued in it for three and twenty
years. He dwelt on Mount Ephraim, near the centre
of the country, that the people might with more con-
veniency, resort to him for judgment ; and though there
is not much recorded of him, yet he seems to have been
a prudent and peaceable man ; raised up to reform abuses,
to put down idolatry, to appease tumults, and heal the
wounds which were given to church and state, during
Abimelcch's usurpation.
He was succeeded by Jair, a Gileadite, of the tribe
of Manasseh, the first governor that was raised up out of
any of the tribes beyond Jordan, and who, in the main,
seems to have been more solicitous to a aggrandize his
own family, than to mind the concerns of religion. For
during his administration the people not only worship-
ped Baalim, and Ashtaroth, as they had frequently done
before, but adopted the gods likewise of every neigh-
bouring nation, of the Syrians, the Zidonians, the Am-
monites, the Moabites, and the Philistines ; so that God
being enraged against them, incited the Philistines and
the Ammonites to invade them on all quarters in one and
the same year. Nor did these people make their incur-
sions only upon the tribes that were on the east side of
Jordan, but passing the river, gave the tribes of Judah,
Benjamin, and Ephraim, no small molestation, and by
their sundry defeats, made them feel the weight of their
power.
The Israelites, finding themselves not able to cope
with such powerful enemies, grew sensible of their folly ;
and, to recover the protection of God, renounced all
he, " but not like Cleombrotus, who was slain while he was
gloriously making head against an impetuous enemy at Leuctra,
not like Cyrus, or Epaminondas, who received a mortal wound,
while he was rallying his men, and securing to them the victory.
These great men died in their callings. They died the deatli of
kings and commanders: whereas he, like some common soldier,
or one of the forlorn hope, cast away his life ingloriously ; giving
this testimony to the ancient Spartans, that they did not well to
avoid storming of walls; in which the stoutest man may chance
to fall by the hand, not only of an abject fellow, but by that of a
boy, or a woman, as they say Achilles was slain, in the gates of
Troy, by the hands of the effeminate Paris." — Patrick's Commen-
tary, and Plutarch's Comp. of Lysunder and Sylla.
a The reasons which the Scripture gives us to think, that he
really did aggrandize his own family, are, 1st, because he is said
to have thirty sons, that rode on thirty asses' colts: for as in those
days the Israelites had but few chariots, and were not allowed to
keep many horses, the most honourable of them were used to be
mounted on these creatures, which, in the eastern countries',
were much higher, and more beautiful than they are with us.
2dly, ' They had thirty cities or villages, called after their own
name, in the land of Gilead.' For as we read that Jair, the son
of Manasseh, went and took the small towns of Gilead, and called
them Ilavoth-jair, (Num. xxxii. 41. and Dent. iii. 14.) so we
may presume that this Jair who was afterwards judge of Israel,
recovered the places which his ancestor conquered, and perhaps
added some more to them, that each son of his might have one. —
Le Clerc's Commentary.
A. Iff. 4158. A. C. 12.r>3. JUD. i. TO THK KND OF RUTH.
their idols, and betook themselves to his service in good
earnest; whereupon * his mercy returning with their
repentance, he soon found out means to effect their
deliverance.
There was, at that time, in the half tribe of Manasseh,
which settled on the east side of Jordan, a man of note
among his people, whose name was Gilead, of the family
of that Gilead, the son of Machar, to whom Moses gave
the 1 city of Gilead, from whence the family took their
name. This man had by his wife several sons, and one
c by a concubine, whom he named Jephthah ; but when
his sons grew up, and their father was dead, they expel-
led Jephthah, as having no right of inheritance with
them, so that he was sent to seek his fortune, and, at
length, settled in the d land of Tob ; where, being a man
of great courage and bravery, he was soon made the
captain of a small army, with whom he used to make
excursions into the enemies' country, and sometimes bring
off rich spoils.
The Ammonites had now raised a large army with a
design to invade the country of Gilead itself. The
Gileadites on the other hand, were resolved to defend
their country, and, to that purpose, had got together
1 Num. xxxii. 29.
b This is the most remarkable repentance and reformation that
we meet with in the history of the judges ; and it seems to be
serious, that in the times of those three governors who succeeded
Jephthah, we read nothing of their relapsing into idolatry. And
as their repentance was sincere, so the expression of the divine
compassion towards them, namely, ' that his soul was grieved
for the misery of Israel,' (Judg. x. 16.) is the strongest that we
meet with ; though every one knows, that the divine nature is
not capable of grief properly so called; but the meaning is, that
he quite altered his former intention, and in much mercy, resolv-
ed, upon their repentance, to deliver them.
c Several Jewish doctors are of opinion, that the word Zonah
may signify either one of another tribe, or, one of another nation;
and so Josephus calls Jephthah %ivo; -rtfi <r<jv /^uri^a, a stranger
by the mother's side. It is to be observed, however, that among
the Jews, if such persons as were deemed strangers embraced
the law, their children were capable to inherit among the rest of
their brethren. Jephthah indeed complains of the hard usage lie
met with, but it was upon this occasion, when his country lie
found stood in need of him ; for had he been unjustly dispossessed
of his right of inheritance before, we can hardly suppose, that a
man of his courage and martial spirit would have sat down con-
tented with his exclusion. It is not to be doubted, therefore,
but that he ' was the son of an harlot,' properly so called. But
then the question is, why God should make choice of a person of
his character for so great an instrument of his glory ? To which
it may be replied, 1st, That God has prescribed laws to men, but
none to himself; and can therefore alter his dispensations as he
pleases, according to the circumstances and exigencies of things.
2dly, That as he chooses to act by second causes, he always
makes use of such instruments, as, all things considered, are
properest for this purpose, without regard to any blemishes, for
which they themselves are not accountable: and 3dly, That he
might purposely dispense with the law in this case, to show, that
those who are basely born, ought not to despond, but by a virtu-
ous and good life, expect a share of God's blessings. — BoweWi
History, b. 4. in the notes. [Although it is asserted above, that
Jcphtliah's mother was an harlot, this is by no means clear;
as, if she was a Canaanite, (which seems very probable, and in
addition to this, was only a secondary wife, or concubine,) then
Jephthah could not have a title to a share of the inheritance.] —
Ed.
d We read no where else of this country, which very probably
was not far from Gilead, upon the borders of the Ammonites, in
the entrance of the Arabia Deserta; or perhaps it is the same
with what is called Ish-tob, (2 Sam. viii. 0", S.) which was in
Syria, and so near the Ammonites, that liny hired forges from
thence, as well as from other nations, to fight against David. —
Patrick's Com mentary.
3 F
410
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M.25S1. A. C. 1443 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
what forces they could ; but then they were at a loss for
a general. Jephthah, they knew, was a man of courage
and conduct, who had signalized himself on frequent
occasions against the enemy ; and therefore, in a full
assembly of their chiefs, it was resolved to send him an
offer of the command of their army. Surprised at this
sudden change, and remonstrating a little their former
unkindness to him, he consented at last to accept of
the command ; but it was on this condition, that if he
happened to be successful in the war, they should estab-
lish him their governor for life, which they readily con-
sented to, and solemnly ratilied. Being invested with
this power and authority, Jephthah sent ambassadors to
the king of Amnion, to demand the reason of his invad-
ing the Gileadites; to whom that prince replied, that
their land was his, and that the Israelites, in their pas-
sage from Egypt, had taken it from his ancestors, which
he now intended to recover. Jephthah returned him,
by other ambassadors, in answer, that if either conquest
or prescription conferred a title, they had a just right
to the country they possessed, since they took it, not
from them, but from the Amorites, and had, for 300 years,
been in quiet possession of it ; but all would not do.
The Ammonites were resolved upon a war, and Jephthah
made all things ready to receive them. But before he
took the field, he made a vow, that if he returned with
victory, the first thing that came out of his house to meet
him, he would certainly offer unto the Lord, which many
think was the occasion of the sacrificing his own
daughter. a
However this be, it is certain, that when he returned
out of the country of Amnion, where his battles were
fought with success, he met with some disturbance at
home ; for the tribe of Ephraim, not long after, passed
the river Jordan, on purpose to pick a quarrel with him,
because, as they pretended, he had not sent for them to
join the army, and share in the victory. ° At other
times they had been noisy and clamorous enough, but
now they proceeded so far as to threaten to burn his
house over his head. Jephthah endeavoured what he
could to pacify them with good words ; but when he
found that reasoning would not do, he fell upon them
with his army, and put them to flight : and being re-
solved to hinder them from giving him the like molesta-
tion any more, he sent and secured all the passes over
Jordan in their way home ; so that, as fast as they came
thither, if upon examination they owned themselves
Ephraimites, they were immediately put to the sword :
a Judges xi. 30. ' And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord.'
Though he did not doubt, yet he supposed that he should be more
certain of the victory, if he made a religious vow beforehand, of
being grateful to God for it. In this he acted conformably to
the general practice of great warriors in all ages. Livy fre-
quently mentions it as the custom of the Roman generals, who
used to vow to Jupiter or Apollo part of the spoil they should
take in war, or to build temples to their honour. Thus the
Israelites, when Arad came against them as they were going to
Canaan, made a vow respecting his country, if God would de-
liver it into their hands. — Num. xxi. 2.
b Though Gideon had called the Ephraimites to assist in the
pursuit of the Midianites, and had given them the advantage of
plunder, and the honour of taking Oreb and Zeeb, two princes ot
Midian, prisoners ; yet, because they were not called at first to
the battle, they took upon them to reprehend him very sharply,
which he, like a prudent man, took patiently, and pacified them
with good words. — Howell's History, b. 4., in the notes.
M. 1458. A. C. 1253. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
if they denied it, they had c the test-word Shibboleth
given them, which, if they pronounced it Sibboleth, dis-
covered their country, and cost them their lives ; inso-
much, that what in the field, and what on the banks of
the river, no less than d 4:2,000 Ephraimites were slain.
Thus Jephthah, having delivered his country from the
attempts both of foreign and domestic foes, lived the
remainder of his days in peace, and after the adminis-
tration of public affairs for six years' continuance in all,
he died, and was honourably buried in his own country.
He was succeeded by Ibzan of Bethlehem, who, after
he had governed seven years, was succeeded by Elon,
of the tribe of Zebulun ; and he, after he had ruled ten
years, by Abdon, of the tribe of Ephraim, who ruled
eight. Of these judges the sacred history says nothing
remarkable, only that some of them had a numerous
issue, which is mentioned to show that the government,
at that time, was not hereditary.
During the administration of these judges, the Israel-
ites, enjoyed a peace of three and twenty years' continu-
ance ; but when they relapsed into their old impieties,
God suffered the Philistines to invade and oppress them,
whereupon Samson's valiant acts began to display them-
selves. He was the son of Manoah, e of the tribe of
c Nothing is more notorious than that the people of the same
nation, who speak the same language, differ very much, in their
pronunciation of it, in several parts of the country. In Pales-
tine, the people in Galilee, and those that lived in Jerusalem,
spake the same tongue, and yet, in the time of Christ, the latter
could tell St Peter, that his ' speech bewrayed him,' (Mat. xxvi.
73.) In Greece all spake Greek, and yet the Iouians, Attics,
Dorians, and ^Eolians pronounced very differently. And here,
though the Gileadites and Ephraimites were all of one nation, yet
the latter, we find, could not pronounce the letter schin. There
were doubtless, therefore, many other words which they could
not frame their mouths to speak, as the Gileadites did, but this
one was chosen, because it was fit for their purpose. For as
Shibboleth signifies floods of ivater, the Gileadites, when they
saw any Ephraimites appear, might put this test to him, and bid
him say, Let me pass over tiie water. — Le Clerks and Patrick's
Commentaries. — In Arabia, the difference of pronunciation by
persons of various districts is much greater than in most other
places, and such as easily accounts for the circumstance men-
tioned in this passage. Niebuhr, (Travels, p. 72.), relates
something similar to it. " The king of the Hamjares, at Dha-
far, said to an Aral), a stranger, Theb, meaning to say, Sit down}
but as the same word in the dialect of the stranger signified leap,
he leaped from a high place, and hurt himself; when this mis-
take was explained to the king, he said, Let the Arab who
cometh to Dhafar first learn the Hamjare dialect." He further
says, " Not only do they speak quite differently in the mountains
of the small district which is governed by the imam of Yemen,
from what thoy do in the flat country; but persons of superior
rank have a different pronunciation, and different names for
things from those of the peasants. The pronunciation of certain
letters also differs. Those which the Arabs of the north and
west pronounce as K or Q, at Muskat are pronounced Tsch; so
that bukkra kiab is by some called butscher tschiab." — Ed.
d This was a terrible slaughter for one tribe to make of another:
but the Ephraimites seemed to have deserved it, as a just punish-
ment of their pride and insolence, in despising so great a man as
Jephthah, who had saved all the people of Israel, and threatening
to destroy his house, after so glorious a victory; in reviling their
brethren likewise; invading them without a cause, and attempt-
ing to drive them out of their country. — Patrick's Commentary.
e As the tribe of Dan lay bordering upon the Philistines, it
was most exposed to their incursions and invasions ; and, there-
fore, God, out of that tribe, chose Samson to be a scourge to
them, and a revenger of his people, which is very agreeable to
the prophecy of Jacob, when he blessed his sons, a little before
his death : ' Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
411
A. M. 25C1. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A,
Dean, and of a mother, whose name we nowhere find in
Scripture. This woman was a long- time barren, and
had no children ; and, therefore, when an angel appeared
to her, while she was alone, and gave her assurances
that she would be mother of a son, who was to be a
a Nazarite from his birth ; to drink no wine or strong
liquor ; and * never have his hair shaved : upon her tell-
ing her husband these glad tidings, he requested of God
to vouchsafe him a sight of the same heavenly messenger,
which accordingly God granted him, and, when Manoah
entreated the angel to accept of a small entertainment,
which he chose rather to have converted into a sacrifice,
Manoah made ready a kid, and wine for libations ; and
having placed them upon an altar made of stone, as the
smoke of the sacrifice began to ascend, the c angel
mounted up in the flame, and so disappeared.
At the time appointed the divine promise was accom-
plished, and the woman was delivered of a son, whom
she named Samson. While he was yet a youth, the Spirit
of God began to appear in him, and to exert itself in
some notable exploits and feats of activity, in what was
called d the old camp of Dan, lying between e Zorah
path, biting the heels of the horse, so that his rider shall fall
backwards.' — Gen. xlix. 17.
a A Nazarite was one who, under the Levitical law, either
to attain the favour, or avert the judgments, or acknowledge the
mercies of Almighty God, vowed a vow of particular purity, and
separated himself, for so the word signifies, in an extraordinary
manner, to the service of God. The time of this vow lasted
usually for eight days, sometimes for a month, and, in some
cases, for the person's whole life. During this time, the persons
(for women as well as men might enter into this engagement)
bound themselves to abstain from wine, and all strong liquors:
not to cut the hair of their heads: not to come near a dead
corpse, nor assist at a funeral: nay, the matter was so high, that
if any happened to die suddenly in their presence, the whole
ceremony of this separation was to begin anew. After the
time that their separation was ended, they were to ofler such
sacrifices as the law appointed, and then, being absolved from
their vow by the priest, they might drink wine, and use the
same freedom that other people did. Samson's Nazaritism,
to which he was consecrated by his parents, was to last the
whole term of his life : but his frequent intercourse with the Philis-
tines, and the great havock and slaughter that he so often made
among them, would induce one to think, that lie had a particular
dispensation exempting him from the observation of some of
the foregoing rules. — See Num. vi. : Patrick's and Le Clerc's
Commentaries upon it; and Calmet's Dictionary, under the
word.
b Long hair was esteemed very much among the Jews; and
such persons as were made Nazarites by their parents, and con-
secrated to God from the womb, were required to wear their hair
Jong and uncut, because it was a token not only of beauty, but of
majesty and veneration. — Howell's History, in the notes,
c Angels' bodies, which the Platonists called ixvftxra, or
vehicles, are not subject to the laws of gravity, as ours are. After
our Saviour's resurrection, the history of the gospel informs us,
how immediately, and in an instant, his body could move from
place to place; and therefore it is no wonder, that Manoah and
his wife should discover the person that appeared to them to be
an angel, by the manner of his ascension. — Le C/erc's Comment.
({This camp of Dan was probably the place where the Danites
made their encampment, in their expedition and enterprise against
Laish, (Judg. xviii. 1 1.>; for it is not at all likely that the Phi-
listines, who had the Israelites, at that time, entirely under their
Subjection, should sutler them to have any standing camp. And
this, by the bye, is a good argument, that the story of Micah, and
the Danites' expedition, was transacted before Samson's time,
though the compilers of the Bible have placed, it after. — HoweU's
History, in the notes.
e I >oth these were towns in the tribe of Dan, whereof Zorah lay
on the frontiers of Judah; and tor this reason Rehoboam, upon
the revolt of the ten tribes, seems to have kept this place, though
M. 415S. A. C. 1253. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
and Eshtaol, the place where he was born. When he
came to man's estate, he fell in love with the daughter
of a Philistine, who lived at Timnath ; and though his
parents did not so well approve of the match, because
she was sprung from an idolatrous family, yet, such was
their tenderness for their son, that they indulged his
passion, and went both of them with him to/ Timnath to
treat about the marriage. As they were on their journev,
and Samson was straggling a little from the company, all
on a sudden a young lion came running at him with open
mouth, but he took it, and slew it with as much ease as
if it had been a kid ; and some time after, as he passed
that way, which was when his father and mother went
with him to solemnize his nuptials, he turned aside to see
what was become of the lion's carcass, and, to his great
surprise, found a s swarm of bees, and some honey in it,
which he took, and gave part of it to his parents, but did
not tell them whence he had it.
It was customary in those days to continue the nuptial
entertainment for seven days, * and, to do the bride-
groom greater honour, his wife's relations had brought
* thirty of their prime youth to bear him company, to
whom, as the manner then was, he propounded a riddle,
J which if they could explain in the time that the feast
lying in one of these tribes, and to have fortified it for a barrier
town, on that side of the kingdom of Judah ; as he did also Aija-
lon, another town belonging to the same tribe. — JFells' Geography
of the Old Testament, vol. 2. c. 6.
f It is not improbably thought, that the place which is called
Timnath, (Josh. xv. 10.) and Timnatha, (Josh. xix. 43.) was the
same with this. It was assigned at first to the tribe of Judah,
but afterwards to the tribe of Dan, and was, in all likelihood, the
place whither Judah, the patriarch of the tribe that was called
after him, went up to his sheep-shearers. — Gen. xxxviii. 12. —
Wells' Geography, ibid.
g Bees are observed by Aristotle and others to abhor stinking
smells, and to abstain from flesh; which has made some think it
strange, that a swarm of bees should be found in the carcass of a
lion: but it is no hard matter to suppose that either time had
consumed, or birds and beasts devoured all the flesh, so that no-
thing was left of the lion but the skeleton, in which the bees did
not breed, (for the notion of insects breeding in that manner is now
quite exploded,) but only settle themselves, when they swarmed
as they have sometimes done in dead men's skulls, and in their
tombs. — BocharCs Hieros. part 2. b. 4. 10; and Le Clerc's
Commentary.
h This was according to the custom of all countries; it was
called by the Jews the nuptial joy. No other feast was to be in-
termixed with it, and all labour ceased as long as it lasted. —
Seldm, Uxor. Heir. b. 2. c. 2. p. 172.
i During the time of the marriage-feast, which, for a virgin,
lasted seven, but for a widow, only three days, it was customary
among the Jews, to have a chosen set of young men, whom the
Greeks call Para/nymphs, and the Hebrews Seheliachim, to keep
the bridegroom company; as also a certain number of young wo-
men were about the bride all this time. These young men were
generally of the bridegroom's relations and acquaintance; but
at Samson's marriage, they belonged to his wife's family, and
were sent, as some of the Jews think, not so much to do him
honour at the time of his nuptials, as to be a guard over him,
lest he should make any disturbance, of which the Philistines
«cre afraid, when they understood that he was a man of so much
strength and might. — /.amy's Introduction, b. 1. c. 14.; and
Calmet's Dissertation on the Marriages of the Jems.
/This riddle which Samson proposed at his nuptials, i
what singular. As the men and women were not permitted to
be together in these eastern countries, they could not amuse them-
selves with their conversation; and as they could not spend their
time merely in dull eating am! drinking, it is hence presumed that
their custom was, in their compotations and leasts, (as we find it
afterwards among the Greeks,) to propose questions and hard
problems to be rcaolvul, in order to exercise the wit and sagacity
412
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443 ; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
lasted, he obliged himself to give them thirty suits of
clothes, and an equal number of shirts ; but if they could
not, they were to forfeit the like to him. The words of
the riddle were, ' Out of the eater came forth meat, and
out of the strong came forth sweetness ;' which so puzzled
the young men, that they could not for their hearts devise
what it meant ; and therefore applying themselves to
Samson's wife, what with threats, what with entreaties,
they prevailed with her to get the secret out of her
husband : which, when, with much importunity, she had
done, she told it them, and they at the conclusion of the
feast, gave him to understand that they knew it. He
told them, however, by whose information they had it,
and, being desperately enraged, went down to a Askelon
a city of the Philistines, where having slain l> thirty men,
he gave their clothes to those that expounded the riddle ;
but taking the thing very ill of his wife, he left her, and
went down to his father's house, while she, in his absence,
was married to one of the young men that had been his
companion all the wedding week.
As soon as his resentment was abated, and his anger
appeased, Samson took a kid for a present to his wife,
and went to her father's house, with a full purpose of be-
ing reconciled to her ; but to his great amazement, was
denied admittance to her room, and told by her father
that, upon presumption he had quite forsaken her, he
had married her to one of his companions, but had ano-
ther daughter younger, and more beautiful, that was at
his service. This answer was far from satisfying him ;
and therefore, imagining that the affront was not so much
the act of his father-in-law, as the general contrivance of
the Philistines, he turned about short, and vowed revenge,
which he afterwards executed in the following manner.
of the company. — Seldcn de Uxor. Hebr. b. 2. c. 16. But as to
this riddle of Samson's, some people are apt to find exceptions.
The opposition, they say, is manifest in the former part of it, but
not in the latter; for weakness is opposed to strength, not sweet-
ness, whose opposite is bitterness or sharpness. But Bochart has
ingeniously observed, that these two words, strong and sharp,
are oftentimes used promiscuously. For, in the Arabic language,
the word mirra, which signifies, strength, comes from marra,
which signifies to be sharp or bitter; and so it is in the Latin,
where acer, a sharp man, is as much as a valiant man, one who
eagerly (as we speak) engages his enemy, and, what is more, we
find, in some of the best authors, this particular epithet applied to
lions, " The impetuous race of lions," (Ovid. Fast.) And
therefore the antithesis of the word is this,' — " Food came from
the devourer, and sweetness from what is eager, or sharp," that
is violent and fierce. — Patrick's and Le Gere's Commentaries.
a It is a city in the land of the Philistines, situated between
Azoth and Gaza, upon the coast of the Mediterranean sea, about
520 furlongs distant from Jerusalem. It is said to have been of
great note among the Gentiles, for a temple dedicated to Der-
ceto, the mother of Semiramis, here worshipped in the form of a
mermaid ; and for another temple of Apollo, where Herod, the
father of Antipater, and grandfather of Herod the Great, served
a- priest. The place subsists to this day, but is now very incon-
siderable. Some mention there is made of the wine of Askalon,
and the cypress-tree, (a shrub that was anciently in great esteem,
and very common in this place,) but modern travellers say no
such thing of it now. — Calmet's Dictionary under the word ; and
Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, , vol. 3.
b It may well be questioned, upon what occasion Samson could
meet with thirty Philistines, all clothed in their new and best
attire, even though we allow that he went with a disposition to
pick a quarrel with them, and slay them ; but then it is but sup-
posing, that at this time, there was a merry-making, either in the
fields, or in the city, at some public solemnity, when great com-
panies used to be gathered together, and appear in their best
apparel, and the thing is done. — Patrick's Commentary.
By some means or other, he got together a multitude
of foxes to the number of 300 ; and, tying them two and
two together by the tails, with a lighted torch between
each pair, he turned them into the standing corn at dif-
ferent places, and so not only set the field on fire, but the
vine and olive yards likewise, insomuch that the whole
country was in a blaze. When the Philistines under-
stood that it was Samson who had done this, in revenge
to the affront which his father-in-law had put upon him,
they came in a body and fired the house over his head,
and so burnt him and Samson's wife together. This was
a fresh provocation, for which Samson threatened to be
revenged ; and, thereupon, without any ceremony, fell
immediately upon them, and <-" slew a great number of
them.
Samson, being conscious to himself, that he must have
highly provoked the Philistines by this last slaughter of
them, took up his residence thenceforwards on the dtop
of the rock Etam, e which was in the tribe of Judah.
Hereupon the Philistines came down with an armed force,
and demanded Samson to be delivered up to them. The
people of Judah, fearing the consequence of this inva-
sion, detached a body of 3000 men to Samson ; who,
after they had expostidated the injury he had done them
in provoking their enemies so highly, told him in plain
c The words in the text, according to our translation are,
' And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter,' (Jud.
xv. 8.) But the words in the original will admit of this signifi-
cation, " He smote them with his leg on their thigh, and gave
them great hurts or wounds;' and to justify this sense, a learned
commentator supposes, that there was, at this time, somewhere
among the Philistines, wrestling matches and other rural exer-
cises, to which every one was invited, and that Samson, among
the rest, might go thither; that there he threw great numbers
of the Philistines, who might value themselves upon their acti-
vity that way; and, in the midst of the grapple with them,
broke their thighs with a kick or twist of his leg. If this suppo-
sition be right, the phrase, " to squeeze the leg on the thigh,"
seems to be much the same with what the Greeks call trxsXi^uv ;
or avotrxiX't^uv ; for, though this kind of exercise grew into high
esteem among the Grecians, who were so famous for their gymnic
sports; yet that wrestling was an exercise not unknown among
the people of the east is manifest from Gen. xxv. 20. xxx. 8. and
xxxii. 24. This our commentator offers but as a conjecture in-
deed ; but it seems much more feasible than the interpretation
either of the Vulgate or Chaldee paraphrast. — Le Clerc in locum.
d This was a strong place in the tribe of Judah, as Josephus
relates to the top of which no more than one man could come
abreast, and therefore easily defensible ; by all this, however,
and what follows in this history of Samson, it is plain that he had
no commission from God, nor was moved by any extraordinary
impulse to make open war (as did Gideon, Jephthah, and others)
for the deliverance of Israel from the yoke of the Philistines, but
only to weaken them and keep them in awe, that, out of dread of
him, they might be less cruel in their oppression ; and that this
was all that God intended to do by him, is pretty plain from the
words of the angel, (Judg. xiii. 5.) ' He shall begin to deliver
Israel.' — Patrick's Commentary.
e Judg. xv. 8. ' And he went down and dwelt on Hie top oi
the rock Etam.' It appeals that rocks are still resorted to as
places of security, and even capable of sustaining a siege. So we
read in De La Roque, (p. 205.) " The Grand Siguier, wishing
to seize the person of the Emir, gave orders to the Pacha to take
him prisoner; he accordingly came in search of him, with a new
army in the district of Chouf, which is a part of Mount Lebanon,
wherein is the village of Gesin, and close to it the rock which
served for retreat to the Emir. The Pacha pressed the Emir so
closely, that this unfortunate prince was obliged to shut himself
up in the cliff of a great rock, with a small number of his officers.
The Pacha besieged him here several months, and was going to
blow up the rock by a mine, when the Emir capitulated. — Tra-
vels in Palestine. — Ed.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c
413
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1413; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
terms, that they were come to seize, and deliver him up
to the Philistines.
Samson submitted to have himself bound, which was
done with new strong cords, upon condition that they
themselves would not side with the enemy against him ;
and so being brought to the place where the Philistines
were encamped, they now thought they had him secure,
and therefore ran out with joy to receive him. But as
they came near him, he snapped the cords asunder, and
happening to espy a fresh jaw-bone of an ass, he made
use of that for want of a better weapon, and therewitli
slew no less than a thousand men ; from which achieve-
ment, the place was afterwards called, either simply Lehi,
that is, the jaw-bone, or Ramah-Lehi, the lifting of the
jaw-bone. Fatigued with this light, and being now ex-
cessively thirsty, in a place where no water was to be had,
he made his supplication to God, and God immediately
caused a fountain of delicious water to issue from a hol-
low rock adjacent to Lehi, wherewith Samson allayed his
thirst, and was revived ; and from this event, the place
was called En-hakkor, the well of him that prayed,
ever after.
After this action Samson made nothing of the Philis-
tines, but went openly into a one of their cities called
Gaza, and took up his lodging in a public house of en-
tertainment. The governor of the place had soon intel-
ligence of him, and sent guards to beset the house, and
to watch the gates of the city for his going out next
morning ; but Samson, being informed of this, rose in
the midnight, and taking the two gates of the city, gate-
posts, bars, bolts, chain and all, he laid them on his
shoulders, and carried them to the top of an hill, J that
looks towards Hebron, and there left them.
a This city was, by Joshua, made part of the tribe of Judah,
but, after him, it fell into the hands of the Philistines, and was
one of their five principalities, situated between Raphia and
Askelon, towards the southern extremity of the promised
land. The advantageous situation of this place was the cause
of the many revolutions to which it became subject. At first of
all it belonged to the Philistines, but in Joshua's time, was con-
quered by the Hebrews. In the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, it
recovered its liberty, but was conquered by Hczekiah. It was
made subject to the Chaldeans, when they reduced Syria and
Phoenicia; and afterwards fell into the hands of the Persians.
They were masters of it when Alexander besieged, took, and
demolished it. It afterwards rose again, but not nearly of the
same magnitude, under the name of Majuma, which underwent
as many vicissitudes as the former. The kings of Egypt had it
for some time in possession: Antiochus the Great took and
sacked it; the Asmoneans, or Maccabees, took it several times
from the Syrians; Alexander Janiiicus, king of the Hebrews,
destroyed it; Gabinius repaired it. Augustus gave it to Herod
the Great; Constantino gave it the name of Constantia, with
many independent privileges, in honour of his son; but the em-
peror Julian destroyed and deprived it of all. — Calmct's Dictio?i-
ary. — Gaza lies 44 miles south-west of Jerusalem, and about one
mile from the Mediterranean sea, in long. 34° 40' E., and lat.
.'51° 25' N., and has a population of about 5000. The environs
are exceedingly fertile, and produce pomegranates, oranges, dates,
and flowers, in great request even at Constantinople. The
manufacture of cotton employs 500 looms in the town and neigh-
bourhood. There are likewise great quantities of ashes made by
the Arabs, and used in the manufacture of soap; this manufac-
ture has lately declined. Gaza is at present divided into two
parts, called the upper and lower. Both of these parts taken
together are now called Gazara; and the upper part where the
castle is situated has the same name, but the lower part is, by
the Arabs, distinguished under the name of Harel el Segiage. —
En.
b The words in the text are, that ' he carried them up to the
. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
At length a more fatal adventure than any of these
befell him : for falling in love with a beautiful woman,
named c Delilah, Avho lived in the vale of Sorek, which
lay in the tribe of Judah, he was so infatuated to her,
that he lost all regard to his own safety. The princes
of the Philistines, observing his passion for this woman,
came and promised her d a round sum of money, if she
would learn of him, and discover to them what might be
the cause of this his wonderful strength, and e how he
might be deprived of it. This she undertook to do ; and
failed not to employ all her art and solicitation to get
the important secret from him. For some time he amused
her with fictions, and made her believe, that his strength
consisted sometimes in one thing, and sometimes in
another; first, that binding him with bands made of
green withes, then, that tying him Avith ropes that had
never been used, and again, /weaving his hair into
top of a hill, that is before Hebron,' (Judges xvi. 3.) ; but the
word which we render ' before,' does equally signify 'in the
sight of Hebron;' and therefore, since the distance between
Gaza and Hebron is no less than twenty miles, it is more proba-
ble, that the hill where Samson left these gates, lay between the
two cities, and in view of both, that the inhabitants of one city
might behold them to their confusion, and they of the other, to
their encouragement to hope for a future deliverance. — Patrick's
Commentary .
c It is certain that Sorek was a place in the land of Judea,
famous for choice wines, as may be gathered from Gen. xlvi.
11.; Isaiah v. 12.; and Jer. ii. 21., and lay not above a
mile and a half from Eshcol, from whence the spies brought a
bunch of grapes for a sample of the fruitfulness of the country ;
but whether Delilah, who is said to live here, was a woman of
Israel, or one of the daughters of the Philistines, (who at this
time were rulers in the country of Judah,) or whether site was
his wife, or an harlot only, is not expressed in her story. St
Chrysostom, and others, are of opinion that lie was married to
her; but if so, some mention, one would think, there should
have been of the marriage ceremonies in this, as well as in Ins
former wife's case. Nor can we think that the Philistines would
have been so bold as to attempt to draw her into their party, and
to bribe her to betray him into their hands, had she been his
lawful wife. It appears, indeed, by her whole behaviour, that
she was a mercenary woman, who would do any thing to get
money; and accordingly, Josephus, (Antiquities, b. 5. c. 1.,)
calls her a common prostitute of the Philistines. — Patrick's Com-
mentary, and Poole's Annotations.
d The princes of the Philistines, from their five chief cities,
Accaron, Askalon, Gaza, Azoth, and Gath, (I Sam. vi. 17.,)
are supposed to be five in number, so that, if they made her a
common purse, as we say, of five times 1100 pieces, or 5,500
shekels of silver, it would amount to about 343 pounds fifteen
shillings. — Howell's History, in the notes.
e There is a good deal of probability in Josephus's manner Oi
telling this story, namely, That while they were eating and
drinking together, and he was caressing her, she fell into an
admiration of his wonderful deeds; and having highly extolled
them, desired him to tell her how he came so much to excel
all other men in strength. For we cannot suppose, that she
came bluntly upon him all at once, and desired to know, as it is
in the text, 'wherewith he might be bound and afflicted.' This
had been discovering her wicked design against him at once,
and defeating herself of an opportunity of betraying him; anil
therefore, we must conclude thai the sacred history in this place,
as it frequently does elsewhere, gives only the sum and substance
of what Delilah said to her paramour, without taking notice of
all the cunning and artful speeches wherewith she dressed it up
— Le Clcrc's Commentary.
f We have followed in this passage, which indeed is a very
obscure one, the notion of the learned Spencer, (On the I.mr of
Moses' Rites, b. 3. C. 0. Dissert. 1.,) concerning the hair of the
Nazarite; but a learned commentator is of another opinion,
namely, that Samson's hair, being very long, was interwoven
with the threads and warp of a web of cloth. And to this im-
pose he supposes, that in the room where he sometimes slept
414
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1222
tresses, and so filleting them up, would bereave him of
his strength. But these were no more than mock stories,
for, upon trial, she found that all these signified nothing ;
and therefore, betaking herself to all her arts and wiles,
she complained of his falseness, and upbraided him with
his want of love, since he withheld a thing from her
which she was so impatient to know : and thus, by daily
teazing and importuning him; she prevailed with him at
length to tell her the secret, namely, that ' in the pre-
servation of his hair (for he was a Nazarite from his
birth) his strength and security lay.'
There was something in his manner of telling her this,
that made Delilah believe she had now got the true
secret from him ; and therefore, she sent word thereof
to some of the chiefs of the Philistines, who came and
paid her the money they had covenanted to give her :
and when she had cut off Ins hair, as he lay sleeping in
her lap, they fell upon him, bound him, and put out his
eyes ; and having carried him to Gaza, they shut him up
in prison, and made him a grind in the mill like a slave.
In process of time, however, his hair grew again, and
with it his former strength returned : so that, when
several of the princes and nobility of the Philistines
were met in a general assembly, to return thanks to their
god & Dagon, for having delivered their worst and sorest
upon a couch, there might stand very near a loom, wherewith
Delilah, as the custom then was, at her leisure hours, might work
and divert herself; and that now, by his permission and conniv-
ance, she might take the locks of his hair, work it into the web,
and, to hinder it from being pulled out, secure it with an iron
pin thrust into the beam, but that Samson, when he awoke, took
the loom along with him at his hair. And, indeed, without
some such supposition as this, we cannot very well tell what to
make of his going away with ' the pin of the beam, and with the
web.' (Jud. xvi. 14.) — Le Clerc's Commentary.
a Before the invention of wind and water mills, men made
use of hand mills, wherewith to grind their corn ; and as this was
a very laborious work, we find masters, especially in most comic
authors, threatened their servants with it, in case of any delin-
quency. It was the work, indeed, of malefactors, as well as
slaves ; and therefore, it seems very probable, that in this prison,
where Samson was put, there was a public mill, as Socrates
(Hist. Ecdes. b. 5. c. 18.) tells us there were several afterwards
in Rome, in the time of Theodosius. So that from this and
some other circumstances, we may learn, that the Philistines'
purpose was not to put Samson to death, even as they had pro-
mised Delilah they would not, but to punish him in a manner,
namely, with blindness, hard labour, and insults, much worse,
and more intolerable than death itself. — Le Clerc's Commentary.
b The word Dagon is taken from the Phoenician root Dag,
which signifies a fish ; and accordingly the idol is usually re-
presented, as the heathens do Tritons and Syrens, in the shape
of a woman, with the lower parts of a fish, — desinit in piscem,
mulier formosa superne. — For this reason learned men have
imagined, that Dagon was the same with Dereeto, which the
people of Askelon worshipped, and near which place there was
a great pond full of fish, consecrated to this goddess, from which
the inhabitants superstitiously abstained, out of a fond belief that
Venus, having heretofore cast herself into this pond, was meta-
morphosed into a fish. The learned Jurieu is of another opinion,
namely, That Dagon whose termination is masculine, both in
sacred and profane writings, is always represented as a male
deity, and may therefore very properly be thought to be the
Neptune of the ancients. The Phoenicians in particular, from
whom both the Greeks and Romans borrowed their gods, living
upon the sea coast, and by their navigation and commerce,
gaining great advantages from that element can hardly be sup-
posed to want a deity to preside over it. Saturn, and his three
sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, were their principal idols :
and as Saturn was their Moloch, Jupiter their Baal, and Pluto
their Baal-zebub; so have we reason to presume, that Neptune
was their Dagon. This however will not hinder us from sup-
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4189. A. C. 1443. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
enemy into their hands ; and after they had feasted a
while, and were now grown merry, they ordered that
this same Samson should be sent for, that they might
have pleasure in ridiculing his misery, and making sport
with his blindness, and accordingly Samson was brought.
A large number of people was upon this occasion met
together, and the building Avhere the feast was celebrated
had oidy two large pillars to support the roof. After
the Philistines therefore had insulted Samson as long as
they thought fit, he desired the boy, that led him, to
guide him to one of those pillars that he might rest him-
self a little against it. The boy did so: and Samson,
by this means, having laid hold of the two main suppor-
ters, the one with his right hand, and the other with his
left, after a short ejaculation to God for the restoration
of his former strength, he gave them such a terrible
shake, that down came the house, and crushed no less
than three thousand persons to death under its ruins,
and Samson among the rest.
c Thus died this hero, in the midst of his enemies, as
he desired ; and when his relations heard of his death,
they sent, and <* took away his body, and buried it
honourably in the sepulchre of his fathers.
posing that there might be two deities, a male and a female,
worshipped in the same country, and under the same figure or
form : and that as the pagan theology gives Jupiter a Juno, to
be his consort in heaven ; and Pluto a Proserpine, to keep him
company in hell ; so Neptune had his Amphitrite, to be the
partner of his liquid empire in the sea. According to this sup-
position, the Dagon of Gaza or Ashdod must be Neptune and the
Dereeto of Askelon, a few leagues distant, Amphitrite, the
daughter of Doris and Oceanus. Nor can it be thought incon-
gruous to suppose farther, that the universal god of the sea might,
in one place be represented as a male, as at Ashdod, and in an-
other, as at Askelon, as a female, to signify the fecundity of that
element, which produces and nourishes so many living creatures.
— Le Clerc's Commentary; Calmct's Dictionary ; and Jurieu,
History of Opinions and Religion, part 4. c. 6.
e It is made a question among the casuists and divines, whe-
ther Samson ought to have died in this manner, with a spirit
of revenge and self-murder? St Austin excuses him indeed,
but it is upon the supposition that he was urged thereunto by
the inward motions of him who is the great Arbiter of our life
and death ; and St Bernard affirms that if he had not a pecu-
liar inspiration of the Holy Ghost to move him to this, he could
not without sin have been the author of his own death ; but
others maintain, that without having recourse to this superna-
tural motive, this action of his might be vindicated from his
office, as being the judge and defender of Israel, and that ho
might therefore devote his life to the public good, as some
heathens have merited the commendation of posterity by so
doing, without having any thing in view but the death of his
enemies, and the deliverance of his own people. — Cohort's Dic-
tionary ; and Saurin's Dissertation on the various feats of
Samson.
d How the people of Gaza came to permit Samson's relations
to come and take away his body, is not so obvious to conceive.
In all nations, there was formerly so much humanity, as not to
prohibit enemies from interring their dead, nor did any of the
Israelites join with Samson in his enterprises ; he stood alone in
what he did : but this last slaughter which he had made among
them, might have provoked them, one would think, to some
acts of outrage even upon his dead body. It is to be observed,
however, that instead of any acts of violence, they might per-
haps be much humbled and mollified by this late disaster ; and
might /ear, that if they denied him burial, the God of Israel,
who had given him such extraordinary strength in his lifetime,
would not fail to take vengeance of them. And therefore, dread-
ing his very corpse, they were desirous to get quit of it,
even as they were of the ark afterwards, and glad that any came
to take such a formidable object out of their sight. — Patrick's
and he Clerc's Commentary.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
415
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. 1. TO THE END OF RUTH.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
Judges, which in Hebrew, are Shophetim, were a kind
of magistrates, not much unlike the archontes, among'
the Athenians, and the dictators, among- the Romans.
The Carthaginians, a colony among the Tyrians, had
a sort of rulers, whom they called suffetes or shophetim,
much of the same extent of power ; and Grotius, in the
beginning- of his Commentary on this book of Judges,
compares them to those chiefs that were in Gaul, in
Germany, and in Britain, before the Romans introduced
another form of government. Their power consisted in
a medium (as it were) between that of a king- and an
ordinary magistrate, superior to the latter, but not so
absolute as the former. They were indeed no more
than God's vicegerents, and every attempt to raise them-
selves to regal dignity was looked upon as an usurpa-
tion upon his right, who alone was to be considered as
the sovereign of the Hebrews ; and therefore we find
Gideon refusing" this supreme authority when it was
offered him : 1 ' I will not rule over you, neither shall
my son rule over you ; the Lord shall rule over you.'
The honour of these judges lasted for life, but their
succession was not always continued ; for there were
frequent interruptions in it, and the people lived often
under the dominion of strangers, without any govern-
ment of their own. According to common custom, they
were generally appointed by God. The gifts which he
invested them with, and the exploits he enabled them to
do, were a call sufficient to that office : but in cases of
extreme exigence, the people sometimes made choice of
such as they thought best qualified to rescue them out of
their oppression, without waiting for any divine desig-
nation.
Their right extended so far, as to arbitrate in all
affairs of war and peace, and to determine all causes ;
but then they had none at all to make any new laws, or
lay any new taxes upon the people. Their dominion
did seldom reach over all the land ; but, as it often hap-
pened, that the oppressions which occasioned a recourse
to their assistance, were felt in particular tribes or pro-
vinces only ; so the judges which were either raised, or
chosen to procure a deliverance from those grievances,
did not extend their command over all the land in gen-
eral, but over that district only which they were ap-
pointed to deliver.
In short, these judges were by their office the protec-
tors of the laws, the defenders of religion, and the
avengers of all crimes, especially of that of idolatry ;
and yet it must be owned, that these were men of the
like passions and infirmities with others, and that the
great advantages which, under God, they procured for the
Israelites, did not exempt them from that frailty which
is incident to all human things.
The sacred story indeed tells us, that 2 ' the Lord
raised up judges, which delivered the Israelites out of
the hands of those that spoiled them,' and that ' when he
raised them up, he was with them,' that is, he communi-
cated to them gifts, both natural and supernatural,
according to the exigencies of his people, and, in all
1 Judg. viii. 23.
Judg. ii. 16, 18.
their encounters with their enemies, attended them with
a peculiar providence : but as well may we infer, that
every general who fights the king of England's battles
with success, should be a man of singular sanctity, as
that those who were employed under God in that capa-
city, should lead lives answerable to their high character.
The power of working miracles is not always accom-
panied with a holy life. Many, that shall say unto
Christ, 2 ' have we not prophesied in thy name, and in
thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done many
wonderful works,' by reason of the iniquity of their lives,
shall find no acceptance with him. What wonder is it
then, to behold some, both kings and conquerors, even
while they ride in triumph over the vanquished foes,
tamely led captive by their own passions ; so that while
we cannot but admire them for their military exploits,
we are forced to blame and censure them for their private
conduct ?
To mention one for all, Samson, a person born for
the castigation of the Philistines, and to be a pattern of
valour to all succeeding heroes, forgot himself in the
arms of a Delilah, and to the passion he had for a base
perfidious woman, sacrificed those gifts which God had
bestowed on him for the deliverance of his church, and
so, to all ages, he became a sad example of the corrup-
tion and infirmities of human nature. The like perhaps,
in other respects, may be said of the rest of the judges :
but then we are to remember, that they were persons
under a particular economy of providence ; that their
conduct therefore is no direction to us, though their
passions the Almighty might make use of, and therefore
tolerate, for the accomplishment of his wise ends :
* ' Howbeit, they meant not so, neither did their hearts
think so,' as the prophet expresses himself upon the
like occasion.
Whether it be lawful, according to the right of nature
and nations, for subjects to rescue themselves from
tyranny by taking away the life of the tyrant, and to
recover their country, which has been unjustly taken
from them, by destroying the usurper, is a question that
has been much debated, and what, at present, we need
not enter into, for the vindication of Ehud's fact. It is
the observation of the learned 5 Grotius, that the autho-
rity of the king of Moab was never legitimized by any
convention of the Israelites, and consequently that they
were at liberty to shake oft' his yoke whenever they
found a convenient opportunity. The only difficulty is
6 whether a private man might make himself an instru-
ment in effecting this, in the manner that Ehud did? But
to this it is replied, that Ehud was no private man, but
acted by warrant and authority from God ; and to this
purpose, the history acquaints us, that 7 ' when Ehud had
made an end of offering the present' which the Israelites
sent to Eglon, he was upon his return home, and ' had
gone as far as the quarries which were by Gilgal.' The
word pesil, which is here rendered quarries, most com-
monly signifies, as indeed it is in the marginal note, as
well as the Septuagint and Vulgate, graven images,
which it is not improbable the Moabites had set up in
this placo-rather than any other, in pure contempt of the
' Mat. vii. 22. * Is. x. 7.
On the law of War and Peace, b. J. c. 4. sect. 19.
6 Saurin'a Dissertation on I legion killed by Ehud.
' Judg. iii. 11, &c.
416
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 418!). A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
God of Israel, who had for so long a time made Gilgal
famous by his presence in the tabernacle while it stood
there.
These images when Ehud beheld, his x spirit was
stirred with a just indignation within him ; and therefore,
proceeding no farther on his journey home, he dismissed
his attendants, and went himself back with a resolution
to revenge this affront to God, as well as the oppression
of his people.
That this his return was directed by a divine impulse
and instigation, is evident, I think, from the hazard of
the enterprise he was going upon, and the many unfa-
vourable occasions that accompanied the execution of it.
For, how could any man, in his senses, think that a
single person as he was, should ever be able to compass
the death of a king, amidst the circle of his guards and
attendants ? How could he expect that an enemy, as
he was, should be admitted to a private audience ? or that,
if he should prove so lucky, the king should be so far
infatuated as to order all the company to quit the room ?
The killing the king must have been a great difficulty
under these circumstances ; but then his making his escape
had all the signs of an impossibility in it : and yet, without
his escaping, the design of delivering his country must
have been abortive. Upon the whole therefore it appears,
that nothing but a divine instinct could have given him
courage to set about the thing ; and therefore it was not
all fallacy, when he told Eglon, that ' he had a message
from God unto him,' because God had sent and commis-
sioned him to kill him : so that what he did in this case,
he did not of himself, or from his own mere motion, but
by virtue of an order which he had received from God,
who had destinated this oppressor of his people to this
untimely kind of death.
This seems to be the only way whereby we can apolo-
gize for Ehud, in a fact which by no means is to be made
a precedent, and, without a divine warrant, is in no case
to be justified. But as for the Holy Scriptures, wherein
this action is related simply, and without either dislike
or approbation, why should they suffer in our esteem
upon that account, any more than Livy, Thucydides, or
any other heathen author, for recording the various
transactions, and some of them full as base and barbarous
as this, that happened in the ages whereof they treat ?
It is a mistake to think, that every person whom the
Scripture mentions, nay, whom the Scripture commends
in some respects, should, in all others, be faultless and
unblamable ; and it would be a much greater imputation
upon the truth and authority of these sacred records, if
the people of God were all made saints, and no black
actions recorded of them ; since it is the received
character of a good historian, ' That as he should not
dare to relate any thing that is false, so neither should
he conceal any thing that is true.'
There is something peculiar in relation to the fact of
Jael, and that is the words of the prophetess, in her
triumphant song : 2 ' Blessed above women shall Jael,
the wife of Heber, the Kenite, be ; blessed shall she be
above women in the tent ;' which some look upon as a
commendation of Jael, and consequently an approbation
of the murder of Sisera : 3 But Deborah herein might
1 Patrick's Commentary.
3 Le Clerc's Commentary.
* Judg. v. 24.
only prophesy how and in what manner the Israelites
would be affected towards that woman, by whose means,
though not in the most commendable way, they had been
delivered from a very dangerous enemy.
It is natural for us, when at any time we are rescued
from an adversary, by whom we have suffered much, and
have reason to dread more ; it is natural, I say, for us
to wish well to the person by whose means he was taken
off; nor are we apt to consider the action according to
the measure of strict virtue, by reason of the benefit
which accrues to us thereby. Deborah might, therefore,
mean no more than what were the common notions of
mankind in a case of this nature. But, even " admitting
her words to be a commendation of the fact, we might,
very likely, perceive several reasons for it, if we had
but a knowledge of some circumstances, which we may
reasonably suppose, though the Scripture has not related
them to us.
It is certain, that the Kenites, descended from Hobab,
the son of Jethro, father-in-law to Moses, were 4 at first
invited to go with the Israelites into the land of Canaan,
and were all along kindly treated by them. They, in-
deed, had no share in the division of the land, nor were
they permitted to dwell in their cities ; yet they had the
free use of their country, and were allowed to pitch
their tents (as their manner of life was) wherever they
thought fit for the convenience of their cattle, though
generally they chose to continue in the tribe of Judah.
By this means a strict friendship interfered, and a firm
alliance was always subsisting between the Israelites
and these people ; whereas, between the Kenites and
Jabin, there was no more than a bare cessation of hos-
tilities ; and though Heber and they continued neutral
in this war, yet it was not without wishing well to their
ancient friends the Israelites, among whom they lived.
Now, it is a received maxim among all civilians, That
where two compacts stand in competition, and cannot
be both observed, the stronger should always have the
4 Num. x. 2D.
a One of our annotators has another way of accounting for the
commendation which is given to Jael in Deborah's song, and
that is, by giving up the divine inspiration of it. " It is not to
be denied," says he, "but that there are some words, passages,
and discourses recorded in Scripture, which are not divinely in-
spired, because some of them were uttered by the devil, and
others by the holy men of God, but mistaken : such is the dis-
course of Nathan to David, (2 Sam. vii. 3.) which God presently
contradicted, (ver. 4, 5.) and several discourses in Job, which
God himself declares to be unsound : ' Ye have not spoken of me
the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath,' (Job xlii. 7.)
This being so," continues he, " the worst that any malicious
man can infer from this place is, That this song, though indicted
by a good man or woman, was not divinely inspired, but only
composed by a person piously minded, and transported with joy
for the deliverance of God's people, but subject to mistake ; who,
therefore, out of zeal to commend the happy instrument of so
great a deliverance, might easily overlook the indirectness of the
means by which it was accomplished, and commend that which
should be disliked. If it be urged, that the song was composed
by Deborah, a prophetess, and must, consequently, be divinely
inspired, the answer is, 1st. That it is not certain what kind of
prophetess Deborah was, whether extraordinary and infallible, or
ordinary, and so liable to mistake. But, 2dly, That every ex-
pression, even of a true and extraordinary prophet, was not
divinely inspired, as is evident from Nathan's mistake above
mentioned, and from Samuel's error concerning Eliub, whom,
from his outward stature and comeliness, he took to be the
Lord's anointed.'' V,l Sam. xvi. 6.) — Poole's Annotations.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
417
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1 113 i OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
preference. An agreement, for instance, says Puft'en-
dorf, 1 that is made with an oath, should always super-
sede that which is made without one. It is but supposing
then, that the two depending- treaties were of these dif-
ferent kinds, and this will be a circumstance in favour
of Jael ; but then, if we may suppose farther, that Jabin
was a grievous tyrant, and Sisera the chief instrument
of his tyranny ; this, 2 according to the opinion of some,
will supply us with a full apology for what she did.
" For there are certain monsters in nature," say they,
" in whose destruction all civil society is concerned.
To do any thing to preserve them, nay to slip a proper
opportunity of ridding the world of them, whatever terms
we happen to be under with them, is to be false to what
we owe to the whole community, under the pretence of
fidelity to a base ally. When matters are come to such
an extremity, that we must light with men, as we do with
wild beasts, fallacy of any kind, which at other times is
justly detested, may, in some measure, be then excused;
nor have they, who, in their dealings with others, are
regardless of all laws, both human and divine, any
reason to complain, if, upon some occasions, they meet
with a retaliation.1'
Jael, when she took the hammer and nail in her hand,
might have this, perhaps, and much more, to say in her
own vindication : but what absolves her most effectually
with us is, the declaration which God had made in favour
of the Israelites, by the wonderful defeat of Jabin's
army, and the direction and impulse wherewith he excited
her to despatch his vanquished general. 3 Had she been
left to herself, she would have been contented, one would
think, to have let him lain still, until Barak, who was in
pursuit of him, had come up, and surprised him. To fall
upon him herself was an enterprise exceeding bold and
hazardous, and above the courage of her sex ; and
therefore, we may conclude, that if it was God who
inspired her with this extraordinary resolution, she was
not to be blamed, notwithstanding' the peace between
Jabin and her family, for being obedient to the heavenly
impulse ; because all obligations to man must necessarily
cease, when brought in competition with our higher obli-
gations towards God. a
1 On the Law of Nature and Nations, b. 4. c. 2.
- See Le Clerc's Commentary, and Saurin's Dissertation on
Die defeat of Jaliin.
3 Scripture Vindicated, part 3.
a This is very inconclusive reasoning. When our duty to
God, and to any individual man become inconsistent with each
other, no one ever supposed that the latter is not to be superseded
by the former; but I am not aware that any duty, either to God
or to the Israelites, made it necessary for Jael to violate the laws
of hospitality to Sisera the captain of the host of Hazor. The
house of Heber her husband was equally at peace with Israel and
with Jaban king of Canaan. The Kenites had indeed been much
more indebted to the Israelites than to the Canaanites. Jael
might therefore have refused to receive Sisera under her roof,
because she could not protect him from his enemies should they
come in pursuit of him, without violating an obligation much
stronger than any under which she was either to him or to his
master ; but when he came under her roof she was surely to pro-
tect him as far as that superior obligation would permit. He
was not her personal enemy ; and granting himself and his mas-
ter, to have been such tyrants as our author supposes, neither
Jael nor any other private individual had a right to rid the world
either of the sovereign or of his servant, by treachery! She might,
without the breach of any duty, have received Sisera into her
tent; but when she had received him, she could not, without in-
curring guilt of the deepest dye, murder him with her own
Whoever looks into the catalogue of the worthies
whom the author of the Hebrews enumerates, will soon
perceive, that, as he is far from being exact in the order
wherein he places them ; so, by the faith for which he
commends them, he means no more than a belief of what
God told them, and ready obedience to his commands,
whenever they were signified to them by a proper autho-
rity. Deborah was, at this time, a very remarkable
woman, famous for the administration of justice, and
determination of controversies among the people ; but
notwithstanding this, it would have been rashness in
Barak to have gone upon so hazardous an undertaking
without any farther assurance than this. He did not
absolutely refuse to go, nay, he offered to go upon the
first notice, and for this his faith is commended in Scrip-
ture; but then he was minded to have some farther con-
viction that this notice was from God, and of this he
coidd not have a better proof, than if the prophetess
herself would go and share with him the fate of the
battle.
The enemy was as formidable a one as ever the
Israelites had to encounter. Nine hundred chariots of
iron, when, 4 In times of greater military preparation,
Mithridates had but 100, and Darius no more than 200
in their armies, was enough to inject terror into any com-
mander, whose forces consisted all of foot, and had no
proper defence against these destructive engines. Good
reason had he, therefore, to apprehend, that the people
would not so readily have enlisted themselves into the
public service, had there not been a person of her char-
acter to appear at the head of it. She was a prophetess,
and had received frequent revelations from God ; and
therefore, when the people saw her personally engaged
in it, they would be the apter to be persuaded, that the
expedition was by God's appointment, and therefore,
without all peradventure, would be attended with success.
And as Deborah's joining with Barak in the expedition
might be thought a good expedient to raise a sufficient
number of forces ; so might it equally be thought a
means effectual, both to prevent their desertion, and to
animate them to the fight : and accordingly s Josephus
tell us, " that when the two armies lay encamped, one
within the sight of the other, the Israelites were struck
with such a terror at the infinite odds of the enemy in
numbers, that both general and soldiers were once upon
the very point of shifting for themselves, without so
much as striking a blow; but upon Deborah's assurance,
that it was the cause of God, and that he himself would
assist and bring them oft', they were prevailed upon to
stand the shock of the battle."
4 Le Clerc's Commentary. 5 Antiq. lib. 5. c. C.
hands! She could not indeed, with innocence, have gone to the
tent door, and voluntarily betrayed him to Barak; but had she
remained quietly within, ami Barak had come to demand if he
was there, she could not, without a breach of the higher duty
which she oweil to Israel, have preserved Sisera at the expense
of a lie. It is perfectly in vain to attempt a vindication of her
conduct; for God can never have authorized falsehood and trea-
chery in such a case as hers with Sisera; nor do the words of
Deborah at all imply an approbation of Jael's moral conduct.
They are merely a wish or prayer that she might be rendered
happy in this world, for the services that she had rendered to
Israel; and perhaps it is not possible for the most upright mind,
in such circumstances, to avoid the forming of such a wish. —
Bishop Gleig.
3 a
418
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 25G1. A. C. H43; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
But there is one advantage more which Barak might
more especially promise to himself in having Deborah's
company in this expedition, and that is, that he might
not want an oracle to resort to upon any emergency that
might happen ; because he was persuaded, that God,
who, by her means, had put his people upon this enter-
prise, would not fail, by her mouth, to direct him in the
management of it. And, accordingly, in the grand
point of all, namely, when it was the properest time to
engage the enemy, we find the benefit which he received
from her company and conversation. ' l Up,' says she,
' for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered
Sisera into thy hand. Is not the Lord gone out before
thee ? So Barak went down from mount Tabor, and
ten thousand men after him, and the Lord discomfited
Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host, with the
edge of the sword.'
The faith of those persons whose actions are recorded
in the Old Testament, and fame commemorated in the
New, consisted, as we said, in a firm belief of God's de-
clarations, and a ready obedience to his commands ; and
how can we account Gideon culpable in either of these
respects ? When the angel of the Lord, or a person
much superior, as some suppose, appeared to him, and
brought him the news of God's having appointed him to
deliver his people from the oppression of the Midianites,
he seems indeed at first to be willing to decline the
office, as conscious of his own incapacity ; but desires
withal to have some conviction given him, as who, upon
the like occasion, would not have desired some ; that
the messenger came from heaven, and was in reality no
impostor ; but when once he was satisfied in this, he
never pretended to dispute the divine command.
He knew very well, that, when he pulled down the
altar and grove of Baal, he must necessarily incense the
whole country against him, and run the hazard of his
own life ; and yet, to do it more effectually, he took to
his aid ten of his father's servants, and, that he might
meet with no molestation, did it in the night. He knew
very well, that when he sounded a trumpet, in order to
form an insurrection in the country, and to raise some
forces to assert his nation's liberty, the Midianites would
interpret this as an open declaration of war, and come
against him with an army as numerous as the sand on
the sea shore for multitude ; but this he mattered not.
He knew that two and thirty thousand men, when he had
raised them, were but a handful, in comparison of the
enemy ; and yet, to see two and twenty thousand of
these desert him all at once, and of the ten thousand
that remained, no more left at last than bare three hun-
dred ; this was enough to stagger any one's mind, that
had not a firm reliance on the word and promises of
God. He knew, that three hundred men, had they been
all giants, and armed cap-a-pee with coats of mail,
would not be able to do any great execution against so
numerous a foe ; but when he found, that, instead of
being armed, he was to attack the enemy naked, and
instead of swords and spears, as usual, his soldiers were
to march in such a plight as never was seen before, with
every one a light, a pitcher, and a trumpet in his hand ;
and, when they came up with their enemy, were to break
their pitchers, flourish their lights, sound their trumpets,
. M. 41S9. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
and, instead of regular fighting, were only to shout and
roar, like so many men either mad or drunk ; who but a
Gideon, that had his faith confirmed by so many visions
and miracles before, would have obeyed, and put in
execution such orders as must have been thought wild,
frantic, and absurd, had they proceeded from any other
mouth but God's ?
Well therefore might he be allowed to request a repe-
tition, nay, a multiplication of miracles, who Mas to
have the trial of his faith and obedience carried to such
an extremity : but the truth of the matter is, that it was
not for his own sake that he made this request. He had
been sufficiently convinced by the fire's breaking out of
the rock, at the touch of the rod in the angel's hand,
that nothing was impossible to God, and that the means
which he directed, how incongruous soever they might
appear to men, would certainly not fail of their effect :
but it was for the sake of his allies that had just now
joined him in this expedition, that he sent up this peti-
tion to God, to have them likewise satisfied ; and there-
fore we may observe, that when all the quotas were
come up, and encamped together, then very likely in
the audience of the whole army, he requested of God,
' 2 and said, if thou wilt save Israel by my hand, as thou
hast said, behold I will put a fleece of wool on the floor,'
&c. It was for their sakes, I say, that the miracles
were wrought, that they who were to share in so hazard-
ous a war, and to destroy the army of the aliens with so
small a force, nay, with no force at all, should have
some assurance given them, that the God of Israel, who
had so often promised their forefathers, that if they
would continue in his favour, ' 3 one of them should
chase a thousand, and two of them put ten thousand to
flight,' was determined to assist them in this enterprise.
If ever this promise was literally fulfilled, it was in
this defeat which Gideon gave the Midianites : but the
iii!:a!jitants of Succoth and Penuel, it seems, made but a
jest and ridicule of it, for which they received a condign
punishment ; but of what kind their punishment was,
commentators are not so well agreed. 4 The word in
the Hebrew signifies tltrashing , and thence it is gener-
ally inferred, that Gideon caused the principal men of
Succoth, who had denied his soldiers provision in their
distress, to be stripped naked, laid flat on the ground, °
and a good quantity of thorns and briers heaped on
them; that so, by cart-wheels, or other heavy carriages
passing over them, their flesh might be pierced and
torn, and themselves tortured, if not quite crushed to
death.
This was a punishment not much unlike what David
inflicted on the Ammonites, after he had taken their city
Kabbah ; but the Ammonites, in my opinion, did not so
much deserve it as these : for thus stands the case.
Gideon was now in pursuit of two kings, who, after the
general rout of their army, were making their escape
with a party of five thousand men. Coming to two
places in the tribe of Gad, who were Israelites as well
as he, and equally concerned to have been venturing
their lives for the public liberty, he is denied a small
refreshment for his men, fatigued all the night with
Jadg.ir. 14.
8 Judg. vj. 37.
3 Dent. *xxii. 30. 4 Patrick's and Le Clerc's Commentaries.
a This vas the maimer of thrashing their corn in the eastern
countries.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &<•
419
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR. ACCORDING TO MALES,
fiwhtino- for them, and without some recruit, in no con-
dition to continue their pursuit : so that, as far as in
them lay, instead of assisting their gallant countrymen,
who had merited every thing from their hands, these
Gadites took part with the enemy, and did what they
could to facilitate their escape, by denying some relief
to their weary pursuers. By the right of war Gideon
might have demanded this help from any nation, but much
more from a people who were embarked in the same
cause, and whose refusal of so small a boon had the
aggravation of perfidy and ingratitude, as well as hard-
heartedness, to inflame its guilt.
Nor was this all. His brethren the Gadites, not only
refused him this common courtesy, but were very witty
likewise, in making their jests and sarcasms upon Gideon.
They upbraided him with the smallness of his army, and
magnified the strength of his enemies, and thereby not
only did all they could to discourage his men in their
pursuit, but endeavoured likewise to have it believed,
that there was no interposition of God in gaining this
victory, and that Gideon would never be able to accom-
plish it : and so, to their other vile qualities, they added
insult and irreligion, a contempt of God, and a dispar-
agement of the man ' whom the Lord had made so strong
for himself.' And therefore it is not at all to be won-
dered at, that Gideon, under all this exasperation, should
choose to bring the two captive kings, with whom they
had upbraided him, in triumph to these two places, and
then resent the affront which was done to God, as well
as himself, by making a severe example of some of the
chief offenders.
It is suggested indeed by some, that Gideon was as
great an offender as any, in his making an ephod for the
purpose of idolatry ; but before we admit of so rash a
censure, we should inquire a little into the nature of this
ephod, and for what possible purpose it was at first
made.
1 An ephod, we know, is a common vestment belong-
ing to priests in general ; but that of the high priest was
of very great value. This vestment, however, was not
so peculiar to the priests, but that sometimes we find the
laity, as in the case of David bringing home the ark of
God, allowed to wear it : and therefore some have
imagined, that the ephod which Gideon made, was only
a rich and costly robe of state, which, on certain occa-
sions, he might wear, to denote the station he held in
the Jewish republic. But if his intent was only to
distinguish himself from others by such a particular
vestment, how this could give occasion to the people's
falling into idolatry, or any way become a snare to
Gideon and his house, we cannot conceive.
Others therefore suppose, that the word ephod is a
short expression to denote the high priest's breastplate,
together with the Urim and Thummim ; and hence, by
an easy figure, they are led to think, that to make an
ephod is to establish a priesthood ; and thereupon con-
clude, that Gideon's crime, in making this ephod, was
not to establish idolatry, but only to institute another
priesthood, besides that which God had appointed in
Aaron and his posterity : and, to this purpose, they
suppose, that he erected a private tabernacle, an altar,
1 Le Clerc's and Patrick's Commentaries; Pool 's Annota-
tions, &c.
A.M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
a mercy-seat, with cherubim, &c., that being now made
the supreme governor, he might consult God at his own
house, in such difficult points as occurred in his admin-
istration.
But besides that it is not easy to imagine, that a man
familiar with God, and chosen by him, as Gideon was,
should, after so signal a victory as he had obtained
immediately apostatize, as he must have done, had he
set up an oracle in his own house, there seems to have
been no manner of necessity for it, because Shiloh, where
the tabernacle stood, was in the tribe of Ephraim, which
adjoined to that of Manasseh, whereunto Gideon belong-
ed. 2 Nor should it be forgotten, that this ephod was
3 ' set up in Oplirah,' which place Gideon 4 quitted, as
soon as he had resigned his public employ, and retiring
to a country-house of his own, in all probability left this
ephod behind him : there is reason therefore to believe,
that the design of setting it up, was merely to be a
monument of his remarkable victory over the Midianites,
in like manner as other conquerors had done before him ;
only as the common custom was, to erect a pillar, or
hang up trophies upon the like occasion, he chose rather
to make an ephod, or priest's habit, perhaps all of solid
gold, as a token that he ascribed this victory only to
God, and triumphed in nothing so much, as in the refor-
mation of the true religion by that means. This was an
action of no bad intent in Gideon, though, in after-times,
when the people began to return to idolatry, and had
this fancy among others, that God would answer them
at Ophrah, where this ephod was, as well as his taber-
nacle in Shiloh, it was perverted to a bad purpose. But
as this abuse arose from the mad caprice of the people,
and not from any ill intent in Gideon, he is no more
chargeable therewith, than Moses was with the idolatrous
worship which the Israelites, in future ages, paid to the
brazen serpent, which he, for very beneficial purposes,
at first set up.
It is generally supposed, 5 that the sacred history has
not furnished us with a complete catalogue of the several
judges that governed Israel, from the death of Joshua
to the reign of Saul ; and that even of those whom it
takes notice of, it relates nothing but what was most
remarkable in their lives and actions : and yet, notwith-
standing this conciseness, it is far more exact and in-
structive than the history of Josephus, to which ' Scaliger
seems to give a preference above all others. The fault
of Josephus, as any one may perceive it, is this : — That
he omits the account of several miracles which the Holy
Scripture relates, for fear that other nations, to whom
he writes, should think that he gives too much into the
marvellous, though at the same time, he makes no scruple
of sacrificing the glory of God to his own private char-
acter.
For this reason it is, that 7 he says nothing of the
angel's touching with the end of his rod the sacrifice
which Gideon had prepared, and so causing fire to flame
out of the rock and consume it; nothing of the two
signs which God was pleased to grant him, for the con-
firmation of his and his confederates' faith, exhibited in
the fleece's being at one time wet, and at another dry ;
Patrick's Commentary. ■ Jiuic. viii. 27. 4 Jodg. viii. 29.
4 Saurin's Dissertation on I legion killed by Khud.
6 Pioleg. de Emend. Temp. 7 Antiii. b. v. c. 3.
420
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[Book V.
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
nothing1 of his zeal in demolishing the altar and gTOve
of Baal, for which he drew upon himself the indignation
of all the abettors of idolatry ; and here, in the matter
of Shamgar, he suppresses the circumstance of his slay-
ing 600 Philistines with an ox-goad, though this be the
only remarkable action recorded of him, and what may,
not improbably, be thus accounted for.
In not many ages after this, we read that these very
Philistines, with whom he had here to do, had disarmed
the Israelites to that degree, that l none in their whole
army, when they came to action, had either sword or
spear, but only Saul and Jonathan his son ; nay, that
they would not so much as suffer a smith to live among
them, for fear of their providing themselves with military
weapons, but obliged them to repair to them, whenever
they wanted to sharpen or repair their instruments of
husbandry.
Now, it must be allowed, that the Scriptures say
nothing of any such reduction as this, in the days of
Shamgar : but if such was the policy of the Philistines,
in the beginning of Saul's reign, why may we not sup-
pose that it commenced some time sooner ? This cer-
tainly the Scripture tells us expressly, that 2 ' in the days
of Shamgar, the highways were unoccupied, and the
inhabitants of the villages ceased,' by reason of the
Philistines, who came and plundered the country, and
carried off what booty they pleased, without molestation :
and therefore, it is not unlikely, that for want of some
regular arms, whereof the Philistines had stripped the
Israelites, Shamgar might make himself a goad, so well
contrived, that with it he could kill any man, without
any manner of suspicion that it was made for that pur-
pose, but only for common use ; that with this instrument
he usually went to plough ; a and when, at any time, the
Philistines made their inroads into his lands, he, with
the assistance of his servants, who, perhaps, were armed
in the like manner, fell upon them, and, at several times,
killed to the number of GOO of them in the space of
about twenty years. This is a fair analysis of the sense
of the words ; and where is the great incongruity of
this? Or what, indeed, is there in the whole, that an
ordinary master of a family, with his domestics about
him, might not do, even though we should not call in
any supernatural strength to his assistance ?
There is more reason, however, why we should have
recourse to the supernatural aid of God, in Samson's
slaying 1000 of these Philistines, at one heat as it were,
Avith no other weapon than the 'jaw-bone of an ass.'
* For though asses in Syria, as the learned affirm, are
both stronger and larger than what we have with us, and
their bones consequently fitted for such hard service as
this ; yet it must be owned, that it was by the wonderful
strength that God infused into him, and not to any apti-
tude of the instrument he made use of, that he was
enabled to do all this execution, which is only incredible
to those * that do not consider the power of God, who
can raise our natural strength to what degree he pleases,
and, at the same time, enfeeble the spirits of those who
oppose his designs, in such a manner, that they shall
have no power to help themselves.
1 I Sam. xiii. 20, &c * Judg. v. 6, 7.
* Poole's Annotations. 4 Patrick's Commentary.
a The description of tli? goad in common use, as given in a
preceding note, renders this supposition unnecessary. — Ed.
It must be owned, however, that there are some cir-
cumstances in this transaction which might possibly
intimidate the Philistines, and thereby contribute to
facilitate the slaughter which Samson made among them.
The people of Judah had now prevailed with him to
suffer himself to be bound, and conducted to the Philis-
tines' camp. The Philistines, as soon as they saw him
coming, ran out with joy to receive him, and very likely
forgot to take their arms with them, as knowing for cer-
tainty, that he Mas safe enough now, and bound, as we
say, to his good behaviour. But when, contrary to their
expectation, they saw him first break the cords so easily
and suddenly, and then coming upon them with such fury
and vengeance, 5 it is not unlikely this might put them
in no small confusion, and as they straggled about in
their flight, gave him the opportunity of slaying them
one by one, as he came up with them.
This, we must allow, is the highest instance of per-
sonal prowess that we any where read of ; and yet pro-
fane historians inform us of other men, who, by their
mere natural courage, unassisted by any divine power,
(as the Scripture informs us Samson was,) have made
great havock among their enemies. For Flavius Vopiscus
reports, that in the Sarmatic war, Aurelian slew forty-
eight men in one day, and in several days b 950, which
diminishes the wonder of this achievement of Samson's
not a little ; especially considering, that the Philistines,
in their surprise, might think that this was all a trick and
management of his conductors to get so many unarmed
men into their power, and that they too were ready to
fall upon them, and assist him, in case they should make
any opposition against their champion.
That Samson, after so long a fatigue, should be almost
ready to c die with thirst, is no strange thing at all ; but
the question is, how, in a place where no water was, he
came to have this thirst allayed ? The Hebrew word
mactes does properly signify the socket, in which the
great teeth in the jaw are fastened ; and from hence
Bochart, among many others, endeavours to maintain by
arguments, that God made one of these teetli drop out
of the jaw, wherewith Samson had done all this execu-
tion, and immediately a stream of water gushed out from
thence. But with all due deference to the learning of
so great a man, 6 it is somewhat strange, that he should
6 Patrick's Commentary. 6 Le Clerc's Commentary.
b Upon this occasion the boys made a song, not much unlike
that which Samson made of himself, (Judg. xv. 16.), which,
after a military manner, they shouted in their dances: " We, a
single man, have slain a thousand men — a thousand we have
slain — long life to him who slew his thousands — no one has as
much wine as the blood shed by him."
c Josephus gives us a strange account of the reason of Sam-
son's thirst, and what there is no matter of foundation for in the
Scripture. " Samson," says he, "was so transported with the
thoughts of this victory, that he had the vanity to assume the
honour of the action to himself, without ascribing the glory of it
to God's power and providence, as he ought to have done. But
while this arrogant and overweening humour was yet upon him,
he found himself seized with a violent parching thirst, which
gave him to understand, that, after all his successes, he was but
flesh and blood still, and liable to human infirmities. The sense
of this disorder brought him to the knowledge of himself, and to
a penitent confession that the victory was God's, and that lie was
able to do nothing of himself without the divine assistance. He
begged pardon for his past vanity and presumption. His prayers
were not in vain; for immediately there gushed out of a rock,
that was hard by, a stream of delicious water to relieve him in
his "aging drought." — slntiquities , b. 5. c. I.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
42 J
A. M. 25C1. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
not observe, when he had this passage under considera-
tion, that such a miracle as this would be inconsistent
with the words which follow : 'wherefore ' he called the
name thereof,' that is, of the fountain of water which
gushed out, ' En-hakkor,' or ' the well of him that cried
to God, which is in Lehi even unto this day.' Lehi is
here therefore the proper name of a place. This place
had doubtless its appellation from this adventure of
.""ainson's with the jaw-bone, and from this place God
caused a spring to arise, that he might allay his hero's
thirst. For it is incongruous to think, that the jaw of
an ass, or any other creature, could have subsisted to the
time when the author of this book of Judges lived ; or
(if all this while none should have had the curiosity to
take away this wonderful bone) that God should, out of
the socket of one of its teeth, cause a stream of water to
flow, by one continual, useless miracle.
It must then be a mistake in our version, to render
the words, ' God clave a hollow place, which was in the
jaw,' when,' according to the a sense of the ancients upon
this place, they should be translated, ' which was in
Lehi.' For the truth of the matter is, that though this
jaw be long extinct and gone, yet those who have tra-
velled through this part of Palestine do inform us, that
in the suburbs of Eleutheropolis, where Lehi very likely
stood, the fountain which arose upon this occasion is
still remaining, and called the fountain of the jaw to
this day.
But be that as it will, whether the water which refreshed
Samson in this his distress came from the jawbone, or,
others think, from a clift* in a rock, or a hollow in the
earth, the miracle is the same, though it may not be im-
proper, whenever we can by an easier interpretation, to
take away occasion from those that seek occasion to
disparage the oracles of God.
We are not, however, concerned to vindicate Samson
in all his extravagant and outrageous actions; such as
his marrying an idolatress, and then leaving her; his
loving lewd women, and discovering the great secret
whereon his all depended to a common prostitute ; his
killing some and maiming others, who perhaps had never
done him any personal injury ; and setting the whole
country on fire, to burn their corn-fields and vineyards,
with many other things that might be alleged against
him. All that we have to say is, that God raised him up
to be a scourge to the Philistines, and that had there not
been some peculiarities in his temper, he had not been
so proper an instrument in his hand ; or that, had he not
run himself so often into praemunires, he would not have
had so frequent occasion to employ the strength which
God had given him, in extricating himself from thence
by the death and destruction of his enemies. Though
1 Judg. xv. 19.
a To this purpose we may observe, that the Seventy inter-
preters, the Chaldee Paraphrast, and Josephus in his history,
make it to be a proper name of a place, whence the waters gushed
out. The words in the Septuaghit are, ' God clave a hollow
place in the ground, which was afterwards called Lehi, or Siagon,
and out of it issued water.' Josephus is quoted before, only he
had these words farther, "which rock," says our translator of
Josephus, " from the exploit of Samson, bears the name of a jaw
unto this very day." And the words of the Paraphrast are
directly to the same purpose: so that it is much to be wondered
at, how so learned and acute a man as Bochart, should overlook
these sentiments of the ancients.— Le Ckrc's Commentary.
A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
therefore there was no fatality in making him of this
unruly disposition, (for that he contracted himself,) yet
there was a wise direction of God's providence in making
his rugged temper subservient to his purposes, and even
out of his faults and enormities extracting the plagues
and punishment of his foes ; for 2 ' surely the wrath of
man shall praise thee,' says the Psalmist, ' and the re-
mainder of his wrath shalt thou restrain.' This we may
lay down as a general reason for God's making use of
so furious an instrument as Samson was, in the execution
of his will : and now, let us examine a little into the
other inconsistencies which some pretend to espy in the
sequel of this story.
A certain anonymous author, * in a dissertation upon
Samson's foxes, has solved the whole difficulty of that
piece of history, if we will but admit of his suppositions.
He supposes that the word schualim, which we render
foxes, should, with a little variation, be written schoalim,
which denotes sheaves, or rather shocks of corn ; and
that the word zanab, which, in our translation, is a tail,
equally signifies the extreme or outermost part of any
thing. Thus, in an orchard planted in the form of a
quincunx, the farthermost tree is called zanab ; and, in
like manner, the extreme or outside shocks in a field
may be so called here : and then the sense of the words
will be, " That Samson, at different places, set fire to
300 shocks of corn, which stood in the out parts of the
fields belonging to the Philistines, and so, by the fire's
spreading from shock to shock, destroyed, in a manner,
all their crop."
But without entertaining any novel interpretation,
and which, upon examination, perhaps will hardly bear
the test, we may adventure to say, that these 300 foxes,
which Samson is said to have caught, are not, even in a
literal sense, so incredible a thing, nor so liable to ridi-
cule, as some may imagine. For we are to consider,
(as the learned 3 Bochart, from the account of several
travellers, evinces,) that the whole country, especially
that part of it which belonged to the tribe of Gad, so
abounded with foxes, that from them 4 several places
took their names : that under the name of foxes may not
improperly be comprehended a creature very much like
them, called thoes, which go in such herds, that 200 of
them have been seen together at once ; that the manner
of catching them was not, as we may imagine, by hunting
only, but by snares and nets, as the above-mentioned
author plainly demonstrates ; and that Samson did not
do this alone by himself, in a day and night's time, but
that, being assisted by his servants and neighbours, as
he was a man of considerable eminence in his country,
he might possibly be some weeks in accomplishing his
design.
His design, however, will not appear so romantic, if
2 Ps. lxxvi. 10.
3 Hieroz. i. 3. c. 10. ( Judg. i. 35.
6 Mr Bernard, in his Republic of Letters, October, 1707, p.
407., makes mention of a small treatise in ISmo, entitled " Dis-
sertation on lialaam's ass, the foxes of Samson, the jawbone of
the ass," &c, from whom I have extracted the author's senti-
ment, as Mr Bernard has represented it; but could, by no
means, meet with the book itself, and cannot therefore properly
enter into an examination of the author's opinion. However, I
thought convenient to make mention of it, because there seems
to I" something ingenious, as well as singular in it.
122
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[Book V.
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
we consider what collections have been made of creatures
much wilder and rarer than foxes : that ' Lucius Sylla,
when he was praetor, ordered to be shown, on the
amphitheatre, a hundred lions; Julius Caesar, when he
was dictator, four hundred ; and that 2 the emperor Pro-
bus, at one spectacle, exhibited a thousand ostriches, a
thousand stags, a hundred Lybian, and a hundred Sy-
rian leopards, and an infinite number of other strange
creatures : and why then should it be thought to be a
thing so incredible, as to need the intervention of a
miracle, as some contend, for Samson, with the assist-
ance of his friends, who might be let into his design, to
get together, in some time, three hundred foxes, in a
country that everywhere abounded with them ?
Foxes, we are none of us ignorant, are very apt to do
a great deal of mischief wherever they abound, and 3
therefore Samson might have this farther aim in collect-
ing so many, namely, that thereby he might clear his
own country of such noxious animals, and at the same
time, that he very well knew, no creature could be more
convenient for his purpose of annoying and detrimenting
his enemies. For as these creatures are very swift of
foot, and have a natural dread of fire, they could not
well fail, when once they were turned into it, of setting
the standing corn in a blaze, and then, as they were tied
in couples, tail to tail, this would make them draw one
against the other, and so being retarded in their flight,
and staying longer in a place, they would give the fire
more time to spread itself, and make a conflagration
universal.
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that the
mustering up such a number of foxes, in order to burn
up the Philistines' corn, was neither a foolish nor im-
practicable thing, supposing Samson was at liberty to
prosecute his revenge in this manner. a But for his
' Pliny, b. 2. c. 16. 2 In Vopiscus on Probus.
:< Calmet's Commentary on Judg. xxv.
a Dr Kennicott contends for the translation noticed above,
namely, that instead of fores we should read handfuls or sheaves,
but this meaning does not seem borne out by the use of the word
in other places, nor is it supported by the context in this place.
The following strictures on this criticism, and remarks on this
subject generally, we quote from Dr Harris's Natural History
of the Bible. " However plausible this turn may seem, I think
that it is as far from the sense of the sacred historian as it is
from our translation, which, I imagine, truly expresses his
meaning. For the word -13S lakar, which our Translators have
rendered ' caught,' never signifies simply to get, take, or fetch,
but always to catch, seize, or take by assault, stratagem, or stir-
prise, &c, unless the following place, 1 Sam. xiv. 47, ' So
Saul took the kingdom over Israel,' be an exception. Again,
admitting the proposed alteration in the word Sjniv, shuol, it will
be difficult to prove that even then it means a sheaf. The word
is used but three times in the whole Bible. Its meaning must
be gathered from the connexion in which it stands here. The
first place is 1 Kings xx. 10, where it is rendered ' handfuls,'
not of grain, but of dust. ' The gods do so unto me, and more
also,' says Benhadad, king of Syria, ' if the dust of Samaria
shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me.' In
Isaiah xl. 12. the same word is translated, 'the hollow of the
hand.' ' Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his
hand, and meted out the heavens with a span.' The last place
in which the word occurs is Ezekiel xiii. 9. ' And will ye pol-
lute me among my people for handfuls of barley, and for pieces
of bread ?' The connexion here with pieces of bread seems evi-
dently to point out to us handfuls of barley in the grain, not
handfuls or sheaves in the ear and straw. In fine, from the
places quoted, taken in their several connexions, the word plainly
appears to mean a measure of capacity, as much as the hollow
of the hand can hold ; as a hand-breadth is used in Scripture for
righteousness in this, and many of his other proceedings,
we are, as we said before, no ways accountable, unless his
a measure of extension. Add to this, that in all other places
of Scripture where we meet with the word handful, that is, as
much grain in the stock as the reaper can grasp in his hand, or
sheaf, a collection of such handfuls bound together, different
terms from that in dispute, are always made use of in the origi-
nal; as Ruth ii. 15, 16, and elsewhere.
" The supposed incredibleness of the stoiy, as it stands in our
bibles, is, I imagine, the only reason for forcing it into another
meaning. The language of the critics I oppose, is this: 'The
action of Samson, as represented in our translation, is so ex-
traordinary, that it must be miraculous. The occasion was un-
worthy of the divine interposition. Therefore the Translators
of the Bible must in this particular have mistaken the meaning
of the sacred historian.' But we have shown above, from an
examination of the principal terms, that the translation is just.
It remains then to be shown, either that the occasion was not
unworthy of the divine interposition, or that the action was not
above human capacity. The latter, I am fully persuaded, is
the truth of the case, though I am far from thinking the former
indefensible. The children of Israel were, in a peculiar manner,
separated from the rest of mankind, for this purpose more es-
pecially, to preserve in the world, till the times of general refor-
mation should come, the knowledge and worship of the one true
God. At sundry times, and in divers manners, did the Deity
for this end interpose. Many instances of this kind are recorded
in the book of Judges. When this people perverted the end of
their distinguished privileges, God suffered them to be enslaved
by those idolatrous nations whose false deities they had worshipped.
By this means they were brought to a sense of their error; and
when they were sufficiently humbled, ' the Lord raised up judges,
which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them.'
Jud. ii. 16. In such a state of servitude to the Philistines were
they at this time. Samson was raised up in an extraordinary
manner to be their deliverer; and his intermarriage with the
Philistines was a means which Providence saw fit to make use
of to effect their deliverance. Thus the affair is represented.
Samson proposes his intentions to his parents. They expostu-
late with him. ' Is there never a womau among the daughters
of thy brethren, or among all thy people, that thou goest to take
a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines ?' ' But they,' adds the
sacred historian, ' were ignorant that it was of the Lord, that he
sought an occasion against the Philistines ; for at that time the
Philistines had dominion over Israel.' Though Samson, then,
might propose to himself nothing more in forming a connexion
with a foreign lady, than the gratification of his own inclinations,
yet we are warranted to say, an overruling Providence had a
further design. The same may be affirmed of other actions of
Samson, which appear to have proceeded from passions of a
more rugged complexion. His intention in them might be un-
worthy of a divine interposition; but the end which God had in
view, the deliverance of a people chosen to preserve his worship
in the world, would make it highly fit and necessary. Nor
ought it to be reckoned strange, that such means should be used ;
for we are authentically assured, that the wrath of man, and, by
parity of reason, other passions too, are sometimes made to praise
the Lord. Thus much I thought necessaiy to say, for the sake
of those to whom a solution on natural principles shall seem un-
satisfactory. Such a solution I now proceed to give.
" In the first place, it is evident from the Holy Scriptures,
that Palestine abounded with foxes, or that animal, be it what it
will, which is signified by the Hebrew word Syiu>. shuol. This
appears from many passages. Psalm Ixiii. 10; Cant. ii. 15;
Lam. v. IS; 1 Sam. xiii. 17; Josh. xv. 28; xix. 3. From their
numbers, then, the capture would be easy.
" Further: under the Hebrew word Sjw, shuol, was probably
comprehended another animal, very similar to the fox, and very
numerous in Palestine ; gregarious, and whose Persic name is
radically the same with the Hebrew. It is no easy matter to
determine, whether the Hebrew Syw, shuol, means the common
fox (canis vulpes,) or the Jackal, (canis aureus,) " the little
eastern fox,' as Hasselquist calls him. Several of the modern
oriental names of the jackal, that is, the Turkish chical, the
Persian sciagal, sciugal, sciachal, or schacal (whence the French
chacai, and English jackal,) from their resemblance to the
Hebrew, favour the latter interpretation. Perhaps the term
may include both animals, although it seems most probable that
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &r<
423
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
being considered as a chief among the Israelites, (whom
God had raised up to annoy the Philistines, and in such
methods as this, rather than open war, to weaken them
by his personal valour and strength,) may be admitted in
justification of what he did. But to proceed.
1 Whether Samson's hair was the physical, or only
moral cause of his strength, needs not, I think, be made
any question. For though plenty of hair may be some
indication of bodily strength, yet since he that is natur-
ally strong becomes not less so by having his hair cut
oft', though this was certainly the case of Samson, it
must necessarily follow, that his hair was no natural
cause of his strength, but that it was a supernatural and
1 Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Samson.
it was the jackal that Samson employed. Dr Shaw is of this
opinion, and observes, that " as these are creatures by far the
most common and familiar, as well as the most numerous of any
in the eastern countries, we may well perceive the great possi-
bility there was for Samson to take, or cause to be taken, three
hundred of them. The fox properly so called, he adds is
rarely to be met with, neither is it gregarious." So Hasselquist
remarks: "Jackals are found in great numbers about Gaza; and,
from their gregarious nature, it is much more probable that
Samson should have caught three hundred of them, than of the
solitary quadruped, the fox.*' Allowing this to be the animal,
the story is easily admissible to belief, without the supposition
of a miracle. For it is not said, that Samson caught so many
foxes in one hour, or one day; or, that he caught them all with
his own hands. Being then judge of Israel, he might employ
many hands, and yet be said, according to the common use of
language, to do it himself.
" Add to this, that the season, the days of wheat harvest, was
extremely favourable for hunting these animals; and, as they
were gregarious, many might be surrounded or entrapped at once.
" I shall conclude with an argument more iu favour of the
justness of our translation, in rendering the word S>W, shuol, ' a
fox,' not a sheaf. It has been esteemed by some persons of ex-
tensive literature to be a demonstrative argument. I shall
mention it, and leave it to stand on its own bottom. At the
feast of Ceres, the goddess of corn, celebrated annually at Rome
about the middle of April, there was the observance of this cus-
tom,— to fix burning torches to the tails of a number of foxes,
and to let them run through the circus till they were burnt to
death. This was done in revenge upon that species of animals,
for having once burned up the fields of corn. The reason, in-
deed, assigned by Ovid, is too frivolous an origin for so solemn
a rite; and the time of its celebration, the 17th of April, it
seems, was not harvest time, when the fields were covered with
corn, — ' vestitos messibus agros;' for the middle of April was
seed-time in Italy, as appears from Virgil's Georgics. Hence
we must infer that this rite must have taken its rise from some
other event than that by which Ovid accounted for it; and Sam-
son's foxes are a probable origin of it. The time agrees exactly,
as may be collected from several passages of Scripture. For
instance, from the book of Exodus we learn, that before the Pass-
over, that N, before the fourteenth day of the month A bib, or
March, barky in Egypt was in the ear; (xii. IS; xiii. 4.) And
in eh. ix. 31, 38, it is said, that the wheat at that time was not
grown up. Barley harvest, then, in Egypt, and so in the coun-
try of the Philistines which bordered upon it, must have fallen
about the middle of March. Wheat harvest, according to Pliny,
N. II. lib. viii. c. 7, was a month later. 'In Egypt barley is
reaped on the sixth month after sowing, corn on the seventh.'
Therefore, wheat harvest happened about the middle of April;
the very time in which the burning of foxes was observed at
Rome.
" It is certain that the Romans borrowed many of their rites
and ceremonies, both serious and ludicrous, from foreign nations:
and Egypt and Phoenicia furnished them with more, perhaps,
than any other country. From one of these, the Romans might
either receive this rite immediately, or through the hands of
their neighbours the Carthaginians, who were a colony of Phoe-
nicians; and so its true origin may be referred back to the story
which we have been considering."
M. 4189. A. C.1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH,
miraculous gift, not, s perhaps always inherent in him,
but only dispensed at certain times, when the Spirit of
God came upon him. 3 It depended indeed on the
covenant made between God and him, the sign of which
covenant was his hair ; and therefore when, in com-
pliance to his harlot, he suffered his hair to be cut off
he broke the covenant with God, and forfeiting the spirit
of strength and courage, was left to his own natural
weakness, and so became an easy prey to his enemies.
But having been now a considerable time in prison,
wherein he was cruelly used, he began to repent no
doubt of his folly ; and therefore making fervent sup-
plications to God for pardon of the violation of his
Nazaratism, he renewed his vow, and so, being restored
to the condition he was in before he lost the favour of
God, his strength began to grow and increase, in pro-
portion as his hair did.
When his hair was thus grown, and his strength re-
turned, it is made a question, whether the house, as it
is called in Scripture, which he pulled down, was the
temple of Dagon, for whose honour this festival was ap-
pointed, or some other edifice ?
That it was not a common house, is evident from the
multitude of the people which it contained ; and though
the temples of the Philistines are supposed *by some to
have been of the same figure and make with those in
Egypt, that is a kind of rotunda, flat-roofed, with a large
portico without, and pillars within to sustain the build-
ing; yet this seems to be no more than a fiction, devoid
of all authority, and accommodated to the purpose of
solving this difficulty. It is not certain, that the Egyp-
tian temples were built in this manner, and much more
probable it is that this house of their famous god Dagon
was made of stone ; and though it wanted no proper
supports, yet it is scarce supposable, that in a structure
of this kind, the whole weight should be supported by
two pillars only, and these so very contiguous, that
Samson could lay hold on them both at one time.
The most general opinion, therefore, is, that this was
a structure which the Philistines made use of, upon such
occasions as this, built all of wood, and supported by
wooden pillars, in the form of the theatres which in af-
ter-times were in great request among the Romans. To-
wards the middle of this building, we may suppose that
there were two large beams, upon which the weight of
the whole structure lay ; and that these beams were sup-
ported by two pillars, which stood in a manner conti-
guous to each other. So that, as soon as Samson had
moved and unsettled these, down must the principals,
and with them the whole building, come. The only re-
maining difficulty is, how a building made of wood, and
supported by two pillars only, should be able to contain
such a multitude of men and women ? But whoever
reads '« Pliny's Natural History, will therein find a
* Patrick's Commentary. 3 Collier's Introduction.
4 Calmet's Commentary.
a The words of Pliny upon this occasion are so very remark-
able, that I thought it not improper to quote them. ' He erected
two vast wooden theatres, suspended each on a hinge that rested
on a moveable pillar: while the forenoon spectacle of the games
was exhibiting, they were opposite to one another, lest the nol W
of exhibition should disturb tin ir mutual attention ; but no Boonei
was the exhibition over, than by a sudden impulse they went
forced round again, so that they stood in juxtaposition ; and in
the evening by the taking down of the scenery, and by combining
424
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
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description of two theatres, built by Curio, capable of
containing a much greater number of people than the
Philistines are here said to be, and yet what was a wonder
much greater than the two pillars here, whenever they
were turned round, as they frequently were, to meet and
make one amphitheatre, they both rested upon one hinge
only, which, had it happened to slip, must have occa-
sioned, as our author tells us, a much greater slaughter
than what was at the battle of Cannae ; as, by the actual
fall of an amphitheatre, built by Atilius, no fewer than
fifty thousand persons as a Tacitus relates the story,
were killed, wounded, and maimed: which is enough,
one would think, to silence the cavils of those who are
apt to fancy that a building of such capacity could not
be so contrived as to rely only on two supporters.*
the two wings, an amphitheatre was formed, and the gladiatorial
spectacles were exhibited, it was capable of enclosing the whole
of the Roman freemen who had become gladiators for hire. But
in this erection what can we most admire ? the inventor or the
invention ? the workman or the planner ? that any one should
dare to plan or execute it ? should act as servant or master in it ?
Besides all these there was added the madness of the people,
who dared to sit on a foundation so imperfect and unstable,
ready every moment to be overwhelmed in ruin." — B. 36. c. 15.
a The fall of this amphitheatre Tacitus relates in these words :
" In the consulship of Marcus Licinus and Lucius Calpumius,
the horror of an unforeseen calamity equalled the havock of mighty
conflicting armies. Its beginning and termination were simul-
taneous. A certain freed man, named Atilius, erected an amphi-
theatre at Fidenre for the exhibition of gladiatorial combats; but
its wooden texture was utterly devoid of all solidity and safety,
for he was urged to its erection by no superfluity of riches nor
desire of municipal honours, but by the base love of money. At
the command of the emperor Tiberius, vast crowds of both sexes
and of every age and class, were seen eagerly rushing to FideiiEe,
and as the distance from Rome to Fidente was but small, (only
five miles) so on that account the misfortune was rendered the
greater; no sooner was the building crammed with the multi-
tude, than all at once it gave way, some parts of it falling in,
•dragging headlong, and burying the spectators, while the other
parts of it falling outwards, overwhelmed the crowded masses
of people around its walls. By this disaster, 50,000 beings
are said to have been killed or mutilated." — Annul, iv. 62.
b The sentiments of Sir Christopher Wren on this subject,
will doubtless be considered as important. " In considering
what this fabric must have been, that could at one pull be de-
molished, I conceive it was an oval amphitheatre, the scene in
the middle, where a vast roof of cedar beams resting round upon
the walls centered all upon one short architrave, that united two
cedar pillars in the middle. The pillars would not be sufficient
to unite the ends of at least one hundred beams, that tended to
the centre ; wherefore, I say, there must be a short architrave
resting upon two pillars, upon which all the beams tending
to the centre of the amphitheatre, might be supported. Now if
Samson by his miraculous strength pressing upon one of these
pillars, moved it from its basis, the whole roof must of necessity
fall." — Parentalia, p. 359. "The eastern method of building
may assist us in accounting for the particular structure of the
temple or house of Dagon, (Judg. xvi.) and the great number of
people that were buried in the ruins of it, by pulling down the
two principal pillars. We read (v. 27.) that about three thou-
sand persons were upon the roof to behold while Samson made
sport. Samson must therefore have been in a court or area
below them, and consequently the temple will be of the same
kind with the ancient sacred enclosures, surrounded only in part
or altogether with some plan or cloistered buildings. Several
palaces and dua-wanas, as they call the courts of justice in these
countries, are built in this fashion; where upon their festivals and
rejoicings, a great quantity of sand is strewed upon the area for
the wrestlers to fall upon, whilst the roof of the cloisters round
about is crowded with spectators of their strength and agility.
I have often seen hundreds of people diverted in this manner
upon the roof of the dey's palace at Algiers; which, like many
niure of the same quality and denomination, hath an advanced
And indeed all the other exceptions, which are usually
made to Samson's character and conduct, are in eflect
no more than mere cavils, which arise in a great measure
from an unacquaintedness with the idiom of the Hebrew
tongue. For as, when in Jotham's parable, ' wine ' is
said 1 ' to cheer both God and man : the words Elo/u'm,
and Anashim, may signify as well high and low, princes
and -peasants, that is, all conditions of men do find
themselves cheered and refreshed with wine ; so when it
is said, that 2' the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon
Samson,' we are not to understand thereby, that he had
any grace extraordinary, or sanctifying influences of the
Blessed Spirit communicated to him, but only that he was
endued with wonderful courage and fortitude, an un-
daunted mind, and a supernatural strength of body at
such and such times, which enabled him to do great acts,
but made no alteration in his manners. And in like
manner, when he is said to 3 ' have judged Israel twenty
years,' we need not infer, that he was the supreme
magistrate in the republic, for that very probably was
Eli, but only that he was the chief man of war, whose
valour was renowned, and who did many great and
signal exploits, in order to rescue his countrymen from the
oppression of their enemies, and to restore them to their
former liberty : I say, in order to this, for he did not
perfect their deliverance : only, by the several defeats
which he gave them, and the great damages he did them,
he infused into the Israelites such a spirit and resolu-
tion, that not many years after, they took up arms, and
appearing in the field against them, defeated, and sub-
dued them ; so that, in all the days of Samuel, we hear
of no farther molestation from that quarter.
The Scripture, however, furnishes us with a reason why
idolatry was not abolished, and a thorough reformation
of religion established, during this period : for it tells
us, that * ' in those days,' namely, between the death of
Joshua, and the first institution of the judges, ' there was
no king,' that is, no chief ruler or magistrate, for the
regal authority did not as yet begin, in Israel, ' but every
one did that which was right in his own eyes ;' so that
considering the natural propensity of the people to
idolatry, and the want of a supreme power lodged in
some one's hand to control them, we need not wonder,
that before the institution of judges, they fell into the
like practices with the nations among whom they lived.
The judges indeed were invested with authority to
suppress these practices ; but then we are to consider,
that few or none of them had a jurisdiction over the
whole land of Israel, but were only rulers of some par-
ticular cantons, which they undertook to deliver from
imminent danger ; and therefore how zealous soever they
1 Judg. ix. 13. 8 Judg. xiv. 6.
3 Judg. xvi. 31. * Judg. xvii. 6.
cloister over against the gate of the palace, (Esth. v. 1.) made
in the fashion of a large pent-house, supported only by one or
two contiguous pillars in the front, or else in the centre. In
such open structures as these, in the midst of their guards and
counsellors, are the bashas, kadees, and other great officers,
assembled to distribute justice, and transact the public affairs of
their provinces. Here likewise they have their public enter-
tainments, as the lords and others of the Philistines had in the
house of Dagon. Upon a supposition therefore, that in the house
of Dagon, there was a cloistered structure of this kind, the pull-
ing down of the front, or centre pillars only, which supported it,
would be attended with the like catastrophe that happened to the
Philistines." — Shaw's Travels, p. 283. — El).
Shot. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
425
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might be for a reformation, yet since their authority was
not of sufficient extension, the wonder is not great, that
1 idolatry should still be practised in some dark corners
of the land, and that in the tribe of Dan, which was so
far distant, ' there should be set up Micah's graven image
which he made, at the time that the ark of the Lord was
at Shiloh.'
Shiloh indeed was so far distant from several parts of
the land of Canaan, that people began to account it too
much trouble to go up thither to pay their vows and
oblations, and therefore bethought themselves of setting
tip private chapels, wherein, as they supposed, they
might serve God as well ; and in the institution of these,
being left to their own fancies, they generally intermixed
some idolatrous practices, and, partly in imitation of the
cherubim at Shiloh, and the teraphim among their
heathen neighbours, chose to worship God through some
visible representation, which, by one means or other,
was carried on in time to direct idolatry.
The Moabites, we know, even when the Israelites were
in a state of independency, and had reason sufficient to
have a jealous eye over them, by their arts and contri-
vances drew them into the worship of their god Baal-
peor ; and much more might the nations, to whom they
were now in subjection, succeed in their attempts, either
of recommending, or, if need required it, of forcing their
religion upon them : so that it was not to be wondered
at, if things ran into such disorder, when there was, if
not a total dissolution, at least a grievous relaxation of
government ; when some of the governors themselves
were far from being the best of men ; and through
inclination, entreaty, or compulsion, the people were so
liable, upon many occasions, to relapse into idolatry.
What Micah's intention might be in setting up a tera-
phim, and other kind of images in his house, commenta-
tors are not so well agreed. Those that are willing to
apologize for the thing, are ready to say, 2 that as he
lived in a time of great trouble and confusion, wherein
the public worship of God was much neglected, if not
totally disused, his design was to erect a kind of domes-
tic tabernacle, wherein he might serve God in private,
since he could not, without much difficulty, do it in
public ; and that the sacred habiliments he made, his
ephod, his teraphim, &c. were no more than what he had
seen at Shiloh : but since the laws of God condemn 3
the making images of any kind, as objects of adoration;
the setting up any religious worship, different from what
he had established ; the offering sacrifices, or 4 perform-
ing any public service any where but in the tabernacle ;
and the employing any priests in his worship but such as
were of the race of Aaron ; it is certain that Micah was
guilty of a violation of all these prohibitions, and in the
matter of these graven and molten images, cannot be
excused from the crime of idolatry.
And indeed, unless he intended to patronize that,
what reasons could he have to make any innovations in
religion, since, according as we date this action, either
Phinehas or Eli wore then in the high priest's office at
Shiloh, where the public worship was performed in all
iis formality, and from whence Micah, who lived in the
' Judg. xviii. 31. ! Calmet's Commentary.
a Exod. xx. 4. and xxxiv. 17; Deut. iv. 15, 16.
4 Lev. xvii. 8. and Deut. xii. 14.
mountains of Ephraim, was not so very distant, but that
he might have gone thither upon all solemn occasions.
The Spirit of God therefore, in repeating the admo-
nition, that ' in those days there was no king in Israel,'
&c. before it begins to relate this story of Micah, seems
to insinuate, that this was a wicked and enormous prac-
tice of his ; that the worship he instituted was idolatrous,
and the priest he had procured to officiate, a renegado :
and if so, the answer this priest received in behalf of the
Danites, and wherein he promised them the success they
met with, must have proceeded from no good principle,
unless we suppose, what seems indeed most reasonable,
that the Levite promised them success, because he was
minded to please them, merely out of his own head,
though, to give it a better sanction, he might pretend to
receive it from this fictitious oracle. In this case, there
was no occasion of having recourse to any oracle what-
ever; because any man of a moderate foresight, con-
sidering the undaunted courage and valour of the
Danites, and the supine negligence and cowardice of the
people of Laish, if once they came to action, might,
without the spirit of prophecy, foretell the event.
The directions which God gave Moses concerning
Joshua's consulting the divine oracle, are conceived in
these words : — 5 ' He shall stand before Eleazar the
priest, who shall ask counsel for him, after the judgment
of Urim, before the Lord ; at his word shall they go out,
and at his word shall they come in, both he and all the
children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.'
In all the book of Joshua indeed we do not find, that he
had this constant recourse to the oracle, 6 and from
hence some Jewish doctors conclude, that he was bound
to do this only at his first entrance upon his office, to
demonstrate to the people that he was Moses' successor ;
but that afterwards the spirit of prophecy rested upon
him, so that he knew how to conduct all public affairs,
without having occasion for this oracular advice. Moses
we know made no use of the Urim and Thummim, to
consult God by the mediation of the high priest : he
went immediately and directly to God himself: but we
do not read that Joshua was admitted to such familiari-
ty, nor had he such frequent revelations from God, as
his predecessors had. And therefore, as God was
pleased, in supplying that defect, to remit him to this
method of consulting him ; we cannot but think, that
upon every momentous occasion, especially in the
weighty affairs of war, he was always careful to pursue
it : and therefore the words in the beginning of Judges,
' Now after the death of Joshua, the children of Israel
asked of the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against
the Canaanites ?' do not import, that they never consulted
God by way of Urim and Thummim, during the life of
Joshua, but rather that after the death of so great a
commander, they were at a stand what to do, nor would
they adventure to proceed in the war of Canaan, without
following the same directions which were given to Joshua,
and which he had so long pursued with so good success.
Nay, the consulting of the divine oracle, especially in
matters of war, was accounted so very necessary, in
order to obtain success, that some commentators have
esteemed this the only reason why the Israelites, in so
just a cause as punishing the Benjainites for their
■' Num. xxvii. '21.
0 Sue Patrick's Commentary in locum.
3 H
426
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[Book V.
A. M. 25G1. A. C. 1143; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
unheard of wickedness, were, in two several battles,
defeated ; even because they did not previously apply
to God, as they should have done. ' They sent up
indeed to the house of the Lord, ' and asked counsel of
him, and said, Which of us shall go up first to the battle
against the children of Benjamin ?' that is, which of
their tribes should have the honour or hazard of making
the first attack : 3 but it is observable, that they had
come to a full resolution of making war against the
Benjamites, and, to that purpose, had made draughts of
the men that were to be employed in it, without ever con-
sulting God, whether an enterprise of this nature, wherein
there was likely to be such an effusion of the blood of
their brethren, would be pleasing to him or no. 3 The
truth is, they never questioned his approbation of what
they accounted so laudable : they presumed upon his
protection and assistance ; and the vast superiority of
their forces made them confident of success. But now,
in a matter of such moment as this, to overlook the
divine oracle, and be determined by their own counsels
only, and to march against one of their own tribes, with
a full purpose of destroying them utterly, before they
knew any thing whether God had decreed their destruc-
tion or no, was not only an instance of their rashness
and presumption, but an act likewise of rebellion against
the majesty of God, who was the king of Israel, and
upon that account alone, had right to declare whether
they were to wage war against their brethren the Ben-
jamites or no.
But supposing that the grounds of the war were justi-
fiable, and God consenting to it, yet why might not he
take the opportunity of punishing the Israelites, by
means of the Benjamites, for their tame permission of
crimes more enormous than what they had now taken into
their heads to chastise ; * for suffering spiritual adultery
among them, even while they were so hot upon punishing
carnal ?
The laws which God gave the Israelites against the
sin of idolatry, were so very severe, that whoever did
but so much as entice another to the commission of it
was to lose all title to pity and compassion, though he
was ever so dear a friend, ever so near a relation :
5 ' Thine eyes shall not pity him, neither shalt thou spare,
neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill
him ; thy hand shall be first upon him to put him to
death, and afterwards the hands of all the people.' But
now in the case of Micah, and the whole tribe of Dan,
who had notoriously fallen into idolatry, the rulers of
Israel were so far from putting this law in execution,
that they connived at their apostasy : and therefore God
took occasion, from this quarrel between the other tribes
and that of Benjamin, to make use of the latter as
scourges to punish this base connivance of the former ;
ami after he had twice employed them to this purpose,
he inverted the fate of the war, and in so doing, made
the confederate army of Israel the instruments of that
terrible vengeance which he took upon the Benjamites,
in the punishment of their execrable lewdness. Fortius
is the wonderful wisdom of God's providence, to employ
1 Judg. xx. 18.
s Calmet's Commentary on Judg. xx.
3 Sam iii's Dissertations, vol. 4. Dissertation 18.
Patrick's Commentary on Judg. xx. * Deut. xiii. S,
M. 41S9. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
the passions of men to his purposes, and to make one
wicked set of people the instruments of his punishing
another, even as he expresses himself in another case,
that in some measure is not incongruous to this : 6 ' Woe
unto the Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff"
in their hand, is mine indignation : — against the people
of my wrath will I give him charge to take the spoil,
and to take the prey, and to tread them down like mire in
the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his
heart think so ; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to
cut oft' nations not a few. Wherefore it shall come to
pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work
upon Mount Sion, and on Jerusalem, I will punish the
fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the
glory of his high looks ;' and in like manner here, when
by the hand of the Benjamites, he had chastised the rest
of the Israelites, by the hand of the Israelites he punished
the Benjamites for their gross impieties, making use of
their respective passions, and furious resentments, to
accomplish his will : albeit ' they meant it not so, neither
did their hearts think so ; but it was only in their hearts
to cut off one another.'
When the heat of their fury, however, was abated, and
the Israelites began to look back with a little coolness
upon what they had done ; how they had almost totally
destroyed one tribe of their brethren, and bound them-
selves by an oath never to marry their daughters to any
of the poor remains of it, which could not but prove the
extirpation of the whole, the joy and triumph of their
late victory was turned into mourning and bitter lamen-
tation.
Whether this oath against contracting any affinity with
the Benjamites, was in itself lawful and obligatory, or
no,7 some interpreters, without any manner of reason,
as I think, have disputed. For, whatever was attended
with such pernicious consequences, as to oblige their
brethren either to live unmarried, which would prove the
extinction of their tribe, or to marry the daughters of the
heathens, which was contrary to their divine law, or to
take to themselves wives wherever they could find them
by force and violence, which was contrary to the univer-
sal law of nations : whatever, I say, was attended with
such evil consequences as these, could not be lawful in
itself, nor of any obligation to the consciences of those
that made it ; and therefore it is somewhat wonderful,
how the Israelites, when they found themselves involved
in such difficulties, as 8 they themselves testify, that for
the preservation of this their oath, they were forced to
have recourse to acts of the utmost cruelty and violence,
did not perceive the illegality of it, and themselves,
consequently, absolved from its observation.
It is not the intent of the sacred historian to relate
matters otherwise than they happened ; nor is it any part
of our business to apologize for actions that in them-
selves are abominable, and will admit of no excuse.
The massacre of the people of Jabesh-gilead, without
ever sending to know the reason of their absenting them-
selves from the war, was a cruel expedient to extricate
the Israelites from a difficulty in which their superstitious
observance of an unlawful oath had involved them ; and
a sad instance it is of the iniquity and barbarity of these
times : for how severe soever the laws of military dis-
6 Is. x. 5, &c. ' See Calmet's Commentary. 8 Judg. xxi. C, &c.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &«.
427
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cipline may be, or with l what justice soever recusants,
as well as deserters in war may be deemed guilty, and
the Jabeshites be called public enemies, because they
did not obey the order of the whole congregation, and
by refusing to join with them against the Benjamites,
made themselves partakers of their crimes : yet certainly
to slay the innocent with the guilty, and to put women
and children to death, who were never made to bear
arms, was the very height of injustice and barbarity. If
it be said, that the cfierem, or the sentence of utter exe-
cration was passed upon them, I do not see with what
justice the virgins could be spared, as we find they were
by a public decree, unless we suppose that God, from
the tabernacle at Shiloh, before which the Israelites were
now assembled, signified his intentions of dispensing
with the full execution of the sentence, by reason of the
public necessity.
And, indeed, the public necessity is the only good
reason that can be given for that other act of violence,
the rape of the virgins at Shiloh. For whatever may be
said in vindication of the Benjamites, namely, that what
they put in execution was by order and advice of their
superiors, and that their intent in doing it was just and
honest, and devoid of that brutal lust which is incident to
common ravishers ; whatever may be said in excuse of
these, the elders of Israel, who gave them this counsel
and authority, had certainly no right to dispose of other
people's children without their parents' consent and
approbation.
° The rape of the Sabine virgins is usually produced
as a piece of history parallel to this ;2 but Romulus, in
whose reign it happened, was one of those princes who
accounted every point that contributed to the establish-
i Judg. xxi. 6, &c.
2 Saurin's Dissertation 18. vol. 4.
a This piece of history we find thus related: " Romulus, per-
ceiving that his new city was surrounded by several \ery powerful
and warlike nations, who bore them no very good will, i'onried a
design to make them his friends, by contracting marriages with
them: but considering with himself, that these neighbouring na-
tions would hardly enter into that affinity with a people, as yet
famous neither for their riches nor great exploits, without being
in some measure compelled into it, he was resolved to put in
practice the stratagem of his uncle Numitor, and to enter into
this alliance with them by carrying oil' their daughters. This
design he communicated to the senate, and having obtained their
approbation of it, he proclaimed a public feast to be celebrated in
honour of Neptune, and invited all the neighbouring cities to
the many diversions and spectacles which he then intended to
exhibit. Crowds of people, with their wives and children,
flocked to the feast; but on the last day, when it began to draw
to a conclusion, Romulus ordered all the young men, that upon
a signal given, they should seize and cany on" every one a virgin,
keep them all night, without offering any rudeness to them, and
bring them the next morning before him. The young men took
care to execute his orders: for dispersing themselves into small
companies, as soon as they saw the sign, they seized on the
damsels, who, upon this occasion, made a hideous outcry, as
expecting much worse usage than they met with. The next
day, when they were brought before Romulus, he spoke very
courteously to them, and told them, That it was to do them no
dishonour, but merely to procure them husbands, that he ordered
that rape, which was an ancient custom derived from the Greeks,
and the most noble and gallant manner of contracting marriage.
He therefore entreated them to be well affected towards those
husbands which fortune had given them; and so, distributing the
young women, which were 6\S3, among an equal number of un-
married men, he dismissed them." — Diongs. Halicarn. Antiq.,
b. 2. c. 21.
ment of his dominions, not only lawful, but glorious, and
that every thing ceased to be a crime, when once it be-
came necessary for reasons of state : but the rulers of
Israel either had, or should have had, different notions.
They were governed by God, ' whose throne is estab-
lished in righteousness,' and should therefore, one would
think, have contrived some other means for re-establishing
a diminished tribe than those violent ways of rapes and
forced marriages. But the sacred historian has assigned
a reason for these unrighteous proceedings, when, in
3 four different places in the book of Judges, he tells us,
that ' in those days there was no king in Israel :' and 4
for want of such a supreme authority, every tribe, and
every city, nay, which is more, every private man com-
mitted many horrid things, which were not publicly
allowed. This 5 was the cause of Micah's idolatry, as
we noted before ; of the Benjamites' filthiness and
abominable lusts ; and of all the enormous things done
by the main body of the Israelites ; their killing all the
Benjamites without distinction ; their binding themselves
by rash and unlawful oaths ; their killing all the women
of Jabesh-gilead who were not virgins ; and here, their
permitting, nay, their ordering this rape, for the preser-
vation of a rash and unjustifiable oath : and this should
teach us to be very thankful for the authority that is set
over us, in order to preserve us from the commission
of such like enormities ; for which end the custom was,
among the ancient Persians, as our learned Usher ob-
serves, to let the people loose to do even what they
listed, for five days after their king died ; that by the
disorders which were then committed, they might see
the necessity of having a king to govern them, and when
one was settled in the throne, the great reason of being
obedient to him.
Thus we have endeavoured to clear up most of the
passages in the book of Judges, which seem to imply
any inconsistency or incredibility, during this period :
and if any heathen testimonies may be thought a farther
confirmation of their truth, we may say, that the seeming
incongruity of Shamgar's slaying so many Philistines
with an ox-goad is mightily abated, by what is told of
Lycurgus, namely, that he overthrew the forces of Bac-
chus with the self-same weapon ; that from Deborah's
being a prophetess, a governess, and dwelling upon a
mount, the story of the Theban sphinx, as some learned
men imagine, was invented by the Greeks ; that their
Hercules was certainly the Samson of sacred writ, his
Omphale and Delilah the same, and that his pillars at
Cales were of near affinity with those of Gaza ; * that
3 Judg. xvii. C. xviii. 1. xix. 1. and xxi. 25.
4 Patrick's Commentary. 5 Ibid.
b The stony is thus told by Ovid. Nisus was beshi;.,! i 13
Minos in his capital city Megara. The fate of that city, which
was the strength of his kingdom, depended upon a certain lock
of red bair, which was concealed under the rest. The siege
had now beeu continued for six months, when the daughter of
Nisus, who had frequent opportunities of beholding her father's
enemy Minos from a lower thai looked into his camp, was so
taken with his goodly mien and deportment, tint she fell desper-
ately in low with him. Her love, and the occasion of it, the pa I
has thus related, " In her opinion Minos appealed beautiful when
he concealed his head in a helmet with dangling plumes, and
alike so when he assumed his shield all glittering with told, &C.
but when by taking off the armour In- displayed hi animattd
countenance, ami when in a purple dress he graceful!) slrod
428
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2561. A. C- 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES. A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
his fatal locks gave rise to the fable of Nisus king of
Megara, upon whose hair the fortune of his kingdom
depended ; that his foxes were commemorated at Rome,
every return of their harvest, * by a similar ceremony of
tying them tail to tail, and so letting them go ; and to
name no more that Jephthah's sacrificing his daughter
to God, is partly adumbrated by Agamemnon's offering
his Iphigenia to Diana, and partly by Idomeneus's pro-
mising to make a victim to Neptune of the first thing he
should meet on shore, if he escaped the present storm,
which happened to be his own son. So happily do many
fictions of the poets concur to confirm the truth and
authority of holy writ.
CHAP. III. — Jephthah1 s rash vow.
This vow of Jephthah's, which has employed the thoughts
and pens of so many learned men, is conceived in these
words : — ' And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord,
and said, if thou shalt without fail deliver the children
of Amnion into my hands, then it shall be, that whoso-
ever cometh forth out of the doors of my house to meet
me, when I return in peace from the children of Amnion,
shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a
burnt-offering.' And the result of this vow was, that
' Jephthah passed over unto the children of Amnion to
fight against them, and the Lord delivered them into his
hands ;' whereupon ' he came to Mizpeh unto his house,
and behold his daughter came out to meet him, with
timbrels, and with dances, and she was his only child :
beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it
came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes,
and said, alas ! my daughter, thou hast brought me very
low, and thou art one of them that trouble me ; for I
milkwhite steed decorated with variegated trappings, scarcely
was the Niseian virgin mistress of her reason. Happy, she said, is
the javelin which he holds, and happy is the bridle pressed by
his lovely hand."— Met. b. S. The result of this passion was,
that this perfidious daughter stole into the chamber, while her
father was fast asleep, cut off the lock whereon the fate of his
kingdom depended, and carried it to Minos, as an undoubted
pledge of her love. But if this fable and Samson's history have
a near resemblance in some of their first circumstances, they are
very different in the conclusion : for Minos rejected the present
with scorn, and slighted the woman because of her perfidy:
whereas the princes of the Philistines took the advantage against
Samson, which Delilah's treachery gave them. — Saurin, vol. 4.
Dissert. 17.
b There was anciently a feast in Rome, called Vulpinalia, or
the feast of the foxes, which Ovid makes mention of, for, in-
quiring into the custom of tying lighted torches to their tails,
that is to say " the cause why foxes when let loose bore burning
torches bound to their tails," he resolves the matter, by telling us,
thata certain youth, having caught a fox which had destroyed much
poultry, was going to burn it. His words are these ; " He first
wrapped the captive all round with straw and hay, and then set
fire to it, when all in a flame the animal escaped from his hand,
and wherever it fled, the produce of the fields were set in a
blaze, the wind giving strength to the destructive element. The
story of the deed has perished, but its monument remains ; for
the Carseolane law declares that every fox that is caught must be
pvit to death. To avenge for the deed, this race of animals is burned
with straw, and have to perish in the same manner that their
progenitor destroyed the cornfields." — Fast. b. 4.
But Bochart has confuted this notion of Ovid's concerning the
origin of this custom, and endeavours to refer it to this piece of
history in Samson's life. — Saurin, vol. 4. Dissert. 17.
have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot go
back. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast
opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according
to that which proceeded out of thy mouth, forasmuch as
the Lord has taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies,
even of the children of Amnion : only let me alone two
months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains,
and bewail my virginity, I, and my fellows. And he
said, go ; and he sent her away for two months, and she
went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity
upon the mountains. And it came to pass, at the end
of two months, that she returned to her father, who did
with her according to his vow, which he had vowed, and
she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, that
the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daugh-
ter of Jephthah, four days in a year.' I set the whole
passage before the reader, that he may the better judge
of the depending controversy there is among commen-
tators, whether this daughter of Jephthah's was really
sacrificed or no : and for his farther satisfaction in this
point, I will fairly state the arguments on both sides ;
consider a little on which side they preponderate ; and
then inquire, in case he did sacrifice his daughter, or as
others will have it, devote her only to God's service in
a single life, whether the thing was lawful for him to do,
and what might possibly be the motive of his doing it.
Those l who maintain the negative, or more merciful
side of the question, argue in this manner : — That Jeph-
thah was certainly a very good man, because we find
him ranked among the worthies of old, that are com-
memorated with honour by the author of the Hebrews :
That he was an Israelite, and as such lived under the
law, which prohibited human sacrifices by the severest
penalties : that had the vow been intended in this sense,
God would never have vouchsafed Jephthah so signal a
victory as he did, which must have terminated in the vio-
lation of his own laws : and therefore they conclude, that
so kind and tender a father as Jephthah is represented,
would never have sacrificed an innocent, dutiful, and
obedient child, as her whole carriage seems to denote
her, in discharge of a rash and inconsiderate vow ; es-
pecially when, according to the prescription of the law,
he might have redeemed his daughter at a price so in-
considerable, 2 ' as ten shekels of silver.'
It must be something else, therefore, say they, that
Jephthah did unto his daughter, and that, according to
the import of the text, was to devote her to a state of
celibacy, or that she might live in the manner of a reli-
gious nun all the days of her life : for the particle vau,
which we render and, ' it shall surely be the Lord's, and
I will offer it up,' is a disjunctive in this place, as it is
elsewhere, and signifies or ; so that the true version of
the passage should be, ' whatever cometh forth to meet
me shall surely be the Lord's, or I will offer it up for a
burnt-offering,' that is, if it be a human creature, I
will dedicate it to the service of God ; if a beast of any
kind, proper for sacrifice, I will instantly offer it up :
for that in this sense the vow is to be understood, is evi-
dent from her going into the mountains to bewail her
virginity, which, had she been doomed to be sacrificed,
1 Patrick's and Le Clerc's Commentaries. Jenkin's reason-
ableness, vol. 2. c. 18. Selden on the Law of Nature and Na-
tions, b. 4. c. 11. Howell's History, &c. * Lev. xxvii. o.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
429
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
had not been near so proper, as to bewail her untimely
end. Nor can we think that Jephthah would have ever
suffered her to have made a circuit of two months among
her companions, for fear of her making her escape, or
procuring some of her friends and acquaintance either to
rescue her, or intercede for her, had she been destined
to suffer death upon her return.
On the contrary, when she returned to her father, and
he had done to her according to his vow, it immediately
follows, that she knew not man ; which shows that the
purpose of his vow was answered by obliging her to a
state of perpetual virginity, in some retired place, where
she was secluded from all society, except that the
daughters of Israel, those especially of her acquaintance,
went up, either to talk and converse with her, or to
celebrate her praise, or to comfort her concerning her
solitary condition, for to all these senses may the word
letannoth be applied, four days in the year, that is, one
day every quarter.
Upon the whole, therefore, they infer, that Jephthah's
daughter did not fall a sacrifice, but was consecrated to
God and his service, that is, devoted to a single life, and
to remain a recluse all her days ; which could not but
occasion Jephthah no small grief and trouble, because
by this means, his family became extinct, and himself
destitute of issue to inherit his estate, and perpetuate
his name.
These are some of the most plausible arguments that
are generally employed to prove, not the sacrifice of
Jephthah's daughter, but only her obligation to a per-
petual virginity in the worship and service of God.
Those l that maintain the affirmative, or harsher side
of the question, namely, that Jephthah, in pursuance of
his vow, did actually sacrifice his daughter, form their
arguments in this manner. 2 That the times wherein
Jephthah lived, were so sadly addicted to idolatry, that
3 ' to burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their
gods,' was a common practice among the Israelites, as
well as other nations; and that the manner 4 in which
he lived, before he was called to the assistance of his
country, which was chiefly by plunder and rapine, and
bloodshed, might make him not incapable of vowing to
sacrifice the first of his domestics that should meet him
upon his victorious return. That this vow is delivered
in general and indefinite terms, namely, ' that whosoever
should come forth out of the doors of his house to meet
him, that should surely be the Lord's, and it should be
the Lord's, by being offered up for a burnt-offering :'
that though the particle vau be sometimes used in a dis-
junctive sense, yet it can only be so, where things are
really distinct and different from each other, but cannot
be admitted, where the one manifestly includes the other,
as it is in the passage before us ; that therefore it is
much more congruous to all the rules of good sense to
understand the words of Jephthah so, as that, by pro-
mising whatsoever he met should be the Lord's, he ob-
liged himself in general to consecrate it to God, and
that, by promising farther, that he would offer it up for
a burnt-offering, he specified the manner in which he in-
fended to make his consecration.
' Edward's Inquiry into some Remarkable Texts.
8 Deut. xii. 31. 3 Saurin, vol. .3. Dissertation 15.
1 Grotius on the passage. Calmet's Dissertation on Jephthah's
Vow, and Saurin on the same, &c.
A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
Vows of perpetual virginity, say they, are institutions
of a modern date : the word of God knows nothing of
them; nor has this pretended celibacy of Jephthah's
daughter any manner of foundation in Scripture ; and
therefore, when this circumstance is inserted, that ' she
knew no man, it is not to signify, that she lived a per-
petual virgin, but only, that she was so unhappy as to
leave the world in her youth, and before she had the
knowledge of a man.
Had Jephthah meant no more, say they, by perform-
ing his vow, than consecrating his daughter, a perpetual
virgin, to the service of God, what cause was there for
renting his clothes, and bemoaning himself, as we find
he did ? Had Jephthah made only a vow of celibacy
for his daughter, whereby she was bound to nothing more
painful, than to lead a single life, what reason was there
for mailing this as a grievous calamity, which some
in i account a thing so eminently glorious and honour-
able ? Is the being shut up as a recluse, and entered
into the list of perpetual virgins, a matter of such bitter
complaint and lamentation ? Was this so sore an evil,
an affliction so extraordinary, that not only before she
underwent it, she and her companions should, for two
months together, be allowed to bewail it ; but that, after
she had undergone it, the daughters of Israel should be
required to lament it four times a year ? 5 If she was
actually put to death, in execution of her father's vow,
it is easy then to understand, why the particular circum-
stance of her dying without issue, when she was the only
daughter of her father, avid had no other prospect of
posterity to keep up his family, should be represented
as a sore aggravation of her violent and untimely death :
but it seems very difficult to account for that bitter
lamentation, made by her father, by herself, by her
companions, and by all the daughters of Israel in suc-
ceeding times, if she suffered no other, no severer pun-
ishment, than that of being devoted to a single life.
These are some of the most prevailing arguments on the
affirmative side ; and for the confirmation of them, it is
farther alleged, that both Josephus and the Chaldee
Paraphrast testify the same thing ; that the ancient doc-
tors, both of the Jewish and Christian church, were of the
same opinion; and that, as to the substance of the fact,
the compilers of the homilies of our church, do perfectly
agree with these ancient writers : so that how desirous so-
ever we may be to clear Jephthah from the imputation of so
cruel, so impious, so unnatural an act, as that of mur-
dering his own daughter ; yet if we will adhere to the
more easy and obvious construction of the words, and as
they appear to us at first view; or if we retain any just
esteem and veneration for the sense of antiquity, we
must necessarily conclude, that when it is said of him,
that ' he did with his daughter according to the vow which
he had vowed,' the meaning can be no less, than that he
did really put her to death : but whether he acted well or
ill in so doing, is another inquiry we are now to pursue.
The law of Cherem, as the Hebrews call it, which is a
law of a peculiar nature, is delivered in these words : "
' No devoted thing, which a man shall devote to the Lord,
of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of thfl
field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed ; every
devoted thing is most holy to the Lord. None devoted,
' Bishop Smalridge's Sermons.
Lev. xxkii. 'is, g9.
430
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
which shall be devoted by men, shall be redeemed, but
shall surely be put to death.' Of this sort, a very learn-
ed 1 commentator supposes this vow of Jephthah's to
have been, and that therefore he could not redeem his
daughter, but was necessitated to put her to death. It
is to be observed, however, that 2 Cherem (which is the
term here made use of) signifies either persons devoted
to slaughter for their execrable impieties, as were the
Amalekites and other nations, whom God commanded
the Israelites to extirpate, or things destined to de-
struction, as were Jericho and Ai, for the wickedness of
those to whom they appertained; so that the law of
Cherem related only to such persons or things, as by an
irrevocable vow, were destined to utter destruction for
their horrid crimes, and because indeed there was parti-
cular command from God, both for the making or
putting such a vow in execution ; but it can by no means
be pretended, either that Jephthah's daughter merited
such a punishment, or that her father had any order or
commission from God to inflict it. On the contrary, all
human sacrifices are expressly forbidden, as odious and
detestable to God : 3 ' Thou shalt not do so to the Lord
thy God ; thou shalt not burn thy sons, and thy daughters
in the fire,' as the heathens used to do to their gods ; ' for
every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have
they done.'
There is one law, indeed, which seems to be of some
moment in the case before us, and that is this :— ' 4 If a
man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind
his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word, he shall
do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.'
But then all sober casuists are agreed, that a vow has
only a constructive, not a destructive force, that is, that
it can only lay a new obligation, where there is none,
or where there is one, strengthen it ; but that it camiot
cancel a former obligation, or superinduce one that is
repugnant to it. Now all our obligations to obedience
proceed from God. s He hath an uncontrollable right
to give laws to his creatures : but if men, by entering
into vows, could free themselves from the obligation of
his laws, they might then, whenever they pleased, by
their own act, defeat his authority. Whatever, therefore,
is in itself forbidden by God, and for that reason unlaw-
ful ; whatever is against any precept of natural or
revealed religion ; whatever is inconsistent with those
relative duties which men owe to one another ; whatever,
in short, is in any respect sinful, cannot, by being made
the matter of a vow, become justifiable. So that he who
hath vowed to do what cannot be done without sin, is so
far from being obliged to perform his vow, that he is,
notwithstanding his vow, obliged not to perform it ; be-
cause there is not only great obliquity in making such
an unlawful vow, but this obliquity is so far from being-
lessened, that it is aggravated by keeping it.
'Since, therefore, the thing vowed by Jephthah seems
to have been in itself unlawful ; since his daughter was
innocent, and had done nothing to deserve death ; since
the running out to meet her father with joy and congra-
tulation, was an act of piety, which seemed to entitle her
1 Diatribe of Lud. Cappel concerning Jephthah's Vow.
* Edward's Inquiry into several texts.
Deut. xii. 31. * Num. xxx. 2. 4 Bishop Smalridge's Serm.
" Ibid.
A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH,
to his love and favour ; since the natural affection of a
father towards his child ought to be stifled, before he could
give way to the execution of the sentence of death upon
her ; since the sacrificing of children to their gods was a
crime, for which the heathen nations were justly detested,
and punished by God ; since Jephthah's offering his
daughter as a victim to the Lord, might reflect a disho-
nour upon the true God, as if he also delighted in such
sacrifices ; since these, I say, and several other things,
might be urged in aggravation of this action, we may
safely and confidently aver, 7 with the Jewish historian,
" that the sacrifice which Jephthah offered was neither
lawful nor acceptable to God," but on the contrary a very
impious act, and an abominable crime, though it might
possibly proceed from a mistaken principle of religion.
The religious observation of oaths and vows has, at
all times, been esteemed a duty incumbent on those that
made them ; insomuch, that even when they have been pro-
cured by guile, they have not been thought destitute of
their obligation. The Gibeonites certainly imposed
upon the children of Israel, when they obtained from
them a league of amity and friendship ; and yet we may
observe what notions the Israelites had of this kind of
obligation, when, in their public consultations, they say,
6 ' We have sworn unto them by the Lord God of Israel ;
now therefore we may not touch them.' This was a
remarkable instance before Jephthah's days, and it is
not improbable, that he might have it in his remembrance,
and imprudently make use of it, as a precedent of the
irreversibleness of oaths, and of the inviolable tie he was
under by reason of his vow : but in succeeding times,
there is a passage in Scripture, which comes nearer to
the case now before us. Saul, in the day of battle, per-
ceiving his enemies to give ground, out of the abundance
of his zeal, made a vow to God, that whoever would
taste any food before the pursuit was over, should cer-
tainly die ; and upon this occasion his own son Jonathan
had like to have been made a sacrifice, merely because
his father would have been thought religious and austere
to the observation of his oath ; notwithstanding he was
plainly excused from the obligation of it as to his son,
who was both in another place, and ignorant of his
father's will, and under necessity of taking some small
refreshment when he was so faint and hungry. What
wonder then if Jephthah, who, we have reason to believe,
was a person much more religiously inclined than Saul,
should think himself under an obligation to observe his
vow, even though it was to the destruction of his own
and only daughter.
What the acceptableness of Abraham's offering his son
Isaac was, he had read in the book of Moses ; and this
might possibly lessen the horror of the fact he was going
to commit. For though Abraham had the positive com-
mand of God for what he did, which Jephthah could not
pretend to, so that there was a great disparity between
their two cases ; yet it was plain, from the acceptable-
ness of Abraham's offering, and the great reward bestowed
on him for his intended oblation, that the sacrificing a
beloved child was not, in all cases, and under all cir-
cumstances sinful, but might be so circumstantiated as
to be an act of piety, and approved in the sight of God :
and when this example proved such an action, as to the
Josephus' Antiquities, b. v. c. 9.
Josh. ix. 19.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
431
A. M. 25fil. A. C. 1443; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
matter and substance of it, not only lawful but commend-
able, Jephthab might from hence be led into an opinion
that the difference between his case and that of Abraham
was not so great, as that what was laudable and almost
meritorious in the one, should be imputed as an unpar-
donable crime to the other.
He had read likewise in the law, that * ' when thou
shalt vow a vow unto the Lord, thou shalt not be slack
to pay it ;' and was sensible that a wilful neglect of this
was a heinous crime, 2a mocking of God, a dissembling
with Heaven, and an act of injustice and unfaithfulness
towards him, who is a severe exactor of vows, and is
wont to avenge the breach of them by the infliction of
the sorest punishments ; and upon these premises he
might possibly argue with himself in this manner :
" Though I know that the performance of my vow will
be accompanied with murder, yet I consider likewise
that my not performing it will be attended with down-
right perjury. Seeing then there is a necessity of sinning
one way or other, I am resolved to choose the former ;
for though that be an injury to my daughter, yet the
other is an affront to God. My child is dear to me in-
deed, but my God, my Father, is much more so. It is
better therefore to be cruel than impious ; to be guilty
of bloodshed, than to be perjured and false to the Lord
of heaven and earth. ' I have opened my mouth unto the
Lord, and I cannot go back.' I must not reverse, I
dare not revoke the sacred promise which I have made
to the Almighty ; but my firm and unshaken purpose is
to perform it." Thus the mistaken sense of the indis-
soluble obligation which his vow had laid upon him,
blinded his eyes, and ran him upon this fatal rock.
He could not but know, had he considered at all,
that no vow is obligatory, where the matter of it is un-
lawful ; or that, what is unlawful in itself, cannot possi-
bly be made otherwise by the interposition of a vow.
Nay, he could not but know, that to act unlawfully, in
virtue of a vow, was a double sin, since not only the vow
itself was sinful, but the act consequent thereupon
was sinful likewise ; and yet so blind sometimes is the
zeal of an erroneous conscience, that it will not suffer
men to perceive, at least to be governed by the most
rational and self-evident principles.
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that how
great soever this sin of Jephthah's was, yet, properly
speaking it was the sin of ignorance, and the effect of a
misguided conscience. By the bitter complaint, which
he uttered upon the first sight of his daughter coming
out to meet him, it is evident that he was under great
trouble and perplexity ; and as she had done nothing to
alienate his affections from her, but in this very act of
meeting him, had done something to engage his affec-
tions more strongly towards her, the bowels of a father
must necessarily yearn to save the life of a loving and
a beloved child. The generous offer which she made
him, that he might do to her what he pleased, according
to his vow, though it made the doing of it less unjust,
could not but add a fresh sting to his grief, and, if he
had any generosity in his breast, make him do it with
more reluctancy. No one who is a parent ; no one who
has felt the workings of nature towards his own issue ;
no one who hath suffered, or who hath feared the loss of
1 Dent. sxih'. 21.
2 Edward's Inquiry into several texts,
M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH,
an only child, but must be sensible of what pangs of
sorrow, what meltings of compassion, what agonies of
grief, must pierce the soul of Jephthah, when he ima-
gined himself under the sad necessity of sacrificing his
own, his only, his virgin daughter, whom he could not
offer up for a burnt-offering, without sacrificing, at the
same time, all the propensions of nature, all the ease and
pleasure of his life, all the prospect of keeping up his
family. Nothing less than a mistaken opinion of the
indispensable obligation of his vow could prevail with
him thus to overrule the strong motives of interest and
inclination ; and a mistake which took its rise from so
good a principle must, without question, at least exten-
uate the guilt, in the judgment both of good-natured
men, and of an all-merciful God.
We cannot, however, part with this remarkable piece
of history, without making one inference, namely, that
we should be strictly careful how we engage ourselves
in any rash and indeliberate vows ; because, as a vow is
confessedly an act of religion, when once ' we have
opened our mouths unto the Lord,' we cannot, without
manifest prevarication and contempt of God's authority,
'go back.' And therefore, to conclude in the words of
a great 3 divine already quoted upon this subject, " as
in civil life, men of the best character for integrity, and
such as are most punctual in keeping their words, are
observed to be very sparing in making promises ; so in
religion, the best way we can take to observe the pre-
cept given us by Solomon, 4 ' that when we vow a vow
unto God, we should not defer to pay it,' will be, in the
first place, to observe another precept, which he lays
down before this, namely, that 5 ' we should not be rash
with our mouths, nor let our hearts be hasty to utter any
thine- before God.' "
CHAP. IV.— On Jephthah's Vow.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
In the course of the previous section, our author states,
that Josephus and the Jewish writers in general, as well
as the principal writers of the early ages of the church,
were of opinion that Jephthah, in consequence of his vow,
offered his daughter as a burnt-offering to the Lord, and
he seems himself decidedly to incline to the same view.
This opinion has been adopted by very respectable mo-
dern commentators. But from this view of the matter I
dissent, as I conceive that Jephthah only devoted his
daughter in a peculiar manner to the service of the Lord.
1 am confirmed in the accuracy of this opinion, by all
that is recorded of the piety of this judge, as well as by
the language in which his vow is couched. He is uni-
formly represented in Scripture, as a man who feared
God. He is mentioned bj the apostle Paul as one of
the eminent men who obtained a good report through
faith : and it is declared, that at this rerj time, — the
time in which he uttered his vow, — that he was under the
influence of the Spirit of God. I maintain, that all this
is irreconcilable with the supposition, that Jephthah de-
liberately vowed to commit murder; for he must have
knowingly done so, if we may imagine that he bound
•J Smalridge's Sermons.
Eccli
' Eccl»s. v. 2.
432
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
fBoos V.
A. M. 2561. A. C. 1413; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4189. A. C. 1222. JUD. i. TO THE END OF RUTH.
himself by an oath to kill the first man, woman; or child,
that should meet him on his return. He, who in his expos-
tulation with the king of Amnion, showed that he was well
acquainted with the history of Israel, could not be igno-
rant of the law which said, ' Thou slialt not kill,' and
which expressly forbade to imitate the heathen in offering
human sacrifices. He who was aware that the law pre-
scribed that, if a man even unintentionally should kill
his slave, should be punished, could not imagine that
the law permitted him intentionally and deliberately to
kill his own daughter.
There is no similarity between the case of Jephthah
and that of Abraham offering up his son Isaac. Abra-
ham acted in obedience to the divine command ; but
(here is no intimation that the Spirit of God, under whose
influence he was, gave any such order to him. Nor even
if such a sacrifice had been required for the trial of
his faith, can we conceive that he would be allowed
to carry it into effect.
But the idea of Jephthah's sacrificing his daughter, is
not more irreconcilable with what we know of his piety
than it is with the provisions which the law itself made in
such a case. It permitted a valuation to be made of
any thing devoted, and the ransom money to be offered
in its stead. The valuation, in the case of a human be-
ing, varied according to the age and sex of the person ;
but, if it were a beast, the offerer was required to give as
the price of its redemption, a fifth more than its esti-
mated value. No ransom could be given for cities or
possessions which God had declared accursed, and had
devoted to destruction ; such were the Amalekites and
Canaanites, to spare whom was to sin against God. We
are entitled to presume, that Jephthah, who was so well
acquainted with the history of his people, was also ac-
quainted with the law concerning vows and things
devoted ; and that in making his vow, therefore, he had
in his view those exceptions in things offered, which the
law made, and those exchanges which it admitted. Even
if he had been ignorant of this, can we suppose, that the
priests were so ill instructed, and so forgetful as to over-
look it? Especially as the execution of the vow was
deferred for two months, and great lamentation made o::
account of it? It is true, idolatry with its attendants,
ignorance and superstition, prevailed over the land ; but
at no period did it prevail to the utter extinction of the
worship of God, and neglect of his law. Besides, Jeph-
thah, and the people of Israel, had united in a reforma-
tion of religion ; and in doing so had obtained signal
marks of the peculiar favour and presence of God.
Would the people allow the instrument of their deliver-
ance, on his return from victory, to sacrifice his own
daughter ? Would they not have interposed for her
safety, as they did at a subsequent period of their his-
tory, on behalf of Jonathan when his father Saul had
doomed him to destruction ?
There is nothing in the language in which the vow of
Jephthah is couched, which requires us to suppose that
he devoted his daughter to death. The conjunction vau
rendered and in our version, might be rendered or : and
it is often thus translated in other passages, ' Whatsoever
cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, shall
surely be the Lord's, or, I will offer it for a burnt-offer-
ing :' ' Whatever it may happen to be, it shall be con-
secrated to God : or, should it be fit to be offered in
sacrifice to the Lord, it shall be presented as a burnt-
offering.' To satisfy us that this is a correct translation,
it may be remarked that the conjunction vau must be
rendered disjunctively in Lev. xxvii. 28, where the law
regarding tilings devoted is recorded. ' Notw ithstanding
no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord
of all that he hath, either of man or of beast, or of the
field of his possessions shall be sold or redeemed.'
These considerations, when viewed in connexion with
those which I am about to mention, prove conclusively
that Jephthah neither did sacrifice his daughter, nor was
under any obligation from his vow to do so. The sacri-
fice of children was an abomination to the Lord : he
repeatedly expressed his abhorrence of the practice ; and
it was prohibited by law under pain of death. ' No
father could, by his own authority, put an offending, much
less an innocent child to death upon any account, with-
out the sanction of the magistrates, and the consent of
the people, as in the case of Jonathan. 2 The Mishna
says, that " if a Jew should devote his son or daughter,
his man or maid servant, the devotement would be void,
because no man can devote what is not his own."
In Avhat way, then, did Jephthah fulfil his vow ? The
consideration of this question will lead us to the same
conclusion as that to which we have already come.
After Jephthah had subdued the children of Ammon, we
read that he ' came to Mispeh unto his house, and behold
his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and
with dances, and she was his only child ; beside her, he
had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass
when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas!
my daughter ! Thou hast brought me very low, and thou
art one of them that trouble me : for I have opened my
mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back. And she
said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth
unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath
proceeded out of thy mouth. And she said unto her
father, let this thing be done for me, let me alone two
months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains,
and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he
said go : — And it came to pass at the end of two
rnonths, that she returned unto her father, who did with
iier according to his vow which he had vowed. And it
was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went
yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite
four days in a year.'
The first thing in this narrative which claims our atten-
tion, is the notice which Jephthah's daughter takes of
the effect of this vow on herself. If we understand the
vow as subjecting her to a life of celibacy, and of seclu-
sion from the world, and consecration to the service of
God, her language on the occasion is natural, and what
might have been expected from her : but had she been
doomed to death, to this she would doubtless have
alluded, and have made it the ground of her lamentation,
If it be supposed that her piety would have made her
silent as to death, the same piety would have led her
silently to acquiesce in the other calamity; and like
Isaac, be willing to forego every prospect in regard to
the promised land. If it be alleged, that on the suppo-
sition of her only being doomed to a life of celibacy
and seclusion from the world, it was not necessary for
Lev. xx. ?., 3.
"Deut. xxi. 18—21.
Shot. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 111G; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4259. A. C. 1152. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
433
her to ask two months to bewail her fate, since she might
have years to mourn over it ; — we may reply, and the
reply is sufficient, that in the apprehension of the Israel-
ites, who looked for the promised Messiah, it was a
heavy affliction to die childless, that the affliction was
greatly increased in the present instance, by the circum-
stance that she was Jephthah's only daughter, and that
in her all the honours of her house would become extinct.
Her fate was a kind of death by anticipation, and it was
meet, therefore, that there should have been a marked
and public mourning on account of it.
The language in which her father is said to have ful-
filled his vow, next deserves our notice. ' Her father
did with her according to his vow which he had vowed.'
Here there is no mention of her death or of her having
been offered in sacrifice to the Lord. While the allu-
sions to her life of celibacy and seclusion from the
world are frequent, there is not a single hint concerning
her death, — a circumstance for which we cannot account,
but on the supposition that that event was not contem-
plated, and that it did not really happen. If she had
been dead, it would not have been necessary for the
daughters of Israel to assemble in any particular place,
since they might as well conduct their lamentations on
her account, on the supposition of her death, in their
respective dwelling places.
On these grounds, then, I am decidedly of opinion
that Jephthah's daughter was not offered in sacrifice ;
but that she was devoted to a life of celibacy and seclu-
sion from the world.
To this view of the matter, it is objected ; first, that
we have no intimation in Scripture of vows of perpetual
celibacy, and that they appear to be a modern invention.
But is there not quite as little said in Scripture of
devoting to death a human being in honour of God ?
Nay, is not the testimony of Scripture against any such
practice ? If the silence of Scripture be deemed a valid
objection in one case, its express prohibition is surely
to be reckoned an insuperable objection in the other.
Secondly, it is further objected, that parents had no
right to devote a child to a life of entire seclusion from
the world. This may be true ; and I would oidy say by
way of reply, that far less had parents a right to devote
8 child to death. The devotement of Jephthah's
daughter to the service of the tabernacle, took place
with her own consent.
Thirdly, the most specious objection to the view of
the matter which we have taken, is, that she might have
been thus devoted to the service of God, and at the same
time enter into the married state. Thus, Samson,
Samuel, and others, who were devoted to God from the
womb, were married. But in answer to this objection,
it may be answered, that in ancient times, the condition
of females was different from that of males ; that while
the latter were allowed to act for themselves, the former
were in some measure restrained by the w ill of others ;
and that, therefore, it was necessary, that the daughter
«f Jephthah, who had been consecrated by a vow to the
Lord, should be under no control in giving herself up to
the service to which she had been thus devoted.1
To these arguments, I am not aware of any reply that
can be made, except that which is urged by Warburton —
1 Num. x\x. 1 .'j.
that Jephthah was a semi-pagan, who knew little of the
law, and had long been accustomed to disregard it.
This, however, as Bishop Gleig observes, is said without
the shadow of proof ; and is indeed so directly contrary
to all that we know of Jephthah's character and conduct,
that the ingenious prelate is forced to confess, that after
he was appointed judge or chief ruler of Israel, Jephthah
appears to have acquired a competent knowledge of the
law : but this confession completely destroys the argu-
ment of this learned critic. For, it was after this period
that Jephthah devoted his daughter.
SECT. III.
CHAP. \.—From the Birth of Samuel to the Death
of Saul.
THE HISTORY.
During the time of Samson's great exploits, both the
civil and ecclesiastical administration seems to have
been in the hands of Eli the high priest, in the beginning
of whose government Samuel was born. B He was the
son of Elkanah, a Levite who dwelt in Ramah, h a city
belonging to the tribe of Ephraim, and, as the custom
of those times was, had two wives, whose names were
a According to the arrangement of the period by Dr Hales,
given at the commencement of the preceding section, page 396,
this statement is incorrect, as it is there stated that Samson's
administration of 20 years commenced B. C. 1202, and termi-
nated B.C. 11S2, when Eli's administration of 40 years began.
That he succeeded Samson is asserted by Josephus, (Antiq. v.
9. 1.) Eli was 5S years of age when he began his administra-
tion, (1 Sam. It. 15 — 18,) and was the first high priest of the
line of Ithamar, the younger son of Aaron. The date of Samuel's
birth is not noticed in any part of the book called by his name ;
but it is ascertained by the research of Josephus, that Samuel at
the time of his prophetic call was 12 years old ; but his call was
450 years after the first division of the conquered lands, (Acts
xiii. 20.) and therefore happened in the thirty-first year of Eli's
administration, and consequently his birth in the nineteenth
year of it. Samuel died about two years before Saul, and there-
lore lived about 92 years. — Dr Hales' Analysis, b. 2. pp. 299 —
302.— Ed.
b Ramah signifies an eminence, or high situation, and is
therefore an appellation given to several places that an- built in
this maimer. This is said to have stood upon Mount Ephraim,
thereby to distinguish it from other towns, in different tribes, ol
the same denomination ; and the reason why it is here called
ltamathaim, in the dual number, is, as some imagine, because
it was built upon two hills, which made it appear a double city:
and because it was situate on high, and had a watch-tower built
in it, it therefore had the title of Zophim added to it. It stood
upon the road that led from Samaria to Jerusalem; and for this
reason, as well as its advantageous situation, Baasha king of
Israel caused it to be fortifx id, that there might be no passage
out of the land of Judah into that of Israel, (1 Kings xv. 17.,
and 2 Chron. xvi. 1.) but in St Jerome's days it was no more
than a small village. Here it was that Samuel passed a great
part of his time; for his mother's dedication of him to the ser-
vice of God did not confine him to Shiluh, after that God had
called him out to a public employ, and appointed him his resi-
dence in a place mine convenient for the execution of it. The
truth is, after the captivity of the ark, and the death of Eli, all
religious ceremonies seem to have ceased at Shiloh, for which
reason it is said, that Samuel built an altar at Ramah, the place
of his residence, to the intent that the people might resort to
him cither to receive judgment, or to offer sacrifices, which,
though it was contrary to the law of Moses, seems to be a case
of necessity; I" eau-e the ark being at one place, and the taber-
nacle at another, neither of them could properly be resorted to
3i
434
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M.288S. A. C. 1116 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4259. A. C. 1152. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
Hannah and Peninnah. a Thrice every year he used to
go to Shiloh, there to offer up his usual sacrifice, and as
he was a pious and religious man, he generally took his
two wives with him, that they, in like manner, might
make their oblations. Now Hannah, though she had no
children, was his favourite wife, and therefore, at * every
feast upon the peace-offering, he usually sent her a
separate mess, and of the choicest of the meat ; which
the other perceiving, was wont to c upbraid her with her
sterility, or want of children. Hannah took this so sore
to heart that all the kind things which her husband said
to her, could not assuage or comfort her ; but as soon
as she rose from table, away she hastens to the taber-
nacle, and there pours out her soul before God, desiring
of him to bless her with a son, which favour if he would
grant her, she promised to make him a Nazarite, and all
the days of his life devote him to his service.
Her prayers were heard, and, in a proper time, she
conceived, and brought forth a son, whom she called
Samuel, even because she had ' asked him of the Lord,'
for so his name imports, and after he was grown to a
competent age, she brought him to Shiloh, anil in a very
joyful and thankful manner, presented him to Eli, who
gladly received him, and immediately clothed him with
a proper habit, even with a linen a ephod, that he might
attend upon the service of the tabernacle. e
Eli himself was a very good man, but by much too
indulgent to his children. He had two sons, Hophni
and Phinehas, who were mere libertines. They domineer-
either for sacrificing, or any other part of public worship. — Pa-
trick's, Le Clerc's, and Calmet's Commentaries; and Universal
History.
a The precept is exactly thus, — ' Three times in the year all
thy males shall appear before the Lord thy God,' (Exod. xxiii.
1 7.) which were at the feast of the passover, the pentecost, and
that of the tabernacles; but women were exempted from this at-
tendance ; and therefore it was an extraordinary act of piety for
Elkanah to take his two wives with him.
b The blood of this peace-offering was shed at the foot of the
altar, the fat was burnt, the breast and right shoulder was the
priest's perquisite, and all the rest belonged to the person who
brought the victim. With this he made a feast of charity, to
which he called his friends and relations, and in several places
of Scripture, God reminds him to invite the Levite, the poor,
the fatherless, and the widow. — Calmet's Commentary.
c Sterility was looked upon among the Jews as one of the
greatest misfortunes that could befall any woman; insomuch that
to have a child, though the mother immediately died thereupon,
was accounted a less affliction than to have none at all. And to
this purpose we may observe, that the midwife comforts Rachel
in her labour, even though she knew her to lie at the point of
death, in these terms, ' Fear not, for thou shalt have this son
also,' Gen. xxxv. 17. — Saurin, in vol. 4. Dissertation 17.
d The ephod which the high priest wore (as we have de-
scribed it elsewhere,) was a very rich habit indeed, (Exod.
xxviii. 6.) but there were other kinds of ephods, which not
only priests and Levites, but even laymen, upon some occa-
sions wore, as we find in the instance of David, (2 Sam. vi. 14.)
which was not a sacred, but an honorary garment, as we may
call it, and such as the high priest might order Samuel to wear,
to distinguish him from some other inferior officers belonging to
the tabernacle. — Patrick's Commentary.
e 1 Sam. ii. 19. The women made wearing apparel, and their
common employment was weaving stuffs, as making cloth and
tapestry is now. We see in Homer the instances of Penelope,
Calypso, and Circe. There are examples of it in Theocritus,
Idyll. 15. But what appears most wonderful is, that this cus-
tom was retained at Rome among the greatest ladies in a very
corrupt age, since Augustus commonly wore clothes made by his
wife, sister, and daughter. — Suet. Aug. 73. Prov. xxxi. 13
— 19. Fleury's Hist, of the Israelites, p. 72.
ed over the men, and debauched the women at their de-
votions ; and so far were they from being content with the
portions which God had allotted them as priests, that
they forced from the people even before they had made
their oblations, what part of the sacrifice they pleased ;
which gave so general a disgust, that religion grew into
contempt, and the worship of God came to be disused.
Eli was not unacquainted with his sons' ill conduct ;
but instead of chastising them as his authority required,
he contented himself with reproving them now and then,
but that in such gentle and mild terms, as rather en-
couraged than deterred them from proceeding in their
wicked practices ; till at length, God, being provoked
with this his remissness, / sent a prophet to threaten
him and his family with utter destruction ; to upbraid
him with his ingratitude in slighting the sacerdotal honour
which he had conferred on him ; to foretell the death
of his two sons both in one day, ffthe removal of his
priesthood into another and better family, and the ex-
treme poverty which his posterity would fall into, upon
their ejection from the sacerdotal office. Nor was it
long before God discovered the same heavy judgments
to Samuel, which was the first revelation he made to this
young prophet, and which Eli, when he was told it, re-
ceived with a mind fully resigned to the divine pleasure :
1 ' It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.'
In these days 7j there were but few prophets, and re-
velations were very scarce ; and therefore when the Is-
raelites perceived, by the truth of his predictions, that
God had appointed Samuel to the prophetic office, they
were not a little rejoiced : and it was from the great
expectations they had of God's favour in renewing this
order of men among them, that they took up arms ; in
order to rescue themselves from the Philistines' yoke.
The army of the Israelites encamped at a place which
was afterwards called * Eben-ezer, and that of the Pliil-
' 1 Sam. iii. 18.
f Who this prophet was, commentators are at a loss to know.
Some imagine, that it was Phinehas the son of Eleazar, but Phi-
nehas very probably was dead long before this time. Others
therefore will needs have it to have been Elkanah, Samuel's
father; and some Samuel himself: but we nowhere read, that
the father was endued with the spirit of prophecy, and the son
was certainly then too young, and unacquainted with the voice
of God. The safest way therefore is, to own our ignorance of
what the sacred historian hath not thought proper to discover to
us. — Calmet's Commentary.
g The high priesthood was originally settled upon Eleazar,
the son of Aaron, by a divine decree ; but that decree being
conditional only, it is reasonable to presume that there was some
great offence or other in Eleazar's family, though not recorded
in Scripture, which provoked God to remove it into the family
of Ithamar, who was Aaron's youngest son, and from whom
Eli descended ; and here, for the abominable practices of his
sons, which he was too negligent to restrain, God threatens to
translate the priesthood back again from the family of Ithamar
to that of Eleazar, which accordingly happened in the reign o'
king Solomon, who deposed Abiathar, the last of Eli's line, iron;
the pontificate, and set up Zadok in his stead. — Poole's Anno-
tations.
h Whatever revelations God might impart to some pious per-
sons privately, there was at this time none publicly acknowledged
for a prophet, unto whom the people might resort to know the
mind of God: nay, so little acquainted were these ages with the
prophetic spirit, that we read of no more than two prophets,
(Judg. iv. 4. and vi. 8.) in all the days of the Judges. — Patrick's
Commentary.
i This place is here mentioned prophetically: for it had
not this name till about twenty years after, (1 Sam. iv. 1.) when
Skct. 111.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c
435
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istines <it Aphek, a city of Judah ; but when they came
to join battle, the Israelites were defeated with the loss
of four thousand men.
The reason of this defeat was imputed by some to
their want of the ark in the army, which as the symbol of
God's pretence, would be a sure means of success ; and
therefore they sent to Hophni and Phineas to bring- it
with them, and when it arrived in the camp, received it
with many a joyful acclamation. The Philistines at
first, were dispirited at the news, as much as their ene-
mies were animated : but at length, taking heart, and
exhorting one another to act courageously, they repulsed
the Israelites, when they came to attack them ; and hav-
ing slain thirty thousand of their foot, among whom were
Hophni and Phineas, they routed the rest, and put them
all to flight, so that the ark of the Lord fell into their
hands.
This ill news a soldier of the tribe of Benjamin,
escaping from the field of battle, brought to Shiloh that
very day, with the usual emblems of extreme sorrow, a
his clothes rent, and earth upon his head ; and then there
was no small outcry and lamentation in the city. Eli,
inquiring the cause of it, had the soldier brought before
liiui, who gave him an account, ° that the Israelites were
routed, his two sons slain, and the ark taken. Eli heard
Samuel fought with the Philistines, and gave them a total over-
throw, and set up a monument of his victory, for the proper
name signifies the stone of help, in the field of battle, which lay
on the north border of Judah, not far from Mizeph, and Aphek,
where the Philistines encamped, must not be far distant from it. —
Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3.
a If we consult Josh. vii. 6. Job ii. 12. and Ezek. xxvii. 39.
we shall find that this was the manner of men's expressing their
deep sorrow for any great calamity that had befallen them. And
accordingly we find Virgil representing Latinus rending his
clothes, and throwing dust upon his gray hairs, when he laments
his private and public calamities: 'with his garment rent, Latinus,
defiling his hoary head with dust, proceeds.' — JEnvid. 12.
b Who this Benjamite was that brought the ill news to Shiloh
of the loss of the battle, the history is silent, and the conjecture
of some Jews, that it probably was Saul, is very uncertain and
precarious: but there is something very remarkable in the
account which he gives of the action. The words are these ;
' And Eli said to the Ben.jamite, What is there done in the
battle, my son? And the messenger answered and said, Israel is
lied before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great
slaughter among the people, and thy two sons Hophni and
Phineas, are dead, and the ark of God is taken.' (1 Sam. iv. ](),
27.) Madam Dacier highly commends the manner wherein
the sacred historian makes his messenger speak, and compares
these words, ' Hophni and Phineas are dead, and the ark of the
Lord is taken,' with those of Antilochus to Achilles, when he tells
him the sad news. — " l'atroclus is stretched a corpse ; the Greeks
fight around him lying naked, and Hector with the dazzling
helmet, is in possession of his armour." (//. 18.) Whereupon she
quotes the glossary which Eustathius has upon this passage iu
Homer. "This speech of Antilochus," says that excellent
ciitic, " affords us a pattern, with what brevity such melancholy
news should be related ; for, in two verses, it comprises every
thing that happened, the death of Patroclus, the person who slew
him, the encounter about his body, and his arms in the posses-
sion of his enemy. The Greek tragic poets have not been so
wise as to imitate this; and, of all others Euripides, who, upon
the most doleful occasion, is so apt to make long recitals, is most
egregiously defective herein. Homer is the only author that
deserves to be followed. Nothing is more ridiculous, than to
hear a messenger, when he is to report some very bad news,
running into tedious circumstances, and pathetic expressions.
All he talks is not minded ; for he to whom he addresses himself,
cannot attend to what he says; the first word that acquaints him
with the misfortune, makes him deaf to every thing else." —
Sattrin, vol. 4. Dissertation 23.
the defeat of the army, and the death of his sons with
courage and unconcern enough: but when he .aim- t..
understand, that the ark of the Lord was fallen into the
enemy's hand, his spirits forsook him, and being both
heavy and aged, he fell from his seat, and broke his
neck and died, after he had been the supreme magistrate
in Israel c for the space of forty years : and, what was
a farther family misfortune, his son Phineas had a wife,
then big with child, and near her time, who hearing of
her father's and husband's death, and, what was the
worst of all, of the captivity of the ark, fell in labour at
the news, and being delivered of a son, had just strength
to name him Ichabod, that is, no glory, before she died;
because the ark which was the glory of Israel, as she
assigns the reason, ' was departed from them.'
The Philistines having thus got possession of the ark,
d carried it in triumph to one of their principal cities,
named Ashdod, and there placed it in the temple of their
god Dagon hard by his image. The next morning the
people of e Ashdod, going into the temple, found Dagon
c The Septtiagint, and some ancient manuscripts, make the
term of Eli's magistracy to be no more than twenty years; and
to reconcile this with the Hebrew text, some suppose, either that
he had Samson joined in the government with him for the first
twenty years of his administration, or his sons, for the last; but
there is no reason for the solution of a difficulty which arises from
nothing else but a fault in the text of the Septuagint. — Gaimefs
Commentary. [See note on this subject at the beginning of
this section.] — Ed.
d It was a custom among the heathens, to carry in triumph
the images of the gods of such nations as they had vanquished.
Isaiah prophesies of Cyrus, that in this manner he would treat
the gods of Babylon: 'Bel boweth, Nebo stoopeth ; their idols
were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle, and themselves are
gone into captivity,' (Isa. xlvi. 1, 2.) Daniel foretells of
Ptolemy Euergetes, that he would 'carry captive into Egypt the
gods of the Syrians, with their princes.' (Dan. xi. 8.) And the
like predictions are to be met with in Jeremiah xlviii. 7. and in
Amos i. 15. We need less wonder, therefore, that we find
Plutarch, in the life of Maicellus, telling us. that he took away
out of the temple of Syracuse, the most beautiful pictures and
statues of their gods; and that afterwards it became a reproach
to Marcellus, and raised the indignation of other nations against
Rome, " That he carried along with him, not men only, but the
very gods captive, and in triumph." — Saurin, vol. 4. Di
tion 24.
e The Philistines were descendants from Mizraim the lather
of the Egyptians, and so, in all probability, having their first
settlement in Egypt, or the parts adjoining, lay to the south-west
of the land of Canaan. In process of time, however, tin y made
inroads upon Canaan, and, in Abraham's day-, had got pi
of a good part of the territories which lay along the w< stern
of the Mediterranean sea. This tract of ground was divided into
fwe principalities, or little kingdoms, namely, Gaza, Askelon,
Ashdod, Gath, and Akron; which for the better understanding
te particulars related of the ark, during its stay in this
country, it will not be improper to describe all together.
city of Gaza, from which the territory took its nam., stood, as it
were, on the very south-west angle, or corner of the land of
Canaan; but of this place we have spoken before. To the
north of Gaza lay next the city of Askelon, called by the
Greeks Ascalon, and of great note among the (untiles for a
temple dedicated to Dirceto, the mother of Simiramis, wl
lure worshipped in the form of a mermaid. To the north of
Ascalon lay Ashdod, called by the Greeks Azotus, and I
for the temple of the god Dagon, whereof we have taken notice
before. Still more to the north lay Gath, memorable for being
the birth-place of the giant Goliath, whom David slew, and of
several others of the same gigantic race. It was dismantled by
O/ies king of Judah, and finally laid waste by Hazael king of
Syria: however it recovered itself) and retained it- old name in
the days of EusebiUS and St Jerome, who place it about foul
from EleutheropoliB, in the way to Lidda. The most northern
436
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V,
A. M.28S8. A. C. 1116; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4259. A. C. 1152. I SAM. i. TO THE END.
fallen down upon his face before the ark ; a but suppos-
ing this to be an accident, they set him up again ; and
again, next morning, found him not only fallen down,
but his head and the palms of his hands broken off, and
lying upon the threshold ; whence there arose a super-
stitious use among the Philistines, that neither priest nor
people would ever * tread upon his threshold.
By this means the people of Ashdod could not but
perceive that their Dagon was far inferior to the God of
Israel, who, to make them still more sensible of this,
smote them, and the inhabitants of the places adjacent,
with emerods, and destroyed the fruits of their grounds
with swarms of mice ; so that, to redress their com-
plaints, the princes of the Philistines ordered the ark to
be removed to Gath, where the same judgments befell
the people of that place ; and when from thence it was
carried to Ekron, not only the c plague of the emerods,
of these cities, still upon the coast of the Mediterranean sea, was
Ekron, called by the Greeks Accaron, a place of great wealth
and power, and famous for the idolatrous worship of Beelzebub,
who had here a celebrated temple and oracle. But of this idol
we shall have occasion to say more, when we come to the reign
of Ahaziah, king of Judah, who sent in his illness to consult
him. — Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
a 1 Sam. v. 4. The destruction of Dagon before the ark of
the Lord, clearly discovered the vanity of idols, and the irresis-
tible power of God. The circumstances attending his demoli-
tion are remarkable ; and in them it is possible may be traced a
conformity with the manner in which different nations treated
the idol deities of each other. Dagon was not merely thrown
down, but was also broken to pieces, and some of these fragments
were found on the threshold. There is a circumstance related
in Maurice's Modern History of Hindostan, (vol. 1. part 2. p.
296.) which seems in some points similar to what is recorded of
Dagon. Speaking of the destruction of the idol in the temple at
Sumnaut, he says, that " fragments of the demolished idol were
distributed to the several mosques of Mecca, Medina, and Gaza,
to be thrown at the threshold of their gates, and trampled upon
by devout and zealous Mussulmans." In both instances the situa-
tion of the fragments at the threshold seems to intimate the com-
plete triumph of those who had overcome the idols, and might
possibly be a customary expression of indignity and contempt.
Tibullus informs us, that to beat the head against the sacred
threshold was, with many, an expiatory ceremony. It probably
originated with the Egyptians in the worship of Isis.
For crimes like these I'd abject crawl the ground,
Kiss her dread threshold, and ray forehead wound.
Grainger. — Ed.
b It is somewhat strange, that when the Philistines saw their
Dagon cast down before the ark of God, with his head and hands
broken off, they should not thence infer, that he was no more
than a vain idol: but instead of that, we find them honouring
the very threshold, whereby he received these maims, as if they
had been consecrated, or had some divinity infused into them, from
the mere touch of this idol. This is a sore instance of blindness
and infatuation ; but it is no more than what other heathen na-
tions fell into. For whether the custom took its first rise from
this practice of the Philistines or no, it is certain, that among
the Romans the threshold was consecrated to the goddess Vesta,
and those which belonged to temples, were always held in the
highest veneration, as appears from Juvenal, " adore the Tar-
peian threshold ;" and that other passage in Tibullus, " If I was
deserving I would not hesitate to fall down before tho temples
and kiss their consecrated thresholds.'"' B. 1. el. 5. Nay, at this
very day, there are some mosques in Persia, whose thresholds
are covered over with plates of silver, and which the people are
not allowed to tread on; for that is a crime which cannot be ex-
piated, without undergoing very severe pains and penalties.
— Caltnet's Commentary.
c The word Apholim, which only occurs here and in the
28th chapter of Deuteronomy, is, by different interpreters, sup-
posed to signify different things. Some take it for a dysentery,
others for what they call procidentia ani; some for a cancer, and
others for something venereal in that part. The Scripture tells
but a wasting pestilence likewise, went along with it ;
so that the people were resolved to send it away, and to
that purpose called their priests together to advise with
them in what manner they might best do it.
The priests advised them to provide a new cart, and
to yoke to it two milch kine, that had never drawn
before, but to keep up their calves confined. In this
cart they ordered them to place the ark, and, because it
was proper to make some trespass-offering to the God
of Israel, to have five golden emerods, and as many
golden mice, d according to the number of the principal
cities of the Philistines, made, and put in a coffer by the
side of the ark. But above all, they cautioned them to
take notice, which way the e kine went ; for if they took
us expressly, that ' God smote his enemies in the hinder parts,'
Ps. Ixxviii. 66. And therefore our translation is not amiss,
which supposes their malady to have been such painful tumors
in the fundament as very frequently turn into ulcers. — Patrick's
and Calmefs Commentaries.
d 1 Sam. vi. 4. The ancient heathens used to consecrate to
their gods such monuments of their deliverances, as represented
the evils from which they were rescued. They dedicated to
Isis and Neptune, a table containing the express image of the
shipwreck which they had escaped. Slaves and captives, when
they had regained their liberty, offered their chains. The Phil-
istines hoping shortly to be delivered from the emerods and
mice, wherewith they were afflicted, sent the images of them to
that god from whom they expected deliverance. This is still
practised among the Indians. Tavernier, {Travels, p. 92.) re-
lates, that when any pilgrim goes to a pagod for the cure of any
disease, he brings the figure of the member affected, made either
of gold, silver, or copper according to his quality ; this he offers
to his god, and then falls a singing, as all others do after they
have offered. Mr Selden also has observed, that mice were
used amongst the ancient heathen for lustration and cleansing.
— De Diis Syris, Syntag. 1. cap. 6.
Such offerings have been made from time immemorial by the
Hindoos. The women, in many parts of India, hang out offer-
ings to their deities; either a string of beads, or a lock of hail",
or some other trifling present, when a child, or any one of their
family, has been recovered from illness. Among the Greeks, it
was customary to devote within their temples, something more
than the mere symbol of a benefit received. Inscriptions were
added to such signs, setting forth the nature of the remedy that
had been successful, or giving a description of the peculiar grace
that had been recorded. Dr Clarke, {Travels, vol. iii. p. 329.)
in a long note from Walpole's MS. Journal, gives many curious
instances of this custom. The following are selected from it.
In the island of Santerin there are some singular representations
of the rock. Tomasini gives the votive figure of a man in a
dropsical state. At Phocrea, in the ancient Lydia, at Eleusis,
at Athens, and other parts of Greece, are to lie seen holes of a
square form, cut in the limestone rock, for the purpose of re-
ceiving their votive offerings. Sometimes in the offerings them-
selves, eyes, feet, hands, have been discovered. AtCyzicum there
is a representation of two feet on marble, with an inscription,
probably the vow of some person who had performed a prosper-
ous journey. The temples of iEsculapius were adorned with
tablets presented by persons restored to health. Invalids were
allowed to sleep in the porticoes, to obtain directions from the
gods in their dreams. The medicine itself was sometimes
placed in the temples; as in the case of a goldsmith, who on his
deathbed, bequeathed an ointment to a temple, which those who
were unable to see the physicians might use. Such votive offerings
were fixed sometimes in the rock, near the sacred precincts of a
temple; sometimes appended to the walls and columns of the
temples, and sometimes fastened by wax to the knees or other
parts of the statues of the gods. (Juven. Sat. x. 54. Prudent.
contra Symm. b. 1. Lucian Philop.) The temples of the Greeks
were used by different states, as banks. To this circumstance
was owing, in part, the vast wealth which they contained ; and
this was increased by the costly offerings in gold and silver
presented on various occasions.— Ed.
e It was no bad policy in the Philistines to take milch kine,
that had never been yoked before, to draw the cart, in order to
Shct. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
437
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4259. A. C. 1152. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
towards Judea, they might conclude that these judg-
ments were of the God of Israel's infliction, if any other
way, they might look upon them only as common acci-
dents.
When all things were thus got ready, the kine were
let go ; and taking the road which led to Bethshemesh,
in the way to Judea, they went lowing along until they
came to the field of one Joshua, and there stood still by
a great stone. Bethshemesh was one of the cities be-
longing to the Levites, and therefore, when word was
brought them of the arrival of the ark, they went and
took it down, and the coffer with it ; and cleaving the
wood of the cart for a fire, sacrificed the two kine for a
burnt-ottering to the Lord. But whether out of joy or
curiosity, so it was, that some of the Bethshemites ad-
venturing to look into the ark, which was expressly
against the divine command, were immediately slain to
the number of seventy, which so terrified the rest, that
they sent to the people of Kirjath-jearim, acquainting
them that the Philistines had brought back the ark, and
desiring them to come and fetch it ; which accordingly
they did, and placed it in the house of one Abinadab,
whose son was consecrated to keep it, and there it con-
tinued for the space of twenty years.
Upon the death of Eli, Samuel succeeded to the
government ; and having called the people together,
very probably upon the occasion of removing the ark
from Bethshemesh to Kirjath-jearim, a he exhorted them
very earnestly to renounce their idolatrous practices, and
to devote themselves entirely to the worship of God, and
then they need not doubt but that he would deliver them
from all their enemies. This the people promised him
faithfully to do : so that Samuel dismissed them for the
know whether there was the hand of God in what had befallen
them. As these creatures were unacquainted with the yoke, it
would be a wonder if they should go jointly together, and not
thwart and draw counter to each other ; it would be a wonder if
their natural affection would not incline them to return to their
calves, which were left behind ; and it would still be a greater
wonder, if, when there were so many different ways to take,
they should go directly forward to Judea, without any manner
of deviation. It was therefore a matter of no small sagacity for
them to make this experiment. To say nothing, that it was a
received opinion among the heathens, that in the motions of a
heifer or cow that was never yoked, there was something omin-
ous anil declarative of the divine will. " Apollo says thou shalt
in the lone field be met by an ox that has never felt the yoke, or
been oppressed by the crooked harrow ; with her as your guide
proceed on your way.' — Ovid. Met. b. 3.
a The speech, which according to Josephu=, Samuel makes to
the people, upon this occasion, is to this effect: — "Ye men of
Israel, since ye find by experience, that the malice of your ene-
mies is implacable, and that your earnest supplications to God for
relief are graciously received ; you should do well to consider, that
your wishing for the freedom you want will never do the busi-
ness, without exerting your power to the uttermost, upon the
proper means of procuring it: for to do otherwise, is but praying
one way, and acting another. Wherefore, in the first place, be
careful not to bring scandal upon your profession by ill manners,
but turn yourselves to the love and practice of justice, without
partiality or corruption. Purge your minds of all gross affec-
tions. Turn to God, call upon him, adore him, and honour him
in your lives and conversations, as well as with your lips. Do
good things and good will come on it, that is, liberty and victory;
tor these are blessings not to be obtained by force of men, strength
ot body, or bands of soldiers; but God, who is truth itself, lias
promised them, as the rewards of probity and righteousness, and
you may depend upon it, he will never disappoint you." — Jewish
Antiquities, b. (>. c. 2.
present, but ordered them to meet him again, within a
certain time, at 6 Mizpeh.
Here they held a solemn fast and humiliation to the
Lord. They wept, and prayed, confessed their sins,
offered sacrifices, and c made libations ; and Samuel
took this opportunity to administer justice among them.
The Philistines hearing of this their assembly, took the
alarm, and coming upon them unawares, put them into
no small consternation. Upon Samuel's sacrifice and
intercession, however, God declared himself manifestly
in favour of the Israelites : for as soon as the fight be-
gan, there was heard d such a dreadful peal of thunder,
as struck terror and amazement into the enemy, so that
they betook themselves instantly to flight, and were pur-
sued by the Israelites as far as Bethcar. The truth is,
this was so signal a victory, that for a long time the
b The Mizpeh here mentioned, as appears from the circum-
stances of the story, must be different from that which is
remarked in the history of Jephthah. There is indeed another
Mizpeh mentioned among the cities of Judah, (Josh. xv. 38,)
and a third among those of Benjamin, (Josh, xviii. 26.) Some
are of opinion, that these two cities are one and the same, and
are oidy supposed to be two, because they lie in the confines of
each tribe: but if they are not the same, it seems most probable,
that the Mizpeh in the tribe of Benjamin, was the city which is
here spoken of. And we may observe farther, that as Mizpeh is
said to be situated not far from Eben-ezer, and probably on the
east or north side ; so Shen (if it be the name of a place, and not
rather of some sharp rock thereabouts) was situated not far from
it on the opposite, that is, on the west or south-west side, to which
Bethcar must needs be contiguous. — Wells? Geography of the
Old Testament, vol. 3. c. I.
c The words in our translation run thus: — 'And they gath-
ered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out
before the Lord,' (1 Sam. vii. 6.) but what we are to under-
stand by this water, the conjectures of commentators have been
various. Some take these words in a metaphorical sense, to
denote those tears of contrition, which were drawn as it were,
from the bottom of their hearts, and fell from their eyes before
the Lord. Others think, that with this water they washed their
bodies, as they are supposed to have done upon another occasion,
(Exod. xix. 20.) to signify the purification of their souls from the
pollution of sin. Others that they made use of it to cleanse the
ground where Samuel was to erect an altar, that it might not
stand upon an impure place. Some suppose that it was employed
as an emblem of humiliation, of prayer, of expiation, of execra-
tion, and I know not what besides. But the most probable
opinion is, that this water was, upon this occasion, poured out,
by way of libation, before God : and for support of this, it is com-
monly alleged, that libations of this kind, were very customary
in ancient times; that Theophrastus, as he is cited by Porphyry,
(Of Abstinenec, b. 2.) tells us, that the earliest libations wereot
water, though afterwards honey and wine came into ropiest ; that
Virgil, {JEneid, iv.) mentions the practice of sprinkling the
water of the lake Avernus ; and that Homer, (Odyssey, 12.) re-
marks, that for want of wine the companions of Ulysses poured
out water in a sacrifice, which they offered to the gods. It is
certain, that David poured out unto the Lord the water which tin-
three gallant men in his army brought him from the well of
Bethlehem, at the hazard of their lives, (2 Sam. xxiii. 16;) and
therefore, though the law does nol enjoin any such libations of
water; yet since there is 00 positive prohibition of them, why
may we not suppose, that upon this extraordinary occasion,
something singular and extraordinary might have been done. —
Patrick's and Cut nut's Commentaries.
d Josephus gives us (his account of the whole transaction: —
" In some places God shook the foundations ot the earth under
the feet of the Philistines, so that they could not stand without
staggering: in others, it opened and swallowed them up alive,
I, clure they knew where they were; v\hile the claps ot thunder,
and the flashes of fire were so violent, that their very eyes and
limbs were scorched to such a degree, thai thej couW ui Itl
their way before them, nor handle their arms." — Jewish Anti-
qtttties, b, 6. c. •>.
438
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4259. A. C. 1152. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
Philistines durst not appear upon the frontiers of Israel,
but were forced to restore the cities which they had taken
from them : so that Samuel had a good reason to set up
a monument (which he did between Mizpeh and Shen,
calling it ' Eben-ezer,' that is, ' the stone of help,') in
memory of so great a deliverance.
After this action, the most part of Samuel's govern-
ment was employed in a peaceable administration of
justice.
For which purpose he took a circuit every year round
a great tract of the country : but as he grew in years, he
appointed his two sons Joel and Abiah to the execution
of that office, who degenerating ° from their father's ex-
ample, became such mercenary and corrupt judges, that
the elders of Israel came in a body to Samuel, com-
plained of the grievances they lay under, by reason of
his infirmity, and his sons' mal-administration, and
thereupon demanded to have the form of their govern-
ment changed, and a king instituted among them, as
there was in other nations.
This demand was far from being agreeable to Samuel ;
however, he consulted God upon it, who gave him an-
swer, that he should comply with the people in what they
desired, notwithstanding the affront did not terminate
so much upon Samuel as himself; but before they pro-
ceeded to the choice of a king, he ordered him to
acquaint them with what his prerogatives were, and what
rights they might expect, that he would demand from
them ; and withal to inform them, b that slavery to them
and their children, subjection to the meanest offices, loss
of liberty, heavy taxes, constant war, and many other
inconveniences would be the consequence of a kingly
power. But " all these remonstrances availed nothing :
a It may probably be made a question, why God did not punish
Samuel, as he did Eli, for the wickedness of his sons ? But to
this it may be answered, that Samuel's sons were not so bad as
those of Eli; since taking bribes privately was not like openly
profaning the tabernacle, and making the worship of God con-
temptible. And besides this, it is possible that Samuel might be
ignorant of the corruption of bis sons, since he lived at Ramah,
and they at Beersheba.— Patrick's Commentary.
h The rules of conduct which God prescribes to the person that
should at any time be constituted king over Israel, are of a quite
different sort from this practice. ' He shall not multiply horses
to himself, neither shall he multiply wives to himself, neither
shall he greatly multiply to himself silver or gold. He shall
write him a copy of the law in a book, and he shall read therein
all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his
God, and to keep all the words of this law, and those statutes, to
do them, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and
that he turn not aside from the commandments to the right hand
or to the left,' (Deut. xvii. 16.) &c. So that Samuel does not in
the words before us, define what are the just lights of kings, but
describes only such practices as the kings of the east, who were
despotic princes, and looked upon their subjects as so many slaves,
were generally accustomed to: and the prophet had reason to
draw a king in those black colours, because the Israelites desired
such a one as their neighbours had, who were all under the
absolute dominion of their princes.— Le Clerc's and Calmet's
Commentaries.
c It is generally supposed, that what made the Israelites so
urgent at this time for a king, was a present strait they thought
themselves in, for want of an able leader: for Nahash the king
of the Amorites coming up to Jabesh Gilcad, and encamping
before it, had put the inhabitants into such a fright, that, without
more to do, they offered to surrender upon terms, telling him,
that * they would become subjects to him, if he would make a
b-ague with them.' (1 Sam. xi. 1.) But the haughty Amorite
in contempt of Israel, let them know, that if he made a league
with them, the condition thereof should be, ' that they should
the people persist in the desire of a king, and God tells
Samuel, that he will not fail to give them one.
The appearance of providence in the election of their
king was indeed very remarkable. Saul the son of Kish,
of the tribe of Benjamin, Avas a very tall, handsome
youth ; and it so happening at this time, that some of his
father's asses being gone astray, he, and a servant along
with him, were sent to look for them. They wandered
about a great way without gaining any intelligence, till
coming to Ramah, the place of Samuel's residence, at
his servants' instigation, he went to advise d with him
concerning the asses. God had apprized Samuel with
the coming of the person that day, who was to be
appointed king ; and therefore Samuel, when he saw him,
showed him all the respect that was due to his former
come out to him, and let him thrust out all their right eyes, and
lay it for a reproach upon all Israel.' The elders of Jabesh, in
this sad circumstance, demanded seven days' respite, that they
might send messengers unto all the coasts of Israel, and if in
that time no succours arrived, they would submit. This, it is
thought, was the reason for their pressing so hard upon Samuel
at this time a king; whereas their duty was, to have inquired of
the Lord, as they had done at other times, who it was that he
would be pleased to constitute the general in this exigence, to
lead out their forces against their enemies. — Hoivcll's History in
the notes.
d The narration of this circumstance we have in the text,
1 Sam. ix. 5 — 8, as follows, we quote Bootluoyd's version: —
" When they were come to the land of Zuph, Saul said to his
young man who was with him, come let us return, lest my father
cease to think on the asses, and become anxious for us. And he
said unto him, behold now, there is in this city a man of God,
and he is an honourable man ; all that he saith assuredly cometh
to pass: let us now go thither; perhaps he may show us the way
in which we should go. Then said Saul to his young man, But,
behold should we go, what shall we present to the man? for the
bread which was in our bags is spent, and we have not a present
to bring to the man of God; what have we? And the young
man answered Saul again, and said, Behold I have in my posses-
sion the fourth part of a shekel of silver; that let us give to the
man of God, that he may show us the way." Presenting gifts is
one of the most universal methods of doing persons honour in the
east. Maundrell {Journey, p. 26.) says, "Thursday, March,
11, this day we all dined at consul Hastings' house, and after
dinner went to wait upon Ostan, the bassa of Tripoli, having
first sent one present, as the manner is among the Turks, to
procure a propitious reception. It is counted uncivil to visit in
this country without an offering in hand. All gentlemen expect
it as a kind tribute due to their character and authority, and
look upon themselves as affronted, and indeed defrauded, when
this compliment is omitted. Even in familiar visits amongst
inferior people, you shall seldom have them come without bring-
ing a flower, or an orange, or some other such token of their
respect to the person visited ; the Turks, in this point, keeping
up the ancient oriental custom hinted, 1 Sam. ix. 7. 'If we go,'
says Saul, ' what shall we bring the man of God? there is not a
present,' &c. ; which words are questionless to be understood in
conformity to this eastern custom, as relating to a token of re-
spect, and not a price of divination." To this account it may
be added, that when Lord Macartney had his interview with
the emperor of China, in his embassy to that prince, in 1793,
the receiving and returning of presents, made a considerable
part of the ceremony. Presents of some kind or other are the
regular introducers of one party to another in the east. Pococke
tells us of a present of fifty radishes. Bruce relates, that in
order to obtain a favour from him, he received a very inconsider-
able present. " I mention this trifling circumstance," he says,
" to show how essential to humane and civil intercourse presents
are considered to be in the east: whether it be dates or whether
it be diamonds, they are so much a part of their manner, that
without them, an inferior will never be at peace in his own mind,
or think that he has hold of his superior for his protection. But
superiors give no presents to their inferiors." — Travels, vol. i.
p. 68.; Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. p. 260. — Ed.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
439
A. M. 2888. A. C. 111C; OR, ACCORDING TO HAI
character. He took him with him a to the high place,
where lie was going to sacrifice ; lie invited him to feast
with him upon the sacrifices that were to be offered ; and
had invited thirty guests more to bear him company.
He seated him in the highest place, and distinguished
him likewise by ordering the choicest dishes to be served
up to him.6 That evening lie had a long conference with
him in private, and the next morning c as he was waiting
on him out of town, he ordered d the servant to be sent
before him, that he might acquaint him with God's pur-
pose of exalting him to the regal dignity ; and having
e anointed him to be king of Israel, he foretold him
a In several places of Scripture, the Canaanites are said to
have had their high places whereon tliey worshipped their idols:
hut this is the first instance of any belonging to the people of
God ; and it is the opinion of some learned men, that this ap-
pointment of a private or inferior place of worship, even while
the ark and tabernacle were in being, by so great an authority
as that of Samuel, gave rise to the institution of synagogues and
proseuchas in so many places of the kingdom afterwards. —
Patrick's Com mentary.
b l'Sam. ix. 24. ' And the cook took up the shoulder, and that
which was upon it, and set it before Saul.' The shoulder of a
lamb is thought in the east a great delicacy. Abdolmelek the
Caliph, (Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 277.) upon
entering into Cufah, made a splendid entertainment. ' When he
was sat down, Amron the son of Hereth, an ancient Mechzu-
mian, came in: he called him to him, and placing him by him
upon his sofa, asked him what meat he liked best of all that ever
lie had eaten. The old Mechzumian answered, an ass's neck
well seasoned and well roasted. You do nothing, says Abdolme-
lek: what say you to a leg or a shoulder of a sucking lamb, well
roasted and covered over with butter and- milk ?" This suffi-
ciently explains the reason why Samuel ordered it for the future
king of Israel, as well as what that was which was upon it, the
butter and milk. — Hornier, vol. i. p. 319. — Ed.
c Boothroyd following the Septuagint translates, (1 Sam. ix.
25, 26,) as follows. * They then came down from the high
place unto the city, and Samuel communed with Saul on the roof
of the house ; for in the roof a bed had been made for Saul, in
which he slept. Now when the morning dawned, Samuel called
to Saul on the roof of the house, saying, Arise, that I may send
thee away. And Saul arose, and both he and Samuel went out
abroad.' This makes the matter clear and satisfactory, and is
in accordance with tiie customs of the east.
Sleeping on the top of the house has always been customary with
the eastern people. " It has ever been a custom with them,
eiinally connected with health and pleasure, to pass the night in
summer upon the house tops, which for this very purpose are
made flat, and divided from each other by walls. We found this
way of sleeping extremely agreeable; as we thereby enjoyed the
cool air, above the reach of the gnats and vapours, without any
other covering than the canopy of the heavens, which unavoida-
bly presents itself in different pleasing forms upon every inter-
ruption of rest, when silence and solitude strongly dispose the
mind to contemplation." — /Food's Bailee, Introduction, and
Fur/irx's Oriental Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 234. — En.
d This was with design to let Saul understand, that what he
was going to do was by the divine order and appointment; and
that when it should come to the casting of lots, (as it did after-
wards, 1 Sam. x. 20.) he might perceive that he was not chosen
king by chance of a lot. There might be likewise this further
reason for Samuel's bidding Saul to send away his servant,
namely, lest the people suspecting Samuel to do this by his own
will, more than by God's appointment, might be inclinable to
mutiny. Since this royal unction then was only designed for
Saul's private satisfaction, it was necessary not to have it pub-
lished before the people had proceeded to a public election of their
king. — Howell's History, in the notes.
e \\ e read of no express command fpr the anointing of kings,
and yet it is plain from the parable of Jotham, (Jud. ix. 3.) that
this was a custom two hundred years before this time. Why
oil, lather than any other liquid, was the symbol of conveying
a regal authority, we are nowhere informed. It is true, that
God directed Moses to consecrate Aaron to the high priest's
ES, A.M. 1259. A. C. 1152. I SAM. i. TO THE K.V1).
several /events which should befall him in his return
home, in token of the truth of his designation to that
office.^
Thus Saul was appointed king ; but then it was only
between Samuel and himself. To make his choice and
inauguration therefore more public, Samuel called an
assembly of the people together at Mizpeh, to which
place the ark of the Lord was brought, that they might,
with more solemnity, proceed to the election of a king.
The method of their electing was this : — First, the lot
was cast for every tribe separately, to know out of whicl
the king was to be chosen, and the lot fell upon that of
Benjamin : next, it was cast for all the families of this
tribe, and fell upon that of Matri ; and lastly, it was
cast for all the persons of this family, and fell upon
Saul, the son of Kish, who, when he came into the
assembly, for he chose to be absent at the time of the
election, and had been recommended by Samuel in a short
speech upon that occasion, appeared so portly, and with
so much majesty, that he gained the affections and good
wishes of all, except some few disorderly persons, who
disapproved of the choice, and, in pure contempt, re-
fused to h make him the usual presents ; which Saul
office, by anointing his head with oil, (Exod. xxix. 7.) But
the anointing of kings, we may presume, was of a prior date.
Unction indeed, in the days of Jacob, was the common method
of setting apart from common use even things inanimate. (Gen.
xxviii. 18.) ; and therefore it may well be supposed that persons
of such designation, as kings were, were all along admitted by
the same ceremony, which might be of divine appointment,
perhaps at the first institution of government, in the antediluvian
world, and thence handed down, by a long tradition, to future
generations. This rite of unction, in short, was so much the
divine care, that we find God giving Moses a prescription how
to make the consecrating oil, (Exod. xxx. 23.) But though
Solomon was anointed with oil taken from the tabernacle, v t
since Samuel was no priest, and could not therefore have any
access to the tabernacle, which at this time was at some distance
from him, it is more reasonable to think, though some Jewish
doctors will have it otherwise, that what he made use of, upon this
occasion, was no more than common oil. — Patrick's Comment.
f The events which Samuel told Saul he should meet with in
his return home, were these: — That near Rachel's tomb, he
should meet two men, who should inform him, that his father's
asses were found again ; that departing thence, he would met
three men going to Bethel, one of them carrying three kids,
another three cakes of bread, and the third a bottle of wine,
and that they should give him two parts thereof; and that
when he came to Geb, which was commonly called the
hill of God, where there was a garrison of the Philistines, ho
should meet a company of prophets going into the city, where
the Spirit of God should fall upon him, and he, to the wonder of
all that should hear him, should begin a prophesy among them:
all which signs happened exactly as Samuel had foretold them.
(1 Sam. x. 2, &c.)
g The text (1 Sam. x. 1.) says, 'Then Samuel took a vial of
oil, and poured it upon his head, and kissed him, and said, Is it
not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his
inheritance?' The kiss of homage was one of the ceremonies
performed at the inauguration of the kings of Israel. The Jews
called it the kiss of majesty. There is probably an allusion to
it in Psalm ii. 12. — Ed.
Alt was a constant custom among the eastern nations, and is
even to this day, whenever they approached the prince, to pre-
sent him with something; but here, in the case of Saul, at his
first accession to the throne, it was the proper method of recognis-
ing him. The Chaldee paraphrase says, that " they did not
come to salute him, or wish him an happy reign;" but this is
the same thing, because the first salutation offered to a king was
always attended with presents, which carried with them a sign
of peace and friendship, of congratulation and joy, and of sub-
jection and obedience. — Catmefs Commentary. — See this sub-
ject illustrated in a preceding note. — Ed.
440
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1UG; OR, ACCORDING TO HALE
could not but perceive, though in point of prudence he
thought proper at that time a to overlook.
Saul had not been many days upon the throne, before
there happened a fit occasion for him to exert himself.
Nahash, king of the Ammonites, laid siege to b Jabesh-
Gilead on the other side of Jordan, and had so closely
begirt it, that the people offered to capitulate ; but on
no better conditions would he permit them, than that each
man should have c his right eye put out. Hereupon they
sent to Gibeah to demand aid of king Saul d in the
space of seven days, (for that was all the time allowed
them ;) and he, having summoned all Israel to come to
their assistance upon pain of death, in a very short time
had an army of 300,000 Israelites, besides 30,000 of the
tribe of Judah, and with these he promised to relieve the
besieged the very next day. Nor was he worse than his
word: for dividinghis army into three parts, and falling up-
on the besiegers about daybreak, he so totally routed and
dispersed them, that scarce two of them were left together.
This victory, e and the deliverance which it procured
from a barbarous and insulting enemy, raised their new
a In this Saul acted a very wise and politic part, as being
unwilling to begin his reign with any disorder or tumult, which
his just resentment of such an affront might perhaps have occa-
sioned. These sons of Belial, as they are termed, were very
likely persons of some rank or quality ; and therefore they despised
Saul, for his having been related to a small tribe, and sprung from
an obscure family. If then he had taken notice of this affront,
and not revenged it, he had shown himself mean-spirited ; and if
he had resented it as it deserved, he might both have provoked
a party against him, and at his first setting out, incurred the
censure of rashness and cruelty: a prejudice, which, in the future
course of his reign, would have beeu far from doing any good. —
Howell's History in the notes.
b This town lay on the east side of Jordan, and not far distant
from the Ammonites who besieged it. It was in being in the
times of Eusebius and St Jerome, and was situate onahill about six
miles distant from Pella, as one goes to Gerasa. It is sometimes
in Scripture simply called Jabesh, and what the inhabitants
thereof are further remarkable for, is — their grateful remembrance
of the benefits they had received from Saul, when, after his death,
having heard that the ' Philistines had fastened his body to the
wall of Bethshan, they went all night, and took the body of Saul,
and the bodies of his sons from the wall, and came to Jabesh, and
burnt them there, and took their bones and buried them under a
tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days ;' for which they were
highly commended by David, (2 Sam. ii. 5.) — /Fells' Geography
of the Old Testament, vol. 3.
c The reason why Nahash was for Having their right eye put
out, was not only to bring a reproach upon Israel, as himself de-
clares, but to disable them likewise from serving in war; for, as
the manner of fighting in those days, was chielly with bow and
arrow, sword and shield, the loss of the right eye made them in-
capable of either; because, in combat, the left eye is covered with
the shield, and in shooting with the bow, it is usual to wink with
"t; so that depriving them of their right eye, made them useless
in war: and yet this barbarous king thought it not proper to put
out both their eyes: for then he would have made them utterly
incapable of doing the service, or acquiring the tribute for him,
which he expected from them. — Calmct's Commentary.
d It may seem a little strange, that this barbarous prince should
be willing to allow the Jabeshites the respite of seven days ; but
Josephus assigns this reason for it, namely, that he had so mean
an opinion of the people, that he made no difficulty to comply
with their request. Saul indeed had been appointed king, but
having not as yet taken upon him the government, he lived just
as he did before, in a private condition, (1 Sam. xi. 5.) So that
had he, upon this notice, endeavoured to levy an army, he could
not think it possible to be done in so short a space as seven days ;
and therefore he thought he might grant them these conditions
without any danger, and without driving them to desperation as
he might have done, had he denied them their request. — Patrick's
Commentary.
e Josephus acquaints us, that Saul did not content himself
S, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
king's fame to such a degree, that some, remembering
the indignities that were put upon him at his corona-
tion, were, in the height of their zeal, for having them
now punished with death ; but Saul very prudently op-
posed the motion, and expressed his aversion to have
the glories of that day, sullied with the blood of any of
his subjects.
From this victory, however, Samuel took occasion to
give those who had hitherto refused their allegiance, an
opportunity of coming in, and recognising the king; and
for that purpose ordered a general meeting at Gilgal to
confirm Saul's election ; which accordingly was cele-
brated with mirth and joy between both king and people,
as well as with sacrifices and thanksgivings to God, as
the author of all their successes.
Samuel was, at this time, to resign the government
entirely into the hands of Saul ; and therefore, in the
speech which he made upon this occasion, he insisted not
a little upon the vindication of his administration. He
reminded them of the great transgressions which they
and their forefathers committed : he set before them the
blessings consequent upon their obedience, and the judg-
ments which would certainly attend their disobedience to
the laws of God : he gave them to understand, that they
had been /far from doing an acceptable thing to God,
in rejecting his government, and desiring a king ; and
(that they might not think that he mentioned this out of
any prejudice, or indeed without a divine direction) he
gave them this sign — That God would immediately send
a storm of thunder and rain, which, in the 8 time of
wheat harvest, as it was then, was a thing unusual ; and
with barely relieving Jabesh, but carried on a war against
the Ammonites, slew their king, laid waste their country,
enriched his army with spoils, and brought the people safe and
victorious to their homes again. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 6. c. 6.
/That part of the speech, which Josephus introduces Samuel,
as making to the people, and complaining of their importunity for
a change of government, is conceived in these terms: — " What
should you choose another king for, after the experience of so
many signal mercies, and miraculous deliverances, while you
were under God's protection, and owned him for your governor ?
You have forgotten the story of your forefather Jacob's coming
into Egypt with only seventy men in his train, and purely for
want of bread ; how God provided for them, and by his blessing,
how they increased and multiplied. You have forgotten the
slavery and oppression they groaned under, till, upon their cries
and supplications for relief, God rescued them himself, without the
help of kings, by the hands of Moses and Aaron, who brought
them out of Egypt into the land you are now possessed of. How
can you then be so ungrateful now, after so many blessings and
benefits received, as to depart from the reverence and allegiance
you owe to so powerful and so merciful a protector ? How often
have you been delivered up into the hands of your enemies for
your apostasy and disobedience, and as often afterward restored
to God's favour, and your liberty, upon your humiliation and
repentance ? Who was it but God, that gave you victory first
over the Assyrians, then over the Ammonites, and then over the
Moabites, and last of all over the Philistines, not by the influence
and direction of kings, but under the conduct of Jephthah and
Gideon ? What madness has possessed you then, to abandon an
heavenly governor, for an earthly." — Jewish Jlntiq. b. 6. c. 6.
g It is an observation of St Jerome, that this harvest in Judea
began about the end of June, or the beginning of July, in which
season thunder and rain were never known, but only in the spring
and autumn, the one called the former, and the other the latter
rain ; and therefore Samuel by this preamble, ' Is it not wheat har-
vest to-day?' (chap. xii. 17.) meant to signify the greatness of
the miracle God was going to work; that he could, in an instant,
and in a time when they least of all expected it, deprive them of
all the comforts of life, as they justly deserved, for their rejecting
him and his prophet, who was so powerful with him, as by his
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &ro.
441
A. M. 288* A. C. 111!: ()K. ACCORDING TO HALES.
this, coming to pass according to his prediction, so terri-
fied the people, that they acknowledged their offence,
and entreated Samuel to intercede for them ; which he
not only promised them to do, but to assist them like-
wise with his best instructions, so long as they adhered
to the observation of God's laws ; but if they despised
them, they were to expect to be destroyed, both they
and their king.
After this victory over the Ammonites, Saul, in the
second year of his reign, disbanded all his army, except
3000 men, two of which he kept for his bodyguard, and
the other thousand were to attend his son Jonathan ; who
being a prince of great bravery, had taken an opportu-
nity, and cut off a garrison of the Philistines in " Geba,
which in effect was a declaration of war.
The Philistines, upon this occasion, raised a very
powerful army, which consisted of* 3000 chariots, (i000
horse, and a multitude of foot, almost innumerable, and
came and encamped at c Michmash. The Israelitish
army, which was to rendezvous at Gilgal, came in but
very slowly, and of those that did, several were so faint-
prayers, to produce such wonders. — Patrick's, Calmet's, and Le
Clerc's Commentaries.
a Among the cities of Benjamin, mentioned in Joshua xviii.
24, fee, we read of Gaba, Gibeah, and Gibeon ; and in Joshua
xxi. 17., we read, that the two cities given to the children of
Aaron, out of the tribe of Benjamin, were Gibeon and Geba;
whence it is not to be doubted, but that Gaba, mentioned in
chap, xviii. was the same with Geba, that we read of in chap. xxi.
But then it will no ways follow, that this Geba or Gaba, is the
same with Gibeah, because this Gibeah was the royal city where
Saul dwelt, and is therefore expressly called 'Gibeah of Saul;'
and for that reason it cannot be supposed, that the Philistines at
this time had a garrison there. — JFells' Geography of the Old
Testament, vol. 3.
6 The words in the original, and in our translation, are, thirty
thousand ; but the Syiiac and Arabic versions, which we have
thought proper to follow, make them no more than three thou-
sand: and indeed whoever considers, that Pharaoh king of Egypt
when he had mustered all his forces together, could bring no more
than 600 of these chariots into the field, and all the other princes
whose equipages are related in Scripture, much fewer, must
needs think it a thing incredible, that the Philistines, out of
their small territories which extended no farther than the two
tribes of Simeon and Dan, along the coasts of the Mediterranean
sea, could ever be able to raise so vast an armament; no, nor
all the nations they could possibly call to their assistance. For
besides that, in the account of all armies, the cavalry is always
more numerous than the chariots of war, which is different here,
the largest armies that we ever read of were able to compass a
veiy few of these chariots, in comparison of the number here
specified. Mithridates, in his vast army, had hut an hundred;
Darius but two; and Antioclius Epipiianes, (2 Mac. xiii. 2.)
but three. Sn that we must either say, that the transcribers
made a mistake in the Hebrew copy, or with some other com-
mentators suppose that this 30,000 chariots, were not chariots
of war, but most of them carriages only, fur the conveyance of
the burgage belonging to such a vast multitude of men, or for
the deportation of the plunder they Imped to be masters of by
having conquered the country. — Lc Clerc's Commentary, and
Universal History.
c Eusebius and St Jerome inform us, that in their time, there
was a large town of this name, lying about nine miles from Jeru-
salem, near Ramah: and the text tells that it was eastward from
Beth-aven. Now Beth-aven which sanities 'the house of ini-
quity,' is supposed to be the same with Bethel, and was so called
after that Jeroboam the son of Nebat had set up his golden calves
to be worshipped here: but as Bethd lay to the east of Michmash,
and not Michmash to the east of Bethel, as the text seems to say,
the translation should be, that they encamped at Michmash, hav-
ing Beth-aven on the east, that is, they seized on that post which
Savil had before in Michmash, on Mount Bethel, ver. 2.— Cal-
met's Commentary.
\. M. 1301. A. C.1110. 1 SAM. i. T\> THE END.
hearted, as to hide themselves in the rocks and caves ;
and others, thinking themselves never safe enough, retir-
ed even beyond the Jordan. The truth is, that both
prince and people were sadly intimidated, because
Samuel, whose company at this juncture was impatiently
expected, was not yet come ; so that the king, fearing
that the enemy would fall upon him before he had made
his addresses to God for success, ordered sacrifices to
be made ; and the burnt-offering was just finished, when
news was brought him that Samuel was arrived.
Samuel had told him beforehand, that by the expira-
tion of seven days, he would not fail to meet him at
Gilgal ; and therefore, being offended at his diffidence
and impatience, he not only sharply rebuked him, but
declared likewise that God, by this way of proceeding,
would in time be provoked to remove the kingdom from
him and his posterity, and give it to another that better
deserved it ; and so having left Gilgal, he went to Gi-
beah, whither Saul and his son Jonathan followed him,
witli a small army of about 0000, and these so badly
provided for action, that they had no manner of weapons,
but what they could make out of their working tools,
because the Philistines would not, at that time, rf permit
so much as a smith to live amonjr them.
dThe precaution which the Philistines took to hinder the Is-
raelites from providing themselves with weapons is no more than
what other conquerors have done to the nations they have van-
quished. Porsenna, when he made peace with the Romans, res-
trained them from the use of all iron but what was necessary in the
tillage of their ground. Cyrus, when he subdued the Lydians, for
fear of a revolt, took from them the use of arms, and instead of a
laborious life spent in war, Buffered them to sink into softness
and luxury, so that they soon lost their ancient valour: and (to
instance in one prince more) Nebuchadnezzar, when he had made
himself master of Judea, took along with him into ' Babylon all
the craftsmen and smiths, that the poorest of the people, which
he left behind, might be in no condition to rebel," (2 Kings xxiv.
14.) The only wonder is, why the Israelites, after they had re-
gained their liberty, under the government of Samuel, and given
the Philistines so total an overthrow at Eben-ezer, did not re-
store those artificers, and so provide themselves with proper arms
against the next occasion ? But besides the extreme sloth and
negligence which appears in the Israelites' whole conduct during
this period, it was not so easy a matter, in so short a time, to
recover a trade that was lost; especially among a people that had
no iron mines, and were so wholly addicted to the feeding ol
cattle, that they made no account of any mechanical art. In
the famous victory which they gained over Sisera, we are t' Id,
that ' there was not a shield or spear seen among fifty thousand
men of Israel,' (Judges v. 8.) but notwithstanding this, they had
hows and arrows, and slings which the men of Gibeah could
manage to a wonderful advantage' (Judg. xx. 16.) And besides
these, the Israelites, upon this occasion, might convert their in-
struments of husbandry, their hatchets, their s| lades, their forks,
their mattocks, fee, into instruments of war; a mneh better shift
than what we read of some, who, in ancient tint) -. had no nthl r
arms than clubs and sharpened stakes, hardened in the lire.
"The rural contest is not now carried on with hard clubs and
stakes bunted at the point."— f'iryil, JEneid. 7. [The policy of
the Philistines has been imitated in modern times. Mulei Is-
mael went farther towards a total reduction of these parts of
Africa than his predecessors had done. Indeed the vigorous
Mulei Hashid, his brother and predecessor, laid the foundation
of that absoluteness ; but was cut oil in the bright of his vigour,
his horse running away with him in so violent a manner, thai be
dashed out his brains against a tree. But this sherd' bn Ught
multitudes of sturdy Arabs and Africans, who used to be courted
liy the kings of .Morocco, Fez, fee, to such a pass, that it was as
much ;ts all their li\es \w re worth to ha\e any weapon in a
whole village or community, more than one knife, ami that with-
out a point, wherewith to cut the throat of any sheep or other
creature, when in danger of dying, lest it should die with the
3 K
442
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116 j OK. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
While the Philistine army lay at Michmash, they sent
out parties several ways to ravage the country, and met
with no manner of opposition ; till Jonathan, accom-
panied with a his armour-bearer only, found means to
ascend a steep rock where the enemy least of all ex-
pected an invasion, and so falling upon them unawares,
in a short time killed about twenty of them ; which put
the rest * into such a consternation, that mistrusting
friends for foes, they began to slaughter and destroy
one another, Saul had soon intelligence of this disorder
in the enemies' camp, and therefore, willing to make the
most of such an opportunity, he got together what forces
he could, and fell upon the Philistines with such fury,
that he totally routed and defeated them.
In the heat of the chase, he caused a proclamation to
be made, that upon pain of death, none should dare to
eat any thing until it was night, that the slaughter of the
enemy might not be retarded. But herein he defeated
his own purpose ; for the people, for want of refresh-
ment, grew faint in the pursuit, so that the enemy es-
caped into their own country : and what was another
grievous consequence of this interdict, his son Jonathan,
who had been absent when the proclamation was made,
had like to have fallen a sacrifice to his father's rash
vow, c merely for eating a little honey, when he was
Wood in it, and become unlawful for food."]— Morgan's History
of Algiers, p. 19fi. — Ed.
a This action of Jonathan's, considered in itself, was doubt-
less a very rash attempt, and contrary to the laws of war, which
prohibit all under command as he was, from engaging the enemy,
or entering upon any enterprise, without the general's order ;
but what may very justly be said in excuse of it is, that he had
a divine incitation to it, which he might probably feel upon the
sight of the Philistines appearing as if they intended to assault
Gibeah, and upon the information which he might receive of
the great spoil which the three parties made of the poor people
in the country. — Patrick's Commentary.
b How two men could put the whole army into such a con-
sternation, may seem somewhat extraordinary; but it should be
considered, that Jonathan and his armour-bearer, climbing up
a way that was never attempted before, might come upon them
unawares, and surprise them: that this action might happen, as
Josephus thinks, early in the morning, when a great part of the
Philistines' army was asleep; that even, had they been all awake,
Jonathan might have so posted himself, as Horatius Codes did
on a bridge, so as to be able to maintain his pass against all the
force of the enemy; that those who made at him, as only one
perhaps could at a time, he with one stroke might lay flat on the
ground, and his armour-bearer immediately despatch them ; that
the rest, seeing them act thus intrepidly, might take them for
two scouts, or van-couriers only of a great army that was coming
up, and ready to tall upon them ; that the army of the Philistines,
being made up of different nations, might be in the greater con-
fusion, as either not understanding or else suspecting one ano-
ther; and what might complete their consternation, that God at
this time might send a panic fear upon them, which, whenever
lie does it, even in the opinion of heathens themselves, is enough
to make the stoutest tremble, and the most heroic spirits betake
themselves to flight. " In frantic dread even the children of the
gods (valiant heroes) fly away." — Pindar, Nemea 9.
c When Saul told his son Jonathan, that for eating this honey,
contrary to his interdict, he should surely die, 'because the re-
verence which he had for his vow, was more to him than all the
kindred and tenderness of nature,' Josephus introduces the son
making his father an answer, not unlike that which Jephthah's
daughter, upon a like occasion, returned to him: "That death,
says he, shall be welcome to me, which acquits my father of the
obligation of a religious vow, and only befalls me, in consequence
■J so glorious a victory to him that gave me being. I have lived
long enough, since I have lived to see the pride and insolence of
the Philistines brought down by the Hebrews, which will serve
me for a consolation in all my sufferings." And the historian
ready to die with hunger, had not the people interposed,
and pleaded the merit of that young prince, to whom
the honour of the day was chiefly owing.
After this victory, Saul ruled the kingdom with an
higher hand, and repulsed his enemies wherever they
assailed him. He had indeed a very large and flour-
ishing family. Abinoam, the daughter of Ahimaaz, was
his wife ; Jonathan, Ishui, and Melchishua, were his
sons; Michal and Merab his daughters ; Abner his cousin-
german, was general of his forces ; and as himself was
a warlike prince, God made choice of him to put in exe-
cution a sentence, ' which, for many years before, he had
decreed against the Amalekites, for their opposing the
Israelites in their passage out of the land bf Egypt.
His commission was utterly to destroy the Amale-
kites, men, women, and children, and to leave not so
much as one creature of any kind alive ; but instead of
executing this according to the letter of the precept, d
he saved Agag their king, and the best of their cattle
alive ; and when Samuel came to expostulate the matter
with him, his pretence was, that what he had spared was,
in pure respect to God, in order to have them offered to
him in sacrifice. But Samuel, who knew very well that
this reserve was made out of a principle of avarice more
than devotion, first laid before him the iniquity of his
conduct, and then declared to him God's immoveable
purpose of alienating the kingdom from his family ;
which made so deep an impression upon him, that he ac-
knowledged his fault, entreated the prophet, who was
going abruptly to leave him, to stay, and make inter-
cession for him, and so far to honour him before the
1 See Exod. xvii. 8, &c. and Deut. xxv. 17, &c.
tells us farther, that the whole multitude was so charmed with
the piety and bravery of the young man, that in ecstasy of ten-
derness and compassion, they took him away out of the hands
of his incensed father, with an oath, " that they would not suffer
an hair of that person's head to be touched, who had been so
instrumental in a victory that tended to the preservation of them
all." — Antiquities, b. 6. c. 7.
d Josephus seems to hint, that Saul saved this Amalekite
king alive, because he was taken with the comeliness and ma-
jesty of his person ; but others rather think that he intended him
to decorate his triumph. For when it is said of Saul, that he
came to Carmel after his victory, and ' set him up a place', (1
Sam. xv. 12.) the word Jab, they say, will signify an arch, as
well as any thing else ; and thence they conclude, that Saul's
purpose was to erect a triumphal arch, in memory of his defeat
of the Amalekites ; and that he kept their king alive to be led
captive in that magnificent procession, wherein he was to make
a display of his victory. — Calmet's Commentary. [" In this place
the LXX. read a hand, probably because the trophy or monument
of victory, was made in the shape of a large hand, the emblem
of power, erected on a pillar. These memorial pillars were
much in use anciently, and the figure of a hand was by its em-
blematical meaning well adapted to preserve the remembrance of
a victory." — Niebuhr, {Voyage en Arabia, torn. ii. p. 211.
French Edition) speaking of Ali's mosque at Mesched-Ali,
says, that " at the top of the dome, where one generally sees on
the Turkish mosques a crescent, or only a pole, there is here a
hand stretched out, to represent that of Ali." Another writer
informs us that at the Alhambra, or red palace of the Moorish
kings, in Grenada, " on the key-stone of the outward arch (of
the present principal entrance) is sculptured the figure of an
arm, the symbol of strength and dominion.*' — {Annual Register
for 1779, Antiquities, p. 124.) To this day, in the East Indies,
the picture of a hand is the emblem of power or authority. When
the Nabob of Arcot, who was governor of fh/e provinces, appeared
on public occasions, several small flags with each a hand painted
upon them, and one of a large size with five hands, were so-
lemnly carried before him.] — Ed.
111.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
44:i
A. M. 2888. A. C. lllfi; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
people, from whom he apprehended a revolt, as to join
with him in worship to God, which Samuel consented to
do : but before he departed, he ordered Agag, who by
this time began to hope for mercy, to be brought forth
to him, and himself, with his own hands, fell upon him,
and slew him.
This was the last interview which Samuel had with
Saul : for, after this action, he retired to his house at
Ramah, where, though he visited Saul no more, he
ceased not to lament the sad condition into which he
was fallen. It was not long, however, before God
awoke him out of his pensive mood, and sent him to
Bethlehem, under colour of sacrificing there, to anoint
David, the son of Jesse, king and successor to Saul.
Jesse had eight sons, and when Samuel came to his
house, seven of them were brought before him, Eliab,
the eldest, was a goodly personage, and him the pro-
phet supposed, at first sight, to have been the person
whom God had pitched upon to succeed Saul ; but being-
instructed otherwise, and upon inquiry, finding that
Jesse had another son, who at that time was in the fields
keeping the sheep, he ordered him to be sent for ; and
as he was a very fair and beautiful youth, immediately
upon his entering the room, he perceived that he was
the person whom God had made choice of ; and accord-
ingly he took an opportunity, and " singling him out
from the rest of his brethren, poured oil on his head, and
anointed him king. Nor was the ceremony useless ; for
from that time forward David found himself inwardly
possessed with a spirit of wisdom, and prudence, and
courage, and other qualifications both of body and mind
that are requisite in a prince. b
Saul, in the mean time, declined more and more in
the favour of God ; and as he was naturally of a timorous
and suspicious temper, an unhappy turn of mind grew
a Our translation says, that 'Samuel anointed him in the
midst of his brethren,' and for this it is pretended, that as this
unction was a solemn act, and the only title which David had to
the kingdom, it was necessary to have it done in the presence of
some witnesses, for which purpose none were more proper than
those of his own family. But it is plain, from his brother Eliab's
treating him after this, (1 Sam. xvii. 28.) that he was not privy
to his being anointed king-elect over God's people; and there-
fore, since the words will equally hear the sense of ' from the
midst,' as well as ' in the midst of his brethren, ' it is more reason-
able to suppose, that as this was the ceremony of his designation
tu tlic kingdom only, few or none except his father perhaps, were
admitted to it. And there was the less reason for witnesses upon
this occasion, because Uavid never laid claim to the crown till
after Saul's decease, and was then, at two several times, first,
when he was made king over the tribe of Judah, and second,
wain made king over all the tribes of Israel, anointed publicly.
— Calmet's and Patrick's Commentary, and Howell's History,
in the notes.
I> They who credit the scripture history in this affair, will
easily account for these extraordinary accomplishments and im-
provements ; for that assures us, ' that the Spirit of the Lord came
upon Dai id from that day forward,' (1 Sam. xvi. 13.) and I should
be glad to learn from those who do not credit this circumstance
of the history, in the strict sense of the text, how otherwise they
can account for these extraordinary effects and endowments
which immediately ensued on David's designation to the throne;
how a designation to empire, I say, which, in its ordinary course,
is too apt to corrupt, debase, and overset with vanity, should
raise an obscure youth, uneducated, and little accounted of, even
in the esteem of a parent's partiality, in an obscure age and
country, without the advantage either of instruction or example,
iiit<. the greatest musician, the noblest poet, and the most con-
summate hero of all antiquity. — The T/ife of David, by the Author
of Revelation Examined.
upon him, and settled at last in a confirmed melancholy,
but such an one as was frequently attended with violent
perturbations, and sometimes with direct frenzy. In this
condition, some of his courtiers advised him to music,
which would be of some use to lull his disturbed mind to
rest; and accordingly recommended David, not only as
an excellent master this way, but a man of other rare
qualifications, both internal and external, enough to
engage his favour.
Upon this recommendation he was sent for to court, c
where Saul was greatly taken with the beauty of his per-
son ; but when he heard him exercise his skill upon the
harp, he was pleased above measure, and quite trans-
ported from all uneasy and melancholy thoughts. rl Saul,
in short, conceived such a kindness for David for having
cured him of his malady, that he made him one of his
armour-bearers, though David, when he found the king-
better, returned to his father's house again. e
The Philistines not long before had received a remark-
able defeat from Saul ; but having now recruited their
forces, they came and encamped between / Succoth and
Azekah, while Saul, with his army, took ground upon
the hill that is above the valley of Elah, which separat-
ed the two camps. AYhile the armies lay thus facing
each other a champion named Goliath, of a prodigious
gigantic stature, S being full ten feet high, with arms
c 1 Sam. vi. 17. This command of Saul might originate in a
desire to obtain such a person as might by his skill in playing
equally contribute to his gratification and state. It seems to
have formed a part of royal eastern magnificence, to have had
men of this description about the court. "Professed storytellers,"
it may also be observed, " are of early date in the east. Even at
this day men of rank have generally one or more, male or female,
amongst their attendants, who amuse them and their women,
when melancholy, vexed, or indisposed; and they are generally
employed to lull them to sleep. Many of their tales are highly
amusing, especially those of Persian origin, or such as have been
written on their model. They were thought so dangerous by
Mahommed, that he expressly prohibited them in the Koran." —
Rickardso?i's Dissertation on the Manners of the East, p. 69.
and Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 182. — Ed.
d 1 Sam. xvi. 23. The power of music upon the affections is
very great. Its effect upon Saul was no more than it has pro-
duced in many other instances. Timotheus the musician could
excite Alexander the Great to arms by the Phrygian sound, and
allay his fury with another tune, and excite him to merriment.
So Eric, king of Denmark, by a certain musician, could be
driven to such a fury as to kill some of his best and most trusty
servants. — /*. Fossius de Pocmatum eantii et rythmi riribnx.
—Ed.
e It seems very doubtful whether this was 1 he case. The t> \t
in this part is confused and unsatisfactory, see note on this sub-
ject in the following chapter. — En.
/Succoth and Azekah lay to the south of Jerusalem, and the
east of Bethlehem, about four leagues from the former, and the
from the latter; and the ancient valley of Elah must consequently
lie not far distant from them, though later travellers plan it at
no more than a league's distance from Jerusalem. — Cahnet'i
Commentary.
g The words in the text are, ' whose height was six cubits
and a span ;' so that taking a cubit to be twenty inches and a
half, and a span to be three inches, and a little more, the whole
will amount to about twelve feet and an half: a stature above as
tall again as usual ! The lowest computation of the cubit how-
ever brings it to near ten feet, which is the standard that «'■
have set it at; though it musl not be dissembled, that both the
Septuagint and Josephus have reduced it to little more than
feet, which badly comports with the weight and raStneSS
armour, though it might suit their design perhaps, in accommo-
dating their account to the credibility of their heathen readers.
Hut be that as it will, several authors, to slum this vast size of
the man not to be beyond the bounds of probability, have written,
444
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M.2888. A. C. 1116 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
and armour proportionable, came out of the camp of the
Philistines for forty days successively, and challenged
any one of the Israelites to a single combat. a This
single combat was to decide the fate of the war : but
none of the Israelites durst adventure upon it, until
David, who happened at this time to come to the camp, b
with provisions for his three elder brethren, that were
then in the service, seeing this great gigantic creature
thus vaunt himself, and hearing withal what reward the
king had promised to the person that should kill him,
namely, that he c would give him his daughter in mar-
riage and ennoble his family, was moved by a divine
impulse to accept of the challenge, which he some ways
d isco vered to the standers by. His eldest brother, Eliab,
ev professo de gigantibus, among whom Hermannus Conringius,
in his book de antiquo statu Holmstadii, and in another de habitu
corporum Germanorum, have demonstrated, that the ancient
Germans were of a vast size, even as Cfesar, de bello Gall, tes-
tifies of them, by calling them ' men of a huge greatness of
body.' Nay, even Josephus himself, who is quoted for denying
the existence of giants, furnishes us with an argument in their
behalf, when he gives us an account of some bones of a prodigi-
ous size which were found in Hebron ; as Acosta, in his History
of the Indies, (b. 1. c. 10.) makes mention of bones of an incred-
ible bigness, and of a race of giants of such an height, that an
ordinary man could scarce reach their knees. — Le Clerc's and
Patrick's Commentary, Calmet's Dictionary, under the word
Goliath; and Dissertation of the giants.
a Tiie words in which Goliath's challenge is expressed, are
these: ' Why are you come out to set your battle in array ? Am
I not a Philistine, and you servants to Saul ? Choose you a man
for you, and let him come down to me: if he be able to fight
with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I
prevail against him, and kill him, then ye shall be our servants,
and serve us.' (1 Sam. xvii. 8.) Antiquity furnishes us with
examples of several such like combats as Goliath here proposes,
but with none more remarkable than that between the Horatii
and Curiatii, related by Livy, b. 1. c. 23. " In which case,'
as Grotius expresses himself, {On the Law of War and Peace,
b. 2. c. 23.) " though the champions perhaps cannot, with all
the innocence imaginable, engage in the combat, yet their re-
spective states may, at least allow of it, as a less evil; as an
expedient whereby a decision is made, without the effusion of
much blood, or any considerable loss on either side, which of the
two nations shall have the dominion over the other. " Strabo,"
says he, '"makes mention of this as an ancient custom among
the Greeks; and /Eneas appeals to the Latins, whether it is not
highly ju^t and equitable, that he and Turnus should determine
the controversy between them even in this manner." But
whether there was any combat stipulated to be decisive of the
quarrel between the two contending nations, it is certain that
this speech of Goliath's was a mere bravado, proceeding from a
high opinion he had of his own matchless strength, as if he had
been the whole support of the nation, which was to stand or fall
together with him. For that he had no authority from the princes
of the Philistines to make any such declaration, is evident
from the event; since so far were the Philistines from yielding
themselves slaves to the Hebrews, upon the death of this cham-
pion, that they made the best of their way into their own country,
Mid there defended themselves, and fought many battles with
them afterwards. — Saurin's Dissertation, vol. 4. Dis. 32. and
Patrick's and Le Clerc's Commentaries.
b In those days it was customary for men to serve their king
and country in the wars at their own expense; and therefore,
Jesse sent a supply of provisions to such of his sons as were in
l he service: but since he had other sons at home, while David
was chiefly in the fields, it seems to be a divine direction that
he sent him from the sheep upon this errand.
c This was no bad policy in Saul to promise largely upon so
important an occasion, forasmuch as Caleb won Kirjath-sepher,
by offering his daughter in marriage to the person that should
take it. And David himself, when he came to the crown, en-
couraged his soldiers to assault the strong fort of Sion, by promis-
ing to make him commander-in-chief of all his forces who should
fust enter it. — Patrick's Commentary.
hearing such words drop from him, took him, and re-
proved him for his rashness ; but, as his declaration, by
this time, had reached the king's ears, the king sent for
him, and having surveyed his youth, told him with con-
cern, that he feared he would never be able to encounter
a man that was so much older and stronger, and a soldier
from his cradle. d But to this David replied, that he
had already done as great things as killing this giant
could possibly be ; that he had slain a lion and a bear
with his bare hands ; and therefore did not doubt, but
that the same almighty power which delivered him then,
would not fail to shield and protect him now.
Saul was not a little pleased with this gallant answer ;
and, to equip him as well as he could for the combat,
offered him his own armour : but when David had put it
on, he found it too large and cumbersome ; and there-
fore, taking only his staff, a sling, and e five smooth
stones, which he picked out of the brook that ran by, he
advanced towards the Philistine, who, perceiving him to
be but a youth, and of a fair effeminate complexion, took
the thing as done in contempt and derision of him; and
therefore he cursed him by his gods, Dagon and Ashta-
roth, and vowed to cut him in pieces, the very moment
he came at him. But David's reply was of another
kind, namely, that he came against him, not in any con-
fidence of his own strength, but in the name of that God
whose name he had blasphemed, and power defied./
And with these words he let fly a stone at him, with such
force and direction, that it hit him on his forehead, and
S piercing his brain, sunk into it, so that he fell flat on
d Josephus introduces David as reasoning with the king in
this manner: "David perceiving," says he, "that Saul took
his measures from the common reason of other encounters, gave
the king to understand, That this was not so much a challenge
to the army, as a defiance to Heaven itself; neither was the
combat to be taken, in truth, for a trial of skill between Goliath
and David, but between Goliath and the Lord of hosts. ' For
it is not my arm,' says he, ' that fights the battle, but the power
of a gracious and invincible God, that many times brings to
pass, even by the weakest instruments, the noblest of his divine
purposes, for his greater glory.' '"' — Jewish Antiquities, b. b'.
c. 10.
e Smooth stones, one would think, part best from the sling,
and, as they meet with the least obstruction from the air, fly with
the greatest rapidity, and in the most direct line; and yet Ludo-
vicus de Dieu, is of a quite contrary opinion, namely, that rough
and sharp stones were properer for David's purpose; whereupon
he translates the words ' five pieces of stone,' as the Hebrew
indeed, without its punctuation, will bear. But it is in vain to be
nice and elaborate about trifles, since of what form soever the
stone which penetrated Goliath's forehead was, it is plain, that it
had both the direction and rapidity of its motion from the hand
of God.
/ 1 Sam. xvii. 45. The decision of national controversies by
the duels of the chiefs, was frequent in ancient times. That
between the Horatii and Curiatii is well known: and even before
that, Romulus and Aruns, king of the Ceninenses, ended their
national quarrel by the like method ; Romulus killing his adver-
sary, taking his capital, and dedicating the spoils to Jupiter
Feretrius. — J'al. Max., b. viii. c. 2. s. 3. Chandler's Life of
David, vol. 1. p. 70, note. — Ed.
g If it should be asked how this possibly could be, when Goliath
was armed so completely, and in particular, is said to have had
an ' helmet of brass upon his head ? ' It is but supposing that
this arrogant champion, in disdain of his inferior combatant,
might come negligently towards him, with his helmet turned
back, and his forehead bare. It is highly probable, that when
he made his menacing speech to David, he might turn back his
helmet, both to speak and be heard more distinctly ; and there
was no such terror in David's appearance, as might induce him
to cover his forehead again. But admitting he did not, it is but
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c
445
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his fare, and David ran up to him, and with the giant's
sword cut oft' his head ; a at the sight of which the Phi-
listines' army fled, and were pursued by the Hebrews as
far as the gates of Ekron witli a very great slaughter.
When Saul saw David marching against the Philis-
tines, he inquired of Abner, who he was? which Abner
could not resolve him ; but upon his return from victory,
introduced him to the king, with the champion's head in
his hand. The king received him with the highest
applauses ; and upon his inquiry, David informed him,
that he was the son of Jesse the Bethlemite. Every
one entertained indeed a high conception for the
author of so great an action, but none expressed so
entire a satisfaction as did Jonathan, b who, being him-
self a prince of extraordinary bravery, was so taken with
his courage and conduct in this engagement that he c
supposing that David levelled his stone so right, as to hit the
place which was left open for his adversary's eyes, or threw it
with such a violent force, as would penetrate both helmet and
head together. To make these suppositions more probable, we
need only remember what we read in Judges xx. l(j., of no less
than seven hundred men in one place, who were so expert with
their left hands, that every one could sling stones to a hair-
breadth, and not miss; or what we read in Diodorus Siculus, b.
5., of some slingers, who threw stones with such violence that
nothing could resist their impression; and that when they made
use of lead instead of stone, the very lead would melt in the air
as it flew, by reason of the rapidity of the motion which they
gave it. — (Patrick's- and Calmet's Commentaries.) — " The arms
which the Achaans chiefly used were slings. They were trained
to the art from their infancy, by slinging from a great distance
at a circular mark of a moderate circumference. By long prac-
tice they took so nice an aim, that they were sure to hit their
enemies not only on the head, but on any part of the face they
chose. Their slings were of a different kind from the Balea-
riaus, whom they far surpassed iu dexterity." — Polybius, p.
125. — Ed.
a 1 Sam. xvii. 51. Niebuhr presents us with a very similar
scene in his Description of Arabia, p. 263, where the son of an
Arab chief kills his lather's enemy and rival, and according to
the custom of the Arabs, cuts oft* his head, and carries it in
triumph to his father. In a note he adds, cutting oft* the head
of a slain enemy, and carrying it in triumph, is an ancient cus-
tom. Xenophon remarks that it was practised by the Chalybes,
(J>. iv.) Herodotus attributes it to the Scythians, (b. iv. c.
CO.)— Ed.
b The text says, (1 Sam. xviii. 3, 4.) ' Then Jonathan and
David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.
And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him,
and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword and
to his bow, and to his girdle.' It was anciently a custom to
make such military presents as these to brave adventurers.
Besides the present instance of the kind, two others may be
quoted: the first is from Home)-.
" Next him Ulysses took a shining sword,
A bow and quiver, with bright arrows stored ;
A well proved casque, with leather braces bound,
iThy gift, Meriones,) his temples crowii'd."
11. x. 807. Pope.
The other is from Virgil, in the story of Nisus and Euryalus.
" Nor did his eye less longingly behold
The girdle belt, with nails of buroish'd gold ;
This present Cadicus the rich bestow'd
On Romulus, when friendship first they vow'd,
And absent! join'd in hospitable ties:
He dying, to his heir bequeathed the prize ;
Till by his eonq'riug Ardean troops oppress'd,
He fell, and they the glorious gift possessed."— JEn. b. 9.— Ed.
c Plutarch, in his book On Intense Friendship, makes mention
ot several great men such as Theseus and Pirithous; Achilles
and Patroclus; Orestes and Pylades ; Pythias and Damon, &C,
who were joined together in the yoke of friendship, as he calls it:
but none of these were comparable to what we read of Jonathan
and David, who entered into the most sacred bonds of mutual
contracted the tenderest and most endearing friendship
with him, which lasted as long as they two lived together ;
but in their return home from this expedition, one thing
happened which occasioned Saul's jealousy. Among
the crowds that came out to meet them, and to grace
their triumph, there was a chorus of women, d who sung
to the musical instruments upon which they played, a
certain song, whose chief burden was, ' Saul has slain
his thousands, and e David his ten thousands ;' which so
enraged Saul against David, that from that time lie
never looked on him with a gracious eye. For though
he thought proper to retain him in his service, and, for
the present, conferred upon him some command in the
army ; yet the reward for his killing Goliath, which was
to be the marriage of his eldest daughter, / he deprived
him of by giving her to another.
When Saul returned to his own house, the same spirit
of melancholy came upon him as before ; and while David
was touching his harp before him as usual, iu order to
alleviate his malady, the outrageous king threw a javelin
at him with such fury, as would certainly have destroyed
him, had not providence turned it aside. Hereupon
David thought proper to withdraw ; yet Saul would still
continue him in his service, to have the more opportu-
nities against his life.
It happened, too, that by this time his second daughter,
whose name was Michal, had entertained kind thoughts
of David, which her father was not unconscious of; and
therefore he signified to him, that upon condition he
would kill him an hundred Philistines, (but not without
some hopes of himself falling in the attempt,) he should
have the honour to become the king's son-in-law. David
accepted the condition, though he could not but perceive
the latent malice of it ; and taking some choice men
along with him, invaded the Philistines, slew double the
number of them, and for a testimony thereof, S sent their
assistance and defence, to their very death, and of kindness to
their posterity, even after either of them should be dead. Jona-
than, in particular, through the w hole story, shows towards
D&vid such a greatness of soul, such a constancy of mind, and
disinterestedness of heart, as few romances can produce examples
of. — Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
d 1 Sam. xviii. G. The dancing and playing on instruments
of music before persons of distinction, when they pass near the
dwelling places of such as are engaged in country business, ^'iil
continues in the east. This was practised by some persons in
compliment to the Baron Du 'Pott. He says, (Memoirs, part
I. p. 181), "I took care to cover my escort with my small
troop of Europeans, and we continued to march on in this order,
which had no very hostile appearance, when we per© ived a mo-
tion in the enemy's camp, from which several of the Turc m
advanced to meet us: and I soon had the musicians of the dil-
ferent hordes playing and dandng before nic, all the time we
were passing by the side of their camp." — Banner, vol. 3, p.
'i92.— Et>.
e Namely, in his lulling Goliath; for all the conquest gained
afterwards was no more than the consequence of his death.
/' This was a high affront u> David, and one of the greatest
injuries that could be done him; however, for the present, he
thought proper to dissemble it. Hew Jonathan resented this
usa«e, we are nowhere told. It is likely, that bis duty to his
father made him prevail with David to take it patiently, as
coming from a man w ho was sometimes beside himself, and knew
i.,,t well what he did: and that David might be the more in-
clinable to do this, a^ hai ing Borne intimations given him ol the
good esteem which the second daughter began to entertain oi
him. — Patrick's Commentary.
,j The reason why Saul exacted the foreskins of David was,
to pn vent all cheat or collusion In the matter, and thai he might
440 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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[Book V
foreskins, according to covenant, to the king; so that,
all things being- thus gallantly accomplished, and in so
public a manner, the king could not refuse him his
daughter, but at the same time laid many other schemes
to take away his life.
Nay, to such desperate lengths did his jealousy run
him, that he, casting oft' all disguise, a commanded his
son Jonathan, and some of the principal men of his
court, at any rate to despatch David; which Jonathan
all along took care to acquaint him with, and at the
same time, advised him to provide himself with some
place of safe retreat, until he should have an opportu-
nity of h expostulating the matter with his father ; which
accordingly he did, and with so good success, that his
father was, seemingly at least, reconciled to David ;
and Jonathan next day introduced him into his presence :
but the increase of David's fame, upon several defeats
given the Philistines, still renewing and increasing
Saul's jealousy, would not suffer this reconciliation to
last long. Saul was taken with another fit of phrenzy,
and David was desired to play to him : but while he was
employed in tuning his harp, the other took an oppor-
tunity, as he had done before, of darting a javelin at
him, which David, having a watchful eye upon him,
nimbly declined, and so retired to his own house.
be sure they were Philistines only whom he killed. Had he
demanded the heads only of so many men, David he might
think, might perhaps cut off those of his own subjects, and bring
them instead of the Philistines; but now, the Philistines being
the only neighbouring people who were uncircumcised, (for the
Arabians, as descended from Ishmael, and all the other nations
which sprung from Esau, were circumcised, as well as the He-
brews,) in producing their foreskins there could be no deception.
Besides that, this would be a gross insult upon the Philistines
in general, to whom Saul was desirous to make David as odious
as possible, that, at one time or other, he might fall into their
hands , — Calmet's Commentary.
a It is strange, that Saul should speak to Jonathan to murder
David, if he knew the friendship he had for him; and he could
Dot be ignorant of it, since, in 1 Sam. xviii. 3, 4., he had made
so public a declaration of it. But he imagined, perhaps, that
his love to a father would overcome his love to a friend ; and,
taking an estimate from himself, might think it no mean incite-
ment to his son, that David was going to deprive not only the
father of the present possession, but the son likewise of the right
of succession to the throne of Israel. But whatever Saul's
reasons might be for desiring Jonathan's assistance in so vile a
fact, it is plain that there was a peculiar providence of God in
his disclosing himself so freely on this head, since thereby David
came to a right information of his danger.^ — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
b The speech which Josephus puts in Jonathan's mouth upon
Ibis occasion, is expressed in these terms: — " You have con-
ceived, Sir, a terrible displeasure against this young man, and
given orders fur his death; but upon what provocation, or for
what fault, great or little, I cannot apprehend. He is a person
to whom we stand indebted for our safety, and the destruction of
the Philistines; for vindicating the honour of our nation from
the scandal of a forty days' affront, in the challenge of a giant,
whom not a creatine, but this innocent youth, had a heart to
encounter; a person who purchased my sister for his wife at
your own price; and, in line, a person entitled to your esteem
and tenderness, both as a brave man, and a member of your own
family. lie pleased to consider, then, what injury you do your
own daughter, in making her feel the mortification of being a
widow, before she enjoys the blessing of being a mother. Be
pleased to remember who it was that cured you of your dark
melancholic tits, and by that means laid an obligation upon the
whole family; and who it was that, next under God, delivered
us from our implacable enemies. These, Sir, are benefits never
to be forgotten, without the infamy of the blackest ingratitude."
■ — Jewish Antiquities, b. 0. e. 13.
Thither the king sent his guards, as soon as it was light,
to apprehend him ; but by the contrivance of his wife
Michal, who let him down from a window, he made his
escape, and by the benefit of a dark night, came to his
old friend Samuel at Ramah, to whom he told all his
complaints, and with whom, for the better security of
his person, he went to Najoh, which was c a school or
college of the prophets, and there dwelt.
It was not long before Saul had intelligence of hi9
abode, and d sent a party of soldiers to apprehend him ;
but they, upon their arrival at the place, where they
found Samuel teaching and instructing the younger
prophets, were seized with a prophetic spirit, and re-
turned not again. After these, he sent fresh messengers,
and after them others again ; but no sooner were they
come within the verge of the place, but they all began
to be affected in like manner. Saul at length, impatient
of these delays, went himself; but as he drew near to
Najoh, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, so that he
went along e prophesying, until he came to the place
where Samuel and David were, and there /stripping
c VVhen these schools of the prophets were at first instituted
is nowhere indicated in Scripture: but, as the first mention we
find of them is in Samuel's time, we can hardly suppose, that
they were much prior to it. It may be presumed, therefore, that
the sad degeneracy of the priesthood, at first occasioned the insti-
tution of these places, for the better education of those that were'
to succeed in the sacred ministry, whether as prophets or priests.
According to the places that are specified in Scripture, (1 Sam.
x. 5, 10, and xix. 20; 2 Kings ii. 5., iv. 38. and xxii. 14.)
they were first erected in the cities of the Levites, which, for
the more convenient instruction of the people, were dispersed up
and down in the several tribes of Israel. In these places the
prophets had convenient colleges built, whereof Najoh seems to
be one, for their abode ; and living in communities, had some
one of distinguished note, very probably by divine election, set ,
over them to be their head or president. Here it was, that they
studied the law, and learned to expound the several precepts of it.
Here it was, that, by previous exercise, they qualified themselves
for the reception of the spirit of prophecy, whenever it should
please God to send it upon them. Here it was, that they were
instructed in the sacred art of psalmody, or, as the Scripture calls
it, (1 Chron. xxv. 1, 7.) in ' prophesying with harps, with psal-
teries, and cymbals.' And hence it was, that when any blessings
were to be promised, judgments denounced, or extraordinary
events predicted, the messengers were generally chosen: so that
these colleges were seminaries of divine knowledge, and nurse-
ries of that race of prophets which succeeded from Samuel to
the time of Malachi. — Stillingfleet' s Orig. Sacra; JVhcatly on
the Schools of the Prophets; and Jacob Abting, dc Repub.
Heb.
d Such was Saul's implacable hatred to David, that it had
abolished, not only all respect and reverence to Samuel, under
whose protection David then was, but all regard likewise to the
college of the prophets, which in those days had obtained the
privilege of a sanctuary. — Patrick's Commentary, and Grotius
on the Law of JJ'ar and Peace, b. 3. c. 1 1 .
e This is a word of an extensive signification, and may denote
sometimes such actions, motions, and distortions, as prophets,
in their inspiration, are wont to express " Things dubious,
while led on in an inspired course; for when the spirit is present
in the heart, man becomes frantic ;" (Sen. in Medea:) which,
perhaps, may be very justly applied to Saul upon this occasion.
Hut the generality of interpreters, in this place, take 'prophesy-
ing ' to signify Saul's singing of psalms, or hymns of thanksgiving
and praise, which even against his will he was compelled to do,
to teach him the vanity of his designs against David, and that
in them he fought against God himself. — Calmet's Commentary
on 1 Sam. xviii. 10; and Poole's Annotations on xix. 23.
f The words in our translation are, ' And he stripped off his
clothes also, and lay down naked, all that day, and all that night.'
(1 Sam. xix. 24.) In which words, and some other portions of
the like import, we are not to imagine that the persons there
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
447
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116 ; OK, ACCORDING TO HAKES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE INI).
himself of Ins upper garments, he lay, as it were in an
ecstasy, almost naked on the ground, all that day and
the next night.
David took this opportunity to make a private visit to
his friend Jonathan, with whom he expostulated his
father's unkindness, which the other could no ways ex-
cuse, only he assured him of his best " offices ; that lie
would make what discovery he could of his father's
designs against him, and not fail to acquaint him with
them. In the mean time he renewed the league of
friendship that was between them, and directed him
where to conceal himself for a day or two, until he could
learn, whether it was proper for him to appear or no ;
which he was to signify to him by his shooting some
arrows, in such a manner as they concluded on, and so
mutually embracing, they parted.
' * The feast of the new-moon was now come, which
j Saul returned from Naioth to celebrate ; but as he ob-
served that c David's seat at the table had for two days
been empty, he inquired of Jonathan d what was become
of the son of Jesse, as he called him in contempt. Jo-
nathan told him that he had given him leave to go to an
anniversary feast of his family at Bethlehem ; whereupon
Saul, suspecting very probably the reality of his answer,
fell into a passion with his son, and upbraided him with
his friendship for David, which, as he told him, would
prove fatal to himself, and injurious to his succession :
and therefore he commanded him to produce him ; for
resolved he was, that this rival of theirs should die.
Jonathan was going to interpose something in vindica-
tion of his friend, and the unreasonableness of his father's
indignation against him, which provoked his father to
such a degree, that, forgetting all ties of paternal love,
e he threw a javelin at him with an intent to kill him. /
spoken of were entirely naked, but only that they were divested
of some external habit or other, which, upon certain occasions,
they might lay aside. For, whereas it is said of some prophets,
(Is. xx. 2. and Mic. i. 8.) that they went about naked, we can
hardly think that they could be guilty of so much indecency,
and especially by the express order of God, who had always testi-
fied his abhorrence of nudity, and enjoined his priests the use of
several garments to cover the body, that thus they might be dis-
tinguished from the pagan priests, who were not ashamed to
appear naked. The words in the original, therefore, which we
render ' naked,' or 'to be naked,' signify no more, than either
to have part of the body uncovered, or to be without a gown or
upper garment, which the Romans called toga, and, according to
the custom of the eastern people, was wont to be put on when
tiny went abroad, or made any public appearance. And there-
fore it was some such vestment as this, or perhaps his military
accoutrements, which Saul, upon this occasion, put off; and that
this was enough to denominate him naked, is manifest from what
A melius Victor, speaking of those who were sent to Lucius
Quintus Cinciiniatus, to bring him to the senate to be made
dictator, says, That they found him naked, ploughing on the
other side of Tiber; whereas Livy, who relates the same story,
observes that he called to his wife Rucca for his gown, or toga,
that he might appear lit to keep them company. — Essay toivurds
a New Translation.
a The speech which Josephus puts in Jonathan's mouth, upon
this occasion is very tender and pathetic: — "That God, who
fills and governs the universe, and knows the thoughts of my
heart iu the very conception of them; that God," says he, "be
witness to the faith that is vowed and promised betwixt us; that
I will never give over searching into, and sifting the private
deliberations and purposes of my father, till I have discovered
the bottom of his heart, and whether there be any secret rancour
in his thoughts, or not, that may work to your prejudice. And
if I shall be able to make any thing out at last, whether it be
for or against you, it shall be the first thing I do to give you in-
formation of it. The Searcher of hearts will bear me witness
that this is true, and that I have ever made it my earnest prayer
to Almighty God, to bless and prosper you in your person and
desigus, and you may assure yourself, that he will be as gracious
to you for the future, as he has been hitherto, and lay all your
enemies at your feet. In the mean while, pray, be sure to keep
these things in memory, and when I am gone, to take care of
my poor children. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 6. c. 14.
b The Jewish mouths were lunar, and never began before the
moon appeared above the horizon ; for which purpose there were
certain persons placed upon the mountains, some time before
the new-moon was expected, to give notice by the sound of an
horn, when it first appeared, that so the news thereof might im-
mediately be carried to Jerusalem. But lest there should be
any mistake in this method of making their observation, from
this example of Saul's, it is supposed, that they celebrated this
festival for two days together. Whether the heathens had this
rite from the Jews or not, it is certain, that other nations had
leasts at the beginning of every month, and that, with the Ro-
mans, the calends in particular were festival days, consecrated
to Juno, to whom sacrifices, at this time, were offered. — Calmet's
Commentary. 1 Sam. xx. 5. " [As soon as the new-moon was
either consecrated or appointed to be observed, notice was given by
the Sanhedrim to the rest of the nation, what day had been fixed
for the new-moon, or first day of the month, because that was to
be the rule and measure, according to which they were obliged
to keep their feasts and fasts in every month respectively. This
notice was given to them in time of peace, by firing beacons
set up for that purpose, (which was looked upon as the readiest
way of communication,) but in time of war, when all places were
full of enemies, who made use of beacons to amuse our- nation
with, it was thought fit to discontinue it, and to delegate some
men on purpose to go and signify it to as many as they possibly
could reach, before the time commanded for the observation of
the feast or fast was expired."] — Lewis' Rites and Ceremonies of
the Jews, p. 25. — Ed.
c That sitting at table was an ancienter custom than either
lying or leaning at meat, is obvious from this passage. The
Egyptians, when they ate at Joseph's entertainment, sat at table,
and so did the Hebrews. Homer always introduces his heroes
in this posture; and that this was the known custom among the
ancient people of Italy, Virgil, in these words, testifies: " Our
ancestors were always accustomed to sit at their meals." — JEneid.
7. It is not to be dissembled, however, that very early, and
even in the times of Saul, the use of table beds, or beds to lie or
lean upon at meals, had obtained among the Jews, for when the
witch of Endor, with much entreaty, prevailed with Saul to take
a little refreshment, it is said, that ' he arose from the earth, and
sat upon the bed,' 1 Sam. xxviii. 23. — Calmet's Commentary.
d It may seem a little strange, that Saul, who had so often
endeavoured to kill David, and was now just returned from an
expedition undertaken against his life, should ever expect to see
him at his table any more. But he might think, perhaps, that
i ) ;i \ i 1 1 was inclinable to overlook all that had passed, as the
effect of his frenzy and melancholy ; that now he had been pro-
phesying at Naioth, he was returned to a sound mind, ami be-
come a new man; and that, because after the first javelin darted
at him, David had ventured into his presence again, he might,
for the future, be guilty of the like indiscretion. — Calmet's Com-
mentary.
e If it be asked, how it came to pass that Saul always had a
javelin or spear in readiness as on this and other occasions, to
execute his evil purposes ? The answer is, that spears wire the
sceptres of those ages, which IdngS always carried in their hands.
That they always carried the sceptres in their hands appears
from Homer, and that these sceptres were spears is evident from
Justin, (b. 23. c. 3.) where speaking of the first age of the Ro-
mans, which Dr Patrick thinks was about the age of Saul, he
tells us that as yet, in these times, kings had spears as en i-ri-
of royalty, which the Greeks called sceptres. — The Life of David,
by the Author of Revelation Examined.
f 1 Sam. xx. 30. ' Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman.'
In the east, when tiny an' angry with a person, they abuse and
vilify his parents. Saul thought of nothing but venting his
anger against Jonathan, nor had any design to reproach his wife
personally: the mention of her was only a vehicle by which, ac-
cording to oriental modes, he was to convey his resentment
448
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2R88. \. C. 1116; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES. A. M. 4311. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
But lie avoided the blow, and retired ; and the next
morning went into the fields, under pretence of shooting
with his bow and arrows, to give David the signal. To
him he communicated all that had passed between his
father and him ; that his father was implacable, and de-
termined to destroy him, and therefore he advised him
to escape for his life : and so, having made new pro-
testations to each other of perpetual friendship, they
embraced and parted.
Ever alter this David was banished from court, and
lived in the nature of an outlaw. The first place that
lie betook himself to was n Nob, where stood the taber-
nacle at that time, and where b Ahimelech was high
priest ; but as he had no attendants, he pretended to
against .Tonal lian into the minds of those about him. {Harmer,
vol. ii. p. 492.) An instance of the prevalence of the same prin-
ciple in Africa, which induced Saul thus to express himself to
Jonathan, occurs in the travels of Mungo Park. Maternal af-
fection is everywhere conspicuous among the Africans, and
creates a correspondent return of tenderness in the child. Strike
me, said my attendant, but do not curse my mother. The same
sentiment, I found universally to prevail, and observed in all
parts of Africa, that the greatest affront which could be offered
to a negro, was to reflect on her who gave him birth.'7 — Travels,
p. 264.
a There is mention made of two cities of this name, one on
the east, or further side, and the other on the west or hither side
of Jordan. The generality of interpreters will have the city
here specified to be that which stood on the west side, and in
the tribe of Benjamin. Though it is not reckoned among the
number of the cities that were at first assigned to the priests,
yet that it afterwards became one of the sacerdotal towns, and
especially as we may imagine, when the tabernacle came to be
moved thither, is evident from 1 Sam. xxii. 19. and Neh.
xi. 32. and some suppose it stood about four leagues from Gi-
bcali. — Calmet's Commentary; and Wells' Geography of the
Old Testament, vol. 3.
b The words of our blessed Saviour, in Mark ii. 25. are these,
' Have you never read what David did, when he had need, and
was an hungered, he and they that were with him, how he went
into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest,
ami did eat the shew-bread, and gave also to them that were with
him ?' Now there are two things which the author of this book
uf Samuel asserts, quite contrary to what our Saviour declares,
namely, 1st, That ' David was alone, and no man with him,'
cli. xxxi. 1. and 2dly, that Ahimelech was at that time high
priest; whereas our Saviour affirms, both that David had com-
pany along witli him, and that Abiathar was then in the ponti-
ficate. Now, 1st, that David had company with him, and that
Ahimelech knew it, is evident from his words in the fourth
verse: 'There is no common bread in my hand, but there is
hallowed bread, if the young men have kept themselves at least
from women ;' and therefore Ahimelech's meaning must be, that
David had no guards to attend him, as it was usual for persons of
his quality to have; or at least those that were with him mi<ditbe
ordered to keep at a distance, and so Ahimelech when he \ittered
these words, might not see them, though, when he came into a
closi r conference with David, David might inform him, what
ri tinue he had brought, and consequently that all the show-bread
was no more than what they wanted for their present support.
2dly, Though it be granted that the name of high priest, in its
strictest sense, did not at this time belong to Abiathar, yet since
it is generally agreed, that, he was the sagan, as the Jews of
latter days call him, who is the high priest's vicar, he might
well enough, in a qualified sense, be called the high priest; espe-
cially considering his immediate succession to his father, and
how short his father's continuance in the office was, after this
interview with David. Nor can we see any great impropriety
in saying, that such a thing was done in ' the days of Abiathar
the high priest, though done somewhat before he was invested
with that dignity, any more than in saying, that such things
happened in the days of Henry VIII., which strictly came to
.,me days before he began to reign. — Patrick's Com-
Tru-ntury.
Ahimelech, that he was sent by the king upon c a busi-
ness of such despatch that he had time neither to take arms
nor provision with him ; and therefore obtained of the
high priest f? Goliath's sword, which had been deposited
in the tabernacle, and some of the show-bread, which
the day before had been taken off from the golden table,
and with these he proceeded to Oath, as not thinking
himself safe in any part of Saul's dominions.
He had not been long in Gath, however, before he
was discovered, and the king informed of his being that
great man of war in Israel, who had so often defeated
and destroyed the Philistines ; so that, to get clear of
this information, he Avas forced to counterfeit madness, e
and an epilepsy, which he did so artfully, that by this
means he evaded the suspicion of the king, and made
his escape to/ Adullam, a town in the tribe of Judah;
where his brethren and relations, together with many
malcontents, and men of desperate fortunes, met him,
and made up a little army oi about 400 in number. S
c It must he owned, that David, in this pretence, did not
speak direct truth, nor are we from hence to take an example
for speaking lies ; but one thing may be said in his excuse, that
as he saw Doeg there, who he knew would inform Saul of what
had passed between him and Ahimelech, his pretence of business
was on purpose to furnish the high priest, if he were called to
an account, with a better apology for his reception of David,
since he knew no other, but that he came express from the king:
and accordingly we may observe, that Ahimelech insists on that
chiefly. It is a melancholy consideration, however, that the
wickedness of the world should be such, as to put even excellent
men sometimes on the necessity of lying to preserve their lives,
which cannot be safe without it. — Patrick's Commentary.
d It was an ancient custom not only among the Jews, but the
heathens likewise, to hang up the arms that were taken from
their enemies in their temples ; and in conformity thereunto,
the sword wherewith he cut oft' Goliath's head David dedicated
to the Lord, and delivered to the priest, to be kept as a monu-
ment of his victory, and of the Israelites' deliverance. And as
it was customary to hang up arms in the temples, so when the
occasions of the state required it, it was no unusual thing to
take them down, and employ them in the public service; from
whence came that saying of Seneca, " Even temples are some-
times stripped bare for the sake of the state." — Calmet's Comr-
mentary.
e David is not the only instance of this kind. Among the
easterns, Baihasus the Arabian, sumamed Naama, had several
of his brethren killed, whose death he wanted to revenge. In
order to it he feigned himself mad. till at length he found an
opportunity of executing his intended revenge, by killing all who
had a share in the murder of his brethren. Among the Greeks,
Ulysses is said to have counterfeited madness, to prevent his
going to the Trojan war. Solon also, the great Athenian law-
giver, practised the same deceit, and by appearing in the dress
and with the air of a madman, and singing a song to the Athe-
nians, carried his point, and got the law repealed that prohibited,
under the penalty of death, any application to the people for the
recovery of Salamis. — Pint. J'it. Solon, p. 82 ; Chandler's Life
of David, vol. i. p. 102. note.
f It was a town in the tribe of Judah, of some considerable
note in the days of Eusebius, and about ten miles from Eleu-
theropolis eastward, where there was a rock of the same name,
in which was a cave, naturally strong and well fortified, to which
David retreated; as indeed most of the mountains of Palestine
were full of caverns, whither the country people generally betook
themselves for safety in time of war. — Calmet's and Patrick's
Commentaries ; Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 2.
g It appears to have been usual in ancient times for such per-
sons as are described in this passage, to devote themselves to the
perpetual service of some great man. The Gauls in particular
are remarkable for this practice. The common people, who are
generally oppressed «ith debt, heavy tributes, or the exactions
of their superiors, make themselves vassals to the great, who
| exercise over them the same jurisdiction as masters do over
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
449
A. M. 2888. A. C. U1G
After his family had thus joined him, he could not but
be apprehensive that the wrath of Saul would fall upon
his aged parents, and therefore his next care was to
provide them with a safe retreat ; which he did by putting
both himself and them under the protection of the king
of Moab, who was then at enmity with Saul. And with
his parents he thus continued, until the prophet Gad,
who attended him, advised him to leave Moab, and to
return into the land of Judah ; which accordingly he did,
and took up his station in the a forest of Hareth, where
Abiathar the priest came to him, and upon this sad
occasion, brought along with him all the pontifical
ornaments.
During David's short stay at Nob, Doeg the king's
principal herdsman, was there, and upon his return to
court, gave Saul information of all that had passed be-
tween the high priest Ahimelech, and David. Hereupon
Saul sent for Ahimelech, and the rest of the priests, and
having accused them of a conspiracy, and traitorous
practices against him, 4 notwithstanding all the high
priest could say in vindication of himself and his
brethren, he commanded them to be put to death. His
guards, who stood by, and heard Ahimelech's defence,
c would not undertake so barbarous an oflice ; but Doeg,
OH. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1
slaves.' — Caesar's Commentaries of Ms Wars in Gaul, b. vi. c.
13.— Ed.
a Both St Jerome and Eusebius make mention of a place of
tins name in the tribe of Judah, lying westward of Jerusalem ;
of which Rabbi Solomon, upon the credit of some ancient tradi-
tion, says, that being before dry, barren, and impassable, upon
David's coming, it became fruitful and irriguous, and that, in
the -23d psalm, where he considers God as his shepherd, who
would lead him into fruitful pastures, and under his protection,
keep him safe in the most dangerous scenes, he alludes to this:
' He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth by the
waters of comfort-.' for surely it is impossible but that this, which
was before a barren desert, might now, by a singular blessing
from God upon the industry of David and his companions, be-
come a green and well-watered pasture. — Wells' Geography of
the Old Testament, vol. 3. ; and the History of David, by the
author of Revelation Examined.
b The speech which Josephus draws up for the high priest
upon this occasion is directed to Saul, and conceived in these
words: " I did not receive David as your majesty's enemy, but
BS the faithfulest of your friends aud officers, and, what is more,
in the quality of your son too, and a relation in so tender a de-
-iii' of affinity and alliance. For how should any body imagine
that man to be your enemy, upon whom you have conferred so
many honours ? Or why should not I rather presume such a
person, without any further inquiry, to be your singular friend?
He told me, that he was sent in haste by yourself, upon earnest
business; and if I had not supplied him with what he wanted, it
would have reflected an indignity upon yourself, rather than upon
him. Wherefore, I hope, that the blame will not fall upon me,
even though David should be found as culpable as you suspect
him; unless an act of pure commission and humanity, abstracted
from the least thought, knowledge, or imagination of any evil
intention, shall be understood to make me privy to a conspiracy:
for the service I did him, was matter of respect to the king's
son-in-law, and the king's military officer, not to the person or
interest of David." — Jewish Antiquities, b. 6. c. 14.
c In this they were to be commended: but much more praise
they would have deserved, if they had orlered up their petitions
fur these innocent people; if they had remonstrated to the king,
that he was going to commit a thing that was contrary to all laws
both divine and human ; and if, when they saw that neither their
reasons nor petitions availed, they had looked upon this order as
the effect of one of the king's distracted fits, and accordingly
seized and secured him, until the priests had made their escape,
and he returned to a better mind. For to stand wringing their
hands, while they saw so many innocent creatures murdered,
mid foreign soldiers made the instruments of the king's cruelty,
SAM. i. TO THE END.
who had been their accuser, at the king's command,
became their executioner, and with his sacrilegious hand,
slew no less than d eighty-five of them. Nor did Saul's
bloody resentment stop here : e for, sending a party to
Nob, he commanded them to kill man, woman, and
child, and even every living creature ; so that of all
the children of Ahimelech, none escaped but Abiathar,
as we said before, who came to David, and told him the
dismal tidings of this massacre, which David could not
but sadly condole, and in some measure look upon him-
self as the innocent occasion of it. However he gave
Abiathar assurances of his protection, that he should
share the same fate with him ; and that, with his own life,
he would shield him from all danger.
While Saul was embruing his hands in the innocent
blood of his subjects, David was employing his arms in
the necessary defence of his country ; for, hearing that
the Philistines had made an incursion upon Keilah, a
city of Judah, /he went and relieved the place, repulsed
the enemy with a great loss of men, and took from them
a considerable booty of cattle. Saul had soon intelli-
gence of this action ; and supposing that David would
now fortify himself in this stronghold, he sent an army
to invest it : but David having consulted the divine ora-
cle upon this emergency, found that the inhabitants of
the place would prove perfidious to him, and therefore
he left them, and retired into a wood in the s deserts of
Ziph, whither Saul, for want of intelligence, could not
was much the same thing as to betray all divine and human
rights, merely to please a tyrant. — Le Clerc's Commentary.
See Josephus's Jewish Antiq., b. 6. c. 14., who has, upon this
occasion, a curious descant about the use of power in kings, when
at once from a low, they come to be exalted to a high station
in life.
d The Septuagint, as well as the Syrian version, makes the
number of priests slain by Doeg to be 305, and Josephus 385,
which is a large variation from the Hebrew text. — Millar's His-
tory of the Church.
e This party, as Josephus informs us, was commanded by
Doeg, the vile informer and murderer, who taking some men
as wicked as himself to his assistance slew in all 385 persons,
and in addition to these, it is thought by some, that the Gibe-
onites, (upon whose account there was so sore a famine in the
days of David) who might now be at Nob, in attendance upon
the priests, were at this time slain. It is certain, Saul was now
become a mere tyrant, and against those poor people acted more
cruelly than he did against the Amalekites, some of whom he
spared, even contrary to God's command; but in this case he let
none escape, on purpose to deter others from giving the least
shelter or assistance to David, and to incite them the rather to
come and give him information wherever his haunts or lurking
places were. — Josephus' Antiq., b. 6. c. 14.
f We read of no embassy, that the people of Keilah sent to
David, to desire his assistance, nor of any particular affection
they had for him ; and therefore we may suppose, that David un-
dertook this expedition out of pure love to his countrymen, to let
the world see, how serviceable he could be to them, in case he
was restored to his dignity again, and that, what ill treatment
soc-ver he should meet with from the hand of Saul, nothing
should provoke him to abandon his love for his country. — Le
Clerc's Commentary.
g In Josh. xv. 55. we read of a town of this name where men-
tion is likewise made of Carmel, and Maon, and therefore it pro-
bably was adjacent to them. And here, in the story of David,
we find Carmel and Maon mentioned as adjoining to Ziph ; so
that it is not to be doubted but that by the Ziph in the wilderness,
whiic David now concealed himself, we are to understand the
Ziph which was in the neighbourhood of Carmel and Maon, in
the southern part of the tribe of Judah, and, according to St Je-
rome, about eight miles eastward from Hebron. — Wells' Geo-
graphy of the Old Testament, vol. 3.
3t
450 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116 j OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A, M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END
pin-sue turn ; but his son Jonathan, having private no-
tice sent him, went to him, and gave him all the comfort
and encouragement that he could ; assuring him, that his
father's malice would never reach him ; that he still hoped
to see him king of Israel, and himself his second ; and
with/these words, confirming the covenant of friendship
between them, they embraced and parted.
The people of the wilderness were very officious in send-
ing Saul intelligence where David was, and, if he would
supply them with a sufficient force, undertook to betray
him into his hands ; but David having taken notice of
their intended treachery, retired farther into the desert
of Maon, whither Saul pursued him, and pressed him so
close, that there was but a valley between the two armies.
David's army was so very small, that Saul was thinking
of encompassing the mountain, where he encamped, in
order to prevent his escape, when news was brought him
that the Philistines had invaded the country on the other
side, so that he was forced to drop his private resent-
ment for the public weal, and divert his arms another
way : but as soon as the Philistines were repulsed, he
with 3000 choice men, renewed his pursuit of David,
who by this time was retired into the strongholds of a
Engedi.
As Saul was on his march, he happened to turn into a
cave by the way-side, where David and some of his men
lay hid. His men, when they saw the king entering
alone, thought it a lucky opportunity that providence
had put in their hands, and accordingly instigated David
to dispatch him. But David rejected the offer with ab-
horrence : b ' God forbid that I should stretch forth my
hand against the Lord's anointed ;' and only, to show
Saul how much he was in his power, went softly, and e
cut off the skirt of his robe. When Saul was gone out
of the cave, David called to him at a distance, and show-
ing him the skirt of his raiment, declared his innocence
in such tender terms, and with such submissive behaviour,
that he made the king's heart relent. So that with the
a Engedi (now called Anguedi) in the clays of St Jerome, was
a large village, situated in the deserts, which lay upon the west-
ern coasts of the Salt or Dead Sea, not very far from the plains
of Jericho: and as the country thereabouts abounded with moun-
tains, and these mountains had plenty of vast caves in them, it
was a very commodious place for David to retire to, and conceal
himself in. Eusebius makes it famous for excellent balm, and
Solomon, in his Song, for vineyards, which, in all probability,
were planted by his father, during his retirement in this place ;
and therefore so peculiarly celebrated by the son. — Calmet's Com-
mentary; Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3.; and
The History of King David, by the Author of Revelation Exa-
mined.
b This one example of David's, under all the provocations he
had received from Saul, abundantly shows us, that the persons of
kings are sacred and inviolable. "The authority of powerful
kings is over their own flocks, that of Jove is over kings them-
selves,"— I/or. Od.
c If it be asked, how David could do this without Saul's per-
ceiving it ? The answer might be, that this possibly might be
some upper loose garments, which Saul might put off, and lay
aside at some distance from him upon this occasion ; and that as
there were several rooms, or particular cells, in these large ca-
verns, which might have secret passages from one to another, Saul,
at the mouth of one of these cells, might lay down his upper gar-r
ment, which David perceiving, and knowing all the passages of
the place, might go some secret way, and cut oil' some small part
of it. Nor could the noise which David's motion might make
be well heard by Saul, because it must have been drowned by a
much greater noise which Saul's army, waiting for him at the
mouth of the cave, may be supposed to make. — Poole's Annota-
tions,
utmost compunction, he acknowledged his guilt in thus
persecuting the just ; and from the many escapes which
God had vouchsafed David, concluding assuredly that
he was to succeed in the kingdom, he conjured him, by
all that was sacred, <l not to destroy his family ; and
having obtained this promise, he returned home : but
David, e not daring to trust to his fair word, still kept
himself close in the fastnesses of the hills.
Much about this time /the prophet Samuel died, and
was buried at Ramah, the place of his habitation, in
great solemnity, and s with the general lamentation of
d But how did David absolve his promise, or keep his oath
with Saul, when in 2 Sam. xxi. 8. he slew so many of his sons?
The reply that is usually made to this is, — That this promise or
oath of David's could never be absolute or unconditional, because,
upon supposition that any of Saul's family had become rebellious
they had nevertheless been obnoxious to the sword of justice ; that
though David could bind himself with his oath, yet he could not
bind God, to whose will and pleasure all private obligations must
be submitted; and what is more, that this execution was not
done by David's order, but at the desire of the Gibeonites, to
whom God had promised that satisfaction should be made for Saul's
bloody endeavours to destroy them. — Patrick's Commentary, and
Poole's Annotations.
e It is an old saying, and a wise one, ' remember not to be
too credulous ;' and the advice of the son of Sirach is this, ' Never
trust thine enemy; though he humble himself, yet take good
heed, and beware of him.' — Ecclus. xii. 10, 11.
jr"The Jews are of opinion, that Samuel died only four months
before Saul. But by the generality of Christian chronologers,
he is supposed to have died about two years before the death of
that prince, and in the ninety-eighth year of his age, twenty of
which had been spent in the government of Israel, (though
Sir John Marsham will have it no more than sixteen,) before
Saul's inauguration, after which he lived about eighteen. He
was indeed, while he lived, an excellent governor, and through
his whole administration above vanity, corruption, or any private
views. Those that attend to his life may observe, that he was
modest without meanness, mild without weakness, firm without
obstinacy, and severe without harshness ; or as the author of Ec-
clesiasticus has recorded his actions, and consecrated this eulogy
to his memory. — ' Samuel the prophet of the Lord, says he,
beloved of the Lord, established a kingdom, and anointed princes
over his people. By the law of the Lord he judged the congrega-
tion, and the Lord had respect unto Jacob. By his faithfulness
he was found a true prophet, and by his word he was known to
be faithful in vision. He called upon the mighty God when his
enemies pressed upon him on every side, when he offered the
sucking lamb ; and the Lord thundered from heaven, and with
a great noise made his voice to be heard. He destroyed the
rulers of the Syrians, and all the princes of the Philistines. Be-
fore his long sleep, he made protestations in the sight of the
Lord, and his anointed, and after his death he prophesied and
showed the king his end.' — Ecclus. xlvi. 13, &c. But besides
the things that are recorded of this prophet in the first book oS
Samuel, there are some other passages concerning him in the
first book of Chronicles ; as, that he enriched the tabernacle with
several spoils which he took from the enemies of Israel during
his administration, ch. xxv. 2S. That he assisted in regulating
the distribution of the Levites, which David afterwards pre-
scribed for the service of the temple, ch. ix. 22. And, lastly,
That he wrote the history of David, in conjunction with the
prophets Nathan and Gad. But as he was dead before David
came to the throne, this can be meant only of the beginning of that
history, which by the other two prophets might be continued
and concluded. There is great probability, indeed, that he com-
posed the twenty-four first chapters of the first book of Samuel,
which contain the beginning of David's life, and several histo-
rical facts wherein he himself had a large share ; but as for the
latter part of it, it was impossible for him to write it, because,
in the beginning of the 25th chapter, there is mention made
of his death.
g When they saw the disorders of Saul's reign, they had great
reason to lament their loss of Samuel, and their sin in rejecting
so great a prophet, and so good a magistrate.— Millars History
of the Church.
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2883. A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
451
the people : during which time, David took the oppor-
tunity to remove from En-gedi, and to retire farther into
the wilderness of Paran, not far from Maon, where he
had been once before.
In the neighbourhood of this place, there lived a
wealthy man, whose name was Nabal, but himself was
of a surly and morose disposition. While David abode
in this wilderness the time before, he had taken great
care to restrain his men from doing any injury to Nabal's
flocks, and now in the time of his sheep-shearing, (which
in these countries was always a season of great festivity
and entertainment,) he sent messengers to him, that in
consideration of the many civilities he had shown him,
he would be pleased to send some provisions for the
support of his army. But Nabal received the messen-
gers very rudely, and with some opprobrious reflections
upon David himself, sent them away empty, which so
exasperated David, that in the heat of his resentment,
he vowed to destroy all Nabal's family before next
morning, and with this resolution he set forward. But
Abigail, Nabal's wife, who was a very beautiful woman,
and in temper the very reverse of her husband, being
informed by her servant of what had passed, took this
expedient to divert his ire.
She ordered her servants immediately to pack up two
hundred loaves of bread, a two bottles of wine, five
sheep ready dressed, five measures of parched corn, an
hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of
figs ; and with this present she made haste to meet David-
David was marching with all speed, to put in execution
his rash vow ; but Abigail when she met him, approached
him with that respect, and addressed him * in such mov-
ing language, that she soon disarmed him of his rage,
and stopped the effects of his indignation ; so that they
botli parted with mutual satisfaction ; he, for being thus
prevented from shedding of blood, and she, for having
thus happily succeeded in her embassy.
AA hen she got home, she found her husband rioting and
drinking; so that she deferred telling him of what had
passed until he was a little soberer the next morning.
But when he came to understand the danger he had
a It must be obvious to every reader, that two bottles of wine
would bear no proportion to the other parts of the present, nor
answer the exigencies which David's army might be in, if they
be understood of such bottles as are now commonly in use with
us: but in these eastern countries, they used to carry and keep
their wine and water in leathern bags, made on purpose to hold
liquid things, which vessels they called, or at least we translate,
botiks. Such were the bottles which the Gibeonites brought to
Joshua's camp, which they said were worn out, and toru in their
pretended long journey, Josh. ix. 13. And of such as those it
is not unlikely, that our Saviour speaks, Mat. ix. 17. where,
in the marginal note of our old Bible, bottles are explained by
bags of leather, or skins, borachios, wherein wine was carried on
asses or camels; and that two such vessels as these might hold
a quantity of wine proportionate to the rest of the present, which
Abigail carried with her, needs not to be disputed. — Howell's
History, in the notes.
6 The speech which the sacred historian puts in Abigail's
mouth, upon this occasion, is certainly an artful piece of elo-
quence, full of fine turns and insinuations; nor is that of Jose-
phus, especially in the conclusion, much amiss ; — ' Be pleased,
Sir, I beseech you, to accept of the good will of your poor servant
in these small presents, and upon my humble request, to pass
oyer the offence of my husband, who has so justly incurred your
displeasure; for there is nothing so well becoming the character
of a person, whom providence designs for a crown, us clemency
and compassion.'— Jctvish Antiquities, b. 6". c. 11.
been in, he was so terrified at the thoughts of it, that e
he turned quite stupid, and in the space of ten days
died : whereupon David sent for his wife and married
her, as he did likewise another woman, whose name was
Ahinoam, a Jezreelite ; for his first wife, who was Saul's
daughter, by her father's command, d was at this time
given to another.
The Ziphites, as we said before, were always forward
to give Saul information where David and his men were
concealed ; and therefore, understanding from them,
that he was somewhere about the mountain Hachilah, e
he took 3000 men, and went in quest of him. David
had intelligence where Saul's army lay encamped ; and
therefore, going first of all privately himself, to recon-
noitre it, he /took with him at night his nephew Abishai,
and entering the camp, found Saul and Abner, and all
the rest of the host fast asleep, Abishai, would have
gladly made use of this opportunity to despatch the
king-, but David would by no means permit him, for the
same reasons that he had saved his life in the cave ; only
the s spear, and cruise of water, that were at his bed's
c The words in the original are, ' lie became a stone ;' but our
translation has wisely supplied the particle as, which should al-
ways be done, when the Scripture affirms something of another
that is not absolutely of the same nature. We may observe
however, that this manner of expression is very common among
profane authors. Thus Ovid brings in Ariadne expressing her
griefs and astonishment at the loss of Theseus, who had left her
in the island Dia: " Cold and wan I sat on a rock, gazing on the
sea, and as much as the stone was my scat so much was I myself
a stone." — The like expression is used of Hecuba, when she saw
the dead body of her son Polydorus: " Like the hard stone she
stood dumb and torpid." But in the case of Niobe, who is said
to be turned into a statue of stone, Cicero, in his Tusculan
Questions, observes, that this fable only represents her perpetual
silence in mourning: and accordingly Josephus tells us of Nabal,
that when his wife told him of the danger he had escaped, he
was struck with such an astonishment, that he fell into a dead
numbness all over his body, of which he soon died. — Le Clerc's
Commentary, and Dis. dc statua salis.
d The reason of Saul's putting this indignity upon David, was
to extinguish as far as he could, all relation and kindred, and to
cut off his hopes and pretences to the crown upon that account:
but as the Jewish doctors are of opinion, that this Phalti, to
whom she was given, was a veiy pious man, and would never
approach her, because she was another man's wife, and as David
had never been divorced from her, he received her again, when
he came to the throne. — Poole's Annotations, and Calmct's
Commentary.
e The inconstancy, falseness, and implacable rage of this prince
is really inconceivable. Not long ago, he was obliged to David
for his life, and acknowledged his error, and made David swear
that he would be kind and merciful to his posterity; and yet now
he openly declares himself again his enemy, and goes in pursuit
of him to kill him. —Patrick's Commentary.
/This may seem a bold and strange attempt for two persons
to go into the midst of an army of 3000 chosen men ; but in
answer to this, many things may be considered: as that, accord-
ing to the accounts of many credible historians, several gallant
men have attempted things of no less danger and difficulty than
this was; that David had all along assurance given him, that
God would preserve him in all dangers to succeed in the king-
dom ; and that at tin's time, he might have a particular impulse
and incitement from God to go upon this enterprise, and might
possibly be informed by him, that lie had cast them into a deep
sleep, that he might give him this second opportunity of mani-
festing to Saul his innocence, and the justness of his cause. Nit
to say, that as secrecy, at this time, was the great point, David
might, think himself safer, in this respect, with one single com-
panion, than with nunc — Poole's Annotations, and The Life of
King David,
g That it was customary for warriors, when they laid them
down to rest, to have their arms placed in order by them, is evi-
452
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 28S8. A. C. 111G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
head, a he bid him bring with him, that he might show
the king how much his life had been at his mercy : and
accordingly Avhen they had got at a convenient distance,
David, with a loud voice, called unto Abner, and, in
an * ironical manner, upbraided him with this neglect of
preserving the king's life, since his spear, and the cruise
of water that were so near his bed's head, were so easily
taken from him : and when Saul, upon hearing his voice,
came out of the camp, and spake to him, he expostulated
with him, much in the same manner as he did after his
escape from the cave, with this additional complaint,
that by thus expelling him from his own country, he
forced him to converse with infidels, and, as much as in
him lay, to embrace their religion. Whereupon Saul,
accusing himself of cruelty, and applauding David's
generosity, confessed his guilt, and promised, for the
future, never to make any further attempts upon his
life.
But notwithstanding these specious declarations, Da-
vid, who knew the instability of Saul's temper, and how
impossible it was for him to live in safety, while he con-
tinued in his dominions, determined at last to go over
to the Philistines ; and having obtained from c Achish,
dent from what Silius Italicus tells us of Mago, Hannibal's bro-
ther. " He, following the warlike custom of his forefathers, lay
resting his wearied limbs on a bull's hide, and in sleep forgot the
heavy cares of life ; not far from the hero was his sword fixed in
the earth, and on its hilt was suspended his tremendous helmet,
while around him on the ground his shield and coat of mail and
spear, and bow, and sling, lay huddled together." — B. vii. But
long before Silius, Homer describes the Thracians sleeping in
tin's maimer in their tents: " The toil-worn heroes slept and near
them their beautiful armour hung in graceful order," &c.
//. x.
a 1 Sam. xxvi. 7. A description very similar to this is given
by Homer of Diomed sleeping in his arms with his soldiers
about him, and spears sticking upright in the earth.
Without his tent bold Diomed they found,
All sheath'd in arms, his brave companions round ;
Each sunk in sleep, extended on the field,
His head reclining on his heavy shield ;
A wood of spears stood by, that fixed upright,
Shot from their flashing points a quivering light.
Iliad, iii. 89.— Pope.— Ed.
b This speech, which David makes to Abner, according to
Josephus, is to this effect. ' Are not you a fit man to be a
prince's favourite, a general of his army, to take upon you the
guard of his royal person, and under all these honourable obliga-
tions, to lie dozing, and stretching yourself at ease, when your
master's life is in danger ? Can you tell me, what is become
of the king's lance, and the pitcher of water, that were this night
taken by the enemy out of his tent,. and from his very bedside
and you, in the mean time, all snoring about him, without
knowing any thing of the matter? Whether this was neglect
or treachery, it is the same thing; you certainly deserve to°lose
your head for it.'' — Jewish Antiquities, b. G. c. 14.
c Whether this was the same Achish, mentioned 1 Sam. xxi.
10. with whom David took shelter at his first flight from Saul,'
or some Buccessor of the same name, is a matter of some con-
'■: His being called ' Achish, the son of Maoch,' seems to
imply that he was a different person; because, in the nature of
things, tin-,: words can have no use, but only to distinguish this
Achish from another of the same name. But whoever it was,
it is highly probable, that he either had invited David to come
thither for his security, or that David had sent beforehand am-
bassadors to treat witb. him, and to obtain his royal promise of
protection. And this we are the rather induced to believe, be-
cause both found their advantage by this alliance: David se-
cured himself against the persecutions of Saul; and Achish,
Knowing David's valour, and the number of troops which came
along with him, thought he should give ;i powerful diversion to
the forces of Israel, if ho could at this time attach David to his
king of Gath, a safe-conduct for himself and his retinue,
he, for some time, lived in the royal city ; but not liking
his accommodation here so well, as he grew in favour
with the king ever more and more, he obtained of him
at last to have the d town of Ziklag- assigned for his ha-
bitation, and, as soon as he was settled here, several of
Saul's best officers and soldiers came over to him.
David at first had some suspicion of them ; but having,
for some time, made trial of their fidelity, he received
them into his service, and gave them commands : and
with this accession to his army he was enabled to make
several excursions against the e Amalekites, and other
nations, in which he was accustomed to kill all, that
none might carry information, and, at the Scime time, / by
certain ambiguous expressions, made the king believe,
that the booty he brought back with him, was taken from
the Israelites, which was no unpleasant news.
In short, to such a degree of confidence was he grown
with Achish, that he proposed taking him along with
him to the war, which the Philistines had at this time
declared against Saul ; but some of the chief men about
him declaring against it, as being apprehensive that in
the day of battle he might possibly turn against them,
prevailed with the king to dismiss him. This was an
agreeable turn to David ; yet he so far dissembled the
interest. But whether David did well or ill in either suing for
or accepting of the protection of this foreign king, is a point
that we shall have occasion to discuss hereafter. — Patrick's and
Calmet's Commentaries; and The Life of King David,
d Ziklag vvas situate in the extreme parts of the tribe of Judah
southwards, not far from Hormah, where the Israelites received
a defeat while they sojourned in the wilderness. In the division
of the land of Canaan, it was first given to the tribe of Judah,
(Josh. xv. 31.) and afterwards to that of Simeon, (Josh.xix. 5.)
but the Philistines seem all along to have kept possession: so that
it never came into the hands of either tribe, until by the gilt of
Achish, it became the peculiar inheritance of David and his suc-
cessors. Why David desired of Achish the liberty to retire to
this place, was to avoid the envy which the number of his at-
tendants might possibly occasion; to secure his people from the
infection of idolatry ; to enjoy the free exercise of his own reli-
gion; and to gain an opportunity of enterprising something
against the enemies of God, without the knowledge or observa-
tion of the Philistines. — Calmefs Commentary, and Poole's
Annotations.
e In 1 Sam. xv. 7. we read, that ' Saul smote the Amalekites,
and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword;'
and yet we find here David making frequent incursions upon the
Amalekites ; and therefore the meaning of the former passage
must be, that Saul destroyed as many of them as fell into his
hands; for several of them might make their escape from Saul
into the deserts that lay towards Arabia Felix, and upon his
retreat, return and repossess their old habitation. — Le Clerc's
Commentary.
f The words wherein David answered this question of Achish,
' Whither have you made a road to-day ?' are these, ' Against
the south of Judah, and against the south of the Jerahmeelites,
and against the south of the Kenites,' (1 Sam. xxvii. 10.) By
which nations David, in reality, meant the Geshurites, and the
Gezerites, who were both of them relicts of the Cauaanites, whom
God ordered to be extirpated, and who did, in truth, live to the
south of Judah; but Achish understood him in a quite contrary
sense, namely, that he had fallen upon his own countrymen. So
that since the formality of a lie consists in our imposing upon
those with whom we converse, we cannot but allow, that though
David's answer may not be called a downright lie, yet it is am
equivocation with an intent to deceive, badly comporting with
that honesty and simplicity which became David, both as a prince
and professor of the true religion, wherein he is no way to
be excused, and much less to be imitated..— Poole's Annota-
tions.
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
matter, that the king, to oblige his nobles, was forced to
be very pressing and importunate with him to return to
Ziklag; which accordingly he did, and in his march
thither, was joined by several of the tribe of Manasseh,
as those of Gad and Benjamin had done before, to a
considerable augmentation of his forces. And well it so
happened ; for upon his return to Ziklag, he found that
the Amalekites had burned and pillaged the place, a and
carried away his two wives, and all the people that were
therein ; and, what was no small accession to this mis-
fortune, his soldiers mutinied against him, as if he had
been * the occasion of it. David, however, marching
away immediately, and having gained intelligence which
way the enemy took, soon came up with them, fell upon
them, and cut them to pieces ; and not only recovered all
the persons and the booty which they had taken, but seve-
ral rich spoils likewise, that they had robbed others
of in this expedition, whereof he made presents to his
friends. c
In the mean time, the Philistine army, lay at d Shu-
nem, and Saul and his forces were encamped in Mount
Gilboa, from whence having a prospect of the enemy's
strength, e his courage failed him, when he saw how
much more numerous the Philistines were, and found, at
the same time, that God, in this pressing juncture, would
not be consulted by him, nor give him any instructions
what to do. He had, some time before, banished all the
wizards, and such as dealt with familiar spirits, out of the
nation ; but being now in the utmost perplexity,^ he was
453
resolved to consult some one of this profession, in order
to know what the fate of this war would be. At Endor,
about three leagues from Mount Gilboa, he was told
there lived a s witch or sorceress : and therefore dis-
guising himself, and taking but two servants with him,
that he might not be suspected, he came to the woman *
by night, and desired of her ' to raise up the ghost of
Samuel.
Whether it was the ghost of Samuel, which God, upon
this occasion, permitted to appear, or some evil spirit
whom the witch, by her enchantments, might raise up ;
but so it was, that from this spectre k the woman learned
that it was Saul who had employed her ; and Saul, when
he saw it, bowed his face to the ground. The appari-
tion spake first, and demanding the reason l why he had
a It may seem a little strange, that the Amalekites, who had
so often been cut to pieces by David, should not, upon their suc-
cess, slay, rather than cany away, the people, which they found
in Ziklag: but this may be imputed either to their covetousness,
who might keep them for sale, and to make money of them as
captives ; or to their cruelty, who might reserve them for more
lingering and repeated torments, or perhaps for the gratification
of their brutal lusts ; though principally it is to be ascribed to
God's overruling providence, who restrained and set bounds to
their rage. — Poole's Annotations.
b This he might seem to be, in relinquishing his own country,
and coming to Ziklag; in provoking the Amalekites by the
slaughter of all that came in his way; and in going with Achish
to war, while he left the place, where their wives and children
were, unguarded. — Poole's Annotations.
c His friends were chiefly those of his own tribe; but besides
these, we find lie sent to others, namely, to the inhabitants of the
city of Bethel, which belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, and this
lie did, not only in the acknowledgment of the shelter and support
which he had received from them in his banishment, but in pros-
pect of their future favour and interest, in case there should hap-
pen a vacancy in the throne. — Le Clerc's and Patrick's
Commentaries.
d Shunem was a city on the borders of the tribe of Issachar,
about five miles to the south of Muunt Hermon, according to St
Jerome and Eusebius, who tells us likewise, that Gilboa was a
ridge of mountains, six miles distant from Scythopolis, anciently
called Bethshan ; and that Endor was a town in the valley of
Jczreel, at the foot of Mount Gilboa. — Wells' Geography of the
Old Testament; and Le Clerc's Commentary.
e The Philistines must have had, on this occasion, several hired
forces, otherwise Saul had no reason to have been afraid of them,
because the small tract which the Philistines inhabited could not
possibly supply them with an army any thing equal to the He-
brews, who, in some of their wars, have carried to the field some
hundred thousands of men. — Le Clerc's Commentary.
f A strange infatuation this of Saul ! He had banished all
wizards and sorcerers out of his kingdom, as a dangerous sort of
people, who made profession of a wicked and unwarrantable art;
and yet he here inquires after one, and puts his whole confidence
iu what he had so wisely exploded before; as if a witch with
her incantations, and other diabolical arts, was capable of allay-
ing the uneasiness of his mind, or securing him from the appre-
hensions of danger. It may be observed, however, that he
mentions a woman rather than a man to be consulted upon this
occasion, because he might mention that the weaker sex might
more easily be deceived by evil spirits, and were generally more
addicted to these unlawful practices. — Calmet's and Patrick's
Commentaries.
g The Septuagint have called her, ' a woman that speaks from
her belly, or stomach,' as most magicians affected to do: and
some modern authors have informed us, that there were women
who had a demon, which spake articulately from the lower part
of their stomachs, in a very loud, though hoarse tone: "The
spirit conversing with the witch shrieked loud and dismally."—
Hor. Sat. 8.
h They could not go the direct way; for then they must have
passed through the enemy's camp; and therefore they took a
compass, and travelled by night, that they might not be discov-
ered ; besides that the night was the properest time to consult
those that pretended to magical incantations, it being a common
opinion among the Greeks, as perhaps now it might be among
the Hebrews, that none of the terrestrial demons did appear in
the daytime. — Patrick's Commentary.
i It was a common pretence of magicians, that they could
raise up ghosts from below, or make dead persons appear to de-
clare unto them future events. " Gore was poured out into a
dish that thereby they might draw out the manes, those spirits of
prophecy." — Hor. Sat. b. 1. And therefore Saul addresses the
woman, as if he believed her abilities in that way. This how-
ever shows, not only the antiquity of necromancy, but the pre-
vailing opinion then, that the soul, after the death of the body,
did survive ; otherwise it would have been impertinent for Saul
to desire the woman to raise up Samuel. Which makes it the
greater wonder, that we have nowhere, in the Old Testament,
a positive declaration of the soul's immortality. — Calmet's and Le
Clerc's Commentaries.
k How the woman came to know it to be Samuel, we may
thus imagine. She saw an apparition she did not expect ; she
knew the prophet; she knew the veneration which Saul had for
him; she knew that prophets were only sent to kings; and she
knew withal, that her art, whatever it was, had never before
that time exhibited a person of that figure to her; and from
hence she concluded, that the apparition must needs be Samuel,
and the person who came to consult her, in all probability was
Saul. — The History of the Life of King David,
I The words of Samuel are, ' why hast thou disquieted me,
and brought me up ?' which, seem to imply, that Samuel was
raised up by the force of this woman's enchantments. But as it
is not in the power of witches to disturb the rest of good men,
and bring them into the world when they please, it is much
more rational to think, that the Scripture here expresses itself in
a manner suitable to the prejudice of the vulgar, among whom
it was a common notion, that these incantations gave trouble to
the souls that were at rest. For which reason, they were cither
to be appeased by offerings, or constrained by the force of enchant-
ments: for so the tragedian has informed us, "He pours out
the magic song, and in a threatening tone hurriedly sings what-
ever either appeases or constrains the airy spirit." — Seneca in
<Epid.
451
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M.2888. A. C. 1110 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
raised him from the dead, was answered by Saul, that
the Philistines, with a powerful army had invaded him,
and in his distress, God had forsaken him, and would
give no answer a which way soever he consulted him.
To whom the spirit replied, that for his disobedience in
not destroying the Amalekites, God had taken away the
kingdom from his family, and given it to David ; and as
to the fate of the war, the Philistines, b the next day,
should rout his army, and he and his sons fall in the
battle.
Saul had no sooner heard his doom, but he fainted
away ; and as he had eaten nothing for some consider-
able time, c the woman and his servants, with much ado,
prevailed with him to take some refreshment : which
when he had done, he went away, and marched all night,
that he might come early enough to the camp next
morning.
The next morning the two armies met, and engaged ;
but the Israelites were forced to give way, and main-
tained a running fight, until they came to mount Gilboa,
where, gaining the advantage of the ground, they at-
tempted to rally again, but with as little success as be-
fore. Saul and his sons did all that was possible for
brave men to do ; but the Philistines aiming wholly at
them, in a short time, overpowered them with numbers,
d so that Jonathan and two others of his brothers, Abin-
a The sacred historian has reckoned up three several ways of
inquiring of God, namely, by dreams, by Urim, and by pro-
phets ; and it may not be amiss to observe, that there were the
same methods of consulting their gods among the Gentiles;
as it appears by what Achilles says in the council of the
Greeks, when met together to consult about the plague which
Apollo sent among them. " Come now let us address some pro-
phet or priest, or interpreter of dreams, for dreams ever are from
Jove."
b The phrase wherein Samuel expresses himself, is this, ' to-
morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me.' Where the word
to-morrow, as some interpreters imagine, is not to be taken in a
strict sense, because, as they conceive, this battle was not fought
till some time after; but in the passage before us, there seems
to be no reason why to-morrow should not be taken literally.
For as Endor was at no great distance from the Israelites' camp,
Saul might go that night, consult the witch, stay, and eat with
her, and get back to the camp before it was light. The next
day the battle begins ; Saul is vanquished, and seeing his army
routed, despairs, and stabs himself. All this might very well be
done in the space of twelve or fourteen hours ; and therefore I
see no occasion why we should depart from the plain significa-
tion of the words — Calmei's Commentary.
c Josephus seems to be veiy warm in his commendation of
this woman's generosity to Saul. ' Shu received him, treated
him, and relieved him ; and all this so cheerfully, and so frankly,
that she gave him all she had, without any prospect of reward •
for she knew that he was doomed to die. And what is more
this she did for the very man whose prohibition had been her
ruin.' But he rashly supposes, that in the words of the sacred
history, the narration is accurate, and defective in no one cir-
cumstance ; whereas, for any thing we know, this woman was far
from being poor; Saul had amply rewarded her for raising up
Samuel, arid his attendant might give her a round price for her
lamb. And though it must be owned, that her address to the
king is tender and respectful enough ; yet whether it proceeded
from fear or affection, may admit of some debate. — Lc Ckrc's
Commentary,
d It was certainly no small grief to David to hear of Jonathan's
death, and a trial it might be of his patience and resignation to
the divine will; but still there seems to be a direction of provi-
dence in suffering him to be slain, that David might more easily
come to the throne. For though Jonathan, no doubt, would have
made a voluntary dedition of it, yet as he was the people's great
favourite, some there might possibly be, who would not allow of the
adab and Malchishua, were killed upon the spot, and the
whole army put in confusion.
Saul defended himself as well as man could do ; but
the small party that remained with him, being entirely
broken, and the e enemy's archers pressing hard upon
him, he found himself so weakened with his wounds and
loss of blood, that for fear of falling into their hands,
and being insulted, he fell upon his own sword, and so
died. He had requested of his armour-bearer before
this to despatch him ; but his armour-bearer was startled
at the proposal and refused to do it : however, when he
saw his master dead, / he desperately followed his
example, and in the same manner put an end to his life.
The next day, when the Philistines came to take a view
of the field of battle, finding the bodies of Saul and his
sons among the slain, they stripped them of their ar-
mour, cut off their heads, and sent expresses to every
place of their victory, g Their armour they sent to the
temple of Ashtaroth, h their heads they fixed up in the
dedition, and so a civil war might have arisen concerning the
successor, which, by his dying in this manner, was prevented. —
Poole's Annotations.
e There is no mention of archers in any of the Philistines'
armies, or battles, before this, in which they are said to have
pressed hard upon Saul, as doubtless they were of great advantage
to the Philistines in making their attack ; 1st, because an assault
with this kind of weapon was new and surprising, and therefore
generally successful; and, 2dly, because the arrows destroying the
Israelites at a distance, before they came to close fight, threw
them naturally into terror and confusion. And for this reason
some think, that when David came to the throne, he taught the
Israelites the use of the bow, (as we read 2 Sam. i. 18.) that they
might not be inferior to the Philistines, nor fall into the like dis-
aster that Saul had done; and for this reason it certainly was,
that when he had made a peace with the Philistines, he took some
of their archers, who in the following books are frequently men-
tioned under the name of Cherethites, to be his body guards. —
Patrick's Commentary, and The History of the Life of King
David.
f The learned and ingenious author of the Historical Account
of the Life of King David, seems to make it evident, that Saul
and his armour-bearer died by the same sword, namely, that
which belonged to the armour-bearer. ' Now, it is an established
tradition of the Jewish chinch,' says he, ' that this armour-bearer
was Doeg the Edomite, who, by Saul's command, slew such a
number of priests in one day, (1 Sam. xxii. IS.) and if so, then
Saul and his executioner fell both by the same weapon wherewith
they had before massacred the servants of the Lord. Even as
Brutus and Cassius killed themselves with the same swords with
which they treacherously murdered Caesar; I say treacherously
murdered, because they lay in his bosom at the same time that
they meditated his death.' — Vol. 1.
g We have taken notice before, that it was an ancient custom
among sundry nations to hang up the arms and other spoils taken
from the enemy, in the temples of their gods, as trophies and
monuments of their victory; and need only remark here, that the
custom prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, as appeals
from this passage of Virgil: — " In the hallowed halls hang many
an instrument of war; battle chariots taken from the foe, shattered
axes, helmets, huge bars of gates, javelins, shields, and rostra
wrenched from war ships." — JEncid 7.
h 1 Sam. xxxi. 10. The custom of dedicating to the gods the
spoils of a conquered enemy, and placing them in their temples
as trophies of victory, is very ancient. Homer represents Hec-
tor as promising that, if he should conquer Ajax in single combat,
he would dedicate his spoils to Apollo:
And if Apollo, in whose aid I trust,
Shall stretch your daring champion in the dust,
If mine the glory to despoil the foe,
On Phcebos' temple I'll his arms bestow.
Iliad. — Pope.
Pausanias says, the architraves of the temple of Apollo at
Delphi were decorated with golden armour, bucklers suspended
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
455
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
temple of Dagon, and their bodies they hung upon gib-
bets against the walls of Bethshan. But the inhabitants
of Jabesh-Gilead, hearing of this indignity, and retain-
ing a grateful sense of the services Saul had done them,
sent a party of their best soldiers by night, who took
down their bodies, and brought them away to Jabesh,
where the people first a burned the remains of their flesh ;
next honourably interred their bones and ashes, in a
grove that was near their city ; and then for the space of
b seven days, fasted and made great lamentation for
them.
CHAP. II.
-Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
In the fourth chapter of this book of Samuel we read,
that upon a defeat which the Israelites had received from
the Philistines, the elders of Israel advised together in
council what might be the occasion of their ill success ;
' Wherefore,' say they, ' hath God smitten us to-day,
before the Philistines?' The justness of their cause,
they thought, was enough to entitle them to God's favour,
how wicked soever they were in their lives ; and there-
fore, without any thought of amending these, they
devised another expedient that would not fail of securing
them victory : ' ' Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of
the Lord,' say they, ' out of Shiloh, that when it comes
among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies.'
- They had good reason to look upon the ark of the
covenant as a certain token of the presence of God
among them, and of his protection over them. They had
had frequent experience of battles won by virtue of his
presence, and lost in the absence of it ; and whenever they
had this token of the divine assistance along with them,
they always esteemed themselves invincible. They re-
1 1 Sam. iv. 3.
2 Calmet's Commentary.
hy the Athenians, after the battle of Marathon, and shields
taken from the Gauls under Brennus. — Chandler's Travels in
Greece, p. 262. — Ed.
a It is certain that the usage among the Hebrews was not to
burn, but to embalm the bodies of their dead with aromatic
spices; but in this case the people of Jabesh might act otherwise,
either because the bodies of Saul and his sons were, by this time,
so dried or corrupted, that they were not fit to be embalmed ; or
because they were apprehensive, that if they should embalm
them, and so bury them, the people of Bethshan might, at one
time or other, come and dig them up, and fix them against their
walls again ; and therefore the Jabeshites thought it advisable to
recede from their common practice, and for the greater security,
to imitate the heathens in this particular: " Weeping for their
gentle companion, they gathered up his whitened bones into a
golden urn." {Hum. II. xxiii.) — Calmet's and Le Gere's Com-
mentary.
b It seems a little strange, that we nowhere read of any gene-
ral mourning that was made for Saul and his sons, who died in
battle ; but the national troubles, which followed upon his death,
Alight perhaps be an obstruction to this. David and his men
mourned but one day for Saul: and therefore, when it is said of the
Jabeshites, that they fasted seven days, their fasting must not be
understood in a strict sense, as if they ate nothing all this time,
1'iit in a more large and general signification, as it is used both in
sacred and profane writers, namely, that they lived very abste-
miously, ate little, and that seldom, and that but mean food, and
instead of wine drank water only. — Calmet's Commentary, and
I'u tie's Annotations,
meinbered the story of the walls of Jericho 3 falling down
by the power of this ark's seven times surrounding them.
They had heard 4 of the defeat which their forefathers
had suffered, when they presumed to march against the
Canaanites without their leader, and without this ark ;
and were fond enough to imagine, that God himself
might be looked upon a3 overcome, if the Philistines
should have the advantage, when the ark of his presence
was with them. By this means, therefore, they thought to
interest his honour in the war, and make him responsible
as it were, for any disaster that should befall them ; and
upon these motives it was that they sent for the ark.
But because they presumed to send for it, without ever
consulting God, as they used to do upon all momentous
affairs ; because the iniquities of the people were become
so enormous, as not to deserve any longer the divine
presence among them ; and because the flagitiousness of
the priests, who were killed in defending the ark, had
for a long time, called for some judgment upon them ;
that therefore his predictions concerning the sons of Eli
might be fulfilled, he permitted the ark to be taken, as
thinking it more inconsistent with his honour to afford
assistance to the wicked and presumptuous, than to admit
of the profanation even of the most sacred things. AVhat
an affliction the loss of this ark was to the people of
Israel we may learn from the sad fate of Eli, and his
daughter-in-law, who both died for grief at the bare
hearing of it ; and therefore we may suppose that a far-
ther reason for God's permitting it, might be, to bring
his own people to a sense of their apostasy and ingra-
titude to him, when they came to consider what a damage
they suffered in the departure of this symbol of his pre-
sence, which was deservedly esteemed * the glory of
Israel.
What afflictions the taking or withholding the ark
brought upon the Philistines, the fall of their god Dagon,
the mice, the emerods, the pestilence, and other sore
judgments, do abundantly testify; and therefore we may
suppose yet farther, that God's design in permitting this
capture of the ark, was to demonstrate his power among
the heathens, and to let the Philistines know, that his
dominion reached everywhere ; that he was equally the
Lord both of the conquerors and conquered ; and that
the pretended deities whom they adored, in comparison
of him, were of no avail.
It was from an intent, therefore, to illustrate his al-
mighty power, and not from any inability to preserve it ;
that God suffered this ark of the covenant to be taken ;
and though what the Jews call the shechinah, or visible
token of God's presence, which abode under the two
cherubim upon the propitiatory, or covering of the ark,
in the shape of the cloud, might not be so apparent, after
it fell into the hands of the Philistines ; yet that it had
divine and miraculous power attending it, is evident by
their own confession, who, upon seeing the destruction
that its presence had occasioned, do frankly declare,
that 6 ' the ark of the God of Israel should not abide with
them, because his hand was sore upon them, and upon
Dagon their god.'
It was a particular prohibition, ' that not only the
common people, but even the Levites themselves, should
Josh
vi. 4. 4 Num.
c 1 Sam. v. 7.
11
45. 5 1 Sam.
' Num. iv. 20.
22.
456 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2SS8. A. C. IU6; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
[Book V.
not dare to look into the ark, or any other of the holy
utensils, belonging- to the service of God, upon pain of
death ; and the severity of this law will not seem so un-
reasonable, when it is considered, that in every nation it
Mas always accounted a great profaneness, and frequently
attended with exemplary punishments, for such as were
not initiated, ' to obtrude into the mysteries of religion ;
and that, if the Philistines, for their irreverence to the
ark, were treated with less rigour than the Bethshemites,
it was because the former were not instructed in the laws
of God, nor obliged to observe them.
It must be acknowledged, indeed, that there is a mis-
take in our translation, as well as in several others.
Bethshemesh is a place of no great note in sacred history,
and - by Josephus it is called no more than a village ;
and therefore it is hardly conceivable, how it could
contain such a number as fifty thousand and threescore
and ten inhabitants, or why God, who is goodness itself,
should make such a slaughter among those who received
his ark with so much joy, and testified their gladness,
by their oblation of sacrifices. To solve this difficulty,
therefore, some have observed, that the words in the ori-
ginal, and according to their natural construction, stand
thus: — He smote of the people ' threescore and ten men,
fifty thousand men ;' where there is plainly wanted some
particle or other, to make the sense complete. They
observe further, that if this is to be taken for a total sum,
the order of the words is plainly inverted, and that
the thousands should go before the inferior numbers, as
is usual in all languages : and therefore, since there
is a manifest defect in the copy, they think it not
amiss to supply it with the particle mem, out of, which in
many other instances is known to be omitted, and here
makes the sense complete, namely, that of the people of
Bethshemesh, for their irreverence to the ark, he smote
' seventy men out of fifty thousand.' For though fifty
thousand men can hardly be supposed in so small a
place; yet, upon hearing of the arrival of the ark, the
country might Hock in from other parts, and in a few
days make up that number ; and though possibly most of
them might be guilty of the same profane rudeness, yet
God, in his great clemency, might punish no more than
seventy of them, and that on purpose to deter others
from the like irreverence. a For it is not unlikely, that
these people might hold the ark in more contempt, since
the time that it had been conquered, as it were, and led
captive by their enemies ; and for this reason God
might the rather exert his vindictive arm, on purpose to
teach them, that this symbol of his presence had lost
none of its miraculous power, by the ill usage it had met
with in its absence.
Upon the removal of the ark from Bethshemesh, 3 it
is not unlikely that there was a general assembly of the
elders of Israel, and that to prevent the like offence, the
1 See Hueti Qurcst. Alent. b. 2, c. 12. p. 200.
* Jewish Antiquities, b. 6. c. 2. 3 Calmet's Commentary.
a There is without doubt an interpolation in the Hebrew text
here, as fifty thousand is too great a number. Boothroyd and Dr
Clark follow the reading of Josephus adopted by the author, and
makes the whole number 70 men, while Dr Hales contends for
the reading of the Syriac and Arabic versions, which have 5070
men. See Clarke and Hoothroyd on the passage, and Hales'
Analysis, vol. ii. p. 304. Seventy men out of a small place in a
harvest da}-, was a great slaughter. — Ei>.
ceremony was performed with the greatest order and
solemnity ; but whyr it was not carried to Shiloh, and re-
posited in the tabernacle, the most probable opinion is,
that after the death of Eli, the Philistines had destroyed
the place, and the tabernacle was removed from thence
to Nob, where it continued until the death of Samuel.
As Kirjath-jearim therefore stood at no great distance,
was a place of considerable strength, and had a remark-
able eminence in it, proper for the reception of the ark,
thither it was ordered to be removed for the present,
with a design, no doubt, to have it restored to its an-
cient seat, at a convenient season : but through the
neglect of religion, as well as the disturbance of the
times, its removal was deferred from day to day : so
that, though David first brought it to the house of Obed-
edom, and then to his palace at Sion, yet we nowhere
read b of its being replaced in the tabernacle any more.
When Samuel was highly displeased with the elders
of Israel for desiring a king, and thereupon applied
himself for advice, the answer which God returned him
was this : ' * Hearken unto the voice of the people in
all that they say unto thee ; for they have not rejected
thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign
over them.' These are, no doubt, the words of an angry
sovereign, resenting the slight upon his government, and
the indignity done to his person ; and therefore, to give
a full answer to the objection, we shall first consider the
nature of the government they were under, and of that
which they desired, and from thence deduce the several
aggravations of their guilt, in being so importunate for
a change.
Josephus 5in his book against Apion has these re-
markable words : " Several nations have their several
forms of government, and their diversities of customs.
Some governments are committed to a single person,
others to a certain number of select men, and others
again to all the people in general ; but our lawgiver,"
says he, " has declared, that ours shall c be a theocracy,
4 1 Sam. viii.
15.
b The future history of this sacred ark is this. After the
building of the temple at Jerusalem, Solomon had it removed
from Sion, into a proper place that was consecrated for it, where
it remained with all suitable respect, till the times of the latter
kings of Judah, who gave themselves up to idolatry, and were
not afraid to put the images of their gods in the holy place itself.
Hereupon the priests, being unable to endure this profanation,
took the ark, and carried it from place to place, that by this
means it might escape the fury of these impious princes: but
Josiah, who was a good man, and restored the true worship of
God, commanded them to bring it back to the sanctuary, and
forbade them to carry it into the country, as they had done.
The Talmudists, however, have a tradition, that Solomon having
learned by revelation, that the Assyrians would one day burn
the temple, which he had lately built, and cany away all the
rich materials which he had placed there, took care to have a
private hole made under ground, where in case of necessity, he
might conceal the most valuable things belonging to it from the
knowledge of any enemies; and that Josiah, having a foresight
ol the calamities which were coming upon the Jewish nation,
here hid the ark of the covenant, together with Aaron's rod, the
pot of manna, the high priest's pectoral, and the holy oil ; but
that during the Babylonish captivity, the priests having lost all
knowledge of the place where these things were concealed, they
were never seen more, and were not in the second temple. —
Calmet's Dictionari/, under the word Ark.
c As God's design in separating the Israelites from the rest
ot mankind, was to perpetuate the knowledge of himself, and the
doctrine of his unity, amidst an idolatrous and polytheistic world ;
Sect. III.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 111G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
457
and has ascribed all rule and sovereign power to God
alone." For though it was necessary, for the due exe-
cution of his commands, that there should be some visible
minister between him and his people, such as Moses and
Joshua were in the time of their administration ; yet it is
certain, that they never ordained any thing of moment
without a special command from him. The same direc-
tion which was given Joshua, that ' * he should stand
before Eleazar the priest, who should ask counsel for
him, after the judgment of Urim before the Lord,' was
required of all other persons that presided in public
all'airs. 2 In all cases of weighty concern, they were to
have recourse to him, who always reserved to himself
the sole power of establishing laws, and appointing ma-
gistrates, and making war. Nay, so very desirous was
God to show himself to be King of the Hebrews, that
there was no ensign of royalty belonging to earthly
princes that, by his own appointment, was not provided
for him, on purpose to engage the people's attention,
(as the Commentator on Maimonides speaks,) and to
make them perceive, that their King, who was the Lord
of hosts, was in the midst of them.
What design God Almighty had in constituting him-
self the King of this people, is evident from the instruc-
tions which he gives Moses ; ' 3 Thus shalt thou say to
the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, ye
have seen what I have done unto the Egyptians, and
how 1 bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto
myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice in-
deed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar
treasure unto me above all people ; for all the earth is
mine, and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and
an holy nation.'
No government can certainly be imagined more happy,
more safe, more free, more honourable, than that wherein
the fountain of all wisdom and power, of all justice and
goodness, presides ; and therefore the least that we can
say of the Israelites, in desiring to change this form for
such a one as was in use in the nations round about
them, that is, for an absolute and despotic government,
where the princes were tyrants, and the subjects all
1 Num. xxvii. 21. * Patrick's Commentary.
3 Saurin's Dissertation 25. vol. 4 ; Exod. xix. 3, &c.
so was he pleased to stand in two arbitrary relations towards
tliem, in that of a tutelar deity and protector, and in that of a
supreme magistrate and lawgiver; besides the natural relation
in which he stood towards them and all other nations in common:
but how long this theocracy continued among the Jews, the
learned are not so well agreed ; some thinking, that from the
first commencement of regal power, or especially from its settle-
ment in the line of David, it ceased, as God's words to Samuel
seem to import, ' they have not rejected thee, but they have re-
jected me, that 1 should not reign over them,' 1 Sam. viii. 7.
Whilst others imagine, that from God's first espousing the cause
of the Israelites, in the time of their tribulation in Egypt, even
to the coming of his blessed Son our Saviour Christ in the flesh,
it all along subsisted, though with some abatements, sometimes
with seeming interruptions; and to this they apply that famous
prophecy of Jacob, ' The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come,'
• ii'ii. xlix. 10: that is, the theocracy shall continue over the
Jews, until Christ come to take possession of his father's king-
dom. For what lawgiver was there ever in Judah, until the
coming of Christ, but God, by the ministry of Moses. — Opinions
<;/ several Theologians, letter 7. Simon's Critical History of the
old Testament; and fParSurton's Divine Legation if Moses,
vol. 2. part 2.
slaves, argues at least a great pitch of folly and indis-
cretion, a baseness of mind, an ingratitude of temper,
a spirit of rebellion, and a secret attachment to the
idolatrous practices of those people, whose king they
were so eager to imitate. For, ' make us a king to
judge us,' was equivalent in their mouths, as * one ex-
presses it, to what their forefathers demanded of Aaron,
' 5 make us gods that they may go before us ; because in
this manner, he who best knew the secrets of their hearts,
in his answer to Samuel, has expounded their meaning :
' They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected
me, that I should not reign over them ; according to all
the works which they have done, since the day that 1
brought them up out of Egypt, even unto this day, they
have forsaken me, and served other gods.'
We have but one thing more to remark upon this sub-
ject, and that is, that the manner in which they demanded
a king, was no less culpable than the ends they propos-
ed by it : for instead of consulting God upon an affair
of this consequence, they went hastily to Samuel, and
when, by fair remonstrances, he is attempting to dissuade
them from so dangerous an enterprise, they turn impetu-
ously upon him, and say, ' nay, but we will have a king ;'
and this may be the reason perhaps why God gave them
one in his anger, descended of the meanest tribe in Is-
rael, and of the meanest family in that tribe, to show
them, that he himself was not satisfied with their pro-
ceedings, nor could be pleased with any thing that was
extorted from him by undutiful importunities.
The meanness of Saul's family indeed was the reason
that some, who were present at his election, openly de-
spised him, and said, 6 •' How can this man save us ?' And
therefore it is not unlikely, that as these seditious men
refused to submit to his government, he might leave the
public affairs in Samuel's hands, and return to his fa-
ther's house, and there live privately, until some oppor-
tunity of better establishing his authority should happen
to present itself. But even in this interval, supposing
he did betake himself to some rural employment; yet
where is the great disparagement of this, when we find
the same done in other nations, by persons of the like
rank and quality ? AY hen we find your Curii, your At-
tilii, your Cincinnati, and several other illustrious Ro-
mans, leaving the plough to assume the reins of go-
vernment, and afterwards leaving the government to
return to the plough.
It must be acknowledged, however, that Saul's exter-
nal qualifications, namely, the stature and comeliness of
his person, was no small recommendation to a people
who desired a king, such as their neighbours had. For
whatever we may think of the matter, the people of the
east had always a regard to these in the choice of then-
kings ; and accordingly Herodotus, having taken a re-
view of Xerxes's whole army, after a short pause de-
clares himself thus ; ' that ~ among such a multitude of
people there was not one, who, for tallness and goodli-
ness of person, did deserve the throne so much as he ;*
and in another place assures us, ' that 8 the Ethiopians
always esteemed him who was of the most advantageous
stature, the fittest to be chosen king;' which cannot but
remind us of what Samuel says to the people when he
Saurin's Dissertation 25. vol. 4 : Exod. xix. 3, &C.
Exod. xxxii. 1. u 1 Sam. x. 27. 7 Herodotus, b. 6. c. 77.
8 Ibid. b. vi. c. 20.
3 M
458 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. JSS8. A. C. 111G; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 1301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
[Book V.
presents Saul to them : ' ' See ye him whom the Lord
hath chosen, that there is none like him among the
people ;' for the historian hath told us before, that
2 ' from his shoulders and upwards, he was higher than
any of the people.'
Nay, had I leisure to gratify the curious, I might
show, that not only in the east, but in the western and
most polite countries, this tallness of stature, and grace-
fulness of appearance were always deemed no unbecom-
ing qualifications for the regal dignity; and therefore
we find Pliny, who certainly was a fine speaker, and
knew how to single out the proper qualities in any great
man, telling his audience, in his panegyric to Trajan,
that " the strength and tallness of his body, the noble-
ness of his aspect, the dignity of his countenance, and
the gracefulness of his speech, did everywhere denote
and proclaim the prince." As on the contrary, what
notions the ancients had of a prince of a low stature,
and mean appearance, Ave may gather from the fine
which 3 Plutarch tells us the Lacedemonians set upon
their king, for marrying a little woman, who was likely
to bring ' not kings, but kinglings,' to reign over them.
It must be remembered, however, that tallness of sta-
ture was not the only thing that recommended Saul to
the kingdom. His father is said to have been * ' a mighty
man of power ;' which though it may not signify his
great wealth, and interest in his country, because 5 Saul
himself declares the contrary, yet it doubtless denotes
his strength, and courage, and fortitude of mind, which
in a great measure he transmitted to his son. For who
in war was more brave and undaunted than he, had he
but known how to use his victories as well as acquire
them ? But here was his great misfortune, that when he
was successful, he was too apt to be unmindful of what
God had enjoined him. AVho in peace was more pru-
dent and politic than he, till his fears and jealousies of
David, mixed with an unhappy temper of blood, made
him malicious and implacable? Nothing can be sup-
posed more wise and discreet, than his 6 ' holding his
peace,' and taking no notice of the slights which were
put upon him at his first election ; nothing more great
and generous, than his answer to some who would have
prompted him to revenge, after he had established his
throne by a glorious conquest ; ' ' There shall not a
man be put to death this day ; for to-day the Lord hath
wrought salvation in Israel.'
Nothing certainly was more different, than Saul's mo-
destly declining the offer of a kingdom ; when elected,
passing by indignities, and returning to a private life ;
when called out to action, mustering his forces, leading
out his armies, vanquishing his enemies, relieving his
friends : and when settled in peace, forgiving injuries,
ami conferring benefits ; and the same Saul, sullen and
discontented with himself, false to his promises, jealous
of his friends, listening to sycophants, quarrelling with his
relations, attempting the life of his own son, murdering
a whole city of God's priests, and instead of consulting
the divine oracle, Hying to the devil for advice in his
distress ; and therefore we need less wonder, that we
1 I Sam. x. 24. * l Sam. ix. 2.
J In the beginning of his book on the Instruction of Children.
• 1 Sam. ix. 1. 5 1 Sam. ix. 21. ' 1 Sam. x. 27.
' 1 Sam. xi. 13.
find the beginning of his reign so prosperous, and the
latter part of it ending in so sad a catastrophe.
Whether Saul deserved this fate or no, we may best
perceive by a review of some instances wherein he is
said to have offended God. In the beginning of the
third year of his reign, the Philistines raised so powerful
an army against him, that his own forces for fear of them,
deserted in great numbers. Gilgal was the place of
their rendezvous, and Samuel, who had hitherto trans-
acted matters between God and Saul, had given him
assurance, that in seven days' time, he would come thi-
ther, 8 ' to offer sacrifices and peace-offerings, and to
show him what he was to do ;' but, as Abarbinel has ob-
served, every one of these articles he transgressed. For,
besides that he distrusted Samuel's word, or thought it
scorn perhaps, that the king should stay for a prophet,
instead of waiting till the appointed days were expired,
he called for the sacrifices on the seventh morning; in-
stead of ordering a proper person to officiate, himself
adventured to offer up the sacrifice ; and instead of
inquiring of God in a regular way, he was determined to
begin the war without any previous consultations : so
that, in this behaviour of his, there were all the signs of
pride and ingratitude, impatience and distrust, neglect of
God, contempt of his prophet, and an apparent invasion
of the priestly office ; upon which accounts Samuel de-
clares, that 9 God would reject him, and not continue
the kingdom in his family.
God, no doubt, by his divine omniscience, foresaw what
other sins Saul would commit, and might therefore with-
out any breach of his mercy, have pronounced a per-
emptory sentence against him ; but the passage before
us implies no such thing. It is no more than a threat,
or a simple denunciation of what God would do, if he
were not more observant for the future, and might
have been revoked, had he not persisted in his disobedi-
ence, and committed a much greater offence against the
divine Majesty in the war against Amalek.
The opposition which these people gave the Israelites,
while they were on their journey to the land of Canaan,
provoked God to such a degree, that, as the historian
relates the matter, he swore, that w ' he would have war
with Amalek from generation to generation ;' and there-
fore commanded Moses ' to write it, for a memorial, in a
book, and to rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, that he
would utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from
under heaven : and when they were upon the point of
entering upon the promised land, they were reminded
of the same divine decree against that wicked people :
11 ' Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way,
when ye were come forth out of Egypt, how he met
thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee,
even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast
faint and weary, and he feared not God : therefore
it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee
rest from all thine enemies round about in the land,
which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance
to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of
Amalek from under heaven ; thou shalt not forget it.' In
this passage we have some reasons assigned, why God
was so highly incensed against the Amalekites.12 They
1 Tarn. x. 8. 3 1 Sam. xiii. 11. '« Exod. xvii. 13, 14.
11 Deut. xxv. 17, &c. a Gen. xxxvi. 12
Srct. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES- ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
459
A U 2888. A. C. 111G ; OR, ACCOKDING TO HAI
were descendants of Esau, and therefore by pedigree,
were allied to the Israelites, and of the stock of Abra-
ham. * They seem to have broke off with the Edomites
very early, and to have joined themselves with the old
Horites, a nest of idolaters, that lived on Mount Seir ;
and so turned apostates from the religion of Abraham.
These apostates were the first that drew the sword against
the Israelites, who were their brethren in blood, and
without any manner of provocation, took the advantage,
and came upon their rear, while they were feeble, faint,
and weary, which was not only a great inhumanity, but
done with an intent to defeat Gods design in bringing
up the people of Israel, and to hinder, if possible, their
entrance into Canaan ; for which reason the impiety of
these people is particularly taken notice of, namely,
' that they feared not God, but that their hand was lifted up
against the throne of the Lord, against the throne of the
God of Abraham,' their father, which was no small ag-
gravation of their crime. It was for these reasons, then,
that God had determined to destroy the whole race of
Amalek, and had made choice of Saul to put his decree
in execution : and if, to indulge his own covetousness, he
thought proper to prevaricate in the matter, he became
guilty of the like sin (to use the words of the learned
Dr Jackson) " as if a judge or inferior magistrate, being-
intrusted to do justice in a matter unto which his sove-
reign had peremptorily and determinately sworn, should
upon a bribe, or other sinister respect, neglect his duty,
and, as much as in him lay, make his master forsworn."
And as a judge that would dare to do this, deserves more
deaths than one ; so, considering the infinite difference
between God and man, and the long train of wickedness
which Saul afterwards ran into, the severity can hardly
be thought excessive, in God's punishing his contempt of
this great command, by the alienation of the crown from
his family.
" But why should the Amalekites, for offences com-
mitted by their forefathers so many years before, deserve
this punishment ? Or suppose they did, why should young
children and infants suffer as guilty, for the crimes of
their parents ?" Our blessed Saviour, in a case some-
what like this, has helped us to a solution of the former
part of this question, when he tells the Jews of his time,
that 2 ' they built the sepulchres of the prophets, which
their fathers had killed : that in so doing, they allowed
or approved of their deeds : and that therefore the blood
of all the prophets, which had been shed from the foun-
dation of the world, should be required of that genera-
tion.' From whence we may draw this inference, — That
when any particular people commit the same crimes that
their ancestors did ; when they approve of them, when
they imitate them, and, by the like actions, declare, that
if they were in their circumstances, they would pursue
the same steps, they are justly punishable, even in virtue
of the sentence which passed upon their ancestors ; and
that tlie divine suspension of that sentence, in order to
try whether they would reform and amend, is so far from
being an hardship, that the longer it is continued, the
more it is an instance of God's mercy, and patience, and
long-suffering.
Now, whoever looks into the conduct of the descen-
dants of these old Amalekites, and considers the several
1 Scripture Vindicated, part 2.
Luke \i. 17, &<•.
ES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
oppressions which occasioned the exploits of Ehud, Gi-
deon, Jephthah, and Saul, will soon perceive, that these
later generations were every moment renewing the ran-
cour and hostilities of their forefathers against the
children of Israel, and consequently were very justly
comprised under the sentence which had originally pass-
ed upon them.
3 ' Children indeed shall not be put to death for their
fathers :' but this prohibition, we must observe relates to
men, and not to God. * Men, when they put a child to
death for the sin of his father, assume an authority that
they have no right to. The law which authorizes them
to punish the father, gives them no power over the life of
the child, a but God is sovereign Lord and Master of the
lives of both. Men who kill the child, to aggravate the
punishment of the father can give the child no equivalent
for the loss of his life ; but God, in the future dispensa-
tion of things, can render him an ample compensation for
it: and therefore, since in a general devastation, whe-
ther of war, famine, or pestilence, without a divine
interposition for every particular person, the innocent
must necessarily suffer with the guilty, it is satisfaction
enough to think, that these innocent persons do not
finally perish when they die, but are thenceforward taken
under God's immediate care, and in the world to come,
will find their retribution. 5 Those, of all others who die,
in their infancy, in what manner soever it be, have
reason to bless God, what grief soever it may give their
parents, for being delivered out of the miseries of this life,
in order to be made happy in another.
Several of the Jewish doctors are of opinion, that after
the death of Eli and his sons, Samuel, by God's parti-
cular election, succeeded to the high priest's office ; and
this they are the rather induced to believe, because they
read of his offering sacrifices in places distinct from the
tabernacle ; of his wearing an ephod, which was a vest-
ment peculiar to the priest ; of his consecrating two
kings, Saul and David ; and find 6 the Psalmist placing
him among persons of that order and distinction. But
the more probable opinion is, that he was no more than
a Levite, and, by birth, incapable of the priesthood,
which was only annexed to Aaron's family ; that there is
no mention made in Scripture of his having any particu-
lar designation to that office ; that there is no reason to
think, that God would breakthrough his own laws and or-
dinances, in favour of him, when there was no occasion for
it, since Hophni and Phinehas, when they died, h might
have sons of sufficient age to succeed them ; that his put-
ting on an ephod, Mas no more than what David did ; his
sacrificing from the tabernacle, what Gideon and Saul
3 Deut. xxiv. 10. 4 Saurin's Dissertation 30. vol. 4.
5 Le Clerc's Comment, on 1 Sam. xv. 3. 6 Ps. xcix. G.
a God, indeed, in a law given to the Jews, threatens that ho
will punish the children for their fathers' iniquity; but God hatt
the highest right of authority both over our affairs as well as our
life since it is but his gift, which he, without any cause, and at
any period, can take from man when lie pleaseth. — Grotii/s </«
the Rigid of War, vol. 2.
b It is generally supposed, but without any grounds that the
exercise of the high priest's function was not entered upon till
such an age; and that Eli's grand-children were not as yet quali-
fied for it: but Josephus (Antiq, b. 15. c. 2.) informs us, that
Aristobulus the brother of Mariamne, was both admitted into that
place, and officiated in it, when he was no more than seventeen
rears old. — Cahnet'i Commentary, on 1 Sam. xxv. 1
4S0 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 288a A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
[Book V.
did ; and his anointing kings, what both Elias and Eli-
sha did : so that these little incidents of his life could
never give him that character. And though it be granted
that the Psalmist has thought proper to place him in
company with Moses and Aaron, yet, at the same time,
he has taken care to point us out the difference between
them ; Moses and Aaron among the priests, and Samuel
' among such as call upon his name,' that is, who sing
God's praise, which was the common employment of the
Levites. Put the case, then, that Samuel was no priest,
yet it seems to be a privilege indulged to some great
men, upon some extraordinary occasions, to offer sacri-
fices, where there was neither the tabernacle, nor any
altar, but what they themselves erected. Thus ' Gideon
and Manoah both, by the directions of an angel, made
their burnt-ollerings just by their own habitations, and
upon no other altar than a rock ; and yet, that they were
accepted by God, is evident from the miraculous fire
that did consume them.
In most countries, indeed, the priesthood was a privi-
lege annexed to the regal dignity, and even in the Jewish
economy, where the sacerdotal office was distinct. Thus
David, upon the reduction of the ark, sacrificed oxen and
fatlings, 2 and Solomon, in the beginning of his reign,
and before the temple was built, sacrificed in high places. 3
But there is much more to be said for Samuel : he lived
in a place that was an academy of the prophets, and
whither much people resorted to be instructed in the law.
Shiloh was now laid desolate, and the ark, which was
the tabernacle's chief furniture, was separated from it :
so that till God had declared his choice of some other
place, the people were, in a great measure, at liberty
where to offer their devotions; and Samuel more especial-
ly, in a city of so great concourse, and where he himself
presided, was obliged in conscience to provide the peo-
ple in the best manner he could, with a public place of
worship. He himself did but rarely, and upon extraor-
dinary occasions, officiate in the sacrifice, yet that,
whenever he did it, he did it with the acceptance and
approbation of God, is plain from the testimony of
Scripture, and the success which God gave him against
his enemies, after he had performed such an act of devo-
tion : for thus the account is, 4 ' And Samuel took a
sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt-offering wholly
unto the Lord ; and Samuel cried unto the Lord for
Israel, and the Lord heard him, and the Lord thundered
with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines,
and discomfited them, and they were smitten before
Israel.'
° The Jews themselves acknowledge, that a prophet is
not subject to the ceremonial law, but may, at any time,
himself sacrifice in what place he pleases : and therefore,
when Samuel went to Bethlehem to anoint David, it
cannot be questioned, but that he had a right to sacrifice
there, though there was neither ark nor tabernacle in the
place ; nor can it be denied, but that one part of his er-
rand was to offer the sacrifice which he carried along
with him. He had indeed an affair of greater conse-
1 Judg. vi. gO. and xiii. 19. 2 2 Sam. vi. 13.
3 1 Kings ill. 2, 3. "1 Sam. vii. 9, 10.
a The authority of a prophet causes, that whenever he is pre-
m nt. and superintends, sacrifice may be done in the due form ; for
by the confession of the .lews, the ritual laws are subject to the
command of a prophet. — Crntitis on Sam. xvi.2.
quence to transact at the same time ; but I cannot see
under what obligation he was to discover that. 5 Secrecy
is of great use in all important negotiations, and the
concealing of one design, under the umbrage of another
is as just and laudable a practice, as the drawing of a
curtain to keep out spies. Acts of religion indeed are
sometimes made cloaks for iniquity ; but it is hard to
conceive, Avhat possible prevarication there could be, in
performing one act of obedience towards God, in order
to facilitate the performance of another. The short of
the matter is, when there are two ends of any action, as
there were in the case now before us, a man may, with-
out any injury to truth, declare the one, and conceal the
other ; nor can any imputation justly fall upon God, for
suggesting an expedient to his servant, in the execution
of which there confessedly was no sin.
And for the same reason, because it was by God's
direction, or the instigation of his Holy Spirit, that
Samuel cut Agag in pieces, we cannot say that this re-
sentment carried him beyond the bounds of respect that
was due to his sovereign. Agag had been a bloody
tyrant, and was now cut off', not for the sins of his an-
cestors only, but for his own "merciless cruelty. His
death had been predicted above 400 years before, 6 by
the prophet Balaam ; but Saul, out of a mistimed com-
passion, and in opposition to the express commands of
God, had thought proper to spare him. Here therefore
was a fit occasion for Samuel to exert himself, and, not-
withstanding the presence of his prince, to vindicate the
honour of his God, by expressing a zeal suitable to 7 that
of Phinehas, in slaying Zimri, or of that noble band of
Levites, 8 who destroyed the worshippers of the golden
calf, though it does not necessarily follow, that he slew
him himself, 9 because what he commanded might be
called his own act, though it was nevertheless done by
the public executioner of justice.
Some commentators have been so far carried away
with the manner of the Scripture expression, viz., that
10 ' an evil spirit from the Lord troubled Saul,' as to think
that he was really possessed with a devil, which at cer-
tain times came strongly upon him, and threw him into
all the mad fits whereof we read : but it should be consi-
dered, that the word ' spirit,' in the sacred language, is
of a very extensive signification, and denotes frequently,
not only the dispositions of the mind, n but those of the
body likewise ; that the custom of the Jews was to
imagine, that everyr affliction, whose cause they were
ignorant of, proceeded immediately from God ; and that
it is a very common thing to find the Scripture phrase
accommodating itself to this vulgar prejudice. Now, in
our interpretation of Scripture, this I think should be a
rule : — That when a passage is capable of two senses,
whereof the one supposes a miracle, and the other a
natural event only, the latter should take place, especi-
ally when there are no circumstances to determine us to
the contrary. But now in the case before us, 12 the fre-
quent access of Saul's malady, the symptoms that attended
it, and the remedy made use of to assuage it, do suffi-
ciently denote, that it proceeded from a deep melancholy,
» Scripture Vindicated, part 2. 6 Num. xxiv. 7. 7 Num. xxv. 7
8 Exod. xxxii. 27. 9 Patrick's Comment, on 1 Sam. xii. 33.
1 t Sam. xvi. 14. ^ " See Job xvii. I. awl Hosea iv. 12.
" Calmet's Commentary on 1 Sam. >vi. 14.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
461
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4310. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
or black bile inflamed ; and that the man was hypochon-
driac, rather than possessed. Agreeable to this bad
complexion of body was the natural temper of his mind,
which through his whole conduct was suspicious, diffident,
cruel, passionate, and vindictive. Add to this, that the
remorses of his conscience, the menaces of Samuel,
God's rejection of him, and his continual apprehensions
of being either dethroned or put to death, by his compe-
titor, confirmed still more and more the evil dispositions
which his temper engendered, and carried them by fits
into downright madness : and as madness is occasioned
by an atrabilious humour highly inflamed, and diffused
through the blood, and from melancholic vapours which
ascend to the brain, and make an alteration in its tem-
perature, it is no hard matter to conceive, that the agree-
able sound of a musical instrument, which occasions joy
and self-complacency, should dissipate these bad hu-
mours, and make the blood and spirits return to their
equal and natural motion.
What the power of music is, to sweeten the temper,
and allay and compose the passions of the mind, we have
some examples from sacred history, but many more from
the profane. As this same Saul was returning from
Samuel, he met, at the place which is called x ' the hill
of God,' a company of prophets, playing on several instru-
ments ; and such was the effect of their melody, ' that
the Spirit,'asthe Scripture expresses it, ' came upon him,
and he was turned into another man.' When Elisha was
desired by Jehoshaphat, to tell him what his success
against the king of Moab would be, the prophet required
a minstrel to be brought unto him, 2 ' and when the min-
strel played, (it is said) that the hand of the Lord came
upon him : 3 not that we are to suppose, that the gift of
prophecy was the natural effect of music, but the meaning
is, that music disposed the organs, the humours, the
blood, and in short the whole mind and spirit of the pro-
phet, to receive the supernatural impression. The truth
is, common experience, as well as the testimony of the
gravest authors, does prove, that there is in music a
certain charm, to revive the spirits, mellow the humours,
allay the passions, and consequently, to dissipate that
rage, or melancholy, which either fumes up into the brain
in vapours, or overspreads the heart with grief and dejec-
tion. We need less wonder, therefore, that we find 4 the
Pythagoreans, whenever they perceived, cither in them-
selves or others, any violent passion beginning to arise,
immediately betaking themselves either to their flute or
guitar ; that we find 5 Theophrastus declaring that music is
an excellent remedy against several distempers, both of
the mind and body ; s others, that Asclepiades, a renown-
ed physician among the ancients, was used to cure madness
by the power of symphony ; and 7 others again, that the
most violent poison, that of the sting of the tarantula,
has been expelled very frequently by this means. The
only remaining difficulty is, how David, with his single
harp, and unassisted with any other instruments, could
effect such a cure upon Saul ? And to satisfy this,
1 must be obliged to inquire a little into the nature of the
Jewish music which was possibly in vogue at that time.
1 1 Sam. x. 5, &c. 2 2 Kings ill. 15.
3 Calmet's Commentary on 1 Sam. xxvi. 17.
* ABlisnu* Var. Hist. b. 14. c. 27. » In a book on Frantic Fits.
6 Censorinus de Die Natali, b. 12.
7 See Saurin, vol. 4. dissertation :->3.
Music, though an art of no necessity to human life,
was certainly of a very early invention. Before the
deluge, Jubal is called the father, or master of those
who played upon the harp, and a ancient organ, as the
two Hebrew words 8 in that place are generally translated.
In the time of Jacob, we find his father-in-law complain-
ing of him, 9 that he had stolen away from him, and not
given him an opportunity of dismissing him honourably,
with mirth, and with song, with tabret, and with harp.
10 Moses, upon his passage over the Red Sea, com-
posed a song, which was sung in parts by himself, at the
head of the men, and by ]1 his sister, with timbrels and
dancing, leading up the women. Samuel, upon his
institution of the schools of the prophets, introduced
several kinds of music : so that before Saul's election to
the kingdom, I2 we read of the psaltery, and tabret, the
pipe, and the harp, in use among them. The kings of
the east made it a point of their grandeur and magni-
ficence, to have men to play to them upon several occa-
sions ; and therefore we may suppose, that Saul, when
he came to the throne, in some reasonable time, con-
formed to the mode. David, who was himself a great
master of music, kept in his house " some companies of
singing men and singing women, as the words of old
Barzillai seem to imply; and Solomon, who denied his
heart no pleasure, came not behind his father in this
respect ; for he had his M men-singers and women-singers
likewise, and musical instruments of all sorts. Josephus
tells us, that he had made four hundred thousand, merely
for the use of the temple ; and therefore we may well
suppose, that he had no small variety of them, for the
use of the musicians that attended his person.
M. Le Glerc seems to be of opinion, that the music of
the ancient Hebrews was not very regular : " They were a
nation," says he, " entirely given to agriculture, and had
neither theatres nor any public diversions of this kind ;
all the use which they made of their music, consisted in
singing some sacred hymns, which David instituted ; but
we have no reason to think, that their performances of
this kind were either harmonious or methodical ;" but
now the learned Kircher has confuted all this. For I5 " it
is not probable," says he, " that such an innumerable
quantity of musical instruments, made by the most skil-
ful hands, should serve only to produce some rude and
inartificial sounds. Among the Hebrews there was cer-
tainly a wonderful order of songs and chanters, a won-
derful distribution of the singers, and a wonderful
agreement of words fitted to harmonious notes ; neither
is it likely that all the instruments of one choir, did per-
form their parts in unison, but that they made a various
harmony, with an admirable and accurate contexture of
the upper parts with their respective basses."
But suppose we, as some imagine, that they wanted
the harmony of a concert, or several parts of music go-
ing on at the same time ; yet it is much to be questioned,
whether that simplicity of composition, which resembles
nature most, is not a greater beauty and perfection than
B Gen. iv. 21. :l Gen. xxxi. 27. I0 Exo.l. xv.
" Exod. xv. :>0. l2 1 Sam. x. 5. 13 2 Sam. xix. H5.
M Ec. ii. S. I5 Musurgia Univer. b. 2. c. 4.
a This instrument in Hebrew is named Hugah, and was a
kind of llnte composed of several pipes, of a different bigness,
joined to one another. — Cahnefs DicHonary, under the word
Music.
462 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2888. A. C. 111G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
[Book V.
that combination of several voices and tunes, which con-
stitutes our concerts. For, to use the words of another
author, in a science wherein I profess to be no adept,
1 " The ancients," says he, " had as great a number of
instruments as we ; they had their symphonies, and voices
of all sorts, as well as we ; but then they had this ad-
vantage above us, that their singing voices and instru-
ments neither drowned the words nor destroyed the sense
of what they sung. While their ears were charmed with
the melody, and their hearts touched with the delicacy of
the song, their minds were transported with the beauty
of the words, with the liveliness, grandeur, or tenderness
of the sentiments. So that, at one and the same time,
they had all the pleasurable impressions and sensations
that the most exact imagery of thoughts and sentiments,
joined with symphony, or a true harmony, could produce
in their breasts ;" and for this reason, it is rightly sup-
posed by Josephus, that while David played upon his
harp, he sung psalms and hymns to king Saul, whose
words very probably were adapted to the occasion, and
that both these put together were conducive to his cure ;
though God without doubt, who gave a blessing to his
endeavours, was the principal cause of the removal of
the malady.
That David's skill in playing upon the harp, in a great
measure removed Saul's melancholy, is manifest from his
retiring from court to his father's house, and betaking
himself to his usual occupation of a shepherd. How
long lie continued with his father, the Scripture is silent ;
but a short time might be sufficient to impair the king's
remembrance of him, especially when he appeared in
another dress than what he wore at court, and was just
now come oft' rough from a journey. He had played to
the king indeed, and happily relieved his disorder : but
who knows, but that he then wore an habit proper for his
profession as a musician, and, as clothes make a great
alteration in a man, appeared now quite another creature
in his plain shepherd's garb ? Who knows, but that the
2 minister, whoever he was, that recommended him to
the king, finding that his music proved medicinal to
him, might take the freedom to send to his father, and
request that his son might continue a little longer at
court, even without the king's knowledge or direction ?
And it seems not unlikely, that the office of armour-
bearer, whatever it imported, was a place of honour and
respect, more than strict duty and attendance, because
Ave find David sometimes retiring to his father's house as
not obliged always to reside at court.
Without our supposing then, as some commentators
have done, that Saul's distemper had disturbed his head
and impaired his memory, Ave need but consider the
humour and fashions of a court, the hurry of business
the multitude of servants, the variety of faces, and the
shoals of comers and goers, that are every day seen
there ; and withal, consider the momentous issue of a
battle lost or won, and what full employ the king or his
chief commander must have for all his thought and atten-
tion, when an army is drawn up in array, and ready to
engage ; and then we may easily account both for Saul
and Abner's wanting recollection, when they saw David
disguised in his shepherd's coat, and now entering upon
an action that was quite contrary to the character of a
musician.
3 But after all, the words in the text say nothing of
Saul's forgetfulness of David, or that he inquired who
he was. They only intimate, that he was ignorant of
his family, and desired to be informed from what parent
he was descended ; and considering how many servants
there are in every court, especially in a lower station,
whose pedigree the king knows nothing of, and how apt
Ave are all to forget the names of those that live at a
distance, as Jesse did from Saul, and with whom Ave hold
little or no intercourse, Ave need not much AAonder, that
Saul, avIio had no concern for David's family before this
adventure, should quite forget the name of his father,
living in another country, and Avhich he had cursorily
heard perhaps, but never once fixed in his mind : but
noAv that the son Avas going upon a desperate enterprise,
and Avas 4 to have gTeat riches, as Avell as the king's
daughter, if he came oft' victorious, it did not a little be-
hove the king to Ioioav something more of the parentage
of this young champion, and into Avhat family he Avas to
match his daughter : and upon this presumption, there
is no madness, no absurdity, no incongruity, in his bid-
ding Abner 5 ' to inquire Avhose son the stripling is.'
" It is a brave and gallant youth. I am charmed with
his behaviour. If he falls in the attempt, he shall have
an honourable interment ; if he succeeds, and slays the
giant, he shall be my son-in-laAV." a
The JeAvs give a very romantic reason for David's
going to Achish, the king of the Philistines, namely, that
it Avas to demand an execution of the treaty, AAhereby
the conqueror Avas to have a sovereign power and domin-
ion over the conquered, which Goliath proposed Avhen he
challenged the Israelites ; and that upon this account,
the chief ministers about that king were so alarmed at
his arrival, ' Is not this David, the king of this our land P*
as some take the Avoids. It is apparent, hoAvever, from
the context, that the land, to which these words relate,
is Judea, and that David, at this time, Avas in no condi-
tion to make any high demands.
Saul's rancour and rage against him were so implaca-
ble, and iioav that somanyAvere turned informers against
him, his poAver to apprehend him Avas become so great,
that there Avas no staying any longer in his dominions ;
' Calmet's Dissertation mi the Music » ,f tin
3 Le Clerc's Commentary on ! Sam.xxvii,
Ancients.
55.
3Saurin's Dissertation on the Combat of David. 4 1 Sam. xvii. 25.
s 1 Sam. xvii. 56. b See Sol. Jarchi on 1 Sam. xxi. 12.
a The suppositions of our author to aceount for Saul's inquiry
who David was, after we are told in the text, that lie had been
made Saul's armour-bearer, and had played for a time before him,
is perhaps the best that could be made in the circumstances, but
is by no means satisfactory. In fact, the whole account in the
text is so incoherent, that we can hardly record it as a part of the
original. Accordingly we find, that in the Septuagint, ver. 12
— 31, ver. 41 and ver. 54 to the end of chap. xvii. are awant-
ing, as also, verses 1 — 5, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 19, of chap, xviii. ;
and if the narrative is read, omitting the verses, it will be seen
that nothing is awauting to complete the sense, and make if
connected. These verses are all awauting in the Vatican copy
of the Septuagint; and though they are found in the Codex
Alexandrinus, Kennieott has shown, that, in all probability, they
were not there till Origen inserted them. See Kennicott's Gen.
Diss. p. 9, and Pilkinton's remarks on this passage. Miehaelis,
Dathe, Houbigant, Boothroyd, Dr A. Clarke, and other critics,
consent that these passages are interpolated. Dr Clarke has
quoted a considerable part of Kennicott's remarks, and some most
judicious observations ■uill lie found in Boothroyd's English
, Translation, and also in his Hebrew Bible.— Ed.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN &c.
463
A. M. 2888. A. C. 111G; OK, ACCORDING TO HAL
and therefore David's business was to find out some safe
retreat. All the other neighbouring princes were at
peace with Saul, and must have delivered him up, had
Saul demanded him. Achish was the only one in hos-
tility with him, and therefore his kingdom the most
proper place for David's refuge, where, though he
might not hope to lie long concealed, yet he might
nevertheless promise himself kind quarter, from the ad-
vantages that would accrue to Achish, in attaching to
his interest a person that was evidently the strength of
the Jewish, and terror of the Philistine, army. Hard
was the fate of David, it must be owned, when he was
forced to fly for protection to those whom he had reason
to believe were his bitterest enemies ; but many great
men have been compelled to the same thing; Themis -
tocles to go over to the Persians, and Alcibiades to the
Lacedemonians, without turning apostates to the interest
of their country.
Self-preservation is one of the first laws of nature,
and therefore, if David, when he came to the court of
Achish, found his life in manifest danger, I cannot see
why he might not make use of any means, consistent
with a good conscience for the preservation of it. He
chose to personate the fool, because he presumed that
Achish would readily conclude, that the troubles he had
suffered under Saul's persecution of him, had stupified
his senses, and turned his head. But he was not the
last wise man who put on that disguise ; for 1 did not
Solon, when he found that the Athenians were going to
surrender Salamine, his native country, into the hands
of the people of Megara, counterfeit the madman, that
he might with more impunity take the freedom to divert
them from it ? And 2 Lucius Brutus, that wise imitator
of the fool, as he is called, made use of the same arti-
fice, to escape the suspicion of Tarquin, who had al-
ready murdered his father and eldest brother, in order
to seize on their great riches.
But supposing that there were no examples of other
wise men to countenance this practice of David's ; yet
wherever did we read, in the word of God, that strata-
gems were not allowable against an enemy ? When the
Israelites besieged Ai, God himself gave them orders to
make a feint, as though they iled, that they might there-
by draw the people out of the city ; and can the differ-
ence be so great, in pretending to a want of courage,
and in counterfeiting a deprivation of reason ? A divine
direction indeed was in the one, and we do not read
that it was in the other case ; but why might not God,
who had David always under his immediate care and
protection, put him upon this expedient, as the only
escape he had for his life ? Or if the expedient was
matter of his own invention, since the circumstances he
was in did absolutely require it, it cannot deserve our
blame, according to that common distich, that goes under
no less a name than Cato's :
Insipiens esto, cum tempus postulat, aut res;
Stultitiam simulare loco, prudentia summa est. a
1 his might be some apology for David's conduct at
th"s critical juncture, supposing that he personated the
tool or madman. But if we look into the Scripture ac-
' Diogenes Laertius, b. 1. in Solone.
8 Dionysins Ilalicarn. Antiq. Rom. b. 4.
a Be foolish, when time or circumstance demands; seasonably
to pretend foolishness, is the highest wisdom.
KS. A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. To THE END.
count of this transaction a little more narrowly, we may
possibly perceive, that David did not dissemble or act
a part upon this occasion, but that he was really seized
with a distemper ; and that distemper, in all probability,
was an epilepsy, or falling-sickness.
For whereas it is said of David, that 3 < he was struck
to the heart (for so it should be rendered) at the words
which the officers of Achish said to their master, and
thereupon was sore afraid of the king, lest, at their in-
stigation, he should put him to death ;' nothing is known
to cause an epilepsy sooner * than a sudden and violent
fright. Whereas it is said in our translation, that 4 ' he
changed his behaviour before them ;' the words in the
Hebrew are ' his taste,' whereby some understand his
reason, < was changed ;' but the Septuagint seem to have
hit upon the right sense, ' his visage, or countenance,
was changed ;' for every one knows what a sudden alter-
ation a fit of this distemper occasions in any one's looks.
Whereas it is said in our translation, that he ' feigned
himself mad in their hands,' the Septuagint render it,
' he trembled, and was convulsed in his hands,' as having
no power to direct their motions, which is another known
effect of an epilepsy. Whereas, again, our translation
says, ' that he scrabbled, or according to the marginal
note, made marks f upon the doors of the gate,' the Sep-
tuagint render the words, ' he fell down against the door
of the gate, and the Hebrew word tctva implies, with
such force and violence, as even to leave marks or
prints upon them ; so that he could not but bruise and
hurt himself very much by these falls. Nor is this all ; for
there is something in the words of Achish, if we will
but adhere to the version of the Septuagint, that shows
David's distemper to have been the falling-sickness,
beyond all controversy. For, whereas our translation
is; ' Lo, you see the man is mad, wherefore then have
you brought him to me ? I have no need of madmen ;'
the words of the Septuagint are, * Why did ye bring this
man before me ? Ye see that he is in an epilepsy, and
epileptic men I do not want, AVhy then did ye bring
him to be taken with a fit in my presence ?' Had David
all this while been only playing the fool, as our trans-
lation makes him, he might possibly have given Achish
some diversion (as c fools in great houses were often
kept to give diversion) by his awkward or frantic tricks ;
5 but the horror wherewith the king was struck at the
first sight of him, and his indignation against his officers,
ior bringing him into his presence, are enough to make
3 1 Sam. xxi. 12. 4 1 Sam. xxi. 13.
4 Sauiin, vol. 4. Dissertation 34. in Mr Dumont's Letter.
b The author of the book, which goes under the name of Hip-
pocrates, written professedly upon this subject, irifi "licovi voriiv,
among many other causes of this distemper, makes mention of
a sudden fright as one: "It passes away by reason of an un-
expected fright."
c Tarquin the Proud kept L. Junius Brutus as a fool, for so
lie pretended to be, to divert his children with his absurd dis-
course and actions. But Anacharsis, who lived about three
hundred years after David, complains of this custom among the
Grecians, by telling us, that a man was a creature too serious to
be designed for so ridiculous a purpose ; and to show the con-
tinuance of this custom, Pliny, writing to one of his friends, who
had complained to him, that at a great entertainment, he had
passed his time but very disagreeably, by reason of the kept fools,
who were always interrupting conversation, tells him, that every-
one has his taste, but, as for himself, he could never be delighted
with such extravagancies, though some complaisance was due to
those of another way of thinking. — Epist. 1 7.
464
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[Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1UG; OR, ACCORDING TO HALE
one believe, that his distemper had made him a frightful
object : and therefore the king commanded immediately to
have him removed out of his presence, and out of the
palace.
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that as
David had the true symptoms of an epilepsy upon him,
Avhich, in all probability, was occasioned by a violent
fright; God, in his good providence, might permit this
distemper to befall him at this juncture, in order to facili-
tate his escape out of the hands of Achish, and as soon
as the danger was over, restored him to his former health
again. For this reason we find him, in those psalms,
which he is thought to have composed upon this occasion,
alluding both to the nature of his distemper, and to
God's goodness, in preserving him in it, and delivering
him from it : 1 ' Great are the troubles of the righteous ;
but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. He
keepeth all his bones, so that none of them is broken ;'
and therefore 2 ' unto thee, O God, will I pay my vows,
unto thee will I give thanks ; for thou hast delivered my
soul from death, and my feet from falling, that I may
walk before God in the light of the living.'
David, upon his escape from the court of Achish, not
knowing of any other place of retreat, betook himself to
tfie cave of Adullam, where he found it necessary to pro-
vide for his security, by putting himself upon some foot
of defence. Jonathan, from full conviction, had told
him, (as himself from frequent experience had found,)
that his father, at all adventures, Mould endeavour to take
away his life. His family by this time were fallen under
the displeasure of Saul, and were in danger of being all
cut off' (as lately were the priests of Nob) under pretence of
a conspiracy against him ; and therefore it is no wonder,
that his brethren, having this apprehension of danger be-
fore their eyes, resorted to him for their own security ; no
wonder, that in a times of national discord, refugees of all
kinds, either through their private wants, or the oppression
of their enemies, a disaffection to the government, or a zeal
for the next successor, should flock to David : nor was
David any ways blamable, for receiving them, 3 since
we have abundant reason to presume, that he took none
under his protection, but such as were forced to fly from
Saul's injustice and oppression, nor screened any debt-
ors, but such as were under a real inability to satisfy
their creditors, and were therefore necessitated either to
1 Ps. xxxiv. IS. 2 Ps. lvi. 12, 13.
3 Caimet's Commentary on 1 Sam. xxii. 2.
a Though there be no comparison between the proceedings of
a very righteous and a very wicked man, David and CatiHne
yet it may not be amiss, upon this occasion, to take notice of
what Sallust says of Manlius, Catiline's agent and ambassador.
In Ktruria Manlius was engaged in collecting those individuals
who, oppressed by poverty and grief in having by the tyranny
of Sylla lost their property and effects, were become desirous of
revolution; robbers also of every description, and in no scant
numbers, flocked around his standard, &c. It is not improbable,
however, that the usage now prevailed among the Jews, which
Csesar tells us, anciently obtained among the Gauls, for
those that woe in debt, oppressed by tributes, or the tyranny of
the great, to betake themselves to the service of some eminent
man for protection. By him they were maintained, and to him
they devoted themselves, under a solemn obligation to live and
die with him. These were called in the Gallic language, Sol-
dnrii, from whence the word soldier is derived; and as they
might be honest and good men, though they had the misfortune
to be in debt, or could not submit to tyrannical treatment; so, in
all probability, David's companions were. — Sec the Life of David,
by the author of Revelation Examined.
S, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
leave their country or lose their liberty. The submission
and discipline wherein he kept his people, and the high
notions of respect and reverence which he always infused
into them, for the government and person of the king,
are an ample testimony that he meditated no defection
or revolt ; and the debtors whom he secured from cruel
prosecutions or slavery, he put in a condition to pay
their creditors, by leading them against the enemies of
Israel, from whom, in several expeditions, they returned
laden with rich spoils.
There is one part, however, of David's conduct, that
cannot so well be vindicated ; and that is, what passed
between him and Achish, upon his second retreat to his
court. We may suppose, indeed, that during this inter-
val, an alliance was made between Achish and him,
(though the sacred historian makes no mention of it,)
and that this new ally, hearing how violently Saul perse-
cuted him, might in hopes of making the breach wider, and
of exasperating David against him, voluntarily invite him
into his dominions ; but certainly we cannot but say,
that David should by no means have gone. God had
expressly commanded him by his prophet to return into
the tribe of Judah, and, at the same time, gave him assu-
rance, that he would be his safeguard and protector. It
was therefore an apparent diffidence of God's providence,
which had been so long employed in his preservation,
to make an enemy's country the place of his refuge ; and
a breach it was of truth and fidelity to his new ally, to
make him believe that he was fighting against his foes,
when all the while lie was destroying his confederates.
But what can we say for his conduct, when he joins
forces with the enemies of his country, takes the field
with them, promises to act offensively, and looks upon
it as a kind of slight and indignity to be dismissed ?
4 ' What have I done,' says he to Achish, ' that I may
not go fight against the enemies of my lord the king ?'
One would really suspect, by his asking the question,
that he had an intention, not unlike that of the famous
Marti us Cariolanus, who, to revenge himself of the
ingratitude of his country, joined with the Volsci to
destroy it. But if his intention was either to stand
neuter, or to turn against the Philistines in the day of
battle, his perfidy and ingratitude to Achish must be
open and conspicuous.
In short how well soever we may wish David's cha-
racter, there is no vindicating his conduct in this parti-
cular. Which party soever he had taken, he must have
been culpable ; and one party he must have taken, had not
Providence so timely interposed to preserve his honour,
without injuring his conscience. However, if we would
suppose any thing in extenuation of his fault, we must
represent to ourselves a fugitive, pursued by a formidable
enemy, and every moment in danger of falling into his
hands ; this fugitive kindly received at a foreign court,
and protected by a prince that was in hostility with his
persecutor ; this prince expecting of his refugee, in con-
sideration of the favours he had conferred on him, that
he should attend him to the war, and espouse his cause
against their common enemy ; and all this while the other
bound in gratitude not to be uncivil, and considering the
dangerous situation of his own affairs, not daring to dis-
cover his real purposes. If we imagine this, 1 say, we
1 Sam, xxix. 8.
Ibid. xiii. 14. and xv. 28.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
465
A. M. if
A. C. 111G; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
must allow, that if in any case, what they call a finesse
in policy were allowable, it was in this of David's, when
he had unhappily brought himself into these circumstances.
It may seem a little strange, perhaps, that David, who
in these and several other grosser instances, could not
but be culpable in the eyes of God, should nevertheless
be styled in Scripture, ' ' the man after his own heart;'
but, whoever observes the occasion of that expression,
will find that it ought to be taken in a comparative sense
only, and in derogation indeed to Saul, whose trans-
gression, in sparing Amalek, the prophet Samuel was
then reproving ; that in executing his decrees upon the
idolatrous nations round about him, David would be
more punctual, and not so remiss as Saul had been ; and
in this respect would conform to the divine will, or be
the man after God's own heart. This seems to be the
primary sense of the words, though the common solution,
viz. that though David was a great and grievous sinner,
yet the severity of his repentance cleared him in the
sight of God, and made an amends for the enormity of
his transgressions, be not much amiss.
It cannot, however, with justice be said, that David
was any ways culpable in sparing the life of Saul,
even when Providence seems to have put it in his hand.
This trial God made of his virtue and clemency ; and a
glorious conquest it was, not only to overcome his own
resentments, which were justly enough founded against
Saul, but the arguments and instigations likewise of those
about him : 2 ' Behold the day, of which the Lord said
unto thee, Behold, 1 will deliver thine enemy into thine
hand, that thou mayest do to him, as it shall seem good
unto thee.' God had delivered him into his hand, indeed ;
but had given him no order, or permission to slay Saul.
3 He had promised him the kingdom likewise, but would
by no means allow him to ascend the throne by blood.
His title to the succession was real and incontestable, but
not allowed to be put in force, or himself to attempt, by
ways of violence, the possession of the crown, as long as
Saul was permitted by God to reign, and recognised as
sovereign by the people. David, as yet, being only a
private man, had no authority to wage war against Saul ;
and though it be allowable for any one to defend him-
self against any unjust aggressor, and to repel force by
force, yet this must be done only in order to secure his
own life, and not to take away that of his adversary ; for
what the apostle says of judging, or censuring, is much
more forcible in the matter of killing : 4 ' Who art thou
that judgest another man's servant? To his own master
he standeth, or falleth ; for there is one lawgiver, who
is able to save, and to destroy : who art thou then that
judgest another ?' And these rules, which ought to be
observed by private persons, are much more extensive
when they relate to a prince and his subject. The sub-
ject is obliged in duty, even though he be innocent, to
bear patiently the ill-treatment of his prince. David,
no doubt, was conscious of his own integrity ; but Mere
it not for the preceding promises of God in his favour,
and the orders which, from time to time, he received
from the high priest's oracle, it would not have been so
easy a matter to justify some part of his conduct. His
1 1 Sam. xiii. 14. and xv. 28. 2 1 Sam. xxiv. 4.
* Calmet.'s Commentary on 1 Sam. xxiv. 4.
4 Rom. xiv. 4. and Jam. iv. 12.
flying from his country, enlisting men, and putting him-
self in a condition of defence, would, even under our mild
government, be looked upon as seditious and rebellious
proceedings. And therefore we may suppose, that David
himself might not have so favourable an opinion of the
course of life he was compelled at that time to follow ;
might think that he gave some umbrage to Saul's jea-
lousy, and suspicion of him ; and might thereupon be
more inclinable to excuse the violence of his persecu-
tion, and to make no other use of the advantages he had
against him, than to demonstrate his own innocence, and
the groundlessness of the other's suspicions ; for such
seems to be the sense of his own words : 5 ' Wherefore
doth my lord thus pursue after his servant ? For, what
have I done, or what evil is in my hand ? Wherefore
hearest thou men's words, saying, David seeketh thy hurt ?
Behold this day thine eyes have seen how the Lord hath
delivered thee into mine hand in the cave, but mine eye
spared thee ; therefore cursed be they before the Lord,
who make this difference betwixt us ; for they have
driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance
of the Lord.' For herein he not only pleads his own
innocence, and good intentions towards the king, but, in
some measure, excuses the king's conduct towards him,
as being under the influence of evil counsellors, who
both imposed upon the king's credulity, and compelled
him to such a method of life as was far from being agree-
able to his interest or inclination.
Upon many accounts, therefore, it was an act of his
great and generous soul, for David to spare the life of
his severest enemy. But though we cannot, in like man-
ner, justify his indignation against Nabal, and the oath
which he swore to destroy his whole family ; yet some-
thing may be offered in excuse of it, if we attend a little
to what occasioned it, and the too common effect which
such treatment, as Nabal's was, is apt to have upon such
spirits as we may suppose David's to have been. David
while he continued in the wilderness of Paran, had given
his men charge, not only to do no injury to Nabal's
shepherds and herdsmen, but even to protect and assist
them, in case they were invaded by any of the neigh-
bouring Arabians ; and now that their master was shear-
ing his sheep, which was always a festival season, not far
from the place where David was encamped, to showhiin
the greater respect, he sent no less than ten young men
of his company to make his compliments to him, and, in
the most civil manner, to request something of him, as it
was the custom to be generous and liberal at such a time
as that, for the relief of himself and his followers, in this
form : 6 ' Peace be to thee,' as the young men's instruc-
tions were, ' and peace be to thine house, and peace be
unto all thou hast.' Peace, in the sacred language, com-
prehends all manner of blessings, both spiritual and
temporal ; and therefore a higher compliment, as he
say, or a more affectionate salutation, could not have
been devised : ' And now I have heard that thou hast
shearers, and thy shepherds, which were with us, we hurt
them not, neither was there ought missing unto them, all
the while that they were in Carmel :' a sufficient argu-
ment, one would think, to engage Nabal's grateful ac-
knowledgment : because it certainly was a matter of
DO small courtesy, for a body of men in arms, and in
1 Sam. xxiv. 9, 10.
6 1 Sam. xxv. &c.
466
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1UC
want of the common necessaries of life not to take by
violence what they could not be hindered from. Such
men claim a kind of license to do injuries with impunity ;
and therefore it ought to be deemed a great favour, when
they do them not David and his men, however, are so
far from magnifying their services to Nabal, that they
only say, ! ' they did them no hurt ;' whereas his own
servants acknowledge, ' that they were a defence,
and a wall to them both by night and by day, all the
while that they were with them keeping sheep.' Upon
this presumption, the matter of their request was,
' Let the young men find favour in thine eyes, (for we
come in a good day ;) give, I pray thee, whatsoever
cometh unto thine hand unto thy servants, and thy son
David.' Words can hardly be invented more full of re-
spect and humility ; 2 for he pays a deference to Nabal,
either upon the account of his seniority, or descent from
the same tribe, and desires no rarities, no delicates, but
any tiling that first came to hand, and what he could most
conveniently spare.
Nabal, as we just now hinted, was of the same tribe
with David, and could not therefore be supposed igno-
rant either of his exploits in defence of his country, or
of the true cause of Saul's indignation against him :
and yet, observe the rudeness and insolence of his
answer to such a civil message and humble request :
3 ' Who is David, and who is the son of Jesse ? There
are many servants now-a-days, that break every man
from his master. Shall I take the provisions I have
made, for my shearers, and give them unto men, whom
I know not whence they are ?' Nothing certainly could
be more provoking than such an answer as this. The
charging David with being a vagabond, and rebel to his
prince, was a reproach insufferable to a man of a liberal
spirit, who knew himself innocent : and therefore no
wonder that David, upon the report of the messengers,
who were themselves brought under the same predica-
ment, and therefore had no reason to alleviate matters,
was resolved, in his passion, to be revenged upon Nabal.
For 4 there were four things in the matter before us that
seem to have inflamed his resentment, and put him upon
this sanguinary design. 1st, The want which both he
and his companions, at present laboured under, but
hoped to have relieved out of the abundance of a wealthy
man, who might easily have done it without hurting him-
self. 2dly, the deception he was under, in finding no
compensation made him, for the care which he and his
people had taken of Nabal's cattle, though perhaps he
had given them his word and assurance that something
of tliis kind would be done. 3dly, The resentment which
easily rises in the breast of any generous man, when,
instead of thanks, and a grateful acknowledgment, he
meets with contumely and opprobrious language. And
■lthly, The vexation which an innocent man, conscious of
his own merits, and the services he had done his king and
country, must necessarily feel, when he perceives him-
self vilified and treated as a scoundrel. * Fugitive and
slave are imputations of the grossest nature ; and when
retorted by an ungrateful person upon his guardian and
benefactor, are provocations past bearing.
Any one of these things singly was enough to irritate
A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
OK. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301.
a man of a lofty spirit ; but all put together, could hardly
fail of inflaming his mind to such a degree, as to make
him lose the government of his passions, and fall into the
most vindictive rage, which is generally more observ-
able in military men, whose courage and spirits run high,
and being too much accustomed to blood and slaughter,
even in lawful wars, have not that dread and abhorrence
of cruel and outrageous executions, as the rest of man-
kind have, who live more retired and peaceable lives.
It was to the sudden transport of Davids passion
then, and perhaps that exasperated by the instigations of
his own men, that we are to impute his vow, and design
of destroying Nabal's family : and though in this we
cannot commend him, yet certainly there' is something-
praiseworthy in his speedy reconciliation upon Abi-
gail's first address and application to him, in the room of
her husband : 6 ' Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which
sent thee this day to me ; and blessed be thy advice, and
blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming
to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own
hand.' 7 ' In a word, the resolution against Nabal, as
one elegantly expresses it, was the resolution of a mor-
tal, not to say a military man, too much injured and
provoked, and urged by necessity and self-preservation :
the change and the thanksgiving, upon being averted
from evil, were the sentiments of an hero and a saint.'
The Jews indeed, as Ave quoted the objection from
Josephus, give us an high commendation of Saul, and
seem to prefer him before David himself, in regard to
the magnanimity of his death. But it is much to be
questioned, whether self-murder, which was certainly
Saul's case, be an act of magnanimity or not. For be-
sides that the laws of all nations have condemned it, as
abhorrent to the dictates of nature and reason, of self-
love and self-preservation, the wisest of the heathen
world ever looked upon it as an instance of madness
and brutality, and with great wisdom have concluded,
that such an action is so far from savouring of true cour-
age and generosity, that a it is the sure effect of a weak
and pusillanimous temper of mind ; since true greatness
of soul as they justly argue, consists in supporting the
evils of adversity, and not in shifting them off*, which is
a mark of a poor impatient spirit, sinking under the com-
mon calamities of life, and not knowing how to bear the
blows of bad fortune. 8 ' Draw thy sword, and thrust
me through therewith, lest the uncircumcised come and
mock, or abuse me,' b was the request which Saul made
to his armour-bearer, and shows that it was not bravery
and courage, but the fear of insults, and a conscious
1 Sam. xxv. 16. 2 Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
» J 6am. xxv. 10, II. < Le Clerc's Comment, in locum.
' The Life of King David.
G 1 Sam. xxv. 32, 33. 7 Life of King David. 8 1 Sam. xxxi. 4.
a By the proper understanding of the right rules of reason,
that is not reckoned a true greatness of soul when any one, in
not being able to endure the calamities of life, undertakes to end
them by laying violent hands on himself; for it is rather a dis-
play of weakness of mind when a man cannot endure either the
oppressive slavery of his own body, or the sneer of a dastardly
world, and surely greater magnanimity must deservedly be said
to belong to him who would rather fight than fly from the struggle
of a calamitous life.— Aug. de Civit. Dei, b. 1. c. 22. And to
the same purpose is that in an heathen author: 'It is an easy
matter to despise a life of adversity ; he is the true hero who can
bo miserable.' — Martial, Epig.
b How much nobler was that resolution of Darius, who, find-
ing himself betrayed, and that he was either to be murdered by
his own subjects, or delivered into the hands of Alexander, would
not however be his own executioner. ' I had rather,' says he,
' die by another's guilt, than my own.' — Curtius, b. 5.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
467
A. M. 2888. A. C. tllG; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
inability to bear them with a becoming superiority of
mind, that made him shun the storm, when he saw it ap-
proaching-, by withdrawing' from the stage of life.
Saul's case indeed was very dolorous ; but he had not
therefore any authority to destroy himself. His life was
a sacred depositum of God's, and not to be taken away
without invading his right, and violating his laws at the
same time. For whatever some may think of the silence
of the Scripture concerning self-murder, there is no
question to be made, but that it is included in the sixth
commandment, under which Saul then lived. 1 The
commandment forbids murder in general ; and it is cer-
tainly as much murder, to kill ourselves, as to kill ano-
ther man : and the reason which the Scripture gives,
why we are not allowed to do it, in both cases, is the
same, because 2' in the image of God, made he man.'
For if I must not shed the blood of another, because he
is made in the image of God; I must not shed the blood of
mine own self, because I also am a man, and made in the
image of God, as well as he. The reason therefore why
we have not more frequent prohibitions against this sin
is plainly this, 3 that whatever sins or offences God, as a
lawgiver, prohibits, he prohibits with a penalty, that is,
he affixes such a punishment to such a crime, and he
who commits the crime, is to undergo the punishment in
this world, whether it be restitution, loss of limb, or loss
of life itself. But now this can never happen in the
case of self-murder, because self-murder prevents all
punishment, the man being dead, before any cognizance
can be taken of his offence, and therefore prevents all
laws concerning it ; and can, consequently, only be in-
cluded under general commands, and forbidden as a sin,
whereof God alone can take cognizance in the world to
come.
Since, upon the whole then, Saul may be said to have
died in an act of cowardice, and in the violation of
God's law, whereof he had no space to repent, it has
been a matter of some inquiry, what we are to think of
his salvation. The Scripture indeed tells us, that4 ' Saul
died for his transgression, which he committed against
the Lord, and also for asking counsel of one who had a
familiar spirit, to inquire of it, and inquired not of the
Lord ; and therefore the Lord slew him.' But it is
doing a manifest violence to the sense of these words,
to apply them as some have done, to his final perdition,
when they plainly relate to no more than his temporal
death. The dangerous and destructive nature of self-
murder is, that it makes repentance, the only revealed
condition of man's salvation, impossible ; but then we
are to know, that in that inexhaustible fountain of good-
ness, there may be some uncovenanted mercy, some so-
vereign and prerogative grace, that may make favour-
able allowances for the distraction of men's thoughts or
passions, the violence of their fears or troubles, or the
over-bearing weight of any other temptation.
But to determine this question more peremptorily,
though it certainly be consonant to the mercy and good-
ness of (jod, to think, that no man shall answer for any
miscarriage which is wholly occasioned by the power of
a disease, or the distraction of the brain, because what-
ever is committed, in such a case, is not the man's free
1 Fleetwood against Self-murder.
» Fleetwood against Self-murder.
2 Gen. xi. G.
■ 1 Chi on. x. 13,14.
act, and consequently cannot be his guilt ; yet we have
no reason to presume, that the case is not so with those,
who, out of pride, or haughtiness, fear of miseries to
come, or impatience under present sufferings, distrust of
God's providence, or despair of his mercy, lay violent
hands upon themselves ; because the act was both vol-
untary and vicious, and not to be amended by repent-
ance : but without limiting thy goodness, O Lord, unto
thy mercy we commit their souls !
Thus we have endeavoured to satisfy most of the po-
pular objections which have been raised against several
facts, occurring in the first book of Samuel ; and for the
farther confirmation thereof, we shall only instance in
one or two ancient traditions among the heathens, which
in all probability derived their original from this part of
sacred history. The Scythians, upon their return out of
Egypt, passiiig through the country of the Philistines,
robbed the temple of Venus at Askalon, and for their
punishment (as 5 Herodotus tells us) they, and their pos-
terity, were for a long while afflicted with emerods.
Whereupon ° the learned Prideaux remarks, that the Phi-
listines had till then preserved the memory of what they
had formerly suffered on account of the ark of God. The
Athenians when the mysteries of Bacchus were brought
out of Bceotia, having not received them with all the
pomp and solemnity that the god expected, were smitten
7 with a disease in their secret parts, which resembled
the malady of the people of Ashdod, and so did their
cure too ; for having consulted the oracle, they were in-
formed, that the way to get rid of their plague, was to
offer unto Bacchus golden figures of the part wherein
they were afflicted. The Grecians, at the taking of
Troy, discovered an ark dedicated to Bacchus ; and
when Eurypilus, as Pausanias 8 tells us, adventured to
open it, he found therein the image of the god, but was
immediately deprived of his senses for daring to look
into it ; which seems to be a plain transcript from the
irreverence and fate of the Bethshemites. 9 Clemens
Alexandrinus has observed, that the fable of JSacus's
praying for rain in a great drought, and when Greece
was sadly distressed for want of corn, was borrowed
from that part of Samuel's history, where he is said to
have called down thunder and rain, in the time of
wheat harvest, when the sky was all serene and clear :
and therefore we need less wonder at the story be-
tween Saul and the witch of Endor, when we read of
Circe, Medea, Erichtho, Manto, Antonoe, and several
other women, who, in the heathen world, became famous
for their necromancy, and of the many votaries that re-
sorted to them ; when we find Statius introducing Tire-
sias, as raising altars, making libations, and offering
sacrifices, a with solemn invocations to the infernal gods ;
and Homer himself, spending a great part of 1U one book
of his poem, in representing Ulysses as invocating the
ghost of this same Tiresias, and attending to the oracles
which proceeded from his mouth. These things had
their foundations in some early traditions, which at first
5 B. 1. " Connection of the Old and New Testament, part
1. b. 1. |>. 44. 7 See Aiistonh. Scholiast, in Acfaarn. act. 2.
8 In Achaic. c 10. |>. 572. 9 Stromat. 6. 10 Odyss. 11.
a The winds of his invocation are these: " To him that knocks
unfold the silent dens, and from their abodes of gloom call forth
the aerial subjects of the cruel l\ rsephone's murky realms, that
the Stygian ferryman may return with a full cargo."
468
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
arose from the facts contained in the sacred writings,
which are confessedly the most ancient records we have ;
and in this respect are an argument of their veracity,
since we find them alluded to by subsequent authors, who
had no regard to their authority.
CHAP. III. — On the Jewish Theocracy.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
It is of great importance to have a right understanding
of the nature and design of that government under which
the Israelites were placed on their departure from the
land of Egypt. This has been called a Theocracy, that
is, a government of which God is the immediate Head.
The persons to whom the administration of this govern-
ment was committed, were neither legislators nor sover-
eigns ; but merely officers who acted under the authority
of God, whose duty it was to see the laws which he had
enacted put in force.
It is evident that the fundamental principle of the
Mosaic law was the maintenance of one true God, and
the prevention, or rather proscription, of polytheism and
idolatry. The covenant of Jehovah with the Hebrew
people, and their oath by which they bound their allegi-
ance to Jehovah their God and King, was, that they
should receive and obey the laws which he should
appoint as their supreme Governor, with a particular
engagement to keep themselves from the idolatry of the
nations around them. In keeping this allegiance to
Jehovah, as their immediate and supreme Lord, they
were to expect the blessings of God's immediate and
particular protection, in the security of their liberty,
peace, and prosperity, against all attempts of their
idolatrous neighbours; but if they should break their
allegiance to Jehovah, or forsake his covenant, by going
and serving other gods, then they should forfeit these
blessings of God's protection.1 In this constitution, it
will be observed, that it is enforced chiefly by temporal
sanctions, and with singular wisdom, for temporal bless-
ings and evils were at that time the common and prevail-
ing incitements to idolatry ; but bythus taking them into
the Hebrew constitution, as rewards to obedience and
punishments for disobedience, they became motives to
continuance in the true religion, instead of encourage-
ments to idolatry.2
In the theocracy of the Hebrews, the laws were given
to them by God, through the mediation of Moses, and
they were to be of perpetual force and obligation, so
long as their policy subsisted. The judges by whom
these laws were administered, were represented as holy
persons, and as sitting in the place of God.3 These
judges were usually taken from the tribe of Levi, and
the chief expounder of the law was the high priest. In
difficult cases of law, however, relating both to govern-
ment and war, God was to be consulted by Urim and
Thunimiin ; and in matters which concerned the welfare
of the state, God frequently made known his will by pro-
1 Deut. xix.25— • 27.
' Lovrman on the Civil Constitution of the Hebrews; Dr
GravesV Lecture!! on the Pentateuch, v. 2. pp. HI 1^5.
8 Deut. i. 17; xix. 7.
phets, whose mission was duly attested, and the people
were bound to hearken to their voice. In all these cases,
Jehovah appears as sovereign King, ruling his people
by his appointed ministers.
A subordinate design of this constitution of the
Hebrew government was, the prevention of intercourse
between the Israelites and foreign nations. The preva-
lence of the most abominable idolatry among those
nations, and the facility with which the Israelites had,
on more than one occasion, adopted their idolatrous
rites, during their sojourning in the wilderness, rendered
this seclusion necessary, in order to secure the funda-
mental principle of the Mosaic law above-mentioned ;
and many of the peculiar laws will, on this principle, be
found both wisely and admirably adapted to secure this
design.4
The form of the Hebrew republic was unquestionably
democratic. When Moses promulgated the laws, he
convened the whole congregation of Israel, to whom he
is repeatedly said to have spoken ; but as he could not
possibly be heard by six hundred thousand men, we
must conclude that he only addressed a certain number
of persons, who were deputed to represent the rest of the
Israelites. By comparing Deut. xxix. 9. with Joshua
xxiii. 2. it appears that these representatives were the
heads of tribes, of families, and judges, and officers.
All the various branches of Abraham's descendants,
like the ancient Germans, or the Scottish clans, kept
together in a body according to their tribes and families ;
each tribe forming a lesser commonwealth, with its pecu-
liar interests, and all of them at last uniting into one
great republic. The same arrangement, it is well known,
obtained among the Israelites, who appear to have been
divided into twelve great tribes, previously to their
departure from Egypt. By Moses, however, they were
subdivided into certain great families, which are called
families by way of distinction : each of whom, again, had
their heads, which are sometimes called, heads of Jtonses
of fathers, and sometimes simply heads. These are like-
wise the same persons, who in Josh, xxiii. 2. and xxiv. 1.
are called elders. It does not appear in what manner these
heads or elders of families were chosen, when any of
them died. The princes or heads of tribes did not
cease with the monarchy ; for it is evident that they sub-
sisted in the time of David ; 5 and they must have
proved a powerful restraint upon the power of the
king.
It will now be readily conceived how the Israelitish
state might have subsisted not only without a king, but
even occasionally without that magistrate who was called
a judge. Every tribe had always its own chief magis-
trate, who may not inaptly be compared to the lords
lieutenants of our British counties : subordinate to them,
again, were the heads of families, who may be repre-
sented as their depute-lieutenants, and if there were no
general ruler of the whole people, yet there were twelve
smaller commonwealths, who in certain cases united
together, and whose general convention would take
measures for their common interest. In many cases par-
ticular tribes acted as distinct and independent republics,
not only when there was neither king nor judge, but even
1 Michaelis's Commentaries, &c. vol. 1.
5 1 Chr. xvii. 10—22.
Srct. 1 11.1
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
469
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
during the times of the kings. Instances of wars being
carried on by one or more particular tribes, both before
and after the establishment of the regal government, may
be seen in Josh. xvii. 15 — 17. Judg. iv. 11. and xviii—
xx. 1 Chron. iv. 18 — 23. It appears from 1 Chron. xxiii.
11. that a certain number of persons was necessary to con-
stitute a family, and to empower such a family to have a
representative head : for it is there said, that the four
sons of Shimei had not a numerous progeny, and were
therefore reckoned only as one family. Hence we may
explain why, according to Micah v. 1. Bethlehem may
have been too small to be reckoned among the families
of Judah. It is impossible to ascertain, at this distance
of time, what number of individuals was requisite to
constitute a house or family.1
The judges who were appointed by Moses, had also
a right by virtue of their office, to be present in the con-
gregation, or convention of the state. After the depar-
ture of the Israelites from Egypt, Moses, for some time,
was their sole judge. Jethro, his father-in-law, observ-
ing that the daily duties of this office were too heavy
for him, suggested to him the institution of judges, or
rulers of tens, of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands,
who determined every affair of little importance among
themselves, but brought the hard causes to Moses. 2 Of
the judges of tens, therefore, there must have been sixty
thousand; of the judges of fifties, twelve thousand; of
the judges of hundreds, six thousand ; and of the judges
of thousands, six hundred. These judges seem to have
been a sort of justices of the peace in several divisions,
probably taken from the military division of a host into
thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens ; this was a model
proper for them as an army marching, and not unsuit-
able to their settlement as tribes and families, in a sort
of counties, hundreds, and tithings.
After the Hebrews were established in the land of
Canaan, Moses ordained that judges should be appointed
in every city, 3 and it should seem that they were chosen
by the people. In succeeding ages these judicial of-
fices were filled by the Levites, most probably because
they were the persons best skilled in the law of the
Hebrews.
During the sojourning of the Israelites in the wilder-
ness, Moses established a council or senate of seventy,
to assist him in the government of the people. The
Jewish rabbinical writers, who have exercised their in-
genuity in conjecturing why the number was limited to
seventy, have pretended that this was a permanent and
supreme court of judicature ; but as the sacred writers
are totally silent concerning such a tribunal, we are
authorized to conclude that it was only a temporary
institution. After their return from the Babylonish
captivity, it is well known that the Jews did appoint a
Sanhedrim or council of seventy at Jerusalem, in imita-
tion of that which Moses had instituted. In the New
Testament, very frequent mention is made of this su-
preme tribunal, of which an account will be found in a
subsequent part of this work.
Thus, the form of the Jewish government was, as .lo-
sephus very properly terms it, a theocracy, under which
sins as well as crimes were punished, and piety and
1 Michael. Commentary, vol. I. p. 844. 3 Exod.xvii. 14, 26.
s Deut. xvi. 18.
private virtue, as well as public services to the state,
rewarded even in this world. No other government, at
least since the earliest ages, has been, or indeed could
be, administered in this manner, for no government ad-
ministered by mere man can either punish or reward
any thing but overt acts ; nor do ordinary civil govern-
ments concern themselves with the practice of religious
duties or private virtues, farther than those duties arid
virtues affect the peace of society. Without taking
cognizance of these things, however, the civil constitu-
tion of the Israelites- would not have answered the pur-
pose for which that people was separated from the rest
of the world ; for their minds in general were too gro-
velling to have been restrained from the universal pro-
pensity to polytheism and idolatry which then prevailed,
by any thing but immediate rewards for duties performed,
and immediate punishment for impiety and vice.
That this theocratic government continued until the
elevation of Saul to the throne is unquestionable. From
the death of Joshua to that period, the highest per-
manent officer in the state as well as in the church was
evidently the high priest : and this was the natural con-
sequence of God himself being the supreme civil gover-
nor of the nation. Occasional magistrates were indeed
raised up from time to time under the denomination of
judges ; but from their history it appears that their of-
fice was rather military than civil ; that most of them
were employed in leading armies to battle against the
oppressors of their country rather than in dispensing
justice to the people ; that they were raised up by an
immediate impulse from heaven, and not by the choice of
the nation ; and that when they were not themselves
supernaturally enlightened by the Spirit of God, they
were to undertake nothing of importance, either in peace
or in war, but by the direction of the high priest, after
he had consulted God for them by Urim.
Such was the theocratic government of Israel in the
time of the judges ; but when, toward the end of Samuel's
administration, the people mutinously demanded a king
to reign over them, and God directed the prophet to
comply with their request, the general opinion till very
lately, was, and perhaps still is, that the government of
Israel ceased to be theocratic, and became such a mon-
archy as other civil governments which are administered
by one man. Such indeed they wished it to be ; for
their demand was to " have a king over them, that they
also might be like the nations ;" and in this sense their
demand was understood both by God and by the prophet.
' They have not rejected thee, said the Lord to Samuel,
but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over
them ;' and had their demand been granted to the ut-
most extent of their wishes, they would very quickly
have proceeded to abrogate the law, and to reject Je
hovah as their only God.
The magistrate called a king in those days and
countries around them, was supreme and absolute. His
edicts were laws, which he could enforce, suspend, or
abrogate, at his pleasure ; but such authority never was
possessed by Saul, by David, or by any other king,
either of Israel or of Judah. All writers on politics
have agreed, indeed all men capable of reflection must
agree, that in every government there is necessarily a
power, from which the constitution has provided no
appeal, and which may therefore be termed absolute,
470
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[Book V.
A. M.2888. A. C. 111G ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
that Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king in-
stead of David his father. And the queen of Sheba, who
had doubtless been informed by Solomon of the true na-
ture of his kingdom, compliments him in these words,
' Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighteth in thee
to set thee on his throne, to be king for the Lord thy
God.' In like manner, Ahijah says to the house of
Israel, on their defection from Rehoboam ; ' And now
ye think to withstand the kingdom of the Lord in the
hands of the sons of David.' l
VII. " The penal laws against idolatry were still in
force during their kings, and put in execution by their
best rulers; which alone is a demonstration of the sub-
sistence of the theocracy ; because such law would be
absolutely unjust under any other form of government. 2
VIII. " It appears that a certain degree of inspiration
was vouchsafed to their several kings, or at least to
the first of each dynasty of kings, to enable them to
discharge properly the duties of God's vicegerents,
and that this gift was not withdrawn till they were re-
jected from their high office, or had rendered themselves
unworthy of it. Thus when Saul was anointed to be
captain over the Lord's inheritance, as soon as he had
turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him ano-
ther heart, and turned him into a new man, to qualify
him, as Bishop Patrick observes, for the government of
his people ; but when he had rendered himself, by his
rebellions against his divine sovereign, unworthy of the
office, that spirit was withdrawn from him, and conferred
on David, who was anointed to succeed him. In like
manner, when Solomon succeeded to the kingdom, God
bestowed on him ' a wise and understanding heart, to
enable him to govern and judge the people,' who are
expressly called not Solomon's, but God's people." 3
It is justly observed by Warburton, that had the peo-
ple's demand of a king been complied with in the sense
and to the extent that they meant it, the equal and ex-
traordinary providence, rewarding piety and virtue in
this world, and punishing idolatry and vice, must have
been withdrawn from them ; and that they could not then
have supported themselves under an ordinary providence
in which ' all things here come alike to all,' surrounded
as they were by exasperated enemies, more powerful
than themselves. But it is of more importance perhaps
to consider the equal and extraordinary providence as
necessary at that period, and long afterwards, to check
their propensities to idolatry, and to prepare them gra-
dually for the reception of that future Messiah, promised
to their forefathers, in whom all the nations of the earth
were to be blessed. A long succession of prophets was
accordingly sent to open up gradually the nature of that
dispensation, which Moses had taught them to expect
from a prophet to be raised up among them like unto
him ; and to remove, by little and little, the shadows of
their law, as they became more and more able to bear
the splendour of the light within. That splendour,
however, the nation at large was never considered
fully able to bear ; and therefore the extraordinary pro-
vidence was never wholly withdrawn from them till some
time after their return from their Babylonish captivity,
by which they appear to have been completely cured of
omnipotent, and uncontrollable. But this power can be
nothing else than the legislature ; and where the right of
enacting and executing the laws is vested in different
bodies, the government is more or less free according
to circumstances. The sole legislator of Israel was
God ; and therefore, as the kings could neither enact a
new law nor repeal an old one, the government continued
to be a theocracy, as well under their permanent admin-
istration, as it was under the occasional administration
of the judges ; and the only difference that we can
discover between the two species of government, is, that
the conduct of Judges was generally directed by him,
and that of the kings either by the inspiration of God
vouchsafed to themselves, or by prophets raised up from
time to time to reclaim them when deviating from their
duty as laid down by the law. That the theocracy ended
not with the judges, has been proved by Bishop Warbur-
ton in so masterly a manner, that I should do my reader
injustice were I not to lay before him an abstract of that
learned and ingenious prelate's reasoning on the subject.
I. " Though the people's purpose, in their clamours
for a king, was indeed to live under a Gentile monarchy,
like their idolatrous neighbours ; yet in compassion to
their blindness, God, in this instance, as in many others,
indulged their prejudices, without exposing them to the
fatal consequences of their project, which, if complied
with in the sense in which they had formed it, would have
been a withdrawing from them of his extraordinary pro-
vidence, at a time when they could not support them-
selves without it. He therefore gave them a king ; but
such a one as was only his viceroy or deputy : and who,
on that account, was not left to the people's election,
but chosen by himself, and chosen foe life, which it does
not appear that all the judges were.
II. " This king had an unlimited executive power as
God's viceroy, for which he was amenable to God alone,
whom David therefore repeatedly calls his own King, as
well as the King of Israel.
III. ': He had no legislative authority, which every
king then had, but which no viceroy could possibly have.
David and Solomon indeed appointed the courses of the
priests ; but the latter is said to have done so according
to the order of the former, who is expressly styled ' the
man of God,' who, therefore, acted under the direction
of the Holy Spirit.
IV. " The king was placed and displaced by God at
pleasure, of which as viceroy, we see the perfect fitness ;
but as sovereign, by the people's choice or by any other
right, we cannot easily account for. No doubt God is
by inherent right the sovereign Dispenser of all things
both in heaven and in earth ; but in the establishing of
the government of Israel, he appears to have treated
with that people, as men equally independent treat with
each other, and to have left it at first to their own option
wlielher they would have himself for their King.
V. " The very same punishment was ordained for
cursing 'the king as for blaspheming God, namely,
stoning to death ; and the reason is intimated in these
words of Abishai to David — ' Shall not Shimei be put to
dcntli for this, because he cursed the Lord's anointed ?'
the common title of the kings of Israel and of Judah.
VI. " The throne and kingdom of Judea is all along
expressly declared to be God's throne and God's king-
dom. Thus, in the first book of Chronicles, it is said,
2Di
1 1 Sam. ix.
b, 5. sec. '3.
2 6am. iii. 5 — 15.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
471
A. M. 28S3. A. C. 1116; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 1301. A. C. 1110. 1 3AM. i. TO THE END.
their propensities to polytheism, and led to turn their
attention more steadily to the prospect of that future
state, which had been presented to them by some of their
later prophets.
During the captivity Bishop Warburton supposes that
the administration of the theocracy lay, as it were, in
abeyance, but it appears that the Jews were there per-
mitted to live as far as possible, that is, to regulate
their own private concerns, by their own laws ; and we are
sure that they were protected by a miraculous interposi-
tion of providence, from the tyranny of those who
attempted to compel them to worship idols or to neglect
the worship of their own God. l On their return to their
own country, however, the theocratic government was
again administered, as is evident from the declaration of
the Almighty, by the prophet Haggai : ' yet now be
strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord ; and be strong, O
Joshua, son of Josedech the high priest ; and be strong
all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work, for
I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts : according to
the word that I covenanted with you when you came out
of Egypt, so my Spirit remaineth amongst you : fear ye
not.' a " What was that covenant?" asks the Bishop.
" That Israel should be his people, and he their God
and King. It cannot barely mean, that he would be their
God, and they should be his people ; for this was but
part of the covenant. Nor can it mean that they should
be conducted by an extraordinary providence, as at their
coming out of Egypt, and during the first periods of the
theocracy, for this was but the effect of the covenant,
which soon ceased after their re-establishment in their
own country."
Then indeed the extraordinary providence was wholly
withdrawn from the Jews, among whom, as among other
nations, there was thenceforth, ' one event in this world,
to the righteous and to the wicked,' whose prosperity or
adversity appeared no longer to be the result, as for-
merly, of their righteousness or their sins. Still, however,
their government continued to be a theocracy ; for they
were governed by laws which, as they were given by God,
none but God could repeal or change. If then, as all
writers on political philosophy agree, every government
receives its denomination from the supreme or sovereign
power of the state ; and if no power can be supreme, but
that in which resides the power of legislation, it is obvious
that the government or constitution of the Jewish state
continued to be a theocracy till the coming of that pro-
phet, who was to be a lawgiver like unto Moses ; for
none else had, or could have authority to repeal, or in any
way change those laws which they had received from God,
by his ministry. Jesus the promised Messiah erected, in-
deed, a new and spiritual kingdom, to be governed by
a new and spiritual law ; and proved the divine origin
of that kingdom, by miracles equally numerous and stu-
pendous with those by which the theocracy had been
originally established ; whilst he completely abolished
the Mosaic dispensation, by rendering it impossible to
administer even the form of the theocratic government. 3
Dan.
i.6. 2 Haggai ii. 4, 5.
3 Warburton, Home, Gleig.
CHAP. III.— Of SamuePs appearing to Said at the
Witch of Endor's.
How long the profession of necromancy, or the art of
raising up the dead, in order to pry into future events,
or to be informed of the fate of the living, has obtained
in the world, we have no indications from history. We
perceive no footsteps of it in the ages before the flood ;
and yet it is strange, that a people, abandoned to all
kinds of wickedness in a manner, could keep themselves
clear of this : but our account of these times is very
short. The first express mention that we meet with of
magicians and sorcerers, is almost in the beginning of
the book of Exodus, where Moses is soliciting the deliv-
erance of the children of Israel out of Egypt; and
therefore Egypt, which affected to be the mother of most
occult sciences, is supposed to have been the inventress
of this. From Egypt it spread itself into the neigh-
bouring countries, and soon infected all the east : for
as it undertook to gratify man's inquisitiveness, and su-
perstitious curiosity, it could not long want abettors.
From Egypt it is certain that the Israelites brought
along with them no small inclination to these detestable
practices ; and were but too much addicted to them ;
notwithstanding all the care that the state had taken to
suppress them, and the provision which God had made,
by establishing a method of consulting him, to prevent
their hankering after them.
The injunction of the law is very express. 4 ' When
thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God
giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abomina-
tions of those nations. There shall not be found among
you any that useth divination, or an observer of times,
or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or "a con-
4 Deut. xviii. 9, &c.
a What our English translation makes a familiar spirit, the
Septuagint and Vulgate render the spirit of Python; but the
Hebrew calls it the spirit of Ob, The word Ob, or Oboth, in
its primary signification, is a bottle or vessel of leather, wherein
liquors were put; and it is not unlikely that this name was
given to witches and wizards, because, when they were in their
fits of enthusiasm, they swelled in their bellies like a bottle.
The occasion of this swelling is said by some to proceed from a
(lemon's entering into the sorceress per partes genitales, and so
ascending to the bottom of her stomach, from whence at that time,
she uttered her predictions ; and for this reason the Latins call
such persons 'ventriloqui,' and the Greeks lyyaaT^tfiviot, 'people
who speak out of their bellies.' That there have been such people
as these, might be shown by several examples both in ancient
and modern history ; but at present, we shall content ourselves
with one taken from Ca?lius Rhodiginus, (Lecti. Antiq. b. 8. C.
10.) his words are to this etlect. " While I am writing," says
he, "concerning ventriloquous persons, there is, in my own
country, a woman of a mean extract, who has an unclean spirit
in her belly, from whence may be heard a voice, not very strong
indeed, but very articulate and intelligible. Multitudes of people
have heard this voice, as well as myself, and all imaginable pre-
caution has been useil in examining into the truth of this fact.
Quando futuri avida portentus mens, sffipe accersitam ventrilo-
quam, ac exutam amictu nequid fraudis occultaret, inspectare et
audire eoncupivit. This demon," as our author adds, " is called
Cincinuatulus, and when the woman calls upon him by his name,
he immediately answers her." In like manner several ancient
writers have informed us, that in the times of paganism, evil
spirits had communion with these ventriloqui per partes secre-.
tiores; but at present, we shall only take notice of a remarkable
passage in St Chrysostom, which we choose to give the reader in
Latin. " Traditur I'ythia famina fuisse, qua in Tripodes sedena
472
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suiter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necroman-
cer ; for all that do these things are an abomination to
the Lord ;' and therefore their punishment was this.
1 ' A man, or a woman, that hath a familiar spirit, or
that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death. They
shall stone them with stones, their blood shall be upon
them.' Nor was it only the practisers of such vile arts,
but those likewise that resorted to them upon any occa-
sion, were liable to the same punishment ; for 2 ' the soul
that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after
wizards to go a-whoring after them, I will even set my
face against that soul, and will cut him off from among
his people,' saith the Lord.
Such was the severity of the Jewish laws against those
who either practised, or encouraged, any manner of ma-
gical arts ; and it must be said in Saul's commendation,
that he put the laws in execution against such vile
people ; he had destroyed and driven away 3 ' those that
had familiar spirits, and the wizards out of the land ;'
and yet, observe the weakness as well as the wickedness
of the man ! when himself fell into distress, and had
abundant reason to believe that God had forsaken him,
he flies to one of these creatures for relief, and requests
of her to raise up his old friend Samuel, as expecting,
very probably, some advice from him. But whether this
was really done or no, or if done, in what manner it was
effected, are points that have so much exercised the
heads and pens, both of ancient and modern, both of
Jewish and Christian, writers, that little or nothing new-
can be said upon them ; and therefore all that I shall
endeavour to do, will be to reduce their several senti-
ments into as narrow a compass, and to state them in as
fair a light, as I can, by inquiring into these three par-
ticulars :
1. Whether there was a real apparition.
2. What this apparition, if real, was ; and,
3. By what means, and for what purposes, it was effected.
1. It cannot be denied indeed but that those who ex-
plode the reality of the apparition, and make it to be
all nothing but a cheat and juggle of the sorceress, have
found out some arguments, that at first sight make a
tolerable appearance. They tell us, 4 that the sacred
history never once makes mention of Saul's seeing
Samuel with his own eyes. It informs us, indeed, that
Saul knew him by the description which the woman
gave, and that he held, for some considerable time, a
conversation w ith him ; but since it is nowhere said that
he really saw him, " Why might not the woman counter-
feit a voice, and pretend it was Samuel's ? When Saul
asked her to « raise him up Samuel, that is, to disturb
1 Lev. xx. 27. 8 Lev. xx. 6. 3 1 Sam. xxviii. 3.
4 Scot and Webster upou Witchcraft,
expansa malignum spiritum per interna immissum, et per geni-
tales partes subeuntem excipiens, furore repleretur, ipsaque
resolutis crinibus baccharetur, ex ore spumam emittens, et sic
furoris verba loquebatur," &c.— Saurin, vol. 4. Dissertation 36.
a \\ hat forms of enchantment were anciently used in the
practice of necromancy, we are at a loss to know; because we
read of none that the Pythoness of Endor employed ; but this
might probably happen, because the ghost of Samuel came upon
her sooner than she expected, and before she had begun her in-
cantations. That however there were several rites, spells, and
invocations used upon these occasions, we may learn from almost
every ancient author; but from none more particularly than from
Lucaxi, who brings in Erichtho animating a dead body, in order
to tell young Pompey the fate of the civil war. The ceremonies
the ghost of so great a prophet, she might think he was
no common man ; and when 5 • he sware unto her by the
Lord,' that he would defend her from all danger, he
gave her intimation enough that he was the king. 6 The
crafty woman, therefore, having picked up the knowledge
of this, might retire into her closet or cell, and there,
having her familiar, that is, some cunning artful man, to
make proper responses, in a different voice, might easily
impose upon one who was distracted with anxious
thoughts, and had already shown sufficient credulity, in
thinking there was an efficacy in magical operations to
evocate the dead.
" The controversy between Saul and David every
one knew ; nor was it now become a secret, that the
crown was to devolve upon the latter : and therefore that
part of the discourse which passed between Saul and
Samuel, any man of a common genius might have hit off",
without much difficulty. Endor was not so far distant
from Gilboa or Shunem, but that the condition of the two
armies might easily be known, and that the Philistines
were superior both in courage and numbers ; and there-
fore his respondent, without all peradventure, might
prognosticate Saul's defeat ; and though there were some
hazard in the last conjecture, viz. that he and his sons
would die in battle ; yet there was this advantage on the
side of the guess, that they were all men of known and
experienced valour, who would rather sacrifice their lives,
than turn their backs upon their enemies." Upon the
whole, therefore, the maintainers of this hypothesis con-
5 1 Sam. xxviii. 10.
6 See Le Clerc's Commentary on 1 Sam. xxviii. passim.
she uses for this purpose, are thus described in our excellent
translator of that poet.
This said ; she runs the mangled carcass o'er,
And wipes from every wound the crusty gore ;
Now with hot blood the frozen breast she warms,
And with strong lunar dews confirms her charms.
Anon she mingles ev'ry monstrous birth,
Which nature, wayward and perverse, brings forth.
Nor entrails of the spotted lynx she lacks,
Nor bony joints from fell hyaenas' backs ;
Nor deers' hot marrow, rich with snaky blood,
Nor foam of raging dogs, that fly the flood.
Her store the tardy re mora supplies,
With stones from eagles warm, and dragons' eyes ;
Snakes that on pinions cut their airy way,
And nimbly o'er Arabian deserts play, &e.
To these she joins dire drugs without a name,
A thousand poisons never known to fame ;
Herbs, o'er whose leaves the hag her spells had sung,
And wet with cursed spittle, as they sprung,
With every other mischief most abhorr'd,
Which hell, or worse Erichtho, could afford.
Having thus prepared the body, she makes her invocation in
these words : —
Ye furies ! and thou black, accursed hell !
Ye woes, in which the damn'd for ever dwell !
Chaos, the world's and form's eternal foe !
And thou, sole arbiter of all below,
Pluto ! whom ruthless fates a god ordain,
And doom to immortality of pain,
Ye fair Elysian mansions of the blest,
Where no Thessalian charmer hopes to rest !
Styx ! and Persephone, compelled to fly
Thy fruitful mother, and the cheerful sky !
Third Hecate ! by whom my whispers breathe
My secret purpose to the shades beneath !
Thou greedy dog, who at th' infernal gate,
In everlasting hunger still must wait !
And thou, old Charon, horrible and hoar !
For ever lab'ring back from shore to shore, &c.
Hear all ye powers ! if e'er your hell rejoice
In the lov'd horrors of this impious voice, &c.
Hear, and obey, &c. Pharaalia, b. C.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2888. A. C. HIG; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
473
elude that as there is no reason, so there was no neces-
sity for any miraculous interposition in this affair, since
this is no more than what any common gypsy, with
another in confederacy to assist her, might do to any
credulous person who came to consult her.
They who undertake to oppose this opinion, lay it
down for a good rule in the interpretation of Scripture,
that we should, as far as we can, adhere to the primary
sense of the words, and never have recourse to any
foreign or singular explication, but where the literal is
inconsistent either with the dictates of right reason, or
the analogy of faith. Let any indifferent person then,
say they, take into his hand the account of Saul's con-
sulting this sorceress, and upon the first reading it, he
must confess, that the notion which it conveys to his
mind, is that of a real apparition ; and since the passages
that both precede and follow it, are confessedly to be
taken in their most obvious meaning, why should a
strange and forced construction be put upon this ?
1 Have we not as much reason to entertain a good
opinion of the author of this history, his ability, his inte-
grity, his knowledge of what he wrote about, and his
undesigningto deceive us, as we can have of any critic or
commentator upon it ? And therefore when he gives us
to understand that the woman saw Samuel, upon what
presumption are we led to disbelieve it ? Saul and his
companions might possibly be deceived by an impostor
in Samuel's guise ; but was the sacred historian there-
fore deceived, or did he mean to deceive us, when he
gives us this plain account of an apparition ? Saul was
a bold man, and too sagacious to become a dupe to a
silly woman. He and his two attendants came upon her
by night, and before she was prepared to act any juggle
or imposture. They were too well acquainted with the
voice, and stature, and figure of Samuel, for any other
to personate him, without being detected. But admitting
the cheat passed upon them, how can we think but that the
author of this account, who pretends to relate the trans-
action as it really happened, and is supposed to have
written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, would in
some measure, have let us into the secret of this impos-
ture ? His business doubtless was to expose such prac-
tices, as far as truth would allow ; and therefore it is
unaccountable (unless he meant to delude us with a false
persuasion) that he should admit everything that tended
to discover the fraud, and in his narration, insert every
thing that tended to confirm the reality of the prophet's
appearance.
2 That spirits of another world may assume such vehi-
cles as may admit them to a sensible commerce with us,
in like manner as our spirits are clothed with these
bodies of ours, the best philosophy will admit ; and that
they have done so upon extraordinary occasions, 3 the
appearance of Moses and Elias, and their conversing
with our Saviour on the mount, do abundantly testify.
And therefore if God, for wise reasons of his providence,
thought fit either to appoint, or permit Samuel to appear
to Saul upon this occasion, there seems to be no more
difficulty in the thing, than his appearing to him at any
other time, while he was alive, and subsisting in the
' The History of the Life of King David.
3 The History of the Life of King David, vol. 1.
3 Mat. xvii. .".
world : for Saul saw his spirit then no more than he
did now, and his spirit was every whit as able to bear a
body as it was then.
It is owned, indeed, that according to the series of
the narration, Saul did not see the apparition, be it
what it will, so soon as the woman did, because probably
the woman's body, or some other object, might interpose
between him and the first appearance ; or perhaps be-
cause the vehicle, which Samuel assumed upon this
occasion, was not, as yet, condensed enough to be visible
to Saul, though it was to the woman : but that he did
actually see him is manifest, because when he perceived,
which word in the original signifies seeing so as to be
assured of our object, that it was Samuel, a ' he stooped
with his face to the g-round, and bowed himself;' which
a man is not apt to do to bare ideas or imaginations.
Persons of this woman's character, who are under the
displeasure of the government, generally affect obscu-
rity, live privately, and are little acquainted with affairs
of state. But suppose her to have been ever so great
a politician, and ever so intimate with what had passed
between Saul and Samuel heretofore, ever so well as-
sured that God had rejected him, and elected David in
his stead ; yet how could she come to the knowledge of
this, namely, that the battle should be fought the next
day, the Israelites be routed, Saul and his sons slain,
and their spoils fall into the enemy's hands : since each
of these events, even in the present situation of Saul's
affairs, was highly casual and uncertain ? For might
not this prince lose a battle, without losing his life ? Or,
if he himself fell in the action, why must his three sons
be all cut off' in the same day ? Whatever demonstra-
tions of innate bravery he had given in times past, after
such severe menaces as he now received from the appa-
rition ; prudence, one would think, would have put him
upon providing for his safety, either by chicaning with
the enemy, or retiring from the field of battle, without
going to expose himself, his sons, and his whole army,
to certain and inevitable death. These are things which
no human penetration could reach, and which only he,
who is the absolute and almighty Ruler of all causes and
events, could either foresee or foretell. And how un-
likely is it, that God Almighty should make use of this
sorceress 4 as a prophetess, and give her the honour of
revealing his counsels, when, at the same time, he con-
curred with her in the imposition put upon Saul, by-
making him believe that Samuel appeared and talked,
when there was no Samuel there ?
4 Waterland's Sermons, vol. 2.
a That ' Saul's stooping to the ground,' and ' bowing himself,'
was a certain indication of his seeing Samuel, is apparent from
several expressions of the same nature in the sacred history.
Thus, when Jacob met Esau, the text tells us, that the ' hand-
maids, and Leah, and Rachel, and their children bowed them-
selves,' Gen. xxxiii. C, 7. When David arose out of his hiding-
place, upon the signal that Jonathan gave him, the text tells u .
that ' he fell with his face to the ground, and bowed himself,'
1 Sam. xx. 41. And when the messenger from Saul's camp
came to David at Ziklag, the text tells us, that ' he fell to the
earth, and did obeisance,' 2 Sam. i. 2. But the text takes no
notice, either of the messenger's seeing David, or David's seeing
Jonathan, or Jacob's family seeing Esau. This is sufficiently
implied in their making their obeisance to them; because it is
incongruous to suppose, that any would bow, and show other
tokens of outward reverence and respect, to persons they did not
[ Sce. — The History of the Life of Kino David, vol. 1.
3o
474 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. IMG; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
But the truth is, those menacing predictions, how
proper soever for a messenger sent from God to utter,
were highly imprudent, either in this witch's, or her ac-
complice's mouth. For, since they knew nothing of
futurity, and were, at the best, but put to conjecture, it
is much more reasonable to believe, that at such a junc-
ture as this, l they would have bethought themselves of
flattering the king, and giving him comfort, and pro-
mising success, and not of thundering out such commina-
tions against him, as might probably incense him, but
could do themselves no good. They could not but
know, that the temper of most kings is to hate to hear
shocking truths, and to receive with the utmost despite
those that bring them ill news. And therefore it is na-
tural to suppose, that had these threatening replies been
of the woman's or her confederate's forming, they would
have given them quite another turn, and not run the
hazard of disobliging the king to no purpose, by laying
an additional load of trouble upon him. In short, 2 the
whole tenor of Samuel's speech to king Saul is too
rough and ungrateful, too grave and solemn, I may also
add, too full of truth and reality, ever to have proceeded
from their contrivance and invention only.
The woman, by her courteous entertainment of Said,
seems to be a person of no bad nature ; and therefore,
if she had any accomplice, who understood to make the
most of his profession, his business at this time must
have been to soothe and cajole the king, which would
have both put money in his pocket, and saved the credit
of his predictions. For, had he foretold him of success
and victory, and a happy issue out of all his troubles,
he and the woman had been sure of reputation, as well
as farther rewards, in case it had happened to prove so ;
and if it had not, since no one was privy to their com-
munion, the falsehood of the prediction, upon Saul's
defeat and death, must, in course, have been buried with
him.
From these reasons, then, we may infer, that the wo-
man in this transaction did not impose upon Saul, since
he had a plain sight of the apparition. What the ap-
parition foretold him was above human penetration ;
and upon the supposition of a juggle, the witch and her
confederate would have certainly acted clean contrary
to what they did. And so the next—
2. Inquiry meets us, namely, what this apparition
was ? Some of the ancient doctors, both of the Jewish
and Christian church, have made an evil angel the sub-
ject of this apparition, in pure regard to the honour of
(iod. " God," say they, " had sufficiently declared his
hatred against necromancy, and all kinds of witchcraft,
in the severe laws which he enacted against them ; but
it is certainly denying himself, and cancelling his own
work, to seem in tha least to countenance or abet them,
as he necessarily must do, if, on the evocation of an old
hag, any messenger is permitted to go from him. Far
be it from us, therefore, to have such conceptions of
(iod. He is holy, and just, and uniform in all his ways ;
and therefore this coming at a call, and doing the witch's
drudgery, must only appertain to some infernal spirit,
who might possibly lind his account in it at last. It
was one of tills wicked crew, that either assumed a phan-
1 Calmet's Dissertation on the Apparition of Samuel.
2 Waterland, ibid.
torn or a real body, appeared in a mantle like Samuel,
spake articulately, and held this conversation with Saul ;
which considering his knowledge and foresight of things,
he was well enough qualified to do, notwithstanding the
sundry predictions relating to future contingencies, which
are contained in it."
How far the honour of God is concerned in this trans-
action, will more properly fall under our next inquiry.
In the mean time, I cannot but observe, that whatever
incongruity may be supposed in the real appearance of
Samuel, it is not near so much, as to find one of the
apostate spirits of hell expressing so much zeal for the
service of the God of heaven, and upbraiding Saul with
those very crimes which he himself tempted him to com-
mit ; as to find this wicked and impure spirit making
use of the name of God, that sacred and tremendous
name whose very pronunciation was enough to make him
quake and shiver, no less than seven times in this inter-
course with Saul, without any manner of uneasiness or
hesitation ; as to find this angel of darkness and father
of lies prying into the womb of futurity, and determining
the most casual events positively and precisely. 3 We
do not indeed deny, but that the devil's knowledge is
vastly superior to that of the most accomplished human
understanding ; that his natural penetration, joined with
his long experience, is such, that the greatest philoso-
phers, the subtlest critics, and the most refined politicians
are mere novices in comparison of him : yet what genius,
however exalted and improved, without a divine revela-
tion, could, as we said before, be able to foretell things
that were lodged in God's own breast, namely, the pre-
cise time of the two armies engaging, the success and
consequence of the victory, and the very names of the
persons that were to fall in battle ? This is what the appa-
rition plainly revealed to Saul : and yet this, we dare
maintain, is more than any finite understanding, by its "
own mere capacity, could ever have been able to find out.
But without this multitude of arguments, if we are
to take the Scripture in its plain and literal sense,
read we over the story of Saul and the w itch of Endor
ever so often, we shall not so much as once find the
devil mentioned in it. And therefore it is somewhat
wonderful, that he should be brought upon the stage by
many learned men, merely to solve a difficulty, which,
upon examination, appears to be none at all. But now
on the other hand, it appears, that, through the whole
narration, Samuel is the only thing that is mentioned.
It is Samuel, whom Saul desires to be called up ; Samuel,
who appeared to the woman ; Samuel, whom the woman
describes ; Samuel, whom Saul perceives, and bows
himself to, with whom he converses so long, and because
of whose words he was afterwards so sore afraid.
The Scripture indeed speaks sometimes according to
the appearance of things, and may call that by the name
of Samuel, which was only the semblance or phantom of
him : but, that this cannot be the sense of the matter here,
we have the testimony of the wise son of Sirach, an ex-
cellent interpreter of canonical scriptures, who tells us
expressly, that 4 Samuel, ' after his death, prophesied,
and showed the king his end ;' pursuant to what we read
in the version of the Septuagint, namely, that 5 Saul
Sauiin, vol. 4. Dissertation 36.
5 1 Chron. >
4 Ecclus. xlvi. 20.
13.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
475
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OU, ACCOKDING TO HALES, A. M. 4301. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
' asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, and
Samuel answered him.' So that, upon the whole, we
may be allowed to conclude, that it was the real soul of
Samuel, clothed in some visible form, which at this time
appeared to the king of Israel : but by what means, or
for what purposes it appeared, is the other question we
are now to determine.
3. Several of the ' fathers of the Christian church
were of opinion, that the devil had a certain limited
power over the souls of the saints, before Jesus Christ
descended into hell, and rescued them from the tyranny
of that prince of darkness. ' St Austin, in particular,
thinks, that there is bo absurdity in saying, that the devil
was as able to call up Samuel's soul, as he was to pre-
sent himself among the sons of God, or to set our
Saviour on one of the pinnacles of the temple ; and a 3
learned Jewish doctor supposes, that devils have such a
power over human souls, for the space of a year after
their departure, as to make them assume what bodies
they please; and thereupon he concludes, but very erro-
neously, that it was not a year from the time of Samuel's
death to his appearance. But these are such wild
and extravagant fancies, as to deserve no serious confu-
tation. It is absurd to say that the souls of saints, such
as we are now speaking of, were ever in hell, and more
absurd to say, that if they are in heaven, it is in the
power of any magical, nay, of any diabolical incanta-
tions to call them down from thence. 4 Great, without
all doubt, is the power of apostate angels ; but misera-
ble, we may say, would the state of the blessed be, if the
other had any license to disturb their happiness, when,
and as long as they pleased : for " God forbid," s says
Tertullian, " that we should believe, that the soul of any
holy man, much less of a prophet, should be so far under
his disposal, as to be brought up at pleasure by the power
of the devil."
Since the devil then has no power to disturb the hap-
piness of souls departed, this apparition of Samuel could
not proceed from any magical enchantments of the
sorceress, but must have been effected by the sole power
and appointment of God, who is the sovereign Lord both
of the living and of the dead : and accordingly, we may
observe, from the surprise which the woman discovered
upon Samuel's sudden appearing, that the power of her
magic was not concerned therein, but that it was the
effect of some superior hand. The scripture relates the
matter thus : 6 ' When the woman saw Samuel, she cried
with a loud voice ; and the woman spake unto Saul, say-
ing, Why hast thou deceived me, for thou art Saul ?
And the king said unto her, be not afraid : what sawest
thou ? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods as-
cending out of the earth.' Now, it is plain from this
narration, that the woman saw something she was not
accustomed to see. 7 Her necromancy had ordinarily
power over demons only, or such wretched spirits as
were submitted to the devil's tyranny ; but on this occa-
sion, she saw an object so august, so terrible, so majestic,
so contrary indeed to any thing she had ever raised before,
1 Justin Martyr, in Dial, cum Tryph. and Origen on 1 Sam. c. 28.
» De Diver. Quajst. b. 2. p. 4.
3 R. Manas. Bun. Israel, de Resur. Mort.
* Saurin, vol. 4. Dissert. 'Mi. 5 De Anima, c. 57.
6 1 Sam. xxviii. 12, 13.
7 Calmet's Dissertation on the Apparition of Samuel.
and that coming upon her before she had begun her en-
chantments, that she could not forbear being frightened,
and crying out with a loud voice, as being fully satisfied
that the apparition came from God.
" But since the scripture assures us, that God had
wholly withdrawn himself from Saul, and would answer
him neither by prophets nor by dreams ; how can we
imagine that he should, all on a sudden, become so kind,
as to send Samuel to him, or that Samuel should be in
any disposition to come, when it was impossible for him
to do any good by his coming."
8 Now there seems to be some analogy between God's
dealing with Saul in this particular, and his former treat-
ment of the prophet Balaam. Balaam was for disobey-
ing the orders which God had given him to bless the
Israelites ; and was searching into magical secrets for
what he could not obtain of God, namely, a power to
change into curses the blessings which God had pro-
nounced by his mouth. In this case there was but small
likelihood, that God would continue to communicate him-
self to a person so unworthy of any extraordinary reve-
lation ; and yet he did it : but then it was with a design
to reveal to him those very miseries, from which his
mercenary mind was so desirous to rescue the Midian-
ites. The application is easy : and it farther suggests
this reason, why God appointed Samuel at this time to
appear unto Saul, namely, that through him, he might
give him a meeting where he least of all expected one ;
and might show him, that the fate which his own disobe-
dience had brought upon him, was determined ; that there
was no reversing the decrees of Heaven, no procuring
aid against the Almighty's power, no flying, though it
were to hell, from his presence, no hiding himself ir.
darkness from his inspection, 9 ' with whom darkness is
no darkness at all, but the night is as clear as the day,
and the darkness and light are both alike.'
111 That the souls of men departed have a capacity,
and, no doubt, an inclination, to be employed in the
service of men alive, as having the same nature and
affections, and beingmore sensible of our infirmities, than
any pure and abstracted spirits are, can hardly be con-
tested; that, in their absent state, they are imbodied with
aerial or ethereal vehicles, which they can condense o;-
rarefy at pleasure, and so appear or not appear to human
sight, is what some of the greatest men, both of the hea-
then and Christian religion, have maintained ; and that
frequent apparitions of this kind have happened since
the world began, cannot be denied by any one that is
conversant in its history. If therefore the wisdom of
God, for reasons already assigned, thought proper to
despatch a messenger to Saul upon this occasion, there
may be some account given, why the soul of Samuel,
upon the supposition it was left to its option, should ra-
ther be desirous to be sent upon that errand : for whatever
mav be said in diminution of Saul's religious character,
it is certain, that he was a brave prince and commander :
had lived in strict intimacy with Samuel ; professed a
great esteem for him, in all things ; and n was by Samuel
not a little lamented, when he had fallen from his obedi-
ence to God. Upon these considerations, we may ima-
gine, that the soul of Samuel might have such a kindness
s Saurin, vol. 4. Dissertation 36. 5 Ps. oxxxix. 12.
See Glanville's Sadducismus Triunrphatus. " 1 Sam. xvi I.
476
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2888. A. C. 1116; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4311. A. C. 1110. 1 SAM. i. TO THE END.
for him, as to be ready to appear to him in the depth of
his distress, in order to settle his mind by telling him the
upshot of the whole matter, namely, that he should lose
the battle and lie and his sons be slain ; that so he might
give a specimen, as the Jews love to speak in commen-
dation of him, of the bravest valour that was ever
achieved, by any commander ; fight boldly when he was
sure to die ; and sell his life at as dear a price as possi-
ble ; that so in his death, he might be commemorated
with honour, and deserve the Threnodia which his son-in-
law made on him : x ' The beauty of Israel is slain upon
the high places. How are the mighty fallen ! From the
blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow
of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul re-
turned not empty. How are the mighty fallen in the
midst of this battle !'
CHAP. IV.— Ore the Witch of Endor.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
I aghee with the author in the opinion, that it was the
spirit of Samuel himself, wearing, as Dr Hales observes,
the same mantle in appearance, which was rent at the final
rejection of Saul from the kingdom, which appeared on
this occasion. Many authors of reputation maintain that
this was a mere imposition practised upon Saul by the
witch ; but it is evident, that the witch herself expected
not to see such a spectre as presented itself before her ;
and that the spectre made its appearance before it was
called.
" I have myself," says Bishop Gleig, " conversed with a
ventriloquist, who performed the most extraordinary feats
in his art, who was extremely communicative on the subject
of his art, and ready to answer every question which I
put to him ; but he was unfortunately so very illiterate
as to speak a language which was hardly intelligible. I
found no difficulty whatever in tracing his art to the
principles on which it was founded, but he would not
tell me in language which I could understand, by what
means he produced his acoustic deceptions. That he
was a great master of his art, however, he gave me, and
thousands besides me, the most complete proofs, making
his voice appear to come sometimes from the roof of the
room, sometimes from without the door, sometimes from
below the floor, and once from the pocket of a gentle-
man who was sitting close by me. Had this man com-
bined with his ventriloquism that phantasmagoric art,
by which some of our modern jugglers frighten the vulgar
in a darkened room, he easily could have exhibited such
a ghost as I have no doubt the witch of Endor meant
and expected to exhibit to Saul."
The ghost, however, which really came was sent by a
different and a higher power, and sent for the same pur-
pose that the dumb ass was, for the ass was made to
reprove the madness of Balaam, and that enchanter him-
self made to bless Israel. Necromancy was among the
arts forbidden by the law of Moses. Saul had in obedi-
ence to that law, lately exterminated, as he thought, all
such impious diviners from Israel ; and yet, finding him-
1 2 Sam. i. 19.
self, in his capacity of king, forsaken by God, he had
recourse in his extremity to one of those wretched beings
who had escaped from the effects of hi? righteous zeal.
But even Saul himself, conscious as he was of being for-
saken of God, could not expect from her the information
which he wanted, but through some means forbidden by
that law which it was his duty to enforce ; and if she was
not aided by a familiar spirit, she must have practised
arts calculated to persuade the people that she was.
These arts were of heathen invention, and led to that
idolatry which Saul Avas bound to root entirely out of
the land ; and no method can be conceived better cal-
culated to confound the impious monarch, and to pre-
vent the wretched woman from practising her impious
arts for the future, than that which the supreme Disposer
of events adopted on this occasion. Before she com-
menced her incantations, the real Samuel appeared
before her, and gave to the infatuated king such an
answer as there is no reason to suppose he would have
received from any pretended Samuel exhibited by her.
It has been maintained by some respectable writers
that the apparition was an evil angel, who appeared in
the mantle and in the shape of Samuel. As the ground
of this opinion, they mention the abhorrence which God
had shown against those who practised the arts of necro-
mancy and witchcraft, and its being inconsistent with
this declared hatred, so far to countenance these arts as
to send a messenger from the invisible state, at the mo-
ment when this woman was engaged in them. To this it
may be answered, that if the appearance of Samuel on
the present occasion be deemed inconsistent with the
divine procedure, there is much greater difficulty in be-
lieving that the apparition was an evil spirit, since the
whole strain of his address to Saul is at variance with
the character of an angel of darkness.
It may indeed seem strange, that God, who had rejected
Saul, and who answered him not when he consulted him,
should now send a departed prophet, to tell him his fate.
But the reason is plain. To have answered his inquiry
when he consulted him, not in a private capacity, but as
the king of Israel, not with the view of obtaining recon-
ciliation, but of ascertaining his fate, would have been
an acknowledgment of him in this character ; whereas
he had been for many years rejected and disowned of
God as his deputy : when, however, he applied not to
him, but to another, for the purpose of learning his fu-
ture destiny, and had, for the time, ceased to be king,
God gave him through his servant such an answer as lie
had not expected.
SECT. IV.
CHAP. I. —From the Death of Saul, to that of
Absalom. In all thirty-three years.
THE HISTORY.
David was at Ziklag Avhen news was brought him of the
defeat of the Israelitish army, and of the death of Saul.
The messenger was an Amalekite, a who pretended that
a By the account which we have of king Saul's death, in the
conclusion of the foregoing book, namely, that he ' fell upon his
own sword, and expired,' (I Sam. xxxi. 4.) it seems v^ry evident,
Skct. IV.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
477
he was the person who despatched the king after he
found himself mortally wounded ; and, however he came
by them, produced Saul's crown and bracelet to verify
what he said. He expected, no doubt, an ample com-
pensation for tiiis message and present ; but instead of
that, David ordered his guards to fall upon, him, because,
according to his own declaration, he had been accessory
to the king's death. a
Upon this conjuncture, David, * by God's directions,
removed with his family and forces c to Hebron, whither
the princes of Judali in a short time, came to congratu-
late his return into his native country, and to offer him
the crown of their particular tribe ; for, by this time,
Abner the late king's uncle, and general of his army,
who had proclaimed his son Ishbosheth successor to the
throne, had taken up his residence at d Mahanaim, on
that the whole story of this Amalekite was a mere fiction of his
own inventing, on purpose to ingratiate himself with David, the
presumptive successor to the throne. But then the question is,
how he came by Saul's crown and bracelet, since it is incongru-
ous to think that he would ever wear them in the time of action,
and thereby expose himself as a public mark ? As therefore it
is presumed, that they were carried into the field of battle by
some of his attendants, in order to put on, in case he had ob-
tained the victory, and returned in triumph ; so the Jews have
a conceit, that Doeg, the infamous murderer of the priests at
Nob, 1 Sam. xxii. 18. who at this time was his armour-bearer,
had them in his possession, and before he killed himself, gave
them to his son, this young Amalekite, and ordered him to carry
them to David, but, to his cost, found that David's reception
was quite different to what lie expected. For being shortly to
ascend the throne himself, he was willing to have it believed,
that to slay the Lord's anointed, upon any account whatever,
was in itself an execrable crime, and therefore, to clear himself
from the imputation of being any ways accessory to so foul a fact,
as his enemies would have been apt to imagine, had he given
countenance to this pretended king-killer, he ordered him im-
mediately to be put to death, and therein at least, acted the part
of a good politician, if not of a righteous judge. — Le Clerc's and
Patrick's Commentaries, on 2 Sam. i.
a 2 Sam. i. 16. The malediction expressed in this passage
occurs in the same sense in other passages of Scripture, particu-
larly Josh. ii. 19. 1 Kings ii. 37. It appears to have been custo-
mary so to speak, both with the Jews and Greeks, as repeated
instances of it are found in the best writers of the last mentioned
people. It was usual with the Romans to wash their hands in
token of innocence and purity from blood. Thus the Roman
governor washed his hands, and said respecting Christ, ' I am
innocent of the blood of this just person,' (Mat. xxvii. 24.) — Ed.
b Though David, after Saul's demise, had a right to the king-
dom by virtue of God's designation ; yet as God had nowhere
declared, at what time he was to make use of this right, he would
not enter into possession, nor take the administration of public
alliiirs upon him, without having first consulted him Patrick's
Commentary.
c Hebron was situate in the midst of the tribe of Judah ; and
as it was a very ancient city, the metropolis of the whole tribe,
and the possession of those priestly families who espoused David's
interest, it was a very commodious city for him to make the
place of his residence at this juncture, as being not insensible,
that the determination of the metropolis in his favour would be
of great weight to influence the whole tribe. And accordingly
we find, that he was soon invested with the sovereignty thereof.
1 For the men of Judah,' saith the text, ' came, and there they
anointed David king over the house of Judah,' 2 Sam. ii. 4. —
The History of the Life of King David, vol. 2.
d This was a place in the tribe of Gad, which had its name
from the appearance of an host of angels to Jacob, as he came
with his family and all his substance to Padan-aram, (Gen. xxxii.
1.) and the reasons for Abner's retreating hither, in the begin-
ning of the new king's reign, were, that he might secure tin-
people on that side of the Jordan, and especially the gallant in-
habitants of Jabesh-gilead, who were great lovers of Saul, and
attached to his family; that he might prevent the Philistines
the other side of Jordan, and by his interest and great
authority, prevailed with all the other tribes to recog-
nise him.
David, however, at the request of the princes of his
own tribe, was anointed king of Judah. For two years
there were no hostilities on either side ; but not long
after this, a war commenced between the two rival prin-
ces, in which there were several engagements, but none
so remarkable, as that which was occasioned by Abner's
sending Joab who was the general of David's forces, a
challenge e to fight twelve men, with an equal number of
his, in single combat. The men met, and to a man
killed one another upon the spot ; whereupon a fierce
battle ensued, in which Abner and his men were defeated,
and put to flight. In the pursuit, Asahel, a younger
brother of Joab's, being very nimble and swift of foot,
made after Abner. When he came up with him, Abner,
who knew him, desired him to desist, and not pretend
to attack him, because he was loath to kill him ; but the
young man, ambitious of taking a general prisoner,
pressed so hard upon him, that, / with a back-stroke of
his spear, Abner gave him a wound, whereof he imme-
diately died.
The victorious army, when they came to the place
where Asahel's body lay slain, stood still, and ceased
their pursuit ; so that Abner had an opportunity to rally
his scattered forces, and making a stand upon an ad-
vanced ground, where he could not well be attacked,
sounded a parley, and reminded Joab, that they were
all brethren, of the same nation, of the same religion,
so that if they persisted in hostilities, both armies would
have reason to rue it. Whereupon they parted, Abner
who had lost three hundred and sixty men in the engage-
ment to Mahanaim, on the other side of Jordan, and
Joab, who, except his brother Asahel, had lost no more
than nineteen, to Hebron.
During the course of this civil war, which lasted for
some years, David's forces, in most rencounters, had the
advantage, and his interest in the nation increased, as
that of Ishbosheth sensibly declined. Abner indeed, as
being both a brave and experienced warrior, and a man
of a great power and influence in all the tribes, more
especially in that of Benjamin, was his main support ;
but with him he unhappily differed, upon account of
Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, whom Abner had de-
bauched. To have any commerce with the relicts of
princes of what denomination soever they were, was, in
from falling upon the king, whom he had under his protection,
in the infancy of this reign; and chiefly, that he might be at a
great distance from David, have the new king more absolutely
under his command, and a better opportunity of raising recruits
among a people, not only brave and courageous, but very well
affected to the cause which he had espoused. — Caimet's Commen-
tary, and Poole's Annotations,
e The expression in the text is, ' let the young men now arise,
and play b< fore us.' By which Abner seems to have meant, not
that they should fall upon, and destroy one another, but merely
that they slum Id practise a little their military exercises, or play
at sharps, as gladiators anciently at Rome, and now among us,
arc wont to do, not with :m.v purpose to kill one another, but only
in divert the spectators. — Caimet's Commentary.
f The expression in the text is, ' that with the hinder part
of the spear, he smote him under the fifth rib;' which Virgil,
speaking of s mortal wound, has not unhappily imitated: " Im- *
mediately he seized his spear and hurled it at the very life s
citadel, where the ribs guard the heart." — JEneid, 12.
478
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
these days, looked upon as an indignity offered to the
royal family, and an a affectation of the kingdom. For
this reason Ishbosheth remonstrated the matter to Abner ;
but Abner, who was a hot man, and impatient of re-
proof, was so incensed at what he said, that he upbraided
him with ingratitude, and threatened not only to b with-
draw his own allegiance from him, but, as far as in him
lay, to carry all Israel over to David's interest. And
as he threatened, so he did. From that very moment
he entered into a private correspondence with David,
and not long after, had a public interview with him. At
this interview David entertained Abner and his atten-
dants which were in all but twenty persons, very splen-
didly ; and, in return, Abner assured him, that he would
use his utmost endeavours to prevail with the other tribes
to come over to his side. But no sooner was he gone,
than Joab, returning from an expedition against the
Philistines, wherein he had been successful and taken
abundance of spoil, and being soon informed that Abner
had been there, and how kindly the king had received
him, not only expostulated the matter with the king in
high terms, as having entertained a man that came only
as a spy upon him, but sent likewise a messenger after
Abner, desiring him to return, because the king had
something more to communicate to him ; and so, having
waylaid him, under pretence of saluting him, he stabbed
him to the heart, c out of jealousy partly, and partly in
revenge of the blood of his brother Asahel.
David was extremely displeased at this cruel and in-
hospitable action ; but his affairs were in so unsettled a
a What notion the world, at this time, had of marrying any
royal relict, is evident from the case of Adonijah, whom Solo-
mon put to death for desiring but to ask for Abishag, one of
David's concubines, though he had employed Bath-sheba, the
king's mother, to be his intercessor, and was himself his brother,
(I Kings ii. 17.) It maybe said perhaps, that Adonijah was at
this time aspiring at the throne, which Solomon perceiving, took
occasion from this his request, to fall out with him, and prevent
it. But however this be, a general rule it was, not among the
Jews only, but among other nations, that no private person
should presume to marry the king's widow ; for this made him
appear as a rival and competitor for the crown. — Calmet's Com-
mentary.
b Abner is an instance of what a strange alteration the study
of revenge will work in a man. It was but just lately that we
found him going about the country to confirm the Israelites in
their attachment to the house of Saul, and opposition to David;
but now, upon a slight disgust, he is not only for deserting him-
self, but for carrying all the strength of his interest over "to the
opposite party. For, " such is the genius of many great minis-
ters," says one, " that upon slight occasions, they are irritated
and do rather rule over kings, than are ruled by them." Pa-
trick's Commentary.
c Abner was a man longer versed in military affairs than
himself, who, in the time of Saul's distraction, had been regent
of the nation, and, since the time that he had set up Ishbosheth
to be king, prime minister. And therefore Joab had reason to
suspect, that in case he once got into David's favour, as the
service he was able to do him, gave him a title to it, it would
not be long before he would gain a superior ascendant; and there-
fore he took this wicked method to prevent him. For to use the
reflection which Josephus makes upon this occasion. " What
will men not dare to do, who are covetous, ambitious, and will
be inferior to none ? They press forward to the end, without
ever considering the means, and will commit a thousand crimes
in pursuit of what they desire. Nor are they less bold in main-
taining, than they were in acquiring their places and preferments
by evil practices; insomuch that, rather than suffer the disgrace
of losing what they have unjustly gotten, they will plunge them-
selves still deeper and deeper in wickedness, to retain it."—
Jewish Antiq. b. 7. c. I.
state, and Joab, at that time, had so much credit with
the army, that he could not call him to an account for
what he had done. And therefore contented himself
with declaring publicly d his detestation of it, and with
making a magnificent funeral for Abner, wherein he
himself followed the corpse as chief mourner.
David indeed had reason to lament the death of Abner,
which, in all probability, had defeated the measures that
were concerted for the union of the two kingdoms, had
not the sudden and untimely death of Ishbosheth paved
the way for it afresh. Ishbosheth, upon the loss of
Abner, began to despair of his affairs, grew negligent
of himself, and fell under the contempt of his subjects ;
so that Rechab and Baanah, e two Benjamites, that were
of his household, came upon him, as he was asleep in the
heat of the day, and having cut off" his head, / car-
ried it as a present to David at Hebron ; but instead
of the reward which they expected, he £ rebuked them
d And good reason he had to express his detestation of so foul
a fact. For besides that Abner was himself a man of great
power and authority, and at this time, the head of the contrary
party, it carried an air of suspicion, that David might have some
concern in the murder ; especially since Joab, his first minister,
and general of his forces, was the wicked instrument of it. Abner
had been reconciled to David indeed ; but this made the matter
still worse, and added the breach of faith and hospitality to the
sin of murder, which was enough to alienate the minds of the
Israelites from him for ever. And therefore Josephus gives us
this account of David's behaviour upon so critical an occasion,
not only to testify his abhorrence of so base a practice, but to
purge himself likewise, upon the strictest niceties of faith and
honour, that he had been true to Abner. ' The moment he
heard of Abner's death, he stretched out his right hand towards
heaven in an appeal and protestation, that he was neither privy,
nor consenting to the fact, and cursed most bitterly the assassin,
whoever he was, his family, and accomplices. He appointed,
by proclamation, a public mourning for him, with all the solem-
nities of tearing garments, and putting on sackcloth, &c. Him-
self, with his great ministers, and officers, assisted at the funeral,
and gave sufficient demonstration, by wringing their hands,
beating their breasts, and other expressions of sorrow, both of
the veneration they had for Abner's memory, and the sense they
had of so inestimable a loss ; so that, in the conclusion, all the
people were perfectly satisfied that David was far either from
approving or consenting to so execrable a deed.' — Jewish Antiq.
b. 7 c. 1 ; Le Clerc's Commentary.
e This is added, to show us, that these two regicides were
not only officers in the king's army, but of the same tribe with
Saul, and therefore had more ties than one upon them, to be
honest and faitliful to his family. For there is reason to be-
lieve, that Saul, who lived in the borders of Benjamin, conferred
more favours upon that tribe than any other, and might
therefore justly expect, both to him and his, a greater esteem
and fidelity from those of his own tribe, than from others. This
patronymic is therefore very properly prefixed to the names of
Rechab and Baanah, to show what vile ungrateful villains they
were, and how justly they deserved the severe and exemplary
punishment which David inflicted on them. — Le Clerc's Com-
mentary.
fit may seem a little strange, that these two ruffians were
not discouraged by David's punishing the Amalekite for killing
Saul, and by the detestation he had publicly shown of Joab's
baseness in murdering Abner ; but the former of these cases, they
might think, was not parallel to theirs ; because Saul was anointed
king by God's immediate direction, whereas Ishbosheth, having
never had such sacred unction, was no more than a usurper;
and as for the latter, they might think, that David's conduct in
relation to Abner's death, proceeded from art and policy, rather
than any serious dislike of the thing itself; and in this opinion,
they might the rather be confirmed, when they saw Joab, instead
of being punished, continuing in the veiy same post and power
that he had before. — Poole's Annotations.
g The manner in which Josephus makes David express him-
self upon this occasion, is to this effect; — " Wicked wretches
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
479
A. M. ';949. A. C. I0f>5; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix.
severely, and ordered their hands and feet to be cut off,
and themselves hung up in a public place, for the terror
of all regicides ; but the head of Ishbosheth was honour-
ably interred in Abner's tomb.
When Ishbosheth was dead, all the tribes of Israel
gent their deputies to David, acknowledging his title, and
promising him their allegiance, upon condition that he
would reign righteously a over them ; so that now he was
anointed king over all the tribes, after that he had reign-
ed at Hebron, over that of Judah only, for the space of
seven years and six months.
Being thus invested with full regal power, and having
* a multitude of brave and gallant officers to attend him,
he made his (irst expedition against Jerusalem, to dis-
possess the Jebusites of the fort of Zion, which com-
manded the city, and was thought so impregnable, that
when he summoned the besieged to surrender, they, in
that you are! prepare yourselves immediately to receive the just
reward of your villany. Do not you know that I required tiie
murder of Saul, when he, who had taken away that sacred life,
had the confidence to bring me his golden crown, for an ostenta-
tion of the service he had done me in it ? And yet it was at the
instance of Saul that he did it, and to prevent the indignity of
his being taken alive by his enemies. And am not I the same
man now that I was then ? or do you think that I am turned so
abandoned a wretch since, as to countenance the most profligate
of men and actions, or to account myself under any obligation to
you, for dipping your hands, upon my account, as you would have
it thought, in the blood of your lord ; for cutting the throat of a
person, and in his bed too, so just, that he never did any man
wrong, and so generous a patron and benefactor to your ungrate-
ful selves, that all the advantages you can pretend to in this world,
are but what you stand indebted for to his bounty and goodness?
You shall therefore now be sure to pay, both for your breach of
faith to your master, and the scandal you have cast upon me.
For what greater wound can any man give me in my reputation,
than to expose me for a person that can take pleasure in the tid-
ings, or give countenance to the committing of so barbarous an
assassination." {Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 2.) Which speech of
David's has a good deal of the spirit of Alexander the Great in
it, whose exacting of punishment of Bessus for his murder of Da-
rius, drew from the historian this reflection: "For he thought
that Darius had not been so much the foe as the friend of him
by whom he was slain." — Justin, b. 12. c. 6.
a This was David's part of the covenant, which the elders of
Israel suggested to him in a very elegant metaphor, which here
occurs the first time, though afterwards it is frequently used in
sacred writ, especially in the prophets, as well as some profane
authors. The expression is ' Thou shalt feed my people Israel ;'
which was the rather made use of, to put David in mind that he
was created a king, not so much for the advancement of his own
honour and interest, as for the good and benefit of the community,
which he was to rule with all tenderness, and watch over with all
diligence. The very manner of the expression implies, that
kings ought to have the same care for their people, as the shep-
herd has over his floclc ; and that, as the shepherd is not the owner
of the sheep he keeps, so should no king look upon his subjects
as his own peeulium, but as a flock committed to him by the only
true Lord of all mankind, and to whom he must give an account
of his administration. " For this is the greatest grace of a king,
that he certainly believes himself to be made a king by God, for
the sake of the people ; and let him often call to mind, that the
people were not created, or ordained, by God for the king," says
Goaradus Pelicanus upon these words. — Patrick's Commentary,
and Poole's Annotations.
b In this account of David's worthies, which are meationed
both in the second book of Samuel, and the first of Chronicles,
there is a great difference of names; and the reason is, because
the catalogue in Chronicles was made in the beginning of David's
reign, that in Samuel, at the latter end ; and so the former men-
tions those men who had helped David to his settlement in the
kingdom, whereas the latter takes notice of those who had stuck
to him all the time of his reign, and died iu his service. — Bed-
ford's Scripture Chronology, b. 5. C. 5.
derision, replied, that the meanest of them all, c their
blind and lame, were able to defend it against all he
could do. This incensed David to such a degree, that he
caused proclamation to be made through the camp, that
whoever first took the fort, should be made captain-
general of all his forces ; whereupon Joab, who was a
bold, pushing man, undertook to storm it, and carried it
sword in hand. After this, David, for the reception of
his guards and domestics, enlarged the buildings of the
place, and made it his royal palace ; while Joab repaired
and beautilied the old city Jebus, or Jerusalem, for the
more commodious habitation of his subjects.
d Hiram, who had lately made himself king of Tyre
and Sidon, hearing how prosperous David was in all his
affairs, sent an embassy to congratulate his accession to
the throne, and withal a present of cedar trees, with car-
penters and other artificers to assist him in his buildings.
But the Philistine princes had other notions of David's
growing greatness, which they took for a sure presage of
their own downfall ; and therefore to put a stop to it as
soon as possible, they raised one great army, which, as
they approached to Jerusalem, he defeated; and the
next year, when they came e with a much larger, God
manifestly interposed in his favour. For instead of ad-
vancing directly upon them, he ordered him to take a
c The blind and the lame, says Luther upon this place, were
the idols of the Jebusites, which, to irritate David, they set upon
their walls, as their patrons and protectors ; and these they call
blind and lame sarcastically, and with respect to David's opinion:
as if they had said, " These gods of ours, whom ye Israelites re-
proach as blind and lame, and so unable to direct or defend us, will
secure us against you, and to your cost, make you find that they are
neither blind nor lame, but have eyes to watch for us, and hands
to fight against you, so that you must conquer and subdue them,
before you take this place." But this interpretation seems to be a
little tuo metaphorical and forced, for which reason we have rather
chosen the construction which Josephus (b. 7, c. 2.) puts upon
this passage, namely, that they imagined their fortress to be so
impregnable, that by way of contempt, they told David that their
very blind and lame would be able to defend it against him and
all his forces: and this is a sense so extremely plain and obvious,
that the renowned Bochart wonders why any man of learning
should seek for any other. The only exception to it is, that
these blind and lame (which were rather objects of compassion)
are said to have been extremely hated by David. But we may
observe, that David here retorts the sarcasm upon them ; ' the
lame and blind,' that is, those who are said to defend the place,
and who, as they pretended, were to be only the lame and the
blind. And these were hateful to David, because they had
wickedly and insolently defied the armies of the living God. —
Poole's Annotations y Patrick's and Le Clerc's Commentaries.
d Abibalus was his primitive name, but before he entered into
a league of amity with David, he changed it to Hiram, that so
it might be the standing name of him and his successors, as Pha-
raoh, and after that Ptolemy in Egypt, Abimelech among the
Philistines, and C;esar among the Roman emperors. The name
in their language signifies, " he lives that is exalted ;" or, " let him
live who is exalted," that is, "let the king live for ever;" and
his sending to David only under this name, is the true reason
why no other name is mentioned in Scripture. — Bedford's Scrip-
ture Chronology, b. 5. C. 4.
e It cannot well be supposed, that the Philistines, out of their
small territories, could produce such vast numbers of men as
they brought against the Israelites; and therefore the remark,
which Josephus makes, helps to explain this matter, namely
" That Syria and Phoenicia, as well as several other warlike
nations, were engaged in the confederacy:" but this cannot be
mi ant of Hiram, who was in a league of the strictest amity
with David, but of such Phoenicians only as would not submit to
him, and therefore joined with the Philistines, first to subdue his
ally, and then to subdue him, before his government could be
settled. — Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 5. c. 4.
480
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO
compass round by a wood of mulberry trees, which would
cover and conceal his march, and when he heard a sound,
or rushing in the trees, which would aftrighten the Phil-
istines, then to fall upon them ; which he accordingly
did, and gave them so total a defeat, that for many years
after, they never pretended to give Israel any more dis-
turbance.
This time of rest, and public security, David thought
a proper season, wherein to bring home the ark of God,
which for almost fifty years had continued in the house
of Abinadab, into a place which he had prepared for it
in his own city. To this purpose, attended with the a
principal men of the nation, and the chief officers of his
court, together with a strong guard for the convoy of
the ark, in case any enemy should attempt to surprise
them, he came to Kirjath-jearim : but, either through
inadvertency, or neglect of the l divine law, which ob-
liged them to carry it upon men's shoulders, they in
imitation of the Philistines, put it in a cart, and when
the cart had like to have been overturned, Uzzah, who
was one of its drivers, taking hold of the ark to prevent
its falling, was immediately struck dead upon the spot ;
so that David, terrified at this judgment, durst not at
that time carry it into Jerusalem, but left it near the
city, in the house of Obed-Edom, a Levite, whom God
blessed with a large increase of all his substance, for
the little time that it continued with him. In the space
of three months, the king, recollecting that none were to
carry the ark but the Levites, though they themselves
were expressly forbidden 2 to touch it, he adventured to
remove it from Obed-Edom's, which he did in great
form and solemnity. The Levites, who were to bear
the ark on their shoulders, he caused to be sanctified ;
himself, clothed in a linen ephod, and b dancing before
it, brought it into a convenient place which he had pre-
pared for it ; offered a great quantity of c sacrifices upon
1 Num. iv. 15. a Num. iv. 15; xviii. 3.
a It is supposed by some, that this bringing back of the ark
was appointed to be one of the great festivals ; and the reason
why David might summon so many of his principal ministers
and officers to accompany him in the expedition, might be, to
possess the young people, who perhaps had heard little or nothing
of the ark, by reason of its having been absent so long, with a
mighty veneration for it when they saw the king, and so many
of the chief nobility waiting on it, with such a variety of music,
and such public declarations of joy. — Miller's History of the
Church.
b Strabo tells us, that it was customary among the Greeks, as
well as other nations, to use music and dancing in the processions
before their gods, (b. 10.) Callimachus mentions the chori, and
dancings of the youth at the altar of Apoilo; Plato observes that
among the Egyptians, all kinds of music, songs and dances were
consecrated to their gods ; (De legibus, b. 3.) And even Lucian
(De Saltatione) expressly says that among the ancients, no cere-
monial of religion, no expiation, no atonement was accounted
rightly accomplished without dancing. So that David was far
from being singular in ins behaviour upon this occasion; nor
was his behaviour, in this particular, any disparagement to his
regal dignity. His dancing, that is, his moving in certain serious
and solemn measures, suited to music of the same character and
tendency, was an exercise highly conducive to the purposes of
piety, and his mixing with the public festivities of his people,
was a condescension, as Tacitus relates of Augustus the Roman
emperor, not unbecoming the greatest monarch. Policy taught
Augustus to put himself upon a level with his subjects in the
public rejoicings ; piety taught David, that all men are upon a
level in the solemnities of religion. So that David was not sin-
gular in his behaviour upon this occasion. — Patrick's Commen-
tary, and The History of the Life of King David, vol. 2.
c The words iu the text arc, ' And it was so, that when they
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
this occasion : and, with the rest of the company that
attended this solemnity, feasted and rejoiced.
d His wife Michal, who was Saul's daughter, and
proud perhaps on account of her pedigree, e upbraided
him upon this occasion with his humility, as a diminu-
tion of his regal dignity ; but he, in reply to the sarcastic
manner wherein she spake it, only told her, " That what
he had done was in honour of that God, who had chosen
him to govern Israel rather than any of her family ; and
that such condescensions as these would never bring
him under any just contempt."
that bare the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed
oxen and fatlings,' (2 Sam. vi. 13.) From which words some
would infer, that David, having measured the ground between
Obed-Edom's house, and the place he had built for the reception
of the ark, had altars raised at the distance of every six paces,
whereon he caused sacrifices to be offered, as the ark passed by.
But it is easy to imagine, what a world of confusion this would
create in the procession ; and therefore the more rational con-
struction is, that after those who carried the ark had advanced
six paces, without any such token of divine wrath as Uzza had
undergone, then did they offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to
God, which might consist of several living creatures, all sacri-
ficed and offered up at once. But, even supposing, that, at set
distances, there were sacrifices all along the way that they went;
yet we are to know, that it was no unusual thing for heathens to
confer on their gods, nay, even upon their emperors, the same
honours that we find David here bestowing upon the ark of the
God of Israel. For in this manner, as Suetonius tells us, was
Otho received, " when during all the journey on his right and
left, victims were slain by the inhabitants of towns." And the
like he relates of Caligula: "When he left Misenum, he pro-
ceeded through a dense body of persons meeting him, and sur-
rounded by altars, and victims, and burning torches." — Calmefs
Commentary.
d After that David was by Saul banished from court, and
forced to seek for shelter in foreign countries, Saul, to cast the
more contempt upon him, gave his wife away to one Phalti, or
Phaltiel, son of Laish of Gallim ; but David, when he came to
the crown of Judah, had her restored to him again ; for which
purposes he sent messengers to Ishbosheth, who then reigned
over the eleven tribes at Mahanaim, to demand her, and who,
according to that demand, took her from Phaltiel, and sent her
back to David. The Hebrews pretend that Phaltiel never came
near Michal, who, in strictness, could not be his wife, because
she had never been divorced by David; but others believe, that
she had five sons by Phaltiel, which were given up to the Gibe-
onites to be executed, (2 Sam. xxi. 8, 9.) But, in this place
there seems to be an error crept into the text, which should be
read Merob instead of Michal. — Calmefs Dictionary, under the
word Michal.
e The words of Michal, wherein she upbraids David, are these :
' How glorious was the king of Israel to-dav, who uncovered
himself to-day, in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as
one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself;' (2 Sam.
vi. 20.) At first reading, they seem to intimate, that David, in
his dancing, had exposed his naked body, and acted some way
or other immodestly. But these words, we are to consider, were
spoken in a fit of passion, and when Michal was minded to ag-
gravate matters ; for it is not to be doubted, but that David kept
himself within the bounds of modesty, how joyous soever he
might be. It was a command which God gave the Israelites,
that they should rejoice in their feasts, (Deut. xii. 7.) but then,
their joy was not to be lascivious or petulant, but pious and mo-
derate. In the case before us, David was in the more imme-
diate presence of God, and about a very sacred business ; and
therefore it is incongruous to think, that he would commit any
thing immodest. And, that he could not expose his nakedness,
as his wife would insinuate, is evident from his having not only
an ephod on, but being clothed with a robe of fine linen, besides
his usual under garments, (1 Chron. xv. 27.) and therefore, though
his putting off his regal robes might give some occasion to Mi-
chal's expression of his ' uncovering himself,' yet it must be
owned, that this opprobrious term proceeded from nothing but
the overflowing spleen of a proud passionate woman. — Calmefs
and Patrick's Commentaries.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c
481
A. M. 2949. A. C. i0-'>5; OH, ACCORDING TO
By Uiis time the palace, which Hiram king of Tyre
had furnished David with men and materials to build,
was finished ; and, as he was reflecting upon the mean-
ness of God's habitation in comparison of his own, it
came into his mind to build a noble fabric for his religi-
ous worship, which design he communicated to a Nathan.
Nathan at first approved of it; but the night following,
he was commanded to forbid it, with this assurance, that
God accepted of his sincere intentions ; promised that
his son should succeed him, and build him a temple ; and
that his posterity should reign b for many generations.
David was a man of war, and therefore, since God had
refused him the privilege of building him a temple, and
had reserved that work for his son Solomon, whose name
denotes peaceable, to execute, he thought himself bound
to subdue al! his enemies on every side, that, when his
son came to undertake that great afl'air, he might meet
with as little molestation as possible.
In the beginning of his reign, the Philistines had twice
invaded him, and therefore he began with them. Their
royal city of Gath, which was called Metheg-Ammah, or
the bridge of Ammali, because it stood upon a hill of
that name, and was a bridle to curb the tribe of Judah,
and keep them in obedience, he took and made it a
barrier against themselves. The Moabites he utterly
subdued ; and, having dismantled all their strong places,
he c slew the greater part of them, reserving such only
as were requisite to till the ground. From hence he
« At what time this prophet began to appear in Israel, we are
nowhere informed. This is the first time that the scripture
makes mention of him. He was a man of great temper, pru-
dence, and fine address, who knew to mitigate the rigour of his
reproofs with a great ileal of sweetness and wisdom, which qual-
ified him so well for the conversation of kings, and other great
persons. He was always equally esteemed and beloved by David,
and, in his conduct towards him, maintained a just medium
between an inflexible austerity and a servile flattery. — Calmct's
Commentary.
b The words in the text are, ' I will establish the throne of his
kingdom for ever;' which, in their primary sense, do relate to
the terrestrial kingdom of David's family, and the long duration
of it, enough to justify the expression 'for ever,' taken in a less
strict signification. But if we take it in a more sublime and
absolute sense, it can belong to none but that Sou of David, to
whom God the Father gave an eternal kingdom, properly so
called, over all things both in heaven and earth, which though it
was not so well known in the times when this prophecy was ut-
tered, was, by the event afterwards, made plain and evident. —
l.e Clerics Commentary,
C There is no small obscurity in the words of the text, which
are these: ' He smote Moab, and measured them with a line,
casting them down to the ground; even in two lines measured
he to put to death, and with one line to keep alive.' Which
words seem to allude to a custom among the kings of the east,
when they were thoroughly incensed against any nation, namely,
to make the captives all come together in one place, and prostrate
themselves upon the ground; that, being divided into two parts,
as it were with a line, their conqueror might appoint which part
he pleased either for death or life, which was sometimes deter-
mined by casting of lots. Some are of opinion, that David made
three lots or parts of these Moabites, two of which he ordered to
be slain, and one part only to be kept alive. The reason of this
severity against this miserable people, the rabbins assure us,
was, because they had slain his parents and brethren, whom he
bad committed to tin' custody of the king of Moab during bis
exile. But of the reality of this motive there is no manner of
appearance; and since this execution which David inflicted may
relate either to the whole nation, or the army only, to clear
David from the imputation of ton much cruelty we should rather
conceive it of the third, or half part at most, of the army. /,e
Cltrc's and Calmet's Commentaries.
HALES, A. M. 4311. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix.
marched his army to secure his territories, which border-
ed upon the Euphrates. The Syrians of Zobah, under
the command of d Hadadezer, came with a strong force,
and gave him battle : but he soon routed them, and,
besides a great number of foot prisoners, took a thou-
sand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen that attend-
ed them ; but, reserving to himself no more horses than
were necessary for an hundred chariots, the rest he ham-
stringed, to make them unserviceable for war. e The
Syrians of Damascus, hearing of Hadadezer's ill success,
came to his assistance. But David put them to the rout
likewise, and having slain two and twenty thousand of
them, he became master of their country ; put garrisons
into their fortified cities, and made them tributary ; and
(what was another victory in this expedition) in his return
from Syria, he engaged a great body of Edomites / in
the valley of salt, slew eighteen thousand of them, and
brought them under the like subjection.
Thus loaded with honour and spoils David returned
from this campaign ; but all the rich materials that he
had compiled together, namely, gold, silver, and brass,
he dedicated to the Lord, or laid them up for the future
use of the temple. And, what was no small addition to
his store, Toi, the king of Hamath, hearing of his vic-
tories, sent his own son to congratulate him thereupon,
and, in a large present of vessels of gold, and vessels
of silver, &c, to acknowledge his kindness in breaking
the power of his most inveterate enemies.
All the while that David was thus engaged in foreign
wars, he took care to have justice administered to his
subjects at home, and a certain number of very great
d In the fragment of Nicolaus Damascenus, which Josephua
has preserved, this prince is simply called Adad, which was the
common name of the kings of Syria, who, according to the man-
ner of other eastern princes, took their titles from the celestial
bodies, and, in their language, Adad signifies the stin. The
fragment, recorded by Josephus is to this effect. " A long time
after, one Adad, a valiant man, and a native of the place, had
the command of Damascus and Syria, Phoenicia only excepted.
There happened to be a war between the same Adad and David
the king of the Jews, and several encounters between them ;
but, in the end Adad was overcome at Euphrates, behaving
himself with the resolution of a brave prince and a great captain."
The same author, speaking further of his posterity, says, " That
the government was handed down from father to son to the tenth
generation, and that the successor still received the father's name
with the empire, as the Ptolemies did among the Egyptians.'' —
Jeicish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 6.
c Aram Damasek, which we translate Syria of Damascus, was
that part of Syria which lay between Libanus and Antilibanus,
whose chief city was Damascus, situate in a valley, called by
several names in Scripture, and watered by t\\o rivers, the two
principal of which, namely, Abana and Pharphar, (mentioned in
2 Kings v. 12.) descended from mount Hermonj whereof the
latter washed the walls of Damascus, aud the ether ran through
it, and divided the city into two parts. — Patrick's Commentary.
f The valley of salt lure is thought by many to be the place
adjoining to the Dead sea. But, as i In' country of the Edomites,
whom David subdued in his return from his expedition into Syria,
must necessarily lie towards the east of Canaan, we must look
for some other valley of salt in the confines of that country.
Now, about a league southward from the city of Palmyra, or
Tadmor, in the road to Edom, we find a large plain abounding
with salt pits, whence a great part of Syria is furnished with
that commodity; and therefore it is very probable, that the battle
between David's generals and the Edomites was fought in this
plain; which i^ about two days' journey from Bozrah, the capital
city of the eastern Edom, wlier.ee the people might march out
to meet David's forces, and oppose them in their return home —
Calmct's Commentary,
482
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES,
M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
men employed in the highest offices of trust. Joab, as
we said before, was captain-general ; Jehoshaphat, a
chancellor of the kingdom ; Abiathar, was high priest ;
Seraiah, secretary of state ; Benaiah, ° captain of his
guard ; and his own sons, the prime ministers of his
household, such as lord chamberlain, lord treasurer, lord
steward, as we call them ; and to these he added one
more, Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, to whom he
restored all his grandfather Saul's estate ; and though
he was a cripple, c and lame of both his feet, yet, for the
love he had for his father, he entertained him with great
kindness, and ordered him to sit with his own sons at the
royal table every day.
David, not long after this, hearing that his rf old friend
a The word in our translation is recorder, which in the mar-
ginal note, is remembrancer, or writer of chronicles; an employ-
ment of no mean estimation in the eastern world, where it was
customary witli kings to keep daily registers of all the transactions
of their reigns; and a trust, which, however discharged to pur-
pose, must be let into the true springs and secrets of action,
and consequently must be received into the inmost confidence.
For whether the office of a lord chancellor was consistent with
the constitution of the Jewish state, a modern author seems to
doubt. — History of the Life of King David, vol. 2.
b These guards are called in the text 'the Cherethites and the
Pelethites;' but who they were, is variously conjectured. That
they were soldiers, is evident, from their being mentioned as
present at the proclamation of king Solomon, against Adonijah,
which could not conveniently have been done without some armed
force, to protect the persons who proclaimed him; and that they
woe not common soldiers, but the constant guards of David's
person, is manifest from the title of l&iftaroQuXuxis, keepers of
the body, which Josephus gives them. Some are of opinion, that
they were men of a gigantic stature ; but we find no grouud for
that, though they were doubtless proper and robust men, as we
speak, and of known fidelity to their prince, (2 Sam. xv. 18. and
xx. 7.) Others again, think that they were Philistines; but it is
hardly supposable, that David would have any of these hated
uncircumcised people to be his body guard, neither can we be-
lieve, that the Israelitish soldiers would have taken it patiently,
to see foreigners of that nation put in such places of honour and
trust. Cherethite, however, is certainly but another name for
Philistine, as appears from Zephaniah ii. 5.; and therefore the
question is, how came any of David's subjects to be called after
that name ? And the answer to this is obvious, — They were so
called, because they went at first with him into Philistia, and
continued there with him, all the time that he was under the
protection of Achish. These were the persons who accompanied
him from the beginning, in his utmost distress, and clave to him
in all calamities; and therefore it is no wonder, if men of such
approved fidelity were made choice of for his body guards ; nor is it
any uncommon thing in history, for legions, or bands of soldiers,
to take their names, not from the place of their nativity, but their
residence, and very frequently from the name of their captain or
commander. Since therefore, in 1 Chron. xii. 3. we find men-
tion made of one Pelet, the son of Azmaveth, who resorted to
David while he was at Ziklag, but still under the protection of
Achish, it is but supposing him to be their captain, and then we
come to the reason why they were called Pelethites, unless we
suppose them rather denominated from Peleth son of Jonathan,
who was of the king's own tribe. — Patrick's Commentary;
Poole's Annot.; and The History of the Life of King David.
c Mephibosheth was very young when his father Jonathan was
killed at the battle of Gilboa, which put his nurse into so great a
consternation, that she let the child fall, as she was making haste
to escape with him, and from that time he was lame of both feet
for ever after. — 2 Sam. iv. 4.
d What the particular benefits which David had received from
Nahash were, we are no where told in Scripture ; but some of the
Jews say, that he fled to him, when he durst stay no longer with
Achish king of the Philistines, and that he received him very
kindly; others, that he entertained his relations when the king
of Moab, to whom he had committed them, slew some of them:
but the most likely opinion is, that as he was a bitter enemy to
Saul, who had given him a great overthrow, he, for that very
Nahash was dead, sent his compliments of condolence
to his son and successor Hanun ; but the great men
that were about the young king, made him believe, that
the sole intent of David's sending this embassy was to
spy out the weakness of the city, and in what place it
might most advantageously be assaulted : so that the too
credulous prince ordered the ambassadors to be treatea
in the most ignominious manner, and with e their beards
half-shaved, and their clothes cut short, even to the mid-
dle of their buttocks, to be sent about their business.
The ambassadors being ashamed to return home, were
ordered to continue at Jericho, until their beards grew
again ; but as for the indignity put upon them, David
gave them assurance that he would resent it in a proper
manner. Accordingly he sent an army under the com-
mand of Joab, to call these unhospitable Ammonites to
an account. The Ammonites were apprised of his de-
sign, and therefore provided against the worst, by pro-
curing 33,000 mercenaries of the Syrians, who lay
encamped at some distance in the fields, whilst their own
forces covered the city.
Upon this situation of the enemy, Joab divided his
army into two bodies, one of which he gave to his bro-
ther Abishai,to keep the Ammonites in play, while him-
self with the other, which consisted of his choice men,
attacked the Syrians. Their agreement was, to relieve
each other, in case there was occasion : but Joab, at the
first onset, charged the Syrians so home, that as they were
but mercenaries, and thought not the cause their own,
they soon gave way, which made the Ammonites, who
depended much upon their courage, endeavour to secure
themselves by retreating into their city ; for the season
of the year being too far advanced, made it imprac-
ticable for Joab to besiege it.
Hadadezer had assisted the Ammonites, with some
forces the last campaign ; and being apprehensive that
David would fall foul upon him, he resolved to be be-
reason, became a friend to David, when he perceived how Saul
persecuted him, and thereupon might send him relief and assist-
ance, and perhaps offer him protection in his kingdom. — Patrick'*
Commentary.
e This was one of the greatest indignities that the malice of
man could invent, in those countries where all people thought
their hair so great an ornament, that some would rather have
submitted to die than part with it. What a foul disgrace and
heavy punishment this was accounted in ancient times, we may
learn from Nicolaus Damascenus, as mentioned by Stobseus,
(tit. 42.) who says, that among the Indians, the king command-
ed the greatest offenders to be shaven, as the heaviest punishment
that he could inflict upon them ; and to the like purpose Plutarch
(in Agesil) tells us, that whenever a soldier, among the Lacedemo-
nians, was convicted of cowardice, he was obliged to go with one
part of his upper lip shaved, and the other not. Nay, even at
this day, no greater indignity can be offered to a man of Persia,
than to cause his beard to be shaved ; and therefore Tavernier,
in liis travels, relates the story, that when the sophi caused an
ambassador of Aureng-zebe's to be used in this manner, telling
him that he was not worthy to wear a beard, the emperor, even
in the manner that David here did, most highly resented the
affront that was done to him in the person of his ambassador.
And as shaving David's ambassadors, was deservedly accounted
a grievous affront, so the cutting off half the beard, which made
them look still more ridiculous, was a great addition to it, where
beards were held in great veneration ; and where long habits down
to the heels were worn, especially by persons of distinction, without
any breeches or drawers, the cutting their garments, even to the
middle, thereby to expose their nakedness, was such a brutal
and shameless insult, as would badly become a man of David's
martial spirit, and just sentiments of honour, to have tamely
passed by. — Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
483
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055 ; OR. ACCORDING TO
forehand with him. To this purpose levying a vast army,
not only in Syria, but in Mesopotamia likewise, he sent
it, under the command of Shobach his general, over the
river Euphrates, as far as Helam, a town in the borders
of the half tribe of Manasseh. This David had soon
intelligence of, and therefore uniting all his forces, he
marched with the utmost expedition, and coming upon
the enemy sooner than was expected, slew seven thou-
sand men, who attended seven hundred chariots ; which
so disheartened the rest, that he soon despatched forty
thousand more, together with their general, who fell in
the action, and died upon the spot. Upon this success,
several petty kings who had assisted Hadadezer in this
expedition, fearing some worse consequence, made a
peace with David, and became tributary to him ; and
even Hadadezer himself, being thus forsaken by his
confederates, gave him assurance that he would no lon-
ger espouse the cause of the Ammonites, but leave them
to shift for themselves, thereupon David sent Joab
against them with a powerful army, who laid the country
waste, destroyed all that came in his way, and to make
short of the matter, laid siege to their royal city of
Rabbah.
AYhile Joab was carrying on the siege of Rabbah,
David continued in Jerusalem, and walking one evening
a on the top of his palace to take the fresh air, he
chanced to * espy a beauteous woman bathing herself in
her garden. The unguarded king, as soon as he saw
her, was smitten ; and inquiring who she was, was in-
formed that she was Bathsheba, the daughter of Ainmiel,
and wife of Uriah c the Hittite, an officer in his army,
■who was then with Joab at the siege of Rabbah. David
sent for her, lay with her, and dismissed her. But, in a
short time, finding herself with child, she apprized him
of it, and desired him withal to consult her honour and
a The manner of building, in all eastern countries, was to have
their houses flat-roofed, with a terrace and parapet wall, for the
convenience of walking in the cool air; and as David's palace
was built on one of the highest places of Mount Sion, he might
easily look down upon the lower parts of the town, and take a
view of all the gardens that were within due distance. — Le
Clerc's Commentary.
b Thus Jupiter is said to have seen Proserpina washing her-
self, and exposing her whole body to his view, which inflamed
his lust after her. But whether it was in her garden, or court-
yard, overlooked by the palace, or in some apartment in her
house, whose windows opened that way, that this woman bathed
herself, it is not so certain. Tradition points out the place of a
fountain still called after her name, which would make it prob-
able that she bathed in a garden, did not Josephus expressly de-
clare that it was in her own house, as indeed the natural mo-
desty and decency of her sex, as well as the circumstance of the
time, for then it was evening, make his account more probable;
nor can it be doubted, but that the declining rays of the sun,
shooting into the inmost recesses of her chamber, and throwing
a great lustre around her, might discover her very clearly to
very distant eyes, without the least suspicion on her part, of any
possibility of being seen, and consequently with all the reserve of
modesty proper to her sex. — The History of the Life of King
David, vol. 3.
c Uriah, though an Hittite by nation, was proselyted to the
.Jewish religion, and so marrying with a Jewish woman, lived
in Jerusalem; or as he was one of the king's lifeguard, which
for reasons above mentioned, seem to have been all natives, and
of the tribe of Judah, this additional name might perhaps be
given him, for some gallant action achieved against the Ilittites,
in the same manner as a Roman, in after ages, came to be called
Afiicanus, Germanicus, Parthicus, &c, upon account of the vic-
tories obtained over the Africans, Germans, or Parthians. —
Calmed Commentary.
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
safety in devising some means to conceal it. Hereupon
he sent a despatch to Joab for Uriah to come to him, as
if he had something particular to inquire of him ; but his
whole intent was to give him an opportunity of lying
with his wife, that so the child, when it was born, might
be reputed his. Uriah came ; and after the king had
asked him some few questions concerning the condition
of the army, and the advances of the siege, he ordered
him to go home, d and refresh himself after his journey,
and sent a handsome collation after him for his enter-
tainment. But so it was, that instead of going near
his wife, he chose to sleep in the guard room.
David was informed of this the next morning ; and
was therefore resolved to make use of another expedient.
He invited him to sup at his own table, and prevailed
with him to drink to such a pitch, that he did not doubt
but that the heat of the liquor would have inflamed his
appetite, and made him go home to his wife ; but still lie
lay in the guard room, and in excuse to thejeing, said,
that he thought it was his duty so to do, while the rest
of the soldiers were encamped. So that finding himself
still disappointed, the king ordered him at last back to
the army, and e sent him with letters to Joab, wherein
he commanded him to manage matters so, that Uriah
might be killed by the Ammonites, which accordingly
came to pass : for in an assault upon the town, Uriah,
d The words in the text are, ' go down to thy house, and wash
thy feet,' (2 Sam. xi. 8.) for in these countries, where it was not
the custom to wear shoes, but sandals only, and, in some places
to go barefoot, washing the feet was a great refreshment after a
journey, and a common compliment that the master of the house
usually made to any stranger at his first entrance. But tin's
custom of washing the feet, was not only after a journey, to
cleanse them from dirt and dust, but very much used likewise,
before people sat down to meat; and therefore David's meaning
in the expression is, that Uriah should go down and feast with
his wife, for which reason he sent a collation to his house, and
after so long an absence, indulge himself in her company. For
David's intention hitherto was, neither to murder Uriah, nor
marry his wife, but only to screen her honour and his own crime.
— Calmet's Commentary.
c It may be thought perhaps, that Uriah suspected something
of his wife's adultery, and therefore, resolving that it should be
discovered, would not be persuaded to go down to his house.
But if he did, he certainly acted the part of a trusty servant,
when he would not open the king's letter to know what was in
it, though, upon supposition that he suspected his criminal
commerce with his wife, he had reason to expect no good. This
puts one naturally in mind of the story of Bellerophon's carrying
letters from Prostus to his father-in-law Jobates, king of Lycia,
with an order to kill him; from whom it came into a proverb,
to carry Bellerophon's letter or a death warrant against one's
self, according to that passage in Plautus: "Aha! thy son hath
now made me a Bellerophon, I myself have brought the warrant
for my bondage." — Bacchid. For the fable of Uriah and Bellero-
phon are so xery much alike, that, the fable of the latter seems tn
be founded upon the story of the former. Bellerophon, who, as
some scholiasts think, should be read Boulephoron, a council
carrier, was a stranger at the court of Prostus, as Uriah being a
Hittite, was at the court of David. He declined the embraces
of Sthenoboea, as Uriah did the bed of Bathsheba; and was for
that reason, sent to Jobates, general of Prostus's army, with
letters, which contained a direction to put him to death, as Uriah
was sent to Joab, David's general. By debates he was sent,
with a small guard, upon an attack, in which it was intended,
lie should be slain, as Uriah was by Joab to that in which he
fell. The main of the history is the same in both: the simili-
tude of Jobates and Joab's name is very remarkable; and the
variation in the whole only lies in some such ornamental em-
bellishments, as might well be expected in a poetical composi-
tion.— Ctilmet's Commentary, and The History of the Life if
Kill j Da rid.
484.
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES. A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
[Book V.
being deserted by the other soldiers, who had private
orders to retire when the onset began, a fell immediately
by the enemy's sword.
As soon as Uriah was dead, Joab sent an express
thereof to the king, who returned him orders to carry on
the siege with more vigour, until he had made himself
master of it ; and then to raze it even to the ground, and
to put all the inhabitants to the sword, without sparing
so much as one man. Upon this order Joab advanced
his approaches, and renewed his assaults every day, until
he had got possession of * the water works which sup-
plied the town ; and then sent a courier to acquaint the
king, that the city was reduced to the utmost extremity ;
was in no condition to hold out much longer, and there-
fore he desired him to come in person, that he might
have the honour of taking it. The king, according to
his general's desire, went with a strong reinforcement,
took the place by storm, gave the plunder of it to his
soldiers, but reserved to himself what belonged to the
king, among which was the crown of inestimable value.
Having thus wasted the city and divided the spoil,
he put the men who had held it out against him, to the
most exquisite torments ; and other places that would
not immediately surrender, he treated with the same
severity.
Upon the death of Uriah, his wife c Bathsheba pre-
tended to mourn for him ; but it was not long before
David sent for her, d and declared her his wife : and in
a The fate and fall of the gallant Uriah is thus related by Jose-
phus: — " Joab put Uriah upon a desperate forlorn, and to cover
his design, gave him several brave men to back him, with a pro-
mise to support him with the whole army, in case there was any
possibility of entering the town ; and at the same time recom-
mended it earnestly to him, to maintain the reputation he had
already acquired with the king and the army, by acquitting
himself gallantly upon this occasion. Uriah with great cheer-
fulness undertook the post, while Joab gave his companions pri-
vate orders to withdraw, and leave him, as soon as they found
themselves in clanger. The Hebrews pressed hard upon the
wall, and put the Ammonites under a dreadful apprehension,
that they would force the town ; whereupon the besieged threw
open their gates, and made a desperate sally, which was as good
as a signal to those that were with Uriah, to abandon him ; which
accordingly they did, and left him to be cut to pieces. He did
all the execution that was possible to be done by one single man
against numbers, and after several wounds received, fell like a
man of honour, with his faco to the enemy." — Jewish Antiqui-
ties, b. 7. c. 7.
b Some learned men are of opinion, that this royal city of Rab-
bah was likewise called the ' city of waters,' either because it stood
upon a river, or was encompassed with water both for its defence
and delight. But Junius renders it, that " he cut off the waters
which supplied the town ;" which translation not only Josephus
seems to favour by telling us, that Joab seized on all the aque-
ducts which led into the city ; but Polybius (b. 5.) likewise, speak-
ing of the siege of this same place by Antiochus, relates the story,
how a certain deserter discovered to that prince a subterraneous
passage through which the besieged came to draw water, which
Antiochus stopped up, and by reason of their thirst compelled them
to surrender. — Poole's Annotations, and Calmct's Commentary .
c How long widows were to mourn for their husbands, there is
no express precept in the law; but the usual time for common
mourners was no more than seven days; and we cannot suppose
that Bathsheba was much longer, considering the reason we ha\e
tn apply to her the words of Lucan: "Unwilling she shed the
trickling tears, and from a heart of joy heaved forth groans."
d According to the Jewish doctors it was utterly unlawful for
any to marry another man's wife in case he had defiled her be-
fore. The canonical law declares such marriages null and void,
as are contracted between an adulterous man, and a woman that
was partner with him in the crime; and though the law of Moses
this state he continued without any molestation, or ap-
prehension of having done wrong, for the space of several
months, till at length God sent e Nathan the prophet to
rouse him out of his adulterous lethargy, and, by r an
does not expressly forbid them, yet we may not thence infer that
they were permitted among the Jews. For these reasons some
have thought that this marriage of David and Bathsheba was
null and invalid ; but others, upon better grounds, have supposed
that though there were many criminal circumstances attending
it, yet these did not vacate its effect, and in short, though it
ought not to have been done, yet being done, the marriage was
good, and the children, which were afterwards born, were legiti-
mate.— Caimet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
e We learn little more of this great man in the sacred writings,
but that he was David's prophet, intimate counsellor, and his-
toriographer. Josephus says of him, that he was a polite and a
prudent man, one who knew how to temper the severity of wis-
dom with sweetness of manners. And Grotius compares him to
Manius Lepidus, of whom Tacitus says that he had a talent of
turning away Tiberius's mind from those cruel purposes, to which
the vile flattery of others inclined him, and was, at the same time,
in equal favour and authority with him. Nathan certainly knew
the art of reproving kings with authority, and yet without giving
oflence. So far from that, he grew in his prince's favour and
estimation, as long as he lived ; insomuch, that David, as tradi-
tion tells us, called one son after his name, and committed
another, even his beloved Solomon, to his care and tuition. — The
History of the Life of King David, vol. 3.
f There is a passage of Seneca, (Epist. 59.) where he treats
of the style fit for philosophic writing, which suits so well with this
parable of Nathan's, that I choose to give it in his own words, as a
fit preamble to the short comment which follows it: — " I find,"
says he, " images, which if any one forbids us to use, and deems
that they ought to be allowed to poets only, yet it is my opinion,
that none of the ancients ever read them who was not capti-
vated with the beautiful diction. Those who spoke in a simple
manner, and with the view of proving something, made great
use of parables, which I think necessary, not for the same reason
that poets use them, but that they might be of assistance to our
weakness, and further both teacher and listener to the point in
hand." For parables, like histories, wherein we have no concern,
are heard with more attention, and are so contrived, as to give no
oflence, even though they provoke the man to whom they are
addressed, to condemn himself. ' There were two men in one
city, the one rich, and the other poor; and the rich man had
exceeding many flocks and herds;' as David had many wives and
concubines, with whom he might have been well satisfied, with-
out violating another man's bed; ' but the poor man had nothing
save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished
up.' Bathsheba, very likely, was the only wife that Uriah had,
with whom lie was highly pleased and delighted, and she very
probably with him, till David's temptations, had perverted her
mind. ' And it grew up together with him and with his chil-
dren ; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and
lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.' Nathan, in
his resemblance, cannot be said to have surpassed the truth, con-
sidering how fond many persons were anciently, not only of
lambs, but of several other creatures, which they suffered to eat
with them at their tables, and lie with them in their beds ; and
that even at this day it is a custom in Arabia, which is contigu-
ous to Judea, to have one of the finest lambs in the flock brought
up in the house, and fed with the children. ' And there came a
traveller to the rich man ;' this denotes David's straggling appe-
tite, which he suffered to wander from his own home, and to
covet another man's wife: and of this appetite the Jewish doctors
have this observation, that " in the beginning it is but a traveller,
but in time it becomes a guest, and in conclusion is the master
of the house." ' And he spared to take of his own flock, and
his own herds,' wherewith he might have satisfied his appetite,
' but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the wayfaring
man that was come to him.' Most commentators here take no-
tice, that Nathan did not go so far in the parable, as to say any
thing of the rich man's killing the poor man. This certainly
would have made the resemblance more complete, but it is
therefore omitted, that David might not so readily apprehend Na-
than's meaning, and so be induced unawares to pronounce a sen-
tence of condemnation upon himself; whereupon the prophet
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &<
485
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 1341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
elegant parable, to represent the baseness and wicked-
ness of what he had done, and to make him pronounce
sentence against his guilty self.
David accordingly condemns himself, and confesses
his guilt, and humbly begs pardon for what he had done :
Whereupon Nathan was sent again to inform him, that a
God had pardoned his transgression, namely, the eternal
punishment due to his transgression God had remitted,
but the b temporal should be inflicted on him. That
had a fair opportunity to show him, that if the rich man, who
took away thy poor man's lamb, deserved death, according to his
own judgment, how much more did he deserve it, who had not
only taken another man's wife, but caused him to be slain like-
wise by the enemies of Israel. — Patrick's Commentary.
a It may very well be asked, how God so readily came to for-
give David, when he acknowledged his transgression, and yet
did not forgive Saul, though he made the like confession. ' I
have sinned.' But the answer is obvious, that, be the form of
expression what it will, unless it proceeds from the sincerity of
the heart, the great Searcher of hearts will not regard it. The
true reason, therefore, why Saul could not obtain a revocation of
his sentence of rejection, was, because his repentance was not
sincere ; it did not proceed from an humble and contrite spirit.
At the same time that he acknowledged his sin, he desired
Samuel ' to honour him before the people,' and persisted in his
disobedience ever after. Whereas David, on the contrary, hum-
bled himself, wept and lamented for his sin, and of his penitence
has left us a perpetual and eternal monument in Psalm li. ' Have
mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness ; according to
the multitude of thy mercies, do away mine offences; wash
me thoroughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from
my sin,' &c.
6 In the threats, which God orders Nathan to denounce against
David, the expressions are, ' I will raise up evil against thee out
of thine own house, aud I will take thy wives before thine eyes,
and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy
wives in the sight of the sun; for thou didst it secretly: but I
will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun;' (2 Sam.
xii. 11 — 12.) Where the words, ' I will raise up, I will take,
I will do,' do not denote any positive actions of God, as if he
prompted wicked men to do the same things, wherewith he
threatens David, insomuch that, without such prompting, they
would not have done them, but by it were necessitated to do
them. Such a construction as this is injurious to the divine
attributes, aud makes God the author of evil. But the true
meaning is, that God, at that time, saw the perverse disposition
of one of his sons, and the crafty wiliness of one of his counsel-
lors, which, without restraining them, would not fail to create
David no small uneasiness. And therefore, because David had
violated his law, and, to gratify his lust, had committed both
adultery and murder, God would not interpose, but suffered the
tempers of these two wicked persons to follow their own course,
and have their natural swing ; whereupon the one, being ambi-
tious of a crown, endeavours to depose his father, and the other,
Trilling to make the breach irreparable, advised the most de-
tested thing he could think of. This indeed was the very tiling
that God had foretold, but, without any imputation upon his
attributes, we may say, that God can so dispose and guide a
train of circumstances, that the wickedness of any action shall
happen in this manner rather than another, though lie do not
infuse into any man the will to do wickedly. " To the torrent
of iniquity, if I may so speak," for I give you the commentator's
own words, because there is something very accurate in them,
" he adds no strength, but prevents its outbreaking to one side
rather to another, and all the circumstances (which have no vice
in themselves) he so directs and regulates that they may attain
to some certain issue. But there are innumerable circumstances
of such a nature, having no real evil in themselves, but in which
however the events arc varied according to the will of God, and
the Almighty hath many methods by which he overrules all things
without any diminution of his glory, and all in such a manner as
to leave to men the liberty either of breaking or obeying his
commandments." So that from such scripture phrases as these,
w'e may not infer, that God either does, or can do evil, but only,
thai he permits that evil to be done, which he foreknew would
he done, but might have prevented had he pleased ; or, in other
therefore the son, for by this time Bathsheba was brought
to bed of a son, begotten in this adulterous congress,
should not live ; that several of his family should come
to an untimely death ; that some one of his sons should
rise up in rebellion against him ; and his own wives be
defiled publicly, and in the sight of all the world, be-
cause he had given such scandal to his own people,
and c such occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme.
Nor was it long before part of this sentence began to
be executed upon him. For the child, which he had by
Bathsheba, was taken sick and died. While it was sick, d
David fasted and prayed, if possibly he might appease
the divine wrath, and intercede for its life ; but when it
was dead, he acknowledged the justice of God, and,
cheerfully submitting to his will, made his ardent sup-
plications to him, that the remainder of his afflictions
might be mixed with mercy. This in some measure was
done ; for, in a proper space of time, he had another son e
terms, that he suffers men, naturally wicked, to follow the bent
of their tempers, without any interposition of his providence to
restrain them. — Le Gere's Commentary.
c David's crime, which at first was secret, was in time dis-
covered, and the report of it carried to the neighbouring nations.
The Syrians, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the
Philistines, people whom he had subdued, and who, out of pure
malice, had always a jealous eye upon his conduct, would not
fail upon this occasion to murmur, and say, "How could God
thus favour an adulterer and murderer ? Where is his justice
and his providence ? Is this the God who is said to be so equit-
able in his dealings with men, and so severe an avenger of ini-
quity, and yet makes choice of such a monster as this to govern
his people ! This is the David, the man after God's own heart,
whom lie preferred before Saul, on whom he hath poured down
innumerable blessings, and for whom he hath many rich promises
in reserve; and yet did Saul ever commit such horrid enormi-
ties as this man has done, and still continues to be the favourite
of God ?" Such reflections we may reasonably imagine would
David's transgressions have occasioned among strangers and
enemies, who might thence be induced to despise a religion they
were acquainted with, and which he, who should have been its
main support, so little regarded. — Calmet's Commentary.
d David's acts of humiliation for his sins are thus described
by Sylvian, On the Government of God. " He put off his purple,
threw away his royal ornaments, laid down his diadem, wholly
stripped himself of his kingship, and appeared as a penitent, in
a squalid, rueful garb, fasting, lying on the ground, confessing,
mourning, repenting, deprecating, &C, and yet, with all his
humiliation and compunction, he could not obtain a revocation
of this punishment." But why should the death of this child,
who, had he lived, would have been a perpetual monument of
guilt, and a brand of infamy upon his parents, be accounted by
David so great a punishment ? The true way to account for tin?,
is to ascribe it to David's excess of passion for Bathsheba, which
so strongly attached him to every orlspriug of hers, and made him
forget eveiy thing in this child, but that motive of endearment.
Besides this, there is something in human nature, which prompts
us to rate things after a manner seemingly unaccountable ; and to
estimate them, not according to their real worth, but according to
the expense or trouble, or even the distress they cost us. Nor
should it be forgot, that this excessive mourning did not proceed
simply from the fear of the loss of the child, but from a deep
sense of his sin, and of the divine displeasure manifested in the
child's sickness, and particularly from a just apprehension of the
injury which he hail dene the infant by his sin, and which ho
thought himself bound in justice, by prayer and intercession, as
much as he was able, to repair. — Patrick's Commentary, and
Poole 's Annotation -v.
e It is very observable, that in the whole compass of this
story, there is not a word said either of Bathsheba's guilt or pun-
ishment; but this might be, because, as to the matter ol her
husband's death, she was innocent: to the adultery which she
Committed, she was enticed by the ofl'ers of a powerful king; and
in tin' eal. unities which befell him, she, no doubt, bad he i share,
and felt her punishment. — Patrick's Cummcntaty.
483
THE HISTORY V.F THE BIBLE..
[Book V.
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO H
by Bathsheba, who was named a Solomon, in confidence
of the promise which God had made, that his reign
should be crowned with peace : but this did not hinder
the divine justice from being true to its threats, as well
as its promises.
David had several sons, but only one daughter, that
we read of, whose name was Tamar, sister to Absalom,
by Maacha, the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur, h a
princess of excellent beauty, and with whom Amnon, his
eldest son by another queen, fell desperately in love,
and pined away with a c hopeless desire of obtaining
her , till at length, by the advice and contrivance of
Jonadab, his intimate friend, and d cousin-german, he
found means to decoy her into his apartment, where, e
a The word Solomon is properly derived from Scholam, which
signifies peace, intimating that his reign should be peaceable;
but, by God's appointment, Nathan gave him another name,
viz. Jedidiah, that is, the Beloved of God. The Scripture, how-
ever, never calls him by this name, but only by that of Solo-
mon, for what reason we cannot tell, unless we may suppose,
that the people being long harassed in war during his father's
reign, might be pleased with this name, and use it rather than
the other, to intimate their hopes and longing desire of peace.
And for this reason (among others) it may be inferred, that
Solomon was born after the conclusion of the Ammonitish war,
though the sacred history takes occasion, from the death of
Bathsheba's first-born, to relate that event first. Not long after
this, David had another son by Bathsheba, (2 Sam. v. 14. and
1 Cliron. iii. 5.) whom he called Nathan, after the name of the
prophet; and of these two Christ was bom, though in different
lines: for Joseph, his supposed father, came from Solomon, as
Matthew (chap. i. ver. 6, 7. relates it;) and Mary, his real
mother, came from Nathan, as it is in Saint Luke, chap. iii.
ver. 34. — Le Clero's Commentary ; and Bedford's Scripture
Chronology, b. 5. c. 4.
b The borders of the Geshurites and Maachathites (as we read
Josh. xiii. 1J, 13.) were given by Moses to the Israelites that
seated themselves on the east of Jordan; nevertheless 'the
children of Israel expelled not the Geshurites and Maachathites,
but they dwell among the Israelites unto this day:' from whence
it is evident, that the cities of Geshur and Maacha, the two
capitals of two small kingdoms, lay within the borders of the land
of Israel : and though it does not appear how they were situated
in respect of each other, yet it is certain that they both lay on the
south side of Mount Libanus, in the north part of the half tribe
of Manasseh, and on the east side of the river Jordan. — Wells'
Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3.
c Virgins of the blood royal were kept secluse in apartments,
separate from the commerce of men, into which not only stran-
gers, but even their own fathers, were not permitted to enter.
Amnon, however, at some time or other, had seen the beautiful
Tamar, or otherwise he could not have conceived so stron" a
passion for her. Upon some certain ceremonial occasions,
indeed, it was customary for the young women to walk out, and
show themselves; but, considering their close confinement at
other times, it was hardly possible for Amnon to find an oppor-
tunity of declaring his passion, much more of gratifying it; and
therefore, out of pure despair, he pined himself into a consump-
tion.'— Calmefs Commentary.
d Jonadab was the son of Shimeah, the brother of David.
e There is something so moving, and the arguments are so
strong in Tamar's speech to Amnon, that one would almost
wonder why it did not prevail with him to desist. 'Nay, my
brother, do not force me.' Here she reminds him of his relation
to her, fur which she hoped he would have such a reverence as not
to meddle with her, though she herself were willing, much less
to offer violence to her, which it was abominable to do even to a
stranger, much more to one of the same blood. ' For no such
thing ought to he done in Israel.' Whatever other nations did,
who had not the knowledge of God's laws, she begs of him to con-
sider, that they both belonged to a nation which was God's pecu-
liar people, had been instructed better, and therefore should act
otherwise. ' Do not thou this folly.' She prays him, besides
the scandal it would give, to reflect with himself on the heinous-
ness of the crime, aud how highly offensive it would be to the
ALES, A. M. 4311. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
notwithstanding all her entreaties and expostulations
with him, he first ravished her, and when his brutish pas-
sion was satisfied, in a sullen humour / bid her begone ;
and when she remonstrated the ill usage, had her turned
out by main force.
g In this mournful and distracted condition, Tamar
repairs to her brother Absalom, and tells him the whole
transaction of her rape : but her brother, though natu-
rally a man of a high spirit, advised her to be silent in
point of prudence, because her ravisher was heir -appa-
rent to the crown ; and himself so h artfully concealed
divine Majesty. ' And I, whither shall I cause my shame to
go?' She beseeches him, ' besides the sin against God,' to consi-
der the disgrace it would be to her, who, after such a foul act,
must be ashamed to look any one in the face. ' And as for thee,
thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel.' Lastly, she puts him
in mind of his own reputation, which so vile an action would
tarnish for ever, and make him be looked upon as a man void of
all sense, religion, honour, and humanity. ' Now therefore, I
pray thee, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from
thee.' It is a common opinion among the Jewish doctors, that
in the war which king David had with the king of Geshur, he
took Maacha his daughter captive, and, as they fancy their law
allows, (Deut. xxi. 11.) lay with her for once only, and then be-
gat this daughter; but that, upon her becoming a proselyte to the
Jewish religion, he married her, and afterwards had Absalom.
Tamar, therefore, being born while her mother was a Gentile,
they suppose that she was not David's legal child, and that
Amnon consequently might marry her: but all this is mere talk,
without any shadow of proof. The most probable opinion is, that
she was neither ignorant of the law (Lev. xviii. 11.) which pro-
hibited such incestuous marriages, nor thought her father's
power so great, as that he might dispense with the law upon this
occasion, but merely that she said auy thing which she thought
would please him, to stop his solicitations, and rude attempts,
and to escape for the present out of his hands. — Patrick's Com-
mentary^ and Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 8.
/"Interpreters seem to be at a great loss to find out the reason,
why Amnon's love to his sister should so soon be converted
into such an hatred, as to make him act so rudely, so brutally
towards her; but it is no uncommon thing for men of violent and
irregular passions, to pass from one extreme to another. The
shame, which accompanies every base action, the remorse and
repentance, and many bad consequences, that immediately pur-
sue it, make a recoil in eveiy man's temper; and therefore
it is no wonder, that a libidinous young man, who would
not spare so much as his own sister, should after fruition,
and when the ardour of his lust was satisfied, be seized with a
contrary passion, and hate the object he loved so much before,
when he came coolly to compare the pleasure and the sin to-
gether, the shortness of the one, and the heinousness of the other.
He hated his sister, when he should have hated himself; and as
this outrageous treatment of her made it impossible for his guilt
to be concealed, so God seems to have abandoned him to the
tumult of his intemperate mind, on purpose to make this punish-
ment of David's adultery more flagrant, and the prophet's pre-
diction of ' raising up evil to him out of his own house,' (2 Sam.
xii. 11.) more conspicuous. — Calmefs and Le Clerc's Commen-
taries; and The History of the Life of King David.
g The manner of Tamar's signifying her vexation for the in-
jury and disgrace which her brother had put upon her, is expressed
by her putting ashes upon her head, (2 Sam. xiii. 19.) And that
this was an ancient custom, whereby to denote one's grief and
concern for any great loss or calamity, is evident from that
passage of the prophet concerning the people of Tyre: ' They
shall cry bitterly, cast dirt upon their heads, and wallow them-
selves in the ashes,' (Ezek. xxvi. 30.) from Achilles's behaviour
upon the death of Patroclus, as we have it in Homer: — " With
both his hands he grasped the burning sand, pouring on his head
and defiling his fair face." (Iliad 18.) And from what Me-
zentius did upon the death of his Lausus, according to Virgil: — .
" With filthy dust he pollutes his hair, and to the heaven high
stretches out both his hands." — JEneid, 10.
h By this means Amnon was lulled asleep into a belief that Ab-
salom would not trouble him for what he had done, because he
Skct. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
487
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055 ; OK, ACCORDING TO
his own resentment that every one believed he had taken
no notice of it. But about two years after, under the
pretence of a sheep-shearing- entertainment, which in
those countries used to be attended with great mirth and
jollity, he invited his friends and relations, and with the
king's consent, though himself declined going, all the
princes of the blood, and more especially his brother
Amnon, to his country seat at Hazor ; where while they
were engaged in feasting and drinking, his servants, by
his direction, and through the promise of an impunity,
fell upon Amnon, as Absalom gave the signal, and im-
mediately despatched him. This put the rest of the
princes into such a consternation, that they made the best
of their way from the house, as expecting the like fate,
and the king, when he heard the first news of the thing,
supposing that Absalom had killed all the rest of his
brothers, was thrown into the utmost grief and despair,
till, by the information of Jonadab, who seems to have
been privy to the design, and the safe arrival of the
other princes, he was certified that Amnon only was
dead ; but his death alone was matter of sorrow and la-
mentation enough.
Absalom, who knew very well how highly his father
would resent this treacherous and barbarous murder, a
fled to his mother's relations, and was entertained by
his grandfather, Talmai, at Geshur, for three years. But,
length of time having worn out David's grief, and Joab
perceiving that he had a secret desire to see Absalom
again, if he could but find out a handsome excuse for
such a purpose, procured a good artful woman * from
Tekoah, who c in a speech, which he had contrived for
did not threaten, nor so much as expostulate with him, or take
any notice of what had passed, though, in reason he ought to have
been more afraid that he was meditating a terrible revenge: ac-
cording to the lesson which the mouse gave her young one, when
she perceived her affrighted at the noise of the crowing cock, but
regardless of the sly approaches of the cat, namely, " That there
was no danger to be feared from the fluttering cock, but from the
silent cat present death.'' — Patrick'* Commentary.
a In the case of wilful murder, the law is, ' That the avenger
of blood shall slay the murderer ; when he meeteth him he shall
slay him,' (Num. xxxv. 21.) from whence it seems to follow, that
it was not in any man's power to protect the wilful murderer, be-
cause the avenger of blood, that is, the nearest relation of the per-
son murdered, might, with impunity, wherever he met him, kill
him. As Absalom therefore had committed a designed murder,
his own life was every moment in danger; and as there were no
cities of refuge in his own country, that, in this case, would
yield him protection, he was forced to fly out of the kingdom to his
mother's father. — Patrick's Commentary.
b Tekoah was a city in the tribe of Judah, which lay south of
Jerusalem, and about twelve miles distant from it. And herein
does Joab's cunning appear not a little, that he made choice of a
woman rather than a man, because women can more easily ex-
press their passions, and sooner gain pity in their miseries; a
widow, which was a condition of life proper to move compassion;
a grave woman, as Josephus calls her, which made her better
fitted for addressing the king; and a woman not known at Jeru-
salem, but living at some distance in the country, that the case
Which she was to represent, might not too readily be inquired
into. — Poole 'fi Annotations.
c The art and contrivance of this widow of Tekoah's speech is
very remarkable. ' When the woman of Tekoah spake to the
king, she fell on her face to the ground, and did obeisance, and
said, Help, O king ! And the king said to her, What aileth
thee ? And she said, I am indeed a widow woman, and my
husband is dead, and thy handmaid had two sons, and the two
strove together in the field, and there was none to part them,
but the one smote the other and slew him; and behold the whole
family is risen against thy handmaid, and they say, deliver him
that smote his brother, that we may kill him, for the life of his
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
her, was to convince the king, that in some cases the life
of a murderer might be saved. The woman Joab intro-
duced ; and when she had told her tale, so as to induce
the king to a compliance with her feigned petition, she
gave him at length to know, that the case she had been
stating was Absalom's : and that if, in a private man, the
king was disposed to be merciful, there was much more
reason for his pardoning his own son, whose absence the
people lamented, and for whom they had so general an
affection.
The king, being apprized that Joab had put the woman
upon this artifice, ordered him to recall Absalom, but
d confined him to live in his own house, and, as yet,
would not seem so far reconciled to him, as to admit him
into his presence. But, at the end of two years, Absa-
lom prevailed with Joab to intercede further for a full
pardon, and to introduce him to the king, who, upon his
humbling himself and begging pardon, took him up from
the ground, where he lay prostrate, and gave him a kiss,
as a token of his forgiveness and royal favour.
Absalom was certainly one of the most comely persons
in all Israel, without the least blemish from top to toe,
and with a head of hair, which in those days was thought
a great beauty, prodigiously long and thick, so that his
person drew every one's eye to him, as soon as he was
restored to favour at court. But as Amnon, his eldest
brother, was slain, and Chileah, his second, by this time
dead, he began to look upon himself as presumptive
heir to the crown, and thereupon to affect a state and
equipage greater than usual. He provided himself with
chariots and horses, and had a guard of fifty men to at-
tend his person : but, notwithstanding this, he would be
e so obsequious and humble, as to stoop to the meanest
brother whom he slew, and we will destroy the heir also: and
so they shall quench my coal that is left,' that is, deprive me
of the little comfort of my life which remains, and is, as it were,
a coal buried in the ashes, ' and leave to my husband neither
name nor remainder upon the earth,' (2 Sam. xiv. 4, &c.) Now
the scope of all this speech was to frame a case as like to David's
as she could devise, that, by prevailing with him to determine it
in her favour, he might be convinced, how much more reason-
able it was to preserve Absalom. But, how plausible soever the
likeness might be, there was a wide difference between her case
and his: for her son, as she pretended, was slain inaseuflle with
his brother; whereas Amnon was taken off by a premeditated
murder: he was slain in the field, where there were no witnesses,
whether the fact was wilfully done or no ; whereas, all the king's
sons, saw Amuon barbarously murdered by his brother: and,
lastly, he was her only son, by whom alone she could hope tohaye
her husband's name perpetuated j whereas David's family was in
no danger of beiug extinct, even although he had given up Ab-
salom to justice. But there was a great deal of policy in not
making the similitude too close and visible, lest the king should
perceive the drift of the woman's pctitfi, before she had obtain-
ed a grant of pardon for her son, and came to make the applica-
tion, to the king: and though, upon her making the application,
the king might have argued the disparity of the two cases, yet he
thought proper to wave this, and admit her reasoning to be good,
because he was as desirous to have Absalom recalled as were
any of his subjects. — Patrick's Commentary.
d This small severity to Absalom, small in comparison of the
heinousness of his crime, David might think necessary, not only
to put upon him a sincere humiliation and repentance for what
he had done, when he found that the king, indulgent as he was,
had not fully pardoned him, but to convince the people like-
wise, how detestable his crime was in the king's esteem, and how-
averse he would be to pass by the liko in another person, who
could not endure the sight of a son, whose hand was defiled with
a brother's blood. — Patrick's Commentary.
e It is an observation of Plato, that when any one intends tc
488
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 1311. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix.
[Book V.
people that had any thing- to say to him ; would offer
his service to solicit every one's cause that had any
business at court ; and, upon proper occasions, not fail
to instil into the people's minds a bad opinion of the
present administration, as if the public affairs were ne-
glected, but that, if he were at the helm, things should
be conducted at an other -guise rate.
a By these arts and insinuations, which were advanta-
geously seconded by the comeliness of his person, as
we said, and the familiarity of his address, he gained to
himself the affections of the people, and insensibly
alienated them from David. * AYhen therefore he ima-
gined that matters were ripe for his purpose, he desired
leave of his father to go to Hebron, pretending that he
had vowed a vow, in his exile, that whenever it should
please God to bring him back to Jerusalem, he would
offer in that place a solemn sacrifice of thanksgiving.
make himself a tyrant in a popular state, he no sooner enters on
the government, but " he smiles upon, and kindly salutes, all
sorts of people, wherever he meets them ;" avowing that he hates
tyranny, promising great things both in private and public,
"and making as if he would be mild, and gentle, and fatherly to
all;" even as Tacitus relates of Otho, " that he used to kiss, and
shake hands with any one, court and adore the mob, and do every
little servile thing, to get possession of the government." — Plato
de Republica, b. S; and Tacitus' 's History, b. 1.
a It is an observation of Aristotle, in his Politics, (b. 5. c. 4.)
that all changes and revolutions in government are made by one
of these two ways, " either by force and violence, or else by deceit
and craft." Nor ever was there a man better formed by nature
to manage matters in this latter way, than was Absalom, who
was a person of courage and gallantry, of civility and courtesy,
young, and wonderfully beautiful, descended from kings, both by
father's and mother's side, and prodigal enough of large and
magnificent promises, if ever he came to be king; a character
not unlike that of Turnus in Virgil: "The well formed shape
influences one, royal ancestry another, and chivalry another." —
JEneid, b. 7.
b This is said in the text to have been ' after forty years,' (2
Sam. xv. 7.) but where to date the beginning of the forty years
lias occasioned much disagreement among commentators. Some
compute them from the time that the Israelites demanded a king
of Samuel; others, from the first time that David was anointed
king; others, from the first commencement of his reign over
Judah; and others again, from the time that he took possession
of the whole kingdom. The two latter of these opinions are in-
supportable, because David reigned but forty years in all, and
was now so hale and hearty, as to be able to walk on foot; where-
as in the latter end of his life he was very infirm and bed-rid.
The learned Usher indeed makes these forty years to commence
from the time of David's first unction; and therefore he was
threescore years old when this rebellion broke out, and lived ten
years after it. But with all due deference to so great authority,
both this and the other opinion, that computes from the time
that a demand of a king was made, are forced and unnatural ;
have no affinity to the text, nor do they suggest any reason why
the sacred historian should begin his account of this unnatural
rebellion with an ' andcit came to pass, that after forty years;'
whereas, if we consider the account of what went before, how
Absalom, by all the arts of popularity, a splendid equipage, con-
descensive behaviour, large promises, and flattering speeches, had
alienated the hearts of the people from his father, we cannot but
be tempted to think that there is an error crept into the text ;
that instead of arbaim, forty, as our copies have it, the word
should' be arba,four only, that is, four years after that Absalom
was re-established in Jerusalem, and had used all his alluring
arts to gain the nation's allections, the first step that he took, was
to go to Hebron. This makes the sense easy and entire, and is
confirmed by the authority of the Syriac and Arabic versions,
the judgment of several able critics, and the testimony of Jose-
phns himself, whose words are, that " four years after his father
w;is reconciled to him, this conspiracy broke out." — Calmet's
Commentary, Howell's History in the notes; and Josephus' Jewish
Antiquities, b. 7. c. 8.
The king, little suspecting his hidden design, and being-
desirous that all religious services should be punctually
performed, gave him free leave to go, and wished him a
good journey. Hebron was the place of his own nati-
vity, and where the royal seat had been, in the begin-
ning of David's reign ; and therefore he thought it the
properest for his wicked enterprise. And no sooner
was he settled there, but he sent his emissaries about
to sound the inclinations of the several tribes, and to
exhort those whom they should gain over to his party,
to be ready to take up arms c as soon as they should
hear that he was proclaimed king.
This occasioned a general insurrection. Absalom was
the nation's darling ; and, upon this summons, d people
flocked to him from every part : so that David, Mho
had intelligence of all this, thought it not safe for him
to continue any longer in Jerusalem, e but leaving the'
c The expression in the text is, ' as soon as you hear the sound
of the trumpet,' (2 Sam. xv. 10.) which looks as if Absalom had
planted trumpeters at proper distances to take the sound from
one another, and disperse it over all the kingdom, that so they,
who were lovers of his cause, might instantly resort to his as-
sistance and support; to which they were encouraged, no doubt,
by the suggestions of his emissaries, who might persuade the
people, that all this was done by the king's consent and approba-
tion, who, being aged and infirm himself, was willing to resign
his kingdom to his eldest and most noble son, who was descended
from a king by both parents. — Le Clerc's Commentary, and
Poole's Annotations.
d It would really make one wonder, how any people could so
easily abandon a prince, so brave, so happy, and successful as
David had been ; how they could forget his excellent qualities,
or be unmindful of the services he had done the nation ; but for
this there may be some reasons assigned. In every nation there
are always some turbulent and discontented spirits, who are uneasy
with the present state of things, and promise themselves some
benefit from a change. Saul's party was not as yet entirely ex-
tinct, and Joab, who was David's prime minister, behaved with
an insufferable pride and insolence. His crimes, which were
very black, and which the king durst not punish, redounded upon
him; and the king himself had given his enemies umbrage
enough against him, in living with Bathsheba, after he had mur-.
dered her husband. But, what gave the fairest pretence of all,
was the obstruction of justice in the civil administration: for
had there not been something of this, Absalom could have had
no grounds for making such loud complaints. These were some
of the causes of so general a revolt in the people. And yet,
after all, there might be something in what Abarbinel imagines,
namely, that neither Absalom, nor the elders of Israel, nor the
rest of the people who were misled by them, had any intention
to divest David of his crown and dignity, much less to take away
his life ; but only to substitute Absalom, as coadjutor to him,
for the execution of the royal authority during his lifetime, and
to be his successor after his death. For, as it would have been
monstrously wicked in Absalom to have designed the destruction
of so kind a father, so it is hard to conceive, how he could have
gained to his party such a multitude of abettors in so villanous
an enterprise. This however we may observe, that David looked
upon their proceedings, (2 Sam. xv. 14. and xvi. 11.) as an at-
tempt upon his life; and that, whatever their first intentions were,
they came at last to a resolution to have him killed, to make
way for their own better security. Which may be a sufficient
warning to all men, never to begin anything that is wrong,
for fear that it should lead them to the commission of that, which
they at first abhorred, when they find they cannot be safe in one
wickedness without perpetrating a greater. — Calmet's and Pa-
trick's Commentaries.
e Though the fort of Zion was very strong and impregnable,
yet there are several reasons, which might induce David to quit
Jerusalem. He had not laid in provisions for a long siege, nor
was Jerusalem, in every part of it, defensible ; and if Absalom
bad once taken it, as it was the capital, he would soon have been
master of the whole kingdom. There was some reason to suspect
likewise, that the inhabitants were faulty, and so much addicted
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
4S9
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OK, ACCORDING TO
place, with a design to retire beyond Jordan, he was at-
tended by his guards, his best troops, and principal
friends. a Zadok and Abiathar the priests, understand-
ing that the king was departed from Jerusalem, brought
the ark of the covenant to accompany him in his distress ;
but ° he desired them to carry it back, and to continue
in Jerusalem, because they might be of use to gain him
intelligence of the enemy's motions and designs, and
their character was too sacred, to fear any violence from
the usurper. Hushai, c the Archite, his faithful friend
and counsellor, came likewise to attend him, and, with
all expressions of sorrow, to see his royal master in such
distress, offered to share his fortune : but David enjoined
him to return, and told him, that he would be more ser-
viceable to him in the city, by pretending to adhere to
Absalom, and by defeating the counsels of Ahithophel,
who, as he understood for certainty, was <l engaged in
his son's measures, and whose great abilities, which the
to the contrary party, that had he stood a siege, and been redured
to straits, they might possibly deliver him up to Absalom. Nor
was the preservation of the city itself, which David had beauti-
fied, and adorned with a fine and stately palace, and where God
had appointed to put his name and worship, the least part of his
concern ; and therefore he thought it more conducive to his in-
terest in all respects, rather than be cooped up in a place which
he desired to preserve from being the seat of war, to march abroad
into the country, where he might probably raise a considerable
army, both for his own defence, and the suppression of the rebels.
— Poole's Annotations.
a 2 Sam. xv. 30. ' And David went up by the ascent of
mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered ;
and he went barefoot: and all the people that was with him co-
vered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they
went up.' This was an indication of great distress: for in an-
cient times the shoes of great and wealthy persons were made of
very rich materials. When any great calamity befell them, either
public or private, they not only stripped themselves of these
ornaments, but of their very shoes, and walked barefoot. In this
manner prisoners taken in war, were forced to walk, both for
punishment and disgrace. — Burder's Oriental Customs, vol. 1.
p. 231.
6 This he might do for several reasons; for either he might
think it not decent to have the ark wander about with him he
knew not whither, and to expose it to all the hazards and incon-
veniences which he himself was like to undergo; or he might
suppose that this would be a means to expose the priests to the vio-
lence of Absalom's rage, as he had before exposed them to Saul's
jury upon another occasion, if God, in his judgment, should per-
mit him to prevail; or this might look as a distrust of the divine
goodness, and that he placed more confidence in the token of
God's presence, than he did in God himself, who had preserved
him in the long persecution of Saul, when he had no ark with
him. But what seems the chief reason at that time, for his
Bending back the ark, was, — That the priests and Levites, of
whose fidelity he was sufficiently satisfied, by giving him intel-
ligence of the enemies' motions, might do him more service in
Jerusalem, than they could do in his camp. — Poole's Annot.
(•This man might be of the ancient race of the Archites, de-
scendants from Canaan, of whom Moses speaks, (Gen. x. 17.) but
since the name of these ancient people is differently written, I
should rather think that this additional name was given him from
the place of his nativity, namely, Archi, a town situated on the
frontiers of Benjamin and Ephraim, to the west of Bethel. —
Joshua xvi. 2.
d The Jews are of opinion, that Ahithophel was incensed
against David, and therefore ready to go over to the adverse
party, because he had abused Bathsheba, whom they take to have
been his grand-daughter, because she was the daughter of Eliam, (2
Sam. xi. 3.) and Ahithophel had a son of that name, (2 Sam.
xxiii. 34.) for this reason they imagine, that he advised Absalom
to lie with his father's concubines, that he might he repaid in
kind; though the Scripture assigns another, namely, that he and
his father might thereby become irreconcilable enemies. —
Poole's Annotations.
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix.
king was not unacquainted with, gave him no small un.
easiness.
David had scarce passed over Mount Olivet, which
lies to the eastward of Jerusalem, when Ziba, whom
he had made steward to Mephibosheth, his friend Jona-
than's son, came, and presented him with a e considerable
quantity of wine, and other provisions ; but, upon the
king's inquiring for his master, who he thought above all
men, in point of gratitude, should have kept firm to his
interest, the perfidious wretch accused him of staying
behind in Jerusalem, in hopes that himself might be
made king ; and the too credulous king, in this general
distraction of his affairs, believing the accusation to be
true, made a hasty grant of all Mephibosheth 's estate to
this base servant and treacherous sycophant.
As David drew near to Bahurim, a city in the tribe of
Benjamin, f one Shiinei, a descendant from the family
of Saul, and who dwelt in that place, came out, and
threw stones at him, and, in the hearing of the whole
company, loaded him with the bitterest reproaches and
execrations, so that Abishai desired leave of the king to
go and despatch the insolent rebel ; but by no means
would the king permit him, but bore all with an admira-
ble patience, £ and resignation to the will of God, as
being conscious of his own guilt in the case of Uriah,
and of the divine justice in thus afflicting him.
While David continued at Bahurim, Absalom and his
party entering Jerusalem, were received with the general
acclamations of the people, and Hushai, not forgetful of
the king's instructions, went to compliment him, and
offered him his service. Absalom knew that he was his
father's intimate friend and counsellor, and therefore
bantered him at first, upon his pretending to desert his
e And yet the text tells us, it was but one bottle: but what we
render bottle, was, in those times, a bag, or vessel made of lea-
ther, which might contain a great deal of wine; because we
cannot suppose, but that the liquor was proportionate to the rest
of the present. — Patrick's Commentary.
f Whether this man had been a personal sufferer in the fall of
Saul's family, or what else had exasperated him against David,
it nowhere appears ; but it seems as if he had conceived some
very heinous offence against him, when neither the presence of a
king, nor the terror of his guards, could restrain him from throwing
stones, and bitter speeches, at him: and it looks as if the king
were fallen into the utmost contempt, when one private man
could think of venting his malice at him in so gross a manner
with impunity. — Howell's History in the notes.
ff The words of David upon this occasion are, ' So let him
curse, because the Lord hath said unto him, curse David: let
him alone, let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him ;' not
that God commanded it by his word, for that severely forbids
cursing, (Exod. xxii. 28.) nor moved him to it by his Spirit ; for
neither was that possible, because G^tempteth no man (Jas.
i. 13.) But the meaning is, that th«ecn t providence of God
did overrule and determine him so to ftflfthat is, God did not put
any wickedness into Shimei's heart, for he had of himself an
heart full of malignity and venom against David, but only left
him to his own wickedness: took away that common prudence,
which would have restrained him from so dangerous an action;
directed his malice, that it should be exercised against David,
rather than any other man ; and brought him into so distressed a
condition, that he might seem a proper object of his scorn and
contempt, which is enough to justify the expression, ' The Lord
hath bidden him,' in the same, manner that we read of his 'com-
manding the ravens,' (1 Kings xvii. 4.) and sometimes inanimate
creatures, (Ps. cxlvii. 15, 18.) The short is, David looked upon
Shimei as an instrument in God's hands, and therefore took all
his abuses patiently, out of a consciousness of his sinfulness,
and a reverence to that Deity who had brought him so low, as to
deserve the insults of this vile Benjamite.— Poole's Annot.
3a
490
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[Book V.
old master ; but Hushai a excused himself in such a man-
ner, and answered all his questions with that subtlety,
that he passed upon the prince for a worthy friend, and
accordingly was received into his privy council.
A council was presently called, wherein Ahithophel,
who was president, and stood highest in Absalom's
esteem, spake first ; and the two chief things which' he
advised him to do, were, first to place a tent on the top
of the palace, (for by this time he had taken possession
of his father's palace,) and to lie publicly with his
lather's concubines, that all the soldiers might see, and
conclude that, after such an indignity, there could be no
hopes of a reconciliation, and thereby be incited to fight
more desperately to secure him in the possession of the
throne. This advice was suitable perhaps to the young
man's vicious inclinations, and therefore he delayed not
to put it in execution: but, as for the second thing
which Ahithophel proposed, viz. " To take twelve thou-
sand choice men, and pursue after David that * very
night, and to fall upon his guards, which were fatigued
with their march, and unable to make resistance, and so
surprise the king, and kill him," he desired to consult
Hushai herein ; who, seeming not to slight Ahithophel's
proposal, advised rather to delay the attempt, until he
had got all the forces, of the kingdom together. " For,
as David and his men were known to be brave, and, at
that time, both exasperated, c and desperate, in case
they should worst the party, sent against them, this
would be a means to discourage others, and be thought a
very inauspicious beginning : whereas if they staid till a
a The manner in which Jostphus makes Hushai answer Ab-
salom, is artful enough, though hardly becoming an honest man.
" There is no contending," says he, " with the will of God, and
the consent of the people ; and so long as you have them on your
side, you may be secure of my fidelity. It is from God that you
have received your kingdom ; and if you can think me worthy of
a place in the number of those you will vouchsafe to own, you
shall find me as true to yourself as ever I was to your father.
No man is to account the present state of things uneasy, so long
as the government continues in the same line, and a son of
the same family succeeds to the throne. — Jewish Antiquities,
b. 7. c. 8.
b It is a wise observation in Tacitus, " In civil discords
nothing is more appropriate than haste, for in them there is more
need for action than deliberation." Ahithophel therefore thought
it highly necessary to make despatch upon this occasion ; because
he knew, that if he should give the people, that had revolted
from their allegiance, leisure to think of what they were doing
against their lawful prince, he would give that prince time to
raise some regular troops, and those that were about him space to
recover from their first fright; Absalom's party would dwindle
into nothing, and David's grow', stronger and stronger: " He
would grant repentance to the wicked, agreement to the good —
for crimes strengthen by -impetuosity, and good counsel by delay."
(Tacitus, Hist. b. 1.) .JBH therefore he advised marching imme-
diately against him, wHait giving him a moment's time to
recover himself. — Calmn Commentary.
c There is something very plausible, and elegant too, in the
advice which Hushai gives Absalom, not immediately to pursue
and fall upon David: 'Thou knowest thy father and his men,
that they be mighty men, and they be chafed in their minds, as
a bear robbed of her whelps in the field.' (2 Sam. xvii. 7.) Eveiy
one knows, that a bear is a very fierce creature ; but she-bears,
as Aristotle tells us, are more fierce than the male, particularly
when they have young ones, but, most of all when these young
ones are taken from them. For this reason the Scriptures make
frequent use of this similitude: ' I will be unto them as a lion,'
says God, in relation to the people of Israel, ' and as a leopard
by the way; I will meet them as a bear, that is bereaved of her
w hilps, and will rent the caul of their hearts,' (Hosea xiii. 7, 8.
See Prov. xvii. 12, &c.) So that the purport of Hushai's advice
numerous army, were come together, d they might be
assured of victory." Absalom, and the rest of the
council approved of this last advice, and Hushai imme-
diately despatched two messengers to David, acquaint-
ing him with what had passed in council, and advising
him instantly to pass the Jordan, lest Absalom should
change his mind, and come and fall upon him on a
sudden.
The messengers, as they were making the best of their
way, happened to meet some of Absalom's party, but had
the good fortune to conceal themselves in a well, until
their pursuers were returned ; and then proceeding on
their journey, came and delivered their despatches to the
king, who decamped by break of day, passed the Jordan,
and came to Mahanahn, a city of Gilead, where he was
kindly received. As soon as Ahithophel heard that
David was out of danger, either taking it amiss that his
counsel was slighted, or perceiving by Absalom's weak
conduct that things were not likely to succeed, and he
consequently e liable to be exposed to David's hottest
indignation, for the counsel he had already given ; partly
out of pride, and partly out of fear of worse torments, he
went to his own house, where he first made his will, and
then hanged himself.
David had not been long at Mahanaim, before Ab-
salom, having got together a numerous army, which was
commanded by Amasa, the son of Ithra, a relation of
Absalom's by marriage, left Jerusalem and passed the
Jordan, in pursuit of his father. The king hearing of
the approach of his rebel son, and foreseeing that a
battle was unavoidable, divided his army into three
bodies. The first to be commanded by Joab, the second
by his brother Abishai, and the third by / Ittai the Gittite,
is founded on this maxim, " That we should not drive an enemy
to despair, nor attack those who are resolved to sell their lives at
as dear a rate as possible." — Calmet's Commentary.
d The benefits which Hushai suggests, from Absalom's having
a large army, are thus expressed in an hyperbolical way, suitable
to the genius of that insolent young man, to whom he gave his
advice ; and therefore more likely to prevail with him ; ' Moreover
if he be gotten into a city, then shall all Israel bring ropes to that
city, and we will draw it into the river, until there be not one
small stone found there,' (2 Sam. xvii. 13.) Where his meaning
is, that if David should quit the open field, and betake himself to
the strongest of their cities, encompassed with high walls and
deep ditches, such a numerous army, as he proposed, would be
sufficient to begirt it round, and by ropes put about the walls,
draw them down, and all the houses of the city, into the ditch
that ran about it: not that any such practices were ever used in
war, and therefore the words must be looked upon as merely
tluasonical, and calculated to please Absalom ; unless we will say
with some, that the word in the original may denote such ma-
chines as are worked by ropes, and were at that time in use to
batter down walls. — Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
e Josephus thus relates the matter: — "When Ahithophel was
come home to Galmon, he called his family together, and told
them the advice which he had given Absalom, but that he
would not follow it ; and that in a short time that refusal would
be his ruin : for David would certainly baffle him, and soon
recover his kingdom. " Now it is more honourable for me," says
he, " to die asserting my liberty like a man, than to wait sneak-
ing till David comes in again, and to be slain at last for the
services I have done the son against the father." — Jewish Anti-
quities, b. 7. c. 9.
/In 2 Sam. xv. 18. we read, that 'all theGittites, six hundred
men, which came after him,' namely, David, ' from Gath, passed
on before the king;' but who these Gittites were, it is hard to de-
termine ; because we have no mention made of them in any other
part of Scripture. Some imagine that they were natives of Gath,
who, taken with the fame of David's piety, aud happy success,
Skoi. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
491
A. M.2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
and himself intended to go in person with them. But by
the importunity of the people about him, he was prevailed
with not to hazard his person in battle ; and perhaps was
more easily dissuaded from it, because the battle was to
be against a son, for whom he still retained so tender an
affection, that he gave the three generals a strict charge,
in the hearing of the soldiers, that for his sake, they
should use Absalom kindly, in case he should fall into
their hands.
The two armies met in the a wood of Ephraim, which
belonged to the tribe of Manasseh, where Absalom's
army, though much superior in number, was defeated,
and put to flight : for the loyalists, upon this occasion,
behaved so gallantly, that they killed * twenty thousand
of the rebels upon the spot, and would doubtless have
carried the slaughter farther, had not Absalom, the chief
cause of all this mischief, been taken and slain.
His hair, as we said before, was of a prodigious length
and largeness ; and as he was now in flight from the
enemy, and riding with great speed under the trees, it
happened to c entangle itself on one of the boughs in
came along with Ittai, whom the Jews suppose to have been the
son of Achish, king of Gath, and being proselyted to the Jewish
religion, became a part of David's guard, and attended him in
his wars. But others rather think, that they were men of Jewish
extract, but had this additional name, from their flying unto
David, probably under the conduct of Ittai, while he was at
Gath, and accompanying him ever after, not only in the time
of Saul's persecution of him, but even after his accession to the
united kingdoms of Judah and Israel. — Patrick's Commentary.
a This wood was so called, as some imagine, because the Eph-
raimites were wont to drive their cattle over Jordan to feed
them in it; but others with more probability, suppose, that it
had its name from the great slaughter (related in Jud. xii.) which
Jephthah had formerly made of the Ephraimites in that place. —
Howell's History, in the notes.
b The expression in the text is, ' The wood devoured more
people that day, than the sword devoured,' (2 Sam. xviii. 8.)
which some think was occasioned by their falling into pits, pres-
siug one another to death in strait places, creeping into lurking
holes, and there being starved to death, or otherwise devoured
by wild beasts, which met them in their flight: but the most
easy and simple meaning of the passage is, that there were more
slain in the wood than in the field of battle. The field of battle,
(as Josephus tells us, Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 9.) was a plain,
with a wood contiguous to it ; and therefore, when Absalom's
army was put to the rout, and betook themselves to the wood
for refuge, their pursuers made a greater slaughter of them there,
than they otherwise would have done, because they could not run
away so fast in the wood, as they might have done in the open
field. — Patrick's Commentary.
c The words in the text, indeed, make no mention of Absa-
lom's hair in this place. They only inform us, that ' Absalom
rude upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of
a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was
taken up between the heaven and the earth, and the mule, that
was under him, went away,' (2 Sam. xviii. 9.) From whence
some infer, that the meaning of the historian is, not that Ab-
salom hung by his hair, but that his neck was so wedged between
the boughs, by the swift motion of the mule, that he was not
able to disengage himself. For it is hardly to be questioned,
say they, but that when he went to battle, he had an helmet on;
and an helmet, which covered his head, would have hindered his
hair from being entangled in the boughs: but it is only supposing,
either that his helmet was such, as left a great deal of his hair
visible and uncovered, or that, if it was large enough to enclose
the whole, he might, upon this occasion, throw it on", as well as
his other heavy armour, to make himself lighter, and expedite
his flight; and then there will be no incongruity in the common
end received opinion, to which the authority of Josephus adds
some confirmation, namely, " That as Absalom was making his
escape, upon the whiflling of the air, a snagged hough of a tree
took hold of his hair, and the mule, running forward from under
him, leit him dangling in the air." — Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 9.
such a manner, that it lifted him off his saddle, and his
mule, running from under him, left him there hanging in
the air, and unable to disengage himself.
In this condition a private soldier found him, and told
it unto Joab, who blamed him for not having killed him :
and when the man in excuse urged the command which
he heard the king give the generals, to be very tender
and careful of his son's life, Joab, looking upon all this
as nothing, or as a command fitter for a parent than a
king, went to the place where he was d hanging, and
having first given him his death's wound himself, ordered
the people, which were by, to despatch him ; and so
went and sounded a retreat, to prevent any farther effu-
sion of blood, and to give Absalom's party an oppor-
tunity of escaping to their respective homes.
Thus died the wicked and rebellious Absalom, and
instead of an honourable interment, fit for a king's son,
his body was taken down, and thrown into a pit, and
covered with an e heap of stones.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
David, no doubt, was a very fond father to his children,
and a tender husband to his wives : of these, it must be
owned, he had too many, eighteen in number, if we will
reckon his concubines into that relation, which, in those
days did not much differ from the other, except in some
rites and solemnities o"f marriage. But as polygamy
d Commentators have observed the justice of God, in bringing
Absalom to a condign punishment, and such a kind of death, as
was ordained by the law for offences, like unto his. For whereas,
in the first place, he was hanged as it were, this was declared by
the law to be an accursed death, (Deut. xxi. 23.) and was after-
wards, in some measure, stoned ; this was the particular kind of
death that the law prescribed for a stubborn and rebellious son. —
Deut. xxi. 21.
e In the description of the Holy Land, some geographers tell
us, that this heap of stones remained even to their days, and that
all travellers, as they passed by it, were wont to throw a stone
to add to the heap, in detestation of his rebellion against his la-
ther. For though it became a custom among the Greeks, to raise
an heap of stones in the place where any great person was in-
terred, as a monument of honour and respect; yet it is plain,
that none of David's army intended any honour to Absalom's
memory in accumulating stones upon him; nor can wc think,
that David himself, though too foud of this rebel son, made any
alteration afterwards in the form o^his burial, for fear of enraging
the people against him. Somc,^pkver, are of a quite contrary
opinion, namely, that David, w^Mmicntcd him with such ex-
cess, removed him from this pit, in order to have him laid iu
the sepulchre" belonging to the I.in^sflfcr perhaps somewhere
about the place where the monument £^P> g'",s under his name,
and even to this day, is shown to traveflPs, was dug in a rock.
It is a little chamber wrought with a chisel, out of one piece of
rock, which stands at some distance from the rest of the moun-
tain, and is a square of eight paces from out to out. The inside
of this chamber is all plain, but the outside is adorned with Bome
pilasters of the same kind of stone. The upper part, or covering,
is made in the form of a conic, pyramid, pretty high and large,
with a kind of flowerpot on its top. The pyramid is composed
of several stones, but the monument itself is square, and all cut
out of one block. In the time of Josephus, the monument, which
was said to be Absalom's, was nothing more than one marble
pillar, widely diffennt from what, at present, goes under his
name; and which therefore must be accounted a more modern
building. — Le Clerc's and Patrick's Conunentariis; Jewish An-
tiquities, b. ?. C. 9; and Caimet't Dictionary, under the word
Absalom.
492
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2049. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
was then tolerated among- the Jews, ' and the prohibition ;
of a king's multiplying wives to himself does nowhere
limit the number of them, David might conceive, that this
polygamy was no transgression of the law, and thence
be induced more readily to comply with it, in order to
enlarge his family, and attach the principal nobility, of
his own nation, as well as some foreign potentates, more
closely to his interest. 2 For it was always looked upon
as a piece of political wisdom in princes, to endeavour
to have many children, that by matching- them into sev-
eral powerful families, they might have more supporters
of their authority, and more assistance, in case of any
invasion of it.
This however is no part of David's commendation,
how much soever it might tend to his security ; but that
a father should be fond of a son, and in some instances
carry that fondness to excess ; that he should be blind
to his lesser faults, and always inclinable, upon proper
tokens of repentance to forgive the g-reater ; that he
should love to see every thing- look gay and handsome
about him, be liberal to his decent expenses, and ready
to overlook some little extravagancies ; that he should
be uneasy in his absence, joyous to see him, and when
he is in any imminent danger, very solicitous for his
preservation, which are all the articles brought against
David in relation to his son Absalom, These are faults,
if faults they be, which every good-natured parent, who
feels the tender propensities of human nature towards
those of his own flesh, will easily be induced to forgive :
and well were it for David, if we could make the like
apology for that great enormity of his, in the matter of
Uriah ; but a instead of attempting any extenuation of
it, we shall rather take notice of the several aggravations
which moralists have discovered in it, and of the reasons
for which the Spirit of God thought proper to record it
in holy writ.
To this purpose, some have observed, 1st, That 3 as
' David tarried at Jerusalem at the time when kings
went forth to battle, he there indulged himself in ease
and luxury, which are the bane and rust of the mind,
and so insensibly fell into those loose desires which
drew him into such vile perpetrations ; so that the first
cause of his sin was idleness. 2d, They observe it as
an aggravation of his crime, 4 that he certainly knew that
Bathsheba Mas another man's wife, and yet deliberately
and advisedly committed the sin ; nay, that she was the
wife of one who was a proselyte to the Jewish religion,
and therefore added scandal to his wickedness, or, as
the text expresses it, 5*gave g-reat occasion to the
enemies of the Lordto blaspheme.' 3d, They observe
that there was perfi^f added to this guilt, and a sinful
1 Deut. xvii. 17. "Patrick's Commentary on 2 Sam. v. 13.
* 2 Sam. xi. 1. * 2 Sam. xi. 1. 5 2 Sam. xii. 14.
<* But contrary to this, the Jewish writers have endeavoured to
justify David in this whole transaction; and to this purpose have
invented laws and customs, that are nowhere to be found, either
in the books of Moses, or in the compass of their history. They
pretend that David was married to Bathsheba before her husband
was dead, because it was a custom, as they say, for soldiers,
whenever they went to the wars, to give their wives a bill of
divorcement, and consequently a full license to marry whom they
pleased. But it is vain to attempt to excuse this black and
crying sin in David, for which God so severely punished him,
and for which he himself was always ready to acknowledge the
divine justice in so doing.— Calmet's Commentary on 2 Sam.
xi. 27.
contrivance, 6in causing Uriah to be sent for home ; in
receiving him with great tokens of his favour, and en-
tertaining him with good cheer, that he might be the
more desirous to enjoy the company of his wife, and so
have the child, which was got in adultery, reputed his
own. 4th, They observe, 7 from Uriah's answer, that
had not David's heart been seared, he could not but
have felt a strong remorse, upon thinking how he had
abused so brave a man, and how he indulged himself in
sinful pleasures, while this man, and the rest of his army,
gloriously endured all maimer of hardships, for the ser-
vice of their country. 5th, They observe, 8 from his
design upon Uriah's life, when he could not otherwise
conceal his lewdness, how naturally one sin paves the
way to another, and how, in a small compass of time,
the fascination of sensual appetites is enough to change
the very nature of mankind ; since even he, who formerly
spared Saul, unjustly seeking his life, is now put upon
contriving the death of a very faithful servant, in a very
base and unworthy manner. 6th, They observe it, as a
farther aggravation of his crime of murder, that he not
only exposed an innocent and faithful servant to be
killed, but that, together with him, 9 several more brave
men, set in the front of the battle, where the service was
hottest, must necessarily have fallen in the attack ; so
blind was he to the public good, and so prodigal of his
subjects' lives, if he might but cover his guilt, and gratify
his lust. 7th, They observe 10from his answer to the
messengers sent by Joab to acquaint him with Uriah's
death, namely, ' the sword devoureth one as well as
another,' the vile hypocrisy and obdurateness of his
heart, imputing that to the chance of war, or rather to
the direction of divine providence, which his conscience
could not but tell him was of his own contrivance. 8th,
and lastly, they observe, " from his marriage with Bath-
sheba, even before her husband was cold in his grave,
how the eagerness of his indulged appetite had now ex-
tinguished, what in some sinners is last of all parted
with, and for which he himself had lately imbrued his
hands in blood, all sense of shame, and regard to repu-
tation or decency.
These are some of the aggravations observable in
David's crime, which besides his lust and cruelty, is
loaded with too just an imputation of perfidy, of ingra-
titude, of hypocrisy, of deliberation, of obstinacy, and
of shamelessness in sin. And for these purposes were
they recorded in Scripture, that they might teach us the
frailty of human nature, and how liable the best of men
are, in some instances of their lives, to be overtaken
with very gross faults : that they might show us the
natural gradation of one sin to another, and that, when
once we have suffered our appetites to break loose from
the restraints of duty, in a short time it will not be in our
power to set bounds to them, however much we may be
inclined to do so : that they might caution us against
sloth and idleness, against indulging any inordinate
passion, or gazing upon any objects that may endan-
ger our innocence : that they might remind us all how
much we stand in need continually of the divine as-
sistance, and therefore how much we are concerned to
pray with all prayer and supplication, and to watch, as
6 2 Sam. xi. 6, &e. ' 2 Sam. xi. 1 1. 8 2 Sam. xi. 15.
3 2 Sam. xi. 15. 10 2 Sam. xi. 25 " 2 Sam. xi. 27.
Sect. IV.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix.
493
well as pray, that we fall into no temptation. And,
lastly, that they might inculcate that excellent precept
which the apostle has laid down in these words : ! ' Breth-
ren, if any man be overtaken in a fault, ye that are
spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness,
considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.'
One pernicious consequence of David's transgression
very likely was, that it made him timorous in inflicting
punishments upon others ; but the reason which Josephus
assigns for his not chastising Amnon for his incestuous
rape, namely, ' because he was his eldest son, and he
loved him, and would not displease him,' is a groundless
calumny, and mere fiction ; for, 3 since the sacred his-
tory has thought fit to be silent in this matter, no one
can tell what his father either said or did to him : the
true reason, therefore, as we suppose, why his father did
not proceed with severity against him, was, because the
case, as it then stood, was intricate and perplexed, and
such as the law had made no provision for. The law con-
cerning rapes is worded thus : — 3 " If a damsel, that is
a virgin be betrothed unto a husband, and a man find her
in the city, and lie with her ; then ye shall bring them both
out of the gate of the city, and ye shall stone them with
stones that they die : the damsel, because she cried not,
being in the city ; and the man, because he humbled his
neighbour's wife.' And again, ' If a man find a dam-
sel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold
on her, and lie with her, and they be found, then the man
that lay with her, shall give unto the damsel's father fifty
shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he
hath humbled her ; he may not put her away all his days.'
These are the two principal laws concerning this matter,
but neither come up to the case now before us. For had
David punished Amnon's crime with death, as the former
law requires, Tamar in like manner must have suffered
too, even though she was innocent, because she cried not
out ; a and though she was not a betrothed damsel, as
the case is put in the latter law, yet David could not
compel Amtion to marry her, because such a marriage
would have been incestuous ; and therefore we may sup-
pose, that though David might reprimand his son very
severely, for having wrought folly in Israel ; yet he
could not bring him before a public judicature, because
the law did not properly extend to his case, or if he had
made it extend, the innocent must have suffered with the
guilty ; and * a rule of equity, I think it is, rather to let
the guilty escape, than that the innocent and injured
should be destroyed.
The sacred historian has taken care to clear David
from any base connivance at Absalom's wickedness in
murdering his brother Amnon, by telling us, that as soon
as he had done it, 5 ' he fled, and went to Talmai,' his
grandfather, by his mother's side, who was then king of
Geshur. Geshur was a city in Syria, which lay on the
other side of Jordan ; and Absalom, who meditated the
murder of his brother, and could not but foresee that it
would be an act of high displeasure to his father, invited
the princes of the blood to his country seat, which was 6
near the city Ephraim, not far from the river Jordan,
1 Gal. vi. 1. • Le Clerc's Commentary on 2 Sam. xiii. 21.
* Dent. xxii. 23, &c. • History of the Lite of King David.
J2 Sam. xiii. 37. 6 2 Sam. xiii. 23. See John xi. 54.
a It is not said that she cried not, the probability is, that she
did, though she was not heard. — Bishop Glcirj. — Ed.
that he might have a better opportunity, not only for
putting in execution his wicked design, but of making
his escape likewise ; so that David, had he been ever
so much minded, could not possibly have apprehended
him, before he had got to a safe retreat : and where, it
is easy to imagine, he woidd tell his tale so well, as to
gain his grandfather's protection, if not approbation of
the fact, which, with a small share of eloquence, might
be so set off, as to appear a necessary vindication of the
honour of their family, which had been so grossly violated.
The law of God indeed is very express : — 7 ' Whoso-
ever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed ; 8 neither shall he take any satisfaction for the
life of a murderer, who is guilty of death, but he shall
surely be put to death.' Whereby it appears, that the
supreme magistrate was obliged to execute justice upon
all wilful murderers, without any reservation ; nor had
David any power to dispense with God's laws, or to
spare those whom he had commanded him to destroy.
But then it must be considered, that the affront which
Amnon put upon Absalom, was very great and heinous ;
that Absalom, at this time, was out of the reach of Da-
vid's justice, and so would have continued, had he not
obtained a promise of impunity ; that, by living an exile
in a heathenish country, David had reason to appre-
hend, that his son was in danger of being infected with
their wicked and idolatrous practices, and was therefore
the rather inclined to recall him ; and that the clamours
and importunities of the people, which Joab procured
this woman of Tekoah to represent to the king in a very
free and artful manner, did almost compel him to do it :
for, what he said in the case of Joab's murder of Abner,
namely, that he could not revenge it, because 9 ' the sons
of Zeruiah, were too hard for him ;' the like, very pro-
bably, might have been said in this case, where the
people's hearts were so strongly, and so universally, set
upon Absalom ; and that the rather, because his long
banishment moved their pity, and his absence made them
more impatient for his return. The eyes of all, in short,
were upon him, as the next heir, as a wise and gallant,
and amiable prince, unhappy only in this instance of
killing Amnon, for which he had a sufficient provoca-
tion ; and therefore, to satisfy the cries of the people,
as well as to provide for the security of his kingdom,
which seemed to depend on the establishment of the suc-
cession in Absalom, David was obliged to forgive him,
and recall him. And when he was recalled, and rein-
stated in the king's favour, it is no wonder that a young-
prince, of his gay temper, should multiply his attendants,
and set up a rich equipage, to attract the eyes and
admiration of mankind ; or that hiiather, whose riches
so well enabled him to bear the expose of this magnifi-
cence, and whose heart rejoiced, perhaps, to see his son
the favourite of the people, did not restrain him in it ;
because a man of an open spirit himself loves to see his
children make a figure in life, which, in all eastern
countries, was a thing customary, and might here more
especially be expected in the eldest and heir presump-
tive to the crown.
10 Some of the Jewish doctors tell us, that how indul-
gent soever David might be to his son Absalom, he never
G. " Num. xxxv. 31.
10 Poole's Annotations on 2 Sam
9 2 Sam.
xv. 7.
iii. 39.
494
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[Book V.
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. .— xix.
intended him for his successor in the kingdom ; that he
had all along made a promise to Bathsheba, his favourite
queen, which promise, though ' recorded later in the
history, might at first come to Absalom's ear, that her
son Solomon should succeed in the regal dignity ; and
that Absalom, both from a consciousness of his own
demerits, and of the superiority of wisdom and piety that
appeared in Solomon, perceiving that his father intended
to postpone him, and instate the other, entered into this
rebellion, in order to assert his birthright to the crown.
But the fault in David was not any exclusion of right,
but too blind an indulgence to his son, even while he
was in arms against him, ready to kill, and resolved to
depose him. ' Spare ye the young man,' says he, and
this he might desire, partly from a consciousness of his
own sin in the case of Uriah, which was the meritorious
and procuring cause of the rebellion, in which his son
was unhappily engaged ; partly from a consideration of
his youth, which is commonly foolish and giddy, and
subject to evil counsels, and therefore deserves pity ;
and partly from a sense of piety in himself, as being
unwilling that he should be cut off in a sinful rebellion,
without any space or means of repentance.
These might be some of the reasons that made David
give his army so strict a charge not to kill his son, in
case they should take him. But Joab had quite different
sentiments of the matter. He perceived, that there
could be no safety to the king, nor peace to the kingdom,
no security to himself, or other loyal subjects, as long
as Absalom lived ; that, notwithstanding this unnatural
rebellion, the king was still inclinable to forgive him,
and that there would always be some unquiet people,
that would be moving fresh disturbances, in order to set
him on the throne. Looking upon this charge, there-
fore, as an order more proper for a parent than a prince,
he adventured to disobey it. For he thought with him-
self, 2 that the king ought not to be observed in an affair,
wherein he showed more regard to his private passion,
than to the public good ; that fathers should always
sacrifice their paternal tenderness to the interest of the
government ; and that as Absalom had forfeited his life
to the laws upon several accounts, it was but justice
now to take this opportunity of despatching him, as an
enemy to his king and country : but whether, in this
act of disobedience to the royal command, Joab is per-
fectly to be vindicated, we shall not pretend to deter-
mine. It is certain that he was a person of a bold
temper, high passions, and fiery resentments ; that valued
himself upon the services he had done the king, and
seemed not to be much afraid of his authority.
The complaint which David makes to some of his
courtiers, upon this* general's murdering the famous
Abner, declares the true reason why he could not, at
that time, put the laws in execution against him :
s ' Know ye not,' says he, ' that there is a prince, and a
great man fallen this day in Israel ? And I am this day
weak, though anointed king ; and these men, the sons of
Zeruiah, be too hard for me. The Lord shall reward
the doer of evil according to his wickedness.' Joab
was David's sister's son, or nephew, 4who had stuck
close to him in all his adversity, an excellent soldier
' 1 Kings i. 30. * Calmet's Commentary on 2 Sam. xviii. 14.
* 2 Sam. iii. 38. • Patrick's Commentary on 2 Sam. iii. 39.
himself, and a man of great power and authority among
the army ; so that had David immediately called him to
justice for this vile act against Abner, such was his in-
terest among the soldiery, that he soon would have
caused a mutiny or revolt, and found a means to shock
or unhinge the government that was not as yet suffi-
ciently established. It was a point of prudence there-
fore in David, to delay the punishment of so powerful
and so perilous a man, until a more convenient season,
and only, for the present, to express his detestation of
the deed, by commending the deceased, condemning
the murder, and commanding the murderer by way of
penance, to attend the funeral in sackcloth, and other
signs of mourning.
So far is David from winking at Abner's murder, that
we find him burying him with great solemnity, and mak-
ing mournful lamentation over his grave ; praising his
valour, and other great qualities, publicly, and cursing
the author of his untimely death. * ' I , and my kingdom,'
says he, ' are guiltless before the Lord for ever from
the blood of Abner the son of Ner. Let it rest on the
head of Joab, and on all his father's house, and let
there not fail from the house of Joab one that hath an
issue, or that is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff] or
that falleth on the sword, or that lacketh bread.'
But what apology shall we make for his treating the
Ammonites so inhumanly, and putting them to such ex-
quisite torments, only for a small indignity, which a
young king, at the instigation of some evil counsellors,
put upon his ambassadors, since there seems to be no
proportion between the affront and the revenge, between
the one's having their beards and clothes cut a little
shorter, and the other's being put under saws and har-
rows, or thrown into hot burning furnaces ? Had David
indeed been the inventor of such frightful punishments,
we might have justly reckoned him a man of the same
cruel and brutal spirit, as was Caligula, who, in after
ages, as 6 Suetonius tells us, was wont to take a great
delight in inflicting them. But the truth is, that these
were the punishments which the Ammonites inflicted
upon the Jews, whenever they took them prisoners ; and
therefore David, when he conquered their country, and
reduced their capital city, used them with the like
cruelty : not every one of them indiscriminately, but
such only as appeared in arms against him, and had
either advised, or approved the advice of putting such a
disgrace upon his messengers.
The Ammonites, it is certain, were early initiated
into all the cruelties of the people of Canaan. When
they invested Jabesh-Gilead, and the besieged made an
offer to surrender, the easiest condition that they would
grant them, was, that they might 7 ' thrust out all their
right eyes, and lay it for a reproach upon Israel for
ever ;' which one instance, as I take it, is in the room
of ten thousand proofs, to demonstrate, that these Am-
monites were monsters of barbarity ; and that therefore
king David was no more culpable for retaliating upon
them the same cruelties that they used to inflict on others,
than the people of Agrigentum were, for burning Pha-
laris in his own bull, or Theseus the hero, for stretching
Procrustes beyond the dimensions of his own bed. For
even the heathen casuists have determined, that no law
2 Sam. iii. 28, 29.
Chap. 27
' 1 Sam. xi. 2.
SECT. V.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
495
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
can be more just and equitable, than that which decreed
artists of cruelty to perish by their own arts.
The particular punishment of passing through the
brickkilns, an ingenious 'author seems fairly to account
for, by making this conjecture. " It is very well known,"
says he, " that the Jews were slaves in Egypt, and parti-
cularly employed in brickmaking. Now it is natural
for all people at enmity, to reproach one another with
the meanness and baseness of their original. As there-
fore the Ammonites were a cruel and insolent enemy,
and nothing could be more natural for men of their
temper, when they had got any Jews in their power,
than to cry out, send the slaves to the brickkilns, and
so torture them to death ; so nothing could be more
natural than for the Jews, when they got an advantage
over them, to return them the same treatment." How-
ever this be, it is certain that the siege of Rabbah began
before David had any criminal commerce with Bath-
sheba, and if the town was not taken till after Solomon's
birth, as the sequel of his history seems to imply, the siege
must have lasted for about two years ; in which time,
upon the supposition that David continued in an obdu-
rate state of sin and impenitence, a and was therefore
deprived of that mild and merciful spirit for which he
had formerly been so remarkable ; there is no wonder,
if, being now become cruel and hardhearted, as well as
exasperated with the length of the siege, he treated the
Ammonites in the same outrageous manner that they
were accustomed to treat his subjects, not only to retal-
iate the thing upon them, but to deter all future ages
likewise from violating the right of nations, by treating
the persons of public ambassadors with contempt. J
That the rights of ambassadors are guarded by all laws,
both divine and human, and that therefore a violation of
these rights is not only unjust, but impious, is the general
sentiment of all the most able 2 writers upon the laws
and constitutions of civil government. So tender were
the Romans in this particular, 3 that they appointed
twenty feciales, as they called those officers, to inspect
1 The History of the Life of King David.
2 See Grotius, Seklen, Puffendorti", &c.
3 Grotius on the Law of War, b. 2. c. 18.
a This supposition cannot be admitted. Nathan had made
David sensible of his sin, and truly penitent even before Bath-
sJieba bare Solomon's elder brother. — Bishop Gleig. — Ed.
b This vindication of David for his conduct towards the Am-
monites, had his treatment of them been such as represented in
the ordinary translation followed by our author, would be by no
means satisfactory. Fortunately the heavy charge urged against
David from this part of sacred history, needs no such vindication.
Dr A. Clarke, on 2 Sam. xii. 31, says:—" I believe this inter-
pretation was chiefly taken from the parallel place, 1 Chr. xx. 3.
where it is said, he cut them with saws and with axes, &c.
Instead of W) vaiyasar, he sawed, we have here (in Samuel
OW vaiyascm, he put them; and these two words differ from each
other only in a part of a single letter 1 resh, for D mem. And it
is worthy of remark that in 1 Chr. xx. 3, six or seven MSS.
collated by Dr Kennicott, have Dt"0 vaiyasem, he put them.
Nor is there found any various reading in all the MSS. yet
collated for the text in this chapter, that favours the common
reading in Chronicles. The meaning therefore is, he made the
people slaves, and employed them in sawing, making iron harrows,
or mining, (for the word means both) and in hewing of wood,
and making of brick. Sawing asunder, hacking, chopping, and
hewing human beings, have any place in this text, any more than
they had in David's conduct towards the Ammonites. See also
Boothroyd on the passage, and the supplement on the objections to
the credibility of the Old Testament, p. 393 of this edition Ed.
their good usage, and preserve their immunities ; to make
them immediate reparation, when any injury was done
them ; and, in case of a personal affront or indignity, to
deliver up the offender, even though he were a noble or
a patrician by birth, into the hands of the nation from
whence the ambassador came, to be treated by them as
they thought fit. And therefore, we need less wonder,
that king David, who, in all his actions, was a nice
observer of every punctilio in public honour, should re-
sent in so high a manner an indignity, the greatest that
could be offered, put upon his ministers, and from them
reflecting upon his own majesty, merely for sending a
kind compliment of condolence to a foolish prince, as
he proved, upon the death of a very worthy father.
A man so zealous for his own honour, as well as for
the rights of nations, in his public capacity, can hardly
be presumed to be an abettor of perfidy in his more pri-
vate. We must therefore suppose, that, notwithstanding
his war with Ishbosheth, wherein there might happen
some skirmishes, he still kept his promise with his father
Saul, not to destroy any of his family ; and therefore in
the whole compass of the war (in which, though it lasted
seven years, we noAvhere read of one battle fought) he acted
in the defensive, not offensive, part, and kept an army
by him, not to destroy Saul's posterity, but merely to
maintain himself in the possession of that regal dignity
wherewith Samuel, by God's order and appointment, had
invested him.
Ishbosheth knew very well, that Samuel had anointed
David, and that God had appointed him to be his father's
successor in the whole kingdom of Israel. And there-
fore his opposing him in a hostile manner, was provoca-
tion enough, one would think, had not David remem-
bered * his oath made to Saul, and thereupon overlooked
this ill treatment of his son, and pronounced him a
5 ' righteous person.' The removal of an adversary, and
dangerous competitor for a crown, might be thought a
meritorious piece of service by some ambitious princes ;
but David was of another sentiment. His soul and his
notions were the same as what inspired the great Alex-
ander, when he took vengeance on Bassus for having
killed his enemy Darius ; 6 for he did not consider
Darius so much in the capacity of an enemy, as Bassus in
that of a friend to the person whom he had basely mur-
dered. And it is not improbable, that his reflection
upon the sad fate of Saul's unhappy family, and the
solemn promise he had given for their preservation, as
well as the design 7 of clearing himself from the least
suspicion of having any hand in this barbarous regicide,
prevailed with David to inflict upon the authors of it,
the exemplary punishment of hanging them upon gibbets,
to be a spectacle of abhorrence ; ofeputting off their right
hands, 8 wherewith they might have committed this exe-
crable deed, and of cutting off their feet, wherewith they
had made their escape from justice.
Abner indeed acted very basely, very treacherously, in
deserting Ishbosheth, the king whom he had set up, upon
a very slight provocation : but David had no concern in
all this. The kingdom belonged to him by divine dona-
tion; Abner knew this before he proclaimed Ishbosheth;
* 1 Sam. xxiv. 21. 2 Sam. iv. 11.
« For he considered that Darius was not so much the friend a9
the foe of that man by whom he was slain. — Justin, b. 12. c. 6.
7 Le Clerc's Commentary. 8 Patrick's Commentary
496
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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[Book V.
and therefore all the mischiefs of the civil war are charge-
able upon him : nor can David be blamed for receiving
his own right, even though it was tendered to him by the
hand of a bad man. The truth is, David did not delude
Abner from his master, but Abner made the first overture
of his service to him ; and as this was no unfavourable
opportunity of uniting the two contending kingdoms,^
which providence seemed to have thrown in his way,
David had been perfidious, not only to his own inter-
est, but to the establishment of the general peace of
the nation, had he not fallen in with it. * He, no
doubt, was privy to the cause of Abner 's disgust :
but, without approving either of his crime or his treason,
he might lawfully make use of the traitor; nay, and con-
fer on him some tokens of his favour too, in considera-
tion of the benefits he had received from him, and of
some commendable qualities, either natural or political,
that he had observed in him. The instrument is not to
be regarded in all actions, and even a bad man, when
he does good services, may merit a reward, and be
received with some approbation.
No man indeed should engage another in a base or
wicked action; 2 because, whether he commits the thing
himself, or employs another to do it, the crime is the
same ; but it is not so, says 3 Grotius, if a person freely
offers himself, without any solicitation or persuasion to
it. In this case, it is not unlawful to use him as an instru-
ment, in order to execute what is confessedly lawful for
us to do : and, as it is not contrary to the law of arms
to receive a deserter, who quits the enemy's party and
embraces ours, so we cannot conceive how David could
become culpable in taking the advantage of Abner 's
quarrel with Ishbosheth, when, without any application
of his, he voluntarily sent to him, and offered him his
service, and when the good providence of God seems to
have employed the passion and angry resentment of that
haughty general, in order to bring about his wise designs,
and by the union of the two kingdoms, prevent the effu-
sion of much blood.
But what shall we say in excuse for his perfidy, when
we find him putting his friend Hushai upon acting such
a part as but badly became a man of honour ; upon
going, and offering his service to his son Absalom, on
purpose to betray him, or give him bad counsel? The
words of David are these : — * ' If thou return to the city,
and say unto Absalom, I will be thy servant, O king ;
as I have been thy father's servant hitherto, so will I
now also be thy servant ; then ma) est thou for me defeat
ihf counsels of Ahithophel.' But David, by these words,
say some interpreters, did not advise Hushai to betray
Absalom, or, for his sake, to violate the laws of friend-
ship, but purely to go and join himself to Absalom,
who, by this time, had assumed the title of king, and
could not properly be addressed without calling him
so, in order to destroy the counsels of Ahithophel, just
as a general sends his spies into the enemy's camp, to
know what passes there ; or as a king keeps, in foreign
courts, his envoys, to gain intelligence of the designs
i Calmet's Commentary on 2 Sam. iii. 12.
» It signifies nothing whether you yourself commit crime, or
engage another person to do it on your account.— August, in
innribiis Manichee.
' On the Law of War, I.. S.chap. 1. By the right of war we
shelter a deserter. * 2 Sam. xv 34
that may be formed against him, and to defeat the
resolutions that may be taken to his prejudice. But
whether these comparisons may come up to the case
before us or no, it was certain, at this juncture, Absa-
lom's business was to be upon his guard. The unjust
war which he had declared against his father, gave his
father a right to treat him as an open enemy, and to
employ either force or artifice against him ; nor can this
conduct of his be blamed, unless we should say, that
when kings are engaged in war, they are forbidden to
disguise their true designs, even though it be a thing
notorious, that upon this disguise the practice of strata-
gems in war, which were never yet accounted unlawful,
is entirely founded.
The truth is, 5 Absalom, as a traitor, a murderer, a
rebel, and, as far as in him lay, a parricide, had for-
feited all the rights of society, but more especially as a
rebel : for a rebel, who sets himself to overturn the
established government, order, and peace of any commu-
nity, does, by that hostile attempt, actually divest
himself of all social rights in that community. And
consequently David could be no more guilty of perfidy,
in forming a design to supplant Absalom, nor Hushai
guilty of villany in undertaking to put it in execution,
than that man can be said to be guilty of sin, who
deceives a madman, and turns him away from murdering
his best friends.
The short of the matter is, Hushai's instructions were
to negotiate David's interest among the rebels as well
as he could. This he could not do without seeming to
act in a contrary character ; and in order to effect this,
there was a necessity for his concealing himself; and
conceal himself he could not, without some degree of
dissimulation ; and therefore the end which he proposed
in what he did, namely, the prevention of that long train
of mischiefs which always attends a civil war, was suffi-
cient to justify the means which he took to accomplish
it. For, though it is to be wished with B Cicero, that
all lying and dissimulation were utterly banished from
human life ; yet, as others have maintained, that a bene-
ficial falsehood is better than a destructive truth, a case
may be so circumstantiated, as to make dissimulation,
which as 7 Lord Bacon says, " is nothing else but a
necessary dependant upon silence, highly necessary;
and a lie, which otherwise would be blamable in a
slave, will deserve commendation (says s Quintilian)
when a wise man makes use of it, to save his country
by deceiving his enemy." Now, as Hushai's wholetfle-
sign was to deceive an open and declared enemy, who
can doubt, but that he was at full liberty, by his address
and subtilty, to disconcert the measures of those, whom
all agree, that had he been so minded, he had license
to attack with open violence ? 9 To overcome an enemy
indeed by valour, rather than art, sounds more gallant,
and by some has been thought a more a reputable way
5 The History of the Life of King David, vol 3.
6 Offic. b. 3. c. 15. ' Serm. Fide), b. 6.
8 Quintal. Instit. Orat. b. 12. c. 1.
9 Puflendorfl's Law of Nature, b. 4. c. 1 ; and Grotius's
Rights of Peace, b. 3. c. 1.
a Thus when Perseus, the Macedonian king, was deceived
by the hopes of peace, the old senators disallowed the act, as in-
consistent with Roman bravery; saying that their ancestors
prosecuted their wars by valour, not craft, not like the subtle
Carthaginians, or cunning Grecians, among whom it was a
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
497
A. M. 2'JiO. A. C. 1055 ; OR, ACCORDING TO
of conquest, but since the laws of nature and arms have
made no difference, and those of humanity and mercy
seem to incline to that side wherein there is likely to be
the least blood shed, Hushai may be said to have acted
the worthy patriot, as well as the faithful subject, in
breaking- the force of an unnatural rebellion, and in
putting it into his royal master's mouth to say, ' ' the
Lord is known to execute judgment ; the ungodly are
trapped in the work of their own hands. They are sunk
down in the pit that they made ; in the same net, which
they hid privily, are their own feet taken.'
Thus, though we are not obliged to vindicate David
in every passage of his life, and think some of the crying
sins he was guilty of utterly inexcusable ; yet if we ex-
cept these, we cannot but think, that although he was a
very tender and indulgent parent, yet he was no en-
courager of vice in his own family, or a tame conniver
at it in others, had he not been restrained by reasons of
state, sometimes, from punishing it ; that he was true to
his promises, just in his distributions, and prudent,
though not crafty, in his military transactions ; " of a
singular presence of mind, (as 2 Josephus speaks of
him,) to make the best of what was before him ; and of
as sharp a foresight for improving all advantages, and
obviating all difficulties, that were like to happen ;"
tender to all persons in distress, kind to his friends,
forgiving to his enemies ; and when at any time he was
forced to use severity, it was only in retaliation of what
other people had done to him.
Happy were it for us, if we could account for the
operations of God with the same facility that we can for
the actions of his saints ; but his counsels are a great
deep, and his judgments, just though they be, are some-
times obscure, and past finding out. For what shall we
say to the fate of Uzzah ? Or what tolerable cause can
we assign for his sudden and untimely end. It was now
near seventy years since the Israelites had carried the
ark from place to place, and so long a disuse had made
them forget the manner of doing it. In conformity to
what they had heard of the Philistines, they put it into
a new cart or wagon ; but this was against the express
direction of the law, s which ordered it to be borne upon
men's shoulders. It is commonly supposed, that Uzzah
was a Levite, though there is no proof of it from Scrip-
ture ; but supposing he was, he had no right to attend
upon the ark ; that province, by the same law, 4 was re-
strained to those Levites only who were of the house of
Kohath : nay, put the case he had been a Kohathite by
birth, yet lie had violated another command which pro-
hibited even these Levites, though they carried it by
staves upon their shoulders, 5 upon pain of death, to
touch it with their hands : so that here was a threefold
transgression of the divine will in this method of pro-
ceeding. The ark, as some say, by Uzzah's direction,
uas placed in a cart; Uzzah, without any proper desig-
nation, adventures to attend it; when he thought it in
danger of falling, officiously he put forth his hand, and
laid hold on it, all violations of the divine commands,
i Vs. ix. 15, 16. 2 Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 12.
3 Num. vii. 9. 4 Num. vii. 9. * Num. iv. 15.
greater glory to overcome their enemies by treachery, than true
valour. — I'ivy, b. 42. c. 47. And it was a known principle of
Alexander's, that he scorned to steal a victory. — Plutarch de
■ icvatidro, and Q. Citrtivs, b. 4. c. 13;
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
and this, as is supposed, not so much out of reverence
to the sacred symbol of God's presence, as out of diffi-
dence of his providence, as unable to preserve it from
overturning.
The truth is, this ark had so long continued in ob-
scurity, that the people, in a manner, had lost all sense
of a divine power residing in it, and therefore approach-
ed it with irreverence. This is implied in David's ex-
hortation to Zadok and Abiathar, after this misfortune
upon Uzzah. G ' Ye are the chief of the fathers of the
Levites ; sanctify yourselves therefore, both ye, and
your brethren, that you may bring up the ark of the
Lord God of Israel, unto the place that I have pre-
pared for it ; for because ye did it not at the first, the
Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we
sought him not after the due order.' What wonder, then,
if God being minded to testify his immediate presence
with the ark, to retrieve the ancient honour of that
sacred vessel, and to curb all licentious profanations
of it for the future, should single out one that was the
most culpable of many, one, who in three instances
was then violating his commands, to be a monument of
his displeasure against either a wilful ignorance or a
rude contempt of his precepts, be they ever so seem-
ingly small ; that by such an example of terror, he
might inspire both priests and people with a sacred
dread of his majesty, and a profound veneration for his
mysteries ?
God indeed is left to his own pleasure, what signs he
shall think fit to give to his people, upon any occasion,
for their good ; but the more arbitrary and uncommon
any sign is, the more it seems to have proceeded from
God. Though therefore the sound of people's going
upon the tops of trees, be a thing not so congruous to
our conceptions, yet it will not therefore follow, that it
was not the real sign which God gave David, because
the stranger the phenomenon was, the greater assurance
it conveyed of the divine interposition in his favour.
Nor can the practicableness of the thing be disputed,
since it was confessedly an host of angels (who could
move on the tops of trees, as well as plain ground) that
made this noise of an army's marching.
There is no reason, however, to acquiesce in this con-
struction only. 7 The word beroclie, which we render
tops, in several places in Scripture, signifies the begin-
ning of things likewise ; and in this acceptation, the sense
of the sign which God gave David will be tin's, — " When
thou hearest a sound, as it were of many men marching
at the entrance of the place where the mulberry trees are
planted, then do thou make ready to fall upon thine
enemy ; for this noise, which is occasioned by the minis-
try of my angels, goes before thee, botli to conduct thee
in thy way, and to inject terror into thine adversaries."
But how plausible soever this interpretation may seem,
there is some reason to suspect, that the other word
bochim, which our translation calls mulberry treex, is in
reality the proper name of a place. " The prophet
Isaiah has a plain allusion to this piece of history, and
seems to confirm what we here suggest. ' The Lord,'
says lie, ' shall rise up as in mount Perazim ; he shall be
wroth as in the valley of Gibeon ;' that is, he shall dc-
6 I Chron. xv. 1"?, 13. : Patrick's Commentary, in locum.
8 Is. xxvui. 21.
3 R
498
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2049. A
stroy his enemies, as he did the Philistines at Baal-Pera-
zim under David, and the Canaanites at Gibeon, under
Joshua : what hinders then, but that Beroche Bochim may
signify the mountains of Bochim ? And so the sense of
the words will be, — " When thou hearest a noise, as of
many people marching upon the hills, or high places of
Bochim, then thou hast nothing to do, but to fall imme-
diately upon the enemy." Either of these interpretations
clears the text from any seeming absurdity ; and I shall
only observe farther, that from the passage of the above
cited prophet, as well as some expressions in the 18th
psalm, such as, 1 ' He sent out his arrows, and scattered
them ; he cast forth lightnings, and destroyed them,' it
seems very likely that a mighty storm of thunder and
lightning, of hailstones, and coals of fire, as the psal-
mist calls it, was assistant to David in the acquisition of
this victory.
In the account of David's conquest of the Ammonites,
the weight of their king's crown seems not a little mon-
strous. The weight of a talent, which, upon the lowest
computation, amounts to no less than 123 pounds, is
allowed to be too much for one neck to sustain ; but then
we should consider, that besides the crown that was
usually worn it was customary, in some nations, for kings
to have a vast large ones, even to a size equal to this,
either hung, or supported over the throne, where, at their
coronation, or upon other solemn occasions, they were
wont to sit.
The Jewish doctors indeed have a very odd conceit,
namely, that David, when he took this crown from
the king of Amnion, hung it up on high by a certain
loadstone that he had, as if the power of the magnet were
to attract gold as well as iron. But let that be as it will,
it is but to suppose, that the crown here under debate,
was of this larger kind, and that, by some means or
other, it was supported over the king's head while he
was sitting on his throne, and then there will be an ap-
parent reason for taking the crown from off, or, as the
Hebrew words will bear it, ' from over the king's head,
and placing it, in like manner, over David's head, even
to indicate the translation of his kingdom to David.
2 It is a common thing, however, in Hebrew, as well as
other learned languages, to have the same word signify
both the weight and value of any thing. And that the
price or worth of the crown is here the meaning of the
phrase we have the more reason to think, because men-
tion is made of an addition of precious stones, which are
never estimated by the weight of gold. 3 Josephus tells
C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM.
1 Ps. xviii. 1 J.
* Poole's Annotations, and Patrick's Commentary in locum.
3 Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 7.
o Tlie ancients make mention of several such large crowns as
tins., which were made for sight more than any thing else. Juve-
nal, exposing the pride and vanity of some of the chief magistrates
;it Rome, describes the pomp and splendour of their appearance in
these words: "What if he had seen the prator stand erect in
his lofty chariot, and towering above the surrounding dust of the
circus, magnificently dressed in an imperial coat, wearing pend-
ant from his shoulders the purple epaulettes of his diedal- wrought
gown, and on his head a golden crown so vast, that scarce can a
human neck support it." (Sat. 10.) Atheneus (l>. 5. c. 8.) de-
scribes a crown made of gold, that was four and twenty feet in
circumference, and mentions others, that were two, some four,
and some five feet deep; as Pliny (b. 33. <•. .'!.) in like mariner,
takes notice of some that were of no less than eight pounds'
weight. — Calmet's Commentary in locum.
us of one stone of great value in the middle of the
crown, which he calls a sardonyx ; and as we may sup-
pose that there were other jewels of several kinds placed
at their proper distances, these, in proportion as they
heightened the value, must lessen the weight of the crown,
and verify what the same historian tells us of it, namely,
" that David wore it constantly on his head afterwards,
for an ornament."
There is another difficulty still behind, which relates
to the weight of Absalom's hair, that in the words of the
text is thus expressed : — 4 ' And when he polled his
head, for it was at every year's end that he polled it ; and
because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled
it, he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels
after the king's weight.' In the explication of which
words, the sentiments of the learned have been so many
and various, that, we shall content ourselves with com-
menting upon some of the chief of them.
Those who are of opinion that the words related only
to the cuttings of Absalom's hair, make the two hundred
shekels the price, and not the weight of them : and to
this purpose they suppose, that though Absalom himself
might not sell his hair, yet some persons about him
might do it, in complaisance to the ladies of Jerusalem,
who might not think themselves in the fashion, unless
they wore a favourite lock of the prince's. But besides
the absurdity of the king's son suffering any of his do-
mestics to sell his hair, the very words of the text are a
confutation of this notion, where they tell us, that ' he
weighed the hair of his head ;' whereas, had it been sold,
the buyer must have weighed the money, even 5 as Abra-
ham did when he purchased the field of Ephron.
Others again pretend, that there is a manifest mistake
crept into the text, which has been occasioned by an
ignorant transcriber's inserting one numerical letter for
another, the resell instead of the daleth, that is, two
hundred instead of four : but, besides the uncertainty,
whether the former Hebrews made use of their letters
instead of figures, whereof there is not the least sign or
token in any ancient copies, wherein, I pray, would the
great wonder be, if what was cut off from Absalom's
head, to thin and shorten his hair, when it grew too
weighty and troublesome to him, amounted to no more
than four shekels, which is much about two ounces ? And
yet the whole design of this narration seems to portend
something more than usual, in this prodigious increase
of Absalom's hair.
The text, however, does not speak of the cuttings of
the hair, but of the head of hair itself, when it talks of
the weight of two hundred shekels ; and therefore those
who take it in this larger sense, are not forgetful to re-
mind us, that in those days, hair was accounted a very
great ornament, and the longer it was, the more it was
esteemed ; that Absalom, to be sure, would not fail to
nourish his with the utmost care, and to let it grow long
enough, because it contributed so much to the graceful-
ness of his person ; that in after ages, as perhaps they
did then, men were wont to use much art with their hair,
and dress it every day with fragrant ointments, in order
to make it grow thick and strong ; that the noble guards
which attended Solomon, as Josephus 6 informs us, had
4 2 Sam. xiv. 26. s Gen. xxiii. IG.
" Jewish Antiquities, b. 8. C. 12.
Skct. V.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
499
A. M. 2940. A. C. 1 0r,5 ; OR, ACCORDING TO
their long hair flowing about their shoulders, which they
powdered with small particles of gold, to make it
sparkle, and glisten against the sun ; and that therefore it
is not improbable, that Absalom, who himself was a gay
young man, and wanted none of these helps or improve-
ments, might, in process of time, bring his hair up to the
weight that the Scripture records, which, according to the
gold shekel, that was but half as much as the silver, came
to no more, as the learned Bochart endeavours to prove,
than three pounds and two ounces.
But since the Scripture says nothing of any such addi-
tions, as ointments, or gold dust, to enhance the weight
of the hair ; others, who think this too much for a man
that polled his hair once every year, if not oftener, have
observed, from the words which we render at ' every
year's end,' that in the original they imply no particular
designation of time ; and thence infer, that Absalom did
not weigh his hair so often as once every year, but at
this particular time only, when he returned to Jerusalem.
" He in his exile," say they, " which lasted about three
years, pretending great sorrow for his sin, seems to have
taken upon him the vow of a Nazarite, until his return ;
one part of which was, that he should not suffer his hair
to be cut for such a determinate time : but upon his recall
home, being now discharged from his vow, he ordered
his hair to be cut all clean off, because it was grown
very cumbersome to him ; which being of so long a
growth, amounted to the weight that the sacred history
relates of it." But this notion of Absalom's Nazaritism
has no foundation in Scripture, l except that lying pre-
tence to his father, when under the cloak of religion, he
was minded to conceal his intended rebellion ; and
therefore all the superstructure built upon it must neces-
sarily fall.
Others, perceiving that none of these inventions would
answer the purpose, have endeavoured to solve the diffi-
culty, by attending to the latter words in the text, ' two
hundred shekels, after the king's weight:' and, to this
purpose, 2 they lay it down as a principle, that, during
the reig-ns of the kings of Judah, there was no variation
in the Hebrew weights, nor were there any that were
called the king's : that the difference between the king's
and the common weight did not commence, till after
some continuance of the Babylonish captivity ; that,
towards the end of this captivity, whoever he was that
revised these books of Samuel, made mention of such
weights as were not properly Hebrew, but such as (after
sixty or seventy years' captivity) the Jews only knew,
and these were the Babylonish ; and that therefore, when
he comes to mention the weight of Absalom's hair, and
tells us, that it was two hundred shekels, he adds, by
way of explanation, that it was after the king's weight,
that is, after the weight of the king of Babylon, whose
shekel was but the third part of a Hebrew shekel, 3 as the
best writers upon weights and measures are generally
agreed. So that, according to this hypothesis, Absalom's
hair, which weighed two hundred Babylonish shekels,
came but in our weight, to about thirty-three ounces ; a
quantity which those who deal in that commodity have
not (infrequently met with upon several women's heads ;
and therefore what brings this long contested story, at
least, within the bounds of a fair probability.
2 Sam. xv. 7, &c. * Calmet's Commentary in locum. * Ibid.
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
Thus have we attempted to solve most of the remark-
able difficulties, that either affect the character of David,
or other parts of Scripture account, during this period
of its history ; and may now begin to wave the testimony
of heathen authors, in confirmation of what we may
think strange and unaccountable in the sacred records ;
because facts of that kind will not so frequently occur ;
and the Jewish nation begins now, in the reign of king
David, to make so considerable a figure, as to have their
affairs either mentioned or alluded to, by the most
remarkable historians, both Greek and Latin.
CHAP
III. — Of the Sacred Chronology, and Profane
History during this Period.
Before we enter upon the foreign history of this period,
it may not be improper to take notice of some chrono-
logical difficulties, that are to be found in the Scripture
account of it. The spaca of time, from the departure
of the children of Israel out of Egypt, to the laying the
foundation of the temple at Jerusalem, is so exactly-
stated, that it will admit of no dispute: ' For * it came
to pass,' says the text, ' in the four hundred and four-
score year, after the children of Israel were come up out
of the land of Egypt, in the month Zif, which is the
second month, that Solomon began to build the house of
the Lord:' but then the manner of computing this num-
ber of years has been various.
5 The generality of the Jews who make it 450 years
from the death of Joshua to the time of Samuel, "suppose
4 1 Kings vi. 1. s Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 5. c. 1
a The chronology of the period here treated of, namely, from
the death of Joshua to the building of the temple, has been much
corrupted in the common Hebrew text: in fact the various parts
are totally irreconcilable, as the eflbrts of our author to this end
in the foregoing portion of this chapter clearly shows. The great
alterations made in the chronology at a late period by the Jews,
and their reasons for so doing, have already been stated, note
pages 65, Co', on the period from the creation to the deluge.
And for the shortening of tin's period they had the very same
motive ; it was indeed a part of the same scheme for raising pre-
judices in the minds of their countrymen against the Messiah-
ship of Jesus of Nazareth. Dr Hales, vol. 1. pp. 221, 222,
second edition, gives from one of the Jewish rabbis, David
Ganz, a table of the period from the exode to the building of the
temple, in which they have contrived to crowd the various
events within the space of 4S0 years; but, he adds, the Jewish
chronologers were hard set to make out this detail, as Ganz
honestly confesses: — For, 1. " By a curious invention, they in-
cluded the first four servitudes in the years of the judges, who
put an end to them, contrary to the express declarations of
Scripture, which represent the administrations of the judges, not
as synchronizing with the servitudes, but as succeeding them,
(Judges ii. 18.) 2. They were forced to allow the fifth servitude
to have been distinct from the administration of Jephthah, because
it was too long to be included therein : but they curtailed a year
from the Scripture account of that servitude, making it, instead
of eighteen, only seventeen years; and they curtailed another
year from Ibzan's administration, making it only six, instead of
stvin years. 3. They sunk entirely the sixth servitude, to the
Philistines, of forty years, because it was too long to be contained
in Samson's administration ; and, to crown all, 4. They reduced
Saul's reign of forty years, (Acts xiii. 21.) to two years only!
The dishonesty of the whole contrivance could be equalled only
by its absurdity; furnishing internal evidence that the period of
four hundred and eighty years, foisted into the Hebrew text of
1 King'-, is itself a forgery." We lave given, at page .190", Di
500
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V,
A. M. 2940. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO
the difference, from the departure out of Egypt, to the
first beginning of the temple, to be 597 years ; but this
account is 117 more than what we find in Scripture.
1 Josephus expressly tells us, that when Solomon began
that mighty work, it was 592 years from the coming of
the Israelites out of Egypt ; but then it is presumed,
that he (as well as the other Jews) reckons the years of the
oppressors apart ; whereas they ought to be included in
the years of the judges, who delivered the people from
that bondage ; for, it is but looking into the Scripture
account, and we shall see that, 2 before Othniel, Israel
was oppressed eight years ; before Ehud, eighteen ; be-
fore Deborah, twenty ; before Gideon, seven ; before
Jephthah, eighteen; and before Samson, forty; now,
adding all these together, we shall find that they amounted
to 111 years ; which, if joined to the years of the judges
•■\ill make the particular years of this period far exceed
the general ; but, by being included in the time assigned
for the government of the judges, they make that par-
ticular and general account of the years agree very
rightly.
There is another difference between this account in
the first book of Kings, and what the apostle affirms in
the Acts of the Apostles, namely, that, 3 ' after the time
1 Jewish Antiquities, b. 8. c. 2.
2 Millar's History of the Church, c. 1. p. 4. 3 Acts xiii. 20.
Hales' table and computation of the period from Joshua to the
election of Saul to the kingdom, which is there shown to be 498
years, and we now subjoin his table of the succeeding period,
from the commencement of the regal state till the revolt of the
Ten Tribes, 120 years: —
Years. B. C.
J. Saul }
Samuel Judge § . ■ .
Saul defeats the Ammonites
his first offence
Jonathan defeats the Philistines .
Saul" s second offence I
David born )
lulls Goliath
marries Michal
first flight to Gath
second flight to Gath
Saul's third offence
2. David
takes Jehus
Philistine war ....
Ark brought home
Nathan's prophecy of the Messiah the
son of David
David's first ofi'ence .
Solomon born ....
Absalom's and Sheba's rebellions .
David's second offence
Adonijah's rebellion .
3. Solomon .....
Temple begun ....
finished
Tadmor built ....
Temples on the mount of corruption
The revolt
40?
38 J
40
L20
1110
1110
1108
1106
1100
ioso
1075
1074
1071
1070
1070
106,3
1061
1060
1055
1052
1050
1036
1032
1030
1030
1027
1020
1006
996
990
The reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, were forty years
each, (Acta xiii. 21 ; 2 Sam. v. 1 ; l Kings xi. 42.1 which deter-
mines the length of the period. Butthedatesofdetailarenotnoticed
in Scripture. They may, however, be collected from incidental
circumstances, and hem the series of events, to a considerable
degree oi exactness, not differing, perhaps, above a year more or
less from the truth. — Hales' Analysis, v. 2. pp. 30s, 309,
second edition.- V.v.
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xLx.
that Joshua divided the land to them by lot, God gave
them judges for about the space of four hundred and fifty
years, until Samuel the prophet.' But now, if there be
450 years from the division of the land of Canaan, which
happened in the seventh year of Joshua's government,
to the time of the government, or even of the death of
Samuel, there must be many more than 480 years in the
whole interval from the departure out of Egypt to the
building of the temple.
To solve this difficulty, some have imagined, that the
words fiiTci TavTa,, after that, which are found in the
twentieth verse, should be placed at the beginning
of the seventeenth, and then the sense will be, that,
from God's choosing our fathers, to the time of the
judges, were 450 years ; for, from Isaacs birth, say they,
to the departure of Israel out of Egypt, are 405 years ;
they wandered in the wilderness 40 years ; and the land
was divided by lot seven years after that ; so that all
these put together, make 452 years, which the Apostle
expresses by the round sum of 450. But this apparently
is not the sense of the apostle, who, in his discourse to
the people, goes on gradually and methodically thus :
' God chose our fathers ; he brought them out of Egypt ;
he led them in the wilderness forty years ; he divided
the land ; and then he gave them judges,' &c. 4 Others
therefore have fallen into a different way of computation,
by making the years of the judges and oppressors dis-
tinct ; for, the years of the judges, say they, until Sa-
muel's time, are 339 ; the years of the tyrants are 111;
which, put together, make exactly 450 : and this kind of
reckoning the apostle might mention, though he did not
entirely approve of it ; and therefore Ave find him intro-
ducing it with an ag, that is, after a manner, or, as some
will Jiave it, who compute the years of the oppressors as
distinct from the years of the judges, though in reality
they ought to be included in one another.
There is still a farther difficulty, which arises from
comparing the scripture chronology, with the genealogies
in the book of Ruth. From the entrance into the land
of Canaan to the building of the temple, were 440 years :
now, if out of this, we subtract for David's life, 70 years,
and for that part of Solomon's reign which was before
the foundation of the temple, four years, the remainder will
be 306 ; and yet for these 366 years, we have four gene-
rations only, for Salmon begat Boaz of Rahab ; Boaz
begat Obed of Ruth ; Obed begat Jesse ; and Jesse be-
gat David, which at a time 5 when the age of man was
reduced to the compass of seventy or eighty years, is a
thing almost impossible. But, as it is not certain, that
the lives of all men were shortened at the time when the
Israelites murmured in the wilderness, forasmuch as the
reason for cutting them off' so soon (even to prevent their
entering into the land of promise) was peculiar to that
generation, and might not affect others ; so the lives of
others might be extended much longer, until the days of
David, and especially in that family, which Cod had
honoured so highly as to appoint, that in it his blessed
Son should be born.
According to this account, we may suppose that
Salmon might be about twenty years old when he enter-
ed into Canaan, and Rahab, whom he married to be
CI
« See Grotius and Usher.
'■ Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 5. c 1
hurch History, e. l. period 4.
Ps. xc. 10.
and Millar's
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
501
A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS, A. M. 4311. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i— xix.
about the same age ; and that Rahab might bear Boaz in
the sixty-second year of her age, which in those days
was no extraordinary thing : and then it is but suppos-
ing farther, that Boaz was 102 years old before he begat
Obed ; Obed 111 before he begat Jesse; and Jesse of
the same age before he begat David ; and the whole
difficulty is removed : only it may be thought a little
strange, that men, above 100 years old, should be capa-
ble of begetting children, until it be considered, that
Moses and Aaron, and Joshua and Caleb, were all
vigorous men at this age ; that, long after this, Jehoiada,
the high priest, was 130 years old when he died; and
that, almost in our own remembrance, our countryman,
Thomas Parr, lived to 152, and had a son when he was
105 years old.
This may suffice for settling the chronology ; and now
to proceed to the history of this period. Our last con-
nexion of the sacred and profane history we concluded
with the life and adventures of Sesostris, a who reigned
in Egypt, and made a very distinguished figure in several
parts of the world, while the Israelites were sojourning
in the wilderness ; but from the time that they entered
into Canaan, h they seem to have had no intercourse
with the Egyptians, nor do their several histories at all
interfere.
All history, indeed, in this period of time, is so de-
faced and corrupted with fables, that it is a hard matter
to discern any lineaments of truth in it ; and yet it may
not be amiss to take notice of some of its remarkable
events.
About the thirty-ninth year of Ehud's government in
Israel, in the time of Deucalion son of Prometheus, there
happened such a deluge in Thessaly, c as gave 1 the
poets an occasion to say that all mankind were therein
destroyed, and that Deucalion, and Pyrrha his wife,
re-peopled the world, by throwing stones behind them,
which were instantly changed into men and women.
Much about this time lived Phaeton, a prince of the
Ligurians, and a great astrologer, that applied himself
chiefly to the study of the course of the sun ; and because,
in his days, the country of Italy, near the river Po, was
1 Ovid's Metamorphoses, b. 1. fab. 7.
a See note on this subject, p. 336. — Ed.
b We have formerly taken notice, (b. 3. c. 5. in the notes,) of
the series of the Egyptian kings, written by Erastosthenes, and
preserved bySyneellus; and here to proceed with that catalogue.
In the year of the world 2523, reigned in Egypt Echesius Caras
one year. In the year 2524, began Nitoeris, and reigned six
years. In the year 25.'10, began Myrtrcus, and reigned twenty
years. In the year 2552, began Thyosimares, the same that
Herodotus calls Myris, or Myrios, and reigned twelve years. In
tho year 2564, began Thyrillus, and reigned eight years. In
the year 2572, began Semiphucares, and reigned eighteen years.
In the year 2590, began Chuter Taurus, and reigned seven
years. In the year 2597, began Cheres Philosophus, and reigned
twelve years. In the year 2609, began Chomo Ephtha, and
reigned eleven years. In the year 2620, began Anchurius
Ochus, and reigned sixty years. In the year 2680, began Pen-
tcathyris, and reigned sixteen years. In the year 2696, began
Stamcnes, and reigned twenty-three years. In the year 2719,
b"gan Sistosichemcs, and reigned fifty-five years. In the year
2774, began Maris, and reigned forty-three years. In tho year
2817, began Siphons Hermes. In the year 2826, began Phru-
ron, or Nihis. In the year 2843, began Amurrhoeus, and
reigned sixty-three years, or to the year of the world 2906.— See
Millar's Church History, c. 1. period 4.
c This flood occurred B. C. 1518, or twelve years before the
commencement of Ehud's administration. — Hales.- En.
so incommoded with extraordinary heats, that the earth
became dry, and barren for several years, s it hence be-
came a renowned fable among the poets, that by his
misguidance of the horses of the sun, who is said to have
been his father, he set the earth on fire.
About the fourteenth year of Tolah's judging Israel,
Ganymede, the son of Tros, king of Phrygia, being be-
loved by Jupiter, as the poets fable, was by him carried
up to heaven in the shape of an eagle, and much against
Juno's will made cupbearer to the gods.
About the sixth year of Jair's government, Perseus
appeared in the world, and of him the fabulous writers
have many strange stories ; as, that he was begot by
Jupiter on Danae in a golden shower ; that when he
came to be of age he conquered the Gorgons, with their
queen Medusa, whose hair was interwoven with snakes ;
that he subdued the inhabitants of Mount Atlas, and first
delivered Andromeda, by killing the sea monster sent
to devour her, and then married her ; that afterwards he
fought against the kings of Mauritania and Ethiopia,
and, returning to Greece, overcame his uncle Prcetus,
and Polydectes king of the island Seriphus. d
Few things are more famous in the songs of the poets
than the expedition of those valiant Greeks that accom-
panied Jason to Colchos ; e and the foundation of the
story is conceived to be this : — That the Argonauts sailed
to some part of Scythia, to carry off a share of the riches
of that country, where the inhabitants gained a great
deal of gold out of the rivers that ran from Mount Cau-
casus, by using sheep skins with the wool on, in order to
take up that precious metal, from whence it was called
the golden fleece. But the poets, out of their fruitful
brains, have made large additions to the story, namely,
that Jason fell in love with Hypsipyle at Lemnos ; and
that at Colchos he married Medea, the king's daughter,
who, being a famous witch, taught him how to kill the
dragon that kept the rich fleece ; how to conquer the
bulls, that vomited fire ; and how to sow the serpent's
teeth, out of which there arose an army of men ; with
many more fictions of the like nature.
But, of all the occurrences in this period, that which
has been most celebrated by the poets is the siege ol
Troy ; and the probable occasion is supposed to be this :
Not long before this remarkable event happened, the
seas were very much infested with pirates, who, landing
on the shores, seized upon all the women and cattle
they could meet with ; and so carrying them oft', either
sold them in some distant country, or kept them for
their own use. Hereupon Tyndarus, the father of He-
lena, considering the beauty of his daughter, caused all
her lovers, who were some of the principal men of
Greece, to bind themselves by a solemn oath, that, if at
any time she should be taken from her husband, they
2 Ovid's Metamorphoses, b. 2. f. 1.
d With respect to the era of Phaeton and Ganymede there is
no evidence whatever; no good evidence indeed that such per-
sonages ever existed. Perseus is supposed to have been the most
ancient of all the Grecian heroes, and founder of the city of My-
celial, of which he was the first king. According to most chro-
nologists, he flourished in the year 1348 B. C. and was contempo-
rary with the Hebrew judge Gideon. Sir Isaac Newton, however,
brings him down to the year 102$ B. C. — Bp. Glcig.
c The ArgonautlC expedition was made, according to Hale-,
in the year 1225 B. ('. diuing the administration of the judgt
Abdon.— Bp. nkig.
502
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M.2949. A. C. 1055 ; OR, ACCORDING TO
would join all their forces together to recover her. And
so, being left to choose whom she would have for her
husband, she made choice of Menelaus king of Myeenae,
and brother to Agamemnon. Paris, one of the youngest
sons of Priamus, king of Troy, upon the report of her
beauty, came into Greece to see her, and was kindly
entertained by Menelaus ; but he soon took an opportu-
nity to debauch his wife, and having robbed the husband
of a great deal of treasure, found means to make his
escape both with her and it.
Menelaus, as soon as his wife was gone, complained
of the injury that had been done him, to all the Grecian
princes, and required the performance of their oath ;
which they readily consented to, and made his brother
Agamemnon general of the forces, that were to be em-
ployed in this expedition. The Greeks, however, being
unwilling to enter into a war, if matters could be accom-
modated by a treaty, sent Ulysses and some others, as
ambassadors to Troy, to demand Helena, and all the
things of value that were taken with her. AVhat answer
the Trojans made to this demand, we are nowhere in-
formed ; but sure it is, that the ambassadors returned
back so very much offended with their ill treatment, that,
in a short time, they fitted out a vast armament.
But there was an unhappy accident, which mightily
retarded the siege of the city, and that was a difference
which fell out between Agamemnon and Achilles. Aga-
memnon, as general, had the preoption of what part of
the booty he pleased, and had then taken to himself a
captive woman, the daughter of Chryses, the priest of
Apollo, as Achilles, and the other commanding officers,
had made choice of others ; but, being obliged to give
up the priest's daughter, in atonement for the pestilence
that was fallen upon the .army, he sent and took Achil-
les's captive from him, which so exasperated this gallant
warrior, that, to revenge himself effectually, he took up
a resolution, neither to fight himself, nor suffer any
forces under him to engage ; and this gave the enemy
so great an advantage, that Hector, at the head of his
forces, broke through the Grecian trenches one day, and
set fire to the ships.
In the midst of this extremity, Patroclus, the bosom-
friend of Achilles, not being able to stand neuter any
longer, begged of Achilles to let him have the use of his
armour, and the command of his troops, in order to re-
pulse the Trojans ; which, he bravely attempted, but, in
the engagement fell by the hands of Hector, who took
from him the arms of Achilles, and carried them oft*.
This conjuncture Agamemnon made use of to be re-
conciled to Achilles ; and to this purpose, sent him back
his captive maid, with many very valuable presents, and
made an excuse for his former behaviour as well as he
could. Achilles, in order to be revenged for the loss of
his friend, laid aside all resentment, and joined the
Greeks in the next battle, wherein he vanquished the
Trojans; and, singling out Hector, never left pursuing
him, wherever he went, until he had killed him. a With
a Homer indeed gives us this account of the taking of Troy;
hut Virgil has informed us, that it was done by a large wooden
horse, in which were enclosed several of the chief commanders
of the Greeks ; that the rest setting sail to the island of Tenedos,
left Siuon to persuade the Trojans, that this horse was built upon
a religious account, and was necessary for them to take into the
city; that, by his craft and instigation, they pulled down [ait of
HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. 1— xlx.
Hector fell the city, which was soon reduced to ashes, and
its inhabitants forced to undergo a military execution.
But, how severe soever the Greeks might be to their
conquered enemies, several historians have observed,
that in their return home, they suffered almost as much
misery as they had brought upon the Trojans. For this
is the account which Thucydides gives of them. " By
reason of their long absence, they found many altera-
tions when they returned, so that some of them were
driven by their neighbours from their ancient seats ;
many were expelled their countries by faction ; others
slain, soon after their arrival ; and others deposed from
their kingdoms by such as had staid at home." Nestor
and Pyrrhus got safe home indeed, but were slain by
Orestes. Idomeneus and Philoctetes, upon their return,
were soon driven away to seek for new habitations.
Agamemnon was, upon his first arrival, slain by his
wife, and her adulterer iEgisthus, who had usurped his
kingdom. Menelaus, having long wandered upon the
sea, was forced into Egypt, before he could return to
Sparta. Ulysses, after ten years' peregrination, and the
loss of his whole company, came home in a poor con-
dition, and had much difficulty to recover the mastership
of his own house. Ajax, the son of Oileus, was drowned ;
Teucer fled into Cyprus ; and Diomedes to king Daunus.
Some of the Locrians were driven into Africa, others
into Italy, others into Sicily, and settled themselves in
such numbers in these parts, that Greek became the
current language of this island, and most of the east
part of Italy obtained the name of Magna Grsecia.
Thus the wise Ruler of the world was pleased to make
one wicked nation the instrument of punishing another.
But, whatever they severally suffered, the succeeding
generations obtained this advantage by it, that the dis-
persion of the Greeks occasioned a fuller peopling of
distant countries, by an accession of these new inhabi-
tants : and the taking of Troy became, in some years,
the settled epocha, whereby all that were acquainted
with the story of it, might agree in their account of time. b
SECT. V.
CHAP. I. — From the death of Absalom to the Building
of the Temple.
THE HISTORY.
As soon as David was informed of his son's death, all
the wall for that purpose; and so the Gret ks, returning on a
sudden, and entering the breach, opened the horse, and seized
on the gates, and burned the city. But another author, who per-
haps might know the truth as well as Virgil, gives us a different
account of this matter, namely, that /Eneas, Antenor, and Po-
lydamus, having taken some disgust at king Priamus, agreed
with the Grecians to betray the city to them, upon condition,
that they might retire with their men wherever they thought fit,
provided they did not settle in Phrygia. To this purpose it was
concerted, that the Grecians should set sail the day before to the
island Tenedos, as if they were quite gone, but return in the
dark of the night, when the Trojans thought themselves secure,
and so be let in at the Scsean gate, over which was a large
image of an horse, which gave the first rise and occasion to all
this story.
b Troy was taken in the year B. C. 1183, and consequently
just at the termination of Samson's administration. See Hales,
vol. i. p. 21b", and vol. ii. p. 257. — Ed.
Skct. V.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
503
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES
the joy of the victory was turned into sorrow. The king
himself withdrew to a a private apartment, where he
vented his grief in such a b mournful exclamation, as
a The place to which David withdrew, in order to vent his
grief, was, as Josephus tells us, (b. 7. c. 10.) to the top of one of
the highest towers in the city; but the sacred history calls it ' the
chamber over the gate,' (2 Sam. xviii. 33.) For the gate was a
spacious place, and much of the same form with the forum among
the Romans, not only the market for all commodities, but the
place where all great assemblies of the people were likewise held.
There were several buildings, where the chief magistrates sat to
administer justice, (Ruth iv. ], 2.) and where the other allairs
of the state were transacted ; so that it is not improbable, that this
chamber over the gate, where David went to weep, might be
some withdrawing room in the place where the privy counsel
was wont to meet. {Calmet's Commentary.) The death of this
favourite but unprincipled son, was a grievous blow to the heart
of his royal father — and the intense anxiety with which lie
waited for intelligence of the fate of the day's engagement, and
especially of Absalom, may be judged of from the position he
occupied when the messengers arrived. To understand his situa-
tion, it is necessary to remind the reader that he was then in
the provincial town of Mahanaim, in the tower that overhung
the gates of which a sentinel was posted, as usual in cases of
emergency, to hail the approach of any emissary from the seat of
war. By this scout, communications of every thing important
he discovered were ever and anon made to the impatient mon-
arch, who sat in an adjoining chamber — one of those which served
as halls of justice — and which, in ancient times, were always
situated on the gates of the city. It was in this apartment, the
nearest in the city to the scene of action, and commanding, from
its elevated position, an extensive view of the country, that
David watched, in the most painful suspense, the tidings of the
civil contest that involved the fate of his crown. It was in this
chamber at the gate, that, according to the practice of remotest
antiquity on the most solemn occasions, he continued to indulge
his pathetic lamentations over the death of his profligate son. It
was out of a window in the same place of public resort, that when
roused by the remonstrances of Joab, he returned Ins thanks to
the army for their gallant defence of his life and his kingdom.
And it was in the same apartments that he appeared afterwards
before the people of the city, distributing justice to all who came
with cases for his decision. That it was the practice of the
ancient kings of Israel, as well as of other Oriental monarchs, to
decide cases while sitting openly at the gate, appears from many
passages of the sacred history ; and, in many parts of the East,
we are informed that the same practice prevails to this day. Mr
Campbell describes an interesting scene of this nature at which
he happened to be present. " While in Kurreechare," says he,
" a city twelve or thirteen hundred miles up from the Cape of Good
Hope, he was told that a cause was going to be brought before the
king. Being anxious to witness it, I was led in haste to the
gate, where I saw the king sit down at the right side of it, with
his secretary on his right hand, and the prosecutor, or complainer,
on his left, who stated his case across to the secretary. During
his narrating his case, the king was looking about, as if not
attending to what was said, but I saw from his eyes that he was
attending to what, for form's sake, was addressed to the secre-
tary. When the party had finished what lie had to say, the
secretary repeated the whole to the king, as if he had been
entirely ignorant of the matter, after which he pronounced his
judgment. This picturesque description gives us a lively idea
of the scenes in which the chiefs and kings of sacred history are
frequently represented as placed among their dependents or their
people ; and accounts for the universal joy that pervaded the whole
city of Mahanaim, when it was known that their afflicted mon-
arch had resumed his daily custom of meeting with, and taking
an interest in the affairs of the people at the gate of the city.
Jamieson's Eastern Manners. — Ed.
b Nothing certainly can be more moving and pathetic, than
the words which David utters upon this sad occasion; but
whether it was David's deliberate wish, that he had died in
Absalom's stead, or only the effect of his excessive love and
grief for him, is not so easy a matter to determine. St Austin
seems to he on the affirmative side, and gives this reason for it:
— That Absalom died impenitent, but might have lived to
become a better man; whereas, if David had died/ he had reason
, A. M. 4375. A. C. 103G. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
this : ' ' O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom,
would God I had died for thee ! O Absalom, my son,
my son !' And as for the army, instead of returning in
triumph, they stole silently into the city, as if they had
done amiss, and had lost, instead of gaining, the battle.
This Joab perceiving, and being sensible that such
excessive grief, at this juncture of affairs, would be of
great prejudice to the king, went boldly in to him,
c and expostulated the matter with him in terms that
might perhaps be necessary on that occasion, but did not
so well become a subject's mouth. However they had
this good effect upon the king, that they roused him
from his melancholy, and made him appear in public, to
the great satisfaction of all his loyal subjects, d but as
he thought himself very insolently used by Joab, upon
several occasions, from that time he made it his resolu-
tion to take the first opportunity of e dismissing him from
being his general.
Those of his subjects, who had appeared in arms
against him, being now made sensible of the folly of their
1 2 Sam. xviii. 33.
to hope well of his salvation: but this supposition, as I take
it, is not so well founded, since there is much more probability
that if Absalom had survived his father, he would have grown
more profligate than ever, triumphed in his good success ;
insulted and persecuted all his father's friends; and proved a
wicked and abominable tyrant. But whether David's wish was
deliberate or no, it is certain, that his grief might be increased
from this reflection, that himself, by his own sin in the case of
Uriah, had been the unhappy instrument and occasion of his
son's death; though some learned men have observed, that
the oriental people were accustomed to express their passions
with more vehemence than we, in these parts of the world are
wont to do; and that the repetition of the same word, ' My son
Absalom, O Absalom, myson,my son,' isastyleproperformourn-
ful lamentation. " To the stars we will extol thyDaphnis, Daph-
nis to the stars we will praise, for Daphnis also loved us." (Virg.
Eccl, v.) "I am grieved for Adonis, Adonis the fair is dead,
Adonis the beautiful is gone." (Bion. Id. 1.) — Patrick's and
Calmet's Commentaries.
c Josephus concludes the speech which he supposes Joab to
have made to David upon this occasion, in words to this effect:
— " Pray, Sir, does not your conscience, as well as your honour
reprove you for this intemperate tenderness for the memory of so
implacable an enemy? He was your son, it is true, but a most
ungracious one ; and you cannot be just to God's providence,
without acknowledging the blessing of his being taken away. Let
me entreat you therefore to show yourself cheerful to your people,
and let them know, that it is to their loyalty and bravery that
you are indebted for the honour of the day ; for if you go on, as
you have begun, your kingdom, and your army will most
infallibly be put into other hands, and you will then find some-
thing else to cry for.' — Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 10.
d2 Samuel xix. 8. ' And the king arose and sat in the gate.'
The custom noticed in this passage appears to have been very
ancient, and is found in other writings than the sacred books.
Homer thus represents Nestor: —
The old man early rose, walk'd forth, and sat
On polish'd stone before his palace gate.
With unguents smooth tin' lucid marble shone,
Where ancient Nelcus sat, a rustic throne ;
Rut he descending to the infernal shade,
Sago Nestor fill'd it, and the sceptre sway'd.
Otlyss. i. 518.— Ed.
c For he had sufficient reason to think of depressing a man,
who was grown so insufferably insolent and imperious. He had
slain Abner most perfidiously in cool blood; had killed Absalom
against the king's express command; in his late bold reproof had
insulted over his sorrow, and, if we may believe Josephus,
threatened to depose him, and give his kingdom to another. To
such a state of arrogance will ministers sometimes arrive, when
they find that their service is become necessary tc their prince.
— Patrick's Commentary .
504 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 103G. 2 SAM. xix-1 KINGS viii.
[Book V.
rebellion, became the forwardest for his restoration ; but,
what grieved him much, his own tribe, the tribe of Judah,
seemed a little indifferent as to the matter ; which made
him send to Zadok and Abiathar the chief priests, not
only to remind them of their own duty, but to authorize
them likewise to treat with Amasa, who though he had
commanded Absalom's army was still a man of great
authority, in the tribe, to offer him his pardon, and in
case he would come fully into his interest, to promise
him the generalship in the room of Joab.
Thus all things conspiring to his happy restoration,
the king left Mahanahn, and set forward on his journey
to Jerusalem, when the chiefs of the tribe of Judah came
to meet, and conduct him over the Jordan. Old Bar-
zillai, who had been very kind to the king in his exile,
and supplied him with provisions while he continued at
Mahanaim, hearing that he was upon his return, came to
take his leave of him ; and see him safe over the river,
and when the king in gratitude for his kindness gave him
an invitation to go with him to Jerusalem, the good
old man modestly excused himself, upon the account
of his age, as having now lost the relish of the plea-
sures of a court, and desired rather to retire to his
own estate, where he might spend the remainder of
his days in quiet: but as he had a son, whose age was
more proper to attend him, if his majesty would be
pleased to confer any favour on him, the obligation
would be the same ; a which David promised to do,
and so with much mutual blessings and salutations,
they parted.
Among the many others who came to meet David upon
this occasion, Shimei the Benjamite, who not long before
had loaded him with curses and imprecations, came, b
with a thousand men of his tribe to beg pardon for his
fault ; and when Abishai would have persuaded the king
to have him killed, he resented the motion as an indig-
nity put upon himself: and being unwilling to eclipse
the public joy with the blood of any one, gave him his
royal word and oath that he should live.
Another remarkable person that came to wait upon
David at this time, was the perfidious Ziba, with his fif-
teen sons and twenty servants. He had again imposed
upon his master, and, when he ordered him to make
ready his asa that he, among others, might go and meet
the king, slid away himself to make his court first; so
that Mephibosheth, being lame, was forced to stay at
Jerusalem, where he had all along c mourned for the
a What David did for Chimham is uncertain; but as he had
a patrimony in Bethlehem, which was the place of his nativity,
ir i< nut improbable, that he gave a great part of it to Chimham,
and liis heirs t'"r ever; and that this was afterwards called 'the
habitation of Chimham' in the days of Jeremiah, (Jer. xli. 17.)
— Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 5. c. 4.
b The reason why Shinici came with so large a retinue, was
to let David see tliat he was a man of some considerable rank,
and capable of doing him great service among the people, which
might he some inducement to the King to grant him his pardon;
or, very likely, he was one of the captains of a thousand in his
own tribe, and might cany them along with him, to make the
stronger intercession for his pardon. — Poole's Annotations.
c The words in the text are, that ' he had neither dressed his
feet, nor trimmed his heard, nor washed his clothes, from the day
that the king departed,' (2 Sam. xix. 24.) These were some
of the instances wherein the Jews were wont to express their
mourning; and they are here mentioned by the historian, as
evidences of the falsehood ofZiba's information against his master,
kin»'s absence, until the king arrived : but when he was
admitted into his presence, and the king seemed to be
angry with him for not having accompanied him in his
exile, he charged this seeming neglect upon the perfidy
of his servant, and d set his case in so fair a light, that
the king revoked the hasty grant he had made in favour
of Ziba, and put his estate upon the same foot of pos-
session that it was before.
When David was passed the Jordan, he was willing to
make all possible haste to Jerusalem ; and, as the tribe
of Judah was the first that came to conduct him home,
he, very probably to gratify them, marched on without
waiting for the great men of Israel, who, in all parts of
the kingdom, were making ready to join him. This oc-
casioned some hot disputes between the princes of Israel
and those of Judah : and, as the king was loth to dis-
please either party, and therefore did not care to inter-
meddle in the controversy, several of the tribes of Israel
took an outward umbrage at this, which occasioned a
fresh insurrection. Sheba, a Benjamite, e and not un-
likely one of Saul's family, made public proclamation
by the sound of trumpet, that " since the tribe of Judah
had engrossed David to themselves, they might even take
him ; and, since all the other tribes he had visibly de-
serted, their wisest way would be to stand to their arms,
and in like manner desert him." Whereupon a great
many of the other tribes followed Sheba ; but the men of
Judah persisted in their loyalty, and conducted the king
to Jerusalem. As soon as he arrived in the city, the
first thing he did was to declare Amasa his general, and
since no one, who neglected himself to this degree, could be suppos-
ed ambitious of a crown. Not dressing his feet, may signify, either
not cutting his toe nails, or his not washing his feet, which the
Jews were accustomed very frequently to do, because of the bad
smell which was natural to them, as well as the Arabians, and
some other nations ; and therefore his omission of this could not
but make him offensive to himself. Not trimming his beard was
letting his hair grow negligently, and without any order. For
the manner of the Jews was, to cut the hair from the lip upwards,
and what grew likewise on the cheek ; but what was on the chin,
and so backwards to the ear, that they suffered to grow; and not
washing his clothes must denote his putting on no clean linen,
but wearing the same shirt all the while. — Calmcfs and Patrick's
Commentaries.
a Josephus brings in Mephibosheth pleading his excuse to David
for not attending him, and expressing a grateful sense of his fa-
vours, in such like words as these: — " Nor has he only disappoint-
ed me in the exercise of my duty, but has been doing me spiteful
offices to your majesty likewise: but you, Sir, are so just and so
great a lover of God and truth, that I am sure your generosity
and wisdom will never entertain a calumny to my prejudice.
Our family has had the experience of your piety, modesty, and
goodness, to a degree never to be forgotten, in passing over and
pardoning the innumerable hazards and persecutions that you
were exposed to, in the days, and by the contrivance of my
grandfather, when all our lives were forfeited, in your power, and
at your mercy. But then, after all this gracious tenderness,
your superadding the honour of taking me to your table, a person
so obnoxious in regard of my relations, as a friend, and as a guest,
nothing could be either greater, or more obliging than this." —
Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 7.
e In the text, Sheba is called ' a man of Belial.' The expres-
sions ' sons of Belial,' 'men of Belial,' and ' children of Belial,'
occur frequently in Scripture, and seem to imply wicked, worth-
less men ; those who refuse to submit to any restraint ; rebels,
licentious and disobedient persons. (See Deut. xiii. 13. Judg
xix. 22. 1 Sam. ii. 12., x. 27.) The primary meaning of tie
word Belial, is uselessness, worthlessness, according to Gesenius;
and the Septuagint renders the phrase avbgis ■z-a.^avopoi, lawless '
men. In the New Testament, Belial is applied to Satan, as the
patron and epitome oi licentiousness, (2 Cor. vi. 15.)— Ed.
Sect. V.J
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
>05
A. M. 2981. A. C. 10-23
to order him to get together a sufficient body of forces,
as fast as he could, to pursue after Sheba. a Amasa,
however, found more difficulty in executing this order
than was expected ; which when David understood, he
sent Abishai with his guards, for he was resolved not to
employ his brother Joab any more, in quest of Sheba,
until Amasa, with the rest of the army, could join him.
Exasperated at this, Joab, without any order went along
with his brother ; and when Amasa came up with them,
which was at Gibeon, and was going to take upon him
the command of the whole army, he advanced, with all
seeming friendliness to salute him ; but when he came
within reach, he ° took him by the beard, and stabbed him
to the heart ; and so, leaving him to wallow in his blood,
proclaimed himself general in chief, and taking the army
with him, pursued after Sheba, e leaving orders for the
forces that were coming up, to follow after.
Sheba had gone about all the tribes of Israel to see if
he could prevail with them to take up arms against
David ; but finding very few, that, upon second thoughts,
were willing to engage in his measures, he was forced
at last, with the few forces he had got together, to
shut himself up in Abel, a fortified town in the tribe of
Naphtali, in the northern part of Judea. But Joab was
soon at his heels, and having besieged the town, and
battered the walls, was making preparations for an as-
sault, when a d woman of great prudence called to the
a The people having been harassed in the late civil war, were
not perhaps so forward as to engage in another. Some of them
might not like to serve under a man who had lately headed a rebel-
lious army against the king, and others might have conceived so
high an opinion of Joab, as not easily to be brought to serve under
any other general. Any of these things might very well retard
Amasa's recruits, and yet he might he loath to make such a re-
port to the king, for fear that it might diminish his authority,
and make him appear not so well qualified for the office wherein
he had placed him, — Patrick's Commentary.
Li It was an ancient custom among the Grecians, to take the
person, to whom they had any address to make, by the chin, or
beard: it was the custom of the ancient Greeks, in their prayers,
to touch the chin, says Pliny, (b. 11. c. 45.) and even to this
day, the Turks, in their salutations, do very frequently take one
another by the beard, (See Tkevenofs Travels, c. 22.) The
Arabians have a great regard to the beard: the wives kiss their
husbands, and the children their fathers beard, when they come
to salute them; and, when two friends meet together, their cus-
tom is, in the course of their compliments, to interchange kisses
in this manner, (See Darvicuz on, the Customs of the Arabs, c.
7.) as the like custom is still preserved among the eastern people,
the Indians, who take one another by the chin, when they would
give ;tn hearty salute, and say, bobha, that is, father, or bit, bro-
ther, as the author of the voyage to the East Indies relates. — See
Peter de Vallcs's Travels.
c So insolent was Joab become, upon the presumption that
David durst not punish him, that as he ventured upon this
bloody fact, so he imagined, that though the sight of Amasa's
dead body might stop the march of those that came by it, yet
upon its being given out that he was again become their general,
their love for him was such, that they would not scruple to follow
hi in. — Pat rich's Com military.
d It seems not unlikely, that this woman was a governess in
this city ; for though that office was most commonly occupied by
men, yet there want not instances of women, as in the case of
Deborah, (Judg. iv. 4.) and queen Athaliah, (2 Kings xi.) who
have been employed in the administration of civil affairs. If
she was invested with any such authority, she was the properest
person to desire a parley with the general; and reason good she
had to desire it, because she knew the present temper and fear
of the citizens and soldiers, namely, that considering the im-
minent danger they were in, they were generally desirous of
peace, and restrained from it only by Sheba's power and authority.
— Poole's Annotations.
OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 1030. 2 SAM. xix— ! KINGS viii.
besiegers from oft" the walls, and desired to speak with
their general. When Joab was come within hearing,
the woman addressed herself to him in a very handsome
manner, and told him, " that e by a long prescription of
time, it had always been a custom, founded l on the law
of God, whenever the Hebrews came before any city, to
offer peace in the first place, even though the inhabitants
were of another nation ; much more then ought this to
have been done to a people, that were all of the same
blood, and the greatest part of them loyal subjects to
the king." To which Joab replied, " that he had no ill
design against the people of the city, only as they har-
boured a rebel and a traitor, whom he demanded of
them :" whereupon the woman persuaded the inhabit-
ants to cut oft' Sheba's head, and throw it over the wall,
which when they had done, Joab raised the siege, and
withdrew with his army to Jerusalem ; where his services,
upon this occasion, were thought to be such that the
king found himself obliged to restore him to his post of
captain-general.
Not long after this, there happened a sore famine in
the land, and the long continuance of it, which was for
three years, made David suspect that it did not proceed
from any common cause, but was inflicted by the im-
mediate hand of God ; and when he consulted the divine
oracle to know the occasion of it, he was given to un-
derstand, that Saul's cruelty to the Gibeonites, in slaying
so many, contrary to the treaty then depending between
him and them, was the cause of it. Hereupon David
sent to the Gibeonites, to know / what satisfaction they
desired ; and when he was told, that they expected seven
of Saul's posterity to be delivered to them, he complied
with their demand, and sent two sons of Rizpah, Sauls
concubine, and s five of Merab, his eldest daughter, but
1 Deut. xx. 10.
e In the beginning of this woman's speech to Joab, there is
something that seems both abrupt and obscure. ' They were
wont to speak in old time, saying, They should surely ask counsel
at Abel, and so they ended the matter,' (2 Sam. xx. IS.) according
to this translation, the sense of the words is, " This city, which
thou art about to destroy, is no mean and contemptible one, but
so honourable and considerable for its wisdom, and the wise
people in it, that when any difference did arise among any of
the neighbouring places, they used proverbially to say, We will
ask the opinion and advice of the men of Abel about it, and we
will stand to their arbitration; and so all parties were satisfied,
and disputes ended." So that her words, according to this sense,
are an high commendation of the city of Abel, for its being a
place time out of mind, very eminent for the wisdom and pru-
dence of its inhabitants. But there is another translation in the
margin of our Bibles, which seems to be more natural, and makes
the woman speak in this manner. " When the people saw thee
lay siege to the city, they said, Surely lie will ask, if we will
have peace ; for the law prescribes, that he should offer peace to
strangers, much more then to Israelitish cities; and if he would
once do this, we should soon bring things to an amicable agree-
ment; for we are peaceable people, and faithful to our prince."
So that, according to this interpretation, the woman both mo-
destly reproved Joab for the neglect of his duty, and artfully
engaged him in the performance of it. — Patrick's Commentary,
and Poole's Annotations.
f This may seem strange, unless we suppose, as Josephus
does, that when David consulted God, he told him, not only for
what crime it was that he sent this punishment, but that he
should take such a revenge for it as the Gibeonites should de-
sire : and there was this farther reason for humouring the Gibe-
onites herein, because they had been modest under their suffer-
ings, and never made any complaint to David of the injuries
that had been done them. — Patrick's Commentary.
g Michal is put in the text indeed, (2 Sam. xxi. 8.) but not by
3s
50G THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. II 1981'. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix-1 KINGS via.
[Book V.
spared Mcphibosheth, the son of Jonathan for the love
which he had for his father when alive. These seven
the Gibeonites took, and hung upon gibbets ; and there
they intended them to hang, a until God should send rain
upon the earth, for the want of this occasioned the fa-
mine. But Rizpah, being informed of this, had a tent
made of sackcloth pitched near the place, for her to live
in, that so, by the help of her servants, she might * keep
watch day and night, to fright away the birds and beasts
from doing any hurt to the dead bodies. It was not
long, however, before God sent plentiful showers of rain,
so that Rizpah had the liberty to take down the bodies.
And, when David was informed of this her pious care,
he was moved thereby to take up the bones of Saul, and
Jonathan his son, who, for five and thirty years before,
had been buried under a tree at Jabesh-Gilead, and
together with these seven sufferers of the same family,
gave them an honourable interment in the tomb of Kish,
the father of Saul, at Zelah, in the country of Benjamin.
David, in the beginning of his reign, had so humbled
the Philistines, that they were not able to bring any
great numbers into the field ; but still, as long as they
had men among them of a gigantic stature, c and such
as were fit to be their champions, they did not cease to
disturb the peace of Israel, insomuch that David, in the
latter end of his reign, had four engagements with them.
In the first of which, himself had like to have been slain
by one of these monstrous large men, had not Abishai
come timely in to his aid, and killed the Philistine ; upon
which occasion, it was unanimously agreed in the army,
mistake, as some will have it; for though Michal was not the
wife of Adriel, but Merab ; yet those children which Merab had
by Adriel, Michal brought up; and the Jews observe, upon this
occasion, that whoever brings up a pupil in his house, is in Scrip-
ture said to have begotten him. Nor is it in Scripture only,
that this form of expression takes place, but in heathen authors
likewise. For Agamemnon and Menelaus are called sons of
Atreus, because Plisthenes, who was their father, being dead, he
took care to bring them up. — Howell's History, in the notes;
and Patrick's Connnentary.
a It was a positive law to the Israelites, (Deut. xxi. 22, 23.)
that If any man was hanged, he should be buried before night;
but the Gibeonites being not of that nation, thought themselves
not obliged by that law. They are remarked indeed to have been
a remnant of the Amorites, (2 Sam. xxi. 2.) and among them,
as some have imagined, it was a barbarous custom in those days,
as it certainly prevailed in after ages, to hang up men, in order
to appease the anger of the gods in time of famine.' Patrick's
and Calmet's Commentaries.
b It is an obvious remark from hence, that crosses and gibbets
whereon malefactors were executed, did not stand high from the
ground, since the dead bodies of such were in danger of being
torn by carnivorous creatures; and what we may farther observe
if, that it was an ancient custom for the relations of such as
were thus executed, to watch their dead bodies. Thus Homer
(Iliad, 23.) mentions Venus, as taking care of Hector's body;
and the story of the Ephesian matron every one can tell. — CaU
met's Commentary.
c This is not a solitary instance. Taverner informs us,
that the eldest ten of the emperor of Java, who reigned in 1648,
had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot. And
Maupertius, in his seventeenth letter says, that he met with two
families near Berlin, where sedigitism was equally transmitted
on both sides of father and mother. I once saw a young girl, in
the county of Londonderry in Ireland, who had six fingers on
each hand, and six toes on each foot, but her stature had nothing
gigantic in it. The daughters of Caius Horatius, of patrician
dignity, were called scdigil<e, because they had six fingers on
each hand. Volcatius a poet, was called sediyilus for the same
reason. — See Pliny's Natural History, b. xi. c. 43; Dr A.
Clarke.— Ed.
that the king should never more go into the battle, lest
a d life so precious should be lost.
In the other three engagements, nothing remarkable
happened, but the death of four of these huge men, by
the hands of some of David's chief officers ; except we
may mention here another valiant act, e which might
probably be done at this time.
The Philistines' army lay in the valley of Rephaim,
between David's camp and Bethlehem, where they had
likewise a garrison. But notwithstanding this, upon
David's intimating a desire to have some of the water of
Bethlehem, three of his chief captains broke through the
enemies' camp, and having drawn some water out of the
well, brought it to David ; but he, understanding at
what price it had been purchased, even at the hazard
of all their lives, would not drink it, but offered it to
the Lord.
About two years before David's death, whatever might
be the occasion of it, so it was, that / he . was desirous
to know the number of his people, and accordingly gave
his chief officers orders to go through the whole king-
dom, and bring him an account of all the people. Joab
endeavoured to remonstrate against it, in a manner more
modest than was customary with him ; but the king's
orders were positive ; and therefore Joab, with other
officers to assist him, beginning on the east side of Jor-
d The expression is very beautiful, and significant in the text,
' Thou shalt no more go out with us to battle, that thou quench
not the light of Israel,' (2 Sam. xxi. 17.) For good kings are
in Scripture justly called the light of the people, (1 Kings xi. 36.
and Ps. exxxii. 17.) because the beauty and glory, the conduct
and direction, the comfort, and safety, and welfare of a people,
depend upon them, and are derived from them. — Poole's Anno-
tations.
e It is commonly observed, by the Jewish commentators, that
though David expressed a desire for some of the water of Beth-
lehem, because it was the place of his nativity, and the water
not improbably \ery excellent in its kind, yet he did not do this
with any intent, that any should venture their lives to fetch him
it. In this action, however, they have remarked three wonder-
ful things, namely, That three men could break through the
whole host of the Philistines ; and when they had so done, durst
stay to draw water out of the well, and then carry it away with
an high hand, through the same host to David. But they might
have added a fourth remark, namely, That they attempted this
at the gate of Bethlehem, where a garrison of the Philistines
kept a strong guard. — Patrick's Commentary.
f The words in the text are, ' And again the anger of the
Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against
them to say, Go number Israel and Judah, (2 Sam. xxi v. 1.)
But in the original there is no nominative case at all. We find
it however supplied in 1 Chron. xxi. 1. where it is said, that
' Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number
Israel.' But then, by the word Satan, there is no necessity why
we should understand the devil properly so called, because any
evil minister, or counsellor, that advised David to number the
people, will answer the signification of the word as well. And
that there was some such counsellor, who prompted David to
this action, seems to be implied in these words of Joab. ' Now
the Lord thy God add unto the people, how many soever they
be, an hundred fold, and that the eyes of my lord the king may
see it; but why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?'
(2 Sam. xxiv. 3.) Whereby it seems plain, that the matter had
been debated in the king's council before, and that, though Joab
was one who opposed it, David was more influenced by the per-
suasion of some other. — Le Clerc's Commentary. — Dr Boothroyd
translates this passage as Mows, " And the anger of Jehovah
was again kindled against Israel, because an adversary stood up
against Israel, and moved David against them to say, Go number
Israel and Judah." This translation represents the meaning of
the original as compared with the parallel place, 1 Chron. xxi. 1.
and gets rid of the difficulty involved in the received text.— Ed.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
507
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dan, came round by the north parts of Canaan, and
returned to Jerusalem, at the end of nine months and
twenty days, with an estimate, that in Israel there were
eight hundred thousand men fit to bear arms, and a five
hundred thousand in Judah ; but of the men that be-
longed to the tribes of Levi and Benjamin, there was
no list given in.
David had no sooner received the account, but his
heart misgave him, that he had done wrong; and it was
not long, before the prophet Gad was sent to bring his sin
to remembrance, and to offer him the choice of three pun-
ishments, b famine, pestilence, or war, which he liked best.
Where every punishment was so destructive, it was hard
to tell which to prefer ; but David at last made choice of
the pestilence ; which accordingly was sent, and, in c a
very short time, destroyed no less than seventy thousand
men. The plague began in the extreme parts of the
kingdom, but every moment made advances nearer and
nearer to Jerusalem ; which when the king and inhabit-
ants of the city heard, they clothed themselves in sack-
cloth, and, with all humility, cried unto God for mercy.
A little before the offering up of the evening sacrifice,
a If we compare this account with what we meet with in 1
Chron. xxi. 5. we shall find a great difference; for there the
men of Israel are said to be three hundred thousand more than
they are here, and, on the other hand, the men of Judah are said
to be thirty thousand less. But as for the former difference it is
but supposing, that in this account recorded in Samuel, the
standing legions, which amounted in all to two hundred and
eighty-eight thousand, that is, twenty-four thousand with their
officers, upon guard every month, are not here mentioned, though
they be in Chronicles: and as to the latter difference, it is but
adding twenty-four thousand legionary soldiers to the tribe of
Judah, and the difficulty is removed. Though some are apt to
think, that in this case, there is no need of this supposition, be-
cause it is a common thing in Scripture to mention a round sum,
cither of men or years, though upon a strict computation, there
may be some wanting. — Patrick's Commentary.
b There is another difference in this account, and what we
meet with in the book of Chronicles. There the famine is said
to be for three years only, but here it is said to be for seven.
The Septuagint indeed make it no more than three; and for this
reason some have imagined, that the seven is an error crept into
the text, especially considering that three years of famine agree
better with three days' pestilence, and three months' flight before
an enemy. But there is 'no reason to suppose any error in the
text; it is but saying, that in Chronicles, the author speaks of
those years of famine which were to come for David's sin only,
but in Samuel, of those three years of famine likewise, which
were sent for Saul's sin, (2 Sam. xxi.) Now, within one year
alter the famine that was sent for Saul's sin, was David's sin in
numbering the people; the intermediate year then was either
the sabbatical year, wherein the people were not allowed to sow
nor reap, or a year of such excessive drought, that the crop came
to little or nothing. Upon either of these accounts we may
properly enough say, that there were four years of famine before,
and three more being now added to them, make up the seven
that are here mentioned. — Poole's Annotations.
c The words in the text are: 'So the Lord sent a pestilence
'ipon Israel; from the morning, even to the time appointed.'
The time appointed was the space of three days; and therefore
some are of opinion, that the plague lasted so long: but then
others urge, that this does not agree with what follows, namely,
that ' God repented him of the evil, and commanded the angel,
who smote the people, to stay his hand. They therefore conclude,
that as the word Moed properly signifies an assemlly, the "time
Moed" must he, when the people met together at the time of the
cveningsacrifice,that is, about the ninth hour of the day ; and con-
sequently, that the plague continued from the morning to this time,
which is about nine hours, or the eighth part of three days; God,
in his mercy, having been pleased to mitigate the rigour of his
judgment, upon the sincere repentance of his people. — Patrick's
Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
or before the time of evening prayer, there appeared an
angel over Jerusalem brandishing a flaming sword in his
hand, as if he were going to destroy it ; whereupon
David implored God's mercy for the people, what ven-
geance soever might light upon him, who was chiefly
guilty : but as he was expecting some heavy stroke, the
angel sent Gad to him, with orders to go immediately,
and build an altar in the thrashing-floor d of Araunah
the Jebusite, which accordingly he did, and having pur-
chased the place, and some oxen for sacrifice, ' for e
fifty shekels of silver, he offered burnt-offerings and
peace-offerings, whereof the Lord declared his accept-
ance by fire from heaven ; and so the plague ceased.
It is not improbable, that God at this time revealed to
David the exact frame and fashion of the temple ; that
from the acceptableness of his sacrifices, he perceived
that this thrashing-floor was the place which God had
designed for the situation of his temple ; that therefore
he not only purchased that, but the whole top of the
mount of Moriah likewise, at the price of 2 ' six hundred
shekels of gold,' for the ground-plot of this temple ; and
that all the remainder of his time was employed in pro-
viding whatever was necessary for the purpose of build-
ing it; in settling the number of the officers, and the
manner of the daily service of those that were to attend
it ; next to this, in settling his civil affairs, and appoint-
ing 3 judges, magistrates, and all inferior officers, whose
business it was to punish offenders, and to keep all others
to their duty, then in settling his 4 military matters, parti-
cularly the twelve captains, for every month, with their
legions, to attend on the king in their turns ; then s the
princes of the twelve tribes, and afterwards 6 several other
officers.
But while he was contriving these things in the best
manner, he seems to have been taken, either with a dead
palsy, or some other distemper, which chilled his blood,
so that he could not be warm in his bed. His physicians
therefore advised, that to supply him with / a natural
1 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. 2 1 Chron. xxi. 25. 3 Ibid. xxvi. 29 to the end.
• Ibid, xxvii. 1—15. 5 Ibid. B Ibid. xxix. 1—20.
d 2 Sam. xxiv. 18. A thrashing-floor among the ancient
Jews, was only, as it is to this day in the east, a round level plot
of ground in the open air, where the corn was trodden out by
oxen. Thus Gideon's floor (Judges vi. 37.) appears to have
been in the open air; as was likewise this of Araunah the Jebu-
site ; else it would not have been a proper place for erecting an
altar and offering sacrifice. In Hosea xiii. 3. we read ot the
chaff which is driven by the whirlwind from the floor. — Shaw's
Travels, p. 139, second edition. — Ed.
e There is again another difference in the account which we
have in the Chronicles, and this in Samuel. In the Chronicles
it is said, that David bought the thrashing-floor, &c, for six
hundred shekels of gold; but in Samuel it is said, for fifty shekels
of silver. Now a shekel of gold being of twelve times more
value than a shekel of silver, it makes the disparity very large ;
and therefore, to account for this, it is generally supposed, that
in the whole David made two purchases: first he bought the
thrashing-floor and oxen, for which he gave fifty shekels of
silver; but that afterwards all the ground about it, out of which
the courts of the temple were made, cost him six hundred
shekels of gold. — Patrick's Commentary.
f It is the observation of Galen, in his fifth book " Of the
power of simple medicines," that nothing so effectually procures
heat and health as the application of any thing young to the
stomach : the advice of David's physicians therefore was not
amiss; but it had been sinful advice, and such as he could not
lnve followed, had not this young woman, whom he took to bed
to him, been his concuhinary wife. In those days such wives
were allowable ; and that she served him in this capacity, is very
508 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book V.
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heat, a virgin should lie in the same bed with him ; for
which purpose Abishag of Shuneni, in the tribe of Issa-
char, was brought to him, and made concubinary wife,
though he had never any carnal knowledge of her.
Adoni.jah, who, next after Absalom, was David's eldest
son, takingthe advantage of his father's age and infirmity,
began to entertain thoughts of making himself king, pre-
suming that his father either could not, or would not
obstruct him. He was indeed a prince of exquisite
beauty, admired by all, and so indulged by his father,
that he a never contradicted him in any thing ; but as he
had a great deal of Absalom in his complexion, he failed
not to imitate him in his equipage, attendants, and splen-
did manner of life.
By some means, however, he had gained Joab the
general of the forces, and Abiathnr the high priest, over
she had said ; so that David immediately declared Solo-
mon his successor, and thereupon commanded Zadok the
priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the captain of
his guards, with the other officers and ministers of state,
to mount him don the mule that he himself used to ride,
and having in this manner « conducted him to Gihon, there
to let Zadok and Nathan anoint him, and then, by sound
of trumpet, to proclaim him king of Israel. All this was
accordingly done, and the people of Jerusalem, by their
loud shouts and acclamations of joy, gave testimony of
their approbation of David's choice.
But how thunderstruck was Adonijah and his compa-
ny, when, being just upon the point of proclaiming him
king, they heard the sound of the trumpet, and the shouts
of the people attending Solomon ! As soon as they
were informed of the occasion, each man thought proper
to his party; and by their advice it was, that he invited | to shift for himself; but, as for Adonijah, he /fled to the
all the king's sons, except Solomon, and all the great j altar for sanctuary, till, having obtained of Solomon a
men of Judah, except Nathan the prophet, Benaiah
captain of the guards, and the officers of the army, (who,
promise of life, upon condition that he would never
attempt any thing for the future against his government,
with Zadok the other high priest, were not for him,) to a j he was conducted into the king's presence, where he
sumptuous entertainment at En-rogel, where the purpose
of the meeting was, as soon as the company had well
feasted, to proclaim him king in the room of his father.
Nathan, who knew b God's designation, David's choice,
and the people's interest in the matter, having got intelli-
gence of this, went and acquainted Bathsheba with it,
and advised her by all means to go and press the king c
to declare Solomon his successor, since things were now
come to that extremity, that without her doing this, all
their lives must certainly be in danger. Bathsheba pur-
sued her instructions; went to the king, and, having
acquainted him with Adonijah's conspiracy, desired him
to name her son his successor, according to the oath that
he had formerly made to her. While she was thus talk-
ing with the king, Nathan came in, and confirmed what
manifest from the account we have of her in Scripture, for
whereas it is said, that ' the king knew her not,' this certainly
implies, that he might have had carnal knowledge of her without
sin or scandal; whereas it is said, that 'she lay in his bosom,'
this phrase everywhere in Scripture denotes what was the sole
privilege of a wife, concubine, (Gen. xvi. 5. Dent. xiii. C.) Nor
can we imagine why Adonijah's desiring her in marriage had
been so heinous a crime in Solomon's account, had she not been
the king's wife, anil he, by this means, had designed to revive
his pretensions to the crown Poole's Annotations.
a It is remarked of David, that one of his great faults, and
what had led him into many premunires, was his extraordinary
indulgence to his children, of whom he was so fond, that he
seems to have overlooked their errors, and not reproved them,
though he was bound to do it, by a plain law, (Lev. xix. 17.)
and could not but know, that the high priest Eli was severely
punished for this neglect. — Poole's Annotations.
b In 2 Sam.vii. 12. God had promised David by Nathan, that
OS «<>iild set upon his throne a son that should proceed from him,
which plainly signified, that none of his sons already burn were
to In' the person; and in 1 Chron. xxii. 9, &c, he declared by
the same prophet, that after his father, Solomon should reign,
and build him an house. This Adonijah could not but know;
and therefore his setting himself against the decree of heaven
made his sin the greater. — Patrick's Commentary.
c This power of naming a successor was here assumed by
David, and tor some time afterwards, as it appears by the story
of his grandson Rehoboam, was continued in the Jewish state.
It was a privilege that, in after ages, was granted to several good
princes; but among the Israelites it did not prevail long, because
the constitution of other nations, to which the Israelites affected
to conform themselves, \\as different. — Poole's Annotations, and
Patrick's Commentary.
d All the rest of David's sons were wont to ride upon mules,
when they went abroad, (2 Sam. xiii. 29,) but David had a mule
peculiar to himself, and the mounting Solomon upon it was a
sufficient declaration in his favour. For, as it was capital, ac-
cording to Maimonides, to ride upon the king's mule, or sit on
his throne, or handle his sceptre without his order; so, on the
contrary, to have the honour to ride upon the king's horse, by
his appointment, was accounted the highest dignity among the
Persians, as appears by the story of Mordecai, in the book of
Esther. — Calmet's Commentary.
e Some commentators are of opinion, that Gihon was the same
with the fountain of Siloam ; but this is a gross mistake, since
Gihon was manifestly to the west, and Siloam to the east of Jeru-
salem. There is little or no certainty likewise in the notions of
some rabbins, who pretend that, in ancient times, kings were
always anointed by the side of a fountain, by way of good omen,
or that the perpetual running of the stream might be an emblem
of the perpetuity of the king's reign. In the history of Saul,
who was their first king, and of David, who was three times
anointed, we find no mention made of any spring or fountain.
As these fountains, however, were places of great concourse, for
there were not many in Jerusalem, the chief reason, we may
imagine, why David ordered Solomon to be anointed at one of
these, was, that the thing might be done as publicly, and in the
presence of as many spectators as possible. — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
f There is no precept in the law to make the altar a privileged
place: but, in conformity to the customs of other nations, the
Jews seem to have done it. Other nations had certainly this
custom, as appears from that passage in Virgil, " In such words
lie prayed, grasping the altars." (Eneid 6.) And it seems not
unlikely, that as the people, when they came into the land of
Canaan, had cities appointed by Gad, whereunto the manslayer
might tly; so while they continued in the wilderness, the camp
dt the Levites might serve for the same purpose. Nay, from the
words in Exodus xxi. 14, where God orders the wilful murderer
' to be taken from his altar, that he may die,' it seems unques-
tionably true, that, even in the land of Canaan, the altar continued
a sanctuary for those who fled unto it: but then the question is,
to what altar Adonijah tied ? Whether to the brazen one which
Moses made, and which was now at Gibeon, or that which his
father had lately erected in the thrashing-floor of Araunah ? It
is expressly said, (I Kings i. 50,) that 'he caught hold of the
horns of the altar;' but we can hardly suppose, say some, that the
altar in the thrashing-floor, which was run up in such haste with
stones and turf, was made in that figure. But what should hin-
der us from supposing, that as David had built a place for the
reception of the ark of the covenant on mount Sion, he had like-
« isr built there an altar for the oblation of the daily sacrifices, in
the exact form of the original one that was then at Gibeon, and
that it was to this altar, and neither of the others, that Adonijah
betook himself for refuge. — Le Clerc's, Patrick's, and Calmet's
i 'omntentaries.
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509
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix
made his obeisance to Solomon, in token of thankfulness
for his preservation, and in acknowledgment of his su-
periority.
This inauguration of Solomon, however, was a little
too hasty and private ; and therefore David, intending a
more public coronation, ordered all the princes of Israel
and Judah, and all the officers of his court and army to
attend him : when, having recovered a little from his late
indisposition, he stood up, and a in a solemn oration,
put them in mind of God's goodness to him, and of his
designation of Solomon to succeed in his throne, and to
build him a temple. And therefore since he had reserved
that honour for his son, he earnestly recommended to
him a strict fidelity and piety towards God, and a zealous
discharge of this important trust. To this purpose he
gave him the plan which he had made for the execution of
this undertaking, and an account of the treasures which
he had provided for the perfecting of this great work.
He gave him also a list of the priests and Levites, and
the courses in which they were to wait in the temple : he
gave him likewise the schemes, and regulations of the
officers of his court, of the civil officers, of the treasures,
and of the superintendents of the revenues, belonging to
the crown ; and, having made a large oblation of money
out of his own private estate for the building of the
temple, by his example and persuasion, he prevailed
with the princes and the people to contribute according
to their abilities, to so good and pious a work. And
when he found himself successful herein, for what they
gave upon this occasion amounted to an immense sum,
he concluded all with a solemn thanksgiving to God,
and a prayer, that he would enable Solomon to perfect
what he had thus designed and recommended.
a The speech which Josephus puts in David's mouth upon this
occasion, is to this purpose :■ — " I am now to inform you, my
countrymen and brethren, that I have had it a long time in my
thoughts to erect a temple to the Lord, and have treasured up a
mighty mass of gold and silver toward the charge of the under-
taking; hut it has pleased God, in his providence, by the mouth
of his prophet Nathan, to put a stop to my design, upon this con-
sideration, that he would not have the foundation of his holy
house laid by hands that have been dipped in blood, which mine
inevitably have been, though in the blood of your enemies, in the
wars I have been forced to engage in, for the necessary defence
ol your liberties: but, at the same time that he forbade me to do
this, the prophet informed me, that God had transmitted the care
ot the whole work to my son and successor. Our father Jacob,
as you all well know, had twelve sons, and yet Judah was chosen
by common consent to be ruler of all the rest. You know like-
wise, that I myself, though there were then six brothers of us, was
advanced by God to the government, and that none of the rest
thought themselves injured: wherefore I must now, in like man-
ner, require it of you, and of all your sons, that you submit
cheerfully and dutifully to my son Solomon, and that ye do it
without any grumbling or civil dissension, because it is from
God s immediate command and commission that he derives his
authority. Put the case now, that God should have set a stranger
over you, how great a folly and madness would it have been for
you to murmur at it ? But how thankful ought you to be, for
the choice of so near a relation, when you yourselves are partak-
ers of the honour that is done to your brother. There is nothing
I so much long for, as to see God's gracious promises take a
speedy effect, and the whole people put into a lasting possession
ol the blessings they are to enjoy under the reign of Solomon.
And all this, my dear son, (says he, turning to Solomon,) will be
made good, and every thing succeed to your wish, so long as you
govern according to piety and justice, with a respect to your
duty both towards God and man, upholding a reverence to the
laws, and treading in the steps of your forefathers: but whenever
you pass these bounds, there is notliing but ruin anil misery t<>
be expected.— Jewish Antiquities, b. 7. c. 11.
1 KINGS viii.
The next day there was a very great and solemn sac-
rifice, and much rejoicing among the people. David,
upon this occasion, had Solomon anointed a second
time, in a more public manner ; ordered that Zadok
should be the high priest in the room of Abiathar, who
had publicly espoused the interest of Adonijah, and, to
put an end to all disputes after his decease, had him for
the future seated on a royal throne, and made sole re-
gent of the kingdom during his lifetime.
Not long after this, David, perceiving his end ap-
proaching, called for Solomon, 4 and gave him his last
exhortation, which was, to be constant in his duty to
God, * 'to walk in his ways, and c keep his statutes, and
his commandments, his judgments, and his testimonies,
that he might prosper in all that he did ;' and then de-
scending to some particular affairs relating to the state,
he charged him to do justice to Joab, for the many mur-
ders he had been guilty of; to show kindness to the
sons of Barzillai, for the support their father had given
him in his distress ; and though he himself had not put
Shimei to death for his past offences, yet whenever he
should prove guilty again, not to spare him/' Having
1 1 Kings ii. 3 — 11.
b Josephus introduces David as taking his last leave of his son
Solomon in these words: "And now, son, I am going to my
fathers, and you, that I leave behind me, are in due time to
follow, which is no more than paying a common debt to nature.
There is no returning from the grave, and, when we are once
gone, we have done with this world for ever. Wherefore, while
I am yet among the living, and before it be too late, pray let me
remind you of the same things once more. Govern your subjects
according to justice. Worship that God from whom you have
received your dignity as well as your being, as you are bound to
do. Observe his precepts, and keep his laws, as they have been
handed down to you from Moses, and have a care that you never
forsake them, either for fear, flattery, or any passion or interest
whatsoever; for otherwise you can never hope for the blessings
of God's favour and providence. But if you behave yourself with
reverence and submission towards God, as you ought to do, and as
I wish you may do, your kingdom will be established to yourself,
and the succession of it continued to your family from generation
to generation. — Jetnisk Antiquities, b. 7. c. 12.
c Under these four words are comprehended all the laws of
Moses. Statutes were such constitutions as had their foundation,
not in reason, but in the will and pleasure of God ; such was the
prohibition of sowing seeds of different kinds together, &c. Com-
mandments were moral duties, that were founded in the nature
of things, and carried their reason along with them : as, not to
steal, not to murder, &c. Judgments were the laws belonging
to civil government, and the dealings of one man with another;
such are all those laws that are recorded in the 21st and following
chapters of Exodus; and testimonies were such laws as preservi d
the remembrance of some great events, and testified to men the
loving-kindness of the Lord ; such as the sabbath, the passovi r,
and the rest of the feasts. — Patrick's Commentary.
d 1 Kings ii. 9. David is here represented in our English
version, as finishing his life with giving a command to Solomon
to kill Shimei. The behaviour thus imputed to the king and
prophet, should be examined very carefully, as to the ground it.
stands upon. When the passage is duly considered, it will ap-
pear highly probable that an injury has been done to this illus-
trious character. It is not uncommon in the Hebrew language
to omit the negative in a second part of a sentence, and to con-
sider it as repeated, when it has been once expressed, and is fol-
lowed by the connecting particle. The necessity of so very con-
siderable an alteration, as inserting the particle not, may be here
confirmed by some other instances. Thus Ps. 1. 5. ix. 18.
xxxviii. 1. If then there are in fact many such instances, the
question is, whether the negative, here expressed in the former
part of David's command, may not be understood as to be re-
peated in the latter part; and if this may be, a strong reason
will be added why it should be so interpreted. The passage
will run thus: ' Behold, thou hast with thee Shimei, who cursed
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thus ended his exhortation to his son, in a short time after
he died, in the seventy-first year of his age, after he had
reigned forty years in all, a seven in Hebron, and three
and thirty in Jerusalem ; and * was buried in that part
of the city which himself had taken from the Jebusites,
and called after his own name.
me, but I swore to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee
to death by the sword. Now therefore hold him not guiltless,
for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do
unto him, but bring not down his hoary head to the grave with
blood.' Now, if the language itself will admit this construction,
the sense thus given to the sentence derives a very strong sup-
port from the context. For, how did Solomon understand this
charge ? Did he kill Shimei in consequence of it ? Certainly
he did not. For, after lie had commanded Joab to be slain, in
obedience to his father, he sends for Shimei, and knowing that
Shimei ought to be well watched, confines him to a particular
spot in Jerusalem for the remainder of his life. 1 Kings ii. 36 —
42. — Kennicott's Remarks, p. 131. — Ed.
a In 2 Sam. v. 5. it is said, that he reigned seven years and
six months in Hebron, which, together with the three and thirty
in Jerusalem, will make his reign to be in all forty years and a
half. To solve this difficulty, as some of the Jews esteem it,
they have devised a conceit, that, to punish David for his adul-
tery with Bathsheba, God sent upon him a leprosy which con-
tinued for six months, in all which time he was looked upon as
dead, and not accounted to reign. But they never considered,
that these months were part of his reign in Hebron, before he
committed that adultery in Jerusalem. The true account of the
matter therefore is, that it is very usual in Scripture computa-
tion, to omit smaller sums, and only reckon by a round number;
for which reason these six months, which were but part of a
year, are not taken notice of in the account both of Kings, 1
Kings ii. 11. and Chronicles, 1 Chron. xxix. 26, 27. — Patrick's
Commentary; and Poole's Annotations.
6 After this account which Josephus gives us of David's seve-
ral speeches before his death, he informs us, " That he was buried
at Jerusalem with a solemnity of royal pomp and magnificence,
that was glorious to the highest degree, and that, over and above
the splendour of the ceremony, his son Solomon deposited in his
monument an inestimable treasure, from which, when Antiochus,
surnamed the Pious, besieged Jerusalem, Hircanus, the high
priest, took the sum of three thousand talents, and therewith
bribed them to raise the siege ; and, that, many years after this,
Herod, surnamed the Great, took another immense sum from
thence, which enabled him to rebuild the temple." Among
several nations indeed it was customary to bury, along with
princes and other great men, various things of value, that they
took delight in while they lived. The Egyptians were used to
this; and about their mummies are frequently found very pre-
cious ornaments. When Alexander the Great had Cyrus's tomb
opened, there was found therein a bed of gold, a very rich table
drinking cups, and many fine vestments; but notwithstanding
all this, several learned men look upon this whole account of
Josephus as a mere fable. For to what purpose, say they, did
Solomon bury all this treasure under ground, when he had so
much occasion for it, when he was forced to borrow money of the
king of Tyre, and burden his people with so many heavy taxes
to supply his excessive expenses ? How came it, that the other
ItingB i,| Judah, who were frequently put to the necessity of strip-
ping the temple of its precious furniture to satisfy their greedy
enemies, never once adventured to lay hold on this treasure?
How came it to escape the hands of the Chaldeans, and other
nations, that so often had the plundering of Jerusalem ? Or why
should Hircanus violate this deposit, which his predecessors
esteemed more sacred than the holy vessels of the Lord ? These
are questions that cannot easily be resolved; and what is a far-
ther confutation of this story, in that very book, from whence
Josephus is BUpposed to have taken it, it is never once said, that
Hircanus broke open David's tomb. The words of that spurious
author are that " Hircanus, while he was besieged by Antiochus,
opened a treasure chamber which belonged to some of David's
descendants, and that, after he had taken a large sum of money
out of it, he still left a great deal in it, and sealed it up agaiu."
But this is a quite different thing, and has no manner of relation
to the sepulchre of David. As to the real sepulchre of David,
When David was dead, Solomon succeeded to the
throne ; and to secure his possession, took an occasion,
in a short time, to rid himself of his adversaries. Ado-
nijah, in his father's lifetime, had made bold pretensions,
but was defeated, and pardoned by Solomon upon con-
dition that he would become a good subject, and give
him no farther molestation ; but, by the persuasion of Joab
and Abiathar, he was now put upon another bold project,
which was to desire Abishag, the late king's concubine in
his old age, in marriage, hoping thereby to strengthen
his interest, and to be able to play an after game for the
crown. To this purpose he prevailed with Bathsheba,
the queen-mother, to speak to the king : but the king
was so far from granting his request, that he was shocked
at the boldness of it, and suspecting some treasonable
design at the bottom, sent immediately and had him put
to death. In the next place he banished Abiathar ; and,
having inhibited him from the exercises of his priestly
office, confined him to his country house, and put Zadok
in his place ; and when he heard that Joab was fled into
the tabernacle for sanctuary, upon his refusing to come
out at his command, c he ordered Benaiah, whom he
it is certain, that it was always held in great veneration among
the Jews. It was in being in St Peter's time, for so he tells
the people, (Acts ii. 29.) Dio (in Adriani vita) informs us,
that part of it was fallen down in the emperor Adrian's reign.
St Jerome relates, that he himself used frequently to go and pray
at it; and modern travellers, as we took notice before, describe
some magnificent monuments hewed in a rock, not far from
Jerusalem, which are doubtless veiy ancient; but they themselves
do not agree that they were the sepulchres of the kings of Judah.
It is somewhat unaccountable, however, that the place of this
prince's sepulchre, which both the Chaldeans and the Romans,
when they took Jerusalem, thought proper to spare, should now
be so entirely lost that we cannot find the least remains of it.
But though providence has so ordered it, that the place of David's
sepulchre should not at present be known, yet there does not
want an eternal monument of his most excellent genius. The
hook of Psalms, which for the most part was composed by him,
does publish the glory of its author, more than the most pompous
elogies ; and the author of Ecclesiasticus (chap, xlvii. 2, &c.) has
consecrated this epitaph to his memory, which is more durable
than either marble or brass: — ' As the fat is taken away from the
peace-offering, so was David chosen out of the people of Israel.
He played with lions as with kids, and with bears as with lambs ;
he slew a giant when he was young, and took away reproach
from the people ; for he called upon the most high Lord, and
he gave strength to his right hand to slay this mighty warrior,
and to set up the horn of his people. So the people honoured him
with ten thousands, and praised him in blessings of the Lord,
for he destroyed the enemies on every side, and brought to nought
the Philistines, his adversaries: — In all his works he praised
the Holy One most high, and blessed the Lord with words of
glory: — He set singers also before the altar, that by their voices
they might, make sweet melody, and daily sing praises in their
songs. He beautified their feasts, and set their solemn times in
perfect order: — The Lord took away his sins, and exalted his
horn for ever; he gave him a covenant of kings, and a throne of
glory in Israel.' — Calmct's Commentary, and his Dictionary
under the word David,
c It was formerly very customary among princes, to employ
their officers, or greatest confidants, in such like executions.
Among the Uomans, the soldiers were always the persons who
carried to prison, to torture, or to execution, such as were found
guilty of any ofl'ence; and this Tertullian makes an argument to
dissuade Christians from engaging in the wars, lest thereby they
should be obliged to imprison, punish, or execute malefactors. In
Dan. ii. 21. we read that Nebuchadnezzar 'sent Arioch, who
was chief commander of his troops, to destroy the wise men of
Babylon,' because they could not interpret his dream; and there-
fore we need less wonder, that we find Solomon employing Be-
naiah, the captain of his guard, on the like office. But whether
Sect. V.] FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &o.
A. M. v&8l. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 103G. 2 SAM. xix-1 KINGS viii.
511
afterwards made general in his room, to go in, and kill
him there. But when Shimei, who deserved the like fate
for his gross abuse of the late king, was brought before
him, he only a confined him to Jerusalem as a prisoner
at large, but with a strict injunction not to move out of
the place, upon pain of death. Upon this condition he
thankfully accepted of his life, and, for some time, kept
within the bounds of his confinement ; but having some
slaves, who had run away, and had entered themselves
into * the service of Achish, king of Gath, he imprudently
went to reclaim them, and, upon his return, by Solomon's
order was put to death.
Having thus secured his kingdom at home, by con-
fining, or cutting off the heads of the faction that was
against him, Solomon bethought himself of strengthening
his interest abroad by foreign alliances ; and to this
purpose, married the daughter of c Pharaoh king of
Egypt, and appointed her at first an apartment in his
own palace ; but after he had finished the temple, built
her a very stately palace adjoining to his own, which
she badly deserved ; for, in process of time, this woman,
lie did not first drag Joab from the altar before he slew him, for
fear of polluting the holy place with blood, or whether Solomon
did not rather think fit to have him killed even at the altar, and
let all men see, that no place, though ever so sacred, should
secure any man from the hand of justice, commentators have not
agreed. — Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
a Shimei, as we read, was a very powerful man. When he
came to meet king David, and to beg pardon for his offence, he
had a thousand of his own tribe to accompany him, (2 Sam. xix.
17.) and therefore Solomon might think proper to confine him to
the city of Jerusalem, that being removed from the place where
his family and interest lay, to one where he was but a stranger,
and sufficiently odious for his former ill treatment of the late
king, he might be incapable of raising any tumults or seditions ;
and that, being in this public theatre, all his words and actions
might be narrowly observed, which, considering his busy and
wicked temper, might give Solomon a fair advantage against him;
and as the manner of some is, the very prohibition itself might
probably inflame his desire to transgress it.' — Poole's Annot.
b Achish had been so great a friend to David, that, though
David had conquered the Philistines, he suffered him still to re-
tain the title of a king, and only to be tributary to him ; so that
there was a friendly correspondence between this city and Jerusa-
lem, insomuch that Shimei might easily hear, by somebody or
other that had been at Gath, that his servants were there. These
servants, in all probability, were such as he had purchased with
a considerable sum of money, and their running away was not
only a loss but a great affront likewise to their master; and there-
fore partly out of rage, and partly through covetousness, he under-
took this dangerous journey, presuming that a thing which might
be done secretly and speedily, would never come to Solomon's
ears; that in the space of three years' time, Solomon might have
forgot his injunction; or that if he remembered it he would not
be so rigid as to put it in execution; especially since he went out
of Jerusalem, not through wantonness, or any contempt of autho-
rity, but merely to recover what he had lost, which, he might
think, wasa thing excusable. — Poole's Annotations, and Patrick's
Commentary.
c It may seem somewhat strange, that in all the history of the
Jews, from the time of Moses to this of Solomon, no mention
should be made of the kings of Egypt, as if they had no concern in
the affairs of Canaan, but were wholly diverted some other way:
but for this, their own historians account, when they tell us, that,
during this space of time, the Egyptian kings did nothing worth
recording. {Biodor. Biblioth. b. 1. p. 29.) All these kings of
^'gypt were called Pharaohs ; but Pharaoh was not a proper name,
but a title of dignity only, which imported the same as sultan or
emperor. They had, besides this, other names; and Clemens
Alexandrinus, in a passage taken from Alexander Polyhistor, tells
us, that the proper name of this Egyptian king, whose daughter
Solomon married, was Vaphres. — Le Clerc's and Calmet's Cum-
meutariis.
among others, contributed not a little to the perversion
of Solomon.
He began his reign however with a good sense of reli-
gion upon his mind ; for which end, taking the chief of
the officers and nobility along with him, he went to
Gibeon, where the original tabernacle and altar, that
were made in the wilderness, were kept, and there offered
a thousand sacrifices, in acknowledgment of God's kind-
ness to him, in placing him upon his father's throne. In
the night following, when God appeared to him in a
vision, and promised to grant whatever he should ask,
he begged him to give him d a wise and understanding
heart, and e considering his youth and inexperience, such
qualities as were necessary for the due government of
the people committed to his charge ; which petition
God was so well pleased with, that, over and above
the wisdom which he asked, he promised to give him
such affluence of riches and honour, as no king in his
days should be able to equalize. When Solomon awaked
out of sleep, he perceived that this was a dream sent
from God ; and therefore returning to Jerusalem, he pre-
sented himself before the ark of the covenant, which was
placed in a tabernacle, that David had made for it, and
there he offered sacrifices in abundance.
Solomon, as we said, had obtained of God a promise
of the gift of wisdom ; and it was not long before he had
an opportunity of showing it, to the great satisfaction of
all his subjects. / Two women, who both lived together
d Hereupon some Jewish annotators have observed that though
Solomon, in his great modesty, might request of God no more
than the gift of government, or, as he expresses it, ' an under-
standing heart to judge the people, and to discern between good
and evil,' (1 Kings iii. 9.) yet God, out of his abundant grace, gave
him a general knowledge of all other things, as the following history
informs us; and that, whereas other men gather their knowledge
from study and observation, Solomon had his by an immediate
inspiration from God ; insomuch that • he, who went to bed as
ignorant as other men, awaked in the morning like an angel of
God.' But though his knowledge of things was, in a great mea-
sure infused, yet he did not therefore neglect his study. ' He
gave his heart to seek, and search out by wisdom, concerning all
things under the sun ;' in which search, as he himself testifies,
(Eccles. i. 13.) he took no small pains: so that his gifts extra-
ordinary did not supersede the use of other means in the
acquisition of knowledge ; but by application and experience he
perfected what he had so advantageously received from the hands
of God. — Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
e The words of Solomon himself are, ' I am but a little child ;
I know not how to go out, or how to come in, (1 Kings iii. 7.)
From whence some have inferred, that he was not above twelve
years old when he spake them, but this must be a gross mis-
computation. His father, when he left the kingdom to him, calls
him 'a wise man,' (livings ii. 6,9.) The foregoing story
shows, that he had already sat some time on the throne ; and
therefore he calls himself a child, not in respect of his years, for
most agree that he was twenty when he began to reign, but his
skill in governing the people, and managing the affairs of state.
This was a modest expression in Solomon ; but it is an observa-
tion of Aristotle, in his book of politics, that young men are
unfit for government, because their consultive power is imper-
fect; which though it may not be a general rule, was delivered
by Solomon himself, in his more mature years, for a maxim : for
' Wo to the land,' says he, (Eccles. x. 16.) ' whose king is a
child. ' Patrick's Commentary.
/"These two women are said in the text to bo harlots; but the
Hebrew word, as we took notice in the case of Rahab, may
equally signify a hostess, or one who kept a house of public
entertainment ; and that it is so to be taken here, we have these
reasons to presume: — That as all public prostitution was severely
forbidden by the law, Deut. xxiii. 17. women of this infamou*
character durst not have presented themselves l»foie so just and
512
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iii one house, were brought to bed about the same time, j places his dominions extended beyond the Euphrates,
and one had overlaid her child. She who found the dead
child by her, accused the other of having stolen away
her living child, and left her dead one in its place : the
other pertinaciously denied the thing ; so that the ques-
tion was, ' To whom did this living child belong?' And
to determine this, Solomon commanded some that stood
by, to take and a cut the child in two, and to give to
ea ch woman a half ; whereupon the real mother begs that
the child may be saved, even though it be given to her
ad versary ; but the pretended one is clearly for dividing
it ; which gave Solomon a full conviction, that she who
expressed a tenderness and compassion for the child,
was its true mother, and accordingly ordered it to be
given her.
The wisdom of the king soon shed a happy influence
over all his dominions, and every subject was, in some
degree or other, made partaker of it. All Judah and
Israel lived in the greatest security; and all the neigh-
bouring nations either paid him tribute, or were his
friends and allies. He ruled over all the countries and
kingdoms * from the Euphrates to the Nile, and in many
so wise a king; that women of this lewd behaviour seldom do
become mothers of children, and when they chance to have any,
are not so solicitous tor their preservation, but rather rejoice when
they have got rid of them. There is no reason to suppose then,
that these women were common harlots ; and yet it is generally
thought that they were both unmarried persons and guilty of for-
nication, because no mention is made of their husbands, whose
office it was, if they had any, to contest the matter for their
wives. — Poole's Annotations,' and Cahnet's Commentary.
a Solomon knew at once that the only sign that would discover
the true mother, would be her aiieetion, and compassion, and ten-
deraess for her child; and therefore, in order to distinguish between
tiie two, his business was to make trial of this; and if we suppose,
tiiat when he commanded the child to be divided, he spake with
a sedate countenance, and seeming earnestness, as the true
mother's petition to the king makes it apparent that he did, then
we may suppose farther, not only the two women, but all the
people present with horror and admiration, expecting the execu-
tion, of the thing; which, when it ended in so just a decision,
quite contrary to what they looked for, raised joy in every
breast, and gave a more advantageous commendation to the judge:
and yet Abarbinel, the Jewish commentator, thinks, that all this
was no great proof of Solomon's extraordinary wisdom, nor could
it beget that fear or reverence which the text says (1 Kings iii.
2S.) it procured to his person. His opinion therefore is, that
Solomon made a discovery of the truth antecedent to this experi-
ment; that by observing the countenance, the manner of speech,
and all the motions of the women, he discerned the secret of their
heart, and penetrated to the bottom of the business; and that his
commanding the child to be divided afterwards, was only to
notify to the company, what he before had discovered. How-
ever this be, it may not be improper, upon this occasion, to men-
tion an instance or two out of profane history, of a singular
address, though much inferior to this, in discovering such
secrets as seemed to be past finding out. To this purpose,
Suetonius, in his life of Claudian, chap. 15., tells us, how that
< mperor discovered a woman to be the mother of a young man,
whom she would not own for her son, by commanding her to be
married to him; fur the horror of committing incest obliged her
to declare the truth; and in like manner, Diodorus Siculus
relates, how Ariopharnes, kingof the Thracians, being appointed
to arbitrate between three men, who all pretended to be sons of
the king oi the Cimmerians, and claimed the succession, found
out the true son and heir, by ordering them to shoot each man
his arrow into the dead king's body ; which one of them refusing
to do, was deemed the true claimant.— Poole's Annotations:
Patrick s and Cahnet's Commentaries.
b The words in the text are, ' And Solomon reigned over all
kingdoms, from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and
unto the border of Egypt,' (I Kings iv. 21.) for the bounds of
his kingdom were to the east, the Euphrates, which is here,
He had a great number of horses and chariots of war.
Instances of his wisdom were as numerous as the sands
of the sea, and in learning and knowledge he c surpassed
all the orientals, and the Egyptians. In a word, he was
the wisest of mankind, and his reputation was spread
through all nations. He composed, or collected, d three
thousand proverbs, and a e thousand and five poems.
and in other places of Scripture, called the river, without any
addition: to the west, the country of the Philistines, which bor-
dered upon the Mediterranean sea; and to the south, Egypt.
So that Solomon had tributary to him the kingdoms of Syria,
Damascus, Moah, and Amnion, which lay between Euphrates
and the Mediterranean ; as indeed, without such a number of
tributary kingdoms, we cannot conceive how the country of Is-
rael could have furnished such a constant supply of provisions
and other things necessary for the support of this prince's gran-
deur.— Patrick's and Cahnet's Commentaries.
c There were three nations in the east of Canaan, that were
very famous for their wisdom and erudition; the Chaldeans, be-
yond the Euphrates; the Persians, beyond the Tigris; and the
Arabians on the nearer side of the Euphrates ; a little towards
the south. But whether the PerMans and Chaldeans were re-
markable for their learning in Solomon's day, is much doubted
among commentators. The book of Job sufficiently shows, that
the Arabians, for of that nation was Job and his friends, were
famous for their learning in ancient times ; and, as to the Chal-
deans and other oriental people, since the sons of Noah took up
their habitation about Babylon, and the neighbouring countries,
it is reasonable to suppose, that where mankind, first began to
settle themselves into regular societies, there arts and sciences
first began to appear. The Egyptians however pretend to a
precedency in this, and several other accomplishments. They
say, that the Chaldeans received the principles of philosophy at
first from a colony that came from Egypt, as Diodorus indeed
makes mention of such a colony, conducted by Belus. But the
Chaldeans, on the other hand, maintain, that from them it was,
that the Egyptians received their first instructions, and accord-
ing to some, that Abraham was the person who first communi-
cated to the Chaldeans the knowledge of astronomy, and other
sciences. However this be, Solomon received from God a per-
fect knowledge of all that useful and solid learning, for which
the eastern people, and the Egyptians, were justly famed ; for, as
it follows, he was a great moral philosopher, a great natural
philosopher, and an excellent poet. — Patrick's and Cahnet's
Com menta ries.
d Josephus, who loved to magnify every thing that concerned
Solomon, instead of three thousand proverbs, tells us, that Solo-
mon composed three thousand books of proverbs. The greater
certainly is our loss, if the thing were credible, because all the
proverbs of Solomon, that we have now, are comprised in the
book that goes under that name, and in his Ecclesiastes ; and yet
some learned critics are of opinion, that the nine first chapters of
the book of Proverbs were not of Solomon's composure, and that
the number of proverbs which properly belong to him, is no more
than six hundred and fifty. — Grotius's Annotations; and Cahnet's
Commentary.
c These, one would think, were poems enough for a person
that had so much other business as king Solomon had ; but Jose-
phus, who is never content, makes him the author of so many
volumes of poetical compositions ; and the Septuagint indeed, as
well as other interpreters, make the number of them to be no
less than five thousand songs or odes. But of all this number,
we have none remaining but the Song of Songs, as it is called,
except the hundred and twenty-sixth psalm, which in its Hebrew
title, is ascribed to Solomon, may be supposed to be one of these.
The Psalter of Solomon, which contains eighteen psalms, a work
that was found in Greek in the library of Augsburg, and has been
translated into Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda, is supposed by
the learned to be none of Solomon's, but of some Hellenistical
Jew, much conversant in reading the sacred authors, and who
had composed them in imitation of the Psalms of David, whose
style he closely pursued, and had inserted several passages of the
prophets, especially of Isaiah and Ezekiel, which he accommo-
dated well enough to his purpose. However this be, these
eighteen psalms were not unknown to the ancients; for they
Srct. V.]
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He knew the virtue of all plants and trees, from the
highest to the lowest ; and in his books treated of the
nature of a all kinds of beasts, and birds, and reptiles,
and fishes ; insomuch, that ° there was a concourse of
strangers from all countries to hear his wisdom, and am-
bassadors from the most remote princes that had heard
of his fame.
As soon as Hiram, king of Tyre, understood that So-
lomon was c made king of Israel, rf he sent ambassadors
were formerly in the famous Alexandrian manuscript, which is
with us, as may be seen by the index which is still to be found
at the end of the New Testament, though the psalms themselves
have either been torn out of the book, or lost by some accident.
he Clerc's and C'a/met's Commentary, and his Dictionary, under
the word Solomon.
a The several hooks which treated of the nature and virtue of
animals, as well as plants, are supposed to have been lost in the
Babylonish captivity; but Eusebius, as he is quoted by Anasta-
sius, informs us, that king Hezekiah, seeing the abuse which his
subjects made of Solomon's works, by placing too much confi-
dence in the remedies which he prescribed, and the natural
secrets which he discovered, thought proper to suppress them all.
Notwithstanding this, since his time, many bocks, concerning
the secrets of magic, medicine, and enchantments, have appeared
under the name of this prince ; and several pieces have been
quoted, such as ' The instructions of Solomon to his son Reho-
boam ; The testament of Solomon ; The books of the throne of
Solomon; The books of magic, composed by the demons, under
the name of Solomon ; The Clavicula, or key of Solomon ; The
ring of Solomon ; The contradiction of Solomon,' &c, which were
most of them very wicked and pernicious tracts, to which the
authors prefixed tins great name, to give them more credit and
sanction. It is somewhat strange, however, that Josephus should
inform us, that Solomon composed books of enchantments, and
several manners of exorcisms, or of driving away devils, so that
they could return no more ; and that he should further assure us,
that himself had seen experiments of it by one Eleazar, a Jew,
who, in the presence of Vespasian, his sons, and the officers of
his army, cured several that were possessed. — Jewish Antiq. b.
8. c. 2. Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Solomon.
b It is a conceit of one of the Jewish interpreters, that all the
kings of the neighbouring countries went to hear the wisdom of
Solomon, and that, upon their return, their subjects came to
them to hear what he had said ; but as we hear of none but the
queen of Sheba who came to visit Solomon, we cannot but think,
that if any other crowned heads resorted to him, the history
would have recorded them as well as her. The words denote no
more, than that the kings of all the neighbouring nations sent
their ambassadors, and people of every land, that had heard of
Solomon's fame, came to see him; for "no spectacle" says an
ingenious author, " is more lovely and grateful, than a wise and
good king; all men flock to see him, and to partake of his pious
and prudent mind. They that see him are loath to leave him,
and they that hear of him are as desirous to see him as children
are to find their unknown father." — Dion Prusceus Oral, de
Regno,
c The fourth chapter of the first book of Kings is chiefly taken
lip in recording the prime ministers and officers of Solomon's
court, the compass and extent of ius kingdom, the happiness and
security of his subjects, the pomp and magnificence of his living,
and the excellence of his own wisdom and erudition.
d This Hiram was doubtless the son of that other Iliram, who
sent David timber and artificers wherewith to build his palace:
for if, according to Josephus, the temple was built in the twelfth
year of Hiram's reign, and the fourth of Solomon's, this Hiram
could not be the same with him who sent David men and mate-
rials; because that Hiram was upou the throne when David took
Jerusalem, which happened to be three and thirty years, before
Solomon began his reign. There are two letters which passed
between this Hiram and king Solomon, recorded by Josephus,
and for the anthenticness of which he appeals both to the Jewish
and Tyrian records, that are to this effect:
" King Solomon to King Hiram, greeting.
" Be it known unto thee, O King, that my father David had
it a long time in his mind and purpose, to erect a temple to the
KS, A.M. 4375. A. C. 103G. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
to him to condole his father's death, and congratulate
him upon his accession to the throne ; and, in a short
time after, Solomon, in return sent an embassy to him,
desiring him to supply him with wood and workmen, and
to lend him his assistance in building the temple of the
Lord. Hiram very readily complied with his desire,
and sent him word, that he would order cedar trees, and
fir trees to be cut down upon mount Libanus ; that his
people should put them on floats, and bring them by
sea to the harbour of Joppa; and that from thence So-
lomon (who contracted to give Hiram such a quantity of
wheat, and wine, and oil, &c, every year, for the main-
tenance of his household and workmen) might send and
fetch them to Jerusalem.
All things being thus agreed on, the preparations for
the building of the temple went on apace. Seventy
thousand proselytes, who were the remains of the ancient
Canaanites, Solomon employed in carrying burdens upon
their shoulders ; fourscore thousand in cutting stone out
of the quarries ; and three thousand six hundred in over-
seeing the work. Of his own subjects, he sent thirty
thousand to work with the king of Tyre's men in the
quarries of Libanus : and, to finish the inner part of the
temple, as well as frame some of its choicest vessels,
Hiram e sent him a most skilful artist of his own name,
Lord ; but being perpetually in war in his days, and under a ne-
cessity of clearing his hands of his enemies, and making them
all his tributaries, before he could attend this great and holy
work, he hath left it to me, in a time of peace, both to begin and
finish it, according to the direction, as well as prediction, of the
Almighty. Blessed be his great name for the present tranquil-
lity of my dominions ! And, by his gracious assistance, I shall
now dedicate the best improvements of this liberty and leisure to
his honour and worship. Wherefore I make it my request, that
you will let some of your people go along with some servants of
mine to mount Libanus, to assist them in cutting down materials
towards this building; for the Siclonians understand it much bet-
ter than we do ; and as for the workmen's reward or wages, what-
ever you think reasonable shall be punctually paid them."
" King Hiram to King Solomon.
" Nothing could have been more welcome to me, than to un-
derstand, that the government of your blessed father is by God's
providence, devolved into the hands of so excellent, so wise, and
so virtuous a successor. His holy name be praised for it! That
which you write for shall be done with all care and good will: for
I will give orders to cut down and export such quantities of the
fairest cedars, and cypress trees as you shall have occasion for.
My people shall bring them to the sea side for you, and from
thence ship them away to what port you please, when they may
lie ready for your own men to transport them to Jerusalem. It
would be a great obligation, after all this, to allow us such a pro-
vision of corn in exchange, as may stand with your convenience ;
for that is the commodity that we islanders want most." (Jewish
Antiquities, b. 8. c. 2. But notwithstanding all his appeal to
the Tyrian records, some have suspected Josephus, as to the
genuineness of these two letters, especially where they find him
bringing in Hiram, speaking of Tyre, as if it had been an island ;
whereas it is plain that the old Tyre, which was then standing,
and must be the place here spoken of, was situate on the conti-
nent.— he Clerc's Commentary.
e Informer times, among the Hebrews, there had been very
excellent workmen, who knew how to cut and engrave precious
stones, to cast and work among metals, &c. ; but this was before
they came into the land of Canaan, in the time of Moses, when
Bezaleel and Aholiab were excellent in many different arts,
which were necessary for the work of the temple: but, as tie
Scripture acquaints us, that they had their skill by inspiration
from God, it does not appear that they had any successors: and,
after the people had got possession of Canaan, they neglected all
manufactures, and applied themselves wholly to agriculture and
feeding of cattle; so that, in the time of Solomon, there was no
3t
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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whose mother was of the tribe of Dan, but his father a
Tynan ; and, what was prodigious, his abilities extend-
ed to all kind of works, whether in gold, silver, brass,
or iron, whether in linen, tapestry, or embroidery; and
by his direction all the curious furniture of the temple
was both designed and finished.
And now all things being in readiness, the foundation
of the temple was laid in the a fourth year of king Solo-
mon's reign, in the year of the creation 2992, 480 years
after the Israelites' escape from the Egyptian bondage ;
and, in the * space of seven years and a half was com-
pleted with such dexterity, that neither c hammer, nor axe,
nor any tool of iron was heard in it, all the while that it
professed artists that could undertake the work of the temple; but
in Tyre and Sidon there were many, for both in his Iliad and his
Odyssey, Homer gives the people of these two places this charac-
ter, whom, upon every turn, he calls lloXulaiSuksvs, excellent
artists in several kinds of works. — Patrick's Commentary.
a If it be asked, why Solomon did not begin the building of the
temple sooner, and even in the first year of his reign, since his
father had left him a plan, and all things necessary for the under-
taking ? Abarbinel's answer is this, — That Solomon would not
make use of what his father had prepared, but was resolved to
build this temple all at his proper cost and charge. He there-
fore put into the treasure of the Lord's house all that David had
ili dilated to the work; and, to gather together as much gold and
silver as was necessary to defray so vast an expense, four years
can be counted no unreasonable time. Nay, even suppose that
he had made use of the treasure which his father had amassed,
yet, if the materials that his father had provided lay at a consi-
derable distance, and were left rude and unfashioned, it would
cost all this time to form them into the exact symmetry, wherein
the Scripture represents them before they were brought together,
especially considering, that the very stones which made the
foundation, were very probably vast blocks of marble, or porphyry.
{I Kings v. 17;) and all polished in the most exquisite manner.
Patrick's Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
b The temple itself was indeed but a small edifice, but the
many courts and offices that were about it, made the whole a vast
pile, and the exquisiteness of the art, and the fewness of the ar-
tists that could be employed about it, made a longer time requi-
site. It must be owned, however, that, considering all things,
Solomon made an extraordinary despatch : for, if the building of
Diana's temple at Ephesus employed all Asia for the space of 200
years, and no less than 360,000 men, for twenty years together,
were taken up in erecting one pyramid, as Pliny, (b. 36. c. 12.)
affirms, no reasonable man can wonder, that this temple was
seven years and a half in building. — Poole's Annotations, and
Calmet's Commentary.
c The Jewish doctors have entertained a very odd conceit,
upon the occasion of this passage in the sacred history, wherein
the temple is said to have been built without noise. They tell
us, that the Drcmon Asmodeus drove Solomon once from his
throne, and reigned in his place, while that prince was forced to
travel over the several kingdoms and provinces of the world ; but
1hat at his return to Jerusalem, he defeated Asmodeus, and hav-
fag chained him so that he could do no hurt, he compelled him
to teach him the art of cutting stones for the temple, without
making any noise, which was done, as they say, not with any
tool or instrument, but by the help of a worm, called samir,
which cuts and polishes stone with a marvellous facility. But
the foundation of all this fiction, (as Bochart. Hieroz. p. 2. b. 6.
c. 11.) has observed, is laid in somebody's mistaking the sense of
Che «>>h1 samir, which signifies a very hard stone, called smiris,
that is n! use In cut and polish other stones, and which Solomon's
workmen might possibly have recourse to upon this occasion. But
the true reason why no noise was heard in the building of the temple
was, that the stones, and other materials, were hewn and squared,
and fitted at a distance; so that when they were brought to the
place where the temple was to stand, there was nothing to do
hut. to join them together. And this might be done, not only
for the ease and convenience of the carriage, but for the magni-
ficence of the work, and the commendation of the workmen's
skill and ingenuity. — Poole's Annotations; and Calmet's Dic-
tionary, under the word Solomon.
Such admirable care and contrivance
preparing and adjusting the materials,
was buildin
was used, i
before they were brought together.
CHAP. II.
-Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
There is hardly any one passage in Scripture more
difficult to give a satisfactory account of, than this rela-
tion of Saul's cruelty to the Gibeonites ; because we have
little or no intimation, either when, or where, or why
their slaughter was committed.
The Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but
the remains of the Amorites, who, upon Joshua's taking
possession of the promised land, imposed upon him and
his counsellors, and cunningly drew the Israelites into a
league with them, which was instantly confirmed by an
oath ; and because it was so confirmed, for above three
hundred years, was reputed inviolable. But though the
Gibeonites, by their craft and fallacy, saved their lives,
yet it was upon this condition, that they shoidd * ' become
hewers of wood and drawers of water, for the service of
the tabernacle.' Now while the tabernacle was at Nob,
which was a city of the priests, and where some of the
Gibeonites, their attendants, may be supposed to reside,
the sacred history informs us, that Saul 2 in revenge to
the priests, whom he took to be favourers of David's
cause, destroyed the city, and massacred all the inhabi-
tants thereof ; so that several of the Gibeonites must have
been slain upon this occasion, and for shedding of their
blood this famine was sent. This is the account which
some learned men give us of the matter : but they never
considered, 3 that as Saul's sin in murdering the priests
was greater than in slaying the Gibeonites, God should
have inflicted this severe punishment upon the land for
the greater sin, rather than the less. It has been said
indeed, that for the slaughter of the priests, God had
avenged himself on Saul before, by suffering him and his
sons to be slain in battle by the Philistines, but that the
slaughter of the Gibeonites was not as yet expiated ;
yet it will be difficult to conceive, why there should be
two different and distinct punishments for one and the
same sin, committed at the self-same time.
When, or by whom, or on what occasion, the taberna-
cle and altar of burnt-offerings, which were made by
Moses in the wilderness, were removed from Nob to
Gibeon we cannot tell, because the Scripture is silent:
but it is the conjecture of 4 some learned men, that it was
not long after the murder of the priests at Nob ; and that
Saul, very probably, to regain the favour of the people,
which he found he had lost by being so barbarous to
men of their sacred character, quarrelled with the Gib-
eonites, and banished them out of their city, in order to
make room for the tabernacle of the Lord.
The Scripture indeed acquaints us, that 5 ' he sought
to slay the Gibeonites in his zeal to the children of
Israel and Judah ;' where the expression seems to denote
1 Josh. ix. 23. 2 1 Sam. xxii. 17.
3 Le Clerc's Commentary on 2 Sam. xxi. 1,
4 Calmet's Commentary on 1 Sam. xxii. IS).
* 2 Sara. xxi. 2.
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1 that the children of Israel envied these miserable
people, insomuch that Saul thought he could not do a
more popular act, than to cut them oft!
But by the children of Israel, 2 some rather under-
stand the tribe of Benjamin in particular, namely, that
very tribe from whence king Saul descended : and
thence they infer, that his zeal or earnest desire to pro-
mote his own tribe to riches and grandeur, made him
seek occasion to fall foul upon the Gibeonites, in
order that the three cities which they possessed in the
territories of Benjamin might fall into his hands,
and so be divided among his own family. That he
either had, or intended to advance and enrich his own
tribe, is manifest from these words of his : 3 ' Hear now,
ye Benjamites, will the son of Jesse give every one of
you fields and vineyards, and make you all captains of
thousands, and captains of hundreds ?' that is, will he
do for you, as I have, and mean to do ? Now, if we
look into the actions of Saul, we do not find, that he
made any purchase of the possessions of another tribe,
or that he took from his enemies any considerable terri-
tories, in order to accommodate his Benjamites ; and
are therefore left to suppose, that the fields and vine-
yards wherewith he enriched them, he unjustly acquired
by destroying and dispossessing the Gibeonites. It is
but supposing, then, that some of the chief of these Gib-
eonites had, in some instance or other, offended Saul,
for which he was minded to destroy the whole race ; or,
that he had cast a greedy eye upon their lands and pos-
sessions, which, incase of their excision, would be for-
feited to the crown, and so might be given to his own
family ; and then he had allegations plausible enough
against them, pretending, " That it was not fur the
honour or interest of God's people, to nourish any of
that viperous brood in their bosoms ; and that however
Joshua and the princes, who then bore sway, had by
their fraud been drawn into an oath to preserve them,
yet, in truth, that oath was contrary to God's com-
mand, which required them * ' to smite them, and utterly
destroy them ;' and therefore, ought not, as he thought,
to be observed."
Thus Saul might set up for a restorer of the divine
laws to their ancient rigour, and strictness of execution,
and a supplier of the default of Joshua, and the princes
of Israel, in sparing the Gibeonites, even though they
were comprised in the general ordinance of extirpation ;
and, under this character, he might easily draw in his
own subjects to abet and assist his cruelty against a poor
people, for whom they had never any good liking.
After the king's fashion is the known maxim ; and there-
fore we may easily suppose, that a wicked and hard-
hearted people, who had assisted Saul in the persecu-
tion of David ; had adhered to his son Absalom in his
rebellion against his own father ; and who at the beck
of so many impious princes, left the true worship of God,
and fell into idolatry ; would not be backward to assist
Saul in putting in execution any of his contrivances
against the poor Gibeonites. And if so, we cannot but
admire the wisdom and justice of God, in making the
punishment national, when the whole nation, for aught
1 Le Clerc in locum.
* The History of the Life of King David, vol. 3.
1 Saui. xxii. 7. * Dent. \ii. 2.
we know, was confederate with Said in murdering the
Gibeonites, or guilty at least in not hindering it ; when
the next generation was involved in the guilt, by not
repairing the injury as much as possible, or not expres-
sing the horror and detestation of it by some public act ;
when an act of discipline might, at this time, be neces-
sary, to preserve the remaining Gibeonites from insults,
to beget in the Israelites a proper respect for them, to
prevent the like murders for the future, and the like
breaches of national compacts.
Nay, supposing the people, who lived in that time
when the famine prevailed, to be never so innocent of
the blood of the Gibeonites ; yet it cannot be denied,
but that God, Avho is the author and giver of life, has an
absolute right over the lives of all, and can recall that
gift whenever he pleases. And therefore, if, in the
case before us, he made a demand, as certainly he had a
right to do it, of so many lives at such a time, and in
such a manner, as might best answer the ends of discip-
line ; then, that which was just in other views, and with-
out any such special reason, could not become unjust,
by having that additional reason to recommend it. In
a word, if the thing was righteous, considered merely
as an act of dominion in God, it could not but be both
righteous and kind, by being made, at the same time,
an act of discipline for the punishment of sin and
perfidy, .and the promotion of justice and godliness
among men.
We must all allow, that God, as he is a most just and
righteous being, can never require, that the innocent
should die for the guilty ; and therefore we have reason
to believe, that, when Saul for reasons above mentioned,
was so outrageous against the Gibeonites, his sons and
grandsons, might be instruments of his cruelty, and very
probably bear some part in the military execution. For
it frequently so happens, that whatever a king commands,
be it never so abominable, is generally approved and
executed by his family; and therefore, Svhen we arc
told from the mouth of God, that the plague, sent upon
the people, was ' for Saul and his bloody house, because
he a slew the Gibeonites,' it seems to be evident, that it
was for their guilt as well as his ; nor can we imagine,
that this guilt of theirs could be any thing less than that
of being the executioners in this slaughter. It is plain,
that they were his captains of thousands and captains of
hundreds ; and it is as plain, that as such, they must be
the instruments of his cruelty ; for if they were not, why-
are they called bloody? They refused indeed 7to
slaughter the priests at his command ; but there is no
reason to believe, that they were so scrupulous in regard
to the Gibeonites ; and if they were not, Is there less
equity in God's destroying their sons for the sins of
their fathers which they adopted and shared in, than
there was in his destroying Jehoram, the son of Ahab,
for that vineyard which the father had cruelly and un-
justly acquired, and the son as unjustly detained?
Without calling then to our assistance God's groat
prerogative, s ' of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation,' we may
!' Scripture Vindicated, part 2.
6 The History 01 the Life of King David, veil. ?>.
7 1 Sam. xxii. 1?. 8 Exod. xx. ;"».
a The words which we vender he slew, might as properly lie
rendered they slew.
516
THF HISTORY O" THE BIBLE,
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fairly saj , that if these descendants of Saul did either
concur in this murder of the Gibeonites, when doing, or
avow and defend it when done, they became culpable
upon their own, as well as their ancestors' account, and
thereupon justly deserved to be delivered up to the re-
sentment of a people that had suffered so much by their
inhumanity.
Upon this supposition then, for it is by supposition
that we must go in this obscure part of history, that both
the people and the princes of the blood were accessory
or instrumental to Saul's cruelty, the reason why God
delayed their punishment so long is obvious ; even be-
cause his infinite goodness waited for their repentance,
which goodness we badly requite, if we pervert it as an
argument against his providence. For may not God be
gracious and merciful as long as he pleases? Or have
we any right to set bounds to his patience and long-
suffering ? It is but supposing then, that while God
continued in this state of expectance, upon some special
occasion or other, to us unknown, both the people of
Israel and Saul's posterity might discover, that they
were so far from repenting, that they gloried in the mur-
der of the Gibeonites, and this would determine God,
who had hitherto waited for their penitence in vain, to
pour out his indignation, upon them, and exact a severe
punishment both for their cruelty and obstinacy.
Whether the Gibeonites did right or wrong in exact-
ing so severe a retaliation, as that of hanging up seven
of Saul's progeny, for the injury that he and his family
had done them, the sacred history is no ways concerned.
It relates the transaction just as it happened; but to
show us from whence this barbarous custom of hanging
up men to appease the anger of the gods did proceed,
it prefaces the account of the matter with this observa-
tion : — ' ' These Gibeonites were not of the children of
Israel,' for among them they learned no such practice.
1 but a remnant of the Amorites,' who were addicted to
this horrid superstition, of which the Gibeonites, not-
withstanding their abode among people of better senti-
ments, still retained some tincture, and propounded it
to David, as an expedient to make the earth become
fruitful again : 2 ' Let seven of Saul's sons be given unto
us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord.'
The Scripture, you see, speaks in the dialect of these
people ; but from thence we make a wrong conclusion,
if we think that God can be delighted with human sacri-
fices, which so frequently, and so vehemently, we find
him, declaiming against, and professing his utter detes-
tation of. He desires the death or punishment of no
man, except it be in pursuance of the ends of his wise
providence, or when the criminal, by his bad conduct, has
forfeited his life to the government he lives under ; nor
would he have required the execution of any of Saul's
posterity, had it not been to procure the poor distressed
Gibeonites, who were true drudges to their Hebrew mas-
ters, a kinder treatment, and better quarter for the future :
and had it not been to testify his abhorrence of all
oppression and violence ; to show that the cries of the
meanest slave, as well as of the mightiest monarch, enter
the ears of the Most High ; that with him there is no re-
spect of persons, but the rich and the poor to him are
both alike : 3 had it not been to repair the injury done
to his most holy name, in the violation of the compact
which both Joshua and the princes of Israel made with
this people, and confirmed with the solemnity of an
oath ; had it not been by this exemplary punishment, to
give mankind a lesson of instruction concerning the
sacredness of oaths and treaties, and how religiously
they ought to be observed, even towards those that are
in the lowest state and circumstances of life.
Under these considerations only could the death of
Saul's sons be acceptable to God ; and how far David,
in like manner, came to be concerned in it, we shall now
proceed to consider.
Both the Septuagint and vulgar Latin translation make
the demand of the Gibeonites, when David sent to offer
them satisfaction, run in this strain : — * ' The man who
consumed us, and oppressed us unjustly, we ought
utterly to destroy, so as not to leave one of his race
remaining in the coasts of Israel;' and, in this demand,
we may presume that they persisted, until David, partly
by his authority, and partly by kind entreaties, prevailed
with them to be content with seven only. Here then was
a fair opportunity for David, had he been so minded, to
have cut off the whole race of Saul, as it were at one
blow, and to have avoided all the odiiun of the action,
by but barely saying, " That the Gibeonites demanded all,
and his instructions from God were, to grant whatever
they demanded," But instead of that, we find him, be-
fore this happened, making inquiry for such 5 ' as were
left of Saul's family, that he might show kindness to
them for Jonathan's sake ;' interposing his good offices
here with the Gibeonites, to have them abate the keen-
ness of their resentment, and make the slaughter of Saul's
devoted house as moderate as possible ; and, after that
slaughter was over, 6 giving them a public and solemn
interment, with the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son,
in the sepulchre of their ancestors, and himself attending
them in person to the grave.
The death of Saul's posterity, procured by the Gibe-
onites, had it not proceeded from God's positive com-
mand, but been only a plausible pretence for David to
get rid of his rivals in empire, 7 we cannot imagine why
he should slay no more than seven of these descendants,
why he should cut off only collateral branches, and spare
all those who were in a direct line of succession to the
throne ; why he spared Ishbosheth, his competitor for the
kingdom, whom, by Abner'smeans, he might have des-
patched, and according to their desert punished the two
traitors, who had officiously murdered him; and why he
spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, and Micah
his son, and Micah 's four sons, whom in all probability
he lived to see, and in them8 a long generation, all de-
scended from Saul's family, and all related to die crown.
Had this affair of the Gibeonites happened indeed
about the beginning of David's reign over all Israel, soon
after the death of Ishbosheth, and when he had reason
to apprehend, that some other rival might, perchance
spring up in his stead, there might then be some umbrage
to think, that the branches of Saul's family were to be
1 2 Sam.
;? Sam. \\:. <i.
Calmct's Commentary in locum. * 2 Sam. x.\i.
' 2 Sam. ix. 1. « 2 Sam. x.\i 1 2, 13.
' The History of the Life of King David, vol. i-S.
8 Ste 1 Chron. viii. :j3, &c.
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517
cut off for reasons of state, and to make his possession
of the crown more safe : but, since these things came to
pass very near the conclusion of his reign, when, as he
himself acknowledges ' in the very next chapter, God
had not only ' covered him with the shield of his salva-
tion, and so enlarged his steps under him, that his feet
could not slip, but given him likewise the necks of his ene-
mies, and made him the head over many strange nations ,*'
he could have no just conception of danger from any
quarter, and consequently no necessity to establish his
throne by blood.
It could not be then for any private end, that David
delivered these children of Saul into the hands of the
Gibeonites, but purely in obedience to the will of God,
who had both directed, and warranted him to do so. For
we cannot but suppose, as Josephus does, that, when
David consulted the oracle concerning the famine, God
informed him, not only for what crime it was inflicted,
but by what means likewise it was to be removed : and
therefore being let into all this, he was not at liberty to
do what he pleased, but compelled rather to give up the
children as so many victims, notwithstanding his pro-
mise and oath to their father ; because a superior power
interposed, and in so doing, cancelled the prior obli-
gation.
His making a grant of Mephibosheth's estate to a vile
miscreant of a servant, without giving his master a fair
hearing, is another exception that is commonly made to
the justice of king David's proceedings in this period of
time. But how could David have leisure to send for
Mephibosheth from mount Olivet to Jerusalem, and in-
quire into the merits of the cause depending between him
and his servant, when he was in so great a hurry, and
under flight from the arms of his rebel son ? Or how
could he suppose that Ziba could have dared to have
told him so notorious a lie, when it might in a short time
be disproved ? Every circumstance, in short, on Ziba's
side looked well ; but none on the master's. To him
David had been extremely kind in restoring him to the
forfeited estate of his grandfather Saul, and in allowing
him 2 to eat at his own table, as one of the king's sons ;
and now at the general rendezvous of his friends, David
might well have expected, that the person to whom he
had extended so many favours, should not have been so
negligent of his duty, as to absent himself, unless it had
been upon some extraordinary business ; and therefore,
when Ziba acquaints him with the occasion of his absence,
though it was a mere fiction, yet with David it might
liiul a readier credence, because at this time he had rea-
son to mistrust every body, and seeing his own family
disconcerted and broken, might think the crown liable
to fall to any new claimant, that could pretend to the
same right of succession that Mephibosheth might.
On the contrary, every thing appeared bright and
plausible on Ziba's side. He, though but a servant, came
to join the king, and, instead of adhering to his master's
pretended schemes of advancement , had expressed his duty
to his rightful sovereign, in bringing him a considerable
present, enough to engage his good opinion. The story
that he told of his master likewise, though utterly false,
was cunningly contrived, and fitly accommodated to the
nature of the times ; so that, in this situation of affairs,
1 2 Sam. xxii. 36, &c. ' 2 Sam. ix. 1 1.
as wise a man as David might have been induced to be-
lieve the whole to be true, and upon the presumption of
its being so, might have proceeded to pass a judgment
of forfeiture (as in most eastern countries every crime
against the state was always attended with such a for-
feiture) upon Mephibosheth's estate, and to consign the
possession of it to another.
All therefore that David can be blamed for in this
whole transaction, is an error in judgment, even when
he was imposed upon by the plausible tale of a syco-
phant, and had no opportunity of coming at the truth ;
but upon his return to Jerusalem, when Mephibo.-heth
appears before him, and pleads his own cause, we find
this the decision of it. 3 ' Why speakest thou any more
of thy matters ? I have said, Thou and Ziba divide the
land:' which words must not be understood, as if lie
appointed, at that time, an equal division of the estate
between Mephibosheth and his servant, for where should
the justice of such a sentence be ; but rather that he re-
voked the order he had given to Ziba, upon the supposed
forfeiture of his master, and put things now upon the same
establishment they Avere at first. 4 ' I have said,' that is,
' my first grant shall stand, when I decreed that Mephi-
bosheth should be lord of the whole estate, and Ziba
his steward to manage it for him.'
The words of the grant are these : 5 ' Then the king
called Ziba, Saul's servant, and said unto him, I have
given unto thy master's son all that pertained to Saul,
and to all his house. Thou therefore, and thy sons, and
thy servants, shall till the land for him, and thou shalt
bring in the fruits, that thy master's son, may have food
to eat,' that is, may be enabled to maintain himself and
family in plenty; ' but Mephibosheth, thy master's son,
shall eat bread always at my table.' From whence it
seems manifest, that this Ziba had been an old steward
in Saul's family, and had managed his private estate,
which lay at Gibeah of Benjamin. 6 This estate, upon
one account or other, had come into David's possession,
either in right of his wife, upon the death of Saul's son,
or by forfeiture to the crown, upon Ishbosheth's rebel-
lion ; but he, being willing now to do a generous act to
Saul's family, in memory of his friendship to Jonathan,
passed a free grant or dedition of it to his son, and that
he might make a provision for all his dependants at
once, put Ziba into the same place he had enjoyed be-
fore, constituting him a steward of the royal manor of
Glibeah, even as he had been in the life of Saul. So
that David's sentence or determination, 7 ' thou and Ziba
divide the land,' refers us to this original grant, and
consequently implies no more, than that all things should
be in the same situation they were in before, namely,
that Ziba, and his sons, should manage the estate, and
support themselves out of it, as usual, and that the re-
mainder of the profits which accrued from thence, they
should bring to Mephibosheth, for him to dispose of as
3 2 Sam. xix. 29. * Selden de ftaccessionibus, 25.
5 2 Sam. ix. 10, 11. 6 Poole's Annotations in locum.
7 2 Sam. xix. 29, 30.
a The ancient way of tenancy, nor is it yet quite disused, was
that of occupying the land, and giving the proprietor a certain an-
nual proportion of the fruits of it. When the tenant paid one
half of the annual produce, he was called 'colonus partiarius;'
and such, in the judgment of the best critics, was Ziba to Mephi-
bosheth, as he had been before to Saul. — The Histvry of the
Life if Kitirj David, vol. '6,
518
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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" Thou remeniberest likewise what Joab did unto me ;
with what insolence he treated me in the time of the war
against Absalom ; how, contrary to my orders, he slew
him, and afterwards talked to me in a menacing and
he pleased ; and to this sense of the words the following
reply seems to be accommodated, ' yea let him have all,'
namely, to his own use and property, ' since my lord
the king is come again in peace.'
That which leads many into a misconception of David,
as if he left the world in a vindictive and unforgiving
temper, because we find him giving his son some in-
structions concerning two persons who had grossly mis-
behaved towards him, has been nothing else but the want
of distinguishing between the same person, when acting
or advising in a public, and when in a private capacity.
Shimei curses David in the time of his troubles, and
yet David forgives him, and promises he shall not die.
Joab does many valorous and brave acts for the honour
of his king, and the enlargement of his dominions ; but
then he sullies all with his insolent behaviour, and bar-
barous murders. They both had committed crimes
enough to forfeit their lives ; David, however, for reasons
of state, thought it not advisable to seize either of them
for the present, but directed his son, if ever they should
give him a sufficient provocation not to spare them.
" Thou hast Shimei with thee, J and some share perhaps
he may have in thy favour ; but trust him not, he is no
friend to kings, or kingly power. Remember what he
did to me in my distress ; how bitterly, how virulently.
he cursed me to my face : and I make no doubt, but
that he would be the same to thee in the like circum-
stances. I forgave him in my exile, because I looked
upon him as an instrument in God's hands to humble me
for my great offence. I forgave him in my return home,
because he came to me when my heart was open, and
unwilling to damp the joy of my restoration with the
effusion of any blood. I promised him his life ; and let
not that promise be violated in my days : but what I
did is no rule or obligation to thee. Let him not die
however for his offence against me, but rather watch his
conduct, and if he should chance to give thee a fresh
occasion, be sure to lay hold of it, because it is not in
his nature to be a good subject." °
1 Patrick's Commentary on 2 Kings ii. S.
a The way in which this passage here commented upon,
should he understood and translated, has already heen noticed, p.
393, hut lor the satisfaction of the curious and inquiring reader
we here subjoin Dr Kennicott's criticism on the text. He says
" David is here represented in our English version as finishing
his life, with giving a command to Solomon to kill Shimei, and
to kill him on account of that very crime for which, as David
here says, he had sworn to him by the Lord he would not put
him to death. The behaviour thus imputed to the king and
prophet, and which would be justly censurable, if true, should be
examined very carefully as to the ground it stands upon ; and
when the passage is duly considered, I presume it will appear
highly probable, that an injury has been here done to this illustrious
character. The point to which I now beg the reader's attention
is this: that it is not uncommon in the Hebrew language to
omit the negative in a second part of the sentence, and to con-
sider it as repeated when it has been once expressed : and is fol-
lowed by the connecting particle. And thus on (Is. xiii. 22,) the
late learned aunotator says, ' the negative is repeated or referred
to by the conjunction van, as in many other places.' So also
(Is. xxiii. 4.) The necessity of so very considerable an altera-
tion as inserting the particle not, may be here confirmed by
some other instances. (Ps. i. 5.) ' The ungodly shall not stand in
judgment nor (the Hebrew is and, signifying andrwt) siuners in
the congregation of the righteous.' (Ps. ix. 18.) ' The needy
shall not always be forgotten: (and then the negative understood
Its repeated by the conjunction now dropped,) the expectation of
the poor shall not perish forever.' (Ps. xxxviii. 1.) 'O Lord.
imperious manner.
Thou rememberest what he did to
Amasa, whom I intended to have put in his place, and
made the general of all my forces; and what to Abner, who
was then endeavouring to gain over to my party all that
adhered to the house of Saul. The injury done to these
two brave men redounds upon me, since they were both
under my protection, and both murdered, basely murder-
ed, because I had an esteem for them ; and till justice be
done to their murderer, which I, in my lifetime, had not
power to do, 2 ' their innocent blood will not depart
from my house.' Do thou therefore take care to assoil
it ; and whenever he commits any transgression against
thee, let the blood of these two valuable men be charged
to his account, and let him, as he has long deserved,
be put to death.
This is the sense of David's words to his son concern-
ing these two men ; and it is easy to observe, that in
these dying instructions of his, 3he is not to be consi-
dered as a private man, acting upon principles of resent-
ment, but as a king and governor, giving advice to his
son and successor in affairs of state. It was for the
public good, that such offenders, as Shimei and Joab,
should suffer at a proper time, and as prudence should
direct : and therefore, since his promise and oath to one
of them, and the formidable power and interest which the
other had usurped, restrained him, in his lifetime, from
punishing them as they deserved ; and since it would
have been an unjust thing in itself, and a derogation to
the glory of his reign, to suffer such public and crying-
sins to go unpunished, he recommended the considera-
tion of these things to his son, and, 4 like a wise magis-
trate, laid a scheme for the punishment of wickedness,
without regard to any private revenge.
David, as we said, durst not call Joab to an account,
3 1 Kings ii. 31. 3 Scripture Vindicated, part 2. p. 106.
Calmet's and Le Clerc's Commentaries on 1 Kings ii.
rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither (and, for and not) chasten
me in thy hot displeasure.' (Ps. Ixxv. 5.) ' Lift not up your
horn on high: (and then the negative, understood as repeated by
the conjunction, now dropped,) speak not with a stiff neck.' (Prov.
xxix. 12.) Our version is this: ' Doth not he that pondereth the
heart consider it? and he that keepeth the soul, doth not he know
it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?'
And (Prov. xxx. 3.) ' I neither learned wisdom, nor {and, for
and not) have the knowledge of the holy.' If then there are in
fact many such instances, the question is, whether the negative
here, expressed in the former part of David's command, may not
be understood as to be repeated in the latter part; and if this
may be, a strong reason will be added why it should be so inter-
preted. The passage will run thus: ' Behold thou hast with thee
Shimei, who cursed me: but I swore to him by the Lord, saying,
I will not put thee to death by the sword. Now, therefore, hold
him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou
oughtest to do unto him, but bring not down his hoary head to the
grave with blood.' Now if the language itself will admit of this
construction, the sense thus given to the sentence derives a very
strong support from the context. For how did Solomon under-
stand this charge ? Did he kill Shimei in consequence of it ?
Certainly he did not; for after he had immediately commanded
Joab to he slain, in obedience to his father, he sends for Shimei,
and knowing that Shimei ought to be well watched, confines him
to a particular spot in Jerusalem for the remainder of his life:
I Kings ii. So' — 42: see also Job xxiii. 17; xxx. 20; xxxi. 20"
This is the best mode of interpreting this text. — El>.
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519
because his power and interest was so great in the army
(and it was the army that David in a great measure de-
pended on) that it might have occasioned an alteration
in the government, had he pretended to do it: but when
Solomon came to the throne, Joab was not that mighty
man he had formerly been. He was at least of an equal
age with David ; had commanded the armies of Israel
for twenty years, and upwards ; and as he was only for-
midable at the head of his troops, and in the times of
war and public disorder ; so l the profound peace which
had subsisted for some time, both before and after the
beginning of Solomon's reign, had impaired his power,
and made him in a manner useless. Upon this account,
Solomon had not the like reason to fear him that his
father had ; nor did he lie under the like obligations to
spare him. He had done David great services indeed,
and a sufficient recompense it was, that lie had been in-
dulged for so many years, with an impunity for his crimes;
but whatever the father might be, the son was under no
ties or obligations, especially when he found him con-
spiring to take away his kingdom, and translate it to
another.
Wherein the formality of David's sin in numbering the
people, which, at first view, seems not to be so very hei-
nous, did consist, it is not so well agreed among inter-
preters. t ' When thou takest the number of the children
of Israel,' says God to Moses, ' after their number, then
shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the
Lord, that there be no plague among them, when thou
numberest them :' upon which passage Josephus, and
some others, have founded this conjecture : — That David
had quite forgot to demand of every man that was mus-
tered, an half shekel, which was appointed by the law,
and is here called ' a ransom for his soul ;' and there-
fore God sent among the people a pestilence ; because,
amidst the great plenty and abundance which they now
enjoyed, it was a very impious and provoking thing not
to pay him his dues. 3 But where do we find, that upon
every numbering of the people, a half shekel was ordered
to be paid ? It was in this case only, when the people
were to contribute towards the building of the taberna-
cle, and God threatens those who should refuse to do it ;
but this has no manner of relation to what David did,
who nowhere stands charged with such an omission, 4
any more than with a design of raising a capitation tax,
as others conceive, upon every poll through the king-
dom.
Others are of opinion, that this numbering of the peo-
ple was a thing contrary to the fundamental promise
which God made Abraham, namely, that his seed should
so increase, as even to exceed the stars in multitude ;
and therefore since God had promised to increase them
beyond number, it savoured of infidelity and distrust in
God, for any one to go about to number them : but quite
contrary to this, the Scripture in another place tells us,
that David, out of a religious regard to the promise of
God, never intended to take an exact number of all, but
of such only as were fit to bear arms ; for so the words
.are 5 ' He took not the number of them, from twenty
years old and under, because the Lord hath said, he
would increase Israel like to the stars of the heavens.'
1 Calmet's Commentary. 2 Exod. xxx. 12.
8 Calmet's Commentary in locum. * Patrick in locum.
5 1 Chron. xxxii. 23, 24.
The most common therefore, and indeed the only
probable opinion is, that this act of David's proceeded
b from pride and ambition, and a foolish curiosity to
know the number of his subjects, the strength of his
forces, and the extent of his empire : as if all these had
greatly contributed to his glory and renown ; as if they
had been of his own acquiring, and more proper to place
his confidence in, than the power and assistance of him
whose protection he had so long experienced ; whom,
upon other occasions, he was wont to call ' his rock, his
shield, and castle of defence ;' and who was able at all
times, to save with a handful of men, as well as a mul-
titude.
Pride then, and an arrogant conceit of himself, which
is always attended with a forgetfulness of God, was at
the bottom of David's numbering the people ; and in-
deed so visible to others, as well as to the all-seeing eye
of God, that we find Joab, who was then of his privy
council, thus remonstrating against it : 7 ' Now the Lord
thy God add unto thy people, how many soever they be,
an hundred-fold, and that the eyes of my lord the king
may see it ; but why doth my lord the king delight in
Uiis thing ?'
It is a judicious observation of the apostle, 8 ( Let no
man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God ; for
God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any
man : but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away with
his own lust, and enticed ;' and therefore it may justly be
reckoned a peculiar elegance in the Hebrew tongue, that
it frequently leaves out the nominative noun to a verb
active, which, when it happens, the accusative following
supplies the place of the nominative that is wanting.
This shows that our translators have made a gross mis-
take in rendering the passage, ' the Lord moved David
to number Israel and Judah,' because in the original
there is no such thing as ' the Lord ;' for the nominative
is omitted, as I said, and the accusative supplying its
place makes the sense simply ' David was moved, (by
what is not named, but by his pride and vanity, we may
say, as well as 9 the instigations of the devil) to number
the people.' So that there is no contradiction in the
Scripture account of this transaction, no appearance of
a confederacy between God and Satan ; nor was God
any further concerned in it, than as his providence,
for wise ends, thought proper to permit it.
" But if David only was culpable in this affair, why
did not God immediately punish him for it, instead of
falling upon the people, who were confessedly inno-
cent?"
The generality perhaps were innocent as to the affair
of numbering the people : that might be chiefly David's
sin ; but in other respects they were not. They had many
great and grievous sins, which justly deserved punish-
ment, and for which probably they would have been
punished before, had it not been for God's tenderness to
David, who must have been a sufferer in the common
calamity ; but now, when both king and people had de-
served correction, God was pleased to let loose his anger
upon both. David, indeed, was not smitten in person,
but a king is never more sensibly punished than when
the judgment of God falls upon his people and dimin-
6 Calmet's Commentary in locum.
2 Sam. xxiv. 3. 8 Jas. i. 13, 14. 9 1 Chron. xxi. 1.
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[Book V.
ishes their number, and their strength, for the body poli-
tic is not unlike the body natural ; no sooner does the
head suffer, but all the members Buffer with it; nor can
the least part of the body be in pain, but the head is
immediately affected : and therefore we need not doubt
but that David, when he saw l ' the angel stretching out
his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it,' and thereupon
broke out into this exclamation, ' Let thy hand, I pray
thee, be against me, and against my father's house,' had
his heart as full of grief and anxiety as any one that lay
languishing in the plague.
Thus, in all the afflictions of his people, David was
afflicted : and if this sore judgment befell the nation a
little while before Absalom's rebellion, as some have sus-
pected a mislocation in this part of the history, this may
suggest a reason why God might think fit to preserve
David, and not cut him off, as he deserved, for his sin ;
2 that the dissension which might have arisen among his
sons, about the right of succession, in case of his death,
and the foreign and domestic wars that would thereupon
have ensued, and a proved more fatal to the Israelites,
than this destroying pestilence, might, by David's life,
and interposition, be prevented. And from the sense of
this, very probably, it is, that we find him commemorating
his deliverance from this public calamity, in such exalted
strains, as make it disputable, whether their piety or
poetry are more remarkable. 3 ' He that dwelleth in the
secret places of the Most High, shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty. He shall deliver thee from the
snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for
the arrow that rlieth by day, nor for the pestilence that
walketh in darkness, or for the destruction that wasteth at
noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thou-
sand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh
thee.'
It must be owned indeed, that there is a very large
difference, in the Scripture accounts of the number of
men, fit to bear arms, that were found in David's
dominions : 4 In Samuel it is said, that they were in Is-
rael eight hundred thousand, and in Judah five hundred
thousand ; but in 5 Chronicles, they of Israel were a
thousand thousand, and a hundred-thousand, and they of
.ludah four hundred threescore and ten thousand : and
various have been the attempts to adjust and settle this
disagreement. Some suppose, that, as Joab undertook
this office with no small reluctancy, and David, very
probably, might repent of the thing, before it was fully
executed, though the commissioners might make an exact
review, 6 yet they thought proper to lay before the kino-
no more than what the sum in Samuel amounts to ; but
that the author of the book of Chronicles might, from
some of these commissioners, receive the complete sum,
which occasioned the difference.
7 Others imagine, that this difference arises from the
1 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 17.
1 Le Clerc's Commentary in locum. s Ps. xci. 1, &c.
1 2 Sam. xxiy. 9. * 1 Chron. xxi. 5. 6 1 Chron. xxvii. 24.
' See Calmet's Commentary on 2 Sam. xxiv. !).
a The character which Livy gives us of such factions and dis-
sensions, is conceived in these words:— " They ended, and
brought to many people more destruction than foreign wars,
famines, or pestilences, or any other calamity inflicted by the
wrath of an angry Deity," b. 4.
legionary soldiers, as they are called, or those companies
of militia which attended the king's person by turns,
and might make the number either greater or less,
according as they were numbered or not numbered in
the account : but this solution is purely arbitrary, and
such as has no foundation in Scripture. It supposes
withal, that the real number was what is recorded in
Chronicles, which, taking in the several articles that are
said to be omitted, surpasses all faith.
Since there is then no possibility of reconciling these
different computations, the question is, which of the two
we are to receive ? And this, without all controversy,
must be that in Samuel, not only because the Arabic
translators in their version of the Chronicles, have
inserted it, but because there is nothing excessive, or
extravagant, in the supposition, that, in a fertile and
well cultivated country of sixty leagues in length, and
thirty in breadth, a multitude of people, to the number
of six or seven millions, which taking in the other arti-
cles, will be the sum total, might very comfortably be
maintained. 8 Rather, then, than have recourse to such
solutions as do but more embarrass the matter, we may
adventure to say, without any diminution to the Scrip-
ture's authority, that the excessive number in the Chroni-
cles was a mistake of the person, who, after the capti-
vity, transcribed this part of the sacred writ ; " For
I do hesitate to say," says Sulpicius, 9 in his sacred
history, " that truth had been corrupted rather by the
carelessness of transcribers during a course of so many
ages, than that the prophet erred."
It must be acknowledged, that in most nations where
the regal power was at this time established, the right of
succession was generally hereditary, and the eldest son
seldom, except in cases of incapacity, postponed. This
is what Adonijah, urges to Bathsheba ; 1U ' thou knowest
that the kingdom was mine by right of primogeniture,
and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should
reign:' but then, there was this peculiar to the Jewish
constitution, that as Cod had been their only king from
the time that they first became a nation, so when they
thought fit to have that form of government altered, he
still reserved to himself the right of nominating the
successor, when the throne became vacant : u ' w hen thou
art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee, and shalt say, 1 will set a king over me, like all
the nations that are about me, thou shalt by all means
make him king over thee whom the Lord thy God shall
choose.' So that when God had declared his pleasure
concerning the person that was to succeed him, as he
did by the prophet Nathan, David was not at liberty to
make choice of any other.
We do not dispute at all, but that Bathsheba, who was
his favourite wife, had a great ascendency over her hus-
band ; but Solomon's title was not founded upon her
interest and management with the king, but upon the
ordination and appointment of God. 12 ' Of all my sons,
says David, (' for the Lord hath given me many sons,) he
hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of
the kingdom of the Lord over Israel ;' and therefore
Adonijah himself acknowledges, 13 ' that it was of the
Le Clerc's Commentary in locum. 9 Book 1.
10 J Kings ii. 15. " Deut. xvii. 14, 15.
12 1 Chron. xxviii. 5. ,3 1 Kings ii. 15.
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Lord, that the kingdom was turned about and became
his brother's.'
Nathan indeed put Bathsheba upon another argument,
namely, the sacredness of the king's oath, in order to pre-
vail with him in behalf of her son : ' Didst not thou
swear unto thy handmaid, saying, Surely Solomon thy
son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my
throne ?' But at what time this promise was made, is a
matter of some dispute. The generality of interpreters
are of opinion, that after the death of the first child which
David had by Bathsheba, he comforted her for her loss,
and gave her assurance, that, if God should give him
another son by her, he would not fail to make him his
successor. But it is much more probable, that David did
not make any declaration of a promise to Bathsheba,
until God had revealed it to him, 2 that he should have
a son, distinct from what he had already, who should
succeed him in the kingdom, and have the honour of
building- him a temple ; and no sooner was Solomon
born, but David was convinced that this was the child to
whom the promise belonged, by Nathan's being sent to
give him a name, denoting his being 3 ' beloved of the
Lord :' and it was at this time, most probably, that David
gave his mother a promise, confirmed upon oath, that,
since God had so manifestly declared in favour of the
child, he, for his part, would do his utmost to facilitate
his succession. But, upon the whole, he did not choose
for himself, * neither was his declaration to Bathsheba
previous to Nathan's information, but rather the effect
and consequence of it.
But even suppose there had been no divine interposi-
tion in favour of Solomon, why might not David, who
had done such signal service in his reign, nominate his
successor ? s Several great princes in most nations have
claimed this privilege. Among the Romans, Aurelius
named Nerva, and Nerva chose Trajan, and so did
Augustus appoint his successor. And that this was a
prerogative belonging to the crown of Israel, and what
continued with it for some time after David, is evident
from the story of his grandson Rehoboam, b who though
a prince of no great merit, took upon him the authority
of nominating his successor, and to the prejudice of his
eldest son, made one of his youngest king.
Far are we from vindicating Solomon in all his actions,
any more than David in the matter of Uriah. His se-
verity to his brother for a seemingly small offence looked
like revenge, and as if he had taken the first opportunity
to cut him oft", for his former attempt upon the kingdom ;
and yet we cannot but imagine, 7 from Solomon's words
to his mother, ' Why dost thou ask Abishag for Adoni-
jah ? Ask for him the kingdom also, for he is mine elder
brother,' that there was some farther conspiracy against
him, though not mentioned in holy writ, whereof he had
got intelligence, and wherein Joab and Abiathar were
engaged ; and that he looked upon this asking Abishag in
marriage as the prelude to it, and the first overt act, as it
were, of their treason. It is certain that they thought
to impose upon the king, as they had done upon his
1 1 Kings i. IS. 2 Sam. xii. 24.
8 1 Chron. xxii. 9, 10.
* The name was Jedidiah, 2 Sam. xii. 25.
4 Calmet's Commentary in lornm.
s Patrick's Commentary on 1 Kings i. 20. 6 2 Chron. xi. 21, 22.
1 1 Kings ii. 22.
S. A. M. 4375. A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix— I KINGS viii.
mother, and carry their point without ever discovering
the malevolent intent of it.
The wives of the late king, according to the customs
of the east, belonged to his successor, and were never
married to any under a crowned head. 8 Abishag was
doubtless a beautiful woman, and, by her near relation
to David might have a powerful interest at court;
Adonijah might therefore hope, by this marriage, to
strengthen his pretensions to the crown, or, at least,
to lay the foundation for some future attempt, upon
a proper opportunity, either if Solomon should die,
and leave a young son, not able to contest the point
with him, or if at any time he should happen to fall
under the people's displeasure, as his father had done
before him.
This might be Adonijah's design, and Solomon ac-
cordingly might have information of it : but supposing
that his brother's design was entirely innocent, yet since
his request, according to the customs then prevailing,
was confessedly bold and presumptuous, and had in it
all the appearance of treason, 9 it was none of Solomon's
business to make any farther inquiry about it, or to in-
terpret the thing in his brother's favour. It was sufficient
for him that the action was in itself criminal, and of
dangerous consequence to the state ; for it is by their
actions, and notintentions, that all offenders must be tried.
Adonijah indeed, had he lived under our constitution,
would have had a fair hearing before conviction ; but we
ought to remember, that, in the kingdoms of the east,
the government was absolute, and the power of life or
death entirely in the prince ; so that Solomon, without
the formality of any process, could pronounce his bro-
ther dead : and, because he conceived, that, in cases of
this nature, delays were dangerous, might send imme-
diately, and have him despatched ; though we cannot but
say, that it had been more to his commendation, had he
showed more clemency, and spared his life.
And in like manner, had he not married his Egyptian
queen, there might be less objection to his character ; for,
whatever augmentation of power he might promise him-
self from that alliance, 10 he certainly ran the hazard of
having his religion corrupted by this unlawful mixture.
Others, however, have observed that as the sacred Scrip-
tures commend the beginning of Solomon's reign, in all
other respects, except the ll ' people's sacrificing in high
places,' which might be the rather tolerated, ' because
there was no house built unto the name of the Lord in
those days ;' and as they give him this character, I2 that
' he loved the Lord, and walked in all the statutes of
David his father,' he would never have done an act so
directly contrary to the laws of God, as marrying an
idolatrous princess, had she not been first proselyted to
the Jewish faith. The Scripture indeed takes notice
of the gods of the Moabites, Ammonites, and Sidonians,
for whom Solomon, in compliance to his strange wives,
built places of worship : but as there is no mention made
of any gods of the Egyptians, it seems very likely that
this princess, when she was espoused to Solomon, quitted
the religion of her ancestors, to which these words in
the psalm, supposed to have been written upon this
8 Poole's Annotations on J Kmgs ii. 22.
9 Calmet's Commentary in locum. I0 See 1 Kings xi.
11 1 Kings iii. 2. u 1 Kings iii. 3.
3 u
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[Book V.
occasion, ' ' Hearken, O my daughter, forget thine own
people, .and thy father's house, so shall the king have
pleasure in thy beauty, for he is the Lord,' are thought
by some to be no distant allusion. However this be, it
is certain, that we find Solomon nowhere reproved in
Scripture for this match ; 2 nor can we think, that his
book of Canticles, which is supposed to be his epithala-
niium, would have found a place in the sacred canon,
had the spouse, whom it all along celebrates, been at
that time an idolatress ; though there is reason to believe
that she afterwards relapsed into her ancient religion,
and contributed, as much as any, to the king's seduction,
and the many great disorders that were in the latter part
of his reign.
How far the high priest, Abiathar, was concerned in
the plot against Solomon, the sacred history does not
particularly inform us ; but such was the reverence paid
to the sacerdotal character, that Solomon would have
hardly dared to have deposed such an one from his
ofiice, had not the constitution of the nation authorized
him so to do. The kings in the east, indeed, soon found
out ways to make themselves absolute ; but it looks as
if, at the first establishment, the king was at the head of
the Hebrew republic, and the high priest his subject,
and in all civil affairs submitted to his correction ; 3 in-
somuch, that when any one abused the power of his
ofiice to the prejudice of the commonweal, or endan-
gering the king's person, the king might justly deprive
him of his honours and titles, of his temporalities and
emoluments, and even of life itself. And therefore,
when Abiathar, by his conspiracy, had merited all this,
whatever was dependent on the crown, as all the re-
venues of this place, as well as the liberty of officiating
in it, were dependent, Solomon might lawfully take from
him ; but the sacerdotal character, which he received
from God, and to which he was anointed, this he could
not alienate : and therefore we may observe, that after
his deprivation, and even when Zadok was in possession
of his place, he is nevertheless still mentioned 4 under
the style and title of the priest.
The truth is, there is a great deal of difference between
depriving a man of the dignity, and of the exercise of
his function in such a determinate place ; and between
taking from him an authority that was given him by God,
and the profits and emoluments arising from it, which
were originally the gift of the crown. The former of
these Solomon could not do, and the latter it is prob-
able he was the rather incited to do, out of regard
to the prophecy of Samuel, wherein he foretold Eli,
from whom Abiathar was descended, that he would
translate the priesthood from his to another family,
as he did in the person of Zadok, who was of the house
of Eleazar, even as Eli was of that of Ithamar ; so that,
by this means, the priesthood reverted to its ancient
channel.
In the account which we have of Solomon's sumptuous
manner of living, 5 we read in the book of Kings, that
he had ' forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots ;'
b but in that of Chronicles it is said, that he had no more
than four ; and yet in this some will acknowledge no
1 Ps. xlv. 10, II. 2 Calmet's Commentary on 1 Kings iii. 1.
* Calmet's Commentary on 1 Kings ii. 27. 4 1 Kings iv. 4.
5 1 Kings iv. 26. r> 2 Cliron. ix. 25.
disagreement at all. The author of Samuel, say they,
speaks of the horses ; the author of the Chronicles of the
stalls or stables, which, supposing every one to contain
ten horses, answer the number exactly. It is observ-
able, however, that the history makes mention 7 of chariot
cities, that is, cities, wherein Solomon kept chariots
and horsemen in several parts of his kingdom, for the
security of his government, and the suppression of any
disorder that might happen to arise ; and therefore other?
have thought, that in the Chronicles the author speak„
of those stalls which Solomon had at Jerusalem for his
constant lifeguard, and were no more than four thous-
and ; but in Kings, of all those stalls which were dis-
persed up and down in the several parts of his kingdom,
which might be forty thousand : because, upon the
account of the conquests, which his father had made on
the east side of Jordan, it was necessary for Solomon
to have a stronger armament of this kind than other
kings before him had, in order to keep the people, that
would otherwise be apt to rebel, in due subjection.
But without any prejudice to the authority of the
Scriptures, why may we not own, that an error has pos-
sibly crept into the text through the negligence of some
transcriber, who has inserted arbaliim, that is, forty, in-
stead of arbali, four, and so made this large disparity
in the number? Four thousand stalls, supposing each
stall for a single horse, are moderate enough ; but forty
thousand is incredible : and therefore, to proportion the
horses to the chariots, s which were a thousand and four
hundred, we may suppose, 9 with the learned author,
from whom we have borrowed this conjecture, that of
these chariots some were drawn with two, some with
three, and some with four horses. Now if the chariots
were drawn with a pair only, the number of Solomon's
chariot horses must be two thousand eight hundred ; if
by two pair, then it must be five thousand six hundred;
but the medium between these two numbers is very near
four thousand ; and therefore it seems most likely, that
the horses which the king kept for this use only, might
be much about this number. Too many for the law to
tolerate ; K but the king perhaps might have as little
regard to this clause in the law, as he had to the follow-
ing one, which forbade him u ' to multiply wives and
concubines to himself, or greatly to multiply silver or
gold.'
The only remaining difficulty, except the divine vision
vouchsafed Solomon, which has not been mentioned, is
the great quantity of sacrifices which he is said to have
offered on one altar only ; but without recurring to any
miracle for this, or without supposing that this fire,
which originally came from heaven, was more strong and
intense than any common fire ; and therefore, after the
return from the captivity the altar, as some observe, was
made larger, because there wanted this celestial ilame :
without any forced solution like this, we have no reason
to think, that all these sacrifices were offered in one day.
The king, we may imagine, upon one of the great fes-
tivals, went in procession with his nobles, to pay his
devotion at Gibeon, where the tabernacle was, and the
brazen altar which Moses had made. Each of the great
' 2 Chron. ix. 25. 8 1 Kings x. 26.
9 See Bochart Hieros. P. I. b. 2. c. 9. " Deut. xvii. 16.
11 Le Clerc's Commentary on 1 Kings iv. 26.
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festivals lasted for seven days ; but Solomon might stay
much longer at Gibeon, until, by the daily oblations, a
thousand burnt-offerings were consumed ; and at the con-
clusion of this course of devotion, he might offer up his
ardent prayer to God, for wisdom, and God, for the con-
firmation of his faith, might appear to him in a dream
by night, and have that converse with him which the
Scripture takes notice of.
1 Sleep indeed is like a state of death to the soul,
wherein the senses are locked up, and the understanding
and will deprived of the free exercise of their functions j
and yet this is no impediment to God in communicating
himself to mankind : for 2 ' God speaketh once, yea
twice,' says the author of the book of Job, ' in a dream,
in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon
men, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth the
ears of men, and sealeth their instruction :' for God, no
doubt, has power, not only to awaken our intellectual
faculties, but to advance them above their ordinary mea-
sure of perception, even while the body is asleep.
3 A very eminent father of the Greek church, speak-
ing of the different kinds of dreams, has justly observed
that the organs of our body, and our brain, are not un-
like the strings of a musical instrument. While the
strings are screwed up to a proper pitch, they give a
harmonious sound, if touched by a skilful hand ; but as
soon as they are relaxed, they give none at all. In like
manner, while we are awake, says he, our senses, touched
and directed by our understanding, make an agreeable
concert ; but when once we are asleep, the instrument
has done sounding, unless it be, that the remembrance of
what passed when we are awake, comes and presents
itself to the mind, and so forms a dream, just as the
strings of an instrument will for some time continue their
sound, even after the hand of the artist has left them. It
is no hard matter to apply this to Solomon's dream. He
had prayed the day before with great fervency, and
desired of God the gift of wisdom. In the night-time
God appeared to him in a dream, and bid him ask what-
ever he would. Solomon, having his mind still full of
the desire of wisdom, asked it, and obtained it: so that
the prayer or desire which he uttered in his dream, was
but the consequence of the option he had made the day
before, when he was awake.
In a word, though we should allow that the soul of
man, when the body is asleep, is in a state of rest and
inactivity ; yet we cannot but think, that God can
approach it in many different ways ; can move and
actuate it just as he pleases ; and when he is minded to
make a discovery of any thing, can set such a lively re-
presentation of it before the eyes of the man's under-
standing, as shall make him not doubt of the reality of
the vision.
Solomon indeed, at the consecration of the temple,
o wns, that 4< the heaven of heavens could not contain God,
and much less then the house that he had built him :'but it
will not therefore follow, that there is no necessity for
places appropriated to divine worship, nor any occasion
for making them so niagnilicent and sumptuous. That God,
who is the author and giver of our being, and to whom
we are indebted, for every thing we have, and every
1 Calmet's Commentary on 1 Kings iii.
3 Gregory de Onificio Hominis, c. 13.
2 Job xxxiii. 1 I.
4 1 Kings viii. 2
thing we hope for, should be constantly attended with
the homage and adoration, with the praises and acknow-
ledgments of his creatures, his own dependant creatures
is a position that will admit of no controversy ; and that
there should be some places appointed for this purpose,
that all the offices of religion may be performed with
more decency, and more solemnity, is another position,
that seems to arise from the nature of the thins". These
buildings we style, the ' houses of God ;' but it is not to
defend him, as Arnobius 5 speaks, from heat or cold
from wind or rain, or tempests, that we raise such struc-
tures, but to put ourselves in a capacity of paying our
duty to him, and of nourishing in our hearts such senti-
ments of respect and reverence, of love and gratitude
as are due from creatures to their great Creator.
In these places, God is said to be more immediately
present to hear our supplications, receive our praises,
and relieve our wants ; and therefore, to make his habi-
tation commodious, David exhorts his subjects to a
liberal contribution, and ' because I have a joy,' says
he, ' in the house of my God, I have of mine own gold
and silver, given three thousand talents of gold, even
the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of fine
silver.' " He indeed makes mention," as the learned
6 Hooker, with whose words I conclude this argument,
has observed, " of the natural conveniency that such
kind of bounteous expenses have, since thereby we not
only testify our cheerful affection to God, which thinks
nothing too dear to be bestowed about the furniture of
his service, but give testimony to the world likewise of
his almightiness, whom we outwardly honour with the
chiefest of outward things, as being, of all things, him-
self incomparably the greatest. To set forth the majesty
of kings, his vicegerents here below, the most gorgeous
and rare treasures that the world can afford are procured ;
and can we suppose, that God will be pleased to accept
what the meanest of these would disdain ? In a word,
though the true worship of God," says he, " be to God
in itself acceptable, who respects not so much in what
place, as with what affection he is served ; yet manifest
it is, that the very majesty and holiness of the place
where God is worshipped, hath, in regard of us, great
virtue, force, and efficacy, as it is a sensible help to stir
up devotion, and, in that respect, bettereth, no doubt,
our holiest and best actions of that kind."
CHAP. III. — Of t/ie ancient Jerusalem, and its
Temple.
It is an opinion vulgarly received, and not without much
probability, that Jerusalem is the same city which 7 else-
where is called Salem, and whereof Melchizedek is said
to have been king. Not that Salem, or the city of Mel-
chizedek, was of equal extent with Jerusalem in after
times ; but Jerusalem was no other than the city of
Salem, enlarged and beautified by the kings of .all Israel
at first — David and Solomon, and after that, by the
succeeding kings of Judah, when the monarchy came to
be divided into two distinct kingdoms.
5 Contra Gent., b. 6. c Eccles. Po'ity, b. 5. 7 Gen. xiv. IS.
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The word Salem, in the Hebrew language, l signifies
peace : and as the city of Melchizedek, called Salem,
is probably thought to be the same with Jerusalem ; so
it is certain, that Jerusalem was 2 otherwise called Jebus,
and therefore, as it preserves the name of Salem in the
latter, so it is thought to preserve the name of Jebus in
the former part of it, and to be nothing else but a com-
pound of Jebus and Salem, which, for the better sound's
sake, by the change of one letter, and the omission of
another, is softened into Jerusalem.
Whether this city stood in the centre of the world or
no, we shall not pretend to determine, though some a
very zealously contend for it ; since it is a matter of
more material disquisition, in what tribe it may be sup-
posed to have been situated. In the conquest of the
land of Canaan, and at the famous battle of Gibeon,
3 Joshua put to death the king of Jerusalem, and, very
probably, took the city, though, by some means or other
not mentioned in Scripture, the Jebusites afterwards got
possession, and continued their possession even till the
days of David. In the division of the land, it was ap-
parently one of those cities which 4 were given to the
tribe of Benjamin ; and yet when we read, that at
one time 5 ' the children of Judah could not drive out
the Jebusites,' and, at another, 6 ' that the children of
Judah took and burnt Jerusalem,' one would be tempted
to think, that it lay within the limits of that tribe. But
then this difference may be easily reconciled, if we will
but consider, that as this city was built on the fron-
tiers of both tribes, it is sometimes made a part of the
one, and sometimes of the other ; that, by Joshua's divi-
sion of the country, Benjamin had most right to it, but,
by the right of conquest, Judah ; however, when it came
to be made the metropolis of the whole nation, it was
thought to belong to the Israelites in common, and
therefore was claimed by neither.
The city of Jerusalem was built upon two hills, and
encompassed all round with mountains. It was situated
in a barren and stony soil ; but the places adjacent were
well watered, having the fountains of Gihon and Siloam,
and the brook Kidron at the foot of its walls. Jebus,
or the ancient city which David took, was seated on a
hill towards the south ; and, on the opposite quarter,
towards the north, was Mount Zion, where David built a
new b city, and called it after his own name, and where
1 Heb. vii. 2. 2 Compart: Josh. xv. 8. with 1 Chron. xi 4.
3 Josh. x. 23—40. and xii. 10. * Josh, xviii. 28.
5 Josh. xv. 63. 6 Judg. i. 8.
a To this purpose they observe, that the sacred writers are veiy
well acquainted with this, as appears by that passage of Ezekiel,
"'• v- 5; 'Thus saith the Lord God, this is Jerusalem: I have
set it in the midst of the nations and countries round about her.'
P« what purpose he did this, the Psalmist has not been wanting
to inform us: ' Out of Zion,' says he, ' the perfection of beauty5
God hath shined,' (Ps. ]. 2.) Here the Almighty kept his
"•nit, and from hence he sent out his ambassadors, the prophets,
to publish his decrees to the whole world around him, with more
ea.se, and speedier conveyance, than could possibly be done from
any other region of the habitable world. From hence, as from
B central point, the light of the law at first, and the gospel after-
wards shone out to the surrounding nations; and therefore we
find Jerusalem emphatically called ' the city of our God, the
mountain of his holiness, beautiful for situation, and the joy of
the whole earth,' (Ps. xlviii. 1, 2.)— The History of the Life of
hint/ David, vol. 2. J J
h This city was of a circular form, situated on a much higher
Mil, and surrounded with a broad deep trench, hewn whether by
stood his royal palace likewise, c and the tea>ple of the
Lord; for the temple was built upon Mount Moriah,
which was one of the hills belonging to Mount Zion. d
Between these two mountains lay the valley of Millu,
which formerly separated ancient Jebus from the city of
David, but was afterwards filled up by David and Solo-
mon, to make a communication between the two cities.
But, besides this valley of Millo, we read in Scripture
art or nature, out of a natural rock. This trench was defended
by a wall of great strength, erected upon its inner edge, and this
wall was, in like manner, defended and beautified with strong
and square towers, at regular distances ; which towers are said
to have been built of white marble, the lowest 60, and the highest
120 cubits high, but all exactly of one level on the top, although
in themselves of very different heights, according to the declivity
of the ground on which they stood. — The History of the Life of
King David, vol. 2.
c The tower which went under the name of David, was situated
upon the utmost angle of Mount Zion, and the beauty and fine
proportion of this fabric, as well as the use that was made of it,
may be fairly inferred from that famous comparison of Solomon's:
' Thy neck is like the tower of David, built for an armoury,
whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty
men,' (Cant. iv. 4.) 'The tower of furnaces,' which probably
had its name from the many fires that were lighted up in it at
once, answered all the ends of a Pharos, or watch tower, both to
land and sea. By the advantage of its situation, it could not fail
of being an excellent light-house both to the Mediterranean and
Red sea, and was probably so contrived, as to illuminate a great
part of the city likewise, and in that respect, was not only a
glorious ornament, but of excellent use. The ' house of the
mighty' was a palace erected by David, in honour of his wor-
thies, or chieftains in war, in which they had apartments, ac-
cording to their reputation and merit in arms, were always ready
at hand, for counsel or aid, as the king's affairs required, and at
leisure hours, by superintending and instructing the youth in
their military exercises, answered all the purposes of a royal
academy for the science of war. — The History of the Life of
King David, vol. 2.
d Dr Clarke and Mr Buckingham, who have investigated
more closely than other travellers the topography of Jerusalem,
suppose a hill on the south of that generally considered as Mount
Zion, and from which it is separated by the valley taken for that
of Hinnom, to be the true Zion. This hill is the one usually
described as the mountain of Corruption, or of Offence, so called
from Solomon's idolatry ; and the valley which separates it from
the supposed Zion, as that of Hinnom, or Gehinnom. But as
Josephus describes but one valley after the filling up of that be-
tween Acra and Moriah by the Asmoneans, namely, that of the
Cheesemongers, or Tyroposon, which united at the fountain of
Siloam with the valley of Jehoshaphat; and as this supposed
valley of Gehinnom is the only one which answers to that de-
scription ; and further, as this hill alone has the distinct outline,
and superior elevation, which we are universally given to under-
stand the citadel of Zion possessed ; it has certainly \ery strong
claims to be considered as such. Every representation of Zion
in Scripture implies a hill distinct from, and loftier than the
ground on which the lower city stood. It was the hill or citadel
of Jebus, the "castle" or "stronghold of Zion," which, from
its insulated and impregnable nature, the Israelites were unable
to take for 400 years after they had gained possession of the
lower city (2 Sam. v. 1 Chron. xi.) it was the crowning emi-
nence of the ridge on which the city stood ; and from which the
whole was denominated after its name. (Ps. exxxii. 13, 14.)
But no marked division or superiority of height which can ex-
plain such a pre-eminence of character, and such an uncommon
power of defence, as are here represented, distinguishes the hiil
commonly received as that of Zion. It is further to be remarked,
that Josephus describes the city as seated on two principal liiils
only, with one principal intervening valley, namely, that of the
Cheesemongers, or Tyropceon, joining the valley of Jehoshaphat
at the fountain of Siloam, as already stated. He also expressly
mentions the upper city as situated on the one, and the low er
city on the other, relative terms certainly, but of little meaning
when applied to the slight inclination of the uncleft ground on
which the modem city, with its allotted part of Zion. stands.— Ed.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
525
A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. If. 437"). A. C. 1030. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
of l the Iiouse of Millo, which is said to be 2 in the city
of David, and therefore was built either upon Mount
Zion, or some adjacent place. Let us then inquire a
little what this house of Millo might possibly be.
Millo, considered in its etymology, is thought to be
deduced from a root which signifies to be full, and is
therefore, in the sacred history, supposed to denote a
large capacious place, designed for public meetings, or,
in short, a senate-house. That this was some public
edifice, I think may be inferred from the notice that is
taken of it among some other of Solomon's public build-
ings, where the reason of the tax, which he levied upon his
subjects, is said to be this, 3 ' That he might build the
house of the Lord, and his own house, and Millo, and
the walls of Jerusalem,' &<:., for, since we find it joined
with the ' house of the Lord, and the walls of Jerusalem,'
we cannot but suppose, that it was a building of the same
public nature ; and we since find farther, that 4 ' the ser-
vants of king- Joash arose, and made a conspiracy, and
slew him in the house of Millo, very probably when he
was come thither to debate, and consult with his princes,
and other chief men, the thing seems to be incontestable,
that this house of Millo was erected for a public senate-
house, though there is some reason to imagine that it
was employed likewise for other purposes.
In the reign of Hezekiah, when Sennacherib came
against Jerusalem with a purpose to besiege it, the king-
took counsel with his princes, and among other things,
that were thought proper for his defence, it is said,
5 ' that he built up all the wall that was fallen, and re-
paired Millo, and made darts and shields in abundance.'
From whence we may infer, that this Millo was a place
of great consequence to the strength of Jerusalem, and
was very probably made to serve two purposes, that is,
to be both a parliament-house and an arsenal.
The palace which David built for himself, to which
was adjoined that which his son built for the king of
Egypt's daughter, must needs have been a very magnifi-
cent structure, since he had both his 6 workmen and
materials sent him a from Tyre, which, at that time, sur-
passed all other nations in the art of building : but of
this we can give no other account, than that it stood
westward from the temple, and consisted of a large
square court, defended by flankers, from one of which
was the descent by stairs into the gardens, which, in
all probability, were watered by the fountain of Siloam.
This fountain of Siloam, rises just under the walls of
Jerusalem, on the east side thereof, between the city and
the brook Kidron ; and in all probability, was the same
with the fountain Enrogel, or the Fuller's fountain,
whereof we find mention 7 in Joshua, and in the books
of Samuel and the Kings. Some travellers will have it
that the water of this fountain is brackish, and has not a
good taste; but the prophet Isaiah, when he utters the
complaint of God against the Jews, s ' forasmuch as this
people refuseth the waters of Shiloah, which go softly,'
' 2 Kings xii. 20. * 2 Chron. xxxii. 5. * 1 Kings ix. 15.
' 2 Kin^s xii. 20. 5 2 Chron. xxxii. S. " I Chron. xiv. 1.
' Josh. xv. 7 ; 2 Sam. xvii ; and J Kings i. 9. 8 Is. viii. 6.
a This must be understood of the Old Tyre, which was situate
upon the continent, and where the temple of Hercules stood, of
whose antiquity Herodotus talks so much; and not of the New
Tyre, which stood upon a neighbouring island, but wis not built
until the days or Solomon. — Calmet's Dictionary under the
word.
&c, seems to denote the contrary. However this be,
St Jerome himself affirms, that the waters of this foun-
tain made the valley through which they ran, as watering
the gardens and plantations that Avere there, very plea-
sant and delightful.
The fountain of Gihon, which springs very probably
from an adjacent hill of the same name, was on the west
side of Jerusalem ; and as king Hezekiah 9 ordered
the upper channel of this fountain to be conveyed into
Jerusalem, that when the city was besieged, the enemy
might not have the benefit of its waters ; so we need not
doubt, but 10 that the other spring of Siloam was, in like
manner, conveyed into the city, and that, for the conve-
nience of its inhabitants, they were both, in several places,
distributed u into pools ; though some make that of Si-
loam to be Avithout the Avails.
The brook Kidron runs in the valley of Jehoshaphat on
the east of Jerusalem, betAveen the city and the Mount
of Olives. It has usually no great quantity of Avater in
it, and is frequently quite dry ; but, upon any sudden
rains, it swells exceedingly, and runs with great impe-
tuosity. It Avas indeed of singular service to the ancient
city, as it received its common sewers, and, upon every
such violent flood, emptied them into the Dead Sea.
The mount of Olives, which doubtless had its name
from the great quantity of olive trees that grew there, Avas
situated to the east of Jerusalem, and parted from the city
only by the valley of Jehoshaphat, and the brook Kidron ;
for which reason it is said to be a Sabbath-day's journey,
that is, about a mile from it. It Avas on this mountain
that Solomon built temples to the gods of the Ammonites
and of the Moabites, in complaisance to his Avives, A\ho
Avere natives of these nations ; and for this reason it is
likeAvise called in Scripture, 12 ' the mount of corruption,'
because such as folloAV vain idols are frequently said in
Scripture to corrupt themselves. 13 Some indeed have
imagined, that this mount of corruption Avas a distinct
place, but the matter of fact is, that Mount Olivet had three
summits, or was made up of three several mountains,
ranged one after another, from north to south. The mid-
dle summit Avas that from which our Lord ascended ;
toward the south Avas that whereon Solomon M set up his
abominations ; and towards the north Avas the highest of
all, 15 Avhich Avas commonly called Galilee.
Mount Calvary, which, in all appearance, had its
name b from the similitude it bore to the figure of a skull,
or a man's head, was to the Avest of the ancient Jerusa-
9 2 Chron. xxxii. 30. I0 Lamy's Introduction, b. 1. c. 3.
11 John ix. 7. u 2 Kings xxiii. 13.
13 Wells' Geography of the Old Testament. ll 2 Kings xxiii. 13.
15 See Reland's Palaest.
b Some formerly have been of opinion, that this mount was
called Calvary, because the head of the first man in the woi Id
was buried there, and that our Saviour was crucified in the same
place; and that his blood running down upon the body of litis
person, might restore him to life, and procure him the fav< ur of
a resurrection. To support this tradition, they tell us that Noah,
having preserved Adam's body in the ark, distributed the several
parts of it to his children, and, as a particular favour, gave the
skull or head to Shem, who was to be the parent of that holy
stock, from whom the Messias was to come; and that Shem,
with a spirit of foresight, buried the skull in Calvary, where he
knew the Messias would be crucified. But neither the ancient
fathers nor any modern authors that mention this tradition, were
ever persuaded of its truth ; and, without any disrespect to them,
we may look upon all this as mere fiction. — Calmet's Diction* ty
under the word Calvary.
526 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
[Book V.
lem, just without the gates : and, as our Saviour suffered
there, we may presume it was the common place where
criminals of all kinds were generally executed. a
The valley of Hinnom, or the sons of Hinnom, lay to
the south of the city, and was remarkable for the cruel
and barbarous worship of Moloch, where parents made
their children pass through the lire, or be burned in the
lire, by way of sacrifice to that idol ; and where it was
usual to have musical instruments, from whence it obtained
likewise the name of Tophet, the Hebrew word Toph, sig-
nifying the same as Tympanum in Latin, and Timbrel in
English, to drown the lamentable shrieks of the children
thus sacrificed. In this place there were afterwards
kept a perpetual fire, to consume the dead carcasses and
excrements, which were brought from Jerusalem ; and
therefore our Saviour alluding to this, calls hell by the
name of Ge-henna, or the valley of Hinnom.
The valley of Jehoshaphat, which is likewise called the
valley of Kidron, because of the above mentioned brook
which runs through it, lies on the east of Jerusalem, be-
tween the city and the mount of Olives. Our Saviour,
indeed, ascended from this mount ; but the notion is very
a Mr Buckingham, who is satisfied of the identity of the pre-
sent hill shown as Calvary, imagines that it was at the time of the
crucifixion, as it is now, within the city. Of the arguments by
which this opinion is supported, the following is an abstract: —
The objections commonly urged against the position of Calvary
within the walls are — that the term Golgotha, which is inter-
preted ' the place of a skull,' implies a place of public interment;
that it was contrary to the custom of the east to bury in cities ; and
that it would be considered as defiling by the Jews to have a place
of execution in the heart of the town. To the first of these objec-
tions it is answered, on the part of Mr Buckingham, that the
word Golgotha thus translated a place of skulls, implies merely
a skull; and is so used by St Luke, who, without mention-
ing Golgotha, writes, ' And when they were come to a place
called skull,' &c. ; that the name applies rather to a tradition that
the skull of Adam was found in this spot; or, which is more pro-
bable, that it was derived from the figure of the eminence itself,
which was a mound of small elevation, consisting of a round nodule
of rock, which, from a resemblance which it bore to the shape of
a skull, obtained that name for it. To the second objection it
is replied, that whatever the general custom of the east may be,
it was the common practice of the Jews to bury in their own
gardens, whether within or without the town. The third objec-
tion is endeavoured to be removed, by showing, that Calvary was
not, as is generally supposed, a place of public execution ; but
was merely seized on by the enraged and impatient multitude, as a
convenient spot for carrying their mad purpose into speedy effect.
This opinion is considered to be corroborated, by the singular
fact, that it is nowhere said that Christ was led out of the city to
be crucified ; and by the no less extraordinary circumstance of
Joseph of Arimathea having, on this same spot, a garden and a
tomb, which he would not be likely to have had in a place defiled by
public executions. Wherever Calvary was, it does not seem pro-
bable that it was a place of common execution for malefactors. It is
quite inconceivable that a wealthy Jew like Joseph of Arimathea
should make choice of a place of public execution, where these
horrid exhibitions must have been frequent, as the scene of his
recreation while alive, and of his interment after death. The
choice of this spot may rather be considered as accidental —
as the first convenient one which offered itself to the impatient
Jews, on which to immolate 'heir victim, and to which he was
hurried lest he should again uscape them. This spot or mount is
a rock, the summit of which is ascended to by a steep flight of
eighteen or twenty steps from the common level of the church,
which is equal with that of the street without; and besides this,
there is a descent of thirty steps from the level of the church to
the chapel of Helena; and eleven more to the place where it is
said the cross was found ; making in all sixty-one steps, or, if
the last eleven be considered as subterraneous, fifty ; equal to at
least thirty- five feet of perpendicular height — sufficient to give
this little eminence the character of a mound or mount. — Ed.
extravagant, that when he returns again he will judge the
world in this valley, merely because the prophet Joel
hath said, 1 ' I will gather all nations, and will brirg
them into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with
them for my people ;' for what is there called the valley
of Jehoshaphat, is not a proper, but an appellative name,
and denotes no more than the judgment of God.
There is another valley that the Scripture makes early
mention of, and that is 2 ' the valley of Shaveh,' which
is likewise called the king's dale, where Melchizedek
met Abraham in his return from the slaughter of Chedor-
laomer. According to Josephus, it was, in his time, but
about two furlongs distant from Jerusalem, and for this
reason, perhaps, it has been thought by some, to be no
other than the valley of Jehoshaphat ; though others
make it different, yet so, as to come up near to the said
valley, and to lie on the south-east part of the city, not
far from the king's gardens. 3 AVhy it obtained the
name of the king's dale, whether it was from its near
situation to the king's palace and gardens, or from its
being the place where the kings were wont to exercise
themselves, or at least to entertain themselves, with seeing
others perform their exercises of running, riding, and (he
like, is not agreed, and very likely will never be deter-
mined.
There were several gates, belonging to the ancient
Jerusalem, * that are mentioned in Scripture ; but it is
1 Joel iii. 2. 2 Gen. xiv. 17, 18.
' Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3.
b The present style of building in Jerusalem will, perhaps, in the
unchanging character of eastern customs, best enable us to
understand its ancient structure. The streets of almost every
eastern city are narrow, for the purpose of excluding the sun
and wind between the deep and almost blank walls of the houses,
having small and but few windows towards the street; their
fronts, properly speaking, being towards the central quadrangle.
The entrance into the principal houses is by a porch, having
benches on each side, where visits are received and business is
despatched ; few guests being permitted to penetrate further into
the mansion. This porch communicates with the court in the
centre: which, with persons of rank or wealth, is paved with
marble, and laid out with fruit-trees and fountains. This court
is surrounded with a cloister; over which is a gallery, having a
balustrade or latticed work on the side towards the court, and on
the opposite one the entrances to the chambers. Whoever has
travelled in Spain or Portugal, where, by their Moorish posses-
sors, many eastern customs were introduced, may have seen
houses of this construction : the convents almost universally
answer to it exactly. The open space in the quadrangle is the
place where company is received on festive occasions; and is the
same as the to p.to-ov, the " midst" or the middle of the house
into which the paralytic was let down, when our Saviour was
preaching to a numerous assembly. (Luke v. 18, 19.) The
stairs are placed either in the porch itself, or at the entrance into
the court; from whence they are continued up one corner of the
gallery to the top of the house, which is made flat to walk on,
and surrounded by a parapet or balustrade. Thus a person may
ascend from the porch to the top of the house without having any
communication with its interior: and to this arrangement our
Lord alludes, in his directions to his disciples respecting the
troubles which were approaching, and their flight from Jerusalem.
' Let him who is on the house-top not come down to take any
thing out of his house.' (Matt. xxiv. 17.) Of the present state
and appearance of Jerusalem, M. Chateaubriand gives the
following account: " When seen from the mount of Olives, on
the other side of the valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents
an inclined plane descending from west to east. An embattled
wall, fortified with towers and a Gothic castle, encompasses the
city all round ; excluding, however, part of mount Zion, which it
formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of
the city towards Calvary, the houses stand very close; but in the
Sect. V.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
527
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 103G. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
no easy matter to discover where their particular situa-
tion was. There is reason to believe likewise, that their
names have been varied, or that one and the same gate
has gone under different appellations ; and as there were
several circuits of walls in the city, which had their
respective gates, it is more than probable, that some of
eastern part, along the brook Cedron, you perceive vacant spaces;
among the rest, that which surrounds the mosque erected on the
ruins of the temple, and the nearly deserted spot where once
stood the castle of Antonia and the second palace of Herod. The
nouses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses, very low, without
chimneys or windows: they have flat terraces or domes on the
top; and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would
appear to the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of
the churches, the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few
cypresses, and the clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the
plane. On beholding these stone buildings encompassed by a
stony country, you are ready to inquire if they are not the con-
tused monuments of a cemetery in the midst of a desert. Enter
the city, but nothing will you there find to make amends for the
dulness of its exterior. You lose yourself among narrow, un-
paved streets, here going up hill, there down, from the inequality
of the ground ; and you walk among clouds of dust or loose stones.
Canvass stretched from house to house, increases the gloom of the
labyrinth; bazaars roofed over, and fraught with infection, com-
pletely exclude the light from the desolate city. A few paltry
shops expose nothing but wretchedness to view ; and even these
are frequently shut, from apprehension of the passage of a cadi.
Not a creature is to be seen in the streets, not a creature at the
gates, except now and then a peasant gliding through the gloom,
concealing under his garments the fruits of his labour, lest he
should be robbed of his hard earnings by the rapacious soldier.
Aside, in a corner, the Arab butcher is slaughtering some animal,
suspended by the legs from a wall in ruins: from his haggard and
ferocious look, and his bloody hands, you would rather suppose
that he had been cutting the throat of a fellow creature than
killing a lamb. The only noise heard from time to time, in this
deicide city, is the galloping of the steed of the desert: it is the
Janissary who brings the head of the Bedouin, or returns from
plundering the unhappy Fellah." The following is Mr Buck-
ingham's description of Jerusalem, as seen from the Mount of
Olives: — " Reposing beneath the shade of an olive-tree, upon
the brow of this hill, we enjoyed from hence a fine prospect of
Jerusalem on the opposite one. This city occupies an irregular
square of about two miles and a half in circumference. Its
shortest apparent side is that which faces the east; and in this is
the supposed gate of the ancient temple, now closed up, and the
small projecting stone on which Mohammed is to sit when the
world is to be assembled to judgment in the vale below. The
southern side is exceedingly irregular, taking quite a zigzag di-
rection ; the south-west extreme being terminated by a mosque,
built over the supposed sepulchre of David, on the summit of
Mount Zion. The form and exact direction of the western and
northern walls are not distinctly seen from hence ; but every part
of this appears to be a modern work, and executed at the same
time. The walls are flanked at irregular distances by square
towers, and have battlements running all around on their sum-
mits, with loop-holes for arrows or musquetry close to the top.
The walls appear to be about 50 feet in height, but arc not sur-
rounded by a ditch. The northern wall runs over slightly de-
clining ground; the eastern wall runs straight along the brow of
Mount Moriah, with the deep valley of Jehoshaphat below ; the
southern wall crosses over the summit of the hill assumed as
Mount Zion, with the vale of Ilinnom at its feet; and the western
wall runs along on more level ground, near the summit of the
high and stony mountains over which we had at first approached
the town. As the city is thus seated on the brow of one large
hill, divided by name into several smaller hills, and the whole of
these slope gently down towards the east, this view from the
Mount of Olives, a position of greater height than that on which
t! c highest part of the city stands, commands nearly the whole
ot it at once. On the north, it is bounded by a level and appa-
rently fertile space, now covered with olive-trees, particularly
near the north-east angle. On the south, the steep side of Mount
Zion, and the valley of Hinnom,both show patches of cultivation
and little garden enclosures. On the west, the sterile summits
ct the hills there barely lift their outlines above the dwellings.
these gates did not lead out of the city into the country.
The gate of the valley, which doubtless had its name
from leading into some valley, and a as travellers will
have it, to the valley of Jehoshaphat, was situate on the
east side of the city.
The dung gate, which seems to have taken its name
And on the east, the deep valley of Jehoshaphat, now at our feet
has some partial spots relieved by trees, though as forbidding in
its general aspect, as the vale of death could ever be desired to
be, by those who have chosen it for the place of their interment.
Within the walls of the city are seen, to the north, crowded
dwellings, remarkable in no respect, except being terraced by
flat roofs, and generally built of stone. On the south, are some
gardens and vineyards, with the long red mosque of Al Sakhara,
having two tiers of windows, a sloping roof, and a dark dome at
one end, and the mosque of Zion, on the sepulchre of David, in
the same quarter. On the west, is seen the high square castle
and palace of the same monarch, near the Bethlehem-gate. In
the centre, rise the two cupolas of unequal form and size, the
one blue and the other while, covering the church of the holy
sepulchre. Around, in different directions, are seen the mina-
rets of eight or ten mosques, and an assemblage of about 2000
dwellings. And on the east, is seated the great mosque of Al
Harem, or, as called by Christians, the mosque of Solomon, from
being supposed, with that of Al Sakhara near it, to occupy the
site of the ancient temple, of that splendid and luxurious king."
The same author describes Jerusalem, as seated on unequal
ground, on a range of high hills, which he computes at 1500 feet
above the sea; some of the eminences being higher than those on
which the city itself stands. The whole country around is re-
presented as a rocky and barren space, which almost defies the
efforts of human labour to fertilize by any common process. The
fixed inhabitants he estimates at about 8000 ; but the continual
arrival and departure of strangers make the total number of those
present in the city from 10 to 15,000 generally, according to
the season of the year. These are made up of a mixed multitude
of Turkish and Arabian Mohammedans, who are the most
numerous, Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Copts, Abyssinians,
Syrians, Nestorians, Maronites, Chaldscans, and Jews ; amongst
whom, the poor Jews, in this their own city, are the most de-
graded, and " are more remarkable from the striking peculiari-
ties of their features and dress, than from their numbers as con-
trasted with the other bodies."
Mr Jolifle, however, who visited Jerusalem in 1817, states,
that the highest estimate makes the total number of inhabitants
amount to 25,000: of which there are supposed to be —
Mohammedans 13,000
Jews . . . from 3 to . 4,000
Greeks 2,000
Roman Catholics .... 800
Armenians ...... 400
Copts 50
Dr Richardson, who was at Jerusalem in 1818, estimates the
population at 20,000; whom he distributes into: —
Mussulmans 5;000
Christians 5,000
Jews 10,000
Which, probably, judging from other estimates, increases the
number of the Jews in the same proportion as it diminishes that
of the Mohammedans.
There is very little trade in Jerusalem, and few manufactures ;
the only one that at all flourishes, is that of crucifixes, chaplets,
and relics; of which, incredible as it may seem, whole cargoes
are shipped off from Jaffa for Italy, Portugal, and Spain. — Ed.
a Our countryman, Mr Sandys, is of opinion, that the gate
of the valley was formerly the same with what is now called St
Stephen's gate, not far from the golden gate, or great sate, which
leads into that which was formerly the court of the temple. He
likewise supposes, that this gate of St Stephen's was formerly
called the sheep gate; but into this opinion perhaps he might be
led by the nearness of St Stephen's gate to the pool of Bethesda,
there the sacrifices were washed before they were brought to
the priest to be offered ; and therefore, since the valley gate, and
the sheep gate, are distinctly mentioned by Nehemiah, we cannot
but think, that they must have been diflerent gates.— ff'elU'
Geography nf the Old Testament, vol. 3.
528
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Boo* V.
A. M. '>9S1. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HAI
from the dung and filth of the beasts that were sacrificed
at the temple, being carried out of it, was probably the
same with what is now so called, and stands on the east
side of the city likewise.
The water gate, which took its name from its use,
because through it was the water brought to serve the
city and the temple, was ' on the same side ; and so was
The gate of the fountain, so called from its nearness
to the fountain of Siloam, only inclining a little towards
the south.
The gate of Ephraim, which opened to the main road,
leading to the tribe of Ephraim, and from it derived its
name, stood on the north side of the city, because on
that side was that tribe seated ; • though others had rather
place it on the west.
The horse gate, sheep gate, and fish gate, are sup-
posed by some to have had their denominations from the
several markets of these creatures, that were kept there.
The horse and sheep gates were both on the east side,
not far from the palace and the temple ; and the fish
gate was on the north, though some, who think it had its
name from the fish that were brought from the Mediter-
ranean sea, had rather place it on the west side.
Lastly, the high gate, or the gate of Benjamin, so
called from its situation towards the land or tribe of
Benjamin, is supposed by some to have been the prin-
cipal gate of the royal palace ; but from what we read
3 concerning Jeremiah's being grossly abused near this
gate, it appears to have been situated by the house of
the Lord.
Thus we have passed through most of the gates of this
ancient city ; and on the north side of it, without the
walls now, but then probably within them, we meet with
some subterraneous chambers, that are wonderfully mag-
nificent, and at present called the sepulchres of the
kings, * of which some late travellers give us a descrip-
tion to this effect. " A\ hen you come to the place, you
pass through an entry hewed out of a rock, which admits
you into an open court about twenty-six feet square, all
cut out of the rock, which is of solid marble, and serves
instead of walls. On the left hand of this court is a
portico nine paces long, and four broad, with a kind of
architrave running round its front, cut out of the same
rock, as are likewise the pillars that support it. At the
end of this portico there is a passage into the sepulchres
which when you have crept through it with some diffi-
culty, lets you into a large chamber of above four and
twenty feet square. Its sides and ceiling are so exactly
square, and its angles so just, that no architect, with
levels and plummets, could build a room more regular.
From this room you pass into six more, one within ano-
ther, and all of the same fabric with the first, except that
the two innermost are deeper than the rest, and have a
descent of about six or seven steps into them. In every
one of these rooms, except the first, were coffins of stone,
placed in niches, along the sides of the room, and
amount in all to about fifty."
This perhaps is the oidy real work that now remains
of the old Jerusalem ; and what makes it justly looked
ES, A. M. 437">. A. C. 103G. 2 SAM. xix-1 KINGS viii.
upon as a wonder, is, that the ceiling, the doors, as well
as all the rest, their hinges, their posts, their frames,
&c, are all cut out of the same continued rock. It may
therefore be worth our inquiring a little in what manner
these structures were employed, and who possibly might
be the persons that were reposited in them.
That these subterraneous structures were not the se-
pulchres of the kings of Judah, the generality of those
that have inspected them are agreed, because the Scrip-
ture tells us, that David and Solomon, and most of their
successors were b buried in the city of David ; and yet
these grots lie without the gate of Damascus, as it is now
called, at a considerable distance from the city of David :
but how far this city of David did formerly extend, or
where we shall find any other signs of a the places,
where David and the other kings his successors were
buried, we have no hints given us. The Rev. Mr Maun-
drell, from this passage in Scripture, 6 ' And Hezekiah
slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the chiefest
of the sepulchres of the sons of David,' is of opinion,
that this was the place where Hezekiah, and the sons
immediately born to David, that were not reposited in
the royal sepulchres, were buried : but it is much more
probable, and what both the Syriac and Arabic versions
seem to confirm, that by the sons of David here, we are
not to understand his immediate sons, properly so called,
but the kings rather that succeeded him. This is a form of
speech frequently made use of by the sacred writers : and
therefore the sense of ' Hezekiah's being buried in the se-
pulchres of the sons of David,' must be, that he was buried
in the sepulchres of the kings descended from David.
The more probable opinion, therefore, is that of Le
Bruyn, who supposes, that these grots were the sepul-
chres of Manasseh, his son Anion, and his grandson
Josiah, kings of Judah. Of Manasseh the Scripture
tells us expressly, that ; ' he was buried in the garden of
his own house, in the garden of Uzza ;' and of Anion it
is said, that ' he was buried in the garden of Uzza ;'
which garden Manasseh might very probably purchase,
and being taken with the pleasantness of it, might there
build him a house, which is here called ' his own house/
in contradistinction to the royal palace, which was built,
and inhabited by his ancestors, on Mount Zion. Of Jo-
siah indeed the sacred history does not say expressly,
that he was buried here ; all that it tells us is, that he "
was ' buried in the sepulchres of his fathers ;' but whether
1 Neh. iii. 26.
Explication du nouveau plan cle l'ancienne Jerusalem, par
M. Calmet. » jer. xx. 2.
4 See Thevenot's Voyages, part 1. b. 2. c. 4. and Mauiidrell's
Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem.
5 1 Kings ii. 10. and xi. 43. 6 2 Chron. xxxii. 33.
7 2 Kings xxi. IS, 2G. 8 2 Chron. xxxv. 24.
a Benjamin of Tudela, who wrote about the year 1173, re-
lates, that not above fifteen years before, a wall belonging to
mount Sion, fell down, and the priests set twenty men to work
upon it. Two of these workmen being one day left alone, took
up a stone, which opened a passage into a subterraneous place,
into which they entered. There they found a palace, supported
by marble pillars, and crusted over with gold and silver. At the
entrance was a table, and upon this table a golden crown and
sceptre. This, say the Jews, was David's monument, and op-
posite to it was Solomon's, adorned in the like manner. As
they were attempting to penetrate farther, they were overset by
a whirlwind, and remained senseless till the evening, when they
heard a voice, bidding them arise, and begone. Benjamin as-
sures us, that he had this story from the mouth of one Abraham,
a Pharisee, who, as he said, had been consulted about this event
by the patriarch of Jerusalem, and declared that this was David's
monument. But the whole of this account has so much the air
of a fable, that it is needless to coufute it. — Calmet' s Dictionary
under the word David.
Skct. v.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
529
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix
in the city of David, or in the garden of Uzza, it makes
no mention : and therefore, since both his father and
grandfather were buried in this garden, there is reason
to think, that Josiah was here buried likewise ; espe-
cially considering, that in one of these subterraneous
rooms, as Le Bruyn tells us, which seemed to be more
lofty than the rest, there were three coffins curiously
adorned with carved works, which he took to be the cof-
fins of these three kings.
But of all the buildings that ancient Jerusalem had to
boast of, the temple which David designed, and Solo-
mon perfected, was the most magnificent. We are not,
however, to imagine, that this temple was built like one
of our churches ; for it did not consist of one single edi-
fice, but a of several courts and buildings, which took
up a great deal of ground. The place whereon it was
erected, was on the top of Mount Moriah,and the build-
ing altogether made an exact square of 800 cubits, or
1 KjO feet long on each side, exactly fronting the east,
west, north, and south.
1 To make this building more firm and secure, it was
found necessary to begin the foundation at the bottom of
the mount ; so that the sides were 333 cubits, or about
608 feet high before they were raised to the level of the
temple, and this afforded a most noble prospect towards
the chief part of the city which lay westward. It is im-
possible to compute the labour of laying this foundation,
because it is impossible to tell how much of the moun-
tain must in some places be removed, and others filled
up, to bring it to an exact square for so great a height :
but when we consider that there were 180,000 workmen
for seven years and a half constantly employed, we can-
not but admire what business could be found for so many
hands to do ; and yet, when we reflect on the vastness
of this fabric, it would make one no less wonder, how
in so short a time it could possibly be completed. " For
the foundation," as Josephus tells us, " was laid prodi-
giously deep, and the stones were not only of the largest
size, but hard and firm enough to endure all weathers,
and be proof against the worm. Besides this, they were
so mortised into one another, and so wedged into the
rock, that the strength and curiosity of the basis was not
less admirable than the intended superstructure, and the
one was every way answerable to the other."
The ground plot upon which the temple was built was
a square of GOO cubits every way. It was encompassed
with a wall of six cubits high, and the same in breadth,
and contained several buildings for different uses, sur-
rounded with cloisters, supported by marble pillars.
Within this space was the court of the Gentiles, fifty cu-
bits wide, and adorned, in like manner, with cloisters
and pillars. To separate this court from the court of
the Israelites, there was a wall of 500 cubits square. The
1 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 4. c. 5.
a These several parts of the temple the Greeks are very care-
ful to distinguish by different names. What was properly the
temple, they called o met; and the courts and other parts of
the temple, to aoiv. Thus when Zacharias is said to have gone
into the temple to burn incense, (Luke i. 9.) which was done in
the sanctum, the word is Mais ; but when it is said that Anna the
prophetess departed not from the temple, (Luke ii. 37.) that is,
lived in that part of the court of the Israelites which was appro-
priated to religious women, the Greek word is hoot. And this
observation holds good all through the New Testament. — Lamy,
De Tabern. b. 5. c. 5.
1 KINGS viii.
court of the Israelites was 100 cubits. It was paved
with marble of different colours, and had four gates, to
every quarter one, and each rising with an ascent of seven
steps. To separate this court from the court of the
priests, there was a wall of 200 cubits square ; and the
priests' court was 100 cubits, encompassed with cloisters
and apartments where the priests, that attended the ser-
vice of the temple, were used to live. This court had but
three gates, to the east, to the north, and to the south,
and were approached by an ascent of eight steps. These
courts Avere all open, and without any covering, but in
case of rain, or other bad weather, the people could re-
tire under the cloisters, that were supported with rows of
pillars, and went round every court. In the Israelites'
court, over against the gate of the priests' court, was
erected a throne for the king, which was a magnificent
alcove, where he seated himself when he came to the
temple. In the priests' court was the altar of burnt-of-
ferings, a great deal larger than that of the tabernacle,
having ten brazen lavers, whereas the tabernacle had but
one, and a sea of brass, which the tabernacle had not,
supported by twelve oxen.
On the west side of the altar of burnt-offerings, there
was an ascent of twelve steps, to what we may properly
call the temple ; and this consisted of three parts, the
porch, the sanctuary, and the holy of holies. The porch
was about twelve cubits long, and twenty broad, at the
entrance of which stood the two famous pillars, Jachin
and Boaz, whose names import, that ' God alone was the
support of the temple ;' and its gate was fourteen cubits
wide, the sanctuary or nave of the temple, was forty cu-
bits long, and twenty broad, wherein were the altar of
incense, and the table of shewbread ; but because the
temple was larger and wanted more light than the taber-
nacle, instead of one, it had ten golden candlesticks.
The holy of holies was a square of twenty cubits, wherein
was placed the ark of the covenant, containing the two
tables of stone, wherein God had engraven his ten com-
mandments ; but instead of two cherubim, as were in the
tabernacle, in the temple there were four.
Round about the temple, and against the walls thereof,
as Josephus tells us, were built thirty cells, or little
houses, which served in the way of so many buttresses,
and were, at the same time, no small ornament to it ; for
there were stories of these cells, one above another,
whereof the second was narrower than the first, and the
third than the second, so that their roofs and balustrades
being within each other, made three different terraces, as
it were, * upon which one might walk round the temple.
b The temple itself, strictly so called, had two stories, the up-
per of which was raised quite above these little houses and their
roofs ; for their roofs reached no higher than the top of the first
story. The second story, which had no building adjoining to its
side, made a large room over the sanctuary and the holy of holies,
of equal dimensions with them ; and it is no improbable opinion
that this was the upper chamber, in which the Holy Ghost « as
pleased to descend upon the apostles in a visible manner. This
upper loom was appropriated to the pious laity as a place for them
to come and pay their devotions in; and therefore it seems very
likely that the apostles were here with other devout persons,
while the temple was full of Jews of all nations, who were come
to celebrate the feast of the Pentecost, and that thereupon they
below, hearing the noise, which was occasioned, by the shaking
of the place, ran up to see the cause of it, and, to their great
surprise, found the apostles distinguished from the other Jews
about them, both by the cloven tongues which sat upon each of
530
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HAI.E
Within, these little houses were ceiled with cedar, their
walls were wainscoted with the same, and embellished
with carving and fretwork, overlaid with gold, which,
with their dazzling splendour made every thing about
them look glorious.
Upon the whole then, we may observe, 1 that the glory
of this temple did not consist in the bulk or largeness of
it, for in itself it was but a small pile of building, no
more than an hundred and fifty feet in length, and an
hundred and five in breadth, taking the whole of it to-
gether from out to out, and is exceeded by many of our
parish churches, but its chief grandeur and excellency
lay in its out buildings and ornaments, in its workman-
ship, which was everywhere very curious, and its over-
layings, which were vast and prodigious ; for the over-
laying of the holy of holies, only, which was a room
but thirty feet square, and twenty high, amounted to six
hundred talents of gold, which comes to four millions
three hundred and twenty thousand pounds of our ster-
ling money.
To conclude this chapter then, 2in the words of
the Jewish historian, " The whole frame, in fine," says
he, " was raised upon stones, polished to the highest
degree of perfection, and so artificially put together,
that there was no joint to be discerned, no sign of any
working tools being upon them, but the whole looked
liker the work of providence and nature, than the pro-
duct of art and human invention. And as for the in-
side, whatever carving, gilding, embroidery, rich silks,
and fine linen could do, of these there was the greatest
profusion. The very floor of the temple Avas overlaid
with beaten gold, the doors were large, and proportioned
to the height of the walls, twenty cubits broad, and still
gold upon gold." In a word, it was gold all over, and a
nothing was wanting, either within or w ithout, that might
contribute to the glory and magnificence of the work.
CHAP. IV.— Ob the Temple.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
Diana's temple at Ephesus was one of the seven won-
ders of the world. It is said that almost all Asia was
employed in the building of it for about two hundred
years ; but it was certainly more extensive than the
1 Prideaux's Con. part 1. b. 3. 2 Jewish Antiq. b. 8. c. 2.
them, and by the several different languages that they spake.
Lamy's Introduction, b. 1. c. 4.
a It is Dot to l>e doubted, but that Solomon made all the uten-
sils and ornaments of the temple proportionable, both in number
and richness, to that of the edifice ; and yet Josephus seems to
have carried his account beyond all credibility, when he tells us
that there were 10,000 tables besides those of the shewbread ;
10,000 candlesticks besides those in the holy place; 80,000
cups for drink-offerings; 100,000 basins of gold, and double that
cumber of silver: when he tells us that Solomon caused to be
made 1000 ornaments for the sole use of the high priest, 10,000
linen robes and girdles for that of the common priests, and
200,000 more for the Levites and musicians: when he tells of
200,000 trumpets made according to Solomon's direction, with
200,000 more, made in the fashion that Moses had appointed,
and 400,000 musical instruments of a mixed metal, between
gold and silver, called by the ancients electrum — concerning
all which we can only say, that the text is either silent or con-
tradicts this prodigious account. — Universal History, b. I.e. 7.
S, A. M. !37!i- A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
temple at Jerusalem, for it may be justly questioned,
notwithstanding the profusion of gold, silver, precious
stones &c, employed in the temple of Solomon, whe-
ther it cost any thing like the money expended on the
temple of Diana.
Pliny informs us, that ' in order to build one of the
pyramids in Egypt, no less than three hundred and sixty
thousand men were employed for the space of twenty
years. But neither was the temple any such work as
this. We may also observe that the temple was never
intended to hold a vast concourse of people; it was only
for the service of the Lord, and the priests were those
alone who were employed in it. The courts, chambers,
and other apartments, were far more extensive than the
temple itself ; it was never designed to be a place to
worship at. There God was known to have a peculiar
residence, and before him the tribes came, and the
priests were a sort of mediators between him and the
people. In short, the temple was to the Jews in the
promised land what the tabernacle was to the Hebrews
in the wilderness ; the place where God's honour dwelt,
and whither the people flocked to pay their adoration.
" Solomon laid the foundation of the temple, A. M.
2992, B. C. 1008, before the vulgar era 1012; and it
was finished A M. 3000, and dedicated in 3001, B. C.
999, before the vulgar era 1003 ; h Kings viii. 2 Chron.
v. vii. viii. The place that was pitched on for erecting
this magnificent structure was on the side of Mount Zion
called Moriah. Its entrance or frontispiece stood to-
wards the east, and the most holy or most retired part
was towards the west. The author of the first book of
Kings, and of the second of Chronicles, has chiefly
made it his business to describe the temple properly so
called, that is the sanctuary, the sanctum, and the apart-
ments belonging to them, as also the vessels, the im-
plements, and the ornaments of the temple, without
giving any description scarcely of the courts and open
areas, which however made a principal part of the gran-
deur of this august edifice.
" But Ezekiel has supplied this defect by the exact
plan he has delineated of these necessary parts. In-
deed it must be owned that the temple as described by
Ezekiel was never restored after the captivity of Ba-
bylon, according to the model and the mensuration that
this prophet has given of it. But as the measure he sets
down for the sanctum and the sanctuary are, within a
small matter, the same as those of the temple of Solo-
mon ; and as this prophet, who was himself a priest, had
seen the first temple ; it is to be supposed that the de-
scription he gives us of the temple of Jerusalem is the
same as that of the temple of Solomon.
" The ground -plot upon which the temple was built was
a square of six hundred cubits, or twenty-five thousand
royal feet ; (Ezek. xlv.) This space was encompassed
with a wall of the height of six cubits, and of the same
breadth. Beyond this wall was the court of the Gentiles,
being fifty cubits wide. After this was seen a great wall,
which encompassed the whole court of the children of
Israel. This wall was a square of five hundred cubits.
logy.
4384
3 Hist. Nat. b. xxxvi. c. 12.
b These dates are according to the commonly received chrono-
According to Dr Hales, the temple was begun A. M,
)r B. C. 1027, and finished B. C. 1020.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE ISRAELITES' ENTERING CANAAN, &c.
531
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
The court of Israel was an hundred cubits square, and
was encompassed all round with magnificent galleries
supported by two or three rows of pillars. It had four
gates of entrance, one to the east, another to the west,
a third to the north, and the fourth to the south. They
were all of the same form and largeness, and each had
an ascent of seven steps. The court was paved with
marble of divers colours, and had no covering ; but the
people, in case of need, could retire under the galleries
that were all round about. These apartments were to
lodge the priests in, and to lay up such things as were
necessary for the use of the temple. There were but
three ways to come in, to the east, to the north, and to
the south, and they went to it by an ascent of eight
steps. Before, and over against the gate of the court
of the priests, in the court of Israel, was erected a
throne for the king, being a magnificent alcove, where
the king seated himself when he came into the temple.
Within the court of the priests, and over against the
same eastern gate, was the altar of burnt-ofterings, of
twelve cubits square, according to Ezek. xliii. 16, or of
ten cubits high and twenty broad, according to 2 Chron.
iv. 1. They went up to it by stairs on the eastern side.
" Beyond this, and to the west of the altar of burnt-
offerings, was the temple properly so called, that is to
say, the sanctuary, the sanctum, .and the porch of
entrance. The porch was twenty cubits wide, and six
cubits deep. Its gate was fourteen cubits wide. The
sanctum was forty cubits wide, and twenty deep. There
stood the golden candlestick, the table of shewbread,
and the golden altar, upon which the incense was offered.
The sanctuary was a square of twenty cubits. There
was nothing in the sanctuary but the ark of the covenant,
which included the tables of the law. The high priest
entered here but once a year, and none but himself was
allowed to enter. Solomon had embellished the inside
of this holy place with palm trees in relief, and cherubim
of wood covered with plates of gold, and in general the
whole sanctuary was adorned, and as it were, overlaid
with plates of gold.
" Round the sanctum and sanctuary were three stories
of chambers, to the number of thirty -three. Ezekiel
makes them but four cubits wide ; but the first Book
of Kings, vi. 6, allows five cubits to the first story, six
to the second, and seven to the third.
" Since the consecration or dedication of the temple
by Solomon A. M. 3001, this edifice has suffered many
revolutions, which it is proper to take notice of here.
" Shishak, king of Egypt, having declared war with
Rehoboam, king of Judah, took Jerusalem, in A. M.
3033, B. C. 907 , before the vulgar era 971, and carried
away the treasures of the temple ; 1 Kings xiv. 2
Cliron. xii.
" In 3146, Jehoash, king of Judah, got silver together
to go upon the repairs of the temple ; they began to
work upon it in earnest, in 3148, B. C. 852, before the
vulgar era 856 ; 2 Kings xii. 4, 5, and 2 Chron. xxiv. 7,
8, 9, &c.
" Aliaz, king of Judah, having called to his assistance
Tilgath-Pilneser, king of Assyria, against the kings of
Israel and Damascus, who were at war with him, robbed
the temple of the Lord of its riches, to give away to this
strange king; 2 Cliron. xxviii. 21, 22, &c. A. M. 3264,
B. C. 736, before the vulgar era 740 ; ami not contented
with this, he profaned this holy place by setting up there
an altar like one he had seen at Damascus, and taking
away the brazen altar that Solomon had made : 2 Kings
xvi. 10, 11, 12, &c. He also took away the brazen sea
from off the brazen oxen that supported it, and the
brazen basins from their pedestals, and the king's throne
or oratory, which was of brass. These he took away
to prevent their being carried away by the king of
Assyria. Nor did he stop here, but carried his wicked-
ness so far as to sacrifice to strange gods, and to erect
profane altars in all the corners of the streets of Jeru-
salem ; 2 Chron. xxviii. 24, 25. He pillaged the temple
of the Lord, broke the sacred vessels, and, lastly, shut
up the house of God. This happened A. M. 3264, B. C.
736, before the vulgar era 740, to his death, which
happened in 3278, B. C. 722, before the vulgar era 726.
" Hezekiah, the son and successor of Ahaz, opened
again and repaired the gates of the temple which his
father had shut up and robbed of their ornaments ;
2 Chron. xxix. 3, 4, &c. A. M. 3278, B. C. 722, before
the vulgar era 726. He restored the worship of the
Lord and the sacrifices, and made new sacred vessels
in the place of those that Ahaz had destroyed. But in
the fourteenth year of his reign, (2 Kings xviii. 15, 16,)
A. M. 3291, B. C. 709, before the vulgar era 713,
Sennacherib, king of Assyria, coming with an army into
the land of Judah, Hezekiah was forced to take all the
riches of the temple, and even the plates of gold that he
himself had put upon the gates of the temple, and give
them to the king of Assyria. But when Sennacherib was
gone back into his own country, there is no doubt that
Hezekiah restored all these things to their first condition.
" Manasseh, son and successor of Hezekiah, profaned
the temple of the Lord, by setting up altars to all the
host of heaven, even in the courts of the house of the
Lord ; 2 Kings xxi. 4, 5, 6, 7 ; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 5, 6,7 ;
A. M. 3306, and the following years. He set up idols
there, and worshipped them. God delivered him into
the hands of the king of Babylon, who loaded him with
chains, and carried him away beyond the Euphrates ;
2 Chron. xxxiii. 11, 12, &c. ; A. M. 3328, B. C. 672,
before the vulgar era, 676. There he acknowledged and
repented of his sins ; and being sent back to his own
dominions, he redressed the profanations he had made
of the temple of the Lord, by taking away the idols,
destroying the profane altars, and restoring the altar of
burnt-offering, upon Avhich he offered his sacrifices.
" Josiah, king of Judah, laboured with all his might in
repairing the edifices of the temple, 2 Kings xxii. 4, 5,
6, &c.,2 Chron. xxxiv. 8—10 ; A. M. 3380, B. C. 620,
before the vulgar era 624, which had been either ne-
glected or demolished by the kings of Judah, his
predecessors. He also commanded the priests and
Levites to replace the ark of the Lord in the sanc-
tuary, in its appointed place ; and ordered that it should
not any more be removed from place to place, as it had
been during the reign of the wicked kings, his pre-
decessors, 2 Chron. xxxv. 3.
" Nebuchadnezzar took away a part of the sacred ves-
sels of the temple of the Lord, and placed them in the
temple of his god, at Babylon, under the reign of Jehoi-
akim, king of Judah ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6,7 ; A. M. 3398,
B. C. 602, before the vulgar era 606. He also carried
away others, under the reign of Jehoiachin, 2 Chron.
532
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V.
A. M. 2981. A. C. 1023; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4375. A. C. 1036. 2 SAM. xix— 1 KINGS viii.
xxxvi. 10; A. M. 3405, B. C. 595, before the vulgar era
599. Lastly, he took the city of Jerusalem, and entirely
destroyed the temple, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah,
A. M. 3416, B. C. 584, before the vulgar era 588 ; 2
Kings xxv. 1, 2, 3, &c, 2 Chron. xxxvi. IS, 19.
" The temple continued buried in its ruins for the
space of fifty-two years, till the first year of Cyrus at
Babylon, A. M. 3468, B. C. 532, before the vulgar era
536. Then Cyrus gave permission to the Jews to re-
turn to Jerusalem, and there to rebuild the temple of the
Lord, Ezra i. 1,2, 3, &c. The following year they laid
the foundation of the second temple ; but they had hardly
been at work upon it one year, when either Cyrus or his
officers, being gained over by the enemies of the Jews,
forbade them to go on with their work ; Ezra iv. 5 ;
A. M. 3470, B. C. 530, before the vulgar era 534. After
the death of Cyrus and Cambyses, they were again for-
bidden by the Magian, who reigned after Cambyses, and
whom the Scripture calls by the name of Artaxerxes ;
Ezra iv. 7, 17, 18, &c. ; A. M. 3483, B. C. 517, before
the vulgar era 521. Lastly, these prohibitions being
superseded under the reign of Darius, son of Hystaspes,
Ezra vi. 1, 14; Hag. i. 1, &c. ; A. M. 3485, B. C. 515,
before the vulgar era 519 ; the temple was finished and
dedicated four years after, A. M. 3489, B. C. 511, be-
fore the vulgar era 515, twenty years after the return
from the captivity.
" This temple was profaned by order of Antiochus
Epiphanes, A. M. 3837. The ordinary sacrifices were
discontinued therein, and the idol of Jupiter Olympus
was set up upon the altar. It continued in this condi-
tion for three years ; then Judas Maccabasus purified it,
and restored the sacrifice and worship of the Lord ;
1 Mac. iv. 36 ; A. M. 3840, B. C. 160, before the vulgar
era 164.
<; Herod the Great undertook to rebuild the whole
temple of Jerusalem anew, in the eighteenth year of his
reign, A. M. 3986.1 He began to lay the foundation of
it A. M. 3987, forty-six years before the first passover
of Jesus Christ, as the Jews observe to him, by saying,
* ' Forty and six years was this temple in building, and
wilt thou rear it up in three days ?' This is not saying
that Herod had employed six and forty years in building
it ; for Josephus assures us, that he finished it in nine
years and a half. 3 But after the time of this prince,
they all continued to make some new addition to it ; and
the same Josephus tells us that they went on working
upon it even to the beginning of the Jewish war. 4
" This temple, built by Herod, did not subsist more
than twenty-seven years, being destroyed A. M. 4073
A. D. 73, of the vulgar era 69. It was begun by Herod
in 3987, finished in 3996, burned and destroyed by the
Romans in 4073.
" This temple of Herod's was very different from that
of Solomon, and from that which was rebuilt by Zerub-
babel after the captivity. This is the description that
Josephus has left us of it, who himself had seen it :—
" The temple, properly so called, was built sixty cubits
high, and as many broad ; but there were two sides of
front, like two arms or shoulderings, which advanced
twenty cubits on each side, which gave in the whole front
an hundred cubits, as well as in height. The stones
made use of in this building were white and hard, twenty-
five cubits long, eight in height, and twelve in width. b
" The front of this magnificent building resembled that
of a royal palace. The two extremes of each face were
lower than the middle, which middle was so exalted that
those who were over against the temple, or that ap-
proached towards it at a distance, might see it though
they were many furlongs from it. The gates were almost
of the same height as the temple ; and on the top of the
gates were veils or tapestry of several colours, embel-
lished with purple flowers. On the two sides of the doors
were two pillars, the cornices of which were adorned
with the branches of a golden vine, which hung down
with their grapes and clusters, and were so well imitated,
that art did not at all yield to nature. Herod made very
large and very high galleries about the temple, which
were suitable to the magnificence of the rest of the build-
ing, and exceeded in beauty and sumptuousness all of
the kind that had been seen before.
" The temple was built upon a very irregular moun-
tain, and at first there was hardly place enough on the
top of it for the site of the temple and altar. The rest
of it was steep and sloping. 6 But when king Solomon
built it he raised a Avail towards the east, to support the
earth on that side ; and after this side was filled up, he
then built one of the porticos or galleries. At that time
this face only was cased with stone, but in succeeding
times, the people endeavouring to enlarge this space, and
tho top of the mountain being much extended, they broke
down the wall which was on the north side, and enclosed
another space, as large as that which the whole circum-
ference of the temple contained at first. So that, at last,
against all hope and expectation, this work was carried
so far that the whole mountain was surrounded by a
treble wall. But for the completing of this great work,
whole ages were no more than sufficient ; and all the
sacred treasures were applied to this use, that the devo-
tion of the people had brought to the temple from all
the provinces of the world. In some places these walls
were above 300 cubits high, and the stones used in these
walls were some forty cubits long. They were fastened
together by iron cramps and lead, to be able to resist the
injuries of time. The platform on which the temple was
built was a furlong square, or 120 paces." Thus far Cal-
met and Josephus.7
1 Joseph, Antiq. b. xv. r. 14.
' Joseph. Antiq. b. xv. c. 14.
* John ii. 20.
Joseph. A lit iq. b. xx. r. 8.
5 Joseph, de Bell. b. vi. p. 917.
Joseph, de Bell. b. vi. p. 915; Antiq. b xv. c. 14.
7 Clarke's Commentary.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK VI.
CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OK THINGS, FROM THE BUILDING OF SOLOMONS TEMPLE, TO THE BABYLONISH
CAPTIVITY, IN ALL ABOUT 400 YEARS,— ACCORDING TO DR HALES, 422 YEARS FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE
TEMPLE, AND OF COURSE 414 YEARS AND SIX MONTHS FROM ITS BEING FINISHED.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
The division of the history of God's chosen people, on
which we are now entering, extends nearly from the
close of David's reign to the Babylonish captivity, a
period of about four hundred and twenty -seven years.
The sacred books in which this history is contained, are
usually called " the first and second books of the
Kings ;" and in some versions, " the third and fourth
books of the Kings." It is evident, as Mr Scott remarks,
that they contain an abstract of the history, compiled
from much more copious records, which seem to have
been collected and preserved by contemporary prophets,1
and indeed, a considerable part of the transactions of
their own times, is recorded in connexion with the pro-
phecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. It is, how-
ever, uncertain by whom this compilation was made : but
if Ezra, as it is generally and probably supposed, com-
piled the books of Chronicles ; it is not likely that he
compiled these also ; as they form a distinct history of
the same times. If, therefore, they were arranged in
the present manner, principally by one sacred writer,
they who ascribe them to Jeremiah, seem to have adopted
the more probable opinion. Indeed, the second book
of the Kings and his prophecy end with the narrative of
the same events ; though perhaps both were added after
his death by another hand ; and it is not unlikely that
some other trivial alterations were made in the days of
Ezra, to render the narrative more perspicuous to the
Jews after the captivity.
They have, however, been constantly received, both
by Jews and Christians, as a part of the Sacred Canon,
the holy Scriptures ; and the events recorded are fre-
quently referred to in the New Testament.8 They con-
tain many prophecies; especially that of Josiah, who
was foretold by name, three hundred years before his
birth. After the death of David, the sacred historian
' 1 Kinirs xi. 41. xiv. 29. xv. 31. xxii. 39, 45. 2 Chron. ix.
29. xii. 15. xiii. 22. xx. 34.
1 Mat. i. 7—12. vi. 29. xii. 42. Luke iv. 25—27. Acts ii.
20. vii. 47—50. James v. 17, 18.
records the principal transactions of Solomon's long
and peaceful reign ; which, however, was covered with
a dark cloud toward the close ; and under his succes-
sor, the nation Avas divided into two distinct kingdoms
of Judah and Israel. The descendants of Solomon
reigned over that of Judah till the captivity, for about
three hundred and eighty-seven years : so that from the
accession of David, during a course of four hundred and
sixty-seven years, the throne was tilled by his descend-
ants, in lineal descent, except as the sons of Josiah
succeeded one another. During this long term of years
there was not a single revolution, or civil war ; and but
one short interruption, by Athaliah's usurpation. Per-
haps it would be difficult to find, in universal history,
any thing equal to this permanent internal order and
tranquillity. Above half the kings of Judah supported
true religion, and many of them were eminently pious
men ; and it is remarkable that their reigns were much
longer than those of the wicked princes.3
The kingdom of Israel continued about two hundred
and fifty-four years, till the Assyrian captivity. The
nineteen kings, of seven families, who, during this period,
reigned in succession, were all idolaters, and most of
them monsters of iniquity : yet the Lord by his prophets,
especially by Elijah and Elisha, preserved a consider-
able degree of true religion in the land, till the measure
of their national wickedness was full ; and then they
were finally dispersed among the Gentiles, except as a
remnant of them was incorporated among the Jews.
Connected with the peace and prosperity of Solomon's
reign, and the fame of his wisdom, a full account is
given of the temple having been built by him. God had
commanded Israel to offer all their sacrifices at one
place ; Shiloh had for some time been that place ; and
the ark had been removed to Zion, by David, in order
that a temple might there be built, which Solomon his
son accomplished. Now a large portion of the subse-
quent parts of the Old Testament relate to this temple ;
to the sins of the people in sacrificing elsewhere ; to
3 1 Kings ,\i. 12. xv. 10. xxii. 42. 2 Kings xv. 2, 33. xviii.
2. xxii. 1."
534
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M.3001. A. C. 1003 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
their profanation of the temple ; to the judgments of
God upon them for their crimes; especially to the
destruction of the temple by the Chaldeans ; and to the
rebuilding of it by Zerubbabel. These things so run
through all the subsequent history and prophecies, that
if Solomon did not build the temple by the express com-
mand of God, it must follow, that God punished the
nation with tremendous judgments for violating merely
human appointments. When the Samaritans preferred
Mount Gerizim, our Lord told the woman of Samaria,
that they " knew not what they worshipped, for salvation
was of the Jews :" and this declaration, with his own
constant attendance at the ordinances there administered,
sufficiently attest the divine inspiration of those re-
cords, in which alone it is expressly declared that
Solomon built the temple by the direction and appoint-
ment of God.
The temple was a type of Christ, — of his church, — and
of heaven. The tabernacle seemed rather to represent
the church in its moveable, changeable state, in this
world : but the temple, fixed to one place, appears to
have been intended to represent the church in heaven. —
This was the house in which Christ dwelt, till he assumed
human nature. Here was the place that God chose,
where his people offered up their sacrifices, till he came,
who by the sacrifice of himself finished transgression,
made an end of sin offering, made reconciliation for
iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness.
Here the messenger of the covenant often delivered his
heavenly doctrine ; and here his church was gathered by
the pouring out of his Spirit after his ascension : the
sound of the gospel went forth from hence over the
world.
It may also be observed, that the Jewish church was,
in the reign of Solomon, in a state of great external
prosperity. Israel was exceedingly multiplied, so that
they seemed to have become like the sand on the sea
shore. They were now in the peaceful possession of
the promised land, and of all the abundance, which,
through the divine blessing, it yielded to them. Their
king was a typical representation of Christ, glorious in
his apparel, exalted, triumphing, and reigning, in his
kingdom of peace. The happy state of the Jewish
church at that time, shadowed forth the condition of the
church in the latter day, when nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, nor learn war any more ; — at that blissful
period, when they shall not hurt nor destroy in all God's
holy mountain, because the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
There were considerable additions made to the canon
of Scripture by Solomon, who wrote the books of
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, probably near the close of
his reign. The Song of Songs, which was also written
by him, has always been considered as representing the
high and glorious relation which subsists between Christ
and his redeemed church.
The reader should remark the care which God exer-
cised in the course of this period, in upholding the true
religion. When the ten tribes had generally forsaken
the worship of God, he preserved the true religion in
the kingdom of Judah ; and when that people corrupted
themselves, as they often did, God still kept the lamp
of heavenly truth burning, and was often pleased, when
tilings seemed to come to an extremity, to grant blessed
4391. A. C. 1020. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
revivals of religion, by remarkable outpourings of his
Holy Spirit, particularly in Hezekiah and Josiah's time.
The preservation of the book of law in the time of the
great apostasy, during a considerable part of the long
reign of Manasseh, which lasted fifty-five yerrs, and
also in the reign of Amon his son, is a remarkable
instance of the care which God exercised over the in-
terests of true religion.
The intelligent reader will also observe, that amid
the apostasies and calamities by which this period was
characterized, the tribe of Judah, from which the Re-
deemer was to come, was preserved from ruin by the
special interposition of God. As instances of deliver-
ance by the arm of God, we need only mention their
preservation when Shishak king of Egypt came against
Judah with a great force ; when Jeroboam brought an
army of eight hundred thousand men against the mem-
bers of this tribe ; and when, again, in Asa's time,
Zerah the Ethiopian came against him with a yet larger
army of a thousand thousand and three hundred chariots-
1 ' And Asa cried unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord,
it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or
with them that have no power.' His prayer was heard ;
and God himself gave him the victory over this mighty
host. When the children of Moab, and the children of
Amon, and the inhabitants of mount Seir, combined to-
gether against Judah with a mighty army, a force greatly
superior to any that Jehoshaphat could raise, God as-
sured Jehoshaphat and his people by one of the prophets,
that they need not be afraid, for that he himself, without
their instrumentality, would destroy their armies. But
it is unnecessary to allude to more examples of this
kind. It was the purpose of God, a purpose often re-
ferred to by the prophets, that the Messiah should spring
from the tribe of Judah, and the family of David, and
that therefore this tribe and family should be preserved
till that illustrious descendant appeared, to whom should
be given the throne of his father David, and of whose
kingdom there shall be no end.
Nor should we fail to notice the goodness of God to
his church and people, in raising up eminent prophets,
who committed their prophecies to writing, for the in-
struction and edification of the church in all ages. From
the time of Samuel there had been a constant succession
of prophets in Israel, who had added to the canon of
Scripture by their historical writings. But now in the
days of Uzziah, God raised up great prophets, who added
to the canon not only by their historical compositions,
but by books of their prophecies. Of these, we need
only mention Isaiah, Amos, Jonah, Micah, and Nahum.
They were divinely qualified to exercise the prophetical
office for the purpose of bearing testimony to the great
Redeemer : for the testimony of Jesus and the spirit of
prophecy are the same. 2 Accordingly, we find, that
the main things insisted on by the prophets are Christ,
his redemption, the establishment of his kingdom among
men, and the glories of the latter day. In what exalted
strains do they allude to these heavenly themes. How
plainly and fully does Isaiah, the evangelical prophet,
describe the manner and circumstances, the nature and
end, of the sufferings and sacrifice of Christ ! 3 In what
chapter of the New Testament are these more fully set forth
2 Chron. xiv. 9—11.
* Rev. xix. 10.
8 Is. lili.
Skct. I.J
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
535
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO H.VLKS. A. If. 43UI. A. C. 1020. I KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
This, then, forms an important era in the history of
the discovery of human redemption. The way of salva-
tion for fallen man was more clear than at any former
period by the great increase of gospel light communi-
cated by inspired prophets : ' Of which salvation the
prophets inquired and searched diligently, who pro-
phesied of the grace that should come unto you: search-
ing what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ
which was in them did signify, when it testified before-
hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should
follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto
themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which
are now reported unto you by them that have preached
the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down
from heaven.' *
SECT. I.
CHAP. I. — From the finishing of the temple, to the
reign of Jehoshaphat.
THE HISTORY.
When Solomon had finished the temple, which was in
the eleventh year of his reign, and in the eighth month
of that year, a even when all the solemn feasts were over,
he thought it advisable to defer the dedication of it
until the next year, which was a year of jubilee, and
determined to have it done some days before the * feast
of tabernacles. To this purpose, he sent all the elders
of Israel, the princes of the tribes, and the heads of the
families, notice to repair to Jerusalem at the time ap-
pointed ; when accordingly, all being met together, the
priests and Levites carried into the temple, first, all the
presents that David had made to it : then set up, in their
several places, the vessels and ornaments appointed for
the service of the altar, and the sanctuary ; and lastly,
1 I Peter i. 10—13.
a Solomon deferred the dedication of the temple to the follow-
ing year after it was finished, because that year, according to
Archbishop Usher, was a jubilee. " This," he observes, " was
the ninth jubilee, opening the fourth millenary of the world, or
A. M. 3001, wherein Solomon, with great magnificence, cele-
brated the dedication of the temple seven days, and the least of
tabernacles other seven days; the celebration of the eighth day
of tabernacles being finished, upon the twenty-third day of the
seventh month, the people were dismissed, every man to his
home. The eighth day of the seventh month, namely, the
thirtieth of our October, being Friday, was the first of the seven
days of dedication ; on the tenth day, Saturday November 1, was
the feast of expiation or atonement held; whereon, according to
the Levitical laws, the jubilee was proclaimed by sound of trum-
pet. The fifteenth day, Friday November 6, was the commence-
ment of the feast of tabernacles ; the twenty-second, Novem-
ber 13, being also Friday, was the termination of the feast of
tabernacles, which was always very solemnly kept, (2 Chron.
vii. 9; Lev. xxiii. 36; John vii. 37;) and the day following,
November 14, being our Saturday, when the Sabbath was ended,
the people returned home. — Usher's Annals. — Ed.
b This feast was appointed in commemoration of the children
of Israel's dwelling in booths, whilst they were in the wilderness,
and of the tabernacle, which at that time was built, where God
promised to meet them, to dwell among them, and to sanctify
the place with his glory ; and might therefore be well reckoned
a very proper season for the dedication of the temple, which was
to succeed in the tabernacle's place. — Bedford's Scripture Chro-
nology, b. 6. c. 2.
brought the c ark of the covenant, together with the
d tabernacle of the congregation, into its new habitation
with great solemnity ; the king and elders of the people
walking before, while others of the priests offered an e
infinite number of sacrifices, in all the places through
which the ark passed.
c The sacred history tells us, that ' in this ark there was no-
thing save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at
Horeb,' (1 Kings viii. 9.) and yet the author to the Hebrews
affirms, ' that in this ark was the golden pot that had manna, and
Aaron's rod that budded, as well as the tables of the covenant,'
(Heb. ix. 4.) Now, to reconcile this, some imagine, that before
the ark had any fixed and settled place, which is the time the
apostle refers to, all these things were included in it, though it
was chiefly intended for nothing but the tables of the covenant;
but that, when it was placed in the temple, nothing was left in
it but these two tables ; all the other things were deposited in the
treasury of the temple, where the book of the law (as we read in
2 Chron. xxxiv. 14.) was found in the days of king Josias.
Others however pretend, that in the time of the apostle, that is,
towards the end of the Jewish commonwealth, Aaron's rod, and
the pot of manna were really kept in the ark, though, in the days
of Solomon, they were not. But tins answer would be more
solid and satisfactory, if he knew for certain, that, in the time of
the apostle, the ark of the covenant was really in the sanctuary
of the temple which Herod built; whereas Josephus (On the
Jewish War, b. C. c. 6.) tells us expressly, that, when the Ro-
mans destroyed the temple, there was nothing found in the holy
of holies. — Calmet's Commentary.
d But the question is, what tabernacle, whether that which
Moses made, and was then at Gibeon, (2 Chron. i. 3.) or that
which was made by David, and was then at Jerusalem? To end
this dispute, some have imagined, that both these tabernacles
were at this time carried into the temple, and laid up there,
that all danger of superstition and idolatry might thereby be
avoided, and that no worship might be performed anywhere,
but only at the house which was dedicated to God's service.
But it is observed by others, that the convenience which David
made for the reception of the ark, was never called the ' taberna-
cle of the covenant ;' it was no more than a plain tent, set up in
some large room of the royal palace, until a more proper recepta-
cle could be provided for it; but the tabernacle that was at Gibeon
was the same that sojourned so long in the wilderness. The tent
was the same, the curtains the same, and the altar the same that
was made by Moses; or, at least, if there was any alteration in
it, as things of this nature could hardly subsist so very long with-
out some repair, the reparation was always made according to the
original model, and with as little deviation as possible. It is not
to be doubted, then, but that the Mosaic tabernacle is the taber-
nacle here intended, which for the prevention of schism, and to
make the temple the centre of devotion, was now taken down, and
reposited in the treasury, or storehouse, where it continued un-
til the time that Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldeans, when
Jeremiah, as Josephus informs us, [Jewish Antiq. b. 8. c. 2.)
was admonished by God, to take it and the ark, and the altar of
incense, and hide them in some secret place, from whence it is
doubted, whether they have ever yet been removed, for fear of
profanation.— Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
e The number of sacrifices which, upon this occasion, are said
to be offered, was ' two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred
and twenty thousand sheep,' (1 Kings viii. 03.) But we must not
suppose, that these were offered all on one day, much less on one
altar. The continuance of this meeting was for fourteen days,
seven in the feast of tabernacles, and seven in that of the dedica-
tion ; and because the brazen altar, before the door of the temple,
was not sufficient to receive all these sacrifices, Solomon, by a
special license from God, ordered other altars to be erected in the
court of the priests, and perhaps in other places, which were to
serve only during this present solemnity, when such a vast num-
ber of sacrifices were to be oflered : for at other times no other
altar was allowed but this brazen one, which Moses had made.
It is no bad observation, however, of Josephus, (b. 8. c. 2.) that,
during the oblation of so many sacrifices, the Levites took care
to ' perfume the air with the fragrancy of incense, and sweet
odours, to such a degree, that the people were sensible of it at a
distance;' otherwise the burning of so many beasts at one time,
must have occasioned an offensive smell. — Patrick's Comment.
536
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
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When the ark was placed in the sanctuary, and the
priests and Levites, in their turns, were celebrating- the
praises of God, the temple was filled with a a miraculous
cloud, insomuch that the priests could not continue to
officiate. This Solomon observing', took occasion from
thence to infer, that the Lord had taken possession of
the place ; and having for some time fallen prostrate *
with his face to the ground, he raised himself up, and
turning- towards the sanctuary, c addressed his prayer to
God, and ' beseeched him graciously to accept of the
house which he had built for his sake, to bless and sanc-
tify it ; and to hear the prayers of all, whether Jews or
Gentiles, who, upon any occasion, either of public or
private calamity, might direct their supplications to him
d from that holy place. He beseeched him likewise to
fulfil the promise which he had been pleased to make to
his father David, in favour of his family, and the kings
his successors ;' and having thus finished his prayer, he
turned to the people, and after he had blessed them, gave
them a strict charge to be sincere in their duty towards
God, to walk in his statutes, and observe his laws.
While Solomon was thus addressing his prayers to
God, and his exhortations to the people, a victim was
laid upon the altar, and God, to testify his acceptance
of what was doing, sent immediately a fire from heaven,
which consumed it, and all the other sacrifices that were
about it ; which, when the people, who were witnesses of
the miracle, perceived, they fell upon their faces, and
worshipped the God of Israel : and it was, very probably,
on the e night following, that he appeared to Solomon
again in a dream, and /signified to him, 'that he had
a When Moses had finished the tabernacle according to the
pattern which God had showed him, and set it all up, it is said,
that ' a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of
the Lord filled the tabernacle, so that Moses was not able to enter
into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon,
and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle,' (Exod. xl. 34,
35.) And therefore, when the temple was finished, and the ark
brought into the sanctuary, God gave the like indication of his
presence, and residence there. Hereby he testified his accep-
tance of the building, and furnishing the temple, as a service done
to his name ; and hereby he declared, that as the glory of the
ark, that sacred symbol of his presence, had been long eclipsed
by its frequent removes, and mean habitations; so now his plea-
sure was, that it should be looked upon with the same esteem
and veneration as when Moses conducted it into the tabernacle.
For this cloud, we must know, was not a heavy, thick, opaque
body, such as is engendered in the air, and arises from vapours
and exhalations, but a cloud that was dark and luminous at the
same time, whose darkness was awful and majestic, and whose
internal part was blight and refulgent, darting its rays upon occa-
sion, and exhibiting its light through its obscurity; so that,
according to its different phasis, or position, it became to the
Israelites a pillar of a cloud by day, to screen them from the heat,
and at night a pillar of fire to give them light, (Exod. xiii. 21.)
Whatever it was that constituted this strange appearance, it is
certain this mixture of light and darkness was looked upon as a
symbol of the divine presence ; for so the Scripture has informed
us, that he who dwelleth in light that is inaccessible, ' made
darkness his secret place, his pavilion round about him, with
dark water, and thick clouds to cover him, (Ps. xviii. 11.)
Caimvt's Commentary.
b Although it is not improbable that Solomon may have pros-
trated himself on the appearance of the cloud of glory that filled
the temple, the text makes no mention of his having done so, but
immediately after this divine manifestation, we are told that he
spake and blessed the people. It may seem unnecessary to take
notice of so trifling a matter, but to mix up with the sacred nar-
rative assertions which are founded on mere conjecture we con-
sider neither safe nor warrantable. — Ed.
c The prayer which Josephus puts into Solomon's mouth upon
this occasion, is to this effect: — " O Lord, thou that inha-
bitcst eternity, and hast raised out of nothing the mighty fabric
of this universe, the heavens, the air, the earth, aiul the sea-
thou that fillest the whole, and every thing that is in it, and art
thyself unbounded, and incomprehensible ; look down graciously
U| on thy servants, that have presumed to erect a temple here to
the honour of thy great name. Lord, hear our prayers, aud re-
ceive our sacrifices. Thou art everywhere, vouchsafe also to be
With us. Thou that seest and hearest all things, look down from
thy throne in heaven, and give ear to our supplications in this
place. Thou that never failest to assist those that call upon thee
day and night, and love and serve thee as they ought to do, have
mercy upon us." There is another prayer, in the same historian,
addressed to God on the same occasion, wherein Solomon blesses'
him for the exaltation of his family, and implores the continuance
of his goodness and peculiar presence in the temple, well worth
the reader's perusal, though too long to be inserted here.
d It is the same thing, no doubt, to God, wherever we pray,
so long as we pray with a pious mind and a devout heart, and
make the subject of our prayers such good things as he has per-
mitted us to ask ; but it was not consistent with the preservation
of the Jewish state and religion that he should be publicly wor-
shipped in every place. For since the Jews were on every side
surrounded with idolaters, led away with divers superstitions, but
ignorant all of the true God, it was highly necessary, that in all
divine matters, there should be a strict union between them all
both in heart and voice, and consequently, that they should all
meet together in one place to worship God, lest they should run
into parties, and fall into idolatry, as it happened when the king-
dom became divided into two. And therefore, though Solomon,
knew very well that in every place, God was ready to hear the
prayers of every devout supplicant, yet, for the preservation of
peace and unity, he was minded to give the people a notion, that
God would be found more exorable to the prayers which were of-
fered in the temple of Jerusalem, and thereby excite them to a
frequentation of that, rather than any other place. — Le Clerc's
Commentary in locum.
e It is thus that we have placed the time of God's second
appearance to Solomon; but some are of opinion, that it did not
happen till two and twenty years after God's first appearance,
and after that Solomon had accomplished all his buildings ; to
which the connexion of the discourse seems to give some count-
enance ; ' and it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the
building of the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all
that he was pleased to do, that the Lord appeared to him a
second time,' (1 Kings ix. 1, 2.) It seems a little strange,
however, that God should delay answering this prince's prayer
for thirteen years together, and then, when he appeared to him,
tell him, ' I have heard thy prayer, and the supplication that
thou hast made before me, and I have hallowed this house which
thou hast built.' Ver. 3. And therefore to solve this difficulty,
it is reasonable to think, that the division of this 9th chapter is
wrong; that the first verse of it should be annexed to the con-
clusion of the preceding chapter, and so terminate the account
of what Solomon had done; and that the next chapter should
begin with the second verse, where the historian enters upon
a fresh subject, namely, the answer that God returned to Solo-
mon's prayer, which he continues to the tenth verse, and pre-
sents us with it all at once, that he might not break the thread
of his narration. — Calmefs Commentary on 1 Kings ix. 2.
f Josephus has made a very handsome comment upon the
answer which God made Solomon in his dream. The voice told
him farther, says he, ' that in case of such an apostasy, as he had
before mentioned, his new-erected fabric should, by divine pei-
mission,come to be sacked, and burned by the hands of barbarians,
and Jerusalem itself laid in rubbish and ashes by a merciless
enemy ; insomuch that people should stand amazed at the very
report of so incredible a misery and distress, and be wondering
one to another, how it could come to pass, that a nation which
was but yesterday the envy of mankind for riches, external glory,
and renown, should now, all on a sudden, be sunk and lost to
the last degree of wretchedness and contempt, and reduced to
this despicable state too by the same hand that raised them. To
which questions their own guilty consciences shall make this
answer: "We have forsaken our God ; we have abandoned the
religion of our forefathers, and of our country, and all this is
justly befallen us for our sins." — Jewish Antiq. b. 8. c. 2.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
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heard his prayer ; did accept of the temple which he had
built for him ; and would not fail to listen to the petitions
that proceeded from thence ; that if he persevered in
his obedience to him, as his father David had done, he
would establish his throne, and perpetuate a race of
successors in his family ; but that, if either he, or his
children prevaricated in this matter, he would cut them
oft", overturn his kingdom, and destroy the temple.'
The feast of the dedication, in conjunction with that
of tabernacles, lasted for fourteen days ; and when all
things were thus performed with the greatest order and
solemnity, on the morrow the king dismissed the people,
a who returned to their respective homes with glad and
joyful hearts.
Solomon, it must be observed, had a singular taste
for building ; therefore, after he had finished and con-
secrated the temple, he undertook a palace for himself,*
which had all the magnificence that can be imagined,
another for his Egyptian queen, and a third, that was
called c ' the house of the forest of Lebanon,' where he
a In I Kings viii. 66, we are told that ' ou the eighth day he
seat the people away;' that is, the day after the latter feast of ta-
bernacles, which lasted seven days. It is said, (2 Chron. vii.
10,) that, ' on the three and twentieth day he sent the people
away,' which Houbigant thinks cannot be reconciled. He is of
opinion, that something has been omitted here which should have
been supplied from the parallel place ; but it is probable that these
fourteen days of rejoicing were not kept without intermission, par-
ticularly as the day of expiation, or atonement, was celebrated on
the tenth of 1'isri, or Ethanim. (See Lev. xxiii. 27; and
Calendar of the Jews, in Prolegom. p. 66.) By admitting
therefore a sufficient interval of time to complete the number of
days, these two texts may be satisfactorily reconciled. — Hewlett's
Commentates. — Ed.
b The description of this palace, which we may gather from
Josephus, Lamy, and others, that have treated of Solomon's
buildings, is in this manner related: — 'Upon several rows of
pillars, there was erected a spacious pile of building, in the
nature of a common hall, for the hearing of causes. It was an
hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth, and in depth thirty,
supported by fifteen square columns, covered with Corinthian
work iu cedar, and fortified with double doors, curiously wrought,
that served both for the security and ornament of the place. In
the middle of this hall was another edifice of thirty cubits square,
and underset with strong pillars, wherein was placed a throne of
state, on which the king himself used to sit personally in judg-
ment. On the right hand of this court of justice stood the king's
own palace, and, on the left, that which he built for Pharaoh's
daughter, both fitted up with cedar, and built with huge stones
oi' toll cubits square, which were partly plain, and partly overlaid
with the most precious marble. — The rooms were hung with
rich hangings, and beautified with images, and sculptures of all
kinds, so exquisitely finished, that they seemed to be alive, and
in motion. It would be an endless work, says Josephus, to give
a particular survey of this mighty mass of building: so many
courts and other contrivances, such a variety of chambers and
offices, great and little, long and large galleries, vast rooms of
state, and others for feasting and entertainment, set out as richly
as could be, with costly furniture, and gildings; besides, that all
the services for the king's table were of pure gold. In a word,
the whole house was in a manner made up from top to bottom,
of white marble, cedar, gold, and silver, with precious stones,
here and there iutermingled upon the walls and ceilings, after
the manner of the adorning of the temple.' — Jewish Antiu. b. 8.
c. 2.
o Some commentators are of opinion, that this house was the
same with the palace which Solomon built in Jerusalem, and that
it had its name from the tall pillars that supported it, which
looked like the cedars in the forest of Lebanon ; but the contrary
is manifest, because the holy Scripture speaks of it as a distinct
building, though perhaps it might not be far distant from the
other on some cool shady mountain, which made it resemble
Mount Lebanon. For it is an idle fancy to think, that this house
chiefly chose to reside. These were the works of thirteen
years : and as Hiram, king of Tyre, was very kind in
supplying him with men, money, and materials, to carry
on these, and many more stately structures, Solomon,
to express his gratitude, or to clear oft' the debt which
he had contracted with him, d offered him twenty cities
in the land of Galilee, adjoining to his own country.
But as these places e did not suit his convenience, he re-
fused to accept of them ; and therefore Solomon, having
made him, no doubt, some other recompense more to
was really built on Lebanon, since we read of Solomon's having
his throne, (1 Kings vii. 7.) and the golden shields, that he made,
placed in it, (1 Kings x. 17.) which he scarce would have removed
to the very extremity of his kingdom: and therefore we may
conclude, as indeed it appears from 1 Kings vii. 2., that this
house was near Jerusalem, and called by the name of the • Forest
of Lebanon,' just as many pleasant and delightful places in that
country were called Carmel, because it was in a lofty place like
Lebanon, and the trees which grew upon it made it very shady
and cool, and consequently proper for Solomon to dwell there in
summer, as he did in his palace in Jerusalem in winter. —
Patrick and Calmet's Commentary on 1 Kings vii. 2.
d It is an express injunction which God gives the Israelites,
that the land wherein the people had a right by divine lot, and
himself a right, as being the sole proprietor thereof, was not to
be sold or alienated for ever, (Lev. xxv. 23.) How thin could
Solomon, without violatiug this law, pretend to give Hiram
twenty cities in the land of Galilee? Now to this some have
replied, that Solomou did not give Hiram a property and perpe-
tual right to those cities, but only assigned him the possession of
them for a time, until the debt which he had contracted for the
several supplies he had from him, while he was building the
temple, was satisfied. Others think that upon supposition that
these cities were inhabited by Israelites, Solomon did not give
Hiram, as indeed he could not, their particular possessions, but
only his own royalties over them, which he might justly do, and
all the profits he received from them, which, according to the
taxes then imposed, (1 Kings xii. 4.) were not inconsiderable.
But there is no reason for these far fetched solutions, when the
Scripture expressly tells us, that these cities were not in the
territories of Israel, nor inhabited at that time by the Israelites,
(2 Chron. viii. 2.) There were indeed some of them conquered
by the king of Egypt, who gave them to Solomon as a portion
with his daughter, and others by Solomon himself, who, as
Selden observes, (On the Law of Nature and Nations, b. 6. c.
16,) had " a right to dispose of those lands which he had con-
quered in voluntary war, without the consent of the senate."
And this may be one reason why he gave these, rather than
other cities, because these were certainly in his own power to
give, when others perhaps were not. A learned author upon
this subject, has given a quite different turn to the sense of the
passage. For his opinion is, that Hiram did not return these
cities, because he thought them not good enough, but because
he was unwilling to receive so large a remuneration for the few
good offices he had done Solomon, and was minded rather that
his favouis of this kind should be all gratuitous. He therefore
makes the word Caiul, which is the name that Hiram gives to
the country where these cities stood, a title of respect, and not
of contempt; for he derives it from the Hebrew Chebes, which
signifies a bond or chain, intimating that these two neighbouring
kings had mutually bound themselves in a bond of friendship,
Solomon by giving, and Hiram by returning the cities now
under consideration. This is very pretty: but it is cany ing the
point of generosity in the king ot Tyre a little too high, in n y
opinion, considering his acceptance of, if not express stipulation
for, such a quantity of corn and oil, in lieu of the timber whicl.
he sent Solomon, (1 Kings v. 10, 11.) — Patrick's and Le Clerc's
Commentaries; and Poole's Annotations.
e The reason is, because the Tyrians being very commodi-
ously situated for that purpose, were in a manner, wholly ad-
dicted to merchandise: aud therefore would not remove from the
sea coasts, to live in a soil which was fat and deep, and conse-
quently required a great deal of labour to cultivate it, which «as
a business that they were very little accustomed to. — Bedford i
Scripture Ci.ronology, b. 6. c. 2.
3 Y
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his satisfaction, took and repaired these cities; and
having built store cities likewise in the country, he sent
colonies of his own subjects to inhabit them, that, they
might be a curb and restraint on the Syrians oi Zobah,
who had formerly been conquered by David, and, upon
their revolt, but lately reduced by Solomon.
To conclude the account of Solomon's public build-
ings. He built the walls of Jerusalem, and a senate-
house in the same city, called Millo. He repaired and
fortified Hazor, Megiddo,thetwo Beth-Horons, Baalah,
« Tadmor in the wilderness of Syria, and Gezer, which
a Tadmor, which, by the Greeks, is called Palmyra, is situated
in the wilderness of Syria, upon the borders of Arabia Deserta,
inclining towards the Euphrates. Josephus places it two days'
journey from the Upper Syria, one day's journey from the Euph-
rates, and six days' journey from Babylon. And the reason he
gives why Solomon was inclined to build a city in this place,
was, because in all the country round about, there was no such
thing as a well or fountain, but in this spot only, to be found. If
we may guess by the ruins, which later travellers give us the
description of, this city was certainly one of the finest and most
magnificent in the east, and it is somewhat surprising, that his-
tory should give us no account, either when or by whom it was
reduced to the sad condition in which it lies at this day. But
the true reason for his building this town in so desolate a place,
was the commodiousness of its situation, to cut off all commerce
between the Syrians and Mesopotamians, and to prevent their
caballing and conspiring together against him, as they had done
against his father David. — Le Clercs Commentary. [It is proba-
ble that Tadmor was originally a watering station between Syria
and Mesopotamia, with perhaps some indifferent accommoda-
tion suited to the mode of travelling in those times. The mere
circumstance of wholesome water being found on any spot in such
a country, was sufficient to give it importance. It lay in the
direct line of communication for the Indian trade, by way of the
Euphrates and Persian Gulf, and must have been an important
station, not only for rest and refreshment, but as a point of ex-
change with the Armenian merchants, who would meet the
Indian convoy here with their own merchandise, as the nearest
point to them, as they thus carry on a direct traffic, independent
of the great merchants of Tyre and Sidon. It is no wonder there-
fore, that the efforts of Solomon should be directed to obtain pos-
session of a place from whence so great a profit might be drawn,
either by a tax on the articles of trade, or by turning a portion of
it, which would otherwise have gone to the ports of Phoenicia,
into those of his own dominions. To strengthen this design he
built Tadmor; that is, he converted it from a mere caravansera
to a proud city; furnished it with every necessary and conveni-
ence as a place of trade; and made it one of the greatest
of the many emporia of eastern commerce: advantages which
it enjoyed, and under which it continued to flourish, for more
than a thousand years, as may be gathered from the mention
made of its strength and prosperity at the time of the Parthian
wars.] — Hansford's Scripture Gazetteer. — Ed. The original
name was preserved till the time of Alexander, who extended his
conquests to this city, which then exchanged Tadmor for the
title of Palmyra. It submitted to the Romans about the year
130, and continued in alliance with them during a period of 150
years. When the Saracens triumphed in the east, they acquired
possession of this city, and restored its ancient name of Tadmor.
Of the time of its ruin there is no authentic record ; but it is
thought, with some probability, that its destruction occurred dur-
ing the period in which it was occupied by the Saracens. Of its
present appearance Messrs Wood and Dawkins, who visited it in
1751, thus speak: — " It is scarcely possible to imagine any thing
more striking than this view. So great a number of Corinthian
pillars, mixed with so little wall or solid building, afforded a most
romantic variety of prospect." Captain Mangles, who travelled
more recently, observes, " On opening upon the ruins of Palmyra,
as seen from the valley of the tombs, we were much struck with
the picturesque effect of the whole, presenting the most imposing
sight of the kind we had ever seen." But on a minuter inspec-
tion, the ruins of this once mighty city do not appear so interest-
ing as at a distance. Volney observes, "In the space covered
by these ruins, we sometimes find a palace of which nothing re-
mains but the court and walls; sometimes a temple, whose
the king of Egypt took from the Canaanites, and gave
it in dower with his daughter. He fortified all the
cities which he made his magazines for corn, wine, and
oil, and those where his chariots and horses were kept.
He subdued all the Hittites, and Hivites, and Amorites,
and Perizzites, that anywhere remained in the land of
Israel, and laid on them all the drudgery, and servile
labour. But * as for his own subjects, he appointed
them either to be surveyors of his works, or guards to
his person, or commanders in the army, or traders and
merchants, that so he might make his nation as famous,
and as rich and flourishing, as it was possible to be
effected by human policy.
But it was not only a multitude of hands, but a large
supply of wealth likewise, that was necessary to carry
on so many expensive buildings ; and therefore Solomon
took care to cultivate the trade to Ophir, which his fa-
ther had begun from Elam and c Ezion-Geber, two ports
in the Red sea, whether himself went in person to in-
spect the building of the ships, and to provide them with
able and experienced seamen, which his good friend and
ally Hiram was never backward to furnish him with. So
that by this means his subjects, who soon attained to the
art of navigation, were enabled to make several ad-
vantageous voyages ; and particularly in one fleet,
peristile is half thrown down ; and now a portico, a gallery, a
triumphal arch. If from this striking scene we cast our eyes
upon the ground, another almost as varied presents itself. On
which side soever we look, the earth is strewed with vast stones
half buried, with broken entablatures, mutilated friezes, disfigur-
ed reliefs, effaced sculptures, violated tombs, and altars defiled by
the dust." It is situated under a ridge of barren hills to the
west, and its other sides are open to the desert. The city was ori-
ginally about ten miles in circumference ; but such have been the
destructions effected by time, that the boundaries are with diffi-
culty traced and determined. In the Modern Traveller, there
is a very excellent description of the present aspect of this ruined
city, by Mr Josiah Conder. — Calmet's Dictionary in locum.
b History indeed takes notice of the same temper in Sesostiis,
king of Egypt, who, upon his return home from his several ex-
peditions, took it into his head to build temples in all the cities of
Egypt, but would sutler no Egyptian to do any servile work
therein. All the work of this nature was performed by the cap-
tives that he brought with him from the wars ; and therefore, to
perpetuate the remembrance of his kindness to his subjects, as
well as remove some possible odium from himself, upon every
temple he ordered this inscription to be set up, " No native was
ever a labourer here." — Diodorus Bibliot. b. 1.
c Josephus will needs have it, that Ezion-Geber is the same
with Berenice, which lies indeed upon the Red sea, but then it
is upou the western or African shore thereof; whereas the Scrip-
ture is positive, that it was a port of Idumsea, or Arabia Deserta,
situate upon the gulf of Elam, which is on the opposite shore.
Elam, or Eloth, or Elath, for it was called by all these names,
was situate upon the same, and might possibly have its name
from thence. When David conquered Edom, or Idumsea, he
made himself master of this port, (2 Sam. viii. 14.) His son,
we see, built ships here, and sent them from hence to Ophir for
gold, (2 Chron. viii. 17, 18.) It continued in the possession of
the Israelites about an hundred and fifty years, till, in the time
of Joram, the Edomites recovered it, (2 Kings viii. 20.) but it
was again taken from them by Azariah, and by him left to his
son, (2 Kings xiv. 22.) His grandson Ahaz however lost it
again to the king of Syria, (2 Kings xvi. 6.) and the Syrians had
it in their hands a long while, till, after many changes under the
Ptolemies, and the Seleucida;, it came at length into the posses-
sion of the Romans. It was formerly a small town, with fruitful
fields about it, but now there is nothing left but a tower, which
serves as an habitation for the governor, who is subject to the
governor of Grand Cairo, and no signs of fruitfulness to be seen
in any parts adjoining to it. — Patrick's Commentary, and CaU
mefs Dictionary, under the word Elam.
Sect. I.
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
539
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M.
° brought him home no less than b four hundred and
twenty talents of gold, with many other commodities,
and curiosities of great value. c In short, Solomon was
one of the richest, and most magnificent princes, that
was then on the face of the earth. In his time, silver
was no more regarded than stones in the street: his
annual revenues were six hundred and sixty-six talents
of gold, besides the tributes he received from the kings
and nations that were in subjection to him ; the subsidies
which his subjects the Israelites paid ; and the sums aris-
ing from the merchants for his customs. The bucklers
of his guards were of gold ; the d ivory throne, whereon
he sat, was overlaid with it ; and all the utensils of his
a As groat a king as Solomon was, we find he turned mer-
chant, and yet the imperial laws forbid noblemen to exercise
trade and commerce, as a thing below them ; and much less then
(as Bodinus de Republica, b. 6. c. 2.) does it become a king. But
we must not measure antiquity by our own times: what might
be then commendable may now have a different appearance. But
the same author is very right in one concession that he makes,
namely, that though he would not have kings now to be merchants
yet, if he might have his choice, "I had rather a prince should
be a merchant," says he, " than a tyrant, and that noblemen
should rather trade than oppress, and make a prey of their tenants.
— Patrick's Commentary.
b In 2 Chron. viii. 18, the number of talents brought home to
Solomon, are said to be four hundred and fifty: but this is a mat-
ter that is easily resolved, if we will but suppose, that the
charges of the voyage to and fro cost thirty talents; or that
Solomon gave Hiram's servants, for conducting his fleet, thirty
talents ; or that in refining the whole mass of gold, the waste might
be thirty talents ; so that, though Solomon's fleet brought him
home four hundred and fifty talents, yet by one or more of these
deductions, there came clear to his coffers no more than four
hundred and twenty. — Patrick's Commentary.
c 1 Kings x. 22. Ellis, in Cook's last voyage, speaking of the
people of Otaheite, says, " They expressed great surprise at the
Spaniards, who had lately made them a visit, because they had
not red feathers as well as the English, which'they had brought
with them in great plenty from the Friendly Isles, for they are
with these people the summum bonum and extent of all their
wishes." (Vol. i. p. 129.) As these islands border so closely
upon Asia, and have among their manners and customs many
which bear a resemblance to those of the Asiatics, may not these
people's high esteem for red feathers throw some light upon this
passage, where we find peacocks ranked amongst the valuable
commodities imported by Solomon. — Ed.
d We never read of ivory till about Solomon's days, who per-
haps brought elephants out of India, or at least took care to have
a great deal of ivory imported from thence ; for, in after ages, we
read of ivory beds, and ivory palaces, &c. Cabinets and ward-
robes were ornamented with ivory, by what is called marquety ;
(Ps. xlv. 8,) these were named 'houses of ivory;' probably be-
cause made in the form of a house or palace; as the silver naoi
of Diana, mentioned Acts xix. 24, were in the form of her tem-
ple at Epliesus; and as we have now ivory models of the
Chinese pagodas or temples. At this time, however, ivory was
every whit as precious as gold, and therefore we must not
suppose, that this throne of Solomon's was entirely overlaid with
gold, for then it might as well be made of wood, but only
in particular places, that so the mixture of gold and ivory,
which gave a lustre to each other, might make the throne look
more beautiful. The like to this, the text says, ' there was not
made in any kingdom,' (1 Kings x. 20.) and perhaps it was so
in those days ; but, in after ages, we read, that the throne of the
Parthian kings was of gold, encompassed with four golden pillars,
beset with precious stones ; and that the Persian kings sat in
judgment under a golden vine, and other trees of gold, the
bunches of whose grapes were made of several sorts of precious
stones. — Patrick's Commentary. To this article may be xery
properly annexed the following account of the famous peacock
throne of the great Mogul: — "The great Mogul has seven
thrones, some set all over witii diamonds; others w'tli rubies,
emeralds, and pearls. But the largest throne is erected in
4391. A. C. 1020. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
palaces, and vessels of his table, which * for magnifi-
cence, and sumptuousness of provision, exceeded all
that was ever known before, were of the same metal.
Presents of gold, of rich stuff's, of spices, of arms, of
horses, and mules, were sent to him from every quarter ;
and to see the face, and hear the wisdom of the renowned
Solomon, was the prevailing ambition of the great men
of that age.
Captivated with this desire the queen of Sheba came
to Jerusalem, attended with a great retinue, and brought
with her rich presents of gold, spices, and precious
stones. Her purpose was, to try if Solomon's wisdom
was answerable to the high commendations she had
the hall of the first court of the palace; it is in form like
one of our field beds, six feet long and four broad. I counted
about a hundred and eight pale rubies in collets about that throne,
the least whereof weighed a hundred carats; but there are some
that weigh two hundred. Emeralds I counted about a hundred
and forty, that weighed some threescore, some thirty carats.
The under part of the canopy is entirely embroidered with pearls
and diamonds, with a fringe of pearls round the edge. Upon the
top of the canopy, which is made like an arch with four panes,
stands a peacock, with his tail spread, consisting entirely of
sapphires and other proper coloured stones ; the body is of beaten
gold, enchased with numerous jewels; and a great ruby adorns
his breast, to which hangs a pearl that weighs fifty carats. On
each side of the peacock stands two nosegays, as high as the bird,
consisting of various sorts of flowers, all of beaten gold enamelled.
When the king seats himself upon the throne, there is a trans-
parent jewel, with a diamond appendant, of eighty or ninety
carats weight, encompassed with rubies and emeralds, so sus-
pended that it is always in his eye. The twelve pillars also that up-
hold the canopy are set round with rows of fair pearls, and of an ex-
cellent water, that weigh from six to ten carats apiece. At the
distance of four feet, upon each side of the throne, are placed two
umbrellas, the handles of which are about eight feet high, covered
with diamonds, the umbrellas themselves being of crimson vel-
vet, embroidered and fringed with pearl. This is the famous
throne which Timur began aiid Shah Johan finished, and is
really reported to have cost a hundred and sixty millions and five
hundred thousand livres of our money." (Tavernier's Indian
Travels, vol. iii. p. 331. edit. 1713.) Mr Morier, describing his
interview with the king of Persia, says: — " He was seated on a
species of throne, called the takht-e-taoos, or the throne of the
peacock, which is raised three feet from the ground, and appears
an oblong square of eight feet broad and twelve long. We could
see the bust only of his majesty, as the rest of his body was
hidden by an elevated railing, the upper work of the throne, at
the corners of which were placed several ornaments of vases and
toys. The back is much raised ; on each side are two square
pillars, on which are perched birds, probably intended for pea-
cocks, studded with precious stones of every description, and
holding each a ruby in their beaks. The highest part of the
throne is composed of an oval ornament of jewellery ; from which
emanate a great number of diamond rays. Unfortunately we
were so far distant from the throne, and so little favoured by the
light, that we could not discover much of its general materials.
We were told, however, that it is covered with gold plates,
enriched by that fine enamel work so common in the ornamental
furniture of Persia. It is said to have cost one hundred thousand
tomauns. — Travels through Persia, p. 19. See also Forbes' s
Oriental Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 84. — Ed.
e The provisions of Solomon's table, for one day, vrere thirty
measures, which, according to the I fibre w word cor, as Goodwin
has computed it, are six gallons, above an hundred and sixty-
eight bushels of fine flour, and sixty of meal, or coarser flour for
inferior servants, ten stall-fed oxen, twenty oxen out of the pas-
tures, and an hundred sheep, besides harts, and roebucks, and
fallow deer, and fatted fowl," or, as Bochart translates the word,
"the choicest of all fatted things." (] Kings iv. 22, 23.) and
this, according to the calculation which some have made from the
quantity of bread that was every day consumed, must make Solo-
mon's family consist, at least, of forty or fifty thousand souls. —
Calmct's Commentary.
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
heard of it ; and therefore in discourse she proposed to
him several enigmatical questions. But when she heard
his clear and satisfactory solutions, she was not a little
amazed at the profoundness of his judgment ; and when
she had seen the beauty, and worship of the temple, the
magnificence of his court, and the sumptuousness of "
his table and attendants, she was quite astonished, and
frankly owned to him, that what herself had seen did far
surpass any of the most extravagant reports she had ever
yet heard of him : and so, having made him very * great
and noble presents, and received others from him, that
were not inconsiderable, she took her leave, and return-
ed to her own country, highly pleased and satisfied with
her visit.0
Hitherto we have seen nothing in Solomon but what
was truly great and wonderful ; but the latter actions of
his life so sadly tarnish and disgrace his character. For
he gave himself up to the love of strange women, such
as were descended from idolatrous nations, and, besides
Pharaoh's daughter d mentioned before, married wives
from among the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Hittites,
the Idumeans, and the Sidonians. e Nay, so unbounded
a Our excellent commentator, Bishop Patrick, tells us, that a
very great man of our own, but is silent as to his name, has
observed, that such things, as the difference of apparel, the order
of sitting at table, and the attendance of Solomon's servants and
ministers, were justly admired by the queen of Sheba, as an in-
dication of his wisdom ; " for they are the outworks," as he calls
them, " which preserves majesty itself from approaches and sur-
prisals; and whatsoever prince departs from these forms and
trappings, and ornaments of his dignity, and pre-eminence, will
hardly be able at some time, to preserve the body itself of ma-
jesty from intrusion, invasion, and violation."
b After a very complimentary speech, in which Josephus
makes this queen address king Solomon, among other valuable
presents, recorded in Scripture, " they speak also," says he, " of
a root of balsam, which she brought with her, which, according
to a tradition we have, was the first plant of the kind that ever
came into Judea, where it hath propagated so wonderfully ever
since." — Jewish Antiquities, b. S. c. 2.
c 1 Kings x. 21. The magnificence of Solomon, particularly
With respect to his drinking vessels, has not been exceeded by
modern Eastern princes. The gold plate of the kings of Persia
has been much celebrated, and is taken notice of by Chardin
He observes, that the plate of the king of Persia is of gold, and
that very fine, exceeding the standard of ducats, and equal to
those of Venice, which are of the purest gold. Shah Abas caused
seven thousand two hundred marks of gold to be melted for this
purpose. Now the two hundred targets of gold which Solomon
made, weighed but little less than the drinking vessels which
Shah Abas made. (I Kings x. 16.) We may therefore believe
that his royal drinking vessels were of equal, if not greater
weight. — Harmer, vol. i. p. 384. Ed.
d Pharaoh's daughter is generally supposed to have been a pro-
selyte to the Jewish religion, and therefore Solomon, in marrying
her, incurred no fault; but, in marrying so many women besides
aud these of a different religion, he committed two sins against
the law; one in multiplying wives, and another, in marrying
those of strange nations, who still retained their idolatry: and
therefore the wise son of Sirach, amidst all the encomiums that
he heaps upon Solomon, could not forget this heinous iniquity,
and terrible flaw in his character. 'Thou didst bow thy loins
to «omen, and by thy body, thou wast brought into subjection.
lh"U didst stain thine honour, and pollute thv seed, so tliat thou
hroughtest wrath upon thy children, and wast grieved for thy
folly. (Ecclns. xlvii. 19, 20.)— Patrick's Commentary.
e 1 Kings xi. 3. It appears to have been the manner of
eastern princes to have a great number of wives, merely for pomp
and state. Father La Compte tells us in his History of China,
(oart 1. p. 62.) that there the emperor hath a great number of
wives, chosen out of the prime beauties of the country. It is
tlsosaid, that the great Mogul has as many wives as make up a
thousand. Hahesci {Present State of ike Ottoman Empire
4391. A. C. 1020. 1 KINGS vlii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
was his lust, that he had 700 wives, and 300 concubines,
who conspired not a little to pervert his heart, and
seduce him, in his old age, to the worship of their seve-
ral idols.
Provoked at this his sad apostasy, God sent a prophet
to upbraid him with his ingratitude, and to pronounce
this heavy judgment upon him : — " That as he had re-
volted from his worship, so the major part of his kingdom
should revolt from him, and put themselves under the
government of one of his servants, though not in his days,
yet in those of his immediate successor :" and, to make
him sensible, that this judgment began already to operate,
he raised up several enemies to the disturbance of his
peace, which, as long as he continued in God's service,
he enjoyed without interruption.
/ The first of these was Hadad of the blood-royal of
Edom, who having fled from Joab, when he ravaged the
country, and put the male children to death, escaped to
Pharaoh king of Egypt, where he married his sister
Tephneh ; but, upon David's death, returned to his coun-
try, and recovered the kingdom, s The second was Re-
zon, who flying from his master Hadadezer king of
Zobah, gathered together a great number of men, over
whom he made himself captain, and with their assistance,
seizing on Damascus, he there reigned as king of Syria,
and confederated with Hadad to distress Solomon in
the declining part of his reign. But h the most dan-
p. 166,) says that the number of women in the harem of the
grand seignior depends on the taste of the reigning monarch.
Sultan Selim had nearly 2000 ; Sultan Mahomet had but 300 ;
Achmet the fourth has pretty near 1600. See also Knolles's
History of the Turks, p. 1368, Hanway's History of the Revo-
lutions of Persia, part 7. c. 31. p. 208. — Ed.
/Hadad was a young prince of the royal family of Idumrea,
who fled into Egypt when David conquered that country: for
David, having obtained a signal victory under the conduct of
Abishai, who, at that time, commanded in chief, sent Joab
afterwards with an order to kill all the males that should be
found in the land. But Hadad had escaped into Egypt, where,
finding favour in the eyes of the king, he married his wife's
sister, and there settled. But, after the death of David, he re-
turned into Idumaea, and gave Solomon no small molestation.
For, entering into a league with Rezon, a fugitive from his
master Hadadezer king of Zobah, but who had now made himself
king of some part of Syria, he, by his assistance, made so many
inroads upon the land of Israel, that all things were in the
utmost confusion, even before Solomon died ; Calmefs Com-
mentary,— and Josephus's Jewish Antiq. b. 8. c. 2.
ff When David made war against Hadadezer, Rezon, one of
his generals, escaped from the field of battle, with the troops
under his command ; and having lived for a little while by plun-
der and robbery, at length seized on Damascus, and reigned
there. But his reign was not long. For David took Damascus,
as well as the other parts of Syria, and left it in subjection to his
son Solomon, till God was pleased to suffer this Rezon to recover
Damascus, and there re-establish himself, to the great disturbance
of the latter part of Solomon's reign. — Calmet's Commentary.
h As Solomon was engaged in several great buildings, he took
care to set proper persons over the works, among whom Jero-
boam was one, and the workmen under his command seem to be
chiefly of the tribe of Ephraim. How he acquitted himself in
this capacity, we are not told ; but the pretence of his being angry
with Solomon, and fomenting jealousies among the people, was
the building of Miilo. Millo was a deep valley, between the old
Jerusalem and the city of David, part of which David filled up,
and thereupon made both a fortress, and a place for the people to
assemble. Another part of it Solomon filled up, to build a palace
for his queen, the daughter of Pharaoh. The prodigious expense
which this work cost, gave Jeroboam an opportunity to infuse
a spirit of sedition into his brethren of the tribe of Ephraim; to
complain heavily of hard labour they were forced to submit to,
and the taxes they were obliged to pay; and to represent tha
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
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gerous enemy of all was Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, a
bold and enterprising man, whom Solomon had made
overseer of his buildings, and who, for his great abilities,
was the chief ruler in the house of Joseph, that is in the
tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. a The prophet Ahijah,
as he was walking in the fields, happened to meet him ;
and, having acquainted him from God, that he had ap-
pointed him to be Solomon's successor in ten tribes out
of twelve, and that, if he Mould adhere to his service,
the government should be established in his family :
as he was but ill affected to Solomon before, and now
encouraged by the prophet's promises, he began to stir
and solicit the people to a revolt. b The king having
intelligence of this, was thinking to take him into custody;
but he made his escape, and fled c unto Shishak king
of Egypt, where he continued for the small remainder
of Solomon's life, d who having reigned forty years, died
whole thing as a work of vanity, merely to gratify a proud foreign
woman, and a silly doating king: and, by these insinuations, he
wrought in the people a disaffection to Solomon, and his govern-
ment; Patrick's Commentary; and Calmet's Dictionary, under
the word Millo.
a Ahijah was a native of Shiloh, and one of those who wrote
the annals of king Solomon's reign, (2 Chron. ix. 29). He is
thought to have been the person who spake twice to Solomon
from God ; once, while he was building the temple, at which
time he promised him his protection, (1 Kings vi. 12.) and at an-
other time, when he had fallen into all his irregularities, and
God expressed his indignation against him in bitter threats and
reproaches, (1 Kings xii. 6.) His prediction to Solomon, that he
would one day be perverted by women; and that to Jeroboam,
that heifers (meaning the two golden calves which he set up)
would alienate him from the service of God, are botli taken
notice of by Epiphanius, in his Life and Death of the prophet. —
Calmet's Dictionary under the word Abijah.
b How Solomon came to know what was thus transacted be-
tween Ahijah and Jeroboam alone, is a question of no great diffi-
culty: for perhaps the prophet made no scruple to report what
he had delivered in the name of the Lord ; perhaps Jeroboam
himself, being puffed up with this assurance, could not contain,
but told it to some of his confidants, who spread it abroad ; or
perhaps his servants, though they heard not the words that the
prophet spake, yet, seeing him rend the garment into twelve
parts, and give ten to him, might speak of this strange and un-
accountable action, which Solomon, as soon as he came to hear
of it, might easily understand, because the same prophet, very
likely had told him but just before, that the kingdom should be
rent from him, and given to his servant (I Kings xiv. 8). —
Patrick's Commentary.
c All the kings of Egypt, from the time of Abraham, are in
the sacred history, called by the name of Pharaoh, unless Ra-
meses, that is mentioned in Gen. xlvii. 11, be the name of a king,
not a country; so that this is the first we meet with, called by
his proper name from the rest of the Pharaohs. Who this
Egyptian prince was, the learned are not agreed. The opinion
is pretty general, that it was the famous Sesostiis, mentioned in
Herodotus, and of whom we have spoken before ; but his life could
hardly be extended to this period. Our great Usher sets him a
vast way backward, even to the time of the Israelites' peregrina-
tion, and some chronologers carry it farther: but, be that as it
will, it is very probable, that the prince had taken some offence
at Solomon, otherwise he would hardly have harboured such se-
ditious refugees as Jeroboam was. — Patrick's and Le Clerc's
Commentaries .
d Josephus indeed tells us, {Antiq. b. 8. c. 3.) that Solomon lived
to a great age, that he reigned eighty years, and died at ninety-
four; but this is a manifest error in that historian, which our say-
ing, that the Scriptures give us only an account of Solomon
while he continued in a state of piety, but that Josephus's com-
putation takes in the whole of his life, is a poor and forced way of
reconciling. The authority of Josephus must never be put in
balance with that of the holy Scriptures, from whence may be
learned that Solomon lived to the age of fifty-eight, or there-
about ; because we may very well presume, that his immoderate
about the fifty-eighth year of his age ; was buried in the
city of David ; and was succeeded by his son e Reho-
boam.
Rehoboam, as soon as his father was dead, went to
/ Shechem, where all the chief of the people were met
together to proclaim him king ; but as the nation had
been burdened with some heavy taxes during his father's
reign, before they would agree to recognise him, they B
desired a redress of their grievances, and in hopes of
awing him into a compliance, sent for Jeroboam out of
Egypt to appear at the head of the assembly.
pursuit of sensual pleasures both shortened his life, and left an
eternal stain upon his memory: otherwise the character, which
the author of Ecclesiasticus gives of this prince, is very beautiful :
— ' Solomon reigned in a peaceable time, and was honoured; for
God made all quiet round about him, that he might build an
house in his name, and prepare his sanctuary for ever. How w ise
wast thou in thy youth, and as a flood filled with understanding!
Thy soul covered the whole earth, and thou filledst it with dark
parables. Thy name went far into the islands, and for thy peace
thou wast beloved. The countries marvelled at thee for thy
songs, and proverbs, and parables, and interpretations. By the
name of the Lord, which is called the Lord God of Israel, thou
didst gather gold as tin, and didst multiply silver as lead ; but
thou didst bow thy loins unto women,' &c. — Ecclus. xlvii. 13, &c.
e Notwithstanding the vast multitude of wives that Solomon
had, the Scriptures make mention of no more than three chil-
dren, this son, and two daughters, that are spoken of 1 Kings
vi. 11, 15. and, what is strange, in the beginning of his story,
it takes no notice as usually it does, of his mother's nation, or
family, though in the conclusion of it, (I Kings xiv. 21 — 31,) it
twice reminds us, that she was an Ammonitess by birth, and that
her name was Naamah. Rehoboam was born in the first year
of his father's reign, and was therefore much about forty-one when
lie entered upon the government ; but he was an unskilful and
imprudent man, and therefore made a very false step at his first
accession to the throne. The author of Ecclesiasticus gives us
no advantageous character of him, when he terms him ' A man
void of understanding, who turned the people away with his
counsel,' (ch. xlvii. 23.) Nay, his own son makes but a faint
apology for him, when he tells the people, that he was ' young '
(young in understanding,) ' and tender hearted, and could not
withstand his enemies,' (2 Chron. xiii. 7.) and therefore some
have imagined, that his father Solomon had him in his thoughts,
when he said, in his Preacher, ' I hated all my labour, which I
had taken under the sun, because I was to leave it to a man that
should come after me ; and who knoweth whether he shall be a
wise man, or a fool ; yet shall he have rule over all my labour,
wherein I have laboured: this also is vanity;' ch. ii. 18, 19. —
Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
/ This city stood not only in the centre of the kingdom of Is-
rael, but in the middle of the tribe of Ephraim, wherein there
was the greatest number of malcontents. It was therefore very
probably by the management of Jeroboam, or some of his friends,
who durst not perhaps venture themselves at Jerusalem, that this
city was made choice of for the place of a general convention,
because they might more securely propose their grievances,
which they were resolved to do, and use a greater freedom of
speech than they could at Jerusalem, where the family of David
was more powerful, more numerous, and better supported. —
Calmet's Commentary; and Poole's Annotations.
g What the particular grievances were that these people desired
to have redressed, we may gather from 1 Kings iv. 7, &c,
namely, the tribute Solomon exacted for his buildings, the ex-
penses of his family, and the maintenance of his chariots and
horses, which being for the honour of the nation, ought to have
been borne more contentedly by a people enjoying such a lar^e
share of peace and plenty, and from a prince who had brought in
such vast riches to his subjects, as made silver to be of no value
at all in his days, (ch. x. 21,) but people are more sensible of their
pressures than of their enjoyments, and feel the least burdens
when they are most at ease. It is observable, however, that
among all their complaints, they take no notice of Solomon's idol-
atry, or the strange worship which he had introduced, though
this, one would think, should have been reckoned among the
greatest of their grievances. — Patrick's Commentary.
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The people accordingly presented their address ; but
instead of a gracious answer, which his father's old
counsellors by all means advised, as the only way to
engage them to his interest for ever, some a young po-
liticians, that had been * brought up with him, were of a
contrary opinion, namely, that such concessions would
look like fear and pusillanimity ; that hard words would
frighten them into obedience ; and that, instead of re-
dressing, his business was to tell them, that he intended
to increase their grievances. This counsel Rehoboam
had the imprudence to follow ; which so disgusted the
people, that they threw off all allegiance, and declared
for another king. When Rehoboam came to understand
this, he c sent Adoram his collector, to appease them,
and probably to assure them that their taxes should be
abated ; but this pacification came too late. Their
passions were so exasperated, that they fell upon the
collector, and stoned him to death, without so much as
once hearing what he had to say. Rehoboam seeing
this, thought it high time to consult his own safety, by
d hastening to his chariot, and fleeing to Jerusalem ;
a They were not so young, but they might have known bet-
ter; for as Rehoboam was one and forty years old when he enter-
ed upon his kingdom, so these gentlemen having been brought
up with him, must have been much about the same age ; but
they were raw and unexperienced, and unacquainted with the
humours of the people ; and therefore they gave the king such
unseasonable advice. — Patrick's Commentary. [Houbigaut,
however, thinks he was but sixteen years old when he began to
reign; and brings many forcible arguments to prove that the num-
ber, forty-one, must be a mistake. Capellus was the first who no-
tified the number forty-one as an error. Boothroyd follows Hou-
bigant in adopting the reading of the Greek appendix to 1 Kings
xii., and observes, Rehoboam is said to have been young on his
accession ; if he had been forty-one, Solomon must have been
married before his father's death, and married to an Ammon-
itess before he took Pharaoh's daughter, which is contrary to the
narrative. Compare 2 Chron. x. 8. and xiii. 7. Dr A. Clarke
also coincides in this reading. And we may add, if Solomon is
allowed to refer to his own son in Eccles. ii. 18, 19, ' Yea I hated
all my labour which I had taken under the sun; because I should
leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth
whether he shall be a wise man or a fool ? yet he shall have rule
over all my labour wherein I have laboured.' Then the conclu-
sion is, that Rehoboam was still a youth, and had nut arrived at
that age when it could be known whether lie would prove a wise
man or a fool, and this work is generally admitted to have been
penned only a short time before Solomon's death.] — Ed.
b It was a common custom among the kings of the east, to
have their sons educated among other young lords that were of
the same age, which, as it created a generous spirit of emulation,
and both endeared the prince to the nobles and the nobles to the
prince, could not but tend greatly to the benefit of the public.
Sesostris, the most famous prince that ever Egypt produced, is
said to have been educated in this way. And by the gallant youths
that were his cotemporaries and fellow pupils, it was, that he
afterwards did so many surprising actions. The same custom
was in use among the Persians, as we may learn from the life
of Cyrus; and of Alexander the Great we are told, that his
father Philip had him trained up in his youth, among those young
noblemen who became his great captains in the conquest of all
Asia. So that Solomon's method and design, in the education
of his son, was wise and well concerted, though it failed of
success. — Calinet's Commentary.
c It was certainly a piece of great imprudence to send any
one to treat with them, when they were so highly exasperated;
but to send him that was an obnoxious man, as having the prin-
cipal care of the very tributes they complained of, was downright
infatuation; because nothing is so natural, as to hate those that
are the instruments of our oppression, or any ways employed in
it. — Patrick's Commentary.
d This is the first time that we read of a king's riding in a
chariot. Saul, David, and Solomon, rode in none; but after the
4391. A. C. 1020. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
by which means he secured the two tribes of Judah and
Benjamin ; but all the rest of the Israelites made choice
of Jeroboam. And thus was this great and goodly
kingdom, almost in its infancy, split into two parts ;
and, for ever afterwards, went under different denomina-
tions, the kingdom of Judah, and the kingdom of Israel,
though the latter included the whole before.
As soon as Rehoboam was got safe to Jerusalem, he
began to meditate revenge for the affront put upon him-
self in the person of Adoram his collector; and there-
fore, to reduce the rebel tribes by force of arms, he put
himself at the head of an hundred and eighty thousand
chosen troops of the two tribes, which continued faithful
to him. But while they were on their march, the e pro-
phet Shemaiah, by the direction of God, advised them to
desist and return every one to his own home ; because by
the divine will and pleasure it was, that this division of the
kingdom came to pass. Hereupon all the army, with
Rehoboam's consent, was disbanded ; and he, to secure
the dominions that were left him, repaired and fortified
fifteen frontier towns ; built several strongholds in the
heart of his country ; furnished them with good garrisons
and provisions ; and erected magazines in several cities,
out of which the soldiers might, on all occasions, be
supplied with arms.
Jeroboam, on the other hand, was not idle, but
enlarged and beautified Shechem, and made it a royal
city. After he had resided there for some time, he went
to the other side of Jordan, and repaired Penuel, which
was anciently a fortified place, and there resided like-
wise, in hopes of gaining the affections of the two tribes
and a half. Amidst all these endeavours to settle him-
self firm on the throne, there was one thing he thought he
had reason to apprehend, namely, that his subjects might
return to their allegiance to the house of David, in case
they were permitted to go up, thrice every year, as the
law directed, to worship at Jerusalem ; he therefore
made a bold alteration in religion, and set up two golden
calves, with altars belonging to them, the one in Bethel
which was the most southern, and the other in Dan,
which was the most northern part of the country, the
better to suit the conveniency of all their votaries. The
regular priests, however, would not comply with him in
these idolatries, and therefore he inhibited them the
exercise of their own religion, banished them his king-
dom, seized on their possessions, and appointed /any,
division of the kingdom, mention is frequently made of the use
of them, both by the kings of Judah and Israel. — Patrick's
Commentary.
e This prophet was very well known in the reign of Reho-
boam : he is supposed to have wrote the annals of that prince ;
and of what authority he was in Judah, we may gather from this
passage, where he is said to have prevailed with the king, and
an bundled and fourscore thousand men, to lay down their arms,
and return home, merely by declaring, that the division which
had happened was by the order and appointment of God.
Calmet's Commentary.
/The Hebrew words Mikctzoth Haam, do properly signify
out of oil the people, and not the lowest of the people. This ex-
position Bochart has justified by a great many examples of the
uses of these words in other places: so that their meaning must
be, not that Jeroboam employed the refuse of the people only,
but that he employed any, though they were not of the tribe of
Levi, though they had no previous qualifications to recommend
them to officiate as priests about his idols. To employ the mean-
est of the people only in this office, had been bad policy, and
exposing his new institution to contempt; but to admit any that
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
543
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who was so minded, to officiate about these new erected
idols : by which means a great accession of strength
accrued to Rehoboam's party ; for the priests that were
banished resorted all to Jerusalem, and as many of the
other tribes as had any regard to the true worship of
God, followed them.
To give the better countenance to his new-invented
religion, Jeroboam himself was accustomed sometimes
to officiate ; and therefore, on a a solemn feast, which
he had appointed at Bethel, as he stood by the altar for
that purpose, a certain * prophet, who came from Judah,
foretold him, that that very altar which he had erected,
should one day be polluted, and destroyed by a child,
born of the house of David, c whose name, in future
offered themselves of what rank or quality soever; to lay open
the priesthood, and destroy the needless distinction of men and
things, as the modern phrase is, this had in it the air of free-
thinking, and must therefore be a very grateful thing, and
ingratiate himself, no doubt with the people. — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
a As the Jews had their feast of tabernacles on the fifteenth
day of the seventh month, so Jeroboam had a feast on the fifteenth
day of the eighth month, which he instituted of his own accord.
Some suppose indeed, that as this feast was appointed by God to
lie observed after the gathering in of the fruits, which might be
sooner ripe in Jerusalem than in the northern parts of the coun-
try, so Jeroboam might pretend, that the eighth would be a better
time for it than the seventh, because then he might have this
farther design in the alteration of this month, namely, that the
people of Judah, when their own feast was over a month before
at Jerusalem, might have an opportunity to come to his, if their
curiosity led them. But the plain case is, that he did every
thing he could in opposition to the established religion, and his
chief intention was to alienate the people from Jerusalem. —
Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 6. c. 2.
b Who this prophet was, commentators are not agreed. The
Jews would generally have it to have been Iddo; but unless we
may suppose that what is here related fell out in the latter end
of Jeroboam's reign, Iddo could not be the person; because Iddo
was alive in the days of Ahijah, son of Rehoboam, whereas the
prophet here spoken of, died, in a manner, as soon as he had
delivered his prophecy. Others therefore have thought, that this
prophet who came to rebuke Jeroboam was Ahijah, the same who
had foretold him of his exaltation to the crown of Israel: but
besides that Ahijah was alive after the time that this prophet
was slain, Ahijah was certainly a native of Shiloh, and lived in
Shiloh, which is in the tribe of Ephraim, and part of Jeroboam's
dominions ; whereas it is expressly said of this prophet, that he
came from Judah: so that there is no foundation, so much as
for a conjecture, what the name of this man of God was. —
1'atrii It's and Calmet's Commentaries.
c This is one of the most remarkable prophecies that we have
in sacred writ. It foretells an action that exactly came to pass
above three hundred and forty years afterwards. It describes
the circumstances of the action, and specifies the very name of
the person that was to do it; and therefore every Jew, who lived
in the time of its accomplishment, must have been convinced of
the divine authority of a religion founded upon such prophecies
as this; since none but God could foresee, and consequently none
but God could foretell events at such a distance. — Le Clerc's and
Calmet's Commentaries. The Jews on whose behalf this pro-
phecy was delivered, would guard it most sacredly; and it was
the interest of the Israelites, against whom it was levelled, to
impugn its authenticity, and expose its falsehood, had this been
possible. This prediction not only showed the knowledge, but
also the power of God. He gave, as it were, this warning to
idolatry, that it might be on its guard and defend itself against
this Josiah, whenever a person of that name should be found sit-
ting on the throne of David ; and no doubt it was on the alert,
and took all prudent measures for its own defence: but all in
vain, for Josiah in the eighteenth year of his reign, literally ac-
complished this prophecy, as we may read, 2 Kings xxiii. 15 — 20.
And from this latter place we find that the prophecy had three
permanent testimonials of its truth. 1. The house of Israel; 2.
ages, should be Josias ; and for the proof of the truth
of his prediction, he added, that immediately it should
be split. Incensed at this freedom of speech, Jeroboam
stretched out his hand, and called to those that stood by,
to seize the prophet ; but as he stretched it out, his arm
grew so stiff', that he could not pull it back again, and
the altar, being split asunder, let the fire, and the ashe3
that were thereon, fall to the ground.
Jeroboam by this means was sensibly convinced of
his impiety, and entreated the prophet to intercede with
God for the restoration of his hand. The prophet in
this particular complied wilh his request ; but when the
king desired his company to dine with him, on purpose
to make him a recompense for his miraculous cure, he
declined the invitation, upon account of a positive
divine injunction, that he should make no stay in the
place, not so much as to eat or drink in it, or d return
by the same way.
In the town of Bethel there lived an old prophet, who,
when his sons came and told him what the man of God
from Judah had done, e what had passed between him
and the king, and what way he had taken in his return
home, went in pursuit of him ; and under the pretence of
a fresh revelation which he had had, countermanding
the injunction which the other thought himself under, in-
vited him to his house./ After some small demur the
The house of Judah; and, 3. The tomb of the prophet who deli-
vered this prophecy, who being slain by a lion, was brought back,
and buried at Bethel. The superscription on whose tomb re-
mained till the day on which Josiah destroyed that altar, and
burned dead men's bones upon it. — Br A. Clarke. — Ed.
d Why this prophet was forbid to eat or drink with the people
of Bethel, the reason is obvious, because he was to have no
familiarity with idolaters; but why he should not 'return by the
same way that he went,' is not so very evident. There is a
passage in Isaiah concerning Sennacherib, which helps, as some
think, to elucidate this matter, where God tells him, that ' he
would turn him back by the same way that he came.' (Isaiah
xxxvii. 29, 34.) that is, he should return home without doing
any thing: all his threats, and all his great projects should have
no effect against Jerusalem. And in like manner, when God
commanded the prophet not to return by the same way, it was as
much as if he had said, ' See that thou be constant, and steadfast
in executing the charge committed to thee ; let nothing hinder or
divert thee, but take abundant care, that thou do thy business
effectually.' But this construction is a little too much strained;
nor can I see, why we may not say, that God enjoined his pro-
phet not to return by the same way, lest Jeroboam, or any other
of the inhabitants of Bethel, either to satisfy their curiosity upon
an occasion so uncommon, or to do him some mischief for his
severe denunciations against their altar and way of worship,
might send men after him to bring him back. — Calmet's and Le
Clerc's Commentaries.
e By this it appears, that these sons of the old prophet were
present when Jeroboam stood at the altar, and therefore joined
in that idolatrous worship, though their father did not, and yet
was too timorous to reprove it. — Patrick's Commentary.
f In 1 Kings xiii. 20, it is said that the word of the Lord came
unto the prophet that brought him back. " A great clamour,"
says Dr Keunicott, " has been raised against this part of the
history, on account of God's denouncing sentence on the true
prophet, by the mouth of the false prophet: but if we examine
with attention the original words here, they will be found to sig-
nify either, he who brought him back; or, whom he had brought
back; for the very same words, tyvn -\t'H asher heshibo, occur
again in verse 23, where they are translated, whom he had
brought back; and where they cannot be translated otherwise.
This being the case, we are at liberty to consider the word of the
Lord as delivered to the true prophet thus brought back ; and
then the sentence is pronounced by God himself, calling to him
out of heaven, as iu Gen. xxii. 1 1 . And that this doom was thus
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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youno- prophet believed him, went with him, sat flown to
meat, and refreshed himself; but in his return, he paid
dear for his disobedience ; " for b a lion met him and
slew him, but when it had so done, it neither tore his
body, nor meddled with his ass ; which, when the old
prophet understood, he took, and buried him in his own
sepulchre, and gave his children in charge, that when-
ever he died, they should lay him in a place contiguous to
this prophet ; because he was confident, that whatever
he foretold concerning the altar of Bethel, and c that
form of idolatry, which Jeroboam had set up, would most
certainly come to pass.
Not long after this, Abijah, the son of Jeroboam, a
young d prince of promising hopes, fell sick : whereupon
Jeroboam prevailed e with his queen to disguise herself
pronounced by God, and not by the false prophet, we are
assured in verse 26. ' The Lord hath delivered him unto the
lion, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake unto him.'
Josephus expressly asserts that the sentence was declared by
God to the true prophet. The Arabic asserts the same. — Ed.
a 1 Kings xiii. 26. Disobedience in special cases has com-
monly been punished by those in authority. The Athenians
put their ambassadors to death, whom they had sent into Arca-
dia, though they had faithfully performed their business, because
they came another way than that which had been prescribed to
them. — /Elian. Far. Hist. b. vi. c. 5. — Ed.
b Not far from Bethel there was a wood, out of which the two
she-bears came that destroyed two and forty children, for mock-
ing the prophet Elisha, (2 Kings ii. 24.) And it is not unlikely
that out of the same wood came the lion which slew this prophet.
— Patrick's Commentary.
c There is something particular in the expressions of the text:
' The saying, which he cried by the word of God against the altar
of the Lord, against the altar of Bethel, and against all the houses
of the high places, which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely
come to pass,' (I Kings xiii. 32.) But how can they be called
the cities of Samaria, when Samaria itself was not now built, nor
had the separate kingdom of Jeroboam as yet obtained that name ?
But this only shows that the author or compiler of these books of
King=, whether it was Ezra or Jeremiah, lived long after the
time of Jeroboam, and writes of things and places as they were in
his own days. He knew full well, that Samaria was built by
Omii, fifty years after Jeroboam, since himself had given the
account of its foundation; but he was minded to speak in the
phrase then current, and to make himself intelligible to those that
read him ; and for this reason no doubt it is, that in 2 Kings
xxiii. 18, the false prophet of Bethel is said to have come from
Samaria, though at that time there was no city of that name.
Calmet's Commentary .
d In 1 Kings xiv. 13, it is said, that ' in him there was found
some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel;' from whence
the Jewish doctors have devised the story, that he broke down
an hedge (it had better been a wall, I should think) which his
father had made, to keep people from going up to Jerusalem at
the three great feasts. But however this be, we may be permitted
fairly to infer thus much from the words: — That he was the only
person in the family who expressed a dislike of the worshipping
of calves, an inclination and intention to abolish it, whenever he
should come into power, and to permit, if not oblige his subjects
to go up to Jerusalem, to worship according as the law prescrib-
ed.— Poole's Annotations.
e Jeroboam might be for having his wife go to consult the pro-
phet at Shiloh, because this was a secret not to be intrusted with
any body else ; a secret which had it been divulged, might have
endangered his whole government: because, if once his subjects
came to understand, that he himself had no confidence in the
calves which he had set up, but in any matter of importance had
recourse to the true worshippers of God, it is not to be imagined
what an inducement this would have been for them to forsake
these senseless idols, and to return to the worship of the God of
Israel, whom they imprudently had forsaken. The queen then
was the only person he could have confidence in. As a mother,
lie knew, that she would be diligent in her inquiry; and, as a
wife, faithful in her report; but there were sundry reasons why
in the dress of an ordinary woman ; to go to the prophet
Abijah, who was then at Shiloh ; and to inquire con-
cerning the fate of the child. The prophet, at that
time was blind ; and therefore they thought that they
might very easily impose upon him : but before the queen
came, God had discovered the whole matter to him ; and
therefore as soon as she entered the door, he called her by
her name, and then delivered the message which God had
directed him to do. / Therein he upbraided Jeroboam
he might desire her to disguise herself. For though Shiloh, lay
within the confines of Ephraim, yet there is sufficient ground to
think, that it was subject to the house of David, and belonged to
the kingdom of Judah. It was certainly nearer Jerusalem than
Shechem, which Rehoboam had lately fortified, and made his
place of residence: and therefore Jeroboam thought it not safe to
venture his queen, in a place that was under his rival's govern-
ment, without her putting on some disguise. He knew too, that
the prophet Ahijah was greatly offended at him, for the gross
idolatry he had introduced ; and therefore he thought, as justly
he might, that, if the prophet perceived her to be his wife, he
would either tell her nothing, or make things much worse than
they were. The only way, therefore, to come at the truth, was
(as he thought) to do what he did: but herein appears his infatua-
tion, that he should not think the person, whom he held capable
of resolving him in the fate of his son, able to see through this
guile and disguise. — Calmet's Commentary, and Poole's Anno-
tations.
f \t is mentioned in the text, that Jeroboam's wife carried
with her a present to the prophet, and we learn from several pas-
sages of Scripture, that it was customary or. consulting a prophet,
to present him with a gift generally consisting of some kind of
provisions, which the condition of that class of persons might
render more acceptable than any money or other kind of present.
What the wife of Jeroboam carried was certainly unsuitable to
the dignity and resources of a queen, and had she gone openly in
that character, her present would in all probability have been
rejected. Instances of presents not being accepted, when
they are considered inferior to what the rank and ability of
the offerer could have produced, are mentioned by many tra-
vellers. An ambassador at the court of Persia, once abruptly
took leave, on the ground that he had been insulted by the trifling
presents the Schah had given him ; in consequence of which the
royal presents were ordered to be set down in a catalogue, along-
side of those of the ambassador; each article was rated at an ex-
travagant value, and the whole was made to be worth double the
money of the ambassador ; but he, conscious of the imposition,
refused to accept it, as unworthy of the rank of a king. Lander,
too, mentions an African from whom he had expected to obtain im-
portant service to the cause of his mission, but was unexpectedly
and grievously disappointed, to find that the sable monarch gave
him a very cold reception. The reason was, that the king had
been persuaded by some of his attendants, that the present of
Lander was far inferior to what Captain Clapperton had made
him a few years before, and, therefore, sending notice to the tra-
veller that he considered his gift below the character of one who
was in the service of the king of Britain, refused to see him.
Had the wife of Jeroboam then gone to the prophet with the pre-
sent she had selected, there is every reason to conclude, that its
trifling nature would have led to its rejection; but it must be
remembered that she went to Ahijah personating a country wo-
man, and that nothing could be more suitable to such a character
than the articles of which her present consisted. Few and sim-
ple as they appear to be, they were very nearly the same as those
which D'Arvieux received from the mother and sister of an Arab
Emir, whom he visited, and from whom he received, early in
the morning after his arrival in their camp, a present of pastry,
honey, fresh butter, with a basin of sweet meats of Damascus.
Whatever the origin of the custom which authorized that the
presents made to prophets should consist always of provision* for
their table, it is evident, from the experience of D'Arvieux, Ihat
the present made to Ahijah by the wife of Jeroboam, was quite
in unison with the character she had assumed, and, although
presents have frequently been refused in the east, on account of
their value being disproportionate to the ability of the donor, no
objection could have been found on this account to the present of
Jeroboam's queen, had not her real condition been supei naturally
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
545
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HAI-ES, A. M
with ingratitude to God, who had made him king; charg-
ed him with impiety and apostasy, in setting up images
for the objects of religious worship ; foretold the expir-
ation of his race, a and the death of the child then sick ;
threatened sore judgments to the people of Israel, for
their conforming to the idolatry which had begun, and,
with this doleful message, he sent her away, who as soon
as she entered the palace door, according to the pro-
phet's prediction, found the child dying. But all these
judgments and miraculous events wrought no reformation
in wicked Jeroboam.
Nor was his rival Ilehoboam king of Judah, much bet-
ter. He, for three years indeed, kept up the true wor-
ship of God at Jerusalem, but it was more out of a
principle of state policy than of true religion. For,
when the time of Jeroboam's subjects coming over to
him upon that account was at an end, he threw off the
mask, and discovered his inclination to idolatry. And
as his example was followed by his subjects, they soon
exceeded all that went before them. For they not only
set up images and gTOves upon every hill, and under
every green tree, but to add to their gross impiety, in-
troduced the detestable * sin of Sodom, and all the other
wickednesses that the ancient Canaanites were expel-
led for.
Under these provocations it was not long before God
sent against them Shishak, king of Egypt, who, in the
fifth year of Rehoboain, c invaded his dominions with a
revealed to the mind of the prophet. — Jamieson's Eastern Man-
ners.— Ed.
a 1 Kings xiv. 10. Sometimes, when a successful prince has
endeavoured to extirpate the preceding royal family, some of
them have escaped the slaughter, and secured themselves in a
fortress, or place of secrecy, while others have sought an asylum
in foreign countries, from whence they have occasioned great
anxiety to the usurper. The word, shut up, strictly speaking,
refers to the first of these cases; as in the preservation of Joash
fmm Athaliah, in a private apartment of the temple, (2 Kings
xi.) Such appears also to have been the case in more modern
times. " Though more than thirty years had elapsed since the
death of Sultan Achmet, father of the new emperor, he had not
in that interval, acquired any great information or improvement.
Shut up, during this long interval, in the apartments assigned him,
with some eunuchs to wait on him, and women to amuse him, the
equality of his age with that of the princes who had a right to pre-
cede, allowed him but little hope of reigning in his turn; and he
had besides, well grounded reasons for a more serious uneasiness."
(Baron Du Tott, vol. i. p. 115.) But when David was in dan-
ger, he kept himself close, (1 Chron. xii. 1.) inZiklag, but not so
as to prevent him from making frequent excursions. In later
times, in the east, persons of royal descent have been left, when
the i-estof a family have been cut oil', if no danger was appre-
hended from them, on account of some mental or bodily disquali-
fication. Blindness saved the life of Mohammed Khodabendeh,
a Persian prince of the sixteenth century, when his brother Ismael
put all the rest of his brethren to death. (D'Nerbelot, p. 613.)
This explanation will enable us more clearly to understand 2 Kings
xiv. 2C; Deut. xxxii. 36" Harmer, vol. iv. p. 211. — Ed.
b There are several passages in Scripture, such as 1 Kings
xv. 12. 2 Kings xxii. 7. Rom. i. 2G, 27, &c, from whence it
appears that this kind of wickedness did frequently attend idola-
try. Among the heathen, the most filthy tilings were commit-
ted in their groves, those places of darkness and obscurity, by the
worshippers of Venus, Bacchus, and Priapus; and when the Is-
raelites fell into the same religion, they must, of course, have
fallen into the same practices; because, whatever they did of
this kind was done in devotion, and honour to their gods, who,
as they imagined, were highly delighted with such obscenities. —
Patrick's Commentary.
c It may seem something strange, that Shishak, who was so
neariy allied to Rehoboam, should come up against him, and
. 4391. A. C. 1020. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
very numerous army ; and, having ravaged the country ,
taken most of the fortified places, and entered Jeru-
salem without opposition, plundered the temple and
palace of their rich furniture and moveables, he took
away all the money that was found in the king's treasure,
and the treasure of the sanctuary, and, at the same time,
carried off the golden shields which Solomon had made ;
in the room of which, Rehoboam, by this depredation,
was reduced so low, that he d was forced to make brazen
ones, for the use and ornament of his guards.
AVe have little or nothing more recorded of Rehoboam,
but that he reigned twelve years after this conquest and
devastation by Shishak ; that he had eighteen wives,
and threescore concubines, and by them eight and twenty
sons, and threescore daughters ; that most of these sons
who were grown to maturity in his lifetime, he made
governors in the chief of the fenced cities in his king-
dom; that he appointed Abijah, who was the eldest by
his favourite wife e Maachah, to succeed him in his
throne, and, / after a continued war with his rival Jero-
boam, died in the fifty -eighth year of his age, and in the
take his royal city: but Rehoboam, we must remember, was not
the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and therefore no relation to Shishak.
But, even had he been never so nearly related, as kingdoms, we
know, never marry, so it is likely that Jeroboam, who had lived
long in Egypt, stirred him up to invade his rival, that thereby
he might establish himself in this new kingdom: and for this
reason it was, that, when the armies of Egypt had taken the
fenced cities of Judah, they returned, without giving Jeroboam
or his dominions any the least disturbance. — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
d This shows to what low condition the kingdom of Judah
was reduced. These shields were a matter of state and gran-
deur ; and therefore it concerned them, if they were able, to have
them of the same value that they were before. And, as they
were carried before the king to the house of the Lord, it seemed
likewise to be a matter of religion, that their value should not be
diminished. Now in making these three hundred shields we are
told, that three pounds of gold went to one shield, (1 Kings x.
17.) This, at four pounds per ounce, or forty-eight pounds ster-
ling to the pound, amounts to no more than ±432,000, and there-
fore it was a miserable case, that they were reduced from so much
wealth to so much poverty, that neither reasons of state, nor re-
ligion, could raise so small a sum on so great an occasion. —
Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 6. c. 2.
e 1 Kings xv. 2. It has been conjectured by Mr Taylor, that
the phrase " and his mother's name was," &c, when expressed
on a king's accession to the throne, at the beginning of his history,
does not always refer to his natural mother, but that it is a title
of honour and dignity, enjoyed by one of the royal family, de-
noting her to be the first in rank. This idea appeal's well founded
from the following extracts. " The oloo kani is not governess
of the Crimea. This title, the literal translation of which is,
great queen, simply denotes a dignity in the harem, which the
khan usually confers on one of his sisters ; or if he has none, on
one of his daughters, or relations. To this dignity are attached
the revenues arising from several villages, and other rights."
{Baron Du Tott, vol. ii. p. 04.) "On this occasion the king
crowned his mother Malacotawit, conferring upon her the dignity
and title of iteghe, that is, as king's mother, regent and gover-
ness of the king when under age." — Bruce's Travels, vol. ii. p.
58 1. Fragments to Calmet. — Ed.
f But how does this agree with what we read in 1 Kings xii.
23, &c, namely, that God commanded Ilehoboam, and his
people, not to fight against the Israelites, and they obeyed? Very
well, if we will but observe, that though the Jews were com-
manded not to make war upon the Israelites, yet they were not
commanded not to defend themselves, in case the Israelites
should make war upon them ; and, considering that they were
now become two rival nations, they might, upon the borders, be
continually endeavouring to gain ground upon each other, and so
run into frequent acts of hostility, without ever once engaging in
a pitched battle. — Patrick's Commentary.
3 a
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seventeenth year of his reign, and was buried in the
city of David.
a Abijah, who succeeded his father in the kingdom of
Judah, in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam king of Is-
rael, was a prince of an active and martial spirit ; and
therefore resolving to put an end to the long dispute
between the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, he raised
an army of four hundred thousand men, while Jeroboam,
whose territories were of larger extent, had got toge-
ther one of eight hundred thousand. This notwithstand-
ing, Abijah determined to give him battle ; but, before
they came to the onset, he thought it not improper to
get upon an eminence, and b to expostulate with the
lsraelitish army the injustice of their cause in revolting
from his father Rehoboam ; the right he claimed on his
side, since God had given the whole kingdom to David,
and his sons for ever ; and the reasonable expectance he
had of the divine assistance in what he was going about,
since the religion of Jeroboam was false and idolatrous,
whereas he, and the men of Judah, had the pure worship
of the living God, his temple, and his ordinances, among
them.
Jeroboam was no wise solicitous to answer him in
those points ; but while he continued speaking, ordered
a detachment to inarch round, and intercept his retreat :
which when the men of Judah perceived, they addressed
themselves to God in prayer for success, and, while the
priests blew the trumpets, the soldiers gave a great
shout, and charged the Israelites so vigorously, that
they soon gave way, and as the enemy gave no quarter
lost, in the whole action, no less than five hundred thou-
sand men, the greatest slaughter that ever was heard of. c
a Dr Kennicott observes that the name of this king of Judah
is expressed three ways; in 1 Kings xiv. and four other
places it is Abijam or Abiua; in two others it is Abihu; but in
eleven other places it is Abiah, as it is expressed by St Matthew (i.
7.) 'P«/3oa^ S= tytyytifft tov A/3<« ; and this is the reading of thirteen
of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., and of thirteen respectable
editions of the Hebrew bible. The Syriac is the same. The
Septuagint in the London Polyglot has AjS;ou, Abihu, but in
the Complutensian and Antwerp Polyglot it is A&iu, Abiah.
Though the common printed Vulgate has Abiarn, yet the Editio
Princeps of the Vulgate, some MSS., and the text in the Com-
plutensian and Antwerp Polyglot, have Abia; which without
doubt is the reading that should in all cases be followed. Ed.
b None of the great captains and commanders, whose speeches
are recorded in heathen authors, ever expressed themselves more
movingly than this king of Judah did. But some have found
fault with him for speaking not so honourably of his father's
military skill and courage, which he might as well have omitted
because, allowing it to be true, he seems to have served no pur-
ose in mentioning it. But this notwithstanding, the speech is
very lively, ami excellently well calculated to cause a revolt in
Jeroboam's army. — Patrick's Commentary. See the speech at
large in 2 Chron. xiii. 4, &c.
c The numbers here given from 2 Chron. xiii. 3, 17, seem
almost incredible. It is very possible that there is a cipher too
much in all these numbers, and that they should stand thus:
i's army, 40,000; Jeroboam's 80,000; slain 50,000.
Calmet, who defends the common reading, allows that the Venice
edition of the Vulgate, in 1478; another in 1489; that of Nu-
remberg in 1521; that of Basil, by Froben, in 1538; that of
Robert Stevens, in 1546; and many others, have the smaller
numbers. Dr Kennicott says: " On a particular collation of the
Vulgate version, it appears that the number of chosen men here
slain, which Pope Clement's edition in 1592, determined to be
500,000, the edition of Pope Sixtus, printed two years befoVe,
determined to be only 50,000: and the two preceding numbers
in the edition of Sixtus, are 40,000, and 80,000. As to dif-
lercnt printed editions, out of fifty-two from the year 14C2 to
This victory Abijah took care to improve by pursuing
Jeroboam, and taking from him so many strong cities,
among which Bethel, where one of the golden calves
had lately been set up, was one, that he Avas never
thenceforward able to make head against his adversary,
who by this, and some other successful achievements,
grew great and powerful. But his reign was but short :
he reigned not quite three years, before he died, and
was buried in the city of David ; and the reason that
some have assigned for GodTs thus shortening of his
days, was his not destroying of idolatry, when, by
taking of Bethel, he had it in his power. For, however
he might plead his possession of the temple and priest-
hood, to make his argument good against Jeroboam ;
yet the character which the sacred historian gives him,
is 1 ' that he walked in all the sins of his father ; nor was
his heart perfect with the Lord his God, as the heart of
his great grandfather David.'
Asa, however, who in the twentieth year of Jeroboam
king of Israel, succeeded his father in the throne of Judah,
1 1 Kings xv. 3.
1592, thirty-one contain the less number. And out of fifty-one
MSS., twenty-three in the Bodleian library, four in that of
Dean Aldrich, and two in that of Exeter College, contain the
less number, or else are corrupted irregularly, varying only in
one or two numbers."
This examination was made by Dr Kennicott before he had
finished his collation of Hebrew MSS., and before De Rossi had
published his Varim Lectiones Veteris Testamenti; but from
these works we find little help, as far as the Hebrew MSS. are
concerned. One Hebrew MS. instead of F|S.v mtttj jdin, arba
meotheleph, 400,000, reads siSn -\zy join, arba esereleph, 14,000.
In all printed copies of the Hebrew, the numbers are as in the
common text, 400,000, 800,000, and 500,000. The versions
are as follows: — The Targum or Chaldee, the same in eaeh place
as in the Hebrew. The Syriac in verse third has 400,000
young men for the army of Abijah, and 800,000 stout youths for
that of Jeroboam. For the slain Israelites, in verse 17th it has
500,000, falsely translated in the Latin text quinque milia,
5000, both in the Paris and Loudon polyglots: another proof
among many that little dependance is to be placed on the Latin
translation of this version in either of the above polyglots. The
Arabic is the same in all these cases with the Syriac, from which
it has been translated. The Septuagint, both as it is published
in all the polyglots, and as far as I have seen in MSS., is the same
with the Hebrew text. So also is Josephus. The Vulgate or
Latin version is that alone that exhibits any important variations;
we have had considerable proof of this in the above mentioned
collations of Calmet and Kennicott. I shall beg liberty to add
others from my own collection. In the Editio Princeps cf the
Latin bible, though without date or place, yet evidently printed
long before that of Fust, in 1462, the places stand thus: ver. 3.
'With him Abia entered into battle; and he had of the most
warlike and choice men 40,000 ; and Jeroboam raised an army
against him of 80,000 men.' And in ver. 17: 'and there fell
down wounded 50,000 stout men of Israel.' In the Glossa
Ordinaria, by Stiabo Fuldensis, we have 40,000 and 80,000
in the two first instances, and 500,000 in the last. — Bib. Sacr.
vol. ii. Antv. 1634. In six ancient MSS. of my own, marked
A, B, C, D, E, F, the text stands thus. In A we have 40,000
for the army of Abijah, and SO, 000 for that of Jeroboam, and
50,000 for the slain of the latter. B, 40,000, 80,000, 50,000.
The numbers being here expressed in words at full length, there
can be no suspicion of mistake. C, 400,000, 800,000, 500,000.
This is the same as the Hebrew text very distinctly expressed.
D, This in the first two numbers is the same as the others above ;
but the last is confused, and appears to stand for 55,000. E,
40,000, 80,000, 50,000. F, 400,000, S00,000, 500,000.
This also is the same as the Hebrew. The reader has now the
whole evidence which I have been able to collect, before him,
and may choose; the smaller numbers appear to be the most
correct. Corruptions in the numbers in these historical books
we have often had cause to suspect and complain of. — Dr A.
Clarke, 2 Chron. xiii. 3 17.— Ed.
Sbct. I.]
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547
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was a prince of a different temper. As he enjoyed the
felicity of a settled peace for the ten first years of his
reign, he wisely made use of it in reforming many abuses
that had been tolerated in former reigns. He expelled
the Sodomites, broke down the idols, and demolished
their altars in all the cities of Judah ; a but he had not
yet power and authority enough to destroy the high
places. The vessels of silver and gold which * both he
and his father had consecrated to the service of the
temple, he presented to the priests ; and by all the
enforcements of regal authority, compelled his subjects
to be religious.
This time of peace he likewise made use of, to fortify
several cities on the frontier parts of his kingdom, and
to train up his subjects in the art of war ; insomuch that,
in a short time, he had an army of three hundred thou-
sand men of Judah armed with shields and pikes, and
two hundred and fourscore thousand men of Benjamin,
armed with shields and arrows, all persons of courage,
and resolved to defend their country.
In this situation of affairs, Zerah,the c king of Arabia
a This seems to be contradicted by a passage in 2 ChroD. xiv.
3, where we are told, ' that Asa took away the altars of the
strange gods, and the high places:' but, for the right understand-
ing and reconciling of this, we may observe, that there were two
kinds of high places, the one tolerated for religious purposes, the
other abominable from their first institution; the one frequented
by devout worshippers, the other made the receptacle of the
wicked and idolatrous only. Now these were the altars and
high places which Asa took away, even where the people sacri-
ficed to strange gods ; but those where God alone was worship-
ped had obtained so long, and were looked upon with so sacred
a veneration, that, for fear of giving a general offence, though
he knew they were contrary to a divine injunction, he durst not
adventure to abolish them. The truth is, these high places were
famous either for the apparition of angels, or some other mira-
culous event; had either been places of abode for the ark of the
Lord, or such as some prophet or patriarch of old had been
accustomed to pray and sacrifice in ; and therefore they were
looked upon as consecrated to the service of God ; nor was there
strength enough in the government to overcome this inveterate
prejudice, till Hezekiah arose, who, to prevent the calamities
that were coming upon the nation, had the courage to effect a
thorough reformation. — Patrick on ] Kings xv. 14 ; and Caiviet
ou chap. xiv. 23.
b According to the piety of ancient times, his father had
tlevoted some part of the spoils he had taken in the war against
Jeroboam to the service of the temple, but had not time to make
good his vow, or, upon some account or other, had neglected it,
su that his son took care to supply that defect. And forasmuch
as himself had taken large booty in his war with the Arabians,
of this he likewise bestowed a considerable part upon holy uses.
— Patrick's Commentary .
c The Scripture lakes no notice of what was the cause of this
war between Zerah and Asa, nor are interpreters well agreed
what the country was from whence this enemy came. The
country, in the original, is called Cush, though we translate it
Ethiopia. Now, there are three countries, different from one
another, all called by the name of Cush; 1. the land of Cush
upon the river Gihon; 2. Cush upon the eastern shore of the
Red Sea; and, 3. Cush, situated above Thebais, and in the
Upper Egypt It is very probable, then, that the country here
spoken of must not be Ethiopia, properly so called, because we
••an hardly imagine, how an army of a million of men should be
permitted to march through Egypt, as they must have done to
invade Judea, without some opposition: and therefore the coun-
try must be the laud of Cush, which lay in Arabia Petnca, upon
the east shore of the Red Sea, and, at the extremity to the point
oi that sea, inclining towards Egypt and Judea. And whereas
some have made a doubt, how so small a country could have
produced so large an army, it is no hard matter to suppose, that
a great part of the army might perhaps have been mercenaries. —
Catmct's Commentary on 2 Chron. xiv. 9; and Dictionary, under
invaded Judea with an almost innumerable army, but
was vanquished by Asa with a much inferior force.
For, as soon as the battle began, God struck the Ara-
bians with such a panic fear, that they began to flee ;
and Asa and his army pursued them, took the spoil of
their camp, carried away their cattle, smote the cities
that were in league with them, and so returned in triumph
to Jerusalem.
After so signal a victory, Asa continued in peace for
the space of five years more ; in which time he thought
himself obliged, both in gratitude to God, and in com-
pliance to the encouragement l which his prophet Aza-
riah had given him, to set himself about a thorough
reformation in religion. To this purpose he executed
all that could be convicted of sodomy : he destroyed all
the idols that were to be found, not only in Judah and
Benjamin, but in any of the conquered countries like-
wise: he repaired the altar of burnt-offerings, and sum-
moned, not only the natives, but strangers likewise, to
the worship of the true God. On a solemn festival,
which he had appointed, he ordered seven hundred oxen,
and seven thousand sheep, part of the spoil which he had
taken from the Arabians, to be sacrificed ; and, at the
same time, engaged in a covenant with his subjects,
which was confirmed by oath, that whoever should for-
sake the true worship of God should have 2 the sentence
of the law executed upon him, and be infallibly put to
death.
His own mother had been a patroness of idolatry ; and
therefore, to show his impartiality, he removed her from
court, and forbade her coming near the queen, for fear
of infecting her ; and understanding that she had set up
an idol in a grove consecrated to an obscene deity, d he
1 2 Chron. xv. throughout. * Deut. xvii. 2, &c.
the word Cush; and ) Yells' Geography of the Old Testament,
vol. i. c. 4. [Dr Hales, however, is of opinion that Zerah was
king of the African Ethiopia, now long known by the name of
Abyssinia, and that his immense army, amounting to a million of
men, and three hundred chariots, but which Josephus reduces,
more probably, to 90,000 infantry, and 100,000 cavalry, {Ant.
viii. 12.) consisted of Abyssinians and Lybians, called in Scripture
Lubim. — Analysis, vol. ii. p. 380, second edition.] — Ed.
d The words in the text, both in 1 Kings xv. 13, and 2
Chron. xv. 16, according to our translation, are to this effect. —
That ' Asa removed his mother Maachah from being queen,
because she had made an idol in a grove, both of which he cut
down and burnt.' The word which we render idol is in the
original Mipheletseth; but then the whole difficulty turns upon
this, — what the proper signification of this word is. The Vulgate
translation has cleared this matter pretty well, by rendering the
passage, that this queen-mother 'was the high priestess in the
sacrifices of Priapus;' and when the Septuagint, according to the
Vatican copy, informs us, that she held an assembly in this
grove, and that her son Asa cut down all the close arbours or
places of retreat, as the word 2iJ»*3sf, which we render assembly,
may have a more carnal meaning, and the other KaraSuov;, pro-
perly signifies hiding places, or places of retirement for wicked
and obscene purposes : we may from hence infer, that both the
Latin and Greek translators took the Mipheletseth of Maachah
to be some lewd and lascivious deity, which loved to be worship-
ped in filthy and abominable actions; and that this could be no
other than the Roman Priapus, whose worshippers were chiefly
women, seems to be implied in the veiy etymology of the word,
which properly signifies terriiulamentum, or, a device to frighten
other things away} tor this was exactly the office of Priapus in
all gardens. " Let Priapus be placed as a guardian in the fruitful
gardens, that with his keen pruiiinghook he may frighten the
birds." {Til «/. Eleg. 1 .) But then the question is, who the patriarch
was, for most idols were made for some patriarch or other, that
the Roman Priapus is thought to represent? And the Learned
518
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[Book VI.
A. Iff. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. ML
burned the idol, and the grove both, and threw their ashes
into the brook Kidron, ' as Moses did before by the
molten calf.
The fame of this reformation, and the blessings where-
widi God had hitherto distinguished Asa's reign, made
the subjects of Baasha, who was now king of Israel,
come over in great numbers to Jerusalem ; which Baasha
perceiving, was resolved, if possible, to put a stop to
it; and therefore he fortified Raamah, a town in the
tribe of Benjamin so conveniently situated, that, by
keeping a good garrison there, he might hinder all
passing to and fro without leave, and so cut oft* all com-
munication between his people and the people of Judah.
Asa hearing of this, and knowing the intent and pur-
pose of the stratagem, was resolved to give him a diver-
sion, if he possibly could, on the other side. To this
end he took all the a silver and gold that was in the
1 Exod. xxxii. 20.
author, from whom I have compiled this note, is of opinion,
that it might properly enough denote Lot, who lay with his two
daughters when he was drunk, and of the former begat Moab,
the primogenitor of that nation, who were the greatest worship-
pers of this obscene deity; though, for several reasons that he
there enumerates, upon presumption that Priapus was the same
witli Baal-Peor, which signifies a naked or uncovered god, he is
more inclinable to think it was Noah, of whom it was said, that
' he was an husbandman, and planted a vineyard, and that he
drank of the wine, and was drunken, and uncovered within his
tent,' (Gen. ix. 20, 21. ; Jurieu's History of Doctrines and Wor-
ship, part 4. c. 2. and 3.) Most of the ancients are of opinion, that
Astoreth, which all allow to be the same with Astarte, was the
Greek Kfe{i;, and the Roman Venus. Tully, in his third book
On the Nature of the Gods, tells us expressly, that Astarte,
among the Tyrians, was the fourth Venus, who was married to
Adonis, and upon his, and some other authorities, many moderns
have gone into the same sentiment ; but, as it is certain, that the
Tyrians had their theology from the Phoenicians, the testimony
of St Austin cannot but have some weight in this case, since he
affirms, with the greatest assurance, that Juno without all doubt,
was, by the Carthaginians, called Astarte ; (Quast. 26, indices.)
That Juno was the great deity and patroness of Carthage, is the
received opinion of the Gentile world. " Which Juno is said to
have preferred to all other regions of the earth, with the excep-
tion of Samos." (Virg.JEn. l.)And therefore, since we find
Baal, who is the same with Jupiter, so frequently in Scripture
joined with Ashtaroth, which is the same with Astarte, we can
hardly refrain thinking, that she must be the Roman Juno; and
they, consequently, husband and wife ; how extravagant soever,
therefore, the frolic of Heliogabalus, mentioned by Herodotus,
was, in sending for the goddess of the Carthaginians to be mar-
ried to his god, who was the Jupiter of the Phoenicians; yet, from
this piece of history, we may inform ourselves, that the goddess of
the Carthaginians was no other than Juno, the supposed wife of
Baal, or Jupiter; and therefore we find her, by the Phoenician
historian Sanchoniatho called Baaltis, which is a feminine sub-
stantive, formed from the word Baal, and by the sacred writers,
'the queen of heaven,' (Jer. vii. 18. and xliv. 18.) We have
sufficient grounds therefore to suppose, that this Astarte was
Juno; but then what particular woman this Juno was, before she
came to be deified, we are at a loss to know: only the conjecture
of the learned author, from whom I have extracted this note,
seems to be preferable to any other I have yet me with, viz.
that as both Baal and Jupiter are generally allowed to be the
patriarch I lam, so this Juno or Astarte, in all probability, was
one of his wives, from whom the Canaanites and Phoenicians
were descended. But in this we have the less certainty, because
the sacred history says nothing of the adventures of the postdilu-
vian matrons, whereby we might be enabled to form a compari-
son between them and these fabulous goddesses. — Jurieu, ibid,
p. 4. c. 5.
a In cases of extreme danger, it was always held lawful to
employ sacred things in the defence of one's country: but there
was no such necessity in this case. God had appeared wonder-
fully in Asa's defence, against an enemy much more powerful
4421. A. C. 990. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
temple, as well as what was found in his own exchequer,
and sent it as a present to Benhadad king of Syria, re-
questing his assistance against Baasha. The largeness
of the present soon had its effect : for Benhadad imme-
diately attacked several cities in Israel with such success,
that Baasha was forced to abandon his new designs of
fortifying his frontiers towards Judah, in order to
defend the other parts of his kingdom that were thus
furiously invaded ; which gave Asa an opportunity to
demolish the works that were begun at Ramah, and with
the materials that Baasha had prepared to build him two
cities in his own dominions, Gebah and Mizpah.
This applying however to Benhadad for assistance
was, in Asa, a thing inexcusable. It implied a distrust
of God's power or goodness to help him, of which he
had so lately so large an experience ; and therefore the
prophet Hanani was sent to reprove him for it : but in-
stead of receiving his reproofs with temper and thankful-
ness, he was so exasperated with them, that he put the
prophet in chains, and gave orders, at the same time,
for the execution * of several of his subjects.
The truth is, towards the close of his reign, he grew
very peevish and passionate, and uneasy with those that
were about him; which, charity would be apt to think,
proceeded from his distemper, a severe gout, in all pro-
bability, whose humour rising upwards, killed him in the
one and fortieth year of his reign. He was succeeded
by his son Jehoshaphat : but instead of being interred, as
the manner of the Jews was, c he ordered his body to be
than Baasha was. Nay, he had promised him his protection at
all times, and success in all his undertakings, if he would but
adhere to his service ; and yet, forgetting all this, he strips the
temple of its treasure, and bribes a heathen prince to come to his
assistance, and break his league with another to whom he stood
engaged: so that here were three offences in this one act of
Asa's. For, 1st, he alienated things consecrated to God with-
out necessity. 2dJy, he did this out of a carnal fear and distrust
of that God whose power and goodness he had lately experienced.
And, Sdly, he did it with an intent even to hire Benhadad to a
breach of his league and covenant with Baasha. — Poole's Anno-
tations.
b It is not said that he gave orders for the execution of his
subjects, but that he oppressed them, or became a tyrant. —
Bp. Gleig.
c The words in the text are these,* — ' They laid him on the bed,
which was filled with sweet odours, and divers kinds of spices,
prepared by the apothecaries' art; and they made a great burning
for him,' (2 Chron. xvi. 14.) But then the question is, whether
the body itself was burned, or only some spices and odoriferous
drugs, to prevent any bad smell that might attend the corpse.
The Greeks and Romans indeed, when they burned any dead
bodies, threw frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and other fragrant
things into the fire, and this in such abundance, that Pliny
(Nat. Hist. c. IS.) represents it as a piece of profaneness, to be-
stow such heaps of frankincense upon a dead body, when they
offered it so sparingly to their gods. The Jews, however, say
the maintainers of this side of the question, were accustomed to
inter, and not to burn their dead, though they might possibly
learn from the Egyptians the usage of burning many spices at
their funerals, as we find they did at the funeral of Zedekiah
king of Judah, (Jer. xxxiv. 5.) but notwithstanding this, some
very able commentators are of opinion, that all these spices and
perfumes were burned along with Asa's body; and they remark,
that among his other offences, the sacred history takes notice of
this vanity of his, in ordering his body to be disposed of accord-
ing to the manner of the Gentiles, and not of his own people.
Though therefore they suppose that Asa was the first who in-
troduced this custom ; yet, in after ages, it became very frequent,
and was thought the more honourable ceremony of the two, (2
Chron. xxi. 19, Ibid. xvi. 14. Amos vi. 10.) — Patrick's and
Calmct's Commentaries on 2 Chron. xvi. 14.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
549
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burned a with great quantities of perfumes and spices,
and his bones and ashes to be collected, and buried in a
sepulchre which he had provided for himself in the city
of David.
During- the long continuance of Asa's reign, sundry
successions and revolutions happened in the kingdom of
Israel, whereof the sacred history has given us but a
short account. In the first or second year of Asa, died
Jeroboam, of some acute disease, which the Scripture
does not specify. His reign was famous, or infamous
rather, for the revolt of the ten tribes, the public institu-
tion, of idolatry, and the terrible defeat which Abijah
gave him, and which he himself seems not long to have
survived. He was succeeded by his son Nadab, a per-
son who took care to imitate his father in all his wicked-
ness ; but his reign was not long. In less than two
years he was treacherously killed by Baasha, his captain
general, who usurped his crown, and to maintain himself
in that usurpation, put every one that was related to his
predecessor to death ; Avhich was certainly a very wicked
and barbarous act, though it proved the accomplishment
of the prophecy b which Ahijah had denounced against
Jeroboams house.
c In the six and twentieth year of king Asa, Baasha
a There is however no evidence from the text that Asa's body
was burned. The aromatics and duly prepared ointments with
which it was surrounded were most probably placed along with
it in the sepulchre. The burning then must have been of other
aromatic woods, most likely at the mouth of the sepulchre, or
some little distance from it. This was evidently a ceremony of
respect, and designed to do honour to the dead. — Boothroyd on
2 Chron. xvi. 14. — Ed.
b 1 Kings xiv. 10, 11. The prophecy runs thus: — 'There-
fore behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and
will cut oft" from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, and
him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take away the
remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung
till it be all gone. Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city, shall
the do^s eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of
the air eat ; for the Lord hath spoken it.' The only difficulty
here is, how Baasha's exaltation to the kingdom of Israel can be
ascribed to God, (as it is 1 Kings xvi. 2.) ' Forasmuch as I have
exalted thee out of the dust, and made thee prince over my people
Israel,' when it is manifest that he got it by his own treachery and
cruelty.' But to this it may be replied, that though the manner of
iuvadingthe kingdom was from himself, and his own wicked heart ;
yet the translation of the kingdom from Nadab to Baasha, simply
considered, was from God, who by his decree and providence,
ordered it, and disposed of all occasions, and of the hearts of all
the soldiers and the people so, that Baasha should have oppor-
tunity of executing his judgments upon Nadab, and such success
thereupon as should procure him a present and quiet possession
of the kingdom. So that his accession to the kingdom was from
the divine decree, but the form and manner of his accession was
from himself, from his own ambition and covetousness ; and as it
was wicked and cruel, is therefore charged upon him as a wilful
murder, ver. 7. — Poole's Annotations.
c And yet Baasha's expedition against Asa, in order to build
Rama, is said to be in the six and thirtieth year of the reign of
Asa, (2 Chron. xvi. 1.) Now to reconcile this, some would have
that six and thirtieth year to relate, not to Asa's reign, but to
the date of the kingdom of Judah, from the division of the king-
dom of Israel, at Rchoboam coming to the crown, and to be in
fact no more than the fourteenth year of the reign of Asa. But
that cannot be, since this expedition of Baasha was some time
after Asa had defeated the king of Ethiopia, or Arabia, and yet
this defeat happened in the fifteenth year of king Asa's reign:
so that that six and thirtieth year of Baasha's going up to build
llamah, can, by no good computation, be the fourteenth year of
king Asa's reign. And therefore, without any more to do, we
may, with Josephus, and others, adventure to say, that the oc-
died and was succeeded by his son Elah, a vicious and
debauched prince, that, in the second year of his reign,
as he was carousing in his steward's house, was assassi-
nated by Zimri, a considerable officer of horse, who, to
secure the kingdom to himself, a cut oft' all Baasha's
friends and relations : but he had not taken care, as
Baasha did, to gain the army which was then besieging
e Gibbethon, over to his interest, so that when they heard
of the news of the king's death, they declared for Omri
their general. He immediately raised the siege, and
marching to Tirzah, the then royal city, soon made him-
self master of it ; so that Zimri seeing all lost, and de-
spairing of any quarter from the enemy, retired to the
palace, / which he set on fire, and, after a reign of seven
days only, was consumed in it.
Omri, however, found it not so easy a matter to get
the throne, as he expected. Half the Israelites declared
for Tibni, the son of Ginah, which occasioned a civil
war for four years, till having vanquished and slain his
rival Tibni, he came to reign without a competitor.
But his reign must be acknowledged to have been very
wicked, when we find it recorded of him, that he not only
walked in the way of Jeroboam, 1 * but did worse than
all before him.' He very probably began to introduce
other and more abominable idolatries than were then in
use, which are therefore called 2 ' the works of the house
of Ahab.' He compelled the people to worship the
golden calves ; and by severe laws, which are called 3
' the statutes of Omri,' restrained them from going up
to Jerusalem : and because the royal palace at Tirzah
was destroyed, he bought of one Shemer a piece of rising
ground, whereon he built a palace for his own habita-
tion, which, in a short time increasing to a city, was, from
its first owner, called in Hebrew Shomerom, but, accord-
ing to the Greek and our translation, s Samaria, and
was ever after made a place of the king's residence, and
the metropolis of the Israelitish kingdom.
1 1 Kings xvi. 25. 2 Micah vi. 16. 3 Micah vi. 16.
casion of this difference proceeds from the mistake of some tran-
scriber.— Howell's History in the notes.
d One part of the threat which the prophet Jehu denounces
against Baasha is, as we see, that God would, ' make his house
like the house of Jeroboam,' (1 Kings xvi. 3.) and that exactly
came to pass. For as Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, reigned but
two years, so Elah, the son of Baasha, reigned no more: and as
Nadab was killed by the sword, so was Elah: so wonderful a
similitude was there between Jeroboam and Baasha, in their
lives and in their deaths, and in their sons and in their families.
— Patrick's Commentary.
e This was a city in the tribe of Dan, and given to the Levites
for their habitation, (Josh.xix. 44, and xxi. 23.) but they seem to
have quitted it, as they did the rest of the cities, when Jeroboam
would not sufier them to exercise their office, and the Philistines,
it is likely, then seized upon it, as being adjoining to their coun-
try. It seems, however, to have been a place of no inconsider-
able strength, since we find, that it maintained a siege for three
kings' reigns successively, though with some interruption, 1 Kings
xvi. 15, 16.
/ Some interpreters would rather have it, that Omri set the
royal palace on fire, in order to burn Zimri in it, who had retired
thither. The Hebrew words indeed will bear that construction;
but the other sense seems more likely. Nor has profane history
forgot to preserve the memory of some princes, who have chosen
to die in this manner, rather than fall by the sword, whereof
Sardanapalus is one of the most ancient and most notorious
examples. — Calmet's Commentary.
y It is somewhat wonderful, that when Omri bought this place
of Shemer, whereon he intended to build a city, he did not call
it l>y his own name, unless we may suppose, that, when Shemer
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In the eight and thirtieth year of king Asa, Ahab
succeeded his father Omri, and in wickedness excelled
all his predecessors. But of him we shall treat at large
in our next chapter, and choose to conclude here with
this observation, — That though, while Asa reigned in
Judah, Israel was in the hands of seven or eight several
princes, namely, Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah,
Zimri, Tibni, Omri, and Ahab ; yet such was their hard-
ness in sin and idolatry, that in all these changes, they
never once thought of returning to the house of David,
or the worship of the true God at Jerusalem.
CHAP. II,
-Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
The Jewish doctors have a tradition, that after Reho-
boani, the son of Solomon, had left Shechem in haste,
anil made the best of his way to Jerusalem, Jeroboam
called a council, consisting partly of pious, and partly
of wicked men; that, in this council, he proposed
whether they would agree and subscribe to all that he
should appoint ; that to this they declared their assent,
and he thereupon constituted himself king ; that when
he proposed farther, whether, if he should establish
idolatry, they would agree and consent to it, the pious
party were shocked, and began to express their indigna-
tion ; but that their wicked neighbours in the council,
pacified them by whispering in their ears, " that Jeroboam
had no intention to set up idolatry, but only mentioned
it in a comparative sense, and with a design to try the
extent of their obedience." So that by this fraud, the
pious people in the council were drawn in, and even
Ahijah himself prevailed on to subscribe implicitly, to
whatever Jeroboam should think fit to enact ; by which
means he took an occasion, as the iniquity of the times
favoured him not a little, to establish idolatry by a
law.
Solomon, we all agree, was a man of great fame for
his knowledge, and yet in the very maturity of his age,
he discovered a strong inclination to idolatry, which
could not but make a bad impression upon the minds of
his subjects, when they saw the preference that was given
to it by so wise a prince. His son Rehoboam was the
issue of a woman that sprung from an infamous nation,
an Ammonitess by birth, who, as far as it appears, was
never a proselyte ; and, having a great hand in her son's
education, might give him a deep tincture of her own
sold it, he let lum have the greater bargain of it, upon condition
that it should be continued in its first owner's name. However
tins be, it is certain, that as Samaria was situated in the midst
of the tribe of Ephraim on a fruitful and pleasant hill, it soon
became the regal and capital city of the kingdom of Israel; nor
did its king omit any thing to make it as strong, as fine, and as
) ich as possible. What fate it underwent by Benhadad king of
Syria; by Salmanassar king of Assyria; and by one of the
Macrabean family; by Herod the Great, who rebuilt and beauti-
fied it; by Augustus Cicsar, and by the Emperor Adrian, under
whom it finally fell ; we shall see, in a great measure, in the
course of this history. It is conjectured by Bochart, who traced
the ruins of it, to have been once larger than Jerusalem ; but
now it consists of nothing but a few cottages and convents,
inhabited by some Greek monks. — Wells* Geography of the Old
Testament, vol. 3.
sentiments : for, in his reign, we read, that 1 ' the people
built them high places, on every green hill, and under
every green tree, and did according to all the abomina
tions of the nations which the Lord cast out before the
children of Israel ;' which they durst not have done, had
the king discountenanced them by his own example.
After a succession of such idolatrous princes, in the
reign of king Josiah, 2 ' the book of the law was found
in the house of the Lord,' at which Hilkiah, the high
priest, seemed to express an uncommon joy and wonder :
and though this might possibly be the authentic copy,
3 which, by God's command, was laid up in the sanctuary,
yet how much the reading of it in any copy was at any
time disused, we may gather, from what the historian
tells us of the king, namely, that * ' when he had read
the words of the book of the law, he rent his clothes ;'
and by a parity of reason we may infer, that what
through the bad example of their kings, who gave life
and encouragement to idolatrous practices, and what
through the negligence of the people, in not perusing
the books wherein the transactions of former times were
recorded, the generation we are now speaking of might
have forgot the history of Aaron's molten calf, and the
punishment pursuant thereupon, and might therefore be
induced to worship another without any dread or appre-
hension of danger.
How the figure of a calf, or any other animal, can be
a symbol of a deity, it is difficult to conceive. But a
certain learned 5 author, who seems a little singular in
his opinion, will needs have it that the golden calves
winch Jeroboam made, were an imitation of the cheru-
bim, in his account these were winged oxen, Moses had
placed upon the ark of the covenant, whereon the glory
of the Lord sat enthroned. These cherubim in the
tabernacle of Piloses, and afterwards in Solomon's
temple, were placed in the sanctuary, and secreted from
vulgar sight : but Jeroboam, to make his religion more
condescensive, placed his calves in open view, so that
every one who looked on them might, through them,
worship the God of Israel, without repairing to the
temple of Jerusalem.
This notion, if it were true, would make the transition
easy from the worship at Jerusalem to the worship at
Dan or Bethel ; but we can hardly imagine, that Jero-
boam had either so harmless or so conformable a design
in setting up these golden images. Whatever his design
was, it is certain that the Scripture, all along, represents
him as of all others, the principal person that 6 ' made
Israel to sin ; that 7 drew Israel from serving the Lord,
and made them sin a great sin.' And therefore we may
observe, that whenever it describes a bad prince, one
part of his character is, that he imitated the son of
8 ' Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who,' as the prophet up-
braids his wife, ' went and made him other gods, and
molten images to provoke me to anger, and to cast me
behind his back,' saitli the Lord.
The truth is, Jeroboam had lived a considerable time
in the land of Egypt, had contracted an acquaintance
with the king thereof, and formed an interest among the
people ; and therefore finding himself under a necessity
1 1 Kings jut. 23, 24.
8 Deut. xxxi. 26.
Monsseus, in Aarone purgato, b. 1.
' 2 Kings xvii. 21.
2 2 Kings xxii. 8.
* 2 Kings xxii. 11.
c. 8. b I Kings xiv. 16
" 1 Kings iv. 9.
Shct. I.]
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of making an alteration in the established religion of
his country, he thought it the wisest method to do it upon
the Egyptian model, that thereby he might endear him-
self to that nation ; and in case he met with opposition
from his rival Rehoboam, might hope for assistance from
that quarter. For as the Egyptians had two oxen which
they worshipped, one called Apis, at Memphis, the me-
tropolis of the Upper Egypt ; and another called Mnevis,
at Hierapolis, a principal city of the Lower ; so he made
two calves of gold, and placed one of them in Bethel
which was in the south, and the other in Dan, which was
in the north part of the country of Israel.
There were these farther reasons likewise that might
determine him in the choice of these two places. Dan
was a town famous l for the Teraphim of Micah, unto
which there had been a great resort for many ages ; and
Bethel was, in every one's opinion, a holy place, that
which Jacob had consecrated after he had been vouch-
safed the vision of the ladder, and where God had so
frequently appeared to him, that he thought he had rea-
son to call it 2 ' the gate of heaven.'
Jeroboam, no question, was not insensible of the
advantage his rival enjoyed, in having the temple in his
possession ; and might many times wish that he had been
able to have built one that might have stood in competi-
tion with it ; but tin's was impossible. Seven years and
a half had Solomon been in completing the temple at
Jerusalem, notwithstanding the multitude of hands that
he employed, and the vast preparations of money and
materials that his father had left him. To build one less
magnificent, had been inglorious to Jeroboam ; and to
build one any ways adequate, was more than he could
hope to see finished in his days. The people were
grown weary of such public expensive works. The tax
had been heavy and burdensome to them. 3 ' Thy father
made our yoke grievous,' was the complaint they
brought against Rehoboam. a Upon this the whole
revolt was founded. And therefore, in the present state
of Jeroboams affairs, a new temple was, of all projects,
the most unpopular, and the likeliest to create a total
defection ; since it was running directly into his rival's
error, and, in effect, declaring, that 4 his little finger
should be found heavier than Solomon's loins had ever
been.
In the mean time his subjects deserted apace ; and, for
want of a place of religious worship to resort to, were
returning to Jerusalem, and to their allegiance to the
house of David at once. Something therefore was
necessary to be done, in order to remedy this growing
evil ; and, because Jeroboam readily foresaw, that, to
support himself in his usurpation, he might possibly want
the assistance of the Egyptians, the best policy that at
present occurred to his thoughts, was, to do a courtesy
to them, in setting up a form of worship much like theirs,
and, at the same time, to gratify his own subjects in the
choice of such places of worship as had been famous in
Judg. xvii. * Gen. xxviii. 17. 3 1 Kings xii. 4. 4 Ibid. ver. 10.
« In 1 Kings xii. 11, Rehoboam tells the people that his father
had chastised them with whips, but lie would chastise them with
scorpions, Iu order to understand what is meant by scorpions
here, we must observe that the Jews sometimes, in inflicting the
punishment of whipping for notorious offences, tied sharp bones,
pieces of lead, or thorns to the end of the thongs, which from the
pain and torture they occasioned were termed scorpions. — Bur-
tkr's OrieiUoJ. Literature. — Ed.
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the days of old, and whose reputed sacredness, b as well
as proximity, might commute for the want of a temple.
Gezer, we own, lay at a considerable distance from
Egypt> which, since the time of Sesostris, had seldom
extended its conquests into foreign lands ; and therefore,
to account for its conduct here, we must observe, that
Gezer was so ancient a town in Canaan, that when
Joshua i conquered it, it had a king of no small note ; that
in the division of the land, 6 it fell to the tribe of Eph-
rahn, was bordering upon the northern part of the
country of the Philistines, and not far from the Mediter-
ranean sea ; that it was one of the eight and forty cities
which, together with their suburbs, were given to the
Levites ; an inland town, but at no great distance from
the sea-port of Joppa ; that when the Ephraimites took
possession of it, 7 they suffered the Canaanites to coha-
bit with them, who gave them no small disturbance, and
towards the latter end of David's reign, expelled them
thence ; that when Solomon came to the throne, he
applied himself chiefly to the building of the temple, nor
thought it worth while to disturb the peace of his reign
for the recovery of a few revolted cities ; that when a
match was proposed between Solomon and Pharaoh's
daughter, Pharaoh thought he could not do a more
acceptable service, or show the benefit of his alliance
better, than in taking Gezer, and some adjacent places ;
that, for this purpose, he set out with a large fleet of
ships, landed at Joppa, besieged Gezer, and because it
made an obstinate defence, 8 burneditto the ground, and
slew all the Canaanites that were in it, but that not long
after he began to rebuild it ; and when his daughter was
espoused to Solomon, gave him this, and some other
places he had taken along with it, as part of her portion ;
for it is a mistaken notion, that princes' daughters had
no portion in those days.
Among the Jews, indeed, the custom was for the men
to give the dower, or to make some present to the pa-
rents, for the favour of having their daughter in marriage.
But this custom prevailed only among the inferior sort :
ladies of the first distinction were, in all nations, wont
to bring their husbands fortunes proportionate to their
quality : for Saul, we read, declared that the man who
should slay Goliah, should not only have his daughter
in marriage, but together with her, plenty of riches and
other valuable emoluments. Antiochus the great pro-
mised to settle upon his, the kingdoms of Judea and
Samaria, as a dower to Ptolemy king of Egypt ; and to
name no more, Agamemnon, in times of an elder date,
though not so great affluence, offered no less than 9
seven good towns with his, without any reserved rent,
5 Josh. x. 33. 6 Ibid. xvi. 5. ' Ibid. xxi. 20, 21. 8 1 Kings ix. 10".
9 Iliad 9. line 111.
b The speech which Josephus makes for Jeroboam, upon this
occasion, is to this purpose: — " I need not tell you, my country-
men, that God is everywhere, and not confined to any certain
place, but wherever we are, he hears our prayers and accepts
our worship, in one place as well as another; and therefore I am
not at all for your going up to Jerusalem at this time, to a peo-
ple that hate you. It is a long tedious journey, and all this
only for the sake of religion. He who built that temple was but
a man, as every one here is, and the golden calves that I have
provided for you, the one in Bethel, and the other in Dan, are
consecrated, as well as the temple, and brought so much nearer
to you, on purpose for the convenience of your worship, where
you may pay your duty to God, in such a manner as best phases
you," ike. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 8. c. 3
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or other deduction from her husband. So that Pharaoh
did no more than conform to the practice of other great
princes, in endowing his daughter with the places he had
taken from the Philistines, in all probability, for that
very purpose.®
How he came to swerve so soon from this alliance,
as to give protection and countenance to his son-in-law's
avowed enemies, need be no wonder at all to him who
considers by what various springs kingdoms are govern-
ed ; how tlie interest of nations shifts about, according
to the different situation of their affairs, and of how
little weight and validity all leagues and treaties are,
when once national interest comes to be thrown nito the
counterbalance.
But this is not all. The Pharaoh who received Je-
roboam in his exile, in all probability, was not the king
whose daughter Solomon had married, but a prince of
another line, and of different views. The woman whom
Solomon married, was one of the dynasty of the Diospo-
lites, whose ancestors had lived at Thebes ; but in the year
that Solomon finished the temple, * there happened a
revolution in Egypt, wherein this dynasty, or race of
kings, lost the throne, and was succeeded by that of the
1 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 6. c. 2.
a It does not, from all this, follow, that ladies of the first dis-
tinction were, in that age and in all nations, wont to bring their
husbands fortunes in proportion to their quality, or that such was
the general practice even of great princes. Saul's declaration
shows that he meant to give his daughter, in reward for the most
important service, which could be rendered to the state; but he
kept not his promise. Afterwards he gave a younger daughter
to David, but it was for a price, even for the slaughter of 200
of his enemies. It was of the utmost importance to Antiochus
and Agamemnon to conciliate, at any price, Ptolemy and
Achilles; and therefore they offered great dowers with their
daughters to purchase the friendship of these formidable enemies;
but this was not the case with respect to Pharaoh and Solomon.
Pharaoh's giving up Gezer, therefore, to Solomon, as a dower with
his daughter, is a proof that David and Solomon were two of the
greatest monarchs of their age ; that he thought himself honoured
by the alliance; and that the sacred historical account of Solo-
jm'ii's glory is not exaggerated. Among the Jews, and gen-
erally throughout the east, marriage was considered as a
sort of purchase, which the man made of the woman he desired
to marry ; and therefore in contracting marriages, as the wife
brought a portion to the husband, so the husband was obliged to
giye her or her parents money or presents in lieu of this portion.
This was the case between Hamor, the father of Shechemaud the
Bons of Jacob, with relation to Dinah, (Gen. xxxiv. 12.) and
Jacob having no money offered his uncle Laban seven years'
sen ice, which must have been equivalent to a large sum, (Gen.
x\ix. 18,) Saul did not give his daughter Michal to David,
till after he had received an hundred foreskins of the Philistines
(1 Sam. xviii. 25.) Hosea bought his wife at the price of fifteen
pieces of silver, and a measure and a half of bailey, (Hos. iii. 2.)
The same custom also obtained among the Greeks and other
ancient nations, (Potter's Antiq. vol. 2. p. 279.) and it is to this
day the practice in several eastern countries, particularly among
the Druses, Turks, and Christians, who inhabit the country of
Hauran, and also among the modern Scenite Arabs, or those
who dwell in tents. (See Burkhardt's Travels in Syria, De La
Jiuque Voyage dans la Palestine , and Burder 's Oriental Customs.)
Young girls, Mr Buckingham informs us, are given in marriage
for certain sums of money, varying from 500 to a 1000 piastres,
among the better order of inhabitants, according to their connex-
ions or beauty; though among the labouring classes it descends
as low as 100 or even 50. This sum being paid by the bride-
groom to the bride's father adds to his wealth, and makes girls,
particularly when handsome as profitable to their parents, as boys
are by the wages they earn by their labour. — Buckingham's
Travels among the Arab Tribes. — Bp. Gleig, Home's Introduc-
tion.— Ed.
Taanites, of whom Semendis, the father of Shishak, was
the first king. * These kept their court at Zoan, an
ancient town not far from the borders of Canaan, and
therefore very convenient for the reception of any re-
fugees that should come from thence. For as it was the
interest of the former kings of Egypt to keep up a good
understanding with the house of David ; so now it be-
came equally the interest of the present race to make
use of all instruments to embarrass them, lest, by joining
with the deposed family, that might, at any time, occa-
sion another revolution in Egypt- And this, by the by,
suggests the reason whereof the Scripture is silent, Avhy
Shishak invaded the kingdom of Judah with a vast army,
but never pretended to annoy Israel ; namely, because
he thought it advisable to disable Rehoboam from as-
sisting the deposed family in Egypt, but to encourage
Jeroboam, who being an usurper himself, was question-
less a friend and ally to those princes that were in the
like circumstances.
AVho the queen of Sheba was, and in what climate the
country from whence she came to visit Solomon lay, are
points wherein the learned are not so well agreed : but
whether her name was Nicaule, Candace, Marqueda, or
Balkis, for different authors give her these several names,
it matters not much, if Ave can but find out what this
Sheba was, whereof she is said to have been queen.
Josephus, and, from his authority, many more are of
opinion, that Sheba was the ancient name of Meroe, an
island, or rather peninsula in Egypt, before Cambyses,
in compliment to his sister, (other historians call her his
mother,) gave it her name. He tells us likewise, that she
was queen both of Egypt and Ethiopia ; c and the Ethio-
b I know not on what authority this is said, but it seems to be
a mistake. There can be no doubt but that it was Shishak, who
afterwards invaded Judah, that gave shelter to Jeroboam when
obliged to flee from the vengeance of Solomon; but if Shishak
was the Chephrenes of Herodotus, which is by much the most
probable opinion, neither he nor his immediate predecessor was
either the first or the last of any dynasty of Egyptian kings.
Solomon had indeed married either his sister, or, which is more
probable, his aunt; but, as Bishop Patrick judiciously observes,
"kingdoms never marry;" and therefore there was nothing un-
natural or uncommon in his conduct on this occasion. — Bp. Gleig.
See also Hales' Analysis v. 4. p. 446, second edition. — Ed.
c The Ethiopians, who held that this queen of Sheba was of
their country, tell us, that she returned big with child of a boy
which she had by Solomon ; that when this child was of age to
learn, she sent him to Solomon, who brought him up as his own
son; that in his education, he took care to provide the ablest
masters for him, and then sent him back to his mother, whom
he succeeded in the kingdom; that the kings of Ethiopia were
descended from Solomon by this young prince, whom they call
Meilic, or Menilehec ; and that of his family there were four and
twenty emperors, down to Basilides, who reigned about the
middle of the seventeenth age. (See Ludolph's History of
Ethiopia.) [Mr Bruce confirms this report of Ludolph's, bringing
sufficient proofs that the Abyssinians believe their present
royal family to be lineal descendants of Solomon and the queen
of Sheba. The tradition of the country certainly accounts
better than any other hypothesis that could be easily framed, for
that mixture of Judaism with Christianity which characterizes
the religion of Abyssinia; and our author justly observes, that
the trade carried on by the Israelites with the Cushites and
shepherds on the coast of Africa, would naturally " create a de-
sire in the queen of Azab, the sovereign of that country, to go
herself, and see the application of the immense treasures that
had been exported from her country for a series of years, and the
prince who so magnificently employed them." The Abyssinians,
he says, " call this queen Maqueda;" but the Arabians, who
contest with them the honour of having had this woman for
Sect. I.]
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pians indeed have a tradition, that upon her return, she
had a son by Solomon, whose posterity reigned there
many years, and, to this very day, they have preserved
a continual list of their names and successors.
There are these exceptions however to be made to
the opinion of the Jewish historian, namely, that whereas
lie cites Herodotus, as speaking- of his queen Nicaule,
Herodotus makes mention of none but only Niconis,
queen of Egypt ; nor does he say one syllable of her
pretended journey to Jerusalem. Whereas he says of
this Nicaule, that she was queen of Egypt and Ethiopia
both ; the sacred history is plain, that in the time of
Solomon there reigned in Egypt that Pharaoh, whose
daughter he married, and in his son Rehoboam's time,
Shishak. Whereas he tells us, that the ancient name of
Meroe, before the time of Cambyses, was Sheba ; for
this he seems to want authority, since 1 Diodorus, and
other historians, represent this city as built new from
the ground, and not repaired by Cambyses.
The more probable opinion therefore is, that this queen
of Sheba came from a country so named, which lay not in
Ethiopia nor Africa, but in the southern part of Arabia
Felix ; because it is generally allowed, that the Sabasans
lived in Arabia, and that their country was usually called
by the Orientalists the kingdom of the south , in allusion to
which, our Saviour styles this princess 2 ' the queen of
the south ;' because their country borders upon the
southern ocean, beyond which the ancients knew no
farther land ; and therefore our Saviour, according to
the common mode of speaking, says of this princess,
that ' she came from the utmost parts of the earth ;'
because, in this country, a women were known to govern
as well as men ; because the common produce of it was
gold, silver, spices, and precious stones, the very pre-
sents which this princess made Solomon ; and, if any
popular traditions may be credited, 3 because the Ara-
bians talk of their queen Balkis, who went to visit
Solomon, and show travellers the place of her nativity
to this very day.
Now if this princess came from Arabia, there is reason
to believe, that she was originally descended from
Abraham, by his wife Keturah, one of whose sons * begat
Sheba, who was the lirst planter of this country; and
consequently that she might have some knowledge of
revealed religion, by tradition at least, from her pious
ancestors. To this purpose the Scripture seems to in-
timate, that the design of her visit to Solomon was, not
so much to gratify her curiosity, as to inform her under-
standing in matters relating to piety, and divine worship.
It was Solomon's fame, 5 ' concerning the name of the
1 B. i. et Luc. Annuel, de Cambyse. 2 Mat. xii. 42.
* Calmet's Commentary on 1 Kings x. 1. and his Dictionary,
under the word Sheba. 4 Gen. xxv. 1,3. s 1 Kings x. 1.
their sovereign, till us, that her name was TCalkis, the daughter
oi lladhad, son of Scharhabil, the twentieth king of Jemen, or
Arabia Felix, and that she reigned in the city of Mareb, the
capital of the province of Sheba. Their histories are full of
fabulous stones concerning lier journey to Solomon's court, and
her marriage with him, but more particularly concerning the
bird hudhud, in English a lapwing, which Solomon made use of
to send into Arabia upon occasion, and to bring him despatches
from thence. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Nicaule.
« It is generally supposed, that these words of Claudian relate
to these people: "this sex rules over the Medesand theetieminate
Sabaeans, and a great part of Barbary is subject to the arms of
queens."
Lord,1 that is, concerning his knowledge of the Supreme
Being, and the proper manner of worshipping him, that
excited her to take so long a journey ; and therefore,
our Saviour says, that as she came so far to hear his
wisdom (his wisdom concerning what? Concerning the
nature and worship of Almighty God,) she would, at the
day of judgment, ' rise up against that generation' which
refused to listen to hiin.
Now, if this was the end of this queen's visit to Solo-
mon, who can say, but that she left her country to good
purpose, since it was to ' find 6 wisdom, and to get un-
derstanding, the merchandise of which is better than the
merchandise of silver, and the gains thereof than fine
gold ; 7 the price which is above rubies, 8 and all that
can be desired is not to be compared to it ?' But even
upon the supposition, that her errand was to acquire
knowledge of an inferior kind, or even to make trial of
Solomon's sagacity, by proposing some enigmatical
questions to him ; yet, who knows not, that it was the
practice in those days for persons of the first rank and
figure in life to exercise their wits in this manner ?
9 Josephus, from some writers of the Phoenician his-
tory tells us, that Solomon used frequently to send to
his friend Hiram problems and riddles, upon the for-
feiture of a great sum of money, if he could not expound
them ; and that one Abdemonus, a Tyrian, not only
unriddled Solomon's difficulties but sent back some new
propositions of his own, which, if Solomon could not
resolve, he was to incur the like forfeiture. Now the
Scripture remarks of Solomon, that 10 ' his wisdom
excelled the wisdom of the east country,' and by the
east country some do understand the seat of the ancient
Arabians, who in the days of Pythagoras, were so
renowned for their wisdom, that " that philosopher
thought it worth his while to go and reside among them
for some time. They were great masters of wit and
ingenuity ; and valued themselves upon their sagacious-
ness and dexterity, both in propounding and solving
problems ; and therefore no wonder that this queen of
Sheba, who, as Josephus informs us, was a woman of
exquisite understanding herself, should fall in with the
humour of the times, and carry with her some problems
of her Arabian sages, on purpose to make a trial of
Solomon's parts : nor can we imagine, but that, in com-
plaisance to so royal a visiter, as well as regard to his
own reputation, Solomon would take care to answer her
questions, and, as the Scripture expresses it, satisfy
12 ' all her desire whatsoever she asked.'
Without knowing the custom of the princes of the
east, their pomp, andsumptuousness of living, one might
be tempted to wonder, what possible use Solomon might
make of this milliad of wives and concubines that he had :
but as he was between forty and fifty years old before
he ran into this excess, we cannot but think, that he kept
this multitude of women more for state than any other
service. 13 Darius Codomannus was wont to carry along
with him in his camp, no less than three hundred and
fifty concubines in time of war ; nor was his queen at all
offended at it, because these women used to reverence
6 Pro. iii. 13. » Job xxviii. IS. 8 Pro. viii. 11.
> Jewish Antiq. b. S. c. 2. 10 1 Kings iv. 30.
11 Porphyr. apud Cyril, b 10. contra Julian.
12 1 Kings x. 13. ,3 Athen. b. 13. c. 1.
4a
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ami adore her as if she had been a goddess. F. Le
Compte, in his history of China, tells us, that the em-
peror there has a vast number of wives chosen out of the
prime beauties of the country, many of which he never
so much as saw in his whole life ; and therefore, it is
not improbable, that Solomon, as he found his riches
increase, might enlarge his expenses, and endeavour to
surpass all the princes of his time in this, as well as all
other kinds of pomp and magnificence.
A man of Solomon's great wisdom, one would think,
should have converted those women that were about him
to the true religion rather than have suffered himself to
be perverted by them to a false one. The Scripture
tells us, indeed, that J ' he went after Ashtaroth the god-
dess of the Zidonians and a Milcom the abomination of
the Ammonites, and b Chemosh the abomination of
Moab ;' but surely he could never be so far infatuated,
as to prefer those idols before the God of Israel. These
women, no doubt, as they had got an ascendant over
him, 2 might abate his zeal against idolatry, and prevail
with him for a public toleration of their religion : they
might obtain money of him for the making of their idols,
the support of their priests, and expense of their sacri-
fices; nay, and perhaps might sometimes persuade him,
in compliance, to go with them to their worship, or to
partake of their lewd and riotous feasts ; but that they
should ever be able to alter his notions concerning the
true God, or prevail with him to believe, that the images
they worshipped were informed with any kind of divini-
ty, is a thing incredible.
In the course of this prevarication, however, he con-
tinued so long, that it is now become a famous question,
Whether he be in a state of salvation or no ? Those
that maintain the negative, are apt to suggest, that
though the Scripture gives us a particular account of his
fall, yet it takes no notice of his recovery ; that without
the grace of God he could not repent, and yet his actions
were such as justly deserved a forfeiture of that grace ;
that had he repented, he would have pulled down the
idolatrous temples which he had erected, whereas we find
them standing many years after him ; and therefore they
conclude, that as he did not 3 ' sorrow after a godly sort,'
for his impieties, because in his whole behaviour to the
very last, they can discern no carefulness wrought in him,
1 1 Kings xi. 5, 7. 2 Poole's Annotations. 32Cor. vii. 11.
a This god is the same with Moloch, which, both in Hebrew
and /Ethiopic, signifies, a king; but then there are various sen-
timents concerning the relation which this God had to the other
pagan deities. Some believe, that Moloch was Saturn, others
Mercury, others Venus, and others again Mars or Mithra. But
F. Calmer., in his dissertation before his commentary upon
Leviticus, has made it more than probable, that this god was the
sun, who is called 'the king of heaven,' as the moon may be said
to be the queen thereof, for its make and manner of worship. — See
vol. ii. p. flit), in the notes.
b Chemosh, or Chamos, comes from a root, which, in Arabic,
Biguifi.es to make haste; and from hence some have imagined,
that he is the same with the sun, whose motion is supposed to
be so hasty and rapid; though some, from the Hebrew root,
which signifies, contrectatus, or handled, will have him the same
with the Roman Priapus, who is called 'Pater contrectationum
nocturnarum ;' while others from the near resemblance of the
Hebrew Chamos with the word Comos, have rather thought it
to be Bacchus, the god of drunkenness: but in either acceptation
it may he supposed to represent either Noah or Lot. — Jtirieu's
history of Doctrhies and fl'orship, part 4.
no clearing of himself, no indignation, no fear, no vehe-
ment desire, no zeal, no revenge, which the apostle ha3
made the proper characteristics of a true repentance.
The promise, however, which God makes to David con-
cerning his son Solomon, may incline us to think favour-
ably of his salvation : 4 ' I will be his father, and he shall
be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him
with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children
of men, but my mercy shall not depart away from him.'
And therefore we may presume, that towards the conclu-
sion of his life he grew sensible of his transgressions, 5
though the sacred writer takes no notice of it, on purpose
to leave a blot on his memory, and a frightful example of
human weakness to all posterity ; that the temples which
he had built to heathen idols, he pulled down and demo-
lished,Bthough they were afterwards raised again upon the
same places, by other impious princes ; and that, after
his fall, he wrote his book of Ecclesiastes as a monu-
ment of his repentance, and acknowledgment of his
own apostasy, and a warning and admonition to all
others, that, however they may think of 7 ' doing what-
ever their eyes desired, of keeping nothing from them,
and of withholding their hearts from no joy ;' yet in the
event, they would find, what his experience had taught
him so late, that all ' was vanity and vexation of spirit ;'
that there was no profit in any kind of wickedness under
the sun, but 8 ' that to fear God, and keep his command-
ments, was the whole duty of man.'
It is making a wrong judgment of things, to think,
that the customs of ancient times, and of different coun-
tries, should agree with those of our own age and climate.
We, indeed, when we have any thing to declare or
relate, do it, for the most part, in express words : but the
people of the east, especially those who took upon them
the character of prophets, were fond of discovering their
minds in c signs and emblematical actions ; because they
4 2 Sam. vii. 14, 15. 5 Patrick's Commentary.
6 Calmet's Dissertation on the Salvation of King Solomon.
7 Eccles. ii. 10, 11. 8 Ibid. xii. 13.
c This is the first symbolical action that we meet with in any
prophet; but, in after ages, instances of this kind became more
frequent. Thus Jeremiah ' made himself bonds and yokes, and
put them upon his neck,' (Jer. xxvii. 2.) to signify the near
approaching captivity of Jerusalem. Isaiah, to denote the capti-
vity of Egypt and Ethiopia, walked naked, that is, without his
upper garments on, ' and barefoot for three years, in the streets,'
(Is. xx. 2, 3.) Ezekiel, to make the people sensible that they
were to be carried away into a strange land, was ordered to
make a breach in the wall of his house, and through that, to re-
move his household goods, ' in the daytime, and in their sight,'
(Ezek. xii. 3, 4.) The false prophet Zedekiah made himself a
pair of iron horns, and said to Ahab, ' With these shalt thou push
the Syrians,' (1 Kings xxii. 11.) And the like practice con-
tinued under the New Testament likewise ; for Agabus having
bound his hands and feet with St Paul's girdle, told the com-
pany, that, ' so should the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man untc
whom it belonged,' (Acts xxi. 11.) Samuel having exhorted
the people to return to the Lord with all their hearts, and to put
away the strange gods from among them, said, ' Gather all Israel
to Mizpah, and I will pray for you unto the Lord. And they
gathered together to Mizpah, and drew water, and poured it out
before the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have
sinned against the Lord.' (1 Sam. vii. 5, 6.) The sacred histo-
rian does not explain in words the meaning of this drawing of
water and pouring it out, nor was there any occasion for his
doing so; the action of itself expressing with sufficient clearness
that a deluge of tears was due for their offences. But it is not in
Israel alone that information was given by action, or that when
words were employed, action was added, to fix their meaning,
Skct. I.]
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looked upon such representations more lively and affect-
ing than any that proceeded from the mouth only
could be.
When the prophet was sent to anoint Jehu to be king
of Israel, the question which the rest of the captains put
to him, * ' Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee?'
sufficiently indicates their scorn and contempt of him :
and, in like manner, Ahijah might have addressed him-
self to a man of Jeroboam's haughty spirit to small pur-
pose, had he not, by some previous action, drawn his
observation, and made him attentive to the message
he was going to deliver. Now, if any such sym-
bolical act was necessary at this time, the tearing of
his garment was more proper than any, because, in the
case of Saul, Samuel had applied it to denote the alien-
ation of his kingdom : ~ ' The Lord hath rent the king-
dom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a
neighbour of thine, that is better than thou :'and if rend-
ing the garment was no insignificant symbol upon this
occasion, the newer the garment was, the more it would
declare, that what the prophet did was by a divine com-
mand, and upon mature deliberation.
This may, in some measure, suffice to rescue Ahijah
from the imputation of madness, in tearing his garment
to pieces. And to come now, in the last place, to the
case of the other prophet who came from Judah to de-
nounce judgments against the altar of Bethel, and was
slain in his return, for disobeying the divine injunction,
this we may think was a small offence, that hardly
deserved so severe a fate ; but then we should do well
to consider, that 3 whenever God, in an extraordinary
maimer discovers his will to a prophet, he always makes
1 2 Kings ix. 11. * 1 Sam. xv. 28. 3 Stillingfleet's Orig. Sacra,
and to impress it on the memory. Herodotus informs us (b. iii.
c. 46.) that the Samians, in their distress, having arrived at
Sparta, and obtained an audience of the magistrates, made a long
speech in the language of suppliants; to which they received for
answer, that " the beginning of their discourse was already for-
gotten, and the conclusion of it not understood." At a second
interview the Samian orators simply produced an empty leathern
bag, saying, that it contained no bread ; to which the Spartans
replied, that they observed the bag and determined to assist them.
Again, we are told by Clemens Alexandrinus, as quoted by
Bishop Warburton, that " Identhura, a king of the Scythians, as
Pherecydes Syrus relates the story, when ready to oppose Darius,
who had passed the Ister, sent to the Persian a symbol instead
of letters, namely, a mouse, a frog, a bird, a dart, and a plough,"
or, as it is otherwise reported, five darts, without the plough.
This symbol was understood by Gobiyas, one of the Persian
chiefs, to signify that the army of Darius should never recross
the Ister, unless like birds they could fly into the air, like mice
burrow in the earth, or like frogs take refuge in marshes. (See
Herodotus, b. iv. c. 13.) As the symbol is mentioned by Cle-
mens, I should think its meaning was, that the Scythians would
dispute every inch of ground, and at last leave the country a
barren desert to the Persians, rather than submit to their yoke.
But whatever be the precise meaning of this particular symbol,
it is obvious, that in those ages all important messages were at
least accompanied by significant actions. They still are so
among all savage nations ; and Bishop Warburton has clearly
traced the practice from its origin in necessity. Where lan-
guages are rude and confined, speakers arc obliged to call in the
aid of significant actions to make themselves understood; and as
every impression made through the eye takes a faster hold of the
mind than impressions made through the medium of the other
senses, orators have in all ages, aud in every country, given
force to their speeches, by what was originally necessary to make
scanty and equivocal languages understood. — See Divine Lega-
tion, b. iv. sect. 4; and b. vi. sect. 5. with the note G. at the
end of that book. — Bishop Gkig. — Ed.
such a sensible impression upon his mind, that he can-
not but perceive himself actuated by a divine spirit ; and,
consequently, cannot but be assured of the evidence of
his own revelation. This evidence the prophet that was
sent to Bethel had ; for as he was able, by the power that
was given him, to work miracles, he could not but be sen-
sible of his divine mission, and that the particular injunc-
tion, of ' his not eating or drinking in the town of Bethel,'
was as much the will of God as any other part of his
commission.
Now, the design of God, in this prohibition, Mas, to
express his abhorrence of that idolatrous place ; and
therefore the other pretended revelation of the b old pro-
phet who lived therein, was justly to be suspected, not
only because it was repugnant to God's main design, but
because it came from a person who had given no great
testimony of his sincerity in choosing to live in a place
notoriously infected with idolatry, and yet making no
public remonstrances against it. The consideration of
this one circumstance should have made the young pro-
phet diffident of what the other told him, at least till he
had shown him some divine testimony to convince him ;
for it argued a great deal of levity, if not infidelity of
his own revelation, to listen to that of another man, in
contradiction to what he had abundant reason to believe
was true.
The short of the matter is : — The prophet from Judah
had sufficient evidence of the truth of his own revelation ;
had sufficient cause to suspect some corrupt ends in the
prophet that came to recall him ; and had sufficient rea-
son to expect an interposition of the same power that
gave him the injunction to repeal it. And therefore his
crime was an easy credulity, or complying with an offer
merely to gratify a petulant appetite, that he knew was
repugnant to a divine command ; and the lesson we are
to learn from God's severity in this instance is :•— Not to
sutler our faith to be perverted by any suggestions that
are made against a revelation that is of uncontested
divine authority, but * ' if an angel from heaven,' as the
Apostle puts the case, should preach any other gospel,
4 Gal. i. 8, 9.
b The learned are divided in their sentiments concerning this
prophet at Bethel. Some will needs have him to have been a
false prophet, highly in esteem with king Jeroboam, because he
prophesied to him soft things, and such as would humour him in
his wickedness. To this purpose they tell us, that going to visit
the king one day, and finding him in a deep concern upon
account of the menaces and reproaches which the man of God
from Judah had denounced against him, he undertook to per-
suade him, that that prophet was an impostor, and to elude the
force of the miracle he had wrought, by telling him, that there
was nothing extraordinary in his altar's falling down, considering
that it was new built, not thoroughly settled, loaded with sacri-
fices, and heated with fire. And as for the matter of his arm,
that was occasioned oidy by his having overwrought himself in
pulling the sacrifices along, and lifting them up upon the altar,
which might make his hand numb for a while, but, upon a little
rest it came to itself ag;iin; and so, with plausible distinctions,
and loose insinuations, he shuffled oil' the miracle, and made the
kin<* more obdurate in wickedness than ever. Others think
more favourably of the old prophet, namely, that he was a true
prophet of God, though some say a wicked one, not unlike the
famous Balaam, who sacrificed every thing to his profit. Whilst
cithers say, he was a weak one, who thought he might innocently
employ an officious lie to bring the prophet of Judah back, who
was under a prohibition indeed, but such a one, as in his opinion,
related only to the house of Jeroboam, and such others as were ol
an idolatrous religion. — Josephus's Jeuish Antiquities, b. £. c. M.
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than what we have received, to detest and denounce him
accursed.'
Here, however, we may take occasion to admire the
unsearchable secrets of the divine justice. Jeroboam
revolts from his lawful sovereign, forsakes the worship
of the true God, engages the people in gross idolatry,
and is himself hardened with the menaces and miracles
of the prophet that was sent to him. A false prophet
deceives an innocent man with a lie, and draws him into
an act of disobedience, contrary to his inclination ; and
yet this wicked Jeroboam, and this seducing prophet, go
unpunished, while the other, who might mean no ill per-
haps in turning back, is slain by a lion, and his body
deprived of the sepulchre of his fathers. We must
acknowledge indeed, that the depths of the judgments
of God are an abyss that our understandings cannot
fathom. But nothing certainly can be a more sensible
proof of the truth of another life, and of the eternal re-
compenses or punishments that attend it, than to see the
righteous so rigorously treated here for very slight
offences ; Moses excluded the land of promise 1 for a
diffident thought ; 2 Lot's wife changed into a statue of salt
for her looking back ; and 3 David, for a vain curiosity,
punished with the death of no less than seventy thousand
of his subjects. And if God be thus severe to his own
servants ; 4 ' if judgment thus begins at the house of God,
where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ?' As
sentence against every evil man, therefore, is not speedily
executed, this is our proof, this is our assurance, that
5 ' God will bring every work into judgment, with every
secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.'
CHAP. III. — Of Solomon's Riches, and his Trade to
Ophir.
He who only looks into the map, and there observes, in
how small a compass the land of Canaan is comprised,
may be apt to think that the kings of that country were
petty princes, ruling over an indigent obscure people,
unable to bear any great expense, and incapable of
making any considerable figure, except now and then,
at the head of their armies. But he will soon perceive
his mistake, when lie comes to reflect on the immense
riches which David left his son Solomon ; on the vast
expense of Solomon's magnificent living ; and on the
several branches of his revenue, which enabled him to
sustain that expense.
The Scripture informs us, that out of the revenues of
the crown, David left Solomon, merely for the purpose
of building the temple, 6 ' a hundred thousand talents of
gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver ;' out of
his privy purse, ' ' three thousand talents of gold, and
seven thousand talents of silver ;' and out of the benevo-
lence of the princes, 8 ' five thousand talents, and ten
thousand drams of gold, and ten thousand talents of
silver.' Now, since it is generally agreed, that a talent
of silver was equivalent to three hundred and forty-two
pounds, three shillings, and ninepence ; and a talent of
1 Nil n. \x. 1 1, 12. 8 Gen. xix. 26. 3 2 Sam. xxiv. 15.
• I Pet. iv. 17, 18. 5 Eccles. xii. II. |; l Chron. xxii. 11.
7 1 Chron, x-»ix. 1. ' Ibid, xxix. 7.
gold amounted to no less than five thousand four hundred
and twenty-five pounds sterling, what an immense sum
must all these talents of gold and silver amount to?
Some of the best authors of weights and measures have
computed, that if all the walls, pavements, lining, and
covering of the temple had been made of massy gold, even
with the wages of the workmen and vessels belonging to
it, they would not have come up to the value here speci-
fied; and therefore, upon this supposition, they have
advanced a notion, that the Hebrews had two kinds of
talents ; a larger, which was called ' the talent of the
sanctuary,' and a smaller, which was the common talent,
and one half less than the other, by which all such exor-
bitant sums, as they say, ought to be reckoned. But
what grounds they have for this distinction we cannot
perceive, 9 since it nowhere appears, either in the Scrip-
tures, or in any other history, that the Jews, especially
before the captivity of Babylon, had any more talents
than one ; and that their talent, whether of silver or gold,
arose to a sum tantamount to what we have stated it at,
there are several instances in the Old Testament, that
may convince us.
To this purpose we may observe, that when Amaziah,
king of Judah, hired a hundred thousand men out of
Israel, to fight against the Edomites, he gave no more
than I0 an hundred talents of silver for them, which would
have been but a very trifling price indeed, had the talent
here been of less value than three thousand shekels :
that when Omri, king of Israel, bought the mountain
whereon was built the city of Samaria, he paid for it no
more than " two talents of silver ; and yet these two
talents were ten thousand nine hundred and fifty pounds,
a proper sum for such a purchase ; that when Sennacherib
king of Assyria had obliged Hezekiah to pay him l2 three
hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold, that
good king exhausted, not only his own treasure, and the
treasure of the house of the Lord, but was forced like-
wise to cut the gold oft' from the doors and pillars of the
temple : and to name no more, that when Pharaoh
Necho 13 ' put the land to a tribute of an hundred talents
of silver, and a talent of gold,' Jehoiakim was necessitat-
ed to levy a tax extraordinary upon his subjects, that
every one might contribute according to his power : but
neither of these remarks, namely, that these two kings
were thus straitened about the payment, would the sacred
historian have made, had the talent in his days, been of
considerably less value 14 than Moses is known to rate it
at. So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the
Hebrew talent continued always the same, and amounted
to a much greater sum, than those who are for debasing
its value are willing to allow.
' But, if the talent must be reckoned at so high a rate,
how can we imagine, that David, who had no estate
from his family, and whose dominions were far from
being extensive, could ever be able to amass such an
immense quantity of wealth?' Now, in answer to this,
we should do well to consider, that, even before the
death of Saul, David was at the head of some brave
troops, with whom he used to make inroads into the
enemies' country, and frequently bring from thence
DCalmet's Dissertation on the Riches that David loft to Solomon.
10 2 Chron. xxv. 6. >' I Kings xvi. 24. Ia 2 Kings xviii. 15.
13 2 Kings xxiii. 33, " Exoil. xxxviii. 25, 26. .
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
557
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003 ; OR, ACCORDING TO H.ILES, A. M.
large booty; that, after Saul's death, he reigned forty
years in all, and, in that space, made it his business to
heap up riches, especially when he came to understand,
that God had appointed his son and successor to build him
a temple ; that, in the time of his reign, he had wars with
the Syrians, the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Moab-
ites, and several other nations, from whom he returned
always victorious, and always laden with their treasures,
and a rich spoils ; that, by this means, he enlarged his
dominions, as far as * the promise made to Abraham
extends, even from the river Euphrates to the Mediter-
ranean sea, on the one side, and to the Nile on the
other ; that the countries which he subdued, and made
tributary to him, such as Arabia, Phoenicia, Mesopota-
mia, Idumasa, &c. were exceedingly rich, and productive
of several mines of gold and other metals ; and that the
tributes which were wont to be exacted upon such occa-
sions, were either annual imposts, or vast sums of money
at once : if we may consider, I say, the spoils which he
took from conquered nations, and the tribute which he
raised from such as submitted to his empire, we shall
have no cause to wonder at his leaving such immense
treasures to his son.
But, besides these revenues from abroad, he had a
large income from the taxes which his own subjects
annually paid him, and the improvements he made of
his own estates ; which in those days were accounted,
not only lawful and allowable, but even honourable and
commendable in princes, as well as others. The sacred
history has preserved 2 the names of the officers Avhom
he employed in this capacity ; and, from the different
provinces wherein they acted, we may, in some measure,
form a judgment of the largeness of this branch of his
income. He had officers set over the labourers, who
were to till his gTounds ; officers to take care of the
dressing of his vines, olive, and fig-trees ; officers to
inspect the gathering of his fruits, and the managery of
wine and oil cellars ; officers to look to the feeding of
his camels and asses, his herds of cattle, and flocks of
sheep ; and officers Avho were to attend to the selling
and exportation of all these. For David, we must
know, had the command of the Mediterranean sea, and
had established a commerce with the Phoenicians, Egyp-
tians, Syrians, Philistines, and other nations, who took
ofi'his camels, asses, oxen, sheep, wine, corn, oil, fruits,
;,nd other commodities, in large quantities, and at very
advantageous prices : all which, being put together,
will make the amount of what David left his son no less
than what the -.acred writer has recorded.
3 And indeed, considering the vast expenses Solomon
1 Gen. xv. 7. 2 1 Chron. xxvii. 2G, &c.
* Calmet's Dissertation on the Riches that David left to Solomon.
a Besides the personal ornaments worn by those who went to
battle in the eastern nations, it was customary to adorn their
weapons and utensils of war with the richest metals. We learn
from the history of David, that the Syrians, whom he subdued
and slew in vast multitudes, wore shields of gold ; and therefore
we need imt doubt, but that their quivers, the handles of their
swords, &e., were of the same metal. He was victorious in
about twenty battles over the richest enemies in the world; and
therefore their personal spoils, rich arms, military chests, and
gods of gold and silver, always carried to battle with them,
could not but amount to an immense sum; and, in all probabili-
t , the spnils of their cities and countries to a much greater. —
T.c Ilisttry of the Life if King David.
•1421. A. C. 990. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
was at in his chariots, in his horses, in his camels, in his
armies, in his shipping, in his buildings, in his furniture,
in his servants, for his table, and for his women, which
came at length to no less than a thousand, and all to be
maintained in the port of queens, we can hardly think,
that a small revenue would ever have been sufficient to
answer all these demands.
The Scripture indeed informs us, that Solomon's
annual income was * ' six hundred, threescore and six
talents of gold, besides what he had of the merchant-
men, and of the traffic of spice-merchants, and of all
the kings of Arabia, and of all the governors of the
country:' but these six hundred threescore and six
talents of gold 5 are thought, by most interpreters, to be
no more than what arose from the tribute which he
imposed upon conquered nations ; over and above which
he had a yearly tax paid by his own subjects ; duties
upon the import or export of all merchandise ; mines of
gold and silver, and other metals ; the voluntary presents
of other princes ; and a trade to Ophir and Tarshish,
which brought him in riches inestimable.
These were two branches of profit which his father
had not, at least not in the same extent. Of the former
it is said, that 6 ' every man that came to hear Solomon's
wisdom, brought his present, vessels of silver, and vessels
of gold, and garments, and armour, and spices, and
horses, and mules,' and continued to do the same every
year ; and of the latter that he sent 7 vessels to Ophir,
which, in one voyage, ' brought him four hundred and
fifty talents of gold, together with almug-trees, and
precious stones ;' and to Tarshish likewise, ' which
brought gold, and silver, and ivory, and apes, and
peacocks ;' and as, by this means, he came to surpass
all the kings of the earth for riches, it may be worth
our while to inquire a little where the places, which pro-
duced such plenty of wealth, were in ancient times
situated, and both how, and by whom, a trade so very
advantageous might probably be carried on.
Amidst the vast variety of opinions concerning the
situation of these two famous places, Ophir and Tar-
shish, 8 the learned Grotius has suggested a good ex-
pedient, one would think, how to find them out ; namely,
by considering what commodities were brought from
thence, and then inquiring of merchants, who have been
in the remoter parts of the world, where not only gold
and precious stones, but ivory likewise, and alinug-
trees, and whatever else we read of, was brought from
thence, and is now to be found. But this expedient will
not do ; not only because the seats of traffic are fre-
quently changing, and any country may, in time, be ex-
hausted of the commodities it once abounded with ; but
because it is no easy matter to tell by the imperfect de-
scription we have of them, of what distinct species some
of these commodities were. 9 The almug-tree, for in-
stance has been a puzzle to most interpreters ; nor are
they yet agreed, whether it was the coral, ebony, Brazil,
pine, or citron wood ; nay, some will have it to have
been no particular tree at all, but only a general name
for any wood whatever, that was excellent in its kind :
4 1 Kings x. 11, 15.
'Calmet's Dissertation on the Riches that David left to Solomon.
8 1 Kings x. 24. ' 2 Chron. ix. 10, 21, 22.
9 Patrick's Commentary on 1 Kings.
Imet aud Le Clerc's Commentaries.
55S
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. II. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
and how then can those commodities, that are of so in-
definite a signification, be any characteristic to the situa-
tion of any country ?
Nor is there much more certainty to be gathered from
the names of the places Ave are in quest of; for, though
it be allowed, that Ophir was the country which at first
was peopled by Ophir, one of Joktan's sons, who are
said ' to have inhabited the country from Mesha to
Sephar, a mountain in the east ; yet, where Mesha and
Sephar are to be placed, we know no more than we do
where Ophir lies. And, in like manner, though Tar-
shish may be supposed by some, to be a town or country,
not far distant from Ophir, yet others will have it to be
no proper name at all, but by ships of Tarshish, or from
Tarshish, understand no more than vessels able to bear
a long voyage, that is, large merchant ships, in opposi-
tion to small craft, intended for home trade in navigable
rivers. So incompetent are the marks whereby Ave may
descry the true situation of these unknoAvn places ! And
therefore Ave can expect no other, but that the conjec-
tures of learned men about them should be Avidely distant.
In relation to the land of Ophir, Avhich is more parti-
cularly under our inquiry, Josephus and from him many
others, places it in the Indies, in a country Avhich he calls
the golden coast, not unlikely the Chersonesus Aurea,
knoAvn now by the name of Malacca, and is a peninsula
opposite to Sumatra. The learned Bochart contends
hard for the isle Taprobane, so famous among the
ancients, which is now called Ceylon, and lies in the
kingdom of Malabar, because this place (as he tells us)
abounds with gold, ivory, and precious stones. Arius
Montanus will needs remove it into Armenia ; and Avhen
Christopher Columbus at first discovered the island His-
paniola in 1492, he used to make his boast, that he had
found the Ophir of Solomon, because he perceived deep
caverns in the earth, from whence he supposed that
prince might have dug his gold. F. Calmet is no less
singular in his opinion. He places Ophir somewhere
in Armenia, not far from the sources of the Tigris and
Euphrates ; ~ and, to obviate the objection of the country's
not bordering on the sea, and not being at distance
enough for a three years' voyage, he supposes, that So-
lomon's fleet made a trading voyage of it ; that in no
one place it met with all the commodities it brought
home ; but, on the coast of Ethiopia, took in apes,
ebony, and parrots ; in Arabia, ivory and spices, and at
Ophir, or the place of traffic Avhere the people of Ophir
resorted, gold : and though this Ophir might be no mari-
time country, yet this hinders not, says he, A\hy the gold
which it produced might not be brought by land carriage
to some part of the Tigris or Euphrates, which, at that
time, were a great Avay navigable. Grotius, as Avell as
Calmet, is of opinion, that Solomon did not send his
fleet to any part, either of the East or West Indies, but
only to a part of Arabia, by Arian called Aphar, by
Pliny, Saphar, and by Ptolemy, Sapphera, situate on
the main ocean ; and that the Indians brought down their
merchandises thither, to be bought by Solomon's factors,
and shipped on board his fleet. And to name no more,
Huetius, in his dissertation upon the subject, endeav-
ours to persuade us, that Ophir lay upon the east coast
1 Gen. x. .SO. 2 Dissertation on the country of Ophir.
■' Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Ophir.
4421. A. C. 990. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
of Africa, and more particularly, A\as that small country
Avhich is called Sophala ; that Solomon's fleet Avent out
of the Red sea, and from the harbour of Ezion-Geber,
entered into the Mediterranean, by a canal of commu-
nication Avhich joined the tAvo seas ; and that, having
doubled the Cape of Guadarfay, and coasted along the
African shore, it came at length to Sophala, and there
met Avith plenty of all the merchandises and curiosities
that the sacred history specifies.
Which of these conjectures, for conjectures they are
all, make the nearest approaches to truth, it is hard to
determine ; only Ave may adventure to say, 4that, if any
part of Arabia did furnish the world, in those days, Avith
the best gold, and in the greatest quantity, as some good
authors seem to say, they who Avould have the Ophir
of the Holy Scriptures to be there situated, seem of all
others, to have the best foundation for their conjecture ;
especially considering that the use of the compass not
being then knoAvn, the Avay of navigation Avas, in those
days, by coasting, Avhich Avould carry a ship into Africa
much better than either into the East or West Indies.
Before the reign of king David, to inquire a little into
this history of the Ophir trade among the Hebrews, the
HebreAvs did not much apply themselves to maritime
affairs. From the time of Joshua they had been almost
perpetually engaged in Avars, and had therefore had no
leisure or opportunity to think of navigation. The Ty-
rians and Phoenicians Avere then in possession of all the
commerce of the Mediterranean ; and on the main ocean
the HebreAvs had not the least footing until David made
a conquest of Idumea, and thereby became master of
two sea port towns on the Red sea, Elah and Ezion-
Geber ; and seeing the advantage that might be made of
the situation of these tAvo places, Avisely took the benefit
of it, and there began this traffic.
After the death of his father, Solomon continued the
trade to Ophir from these two ports, Avhither himself
Avent in person ; and having ordered more ships to be
built, and the harbours to be repaired and fortified, he set-
tled every thing else that might tend to the effectual carry-
ing on of this traffic, not only to Ophir, but to all other
parts to which the sea Avhereon those ports lay opened
him a passage. But his chief care Avas to plant in those
two towns such inhabitants as Avere best qualified to
carry on his design ; for Avhich reason he brought thither,
from the sea coasts of Palestine, as many sailors as he
could get, but especially of the Tyrians, with whom his
good friend and ally, king Hiram, supplied him in
great numbers : so that in a short time he drew to these
tAvo ports, and from thence to Jerusalem, all the trade
of Africa, Arabia, Persia, and India, which Avas the
chief fountain of the immense riches for Avhich his reign
Avas so renoAvned.
After the division of the kingdom, the kings of Judah,
Avho kept possession of these ports in Idumea, still
carried on the trade, especially from Ezion-Geber, which
they chiefly made use of until the time of Jehoshaphat ;
who having prepared a fleet to go to Ophir, in conjunc-
tion with Ahaziah king of Israel, had the misfortune to
have them destroyed and dashed to pieces against a
ridge of rocks which lay at the mouth of the harbour,
before they could get to sea, which gave him such a
4 Prideaux's Connexion, part 1. h. 1.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
559
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
distaste against the place, that, from thenceforward,
the station of his ships was at Elah, for from thence we
read of his sending out a fleet next year for Ophir.
1 When Jehoram succeeded his father Jehoshaph.it,
God, for the punishment of his exceeding great wicked-
ness, suffered the Idumeans to revolt from him; who,
having expelled his viceroy, chose them a king of their
own, and, under his conduct, regaining their ancient
liberty, they soon recovered the two ports of Elah and
Ezion-Geber : but even while they had them, there was
an interruption in the Ophir trade, until Uzziah king of
Judah having retaken Elah, in the beginning of his
reign, fortified it anew, peopled it with his own subjects,
and restored the old traffic to Ophir, which continued all
along until the wicked reign of Ahaz.
In the reign of Ahaz, Rezin king of Damascus, being
assisted by Pekah king of Israel, took Elah by surprise ;
and having driven out the Jews that were settled there,
put Syrians in their place, and was thinking of carrying
on this trade, which the kings of Judah had been so
enriched by, to his own advantage ; when, the very next
year, Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, having by the
procurement of Ahaz, invaded Damascus, and conquer-
ed Rezin, took possession of Elah, and reserved the
property of trade to himself : so that the Jews, from
thenceforward, had never any portion in it, which proved
a great diminution to their wealth.
How the Assyrians managed this traffic, while it con-
tinued in their hands, or where they fixed their principal
mart for it, we are nowhere told. In process of time,
we find it Avholly engrossed by the Tyrians, who, from
the same port of Elah, by way of a 2 town on the con-
fines of Egypt and Palestine, made it all centre in Tyre,
and from thence furnished all the western part of the
world with the wares of Persia, India, Africa, and
Arabia, to the great enriching of themselves, as long as
the Persian empire subsisted, under the favour and pro-
tection of whose kings they enjoyed the full possession
of this trade. 3 But when the Ptolemies prevailed in
Egypt, by building several ports on the Egyptian or
western side of the Red Sea, for Elah and Ezion-Geber
lay on the eastern, and, by sending from thence fleets to
all those countries where the Tyrians traded from Elah,
they soon drew all this trade into their kingdom, and
there fixed the chief mart of it at Alexandria, where it
continued for a great many ages, until a way was found
out, * about two centuries and a half ago, of sailing to
those parts by the way of the Cape of Good Hope ; after
which, the Portuguese, for some time, managed this trade ;
but now the greatest share of it is fallen into the hands
of the English and Dutch.
SECT. II.
CHAP. I. — From the Reign of Je/ios/iaphal to the
Siege of Samaria.
THK HISTORY.
After the death of Asa, ° Jehoshaphat his son, when
1 Prideaux's Connexion, part I. b. 1.
2 The town's name was Rhinoeolura, Strabo, b. 16.
* Prideaux'a Connexion, ibid. * Anna Dam. 1 107.
a 1 Kings xvii. 1. " We are deceived by not seeing titles
4482. A. C. 929. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
five and thirty years of age, succeeded him in the king-
dom of Judah, and, in all acts of piety, as well as the
reformation of religion, imitated, if not excelled, b the
former part of his father's reign. At his first accession
to the throne, he expressed his zeal for God's service, in
the extirpation of those Sodomites, and the destruction
of those idolatrous c high places and groves which
remained in his father's reign ; and perceiving that the
people were grossly ignorant of the law, after he had
fortified his frontier towns, and put his kingdom in a
good posture of defence, he sent itinerant priests and
Levites through all his dominions, with letters to the
princes, and heads of each family, to receive them
kindly, and to encourage them in expounding the law,
and instructing his subjects in the knowledge of their
duty.
By these means, he soon gained the hearts of his
people, who, to support the dignity of his government/
among the Israelites, like those of our nobility. Every one was
called plainly by his own name: but their names signified great
tilings, as those of the patriarchs. The name of God was part of
most ; which was in a manner a short prayer. Elijah and Joel
are made tip of two of God's names, joined in a different way.
Jehoshaphat and Shephatiah signify the judgment of God:
Jehozedek and Zedekiah, his justice: Johanan, his mercy,
Nathanael, Elnathan, Jonathan and Nathaniah, all four, signify,
God given, or the gift of God. Sometimes the name of God was
understood, as in Nathan, David, Obed, &c, as is plain by
Eliezer, God my helper: Uzziel, God my strength; and Obadiah,
the Lord's servant. The Greek names also are of the same
import; many are composed of the names of their gods; as
Diodorus, Diogenes, Hermodorus, Hiephestion, Athenais, and
Artemisia." — Fleury's History of the Israelites, p. 20. — Ed.
b In 2 Chron. xvii. 3. mention is made of the first ways of his
father David; but it may \ery well be questioned, whether the
word David be not slipped in here by the fault of some tran-
scriber, in the place of Asa, because in 1 Kings xxii. 43, as
likewise in 2 Chron. xx. 32, Asa is named, and not David.
Now it is very well known, that in the beginning of his reign,
Asa was very religious, but fell from his piety towards the con-
clusion of it; and therefore the sacred historian, by observing
that Jehoshaphat followed his father in what he was in his first
days, and not in his old age, might intend a just reflection upon
Asa for his growing more negligent aud remiss in the service of
God, towards the decline of his life. — Patrick's Commentary;
and Howell's History in the notes. [The word David is wanting
in the Septuagint and six MSS. Boothroyd omits it, and con-
siders it most probable that Asa is the true reading. — En.
e It is said of his father Asa likewise, that he removed the
high places, together with the idols and the groves, which his
father and mother had made, 1 Kings xv. 12, &c. ; but then we
are to observe, as we have noted before, that there were high
places and groves of two sorts ; some for the worship of the true
God, which continued in Judah even under religious princes;
and others for the worship of idols, which good kings took away,
even though they left the other standing. The high places and
groves of this latter kind, were those which Asa destroyed; but
because towards the conclusion of his reign, when he grew more
infirm in body, and more remiss in God's cause, some of his
subjects, out of their vile attachment to idols, had made new
ones, Jehoshaphat, upon his accession to the throne, had occa-
sion enough to begin a reformation in this particular as well as
many others. — Patrick's Commentary on I Kings xviii. 30;
and Poole's Annotations on 2 Chron. xvii. <>.
d It was customary for subjects to make their oblations to
their princes, especially at the commencement of their reigns.
It is said of some disaffected people, that they brought Saul no
presents, even though he had been recognised as king, (1 Sam.
x. 27.) But by the presents here spoken of, we may not impro-
perly understand the tribute and customs which his subjects were
obliged to pay him; only it was thought proper to call them pre-
sents, or voluntary gifts, as a name of a less odious sound and
import, than that of tributes. — Calmet's Commentary on 2 Chrou.
xviii. 5.
560
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4482. A. C. 929. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
brought him presents from every quarter, a and struck
such a terror into his enemies, that instead of invading'
his dominions, the Philistines came voluntarily, and paid
him a tribute, which had been suspended for some years,
and the Arabians, whose riches consisted in cattle, sent
him always seven thousand seven hundred rams, and an
equal number of he goats, as an annual acknowledg-
ment of their homage. For Jehoshaphat took care to
make himself strong in arms, as well as wealth, having
an army of above eleven hundred thousand men, s be-
sides those that were in garrisons, and such fortified
places as he had well furnished with plenty of all mili-
tary stores.
In short, Jehoshaphat was rich and happy, great and
honourable, beloved by his subjects, and revered by his
enemies ; only there was this great blemish in his reign,
that he c married his son Jehoram to Athaliah, daughter
to Ahab, king of Israel, which both displeased God,
and involved him and his family in sundry troubles : but
of these hereafter.
This Ahab, as we said, was one of the wickedest princes,
and the most abominable idolaters, that ever sat on the
throne of Israel : for he not only continued the worship
of the calves which Jeroboam had set up, but having
married Jezebel, the daughter of d Eth-baal, king of
Tyre, to pleasure this woman he introduced the idolatry
paid to the e god Baal, built him a temple in Samaria,
a His enemies could not but be sensible, that it was in vain to
assault him, while he continued firm in his religion; for they
must have observed, that the prosperity of all the kings of Judah
depended on that, and that they never'fell into the hands of their
enemies, but when they had first fallen from God. — Patrick's
Commentary.
b This is such a prodigious number that no judicious critic
will attempt to defend it, and besides if Jehoshaphat was possessed
■ >! so -reat a force, it is not easy to account for the alarm which
he felt when told that the Moabites and Ammonites were
coming against him. Also in his prayer, uttered on that occasion,
he says, ' We have no might against this great company that
cometh against us, neither know we what to do.' — See Kennicott's
Dissertation. — Ed.
c The only shadow of excuse that can be alleged in behalf of
Jehoshaphat's marrying his son in this manner, might be a fond
conceit, that in case Ahab should die without issue male, he
might have a chance to reunite the two kingdoms of Israel and
Judah ; but in this piece of worldly policy he found himself sadly
disappointed. — Calmet's Commentary.
d Eth-baal, or Ithobalus, as he is called by profane writers
does equally signify the strength of Baal. In the catalogue of the
of Tyre, he is said to be the eighth; and as both Tyre and
Sidon w,ic, from the beginning, subject to the same king, it is
not improbable, that their kings resided sometimes at the' one,
-nil sometimes at the other city, and were therefore called the
kings of Tyre or Sidon promiscuously. As the character of kin<*
and priest were frequently united in the same person, so is he
ed to have been the high priest of Astarte or Ashtaroth,
the goddess of the Sidonians; and for this reason perhaps his
daughter was so violently attached to that kind of idolatry, that
when she came into power, she was for utterly extirpating all the
oriests and prophets of the Lord. The truth' is, this queen was
B monster in her kind; and therefore the name of Jezebel has
I assed into a proverb, to denote any cruel, impious, and impe-
rious woman. — Calmet's Commentary on 1 Kings xvi. 31.
e Baal, in the Hebrew tongue, signifies Lord, and as Selden
« bserves, was anciently the name of the true God, until the world
grew wicked, and came to apply it to the sun; in after ages, to
other stars; and in process of time, to any of their kings whose
memory was dear to them. The same author observes, that the
Phoenician Belus, or Baal, was the same with the European
Jupiter, and as Sidon was situate on the sea side, their Baal
was called by the Gre< ks the Jupiter of the sea. But more of
erected an altar, and /made a grove, where all kinds
of impurities were committed, the more effectually to
proselyte the vicious and debauched to a religion so
agreeable to their lusts ; and as an instance of the daring
impiety of this age, one Hiel, who lived at Bethel, the
famous seat of all idolatry, S adventured to rebuild
Jericho, in defiance of the curse which Joshua had pro-
nounced above four hundred and fifty years before,
against any man that should attempt it. But the pre-
sumptuous wretch found to his cost, that Joshua's pre-
diction was verified in him, when he saw his eldest son
die, as soon as he had begun the work, the rest of his
children drop oft', as he continued it, and his youngest
son taken away at last, when he had completed it.
In the midst of this bold impiety, Israel however had
the happiness to be blessed with an eminent prophet,
Elijah, the h Tishbite, an inhabitant of Gilead, on the
other side of Jordan ; who being grieved to see such a
general apostasy from the true religion, l prayed ear-
this you may see in the writings of that great man. — Selden on
the gods of Syria.
f The Jewish law was so far from permitting men to plant
any such groves, that it enjoins all its professors to destroy them :
' Ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and
cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire,'
(Dent. vii. 5 ;) and therefore, though Josephus imputes the erec-
tion of these to the impiety of his wife Jezebel, who (as he tells
us, Jewish Antiq. b. viii. c. 7.) " was a woman of a bold, enter-
prising humour, and of so impetuous and ungovernable a spirit,
that she had the confidence to build a temple to Baal, the god of
the Tyrians, to plant groves, for superstition, of all sorts of trees,
and to appoint her priests and false prophets expressly for that
idolatrous service;" yet her husband was nevertheless culpable
for giving her that indulgence.
g Jericho was one of the first places that Joshua took in the
land of Canaan ; and when he took it, he laid it under a Cherern,
that it should never be rebuilt: but it is presumable, that as the
sacred history was then very little read, Hiel might either be
ignorant of this interdict, or being a professed idolater himself,
might probably, at the instigation of Jezebel, or to gain the
favour of the court, do it in defiance of God, and to let the world
see, that whatever was denounced in his name was of no signifi-
cance at all, and for this reason met with his condign punish-
ment.— Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
h Thesbe was a town on the other side of Jordan, in the tribe
of Gad, and in the land of Gilead, where this prophet was born,
or at least inhabited for some time. Since the Scripture makes
no mention, either of the quality of his parents, the manner of
his education, or his call to the prophetic office, some Jewish
doctors have been of opinion, that he was an angel sent from
heaven, in the midst of the general corruption of the world, to
preserve the true worship of God. Others pretend, that he was
a priest descended from the tribe of Aaron ; that his father's name
was Sabaca, and his birth altogether miraculous: whilst others
again will needs have it, that he was Phinehas, the son of Aaron,
who after having lived a long while concealed, appeared again
in the world under the name of Elijah. But where the Scrip-
ture is silent, all particulars of this kind are of small authority.
This, however, may be said with safety of him, that he was one
of the chief, if not the prince of the prophets of his age; a man
of a great and elevated sold, of a generous and undaunted spirit,
a zealous defender of the laws of God, and a just avenger of the
violation of his honour. — Calmet's Commentary.
i St James's words are these: — ' Elias was a man subject to
the like passions as we are; and he prayed earnestly that it might
not rain, and it rained not on the earth for the space of three
years and six months.' Our blessed Saviour makes mention of
the like compass of time, (Luke iv. 25,) and yet neither of these
are contradictory to what the sacred history tells us, namely,
' That the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year,'
(1 Kings xviii. 1.) For we must remember, that as Egypt had
no lain, but was watered by the river Nile ; so the land of Canaau
had generally none, except twice a year, which they called ' the
Skct. II.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &<
561
A. M. 2.300. A. C. 1003; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4482. A. C. 929. I KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
nestly to God, that he would lay bare his arm, and sho»v
some visible token of his displeasure against so wicked a
people : and accordingly, in a short time, he was sent to
Ahab to let him know, that God intended to bring a sore
famine, occasioned by want of rain, a upon the land, which
should last for above three whole years.
When the drought had continued some time, and the
divine threat began to operate, Elijah retired to the
* brook Cherith, where he concealed himself for the space
of a whole year, and was miraculously fed by the ravens,
which brought him bread and flesh twice every day, and
for his drink he had the water of the brook ; but when
the water of the brook began to fail, God directed him
to go to c Zarephtha, a town belonging to the territories
of Sidon, where he had appointed a widow woman to
entertain him.
early and latter rain.' The former of these was in the month
Nisan, which answers to our March; and the other in the month
Marchesvan, which answers to our Octoher. Now, at the begin-
ning of the drought, Ahab might veiy probably impute the want
of rain to natural causes ; but when, after six months, neither
the former nor the latter rain fell in their season, he then began
to be enraged at Elijah, as the cause of the national judgment,
and forced him, at God's command, to save his life by flight:
and from that time the three years in the historian are to be com-
puted, though from the first notice which Elijah gave Ahab of
this approaching calamity, to the expiration of it, were certainly
three years and a half. This calamity is said to have been pro-
cured by Elijah's prayers: but we must not therefore imagine,
that his prayers were spiteful and malicious, but necessary rather,
and charitable to the offenders; that by the sharp and long afflic-
tion which they produced, God's honour, and the truth of his
word and threatenings, which was now universally contemned,
might be vindicated; and that the Israelites, whose present im-
punity hardened them in their idolatry, might hereby be awak-
ened to see their wickedness, their dependence upon God, and
the necessity of their returning to his religion and worship. —
Bedford's Scripture Chronology , b. 6. c. 2 ; and Poole's Anno-
tations.
a It is worthy of remark, that according to Menander, there
occurred in the reign of Eth-baal, king of Tyre an extremely
severe drought, which lasted from the month Hyperberetreus till
the same month in the following year. After prayers were put
up for averting the judgment with which the laud was threaten-
ed, there ensued mighty claps of thunder, and, we may presume,
a copious rain. As Eth-baal was contemporary with Ahab, the
reader cannot fail to identify the drought now mentioned, with
that which gave celebrity to the ministerial functions of the pro-
phet Elijah. — Russell's Connexion, b. 2. c. 2. — Ed.
b The brook Cherith, and the valley through which it runs, are
both very near the river Jordan ; but whether on the east or west
side of the river, it is not so well agreed. Eusebius, or at least St
Jerome, places it beyond Jordan, and so on the east side of it,
but others generally agree in placing it on the west side, because
God, in sending away Elijah, says to him, • Get thee hence, and
turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is
before Jordan,' (1 Kings xvii. 3,) where the expression 'turn
thee eastward,' seems to imply, that Elijah was on the west side
of Jordan, for had he been on the east side, then to have gone to
the brook, which ran on that side Jordan, would have been to
have turned westward. — IFells' Geography of the Old Testa-
ment, vol. iii.
c Zarephtha, or as it is called in the New Testament, Sarepta,
was a town which lay between Tyre and Sidon, but somewhat
nearer to the latter. Mr Maundrell, in his journey from Aleppo
to Jerusalem, observes, that it is the same with what is now
called Sarphan, distant about three hours' travel from Sidon, in
the way to Tyre. Whatever it was formerly, the same author
tells us, that at present it consists of no more than a few houses,
on the tops of the mountains, about half a mile from the sea ;
though there is reason to believe, that the principal part of the
city stood below, in a space between the hills and the sea, be-
cause there arc still ruins there to be seen of a very considerable
extent. — IFells' Geography of the Old Testament, part 1 . c. 5. s. 2.
The famine had spread itself over the country of Sidon,
as well as the land of Israel ; and therefore, when the
prophet drew near the town, he met the widow to whom
he was directed ; and when he requested of her to give
him a little water, and withal a morsel of bread she
solemnly protested to him, that she had but an handful
of meal in a barrel, d and a little oil in a cruise, and was
come out to pick up some sticks, wherewith to bake a
cake e for her and her son, which was to be the last meal
they were ever like to eat. But the prophet, encouraging
her to do as he bid her, gave her assurance, that her
meal and her oil should not fail as long as the famine
lasted ; which accordingly proved true : for of that little
store, she, and her son, and the prophet, lived for the
space of two years; and when, in this space, her sen
fell sick and died, Elijah by his prayers restored him to
life again, which /gave the mother full conviction, that
he was a person extraordinary sent from God.
After he had lived in this obscurity for above two
years, God commanded him to return to the land of Is-
rael, and to present himself before Ahab, because in a
short time, he intended to send rain upon the earth. At
this time the famine was so extreme about Samaria, that
the king commanded 8 Obadiah, one of the officers of
his household, and some others with him, to go all over
the country in quest of some forage for the subsistence
of his cattle ; and to see that his orders were fully ex-
d 1 Kings xvii. 12. As coin is subject to be eaten by worms,
the easterns keep what they are spending in long vessels of clay,
(Sandys' Travels, p. 117.) So it appears the woman of Zarephtha
did. The word translated barrel, properly signifies ajar; arid
is the same with that used for the vessels in which Gideon's sol-
diers concealed their torches, and which they brake when they
blew with their trumpets. — Harmcr, vol. i. p. 277. — Ed.
e Some of the Hebrew doctors, and herein they are followed
by some Christians, are of opinion, that this widow's son was the
prophet Jonas ; that after his restoration, his mother gave him to
Elijah ; that ever after he attended on the prophet as long as he
lived; and on a certain occasion was despatched by him to
Nineveh, as exery one knows. But besides that these traditions
are destitute of any real proof, Jonah was an Hebrew, as he
himself declares, (i. 9.) and a native of Gath-hepher, as we read
(2 Kings xiv. 25.) whereas the widow's son was a native of Za-
rephtha, a town belonging to the kingdom of Sidon, and by birth
a stranger to the race of Israel. — Calmet's Commentary.
f The woman had sufficient reason to believe, that Elijah was
a prophet, or person sent from God, when she saw the miraculous
increase of the meal and oil ; but upon his not curing her son
when he lay sick, but rather suffering him to die, her faith began
to droop; whereas, upon seeing liim revive, her faith revived
with him ; and through the joy of having him restored to her
again, she accounted this latter miracle much greater than the
former. — Le Clerc's Commentary.
g There are some Jewish doctors who think that this Obadiah
was the same with him whose writings we have among the twelve
minor prophets. They pretend that he was married to that
woman of Shunem, where Elisha used to lodge; that he was a
disciple of the prophet Elijah, and the last of the three captains
whom king Ahaziah sent to apprehend him; and that for this
reason he had compassion on him, though he destroyed the others
that came before him, with (ire from heaven, (2 Kings i. 9, &c.)
but all these things are pure apocrypha. Obadiah himself, in his
discourse with Elijah, sufficiently tells us who lie was, namely, a
person truly religious, who worshipped God alone, had a singular
allection for his servants; enough, one would think, to have made
Ahab discard, if not persecute him, had he not found him so
highly useful in the management of his domestic affairs, as to
connive at his not worshipping Baal, or the calves: especially as
we read nothing of his going up to Jerusalem, which was a de-
fect that God perhaps might think proper to dispense with.- -Cat-
met and Patrick's Commentaries.
4 B
5G2
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M.3001. A. C. 1003 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M
edited, himself went along- with some of them.'* Obadiah.
of all the king's domestics, was the most religious. He
in the time of Jezebel's b persecuting the prophets of the
Lord, concealed an hundred of them, by fifty in a cave,
and there sustained them with necessaries. When Elijah
met him, Obadiah saluted him with great respect ; but
when the prophet required him to go and acquaint the
king that he was there, and desired to speak with him,
Obadiah at first excused himself, upon apprehension that
Elijah might vanish, and leave him the object of the king's
indignation, who had taken such vast pains to find him
out ; but when the other assured him that he would not
stir, he went and brought the king to him. The king, at
the first interview, began to upbraid him with being the
cause of the calamity that the nation suffered ; but Elijah
boldly returned the charge, and having taxed him with
the worship of false gods, which was the source of all
their wo, he undertook to prove that they were no more
than false gods, if so be the king would be pleased to
summon all the people to meet upon mount Carmel, and
to bring thither the 450 priests of Baal, together with
the 400 priests of Astarte, who were supported at
Jezebel's table.
Elijah had told Ahab, that ' ' there should be neither
dew nor rain upon the earth, but according- to his word ;'
and therefore the king being persuaded, perhaps, that
the national remedy was in his hands, neglected not to
issue out writs for the convention of the people, and
1 I Kings xvii. I.
a Of the dreadful extremities to which the inhabitants were
reduced, for want of provender for their beasts of burden, an idea
may be formed by the extraordinary circumstance of the haughty
Ahab proposing to his prime minister Obadiah, to go in person,
and by different routes, in search of grass for the horses and
mules, both of which were held in the highest estimation. The
places where Obadiah was recommended by his royal master to
look for provender was in the vicinity of springs and running
waters— a recommendation founded on a correct knowledge of
the state of the parched and barren regions of the east, where the
few spots of verdure that occur are found so generally to afford
water, that the presence of the one is almost always a sure indi-
cation of the nearness of the other; and the circumstance of two
personages of such elevated rank setting out from the palace in
search of such places, is one of the strongest proofs that could be
given of the simplicity of ancient manners, when the greatest
princes were in the habit of stooping to perform the meanest and
commonest offices. Among the tribes of Asia and Africa, the
same habits are to this day observed by the most powerful chiefs
who are so far from deeming it derogatory to their royal dignity
tii engage in an expedition to obtain either grass or water, that
no employment could be considered more suitable to their char-
acter, or more likely to secure for them the good-will and esteem
if their subjects. — Jamieson's Eastern Manners. — Ed.
h Elijah, in his appeal to the people, tells them, ' I, even T.
only remain a prophet of the Lord,' (1 Kings xviii. 22.) and
therefore we can hardly imagine, that all these hundred, whom
< rbadiah preserved, were men actually inspired and invested with
a prophetic character, but only such as were the disciples of the
prophets, and candidates for that office. For it is not unlikely,
that even to Jezebel's time, there were remaining in Israel schools
of the prophets, which ^he endeavoured to destroy, as well as
those that were bred up in them, that there might be none left
to instruct the people in the true religion. These she certainly
looked upon as enemies to her idolatry, and might possibly per-
suade her husband, that they were disaffected to his government
and favourers of the kings of Judah, because they worshipped the
same God, and thought that the proper place of his worship was
Jerusalem: and therefore the greater was the piety and courage
of Obadiah, in rescuing so many victims from the hands of this
furious and enraged woman. — Patrick's and Le C/crc's Conir-
wuntarier.
4482. A. C. 020. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
ordered the priests to attend. When they were all met
together, Elijah, having first upbraided them with their
vile prevarication, in mixing the worship of God and the
worship of Baal together, made them a fair proposal, to
this erlect. " Since there can be no more than one
infinite, supreme, almighty, and independent being, let
us, at this time, make the experiment who this being is.
You, who are the worshippers of Baal, have all the
advantages on your side, the favour and protection of
the court, 450 priests of one kind, and 400 priests of
another ; whereas I, who am the manager of God's cause,
am but one poor banished man ; and yet let two oxen be
brought before us. Let the priests of Baal choose their
ox, dress it, cut it in pieces, lay it on the altar ; but let
there be no fire thereon ; and I, in like manner, will do
so to my ox. Let them pray unto their gods, and I
likewise will call on the name of Jehovah ; and then let
the God, who, by consuming the sacrifice c with a sudden
Hash of fire, shall make it appear, that he hath heard the
prayers, be owned by this whole assembly to be this one,
this true, supreme, independent Being."
This was a proposal that none could gainsay ; and
therefore the priests of Baal prepared their altar, sacri-
ficed their bullock, placed it on the altar, and began to
call upon their god : but Baal continuing deaf to their
invocations, they betook themselves to odd gesticula-
tions : they sometimes jumped over the altar, d some-
c This is not the first time, wherein God had declared his
approbation of his worshippers, by sending down fire to consume
the sacrifices, (Lev. ix. 24. and Judg. vi. 21.) and though perhaps
it may be possible for evil spirits, who may have great knowledge
how to manage meteors and exhalations to their purposes, to
make fire descend from the clouds ; yet, since they can do
nothing without a divine permission, it is absurd to think, that,
in a matter of competition between him and false gods, he should
give evil spirits any license to rival him in his miracles. — Le
Clerc's Commentary.
d 1 Kings xviii. 26". ' They leaped upon the altar which was
made.' Baal, whose idolatrous worship is here referred to, was
the same as Apollo, or the Sun. Callimachus has given us a
remarkable instance of the universal veneration which was paid
by the ancient pagans, at his altar in the temple of Delos.
Amongst other ceremonies in the worship of this idol, it was
customary to run round his altar, to strike it with a whip, and
with their hands or arms bound behind them, to bite the olive.
For of Delos, the poet says: —
Thee, ever-honour'd isle, what vessel dares
Sail by regardless? 'twere in vain to plead
Strong driving- gales, or, stronger still than they,
Swift-wing'd necessity: their swelling sails
Here mariners must furl : nor hence depart,
Till round thy altar, struck with many a blow,
The maze they tread, and backward bent their arm1;.
The sacred olive bite.
Hymn to Delos, v. 433.
The former part of this ceremony plainly alludes to singing and
dancing round the altar. The latter part seems to accord with
what is said of Baal, (1 Kings xviii. 26" — 28.) where we read of
the priests of Baal who leaped upon the altar they had made,
which the Septuagint renders ran round; 'and they cried aloud,
and cut themselves, after their manner, with knives and lancets,
till the blood gushed out upon them.' Their running round the
altar signified the annual rotation of the earth round the sun.
Striking with a whip the altar, cutting themselves with knives
and lancets, crying aloud to their deity, were symbolical actions,
denoting their desire that he would show forth his power upon
all nature in general, and that sacrifice in particular then before
him. Having thus surrounded the altar of Apollo, and by these
actions declared their belief in his universal power, they used to
bend their own arms behind them, and so take the sacred olive
into their mouths: thereby declaring, that not their own arm or
power which was bound, but from his whose altar they surround-
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
563
A. M. 3U01. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
times danced round it, and, according as their custom
uas, began ° to cut themselves with knives and lancets,
but all to no purpose : whereupon the true prophet * fell
a bantering and ridiculing them, as justly he might; but
their senseless idol knew nothing of the matter.0
oil, and from him they expected to obtain that peace, whereof
the olive was always a symbol. (Gen. viii. 11.) There are some
evident allusions to these abominable idolatrous practices in the
Old Testament; and for which the Jews are severely reprimand-
ed by the prophets, for following such absurd and wicked cere-
monies. ' Thus sailh the Lord concerning the prophets that
make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace,'
(Micah iii. 5.:) and respecting Ashdod, the prophet says, 'I
will take away his blood out of his mouth, and his abominations
from between his teeth.' (Zech. ix. 7.) "Theseus, on his return
from Crete, put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to Apollo,
and dedicated a statue of Venus, which he received from
Ariadne, joined with the young men in a dance, which the
Pelians are said to practise at this day. It consists in an imi-
tation of the mazes and outlets of the labyrinth; and, with various
involutions and evolutions, is performed in regular time. This
kind of dance, as Dictearchus informs us, is called by the
Deliaus the Crane; he danced it round the altar Keraton, which
was built entirely of the left side horns of beasts." {Plutarch vita
Theseus.) This was a circular dance, and probably called the
crane, because cranes commonly fly in the figure of a circle.
This dance, after a lapse of 3000 years, still exists in Greece,
under the name of the Caudiot. See au account of it in M.
Guy's Hist. Lit. de la Grece, Lett. 13, aud a plate in Leroy
Baines des plus beaux monumens de la Grece. — Ed.
a A strange method, one would think, to obtain the favour of
their gods! and yet, if we look into antiquity we shall find, that
nothing was more common in the religious rites of several
nations than this barbarous custom. To this purpose we may
observe, that as Plutarch, on Superstition, tells us, the priests of
Belona, when they sacrificed to that goddess, were wont to
besmear the victim with their own blood ; that the Persian
Magi, according to Herodotus (b. 7. c. 191.), used to appease
tempests, and allay the winds, by making incisions in their
flesh ; that they who carried about the Syrian goddess, as
Apuleius (b. 8.), relates, among other mad pranks, were, every
now and then, cutting and slashing themselves with knives, till
the blood gushed out; and that even to this day, some modern
travellers tell us, that in Turkey, Persia, and several parts of
the Indies, there are a kind of fanatics, who think they do a very
meritorious thing, aud what is highly acceptable to the deity, in
cutting and mangling their own flesh. " But the gods ought
not to be worshipped at all," says Seneca, as he is quoted by St
Austin de Civ. Dei (b. G. c. 10.), " if they delight in such. The
fury of a restless and excited mind to gain the favour of the gods
is so great, that not even the most hideous tyrants can exercise
their cruelty so savagely," &c. Calmet's and Le Clerc's Com-
militaries.
b The words of the prophet are very cutting and sarcastical.
" Cry aloud, for he is a god " no doubt, though he may be deaf,
or a great way off, so that he cannot hear unless you cry aloud;
or "either he is talking," about business, or "pursuing his
pleasures ;" or perhaps " he is in a journey, and not at home ;" or
" perad venture he sleepeth, and must be awakened." The two
last notions of " being asleep, and not at home," how absurd
soever they may lie when applied to the deity, were certainly
such &^ several idolaters conceived of their gods, as appears from
these passages in Homer. In the former of these, Thetis, says
he, cannot meet with Jupiter, because he was gone abroad, and
would not return in less than twelve days. " For Jupiter yes-
terday went away to a feast among the ./Ethiopians, aud all the
other gods are along with him, but on the twelfth day he will re-
turn again to Olympus." And in the conclusion of that hook, he
shows in wnat manner the gods went to sleep: — " But Jupiter,
the Olympian prince of lightning, went up to his couch, where
it was bis wont to repose when gentle sleep hung heavily on his
eyelids," &c.
c Elijah's taunts were not the groundless cflusions of satire and
ridicule, but were founded on the absurd and grovelling notions
entertained of the objects of their worship by the heathen; who,
both in ancient and modern times, ascribed to their gods all the
attributes of humanity; aud considered that their favour was to
4482. A. C. 929. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
This farce of devotion they continued till the day
was above half spent ; when Elijah, desiring the people
to draw near, and take twelve stones, according to the
number of the tribes, d repaired the altar of the Lord,
which had been broken down, and then laying his bullock
on the wood, e poured a great quantity of water three
times on the sacrifice, on the wood, and on the altar ; so
that the water filled the trench, which was dug round the
altar to receive it. It was now much about the time of
be procured, aud their presence and attention obtained, by means
similar to those practised in securing the ear and the good-will of
men. The heathen deities had all of them certain employments
assigned them,— one had the management of the winds, another
of the water, the cares of which were supposed necessarily to
occupy and distract their minds at particular periods ; and some
were also engaged in long and distant expeditions, from which
they had to return before they could answer the supplications of
their votaries. — Even in the present day, the same notions pre-
vail among the heathen, of the limited powers of the deities.
Thus Siva, the principal god of the Hindoos, once fell into a
profound reverie, which was supposed to be the cause of great
public calamities and portentous occurrences that befell the land.
On a particular season of the year, he is constantly occupied
with the pleasures of the chase, to gratify him with which, his
statue, together with that of his favourite wife, is taken from his
temple, placed on a car, and carried out to the open fields.
Sometimes he suddenly departs on long journeys, and sometimes
he falls asleep, which he did on one occasion particularly, when
he had assumed the form of a porter, and, wearied with his task,
resigned himself under a tree to the influence
" Of nature's soft restorer, balmy sleep."
— From these circumstances, it appears that the sarcastic observa-
tions of the prophet were thrown out in ridicule of the prevailing
ideas of the priests and devotees of Baal ; and they were rendered
the more cutting, by his recommending them 'to cry aloud;'
the very last attempt to gain the ear of their deity they would
have dreamt of making, as it is considered the greatest impro-
priety to disturb any one in a temple or sacred place, when he is
meditating, or to trouble him when engaged in the pleasures of
the chase — in prosecuting a journey, or the enjoyment of repose.
The proposal was made by Elijah, as if, in the extremity of their
distress, they should break through the ordinary rules of respect
for their God, more particularly as the occasion so greatly con-
cerned his honour; and, as if he wished to afford the spectators
the strongest proofs, according to the popular notions, of the
impotence and insignificance of the idol, to whom they had been
taught to prostrate themselves with blind homage. — Jamieson's
Eastern Manners. — Ed.
d The altar, which the sacred author here calls ' the altar of the
Lord,' was certainly one of those which were built in the time of
the judges, and first kings of Israel; when, for want of a fixed
place of worship, such structures were permitted. Botli Taci-
tus (b. 2. c. 74,) and Suetonius, speak of the God of Carme],
whom Vespasian went to consult when he was at Judea. His
priest Basilides promised him all manner of prosperity aud suc-
cess in his undertakings; but, as the two historians tell u^, there
was neither temple nor statue upon the mountain, but one altar
only, plain but very venerable for its antiquity. Some are of
opinion, that this Basilides was a Jew, and priest of the Most
High God; but it seems more reasonable that he was a pagan
priest, and probably the same who met Vespasian in the temple
of Serapis in Egypt. However this be, the altar of Carmel
seems to have had its origin from this altar of the true God,
which the ancient Hebrews first erected, and Elijah afterwards
repaired ; which even the heathens held in such veneration, that
when they came to be masters of the country, they would not
place so much as an image by it. — Calmet's Commentary.
e This the prophet did to make the miracle more conspicuous
and convincing, to show, that there was no fallacy in it, no fire
concealed in or about the altar, but that the lightning, which
was to consume the sacrifice, came from heaven, and came at his
invocation; for so Josephus tells us, that Elijah invited the peo-
ple to draw near, even that they might search, and spy every-
where if they could find any fire that was conveyed under the
altar. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 8. c. 7 ; Calmet's aud Le Clerc's
Commentaries.
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offering- the evening sacrifice, when, having prepared all
things, he approached the altar, and prayed in this man-
ner : ' Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, show
this day, that thou art the God of Israel, that I am thy
servant, and that it is by thy commandment that I have
done this thing. ° Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that these
people may understand, that thou art the Lord God,
and that their hearts may be converted from their idol
unto thee.' And no sooner had he ended this short
prayer, but a fire fell from heaven, * and consumed not
only the biirnt-oftering, but the wood and stones, nay,
the very dust of the place, and the water that was in the
trench ; insomuch, that, when the people saw the miracle,
they fell on their faces, and in admiration and acknow-
ledgment of it, owned that the God of Elijah was the
true God : c whereupon he ordered them to seize on the
priests of Baal as a pack of cheats and impostors, to
carry them down from the mountain, and to slay them all
at the brook Kishon.
Afterthis justexecution was finished, the prophet return-
ed to the top of the mountain, from whence he might view
the Mediterranean sea ; where, having prayed for rain, d
a He was the more earnest and fervent in his prayer, as Abar-
binel thinks, because he had undertaken to make the experiment
of God's power on his own accord, and without any particular
command from him, nothing doubting, but that he would appear
to vindicate his own honour, even though he offered sacrifice on
a high place, which was not agreeable to the law. — Patrick's
Commentary. There is no ground whatever, for supposing that
Elijah in this affair acted on his own responsibility ; on the con-
trary, he expressly declares in his prayer, that he had acted ac-
cording to the commandment of God. — Ed.
b 1 Kings xviii. 38. Bishop Patrick apprehends that God
testified his approbation of Abel's sacrifice by a stream of fight,
or a flame from the shekinah, which burned it up. In this opinion
many aucient writers concur; remarking that footsteps of it may
be met with in many other cases. (See Gen. xv. 17. Lev. ix.
24. Judg. vi. 21. 1 Chron. xxi. 26. 2 Chron. vii. 13. Ps. xx.
3, marginal reading.) Some relics of it are to be found among
the heathen: for when the Greeks went on shipboard to the
Trojan war, Homer represents Jupiter promising them good suc-
cess in this manner. {Iliad, ii. 354.) And thunder sometimes
accompanying lightning, Virgil makes him establish covenants
in that manner. After yEneas had called the sun to witness,
Latinus lilts up his eyes and right hand to heaven, saying, " Let
the (heavenly) father hear what I say, who established covenants
with thunder." {JEneid, xii. 200.) From some early instances
of this kind the heathen seem to have derived their notions
that when a sacrifice took fire spontaneously, it was a happy
omen. Pausanias says, that when Seleucus, who accompanied
Alexander in his expedition from Macedonia, was sacrificing at
lVlla to Jupiter, the wood advanced of its own accord towards the
image, anil was kindled without fire. See also Lev. ix. 24.
1 Chron. xxi. 26. 2 Chron. vii. 1. — Ed.
c The process of this consumption is very remarkable, and all
calculated to remove the possibility of a suspicion that there was
any concealed fire. 1. The fire came down from heaven. 2.
The pieces of the sacrifices were first consumed. 3. The wood
next, to show that it was not even by means of the wood that the
flesh was burned. 4. The twelve stones were also consumed, to
show that it was no common fire, but one whose agency nothing
could resist. 5. The dust, the earth of which the altar was con-
structed, was burned up. 6. The water that was in the trench, was
by the action of this fire entirely evaporated. 7. The action of this
fire was in every case downward, contrary to the nature of all
earthly and material fire. Nothing can be more simple and artless
than this description, yet bow amazingly full and satisfactory is
the whole account. — Br A. Clarke. — En.
d 1 Kings xviii. 42. ' And Elijah went up to the top of Car-
mel, and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his lace
between his knees.' The devout posture of some people of the
Levant greatly resembles that of Elijah. Just before the descent
oi the rain, he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face
he sent his servant seven times to see if he could perceive
any appearance of it : and he at last brought him back
word, that he saw a small cloud rising out of the sea, e
no bigger, to look at, than a man's hand ; whereupon he
commanded him immediately to go to Ahab, and to ad-
vise him to hasten to his chariot, and make the best of his
way home, lest the rain should stop him. The king took
his advice, and the prophet, having / girded up his vest
about him, ran all the way before him to Jezreel.
As soon as queen Jezebel understood what Elijah had
done, and more especially, how he had caused all the
prophets of Baal to be slain, she vowed revenge, and B
sent him word, that his life the next day should certainly
pay for theirs : whereupon, not thinking himself safe in
Ahab's dominions, he withdrew to a town in the southern
parts of the tribe of Judah, called Beersheba, where he dis-
missed his servant, and, pursuing his journey farther into
Arabia Petnea, walked all day : but in the evening, be-
ing extremely fatigued, he laid himself down under a
juniper tree, sick with the world, and desirous to leave
it. He had not, however, slept long, before an angel,
between his knees. Chardin relates that the dervises, especially
those of the Indies, put themselves into this posture, in order to
meditate, and also to repose themselves. They tie their knees
against their belly with their girdles, and lay their heads on the
top of them, and this, according to them, is the best posture for
recollection. — Harmer, vol. ii. p. 506. — Ed.
e When Elijah's servant reported to his master, that he saw a
little cloud arising out of the sea like a man's hand, he command-
ed him to go up and say to Ahab, ' Prepare thy chariot, and get
thee down, that the rain stop thee not.' This circumstance was
justly considered as the sure indication of an approaching shower,
' for it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was
black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.' Mr
Bruce {Travels, vol. iii. p. 669) has an observation which greatly
corroborates this relation. He says, " there are three remarkable
appearances attending the inundation of the Nile: eveiy morning
in Abyssinia is clear, and the sun shines ; about nine, a small
cloud not above four feet broad, appears in the east, whirling vio-
lently round, as if upon an axis ; but arrived near the zenith, it first
abates its motion, then loses its form, and extends itself greatly,
and seems to call up vapours from all opposite quarters. These
clouds having attained nearly the same height, rush against each
other with great violence, and put me always in mind of Elijah's
foretelling rain on Mount Carmel. The air, impelled before the
heaviest mass, or swiftest mover, makes an impression of its own
form, in the collection of clouds opposite, and the moment it has
taken possession of the space made to receive it, the most violent
thunder possible to be conceived instantly follows, with rain ; and
after some hours the sky again clears." — Ed.
f In this country, loose and long garments were in use ; and
therefore, when the people were minded to run, or make any
great expedition, their custom was to gird them round their waist:
but why the prophet condescended to become, as it were, the
king's running footman upon this occasion, was to show the world,
that his extraordinary power, in working miracles, and the con-
quest he had thereby gained over his enemies, had not made him
proud, and to satisfy the king of his readiness to do him afl the
honour imaginable; that he was far from being his enemy, and
only desired he would become the true worshipper of God, who
was, as he could not but see, the Lord God of Israel.— Patrick's
Commentary.
g This certainly was the effect of her blind rage, and not of
any prudence in her: for prudence would have advised her to
conceal her resentment until she had been ready to put her de-
signs in execution; whereas this sending him word, was giving
him notice of his danger, and admonishing him to avoid it. But,
since he had the confidence to come where she was, she might
think perhaps, that he was as courageous as she was furious ; that
upon this notice he would scorn to fly; and she too, in her pride,
might scorn to kill him secretly or surreptitiously, resolving to
make him a public sacrifice. — Patrick's Commentary, and Poole's
Annotations.
Sect. II.]
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who had brought him meat and drink, awoke him, and
bade him eat heartily, because he had a long- journey to
take. The prophet did as he was ordered, and in the
strength of that repast, walked a 40 days and 40 nights,
until he came to Mount Horeb, the place where God at
first delivered the law to Moses. Here he betook him-
self to a cave, intending" very probably to spend the
remainder of his days in retirement ; but he had not
been long- in the place, before he had a vision, wherein
God having- first, by several * emblems, made him sen-
sible of his almighty power and presence, c gave him to
a From Beersheba to Mount Horeb is, at the most, not above
150 miles, and the prophet, it seems, had advanced one day's jour-
ney into the wilderness; so that he had hot now more to finish
than any active man might have done in four or five days at
most: how came the prophet then to make forty of it ? To this
some reply, that he, as the Israelites of old, was kept wander-
ing up and down this pathless wilderness forty days, as they were
forty years, till, at length, he hit upon this sacred mountain.
Others suppose that he went about by private ways, and perhaps
sometimes rested, and lay hid, in order to prevent discovery.
lint, when he was got into the wilderness, one would think lie
might have been safe, and proceeded straightway, if he knew the
straight way to the place intended. 1 was thinking, therefore,
that there would be no solecism, if we should say, that the time
of going to, staying at, and coming from, the mount of Horeb,
is to be included in these forty days, though, in a short narration,
words may be so expressed, as if the journey only had taken up
all that time. — Patrick's, Calmet's, and Le Clerc's Commentaries,
b Elijah being now come to the same place, where God had
delivered the law to his servant Moses, God was minded to com-
municate the like favour to his servant the prophet, namely, to
unveil his majesty to him, and give him some signal of his im-
mediate presence: but there is something very remarkable in the
words of the text. ' And behold the Lord passed by, and a strong
wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, but the
Lord was not in the wind ; and after the wind, an earthquake,
but the Lord was not in the earthquake ; and after the earth-
quake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire ; and after the
fire, a still small voice,' (I Kings xix. 11, &c.) And various
are the speculations which this appearance of the divine majesty
hath suggested to interpreters. The generality of them have
looked upon this as a figure of the gospel dispensation, which
came, not in such a terrible manner as the law did, with storms,
thunders, lightnings, and earthquakes (Exod. xix. 16.), but with
great Utnity and sweetness, wherein God speaks to us by his Son,
who makes use of no other but gentle arguments and soft persua-
sions. But, if we take this to be a symbolical admonition to
Elijah, according to the circumstances he was then in, we may
reasonably suppose, that herein Gud intended to show him, that,
though lie had all the elements ready armed at his command to
destroy idolaters, if he pleased to make use of them, yet he had
rather attain his end by patience, and tenderness, and long-suf-
fering, signified by that small still voice, wherein the Deity ex-
hibited himself, and consequently, that the prophet should hereby
be incited to imitate him, bridling that passionate zeal to which
his natural complexion did but too much incline him. — Le Clerc's,
Calmet's, and Patrick's Commentaries.
c ' And Elijah wrapped his face in his mantle and went out,'
(I Kings xix. 13.) The Jews accounted ita token of reverence to
Have their feet bare in public worship, and to have their heads
covered. This was accordingly the practice, not of the priests
only, but of the people also; and the latter practice remains so to
this day. Thus, on the divine appearance to Moses in the bush,
it is said, 'he hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God '
(Exod. iii. 6.); and on the extraordinary manifestation of the
divine presence to Elijah, ' he wrapped his face in his mantle.'
<bi the same account perhaps the angels were represented in
vision to Isaiah as covering their faces with their wings iu the
presence of Jehovah (Is. vi. 2.). The ancient Romans performed
their sacred rites with a covering on their heads. Thus Virgil:
Our way we bend
To Pallas, Bad the sacred lull ascend:
There prostrate to tin' fierce virago pray,
Whose temple was Hie landmark of our way, —
Each with a Phrygian mantle veil'd liis head.
understand, that the number of his true worshippers was
gTeater than he imagined, d and that he would not fail
to take vengeance on the house of Ahab for their abomin-
able idolatry. To this purpose he ordered him to re-
turn into his own country by the way of Damascus,
where he was to anoint Hazael king of Syria, Jehu
king of Israel, and to appoint Elisha his successor in
the prophetic office ; intimating hereby, that these men e
would be proper instruments, in his almighty hand,
whereby to punish the idolatry of Israel, and to assert
the righteousness of his own cause.
This was a matter of some comfortable expectation (o
Elijah : and therefore leaving Horeb, in his return by
the way of Damascus, / he found Elisha at plough, and
as he passed by, S cast his mantle upon him ; which the
The Greeks, on the contrary, performed their sacred rites
bareheaded. St Paul, therefore, writing to the Corinthians, who
were Greeks, says, ' every man praying or prophesying with his
head covered dishonoured! his head.' (1 Cor. xi. 4.) — Ed.
d ' Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees
which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath
not kissed him.' (1 Kings xix. 18.) Bowing the knee was an act
of worship, and so was kissing the idol. This was dotie two
ways, either by applying their mouth immediately to the image,
or kissing the hand before the image, and then stretching it out,
and, as it were, throwing the kiss to it. — Ed.
e The words in the text are, ' And it shall come to pass, that
him that escapeth the sword of Hazael, shall Jehu slay; and him
that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay ' (1 Kings
xix. 17.) Where it is easy to observe, that these things are not
mentioned according to the order of time wherein they fell out,
for Elisha was a prophet before Hazael was king, and Hazael was
king before Jehu, but they are spoken of according to the decree
of God, who, as Abarbinel observes, appointed every one to exe-
cute that which was proper for him to do: "Thus he intended,"
continues that learned commentator, " that Hazael should destroy
the idolaters of Israel in battle, and therefore he mentions that
first, because it is a general calamity ; but as Jezebel, the children
of Ahab, and the priests of Baa], went not to fight, and conse-
quently could not fall in battle, he ordained Jehu to cut off them,
and all the worshippers of Baal, in the manner that we find he
did: but as he did not know the disposition of little children, he
left them to be punished by Elisha, who by the spirit of pro-
phecy, foresaw that they would become idolaters." But in this
there seems to be more subtilty than needs, since the plain sense
of the words is no more than this: — " That God, in his provi-
dence, had appointed three persons to punish the Israelites ac-
cording to their deserts; and that one or other of these should
infallibly execute his judgments upon them." The only diili-
culty is, how the prophet Elisha can be said to slay, when, by
profession, he was a pacific man, and never engaged in war? But
when we consider the two and forty children which he destroyed,
besides others, whom, upon the like occasion, he might destroy;
the sore famine, which, by God's appointment, he sent upon the
Israelites, (2 Kings vi. 25.) and the many cutting prophecies
and comminations called in Scripture ' the sword of the mouth,'
(Is. xlix. 2. and Rev. i. hi.) which he denounced against them,
and which were fulfilled, we shall find reason enough to justify
the expression. — Poole's Annotations.
/So far was this from being any argument of bis poverty, that
it was in reality a token of his wealth and great riches: for he
who could keep twelve joke of Oxen at plough, was in this respect
no inconsiderable man, and yet according to the manner of these
early times, he looked after his own business himself; for nothing
was of greater esteem, not only among the Hebrews, but among
the ancient Greeks and Romans likewise, than agriculture, and
such persons as were of the best quality were called odiTovoysi,
men who did their work themselves, and left not the care of it
to others. Elisha therefore was taken from the plough to be a
prophet, in like manner as among the Romans afterwards, some
were taken from thence to be consuls and dictators. — Patrick s
Commentary,
,/ The mantle was the proper habit of prophets (2 Kings i. S.),
anil then lore Elijah's casting it upon him «as the ceremony
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other understanding to be a call to the prophetic min-
istry, " as soon as he had settled his private concerns,
here used for his inauguration: though, as it was customary for
servants to cany their masters' garments alter them, others un-
derstand it only as a token that Elisha was to be his servant, to
attend upon him, and succeed in his office. However this be,
it is probable, that when he cast his mantle upon him, he said
something to Elisha, whereby he acquainted him with his de-
sign, though the particular words, in so short an history, are not
expressed. — Poole's Annotations, and Le Clerc's Commentary.
a 1 Kings xix. 21. Elijah is commanded (ver. 16.) to anoint
Elisha prophet in his room. 1. Though it is generally believed that
kings, priests, and prophets, were inaugurated into their respec-
tive offices by the rite of unction, and this I have elsewhere
supported ; yet this is the only instance on record where a pro-
phet is commanded to be anointed; and even this case is pro-
blematical, for it does not appear that Elijah did anoint Elisha.
Nothing is mentioned in his call to the prophetic office, but the
casting the mantle of Elijah upon him ; wherefore it is probable
that the word anoint, here signifies no more than the call to the
office, accompanied by the simple rite of having the prophet's
mantle thrown over his shoulders. 2. A call to the ministerial
office, though it completely sever from all secular occupations,
yet never supersedes the duties of filial affection. Though Elisha
must leave his oxen, and become a prophet to Israel; yet he may
fust go home, eat and drink with his parents and relatives, and
bid them an affectionate farewell. 3. We do not find any at-
tempt on the part of his parents to hinder him from obeying the
divine call: they had too much respect for the authority of God,
and they left their son to the dictates of his own conscience. Woe
to those parents who strive, for filthy lucre's sake, to prevent
their son from embracing a call to preach Jesus to their perishing
countrymen, or to the heathen, because they see that the life of
a true evangelist is a life of comparative poverty, and they had
rather he should gain money than save souls. 4. The cloak, we
have already observed, was the prophet's peculiar habit; it was
probably in imitation of this that the Greek philosophers wore a
sort of mantle, that distinguished them from the common people ;
and by which they were at once as easily known as certain aca-
demical characters are by their gowns and square caps. The
pallium was as common among the Greeks as the toga was among
the Romans. Each of these was so peculiar to those nations,
that Palliatus is used to signify a Greek, as Togatus is to signify
a Roman. 5. Was it from this act of Elijah, conveying the pro-
phetic office and its authority to Elisha by throwing his mantle
upon him, that the popes of Rome borrowed the ceremony of col-
lating an archbishop to the spiritualities and temporalities of his
see, and investing him with plenary sacerdotal authority, by send-
ing him what is well known in ecclesiastical history by the name
of pallium, pall, or cloak ? 1 think this is likely, for as we learn
from Zech. xiii. 4, and 2 Kings i. 8, that this mantle was a
rough or hairy garment, so we learn from Durandus that the
pallium or pall was made of white wool, after the following
manner: — The nuns of St Agnes, annually on the festival of
their patroness, offer two white lambs on the altar of their church
'luring the time they sing Agnus Dei, in a solemn mass; which
lambs are afterwards taken by two of the canons of the Lateral i
church, and by them given to the pope's subdeacons, who send
them to pasture till shearing time; and then they are shorn, and
the pall is made of their wool, mixed with other white wool. The
pall is then carried to the Lateran church, and there placed on
the high altar by the deacons, on the bodies of St Peter and St
Paul ; and, after an usual watching or vigil, it is carried away in
the night, and delivered to the subdeacons, who lay it up safely.
Now, because it was taken from the body of St Peter, it signifies
the plenitude of ecclesiastical power; and, therefore, the popes
assume it as their prerogative, being the professed successors of
this apostle, to invest other prelates with it. It was at first
' ""',l t0 Rome, but afterwards it was sent to popish prelates
in different pan- of the world. (i. It seems, from the place in
Zechariah quoted above, that this rough cloak or garment became
the covering of hypocrites and deceivers; and that persons as-
sumed the prophetic call; and God threatens to unmask them.
V e know that this became general in the popish church in the
beginning of the 1 6th century; and God snipped those false
prophets of their false and wicked pretensions, and exposed them
to the people — See JJr Clark's Commentary. — Ed.
went with Elijah, and was his servant as long as he
lived ; so that Elijah did not think it necessary to go to
Damascus, upon the account of Hazael, nor to speak
with Jehu in Israel ; but left these affairs to be trans-
acted by Elisha, whenever a fit opportunity should offer.
Not long after this, but upon what provocation it is
not said, Benhadad raised a vast army against Ahab
king of Israel, and marched directly into his country,
with a design to invest Samaria, his capital city. But
before he did that, he sent him an haughty message, de-
manding all that belonged to him, in satisfaction for
some presumed affront. Ahab was in no condition to
oppose him, and therefore he tamely submitted himself
to his mercy : but this tameness only inflamed Benhadad's
insolence, so that, in his next message, he demanded all
things to be immediately put into his hand ; which, when
the king of Israel understood, he called a general coun-
cil of the kingdom to advise what to do. They unani-
mously agreed to stand by their king to the last extremity ;
which, when Benhadad's ambassadors told him, he fell
into a great rage, and immediately ordered his army to
invest Samaria ; but while he lay before the town, h God,
who was justly provoked at this proud Syrian, sent c a
prophet to Ahab, not only to assure him of victory, but
to instruct him likewise d in what method he was to at-
tain it ; which succeeded so well that Benhadad himself
had much to do to escape with his life.
The same prophet, however, gave the king of Israel
great caution to recruit his army, and be upon his guard,
against the beginning of the next year, because then the
b 1 Kings xx. 12. ' And it came to pass, when Benhadad
heard this message, as he was drinking, he and the kings, in the
pavilions.' &c. The pavilions here spoken of were nothing more
than mere booths or common tents, notwithstanding Benhadad and
the kings were drinking in them. That great and even royal
persons occasionally refreshed or indulged themselves in this
manner, is clear from the following paragraph in Dr Chandler's
Travels in the Lesser Asia, (p. 149.) " While we were em-
ployed on the theatre of Miletus, the aga of Suki, son-in-law by
marriage to Elez Oglu, crossed the plain towards us, attended by
a considerable train of domestics and officers, their vests and tur-
bans of various and lively colours, mounted on long tailed horses,
with showy trappings, and glittering furniture. He returned,
after hawking, to Miletus, and we went to visit him, with a
present of coffee and sugar; but were told that two favourite birds
had flown away, and that he was vexed and tired. A couch was
prepared for him beneath a shed made against a cottage, and
covered with green boughs to keep oil' the sun. He entered as
we were standing by, and fell down on it to sleep, without tak-
ing any notice of us." — Harmer, vol. iii. p. 50. — Ed.
c Who the prophet was, who upon this, and another message
afterwards, was sent to Ahab, the Scripture nowhere informs us.
It is somewhat odd, that during this whole war with Benhadad,
neither Elijah nor Elisha, the two principal prophets of Israel
should appear, though other prophets, whereof there seems to be
a considerable number, make no scruple of executing their office;
whether it was, that this war commenced before Jezebel's perse-
cution of the prophets, or that this impious queen abated her per-
secution, and let them have some respite, when she had exter-
minated Elijah as she thought. — Calmct's Commentary.
d The instruments in attaining this victory were to be 'the
young men of the princes of the provinces/ with Ahab at the
head of them, (1 Kings xx. 14.) The Hebrew word has some
ambiguity in it, and may signify, either the * sons,' or the ' ser-
vants ' of the ' princes of' the provinces,' either young noblemen
themselves, or their father's pages, who were equally brought up
delicately, and quite unaccustomed to war. It was by these young
men, and not by old experienced officers that this battle was to
be won: that thereby it might appear, that the victory was
wholly owing to God's gracious and powerful providence, and not
to the valour, or fitness of the instruments. — Poole's Annot.
Sect. II.]
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Syrians designed him another visit ; which accordingly
came to pass. For some of his generals having per-
suaded the king of Syria, that the gods of the Israelites
a ' were gods of the hills,' and, therefore, to fight them
with advantage, was to fight them in a champaign coun-
try, he raised another army of equal force with that
he had lost the year before, and came and sat down
before Apheck, a city in the tribe of Asher. Ahab, how-
ever, was prepared to receive him, and though with a
force far inferior to the Syrians, marched out to meet
them, gave them battle, put them to the rout, and slew
upon the spot 100,000 of them.
The vanquished h betook themselves to Apheck, but
were far from folding any security there ; for the provi-
dence of God pursued them, and by the fall of the walls
of that city, destroyed 27,000 more of them: so that,
terrified with this judgment, Benhadad went to hide him-
self in some place where he thought he could not be
easily found ; but was, at length, prevailed on by his
chief officers to send ambassadors to Ahab, in the hum-
blest manner, clothed c in sackcloth, and with ropes
a That there were many gods, who had each their particular
charge and jurisdiction ; that some presided over whole countries,
whilst others had but particular places under their tuition and go-
vernment; and were some of them gods of the woods, others of
the rivers, and others of the mountains, was plainly the doctrine
of all heathen nations. Pan was reckoned the god of the moun-
tains, for which reason he was styled, 'O^'.iSarti;, mountain
reamer; and in like manner the Syrians might have a conceit
that the God of Israel was a God of the mountains, because
Canaan, they saw, was a mountainous land; the Israelites, they
perceived, delighted to sacrifice on high places; their law, they
might have heard, was given on the top of a mountain; their
temple stood upon a famous eminence, as did Samaria, where
they had so lately received a signal defeat. For their far-
ther notion was, that the gods of the mountains had a power to
inject a panic fear into an army, whenever they pleased. Nay,
that they did not only assist with their influence, but actually
Riigage themselves in battle, in behalf of their favourites, is a sen-
timent as old as Homer, and what Virgil has not forgot to imi-
tate. " Monsters of all sorts of gods, along with the dog-headed
Anubis, hurl hostile weapons against Neptune, Venus, and Miner-
va: in the midst of the contest rages the god of war, clothed in
Steel: around them flutter in the air, the black fates of death:
Discord herself is seen in a rent garment, leaping in joy amid
the carnage : and Belloua is following her, armed with a bloody
whip." (Eneid. 8.) It was a prevalent notion among the hea-
thens, not only that all deities were local, but that they had no
power, anywhere but in that country, or place, over which they
presided. It is very likely that the small Israelitish army
availed themselves of the heights and uneven ground to fight with
greater advantage against the Syrian cavalry. — Home's Intro-
duction, and Dr Clarke. — En.
b Apheck, or Aphaca, as it is called by profane authors, was
situated in Libanus, upon the river Adonis, between Heliopolis
ind Biblos: and in all probability is the same that Paul Lucas,
in his Voyage du Levant, (vol. i. c. 20,) speaks of, as swallowed
up in a lake of Mount Libanus, about nine miles in circumfer-
ence, wherein there are several houses all euti re, to be seen under
water. The soil about this place, as the ancients tell us, was
very bituminous, which seems to confirm their opinion, who
think that subterraneous fires consumed the solid substance of the
earth, whereon the city stood, so that it subsided and sunk at
once, and a lake was soon formed in its place.— Cabinet' s Com-
mentary and Dictionary under the word Apheck.
c This was the posture in those times, wherein supplicants
presented themselves when they petitioned for mercy. The
sackcloth upon their loins was a token of their sorrow for « hat
they had done; and the halters about their necks, a token of their
subjection to whatever punishment Ahab should think fit to in-
flict upon them: for which reason Bessus, according to Curtius,
(l>. 7.) was brought to Alexander with a chain about his neck. —
Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
1 KINGS viii. TO THE ENDOF2CHKON.
about their necks, to make their submission upon what
conditions he pleased. <* The conditions that Ahab in-
sisted on, were only, that the Syrians should restore all
the country which they had taken from Baasha, king of
Israel, and grant e him some privileges in Damascus
their capital, as a token of their homage and subjection ;
which the other very readily consented to, and so a
league was concluded between them: but a league so
offensive to God, that he sent a prophet immediately to
reprove Ahab for it ; and to let him know, " That had
he destroyed Benhadad, as God had put it in his power
his dominions should have been annexed to the" kingdom
of Israel; but that since /he had acted otherwise, his
life should pay for the life of Benhadad : for he should
be slain in battle with the Syrians, who instead of being
held in subjection to the Israelites, should, in a few
years, as they were in the reign of Hazael, become their
masters, take their towns from them, and make ravages
in their country." But instead of humbling himself at
the denunciation of this heavy sentence, or expressing
any sorrow for his fault, Ahab became but more sullen
and obstinate, and in a short time, ^ added this farther
offence to his other great crimes.
Not far from the royal palace of Jezreel, in a place
convenient for a kitchen-garden, there was one Naboth,
d 1 Kings xx. 32. Approaching persons with a sword hang-
ing to the neck, is, in the east, a very humble and submissive
act. Thevenot has mentioned this circumstance (part i. p. 289,)
in the account he has given of the taking of Bagdad, by the
Turks, in 1(338. When the besieged entreated quarter, the prin-
cipal officer went to the grand vizier, with a scarf about his
neck, and his sword wreathed in it, and begged mercy. The ropes
mentioned in this passage were probably what they suspended
their swords with. — Harmer, vol. ii. p. 258. — Ed.
e The privilege which Benhadad gave to Ahab is thus expres-
sed: 'Thou shalt make streets for thee in Damascus, as my
father made in Samaria;' but then the learned are not agreed
what we are to understand by ' streets.' Some suppose, that
they were courts of judicature where Ahab was to maintain a
jurisdiction over Benhadad's subjects. Others think that they
were public market places, where commodities were sold, and
the toll of them paid to Ahab; but the most general opinion is,
that they were citadels or fortifications, to be a bridal of restraint
upon this chief city of the Syrians, that they might make no new
eruptions into the land of Israel. A great privilege this ! But
what Benhadad, when he found himself set at liberty, refused to
comply with. — Patrick's and Calnufs Commentaries.
f If it should be asked, wherein lay Ahab's great offence, for
which God threatens to punish him so severely ? The ans\u i
is, — that it consisted in suffering so horrid a blasphemer as Ben-
hadad was, to go unpunished, which was contrary to an express
law, (Lev. xxiv. 1C.) If it should be urged, that this was no
thing to Benhadad, since the law concerned the Israelites only,
the reply is, that this law extended not to those only that were
born in the land, but as it is there expressed to strangers likewise
that were among them, and in their power, as Benhadad cer-
tainly was. God had delivered him into Ahab's hands for his
blasphemy, as he had promised, (1 Kings xx. 28.) and therefore
this act of providence, compared with the law, did plainly inti-
mate, that he was appointed by God for destruction: but so fat
was Ahab from punishing him as he deserved, that he treats him
like a friend and a brother, dismisses him upon easy term-;, and
takes his bare word for the performance, without the least care
for the reparation of G oil's honour. — Poole's Annotations.
g The account of Ahab's coveting Nabuth's vineyard, as Abar-
biuel observes, is immediately set after his treatment of Benhadad,
to show his extreme great wickedness in sparing him, as Saul
did Agag king of the Anialekites, and killing Naboth, that he
might get possession of his vineyard. For this was an high ag-
gravation of his crime, that he basely murdered a just Israelite,
and let an impious em my escape. — Patrick's Commentary.
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a citizen thereof, who had .a vineyard, which Ahab was
very desirous of obtaining a and therefore * offered the
owner of it an equivalent, either in land or money ; but
the owner, upon the account of its being his paternal
inheritance, refusing to part with it, gave Ahab such
uneasiness, that he took his bed for mere discontent,
and was so sullen and uneasy, that he would not eat his
meat. But when his wife Jezebel came to understand
the cause, she first upbraided him with his pusillanimity,
or not knowing how to exert the authority of a king, and
then to cheer him up, bid him drive away all melancholy,
for that she had found out an expedient how to put him
in the possession of Naboth's vineyard. To this pur-
pose she wrote letters from Samaria in Ahab's name,
and sealed with his signet, c to the principal men of
a 1 Kings xxi. 2. ' Give me thy vineyard.' The request of
Ahab seems at first view fair and honourable. Naboth's vineyard
was nigh to the palace of Ahab, and he wished to add it to his
own for a kitchen garden, or perhaps a grass plot, gan yarak ; and
he oners to give him either a better vineyard for it, or to give
him its worth in money. Naboth rejects the proposal with
horror: 'The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheri-
tance of my fathers to thee.' No man could finally alienate any
part of the parental inheritance; it might be sold or mortgaged
till the jubilee, but at that time it must revert to its original
owner, if not redeemed before ; for this God had particularly en-
joined, (Lev. xxv. 14 — 17, 25 — 28.) therefore Naboth properly
said, ver. 3, ' The Lord forbid it me, to give the inheritance of
my fathers.' Ahab most evidently wished him to alienate it
finally, and this is what God's law had expressly forbidden ; there-
fore he could not, consistently with his duty to God, indulge
Ahab; and it was high iniquity in Ahab to tempt him to do it;
and to covet it showed the depravity of Ahab's soul. — Ed.
b By this it appears, that though the kings of Israel did rule
their subjects in a very arbitrary and despotic manner, yet they
did not as yet take the liberty to seize on their lands and here-
ditaments; and therefore what Samuel prophesies of the kings of
Israel, that ' they would take their fields, their vineyards, and
their olive-yards,' (1 Sam. viii. 14,) does not extend to any true
and lawful, but a presumed and usurped right only in their
kings. — Calmet's Commentary .
c 1 Kings xxi. 8. ' Seal.' Seals are of very ancient invention.
Thus Judah left his seal with Tamar as a pledge. The ancient
Hebrews wore their seals or signets in rings on their fingers, or
in bracelets on their arms. Sealing rings, called annuli, signa-
torii, sigillares, and chirographi, are said by profane authors to
have been invented by the Lacedsemonians, who, not content to
shut their chests, armouries, &c, with keys, added a seal also.
Letters and contracts were sealed thus : first they were tied up
with thread or a string, then the wax was applied to the knot
and the seal impressed upon it. Rings seem to have been used
as seals in almost every country. Pliny, however, observes that
seals were scarcely used at the time of the Trojan war ■ the
method of shutting up letters was by curious knots, which inven-
tion was particularly honoured, as in the instance of the Gordian
knot. We are also informed by Pliny, that in his time no seals
were used but in the Roman empire: but at Rome testaments
were null without the testator's seal and the seals of seven wit-
nesses.— (Digest, b.xxxvii. tit. de Bonorum Possessione. Tf'ilson's
Archaol. Diet. art. Seal.) The very ancient custom of sealing
dispatches with a seal or signet, set in a ring, is still retained in
the east. Pococke says, (Travels, vol. i. p. 186, note,) " in
Egypt they make the impression of their name with their seal,
generally of cornelian, which they wear on their finger, and
which is blacked when they have occasion to seal with it." Han-
way remarks (Travels, i. 317.) that " the Persian ink serves not
only for writing, but for subscribing with their seal; indeed
many of the Persians in high office could not write. In their rings
they wear agates, which serve for a seal, on which is frequently
engraved their name, and some verse from the Koran." Shaw
(Travels, p. 247.) says, " as few or none either of the Arab
shekhs, or of Turkish and eastern kings, princes, or bashaws
know to write their own names, all their letters and decrees are
stamped witli their proper rings seals, or signets, (I Kings xxi.
4482. A. C. 929. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
Jezreel, ordering them <* to proclaim a fast, to bring
e Naboth before the judges, and to suborn two false
witnesses, who should depose against him, that he had
f blasphemed God and the king, that so he might be
carried out of the city, and stoned. S All this was done
according to this wicked woman's desire ; and, as soon
as Ahab understood that Naboth was dead, he went to
Jezreel, and took possession of his vineyard : but upon
his return to Samaria, the prophet Elijah, by God's di-
rection, met him, and having upbraided him with this his
last rlagitiousness, in slaying the innocent, and seizing
on his inheritance, he denounced this heavy sentence
against him, ' That in the same manner that dogs had
licked Naboth's blood, they should lick his ;' that all his
posterity should die by the sword, and be exposed with-
out the honour of a decent funeral ; and that, as to his
wife Jezebel, she should be devoured by ' dogs h near the
8. Esth. iii. 12. Dan. vi. 17 or 18, &c.) which are usually of
silver or cornelian, with their respective names engraved upon
them on one side, and the name of their kingdom or principality,
or else some sentence of the Koran, on the other." Eastern
signets have cypress and letters on them. — Clarke's Travels,
vol. i. p. 320. — Ed.
d It was always a customary thing, upon the approach of any
great calamity, or the apprehension of any national judgment, to
proclaim a fast; and Jezebel ordered such a fast to be observed
in Jezreel, the better to conceal her design against Naboth. For,
by this means, she intimated to the Jezreelites, that they had
some accursed thing among them, which was ready to draw down
the vengeance of God upon their city; and that therefore it was
their business to inquire into all those sins which provoked God
to anger against them, and to purge them out effectually. As
therefore these days of fasting ware employed in punishing offen-
ders, doing justice, and imploring God's pardon, they gave the
elders of the city an occasion to convene an assembly, and the
false witnesses a fair opportunity to accuse Naboth before them.
— Le Clerc's and Patrick's Commentaries.
e Josephus is of opinion, that, as Naboth was of an illustrious
house, he was ordered to be set in an honourable place among
the elders and chief rulers of the city ; that so it might be thought,
that they did not condemn him out of hatred or ill will, but
merely as they were constrained to it by the evidence that was
given against him. But others will have it, that the reason why
he was set in an eminent place was only, because persons accused
and arraigned were wont to stand conspicuous before their judges,
that all the people might see them, and hear both the accusatious
against them, and their defence. — Patricks Commentary.
f By the law of Moses it was death to blaspheme God, (Lev.
xxiv. 16.) and by custom it was death to revile the king, (Ex.
xxii. 28.) Now, in order to make safe work, the evidences as
they were instructed accused Naboth of both these crimes, that
the people might be the better satisfied to see him stoned. There
is this difference, however, to be observed between these two
crimes, that if a man had only blasphemed God, he was to be
tried by the great court at Jerusalem, as the Hebrew doctors
tell us, and his goods came to his heirs ; whereas, when a man
was executed for treason against the king, his estate went to the
exchequer, and was forfeited to him against whom the offence
was committed; and for this reason it was, that they accused
Naboth of this crime likewise, that his estate might be confis-
cated, and Ahab, by that means, get possession of his vineyard.
— Patrick's Commentary.
g Princes never want instruments to execute their pleasure ;
and yet it is strange that among all these judges and great men,
there should be none that abhorred such a villany. It must be
considered, however, that for a long while they had cast off all
tear and sense of God, and prostituted their consciences to please
their king: nor durst they disobey Jezebel's commands, who had
the full power and government of the king, as they well knew,
and could easily have taken away their lives, had they refused to
condemn Naboth. — Poole's Annotations.
h 1 Kings xxi. 23. Mr Bruce, when at Gondar, was witness
to a scene in a great measure similar to the devouring of Jezebel
by dogs. He says, " the bodies of those killed by the sword,
Sect. 1I.J
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
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wall of Jezreel,' that is, a where Naboth was judged,
and unjustly condemned.
Uneasy at the sight of the prophet, and much more
terrified at his denunciations, Ahab rent his clothes, put on
sackcloth, and gave other indications of his sorrow and
humiliation ; * but as his repentance was neither sincere
mirpersevering, c God, who might otherwise have revoked
the whole sentence, inflicted part of it upon his person ;
but the utter extirpation of his family did not happen,
till the reign of his son Jehoram, as we shall see in its
proper place.
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, as Ave said before, had
imprudently married his son and heir to this wicked
Ahab's daughter ; and as this alliance occasioned an in
terview between the two kings, Jehoshaphat went one
day to Samaria, to visit Ahab, who entertained him and
his attendants very splendidly ; but taking the advan-
tage of this opportunity, invited him to go along with
him to the siege of Ramoth Gilead, a town in the tribe
of Gad, which the king of Syria unjustly detained from
him. Jehoshaphat agreed to attend him ; but being
loth to do any thing of this kind without a divine appro-
bation, he desired of Ahab to inquire of the prophets
concerning the event of this expedition. To this pur-
pose Ahab summoned together 400 priests of the goddess
were hewn to pieces and scattered about the streets, being denied
burial. I was miserable, and almost driven to despair, at seeing
my hunting dogs twice let loose by the carelessness of my ser-
vants, bringing into the court-yard the heads and arms of
slaughtered men, and which I could no way prevent, but by the
destruction of the dogs themselves." He also adds, that upon
being asked by the king the reason of his dejected and sickly
appearance, among other reasons he informed him, " it was
occasioned by the execution of three men, which he had lately
seen; because the hyrenas, allured into the streets by the quan-
tity of carrion, would not let him pass by night in safety from the
palace, and because the dogs fled into his house, to eat pieces of
human carcasses at their leisure." (Travels, vol. iv. p. SI.) This
account illustrates also the readiness of the dogs to lick the blood
of Ahab (1 Kings xxii. 38.), in perfect conformity to which is
the expression of the prophet Jeremiah, (xv. 3.) ' I will appoint
over them the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear.' — Ed.
a There is a great dispute among the learned, as to the ac-
complishment of this prophecy. At first it was no doubt
intended to he literally fulfilled; but upon Ahab's repentance, as
we find below, the punishment was transferred from him to his
son Jehoram, in whom it was actually accomplished ; for his ' dead
body was cast into the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreel-
ite, for the dogs to devour,' (2 Kings ix. 25.) Since Ahab's
blood therefore was licked by dogs, not at Jezreel, but at Sama-
ria, it seems necessary, that we should understand the Hebrew
word which our translation renders ' in the place where,' not as
denoting the place, but the manner in which the thing was done ;
and so the sense of the passage will he, — That as dogs licked, or
in like manner as dogs licked Naboth's blood ; even so shall they
lick thine; observe what I say, even thine. — Poole's Annot.
b 1 Kings xxi. 27. Going softly seems to have been one of the
many expressions of mourning commonly used among the east-
ern nations. That it was in use among the Jews appears from
the case of Ahah; and by mistake it has been confounded with
walking barefoot. It seems to have been a very slow, solemn
manner of walking, well adapted to the state of mourners labour-
ing under great sorrow and dejection of mind. — Ed.
c The scope of the passage, (I Kings xxi. 27— 29.) leads us to
believe, that Ahab's repentance was sincere, though it produced
no lasting improvement in his character; besides, if his repen-
tance had been merely a false pretence, it cannot he supposed
that God would have signified his approbation of it by a remis-
sion of the threatened punishment. The circumstance deserves
our particular notice, and furnishes a signal instance of God's
readiness to meet the returning penitent, even while he is yet a
great way on"'. — En.
4482. A. C. 929. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
Astarte, d who unanimously agreed, that the expedition
would prove successful ; but as Jehoshaphat's purpose
was, not to inquire of these, but of some true prophet of
the Lord, with much difficulty he obtained of Ahab to
have Micaiah produced, who, charging e Ahab's pro-
phets with falsehood, foretold, that the enterprise would
prove fatal to all Israel, and to Ahab in particular ; and
therefore he advised both kings to desist.
Ahab, however, instead of listening to Micaiah, or-
dered him into custody, until he should return in peace ;
and taking Jehoshaphat with him, marched with all his
forces to the siege : but, when he came within sight of
the enemy's army, his courage began to cool, and think-
ing to evade the force of Micaiah's prophecy by a stra-
tagem of his own, he put himself in the garb of a common
officer, and advised Jehoshaphat to right in his royal
robes. The king of Syria had given particular command
to his generals / to single out Ahab, and, if possible to
kill him, as the chief author of the war. At first they
mistook Jehoshaphat for the king of Israel, and there-
fore fell upon him with great impetuosity ; but perceiving
at length, that he was not the person they wanted, they
desisted from the pursuit of him, and, in quest of Ahab,
bended their course another way.
Ahab, however, did not gain much by his politic pro-
d In the text, they are simply called prophets; but it is not
impossible that they were priests of the goddess Astarte, main-
tained by the wicked Jezebel. — Ed.
e Micaiah's answer to Ahab, inquiring of him the success of
his intended exhibition, is, ' Go, and prosper ; for the Lord shall
deliver the city into the hands of the king,' (1 Kings xxii. 15.)
which does not at all contradict the other prophets, had it been
spoken in earnest; but we have good reason to believe, that the
words were spoken ironically, and in mockery to the promises
which the other prophets made Ahab. Accordingly, we may
observe by Ahab's reply, that he suspected Micaiah's sincerity,
and, either by his gesture or manner of speaking, gathered, that
his meaning was to traduce these false prophets for their answers.
So that Micaiah's answer is in effect, as if he had said, — ' Since
thou dost not seek to know the truth, but only to please thyself,
go to the battle, as all thy prophets advise thee ; expect the success
which they promise thee, and try the truth of their predictions, by
thy dear bought experience. — Poole's Annotations. [The words
of Micaiah evidently contain a strong irony; as if he had said,
"All your prophets have predicted success; you wish me to
speak as they speak: ' Go and prosper; for the Lord will deliver
it into the hand of the king.' " These were the precise words
of the false prophets, (v. G and 12,) and were spoken by Micaiah
in such a tone and manner as at once showed to Ahab that he did
not believe them; hence the king adjures him (v. 10.) that he
would speak to him nothing but truth ; ar.d on this the prophet
immediately relates to him the prophetic vision which pointed
out the disasters which ensued. It is worthy of remark, that this
prophecy of the king's prophets is couched in the same ambiguous
terms by which the false prophets in the heathen world endea-
voured to maintain their credit, while they deluded their votaries.
The reader will observe that the word it is not in the original.
' The Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king;' and the
words are so artfully constructed, that they may he interpreted
for or against; so that, be the event whatever it might, the jug-
gling prophet could save his credit, by saying he meant what had
happened. Thus then the prophecy might have been understood:
'The Lord will deliver (Ramoth Gilead) into the king's (Ahab's)
hand;' or 'The herd will deliver (Israel) into the king's hand;'
that is, into the hand of the king of Syria. And Micaiah re| i ats
these words of uncertainty, in order to ridicule them and t xpose
their fallacy. — En.
/This Benbadad might order, either in policy, as supposing
this to be the best and readiest way to put an end to this war;
or with a design to take him prisoner, that thereby be might
wipe out the stain of his own captivity, and recover the honour
ami advantages which he then lost. — Poole's Annotations.
4 c
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ject, as he thought it ; for he was mortally wounded by
a random arrow : and though he was held up in his cha-
riot for some time, with his face towards the enemy, to
encourage his soldiers, yet about sunset he died, and a
retreat was sounded. His dead body was carried to
Samaria, and there buried, and his son Ahaziah succeed-
ed him in the kingdom. But as the chariot wherein he
was carried, was all stained with the flux of blood from
his wound, while it was washed in a pool near the city,
the dogs came and licked it, that the prophecy of Elijah
might not go altogether unfulfilled.
As for Jehoshaphat, though he escaped from the battle,
and returned in peace to Jerusalem, yet God sent the
prophet Jehu to reprove him for his having assisted
Ahab, who was a God's avowed enemy : but this fault he
endeavoured to repair by the good order which he estab-
lished in his dominions, both as to civil and religious
affairs ; by appointing honest and able judges, * and
giving them proper charges ; by regulating the discipline
and order of the priests and L/svites, and by enjoining
them to perform punctually their respective duties in the
service of God. Nor was it long before he experiment-
ally found the favour of God extended to him in a most
miraculous manner, for this his reformation. For when
the Moabites and Ammonites, with their auxiliaries,
made a formidable invasion upon his kingdom, and he
thereupon had appointed a public fast, and applied him-
self to God for help c by humiliation and prayer, he had
a Even common reason taught the heathens not to make any
friendship with such as were enemies to the gods ; and therefore
CaLlimachus, in his hymn to Ceres, tells her, " O mother Ceres,
may that man never be in friendship with me, who is in enmity
with thee ; nor let him dwell under the same roof; for those who
are thy toes, assuredly are no friends of mine." Whereupon the
illustrious Spanheim has observed many similar sayings among
the heathens, and how the ancient Greeks abhorred to lodge in
the same house, or to eat at the same table, with a murderer, or
any grievous criminal, for the same reason, perhaps, that Horace
has thus expressed upon the like occasion:— "The man who hath
revealed the secret mysteries of Ceres, must ever be debarred from
sitting under the same roof, or sailing in the same boat with me ;
for frequently the incensed deity of Olympus, in inflicting due
punishment, hath joined the innocent with the guilty. Justice,
though she may follow with a limping foot, hath rarely failed to
grasp the evading criminal."
b The charge or solemn admonition which Jehoshaphat gave the
judges, whom he appointed in each city, runs in these words:
' Take heed what ye do, for ye judge not for man, but for the Lord,
who is with you in the judgment: wherefore now let the fear of
the Lord be upon you: take heed and do it; fur there is no ini-
quity with the Lord our God, no respect of persons, no taking of
gifts,' (2 Chron. xix. 6, 7.) It is a remarkable saying of Cicero,
that judges, being sworn to do justice, should remember^
when they come to pass sentence, " that they have God as a
witness, that is, as I suppose, that they have their own mind,
than which God hath given to man nothing more divine." (De
Offir.b. Hi. c. 13.) Where he has left us this excellent instruc-
tion likewise, that " a man must lay aside the person of a friend
when he puts on the person of a judge." In like manner, there
are several passages in Hesiod, admonishing those who have the
administration of justice, to retain in their minds the considera-
tion of their gods' inspection: but one of these will answer to our
purpose. — " Ye kings, and ye that on earth administer justice to
man, be faithful! for, amidst the countless mortal tribes, immor-
tal beings dwell, and watch those who, wreckless of the wrath of
heaven, grind the poor, inflicting undue punishment ; yea, to the
all-rearing earth, Jove has commissioned three myriads of un-
dying ones as guardians of the death-doomed, by night and by
day hoveling on the air, and crowding the earthward tracts of
heaven, they chain the arms and curb the fiery wills of tyrants
Works and Days, 1. 246.
c This prayer of Jehoshaphat's is deservedly accounted one of
a most gracious answer vouchsafed him, namely, that,
on the next day, he should obtain a complete victory,
without once striking a stroke ; which accordingly came
to pass. For when Jehoshaphat drew up his army, near
the place where the enemy lay, he found nothing there
but dead bodies ; God having been pleased, before his
approach, so to confound their understanding, that being
a mixed multitude of divers nations, they, d some way or
the most excellent that we meet with in sacred history. He
begins it with an acknowledgment of God's supreme and irresis-
tible power, which extends itself everywhere, over all creatures
in heaven and earth, which are every one subject to his authori-
ty:— ' O Lord God of our fathers, art thou not God jn heaven?
and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in
thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to
withstand thee?' Then he remembers the peculiar relation
which the people of Israel have to him ; the promise he made to
Abraham, as a reward of his fidelity ; and the deed of gift which
he conveyed to him and his posterity, of this country for ever :
' Art thou not our God, who didst drive out the inhabitants of
the land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of
Abraham, thy friend for ever?' Then he reminds him of the
long possession they had had of the country, and of the temple
which Solomon had built for his worship, to whom, at the con-
secration, (and therefore he refers to Solomon's words at the con-
secration, 1 Kings viii.) he promised a gracious reward to all
the prayers that should be offered there : ' and they dwelt therein,
and have built thee a sanctuary therein for thy name, saying, if
when evil cometh upon us, as the sword, judgment, or pestilence,
or famine, we stand before thee in this house, and in thy presence,
for thy name is in this house, and cry unto thee in our affliction,
then thou wilt hear and help.' In the next place, he represents
the foul ingratitude of their enemies, in invading a country to
which they had no manner of title, even though the Israelites
did them not the least harm when they came to take possession
of it, but took the pains to march a long way about to get to it,
rather than give any molestation ; and in aggravation of their
wickedness in this respect, he suggests, that by this invasion
they made an attempt, not only upon the rights of the Israelites,
but of God himself, who was the great Lord and proprietor from
whom they held the land : ' And now behold the children of
Ammon, and Moab, and Mount Seir, whom thou wouldst not
let Israel invade, when they came out of the land of Egypt, but
they turned from them, and destroyed them not; behold, I say,
how they reward us, to come to cast us out of the possession
which thou gavest us to inherit.' Then he appeals to the justice
of God, the righteous judge, who helps those that suffer wrong,
especially when they have no other helper: for this is the last
argument he makes use of to conciliate the divine assistance,
even the weak condition wherein he and his people were, which
made them the objects of the divine pity, especially since they
placed their hope and confidence in him alone: ' O Lord, our
God, wilt thou not judge them? For we have no might against
this great company, that cometh against us, neither know we
what to do, but our eyes are upon thee.' (2 Chron. xx. 12.) &c.
with Patrick's Commentary on the words.
d The words in the text are, ' the Lord set ambushments
against the children of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, which
were come against Judah, and they were smitten,' (2 Chron.
xx. 22.) And there are two ways wherein this slaughter may be
supposed to have happened: either, 1st, by the ministry of God's
angels, who might appear in the shape of men, and, putting on
the appearance of Moabites or Ammonites, might smite some
part of the army privately, and they supposing this to be done
by their neighbours, might turn about and fall upon them like
enemies, and so break forth into mutual slaughters: or, 2nd, by
some jealousies and animosities among themselves, which by
degrees break forth, first into secret ambushments, which one
party laid for another, and then into open hostilities and outrages
to their total destruction. So easy a thing it is for God to defeat
his enemies, who can, when he pleases, infatuate their designs,
or arm their own passions and mistakes against them.— Poole's
Annotations on 2 Chron. xx. 22. — Boothroyd renders the pas-
sage thus: " And when they began to sing and praise, Jehovah
turned the ambush-men of Mount Seir, who should have come
against Judah, against the Ammonites and Moabites, and they
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
571
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
other, by mistake, fell a slaying and destroying one
another ; so that Jehoshaphat and his people had no-
thing else to do but to carry off' the arms and spoils
of the dead, wherein they employed themselves for three
whole days, and, on the fourth, meeting in a valley,
which from this event, was called afterwards ' the valley
of blessing,' they gave solemn thanks to God for this
deliverance ; and, not long after, Jehoshaphat, with his
victorious troops, entering Jerusalem in triumph, was
received with the joyful acclamations of his people, and
struck such terror into all the neighbouring nations, that,
for the remainder of his reign, he met with no molesta-
tion.
One loss however he had towards the conclusion of
his reign, a in joining with Ahaziah king of Israel, to
were smitten. Then the Ammonites and Moabites attacked the
inhabitants of Mount Seir, so as utterly to slay and destroy them ;
and when they had destroyed the inhabitants of Mount Seir, they
rushed on to destroy one another:" he adds in a note, I conceive
that the Edomites, who had been placed as an ambush against
the Judahites, either by mistake or designedly, attacked the
Ammonites and Moabites, and that these uniting, repelled the
attack, and in a great measure destroyed the Edomites; then
quarrelling among themselves, mutually destroyed one another.
—Ed.
a This certainly was a great weakness in him, to make friend-
ship with the son, when he had been so sharply reproved for
joining with his father Ahab, especially since the son was as
great an idolater as the father, but unto this he was betrayed by
the affinity that was between them ; and though he did not join
with him in war, but only in trade, yet God was nevertheless
displeased with him; which shows how dangerous a thing it is to
have too near a familiarity or commerce with idolaters, or any
other very wicked men. — Patrick's Commentary. — [It appears
from 2 Chron. xx. 36, that Jehoshaphat joined in making and
sending ships to Tarshish, and it is possible that what is stated
in I Kings xxii. 49, is spoken of a second expedition, in which
Jehoshaphat would not join Ahaziah. But instead of row nSi, veto
abah, ' he would not,' perhaps we should read m« 1S1 vclo abah,
' lie consented to him ;' two words pronounced exactly in the
same way, and differing but in one letter, namely, an k aleph,
for a 1 vau. This reading, however, is not supported by any
MS. or version ; but the emendation seems just; for there are
several places in these historical books in which there are mis-
takes of transcribers, which nothing but violent criticism can
restore, and to this it is dangerous to resort, but in cases of the
last necessity. Critics have recommended the 4Sth and 49th
verses to be read thus: 'Jehoshaphat had built ships of burden
at Ezion-Geber, to go to Ophir for gold.' 49. ' And Ahaziah
the son of Ahab, had said to Jehoshaphat, Let my servants, I
pray thee, go with thy servants in the ships; to which Jehosha-
phat consented. But the ships went not thither; for the ships
were broken at Ezion-Geber.' This is Houbigant's translation,
who contends that " the words of the 48th verse, ' but they went
not,' should be placed at the end of the 49th verse, for who can
believe that the sacred writer should first relate that ' the ships
were broken,' and then that Ahaziah requested of Jehoshaphat
that his servants might embark with the servants of Jehoshaphat."
This bold critic, who understood the Hebrew language better than
any man in Europe, has, by happy conjectures, since verified by
the testimony of MSS., removed the blots of many careless tran-
scribers from the sacred volume. — Dr A. Clarke.~\ — En.
[lioothroyd also follows Houbigant in his translation, and, with
Geddes, arranges 1 Kings >»xii. 43 — 50, as follows: 43. ' And
he walked in all the ways of Asa, his father: he turned not aside
from it, doing what was right in the eyes of Jehovah.' 46. ' For
the remnant of the Sodomites, who were left in the days of his
father Asa, he removed from the land; only the high places
were not entirely removed ; still the people sacrificed, and burned
incense on the high places.' 44. ' And Jehoshaphat made peace
with the king of Israel.' 47. ' And as there was then no king
in Edom, but a deputy for the king of Judah.' 48. • Jehoshaphat
built ships of Tarshish at Ezion-Geber, to go to Ophir, for gold.'
49. 'Then said Ahaziah the son of Abhab, to Jehoshaphat,
kt my servauts go witli thy servants in the ships : to which
4482. A. C. 929. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
equip out a fleet in the port of Ezion-Geber, in order to
go to Tarshish ; for the whole fleet was dashed in pieces
upon a ridge of rocks that lay in the mouth of the har-
bour, before they ever got to sea. But, as Jehoshaphat
was afterwards convinced, that this was a judgment of
God upon him for entering into partnership with an im-
pious prince, as Ahaziah certainly was, the next fleet he
set out was from his other port of Elah, wherein he suffer-
ed Ahaziah to have no concern ; and therefore came off
with better success. The truth is, Jehoshaphat was a re-
ligious and good prince, a zealous and great reformer,
and yet the people still retained a kindness to the high
places. * He lived sixty, and reigned twenty-five years ;
was buried in the city of David, and succeeded by his
son Jehoram.
His father Jehoshaphat had six other sons ; but to give
no umbrage for suspicion, he had in his life time remov-
ed them from all public business, made them governors
of fenced cities, and give them separate fortunes of their
own. But notwithstanding all this precaution whene'er
Jehoram was settled on the throne, he murdered all his
brothers, and several chief men in Israel, who, as he
suspected, either adhered to their party, or were likely
to revenge their deaths.
During these cruel proceedings in the very beginning
of his reign, he had a c letter sent him from Elijah,
Jehoshaphat consented. But they went not ; for the ships were
wrecked at Ezion-Geber.' 45. ' Now the rest of the acts of
Jehoshaphat, and the might which lie exercised, and how he
warred, are written in the Chronicles of the kings of Judah.'
50. ' And Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers ; and was buried
with his fathers in the city of David ; and Jehoram his son reign-
ed in his stead.'] — Ed.
b 1 Kings xxii. 43. Many of old worshipped upon hills, and
on the tops of high mountains; imagining that they thereby ob-
tained a nearer communication with heaven. Strabo says, that
the Persians always performed their worship upon hills. Some
nations, instead of an image, worshipped the hill as the deity. In
Japan, most of their temples are at this day upon eminences,
and often upon the ascent of high mountains, commanding fine
views, with groves and rivulets of clear water; for they say, that
the gods are extremely delighted with such high and pleasant
spots, (Kcempfer's Japan, vol. ii. b. 5.) This practice, in early
times, was almost universal; and every mountain was esteemed
holy. The people who prosecuted this method of worship, en-
joyed a soothing infatuation, which flattered the gloom of super-
stition. The eminences to which they retired were lonely and
silent; and seemed to be happily circumstanced for contemplation
and prayer. They who frequented them were raised above the
lower world, and fancied that they were brought into the vicinity
of the powers of the air, and of the deity who resided in the
higher regions. But the chief excellence for which they were
frequented was, that they were looked upon as the peculiar places
where God delivered his oracles. — HotcclVs Mythological Diet.
p. 225.— Ed.
c Now since it is plain, from 2 Kings ii. 11, &c, that Elijah
was taken up into heaven, in the time of Jehoshaphat, the ques-
tion is, how could Elijah send his son a letter ? For resolution
to this, Josephus and others imagine, that this writing was in-
dited in heaven where Elijah now is, and sent to Jehoram by
the ministry of angels. But there is no reason to suppose that so
singular a miracle was wrought in favour of an idolatrous prince,
' who had Moses and the prophets,' which, in our Saviour's opi-
nion, were sufficient to instruct him in all points necessary to
salvation, and needed not any additional writing to he sent him
from the other world. Others therefore are of opinion, that this
letter was written before Elijah's ascension into heaven ; that,
foreseeing, by the spirit of prophecy, the great wickedness Jeho-
ram would fall into, he dictated the contents hereof to one of the
prophets, charging them to put them down in writing, to send
them in a letter to Jehoram, when he grew as impious as he is
here related, and to let him know withal, that Elijah commanded
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wherein he upbraided him with the murder of his brothers,
ami his departure from the religion of his ancestors ; and
wherein a he threatened him with a sore disease in his
bowels, and his wives, his children, and his people, with
judgments of several kinds, which God would send upon
them. Nor was it long before these threats began to
operate. The Edomites, who had all along been sub-
ject to the house of David, rebelled ; and ha vino- ex-
pelled his deputy, made themselves a king of their own
and were never again subject to the Jewish yoke. Lib-
nah, a city in his own dominions, shook oft" its allegiance,
and refused to acknowledge him any longer for its sov-
ereign. The Philistines and Arabians made inroads
upon his territories, ravaged the country, plundered his
palaces, and carried away his very wives and children ;
so that they left none except Jehoahaz the youngest •
and, to complete his misery, after God had afflicted him
with a cruel dysentery, which for two years grievously
tormented him, and brought him at last to his grave, he
died, without being so much as lamented by his subjects ;
and after a life of forty, and a reign of eight years,
being buried indeed in the city of David, but not in any
of the royal sepulchres, was succeeded by his son Je-
hoahaz. But to return to the history of king Ahaziah.
Ahaziah, as we said, succeeded his father Ahab in the
kingdom of Israel, in the seventeenth year of Jehosha-
phat's reign, and was not a whit behind him in all man-
ner of wickedness. But as his reign was but short, in the
whole not above the space of two years, so was it
inglorious and full of trouble. For in the first year of
his reign, the Moabites, who had always been obedient
to the kings of Israel from the first separation of the two
kingdoms, took now an opportunity to revolt ; nor had
he power to reduce them to their subjection ; for in the
second year of his reign, he received such a hurt by a
fall from * the terrace of his house, as reduced him to a
this writing to be delivered to him; upon presumption that it
would affect him the more, as it came from a person that was
translated into heaven. But this notion has no better foundation
than the other, for the prophets were sent to those who lived in
their own age, to declare unto them the will of God, not to write
letters, fit to be delivered only when they had departed out of this
life. God never left himself without a witness ; and at this time
more especially, there were prophets in abundance ; and therefore
others have supposed, that there has been a mistake in the tran-
scriber; and the name of Elijah put for that Elisha; or that Elijah
"by whom this letter was sent, was not the prophet who was taken
up to heaven, but another of that name, who lived in the subse-
quent age, and was contemporary with Jehoram. Which of
these conjectures, for conjectures they are all, seems most feasible
we are at liberty to choose, since any of them is sufficient to solve
the above-mentioned difficulty.— Le Clerc and Patrick's Com-
meatary. [Boothroyd, in his translation, (2 Chron. xxi. 12.)
instead of Elijah reads Elisha; and adds, this correction seenis
absolutely necessary, though not confirmed, perhaps, by any one
MS. or ancient version. From comparing parallel passages, it
is clear that errors in names are most frequent.] — Ed.
a There was no calamity that could be thought of, as several
have observed, which did not befall this wicked prince. His king-
dom was destroyed and depopulated by the fiercest nations ; his
treasures ransacked ; his wives carried into captivity; his chil-
dren Blain; himself afflicted with a sore disease for two years;
and, when he was dead, denied the honour of a royal sepulchre,
such as his father had. All which calamities were threatened in
tins wnting sent him in the name of Elijah, that he might not
think that they came by chance, but by the special direction of
Almighty God, as a punishment for his impiety.— Patrick's
Commentary on 2 Chron. xxi. 14.
6 In the eastern countries the roofs of the houses were flat, and
very bad state of health. In this condition, he sent to a
Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to know if he should
surrounded with a battlement, to prevent falling from them, be-
cause it was a customary thing for people to walk upon them in
order to take the air. Now, in this battlement, we may suppose
that there were some wooden lattices for people to look through,
of equal height with the parapet wall, and that Ahaziah negli-
gently leaning on it, as it was rotten and infirm, it broke down,
and let him fall into the court or garden belonging to his house.
Or there is another way whereby he might fall. In these flat
roofs, there was generally an opening which served instead of a
skylight to the house below; and this opening might be done
over with lattice-work, which the king, as he was carelessly
walking, might chance to step upon, and slip through. Nor is
there any absurdity in supposing such lattice-work .in a king's
palace, when the world was not arrived to that height of art and
curiosity which we find it in now. — Poole's Annotations, and
CalmeVs Dissertation on the Buildings of the Ancient Hebrews.
c The word signifies, the god of flies; but how this idol came to
obtain that name, it is not so easy a matter to discover. Several
are of opinion, that this god was called Baal-semin, the lord of
heaven, but that the Jews, by way of contempt, gave it the name
of Baal-zebub, or the lord of a fly, a god that was nothing worth,
or, as others say, whose temple was filled with flies : whereas the
temple of Jerusalem, notwithstanding all the sacrifices that were
daily offered, never once had a fly in it, as their doctors relate.
The sacred writings, indeed, when they speak of the gods of the
heathens, very frequently call them, in general, idols, vanity,
abominations, &c, but they never change their proper names into
such as are of an opprobrious import: neither can we think it
likely, that the king of Israel would have called the god of Ekron,
for whom he had so high a veneration as to consult him in his
sickness, by any appellation of contempt. Whoever considers
what troublesome and destructive creatures, especially in some
hot countries, flies are known to be; in what vast swarms they
sometimes settle, and not only devour all the fruits of the earth,
but in many places occasion a noisome pestilence ; may reason-
ably suppose, that the heathens had a proper deity to whom they
paid their addresses, either for the prevention or removal of this
sore plague. [In particular, the fly, called Zebub, and in modern
Arabic, Zimb, is an insect so very destructive as to render it far
from surprising that the ancient polytheists, who had gods pre-
siding over every department of nature, should worship, as a very
powerful deity, Baalzcbub, or the lord of flies. The Zebub, or
Zimb is never seen, says Mr Bruce, but where the earth is fat
and loamy; and though very little larger than a bee, " whenever
it makes its appearance in swarms, as it always does, and even
as soon as its buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake their food,
and run wildly about, till they die, worn out with fatigue, flight,
and hunger." Even the elephant flies before it, or rolls himself
in the mire to protect his skin from its attack. " The very
sound of the Zimb, before it is seen, occasions," says the same
author, "more trepidation both in the human and brute creation,
than would whole herds of these monstrous animals collected
together, though their number was in a tenfold proportion greater
than it really is;" and the only remedy that remains for the
shepherd on the appearance of this destructive insect, is to hasten
with his cattle as quickly as he can, to the nearest sandy desert,
whither the Zimb never pursues them'. If we may believe
Sandys, these flies abound in the country that was anciently
called Ekron.] — Bp. Gleig. And accordingly we are told by
Pliny (b. 29. c. 6.), that when there was a plague in Africa,
occasioned by vast quantities of flies, after that the people had
sacrificed to the god Achore, (he should have said the god of
Ekron, for there is a plain affinity between their names,) the flies
all died, and the distemper was extinguished. Now, it was a
known maxim of the heathen theology, that as all plagues were
inflicted by some evil demon or other, so all evil demons were
under the restraint of some superior one, who is their prince and
ruler. As therefore Pluto was known to be the god of hell, and
to have all the mischievous band of spirits under his control, to
him the heathens used to pray, and offer sacrifices, that he might
not suffer any of his inferior agents to inflict this heavy judgment
upon them. They worshipped him, I say, not to engage him to
do them any good, but to prevail with him to do them no harm;
and accordingly we may observe that every thing in their service
was dark and gloomy. Their offerings were in the night: " then
to the Stygian king he performs nocturnal sacrifices." (Virg. /En.
Sect. II.]
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573
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recover ; but, by God's appointment, the prophet Elijah
was sent to meet his messengers, and to turn them
back with this answer, ' that the king should certainly
die.'" The messengers coming back much sooner than
was expected/' acquainted the king with the reason of it;
and he, c by their description, understanding that it was
Elijah who sent him the message, immediately despatched
a captain with fifty soldiers to apprehend him ; but upon
their approach, the prophet commanded lire to come
down from heaven and destroy them. The like he did
to another captain and his company; but when the third
came, in a mure submissive manner, and begged his life,
and the lives of his soldiers, <l Elijah went with him to
the king, and told him from his own mouth what he had
before told the messengers ; which accordingly came to
pass, for he died a short time after, and having no son
of his own, was, e in the second year of Jehoram, son
(i.) Their victims were black: " The chaste Sybil shall invoke
thee with the blood of many a swart victim." (Virg. JEn. G.)
And the blood let out into a deep ditch: " he sinks the knife in
the throat of the black victim, and sprinkles the wide ditches
with blood." (Ovid. Met. b. 7.) Such good reason have we to
think, that the Baal-zebub, in Scripture, called the ' prince of
the devils,' was the very same with the Pluto whom the heathens
made the god of hell, and worshipped in this manner. — Patrick's
and Le Clerc's Commentaries; Jurieu's History of Doctrines
mid If'orship, part 4. c. 3, &C; Bruce' s Travels, and Harmer's
Observations.
a Ekron was a city and government of the Philistines, which
fell by lot to the tribe of Judah, in the first division made by
Joshua, (Josh. xv. 45.) but was afterwards given up to the tribe
of Dan, (Josh. xix. 43.) though it does not appear from history that
the Jews ever had a peaceable possession of it. It was situated
near the Mediterranean sea, between Ashdod and Jamnia, in a
moist and hot soil, and was therefore very much infested with
flies. — Caltiiet's Dictionary and Patrick's Commentary.
b It may seem somewhat strange, that Ahaziah's messengers
should stop their journey to Ekron, at Elijah's command ; but he
was a man of such a venerable presence, and spake to them with
such authority in the name of the Lord, that they were overawed
thereby to obey him rather than the king. — Patrick's Commen-
tary.^
c The description which the messengers give of Elijah, is,
' that he was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather
about his loins,' (2 Kings i. S.) where his being an hairy man,
may either denote his wearing long hair on his head, and his
beard, as the ancient Greek philosophers were wont to do, and
as Lucan describes Cato, "over his stern front, lie allowed his
hoarv hair to hang, and on his chin, a gloomy beard to grow."
Or it may denote his habit, which was made of skins, rough,
and with their hair on; as the ancient heroes were clothed in the
skins of lions, tigers, and bears; as the Evangelist represents the
Baptist in ' a raiment of camel's hair,' (Mat. iii. 4.) as the apostle
describes the prophets, 'wandering about in sheep skins and
goat skins,' (Ilth. xi. 37.) and as Statins dresses up oldTiresias,
" he assumes the heavy looks and voice and well-known skins of
that, aged seer Tiresias." — Theb. b. 2.
d This is a gr< at instance of the prophet's faith and obedience to
God in whom he trusted, that he would deliver him from the
wrath of the king, and the malice of Jezebel. He hail ordered,
not long before, all the prophets of Baal to be slain; had sent a
Ncry unwelcome message to the king; and now made a very
terrible execution upon two of his captains and their companies;
so that lie had all the reason in the world to apprehend the
utmost expressions of the king's displeasure: and yet, when God
commands him, he makes no manner of hesitation, but goes boldly
to him, and confirms, with his own mouth, the ungrateful truth
which he had declared to his messengers. — Patrick's Commen-
tary.
<• Flow could Jehoram, the brother of Ahaziah, begin his reign
in Israel in the second year of Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat,
when we read soon after, that he began to reign over Israel in
the eighteenth year of Jehosliaphat king of Judah, (2 Kings iii.
I.) and iu another place, that Jehoram, the son of Jeho I
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of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, succeeded by his brother
Jehoram.
About the beginning of the / reign of Jehoram king
of Judah, Elijah the prophet was translated into heaven.
God, very likely, had given him some intimation of the
time when this miraculous event should happen ; and
therefore, before his departure, he visited the sons of the
prophets that were at Bethel and Jericho, and took his
leave of them with such solemnity, that they be«an to
suspect that this was the last visit he intended to make
them ; and accordingly S apprised Elisha of it, who
thereupon determined not to leave his master, as long as
he continued upon earth.
With this resolution, he set forward with Elijah, who
was now shaping his course towards his native country of
Gilead, from whence he was to be translated ; and as
they were to pass over the Jordan, Elijah * with his man-
tle struck the waters, which instantly divided into two
parts, so that they went over on dry ground.
When they had passed the river in the sight of fifty of
the l sons of the prophets, and as they drew near to the
began to reign over Judah, in the fifth year of Jehoram king of
Israel? (2 Kings viii. lb".) Now, it is but supposing that Jeho-
shaphat declared his son Jehoram king, while himself was alive,
and reigned in conjunction with him for the space of seven
years, and all the difficulty is removed : for then Jehoram, the
son of Ahab, might begin his reign in the second year of Jehoram
son of Jehoshaphat, namely, in the second year that he reigned
with his father who was then alive; and Jehoram, son of Jeho-
shaphat, may be said to have begun his reign in the fifth of Jeho-
ram the son of Ahab, meaning the time when, after his father's
death, he began to reign alone. That the kings of Judah and
Israel, as well as other oriental princes, were accustomed to
appoint their successors, and even during their lifetime, to give
them some share in the administration, is plain from several
instances : and that Jehoshaphat found it expedient to settle his
son in the kingdom with himself, seems to be intimated in 2
Chron. xxi. 3, where it is said, that 'he gave the kingdom to
Jehoram, because he was his first-born, and gave gifts to the rest
of his sons, who, being many, might perhaps be forming parties,
and be entering into cabals about the succession to the kingdom;
and therefore to put an end to all such contests, Jehoshaphat
declared Jehoram king, while himself was on the throne, because
he was his first-born. — Calmefs and Patrick's Commentaries.
f To prevent confusion, the reader is desired to take notice,
that in the course of this history there is mention made of two
Jehorams, who reigned much about the same time; one, the
second son of Ahab, who succeeded his brother Ahaziah, and
was king of Israel ; and the other, who was son and heir to
Jehoshaphat, and reigned in Judah; both very wicked princes;
and therefore the greater care should be taken, that their actions
be not blended together.
g The expression in the text is, ' Knowest thou that the Lord
will takeaway thy master from thy head to-day ?' (2 Kings ii, 3.)
where the sons of the prophets allude to their manner of sitting
in their schools. For the scholars used to sit below their master's
feet, and the masters above over their heads, when they taught
them: and therefore the- sense of the words is, that ' God would
deprive Elisha of his master Elijah's instructions,' namely, by a
sudden death. For it does not appear that they had any notion
of his translation; so far from this, that they desired leave to send
out some to seek for him, ' if pcradventure the Spirit of the Lord
had taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain, or into
some valley,' (2 Kings ii. I''-' — Patrick's Commentary.
h In these two books of King-, there i> mention made five
times of this mantle; and in every place it is called -Adareth, which
denotes ' a royal as well as a prophetical robe.' The Septuagint
always translates it by the word faXur7,, which properly signifies
the prophetic mantle, made of lamb-skins, being a kind of upper
garment thrown over the shoulders, and, as some think, reaching
down to the heels; though Others take it for IIO men- than a lea-
thern jacket to keep out rain. '• Lei the leathern mantle never
be awanting, in case of sudden rains," [Mart. b. 14.)
i By ' lac sons of the prophets,' we are to understand 'the
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place of Elijah's ascension, Elisha requested of him that
the same gift of prophecy which God had been pleased
to bestow on him, might be a communicated to him, in
a larger measure than to the other prophets ; which the
other did not positively promise, but told him, however,
that if he happened to see him when he came to be
translated, this would be a good sign, that God would
not refuse him his request : and while they were thus
going on, and talking, there appeared, as it were, a
bright chariot, and horses, running towards them on the
ground, and, coming between them, parted them. * For
Elijah mounted the chariot, and in a great gust of wind,
directed by angels, was transported into heaven ; while
Elisha, who was left behind, c cried to him as he saw
scholars of the prophets/ such as they educated and trained up
in religion and virtue, upon whom God by degrees bestowed the
spirit of prophecy, and whom the superior prophets employed in
the same capacity, as the apostles did the evangelists, namely, to
publish their prophecies and instructions to the people, in the
places where they themselves could not go. Nor is it any small
testimony of Gods' love to an apostate people, that in these cor-
rupt times, and in that very place where the golden calves were
worshipped, he still continued the schools of the prophets, in order
to recover them from idolatry. Nay, what is very remarkable,
there were prophets of greater excellency for their miracles, in
Israel, than were in Judah, because they needed them more, both
to turn their hard hearts from the worship of idols, and to preserve
the pious persons that remained among them from deserting their
religion. — Patrick's Commentary.
a The words in the text are, ' Let, I pray thee, a double por-
tion of thy Spirit be upon me;' where some learned men are of
opinion, that this request in Elisha would be arrogant, if the
words were to be taken in their most obvious sense; and there-
fore they refer them to Elisha's school-fellows, whom he desires
to surpass in all prophetic gifts, as much as the first-born did ex-
cel the other children in his portion of the inheritance. But see-
ing Elijah had no other successor upon whom he was to bestow
any prophetic gifts, but Elisha, we cannot see why Elisha may
not be said to have a double portion of the prophetic spirit, since
it is evident he did many more miracles than Elijah did, and
even after his death, exerted a divine power in raising the dead
man, (2 Kings xiii. 21.) Had he desired this double portion
indeed out of a principle of vainglory, there might then be
something said against his request; but since he did it with a
pure intent to become thereby more serviceable in his genera-
tion, we cannot perceive why he was to blame in requesting
what our blessed Saviour granted to his apostles, namely, the
power of working greater miracles than he himself did. — Le
Clerc's and Calmet's Commentaries.
b What this chariot was, and to what place it conveyed Elijah,
we shall have occasion to observe in the following chapter; at
present we shall only take notice of some things relating to this
prophet's character. The author of Ecclesiasticus (xlviii. 1, &c.)
has dedicated this encomium to his memory, " Then stood up
Elias the prophet as fire, and his word burnt like a lamp. He
brought a sore famine among them, and by his zeal he diminished
their number. By the word of the Lord he shut up the heaven,
and also three times brought down fire. O Elias, how wast thou
honoured by thy wondrous deeds ? And who may glory like
unto thee ? Who didst raise a dead man from death, and his
son from the place of the dead, by the word of the Most High;
who broughtest kings to destruction, and honourable men to their
bed: — Who wast taken up in a whirlwind of fire, and in a chariot
of fiery horses ; who was ordained for reproofs in their times, to
pacify the wrath of the Lord's judgment before it brake forth into
fury ; to turn the heart of the father to the son, and to restore the
tribes of Jacob." In which last sentence our author alludes to
that passage in Malachi, (iv. 5, 6.) ' Behold I will send you
Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Lord ; and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I
come and smite the earth with a curse.'
c The words of Elisha upon this occasion are, ' My father, my
father,' so they called their masters and instructors, ' the chariots
of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.' The expression alludes to
him mount, and expressed his sorrow when he was gone :
but taking up the mantle which had dropped from him,
in his ascent, with it he divided the waters, as Elijah
had done, and repassed the Jordan.
Hereby the prophets of Jericho, and the places adja-
cent, were convinced that the spirit of Elijah rested
upon Elisha. And accordingly, when they met him,
they recognised him for his successor, and paid him the
same respect. Believing, however, that the Spirit of
God might possibly have d transported Elijah into some
distant or desert place, they desired leave to send out
fifty men in search of him. Elisha assured them that it
would be needless : however, to give them all the con-
viction they desired, he suffered them to do what they
pleased ; so that the men went and returned again after
three days' search to no purpose.
From this place Elisha proceeded to Jericho, where,
at the request of the inhabitants, he cured the e brack-
ishness of their water, and the barrenness of their
the form of the chariot and horses that he had just then beheld,
and seems to imply, " that Elijah, by his example, and counsel,
and prayers, and power with God, did more for the defence and
preservation of Israel, than all their chariots and horses, and
other warlike provisions ;" unless we may suppose that this was
an abrupt speech which Elisha, in the consternation he was in,
left unfinished, and so the sacred history has recorded it. — Poole's
Annotations and Le Clerc's Commentaries.
d ' The Spirit of the Lord,' whereby we may understand either
the power of God, or some one of his angels, frequently used to
cany the prophets through the air, and with vast celerity remove
them to distant places; and therefore Obadiah speaks of it as a
common thing: ' and it shall come to ptss, as soon as I am gone
from thee, that the Spirit of the Lord will cany thee where I know
not, so that when the king cannot find thee he will slay me,' (1
Kings xviii. 12). And accordingly in the New Testament, we
are told of Philip, that ' when they were come out of the water,
the Spirit of the Lord caught him away, that the eunuch saw him
no more, and Philip was found at Azotus,' (Acts viii. 39, 40.) —
Le Clerc's Commentary.
e The manner in which the prophet Elisha sweetened the
fountain, and made the soil fruitful, was by casting salt into the
water, to make the miracle more conspicuous ; for salt is a thing,
that of all others, makes water less potable, and the ground more
barren. Josephus, however, willing to improve upon this history,
adds, as his usual manner is, several circumstances of his own.
For he tells us, "That this fountain did not only corrupt the
fruits of the earth, whether grain or plants, but likewise caused
abortions in women, and tainted, with a blasted infection, what-
ever it touched, that was capable of such impression ; that Elisha,
having been treated with great hospitality and respect by the
people of Jericho, bethought himself of such an acknowledgment,
as they themselves, their country, and their posterity, to the end
of the world, might be the better for; that hereupon he went
out to the fountain, and causing a pitcher of salt to be let down
to the bottom of it, he advanced his right hand towards heaven,
and, presenting his oblations at the side of it, besought God, in
his goodness, to correct the water, and to sweeten the veins
through which it passed ; to soften the air, and to make it more
temperate and fructifying; to bestow children as well as fruits,
upon the inhabitants in abundance; and never to withdraw these
blessings, so long as they continued in their duty ; and that upon
offering up this prayer, with all due ceremony, and according to
form, the ill quality of the fountain was changed, and, instead of
sterility, became now an efficacious means of plenty and increase."
The author, we may observe, to gratify the pagans, represents
Elisha in the form of a magician, who, by invocations, oblations,
and other mysterious operations, changed the bad quality of the
waters, and thereby made the valley of Jericho fruitful ; whereas
this was done in a manner altogether supernatural and miracu-
lous. Nay, to this very day, there is a fountain on the west of
Jericho, which rises about three quarters of a league above the
town, in the way to Jerusalem, which, yielding a great deal of
water, and that very good in its kind, runs along aud fructifies
the plain. — The Wars of the Jews, b. 5. c. 4.
Skct. II.]
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soil.™ Thence he continued his course to Bethel, where,
upon the children's mocking and ridiculing him, h two
she-bears rushing out of the neighbouring forest, fell upon
them, and devoured two and forty of them. From
Bethel he went to Mount Carmel, where probably there
was another school of the prophets ; and from thence he
proceeded to Samaria, where he had soon opportunities
enough of exerting his prophetic office.
It was in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of
Judah, that tins Jehoram king of Israel, c began to
a 2 Kings ii. 19. ' And the ground bar/eu;' marg. 'causing
to miscarry.' If the latter reading is allowed to be more just
than the former, we must entertain a different idea of the situa-
tion of Jericho than the textual translation suggests. There are
actually at this time cities where animal life of certain kinds
pines, and decays, and dies ; and where that posterity which should
replace such loss, is either not conceived; or, if conceived, is
not brought to the birth; or, if brought to the birth, is fatal in
delivery to both mother and offspring. An instance of this kind
occurs in Don Ulloa's Voyage to South America, vol. i. p. 93.
He says of the climate of Porto Bello, that "it destroys the
vigour of nature, and often untimely cuts the thread of life."
And of Sennaar, Mr Bruce ( Trav. vol. iv. p. 469.) says, that
" no horse, mule, ass, or any beast of burthen, will breed, or
even live at Sennaar, or many miles about it. Poultry does not
live there ; neither dog nor cat, sheep nor bullock, can be pre-
served a season there. They must go all, every year, to the
sands. Though every possible care be taken of them, they die
in every place where the fat earth is about the town, during the
first season of the rains." He farther mentions, that the situa-
tion is equally unfavourable to most trees. — Ed.
b They had probably been robbed of their whelps, which made
them more fierce and outrageous. — Patrick's Commentary.
c 'Jehoram king of Israel began to reign.' There were two
Jehorams who were contemporary: the first, the son of Ahab,
brother to Ahaziah, and his successor in the kingdom of Israel;
the second, the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, who succeeded
liis father in Judah. But there is a difficulty here: how is it
that Jehoram, the brother of Ahaziah, began to reign in the
second year of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat, as it is stated, 2
Kings i. 17, seeing that, according to chap. iii. 1, he began his
reign in the eighteenth year of the reign of Jehoshaphat; and
according to chap. viii. 16, ' Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, began
to reign in the fifth year of Jehoram king of Israel.' Calmet and
others answer thus: " Jehoram king of Israel began to reign in
the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, which was the
second year after this Jehoshaphat had given the vice-royalty to
his son Jehoram ; and afterwards Jehoshaphat communicated
the royalty to Jehoram his successor, two years before his death,
and the fifth year of Jehoram king of Israel." Dr Lightfoot takes
another method: — "Observe," says he, "these texts, 1 Kings
xxii. 51, ' Ahaziah the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in
Samaria, the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and
reigned two years;' and 2 Kings i. 17: 'And Ahaziah died,
according to the word of the Lord which Elijah had spoken, and
Jehoram reigned in his stead, in the second year of Jehoram son
of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah ;' and 2 Kings iii. 1 : ' Now
Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria
the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah.' By these
Scriptures it is most plain, that both Jehoram, the son of Jeho-
shaphat, and Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign in the
seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat : for who sees not in these texts
that Jehoshaphat's eighteenth, when Jehoram the son of Ahab
began to reign, is called the second year of Jehoram the son of
Jehoshaphat? Now Jehoshaphat's reign was not yet expired by
eight or nine years, for this was in his seventeenth year, and he
reigned twenty-five years; (I Kings xxii. 42.) nor was Ahab's
reign yet expired by two or three years, for this was in his
twentieth year, and he reigned twenty-two years, (1 Kings xvi.
29.) But the reason why both their sons came thus into their
thrones in their lifetime, and both in the same year, was, because
their fathers, Jehoshaphat and Ahab, were both engaged in the
war against the Syrians, about Ramoth-Gilead ; and while they
were providing for it, and carrying it on, they made their sons
vice-royals, and set them to reign in their stead, while they were
absent, or employed upon that expedition." This is veiy pro-
reign ; and though he did not make any great reforma-
tion in his kingdom, yet he was not altogether so wicked
as his father and brother : for he d removed the idols of
Baal, very likely to procure Jehoshaphat's friendship,
though the golden calves which were the state-engine to
keep up the division between Israel and Judah, he could
not prevail with himself to depose. In this state, how-
ever, he e had Jehoshaphat for an ally, when he engaged
in a war, which was in the beginning of his reign, with
Mesha king of Moab, for refusing to pay the tribute / of
an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand
rams with the wool, which, until the reign of his
brother Ahaziah, had been all along from the time of
David paid to the crown of Israel ; and as the king of
Israel was then no more than deputy to Jehoshaphat, he
engaged him likewise in the quarrel. These three kings,
in order to surprise the enemy, and invade him on the
weakest side, took a compass of seven days' march in the
wilderness of Edom, and had like to have been all lost
for want of water, had not the prophet Elisha, who was
then in the camp, l put them in a method how to procure
some ; s and not only so, but at the same time promised
1 2 Kings iii. 16.
bahle, and seems well supported by the above texts, and would
solve all the difficulties with which many have been puzzled,
and not a few stumbled. Here we have sufficient evidence for the
vice-royalty here mentioned. — Dr A. Clarke. — Ed.
d It is a little strange, that his mother Jezebel, who brought
this worship with her from the Sidonians, should suffer him to
remove the images of her favourite god ; but she perhaps might
be a little daunted with the many disasters that had befallen her
family, and was content with the privilege of having her idolatrous
worship in private ; nor is it unlikely, that Jehoshaphat might
refuse to assist him in his wars against the king of Moab, unless he
would consent to renounce his idolatry. — Patrick's Commentary.
e The answer which he gives Jehoram is the very same that
he returned to his father Ahab, in his war against the Syrians:
' I am as thou art ; my people, as thy people ; and my horses, as
thy horses,' (1 Kings xxii. 4. and 2 Kings iii. 7.) And consid-
ering the ill success he had, one would wonder why he should be
so forward to join with his son; hut, as Jehoram had reformed
some things, he might have a better opinion of him, and, by
showing him kindness, hope perhaps to prevail with him to pro-
ceed farther: and, as the Moabites had of late invaded his coun-
try, (2 Chron. xx. 1.) he might embrace this opportunity to
chastise them for it. But, without these considerations, the war
was right and justifiable ; and fit it was that rebels and revolters
should be chastised, lest the example should pass into his own
dominions, and encourage the Edomites to revolt from him, as
we find they afterwards did from his son. — Patrick's Commen-
tary and Poole's Annotations.
./"This was a prodigious number indeed; but then we are to
consider, that these countries abounded with sheep, insomuch
that Solomon offered 120,000 at the dedication of the temple,
(2 Chron. vii. 5.) and the Reubenites drove from the Hagaritcs
250,000, (1 Chron. v. 21.) For, as Bochart observes, their sheep
frequently brought forth two at a time, and sometimes twice a
year. The same learned man remarks, that in ancient times,
when people's riches consisted in cattle, this was the only way
of paying tribute ; for, as he quotes the passage out of Pliny,
" money, (pecunia,) was even named so from the word peats, or
cattle: and still yet in the Censor's tables all things are called
pascua, (pastures,) from which the people received revenue,
because this had long been their only income." (Xat. Hist. b. 18.
c. 3) It is observed by others likewise, that this great number
of cattle was not a tribute which the Moabites were obliged to
pay to the Israelites every year, but on some special occasion
only ; upon the accession of every new king, for instance, when
they were obliged to express their homage in this manner, or to
make satisfaction for some damages, that the Israelites should at
any time sutler from their invasious or revolts. — Patrick's and
Le Clerc's Commentaries.
g The prophet did not instruct the kings how to procure a sup-
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them a complete victory over the Moabites. The next
morning-, the confederate army had water enough ; " and
the Moabites, who were now marching to oppose them,
perceiving water where they knew there used to be none,
and, by the reflection of the sun, that it looked like blood,
supposed that the three kings had quarrelled, and their
armies engaged, and slain one another ; so that they
concluded they had nothing to do but to fall upon the
spoil. But when they came to the camp, the Israelites
gave them a reception that they little expected ; for they
not only killed great numbers of them upon the spot, but
pursued them into their country, destroyed their forti-
fied places, choked up their springs, cut down their
timber, b and made ravage and devastation wherever they
came ; insomuch that the king Avas forced to betake
himself to his capital city, Kirhareseth, where the con-
federate army besieged him, and soon reduced him to
such extremity, that after he had made a successful sally
with 700 men, in hopes of forcing the king of Edom's
quarters, and found himself repidsed, he took his eldest
ply of water by any knowledge of his own, as our author's words
would seem to imply, he merely announced to them what God
had revealed to him, namely, that they should dig a number of
ditches, and that these should be miraculously filled with water.
" The mind of the holy man being discomposed, as it seems, by
the presence of the idolatrous Edomite, he called for music, in
order, probably, that its soothing influence might prepare him to
give a response with calmness and self-possession, and then he
predicted the manner and issue of the battle in terms as plain as
if it had been a description after the event. The manner in
which the enemy were delivered into the hands of the confederate
kings, was altogether miraculous, for, though it was through the
intervention of water, there was not the whirlwind, which in the
east is the usual prognostic of rain; and it was to that usual at-
mospheric appearance, previous to a shower, that the prophet
alluded, when he said, ' Ve shall not see wind, neither shall ye
see rain, yet the valley shall be filled with water, that ye may
drink, both you and your cattle.' The event fell out precisely
as the prophet had foretold ; the whole country was filled with
Mater, and what proved a most seasonable relief to the confederate
armies, was the cause of the enemy's destruction, for in conse-
quence of the reflection of the sun's rays on the water, which, at
its rising and falling, often gives water a red appearance, they
were deceived into the belief that it was blood; and that such a
profusion of it could have been occasioned only by some sudden
and deadly strife between the allies. Under this delusion, they
ran carelessly to the camp of the opposite party, by whom they
were surprised, put to flight, and killed in great numbers, their
country invaded and laid waste. — Javriesoris Eastern Manners,
pp. 310', 317. — Ed.
a 2 Kings iii. 17. ' Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see
rain; yet the valley shall be filled with water.' Rain is often in
the east preceded by a squall of wind. The editor of the Ruins of
Palmyra tells us, that they seldom have rain except at the equi-
noxes, and that nothing could be more serene than the sky all the
time he was there, except one afternoon, when there was a small
shower, preceded by a whirlwind, which took up such quantities
of sand from the desert, as quite darkened the sky (p. 37). Thus
Elisha told the king of Israel, 'ye shall not see wind nor rain,
yet that valley shall be filled with water.' The circumstance of the
wind taking up such a quantity of sand as to darken the sky, may
serve to explain ] Kings xviii. 45: 'The heaven was black
with clouds and wind.' The wind prognosticating rain is also
referred Co Prov. xxv. 14: ' Whoso boasteth himself of a false
gift,' pretending to give something valuable and disappointing the
expectation, 'is like clouds and wind without rain.' — Harmcr,
vol. 1. p. 51— En.
b 2 Kings iii. 25. ' Felled all the good trees.' In times of war
it was formerly very common for one party to injure the other,
by destroying their valuable trees. Thus the Moabites were
punished, and thus the Arabs of the holy land still make war upon
each other, burning the com, cutting down the olive trees, &c.
— Hasselquist's Travels, p. 143. — Ed.
M. 4507. A. C. 904. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
son, c and in mere desperation, sacrificed him upon the
wall of the city, in the sight of the Israelitish army, who
being struck with horror at so barbarous an action, raised
the siege, and retired to their own country. d
Upon raising this siege, the prophet Elisha left the
three kings, and returned to Samaria ; whereupon the
sacred historian gives a long detail of the several mira-
cles which lie wrought, namely, l that he increased a
poor widow's oil, to such a quantity, as enabled her to
pay her husband's debts, and preserve her two sons from
bondage. 2 That, to reward the wealthy Shunamite for
his kindness and hospitality to him, e he prevailed in his
prayers with God, that his wife might have a child, and
afterwards, when the child died, 3 restored him to life
again. That while he was at Gilgal, he cured the noxi-
ous quality of the prophets'/ colloquintida pottage, by
1 2 Kings iv. 1, &c. * 2 Kings iv. 8, &c.
3 2 Kings iv. 34.
c Not only the Holy Scriptures, but several heathen writers
likewise do assure us of this, that in cases of great extremity, it
was customary among people to sacrifice to their gods whatever
was most dear to them. Ctesar, in his war with the Gauls, tells
us, that when they were afflicted with grievous diseases, or
in time of war, or great danger, they either offered men for
sacrifices, or vowed that they would offer them ; because they
imagined, that their gods could never be appeased, unless one
man's life was given for another's. No less a man than Grotius
is of opinion, that this Moabitish king, in imitation of Abraham,
sacrificed his son to the God of Israel, hoping thereby to appease
his wrath, and to move the compassion of the kings that were
besieging him: but the most general opinion is, that he offered
this costly sacrifice to some false deity, and very likely to Che-
mosh, which was his national god, and generally thought to be
the sun. — Calmefs and Le Clerc's Commentaries.
d Instead of the words, ' there was great indignation against
Israel,' as in our version, 2 Kings iii. 27, Boothroyd has, ' there
was great indignation amongst the Israelites,' which seems to be
the true reading. — Ed.
e This kindness consisted in entertaining him ; to the better
accomplishment of which, they built for him a little chamber on
the wall, that he might turn in thither, as related, 2 Kings viii.
10. The following may illustrate the nature of this chamber:
"To most of these houses there is a smaller one annexed, which
sometimes rises one story higher than the house; at other times
it consists of one or two rooms only, and a terrace, whilst others
that are built, as they frequently are, over the porch or gatew ay,
have, if we except the ground floor, which they have not, all the
conveniences that belong to the house, properly so called. There is
a door of communication from them into the gallery of the house,
kept open or shut at the discretion of the master of the family,
besides another door, which opens immediately from a private
staircase, down into the porch or street, without giving the least
disturbance to the house. These back houses are known by the
name of alee or oleah, for the house properly so called, is dar or
beet, and in them strangers are usually lodged and entertained.
The oleah of holy Scripture, being literally the same appellation,
is accordingly so rendered in the Arabic version. We may sup-
pose it then to have been a structure of the like contrivance.
The little chamber, consequently, that was built by the Shuna-
mite for Elisha, whither, the text instructs us, he retired at his
pleasure, without breaking in upon the private affairs of the
family, or being in his turn interrupted by them in his devotions;
the summer chamber of Eglon, which, in the same manner with
these, seems to have had privy stairs belonging to it, through
which Ehud escaped, after he had revenged Israel upon the king
of Moab; the chamber over the gate, whither, for the greater
privacy, king David withdrew himself to weep for Absalom ; and
that upon whose terrace, Ahaz, for the same reason, erected his
altars; seem to have been structures of the like nature and con-
trivance with these olees." — Shaw's Travels, p. 2S0. — Ed.
f It is a plant so very bitter, that some have called it the gall
of the whole earth. It purges excessively, and is a sort of poison,
if not qualified, and taken in a moderate quantity. — Calmefs and
Patrick's Commentaries. It is customary to use herbs gathered
Sect. II.]
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the injection of a little meal. ' That there he multi-
plied twenty barley loaves, and satisfied above 100 per-
sons with them ; and a that there he made an axe, which
was fallen into the river, merely by throwing- in a stick,
rise up, and swim upon the surface of it : but the miracle
which the sacred history more particularly insists on, is
the cure of Naaman's leprosy.
Naaman was general of the king- of Syria's troops, a
man famous for exploits in war, and in great esteem
with his master ; but he was a leper. At this time there
seems to have been no good understanding between
the two crowns ; and yet the king of Syria, to recover so
valuable a servant from his illness, wrote to the king of
Israel, but in such terms as gave him some uneasy ap-
prehensions. a When Elisha understood this, he ordered
that Naaman might be sent to him ; and when he came
with all his attendants and stately equipage, instead of
receiving in form, * he sent his servant out to him, and
bade him go c dip himself seven times in the river Jor-
dan, and he would be cured. The proud Syrian, not
understanding this treatment, and expecting very likely
that the prophet, by some personal act, would have
performed the cure, thought himself slighted, and was
for returning home : but being advised by those that
were about him, that since the prescription was so easy,
to make the experiment at least would not be much, he
went to the river, and after having bathed seven times
therein, found himself perfectly cured.
Rejoiced at his unexpected recovery, Naaman returned
to Elisha, acknowledging, that there was no other God,
but the God of Israel ; protesting, that from thence for-
ward he would sacrifice to none but him ; desiring, for
that purpose, two mules' loads d of the earth of the coun-
•1507. A. C. 901. \ KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
try, wherewith to build him an altar ; deprecating any
orlence that might arise from his waiting on the king, e
his master, when he went to worship in the temple of
/ Rimmon ; and, in the conclusion, importuning the
prophet to accept of a present, for the great cure that he
had wrought upon him, which the other most S positively
refused.
But there was not the like disinterestedness in his
servant Gehazi. He, thinking it unreasonable, that so
potent and wealthy a person should go off without pay-
ing for so signal a benefit, resolved to get something for
himself; and therefore, unknown to any body, as he
thought, he followed after Naaman, and having soon
overtaken him, forged a lie, that his master desired of
the general to send him a talent of silver, and two
changes of garments, for two sons of the prophets, who,
since his departure, were come to visit him. The
general was glad of this opportunity to oblige his mas-
ter ; and therefore pressed him to take two talents of
silver with the garments, and sent two of his servants to
carry them for him ; from whom he received them before
he came to his master's house, and deposited them, as he
thought, in a safe place : but no sooner did he return into
his master's presence, than he began to tax him with
what he had been doing, which when Gehazi denied, he
h denounced his sentence, namely, that the leprosy
' 2 Kings iv. 41.
2 2 Kings vi. 5, 6.
from the fields, as well as those produced in the garden. Russell
states, that at Aleppo, besides the herbs and vegetables produced
by regularly cultivated gardens, the fields afford bugloss, mallow,
and asparagus, which they use as pot herbs, with some others,
which are used in salads. — Harmer, vol. i, p. 532. — Ed.
a 2 Kings v. C. 'I have sent Naaman my servant unto thee,
that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy.' Schultens, in his
MS. Orig. Heb., observes, that " the right understanding of this
passage depends on the custom of expelling lepers, and other in-
fectious persons, from camps or cities, and reproachfully driving
them into solitary places; and that when these persons were
cleansed and re-admitted into cities or camps, they were said to
be 'recolleeti,' gathered again from their leprosy, and again receiv-
ed into that society from which they had been cut oil'. — Ed.
b Elisha's not appealing to receive the Syrian general is as-
cribed by some to the retired course of life which the prophets
led; but then why did he see him, and enter into conversation
with him, when he returned from his cure ? I should rather
think, that it was not misbecoming the prophet, upon this occa-
sion, to take some state upon him, and to support the character
and dignity of a prophet of the Most High God ; especially since
this might be a means to raise the honour of his religion and
ministry, and to give Naaman a right er idea of his miraculous
cure, when he found that it was neither by the prayer nor presence
ot the prophet, but by the divine power and goodness that it was
effected. — Poole's Annotations and Calmet's Commentary.
c In conformity to the law, which requires that lepers, in order
to their clcansii.g, should be sprinkled seven times, (Lev. xiv. 7,
&c.) the prophet ordered Naaman to dip himself as often ; but Jor-
dan, as the Syrian argued, had no more virtue in it than other
rivers; nor could cold water, of any kind, be a proper means for
curing this distemper, whose root is a white waterish humour,
that would increase rather than be diminished by any such ap-
plication. — Patrick's Commentary.
d Ho desired the earth of the land, because he thought it inoic
holy and acceptable to God, and proper for his service ; or be-
cause he would, by this token, declare his conjunction with the
people of Israel in the true worship, and constantly put himself
in mind of his great obligation to that God, from whose land
this earth was taken. He might have had indeed enough of this
earth without asking any one for it ; but he desired the prophet
to give it him, as believing, perhaps, that he who put such virtue
into the waters of Israel, could put as much in the earth thereof,
and make it as useful and beneficial to him in another way.
These thoughts indeed were groundless and extravagant, but yet
were excusable in an heathen and novice, that was not as yet
sufficiently instructed in the true religion. — Poole's Annotations.
e 2 Kings v. 18. 'And he leaneth upon my hand.' Tin's
might be done out of state, or on account of weakness. In the
additions to the book of Esther, (xv. 4.) mention is made of two
young women that waited on that queen, upon one of whom she
leaned, and the other held up her train. It was not oidy the
custom amongst the Persians and Syrians, but the Israelites also.
(2 Kings vii. 2, 17). — Patrick in locum. — Ed.
/It is thought by the generality of interpreters, that as the
Syrians were great worshippers of the sun, this god is the same ;
and that the name Rimmon, or high, is given him by reason of
his elevation. Grotius takes it for Saturn, because that planet is
the highest of all; and Selden will have it to be the same with
Elion, or the most high god of the Phoenicians. It is certain
that the word Rimmon is the name that the Syrians gave pome-
granates; and therefore, as their country was full of pomegran-
ate trees; whose fruit is not only of a delicious taste, but of great
use likewise on account of the excellent liquor which it produces,
they gave perhaps the name of pomegranate to their god, in the
same manner that the Greeks and Latins gave that of Ceres to
the goddess of corn.— Lumy's Introduction, b. 3. c. I.; and
Juricus History of Doctrines and Worship, part 1. c. 10.
g Elisha did not think it a thing simply unlawful to receive
gifts or presents: for we fiud him receiving them upon anothei
occasion; (2 Kings iv. 41.) but he did not hold it expedient, in
his present circumstances, to do it, because he thought it would
make for the honour of the true God and religion, to let the
Syrians see the generous piety, charity, and kindness of his
ministers and servants, and how much they despised all that
worldly wealth and glory, which the priests or prophets of the
Gentiles so greedily sought after; that thereby Naaman might
be confirmed in the religion he had embraced, and others, in like
manner, incited to a love and liking of it. — Poole's Annotations.
h And justly did he deserve it, since his crime had in it all
these aggravations; a greuly covetousness which is idolatry; a
4 u
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whereof he had cured Naanian should adhere to him and . binical doctors, that, as Naaman was no Jew, but a
his family for ever ; which accordingly, that very moment,
came to pass.
CHAP. II.— Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
Thk most material part of the discourse which passed
between Naaman and Elisha, is delivered in these words:
1 ' Thy servant,' says Naaman, ' will henceforth offer
neither burnt-offerings nor sacrifice unto other gods, but
unto the Lord : in this thing the Lord pardon thy ser-
vant, that, when my master goeth into the house of
foreigner and a proselyte only, 4 he was not obliged to
abstain from all external worship of idols, as the Jews
confessedly were, so long as he continued in another
country ; yet it is generally agreed, that we are bound
to show the same respect to our superiors, and those that
are set in authority over us, so long as Ave do not injure
our consciences thereby, in one place as in another ; and
5 that therefore Naaman might very innocently retain his
dignity, and high office at court, even as Joseph did in
Egypt, and Daniel in Babylon ; might accompany his
master into Rimmon 's temple, nay, and bow together with
him, in compliance to his infirmity or convenience, who
could not so well bow, if the other stood upright, so long
as this was a service done to the man, as Tertullian 6
reasons upon the like occasion, and not to the idol ; so
Rimmon, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself
in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in long as this was an act purely external, without any of
this thing-: and Elisha said unto him, go in peace.' ; those inward sentiments of respect which constitute the
' Go in peace,' was a common form of valediction among
the Jews, wherewith Elisha might dismiss Naaman with-
out any further answer to his request, or resolution to
his doubt. For the prophet, we must suppose, in this
whole transaction, was under the immediate influence
and direction of the Spirit of God ; and therefore, if the
Spirit of God thought proper to withhold any farther
instruction from the Syrian general, it was not in the
prophet's power though he had ' given him his house full
of silver and gold,' 2 as Baalam put the case, ' to go
beyond the word of the Lord to do more or less.' Con-
sidering then, 3 that Naaman was now in the infancy of
his conversion, and as yet not able to receive the higher
precepts of perfection ; that himself was conscious of his
own offence, and wanted not therefore so much to be in-
structed, as encouraged and strengthened in the Lord :
and that the matters wherein he seemed to doubt were not
of such mighty importance as to concern the essence
and foundation of religion ; considering these things, I
say, we may soon perceive the reason why Elisha
accepted of his renunciation of a false and profession of
a true religion, his declared aversion to the worship of
idols, and fixed resolution to serve the Lord only, as a
sufficient advance in his present circumstances.
Israelites, indeed, and such as were descended from
the stock of Jacob, were obliged to the observation of
the whole Mosaic law ; but strangers and aliens, when
they came to be admitted proselytes of the gate, were
confined only to the worship of the true God, and the
practice of such duties as were moral and social : and
therefore, when Naaman professed himself a worshipper
of the most high God only, and declared withal, that his
attending his master into the temple of Rimmon was
not with any religious purpose, but purely in perform-
ance of the duty of his office, the prophet had good
reason to bid him go in peace, or, as the words may
impnrt, to give himself no uneasiness about the matter.
For, though we pretend not to say with some rab-
1 2 Kings v. 17, 18. 2 Num. xxii. IS.
3 Poole's Annotations on 2 Kings v. 1 9.
profanation of God's name ; a downright theft, in keeping that to
himself which was given for others; deliberate and impudent
lying; a desperate contempt of God's omniscience, justice, and
holiness; an horrible reproach cast upon the prophet and his
religion; and a pernicious scandal given to Naaman, and every
other Syrian that should chance to hear of it Poole's Annota-
tions.
essence of adoration.
" This, I own, is the common solution ; but it does
not entirely please me. It justifies an action which
Naaman himself was not well satisfied in. It leaves
upon the prophet an imputation of too much lenity and
indulgence, and, upon the general, that of too much hypo-
crisy and dissimulation. Had Naaman 's example, in this
sense, been made a precedent, Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, in the court of Nebuchadnezzar ,and oldElea-
zar, amidst Antiochus's officers, might have escaped
persecution. 7 They, at the sound of the instruments,
might have fallen down before the image, not out of
any principle of adoration, but in pure obedience
to the king's orders ; and 8 Eleazar might have evaded
the eating- of swine's flesh, if he would have but let it
been reported that he did eat it ; but we find no such
prevarication in either of these, and therefore we can
hardly think, that this is the right solution."
9 Now since repentance has regard to what is past, and
to ask pardon for an offence already committed is much
more natural than to ask pardon for what we purpose
for the future to commit, which, in matters of morality, is
a kind of contradiction, it seems not improbable, that
the words should be rendered, as the original will fairly
bear it, in the preter tense : ' Lord, pardon thy servant,
that when my master went into the house of Rimmon, to
worship, and he leaned on my hand, and I bowed myself
there, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing.' For,
how great would the incongruity be, if Naaman, who had
just before declared his renunciation of idolatry, should
now confess his readiness to relapse into the same crime,
and desire God's pardon for it beforehand ? AVhereas,
to ask pardon for what he had done amiss, and to desire
the prophet's intercession with God in that behalf, argued
a mind truly sensible of his former transgression, and
very much resolved to avoid it for the future : and ac-
cordingly,10 it is supposed, that, upon his return home,
he refused to worship Rimmon any more, and was there-
upon dismissed from being general of the king's forces. a
4 Grotius, in locum ; and Selden, de Jure Nat. et Gent. b. 2. c. 1 1.
5 Calmet's Dissert, sur la Priere que Naaman, &c.
6 See De Idololat. b. 16, 17. 7 Dan. iii. 12.
8 2 Maccab. vi. 21, &c. 9 Calmet's Dissertations.
10 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 6. c. 2.
a Dr Boothroyd adopts the received version of this passage,
and gives the following reasons: Dr Lightfoot and others would
Sect. II.]
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Bethel, we all know, was one of the cities where Jero-
boam had set up a golden calf, a place strangely addicted
to idolatry, and whose inhabitants had no small aversion
to Elisha, as being the servant and successor of one who
had been a professed enemy to their wicked worship,
and himself no less an opposer of it. It is reasonable
to suppose, therefore, that the children, if they were chil-
dren, for the word naarim may signify grown youtJi.s
as well, who mocked Elisha, were excited and encour-
aged thereunto by their parents ; and, therefore, the
judgment was just in God's punishing the wickedness of
these parents by the death of their children, who, though
they suffered in this life, had the happiness to be rescued
from the dangers of an idolatrous education, which
might have been of fatal tendency both to their present
and future state.
In the mean time, it must be acknowledged, that the
insolence of these mockers, whether we suppose them
children or youths, was very provoking, 2 forasmuch as
they ridiculed not only a man whose very age command-
ed reverence, but a prophet likewise, whose character,
in all ages, was accounted sacred, nay, and even God
himself, whose honour was struck at in the reproaches
cast upon his servant ; and that too in one of his most
glorious and wonderful works, his assumption of Elijah
into heaven. For, ' Go up thou bald-head, go up thou
bald-head,' a besides the bitterness of the contempt ex-
1 Poole's Aruiot. in locum.
8 Poole's Annot. in locum.
render it in the past tense, and make this a confession of his idol-
atry, and a prayer that he might receive forgiveness. In answer,
he it remarked, first, That all the ancient versions render as our
common version. Secondly, This version is most agreeable to
the text, the words naturally suggesting it; and, thirdly, Naa-
man proposes a case, which must happen in the discharge of his
duty. It appears to have been his duty, as chief commander, to
attend the king when he went to worship ; and when he did this,
he asks, ' Will Jehovah pardon him ?' Is such an act to be re-
garded as sinfid, and inconsistent with the worship which Jeho-
vah requires ? If the act be considered in a civil light, he might
bend in respect to the king without regarding the idol. To which
it maybe added, that the valediction of the prophet, ' go in peace,'
may imply, ' trouble not thyself with scruples of this kind ;' and
in this concession there is nothing unreasonable, when we con-
sider that Naaman did not enjoy the light of revelation, and was
not amenable to the Mosaic law ; but it by no means follows that
such compliances are justifiable in those who live in an age or
country, blessed with the knowledge of the revealed will of God.
— Holden's Christian Expositor.— Ed.
a Whether Elisha was bald or not, does not appear from the
sacred story, nor does it afiect the object of these young scoffers,
in applying that epithet to the holy man; for in the east, to call a
person bald-headed, is to treat, him with the utmost degree of
contempt. " I was not a little astonished," says Mr Roberts,
" when I heard for the first time, a man called a bald-head, who
had a large quantity of hair on his head ; and I found upon in-
quiry, that it was a term of ignominy and reproach. A stupid
fellow is called a bald-headed dunce, and of those who are weak,
it is usual to say they are bald-heads. Call a man a bald-head,
which is often done although his hair be most luxuriant, and im-
mediately sticks or stones will be your portion." Hence it ap-
pears, that the expression, applied to Elisha, contained the grossest
insult. Ascend, thou empty skull to heaven, as it is pretended
thy master did ! This was blasphemy against God; and their
punishment, for they were Bethelite idolaters, was only propor-
tioned to their guilt. Elisha cursed them, that is, pronounced a
a curse upon them, in the name of the Lord. The spirit of their
offence lies in their ridiculing a miracle of the Lord: the offence
was against him, and he punished it. It was no petulant humour
of the prophet that caused him to pronounce this curse; it was
Cod alone: had it proceeded from a wrong disposition of the
prophet, no miracle would have been wrought in order to gratify
pressed in the repetition of the words, shows that they
made a mere jest of any such translation ; and therefore
in mere banter, bid Elisha go up, whither, as he pre-
tended, his friend and master was gone before.
These provocations, one would think, were enough to
draw an imprecation from the prophet ; but this impre-
cation did not proceed from any passion, or private
resentment of his own, but merely from the command
and commission of his God ; who, for the terror and
caution of other profane persons and idolaters, as well
as for the maintenance of the honour and authority of his
prophets, confirmed the word which had gone out of his
servant's mouth.
The like is to be said of the destruction which Elijah
called down from heaven, upon the two captains, and
their companies, who came to apprehend him ; that he
did this, not out of any hasty passion or revenge, but
purely in obedience to the Holy Spirit wherewith he
was animated, and in zeal for the honour and glory of
God, which, in the person of his prophet, were grossly
abused.
The officers that were sent to him, call him indeed a
man of God ; but, by the answer which the prophet re-
turned, we may learn, that they called him so only by
way of contempt and derision. 3 As they could not be
ignorant, however, that Ahaziah was highly offended at
Elijah, and had sent them for no other purpose, but to
bring him to punishment 4 for having denounced his
death ; if they thought proper to obey the king in such
unrighteous proceedings, rather than the laws of nature
and religion, which forbid us to be instruments in cruelty
and wrong, they deserved the fate they met with : and
our blessed Saviour does not blame Elijah's conduct in
this respect, but his disciples only, for their perverse
imitation of it, from a spirit of resentment and revenge,
3 Le Clerc's Commentaries in locum.
1 2 Kings i. 4.
it. " But was it not a cruel thing to destroy forty-two little
children, who in mere childishness, had simply called the pro-
phet bare skull, or bald-head ?" I answer, Elisha did not destroy
them: he had no power by which he could bring two she-bears
out of the wood to destroy them. It was evidently either acci-
dental, or a divine judgment, and if a judgment, God must be
the sole author of it. Elisha's curse must be only declaratory of
what God was about to do. " But then, as they were little
children, they could scarcely be accountable for their conduct;
and consequently it was cruelty to destroy them." If it was a
judgment of God, it could be neither cruel nor unjust; and I
contend that the prophet had no power by which he could bring
these she-bears to fall upon them. But were they little children?
for here the strength of the objection lies. Now, I suppose the
objection means children from four to seven or eight years old ;
for so we use the word: but the original coup tfifinearim katun-
nim, may mean young men, for fup katon signifies to be young,
in opposition to old, and is so translated in various places in our
Bible ; and nyj naar, signifies not only a child, but a young man,
or servant, or even a soldier, or one fit to go out to battle; and
is so translated in a multitude of places in our common English
version. I shall mention but a few, because they are sufficiently
decisive. Isaac was called naar when twenty-eight years old,
(Gen. xxi. 5, 12 ;) and Joseph was so called when he was thirty-
nine, (Gen. xli. 13.) Add to these 1 Kings xx. 14, ' And
Ahab said, By whom shall the Assyrians be delivered into my
hand ? And he said, Thus saith the Lord, By the young men
(benaarey) of the princes of the provinces.' That these were
soldiers, probably militia, or a selection from the militia, which
served as a body guard to Ahab, the event sufficiently declare':;
and the persons that mocked Elisha were perfectly accountable
fur theii conduct. — Jawieson's Eastern Manners and Dr A.
Clarke on 2 Kings ii. 23. — Ed.
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and under a trivial provocation, in comparison of what
was o/tered to the prophet. The truth is, God, in this
instance of severity, hath taught us, that he will have his
prophets reverenced, a 1 because they are allied to him,
and every affront put upon them he resents as an indig-
nity to himself ; and therefore the sad end of the two
captains, and their companies, who came to apprehend
the prophet of the Lord, was designed monumentally to
deter future ages from the like provocations ; and to re-
mind us of the precept which God himself hath given us,
2 ' touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.'
3 'O Elijah !' says the author of Ecclesiasticus, 'how
wast thou honoured in thy wondrous deeds, and who
may glory like unto thee ?' Like thee, * who wast vouch-
safed the sight of God's glorious and majestic presence ;
5 who hadst angels sent to comfort and refresh thee,
when thou wast weary ; B who hadst fire sent thee from
heaven, to avenge thee of thine enemies, when they came
to insult thee ; 7 who hadst thy body in a bright chariot
translated into heaven, without undergoing- the fate of
mortals ; and, (what was not the least of thy preroga-
tives) who hadst, s whilst thou lived, the power of locking
or unlocking the storehouses of heaven at thy pleasure,
and by thy prayers.' It was doubtless to magnify his
office, which now began to be depreciated not a little,
that God hath authorized his prophet to accost Ahab with
such marvellous assurance, as if the dispensation of the
rain and dew of heaven, for such a determinate time,
had been entirely at his disposal : but we mistake the
matter widely, if we suppose, that the prophet had any
part, farther than he was God's minister and messenger
to declare the thing, in bringing this famine upon the
land. All judgments of this kind are the immediate
work of God : and, ' as 9 he does not afflict willingly,
nor grieve the children of men ;' so, if we will but turn
to 10 the preceding chapter, we shall find an account of
such open and avowed idolatry, and such bold contempt
of the divine authority, both in the prince and people,
as will sufficiently justify the severity of God in bring-
ing this national judgment upon them. For well may
the people be supposed to be generally depraved, when
we find it recorded of their prince, that ll ' he did more
to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all
the kings of Israel that were before him.'
AVe own indeed, that Elijah did not, in every thing
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act a consistent part ; he, who but lately was so bold
and intrepid, as to present himself before Ahab, who
had been long in quest of him, in order to make him
sutler 12 as the disturber of the public peace, is now
frightened at the menaces of a silly woman ; and there-
upon quits his country, and flies for his life, notwith-
standing the late signal interposition of providence in
his favour. But what shall we say to this ? 13 ' Elias was
a man subject to the like passions as we are ;' * and it was
probable, in respect to this his infirmity, that the apostle
made this reflection upon him. J4 He knew Jezebel, and
that she had all the faults incident to her sex in a super-
lative degTee ; that she was fierce, cruel, vindictive, and
implacable ; that, in slaying the priests of Baal, he
had incurred her displeasure, and that to revenge her-
self, she had all the power of the kingdom under her
command. These notions ran in his head, and made
such an impression upon his spirits, as deprived him of
that resolution and manly courage for which he was
heretofore so remarkable ; nor was there wanting a wise
design of providence in suffering this timidity to fall
upon his servant.
St Paul tells us of himself, that )5 ' lest he should be
exalted above measure, through the abundance of revela-
tions, there was given unto him a thorn in the flesh, the
messenger of Satan, to buffet him,' as he repeats it
again, ' lest he should be exalted above measure.' And
in like manner, we have reason to believe, that I6 God,
upon this occasion, might withdraw that spirit of intre-
pidity, wherewith at other times, he fortified Elijah's
mind, on purpose to show him his natural imbecility, and
the necessity he had at all times of the divine assistance ;
and on purpose to suppress all the little sentiments of
1 Scripture Vindicated, part 2, page 124. 2 1 Chron. xvi. 22.
:l Ecclus. xlviii. 4. 4 1 Kings xix. s Ibid. xix. 5
'•2 Kings i. 10, &c. 7 Ibid. ii. 11. B Ibid. xvii. 1.
■ Lament, iii. 33. lu Ibid. ii. "1 Kings xvi. 33
a God did not destroy the two captains and their companies
by fire from heaven for any personal offence against the man
Elijah, as our author represents, but to protect his prophet from
the fury of Ahaziah, and to exhibit to that prince and his subjects
an awful token of his indignation against their wicked and idola-
trous practices. As God is just and good, he would not have
destroyed these men, had there not been a sufficient cause to
justify the act. It was not to please Elijah, or to gratify any
vindictive humour in him, that God thus acted; but to show his
own power and justice. No entreaty of Elijah could have in-
duced God to have performed an act that was wrong in itself.
Elijah per onally had no concern in the business; God led him
simply to announce on these occasions what he himself had deter-
mined to do. ' If I be a man of God,' that is, ' as surely as I
am a man of God, lire shall come down from heaven, and shall
consume thee and thy fifty.' This is the literal meaning of the
original; and by it we see that Elijah's words uere only declara-
tive, and not imprecatory. — Ed.
12 1 Kings xviii. 17. 13 James v. 17.
14 Calmet's Commentary on 1 Kings xix. 3. 15 2 Cor. xii.7.
1(i Calmet's Commentary and Poole's Annotations.
b ' Subject to the like passions as we are.' The passage here
quoted from James v. 17. is altogether misapplied. The
apostle's design in making an allusion to the prophet Elijah,
evidently was to confirm the truth of the maxim -which he had
stated, (v. 16.) that ' the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much,' and thereby to furnish encouragement to
believers to continue instant and persevering in prayer in behalf
of others as well as themselves. By saying that ' Elias was a
man subject to like passions as we are,' the apostle intended no
reflection upon the character of that prophet; for the original
word rendered by the phrase ' subject to like passions,' signifies
the being liable to all those accidents which attach to mortality,
namely, to those feelings, wants, and weaknesses, to disease and
death, to which flesh is heir. The same word occurs in Acts
xiv. 15, where it is used in the same sense. Hence the
apostle's argument is, that since Elias, who was only a mortal
like themselves, furnished such a signal instance of success in
prayer, they also by engaging in that exercise with like faith
and fervour, might expect the divine interposition whenever that
should be necessary. But why does the author represent Elijah
as betraying a want of trust in God's protection, because he fled
from Jezebel when she threatened his life? Did not the apostles
act in a similar way, and did not our Lord himself frequently use
precautions in order to escape the rage of his enemies? The
truth is, we have no warrant in Scripture for expecting that
degree of divine protection which shall supersede all prudence
and exertion on our part, with a view to our safety and self-pre-
servation, provided this does not interfere with known or com-
manded duty. Now we do not find that Elijah received any
divine command to remain in Jezreel, or any assurance of divine
protection from the threats of Jezebel, and he knew that he was
unable to protect himself if he remained. He took the most
prudent course, which was to give place to the present storm,
J and retire to a place of safety. — Ed,
II.]
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pride and arrogance that might possibly arise in his
breast, upon the contemplation of the gifts and graces
which he had bestowed on him, and the many great
miracles that were wrought by his hands ; and that, there-
upon, if he did glory, he might glory in the Lord, and
not dare to t(ake any part of his honour to himself.
1 The Jews have made a comparison between Elijah
and Moses in several particulars, and given Moses the
preference, especially in the matter of his ■ forty days
fast :' for Elijah, they suppose, did every day eat and
drink, when he happened to rind any sustenance in the
wilderness ; whereas Moses had nothing to support him,
but only the miraculous power of God. The text, how-
ever, is far from intimating that Elijah ate any thing,
but what the angel at first brought him; for a 'he went
in the strength of that meat, forty days and forty nights,
unto Horeb, the mount of God ;' whereas had he taken
any nourishment by the way, it had not been by the
strength of that food that he performed his journey.
What that food was, the Scripture has taken care to
inform us, namely, that it was ' simple bread and water,'
to make the miracle more remarkable, but such as was
of far greater and more durable virtue than ordinary ;
and such as gave a life and vigour far surpassing the
elleets of any other nourishment. Whether angels, in
the celestial state, are purely spiritual, or clothed with
some material form, but much more subtle and refined
than any we know of here below, is a question much
agitated among the schools : but if, for the present, we
should allow the affirmative, 'the food of angels,' and
what may be called the sustenance of their glorious but
infinite beings, need not be accounted altogether an
allegory. It is certain, that upon :i their appearance in
human shape, they did frequently eat the common food
of men ; that our blessed Saviour, alter the assumption
of his glorious body, * ' ate part of a broiled fish and
of an honey comb ;' nor may we forget, upon this occa-
sion, his words at the paschal supper, 5 ' 1 will not
henceforth drink of this fruit of the vine, until that day
I drink it new with you, in my father's kingdom :' all
which will be enough to countenance the opinion that
tin* food which was brought to Elijah at this time, was
of celestial growth and virtue, whereby creatures of a
superior excellency may possibly, at certain periods,
have their natures renewed, as the tree of life, in the
State of paradise, is supposed to have been intended for
that purpose, and to live on to eternal ages. No won-
der, then, that food of such a rare quality, as to deserve
the delegation of an angel from heaven to bring it,
should have all the virtue and all the efficacy that we
read of.
But, waving this speculation, we may suppose the re-
past to have been nothing more than common bread and
water ; yet who can doubt, but that God, either by re-
tarding the faculties of concoction and perspiration, or
by preserving the spirit and juices from dissipation,
might make its strength and nourishment subsist for the
time specified ? It is but God's speaking the word in
this case, and the thing is done. The least beck of his
will can make the same meal that usually serves us for
four and twenty hours, support us for forty days, and
1 Patrick's Commentary on 1 Kings xix. 8. ■ [bid.
Gen. xviii. S. ' Luke x\i\. !-.'. i Mat. xxvi. 2L).
4507. A. C. 904. 1 KINGS via. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
much longer if he pleases. That meat of any kind should
sustain us for four and twenty hours, if rightly consider-
ed, is a miracle ; and that the like proportion should do
it for the space of forty days is still but a miracle, and
with the same facility that God does the one, he can do
the other : a so true is that observation which our blessed
Saviour borrows from Moses, u ' Man doth not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God.'
And indeed no person ever had so large experience
of the truth of this observation, as had the prophet now
before us, who was so long sustained, not only by the
wonderful increase of the widow's oil and meal, but by
the daily ministry likewise, and attendance of ravens.
For whatever some may dream of merchants or Arabians,
who might take pity of Elijah in his retirement, and send
him provisions every day ; besides that the original
word, as 7 Rochart has sulficiently evinced, never signi-
fies merchants, and that there were no Arabians inhabiting
the coasts where Elijah lay concealed, it can hardly be
imagined, but that the place of his retreat would have
soon been discovered to Ahab, had either merchants, or
other inhabitant of the country, been at any time ac-
quainted with it.
What industry that wicked king used to find out the
prophet, wherever he absconded, we may learn from
the information of good Obadiah, namely, that he had
ransacked every nation where he could reasonably
think that he was concealed, and when he found him
not, he took an oath of the people, that he was not
among them. For 8 though Ahab could not compel other
nations to take an oath to that purpose, yet, considering
the great interest he had among the neighbouring princes,
he might easily prevail with the great men of each king-
dom to give him that satisfaction. If we look into his
alliances, we shall find, that the king of Tyre was his
father-in-law, and the king of Moab tributary to him ;
that Jehoshaphat was his friend and relation, and that
the king of Edom was dependant on Jehoshaphat ; that,
0 as the kings of Arabia and Syria corresponded with So-
lomon, so, very likely, they were confederate with Ahab ;
that one of their articles might be to deliver up to each
other all their fugitive or banished subjects upon
demand ■ and that tin's was the foundation of his desire
and expectance of this oath : and yet, notwithstanding
all this strict and diligent inquiry, Elijah might live con-
cealed in the widow of Zareptha's house, because he had
laid sufficient obligations upon her, both in preserving
her from the danger of the famine, and in restoring her
b Dent. viii. 3. and Mat. iv. 4. 7 Iliero. part 2. b.8. C 13.
* Poole's Annotations on 1 Kings xviii. 10.
,J 1 Kings x. 15, 29.
a The author's remarks on this subject are very little to the
purpose, and show an endeavour to be wise above what is written.
To all inquiries respecting the manner in which Elijah was sup-
ported without food, for forty days, the only legitimate answer
that can be given is, that this was effected by miraculous agency;
and that God can support without food, for any length of time,
surely no one will deny. The author's assertion, that the man-
ner in which food of any kind should sustain us for twenty-four
hours, if rightly considered, is a miracle, is improper. It is in-
deed true, that God can as easily support without food for forty
days, as for twenty-four hours; but to say that the one case, as
(veil ;h the oilur, is miraculous, is to destroy the distinction
between a miracle, and what takes place in accordance with t.'ie
established laus of nature. — En.
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dead son to life again, to use all possible care to con-
ceal him. But to return to Elijah's ravens.
Though we should allow that they are creatures vora-
cious, and unnatural to their young ones, yet the more
unfit instruments they seemed to be, the more they mag-
nified the almighty power of Him who controlled their
natural appetites, while he employed them : ! and if there
was a moral instruction in it, as St Chrysostom fancies,
the more they might mollify the prophet's heart toward
the deluded Israelites, by seeing those very creatures
that were cruel to their young kind to him. Though
we should allow, that they were creatures legally un-
clean, yet, as it was for the meat, and not for the touch,
that they were accounted so, this we must grant was a
case extraordinary, wherein the ceremonial law was over-
ruled by necessity, and by the lawgiver's dispensation.
There is this to be said, however, in defence of God's
choice of ravens for this purpose, namely, that as they are
solitary birds, and delight to live about brooks of water,
so are they accustomed to seek out for provisions, and
to carry them to the places of their abode ; upon which
account they were no improper creatures for God to em-
ploy upon this service ; a especially, if what St Jerome
tells us may be credited, namely, that one of these birds
brought Paul, the first hermit, half a loaf every day, and,
when St Anthony came to visit him, it brought him a
whole one, to answer the wants of these two soldiers of
Jesus Christ, as b he words it ; but whence it had this, as
well as whence Elijah's ravens had their supply, we pre-
tend not to tell ; and had rather acknowledge our igno-
rance in such like speculations, than take up with
uncertain, and sometimes absurd conjectures. c
i Patrick's Commentary on 1 Kings xvii. 6.
a It has been attempted to get rid of this miracle, by asserting
that the prophet was not fed by ravens, but by the Orbini, or
inhabitants of Orbo, a small town in the vicinity of Bethshan.
, But the following arguments will show that the received interpre-
tation is correct: — It is expressly said that Elisha 'drank of the
brook' Cherith, (1 Kings xvii. 6.) Had strangers brought him
food, they might as well have furnished him with water; and thus
it would not have been necessary for him to have removed when
the brook was dried up. Again, Ahab, who had sent messen-
gers in pursuit of the prophet among the neighbouring kingdoms
and nations, took an oath of them that they were ignorant of the
place of liis concealment, (1 Kings xviii. 10) ; and some one out of
a tribe, we may suppose it probable, would have delivered him up,
seeing they could gain nothing by his concealment, and had every
thing to fear from detection. If we come to verbal criticism, we
find that the word is precisely the same with that which is most
properly rendered ' raven' in Gen. viii. 7, when Noah sends a bird
out of the ark. The Almighty, doubtless, could have caused food
to have been conveyed to Elijah in any other way, but he chose
to send it by these rapacious birds, for the greater illustration of
his absolute command over all creatures, and also to give us
full evidence that he is able to succour and preserve, by the most
improbable means, all those who put their trust in him. We
need go no further to inquire whence the ravens had this food:
it is enough if we believe they brought it to Elijah, for then
we must allow that they acted by divine direction, and that the
food was ol God's providing. — Home's Introduction, 7th edi-
tion.— Ed.
6 At thy arrival, Christ doubled the provisions of his soldiers.
—Jerome's Life of Paul the Hermit.
c It was very foolish, if it proceeded from no worse motive, to
put the ridiculous legend of Anthony on the same footing with
the history of Elijah. Anthony was the founder of monachism,
which, far from being essential to the Christian religion, has been
the source of some of its greatest corruptions ; and the tales which
are told of his miracles, and many conflicts with demons, are now
abandoned as absurd fictions by every man of learning, as well in
There are two exceptions more, which are generally
made to Elijah's conduct, namely, his omission in not
anointing Hazael to be king of Syria, and Jehu, king of
Israel ; and his cruelty in destroying the priests of Baal
without a proper authority. Now, in answer to the former
of these, it should be observed, that the words, ' Go and
anoint,' may not be a positive command, but only a
discretionary permission so to do. The prophet had
been sorely complaining to God of the wickedness and
idolatry of the Israelites, and of the bloody persecutions
of their rulers : 2 ' I have been very zealous for the
Lord God of hosts,' says he, ' for the children of Israel
have forsaken thy covenant, and thrown down thine altars,
and slain thy prophets with the sword, and I, even I
only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away :'
A\ hereupon God, after having shown him, 3 by some
symbolical representation, how able he was to avenge
him of his adversaries, bids him go and anoint such
and such persons to be kings ; as if he had said, *
"Thou desiredst of me, that I should destroy the idol-
aters of Israel, and such as have a design upon thy life ;
but, in order to that, thou hast nothing to do but to go
and appoint two other persons to be kings over Israel
and Syria, and they will avenge both thy quarrel and
mine.''
5 But allowing the words to be a positive command,
we may suppose that when Elijah, by his prophetic spirit,
2 1 Kings xix. 10. 3 1 Kings xix. 11 — 13.
4 Le Clerc's Commentary on 1 Kings xix. 15. 5 Ibid,
the church of Rome as in the Protestant churches. The miracles
of Elijah were intimately connected with the theocracy of Israel,
which was instituted for preserving in the world the knowledge
of the divine unity. That theocracy was then administered by
the idolater Ahab, as it had been by a series of idolaters before
him ; and the purpose of its institution would have been com-
pletely defeated, had it not been maintained by a succession of
prophets armed with power to thwart in some degree the mea-
sures of those idolatrous princes. As Ahab was the most hardened
idolater that had ever swayed the sceptre of Israel, so was Elijah
the greatest prophet that had ever been raised up to maintain
the unity of God, and to restore the authority of the law of Moses.
His life was therefore miraculously preserved as essential to the
theocratic government of Israel, which was itself necessary to the
preservation of true religion. In his case, if in any, there was
surely a " plot worthy of being unraveled;" whilst the pretended
miracles of Anthony were wrought in support of the first corrup-
tions of Christianity ! That ravens were animals fit to be employed
for the preservation of the prophet is very obvious ; for they are
carnivorous birds, and in a country like Israel, where altars were
hourly smoking, and oxen and sheep killed, under every green
tree, they could be at no loss to find either the bread or the flesh
which they were instinctively prompted to cany twice every day
for his subsistence. " It is a fact," says Mr King, (Morsels of
Criticism, vol. 1. p. 292, 8vo edition,) "now well known, that
eagles, and ravens, and all birds of prey, do, at the time they
have young ones, and even sometimes on other occasions, plun-
der the country all around them, in order to carry flesh and food of
various kinds to their nests, and to feed their offspring. And with
this fact the inhabitants near the Cevennes are so well acquaint-
ed, that the shepherds there, in the neighbourhood of the nests of
those wild birds, contrive to serve themselves with meat for their
own tables, at this very day, by means of these birds; climbing
up to their nests, when the old ones fly from them in quest of
more prey, and taking away from the young what the old had
leit there." There is no reason to think that the old prophet had
occasion to climb for his food, as his purveyors were under the
immediate control of that Providence which miraculously watched
over him ; but as he was not interdicted the use of fire in his
banishment, lie might easily make a fire of dry sticks to roast the
meat, if it was brought to him raw, which is surely the most
probable supposition. — Bishop Glcig. — Ed.
Sect. II.]
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perceived what a grievous destruction the exaltation of
these two persons to the thrones of Israel and Syria,
would bring- upon his native country, he petitioned God
to delay the execution of this his order ; a at least for some
time, and obtained his request. This indeed is a circum-
stance that we do not meet with in Scripture ; but in
so short a history as this of the Hebrews is, we may
well be allowed to supply some things that seem to be
omitted, when this may be done without offering any
violence to the words of the text, and especially when
there is an analogy, in other parts of the history to bear
us out.
Now, in relation to one of these, namely, Hazael, who
was afterwards king of Syria, it is said that, when he
came to inquire of Elisha concerning his mother Benha-
dad's sickness, the prophet 1 ' settled his countenance
upon him stedfastly, and wept; whereupon Hazael said,
Why weepeth my Lord ? And he answered, Because
I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children
of Israel. Their strongholds wilt thou set on lire, and
their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt
dash their children, and rip up their women with child :'
Ami from tills passage, we have some grounds to think
that Elijah, upon the like prospect of his nation's cala-
mities, might desire of God, if not a revocation of his
command, at least a delay in the execution of it ; and
that this was the reason why neither of these kings were
anointed by him.
What notions the worshippers of Baal might have of
the power of their god, we cannot tell ; but as sending
down tire from heaven 2 was not above the reach of evil
spirits, and some lying traditions might perhaps have
descended to them concerning the exploits of their Baal
in particular ,a who, as he was thought to be the sun, and
to exceed all heavenly bodies in heat, might, upon this
grand occasion, as they thought, exert his power and
burn up their sacrifice, they held it the wisest way to
accept of the prophet's challenge. The prophet's chal-
lenge indeed was upon such fair terms, that, whatever
notions they might have of their god, they must have
forfeited all their credit with the people, had they pre-
tended to decline it : and therefore, rather than do this,
they chose to venture all upon the hazard of an after-
game, hoping that either they might have an opportunity
of conveying fire among the wood clandestinely, or that
Elijah would fail in his attempt as well as they, and so
both stand upon equal g-round ; or that, if he succeeded,
the thing might not be done so cleverly, but that there
1 2 Kings viii. 11, 12. * Job i. 16.
3 Patrick's Commentary on 1 Kings xviii. 26.
« The Scriptures are silent as to tlie precise time and manner
in which the divine commission given to Elijah was executed ; but
it does not therefore follow that this commission was not executed
at the time appointed. As the prophet was ordered to go on the
way to the wilderness of Damascus, it is not improbable that he
went directly towards Syria, and meeting with Hazael, anointed
him. The word anoint, however, may be understood in a figur-
ative sense, denoting a particular appointment, designation, or
call to an oflice. In this sense the word is used in other passages
of Scripture, (Ps. cv. 15; Is. xlv. 1.) and of the three indivi-
duals, Elisha, Hazael, and .leliu, whom Elijah was commanded
to anoint, we read that the latter only was actually anointed, and
that by Elisha. The command, then, given to Elijah, in so far
as it regarded Hazael and Jehu, might have been executed by a
prophetic declaration on the part of the prophet, that God intended
to raise them to the kingly office. — En.
might be room for some cavils and exceptions to be
raised against it.
Upon these presumptions they might enter the lists ;
and, when they were so shamefully defeated, the pro-
phet, 4 as an extraordinary minister of God's vengeance
upon sinners, especially when the magistrate so grossly
neglected his duty, had sufficient authority to execute *
the sentence of death passed upon them by the Lord of
life and death, as perverters of the law, and teachers of
idolatry ; as authors of cruelty, and inciters of Jezebel 6
to murder the prophets of the Lord ; and as cheats and
impostors, to whose execution the people concurred,
their princes gave their consent, and their king, as as-
tonished at the late stupendous miracle, could make no
opposition.
AYhether Ahab's repentance, upon the commination of
God's judgments, was sincere or superficial only, has
been a matter of some debate among divines. It is cer-
tain that, in consideration of it, God revoked, at least in
part, the sentence which he had denounced against him,
and transferred it upon his posterity. And 7 yet we do
not find him producing any ' fruits meet for repentance ;'
either renouncing his superstitions, or destroying his
idols, or restoring Naboth's vineyard, or re-establishing
the true worship of God. Struck with the prophet's me-
naces, and dreading the effects of his predictions, he put
on the garb of a penitent ; he wept, he sighed, he fasted
and bemoaned himself; but how came God, who inspects
the hearts, and cannot be taken with external show, to
have any respect to this ? Such esteem has he, accord-
ing to some, for true repentance and reformation, that
he is willing to reward the very appearance of it. But
this is an answer that comports not so well with the puri-
ty and holiness of God ; and therefore we should rather
choose to say, that Ahab's repentance at this time was
true, though imperfect ; and his sorrow sincere, though
of no long continuance ; and that, had he persisted in
the good resolutions he had then taken up, God would
have remitted him, not only the temporal, but the eter-
nal punishment likewise, that was due to his sin. In the
mean time, this instance of the divine lenity is left upon
record to encourage the first essays of our repentance, and
to give us assurance of this, — That our good and gra-
cious God, 8 ' who keepeth mercy for thousands, and
forgiveth iniquity, transgression, and sin, 9 will not break
the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, but bring-
forth judgment unto truth.'
But the same God who professes himself the forgiver
of transgression and sin, declares, withal, that 10 ' he will
not clear the guilty, but visit the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children.' In the case of Hiel, that impious
rebuilder of Jericho, God was obliged, in order to fulfil
the prophecy, to transfer the punishment due to the
father upon his sons, because the form of Joshua's male-
diction is, " ' Cursed be the man before the Lord, that
raiseth up, and buildeth this city Jericho : he shall Jay
the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his young-
est son shall he set up the gates of it :' and as this male-
diction was kept upon record, and a thing well known,
the people would have had but. a slender conception of
4 Poole's Annotations on 1 Kings xviii. 4(t.
5 Dent. xiii. (>. 9— xvii. 2, 7. 6 1 Kings xviii. 4.
' Calmet's Commentary. B Exod. xx\i\. 7.
3 Is. xlii. :i. "> Exod. xxxiv. 7. " Josh, vi. 26.
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God's justice, or rather the judgment would have passed
without observation, had Hiel alone, whose death might
have been imputed to his old age, been cut oft' in the
course of his building this city. But now by taking his
children, one after another, as the building advanced,
the hand of God was visible, the denunciation of his ser-
vant verified, and a proper caution given to the whole
nation, not to despise his patience and long-suffering,
because they could not but see, that, upon their persisting
impenitence, all his threats and comminations would,
sooner or later, most certainly come to pass. a
Hiel himself, indeed, is not concerned in the prophecy ;
and therefore no mention is made in Scripture of what
fate befell him. But, from the impartiality of God's jus-
tice, we have reason to suppose, ' ' that, after he had
lived to be an eye-witness of his children's untimely
death, himself was cut off by some sore judgment ; or
that if he escaped, his present impunity was his greatest
misery, forasmuch as it continued his torment in the
sad and lasting remembrance of his sons that were lost
through his folly ; or else was a means to harden his
heart for the infliction of such greater punishments as
God had reserved for him.
1 Poole's Annotations.
a This prediction was delivered upwards of 500 years before
the event; and though it was most circumstantially fulfilled, yet
we know not the precise meaning of some of the terms used in
the original execration, and in this place where its fulfilment is
mentioned. There are three opinions on the words, ' lay the
foundation in his fust born, and set up the gates in his youngest
son.' 1. It is thought that when he laid the foundation of the
city, his eldest son, the hope of his family, died by the hand and
judgment of God, and that all his children died in succession; so
that when the doors were ready to be hung, his youngest and last
child died, and thus, instead of securing himself a name, his
whole family became extinct. 2. These expressions signify only
great delay in the building; that he who should undertake it,
should spend nearly his whole life in it; all the time in which he
was capable of procreating children ; in a word, that if a man laid
the foundation when his first-born came into the world, his youngest
and last son should be born before the walls should be in readiness
to admit the gates to be set up in them; and that the expression
is of the proverbial kind, intimating greatly protracted labour,
occasioned by multitudinous hindrances and delays. 3. That he
who rebuilt this city, should, in laying the foundation slay or
sacrifice his first-born, in order to consecrate it, and secure the
assistance of the objects of his idolatrous worship; and should
slay his youngest at the completion of the work, as a gratitude-
offering for the assistance received. This latter opinion seems
to be countenanced by the Chaldee, which represents Hiel as slay-
ing his first-bom Abiram, and his youngest son Segub. But
who was Hiel the Bethelite ? The Chaldee calls him Hiel of
Bethmome, or the Bethmomite; the Vulgate Hiel of Bethel-
the Septuagint, Hiel the Baithelite; the Syriac represents Ahab
as the builder: ' Also in his days did Ahab build Jericho, the
place of execration ;' the Arabic, 'Also in his days did Hiel
build the house of idols,' to wit, Jericho. The MSS. give us
no help. None of these versions, the Chaldee excepted, inti-
mates that the children were either slain or died ; which cir-
cumstance seems to strengthen the opinion, that the passage is
to be understood of delays and hindrances. Add to this, why
should the innocent children of Hiel sutler for their father's pre-
sumption ? And is it likely that if Hiel lost his first-born when
lie laid the foundation, he would have proceeded under this
evidence of the divine displeasure, and at the risk of losing his
whole family ? Which of these opinions is the right one, or
whether any of them be correct, h more than I can pretend to
state. A curse seems to rest still upon Jericho: it is not yet blotted
out of the map of Palestine, but it is reduced to a miserable vil-
lage, consisting of about thirty wretched cottages, and the
governor's dilapidated castle ; nor is there any ruin there to indi-
cate its former splendour. — Dr. A. Clarke on 1 Kings xvi. 34
— Ed.
4507. A. C. 904. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHROM.
It is certainly an argument either of gross ignorance*
or of a very corrupt and depraved mind, to make the
condescensions of Scripture matter of exception against
it, and to find fault with the sacred penman, because
he endeavours, by apt allusions and representations, to
bring down spiritual and divine things to the measure
of our mean and shallow capacities.
2 The Jews conceived of God in heaven as of a king-
seated on his throne ; and that good and bad angels,
the one standing on his right hand, and the other on his
left, were the appointed executioners of his orders,
either to reward or punish his subjects. And as princes
upon earth do generally nothing of moment without
advising with their council and chief officers, so the
prophet represents Almighty God, as deliberating with
his heavenly courtiers what course he had best to take,
in order to bring Ahab to destruction. Amidst this con-
sultation, some suggest one expedient, and some another ;
but none takes with God until a lying spirit steps out
and oilers his service, which God, after some examina-
tion into his abilities, accepts.
But now no man, I think, can have such a crude con-
ception of the divine providence, as to think that this
is the method of God's governing the world ; that he,
who is the fountain of all power and wisdom, needs to
advise with any of his creatures, or can be at a loss for
any expedient to accomplish his ends ; or that he, who
is both truth and holiness itself, should ever send a
lying spirit among his prophets, which would be to con-
found all inspiration, and to make the imputation of
error redound upon himself.
3 Upon the whole, then, we cannot but infer that the
speech of Micaiah was no more than a parabolical re-
presentation of a certain event, which not long after
came to pass ; that several of the circumstances which
are thrown into it are, in a great measure, ornamental,
and designed only to illustrate the narration ; and that
therefore they are not to be taken in a literal sense, but
in such a manner as other parables are, where the end
and design of the speaker is chiefly to be considered ;
which in Micaiah's case, was to show the reason why so
many of the prophets declared what was false upon this
occasion ; even because they were moved, not by the
Spirit of truth, but that of adulation.
The prophets indeed, both in their parabolical speeches
and symbolical actions, are to be considered as persons
of a singular character. For as we find 4 one of them
tearing his own garment to pieces, to signify to Jero-
boam the alienation of the major part of the kingdom
from the house of Solomon : so here we have another de-
siring his companion, for so what we render ' neighbour '
signifies, to give him a wound, 5 that thereby he might
have the better opportunity of reproving Ahab for his
ill timed clemency to Benhadad.
The princes of the east were difficult of access ; and
in the court of Ahab, in particular, the character of a
prophet was held in so great detestation, that some
expedient was to be found out, to gain him admittance
to the king's presence, and an opportunity to speak to
him in the maimer he designed. After so gTeat a victory
as Ahab had lately won by the valour of his men, it may
be presumed, that the name of a soldier was become in
Calmet's Commentary.
4 i Kings xi. SO, 31.
Le Clerc's Commentary.
5 Ibid. xx. 35.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
585
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high esteem ; and therefore to personate a soldier, and a
wounded soldier likewise, who might more engage the
king's pity and attention, the prophet entreats his fellow-
collegiate, having first told him his intent to give him
a slight cut with a sword, or some other instrument, that
thereby he might be enabled to act his part better.
To desire to have his own flesh slashed and cut, was,
in appearance, a request so frantic, that justly might his
brother prophet have denied him that courtesy, had he
not been satisfied that the request came from God : but
herein lay the great fault of the recusant ; though he
knew the authority of God's commands, and that this
was the very thing which he enjoined, yet, out of an
indiscreet pity and compassion to his brother, he refused
to comply. ' Had he been a stranger indeed to the
several methods of divine prophecy, he might have
excused himself with a better grace ; but as he was
equally a prophet bred up in the same school with the
other, had been informed by the other of his whole
design, and well understood the weight of these words,
2 ' I command thee in the name of the Lord,' he was
utterly inexcusable ; because disobedience to a divine
command, and especially when delivered by a prophet,
was, 3 by the construction of the law, held capital.
Now there were two ways, according to the Jewish
doctors, wherein the prophets of old were punished for
their offences in their office. Those * who prophesied
in the name of idols, or prophesied falsehoods in God's
name, were put to death by the judges ; but those who
either concealed or rejected a true prophecy, were to
die by the hand of God. And in the case now before us,
the divine justice might be more disposed to mark what
was done amiss, for this reason, among others to us
unknown, that, by the severity of this punishment of a pro-
phet's disobedience, proceeding from pity to his brother
prophet, he might teach Ahab the greatness of his sin, in
sparing him, through a foolish generosity or compassion,
whom, by the laws of religion, and justice, and prudence,
and self preservation, he should have cut oft'; and con-
sequently what punishment he might reasonably expect
for his disobedience.
In the account which the Scripture gives us of Jeho-
shaphat's reformation, it is said, that he not only 5 • took
away the high places and groves, but sent to his princes
to teach the cities of Judah,and with them sent Levites,
who had the book of the law with them, and went through
all the cities of Judah teaching the people.' But what
the proper business of these princes, in their circuit
round the kingdom was, is a matter of some dispute
among the learned. Grotius 6 is of opinion, that their
commission extended to the instruction of the people,
which, in cases extraordinary, is every one's business,
and could never be done with more probability of suc-
cess, than by persons who were of the king's council, and
invested with his authority. There is reason to think,
however, that they did not act in the very same capa-
city with the priests and Levites that attended them; but
that, 7 as judges and justices of peace among us, teach
and instruct the people in the laws of the land, when
they deliver their charges from the bench ; so these
great men, hi the king's name, did only admonish and
1 Poole's Annotations. 2 ] Kings xx. 35.
5 Dent, xviii. 19. * Ueut. xviii. 20. 5 2 Chron. xvii. fi.
6 In locum. 7 Poole's Annotations on ver. 7.
4507. A. C. 904. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
require the people to observe the laws of God, which
were the municipal laws of the land, and left the par-
ticular explication and enforcement of them to those o f
the sacred order, who went along with them ; supporting
them, in the mean time, in the execution of their office,
and obliging the people to receive them with respect, to
hear them with attention, and to practise what the\
taught them.
However this be, it is obvious from the sense of the
words, that, in those days there was a great 8 ' famine in
the land,' as the prophet expresses it, ' not a famine of
bread, or a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of
the Lord.' There were then no such public synagogues
and public teachers as were afterwards instituted in the
kingdom, for the instruction of the people in the sense
of the law ; for then there would have been no occasion
for these commissioners and Levites to have gone about
throughout all the cities of Judah ; and into such a
wretched state of ignorance was the generality of the
people fallen, that there was scarce one copy of the law
to be found in the hands of any private person in the
whole country ; for which reason it was thought advis-
able, and necessary indeed, to carry one with them.
The truth is, the synagogues, whereof we read so
much in the Acts of our Saviour and his apostles, as
places appointed for the public instruction of the people,
were not of so early an institution, as the times we are
uow speaking of. 9 They did not obtain universally till
after the time of the Maccabees ; and it is to no later
date than this that the words of St James allude, l0 ' Moses
of old time hath in every city them that preach him, be-
ing read in the synagogues every sabbath-day.' Upon
the whole, therefore, we may infer that if proper
places for religious instruction were not as yet institut-
ed ; if the Levites and others, whose stated business it
was to instruct the people, were become grossly negli-
gent in their duty ; and the people withal were grown
so obstinate in their ignorance, as to want a proper
authority to compel them to listen to their instructors ;
then was this commission which Jehoshaphat gave to
persons duly qualified to execute it, far from being-
needless or supererogant, but such only as became a
pious prince, whose chief ambition ivas, that " ' the earth
should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea.'
For this reason, no doubt it is, that the sacred historian
has remarked, as a reward of this prince's piety, that12 'he
had not only riches and honours in abundance,' but a more
numerous people, and a larger military force, in propor-
tion to his territories, than any of his most powerful prede-
cessors. The whole amount of the particulars indeed is
so very great, I3 that some have suspected a mistake in
the transcribers; but when it is considered that the
dominions of the kingdom of Judah under Jehoshaphat
were not confined to the narrow limits of Judah and
Benjamin only, but "reached into the tribes of Dan,
Ephraim, and Simeon ; into Arabia, and the country of
the Philistines ; in a word, from Beersheba to the moun-
tains of Ephraim one way, and from Jordan to the
Mediterranean sea the other ; when it is considered
that this kingdom received a vast accession, when Jero-
8 Amos viii. 11. " Calmet's Diet, under the word Synagogue.
10 Acts xv. 21. " Is. xi. 9. 122 Chron. xviii. 1.
i< Le Clerc's Commentary on ibid. xvii. 14. '« Calmet's ibid,
4 E
586 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book VI.
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boam thrust out the priests and Levites from officiating
in the service of the Lord, and multitudes of other
piously disposed persons followed them from all parts
of Israel, when they found that they might be encour-
aged in worshipping God at Jerusalem ; when it is con-
sidered, that this country was exceedingly well cultivat-
ed, flourishing in commerce, abounding with foreigners,
and what a vast increase of inhabitants in any nation
may be produced in the space of an hundred years,
which was the very period from David ; and when it is
considered farther, that soldiers in these days were not
kept, like our standing armies, in constant pay and duty,
but only had their names set down in the king's muster-
rolls, in order to be summoned to arms whenever there
was occasion, and so returned to their families, and fol-
lowed their usual occupations : when all this is con-
sidered, and put together, I say, we shall not find the
number of twelve hundred thousand fighting men, even
though they may include six millions of persons of all
ages and conditions, to be so very extravagant ; especi-
ally, when it is remembered, that the city of Thebes
alone, as it is reported by ' Tacitus, furnished no less
than seven hundred thousand soldiers ; that, in ancient
Rome, there were once between three and four millions
of souls ; and that, in Grand Cairo, as some travellers
report, there is now almost twice that number."
We have but one seeming paradox more to account
for, and that is the fall 2 of the walls of Aphek upon no
less than seven and twenty thousand men. But, in
answer to this, 3 we are not to suppose that this wall, or
castle, or fort, as it may be rendered, fell upon every
individual one, much less that it killed every man it
fell on : it is sufficient to justify the expression, that it
fell upon the main body of these seven and twenty thou-
sand, and that it killed some, and maimed others, for
the Scripture does not say that it killed all, as is usual
in such cases. Let us suppose, then, that these Syrians,
after their defeat on the plains of Aphek, betook
themselves to this fenced city, and, despairing of any
quarter, mounted the walls, or retired into some castle,
with a resolution to defend themselves to the last ; and
that the Israelitish army coming upon them, plied the
walls or the castle on every side so warmly with their
batteries, that down they came at once, and killing some,
wounding others, and making the rest disperse for fear,
did all the execution that the text nitends.i
Thus we may account for this event in a natural way ;
but it is more reasonable to think, that God, upon this
occasion, wrought a miracle ; and, either by some sudden
earthquake, or violent storm of wind, overturned these
walls, or this fortress upon the Syrians. And, indeed,
if any time was proper for his almighty arm to interpose,
4 it was at such a time as this, when these blasphemous
people had denied his sovereign power and authority in
the government of the world, and thereby in some mea-
sure obliged him, in vindication of his own honour, to
give them a full demonstration of it, and to show that he
was the 5 God of the plains, as well as of the mountains ;
that he could as effectually destroy them in strongholds,
as in the open field, and make the very walls wherein
they trusted for defence, the instruments of their ruin.
1 Annals, b. 2. 2 1 Kings xx. 30.
9 Poole's Annotations in locum.
a Though many travellers have reported this city to he of an
enormous magnitude, the real circumference of it, however, is
not more thau S miles, and the number of inhabitants not more
than 300,000 or 400,000 Ed.
b Serious doubts are entertained concerning the legitimacy
of our translation of the passage in question. If, instead of
mm chomah,&waU, we read nan confusion or disorder, then the
destruction of the 27,000 men may appear to have been occasioned
by the disorganised state into which they fell ; of which their
enemies taking advantage, they might destroy the whole with ease.
But .-ran ckomah, a wall, becomes, as Dr Kennicott has ob-
served, a very different word when written without the 1 van,
i* which signifies heat; sometimes the sun, vehement heat,
or the heat of the noon-day sun; and also the name of a
wind, from its sutibcating, parching quality. The same noun,
from av< yacham, Dr Castel explains by excundescentia,
furer, venerium; burning, rage, poison. These renderings, says
Dr Kennicott, all concur to establish the sense of a burning wind,
eminently blasting and destructive. I shall give a few instances
CHAP. III.-
■Of the translation of Enoch and
Eli jali.
Of all the events recorded in Scripture, we meet with
none that requires our attention more than the translation
of the patriarch Enoch, in the times before the flood,
and the assumption of the prophet Elijah, under the dis-
pensation of the law : for, whether Moses, the great
minister of that dispensation, was in like manner ex-
empted from the common fate of mortals, is a matter
wherein commentators are not so well agreed. The ac-
count of Elijah's translation is so express and circuin-
* Poole's Annotations in locum. i 1 Kings xx. 23.
from the Scripture: — We read in Job xxvii. 21 : ' The east wind
carrieth him away ;' where the word d'HS Jtadim is xautruv, burn-
ing, in the Septuagint; and in the Vulgate, icntus urens, a burn-
ing wind. In Ezek. xix. 12, ' She was plucked up nam, she was
cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up her fruit;
her strong rods were withered, and the fire consumed them.'
Hosea (xiii. 15.) mentions the desolation brought by 'an east
wind, the wind of the Lord.' What in Amos iv. 9. is, ' I have
smitten you with blasting,' in the Vulgate is, in vento vehemente,
' with a vehement wind ;' and in the Syn'ac, wi/h a hot ivind.
Let us apply these to the history: when Benhadad, king of
Syria, was besieging Samaria the second time, the Israelites
slew of the Syrians 100,000 footmen in one day; and it follows,
that when the rest of the army fled to Aphek, 27,000 of the meu
that were left were suddenly destroyed by rrann kachomah, or
nann hachamah, a burning wind. That such is the true interpre-
tation, will appear more clearly if we compare the destruction of
Benhadad's army with that of Sennacherib, whose sentence is
that God would send upon him a blast, rm ruach, a wind;
doubtless such a wind as would be suddenly destructive. The
event is said to be that in the night 185,000 Assyrians were
smitten by the angel of the Lord, 2 Kings xix. 7, 35. The
connexion of this sentence with the execution of it is given by
the Psalmist, who says. (civ. 4.) ' God maketh his angels mm
ruchoth, winds;' or, ' maketh the winds his angels,' i. e., messen-
gers for the performance of his will. In a note on Ps. xi. 6.
Professor Michaelis has these words: Vcntus Zilgaphoth,pestilens
citrus est, orivntalibus notissimus, qui obvia guavis nccat; " The
wind Zilgaphoth is a pestilent east wind, well known to the
Asiatics, which suddenly kills those who are exposed to it."
Thevenot mentions such a wind in 105S, that in one night suf-
focated 20,000 men. And the Samiel he mentions as having,
in 1GG5, suflbcated 4,000 persons. " Upon the whole, 1 con-
clude," says the Doctor, "that as Thevenot has mentioned two
great multitudes destroyed by this burning wind, so has holy
Scripture recorded the destruction of two much greater multi-
tudes by a similar cause; and therefore we should translate the
words thus: ' But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and the
burning ivind fell upon the 27,000 of the men that were left.' —
Dr A. Clarke on 1 Kings xx. 30.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
587
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stantiated, that no question can be made of its reality ;
but the ambiguity of the words wherein the sacred his-
torian has related the assumption of Enoch, has induced
several to think, that though this antediluvian patriarch
was highly in favour with God, and for that reason re-
moved from the contagious wickedness which was then
overspreading the earth ; yet that this removal was ef-
fected, not by any miraculous operation of God, but
merely by his undergoing a natural death.
The words wherein Moses has recorded this transac-
tion are very few, and these of uncertain signification :
1 Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took
hiin.' Now it is plain, from several passages in Scripture,
not only that the word which we render ' God took him,'
is set to signify our common death, as in the case of
Elijah himself, when, under the juniper-tree, he prays
that God would2 ' take away his life,' because he was not
better than his fathers ; and in that of holy Job, when
lie tells us, that he did not know how soon 3 his Maker
might take him away ; but that the other expression, ' he
was not,' is frequently used in the same sense, as is evident
from the lamentation which both Jacob and his son Reu-
ben made for the supposed loss of Joseph : « ' Joseph is
not,' and Simeon is not, says the old man : and 5 ' the
child is not ; and I, whither shall I go ?' says the son.
So that no argument can be drawn from the terms in the
text to countenance a miraculous assumption, more than
a natural death, in the prophet Enoch. But this is not all.
The author of the book, entitled The Wisdom of Solo-
mon, is supposed to carry the matter farther, and to de-
clare positively for the death of this patriarch, when he
tells us, ° ' that he pleased God, and was beloved of him,
so that, living among sinners, he was translated ; yea,
speedily was he taken away, lest wickedness should
alter his understanding, and deceit beguile his soul.
Being made perfect in a short time, he fulfilled a long
time ; for his soul pleased the Lord, therefore hasted he
to take him away. from among the wicked.' Where every
line in the description, as some imagine, suits exactly
with Enoch, and yet the author all along supposes, that
the person he is here speaking of died in the same man-
ner as other men do.
7 We acknowledge indeed, that the author of the book
of Wisdom, speaking of the hasty .and premature death
of the righteous, might properly enough allude to what
Moses relates concerning the translation of Enoch, who,
in comparison of his contemporary patriarchs, lived but
a short time ; but we have no reason at all to suppose,
that he is here directly treating of the death of Enoch ;
on the contrary, that he is here discoursing of the right-
eous in general, and vindicating the wisdom and good-
ness of providence, in taking them sometimes sooner
than ordinary out of this wicked world, is evident from
the inference wherewith he concludes his discourse :
"'thus the righteous that is dead, shall condemn the
ungodly that is living, and youth, that is soon perfected,
the old age of the unrighteous : for they shall see the
age of the wise, and shall not understand what God in
his council had decreed of him, and to what end the
Lord hath set him in safety.
1 Gen. v. 24. ! 1 Kings xix. 4. ' Job xxxii. 22.
Gen. xlii. 3G. 5 Gen. xxxvii. 30. • Wisdom iv. 10, &c.
Calmet's Dissertation on the Patriarch Enoch.
• Wisdom iv. 16, 17.
We acknowledge again, that, according to the light
which the gospel has introduced, for a good man to die
at any time 9 is gain, and to be removed from the miseries
of this life is much better than the longest continuance
in it. lu But still it must be confessed, that, in the first
ages of the world, and under a less perfect dispensation,
length of days was generally accounted the recompense
of virtue ; and, therefore, if there were nothing extraor
dinar y in the manner of Enochs departure, the othei
patriarchs, who so far exceeded him in years, seem to
have been more immediately under the divine favour
than he, who, though more remarkable than any for his
piety and goodness, fell under the lot and commenda-
tion of the wicked, as being not permitted " to live out
half his days.
We acknowledge, once more, that the words of
Moses do not necessarily imply any miraculous assump-
tion of a living man into heaven, or any other place un-
known, and unaccessible to mortals ; but still, if we will
but compare what he says of Enoch with what he relates
of the other patriarchs, we shall soon perceive, that his
purpose was to distinguish between their manner of
leaving the world and his. For whereas it is said of all
the preceding patriarchs, that they lived to such and
such a number of years, and 12 ' begat sons and daughters,
and so died ;' of Enoch it is said, that ,3 ' he lived sixty
and five years,' and begat Methuselah ; that after he
begat Methuselah, ' he lived three hundred years, and
begat sons and daughters ;' but then, instead of ' he
died,' the author's words are, ' he walked with God, and
was not, for God took him :' where he first takes notice
of his good and pious life, which made him so accept-
able to God, and then of his translation, ' God took him :'
but lest there should be any ambiguity in that expression,
he adds, and ' he was not,' or appeared no more in the
world ; whereby he intimates that he still lives, and
subsists in some other place.
The truth is, these expressions in the text, when right-
ly understood, do confirm, rather than invalidate, the
doctrine of Enoch's translation : but, to put the matter
beyond all dispute, we have the authority of an apostle,
enumerating the actions of the worthies of old, and tel-
ling us of this patriarch in particular, that I4 ' by faith he
was translated, that he should not see death, and was
not found, because God had translated him : for, before
his translation, he had this testimony, that he pleased
God:' where the author to the Hebrews takes care, by
repeating the word three times, to prevent our mistaking
his meaning ; and by telling us, that the patriarch was
not found, he plainly alludes to what the sons of the
prophets did, when Elijah was taken away, that is, sent
15 fifty men in quest of him, but found him not ; and con-
sequently not obscurely intimates, that this transport of
the patriarch was of the same nature with what happened
to the prophet so many years after ; that they were both
the effect of the divine favour to them, both the reward
of their services upon earth, and both a remove to some
certain place that is beyond the reacli of the knowledge
of man.
In what part of the world this place is, we should not
9 Phil. i. 21, 22. in Saurin's Diss, on the Translation of Enoch.
11 Psalm lv. 23. 12 Gen. v. 5, &c. 13 Gen. v. 21, &c.
u I Id), xi. 5. 15 2 Kings ii. 16.
588
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4507. A. C. 904. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
be too inquisitive, much less too positive, because we
have no foundation but conjectures to go upon. ' St
Austin, who seems to be more reserved in other abstruse
questions, is very peremptory in this, — That Enoch and
Elijah were translated into that a terrestrial paradise
where Adam and Eve lived, in their state of innocence ;
that there they are nourished by the fruit of the tree of
life, which gives them a power of subsisting for ever,
without submitting to the necessity of death ; that there
they enjoy all the blessings and privileges that our first
parents had before their transgression ; and, among
other things, an exemption from sinning, by the super-
natural grace of God. But then the question is, where
we are to place this terrestrial paradise, since there is
scarce one region in the world that one author or other
has not made choice of for its situation ; and since, by
the violent concussions which happened at Noah's flood,
the face of nature had been so changed, that those very
places, which, according to their description in Scripture,
seem once to bid fairest for it, are now debased to such
a degree, as little to deserve the appellation of the
gardens of pleasure, much less the abodes of the blessed.
2 The word Schamajim, which we render heaven, is
supposed by several, both Jewish and Christian doctors,
to be the upper part of the air, where the spirits of just
men departed, together with these two translated persons,
live in a state of sincere, but imperfect bliss, until the
general resurrection. But this, in our opinion, is plac-
ing the seats of the blessed too near the confines 3 of
' the prince of the power of that element,' and in danger
of being disturbed by some incursions from his quarters :
and therefore, if we might be indulged a farther conjec-
ture, 4 we should rather choose to place them beyond
the circumference of the solar system, where there are
immense spaces, neither obstructed by the motion of any
planets, nor obnoxious to the changes of their atmo-
spheres, because nothing is there but pure ether. But
how our corporeal part shall be enabled to live there,
and to live to all eternity, we shall then come to under-
stand, when by experience we shall know what that
change is, which the body undergoes, when it puts on
immortality. In the mean time, as God is omnipotent,
nothing can hinder him from making what changes he
pleases in our bodies, and from preserving them eternally
in that state.
This we may call the celestial paradise, * into which
1 Contra Julian, b. 6. c. 30.
2 Le Gere's Commentary on 2 Kings ii. 11.
3 Ephes. ii. 2. " Le Clerc, ibid.
a Whether the Mahometans embrace the same opinion, it is
a little uncertain ; but they have a tradition among them, of one
Kheder or Khizin, who had the good fortune to find the fountain
of life, whereof he drank plentifully, and so became immortal.
This Kheder, whose name signifies verdant or ever-flourishing,
according to them, is the same with Elijah, who lives in a place
of retirement, in a delicious garden where the fountain of life
runs, and the tree of life, which preserves his immortality,
grows. — Calmcfs Dictionary, under the word Elijah.
b This is incorrect. The paradise into which the soul of the
penitent thief was promised admittance, was nothing else than
hades, or the abode of the spirits of the just until the general
resurrection, as Dr Campbell has most satisfactorily shown
in his sixth Dissertation, prefixed to his translation of the
Gospels. Although, therefore, we cannot determine the place
of residence assigned to Enoch and Elijah, we can scarcely
suppose that they, with their glorified bodies, inhabit the regions
our blessed Saviour promised the penitent thief upon the
cross a joyful admittance ; and having taken him with
him, and reposited his soul in this mansion of rest and
happiness, proceeded in his ascent beyond the orbits of
the most distant stars, and made his entrance into the
highest heavens, which are the residence of God himself;
and into which, as others imagine, this patriarch and
prophet were, upon their translation, carried.
5 ' I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago,'
says St Paul, speaking of himself, though his modesty
made him conceal it, ' (whether in the body, I cannot tell,
or whether out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth)
such an one caught up to the third heaven ; and I knew
such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body,
God knoweth) how that he was caught up into paradise,
and heard things unspeakable, which it is not possible
for man to utter :' and if St Paul ' was caught up into
the third heaven,' even while he continued in this mortal
state, why may we not suppose that Enoch and Elijah
were at once translated into the same place ? The pro-
bable design of God's vouchsafing the apostle this vision
5 2 Cor. xii. 2, &c.
of disembodied spirits. The passage which our author here
quotes from 2 Cor. xii., seems indeed to favour the opinion,
that what is called ' paradise ' by our Lord, (Luke xxiii. 43.)
is the same as heaven itself; but that this is not the case, the
following remarks by Dr Campbell, will, we think, place be-
yond a doubt: "The Jews make mention of three heavens.
The first is properly the atmosphere where the birds fly, and
the clouds are suspended. The second is above the first, and is
what we call the visible firmament, wherein the sun, moon,
and stars appear. The third, to us invisible, is conceived to
be above the second, and therefore sometimes styled the heaven
of heavens. This they considered as the place of the throne of
God, and the habitation of the holy angels. Now it is evident
that, if in the second and fourth verses he speak of one vision or
revelation only, paradise and heaven are the same ; not so, if in
these he speak of two different revelations. My opinion is, that
there are two, and I shall assign my reasons. First, he speaks
of them as more than one, and that not only in introducing them,
' I will come to visions and revelations ;•' for sometimes it must
be owned, the plural is used in expressing a subject indefinitely:
but afterwards, in referring to what he had related, he says, (2
Cor. xii. 7.) ' lest I should be exalted above measure, through
the abundance of the revelations,' rav ccxokccXv^/iuv. Secondly,
they are related precisely as two distinct events, and coupled
together as the connexive particle. Thirdly, there is a repetition
of his doubts, (2 Cor. xiii. 2, 3.) in regard to the reality of this
translation, which, if the whole relate to a single event, was not
only superfluous, but improper. This repetition, however, was
necessary, if what is related in the third and fourth verses, be a
different fact from what is told in the second, and if he was
equally uncertain, whether it passed in vision or in reality.
Fourthly, if all the three verses regard only one revelation, there
is, in the manner of relating it, a tautology unexampled in the
apostle's writings. I might urge, as a fifth reason, the opinion
of all christian antiquity, Oiigen alone excepted. And this, in
a question of philology, is not without its weight. I shall only
add, that though in both verses, the words in the English Bible
are 'caught up,' there is nothing in the original answering
to the particle 'up.' The apostle has very properly employed
here the word k^ra^u, expressive more of the suddenness of
the event, and of his own passiveness, than of the direction of
the motion. The only other place in which -xaytbusos occurs is
in the Apocalypse. (Rev. ii. 7.) 'To him that overcometh will
I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst ' too <xaga.-
luaoo 'of the paradise of God.' Here our Lord, no doubt, speaks
of heaven, but, as he plainly alludes to the state of matters in the
garden of Eden, where our first parents ware placed, and where
the tree of life grew, it can only be understood as a figurative
expression of the promise of eternal life, forfeited by Adam, but
recovered by our Lord Jesus Christ." — Campbell on the Gospels.
—Ed.
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of heaven, was to show him what his final reward would
be, and consequently, for the crown of joy that was set
before him, to make him ' ' glory in the cross of Christ,'
2 'in tribulation, in distress, in persecution:' and how
reasonable it is to believe, that these two worthies, who
in their several generations had 3 ' fought the good light,
and finished their course, and kept the faith,' should,
upon the peculiar favour of their assumption into heaven,
be admitted to a nearer participation of the beatific
vision, as an ample reward for the fatigues of their war-
fare ?
At our Saviour's transfiguration upon the mount, we
find one of these sent to him, as we may presume, upon
some important message, appearing in a bright and
glorious form, and, as if he were admitted to the coun-
sels of heaven, 4 ' talking with him of his decease, which
he was to accomplish at Jerusalem:' and therefore we
can hardly think that his abode could be at any wide
distance from the throne of God's presence, who, in con-
junction with his faithful servant and lawgiver, Moses,
was deputed to go an embassy to his b ' beloved son.'
But in this point, we ought to repress our curiosity, and
in the sense of 6 Theodoret, content ourselves with what
God has been pleased to reveal in Scripture, without
inquiring too curiously into what he hath thought fit to
conceal.
In what manner Enoch was translated into heaven we
have not the least intimation, nor is the account of
Elijah's ascension to be taken in a literal sense ; since
a tiery chariot and horses would not have been a vehicle
so proper for a nature as yet not impregnated with im-
mortality. The notion of those who, upon this occasion,
make angels assume the form of the chariot and horses,
is not so incongruous, because we need not doubt
but that by the divine permission they can transform
themselves into any shape. They are supposed to have
frequently appeared in the figure of flying oxen, for
which reason they have obtained the name of cherub, or
cherubim ; and with the same facility they might at
this time have put on the appearance of horses : but in
points not so clearly expressed, we are to resolve God's
method of acting by those that are analogous, and yet
more plain.
Now the only ascension that we read of besides these,
is that of our blessed Saviour ; and the manner in which
he is said to have been carried up, was by the subvention
of a cloud, which raised him from the ground, and,
the mounting with hjm gradually, 7 carried him out of the
apostles' sight:' and in like manner, we may suppose,
that the translation of these two was performed, namely,
that a bright and radiant cloud, which, as it ascended,
might appear like a chariot and horses, raised them from
the earth, and leaving tins little globe behind, wafted
them into the seats of the blessed. Only we must ob-
serve, that Christ's body was at this time invested with
the powers of spirituality, and therefore capable of
ascending without any vehicle ; whereas theirs was re-
tarded with a load of matter.0 And therefore it is rea-
sonable to think, that by the ministry of angels, or rather
by the power of God, the cloud which carried them up,
was condensed to a more than common consistency, and
that the whirlwind which might be raised for this purpose,
helped to accelerate its motion, and expedite their
ascent.
But since 8 ' flesh and blood cannot inherit the king-
dom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorrup-
tion ;' the question is, how these persons were all on a
sudden, 9 ' made meet to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light ?' ' Behold I show you a mystery,'
says St Paul, speaking of those who shall be alive at
our Saviour's second advent, ' we shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twink-
ling of an eye, at the last trump ;' and therefore the same
almighty power, which, at the sounding of the last trump,
will make our corruptible natures ' put on incorruption,
and our mortal put on immortality,' did, no doubt, in
their passage, change their terrestrial into celestial
bodies, and thereby convey into them such faculties as
were requisite for the enjoyment of the place whereunto
it was conducting them.
What particular services Enoch had done God, for
which he vouchsafed him this favour extraordinary, and
an exemption from mortality, the Scripture has nowhere
specified.6 It tells us only, that ' he walked with God ;'
but then, considering, that if not then, at least in a short
time, I0 ' all flesh hath corrupted their ways, and that
when God saw the wickedness of the earth, it repented
him that he had made man ;' we may suppose, that this
good and pious patriarch took care not only of his con-
duct, but set himself in opposition likewise to the vio-
lence, and other kinds of iniquity, which began then to
prevail in most places ; and that, in short, he was, as the
tradition goes, a preacher of righteousness, in which
office Noah is said to have succeeded him. For that he
was a preacher of righteousness is manifest from that
commination of his, which St Jude, from some ancient
record or other, brings him in making to the antediluvian
world : " ' Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of
his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince
all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly
deeds which they have committed, and of all the hard
speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against
him.'
3 2 Tim. iv. 7.
Quest. 45. in Gen.
1 Gal. vi. 14. 2 Rom. viii. 35.
' Luke ix. 31. 5 Luke ix. 35.
7 Acts i. 9.
" Whence did the author leant tin's? Is it not reasonable to
suppose that the same power that removed Enoch and Elijah 1 — En
8 1 Cor. xv. 50.
Gen. vi. II, 6
9 Col. i. 12.
11 Jud. 14, 15.
from an earthly to a heavenly state, could change their gross
natural bodies into pure and spiritual bodies, like those which
the apostle tells us the saints shall possess when they shall be
caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air? That
Enoch and Elijah underwent such a change, the author him-
self, with a strange inconsistency, admits in the next paragraph.
—Ed.
b It is not to be supposed that either Enoch or Elijah received
such a glorious distinction on account of any services which
they had rendered in the cause of God and religion; for, strictly
speaking, no mere man was capable of rendering such ser-
vices to God as should entitle him to an exemption from the
curse brought upon all mankind by the fall ; and however emi-
nent these prophets were for their piety and zeal in the cause
of God, they were still obnoxious to the consequences of Adam's
transgression, and if they were exempted from the common
doom, anil admitted into the heavenly state, it could only have
been through the blood of the Lamb that was slain from the
foundation of the world. See remarks at the end of tliis chapter.
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And in like manner, it is very evident, that Elijah was
a zealous advocate for God, and a strenuous opposer of
idolatry, an implacable enemy to Baal's priests, an un-
daunted reprover of the wickedness of princes ; and a
severe inflicter of the divine vengeance upon all the
children of disobedience : and therefore, we may pre-
sume, that God designed his exaltation, not only as a
recompense for his past services, which were great, but
as an encouragement, likewise, to other remaining pro-
phets, to be strong in the Lord ; to bear witness boldly
against the corruption of the age wherein they lived ;
and in the execution of their office to fear the face of no
man.
The corruption of the age indeed, both in the times of
Enoch and Elijah, was become so great and general,
that the belief of a future state, we may well suppose,
was in a manner quite extinct among them ; and there-
fore God might think it expedient, at these two periods
of time, to give the world a sensible proof of it, if not
to convince the unbelieving part, at least to excite in the
hearts of the faithful, under all their afflictions and per-
secutions for righteousness' sake, refreshing hopes and
expectations of a recompense to be made them in due
time. Nor can we think, but that in these instances
God might have a prospect to a greater event, and by
the assumption of his two faithful servants, intend to
typify the ascension of his Son, who was to destroy
death, and open the kingdom of heaven to all believ-
ers ; that thereby he might make the testimony of his
apostles concerning this fact a thing more credible ; and
give all good Christians a more solid comfort and con-
solation in those words of St Paul, ' ' Who shall lay any
thing to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that
justifieth. Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ
that died ; yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at
the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for
us.'
The testimony of the angels concerning our blessed
Saviour is, — 2 'This same Jesus, who is taken up from
you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have
seen him go into heaven :' but, before this his second
coming, it is an opinion that has prevailed much among
the ancient fathers, 3 that God in his gTeat mercy will
send Enoch and Elijah to oppose the proceedings of
Antichrist, to refute his doctrines, and to foitify the
righteous against his threats and cruelties ; but that, by
the management of this their adversary, they shall be
put to death, though in a short time raised again to ever-
lasting life and glory. The whole of this notion is
founded upon a very abstruse passage in St John's
Revelation, concerning the two witnesses, which are
variously interpreted. For, besides Enoch and Elijah,
as we said before, some apply them to the law and the
prophets, others to the Old and New Testament, and
others again, especially those who favour the millenary
scheme, to our Saviour Christ, and his forerunner John
the Baptist. But as every one is left to his liberty to
choose what part he pleases in such problems as these,
we shall, without pretending to determine any thing our-
selves, leave the passage, which, in a gTeat measure we
account inexplicable, to the examination of the more
1 Rom. viii. 33, 31. 2 Acts i. 11.
8 Calmct's Dissertation on the Patriarch Enoch, &c.
4507. A. C. 904. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
learned and sagacious. — a ' I will give power unto my
two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two
hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
These are the two olive-trees, and the two candlesticks,
standing before the God of the earth ; and if a man will
hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and de-
voureth their enemies. — They have power to shut heaven,
that it rain not, in the days of their prophecy, and have
power over waters, to turn them to blood, and to smite
the earth with all plagues as often as they will. And
when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast,
that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit, shall make war
against them, and overcome them, and kill them, and
their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city,
which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also
our Lord was crucified. — Their bodies shall lie three
days and an half without being buried, and the people
shall rejoice and make merry, because of their death ;
but after three days and an half, the spirit of life from
God shall enter into them, and they shall stand on their
feet, and gTeat fear shall fall upon them that see them.'6
a Rev. xi. 3, &c. The learned Calmet, from whom in a great
measure I have extracted this dissertation, concludes his discourse
in such words as these. — 1. That though we cannot infer from
the strict words of Moses, that Enoch was translated alive into
another world, and is still living; yet nevertheless ought the
authorities of St Paul, and the tradition of the church, to prevail,
with us, to esteem, this opinion as a matter of faith. — 2. Al-
though the fathers and interpreters seem to differ about the place
into which Enoch was translated, yet if we examine carefully
their different opinions, the greatest part of them may be reduc-
ed to a declaration of his being in paradise, which some place on
the earth, and others in heaven. And, 3. That whatever liberty
the church may allow interpreters, of putting a sense on the passage
quoted out of the Revelation, which speaks of the coming of two
witnesses that are to appear in the latter ages, it must be agreed,
that the opinion which explains it of the return of Enoch and
Elijah upon the earth, is much preferable to any other, on ac-
count of its antiquity, its intrinsic justness, and the number of
authors who maintain it. — [Calmet might, veiy consistently with
his creed, pay great deference to tradition, and the authority of
the Romish church; but Protestants renounce both the one and
the other, and appeal to no human tribunal, in the interpretation
of Scripture, but that of reason.] — Ed.
b A considerable portion of what is advanced in the preceding
section, might well have been spared. All inquiries as to
the particular place or state assigned to Enoch and Elijah, or as
to the exact nature and locality of the mansions prepared for the
just, are to be regarded as vain and fruitless speculations, which
may lead into error, but cannot tend to edification or instruction.
These are amongst the secret things which belong to the Lord :
and therefore it argues presumption on our part to search into
them with prying and curious eyes. What it concerns us chiefly
to know, is the design which the Almighty had in translating
Enoch and Elijah into heaven, without tasting death, and if we
carefully attend to the times in which each lived, the circum-
stances in which each was placed, and the method which God
was pleased to adopt, in revealing his plans of mercy to our fal-
len race, we may warrantably draw the following conclusions.
1. That God intended to put a distinguishing mark of his honour
upon Enoch and Elijah, in consideration of their faithful adher-
ence to the truth, and their zeal in defending it in the midst of
universal degeneracy and corruption. 2. That the high honour
thus conferred upon these two faithful servants of God, was in-
tended as a public attestation of a future state of retributions for
the encouragement of God's people in times of trial and affliction.
The account given of Enoch's translation is brief, and couched
in obscure terms, while the history of the translation of Elijah is
much more particular and minute ; and this is perfectly consistent
with the gradual development of the Almighty's designs, which
we clearly recognise in the Old Testament, and particularly in
the prophecies. 3. The assumption of Enoch and Elijah, was
also designed as a prefiguration of the ascension of Christ. On
Sect. III.]
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SECT. III.
CHAP. I. — From the Siege of Sa?naria by Benhadad,
to the Death of Uzziah King of Judah.
THK HISTORY.
Notwithstanding the great service which the prophet
Elisha had done Benhadad king of Syria, in curing Naa-
man, the general of his forces, of a confirmed leprosy,
he still continued his enmity against Israel. Having
raised an army with a purpose to besiege Samaria, he
opened the campaign with stratagems of war ; and, in
hopes of surprising Jehoram's troops, laid here and there
some ambuscades, which Elisha, by his spirit of prophe-
cy found out, and all along gave the king of Israel a
timely intelligence of them. Benhadad at first suspect-
ed that his councils were betrayed ; but when he was in-
formed by a one of his officers that Elisha, who was then
at Dothan, a small city in the half tribe of Manasseh, and
not far from Samaria, must certainly have been at the
bottom of all this, he sent a strong detachment to seize
him, and invested the city that night.
On the morrow, when Elisha's servant saw the enemy
surrounding the town, and knew of no forces to oppose
them, * he expressed his fear and concern to his master ;
this point we can hardly entertain a doubt, if we attend to the
nature and design of the types and figures of the Old Testament.
" It has been pertinently remarked, that in each of the three
great periods of the church, it has pleased God, with a view to
support the faith of his people, to give them a lively figure of the
resurrection, as in the cases of Enoch before the flood, and under
what is called the patriarchal dispensation, Elijah under the Mo-
saic dispensation, and the great Captain of salvation himself, under
the gospel, for whom the everlasting doors were opened. And
in conducting those events, the Most High has gradually disclosed
life and immortality, from the dawn of morning light, to the full
glory of meridian splendour. It must have been an encouraging
sight to the antediluvian saints to see a guilty son of Adam with-
drawn from among them, and lodged not in a tomb, but in the
bosom of God. It was a still more striking illustration of im-
mortality, to behold the heavens opened, and the divine messen-
gers, in flaming fire, conducting a prophet into the mansions of
glory. But the grandest display of this doctrine, is presented
before our eyes, in the case of the Author and Finisher of our faith,
who when lie burst the bars of the grave, and ascended up on high,
' brought life and immortality to light,' opened the gates of
righteousness, that the nations of those who are saved, may enter
in. Enoch, Elijah, and Christ, in one view, may be compared
with each other; but, in all things, to the latter belongs the pre-
eminence. Enoch and Elijah ascended as solitary individuals,
and their ascension, except as an example, benefited only them-
selves. Christ ascended as the first-fruits of them that sleep,
and now that he is lifted up, he is drawing together his elect unto
him, whom at least he will present before the presence of the
Divine glory, with exceeding joy." — Jones. — Ed.
a It is not to be doubted, but that Naaman, upon his return
from Samaria, spread the fame of Elisha so much in the court of
Syria, that some of the great men there might have the curiosity
to make a farther inquiry concerning him; and, being informed
by several of his miraculous works, they might hence conclude,
that he could tell the greatest secrets, as well as perform such
vranden as were related of him; and that, therefore, in all pro-
bability, he was the person who gave the king of Israel intelli-
gence of all the schemes that had been contrived to entrap him.
— Patrick's Commentary.
b This young man, it is supposable, had been but a little while
ivith his master, no longer than since Gehazi's dismission, and
therefore perhaps had not yet seen any great experiments of his
power to work miracles ; or, if he had, the great and eminent
but, upon his master's prayer, « his eyes were opened,
and he beheld a multitude of horses and fiery chariots
standing in array, and prepared to protect them ; while,
as his master continued his prayer, the men that belea-
gured the town were struck with blindness ; so that by
the prophet's persuading them that they were out of
their way, and had mistaken the place they were bound
to, they were led, in this bewildered condition, into the
very midst of Samaria, where, at the prophet's request,
God opened their eyes again to show them the danger
they were in.
Jehoram, finding so great a number of the enemy
lying at his mercy, would have gladly put them to the
sword ; but Elisha by all means dissuaded him from it ;
alleging, that as he would scarce be so cruel as to kill in
cold blood, even prisoners that were taken in war, much
less should he touch those who were brought into his
hands by the providence of God ; and therefore he rather
advised him d to treat them, with all manner of civility,
and let them go ; which accordingly the king did.
But, e how signal soever this piece of service and
danger he thought his master in, (for, in all probability, he had
learned from the people of the town, that this vast body of men
were come to apprehend him only,) might well be allowed to
raise his fear, and shake his faith. — Poole's Annotations.
c It must be allowed that angels, whether they be purely spi-
ritual, or, as others think, clothed with some material form, cannot
be seen by mortal eyes; and therefore as Elisha himself, without
a peculiar vouchsafement of God, could not discern the heavenly
host, which, at this time, encamped about him ; so he requests
of God, that, for the removal of his fears, and the confirmation
of his faith, his servant might be indulged the same privilege;
nor does it seem improbable, that from such historical facts as
these, which have descended by tradition, that notion among the
Greeks, of a certain mist which intercepts the sight of their gods
from the ken of human eyes, might at first borrow its original.
To this purpose we may observe, Jiat Homer makes Minerva be-
speak Diomedes fighting against the Trojans, who were assisted
by some other gods: "The vapour which heretofore lay over
thine eyes, I of a truth abstracted, that you might certainly know
the immortal from the mortal being." Which Virgil has imi-
tated, in making Venus speaks thus: "Look: for I will take
away all that cloud which, at present overspreading thy vision,
weakens it powers, and renders indistinct the circumjacent ob-
jects." (Eneid. 2) — Le Clerc's Commentary.
d Though, according to the rigour of the laws of arms, a con-
queror is at liberty to put whatever enemies fall into his hands,
if he pleases, to the sword ; yet the laws of humanity and com-
passion, of honour and good nature, should always restrain us from
treating with the utmost severity such as surrender themselves,
and implore our mercy ; for so says the tragedian, " What the law
doth not forbid, modesty itself repudiates." {Senec. 7'road.) So
the philosopher, " The nature of honour and equity commands
us to spare even captives." (Senec. de Clement, b. 1. c. IS.) And
so the divine, " Necessity, not will, destroys the opposing ene-
my; as violence is due to him that fightetli and opposeth, so
mercy must be rendered to the vanquished captive." (Aug. ad
Bordfac. epis. 1.) But, besides the humanity and charity of the
thing, there was this prudence and policy, in the kind treatment
of the Syrians, that, by this means, their hearts might be mollified
towards the Israelites, that, upon their return, they might be-
come as it were, so many preachers of the power and greatness
of the God of Israel, and not only be afraid themselves, but dis-
suade others likewise from opposing a people that had so invinci-
ble a protector. — Calmet's Commentary and Poole's Annotations.
e Several heathens have observed, that " injuries are more
gloriously overcome by benefits, than requited by pertinacious
and mutual hatred ;" but the sense of benefits in bad natures does
not last long: for no sooner do we read of the kind treatment
which the Syrians received, (2 Kings vi. 2.3.) but it immediately
follows, that the king of Syria ' gathered all his host, and went
up and besieged Samaria ;' which does not so well agree with
what is said in the preceding yen e, namely, that ' the bands of the
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generosity to Benhadad was, it did not prevail with him
to relinquish the old grudge and malice which he had
conceived against Israel : for, not long after, he laid
close siege to Samaria, and reduced the city to such dis-
tress, that an ass's head was sold « for fourscore pieces
t>f silver, and * three quarters of a pint of pulse for
five. Nay, to that extremity was the famine come, that
even mothers were constrained to eat their own children ;
Syrians came no more into the land of Israel.' But now, as we
can hardly think, that any author whatever would contradict him-
self in the same breath, so we must suppose, either that the
Syrians quite retreated for this time, and laid aside all thoughts
of war, though afterwards they altered their minds, and broke out
again into hostilities; or, what seems more plain, that their bands
made no more incursions and inroads, but that they were resolved
to fall upon the Israelites at once, with a regular and formed
army, and to besiege Samaria. For in this sense Josephus takes
it, when he tells us, that, after this time, " Adad," for so he calls
Benhadad, " never entered into any underhand practice against
the king of Israel, but resolved to make open war upon him, in
confidence of his greater strength and numbers. — Jewish Anti-
quities, b. 9. c. 2.
a If we reckon these pieces of silver, or shekels, at fifteen-
pence apiece, they come to five pound sterling ; a vast price for
that which had on it so little meat, and that unclean according to
the law, (Liv. xi. 26.) In times of famine, however, and ex-
treme necessity, the Jews themselves were absolved from the
observation of the law ; nor do there want instances in history
where other people, upon the same occasion, have been reduced
to the like distress, if what Plutarch, in the life of Artaxerxes,
tells us, be true, namely, that in that prince's war with the Ca-
ducii, an ass's head could scarce have been purchased at the price
of sixty drachms, that is, two pounds and five shillings of our
money.- — Calmet's Commentary, and Prideaux's Connection, in
the preface.
6 What we in this place c&Upulse, our translation has rendered
dove's dung; but interpreters have been at a great loss to devise,
upon what account the inhabitants of Samaria should be obliged
to buy so small a quantity of it (for a cab was the least measure
•the Jews had for dry things) at so dear a rate. For food, for
salt, for firing, for dunging their lands within the walls, several
interpreters have severally applied it; but, upon a small examin-
ation, it will appear, that none of these uses could suit with the
circumstances of a city so closely besieged as Samaria was.
The Talmudists suppose, that they have found out the true
solution, by translating the term in the original by crop of doves;
for they affirm, that several people in Samaria kept many doves
to bring them provisions from the country, which were wont to
disgorge what they picked up, so that their owners might sell it
at a dear rate : but who can imagine that so great a number of
doves, as were necessary for this purpose, should be suffered to
live in a city so pinched with famine; that doves should be so
docile, and well trained up, as to bring to their masters whatever
they had ranged for; or, that in a country, in a manner covered
with the enemy, who had altogether foraged and laid it waste,
there should be found any nourishment at all? The learned
Bochart, therefore, has not only solidly confuted these wild
opinions, but has likewise farther observed that the Arabians
gave the name of dove's dung, or sparrow's dung, to two
several things ; 1st, to a kind of moss that grows on trees, or
stony ground; and, 2dly, to a sort of pease or pulse, which was
very common in Judea, as may be seen in 2 Sam. xvii. 28, and
therefore he concludes, that the word Chersonim may very well de-
note vetches or pulse: and, for the confirmation of this, some travel-
lers have told us, that, at Grand Cairo and Damascus, there are
magazines where they constantly fry this kind of grain, which
those who go on pilgrimage buy and take with them as part
of the provision for their journey; Hieroz, part 2. b. 1.
c. 7. and an Essay towards a New Translation. — [Harmer, in
his Observations, attempts to show that the dove's dung
mentioned 2 Kings vi. 25, was employed during the siege, for
the purpose of more speedily raising a supply of esculent vege-
tables, such as melons and cucumbers ; and it is well known that
dove's dung is reckoned of great value in the east on account
of its great power in stimulating the rapid growth of such vege-
tables. Most modem critics, however, are of opinion, that by
which when the king understood, from the information
of one who had been constrained to do it, he rent his
clothes, and, in a fit of rage vowed to be revenged of
Elisha, whom he took to be the cause of all this calam-
ity ; and to this purpose sent an officer to take off his
head, whilst himself followed after to see the execution
done.
Elisha, by the spirit of prophecy, had notice of this
wicked design against his life ; and having acquainted d
the company with it, desired them to secure the doors, «
dove's dung, is meant a kind of pease, which agrees with the
opinion expressed in the author's note. Dr Boothroyd translates
vetches, and certainly this rendering marks more strongly the
severity of the famine than the received one, for it cannot be
supposed that dove's dung, in the literal acceptation, was used
for food. Dr A. Clarke agrees in supposing that a sort of pease
are meant, which to this day the Arabs call by this name. Dr
Shaw says, " The garvanqos, cicer, or chick pea, has been taken
for the pigeon's dung, mentioned in the siege of Samaria; and as
the cicer is pointed at one end, and acquires an ash colour* in
parching, the first of which circumstances answers to the figure,
the second to the usual colour of dove's dung, the supposition is
by no means to be disregarded.] — Ed.
c The story, as it is represented in Scripture, is very affecting.
' And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there
cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king! And
he said, If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee?
out of the barn-floor, or out of the wine-press? And the king
said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This wo-
man said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day,
and we will eat my son to-morrow ; so we boiled my son, and
did eat him; and I said unto her the next day, Give thy son that
we may eat him, and she hath hid her son ;' 2 Kings vi. 26,
&c. A shocking story this! and a terrible effect of the divine
vengeance, which Moses had long before told the Israelites
would fall upon them, Deut. xxviii. 53, if they rebelled against
God ; which, at two other times besides this, namely, at the siege of
Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar, Ezek. v. 10, and at that under
Titus the Roman general, came likewise to pass; for therein
Josephus gives us a very dolorous account of a lady of distinc-
tion, who, out of extremity of hunger, was forced to eat the very
child that sucked at her breast. — The IVars of the Jews, b. 7. c. 8.
d The words in the text are, ' And Elisha sat in his house, and
the elders sat with him,' 2 Kings vi. 32, where, by 'his house,'
some interpreters understand the school where the sons of the
prophets met to be instructed ; and, by the elders, his chief
scholars, who under his instruction applied themselves to the
study of divine things. But as we frequently read in Ezekiel, of
the elders of Israel, sitting before the prophet to hear him, chap,
viii. 1, and xiv. 1, we cannot see why the elders, in this place
likewise, may not denote some good and godly men, who bore
office either in the court, camp, or city, as it seems probable by
the prophet's desiring their help and protection. For, though
Jehoram himself was a wicked man, and most of Ids officers
might be forward enough to imitate him, yet we are not to doubt,
but that there were some of them, whom Elisha's holy life and
glorious miracles, together with the sundry benefits which the
public reaped from his ministry, had won over to God, and to the
true religion ; and these were here sitting with him, either to
receive comfort and counsel from him in this distressed time, or
to solicit him to use his power with God for their relief; which
accordingly he did, and in compliance to their request, not out
of any fear of the king's threats, (from which he was well as-
sured that God would not fail to deliver him,) he pronounced
the joyful news, which follows in the beginning of the next
chapter.. — Poole's Annotations.
e Executions in the east are often very prompt and arbitrary.
In many cases the suspicion is no sooner entertained, or the
cause of offence given, than the fatal order is issued ; the messen-
ger of death hurries to the unsuspecting victim, shows his war-
rant, and executes his orders that instant in silence and solitude.
Instances of this kind are continually occurring in the Turkish
and Persian histories. " When the enemies of a great man, among
the Turks, have gained influence enough over the prince to pro-
cure a warrant for his death, a capidgi (the name of the officer
who executes these orders), is sent to him, who shows him the
Sect. III.]
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that the officer might not be admitted until the king
came. When the king was come, and the prophet was
exhorting him to have a little patience, and God would
remove this affliction in time, in a raving fit of despair,
he replied, ' That he would wait God's leisure no longer,
but go and worship his father's idols, it they, peradven-
ture, could deliver him in this necessity.' W hereupon
the prophet assured him, that, if he would stay but four
and twenty hours more, he should see such an alteration
in Samaria, that a a measure of Hour should be sold for
a shekel, and two measures of barley for the same
price. This a certain lord, a great favourite of the
king's, standing by and hearing, affirmed to be a
thing impossible, unless Hod should rain corn from the
clouds ; to whom the prophet only made this short
answer, that ' himself should see the plenty, but not
be permitted to taste of it ;' which accordingly came to
pass.
The people of Samaria, though addicted to idolatry,
did nevertheless observe the ceremonial part of the law,
and, pursuant to this, had b shut four lepers out of the
order he has received to carry back his head ; the other takes the
warrant of the grand seignior, kisses it, puts it on his head in
token of respect, and then having performed his ablutions, and
said his prayers, freely resigns his life. The capidgi having
strangled him, cuts off his head, and brings it to Constantinople.
The grand seignior's order is implicitly obeyed; the servants of
the victim never attempt to hinder the executioner, although the
capidgi came very often with few or no attendants." It appears
in the writings of Chardin, that the nobility and grandees of
Persia are put to death in a manner equally silent, hasty, and
unobstructed. Such executions were not uncommon among the
Jews under the government of their kings. Solomon sent Be-
niah as his capidgi, or executioner, to put Adonijah, a prince of
his own family, to death; and Joab, the commander-in-chief
of the forces in the reign of his father. A capidgi likewise
beheaded John the Baptist in the prison, and carried his head to
the court of Herod. To such silent and hasty executions, the
royal preacher seems to refer in that proverb ; ' the wrath of a
king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it:'
his displeasure exposes the unhappy offender to immediate
death, and may fill the unsuspecting bosom with terror and
dismay, like the appearance of a capidgi : but by wise and
prudent conduct, a man may sometimes escape the danger.
From the dreadful promptitude with which Beniah executed the
commands of Solomon on Adonijah and Joab, it may be con-
cluded that the executioner of the court was as little ceremonious,
and the ancient Jews nearly as passive as the Turks or Persians.
The prophet Elisha is the only person in the inspired record,
who ventured to resist the bloody mandate of the sovereign; the
incident is recorded in these terms: ' But Elisha sat in his
house, and the elders sat with him; lie said to the elders, See how
this son of a murderer has sent to take away mine head? Look
when the messenger cometh; shut the door, and hold him fast at
tin- door. Is not the sound of his master's feet behind him?'
lint if such mandates had not been too common among the Jews,
and in general submitted to without resistance, Jchoram had
scarcely ventured to dispatch a single messenger to take away the
life ol so eminent a person as Elisha. — Paxtoris Illustrations.
—Ed.
a The word Scah, which we render a measure, was equal to
six cabs, and contained, as some think, six quarts, as others
a peck, and as others a peck and two quarts, of our measure.
The shekel was much about our three shillings; and to have a
peck of fine flour for three shillings at other times would not
have been so cheap; hut, considering the present situation of
things, it was wonderfully so. — Le C/erc's Commentary and
Poole't Annotations. — \ According to the best authorities, the
measure or seah was equal to one peck one pint, and the value
oi tin' shekel, two shillings, 3d! sterling.] — En.
/> '1 he Jews are of opinion, that these four lepers were Gc-
h«zi and three of his sons. Persons that were leprous indeed,
were not permitted to converse with other men, and, by the
city ; who lay under the walls, until they were ready to
starve. In this condition these poor creatures, consult-
ing what measures they should best take, resolved at last
to try the generosity of the enemy, because, at the worst,
they could but die ; and accordingly, before the break
of day, went to the camp. When they came thither, to
their great surprise, they found no living creature, but
only horses and asses. c The tents were standing and well
provided with riches, and all manner of necessaries, but
the men were gone : for having been affrighted witli a
noise in the air, as of an army in full march, and ready
to fall upon them, they supposed that the king of Israel
had called to his assistance some foreign powers, the
d Hittites or Egyptians, and thereupon leaving the camp,
without ever striking their tents, betook themselves to
their heels as fast as they could.
The poor lepers having first satisfied their hunger,
and secured some riches to themselves, began to reflect,
that while they were thus regaling themselves, and plun-
dering the camp, their countrymen were in danger of
starving in the town ; and therefore, with all possible
haste, returning to the gate, they gave the porter notice
of the enemy's flight, who went immediately and sent
an account of it to the king. The king, imagining at
first that this had been a stratagem c of the Syrians to
law of Moses, while the Israelites lived in tents, they were to
be turned out of the camp, (Num. v. 2, 3.) But, after that
they came to inhabit cities, it may be questioned whether they
treated them with that rigour; since, in 2 Kings viii. 4, we
find Gehazi holding discourse with the king, (which makes
against his being one of the four excluded lepers,) and giving
him a detail of all Elisha's miracles; but this he might do by
talking to him at a proper distance. Lepers indeed were care-
fully avoided, because their distemper, in these hot countries,
was thought contagious ; but, in the case before us, these four
seem to be excluded, not so much upon the account of their
distemper, as because they were useless hands. They could
neither fight, nor work in communion with others: they were only
persons born to consume the fruits of the earth, and were there-
fore no proper persons in a siege. — Patrick's and Calmet's Com-
mentaries.
c 2 Kings vii. 10. ' Horses tied and asses tied.' From the
circumstances recorded concerning the flight of the Syrians, it
appears to have been remarkably precipitate. That they were
not altogether unprepared for a hasty departure, may be inferred
from comparing this passage with the following extract from
Memoirs relative to Egypt, p. 300. " As soon as the Arabs are
apprehensive of an attack, they separate into several small camps,
at a great distance from each other, and tie their camels to the
tents, so as to be able to move off at a moment's notice." Such
a precaution is not probably peculiar to the modern Arabs, but.
might be adopted by the Syrian army. If this was the case, it
shows with what great fear God filled their minds, that though
prepared as usual for a quick march, they were not able to avail
themselves of the advantage, but were constrained to leave every
thing behind them as a prey to their enemies.— Ed.
d The Hittites in particular lived in Arabia Petraa, to the
south of Palestine, and, in Solomon's time, who had some wives
likewise out of their country, held a great commerce with him
for horses, (1 Kings x. '20. and xi. 1.) But under the name of
Hittites as elsewhere under the name of Amorites, the sacred
penman seems to comprehend all, or any of the people of Canaan.
For thou'di the greatest number of that people were destroyed.
yet some of them were spared, and many of them, upon Joshua's
comin" (led away, some to remote parts, as that famous and
ancient pillar in the coasts of Afric testifies, and others to the
countries bordering upon Canaan ; where, by reason of the scarcity
of inhabitants in those days, finding room enough, they seated
themselves, and in process of time, growing numerous and power-
ful, appointed, according to their ancient manner of government,
kin^s to rule over them. — Poole's Annotations
e 8 Kings vii. \i. In the History of the Revolt of Ali Bey,
4 k
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draw his people out of the town, an<l so fall upon them,
sent out some parties to reconnoitre such places as
might be most suspected for ambuscades ; but when they
returned, they informed him, that they could get no sight
of the enemy, only they found the road strewed with
arms, and garments, and several bundles of things, which
they had dropped, as they supposed, to ease themselves
in their flight. Upon hearing of this news, the people
rushed out of the city in great numbers, and bring in
provision in such quantities, that corn was sold at the
price which Elisha mentioned, and at the time which he
foretold: and as the incredulous nobleman, who had
despised the prophet's prediction, was appointed by the
king to guard the gate which led from the city to the
camp, the better to prevent disorders, the crowd pressed
so vehemently upon him, that they trampled him under
foot, and killed him, before he had an opportunity to
taste any part of that great store which he saw was
brought to the market.
After this miraculous raising of the siege of Samaria,
Benhadad was deterred from making any farther attempts
upon Israel : nor do we hear any more of him in the
sacred history, until Elisha went to Damascus, the capital
of Syria, to execute the order of declaring Hazael king,
which was originally given to Elijah his predecessor.
The king hearing of his arrival, and being no stranger to
his abilities, sent this same Hazael, who was then become
one of his prime ministers, to wait upon him with a very
noble present, and to inquire of him whether he should
" recover of the sickness which he then laboured under.
The prophet told Hazael, that his master might recover,
because his distemper was not of itself mortal, but that
he was very well assured that he would not : and then,
(p. 99.) we have an account of a transaction very similar to the stra-
tagem supposed to have lieen practised by the Syrians. The pasha
of Sham (Damascus) having marched near to the sea of Tiherias,
found sheik Daher encamped there; but the sheik deferring the
engagement till the next morning, during the night divided his
army into three parts, and left the camp, with great fires, all
sorts of provisions, and a large quantity of spirituous liquors,
giving strict orders not to hinder the enemy from taking posses-
sion of the camp, but to come down and attack them just before
dawn of day. " In the middle of the night, the pasha of Sham
thought to surprise sheik Daher, and marched in silence to the
camp, which, to his great astonishment, he found entirely aban-
doned, and thought the sheik had fled with so much precipitation,
that he could not carry on" the baggage and stores. The pasha
thought proper to stop in the camp to refresh his soldiers. They
soon fell to plunder, and drank so freely of the liquors, that, over-
come with the fatigue of the day's march, and the fumes of the
spirits, they were not long ere they were in a sound sleep. At
that time sheik Sleby and sheik Crime, who were watching the
enemy, came silently to the camp; and sheik Daher, having
repassed the sea of Tiberias, meeting them, they all rushed into
the camp, and fell on the confused and sleeping enemy, eight
thousand of whom they slew on the spot; and the pasha, with the
remainder of his troops, fled with much difficulty to Sham, leav-
ing all their baggage behind." — Harmer, vol. iv. p. 244. — Ed.
a What Benhadad's distemper was, we are nowhere told in
Scripture; but it is very evident, that it was not of so desperate
a nature, but that he might have recovered of it, had he not had
foul play for ins life. According to the account of Josephus, it
was no morn than a fit of melancholy: for "when he came to
understand," as he tells us, " that all these alarms of chariots
and horsemen, that had given such an irreparable rout to him
and his army, were, in truth, only judicial impressions of affright
and terror, without any foundation, he looked upon it as a declara-
tion from heaven against him ; and this anxiety of thought made
him as sick in the body too as he was in his mind." — Jewish
sfntiq. b. 5. c. 2.
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looking steadfastly upon him, he broke out into tears,
upon the prospect, as he told him, of the b many barbar-
ous calamities which he would bring upon Israel, when
once he was advanced to power, as that he would be,
because he was assured by divine revelation that he Mas
to be king of Syria. At these words, Hazael's ambition
took wing ; and therefore returning to his master, he
concealed the prophet's answer, and gave him good
hopes of his recovery, but the next day took care to
prevent it, by c stifling his breath with a thick cloth
dipped in water : and as Benhadad had no son of his
own, and Hazael was a man of great esteem, especially
among the soldiery, he was, without much difficulty,
declared his successor. i
The next thing which Elisha did was to have Jehu
anointed king of Israel, pursuant to the order that was
given to his master Elijah, and to the divine decree of
punishing the house of Ahab for their manifold impieties.
Ramoth-Gilead was a place of long dispute between the
two crowns of Israel and Syria. Jehoram, king of
Israel, had lately had an engagement with Hazael, king
of Syria, not far from it, wherein he had received some
very dangerous wounds, and was gone down to Jezreel,
to be cured of them. His army, however, d continued
b The particulars are thus enumerated: — ' I know the evil
that thou wilt do to the children of Israel; their strongholds
wilt thou set on fire ; their young men wilt thou slay with the
sword ; and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with
child,' (2 Kings viii. 12.) That dashing young children against
the stones was one piece of barbarous cruelty, which the people
of the east were apt to run into, in the prosecution of their wars,
is plainly intimated in that passage of the Psalmist's, alluding to
the calamities which preceded the Babylonish captivity: 'O
daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery! Yea, happy shall he
be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us. Blessed shall he
be, that taketh thy children, and throweth them against the
stones,' (Ps. exxxvii. S, 9.) Nor was this inhuman practice
quite out of use among nations that pretended to more politeness:
for, according to the remains of ancient fame, the Greeks, when
they became masters of Troy, were so cruel as to throw
Astyanax, Hector's son, a child in his mother's arms, as Homer
represents him, headlong from one of the towers of the city.
The ripping up women with child is the highest degree of
brutal cruelty; and a cruelty for which there is no occasion,
because, kill but the mother, and the child dies of course; and
yet it has been often known, that in the heat of execution, this
barbarity has been committed. Nay, there is reason to believe
that Hazael, in his war with the Gileadites, (2 Kings x. 32, 33.)
verified this part of the prophet's prediction concerning him; for
what Amos, complaining of his cruelty to these people, calls
threshing Gilead ' with threshing instruments of iron,' both the
Septuagint and Arabic versions read, ' he sawed the big-bellied
women of Gilead with iron saws.' — Le Clerc's and Calmet's Com-
mentaries.
c This he did, that no signs of violence might appear upon
him ; for had the people, in the least, suspected his being mur-
dered, Hazael would not so easily have acceded to the throne ;
because, according to the account of Josephus, Benhadad was a
man of such reputation among the people of Syria and Damascus,
that as his memory was celebrated among them with divine
honours, his death, no doubt, had it been known to have been
violent, would have been fully revenged upon the murderer. —
Jeii-ish Ant. b. 9. c. 2. We may observe, however, that history
makes mention of some other princes who have died in the same
manner that Benhadad did ; that the emperor Tiberius, accord-
ing to Suetonius, was, in his last sickness, choked in his bed
by a pillow crammed into his mouth, or, as Tacitus has it, was
smothered to death under a vast load of bedclothes; and that
king Demetrius, the son of Philip, as well as the emperor
Frederick II., was hurried out of the world the sume way. —
Calmets Commentary.
d It is supposed by some interpreters, that the city of Ramoth-
Gilead was taken by Jehoram, before he departed from it to be
Sect. III.]
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the siege under the command of Jehu, who in the king's
absence, acted as captain-general. This, Elisha thought,
was no improper opportunity to execute the orders which
were left upon him to do ; and therefore a calling one
of his minor prophets, he bid him go to Ramoth-Gilead,
and * there anoint c Jehu, the grandson of Nimshi, as
king of Israel, with the utmost secrecy, and then to
come away with the utmost expedition. M'hen the pro-
phet came thither, he found the officers in a council of
war, and Jehu, at the head of them. Desiring therefore
to speak with him in private, he did what his instructions
were, and reminding the general of the prophecies of
Elijah, concerning the utter extinction of the house of
Ahab, he enjoined him, now that he was invested with
power, to put them in execution.
The officers that were with Jehu, had but a contempti-
,'iired of his wounds. This they gather from the mention made
of the ' inner chamber,' (2 Kings ix. 2.) ' the top of the stairs,'
(ver. 13.) and from that caution which Jehu thinks advisable,
' Let none go forth, or escape out of the city,' (ver. 15.) But
these arguments will not do. What we render ' out of the city,'
does signify every whit as properly, ' from before the city,' that
is, out of the camp or army that is besieging the city. But
even, if this be not so, the Israelites might, at this time, have
the suburbs, or out-buildings belonging to the city, in their pos-
session, where the general might have his headquarters, End
from whence he might give orders to the piquet-guard, as we
call it, that none should be permitted to move. For had the
town been already in their hands, we cannot see why Jehoratn
should have kept all Israel there, (ver. 14.) that is, all the mili-
tary force of Israel, when a strong garrison would have been
sufficient. — Poole's Annotations.
a The Jewish doctors are of opinion, that the prophet whom
Klisha sent upon this message, was Jonah ; but, upon this suppo-
sition, he must at this time have been a very young man, be-
cause Jeroboam II., in whose reign Jonah prophesied, did not
ascend the throne till about fifty years after this unction of Jehu
kins; of Israel. However this be, it is reasonable to think that
Elisha himself did not go to perform this office, either because
he was now grown old, and unfit for such a journey, or because
he was a person too well known, and not so proper to be employ-
ed in an aflin'r that required secrecy. — Patrick's and Calmct's
Commentaries.
b The Jews are of opinion, tiiat none of the kings of Israel
were anointed but those that were of the house of David, and
these oidy when there was a question about their succession ; as
Solomon, they say, needed not to have been anointed, had it not
been tor the faction of Adonijah. But in the case of Jehu, in
whom the succession of the kingdom of Israel was to be translat-
ed out of the right line of the family of Ahab, into another family
which had no right to the kingdom, but merely the appointment
of God, there was a necessity for his unction, in order both to
convey to him a title, and to invest him in the actual possession
of the kingdom: for if that, which some imagine from I Kings
xix. 16., be true, namely, that the prophet Elijah did, before
this time, anoint Jehu, that unction did only confer on him a
remote right to the kingdom, in the same manner as Samuel's
unction did to David. (1 Sam. xvi. 13.) — Patrick's Commentary
and Pnole's Annotations.
c For barbarity and hypocrisy Jehu has few parallels; and the
cowardliness and baseness of the nobles of Samaria, have seldom
been equalled. Ahab's bloody house must be cut off; but did
God ever design that it should be done by these means? The
men were, no doubt, profligate and wicked, and God permitted
their iniquity to manifest itself in this way ; and thus the purpose
el God, that Ahab's house should no more reign, was completely
accomplished: (see 1 Kings xxi. 19, 21, 29.) And by this con-
duct Jehu is said to have executed what was right in God's
eyes. (ver. 30.) The cutting off of Ahab's family was decreed
by the divine justice; the means by which it was done, or at
least the manner of doing, were not entirely of his appointing:
yet the commission given him by the young prophet, (c. ix. 7.)
was very extensive. Vet still many things seem to be attributed
to God, as the agent, which he does not execute, but only per-
mits to be done. — Ed,
4516. A. C. 895. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END Oi? 2 CHRON.
ble opinion of the prophet; for persons of this charac-
ter they looked upon as a d kind of madmen ; and yet
when they understood that he had anointed Jehu to be
king, they proclaimed hiiu with a general consent, and,
with a good body of forces, marched directly to Jezreel,
where Jehoram was not yet recovered of his wounds,
and whither Ahaziah, king of Judah, was at that time
come to visit him. Jehu's intent, was to get to Jezreel,
before the king could have any intelligence of what had
passed at Ramoth-Gilead, and there to surprise and
seize him ; but a e centinel from the watch tower, per-
ceiving a body of men coming, and, by their, hasty
march, concluding that it was Jehu who commanded
them, apprised the two kings of it; whereupon they
got ready their chariots in all haste, and, as the provi-
dence of God would have it, met him not far from the
vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite, and perhaps ' in the
place where Naboth was stoned.
Upon their first meeting, a few words convinced Jeho-
ram, that Jehu had conspired against him, and was come
in an hostile manner, to avenge / the idolatry and wick-
edness of his mother Jezebel, whereupon he turned his
chariot and fled ; but Jehu soon overtook him with a
swift arrow, which pierced his heart ; and when he per-
1 1 Kings xxi. 19.
d The officers who were in company with Jehu, might easily
perceive by the habit, and air, and manner of speech of the per-
son who accosted Jehu so boldly, and when he had done his busi-
ness, vanished so suddenly, that he was a prophet ; but then there
might be several reasons which might induce men of their pro-
fession to have a contemptible opinion of men of that order. The
rigid and obscure course of life which the prophets led, their
neglect of themselves, and of the things of this world, might
pass with them for a kind of infatuation ; and the holy exercises
to which they devoted themselves, for no more than a religious
frenzy. Besides this, the false prophets, which they had seen in
the court of Ahab, had given just offence; and by their affected
gestures and studied contortions, whereby they thought to recom-
mend their crude enthusiasms, made themselves justly ridiculous,
and contemptible. And therefore it is uo wonder that these
officers, at first sight, should censure a true, as they thought they
had reason to judge of the false prophets with whom they had
been acquainted; especially when we find some leading men in
the tribe of Judah treating the prophets of the Lord, as in the
case of Ezekiel xxiii. 30, 31, and of Jeremiah xxix. 2b", as
fools and madmen; and some great names in the heathen world,
looking upon all pretenders to inspiration in no better light;
according to that noted passage in Cicero: " what authority does
that 'furor' possess which ye call divine, so that a madman can
discern what a wise man cannot ; and he who has lost his human
senses, is thought to possess superhuman." — Be Divinat. b. 2.
e In time of peace, as well as war, it was customary to have
watchmen set on high and eminent places wherever the king
was, to prevent his being surprised. Thus David, at Jerusalem,
was informed by the watchman, that his sons were escaped from
the slaughter of Absalom, when he thought them all lost, (2 Sam.
xiii. 34.) and therefore Jehoram, who had an army lying before
Ramoth-Gilead, had good reason to keep a watchful eye upon
every motion that came, especially from tliat quarter. — Patrick's
and Calmct's Commentaries.
f The answer which Jehu returns to Jehoram is, — ' What
peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel, and her
witchcrafts are so many?' (2 Kings ix. 22.) that is, whilst her
idolatries wherewith she bewitches the people, are still continued
and multiplied. And he upbraids Jehoram with his mother's
sins and not with his own, because hers were more notorious
and infamous, and what by his contrivance, he had made his own ;
because they were the principal reasons why God did inflict, and
he was come to execute these judgments; and because he could
find no odious accusations against him, except about the golden
calves, which he purposely declined mentioning, because he him-
self intended to keep them up. — Poole's Annotations.
596
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ceived him sinking in his chariot, he bid an officer that
was by throw him into Naboth's field, which was near at
hand, a that the word of the Lord might be fulfilled.
As for Ahaziah, he attempted to make his escape, but
was pursued by a party of Jehu's men, who came up with
him at Gur, and, as he was sitting in his chariot, gave him
a mortal wound ; so that as soon as he reached Megiddo
he died. He was thence removed to Jerusalem, where
he was buried in the royal sepulchre of his ancestors,
and, after a reign of less than two years, was succeeded
by his mother Athaliah, who usurped the throne.
Jehu, in the mean time, made the best of his way to
Jezreel, where Jezebel, resolving to keep up her gran-
deur to the last, b painted and dressed herself in her
royal robes, and looking out of her window, upbraided
him with his treachery as he passed by, and reminded
him of the unhappy fate of Zimri, who slew his king and
master Elan : but, without making her any answer, he
called to somebody to throw her out of the window,
which c her own eunuchs did ; so that, by the fall,
her d blood stained the walls of the palace, and, when
she was upon the pavement, the horses trampled her
under foot, and the dogs devoured her body; e insomuch,
a The words which Jehu seems to quote are these, — ' Surely
I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his
sons, saith the Lord, and I will requite him in this place, (2
Kings ix. 26.) It is to be observed, however, that in all the his-
tory of Naboth, which is recorded in 1 Kings xxi., we find no
mention made of the death of his sons; but it is no unusual thing
for the Scripture to supply in one place, that which has been
omitted in another. It is not improbable, therefore, that as Na-
both was accused of high treason, all his family was involved in
his ruin, and all his estate confiscated to the king's exchequer:
and what seems to confirm this opinion, is — That we find Elijah
never once putting the king in mind to restore the vineyard to
Naboth's children, nor the king, in the time of his repentance,
ever once thinking to do it, because, in all human appearance,
there were no heirs left. Notwithstanding this, Grotius, and
other learned men, have observed, that these words may signify
no more than the extreme poverty to which Naboth's family was
reduced by the death of their father, and the confiscation of his
goods: for, among the Hebrews, say they, all punishments and
miseries are called ' blood,' (Lev. xvii. 4.) and to take away their
estate, upon which they would have lived, was, in effect, to take
away their blood, in which is the life of every creature. But
this is a little forced: and therefore, we should rather think, that
Jehu is here aggravating Ahab's crime, and reckoning the sons as
slain with the father, because by their being deprived of him, and
of his estate, they were, in a manner, in as bad a condition as though
they were dead. — Le Clerc's, Patrick's, and Calmet's Commen-
taries. [This last opinion is not more satisfactory than the pre-
ceding. As the object both of Ahab and Jezebel was to obtain
entire and perpetual possession of Naboth's vineyard, it is very
orobable that the whole of Naboth's family were cut off' with
nimself, in order that none of his posterity might afterwards re-
claim the property.] — Ed.
b The words in the original import, ' She put her eyes in
paint,' that is, she used stibium or antimony pulverized, to make
her eyes and eyebrows look black and large, which, in several
countries-, was accounted a great beauty. The use of paint has
oeen of ancient date, and the art of blacking the hair, and beau-
tifying the face may be indulged to the vanity of the female sex ;
but it raises one's indignation to read of a Sardanapalus paintin«
his eyes and eyebrows ; of the ancient Greeks running into the
same custom ; and much more of the ancient Romans : but there
were fops in all nations then as well as now. " He by using
wet soot enlarged his eyebrow j pricking it with an obliquely
pointed needle, and stains his trembling eyelids.— Juv. Sat. 2.
c According to the custom of the eastern nations, the business
of this sort of people was to attend upon queens in their cham-
bers, who by their great fidelity and obsequiousness, gained gene-
rally the esteem, and were admitted to the confidence of those
they served, and from thence into places very often of great trust
and profit. It is remarked, however, of Jezebel's eunuchs, that
they were far from being faithful to her, to let us see how sud-
denly courtiers are wont to change with the fortune of their mas-
ters.— Patrick's Commentary.
d Some of the Jewish doctors look upon this as a punishment,
according to the lex talionis; for as she had done, so she suffered.
She had caused Naboth to be stoned, and now she is condemned
to be stoned herself. For there were two ways of stoning, either
by throwing stones at malefactors till they had knocked them
down and killed them ; or by throwing them down upon the stones
from an high place, and so dashing them to pieces. — Patrick's
Commentary.
e It is scarcely possible for an European to form an idea of the
intolerable nuisance occasioned in the villages and cities of the
east, by the multitude of dogs that infest the streets. The natives,
accustomed from their earliest years to the annoyance, come to
be regardless of it; but to a stranger these creatures are the
greatest plague to which he is subjected ; for, as they are never
allowed to enter a house, and do not constitute the property of
any particular owner, they display none of those habits of which
the domesticated species among us, are found susceptible, and are
destitute of all those social qualities which often render the dog the
trusty and attached friend of man, — the lively companion, — the
faithful guardian, and the favourite on every hearth. Instead of
the gentle, attractive, and almost rational creature he appears to
be among us, the race seems wholly to degenerate in the warm
regions of the east, and to approximate to the character of
beasts of prey, as in disposition they are ferocious, cunning, blood-
thirsty, and possessed of the most insatiable voracity ; and even
in their very form, there is something repulsive; their sharp and
savage features; their wolf-like eyes; their long hanging ears;
their straight and pointed tails ; their lank and emaciated forms,
almost entirely without a belly, give them an appearance of
wretchedness and degradation, that stands in sad contrast with
the general condition and qualities of the breed in Europe.
They are almost wholly outcasts from human habitations; and,
consequently, in Asiatic countries, the beautiful traits of canine
fidelity and attachment, are altogether unknown. There the
hand of man is seldom extended to offer the stroke or the morsel
of kindness ; and the creature that receives or snatches it from
the unwilling hand, would, in a few hours after, if an opportunity
offered, mangle and devour the corpse of his benefactor without
the smallest repugnance. These hideous creatures, dreaded by the
people for their ferocity, or avoided by them as useless and unclean,
are obliged to prowl about everywhere in search of a precarious
subsistence ; and, as they have never been subjected to any dis-
cipline, and run generally in bands, their natural ferocity, inflam-
ed by hunger, and the consciousness of strength, makes them the
most troublesome and dangerous visitors to the stranger w ho un-
expectedly finds himself in their neighbourhood, as they will not
scruple to seize whatever he may have about him, and even in
the event of his falling, and being otherwise defenceless, to at-
tack and devour him. It is chiefly, however, at night, that these
prowlers are the most formidable ; for even those which lie during
the heat of the day, lazy, inactive, and scarcely raising their
head to growl at the passenger who may have chanced to trample
on them, run about, whenever the shades begin to fall, and the
inhabitants to disappear from the streets, and are so intolerable by
their perpetual din, and their sudden and furious attacks, that it
is an attempt never made without the greatest risk, to walk
abroad at night, and without sufficient protection. This circum-
stance, which is frequently noticed by travellers in the east, may
be illustrated by an incident described in a \ery lively manner by
the French traveller Denon. It occurred on the day of his entry
into Alexandria, when that city was stormed by the French in
the late war, and having omitted to take with him some neces-
sary articles of clothing, he luid gone for that purpose to his ships,
and was returning considerably later than he had anticipated to
the city, which he found totally deserted ; the stillness of midnight
prevailing, and not a glimmer of light, but what was afforded by
the stars and char atmosphere of the climate. He had not proceed-
ed far, when he was met by a troop of furious dogs, who attacked
him from the streets, the doors, and the low roofs of the houses,
with so much ferocity, as almost to deprive him of the power of
self-defence. No sooner had he passed the territory of these, than he
was received by a fresh band of assailants, till at length, molested
and wearied almost to death, he thought of taking a circuitous
route along the suburbs of the city, by which, after climbing over
the walls, and wading a considerable depth into the river, he came.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
597
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that when Jehu, in consideration of her quality, ordered
some of his servants to go and bury her, they found no-
thing-of her remaining but her skull, feet, and palms of her
after the greatest fatigue, about midnight, to one of the French
sentinels, convinced that clogs are one of the greatest pests of an
oriental city. Chateaubriand, speaking of Galata, near Constan-
tinople, says, that; " the almost total want of women, the want
of wheel-carriages, and the multitude of dogs without masters,
were the three distinguishing features of the city ;" and Le Bruyn,
{escribing another eastern city, says, " great numbers of dog's crowd
the streets ; they do not belong to any one, but either get their
food as they can, or are supported by the charitable, who give
money to bakers and butchers to feed them, and even leave le-
gacies for that purpose." In ancient times, they seem to have
been no less a nuisance than they are to the modern cities of
the east : for we find the sacred writers making several allusions
to the particulars now mentioned regarding the character and
condition of dogs in terms so graphic, and so like what an ob-
server of the present day might use, as to convey the impression
that the ancient inhabitants of Palestine witnessed the same spec-
tacles, and were subjected to the same molestations, as are found
still to exist in all the towns and villages throughout the east.
Thus, the Psalmist, (Ps. lix. 14, 15.) ' At evening they return
and make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city; they
wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied.'
In the 22d psalm, in which he gives a prophetical description
of the sullerings of Messiah, he uses these expressions: 'Dogs
liave compassed me ; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed
me;' aptly representing, under the image of a band of ferocious
dogs attacking a defenceless passenger, the proceedings of the in-
solent and infuriated multitude, who insisted for the crucifixion
of Jesus. To the same features in the character of eastern dogs,
allusion is made in the following passage from Isaiah: — 'The
watchmen of Israel are blind; they are ignorant; they are all
dumb dogs, they cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to
slumber: yea they are greedy dogs, which can never have
enough.' Under this figurative language the prophet described
the indolence, unfitness, and rapacity of the prophets and teachers
of his corrupt age ; the application of his bold metaphors may
easily be made by help of the statements already given, of the dis-
position and habits of the dog in eastern countries; but he
lias included one additional circumstance that remains to be
noticed to complete the description of the oriental breed. He
calls them ' dumb dogs ; they cannot bark ;' and this too is
in exact accordance with what is found to be the case still;
for travellers who have attended to this point, inform us,
that the canine species degenerate so much in hot countries,
that in a short time they lose their voice and cannot bark, so
that they either make a hideous melancholy howl, or, as in some
places, become altogether dumb. These animals, driven by
hunger, greedily devour every thing that comes in their way;
they glut themselves with the most putrid and loathsome sub-
stances that are thrown about the cities, and of nothing are they
so fond as of human flesh; a repast, with which the barbarity of
(he despotic countries of Asia too frequently supplies them, as the
bodies of criminals slain there for murder, treason, and violence,
are seldom buried, and lie exposed till the mangled fragments are
carried oil by the dogs. Many travellers in the east mention
their having met with such disgusting spectacles, and Bruce, in
particular, describes the streets of Goudar, the capital of Abys-
sinia, as strewed with pieces of carcasses, ' and the very courts of
the governors polluted by such remains: while Sir Thomas Roe
presents scenes of a still more revolting nature in Constantino-
ple. With these circumstances in our knowledge, we cannot
be surprised at those parts of the sacred history which describe
the readiness of the do^s to lick up the blood of the much injured
Nabotb; or at the wretched fate of the royal accomplices in (his
murder; with one of whom, the atrocious Jezebel, the dogs had
been BO busy, that when the messenger came to bury her corpse,
' they found no inure of her than the skull, and the feet, and the
palms of her hands.' And we are enabled tojudgealsoof the severi-
ty of the divine judgment upon the guilty and impenitent nations
of old, when the Almighty threatened to visit them, among other
terrible scourges, with multitudes of furious and ravenous dogs :
' I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord; the sword to
slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of heaven, and the beasts
ol the earth to devour and destroy.' (Jer. xv. 3.) The unsocial
1 See note pp 5G8. &G9.
hands : a so punctually was the prophet's prediction ful-
filled concerning this wicked and idolatrous woman !
Having thus settled himself in a quiet possession of
Jezreel, Jehu sent a letter to the nobles, and other great
men, * who were at Samaria, and had the care of the
princes of the blood, to choose out whom they thought
the fittest to sit upon the throne of Israel : but they
being well aware with what intent he did this, and not
unacquainted with the fate of the two kings, he had
already dispatched, returned him a very submissive
answer, wherein they declared themselves entirely at
his devotion. This declaration he took the advantage
of ; so that, in his next message, he commanded them c
and disgusting propensities which the dog exhibits, together with
the general state in which he lives as a wandering outcast, have
made him be regarded, in all ages, by the people of the east, with
the greatest aversion and contempt; and hence one of the
strongest terms which they can ever employ towards one whom
they hold in little or no estimation, is, to call him a dog. Vari-
ous examples of this occur in the course of the sacred history.
' Am I dog,' said the Philistine champion to David, ' Am I a
dog, that thou comest to me with staves ?' alluding to the defences
with which people are obliged to furnish themselves against the
attacks of these furious animals. 'After whom,' said David,
wishing to express his own insignificance as an enemy of Saul,
' after whom is the king of Israel come out ? After whom dost
thou pursue ? after a dead dog ?' Mephibosheth, by way of ex-
pressing his own humility, and thereby magnifying the liberality
of king David towards him, said ' What is thy servant that thou
shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am ?' Aimer, when
accused of an odious crime, by his master Ishbosheth, made this
indignautreply : ' Am I a dog's head, that thou chargest me to-day
with a fault concerning this woman ;' that is, am I the head, the
foremost and most headstrong of a band of grovelling dogs, that
thou treatest me so ?' Hazael, too, when informed by the sor-
rowing prophet of the dreadful cruelties he would perpetrate on
the land of Israel, when he ascended the throne of Syria, the
haughty soldier indignantly repelled them as an imputation on
his honour. ' But, what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do
this great thing ?' — Jamieson's Eastern Manners. — Ed.
a Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre ; the wife of
Ahab, and mother of Jehoram, kings of Israel; the mother-in-
law of Jehoram king of Judah ; and the aunt of Ahaziah, who
was likewise king of Judah. — Calmel's Commentary.
b The words in the original, which our translation has follow-
ed, are, ' Jehu wrote letters, and sent to Samaria, unto the rulers
of Jezreel, to the elders, and to them that brought up Ahab's
children, (2 Kings x. 1.) But then, the question is — How the
rulers of Jezreel came to be at Samaria ? Some have ima-
gined indeed a mistake in the transcriber, and that, instead of
Jezreel, the word should be Israel, which is no great variation :
but why may we not suppose, that, upon hearing how Jehu had
slain Jehoram, the great men of his court might take the chil-
dren, and, for fear that they should fall into his hands, flee with
them to Samaria, as the capital and strongest place in the king-
dom, where they might think of defending themselves against his
usurpation, and, as his letters seem to import, of filling, with one of
Ahab's family, the vacant throne. It was customary for princes
of the blood, in those days, to be brought up in the families of the
prime nobility of the nation; and therefore, whatever persons of
this quality had these princes under their care, and saw the revolu-
tion that was likely to happen, they might think it the most advis-
able way to hasten "ith them to Samaria, as a place of the most
security: or, fur thievery reason, Jehoram, when he went against
Ramoth Gilead, mighl have sent them thither, that they might
he under euver from any ill accident that might possibly happen
in his war with the king of Syria. — Patrick's Commentary and
Poole's Annotations. [Instead of the words of the text (2 Kings
x. i.), as given in this note, Boothroyd translates, ' Jehu wrote
letters, and sent to Samaria, unto the elders of the city,' which
the whole context slmus to In- the true leading.] — En.
e Besides the accomplishment of the divine decree, Jehu had
this farther design in requesting this cruel service of the rulers
and elders, anil gnat men of the nation, namely, that thereby
he might engage them in the same crime and conspiracy with
598
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[Book VI.
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
to send him the heads of all the princes, who a were no
less than seventy ; b and on this likewise being punctually
obeyed, without any farther delay, he proceeded to ex-
tirpate every one that remained of Ahab's family, the
great men of his court, and all his friends. For, in his
way to Samaria, meeting with some nephews and other
relations of Ahaziah, who, c knowing nothing of these
transactions, were going to pay a visit to the court at
himself. For, by prevailing with them to murder Ahab's kins-
men in this manner, he tied them to his interest so closely, that
if any of the inferior people had been minded to oppose his de-
signs, they were, by this means, deprived of any man of figure
and distinction to head them ; and not only so, but, by this ex-
pedient, Jehu thought likewise that he might, in a great measure
justify, at least lessen the odium of his own cruel and perfidious
conduct ; for this is the sense of his appeal to the people, ' Ye be
righteous; behold I have conspired against my master, and slew
him; but who slew all these?' (2 Kings x. 9). As if he had
said, " I own, indeed, that I was a great instrument in taking off
the late king; but am I more culpable than are the friends, the
counsellors, the officers of Ahab? I pretend not to conceal my
fault; but the approbation which the principal men of the nation
have given it, in taking up arms against the house of Ahab, and
the wonderful success that has attended this enterprise of mine,
are not these a certain proof that God has raised me up to execute
his decree in this respect? And ought you not to acknowledge,
in this case, the interposition of his hand?" — Calmet's Commen-
tary.
a The sacred historian takes care to repeat the number of
these princes of the blood in two separate places, (2 Kings x. 1.
and 6.) on purpose to show the vile spirit of these great men,'
who could destroy so many royal persons, to whom they were
governors, and to whom they owed a just protection and defence ;
and therefore it was no more than they deserved, if, when Jehu
' slew all that remained of the house of Ahab, and all his great
men, till he left none,' he included in that number, as some im-
agine, these base perfidious time-servers. — Patrick's Commen-
tary.
b It appears from the text that Jehu caused the heads of
the king's sons to be piled up in two heaps at the gates of
the palace. "Such barbarities, shocking as they are, are
iar horn being uncommon in the east, and so gratifying a spec-
tacle does a number of enemies' heads seem to arlbrd to the
savage princes of that quarter of the world, that there is scarcely
any one country there, even the most advanced in civiliza-
tion where instances may not be found, of sovereigns and
chiefs adorning the walls and avenues of their palaces with
those bloody trophies. On passing one of the gates of the sera-
glio in Constantinople, which stood open, Carne saw lyin°- a
number of heads of the wretched Greeks, which the boys were
tumbling about like footballs. A traveller, who was invited
to the court of the dey of Algiers, says the first object that
struck his eyes, were six bleeding heads, ranged alon°- the en-
trance to the palace ; and Sir John Malcolm informs us, that at
the storming of Ispahan, where the slaughter was beyond all
description, Timour ordered 70,000 heads to be piled up as a
monument of his conquest. So fond are eastern conquerors of
these sanguinary trophies, that prisoners have been known to be
put to death in cold blood, in order that a greater number of
b.-ads might be dispatched from the seat of war to the victorious
monarch, and so callous are the persons charged with the ar-
rangement of them, that they often selected a head of peculiar
appearance and long beard, to grace the summit of the pyramid
Brutal and savage, then, as it was, the conduct of Jehu has its
parallel in the habits of so many other eastern princes, that it must
be imputed, less to the barbarous temper and ferocity of the man,
than the delight in blood and cruelty common to all uncivilized
people.' —Janueson's Eastern Manners. Ed.
<• Jehu must certainly have made wonderful expedition and
secrecy in what he did, to have prevented the report, which
generally spreads very fast, of what had passed at Jezreel Two
kings and a queen killed, the whole family of Ahab extinct, and
a general change and revolution in the state; and yet not a word
of tins known at Jerusalem, which was not quite fourscore miles
u.stant from Jezreel, even though Ahaziah the king of Judah,
ms ono of the princes that were slain._C«teV Commentary.
4516. A. C. 895. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 1 CHRON.
Samaria, he ordered these likewise, which in all amount-
ed to the number of forty-two, to be slain ; and so, to
give a better face to what he did, taking d Jonadab the
son of Rechab, a man of great strictness and sobriety of
life, into the chariot with him, e lie proceeded on his
journey to Samaria.
d Several learned men are of opinion, that this Jonadab was
not the person who gave the precepts mentioned in Jeremiah,
(ch. xxxv.) to his children, but another of that name, who lived
in the days of Jeremiah ; for it is not likely, they think, that a
man addicted to such a quiet and retired life as he instituted,
would have come to meet Jehu ; and therefore they rather im-
agine, that it was some military person of great note and esteem
among the populace, whose interest might do Jehu great service,
and whose advice in many things he afterwards followed. But
why might not Jonadab, how well soever he might love retire-
ment, come, upon this occasion, to congratulate Jehu's zeal
against idolatry, and to advise and encourage him to proceed in
fulfilling the will of God revealed to him? And the reason is
obvious why Jehu might be glad of the countenance and company
of such a man, whose known piety would gain him more rever-
ence and respect, than the attendance of any great captain could
procure him. But, though Jonadab the son of Rechab is allowed
to be a good man, yet it does not therefore follow, that he reviv-
ed the ancient rules of the Rechabites, as some are apt to think,
upon a religious account, but purely as a matter of policy. The
story is this: the Rechabites were of the race of Hobab, or Jethro
the Kenite, priest of Midian, and father-in-law to Moses, (1
Chron. ii. 55.) so that the Kenites were Midianites, and the
Midianites were dwellers in tents from the b^ginning; for in
this manner Abraham lived while he sojourned in the land of
Canaan; and, in imitation of him, the Midianites, who were of
his posterity, might do the same. Now, when the children of
Hobab, who were all Kenites, were invited by Moses to go along
with the people of God into Canaan, they might retain this pas-
toral manner of life, not only as a badge of the nation from
whence they were descended, but as a means likewise to make
their habitation more quiet and secure, in a land where they were
strangers, both from the envy of the Jews at home, and the
danger of enemies abroad. For, having neither houses nor lands,
but tents and cattle only, which they could move upon occasion
from place to place, they could not be so subject to hostile inva-
sions. But as, in length of time, these Kenites were tempted,
by the more pleasant living of the Israelites, to think of changing
this custom of their ancestors, this Jonadab the son of Rechab, a
famous Kenite, and of much esteem and authority among them,
took occasion to renew it again, and to bind his posterity to
observe it; for which end he forbade the drinking of wine, lest
the desire of so delicious a liquor might tempt them to plant
vineyards, and build houses, as the Jews did. What authority
he had to enforce these arbitrary injunctions, we cannot learn.
It is plain, that he laid his posterity under no curse in case of
disobedience; on the contrary, we find, that the prophet Jere-
miah, (ch. xxxv. 2, &c.) was directed by God to bring them to an
apartment in the temple, to set wine before them, and invite
them to drink ; which would have been an unworthy action, if
they had been under an indispensable, obligation of abstaining from
it; and, on the other hand, the Rechabites refused it, not because
their father laid them under any curse if they disobeyed him,
but because he promised, that ' they should live many days in
the land wherein they were strangers,' if they obeyed his voice
(Jer. xxxv. 7.) ; which promise, being also made to those who
' honoured their parents,' (Exod. xx. 12.) might the more incline
them to that strict obedience, for which they are so highly com-
mended by God in the place above cited. Upon the whole,
therefore, it appears, that Jonadab only renewed what his ances-
tors had observed long before he was born ; and that his authori-
ty prevailed among his brethren to continue this abstinence
for two hundred years after he was dead, not as a matter of reli-
gion, but as a mere civil custom. — Patrick's Commentary and
Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 6. c. 2.
e 2 Kings x. 15. 'And he gave him his hand.' In token of
acknowledging a newly elected prince, it was not uncommon, or
inconsistent with the reverence due to his character, to take him
by the hand. D'Herbelot, (p. 204.) in explaining an eastern
term, which he tells us signifies the election, or inauguration of
a khalif, he informs us, that this ceremony consisted in stietch-
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
599
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4516. A. C. 895. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON
As soon as he was come to Samaria, he first destroyed
all that were left of the house of Ahab in that city, and
then, pretending- that he designed to offer an uncommon
sacrifice unto Baal, he issued out a proclamation, com-
manding all his priests, prophets, and worshippers,
upon pain of death, to be present at this great solemni-
ty. They all came, and when they, and they only, for
(•are was taken, that none of the servants of the Lord
should be among them, were met together in Baal's
temple, and the a priests in their proper vestments, he
commanded his guards to go in, and fall upon them,
and kill them all. After this, they ran to the temple of
Baal, broke down his image, and the * other images of
the like nature, and burned them publicly. They demo-
lished the temple quite, laid it flat with the ground ; and,
that the place whereon it stood might in all future ages
be looked upon as despicable, they made it a c common
jakes.
Thus entirely did Jehu destroy the family of Ahab, and
(lie worship of Baal in the kingdom of Israel ; for which
lie was so far approved and rewarded by God, that he
entailed the crown upon his family to the fourth genera-
tion : but policy prevailed against religion, and per-
suaded him to continue the old idolatry, even when he
had destroyed the new. The calves which Jeroboam
had set up, he would not part with : and therefore God,
to make him sensible of his displeasure, stirred up
Hazael king of Syria to invade his country ; who, having
taken several of his frontier towns, did thereby open a
ing forth a person's hand, and taking that of him that they
acknowledged for khalif. This was a sort of performing homage,
and swearing fealty to him. — Harmer, vol. iii. p. 330. This
was also sometimes done as a token of friendship and fidelity.
(Gal. ii. 9). With this view it was also practised by the
Romans, as appears from Virgil: " My father Anchises frankly
gives the youth his right hand, and fortifies his mind by that
kindly pledge." — En.
a It was the custom of almost all idolaters to be very curious
about the external pomp of their ceremonies, wherein, indeed,
the chief part of their worship does consist. All the priests of
Baal were clothed in fine linen, and their chief priests, no doubt,
had some particular ornaments to distinguish them. Baal and
Astarte were Phoenician deities: and therefore, as Silius Itali-
CUS, in his description of the priests of Hercules, has given us an
account in what manner the Phoenician priests, when in their
office, were habited, we have reason from thence to suppose,
that the dress of the priests of Baal was much of the same kind.
" Nor while sacrificing it is their custom to wear variegated
robes; their bodies are covered with white linen, and the head
is ornamented with Pelusian cloth. It is the part of those wearing
flowing garments to offer frankincense, and according to the usage
of their forefathers, to assume the sacrificial robe of the high
priests."
f> These idolaters, besides the supreme God whom they took
Baal to be, worshipped several other lesser gods, whom they call
Haalim, and whose images were placed in this temple: for it
was an ancient custom, as Servius notes, after the priest had
invoked the particular god for whom the sacrifice was intended,
to address himself to all the other gods, lest any of them should
think themselves neglected. — Patrick's Commentary.
c The histories of the east furnish us with several examples of
princes inflicting this kind of punishment upon such as were
found guilty of high treason, or of contravening the king's com-
mands. To this the decree which Darius made in favour of
the Jews plainly alludes: 'whosoever shall alter this word, let
timber be pulled down from his house, and, being set up, let him
be hanged thereon; and let his house be made a dunghill ' (Ezra
vi. 1 1.) And, to the same purpose, is that threat of Nebuchad-
m z/ar to the magicians, &c. ' If ye will not make known unto
me the dreams, with the interpretation thereof, ye shall be cut
in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill.' Dan. ii. 5.
way to make great ravages in several other places of his
kingdom, especially in the country beyond Jordan,
where the tribes of Manasseh, Gad, and Reuben suffered
much. In a word, we may say of Jehu, that, as his
conduct was of a mixed nature, God rewarded his obedi-
ence, but punished his idolatry; who, after he had
reigned eight and twenty years, died, and was buried in
Samaria, and, without any opposition, was succeeded by
his son Jehoahaz.
Jehoahaz, to preserve the crown of Israel from uniting
with that of Judah, pursued the same method that his
predecessors had done, in relation to the political wor-
ship of the golden calves; so that, during his whole
reign, God sorely afflicted both him and his people, by
delivering him into the hands of Hazael, and his son
Benhadad, the third Syrian king of that name, who
reduced him to that low ebb, that he had no more than
50 horsemen, 10 chariots, and 10,000 foot soldiers left.
At length, through the many defeats he had received,
and the grievous oppression under which he laboured,
grown weary of life as well as government, after a very
troublesome reign of seventeen years, he died, and was
succeeded by his son Joash, a prince more fortunate,
and not altogether so irreligious as his father. But, to
inquire a little now into the affairs of the kingdom of
Judah.
When Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, and wife to
Jehoram king of Judah, understood that Jehu had slain
her son Ahaziah, being a very ambitious, bloody-minded
woman, and resolving to take the government upon her-
self, d she destroyed all the children that Jehoram had
by another wife, and all their offspring, that so she might
ascend the throne without any opposition. Jehoshaba,
the sister of Ahaziah by the father's side, but not by the
mother's, was, at this time, married to Jehoiada, the
high priest ; and while Athaliah's executioners were
murdering the rest, she stole away e Joash, the son of
d The consideration of the fate that attended these royal
families, is enough to make any one bless providence for having
been born of a meaner parentage. The whole offspring of Jero-
boam, Baasha, and Ahab, kings of Israel, was cut oft' for their
idolatry, so that there was not one left; and the kings of Judah,
having contracted an affinity with the house of Ahab, and being
by them seduced into the same crime, were so destroyed by thn e
successive massacres, that there was but one left. For, fii>t,
Jehoram slew all his brethren ; then Jehu slew all his brother's
children ; and now Athaliah destroys all the rest that her execu-
tioners could meet with. Enraged she was to see Ahab's family
cut off; and therefore she resolved to do as much by the house
of David. As she was one of Ahab's family, she had reason to
apprehend that Jehu, who had a commission to extirpate all,
would not be long before he called upon her: her only way there-
fore, to secure herself against him, was to usurp the throne; but
this, she knew, she could not do without destroying all the royal
progeny, who were no well-wishers to the worship of Baal, which
she had abetted, and was resolved to maintain. — Poole's Anno-
tations, Patrick's Commentary, and Bedford's Scripture Chron-
ology, b. (i. c. 2.
c Some interpreters are of opinion, that Joash was not the
real son of Ahaziah, in whom the race of Solomon, in a direct
line, was extinct, but properly the son of Nathan, and only
railed Ahaziah's, because he succeeded him in the throne: for had
he been Ahaziah's true son, and Athaliah's grandson, why might
not she have declared him king, and during his minority at least,
taken the administration into her own hands? But therefore
she exercised her cruelty, as they say, in destroying the princes
related to Ahaziah, because she was unwilling to have the king-
dom go into another branch of David's family. But notwith-
standing these reasons, and the authority of those who produce
(300
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[Book VI.
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
Ahaziah, and kept him, and his nurse concealed a in an
apartment b of the temple, * for the space of six years.
In the seventh year, his uncle Jehoiada, being deter-
mined to place him upon the throne of his ancestors,
and to this purpose having engaged the priests and Le-
vites, and the leading men in all the parts of the king-
dom, in his interest, in a public assembly produced him,
and made them take an oath of secrecy and fidelity to
him. Then putting himself in a proper posture of de-
fence,* he distributed the arms which David had re-
posited in the temple, among his people, whom he di-
vided into three bodies, one to guard the person of the
king, and the other two to secure the gates of the temple,
that none might be permitted to enter, except the priests
and Levites, who were to officiate, upon pain of death.
After this he brought out the young prince, set the
crown on his head, e put the book of the law into his
them, in the second books both of Kings and Chronicles, we
find this Joash so frequently called the son of Ahaziah, the
the king's son, &c, without any manner of restriction, that we
cannot be persuaded to look out for any other father for him.
a Josephus relates this young kind's escape and concealment
thus: — " Jehoshabath, the sister of Ahaziah, and wife to Jehoiada
the high priest, coming into the palace, found a male child, of
about a year old, whose name was Joash, among the dead bodies
of the sons of Ahaziah, whom the nurse, it seems, had there laid
on purpose to save its life ; she therefore conveyed it away to
her own lodgings, and thence to the temple, where she took care
of it, through the whole six years of Athaliah's reign, without
making any one privy to the secret, except her own husband ;"
who, upon this extraordinary occasion, might dispense with the
law, or rather custom, which allowed none but the priests who
officiated, to lodge in the apartments of the temple. — Jewish
Antiq. b. 9, c. 7. and Calmet's Commentary,
b In the text, 2 Kings xi. 2, it is called a ' bed-chamber.' A
bed-chamber does not, according to the usage of the east, mean a
lodging room, but a repository for beds. Chard in says, " In the
east, beds are not raised from the ground with posts, a canopy,
and curtains; people lie on the ground. In the evening they
spread out a mattress or two of cotton, very light, of which they
have several in great houses, against they should have occasion,
and a room on purpose for them." From hence, it appears that
it was in a chamber of beds that Joash was concealed. — Harmer,
vol. ii. p. 489. — Ed.
c It is very likely, that Athaliah might imagine that she had
slain all, and so think herself secure ; or if she suspected that this
one was preserved, she might not think it advisable to make any
strict search, lest thereby she should alarm the people with the
notion, that there was still a son of David's family left, which
might be a means to make them uneasy under her government,
and desirous of a change ; besides that she might have the vanity
to think of being able, in a short time, to secure the crown to
herself, in such a manner as that she should not need to fear
such a weak competitor. — Poole's Annotations.
d The captains and other officers, who were admitted to the
knowledge of Jehoiada's design, came into the temple unarmed,
for fear of giving suspicion; but as David had erected a kind of
sacred armoury in one of the apartments of the temple, wherein
the weapons, and other trophies which he, and several other
generals, had gained from their enemies, and as monuments of
their victories, had dedicated them to the Lord, were deposited,
Jehoiada took care, upon this occasion, to have this magazine of
military provisions opened, so that there was no want of any sort
of arms. — Joseph Antiq. b. 9, c. 7.
e Those who think that the word Eduth, which we translate
testimony, comes from the Hebrew root Adah, which signifies
to clothe, put on, or adorn, suppose that it vvas some royal
ornament, which the high priest put upon the king, as a mark of
regal dignity, at the same time that he placed the crown upon his
head; and this ornament they conceive to have been a bracelet,
because in the story of the Amalekite, we read, that he brought to
David the bracelet that was upon Saul's arm, as well as the
crown that was upon his head. But since, in the 17th chapter
of Deuteronomy, which treats expressly of the election and duty
4510. A. C. 895. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
hand, and because his right had been interrupted,
anointed him, and with the sound of the trumpet pro-
claimed him, which was seconded with the joyful shouts
and acclamations of the people.
Athaliah, hearing the noise, made all the haste she
could to the temple ; but when, to her great surprise, she
saw the young king on a throne, which was erected / in
an eminent place, 8 and the people and great men about
him rejoicing, she rent her clothes, and cried out,
Treason ! But Jehoiada soon silenced her : for having
commanded the guards to seize and carry her out of the
temple, and to put all to the sword who should pretend
to rescue or assist her, they immediately executed their
orders ; and taking her out of the sacred ground, brought
her, without any opposition, to the stable-gate belonging
to the palace, and there slew her.
Joash, being thus seated on the throne, by the high
priest's directions, made a covenant with the people,
that they should restore the true worship of God, con-
tinue in it, and root out all idolatry ; and then he made
another between himself and the people, viz., that he
should govern according to law, and that they should
be mindful to obey him. When this was done, the multi-
tude rose, destroyed the temple, demolished the altar,
broke down the images, and killed Matan, the priest of
Baal, who was then in waiting. After this, Jehoiada
abolished some corruptions, which former reigns had in-
troduced, made some reforms in the service of the
of a king, there is this injunction given — ' That he should write
him a copy of the law in a book, out of that which is before the
priests, the Levites,' ver. 18 — others, with more probability, have
thought, that, at his coronation, a roll, containing a copy of the
law, which is frequently called a testimony, as being a witness of
God's will and men's duty, was put in his hands, which he held
for that time, in the way of a sceptre or a truncheon ; though
others will have it, that when Jehoiada crowned Joash, he
laid the book of the law upon his head, to which custom holy
Job (ch. xxxi. 35, 36.) as they think, seems to allude, when he
wishes, ' O that mine adversary had written a book! Surely I
would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me?'
For the manner among the orientals, when they had received a
letter from any person they highly respected, was to hold it up to
their heads, before they opened it. — Patrick's and Calmet's Com-
mentaries, and Poole's Annotations.
f The words in the text are, ' And when she looked, behold
the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was.' (2 Kings xi. 14.)
Now there were two famous pillars, which Solomon erected in the
porch of the temple, whereof that on the right hand was called
Jachin, and that on the left Boaz, and were each of them, ac-
cording to the account we have, eighteen cubits high, (1 Kings
vii. 15. 21.) Solomon's design in setting up these two pillars,
is generally supposed to have been, in order to represent the pil-
lar of the cloud, and the pillar of fire, which went before the
Israelites, and conducted them in the wilderness. The pillar on
the right hand represented the pillar of the cloud, and that on
the left the pillar of fire ; and near one of these pillars, in all
probability, the royal throne was erected ; unless we can suppose,
that what is here called a pillar, was that brazen scaffold, five
cubits long, five broad, and five high, which Solomon made at
first, upon his dedicating the temple, but was afterwards continued
for the king, upon any solemn occasion, to appear upon, and
where doubtless there was a throne of state. — Calmet's Commen-
tary and Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. 6. c. 2.
g From various testimonies it appears, that a seat erected near
a pillar or column, was particularly honourable and distinguish-
ing. Homer furnishes an instance of this kind. Speaking of
Ulysses, he says —
The monarch by a column high enthron'd
His eye withdrew, and fixed on the ground.
Udyss. xxiii. 93. Pope.
The same custom is also twice mentioned in Odyss. b. viii.
See also Kings xxiii. 3. — Ed.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
601
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1008; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4522. A. C. 883. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CITRON.
temple, and then, with all the rulers, and officers, and
people, conducted the king to the royal palace, and put
him into a quiet possession of the kingdom of Judah.
Seven years old was Joash when he began to reign,
which was in the seventh year of Jehu king- of Israel ;
and, while he was under his uncle Jehoiada's guidance
and direction, he governed the nation very well : but
when once that good old counsellor died, (who in the a
130th year of his age paid the last debt to nature, and in
consideration of his many great services done the public,
had the honour to be buried in one of the royal sepul-
chres,) he fell into the hands of such persons as were idol-
aters in their hearts, ami they, taking the advantage of
his youth, * by their crafty management and insinuations,
first obtained a license for themselves to worship such
idols as they should think fit, and then proceeded to
delude him into the like apostasy.
In the beginning of his reign, he was very solicitous
about the house of God, wherein he had so long, and so
happily been concealed ; and, as it was greatly gone to
decay, through the negligence of former princes, and the
depredation of Athaliah's children, he took no small
pains to settle revenues, and procure contributions for its
reparation. c But now, by his connivance at least, if not
a This the historian takes notice of, as a life remarkably long
in those days ; and yet our learned Usher has observed, that in
an age not far remote from our time, several men outlived this
period. The words of Joseph Scaliger, which he quotes, are to
this effect, — " Several persons we could mention, that have lived
120, 125, and 130 years, whom we knew, have seen, and well
remember: but, in the year 1584, there was at Paris a miracle
of an old man, who bore arms under Louis XI. and at the age
of 140 years and upwards, had the use of his limbs and faculties
entire." But not a greater miracle was he, than our Thomas
Parr, the sou of John Purr of Wilmington, in the county of Salop,
who abode with his father as long as he lived, but. after his decease,
married his first wife at the age of eighty. With her he lived
for the space of two and thirty years, in which time, being con-
victed of adultery with another woman, he did public penance in
the church of Alderbury, when he was 105. In his 122d year,
he married his second wife, who abode with him as long as he
lived: hut at length he was brought up to London by the earl of
Arundel and Surrey, in the year IG'35, and shown to the king of
Great Britain, when he was some months more than 152 years
old. Two years after this he died in Arundel house, and might
probably have lived some years longer had he continued in his
native air. — Chronologia Sacra, c. 12.
b The Jews have a fancy, that the courtiers, who after the death
of Jehoiada got possession of Joash, flattered him with a conceit,
that he himself was worthy of divine honours, who had been
brought up in the house of God, a favour that was never granted
to a mere man, and that the king's being pleased with this kind
of flattery, provoked (Jod to send upon him the calamities we
afterwards read of; even as the angel of God smote Herod, for
assuming the glory to himself, when the people, in commenda-
tion of his oration, said, ' That it was the voice of a gud, and not
of a man.' (Acts xii. 22.) But this is mere fancy. If the
princes of Judah wanted to obtain a toleration from the king for
their idol worship, it would have been highly absurd for them to
go about to persuade him that himself was a god, since they that
have the folly to establish their own adoration are always very
jealous of the worship of any other. Their making obeisance
therefore to the king, denotes the humble posture wherein they
represented their petition,, that they might not be confined to
unnecessary and troublesome journeys, in coming to Jerusalem to
worship, but be indulged the liberty, which their forefathers bad,
of worshipping God in high places; which, when they had once
obtained, they knew they might then worship idols, without ob-
servation or disturbance. — Patrick's taxi CaJmefs Commentaries,
and Poole's stimulations.
c Jehoiada, the high priest, is supposed to die in or near the
three and twentieth year of king Joash's reign, so that Joash
might be about thirty years old uhon the princes of Judah seduc-
by his own example, men began to forsake the temple of
the Lord, and to addict themselves to the worship of
idols and groves consecrated to false gods ; insomuch
that the divine vengeance was kindled both against the
king and people of Judah, whereof they had notice
by several prophets ; but all to no purpose. At length
the Spirit of God stirred up Zechariah, the son of Jehoi-
ada, the high priest, to remonstrate against the general
impiety ; which he did in such strong terms, that the
king was offended at his freedom, and d little remember-
ing the kindness of his father and mother, to whom he
was indebted for his own life, gave orders to destroy the
son ; so that a band of ruffians, appointed for that pur-
pose, fell upon him, and, in one of the courts of the
temple, stoned him to death, calling upon God to avenge
his cause.
And it was not long before the great avenger of all
violence and wrong effectually did it ; for the very next
year the Syrian army under Hazael passed the Jordan,
and marching directly to Jerusalem, slew in their way
all the princes and great men that had seduced their
king to idolatry.
Joash was in no condition to make any resistance ;
and therefore, to redeem himself from the miseries of a
siege, took all the rich vessels which his ancestors had
devoted to the service of God, and all the gold that was
laid up in the treasures of the temple, besides what was
found in the royal treasury, and sent it as a present to
Hazael to prevail with him to withdraw his troops. Ha-
zael, for the present, might withdraw them : but, e the
next year theymarchedagain into the territories of Judah ;
and though Hazael was not there in person, defeated
the forces which Joash sent against them, made great
havock in the country, entered Jerusalem, put some of
the princes and rulers to the sword, and treated Joash
himself with no small indignity and contempt. But this
ed him to idolatry: and this makes it the more wonderful what
possibly could give occasion to such a shameful change, in so
advanced an age, unless we can suppose that the conduct of the
priests in embezzling the money collected for the reparation of
the temple, whereof he complains to Jehoiada, (2 Kings xii. 7.),
might curdle his temper, and give him some disgust. — Le
Clerc's Commentary, and Howell's History in the notes.
d This sin, besides the contempt of God's prophet, and of the
sacred place where he was murdered, had an horrid ingratitude
in it, f.ince Zechariah was the son of him to whom the king
owed his life and kingdom, and who himself assisted his
father in his unction, as some think; because it is said that
' Jehoiada and his sons anointed him,' (2 Chron. xxiii. 11.) But
if Jehoiada was high priest, tin's sou is not reckoned among the
successors of Aaron, (1 Chron. vi.)and therefore it is likely that
he was a younger son of Jehoiada; for, had he been the eldest,
he would have had sufficient authority, without the spirit of pro-
phecy, to have reproved Joash for his idolatry. Ludovicus
Capellus therefore thinks it probable that his brother, the high
priest, connived at the king's apostasy, and that this younger
brother was inspired by God to reprove it; which boldness Joash
and his courtiers thought they might punish with some other
colour, by alleging that he was not moved to it by the Spirit of
God, but by a rash anil pragmatical temper of his own, which
they incited tin: people to ehasii-e. — Patrick's Commentary.
c It is highly probable that, besides the present of gold which
Joash sent Hazael, in order to bribe him to withdraw his army,
he had made him a promise of an annual tribute; and that upon
his refusal to pay it, the Syrian army took the field the in xi year,
and as the expression in the text is, 'executed judgment upon
Joash,' (2 Chron. xxiv. 21.) For, according to the author of the
Jewish traditions upon the second book of Chronicles, while
they killed his children before his eyes, they upbraided him with
the cruel and unjust death of Zechariah. — CalmeCs Comment.
4 a
602
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[Book VI.
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was not .all ; for no sooner was the Syrian army departed,
but the distemper, or rather that complication of distem-
pers, wherewith, some time before, (iod had afflicted
Joash, grew worse and worse ; so that being confined to
his bed, two of his own servants, Zabad and Jehozabad,
conspired against him, and a slew him ; who, after a
reign of forty years, was succeeded by his son Amaziah,
and buried in the city of David, but b not in the royal
sepulchres.
Aniaziah was five and twenty years old when he be-
gan to reign, and for some time behaved tolerably well,
though he followed the example of his ancestors in letting
the high places stand, and in suffering the people to offer
sacrifice and burn incense there. c As soon as he
found himself settled in the throne, he very justly took
revenge of the two traitors that had murdered his father :
but d their children he did not touch, because it was
contrary to the law that ' ' children should be put to
death for their fathers.' About four and fifty years be-
fore his accession, the Edomites had revolted, in the
reign of Jehoram, from the kingdom of Judah ; and
therefore, having a design to reduce them to their former
subjection, he new-modelled and new-officered his army,
and upon a general muster found them to be no less
than e 300,000 fighting men : but, thinking these too
few for his intended expedition, he hired of die king of
Israel 100,000 more, for whom he / paid him 100
1 Dent. xxiv. 16.
a These two murderers, (mongrel fellows, whose fathers were
Jews, hut their mothers aliens,) perhaps were of his heclchamber;
and, having constant access to the king, might more easily ac-
complish their design : however, he was so weak and feeble that
he could make no resistance, and had fallen into that contempt
and disesteem, that his guards minded not what became of him.
— Patrick's Commentary.
b Though the people could not punish wicked kings for their
impieties while they lived, yet they fixed an odium upon their
memory when they were dead ; whereby they both preserved the
sacredness of their supreme power, (as Grotius, On the Law of
ff'ar and Peace, b. i. c. 3. sect. 16. speaks,) and kept kings in
some measure under awe for fear of what might befall them
after their decease. — Patrick's Commentary .
c It seems that these two assassins continued to be men of
weight and interest at court, even after they had murdered their
king; for his son, we may observe from 2 Kings xiv. 8. retained
them in his service for some time, nor durst he venture to exe-
cute justice upon them, until he was well settled in his authori-
ty, and had divested those of all power who were their friends
and abettors. — Patrick's Commentary.
d In this he acted like a good man, and contrary to the wicked
customs of many kingdoms, where, if any one be guilty of high
treason, not only he, but his children likewise, who are neither
conscious nor partakers of any of his traitorous practices, are
equally devoted to destruction, lest they, forsooth, should form
any faction against the prince, or seek revenge for their father's
death. — Lc Clcrc's Commentary.
c Hence some have made an observation, how much the ini-
quities of the people of Judah had diminished their numbers
since the days of Jehoshaphat, which was a space of but eighty-
two years: for this king could bring no more than 300,000 men
into the field; whereas Jehoshaphat brought almost four times as
m u ly . — Patrick's Commentary.
f If these be reckoned for talents of silver, as they generally
are, each talent, at 125 pounds weight, and each pound weight
at £4 in value, the whole will amount to £50,000 sterling,
which will be but ten shillings to each man, officers included.
Very low pay! unless we suppose, that this whole sum was
given to the king of Israel for the loan of so many men, and
that the men were to have their pay besides ; or rather, that
they were to have no other pay but the booty which they
took from the enemy; and that this was the true reason why
they were so exasperated at their dismission, as to ' fall upon
talents ; but, S by the direction of a prophet whom God
sent to him on purpose to dissuade him from employing
these auxiliaries, they were, with much ado, discharged,
and himself went in person against the Edomites with
none but his own men, the people of Judah. However,
being thus shamefully dismissed, as they thought, they
were not a little exasperated against Aniaziah ; and
therefore, in their return home, they plundered all the
towns in their way, killed no less than 3000 men, and
carried away a considerable booty, to make an amends
for the plunder they had promised themselves in the
Edomitish war.
Aniaziah, as we said, with none but his own forces,
marched against the Edomites. In the h valley of salt
he gave them battle, slew 10,000 upon the spot, and
took 10,000 prisoners. From thence he marched to
Selah, l the metropolis of Arabia Petraea, of which he
soon became master, and from the top of the rock where-
on the town stood, 3 threw the ten thousand he had taken
prisoners headlong, so that they were all dashed to
pieces.^
the cities of Judah, from Samaria even unto Beth-horon,' (2
Chron. xxv. 13.) They went very probably first to Samaria,
where they complained to their own king of the bad treat-
ment they had received from Amaziah, and desired some re-
paration to be made them for the affront put upon them, and
the loss of the profit which they might have made in the war;
but, finding him not inclinable to make them satisfaction, they
immediately fell foul upon the territories of Judah, and, from
Samaria, for that is the place of their setting out, even to Beth-
horon, a town not far distant from Jerusalem, ravaged the coun-
try, and did the mischief here mentioned ; which they might
more easily do, because the war with Edom had drained the
country of all the forces that should have opposed them. —
Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries on 2 Chron. xxv. 6. 13.
g The Jews will needs have it, that this prophet was Amos,
the father of Isaiah ; but their tradition is built upon a mistake,
namely, that Amos the prophet was Isaiah's father.
h This valley lay towards the land of Edom, and was so called,
either from the salt springs which were therein, or from the salt
that was dug up there. — Patrick's Commentary on 2 Sam. viii.
13.
» Selah, in the Hebrew tongue, signifies a rock, and so exactly
answers to the Greek word petra, that most commentators, with
veiy good reason, have agreed, that this Selah is the same with
Petra, the metropolis of Arabia Petraea, and from whence, as
some imagine, the whole country took its name ; though others
think, that, as this city had its situation on a rock, so the adja-
cent tract was called Arabia Petraea from its being overspread
with such rocks, or rocky hills. — WeUs' Geography of the Old
Testament, vol. iii.
./That this was an ancient punishment among the Romans, we
may learn from Livy, Plutarch, and several others ; as Mr Selden
(de Synedriis, b. 1.) observes, that it was in use among other
nations; but we do not find it commonly practised among the
Jews. It is not in the catalogue of the punishments which Moses
enacts; neither was it ever inflicted by any regular judicature;
and therefore one would think that the Edomites, either by some
such like cruelty to the people of Judah, had provoked them to
make a retaliation in this manner, or that they were, in their very
disposition, so apt to revolt, that there could be no keeping them
in subjection, without some such sad exemplary punishment as
this. — Calnwt's Dissert, on Punishments, and Le Clerc's Com-
mentary on 2 Chron. xxv. 12.
k 2 Chron. xxv. 12. This mode of punishment was practised
by the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Jews. In Greece,
according to the Delphian law, such as were guilty of sacrilege
were led to a rock, and cast down headlong. (JElian, Far.
Hist. b. xi. c. 5.) The Romans also inflicted it on various
malefactors, by casting them down from the Tarpeian rock. (Livy
Hist. b. vi. c. 20.) Mr Pitts, in his account of the Mahometans,
(p. 10,) informs us, that in Turkey, at a place called Constantine,
a town situate at the top of a great rock, the usual way of exe-
cuting great criminals is by pushing them off the cliff. This
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
603
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But his cruelty to the captives was not the worse thing
he was guilty of in this expedition. In his return, he a
brought with him the idols of Edom, to which he paid
adoration, and offered incense ; which thing provoked
the Lord so, that he sent a prophet to reprove him for
his apostasy, and to threaten him with the destruction
which in a short time came to pass. For, being now
elated with his success against the Moabites, and resent-
ing the affront which the Israelitish army had lately put
upon him, he b sent Joash king of Israel a challenge to
meet and engage him in a pitched battle.
Joash, as it deserved, c received the message with
contempt : but when he found that Amaziah was hereby
but the more irritated, and persisted in his purpose of
fighting, he met him, and gave him such a reception, that
he routed his army, took him prisoner, and carried him
d to his own city of Jerusalem ; where he entered in
is also mentioned as a capital punishment by Tacitus, (Annals,
b. ii. c. 39.)— Ed.
a Idolatry, at the best, can no ways be apologized for; but no
reason can be invented, why any person should make the objects of
his adoration such gods as could ' not deliver their own people out
of their enemies' hands,' as the prophet very justly reproves Ama-
ziah, (2 Chron. xxv. 15.), unless we suppose that the images of
these gods were so very beautiful, that he perfectly fell in love
with them, or that he worshipped them for fear they should owe
him a spite, and do him some mischief, in revenge for what he
had done against the Edomites. How much more wise were the
sentiments of Fabricius Maximus, upon the like occasion, who,
having conquered Tarentum, and being asked, what should be
done with their gods ? bid them leave them with the Tarentines,
" for what madness is it," as he adds, " to hope for any safety
from those who cannot preserve themselves ?" — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
b Josephus, in his account of this transaction, tells us that
Amaziah wrote an imperious letter to the king of Israel, " com-
manding him and his people to pay the same allegiance to him
that they had formerly paid to his ancestors David and Solomon ;
or, in case of their refusal, to expect a decision of the matter by the
sword." Others think that he intended no war by this message,
but only a trial of military skill and prowess, or a civil kind of in-
terview between his men and those of Israel ; for had he purposed
to act in a hostile manner, lie would have assaulted them on a
sudden, and not given them this warning to stand upon their
defence. The words of the message are, ' Come let us look one
another in the face,' (2 Kings xiv. 8.) Much of the same kind
with what Abner said to Joab, ' Let the young men now arise,
and play before us,' (2 Sam. ii. 14.) But how polite soever the
expressions may be, in both cases, they had in them the formality
of a challenge, as both the king and general, who were not unac-
quainted with military language, did certainly understand them.
So that the truth of the matter seems to be this: — Amaziah
being encouraged by his late victory, determined to be revenged
for the slaughter of his ancestors, by Jehu, (2 Kings ix.) and for
the late spoil which the Israelites had made in his country ; and
thereupon resolving to have satisfaction, but in a fair and honour-
able way, he sent them this open declaration of war, but con-
ceived in as mild terms as any thing of that harsh nature could
be. — Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
c It was a custom among the oriental people to deliver their
sentiments in parables, in which they made a great part of their
wisdom to consist : and considering the circumstances of the per-
son he addressed to, who was a petty prince, flushed with a little
good success, and thereupon impatient to enlarge his kingdom, no
similitude could be better adapted than that of a thistle, a low con-
temptible shrub, but upon its having drawn blood of some travel-
ler, growing proud, and affecting an equality with the cedar, a tall
stately tree that is the pridt; and ornament of the wood, till in
the midst of all its arrogance and presumption, it is unhappily
trodden down by the beasts of the forests, (2 Kings xiv. 9.) which
Joash intimates would be Amaziah's fate, if he continued to pro-
voke a prince of his superior power and strength. — Lc Clcrcs,
Oil/net's, and Patrick's Commentaries.
J Josephus relates the defeat and captivity of Amaziah after
triumph, plundered the temple and palace of all tl at
was valuable, laid a tax upon the land, carried off hos-
tages e for the security of the payment ; and that, in case
of any failure in this respect, the city might lie open to
his invasions, he broke down all the fortifications of the
wall, from the gate of Ephraini to the corner gate, about
400 cubits in length, and so / returned to Samaria.
After this shameful defeat, Amaziah lived above fifteen
years ; but we read of nothing remarkable concerning
him, save that, persisting still in his idolatry, he conti-
nued under God's displeasure, and at length fell under
the contempt of his subjects ; insomuch that some of s
the inhabitants of Jerusalem formed a conspiracy against
his life, which he, having some intelligence of, endea-
voured to escape by flying to Lachish, a town on the
frontiers of the Philistines ; but all in vain : for the con-
spirators sent after him, and had him there privately
murdered ; which, when his friends understood, they
brought his corpse, without any state or formality, to
Jerusalem, where he was buried among his ancestors,
and, after a reign of nine and twenty years, was suc-
ceeded by his son Azariah, who, in the book of Chroni-
cles, is called Uzziah. But to turn our thoughts now to
the kingdom of Israel.
In the beginning of the reign of Jehoash, king of
Israel, which was in the h thirty-seventh year of Joash,
this manner: — " No sooner were his men advanced within sight
of the enemy, but they were instantly struck with such a panic
terror, and consternation, that they turned their backs, without
striking a blow ; and flying several ways, left Amaziah prisoner
in the hands of his enemies, who refused to give him quarter
upon any other terms than that the citizens of Jerusalem should
set open their gates, and receive him and his victorious army into
the town ; which, between the pinch of necessity and the love of
life, they were prevailed upon to do: so that Joash entered the
town in his triumphal chariot, through a breach of 300 cubits of
the wall, that he had caused to be made, with his prisoner Ama-
ziah marching before him. — Jewish Antiquities, b. 9. c. 10.
e These hostages were, in all probability, the great men's sons
of the city, whom Joash took along with them, as a security that
the kingdom of Judah should give him no farther molestation.
/He never intended to make a thorough conquest of the king-
dom of Judah, nor did he leave a garrison in Jerusalem ; but
contenting himself with what spoil he could get, he made all con-
venient haste home, because he had work enough at this time
upon his hands, to defend his territories against the daily invasions
of the Syrians. — Patrick's Commentary.
g What provoked the people of Jerusalem more than any other
part of the nation, against their king, was, their seeing their city
spoiled of its best ornaments, exposed to reproach, upon account
of the great breach that was made in their wall, and several of
their children carried away as hostages for their good behaviour;
all which they imputed to their king's mal-administration.
Whereupon they entered into a conspiracy against him, which
makes some commentators say, that he lived in a state of exile at
Lachish, the space of twelve years, not daring to continue long in
Jerusalem after the defeat which Joash had given him. But our
learned Usher has placed this conspiracy in the last year of Ama-
ziah's reign, as Jacobus Capellus, in his Sacred and Foreign
History, supposes that it was set on foot by the great men of
Jerusalem, upon the specious pretence of being guardians to the
young prince, and taking better care of him than his father was
likely to do. — Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
h The synarchies, or joint reigns of father and son, in these
times have rendered the chronology a little difficult, as it is in
this case: for in 2 Kings xiii. 1. it is said, that Jehoahaz, king
of Israel began to reign in the twenty-third year of Joash king of
Judah, and reigned seventeen years; from whence it follows,
that Jehoash began to reign, not in the thirty-seventh, but in the
thirty-ninth or fortieth year of Joash king of Judah: but by this
it only appears, that he reigned three of these years in conjunc-
tion with his father. — Howell's History in the notes and Pairiek's
Commentary.
604
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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king of Judah, the prophet Elisha fell sick of a disease,
whereof he died. The king of Israel, upon this occa-
sion, came to visit him ; and having much a lamented
the loss which all Israel would have by his death, he
received his blessing, and dying counsel to wage war
against the Syrians with all courage and bravery ; giving
him assurance, and, b by the emblem of a bow and arrows,
making him sensible of the several victories which God
had decreed that he should obtain.
This was the last prediction of Elisha that we read of,
for soon after this he died ; but it was not the last mira-
cle that we find he did : for, some time after his inter-
ment, 8 company of Israelites, as they were going to
bury a dead person, perceiving a band of Moabites c
making towards them, d put the corpse for haste into
a His words are, 'My father! my father! the chariot of
Israel, and the horsemen thereof,' (2 Kings xiii. 14.) which are
the wry same that Elisha used concerning his master Elijah,
when he was taken up into heaven, (2 Kings ii. 12.) signifying
the great authority he had maintained among them, included in
the word 'father,' and the many glorious victories which he had
obtained for them, by the efficacy of his counsels and prayers. —
Patrick's Commentary '.
b This was a symbolical action, whereby the prophet intended
to represent the victories, which he had promised the king of Israel
against the Syrians more fully and plainly to him. His shooting
the first arrow eastward, or to that part of the country which the
Syrians had taken from his ancestors, was a declaration of war
against them for so doing; and his striking the other arrows
against the ground, was an indication how many victories he was
to obtain; but his stopping his hand too soon, denoted the imper-
fection of his conquests, which did not please the prophet so well,
and for what reason we shall see in the course of the objections. —
he Clerc's Commentaries. ["It was an ancient custom to
shoot an arrow or cast a spear into the country which an army
intended to invade. Justin says that, as soon as Alexander the
Great had arrived on the coasts of Ionia, he threw a dart into the
country of the Persians. ' When they had reached the continent,
Alexander first threw a javelin as if upon a hostile land.' (Just.
1). ii.) The dart, spear, or arrow thrown, was an emblem of the
commencement of hostilities. Virgil (Mn. ix. 51.) represents
Turnus as giving the signal of attack by throwing a spear: —
• Who first," he cried, " with me the foe will dare?"
Then hurled a dart, the signal of the war.
Pitt.
Servius, in his note upon this place, shows that it was a custom
to proclaim war in this way: the pater patratus, or chief of the
feciales, a sort of heralds, went to the confines of the enemy's
country, and, after some solemnities, said with a loud voice ' 1
wage war with you, for such and such reasons:' and then threw
in a spear. It was then the business of the parties thus defied
or warned to take the subject into consideration; and if they did
not, within thirty days, come to some accommodation, the war
was begun. — Dr A. Clarke's Commentary. — Ed.
^ c These Moabites were not such a gang of robbers as some-
times infest our roads, but a regular body of men, well appoint-
ed, and under proper officers, to the number of a small army,
who made incursions into the territories of Judah and Israel,
generally at the beginning of the year, which is the season pro-
per lor armies to take the field ; and therefore some have observed
that the month Nisan, which, with the Jews, is the first in their
year, had its name from Nisim, which signifies the ' engines of
war,' which were usually set up in that month; in like manner as
the month, which we call March, and, in part, answers to the
Jewish Nisan, had its name among the Romans from Mars,
their god of war; because most nations, at that time, began their
military expeditions.— Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
d The common places of burying among the Hebrews, were in
the field-, in caverns dug into a ruck, with niches for the corpses
to be placed in, and, at the entrance of the sepulchre, then- was
a hewn stone, which might be removed or replaced without any
damage to the tomb. The Jews, as Josephus informs us, gave
Elisha a pompous and honourable interment, answerable to the
dignity and merit of so great a prophet; but he does not tell us
Elisha's tomb, which, as soon as it had touched his
body, e immediately revived, so that the man stood upon
his feet, and went home, no doubt, with the company.
This miracle, which was a divine confirmation of the
truth of all Elisha's prophecies, could not fail of being
a powerful means to encourage Jehoash in his engaging
in war with the Syrians. Nor was his success less than
the prediction ; for, / in three pitched battles he van-
quished Benhadad, (his father Hazael being then dead,)
recovered all the cities that had been taken from his
father Jehoahaz, and reunited them to the kingdom of
Israel. After this he lived quiet from all enemies, until
Amaziah king of Judah gave him the small disturbance
we have spoken of : but, after the victory which he gained
over him, we hear no more of his appearing in the field,
and may therefore conclude that, after a reign of six-
teen years, he died in peace, and was succeeded in his
throne by his son Jeroboam.
In the fifteenth year of Amaziah king of Judah, this
Jeroboam, the second of that name, began to reign over
Israel, and by S the encouragement which the prophet
where the place of his sepulture was. Hereon some have imagin-
ed, that he was carried to Abelmeholah, the place of his nativity, to
be there interred among his ancestors: others think that he was
at first buried on Mount Carmel, a favourite place of his, and
afterwards removed to Samaria: others again say, that he was
buried at Nineveh; and, to this very day, the inhabitants show
his monument at Mosul, which was built, as they say, upon the
very same spot where old Nineveh stood. But the most prevail-
ing opinion, founded upon a constant tradition, is, that he was
buried somewhere in the neighbourhood of Samaria, because there,
in all appearance, he died. The tomb, however, that is usually
shown for his in that city, can be nothing more than the reposi-
tory of his remains, since his original burying-place was cer-
tainly at some distance from it. — Jewish Antiq. b. ix. c. 9.
e Josephus, in his account of this transaction, varies a little
from the sacred history : for " it happened, after Elisha's burial,"
says he, " that a traveller was killed upon the way by some
thieves, and his body thrown into Elisha's monument, which,
upon the bare touch of the prophet's corpse, instantly revived."
The Jewish doctors, who love to improve upon every miracle,
tell us that this person, whom they pretend to call Sellum, after
he was revived, did presently die again, because he was a wicked
man, and did not deserve to live long; never considering, that
his hasty death afterwards was the ready way to impair the credit
of the miracle, and make it indeed of no effect. However this
may be, it is certain, that by this miracle, as we find it related
in Scripture, God did the highest honour to his prophet, and
confirmed the truth of what he had promised to the king of Israel,
as well as the certainty of a future life ; in which sense some
part of the character, which the author of Ecclesiasticus, (chap,
xlviii. 12,) gives him, may not improperly be understood:
' Elisha was filled with Elijah's spirit; whilst he was not moved
with the presence of any prince, neither could any bring him
into subjection: no word could overcome him; and after his
death his body prophesied: he did wonders in his life, and at his
death were his works marvellous." — Jeu-ish Antiq. b. ix. c. 9. and
Calmcl's Commentary.
f We have no particulars of the war between Jehoash and the
Syrians, nor can we tell where these three battles were fought;
but the success of them was so great, that the king of Israel not
only retook all the places that had been lost in his own domin-
ions, but repulsed the enemy into their own country, and there
obtained a signal victory over them. — Patrick's Commentary.
g The only mention we have of this prophet, whom the Jews
will have to be the son of the widow of Zarephtha, whom Elijah
raised from the dead, but without any foundation of reason, is in
this passage, and the account of his famous mission to Nineveh.
What the prophecies were, whereby he encouraged Jeroboam to
proclaim war against the king of Syria, we have no where record-
ed ; but as we have not every thing which the prophets did write,
so several prophets, we must know, did not commit their pre-
dictions to writing, From this place, however, we may observe
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
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Jonah gave him, proved successful in many military
achievements. He recovered a large territory, which
several kings had taken from his predecessors, even all
the country from Libanus on the north, to the Lake
Asphaltites, on the south ; but especially on the east of
Jordan, whereby he enlarged those conquests which his
father Joash had made : and whereas Hamath and Da-
mascus had, in the days of David and Solomon, been
tributaries to the kings of Judah, but had now revolted
from Israel, he conquered them again, and a made them
pay homage to him, as they had formerly done to his
predecessors. So that, after a long reign of * one and
forty years, wherein his arms were all along successful,
he c died in much honour and renown, and was buried
with his ancestors ; but whether it was through wars
abroad, or through discord and dissention at home, he
left the government in such confusion, that after his
decease, there was an interregnum for the space of two
and twenty years.
During the time of this interregnum, Jonah, d the son
of Amittai, who had prophesied before, in the time of
Jeroboam, was now sent upon another errand. His com-
mission was expressly to Nineveh, whither he was to
go, and to exhort the inhabitants to repentance, be-
that God was very merciful to the Israelites, though they were
certainly a xury wicked people, in continuing a race of prophets
among them, even after Elisha was dead. — Patrick's Comment.
a Some are of opinion, that when Jeroboam reconquered these
two chief cities of Syria, he restored them to the kingdom of
Judah because they belonged to it of right, and reserved to him-
self only a small tribute to be paid him by the way of acknow-
ledgmeut. This is what the original Hebrew, as well as the
Ckaldee and Septuagint versions seem to favour: but the Syriac
and Arabic translators have omitted the word Judah, and may
therefore be supposed to think, as several others do, that Jeroboam
kept to himself all those places which he had recovered at his
own hazard and expense. — Calmefs Commentary.
b This was much longer than any of the kings of Israel had
reigned: for even Jehu himself, though his reign was longer than
that of any who went before him, reigned but twenty-eight years ;
God having on purpose prolonged this prince's reign, because
he «as not minded to 'blot out the name of Israel from under
heaven,' but to save them by his hand.— 2 Kings xiv. 27.
c The prophet Amos, who lived in the reign of this prince,
was accused by Amaziah the priest of Bethel, for prophesying
1 that Jeroboam should die by the sword ;' but Amos never made
any such prediction. It was a false accusation which this idola-
trous priest sent against him, because he was desirous, to have
him removed out of the way. — Amos. vii. 10, &c.
(/It is a very common opinion among the Jews, as we said, that
Jonah was the widow of Zarephtha's son; and this opinion they
bund upon the words of the mother, when she received her son
alive from the prophet's hand: ' By this I know, that the word
of the Lord in thy mouth is truth,' (1 Kings xvii. 24.) for there-
fore, say they, was the child called the son of Amittai ; because
Amittai signifies truth: a weak reason, God wot ! and such as is
plainly repugnant to the testimony of Scripture. For this we
know for certain, that Jonah lived in the reigns of Joash and
Jeroboam the Second, kings of Israel, and therefore could not be
the widow of Zarephtha's son, since the former of these princes
did not begin to reign till sixty years after the translation of Eli-
jah. Others pretend that he was son to the Shunamite woman,
whom the prophet Elisha raised from the dead ; but Shunam and
Gath-hepher, where we are certain .Jonah was horn, were two
quite different places, the former in the tribe of Issachar, the
other in that of Zebulun; and therefore, we may conclude, that
Amittai was the proper name of Jonah's father, who lived in a
little canton of the tribe of Zebulun, called Ilopher or Hopher,
wherein was the town ofGath, which is generally believed to be
the same with Jotapata, so famous for the siege which Josephus
t.ie Jewish historian, there maintained against the Roman army,
a little before the destruction of Jerusalem. — Calmct't Ptvfaceon
Jonah, and his Dictionary under the word.
cause the ' cry of their sins had reached heaven.' But
instead of obeying the divine command, the sacred history
informs us that he bent his course another way, and in-
tending to retire to Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, embarked
at Joppa, e a seaport on the Mediterranean ; that as
as soon as he had well got to sea, an unaccountable storm
arose which gave the mariners a suspicion, that some great
malefactor was got on board, upon whose account the
heavens seemed so very angry ; / that therefore calling-
all the people together, they made them cast lots, in order
to know who this guilty person was ; that when the lot
fell upon Jonah, he freely owned, that he was a Jew,
who w orshipped the God of heaven, and not only a Jew,
but a prophet likewise, who had been ordered to go to
Nineveh, but was now endeavouring to rlee from the
divine presence ; that since he found it was impossible
to do that, and every one's life, upon his account, was in
such imminent danger, he wished them to throw him
overboard, as the only way to appease the storm ; that
with some reluctancy, S the seamen did it, whereupon
there immediately ensued a calm, which struck the
e Joppa is a seaport town in Palestine, upon the Mediterra-
nean, and was formerly the only port which the Jews had upon
that coast, whither all the materials that were sent from Tyre,
towards the building of Solomon's temple, were brought and
landed. The town itself is very ancient; for profane authors
reckon it was built before the flood, and derive the name of it from
Joppa, the daughter of Elolas, and the wife of Cepheus, who was
the founder of it. Others are rather inclined to believe, that it
was built by Japhet, and from him had the name of Japho, which
was afterwards moulded into Joppa, but is now generally called
Jaffa, which comes nearer to the first appellation. The town is
situated in a fine plain, between Jismia to the south, Casarea of
Palestine to the north, and Rama or Ramula, to the east; but at
present is in a poor and mean condition; nor is its port by any
means good, by reason of the rocks which project into the sea.
The chief thing for which this place was famous, in ancient pagan
history, is the exposition of Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus
king of Egypt, who, for her mother's pride, was bound to a rock,
in order to be devoured by a sea monster, but was delivered by
the valour and bravery of Perseus, who afterwards married her;
for in the times of Mela and Pliny, there were some marks
remaining, as they themselves testily, namely, Mela, b. i.e. 11;
Pliny, b. v. c. 13; Joseph, on the Jewish U'ars, b. iii. c. 15, of
the chains wherewith this royal virgin was bound to the rock which
projects into the sea. But all this is mere fiction, first founded
upon the adventure of Jonah, who set sail from this port, and
then improved with the accession of some particular circum-
stances. — Calmefs Commentary on Jonah, i. 3.
f The Jewish doctors, who are great lovers of prodigies, are
not even satisfied with what they meet with in this history of
Jonah, but have over and above added, that as soon as the ship,
wherein he was embarked, was under sail, it all on a sudden
stood stock still, so that it could be made to move neither back-
ward nor forward, notwithstanding all the pains that the mari-
ners took in rowing: but others, with more probability say,
that while all the rest of the ships were quiet and nnmoiestl <l,
the storm fell upon none but that wherein Jonah was, which
made the seamen think that there was something miraculous in
it; and thereupon called upon the company that sailed with the in,
to come and cast lots, as the superstitious custom among the
heathens was, whenever they were in any great distress: that
accordingly they cast lots time different times, which still fell
upon Jonah; and that they let him down several times with a
rope, without plunging him into the sea, and as often as they
did it, found the storm abate, and whenever they pulled him up
again, found it increase: so that at last they were forced to
commit him to the mercy of the waves: all which are circum-
stances which the Scripture account neither favours nor contra-
dicts.— l 'chiiil's ( iniiiiH ntiiry.
i/ The people of the cast have a tradition, that it was not above
four leagues from Joppa, over agaiust Antipatris, that the sea-
men threw Jonah overboard.
606
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people with such devotion, that they offered a sacrifice to
the Lord, and made their vows ; that in the mean while
God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, in
whose belly he continued for three days and three nights,
and then upon his supplications to heaven, was thrown
out upon the shore ; that being thus wonderfully deliver-
ed, he disputed the divine command no longer, but
made the best of his way to Nineveh, which, at that time,
was a very large city, and having got into the heart of
it, delivered his message, namely, that within forty days
that city should be destroyed, with great boldness and
intrepidity ; that the people of Nineveh, believing this
message to be sent from God, proclaimed a a most solemn
fast, and from the highest to the lowest, putting on
sackcloth, * and addressing their prayers to God, showed
such tokens of sorrow and repentance, that he reversed
their doom, or at least deferred it for some years ; that
Jonah being sore displeased at this, as fearing that it
might bring some disgrace upon his prophetic office,
after some expostulations with God, retired out of the
city, and having built him a booth, sat under the cover
of it, to see what the end would be ; that while he was
here, God c caused a gourd to spring hastily up, which
a The history tells us, that ' by a decree from the king and
his nobles, neither man nor beast, neither herd nor flock were
allowed to taste any thing, but were kept up from feeding and
drinking water,' (Jonah iii. 7.) This was carrying their absti-
nence to a greater severity than what we find practised among the
Jews. For though in times of public calamity, and on the day
of solemn expiation, we find that they made their children fast,
as we may gather from Joel ii. 16, yet we nowhere read of their
extending that rigour to their cattle. Virgil indeed, in one of
his eclogues, brings in a shepherd, telling his companion, that
for the death of Julius Ctesar, the mourning was so general, that
even the sheep and other creatures were not driven to water.
But then the question is, whether this may not be looked upon
as a poetical exaggeration. From Homer, and some other an-
cient authors, we learn, that when any hero, or great warrior
died, the custom was to make his horses fast for some time, and
to cut off part of their hair; nor may we forget mentioning,
what some historians tell us, of the people inhabiting the Cana-
ries and Peru, namely, that in times of great drought, they shut
up their sheep and goats, without giving them any thing to eat,
upon presumption that their loud cries and bleating will reach
heaven, and prevail with God to give them rain. — Horn on the
Origin of the American Nudo7is, b. 2. c. 13.
b The text tells us of the king of Nineveh, that upon the
preaching of Jonah, ' he laid his robe from him, and covered him
with sackcloth, and sat in ashes,' (Jonah iii. 0,) and, what is
pretty strange, some have thought, that the king thus penitent
upon this occasion, was Sardanapalus, a man famous among
heathen authors for his luxury and riches, and in whose reign
the famous city of Nineveh was taken by Arbaces and Belesis.
But others, with more probability, suppose, that it was Pul, the
father of this Sardanapalus, whom some heathen authors call
Anabaxarus, and others Anacyndaraxus. For, as he died, ac-
cording to Usher, about the year of the world 3237, he might be
upon the throne in the reign of Jeroboam II. king of Israel,
which was the time when Jonah was sent to Nineveh. — Calmet's
Commentary, and Usher at A. M. 3254.
c The word Kikajon, by the Septuagint, Arabic, and Syriac
versions, is called a gourd; but most of the ancient Greek trans-
lators, following St Jerome in this particular, choose rather to
render itivy. St Jerome, however, acknowledges, that the word
ivy does not answer the signification of the Hebrew Kikajon,
though he thinks it much better in this place than a gourd,
which, growing close to the earth, could not have shaded Jonah
from the heat of the sun; for the Kikajon, according to him, is
a shrub which grows in the sandy places of Palestine, and in-
creases so suddenly, that in a few days it comes to a consider-
able height. It is supported by its trunk, without being upheld
by any thing else; and by the thickness of its leaves, which re-
by its spreading leaves so shaded his booth from the
heat of the sun, that it pleased him much ; but being-
next morning gnawed by a worm, it withered away,
which so fretted the impatient man, that he even desired
to die ; and that hereupon God took occasion to expos-
tulate with him, and show him the unreasonableness of
his repining at the loss of a plant, which cost him no-
thing, which rises in one night, and dies in another, and
yet having no concern or commiseration for the destruc-
tion of a populous city, wherein there were above
120,000 innocent babes, and consequently the number
of all its inhabitants vastly large ; and with this way of
reasoning-, d we may suppose, he reconciled his prophet's
wayward thoughts to this his merciful methqd of pro-
ceeding. But to return to the affairs of Judah.
After the murder of Amaziah at Lachish, Uzziah, who
is e likewise called Azariah, in the sixteenth year of his
age, / which was in the seven and twentieth year of the
semble those of a vine, affords, in hot weather, a very agreeable
shade. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Kikajon. [" The
best judges say the ricinus or palma Christi, from which we get
what is vulgarly called castor oil, is here meant. It is a tree as
large as the olive, has leaves which are like those of the vine, and
is also quick of growth. This in all probability was the plant in
question, which had been already planted, though it had not
attained its proper growth, and was not then in full leaf. Celsus,
in his Hicrobot., says it grows to the height of an olive tree; the
trunk and branches are hollow like a kex, and the leaves some-
times as broad as the rim of a hat. It must be of a soft or spungy
substance, for it is said to grow surprisingly fast. See Taylor
under the root pp, 1670. But it is evident there was something
supernatural in the growth of this plant, for it is stated to have
' come up in a night;' though the Chaldee understands the pas-
sage thus: " It was here last night and is withered this night."
In one night it might have blown, and expanded its leaves con-
siderably, though the plant had existed before, but not in full
bloom till the time that Jonah required it for a shelter.] — Dr A.
Clarke's Commentary. — Ed.
d The book of Jonah ends as abruptly as it begins: it begins
with a conjunctive copulative, ' and the word of the Lord came
upon Jonah,' so it should be read, which has made some com-
mentators think, that it was but an appendix to some of his other
writings; and it ends without giving us any manner of account,
either what became of the Ninevites, or of Jonah himself, after
this expedition. It is likely indeed, from the compassionate
expressions which God makes use of towards the Ninevites, that
for that time he reversed their doom: and it is not improbable
that Jonah, when be had executed his commission, and been
satisfied by God concerning his merciful procedure, returned
into Judea ; but the author of the lives and deaths of the pro-
phets, who goes under the name of Epiphanius, tells us, that,
returning from Nineveh, and being ashamed to see that his pre-
diction was not fulfilled, he retired with his mother to the city
of Tyre, where he lived in the plain of Sear, until he died, and
was buried in the cave of Cenezeus, judge of Israel ; but who the
author means by Cenezeus, unless it be Caleb, who is frequently
surnamed the Kenezite, though we do not read of his being ever
a judge of Israel, or rather Othniel, who was the son of Kenaz,
and one that judged Israel, we cannot tell. — Cahnet' s Dictionary
under the word Jonah, and Howell's History, in the notes.
e The words are much of the same signification ; for the former
signifies the strength, and the other the help of God.
f Commentators have been at a good deal of trouble to recon-
cile a seeming contradiction in this computation. For if Ama-
ziah, the father of Azariah, lived but fifteen years, after the
beginning of Jeroboam's reign, as appeal's from 2 Kings xiv. 17,
then Azariah must begin his reign, not in the twenty-seventh,
but, if he succeeded his father immediately, in the sixteenth, or
fifteenth rather, of Jeroboam: but our learned Dr Lightfoot solves
this at once, by supposing, that there was an interregnum,
wherein the throne was vacant eleven, or rather twelve years,
between the death of Amaziah and the inauguration of his son
Azariah, who being left an infant of four years old when his father
died, was committed to the guardianship of the grandees of the
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
607
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
reign of Jeroboam king of Israel, succeeded his father,
and, in the former part of his reign, behaved well ; for
which God prospered him in all his undertakings, and
blessed his arms with great success : for he worsted the
Philistines in many battles, dismantled several of their
towns, and built cities in the country thereabout to keep
them in subjection. His next expedition was against
the Arabians that were upon the borders of Egypt, and
Bgainst the Mehunims, who lived in their deserts, whom
he utterly subdued ; and not long after, so terrified the
Ammonites, that they, as the others were, became tribu-
taries to him. He then repaired the walls of Jerusalem,
and, at proper distances, built towers, from whence, "
with engines that threw darts and stones, he might be able
to annoy an invader ; and, as he was a great lover of
husbandry, he employed several plowers and planters in
the plains, vine-dressers on the mountains, and shep-
herds in the valleys, whereby he acquired considerable
wealth. But the chief glory of his kingdom lay in his
army, which consisted of above 370,000 select men under
the command of 2,000 brave experienced officers, all
armed with proper weapons both offensive and defensive,
and trained up in the most perfect manner of martial
discipline.
Thus prosperous was Uzziah in every circumstance of
life, * while Zechariah lived and had him under his
nation, who, during his minority, took the administration of
public a I lairs upon themselves, and when he was become
sixteen, devolved it upon him ; so that when he came into the
full possession of the throne, it was in the seven and twentieth
year of Jeroboam. — Patrick's Commentary,
a This is the first time that we read of any machine, either
for besieging or defending towns; which is plainly the reason
why sieges were of so long a continuance before the invention of
these. Homer, who is the most ancient Greek writer we kiiow
of that treats of sieges, describes a kind of entrenchment, though
a poor one, some lines of circumvallation, and a ditch with pali-
sades; but we hear not one word of any machines, such as the
ballisUe and the catapulta-, which were used forhurling stones and
throwing darts; and therefore we need less wonder that the
famous siege of Troy continued so long. Sardanapalus, king of As-
syria, maintained himself in Nineveh for seven years, because the
besiegers, as Diodorus observes, (b. 2.) wanted such engines as
were fit for demolishing and taking of cities, they being not then
invented. Salmanezer lay three years before Samaria, (2 Kings
xvii. 5, C.) and, as some say, Psammeticus (vid. Aristcas dc
LXX.inlcrp.) twenty, before Azoth. Now of Uzziah it is said,
'That lie made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning
men, to be on the towers, and upon the bulwarks', to shoot arrows
and great stones' (2 Chron. xxvi. 15.); so that it must needs be
a mistake, to attribute the invention of the ballista, the scorpia,
or the onager, whereof Ammianus Marcollinus (b. 23. c. 2.) has
given us the descriptions, to the Greeks or Romans, because we
find them made use of in the east, before ever the Greeks had
brought the military art to any great perfection. Uzziah was
certainly the first inventor of them; and therefore it is said that,
for these and other warlike preparations, 'his name was spread
abroad.' From this time they began to be employed, both in
attacking and defending towns ; and therefore we find the pro-
phet Ezekiel describing the future sieges of Jerusalem and Tyre,
where he makes mention of battering rams, and engines of war,
or, as it should be rendered, ' machines of cords,' which in all
probability were what later ages called their ballista' and cala-
pultn;. — Calmct's Dissertation on the Military Services of the
ancient Hebrews.
b Sume are of opinion that the person here mentioned was a
prophet, and the same with that Zechariah whose book of pro-
phecies is extant in the bible; but, as he wrote in the reign of
Darius, it is plain that he lived almost three hundred years after
this. It is not unlikely, however, that he was the son of that
Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, who, by the command of king
Joash, was slain in the temple; that lie was called after his
4G02. A. C. 809. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
direction ; but when once that faithful counsellor died,
which was in the three and thirtieth year of his reign, he
soon grew so c intoxicated with the thoughts of his power
and greatness, that forgetting himself he would needs
intrude into the priestly office. Accordingly, having
taken it into his head one day to d offer incense, he went
into the sanctuary, and when Ahaziah, and some other of
the priests, endeavoured to dissuade him from it, he fell
into a rage, and received their remonstrances with
threats. God, however, took care to vindicate the
sacredness of the sacerdotal office : for the moment that
he took the censer in his hand, and was going to burn
incense, he was e struck with a leprosy, which no art of
man could ever after cure ; so that, while his son Jotham,
as his father's viceroy, took the public administration
upon him, he was forced to live in a separate place by
himself; and, after a reign of two and fifty years, died,
and was buried, not in the royal sepulchres, but in the
father's name ; was preceptor to Uzziah ; and, though not a pro-
phet, a man very skilful in expounding the ancient prophecies,
and giving instructions out of them, as Grotius understands it. —
Patrick's and Calmct's Cornvientaries.
c How hard a matter is it, says Bishop Patrick, hereupon to
bear great prosperity with moderation, and humble thankfulness!
d What it was that tempted the king to this extravagant
folly, it is hard to imagine ; but the most likely conjecture is,
that he had a vain ambition to imitate heathen princes, who, in
several countries, joined both the regal and sacerdotal offices to-
gether. But, however it may be in all other countries, the
priesthood in Judea was confined to the house of Aaron only, and
every one that pretended to usurp that office, was, by the law of
the land, to be put to death; ' for thou, and thy sons with thee,'
says God to Aaron, 'shall keep your priest's office for every
thing of the altar, and within the veil, and ye shall serve. I
have given your priest's office unto you as a service of gift: and
the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.' (Numbers
xviii. 7.)
e The punishment for such as would intrude into divine
ministrations was capital, we see ; and therefore God smote
Uzziah with such a disease, as was a kind of death ; because it
separated the person that was afflicted with it from the commerce
and society of men, even as if he were departed this world, and,
as the Psalmist expresses it, become ' free among the dead,'
(Ps. lxxxviii. 5.) But, besides the infliction of this disease,
Josephus tells us, "that, the very moment that Uzziah was going
to burn incense, there happened a terrible earthquake, and, as
the roof of the temple opened with the shock of it, there passed a
beam of the sun through the cleft, which struck directly upon the
face of this sacrilegious prince, whereupon he instantly became a
leper; nay, that this earthquake was so very violent, that it tore
asunder a great mountain, towards the west of Jerusalem, and
rolled one half of it over and over a matter of four furlongs, till
at length it was stopped by another mountain, which stood over
against it, but choked up the highway, and covered the king's
gardens all over with dust."' But all this may he justly suspected.
That there was a great earthquake in the reign of Uzziah, is
evident from the testimony of two prophets, (Amos i. 1. and
Zechariah xiv. 8.) but that it happened exactly when Uzziah
attempted this invasion of the priesthood, is far from being clear;
on the contrary, if we will abide by Bishop Usher's computation,
the Jewish historian must be sadly mistaken. For since the
prophet Amos tells us, that he began to prophesy two years be-
fore this earthquake happened, in the reigns of I'zziah king of
Judah, and Jeroboam the second king of Israel; and since we
may gather from the sailed history, that Jeroboam died two years
before the birth of Jotham the son of Uzziah; that Jeroboam
died in the six and twentieth year of the said I'zziah, and
Jotham his son was born in the three and twentieth year thereof,
and yet was of age sufficient to be made regent of the kingdom,
when his lather was thus struck with a leprosy, which must have
In in several years after Jeroboam's death, it must needs follow
that this earthquake could not happen at the time which Josephus
assigns, but must have been much later. — Jotephut't Jewitk
Wars, b. 9. c. 11. and Calmct's- Commentary on 2 Chron. xv. £>.
608
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Boos VI.
A. C. 1003: OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4fi51. A. C. 7S7. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
same field, "■ at some distance from them, because he was
a leper, and was succeeded by his son Jotham.
During the reigr of this Uzziah, there happened some
events, mentioned in other parts of Scripture, which are
not to be found in the books that are purely historical.
Such are that terrible earthquake whereof Amos ' pro-
phesied two years before it happened ; that sore plague
of the locusts, whereof Joel 2 gives us so full and lively
a description ; and that extreme drought, mixed with
fearful flashes of fire, which fell from heaven, and, as
the prophet 3 expresses it, ' devoured all the pastures of
the wilderness, and burned up all the trees of the field.'
But that which we are chiefly concerned to take notice
of, is the succession of prophets in Israel and Judah,
whom God raised up to give them instructions and ex-
hortations, and to denounce his threatenings and judg-
ments against them, upon their persisting in their impie-
ties : and these he appointed, not only to warn them by
word of mouth, as his former prophets had done, but to
commit their admonitions to writing, that posterity might
see the ingratitude of his people, and all other nations,
from their backslidings and punishments, might learn
not to do so wickedly.
The first of these prophets was Hosea, the son of
Beeri, who, according to the introduction to his book,
prophesied in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam
the second king of Israel ; and consequently continued
to be a prophet at least seventy years, unless we may
suppose, as 4 some have done, that this is a spurious
title of some ancient transcribers, and that the true be-
ginning of his work is at the second verse, ' The begin-
ning of the word of the Lord by Hosea.' However this
be, we may observe, that he speaks positively of the
captivity of the ten tribes, and inveighs strongly against
their disorders ; that he foretells, that the kingdom of
Judah should for some time subsist after them, but that
at length they too should be carried away captive be-
yond the Euphrates ; and through the whole lays open
the sins, and declares the judgments of God against a
people hardened and irreclaimable.
The next prophet is Joel, the son of Pethuel. He
mentions the same judgment that Amos does ; and, under
the idea of an enemy's army, represents those vast
swarms of locusts, which, in his time, fell upon Judea
and occasioned great desolation. He calls and invites
the people to repentance, and promises mercy and for-
giveness to those that will listen to the call. He speaks
of the teacher of righteousness, whom God was to send
and of the Holy Spirit which he was to pour out upon
all flesh ; and, in the conclusion, relates what glorious
things God would do for his church in the times of the
gospel.
The next prophet is Amos ; for he lived in the days
of Uzziah king of Judah, and of Jeroboam the second
king of Israel. He begins his prophecies with threaten-
1 Chap. }. 1. ^ * Chap. ii. 2, &c. 3 Joel i. IS.
* Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Hosea.
a Josephus will needs have it, that his body was buried in his
garden, in a monument by itself, forgetting very probably, what
he told us before, that these gardens, at this time, were covered
all over witli rubbish. — Josephus's Jewish ll'urs, b. 9. c. 11. and
Calmet's Commentary on 2 Chron. xv. 5.
ings against the neighbouring nations, that were enemies
to Israel ; then reproves the people of Israel and Judah
for their idolatry, effeminacy, and other sins ; exhorts
them to repentance, without which their hypocritical ser-
vices will do them no good ; foretells their captivity, and
heavy judgments of God ; and, at last, speaks of the
restoration of the church among the Jews, and the happy
accession of the Gentiles.
The next prophet is Obadiah ; for he was contempo-
rary with Hosea, Joel, and Amos. He denounces God's
judgments against the Edomites for the mischief they
had done to Judah and Jerusalem, whom he promises
that they should be victorious over these Edomites, and
their other enemies ; and, at last, foretells their reforma-
tion and restoration, and that the kingdom of the
Messiah should be set up by the ' bringing in of a great
salvation.'
The book of Jonah is a history rather than a pro-
phecy ; and, if it was written by himself, it is a frank
acknowledgment of his own faults and failings, and a
plain evidence, that, in this work, he designed God s
glory, and not his own. For it contains remarkable
instances of human frailties in the prophet, of God's
compassion and condescension to him, and a noble type
of our Saviour's burial and resurrection.
The other prophet that lived in these times was Isaiah,
the son of Amos, whose prophecies may be divided into
three parts. The first part includes six chapters relating
to the reign of Jotham, the six following chapters relate
to the reign of Ahaz, and all the rest to the reign of
Hezekiah. The great design of what he does, is to
foretell the captivity of Babylon, the return of the people
from that captivity, and the flourishing kingdom of the
Messiah : but b the whole book is highly serviceable to
the church of God in all ages, for conviction of sin,
direction in duty, and consolation in trouble ; and it5
author may justly be accounted a great prophet, whether
we consider the extent and variety of his predictions ;
the sublimity of the truths which he reveals ; c the majesty
and elegance of his style ; the loftiness of his metaphors,
or the liveliness of his descriptions. d
b St Jerome, in his introduction to Isaiah's prophecy, tells us,
that his writings are, as it were, an abridgment of the holy
Scriptures, and a collection of all the most uncommon knowledge
that the mind of man is capable of. His words are, " What
shall I say of physics, ethics, and theology? Whatever belongs
to the holy Scriptures, whatever the tongue of man can utter,
and the senses of mortals can perceive, is contained in that vol-
ume."— Jerome's Preface to Isaiah.
c Grotius compares this prophet with the great Grecian ora-
tor, Demosthenes; for in him, says he, we meet with all the
purity of the Hebrew tongue, as in the other, there is all the de-
licacy of the Attic taste. Both are sublime and magnificent in
their style, vehement in their emotions, copious in their figures,
and very impetuous, when they set ofi' things of an enormous
nature, or such as are grievous or odious. But there is one
thing, wherein the prophet was superior to the orator, and that is
in the honour of his illustrious birth, and relation to the royal
family of Judah; and therefore what Quintilian says of Corvinus
Messala, may be justly applied to him, namely, that he speaks
in an easy flowing manner, and in a style which shows him to
be a man of quality. — Grotius on 2 Kings xix. 2. and Quintit.
b. 10. c. 20.
d Who Isaiah was, is uncertain: the Jewish tradition is that
he was of the seed-royal, and nearly allied to Amaziah; but there
is no proof of this assertion. Certain it is, he was much at court,
and his style and manner refined, and particularly elegant ami
lofty. — Hawcis. — Ed.
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CHAP.
II. — Difficulties Obviated and Objections
Answered.
St Paul, speaking of the propagation of the gospel, and
the seeming insufficiency of the means which God had
employed to effect it, has these remarkable words : l * Ye
see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are call-
ed ; but God hath chosen the foolish tilings of the world to
confound the wise, the weak things of the world to con-
found the mighty, the base things of the world, and
things that are despised, yea, and things that are not, to
bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory
in his presence.' And then proceeding to speak of
himself; 2 ' And I, brethren,' says he, ' when I came to
you, came not with excellency of speech, or of wisdom,
declaring unto you the testimony of God ; but was with
you in weakness, and fear, and in much trembling : and
my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words
of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and
of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom
of men, but in the power of God.'
Now, if God in the conversion of the world to Chris-
tianity, made use of instruments in themselves so incom-
petent for the work, lest the work might be imputed to
human powers ; by parity of reason we may presume,
that, in the conversion of the Ninevites, God might not
employ a prophet of the best natural temper and quali-
fications, since Isaiah was then of age, and seems to
have been better fitted for such a mission, that the glory
of the event might not be ascribed to any innate abilities
of the prophet, but to the sole power of God which
accompanied him, and 3 ' made the foolishness of his
preaching,' as the apostle expresses it, ' effectual to save
them that believed.'
We must not imagine, however, that, in his address to
the people of Nineveh, the prophet had nothing to say but
this one sentence, ' Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be
overthrown.' This indeed was the sum and substance of
his preaching, but we may well presume that he took
frequent occasions to expatiate upon it ; by reminding
them of the number and nature, and several aggravations
of their offences ; by acquainting them with the holi-
ness, justice, and omnipotence of God; that holiness
which could not behold iniquity without detestation ; that
justice which, sooner or later, would not suffer it to go
unpunished ; and that almighty power, which could, in a
moment, lay the stateliest cities in ashes ; by exhorting
them to repentance from a dread of his impending judg-
ments ; and by instructing them in the method of pacify-
ing his wrath, and affecting a reconciliation with him.
Some of the ancients are of opinion that Jonah re-
ceived no orders from God to limit the destruction of
Nineveh to forty days, because there is no such time
fixed in his instructions ; all that God appoints him to
do is, 4 ' to go unto Nineveh, that great city,' as he calls
it, ' and to preach unto it that preaching which he should
bid him :' and therefore they suppose that the space of
forty days was an addition of the prophet's own, and, for
that reason, not exactly fulfilled ; but there is no occa-
1 1 Cor. i. 86, &c. 2 1 Cor. ii. 1, &c.
* Jonah iii. 2.
1 Cor. i. 21.
sion for charging him with any such falsification, since
the comminations of God are always conditional, a and
answer his gracious purposes much better when they are
averted than when they are executed.
And indeed, though in this case they were averted for
a while, yet, when the people relapsed into their former
iniquities, the prophet's prediction did not fail of its
accomplishment. For, if we take the forty days to de-
note forty years, a day for a year, and the overthrowing
of Nineveh, not to signify its final destruction, but ordy
the subversion 5 of that ancient empire of the Assyrians,
which had governed Asia for above 1300 years, and was
destroyed under the effeminate king Sardanapalus ; then
was the prophecy literally fulfilled, and from its fulfilling
we may trace the time of Jonah's mission.
But though this prophecy of Jonah was not fulfilled at
the end of forty days, as he expected, and at the end of
forty years there was only a destruction of the monarchy,
and not of the city ; yet his miraculous preservation in
the whale's belly gave him such credit, that it was always
believed that the time of its accomplishment Avas uncer-
tain. To this purpose we find Tobit 6 giving his son
Tobias instructions to depart out of Nineveh, ' because
those things which the prophet Jonah spake should cer-
tainly come to pass :' and accordingly', before Tobias
died, he heard of the destruction of Nineveh, which was
taken by Nebuchodonosor and Ahasuerus : 7 for these
two princes being related by marriage, entered into a
confederacy against the Assyrians, and, joining their
forces together, besieged this city, and, after having taken
it and slain Saracus, the king thereof, they utterly de-
stroyed it, and from that time made Babylon the place of
royal residence, and the sole metropolis of the Assyrian
monarchy. Thus was the prediction of Jonah, concerning
the destruction of Nineveh, though not in the time which he
had prefixed, fulfilled ; nor can the delay of it be looked
upon as any breach of the divine veracity, whatever un-
easiness it gave the prophet. The truth of the matter
is, — Jonah was a man of an unhappy temper, peevish
and passionate, and, in this case, fearful of being ac-
counted a false prophet, of having his ministry exposed
to contempt, or his person perhaps to violence from the
Ninevites, because the event did not answer the predic-
tion. And the proper lesson we are to learn from his
behaviour is, — That the gift of prophecy does not alter
men's natural tempers, nor set them above the level of
human frailty : for 8 ' we have this treasure,' as the apos-
tle speaks, ' in earthen vessels, that the excellency of
the power may be of God, and not of us.'
That stratagems in war, and other artifices to delude
and ensnare an enemy, are not prohibited by the lav. of
God, the generality of casuists are agreed ; and there-
fore, upon the supposition that Elisha's speech to Ben-
hadad's men was framed on purpose to deceive, he did
no more than make use of the common privilege which
every nation, engaged in war one with another, is per-
mitted to employ : but upon a nearer examination,
we cannot charge his words with a direct falsehood,
5 Prideaux's Connection, at the beginning.
s Tobit xiv. S, &o. 7 Prideaux's Connection, unnoClS.
B 2 Cor. iv. 7.
a This may he clearly inferred from numerous instances re-
eorded in a&cred history, and is expressly declared in Jer. xxiii.
7— 10.— Ed.
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though we must allow that there is some ambiguity in
them.
When the prophet perceived that the Syrian army had
encompassed the place where he abode, he went out of
the city, and told them, ' ' This is not the way, neither
is this the city,' namely, where they would find the man
for whom they were sent ; because, at that time, he was
come out of the city ; and therefore, if they proceeded
in their march, they would be sure to miss him. But
' follow me, and I will bring- you to the man whom ye
seek ;' and so lie did, but not in the manner, it must be
owned, that they either expected or desired. The whole
conduct of the prophet, therefore, in this respect, was no
more than what the practice of war always allows,
namely, a feint to cover his real designs, and, by coun-
terfeit motions and false alarms, to draw the enemy into
such intricacies, that he might come upon them, and sur-
prise them when they least of all thought of it.
The formality of a lie, as some will have it, does not
consist so much in saying what is untrue, as in making
a false representation of things with a purpose to do
hurt : but the prophet's generous treatment of the enemy,
when he had them at his mercy, shows that he had no
malignity in his intention, no design to make an advan-
tage of their deception ; but, on the contrary, took the
most effectual means, both to cure their inveterate
hatred against the Israelites, and to reconcile them to
the worship and service of the true God, who had wrought
such a miracle for their conviction, as well as the pre-
servation of his prophet.
8 ' He smote them with blindness, according to the
word of Elisha :' but then we are not to imagine that this
blindness was so total that they quite lost the use of their
eyes, but only that it was such a dimness and confusion
in their sight, as hindered them from distinguishing one
object from another, the city of Dothan, for instance,
from the city of Samaria ; even, in like manner, as we
read of the people of Sodom, that when the angels 3
' smote them with blindness,' which they might easily do
by some small alteration, either in their sight, or in the
air, ' they wearied themselves to find out Lot's door.'
They saw the house, it seems, but did not discern the
door, because this sudden disorder in their imagination
might either make the door appear to them like the solid
wall, or the solid wall like so many doors.
This is no more than what happens to several men in
their liquor ; that, though their eyes be open, and can
perceive the several objects that surround them, yet they
cannot discern wherein they differ. And if we may sup-
pose that the Syrian army was under the like dnptxciot,, as
the Greeks very happily term it, we need no longer won-
der that they readily accepted of a guide, who offered
his services, and bespoke them fair, whom they might
indeed take for some deputy of the town, with authority
to deliver up the prophet to them, than that a drunkard,
who, after a long while having lost his way, and found
himself bewildered, should be thankful to any hand that
would promise to conduct him safe home.
4 That Hazael was never, in a strict sense, anointed
by Elijah, to be Benhadad's successor, is evident from
what appears of him in sacred history. For, when he
2 Kings vi. 19. s Ibid.ver. IS. s Gen. xix. 11.
4 Le Clerc's Commentary on 1 Kings xix. 15. and Scripture
Vindicated, part 2.
4651. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
came to consult Elisha, concerning his master's illness,
which was a considerable time after the prophet Elijah's
translation, we find by the whole interview, that he was
entirely ignorant of his own designation for the throne
of Syria, which he could not have been, had h<< been
anointed before this time. Either therefore we muyttake
the word in a figurative sense, to denote no more than
God's purpose or determination, that. Hazael should suc-
ceed in the throne of Syria, to execute the designs of
his providence upon the people of Israel, even as Cyrus,
for the same reason, is called 5 ' the Lord's anointed,'
though he was never properly anointed by God ; or, if
we take it in a literal sense, we must suppose some rea-
son why Elijah waved the execution of that command,
even because he foresaw the many sore calamities which
Hazael, when advanced to the crown of Syria, would
bring upon Israel, and thereupon prevailed with God,
that he might be excused from that ungrateful office, and
that, in his time at least, a succession which would be
attended with such direful consequences might not com-
mence.
It may possibly be thought, indeed, that Elisha's fore-
telling his advancement to the throne might be a spur
and incitement to his ambition ; but the means whereby
he accomplished his design were entirely from his own
wicked and corrupt mind, which would not stay for the
ordinary methods of divine providence to bring it inno-
cently about, but chose rather to carve for himself, and,
by murdering his master, to cut him out a more compendi-
ous way of coming into immediate possession. And this
solves the seeming difficulty of the prophet's sending one
answer to Benhadad, and telling Hazael quite another
story : for when Hazael understood that his master's di-
sease was not mortal, but that, if no violence intervened,
he might easily get over that indisposition, for that is
the sense of ° ' he may certainly recover ;' and, at the
same time, was told by the prophet, that he would not,
however, recover, because he foresaw that violence would
be used to take away his life, as this is the sense of ' he
shall surely die,' Hazael went his way, and not willing
to trust Providence with his master's recovery, took care
the next morning to have him despatched.
There is, however, another, and, as some think, a much
plainer interpretation of the prophet's words : for, since
this is a passage which admits of a various lection, the
adverb lo, as it is in the textual reading, signifies not,
but in our translation, which in this place follows the
marginal, it is rendered, to him : so that, if the He-
brew text be right, as some learned men, upon examina-
tion, have given it the preference, the plain reading of
the words will be, ' Go, say, thou shalt surely not live ;
for the Lord hath shewed me that thou shalt surely die.'
This was the sense of the prophet's answer to Benhadad;
but Hazael, who was a wicked man, went and told him
a quite contrary tiling, on purpose to lull him into a state
of security, that thereby he might have a fairer opportu-
nity of accomplishing his design upon him.
Thus, whether the marginal or textual reading be
right, and consequently, whether the prophet's message
to Benhadad be taken in an affirmative or negative sense,
he cannot justly be charged with baseness and ingrati-
tude ; since, whether he accepted of his present or no, it
5 Is. xlv. 1.
6 2 Kings viii. 10.
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is manifest that he could not return him any false and
delusive answer : and yet the more probable opinion is,
that, in conformity to his practice, in the case of Naaman
the leper, he did, upon this occasion, 'reject the good
things of Damascus ' which Benhadad sent, because the
same reasons which induced him to refuse them from
the hand of Naaman were still in force, and might
equally prevail with him not to accept them from the
hand of Hazael.
Thus, with regard to Benhadad king of Syria, the
prophet stands clear of any imputation of falsehood or
ingratitude ; and, in like manner, if we consider the
matter as it stood, between him and Joash king of
Israel, we shall find no unbecoming passion or peevish-
ness in his conduct, but a great deal of zeal and con-
cern for the honour both of his king and country. For
whether king Joash before this interview with Elisha,
was acquainted or not with the nature of parabolical
actions, whereby prophets more especially were accus-
tomed to represent future events ; by the comment which
Elisha made upon the first arrow that he shot, which he
calls l ' the arrow of deliverance from Syria,' he could
not but perceive that this was a symbolical action, and
intended to prefigure his victories over that nation ; and
therefore, as the first action of shooting was a kind of
prelude to the war, he could not but understand farther,
even though the prophet had said nothing to him, that
this second action of striking the ground with the arrow,
was to portend the number of the victories he was to
obtain. 2 But then, if we may suppose with the gener-
ality of interpreters, that the prophet had apprised him
beforehand, that such was the symbolical intent of what
he now put upon him ; that the oftener he smote upon
the ground, the more would their victories be which his
arms should obtain ; that this was the decree of heaven ;
and that thus, in some measure, his success in Avar was
put in his own power ; the king's conduct was utterly
inexcusable, if, diffident of the prophet's promise, and
considering the vast strength of the kings of Syria more
than the power of God that was engaged on his side, he
stopped his hand after he had smitten thrice ; supposing
indeed, that the prediction would never have been ful-
filled, had he gone on and smitten upon the earth oftener.
Upon the whole, therefore, the prophet had just reason
to be offended at the king for not believing God, who
had done so many signal miracles in favour of the
Israelites ; for not believing him, who, according to his
own acknowledgment, had been a constant defender of
the state, 3 ' the chariot of Israel and the horsemen
thereof,' and now, in his dying hours, was full of good
wishes and intentions for his country ; and, by this un-
belief of his, for eclipsing the glory of his own arms,
and curtailing the number of his victories : for 4 ' thou
shouldest have smitten five or six times,' says the prophet
to the king, ' then shouldest thou have smitten Syria, till
thou hadst consumed it ; whereas now thou shalt smite
Syria but thrice.'
' ' Behold I send unto you prophets, and wise men,
and scribes,' says our blessed Saviour, upbraiding the
Jews with their bloody persecutions of the righteous,
. 4G54. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
1 2 Kings xiii. 17.
* Le Clerc's Commentary on 2 Kings xiii. 19.
8 Ibid. ver. 14. « Ibid. ver. 19. • Mat. xxiii. 3J, &c\
' and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some
of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and perse-
cute them from city to city ; that upon you may come
all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the
blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zechariah,
the son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the temple
and the altar :' and hereupon some names of great autho-
rity have inferred, that the Zechariah, son of the high
priest, whom Joash, king of Judah, commanded to be
slain, was the same with the person whom our Saviour
here mentions ; for though he calls his father by a differ-
ent name, Barachiah, and not Jehoiada, yet this he
might do, say they, to denote the divine graces, which
were so conspicuous in him ; for so the word Barachiah
means.
It must be observed, however, that as there is a differ-
ence in these two persons, not only in regard to their
father's names, but to the place likewise where they suffer-
ed, the one 6 ' between the temple and the altar,' that is, in
the court of the priests, and the other 7 ' in the court of the
house of the Lord,' that is, in the court of the Israelites,
where he was mounted on high, and inveighing against
their idolatry, there are some grounds to believe, that
the Zechariah in the gospel is not the same with him
whose death we find recorded in the Chronicles of the
kings of Judah.
Our blessed Saviour, it must be owned, not only fore-
told the utter excision of the Jews, but described like-
wise several preceding calamities almost in the very
manner wherein their own historian has related them.
Now, in the times of the Jewish war, Josephus 8 makes
mention of one Zacharias, and gives us these ircum-
stances concerning his murder : That he was the son of
one Baruch, a man of the first rank, and of great autho-
rity, virtue, and wealth, a friend to all good men, and a
constant enemy to the wicked ; that his son Zacharias
was, by the zealots of that time, looked upon as a man
so very popular, that they could not think themselves
safe, without taking away his life ; that to this purpose
they brought him before a sham court of their own erect-
ing, where they accused him of a conspiracy to betray
Jerusalem to the Romans, and of holding a criminal
correspondence with Vespasian ; that upon his trial, his
innocence appeared so clear, and the accusations against
him so false and malicious, that their own court, contrary
to their expectation, acquitted him ; but that, after he
was acquitted, two ruffians of their company fell upon
him, and, having murdered him in the middle of the
temple, threw his dead body down the precipice whereon
it stood.
This is the person, as others imagine, that our Saviour
intends; for as he begins with Abel, the first instance of
a person suffering by violence, it is but reasonable, they
think, that he should conclude with one of the latest
among the Jews while their government subsisted ; and
therefore they look upon our Lord's words, not as a
recital of what had been done, but a prediction of what
would be done ; and a glorious evidence it is of his divine
omniscience, which could foretell the names both of father
and son, above forty years before the event happened.
However this be, we must not accuse the father of
u Mat. xxiii. .35. 7 2 Chron. xxiv 21.
" History of the Jewish Wars, b. 1. c. 5
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that Zacharias, who died a martyr in the reign of Joash
king of Judah, of showing a busy and pragmatical spirit,
in placing this Joash, when a child, upon the throne of his
ancestors. Jehoiada, as he was high priest, had a large
authority even in civil affairs ; 1 the dignity of his station
set him at the head of a very powerful body of men, the
priests and Levites ; and his quality, as first judge and
president of the great council of the nation, gave him a
right to defend oppressed innocence, and made it his
duty to oppose the unjust usurpation of Athaliah, who
had no pretence of claim to the crown, and was descend-
ed likewise from a wicked family, which God had parti-
cularly devoted to destruction.
2 The constitution of the nation moreover was such,
that the crown, by divine appointment, was appropriat-
ed to the sons of David ; and therefore the hereditary
right was inherent in him whom he had set up, whose
aunt he had married, whose kinsman he was by birth as
well as marriage, and who upon these accounts, as well
as all necessary qualifications for so high a trust, was the
properest guardian of the succession. For he had a large
share of wisdom and experience, an ardent love for the
public good, courage and activity in his complexion,
and a solid piety towards God ruling in his heart ; and
yet he did not act alone in this important affair, but had
the consent and concurrence of the chief officers, both
civil and ecclesiastic, the special motion and assistance
of God's blessed Spirit, and, as we may suppose, the
direction and encouragement of the principal prophets
that were then alive.
His son indeed was but badly requited for all the
care which his father had taken in setting the crown upon
young Joash, when, in his reign, and by his orders, he
was stoned to death, and as he was expiring, cried out,
3 ' Lord, look upon it, and requite it.' But we must not
by these words imagine that he died with a spirit of
revenge, for far be it from so good a man, but that, by
the spirit of prophecy, he only foretold, that it would
not be long before God would find out some means of
punishing the king for his barbarous usage of him ; which
accordingly came to pass ; for in the following verses
we read, that 4 ' at the end of the year, the host of Syria
came up against him,' and not long after that, 5 ' his
own servants conspired against him, and slew him on his
bed.'
The spirit of the gospel, it must he owned, is of a
much more gentle and forgiving temper than that of the
law, under which we meet with several such imprecations,
especially in the Psalmist, as cannot, without violence,
admit of any other construction. a Our blessed Saviour,
1 Calmet's Commentary on 2 Kings xi. 4.
1 Poole's Annotations. 3 2 Chron. xxiv. 22.
4 Ibid. ver. 23. 5 Ibid. ver. 25.
a It must lie confessed that, at first sight, these imprecations
appear cruel and vindictive, irreconcilable with the gentle
spirit of piety and religion; and some unhesitatingly acknow-
ledging them to be indefensible on Christian principles, rest the
defence solely on their accordance with the character of the
Jewish dispensation; which, say they, did not inculcate that
cordial forgiveness of injuries, and even love of our enemies,
which form an essential and peculiar doctrine of the gospel. In
tin's representation the inquirer will not be disposed to acquiesce,
when he reflects that the Hebrew Scriptures do forcibly enjoin
the duties of forgiving injuries, Exod. xii. 49; xxiii. 4, 5; Lev.
xix. 17, 18; Dent, xxxii. 35; Prov. xi. 17; xix. 11; xx. 22;
xxiv. 29; Zech. vii. 10; of doing good to enemies, Exod xxiii.
4, 5; Prov. xxv 21; Jer. xxix. 7: and of cultivating mutual
4S54. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
in his reasoning with the Jews, tells them, 6 that Moses
did indulge them in some cases, ' because of the hardness
of their hearts ;' not that God ever did, or ever will hu-
mour any man, because he is obstinate and obdurate ;
6 Mat. xix. 8.
kindness and good will, Exod. xxii. 21 — 24; Lev. xix. 17, IS,
34; xxv. 35; Deut. x. 19; Prov. xv. 17; xvii. 17; xviii. 24;
xxvii. 10; David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, extols and re-
commends benevolence and mercy, forgiveness and kindness, to
enemies, Ps. xv. 5; xxvii. 2, et seq. ; xxxiv. 14; xxxvii. 1, 8,
21, 26; xxxviii. 12 — 14; xxxix. 1; xl. 1, 3; xciv. 1 ; ci. 5;
cix. 4, 5; cxii. 5, 9; cxx. 6, 7; exxxiii. 1 — 3; and his own
conduct afforded a noble exemplification of these virtues, as will
be apparent by consulting the following passages: Ps. xxxv. 12
— 15; 1 Sam. xxiv. 1, et seq.; xxvi. 1, et seq. 2 Sam. i. 4, et
seq. ; iv. 8 — 12; xvi. 7—11; xix. 21 — 23. It cannot then be
credited that one so distinguished for tenderness and benevolence
of heart, as well as for pre-eminent piety, could utter any thing
in direct opposition to those feelings of mercy and forgiveness
which he both highly recommended, and exhibited in his own
practice. Independently of this we may rest assured that no
unmerciful and revengeful sentiment was ever suggested by the
Holy Spirit, or ever found entrance into a work of inspiration.
From these observations we may with certainty infer that the pas-
sages in question, however they may appear, were undoubtedly not
intended to convey any bitter and unrelenting malediction. Nor will
they be deemed to do so, provided due allowance be made for the
bold phraseology of oriental poetry, which must generally be receiv-
ed with considerable abatement ; and provided also, they be under-
stood with the reservation which ought to accompany all our
wishes and addresses to the Deity, namely, that he would grant
them only so far as may be consistent with his will and provi-
dence. If the imprecative parts of the book of Psalms be taken
with these limitations, as in reason they ought, they will be found
in substance merely to express a wish that the wicked men spoken
of might receive the just recompence of their deeds, and that the
punishment they deserved might speedily overtake them, if such
were the will of God. The impious and transgressors are those
alone upon whom the Psalmist imprecates the Divine vengeance;
and there is nothing of vindictive feeling in praying for that
which he believed the Divine justice, as well as the Divine pro-
mise were engaged to inflict; while at the same time his entire
confidence in the absolute perfections of the Supreme Being affords
ample evidence that he calls for this vengeance only so far as
might be accordant with the divine attributes of wisdom, good-
ness, and equity. A strong confirmation of this reasoning is
supplied by Ps. xxviii. 4, 5, where he prays the Almighty to
' give them according to their deeds, according to the wicked-
ness of their endeavours ; to give them after the work of their
hands; to render them their desert;' and he immediately sub-
joins as a reason for the petition, and a vindication of it, ' because
they regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operation of his
hands, he shall (will) destroy them, and not build them up.'
Such imprecative addresses are in reality the expression of an
earnest desire that the will of God may be done in earth as it is
in heaven, and that, if it seemed good unto him, he would assert
his own honour as well by the punishment of the iniquitous as by
the preservation of the righteous. The persons to whom the im-
precations refer, were inveterate adversaries, plotting against the
life of the Psalmist, and maliciously intent upon effecting his
ruin. To pray to be rescued from their wicked devices, was
clearly lawful ; and, considering their numbers and persevering
malignity, his escape might seem utterly impracticable without
their entire overthrow or extirpation; a prayer for their destruc-
tion, therefore, was equivalent to a prayer for his own preserva-
tion and deliverance. Besides, they were for the most part not
only personal enemies, but hostile to the people of Israel, rebels
to their heavenly king, and violators of his commands. To desire
the punishment of such characters arose, it may fairly be pre-
sumed, not from personal vindictive feelings, but from a regard
to religion, and hatred of iniquity; and was in fact tantamount
to desiring the Almighty to vindicate his glory by inflicting the
chastisements, which they deserved, and which he has denounced
against the proud contemners of his laws. By many writers the
passages objected to are explained as predictions ; and this is not
at variance with the Hebrew idiom; which admits, under some
circumstances, the use of the imperative for the future as Ps.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
613
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but the sense of the word is, ' that God therefore con- |
nived at some things, because the dispensation under
which they lived wanted proper efficacy to work their
hearts to a greater softness. We are not therefore to
wonder that we find some disparity in the behaviour of a
Christian and Jewish martyr ; but that such prophetical
declarations, concerning the future punishment of ene-
mies and persecutors, were not thought wicked and
uncharitable, even under a more perfect dispensation, we
have the example of the great apostle of the Gentiles to
evince ; who, speaking of Alexander the coppersmith,
who had greatly opposed him, * ' the Lord reward him,'
says he, ' according to his works ;' where it is to be ob-
served that the king's manuscript reads dvcioaau , and
not drraoa'/}, that is, shall or will reward, and most of
the ancient commentators have remarked, that this is not
an imprecation, but a prediction only, not unbecoming
an apostle.
What God says of the king of Assyria, whom he calls
' the rod of his anger, and the staffof his indignation,' is
not inapplicable to Jehu, after he was advanced to the
throne of Israel : ' 1 sent him against the people of my
wrath to tread them down, like mire of the streets, how-
beit, he meant not so, neither did his heart think so,
but it was in his heart to destroy, and cut off nations not a
few.' Jehu indeed made great ostentation of ' his zeal for
the Lord,' and declared that, during his administration,3
1 Young's Sermons. * 2 Tim. iv. 14
3 Whitby's Commentary on the New Testament.
xxxvii. 27; Gen. xx. 7; xlii. 18; xlv. 8; Prov. iii. 4; iv. 4;
and the employment of the imperative mood, when declaring fu-
ture events, is not unusual with the sacred writers, as in Is. vi.
10; viii. 9, 10; ix. 3; xvii. 1 ; xxix. 9; Jer. i. 10; Ezek. xliii. 3.
In some instances, a prayer or wish for the punishment of sinners
may be nearly equivalent to a prediction, inasmuch as it is
founded on the belief, and meant to imply, that, according to
God's moral government of the world, punishment most certainly
awaits them. Some of the imprecations in the Psalms may, then,
he understood as declarative of the just judgments of God, which
would inevitably fall upon the impious; but in others, and per-
haps most of them, both the natural construction of the sentences,
and the full force and propriety of the expressions, require them
to be taken in an impreeative sense. To explain them in any
other sense is doing violence to the laws of grammatical interpre-
tation; yet even in this light, considered as imprecations, they
amount to no more than a wish that the impious may be dealt
with according to the eternal and unalterable laws of divine jus-
tice, that they may openly and before the world receive the
penalties of crime, provided it be the will of God; which surely
is neither an unnatural nor unreasonable wish in those, who an-
xiously seek the punishment of vice, and the maintenance of true
religion and virtue. In the Psalmist, moreover, it is a wish not
proceeding from a desire to gratify a personal and vindictive
feeling, but partly from a desire of self-preservation, and partly
from anxiety to see the worship and tjlory of God triumphant
over all enemies. Imprecations, therefore, made with the limita-
tions, and originating in the motives just mentioned, so far (rata
being liable to the charge of maliciousness and revenge, are in
accordance with the purest spirit of religion, and with the exer-
cise of the most extensive charity. Of all those tremendous im-
precations which appear in our common English version of Dent,
xxvii. 15 — 26, there is not one authorized by the original. The
Hebrew texts express no kind of wish, but are only so many de-
nunciations of the displeasure of God against those who either
were or should be guilty of the sins therein mentioned, and of the
judgments which they must expect to be indicted upon them,
unless prevented by a timely and sincere repentance. And
agreeably to this view, the sacred text should have been rendered
' cursed they,' or ' cursed are they,' and not 'cursed be they,'
in the sense of Let them be cursed ; the word be, though inserted
in our translation, having nothing answerable to it in the Hebrew.
— Home's Introduction. — En.
4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
' there should fall to the earth nothing of what he had
said concerning the house of Ahab ;' and it must be ac-
knowledged, that for his performance of the divine
commands in this regard, 4 he received commendations
from God, and a settlement of his family in the throne
of Israel for four successions ; and yet we may say of
him, ' that he meant not so, neither did his heart think
so :' he was still a bad man, though ' he did well in exe-
cuting that which was right in God's eyes,1 as to the
abolishment of the worship of Baal ; s but his obstinate
persistance in the sin of Jeroboam may be justly all
against him, as an argument of his false -heartedness in
all his other actions.
Why he continued in this kind of idolatry, the reasons
were much the same with him, that they were with the
first institutor of it, — lest, by permitting his subjects to
go to the place appointed for divine worship, he might
open a door for their return to their obedience to the
house of David; and not only so, but disoblige likewise
a great part of the nobility of the nation, who, by this
time, had been long accustomed, and were warmly
affected to the worship of the golden calves : herein,
however, he made a plain discovery of his sin and folly,
in not daring to trust God with the keeping of his king-
dom, though it was from his kindness and donation that
he had it, and in apprehending any danger from die
house of David, or the kingdom of Judah, which were
both now in so weak and declining a condition, that they
were much more likely to be swallowed up by him.
6 The truth is, Jehu was a wicked, bold, furious, and
implacable man ; but a man of this complexion, consi-
dering the work he was to be set about, was a proper
instrument to be employed ; and so far is it from tending
to the reproach, that it is infinitely to the glory of God,
that he can make use of such boisterous and unruly pas-
sions of mankind for the accomplishment of his just
designs, according to the observation of the royal Psal-
mist, 7 ' Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, and
the remainder of his wrath shalt thou restrain.' This
he plainly did in the case of Jehu ; for after he had set-
tled him in the possession of a kingdom, and still found
that he persisted in his political idolatry, he brought
down the king of Syria upon him, " ' who smote the coasts
of Israel,' and quite wasted all that part of his kingdom
which lay beyond the river Jordan.
There is this to be said, however, concerning Jehu's
cutting oft' Ahaziah, and 9 the other branches of his
family, that though his primary intent in doing it was to
secure himself in the possession of the kingdom, against
all claims that might come from the house of Ahab; yet
did he not act entirely contrary to his commission, be-
cause 10 Ahaziah was the son of Athaliah, the daughter of
Ahab, and the order of God was, " ' that the whole house
of Ahab should perish ;' but then the question is, where it
was that Ahaziah was slain? because in the two accounts
that we have of his death, there seems to be some repug-
nancy. The account which we have in the second book
of Kings runs thus: — 12 ' When Ahaziah saw the death of
Jehoram king of Israel, he iled by the way of the garden-
• g Kings X. 10. s Ibid. ver. 29. « Poole's Annotations.
I IV Ixxvi. 10. 82 Kings x. 32.
"J Poole's Annotations on 2 Kings x. 14, "' 2 Kings viii. 18.
>' 2 Kings ix. 8. « Ibid. ver. 87.
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house, and Jehu followed after him, and said, smite him
also in his chariot : and they did so, at the going up to
Gur, which is by Ibleani, and he fled to Megiddo, and
there died :' but in the book of Chronicles it is said, that
1 ' when Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of
Aliab, and found the princes of Judah, even the sons of
the brethren of Ahaziah, that ministered unto Ahaziah, he
slew them. And he sought Ahaziah, and they caught him,
(for he was hid in Samaria,) and brought him to Jehu,
and when they had slain him, they buried him.'
Now, in order to reconcile the different accounts of the
same event, Ave must observe, 2 that as one great end of
writing the book of Chronicles, was to supply such mat-
ters as had been omitted in the book of Kings ; so this
account of the death of Ahaziah, in the latter, is very
short, and included in the story of Jehoram, that the
reader, at one and the same view, as it were, might per-
ceive in what manner it was that both these princes fell ;
but in the former it is told more at large ; and therefore,
to complete the history, we must take in both accounts,
and from thence we may gather, — that upon seeing Jeho-
ram mortally wounded, Ahaziah turned his chariot, and
made the best of his way to Samaria, in order to escape
into his own kingdom, — but finding the passes too nar-
rowly guarded, he thought proper to conceal himself in
the town, in hopes of a better opportunity ; that Jehu,
in the mean time, coming to Samaria and having intelli-
gence that Ahaziah was lurking there, ordered that
diligent search should be made for him, and when he
was found, that he should be carried to Gur, the place,
in all probability, where his father Joram had slain all
his brethren, and there be killed in his chariot, that so his
servants might immediately carry off his corpse, and bury
it. But as Jehu's order to the officers that were intrust-
ed with the execution, was only, that they should smite
him, they thought it enough to give him a mortal wound,
St) that his servants carried him from thence to Megiddo,
the next town in the tribe of Issachar, where he died.
This makes the circumstances consistent : and though
we are no ways concerned, especially when the sacred
history is silent, to assign any reasons for such furious
passions as are frequently observed in great and wicked
men ; yet it may be no hard matter to imagine some-
tiling more probable, than what 3 Josephus makes the
cause of Jehoram's indignation against Elisha, and his
vowing to take off his head ; even because he refused to
intercede with God for the removal of the famine that
had, at this time, so sorely wasted the city of Samaria.
From the many miracles which Elisha did, the king very
likely might be convinced, that the same spirit which
once resided in Elijah was now descended upon him •
and therefore, as Elijah had power, by his prayers, either
to shut or open the windows of heaven, either to cause or
remove a famine, as he pleased, 4 he might possibly
imagine, that God had conferred the same privilege upon
Elisha, and might therefore be highly incensed against
him, because he would not make use of it in the preser-
vation of a city reduced to the utmost distress. But we
can hardly imagine, that a wicked and idolatrous prince,
as Jehoram certainly was, would ever entertain so high
a conception of any of the Lord's prophets : and there-
• 2 Chron. xxii. 7, &c.
* Jewish Antiq. h. V. c. :i.
Poolo's Annotations.
Poolu's Annotations.
fore we must endeavour to find out some other reason
for the violence of his rage and indignation against him.
When the prophet Elisha carried the detachment of
the Syrian army, which was sent to apprehend him at
Dothan, hoodwinked, as it were, into the city of Samaria,
Jehoram, we find, would have gladly taken this advan-
tage, and fallen upon them with the sword : * ' My
father, shall I smite, shall I smite them ?' So eager was
he to have them destroyed, as we may learn from the
repetition of his words ! But by no means would the
prophet permit him ; on the contrary, he ordered them
to be treated with much civility, and dismissed in peace.
A usage this which deserved a better return than what
they made the Israelites the year following, when they
came and besieged Samaria, and sorely distressed it.
The king of Israel, therefore, reflecting on the opportu-
nity which, had he employed it as he desired, would have
disabled the army from making any fresh invasions, but
was unhappily lost, by listening to an old doated pro-
phet, as he might call him, was grieved beyond measure,
and hereupon vowed to make his life pay for the lives
of those, who, by his counsel, had escaped, and were
now returned to repeat their hostilities. It may be sup-
posed likewise, that upon the return of the Syrian army,
the king of Israel, knowing himself in no condition to
oppose them, might possibly be for purchasing a peace
at any rate ; which Elisha might endeavour to dissuade
him from, by giving him all along assurance, that the
enemy should at length be defeated. Finding however
no effect in the prophet's promises, and, on the contrary,
seeing his capital closely besieged, and the people re-
duced to great extremity of want, he began to repent
him of following his advice ; and being shocked at hear-
ing the horrid story, and that from the mother's own
mouth, of her being forced to eat her own child for
hunger, he fell into a rage, and vowed to be revenged
of Elisha, as one Avho, by his bad counsel, had occasion-
ed all that misery : 6 ' God do so to me, and more also,
if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall stand on
him to-day ;' never considering that his own manifold
and crying sins, especially his obstinate adhering to the
idolatry of the calves, 7 and the whoredoms and witch-
crafts of his mother Jezebel, were the true and proper
causes of all his calamities.
Jehu, as we said before, was a wicked and ambitious
man, and it is much to be questioned whether he would
have executed the divine will so punctually, had it not
fallen in with his own interest and designs. He had
now extirpated the house of Ahab, and, as Ahab had
been the first introducer of the idolatry of Baal into the
kingdom of Israel, he could not but think that the
priests and prophets, and such as adhered to the worship
of that false God, were of Jezebel's faction, and might,
at one time or other, take occasion to revenge her death.
Something or other was therefore necessary to be done,
in order to get rid of this dangerous set of men, and,
that the business might be done effectually, to get rid of
them all at once. 8 He was a person of a known indif-
ference in matters of religion, who in this regard always
conformed to the humours of the court, and, in the
reign of king Ahab, had been as strenuous a worshipper
3 2 Kings vi. 21.
6 2 Kings vi. 31.
Poole's Annotations.
7 Chap. ix. 22.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OP THE TEMPLE, &c.
615
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of Baal as any ; and therefore, how could the people
tell, when they read his proclamation for a great feast,
and a solemn sacrifice to be ottered unto Baal, but that,
in good earnest, he had returned to his former love to
the religion which he once embraced, and only deserted
for a while, in complacency to others P He had gone on
a little oddly indeed at his entrance upon the govern-
ment, had murdered their chief patroness, and made free
with some of their priests likewise ; but these priests
perhaps were 1 domestics to Jezebel, or too nearly related
to Ahab's family, not to go ott'in the common slaughter.
Some instances of this kind could hardly be helped in
the heat of execution, when the man was resolved to
secure himself, and remove all competitors : but now
that he has nothing to fear, why should we think, but
that a prince who has no sense of religion at all, should
be a worshipper of our god Baal, (that glorious luminary
which shines so bright in the firmament of heaven,) as
he is of the golden calves?"
Thus, we may suppose, the Baalites reasoned, upon
reading the king's proclamation so apparently in favour
of their idolatry ; and God, in his judgment, suffered
their 2 ' foolish hearts to be thus darkened, and because
they received not the love of the truth, that they might
be saved, for this cause he sent upon them a strong de-
lusion, that they might believe a lie.' But whether they
deluded themselves into this persuasion or not, this they
knew by experience, that Jehu was a man of a fierce and
bloody temper, who would not fail to put his threats in
execution ; and therefore reading in the same proclama-
tion, that 3 ' whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not
live,' they found themselves reduced to this sad dilemma,
either to go or die ; and therefore they thought it the
wisest way to run the hazard, and throw themselves upon
his mercy, having this at least to plead for themselves,
that they were not disobedient to his commands. The
only remaining question is, if every one obeyed this sum-
mons, how could the temple of Baal be capable of receiv-
ing them all?
Now the words of Jehu's summons are these : 4 ' Call
unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and
all his priests, let none be wanting ; for I have a great
sacrifice to otter unto Baal. And Jehu did it in subtilty,
to the intent that he might destroy the worshippers of
Baal ;' in which words we may observe, 5 that two par-
ticular orders of men are distinctly mentioned, the pro-
phets and priests ; and therefore we may presume, that
the servants and worshippers who are joined with them,
were some of an inferior kind, such as Levites in the
Jewish, or deacons in the Christian church, who attended
upon the other in their sacred ministrations ; because in
tht twenty-second verse, we find Jehu ' ordering him,
who was over the vestry, to bring forth vestments for all
the worshippers of Baal,' which cannot be meant of the
people in general, because they wore no distinct gar-
ments in their worship either of God or Baal, but of
priests and ministers only. These were the great sup-
port of the present idolatry ; and therefore Jehu concluded
very justly, that, if he did but once destroy them, all the
common worshippers would fall away of course.
2 Kings x. 11.
4 Ibid.
8 2 Thes. ii. 1 1. 3 2 Kings x. 19.
5 Poole's Annotations.
a Haal and Astaroth are commonly joined together; and as it
4G54. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
But, even if we take the words ' servants ' and ' wor-
shippers ' in their utmost latitude, we need not doubt but
that the temple of Baal, e which was built in the capital
city, and near the royal palace, and, being the chief in
its kind, was designed for the use of the king and queen,
and, particularly perhaps for such great and high solem-
nities, was large and capacious enough to hold them all.
For, besides this principal building, 7 there might be
several outward courts, as there were in the temple at
Jerusalem, where the people stood while they worship-
ped, as they did in the temple service, and these, toge-
ther with the temple itself, would afford space sufficient
for all the idolaters of that kind, both ministers and
people, that were then in the whole kingdom. For,
since the days of Aliab, by the ministry of Elijah, Elisha,
and the rest of the prophets, as well as by the slaughter
which Hazael, in his wars against Israel, had made
among many of them, the number of Baal's worshippers
had been greatly diminished. Jehoram himself, as we
read, 8 ' put away the image of Baal that his father had
made,' and when the king withdrew his presence and
encouragement, his subjects, without doubt, for the gen-
erality, followed his example ; for it cannot be supposed,
that the worship of such senseless idols could ever be
kept up, especially among a people that had the oracles
of God in their custody, without the influence of some
great authority, or the consideration of some wicked and
worldly ends.
CHAP. III. — Of Jonah's Mission to Nineveh, and
abode i?i the Whale's Belly.
In the whole compass of the Old Testament, I know of no
passage that has been made so popular a topic of banter
and ridicule, and which the lovers of infidelity, in all
ages, have so much delighted to descant upon, as the
story ' of Jonah's continuing three days and three nights
in the whale's belly.' The story indeed, at first hearing,
sounds surprisingly; and therefore we need not wonder
that the wit and sagacity of a Porphyry or a Julian found
some plausible exceptions against it, which our modern
retailers and malicious improvers of their objections
have endeavoured to decry as a wild romance, or at
best but a parabolical representation of something else.
" That a man, thrown into the sea with all his clothes
on, should, in the very nick of time, meet with a fish,
and such a fish as was never heard of before, large
enough to swallow him up quick, and, without hurting a
hair of his head, to keep him in his stomach for so many
days and nights alive ; that in this narrow and gloomy
prison he should be able to breathe, and live, and be
nourished ; thence send up his prayers to God, and
thence promise himself a deliverance in due time ; this
is an account of things so very absurd, that there is no
possibility of believing it. For admitting that Jonah
got safe and sound down the whales throat, yet how
could he subsist there without air, or continue any time
without being parboiled? The stomach, we know,
would do its office ; and, therefore, we cannot but think,
that in a few hours, much more in three days, the man
0 Poole's Anntit. ' Patrick's Commentary 8 2 Kings iii. 2.
is believed that Astaroth denotes the moon, we have good reason
to say, that Baal is put lor the sun. — Calmefs Dictionary.
616
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must, of course, have been totally dissolved, and his
body converted into the body of the fish ; or if its diges-
tion was not so quick, he must, at least, when cast upon
the shore, have been sadly sodden, and unfit to be sent
upon another expedition.
" What God can do we must not dispute ; but then
great care should be taken, not to magnify his power to
the diminution of his wisdom, or to think, that he is so
lavish of his miracles as to save a rebellious prophet,
that was disobeying his orders, and fleeing, if possible,
from his presence, that deserved indeed to be left to the
mercy of the waves, and made food for the fishes of the
sea, rather than vouchsafed so stupendous a preserva-
tion ; and all this, for what ? Even to compel him to
go, against his will, to a wicked city, with an unwelcome
message ; as if there had been no prophet in Israel, but
this sullen and refractory man, to be sent upon this
errand."
Nineveh, at the time when Jonah was sent thither, was
the metropolis of the Assyrian empire, and one of the
largest and most ancient cities in the world. According
to the best chronologers, it was built not long after the
flood, and very soon after the tower of Babel, by Niui-
rod ; but being afterwards greatly enlarged by Ninus,
from him it received its name. It was situated upon
the banks of the Tigris, and, as Diodorus ' has given us
the description of it, was, in length, 150 stadia; in
breadth, 90 ; and in circumference, 470 ; which, being
reduced to our measure, make it about 21 miles long, 9
broad, and 54 round. How stately its walls, and how
lofty its towers were, the same historian has taken care
to inform us ; and how great the number of its inhabi-
tants was, we may learn from2 'the 120,000 children,
who could not discern between their right hands and
their left :' for, according to a proportionate computation,
there must have been in the whole above 600,000 per-
sons.®
1 B. 2. Bib. s Jonah iv. 11.
a Although Nineveh formed the subject of some of the earliest of
the prophecies, and was the very first which met its predicted fate,
yet a heathen historian, in describing its capture and destruc-
tion, repeatedly refers to an ancient prediction respecting it.
Diodorus Siculus relates, that the king of Assyria, after the com-
plete discomfiture of his army, confided in an old prophecy, that
Nineveh would not be taken unless the river should become the
enemy of the city : that after an ineffectual siege of two years,
the river, swollen with long-continued and tempestuous tor-
rents, inundated part of the city and threw down the wall for the
space of twenty furlongs; and that the king, deeming the pre-
diction accomplished, despaired of his safety, and erected an
immense funeral pile, on which he heaped his wealth, and with
which himself, his household, and palace were consumed. The
book of Nahum was avowedly prophetic of the destruction of
Nineveh: and it is therefore told that ' the gates of the rivers shall
be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.' ' Nineveh, of
old, like a pool of water — with an overrunning flood he will
make an utter end of the place thereof.' The historian describes
the tacts by which the other predictions of the prophet were as
literally fulfilled. He relates that the king of Assyria, elated
with his former victories, and ignorant of the revolt of the Bac-
trians, had abandoned himself to scandalous inaction; had ap-
pointed a time of festivity, and supplied his soldiers with abun-
dance of wine ; and that the general of the enemy, apprized, by
deserters, of their negligence and drunkenness, attacked the
Assyrian army while the whole of them were fearlessly giving
way to indulgence, destroyed great part of them, and drove the
rest into the city. The words of the prophet were hereby veri-
fied; < While they be folden together as thorns, and while they
are drunken as druukards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully
Now, we have wrong conceptions of God, if we think
that, because he made the children of Israel his peculiar
people, he therefore neglected all the world besides.
On the contrary, 3 ' Though he showed his word unto
3 Ps. cxlvii. 19.
dry.' The prophet promised much spoil to the enemy: ' Take
the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold ; for there is no end of
the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture.' And the
historian affirms, that many talents of gold and silver, preserved
from the fire, were carried to Ecbatana. According to Nahum,
the city was not only to be destroyed by an overflowing flood, but
the fire also was to devour it ; and, as Diodorus relates, partly
by water, partly by fire, it was destroyed. The utter and per-
petual destruction and desolation of Nineveh were foretold :
' The Lord will make an utter end of the place thereof. Afflic-
tion shall not rise up the second time. She is empty, and void,
and waste. The Lord will stretch out his hand against the north,
and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and
dry like a wilderness. How is she become a desolation, a place
for beasts to lie down in!' In the second century, Lucian, a
native of a city on the banks of the Euphrates, testified that
Nineveh was utterly perished, — that there was no vestige of it
remaining, — and that none could tell where once it was situate.
This testimony of Lucian, and the lapse of many ages during
which the place was not known where it stood, render it at least
somewhat doubtful whether the remains of an ancient city, oppo-
site to Mosul, which have been described as such by travellers,
be indeed those of ancient Nineveh. It is perhaps probable that
they are the remains of the city which succeeded Nineveh, or of
a Persian city of the same name, which was built on the banks
of the Tigris by the Persians, subsequently to the year 230 of
the Christian era, and demolished by the Saracens in 632. In
contrasting the then existing great and increasing population,
and the accumulating wealth of the proud inhabitants of the
mighty Nineveh, with the utter ruin that awaited it, — the word
of God, (before whom all the inhabitants of the earth are as grass-
hoppers), by Nahum was — ' Make thyself many as the canker-
worm, make thyself many as the locusts. Thou hast multiplied
thy merchants above the stars of heaven : the canker-worm
spoileth and fleeth away. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and
thy captains as the great grasshoppers which camp in the hedges
in the cold day; but when the sun riseth they flee away; and
their place is not known where they are,' or were. Whether
these words imply that even the site of Nineveh would in future
ages be uncertain or unknown, or as they rather seem to inti-
mate, that every vestige of the palaces of its monarchs, of the
greatness of its nobles, and of the wealth of its numerous mer-
chants, would wholly disappear; the truth of the prediction can-
not be invalidated under either interpretation. The avowed
ignorance respecting Nineveh, and the oblivion which passed
over it, for many an age, conjoined with the meagreness of evi-
dence to identify it still, prove that the place was long unknown
where it stood, and that even now it can scarcely with certainty
be determined. And, if the only spot that bears its name, or
that can be said to be the place where it was, be indeed the site
of one of the most extensive of cities on which the sun ever shone,
and which continued for many centuries to be the capital of
Assyria, — the 'principal mounds,' few in number, which show
neither bricks, stones, nor other materials of building, but are
in many places overgrown with grass, and resemble the mounds
left by intrenchments and fortifications of ancient Roman camps,
and the appearances of other mounds and ruins, less marked than
even these, extending for ten miles, and widely spread, and
seeming to be « the wreck of former buildings,' show that Nineveh
is left without one monument of royalty, without any token what-
ever of its splendour or wealth; that their place is not known
where they were ; and that it is indeed a desolation — 'empty,
void, and waste,' its very ruins perished, and less than the wreck
of what it was. ' Such an utter ruin,' in every view, has been
made of it; and such is the truth of the divine predictions. —
Keith's Evidence of Prophecy. — Several writers are of opinion
that the ruins on the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite to the
town of Mosul, point out the site of the ancient Nineveh. Mr
Rich, who was resident at Bagdad, describes on this spot an
enclosure of a rectangular form, corresponding with the cardinal
points of the compass, but the area of which is too small to have
contained a larger town than Mosul. The boundary of this en
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
617
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
Jacob, and his statutes and ordinances unto Israel,' in a
particular manner, yet he did not leave himself without
a witness in other nations ; but whenever they were
drawing destruction upon themselves, took care to ac-
quaint them with their impending- doom. To this pur-
pose, Ave may observe, that not only Isaiah, Ezekiel, and
Daniel, but almost all the other prophets, do foretell the
destruction of Babylon, and publish the divine threats
against Egypt, Edom, and the other kingdoms neighbour-
ing upon Canaan ; that ' Jeremiah, in particular, was
ordered by God to make himself bonds and yokes, and
send them to the kings of the Ammonites, of Tyre and
Sidon, and other princes, by the hand of their ministers,
who were then at the court of Zedekiah king of Judah,
with his admonition to their masters, that unless they re-
pented of their evil ways, he would deliver them into the
power of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, whom he
calls his servant, even as he does 2 Cyrus, his anoint-
ed, for being appointed to execute his will, some
hundred years before he was born ; and, therefore, we
need less wonder, that we find God interesting himself
in the preservation of the large and populous city of
Nineveh, upon which depended the whole fate of the
Assyrian empire, since, in all ages, he has given proofs
of his protection and absolute dominion over other
nations, as well as the Israelites, either in threatening
their disobedience, in order to procure their amendment,
or if they despised his threatenings, in punishing their
obstinacy, as they deserve.
3 ' Is he the God of the Jews only ? Is he not also
of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also,' says an
apostle of great authority ; and, therefore, we may pre-
sume, that as Jonah was the only prophet in the Old
Testament that was sent expressly to preach to the Gen-
tiles, God might design hereby to give to his people a
premonition of his intention, ' in the fulness of time, ' to
raise up a root of Jesse,' as the prophet expresses it,
' which would stand for an ensign of the people, and unto
1 Jer. xxvii. 2, &c. 8 Is. xlv. 1. 3 Rom. iii. 19.
4 Is. xi. 10.
closure, which he supposes to answer to the palace of Nineveh,
may be perfectly traced all around, and looks like an embank-
ment of earth or rubbish, of small elevation ; and has attached to
it, and in its line, at several places, mounds of greater size and
solidity. The first of these forms the south-west angle; and on
it is built the village of Nebbi Yunus, where they show the tomb
of the prophet Jonas. The next, and largest of all, is the one
which Mr Rich supposes to be the monument of Ninus, and is
situated near the centre of the western face of the enclosure,
being joined like the others by the boundary wall ; the natives
call it Koyunjuk Tepe. Its form is that of a truncated pyramid,
with regular steep sides and a flat top ; and is composed of stones
and earth, the latter predominating sufficiently to admit of the
summit being cultivated by the inhabitants of the village of Koy-
unjuk, which is built on it at the north-east extremity. The
measurements of this mound were 178 feet for the greatest height,
1850 feet the length of the summit east and west, and 1147 for
its breadth north and south. Out of a mound in the north
face of the boundary was dug, some time since, an immense
block of stone, on which were sculptured the figures of men and
animals. So remarkable was this fragment of antiquity, that
even Turkish apathy was roused, and the pacha and most of the
principal people of Mosul came out to see it. One of the spec-
tators particularly recollected among the sculptures of this stone,
the figure of a man on horseback, with a long lance in his hand,
followed by a great many others on foot. These ruins seem to
attest the former existence of some extensive buildings on the
spot, but whether belonging to the ancient Nineveh will admit
of considerable doubt. — Ca/nut's Dictionary. — Ei>.
4G5K A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
which the Gentiles should seek : to 5 break down the
middle wall of partition, even the law of commandments,
contained in ordinances ;' and to unite all nations in one
communion, * under 6 one great shepherd and bishop
of their souls.'
But whether God might design this call to the Nine-
vites, as a pledge and assurance of his future admission
of the people of all nations into the privileges of die
Christian covenant, this certamly he might have under his
immediate view, namely, to show the disparity between
his people and aliens, and upon the comparison of their
several behaviours, shame them for living unreclaimed,
under the constant preaching of his prophets for so
many years, when a people, whom they despised, as
' being strangers to the covenant of promise,' had, by
the mighty power of his word, been converted in the
space of three days.
Nothing is more common in Scripture, than to find
God complaining of his people for not attending to the
messages which he sent them ; ' ' since the day that their
fathers came forth out of Egypt,' says God to one of his
prophets, ' even unto this day, 1 have sent unto them all
my servants, the prophets, daily rising up early, and
sending them ; yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclin-
ed their ear, but hardened their neck, and did worse than
their fathers : therefore shalt thou speak all these words
unto them, but they will not hearken, and thou shalt call
unto them, but they will not answer thee.' And there-
fore God, very well foreknowing the success that his
prophets would meet with, might send him with commis-
sion to preach to the Ninevites, not only in pursuance of
his kind purposes to them, but with an intent likewise to
render his own people inexcusable, even as our Saviour
represents the case of the Jews in his days, who refused
to hear him : 8 ' The men of Nineveh shall rise in judg-
ment with this generation, and shall condemn it, because
they repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and behold a
greater than Jonah is here.'
And indeed some have imagined, that one gTeat cause
of Jonah's declining the order at first, and of his going
at last with so much reluctance to Nineveh, might be
some suspicion, that in case these Gentiles should listen
to his preaching, it might be not only a lasting reproach
but a means of reprobation likewise to his countrymen,
who, under the constant ministration of so many pro-
phets, were only become more obdurate in sin ; and
therefore, jealous of the honour of his nation, and too
solicitous for their preservation, he could not prevail
with himself to accept of a commission that seemed to
interfere with this, lest a ready compliance with the
divine command at Nineveh should prove the disparage-
ment at least, if not the utter rejection of ' ' his brethren,
his kinsmen after the flesh.'
The prophet himself, however, has suggested another
reason for his unwillingness to go to Nineveh, and that
is, the superabundant mercy of God, which, he foresaw,
would be moved to pity at the prayers and tears of Uie
people ; and therefore he remonstrates thus : 10 ' I pray
thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when 1 was yet
in my country ? Therefore 1 Hed before into Tarshish :
for I knew that thou are a gracious God, and merciful,
5 Eph.
ii.
41.
6 1 Pet.
ii.
25.
7
Jer.
\ ii
25,
&c
B Mat.
\i
. 41.
9 Rom.
•1
1
3.
10
Jon.
iv.
2,
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6lo\v to anger, of great kindness, and repentest thee of
the evil.' But how plausible soever this excuse may be,
yet upon the face of the whole affair, it appears that the
prophet considered himself a little too much ; and there-
fore we may conclude, that the true reason for his declin-
ing this errand, was the hazard and difficulty of the
undertaking, and the great uncertainty of its success :
the very same thought that deterred Moses from apply-
ing to Pharaoh to grant the Israelites their liberty, and
Gideon from taking up arms to rescue his country from
the slavery of the Midianites : for as each of these made
their several excuses ; ' I am of uncircumcised lips,' says
one, ' and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me ?' and, ' I
am the least in my father's house,' says the other, ' and
how then shall I save Israel ?' So might Jonah say within
himself, ' I am less than the least of the prophets,' and
how then can I expect that the people of so great and opu-
lent a city will give any attention to my preaching ; that
they will not rather take the alarm, and fall upon me,
and slay me, when I come to tell them that their ruin
and destruction is so near approaching ? I will get quit
of this dangerous affair, therefore, as well as I can ; and
because I conceive that the spirit of prophecy, which
upon this account makes me so uneasy, will not pursue
me, after I am gone out of the holy land, I will make the
best of my way into Cilicia; for when I have got at
some distance from Judea, God perhaps may think no
more of sending me, but may find him out some other
prophet, that is better qualified for this purpose.' But '
' whither shall I go from thy Spirit ?' as one better in-
structed than Jonah seems to be in this article of his
omnipresence, addresses himself to God, 'or whither
shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into
heaven, thou art tliere ; if I go down into hell, thou art
there also ; if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell
in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall thy
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me ;' which
no man ever so experimentally found to be true as did
this prophet, while he sojourned in the deep, and took
up his habitation in the whale's belly.
2 Some learned men indeed are of opinion, that the
fish which swallowed up Jonah was not a whale, because
the largest of these, as they tell us, have but in proportion
very narrow gullets, such as are not capable of receiv-
ing a man entirely into their stomachs : and therefore they
imagine that it was what they call the lamia, or seadog,
which, though less in bulk than a whale, has a gullet so
vastly large, that frequently in its stomach have been
found men, all whole and entire, 3 and sometimes clad
in armour.
It must be acknowledged, that the Hebrew dag-gadol,
which the text in Jonah makes use of, signifies no more
than any great fish ; but then it makes something for the
common opinion, that the whale is the largest species
wo know of that swims in the sea. The ancients indeed
seem to have enlarged too much in their account of this
animal. "Pliny talks of some that were 600 feet long, and
1 Ps. cxxxix. 7.
*Bochart's Sacred Zoology, part 2. b. 5. c. 12; Bartholin,
(in Diseases in Old Testament, art. 14.
3 Tin's a French author, named Rondelet, reports of one of
these seadogs, which was taken near Nice, or Marseilles. —Cat-
tact's Dissertation on the fish which swallowed Jonah
4 3i. :iS. c. 1.
above half as much broad. Solinus 5 makes others no less
than 800 feet ; and Dionysius 6 seems to affirm of others,
that they had a throat wide enough to swallow up a ship
with all its rigging. But though these may pass for ex-
travagant exaggerations, 7 an author who has written ex-
pressly upon this subject gives us this account : — " That
in the northern seas, there are whales of such a prodigious
bigness, that when their flesh is taken off, and nothing
left but their skeletons, they look like large vessels, or
rather like spacious houses, with several chambers and
windows in them, wherein a whole family might find room
to live." Their mouth, every one allows, is capable of
containing several men at once. We are told B of one
cast on the coast of Tuscany, in the year 1624, whose
jaws were so wide, that a man on horseback might have
ridden into them with ease : and we have not much reason
to doubt, but that their throat and belly are answerable 9
to so spacious an opening.
It cannot be thought, indeed, but the cpsophagus in
creatures that are dead, must be contracted to a great
degree, in comparison to what it is when they are alive,
and especially when they are eating ; in which case it is
capable of so great dilatation, as is evident from a pikes
sometimes swallowing another fish almost of his own
magnitude, that we need not much fear, but that the fish,
which God had provided for that purpose, was able to
gulp Jonah down at once, without ever hurting him.
For the whale, as we are told has neither teeth nor tushes,
whereas the seadog has four or five rows of teeth in each
jaw, and is therefore the much properer of the two to
receive into its stomach any thing alive without the dan-
ger of contusion.
Thus we have conveyed Jonah safe and sound into the
whale's belly ; let us, in the next place, see how he is to
live there for the space of three days. The Scripture
indeed speaks precisely of I0 ' three days and three
nights ;' but as Jonah was a type of our Saviour, and
his abode in the belly of the whale, a prefiguration of
our Lord's continuance n ' in the heart of the earth,' there
is some reason to think, that the type and the antitype,
in this respect, were both alike ; and that as our Lord
was but one whole day, and part of two more, in the
grave, so Jonah might continue no longer in the deep,
and yet according to the Hebrew way of computation,
both might be truly said to have been ' three days and
three nights,' in their respective confinements. But not
to insist on this abbreviation of time, what some natural-
ists tell us of the food of the whale, namely, that it does
not live on flesh, but on weeds, on the froth of the sea,
on insects, and such small fish as are easy of digestion ;
and that, consequently, as having a colder stomach, it
was a fitter receptacle for the prophet, than any other
fish that was carnivorous ; this might be of some consi-
deration perhaps, were we not disposed to call in the
miraculous power of God, which alone could preserve
him in these circumstances. But then, we cannot but
allow, that as he suspended the violence of the fire from
5 C. 52. 6 Periegetes, ver. 603.
7 Olaus Magnus on Wonderful Fishes, b. 21. c. 15, 16.
9 John Cabri of the academy of Florence, makes mention of
this whale.
9 Its mouih was so large in extent, that it resembled the open-
ing of a cave.
10 Jon. i. 17. » Mat. xii. 4u.
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c
619
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hurting the three young men that were cast into the fur-
nace • that as he made St Peter's body either so light
as to walk upon the waters, or the waters so solid as to
support it ; so with the same facility, he might control
the acid humours in any creature's stomach, and make it,
for such a determinate time, lose its faculty of digestion :
for in all this there is nothing that surpasses the power of
the great Author of nature, who gives or suspends the
activity of all bodies, who stops or controls, who changes
or modifies, as he thinks fit, all the motions which he
communicates to matter, of what kind soever it be. And,
in like manner, though it be impossible, according
to the ordinary laws of nature, for a man to breathe
in the stomach of a fish, or at least to draw in such a
quantity of air as is requisite to give a due circulation to
his blood ; yet since it is neither contrary to the nature
nor superior to the power of God, by one means or other
to effect the thing, if it be but agreeable to his will, we
cannot see any reason why it may not be done.
Bats and swallows, and other birds, which in the cold
season of the year, creep into elitfs of rocks, and hollow
trees, l creatures that live under ground, and several
others that abide at the bottom of deep water, subsist in
a manner without breathing. They live, as it were in a
deliquium of life, and the blood in their veins seems to
move very slowly, if at all ; and yet we find them revive
again, upon the approach of the genial heat of the sun,
to give their blood and juices a brisker fermentation;
and why might not God then, during these three days
and nights, put Jonah into the very same state of repose
and tranquillity, that either the element they live in, or
the colder season of the year, do naturally bring upon
these animals, by correcting the fluidity, and retarding the
circulation of his blood, so as to make frequent respira-
tion not so necessary ?
The ancient physicians were of opinion, that while
the child continued in its mother's womb, it lived with-
out breathing, so that there was no employment for the
lungs, until it came into the open air ; but later anato-
mists will persuade us, that, without some circulation of
blood in the body, no animal can live ; and therefore
they pretend to have found out in the foptus a consider-
able artery, which conveys the blood from the vena cava,
without its passing into the right ventricle of the heart,
into the lungs ; from whence by another smaller artery,
which they call the dotal, it is carried into the aorta,
and so continues in a perpetual circulation, without en-
tering the lobes of the lungs, which are not replete with
blood, nor begin to move, until the child is born and
sucks in the fresli air. For then, say they, the blood
being forced by the motion of the heart into the artery,
whose orifice lies in its right ventricle, goes directly into
the lungs, and is thence brought back by the pulmonary
vein, so that the other vessels which help the circulation
of blood in the foetus, being now become useless, do by
degrees stop and are dried up. But it may not always
happen so : in some particular persons nature sometimes
preserves them open : and this is the reason which some
give us why the divers, as they are called, who accus-
tom themselves to go under deep water to discover and
bring up the riches of the deep, can abide so long in that
element without breathing. a
1 Calmet's Dissertation on the Fish, &c.
* On this subject see the following supplement by the Editor.
We pretend not however to advance, that Jonah was
one of this sort of men ; but still we may affirm, that it
was in God's power, during his continuance in the fish's
belly, to put him in such a state of acquiescence, and
his blood into such a form of circulation, as would require
no more respiration than the foetus has in the womb.
In this there is nothing impossible, nothing incompatible
with the laws of nature ; though it must be acknowledged
that strictly speaking the thing is above the ordinary
and known laws of nature, and therefore miraculous :
but then if we believe not this miracle, why should we
believe any other, or why should it be thought a more
incredible thing, that Jonah should live three days in
the belly of a large fish, than that Lazarus 3 should be
recalled to life again, after he had been four days buried
in the grave ; that the prophet should return from this
sea-monster's stomach, safe and sound, than that the
4 three Jews in Babylon should escape from the flaming
furnace, without having so much " as the smell of the
fire pass upon them ?"
" But other miracles, it may be said, were done for
some wise ends of providence, and when there appeared
an urgent occasion for God's exerting his almighty
power ; whereas, in the case before us, there seems to
be none at all."
That prophets, however, invested with great power,
and sometimes intrusted with high commissions from
God, were 5 'men subject to like passions' and infir-
mities as we are, is evident, not only from the testimony
of the apostle, but from the accounts of their own beha-
viour likewise. The prophet that was sent to Bethel,
to denounce God's judgment against the idolatrous altar,
was a sad example of human frailty, in giving credit to
the persuasions of another, even when they contradicted
a divine command. Jonah, when he was directed to go
to Nineveh, discovered the like if not greater tokens of
human infirmity, when, instead of pursuing that journey,
he bent his course another way, not without some vain
hopes of evading, by that means, the divine presence :
and therefore as God sent a lion to slay the prophet of
Judah, for his too much credulity ; so some have ima-
gined, that he not only pursued this prophet of Israel
with a dreadful storm, but even had him thrown over-
board, and swallowed up by this sea-monster, in punish-
ment for his perverseness and prevarication. God indeed,
by his « vnrruling power, made the belly of this monster
a place of security to him ; but what notions the prophet
himself had of this strange habitation, 6 ' where the floods
compassed him about, and the billows and waves passed
over him,' Ave may learn from his meditations in the deep,
r ' when he cried, by reason of his affliction, to the Lord,
and he heard him ;' so that, upon the presumption that
God intended not to destroy him, the primary reason, we
may imagine, for his appointing this fish to swallow him
up, was to stop this fugitive prophet, as he was endea-
vouring to make his escape : but then, ' in the midst of
judgment, thinking upon mercy,' after a confinement of
three nights and three days in the deep, whereby he both
taught him better obedience for the future, and rectified
his notions concerning the divine omnipresence, he
ordered his jailor, if we may so speak, to give him his
liberty, and deliver him safe on shore.
" John xi. 17, 39, 44.
0 Jon. ii. 3.
« Dan. iii. 27. 5 Ja. v. 17.
1 Ibid. vcr. 2.
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The oriental traditions do vastly differ as to the place
where Jonah was cast upon the land. ' Josephus must
needs be under a gross mistake, when, to throw him upon
some coast of the Euxine sea, he makes the whale, which
could hardly be any quick mover, run 800 leagues, at
least, in three days and nights ; neither are others,
who from the upper part of the Mediterranean, carry him
into the ocean, and thence into the Red Sea, or the
Persian Gulf, in the like space of time, any happier in
their conjectures. The ship, we know, was bound for
Tarsus 2 a a gTeat trading town in Cilicia, a province in
Asia Minor, at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea ;
and therefore the most probable opinion is, that some-
where on this coast, the fish disembogued itself of Jonah ;
and if so, the mariners, who by the time that he was set
on shore, had arrived at their port, when they heard the
strange account of his deliverance, must have become
converts to the worship of that God only, who, in this in-
stance, had shown himself able, 3 'to do whatever he
pleased in heaven, and in the earth, in the sea, and in
all the deep places.'
In the storm which St Paul, in his voyage from Crete
to Rome, underwent, an angel stood by him one night,
and said unto him, * ' Lo, God hath given thee all them
that sail with thee :' and if, by the expression, we may
understand the salvation of their souls, as well as their
bodies, a sufficient reason it was, for God's permitting
this distress to fall upon them, since eventually it proved
the occasion of their conversion. And, in like manner,
if the sudden ceasing of the storm upon ' Jonah's being-
cast forth into the sea,' s made so strong an impression
upon the mariners that sailed with him, how can we
think, but that His miraculous escape out of that merciless
element, especially when he came to recount the partic-
ulars of it, would make them all proselytes to his reli-
gion ? And if we may suppose further, that some of the
ship's crew accompanied him to Nineveh, as knowing
the purpose of his errand thither, to testify to the people
that he was the same man who was in this manner de-
livered from the jaws of the deep, or that the Ninevites
came by their intelligence of this miracle by some other
means, we have here a good reason why they attended
to his message, and repented at his preaching • and
consequently why God wrought this wonderful work upon
him, in order to give his predictions more weight and
authority.
Nay, farther, we may suppose, that when the people of
Nineveh heard Jonah preaching about their streets, and
threatening their city with so sudden a destruction, their
curiosity would naturally lead them to inquire Avho that
person was, and by whose authority it was that he took
so much upon him? and being informed that he was of
a nation, 6 ' which had God more nigh unto them in all
1 Jewish Antiq. b. ix. c. 11.
2 Wells' Geography of the New Testament, part 2.
3 Ps. cxxxv. 6. 4 Acts xxvii. 24. 5 Jonah i. 16.
6 Deut. iv. 7, 8.
a Commentators are not agreed as to whether this was the
same with Tartessus in Spain, the most celebrated emporium in
the west to which the Hebrews traded, or Tarsus, the metropolis
of Cicilia, celebrated as the birth-place of St Paul: a consider-
able number of eminent names might be adduced in support of
both opinions. That it was the one or other of these places seems
almost certain ; but it is not of great importan that we should
be assured which it was. — Ed
things that they called upon him for, and had statutes
and judgments more righteous' than any other people
upon earth : a nation 7 ' to whom,' as the apostle expres-
ses it, ' appertained the adoption, and the glory, and
the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service
of God, and the promises :' a nation 8 ' which the Lord
had taken from the midst of another nation,' had brought
out of Egypt, and settled in Canaan, ' by temptations,
by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty
hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great ter-
rors ;' and that he, in particular, was a prophet of this
great God, who ' had made the heavens and the earth,
the sea, and all that in them is,' and who, for his diso-
bedience in refusing to come upon this errand, had con-
fined him in the deep for three days and nights, but now,
upon his humiliation, had set him free from his ghastly
prison, and given him courage to speak with so much
boldness ; the people, I say, who were informed of all
this, could not well fail of giving God the glory due
unto his name, for sending a prophet of his favourite
nation, and one of so distinguished a character, to give
them notice of their impending doom.
9 ' I wrought for my name's sake,' says God, remem-
bering the wondrous things which he had done for the
children of Israel, ' I wrought for my name's sake, that
it should not be polluted among the heathen, among
whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known
unto them, in bringing them out of the land of Egypt :'
and therefore we may well admit, as another motive
to his working this miracle, the desire he had to raise
the fame of a nation he had taken so immediately under
his care, as well as to have the glory of his own name
magnified among the Gentiles. To which we may add
that most weighty reason of all, which our blessed Saviour
suggests : lu ' An evil and adulterous generation seeketh
after a sign, and there shall no sign be given it, but the
sign of the prophet Jonas : for as Jonas was three days
and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of
man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth.' So that the great design of God's exhibiting, at
this time, this miracle in the person of Jonah, was to
confirm, in future ages, the great and fundamental article
of our faith, upon which the whole superstructure of the
Christian religion depends, ' the resurrection of our Sa-
viour Christ ;' and that whenever the reality of that fact,
as it is related in the New Testament, came to be called in
question, we might be furnished with a parallel instance
of the mighty power of God recorded in the Old.
Nor is it only in the sacred records that we meet with
this history of Jonah, but in the fables, related by sev-
eral heathen authors, both in verse and prose, we find
evident footsteps and memorials of it. Hercules was
the great champion of the Grecians, and his fame they
were wont to adorn with all the remarkable exploits that
they could in any nation hear of. It is not improbable
therefore, " that the adventure of his jumping down the
throat of the seadog, which Neptune had sent to devour
him, and there concealing himself for three days, without
any manner of hurt, save the loss of a few hairs, which
came off by the heat of the creature's stomach, was
founded upon some blind tradition which these people
7 Rom. ix. 4. 8 Deut. iv. 34. 9 Ezek. xx. 9, 14.
10 Mat. xii. 39, 40. " Lycophron, see Grotius and Bochart
Sbct. III.]
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might have of what happened to Jonah. Nor can the
known story of Arion, thrown overboard by the seamen,
but taken up by a dolphin, and carried safe to Corinth,
be justly referred to any other original ; since, ' besides
pome resemblance in their names, and no great disparity
in the times wherein they lived, which are both circum-
stances that make for this hypothesis, the supposed dif-
ference in their respective callings can be no manner of
objection to it, 2 because the same word in the Hebrew
tongue signifies both a prophet and a musician. And
therefore it is remarkable, that as Arion played the tune
wherewith he charmed and allured the fish to save him,
before he jumped overboard ; so Jonah, when he found
himself safely landed, uttered, what is called 3 a prayer
indeed, but is, in reality, a lofty hymn in commemora-
tion of his gTeat deliverance, as appears by this speci-
men : 4 ' The waters compassed me about, even to the
soul ; the depth closed me round about, and weeds were
wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms
of the mountains ; the earth, with her bars, was about
me for ever ; yet hast thou brought up my life from the
pit, O Lord my God.'
CHAP. IV. — On Jonalis Mission to Nineveh, and
abode in the Whale's belly.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
The author of the Fragments appended to Calmet's Dic-
tionary, explains this, -not of a living animal, but of a
floating preserver, by which Jonah was saved from
drowning. He remarks that the word which is used in
the original, ' Dag,' signifies primarily a fish; yet, that
it also signifies a fish boat, and figuratively a preserver,
so that the passage will admit of being rendered thus :
1 the Lord prepared a large preserver to receive Jonah,
and Jonah was in the inner part,' the belly or hold, ' three
days and nights, and then was cast up on the shore.'
Hut this fanciful interpretation cannot be adopted,
because it contradicts the express declaration of our
Lord.5 There are four objections urged to the account
which is given us of this miracle : first, that the gullet
of a whale is too small to admit the body of a man.
Secondly, that though admitted entire into the stomach
of this fish, he could not live there. Thirdly, that there
are no whales in the Mediterranean sea. And fourthly,
that the whole story is rendered improbable by the re-
presentation given of the character and religious princi-
ples of Jonah.
The first objection is refuted by observations which
have been made on the natural history of the whale.
Captain Scorcsby states, that when the mouth of the great
common whale is open, it presents a cavity as large as
a room, and capable of containing a merchant ship's
jolly boat full of men, being six or eight feet wide, ten
or twelve feet high, and fifteen or sixteen feet long. 6
The objection of infidel writers, therefore, in regard to
this point, is vain and unfounded.
lint it is further alleged, that though the body of a
1 IIiR't. Dumonst. Evang. Propos. 4. tie Prophets Jonah.
2 Ilui'tius, ibid. 3 Jon. ii. 2. * Ibid. ver. 5, C.
4 Mat. xii. 40. 6 Vol. i. i>. 455.
man might be admitted entire into the stomach of this
fish, he could not live there. But Dr Mosely has ascer-
tained by the most decisive experiments, that digestion in
fishes is not produced either by trituration or by the heat of
the stomach. " I generally found," says he, " after cut-
ting up the stomachs of many cod-fish just as they came
alive out of the water, — small oysters, muscles, cookies,
and crabs, as well as small fishes of their own and other
species. The coldness of the stomach of these fishes, is
far greater than the temperature of the water out of which
they are taken, or of any other part of the fish, or of
any other substance of animated nature I ever felt. On
wrapping one of them round my hand, immediately on
being taken out of the fish, it caused so much aching and
numbness that I could not endure it long." " Animals
or parts of animals, possessed of the living principle,
when taken into the stomach, are not," says Mr John
Hunter, 7 " in the least affected by the powers of that
viscus, so long as the animal principle remains. Thence
it is that we find animals of various kinds living in the
stomach, or even hatched and bred there ; but the mo-
ment that any of these lose the living principle, they
become subject to the digestive power of the stomach.
If it were possible for a man's hand, for example, to be
introduced into the stomach of a living animal, and kept
there for some considerable time, it would be found that
the dissolvent powers of the stomach could have no effect
upon it ; but if the same hand were separated from the
body, and introduced into the same stomach, we should
then find, that the stomach would immediately act upon
it. Indeed, if this were not the case, we should find
that the stomach itself ought to have been made of indi-
gestible materials ; for, if the living principle were not
capable of preserving animal substances from undergo-
ing that process, the stomach itself would be digested.
But we find, on the contrary, that the stomach, which at
one instant, that is, while possessed of the living princi-
ple, was capable of resisting the digestive power which
it contained, the next moment, namely, when deprived
of the living principle, is itself capable of being digested,
either by the digestive powers of other stomachs, or by
the remains of that power which it had of digesting other
things."
Still, however, it is stated, by way of objection, that
there are no whales in the Mediterranean sea. With
the view of obviating this objection, some writers have
supposed that the shark may have been the fish which is
here intended. But in truth, the objection which this
hypothesis is designed to meet, is frivolous : for on any
supposition the preservation of Jonah was owing to a
miraculous interposition of providence. It is expressly
asserted, * < that Cod had prepared a great fish :' and
who will say, that God could not by an impulse commu-
nicated bring the whale to the side of the ship, and pre-
pare it for the purpose which it was intended to answer ?
But the fourth objection to the whole of this narration
is that the story is rendered improbable by the repre-
sentation given of the character and religious principles
of Jonah. Can we imagine that a man would have been
selected, to deliver a message from God to the greiit
city of Nineveh, who was himself so ignorant as to sup-
pose that he could flee from the presence of the Creator
l'liil. Trans, vol. lxii. p. 449.
Jon. i. 17.
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and Governor of the universe, and whose dispositions
were so perverse as to make him unwilling to execute a
commission the most honourable that could be intrusted
to man ?
A candid consideration of the circumstances of the
case will show that there is no force whatever even in
this objection. — Of Jonah little more is known than that
he was of Gath-hepher, a town in the tribe of Zebulon,
and connected with the kingdom of Israel. He was not
ignorant, as has been imagined, that Jehovah is the God
of the whole earth, whose dominion is universal, and
from whose presence no swiftness can flee. But by
fleeing unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, he
meant a withdrawment from that prophetical ministry in
the immediate and more special presence of God, as it
were, which he had been called to discharge. Some
think, that he declined going to Nineveh to denounce
the judgments of God against it, because he was jealous
for the honour of Israel, and was not willing that the
Gentiles should partake of the benefits of prophecy ; and
he afterwards intimates l that he apprehended that God
would mercifully spare Nineveh, and that he should be
despised and punished as a false prophet. But when we
consider the perils and hardships to which this journey
and message were likely to expose him ; when we ima-
gine to ourselves the probable reception of a despised
prophet of Israel in this proud idolatrous city, come
avowedly to predict its speedy destruction ; and that
this might draw on him the resentment both of the rulers
and the multitude, we shall not wonder that he was ex-
tremely reluctant to undertake the service. How often
does it happen, that the servant of the Lord wishes for
a removal from his post merely to escape the opposition
with which he may be assailed, — not remembering that,
however painful may be his circumstances, he is safe
while in the path of duty, and that in fleeing from that
path still greater trials await him !
Strong faith and a habit of unreserved obedience were
necessary to overcome the reluctance that Jonah must
have felt. He seems to have supposed that the spirit of
prophecy would not rest on him, if he left the land of
Israel to go some other way than to Nineveh : he desired
to be freed from those impulses with which he had not
courage and faith to comply, and he therefore proposed
' to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.'
Accordingly, he went to Joppa, a seaport town, about
forty miles from Gath-hepher, where he is supposed to
have dwelt. There he met with a vessel about to sail
to Tarshish, and, paying the fare, went aboard, not
expecting to be pursued by more imminent danger, than
any of those from which he fled. A tempest was com-
missioned to arrest the ship. The affrighted mariners
having some sense of a superior power, but no right
knowledge of the true God ; and being of different
countries, cried, every one to the idol that he had been
used to worship, for deliverance from death. The ex-
traordinary nature of this tempest, and the general
notions of a superior power, and of right and wrong,
which these men entertained, induced them to conclude,
that some atrocious criminal sailed witli them, for whose
cause this evil had befallen them. They agreed to
decide, by casting lots, who was the criminal. This was
1 Chap. iv. 1, 2.
an appeal to the heart-searching God, and to his provi-
dence ; and he was pleased to determine the matter for
them, by causing the lot to fall upon Jonah. When he
was thus singled out as the culprit, whom divine ven-
geance pursued, the mariners calmly entreated him to
inform them, whether he was not conscious of some great
crime, for which this calamity was come upon them.
AVitiiout reserve Jonah told them of his people and
religion, as a worshipper of Jehovah the God of heaven,
the Creator both of the sea and the dry land ; and at the
same time ingenuously confessed his sin. This exceed-
ingly alarmed them ; and perceiving that the tempest
continued to increase, and not knowing how to act, in-
quired of Jonah himself as the prophet of Jehovah,
what they ought to do in this emergency. He, convinc-
ed of his sin and folly, and perhaps receiving some inti-
mation of the divine will, counselled them to cast him
into the sea, and then the tempest would cease, for he
knew that it was raised on his account. When they
found that their endeavours to preserve his life and their
own were in vain ; and after they had prayed to Jehovah
not to impute to them the guilt of murder when in self-
preservation they sacrificed his servant, they cast him
overboard. The storm having ceased immediately, they
were so impressed with what they had seen and heard,
that they feared the mighty power of God, and wor-
shipped his name. " Disclaiming all their idol gods,"
says Bishop Hall, " they offered a sacrifice to the only
true God, and made vows to him, to worship him at Jeru-
salem."
SECT. IV
CHAP. I.— From the Death of Uzziah, to the Death
of Josiah king of Judah.
THE HISTORY.
The interregnum, a or vacancy in the throne of Israel,
which lasted for two and twenty years and upwards,
occasioned so general a confusion, that the people at
length came to a resolution to place Zechariah, the son
of Jeroboam, and the fourth * and last of Jehu's line,
a This interregnum some chronologers make longer, and some
shorter, according as they suppose that Zechariah reigned more
or less in conjunction with his father: but that there was mani-
festly a vacancy in the throne of Israel for the time assigned, is
evident from hence: that Jeroboam II., who began to reign in
the fifteenth year of Amaziah king of Judah, died in the fifteenth
year of Uzziah; and that his son Zechariah began not to reign
till the eight and thirtieth year of the said Uzziah: so that there
was plainly all this interregnum; but whence it was occasioned,
whether by foreign wars, or rather by domestic confusions, as
appears by the unfortunate end of the successors, we are nowhere
told. — Patrick's Commentary.
b God had promised Jehu, that, for executing his will upon
the house of Ahab, he would continue the crown of Israel in his
family for four generations ; and accordingly Jehoahaz, Joash,
Jehoram, and Zechariah succeeded him: but because he did
it not so much in obedience to the divine command, as to
satisfy his private and ambitious views, and in a method of
cruelty quite abhorrent to the divine nature, God cut his family
short, as soon as he had fulfilled his promise to him, and thereby
accomplished the prophecy of Hosea: 'I will avenge the blood
of Jezreel upou the house of Jehu, aid will cause to cease the
Skct. IV.]
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upon the throne. This happened in the eight and
thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah ; but as he proved
a wicked prince, and followed the steps of his ancestors,
he did not live long to enjoy the government ; for at
the end of six months he was murdered by Shallum, who
usurped the throne, but enjoyed it no longer than one
month. For Menahem, general of the king's forces,
which were then besieging Tirzah, hearing of what
Shallum had done, immediately raised the siege, and
marching directly to Samaria, defeated and slew Shal-
lum; and by the power and authority of the army,
placed himself upon tlfe throne. Not long after this,
he returned with his army to Tirzah ; a but the inhabi-
tants refusing to open the gates, he took the place by
storm, and so having spoiled it, and laid all the coun-
try waste as far as Tiphzah, he came and sat down
before it : but when the people of Tiphzah, in like man-
ner, refused to open their gates, and submit to him, with-
out distinction of age or sex, he put them all to the sword,
and, in short, was so barbarously cruel, as to b rip up
the very women that were with child.
Pid, c king of Assyria, taking the advantage of these
kingdom of the house of Israel (chap. i. 4.), and perhaps it was
in remembrance of this prophecy, as well as of the promise which
confined the kingdom in Jehu's family to four generations only
(2 Kings xv. 10.), that Shallum was encouraged to attempt the
life of Zechariah. — Patrick's Commentary and Poole's Anno-
tations.
a This is a place we find frequent mention of in the sacred re-
cords, because it was a long time the regal city of the kingdom of
Israel, after that the ten tribes had revolted from the house of
David. Jeroboam, who was the first king of Israel, though he
dwelt for some time in Shechem, in his latter days at least,
resided here, as did all the other kings of Israel, until Omri, hav-
ing reigned six years in Tirzah, built Samaria, and removed the
royal seat thither, where it continued until a final period was put
to that kingdom. Now the reason which induced the first kings
of Israel to make Tirzah the place of residence, may he gathered
from that expression in Canticles, ' Thou art beautiful, O my
Jove, as Tirzah,' (vi. 4.) which certainly implies that Tirzah was
a beautiful and pleasant city to dwell in. But how famous and
beautiful a place soever this city was, we have no certain account
of its situation ; only it is supposed by most, that as Jeroboam was
of the trihe of Ephraim, he would naturally be inclined to make
choice of a place within the compass of his tribe for his royal city:
and this opinion is thought to receive confirmation from the word
Ephraim's being frequently used to denote the whole kingdom of
Israel, even because its capital city was situated in that tribe.
However this be, it is pretty plain, from the circumstances of the
story, that the Tiphzah where Menahem exercised so much
cruelty, was not the town of that name which lay upon the
Euphrates, mentioned in 1 Kings iv. 21, as one of the boundaries
of Solomon's dominion, but some place not far from Tirzah, and
consequently, very probably in the tribe of Ephraim. — Wells'
Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3.
b Josephus does not indeed make mention of this particular
instance of his unrelenting cruelty; but this lie tells us, that,
" when he had taken the town, he put all to the sword, without
sparing a man, woman, or child ; and that he exercised such mi r-
ciless rigour and inhumanity towards his own countrymen, as
would have been unpardonable even to the worst of barbarians:"
but by these methods he thought, no doubt, to terrify the whole
kingdom, so that none might dare to withstand him. — Jewish
-lutni. b. 9. o. 11. and Patrick's Commentary.
O This is the first time that we find any mention made of the
kingdom of Assyria, since the days of Nimrod, who erected a
small principality there (Gen. *• 11.), and Pel, or Phul, is the
first monarch of that nation who invaded I in •', and began their
transportations out of their country. Some are of opinion that he
was the same with Belesis, the governor of Babylon, who, toge-
ther with Arbaces the Medc, slew Sardanapalus, the last of the
Assyrian monarchs, and translated the empire to the Chaldean-'.
Our excellent Patrick seems to be confident in this. But accord..
distractions, marched with an army, and invaded the
kingdom of Israel on the other side of Jordan, which lay
nearest to Babylon : but Menahem, by a present of 3000
talents of silver, which he raised out of the wealthiest of
his subjects, prevailed with him, not only to withdraw his
forces, but to recognise his title likewise to the crown of
Israel, before he left the kingdom ; which was one great
reason, that he held the quiet possession of it for the
space of ten years, and in the fiftieth year of Uzziah
king of Judah, died, .and d was succeeded in it by his
son Pekahiah.
Pekahiah, however, did not reign above two years,
before he was murdered in his royal palace by Pekah,
the general of his army, who, in the last year of Uzziah
usurped the crown, and wore it for twenty years, but not
without much disquiet and perplexity. For after that
Tiglath-Pileser, e king of Assyria, had several times
invaded his kingdom, taken his cities, ravaged the coun-
try, and carried away great numbers of his subjects cap-
tive, Hoshea /the son of Elah murdered him, as he had
ing to our learned Prideaux, Belesis was one generation later:
and therefore it is supposed that this Pul was the father of Sar-
danapalus, who was called Sardon with the annexation of his
father's name Pul, in the same manner as Merodach king of
Babylon was called Merodach-baladan, because he was the son of
Baladan. This Pul, therefore, was the same king of Assyria
who, when Jonah preached against Nineveh, gave great tokens of
his humiliation and repentance. [Dr Hales thinks he was son
of that king ] — Ed. The only difficulty is, that he seems to
have marched his army from Babylon, and not from Nineveh,
and yet his son and successor, we find, lived at Nineveh ; but
then it is suggested that, as the kings of Assyria resided some-
times at Babylon, and sometimes at Nineveh, it is not impro-
bable Pul, to avoid the judgments which Jonah threatened
against the latter, might remove to Babylon, where he resided
the remaining part of his reign; and this made it so convenient
for him to attack the Israelites on the other side of Jordan. —
Pridcaux's Connection, anno 747, and Bedford's Scripture Chro-
nology, b. 6.
d This shows that Menahem was a man of great weight and
consideration; since, notwithstanding all his violence and cruelty,
he left the kingdom in his own family, which his two predeces-
sors could not do. It is manifest, however, that there was a
small interregnum of about a year's continuance, between his death
and his son's accession: for his son did not begin to reign till the
fiftieth year of Uzziah, and yet he must have been dead the year
before, because it is said of him, (2 Kings xv.) that he began to
reign in the thirty-ninth year of Uzziah, and reigned but ten
years. There was therefore apparently an interregnum ; but
what the occasion of it was, it is not so well known ; though there
is room to suppose, that it proceeded from the interest of his suc-
cessor, who might raise a party to keep him out of the throne, as
he did afterwards to deprive him both of that and life. For,
according to Josephus, " he was cut to pieces, with several of his
friends about him, at a public feast, by the treasonable practices of
Pekah, one of his principal officers, who, seizing upon the go-
vernment, reigned about twenty years, and left it at last a diffi-
cult question to determine, 'Whether he was more remarkable
for his impiety towards God, or for his injustice towards men ?' "
— Josephus' s Antiquities, b. 9. c. 11., and Bedford's Scripture
Chronology, b. 6.
e He is supposed by some to have been the son and successor
of Sardanapalus, who restored the kingdom of Assyria, and pos-
sessed it, after it had been dismembered by Belesis and Arbaces;
but our learned Prideaux (who begins his excellent Connection of
the History of the Old and New Testament at this period) makes
him to be th i same with Arbaces, by Elion called Thilgamus,
and by Castor, Ninus Junior; who, together with Belesis, headed
the conspiracy against Sardanapalus, and fixed his royal seat at
Nineveh, the ancient residence of the Assyrian kings, as Belesis,
who in Scripture is likewise called Baladan, (Is. xxxix. 1.) did
his at Babylon, and there governed his new erected mpire for
nineteen years. — Prideanx's Connection, anno 747.
/After he had murdered his predecessor Pekah, the eiiiers of
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done his predecessor, and after an interregnum of nine
years, a thrust himself into the throne ; but it was not
long before he found that his usurpation was attended
with many incumbrances.
Salmaneser, who, in the fourteenth year of Ahaz,
king of Judah, succeeded his father Tiglath-Pileser, in
the kingdom of Assyria, invaded his country, and having
subdued Samaria, made him promise to become his
vassal, and to pay him an annual tribute. For some
time Hoshea sent his presents, and his tribute money,
very punctually ; but having entered into a confederacy
with So * king of Egypt, by his assistance he hoped to
be able to shake off" the Assyrian yoke ; and therefore
withdrew his subjection, and would pay no more tribute ;
whereupon Salmaneser c marched with an army against
him, and having subdued all the country round, and
amassed a d great quantity of rich prey, he came, and
sat down before Samaria. The town held out for three
years ; but being at length compelled to surrender, Sal-
maneser quite demolished it. He took Hoshea, and
put him in chains, and shut him up in prison all his days ;
and having e carried the people into captivity, and placed
them in the north parts of Assyria, and in the cities of
the Medes, he sent several colonies of his own subjects
from Babylon, and other provinces, to replenish the
land : but being too few for this purpose, and withal a
very wicked and idolatrous people, the divine providence
the land seem to have taken the government into their own
hands ; for he had not the possession of the kingdom till the latter
end erf the twelfth year of Ahaz, that is, about nine years after he
had committed the fact. He came to the crown, it must be
owned, in a very wicked manner, and yet his character in Scrip-
ture is not so vile as many of his predecessors, (2 Kings xvii. 2.)
For whereas the kings of Israel had hitherto maintained guards
upon the frontiers, to hinder their subjects from going to Jeru-
salem to worship, Hoshea took away these guards, and gave free
liberty to all to go and pay their adorations where the law had
directed. And therefore, when Hezekiah invited all Israel to
come to his passover, this prince permitted all that would to go:
and «hcn, upon their return from that festival, they destroyed
all the monuments of idolatry that were found in the kingdom of
Samaria, instead of forbidding them, in all probability he gave his
consent to it; because without some tacit encouragement at least,
they durst not have ventured to do it. — Prideaux's Connection,
anno 729.
a Ten years, according to Hales. — Ed.
b This So, with whom Hoshea entered into confederacy, is, in
profane authors, called Sabacon, that famous Ethiopian, mention-
ed by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, who, in the beginning of
Hezekiah's reign, invaded Egypt, and having taken Bocehai is, the
king thereof, prisoner, had him, in great cruelty, burnt alive, and
then seized on his kingdom. — Prideaux's Connection, anno T2G.
c Salmaneser, who in Tobit i. 2, is called Enemessar, and in
Hosea x. 14, Shalman, was the son and successor of Arbaces, or
Tiglath-Pileser, and according to Josephus, who has quoted a
passage from Menander, there is mention made of him, and of
his conquest of the land of Israel, in the history of the Tynans.
— Jewish AnUq. b. 9. c. 14.
d In this expedition, among other rich things which he took
and carried away, was the golden calf which Jeroboam had set
up at Bethel, which, ever since his time, had been worshipped
by the ten trilics that had revolted with him from the house of
David, as the other golden calf, which he, at the same time set
up at Dan, had been taken thence, about ten years before, by
his father Tiglath-Pileser, when he invaded Galilee, the province
wherein that city stood. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 729.
e The policy of any prince, in transplanting a conquered
people into another country, is to prevent their combining to-
gether, which they cannot so well do in a strange land, and among
a mixed multitude of different languages, in order to shake off
their uneasy yoke, and recover their liberty. — Le Clero's Com-
mentary,
permitted lions, /and other wild beasts, to multiply
upon them to such a degree, that they were forced to
make a representation thereof at the Assyrian court,
namely, " that being ignorant of the manner wherein
they were to worship the god of the country, they sup-
posed that this affliction was sent upon them ; and there-
fore they humbly prayed, that some priest of the Jewish
nation might be sent to instruct them in that particular."^
This accordingly was done : but as these colonies con-
sisted of a mixture of different nations and provinces,
they joined the worship of the true God with that of
the several idols of the countries from whence they
came ; so that one might have seen the people who came
from Babylon worshipping Succoth-Benoth ; '' the in-
habitants of Cuthath, » praying to Nergal ; * those of
f Josephus, in this part of the history, takes the liberty to
alter the sense of the sacred text: for instead of the increase of
lions, which destroyed the people, he tells us, " that they were
visited with a dreadful plague, so that the place was in a man-
ner quite depopulated by it." But allowing it to be lions, why
should these new inhabitants be afflicted with these creatures
' for not fearing the Lord,' (2 Kings xvii. 25.) when the Israel-
ites, who feared the Lord as little as they, were never infested
with any such thing? The Israelites were addicted to idolatry;
but then they did not deny the divine power and providence,
only they imagined, that their idols were the intermediate causes
whereby the blessedness of the supreme God might be conveyed
to them ; whereas these new comers believed the idols that they
worshipped to be true gods, and had no conceptions higher. They
had no notion of one eternal, almighty, and independent being.
The God of Israel they took to be such an one as their own, a
topical god, whose power and care extended no farther than to
one particular nation or people ; and therefore, to rectify their
sentiments in this particular, he took this method to let them
know, that ' all the beasts of the forest were his,' and that when-
ever he is incensed with a people, he wants not instruments to
execute Ids wrath ; the air, the earth, the elements, and creatures
of any kind, can avenge him, and punish them. — Jewish Antiq.
b. 9. c. 14. and Calmets Commentary.
g Imperfect as this teaching was, it in the end overthrew the
idolatry of these people, so that soon after the Babylonish capti-
vity they were found to be as free from idolatry as the Jews them-
selves, and continue so to the present day. But they are now
nearly annihilated: the small remains of them is found at Nap-
louse and Jaffa; they are about thirty families; and men, women,
and children, amount to about two hundred persons ; they have
a synagogue, which they regularly attend every sabbath ; and
they go thither clothed in white robes. — Br A. Clarke. — Ed.
h Among the great variety of conjectures, it is difficult to tell
what we are properly to understand by these abstruse words.
The Jewish doctors will have them to signify ' an hen and
chickens ;' but for what reason it is hardly conceivable. Others
rather think them that celestial constellation called pleiades,
winch the Babylonians, who were greatly addicted to astronomy,
might possibly worship. Some think them the name of a city
which the Babylonians built in Samaria; and others a par-
ticular deity whom they adored: but since the words plainly
import the 'tabernacle of daughters,' or 'young maidens," they
may be most properly referred to those infamous places where all
the young women were obliged, once in their lives, to prostitute
themselves to any that asked the favour, in honour of the goddess
Mylitta, who, in other nations, is called Venus. Herodotus, in
Clio, b. 1, gives us an account of this abominable custom at
large, and it is not improbable, that these Babylonians might
bring it along with them into the country of Samaria. — Calmefs
Dictionary, under the word ; Scldcn on the Syrian gods, Essay 2.
c. 7. Vossius on Idolatrg, b. 2. c. 2. and Jwrieu's History of
Doctrines, &c. part 4. c. 8.
i A province of Assyria, which, as some say, lies upon the
Araxes; but others rather think it to be the same with Cush,
which is said by Moses to be encompassed by the river Gihon,
and must therefore be the same with the country which the
Greeks call Susiana, and which, to this xery day, is called by the
inhabitants Chusestan.— Wells' Geoff, of the Old Test. vol. 3.
k The Rabbins, who are followed therein by some other inter-
Sfxt. IV.]
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A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
Haniath, a setting up Ashhnah ; * the Avites, c adoring
Nibhaz d and Tartak ; and those of Sepharvaim, e pros-
trate before Adranialech / and Anamalech ; and all this,
preters, think that this deity is worshipped under the shape of a
woodcock; but, as the word ner signifies a lamp, others, with
better reason, have imagined that the Cutliites, who were after-
wards called Persians, adored fire, and, in honour of the sun, in
the same manner as the Persians did, kept a perpetual lire burn-
ing upon their altars. — Catmel's Dictionary under the word, and
Patrick's Commentary.
a There are several cities and countries which go under this
name ; hut what we take here to be meant, is that province of
Syria that lies upon the Orontes, wherein there was a city of the
saint' name, which when Salmaneser had taken he removed the
Inhabitants from thence into Samaria, at distance enough, as he
thought, to prevent their raising any fresh commotion. — Calmet's
Commentary.
b Some of the Jewish doctors say, that this Syrian god was
worshipped under the shape of an ape; others of a lamb; others
of a goat; others of a satyr; and others in the figure wherein
tin- |iiicts represent the god Pan. They who made an ape of this
idol god, seem to have some regard to the sound of the word
Sima, which has an analogy to the Greek word simia ; but the
Hebrews, it is very well known, have another word to denote
an ape, which together with the goat, was properly an Egyptian
deity. The Syrians, however, adored the sun, under the appel-
lation of Elah-Gabalah, from whence the emperor Heliogabalus,
who instituted that worship with so much magnificence in Rome,
took his name ; and therefore, as Asuman or Suman, in the Per-
sian language, signifies heaven, the Syrians might from thence
derive the name of their god, who was represented by a large
stone pillar, terminating in a conic or pyramidal figure, whereby
they denoted fire. — Patrick's Commentary and Dictionary under
the word, and Tennison of Idolatry.
c In Deut. ii. 23, we read of the Avims; but then, in the
same text we are told, that the Caphtorim, which is generally
understood of the Philistines, ' destroyed them, and lived iu their
stead, long before these times;' nor does it appear, that the king
of Assyria ever had under his subjection the places where these
people are said to have lived. The most probable opinion seems,
therefore, to be that which the learned Grotius has suggested, by
observing that there are a people in Bactriana, mentioned by
Ptolemy under the name of Avadice, who might possibly be those
whom Salmaneser at this time transported into Palestine. — /Fells'
Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3.
d What these idols were, it is almost impossible to tell. Our
learned Selden, though he thinks they were the same idol under
different appellations, acknowledges himself unable to give any
account of them ; for he quite overlooks the fancy of the Rabbin-
ical writers, who dress up the former in the shape of a dog, and
the latter in that of an ass. — Patrick's Commentary. Jurieu,
in his history of Doctrines, &c. part 4. c. JO, has observed, that
as the word Nibhas or Nilichas, both in the Hebrew and Chaldee,
with a small variation, denotes quick, swift, rapid, &c. and Tar-
tak in the same language signifies a chariot, these two idols
may both together denominate the sun mounted en his car, as
the fictions of the poets, and the notions of the heathen theo-
logists were wont to represent that bright luminary.
e Ptolemy makes mention of a city called Zipphara, on the
banks of the river Euphrates, which the generality of interpreters
take to be this: but as the sacred history tells us that the
Israelites were translated into the cities of the Medes, and these
Medes, in all likelihood, were brought to supply their places;
between Colchis and Media there are a people, whom Herodotus
calls the Saspires, which may be the same with these that the
text calls the ' Sepharvaites.' — Calmct's Commentary.
f The former of these, according to the Jewish doctors, was
represented in the form of a mule, some say a peacock; and the
latter in the form of a horse, some say a pheasant: but the defini-
tion of the words, as well as the sacrifices that were made to
them, quite destroys these idle fancies. Moloch, Milcom, and
Moloch, in the languages of different nations, do all signify a king,
and are put for the sun, which is called the king, as the moon is
the queen of heaven: and therefore the addition of Addir to the
one, which denotes powerful; and of Anna to the other, which
signifies to answer, means no more than the mighty, or the
oracular Moloch; as the children which were offered to him in
sacrifice show, that he was the same with the Moloch of the
4654 A. C.757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
going on with the service of the God of Israel, made
a strange and unaccountable medley of religion.
This was the end of the Israelitish kingdom, S after
it had subsisted above two hundred and fifty-six years,
and the beginning of that mongrel people which went
afterwards under the name of Samaritan. Among the
captive Israelites that were carried away by Salmaneser,
h we have an acconnt of Tobit, of the tribe of Naphtali,
Ammonites, or the Saturn of the Phoenicians. — Calmet's and
Patrick's Commentaries.
g In the kingdom of Israel there was from the first the great-
est disregard of the divine laws; it was consequently destroyed
one hundred and thirty-four years earlier than that of Judah.
Jeroboam trusted little to the divine promise made him by the
prophet; but fearing that if the people went to Jerusalem to at-
tend the feasts, they would return to their alliance to the house of
David, he set up two golden or gilded calves, as images of Je-
hovah: an imitation of the Apis and Mnevis of the Egyptians,
among whom he had long dwelt in exile. One of these was
placed at Bethel, not far from Shechem, for the southern tribes,
and the other at Dan, for the tribes of the north. Temples
were built, and altars erected, for these images; priests were
appointed from all the tribes without distinction, and the priestly
functions performed even by the monarch himself. He appoint-
ed the festivals a month later than they had hitherto been, and
commanded that they should be celebrated before these images
of Mnevis and Apis, which the people took for gods, and wor-
shipped as such ; although this kind of idolatry had already been
very severely punished at mount Horeb. (1 Kings xii. 25 — 33.
Exod. xxxii.) These arbitrary changes became after this so in-
terwoven with the constitution, that even the more pious succes-
sors of Jeroboam did not venture to abolish them, and re-establish
the authority of the fundamental law. These rebellious backslid-
ings from God, though so impressively inculcated on the whole
people at the first introduction of monarchy, and afterwards on
Jeroboam himself, (1 Sam. xi. 14. xii. 1 Kings xi. 38.) did not
prevent Jehovah from governing the kingdom of Israel accord-
ing to his law. We see how he exterminated, one after another,
those royal families, who not only retained the arbitrary institu-
tions of Jeroboam, tolerated and patronized idolatry with its con-
comitant vices, but even introduced and protected it by their
royal authority. The extermination of the reigning family he
announced beforehand by a prophet, and appointed his successor.
We see that the higher their corruptions rose, so much the more
decisive and striking were the declarations and signs made to
show the Israelites, that the Lord of the universe was their Lord
and King, and that all idols were as nothing when opposed to him.
Even Naaman the Syrian acknowledged, and the Syrians gener-
ally found, to their sorrow, that the God of the Hebrews was not
a mere national god, but that his power extended over all nations.
History represents a contest, as Hess expresses it, between Ji ho-
vah, who ought to be acknowledged as God, and the idolatrous
Israelites ; and everything is ordered to preserve the authority of
Jehovah in their minds. At last, after all milder punishments
had proved fruitless, these rebellions were followed by the de-
struction of the kingdom, and the captivity of the people, which
had been predicted by Moses, and afterwards by Ahijah, Hosea,
Amos, and other prophets. (Deut. xxviii. 36. 1 Kings xiv. 15.
Hosea ix. Amos v.) We also find that divine providence was
favourable or adverse to the kingdom of Judah, according as the
people obeyed or transgressed the law; only here the royal family
remained unchanged, in accordance with the promise given to
David. We here meet indeed with many idolatrous and rebel-
lious kings, but they are always succeeded by those of purer mind,
who put a stop to idolatry, re-established theocracy in the hearts
of their subjects, and by the aid of prophets, priests, and Levites,
and the services of the temple, restored the knowledge and wor-
ship of God. Judah, therefore, though much smaller than Israc I,
continued her national existence one hundred and thirty-four
years longer; but at last, as no durable reformation was produc-
ed, she experienced the same fate as her sister kingdom, in ful-
filment of the predictions of Moses, and several other prophets.
(Deut. xxviii. 36.) — John's Hebrew Commonwealth. — Ed.
h This account we have here inserted in the sacred history,
not that we look upon the book of Tobit as canonical, for that the
Jews and ancient Christians never held it to be, though the
4 K
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who married one Anna, a woman of the same tribe, ' and
by her had but one son, whose name was Tobias : that,
during his captivity, lie was advanced to be purveyor to
king Salmaneser ; and, in that capacity, had liberty to
go where he pleased ; which gave him an opportunity of
visiting his brethren, and doing them all good offices, of
supplying their wants, and lending them money upon
any occasion, as he did to one Gabriel, a kinsman of
his, who lived at Rages in Media, to the sum of ten ta-
lents, for which he took his note : that, by a revolution
» Tobit i.
church of Rome, by a decree of the council of Trent, thought fit
to receive it as such, but purely because it has been allowed by
the generality of the christian fathers, to be a true history of this
particular family, a good exemplar of chanty and beneficence,
and au excellent pattern of paternal care and filial obedience.
The book itself is supposed to have been wrote, the former part
of it by Tobit, and the latter by his son; at least it is thought
that they left behind them memoirs of their family, and such
materials as a later author, who lived, very likely, in or after
the captivity, because the words Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael
are allowed to be Babylonish, might compile and digest into
proper order. It is not doubted but that the original of this book
was either in Hebrew or Chaldee. St Jerome having met with
a Chaldee copy of it, did not question hut that he had got the
original, and accordingly employed a man that was perfectly well
skilled in that language to render it into Hebrew, whilst himself
translated it into Latin ; and this is the version that the church
of Rome chiefly esteems. Before this version there was another,
which is reckoned the most ancient, done into Greek ; but who the
author of it was, or from what language he translated it, we have
but small foundation for conjecture ; though some have been apt to
think that it came from the same fountain from whence St Jerome
had his, but that the translator had taken such freedoms with the
text, as obliged him to retranslate it. The Latin translation,
which was in use before St Jerome's appeared, seems to have
been taken from the Greek, though in many places it varies from
it, by abridging sometimes, and sometimes amplifying the nar-
ration. The Hebrew copies, published by Fagius and Munster,
are nothing but translations (and those very modern ones, from
the Greek or Latin versions, though, in many places of the book,
they take the freedom to vary from them. That of Munster is
supposed to have been done by himself, and that of Fagius by the
Jews of Constantinople in the year 1517, and has so near a con-
formity to the Greek, that no manner of doubt is to be made of
its Im inc. descended from thence. These are the several versions
that we have of this book of Tobit, which, as it was not received
into the canon of the Jews, was not therefore admitted into that of
the ancient Christian authors, who confined themselves to those
books which the Jews acknowledged to be canonical. It is cer-
tain that neither Josephus nor Philo, nor any of the ancient Jew-
ish writers, make any mention of that copy which St Jerome took
so much pains about, nor do they register it among their sacred
books. Fagius pretends that this book of Tobit does not contain
a true history, but a pious fiction only, wherein, under borrowed
names, the characters of a father and a son truly pious are set
forth; and our learned Pririeaux seems to go farther when he
tells us, "That there are some matters in it, which are not so
reconcilable to a rational credibility, which look indeed more
like the fictions of Homer than the writings of a sacred historian,
and gives such an objection against the book as does not lie
against any other." But, notwithstanding these allegations, we
may be as^un d that the Jews had all along a great regard for
this bonk. Origen, in his epistle to Africanus, tells us that the
ancient Christians read it, though they placed it among their
apocryphal writings. St Jerome acknowledges that, though they
diil Mot receive it into their canon, yet they admitted it among
their hagiographa. Grotius owns that they read this book, and
looked upon it as a tine history; and our own Prideaux confesses
that " it is of great use to represent to us the duties of charity
and patience, in the example of Tobit's ready helping his breth-
ren in their distress, to the utmost of his power; and his bearing
with a pious submission, the calamities of his captivity, poverty
and blindness, as long as they were inflicted on him." — Calmet's
Preface on the Life of Tubit, and Prideaux's Connect., anno 612.
of fortune, himself being reduced to a low condition,
deprived of his eyesight, and now advanced in years,
he ordered his son to go to Rages, to fetch the money
he had left in his kinsman's hand ; and because it was
proper to have a companion in so long a journey, he
hired a young man, as he thought, to be his guide, but
who afterwards proved to be the angel Raphael : that
coming to their inn one night upon the banks of the Ti-
gris, Tobias went into the river to wash his feet, when
a large fish made at him, as though it would devour him ;
but the angel encouraged him to lay hold on it, and draw
it to the shore, and then bade him open it, and take out
the heart, the gall, and the liver ; for that the heart and
liver when burned, would drive away evil spirits, and the
gall was an excellent remedy for all impediments in the
sight ; that when they came to Ecbatana, they went to
one Raguel, a near relation of Tobit's, who had an only
daughter, named Sara, but her misfortune was to be
haunted by a demon, who had slain her seven husbands
successively, the very first night they went to bed to her :
that notwithstanding this, by the persuasion of the angel,
Tobias was induced to marry her, and by following his
advice how he and his wife were to conduct themselves
after marriage, and in what manner they were to fumi-
gate the room by burning the liver of the fish, come off
safe, to the great joy of the whole family : that having
received the money at Rages, he returned with his wife
to his parents at Nineveh ; and upon his return cured his
father of his blindness, by rubbing his eyes with the fish's
gall, which brought away a kind of white film that ob-
structed his sight : that after this recovery of his sight,
Tobit lived about forty years ; but having all along-
charged his son, as soon as he and his wife were dead,
to leave Nineveh, because the wickedness of the people,
he was sure, would bring Upon it the judgment which
Jonah had denounced, Tobias, as soon as he had done
his last duty to his parents, left the place, and with his
wife and family, returned to Ecbatana, where he found
his father and mother-in-law healthy, though now grown
old. Upon their death he succeeded to their estate ; and
after he had lived to the age of fourscore and nineteen,
died in peace, and was buried by his children. But it is
time now to look back upon the affairs of the kingdom
of Judah.
Jotham, the son of Uzziah king of Judah, was five and
twenty years old when he began to reign ; a though, as
a Jotham is said (2 Kings xv. S3.) to have reigned sixteen
years, yet in the preceding verse (30.) mention is made of his
twentieth year. This repugnance is reconcilable in the following
manner: Jotham reigned alone sixteen years only, but with his
father Uzziah, who, being a leper, was therefore unfit for the whole
government four years before, which makes twenty in whole. In
like manner we read (2 Kiags xiii. 1.) that 'in the three and
twentieth year of Joash, the son of Ahaziah king of Judah, Je-
hoahaz the son of Jehu, began to reign over Israel in Samaria,'
and reigned seventeen years: but in verse 10. of the same chap-
ter, it is related that ' in the thirty- seventh year of the same
Joash, began Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz, to reign over Israel
in Samaria.' Now, if to the three and twenty years of Joash,
mentioned in the first passage, we add the seventeen years of
Jehoahaz, we come down to the thirty-ninth or fortieth year of
Joash; when on the death of Jehoahaz, the reign of Jehoash may
be supposed to have begun. Yet it is easy to assign the reason
why the commencement of this reign is fixed two or three years
earlier, in the thirty-seventh year of Joash, when his father must
have been alive, by supposing that his father had admitted him ,
as an associate in the government, two or three years before his
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
627
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viceroy to his father, he had the whole administration in
his hands for some yeaFS before. He ' was a prince a
famous for all excellent qualities and virtues ; a man
exemplary for his reverence to God, his justice to men,
and his care for the commonwealth. He made it his
business to set and keep things in order ; to rectify
whatever he found amiss ; and in matters of religion
would have made a thorough reformation, but that his
people were extremely wicked, and obstructed his de-
signs. He took care, notwithstanding, to repair the
temple ; to rebuild the high gate which led from his pa-
lace ; and, to secure himself against hostile invasions,
raised several structures, both in the mountains and
forests, for the service and strength of the kingdom.
The Moabites, however, though they had been formerly
conquered by David, and made tributary to the crown of
Judah, were now become so powerful, that they invaded
Jotham ; but he, with a good body of men, soon drove
them out of his country, and imposed on them a tribute
of 100 talents of silver, 10,000 measures of wheat, and
as many of barley, to be paid him yearly. For three
years they continued to pay it ; but when Rezin king of
Syria, and Pekah king of Israel, entered into a confe-
deracy against Judah, they took this opportunity of
revolting ; and Jotham indeed hail his hands too full ever
to attempt to reduce them. He, however, died in peace,
before the preparations for war that were making against
him took effect : and being buried in the royal sepulchre
of his ancestors, left his son Ahaz, who was then about
twenty years of age, but much degenerated from his fa-
ther's piety, under a fearful apprehension of the ap-
proaching war.
The design of the two confederate kings, upon the tak-
ing of Jerusalem, was to have extirpated the whole house
of David, and set up a new king over Judah, the son of
Tabeal ; b but as God's design was only to punish Ahaz,
and not to cut oft' the whole family of David his servant,
1 Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, b. ix. c. 11.
death. This solution is the more probable, as we find from the
case of Jehoshaphat and his son (2 Kings viii. 16.), that in those
days such a practice was not uncommon. — Dick on the Inspira-
tion of the Scriptures, p. 299. The application of the rule above
stated will also remove the apparent contradiction between 2 Kings
xx i v. 8, and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9, Jehoiaehim being eight years
old when he was associated with his father, and eighteen years old
when he began to reign alone. The application of this rule will
reconcile many other seeming contradictions in the books of
Kings and Chronicles. — Home's Introduction. — Ed.
a Solomon Jarchi here observes, that all the kings of Judah had
some crime or other laid to their charge, except this Jotham:
that David himself sinned grievously in the matter of Uriah;
that Solomon by his wives was drawn into idolatry ; that Reho-
boam forsook the law of the Lord, and Ahijah walked in his steps:
that Asa sent the treasures of the temple to the king of Syria, and
put the prophet in the stocks: that Jehoshaphat entered into
society witli the idolatrous; and so he goes on with all the rest:
but in Jotham, says he, there is no fault found, which, in an age
of general corruption, is pretty wonderful, unless we may sup-
pose, ' that the people's sacrificing and burning incense still on
high places, (2 Kings xv. 35.) which he by his authority might
have removed, be imputable to him as a fault. — Patrick's Com-
mentary.
I' Who this person was, it is nowhere said in Scripture; but
he seems to have been some potent and factious Jew, who having
revolted from his master the king of Judah, excited and stirred
up this war against him, out of an ambitious aim of plucking him
down from his throne, and reigning in his stead. — Pridcuax's
Connection, anno 747.
4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
he sent the prophet Isaiah to encourage him in the de-
fence of the city, and, to assure him that they should not
succeed in their attempt, he gave him two signs, the one
to be accomplished speedily, and the other at some dis-
tance of time. The former was, s that the son which the
prophet then had by his wife, should not be of age to
discern between good and evil, before both these kings
should be cut oft" from the land. The other was, that a
virgin 3 should conceive and bear a son, c who should be
called Emanuel, so that he might rest himself satisfied
because the destruction of the house of David could in
no case happen until the Messiah should be born, in this
miraculous manner, of a virgin descended from that
family: and accordingly the two kings, finding themselves
not able to carry the town so soon as they expected,
raised the siege and returned home.
This deliverance, however, made no other impression
upon Ahaz, than that, instead of being reformed, he grew
more wicked and obdurate in his sins. For he not only
set up the worship of the golden calves, for which he had
not the same politic reason that the kings of Israel had,
but made molten images likewise for all the inferior gods
of the heathens. To these he sacrificed d and burned in-
cense in the high places, and on the hills, and under
every green tree. Nay, and to add to all his other im-
pieties, made his sons ' pass through the fire to Moloch,' e
in the valley of the sons of Hinnom ; / for which provo-
* Is. viii. 4. 3 Ibid. vii. 14.
c In the primary but lower sense of this prophecy, the sign
was given to assure Ahaz that the land of Judea would be speedi-
ly delivered from the kings of Samaria and Damascus, by whom
it was invaded. But the introduction of the prophecy the sin-
gular stress laid upon it, and the exact sense of the terms in
which it is expressed, made it in a high degree probable that it
had another and more important purpose ; and the event has
clearly proved that the sign given, had secondarily and mystically
a respect to the miraculous birth of Christ, and to a deliverance
much more momentous than that of Ahaz from his then present
distressful situation. — Home's Introduction. — Ed.
d 2 Chron. xxviii. 23. ' For he sacrificed unto the gods of
Damascus, which smote him.' However stupid it was to ima-
gine that they had any power over him, who could not defend
themselves from Tiglath-Pileser, yet, being of opinion that they
were gods, he endeavoured by sacrifices to appease them, that
they might do him no farther hurt. Thus the ancient Romans,
by sacrifices, intreated the gods of their enemies to come over to
them, and to be their friends. — See Jackson's Original of Un-
belief, c. 17.— Ed.
e Interpreters are agreed that ' this passing through the fire'
was performed either by causing the child to pass between two
fires made near one another, by way of its consecration to the
service of Moloch, or by putting it in the body of the idol made
of brass, and heated extremely hot, so that it was immediately
burned to death. But then, to abate the honor of the crime, some
are of opinion that Ahaz made his sons pass through the fire in
the former sense only, and that because we find Hezekiah sur-
vive and succeed him in the throne, and another of his sons,
namely, Maaseiah, slain by Zichri, at his taking of Jerusalem;
but this does not hinder Ahaz from having other sons, not mention-
ed in the history, whom he might make sacrifices to Moloch. The
Scripture says expressly, that ' lie made his sons to pass through
the fire according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the
Lord cast out before the children of Israel,' (2 Kings xvi. 3.)
Now it is incontestably true that the ancient inhabitants of the
land of Israel did frequently imitate the heathens in these barba-
rities: ' They offered their sons and their daughters unto devils,
and defiled the land with innocent blood, which they offered unto
the idols of Canaan,' (Ps. cvi. 36. See Ezek. xvi. 20, 21, and
xxiii. 37 — 39.) And therefore it is reasonable to think that he
did the same, and that this is recorded against liim as an aggrava-
tion of his other crimes. — Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries,
f Ilinuom, in all probability, was some erniueut person hi
623
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO WALKS. A. M
cations the Lord brought upon him the same confederate
army the year following. This, dividing itself into three
bodies, the first under Kezin king of Syria, the second
under Pekah king of Israel, and the third under Zichri,
a mighty man of Ephraim, invaded his kingdom in three
different parts at the same time.
Rezin took Elah, a out of which he drove the Jews,
and settled the Edomites in it ; and having loaded his
army with spoils, and taken a vast number of captives.
returned to Damascus. Pekah, with his army, marched
directly against Ahaz, and gave him a terrible overthrow,
wherein he destroyed no less than 120,000 of his men :
and Zichri, taking advantage of this victory, marched to
Jerusalem ; and having taken the royal city, slew Maa-
seiah the king's son, and all the great men of the king-
dom whom he found there. After this, both these armies
of Israel, in their return, carried with them vast spoils,
and above 200,000 captives, whom they intended to have
sold for slaves : but as they approached Samaria, the
prophet Oded, with the principal inhabitants of the city,
came out to meet them, and, after proper remonstrances
of their cruelty to their brethren, prevailed with them not
only to release the prisoners, but to let them likewise be
clothed and relieved out of the spoils they had taken,
and so sent back to their own houses.
The kingdom of Judah was no sooner delivered from
these enemies, but it was invaded by others, who treated
it with the same cruelty ; for the Edomites to the south,
and the Philistines to the west, seized on those parts
which lay contiguous to them, and, by ravages and in-
roads, did all the mischief they could to the rest.
Being reduced to this low condition, and seeing no
oilier remedy left to his affairs, Ahaz sent an embassy
to Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria, with a large present
of all the ijold and silver that he could find in the trea-
ancient times, towhom this valley belonged, and to whose posterity
it descended, and is therefore sometimes called the ' valley of the
children of Hinnom.' It was a famous plot of ground on the east
side of Jerusalem, and so delightfully shaded, that it invited the
people to make it a place of idolatrous worship, whereby it became
infamous, and was at last turned into a public dunghill, or recep-
tacle, where all the tilth and excrements of the city were brought
and burned ; for which purpose there was a perpetual fire kept,
which made it a kiDd of image or representation of hell. — Pa-
trick's Commentary on Josh. xv. 8. The place now shown as
the valley of Hinnom is a deep ravine, closed on the right by the
steep declivity of mount Zion, and on the left by a line of din's,
more or less elevated. From some points in these cliffs tradition
relates that the apostate betrayer of our Lord sought his desperate
end: and the position of the trees, which in various parts over-
hang the brow of the cliff, accord with the manner of his death.
— Jowett's Christian Researches . — En.
a Blah, or Klam, as we took notice before, was a famous port
on the Red Sea, which David in his conquest of the kingdom of
Edom took, arid there established a great trade to divers paits of
the world. In the reign of Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, the
Edomites recovered their liberty, and became sole masters of
this city, until the time that Uzziah recovered it to the dominion
of Judah, (2 Kings xiv. 22.) hut, in the reign of Ahaz, the Sy-
rians retook it, and restored it to the Edomites: and why they
chose to do this, rather than keep so advantageous a place in their
own possession, wo may learn from what we read of the Edom-
ites, (2 Chron. xxviii. 17.) namely, that they invaded Judah, as
auxiliaries to the king of Syria, much about the time that he was
engaged in war with that kingdom; and therefore it is no wonder
that lie should give up a place which lay at too great a distance for
him to keep, to the Edomites, whose originally it was, and who
made perhaps the restitution of it one article of their confederacy
with him. — Patrick's and Le C/erc's Commentaries.
4070. A. C. 741. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
sury of the temple, and as large promises to become
his vassal and tributary for ever, if he would but send
forces to his assistance against his enemies.
The king of Assyria readily laid hold on this invita-
tion ; and, marching with a great army against Rezin
king of Syria, he slew him in battle, besieged and took
his capital of Damascus ; and, having reduced the whole
country under his dominion, transplanted the people to
Kir, a place in the Upper Media, and so put an end to
the kingdom of Syria in Damascus, ° after it had con-
tinued for nine or ten generations.
After this he marched against Pekah, seized all that
belonged to Israel beyond Jordan ; and, having plun-
dered the land of Galilee, proceeded towards Jerusalem
with an intent to squeeze more money out of Ahaz,
which when he had done, by making him cut the vessels
of the temple to pieces, and melt them down to satisfy
his avarice, he marched back to Damascus, and there
wintered, c without doing him any further service. These
indignities, which another man might have resented,
b In the time of Abraham, Damascus was in being; and some
of the ancients inform us that this patriarch reigned there im-
mediately after Damascus, its founder. This much is certain,
that one whom he had made free, and appointed steward in his
house, was of Damascus, (Gen. xv. 2.) at the time that he pur-
sued Chedorlaomer, and the five confederated kings, as far as
Hobah, which lies northward of Damascus, (Gen. xiv. 15.) The
Scripture says nothing more of this city until the time of David,
when Hadad, who, according to Josephus, {Jewish Antiq. b. vii.
c. 6.) was the first who took upon him the title of king of Da-
mascus, sending troops to the assistance of Hadadezer king of
Zabah, was himself defeated by David, and his countiy subdued.
Towards the end of Solomon's reign, Rezin recovered the king-
dom of Damascus, and shook off the Jewish yoke, (1 Kings xi.
23, &c.) Some time after this, Asa king of Judah, implored
the help of Benhadad king of Damascus, against Baasha king of
Israel, (1 Kings xv. 18.) And from his time the kings of Da-
mascus were generally called Benhadad, till, in this last contro-
versy with them, Ahaz called in the assistance of the king of As-
syria, who killed their king, and carried his subjects into captivity,
according to the predictions of Isaiah vii. 9, and Amos vii. — Cal-
mefs Diet, under the word. [The present city of Damascus is
of a long straight figure, extending about two miles, and lying
nearly in the direction of north-east and south-west. It is sur-
rounded with gardens, stretching no less, according to common
estimation, than thirty miles around ; which gives it the appear-
ance of a city in the midst of a vast wood. The gardens are
thickly planted with fruit trees of all kinds, that are kept fresh
and verdant by the waters of the Bar.ady. Numerous turrets
and gilded steeples, glittering in the blazing sunbeam among the
green boughs, diversify and heighten the beauty of the prospect.
On the north side of this vast wood, is a place called Solkas,
crowded with beautiful summer-houses and gardens. This de-
lightful scene, and even the city itself, may be considered as the
creation of the Banady, which supplies both the gardens and the
city, diffusing beauty and fertility wherever it flows.] — Paxton's
Illustrations. — Ed.
c In 2 Chron. xxviii. 20 we read, ' that Tiglath-Pileser came
unto Ahaz, and distressed, hut strengthened him not.' And yet.
in 2 Kings xvi. 9, it is said, that ' he did help him ;' and how
then can he be said to have distressed him? Veiy well; for as
he came to his assistance against the king of Syria, so he took
Damascus, carried the people captive, and delivered Ahaz from
the power of the Syrians; but this did Ahaz little good, for he
helped him not to recover the cities which the Philistines had
taken from him. He lent him no forces, nor enabled him to
recruit his own; on the contrary, he rather weakened him by
exhausting his treasures, and destroying Samaria, which opened
a way for the invasion of his country with more facility, as it
happened in the next reign. For it is no uncommon thing, even
in later ages, to hear of kingdoms that have called in the help of
some foreign prince against their enemies, overrun and con-
quered by those who came to their assistance. — Patruk's Coin*
mentary.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
629
A. M. 3246. A. C. 758 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
Ahaz, in his circumstances, thought proper to overlook ;
and not only so, but when he heard that Tiglath-Pileser
was returned to Damascus, he went thither to pay him
homage and obeisance, as his vassal and tributary. While
he continued at Damascus, he happened to see an idola-
trous altar, of so curious a make and figure in his opinion,
that he ordered a model of it to be taken, and sent to
Urijah, the high priest at Jerusalem, a with injunctions
to have another made as like it as possible ; and when
he returned, he removed the altar of the Lord out of its
place in the temple, and ordered this new one to be set
up in its stead, and that sacrifices for the future should
be offered on it alone.
The truth is, the more his misfortunes came upon him,
the greater his contempt of Almighty God grew : inso-
much that, having defaced * several of the most stately
vessels of the temple, he caused it at last to be wholly
shut up ; and, suppressing all divine worship throughout
tlit' kingdom, in the room thereof he set up the worship
of the gods of the Syrians,0 and of other nations, alleg-
a It must not be denied, indeed, but that the high priest carried
his complaisance much too far, in obeying the king's injunction,
which he ought, with all his power and interest, to have opposed.
God prescribed to Moses in what form, and with what materials,
he was to make the altar, (Exod. xxvii. ], &c.) The altar
which Solomon made, was indeed four times as large, (2 Chron.
iv. 1.) but then God had given such solemn testimony of his
approbation of it, that there was no touching it without impiety;
for the high priest could not but know that this innovation of
the king's did not proceed from any principle of religion, but
from a design to degrade the altar of the Lord, as well as the
other sacred vessels of the temple. But what shall we say for
this? There will, in all ages, be some men found, who will be
ready to execute the most impious commands that can possibly
come from the throne.— Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
b The words in the text, according to our translation, are,
' Ahaz cut off the borders of the bases, and removed the laver
from off them, and took down the sea from off the brazen oxen
that were under it, and put it upon a pavement of stones, and
the covert for the sabbath, that they had built in the house, and
the king's entry without, turned he irom the house of the Lord,
for the king of Assyria.' (2 Kings xvi. 17, 18.) His removing
the bases, the laver, and the brazen sea, was palpably with a de-
sign to deface the service of God in the temple, and thence to
bring it to public contempt; but then commentators are much at
a loss to know what we are to understand by ' the covert for
the sabbath within, and the king's entry without the temple.'
Now the prophet Ezekiel tells us expressly, ' that the gate of the
inner court which looked towards the east, was opened only on
the sabbath, and on the day of the new moon ;' and that in these
da} S the king was to enter into the temple at this gate, and
continue at the entrance of the priests' court, where was the
brazen scaffold which Solomon erected, (2 Chron. vi. 13.) a
place for the king to pay his devotions on, until his sacrifices
were offered ; and if so, the musack, which we translate cover,
might be a kind of canopy, or other covered place, under which
tlic king sat when he came to the service of the temple on the
Babbath, or other great solemnities, which was therefore called
the covert of the sabbath ; and the reason why the king ordered
this to be taken away was because he intended to trouble him-
self no more with coming to the temple, and by this action to
express his hatred likewise, and contempt of the sabbath. —
( 'almet's and Patrick's Commentaries, and Spencer on the Laws
of the Hebrews, b. i. c. 1.
c This was a monstrous stupidity, to think that these gods
had any power over him, who could not defend themselves from
the arms of Tiglath-Pileser! Thinking, however, that they had
distressed him, he sacrificed to them, in order to appease their
wrath, that they might do him no farther hurt; in the same
manner as the ancient Romans were wont to bribe the gods of
their enemies with larger sacrifices than ordinary, in hopes of
bringing them over to their party, and making them their
friends. — Patrick's Commentary.
4670. A. C. 741. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
ing that they had helped their respective people ; whereas
his God, forsooth, had forsaken him, and therefore de-
served no farther homage. But in the height of all his
impiety and profaneness, he was cut off* by a sudden
stroke, in the very prime of his age, after he had lived
six and thirty, and reigned sixteen years ; and, being
buried in the city of David, though not in the royal
sepulchres, d for that honour he was denied because of
his iniquities, he was succeeded by his son Hezekiah,
who was a worthy and religious prince.
« In the five and twentieth year of his age Hezekiah
d 2 Chron. xxviii. 27. The Israelites were accustomed to
honour in a peculiar manner the memory of those kings who had
reigned over them uprightly. On the contrary, some marks of
posthumous disgrace followed those monarchs who left the world
under the disapprobation of their people. The proper place of
interment was in Jerusalem. There, in some appointed re-
ceptacle, the remains of their princes were deposited: and, from
the circumstance of this being the cemetery for successive rulers,
it was said, when one died and was so buried, that he was gathered
to his fathers. Several instances occur in the history of the kings
of Israel, wherein, on certain accounts, they were not thus in-
terred with their predecessors, but in some other place in Jeru-
salem. So it was with Ahaz, who, though brought into the
city, was not buried in the sepulchres of the kings of Israel. In
some other cases, perhaps to mark out a greater degree of cen-
sure, they were taken to a small distance from Jerusalem. It
is said that ' Uzziah was buried with his fathers in the field of
the burial which belonged to the kings; for they said, he is a
leper.' (2 Chron. xxvi. 23.) It was doubtless with a design to
make a suitable impression on the minds of their kings while
living, that such distinctions were made after their decease.
They might thus restrain them from evil or excite them to good,
according as they were fearful of being execrated, or desirous of
being honoured, when they were dead. The Egyptians had a
custom in some measure similar to this: it was, however, general
as to all persons, though it received very particular attention, as
far as it concerned their kings. It is thus described in Frank-
lin's History of Ancient and Modern Egypt, (vol. i. p. 374.)
" As soon as a man was dead, he was brought to his trial. The
public accuser was heard. If he proved the deceased had led a
bad life, his memory was condemned, and he was deprived of
the honours of sepulture. Thus, that sage people were affected
with laws which extended even beyond the grave, and every
one, struck with the disgrace inflicted on the dead person, was
afraid to reflect dishonour on his own memory, and that of his
family. But what was singular, the sovereign himself was not
exempt from this public inquest upon his death. The public
peace was interested in the lives of their sovereigns in their ad-
ministration, and as death terminated all their actions, it was
then deemed for the public welfare that they should suffer an
impartial scrutiny by a public trial, as well as the most common
subject. Even some of them were not ranked among the hon-
oured dead; and consequently were deprived of public burial.
The Israelites would not surfer the bodies of some of their flagi-
tious princes to be carried into the sepulchres appropriated to
their virtuous sovereigns. The custom was singular: the effect
must have been powerful and influential. The most haughty
despot saw, by the solemn investigation of human conduct, that
at death he also would be doomed to infamy and execution.'
What degree of conformity there was between the practice of
the Israelites and the Egyptians, and with whom the custom first
originated, may be difficult to ascertain and decide, but the con-
duct of the latter appears to he founded on the same principle as
that of the former, and as it is more circumstantially detailed,
affords us an agreeable explanation of a rite but slightly men-
tioned in the Scriptures. — Ed.
e Of Ahaz it is recorded that he was but ' twenty years old
when fie began to reign,' and that he reigned sixteen before he
died; so that in the whole lie lived six and thirty years, (2 Kings
xvi. 2.) Now his son Hezekiah is said to have been ' five and
twenty years old when lie began to reign,' (2 Kings xviii. 2.) and
consequently his father must have begot him when he was eleven
years old, which seems a little incredible: and, to solve this
difficulty, commentators have taken severaf ways. Some have
imagined that Hezekiah was not the real, but adopted son only
630
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 321G. A. C. 758 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
began to reign ; and, after he had got the full posses-
sion of the kingdom, (for, during his father's illness, he
acted only as viceroy under him,) he began in good
earnest to a set about a thorough reformation of religion.
To this purpose he caused the doors of the temple, which
his father had ordered to be shut up, to be opened ; his
father's new altar to be removed ; the altar of the Lord to
of Aha;, and might therefore succeed his foster-father at this or
any other age ; but this hypothesis, as Bochart observes, spoils
the descent of our Saviour from David. Others suppose that
there was an interregnum for some years, occasioned by a sedi-
tion that happened in Jerusalem: but there is no foundation for
this hypothesis in history ; on the contrary it is much more like-
ly that, as Hezekiah was a man grown, and greatly beloved by
the people, he should immediately succeed upon his father's de-
mise. Others imagine that, in detestation of Ahaz's wickedness,
his reign is omitted in this account, and that therefore the pas-
sage should be thus rendered : • Ahaz was twenty years old when
his father began to reign.' But this is reversing the order of
words in the text, and turning them into a sense that is far from
being natural. Others, not satisfied with any of these solutions,
will needs have it that there is an error crept into the text itself
by the negligence of some transcriber, who, instead of twenty,
made Hezekiah five and twenty years old when his reign com-
menced, merely by mistaking the numerical letters: but it is
not so well, even in numerical matters, which are most liable to
variation, to find any fault witli the text except where there is no
other tolerable solution, which is not the case here. In these
days, and long before, it was no unusual thing, upon several con-
siderations, for kings to take the son who was to succeed them
into partnership with them before they died. Now Ahaz, by
his mismanagement, had brought himself into so many intangle-
ments (2 Chron. xxviii. 1G, &c. and xxix. 7, &c.) as to want an
assistant in the government, and accordingly, it appears that he
admitted his son in that capacity. For, whereas it is said of
Hezekiah that he began to reign in the third year of Hoshea son
of Elah, (2 Kings xviii. 1.) and of Hoshea that he began to
reign in the fourteenth year of Ahaz, (2 Kings xvii. ].) it is
evident that Hezekiah began to reign in the fourteenth year of
Ahaz his father, and so reigned two or three years before his
father's death. So that at the first date of his reign, which was
in conjunction with his father, he might be but two or three and
twenty, and his father, consequently, when he begot him, two or
three years older than the common computation. But there is
another way of solving this difficulty. It is a common thing,
both in sacred and profane authors, in the computation of time,
to take no notice whether the year they mention be perfect or
imperfect, whether finished or but newly begun. Upon this
account Ahaz might be near one and twenty years old when he
began to reign, and near seventeen years older when he died:
and, on the other hand, Hezekiah when he began to reign, might
be but just entering into his five and twentieth year, and by
this means Ahaz might be near fourteen years old when he begat
Hezekiah, which is no extraordinary thing at all. Nay, even
upon the lowest supposition, that he was but eleven or twelve
years old, yet instances are innumerable, such as Bochart and
others have given, of persons that have procreated children at
that age: for it is not so much the number of years, as the nature
of the climate, the constitution of the body, the stature of the
person, the quality of the diet, &c, that ought to he considered
'"a this affair. — Bochart 's Phalcg. p. 920; Millars History of
the Church, p. 201 ; Bedford's Scripture Chronology, Patrick's
and Calnwt's Commentaries. [According to Dr Boothroyd,
Ahaz was twenty-five years of age when he began to reign,
and if this emendation be correct, the difficulty in question
vanishes; for Ahaz would then have been only sixteen years
of age when he begat Hezekiah.— See Boothroyd on 2 Kings
xvi. 2. — Ed.
a A great demonstration this of his sincere piety and zeal towards
God, that he began so soon to reform the corruption of religion,
and did not stay till he had established himself in his throne!
He might think, however, that the surest way to estahlish him-
self in the throne, was to establish the true worship of God ;
though he could not but foresee that he ran a great hazard in
attempting the abolition of idolatry, which had been confirmed
by some years' prescription. — Patrick's Commentary.
4070. A. C. 741. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
be restored to its place again ; and whatever other pollu-
tions it had contracted during his father's administration,
he ordered them all to be purged and done away.
Then calling the priests and Levites together, he requir-
ed them to sanctify themselves according to the direc-
tions of the law ; and, after that, the former he appoint-
ed to offer sacrifices, b in order to atone for the king's,
their own, and the people's sins ; and the latter, c with
b The words in the text are, — ' For a sin-offering for the king-
dom,' that is, for the king's sins and those of his predecessors;
' for the sanctuary,' for the priests' sins, and the profanations of
the temple; ' and for Judah,' that is, for all the people who had
followed the bad examples of their impious kings. Now, the
offering which the law prescribed for the transgression of the
people, was a young bullock ; and for the offences of the prince,
was a goat, (Lev. iv. 23, &c.) but good Hezekiah, we find, was
willing to do more than the law commanded. He was sensible
that both prince and people had been guilty, not only of sins
of ignorance, for which these sacrifices were instituted, but
of wilful and presumptuous crimes of gross idolatry, a profanation
of the temple, and an utter extinction of the worship of God ; and
therefore he appointed seven bullocks for a burnt-offering, and
as many goats for a sin-offering, upon presumption that these
numerous sacrifices were, if not necessary, at least highly fit and
becoming, upon the account of the great and long neglect of
divine service, and the multitude and long continuance of their
other offences against God, for which they were now to beg for-
giveness.— Calmei's and Patrick's Commentaries.
c Moses, in the service of the tabernacle, did not appoint the
use of many musical instruments ; only he caused some trumpets
to be made, which, upon solemn occasions, were to be sounded
at the time when the burnt-offering and peace-offering were upon
the altar, (Num. x. 10.) But David, by the advice of the pro-
phets Gad and Nathan, introduced several kinds of music into
the service of the temple, as a thing highly conducive to inspire
people with respect, with joy, and with affection for the solemni-
ties and assemblies of religion, (1 Chron. xxiii. 5, and xxv. 1.)
and it is farther observable, that the institution of music, in re-
ligious assemblies, is not a matter of human invention, but what
was ordained by God, and has the sanction and authority of his
prophets to confirm it; 'for so was the commandment of the
Lord by his prophet?,' (2 Chron. xxix. 25.) [The musical in-
struments of the Hebrews are, perhaps, what has been hitherto
least understood of anything in Scripture. Calmet considers them
under three classes; 1st, stringed instruments; 2nd, hand in-
struments, or divers kinds of flutes; 3d, different kinds of drums.
(1) Of stringed instruments, are the nabel, and the psaltery, or
psanncterin. (Dan .iii. 5.) These three names apparently sig-
nify nearly, or altogether, the same thing. They considerably
resembled the harp ; the ancient cytheera or the ashur, or the ten-
stringed instrument; both were nearly of the figure A: but the
nablum or psaltery, was hollow toward the top, and played on
toward the bottom, whereas the cytkecra or ten-stringed instrument
was played on the upper part, and was hollow below ; both were
touched by a small bow or fret, or by the fingers. The kinnor, or
ancient lyre, had sometimes six, sometimes nine strings, strung
from top to bottom, and sounded by means of a hollow belly, ove.
which they passed ; they were touched by a small bow, or fret, or by
the finger. The ancient symphony was nearly the same as our viol
The sambuc was a stringed instrument, which was nearly the
same, it is thought, as the modern psaltery. (2.) We discover
in Scripture various sorts of trumpets and flutes, of which it is
difficult to ascertain the forms. The most remarkable of this
kind is the ancient organ, in Hebrew hiiggab, the ancient pipe of
Pan, now common among us. (3.) Drums were of many kinds ;
the Hebrew titpt, whence comes tympanum, is taken for all kinds
of drums or timbrels. The zabxelim. is commonly translated by
the LXX and the Vulgate, cymbala; instruments of brass of a
very clattering sound, made in the form of a cap or hat, and
struck one against the other, while held one in each hand. Later
interpreters by zabzelim, understand the sistrum; an instrument
anciently very common in Egypt. It was nearly of an ovai
figure, and crossed by brass wires, which jingled upon being
shaken, while their ends were secured from falling out of the
frame, by their heads being larger than the orifice which contain-
ed the wire. The Hebrews mention an instrument called ska-
Sect. IV. 1
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
631
A. M. 3246. A. C. 758, OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
musical instruments, to sing praises to God in the words
of David, a and of Asaph the seer.
Having thus restored the service of the temple, he
proposed with himself to revive the passover, which, by
reason of the division of the kingdom, and the frequent
commotions that had happened thereupon, had not been
regularly observed for along while. To this purpose, he
advised with the princes, and chief men of the kingdom ;
and because it was thought, that neither the temple, the
priests, nor the people, could be sulticiently sanctified,
against the usual time of observing it, which was in the
first month of the year, it was resolved, that * it should
be celebrated in the second : and accordingly a procla-
mation was issued out, requiring not only the people of
Judah, c but all other Israelites of whatever tribe they
were, to come to this solemnity.
It could hardly be expected but that, after so long
a disuse of this holy festival, an attempt to revive it
should meet with some scorn and opposition ; and therefore
we need not wonder that many of the tribes of Ephraim,
li'shim, which the LXX translate cymoala; but Jerome sislra.
It is found only in 1 Sam. xviii. 6. The term shaleshim suggests
that it was of three sides, (triangular) and it might be that an-
cient triangular instrument, which carried on each side several
rings, that were jingled by a stick, and gave a sharp rattling
sound. The original also mentions mezzilothaim, which were of
brass, and of a sharp sound. This word is usually translated
cymbala ; some however render it tintinnabu/a, little bells, which
is countenanced by Zechariah xiv. 20, which says, the time shall
come when on the bracelets of the horses shall be written ' Holi-
ness to the Lord!' We know that bells were anciently worn by
horses trained for war to accustom them to noise. — Calmet
abridged. — Ed.
a David was both a great poet and master of music, and might
therefore modulate and compose his own hymns ; but whether tiie
music of them might not be altered and improved in after ages,
because the words only are here taken notice of, is a matter of
some uncertainty. The Asaph here mentioned was the person
who lived in David's days, so famous for his skill in music, and
the several devout pieces, which he composed, are those which
we meet with in the collection of the Psalms; but others will
needs have it, but for what reason I cannot tell, that the author
of the Psalms ascribed to Asaph, was another person who lived
in after times, though perhaps of the same family, as well as name,
with this famous Asaph who lived in David's. — Patriek's Com-
mentary.
b The direction which the law gives, is, — That the passover
should be ' celebrated on the fourteenth day of the fust month,
which the Jews call Nisan; but because it was found impossible
to get all things in readiness against that time, it was judged more
advisable to adjourn it to the fourteenth of the next month,
which the Jews call Jair, rather than stay to the next year; and
for this they had some encouragement; because the law allows,
that, ' in case any man shall be unclean, by reason of a dead
body, or be on a journey afar off, he may eat the passover on
the fourteenth day of the second month,' (Num. ix. 10, 11.) and
what was an indulgence to particular persons, they thought might
well be allowed to the whole congregation of Israel. — Patrick's
Commentary.
c Hezekiah, it is certain, had no right to invite Hoshea's sub-
jects to repair to Jerusalem to the celebration of his passover;
yet lor the doing of this, we may well presume, that he had en-
couragement from Hoshea himself, who, as to the matter of reli-
gion, as we said before, has a better character in Scripture than
any of his predecessors from the division of the two kingdoms.
Hut the truth of the matter was, that both the golden calves,
which had made this political separation, were now taken away,
that of Dan by Tiglath-Pileser, and the other of Bethel, by
his son Salmaneser; and therefore the apostate Jews, being thus
deprived of their idols, began to return to the Lord, and to go up
to Jerusalem to worship, for some time before Hezekiah made
them this invitation to his passover. — Prideaux's Connection,
anno 729.
. 4680. A. C.725. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
Manasseh, and Zebulun, should laugh at Hezekiah'a
messengers, when they invited them to this feast. Great
multitudes, however, even from those parts, caine to
Jerusalem upon this occasion ; and the concourse indeed
was so numerous, that this might be justly reckoned one
of the greatest passovers that had been solemnized from
the days of king Solomon. The time which the law di-
rects for the continuance of this feast, is seven days ; but
forasmuch as it had been long neglected, they now dou-
bled the time, and kept it for fourteen, with great joy
and gladness of heart : and as soon as the solemnity was
ended, those that belonged to the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin, rf went and brake the images in pieces, cut
down the groves, threw down the high places, and altars
belonging to strange gods, and absolutely destroyed all
the monuments of idolatry which were any where to be
found, either in Jerusalem, Judea, or any of the coasts
belonging to them ; as those of the other tribes, in their
return home, did the same in all the rest of Israel ; so
that idolatry was quite abolished, and the true worship
of God again universally restored.
Nay there was one thing, namely, the brazen serpent,
e which might have been of innocent use, and served in
d This, as the text tells us, was done not only in the tribes of
Judah and Benjamin, but in those of Ephraim also and Manasseh,
(2 Chron. xxxi. 1.) which though they were part of Hoshea's
dominion, yet Hezekiah might direct this abolition of idolatry
in them, in virtue of a law which bound Israel, as well as Judah,
and required the extirpation of these things in the whole land of
Canaan ; by the special impulse and direction of God's Spirit,
which puts men upon heroic actions, though not to be drawn into
imitation; or out of a firm persuasion that his neighbour Hoshea,
who had permitted his subjects to repair to the passover, would
approve and consent to what he did in this respect. — Poole's An-
notations.
e The reason which the Scripture assigns for Hezekiah's de-
stroying this brazen serpent is, — ' because unto this day the chil-
dren of Israel had burnt incense to it,' (2 Kings xviii. 4.) We are
not however to suppose, that, all along from the days of Moses,
this brazen serpent was made an object of religious worship: this
is what neither David nor Solomon, in the beginning of his reign,
would have allowed of; nor can we think, but that either Asa or
Jehoshaphat, when they rooted out idolatry, would have made an
end of this, had they perceived that the people, at that time,
either paid worship or burnt incense to it. The commencement
of this superstition therefore must be of a later date, and since
the time that Ahab's family, by being allied to the crown of
Judah by marriage, introduced all kinds of idolatry. Now, one
false inducement to the worship of this image might be a mistake
of the words of Moses. For whereas it is said, ' that whosoever
looketh upon it shall live,' (Num. xxi. 1.) some might thence
fancy, that, by its mediation, they might obtain a blessing, and so
make it the object of their superstition at first. However, we
may imagine that their burning incense, or any other perfumes
before it, was designed only in honour to the true God, by whose
direction Moses made it; but then, in process of their supersti-
tion, they either worshipped the God of Israel tinder that image,
or what is worse, substituted a heathen God in his room, and
worshipped the brazen serpent as his image; which they might
more easily be induced to do, because the practice of some neigh-
bouring nations was to worship their gods under the form of a
serpent. Upon this account Hezekiah wisely chose rather to lose
this memorial of God's wonderful mercy to his people in the wil-
derness, than to suffer. it any longer to be abused to idolatry, and
therefore 'he brake it in pieces,' that is, as the Talmudists ex-
plain it, he ground it to powder, and then scattered it in the
air, that there might not be the least remains of it. And yet,
notwithstanding all the care which he took to destroy it, Sigonius
in his history of Italy, tells us, that in the church of St Ambrose,
in Milan, they show a brazen serpent entire, which they pretend
to be the veiy same which Moses erected in the wilderness;
though it must be owued, that among their learned men, there
632
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3216. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
the same manner as did the pot of manna, and Aaron's
rod, for a monument of God's miraculous mercy to the
Israelites in their passage through the wilderness ; but,
because the preceding times of iniquity had made it an
object of idolatrous worship, Hezekiah thought proper
to destroy it, in order to take away all occasion of the
like abuse for the future. Having thus removed all the
objects of idolatry, he took care in the next place to re-
store the temple worship to its ancient splendour and
purity. To this purpose he put the priests and Levites
in their courses, and appointed every one his proper
ministration. The tithes and first fruits, which idolatrous
princes had detained, on purpose to bring the priesthood
into poverty, and thence into contempt, he returned to
the church : and «■ out of his own privy purse, as we say,
ordered the expenses of the daily oblations, as well as of
the larger offerings on the great festivals of the year to
be defrayed.
Upon these, and several other accounts, Hezekiah
deserved the title of one of the best of kings ° that ever
reigned in Judah ; nor was God in the least wanting to
reward his piety in a most signal manner. For, while
Salmaneser was engaged in the siege of Samaria, he
warred against the Philistines, and not only regained all
the cities of Judah, which they had seized during the
time that Pekah and Rezin jointly distressed the land,
but also dispossessed them of almost all their own terri-
tories, except Gaza and Gath.
As soon as the siege of Samaria was over, Salmane-
ser sent to Hezekiah to demand the tribute which his
father Ahaz had agreed to pay to the kings of Assyria ;
but Hezekiah refused to pay it ; which would doubtless
have brought the Assyrian upon him, with all his power,
had he not been diverted by the war c he entered into
against Tyre, and died before he had put an end to it.
4G8G. A. C. 725. \ KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON
He was succeeded by his son Sennacherib, who, as
soon as he was settled on the throne, renewed the de-
mand for the tribute, and upon Hezekiah 's refusing to
comply, marched a great army into Judea. in order to
fall upon him.
d Not long before this, Hezekiah was taken with a sore
illness, and had a message from God, by the prophet
Isaiah, to settle his affairs and prepare for death ; but,
upon his great concern, and hearty prayer to God, he
obtained another message from him by the same prophet,
promising him a reprieve for fifteen years longer, and a
deliverance from the Assyrians, who were then coming
against him. Both these were events beyond his expec-
tation ; and therefore, to give him a full assurance of
faith, God, at his request, made the sun go backward
ten degrees upon the sun-dial that Ahaz had erected ;
and when, by the prophet's directions, a plaster of figs
was applied to his ulcer, he recovered in the space of
three days, and went up to the temple to return God
thanks for so wonderful a deliverance.
Upon Hezekiah 's recovery, Merodach-Baladan king
of Babylon sent ambassadors e to congratulate him, and
at the same time to enter into an alliance with him against
Sennacherib, whose growing power the Babylonians, as
well as the Jews, had reason to fear : and Hezekiah was
so taken with the honour done him upon this occa-
sion, that, out of the vanity and pride of his heart, he
showed the ambassadors all the wealth /and strength
are some who acknowledge the cheat, and disclaim it. — Le Clercs
Commentary and Prideaux's Connection, anno 726.
a After that David had brought the ark of the Lord into the
tent which he had pitched for it, near his own palace, the Scrip-
ture seems to intimate, (1 Chron. xvi. 1.) that he divided the
priests and Levites into two bodies; one of which he left at Gi-
beah, to attend in the tabernacle which Mnses made; and the
other lie took with him to Jerusalem. And from this time, it is
highly probable, that out of his own estate he supplied whatever
was necessary lor the sacred ministry of this his domestic taber-
nacle on Mount Sion. When Solomon had built the temple, he
obliged himself to defray all the expenses, both ordinary and ex-
traordinary, of the altar, (2 Chron. viii. 13.) And, in like man-
ner, upon the rebuilding of the temple, at the return from the
captivity, Ezekiel assigns a proper revenue to the king, to answer
the expense of all sacrifices, both stated and occasional, (chap,
xlvi.) so that Hezekiah in this did properly no more than what
was incumbent on him; though several of his idolatrous prede-
cessors had doubtless withdrawn the fund appropriated to that
purpose, which made it so commendable in him to restore it to
its proper channel. — Ca/met's and Patrick's Commentaries.
b The woids in the text are, — ' So that, after him, was none
like hiro amongst all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before
him, (2 Kings xviii. 5.) Now it is plain that the same com-
mendation is given of Josiah, namely, that ' like unto him was
there no king before him, which turned to the Lord, with all his
heart, &c, neither after him arose there any like him,' (2 Kings
xxiii. 25.) So that this character of Hezekiah must relate to
some particular virtue wherein he stood distinguished from the
rest of the kings of Judah, and that was, 'his trusting in the
Lord God of Israel,' as it is in the beginning of the verse, and
not in the help of any foreign forces, as all the other kings, even
the most renowned for their piety, in some measure, are known
to have done. — Calmet's Commentary.
c The king of Tyre finding the Philistines brought low by the
war which Hezekiah had lately made upon them, laid hold on the
opportunity to reduce Gath, which had some time before revolted
from under his obedience. Hereupon the people of Gath,
applying themselves to Salmaneser, engaged him in their cause
against the Tyrians. He soon took several of their cities, and
at length closely besieged their capital: but before he could carry
the place, which held out for five years, he died, and by that
means gave some respite to Hezekiah. — Pridca,u.v' s Connection,
anno 720.
d In the course of the sacred history, this sickness of Hezekiah's
is placed immediately after the defeat and death of Sennacherib ;
whereas it plainly happened before that time, because in the mes-
sage which God sent him upon his bed of sickness by the prophet
Isaiah, he promises to ' deliver Jerusalem out of the hands of the
king of Assyria,' (2 Kings xx. 6.) The truth of the matter is —
Hezekiah reigned in all nine and twenty years, (2 Kings xviii.
2.) He had already reigned fourteen years, when Sennacherib
invaded him (2 Kings xviii. 13.), and after his sickness he con-
tinued to reign fifteen years (2 Kings xx. C), so that his sickness
must have happened in the very same year that the king of As-
syria invadtd his kingdom; but the sacred penman deferred the
account he was to give of that, until he had finished the history
of Sennacherib, which he was willing to give the reader at one
view; and this is the true reason of the mislocation Calmet's
Commentary.
e The conquests which the Assyrians were everywhere making
could not fail of giving umbrage to the neighbouring powers to
confederate against them ; and therefore we may well suppose
that, besides the business of congratulating Hezekiah's recovery,
the purpose of this embassy was to enter into an alliance with
him against Sennacherib, whose growing power the Babylonians
had reason to fear, as well as the Jews; and, as the author of the
Chronicles expresses it, ' to inquire into the wonder that was
done in the land,' (2 Chron. xxxii. 31.) that is, to inquire about
the miracle of the sun's retrogradation, which could not fail ol
being a matter of great curiosity to the Chaldeans, who, above all
other nations, were at that time given to the study of astronomy.
Calmet's Commentary and Prideaux's Connection, anno 713.
/The things which Hezekiah showed to the Babylonian am-
bassadors, were the riches of his house, his treasures, his armoury,
and all his stores and strength for war; and the reason for his
doing this, was doubtless, to make the Babylonians put the great-
er value upon his friendship: but herein he offended God, that
he not only laid a bait before these foreigners, to encourage them
Sbct. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
633
A. M.324G. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
of his kingdom, for which the prophet Isaiah was sent to
reprove him, and to let him know that a day would
come when all the stores he made such ostentation of
should be carried into Babylon ; which admonition a he
received in a very decent and humble manner.
Sennacherib, in the mean time, advanced with a mighty
army against the fenced cities of Judah ; and, having
taken several of them, he came at length and sat down
before Lachish, and threatened, after he had taken that,
to besiege even Jerusalem itself. Hereupon Hezekiah,
taking advice of his princes and chief counsellors, made
all manner of preparations for a vigorous defence. He
repaired the walls, and fortified them with towers. He
provided darts and shields in great abundance, and all
other arms and artillery that might be useful, either to de-
fend the place or annoy the enemy. He had the people
inrolled that were lit for war, and placed over them good
officers, both to instruct them in all military exercise,
and to head and conduct them when they were to make
their sallies. He stopped up the fountains * for a good
to invade his country, but seemed to place more confidence in
this new alliance with them, than in the power of the Almighty,
whose favour and protection he had so long experienced. The
author of the Chronicles tells us, that, 'in the business of the
ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to
inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to
try him, that he might know all that was in his heart,' (2 Chron.
xxxii. 31.) And, from hence some have inferred, that Heze-
kiah's great offence lay, not so mucli in the ostentation of his
military stores and treasures, as in his not giving sufficient glory
to God for so signal a miracle, and his recovery ensuing there-
upon, and in his not representing this matter to these idolatrous
ambassadors, in such powerful and convincing terms as might
have drawn them over to the knowledge of the true God, which
was the proper improvement he should have made of this divine
vouchsafement to him. — Le Clerc's Commentary. [However
we may endeavour to excuse Hezekiah, it is certain that he
made an exhibition of his riches and power in a spirit of great
vanity; and that this did displease the Lord. It was also ruin-
ous to Judea; when those foreigners had seen such a profusion of
wealth, such princely establishments, and such a fruitful land, it
was natural for them to conceive the wish that they had such
treasures, and from that to covet the very treasures they saw.
They made their report to their king and countrymen, and the
desire to possess the Jewish wealth became general ; and in con-
sequence of this there is little doubt that the conquest of Jerusalem
was projected.] — Dr A. Clarke. — Ed.
a The words in the text are : ' Then said Hezekiah unto
Isaiah, good is the word of the Lord, which thou hast spoken.
And he said, is it not good if peace and truth be in my days?
(2 Kings xx. 19.) The prophet hath told him, that the very
people whom he had been so highly complimenting would cany
his posterity into captivity; and to return him such an answer
as this, shows not all the concern which a good prince ought to
have for his people and posterity. It shows, indeed, as if he
cared not what became of them, so long as he was permitted to
live easy and happy. The words in the original are to this effect,
'that which thou hast told me from God, is good:' I willingly
submit to it : ' but shall peace and truth,' that is, solid and last-
ing peace, 'continue for my time?' " May I flatter myself with
so much happiness? And will God be so gracious as not to
revoke the grant which he hath made me of a longer continuance
here? He is just, no doubt, in every thing he sends upon us;
but do these threats relate to me or my posterity only? Well
wero it for me, if he would suspend the execution of his wrath
for the little time that I have to live." This is the natural sense
of Hezekiah's answer; and accordingly Josephus makes him
say, " That though I am much afllicted at the thoughts of the
misery that will befall my family, yet, since it is God's pleasure
that it should be so, I have no more to beg of Heaven, than that
I may enjoy the small remainder of my miserable life in peace. —
Jewish Antiq. b. x. c. 3. and Calmtt's Commentary.
i> It is an old stratagem in war, to distress an enemy by the
4G8G. A. C. 725. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
compass round, and the brook c that passed by the wal.'fl
of the city, in order to distress the enemy for want of
water : and, to strengthen himself the more against them,
he entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with
the king of Egypt. But this alliance the prophet Isaiah
highly blamed, as it implied a diffidence of the Almighty's
power to help him, and would redound to his own shame,
and reproach, and confusion at last ; which accordingly
came to pass. For, while Sennacherib was besieging
Lachish, Hezekiah, observing that this new ally of his
made no haste to come to his assistance, and being sad-
ly sensible that of himself he was not sufficient to resist
so powerful an adversary as the king of Assyria, sent
ambassadors to him, desiring him to retire out of his
dominions, and promising to submit to such conditions
as he should be pleased to impose upon him.
The demand which Sennacherib made, was the pay-
ment of three hundred talents d of silver, and thirty
talents of gold ; which Hezekiah was not able to raise,
without exhausting all his treasures, and stripping the
very doors of the temple of the gold plates wherewith
they were overlaid. This diverted the king of Assyria
for some time ; so that, leaving Judea, he turned h'ss
arms against Egypt ; e but after a series of different suc-
want of water; but this is what the besiegers do generally prac-
tise against the besieged. In this manner it was Holofernes
intended to distress Betliulia, (Judith vii.); and of Semiramis,
Cyrus, and Alexander, it is reported, that they all took Babylon
by diverting the current of the Euphrates. But Hezekiah here
takes another method ; he is for preventing the Assyrians from
carrying on the siege of Jerusalem by intercepting the water,
that is, by filling up the fountain-heads with earth, that the
enemy might not perceive where any water was; and so carry-
ing their streams through pipes and subterraneous channels into
the city, there to be received in basins and large pools for the
benefit of the besieged: and this he might do with more facility
to himself, and prejudice to the enemy, because (except the
springs and brooks that were just contiguous to the city) the
whole country, (according to Strabo, b. xvi.) for the space of
sixty furlongs round about, was all barren and waterless. — Le
Clerc's Commentary.
c This must be the brook Kidron, which ran in a valley of
that name, between the city and the mount of Olives, when it
had any water in it; for, except in the case of great rains, or
the snow's dissolving from the mountains, it was generally dry.
However, if it had any fountain-head, by stopping up that, and
diverting its current by conveyances under ground, Hezekiah
might, in like manner, make it of no use to the besiegers. —
Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
d The Hebrew talent, according to Scripture, (Exod. xxv.
39.) contains three hundred shekels, and every shekel answering
to the value of three shillings, these three hundred talents of sil-
ver must contain, of our money, thirteen thousand five hundred
pounds; and the thirty talents of gold, one hundred and sixty-
four thousand two hundred and fifty ; so that the whole sum here
paid by Hezekiah amounted to one hundred and seventy-seven
thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds of our money. — Pri-
deaux's Connection, anno 713.
e What might possibly be the occasion of a war between two
kingdoms so widely distant as Assyria and Egypt were, it is
difficult to know. We have nowhere any information from his-
tory, and are left therefore to conjecture — that, after Salmaneser
had taken away the ten tribes, and sent colonies in their room,
the tribe of Simeon, which lay nearest to Egypt, becoming part
of his dominions, as well as the rest, the Egyptians might take
the advantage of the Assyrians' great distance, and make some
encroachments upon it. That Sennacherib, when he was come
as far as Judea, might take that opportunity to proceed with his
arms into Ejiypt, in order to be revenged on Sevechus, the son of
Sabacon or So, whom Herodotus calls Setlion, who was at this
time lung of Egypt, and the chief pontiff likewise of the god
Vulcan. And as he was a weak prince, the king of Assyria
gained many advantages over him; but, sitting down at length
4l
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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A. M. 32-IG. A. C. 758; OR,
ACCORDING TO HALES, A M. 4680. A. C. 725. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CH RON.
cesses, he returned again, and invested Lachish, and
thence, contrary to all faith, and the agreement subsist-
ing between him and the kings of Judah, sent three of his
principal officers, with a good detachment of forces to
demand the surrender of Jerusalem.
a Rabshakeh, for that was the name of the person who
before Pelusium, when he had brought his platform?, as Josephus
tells us, within a little of the top of the walls, and was upon the
vary point of giving the assault, news was brought him, that Tir-
hakah king of Ethiopia was upon his inarch, with a great rein-
forcement to assi<t the Egyptians; whereupon he immediately
raised the siege, and drew oli.his army, which gave occasion to
the fabulous account in Herodotus, namely, ' That upon the
king's prayer to his god Vulcan, there came in one night such
troops of rats, into the camp of the Assyrians, that they gnawed
all their bowstrings to pieces, and so, in effect, disarmed the
whole camp of the besiegers, and made them draw on" from the
town with BO much precipitation." — Le Merc's Commentary on
2 Kings xxiii. 29, and Jewish Antiquities, b. x. c. 1. The
overthrow of Sennacherib, whese expedition was designed parti-
cularly against Egypt, is described by Herodotus, (ii. 141,) but
evidently corrupted by the Egyptian priests from whom Herodo-
tus received the narration. His words are: " After this a priest of
Vulcan, by name Setho, ascended the throne. He very impru-
dently treated the soldiers with great severity, as though he
should never stand in need of their services. He insulted them
in many ways, and took from them the lands which had been
granted to them by former kings, at the rate of twelve arura;
(iao^as) to a man. (Compare Is. xix. 1 — 4.) But afterwards
when Sennacherib king of the Arabs and Assyrians was advanc-
ing against Egypt with a great army, the Egyptian soldiers re-
fused to lend their aid against him. The priest was now in great
perplexity; and, going into the temple, complained to his idol,
with tears, of the "peril he was in. In the midst of his complaints
he was overtaken by sleep, and there appeared to him in a vision,
the god standing by him, and bidding him to be of good courage,
fir no misfortune should befall him in encountering the Arabian
army ; lor he himself would send him helpers. Confiding in' this
dream, he took such Egyptians as were willing to follow him, and
encamped at Pelusium: for through this place the invaders must
necessarily make their attack. None of the soldiers followed him,
but only the merchants, artificers, and populace. When they had
arrived there, field mice in great numbers spread themselves
about among their enemies, and gnawed in pieces the quivers
Ud hows, and thongs of the shields, so that on the following
morning they were obliged to flee, destitute of arms, and many
fell. Even to this day there stands in the temple of Vulcan a
stone statue of this king, having a mouse in his hand, and speak-
ing by an inscription to the following effect, ' Let him who looks
on me reverence the gods.' " From this narrative, though con-
siderably distorted, it is plain that the Egyptians attributed their
deliverance from Sennacherib to a deity, and to that deity whom
the Greeks caH"Hipai<rr«,-, Vulcan. Among the Egyptians he is
named Phtha or Kneph ; and because lie is said to have made the
world, he is also called Ar,fuov^y'os, the artificer. Now, as the God
of the Hebrews was the Creator of the world, the Egyptians might
easily confound him with their Phtha, and attribute this deliver-
ance to the latter. The circumstance of Setho's going into the
temple and complaining of his danger to Phtha, is manifestly bor-
rowed from what is related of Hezekiah, (Is. xxxvii. 14, 15.)
Bnsebius makes Setho the first king of the nineteenth Diospolitic
dynasty, and assigns to his reign lilty-five years. But if Tirha-
kah, whom Manetho places as the third of the twenty-fifth Ethio-
pic dynasty, with a reign of twenty years, was master of Egypt,
then Setho could be only a tributary king and a vassal of this uni-
\, real conqueror, or, at most could onlyreign over the Delta and
Upper Egypt. — Jahn's Hebrew Cummomrealth. — Er.
a Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh, are not the proper names
of these men, but rather denote their employments and offices.
Tartan signifies the president of the customs, Jtabsaris, the
chief eunuch, and Rabthakeh, the principal cup-bearer; and be-
cause he spake I It brew % ith some fluency, the rabbins are gene-
rally of opinion, that lie was either an apostate Jew, or one oi the
captivity of Israel. It is certain that he was a very eloquent
mar., and his speech very well calculated to raise sedition, or
defection among the besil ged ; but that a person of his edu-
delivered the demand from the king of Assyria, spake
in the Hebrew tongue, and in a very insolent and impe-
rious manner, to the three ministers of state whom He
zekiah sent to parley with him, telling them, " That it
was in vain for them to trust in their God for help, be-
cause his master's arms had been all along so victorious,
that the gods of other nations could not resist their course,
and much more vain would it be, to depend on the king of
Egypt for assistance, who was hardly able to support his
own dominions, and would certainly * fail them when
they looked for his aid. Their wisest way, therefore,
would be to surrender the town to his master, the great
king of Assyria, at discretion ; for if they pretended to
stand a siege, (and this he spake with a louder voice
than ordinary, in the audience of the people that were
upon the wall, and in hopes of creating a revolt
among them,) his master would distress them to such a
degree, that they should be compelled to eat their own
' excrements, and drink their own piss.' "
When Hezekiah heard the blasphemous message,
which Rabshakeh had delivered to his ministers, he rent
his clothes, put on sackcloth, went to the temple to
address himself to God, and sent an account thereof
to his prophet Isaiah. But Isaiah's answer was, not to
fear the menaces of the proud Assyrian ; for that God
would soon find out a method to make him depart his
country ; c which accordingly came to pass. For news
cation should be versed in the Phoenician, which is in a manner
the same with the Hebrew language, is no wonder at all. More-
over, had he been a Jew, though an apostate, he should have
known better, one would think, than to have upbraided Hezekiah,
with acting according to the law under which he lived, in de-
stroying the grovesand altars of idols, and in requiring his sub-
jects to worship God in Jerusalem only, (2 Kings xviii. 22.) —
Lc Clerc^s Commentary.
b The words in the text are, ' Now behold thou trustest upon
the stall' of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, (2 Kings xviii.
21.) The comparison is excellent, to denote an ally that is not
only weak and unable to help, but dangerous likewise to those
that rely upon him for succour ; and his representing the power
of Egypt to be as brittle as the canes or reeds that grow on the
banks of the Nile, for it is to this, no doubt, that the Assyrian
orator alludes, is a great beauty in the similitude. This, how-
ever, must be allowed, that what he here speaks in contempt of the
Egyptian strength, has more of ostentation in it than truth; be-
cause the Assyrian army, having lately made an attempt to sub-
due that kingdom, was now returned into Judea with disgrace.
Patrick's, Lc Clare's, and Calinet's Commentaries.
c 2 Kings xix. 7. ' Behold I will send a blast upon him.' The
destruction of Sennacherib and his army appeals to have been
effected by that pestilential wind called the simoom. Mr Bruce
thus speaks of it: — " We had no sooner got into the plains than
we felt great symptoms of the simoom ; and about a quarter be-
fore twelve, our prisoner first, and then Idris called out, ' The
simoom ! the simoom !' My curiosity would not sutler me to
fall down without looking behind me; about due south, a little to
the east, I saw the coloured haze as before. It seemed now to
be rather less compressed, and to have with it a shade of blue:
the edges of it were not defined as those of the former, hut like a
very thin smoke, with about a yard in the middle tinged with
those colours. We all fell upon our faces, and the simoom passed
with a gentle shullling wind. It continued to blow in this man-
ner till near three o'clock, so that we were all taken ill that night,
and scarcely strength was left us to load the camels and arrange
the baggage." [Travels, vol. i v. p. 581.) in another place Mr
Bruce describes it as producing a desperate kind of indifference
about life; that it brought upon him a degree of cowardice and
languor, which he struggled with in vain ; and that it completely
exhausted his strength. From the accounts of various travellers,
it appears to have been almost instantaneously fatal and petrify-
ing. It was consequently a fit Lgent to be employed in desolat*
Srct. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
635
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being brought him that Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, or of
the Cuthites rather in Arabia, had invaded some part of
his dominions, he immediately raised the siege of Lib-
nah, a where he then was, and marched against the ene-
my : however, before lie raised the siege, he sent a
second summons to Hezekiah, as insolent and blasphe-
mous as the former. This was delivered in a letter ;
and Hezekiah had no sooner read it, but he went into
the temple, spread it before the Lord, and implored of
him a deliverance from this outrageous enemy ; which
Isaiah assured him he should have, because that the Lord
had taken the city of Jerusalem under his protection, and
would not therefore sutler the king of Assyria, b not-
withstanding all his vain boastings, to come near it.
In the mean time, the king of Assyria having engaged
the Ethiopian army, and given them a great overthrow,
was in full march to Jerusalem, flushed with this fresh
victory, and resolved to destroy the place, and every
soul in it ; when the very night after that the prophet
had given the king of Judah this assurance, an angel c
ing the army of Sennacherib. It sometimes happens, that dur-
ing an excessive heat, there comes a breath of air still more
burning, and that both men and beasts being already overpowered
and faint, this small increase of heat entirely deprives them of
respiration. — Niebuhr's Description of Arabia, p. 81. — Ed.
a Libnah was not far from Lachish, both situated on the moun-
tains of Judea; and it is probable that Sennacherib, not finding
himself able to carry the latter, had removed the siege to Libnah,
which was a place not so well fortified in his opinion, and yet so
situated, that by keeping a good guard in the chops of the moun-
tains, he might carry on the siege, without any fear of Tirhakah's
coming upon him. — Lc Clerc's Commentary.
b The prophet, in his answer to Hezekiah, has given us an ad-
mirable description of the ridiculous vanity and ostentation of a
king puffed up with great success: ' By thy messengers thou hast
reproached the Lord, and hast said, With the multitude of my
chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains, and the
sides of Lebanon ; and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders,
and enter into the forest of his Carmel. I have digged, and
drunk strange waters, and with the soles of my feet have 1 dried
up all the rivers of besieged places,' (2 Kings xix. 23, &c> as if
he had said, " What can resist the force of my victorious arms?
Or where is the place that is inaccessible to the strength and ac-
tivity of these troops ? I have scaled the top of the highest
mountains, with my heavy chariots of war. I have ascended
even Lebanon itself, and through the most difficult passages have
opened and plained myself a way. Who then shall hinder me
from taking up my quarters in what part of Judea I please, from
either climbing up to the top of Carmel, or from coming down
into the fruitful vales, by making an entire conquest of the coun-
try ? At my call fountains, even in the driest places, arise ; at
my beck the hills subside, the rocks divide, and make me away;
and at my approach, the deepest rivers and ditches run diy; so
that resistance is unavailable, and victory must attend my stan-
dard wherever I go, or whatever enterprise I take in hand."
c The ancient Jews, as well as the Persians and Arabians,
were of opinion, that there is an angel of death, or an exterminat-
ing angel, to whom God has given the commission to take away the
lives, either of single persons, or of multitudes of people at once,
wherein the Almighty gives the order, but leaves the method of
doing it to the discretion of the angel ; so that in which way soever
the infliction is made, it is always said to be done by the angel of
God. The modern Jews are much of the same opinion: for they
maintain that this angel of death stands at c\nry dying man's bed's
head, with a naked sword in his hand, at the extremity of which
there hang three drops of gall, and that the sick person, seeing this
angel, in a great fright opens his mouth, whereupon he immedi-
ately drops into it these three fatal drops ; the first of which occa-
sions his death ; the second makes him pale and livid ; and the third
reduces him to the dust in the grave, with some other notions of
the like nature. Now since the Scripture has nowhere said ex-
pressly, in what manner this Assyrian army was destroyed, some
have thought that it was by a plague; others by thunder and
of the Lord came down into the camp of the Assyrians,
and smote no less than a hundred fourscore and live
thousand men : d so that, terrified with this slaughter,
Sennacherib made haste into his own country, and took
up his residence at Nineveh ; where he had not been
long, before e his two eldest sons, Adrammelech and
Sharezer conspired against him, and, as he was worship-
lightning; others by fire from heaven; others by a scorching
wind ; and others by their falling foul of one another in the obscu-
rity of the night; but which way soever it was effected, accord-
ing to the Hebrew idiom, there is no impropriety in saying, that
it was done by a destroying angel, which is a comprehensive
phrase, that reconciles all the Scripture passages wherein this
terrible defeat is mentioned, and all the sentiments of commen-
tators concerning it. — Calmefs Dissert, on the Defeat of the
Army of Sennacherib.
d The reign of the good king Hezekiah was signalized by the
extraordinary and memorable deliverance, which the Lord grant-
ed to him and his people out of the hands of the Assyrians under
Sennacherib. The destruction of the vast multitude whom that
invader commanded, and who became all dead corpses in a single
night, is in one passage attributed to an angel of the Lord; but,
in another part of the same history, and also by Isaiah, it is said
to have been occasioned by a blast, which is generally, and on
good grounds, supposed to mean the simoom, or hot pestilential
wind which is so prevalent in the sultry regions of the east. It
is a south wind, which, blowing over an immense tract of
heated ground or sand, becomes itself so hot and stifling, as to
occasion the greatest danger, and even immediate death to the
traveller. Its approach is indicated by a haze in the atmosphere,
in colours like the purple part of the rainbow, and passes along
with silent and incredible velocity. The moment it is perceived
by the natives and the camels, who are well acquainted with its
fatal power, they instantly fall to the ground, and bury their
mouth and nostrils in the sand. Delia Valle mentions the
melancholy fate of two gentlemen, who were travelling with him,
and who having gone, during the middle of the day, into a khan
to rest, fell asleep at the open window, and were found dead,
and their bodies very black and disfigured, in consequence of a
blast of the simoom having passed over them while they lay, un-
conscious of their danger, in that exposed situation. Another
traveller mentions, that the water in their skins was dried up in
a moment, and that his companion, who had been bathing in the
Tigris, having on a pair of Turkish drawers, showed them, on
his return, perfectly dried in an instant by this hot wind, having
come across the river. The most circumstantial, however, as
well as the most recent account of a dreadful destruction, occa-
sioned by this hot wind in the year 1S13, is given in the news-
papers of that day. The caravan from Mecca to Aleppo con-
sisted of 2000 souls, merchants and travellers, pilgrims returning
from performing their devotions at Mecca, and a numerous train
of attendants, the whole escorted by 400 military. The march
was in three columns. On the 15th of August, they entered
the great Arabian desert, in which they travelled seven days,
and were nearly approaching its boundary. A few hours more
would have placed them beyond the reach of danger, when, on
the morning of the 23d, just as they had struck their tents, and
begun their march, a wind rose and blew with tremendous
rapidity. They pushed on as fast, as their beasts of burden could
carry them, to escape the threatened danger, when the fatal
simoom set in suddenly, the sky was overcast, dense clouds
appeared, whose extremity darkened the horizon, and shot with
the rapidity of lightning across the desert. They approached the
columns of the caravan. Both men and beasts, overcome by a
sense of common danger, uttered piercing cries, and the next
moment fell beneath its pestilential influence. Of 2000 souls
composing the caravan, not more than twenty escaped the cala-
mity, and these owed their preservation to the swiftness of their
dromedaries. Such, in all probability, was the terrible agent
which heaven employed for the destruction of the prodigious
army led on by the king of Assyria. — Jamieson's Eastern Man-
ners.— Ed.
e When Sennacherib was got home, after the loss of so great
an army, he demanded of some about him, what the reason might
be, that the irresistible God of heaven sq favoured the Jewish
nation? To which he was answered, that Abraham, from whom
they were descended, by sacrificing his only son to kim, had
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ping at the temple of Nisroch, a his god, fell upon him,
and slew him ; and afterwards making their escape into
Armenia, gave room for Esarhaddon, their younger
brother, to succeed in the throne.
After this signal defeat of the Assyrian army, Hezekiah
lived the remainder of his days in peace and tranquillity,
being both honoured and revered by all neighbouring
nations, who by this, and several more instances, perceiv-
ed that he was under the immediate protection of God,
and were therefore afraid to give him any molestation. So
tiiat, being at rest from wars, he applied his thoughts to
the good government of his people, and the improve-
ment of the city of Jerusalem, by erecting magazines,
and filling them with arms, and by making a new aque-
duct, which was of great convenience to the inhabitants
for the supplying them with water. At length, after a
course of great and worthy actions, he died in the
twenty-ninth year of his reign, and was buried, with
great solemnity, * in the most honourable place of the
sepulchres of the sons of David. Happy in every thing
else, except in being succeeded by a son, whose name
was 3Ianasseh, and who, in the beginning of his reign
more especially, proved the very worst of all his race.
Manasseh was but a minor of twelve years old when
he succeeded to the crown ; and as he had the mis-
fortune to fall into the hands of such guardians and chief
ministers, as were ill affected to his father's reformation,
they took all the care imaginable to breed him up in the
strongest aversion to it, and to corrupt his mind with the
worst of principles, both as to religion and government.
For he not only worshipped idols, restored high places,
and erected altars unto Baal, but in the room of the ark
of the covenant set up an idol, even in the sanctuary
itself, made his children pass through the fire to Mo-
loch, practised witchcrafts and enchantments, and con-
sulted soothsayers, and such persons as dealt with
familiar spirits.
Nor was he content to practise these abominations
himself, but being naturally of a cruel temper, he raised
bi'ter persecutions against those who would not conform.
purchased his protection to his progeny; whereupon the kino-
replied, ' If that will win him, I win spare him two of mine to
gain him to my side:' which when his two sons, Sharezer and
Adrammelech heard, they resolved to prevent their own death by
ucrificing him. But for all this fiction, there is no other founda-
tion hut that scarce any thing else can be thought of, that
can afford any excuse for so wicked a parricide. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 709.
a Some take this god to he the figure of Noah's ark; others of
a dove, which was worshipped among the Assyrians; and others
eagle. The Hebrew of Tobit, published by Monster, calls
it Dagon; but Selden acknowledges, that in all his reading he
never met with any thing that could help him to explain it.
Jurieu, however, seems to be more lucky in his inquiries; for,
by several arguments, he has made it appear, that this idol was
Jupiter Belus, the founder of the Babylonish empire, who was
worshipped under the Conn of an eagle ; and therefore, he observes
farther, thai as this Belus in profane history was the same with
theNimrod of Moses, between Nimrod and Nisroch the dissi.
mOitude Is no) gnat, nor is it improbable that to perpetuate his
honour, his votaries might change the name of Nimrod, which
signifies a rebel, into that of Nisroch. which denotes a young
eatfe.— Patrick's Commentary, and Jurieu s History of Doc-
trines, BfC. part 4. c. 11.
i In the innermost and chiefest of the rooms of the royal
sepulchres of the bouse of David, was the body of Hezekiah placed
in a niche, which in the upper end of the room was very likely ai
that time cut on purpose for it. to do him the greater honour.—
Prideaum't Connection, anno 69Q.
The prophets c who were sent to reprove him, he treated
with the utmost contempt and outrage, and filled, in
short, all the land with innocent blood, which he shed in
carrying on his detestable purposes : but it was not long
before the divine vengeance overtook him.
Esarhaddon being settled in the kingdom of Babylon,
began to set his thoughts on the recovery of what his
father Sennacherib had lost in Syria and Palestine ; and
having raised a great army, marched into the territories
of the ten tribes, from whence he carried away a great
multitude of Israelites, who were remains of the former
captivity, and so sending some of his generals with a
part of his army to Judea to reduce that country likewise,
they vanquished Manasseh in battle, and haying taken
hitn hid in a thicket of briers and brambles, brought him
prisoner to Esarhaddon, rf who put him in irons, and car-
ried him prisoner to Babylon.
e His prison and chains brought him to himself, and
made him so sensible of his heinous provocations against
God, that with deep sorrow and humiliation, / he implor-
ed the divine pity and forgiveness, and thereupon pre-
vailed with God, to mollify the king of Babylon's heart,
who restored him to his liberty, and reinstated him in his
kingdom.
Upon his return to Jerusalem, he redressed, as much
as he could, the mischiefs which his former impiety had
c The prophets who were supposed to have been living in this
king's reign, were Hoshea, Joel, Nahum, Habakkuk, some say
Obadiah; and who was the greatest prophet of them all, Isaiah.
In the late reign he was in great esteem at court, and being him-
self of the blood royal, and as some say, the king's father-in-law,
he thought it more incumbent upon him to endeavour to reclaim
him from his degenerate wicked courses. But this so exasperat-
ed him against Isaiah, that, instead of hearkening to his remon-
strances, he caused him to be apprehended, and to make his
torture both more lingering, and more exepjisite, had him sawa
asuuder with a wooden saw, to which the author of the epistle to
the Hebrews, c. xi. 37.; may be thought to allude. — Calmet's
Commentary, and Howell's History, in the notes.
d From Isaiah xx. 1, we may learn, that Esarhaddon, whom
the sacred writer in that place calls Saigon, king of Assyria, sent
Tartan, his general into Palestine ; and it was he, veiy probably,
who took Manasseh and carried him prisoner to Babylon. Esar-
haddon was some time before, no more than king of Assyria, but
upon his accession to the throne, he made himself master of Ba-
bylon and Chaldea, and so united the two empires together. —
Calmet's Commentary and Prideaux's Connection, anno 677.
e The Jewish doctors have a tradition, that while Manasseh
was at Babylon, by the direction of his conqueror, he was put in
a large brazen vessel full of holes, and set near to a great fire ;
that in this extremity, he had recourse to all his false deities, to
whom he had offered so many sacrifices, but received no relief
from them ; that remembering what he had heard his good father
Hezekiah say, namely, when thou art in tribulation, if thou turn
to the Lord thy God, he will not forsake thee, neither destroy
thee,' (Deut. iv. 30, 31.) he was thereupon immediately deli-
vered, and in a moment translated to his kingdom ; hut this is no
less a fiction, than that miraculous flame which the author of the
imperfect comment upon St Matthew speaks of, that encompas-
sed him on a sudden, as he was praying to God, and having
melted his chains asunder, set him at liberty. See Tradit. Heir.
in Paratip. ct Targum,, in 2 Chron. xxiii..ll. In all probability
it was Saos Duchin, the successor of Esarhaddon, who, some
years after his captivity, released Manasseh out of prison.
r f We have a prayer, which it is pretended he made in prison.
I he church does not receive it as canonical, but it has a place
among the apocryphal pieces, and in our collections, stands he-
fore the books of the Maccabees. The Greek church, however,
has received it into their Euchologium, or book of prayers, and
they use it sometimes as a kind of devout form, and what con-
tains nothing in it deserving censure.— Calmet's Dictionary un-
der the word Manasseh.
Sect. IV.J
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
637
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done. He abolished the idolatrous profanations of the
temple ; restored, in all things, the reformation which his
father had made, and obliged all his subjects to worship
and serve the Lord only ; so that, after this, God blessed
him with a long- and prosperous reign, longer indeed
than any of the kings of Judah, either before or after
him, had reigned. He possessed the throne full five and
fifty years : and yet, notwithstanding his signal repen-
tance, because his former wickedness was so great, he
was not allowed the honour of being buried in any of the
royal sepulchres, but was laid in a grave made in the
garden belonging to his own house, called the garden of
Uzzah, ° and was succeeded by his son Anion.
This prince, imitating the first part of his father's reign,
and not the repentance of his latter, gave himself up to
all manner of wickedness and impiety; so that God
shortened his government, by permitting some of his
own domestics, * after a reign of two years, to conspire
against him, and slay him : but as wicked as he was, the
people of the land took care to revenge his murder, by
putting all to death who had any hand in it, though they
would not, at his burial, honour him, any more than his
father, with a place among the sepulchres of the sons of
David.
His son Josiah, who was then a child no more than
eight years old, succeeded in the throne ; but, having the
happiness to fall under the conduct of better guardians
in his minority, than did Manasseh his grandfather, he
proved, when grown up, a prince of very extraordinary
worth, equal, if not superior, in piety, virtue, and good-
ness, to the best of his predecessors. In the sixteenth
year of his age, he took upon him the administration of
the kingdom ; and beginning with the reformation of reli-
gion, endeavoured to pvirge it from all those corruptions,
which had been introduced in the preceding reigns. To
this purpose, he took a progress through the whole
kingdom, and wherever he came, brake down the altars,
cut down the groves, c and brake in pieces all the
a This garden, as some think, was made in that \ery spot of
ground where Uzzah was struck dead, for ' touching the ark of
the Lord,' (2 Sam. vi. 7.) but others imagine, that this was the
place when Uzziah, who died a leper, was buried, (2 Chron.
xxvi. 23.) and that Manasseh chose to be buried here, as on-
worthy, because of his manifold sins, whereof he nevertheless
repented, to be laid in any of the royal sepulchres of the kings of
Judah. — Pat/rick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
b This, as some Jewish authors observe, is the usual number
of years to which the sons of those kings did arrive, who, by their
abominations, provoked God to anger; as they instance in the son
of Jeroboam, (1 Kings xv. 25.) the son of Baasha, (chap. xvi. 8.)
the son of Ahab, (chap. xxii. 51.) — Patrick's Commentary.
c In 2 Kings xxi. 3 and 7, it is said, that ' Manasseh made a
grove, and he set a graven image of the grove,' &c, vaiyasem ctk
petel haasherah, asher asah: ' And he put the graven image of
Asherah, which he had made,' into the house. Asherah, which
we translate grove, is undoubtedly the name of an idol ; and pro-
bably of one which was carved out of wood. R. S. Jarchi, on
Gen. xii. 3, says, < that Asherah means a. tree, which was worship-
ped by the Gentiles;' like as the oak was worshipped by the an-
cient Druids in Britain. Castel in Lex. Hept. sub voce rcti,
defines Asherah thus: ' a wooden image dedicated to Astarte or
Venus. The LXX. render the words by aXro; ; and Flaminius
Nobilis, on 2 Kings xxiii. 4, says, "Again Theoderet observes,
aXffo; is Astarte and Venus: and by other interpreters called
Ashtaroth." The Targum of Ben Uzziel, on Deut. vii. 5,
' Their groves shall ye cut down,' translates the place thus: —
veiianey sigedeghon tckatsetsim, ' and the oaks of their adoration
shall ye cut down.' From the above it is pretty evident thut
idols, not groves, arc generally intended where usherah and its
carved and molten images that were dedicated to idol-
atry. The graves of idolatrous priests he dug up, and
burned their bones upon some of these altars, thereby
to defile and pollute them for ever ; and d whatever
priests of the Levitical order had at any time sacri-
ficed on the high places, though it were to the true
God, these he took care to depose from their sacer-
dotal office. e The houses of the Sodomites he broke
down: Tophet, / which was in the valley of Hinnom,
he defiled. The horses s dedicated to the sun he re-
derivatives are used. Here follow proofs. In chap, xxiii. 6, it
is said, that ' Josiah brought out the groves from the house of the
Lord.' This translation seems very absurd ; for what grove could
there be in the temple ? there was none planted there, nor was
there room for any. The plain meaning of vaiyotse cth haashe-
rah nibbeyth Yehovah is, ■ And he brought out the (goddess)
Asherah from the house of the Lord, and burnt it,' That this is
the true meaning of the place appears further from verse 7, where
it is said, ' he broke down the houses of the Sodomites,' {hakkc-
deshim, of the whoremongers,) ' where the women wove hang-
ings for the grove,' ibottim laashcrah, houses or shrines for
Asherah.) Similar perhaps to those which the silversmiths made
for Diana, (Acts xix. 24.) It is rather absurd to suppose that
the women were employed in making curtains to encompass a
grove. The Syriac and Arabic versions countenance the inter-
pretation I have given above. In verse 6, the former says, ' he
cast out the idol, dechlotho, from the house of the Lord,' and in
verse 7, 'he threw down the houses, dazione, of the prostitutes;
and the women who wove garments, ledechlotho, for the idols
which were there. The Arabic is exactly the same. From the
whole it is evident that Asherah was no other than Venus ; the
nature of whose worship is plain enough from the mention of
whoremongers and prostitutes. I deny not that there were groves
consecrated to idolatrous worship among the Gentiles, but I am
sure that such are not intended in the above cited passages, and
the text in most places reads better when understood in this
way. — Dr A. Clarke, 2 Kings xxi. end of chap. — Ed.
d Several of these priests, seeing the worship of the temple
abandoned, and, after that the tenths, and offerings, and sacrifices
were taken away, having nothing to subsist themselves, had the
weakness to repair to the high places, and there offer unto God
such oblations and sacrifices as the people brought them ; for it
does not appear that any of them entered into the service of
false gods; but because this was giving countenance by their pre-
sence and ministry to a worship that was forbidden, (Deut. xii.
11.) he would not receive them any more into the service of the
temple, though he suffered them to be maintained by it. He puts
them, in short, into the conditions of those priests that had any
blemish, who might ' not offer the bread of their God,' and yet
might ' eat the bread of their God, both of the holy and most
holy,' Lev. xxi. 21, 22. — Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
e This was the name which is sometimes given to the most
infamous of all prostitutes, who expose their bodies to be abused
contrary to nature, in honour of those filthy deities whom they
worshipped. Their houses were near the temple, and therefore
these were persons consecrated to impurity; and that they might
commit their abominations with a greater licentiousness, they had
women appointed to make them tents, wherein they were wont
to retire upon these detestable occasions. — Calmet's Commentary.
/It is the general opinion of the Jews, that the word tophet
comes from toph, which, in their language, signifies a dram ;
because drums, in this place, were used to be beat, in order to
deaden the cries of those children which were burned alive to the
idol Moloch; but there is one objection to this etymology, name-
ly, that it does not appear that the larger kind of drums, such as
are in use now, were at all known to the ancients. There was
a lesser sort, indeed, or what we call a tabor, wherewith they
made music in their dancing ; but these were not loud enough
for the present purpose, and the larger kind we owe to the Ara-
bians, who first brought them into Spain, from whence they were
dispersed all Europe over. — Le Gere's Commentary.
g It is certain that all the people of the east worshipped the
sun, and consecrated horses to it, because they were nimble and
swift in their course, even as they supposed it to be: "The Per-
sian appeases the ray-encircled Apollo with a horse, lest a slow-
footed victim should be given to the fleet God." {Ovid. Fasl.h.
638
THE HISTORY OP THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3246. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
moved ; burned its chariots with fire ; and being not satis-
lied with destroying all the monuments of idolatry in
his own dominions, he visited in person the cities of
Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the rest of the land
which had formerly been possessed by the ten tribes,
and there did the same. But while he was at Bethel, a
discovering by the inscription the monument of the pro-
phet who was sent from J udah to declare against the
altar which Jeroboam had there set up, and (above three
hundred years before) to name the very name of Josiah
who was to destroy it ; he would not sutler it to be
touched, nor his bones to be molested.
Having thus carried on the work of reformation in the
distant parts of his kingdom, he took care in the next
place, to have the temple repaired. To this purpose,
he ordered Hilkiah the high priest to take a general
view of it, and see what was necessary to be done ;
who, while he was surveying and examining every place,
chanced to find ' a book of the law of the Lord given
by Moses.' The book was carried to the king, who,
having * heard some part of it read, rent his robes in
dread of the curses denounced against a wicked people,
and immediately sent the high priest, and some other of
his chief officers, to Huldah c the prophetess to inquire
i.) But then the question is, whether the people of Judah sacri-
ficed these horses to the sun, as it is certain that the Armeni-
ans, Persians, and other nations did, or only led them out in
state every morning, to meet and salute the sun at its rising.
The ancients had a notion likewise, that the sun itself was car-
ried about in a chariot ; and therefore chariots, as well as horses,
were dedicated to it. Since then we find these horses and
chariots standing so near together, the horses, we may suppose,
were designed to draw the chariots, and the chariots to cany the
King and his other great officers, who were idolaters of this
kind, out at the east gate of the city every morning, to salute
and adore the sun at its coming above the horizon. — Bocharfs
llicruz. part. 1. b. xi. c. 10.
a The Jews will tell us, that, on one side of the grave, where
the prophet of Judah and the prophet of Bethel lay together,
there grew nettles and thistles, on the other, myrtles, and other
odoriferous plants, signifying that a true and false prophet lay
there ; and that this raised the king's curiosity to inquire whose
that sepulchre was; but there is no ground fortius fabulous fancy.
The king, we may suppose, espied a stone or a pillar more emi-
ii. lit than the rest, with the names of the persons that were
buried under it, and this made him ask the question of the men
of the city, that is, some of the old inhabitants that had escaped
the captivity, and not any of those new-comers whom the kin"
of Assyria had sent thither; for these could give no account o^
the ancient histories of the Israelites ; neither can we suppose
that the sepulchre itself, after so many years' standing, could have
been distinguishable, had not some pious person or other, with an
intent to perpetuate the memory of the thing, in each successive
age, taken care to preserve and repair it (Mat. xxiii. 29.) Le
Clerc's and Patrick's Commentaries.
'■ Whether it was the whole Pentateuch, or the hook of Deut-
ny only, which the high priest found in the temple, it is
generally agreed, that the part which Sbaphail read to the king
ken out of Deuteronomy, and not without some probability,
that the xxviiith, xxixth, and xxxth chapters were that portion of
Scripture which the secretary, who, as we are told 2 Kings xxii.
•s, had read the book before he brought it to the king, thought
proper upon this occasion to turn to; for therein is contained a
renewal of the covenant, which Moses, as mediator, had made
between God and the people of Israel at mount Horeb; and
therein are those threats and terrible comminations to the trans-
greasora ol the law, whether prince or people, which affected
Josiah BO much; and 'which Moses had given the Levites to
I ut on the aide ol the covenant, that it might be there for a wit-
ness against the transgressors of it, (Deut. xxxi. 2o, 26.)
< 'almet i Commentary.
0 This is the only mention we have of this prophetess, and
4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
of the Lord ; who returned them in answer, ' that the
judgments threatened in the book of the law would not
be long before they fell upon the kingdom of Judah ;
but that, because the king had expressed so deep a con-
cern upon hearing the denunciation of them, their exe-
cution should be delayed till after his death.'
The good king-, however, in order to appease the
wrath of God, called together a solemn assembly of all
the elders and people of Judah and Jerusalem ; and going
with them to the temple, he caused the law of God there
to be distinctly read; and when that was done, both he
and all the people entered into a covenant to observe all
that was contained in it. After this he made another
progress round the kingdom of Judah and Samaria, to
destroy every the least remainder of idolatry that he
could meet with ; and when the season of the next pass-
over was come, had it d kept with such exactness and
solemnity, as had never been observed from the days of
Samuel the prophet to that time.
In a word, this excellent prince did all that in him lay
to atone for the sins of the people, and appease the wrath
of God ; but his decree, e for the removal of Judah into a
certainly it makes much to her renown, that she was consulted
upon this weighty occasion, when both Jeremiah and Zephaniah
were at that time prophets in Judah. But Zephaniah, perhaps,
at that time, might not have commenced a prophet; because,
though we are told that he ' prophesied in the days of Josiah,'
(Zeph. i. 1.) yet we are nowhere informed in what part of his
reign he entered upon the prophetic office. Jeremiah, too, might
at that time be absent from Jerusalem, at his house at Auathoth,
or some more remote part of the kingdom; so that, considering
Josiah's haste and impatience, there might be no other remedy
at hand to apply to hut this woman: ' great is the wrath of the
Lord that is kindled against us,' says the king to his ministers,
(2 Kings xxii. 13.) and therefore his intent, in sending them,
might be to inquire whether there were any hopes of appeasing
his wrath, and in what manner it was to be done. Being thero>
fore well assured of this woman's fidelity in delivering the mind
and counsel of God, the ministers who went to inquire, conclud-
ed rightly, that it was much more considerable what message
God sent, than by whose hand it was that he conveyed it. —
Poole's Annotations.
d The words of the text are, — ' Surely there was not held such
a passover, from the days of the judges, nor in all the days of the
kings of Israel, and of the kings of Judah,' (2 Kings xxiii. 22.)
which, taken in a literal sense, must denote, that this passover,
which was celebrated by two tribes only, was more numerous, and
more magnificent, than all those that were observed in the days of
David and Solomon, in the most happy and flourishing state of the
Jewish monarchy, and when the whole twelve tribes were met
together, to solemnize that feast. It may not be amiss there-
fore to allow, that, in these expressions, there is a kind of auxesis
or exaggeration, not unusual in sacred, as well as in profane
authors. For nothing is more common than to say, " never was
so much splendour and magnificence seen," when we mean no
more, than that the thing we speak of was very splendid and
magnificent; unless we suppose with some, that a preference is
given to this passover above all the rest, in respect of the exact
observation of the rites and ceremonies belonging to it, which, a
other times, were performed according to custom, and several
things either altered or omitted; whereas at this, every thing
was performed according to the prescribed form of the law, from
which, since the finding of this authentic copy of it, Josiah
enjoined them not to vary one tittle. — Calmet's and Le Clerc's
< 'ommentaries. [What distinguished this passover from all others
before it, was doubtless the regularity with which it was observed,
together with the zeal and devotion of those who were engaged
in it. The words of the text do not therefore apply to the
number present, but to the manner in which the solemnity was
kept, and the spirit which animated the worshippers.]— Ed.
6 '1 hough Josiah was doubtless sincere in what he did, and
omitted nothing t0 restore the purity of God's worship, wherever
his power extended ; yet the people had still a hankering after
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OP THE TEMPLE, &f
639
A. M. 324G. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. C39. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
land of their captivity, was passed, irrevocably passed ;
and therefore when Pharaoh Necho ° king of Egypt de-
sired to pass through Judea, in order to go and attack
Charchemish/' a city belonging- to the king of Babylon,
and situate upon the Euphrates, Josiah would by no
means consent to it ; but getting together his forces,
posted himself in the valley of Megiddo,c on purpose
the corruption of the former part of Manasseh's reign. They
complied, indeed, with the present reformation; but this was
only out of fear of incurring the king's displeasure, or of feeling
the severity of his justice. Their hearts were not right towards
God, as appears from the writings of the prophets that lived in
those times; and therefore, seeing no sign of their repentance,
God had no reason to reverse his decree. — Calmet's and Le
Clerc's Commentaries.
a Pharaoh signifies no more, in the Egyptian language, than
king; and was therefore given to any one that sat upon that
throne: but Necho, according to Herodotus, was his proper
name, though some will have it to be an appellative, which signi-
fies lame, because this Pharaoh, as they suppose, had a lameness
which proceeded from some wound he had received in the wars.
The same historian tells us, that he was the son and successor of
Psammetichus king of Egypt, and a man of a bold enterprising
spirit ; that he made an attempt to join the Nile and the Red
Sea, by drawing a canal from one to the other: that though he
failed in this design, yet, by sending a fleet from the Red Sea
through the straits of Babel-Mandeb, he discovered the coasts
of Africa, and, in this his expedition to the Euphrates, resolved
to bid fair, by destroying the united force of the Babylonians and
Medes, for the whole monarchy of Asia.— Prideaux's Connection,
anno CIO, and Mar sham's Canon, ceg. scecul. 18. [This
Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, whom Herodotus calls the son of
Psammetichus, and represents as an enterprising hero, with
which representation the Bible perfectly accords, is enumerated
by Manetho as the sixth (Nechas II.) of the twenty-sixth Saitic
dynasty. (John's Heb. Commotitoealth.) The account of the
war carried on by Pharaoh Necho against the Jews and Baby-
lonians, is confirmed by the recent discoveries of the late enter-
prising traveller Belzoni among the tombs of the Egyptian
sovereigns. In one of the numerous apartments of the tomb
of Psammethes or Psammis, the son of Pharaoh Necho, he found
a sculptured group describing the march of a military and trium-
phal procession, with three different sets of prisoners, who are
evidently Jews, Ethiopians, and Persians. The procession begins
with four red men with white kirtles, followed by a hawk-headed
divinity; these are Egyptians apparently released from captivity,
and returning home under the protection of the national deity.
Then follow four white men in striped and fringed kirtles, with
black beards, and with a simple white fillet round their black
hair; these are obviously Jews, and might be taken for the por-
traits of those who, at this day, walk the streets of London.
After them come three white men with smaller beards and curled
whiskers, with double-spreading plumes on their heads, tattooed,
and wearing robes or mantles spotted like the skins of wild beasts ;
these are Persians, or Chaldeans. Lastly, come four negroes
with large circular ear-rings and white petticoats, supported by a
bell over the shoulders: those are Ethiopians.] — Belzoni' s Nar-
rative, 4to, and Atlas of Plates, Nos. 4, 5, and 6. — En.
b Geographers make no mention of this city under this name;
but it is very probably the same with what the Greeks and Latins
call Cercusium or Cercesium, which was situated on the angle
formed by the conjunction of the Chaboras or Chebar, and the
Euphrates. Isaiah x. 9, speaks of this place as if Tiglath-Pileser
had made a conquest of it, and Necho, perhaps, now was going
to retake it, as we find he did ; but Jeremiah informs us, (eh. xlvi.
1,2.) that in the fourth year of Jehoiachim king of Judah, it was
taken and quite destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. —
Calmet's Comment., and Wells Geog. of the Old Test. vol. iii.
c Megiddo was a city in the half tribe of Manasseh, not far
from the Mediterranean Sea, which way Necho was to pass with
his army, in order to go into Syria, and thence to the Euphrates.
In the valley adjoining to this place Josiah was slain, ' while he
was at the head of his army,' as Josephus tells us, ' and riding
up and down to give orders from one wing to the other.' Tiiis
action Herodotus makes mention of when he tells us, * that
Nechos king of Egypt having fallen upon the Syrians, near the
to obstruct his passage. The Egyptian king hearing of
this, sent ambassadors desiring him to desist, declaring
that he came not to invade his territories, but purely to
do himself justice on the king of Babylon ; and assuring
him withal, that what he did in this case was by the or-
der and appointment of God. Josiah, however, thought
himself no way concerned to believe him ; and therefore
on Necho's marching up to the place where he was post-
ed to receive him, a battle immediately ensued, wherein
the Egyptian archers, discovering Josiah, though he had
disguised himself before the action began, plied that
quarter of the army where he fought so very warmly
with their arrows, that at last receiving a mortal wound
from one of them, he was carried in another chariot d
out of the battle to Jerusalem, where after a reign of
one and thirty years, he died, and was buried in the
sepulchre of his ancestors.
e The death of so excellent a prince was deservedly
lamented by all his people ; but by none more sincerely
than by Jeremiah the prophet ; who having a thorough
sense of the greatness of the loss, as well as full fore-
sight of the sore calamities which were afterwards to
follow upon the whole kingdom of Judah, while his heart
was full with a view of both these, wrote a song of
lamentation / upon this mournful occasion ; but that is
city Magdol, obtained a great victory, and made himself master
of Cadytis,' where the author plainly mistakes the Syrians for
the Jews ; Magdolum, a city in the Lower Egypt, for Megiddo ;
and Cadytis, for Kadesh, (in the Upper Galilee, by which he was
to pass in his way to Charchemish;) or rather for the city of
Jerusalem, which, in Herodotus's time might be called by the
neighbouring nations Cadyta or Cadyscha, that is, the holy city;
since, even to this day, it is called by the eastern people Al-huds,
which is plainly both of the same signification and original. —
Calmefs Dictionary under the word Kadesh, and Prideaux's
Connection, anno 610.
d It was the custom of war in former times for great officers to
have their led horses, that it one failed they might mount another.
The kings of Persia, as Quintus Curtius informs us, had horses
attending their chariots, which, in case of any accident, tiiey
might make to; and, in like manner, we may presume, that
when it became a mighty fashion to fight in chariots, all great
captains had an empty one following them, into which they
might betake themselves if any mischance befell the other. —
Bochart's Hieroz. part 1. c. 2 and 9.
e The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus has given us his
encomium in these words: — "All, except David, and Heze-
kias, and Josias, were defective. They forsook the law of the
Most High; even the kings of Judah failed. But the remem-
brance of Josias, is like the composition of the perfume, that is
made by the art of the apothecary: it is as sweet as honey in all
mouths, and as music at a banquet of wine. He behaved himself
uprightly in the conversion of the people, and took away the
abomination of iniquity. He directed his heart unto the Lord,
and in the time of the ungodly, lie established the worship of God.'
— Ecclus. xlix. 1, &c.
f The Jews were wont to make lamentations, or mournful
songs, upon the death of great men, princes, and heroes, who
had distinguished themselves in arms, or by any civil arts had
merited well of their country. By an expression in 2 Chron.
xxxv. 25, ' behold they are written in the Lamentations,' one
may infer, that they had certain collections of this kind of com-
position. The author of the book of Samuel has preserved those
which David made upon the death of Saul and Jonathan, of
Abner and Absalom: but this mournful poem, which the discon-
solate prophet made upon the immature death of good Josiah,
we nowhere have; which is a loss the more to be deplored be-
cause, in all probability, it was a master-piece in its kind: since
never was there an author more deeply affected with his subject,
or more capable of carrying it through all the tender sentiments
of sorrow and compassion. — CalmeCs Commentary, and Preface
on the Lamentations of Jeremiah,
640
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 324S. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
lost; and the other, which goes under his name, and is
still remaining, was composed upon the destruction ot
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.
CHAP. II.
-Difficulties Obviated, and Objections
Answered.
That the dung of swallows is of a very hot and caustic
quality, and when dropt into the eye, must needs be in-
jurious to the sight, as being apt to cause an inflamma-
tion, and thereby a concretion of humours, which in pro-
cess of time may produce a white film that will obstruct
the light from the optic nerves ; and that the gall of a
fish, especially of the fish called Callionymus, is of excel-
lent use to remove all such specks and obstructions to
the sight, we have the testimony of some of the greatest
men, ' physicians and naturalists, to produce in confir-
mation of this part of Tobit's history. That good angels
•are appointed by God to be the guardians of particular
men, and in execution of this their office, do frequently
assume human shapes, to guide them in their journeys,
and to deliver them from all dangers, is a doctrine 2 as
ancient as the patriarch Jacob's time, embraced by
Christians, and believed by the wisest heathens ; and
that every man, in like manner, has an evil angel, or
genius, whereof some preside over one vice, and some
over another; insomuch that there are demons of avarice,
demons of pride, and demons of impurity, &c, each
endeavouring to ensnare the person he attends with a
complexional temptation, is another position that has
been almost generally received, 3 not only in the Jewish
and Christian, but in the Pagan theology likewise; and
therefore thus far the history of Tobit can be no novel
or romance.
That good angels have a superior power and control
over the bad, and by the divine authority can curb and
restrain their malice, which is all that we need under-
stand by ' their binding them up,' is evident from a pas-
sage in the Revelations very similar to what we read
here concerning Raphael and Asmodeus : 4 ' I saw an
angel come down from heaven, having the key of the
bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand, and he
laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the
devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years and
cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and
set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations
no more :' and that this good angel, personating an
Israelite, and 5 • calling himself Azarias, the son of
Ananias,' was not guilty of any lie or prevarication, is
plain from cases of the like nature. For as the picture
is usually called by the person it represents, and he who
in tragedy acts the part of Cato, does, for that time, go
1 Galen, de Simplio. Medicament. Facult. b. x. c. 12. iElian.
I), xiii. c. 1. K basis, b. ix. e. 27. Pliny, b. xxvii. c. 11.
Gesner. Hist. Animal, b. iii. Aldrovand. Oraitholog. b. xvii.
Vales, de Sana Philosoph. c. 42.
» Gen. xlviii. 16. I's. xxxiv. 7. Mat. xviii. 10. Acts xii.
15. Hesiod. Oper. et Dies. b. i. Plato, de Legibus, b. x. and
Apuleius, de Deo Socratis.
'See Buxtorf. Syoag. Jud. c. 10. Basilar Hist, des Juif. b.
vi. c. 19. Orphei Hymn. ad. Muses, Plutarch in Bruto.
1 Pat. v. 8. Mat. vii. 32, S3. Luke xiii. 11, 16.
* Rev. xx. I. &c. • Tobit v. 12.
4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
under his name ; so Raphael, being sent by God in the
form and appearance of a young man, was in that capa-
city to act and speak as if he had been such. Nor was
there any fallacy in his assuming the name of Azarias,
which signifies God's help or assistance, since he was
manifestly sent for this very purpose, that he might be
a guide and assistance to Tobias in his journey ; and
therefore very prudently concealed his quality of an
angel, that he might more conveniently execute his com-
mission. So that hitherto there is no incongruity in the
whole narration, if we can but have a farther account,
why 6 the smoke of the fish's liver and heart should be
of an efficacy to put the evil spirit to flight.
Those who are of opinion, 7 that demons, or evil
angels, were invested with certain material forms, where-
in they snuffed up the perfumes, and feasted themselves
upon the odours of the incense and sacrifices that were
offered to them, have an easy way of solving this diffi-
culty, by supposing that the smell of the burned heart and
liver of the fish was offensive to Asmodeus, even as they
pretend, 8 that in some herbs, plants, stones, and other
natural things, there is a certain virtue to drive away
demons, and to hinder them from coming into such a
determinate place. The Chaldeans, among whom the
book of Tobit was wrote, and the Israelites, for whose
use and instruction it was wrote, might both be of this
opinion : — That demons, as not absolutely divested of
all matter, were capable of the same sensations and im-
pressions that belonged to corporeal substances ; and
therefore in accommodation to the vulgar idea and pre-
judice of the people, the author of this history might
express himself, as though the expulsion of this evil
spirit was effected by a natural cause, the smoke of the
fish, even though, at the same time, he sufficiently inti-
mates, that it was by a divine power that it came to pass,
because we find the angel thus enjoining Tobias, 9 ' when
thou shalt come to thy wife Sara, rise up both of you,
and pray to God, who is merciful, who will pity you,
and save you.'
Upon the contrary supposition, namely, that this
demon was a being incorporeal, and this is the supposi-
tion concerning the angelical nature which generally
prevails, we may safely conclude, that the smoke of the
fish's entrails could have no direct and physical effect
upon him ; that his fleeing away therefore was occasioned
by a supernatural power, in the exercise of which, the
angel appointed to attend Tobias, was the principal in-
strument ; 1U that he ordered the burning of the fish's
entrails as a sign when the evil spirit, by his superior
power, should be chased away ; or in the same sense
that our blessed Saviour spread clay upon the eyes of
the man that was born blind, and ordered him to wash
in the pool of Siloah, namely, not as the cause, but the
proof of his cure ; and that he sent him away " ' into the
uttermost parts of Egypt,' that is, into the deserts of Ihe
Upper Egypt, because our Saviour intimates that such
is the usual habitation of evil spirits, when he represents
them, 12 ' as walking through dry places, seeking rest,
and finding none.'
0 Tobit viii. 2. » Porphyr. de Abstin. b ii.
" Origen. rout. Cels. b. viii. ° Tobit vi. 17.
,0 Saurin's Dissert, sur le Demon Asmoilee.
" Tol>it viii. 3. ,2 Mat. xii. -13,
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
641
A. M. 32IG. A. C. 7.";8: OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. G39. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
However this be, we cannot hold ourselves concerned
for the vindication of every expression in a book, which
our church has not thought fit to receive into her canon
of Scripture. It is sufficient for our present purpose,
that the historical ground-plot of it be true, whatever
may be said as to some particular passage in it ; and
though its figurative and poetical style, as well as near
conformity to the theology then in vogue, may give
some umbrage to a reader, that will not be so candid as
to think with St Jerome, ' 'Many things are spoken in
the sacred writings according to the opinion of that time,
and not according to what was the real truth of the
matter.'0
1 Jerome on Jeremiah xxviii. 28.
a By much the greater part of this disquisition on the book of
Tobit might have been well omitted. That hook was never admit-
ted into the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures by the Jews; nor is
if, to be found in the earliest and most authentic canons of the
Christian church. That there was such a man as Tobit, carried
captive with the rest of the tribe of Naphtali by Salmaneser; that
he was eminent for his piety and charity; that his wife, though
a good woman, was not always obedient to her husband ; that lie
became blind in the manner which is recorded, and had his sight
restored by the means which are said to have been used for that
purpose ; and that his son married the daughter of Raguel of
Ecbatana, after she had been betrothed to seven husbands, there
is no reason to doubt; for not one of these events is contrary to
the common course of nature. It is indeed xery singular that
seven young men should have successively perished on their
attempting each to consummate his marriage; but such events
were not, in themselves, impossible, and perhaps we may even
conceive the cause by which they were effected. The whole
story of Asmodeus and Raphael is certainly a piece of poetical
machinery, invented for a similar purpose with that for which
Homer introduces his gods and goddesses as taking opposite sides
in the Trojan war, or for which the Persian poets introduce the
agency of good and evil genii, in their beautiful moral allegories.
It was to adapt the story to the taste of those for whose amuse-
ment and instruction it was written, who delighted in the mar-
vellous, ami on whose memory and imagination a philosophical
account of a singular event would have made no deep or lasting
impression. To understand the story of Raphael and Asmodeus
literally, as Calmet seems to have done, would be to prefer the
authority of this beautiful oriental tale to that of the whole Hebrew
Scriptures, in which I heartily agree with Bishop Horsley, that no
countenance whatever is given to the popular doctrine of guardian
angels. " This interpretation ;' says the bishop, " introduces a
system, which is in truth nothing better than' the pagan poly-
theism, somewhat disguised ami qualified ; for in the pagan
system every nation had its tutelary deity, all subordinate to
Jupiter, the sire of gods and men. Some of those prodigies of
ignorance and folly, the rabbins of the Jews, who lived since the
dispersion of the nation, thought all would be well if for tutelar
deities, they substituted tutelar angels. From this substitution,
the system of guardian angels, which I have described, arose;
and from the Jews the Christians adopted it with other fooleries."
But though the story of Raphael and Asmodeus must be consider-
ed as mere machinery, it does not by any means follow that the
history itself — the detail of facts, is not entitled to great credit.
No man of real learning, Mr Bryant aNme excepted, has ever
called in question, 1 believe, the great outlines of the Trojan war
as drawn by Homer; though surely no man in this age hath be-
lieved that the pestilence was sent among the Grecian troops
by Apollo, for Agamemnon's cruelty to his injured priest, or that
1 'ioniedo literally wounded the god of war, and sent him bellowing
with pain to heaven! That there were such men, however, as
Agamemnon and Diomede; that the former was the commander
of the confederate Greeks, and the latter one of their must ac-
complished heroes; and that, in the tenth year of the war, great
numbers of the army were cut off by some pestilential disease,
which the medical knowledge of Machaon did not enable him to
cure, it would be unreasonable to doubt. And would it not be
equally unreasonable to doubt the historical facts related in the
book of Tobit, though we do not interpret literally his oriental
machinery? or on account of that machinery, to neglect the
Whether the book of the law, which Hilkiah the high
priest found in the house of the Lord, in the time of
Josiahkingof Judah, consisted of the whole Pentateuch,
or only of that part of it which is called Deuteronomy ;
and whether it was the authentic copy which Moses com-
mitted to the priest's custody, or only some ancient
manuscript kept in the temple for the public use, namely,
for the king to read to the people once every seven
years, or for the priests to consult upon any emergent
difficulty, is a matter of some debate among the learned.
The testimony of the author of the book of Chronicles
seems however to determine the matter, when he assures
us, that the book of the law which Hilkiah found, was
that 2 ' which was given by the hand of Moses,' and con-
sequently the whole Pentateuch, which, by his command,
was reposited 3 ' in the side of the ark of the covenant.'
It is presumed, indeed, that Josiah's three predeces-
sor's, Ahaz, Manasseh, and Anion, as not content to
be impious themselves, and to instigate their subjects to
idolatry, had made it their business to burn and destroy
all the copies of the law that they could anywhere meet
with, b so that there was not so much as one left for the
king's use ; and that this was the reason of his discover-
ing so great a surprise at his hearing the commutations
read, because he had never perhaps seen nuy such
volume before. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that
disuse often cancels the most excellent laws ; and from
Josiah's surprise, we have room to suspect, that he had
not as yet transcribed a copy of the law with his own
hand, and had probably for some time neglected the
2 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14. 3 Deut. xxxi. 26.
moral lessons with which it abounds, and affect to despise the
beautiful simplicity of the tale? As a moral tale founded in fact,
it ought undoubtedly to be received; as such, it appears to have
been alluded to by Polycarp early in the second century; and
there is not the smallest reason to believe that its author ever
expected it to be received as a work of a higher order. — Bishop
Glciff.—ED.
b The rabbins say that Ahaz, Manasseh, and Anion endeavour-
ed to destroy all the copies of the law, and this only was sacred
by having been buried under a paving-stone. It is scarcely
reasonable to suppose that this was the only copy of the law that
was found in Judea; for even if we grant that Ahaz, Manasseh,
and Amon had endeavoured to destroy all the books of the law,
yet they could not have succeeded so as to destroy the whole.
Besides, Manasseh endeavoured, after his conversion, to restore
every part of the divine worship, and in this he could have done
nothing without the Pentateuch; and the succeeding reign of
Amon was too short to give him opportunity to undo every
thing that his penitent father had reformed. AM to all the
considerations, that in the time of Jehoshaphat, teaching from the
law was universal in the land, for lie set on foot an itinerant
ministry, in order to instruct the people fully: for be sent bis
princes to teach in the cities of Judah; and with them lie sent
Levites and priests; and they went about through all the cities
of Judah, and taught the people, having the book of the Lord
with them.' (2 Chron. xvii. 7 — 9.) And if there be any thing
wanting to show the improbability of the thing, it must be this,
that the transactions mentioned here took place in the eighteenth
year of the reign of Josiah, who had, from the time he came to
the throne, employed himself in the restoration of the pure
worship of God; and it is not likely that, during these eighteen
years, he was without a copy of the Pentateuch. The simple
fact seems to be this, that this was tin1 original covenant renewed
by Moses with the people in the plains of Moab, and which lie
ordered to be laid up beside the ark ; (Deut. xxxi. 26.) and being
now unexpectedly found, its antiquity, the occasion of its being
made, the present circumstances of the people, the imperfect
state in which the reformation was as yet, after all that had been
done, would all concur to produce the effect here mentioned on
the mind of the pious Josiah. — Br A. Clarke. — Ed.
4 M
64.5
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 324G. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
reading it publicly, l ' every seventh year,' according to
the command. But that he had never seen such a tran-
script of it before this time, we can hardly believe, be-
cause it is not conceivable how he could so early apply
himself to the service of God, even in opposition to the
corruptions of the times ; how he could begin the refor-
mation of religion, the abolishment of idolatry and super-
stition, and the establishment of so many wholesome
ordinances for the divine worship, without the assistance
and direction of this book.
In this very year, we are told, that such a passover
was solemnized - ' as had not been kept from the days
of Samuel the prophet, nor among all the kings of
Israel ;' but how the priests could have observed all the
rites and ceremonies belonging to it, (which are not a
few) if every prescribed form of it had been lost, we
cannot conceive ; since copies of the book, which was
now found in the temple, could not be made and tran-
scribed time enough for their instruction in these parti-
culars.
In the reigns of Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, copies
of the law 3 were common enough, and in the reigns of
their wicked successors, the sacred history makes no
mention of their being burned or destroyed. The Jewish
doctors indeed tell us, that Manasseh blotted the sacred
name of Jehovah out of all the books that he could find ;
but they nowhere report, that he utterly abolished them :
and therefore we may conclude, that the people, at this
time, had several copies of the law among them, though
some of them perhaps were imperfect and corrupt ; and
the high priest might rejoice, when he had found the
original, because by it all the other copies might be
corrected ; and rejoice the more, that he had found it at
a time when the king was going to make a reformation
in religion, which he could not but look upon as a very
remarkable providence.
The four Evangelists, who have recorded the sub-
stance of the christian religion, we have by us, and may
read therein every day ; and yet who can say, but that
some remarkable passage may perchance escape his
observation ? * But now, if, by some lucky accident, we
should happen to find the original of St Matthew or St
John, who can doubt, but that we should both read and
listen to it with more seriousness and attention than we
now do to the same books that are every day in our
hands ? And in like manner Ave may say, that it was the
great reverence which Josiah bore to the original book
of .Moses, as well as the seasonable and remarkable find-
ing it at this time, that awakened and quickened him to
a more attentive consideration of all the passages con-
tained in it, than ever he had known before, either in his
reading, or hearing the ordinary copies of the law.
Manasseh was certainly, in the former part of his
reign, a very impious prince. The Scripture seems to
imply, that, till his miseries had rectified his notions,5 he
did not believe at all in the God of Israel, nor in the
history of his forefathers ; but he is not the only son that
has degenerated from the good example of a pious
father ; neither were his subjects the only people that,
even in the grossest irreligion and profaneness, have
4772. A. C. C39. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
imitated the example of their prince. The wonder is,
how both prince and people became, upon every occa-
sion, so prone to fall from the religion of their ancestors
into idolatry, notwithstanding the frequent remonstrances
on God's part to the contrary ? Now:, to this purpose it
may be observed, 6 that in the whole compass of the
law, there is no express revelation made of a future life ;
that the hints which are given of it, are too obscure for
every common reader rightly to interpret ; and that this
obscurity might be a means of throwing the ancient
Israelites into idolatrous practices. For as they had no
certain hopes of another life to rely on, they could not
see neighbouring nations in a more flourishing condition,
without some uneasiness and perturbation of mind ; and
from hence, by degrees, they might fall into this opinion,
— That the gods of these nations must needs be more
mighty and powerful than the God of Israel, since their
worshippers were manifestly more prosperous ; and from
hence they were induced to forsake the God of their
ancestors, and to worship the gods of the heathen.
It may be observed farther, that the difficulty of keep-
ing the Mosaic law, especially in what related to its rites
and ceremonies, was very great, and the profit which
resulted from thence no ways comparable to the trouble
which it occasioned ; and from thence they might be
tempted to shake on" 7 ' a yoke which neither they nor
their forefathers were able to bear,' and betake them-
selves to the observance of other laws, more easy and
commodious in themselves, and such as were productive
of much more benefit and prosperity to the observers of
them. Nor should it be forgotten, that as a great part
of the revenues of Palestine, according to the custom of
the Mosaic law, fell to the lot of the priests and Levites,
the laity, upon every occasion, might grow weary of
paying so much ; and thereupon be inclined to any inno-
vation in religion that should offer itself, if it could but
be supported at an easier expence. And accordingly
we may observe, that in the wicked reigns of Ahaz and
Manasseh, when the temple was either quite shut up, or
converted to idolatrous purposes, the payment of tithes
and oblations was suspended, which might be a great
gratification to the people, until, in the reigns of Heze-
kiah and Josiah, they were again restored to the minis-
ters of God. These, and such reasons as these, might
make the ancient Hebrews so unsettled in their obedience
to the law of Moses, a until the time that a clearer and
'D'"'. xxxi. 10,11 » 2 Chron. xxxv. 18.
Chap. xvn. y. CaJmet's Comment, on 2 Kings xxii. 8.
8 (In en. xxxiii. 13.
6 Le Clerc's Commentary on 2 Kings xxi. 11.
7 Acts xv. 10.
a The manner in which the author here endeavours to account
for the proneness of the Israelites to fall into idolatry, and to
apostatize from the worship and service of Jehovah, is very un-
satisfactory. He even seems to frame excuses for their conduct
in this respect, or at least to diminish the magnitude of the guilt
with which Scripture itself plainly charges them for their idola-
trous practices. If, as the apostle Paul represents, the Gentiles
were without excuse because they did not worship the true God
in accordance with the natural dictates of their own consciences,
and the knowledge of his character and attributes, manifested to
them in the works of creation and providence; how much more
guilty must the Israelites have been, in worshipping and serving
the creature more than the Creator; when to them pertained the
adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the
law, and the service of God, and the promises? In vain shall we
endeavour to account for the idolatrous propensities of the chosen
people of God, if we leave out of view the natural depravity and
corruption of the human heart. This principle, as the word of
God declares in language too plain to be misunderstood, is the
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
643
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more perfect revelation of a future life extended their
views and hopes above the things of this world, and
made them more constant and immovable, as the author
to the Hebrews * bears them testimony, in the worship
of the true God.
Josiah may be thought by some to have followed the
dictates of his zeal a little too far, in destroying the
images, and altars, and other monuments of idolatry,
1 Chap. xi. 35, &c.
main source and spring of idolatry and apostasy from the worship
and service of God; and it lias, in all ages, tended powerfully to
cause men to forsake the Fountain of living waters, and to hew
out to themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. We
do not deny that, in the case of the Jews, there were other sub-
ordinate causes which operated in drawing them away from their
allegiance to their God and King; but we maintain that the
primary cause was an evil and bitter heart, and that this is the
plain and often repeated declaration of Scripture. The author
seems to take for granted, that the Israelites had no certain hope
of a future life, and assigns this as one cause why they were so
ready to fall into idolatrous practices ; but if we examine carefully
the Old Testament Scriptures, along with several passages in the
New, we shall find, that, even on the subject of a future state,
the Israelites had communicated to them a degree of knowledge
sufficient to render unavailing the plea which the author urges in
their behalf. The patriarchs cherished a hope of the pardoning
mercy of God towards penitent sinners, (Gen. iv. 7.) and con-
fided in him, as the judge of all the earth, (xviii. 25.) and the
great rewarder of them that diligently seek him ; which reward
they expected, not merely in the present evil world, but in a
future state: for we are told that ' they sought a better country,
that is, an heavenly.' (Gen. v. 22, 24, compared with Heb. xi.
5, Gen. xxviii. 13; compared with Mat. xxii. 31, 32, and Gen.
xxv. S; compared with Heb. xi. 10, 14 — 16.) To this we may
add, that a hope was cherished from the beginning, originally
founded on a divine promise of a great Saviour, who was to de-
liver mankind from the miseries and ruin' to which they were
exposed, and through whom God was to make the fullest dis-
coveries of his grace and mercy towards the human race, and to
raise them to a high degree of glory and felicity. (Gen. iii. 15.
xii. 3; xvii. 19; xxii. 18; xxvi. 4; xlix. 10.) These were the
chief principles of the religion of the patriarchs who were ani-
mated by a strong sense of their obligation to the practice of
piety, virtue, and universal righteousness. The belief of a
future state, which we thus see was held by the patriarchs, (though
not expressly taught by Moses, whose writings presuppose it as
a generally adopted article of religion,) was transmitted from
them to the Israelites, and appears in various parts of the Old
Testament. From the circumstance of the promise of temporal
blessings being principally, if not entirely, annexed to the laws of
Moses, Bishop Warburton attempted to deduce an argument in
support of his divine mission. It is impossible here to enter into
an examination of this argument: but we may observe, in the
first place, " that the omission of a future state as a sanction to
the laws of Moses, can be satisfactorily accounted for; and,
secondly, that the Old Testament shows that he himself Believed
a future state, and contains a gradual development of it. These
two propositions, the former of which is in unison with the opin-
ion of Warburton, the latter at variance with him, appear to be
very satisfactorily established by the luminous reasoning of Or
Graves. Iustead of employing the omission of the doctrine as a
medium, by which to prove that a divine interposition was
necessary lor the erection and maintenance of Judaism, he first
shows the reality of a divine interposition, and then that the
omission iii question, so far from being inconsistent with the
divine origin of the system, does, in fact, necessarily result from
the peculiar nature of the dispensation, and from the character
of the people to whom it was given. — The polytheistic principle
ot tutelary deities maintained that their worship was attended
"itli a national prosperity. The futility of this it was the inten-
tion of God to display by open and unequivocal demonstrations
ot his own omnipotence. The moral government of Jehovah was
to he exhibited on the earth by the theocracy which he establish-
ed. Its very nature required temporal sanctions, and their
immediate enforcement; its object could not be attaiued by
waiting till the invisible realities of a future state should be
4772. A. C. C39. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHKON.
in the kingdom of Israel, where he had neither any
regal or judicial authority : but it should be remembered,
that his authority in this regard was founded upon an
ancient prediction, 2 where he is particularly named, and
appointed to this work of reformation by God himself,
and that consequently, he could not be guilty of an
infringement upon another's right, even though he had
8 1 Kings xiii. 2.
unveiled. The previous exhibition of such a moral government
was the best preparation for the full revelation of man's future
destiny, and of the means provided for his welfare in it, by a
merciful and redeeming God. ' Life and immortality were thus
to be fully brought to light by the gospel.' As yet the bulk of
mankind were unprepared for it, and were better fitted to com-
prehend, and be Influenced by sensible manifestations of the
divine judgments, than by the remoter doctrine of a future state
of retribution. The Old Testament, however, and even the
writings of Moses, contained intelligible intimations of immortali-
ty. The four last books of the Pentateuch, indeed, were princi-
pally occupied in the detail of the legal regulations, and the
sanctions necessary to enforce them: yet even from them Jesus
Christ deduced an argument to the confusion of the Sadducees.
And in the book of Genesis are several occurrences, which must
have led the pious Jews to the doctrine of a future existence,
even had they possessed no remains of patriarchal tradition.
The account of the state of man before the fall, of the penalty
first annexed to his transgression, and of the sentence pronounced
upon our first parents, considered in connexion with the promise
of a deliverance, would necessarily suggest such a doctrine.
Could the believing Jews conclude that death would have followed
the acceptance of Abel's sacrifice, unless he was translated to
some better state of existence and felicity? How also did God
show his approbation of Enoch's piety, unless he took him to
himself, and to immortality and bliss? Doubtless the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews was not the first who discovered that
' the fathers did not look for transitory promises ;' that ' they
sought a better country, even a heavenly ;' and that ' God hath
prepared for them a city ;' and that Moses himself rejected the
' enjoyment of the pleasures of sin for a season,' because ' he had
respect to the recompence of the reward.' This important and
consolatory truth of a future state of being, was, in process of
time, displayed to the Jews more and more clearly. The book
of Job is very explicit upon the subject. The royal psalmist
has spoken of it with great confidence: and Solomon, besides
several passages in his proverbs, which seem to allude to it, is
supposed to have written the book of Ecclesiastes, which concludes
with a clear declaration of it, for the express purpose of proving
and enforcing it. The translation of Elijah, and the restoration
to life of three several persons by him and his successors, must
have given demonstration of the probability of the same doctrine ;
which also Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, and especially Daniel,
very frequently inculcate, and even presuppose as a matter of
notoriety and popular belief." To these considerations we may
add the fact, that in the books of Leviticus (xix. 26, 31 ; xx. 27.)
and Deuteronomy (xviii. 10, 11.) there are various enactments
against diviners, enchanters, and those who profess to know the
future, by consulting either familiar spirits, or the spirits of the
departed. All these superstitions suppose the belief of spirits,
and the doctrine of the exist! nee of souls after death: and Moses
would not have prohibited the consulting of them by express
laws, if he had not been apprehensive that the Hebrews, after
the example of the neighbouring heathen nations, would have
abused the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which was
universally received among them. Severe, however, as these
laws were, they did not entirely repress this abuse: for the
Psalmist (cvi. 2S.) reproaches the Israelites with having eaten
' the sacrifices of the dead,' that is, sacrifices offered to the manes
of the dead. We have also, in Saul, a signal instance of this
Superstition. After he had ' cut off those that had familiar spirits,
and the wizards, out of the land,' (I Sam. xxviii. 3, 9.) having
in vain consulted the Lord respecting the issue of his approach-
ing conflict with the Philistines, he went, in quest of a woman
that had a familiar spirit, and commanded her to evoke the soul
of the prophet Samuel, (ver. 7 — 12.) This circumstance evi-
dently proves that Saul and the Israelites believed in the immor-
tality of the soul. — Home's Introduction. — El.
C44
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book \L
A. M. 3246. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
no farther commission. But the ten tribes, we are to
consider, being now gone into captivity, the ancient
right which David and his posterity had to the whole
kingdom of Israel, before it was dismembered by Jero-
boam and his successors, devolved upon Josiah. The
people who escaped the captivity were united with his
subjects, and put themselves under his protection. They
came to the worship of God at Jerusalem, and did
doubtless gladly comply with his extirpation of idolatry ;
at which the Cuthites, the new inhabitants of the country,
who worshipped their gods in another manner; were not
at all offended.
The kings of Assyria, it is true, were the lords and
conquerors of the country ; but from the time of Manas-
seh's restoration, they seem to have conferred upon the
kings of Judah, who might thereupon become their
homagers, a sovereignty in all the land of Canaan, to
the same extei.t, wherein it was held by David and
Solomon, before it was divided into two kingdoms. So
that Josiah, upon sundry pretensions, had sufficient
power and authority to visit the kingdom of Israel, and
to purge it from idolatry, as well as his own.
And this, by the bye, suggests the reason why that
good king was so very strenuous in opposing the king
of Egypt, when he demanded a passage through his
country. l He was now, as we said, an homager, and
ally to the king of Babylon, and under a strict oath to
adhere to him against all his enemies, especially against
the Egyptians, and to defend the land of Canaan, which
was one barrier of the empire, against their invasions ;
and, being under such an obligation to his sovereign
paramount, he could not permit his enemy to pass
through his country, in order to make Avar upon him,
and not oppose him, without incurring a breach of his
oath, and a violation of that fidelity, which, in the name
of his God, he had sworn to the king of Babylon; and
this was a thing which so good and just a man as Josiah
was, could not but detest.
It was the sense of his duty, therefore, and not any
rashness of temper, or opposition to the divine will, that
engaged Josiah in this war with the king of Egypt.
The king of Egypt indeed sent to him to acquaint hint,
that 2 God was with him, and that therefore opposing
him, would bo lighting against God: but Josiah knew
Aery well that he was an heathen prince, who had no
knowledge of the Lord Jehovah, nor had ever consulted
his oracles or prophets, and had therefore sufficient
reason to believe, that by the god who, as lie pretended,
had sent him upon this expedition, he intended no other
than the false Egyptian god, whom he served, but whom
the king of Judah had no reason to regard.
The truth is, whenever the word God occurs in this
nic -age from Necho to Josiah, it is not expressed in the
Hebrew original by the word Jehovah, which is the
proper name of the true God, but by the word Elohim,
which, being the plural number, is equally applicable to
the false gods of the heathens, (and is the word that is
used to denote them, whenever they are spoken of,) as
well as the true God. But even suppose that Necho, in
his embassy to Josiah, had made use of the proper name
of the true God : yet was not Josiah therefore bound to
believe him, because we find Sennacherib, when he
i frideaux's Connection, anno 610. 2 2 Chron. xxxv. 21.
came up against Judah, sending Hezekiah word, 3 that
the Lord (Jehovah in the Hebrew) had ordered him to
go up against the land, and destroy it ; and yet it is
certain that Sennacherib, in so pretending, lied to
Hezekiah ; and why then might not Josiah have as good
reason to conclude, that Necho, in the same pretence,
might have lied likewise ? Necho, however, in his mes-
sage, by using the word Elohim, gave Josiah to under-
stand that, by the false gods of Egypt, he was sent
upon that expedition, and therefore Josiah could not be
liable to any blame for not hearkening to the words
which came from them.
His death, indeed, was sudden and immature ; he fell
in battle against the Egyptians ; and yet he may be said
to have ' gone to his grave in peace,' because he was
recalled from life, whilst his kingdom was in a prosper-
ous condition, before the calamities wherewith it was
threatened were come upon it, and whilst himself was in
peace and reconciliation with God. Thus, when * ' the
righteous are taken away from the evil to come,' though,
5 ' in the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and
their departure is taken for misery ;' yet, in what manner
soever their exit be, they may well be said ' to die in
peace,' who, after their dissolution here, 6 ' are numbered
among the children of God, and their lot is among the
saints.'
7 ' Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is
for the eyes to behold the sun,' says the wise preacher.
The love of life is natural to us, and in our very frame
and constitution is implanted the fear of death ; so that
it requires no small compass of thought and serious con-
sideration, to receive the sentence of our dissolution
with a proper composure of mind. The common excuse
of human infirmity might therefore apologize for Heze-
kiah's conduct, had we nothing- more to say in his behalf;
but this is far from being all.
The message which God sent him by the prophet
Isaiah was, that ' he should die,' that is, that his dis-
temper, according to the natural course of things, was
mortal, and above the power of human art to cure. But
this denunciation was not absolute and irreversible. It
implied a tacit condition, even as did Jonah's prediction
of the destruction of Nineveh, which the repentance of
its inhabitants prevented, as Hezekiah's humiliation
retarded the time of his death. At this time, however,
he was no more than nine and thirty years old, nor had
he as yet any son ; for Manasseh was not born till three
years after his illness. The Assyrians too were now
making g-reat preparations to invade his kingdom ; for
his sickness was prior to their invasion, though, in the
course of the history, it is placed immediately after it.
Putting all these considerations together, then, the king
had sundry reasons, besides the natural aversion which
all men have to death, to be concerned at its approach,
and to desire a prolongation of his life.
Length of days, and a peaceful enjoyment of old age,
was a promise which God had made to his faithful ser-
vants, and the reward that he usually paid them in hand ;
8 and therefore Hezekiah was apt to look upon himself
as under the displeasure of God, for his being so hastily
3 2 Kings xviii. 25. * Is. lvii. 1. 5 Wisd. in. g,
6 Wisd. v. 5. 7 Eccl. ix. 7.
8 Le Clerc's Commentary ou 2 Kings xx. 3.
Shot. IV.]
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summoned away, and this premature death of his, as a
kind of token of his final retribution. In himself he
saw the royal family of David extinct, and all the hopes
of having' the Messiah born of his race become abortive.
He saw the storm that was gathering, and threatening
his country with desolation, while there was none of his
family to succeed in his throne, and all tilings were in
danger of running into anarchy and confusion ; and there-
fore, having this prospect before his eyes, he might well
melt into tears at the apprehensions of his approaching
death, which would extinguish all his hopes, and con-
summate all his fears, in making him go down childless
to the grave."
What his distemper was, the Scripture has nowhere
expressly told us : the original word denotes an inflam-
mation ; but what kind of inflammation it was, or what
part of the body it affected, we have no intimation given
us: and therefore, being thus left to conjecture, some
have thought it an imposthume ; others, a plague-sore ;
and others, a quinsey ; being all led in their opinions
by what 1 naturalists have told us of the virtue of the
medicine that was here applied for the cure, namely, that
figs, in a decoction, are good to disperse any inflamma-
tion about the glands, by gargling the throat ; and that,
in a cataplasm, they wonderfully soften and ripen any
hard tumour. But, whatever the quality of the medicine
might be, that there was a divine interposition in the
whole affair, is evident, both from the speediness of the
cure, and the nature of the sign which God gave Heze-
kiah, in order to convince him of it.
Some very considerable writers would endeavour to
persuade us that, before the Babylonish captivity, the
Jews had no instruments whereby to measure time, nor
any terms in their language whereby to denote the dis-
tinct gradation of it; which, were it true, would effec-
tually destroy all that the Scripture relates, both con-
cerning this sun-dial which Ahaz set up, and the famous
miracle which was wrought upon it : but who the first
inventors of such horological instruments were, it is not
so easy a matter to determine.
3 The Egyptians, who always loved to magnify the
1 Dioscor. h. i. c. 1^3; Pliny, b. xxiii. e. 7.
2 See Usher ad A. M. 3291, and Jaquelot. Dissert, i. on the
Existence of God, c. 16.
a As the nation was at this time threatened with an assault
by the whole force of the Kins "' Assyria; they therefore needed
a commander, who united wisdom, courage, and faith, to head
them in such an emergency: and if he were removed, and they
were left to a disputed succession, and the weakness of an usurp-
ed or opposed government, there could be little prospect, but
that Jerusalem would share the fate of Samaria. Willi great
earnestness and perseverance, Hezekiah had brought his refor-
mation to a hopeful establishment; but he might fear lest the
instability of the people, and the dissensions of the nobles, would
Bubvert all, if he woo taken away at this crisis. He therefore
desired to live, not for his own sake so much as for that of his
family anil people, especially for the interests of true religion;
and he prayed to that effect, with many tears as well as with
great fervency. The Lord knew, and Hezekiah could appeal to
him, that he had walked before him in sincerity and uprightness
i't heart; having used all his authority and influence, with zeal
and earnestness, to suppress idolatry anil wickedness, and by
every scriptural means to promote the worship and service of
God; and that he had dime what was good in his sight, being an
example to his people. The consciousness of his integrity gave
him confidence; and he begged the Lord to remember the fruits
ot grace which had been produced, and to spare him, that lie
might be yet more fruitful and useful. — Scott's Comment. — En.
glory <tf their nation, and to lay claim to the invention
of every learned science or curious art, pretend that
machines of this kind were in use among them many
years before they appeared in other nations. To this
purpose 3 their historians have observed that in Acantha,
a town situate on the Nile, there was every day a large
vessel filled with water, which, as it sunk gradually by
running out at a small passage, distinguished the several
hours of the day ; and that all ' the clepsydras, or icaler
hour glasses ' among the Greeks and Romans, were
afterwards formed upon this model.
The Babylonians were a people well versed in all
parts of astronomy, and it was from them, as Herodo-
tus 4 observes, that the Greeks had the pole and the
gnomon, and the twelve parts of the day. For Anaxi-
mander, whom Pliny, by mistake, calls Anaximenes, who
first taught them to distinguish time, travelled into
Chaldea for the improvement of knowledge, and from
thence brought away this useful invention. Anaximan-
der, indeed, is said to have flourished about two hundred
years after this; but as the Scripture informs us, that
there was a good deal of intimacy between Tiglath-
Pileser king of Assyria, and Ahaz king of Judah, it is
not improbable, that as he was taken with the figure of
a strange altar, when he went to visit that prince at
Damascus, he might then likewise see some of the sun-
dials, (for sun-dials might be common in Chaldea, though
not in other countries,) which Tiglath-Pileser was accus-
tomed to carry along with him, for the mensuration of
time, wherever he went ; and, being highly delighted
with so curious and useful an invention, might either have
one made on the spot, or take the model of one to be
made at Jerusalem, and set up in his royal palace.
It is no easy matter to determine of what form the
sun-dial was, but, 5 if we may be allowed to gather any
thing from the signification of the word mahal, which is
always used in this narration, we may, with the learned
Grotius, suppose that it was not horizontal, as sun-dials
are commonly made, but of a concave hemispherical
figure, b much like what the Greeks call a««<p>j, and
that therein was a gnomon of some kind or other, which
cast its shadow upon the lines engraven in its concavity.
But of what make soever this dial was, we have reason
to believe, that the recess of its shadow was a real mira-
cle, and not the effect of any natural cause, namely,
the interposition of a cloud, or any other meteor, which
might diverge the rays of the sun to another part of the
dial, for some small space of time.
The account which we have of this event, in the second
3 Herod, b. i., and Strabo b. ii. c. Iff). * B. ii. p. 76.
5 Calmet's Dissert, on the Rotrogradation, &c.
b Other authors are of an opinion quite contrary to this. They
suppose that, as there is no mention made of any sun-dials in
all the wmks of Homer, and the Jews very probably knew
nothing of the division of the day into so many hours till after
the time of the captivity, the invention of such machines was
subsequent to Hezekiah's days: and therefore, from the word
xvafiafaovs in the Septuagint, which may properly enough be
rendered steps or stairs, they infer, that this famous chronometer
of kin^ Ahaz, was nothing but a flight of stairs leading up to the
gate of the palace, and according to the projection of the sun,
marked at proper distances with figures, denoting the division
of the day, and not any regular piece of dial work. — Universal
Hist. b. i. c 7. But this is too poor a thing to be recorded hi
lii Hi v, as the invention orerection of a king, which every person
might have done as well as he.
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book of Kings, makes no mention indeed of the sun's
going back, but only of the shadow upon the dial ; but,
in the book of Isaiah's prophecy, wherein we have this
miracle more minutely related, we are told expressly
that 1 ' the sun returned ten degrees ,' and from hence
the opinion of the ancients, both Jews and Christians,
has been, that the miracle was wrought, not upon the
shadow, " but upon the body of the sun ; or " that the
sun," as our excellent archbishop Usher 2 expresses it,
" and all the heavenly bodies went back, and as much was
detracted from the next night as was added to this day."
Those who embrace the new philosophy, which places
the sun in the centre, and supposes the earth to move
round it, have, from their hypothesis, no difficulty in
admitting of this miracle, whether it be said to consist
in the different determination of the rays, or in the retro-
gradation of the body of the sun ; because it is the same
thing as to all outward elf'ects, whether the earth turn
round the sun, or the sun round the earth : but, in both
cases, there is this difficulty : 3 that the sudden and vio-
lent motion either of the sun or earth, to make that day
and night of no greater length than the rest, would be
in danger of shocking or unhinging the whole frame of
nature, as it certainly would have done, had it not been
guided and directed by the steady and unerring hand of
the great Creator of the universe, whose motion he can
either retard or accelerate as he pleases, without occa-
sioning any confusion in the order of things, and with
1 Is. xxxviii. S. 2 Annal. A. 3291.
3 Calmet's Dissertation on the Retrogradation, &c.
a Those who maintain the contrary opinion, namely, that the
whule miracle was wrought upon the dial, and occasioned only
hy the reversion of the sun's beams, while the sun proceeded in
its ordinary course, urge in its defence, — That in 2 Kings xx. 9,
where this miracle is recorded, mention is only made of the
'shadow's going back;' aud though, in Isaiah xxxviii. 8, the sun
i- Baid to 'return ten degrees;' yet, to put the sun for its beams
is a common mode of speech in all languages. That the division
ol the day into hours, upon which the invention of all horoscopieal
instruments must depend, was of a later date than this : that Daniel
is the first writer in the Old Testament who makes any mentiou of
it ; and that there is no Hebrew word, in the compass of the whole
language, to denote it. As, therefore, the intent of this miracle
was not to lengthen the day, as that of Joshua's, but purely to
put back the shadow upon the sun-dial, this might have well
enough been done, say they, by the sole refraction of the sun's
rays, and without giving any interruption to the course of nature.
This interruption, if the recess and return of the sun, or the
i nth, if we please, was gradual, must have occasioned g'reat iri-
i onveniences to mankind upon earth; since, it' the degrees were
horary, or lines of an hour's distance upon the dial-pfate, as we
now speak, to make the sun recede ten hours, and alter that
re-advauce ten more, this would have been to prolong that day
for twenty hours, which in hot regions, would be enough to
Bcorch the people of the hemisphere that the sun was ovei° and
ni colder climates, when it happened to be absent so Ion'" to
frcew the inhabitants to death. On the other hand, this hiter-
ruption, il the sun or earth went back in an instant, and returned
as hastily again, must have been seen and felt all the world over
keen observed by the astronomers then living, and recorded in
the writings o subsequent historians, as well as the sun's stand-
ing Still in Joshua S time; but, since we find no footsteps of this
<.n tin' contrary, by Merodach Baladan's sending to Hezekiah to"
inform himsell about this phenomenon, it. is rather evident that
the thing had not been observed as far as Babylon, they thence
infer that there was ,„, reason for Cod's putting himself to the
I xpence ol so prodigious a miracle, as to make an alteration in
the whole fabric ol the universe, when a bare refraction of the
suns rays upon the dial-plate would have answered the end as
well.— Le CUra Comvuntury; Lowth's Commentary on Isa
xxxviii., ami Universal History, b i. r J.
much greater facility to himself, than any human artificer
can cause a machine of his own making to go swifter or
slower, by the sole suspension of an heavier or lighter
weight.
Since the Scripture, therefore, in this case, tells us as
plainly, that the sun did recede, as, in the case of
Joshua, that it did stand still in the firmament of heaven,
we have no other warrant but to take words in their
literal sense, even though it be attended with some
difficulties. These difficulties arise chiefly from the
opposition of some modern systems of philosophy ; but
whether it be just and reasonable that revelation should
conform to philosophy, or philosophy to revelation,
especially when the expressions of Scripture are clear,
and sentiments of philosophers but mere conjectures, is
a question that need require no long deliberation ;
especially since heavenly bodies, by reason of their vast
distance, are inaccessible to our utmost sagacity, and
the greater part of the secrets of nature are not discover-
able by our most indefatigable search after truth.
4 Though at first view we may be apt to think that a
sign, which precedes the event, is more significant,
because better adapted to our manner of conceiving it,
than one which follows after it ; yet, upon a nearer
examination, we shall find that a sign which is posterior
to the event, is not a less, but in some respects, a more
convincing proof than the other ; especially when the
person to whom it is given lives to see both the sign and
the event accomplished. The sign which goes before
the event proves but one thing, namely, that the event
was from Cod, or that the person who foretold it was
divinely inspired ; but the sign which is future to the
event, manifests these three things: 1st, that the person
who foretold it was possessed with the spirit of pro-
phecy : 2dly, that God was the author of the miraculous
event which he foretold : and 3dly, that he was the
author likewise of the sign which followed the miracle ;
especially if the sign be miraculous, as it generally is.
To apply this now to the case before us. To convince
Hezekiah of his approaching deliverance, God gave him
such things for a sign as would not come to pass until
his deliverance was accomplished ; but then it should
be remembered, that as the people were to be convinced
that what happened to Sennacherib was not the work of
chance, or the effect of natural causes, but immediately
inflicted by the hand of God, his prophet was to foretell
not only the particulars of what befell him, but such con-
sequences, likewise, as would appear not only to be
supernatural, but demonstrations likewise of the divine
power and goodness. To this purpose Isaiah is sent,
not only to foretell Hezekiah's deliverance, the destruc-
tion of the Assyrian army, and the death of Senna-
cherib ; but, to fortify the people against the apprehen-
sions of another enemy, namely, a grievous famine,
after that Sennacherib was gone, he is ordered to add,
that God would find one means or other to preserve his
people. Though the enemy will destroy all the corn in
the country, ' yet ye shall eat this year,' says the pro-
phet, ' such things as ye can meet with :' though the
next year be the year of Jubilee, or Sabbatical year, in
which ye are to let the land rest, ' yet ye shall eat such
things as grow of themselves;' * God shall take care,
4 Calmet's Commentary on 2 Kings xix. 29.
s Lowth's Commentary on Isaiah xxxvii. o3.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
G47
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one «ay or other, that ye shall want no provisions these
two years ; and in the third year there shall be no enemy
to molest you, and therefore ' sow and reap the fruit of
your labours :' for though ye have been brought low with
losses innumerable and persecutions, yet, in a short time
ye shall be re-established ; for ' the remnant that is
escaped of Judah shall yet again take root downward,
and bear fruit upward.'
The like may be said of the sign concerning the vir-
gin that was to ' bear a son, and call his name Imman-
uel ;' though it was some hundred years subsequent to the
deliverance which God promised Judah, yet was it of
great service to confirm the people in their expectations
of it. To this purpose we may observe, that it is not to
Aliaz that the prophet addresses himself, (for he, out of a
specious pretence of not being willing to tempt God,
rejected all signs,) but to the princes of the blood royal ;
and therefore he says, J ' hear ye now, ye house of
David, the Lord himself will give you a sign, a virgin
shall conceive.' The original word alma (as - several
learned men have observed) signifies almost always a
virgin untainted by a man, — is so rendered by the Sep-
tuagint in this place, and cannot, with any propriety,
denote 3 any indifferent young woman, who should after-
wards be married, and have a son. For how can we
imagine that, after so pompous an introduction, the
prophet should mean no more at last by ' a virgin's con-
ceiving,' than that a young woman should be with child ?
What ! does Isaiah offer Ahaz a miracle, ' either in the
depth, or in the height above?' and, when he seems to
tell the house of David that God, of his own accord,
would perform a greater work than they could ask, does
he sink to a sign that nature produces every day ? Is
that to be called a wonder, (which implies an uncommon,
surprising, and supernatural event,) which happens con-
stantly by the ordinary laws of generation ? How little
does such a birth answer the solemn apparatus which the
prophet uses to raise their expectation of some great
matter ? ' Hear ye, O house of Judah, — behold, the Lord
will give you a sign worthy of himself; and what is that ?
Why, a young married woman shall be with child. How
ridiculous must such a declaration make the prophet!
And how highly must it enrage the audience, to hear a
man, at such a juncture as this, begin an idle and imper-
tinent tale, which seems to banter and insult their misery,
rather than administer any consolation under it !
It is to be observed farther, that, in the beginning of
this passage, when God commanded Isaiah to go and
meet Ahaz, he ordered him to take with him his son
Shear-jashub, who was then but a child. AVhy the child
was to accompany his father, we can hardly suppose any
other reason, but that he was to be of use, some way or
other, to enforce the prophecy. It is but supposing
then that the prophet, in uttering the words, ' before
this child shall be able to distinguish between good and
evil,' 4 pointed at his own son, for there is no necessity
to refer them to Immanuel, who might then either stand
by him, or be held in his arms, and all the difficulty is
solved : but then the comfort which accrued to the house
of David from this seasonable prophecy, was very con-
4772. A. C. G39. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
sidenable. 5 For it assured them of the truth and vera-
city of God's promise, and that he would not suffer them
to be destroyed, nor the ' sceptre to depart from Judah/
until the Messiah came. It assured them of his almighty
power, in that he could create a new thing in the earth,
by making a virgin to conceive, and thereby show him-
self able to deliver them out of the hands of their most
potent enemies ; and it assured them likewise of his
peculiar favour, in that he had decreed the Messiah
should descend from their family, so that the people
whom he had vouchsafed so high a dignity, might depend
on his promise, and ' under the shadow of his wings,'
think themselves secure.
1 Is. vii. 13, 14. 2 See Kidder's Demonstration, part 2.
3 bee Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion.
4 Usher's Annul. A. M. 3263.
CHAP. III.— Ok the Dial of Ahaz.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
At the beginning of the world it is certain there was no
distinction of time, but by the light and darkness ; and
the whole day was included in the general terms of the
evening- and morning. The Chaldeans, many ages after
the flood, were the first who divided the day into hours :
they being the first who applied themselves with any
success to astrology. Sun-dials are of ancient use :
but as they were of no service in cloudy weather and in
the night, there was another invention of measuring the
parts of time by water ; but that not proving sufficiently
exact, they laid it aside for another by sand. The use
of dials was earlier among the Greeks than the Romans.
It was above three hundred years after the building of
Rome before they knew any thing of them : but yet
they had divided the day and night into four and twenty
hours : though they did not count the hours numerically,
but from midnight to midnight, distinguishing them by
particular names, as by the cock-crowing, the dawn, the
mid-day, &c.
With respect to the dial of Ahaz, it is said, that the
shadow was brought ten degrees backward. Was this
miracle occasioned by the sun's going ten degrees bach
in the heavens, or by the earth's turning upon its axis
from east to west, in a contrary direction to its natural
course. To me it appears that the miracle was effected
by means of refraction. For a ray of light, we know,
can be raised or refracted from a right line by passing
through a dense medium ; and we know also, byr means
of the refracting power of the atmosphere, the sun, when
near rising and setting, seems to be higher above the
horizon than he really is; and by horizontal refraction,
we find that the sun appears above the horizon when he
is actually below it, and literally out of sight : therefore,
by using dense clouds or vapours, the rays of light might
be refracted from their direct course, ten, or any other
number of degrees ; so that the miracle might have been
wrought by occasioning this extraordinary refraction,
rather than by disturbing the course of the earth.
It is owing to refraction that we have any morning or
evening twilight : without this power in the atmosphere,
the heavens would be as black as ebony in the absence
of the sun ; and at his rising we should pass in a mo-
See Kidder's Demonstration, part 2.
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i.ioiit from the deepest darkness into the brightest light ;
and at his setting, from the most intense light to the
most profound darkness, which in a few days would be
sufficient to destroy the visual organs of all animals.
That the rays of light can be supernatually refracted,
and the sun appear to be where he actually is not, we
have a most remarkable instance in Kepler. Some
Hollanders who wintered in Nova Zembla in the year
L596, were surprised to find that, after a continual night
of three months, the sun began to rise seventeen days
sooner than (according to computation deduced from
the altitude of the pole, observed to be seventy-six de-
grees) he should have done ; which can only be account-
ed for by an extraordinary refraction of the sun's rays
passing through the cold dense air in the climate. At
that time, the sun, as Kepler computes, was almost five
degrees below the horizon when he appeared, and con-
sequently the refraction of his rays was about nine times
stronger than it is with us.
Now, this might be all purely natural though it was
extraordinary, and it proves the possibility of what I
have conjectured, even on natural principles ; but the
foretelling of this, and leaving the going back or for-
ward to the choice of the king, and the thing occurring
in the place and time when and where it was predicted,
shows that it was supernatural and miraculous. But
why maintain, it may be asked, that the event alluded to
was effected by refraction ? Could not God as easily have
caused the sun, or rather the earth, to turn back, as to
have produced this extraordinary and miraculous refrac-
tion ? 'This is most certain : but, according to our limit-
ed apprehensions, it seems more consistent with the
wisdom of God to attain an end by simple means than
by those that are complex : and had it been done in the
other way, it would have required a miracle to invert
and a miracle to restore ; and a strong convulsion on
the earth's surface to bring it ten degrees suddenly back,
and to take it the same suddenly forward. The miracle,
according to my supposition, was accomplished on the
atmosphere, and without in the least disturbing even that ;
whereas, on the other supposition, it could not have been
done without suspending or interrupting the laws of the
solar system. The point to be gained was the bringing
back the shadow on the dial ten degrees : this might
have been accomplished by the means which I have
described, as well as by the other; and these means
being much more simple, were more worthy the divine
choice than those which are more complex, and could
not have been used without producing the necessity of
working at least double or treble miracles.
It is objected, however, to this view, that Isaiah '
expressly asserts that ' the sun returned,' and not merely
that ' that the shadow went backward.' It becomes
not erring man even to seem to contradict this asser-
tion. I would only venture to say, with all humility,
tli.it as the very same end might have been attained
by means of refraction as would have been accom-
plished by the retrograde motion of the sun ; and as
the event was unquestionably miraculous on either sup-
position, 1 do not see that the adoption of the view of
this subject which 1 have suggested is in any way dero-
gatory to the authority of divine revelation.2
1 Chap, wwiii. 8.
2 See Dr Clarke's Commentary on the place.
CHAP. IV.— Of the Transportation of the Ten
Tribes, and their Return.
Nothing s in history is more common, than to see whole
nations so changed in their manners, their religion, their
language, and the very places of their abode, as that it
becomes a matter of some difficulty to find out their first
original. Large empires swallow up lesser states ; and,
in the course of their conquests, sweeping every thing
before them like a torrent, they compel the vanquished
to follow the fate of their conquerors, and to inhabit
such countries as were unknown to them before.
Never was there a people that had a more ample ex-
perience of these unhappy revolutions than the kingdom
of Israel, which, upon the revolt of Rehoboam, came to
be called ' the kingdom of the ten tribes.' God, by the
mouth of his servant Moses, had denounced this .judg-
ment upon them, in case of their obstinate disobedience
to his law : 4 ' the Lord shall scatter thee among all
people, from the one end of the earth to the other ; and
among all these nations, thou shalt find no ease, neither
shall the sole of thy foot have rest.' And accordingly,
when by their idolatry, and other grievous impieties,
they had ' provoked God to wrath, and filled up the
measure of their iniquity ;' in the reign of Pekah king of
Israel, 5 he sent Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria, who
invaded his country, and having overrun gre.it part of it,
carried away captive the tribes of Naphtali, Reuben, Gad,
and the half tribe of Manasseh, from the east side of the
river Jordan ; and about twenty years after this, in the
reign of Hoshea, sent his son Salmaneser against Sama-
ria, who, after a siege of three years, took it, and carried
away all the remainder of that miserable people accord-
ing to what the prophet Hosea had foretold : 6 ' Ephraim
is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no
fruit. My God shall cast them away, because they did
not hearken unto him, and they shall be wanderers
among the nations.'
Such, with very small exception, has been the case of
this unhappy people, ever since the time of the Assyrian
captivity; and yet, such is their pride and arrogance,
that instead of owning the truth, they have devised fables
of their living all along in great prosperity and grandeur
in some unknown land, as a national and united body,
in an independent state, and under monarchies or
republics of their own. So, that before we begin to
inquire into the real places of their transportation, and
some other circumstances thereunto belonging, it may
not be amiss to examine a little the merit of these pre-
tensions, and what foundation they have for such mighty-
boasts.
The author of the second book of Esdras informs us,
7 ' that the ten tribes, being taken prisoners by Salmane-
ser, and carried beyond the Euphrates, entered into a
resolution of quitting the Gentiles, and retiring into a
country never inhabited before, that they might there
religiously observe the law, which they had too much
neglected in their own land ; that to this purpose they
crossed the Euphrates, where God wrought a miracle for
their sakes, by stopping the sources of that great river,
3 Calmet's Dissert, on the Ten Tribes, &e.
4 Dent, xxviii. 64, 65. 5 2 Kings xv. 29.
6 Ilosea ix. 16, 17. 7 2 Esdras xiii. 40, &c
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
649
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3i)d drying up its channel for them to pass over ; that
having thus wonderfully passed this river, they proceed-
ed in their journey for a year and a half, till they arrived
at last at a country called Arsareth, where they settled
themselves, and were to continue until the latter days,
when God would appoint their return, and work the same
miracle in passing the Euphrates that he had done for
them before.'
This is the substance of our author's account : but
now, who can believe, that a people so fond of idolatry
in their own country, should, in their state of captivity,
be so zealous for the observation of the law ? Arsareth,
we are told, is a city in Media, situate beyond the river
Araxes ; but if this was the place they betook themselves
to for the freer exercise of their religion, what need was
there for so very long a peregrination ? Or who can
suppose that their imperious masters would suffer cap-
tives, upon any pretence whatever, to retreat in a body,
out of their country, and set up a distinct kingdom in
another place ? ' In short, this counterfeit Esdras, who
seems to have been a Christian, and to have lived about
the end of the first, or the beginning of the second cen-
tury, is not only so inconsistent in his account of this, and
several other transactions, but so fond of uncertain tra-
ditions, and so romantic and fabulous about the divine
inspiration which he boasts of, that there is no credit to
be given to what he says, a concerning the retreat of the
ten tribes into an unknown land.
A famous Jewish traveller 2 of the twelfth century,
and who seems to have undertaken his travels solely to
discover the state of his dispersed brethren, assigns
them a large and spacious country, wherein reigned two
brothers, descendants of the house of David. The elder
1 Basnag. Hist, of the Jews, b. 6. c. 2.
8 Benjamin de Tudela's Itiner. page 89.
a There is an unfounded opinion, though very ancient, that the
majority of the ten tribes emigrated to an unknown country.
The spurious Ezra asserts, " that Salmaneser carried them be-
yond the river, and they resolved to separate from the heathen and
to seek a spot where they might religiously observe the law, for
the violation of which they had been so severely punished."
Ezra characterizes the country whither they retired as follows:
1. It was uninhabited. (Then they must have sought an unex-
plored country.) 2. Its distance was such, that their journey
lasted a year and a half. 3. To reach it they crossed the
Euphrates, which God miraculously divided for the passage of
the Jews ; and Ezra adds, that on their return to Judea God
will again perform the same miracle. 4. This country is called
Arsareth. But we ask, how could a people completely subdued,
rise in a body and march unresisted through the territory of their
proud masters, to establish a kingdom elsewhere ? This event
happened, if ever, in the thirty-first year of the captivity ; but
Ezra informs us that they were then in the countries whither
Salmaneser had carried them captive. Their desire to keep
the law strictly is said to have been their motive ; but the Jews
in their dispersions reverenced the law so little, that they adopt-
ed the pagan customs and worship. There is a city called
Arsareth beyond the river Araxes, and the Jews are supposed
to have given it this name. But the country whither the ten
tribes retired, being at a great distance from Media, this cannot
be the Arsareth of Ezra. The route they took is as little known
as the country to which they emigrated ; and hence it is that so
many authors severally mention China, Tartary, India, and a
second river Sabbatius, as the retreat of the ten tribes ; while
they all appeal to Ezra as their authority. But the account of
Ezra is suspicious ; for it does not appear from the book of Tobit,
that the journey of the tribes was long, or that there was any
separation from the heathen, for the more strict observance of
the law. On the contrary, Jews were to be found in Susa,
Kiliatana, Rages, and in the other cities of Media and Assyria,
and also on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.
of these, as he tell us, was Annas, who, besides his capi-
tal Thema, had many other cities, castles, and fortresses,
and an extent of ground which could not be travelled
over under sixteen days. The other, whose name was
Salman, had in his dominions forty cities, two hundred
boroughs, and an hundred castles. His subjects, who
were all Jews, were three hundred thousand ; Tanai,
which was his capital, containing an hundred thousand ;
and Tilimosa, a strong city situate between two moun-
tains, where he usually resided, as many inhabitants.
Here we have a spacious country of nothing but Jews:
but the author, who pretends to have been there, has so
mistaken the situation of several places that he mentions,
and gives us such fabulous accounts of the manner of the
Persians fishing for pearls ; of the virtue of the prophet
Daniel's tomb ; and of some Turks, who had two holes
in the midst of their face, instead of a nose ; that a
man must be very fond of romances, who can give credit
to what seems to be calculated on purpose to flatter the
pride of a people, who are still foolishly vain, though
under the rejection of Almighty God.
Another Jewish author 3, in his description of the
world, has found out very commodious habitations for
the ten tribes, and in many places has given them a
glorious establishment. In a country which he calls
Perricha, inclosed by unknown mountains, and bounded
by Assyria, he has settled some, and made them a flourish-
ing and populous kingdom. Others he places in the desert
of Chabor, which, according to him, lies upon the Indian
sea, where they live, in the manner of the ancient Recha-
bites, without houses, sowing, or the use of wine. Nay,
he enters the Indies likewise, and peoples the banks of
the Ganges, the isles of Bengala, the Philippines, and
several other places, with the Jews, to whom he assigns
a powerful king, called Daniel, who had three other
kings tributary, and dependent on him. But this is all
of the same piece, a forged account to aggrandize then-
nation, and to make it be believed, that * ' the sceptre is
not departed from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between
his feet,' and that Shiloh consequently is not yet come.
Manasseh, one of the most famous Rabbins of the last
age, has asserted the transmigration of the ten tribes
into Tartary, where he assigns them a great province,
called Thabor, which in the Hebrew tongue signifies a
navel, because this Thabor, as he says, is one of the
middle provinces of Tartary. Ortelius, in his Geogra-
phy, is not only of the same opinion, but in confirmation
of it adds that the ten tribes succeeded the Scythians,
its ancient inhabitants, and took upon them the name of
Gauthei, because they were ' zealous for the glory of
God; that Totaces, the true name of the Tartars, is
Hebrew, and signifies remains, as the tribes dispersed
in the north were the remains of ancient Israel; that
among these people there are several plain footsteps of
the Jewish religion, besides circumcision ; and from
them, in all probability, have descended the Jews, that
in Poland and Muscovy are found so numerous.
5 It cannot be denied, indeed, but that several of the
Israelites might pass into Tartary, because Armenia is
the only country that parts it from Assyria, whereiuito
they were primarily carried : but there is no reason for
3 K. Abi Ben Merodoche Peritsful, of Ferrara.
4 Gen. xlix. 10. 6 Basnag. History of the Jews, b. 6. c 3.
4 N.
650
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[Book VI.
A. M. 3246. A. C. 758; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
their penetrating Scythia, and thence dispersing- them-
selves in the kingdoms of Poland and Muscovy; because
the tranquillity and privileges which the princes of these
countries have granted the Jews, are the true cause and
motive of their resorting thither in such numbers. In
confutation therefore of what has been said above, * the
Jewish historian has well observed, that the ancient
Scythians were a people too fierce by nature, and too
expert in war, for a handful of fugitives, such as the
Israelites were, ever to conquer or expel ; that the
people of this country were all along idolaters, until
they were converted to the religion of Mahomet, from
whence they received the rite of circumcision, and some
other ceremonies conformable to the law of Moses ; that
the etymology of names is, of all others, the weakest
and most precarious argument ; and that it is ridiculous
to seek for the glory of God among the Tartars before
the introduction of Mahometanism, since, according to
the account of their 2 historian, "some of them lived
like beasts, without any sense of God ; others worship-
ped the sun, moon, and stars; and others again made
gods of the oxen that ploughed their land, or prostrated
themselves before every great tree.'"
Manasseh, the famous Rabbin we lately mentioned,
published a book,1 entitled, ' The Hopes of Israel,' found-
ed upon the number and power of the Jews in America ;
but in this he was imposed upon by the fabulous relation
of Montesini, who reported, "that he found a great
number of Jews concealed behind the mountains of Cor-
dilleras, which run along Chili in America ; that continu-
ing his journey in that country, he came at length to the
banks of a river, where, upon his giving a signal, there
appeared a people, who pronounced in Hebrew these
words out of Deuteronomy, ' Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord
our God is one Lord,' that they looked upon Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob as their great progenitors, and had
been conducted into that country by incredible miracles;
that the Indians had treated them with great cruelty,
and thrice declared war against them ; but that, by God's
protecting his people against idolaters, they had been
as often defeated, and were now totally destroyed ; and
that some of their Magi, who made use of enchantments,
had openly declared that the God of Israel was the only
true God, and that, at the consummation of a^es their
nation should become the mistress of the whole universe."
Deluded with this account, Manasseh endeavoured to
find out the road which might possibly lead the Israelites
into the West Indies ; and, to this purpose, supposing
that Asia and America were formerly one continent be-
fore they were divided by the straits of Anian, he asserted
that the Israelites might travel to America, by land, be-
fore the separation happened.
Sir William Penn, in his ' Present State of the Lands
of the English in America,' tells us, " that the faces of
the inhabitants, especially of their children, are so very
like the Jews, that when you look upon them, you would
think yourself in the Jews' quarter in London ; that their
eyes are little and black, like the Jews, that they reckon
by moons ; olfer their first fruits ; have a kind of feast of
tabernacles ; and that their language is masculine, short,
1 Baanage's History of the Jews, b. vi. c. 3.
3 Haitho Armenius, b. on the Tartars, c. 1.
' Amsterdam, 16'50.
concise, and full of energy, in which it much resembles
the Hebrew."
Other historians * have observed that some of the Ameri-
cans have a notion of the deluge, though they relate
it in a different manner ; that they celebrate a jubilee
every fifth year, and a sabbath every seventh day; that
others observe circumcision, abstain from swine's flesh,
and purify themselves by bathing, whenever they have
touched a dead carcase ; that marriages, among others,
are performed i in a manner not unlike what Moses pre-
scribes ; and that they generally believe a resurrection ;
6 for which reason they cause their wives and slaves to
be buried with them, that, when they arise from their
graves, they may appear with an attendance suitable to
their quality.
7 This conformity of customs, and looks, and senti-
ments, have induced several to think, that the captive
Israelites we are here in quest of, went into America,
either by way of China or Tartary, and there settled
themselves. But, how specious soever these arguments
may appear, there is no manner of solidity in them. To
prove a point of this kind, we should produce a whole
nation or province in America, distinct from all others
in their ceremonies and way of worshipping God, in a
manner exactly agreeing with the Hebrews : but to say,
that because in one place the people abstain from
swine's flesh, and in another they observe the seventh
day ; in one, they offer sacrifices, and in another use
baths, when they think themselves polluted, the Americans
were originally Israelites, is carrying the consequence
a great deal too far, and what indeed we may prove in
any other nation under heaven, if we may be allowed
to argue in this manner from particulars to generals.
The truth is, the devil, in all his idolatrous countries,
has made it his business to mimic God in the rites of his
religious worship ; or, if this were not, there is naturally
so great a conformity in men's sentiments concerning
these matters, that the Americans might agree with the
Jews in the oblation of their first-fruits, their computa-
tions by moons, &c, without having any commerce or
affinity with them ; and though there be something more
characteristic in circumcision, yet as several other
nations used it, the Americans, upon this account, cannot
be Jews, a because, if we may believe Acosta, who had
4 See Acostan, and other Writers on American Affairs.
5 Deut. xxv. 9.
6 Zaaret's History of the Discovery of Peru, b. 1. c. 12.
7 Saurin's Dissertation on the Country, &c.
a We are not to believe that these savages are Jews, merely
because their religious rites resemble in some respects those of
Judaism. The religious worship of other idolaters has much in
common with Judaism; and can we infer that they too are
the posterity of Jews ? There are those who attribute this
similarity in forms of worship to the machinations of the devil,
who seeks to rival the glory of God by receiving the same kind
of adoration. But without allowing to the arch fiend more power
than he really possesses, this resemblance maybe explained from
the similar dispositions of men. Idolatry does not necessarily
derive its ceremonies from the true church. Nations which have
never had any intercourse with each other, have the same ideas
of a God, and frequently worship him in the same manner. The
aborigines of America have been taught neither by the Mani-
cheans nor Egyptians, the belief in two first principles. Yet the
inhabitants of Peru relate that man was created by a powerful
being named Con; but the sun and moon begat an evil being
called Pachachauna, who was more powerful than Con. He
transformed men into apes, parrots, and bears, and was the
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
651
A. M. 3246. A. C. 758 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
made their customs a good part of his study, they never
did circumcise their children, and therefore are thus far
excluded from being descendants of that race.
Thus we have endeavoured to find out the situation
of the ten tribes of Israel, and yet can meet with nothing,
but either the fabulous accounts of the Talmudists, or the
uncertain conjectures of modern critics ; let us now have
recourse to the Scriptures, and know what the information
is that they can supply us with, in this our inquiry.
The sacred history thus expresses it — ' e the king of
Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into
Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor, by the
river Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes ;' only we
must note, that there is some ambiguity in the translation:
for, whereas it looks as if Gozan were the river and not
Habor, there is plainly no river to be found of the name
of Gozan, and therefore the emendation should be — ' he
placed them in Halah, and by the river Habor in Gozan,
and in the cities of the Medes.'
The holy penman, we may observe, distinguishes two
places into which the Israelites were carried, as indeed
they were numerous enough to make two different colo-
nies, Assyria and Media. In Assyria we see the river
Habor, or Chaboras, a which rises from mount Masius,
and, running through Mesopotamia, falls into the Eu-
phrates. Halah, which in Ptolemy is called Chalcitis, is
a city and province situate on one side of its banks, and
Gozan, which is likewise a city and province, is found
on the other ; so that the ten tribes were seated in two
provinces, which stretched along both sides of this river.
A happy situation for them, since they were only
separated by a river which watered all the cities that
were assigned for their habitation!
2 As to the cities of the Medes we are more in the dark,
because the Scripture does not specify any; but we may
presume that this colony was placed in the mountainous
part of Media, because it was less peopled than the
lower country. It wanted indeed inhabitants, and if we
l2 Kings xvii. 6. 2 Basnage's History of the Jews, b. iv. c. 4.
creator of the Indians. They worship both these beings but
especially the evil being, because they fear that he may again
change men into brutes. They may, in the same manner, have
instituted rites resembling those of Judaism, without borrowing
them from the Jews. They form their altars of twelve stones,
they offer to God the first-fruits, and divide the year by moons;
but these are customs which might have arisen from peculiar cir-
cumstances in any country. It is by no means certain that the
Indians practised circumcision. Peter Martyr asserts that they
" sacrificed their infants to idols, and circumcised themselves;"
but Gomara says that the rite was not universal among them.
Acosta, who was well acquainted with the customs of the Ameri-
cans, observes, "that they never circumcised their children, and
therefore could not be the posterity of the ten tribes." If they
were uniformly circumcised, it would not prove their descent
from the Jews , because there are other nations besides the Jews
who practise this rite. We cannot then infer the origin of the
Indians from an apparent resemblance in their forms of worship
to those of Judaism. — John's Heb. Com. pp. 316, 317.
a Ezekiel addresses his prophecies from the river Chebar, or
Habor. Our translation takes Habor for a city situated ' by the
river of Gozan,' and major Rennell says there is found in the
country anciently named Media, in the remote northern quarter
towards the Caspian sea, and Ghilan, a considerable river named
Ozan, or Hozal-Ozan. There is also fonnd a city named Abhar
or Habor, situated on a branch of the Ozan ; and it has the
reputation of being exceedingly ancient. Here Mr Morner
found ruins composed of large mud bricks, made with straw, and
baked in the sun, like some of those found at Babylon. This is
probably the place mentioned in Scripture Ed.
4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viu. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
will believe * Strabo, was supplied by strangers and
colonies from abroad.
The truth is, the ancients have extolled Media as a
very happy country. Ecbatana, where the king kept his
residence in summer, was one of the finest and largest
cities in the world. Susa, where he spent the winter,
was a very considerable place likewise : but, on the north
side, there were high mountains, where nevertheless
there was good pasturage, so that what the country
wanted was good husbandmen, and such as were used
to tillage ; for which purpose the Israelites, who had
made that their principal business in the Holy Land,
were, of all other people, the fittest inhabitants.
In these two provinces were the ten tribes seated at
first ; and it is not improbable that, in a short time, those
of Assyria might extend themselves into several other
parts of the empire ; for, in Alexander's time, we meet
with b a great body of them in Babylon ; and that those
of Media might stretch upon the right, into the provinces
bordering upon the Caspian sea, or, as 4 some imagine,
even beyond that sea, as far as the river Araxes ; but
that they ever became so powerful as c to change the
ancient names of placts into those of their own language,
we can hardly believe; because they fell under so many
bitter persecutions, were subject to so many revolutions
of the kingdoms where they lived, and, from different
princes, underwent such a variety of transmigrations,
that, before they could gain any such weight and autho-
rity in the world, we find them here and there scattered,
in lesser bodies, as it Avere, over the whole face of it.
Not only some of the Greek fathers, but some of our
modern critics likewise, have maintained, that the ten
tribes Avere restored, with those of Judah and Benjamin,
under the conduct of Zorobabel and Nehemiah, when
Cyrus and his successors were so kind as to give the
Jews in general a full permission to return into their
native land.5 To this purpose they have observed, that
several of the prophets who foretold their captivity, with
the same breath, as it were, have predicted their return ;
that, in token of such their return, 6 ' twelve goats,' for
every tribe one, : were offered at the dedication of the
new temple,' which would scarce have been done, had
3 Basnage's History of the Jews, b. vi. c. 4.
4 Fuller's Miscell. Sacr. b. ii. c. 5.
5 Calmet's Dissert, on the Ten Tribes, &c. 6 1 Esdras vii. 8.
b Besides those that were carried thither at the captivity,
Artaxerxes sent a new colony of that nation tluther, who, when
Alexauder the Great was for rebuilding the temple of Belus, had
the courage to resist him. For, whereas other people were eager
to furnish materials for the building, they refused to do it, as
thinking it had some stain of idolatry. — Basnage's Hist, of the
Jews.
c We read of the Cadusians, the Geles, and of Arsareth beyond
the Caspian sea; for which reason the learned Fuller supposes,
that the Jews spread themselves thus: " For the name of Geles,''
says he, " is Chaldaic, and signifies strangers or fugitives, which
title suited with the Jews, whom God had expelled from their
country for their sins. The Cadusians have a little altered the
word Chadoschim, which signifies saints, which was a title the
Jews, who called themselves a holy nation, much affected ; and,
lastly, Arsareth, the most famous of all the cities built upon the
Araxes, had a Hebrew name, signifying the city of relics, W
l/ir remains of Israel." But the author of the History of the
Jews, so often cited upon this subject, has confuted the argument
drawn from the etymology of the words; and, in particular,
shown that the Cadusians were a people much ancienter in the
country than the Israelites, since Ninus reckoned them among
his subjects. — B. vi. c. 4.
652
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3216. A. C. 758 ; OX, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
ten of these tribes been left behind beyond the Euphrates;
that under Nehemiah the Levites confessed the sins of
the ten tribes; that in the time of the Maccabees ' all
Palestine was full of Israelites as well as Jews ; that
2 St Matthew makes mention of the land of Naphtali ;
and that St Paul, in his defence before Agrippa, de-
clares, 3 ' that for the promise, to which the twelve tribes
hope to come, he was called in question.'
It cannot be thought, indeed, but that the love which
the Jews, above all other nations, bore to their native
country, and the great encouragement which the princes
of the east were pleased to grant to forward the re-
establishment, might tempt some of each tribe to take
this opportunity of returning with the two tribes of
Judah and Benjamin ; nor can ve doubt, but that, upon
their return, they would be apt to assume their former
names, and, as far as in them lay, to settle themselves
in their ancient possessions. S» that, what with those
that escaped their conqueror's fury, and remained un-
transported; those who returned with Ezra, pursuant to
the commission which Artaxerxes gave him ; and those
who took the advantage of the revolutions of the empire,
and of the frequent journeys they tiade to Jerusalem, —
great numbers of the ancient inhabitants might be found
in the days of the Maccabees, and some of every tribe
in our Saviour's time : but that all tlese returns did never
amount to a full restoration of the people, we have
abundant testimony to convince us.
Josephus 4 indeed tells us, that Ezra, upon the receipt
of his commission from Artaxerxes, communicated the
contents of it to all the Israelites that were in exile,
some of whom resorted to Babylon in order to return
with him; " but there were then another sort of Israelites,"
as his words are, " who being wonted to the place, and
settled in their habitations, chose rather to continue
where they were." Upon the whole, he computes, that
few or none, but those of the tribe of Benjamin and Judah,
came along with Ezra ; and " this is the reason," as he
tells us, " that in his time there were only two tribes to
be found in Asia and Europe under the Roman empire ;
for, as for the ten tribes, they are all planted beyond the
Euphrates," says he, " and so prodigiously increased in
number, that they are hardly to be computed." Nay,
even those that followed Ezra, according 5 to the senti-
ment of some of the Talmudists, were but the dregs of
the people, because the nobility and principal men of the
house of David still continued in Chaldea.
However this be, it is certain that Philo, 6 in his
representation to Caligula, tells him, that Jerusalem
ought to be looked upon, not only as the metropolis of
Judea, but as the centre of a nation dispersed in infinite
places ; among which he reckons the isles of Cyprus
and Candia, Egypt, Macedonia, and Bithynia ; the
empire of the Persians, and all the cities of the east,
except Babylon, from whence thoy were then expelled.
Nay, prior to this we read, 7 that a great number of these
orientals appeared at Jerusalem, at the feast of Pente-
cost, when, after our Saviour's ascension, his apostles
began to preach the gospel during that festival. It can-
not be thought that they were only proselytes, whom
4772. A. C. 639. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
the Jews o f the dispersion had converted ; they must have
been Jews who came to sacrifice at Jerusalem, according
to the law ; for by St Luke's enumeration of them, it
appears that they were the descendants of the tribes
that had been long before settled among the 8 Medes,
among the Paithians, in Mesopotamia, in Cappadocia,
in Pontus, and Asia Minor, &c, and therefore we find
St Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, directing his
epistle B ' to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.'
Upon the strength of these authorities we may then
conclude that, though Artaxerxes, in his commission to
Ezra, ,0 gave free liberty to all Jews whatever that were
under his dominions to return to Jerusalem, if they were
so minded, which some, without doubt, most gladly em-
braced ; yet the main bulk of the ten tribes, being loth
to remove, continued in the land of their captivity,
where they are still to be found in great numbers : and
therefore all those glorious prophecies, which some by
mistake have applied to their thin returns under the
Jewish governors sent from Babylon, do certainly relate
to a much greater event, even their conversion and final
restoration under the kingdom of the Messias.
The prophet Hosea, speaking of the present state of
the Jews, gives us this character whereby to distinguish
them : n ' They shall abide many days without a king, and
without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an
image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim.'
In vain do they boast of that power and authority which
they never had, but in their own country. The kings
and the princes that they talk so much of, are all ficti-
tious and imaginary. From the first time of their
transmigration to this very day, they have been a people
without any governor, or form of government ; and if, in
the midst of so many different nations, and under so
severe persecutions, they nevertheless have hitherto been
preserved, it must be imputed to the secret and wonder-
ful providence of God, who hath still designs of pity
and gracious loving-kindness towards them. To this
purpose the same prophet assures us, that 12 ' the number
of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea,
which cannot be measured or numbered ; and in the
place where it was said unto them, ye are not my people,
there it shall be said unto them, ye are the sons of the
living God : for he shall recover the remnant of his
people,' says another prophet, 13 ' that shall be left : —
He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and assemble
the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed
of Judah from the four corners of the earth ;' for 14 ' be-
hold the days come, saith the Lord,' by another of his
prophets, ' that it shall no more be said, the Lord liveth
that brought the children of Israel out of the land of
Egypt, but the Lord liveth that brought up the children
of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the
lands, whither he hath driven them. And I will bring
them again into the land that I gave unto their fathers ;'
and, when this is done, I5 ' I will no more hide my face
from them,' but I6 ' will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in
my people.' '7 ' They shall be no more a prey to the
heathen :' ,8 ' violence shall be no more heard in their
' 1 Mac. v. 9, 15, be. ' Mat. iv. 15.
3 Acts xxvi. 7. * Jewish Antiq. b. xi. C. 5.
* Basnage's Hist, of the Jews, b. vi. <-. 2. f' Philo ad Caium.
' Basnsge'a Hist, of the Jews, I), vi. c 2.
8 Acts ii. 9. 9 1 Pet. i. 1. 10 1 Esdras viii. 10, 11.
11 Hoe. iii. 1. 18 ibid. ;. |o. « Is. xi. 11, 12.
14 Jer. xvi. 14, 15. « Ezck. xxxix. 29. 16 Is. lxv. 19.
17 Ezck. xxxiv. 28. w Is. Ix. 18.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
653
A. M. 3394. A. C. 610; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4803. A. C. COS. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON
land, wasting, nor destruction within their borders ; but
they shall call their walls salvation, and their gates
praise.' ' ' Their land shall no more be termed desolate,'
J ' but they shall dwell in the land that I have given to
Jacob my servant, even they and their children's children
for ever ; and my servant David,' (not the son of Jesse,
who was dead long before Ezekiel prophesied, but the
Messiah, who was to be of the lineage of David, as
Kimchi explains it,) ' shall be their prince for ever.'
' Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace, which
shall be an everlasting covenant with them ; and I will
set my sanctuary among them for evermore. My taber-
nacle shall be with them ; yea, I will be their God, and
they shall be my people.'
3 Now, though it cannot be denied that these, and
several other prophecies to the like purpose, do denote
a great and glorious restoration to God's people ; yet it
seems very evident that scarce any of them can be ap-
plied to the return of the Jews from their captivity in
Babylon. Long since that time, and almost seventeen
hundred years ago, his covenant of peace has been
departed from them ; 'violence has been in their land,'
which has been laid desolate ; their tabernacle and sanc-
tuary have been consumed ; they have been a prey to the
heathen ; and have long ceased to be God's people,
and he to be their God : and therefore these prophecies
must be understood of some other event, which can only
be the general conversion of the Jews to Christianity,
and their re-establishment in the Holy Land. For this
mystery the apostle has revealed, 4 ' that blindness in
part hath happened to Israel, until the fulness of the
Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved, as
it is written, 5 there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer,
and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. 6 Then
shall the Lord set his hand again, a second time, to re-
cover the remnant of his people, and to assemble the
outcasts of Israel, from every kindred, and tongue, and
nation, and people, that, at 7 the blowing of the great
trumpet, they may come from the land of Assyria and
Egypt, and may worship the Lord in the holy mount at
Jerusalem.' When this great event shall happen, it is
impossible for us to determine ; but our business, in the
mean time, is to pray, that 8 'the salvation of Israel may
come out of Zion, that Jacob- may rejoice, and Israel
may be glad.'a
1 Is. lxii. 4. 2 Ezek. xxxvii. 25, &c.
3 Whitby's Treatise of the true Millennium.
4 Rom. xi. 25, 26. s Is. lix. 20. ° Ibid. xi. 11, &c.
7 Ibid, xxvii. 13. 8 Ps. xiv. 7.
a Numerous prophecies in the Old Testament declare, as
clearly as language can, that the Jews shall return to Judca,
and be at last permanently re-established in the land of their
fathers. The uniform experience of the literal truth of every
prediction respecting their past history may suffice to give assur-
ance of the certainty of their predicted restoration. And
amidst many signs that ' the times of the Gentiles ' are drawing
towards their fulfilment, many concurring circumstances seem
also to ha preparing the way of the children of Israel. Scattered
as they have been for so many ages through the world, and main-
taining still their distinctive character, their whole history for-
bids the thought that they will ever mingle among the nations,
or cease to be, what they have ever been, a peculiar people. But
while their history, as a nation, gave, for the space of many
generations, unequivocal attestations of an overruling providence,
sustaining the theocracy of the commonwealth of Israel ; and
w'hile during a period of still greater duration, they have been
' a people scattered and peeled :' yet after the lapse of so many
ages, they arc still reserved for illustrating the truth, the mercy,
SEC T. V.
CHAP. I.— From the Death of Josiah, to the
Babylonish Captivity.
THE HISTORY.
After the unhappy death of good Josiah, his son
Jehoahaz, b who was also called Shallum, was anointed
king ; but as he was far from following his father's ex-
and the glory of the God of Israel; ' at eventide it shall be light.'
They now begin, centuries of persecution and spoliation having
passed away, to participate, in cases too numerous to be specified,
of benefits arising from the altered spirit of the times. And
possessed, as in an unexampled degree they are, of silver and
gold, and of large portions of the public funds of various king-
doms, they may be said, even now in some manner, to 'inherit
the riches of the Gentiles.' And commanding, as in a great
measure they do, the rate of exchange throughout Europe, they
are entitled from the present influence of money on the security of
governments, and on the art and results of war, to high political
consideration ; and the time may not thus be remote, when they
shall be 'raised up as an ensign among the nations.' Not
naturalized to the isles of the Gentiles, either by law or affection,
or bound to any soil by the possession of fixed property, which
would be of no easy transference, but ever looking with un-
diminished love to the land of their fathers, even after an
expatriation uninterrupted for nearly eighteen centuries, they
are ready, whenever the time shall be fulfilled, to fly thither ' like
a cloud, and like doves to their windows.' But to what degree,
and in what manner, the present convulsions of the Turkish
empire, combined with the peculiar, and in many instances, novel
condition of the Jews, throughout Europe and America, shall be
the means of facilitating their eventual restoration to their own
land, (which is ravaged by Arabs, and yields but a scanty
revenue to the Turks) no mortal can determine. It is enough
for Christians to know, that two thousand of years, through nearly
which period it has been dormant, can neither render extinct the
title, nor prescribe the heaven-chartered right of the seed of
Abraham to the final and everlasting possession of the land of
Canaan : that God ' will remember the land, and gather together'
unto it his ancient people, and that his word concerning Zion,
which he hath neither forgotten nor forsaken, is, ' I have graven
thee upon the palms of my hands, thy walls are continually before
me. Thy children shall make haste ; thy destroyers, and they that
made thee waste, shall go forth of thee, &c.,' (Is. xlix. 16, 17, &c.)
And that through all the changes which have happened in the
kingdoms of the earth from the days of Moses to the present
time, which is more than three thousand two hundred years,
nothing should have happened to prevent the possibility of the
accomplishment of these prophecies, but, on the contrary, that the
state of the Jewish and Christian nations at this day should be
such as renders them easily capable, not only of a figurative, but
even of a literal completion in evvvy particular, if the will of God
be so, this is a miracle which hath nothing parallel to it in the
phenomena of nature.' — Keith's Evidence of Prophecies. — Ed.
b Jehoahaz was not the eldest son of Josiah, as appears from
this, — That he was but three and twenty years old when he be-
gan to reign, and reigned but three months ; after which his
brother Jehoiakim, when he was made king, was five and twenty
years old, (2 Kings xxiii. 31, 32.) For this reason, it is said,
that the people anointed him, because, as he did not come to the
crown by right of succession, his title might have otherwise been
disputed ; for in all disputed cases, and where the kingdom came
to be contested, anointing was ever thought to give a preference.
At this time, however, the Jews might have some reason to pre-
fer the younger brother, because very probably he was of a more
martial spirit, and better qualified to defend their liberties against
the king of Egypt. His proper name, it is thought, was Shal-
lum ; but our learned Usher supposes, that the people looking
upon this as ominous, because Shallum, king of Israel, reigned
but one month, changed it to Jehoahaz, which proved not much
more fortunate to him, for lie reigned but three Patrick's and
Calmct's Commentaries.
654
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M.3384. A. C. 610 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
ample, lie was soon a tumbled down from his throne
into a prison, where he ended his days, with misery and
disgrace, in a strange land. For Pharaoh-Necho, upon
his return from the expedition against the Babylonians,
wherein he had great success, hearing that Jehoahaz had
taken upon him the kingdom of Judafa without his con-
sent, sent for him to Riblah in Syria, and on his arrival,
caused him to be put in chains, and sent prisoner to
Egypt, h where he died. He had an elder brother, whose
name was Eliakim ; but Necho, when he came to Jerusa-
lem, changed it into Jehoiakim ; c and having constitut-
ed him king, and put the land to an annual tribute of
an hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold, he
returned with great triumph into his own kingdom.
Jehoiakim d being thus placed on the throne, went on
in his brother's steps to relax all the good order and
a The Scripture nowhere tells us, upon what occasion it was
that Jehoahaz fell into the king of Egypt's hands, or for what
reason it was that he used him so severely ; but it is presumable,
that to revenge his father's death, he might raise an army, and
engage him in a pitched battle, though he failed in the attempt.
For why should he put him in bands, if he voluntarily went, and
surrendered himself at Riblah ? or why be so highly offended at
him for accepting of a crown which the people conferred on him?
The general opinion therefore is, that he was a man of a bold and
daring spirit, and therefore those words in the prophet Ezekiel
are applied to him: ' thy mother is a lioness; she brought up one
of her whelps ; it became a young lion ; but he was taken in the
pit, and he was brought with chains unto the land of Egypt;' for
which reason Pharaoh-Necho treated him in this manner, that he
might put it out of his power to give him any farther distur-
bance.— Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
b This the prophet Jeremiah foretold, where he bidsthe king,
and the people of Judah, 'not to weep for the dead,' meaning
Josiah, ' but for him that goeth away, for he shall return no more,
nor see his native country.' Because, ' thus saith the Lord con-
cerning Shallum,' which was the original and right name of
Jehoahaz, ' the son of Josiah king of Judah, who reigned instead
of Josiah, his father, and who went forth out of this place, he
shall not return hither any more.' (Jer. xxii. 11.)
c It was a usual thing for conquerors to change the names of
the persons they vanquished in war, in testimony of their absolute
power over them. Thus we find the king of Babylon changing
the name of Mattaniah into Zedekiah, when he constituted him
king of Judah, (2 Kings xxiv. 17.) But our learned Usher has
farther remarked, that the king of Egypt gave Eliakim the name
of Jehoiakim, thereby to testify that he ascribed his victory
over the Babylonians to Jehovah, the God of Israel, by whose
excitation, as he pretended, (2 Chron. xxxv. 21, 22), he under-
took the expedition. — Patrick's and Calmet's Commentaries.
d As to the time when Jehoiakim came to the throne, the dif-
ference is very remarkable: for in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9, it is said,
that he was but ' eight years old,' but in 2 Kings xxiv. 8, that
he was ' eighteen when he began to reign,' and yet, considering
how common a thing it was for kings to make their sons their
associates in the kingdom, thereby to secure the possession of it
in their family, aud prevent all contention among the other
brothers, the difference is easily reconciled, by supposing, that
when his father had reigned one year, he took him to reign in
conjunction with him, when he was no more than eight years
old. With his father he reigned ten years ; so that, when his
father died, he was eighteen years old, and then he began to
reign alone, which was no more than three months. The author
dl the book of Kings makes mention therefore only of the years
when lie began to reign alone ; but the author of the Chronicles
speaks of all the time that he reigned, both with his father, and
alone. Tins is a fair solution; though 1 cannot see what injury it
can do to the authority of the sacred text, if we should aeknow-
ledge, that there is an error in the transcriber of the book of
Chronicles ; because two of the most ancient and venerable
versions, the Syriac and Arabic, have rendered it in that place,
net eight but eighteen, which they were doubtless induced to do by
those ancient Hebrew copies from whence they formed their
translation. — Patrick's Commentary, uud Puolc's Annotations.
4803. A. C. G08. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
discipline which his father had instituted, and the people,
who never heartily came into that good king's reformation,
took this opportunity to follow the bent of their depraved
inclinations ; whereupon the prophet Jeremiah went first
to the king's palace, where he denounced God's judg-
ments against him and his family, and afterwards into the
temple, and there spoke to all the people after the same
manner. The priests, offended at this freedom, caused
him to be seized, and brought before the king's council,
in hopes of having him put to death ; but Ahikam, e who
was one of the chief lords thereof, so befriended him, that
he got him discharged by the general suffrage, not only
of the princes, but also of all the elders of the people
that were then present.
But aUrijah, / another prophet of the Lord, who, in
like manner, had declared against the iniquity of the
prince and people, did not so easily escape : for though
he fled into Egypt, when he understood that Jehoiakim
had a design against his life ; yet this did not hinder the
tyrant from pursuing him thither, where having procured
him to be seized, he brought him prisoner to Jerusalem,
and there had him executed, and his dead body contemp-
tuously used ; which was no small aggravation to all his
other crimes.
He had not been above three years upon the throne,
before Nabopollassar, king of Babylon, being now be-
come old and infirm, and perceiving that, upon the late
advantage which the king of Egypt had gained against
his arms, all Syria and Palestine had revolted from him,
took his son Nebuchadnezzar into partnership with him
in the empire, and sent him with a strong army into those
parts, in order to recover what had been lost.
It was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, when Nebu-
chadnezzar, having defeated Necho's army on the banks
1 Jer. xxvi. 20, &c.
e This Ahikam was the father of Gedaliah, (2 Kings xxv. 22.)
who was afterwards made governor of the land, under the Chal-
deans, and the son of Shaphan the scribe, (who was chief minister
of state under king Josiah, 2 Kings xxii. 12.) and brother to
Gemariah, (Jer. xxxvi. 10, Elasah, xxix. 3, and Jaazaniah,
Ezek. viii. 11,) who were great men in those days, and members
likewise of the council with him ; where, in conjunction with
them, he could not fail of having a powerful interest, which he
made use of on this occasion, to deliver the prophet from that
mischief which was intended against him. — Prideaux's Connec-
tion, anno 609.
/About this time also were living the prophets Habakkuk,
Zephaniah, and Nahum, who being called to the prophetic office
in the reign of Josiah, continued, very likely, to this time, be-
cause we find them prophesying the same things that Jeremiah did,
namely, the destruction and desolation of Judah and Jerusalem,
for the many heinous sins that they were guilty of. As to
Habakkuk, neither the time in which he lived, nor the parents
from whom he was descended, are any where named in Scrip-
ture; but his prophesying the coming of the Chaldeans, in the
same manner that Jeremiah did, gives us reason to believe that
he lived in the same time. Of Zephaniah, it is directly said,
(chap, i.) that he prophesied in the time of Josiah, and in his
pedigree, which is also given us, his father's grandfather is
called Hezekiah, whom some take for the king of Judah, and
consequently reckon this prophet to have been of royal descent.
As to Nahum, lastly, it is certain, that he prophesied after the
captivity of the ten tribes, and before that of the other two,
which he foretold, (chap, i.) Though therefore the Jews do gene-
rally place him in Manasseh's reign, yet others choose to refer
him to the latter part of Josiah's, as being nearer to the destruc-
tion of Nineveh and of the Assyrian monarchy, to which several
prophecies of his do principally relate. — Prideaux's Connection,
anno 009 ; and Howell's History, in the notes.
Skct. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
655
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of the Euphrates, marched into Syria and Palestine, in
order to recover these provinces, which lie soon did ;
and having besieged Jerusalem, took it, and carried away
the king, and part of the vessels of the temple along
with him, to Babylon. In a short time, however, he re-
leased him and restored him to his crown, on condition
that ^.e should become tributary to him, which he con-
tinued to be for three years ; but in the fourth, he re-
tracted from that subjection, whereupon Nebuchadnezzar
came upon him with a fresh invasion.
Upon the first invasion, the Rechabites, who, accord-
ing to the institution of Jonadab the son of Rechab, their
founder, had always abstained from wine, and hitherto
only lived in tents, apprehending themselves in more
danger in the open country, came to Jerusalem for safety.
By these people God intended to convince the Jews of
their disobedience to him ; and therefore he ordered his
prophet Jeremiah, to bring them to an apartment of the
temple, and there offer them wine to drink, which when
they refused upon account of its being contrary to their
institution, which they never yet had violated, the pro-
phet (after due commendation a of their obedience)
turned it upon the Jews, and reproached them, who were
God's peculiar people, for being less observant of his
laws than the poor Rechabites, who were not of the stock
of Israel, had been of the injunctions of their ancestor.
Before the next invasion Jeremiah prophesied that
Nebuchadnezzar would again come against Judah and
Jerusalem ; that he would waste the country, and carry
the people captive to Babylon, where they should con-
tinue in that condition for the space of seventy years ;
with many more calamities, and woful desolations, that
were ready to fall upon them, if they did not repent.
But this was so far from making any saving impression
upon them, that it only enraged and exasperated them
the more against him, insomuch, that, for fear of their
malice and wrathful indignation, he was b forced to
keep himself concealed.
a The prophet's words, upon this occasion, are these : — ' Be-
cause ye have obeyed the commandments of Jonadab your father,
and kept all his precepts, and done according to all that he hath
commanded you ; thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel,
Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand be-
fore me for ever.' (Jer. xxxv. 18, 19.) To stand before a prince,
or to see his face, in Scripture phrase, denotes the honour which
accrues from being in his service, but the Rechabites were nei-
ther priests nor Levites. Hitherto they had lived in the fields,
separate from towns and villages, and were averse indeed to any
employment either in church or state ; but from the time of
their captivity, (for they were carried along with the two tribes,)
we find them employed as singers and porters in the service of
the temple. To serve in this capacity, there was no necessity
for their being of the tribe of Levi ; the declaration of the divine
will, by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, was in this case a
sufficient vocation. — Calmet's Commentary on Jer. xxv. 19.
b Jeremiah's words, upon this occasion, are, — ' I am shut up,
I cannot go into the house of the Lord,' chap, xxxvi. 5. But
then the question is, what we are to understand by his being
shut up ? For, that he was not at that time shut up in prison,
is plain from the prince's advising him and Baruch to hide
themselves, ver. 19. Junius and Tremellius do therefore sup-
pose three ways of his being shut up, and leave it to our choice
which to take. The first is, that the king had forbidden him to
go any more into the temple to prophesy such terrible things to
the people ; but the prophets of God did not use to observe such
prohibitions of their prophetic ministry. The second is, that the
chiet priests had excommunicated him, and therefore he might
not go; but this, in all likelihood, he would have less regarded,
for the same reason. The third is, that God, to provide for the
During his concealment, God commanded hiin to col-
lect together, and digest into one volume, all the pro-
phecies which he had given him against Israel, against
Judah, and against other nations, from the time that he
first began to prophesy, (which was in the thirteenth
year of Josiah,) if haply, by hearing all his judgments
summed up together against them, they might be brought
to a better sense of their transgressions. To this pur-
pose the prophet employed Baruch, c his disciple and
amanuensis, to take a copy d of them from his mouth,
safety of his prophet, and to punish the obstinacy of the people,
would not permit him to go any more among them. This, of
the three, seems the most probable ; though the phrase may very
properly denote no more than the prophet's concealing himseli,
and keeping at home, for fear of some mischief from the people.
— Howell's History, in the notes.
c Baruch, the son of Neriah, and grandson of Maaseiah, was
of an illustrious birth, and of the tribe of Judah. Seraiah, his
brother, had a considerable employment in the court of king
Zedekiah, but himself kept close to the person of Jeremiah, and
was his most faithful disciple, though his adherence to his master
drew upon him several persecutions, and a great deal ot bad
treatment. After the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchad-
nezzar, Baruch and his master were nermitted to stay in the
land of Judea; but when the remains of the people which were
left behind, after having slain their governor Gedaliah, were for
retiring into Egypt, they compelled Jeremiah and his disciple to
go along with them, where the prophet died, and Baruch soon
after made his escape to his brethren in Babylon, where, accord-
ing to the tradition of the Rabbins, he likewise died in the
twelfth year of the captivity. But of what authority the book,
which goes under his name, is, or by whom it was written, and
whether any thing related therein be historically true, or the
whole of it a fiction, is altogether uncertain. Grotius, in his
Commentary upon it, thinks it an entire fiction of some Hellen-
istical Jew, under the name of Baruch ; and St Jerome, long
before him, (in the preface to his Exposition of Jeremiah,) tells
us, that the reason why he did not make a comment on this
book, (though, in the edition of the Septuagint, it be joined with
Jeremiah,) was, because it was not deemed canonical among the
Hebrews, and contains an epistle which falsely bears the name
of Jeremiah. This epistle is annexed to the book, and, in the
common division of it, makes the last chapter; but the main
subject of the book itself is likewise an epistle, either sent, or
feigned to be sent, by king Jehoiakim, and the Jews who were
in captivity with him in Babylon, to their brethren the Jews
who were still left in Judah and Jerusalem; wherein they re-
commend to their prayers the emperor Nebuchadnezzar and his
children, that, under his dominion, they may lead quiet and
peaceable lives; wherein they confess their sins, and ask pardon
for what is past, take notice of the threats of the prophets, which
they had so long despised, and acknowledge the righteousness of
God in what he had brought upon them ; wherein they remind
them of the advantages which the Jews had in their knowledge
of the law of God, and of true wisdom, above all other nations,
and thereupon exhort them to reform their manners, and forsake
their evil customs, which would be the only means to bring about
their deliverance from the captivity under which they groaned.
The whole is introduced with an historical preface, wherein it
is related that Baruch, being then at Babylon, did, in the name
of the captive king, and his people, draw up the same epistle,
and afterwards read it to them for their approbation ; and that,
together with it, they sent a collection of money to the high
priest at Jerusalem, for the maintenance of the daily sacrifices.
This is the substance of the book itself; and, in the letter annexed
to it, which goes under Jeremiah's name, the vanity of the
Babylonish idols and idolatry is set forth at large, and with
liveliness enough. Of the whole there are but three copies; one
in Greek, and the other two in Syriac, whereof one agreeth with
the Greek, though the other very much differs from it; but in
what language it was originally written, or whether one of these
be not the original, or which of them may be so, it is next to
impossible to tell. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 595, and Cal-
met's Preface on Baruch.
d How Jeremiah could remember all the prophecies that he
uttered for the space of two and twenty years together, we can
G56
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
TBook VI.
A. M. 3391. A. C. G10; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4803. A. C. G08. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
and, when he had so done, ordered him to go up into
the temple, on the day of expiation, a and there read it
in the hearing of all the people.
Pursuant to his instructions Baruch went, and, in Ge-
mariah's * apartment, read the book, lirst to the people,
who stood below in the courts, and afterwards to the
princes who were met together in the secretary's chamber ;
and who thereupon advised him and his master Jere-
miah, both to c keep out of the way, until they had known
the king's pleasure concerning it. As soon as the king
was informed of the book, he sent one of his attendants
for it, and commanded him to read it : but he had not
gone far, before the king, impatient to hear the judg-
ments denounced against him, snatched it out of his
hand, and, notwithstanding the importunity of his nobles
to dissuade him, cut it to pieces, and threw it into the
lire, d which was upon the hearth, (for it was then the
hardly conceive, unless we allow that he had the particular in-
spiration of God to bring all things to his remembrance, that he
might neither forget nor misrepresent them in his recital to
Baruch: for, without such a supernatural assistance, what se-
curity have we that this part of the Scriptures is the work of the
Holy Ghost ? — Calmet's Commentary on Jer. xxxvi. 4.
a Some are of opinion that this was done on the great day of
fasting, or solemn expiation, which was observed at the begin-
ning of the civil year, on the tenth day of the month Tizri,
which answers to the latter end of our September, and the be-
ginning of October; but the context seems to denote, that it was
on the fast day mentioned in the ninth verse to have been pro-
claimed in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, which must have been a
fast extraordinary, and appointed upon some particular occasion
of the state, because the law had ordained no such observation on
the ninth month: but what that particular occasion was, it is not
so well known ; though some have imagined that it was in com-
memoration of the calamity which had befallen Jerusalem in the
year before, when Nebuchadnezzar had sent to Babylon part of
the vessels of the house of the Lord, and was upou the point of
sending away captive the king and all his princes.— Calmet's
Commentary on Jer. xxvi. 4. 9.
b This Gemariah was one of the captains ot the temple, whose
apartment was near the New Gate, whereof he kept guard, and
had a certain number of Levites under him, who constantly stood
centinel. For the temple, we must know, was guarded like a
king's palace ; and as the upper court, which is mentioned in the
text, was, in all probability, the priest's court ; so the gate, where-
of Gemariah had charge, must have been the east gate of that
court, which, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, 2 Chron. xx. 5. is
called the New Court. — Calmet's Commentary.
c The advice which the princes of Judah gave upon this occa-
sion is very remarkable, because it reconciles their duty to God,
to justice, and to charity, with what they were obliged to from
their prince. Their prince, they knew, was of an hasty and vio-
lent temper; and yet the contents of the book were such, that it
would not be safe for him to be ignorant of it; and therefore,
being in duty bound to acquaint him with it, they advised Baruch
and his master to provide for their own security, until they should
see what effect it would have upon the king, whereof they pro-
mised, no doubt, to give them intelligence.— Calmet's Commen-
tary.
d The text tells us, that it was in the ninth month, (which
mum-, ers.in part to our month of November,; when the king burned
the book. After that the rain began to fall in the month of Sep-
tember, the weather generally grew raw and cold, so that a fire
at this time was not unseasonable: the custom, however, in this
country was not to have chimneys, as it is among us. The fire
was made in the middle of the room, upon an hearth, or in a
stove, and the smoke went out either at the door or window, or
some opening made on purpose in the roof of the house, as we
see in some oi our college halls, and some kitchens in ancient
monasteries, where the chimney is in the midst of the roof, in
the form of a cupola, with several openings for the smoke to fly
out at. For, that there were formerly no chimneys in the man-
ner we make them now, is plain from the observation which his
annoialor makes upon Vitruvius, namely, that, in all his book of
winter season,) where it was consumed ; and then imme-
diately sent out his officers to apprehend the prophet
and his amanuensis ; but they had both withdrawn to a
place of security, and could not be found.
Upon burning the book, Jeremiah was commanded to
make another in the same manner ; to have the same pro-
phecies inserted in it, with some l farther denunciations
against Jehoiakim and his house, which, in a short time,
began to take effect. For Nebuchadnezzar, as we said,
having invaded Judea, and laid siege to Jerusalem, soon
took it, and put Jehoiakim in chains to carry him to
Babylon ; but, upon his humiliation, and swearing fealty
to him, he again restored him to his kingdom, and left
Jerusalem, in order to pursue his victories against the
Egyptians : but before he did that, he e caused great
numbers of the people to be sent captives to Babylon,
and gave particular orders to Ashpenaz the master of his
eunuchs, that, out of the children of the royal family,
and that of the nobility of the land, he should make
choice of such as surpassed others in beauty and wit,
that, when they came to Babylon, they might be made
eunuchs too, and attend hi his palace. This Ashpenaz
accordingly did ; and, among the children that were
carried away captive / for this purpose were Daniel,
Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Daniel, upon his ar-
1 Jer. xxxvi. 30, 31.
architecture, he makes no mention of chimneys, which he ques-
tionless would have done, had they been of use in his time. — Cal-
met's Commentary, and M. Perault on Vitruv. b. vi. c. 8.. — [In
Palestine, and the surrounding regions, the coldness of the night
in all the seasons of the year, is often very inconvenient. The
king of Judah is described by the prophet, as sitting in his win-
ter-house in the ninth month, corresponding to the latter end of
November and part of December, with a fire burning on the
hearth before him. This answers to the state of the weather at
Aleppo, where, as Dr Russel informs us, the most delicate
people make no fires till the end of November. The Europeans
resident at Syria, he observes in a note, continue them till
March ; the people of the country seldom longer than February ;
but fires are occasionally made in wet seasons, not only in March,
but in April also, and would be acceptable at the gardens some-
times even in May. Dr Pococke, in his journey to Jerusalem,
being conducted by an Arab to his tent, found his wife and family
warming themselves by the fire on the seventeenth of March ;
and on the eighth of May he was treated with a fire to warm
him, by the governor of Galilee. The nights at that season are
often very cold, and of this the inhabitants are rendered more
sensible by the heats of the day. In May and June, and even
in July, travellers very often put on fires in the evening. This
statement clearly discovers the reason, why the people, who went
to Gethsemane to apprehend our Lord, kindled a fire of coals to
warm themselves at the time of the passover, which happened
in the spring. — Paxton's Illustrations, vol. i. — Ed.]
e Since the people were thus carried into captivity, the sons
of the royal family, and of the nobility of the land, made eunuchs
and slaves in the palace of the king of Babylon ; the vessels of
the temple carried thither, the king made a tributary, and the
whole land now brought into vassalage under the Babylonians ; from
hence we must reckon the beginning of the seventy years' cap-
tivity foretold by the prophet Jeremiah, ch. xxv. 1 1 . and xxix. 10,
and in the fourth year of Jehoiakim must be the first year in that
computation.. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 606.
/Some indeed do place their captivity several years later, but
it is absolutely inconsistent with what is elsewhere said in Scrip-
ture: for these children, after their carrying away to Babylon,
were to be three years under the tuition of the master of the
eunuchs, (Dan. i. 5,) to be instructed by him in the language and
learning of the Chaldeans, before they could be admitted into
the presence of the king, to stand and serve before him. But in
the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, after his father's
death, which was but the fourth year after his first taking of
Jerusalem, Daniel had not only admission and freedom of access
Sect. V.]
FK03I THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, fee.
657
A. M. 3394 A. C. CIO : OR. ACCORDING TO HAI.ES, A. M.
riv.il in Babylon, was called Belteshazzar, and the other
three were named Shadrach, M.eshach, and Abednego,
of whom we have several things to say in another place.
Jehoiakim, after he had lived in subjection to the
king of Babylon for tliree years, rebelled against him :
and refusing to pay him any more tribute, renewed his
confederacy with Necho king of Egypt. Hereupon Ne-
buchadnezzar, a not being at leisure to come himself to
chastise him, sent orders to all his lieutenants and go-
vernors of provinces in those parte, to make war against
him, which brought upon him inroads and depredations
from every quarter ; till, in the eleventh year of his
reign, all parties joined together against him, and. hav-
ing shut him up in Jerusalem, they took him prisoner in
a sally which he made upon them, slew him with the
sword, and, in the completion of the ' prophet's predic-
tion concerning him, b cast his dead body in the high-
way, without allowing it the decency of a funeral.
After the death of his father, Jehoiachin, c who is like-
wise called Coniah and Jeconiah, ascended the throne :
but for the little time that he continued thereon, persist-
ing in his fathers impieties, he drew upon himself 2 a
1 Jer. xxii. IS, 19. 2 Jer. xxii. 24—30.
to the king, but we find him there interpreting his dream,
(Dan. ii.) and immediately thereupon advanced to be the chief of
tiit- governors of the wise men, and ruler over all the provinces
of Babylon ; and, less than four years' instruction in the lan-
guage, laws, usages, and learning of the country, can scarce be
thought sufficient to qualify him lor such a trust; nor could he
any sooner be old enough for it, because we may observe, that
when he was first carried away from Jerusalem, he was but a
youth. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 606.
a What detained liim from going in person against Jerusalem
we are not told: only it appears, that, in the tenth year of Je-
hoiakim, he was engaged in an arbitration between the Medes
and Lydians, the occasion of which was this: — After the Medes
had recovered all the L'pjer Asia out of the hands of the Scy-
thians, and again extended their borders to the river Halys,
which was the common boundary between them and the Ly-
dians, it was not long before there happened a war between these
two nations, which was managed for five years together with
various success. In the sixth year, intending to make one
battle decisive, theyr engaged each other with their utmost
strength; but in the midst oi the action, and while the fortune
of the day seemed to hang in an equal balance between them,
there happened an eclipse, which overspread both the armies
with darkness: whereupon they desisted from fighting, and
agned to refer the controversy to the arbitration of two neigh-
bouring princes. The Lydians chose Siennesis king of Cilicia;
and the Medes Nebuchadnezzar (who, by Herodotus, b. 1. is
called Labynctus,') king of Babylon, who concluded a peace be-
tween them, on the terms that Astyages, son oi Cyaxares king
:, should take to wife Ariena, the daughter of Halyattis,
king of the Lydians; of which marriage, within a year after,
was bom Cyaxares, who is called Darius the Mede, in the
book of Danief. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 528.
( b In 2 Kings xxiv. 6, we are told expressly, that Jehoiakim
'slept with his fathers,' and yet it is very certain that he was
neither buried with them, nor died in his bed, but lay above
ground unburied, according to the prediction of the prophet, (Jer.
xxxvi. 30.) ' exposed in the day to the heat, and in the night to
the frost;' from whence it appears, 'that to sleep with one's
fathers,' signifies no more than to die as they did. — Patrick's
Commentary.
c His succeeding his father in the throne of Judah may seem
to disagree with the threat which the prophet denounces against
his father, (Jer. xxxvi. 30.) ' He shall have none to sit upon the
throne of David.' But as Jehoiachin's reign lasted little more
than three months, dining which time he was absolutely subject
to the Chaldeans, a reign of so short a continuance, and so small
authority, may very justly be looked upon as nothing. — Calmefs
Commentary.
4803. A. C. EM. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
bitter declaration of God's wrath, which was speedily
executed. For, in three months after his father's death,
Nebuchadnezzar, d coming in person with his roval army
to Jerusalem, which was then blocked up by his lieute-
nants, caused the place to be begirt with a close siege
on every side. This so terrified Jehoiachin, that e tak-
ing his mother, his princes, and his chief ministers with
him, he went out to Nebuchadnezzar, and delivered him-
self into his hand : who, though he spared his life, put
him in chains, and sent him to Babylon, where he conti-
nued in prison until the death of his conqueror. But when
Evilmerodach / succeeded to his father's throne, he not
only released him from his imprisonment, which had con-
tinued for seven and thirty years, but treated him with
great humanity and respect, allowing him an honourable
maintenance, and giving him the precedence of all other
princes in Babylon.
At this time Nebuchadnezzar carried away with him,
besides the king and his family, a vast number of other
captives, among whom was Ezekiel the prophet, all the
mighty men of valour, and all the useful artificers, out
of Jerusalem, s to the number of ten thousand men, to-
gether with all the treasures, and * rich furniture of the
d It is very probable that Nebuchadnezzar heard that he had
entered into a confederacy with the king of Egypt, as his succes-
sor did ; and therefore sent an army against him, in the very
beginning of his reign, to lay siege to Jerusalem, against which
he intended to come himself But the Jews have a conceit that
Nebuchadnezzar's counsellors represented to him, how unadvis-
edly he had acted in making him king whose father bad been in
rebellion against him, and that upun their representation, he
resolved to depose him. ' From an ill dog there never comes a
good whelp,' was the proverb, they say, which the counsellors
made use of on this occasion ; and to make this more feasible to
the father and son, they generally apply that passage in Ezekiel,
' She took another of her whelps, and made him a young lion,
and he went up and down among the lions. He became a young
lion, and learned to catch the prey, and devour men. Then the
nations set against him on every side from the provinces: they
spread their net over him, and he was taken in their pit,' chap.
xix. 6, &c. — Calmii's and Patrick's Commentaries.
e It is very probable that he made this surrender, at the advice
of the prophet Jeremiah, who gave the same counsel more than
once to his successor Zedekiah, (Jer. xxi. 9; xxvii. 17;
xxxviii. 2.)
/ During his father's indisposition, who fancied himself meta-
morphosed into an ox, he took upon him the administration of
the government ; but after seven years, when his father recovered
his understanding, so as once more to ascend the throne, Evil-
merodach, as some believe, was imprisoned by his father, and in
his confinement, contracted an acquaintance and intimacy with
Jehoiachin ; so that after his father's death, and his full accession
to the throne, he released him out of prison, and heaped many
favours upon him: and it was by his advice, as the Jews tell us,
that Evilmerodach took his father out of the ground, after he was
dead and buried, cut his body in pieces, and gave them to three
hundred ravens, lest he should return from his grave, as he had
before recovered from his metamorphosis into an ox. — Calmct's
Dictionary, under the word Evilmerodach.
g This must be understood of the whole number of the people
that were at this time carried captive, which, according to Aber-
binel was thus made up : — Jehoiachin and all his court, and great
men. were seven thousand; the craftsmen a thousand; and other
considerable men in the country two thousand, which completed
the number. Jeremiah indeed computes them to be little above
three thousand th;it were now carried away : but he reckons only
those that were carried from Jerusalem ; whereas in 2 Kings
xxxi v. 16, there is an account of those who were carried from other
cities, and out of the tribe of Benjamin, which were seven thou-
sand ; and this reconciles the difference. — Patrick's Comment.
h Nebuchadnezzar carried away the vessels, and rich furniture
of the temple, at three difierent times. 1st. In the third year of
4o
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temple, and of the royal palace. What he left in the
land were only the poorer sort of people, over whom he
made Mattaniah, the third son of Josiah, king. Of him
he took a solemn oath to be faithful and true in his obe-
dience to the crown of Babylon ; and, to engage him the
more to be so, he changed his name to Zedekiah, which
signifies the justice of the Lord, intending thereby to put
him in mind of the vengeance he was to expect from the
justice of the Lord his God, if he violated that fidelity
which he had in his name sworn unto him.
Zedekiah was but just settled in the throne, and Ne-
buchadnezzar departed out of Judea, and Syria, when '
several kings of the neighbouring nations, namely, the
Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Zidonians,
'the Tynans, &c, sent their ambassadors to Jerusalem, to
congratulate him upon his accession to the throne, and
to propose a league against the king of Babylon, in
order to shake oft' his yoke, and prevent his return into
those parts any more. Upon this occasion, Jeremiah,
by God's command, made him bonds and yokes, which
he sent by the said ambassadors to their respective mas-
ters, with this message from God, namely, " That he had
given all their countries to the king of Babylon, and
therefore their wisest course would be to submit to his
yoke, which if they refused to do, both they and their
countries should most certainly be destroyed :" but to
Zedekiah he went in person, and having persuaded him
<.o submit to the king of Babylon, and not to give credit
to false prophets, who might flatter him with a deliver-
ance from his power, he prevailed with him for that time
not to enter into the league that was proposed.
He had before this, 2 under the emblem of two baskets
of figs, foretold Zedekiah the restoration which God
intended for those that were gone into captivity, and the
misery and desolation which should befal them who
were still in the land ; and now in pursuance of his pro-
phetic office, he « took the opportunity of the king's
1 Jer. xxxvii. i Jer# xxiy
the «|gn of Jehoiakim, when he first took Jerusalem, he carried
part of the vessels oi the house of God away into the land of Shi-
md put them into the house of his god,' (Dan i 2 ) ^hese
were the vessels which his son Belshazzar profaned (Dan v 2 )
and which Cyrus restored to the Jews, (Ezra i. 7.) to be" set up
again in the temple when rebuilt, gdly, In the reign of Jehoia-
Chm, he took the city again, and cut in pieces a great part of the
vessels of gold which Solomon had made, (2 Kings xxiv 13)
and by some chat.ee or other had escaped his former plunder
•idly, In the eleventh year of Zedekiah, he pillaged the temple
once more, when he brake in pieces the pillars of brass, and the
bases, and the brazen sea, and took along with them all the vessels
of silver and gold that he could find, and carried them to Babylon
fl! Kings xxv. 13,) &c. It is somewhat strange, that amongst all
Ms inventory we hear no mention made of the ark of the cove-
nant, which o all other things was held most sacred; but it is
'«TP;*«*'e that it was burned together with the temple, in this
last desolaUon. E or what some say of its being hidden by the pro!
phet Jeremiah, inacertam cave in Mount Nebo, is a mere fable
/;,;""' ''"hniix Commentaries, and Dissertation on the
/,ut oj the Covenant.
embat<llhLtWn'.!?1»U?0f what occasion Zedekiah sei,t «»s
embassy to the king ol Babylon, the sacred history is silent; but
. to very pn»umable that it was at the beginning of his reign,
and that as Judea was then tributary to the Chaldeans, the king'
I n icy was to keep up ■ good understanding with them. Ezekic
however was not as yet possessed of the spirit of propl Ley and
fa tins reason Jeremiah, was obliged to take care of tbeJews
who were gone captives into the laud of Babylon, and to send
them instructions u, what manner they were to behave, namely
sending an embassy to Babylon to direct a letter to the
Jews of the captivity, advising them not to be deceived
with such prophets, b as made them entertain false hopes
of a speedy restoration ; that by the ordination of God
their captivity was to last seventy years ; and that the
people left at Jerusalem would be of little use to assist
them in their deliverance, because God, in a short time,
would afHict them with the sword, with famine, and with
pestilence, so as to consume the greatest part of them,
and scatter the rest over the face of the earth ; and there-
fore he exhorts them to live quietly and peaceably in the
country, whither they were carried, without expecting
any return, until the time which God had appointed.
Upon the receipt of this letter, one Sliemaiah, a
popular man among the captive Jews at Babylon, took
upon him to write to Zephaniah, the second priest, and
to all the priests and people of Jerusalem, representing
Jeremiah as a madman, and a false pretender to pro-
phecy, and advising them to confine him : which Jere-
miah hearing, was commanded by God to send again to
the captives of Babylon, to let them know, that he would
punish Shemaiah and his posterity very severely, for
having deluded them with false prophecies ; and at the
same time, to convince those that were left in Jerusalem,
he showed them, 3 by the emblem of a potter's vessel,
that it was in the Almighty's power to destroy what
nation or people he pleased. But all this availed nothing.
They still resolved to go on in their wicked ways : and,
to avenge themselves of the prophet, who gave them
some disturbance therein, they abused him with words
and blows, and, at length, put him in the stocks.
It was no small comfort to him, however, under all
his afflictions, to find that Ezekiel, who, much about this
time, was called to the prophetic office, prophesied the
same things at Babylon that he did at Jerusalem. At
Jerusalem, Jeremiah 4 foretold the divine judgments
which were to be executed upon Chaldea and Babylon,
by the Medes and Persians, which he wrote in a book,
and 5 delivered it to Seraiah, who was then going to
* Jer. xviii. * Jer. 1. and li. 5 Jer. li. 59, 64.
' to seek the peace of the city, whither they were carried away,'
(Jer. xxix. 7.) pursuant to which instruction, we find those in
Babylon requiring their brethren at Jerusalem ' to pray for
the life of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, and for the life of
Belthasar his son, that their days may be upon earth as the
days of heaven:— That they might live under the shadow of
Nabuchodonosor, and under the shadow of his son, and find
favour in their sight.' (Baruch i. 11, 12.)
b The two persons mentioned in Scripture, who took upon
them to be prophets sent from God, were Ahaz the son of
Kolaiah, and Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, two of the captivity
among the Jews at Babylon ; who feeding the people with false
promises of a speedy restoration, hindered them from making
any settlements in the places assigned for their habitation: hut,
as the prophet Jeremiah denounced their sudden and fearful
destruction, Nebuchadnezzar, understanding that they disturbed
the people by their vain prophecies, caused them both to be seized,
and roasted to death in the fire. The later Jews say, that these
two men were the two elders who would have corrupted Susanna,
and that Nebuchadnezzar commanded them to be burned for this
reason: but the whole foundation of this conceit is, that Jeremiah
(chap. xxix. 23, where he speaks of these men) says, ' that they
committed villany in Israel, and adultery with their neighbours'
wives ;' from whence they conjecture all the rest. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 597.
c The words in the text according to our translation are,
the word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah,
the son of Neriah, &c., when he went with Zedekiah, the king
ot Judah, into Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign, aud this
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
659
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Babylon upon an embassy, with instructions to read the
contents of it to his captive brethren upon the banks of
the river Euphrates ; and when he had made an end of
reading, to tie a stone to it, and a throw it into the river,
thereby to denote, that as it would naturally sink, so
should the Babylonish empire be totally destroyed, and
never rise any more.
At Babylon, Ezekiel, by several types and propheti-
cal revelations, foretold the taking of Jerusalem by the
Chaldeans; Zedekiah's flight from the city by night; the
putting out of his eyes ; his imprisonment and death at
Babylon ; the carrying away the remainder of the Jews
into captivity ; the desolation of their country, and the
many and great calamities which should befal them for
their iniquities. But to those of the captivity, who,
avoiding these iniquities, did endeavour to keep them-
selves steady and faithful in God's service, God, by the
mouth of his prophet, promised to become a sanctuary in
a strange country, and to bring them back again unto
the land of Israel, where they should flourish in peace
and righteousness, and once more ' become his people,
and he their God.
Thus did these two great prophets visit the people
which were still remaining in Jerusalem with several
warnings ; endeavouring, both by significant emblems,
and direct predictions, to reclaim them. But, when they
still persisted in their obstinacy and disobedience, God
at length brought upon them the calamities which he had
so often foretold, and so severely threatened.
Before we come to the destruction of Jerusalem, how-
1 Ezek xi. 20.
Seraiah was a quiet prince,' (Jer. li. 59,) and from hence some
Hebrew interpreters infer, that Zedekiah went to Babylon in
the fourth year of his reign to make his court, and cultivate the
good graces of li is patron and paramount Nebuchadnezzar. But
this opinion, though followed by several, has no foundation in
any other part of Scripture ; and the passage now before us, may,
according to the original, be very properly rendered in this wise.
' The wend which Jeremiah commanded Seraiah, when he went
to Babylon upon an embassy from Zedekiah.' The chief business
of this embassy was to request of Nebuchadnezzar, a restitution
of the sacred vessels of the temple which lie had taken away,
when he carried Jehoiakim captive into Babylon. Our transla-
tion, however, is not at all significant in this place, when it
styles this Seraiah, a quiet prince. The Septuagint have very
properly rendered the words oi^ut, lugav the prince of the pre-
sents, which some apply to the presents which king Zedekiah
made to the temple, and others to the things he daily supplied
ior sacrifices ; but the most natural sense in this place is, that
he was charged with the presents and tribute which Zedekiah
was obliged to send to Nebuchadnezzar; that his business was, to
present them to the emperor, and, upon that occasion, to solicit
the restoration of the sacred vessels ; upon which account, the
Vulgate has rendered the words ' princeps prophetiae,' the chief
person in the embassy, who at the time of audience, was to
make a speech to the emperor, in his prince's name. — Calmefs
Commentary. — [Dr Boothroyd renders the passage in question
thus, — ' The word which Jeremiah, the prophet, commanded
Seraiah, the son of Meriah, the son of Maaseiah, when he went
' n behalf of Zedekiah, king of Judah, to Babylon, in the fourth
year of his reign ; lor Seraiah carried a present.] — Boothroyd's
Aew Version. — Ei>.
a We have an emblematical action of the like kind described
'ii the book of the Revelation of St John: 'and a mighty angel
took up a stone, like a great millstone, and cast it into the
sea, saying, Thus, with violence shall that great city Babylon
be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all,' chap.
xviii. 21, where the word Babylon is taken in an analogical
sij<-e, because the destruction of that great city and empire, as
we shall see hereafter, was so remarkable, as to afford a com-
ever, there is a memorable transaction, * which preceded
it, namely, the siege of Bethulia, and its deliverance by
the courage and dexterity of a woman, which must c not
be entirely omitted.
parison for any other great and opulent state brought to ruin and
desolation.
/' It is a great dispute among the learned, whether this his-
tory of Judith was transacted before or after the Babylonish
captivity. Those who maintain the latter opinion, found a
great deal upon the words of the history itself, wherein the
author, according to the Greek version, (chap. iv. 3,) expressly
tells us, that 'the Israelites were newly returned from captivity,
and all the people of Judah were lately gathered together, and the
vessels, and the altar, and the house, were sanctified after their
profanation:' and wherein it is farther affirmed, that they ' were
led captives into a land that was not theirs,' that the temple of
their God was ' cast to the ground, and their cities taken by the
enemies; but now they are come up from the places where they
were scattered, and have possessed Jerusalem,' (ch. v. 18, 19.) It
is in vain, say they, to endeavour to correct the sense of these
passages: the bare reading of them, and the first impression they
make upon the mind, naturally leads one to say, that this history
was not transacted till after the return from the captivity, which,
in a great measure, is confirmed by the opinion of almost all the
ancients, and a great many of the moderns ; but then they widely
disagree in their computations of the period of time when this
remarkable event happened. For some place it under Cambyses,
the son of Cyrus, others under Xerxes, others under Darius;
and others again, under Antiochus Epiphanes, in the time of
the Maccabees; which last opinion is the most tenable, if we will
but allow, that a feast was instituted in commemoration of it, as
we read in the Vulgate, but in none of the other translations.
Those who maintain that this transaction happened before the
captivity, are in like manner divided: for some place it under
Manasseh, and others under Zedekiah.
Those who contend for Zedekiah's reign, make the Nabucho-
donosor in the book of Judith, and the Nebuchadnezzar in the
2d of Kings, the same person; and as it is positively said in the
2d chapter of Judith, that he put his general Holofenies on this
expedition, in the first month of the eighteenth year of his reign,
which was the ninth of Zedekiah king of Judah, Holoferues's
death, and the siege of Jerusalem happened, they say, in the
same year; only it must be supposed, that the attempt against
Bethulia was in the beginning of the year, and the siege of Jeru-
salem at the end of it. The captivity, therefore, from which the
Jews are said to have newly returned, must be that in Jehoia-
kim's time, for that in Zedekiah's continued seventy years,
before which Nebuchadnezzar had quite subdued Arphaxad,
king of the Medes, and demolished Ecbatan. And as for the
Bethulians enjoying peace during the life of Judith, it may be
supposed that Nebuchadnezzar, being employed two years in the
siege of Jerusalem, might spend some years in reducing other
parts of the country; and seeing Bethuiia was a place naturally
strong, and situated among the mountains, he might be unwilling
to foil his army before it, and, especially considering the ill suc-
cess of his general, to make any fresh attempt upon it, until he
had subdued all the rest. Those, again, who contend for Man-
asseh's reign, make the Nabuchodonosor in Judith to be the same
with Saosduchinus in Ptolemy, and Arphaxad the same with
Phraortes, mentioned by Herodotus; and that, as these two
princes made war with one another, wherein Phraortes was van-
quished, and perished with his army, all the other things recorded
of Saosduchinus and his general might happen without inconsis-
tency. For the captivity there mentioned, might be that from
whence Manasseh, with some of his subjects, had lately returned,
when the temple, which had been profaned, was purified again,
and the service of the sanctuary restored to its ancient dignity,
(2 Chron. xxxiii. 1, &c.) This is a short state of the several
opinions concerning the date of this transaction, and the last of
these, in our judgment, seems to be best founded. — Pridcan.r's
Connection, anno ()C5 ; Calmct's Preface on the Book of Judith.
c For though the Jews and ancient Christians did not receive
this book of Judith into their canon of Scripture, yet they always
looked upon it as a true history; and accordingly Clement, in
his epistle to the Corinthians, has cited it as well as the author
of the apostolic constitutions, which go under his name; and as
St Athaoasius, or the writer of the Synopsis, that is ascribed to
660
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3394. A. C. 610; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
The author of the book of Judith a relates, that Nebu-
chodonosor, b king- of Assyria, in the twelfth year of his
rei"-!!, fought a great battle in the plains of Ragau, c with
Arphaxad ,l king of Media, wherein he not only utterly
him, gives a summary account of it, even as he does of other
sacred books, from his example we may be permitted to justify
tiie short abridgment which we have made of it in our ' History
of the Holy Bible.' — Calmet's Dictionary under the word Judith.
a Who this author was, it nowhere appears. St Jerome seems
to think that Judith wrote it herself, but produces no good
authority for his opinion. Others will have it, that the high
priest Joakim, mentioned in this book, was the author of it;
but this is equally a bare conjecture ; nor is there much more
certainty in those, who, supposing the history to have happened
in the time of Cambyses, ascribe it to Joshua, the son of Josedek,
who was high priest at that time. But whoever the author was,
he seems to be posterior to the facts which he relates, because
he speaks of the festival instituted in memory of Judith's victory,
as still continued in his time, (Judith xvi. 20.) The book was
originally written in the Chaldee language, which is not now
extant; but from thence, at the desire of Paula and Eustochium,
St Jerome formed the translation, which we now have in the
vulgar Latin edition of the Bible, not rendering it word for word,
as himself tells us in his preface to the history, but repairing the
corruptions of the various readings, and giving us, according to
the best of his judgment, the true and entire sense of the original.
Besides this translation of St Jerome's, there are two others, one
in Greek, and the other in Syriac. That which is in Greek is
attributed to Theodotion, who lived in the time of Commodus,
who was made emperor of Rome in the year of Christ 180.
But the version was much ancienter; for Clemens Romanus, as
we said, in his epistle to the Corinthians, which was wrote near
126 years before, has a quotation from it. The Syriac translation
was made from the Greek, and so was also the English, which
we, at present, have among the apocryphal writings in our Bible.
And of all these three versions, it may be observed, that there
are several particulars in them which are not in Jerome's, and
which seem to be those various readings which he professes to
have cut off, as vicious corruptions of the text; so that, in this
respect, St Jerome's translation ought to have the preference,
whenever there is any remarkable difference between them. —
Prideati.r's Connection, anno 655, and Calmefs Dissertation on
the Book of Judith.
b This Nabuchodonosor is the same prince whom Herodotus'
calls Saosiluchinus, who, after the death of Esarhaddon, (the same
who took the advantage of Masessimordacus's dying without issue,
and united the kingdom of Babylon to that of Assyria,) succeeded
to his acquisitions ; and the reason why the author of this book
of Judith, who apparently wrote either in Babylon, or some other
part of Chaldea, calls him Nabuchodonosor, is, because this was
the common name, as Pharaoh was in Egypt, of the kings of that
country. — Calmet's Commentary on Judith, and Pridcaux's
Connection.
c The plains of Ragau are very probably those which lie about
Rages, a town of Media, standing upon the mountains of Ecba-
tan, and distant about a small day's-joumey from that city.
(.HI iiiit's Dictionary.
d Roth our learned Prideaux and primate Usher are of opinion,
that this Arphaxad was the person whom profane historians call
Dejoces, the fust king of the Medes, and founder of Ecbatan;
but the account which the book of Judith gives of Arphaxad,
and of the circumstances of his death, seems to be more ap-
plicable to what Herodotus relates of Phraortes, his son and
Buccessor. For, as Arphaxad had many nations under his
dominion, and fell in battle against the king of Assyria, (Judith
i. 6, 15.) so Herodotus (b. i.) tells us of Phraortes, " That, hav-
ing subdued the Persians, and made them part of his empire, he
soon overcame the rest of the people of the Upper Asia, that is,
all that lay north of Mount Taurus, to the river Halys, passing
from nation to nation, and always attended with victory; until
coming with an army against the Assyrians, with an intent to
besiege Nineveh their capital, he was vanquished and slain in the
two and twentieth year of his reign. Dejoces, indeed, is said
by Herodotus to have been the fust founder of Ecbatan ; but as
the undertaking was very great, it is not improbable, that he left
enough to his successor Phraortes to complete; so that all the
uhich the author of Judith ascribes to Arphaxad (chap, i.)
4814. A. C. 597. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
defeated, and slew him, but made himself master of seve-
ral of his cities, and among others, of Ecbatan, « the
royal seat of the Median empire, which he miserably
defaced : and afterwards returned in great triumph to
Nineveh : that, some time after inquiring of his officers,
nobles, and counsellors, what tributary countries had not
gone with them to the war, for he had summoned them all
to attend him, and finding that none of the western pro-
vinces had paid that regard to his commands, he made
a decree that Holofernes,/ the chief captain of his army,
should not fail the next year to chastise their disobed-
ience : that, pursuant to this decree, this general took the
field with a vast army ; S and having wasted and destroy-
ed several other nations, at length came unto Judea,
where he laid siege to Bethuliah, h a strong town in the
might be his." — Calmefs Commentary and Dictionary; and Pri-
deaux's Connection, anno 635.
e This city, Herodotus says expressly, was built by Dejoces,
the first king of the Medes; but that author is wrong in ascrib-
ing the honour of the whole work to him, which his son
Phraortes, at least finished and beautified to such a degree, that,
though the Scripture is silent, profane authors have given us a
very advantageous account of it. The city, according to them,
was situate on a spacious eminence, and into it Dejoces had
brought together the whole nations of the Medes, who never be-
fore had lived in any thing but caves and huts, dispersed up and
down in the country, which great concourse of people made it
very large and populous. It was encompassed with seven walls,
at equal distances from each other. The first was the lowest and
equal in circumference with those of Athens, that is, according
to Thucydides, (b. ii.) 178 furlongs. The rest rose gradually, and
overlooked each other, about the eighth of a battlement. The
battlements were of different colours. The first was white, the
second black, the third red, the fourth blue, the fifth of a deep
red, the sixth of a silver, and the seventh of a gold colour; and
for this reason, as Bochart has observed, this city was usually
called by the ancients Agbata, which, in the Arabic language,
signifies, a thing of different and distinct colours. The royal
palace and treasury stood within the seventh wall; and the
palace alone, according to Polybius, (b. x.) was seven furlongs
round, and built with all the cost and skill that a stately edifice
did require ; for some of its beams are said to have been of silver,
and the rest of cedar, which were strengthened with plates of
gold. — Calmet's Curnment. and Dictionary under the word; and
Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. 3. [This city still
exists under the name of Hamadan, and is situated in lat. 34° 53'
N., long. 40° E. The tombs of Esther and Mordecai are said
to be still preserved in it, and are protected by a colony of Jews,
who have been resident there from time immemorial, and at pre-
sent amount to about 600 families. The whole population of
Hamadan is estimated at 40,000.] — Ed.
/Some annotators are of opinion, that the word Holofernes is
of Persian extract, in the same manner as Tisaphernes, Intapher-
nes, &c. But others imagine that this general was a native
either of Pontus or Cappadocia. Polybius makes mention of one
of that name, who, having conquered Cappadocia, soon lost it
again, because he was for changing the ancient customs of the
country, and introducing drunkenness, together with feasts and
songs to Bacchus ; whereupon Casaubon conjectures, that this
was the same Holofernes that commanded Nabuchodonosor's
forces, as it must be owned, that his riot and debauchery, as well
as the rapidity of his conquests, makes him not unlike him. — See
Poly ph. apud Athen. b. x. c. 1 1. ; and Casaub. in Athen.
g The author of Judith's history has thus described it: — • Ho-
lofernes mustered the chosen men for the battle, as his lord com-
manded him, unto an hundred and twenty thousand, and twelve
thousand archers on horseback. A great multitude of sundry
countries went with them like locusts, and like the sand of the
earth: for the multitude was without number' (Judith ii. 15, 20).
h Our modern travellers to the Holy Land do almost unani-
mously agree, that Bethulia is situate in the tribe of Zebulon,
about a league from Tiberias towards the west, where they pre-
tend that some marks of Holofernes's camp are still to be seen;
but some great men are apt to suspect the report of these travel-
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
601
A. M. 3394. A. C. G10 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4814. A. C. 597. I KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
tribe of Simeon, and by cutting off its waters, reduced
it to such extremity, that, through the people's impor-
tunity, Ozias the governor had promised to surrender
the place unless it was relieved in five days : that
Judith, a widow lady of an ample fortune, but a of great
virtue and piety withal, sent for the governor and prin-
cipal men of the city, to let them know that God, by
her hand, would find out an expedient to deliver them ;
but in what manner this was to be effected, she desired
them not to inquire : that, having addressed herself to
God by prayer for success, and being not insensible of
her own beauty, for she was extremely handsome as well
as virtuous, she adorned herself in all her rich attire,
and attended only with one maid, b left Bethulia, and
went directly to the Assyrian camp : that, being- stopped
by the outguard, and carried before the general, he
received her with all the civility and respect that her
appearance seemed to demand ; and, having understood
that the design of her leaving her countrymen was, both
to escape the destruction which she foresaw was coming
upon them, and to inform him in what situation their
affairs were, and how he might become master of the
place without the loss of one man, he not only promised
her his protection, but appointed her and her maid an
apartment proper for them ; for he was already enamour-
ed with her wit and beauty : that, having thus far suc-
ceeded very prosperously, she requested of him, that, as
she was a strict observer of the religion of her country,
she might be permitted to eat separately c such provisions
lers, who are too much accustomed to take up witli the traditions
of the country, though there is not always the greatest certainty
in them. This, however, is incontestihle, that both Judith and
her husband were of the tribe of Simeon, (Judith viii. 1, and ix.
2,) and for what purpose they should remove to so great a dis-
tance from their own inheritance, and settle in a different tribe,
we cannot see. Since, therefore, the Scripture takes notice of a
place in the tribes of Simeon named Bethuel, (Joshua xix. 4,) a
place dependant on Gaza of the Philistines, and famous for its
temples, which were very remarkable, both for their antiquity
and fine structure, from whence not unlikely it had its name
of Bethel, or the house of the Lord, there is much more rea-
son to conclude, that this was the place ; since the other, which
travellers talk of in the tribe of Zebulun, must be of too modern
a date to be the city intended here, because we find neither
Joshua, nor Josephus, nor Eusebius, nor St Jerome making
any mention of it. — Cahners Dissertation and Commentary on
the Book of Judith.
a The character which the historian gives her with respect to
tiiis is, — ' That there was none who gave her an ill word, for she
feared the Lord greatly,' (Judith viii. S,) which is certainly an
high commendation, considering how tender and delicate a tiling
the reputation of a young and beautiful widow is.
b The word, in ancient translations, is A bra, which signi-
fies a companion, or maid of honour, such as ladies of the first
condition had, rather than a servant; for the same word in the
Septuagint is applied to the women that attended both Pharaoh's
daughter, (Exod. xi. 5,) and Queen Esther, (chap. iv. 4.)
c There was no law of God that prohibited the Jews from eat-
ing several things that the Gentiles made use of. Bread, wine,
and fruits were allowed them with other people; but, either some
tradition then prevailing among the Jews, or some religious vow
that Judith might have bound herself under, the fear of giving
scandal to her countrymen when she returned, or the prayers and
pagan invocations which were made over the meat that was served
up to Ilolofernes; some of these reasons, I say, very likely hin-
dered her from accepting the otler which the general made, of
provisions from his table, and inclined her to desire to eat alone;
a restraint which we find Daniel putting himself under in the
court of Nebuchadnezzar, (chap. i. S.) and Tobit, in that of Sal-
niar.esor, (chap. i. 10, &C.) "here he says of himself, that ' when
all my brethren, and those that were of my kindred did eat of
as she had brought with her ; and, without any molestation >
to have leave to go out of the camp at night, or before it
was day, in order d to perform her devotions ; which
accordingly was readily granted her : that having lived
in this manner for three days, on the fourth, Ilolofernes
invited her to a splendid entertainment, where she
appeared in her choicest ornaments of dress ; and the
general, in hopes of enjoying the beautiful stranger that
night, gave a loose to mirth, and drank more plentifully
than ever he was known to do ; that, in the evening, all
the company being dismissed, except Judith, who was
left alone with the general intoxicated with liquor, and
now fallen fast asleep upon the bed, she thought this a
proper opportunity to put her design in execution ; and
therefore, approaching the place where he lay, and taking-
down his scimitar, which hung by him, she first prayed
to God to strengthen her in the enterprise, and then, at
two strokes, severed his head from his body, which she
gave to her maid, who, by her order was waiting e at her
tent door, to put it in the bag wherein her provisions
were brought : that, having thus accomplished their de-
sign, they passed through the camp unobserved, and
made the best of their way to Bethulia, where Judith,
acquainting the governor and elders of the city with
what she had done, and in testimony thereof, producing
the head of Holofernes, advised them to hang it out
upon the walls as soon as the morning appeared, and
then every one to arm, and sally out of the gates as if
they meant to attack the enemy, but, in reality, only to
give them an alarm, that thereupon they might have
recourse to their general, as she supposed they would,
and so come to know what fate had befallen him : that,
upon the Bethulians appearing in arms, the outguards
gave notice to their officers, and the officers sent to their
general ; but when they understood that their general
was dead, his head gone, and nothing left behind but a
senseless trunk wallowing in blood, such a general con-
sternation overspread the camp, that, instead of prepar-
ing themselves to fight, the Assyrians threw away their
arms, and rled : while the Bethulians, and other neigh-
bouring people, to whom Ozias had sent intelligence of
this their disaster, attacked them in small parties, from
several quarters ; and having slain a considerable number
of them, greatly enriched/ themselves with their spoils :
the bread of the Gentiles, I kept myself from eating, because I
remembered God with all my heart.' — Calmct's Commentary.
d As prayer, no doubt, is best performed in places of retire-
ment, and the hurry of a camp must needs be inconvenient for
religious offices, Judith, who professed herself a woman of strict
piety, had a good pretence to request of the general a liberty to
retire out of the camp, when she thought proper, and without
any questions asked her, to perform her devotions, which she
foresaw would be a means to favour her escape, after she had
executed the design she came about. For it was on this precau-
tion, rather than any obligation, either from the law or from
custom, that this devotion of her praying without the camp was
founded. — Calmct's Commentary.
e Namely, to go along vt ith her out of the camp to prayers, as
she had done the nights before; for it does not appear, from the
whole history, that Judith had communicated her design to her
woman, but rather that she took upon herself the risk of the
whole affair, which could not be conducted with too much secrecy
and prudence. — Ca.met's Commentary.
/"So great was the number of these, that the text tells us, the
Bethulians were thirty days in gathering them, (eh. xv. 11.?
For considering the largeness of (he camp of the Assyrians, anil
the several detachments they might have, some on the mouu-
G62
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3391. A. C. G10; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
that a deputation of the elders from Jerusalem with their
chief priests accompanying them, came to Bethulia to
compliment Judith upon this her great achievement, with
whom she repaired to the temple at Jerusalem ; where
public thanks were given, and burnt sacrifices offered to
God, for this signal victory, and Judith's oblation,"
upon this occasion was the plunder of Holofernes's tent,
with all his rich equipage, which the soldiers had pre-
sented her with ; and, lastly, that after these public re-
joicings, b she went back to Bethulia again, where she
lived in great splendour and renown, and, after a good
old age, died, and was buried with her husband Manas-
seh, much beloved, and much lamented by the people.
But to look back to the affairs of Judea.
In the seventh year of his reign, Zedekiah, being
grown impatient of the Babylonish yoke, had sent his
ambassadors, and made a confederacy with Pharaoh
Hophra king of Egypt; which when Nebuchadnezzar
understood, he drew together a great army out of all
the nations that were under his dominion, and, in a short
time, marched towards Judea, to punish hint for his per-
fidy and rebellion. His victorious army soon overran
the country, and having taken most of the cities, in the
ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, the tenth month of the
year, and the tenth day of the month, it came before
Jerusalem, and blocked it close up on every side ; so
that, in a short time, the famine began to prevail : and
in memory of this, the Jews have ever since observed
the tenth day of Tebeth, (the month when this happened,)
as a day of solemn fasting and humiliation even to this
time.
On that very day of the month when the siege of Jeru-
salem began, Ezekiel, then a captive in Chaldea, had it
revealed to him by the type of a boiling pot, what a dis-
mal destruction should be brought upon that city ; and,
in the beginning of the next year, Jeremiah was ordered
to declare to the king, that the Babylonians who were
then besieging the town, would certainly take it, and
burn it with fire, make him prisoner, and carry him to
Babylon, where he should die : which provoked Zede-
kiah to such a degree that he ordered him to be clapped
up close in prison.
As Nebuchadnezzar's army was approaching Jerusa-
lem, Zedekiah, and his people, in dread of what might
tains, and others on the plains; the many valuable things which
might he hid, or thrown aside in their flight: and the much time
it would cost the Bethulians to search diligently, and to collect
them all, and to provide carriages to bring them home to the city,
there to be distributed equally among the people, and, according
to the prescription of the law, (Num. xxxi. 27.) considering all
this, I say, thirty days may not be thought an unreasonable sp°ace-
though it must be owned, that the Syriac version reads it only
three. — Cahnefa Commentary.
o Nothing is more common, both in sacred and profane his-
tory, than to meet with Beveral kinds of spoils taken in war,
dedicated to God, in acknowledgment of his goodness, and in
memory ol the victory, which, by his blessing and assistance, was
men obtained. — Colmet'i Commentary.
8 The joy which the people of Jerusalem expressed upon
Judith s entry, is thus related : ' Then all the women of Israel
ran together to Bee her, and blessed her, and mad,, a dance amonff
them lor her; and she took branches in her hand, and gave also in
the u„men that were with her, and put a garland of olive upon
her, and oo her maid that was with her, and she went before all
the people in the dance leading the women, and all the men of
Israel followed with garlands, and with .^ongs in their n ouths —
Judith xv. 12, }'3.
U. 4814. A. C. 597. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
follow, made a show of returning unto the Lord their
God. They entered into a solemn covenant thencefor-
ward to serve him only, and to obey his laws ; and in
pursuance of that, agreed to proclaim a manumission, or
liberty to all Hebrew servants of either sex, according
to what the law c enjoined ; but upon the coming of
Hophra king of Egypt, to the relief of Jerusalem, and
Nebuchadnezzar's raising the siege to meet him, and
give him battle, the Jews were generally of opinion,
that the Chaldeans were gone for good and all, and
thereupon repented of their covenant of reformation,
and caused every man his servant, and every man his
hand-maid, to return to their servitude. AVhich base
and impious prevarication so provoked Gpd, that he
ordered his prophet to proclaim liberty to the sword,
and to the famine, and to the pestilence, to execute his
wrath upon them, and their king, and their princes, and
all Judah and Jerusalem, to their utter destruction.
Jeremiah, indeed, in all the answers which he returned
the king, (who, upon the departure of the Chaldeans, sent
frequently to consult him,) was always positive, that the
Egyptians, whom he depended upon, would certainly
deceive him ; that their army would return without giving
him any assistance ; and that the Chaldeans would there-
upon renew the siege, take the city, and burn it with fire,
During- their absence, however, he thought it no impro-
per time to endeavour to avoid the approaching siege,
by retiring to Anathoth, his native place; but as he was
passing- the gate of the city which led that way, the cap-
tain of the guard seized him as a deserter, and brought
c The words of the law are these: — " If thy brother, an
Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and
serve thee six years, then, in the seventh year, thou shalt let
him go free from thee; and when thou sendest him out free
from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty ; thou shalt
furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and
out of thy wine-press: of that wherewith the Lord hath blessed
thee thou shalt give unto him: and thou shalt remember, that
thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy
God redeemed thee. — It shall not seem hard unto thee, when
thou sendest him away from thee ; for he hath been worth a
double hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years, and the
Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest." (Deut. xv.
12, &c.) Now, for the better understanding of this, we must
observe that there were two periods of time, wherein this release
of Jewish bond-slaves was enjoined, the year of jubilee, which
was every fiftieth year, and the sabbatical year, which was eveiy
seventh year. The sabbatical year is what is here intended: it
now happened in the eighth year of Zedekiah's reign; but, as
Prideaux in his preface remarks, had not been observed for
above 300 years before ; for which reason the Jews, being now
in a state of compunction, were for restoring it to its primitive
institution; but upon the removal of their fears, by the withdraw-
ing of Nebuchadnezzar's forces, they repented of their good in-
tentions, and recalled their servants to their slavery again. Why
the observation of such a year in seven was enjoined, the reasons
are pretty obvious: for besides the commemoration of the Israel-
ites' release from the Egyptian bondage, which the text specifies
the general release of servants, and the restoration of lands and
tenements to their first owners, which were then to be transacted,
were to hinder the rich from oppressing the needy, and reducing
them to perpetual slavery ; that debts should not be too much
multiplied, nor the poor, consequently, entirely ruined; but that
a liberty of people's persons, an equality of their fortunes, and
the oriler and distinction of their tribes and families (as far as
it was possible) might be preserved : and as it was something
like this that Lycurgus established among the Lacedemonians, in
his instituting an equality among persons, banishing slavery, and
preventing, as tar as he could, any one's becoming too powerful,
or too rich. — Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b iv. c. 4. and
C\ Unci's Dictionary, under the word Salbutk.
Sect. V'.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c
663
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him before the princes, who, in much rage, fell upon
him, and beat him, and then committed him to the com-
mon jail, where he continued for many days.
In the mean time, the Egyptians not daring to engage
the Chaldean army, retired before them into their own
country, leaving Zedekiah and his people, with their un-
equal strength, to contend with Nebuchadnezzar, who
now returned more exasperated than ever, to re-invest
the city of Jerusalem. Nor had he been long before it,
ere the king sent messengers to Jeremiah to inquire of
him, then in prison, concerning the fate of the present
war: but his constant answer was, " That God being
highly provoked against him and his people, for their
manifold iniquities, would fight against the city, and
smite it ; that both king and people should be delivered
into the hands of the king of Babylon ; that those who
continued in the city during- the siege, should perish by
the pestilence, by the famine, and by the sword; but
that those who endeavoured to escape, though they fell
into the hands of the Chaldeans, would have their lives
preserved:" at which several of the princes, and chief
commanders, being very much offended, pressed the
king against him, as one who, by his speeches, dis-
couraged the soldiers and people, and was enough in-
deed to occasion a defection.
In this conjuncture of affairs, the king was obliged to
deliver him into their hands ; and they, with unrelenting
cruelty, cast him into a nasty dungeon, ° where inevitably
he must have perished, had not Ebed-Melech, * one of
the king's eunuchs, interceded with his master to have
him released from thence, and sent him back to his
former prison ; for which favour the prophet assured him
from God that he should not perish at the sacking of
the city.
As the city began to be pressed more by the siege,
the king desired a private conference with Jeremiah,
who accordingly was sent for to an apartment of the
temple ; but the prophet could give no other answer to
his questions, than what he had done before ; only he
advised him to surrender to the enemy, as the best ex-
pedient to save both himself and the city. The king,
though urged by the prophet, could by no means bring
himself to think of that. At his breaking- off the dis-
course, however, he obliged him to secrecy, though he
did not forget to remand him to prison : and this is the
last interview that the prophet had with the king.
In the mean time, the siege began to draw toward a
conclusion. The people within the walls, through the
scarcity of provisions, were reduced to the last necessity,
even ' to feed on one another ; and those without had
1 Lam. iv. 4, 5, and Ezek. v. 10.
a Some think, that when he was in this dismal place, he made
those mournful meditations, which are set down in the third chap-
ter of the Lamentations: ' They have cut ofl'my life in the dun-
geon, and cast a stone upon me. — I called upon thy name, O
Lord, out of the low dungeon, and thou hast heard my voice,'
&<•. ver. 53, 55, 5fi. — Louth's Commentary on Jer. xxxviii.
b This charitable intercessor for the prophet in his distress, is,
in the text, said to have been an Ethiopian; accordingly Hnetius
(in his Treatise on the voyaging of Solomon, c. 7.) observes from
Josephus, that Solomon in his voyage to Tarshish, (I Kings x.
2'i.) amongst other merchandise, brought slaves from Ethiopia,
which was likewise the practice of the Greeks and Romans in
after ages, as he there proves by several testimonies: and such
an one he supposes this Ebed-melech to have been originally, ' He shall be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon,
though afterwards he was promoted to be an eunuch, or chief and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his^eyes shaU 1 < -
officer of the king's house.— Lowth's Commentary on Jer. xxxviii. | hold his eyes,' (chap, xxxii. 4.) both of which were literally
now finished their works, and provided all things for a
general assault ; when in the eleventh year of king
Zedekiah, and on the ninth day of the fourth month of
that year, the city was taken by storm, about midnight,
and every place filled with blood and slaughter. Through
the favour of the night, Zedekiah and his friends c en-
deavoured to make their escape towards the wilderness ;
but he had not gone far, before he was taken, and car-
ried to Nebuchadnezzar, who was then at Riblah, d where,
after some severe reproaches, e he first caused his sons
and the princes of Judah taken with him, to be slain be-
fore his face, and then commanded his eyes / to be put out
c It is a hard matter to conceive how the besieged could make
their escape, seeivg that the'Chaldeans had begirt the city round
about. Josephus indeed gives us this account: — "That as the
city was taken about midnight, the captains with the rest of the
soldiers, went directly into the temple; which king Zedekiah per-
ceiving, he took his wives, children, commanders, and friends,
and they slipt all away together, by a narrow passage towards the
wilderness. But then what this narrow passage was is still the
question. The Jews indeed think that there was a subterraneous
passage from the palace to the plains of Jericho, and that the king,
and his courtiers might endeavour to make their escape that way.
Dion, it is true, tells us (b. Ixvi.) that in the last siege of Jeru-
salem, the Jews had covert ways, which went under the walls of
the city, to a considerable distance into the country, out of which
they were wont to sally, and fall upon the Romans that were
straggling from their camp : but since neither Josephus, nor the
sacred historian, takes notice of any such subterraneous conduit
at this siege, we may suppose that the Chaldeans having made a
breach in the wall, the besieged got away privately between the
wall and the out-works, in a passage which the enemy did not
suspect. The words in the second book of Kings are: — ' They
went by the way of the gate, between the two walls, which is by
the king's garden,' (chap. xxv. 4,) which in Jeremiah are thus
expressed: — 'They went by the way of the king's garden, by
the gate between the two walls:' so that, as the king's garden
faced the country, very likely there was some very private and
imperceptible gate, through which they might attempt to escape,
and the besiegers perhaps might not keep so strict a watch at
that part of the town, especially in the hurry of storming it, be-
cause it led to the plain, and made their escape in a manner
impracticable. — Jewish History, b. x. c. 11 ; Patrick's, Le Clerc's,
and C'almet's Commentaries.
d Riblah was a city of Syria, in the country of Hamath, which
country is the nearest to Judea, and which city, according to St
Jerome, was the same with that which was afterwards called
Antioch; and as it was the most pleasant place in all Syria, here
Nebuchadnezzar lay, to attend the success of the siege of Jeru-
salem, to send his army proper supplies, and to intercept any
relief that might come to the besieged Patrick's Commentary.
e Nebuchadnezzar no sooner cast his eye upon him, says Jose-
phus, (Jewish Antiquities, b. x. c. 1 1.) than he called him all the
faithless and perfidious names that he could think of. " Did you
not promise to manage the power and authority that I put you in
possession of for my advantage and behoof ? And am not I well
requited, do you think, for making you a king in your brother
Jehoiakim's place, by your employing of the credit and interest,
that I gave you, to the ruin of your patron and benefactor ? But
that God is great and just, who for the punishment of your
treachery and ingratitude, hath now made you my prisoner." But
there is a mistake in this speech of Nebuchadnezzar's, namely
his making Zedekiah succeed his brother Jehoiakim where-
as he was put in the place of his nephew Jehoiachin ; but
his nephew's reign was so very short, little more than three
months, that this imperious monarch might look upon it as no-
thing at all.
f Josephus takes notice, that the seeming contradiction in the
prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, concerning the fate of Zede-
kiah, made that prince give no heed to what was foretold. Ezc-
kiel's prophecy is delivered in these words: — 'I will bring him
to Babylon, to the land of the Chaldeans, yet he shall not see it,
though be die there,' (chap. xii. 13.) and Jeremiah's in these: —
664
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[Book VI.
A. M. 3394. A. C. G10; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
and himself to be bound in fetters of brass, to be sent to
Babylon, and put in prison for life, to the full accom-
plishment of a what the two prophets, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, had foretold concerning him.
As soon as Nebuchadnezzar had advice of the taking
of Jerusalem, he sent Nebuzaradan, the captain of his
guards, with orders to raze the place, plunder the temple,
and carry the people that were left captives to Babylon ;
M'hich he failed not to execute with the utmost rigour
and cruelty. For having taken all the vessels out of the
house of the Lord, and gathered together all the riches
that he could find, either in the king's palace, or in any
great men's houses, he b set both the temple and city on
fire, and overthrew all the walls, fortresses, and towers
thereunto belonging, until he had brought the whole to a
perfect desolation : and upon these two sad occasions,
namely, the taking of the city, and the destruction of the
temple, the prophet Jeremiah composed a mournful
poem, which is called his Lamentations, c and the Jews
accomplished; for Zedekiah was carried to Riblah, where he saw
the king of Babylon, and spake to him, and beheld his children
executed ; but had afterwards his eyes put out, and was then car-
ried to Babylon, where he was incapable of seeing the city,
because he had lost his eyesight . — Jewish Antiquities b. x. c.
1 1 ; Calmet's and Patrick's Commentaries.
a The reflection which Josephus makes upon this occasion is
very good and moral: — "This may serve to convince even the
ignorant," says he, " of the power and wisdom of God, and of the
constancy of his counsels, through all the various ways of his
operations. It may likewise show us, that God's foreknowledge
of things is certain, and his providence regular in ordering of
events; besides that, it holds forth a most exemplary instance of
the danger of our giving way to the motions of sin and infidelity,
which deprive us of the means of discerning God's judgments,
which are ready to fall upon us. — Jeivish Antiquities, b. x. c. 11 .
o The temple was burned, from the time that it was built, 400
years, says Sir John Marsham; 424 years 3 months and 8 days,
says Primate Usher; 430 years, says Abarbinel, and other learn-
ed Jews: but Josephus computes the thing still higher; for he
tells us, that the temple was burned 470 years 6 months and 10
days, from the building of it; lOfiO years 6 months and 10 days
from the Israelites' coming out of the land of Egypt; 1950 years
ti months and 10 days, from the deluge; and 3530 years 6
months and 10 days from the creation of the world. Josephus
stands amazed, that the second temple should be burned by the
Komans in the same month, and on the very same day of the
month, that this was set on fire by the Chaldeans, and as some
of the Jewish doctors say, when the Levites were singing the
same psalm in both destructions, namely, xciv. 23, ' He shall
bring upon them their own iniquity, and he shall cut them off in
their own wickedness; yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off.'
— Patrick's Commentary, and Jewish Antiquities, b. x. c. 11.
c The Lamentations of Jeremiah, for the title is properly and
significantly plural, consist of a number of plaintive effusions,
composed upon the plan of the funereal dirges, all upon the same
subject, and uttered without connexion as they rose in the mind,
in 1 lung course of separate stanzas. These have afterwards been
put together, and formed into a collection or correspondent whole.
If any reader, however, should expect to find in them an artificial
and methodical arrangement of the general subject, a regular dis-
position of the parts, a perfect connexion and orderly succession
in the matter, and, with all this, an uninterrupted series of ele-
gance and correctness, he will really expect what was foreign to
the prophet's design. In the character of a mourner, he cele-
brates iu plaintive strains the obsequies of his ruined country:
whatever presented itself to his mind in the midst of desolation
and misery, whatever struck him as particularly wretched and
calamitous, whatever the instant sentiment of sorrow dictated, he
poors forth in a kind of spontaneous effusion. He frequently
pauses, and as it were ruminates upon the same object; frequently
varies and illustrates the same? thought with different imagery,
and a different choice of language: so that the whole bears rather
the appearance of an accumulation of corresponding sentiments,
than an accurate and connected series of different ideas arranged
4825. A. C. 58G. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
observe two annual fasts, the one in the fourth month,
which falls in with our June, and the other in the fifth
month, which answers to part of our July, even to this day.
in the form of a regular treatise. I would not be understood to in-
sinuate, that the author has paid no regard whatever to order or
arrangement; or that transitions truly elegant from one subject,
image, or character, to another, are not sometimes to be found ;
this only I wished to remark, that the nature and design of this
poem (being in reality a collection of different sentiments or sub-
jects, each of which assumes the form of a funereal dirge) neither
require, nor even admit of a methodical arrangement. The
whole poem, however, may be divided into five parts: in the
first, second, and fourth, the prophet addi esses the people in his
own person, or else personifies Jerusalem, and introduces that
city as a character: the third part is supposed to be uttered bv the
chorus of Jews, represented by their leader, after the manner of the
Greek tragedies; and in the fifth , the whole nation of the Jews,
on being led into captivity, pour forth their united complaints to
Almighty God. This last, as well as the others, is divided into
twenty-two periods, according to the number of the letters of the
alphabet; with this difference, that in the four other parts the
initial letters of each period, exactly correspond with the alpha-
betical order. And from this circumstance we have been enabled
to form some little judgment concerning the Hebrew metres.
The acrostic or alphabetical poetry of the Hebrews was cer-
tainly intended to assist the memory, and was confined altoge-
ther to those compositions which consisted of detached maxims
or sentiments without any express order or connexion. The
same custom is said to have been prevalent, indeed is said still to
prevail in some degree among the Syrians, the Persians, and the
Arabs. With how much propriety the prophet has employed
this form of composition on the present occasion, is evident from
what has been said concerning the nature of this poem. The
manner and order of this kind of verse is as follows: — Each of the
five parts, or grand divisions, is subdivided into twenty-two
periods or stanzas ; these periods in the three first parts are all of
them triplets, in other words, consist each of three lines only; in
each of the two former parts there is one period, consisting of four
lines. In the four first parts, the initial letter of each period
follows the order of the alphabet ; but the third part is so very regu-
lar, that every line in the same period begins with the same letter,
so as necessarily to ascertain the length of every verse or line in
that poem ; indeed, even in the others, though the lines are not
distinctly marked in this maimer, it is no difficult matter to
ascertain their limits, by resolving the sentences into their
constituent members. By this mode of computation it ap-
pears, that in the fourth part all the periods consist of distichs,
as also in the filth, which is not acrostic: but in this last part
I must remark another peculiarity, namely, that the lines
are extremely short, whereas in all the rest they are long.
The length of these metres is worthy of notice: we find in
this poem lines or verses, which are evidently longer, by almost
one half, than those which occur usually and on other occasions.
The length of them seems to be, on an average, about twelve
syllables ; there are a few which do not quite amount to that num-
ber, and there are a few which perhaps exceed it by two or three
syllables : for, although nothing certain can be determined con-
cerning the number of syllables, in truth I pay no attention to
the fictions of the Mazorites, there is room, nevertheless, for very
probable conjecture. We are not to suppose this peculiar form
of versification utterly without design or importance; on the con-
trary, I am persuaded that the prophet adopted this kind of metre
as being more diffuse, more copious, more tender, in all respects
better adapted to melancholy subjects. I must add, that in all
probability the funereal dirges, which were sung by the mourners,
were commonly composed in this kind of verse; for whenever, in
the prophets, any funereal lamentations occur, or any passages are
formed upon that plan, the versification is, if I am not mistaken,
of this protracted kind. If this then be the case, we have disco-
vered a true legitimate form of elegy in the poetry of the He-
brews. It ought, however, to be remarked, that the same kind
of metre is sometimes, though rarely, employed upon other occa-
sions by the sacred poets, as it was indeed by the Greeks and
Romans. There are, moreover, some poems manifestly of the
elegiac kind, which are composed in the usual metre, and not in
unconnected stanzas, according to the form of a funereal dirge.
Thus far in general as to the nature and method of the poem,
Sect. "V.J
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &e.
665
A. M. 3391 A. C. 610; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M.
Having thus destroyed the city and temple, Nebuzara-
d.an made all the people that he found in the place cap-
tives. Some of the chief of these, such as Seraiah the
high priest, Zenhaniah a the second priest, and about
seventy others, he carried to ltildah, where Nebuchad-
nezzar b caused them all to be put to death. The poorer
and labouring part of the people, such as Could till the
ground, and dress the vineyards, he left behind him, and
made Gedaliah c their governor ; but as for all the rest,
he carried them directly away to Babylon ; only Jere-
miah, of whom Nebuchadnezzar had given him charge to
take particular care, he not only took out of prison when
he first came to Jerusalem, but as the rest were upon
their departure, gave him his option, whether he would
go with him to Babylon, where he should be maintained
very plentifully at the king's charge, or else remain in
and the form of (lie versification; — it remains to offer few re-
marks concerning the subject and the style.
That the subject of the Lamentations is the destruction of the
holy city and temple, the overthrow of the state, the extermi-
nation of the people — and that these events are described as
actually accomplished, and not in the style of prediction merely
— must be evident to every reader; though some authors of consi-
derable reputation have imagined this poem to have been com-
posed on the death of king Josiah. The prophet, indeed, has so
copiously, so tenderly, and poetically, bewailed the misfortunes
of his country, that he seems completely to have fulfilled the
office and duty of a mourner. In my opinion there is not extant
any poem which displays such a happy and splendid selection of
imagery in so concentrated a state. What can be more elegant
and poetical than the description of that once flourishing city,
lately chief among the nations, sitting in the character of a lemale,
solitary, afflicted, in a state of widowhood, deserted by her friends,
betrayed by her dearest connexions, imploring relief, and seek-
ing consolation in vain ? What a beautiful personification is
that of ' the Ways of Sion mourning, because none are come to
her solemn feast !' How tender and pathetic are the following
complaints !
" Is this nothing to all you who pass along1 the way ? Behold and see,
If there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is inflicted on me ;
Which Jehovah inflicted on me in the day of the violence of his wrath.
For the»e things I weep, my eyes stream with water;
Because the comforter is far away, that should tranquillize my soul;
My children are desolate, because the enemy was strong."
But to detail its beauties would he to transcribe the entire poem.
I shall make but one remark relative to certain passages, and to
the former part of the second alphabet in particular. If, in this
passage the prophet should be thought by some to affect a style
too bold and energetic for the expression of sorrow, let them only
advert to the greatness of the subject, its importance, sanctity,
and solemnity; and let them consider, that the nature of the
performance absolutely required these to be set forth in a style
suitable, in some degree at least, to their inherent dignity:— let
them attentively consider these things, and I have not a doubt
but they will readily excuse the sublimity of the prophet. —
Lowth on Hebrew Poetry. — Ed.
a The Jews call their second priest their Sayan, whose busi-
ness it was to supply the function of the high priest, in case lie
was sick, or any other incapacity attended him. We find no such
particular institution under the law; but Eleazar, the son of
Aaron, who is styled ' the chief over the chief of the Levites,
and who had the oversight of them who kept the charge of the
sanctuary,' (Num. iii. 32,) and whose authority was not much
inferior to that of the high priest, may, not improperly, be deem-
ed one of that order. — CalmeCs Commentary.
b Because, very probably, he looked upon them as the king's
principal counsellors, who advised him to rebel against him. —
Patrick's Commentary.
c Gedaliah, we understand, was the son of Ahikam, Jeremiah's
great friend ; and it is not unlikely, that, by the prophet's advice,
who exhorted all, both king and people, to surrender themselves
to the Assyrians, (Jer. xxxviii. 5, 17,) he made his escape from
the city, and went over to the king of Babylon and for this rea-
son was promoted to the government of Judea Calmet's and
Patrick's Commentaries.
4825. A. C. 58G. 1 KINGS viii. TO TIIK END OF 2 CITRON.
the country ; and when the prophet had chosen the latter,
he dismissed him honourably, with a handsome present,
and with letters of recommendation to the governor Ge-
daliah, wherein he gave him a strict charge to take par-
ticular care of him.
CHAP. II. — Object ions answered and Difficulties
obviated.
We, who have not received the book of Judith in our
canon of Scripture, are not under the like necessity of vin-
dicating its divine inspiration and authority, as are they
who, ' by a public act of council, have thought proper to
admit it ; but still we see no reason why we should recede
from the opinion of the ancients, merely because some
modern commentators, who, by the same freak of fancy,
might have turned the plainest narrative in Scripture
into an allegory, have adventured to call it a parable.
Mysteries indeed may be made of any thing, and, in a
pregnant brain, fit allusions will never be wanting, when
once a full scope is given to the imagination, and a
writer is permitted to invent what he pleases : but it
would be madness to give up the truth of historical facts
merely because the man has ingenuity enough to apply
them to a feigned purpose, especially when upon exa-
mination we find that there are sufficient proofs and tes-
timonies of their reality, and no insuperable objections
to the contrary.
Let us suppose, then, that the events contained in this
history happened before the Babylonish captivity, and in
the reign of Manasseh king of Judah ; that Nabuchodo-
nosor in Judith was the same with Saosduchinus in Pto-
lemy, who reigned over the Assyrians and Chaldeans,
having subdued Esarhaddon king of Assyria ; that Ar-
phaxad is the same with Phraortes, mentioned in Hero-
dotus, and that these two kings waged war with each
other; that Saosduchinus having overcome Arphaxad,
resolved to reduce all the nations spoken of in Judith,
under his dominion, and to that purpose, sent Holofernes
at the head of his forces to subdue those countries that
would not submit ; that at this time Manasseh, who had
been a little before delivered from the captivity in which
he had been carried to Babylon, dwelt at Jerusalem,
concerning himself but little with the government, and
leaving the care of public affairs to Joakim the high
priest ; that the inhabitants of Bethulia resolved by God'a
assistance, to preserve their religion and liberties, and
accordingly shut their gates against Holofernes ; and
that Judith, a woman of great courage and conduct,
seeing the extremity to which the city was reduced,
undertook to destroy Holofernes, and, in her attempt,
succeeded. Supposing all this, I say, and this is the
substance of the whole, where do we find any thing con-
trary to the rules either of history or chronology ?
The war, we suppose, commenced between Nabuchodo-
nosor and Arphaxad, in the year of the world 3347 ; the
expedition and death of Holofernes were both in the next
year, 3348, Manasseh was taken and carried to Babylon
3349, he returned some years after, and died 33G1 : so that
here we find a proper space for the things related in this
1 Concil. Trid. sess. 4.
4p
666
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3304. A. C. G10; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
history to be transacted ; and that they were really thus
transacted we have the concurring- testimony both of the
Jewish and Christian church, who, though they deny the
book a place in the number of their sacred and divine
writings, yet did always esteem it one of their apocry-
phal pieces, and a true and incontested history, well
contrived for the edification of the vulgar, though not of
authority enough to determine any controversy in matters
of religion.
1 Josephus indeed makes no mention either of the
book of Judith, or of her famous exploit in killing- Ho-
lofemes ; but his silence is no argument against what we
assert, because he nowhere professes to take notice of
every thing that occurred in the Jewish republic ; on the
contrary, ~ he openly declares that his purpose was to
relate only such things as were recorded in the books
which were originally written in Hebrew, and declared
canonical, which that of Judith never was.
It is some confirmation of its genuineness, however,
that, in writings which are of undoubted authority, we
meet with some citations out of it ; and therefore, when
we find St Luke, in Elizabeth's salutation of the Virgin
Mary, using these words, — 3 ' Blessed art thou among
women,' which are manifestly taken from the compliment
which Ozias makes Judith, 4 ' Blessed art thou of the
most high God, above all the women upon earth ;' and
St Paul in his exhortation to the Corinthians, using these,
— 5 ' Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured,
and were destroyed of the destroyer,' which he certainly
borrows from the tenth chapter of Judith, according to
the Greek interpretation ; we cannot forbear concluding,
that, in the apostolic age, this book was looked upon as
a piece of true and uncontroverted history.
Difficulties, indeed, there will occur in relation to
names, dates, and other particulars, almost in all his-
tories, and especially in the Oriental, ' when we shall
find, not only in writers of different characters, the Greek
and Hebrew, the sacred and profane, but even in writers
of the same nation, the same person under different
appellations. Though, therefore, in strictness of speech,
it may be accounted an error in history, to call the king
of Nineveh by the name of Nabuchodonosor ; yet, as it
was the style and manner of the Jews to denote any
prince who lived beyond the Euphrates by that name, we
need not wonder that we find an author, who lived in an
age when the fame and reputation of Nabuchodonosor
the Great had quite eclipsed the name of all his prede-
cessors, calling another prince, who lived at a far dis-
tance, that is, Saosduchinus the king of Assyria, by the
name of the king of Babylon, which perhaps at that time
might be the standing name of every great and distant
monarch.
Nor is there any great trespass against the truth of
history 7 in this author's asserting that Arphaxad built
tlic walls, the towers, and the gates of Ecbatan ; since
by Arphaxad he foes not mean the Dejoces in Herodo-
tus, but his son Phraortes, who succeeded him in the
kingdom of Media : for that he must mean so, is plain,
because he gives us to understand, that this Arphax-
ad was defeated, and8 himself slain by the Assyrian
' Huetius'a Demonstrat. propos. 4. * Jewish Antiq. b. x. c. 11.
B Luke i. 42. t Judith xiii. 18. MCoi.x, 10.
6 Calmet's Preface on the book of Judith.
» Jiulith i. 2, &v. 6 Ibid. ver. 16.
48:25. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
archers, which even Herodotus 9 himself makes to be the
fate, not of Dejoces the father, but of his son Phraortes,
who, having subdued the Persians, as he tells us, and
made himself master of almost all Asia, was not content
therewith, but coming at last to attack Nineveh and the
Assyrian empire, was overcome, and killed in the
bold attempt.
His father indeed might lay the foundation of Ecba-
tan, and during his lifetime, carry on the building ; but
a work of this kind is not so soon effected, but that he
might leave the completion of it to his son, who being a
prince of a warlike spirit, and having many forces under
his command, is therefore, in the book of Judith, not
improperly said to have made the gates of this royal city
10 ' in height seventy cubits, and in breadth forty cubits,
for the going forth of his mighty armies, and for the
setting in array of his footmen.'
Whoever looks into the order and succession of the
Jewish high priests, as we have them delivered to us in
the first book of Chronicles, ll in the books of Ezra, 12
Nehemiah, 13 and in the history of Josephus, 14 will find
them so intricate and perplexed, so many omissions and
mislocations, such a diversity of names and numbers,
and such seeming contrariety in the several accounts, as
will cost him no small pains to reduce them to any toler-
able regularity. The reason is, because the Scripture
nowhere professes to give an exact catalogue of all
such as had been admitted to that office and dignity
until the captivity.
That in the book of Chronicles seems to bid fairest
for it : but, upon examination, it will appear 15 to be
only a direct lineal descent of the pontifical family,
from Aaron to Josedech the son of Seraiah, who was
high priest at the captivity ; and not a succession of
such as had borne the pontifical office, because several
in that pedigree are inserted that were never high
priests, a and several are omitted that were. The pedi-
grees of the high priests in Ezra and Nehemiah are but
imperfect parts of that which we have in the book of
Chronicles ; and as for the catalogue of Josephus, it is
so corrupted, that scarce five of the names in it do agree
with any thing that we have in Scripture : so that, con-
sidering the defect of these accounts, we maybe allowed
to infer, that Joakim or Eliakim, (for they are names
both of the same import,) might have been high priest in
the time of Manasseh ; even though we should suppose
there was no mention made of him as such, either in the
Holy Scriptures, or in the history of Josephus.
16 The Scripture, however, takes notice of one Eliakim,
the son of Hilkiah, whom, (according to the prophet l?
Isaiah) God promised ' to clothe with a robe, and to
9 B. i. c. 97. 10 Judith i. 4. " Chap. vi. 3, &c.
12 Chap. ii. 36, &c. '3 Chap. vii. 39. '" B. viii. c. 15.
15 Piideaux's Connection, anno 655.
16 Calmet's Dissertation on the Order and Succession, &c.
" Chap. xxii. 21.
a The high priests of the family of Eli are instances of the
latter; for they are left out of that pedigree, though they were
high priests: and those of the true race who were excluded by
tliem, are instances of the former; for they are in it, though
they were never high priests: and it is very likely that, from
the time of Solomon to the captivity, many more such instances
might have happened, to hinder that pedigree from being an
exact catalogue ol the high priests. — Prideaux's Connection,
anno 655.
Skct. V.J
FR031 THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
667
A. M. 3391. A. C. G10; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
strengthen with a girdle,' that is, to invest with the
pontifical habit and office ; and therefore, his ' being- a
father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house
of Judah, and his having the key of the house of David
laid upon his shoulder ; so, he should open, and none
should shut, and he should shut and none should open,'
does very well agree witli the part which Joakim is said
to have acted in the book of Judith. For though the
supreme power was doubtless in Manasseh, yet, since
his return from the captivity, having either sequestered
himself from public business, or • being- engaged in the
defence of his country in some other place, he might
intrust the management of his affairs in Jerusalem to the
high priest, who, having such an amplitude of power,
and acting as chief minister in that place, might be well
enough mentioned in this transaction of Judith, 2 and in
the deputation of the elders from Jerusalem to thank her
for it, without naming his master at all.
What the manners and customs of the Persians were
we may in some measure learn from the Greek historians,
who, upon the dissolution of that monarchy by the con-
quest of Alexander, were obliged to say something of
a people whom they succeeded in the dominion of the
east ; but, as these historians did not write till after the
kingdom of Persia was destroyed, they have taken little
or no notice of other Oriental nations ; and therefore
what affinity there might be in their manners and usages,
we cannot tell ; and 3 consequently must not blame the
author of the book of Judith, for making Holofernes act
out of character, as we think, unless we know how far
the customs of the Assyrians and Persians did conform
or disagree.
Herein, however, we know, that all Oriental nations
were unanimous, namely, in affecting pomp and grandeur ;
and therefore (whether it was a Persian custom or no) we
need not wonder, that we find Holofernes, the captain-
general of the Assyrian army, 4 ' resting upon his bed,
under a canopy, which was woven with purple, and gold,
and emeralds, and precious stones ;' and when Judith was
introduced, ' coming out before his tent, a with silver
lamps going before him,' We need not wonder at the
rapidity of his conquest, since, doubtless, he had several
lieutenant-generals under him, who, with strong detach-
ments from the grand army, might, in separate bodies,
invade all the provinces which the historian mentions ;
and, since he nowhere met with any opposition until he
came into Palestine, but expected a gTeat deal in Egypt,
he thought it advisable to halt, for some time, in the
neighbourhood of Bethulia, and to put his men into
quarters of refreshment, until the forces which he had
detached upon sundry expeditions were come up, and
bad joined him. And for this reason he was not so
eager to press the siege of Bethulia, that he might not
1 Prideaux's Connection, anno 655. 2 Judith xv. 8.
3 Calmet's Preface on the book of Judith. " Judith x. 21, 22.
a Holofernes may be thought, in this piece of state, to imitate
the custom of the Persians, among whom it was usual to carry
fire before their kings, as it was afterward done before the Roman
emperors, and is at present before the emperor of the Turks ;
but the reason of this might be no more, than either that Judith
and her maid were apprehended, and brought to Holofernes, be-
fore it was quite day, or that the inner apartment of his tent was
so veiy dark, that he had lights continually binning in it. — Cul-
7»ct's Commentary on Judith x. 22.
harass and fatigue his men in fighting against rocks and
inaccessible mountains, but preserve them fresh and un-
foiled, for their great and more important expedition
against Egypt.
The truth is, the king of Nineveh was resolved not
only to subdue the several nations from the Euphrates
to Ethiopia, but intended likewise to oblige them all to
5 adore and acknowledge him only to be god ; G and
therefore the Bethulians, who could not, without impiety,
and a renunciation of their religion, submit to the
dominion of such a king, had reason to promise them-
selves the assistance of God, in the prosecution of this
war ; and Judith, who found herself under a divine and ir-
resistible impulse to go upon so adventurous an exploit,
had good reason to hope for success' against a prince,
who had declared himself an enemy to the God of heaven,
and an usurper of that honour and adoration which be-
longed to him alone.
b ' If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son,
or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend,
which is as thine owti soul, entice thee secretly, saying,
let us serve other gods which thou hast not known, thou,
nor thy fathers ; thou shalt not consent unto him, nor
hearken unto him, neither shall thine eye pity him, neither
shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou
shalt surely kill him:' and, in pursuance of this law,
much more might Judith, or any other inhabitant of
Bethulia, whom God had inspired with the like courage
and magnanimity, endeavour to counterplot the designs
of any person, who, in an hostile manner, should come,
not only to invade their civil rights and liberties, but to
extirpate their religion ; and, instead of enticing, to
compel them by force of arms, to receive a form of ido-
latry, which neither they nor their fathers knew.
Many things may be alleged against Judith's method
of proceeding in this affair, but they are most of them
reducible to the common stratagems of war, which not
only the law of arms, but thf> commands of God in some
cases, and the examples of several of the best men in
sacred history, have declared to be allowable. What
comes not under this denomination, we shall not pretend
Judith vi. 2.
6 Deut. xiii. 6, &c.
b How great soever the folly and impiety was, in desiring to
pass for a god, yet the king of Nineveh was not the only prince
that we find infected with it. The flatterers of Darius the
Median proposed to him to make a decree that, under pain of
being cast into the den of lions, no one should dare to ask a peti-
tion of any god or man, but of him only, for the space of thirty
days, (Dan. vi. 7.) When Alexander the Great took it into his
head, to exact the same divine honours of his people that they
had formerly paid to the kings of Persia his predecessors, he
found people about him base and prostitute enough to commend
the design, and to maintain, that thus to advance kings above the
rank of mortal man, was not only a pious, but a prudent and ad-
vantageous thing; for so the historian expresses it: ''That the
Persians, not only through motives of piety but of wisdom, wor-
shipped their kings as gods, for they deemed majesty to be a
bulwark to the welfare of the nation/' {Quint. Curt. b. viii.) The
Egyptians had their princes in the like veneration, and looked
upon them as highly raised above the condition of other men;
but the Greeks, it must be owned, held all this baseness and
abject flattery in a just detestation, insomuch that the Athenians
put Timagoras to death, for having prostrated himself before the
king of the Persians; and Spei thins and Bulis, two Lacedemo-
nians, though then in a state of captivity, could not be brought
to pay that adoration to Artaxerxes, which he required of every
one that approached him. — Pint, in Artax.
6G8
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. H 3394. A. C. G10 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
to vindicate ; ' for the notion of mental reservations and
ironical speeches, which are not allowed in common
conversation, are but the poor subterfuges which com-
mentators have used to apologise for the conduct that
they can by no means justify.
The history, indeed, represents this Judith as a woman
of great courage ; but it nowhere intimates that she was
without faults. The manner of her preparation for the
undertaking, and the success wherewith it was attended,
may make us presume, that its design was originally
from God ; but then the continued train of falsehood and
dissimulation wherewith it was carried on, must needs
persuade us, that the means of conducting it was left to
the woman, who, on this occasion, has given us a very
remarkable specimen of the cunning and sagacity, the
guile and artifice, of her sex.
One thing, however, may be said, and that without any
forced explication, in favour of her conduct: — That her
answer to the eunuch's suggestion she might design
for no more than a common compliment, which the situa-
tion of her affairs, at that time, obliged her to make.
* She might perceive, very likely, the bad design which
the Assyrian general had upon her ; but she did not
think herself concerned to discover that she perceived it.
She pretended, in some measure, to be ignorant of it ;
and to pretend an ignorance of what is proposed, when
the thing is naughty and will not bear examination, is a
point of modesty as well as prudence : as, where it will
admit of a double construction, there to take it in the
better sense, is even reputed an act of candour and good
breeding. ' Let not this fair damsel fear,' says the old
pander, ' to come to my lord, and to be honoured in his
presence, and drink wine, and be merry with us, and be
made this day as one of the daughters of the Assyrians,
who serve in the house of Nabuchodonosor.' How the
daughters of Assyria, who served in this capacity, were
used, Judith very probably had been informed: but,
since the eunuch seemed to put it on the foot of a great
favour and honour done her, she could not do less
than return him a compliment ; but then we all know,
3 that the offers of service, which, upon every occasion,
we are so apt to make to one another, and those expres-
sions of submission and respect, which so commonly
pass among us, are not to be taken in a literal sense,
because they always imply a tacit condition ; and there-
fore the answer which the historian puts in Judith's
mouth, 'surely, whatever pleaseth him, I will do speedi-
ly,' will fairly admit of this construction, ' whatever
Holofernes shall desire of me, so far as it is consistent
with my duty, my honour, and my religion, I will not
fail to do.'
Thus we have endeavoured to satisfy most of the
popular objections, and to reconcile mostof the seeming1
inconsistencies, that occur in the history of Judith; and
if there still remain any that cannot sufficiently be cleared
up, they ought, in justice, to be imputed to our ignorance
and want of better information. Had we the ancient books
of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah, to
which we arc bo often referred in Scripture, or had we the
histories of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians
and Egyptians, (with whom the Jewish nation had so long
an intercourse,) perfect and entire, it is not to be doubted°
1 Calmet's Commentary on Judith x. 13.
'Calroet's Preface mi tin: book of Judith.
[bid.
4825. A. C. 58G. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
but that many of the difficulties which at present seem
insurmountable, would then easily subside and sink into
nothing. The plain truth is, " there Mas scarce ever a
history written " according to our learned Prideaux's *
observation, " but what in the very next age will seem to
have inconsistencies enough in it as to time, place, and
other circumstances, when the memory of men concerning
them begins to fail ; and therefore we may be much more
apt to blunder, when we take our view at the distance of
above two thousand years, and have no other light to
direct us to our object, but such glimmerings, from
broken scraps of history, as are in effect next to nothing."
The like is to be said of the several seeming absurdi-
ties that may be observed in the writings and behaviour
of the prophets : — That were we sufficiently acquainted
with the style and manner of writing that was in use in
those days, and especially in the eastern countries, we
should think it no strange thing to find them expressing
themselves by types and figures, parabolical representa-
tions, and emblematical actions. For, however it comes
about, so it is, that mankind have all along been marvel-
lously taken with story and picture. 5 These excite the
curiosity of our nature ; they tempt us to learn, help us
to remember, and convey instruction to the mind, in a
more pleasing and effectual manner than plain documents
can ; and hence it came to pass, that a great part of the
learning of the wise men of the east consisted in b ' pro-
phecies, in subtle and dark parables, and in the secrets
of grave sentences,' as the author of the book of Eccle-
siasticus has branched it out ; for 7 ' to understand a pro-
verb and the interpretation ; the words of the wise, and
their dark sayings,' was the very best description that
Solomon himself could give of wisdom. 8 Among the
ancients, indeed, mythology was in the highest esteem.
The Egyptians, who were in great reputation for learn-
ing, delivered their notions in hieroglyphics; and from
them the Greeks took the mode of couching their mean-
ing in fable. Hesiod, 9 who contends with Homer for
antiquity, is supposed by Quintilian to be the author
of the fables which go under the name of iEsop ; but,
however this be, the very supposition of his being so,
makes it probable that he did write fables, as, perhaps,
most men of learning and note in those days accustom-
ed themselves to this form of writing.
10 But, besides this parabolical way of writing which
was in great vogue among the ancients, and to which
the Jews, by a kind of natural genius, were wonderfully
inclined, the people of the east had a way of expressing
themselves by actions as well as words, and, to inforce
the matter they were upon, would frequently make use
of outward and visible signs and representations. " This,
our learned Mr Mede shows, was the practice of the
Indians, Persians, and Egyptians ; and, even among the
Romans, who were a people that used great modesty of
style, and more gravity in their actions, than many other
nations, it was a customary thing in their orations and
pleadings, to use all arts to raise the passions, by actions
and representations as well as words ; insomuch, n that
4 Connection, anno t>55.
s Reeve's Sermons. 6 Ecclus. xxxix. 1, &c. ' Prov. i. 6.
8 Jenkins' Reasonableness of Christianity, vol. ii. c. 3.
9 Quintil. Instit. b. v. c. 11.
,0 Lightfoot's Heb. and Talmud. Exercit. in Mat. xiii. 3.
u Comment, in Apoeal. part. 1. p. 470. I2 Cic. pro P. Sexlio.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
669
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they would frequently hang up the picture of the thing
they were to speak to. Cicero tells us of himself, that
he sometimes took up a child, and held it in his arms to
move compassion ; and to excite horror and indignation,
nothing was more common, than for the accusers to pro-
duce, in open court, a bloody sword, or the garments of
the wounded ; to show the bones that had been taken
out of the wound, or the scars that it had left behind
it : " The power of these things is usually great," says '
Quintilian, " directing the attention of men to the sub-
ject in question ;" for it can hardly otherwise happen,
but that by this means they should fix the attention of
their hearers, when, at one and the same time, they speak
both to their eyes and ears.
From these few remarks, it appears in general, that
the figurative expressions of the prophets, their actions,
and types, and parables, were not incongruous to the
customs of the times and places where they lived, and
yet very proper means to give a lively and affecting re-
presentation of the message they had to deliver ; and so
proceed we to the passages which seem to give disgust.
To take several of these in their literal sense, would
be an effectual way to disparage the divine precept,
which, according to this acceptation, would put the pro-
phet upon acting in a manner quite inconsistent with
common prudence ; and therefore interpreters are gen-
erally agreed, that the things of this kind, which will not
come under a literal construction, were either transacted
in vision, that is, the prophet in a dream, or some other
deliquium, imagined that he did such and such things,
and then related them to the people ; or that they were
parables, which God dictated to the prophet, and the
prophet recited to the people ; only it must be observed,
a that the literal interpretation of a text always claims
the preference, if there be not some weighty reason
against it, or some intimation in the text itself, that the
words are figurative and enigmatical.
The prophet Jeremiah 3 is ordered by God, ' to take
the wine-cup of his fury at his hand, and to carry it up
and down, far and near Jerusalem, and the cities of
Judah, and the kings and princes thereof: to Pharaoh
king of Egypt, and his servants, princes, and people ;
to all the Arabians, and kings of the land of Uz ; to the
kings of the land of the Philistines, Edom, Moab, and
Amnion ; to the kings of Tyre and Sidon, and of the
isles beyond the sea, Dedan, Tenia, and Buz ; to the
kings of Zimri, of the Modes, and Persians, and all the
kings of the north.' Now, since it was morally impossi-
ble for the prophet to visit all these kings and nations
in person, and the nature of the thing would not admit
of any real performance, it could be no otherwise done
than in vision. ' The cup of God's wrath,' is a common
figure in Scripture, to denote the severity of his judg-
ments ; and therefore, when the prophet says, that ' he
took the cup at the Lord's hand, and made all the
nations drink thereof,' he can mean no more, than that
he prophesied against these several nations, and, by
virtue of the spirit of foreknowledge which God had im-
parted to him, pronounced their doom.
4 In like manner, his sending yokes and bonds to
several kings, whose ambassadors were then at Jeru-
1 Instit. b, v. c. 1.
8 Chap. xxv. 15, &c.
2 Scripture Vindicated, part. 3. p. 72.
4 Scripture Vindicated, part '3. p. 88.
4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
salem, can hardly be understood in a sense altogether
literal ; because it is not probable, either, that the am-
bassadors would take the yokes at his hands, or carry
them to their respective masters ; but then, as yokes and
bonds are common figures in Scripture, to denote capti-
vity, and the miseries that attend it, his sending the
yokes and bonds, may signify no more, 5 than his de-
claring, from God, the fate of these princes, when the
king of Babylon was let loose upon them. Only it must
be observed, that the prophet might really make some
of these yokes and bonds, (as the Scripture says express-
ly, that he put one upon himself,) to enliven the idea, and
make the impression of what he was to say more stroii"-
and emphatical. For these ornamental figures, and
affecting images interspersed with it, added new force
and dignity to the prophet's message, made it more
awful and solemn to the delivery, and gave it the advan-
tage of a deeper and more durable impression.
In like manner, again, the whole affair of this prophet's
girdle, his carrying it to the Euphrates, hiding it in a rock,
and, at such a determinate time, going for it again, and
finding it quite rotten and spoiled, can hardly be taken
in a literal sense ; because the vast a distance of fhe
place, and trivialness of the errand, as well as the im-
possibility of getting out of Jerusalem, if it was then
invested by the Babylonians, make strongly against it ;
and therefore we may suppose, that all this was trans-
acted in the prophet's imagination only ; that, in the
night-time, God sent upon him a vision, wherein all this
series of things seemed to be performed by him, to im-
print it the deeper upon his understanding, namely, that
the kingdom of Judah, which was once as nearly united
to God as the girdle is to a man's loins, should be utter-
ly ruined and destroyed ; and though the river Euphrates
be at a wide distance from the prophet's place of abode,
yet, in the vision, which is never confined to places, it
might be more aptly made choice of than any other,
thereby to denote to the Jews, that over that river they
were to be carried captive to the city of Babylon.
The short of the matter is, — Several things which the
prophets set down as matters of fact, might not be actual-
ly done, but only represented as done, to make the more
lively impression upon their readers and hearers. Nay,
there are several commands which God gives Ezekiel in
particular, such as, his ' lying for 390 days on one side,'
which was next to a thing impossible, ' his baking his
bread with man's dung,' which was a thing unseemly,
and his ' shaving his head and beard,' which, as he was
a priest, 6 was a thing expressly forbidden him, that the
prophet is never once said to have performed, nor were
they indeed given him with an intent that he should per-
form them, but only relate them to the people, and so
5 Hemic. Michael Bib. Heb. notes on the passage.
C Lev. xxi. 5.
a The learned Bochart has invented a new solution of this dif-
ficulty. He supposes, that as it was a common thing for the
initial letter to be dropped, in the names of places and persons,
the Hebrew word 1'hrath may be supposed to stand for Ephratli
or Ephratah, which is Bethlehem, about five or six miles distant
from Jerusalem : by which means the prophet's journey is great-
ly shortened, and the pains of going thither once again is not
much. But whether this solution, as ingenious as it is, will
bear the test, is left to the examination of the critics. — Culmei't
Commentary, ami Scripture Vindicated, in locum.
670
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3394. A. C. 610; OR
make them ' signs unto the house of Israel,1 that is, either
resemblances of things past, or prognostications of
things to come.
St Peter, we may observe, * was commanded in his
vision, to do what he never did ; ' Rise, Peter, kill
and eat:' nay, by his reply, it appears, that himself did
not think that he was any ways bound to obey the com-
mand ; ' Not so, Lord ; for I have never eaten any
thin"- that is common or unclean.' And yet the use
which he made of this vision was, to report it to the
church as a sign or emblematical indication of God's
having accepted the Gentiles into the gospel terms of
salvation. And, in like manner, when Ezekiel, in his
vision, received the command of ' shaving his head and
his face,' his answer might have been in St Peter's strain,
• Not so, Lord ;' for, by thy law, I am forbidden ' to
make baldness upon my head, or to shave oft' the corner
of my beard;' and yet he might relate this vision to
the people, the better to enforce the threats which God
had authorized him to denounce against Jerusalem :
2 ' Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold I, even I am
against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of
thee, in the sight of the nations ; and I will do in thee
that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do
any more the like, because of all thy abominations.'
In a word, the prophets, in their visions, might receive
several commands concerning things illegal or inde-
cent ; 3 but then they considered these not as formal
commands, but as types, emblems, and predictions, de-
livered to them in a perceptive form, in order to im-
print the things intended the deeper upon their minds,
and to make the representation thereof to the people
with whom they had to do more lively and affecting ;
nor should it seem strange, that the divine wisdom, in
this case, makes choice of things improper, and some-
times impracticable, since his purpose in so doing is to
make the prophet perceive at once, that it was all sym-
bolical, and not designed to direct him how and what to
act, but how and what to apprehend, foresee, and fore-
tell of things to come.
Whether the command given to Hosea to marry a
woman that either had been or would prove a prostitute
is to have a literal or figurative construction, commen-
tators and critics, both ancient and modern are not a
little divided ; but since in the figurative there is no vio-
lence oftered to Scripture, and in the literal there is
nothing immoral or absurd, it matters not much in
which sense we take it. In Scripture, it is a common
thing to represent the defection of a people from the
service of God, 4 by the metaphors of adultery and for-
nication ; and, therefore, to introduce the prophet as
marrying a woman that proved an adulteress, as having
several children by that marriage, and as calling these
children by such names as denoted the destruction of a
rebellious nation, is no bad manner of expressing the
near relation between God and his people ; his constant
.arc in preserving and multiplying them ; their vile in-
gratitude in revolting from him ; and the great severity
wherewith he intended to punish their revolt. Or take
the words in a literal sense, and that the prophet was
ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M 4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
really commanded to marry a woman of a bad reputation ;
yet might there not be many prudential considerations
to make such a match eligible ? The Scripture, we may
observe, in the appellations which it gives persons and
things, has less regard to what they actually are, than
to what they once were ; and hence it is, that Moses's
rod, when turned into a serpent, 5 is still called his rod ;
and those whom our Saviour healed of their several in-
firmities, are still the deaf, 6 the lame, &c, even after
they are cured. Now, if the woman whom Hosea was
ordered to marry, though once she had lived an inconti-
nent life, was now become chaste and virtuous, where
was the great absurdity of his actually doing it, since,
besides other motives to us unknown, he was, in this ac-
tion, to be a sign to the Israelites, and to set an example
to them, ' who had gone a whoring after other gods,'7
that, if they would forsake their false deities, and return
to their true God, the God of their fathers, he would still
accept, and receive them, in the like manner as the pro-
phet had takeYi an adulteress to his wife, upon assurance
that ever, for the future, she would prove faithful to his
bed?
The account of Ezekiel's packing up his household
goods, removing them by night, and breaking through
the walls of his house to carry them away more secretly,
though some interpreters have looked upon it as the
mere narration of a vision, or the recital of a parable,
yet to me it seems more probable, that the whole was
transacted just in the manner wherein it is described ;
especially considering the near resemblance between the
prediction and the event. For,afterthat the prophet, by the
symbolical action of removing his goods in a fright, had
typified the taking of Jerusalem, he proceeds to apply
what he had done in this prediction. — 8 ' I am your sign ;
like as I have done, so shall it be done mito them : they
shall remove, and go into captivity ; they shall dig
through the wall to carry out thereby ; and the prince
that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the
twilight, and shall go forth.' — My net also will I spread
upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare ; and I will
scatter, toward every wind, all that are about him to help
him, and all his bands.' And accordingly the eventhap-
pened ; for 9 ' when the city was broken up,' says the
historian, ' all the men of war fled by night, by the way
of the gate, between two walls, which is by the king's
gardens, for the Chaldees were against the city round
about, and the king went the way towards the plain.
But the army of the Chaldees pursued after the king,
and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and all his
army were scattered from him.'
The like is to be said of the same prophet's being or-
dered by God to delineate upon a slate the city of Jeru-
salem, and the Babylonish camp investing it, namely,
that the portraiture of the fort, the mount, the camp, and
battering rams, against it, 10 are so very like to what
happened at the siege, that we can hardly forbear pre-
suming, that the whole narration is literal, or that the
prophet did really draw a sketch of the siege of the city,
as God commanded him. For since, as we observed
before, it was a practice sometimes among the best of ora-
2 Ezek. v. 8, 9.
4 Lev. xvii. 7.
Jer,
1 Acts x. 13, 11.
3 Scripture Vindicated, part 3. p. 94,
iii. I. Ezek, xvi. 15. xxiii. 3, &c.
Exod. vii. 12. e Mat. xi. 5. and John ix. 17.
Jenkins's Reasonableness of Christianity, vol. ii. p. 53.
8 Ezek- *"■ 11, &e. 9 2 Kings xxv. 4. 5.
lu Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, b. x. c. 11
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
671
A. M. 3394 A. C. 610 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
tors to represent, in a picture, the particular thing they
were to speak to, thereby to gain the readier attention of
their hearers, why should it be thought inconsistent with
the character of a prophet, or any diminution of his dis-
cretion, or gravity, to do the same thing, in order to gain
the i me end ?°
To walk naked indeed for three years together, as the
prophet Isaiah l is said to have done, does not so well
comport with the rules of decency, and seems to carry in
it an appearance of frenzy or madness ; but we are to
remember, that, in Scripture phrase, those are said to
go naked, who either go without 2 their upper garment,
or without the 3 habit that is proper to their station or
quality ; and that the Hebrew text does not say, that
Isaiah walked in this manner for three years together,
but that he thus walked as a type or sign of the three
years' calamity which would come upon Egypt and Ethi-
opia. So that the sense of the passage is thus : — That
Isaiah went about without his upper garment, in token
that the Egyptians and Arabians should undergo a cala-
mity of three years' continuance from the king of Assy-
ria ; but how long or how often he did this, the Scripture
is silent ; only it may be presumed, that he did it in
such a manner, whether three days together, or thrice the
same day, as might best prefigure the three years' cala-
mity : and since the action was to be typical, the pro-
phet, who, through the iniquity of the times, could scarce
gain the audience of the people at any rate, was to
appear in an uncommon garb, and with something parti-
cular in his manner, to strike the eyes and awaken the
observation of all around him : for, had not there been
some visible impropriety in the action, something seem-
ingly inconsistent with the character of so grave a man,
it would not have answered the purpose of exciting the
curiosity and attention of the people for which it was
intended.
Thus we have endeavoured to vindicate the actions of
the prophets, or rather the wisdom of God which put
them upon such actions, from all imputations of weakness
and folly ; and shall only observe farther, that our mis-
conceptions of these things must, in a great measure, pro-
ceed from our ignorance of the prophetic style, as says
a learned examiner of this style ; — * " For all places of
Scripture that are expressed in allegorical or proverbial
forms of speech, or by types and resemblances of things,
as all prophecies more or less are, must needs have been
better understood in those times when they were written,
than they can be now, because we have but an imperfect
notion of many tilings to which the allusion is made, and
from whence the similitude is taken."
1 Chap. xx. 3, 4.
2 John xxi. 7. Acts xix. 16. Mark xiv. 36. Mat. xxv. 26.
3 2 Sam. xix. 24. 2 Sam. vi. 20.
4 Jenkins's Reasonableness, vol. ii. c. 7.
a Language, as appears from the nature of the thing, from the
records of history, anil from the remains of the most ancient lan-
guages yet remaining, was at first extremely rude, narrow, and
equivocal : so that men would be perpetually at a loss, on any
new conception, or uncommon accident, to explain themselves
intelligibly to one another; the art of enlarging language by a
scientific, analogy being a late invention: this would necessarily
Bet them upon supplying the deficiencies of speech by apt and
significant signs. Accordingly, in the first ages of the world,
mutual converse was upheld by a mixed discourse of words and
actions; hence came the eastern phrase of "the voice of the
sigu ;" and use and custom, as in most other affairs of life, improv-
4825 A. C. 58G 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
CHAP. III. — Of the Sacred Chronology and Profane
History during this period.
The particular differences, and seeming incongruities,
in point of chronology, that have occurred in this period
of history, we have endeavoured to solve and reconcile
in the notes that are annexed to it ; but there is a passage
iug what had arisen out of necessity, into ornament, this practice
subsisted long after the necessity was over; especially amongst the
eastern people, whose natural temperament inclined them to a
mode of conversation, which so well exercised their vivacity, by
motion ; and so much gratified it, by a perpetual representation
of material images. Of this we have innumerable instances in
holy Scripture : as where the false prophet pushed with bonis of
iron, to denote the entire overthrow of the Syrians: where Jere-
miah, by God's direction, hides the linen girdle in a hole of the
rock near Euphrates; where he breaks a potter's vessel in sight
of the people ; puts on bonds and yokes ; and casts a book into
Euphrates ; where Ezekiel, by the same appointment, delineates
the siege of Jerusalem on a tile ; weighs the hair of his beard in
balances ; carries out his household stuff; and joins together the
two sticks for Judah and Israel. By these actions the prophets
instructed the people in the will of God, and conversed with them
in signs: but where God teaches the prophet, and, in compliance to
the custom of that time, condescends to the same mode of instruc-
tion, then the significative action is generally changed into a
vision, either natural or extraordinary: as where the prophet
Jeremiah is bid to regard the rod of the almond tree, and the
seething pot; the work on the potter's wheel, and the baskets of
good and bad figs ; and the prophet Ezekiel, the ideal scene of
the resurrection of dry bones. The significative action, I say,
was, in this case, generally changed into a vision ; but not always.
For as sometimes, where the instruction was for the people, the
significative action was perhaps in vision ; so sometimes again
though the information was only for the prophet, God would set
him upon a real expressive action, whose obvious meaning con-
veyed the intelligence proposed or sought. Of this we shall give,
at the expense of infidelity, a very illustrious instance. The ex-
cellent Maimonides, not attending to this primitive mode of
information, is much scandalized at several of these actions, un-
becoming, as he supposed, the dignity of the prophetic office; and
is therefore for resolving them in general into supernatural visions
impressed on the imagination of the prophet ; and this, because
some few of them may perhaps admit of such an interpretation.
In this he is followed by Christian writers, much to the discre-
dit, as I conceive, of revelation; and to the triumph of libertinism
and infidelity ; the actions of the prophets being delivered as
realities; and these writers representing them as mean, absurd,
and fanatical, and exposing the prophet to contempt. But what
is it they gain by this expedient ? The charge of absurdity and
fanaticism will follow the prophet in his visions, when they have
removed it from his waking actions; for if these actions were
absurd and fanatical in the real representation, they must needs
be so in the imaginary ; the same turn of mind operating both
asleep and awake. The judicious reader, therefore, cannot but
observe, that the reasonable and true defence of the prophetic
writings is what is here offered: where we show, that information
by action was, at this time and place, a very familiar mode of
conversation. This once seen, all charge of absurdity and sus-
picion of fanaticism, vanish of themselves: the absurdity of an
action consists in its being extravagant and insignificative ; but
use and a fixed application made these in question both sober and
pertinent: the fanaticism of an action consists in a fondness for
unusual actions and foreign modes of speech; but those in ques-
tion were idiomatic and familiar. To illustrate this last observa-
tion by a domestic example: when the sacred writers talk of
being ' born after the spirit,' of being ' fed with the sincere milk
of the word,' of ' putting their tears into a bottle,' of ' bearing
testimonies against lying vanities,' of 'taking the veil from men's
hearts,' and of 'building up one another;' they speak the com-
mon, yet proper and pertinent phraseology of their country; and
not the least imputation of fanaticism can stick upon these origi-
nal expressions. But when we see our own countrymen repro-
bate their native idiom, and affect to employ only scripture
phrases in their whole conversation, as if some inherent sanctity
672
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3394 .1. C. CIO; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
in the prophet Ezekiel, generally supposed to relate to
this time, wherein some learned chronologers do not so
well agree.
The passage is this : — l ' I have laid upon thee the
1 Ezek. iv. 5, C.
resided in the eastern modes of expression, we cannot choose but
suspect such men far gone in the delusions of a heated imagina-
tion. The same may be said of significative actions. But it
is not only in sacred story that we meet with the mode of speak-
ing by action. Profane antiquity is full of these examples; the
early Oracles in particular frequently employed it, as we learn
from an old saying of HeracKtus: " That the king whose oracle
is at Delphi, neither speaks nor keeps silent, but reveals by signs."
The influence language would have on the first kind of writ-
ing, which was hieroglyphical, is easy to conceive. Language,
we have shown, was out of mere necessity, highly figurative, and
full of material images; so that when men first thought of recor-
ding their conceptions, the writing would be, of course, that very
picture which was before painted in the fancy, and from thence,
delineated in words: even long after, when figurative speech was
continued out of choice, and adorned with all the invention of
wit, as amongst the Greeks and Romans, and that the genius of
the simpler hieroglyphic writing was again revived for ornament,
in emblems and devices, the poetic habit of personalizing every
thing filled their coins, their arches, their altars, &c. with all
kinds of imaginary beings. All the qualities of the mind, all the
ailections of the body, all the properties of countries, cities, rivers,
mountains, became the seeds of living things: for,
" as imagination bodied forth
The forms of things unknown, the artist's hand
Turn'd them to shape, and gave to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name." Shalcspeare.
The reciprocal influence hieroglyphic writing would have on lan-
guage is as evident. The Chinese used this kind of writing, as
well as the Egyptians; and the character given of their language
is entirely correspondent: "The style of the Chinese, in their
compositions," says Du Halde, " is mysterious, concise, allego-
ric, and sometimes obscure. They say much in few words.
Their expressions are lively, animated, and thick sown with bold
comparisons, and noble metaphors.'' Their style, we see, was
concise and figurative; the very character, as we have seen, of
all the barbarous nations upon earth, both ancient and modern ; for
nature is ever uniform. The cold phlegmatic temper of the Chi-
nese made their style short and laconic; the use of hieroglyphics
made it figurative; and from this mixture it became obscure;
hut had those remote inhabitants of the east and west possessed
the warm imagination of the proper Asiatics, then had their lan-
guage, like that of the people spoken of above, abounded with
pleonasms instead of laconisms. The old Asiatic style, so highly
figurative, seems likewise, by what we find of its remains, in the
prophetic language of the sacred writers, to have been evidently
fashioned to the mode of ancient hieroglyphics, both curiologic
and tropical. Of the first kind are the figurative expressions of
' spotted garments,' to denote iniquity ; an ' intoxicating draught,'
to signify error and misery; the 'sword and bow,' a warrior- a
' gigantic Stature,' a mighty leader; ' balance, weights, and mea-
sures,' a judge, or magistrate; 'arms,' a powerful nation, like
the Roman. Of the second kind, which answers to the tropi-
cal hieroglyphic, is the calling empires, kings, and nobles, by the
names ol the 'heavenly luminaries, the sun, moon, and stars;'
their temporary disasters or entire overthrow, denoted by
'eclipses and extinctions;' the destruction of the nobility, by
'stars falling from the firmament;' hostile invasions, by 'thun-
der and tempestuous winds;' and leaders of armies, conquerors,
and founders of empire, by 'lions, bears, leopards, goats, or high
trees.' In a word, the prophetic style seems to be a speaking
hieroglj phic.
These observations will not only assist us in the intelligence of
the Old and New Testament, hut likewise vindicate their cha-
racter from the illiterate cavils of modern libertines, who have
foolishly mistaken that colouring for the peculiar workmanship of
the speaker's heated imagination, which was the sober established
language of their times; ;i language which God and his Son con-
descended to employ, as the properest vehicle of the high mys-
terious ways of Providence, in the revelation of themselves to
mankind. — War-burton's J)iii»r Legation of Moses vol iv. pp
133— UG, and 17.\S— 175.— Ed.
years of their iniquity, according to the number of days,
three hundred and ninety days ; so shalt thou bear the
iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou shalt
accomplish them, lie again on thy right side, and thou
shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days.
1 have appointed thee each day for a year.' The gener-
ality of commentators, who take God's laying upon the
prophet the years of his peoples iniquity, to denote his
forbearing to punish them for their offences for such a
determinate time, do agree, 2 that there is an exact sum
of 390 years mentioned in this place ; that this sum is
to begin from the time that Jeroboam first set up the
golden calves ; and that the 390 and 40 years are not
distinct numbers, but that the less is to be included in the
greater ; but then the question is, where we are to end
these 390 years ? or to which of the captivities do they
extend ?
Several learned men of great authority make these
years to end a at the last captivity by Nebuzaradan, cap-
tain of the guards under Nebuchadnezzar king of Baby-
lon, and four years after the last destruction of Jerusalem,
which happened in the eleventh year of Zedekiah ; for,
from the time of the setting up the calves, 4 say they, to
this last instance of God's severity, are just 390 years ;
from the eighteenth year of Josiah, when the kingdom of
Judah entered into covenant with God, to this time, are
just forty years ; and, by this last captivity, all the pre-
dictions of the several prophets, relating thereunto, were
perfectly fulfilled.
It is to be observed, however, that this last captivity
was so small, so sudden, and attended with so little
difficulty, as can by no means come up to the pomp and
solemnity of the prophet's description, in that very chap-
ter wherein this epocha is mentioned. The account
which we have of the invasion is this : — 5 " Whilst Ne-
buchadnezzar lay at the siege of Tyre, he sent Nebuza-
radan with part of his army to invade the land of Israel,
on purpose, as is supposed, to revenge the death of
Gedaliah ; because there was no other reason for his
falling upon the poor remains of those miserable people,
whom he himself had left and settled there. In this
expedition Nebuzaradan seized upon all the Jews whom
he found in the land, made them captives, and sent them
to Babylon ; but they all amounted to no more than
seven hundred and forty-five persons." Here was no
resistance made, no siege maintained, no famine incur-
red. The people fell a cheap and easy prey, because
they were ruined, and destroyed before. But now, in
the expedition to which the prophet 6 alludes, Jerusalem
was besieged, and the defendants reduced to the neces-
sity of 7 ' eating bread by weight, and with ('are, and of
drinking water by measure, and with astonishment,' as
he expresses it.
For this reason, we should rather incline to the hypo-
thesis of those who end both the computations at the
destruction of Jerusalem, in the eleventh of Zedekiah ;
who, according as they compute the time from Jero-
boam's apostasy, make the period of God's forbearing
s Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. vi. c. 1.
3 Jer. lii. SO.
4 Primate Usher, Dr Prideaux, and Marshall, in their Chro-
nological Tables.
Prideaux's Connexion, anno 584. 6 Ezek. iv. 1 — 3.
-< Ezek. iv. 1G.
Sect. V]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
673
A. M. 3394. A. C. G10; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825
(lie house of Israel, from thence to the destruction of
Jerusalem, to contain just three hundred and ninety
years ; and who begin the forty years of God's forbear
ance of the house of Judah, from the mission of the pro
phet Jeremiah to preach repentance to them, that is,
1 from me thirteenth year of Josiah, when he was lirst
railed to this office ; from which time, to the last year
of Zedekiah, when Jerusalem was destroyed, were
exactly forty years. For ' since the hundred and twenty
years of God's forbearing- the old world is reckoned
from the mission of Noah to preach repentance, there
seems to be some parity of reason, that his forty years'
forbearance of the kingdom of Judah should be reckoned
from the like mission of Jeremiah.
But there is another way of explaining this passage ;
for if by the word iniquity, which God imputes to the
house of Israel and Judah, we are to understand the
punishment of their iniquity, which is very common, and
seems to be the most natural sense in this place, it is
plain, that as the whole tenor of the prophet's discourse
seems to denote an event future, and far distant, it may
not improperly relate to the continuation of God's
punishment upon the tribes of Israel and Judah, for their
great and manifold provocations.
3 Now the punishment of Israel for their iniquities may
be said to commence at the taking of Samaria, in the
reign of Hoshea ; as that of Judah did, at the taking of
Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah. If then we reckon
from the destruction of Jerusalem to the time when
Cyaxares II. (whom 4 the Scripture calls ' Darius the
Median,') became king of Babylon, we shall find it
about forty years ; and as he was a known favourer of
the Jews, and might therefore give them leave to return
home, we may be allowed to infer, that here the term of
their punishment did expire. And, in like manner, if
we reckon from Salmaneser's taking Samaria to the last
victory which Alexander the Great obtained over Darius
Codomannus, whereby he became sole monarch of all
Asia, we shall find it to be much about three hundred
and ninety years: and as his kindness to the Jews was
very remarkable, we may here date the restoration of
their liberty, and consequently their release from the
punishment which God inflicted on them for their sins.
Thus, accordingly as we take the sense of the words
in the prophet, the history which is alluded to puts on a
different aspect, and relates to a different period : but
proceed we now to the profane history itself.
What dealings and intercourse, in the space of these
last four hundred years, a namely, from the building of
Solomon's temple to the captivity of Babylon, the Jew-
ish people had with the Philistines, the Ammonites,
Moabites, Phcpnicians, Syrians, and other neighbouring
nations; and what relation and dependence they had on
the great and powerful kingdoms of Assyria, Babylon,
and Egypt, has, in some measure, been observed in the
course of this history. What we are farther concerned
to do, is to take notice of some more remarkable events,
'Jer.i. 1, 2. 2Gen. vi. 3.
3 Calmet's Dissert, or the Examination of the Ten Tribes, &e.
4 Dan. v. 31.
a Dr Hales dates the finishing of the temple, B. C. 1020,
8-id the destruction of Babylon B. C. 536 ; making this period
434 years. — En.
C. 58G. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
which, during this period of time, are supposed to have
happened in the world.
5 In the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Uzziah king
of Judah, and while there was an interregnum in the
kingdom of Israel, the Olympic games were instituted
in Greece. The use and design of them was to train up
the youth in active and warlike exercises, that, if occa-
sion required, they might be capable of doing their
country service in the field ; and it was not from the
mountain Olympus, in Thessaly, but from the city
Olympia, (since called Pisa, near Elis, a city in Pelo-
ponnesus, where they were celebrated in the adjacent
plains, near the river Alpheus), that they took their
names. Here was the splendid temple of Jupiter, which
had vast treasures belonging to it, by reason of the ora-
cles which were there given out, and these games which
were there celebrated in honour of that deity ; and here
was likewise that famous statue of Jupiter, * made by
Phidias, which was accounted one of the wonders of the
world, and from which he obtained the name of Jupiter
Olympius.
It was about four hundred and forty years before this
time, that these games and exercises were at lirst insti-
tuted by one Hercules ; not the son of Jupiter and
Alcmena, so much celebrated by the Greek and Latin
poets, but one of the priests of Cybele called by that
name, who came into Greece from Ida, a mountain in
Phrygia, (whence he and his companions were called
Idad, Dactyli, and Corybantes,) and brought in many
superstitious rites with them. After the death of this
5 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. vi. c. 2.
b This statue of Jupiter is described by l'ausanias, in the fol-
lowing manner: — "He is made sitting on a throne of gold and
ivory, with a crown on his head, which seems to be made ol olive
branches. In his right hand he holds an image of victory, made
of ivory likewise, that has on its head-dress a crown of massy
gold ; and in his left a sceptre, made of all kinds of metals mixed
together, with an eagle on the top of it. His shoes and stockings
are all of gold, and the rest of the drapery is of the same metal,
adorned with figures of various animals, and a great number of
flower-de-luces. His throne is embellished with ivory, ebony,
gold, precious stones, and a multitude of embossed figures. At
the four feet, or pedestals of the throne, are four victories, and
two others at the feet of the statue. At the two feet, on the
foreside of the throne, on one hand, are the figures of sphinxes,
who are carrying on* some Theban youths; and on the other side,
are represented the figures of the children of Niobe, whom Apollo
and Diana shot to death with their arrows. Between the feet of
the throne is represented Theseus, and the rest of the heroes who
accompanied Hercules to the war against the Amazons, together
with several Athlete of diverse kinds ; and the place is all around
adorned with pictures, representing the labours of Hercules,
together with several others of the most renowned historical sub-
jects. On the upper part of the throne, on the one side, are en-
graven the Graces, and on the other the Hours, because, according
to the poets, both these were the daughters of Jupiter. On the
footstool of the statue are golden lions, and a representation of the
combat of Theseus with the Amazons ; and on a basis thereof
are innumerable golden figures, such as that of the sun going
into his chariot, of Jupiter and Juno, Mercuiy, Vesta, and
Venus, who has Cupid standing by her; of Apollo, Diana,
Minerva, Hercules, Amphitrite, Neptune, and the Moon, which
is here represented sitting upon a horse." This is the substance
of what l'ausanias says of this famous statue; but notwithstand-
ing that its workmanship was the wonder of all the ancients, and
the curiosity of seeing it might increase the number of those who
came to the Olympic games, yet Strabo finds great fault with it
for want of a due proportion, because it was of such a prodigious
bigness, that if it had stood upright, it must have made a hole
in the roof of the temple. — Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b.
vi. c. 2. in the notes.
4 Q
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Hercules, these games were discontinued for many
years, till, by advice from the oracle of Apollo, Iphitus
established them again ; even in the lifetime of Lycurgus,
who is nowhere said to have opposed them ; a and so
they continued until the time of Constantine the Great,
who, upon his profession of the Christian faith, first
slighted the ludi seculares, and afterwards all other
games, as monuments of pagan superstition ; so that
falling by degrees into disesteem, in the time of Theo-
dosius the Great, if not before, they were utterly unfre-
quented, and dwindled into nothing.
These games were used to be performed at the end of
every four years, and so every four years made an
Olympiad, and lasted for five days ; when the youth of
Greece contended for mastery in five sorts of exercises,
one for each day, namely, the crestus, or whirlbat, the
quoit, leaping, wrestling, and racing, either on foot or
horseback, or in chariots ; all which exercises were
thought so honourable, that even kings themselves did
not disdain to become competitors for the victory ; and
accordingly we find Pindar, the most celebrated poet in
those days, addressing his first Olympic to Hiero king
of Syracuse, for having won the prize in one of the
horse-races.
The prize, however, was not great ; it was no more
than a garland of palm or olive : but the victor was
treated with such tokens of respect and esteem, and was
attended by the people with such loud acclamations,
while he rode into the city in a coach through a breach
in the wall, which, upon this occasion, was made for his
more pompous entrance ; and while he was sure to have
the best of poets to celebrate his praise, and rank him
even among the gods, that to come oft* conqueror, and
be crowned in this place, was thought an honour not
inferior to that of a triumph in Rome ; and this the rather
because the inhabitants of Elis, who were the presidents
of these games, were so remarkably impartial in giving
sentence according to merit, that whoever was crowned
by their order and determination was always thought
justly to deserve it.
Thus, ' it appears, that the original use of these
Olympic games was to encourage activity of body ; but
in process of time, they came to be employed to a quite
different purpose, even to fix the chronology of the his-
tory of the Greeks, among whom b it grew a custom to
reckon by Olympiads ; for before that custom prevailed,
their historians were vastly negligent in fixing the date
1 Bedford's Scripture Chronology, b. vi. c. 2.
a Dr Hales gives the following account of the Olympiads,
which is probably correct, and is certainly more perspicuous than
that in the text. These celebrated games were originally in-
stituted in honour of Jupiter Olympius, by the Phrygian Pelops,
who settled in the Grecian peninsula, called from him Peleponne-
sus about B. C. 1350. They were repeated by the Theban
Hercules, about B. C. 1325, and, after along interruption, restor-
ed in part by Iphitus King of Elis, and celebrated at Olympia, on
the banks of the river Alpheus, B. C. 884, according to the most
probable account. However, the vulgar era of the Olympiads
did not commence till 108 years alter, July 19. B. C. 77(>. —
Halts' Analysis, vol. i. p. 135, second edition. — En.
b It is to be observed, however, that it was not from the first
Olympiad, that they began their computation, but from the 27th,
when Choncbus, a native of Elis, was victor, because there was
no register kept of the preceding Olympiads; and therefore the
commencement of this era was an hundred and eight years after
the establishment of the games which occasioned it. — Colonel's
Dictionary under the word Ulympiad.
of such transactions as they related. Varro, the most
learned person among the Romans, both for history and
antiquity, reckon three sorts of times. The first from
the beginning of mankind to the first flood, which he
calls uncertain, because no account is given of it by any
heathen writer. The second, from the flood to the first
Olympiad, which he calls fabulous, because many strange
stories are reported of the gods and demigods in those
times, but without any method or order. The third, from
the first Olympiad to his time, which he calls historical,
because thenceforward all transactions were laid in their
proper places ; but before the institution of this method
of computation, " every thing was confused in the
Grecian history," as Eusebius 2 tells us, " and 3 no one
thing written with any tolerable exactness."
In the eleventh year of Jotham, c king of Judah, which
was the twelfth of Pekah king of Israel, another famous
era commenced, and was in use throughout all the
empire, upon the building of the city of Rome, the his-
tory of which is as follows.
After the destruction of Troy, 4 ./Eneas landing in
Italy, was at first opposed by Latinus, king of the La-
tins, or aborigines ; but being overcome in battle by the
Trojans, Latinus made peace with their leader, and per-
mitted him and his men, to live independent in his king-
dom. Enraged at this treatment, Turnus king of the
Rutuli, fomented a fresh war against J^neas ; but in the
conclusion, he was slain in single combat by the Trojan
chief, and his mistress Lavinia, who was the occasion of
all this contention, was, by her father Latinus, given to
the conqueror for a wife. ./Eneas, it must be observed,
had another son by a former wife, named Creusa, who
was lost in the siege of Troy ; and after his death, his
relict Lavinia, being great with child, and fearing the
power of Ascanius, for that was his name, fled into the
woods, and was there delivered of a son, who, for that
reason, was called Sylvius, and because he was born
after his father's funeral, was likewise called Posthumus.
It was not long, however, before the people began to
express their resentment of this hard usage of Lavinia,
so that Ascanius was obliged to recall her ; and to avoid
all occasions of disagreement for the future, he left to
her and her son Sylvius, the city of Lavinia, which
/Eneas had built, and called after her name, whilst him-
self removed to Alba Longa, a city of his own erecting
and where he lived for the remainder of his days, highly
delighted with the situation of the place.
After the death of Ascanius, there happened a conten-
tion between this Sylvius the son of ./Eneas, and lulus
2 Africanus, and Euseb. Prsep. Evan. b. x. c. 10.
3 Justin Martyr's Exhortation to the Greeks.
4 Sir Walter Raleigh's History, b. ii. c. 24. s. 4.
c Of the time when this city was built, there are two accounts,
the Varronian and the Capitolian. The Varronian places it in
the year before, but the Capitolian in this year, and yet they may
both be easily reconciled; for as it was customary in those times,
when they began to build a city, to go round it with a plough,
and make a furrow where the walls were to be built, but leave a
void space for the gates; the year before they might thus mark
out the city, dig the foundation of the walls, and provide stones,
timber, and other materials, and this year lay the foundation ;
so that the computation might easily begin from either year,
though the Capitolian is the general account. — Bedford's Scrip-
lure Chronology, b. vi. c. 2. [Dr Hales fixes the date of the
building of Home as B. C. 753; which makes the fourth year of
Jotham. See tabic at the end of this section.] — Ed.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING
A. M. 33W. A. C.GIO; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
t!ie son of Ascanius, about the succession to the king-
dom; but as the relations of Lavinia had the more pre-
valent interest in the country, the matter was so com
promised that lulus was made high priest, and Sylvius
king", in whose family the kingdom continued for several
generations, and every succeeding prince was named
Sylvius.
Of this race was Latinus the Second, grandson to
Sylvius, who built several towns on the borders of
Latium ; and their inhabitants, standing much upon the
honour of their original, were afterwards called Prisci
Latini. Of this race was Tiberinus, who, as some say,
was drowned in the Tiber, and from that unhappy acci-
dent gave name to the river. Of this race was Aventinus,
who, by being' buried in the place, gave name to one of
the mountains on which Rome was built ; and of this race
was Procas, who, after his death, left his two sons,
Numitor and Amulius, to reign alternately every year ;
but Amulius the younger deposed Numitor, slew his son
jKgisthus, and to cut on*' the whole race, compelled his
daughter Ilia to enter into a vow of perpetual virginity,
by becoming- a priestess to the goddess Vesta. Her vow
however did not last long; for a certain soldier found
means to get her with child, but to cover the disgrace, a
report was raised, that all this was done by Mars, the
god of war. At length she was delivered of two sons,
Romulus and Remus, whom their uncle Amulius com-
manded to be drowned, and their mother to be buried
alive, as being" the punishment which the law indicted,
when vestal virgins had violated their chastity.
Whether the mother underwent this punishment, or, as
some will have it, upon the entreaty of Anlho, the
daughter of Amulius, obtained her pardon, it is certain
that the two children were thrown into the Tiber, in order
to be drowned ; but as the stream was low, and much
mud was in the place, a certain woman, named Lupa,
found them before they were dead, and having suckled
them for some time, from whence the story of their being-
nursed by a she-wolf took its rise, brought them at
length to Faustulus, the king's shepherd, who recom-
mended them to the care of his wife Laurentia, and so
they were both preserved.
As soon as they came to a proper age, they lived at
first in the capacity of shepherds ; but being" naturally
of a brave and martial temper, they applied themselves,
not only to the business of hunting" wild beasts, but of
clearing the country likewise of such gangs of robbers,
as came to plunder and infest it ; so that, in a short
time, the fame of their adventures made multitudes of
the neighbouring youth, who were of the like complexion,
resort unto them. Enraged at their proceedings, a
strong- company of these robbers set upon them at a cer-
tain time, and though Romulus defended himself against
their attack, took Remus prisoner, and pretending that
he had plundered the estate of his grandfather Numitor,
delivered him to king" Amulius, who sent him to his bro-
ther Numitor, to be executed for the fact.
When Remus was brought before Numitor, lie behaved
with such courage and intrepidity, that he could not but
suspect something" uncommon in him ; and thereupon
hearing- that he had another brother, and that they were
twins, and comparing their age with the time when his
daughter Ilia's two children were exposed, he began to
think, that these, without doubt, must be the boys whom
OP THE TEMPLE, &c. 675
4S25. A. C. 58G, 1 KINfiS viii. TO THE END OK 2 CHRON,
some good providence had wonderfully preserved ; and,
being- confirmed in his opinion by the information of
Faustulus, who had brought them up, he entered into a
conspiracy with them, against his brother Amulius, where-
in it was agreed, that Romulus with his men should pri-
vately enter the city, and being joined with such forces
as Remus could muster up in Numitor's family, should,
all on a sudden, attack the palace, and seize the king.
The plot succeeded. Amulius was taken and killed;
and after that Numitor had congratulated his grandsons
upon their success, he ascended the rostrum, and in a
full assembly of people, declared how wicked and in-
human his brother Amulius had been; that these were
his two grandchildren; how they were born, and bred
up, and came to be discovered ; and that by their con-
trivance it was that the tyrant was taken off; where-
upon the people immediately came to a resolution, that
Numitor should be their king, and that, next under him,
Romulus and Remus should be held in the greatest
veneration.
As soon as these matters were settled and adjusted,
the two young princes (to perpetuate the memory of their
preservation) resolved to build a city upon the spot
where they had been nourished and brought up ; and
several of the neighbouring" people, as well as their own
men, came in to their assistance. It was not much
doubted, but that this new city would, in process of time,
outvie all the other towns in Italy ; but then, as the two
brothers were twins, and it was not well known which
was the elder, they agreed to determine, by the flight of
birds who should give the name to the city, and upon
the grandfather Numitor's decease, which of them should
reign first.
To this purpose they went each of them to the top of
an hill. Romulus ascended what was afterwards called
Palatums, and Remus Aventinus, from whence he disco-
vered six vultures first; but his brother afterwards saw
twelve, so that the dispute was never the nearer an end.
Remus laid claim to the sovereignty, because he saw the
first vultures, and Romulus because he saw the most ;
insomuch that from words proceeding- to blows, Remus
was unhappily slain by his brother, and, in his death, '
put an end to the controversy.
When the city was built, Romulus called it Roma,
which, in the Greek tongue, signified strength, and not
by his own name Romula, because it was a diminutive.
As the city, however, when finished, had not a sufficient
stock of inhabitants, he found out an expedient to
remedy this defect, by making a neighbouring grove an
asylum or place of refuge, to all malefactors and dis-
contented persons ; so that, in a short time, vast num-
bers of all nations, that could not live in their own
country with safety fled hither for protection, and peopled
the city. These inhabitants however could last but for one
age, because they were most of them men, and when they
desired to marry with their neighbours, were rejected
1 Florus makes the occasion of the death of Remus to he ano-
ther matter : for having observed that Romulus, hy the greater
number of the vultures which he saw, had got the better, and
built his city, with good hopes that it would he remarkable for
warlike affairs, because those birds were accounted birds of prey;
ere the walls were raised to any great height, his brother Remus
made a jest of them ; which exasperated the other to that degree,
that he ordered him immediately to lie slain,
076
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI.
A. M. 3394. A. C. G10; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4325. A. C. 58G. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
with scorn ; so that they were under a necessity to get
themselves wives by some stratagem or other. To this
purpose Romulus proclaimed a feast, and public games,
in the honour of Neptune, to be celebrated near his new
city; and when the virgins from every quarter came thither
to see .and divert themselves, upon a signal given, they
were all seized by force, carried into the city and com-
pelled to become wives to those that wanted them. Ex-
asperated with this base treatment, the neighbouring-
people immediately prepared for war, but are repulsed
with loss by the .Romans ; till the Sabines, who were their
most formidable enemy, and principally concerned in
the late affront, marched against them, and, under the
command of their king-, Tatius, were just upon giving-
them a total defeat; when their daughters, who were now
become wives to the Romans, ran between the two armies,
and with their hair torn, and all other indications of sor-
row, acquainted their parents that they had been used
civilly, and that, if matters were carried to such extremi-
ties, nothing could be expected on their side but ruin and
destruction. Hereupon their parents, being overcome
by their prayers, and tears, and arguments, laid aside
all angry resentment, and entered into a treaty with their
sons-in-law, which succeeded so well, that several of them
left their ancient habitations, and came with all their sub-
stance, and lived in Rome. From so small abeginning
did this city gradually increase to be the scat of the wes-
tern empire, and the mistress of the then known world !
One very remarkable event more, which happened the
very next year after the building of Rome, namely, in
the twelfth year of Jotham king of Judah, and the thir-
teenth of Pekah king of Israel, was the dissolution of
the Assyrian monarchy upon the death of Sardanapalus,
as several heathen authors have thus related it. This
emperor exceeded all his predecessors, in sloth and vo-
luptuousness. He clothed himself in women's attire ;
he painted his face, and decked his body more like a
strumpet than a king ; he affected an effeminate voice ;
spun fine wool and purple among his concubines, and
proceeded to such a degree of luxury andshamelessness,
that he wrote verses in commemoration of his dissolute
manner of life, and commanded, after his death, to have
them inscribed on his tomb.
The kings of the east seldom appeared in public : but
Sardanapalus was never seen by any, but such only as
were either assistants or associates in his lasciviousness •
until Arbaces, the general of the Median forces, bribed
one of his eunuch?, by giving him a golden cup, to be
introduced into his presence ; where, seeing his vile de-
generate behaviour, he began to think it a disparagement,
that so many brave and gallant men should be under the
dominion of a worthless wretch, that affected to be a
spinster rather than a king. This he communicated to
his friends and acquaintances, to the governors of seve-
ral provinces, but more especially to Belesis, the gover-
nor of Babylon, witli whom he entered into a close con-
federacy to depose the present emperor, and to divide
his dominions between them, whereof Belesis was to
have Babylon, Chaldea, and Arabia, and himself all
the rest.
1 When matters were thus agreed on, Arbaces endea-
voured, by all sorts of arts and insinuations, to make
1 Bedford's Scripture History, b. vi. c. 2.
himself acceptable to the Medes ; to persuade them to
invade the Assyrian empire, and, in hopes of regaining
their liberty, to draw the Persians into the like confe-
deracy. On the other hand, Belesis prevailed with the
Babylonians to revolt, and gained the king of Arabia,
with whom he had a very great intimacy, to his party ; so
that, when all their forces were joined together, the army
is said to have consisted of 400,000 men.
Sardanapalus, seeing such a strong confederacy and
combination of arms against him, thought it high time to
shake off his sloth ; and having drawn forth the forces
of the rest of the provinces, he engaged the enemy thrice,
and as many times defeated them. In the first action
he pursued them to the mountains, seventy furlongs be-
yond Nineveh. In the second he so defeated them, that
they were all upon the point of returning home, had not
Belesis, who was a Babylonish priest, and pretended to
great skill in astrology ° and divination, given them
a Whatever skill he might pretend to in astrology, it is certain
that he was an excellent astronomer, and when he came to
Babylon, and was made emperor there, set himself to rectify the
Chaldean year, which seems to have stood unaltered from the
flood till that time. The ancient year of the Chaldeans consisted
of 360 days, or of twelve months, with thirty days to each month ;
but as this was five days and a quarter less than the revolution of
the sun to the same point of the equinox, the Egyptians, in the
time of Thoth, their second king, and grandson of Ham, added
five days to the year, so that every year consisted exactly of 365
days. But then, in four years there was one day less than in so
many Julian years, which in a great length of time, namely, in
1460 years, made the beginning of the year run through all the
seasons. To prevent this inconsistency, the Chaldeans, about
every six years, added to their year of 360 days an intcrcalaiy
month, which made their years unequal; and therefore Belesis,
being well acquainted with the Egyptian astronomers, and find-
ing that their year was equal, though not absolutely perfect, re-
duced the Babylonian year to the same standard, that is, he made
it consist of 365 days, which were divided into twelve months,
of thirty days each, and five days, which were added at the end
of the year. But then, because, in each of these years there
would be a redundant quarter of a day, and in four years,
one whole day, instead of the bissextile day, as it is in the Julian
computation, he began every fourth year a day sooner. This al-
teration he ordered to begin in the first year of his reign, and
from thence it was called "the famous era of Nabonassar,"
for so Belesis was likewise named, which continued in Egypt to
the death of Anthony and Cleopatra, and was afterwards in use
among the mathematicians and astronomers to the time of Ptole-
my, who made his canon by this account, which is justly esteemed
the surest and most useful guide of ancient chronology, where the
sacred historians are silent. — Bedford's Scrip. Chron. b. vi. c. 2.
JI'Mstons Theory, b. ii.; and Chron. of the Old Testament, p.
12. [It is not probable that the Chaldean astronomers, in whose
country must have been preserved much of the learning of the an-
tediluvian world, were under the necessity of borrowing any part
of their science from the Egyptians, whose ancestors, at their first
emigration from Babylonia, must have carried with them from that
country the rudiments at least of all their own science. Accord-
ingly the account of the origin of the famous era of Nabonassar,
which Syncellus has given us, from the earliest writers on Chal-
dean history and antiquities, differs considerably from this.
" Nabonassar," says he, as quoted by Dr Hales, " having col-
lected the acts of his predecessors, destroyed them, in order that
the computation of the reigns of the Chaldean kings might be
made from himself." Such was the origin of the era of Nabonas-
sar, winch that monarch made to begin, with his own reign, on
the 26th day of February, B. C. 747, and the year employed in
it, was the movable year of twelve equal months of thirty days
each, to which were added five supernumerary days. This year,
which had been in common use among the Chaldeans, Egyptians,
Armenians, Persians, and other oriental nations, from time
immemorial, ran through all the seasons in the course of 1461
years, which was therefore considered as the grand Nabonassa-
rian period or annus magnus of the Chaldean astronomers, for
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE, &c.
677
A. M. 3394. A. C. 610; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 1825. A. C. 58G. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
assurance, that God would at last reward their labours
with success. In the third engagement Arbaces himself
was wounded, and his army routed, and pursued as far
as the mountains of Babylon ; so that the chief officers
were for dispersing and shifting for themselves, when
Belesis gave them once more assurance, that if they
would but continue together for live days longer, every
thing in that time would have a different turn.
With much entreaty was the army prevailed on not to
disperse, when suddenly news was brought, that a great
enforcement was coming from Bactria to join the king,
so that the only game which Arbaces had to play was, to
march against them, and by all means imaginable, pre-
vail with them to revolt; wherein he succeeded beyond
all men's hopes and expectations, and so gave another
turn to the face of allairs.
Sardanapalus, in the mean time, knowing nothing of
this, and being elated with his repeated successes, was
indulging his sloth and luxury, and preparing beasts for
sacrifice, with plenty of wine, and other things necessary
to feast and entertain his soldiers ; when Arbaces, having
intelligence by deserters in what condition his army lay,
fearless of any foe, and overcome already with surfeiting
and drunkenness, broke into their camp by night, and,
having made a terrible slaughter of most of them, forced
the rest into the city,
The king, after this defeat, took upon him the defence
of the place, and committed the charge of the army to
Salamenus, the queen's brother ; but Salamenus was
worsted in two pitched battles, one in the open field,
and the other before the walls of Nineveh, where himself
was slain, and most of his men cut to pieces ; so that all
the resource which Sardanapalus had, was to sustain the
siege as long as he could, until the succours, which he
had sent for out of all his provinces, should come to his
assistance ; and this he had some hopes of being able to
do, because there was an ancient prophecy, " that Nine-
veh never could be taken by force, until the river became
its enemy."
Arbaces, on the other hand, was much encouraged by
his successes, and carried on the siege with the utmost
vigour ; but the prodigious strength of the walls, which
were an hundred feet high, and so very broad, that three
chariots might go .abreast upon them, and the vast plenty
of all manner of stores and provisions, necessary for a
long defence, hindered him from making any consider-
able progress.
Thus two years were spent, without any prospect of
relief on the one side, or of taking the town on the other.
In the third year, a continued fall of rains made the
Tygris overflow to such a degree, that coming into the
much the same reason that 4714 has been considered as the grand
Julian period by the astronomers of modern Europe. Hence the
astronomical era of Nalionassar, or annus magnus of the Chal-
deans, commenced on the 28th day of March, B. C. 867, near
120 years before the Historic era; and the king and his counsel-
lors were induced to fix on that year and day for the commence-
ment of their grand or astronomical period, because there was a
synchronism of the new moon and venial equinox on that day,
which was likewise the beginning of the Chaldean year. It is,
however, the historical era that was in common use among
chronologers ; and its freedom from intercalation rendering it pe-
culiarly convenient for astronomical calculations, it was adopted by
the early Greek astronomers Timachares and Hipparchus, and by
Ptolemy and others of the Alexandrian school in Egypt.]— Ilulcs's
Analysis, vol. i. p. 155, second edition.^ — Ed.
city, it tore along with it twenty fathoms of the wall
which Sardanapalus concluding to be the accomplishment
of the oracle, because by this means the river was appar-
ently become an enemy to the city, he grew quite dispirit-
ed, and gave up all for lost. However, to prevent his
falling into the hands of the enemy, he caused a large pile
of wood a to be made in the court of his palace, and there
heaping up together all his gold, silver, and royal apparel,
and having enclosed his eunuchs and concubines in the
midst of it, ordered it to be set on fire, and so burned him-
self and them together. The only action wherein ' those
historians, who make no mention of his victories, repre-
sent him as a valiant man ! Arbaces, being informed of
this, inarched his army through the breach of the Avail,
and took the city. After this he rewarded his followers
according to their merit ; made Belesis governor of
Babylonia, Chaldea, and Arabia, according to their
compact, and took the rest of the empire to himself:
which put an end to the Assyrian monarchy, after it had
governed all Asia 2 above thirteen hundred years, and,
according to the vision which Daniel 3 had of it, in its
conquests had been as swift as an eagle, but now its
wings were plucked. *
1 Justin, b. i. and Athenaus, b. xii. c. 12. 2 Justin, b. i.
3 Dan. vii. 4.
a Concerning this pile, Athenaus informs us that it was
four hundred feet high, upon which he placed one hundred and
fifty golden beds, and as many golden tables ; that he had thrown
into it some millions of talents of gold and silver, besides the
richest furniture of purple, and the finest garments ; and that
this pile was fifteen days in burning. To which Diodorus adds,
that Belesis, by craft, obtained leave of Arbaces to carry oiFthe
ashes, under pretence of building an altar with them at Babylon,
by which means he gained an immense treasure. But all this
looks more like a romance than a true story. — Bedford's Scrip-
ture Chronology, b. vi. c. 2. in the notes.
b The following is Dr Hales's table of this period, confessedly
the most difficult part of sacred chronology, and the account of
the principles on which he has harmonized the different reigns,
in his own words: —
From the revolt of the Ten Tribes, to the destruction of
Jerusalem. 404 years.
KINGS OF JUDAH. KINGS OF ISRAEL.
Rehoboam
Abijah . . .
Asa ....
Jehosaphat . .
Jehoram, or Joram
Ahaziah . . .
Q. Athaliah . .
Joash, or Jehoash
Amaziah . .
Interregnum
Uzziah, or Azariah
Jotham
Ahaz ....
Ilezekiah
Manasseh
Amon . . .
Josiah . . .
Jehoahaz, 3 m.
Jehoiakim
Jehoiachin, 3 m.
Zedekiah . . .
Y. B.C.
17 990
3 973
41 970
25 9:29
8 904
1 896
6 895
40 889
29 849
11 820
52 809
16 757
16 741
29 725
55 696
2 641
31 639
11 COS
11 597
1. Jeroboam
2. Nadab
3. Baasha
4.Ela . .
Y. B.C.
. . 22 990
. . 2 96S
(24) 23 966
(2) 1 943
5.Zimii&Omri (12) 11 942
6. Ahab .... 22 931
7. Ahaziah ... 2 909
8. Jehoram, or Joram 12 907
9
Jehu . . . .
28
895
10
Jehoahaz .
17 867
11
Jehoash, or Joash
16
850
1:.'
Jeroboam II.
41
834
1st Interregnum
22
793
13.Zechariah&Shallum 1
771
14
Menahem . .
10 770
lfi
Pekahiah . . .
2
760
16.
Pekah . . . .
20
75S
2d Interregnum
10
738
17.
Hoshea r . .
9 728
Samaria taken
271
719
Jerusalem taken 404 586
This period has been hitherto considered as the Gordian knot of
sacred chronology ; the intricacy of which, all the chronologers
have complained of, but none have been able to unravel. The
difficulty of harmonizing the reigns of the kings of Judah and
Isiael together, has principally arisen; 1. from the discordance
678
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
[Book VI.
A. M. 3331. A. C. G10; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4925. A. C. 586. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON.
of some of the correspondences in the years of their respective
reigns, with the direct lengths of those reigns; and 2. from not
critically determining the duration of the two interregnums or
vacancies, in the succession of the latter kings, so as to make
them correspond with the former throughout. The whole is
In re adjusted and harmonized, and it is hoped, satisfactorily,
upon the following principles : — 1. The standard of the reigns of
the kin«s of Judah is considered as correct: for it is verified by
the concurrence of the books of Kings and Chronicles, the latter
relating especially to the kings of Judah, and of Josephus, Abul-
fara<*i, and Eutychius. The incorrectness, therefore, complained
of, must be confined to the latter series ; and must be remedied,
by reducing it to the former. 2. The two series of reigns agree
in three points of time : 1. The reigns of Rehoboam and Jero-
boam began together, or in the same year, (1 Kings xii. 1 — 20;
2 Chron. x. 1—19;) as did also, 2. The reigns of queen Atha-
lia.li and of Jehu, who slew the two kings of Judah and Israel,
Ahaziah and Jehoram, the same day, (2 Kings ix. 24 — 27;)
and, 3. Samaria was taken by the Assyrians in the ninth year of
Hoshea king of Israel, and in the sixth year of Hezekiah king of
Judah, (2 Kings xviii. 10.) 3. Hence it necessarily follows,
1. That the first six reigns in Judah must be equal in length to
the first eight in Israel; and also, 2. That the next seven in
Judah, to the sixth of Hezekiah, including one interregnum, must
be equal to the remainder in Israel, including two interregnums.
4. But upon comparing the former together, it appears that the
first six of Judah amount to ninety-five years ; whereas, the first
eight of Israel amount to ninety-eight years, according to the
table of reigus in Scripture. Consequently, three years must be
retrenched from the latter, to reduce them to an equality with
the former. Accordingly, one year is here subtracted from each
of the reigns of Baasha, Ela, and Zimri, which are thereby re-
duced from current,* to complete years. And this reduction is
warranted by the correspondences : for Baasha began to reign in
the third year of Asa king of Judah, (1 Kings xv. 33;) and his
son Ela, in the twenty-sixth of Asa, (1 Kings xvi. 8,) which
gives the reign of Baasha, 26 — 3=23 years complete. Ela was
slain in the twenty-seventh of Asa, (1 Kings xvi. 10 ;) he reigned,
therefore, only 27 — 26=1 year complete. And Zimri and Omri
reigned in succession, from the twenty-seventh to the thirty-eighth
of Asa, (1 Kings xvi. 29;) or only 38 — 27=11 years complete.
And as their reigns were all included in the one reign of Asa,
and therefore more likely to be correctly referred thereto, this is
a reason why these three reigns should be selected for reduction,
rather than the succeeding or the preceding. 5. Upon compar-
ing the latter together, it appears that there was one interregnum
in the kingdom of Judah, of eleven years, and two in Israel of
twenty-two years, and often years; which are requisite in both,
to equalize the two periods together, of one hundred and seventy-
six years each ; counting them from the joint accession of queen
Athaliah and Jehu, to the sixth of Hezekiah, and capture of
Samaria, in the same year. That the lengths of these interreg-
nums are rightly assigned, will appear from the correspondences
of reigns. 1. Amaziah king of Judah, survived the death of
Jehoash king of Israel, fifteen years; he died, therefore, about
the sixteenth year of his son Jeroboam II. (2 Kings xiv. 17; 2
Chron. xxv. 25;) but Azariah, or Uzziah, did not begin to reign
* That the reigns in these lists are all computed, in current time, ac-
cording to the popular mode of computation in tlie east, and every where,
may further be collected from that of Zedekiah, eleven years; which
actually waa only ten years, four months, ami eight days, supposing the
tir-t year to have been complete. Compare 2 Kings .\.\iv. 18, with xxv
2—1.
until the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam II. (2 Kings xv 1 ;
2 Chron. xxvi. 1;) therefore, fiom the death of Amaziah to the
succession of his son Uzziah, there was an interregnum of 27 —
16=11 years. 2. Jeroboam II. began to reign in the fifteenth
year of Amaziah, king of Judah, and reigned forty-one years,
(2 Kings xiv. 23 ;) he died, therefore, in the sixteenth year of
Uzziah, king of Judah; but Zechariah, his son, did not succeed
him till the thirty-eighth of Uzziah, (2 Kings xv. 8;) conse-
quently, the first interregnum in Israel lasted 38 — 16=22
years. 3. Pekah, king of Israel, began to reign in the fifty- '
second of Uzziah, (2 Kings xv. 27; 2 Chron. xxvi. 3;) and
in the twentieth year of his reign was slain by Hoshea, (2 Chron.
xv. 30,) in the third year of the reign of Ahaz king of Judah,
(2 Kings xvi. 1 ;) but Hoshea did not begin to reign till the
twelfth year of Ahaz, (2 Kings xvii. 1.) or the thirteenth cur-
rent, (2 Kings xviii. 10;) consequently, the second interregnum
in Israel lasted 13 — 3=10 years. 6. A curious and satisfactory
confirmation of this adjustment of the reigns of the kings of
Israel, is furnished by Josephus, who reckons their amount, from
the revolt of the ten tribes, to the extinction of that kingdom,
210 years, (Ant. ix. 14, 1;) and if, from the whole corrected
amount, 271 years, we deduct the two interregnums, 32 years,
the remainder, 239 years, complete, or 240 current, gives the
lengths of the reigns alone. This furnishes a decisive proof of
his great skill as a chronologer, in developing the length of this
intricate and perplexed period. That he was no stranger to the
chasm of thirty-two years in Israel, we may infer from his taking
into account the eleven years of interregnum in Judah, necessary
to complete his amount of the whole period, from the foundation
to the destruction of the temple, 441 years. 7. We are now
competent to detect some errors that have crept into the corres-
pondences of reigns ; and which have hitherto puzzled and per-
plexed chronologers, and prevented them from critically harmon-
izing the two series; not being able to distinguish the genuine
from the spurious numbers.
1. ' Jehoshaphat began to reign over Judah in the fourth year
of Ahab,' (1 Kings xxi. 41.) It should be the second.
2. ' Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel in
the seventeenth of Jehoshaphat,' (1 Kings xxii. 51.) It should
be the twentieth of Jehoshaphat.
3. ' Jehoram, the son of Ahaziah, began to reign over Israel
in the second year of Jehoram, sou of Jehoshaphat,' (2 Kings i.
17.) It should be in the twenty-second year of Jehoshaphat; as
also, where it is again incorrectly stated, in the eighteenth, (2
Kings iii. 1.)
4. ' Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, began to reign over
Judah, in the fifth year of the reign of Joram, the [grand] son
of Ahab,' (2 Kings viii. 16.) It should be the fifth year from the
death of Ahab ; or the third year of Joram's reign. ' Jehoshaphat
being then king of Judah,' is an anachronism, and an interpola-
tion in the Masorite text.
5. ' Jehoash began to reign over Israel in the thirty-seventh
year of Joash, king of Judah,' (2 Kings xiii. 10.) It should be
the thirty-ninth year ; as in the accurate Aldine edition of the
Greek Septuagint..
6. The correspondences by which the interregnum in Judah
was collected, are incorrect; they should be 25 — 14=11 years.
7. ' Hoshea slew Pekah king of Israel, in the twentieth year
of Jotham,' (2 Kings xv. 30.) But Jotham reigned only sixteen
years, (2 Kings xv. 33 ) It should be in the third year of Ahaz,
as collected from 2 Kings xvi. 1. — Ed.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK VII.
CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THINGS FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY TO THE BIRTH OF CHRIST,
IN ALL 588 YEARS,— ACCORDING TO DR HALES 586.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
The two methods by which Scripture gives an account
of the events by which the great plan of redeeming
mercy has been carried on, are history and prophecy.
Where Scripture history fails, prophecy takes place; so j
that the account is carried on, and the chain is not
broken, till we come to the very last link of it in the
consummation of all things.
The period, accordingly, on which we are now enter-
ing, though less the subject of Scripture history than
most of the preceding, is more the subject of prophecy
than the events of the former periods. It was the will
of God that the spirit of prophecy should cease ; but
before that took place, an outline of the history of events
till the coming of Christ was given in the prophecies
which were recorded in Scripture. It is also deserving
of notice, that, whereas the historical notices of the pre-
ceding periods in profane history are scanty and im-
perfect, they are, in regard to this period, authentic
and full.
Nor can we fail to notice the number and magnitude
of the revolutions which, from this era, took place among
the nations of the earth, preparatory to the coming of
Christ. The king of Babylon is represented in Scrip-
ture as overturning the world ; but the Babylonish em-
pire was overthrown by Cyrus, who founded the Persian
empire in its room, and which greatly surpassed it in
extent and glory. But this also was overthrown by
Alexander, who established the Grecian empire on its |
ruins ; and this in its turn was destined to be subverted
by the Romans, whose empire surpassed all that had
preceded it in extent and dominion. These mighty re-
volutions were designed by the sovereign Ruler of the
universe, to prepare the world for the coming of Christ.
1 ' I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, until he come
whose right it is, and I will give it him.' 2 ' For thus
saith the Lord of hosts, I will shake the heavens and
the earth, and the sea, and the dry land ; and I will
shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall
come, and I will till this house with glory, saith the
Lord of hosts.' These mighty empires were suffered
thus to overthrow and destroy one another, to show the
instability and vanity of all earthly power and greatness ;
which served as a foil to set forth the glory of Messiah's
kingdom, which shall never be destroyed. This was
the kingdom which the God of heaven was to set up ; —
a kingdom that shall not be left to other people, but
which shall break in pieces and consume all these king-
doms, and shall stand for ever. 3
How remarkable was the preservation of the church
amid those overturnings of the kingdoms of the world !
It is indeed wonderful that the chosen people should
have been preserved for five or six hundred years, while
the earth was, as it were, rent in pieces ; especially
considering that the land of Judea, the chief place of
the church's residence, lay in the midst of the contending
nations, and was very much the object of the envy and
hatred of all the heathen nations.
The first thing that offers itself to our observation in
the history of this period, is the captivity of the Jews in
Babylon. They were often, in the time of the judges,
brought under the dominion of their enemies ; but there
had never been any such thing as destroying the sanc-
tuary and city of Jerusalem, and all the towns and
villages of the land, and carrying the whole body of the
people into a distant country. Vet, the great plan of
redeeming love and mercy was promoted by this dis-
pensation ; for it had the effect of curing the nation of
their tendency to idolatry. This was a remarkable and
wonderful change in that people, and what directly
promoted the work of redemption. It also tended to
prepare the way for the coming of the Redeemer, by
diminishing the glory of the Jewish dispensation. In
the language of prophecy 2 it removed the crown and
diadem, that it might be no more, till he should come,
whose right it was. The Jews henceforward were always
dependent on the governing power of other nations,
that is, during the space of near six hundred years, with
the exception of a short interval. They were, besides,
' Ezek. xxi. 27.
8 Ilaggai ii. 6, 7.
Dan. ii. 44.
* Ezek. xxi. 26.
680
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Took VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OK. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7.— xlv.— DANIE Land EZRA i — v.
by the captivity into Babylon dispersed over the world j representation of his offices, and to the arrival of the
before the coming- of Messiah, — a circumstance which period suitable for the accomplishment of his work,
tended greatly to promote the kingdom of Christ. | The prophets who were successively raised up bore
Though Cyrus gave them liberty to return to their own testimony concerning him ; and their power of eloquent
land, many of them never returned, but were scattered and of sublime description never rose so high, as when
abroad, and continued to dwe.ll among the nations. The setting forth the dignity of his person, the efficacy of his
effect of this dispersion was the raising of a general work, and the glories of his kingdom. At length the
expectation of the Messiah — the birth of a glorious
person in Judea, who should reign over the world in
peace and righteousness. It is unnecessary to say, how
much this general dispersion of the Jews contributed to
the general and rapid promulgation of the gospel.
It was during the captivity that Ezekiel and Daniel
greatly enlarged the canon of Scripture. To each of
these prophets Christ appeared in the form of that nature
which he was afterwards to assume. These two prophets,
in many respects, were more particular concerning the
coming of Christ, and his glorious kingdom, than any of
the prophets had been before. Daniel mentions the
time in which Messiah should come. Thus does gospel
light increase the nearer we approach to the dawn of the
Sun of righteousness.
But Babylon itself, into which the Jews had been car-
ried captive, was overthrown by Cyrus. Its destruction
was brought about in such a manner, as wonderfully to
show the hand of God, and to fulfil his word by his pro-
phets. That great city was destroyed after it had stood
about seventeen hundred years. The Jews were in con-
sequence permitted to return to their own land, and to
rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. This return of the
Jews from Babylonish captivity is, next to the redemp-
tion out of Egypt, the most remarkable of all the Old
Testament redemptions, and most insisted on in Scrip-
ture, as a type of the redemption of man from the
dominion of sin and Satan. Their return was a remark-
able dispensation of providence, inasmuch as Cyrus, the
main instrument by whom it was effected, was a heathen
prince, who gave them liberty not only to rebuild the
city and the temple, but to receive the silver and gold
which were requisite for their undertaking. Afterwards
God inclined the heart of Darius to further the building
of the temple with his own tribute money, and by com-
manding the Samaritans, who had been striving to
hinder them, to help without fail, by furnishing them
with all that they needed in order to it. 1 God inclined
the heart of Artaxerxes, another king of Persia, to pro-
mote the work of preserving the state of the Jews, by
his ample commission to Ezra; helping them abundantly
with silver and gold of his own bounty, and offerino
more as should be needful, out of the king's treasure-
house. In the prophecy of Daniel, this is called the
decree for restoring and building Jerusalem; hence the
seventy weeks are dated.
It was during this period that Ezra added to the
canon of Scripture, and that the canon of the Old Testa-
ment was completed and sealed by Malachi. Soon after
this, the spirit of prophecy ceased till the appearing of
the great Prophet, who came a light to lighten the
Gentiles, and to be the glory of his people Israel.
The events, characters, and dispensations, which the
history of the patriarchal and Mosaic economies re-
cords, were made subservient to the Redeemer, — to the
Divine Redeemer, for whom this preparation had been
made, appeared, and justified by the works which he
performed, and the redemption which he wrought out,
the light in which poetry, history, and prophecy, had
held him forth. His glory was beheld as the glory of
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Ezra
SECT. I .
CHAP. I. — From the Captivity to the Death of Cyrus.
THE HISTORY.
After the return of Nebuchadnezzar and his victorious
army to Babylon, all those Jews who, for fear of him,
had taken refuge among neighbouring nations, or had
hid themselves in the fields and deserts of their own
country, hearing that Gedaliah was made governor of the
land, resorted to him at Mizpah, a where he set up his
residence. Among these were Johanan and Jonathan,
the sons of Kereah, and Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah,
with divers others : but Ishmael came to him out of a
treacherous intent only ; for being of the blood-royal,
he reckoned to make himself king of Judea, now that
the Chaldeans were gone, and to that purpose had form-
ed a conspiracy to kill Gedaliah, and seize on the
government, wherein Baalis, J king of the Ammonites,
was confederate with him.
a In the history of Jacob we lead, that after a stay of several
years at Haran, making his escape from thence, he was overtaken
by Laban, his father-in-law, in a mountainous tract, which was
afterwards called Gilead, that is, au heap of stones, as also
Mispah, that is, a watch tower, because, at the covenant which
was made between Laban and him, an heap of stones was gather-
ed to remain a monument of it, and upon that occasion Laban's
expressions are these: — ' The Lord watch between me and thee,
when we are absent one from another. If thou wilt afflict my
daughters, or if thou wilt take other wives besides my daughters,
no man is with us; see, God is witness between me and thee.'
(Gen. xxxi. 49, 50.) From that time, the place where this cove-
nant was made, and where, probably in memory of it, a city in
after-ages was built, was called Mizpah. It was situate on the
east side of the river Jordan, and in the division of the land,
fell to the tribe of Dan; and here it was that Gedaliah chose to
fix his habitation, or perhaps was ordered to fix it lure, because
it lay nearest of any to Babylon, from whence he was to receive
his instructions as to the administration of the government.
Wells' Geography of the Old Testament, vol. i.
b That Ishmael, who was of the bluod-royal of Judah, should
attempt to take away the life of Gedaliah, is no wonder at all.
His envy of the other's promotion, and his ambition to make
himself a king, might be strong incitements to what he did : but
why Baalis should have any hand in so black a design, we can
hardly imagine any other reason than the ancient and inveterate
hatred which the Ammonites always had against the Hebrews:
and therefore this king of theirs, seeing that the Jewish nation
was at this time, in a manner, brought to nothing, was minded
to take revenge for all the injuries that his ancestors had received
from them, and to give the finishing stroke to their ruin by cut-
ting of]" their governor, and so dispersing all the remains of that
unhappy people, which was now gathered together at Mizpah.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
681
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 580. JKIl. .\1.7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i.— v.
His design, however, was not carried on so secretly,
but that Johanan, the son of Kereah, got notice of it,
and acquainted the governor with it ; but he being a man
of a generous temper, and not apt to entertain jealousies
of others, took no notice of Jolianan's information, but
continued the same friendly correspondence with Ishmael
that he had ever done. This gave the traitor an advan-
tage against him ; for pretending to pay him a visit one
day, he and his confederates, at a time when the people
were gone out to harvest work, fell upon him, and slew
him, even while he was entertaining them at his table.
With him he murdered all the Jews and Chaldeans that
were at Mizpah, except some few, whom he made cap-
tives ; and having kept the matter private, the next day
but one, he destroyed fourscore Israelites, who were
coming in a mournful manner, a with their oblations, into
the town, and there put them all to the sword, except
ten, who, for the redemption of their lives, offered him
all the * treasures they had in the field.
After this massacre, Ishmael not thinking himself safe
in Mizpah, took the captives with him, among whom
were king Zedekiah's daughters, and was making the
best of his way to the king of the Ammonites, when
Johanan and the rest of the captains of Judah, hearing
of this detestable deed, made after him with what forces
they could get together : but when he perceived them
coming, he left all his train behind him, and with only
eight men, made his escape into the land of Ammon.
Johanan, and the rest of the captains, being thus left
with all the people, and now reflecting on what Ishmael
had done to Gedaliah, began to be apprehensive, that
the Chaldeans might possibly revenge his death upon
them ; and, therefore, for fear of the worst, they retired
But whatever their views might he, it is certain that they put
their design in speedy execution ; for the murder of Gedaliah
happened hut two months after the destruction of the city and
temple of Jerusalem, namely, in the seventh month (which is
Tisri, and answers in part to our September and October), and
on the thirtieth day of the month: for that day the Jews have
kept as a fast, in commemoration of this calamity (which indeed
was the completion of their ruin) ever since. — Calmet's Com~
mentary on Jer. xl. 14; and rrideau.v's Connection, anno 588.
a The Hebrews, at the death of their friends and relations,
gave all possible demonstrations of grief and mourning. The
duration of which was commonly seven days; but it was length-
ened or shortened according to circumstances. That for Moses
and Aaron was prolonged for thirty days, which, Josephus says,
ought to be sufficient for any wise man, on the loss of his nearest
relation, or his dearest friend. The mourning habit among the
Hebrews was not fixed either by law or custom. We only find in
Scripture, that they used to tear their garments. Though it was
an express prohibition in the law, ' ye shall not make any cuttings
in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you,' (Lev.
xix. 28;) yet this seems to relate only to such practices, when
they became superstitious, and were done in honour to false gods;
for in cases of ordinary mourning for the dead, or for any other
grievous disaster, the words of the prophet seem to imply, as if
they had been permitted in common use : ' both the great and
tiie small shall die in the land ; they shall not be buried, neither
shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make them-
selves bald for them, neither shall men tear themselves in mourn-
ing to comfort them for the dead.' Jer. xvi. 6, 7.
b Treasures, according to the common phrase of Scripture,
signify any thing that is hid or kept in reserve, whether it be
gold, silver, com, wine, oil, apparel, or any other thing; and
among the people of the east, it was a usual thing to bury their
corn, and other provisions, in deep holes, and caverns, which
they dug and filled up so very dexterously, that no one could
perceive that the earth had been moved, nor could any find them
out, but those who made them. — Calmet's Commentary.
to Chimham, c not far from Bethlehem, that in case they
were called to an account, they might more readily
make their escape into Egypt.
Jeremiah, from the time that he parted with Nebuzara-
dan, had taken up his abode with Gedaliah the governor ;
but after his death, among the rest of the captives, was
carried from thence by Ishmael the conspirator, and
now, upon his defeat, accompanied Johanan, and the
rest of his countrymen, to their new habitation at Chim-
ham. Here they had not been long before Johanan,
and the other princes of the people came to request of
him that he would consult the Lord concerning their
intended journey into Egypt, with warm professions,
however, of a ready compliance with whatever he should
think fit to enjoin them. The prophet did so : and in
ten days' time returned them this answer from God : —
" That if they would tarry in Judea, and live peaceably
under the king of Babylon, he would screen them from
their present danger, and incline the heart of their con-
queror to be favourable to them ; but that if they persisted
in their intention of going into Egypt, he would infallibly
cause every thing they dreaded, the sword, the famine,
and the pestilence, to pursue them." But notwithstand-
ing both their own professions, and the prophet's de-
clarations, wherein they d blamed Baruch, as being-
accessary, they were resolutely bent upon going into
Egypt ; and accordingly taking all the remnant of Judah,
men, women, and children, the king's daughters, Jere-
miah the prophet, and Baruch his scribe, with them, they
went and settled in the country, until the judgments
wherewith God had threatened their disobedience came
upon them.
The Jews e were no sooner settled in Egypt, than
c This place may be supposed, from 2 Sam. xix. 38, to have
been anciently given by king David to Chimham, the son of
old Barzillai the Gileadite, and which, at this time, bore his name,
though near five hundred years after the first donation. It was
in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, about two leagues from
Jerusalem, and hither the poor people betook themselves ; because
it was at a much farther distance from Babylon than Mizpah, and
in their straight way to Egypt, in case they should determine to
go thither, as they seemed inclinable to do, because there they
supposed they should ' have no war, nor hear the sound of the
trumpet, nor have hunger of bread.' Jer. xlii. 14.
d The words in the text are,— ' The Lord our God hath not
sent thee to say, go not into Egypt to sojourn there ; but Baruch,
the son of Neriah, setteth thee on against us, to deliver us
into the hands of the Chaldeans, that they may put us to death,
and carry us away captive into Babylon,' Jer. xliii. 2, 3. But
what foundation the people should have for this their accusation
against Baruch, it is no easy matter to conceive ; only we may
suppose, that as Baruch was preserved, and taken care of by the
Chaldeans, as well as his master, and was equally against main-
taining the siege of Jerusalem, when Nebuchadnezzar came he-
fore it; and that as he had been some time at Babylon himself,
(see Baruch i. I, 3,) and was probably not so virulent in his
speeches against the Chaldeans as the other Jews were ; this, to
a blind and mutinous mob, was reason enough to suspect him of
being engaged in the enemy's party. — Calmet's Commentary.
e The places in which the Jews are said to have settled them-
selves in Egypt, were Migdol, Tahpanhes, Noph, and the coun-
try of Pathros, (Jer. xliv. 1.) Migdol is the same place in Egypt,
which Moses makes mention of, (Exod. xiv. 2,) over against
Baal-zephon, not far from the Red Sea. Tahpanhes is Daphne,
not far from Pelusium, the first city in Egypt, in the road from
Judea, and, as it were, its key. Noph is Memphis, situate
above the parting of the Nile, or where the Delta begins, and
not a littlo famous for its pyramids; and the country of Pathros
is the same with Thebais, or the Upper Egypt, so called from
the city Thebes, which was the first capital of it.
4 R
6S2
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OR, ACCOPDINft TO HALES, A
they gave themselves wholly up to idolatry, worshipping
the queen a of heaven, and the other false deities of the
land, whereupon Jeremiah made loud remonstrances ;
but all the effect which they had upon them, was only
to make them more obstinate in their impiety : so that
the prophet was obliged to denounce God's severest
judgments against them in express terms, and at the
same time to foretel, that the king- of Egypt, under
whose protection they lived secure, as they thought,
should be delivered into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, 6
(rod's agent for that purpose, in like manner as Zede-
kiah was; which, in the space of eighteen years after-
wards, accordingly came to pass.
After this we have no more of the prophet Jeremiah, c
and very little of his contemporary Ezekiel. d They
both, no doubt, continued in their prophetic office until
their death ; but when or where that happened, or by
whose means it was occasioned, the Scripture is silent,
and tradition is uncertain. This however we may learn
a By which is meant the moon at least, if not all the planets;
for what we render queen, in the marginal note, is called the
frame of heaven.
h It is very observable, that in several places of Jeremiah's
prophecy, namely, chap. xxv. 9, chap, xxvii. G, and chap, xliii.
10, Nebuchadnezzar is called ' God's servant,' on purpose to
show us, that as great a prince as he was, he was no more than
the executioner of his commands; that he was the general of his
troops, and that all the victories he gained, and the conquests he
won, were by his direction and appointment; for no writers
speak with so much deference of God, as do the prophets, be-
cause they only knew, by the inspiration of the divine Spirit, to
express with a proper dignity what the greatest monarchs are in
comparison with the divine majesty. — Calmet's Commentary.
c St Jerome, in the life of this prophet, and Dorotheus, in his
Synopsis of the lives and deaths of the prophets and apostles, tell
us, that he was stoned to death in Egypt by his own renegado
countrymen the Jews, for preaching against their idolatry; and
of this some interpret St Paul's iXdairwav, they were stoned,
Heb. xi. o7. It appears indeed by the account we have of their
behaviour, Jer. xliv. ]G, that they were bent both against him
and his reproofs; and therefore it was more likely that they were
the authors of his death, than, as some say. the Egyptians were,
for his prophesying against them, and their king Pharaoh-hophra.
For the Egyptians, according to the same tradition, having by
the prophet's prayers, been freed from the crocodiles, which very
much infested them, had him in such great honour and esteem,
that, in testimony thereof, they buried him in one of their royal
sepulchres. The truth is, Jeremiah was, all his lifetime, ex-
posed to the ill treatment of the Jews, whose irregularities,' and
sad apostasy, he was always reproving; and therefore the author
ol the book of Ecclesiasticus, in the encomium which he <>ives of
this prophet, seems to draw his character from the persecutions
he endured : ' they intreated him evil, who nevertheless was a
prophet, sanctified in his mother's womb,' Ecclus. xlix. 7.
d St Jerome, in his life of this prophet, tells us, that he was
put to death hy a prince of the children of Israel, whom he re-
proved for his idolatry: but who this prince of the Jewish nation
should be, upon the river Chehar, where Ezekiel, in the time of
his captivity, lived, it is difficult to tell. He was buried, as
some ^ay, in the same cave wherein Shem and Arphaxad were
deposited, upon the banks of the Euphrates: but Benjamin of
Tudela, in his travels, tells us, that at some leagues from Bagdat,
he saw & magnificent mausoleum, which was said to be'this
prophet's tomb, upon the top of which there was a famous lib-
rary, wherein, aa they s;iy, was the original of the prophet's pre-
d.ctions. written with his own hand; that in the prophet's tomb
then- is a lamp continually burning, maintained at the expense
ol the captivity of Bagdat: that every year this tomb is fre-
quented by the several heads of the captivity, who resort thither
with a numerous retinue: and that not oidy the Jews, but the
Persians Medes, and many of the Mussulmen, made this a place
of devotion, and came thither to make their presents, and per-
form their most sacred vows.— Calmcfs Dictionary, under the
wuid Ezeliitf.
M. 4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL and EZRA i.— v.
from their own writings, that after they had discharged
their duty to their own people the Jews, they were di-
rected by God to address the rest of their predictions
cliieHy to the fientiles. Accordingly we find Jeremiah
prophesying against Egypt in the 46th chapter ; against
all the Philistines in the 47th ; against the Moabites in
the 48th ; against Amnion, Edom, and other people in
the 49th ; and against Babylon in the 50th and 51st;
with some promises here and there interspersed concern-
ing the redemption of Israel. In like manner we find
Ezekiel prophesying against the Ammonites in the 25th
chapter ; against the Tyrians, and those that traded
with them, in the 26th and 27th ; against the prince of
Tyre, in the 2Sth ; against Egypt, in the 29th, 30th, 31st,
and 32d; against the shepherds of Israel, in the 34th;
against the Edomites in the 35th ; and against the ene-
mies of the church of God, under the name of Gog and
Magog, in the 3Sth and 39th ; with promises of a re-
storation (especially in the 36th and 37th,) to his cap-
tive countrymen, and a long description of the rebuild-
ing of the temple and city, wherewith he concludes, as a
sure confirmation of it.
Daniel, who was descended from the royal family of
David, in the first captivity of Judah, which happened
under king Jehoiakim, together with his friends Hana-
niah, Mishael, and Azariah, was carried to Babylon,
when he was .as yet but a youth. The custom among
conquerors then was to change the names of their cap-
tives, especially when they were to serve in any capacity
about the court ; and therefore, by the order of Aspenaz,
e master of the eunuchs, Daniel/ was called Belteshaz-
zar; Hananiah Sliadrach ; Mishael, Meshacli ; and
Azariah, Abeclnego.
For three years they were instructed in all the learn-
ing of the Chaldeans, and had a daily allowance of meat
and wine from the king's table ; but Daniel, who was a
devout observer of the religion of his country, desired of
the chief eunuch, that they might be excused from that,
and have only a sufficient quantity of water and pulse
allowed them, which accordingly was granted ; and, by
the time that they had finished their studies, they were
found to excel in the several parts of learning there in
c What we render ' master of the eunuchs,' may very likely
signify the chief minister of Nebuchadnezzar's court. Such of-
ficers, in the palaces of eastern princes, were usually called
eunuchs; because they who had the control of the king's house-
hold, as we say, were ordinarily such, though many times it
might be otherwise. The Jews have a notion, that Daniel and
his three companions were, by the .order of Nebuchadnezzar,
made eunuchs, that the prophecy of Isaiah might be fulfilled:
' Thy sons, that shall issue from thee, shall they take away, and
they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon,' (chap,
xxxix. 7.) But that is no conclusive reason ; because in that
prophecy, as well as in the passage we are now upon, the name
of eunuch might mean no more than any person who had an em-
ployment at court. — Calmet's CoJiimetitary.
f \t is very remarkable, that, as all their former names relat-
ed to the true God, so all the names which on this occasion were
imposed upon these four Jewish youths, had some reference or
other to Babylonish idols. Daniel, in Hebrew signifies, God is
my judge; Belteshazzar, in Chaldee, is the treasure of Bsal;
Hananiah, in Hebrew, is well pleasing to God; Shadrach, in
Chaldee, the inspiration of the sun; Mishael, in Hebrew, pro-
ceeding from God; Meshach, in Chaldee, belonging to the god-
dess Skeshach; Azariah, in Hebrew, God is my help; and Abed-
nego, in Chaldee, the servant of Nago, that is, the sun, or the
morning star, both deities among the Babylonians, and so called
because of their brightuess. — Calmet's Conanentary on Dan. i. 7.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &o.
683
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEI, and EZRAi— v-
vogue, all the magicians in the country ; a and especially
Daniel was become very famous for his singular skill in
the knowledge and interpretation of dreams.
It so happened one night, that king Nebuchadnezzar
had a dream, which left strong impressions upon his
spirits ; but the thing which made him uneasy was, that lie
could not recollect the substance of it. To assist his
memory in this respect, he summoned all his wise men
together, those especially that pretended to divination,
demanding of them what his dream was, but when they
eudeavoured to excuse themselves upon the presumed
impossibility of the thing, he fell into such a passion,
that lie ordered all who professed magic * in his domin-
ions to be instantly put to death.
Under this denomination and sentence were Daniel
and his three friends included ; and there fore, understand-
ing the reason of this sudden decree, Daniel applied
himself to Arioch, captain of the guard, desiring a short
respite of its execution, in which time he did not in the
least doubt but to give the king full satisfaction, both as
to his dream, e and the interpretation of it : and so pro-
as The prophet Daniel makes great mention of these sort of
people, and ranks them under these lour different kinds: — The
Chartumim, the Asaphim, the Mecasphim, and the Chasdim,
(chap. ii. 2.) Chartumim, according to the Septuagint, signifies
sophists, but, according to St Jerome, diviners, fortune-tellers,
casters of nativity, Sic. Asaphim has no derivation from the
Chaldee tongue, but no small resemblance to the Greek word
trofio;, (whether the Greeks took this word from the Babylonians,
or the Babylonians from them) and therefore the Seventy have
rendered it by philosophers. Mecasphim is thought by some to
be necromancers, such as pretended to raise the dead, to gain
intelligence of things future: but the Seventy have rendered it
by a word that denotes such enchanters as made use of noxious
herbs and drugs, the blood of victims, and the bones of the dead
for their superstitious operations. The other word Chasdim is
the same with Chaldeans, and here signifies a sort of philosophers
among the Babylonians, who dwelt in a separate part of the city,
and were exempt from all public offices and employments. Their
study was natural philosophy, astrology, divination, or the fore-
telling of future events by the observation of the stars, the inter-
pretation of dreams, the science of auguries, the worship of their
gods, &c, as Diodorus Siculus, (b. 1.) give us an account of
them. — Calmet's Dictionary under the word Marjicia7is.
b Magic is properly of three kinds, natural, artificial, and dia-
bolical. The first of these is no other than natural philosophy,
but highly improved and advanced; whereby the person that
is well skilled iu the power and operation of natural bodies, is
able to produce many wonderful effects, mistaken by the illiter-
ate for diabolical performances, but such as lie perfectly within
the verge of nature. Artificial magic is what we call legerde-
main or sleight of haud, the merry tricks of jugglers, as we
corrupt the joculatorcs, far from exceeding the power of art,
though many times they pass with the vulgar for diabolical like-
wise. Diabolical magic is that which is done by the help of the
devil, who, having great skill in natural causes, may assist those
who are in league and covenant with him, to do many strange
and astonishing things. It seems, however, by the discourse
which passed between Nebuchadnezzar and his magicians, that
they had no knowledge in the sciences they pretended to; that
the king himself looked upon them as no better than a pack of
impostors; and that they had no familiarity with any wicked de-
mons who might have helped them out at this dead lift ; other-
wise they would not have told the king, ' it is a rare thing which
the king requiroth, and there is none other that can show it before
the king, except the gods whose dwelling is not with fiesh,' (Dan.
ii. 11.) — See Edwards' Body of Divinity, vol. i.
c Some are of opinion, that Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and the
interpretation thereof, were both revealed to Daniel while he
was asleep; but others rather think that it was in a vision while
he was awake, because the prayer and thanksgiving which he
made to God seem to insinuate that he was awake; though
we cannot see why he might not receive the revelation in his
ceeding to his three friends, he acquainted them with what
he had undertaken, and desired tiieir joint prayer to
God, that he would be pleased to reveal this great and
important secret to him ; which accordingly was done
that very night.
The next morning, after he had returned praise and
thanksgiving to God for this singular vouchsafement, he
repaired to the palace, and, being introduced by the
captain of the guard, was asked by the king, if he had
found out his dream ? " You saw," d says he, " ()
king, an image of a vast dimension, e excellent in bright-
ness, but terrible in aspect. The head of this image was
of fine gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly and
thighs of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet partly iron
and partly clay. You saw, likewise, O King, a stone
cut out of the mountain, but from whence it came you
knew not. This stone, falling upon the feet of the
image, brake them into pieces, and then the rest of the
image mouldered into dust, which the wind dispersed,
so that it was no more to be seen ; but the stone which,
in this manner, destroyed the image, increased to a great
mountain, and filled the earth. This, O king, was the
dream : and the interpretation / of it is this : — You, who
sleep, and return God thanks for it as soon as he awoke. — Cal-
met's Commentary.
d Josephus introduces Daniel as making this preamble to his
discovery and explanation of the king's dream: "It is not any
high conceit of my own wisdom, as if I understand more
than the Chaldeans do, or any designed reproach upon them
for not being able to resolve a question which I am able to unrid-
dle, that I engage in this matter; for I am not a person that pre-
tends to more skill and knowledge than my neighbours; but it is
purely the work of God, in pity to the miserable, and in mercy
to my prayers, for the life and safety of myself and friends, that
has now laid open this dream to me, and explained the meaning
of it. Nor have I been so solicitous for the safety of myself and
my companions under your displeasure, as for your honour and
glory, lest you should tarnish them, by putting to death (contrary
to all right and justice) so many worthy men, merely because
they were not able to do a thing that is impossible for flesh and
blood to perform." (Jewish Antiq. b. x. c. 11.) This is to be
observed, however, that though a great part of the book of Daniel
be in Hebrew, yet this speech of his to the king, as well as the
dialogue which passed between the king and the magicians; the
king's decree, wherein he orders the golden statue to be wor-
shipped ; and that other, wherein he declares his dream of the
vast large tree, which Daniel explained ; the history of the feast
which Belshazzar made ; of his profanation of the sacred vessels,
and the terrible vision of the handwriting which he saw upon
the wall; the beginning of the reign of Darius; the honours con-
ferred on Daniel, and the vision of the four beasts, denoting the
four monarchies ; that all these, I say, (namely, from the fourth
verse of the second chapter, to the beginning of the eighth chap-
ter,) are wrote in the Chaldee or Syriac language, which, at that
time, were both the same, and both as familiar to the prophet as
was his mother tongue. ■ — Calinet's Commentary on Dan. ii. 4.
e Grotius accurately observes, that the image appeared with a
glorious lustre in the imagination of Nebuchadnezzar, whose
mind was wholly taken up with admiration of worldly pomp and
splendour; whereas the same monarchies were represented to
Daniel under the shape of fierce and wild beasts, (ch. vii.) as
being the great supporters of idolatry and tyranny in the world.
— Lowth's Commentary on Dan. ii.
f By these different emblems of metals and stone, God intend-
ed to signify to Nebuchadnezzar the several empires that were to
be in the world. The Assyrian or Chaldean is represented by
gold, because it was the first and the most magnificent, if not the
most extensive, and Nebuchadnezzar being then upon the throne,
is said to be head of it. That of silver is the Persian, founded
by Cyrus, upon the ruins of the Chaldean, but inferior to the
Chaldean in its duration at hast, if not in its extent. That of
brass is the Grecian, founded by Alexander, upon the ruins of
ihe Persian, and its character is, that it 'should bear rule over
684
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M.3417. A. C. 587 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
are supreme above all other kings, and to whom the God
of heaven hath given power, and strength, and glory, are
signified by this head of gold. After you another king-
dom shall arise, but as inferior to yours as silver is to
gold. After that there shall arise a third kingdom,
emblemed by brass, which shall govern the earth ; but
the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, and van-
quish all the rest. And whereas the feet were partly
iron, and partly clay, this kingdom shall be divided;
part of it shall be strong, and part of it weak, as clay
and iron cannot be solidly mixed together ; but in the
times of these empires, the God of heaven shall set up
another kingdom, signified by the stone, which shall
prevail above all, and itself never be destroyed," &c.
Surprised at this wonderful discovery, the king fell
prostrate before Daniel, a and was ready to pay him
divine honours. He loaded him, however, with presents
and rich gifts ; set him at the head of his learned men ;
made him governor over the whole province of Babylon ;
and, at his request, put his three friends into places of
the highest trust under him. But all this happened b
before the siege of Jerusalem.
all the earth,' (Dan. ii. 39,) which was verified in its great
founder; for, upon his return from India to Babylon, the ambas-
sadors of almost all the known parts of the world resorted thither
to pay their homage and acknowledgment of his dominion. That
of iron is the Roman empire, which is distinguished by its
' breaking in pieces, and subduing all things,' (ver. 40.) For,
whilst it was in its full strength and vigour, under its consuls
and first emperors, it brought under its dominion all the king-
doms and states that were then subsisting in Europe, Africa, and
a great part of Asia; but, from that time, it became a mixture
of iron and clay. Its emperors proved most of them vicious and
corrupt, either by their tyranny, making themselves hateful to
their subjects, or by their follies and vices, contemptible. Lastly,
that of the 'stone out of the mountain,' is the fifth monarchy, or
the kingdom of the Messias ; which, against all the power and
policy of the Roman empire, prevailed, not by an external force,
but by the powerful preaching of the gospel, to the suppression
and deleat of wickedness and impiety, idolatry, and superstition,
and ' it shall stand for ever, and never be destroyed,' (Dan. ii.
44,) which can be said of no other kingdom but that of Jesus
Christ, which, for these eighteen hundred years and upwards,
has withstood the violence of persecutions, and all other contri-
vances formed against it, and has the sure promises of its almighty
Founder on its side, that ' the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it,' Mat. xvi. 18. — Calmefs Commentary.
a Nebuchadnezzar seems, in a sudden transport, to have look-
ed upon Daniel as having something more than human in him,
just as the barbarians thought of St Paul, (Acts xxviii. 6 ;) and
therefore it ts said, that 'he fell on his lace and worshipped him ;'
because the doing of reverence, by way of prostration, is not only
an act of worship paid to God, but frequently given to kings and
great men in the Old Testament, according to the custom of
eastern countries, (2 Sam. ix. G ;) and sometimes even to pro-
phets, on account of the sanctity of their office, (1 Kings xviii.
7 ;) nor was it usually refused by them, except such circumstances
were added to it, as made it look like divine worship, and then
it was always rejected, as in the case of St Peter, Acts x. 26. —
Lowth't Commentary on Dan. ii. 43.
b Namely, in the seventh year of Jehoiakim, according to
Prideaux. [This however seems to be a mistake. The most
accurate chronologers suppose it to have happened not only after
struction of Jerusalem, but even after Nebuchadnezzar's
devastation of Egypt; and the arguments by which they support
their opinion appear to bo conclusive. 1. Daniel was old enough
to be included, with his three friends, among the Magi condemned
to deatb, for not telling to the king his dream, and not only so,
but to bo appointed Arcbimagus on his declaring and interpret-
ing that dream. 2. He styles Nebuchadnezzar king of kings,
invested with universal dominion over all the earth; but this
could not be said even in the hyperbolical style of the east, till
after the king's return from the conquest of Egypt. Jackson and
4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i-v.
Nebuchadnezzar being now returned home, out of the
spoils which he had brought from Syria and Palestine,
ordered a golden statue c to be made, thirty yards in
height, and of proportionable bigness ; and having set
it up in the plains of Dura, near Babylon, he summoned
all his subjects, of whatever order and degree, to be pre
sent at the dedication of it, and the moment they heard
the music strike up, which was to be the signal, to fall
prostrate on their faces, and adore it, upon pain of
being thrown into a burning d furnace.
Among the captive Jews, the three friends of Daniel,
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were accused to the
king as having violated his command ; and when they
were brought before him, persisted in their refusal to pay
adoration to the image, with so much constancy, that
the king, being incensed thereat, ordered those about
him to have the furnace made seven times hotter than it
was before ; to bind these bold contemners of his will,
and cast them immediately into it.
The furnace indeed was so intensely hot, that the
persons who were ordered to throw them in, were
scorched to death ; but they themselves came to no
manner of harm ; for an angel e from heaven came, and,
Hales therefore place the discovery and interpretation of Nebu-
chadnezzar's first dream 569 years B. C, or seventeen years
after the destruction of Jerusalem. — Hale's Analysis, vol. ii. pp.
455-6, second edition.] — En.
c Grotius is of opinion that the image which Nebuchadnezzar
set up was the figure of his father Nabopolassar, whom, by this
means, he intended to deify; but others think that it was his
own statue which he erected, to gain the adorations of his people
in this form. We cannot, however, in what we find Nebuchad-
nezzar saying to Daniel's friends, perceive that he any where
upbraids them with contempt offered either to his person, or his
statue, but only that they ' would not serve his gods, nor worship
the image which he had set up,' (Dan. iii. 14.) And therefore
others have imagined, that this was neither his own nor his
father's statue, but that of Jupiter, which was afterwards found
in the temple of Belus, when Xerxes plundered it of its im-
mense riches, among which were several images of massy gold,
but one more especially forty feet high, which might be the same
that Nebuchadnezzar consecrated in the plains of Dura. For
though that is said to have been sixty cubits, that is, ninety feet
high, yet we may suppose, that it stood upon a pedestal of fifty
feet high, and so the image and the pedestal together, might
make ninety, (see vol. i. p. 310. in the notes,) otherwise there
would be no proportion between its height and its breadth, accord-
ing to the description we have of it in Dan. iii. I. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 573. — [That the image which Xerxes found in
the temple of Belus was forty feet high, is indeed said by Dio-
dorus Siculus (b. ii.) ; but according to Herodotus, (b. i. c. 183,)
it was only twelve cubits or eighteen feet high, and this is surely
the more probable account of the two. It may, however, have
been the image set up by Nebuchadnezzar; for in the height of
that image, as stated in the book of Daniel, the pedestal or pillar,
on which it was placed in the plain of Dura, is probably in-
cluded.]— Bishop Glcig. — Ed.
d This kind of punishment was pretty common in these parts
of the world, so that some will have it, that Abraham, before he
departed from Chaldea, was made to undergo it, but escaped by
a miraculous preservation, founding their opinion on Gen. xi. 31.
Of this furnace, in particular, it is related, that the king's ser-
vants having received the command to heat it seven times
hotter, ' ceased not to make the oven hot with rosin, pitch, tow,
and small wood ; so that the flame streamed forth above the fur-
nace forty and nine cubits, and passed through and burned the
Chaldeans it found about the furnace. The Sotig of the three holy
Children, ver. 23, &c. — For an inquiry into the construction of
this furnace or place of fire, see Taylor's Fragments to Calmet,
and Calmet abridged, p. 409. — Ed.
e Nebuchadnezzar's expression upon this occasion is, ' Lo ! I
see four men walking loose in the midst of the fire, and the
form of the fourth is like the Son of God,' (Dan. iii. 25.) Where-
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
685
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C.586. JER. xl. 7-xlv- DANIEL, and EZRA i— y.
suspending the agency of the fire, walked in the midst
of the furnace with them, blessing a and praising God ;
so that when the king, who staid to see the execution,
perceived it, he started up on a sudden, and, coining
nearer to the mouth of the furnace, called upon them to
come forth, which they instantly did, in the presence of
him and all his attendants, without b so much as an hair
of their heads being singed, or the least smell of fire
about them. Convinced by the greatness of this miracle,
the king himself glorified the God of Israel, published
an edict in favour of the Jewish religion, and gave these
three glorious confessors still higher promotion in the
province of Babylon.
Not long after this, the judgments which the prophet
Jeremiah • had denounced against his countrymen the
Jews, when they rejected the counsel of God, and fled
into Egypt for protection, (as they vainly thought,) be-
1 Jer. xliv. 27, 28.
upon some have thought that this prince, having little or no
knowledge of the true religion, imagined that he saw some demi-
god, an Apollo, a Hercules, a Mercury for instance, the son
of a superior god walking with the three Hebrew youths in the
fiery furnace. The notion, it must be owned, agrees \ery well
with the ancient theology of the Greeks, to which that of the
Chaldeans had no small resemblance ; but as angels are some-
times in Scripture called the ' sons of God,' (Job i. 6. andxxxviii.
7.) and most nations had not only a belief of their existence, but
high conceptions likewise of their power, the king explains him-
self what he means by ' the son of God,' when, in joy for their
deliverance, he cries out, ' blessed be the God of Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered
his servants that trusted in him !' (Dan. iii. 28.) For, as it is
in the song of the three holy children, " the angel of the Lord
came down into the oven, together with Azariah and his fellows,
and smote the flame of the oven, and made the midst of the
furnace as it had been a moist and whistling wind, so that the
fire touched them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them."
[Instead of ' the son of God,' as we have it in Dan. iii. 25, Dr
Boothroyd translates ' a son of God,' and Dr A. Clarke has
the following remarks on the passage : — " What notion could this
idolatrous king have of the Lord Jesus Christ ? for so the
place is understood by thousands ; bar elohim signifies a son of
the gods, that is, a divine person or angel; and so the king calls
him in ver. 28: ' God hath sent his angel, and delivered his ser-
vants.' And though even from this some still contend that it
was the angel of the covenant, yet the Babylonish king knew
just as much of the one as he did of the other. No other minis-
tration was necessary; a single angel from heaven was quite suf-
ficient to answer this purpose, as that which stopped the mouths
of the lions when Daniel was cast into their den."] — Dr Clarke's
Commentary on Dan. iii. 25. — Ed.
a According to the vulgar Latin edition, in the third chapter
of Daniel, between the 23d and 24th verses, is added the ' Song
of the three children;' but being nowhere extant, either in the
Hebrew or Chaldee language, and never received in the canon
of holy writ by the Jewish church, or by the ancient Christians,
our church has thought proper to place it among the apocryphal
writings, where it stands next to the book of Baruch, though the
church of Home, by a decree of the council of Trent, (sess. 4.),
has not only given it, but the history of Susanna likewise, and of
Mel and the Dragon (which most of the ancients looked upon as
mere tables,) a place among the canonical Scriptures. The Song
itself consists of two parts; a prayer, and a thanksgiving. The
prayer is a devout confession of the sins of the people, and ac-
knowledgment of God's righteousness, in bringing their cap-
tivity, and other calamities, upon them. And the thanksgiving
is a solemn excitation of all creatures whatever, but more espe-
cially of the three Hebrew children, who were thus ' saved from
the hands of death, to bless the Lord, praise him, and exalt him
above all for ever.'
b " As if the flame itself (according to the expression of
Josephus) had been conscious of the injustice of their sentence,
and suspended the very nature of its consuming quality in favour
of the innocent." — Jewish Antiquities, b. x. c. 11.
gan to operate ; for, when Nebuchadnezzar understood,"
that the subjects of Pharaoh Hophra had revolted from
him, and declared Amasis, an officer of his court, their
king, he took the advantage of the intestine troubles
ensuant thereupon, and having in a short time over-
run the country from Migdol to Syene, d that is, from
one end of Egypt to the other, he plundered and laid it
waste ; and of the Jews, who, after the murder of Geda-
liah, had tied thither, some he slew, and others he car-
ried away captive to Babylon ; so that scarce any escap-
ed but such as fled out of Egypt, and afterwards set-
tled themselves in their own land, at the end of the cap-
tivity. e
Having thus reduced the king of Egypt, and constituted
Amasis his viceroy, he returned to Babylon, Avhere he had
another dream, which gave him fresh disquiet. This
dream he very well remembered ; and therefore he sent
for his own magicians first, in hopes that they could have
interpreted it ; but when he met with no satisfaction from
them, he was forced to have recourse to Daniel again ;
and thus, upon his entrance, he accosted him :
" 1 saw / a tree of a prodigious bigness, which seem-
ed to reach from earth to heaven. It was fair and
full of fruit ; yielded shelter to the beasts and fowls,
and sustenance to all flesh. I saw s likewise an angel
c The occasion of this revolt is to this effect related by
Herodotus, — That Pharaoh Hophra, whom he calls Apries, hav-
ing lost a great army in Libya, and, as some imagined, on pur-
pose, that, being rid of them, he might with more ease and
security govern the rest, fell under the resentment of his sub-
jects to such a degree, that several of them joined together in a
body, and revolted from him ; that, to appease and reduce them
to their duty, he sent Amasis, one of the officers of his court, to
them, but, instead of his persuading them, they prevailed with
him to be their king; that hereupon Hophra sent Palerbamis, a
person of the first rank, to arrest Amasis, and bring him with
him ; but, when he returned without being able to execute his
commission, he commanded his ears and Ids nose to be immedi-
ately cut off, which indignity, to a man of his worth and charac-
ter, so exasperated the rest of his subjects, that they almost all
forsook him; so that he was forced to hire an army of foreigners,
wherewith he attempted to give Amasis battle not far from
Memphis ; but had the misfortune to be vanquished, taken pri-
soner, and carried to the city Sais, where he was strangled in
his own palace. — Herod, b. i., and Diod. Sic, b. i. part 2.
d This is a city in the southern frontiers of Egypt, between
Thebes and the great cataracts of the Nile, of which the ancients
speak frequently, as the farthest part in Egypt of any note to-
wards Ethiopia. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the word.
e These transactions probably took place before the erection of
the golden image, and the miraculous deliverance of the three
children. See previous note by Ed.
fit is very observable, that in the writings of the prophets,
princes are frequently compared to trees, (Ezek. xvii. 5, o', and
xxxi. 3. Jer. xxii. 15. Ps. xxxvii. 35.) and it is the notion of
Grotius, that a tree seen in a dream, according to the principles
of the Indians, Persians, and Egyptians, denotes some great and
excellent personage ; but nothing is more precarious than these
principles, or more uncertain than these observations, because in
tiie dreams which come from God, he may represent an eminent
person under a thousand different types, as well as that of a state-
ly tree. — Calmeft Commentary on Dan. iv. 7.
g The words in our translation are, I saw ' a watcher,' which, as
it came down from heaven, could be no other than an angel. Tho
Chaldee word is nir, from whence St Jerome imagines, that the
pagans derived their Iris, the messenger of the gods ; and by some
expressions in Dan. iv. 17, it looks as if the Chaldeans had a no-
tion, for the king, we may suppose, speaks according to the com-
mon sentiments of the people, that these watchers, or holy ones
in heaven, did constitute an assembly of judges, or were an order
of blessed spirits, who took under their cognizance and decision
the fate of men; for, by the decree of these watchers it was, thai
686
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A, C. 5S7; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M,
coming- down from heaven, who cried with a loud voice, j
Hew down the tree, cut off" the branches, shake off the
leaves, scatter the fruit, and let all creatures depart from
it ; but let the stump remain in the earth, and bind it with
a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field,
and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his por-
tion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth : let his
heart be (-hanged from that of a man, and a beast's heart
be given him, "■ and let seven times pass over him.
As soon as Daniel heard the dream, he was so affected
with the dreadful judgments which it portended to the
king, that he stood silent for the space of an hour ; but
being encouraged by the king to expound the thing to
him, be it what it would, he addressed himself to him in
these words : — " The tree, O king, which thou sawest in
thy dream, is thyself ; for thy greatness reacheth unto the
heavens, and thy dominions to the end of the earth : but
the angel which came from heaven with orders to cut down
the tree, denotes the decree of the Most High, which is
determined against thee, namely, that thou shaft be dri-
ven from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts
of the field ; thou shalt eat grass with the oxen, and be
wet with the dew of heaven ; that seven years shall pass
over thee, before thou comest to consider that God
ruleth over the kingdoms of men ; and that, after such
a term, thou shalt be restored to thy kingdom again,
which is the thing intimated by the stump of the tree that
was ordered to be left. And now that thou hast heard
the interpretation of this dream, permit me, O king, to
advise thee to atone for thy sins by an holy life, and by
acts of mercy to the poor, and to recommend thyself
to the mercy of God, that he may prolong thy posterity."
This was the advice of a faithful minister; but Ne-
buchadnezzar, it is to be feared, had b not the heart to
pursue it.
the tree, in the vision, was ordered to be cut down. — Calmet's
Commentary.
a The ambiguity of this expression, which the prophet, in his
exposition of the dream, still adheres to, has occasioned a great
variety of opinions concerning it. Some maintain, that, as the
Persians distinguished their years into two seasons, winter and
Mimmer, the seven years of Nebuchadnezzar must be reckoned
in this manner, which will therefore reduce them to the space of
three years and a half. Dorotheus, in his Synopsis of the lives
of the prophets and apostles, tells us, that God did indeed con-
demn Nebuchadnezzar to seven years' habitation with brutes but
that, at the prayers and intercessions of Daniel, the seven years
were reduced to seven months. The word time, according to
others, denotes no more than the space of a month ; so that the
king's disorder, of course, lasted no longer than seven months;
whereof, according to their computation, for the first forty days
he continued in his frenzy as a madman ; in the forty days fol-
lowing he bewailed his offences, and in the last forty days he
recovered by degrees from his infirmity: but all these are idle
conjectures. A year was a common measure of time among
the Chaldeans, especially in the chronicles of their kings;
and, therefore, in this particular, we need no other interpre-
ter for Daniel than Daniel himself, who, in sundry places of
this prophecy, particularly in chap. xii. 7, has set a time and
times, and the dividing, or half of a time, for the space of three
years and a half.— Calmet's Dictionary under the word Nchu-
chadnezxar.
I, God delayed the execution of his threats against this prince,
and gave him a whole year's reprieve, (chap. iv. 29,) to see if
he would repent, and turn unto him; but perceiving that he still
persisted in his crimes, as soon as the measure of his iniquity
was full, he smote and reduced him to the condition of a beast.
Tiiis is Theodoiet's notion of the matter; but St Jerome rather
thinks, that this king being terrified with the threats, andtouch-
4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i-v.
His cessation from war, in which he had been long
engaged, had by this time given an opportunity of finish-
ing his stately buildings at Babylon ; and upon the sur-
vey of these, as well as other monuments of his greatness,
he became so intoxicated with pride and arrogance, that
God, in punishment of his haughty mind, deprived him
of his senses, and for exalting himself above the state of
men reduced him to the condition of a beast.
For seven years he lived abroad in the fields, eating
grass like an ox, and taking up his lodging on the ground
in the open air. But at the expiration of this time, when
he became sensible of God's superior power and domin-
ion, his senses returned to him again. His kingdom
was restored, and he re-instated in his former -majesty ;
whereupon he made this solemn and grateful acknow-
ledgment; 1 ' And now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, and
extol, and honour the King of heaven, all whose works
are truth, and his ways judgment, and those that work
in pride, he is able to abase, when he pleases.'
Upon the death of Nebuchadnezzar, c (for he lived
not long after his restoration,) his son Evil-merodach
succeeded to the throne of Babylon, and to make some
amends for his father's hard usage of Jehoiachin, the cap-
tive king of Judah, he released him, as was said before,
from an imprisonment that had lasted near thirty -seven
years, and promoted him to great honour in his palace.
His reign however was but short ; for his lusts and
wickednesses had, in the space of two years, made him
so intolerable, that even his own relations conspired
against him, and put him to death ; whereupon Neriglissar,
his sister's husband, who was at the head of the con-
spiracy, reigned in his stead ; and as Jehoiachin d did not
long survive him, Salathiel, his son, succeeded as nomi-
nal prince e of the Jews. Upon his accession to the
1 Dan. iv. 37.
cd with the exhortations of the prophet, began to set about his
reformation, and by acts of charity and mercy, to reconcile him-
self to God, for which he obtained a delay of his punishment for
a year's space ; but that, instead of persevering in these good
purposes, he suffered himself to fall into pride, upon the contem-
plation of the mighty works he had done, and so, by his vanity,
lost what he had gained by his charity. — Calmet's Commentary.
c This prince died in the year of the world 3442, and B. C.
562, according to Hales, A. M. 4850, and B. C. 561, after he
had reigned from the death of his father, according to the
Babylonish account, three and forty years. He was certainly
one of the greatest princes that had appeared in the east for many
years before him, and according to Megasthenes, (as he is cited
by Josephus, Antiq. b. x. c. 11.) both for his enterprises and
performances, far excelled even Hercules himself. The same
historian (as he is quoted by Eusebius, Prczp. b. ix. c. 41.) in-
forms us, that, a little before his death, he foretold his subjects of
the coming of the Persians, and their subduing the kingdom of
Babylon ; but this he might gather from the prophet Daniel, and
especially from the interpretation of his dreams. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 562.
d It is not unlikely that Jehoiachin, being a favourite, fell
with him ; for that best agrees with Jeremiah's prophecies con-
cerning him, wherein it is denounced, (chap. xxii. 30,) that he
'should not prosper in his days;' which could not be so well
verified of him, had he died in the full possession of all that pros-
perity to which Evil-merodach had advanced him. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 559.
e Long after the loss of all authority, the Jews kept up the
title oi a king among them, and had a person descended of the
house of David, who, by the name of « the head of the captivity,'
was acknowledged and honoured as a prince, and, as far as was
consistent with the government they lived under, was invested
with some sort of jurisdiction over tlicm. Nay, to this very day,
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
687
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7-xlv. DANIEL, AND EZRA i-v.
throne, Neriglissar made gTeat preparations for war
against the Medes, which obliged Cyaxares, their king,
to call in the assistance of his nephew Cyrus a out of
Persia, who, coming with a body of thirty thousand
Persians, was by his uncle made general of the Medes
likewise, and thereupon, with his joint forces, gave
Neriglissar battle, slew him, and put his army to the
rout.
The death of this prince proved a gTeat loss to the
Babylonians, especially considering that his son Laboro-
soarchod, who succeeded him, was in every thing the
very reverse of his father, a man given to all manner of
wickedness, * cruelty, and injustice, for which he be-
came so odious to his own subjects, that they conspired
against him, and slew him after he had reigned only
nine months.
Belshazzar c (in all probability the grandson of the
great Nebuchadnezzar) succeeded him ; in the first year
the same pageantry is said to be kept up among the Jews, and chief-
ly with this view, that they may be furnished from hence with an
answer against the Christians, urging the prophecy of Jacob
against them, namely, that ' the sceptre is departed from Judah;'
for thereupon their usual reply is, that the sceptre is still pre-
served among them in the head of the captivity; though some of
them have modesty enough to give up this. — Prideauv's Coti-
nection, anno 559.
a It is on all hands agreed, that Astyages king of the Medes
had a son, whom profane history calls Cyaxares ; and a daughter
whose name was Mandana, married to Cambyses, a Persian, by
whom she had Cyrus ; but whether this Cambyses was king of
the country, or only a private person, it is not so well agreed.
The two chief historians who write of this matter, are Herodotus
and Xenophon; but their relations in this regard are different;
forasmuch as the latter makes his lather king of Persia, the former
a meaner man. The account of Herodotus indeed contains nar-
ratives that are much more strange and surprising, and conse-
quently more diverting and acceptable to the reader; and for
this reason, more have chosen to follow him than Xenophon ; but
though Xenophon (as being a great commander, as well as a great
politician) had certainly grafted many maxims of war and policy
into his history, yet where nothing of this appears, he must be
allowed to he an historian of much more credit in matters of fact
than Herodotus. Herodotus having travelled through Egypt,
Syria, and several other countries, in order to the writing of his
history, did, as travellers used to do, put down all matters upon
trust, and in many, no doubt, was imposed on ; but Xenophon
was a man of another character. He wrote all things with great
judgment, and due consideration; and having lived in the court
of Cyrus the younger, a descendant of the Cyrus whom we now
speak of, had opportunities of being better informed of what he
wrote concerning this great prince than Herodotus had ; and
confining himself to this argument only, no doubt he examined
all matters relating to it more thoroughly, and gave a more ac-
curate and just account of them, than could he expected from the
other, who wrote of all things at large, as they came in his way.
— Prideaux's Connection, anno 563.
b Two acts of his tyrannical violence towards two of his prin-
cipal nobility, Gobrias and Gadates, are particularly mentioned
by Xenophon, namely, that the only son of the former lie slew at
a hunting, to which he had invited him, for no other reason but
his throwing a dart with success at a wild beast, when he him-
self had missed it; and that the other he caused to be castrated,
merely because one of his concubines had commended him for
a handsome man. — Cyropasdia, b. v.
c Great is the difference among historians, and others, who
this Belshazzar (who is generally believed to be the same with
the Nebonnedus in Berosus, and the Labynetus in Herodotus)
was. Some will have him to be of the royal blood of Nebuchad-
nezzar, and others no way related to him. Some maintain that
he w;ts a Babylonian, and others affirm that he was a Mede ; and
of those who allow him to be of the royal family of Nebuchad-
nezzar, some will have it that he was his son, and others that
lie was his grandson; and, therefore, to clear this matter, we
must observe, 1st, That Belshazzar, be he who he will, was cer-
of whose reign, * Daniel had his dream of the four beasts,
representing the four empires of the Chaldeans, Persians,
Greeks, and Romans ; and in the third, the famous
vision of the 2 ram and the he-goat, by the latter of which
was signified Alexander the Great, and by the former
Darius Codomannus, the last of the Persian kings, who
were the successors of Cyrus. Cyrus, indeed, who
was to lay the foundation of the Persian monarchy, had
several conflicts with Belshazzar 's armies ; but at length,
having overthrown him in a pitched battle, he shut him
up in the city of Babylon, and there besieged him.
During the siege, Belshazzar having made a great feast
for all his courtiers, ordered that the vessels of gold and
silver, which his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar had taken
out of the temple of Jerusalem, should be brought into
the banqueting house, that he and his princes, together with
his wives and concubines, might drink out of them ; which
accordingly was done; and, to add to their profaneness,
in the midst of their cups, they sang songs in the praise of
their several idols. But it was not long before God^put
1 Chap. vii. * Chap. viii.
tainly of the seed of Nebuchadnezzar, because he is expressly
called his son in several places of the 5th chapter of Daniel,
and in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 20, it is said, that Nebuchadnezzar and
his children, or offspring, reigned in Babylon until the kingdom
of Persia commenced. 2dly, That, according to the prophecy
of Jeremiah, (chap, xxvii. 7.) the nations of the east were to
serve Nebuchadnezzar and his son, and his son's son ; and there-
fore he must have had a son, and a son's son, successors to him
in the throne of Babylon, odly, That as Evil-merodach was
Nebuchadnezzar's son, of all the kings that reigned after him at
Babylon, none but Belshazzar could be his son's son ; for Neri-
glissar was only his daughter's husband, and Laborosoarchod
was Neriglissar's son ; so that neither of them was either son or
grandson to Nebuchadnezzar. 4thly, That, according to Hero-
dotus, (b. i.) the last king of Babylon, who, without doubt, was
Belshazzar, because, immediately after his death, the kingdom
was given to the Medes and Persians, (Dan. v. 2S, 30, 31.) was
son to the great queen Nitocris ; but now Nitocris, to have a
child that was grandson to Nebuchadnezzar, could be wife to no
other than Evil-merodach ; and therefore, putting all this together,
it appears that Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon, was the
son of Evil-merodach by Nitocris his queen, and consequently
son's son to Nebuchadnezzar; nor must it seem strange, that we
find him, in Dan. v. called ' Nebuchadnezzar's son,' and ' Nebu-
chadnezzar his father,' because it is the usual style of Scripture
to call any ancestor upward, father, and any descendant down-
ward, son. — Prideau.v's Connection, anno 555. [It is not often
safe to differ on a point of ancient history with Dr Prideaux ;
but the series of Nebuchadnezzar's successors on the throne of
Babylon, as given by Dr Hales, seems more consistent than this,
both with itself and with sacred Scripture. That Evil-merodach
— the Ilverodam in Ptolemy's canon — was the son and immediate
successor of Nebuchadnezzar, seems to be universally admitted.
According to Hales, however, he was not cut off in a conspiracy
of his own subjects, but slain in battle by Cyrus when command-
ing the armies of his uncle and lather-in-law Cyaxares, whose
territories Evil-merodach had prepared wantonly to attack. He
was succeeded by his son Neriglissar, the Belshazzar of Daniel,
and grandson of Nebuchadnezzar the great; and it was Belshazzar
or Neriglissar, who so cruelly oppressed his own subjects, and
exercised such acts of tyrannic violence on Gobrias and Gadates,
as provoked them to excite a conspiracy against him, in which
he was slain, according to Ptolemy's canon, seventeen years before
the final overthrow of the kingdom of Babylon. Laborosoarchod,
who is, by our author, called the predecessor of Belshazzar, we
learn from Berosus to have been his son, and, though a mere
boy {this,) to have succeeded him in the kingdom; but he was
slain, in a conspiracy, nine months afterwards, and is therefore
omitted in Ptolemy's canon.] — Hales's Analysis, &c. vol. ii. p
503, &c. and vol. iii. p. 81, &c. — Ed.
d Next to murder, no sin is so remarkably punished in this
world as that of sacrilege. This appears from innumerable in-
stances taken from all histories, both sacred and profane. But
688
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M 4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7-xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i-v.
a damp to the king's mirth, by causing a hand to appear
upon the wall, which, in three words, wrote the sentence
of his condemnation. The king saw the hand that wrote ;
and being exceedingly affrighted and troubled at it, he
commanded all his wise men, magicians, and astrologers
to be immediately called, that they might read the writ-
ing, and explain its meaning ; but when none a of them
could do either, notwithstanding the great honours b and
presents which he offered them, at the instance of the
c queen-mother, Daniel was sent for.
As soon as he came into the king's presence, he d re-
ceived him very courteously, and made him the same
in the heathen story, remarkable examples of this kind are the
miserable end of the Phocians, who robbed the temple of Delphos,
and were the occasion of that war, which was called from thence
'the holy war:' the destruction of the Gauls in their attempt
upon the same temple ; and of Crassus, who plundered the temple
of Jerusalem, and that of the Syrian goddess; as these two last
stories are related by Prideaux, part 2. — Lowth's Commentary
on Dan. v. 5.
a The writing very probably might be in a character unknown
to the Chaldeans, as the old Hebrew, Phoenician, and Samaritan
were ; or if they were acquainted with the character, yet such is
the genius of most of the oriental languages, where so little use
is made of vowels, and where the pronunciation and sequel of
the discourse generally determine the signification of the letters,
that a man may be a perfect master of a language, and yet not
able to read and comprehend a word, when it, stands alone, and
without any context, as it is in the case of Mene, Tckel, Uphar-
sin. A man, for instance, that understands the Hebrew tongue
never so well, were he to meet dbr standing alone, would have
much ado to read them, because, according to the manner that
we pronounce them, the letters will admit of many different
significations; and it is much the same in the Chaldee language,
wherein the words we are now speaking of were wrote. — Calmet's
Commentary on Dan. v. 7.
b The king's words are these: — 'Whosoever shall read this
writing, and show me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed
with scsrletj and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall
be the third ruler in the kingdom,' (Dan. v. 7.) From whence
it appears, that the kings of Babylon wore the same ornaments,
and, in rewarding their favourites, gave the same marks of
honours that the kings of Persia and their successors did. For
purple, we find in several Greek authors, was the ordinary habit
of the kings of Persia, and of the princes of their court that were
in the highest posts of honour. The chain or collar of gold was
one of the greatest marks of distinction that the Persian kings
could bestow upon their subjects; and 'to be the third ruler of
the kingdom,' was the same sublime office that Darius the Mede
put Daniel in, (ch. vi. 1, 2.) when he constituted him one of the
presidents over the hundred and twenty princes that he had
made governors over provinces. — Xenophon's Cyropeedia , b. 8 ;
Diudorns, 1). xviii; Josepkus's Antiquities, b. xi. c. 6; Brisson
on the kingdom of the Persians, b. i.
c In the 2d verse of the fifth chapter of Daniel, we read, ' that
the king, his princes, his wives, and his concubines ' were all at
the feast, which he made for them; and yet in the 10th verse it
follows, that the queen, upon hearing of the news of the hand-
writing, 'came into the banquet house;' but then it must be
observed, that this queen was not one of his wives, but Nitocris,
his mother, and she seems there to be called the queen by way
of eminence, bi cause she had the regency of the kingdom under
her son, for which her great wisdom duly qualified her. For
this reason Herodotus speaks of her, as if she had been sovereign
of the kingdom, in the same manner as Semiramis is said to have
been, and attributes to her all those works about Babylon which
other authors ascribe to her son. — Pridcau.v's Connect, anno 547 '.
d And yet it is observable, that when he came into his pre-
sence, he asked him, 'art thou that Daniel?' which seems to
imply, though he was one of the chief ministers of state, (Dan.
v. 13.) the king did not know him; but this only Bhows, that
Belshazzar was a man who minded nothing but his pleasures,
and left all things else to the management of others; a conduct
too often followed by such princes as think kingdoms made for
nothing else hut to serve their pleasures, and gratify their lusts!
— Prideaur's Connection, anno 547,
offer of honours and presents, that he had done to his own
magicians, if he would but explain the writing. Daniel
modestly refused the offers he made him ; but having
undertaken to perform what he required of him, he
first reproved him, with some freedom, for his ingratitude
to God, who had advanced hhn to the rank of a sovereign,
and for the profanation of the vessels which were conse-
crated to his service ; and then proceeded to the inter-
pretation of the words, which were these, Mene, Tekel,
Upharsin. " Mene," says he " which signifies number,
intimates, that the days, both of your life and of your
reign, are numbered, or that you have but a short time
to live. Tekel, which signifies weight, intimates, that
you have been weighed in the balance of God's justice,
and found too light ; and Upharsin, e which signifies
fragment, intimates, that your kingdom shall be divided,
and given to the Medes and Persians ;" which accord-
ingly came to pass ; for that very night, in the midst of
their feasting and revelling, the city/ was taken by sur-
e Daniel, in repeating the words, instead of Upharsin, puts
in Peres; but they both signify the same thing.
f Cyrus had lain before the town to little or no purpose for
the space of two years, when, understanding that a great annual
feast was approaching, wherein the Babylonians, in honour of
their idol Sheshach, were wont to spend the whole night in
revelling and drunkenness, he thought this no improper time to
attempt to surprise them. To this purpose, having posted one
part of his men at the place where the river ran into the city,
and another where it came out, with orders to enter by way of
the channel, as soon as they found the river fordable : about the
close of the evening he fell to work, broke down the dams, and
turned aside the stream ; so that, by the middle of the night,
the riverwas so drained, that the parties according to their orders,
entered the channel, and finding the gates leading down to the
river open, by them they ascended into the city, and made
directly to the palace, where they slew the king, and all those
that were about him. By this stratagem Cyrus became master
of Babylon, but he took no care to repair the breach in the banks
of the river; so that all the country on that side was overflown,
and the current which went to Babylon grew afterwards so
shallow, as to become unfit for the smallest navigation. So fully
verified were all these prophecies concerning Babylon : ' Behold
I will stir up the Medes against her,' (Isa. xiii. 7.) ' 1 will dry
up her sea, and make her springs dry,' (Jer. li. 36.) ' Babylon,
the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency,
shall be like Sodom and Gomorrah,' (Is. xiii. 19) ' For I will
make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water,' (Is.
xiv. 23.) ' saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts.' —
Prideaux's Connection, anno 547. [According to Dr Hales,
the taking of Babylon by Cyrus was long after this, on the revolt
of Nahonadius from the dominion of the Medes ; and it is cer-
tainly not said in the hook of Daniel, that on the night of Bel-
shazzar's murder the city was ' taken by Cyrus,' or by ' any
man.' " The great feast, on the night of which Belshazzar was
slain, appears to have been at a season of profound peace and
tranquillity, when ' a thousand of his lords ' could freely come
from all parts of his empire without molestation or interruption
from a besieging enemy, and when the king would be most apt
' to forget God, after he had eaten and was full.' " In the book
of Daniel it is not said how or by whom Belshazzar was slain ;
but it may be collected, says Dr Hales, from Xenophon, that he
was slain by conspirators, at the head of whom were Gobrias and
Gadates. This is certainly not said by Xenophon, who seems to
have confounded the time at which Belshazzar was slain, when
the gods punished the impious king, with the taking of Babylon
when it had revolted from the Midian yoke ; for it is much more
probable that Xenophon confounded dates and events, than that
there should be any mistake in the canon of Ptolemy, or in the
Chaldean records as quoted by Berosus. The family of Nebu-
chadnezzar being now extinct, our author thinks that Cyaxares
oi- Darius the Mede, who was the brother of Nebuchadnezzar's
queen, took possession of the throne by the voluntary oner of the
Babylonians.] — Bishop Gleig. — Ed.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &<;.
6Si)
\. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— .v.
prise, ° Belshazzar slain, and the kingdom translated to
Cyaxares, whom t!ie Scripture calls ' Darius the Mede.'
Darius, from his very first accession to the throne, had
a great esteem for Daniel, as knowing him to be a per-
son of extraordinary parts and learning-, and long- versed
in affairs of state : and therefore having- divided the
whole empire into an hundred and twenty provinces,
over which he set governors, and over these three presi-
dents, as the king's chief ministers, he made Daniel the
first of these; * but it happened to him, as it usually
does to all favourites, to be maligned, and envied by
others.
His administration of public affairs, however, was so
just, that in that capacity he gave them no room for any
accusation against him, and therefore they laid their
plot another way. He, they knew, was a strict observer
of the religion of his country, and a constant resorter to
God in prayer ; and therefore they applied themselves
to Darius, in the name of his whole council and officers
of state, that he would be pleased so far to indulge his
people, as to pass a decree, only for thirty days, that
whoever c should ask any petition either of God or man,
except of the king only, for that space of time, should
be thrown to the lions ; which the king, taking it for a
great testimony of their affection and loyalty to him, at
his first accession to the throne, without any manner of
a Of the manner wherein this was done, we find Xenophon
(Cyropadia, b. vii.) thus relating the story, namely, " That two
deserters, Gadates and Gobryas, having assisted some of the
Persian army to kill the guards and seize upon the palace, they
entered into the room where the king was, whom they found
standing up in a posture of defence, but that they soon dispatched
him, and those that were with .him, and thereby fulfilled the pro-
phecy of Jeremiah ; ' I will make drunk her princes, and her
wise men, her captains and riders, and her mighty men; and
they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not awake, saith the King,
whose name is the Lord of hosts,' " (chap. li. 57.) — Loivth'i
Commentary on Dan. v. 30.
b For though the whole power of the army, and the chief con-
duct of other affairs were in the hands of Cyrus (and therefore
we find him, in Ptolemy's canon, set down as immediate suc-
cessor to Belshazzar, who is there called Nabonadius,) yet as
long as his uncle lived, Cyrus allowed him a joint title with
him in the empire, and out of deference to him, yielded him the
first place of honour in it; though, in reality, he had no more
than the name and shadow of sovereignty, except in Media,
which was his own proper dominion before any concpuests were
made. — J'ridcan.v's Connection, anno 538. [This is certainly
not correct. That Nabonadius was a very different man from
Belshazzar has been already shown; and it seems evident from
Ptolemy's canon, and from Berosus as quoted by Dr Hales, that
Darius, whilst he lived, was the sole monarch of Babylon and
Medea, though, being of an indolent disposition, as has been al-
ready observed, In: left the burden of military affairs and the care
of the government to Cyrus, who was at once his nephew, his
son-in-law, and bis destined heir. This may have led Zenophon,
and after him Prideaux, to suppose Cyrus joint sovereign with
liis uncle of the Babylonian empire, especially as Darius appears
tu have lived only two years after lie succeeded to that throne.] —
Bishop Gleig. — Ed.
c It may seem a little strange, that Darius should so readily
accept of an honour which was due to God alone. But we see
what a pitch of vanity and arrogance these eastern princes were
arrived at, when we find Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel, asking tbe
three Hebrew youths, ' Who is that God that shall deliver you
out of my hands ?' (Dan. iii. 15.) when we find it said of another
of that name, in the book of Judith, ' Who is God but Nabu-
chodonosar ? He will send bis power, and destroy them from
the face of the earth,' (chap. vi. 2, 3;) and more especially, when
we find the Persians making it a matter of state policy to have
the persons of their kings in the same veneration as they had
their gods.— Quint. Curt. b. viii.
hesitation, passed into an act, and issued out his pro-
clamation to that purpose.
Daniel was not ignorant that this wicked contrivance
was designed to ensnare him ; but nevertheless he con-
tinued his usual course of paying his adorations to God,
three times every day, and that not in any clandestine
manner, but with his chamber window open towards Je-
rusalem. d His enemies, who had laid this snare for
him, were not forgetful to watch him diligently ; and
therefore having taken him in the act of prayer, they
immediately went to the king, accused Daniel of a con-
tempt of his decree, and desired that the sentence might
instantly be executed upon him.
The king too late perceived, that his easy compliance
with a fallacious offer had betrayed him into a mistake
that was likely to prove fatal to his servant Daniel , and
therefore he laboured what he could to reverse the de-
cree; but the grandees, on the other hand, represented
to him, that the royal decrees, according to the laws of
the Medes and Persians e were unalterable, and conse-
quently the penalty which Daniel had incurred, irrever-
sible ; so that what through the importunity of those
wicked men, and a false notion of honour in adhering to
his word, the king delivered up Daniel to their mercy,
but not without some glimmering hopes, that the God
whom he served continually would by some means or
other preserve him.
No sooner was Daniel delivered into their hands, but
they hurried him away to the lions' den ; and having
thrown him in, they not only rolled a large stone to the
mouth of it, but had it sealed likewise/ with their own,
as well as the king's signet, that thereby they might pre-
vent all possibility of his making an escape. The king,
in the meantime, went pensive home ; and having passed
the night in much uneasiness and anxiety of mind, he rose
early next morning, and repaired to the den, where, to
his great and surprising joy, he found Daniel alive ; and
having caused him to be taken out, he ordered, that his
accusers, S their wives and their children, should be all
d It was a constant custom among the Jews, for those that
were in the country, or in any distant land, to turn themselves
towards Jerusalem ; and for those that were at Jerusalem, to
turn towards the temple, when they prayed ; and the probable
reason of this might be, the words of Solomon, in his prayer to
God, at the consecration of the temple: ' If thy people, when led
away captive, pray unto thee toward their land which thou gavest
unto their fathers, the city, which thou hast chosen, and the
house, which I have built for thy name ; then hear thou their
prayers, and their supplication, in heaven, thy dwelling-place,
and maintain their cause,' (1 Kings viii. 48, 49.)
c So Diodorus Siculus tells us (b. iv.) of Darius the last king
of Per-ia, that he would have pardoned Charidemus after he was
condemned to death, but could not reverse the law that had
passed against him. What made these laws thus unalterable,
we are at a loss to know, unless we suppose, that when they
passed, either the king had confirmed them by an oath, and then
they became immutable ; or that they were sealed not only by
the king, but by all the princes then in council, as one would be
apt to guess from Dan. vi. 8, and xii. 9. — Lowth's Commentary
on Dan. vi. ; and Patrick's Commentary on Esther i.
/' Jiy this it seems, as if the Persian government, at this time,
was a kind of mixed monarchy, consisting of a king and nobles;
forasmuch that we find the king could do nothing of importance
without his counsellors, nor had he power to alter any thing that
was determined in council. — Calmefs Commentary.
q Tbe Lex Talionis condemned all calumniators to the same
sort of punishment which they intended to have brought upon
others; and in this case, among the Persians, it was a frequent
4s
C90
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
oast into it, where the lions fell upon them, and instantly I
destroyed them ; while the king, in grateful acknowledg- j
nient of a wonderful providence in Daniel's preservation,
made public proclamation, that in all the parts of his
dominions, the God, whom Daniel worshipped, should
be revered.
The term of seventy years, which the prophet Jere-
miah " had prefixed for the continuance of Judah's cap-
tivity, being now drawing toward a conclusion, Daniel '
thought it his duty to humble himself before God, and to
make his ardent supplications to him that he would re-
member his people, and grant a restoration to Jerusalem,
and make his face again to shine upon his holy city,
and his sanctuary, which was desolate ; whereupon he
had in a vision assurance given him by the angel
Gtibriel, not only of the deliverance of Judah from their
temporal captivity under the Babylonians, but also of a
much greater redemption which God would give his
church, by delivering them from their spiritual captivity
under sin and Satan, to be accomplished at the end of
seventy weeks after the going forth of the commandment
to rebuild Jerusalem, that is, at the expiration of 490
years, as we shall have occasion to explain that remark-
able passage 3 hereafter.
Upon the reduction of Babylon, 3 which put an end to
the Chaldean empire, after it had continued from the
reign of Nabonassar, who founded it, 209 years, Cyrus
went into Persia to make a visit to his father and mother,
who were a et living ; and, on his return through Media,
married the laughter and only child of his uncle Darius,
and had, in dower with her, the reversion of the kingdom
of Media, after her father's death ; so that, in a short
time, he succeeded, not only to the Babylonish empire,
but to the two additional kingdoms of Persia and Media
likewise, and from hence the whole extent of his domin-
ions took the name of the Persian empire.*
1 Chap. ix. 2 Dan. ix. 24, &c.
3 Prideaux's Connection, anno 540.
thing to include all the family in the penalty inflicted on the
father; but "ahominahle laws," says Ammianus Marcellinus,
" by which, on account of the guilt of one person, death was in-
flicted on the whole of the kindred." — Calmct's Commentary,
a The particular prophecies to which Daniel alludes, might
probably be these : ' Thus saith the Lord of hosts, because ye have
not heard my words, behold, I will send and take all the families
of the north, and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my ser-
vant, and will bring them against this land and the inhabitants
thereof: and this whole land shall be a desolation, and an aston-
ishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy
years; and it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accom-
plished, I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith
the Lord, for their iniquity: but I will visit you, and perform
my good word towards you, in causing you to return to this
place. For I know my thought that I think towards you, saith
the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an ex-
pected end,' .Icr. xxv. 8. &c, and xxix. 10, 11.) But prophe-
cies, he knew very well, were but conditional, and, for their ac-
complishment, depended, in a great measure, upon the behaviour
of those to whom they were made. One part of this prediction
he had seen executed, in the punishment of the king of Babylon,
and the translation of his kingdom to the Medes and Persians;
but gooil reason lie had to fear, lest the sins of his countrymen
the Jews should retard the completion of the other part, namely,
their return from captivity, beyond the compass of seventy years:
and this was both the cause of his grief and the motive of his
prayer. — Calmet's Commentary.
b There seems to be in this paragraph many mistakes. It
cannot be true that Cyrus did not marry the daughter of Darius
or Cyaxares Ii. till after th« conquest of Babylon; for Xenophon,
who relates this, says likewise that the princess and he were
4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
4 As soon as Cyrus was come into the full possession
of the empire, he published a decree, c wherein lie gave
free liberty to the Jews to return to their own country,
and to rebuild the house of the Lord at Jerusalem.
d Many of the sacred vessels, to the number of 5400,
4 Ezrai. 1, &c.
about the same age; and it seems indisputable that at the con-
quest of Babylon Cyrus was sixty-three years of. age. But he
had two children by the daughter of Darius, who were both
grown to man's estate at his death, when he was seventy years
of age ; and therefore he must have married at a much earlier
period than the conquest cf Babylon. His father likewise, and
probably his mother, must have been dead before that period, as
will appear from the following account of the birth, successions to
different kingdoms, and death of this illustrious prince, collected
by Dr Hales with the utmost care and accuracy. "The reign
of Cyrus over Persia began, according to Diodorus, Thallus,
Castor, Polybius, and Phlegon cited by Eusebius, (Prap. Evang.
b. 19.) in the first year of the fifty-fifth olympiad, corresponding
to the Julian years, B. C. 5G0, and 559. He reigned, in all,
thirty years, according toCtesias, Justin, Clemens Alexandrinus,
and Eusebius; twenty-nine according to Herodotus: and thirty-
one years according to Sulpitius. The year of his death is ascer-
tained to have been B. C. 529, by a lunar eclipse recorded by
Ptolemy to have happened in the seventh year of his son and
successor Cambyses, B. C. 523. This determines the birth of
Cyrus to have been B. C. 599, two years after his grandfather,
Astyages, succeeded to the crown of Media, B. C. 601. Cyrus
succeeded to the crown of Persia, on the demise of his father,
B. C. 559, as hath been already observed, and is determined by
the thirty years of his whole reign. This corrects an error of
Xenophon, who represents Cambyses, (father of Cyrus) as still
alive after the capture of Babylon, B. C. 536; an error into
which he was led, perhaps, by confounding this capture with the
death of Belshazzar, that ' impious king,' as he calls him, who
was slain seventeen years before, B. C. 553, when Cyaxares, or
Darius the Mede, took possession of the kingdom of Babylon.
Cyrus peaceably succeeded his uncle two years after," as the
author completely proves, in opposition to Herodotus, and the
general current of ancient and modern historians, by the united
testimony of iEschylus, Xenophon, Josephus, and the Persian
historians, supported by the authority of Scripture, and common
sense. " And when Nabonadius, who had been appointed
viceroy of Babylon by Darius the Mede, at length rebelled and
joined Croesus the sovereign of Lydia, he was defeated, B. C.
53S, and Babylon was taken by Cyrus, B. C. 53G, which was,
of course, the era of the actual commencement of his full
sovereignty. — Hales 's Analysis, &c, vol. ii. p. 465, and vol.
iv. p. 88, second edition. — Ed.
c It is a good deal more than probable, that this decree in
favour of the Jews was, in a great measure, owing to Daniel's
good offices. Cyrus, at his first coming to Babylon, after he had
taken the city, found him there an old minister of state, famed
for his great wisdom over all the east, and, in many things, for a
knowledge superior to the rest of mankind ; and accordingly we
find, that he not only employed him as such, but, upon the settling
of the government of the whole empire, made him first superin-
tendent or prime minister of state over all the provinces of it.
In this station of life, Daniel must have been a person of great
authority at court, and highly in the esteem of his prince: and
therefore, as we find him earnest in his prayer to God for the
restoration of his people, (Dan. ix.) we cannot but think, that he
would be equally warm in his intercessions for it with the king.
To which purpose, it is not improbable, that he might show him
those passages in Isaiah, which speak of him by name, 150 years
before he was born, as a great prince and conqueror, the ruler of
many nations, and the restorer of his people, by causing his
temple to be built, and the city of Jerusalem re-inhabited. For,
that Cyrus had seen those prophecies, the thing is plain, not
only from the testimony of Josephus, {Antiq. b. xi. c. 1.) but
from the recital that is made of them in the decree itself, (Ezra
i. 2;) and if so, who should be so proper to show them to him,
and to recommend the accomplishment of them to his princely
care, as Daniel, who had so great credit with him, and so passion-
ate a concern for the restoration of Zion.— Prideaux's Connection,
anno 538.
d Some are of opinion that among the sacred things which
Sbct. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
69J
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
° which Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the former house,
brought to Babylon, and placed in the temple of his god
Bel, he ordered his treasurer to restore ; and wrote let-
ters * recommendatory to the governors of several pro-
vinces to assist the Jews in their undertaking.
The encouragement which was given them by virtue
of this decree, made the Jews soon gather together out
of the several parts of the kingdom of Babylon, to the
number of 42,360, which, together with their servants,
who were 7337 more, amounted in all to 49,697 persons.
For, not only those of Judah and Benjamin, but several
also of the other tribes that had been carried away by
Tiglath-lJileser and Esarhaddon, yet still retained the
true worship of God in a strange land, took the benefit
of this decree, to return to their own country.
The chief leaders of these returning captives were
Zerubbabel and Joshua. Zerubbabel, c whose Babylonish
name was Sheshbazzar, was the son of Salathiel, the son
of Jehoiakim king of Judah, who was kept so long cap-
tive in Babylon ; and Joshua was the son of Jozadach,
the son of Seraiah, who was high priest when Jerusalem
Cyrus ordered to be restored, the ark of the covenant was one ;
but it nowhere appears that this ark was carried from Jerusalem
to Babylon. They tell us, indeed, that in the second temple
sacrifices were offered, as in the first, and all solemn days observ-
ed, especially the great day of expiation, when the law ordained,
that the blood should be sprinkled before the mercy-seat; and the
mercy-seat, say they, was part of the ark ; but besides that, the
ark, without the sheehinah, or divine glory, (which was then
withdrawn,) would have been of no great significance, the Jews
universally acknowledged, that the ark was one of the five things
that were wanting in the second temple.
a The sum total of the vessels, as they are named in Ezra, i.
9, 10, do not amount to half this number; and therefore some
have thought, that there must be a numerical error either in the
one place or the other; whilst others suppose, that as in 2 Chron.
xxxvi. IS, Nebuchadnezzar is said to have carried away all the
vessels, both great and small, in this detail the larger vessels
only, and such as were of great value, are mentioned, but that the
gross sum comprehends all, and amounts to the number specified.
— Patrick's Commentary on Ezra i. 11.
b Josephus has recorded one, which is directed to the gover-
nors of Syria, in the following manner: — " Cyrus the king, to
Sysina and Saraba=an sendeth greeting. Be it known unto you,
that I have given leave to all the Jews that are in my dominions
to return to their own country, and there to rebuild their capital
city, with the holy temple at Jerusalem, in the same place where
it stood before. I have likewise sent my treasurer, Mithridates,
and Zerubbabel the governor of Judea, to superintend the build-
ing, and to see it raised sixty cubits upward from the ground,
and as many over; the walls to be three rows of polished stone,
and one of the wood of the country, together with an altar for
sacrifices, and all this to be done at my charge. — It is my further
pleasure, that they receive entire to themselves all the profits and
revenues that were formerly enjoyed by their predecessors, and
that they have an allowance paid them of 250,500 drachmas, in
consideration of beasts for sacrifices, wine, and oil, and 2500 mea-
sures of wheat, in lieu of fine Hour, and all this to be raised upon
the tribute of Samaria; that the priests may offer up sacrifices,
according to the laws and ceremonies of Moses, and pray daily
for the king and royal family, and for the welfare and happiness
ot the Persian empire; and let no man presume to do anything
contrary to the tenor of this my royal will and proclamation, upon
pain of forfeiting life and estate." — Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 1.
c In the time of the captivity, it was a common thing for the
great men of Judah to have two names ; one of their own coun-
try, which was domestic, and another of the Chaldeans, which
was used at court. Zerubbabel was bom in Babylon ; and his
name, which signifies an crile, or stranger in Babylon, imports
the misery of the people of Israel at that time ; hut Sheshbazzar,
which is a compound of two words, signifying, fine limn ami
gold, seems to be a name of a better omen, r.nd to denote their
ftlture more nourishing condition.— Patrick's Commentary.
was destroyed, and put to death by Nebuchadnezzar at
Riblah, in Syria ; so that the former of them was des-
cended from the regal, and the latter from the pontifical
family in a direct line. Zerubbabel was made governor
of the land by a commission from Cyrus ; Joshua, of
course, succeeded to the chief priesthood ; and with
them were joined several others, as assisters, for the set-
tling all affairs both in church and state.
On the first month of the Jewish sacred year, which is
called Nisan, and answers to part of March and part of
April in our calendar, the people arrived in Judea ; and.
having dispersed themselves, according to their tribes and
families, in their several cities, they set about the rebuild-
ing of their houses, and the cultivation of their lands,
after they had lain desolate, from the murder of Geda-
liah, two and fifty years. On the seventh month, which
is called Tizra, and answers in part to our September
and October, all the people from their several cities,
met together at Jerusalem, and on the first day of that
month, there celebrated the d feast of the trumpets. On
the tenth was the great day of expiation, e when the
d The first day of the month Tizri was the beginning of the
Jewish civil year, and on it was the feast of trumpets, so called,
because it was proclaimed by sound of trumpet; but, upon what
occasion it was at first instituted, the Scripture is silent. Theo-
doret (Quest, xxxii. in Lev.) is of opinion, that it was in memory
of the thunder and lightning upon Mount Sinai, when God gave
his law from thence. The ancient rabbins will have it, that it
was in remembrance of the deliverance of Isaac, in whose stead
Abraham sacrificed a ram ; but some modern Jews maintain that
it was in memory of the world's creation, which they accordingly
assert was in the beginning of autumn, and, as they hold it by
tradition, that on this day God particularly judges all the actions of
the foregoing year, and disposes all the events of the year follow-
ing, for this reason they generally apply themselves, for the whole
eight days preceding this feast, to the works of penance and mor-
tification. On the feast itself, which lasts for two days, all labour
and business are suspended, and, while sacrifices were in use, the
Jews offered, in the name of the whole nation, a solemn holo-
caust of a calf, two rams, and seven lambs, all of the same year,
together with the flour and wine, that usually went along with
such sacrifices ; but, instead of that, they now go to the syna-
gogue, where they repeat several prayers and benedictions, and
having taken the Pentateuch very solemnly out of the chest, and
read to five persons the service that used to be performed on that
day, they sound twenty times upon a horn, sometimes very low,
sometimes very loud: and this, they say, makes them think of
the judgments of God, to intimidate sinners, and put them upon
repentance. — Caimefs Dictionary under the word Trumpet.
e This was one of the principal solemnities of the Jews, and the
ceremonies to be observed hereon were such as these. — The
high priest, after he had washed not only his hands and feet, as
usual in common sacrifices, but his body likewise, dressed him-
self in a plain linen garment like one of the priests, and had nei-
ther his purple robe, his ephod, nor his pectoral on, because he
was going to expiate his own as well as the pi ople's sins. lie
first of all offered a bullock and a ram for his own sins, and those
of the other priests, putting his hand upon their heads, and con-
fessing his own sins, and the sins of his house: then he received
from the princes of the people two goats for a sin-offering, and a
ram for a burnt-offering, to be offered in the name of all the peo-
ple. By lots it was determined which of the two goats should be
sacrificed, and which beset at liberty ; and therefore, after that
he had perfumed the sanctuary with some burning incense, he
took of the blood of the bullock which he had sacrificed, and dip-
ping his finger in it, sprinkled it seven times between the ark
and the veil, which separated between the holy of holies, and the
body of the tabernacle or temple. After this lie came out again,
and having sacrificed the goat upon which the lot was fallen, he
returned with some of its blood into the sanctuary, and there
sprinkled it as he had done before: then coming out again, he
sprinkled both sides of the court with the blood of the goat, and
so proceeding to the altar of the burnt-offerings, he wet the four
692
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES. A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
high priest made atonement for all the people ; and on
the fifteenth began the feast of tabernacles, a which last-
ed till the twenty-third. During- all which solemnities,
the people staid at Jerusalem ; and to promote the resto-
ration of God's worship in that place, the free-will offer-
ings, which they made upon that occasion, besides an
hundred vestments for the priests, amounted to sixty-one
thousand drachms of gold, and live thousand minae of
silver, which, in all, comes to about b seventy-five thou-
horns of it with the blood of the goat and the bullock, and sprin-
kled it seven times with the same. After all these ceremonies
were finished, the goat that was to be set at liberty, which was
commonly called the scape-goat, was brought to the high priest,
who put both his hands upon its head, and having confessed all
his own sins, and the sins of the people, delivered it to persons
appointed to that office, who carried it into the wilderness, and
left it upon the brink of a precipice, at twelve miles' distance
from Jerusalem. After all which, the high priest washed him-
self all over again in the tabernacle or temple, and putting on
his pontifical dress, sacrificed two rams for a burnt-offering, one
for himself and the other for the people : and so concluded the day,
with reading the law, and giving the blessing to the people, who
all, upon this occasion, behaved with great devotion, fasted punctu-
ally, and returned home with a full persuasion and assurance that
their sins were entirely done away, and expiated. The modern
Jews, who have no sacrifices, content themselves with reading in
Leviticus what relates to the solemn service of this day, and tiie
ceremonies concerning the scape-goat. They, in like manner,
fast very strictly, and pray very devoutly, until the conclusion of
the day, when having received the Rabbin's blessing, they go
home, fully satisfied that all their iniquities are pardoned ; for their
standing maxim is, that repentance, though accompanied with a
resolution of living well, does but suspend sins; whereas the feast
of expiation does absolutely abolish them. The reader that is de-
sirous to know more of this, may consult Basnage's History of
the Jews, and Culmet's Dictionary under the word Expiation.
a This was one of the great solemnities of the Jews, wherein
all the males were obliged to present themselves before the Lord.
In Hebrew it is called chag hassuchoth, the feast of tents; be-
cause it was kept under green tents, and arbours, in memory of
their dwelling in tents in their passage through the wilderness,
and immediately after the harvest, in grateful acknowledgment
to God for the fruits of the earth which they had lately gathered
in. It was observed for seven days ; and of the several sacrifices
which «ere appointed for each day, we have a punctual account
in the book of Numbers, (chap. xxix. 12, &c.) The modem
Jews not hiving now an opportunity of going to the temple and
performing all the ceremonies prescribed by Moses, make, each
for himself, in some open place, a bower, or arbour of the branches
of trees of such a determinate height, hung round about and
adorned, as much as they can, where they eat and drink, and
pass at least as much time in their houses, for all the days of the
festival; but such as are old, or sick, are excused, and when it
rains very hard, they are permitted to retire to their houses.
On the first day of the feast, they take one branch of palm, three
of myrtle, and one of willow, bound together, which they carry
in their ri^lit hand, and having a branch of citron, with its fruit
in their left, thus they make four turns about the reading desk
in their synagogues. On the seventh day, which is accounted
more holy than the rest, they rise with the sun, and going to the
synagogue, sing abundance of prayers, which they repeat all the
feast, with prodigious rapidity, as supposing, that during their
journey they were obliged to make haste even in the sen ice of
God. On the eighth, (for they have added two days to w^hat
Moses at first prescribed) they get their friends together, and
give them an entertainment; and on the ninth, which they call
'the joy of the law,' they complete the reading of the Penta-
teuch, according to the order of its sections. — Basnage's Hist,
of the Jews, ami Cahnet's Diet, under the word Tabernacles.
& For every drachm of gold is worth ten shilling.; of our money,
and every mina of silver nine pounds; for it contained sixty
shekels, and every shekel of silver is worth three shillings of our
money. — From whence it appears, that the .lews were not made
such poor slaves in Babylon, as wrought fur their lords and mas-
ters, but had some of them very considerable offices at court, and
ail liberty to trade, and get riches for themselves; and conse-
sand five hundred pounds of our money ; and with this
fund, they began the work of rebuilding the temple.
To this purpose, having employed the first year in pre-
paring materials and providing workmen, in the second
month of the second year, (which answers in part to our
April and May), they laid the foundation of it with great
joy and solemnity ; only the old men, who had seen the
glory of the first temple, and had no expectation that
this, which was now abuilding by a few poor exiles,
lately returned from their captivity, would ever equal
that which had all the riches of David and Solomon (two
of the wealthiest princes of the east) expended on it,
wept at the remembrance of the old, whilst the others
rejoiced at the laying the foundations of the new temple.
Whilst the Jews Mere going on with this work, the
Samaritans, who were planted in several cities of Israel
in the room of the Israelites whom Salmanassar, king of
Assyria, had long before carried away captive, hearing
that they were about rebuilding their temple, came to
the governor Zerubbabel, and desired to join with them
in the work, alleging, that they worshipped the same
God that the people of Judah did. The governor, how-
ever, and the chiefs of the families of Israel, would by
no means allow them to have any share in the work,
being apprehensive that they, who were no better than
idolaters, c notwithstanding they pretended to worship
the God of Israel, might have some evil design in the
ofier of their service ; and therefore they absolutely
refused them ; which so exasperated the other, that, from
that very moment, they made it their endeavour, as much
as in them lay, to obstruct the work : and though they
could not alter the decree which Cyrus had made in
favour of it ; yet by bribes, and underhand dealings
with his ministers, they in a great measure defeated its
effects. So that for several years the building went but
slowly on, and, upon the death of the prophet rf Daniel,
quently that there may not be all the truth imaginable in that
common saying among them, namely, that they were the only
bran, that is, the dregs of the people, who returned to Jerusalem,
after the end of the captivity, and that all the fine flour staid be-
hind at Babylon. — Pridcaux's Connection, anno 536.
c For although, from the time that they had been infested
with lions, in the days of Esarhaddon, they had worshipped the
God of Israel, yet it was only in conjunction with their other
gods whom they worshipped before ; and therefore, notwithstand-
ing their worship of the true God, since they worshipped false
gods too at the same time, they were, in this respect, idolaters,
which was reason enough for the true worshippers of God to have
no communion with them. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 534.
d We do not find that Daniel took the advantage of the edict
which Cyrus made in favour of the Jews; and therefore we may
suppose, that, as he did not return with them to Jerusalem, the
king might require his continuance with him, and Daniel might
the rather consent to it, as having thereby a better opportunity
to befriend his countrymen upon any exigence. To this purpose
it is highly probable, that he attended the Persian court, which,
alter the taking and defacing of Babylon, resided in summer at
Shushan or Susa, and in winter at Ecbatan. In the palace of
Shushan, Daniel, as himself tells us, (chap. viii. I, &c.,) had
several visions. In this city, as Josephus himself informs us,
(Antiq. b. x. c. 12,) where, instead of Ecbatan, St Jerome reads
Susa, he built a famous edifice, finished with such exquisite art,
that it continued fresh and beautiful in his days; and in this city
the common tradition is, that he died in the third or fourth year
of Cyrus, and about the ninety-first year of his age; for even tc
this day, as we learn from Benjamin's Itincrarium, the inhabi-
tants of the place, at present called Tuster, show his monument.
But the most valuable monument left behind him is in his writ-
ings, whereof the Jewish historian gives us this character —
Sect. I.J
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &<
69B
A. HI. 3417 A. C. 587 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JElt. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, AND EZRA i— v.
" He had this peculiar blessing attending him, that he lived in
great reputation both with prince and people, and when he died,
left an immortal memory behind him. II is writings, which are
still extant, and in common use, we keep as a sure pledge that he
had an intimacy and conversation with God: lor, whereas other
prophets were more employed in foreboding calamities and ill
news, which drew upon them disgrace from princes, and hatred
from the people, Daniel, on the contrary, foretold nothing but
happy events, and what was agreeable; so that the nature of his
predictions was such, as gained him the good will of all, and such
the certainty of them, as gained him a ready credence with all:
which, as the historian remarks, may serve not only to establish
a veneration for the memory of a man whom God so signally ho-
noured, but to confound likewise the impious doctrines of the
Epicureans, which will not allow of any overruling providence
interposing in the government and preservation of the universe,
but will have the whole course of sublunary things to he nothing
more than one grand huddle of contingencies. For when I con-
sider the prophecies of Daniel, says he, I cannot but blame the
ignorance or irreverence of those who make it their profession
to decry providence, as if God took no care of us, since it is
impossible to conceive how there should be such a corespondence
between the things foretold at one time and fulfilled so many
ages alter, if, according to their opinion, every thing were left to
run at random, and fall out at hap-ha/ard." — Jewish Jlntiquitics,
b. x. c. 12. [Mr Bell, iu his edition of Rollin, lias an able and
elaborate inquiiy into the situation of Shushan, which lie identi-
fies, with the ruins called Sus or Shush, 100 miles distant from
the banks of the Shat-ul-Arab, and 50 miles N.W. of Sinister, the
Tuster mentioned above. From this article we extract the fol-
lowing interesting account of the tomb of Daniel: — Amongst
the ruins of Sus, two mounds stand pre-eminent, and of enormous
dimensions, the one being a mile in circumference, and the other
two; their height measuring nearly 150 feet. They are com-
posed of huge masses of sun-dried brick, and courses of burnt
brick and mortar, and stand not very far from the banks of the
Kerah or Karasu; from whose eastern shore the vestiges of this
once famous capital are yet traceable nearly to the banks of the
Ab-zal. approaching the town of Dezful. The people of the coun-
try disUr guish these two great mounds by the name of the Castle
and the Palace; and at the foot of the latter or largest appears a
little dome-like building, under which travellers are shown the
tomb of Daniel the prophet. A dervise resides there, impressed
with a belief of its peculiar sanctity, and who points to the grave
of the ' man greatly beloved,' the most inspired of Judah's pro-
phetic sons, with as much homage as if it belonged to the pre-
tended prophet of Mecca himself, or to the Imaum Hosein. Though
covered by this modern structure, no doubt is held by Jew, Arab,
or Mussulman, of the great antiquity of the tomb beneath — all
bearing the same tradition, that it does in very deed contain the
remains of the prophet. The exact era of his death is not known ;
but it is probable that he died in Susa, a few years after the tak-
ing of Babylon by Cyrus. Josephus mentions a famous edifice-
built by Daniel at Susa, in the form of a castle, which, he adds,
was still standing; and had been finished with such wonderful
art, that even then it appeared as fresh and beautiful as if only
newly founded. " Within this edifice," Josephus says, " was
the place where the Persian and Parthian kings were usually
buried ; and for the sake of the founder, the keeping of it was
committed to one of the Jewish nation, even at that day." Some
copies of Josephus, now extant, place this building at Ecbatan,
or Ilamadan, in Media; but St Jerome, who also gives an ac-
count of it, and professedly does so verbatim from Josephus,
places it at Susa, which'shows that it was so in his copy of that
historian. We no where read in Scripture that Daniel was at
Ecbatan, Susa was formerly a city of the Babylonian empire,
and Daniel sometimes at least resided there before the taking of
Babylon ; and it has since then been the constant tradition, that
there Daniel died, and there they still show his monument. It
must also be remarked, that Josephus calls this edifice Boris,
the same name by which Daniel himself distinguishes the castle
or palace of Shushan'. For what is translated at Shushan in the
palace, (Dan. viii. 2,) i> in the original Bish Shushan Ha. Bi-
rah. Here, undoubtedly, the Birah of Daniel is the same with
the Maris of Josephus, and both signify the palace or castle built
ill Shushan by Daniel while governor of that province. The site
of t'.iis once famous metropolis of the east is now a mere wilder-
ness, given up to beasts of prey, no human being disputing their
reign save the poor dervise who keeps watch over the tomb of
the prophi I. The chambers of royalty where Ahasuerus showed
the riches of his glorious kingdom, and the honour of his excel-
lent majesty, for IsO days, unto all his princes and servants, the
power of Media and Persia, with the nobles and princes of the
127 provinces that stretched from India even to Ethiopia, are
now the abodes of the lion, the wolf, and the hyana; and the
voice of festive song that once filled the joyous halls is now ex-
changed for the frightful bowlings of these beasts of prey. The
earliest notice of Daniel's tomb published in Europe, seems to
have been given by Benjamin of Tudela, a Spanish Jew, who
visited Asia, towards the latter part of the thirteenth century.
The account of his travels was first printed in Hebrew, in 154o,
and has gone through several editions and translations into dif-
ferent languages. The tomb of Daniel is also mentioned by
another Jewish traveller, whose Hebrew work, with a Latin trans-
lation by the learned Hottenger, was published at Heidelberg,
in l()5i), under the title of ' Cippi Hebraici.' But in these no-
tices the Tigris is confounded with the Euphrates, and Babylon
with Susa. "The local tradition which fixes Daniel's tomb at
Susa," says Sir William Ousely, "seems worthy of investiga-
tion. Through the more modern authors of some oriental works,
mostly geographical, I have pursued the tradition to Hamdalla,
Cazvini, of the fourteenth century, and from him through Rabbi
Benjamin above-mentioned, to Ebn Hawkel, who travelled in the
tenth century." — Oriental Geog. p. 70, of Ebn Hawkel, trans-
lated by Sir William Ousely. This is probably the oldest autho-
rity furnished by printed books on the subject; but a venerable
historian, Aasim of Cufah, who preceded Ebn Hawkel by two
centuries, (for he died in 735) mentions the discovery of Daniel's
coffin at Sus, in a MS. chronicle, from which Sir William
Ousely promised an extract, which is given in Walpole's me-
moirs of Asiatic Turkey, p. 422. The passage in Ebn Hawkel
respecting Daniel's tomb is as follows: — "In the city of Sus
there is a river; and I have heard, that in the time of Abou
Mousa al Ashari, a coffin was found there, and it is said the hones
of Daniel the prophet, to whom be peace, were in that coffin,
these the people held in great veneration, and, in time of dis-
tress or famine from drought, they brought them out and prayed
for rain. Abou Mousa al Ashari ordered this coffin to be brought,
and three coverings or lids to be made for it; the first or outside
one of which was of boards, exceedingly strong, and caused it to
be buried, so that it could not be viewed. A bay or gulf of the
river comes over this grave, which may be seen by any one who
dives to the bottom of the water." Now follows Sir William
Ousely's own relation, with the extract from Aasim of Cufah:
" I was finally driven by the heat to the tomb of Daniel, or, as he
is called in the east, Danyall, which is situated in a most beau-
tiful spot, washed by a clear running stream, and shaded by
planes, and other trees of ample foliage. The building is of
Mahommedan date, and inhabited by a solitary dervise, who
shows the spot where the prophet is buried, beneath a small and
simple square brick mausoleum, said to be, without all pro-
bability, coeval with his death. It has, however, neither date
nor inscription, to prove the truth or falsehood of the dervise's
assertion. The small river running at the foot of this building,
which is called the Belleran, Hows, it has been said, immediately
over the prophet's tomb, and, by the transparency of the water,
his coffin was to be seen at the bottom. But the dervise and the
natives whom I questioned, remembered no tradition corroborat-
ing such a fact. On the contrary, it has at all times been custom-
ary with the people of the country to resort hither on certain
days of the month, when they ofier up their prayers at the tomb
I have mentioned, in supplication to the prophet's shade; and,
by becoming his guests for the night, expect remission from all
present grievances, and an insurance against those to come."
The following is the tradition from the Persian MS. of Aasim of
Cufah, communicated by our author: — lathe 18th year of the
Hegira, A. D. 640, whilst Omar was khalifi*, an Arabian army,
under Abou Mousa al Ashari, invaded Susiana. In the ancient
capital Sua (Sus) that general found, besides considerable trea-
sures of various kinds, an extraordinary sepulchral monument,
which, according to local tradition, contained the body of the pro-
phet Daniel. Of this discovered monument, the most circum-
stantial account is given by Abou Mohammed Ahmed, whose
father, Aasim of Cufah, flourished so shortly after the conquest
of Susiana, that he might, when young, have conversed with
several of the veteran warriors, whose valour had contributed to
that event, for be died in A. D. 7o5, as we learn from Casiri.
Ebn Aasim's Book of Victories, in the original Arabic, is a work
very rare; but it was translated into Persian by Ahmed al Mas-
toitzi, about the year 1200, A. D. and copies iu this language
694
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZKA i-v.
who was a powerful advocate for his countrymen at the
Persian court, and the death of their great benefactor
are sufficiently numerous. I have extracted what relates to the
tomb of Daniel. " Abou Mousa, having pillaged the territory
ofAhwaz, proceeded to Susa, where he slew the governor, a
Persian prince, named Shapoor, the son of Azurmahan. Then
he entered the castle and palace of that prince, and seized all the
treasure there, deposited in different places, until he came to a
certain chamber, the door of which was strongly fastened, a lead-
en seal being affixed to the lock. Abou Mousa inquired of the
people of Sus what precious article was guarded with such care in
this chamber. They assured him, that he would not regard it
as a desirable object of plunder ; but his curiosity was roused, and
he caused the lock to be broken, and the door to be opened. In
the chamber he beheld a stone of considerable dimensions hollow-
ed out into the form of a coffin, and in that the body of a dead
man, wrapped in a shroud or winding-sheet of gold brocade. The
head was uncovered. Abou Mousa and his attendants were
astonished ; for having measured the nose, they found that pro-
portionally he must have exceeded the common size of men
The people now informed Abou Mousa, that this was the body of
an ancient sage who formerly lived in Irak, (Chaldea or Babylo-
nia,) and that whenever the want of rain occasioned a famine or
scarcity, the inhabitants applied to this holy man, and through
the efficacy of his prayers, obtained copious showers of rain from
heaven. It happened afterwards that Sus also suffered from ex-
cessive drought; and the people in distress requested that their
neighbours would allow this venerable personage to reside a few-
days among them, expecting to derive the blessing of rain from
his intercession with the Almighty; but the Irakians would not
grant this request. Fifty men then went, deputed by the people
of Sus, who again petitioned the ruler of Irak, saying, ' Let the
holy person visit our country, and detain the fifty men until his
return.' These terms were accepted, and the holy person came
to Sus, where, through the influence of his prayers, rain fell in
great abundance, and saved the land from famine; but the peo-
ple would not permit him to return, and the fifty men were de-
tained as hostages in Irak. Such, said those who accompanied
Abou Mousa, is the history of the dead man. The Arabian ge-
neral then asked them, ' by what name this extraordinary per-
sonage had been known among them ?' They replied, ' the people
of Irak called him Daniel Hakim, or Daniel the Sage.' After
this Abou Mousa remained some time in Sus, and despatched a
im ss,ii<;er to Omar the Commander of the Faithful, with an ac-
count of all his conquests in Khuzistan, and of the various trea-
sures that had fallen into his possession. He related also the dis-
covery of Daniel's body. When Omar had received this account,
lie demanded from his chief officers some information concerning
Daniel, but all were silent, except Ali, on whom be the blessing
-I God. He declared, that Daniel had been a prophet, though
not ol the highest order; that in ages long since he had dwelt
with Bakht al Nassar, (Nebuchadnezzar), and the kirns who had
succeeded him; and Ali related the whole of Daniel's history
from the beginning to the end. Omar then, by the advice of his
counsellor Ali, caused letters to be directed to Abou Mousa to
remove with due respect and veneration the body of Daniel to
some place where the people of Sus could no longer enjoy the
possession of it. Abou Mousa, immediately on the receipt of this
order, obliged the people of Sus to turn the stream which supplied
them with water from its natural course. Then he brought forth
the body of Daniel, and having wrapped it in another shroud of
gold brocade, he commanded a grave to be made in the dry chan-
nel of the river, and therein deposited the venerable remains of
the prophet. The grave was then firmly secured and covered
with stones of considerable size; the river was restored to its
wonted channel, and the waters of Sus now flow over the body of
I >aniel. The venerable dervise who watches the tomb of Daniel,
showed major Monteith several blocks of stone curiously sculp-
tured, and of evident antiquity, two of which he sketched hastily.
The first of these was a green granite, so dark as to be almost black,
finely polished, and in height twenty-two inches, and twelve in
width. One of its sides was completely covered with hierogly-
phieal figures, roughly carved in relief, and occupying five rows.
The first row contains forms supposed to denote the sun, moon,
and one of the stars; the second, animals resembling a hare, a dog[
and a bird; the third, a figure with the head and lower extremi-
ties of a tiger, the arms of a man, and the tail of a goat. Three
symbolical instruments divide this monster from a second, who is
Cyrus, a which happened not long after, it was quite in-
termitted, until the second year of the reign of Darius
the son of Hystaspes, wherein it was re-assumed.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties Obviated and Objections
Answered.
That there was such a person as Daniel, of the Jewish
captivity in Babylon, famous for his discovery of future
events, and for his great piety and devotion towards
God, can hardly be denied; that the discourses and pre-
dictions of a person so highly in favour with God should
be put in writing, either by himself or some other, and
when committed to writing, should be carefully preserv-
ed, is reasonable to believe ; and that the book which
has descended to us contains the revelations, and other
accounts of things, which God was pleased to communi-
cate to him, will sufficiently appear by the sequel.
The character which the prophet Ezekiel gives his
contemporary, Daniel, l is, his singular prevalence with
God in prayer ; and whoever looks into the book that
goes under his name, will find its author verifying 2 this
'Ezek. xiv. 14. 8 Dan. ii. 6, 9.
also half brute, half man, with a staff in its hand, and crowned
with a flat cap ; the fourth row contains an animal like an ante-
lope, a serpent a scorpion, and something resembling the orna-
mented top of a stall" or sceptre ; the fifth exhibits a trident, two
spears, a hawk, and another bird, finishing the group with a re-
gularly formed Greek cross. Besides these hieroglyphics, two
sides of the stone are occupied by inscriptions in the cuneiform
character. At the head of one of them was a double low of na-
tural objects resembling birds. The second relic of Susa, which
drew the particular attention of major Monteith, was a white
marble stone found, as the dervise told him, in the great mound of
the palace, near to the tomb of the prophet. It does not exceed
ten inches in width and depth, and measures twenty in length,
and is hollow internally. Three of its sides are cut in bas relief,
two of them with similar representations of a man apparently
naked, excepting a sash round his waste, and a sort of cap on his
head: his hands are bound behind him. The corner of the stone
holds the neck of the figure, so that his head forms part of one of
its ends. Two lions in sitting postures, appear on either side at
the top, each having a paw on the head of the man. The exe-
cution resembles the style of the other on the dark stone; but
there are no traces of letters on this. Both major Monteith and
captain Lockett attempted to get the dark stone by means of
negotiating with the people, but in vain — the inhabitants viewing
it in the light of a sacred talisman.] — Bell's Rollin, vol. 1, pp.
195-6. — Ed.
a It is generally agreed by historians, that Cyrus was much
about seventy years old when he died ; but then they widely dif-
fer among themselves as to the manner of his death. Some say
that he was taken in an engagement, and hanged ; others, that
he died of a wound which he received in his thigh; and others
that he was killed in a battle with the people of Samos. He-
rodotus, Justin, and Valerius Maximus relate, that, in his war
against the Scythians, falling into an ambush which queen To-
myris had laid for him, he was taken prisoner, and, with in-
sult enough, had his head cut off by her order: but Xenophon's
account is, — that he died peaceably in his bed, amidst his
friends, and in his own country; as, indeed there is little rea-
son to think either that so wise a man as Cyrus should, in his
advanced years, engage in so desperate an undertaking as this
Scythian expedition is represented on all hands, or that had
he died in Scythia, his mangled body could have ever been
got out of the hands of these barbarians to be buried at Pasar-
gada in Persia, as most authors agree it was, and where his mo-
nument was to be seen in the time of Alexander the Great.—
Cahncl "x Dictionary under the word Cyrus; and Prideauw's
Connection, anno 530.
Skct. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
695
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
character, and his success in this particular exemplified
in several instances. ' His deliverance out of the den
of lions, and that of his companions out of the h'ery fur-
nace, facts that are recorded in the present book, are
expressly mentioned in the prayer of 2 old Eleazar in
Egypt, under the rage of Ptolemy Philopater against the
Jews, and 3 of Mattathias, the father of the Maccabees,
in Judea, under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes,
and their examples, among other Scripture instances,
are proposed as motives to confidence in God, and con-
stancy in their religion : 4 so that the Jews in those
times, took this book to be written by Daniel himself,
and accordingly made use of it. Nay, long before these
times, 5 we find Nehemiah beginning his solemn prayer
to God in Daniel's own words, almost with no variation.
' O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the co-
venant and mercy to them that love him and keep his
commandments,' which is a plain proof, not only that he
looked upon this book of Daniel as true and authentic,
but that he esteemed his manner of prayinglikewise not
unworthy his imitation.
Josephus, we know, was a priest well versed in the
law, and in the sacred writings, whose authority he pro-
fesses to follow through all his Antiquities ; and yet he
seems to prefer Daniel above other writers of that kind,
and to give us a more particular account of his than of all
the other prophecies of the Old Testament put together :
for he informs us, 6 " That Daniel not only foretold
future things (which was common to him with other
prophets), but that he set the time likewise for their
coming to pass ; 7 that this book therefore was held
among the sacred writings, and 8 read in public assem-
blies (which is the peculiar privilege of canonical books)
in his days, because the completion of the events he
foretold gained him belief with all mankind." Nay, if
we will give credit to this same Josephus, this book of
Daniel was looked upon as genuine, and of divine au-
thority, even in the days of Alexander the Great ; other-
wise the high-priest had put a banter upon him, when, 9
at his coming to Jerusalem, and going into the temple,
he showed him a passage in it, wherein it was foretold,
under the emblem of a he-goat with one horn, over-
coining a ram with two, that a certain king of Greece
would conquer the Persians ; which Alexander took to
himself, and perhaps, upon that very account might treat
the Jewish nation with more clemency than he did their
neighbours.
But however this be, it is certain, that in and before
the time of our blessed Saviour, the Jews received the
book of Daniel as authentic Scripture, without any sus-
picion to the contrary. For, whereas the name of the
Mnssias, and of ' the Son of man,' which they applied
to the Deliverer whom they expected, the title of the
' kingdom of God,' and of ' heaven,' used for the state
of tilings under that Deliverer, his coming in the ' clouds
of heaven,' his taking ' all judgment upon himself, and
the resurrection of the dead,' pursuant upon that his
1 Dan. iii. anil vi. 2 Joseph. Jewish Antiq.
3 1 Maccab. ii. 60.
Bishop Chandler's Vindication of his Defence of Christianity.
* Compare Neh. i. 5, with Dan. ix. 4.
6 Antiq. b. 12, c. 1 1. r Ibid. b. 10, c. 11.
8 Ibid. c. 12. 9 Ibid. b. 9, c3.
482.'. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIET , and EZRA i— v-
coming, are expressions manifestly borrowed from Dan-
iel : these expressions were, at that time, the current
language of the Jews, insomuch, that we find none of
them surprised when they heard the Baptist telling them
that ' the kingdom of heaven was at hand,' or our Sav-
iour calling himself so frequently ' the Son of man,'
and citing Daniel the prophet by name ; which they
certainly would have been, and thereupon raised no
small clamour, had they perceived that he was obtrud-
ing a spurious book upon them for canonical.
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that,
since there confessedly was such a person as Daniel,
whose character in the prophet Ezekiel agrees with
what we find in our present Daniel ; since this book of
his has the testimony of Josephus (no incompetent judge
in a matter of this nature), was commonly cited in the
times of our Saviour, was referred to before the times of
the Maccabees ; nay, was thought genuine in the times
of Alexander, and has received no small confirmation
from the use and application which Nehemiah makes of
it ; either we may suppose, that all these persons, in
their different generations, were mistaken, or else we
must allow, that our present book of Daniel is no ficti-
tious piece of later date, but the work of the prophet
whose name it bears, and who lived in the age which
the sacred records have assigned him.
It is no valid objection, either against his personal
or prophetic character, that he was educated in the
learning of the Chaldeans, and became a remarkable
proficient therein. The learning of the Chaldeans con-
sisted chiefly in what they call astrology, or the know-
ledge of the celestial motions, the art of building, and
the art of war. Some curious and superstitious arts
that were abhorrent to the law of Moses, they were fam-
ous for practising ; but there is no necessity for us to
infer from thence, that Daniel and his friends were ever
initiated in these ; on the contrary, we may be allowed
to argue thus : — That, had there been anything criminal
in the method of their education, they who refused to
defile themselves with the king's meat, would never
have complied with it. They refused the king's provi-
sions, not only because he might probably have such
things served up at his table as were prohibited by their
law, but because it was customary likewise in most
nations, before their meals, to make an oblation of some
part of what they ate or drank, to their gods, as a thank-
ful acknowledgment, that whatever they enjoyed pro-
ceeded from their bounty: so that every entertainment
had in it the nature of a sacrifice ; and therefore Daniel
and his friends looked upon the provisions which came
from the king's table as meats offered to idols, and
upon that account esteemed them unclean. But the
same principle that moved them to this, would have
restrained them from the study of the Chaldean learn-
ing, had any of their impious or unwarrantable sciences
been imposed upon them.
The king indeed is said ,0 ' to have found them ten
times better than all the magicians and astrologers that
were in his realm.' But these words, in ancient times,
were not appropriated to the evil sense which they now
bear, but signified, in the general, men of wisdom and
10 Dan. i. 20
696
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A M. 3417. A. C. 587; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v
learning, skilled, in the knowledge of things natural and
divine. ' Those who in St Matthew are called ftctyoi,
our translation has 'rendered 'wise men,' because the
evangelist seems to have given them that name, not as
a note of infamy, but as an honourable title. And in
like manner, why may not the words be here understood
of such persons as employed themselves in the lawful
search of natural causes and effects, of the curious pro-
ducts of the earth, and the regular motions of heavenly
bodies ? For when Daniel made intercession to the
captain of the guard, that " the 'wise men of Babylon
might not be slain,' we can hardly suppose that all of
these were such as studied unlawful arts and sciences,
since he himself was afterwards made master and presi-
dent over them.
Nay, even supposing that these wise men of Babylon
made profession of some sciences, whose only founda-
tion were superstition and deceit, yet why must their
Hebrew disciples be obliged to pursue the same ?
Might they not follow such studies as best suited their
genius, and the principles of their religion? The same
indulgence which they obtained from the master of the
eunuchs with regard to their provisions, may well be
supposed to have been granted them in relation to their
studies, in case any difficulty of this kind had been
imposed upon them. But there is no occasion for our
imagining this. The masters of these occult sciences
(as they call them) had many good reasons for not
obtruding them upon their disciples ; and Daniel and his
companions, who were designed to attend in the king's
presence, were more properly to be educated in .another
way, viz. in the knowledge and purity of the Chaldee
tongue, of the arts of war and policy, of the state and
revenues of the kingdom, and such other tighter and
more polite accomplishments, as would make their per-
sons and services more acceptable at court, than any
proliciency in these abstruse matters could do. But put
the case, that they were at any time called to lectures
in any of the sciences that were not so strictly warrant-
able, we cannot see why they might not be permitted
to attend to them with the same spirit that 3 ' Moses
was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,' namely,
* not with a purpose to follow them, or to square their
lives or sentiments according to them, but purely to
put themselves into a capacity, upon a proper occasion
to confute them, and with more advantage to expose
their falseness and absurdity.
It was not for any more excellent proficiency there-
fore in those black arts, which were prohibited by the
law of God, that Daniel obtained an exemption from the
punishment of the fiery furnace, but either because he was
absent upon some pretence or other, as most of the Jews
might choose to be absent upon this occasion, or because
he was not accused to the king, at this time, for refusing
to worship the idol which he had set up, though he might
be present at the dedication.
Nebuchadnezzar, 5 we read, had summoned all his
princes, counsellors, governors, captains, and all his
other officers and ministers, to be present and assisting
at the solemnity of this dedication ; and therefore it is
1 Whitby's Paraphrase tm Mat. ii. 1. 2 Dan. ii. 24.
3 Acts vii. 22. 4 Calmet's Commentary on Dan. 1. 17.
5 Dan. iii. 2.
not likely that Daniel, who was one of the chief of them,
should be allowed to be absent ; but his enemies thought
it more advisable not to begin with him, because of the
great authority he had with the king, but rather to fall
first upon his three friends, whose promotion in the pro-
vince of Babylon raised their envy, that thereby they
might more successfully pave the way to his ruin : but
the miraculous interposition of providence in behalf of
his friends quashed all farther accusations against him ;
and for this reason it is, that no mention is made of him
in this whole transaction.
It is said indeed of him, 6 ' that he had understanding
in all visions Mid dreams,' and dreams, we know, among
the eastern people, were held in great regard. They
observed them much, and applied to such persons as pre-
tended to explain them, for their interpretation : nor can
it be denied, that in the earliest ages of the world, it was
the received opinion, that such dreams as were attended
with unusual circumstances, did portend and signify some
future event ; that they were frequently sent from God,7
' who in a dream, in a vision of the night, speaks once,
yea twice, to men,' as Elihu affirms in Job. Now, if
dreams be significative, and often sent from God, it can
hardly be thought, that in all cases the interpretation of
them should be unlawful ; and therefore we may observe,
that in that very place where Moses forbids the He-
brews to consult magicians and interpreters of dreams, he
nevertheless tells them, 8 ' that the Lord their God would
raise up to them, from among their brethren, a prophet
like unto him, whom they should consult and hearken to.'
So that, though the Israelites were forbidden to make use
of soothsayers or diviners, as the custom of the nations
was, to whose possessions they succeeded ; yet they were
permitted to address themselves to God and his pro-
phets, in order to learn the explanations of their dreams,
and the prediction of future events ; consequently there
could be no crime in Daniel's applying himself to this
kind of knowledge, since whatever excellency he had in
this way, the Scripture takes care to ascribe it to the pe-
culiar gift of God °
6 Dan. i. 17. ' Job xxxiii. 14, 15. 8 Dent, xviii. 15.
a That he was taught — even by the astrologers, much useful
knowledge, can hardly be doubted: for those men could not have
pretended to foretell future events from the conjunctions and op-
positions of the stars or planets, without acquiring great knowledge
in the useful and sublime science of astronomy, which the agri-
cultural life of the Jews, and the perfection of their law, deprived
them of almost every inducement to study. No Chaldean astro-
loger can have employed himself in more frivolous pursuits than
were those of the alchymists, in the dark ages of modern Europe,
in quest of the Philosopher's stone ; and yet to the alchymists we
are in a great measure indebted for the origin of the science oi
chemistry, which has within these thirty years been carried tc
such perfection, and contributed so much to the comfort and ele-
gance of civil society. Even in the interpretation of dreams
something might be learned from the Chaldean wise men. Nei-
ther the gods of Babylon, indeed, nor the conjunctions of the
stars, could reveal any thing to the astrologers or soothsayers,
but no man who admits the Divine origin of any part of the
Scriptures, can doubt, but that the true God occasionally revealed
his will to the prophets in dreams and visions; and when he did
so, he must nave made use of such symbols or such language as
was generally employed to denote the things intended. The nar-
rowness of original languages, and the practice of hieroglyphieal
writing which seems to have prevailed in most nations — especi-
ally in the east — during some period of their existence, rendered
it almost necessary to express occasionally one thing by another,
to which it was supposed to have some resemblance or analogy.
I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &o.
697
A. M. 3*17. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
Daniel, indeed, lived in great prosperity, and in the
capacity of a prime minister, under some of the Babylo-
nian and Persian monarchs ; and therefore if, through
ignorance, he has mistaken their name, or recorded any
In visions or dreams, whether sent by God or not, some symbols
or language must have been employed : and the business of the
Oneirocritic or interpreter was to ascertain the import of such
symbols. The interpreter who practised by art could only guess
at that import, and in nine instances out of ten was likely to
guess erroneously; but he who interpreted by inspiration was in
no danger of falling into error, though each symbol, or word,
taken by itself, must have had some meaning generally under-
stood by those among whom such symbols and words were in
general use, as well as by the prophet. " The early interpreters
of dreams," says Bishop Warburton, (Divine Legation of Moses,
b. iv. s. 4,) "were not juggling impostors; but, like the early
judicial astrologers, more superstitious than their neighbours,
and so the first that fell into their own delusions. However, sup-
pose them to have been as arrant cheats as any of their successors,
yet, at their first setting up, they must have had materials proper
for their trade; which could never be the wild workings of each
man's private fancy. Their customers would look to find a known
analogy, become venerable by long application to mysterious wis-
dom, for the groundwork of their deciphering; and the decipher-
ers themselves would as naturally fly to some confessed authority
to support their pretended science. But what ground or autho-
rity could this be, if not the mysterious learning of symbolical
characters? The Egyptian priests, the first interpreters of dreams,
took their rules for this species of divination, from their symbolic
riddling, in which they were so deeply read ; — a ground of inter-
pretation which would give the strongest credit to the art, and
equally satisfy the diviner and the consulter; for it being gene-
rally believed that their gods had given them hieroglyphic writ-
ing, nothing was more natural than to imagine, that those gods,
who, in their opinion, gave dreams likewise, had employed the
same mode of writing in both revelations." When the true God
gave revelations by dreams, he, of course, made use of the sym-
bols that were most likely to arrest the dreamer's attention, and
at the same time were generally understood ; and in different
countries he would make use of different symbols according to
the practice of the people, for whose information the dream was
sent. Thus in Pharaoh's two dreams, the symbols made use of
were, in one, ' seven kine,' and, in the other, ' seven ears of
corn.' In the hieroglyphics of Egypt the ears of corn denoted its
fertility, and the kine its great tutelar patroness Isis. Thus far
Pharaoh seems to have understood the dream without an inter-
preter; and hence arose his anxiety to understand the rest, as a
matter that concerned the public. ''Accordingly, when Joseph
comes to decipher the dream, he does not tell the king that the
two sevens denoted seven years, in Egypt, but simply seven
years; — the scene of the famine needing no deciphering." In
Nebuchadnezzar's second dream, he saw ' a fair and high tree,'
of which the height reached to heaven; and this being the sym-
bol of majesty in general, very naturally made the proud mo-
narch anxious to know what particular monarch it signified; and
therefore the prophet Daniel begins his interpretation with say-
ing — ' The tree that thou sawest — is thou, O king ! But if
Daniel was intended by God, as he certainly was, to be an inter-
preter of the dreams sent by him to the king of Babylon — the
scourge by whom he chastised sinful nations — it is obvious that a
knowledge of the symbols by which events were supposed to be
represented in Chaldea, was a species of preparatory knowledge
absolutely necessary to him. The symbols employed for this pur-
pose by the Chaldean magi may have been different from those
in use among the priests of Egypt; but whether they were or not,
it seems evident that hieroglyphieal writing, and all kinds of
symbolical representations of God and his attributes, were absolute-
ly prohibited by the Mosaic law. Daniel, therefore, must have
been taught the import of the Chaldean symbols, to fit him for
an important part of the office which he was destined to fill; and
as God appears not on any occasion to work miracles for an
object which can be attained by natural means, it is to hi: hoped
that the deist will permit Christians to believe that Daniel might
without sin be taught, the meaning of the mysterious symbols of
Chaldea by those wise men of that empire, among whom they
were best understood. The sciences of astronomy and chemistry
furnish many illustrious proofs of the power, wisdom, and good-
M. 4825. A. C.58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i-v.
thing of them that is not true, this we allow will have a
suspicious aspect upon the authority of his writings : but
when it is considered how common a thing it was for the
princes of the east, upon one occasion or other, to mul-
tiply their names, and not only by foreigners, but even
by their own people, to be called sometimes by one
name, and sometimes by another ; how usual it was for
them to continue the titles of honour which were confer-
red in consideration of those great exploits, whereby the
dignity of their family was originally raised, and to
adopt them into the number of their own ; how custom-
ary it was, upon their accession to the kingdom, for them
to change their names, and yet the first and private name
be still retained by most other people, while the impe-
rial name appeared in public acts, and was used at home
only : whoever considers this, I say, will cease his won-
der, when, amidst such a variety of appellations for one
and the same person, he finds this historian making use
of one, and that of another, according as his fancy, his
pronunciation, or the custom of the country where he
lived, led him. Daniel, in all probability, calls the same
person Darius Medus, whom the Greek historians call
Cyaxares the Second : but when it is observed, that these
historians agree with Daniel as to the main points of his
narration, namely, l that Babylon was taken by an army
of Medes and Persians, whereof the Medes being the
superior, were, at that time, named first ; that Cyaxares,
king of Media, assisted at the siege, and was treated by
Cyrus as his chief; that after a day of riot and revelling
the city was taken in the night time, by diverting the
course of the river Euphrates, and the king of Babylon
slain in his palace ; that Cyaxares being old, and natu-
rally inactive, chose rather to live at Ecbatan, the capi-
tal of Media, while Cyrus attended the affairs of the
government of Babylon ; and that Cyrus, upon his death,
succeeded to the whole empire : if we observe, I say, the
exact agreement between these historians, as to the chief
matters of fact, we may easily dispense with some small
difference in point of names ; especially considering that
the authors lived at no less a distance than Babylon is
from Greece, and that the Greeks consequently might
make use of the name which he went by in Media, as best
known to them, which the Babylonians, after he had
taken their city, changed into Darius Medus, or the vic-
torious Mede, and which Daniel, being a captive in the
place, might, in conformity, call him.
It2 may happen, indeed, that there is now and then a
word or two, in the book of Daniel, which may seem to
have some analogy to the Greek tongue, and with some
little variation, may be derived from it ; but then it is to
be observed, that the words of this kind are, for the most
part, technical terms, such as might slip into any lan-
guage, without being perceived, and such a writer might
properly enough use, without understanding anymore of
1 Xenophon, b. v. and viii ; and Herodotus, b. i.
2 Bishop Chandler's Vindication of the Defence of Christianity,
ness of the Creator and Governor of the world ; these sciences
have been successfully cultivated by philosophers in France, who
seem not to acknowledge the moral attributes of the great first
Cause if indeed tiny allow any cause to he first; but surely
an intelligent Christian clergyman, of a mind tolerably firm,
mi'dit take lessons in astronomy and chemistry from such men,
not only without incurring guilt or danger, but with great advan-
tage to himself. — Bishop Gleig. — Ed.
4 T
693
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIL
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES
the tongue from whence they are borrowed. Architects
and mechanics, we know, use to this day several Greek
and Arabic terms of art in their respective professions,
and yet they do not pretend to understand the language
from whence they came : and why might not Daniel,
speaking in terms of art, as he certainly does, when he a
names the musical instruments, very probably of the
Grecian make, which were used at the consecration of
Nebuchadnezzar's golden image ; why might not he, 1
say, make use of words of a foreign extract, and, at the
same time, be supposed a stranger to the other parts of
the language ? This I think is the common privilege of
most writers : nor is the mixture of some Greek terms in
the Chaldee language so difficult a matter to account
for, if we will but allow what Grotius, upon the place,
observes, namely, " That before Daniel's age, many
colonies both of the Ionians and JEolians, having settled
themselves in Asia Minor, which lies contiguous to some
provinces of the eastern kingdoms, might that way com-
municate the names of what they invented, or improved,
even as far as Babylon itself."
The translation of the Septuagint has been held in such
esteem, that to have any part of Scripture omitted in it
would give a just suspicion, as if it had not been extant,
or not known at the time when those learned men under-
took the work : but this is so far from being true in the
case of Daniel, that we find the Septuagint version of him
read publicly in our Saviour's time ; that we find Justin
Martyr, ' and Clemens Romanus, 2 who both wrote be-
fore Theodotion's version was made, both citing passages
out of it ; that we find St Jerome 3 giving us several
various readings, different from those in Theodotion, and
sometimes from those of Aquila and Symmachus, out of
it; and, at the same time, telling us, why this transla-
tion of Daniel was repudiated, and that of Theodotion
substituted in its room by the doctors of the church.
It was Origen indeed who first brought it into dis-
credit, by comparing it with that of Theodotion from the
original, in his Hexapla, which showed its imperfections
a little too plainly ; but then its degradation proves, that
before this happened to it, it was all along used in the
Christian church.
The omission of Daniel's name in the enumeration of
the prophets which we meet with in Ecclesiasticus, 4 is
of no great moment, because we find no mention made
1 Dial. cum. Tryph. p. 87. 2 Ad Corinth, ep. 1.
3 In Dan. iv. 8. 4 Chap. xlix.
a Our learned Bishop Chandler is fully of opinion that the
names of the instruments mentioned in Dan. iii. 5, are not
Greek, but eastern derivations, that from thence they did pass
to the Greeks, who, with a little alteration, adapted them to their
pronunciation, or termination of words. " For," as he argues,
" that their names were at first given them in the conn try where
the instruments themselves were invented, can hardly be doubt-
ed ; if therefore such instruments as are here specified were used
in the east ; if their names be proved to be barbarous ; and if
an eastern root can be assigned for their derivation, which no
Greek theme will suit so well," all which he endeavours to prove
in several instances, then may we be well allowed to infer that
the names of these instruments, whatever affinity they may seem
to have to the Greek language, were originally oriental; which
opinion is confirmed by the testimony of Strabo, (b. x.) who as-
sures us, that the names of musical instruments, such as nablia,
sambuca, and barbitos, were derived from barbarous languages,
by which the Greeks denote the eastern tongues. — See Vindica-
tion of the Defence of Christianity; and Louth's Commentary
on Dan. iii.
A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL and EZRA i.— v.
of Job or Ezra, and yet they both had books that went
under their names, as well as he. The truth is, the his-
tory of the book itself may give us some grounds to
think, that Daniel's character might possibly have been
in it at first, though upon some occasion or other, it
afterwards came to be dropped. Jesus the grandfather,
as Ave read in the prologue, wrote it in several volumes,
and left it behind him unfinished : the original fell into
such hands as carried it into Egypt, where Jesus the
gTandson met with it, and having compiled it all orderly
into one volume, upon account of the pains which he
had taken with it, he joined his own name with that of
his grandfather in the titlepage : 5 but it fared with this
as it does with other books, to lose in translation, and
to suffer by copyists ; insomuch, that whoever will be at
the trouble to compare the Greek editions with one ano-
ther, and with the various translations, will discover
words, parts of sentences, and whole periods, to be so
frequently omitted, altered, contracted, explained, or
enlarged, as to abate his wonder, that the mention of
any person, though never so considerable, should be
omitted in a book that is delivered to us so variously
and imperfectly. But there may be another reason as-
signed for this omission : most part of the Old Testa-
ment was written in Hebrew, which was the common
language of Judea, and in it did Jesus the son of Sirach
write this book of Ecclesiasticus. Now, as a great part of
the books of Ezra and Daniel was written in Chaldee,
which was a tongue not so well known in Judea, it may
reasonably be supposed, that the author's ignorance of
that tongue might be the true reason why he omitted
these two great men, and all account of their writings,
in his catalogue of the prophets.
There are sundry reasons likewise to be given, why
we have no Chaldee paraphrase upon Daniel, as well as
the rest of the prophets : for, besides that a good part
of Daniel is in the Chaldee tongue, and, upon that ac-
count, might less need one ; it is a general complaint
among the Jews themselves, that a great many of their
ancient Targums have been lost, and an acknowledged
case, that some of their sacred writers (such as Ezra and
Nehemiah for instance, men famous in the Jewish story,
and the latter of them highly celebrated by the son of
Sirach) never had any. The truth is, the frequent cala-
mities which befell the Jewish nation, and dispersed them
into other countries, made them negligent of their books ;
left them no leisure to transcribe long paraphrasts ; and
when, by mixing among other people, they had lost the
knowledge of the language, left them no ability to do it ;
so that, amidst this ignorance and confusion, it is no
wonder if many valuable copies were lost, some of
which b have since come to light ; but there is reason to
apprehend, that the Targum upon Daniel never will.
For so much does this prophet speak of the Messiah,
describe the signs, and define the time of his coming so
precisely, that the Jews, perceiving the advantage which
their adversaries the Christians might make of it, were
under strong temptations, either to omit or suppress the
paraphrase of a prophet so diametrically opposite to
And accordingly, we have a story from 6 one of
them.
5 Bishop Chandler's Vindication, &c.
« R. Abruhadam in Zaccath's Juchaism, p. 54.
b It is but the other day that the Targums of the two books of
Chronicles were discovered .—.Bp. Chandler's Vindication, &c.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
699
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
their rabbins, that savours not a little of some such prac-
tice, namely, " that when Jonathan had finished his Tar-
gum on Job, Proverbs, and the Psalms, and was going
on to Daniel, he was restrained by a voice, which bade
him give over there, lest the sons of men should learn
from Daniel the time of the Messias."
However this be, ! since Daniel is so far from being
passed by in any dishonourable manner, that even
Jonathan himself, in his Targum on the other prophets,
expresses a great regard to him, by applying predictions
found only in his book, to texts in other prophets that
he was then interpreting; since, in doing this, he
follows Daniel in his ideas, phrases, and words, and
explains passages in other prophets by such as were
plainer and fuller, in his opinion, in him ; it certainly
follows, that (however his paraphrase be lost) Daniel
was in his esteem a prophet of equal, if not superior,
credit to the prophets he was then commenting upon.
Whether the Jew3 were more than other nations
addicted to the publishing of spurious tracts, under the
names of their great authors, and particularly under
Daniel's name, it concerns us not to inquire ; since the
very supposition implies thus much, that with the Jewish
church, at that time, the writings of Daniel were held in
high esteem, (for, in such a case, who would choose an
inglorious father ?) when these base pieces came out in
his name. The having impostures fathered on him there-
fore is so far from being any prejudice to Daniel's gen-
uine writings, that it rather redounds to the confirmation
of their authority ; since what Avas spurious did no sooner
appear in the light, but it was despised, rejected, and
condemned. The prayer of the three children was not
read in all the copies of the Septuagint ; the story of
Susanna, in some manuscripts, stood apart from the book
of Daniel, in others after it ; and as for the fable of Bel
and the Dragon, it was not intended by its first inventor
to pass under the name of Daniel, but of one Habak-
kuk, the son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi, till Theodo-
tion, in his Greek edition of the Bible, thought proper
to change its title.
The truth is, the Jewish church always looked upon
these pieces as spurious, and therefore allowed them
much the same place in their Scriptures that the apocry-
phal books have in our English Bibles ; but the genuine
book of Daniel they held always in the greatest venera-
tion, esteeming the author of it as one of the chief of
their prophets, until Maimonides, a learned Jew of the
twelfth century, in order to bar all proofs that might
be drawn from him in favour of Christianity, thought fit
to degrade him from his prophetic character, and place
him in the number of a hagiographal writers only.
1 Bishop Chandler's Vindication. &c.
a It is much to be questioned, whether such a distinction, as
hagiographal books was known in our Saviour's time. All the
partition that we read of is, the law and the prophets, and the
rest of the books (Proleg. to Ecclus.) which in Luke xxiv. 44,
are called ' the Psalms;' and according to Piiilo (de Vit. Const.)
"are hymns and other books, conducing to the promotion of
piety and knowledge." This threefold distribution of the books
ot Scripture is taken from the nature and subjects of the books
themselves, and not from any supposed degrees of sacredness
between them; and, if the word Cethubim, or Hagiographa, was
then, or rather in the next century, made use of, it was applied
only as a general name for the poetical and moral books of Scrip-
ture, to which class neither Daniel nor any historical book was
reducible.— Bishop Chandler's Vindication, &c.
4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
Hard is the fate of a prophet, when the very clearness
as well as obscurity of his writings must be imputed as
an objection against his authority ; but certainly we must
allow, that it is as easy for an all-knowing God to fore-
tel all circumstances of an event, or to reveal the whole
series of events, in their proper connexion and succes-
sion, as to declare one single occurrence. Such know-
ledge and such wisdom are essential attributes of God :
nor can there be any absurdity in his imparting his
knowledge of future events, with more or less reserve to
one man rather than another ; only one would think, that
the freer such communications were, and the more con-
spicuous the revelation, the more excellent should the
prophet whom God pleased to honour in this manner be
accounted. So unreasonable are the prejudices of those
who make the clearness of prophecies an argument
against them, and endeavour to exclude Daniel from the
number of prophets, for a reason that best entitled him
to that character !
" But what shall we say 2 to his dark and abstruse
way of writing in other places, his figurative and para-
bolical, his enigmatical and emblematical style, his un-
couth images and symbols, entirely unlike the writings
of the other prophets, but vastly agreeable to that turn
which the Jews took up, when they came to be formed
in the schools of the Greeks ?" All the Greek authors
that we are acquainted with, are strangers to this manner
of writing ; they abound, indeed, in figures and allego-
ries ; but the symbolical and emblematical form was
purely oriental, and what other prophets as well as
Daniel, as occasion requires, pursue.
For, doth not Isaiah foretell the destruction of the
Egyptians under the image of God's 3 striking with
a great and strong sword the leviathan (or crocodile),
and slaying the great dragon that is in the sea ? Does
not Jeremiah 4 speak of the Assyrians under the name
of a dove, because 5 Semiramis had made that bird the
symbol of her nation ? Does not Ezekiel prophe6y of
Pharaoh under the figure of 6 a great dragon that lives in
the midst of the rivers ; of the king of Babylon, under
the emblem of a 7 large eagle with great wings ; and of
the Assyrian, under the similitude of 8 a tall cedar in
Lebanon, exalted above all trees, and reaching the
clouds with j'ts top, &c, the very same figure 9 whereby
the kingdon of Nebuchadnezzar was represented? It
is the genius of the eastern people to be delighted with
fiction and imagery, and, as Sir John Chardin, in his
description of Persepolis, tells us, nothing is more
common among their authors, than to call countries by
the names of their emblems, which are, as it were, the
arms of that nation ; and, in forming these emblems, to
make use not only of natural animals, but of such as are
chimerical and fabulous likewise, beasts with wings,
and birds with four feet and long ears.
10 " Among the figures upon the walls and pillars of
an ancient temple in this h once famous metropolis of
2 See Collins's Scheme of Literal Prophecy. " Is. xxvii. 1.
4 Jer. xlviii. 28. 5 Diodor. Sicul. b. 3. 6 Ezek. xxix. 3.
7 Ezek. xvii. 3, 12. 8 Ezek. xxxi. 3, &c. 9 Dan. iv. 10, &c.
lu Bisiiop Chandler's Vindication, &c. p. 152.
b While Alexander lay at this place, he gave himself much
to feasting and drinking, for joy of his great successes. In one
ot these feasts, which he made for his chief commanders, he in-
700
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M 482% A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
Persia," says he, " there are some very monstrous for
figure and size. A winged lion with a crown on his
head ; a winged lion flying on the back of a bull ; the
body of a horse with wings on his back ; and a man's
head covered with a high bonnet crowned, &c. In
images and hieroglyphics," continues he, " here one
may see the wars of princes and countries, and their
successes expressed. The beasts represent the people
or land in war ; their running at each other, their en-
gagement ; and the crown on the head of one of them,
or his taking the other by the hair of the head, and stab-
bing him, points out his victory."
Now, since this method of describing things by images
was so customary in the age and place where Daniel
Mas captive, it is reasonable to suppose, that he con-
formed himself to it, and that the fictitious animals
which he makes mention of, were no improper emblems
of the several empires whereof he writes. The ram, for
instance, was the royal ensign of the Persians, 1 as Am-
mianus Marcellinus observes ; the goat, since their king-
Carinus, was the arms of Macedon ; and therefore, how
aptly does Daniel see a goat with a notable horn (for
a horn 2 is always an emblem of power and dominion),
to which he gives wings, because of the quickness of his
success, to s ' run against a ram with unequal horns, and
cast him to the ground,' when he foretells what the Mede
and Persian empire should do, and suffer from the
Macedonian Greeks ? Upon ' the breaking of the great
horn,' on Alexander's dying in the height of his tri-
umphs and prosperity, how properly do 4 ' four others
come up towards the four winds of heaven,' to denote
the division a of his empire among four kings, whereof
Ptolemy had Egypt, and the adjoining countries to the
south ; Antigonus had Asia to the north ; Seleucus had
1 B. 19. And rams' heads with horns, the one higher, and
the other lower, are still to be seen among the ruins of Perse-
polis, as Sir John Chardin takes notice in his travels.
2 Deut. xxxiii. 17; Psal. lxxxix. 17.
3 Dan. viii. 7. 4 Dan. viii. 8.
vited their mistresses likewise to accompany them; among
whom was one Thais, a famous Athenian courtezan, who was
then mistress to Ptolemy, afterwards king of Egypt. This wo-
man, in the heat of her carousals, proposed to Alexander the
burning down of the city and palace of Persepolis, in revenge
to the Persians; especially for their burning of Athens under
Xerxes; and, as the whole company was drunk, the proposal
was received with a general applause, so that every man took
a torch, and (with Alexander at the head of them) setting fire
to the city and palace, in a short time, burnt them both to
the ground. Thus, at the motion of a drunken strumpet, was
destroyed, by this drunken king, one of the finest palaces in the
world ; for that this at Persepolis was such, the ruins of it suf-
ficiently show, which are still remaining at a place near Shiras,
named Chebelminar, which, in the Persian language, signifies
forty pillars; and is so called, because such a number of pillars,
as well as other stately ruins of this palace, are there still re-
maining even to this day. — Pridcaux s Connection, anno 330.
a Dr Prideaux is of opinion, that this partition of Alex-
ander's empire, to which the prophecy has relation, did not
happen till after the battle at Ipsus, where Antigonus was slain,
and whereupon the four surviving princes divided the conquer-
or's dominions into four distinct kingdoms, whereof Ptolemy
had Egypt, Lyhia, Arabia, Ccelo-Syria, and Palestine: Cas-
sander, Macedonia and Greece; Lysimachus, Thrace, Bithy-
nia, and some other provinces beyond the Hellespont and the
Bosphorus; and Seleucus all the rest; Prideaux' 's Connection,
anno 301. But others have made the division of his empire
ensuant immediately upou his death. — Caimct'i Commentary
on Dan. vii.
Syria to the east ; and Antipater Greece and Macedo-
nia to the west.
5 A little horn coming out of one of these, and wax-
ing exceeding great towards the south, and east, and
pleasant land, nay, waxing so great as to cast down
some of the host of heaven, and of the stars to the
ground, and so trample upon them, may seem a wild
extravagant rant : but when it is considered, that all this
is meant of Antiochus, who was afterwards called by
his flatterers Epiphanes, though himself a vile person,
and usurper of the kingdom ; that it is to represent him,
as soon as he got possession of the Syrian kingdom,
taking advantage of the youth of Ptolemy Philometer,
and invading Egypt to the south, Armenia and Persia
to the east ; and Judea, which is here styled 'the plea-
sant land,' and frequently described as a land flowing
with milk and honey, that it is to represent him persecut-
ing the Jewish church and nation, here styled ' the host
of heaven ;' murdering the principal men of both, here
called ' the stars ;' deposing their high priest, whose
title is ' the prince of the host ;' profaning their temple,
polluting their altar, abolishing their law, and establish-
ing idolatry by a solemn edict, 6 as whoever has read of
the mad and impious actions of Antiochus '' must know :
when this is considered, I say, a small allowance for
the oriental manner of pompous writing will reduce these
images to a tolerable size.
The plain truth is, princes and states were in old
times painted by their symbols, which are therefore
called their yvufopcnci, and, in after ages, came to be
distinguished by writers under the name of such symbols,
as well as by their proper appellations ; and therefore
' the lion with eagle's wings,' signifying the strength of
t'.e Assyrian empire, and the celerity of its conquests ;
' the beast with three ribs in his mouth,' intimating the
reduction which Cyrus made of Babylon, Lydia, and
Egypt, to the Persian monarchy ; the ' leopard w ith four
wings and heads ;' denoting Alexander and his four suc-
cessors ; and the ' other beast with iron feet and ten
horns,' representing the Roman empire, and the ten
s Daniel viii. 9, &c. 6 2 Maccab. v. 24, &c.
b Many of the heathen writers give us this account of him,
namely, that he would frequently get out of the palace, and ram-
ble about the streets of Antioch with two or three persons only
accompanying him; that, in his rambles, he would drink with
strangers and foreigners, and even with the meanest and vilest
of them; that, when he heard of any young company met toge-
ther to make merry, he would intrude himself among them,
and revel away the time with them in cups, and songs, and
other holies, without any regard to common decency, or
his own royal character; that, in these frolics, he would often
go out in the streets, and there scatter his money by handfuls,
for the rabble to scramble for; that, at other times, he would
go about with a crown of roses upon his head, and, in a Roman
gown, would walk the streets alone, carrying a parcel of stones in
his lap, to throw at those that should follow after; that he was
much addicted to drunkenness and lasciviousness; was frequent-
ly found in the company of pathics, and common prostitutes, on
whom he would gratify his lust publicly, and in the sight of the
people ; and that, having for his catamites two vile persons,
called Timarchus and Heraclides, who were brothers, he made
the former of them governor of Babylon, and the other his trea-
surer in that province. The short is, his freaks, follies, and
vices were so many, that men were iu a doubt whether he weTe
a madman or a fool, though the former of these was generally
thought his truest character; and, therefore, instead of Epiphanes
the Illustrious, they commonly called him Epimanes, the Mad-
man.— Prideaux's Connection, anno 175.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
701
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 580. JEK. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
kingdoms, a or principalities, into which it was divided,
was a language as well known to skilful readers at that
time, as are the arms, the colours, and the field of
escutcheons, in these latter days, to heralds.
6 Porphyry, no doubt, was well acquainted with this
hieroglyphic way of writing, because all the objection
which he makes to these prophecies of Daniel, concern-
ing the four empires, is, that they were too plain and
perspicuous, and more like historical narratives of facts
already done, than prophetical predictions of things to
come. But however this enemy of Christianity might
urge the plainness of the prophet's predictions, in order
to invalidate the authority of his book, it must not be
denied, but that God, in his great wisdom, has so ordered
the matter, for the exercise of our faith and industry,
and so framed the prophetic style, that there should be
still some shade and remains of obscurity, abiding upon
the face of almost every prophecy, even after the time
of its completion ; and, therefore, instead of being sur-
prised at the great variety of computations, which chro-
nologers, and other learned men have put upon the
^"*^ seventy weeks ' mentioned in Daniel, we may much
ratrier wonder, how, at this distance of time, they have
been able to come to any tolerable exactness.
The words of the prophecy are these : — ' seventy
weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy
1 Dan. ix. 24.
a Bishop Lloyd hath given us the following list of the ten
kingdoms which arose out of the dissolution of the Roman em-
pire, and the time of their rise. 1. Huims erected their king-
dom in that part of Pannonia and Dacia, which from them was
called Hungary, about A. D. 336. 2. Ostrogoths settled them-
selves iu the countries that reach from Rhetia to Majsia, even
as far as Thrace, about 377, and afterwards came into Italy
under Alaricus in 410. 3. Wisigoths settled in the south parts
of France, and in Catalonia, about 378. 4. Franks seized upon
part of Germany and Gaul, A. D. 420. 5. Vandals settled in
Spain, and afterwards set up their kingdom in Africa, A. D. 407.
6. Suevians and Alans seized the western parts of Spain,
A. D. 407, and invaded Italy 457. 7. Burgundians came out
of Germany into that part of Gaul, called from them Burgundy,
407. 8. Rugians, and Thuringians settled in Italy under
Odoacer, about 476. 9. Saxons made themselves masters of
Great Britain, about the same time, 476. And 10. Longobards
settled first in Germany, A. D. 383, and afterwards succeeded
the Ileruli and Thuringi in Hungary. — Lowth's Commentary
on Dan. vii. 24.
b This Porphyry was a learned heathen, born at Tyre, in
the year of Christ about 230, and there called Malchus ; but
upon his going among the Greeks, he changed it to Porphyry,
which is much of the same signification; for Malchus in the
Phoenician language, which was then spoken at Tyre, signifies
a king, as rrogQugios, in the Greek denotes one that wore purple,
which none but kings, and royal persons were then permitted to
do. He was a bitter enemy to the Christian religion ; and there-
fore wrote a large volume against it, containing fifteen books,
whereof the twelfth was wholly levelled against the prophecies of
Daniel; but because the predictions of this prophet, concerning
the several empires, were acknowledged, on all hands, to have
been fulfilled, he did not go about to disprove it; on the con-
trary, he endeavoured to maintain, by the testimony of the best
Greek historians then extant, that they were fulfilled so exactly,
and so minutely, that it was impossible for them to be the pre-
dictions of the Daniel who belonged to the Babylonish captivity,
and must therefore be the spurious composition of some later
author. But this argument St Jerome, iu his comment upon
Daniel, fully turns upon him. It is much to be lamented, how-
ever, that not only this whole work of Porphyry is lost, but that
also the books of Eusebius Apollinarius, and Methodius, which
were wrote in answer to this heathen adversary, (to the great
damage both of divine and human knowledge,) have all under-
gone the same fate. — Prhlcau.v's Connection, anno 164.
holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an
end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and
to bring in an everlasting righteousness, and to anoint
the Most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that
from the going forth of the commandment to restore,
and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the prince
c shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks,
and the street shall be built again, and the wall, even
in troublous times ; and after threescore and two weeks,
shall Messiah be cut oft* but not for himself: and
the people of the prince that shall come, shall de-
stroy the city, and the sanctuary, and the end thereof
shall be with a flood ; and at the end of the war, deso-
lations are determined; and he shall confirm the cove-
nant with many, for a week ; and, in the midst of the
week, he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to
cease ; and for the overspreading of abominations, he
shall make it desolate, even until the consummation,
and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.'
Now, to set these words in a right light, we must con-
sider, 1st, That the main design and intendment of them
is, to foretel the coming of the Messiah, his abolishing
the Jewish, and setting up a new and more perfect re-
ligion ; which is so manifest to every common reader,
that later Jews (to avoid the force of this one prophecy)
have even adventured to exclude the whole book of
Daniel from the number of inspired writers, and to
pronounce a curse upon any that shall pretend to com-
pute the time of the Messiah's coming. 2dly. It is
agreed by most interpreters, that the seventy weeks
here spoken of (according to the prophetic style) are
to be taken for weeks of years, every one of which
contained seven years, and so the seventy weeks will
amount to 490 years, at the expiration of which term,
the matters contained in this prophecy were to have their
accomplishment. But then the question is, at what
point of time these seventy weeks, or what is all one,
the 490 years, either began or expired ? For if we can
but find out one of these periods, there will be less dif-
ficulty in stating the other. Now, 3dly, It seems pretty
plain, that the several events specified in the beginning
of this prophecy, viz. ' to finish ' or restrain transgres-
sions ; 2. To make an end of sin ; & To make expia-
tion, or reconciliation for iniquity ; 4. ' To bring in
everlasting righteousness ;' 5. ' To seal up,' or com-
plete, and ' fulfil vision and prophecy ;' and 6. ' To
anoint,' or consecrate ' the Most Holy,' were all accom-
plished in the great work of our salvation, by the death
and passion, and by the doctrine and resurrection, of
our Saviour Christ. For being born without original,
and having lived without actual sin, he truly was the most
holy of all that ever bore our nature, and being thereby
fully fitted for this great work, ' he was anointed with
the Holy Ghost, and with power,' to be our priest, our
prophet, and our king.
As our priest, he offered himself a sacrifice upon the
cross, and thereby made atonement for our sins, which
is ' making an end of them,' by taking away their guilt ;
and in so doing, working reconciliation for us with God.
c The colon, which, in our English Bibles, is placed after
' seven weeks,' in the middle of this sentence, should be placed
after ' two weeks,' at the end of it, which wrong punctuation
may possibly lead some people into an error in their computa-
tion.
102
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA j— v.
As our prophet, he gave us his gospel, a law of ' ever-
lasting righteousness,' and the only revelation we are
to expect. And as our king, he sent his Holy Spirit
into our hearts, to guide and influence us according to
this law ; whereby he has taken an effectual method to
restrain, and extinguish in us, all manner of transgres-
sion ; and in doing all this, he has sealed up, that is,
fulfilled, and thoroughly finished all, that by visions and
prophecies had been before revealed concerning him.
Since l therefore all these events were brought to
pass, and accomplished at the time of Christ's death,
this must determine us where to fix the end of the weeks
wherein these events were to be accomplished. And if
the end of these weeks is to be fixed at the death of
Christ, then, 4thly, This will determine us where to
place the beginning of them, namely, 490 years before, a
which is the very year and month, ° wherein Ezra had
his commission from Artaxerxes Longimanus, king of
Persia, for his returning to Jerusalem, and there to re-
store the church and state of the Jews.
The only objection against this computation is, — That
the words of the prophecy seem to denote a real building
of the city, since it makes mention of its streets and
walls ; whereas that work was executed upon the decree
by Cyrus, several years before Ezra was in commission.
But this objection will appear of little force, if once
it be considered, that figurative expressions are, in a
1 Prideaux's Connection, anno 409.
a Most learned men agree, that the death of Christ happened
in the year of the Julian period 474G, and in the Jewish month
Nisan: and therefore, if we reckon 490 years backward, this
will lead us to the month Nisan, and in the year of the Julian
period 4-^56; which, according to Ptolemy's canon, was the
seventh year of Artaxerxes' reign, in which the Scripture tells
us (Ezra vii. 7), that this commission was granted. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 578.
b Others are of opinion, that the commission here intended
was not that which was given to Ezra, but that which Nehe-
miah had from Artaxerxes, in the twentieth year of his reign,
at which period they place the commencement of these seventy
weeks; which, being reduced to 490 lunar years, bring us down
to the time when our Saviour Christ was put to death. There
are some variations, indeed, concerning the calculation of these
years. Chronologere differ among themselves a little; but the
greatest difference does not exceed nine or ten years; and yet
even this, Petavius, who has treated of the subject, in his
twelfth book de Doctrina Temporum, has endeavoured to accom-
modate, by showing that the words of the prophecy of Daniel,
concerning the going forth of the command to restore and re-
build Jerusalem, ought to be understood of the complete execu-
tion of that order, which was performed by Nehemiah only;
and that the twentieth year of Artaxerxes mentioned in Nehe-
miah i. 1, ought to be explained, not of the twentieth year of
Artaxerxes alone, but of the twentieth from the time that his
father made him his associate in the throne, which was ten years
before his death: which ten years being deducted from the num-
ber of years that elapsed from the decree of Artaxerxes in favour
of Nehemiah, to the death of Jesus Christ, deliver the chronolo-
gers out of all their perplexities, and dispel all the difficulties
that the few supernumerary years occasioned ; Calmeft Disser-
tation on the Seventy Weeks, 8tc. What the learned Bishop
Lylod's manner of computing these weeks is, the reader will
find fully explained and illustrated by Mr Bedford, in his Scrip-
ture Chronology, (b. 7. c. I); and if he would have still farther
satisfaction herein, he may consult Pererius upon Daniel; M.
Uasnage's Dissert, upon the seventy weeks ; F. Hardouin's
Dissert, on the same subject; and that of F. Frischmouth, in
his Thesaurus Dissertationum, at the end of the great critics.
[ Dr Hales's Analysis of Ancient Chronology is also worthy of
being consulted on the Prophecies of Daniel, though the worthy
author is too eager to launch into futurity; see also Mr Bell's
Dissertation on Dau. xi.; Rollin, vol. 2. p. 510.] Ed.
manner, necessary in prophecies, and that nothing is
more common in Scripture, than by Jerusalem, in parti-
cular, to mean the whole political and ecclesiastical
state of the Jews.
There is another difficulty observable in this pro-
phecy, which deserves our attention, and that is, the
division of the seventy weeks into three distinct periods,
that is, into seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and one
week, to each of which a different event is assigned.
In the seven weeks, or forty-nine years, from the going
forth of the commandment, the streets and walls of Jeru-
salem, that is, the restoration and establishment of the
church and state of the Jews, is to be accomplished.
In the sixty -two weeks, or 434 years more, the- Messiah
is to come, and make his appearance in the world ; and
in one week, or seven years after this, he is to ' confirm
a covenant with many, and cause the sacrifice and obla-
tion to cease:' all which were literally fulfilled. For,
in the space of forty -nine years, which answers to seven
weeks, the reformation and establishment of the Jewish
church and state was carried on, and completed, first
by Ezra, in virtue of a decree granted in the seventh
year of Artaxerxes, and afterwards by Nehemiah, in
virtue of another granted him by the same prince, in the
twentieth year of his reign. From that time, in the
space of 434 years, which answers to sixty -two weeks,
our blessed Saviour appeared in the world as the Mes-
siah ; and for seven years after that (which answers to the
one week in the prophecy), first, by his forerunner John
the Baptist, for the space of three years and a half more,
he conlirmed the covenant of the gospel with as many of
the Jews as were converted, and embraced these laws of
everlasting righteousness which he published ; and at
length by the sacrifice of his most precious blood, made
all other victims and oblations (which were but types and
emblems of his) for ever cease and be abolished. As to the
other part of the prophecy, it relates so evidently to the
destruction of Jerusalem, that it needs no explanation.
Whoever has read Josephus cannot but observe, that,
by the destruction of the city and sanctuary, by the
people of the prince that was to come, who, with their
armies and desolating abominations, should invade
Judea as with a flood, and, by a terrible and consuming
war, bring utter ruin and destruction upon it, and upon
all the people of the Jews that should dwell therein, can
be meant nothing but Titus at the head of the Roman
army, executing the wrath of God for the murder of his
Son, our Saviour, upon that devoted city and people, in
such a terrible and tragical manner as their historian
has related.
Ezekiel, indeed, according to the sentiment of some
rabbins, was a prophet of more obscurity than Daniel,
and, especially in the description of the chariot, as they
call the first chapter, so very intricate and abstruse, that
they would not permit it to be read by any until they
were arrived, at the age of thirty. The design of the
prophet in that chapter is, to represent the great and
glorious appearance of God coming to give him instruc-
tions in the management of his prophetic office ; and, to
this purpose, he makes use of images foreign indeed to
our manner of writing, but which are all significant and
full of majesty. He seats himself on a radiant throne,
supported by cherubim moved by wheels of an uncom-
mon make, covered with the canopy of heaven, and en-
Skct. I.J
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703
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
circled with the rainbow ; and though, in the description
of the cherubim and wheels, there may be something
not so agreeable to our way of thinking, yet we are not
to suppose, but that, in the whole, it was adapted to the
age wherein the prophet wrote, and in each part perhaps
did include an excellent moral. Angels, of what rank
or denomination soever, are all ministering spirits, and
the instruments of God's providence in the government
of the world ; and therefore are represented here as
supporting his throne, and in allusion, ' very likely, to
the triumphal chariots of eastern princes, which are
drawn by several sorts of beasts, they are said 2 every one
to have four faces. Their wings denote their readiness
and alacrity ; their eyes, their sagacity and vigilance ;
their hands, their prudence and dexterity ; their feet, their
steadiness and resolution in performing the divine com-
mands ; and 3 the noise of their wings, when they went,
expressed the terribleness of the judgments which they
were to execute upon Jerusalem and all the Jewish nation.
And, in like manner, 4 the make and fashion of the
wheels which these cherubim actuate, shows, that all the
ways of providence are uniform, and subservient to each
other ; as 5 their going perpetually forward intimates,
that providence does nothing in vain, but always ac-
complishes its designs. 6 The largeness of the rings
or circumference of the wheels, denotes the vast compass
of providence, 7 ' which reacheth from one end to another
mightily.' 8 Their being full of eyes implies, that the
motions of providence are directed by unerring wis-
dom ; and 9 their moving, when the cherubs moved,
seems to demonstrate, with what readiness and alacrity
all the instruments of providence do concur in carrying
on his great designs. a Thus, full of instruction is every
1 Lowth's Comment, on Ezek. i. 2 Ezek. i. 6.
3 Ibid. ver. 24. 4 Ibid. ver. 16. 5 Ibid. ver. 17.
6 Ibid. ver. 18. 7 Wisd. viii. 1. 8 Ibid. ver. 18.
9 Ibid. ver. 19.
a Each cherub had four faces: (1.) that of a man; (2.) that of
a lion ; (3.) that of an ox ; (4.) that of an eagle. These four
faces were probably attached to one head, and seen by the be-
holder in union, being joined, each by its back part, to the others.
Their body, from the neck downwards, was human; ' the like-
ness of a man.' This human part first meeting the spectator's
eye, had he seen nothing else, lie might from thence have sup-
posed the whole form to be human. Ezekiel describes the
cherub as having four wings; — Isaiah describes the seraph as
having six wings; say, two on his head, two on his shoulders,
two on his flanks. Their arms, rendered in our translation
hands, were four, one on each side of the creature. The re-
mainder, or lower part of their figure, was, from the rim of the
belly downwards, either (1.) humau thighs, legs, and feet, to
which were appended, at the posteriors, the body and hind legs
of an ox; or rather, (2.) the body and the fore legs of an ox, out
of which the human part seemed to rise, so that all below the
rim of the belly was ox-like, and all above that division was
human. From which formation a spectator paying most atten-
tion to their lower parts, might have been inclined to think them
oxen; or at least bestial. With regard to their services, or
what they appeared to do, Mr Taylor asks, was the vision seen
by the prophet Ezekiel, as well as that by the prophet Isaiah, the
resemblance of a movable throne or chariot, of prodigious dimen-
sions, on which the sovereign was understood to sit ; and to
which the wheels were annexed in much the same maimer as to
the royal travelling, or military thrones of the Persian kings;
while the four cherubim occupied the places of four horses to
draw this magnificent machine? This he thinks probable, and
illustrates the idea at some length. The wheels described in
Ezek. i. 15 — 21. in connexion with the cherubim, Mr Taylor
conceives to have been representative of the throne of the Deity;
the construction — wheel within wheel — being for the purpose of
their rolling every way with perfect readiness, and without any
4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv., DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
little symbol in this description ! And therefore it is
doing injustice to the character of the prophet, to find
fault with his images, because they agree not with the
present mode, or to censure his writings before we
understand them.
His prophecy 10 concerning Gog and Magog is per-
haps deservedly thought one of the most difficult pas-
sages that occur in the Old Testament; and accordingly,
the conjectures about it have been various. It is gener-
ally agreed, however, that the words * Gog and Magog-
are not real but fictitious names ; and therefore their
wars with the people of God, some have applied to the
cruelties of Antiochus Epiphanes against the Jews ;
others to the persecutions of the Gentiles against the
Christians ; some to the irruption of the Goths, and
other barbarous nations, into the Roman empire ; others
to the ravages which the Turks made in Asia, and some
parts of Europe ; and others again, to those, as is pro-
phesied elsewhere, oppressions which, in the latter days,
Antichrist shall bring upon the true professors of our
most holy religion.
11 The main current of interpreters will have the Gog
in Ezekiel to be Antiochus ; but then there are some
exceptions to this opinion, that may be gathered from
Ezekiel himself. For whereas the Gog in Ezekiel 12
' was to fall upon the mountains of Israel ;' 13 ' was to be
buried in the east of the Mediterranean sea ;' was to
have an army destroyed, 14 ' by their turning their swords
upon one another ;' and 15 the Israelites were to gather the
' spoils, and burn their arms for several years :' whoever
looks into the history of Antiochus, will see that he died
at a little town called Taba, in the confines of Persia
1(1 Ezek. xxxviii. and xxxix.
» Calmet's Dissert, on Gog and Magog. 12 Ezek. xxxix. 4.
13 Ibid. ver. 11. I4 Ibid, xxxviii. 21. 15 Ibid, xxxix. 9, 10.
occasion of turning the whole machine. The cherubim having
the conducting of this throne, it is obvious to remark how well
adapted their figure was to their service; their faces looking
every way, so that there was no occasion for turning, as a horse
must, in obedience to directions, to proceed to the right, or to
the left, instead of going straight forward. As much misappre-
hension respecting these appearances, has arisen from the idea
of the wheels and the cherubim being full of eyes, (Ezek. i.) Mi-
Taylor next endeavours to correct that mistake. It is surprising,
he remarks, that when the same Hebrew word py obi, had been
rendered colour, in verses 4, 7, 16, 22, 27, it should in verse
18 be rendered eyes. It means the glittering splendid hues —
the fugitive reflected tints, those accidental coruscations of
colours, such as we see vibrate in some precious stones, which,
seen in some lights, show certain colours, but seen in other lights,
show other colours. This sense of the word is confirmed by the
use of it in Numb. xi. 7: " the manna was like coriander seed, it-
self; but the eye of it— the reflected glistening tint which vibrated
from it— was like to the eye — the glistening tint— of the bdellium."
It would not be far from the truth, to say, that these eyes were of
the nature of those we call eyes in a peacock's feather: that is, that
they were spots peculiarly embellished with colours, or streaks like
those of the golden pheasant of China. — Calmet's Diet. — En.
b Magog was the son of Japhet, (Gen. x. 2.) from whom the
Scythians were generally supposed to be derived ; a people well
known in the east for their frequent irruptions and devastations
therein made, and who, for their rapine and violence, cruelties
and barbarities of all kinds, for some time passed into a proverb;
and therefore, wluther we suppose Cambyses or Antiochus, as
we shall see hereafter, to be the Gog in Ezekiel, the prophet's
calling him by the name of a ' wild Scythiau ' can be no objec-
tion, because scarce ever were any two men more cruel, more
savage, and brutal in their passions, than they ; insomuch, that
we may truly say, that, as the Scythians were the terror of all
the east, so Cambyses and Antiochus were the horror and abo-
mination of mankind. — Calmet's Commentary on Gog and Mayog,
704,
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book VII.
OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
A. M.341V. A. C. 1.87
and Babylonia ; that, upon his death, his army suffered
no defeat, neither did the Jews reap any advantage by
it, because his son Antiochus Eupater continued to
oppress and harass them with wars as much as ever.
But if Antiochus was not the Gog in Ezekiel, the
question is, Who was ? And to resolve this question, we
may observe, that (be the person who he will) the pro-
phet speaks of him as a powerful prince, who should
come from the north, ' with a numerous army, 2 made
up of different nations, exasperated against the Jews,
aud with full intent 3 to plunder and ravage their country ;
but that he should be disappointed in his design, and 4
his army miraculously destroyed.
We may observe farther, that this event was to happen
after the return from the captivity ; because the prophet
mentions it as a thing future : 5 ' thou shalt come into a
land (speaking- of (jog) that is brought back from the
sword, and against a people who have lately returned
from amidst the nations where they had been dispersed ;'
which can be meant of none but the Jews ; but 6 that it
could not happen after the time of the Maccabees,
because the Jewish history is, from thence, so very well
known, that a transaction of this nature could not well
escape us ; and therefore we may conclude that it was
between the return from the captivity, and the first ap-
pearing of the Maccabees, a very obscure interval as to
the Jewish affairs, that what the prophet relates of Gog
and his adventures, came to pass ; and if so, we can see
no prince or potentate to whom the characters which the
inspired writers give of him, can so properly belong-, as
to Caiubyses the son of Cyrus.
According to the accounts of all history, he was cruel
and barbarous, excessively impious, and insatiably cove-
tous. His indignation against the Jews he expressed 7
by a revocation of a grant which his father gave for the
rebuilding of their city and temple. He led a large
army into Egypt, composed of all the different nations8
that Ezekiel mentions, who were overwhelmed (a great
many of them at least) by the driven sands of the deserts.
In his return from Egypt, 9 he died at Ecbatan in
Palestine, at the foot of Mount Carmel, which faces the
Mediterranean sea, of a wound which he received by his
sword's falling accidentally out of the scabbard; so that
a great many lines of the picture which the prophet
draws of (jog, meet in Caiubyses, though it must be
acknowledged that all do not.
10 What bids fair for this opinion, however, is the order
and series of events which Ezekiel seems to have ob-
served in his prophecies ; for having first foretold the
taking of Jerusalem, the captivity of Babylon, and the
desolation of Tyre, Egypt, and some other countries
neighbouring upon Judea, he proceeds, in the next place,
to the dissolution of the Chaldean monarchy, and the
return of the Jews from their captivity : but before they
are well settled in their native country, Gog and his
numerous army are introduced to trouble their repose,
and threaten their ruin ; but that God interposes to rid
them of this fierce enemy, who is said to have fallen in
the mountains of Israel, he, and all his army. It must
1 Ezek. xxxviii. 15. 2 Ibid. ver. 2. 3 Ibid. ver. 9, &c.
* Ibid. ver. 22, &c. 5 Ibid. ver. 8.
6 Calmet's Dissert, on Gog and Magog.
7 Ezra iv. 19, &e. 8 Ezek. xxxviii. 2, &c. 9 Herod, b. iii.
10 Calmet's Dissert, on Gog and Magog.
be owned, indeed, that the writers of the life of Caiubyses
make mention of no intention in this prince to fall foul
upon the Jews, nor do they say any thing of the destruc-
tion of his army, ensuant upon his death ; but upon the
supposition, that the prophecy relates to him, God, who
knew the evil disposition of that prince's heart towards
the Jews, (which no profane author could penetrate.)
has given us this part of his history : " < Thus saith the
Lord, it shall also come to pass, that at the same time,
thou shalt think an evil thought, and shalt say, I will
go up to the land of unwalled villages ; I will go to
them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwell-
ing without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, to
take a spoil, and to take a prey, to turn my hand upon
the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon
the people that are now gathered out of the nations.'
What became of his army, after he was dead, we cannot
tell. Herodotus, who gives us the largest accounts of
him, immediately after his decease, passes to the history
of the Magian, who usurped his throne ; and therefore
we may suppose, 18 that as they consisted of so many dif-
ferent nations, and followed him only by compulsion,
when once their head was gone, they crumbled into
parties, quarrelled, and, as 13 the prophet had foretold,
turned their arms upon one another ; which was no more
than what M the Philistines did in the time of Saul, and
15 the Midianites, when Gideon judged Israel. a
"Ezek. xxxviii. 10, &c. n Calmet's Dissert.
13 Ezek. xxxviii. 2. 14 1 Sam. xiv. 20. Vj Judg. vii. 22.
a The following is Rosenmuller's account of Gog and Magog.
It seems to rest upon a much better foundation than that given
above : — " The word Magog, which in the ethnographic table in
Genesis, is the name of Japhet's second son, appears in Ezek.
xxxviii. 2, as the name of a country, whose ruler was called
Gog, and who, at the same time, was prince of Meshech and
Tubal, that is of the Moschi and Tibareni. It is said, that after
the people of God should be delivered from all their enemies
and oppressors, and enjoy a long season of repose, this powerful
monarch would collect a numerous and formidable host of the
tribes of the distant north, and overrun the Holy Land, where,
however, he would meet a signal overthrow, and be buried in a
valley on the east side of the lake of Gennesareth, (chap, \xxix.
11.) In the Revelation of St John, (chap. xx. 8,) Gog and
Magog are not spoken of as lands or their rulers, but as two great
nations, comprising the heathen at the four ends of the earth,
who, after the millennial reign, shall be stirred up by Satan to
encamp against the holy city, and shall be destroyed by fire from
heaven. Among the Arabs and Persians the nations of Vajooj
and Majoqj correspond to the Gog and Magog of the Hebrews.
They are supposed to have descended from Japhet, and to dwell
in the distant north. Alexander the Great is said to have erected
a wall, in order to prevent the inroads of these plundering tribes in-
to the countries of the south. From the accounts found in
Arabian and Persian geographers of Vajooj aud Majooj, we con-
clude that they comprehend, under this designation, all the less
known barbarous people of the north-east and north-west of Asia;
the same who were described among the Greeks and Romans by
the name of Scythians, and among the later Europeans by the
name of Tatars, (corrupted into Tartars.) Yet though the Gog
and Magog of the Hebrews may have had an equally vague ac-
ceptation, it nevertheless seems to have pointed more precisely
to the northern tribes of Caucasus, between the Euxine and
Caspian Seas. This idea is countenanced, not only by the fact
of the names being connected in Ezekiel with Ararat (Armenia,)
Meshech (the Moschi,) and Tubal (the Tibareni 0 hut also by
umstance that the famous Caucasian wall, anciently
the
erected by a Persian monarch as a defence against the incursions
ot the northern barbarians, and which extended from Derbend,
on the western shore of the Caspian to near the Black Sea, was
called the wall (against) Yajonj and Majooj, that is, Gog and
Magog, a name which the remains still bear. In the Apocalypse,
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &<
705
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
We have been so large in our answers to some of the
last objections, that we have less room left for the re-
conciliation of some seeming- inconsistencies that are
alleged in this period of history ; but a little will suffice
for this.
For, 1. Whereas the number of the people, returning
from the captivity, is much larger in the general sum
than it is in the particulars, it is to be remembered, that
not only those of Judah .and Benjamin, but several also
of the other tribes, took the benefit of the decree which
Cyrus granted in favour of the Jews, to return again in-
to their own land. That they did so, is plain from the
tenor of the decree itself, which extends l ' to all the peo-
ple of the God of Israel,' whereof (as Josephus informs
us) Zerubbabel sent a copy into Media, to the rest of the
ten tribes, who, ' together with the rest of the fathers of
Judah and Benjamin,' are supposed to be those, J ' whose
spirit God had raised up to go :' and therefore the dif-
ference between the gross and the particular sums arises
from hence, 3that in the latter, the tribes of Judah, Benja-
min, and Levi , only are reckoned by their families ; where-
as in the former, all those of the other tribes that accom-
panied them in their return to Jerusalem are added.
This accounts for the difference between the general
and particular sums in Ezra ; and then why the particu-
lars in Ezra differ from the particulars in Nehemiah, the
matter (according to a very competent * judge) is to be
1 Ezra i. 3. 2 Ibid. ver. 5.
3 Patrick's Commentary on Ezra ii. C; and Prideaux's Con-
nection.
* Lightfoot's Chronology, p. 146.
the terms Gog and Magog are evidently used allegorically, as
names of the enemies of Christianity, who will endeavour to ex-
tirpate it from the earth, lint shall thereby bring upon themselves
signal destruction." — (Bib. Cabinet, No. xi. Rosenmuller, Bib.
Geoff, vol. i. pp. 121 — 123.) With regard to the wall of Gog
and Magog mentioned by liosenmuller, Ker Porter (Travels,
vol. ii. p. 520.) thus writes, — " The name Daghistan implies a
land of mountains, and it contains some of the most inaccessible
of this bianch of the Caucasian range, which runs directly through
the heart of this country. The eastern side, towards the sea,
commands the most level ground ; and on that shore we find the
district and city of Derbent. It possesses a picturesque citadel,
though situated at rather an unserviceable distance from the
town and harbour; but I am told that part of the ancient wall,
named Gog and Magog, is very traceable near this old stronghold,
and that its foundations may be tracked thence, running in a
westerly direction over even the highest mountains. This place,
and its adjacent district, a position deemed of the greatest im-
portance by all conquerors, whether Persians, Greeks, Arabs,
&c. who could acquire its possession, is now the property of
Russia/' This wall was really built by the famous Noushirvan,
king of Persia, as a barrier against the inroads of the Khazars.
That Gog and Magog were to be sought for in the Caucasus,
was the idea (if Bochart. " He observes," says Wells, (Gcor/. of
he Old Testament, vol. i. p. 121.) that these words [divm
Gog-chasan, denote in the neighbouring oriental tongues as much
is Gog's Fort, and from Goy-chasan the Greeks framed the
name Kxixuao;, Caucasus.'' And besides finding the word Gog
preserved in Gogarene, a district of Iberia, he believes Pro-
metheus, chained to the Caucasus by Jupiter, to have been none
other than Gog.
The Schrrif-el-Edrisi, m his geographical work called " The
Diversion of the Curious," gives a singular account of Yajooj
and Majooj, taken from the travels of one Salam the interpreter.
This person, says he, was sent about the beginning of the ninth
century, by the Calif Mohammed Ameen Billah, to discover
the mountain Kokaiya, with the bank or rampart of Yajooj and
Majooj, who dwelt on the north of it, and who were confined
within by a great gate of iron, fifty cubits high, supported by
great buttresses, with an iron bulwark reaching to the summit of
4825. A. C. 580. JER. xl. 7-xlv., DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
conceived and apprehended thus, — " That Nehemiah
found the list and catalogue of those that came up in the
first of Cyrus, as it was then taken, and that he called
over the names of the families, as they lay in order
there ; that he observed the order of the old list, in call-
ing them over, and lifting them, but took the real number
of them, as they were at the time, when he numbered
them, that some families were now more in number than
they were when the first list was made, and some fewer ;
and some that were in that list were not to be found now ;
for some more of the same stock had come up from
Babylon, since the first numbering, and others, who
had come up at first, and were then numbered, were now
gone back again."
2. Whereas it is said of the fourscore Israelites, that
they were 5 ' carrying their offerings to the house of the
Lord,' when the house of the Lord at Jerusalem had, for
some time before, been destroyed by the Babylonians ; 6
why may we not suppose, that the place where the temple
stood, even after its destruction, was held in such vener-
ation, that the people who were left in the country,
after the general captivity, chose to offer their sacrifices
and oblations there, as long as they remained in the
land ; and that having no priests at Jerusalem, they
might go to Mizpeh (where these servants of the Lord
had, very probably, put themselves under the governor's
protection) to fetch one from thence, in order to assist
them in their religious offices ?
7 Samaria, indeed, and the other parts from whence
these devout persons came, lay to the north, and Mizpeh
to the south of Jerusalem, a little too far distant for
them to go for a priest ; and therefore others have
imagined, that after the destruction of the temple,
Gedaliah, by the advice of the prophet Jeremiah, and
the priests that were with him, had established a taber-
nacle, and built an altar at Mizpeh, where the people,
for the present, might resort to pay their devotions, and
present their oblations, until by some happy turn of
affairs, their temple might come to be built again ; and
that this tabernacle and altar might with propriety
enough, be called ' the house of the Lord.'
We can hardly believe, indeed, that after the temple
was gone, the people were to live without any place of
religious worship; and, therefore, considering that Miz-
peh was all along esteemed a place of more than ordi-
nary sanctity ; that after the return of the ark, there
8 l Samuel gathered together all Israel before the Lord ;'
that there he built an altar, and 9 'offered a sacrifice;'
and that in the time of the Maccabees, when the Jews
were in the same case as now, without a temple, and
without an altar, they here ,0 ' assembled themselves to-
gether ;' for Mizpeh, as the author of that history tells
us, ' was the place where they prajed aforetime iu
Israel:" we cannot but think, that there is something of
5 Jer. xl. 5. 6 Prideaux's Connection, in the notes, anno 588.
7 Calmet's Commentary on Jer. xli. 5. 8 1 Sam. vii. 5, 6.
■ 9 Ibid, ver, 19. ,0 Maccab. iii. 46.
Kokaiya, almost beyond the reach of vision. The people of
Yajooj, says he, are of the common size, but those of Majooj (so
far from being giants according to European notions) are a race
of pigmies only three spans high. For farther information respect-
ing the locality of Gog and Magog, the reader is referred to a Dis-
sertation on the subject by D'Anville, in the Memoires de 1'Acad.
des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, vol. xxxi. and Rennell's Geog.
of Herodotus, p. 152. — Bib. Cab. No. xi. Rosenmulkr, Bib,
Geog. — Ed.
4 u
706
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
reality in the supposition, and that these eighty pious
mourners were going to Mizpeh, and not to Jerusalem,
■when the bloody and perfidious Ishmael circumvented
them.
3. Once more : whereas it is said, 2 ' that the priests
and Levites, and elders of the fathers,' who had seen
the first temple, wept when the foundation of the second
was laid, though it is manifest, that the latter temple
was 3 forty cubits larger than the former ; it must be re-
membered, that the reason of their weeping was, not so
much because it was like to prove far inferior to that of
Solomon as to its outward structure, but because it was
to want those extraordinary marks of the divine favour,
wherewith the other temple was honoured. The second
temple was built upon the same foundations with the
first ; and therefore the different measures that we find
of them in the books of Kings and Ezra, are to be under-
stood in respect of the different distances between which
the said measures were taken. The twenty cubits'
breadth, which is said of Solomon's temple, was from
the inside of the wall on the one side, to the inside of
the wall on the other ; but the sixty cubits' breadth of
that to be built by Zerubbabel, was the breadth of the
whole building, from the inside of the outer wall of it
on the one side, to the inside of the outer wall on the
other. So that the difference of the said twenty cubits'
breadth, and of the said sixty cubits' breadth, is no
more than this, — That the one is meant of the temple
strictly so called, the other of the temple and its
appertaining buildings. Both the temples then, without
all doubt, were of the same dimensions ; but then here
was the difference, the sad difference, which drew tears
from the eyes of the elders, viz. that, in all appearance,
there were little or no hopes, that the poor beginnings
of the latter temple would ever be raised to the grandeur
and magnificence of the former, since the one had been
built by the wisest and richest king, and constantly
adorned by some one or other of his posterity ; the other
now begun by a small company of exiles, just returned
from their captivity ; the one in a time of profound
peace, and the greatest opulence, the other in a time of
common calamity and distress ; the one finished with
the most costly stones and timber, wrought with exqui-
site art, and overlaid with vast quantities of gold, the
other to be raised out of no better materials than what
could be dug from the ruinous foundation of the old one.
But the occasion of their g-rief was not only this, that
the materials and ornaments of the second temple, 4
were even as nothing ' in comparison of the first;' but
the ark of the covenant a and the mercy-seat, which
M. 4825 A. C. 580. JER. xl. 7-xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i-v.
was upon it, b the holy fire c upon the altar, the Urim and
Thummim, d the spirit of prophecy, e the Shechinah, /
or divine presence, the five great things for which the
former temple was so renowned, were lost and gone,
and never to be recovered to this other.
Jer. xli. (i. * Ezra
Compare Ezra vi. 3. with 1 Kings vi. 20. and 2 Cliron
4 Hag. ii. 3.
12.
never more be seen ; and this, though a fiction, is designed to
inform us, that, in the destruction of Jerusalem, this sacred
piece of furniture was lost. The Jews, indeed, upon the build-
ing of the second temple, made an ark of the same shape and
dimensions with the first, and put it in the same place: but it
had none of its honours and prerogatives ; no tables of the law,
no Aaron's rod, no pot of manna in it, no appearance of the
divine glory over it, no oracles given from it; the only use that
was made of it was, to be a representative of the former on the
great day of expiation, and to be a repository of the Holy Scrip-
tures, that is, of the original copy of that collection which was
made of them after the captivity, by Ezra, and the men of the
great synagogue. — Prideaux'' s Connection, anno 535.
b This was the cover of the ark of the covenant. It was
made of solid gold, and at the two ends of it were fixed two
cherubim of the same metal, which, by their wings extended
forwards, seemed to form a throne for the majesty of God, who,
in Scripture, is represented to us as sitting between the cheru-
bim, and the ark itself was, as it were, his footstool. The
Hebrew word caphoreth, by being translated propitiatory, seems
to imply, that from thence the Lord heard the vows and prayers
of his people, and pardoned them their sins ; and by its being,
at other times, translated oracle, seems farther to imply, that
from thence he manifested his will and pleasure, and gave re-
sponses to Moses. — Calmefs Dictionary, under the word.
c This fire came down from heaven, first upon the altar in
the tabernacle, at the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the
priesthood, (Lev. ix. 24,) and, afterwards, it descended anew upon
the altar in the temple of Solomon, at its consecration, (2 Chron.
vii. I,) and there it was constantly fed and maintained by the
priests, day and night, in the same manner as it had been in the
tabernacle. Tiie Jews have a tradition, that Jeremiah, foresee-
ing the destruction of the temple, took this fire, and hid it in a
pit, but that, at the rebuilding of the temple, being brought
again from thence, it revived upon the altar; but this is all a
fiction: for the generality of them allow, that, at the destruction
of the temple, it was extinguished; and, in the time of the
second temple, nothing was made use of for all their burnt-
offerings but common fire only. — Prideaux' s Connection.
d Whether the Urim and Thummim lay in the high priest's
breastplate itself, or only in the clearness and perfection of those
oracular answers which he received from God, when he went to
consult him upon any important matter, so it was, that, having
put on all his pontifical robes, and presented himself in the sanc-
tuary before the holy of holies, he knew, by one means or other,
most probably by an audible voice from the mercy-seat (which
was within behind the veil), what the divine pleasure was con-
cerning the affair wherein he came to consult him. This was
a singular privilege vouchsafed to the Jews; but it does not
appear from the sacred history, that there are any footsteps of
consulting the Lord in this manner after the building of Solo-
mon's temple to the time of its destruction; and, after its de-
struction, all are agreed, that this was never restored ; so that
there seems to be some reason for that maxim among the .lews,
namely, that the Holy Spirit spake to the children of Israel, during
the tabernacle, by Urim and Thummim ; under the first temple,
by the prophets ; and under the second by Bath-col, or a voice
sent from heaven, such as was heard at the baptism of Jesus
Christ, and at his transfiguration. — Patrick's Commentary ; and
Calmefs Dictio)iary.
e This, it must be owned, was not wholly withdrawn from the
Jewish church, in the time of the second temple. The prophets
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi lived in this time and prophc-
sied : but, after their death (which the Rabbins say happened in
one year), the prophetic spirit wholly ceased from among the
Jews. — Prideaux 's Connection.
/The Shechinah was a sensible token of God's presence
among the Jews, which consisted of a visible cloud, resting over
the mercy-seat, or cover of the ark of the covenant, just above the
a This was a small chest, or coffer, three feet nine inches in
length, two feet three inches in breadth, and two feet three
inches in height, Exod. xxv. 10, 22. In it were put the two
tables of the law, the broken ones as well as the whole ones (say
the Rabbins), and nothing else was put therein when it was
brought into Solomon's temple, 1 Kings viii. 9; but in process
of time, Aaron's rod, the pot of manna, and the original volume
of the law, written by Moses' own hand, came to be likewise
put into it, ILli. ix. 4. The Jews have a tradition, which Epi
phanios [in VitaJerem. Prophetm) takes notice of, that Jeremiah
foreseeing the approaching ruin of the temple, carried the ark of j two cherubim,' that overshadowed it, (Lev. xvi. 2.) It there
the covenant into a cave, and by his prayers prevailed that it first appeared when Moses consecrated the tabernacle, and after-
might be sunk, and swallowed up in the rock, so that it might i wards, at the consecration of the temple by Solomon, was trans-
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &«
707
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M
This was a just matter of lamentation to those that
had seen these singular tokens of the divine favour in
the former temple, and a discouragement of their pro-
ceeding with the building of the present ; and therefore
the prophet Haggai was sent to inform them, that all
these wauls and defects should be abundantly repaired
by the coining of the Messiah, the true Shechinah of
the Divine Majesty, in the time of the second temple :
1 ' I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations
shall come, and I will fill this house with glory ; the
glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the
former, saith the Lord of hosts.'
CHAP. III. — On the History of Cyrus, andthe Taking
of Babylon.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
As the taking of Babylon is one of the greatest events
in ancient history, and as the principal circumstances
with which it was attended were foretold in the Holy
Scriptures many years before it happened, it may not be
improper that, by the insertion of a few observations,
we enable the reader more fully to compare the predic-
tions and the accomplishment of them together.
The pride, the cruelty, and the impiety of Babylon,
provoked the wrath of God against her. With regard to
her pride, she believed herself to be invincible. ' She
said in her heart, I am the queen of nations, and I shall
remain so for ever. I am, and none else beside me ;
I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss
of children.' As to her cruelty, God himself complains
of it : 'I was wroth with my people, and have given
them into thine hand : thou didst show them no mercy ;
upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.'
And as to her impiety, her monarch not only preferred
his false divinities to the true and only God, but fancied
that he had vanquished his power, because he was pos-
sessed of the vessels which had belonged to his worship ;
and as if he meant to affront him, he affected to apply
those holy vessels to profane uses.
If ever there was a city, as Dr Keith observes, that
seemed to bid defiance to any predictions of its fall, that
city was Babylon. Its walls, which were reckoned
among the wonders of the world, appeared rather like
the bulwark of nature, than the workmanship of man.
The temple of Belus, half a mile in circumference, and
a furlong in height, — the hanging gardens, which, piled
in successive terraces, towered as high as the walls —
the embankments which restrained the Euphrates — the
hundred brazen gates — and the adjoining artificial lake,
— all displayed many of the mightiest works of mortals
concentrated in a single spot. Yet, while in the pleni-
tude of its power, and, according to the most .accurate
chronologers, KiO years before the foot of an enemy had
1 Hag. ii. 7, 8.
lated thither; (See vol. 2, 437) and there continued, in the
same visible manner, while the ark was in its own proper place,
either in the tabernacle or temple (but not while it was in move-
ment, as it often was during the time of the tabernacle), till the
Babylonians destroyed the temple, after which it never appeared
more. — Pridtaua's Connection.
4825. A. C. 58G. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and F5JRA i-v.
entered it, the voice of prophecy pronounced the doom
of the mighty and unconquered Babylon. A succession
of ages brought it gradually to the dust ; and the grada-
tion of its fall is marked till it sink at last into utter
desolation. At a time when nothing but magnificence
was around Babylon the great, fallen Babylon was
delineated exactly as every traveller now describes its
ruins.
Chaldea, with its rich soil, and warm climate, and
intersected by the Tigris and Euphrates, was one of the
last countries in the world, of which the desolation could
have been thought of by man. Yet the debasing idola-
try, and brutifying wickedness of its inhabitants provok-
ed, and brought down the vengeance of heaven.
' The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos
did see. The noise of a multitude in the mountains,
like as of a great people ; a tumultuous noise of the
kingdoms of nations gathered together ; the Lord of
hosts niustereth the host of the battle. They come from
a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord,
and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole
land. Behold the day of the Lord coineth, cruel both
with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate ;
and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. Baby-
lon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldce's
excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it
be dwelt in from generation to generation ; neither shall
the Arabian pitch tent there ; neither shall the shepherds
make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert
shall lie there ; and their houses shall be full of doleful
creatures ; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall
dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall
cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their
pleasant palaces. 2
' I will cut oft' from Babylon, the name, and remnant,
the son and nephew, saith the Lord. I will also make
it a possession for the bittern and pools of water ; and
I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith
the Lord of hosts. Thus saith the Lord, that saith
unto the deep, be dry ; and I will dry up thy rivers ; that
saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all
my pleasure, — and I will lose the loins of kings, to
open before him the two leaved gates ; and the gates
shall not be shut. — I will punish the land of the Chalde-
ans, and will make it perpetual desolations. And I
will bring upon that land all my words which I have
pronounced against it, even all that is written in this
book which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the
nations. Declare ye among the nations, and publish,
and set up a standard ; publish and conceal not ; say,
Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodoch is
broken in pieces ; her idols are confounded, her images
are broken in pieces. For out of the north there cometh
up a nation against her, which shall make her land de-
solate, and none shall dwell therein ; they shall remove,
they shall depart, both man and beast. For, lo, I will
raise, and cause to come up against Babylon, an assem-
bly of great nations from the north country : and they
shall set themselves in array against her; and from
thence she shall be taken ; their arrows shall be as of a
mighty, expert man ; none shall return in vain. And
- Is. xiii. 1—22.
708
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7.— xlv. DANIEL and EZRA i— v.
Chaldea shall be a spoil ; and all that spoil her shall
be satisfied, saith the Lord. Behold the (undermost of
the nations a wilderness, a dry land and a desert.
Because of the wrath of the Lord, it shall not be inhabit-
ed, but it shall be wholly desolate ; every one that goeth
by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her
plagues. The Lord hath opened his armoury, and hath
brought forth the weapons of his indignation ; for this is
the work of the Lord God of hosts in the land of the
Ohaldees. Come against her from the utmost border,
open her storehouses ; cast her up as heaps, and destroy
her utterly, let nothing of her be left. — Therefore the
wild beast of the desert, with the wild beasts of the
islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell there-
in : and it shall be no more inhabited for ever ; neither
shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. As
( lod overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbour-
ing cities thereof, saith the Lord ; so shall man no more
abide there, neither shall any son of man dwell therein/1
' Set up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among
the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together
ag-ainst her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Asche-
nas : Lo, I will raise and cause to come up against
Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north
country.'
Cyrus subdued the Armenians, who had revolted
against Media, spared their king, bound them over anew
to their allegiance, by kindness rather than by force, and
incorporated their army with his own. He adopted the
Hyrcanians who had rebelled against Babylon, as allies
and confederates, with the Medes and Persians. He
conquered the united forces of the Babylonians and
Lydians, took Sardis, with Crcesus and all his wealth,
spared his life after he was at the stake, restored to him
his family and his household, received him into the
number of his counsellors and friends, and thus prepared
the Lydians, over whom he reigned, and who were
formerly combined with Babylon, for coming up against
it : he overthrew also the Phrygians and Cappadocians,
and added their armies in like manner to his accumulat-
ing forces. And by successive alliances and conquests,
by proclaiming liberty to the slaves, by a humane policy,
consummate skill, a pure and noble disinterestedness,
and a boundless generosity, he changed, within the space
of twenty years, a confederacy which the king of Baby-
lon had raised up against the Medes and Persians,
whose junction he feared, into a confederacy even of the
same nature against Babylon itself, — and thus a standard
was set up against Babylon in many a land, kingdoms
were summoned, prepared, and gathered together against
her.
' They shall hold the bow and the lance, — they shall
ride upon horses, — let the archer bend his bow, — all ye
that bend the bow shoot at her.' Forty thousand Persian
horsemen were armed from among the nations which
C\,rus subdued; many horses of the captives were be-
sides distributed among all the allies. And Cyrus came
up against Babylon with a great multitude of horse ; and
also with a great multitude of archers and javelin men,
— that held the bow and the lance.
No sooner had Cyrus reached Babylon, with the
nations which he had prepared, and gathered against
1 1-. \li\ xlvi. Jcr. ii.
her, than in the hope of discovering some point not
utterly impregnable, accompanied by his chief officers
and friends, he rode around the walls, and examined
them on every side, after having for that purpose sta-
tioned his whole army round the city. They camped
against it round about. They put themselves in array
against Babylon round about.
Frustrated in the attempt to discover, throughout the
whole circumference, asingle assailable point,and finding
that it was not possible, by any attack, to make himself
master of walls so strong and so high, and fearing that his
army would be exposed to the assault of the Babylonians
by a too extended, and consequently weakened line. —
Cyrus standing in the middle of his army gave orders
that the heavy armed men should move, in opposite
directions, from each extremity towards the centre ; and
the horse and light armed men being nearer and advan-
cing first, and the phalanx being redoubled and closed
up, the bravest troops thus occupied alike the front and the
rear, and the less effective were stationed in the middle.
A trench was dug round the city — towers were erected
— Babylon was besieged — the army was divided into
twelve parts, that each, monthly, by turn, might keep
watch throughout the year ; — and though the orders were
given by Cyrus, the command of the Lord of hosts was
unconsciously obeyed, ' let none thereof escape.'
' The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight.
They have remained in their holds ; their might hath
failed ; they became as women.' Babylon had been the
hammer of the whole earth, by which nations were broken
in pieces, and kingdoms destroyed. Its mighty men
carried the terror of their arms to distant regions, and
led nations captive. But they were dismayed, accord-
ing to the word of the God of Israel, whenever the na-
tions which he had stirred up against them, stood in
array before their walls. Their timidity, so clearly pre-
dicted, was the express complaint and accusation of
their enemies, who in vain attempted to provoke them to
the contest. Cyrus challenged their monarch to single
combat, but also in vain ; 2 for the hands of the king of
Babylon waxed feeble. Courage had departed from
both prince and people ; and none attempted to save
their country from spoliation, or to chase the assailants
from their gates. They sallied not forth against the
invaders and besiegers, nor did they attempt to disjoin
and disperse them, even when drawn all round their
walls, and comparatively weak along the extended line.
Every gate was still shut ; and they remained in their
holds. Being as unable to rouse their courage, even by
a close blockade, and to bring them to the field, as to
scale or break down any portion of their stupendous
walls, or to force their gates of solid brass, Cyrus
reasoned, that the greater their number was, the more
easily would they be starved into surrender, and yield
to famine, since they would not contend with arms, nor
come forth to fight. And hence arose, for the space of
two years, his only hope of eventual success. So
dispirited became its people, that Babylon, which had
made the world as a wilderness, was long unresistingly
a beleaguered town. But possessed of many fertile
fields, and of provisions for twenty years, which in their
timid caution they had plentifully stored, they derided
8 Xc.iK.jh. Cyrop. iv. p. 290.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c
709
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825. A. C. 58G. JER. si. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— y.
Cyrus from their impregnable walls within which they
remained. Their profligacy, their wickedness and false
confidence were unabated ; they continued to live care-
lessly in pleasures, but their might did not return ; and
Babylon the great, utdike to many a small fortress and
nn walled town, made not one effort to regain its freedom
or to be rid of the foe.
Much time having been lost, and no progress having
been made in the siege, the anxiety of Cyrus was strong-
ly excited, and he was reduced to great perplexity, when
at last it was suggested, and immediately determined
on, to turn the course of the Euphrates. But the task
was not an easy one. The river was a quarter of a mile
broad, and twelve feet deep, and in the opinion of one
of the counsellors of Cyrus, the city was stronger by the
river than by its walls. Diligent and laborious prepara-
tion was made for the execution of the scheme, yet so as
to deceive the Babylonians. And the great trench,
ostensibly formed for the purpose of blockade, which for
the time it effectually secured, was dug around the walls
on every side, in order to drain the Euphrates, and to
leave its channel a straight passage into the city, through
the midst of which it flowed. But, in the words of
Herodotus, " if the besieged had either been aware of
the designs of Cyrus, or had discovered the project be-
fore its actual accomplishment, they might have effected
the total destruction of their troops. They had only to
secure the little gates which led to the river, and to man
the embankment on either side, and they might have en-
closed the Persians as in a net, from which they could
never have escaped." l Guarding as much as possibly
they could against such a catastrophe, Cyrus purposely
chose, for the execution of his plan, the time of a great
annual Babylonish festival, during which, according to
their practice, " the Babylonians drank and revelled the
whole night." And while the unconscious and reckless
citizens " were engaged in dancing and merriment,"
the river was suddenly turned into the lake, the trench
and the canals ; and the watchful Persians, both foot
and horse, so soon as the subsiding of the water per-
mitted, entered by its channel, and were followed by
the allies in array, on the dry part of the river. ' I will
dry up thy sea, and make thy springs dry ; that saith to
the deep be dry, I will dry up thy rivers.'
One detachment, says Herodotus, was placed where
the river first enters the city, and another where it leaves
it. a And one post did run to meet another, and one
messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon
that his city is taken at the end, and that the passages
are short. They were taken by surprise, according to
the historian just mentioned ; and such was the extent of
the city, that they who lived in the extremities were
made prisoners before any alarm was communicated to
the centre of the place where the palace stood. Not a
gate of the city wall was opened ; not a brick of it had
fallen. But ' a snare was laid for Babylon — it was
taken, and it was not aware ; it was found and also
caught, for it had sinned against the Lord. How is the
praise of the whole earth surprised ! For thou hast
treated in thy wickedness, and thy wisdom, and thy
knowledge, it hath perverted thee, therefore shall evil
come upon thee, and thou shalt not know from whence
1 Ilcroil. I), i. c. 191,
U. i. c, 191.
it riseth, and mischief shall come upon thee, and thou
shalt not be able to put it off.'
' In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will
make them drunken, that they may sleep a perpetual
sleep and not wake, saith the Lord. I will bring them
down like lambs to the slaughter.' Cyrus, as the
night drew on, stimulated his assembled troops to
enter the city, because in that night of general revel
within the walls, many of them were asleep, many
drunk, and confusion universally prevailed. On pas-
sing, without obstruction or hinderance, to the city, the
Persians, slaying some, putting others to flight, and
joining with the revellers, as if slaughter had been mer-
riment, hastened by the shortest way to the palace, and
reached it, before a messenger had told the king that his
city was taken. The gates of the palace, which was
strongly fortified, were shut. The guards stationed
before them were drinking beside a blazing light, when
the Persians rushed impetuously upon them. The
louder and altered clamour, no longer joyous, caught
the ear of the inmates of the palace, and the bright light
showed them the work of destruction, without revealing
its cause. And, not aware of the presence of an enemy
in the midst of Babylon, the king himself (who had been
roused from his revelry by the handwriting on the wall),
excited by the warlike tumult at the gates, commanded
those within to examine from whence it arose ; and ac-
cording to the same word by which the gates leading
from the river to the city were not shut, the loins of
kings were loosed to open before Cyrus the two-leaved
gates. At the first sight of the opened gates of the pal-
ace of Babylon, the eager Persians sprang in. " The
king of Babylon heard the report of them ; anguish took
hold of him." He and all who were about him perished ;
God had numbered his kingdom and finished it : it was
divided, and given to the Medes and Persians : the
lives of the Babylonian princes, and lords, and rulers,
and captains, closed with that night's festival ; the drun-
ken slept a perpetual sleep and did not wake. 3
' Her young men shall fall in the streets, and all her
men of war shall be cut oil' in that day.' Cyrus sent
troops of horse throughout the streets, with orders to
slay all who were found there. And he commanded
proclamation to be made, in the Syrian language, that
all who were in the houses should remain within ; and
that if any one were found abroad, he should be killed.
These orders were obeyed.
' I will fill thee with men as with caterpillars.' Not
only did the Persian army enter with ease as cater-
pillars, together with all the nations that had come up
against Babylon, but they seemed also as numerous,
Cyrus, after the capture of the city, made a great dis-
play of his cavalry in the presence of the Babylonians,
and in the midst of Babylon. Four thousand guards
stood before the palace gates, and two thousand on each
side. These advanced as Cyrus approached ; two thou-
sand spearmen followed them. These were succeeded
by four square masses of Persian cavalry, each consist-
ing of ten thousand men : and to these again were added
in their order, the Median, Armenian, Hyrcanian,
Caducian, and Sacian horsemen, — all, as before, riding
upon horses, every man in array, with lines of chariots.
3 Herod, b. i. c. 191.
710
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
four abreast, concluding the train of the numerous hosts.
Cyrus afterwards reviewed at Babylon the whole of his
army, consisting of one hundred and twenty thousand
borse, two thousand chariots, and six hundred thousand
foot. Babylon, which was taken when not aware, and
within whose walls no enemy, except a captive, had ever
been seen, was also filled with men as with caterpillars,
as if there had not been a wall around it. There is in
every particular a strict coincidence between the predic-
tions of the prophets and the historical narratives, both
of Herodotus and Xenophon. The prophecies of Isaiah
were delivered above one hundred and sixty years be-
fore the taking of Babylon, two hundred and fifty years
before Herodotus, and nearly three hundred and fifty
before Xenophon.
On taking Babylon suddenly, and by surprise, Cyrus,
as had been literally prophesied concerning him, and
as the sign by which it was to be known that the Lord
bad called him by his name, l became suddenly possess-
ed of the most secret treasures of Babylon. No enemy
had ever dared to rise up against that great city. To
tike it seemed not a work for man to attempt ; but it
became the easy prey of him who was called the servant
of the Lord. And as at this day, from the perfect re-
presentation given by the prophets, of every feature of
fallen Babylon, now at last utterly desolate, man may
know that God is the Lord, seeing that all who have
visited and describe it, show that the predicted judg-
ments against it have been literally fulfilled ; so, at that
time Cyrus, who, for two years, could only look on the
outer side of the outer wall of Babylon, and who had
begun to despair of reducing it -by famine, was to know
by the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret
places being given into his hand, that the Lord which
had called him by his name, was the God of Israel.
When the appointed time had come, that the power of
their oppressor was to be broken, Babylon was taken ;
and when the similarly prescribed period of the captivity
of the Jews, for whose sake he was called, had expired,
Cyrus was their deliverer.
' Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations,
before him.' Cyrus, commencing his career with a
small army of Persians, not only succeeded to the king-
dom of the Medes and Persians, first united under him
but the Hyrcanians yielded also voluntarily to his au-
thority. He subdued the Syrians, Assyrians, Arabs
Gappadocians, both Phrygias, the Lydians, Carians,
Phoenicians, and Babylonians. He governed the Bactri-
ans, Indians, and Cilicians, and also the Sacians, and
other nations. He likewise reduced to his authority the
Greeks that were in Africa, and the Cyprians and Egyp-
tians.
On taking Babylon suddenly, and by surprise, Cyrus
became immediately possessed of the treasures of dark-
ness, and hidden riches of secret places. On his first
public appearing in Babylon, all the officers of his army,
both of the Persians and allies, according to his com-
mand, wore very splendid robes, those belonging to the
superior officers being of various colours, all of the
finest and brightest dye, and richly embroidered with
gold and silver ; and thus the hidden riches of secret
1 Isa. xlv. 1—4.
M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i.— v.
places were openly displayed. The past history of the
land of the Chaldeans may be briefly closed in the lan-
guage of prophecy ; for the prophets, in their visions,
saw it as it is ; although historians knew not, even after
its grandeur was partially gone, how to tell of its ferti-
lity which they witnessed, and hope to be believed.
Those who recorded the word that the Lord spake
against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans,
had no such fear, though 2400 years have elapsed since
they described what is now only at last to be seen.
Where astronomers first registered eclipses, and
marked the motions of the planetary bodies, the natives,
as in the deserts of Africa, or as the mariner without a
compass on the pathless ocean, can now direct their
course only by the stars, over the pathless desert of Chal-
dea. Where cultivation reached its utmost height, and
where two hundred fold was stated as the common pro-
duce, there is now one wide and uncultivated waste ; and
the sower and reaper are cut off from the land of Babylon.
Where abundant stores and treasures were laid up, and
annually renewed and increased, fanners have fanned,
and spoilers have spoiled them till they have emptied
the land. Where labourers, shaded by palm trees 100
feet high, irrigated the fields till all was plentifully wa-
tered from numerous canals, the wanderer, without an
object on which to fix his eye, but stinted and shortlived
shrubs, can scarcely set his feet without pain, after the
noonday heat, on the arid and parched ground, in plod-
ding his weary way through a desert, a dry land, and a
wilderness. Where there were crowded thoroughfares from
city to city, there is now silence and solitude; for the
ancient cities of Chaldea are desolations, — where no man
dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby.
A chapter of sixty pages in length, of Mr Bucking-
ham's travels in Mesopotamia, is entitled, " Search
after the AY alls of Babylon." After a long and fruitless
search, he discovered on the eastern boundary of the
ruins, on the summit of an oval mound, from seventy to
eighty feet in height, and from three to four hundred feet
in circumference, " a mass of solid wall, about thirty feet
in length, by twelve or fifteen in thickness, yet evidently
once of much greater dimensions each way, the work
being, in its present state, broken and incomplete in every
part ;" s and this heap of ruin and fragment of wall he
conjectured to be a part — the only part, if such it be,
that can be discovered — of the walls of Babylon, ' so
utterly are they broken.' Beyond this there is not even
a pretension to the discovery of any part of them.
Captain Frederick, of whose journey it was the
" principal object to search for the remains of the wall
and ditch that had compassed Babylon," states that,
" neither of these have been seen by any modern travel-
ler. All my inquiries among the Arabs," he adds, " on
this subject completely failed in producing the smallest
effect. Within the space of twenty- one miles in length
along the banks of the Euphrates, and twelve miles across
it in breadth, I was unable to perceive any thing that could
admit of my imagining that either a wall or a ditch had
existed within this extensive area. If any remains do
exist of the walls, they must have been of greater cir-
cumference than is allowed by modern geographers. I
may possibly have been deceived ; but 1 spared no pains
8 Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 306, 307
Skct. 1.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVTY, &t
711
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OK, ACCORDING TO HALKS, A. M. 4825. A. C. 586. JEH. xl. 7— xlv. I) VMM,. ind EZRA i— r.
to prevent it. I never was employed in riding and
Walking less than eight hours for six successive days,
and upwards of twelve on the seventh." '
Major Keppel relates, that he and his party who ac-
companied him, in common with other travellers, had
totally failed in discovering any trace of the city walls,
and he adds, the divine predictions against Babylon
have been so literally fuliilled in the appearance of the
ruins, that I am disposed to give the fullest signification
to the words of Jeremiah, 2 ' the broad walls of Babylon
shall be utterly broken.'
From palaces converted into broken hills, as Dr
Keith observes, — from streets to long lines of heaps —
from the throne of the world to sitting on the dust — from
the hum of mighty Babylon to the death-like silence that
rests upon the grave to which it is brought down ; — from
the great storehouse of the world, where treasures were
gathered from every quarter, and the prison-house of
the captive Jews, where they served in hard bondage to
Babylon, the spoil of nations, itself taken from thence,
and nothing left ; — from a vast metropolis, the place of
palaces, and the glory of kingdoms, whither multitudes
ever flowed, to a dreaded and shunned spot, not inha-
bited nor dwelt in from generation to generation, where
even the Arabian, though the son of the desert, pitches
not his tent, and where the shepherds make not their folds ;
— from the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of
secret places, to the taking away of bricks, and to an
uncovered nakedness ; — from making the earth to trem-
ble, and shaking kingdoms, to being cast out of the
grave like an abominable branch; — in extremes like
these, there is not a single fact that may not most appro-
priately be ranked under a prediction, and that does not
tally entirely with its express and precise fulfilment,
while, at the same time, they all united, show the de-
struction which has come from the Almighty upon Ba-
bylon.
" Who hath declared this from ancient time ? Who
hath told it from that time ? Have not I the Lord ? and
there is no god beside me ; — declaring the end from the
beginning, and from ancient times, the things that are
not yet done — saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will
do all my pleasure." Is it possible that there can be any
attestation of the truth of prophecy, if it be not witnessed
here ? Is there any spot on earth which has undergone a
more complete transformation ? " The records of the
human race," it has been said with truth, " do not pre-
sent a contrast more striking, than that between the
primeval magnificence of Babylon, and its long desola-
tion." 3 Could any prophecies respecting any single
place have been more precise, or wonderful, or numer-
ous, or true, or more perfectly accomplished throughout
many generations ? And when they look at what Baby-
lon was, and what it is, and perceive the minute realiza-
tion of them all, — may not nations learn wisdom — may
not tyrants tremble, — may not sceptics think.4
Before concluding this chapter, it should be remarked,
that the recording of the name of Cyrus in an inspired
book, and showing beforehand that God had chosen
1 Transactions of the Lit. Soc, Bombay, vol. i. p. 130, 31.
' Jer. li. 58.
See Keith's Evidence of Prophecy, and Bell's Notes to Rollin.
4 Edin. Review, No. i. p. -131).
him to overturn the Babylonian empire, is expressly
mentioned as having respect to two great objects : first,
the deliverance of Israel ; and, second, the making
known his supreme divinity among the nations of the
earth.
' For the sake of my servant Jacob,
And of Israel my chosen,
I liave even called thee by thy name,
I have surnamed thee, though thou knowest me not,
I am Jehovah and none else.
Beside me there is no God.
I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me
That they may know from the rising of the sun,
And from the west, that there is none beside me.'
It was therefore intended by tJiis proceeding, on the part
of Providence, to teach not only Cyrus, but the people
of his vast empire, and surrounding nations, first, that
he was Jehovah, the self-subsistent, the eternal God ;
second, that he was God alone, there being no Deity be-
side himself; and third, that good and evil represented
by light and darkness, were neither independent nor
eternal subsistences, but his great instruments, and under
his control.
The Persians who had vastly extended their empire
by the conquests of the countries formerly held by the
monarchs of Babylon, were thus prepared for such a re-
formation of their religion as Zoroaster effected. If the
Magi who came from the east to seek Christ were Per-
sians, some true worshippers of God would appear to
have remained in Persia to that day ; and if, as is pro-
bable, the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel were retained
among them, they might be among those who waited for
redemption, not at Jerusalem, but in a distant part of the
world.
CHAP. IV. — Of the Pride and Punishment of
Nebuchadnezzar.
AVhoever looks back upon the actions of Nebuchadnez-
zar, will easily perceive that he was a great and suc-
cessful warrior ; that, during a his father's lifetime, and,
while he commanded the army as general under him, he
drove the Egyptians, the only nation that pretended, .it.
this time, to rival the Babylonish monarchy, out of Syria
and Palestine, took Jerusalem, and carried away the
people captive ; and that, upon his own accession to
the throne, he overcame the Phoenicians and Tyrians,
overran all Egypt, and made it tributary, and returned
home in triumph loaded with rich spoils. The Scrip-
ture, however, does not impute the occasion of his prido
to the number of his conquests, or the extent of his
dominions, but to the state and magnificence of his roy*.l
city, in which, as it were at one view, he saw all the
fruits of his martial toil, all the spoils of his many vic-
tories, and all the revenues of his vast empire comprised,
and displayed in their utmost splendour. For while he
was walking upon his palace at Babylon, very probablv
in his hanging gardens, and in the uppermost terrace of
them, from whence he might have a full prospect of the
whole city, B ' Is not this Great Babylon,' said he to
5 See Prideaux's Connection, vol. i. pp. 62, 65, 66, and 92.
' Dan. iv. 30.
712
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. C. r,87; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4825
C. 5SG. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v
himself, ' \vlii<;h 1 have built for the house of the king-
dom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of
my majesty ?'
Babylon was one of the most ancient cities of the
world. It was founded by Nimrod, not long after the
building of the famous tower of Babel, and was enlarged
and beautified by Semiramis ; but Nebuchadnezzar was
the person who put the finishing hand to it, to make it
one of the great wonders of the world : and therefore it
may not be amiss, to take a short survey of the works
that are generally ascribed to him, in order to see what
grounds he might have for this arrogant vaunt.
1. The whole city, which stood on a large flat, con-
sisted properly of two parts, which were divided by the
river Euphrates. That part of it which was on the east
side of the river was the old city ; the other, on the west
side, was added by Nebuchadnezzar, and the whole was
a square of 120 furlongs, or fifteen miles every way,
which made the whole circumference of it to be 480 fur-
longs, or exactly threescore miles. Its walls, which were
in thickness eighty-seven feet, a in height 350 feet, and
in compass 480 furlongs, were all built of large bricks,
cemented together with bitumen, a glutinous slime,
which, issuing out of the earth in that country, binds
stronger and firmer than lime, .and, in a short time, grows
harder than the very brick and stone which it cements.
The city was encompassed without the walls with a
vast ditch, tilled with water, and lined with bricks on
botli sides, after the manner of a counterscarp; and, as
the earth which was dug out of it made the bricks where-
with the walls were built, we may judge of the depth and
largeness of the ditch from the vast height and thickness
of the walls. In the whole compass of the wall there
were 100 gates, that is, five and twenty on each of the
four sides, all made of solid brass ; and, between every
two of these gates, at proper distances, were three towers,
that is, at the four corners of this great square, there
were four towers, h between each of these corners and
the next gate on either side three towers ; and every one
of these towers was ten feet higher than the walls.
Answering to every one of these gates, there was a
street which led from gate to gate ; so that there were
fifty in all, each fifteen miles long; whereof twenty-five
going one way, and twenty-five another, they crossed
each other at right angles, and so cut the whole city out
into 676 squares, each of which was four furlongs and an
half on every side, that is, two miles and a quarter in
compass ; and round these, on every side towards the
a Some authors indeed will have them to have been no more
than filly cubits; hut then they speak of them only as they were
after the time of Darius Hystaspes; for the Babylonians having
revolted from him, and, in confidence of their strong walls,
Stood out against him in a long siege, after he had taken the
place, in order to prevent their rebellion for the future, he took
away their gates, and beat down their walls to the height above-
mentioned, and beyond this they were never after raised. —
Prideau.v's Connection, anno 570.
b This is to be understood only of those parts of the walls
where there was need of towers; for some parts of them lying
against morasses always full of water, where they could not he
approached by any enemy, had no need of any towers at all for
their defence; and therefore in them there were none built; for,
whereas the whole number of them amounted to no more than
250, had the same uniform order been observed in their disposi-
tion all round, there must have been many more.- — Prideau.v's
Connection, anno 570.
street, stood the houses, all built three or four stories
high, with fronts adorned with all manner of embellish-
ments, and with yards and gardens thrown backwards.
Besides these, there were four other streets, built only
on one side, because they had the wall on the other,
which went round the four sides of the city, and were all
of them 200 feet broad, though the other streets were
but 150. c
Quite cross the city ran a branch of the river Euphrates,
which entered in on the north, and went out on the south
side ; and over it, in the very middle of the city, was a
bridge of a furlong in length, and thirty feet in breadth,
built with wonderful art, to supply the defect of a foun-
dation in the bottom of the river, which was all sandy.
By this bridge a communication was kept up between
the two parts of the city ; and, at the two extremities of
it, stood two palaces, the old one on the east, and new
one on the west side of the river. The former of these
took up four of the squares abovementioned, the other
nine ; and the temple of Belus, which stood near the old
palace, took up another.
2. The temple of Belus, which was one of the most
wonderful works in the world, was a square of a furlong
on each side, that is, half a mile in the whole compass ;
and consisted of eight towers, or what seemed like
towers, built one above another. Herodotus tells us,
that the way to go up it was by stairs on the outside
round it; from whence it seems most likely, that the
whole ascent to it was by the benching-in, drawn in a
sloping line, from the bottom to the top, eight times
round it, and that this made the appearance of eight
towers one above another. The eight towers, as they
are called, being like so many stories, were each of
them rf seventy-five feet high, and in them were many
great rooms, with arched roofs, supported with pillars,
which, after that the place was consecrated to an idola-
trous use, were all made parts of the temple ; but the
most sacred parts of alb and where the chiefest devotions
were performed, was the uppermost story, over which, on
the top of the tower, was an observatory, by the benefit
of which the Babylonians advanced their knowledge in
astronomy beyond e all other nations.
c For an interesting inquiry into the extent and population of
Babylon, we refer the reader to Bell's Rollin, vol. i. pp. ISO, 1S7,
■ note. — Ed.
d Some, following the mistake of the Latin version of Hero-
dotus, wherein the lowest of these towers is said to be a furlong
thick and a furlong high, will have each of these towers to be a
furlong high, which amounting to a mile in the whole, is enough
to shock any one's belief. But the Greek of Herodotus, which
is the authentic text of that historian, says no such thing, but
only that it was a furlong long and a furlong broad, without men-
tioning any thing of its height at all. And therefore Strabo, in
his description of it, calling it a pyramid, because of its decreas-
ing and benching-in at every tower, says of the whole, that it
was a furlong high and a furlong on every side, which, without
any farther addition makes it exceed the greatest of the pyramids
of Egypt. I mean for its height. For, whereas the height of the
tallest pyramid was no more than 481 feet, that of the temple of
Belus was COO, that is, higher by 1 19 feet, which is one quarter
ot the whole. — Prideaita's Connection, anno 570.
c The Babylonians made great boasts of the antiquity of their
knowledge in this kind of learning. They reckoned 473,000
years, from the observations of their first astrologers to the arrival
of Alexander the Great; but Aristotle, who was curious in in-
quiring into the truth of what was related of these observations,
desired of Calisthenes, his scholar, who accompanied Alexander
to Babylon, to send him the most certain and exact account that
Sfxt. V.""
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
713
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 8— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
This tower, and the several rooms in it, were all that
was called ' the temple of Belus,' until Nebuchadnezzar
enlarged it with vast buildings, which were erected in a
square of two furlongs on every side, or a mile in circum-
ference. On the outside of these was a wall enclosing
the whole, in which were several gates leading to the
temple, all made of solid brass, very probably from the
brazen sea, the brazen pillars, and the other brazen ves-
sels, which, * from the temple of Jerusalem, were car-
ried to Babylon.
This temple stood till the time of Xerxes ; but he, on
his return from the Grecian expedition, having first plun-
dered it of its immense riches, among which were sev-
eral images or statues of massy gold, demolished
the whole of it, and laid it all in ruins. Alexander,
upon his return to Babylon from his Indian expedition,
proposed to have rebuilt it, and, to that purpose, set
ten thousand men on work to clear away the rubbish ;
but his death, in a short time after, put an end to all
further proceedings in that design, and (as modern trav-
ellers assure us) the knowledge of the very place where
it once stood is at this time lost. a
3. Near to this temple, on the east side of the river,
as we said, stood the old palace of the kings of Baby-
lon, four miles in circumference ; and exactly over-
against it, on the other side of the river, was the new
palace, built by Nebuchadnezzar, eight miles in compass,
and surrounded with three walls one within another.
But the most wonderful things belonging to it were the
hanging gardens, which Nebuchadnezzar made in com-
plaisance to his wife Amylis, 2 daughter of Astyages
king of Media ; for she, retaining a strong inclination
for the mountains and forests of her own country, de-
sired to have something like it in Babylon : and there-
fore, to gratify her, he erected this monstrous work of
vanity.
These gardens contained a space of four hundred feet
square, and were carried up aloft into the air, in the
1 Dan. i. 2; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 7.
2 Herodotus calls her Nitomis.
he could gather of this matter; and accordingly he sent him
astronomical observations that had been made for 1903 years,
which came within 115 years of the flood, or fifteen years after
the tower of Babel was built, but tell infinitely short of their other
monstrous computation, though this of Calisthenes seems to be a
little enlarged ; because, according to our chronology, we reckon
no more than eighteen hundred years from Nimrod and the tower
of Babel, to the reign of Alexander at Babylon. — Calmet's Dic-
tionary, under the word Babylon.
a Tin's was supposed to be the case at the time our author
wrote; but the investigations of Rich, Ker, Porter, Kinnear,
&<•., have satisfactorily proved that the mound called by the
Arabs, Birs Nimroud, or the Palace of Nimrod, and by the Jews
Nebuchadnezzar's Prison, is the site ot the celebrated temple of
Belus, completed, if not begun, by Nebuchadnezzar. This
mound stands in the centre of an immense court, surrounded by
a canal, and which encloses a space of about two miles, the
whole of which is one mass of ruins. The Birs rises in the cen-
tre of this to the height of 19S feet, surmounted by a tower,
whose shattered elevation is 37 feet above the massy mound,
and 22 feet broad. The country round this for many miles is
covered with remains of buildings in the form of larger or smal-
ler mounds, but clearly traceable by the masses of brick of which
they are composed. A full description of these ruins would
occupy more space than we can allbrd ; but the inquiring reader
may refer to Mr Bell's note on this subject in his edition of
Kollin, vol. i. p. 180, et seq., where a full and satisfactory ac-
count oi the ruins is given, and the exact fulfilment of all the pro-
phecies respecting ancient Babylon clearly demonstrated. — En.
manner of several large terraces, one above another,
until the highest of them came up to the height of the
walls of the city, that is to say, was three hundred and
fifty feet high. The ascent was from terrace to terrace,
by stairs ten feet wide, and the whole pile was sustained
by vast arches built upon arches one above another, and
strengthened by a wall surrounding it on every side, of
two and twenty feet in thickness.
On the top of the arches were first laid large flat
stones sixteen feet long, and four broad ; over them was
a layer of reed, mixed with a great quantity of bitumen ;
over this were two rows of brick, closely cemented toge-
ther by plaster ; over these were laid thick sheets of lead,
and all this to keep the moisture of the mould from
draining away ; and then, lastly, upon this lead was laid
such a large quantity of earth heaped together, as affor-
ded depth enough for the largest trees to take root in it.
For, in this garden there was every thing that could
either delight the eye, or gratify the curiosity, beautiful
and large trees, flowers, plants, and shrubs ; and to keep
every thing verdant and gay in the upper terrace, there
was an aqueduct or engine which drew up water out of
the river into a kind of reservoir above, and from thence
watered the whole garden.
4. The river, indeed, at a certain season of the year,
namely, in the months of June, July, and August, by the
sun's melting the snow in the mountains of Armenia,
used to overflow its banks (in the same manner as
the Nile in Egypt does), to the great damage of the
city and country of Babylon ; and therefore, to prevent
this inconvenience for the future, Nebuchadnezzar had
two artificial canals cut, on the east side of the Euphrates,
in order to carry oft' the superfluous water into the Tigris.
One of these canals discharged itself near Seleucia, and
the other over against Apamia : and, for the farther
security of the country, from the head of these canals
down to the city, and some way lower, he made vast
banks of brick and bitumen ; but the most wonderful
part of the work was within the city.
There, on each side of the Euphrates, he built, from
the very bottom of the channel, a great wall of the same
thickness with the walls of the city, that is, eighty -seven
feet thick, and of an hundred and sixty furlongs (which
are * twenty miles of our measure) in length ; and over-
against every street that crossed the river, he made on
each side a brazen gate in the wall, and stairs leading-
down to the river, from whence the inhabitants used to
pass by boat from one part of the city to the other.
5. It was necessary, however, that while this work
was carrying on, the stream should be diverted some
other way ; and therefore, to this purpose, he had a
vast artificial lake made to the west of Babylon, which,
according to the lowest computation, was forty miles
square, and an hundred and sixty in compass ; and being
of a proportionable depth, was able to contain all the
water until the work was finished. When this was done,
the river was returned to its former channel ; but the
lake, and the canal which led to it, were still preserved,
because they were found of use, not only to prevent the
b And therefore this work must have begun two miles and an
half above the city, and continued two miles and an half below
it, because the city throughout was no more thau fifteen miles
1'ridcau.f's Connection , anno 570.
4 x
714
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.
danger of all overflowings of the river, but to keep
water likewise all the year round, as in a common
reservatory, which might be let out on proper occasions,
by sluices, for the improvement and fertilizing of the
ground.
These are some of the vast works « which the gener-
ality of historians ascribe to Nebuchadnezzar, and upon
the view and contemplation of which he grew so arro-
gant and elated, as to think himself equal, if not super-
ior to God : for, • Is not this great Babylon, which I
have built for the honour of my majesty ?' says he of
himself ; ' and, ' Who is god but Nebuchadnezzar ?' say
his sycophants concerning him. The truth is, if we will
credit the account in the book of Judith relating to this
prince, he was, in his temper, a professed atheist. b The
sense of his success in life, and of the wonderful works
which he had achieved, both in a civil and military ca-
pacity, had so intoxicated his reason, as to make him
become fool enough, to say in his heart there was no
other god but himself ; for this is the avowed purpose of '
his sending his armies under the general Holofernes,
2 ' That ail nations should worship him only, and that
all tongues and tribes should call upon him as god.'
Fit therefore it was, that such impious pride should
be abased, and that he who set himself above the rank
1 Judith vi. 2.
2 Judith iii. S.
a Berosius, Megasthenes, and Abydenus attribute all these
works to Nebuchadnezzar; but Herodotus tolls us, that the
bridge, the river-banks, and the lake were the work of Nitocris,
his daughter-in-law, who might possibly finish what he, at his
death, left incomplete, and, upon that account, receive from this
historian the honour of the whole.
I There is nothing in the canonical books of the Old Testa-
ment, where Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned, from which it can
reasonably he inferred that he was an atheist; and the Nabu-
chodonosor of the apocryphal book of Judith appears to have been
a very different man. In that book Nabuchodonosor is expressly
said to have reigned in Nineveh, and to have been the king of
the Assyrians; but it nowhere appears that Nebuchadnezzar ever
held his court in Nineveh. By Dr Hales, Nabuchodonosor is
supposed, on good ground, to have been the immediate success-
or of Ninus III. the immediate predecessor of Sarea, or Sar-
danapolus II. and therefore the last king of Nineveh but one of
the Assyrian dynasty. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon appears to
have been an arrogant and vainglorious conqueror, but in no
other sense an atheist than many such conquerors have been,
even in Christian countries, who, elated by success, forgot in
their practice the God of battles, by whom that success was ob-
tained. Far from being a speculative atheist, or from demand-
ing divine worship to himself, the Babylonian conqueror appears
to have been a zealous polytheist and idolater, acknowledging,
• however, as most polytheists of any reflection did, that there was
one God superior to all the others, and ready occasionally — per-
haps always — to attribute this superiority to the God of Israel.
It is probable likewise that he believed in the Metempsychosis, a
.doctrine which appears, from the Asiatic Researches, and other
ancient records, to have prevailed over all the east horn a period
long anterior to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar; and, if such was
the case, there was a peculiar propriety in punishing his pride
by the disease called lycanthropy. He persisted, in opposition
to his own repeated conviction, to worship the gods, in whom he
appears at times to have had no confidence whatever, giving, it
may be supposed, some degree of credit to this gloomy doctrine ;
and therefore, with wisdom truly divine, he was visited with a
species of madness, which, though it has been occasionally wit-
nessed in every age and in different countries, appears to have
been most frequent where the doctrine of the metempsychosis
or the transmigration of souls prevailed. See VVarburton's Div.
Leg. on this subject, and likewise Mosheim's edition of Cud-
worth's Intellectual System, with the authors referred to by the
learned editor of that profound work.
4825. A. C. 586. JER. xl. 7— xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA i— v.
of men, upon a level with God, nay, in an elevation
superior to God, should be made sensible of his depen-
dent state, and taught humility and self-annihilation, by
being degraded to the condition of a brute. ' He had
said in his heart,' for of him is that prophecy in Isaiah,
3 ' I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne
above the stars of God ; — I will ascend above the heights
of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. — But how art
thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning ?
How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken
the nations ? — They that see thee shall narrowly look
upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man
that made the earth to tremble, that did shake all king-
doms, that made the world as a wilderness, anchdestroy-
ed the cities thereof ?' And well they might, when they
saw 4 ' him dwelling with the beasts of the field ; eating-
grass like oxen, and wet with the dew of heaven, and
his hair gTown like eagle's feathers, and his nails like
the claws of birds.' But then the question is, what the
proper sense of these words is ? Or, what is the same
thing, of what kind this divine infliction upon the king
of Babylon was ?
Origen, 5 who was for resolving every thing that he
could not comprehend in Scripture into allegory, was of
opinion, that under the name of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel
intended to give us a representation of the fall of Lucifer,
being probably led to think so by the above cited pas-
sage in the prophet Isaiah. But the account of the
punishment which befell this prince is so often inculcated
in the same chapter ; foretold in the dream explained
by the prophet ; repeated by the voice from heaven ; and
all this published in a solemn declaration by the king
himself after the recovery of his senses, that there is no
manner of grounds to think of any figure or allegory in
this piece of history.
Nebuchadnezzar's real metamorphosis into an ox, both
as to his outward and inward form, is a notion too gross
for any but the vulgar, who may be taken, perhaps with
such fictions of the poets ; and what we have no need to
recur to, thereby to multiply miracles to no purpose,
from any words in the text which will fairly admit of
another interpretation.
The metempsychosis of an ox's soul into Nebuchad-
nezzar's body, thereby to communicate the same motions,
taste, and inclinations, that are observable in that animal,
is a notion unknown to all antiquity ; for, according to
the doctrine of Pythagoras, such a transmigration was
never made until the body was actually dead ; besides
the manifest incongruity of supposing two souls, a ration-
al and a brutal, animating the same prince, or the prince's
soul departed from him, and become the substitute to a
brute.
A fascination, both in the eyes of Nebuchadnezzar's
subjects, and in his own fancy and imagination, which
might make them both believe, that he really was changed
into an ox, and had the figure of one, is a notion every
whit as liable to exception. For, besides that it is difficult
to conceive, how a deception of this kind could abide
upon a whole nation for the space of seven years, the
Scripture takes notice of no evil spirit in this whole
transaction, but imputes all to the sole power of God,
Is. xiv. 13, &c. * Dan. iv. 32, 33.
5 Calmet's Dissert, on the Metamorphosis, &c.
I]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
715
A. M. 3117. A. C. 587; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M, 4325. A. C.586. JEK. xl. 7 -xlv. DANIEL, and EZRA l-v.
who can humble the proud, and chastise the wicked, as
he pleases.
The most general therefore, and most probable opinion
is, — that Nebuchadnezzar, by the judgment of God, was
punished with madness, which so disordered his imagina-
tion, that he fancied himself a beast, and was prompted
to act like one.
There is a distemper, not a very common one indeed,
but what has befallen several, which naturalists and
physicians call lycanthropy," when by the power of a
depraved imagination, and a distempered brain, a man
really thinks that he is a wolf, an ox, a dog, or the like,
and accordingly in his inclinations, motions, and beha-
viour, cannot forbear imitating the particular creature
which he fancies himself to be. In this manner Nebu-
chadnezzar, imagining that he was become an ox, want-
ed upon all four, fed upon grass, went naked, lowed
with his voice, and butted, as he thought, witli his horns ;
and, in short, did all the actions, as far as he was able,
that a real ox is known to do. l Hereupon his subjects,
perceiving this change in him, took him and bound him,
.as madmen are wont to be treated, but, at last, he escap-
ing out of their hands, fled to the fields, where he herded
with the cattle, exposed to the dew of heaven, and the
inclemencies of the weather ; where his neglected body
became horrid and dreadful to behold ; where his hair, and
his nails, in process of time, grew in the hideous manner
that the prophet had described them ; and, where his heart,
that is, his apprehension, appetite, and inclinations, by
the continuance of his distemper, became quite brutal,
and of the same cast with the beasts that graze.
The masters of the medics, who have treated of this
kind of madness, have made it their observation, that
the persons infected with it are generally so excessively
strong, that no bands or chains can hold them. They
can live a long while without eating or drinking, and
endure wet and cold without any great inconvenience to
themselves ; and therefore Nebuchadnezzar, though bred
up in the pleasures and delicacies of the court, might,
by the strength of his distemper, be enabled to do what
otherwise he would not ; to live in the fields for seven
years together, naked, and exposed to the injuries of
the weather, without any thing to nourish him, except
either the grass on the ground, or the wild fruits on the
hedges ; but then, whether he retained the use of his
reason whilst he continued in this disastrous state, is a
question that is not so easily determined.
The Scripture, indeed, at first sight, seems to intimate,
that he had no sense of his misery, nor made any reflec-
tion upon himself, or upon what he was doing, until God
was pleased to remove his afflicting hand : for these are
his own words.2 ' At the end of my days, I Nebuchad-
nezzr lift up mine eyes unto heaven, and my under-
standing returned unto me ;' which seem to imply, that
all along before this, his reason was in a kind of deli-
1 Dan. iv. 33. 2 Ibid. iv. 31.
a Such was the distemper of Lycaon king of Arcadia, which
Ovid has described, as if he had been turned into a wolf. In
terror he flies to the silent wilderness, and there endeavouring to
talk articulately, he can only howl — his mouth spontaneously
acquires a rabid longing for food, and his wonted fury is direct-
ed against the cattle, his delight is now in bloodshed — his gar-
ments are changed to hair, his amis to legs — he becomes a wolf,
though still in shape retaining the marks of his former nature. —
Ovid. Met. b. i.
quium, and without any consciousness of what he was
about. But then it may be asked, wherein would his
punishment and humiliation consist, if the man was in-
sensible ; if he knew nothing of the matter ; nay, if he
took pleasure, as most madmen do, in the disorder of
the imagination ?
To be miserable, and not to know it, by some may be
thought the very height of misery ; but the person in
Horace, who frequented the empty theatre every day,
and delighted himself with the reveries of his own fancy,
with plays and shows which nobody saw but himself, was
not so well pleased with his friends when they had reco-
vered him to his senses : — *' Friends, you have of a
surety killed, not cured me, since my delight is thus va-
nished, and the agreeable aberration of my mind expelled
by medicine." 3
To answer the ends of Providence, therefore, in afflict-
ing in this manner this haughty and assuming prince,
which was to mortify his pride, and bring him to a state
of humiliation and acknowledgment of God's superior
hand, we may suppose, that at certain intervals at least,
he had a sense and perception of his misery ; that he
saw the condition to which he was degraded ; but being
carried away with his brutal appetite, found it not in his
power to extricate himself. St Paul, in his description
of a man given up to his lusts, whereof Nebuchadnezzar,
in his present condition, is no improper emblem, has
these remarkable words. 4 ' I know that in me,' that is,
in my flesh, ' dwelleth no good thing ; for to will is pre-
sent with me, but how to perform that which is good, I
find not; for the good that I would, I do not, but
the evil that I would not, that I do. For though I
delight in the law of God after the inner man, yet I see
another law in my members, warring against the law
in my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law
of sin, that is in my members. O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death !'
And, in like manner, if we suppose this king of Babylon,
in such a perpetual struggle and conflict with himself ;
seeing his error but not able to avoid it ; sensible of his
disgrace, but not capable to redress it ; committing the
things which his soul abhorred; and detesting himself
for what he found himself necessitated to do, till God
should think fit to restore his understanding", by allaying
the ferment of his blood and humours, correcting his ap-
petite, and ranging his ideas into their proper order :
if we suppose this, I say, we have before us the image of
a creature completely miserable; reasons for his humi-
liation, during his affliction, innumerable ; * a fountain
3 Hor. Ep. b. ii. 4 Rom. vii. 18, &c.
b What Nebuchadnezzar says of himself, with regard to this
duty, is very remarkable, — ' I blessed the Most High, and prais-
ed and honoured him, that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an
everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to ge-
neration. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing,
for he doth according to his will, in the armies of heaven, and
among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand
or say unto him, What dost thou? I therefore now praise, and
extol, and honour the king of heaven, all whose works are troth,
and his ways judgment, and those that walk in pride, he is able
to abase,' (Dan. iv. 34, &c.) Which is enough, one would
imagine, to make us think charitably of the conversion and final
end of this prince; and with St Austin, to conclude, that what-
ever happened to him, by way of punishment, was designed by
providence for his soul's health. " By the hidden providence
and mercy of God such a plan was adopted for the king's salva-
tion."— Epist. 3.
716
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3417. A. C. 587 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4882. A
to supply his gratitude upon the removal of it, inex-
haustible ; and, from his example, this lecture of admoni-
tion to all succeeding generations : * ' Thus saith the
Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom ; neither
let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the
rich man glory in his riches ; but let him that glorieth,
glory in this, — that he understandeth, and knoweth me,
that I am the Lord, who exerciseth loving-kindness,
judgment, and righteousness in the earth ; for in these
things I delight, saith the Lord/
SECT. II.
CHAP. I.— From the Death of Cyrus to that of
Nehemiah.
THE HISTORY.
Cyrus died, when he was seventy years old, after he had
reigned, from his first being made commander of the
Persian and Median armies, thirty years ; from his
taking of Babylon, nine years ; and from his becom-
ing sole monarch of the east, seven years ; and was
succeeded by his son Cambyses, whom the Scripture
calls Ahasuerus. As soon as he was well settled in the
throne, the Samaritans, instead of applying themselves
secretly to the ministers and officers of his court, pre-
sented their petition 2 to him openly, desiring that the
rebuilding of Jerusalem might be stopped ; and though
they did not prevail with him to revoke his father's decree,
yet by the several discouragements which he put upon it,
he, in a great measure, defeated its main design : so that
the work went on very heavily in his reign. But his reign
was not long : it was but seven years and five months,
before he came to an untimely end, and was succeeded,
for a short time, by the Magian, a who pretended to
1 Jer. ix. 23, &c. 2 Ezra iv. 6'.
a The word Magian or Migc-gush, in the old Persian lan-
guage, signifies a person that had his ears cut off, and was a name
ot contempt given to the whole sect, upon account of a certain
impostor among them, who had the misfortune to lose his ears,
and yet had the confidence to usurp the crown of Cyrus; but
before this incident they went under another name, and were
held in great reputation among the Persians. They were indeed
their chief professors of philosophy, and iu matters of religion
made these the great articles of their faith: — " That there were
two principles or gods, the one the cause of all the good, and the
other the cause of all the evil in the world ; but in this they were
divided; that some of them held both these principles to have
been from all eternity, whereas others maintained, that the good
principle only was eternal, and the evil one created, in the like
manner as we believe, that the devil is a creatine, who is fallen
from his original purity and perfection. These two principles,
they believed, were in continual opposition to each other, which
was to continue till the end of the world ; but then the good prin-
ciple having overcome the evil, they should each of them have a
distinct world to himself; the good reigning over all good beings
and the evil over all the wicked. They imagined farther, that
darkness was the truest symbol of the evil, as light was of the
good god; and therefore they always worshipped him before fire,
a. being the cause of light, and before the sun more especially,
because thejr accounted it the most perfect light. They paid
divine honours, in short, to light, to the sun, to the fire in their
temples, and to lire in their houses; but they always hated dark-
ness, because they thought it a representation of the evil god,
whom they ever bad in the utmost detestation." Such were
tlie Ma_i among the ancient Persians, and such are the Guebres,
or worshipper* of fire, anion:; the present Persians and Indians.
— Prideaiur'a Connection, ami Calmed Die. under the worn
C. 5-'9. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. part of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
be his brother Smerdis, h and whom the history of Ezra c
calls Artaxerxes. To him the Samaritans, in like manner,
addressed themselves, and in a memorial, represented,
" That d the Jews were rebuilding their city and temple
at Jerusalem, which might be a matter of pernicious
consequence to his empire ; that these Jews had always
been a rebellious people, as he would find, if he con-
sulted the records of his ancestors ; that therefore there
was reason to suspect, that in case they were permitted
to go on, when once they had finished the work, they
would withdraw their obedience, or refuse to pay tri-
bute ; e and that by their example, very probably, all
b The manner in which this Magian came to usurp the Per-
sian throne is thus related by most historians:— Cambyses had a
brother, the only son of Cyrus besides himself, and born of the
same mother. His name, according to Xenophon, was Tana-
oxares, but Herodotus calls him Smerdis, and Justin, Mergis.
He accompanied him in his wars for some time; but upon a
pique of jealousy, the king sent him back into Persia, and there
caused him to be murdered privately. The king, when lie
went upon the Egyptian expedition, had left the supreme govern-
ment of his affairs in the hands of Patizithes, one of the chief of
the Magians (for the king was addicted to that sect of religion),
who had a brother that did very much resemble Smerdis, the
son of Cyrus, and was, for that reason perhaps, called by the
same name. Patizithes, hearing of the young prince's death,
and supposing that this, and some other extravagances of Cam-
byses, had made him odious to his subjects, placed this brother
of his on the throne, pretending that he was the true Smerdis,
the son of Cyrus, and so sent heralds through the empire to
proclaim him king. It was the custom of the eastern princes in
those days to live retired in their palaces, and there transact all
their aflairs by the intercourse of their eunuchs, without admit-
ting any else, unless those of the highest confidence, to have
access to them. This conduct the pretended Smerdis exactly
observed; but Otanes, a Persian nobleman, having a daughter,
whose name was Phedyma, who had been one of Cambyses'
wives, and was now kept by Smerdis in the same quality, and
being desirous to know whether he was the real son of Cyrus or
no, sent her instructions, that the first night she lay with him,
she should feel whether he had any ears (because Cyrus, for
some crime or other, had cut off this Magian's ears), and she
acquainted her father that he had none, he immediately took six
others of the Persian quality with him, among whom Darius
was one, and, entering the palace, slew both the usurper and
his brother who had been the contriver of the whole plot. — Pri-
deaux's Connection, anno 522.
c That Cambyses was the Ahasuerus, as we said before, and
the false Smerdis the Artaxerxes who obstructed the work of the
temple, is plain from hence, — That they are said in Scripture
(Ezra iv. 5, &c.) to be the kings of Persia that reigned between
the time of Cyrus and the time of that Darius by whose decree
the temple was finished ; but as that Darius was Darius the
son of Hystaspes, between whom and Cyrus there reigned none
in Persia but Cambyses and Smerdis, it must follow from hence,
that none but Cambyses and Smerdis could be the Ahasuerus and
Artaxerxes who are said in Ezra to have put a stop to this work.
— Prideaux's Connection, anno 522.
d After the return from the captivity, the people in general
came to be called Jews, because, though there were many Israel-
ites among them, yet they chiefly consisted of the tribes of Ju-
dah and Benjamin; and though the edict of Cyrus gave all per-
mission to return when they pleased, yet the sacred writers take
notice only of those who returned in a body. — Patrick's Com
mentary on Ezra.
e For this there are three expressions in the text, toll, tribute,
and custom. By the first of these Grotins understands that
which every head paid to the king, which we call poll-money :
by the second, the excise (as we now speak) that was upon com-
modities and merchandise; and by the last the land-tax. But
Witsius, (in his Miscell. part. 2,) is of opinion, that the first word
rather signifies that part which every man paid out of his estate,
according as it was valued; the second, that which was paid for
every head ; and the third, that which was paid upon the high-
ways, by every traveller that went about the country with any
kind of merchandise. — Patrick's Commentary.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
717
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Syria and Palestine would be tempted to revolt ; so
that, in a short time, his majesty would be excluded
from having any benefit from his territories on that side
of the river Euphrates."
Upon consulting the records which the Samaritans
referred the king to, it plainly appeared, that the Jews
had defended themselves with great valour, and had
been subdued by Nebuchadnezzar, not without much dif-
ficulty ; whereupon he issued out an edict, wherein he
prohibited the Jews to proceed any farther in their
building, and ordered his officers in Samaria to put it
in execution. They immediately went up to Jerusalem
witli an armed force, and having pursued the king's
orders with the utmost rigour, put a full stop to any far-
ther proceeding in the work, until the second year of
« Darius Hystaspes.
Darius, upon the death of the pretended Smerdis,
was, ° by a stratagem, chosen king of Persia ; and
though the edict which prohibited the building of the
temple, expired with the usurper, yet had the prophets
Zechariah c and Haggai much ado to prevail with the
a There are some who take the Darius here mentioned, not
to be Darius the Second, who was the son of Hystaspes, but the
Darius who is commonly called Nothus; but then they are
pressed with this difficulty, which may well be called insur-
mountable. For, from the first year of Cyrus, who gave orders
for the building of the temple, to the sixth year of Darius Nothus,
in which they supposed that it was finished, there were, at least,
an hundred and thirteen years; according to some, an hundred
and seventeen; and according to others, an hundred and forty-
two. But now, if all this time, Zerubbabel was in the govern-
ment of Judea, and Joshua in the high-priesthood, so long an
authority in church or state was never heard of in any age be-
fore. Nor must it be forgotten, what the prophet Haggai, (chap. ii.
8,) supposes, namely, That some then alive remembered the glory
of the first temple, and compared it with the glory of the second ;
which upon the supposition that this was in the sixth year of
Darius Nothus, will make them at least an hundred and four-
score years old, a thing almost incredible. And therefore the
must probable opinion is, that the Darius here meant, was Dar-
ius Hystaspes, whose second year was the eighteenth after the
first of Cyrus, as Huetius reckons. — Patrick's Commentary.
b The seven princes, who had slain the usurper Smerdis, and
his brother, consulting together about the settling of the govern-
ment, came at length to this resolution, that the monarchy
should continue in the same manner that it had been established
by Cyrus, and that, to determine which of them should ascend
the throne, they should all meet at a certain place the next
morning, against the rising of the sun, and that he whose horse
first neighed, should be appointed king. For as the sun was the
great deity of all the Persians, they seemed by this method, to
refer their election to it; but Darius's groom, being informed of
this, tietl a mare on the night before the election to the place
where the next morning, they were to meet, and brought his
master's horse to cover her. As soon, therefore, as the princes
met together at the time appointed, Darius's horse remembered
the place, ran immediately thither, neighing and prancing all
along; whereupon the rest dismounting, saluted him as their
king) and accordingly placed him on the throne. — Pridcaux's
Connection, anno 521.
c Zechariah was the son of Barachiah, and grandson of Iddo;
but the time and place of his birth are unknown. Some will
have him to be born at Babylon, during the captivity; but others
think that he was bom at Jerusalem, before the tribes of Judah
and Benjamin were carried away. It is certain, however, that
he returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel, and very probable
that he began to prophesy in the second year of Darius, the son
of Hystaspes. The number, excellency, and preciseness of his
prophecies made him be styled "the sun among the lesser pro-
phets," and as he began his predictions about two months after
Haggai, with him he encouraged the Jews to go on in the re-
building of their temple, and gave them assurance of the divine
protection. But these prophecies were inconsiderable, in com-
people to reassume the work. They were fearful of the
interest which the Samaritans Mere presumed to have at
court; and accordingly found, that no sooner had they
provided themselves with stone and timber, and other
materials, in order to proceed in the building, but these
implacable enemies betook themselves to their old prac-
tices, and endeavoured to possess Tatnai, whom Darius
had made governor over the provinces of Syria and
Palestine, with a notion that what the Jews were doing
was without authority, and would prove prejudicial to
the king.
Tatnai, upon this information, came to Jerusalem,
and having called the governor and elders of the Jews
together, d he understood from them, that they had a
parison of those which foretell the coming of the Messias in the
plainest terms; the cruel war which Antiochus Epiphanes waged
with the Jews, and God's severe judgments against this tyrant;
the Jewish war with the Romans, and the siege of Babylon by
Darius ; the dissolution of the old covenant, and the substitution
of a new one under Christ; the glorious state of the Christian
church, and the conversion of the Gentiles; the persecutions
which the Christians should endure, and the severe punishment
of their persecutors, and other such like events, contained in the
ninth and following chapters of his prophecies. Some critics,
however, are of opinion, that the style of this prophet is a little
interrupted, and without connexion, and that the ixth, xth, and
xith chapters, which go under his name, were originally written
by Jeremiah; because in Matthew, (ch. xxvii. 9, 10.) under the
name of Jeremiah, we find Zechariah xi. 12, quoted ; and as the
aforesaid chapters make but one continued discourse, they con-
clude from thence, that all three belonged to Jeremiah. But it
is much more natural to suppose, that the name of Jeremiah, by
some unlucky mistake, has slipt into the text of St Matthew,
instead of that of Zechariah. Contemporary with him was the pro-
phet Haggai, who, in all probability, was born at Babylon, and
returned with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem. They both, with united
zeal, encouraged the people to go on with the work of the temple,
which, by the envy of the Samaritans, who were their enemies,
and the ill offices of some at the court of Cyrus and Cambyses,
whom they influenced, was discontinued for some time: but upon
the accession of Darius to the throne, Haggai, in particular, by
reproaching the people with their indolence and insensibility, by
telling them that they were careful enough to lodge themselves
very commodiously, while the house of the Lord lay buried in its
own ruins, and by putting them in mind, that the calamities of
drought and famine, wherewith God had afflicted them since
their return, were owing to their neglect in repairing the temple,
prevailed with them to set about the work in good earnest; so
that, by virtue of these reproofs, as well as some encouragements
which God occasionally authorized him to give them, they
brought the whole to a conclusion in a short time. — Calmct's
Dictionary under the words, and Universal History, b. ii. c. 1.
d The plea which Josephus makes Zerubbabel the governor,
and Joshua the high priest, urge upon this occasion, is to this
effect — " That they were the servants of the great God, to whose
honour this temple was built, and to his service dedicated by the
greatest, the happiest, and the wisest prince that ever sat on that
throne ; that it stood for many ages, till, by reason of the wicked-
ness of their forefathers, the city, by God's permission, was taken
by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Chaldea, the temple pillaged,
and laid in ashes, and the people carried away captives into
Babylon; that when Cyrus came to be possessed of the throne
of Persia and Babylon, he ordered, by his royal proclamation, the
rebuilding of the temple, and the restoring of all the sacred ves-
sels that had been taken away by Nebuchadnezzar, which accord-
ingly were transported to Jerusalem, and laid up again in the
temple ; that by the command of the same king, Abassar was
sent to see tin' work expedited, and accordingly was present at
the laying of the foundation; but that, ever since that time, by
one artifice or other, their enemies had found means to obstruct
and retard it: and that, for the truth of these allegations, tiny
desired that Darius might be wrote to, that, by consulting
public records, it might be known, whether or no these facts
were according to this their representation." — Jewish Hist. b.
xi. c. J.
718
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529 ; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 48U0 A. C. 521. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. paut of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
decree from Cyrus, which empowered and authorized
them in what they did : whereupon the governor wrote
to court, acquainting the king with the true state of the
case, and desiring that search might be made into the
public records, whether the Jews really had any such
decree from Cyrus, and upon the whole, that he would be
pleased to signify his will, what he would have him to
do in this aliair.
Darius, * who, the better to fortify his title to the
crown, had married two of the daughters of Cyrus,
thought himself concerned to do every thing that might
tend to the honour of that great prince ; and therefore
confirmed the decree which he had granted to the Jews,
with a fresh one of his own, wherein he gave them an
assignment upon his revenues in several provinces for
whatever money they wanted, to enable them to go on
with the work, and to provide them sacrifices for the
sen ice of the temple, that the priests, in their daily
offices, might " put up their prayers for the prosperity
of the king and the royal family : and wherein he ordered,
that the man should be hanged, and his house pulled
down ' for timber to make him a gallows, who ever should
pretend to put any let or obstruction to this his injunc-
tion.
Upon the publication of this decree, and the great
care that was taken to have it fully put in execution, the
work of the temple went on so very successfully, that, in
the sixth year of Darius, according to the Jewish ac-
count, and on the third day of the twelfth month, (which
is called Adar, and answers in part to our February and
March,) the whole of it was finished, and its dedication
celebrated by the priests and Levites, and all the con-
gregation of Israel, with great joy and solemnity. By
' Prideaux's Connection.
a Though the Jews were not allowed to desire the heathen to
pray to their deities for their prosperity, because they were for-
biddi n to acknowledge any other God hut one: yet the heathen,
if they thought fit, might worship their God; nor did the Jews
deny them that privilege, or refuse the offerings which they
brought for that purpose, until in the time of their wars with
the Romans, the faction of the zealots grew to be predominant:
fur then, as Josephus tells us, (b. ii. c. 7.) " one Eleazar, the
son of Ananias the high priest, a desperate daring young man,
and a military officer then in command, pressed some of his
friends among the priests to receive no oflering or sacrifice
but from the Jews only; by which means it came to pass, that
the very offerings of Caesar, which were used constantly to be
made for the welfare of the Roman people, came to be rejected •
and this proved the very ground and foundation of the war
with that nation. The high priest, however, and the men of
the best quality, declared themselves extremely dissatisfied
with the novelty of this prohibition, and with great importuni-
ties, desired the continuance of so pious a custom, as ofler-
ing up prayers for princes and governors." But all is in vain;
though this place in Ezra, (chap. vi. 10.) one would think, sets
the duty in a clear light. — Le Clerc's Commentary on Ezra.
b The most obvious sense of the words in the text, (chap. vi. 11.)
seems to be this; but Lud. de Dieu, observes, that, in the
words which we there lender ' being set up,' there is no proper
construction; ami therefore he would rather have them trans-
lated, according to the Septuagint, • And standing, let him be
beat upon it,' that is, ' whipped,' as we say, ' at a post,' for that
was a punishment among the Persians and other nations. But if
a greater punishment than this should here be intended, then he
makes the first words refer to the timber, and the latter to the
man, in this manner; 'and from above, let it fall upon him,'
that is, the stake being lifted up, shall be struck into his body,
and come out at his fundament, which was a cruel punishment
among the^ Eastern people, and continues still in use to this day.
— Patrick's Commentary.
the next month, which was the month Nisan, the first in
the Jewish year, the temple was made fit for every part
of divine service ; and, therefore, on the fourteenth day
of that month, the passover was observed in it, accord-
ing to the law of God, and, by all the Jews that had re-
turned from the captivity, solemnized with great joy and
gladness of heart, ' because the Lord had made them
joyful,' (as it is expressed in the book of Ezra,) ' and
turned the heart of the king of Assyria c unto them, to
strengthen their hands in the house of God, the God of
Israel.'
By the decree of Cyrus, .which was thus confirmed by
that of Darius, the tribute of Samaria had been assigned
for the reparation of the temple ; but now, that the body
of the temple was finished, (though the outworks remained
still untouched,) the Samaritans pretended that the end of
this assignment was ceased, and thereupon refused to
pay the tribute any longer. But the Jews, upon send-
ing Zerubbabel their governor, with two other principal
men, to Shushan, or Susa, which was then the residence
of the Persian monarch, in order to complain of this
unjust detention of the royal bounty, met with a proper
redress ; and returned with the king's order d to his
officers of Samaria, requiring- them to take an effectual
care, that, pursuant to his edict, the Samaritans paid
their tribute to the temple, and gave the Jews for the
future no cause to complain of their refusal herein :
which put a full end to all contest about that matter, and
was the last good office we find recorded in Scripture,
that Darius did the Jews. For, in the six and thirtieth
year of his reign e he died, and was succeeded by Xerxes,
c Darius is called ' the king of Assyria,' as now reigning over
all the kingdoms which were formerly under the power of the
Assyrians ; and from hence Archbishop Usher infers, that
Babylon, (which, in the beginning of his reign, had revolted,)
must necessarily have been reduced by Darius before this time,
otherwise he thinks he could not have here been styled, ' king of
Assyria,' whereof Babylon was then the metropolis. — Patrick's
Commentary ; and Prideaux's Connection, anno 515.
d A copy of the king's order, or the letter which he sent back
by the Jewish commissioners to the officers and lieutenants ot
the province, and the senate of Samaria, Josephus has recorded
in these words.
" King Darius, to Tangar and Sambaba, masters of our horse
at Samaria, and to Shadrack, Bobelon, and the rest of their
fellow subjects there, sendeth greeting :
" Whereas I am given to understand by Zerubbabel, Ananias,
and Mardocheus, on the part of the Jews, that you stand accused
of interrupting and discouraging the rebuilding of the temple,
and of refusing to bear your part in the charge of the sacrifices,
which, by my order and command, you ought to have done:
this is to will and require you, upon sight of this letter, forth-
with to supply them, out of my treasury at Samaria, with what-
soever they shall want for the use of their sacrifices and worship,
to the end that they may offer up daily prayers and oblations,
both for myself and all my people." — Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 4.
e The character which our celebrated connecter of the Old
and New Testament has given us of tliis Darius, is, — That he
was a prince of great wisdom, clemency, and justice, and has the
honour to be recorded in holy writ, for a favourer of God's people,
and a restorer of his temple at Jerusalem, and a promoter of his
worship therein. For all this God was pleased to make him his
instrument ; and, with respect to this, I doubt not, it was, that
he blessed him with a numerous issue, a long reign, and great
prosperity. For, though he was not so very fortunate in his wars
against the Scythians and Greeks, yet every where else he had
full success in all his undertakings, and not only restored and
fully settled the empire of Cyrus, after it had been much shaked
by Cambyses, and the Magian, but also added many large and
rich provinces to it, especially those of India, Thrace, Macedon,
and the isles of the Ionian sea. — Prideaux's Connection, anuo 486.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
719
A. M. 3175. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4036. A. C
the a eldest of his sons by Atossa, daughter to Cyrus,
the great founder of the Persian monarchy.
Xerxes, ! according" to Josephus, (for we have but
little account of him in the sacred records), confirmed
to the Jews all the privileges that his lather Darius had
granted them, and particularly that which assigned them
the tribute of Samaria, for the charge of the sacrifices
that were to be offered in the temple of Jerusalem. It
is of him that the words of the prophet Daniel are
meant: % ' Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings
in Persia,' which were Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius
Hystaspes, ' and the fourth shall be far richer than they
all ; and, by his strength through his riches, he shall stir
up all against the realm of Greece ;' for the story is
well known, with what* a prodigious armament, both by
sea and land, he set out against the Greeks, c but with
1 Jewish Antiq. b, xi. c. 5. Where we have a copy of his
letter to his governors and lieutenants of Syria, but too long to be
inserted here.
2 Dan. xi. 2, 3.
a Darius had three sons by his first wife, the daughter of
Gobrias, all born before his advancement to the throne, and four
Others by Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, who were all born after
it. Of the former, Artabasanes was the eldest; of the latter,
Xerxes : and, as Darius advanced in years, between these two
was the competition lor the succession. Artabasanes urged, that,
as he was the eldest son, according to the custom and usage of
all nations, he ought to be preferred before any that was younger.
But Xerxes replied to this, that he was the sou of Darius by
Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, who was the first founder of the
Persian empire ; for which reason he held it just and reasonable,
that the crown of Cyrus should rather come to a descendant of
Cyrus, than to one that was not; and to this he added, that
though Artabasanes was the eldest son of Darius, yet he was not
the eldest son of a king; that he was born when he was only a
private person, and could therefore claim no more than to be
heir of his private fortunes; but that, as to himself, he was the
first born after his father was king, and had therefore the best
right to succeed him in the kingdom. Whereupon he was nomi-
nated to the succession, but not so much for the strength of his
plea, as for the influence which his mother Atossa had over the
inclinations of her husband. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 4S0.
b Alter he had passed over the Hellespont, his land-army,
ui)on the muster, was found to be one million and seven hundred
thousand foot, and fourscore thousand horse, besides his chariots
and camels, for which, allowing twenty thousand more, the whole
will amount to one million and eight hundred thousand men.
Mis fleet consisted of twelve hundred and twenty ships of the
line of battle, besides galleys, transports, victuallers, and other
sorts of vessels that attended, -which were three thousand more ;
and on board of all these were reckoned to be five hundred and
seventeen thousand, six hundred and ten men: so that the whole
number of forces by sea and land which Xerxes brought with
him out of Asia to invade Greece, amounted to two millions
three hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred and ten men.
Alter his passing the Hellespont, the nations on the other side
that submitted to him added to his land-army three hundred
thousand men more, and two hundred and twenty ships to his
fleet, on board of which were twenty-four thousand men ; and
the servants, eunuchs, women, suttlers, and all such other people
as followed the camp, were computed to be no less than as many
more.. So that the whole number of the persons of all sorts that
followed Xerxes in this expedition were at least five millions.
This is Herodotus's account of that armament: and, considering
that he is the most ancient author that has written of this war,
was himself alive when it happened, and has treated of it with
greater appearance of exactness than any other, there is reason
to believe, that his computation is the truest. — Prideaux's Con-
nection, anno 480.
c For having lost most of the forces which he left behind
him at the battle of Platica, and a great many of his ships at the
light in the straits of Salamis, and being frightened with an appre-
ln neion, lest the conqueror should sail to the Hellespont, and
there obstruct his return, he fled thither with all the haste and
EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. part of HAG. ZECH. MAI,
what foul disgrace he returned home from the inglorious
expedition, when, falling into contempt with his own
subjects, not a long while after, he was murdered by the
captain of his guard, and succeeded by his son d Arta-
xerxes Longimanus, whom the Scripture calls Ahasuerus,
and was the same e who had the beautiful Hebrew Esther
for his queen.
Upon /some occasion or other, Ahasuerus appointed a
precipitation that he could ; but, at his coming thither, finding
the bridge of boats which he had left there broken by storms, he,
who had passed over that sea but a few months before with such
pomp and pride, was forced to repass in a poor fisher-boat, a
piece of history this which Juvenal has not badly represented in
thesewords: "But how did he return after his flight from Salamis?
he that used to lash the north, west, and east winds with stripes — .
barbarian that he was! they never endured such treatment in the
iEolian prison. But how did he return? forsooth in a single
bark, over blood-coloured waves, and the vessel retarded by the
closely-huddled dead bodies." — Sat. 10.
d This prince, to distinguish him from others of that name,
was called Maxf>o%iig, or Longimanus, upon the supposed length
of his hands, with which it is said that he could have touched his
knees, even when he stood upright; but this notwithstanding, it
is reported of him, that he was both the handsomest person of
the age in which he lived, and a prince likewise of a very mild
and generous disposition. — Prideaux 's Connection, anno 465.
e Our learned Usher is of opinion, that Darius Hystaspes was
the king Ahasuerus who married Esther, namely, that Atossa was
the Vashti, and Artystona the Esther of the Holy Scriptures.
But Herodotus positively tells us, that Artystona was the daugh-
ter of Cyrus, and therefore could not be Esther; and that Atossa
had four sons by Darius, besides daughters, all born to him after
he was king; and therefore she could not be that queen Vashti
who w:as divorced from the king her husband in the third year
of nis reign, (Esther i. 3); nor he that Ahasuerus that divorced
her. Joseph Scaliger is likewise of opinion, that Xerxes was
the Ahasuerus, and Hamestris his queen the Esther of the Holy
Scriptures. But whatever seeming similitude there may be in
the names (and this is the whole foundation of his conjecture), it
is plain from Herodotus, that Xerxes had a son by Hamestris,
who was marriageable in the seventh year of his reign ; and
therefore it is impossible that he should be Esther's, because
Esther was not married to Ahasuerus until the seventh year of
his reign, (Esther ii. 16) ; and, considering that the choice of
virgins was made for him in the fourth of his reign, and a whole
year employed in their purifications, the soonest that she could
have a son by him, mnst be in the sixth ; and therefore we may
conclude (with Josephus, the Septuagint, and the Apocryphal
additions to the book of Esther), that the Ahasuerus in Scripture
was Artaxerxes Longimanus, and Esther an Hebrew virgin, as
she is all along represented.— Prideaux's Connection, anno 465.
f The occasion of this great festival is, very likely, intimated
to us in the phrase, ' When the king Ahasuerus sat on the
throne of his kingdom,' (chap. i. 2,) that is, enjoying peace and
tranquillity through his large dominions; for the history of his
accession to the throne is this: — Xerxes, his father, was priv- '
ately murdered by Artabanus, captain of his guard. He coming
to him (who was then but the third son), made him believe that
Darius, his eldest brother, had done it, to make his way to the
throne, and had a design likewise to cut him off, to secure him-
self in it. This Ahasuerus believing, went immediately to his
brother's apartment, and, by the assistance of the wicked Arta-
banus and his guards, slew him, thinking all the while that he
acted but in his own defence. Artabauus's drift was to seize on
the throne himself ; but for the present, he took Ahasuerus, and
placed him thereon, with a design to pull him down as soon as
matters were ripe for his own ascent : but when Ahasuerus
understood this from Magabyzus, who had married one of
his sisters, he took care to counterplot Artabanus, and to cut him
and his whole party oil' before his treason was come to maturity ;
and for this, and some other successes against his brother Hystas-
pes, which settled him in a peaceable possession of the whole
Persian empire, very probably it was, that a festival season of
above an hundred and fourscore days' continuance was appointed,
which even to this day, according to some travellers, is no un-
common thing in those parts of the world. — Prideaux's Connec-
tion, anno 405; and Patrick's Commentary on Esther, chap. i.
720
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3475. A. C. 620; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4920\
solemn rejoicing in the city of Shushan, a which lasted
for an hundred and eighty days ; and in conclusion
thereof, for seven days successively he made a great
feast for all the princes and governors of his provinces ;
as the queen Vashti, * in her apartment, did for the ladies
of the best distinction. In the last day of this feast,
the king, either out of a frolic, or fondness to his queen,
sent seven of his chamberlains to conduct her into his
presence, that he might show her to the company, for
she was extremely beautiful ; and ordered, at the same
time, that she should come with the crown on her head. c
This was an order so contrary to the usage of the
Persians, and so little becoming her dignity and high
station in life, that rather than be made a public specta-
cle, she adventured to disobey the king's command ;
i. A. C. 485. EZRA \v. 7— end, EST. NEH. part of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
a Cyrus, and the rest of the Persian kings, after the conquest
of the Medes, whose country lay remote, settled their royal
seat at Shushan, that they might not be too far from Babylon,
and made it the capital of Persia. It stood upon the river Ulai,
and was a place of such renown, that Strabo calls it n«X/v
a^icXoyoTarhv, a city most worthy to be praised. The whole
country about it was wonderfully fruitful, producing an hundred,
and sometimes two hundred fold, as the same author informs us,
(b. xv.) Pliny indeed supposes that Darius Hyst.aspes was the
first founder of it, but he only enlarged and beautified it with a
most magnificent palace, which Aristotle (in his book de Mundu)
calls " a wonderful royal palace, shining with gold, amber, and
ivory. " Nor is it altogether foreign to this purpose, what our
learned Lightfoot {de Templo, chap. 3,) tells us, namely, that the
outward gate of the eastern wall of the temple, was called " the
gate of Shushan," and had the figure of that city carved on it, in
acknowledgment of the decree which this Darius granted in that
place, in order to permit and encourage the Jews to rebuild
their temple at Jerusalem. — Patrick's Commentary on Esther,
chap, i., and Culinets Dictionary, under the word Shushan.
b It has been a great inquiry among the learned, who this
Vashti was. Those who make the Ahasuerus in Scripture to
be Darius the son of Hystaspes, suppose that she was Atossa the
daughter of Cyrus, who was first married to Cambyses, her own
brother, then to the Magian, who would have passed for Smei dis,
and last of all to Darius. Others suppose, that she was Aha-
Buerus's own sister, because the Persians, in those days, made no
scruple of these kinds of marriages; though there is much more
reason to think, that before her marriage, there had been such a
collection of virgins made for the use of the king, as was before
Esther's, (this is implied in chap. ii. 19,) and that having the
good fortune then of obtaining the preference in the kind's
esteem, she was created queen; but being, perhaps, a woman of
no high descent, her family extraction, for that reason, might be
concealed. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the name.
c It would appear that the general usage which obtained
among the Persians, of keeping the females of the harem strictly
secluded, was on particular occasions dispensed with ; for Hero-
dotus (b. v. c. 18,) relates a story of seven Persians of rank, who
were sent by Megabyzus a Persian general, on a mission to
Amyntas, a Grecian province. This province received them
hospitably, and gave them a splendid entertainment. When
after the entertainment, they began to drink, one of the Persians
thus addressed Amyntas : " Priuce of Macedonia, it is a custom
with us Persians, whenever we have a public entertainment, to
introduce our concubines and young wives. Since, therefore,
you have received us kindly, and with the rites of hospitality,
imitate the custom we have mentioned." Their request was
complied with, and the consequence was, what no doubt queen
Vashti had reason to expect in her own case, namely, that when
the Persians were warmed with wine, they began to behave in-
decorously towards the females. However improperly Ahasue-
rus may have acted in commanding his queen to be brought into
the public assembly, he would appear to have done nothing con-
trary to general usage on such occasions; but we cannot help
admiring the high sense of honour, if not virtue and modesty,
which queen Vashti exhibited, in refusing to expose herself to
the indecent treatment and inflamed passions of a group of
drunken Bacchanalians. — En.
which (l incensed him to such a degree, that, e advising
with his counsellors in what manner he was to punish
her for this public affront, he came to this resolution,
(which was afterwards passed into an irreversible decree,)
that, for fear that Vashti's ill example should encourage
other women to contemn and disobey their husbands,
she should be deposed from her royal dignity, and an
order be issued out, for the making a collection of the
fairest virgins, in every province through the whole
empire, that, out of them, one might be chosen whom
the king should like best to be queen in the room of the
divorced Vashti.
At this time there lived at Shushan a certain Jew of
the tribe of Benjamin, named Mordecai, a descendant
of those who had been carried captive to Babylon with
Jehoiachim king of Judah, and, by his attendance at
1 the king's gate, seems to have been one of / the por-
ters of the royal palace. He, having no children of his
own, bred up Hadassah, S his uncle's daughter, who,
being a very beautiful young woman, among other vir-
gins, was made choice of upon this occasion. As soon
as she ll was carried to court, she was committed to the
1 Esther ii. 19.
d The expression in th<; text is, ' that the king was very
wroth, and his anger burned in him,' (Esther i. 12.) It was
more immoderate, because his blood was heated with wine, which
made his passion too strong for his reason ; otherwise he would
not have thought it decent for the queen, nor safe for him-
self, to have her beauty, which was very great, exposed in this
unusual manner; especially if there be any thing in what the
Jewish Targum seems to suggest, namely, that he commanded
her to be brought quite naked, that her comely proportion might be
seen as well as her face. — Patrick's Commentary on Esther, ch. i.
e The words in our translation are, ' the wise men who
knew the times,' (chap. i. 13.) and from hence some have
observed, that as the Persian kings did nothing without their
magi, who were great pretenders to astrology, men of this sort
were called to know whether it was a proper time to set about
the thing which the king might then have in ins mind. For
such was the superstition of the eastern people, that, as the
satirist remarks, " whatever came from the mouth of the astrolo-
ger, they supposed it to issue from the fountain of Ammon."
(Juv. Sat. 6.) The explication, however, which Vitringa gives
us of the original words, Jodehe habitim, is far from being im-
proper, namely, that they were men well versed in ancient his-
tories, and in the laws and customs of their country ; and were
therefore able to give the king counsel in all extraordinary and
perplexed cases, as this certainly was. — Patrick's and JLe Clerc's
Commentaries on Esther i.
f But perhaps he might have been an officer of a higher
rank, because it was an order instituted by Cyrus, as Xenophon,
in his Cyropcsd. (b. viii.) informs us, that all persons whatever,
who had any employment at court, should attend at the palace
gate, where there was, doubtless, a proper waiting room for
their reception, that they might be in readiness, whenever they
were wanted or called for ; and that this custom was afterwards
continued, we may learn from Herodotus, (b. iii. c. 120.) — Le
Clerc's Commentaries on Esther, ch. ii.
y This woman was born in Babylon, and therefore, in analogy
to that language, they gave her the name of Hadassah, which,
in Chaldee, signifies a myrtle; but her Persian name was Esther,
which some, a little incongruously, derive from curing, a star,
and others from satar, which signifies hidden, because she was
concealed in Mordecai's house ; or rather, because her nation
was concealed, and she not known, until Mordecai's merit and
services to the crown came to be rewarded. — Patrick's Comment.
h The harems in the east were guarded with extreme vigilance.
Chardin (Trav. p. 332,) informs us, that it is a crime for any
person whatever to be inquiring what passes within those walls;
that it is very difficult to be informed of the transactions in those
habitations ; and that a man may walk a hundred days, one after
another, by the house where the women are, and yet know no
more what is done therein than at the farther eud of Tartary
Skct. II.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
121
This sufficiently explains the reason of Mordecai's conduct. —
Ed.
a The reason is assigned in the following verse for their being
kept so long in this course, namely, that for six months they
might be anointed with the oil of myrrh, which, besides the fra-
grancy of its smell, was good to make the skin soft and smooth,
and clean it from all manner of scurf: and for six more with
sweet odours, which, in these hot countries, were necessary to
take away all ill scents, and, as some think, to make the body
more vigorous. But besides this, there might be something of
state in making those vassals (for such they were counted) wait,
before they were admitted to the honour of the king's bed; and
something of precaution too, in keeping them seeluse for so long
a time, that the king might be satisfied that he was not imposed
upon by a child begotten by any other man. — Patrick's Com-
mentary, and Poole's Annotations on Esther ii. 12.
b According to this account of things, this Persian monarch
seems to have had but one wife, at least but one in chief favour
and esteem with him, though it is certain he could not fail of
having an infinite number of secondary wives or concubines.
This was the name of every one that was taken from among the
virgins, who had a separate house for themselves, and conducted
to the king's bed; where having passed a night, she returned no
more to the virgins' apartments, but was, the next morning, re-
ceived into the house of the concubines, and there treated in the
state and port of one of the king's wives; for such they were ac-
counted. No man was permitted to marry them, as long as the
king lived; and upon his demise, they generally fell to his suc-
cessor. Of these Darius Nothus is reckoned to have had no
less than 360. — Poole's Annotations.
c The manner of the Persian king was, to give his queens, at
their marriage, such a city to buy them clothes; another for their
hair, another for their necklaces; and so on for the rest of their
expenses. And as it was customary for him, according to the
testimony of Herodotus, upon his accession to the throne, to remit
the tribute that was due to him from all the cities; so he misjht
upon this occasion, out of his abundant joy, make a release to the
provinces, and forgive them some of the duties and imposts that
they were bound to pay him. — Patrick's Commentary.
A. M. .'51T5. A. C. 5-29; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A.
care of an eunuch, who was to have the custody of these
virgins, and by her sweet and engaging behaviour, made
herself so acceptable to him, that he ttssigned her the
best apartment in the house appointed for their habita-
tion, and gave her a preference in other matters before
all the rest of the virgins.
It was the custom, at this time, that every virgin thus
taken into the palace for the king's use, was to go
through a a course of purification, by sweet oils and
perfumes, for a whole year ; which, when Hadassah had
done, and so prepared herself for the king's bed, the
king was so highly delighted with her, that intending to
make her b more than a concubine, he continued her in
his own palace, and in a short time set the royal diadem
upon her head, and made her queen in the room of
Vashti. The nuptials were celebrated with great magni-
ficence. A splendid entertainment was made, which, in
honour to the new queen, was called ' Esther's feast,'
for that was the Persian name which had lately been given
her, and the king, upon this joyful occasion, not only gave
e rich presents to the queen, and largesses to the guests,
but granted pardons likewise to his subjects, and a relax-
ation of tribute for some time to all the provinces of his
dominions.
At Esther's first going to court, Mordecai had given
her a strict caution, not to discover that she was a Jew-
ess, lest the king should despise her for being a captive,
which she carefully observed ; and he for the same rea-
son concealed his relation to her, contenting himself with
the little employment he had at court, until a more
favourable opportunity should present itself. In the
mean time, he had the good fortune to discover a con-
C. 4G1. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEII. part of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
spiracy, which d two of the king's chamberlains were
forming against his life- This he communicated to the
queen, and the queen acquainted the king with it in Mor-
decai's name, so that the conspirators were seized, con-
victed, and executed : but though the whole affair was
recorded in the Persian annals, yet Mordecai, for the
present, was no more thought on, until his merit and great
services came to be remembered upon this occasion.
Hainan, an Amalekite, of the posterity of Agag, king
of Amalek, in the time of Saul, was become the king's
chief favourite, and all the servants at court were order-
ed to show him great respect and reverence ; which every
one readily did, except Mordecai, who, upon his pass-
ing to and fro, took no manner of notice of him. e This
so exasperated the proud Amalekite, that being inform-
ed that Mordecai was a Jew, he was resolved, in revenge
of the affront, not to destroy him only, but his whole na-
tion with him : but because there might be some danger
in so bold an undertaking, he called together his divin-
ers, to find out what day would be most lucky for putting
his design in execution.
The way of divination then in use among the eastern
people, was by casting lots, and therefore, having tried
in this manner, first each month, and then each day in
every month, they came at last to a determination, that
the / thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is called
d These were two great men who perhaps kept the door of the
king's bedchamber, and being either incensed at the divorce of
Vashti, whose creatures they were, or at the advancement of
Esther, who, in all probability, would raise her kinsman Morde-
cai to a superiority over them, took disgust thereat, and so re-
solved to revenge themselves on the king for it Prideaux's
Connection, and Patrick's Commentary.
e Josephus tells us, that Haman taking notice of this singular-
ity in Mordecai, asked him, what countryman he was ? And
finding him to be a Jew, broke out into a violent exclamation
at the insolence of such a scoundrel, that when all the natives of
the freeborn Persians made no difficulty in doing him that ho-
nour, this slave of a Jew should presume to affront him; and in
this rage he took up a desperate resolution, not only to be re-
venged of Mordecai, but to destroy the whole race of Jews like-
wise: well remembering, that his ancestors, the Amalekites, had
been formerly beaten out of their land, and utterly exterminated
by the Jews. — Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 6. [That a man of Morde-
cai's character should neglect or obstinately refuse to give to any
person in authority the usual marks of civil respect, cannot be
supposed ; and therefore we must consider that the homage
which Haman received from the venial crowd that hung about
the palace, was something more than this, probably that prostra-
tion of body which the Persians were accustomed to give as the
profoundest act of submission, and which was nothing else than
a species of worship — an act of homage which even the ancient
Greeks refused to render, and which it would have been the greatest
impiety in Mordecai, to render to any mortal man, however ex-
alted his character and situation. Into his religious scruples, the
ambitious favourite did not, nor could not enter, and determined
at all hazards to rid himself of one who was likely to prove an
obstacle in his way to universal power, he had formed the pur-
pose of taking the life of the obnoxious Jew.] — Jamicson's Eastern
Manners, pp. 346, 347. — Ed.
/It was in the first month in the year, when Haman began
to cast lots, and the time for the execution of the Jews was, by
these lots, delayed until the last month in the year; which plainly
shows, ' That though the lot he cast into the lap, yet the wholo
disposing thereof is from the Lord,' (Prov. xvi. 33.) For here-
by almost a whole year intervened between the design and its
execution, which gave time for Mordecai to acquaint queen Es-
ther with it, and for her to intercede with the king for revoking
or suspending the decree, and thereby disappointing the conspi-
racy : for we can hardly think, what Le Clerc suggests, that
Haman gave the Jews all this time, that they might make their
escape out of the kingdom, and not stay to be slain, which possi«
4 Y
722
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. .W5. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS, A. M. 4917. A
Adar, would be most fortunate for his design. Where-
upon he went to the king, and having insinuated to him,
" That there were a certain people dispersed all over
his empire, who called themselves Jews, and who, hav-
ing laws and ordinances of their own, despised all his
edicts and injunctions ; that their principles, in short,
tended to the disturbance of the good order of his go-
vernment, and the breach of all uniformity; that, upon
these accounts, it was not consistent with the rules of
policy to allow them any farther toleration ; and therefore
he proposed they should be destroyed, and extirpated all
out of the empire of Persia; and lest the loss of so many
subjects should be thought a diminution of the king's re-
venue, he proposed to make up the defect out of his own
private fortune." The king was easy enough to be
wrought upon by this court-minion ; who, having obtained
his royal consent, a ordered the secretaries of state b to
form a decree pursuant hereunto, which when it was
hly might 1 ring an odium upon himself, when it came to be known
by whose instigation this massacre was committed. — Patrick's
and Calmet's Commentaries.
a In the text it is said, (chap. iii. 10,) ' And the king took his
ring from his hand and gave it unto Hainan.' This he did both
as a token of affection and honour. With the Persians, for a
King to give a ring to any one was a token and bond of the great-
est love iind friendship imaginable. {Alex, ah Alex. Genial. Dier.
b. i. c. 26.) " Mirza Sheffeea entertained us with a breakfast
more elegant than any of the similar meals to which we had been
invited. Just before we were rising to depart, the minister,
after having talked much on the hopes which he cherished, that
the friendship of the two nations would long subsist, pulled a
diamond ling from off his own finger, and placed it on the en-
voy's, saying, ' And, that I may not be thought to be insincere
in my professions, let me beg of you to accept this as a pledge
of my friendship for you; and intreat you to wear it for my sake.'
This gift, unlike the generosity of Persian presents, was really
handsome; it was a beautiful stone, perfect in all its parts." —
(Mmer'g Journey through Persia, p. 149.) It may be this
was given to Hainan, to seal with it the letters that were or should
he written, giving orders for the destruction of the Jews.
Among the Romans in aftertimes, when anyone was put into the
equestrian order, a ring was given to him, for originally none but
knights were allowed to wear them. It was sometimes used in
appointing a successor in the kingdom: as when Alexander was
tlying, he took his ring from oil' his finger, and gave it to Per-
diccas, by which it was understood that he was to succeed him. —
S,*c Mace. vi. 14, 15 — Ed.
b The decree itself, according to Josephus, was to this effect:
— " The great king Artaxerxes, to the hundred and seven and
twenty governors of the provinces, between India and Ethiopia,
greeting. Whereas it hath pleased God to give me the command
of so many nations, and a dominion over the rest of the world,
as large as I myself desire, I being resolved to do nothing that
may be tyrannical, or grievous towards my people, and to bear
a gentle and easy hand over them, with an eye more especially
to the preservation of their peace and liberties, and to settle
them in a state of tranquillity and happiness, not to be shaken.
All this I have taken into mature deliberation; and being given
to Understand by my trusty and well beloved friend and counsellor,
Hainan, a person of a tried faith, prudence, and justice, and whom
I esteem above all others, that there is a mixture of a sort of inhu-
man people among my subjects, that take upon them to govern
by their own laws, and to prescribe ways to themselves, in con-
tempt of public order and government; men depraved both in
their customs and in their manners, and enemies not only to
monarchy, but to the methods of our royal administration. This
is therefore to will and require, that upon notice given you by
Haman (who is to me as a father) of the persons intended by this
my proclamation, you put all the said persons, men, women,
and children, to the sword, without any commiseration or favour,
in a strict pursuance of my decree. And it is my further eom-
m:md, that you put this in execution \ipon the thirteenth day of
the twelfth month of the present year, to make but one day's
work of the destruction of all mine and your enemies, in order
. C. 4C4. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NE1I. part or HAG. ZECH. RIAL.
was signed, he sent c by posts to all lieutenants, and
governors of provinces, with strict charge to destroy,
and cause to be killed, all the Jews, of whatever sex
or condition, both young and old, that were any where
within their jurisdiction, on the thirteenth of Adar fol-
lowing.
The publication of this horrid decree occasioned an
universal grief and lamentation, wherever the Jews
inhabited ; and in the city of d Shushan, which was not
well pleased with it, Mordecai in particular having put
on sackcloth, and covered his head with ashes, went
along the streets, e bemoaning his and his countrymen's
to a future peace and security of all our lives after." — Jewish
Antiq. b. 11, c. 6.
c The fust institution of posts is generally ascribed to the
Persians; for the kings of Persia, as Diodorus Siculus, (b. xix.)
observes, that they might have intelligence of what passed in
all the provinces of their vast dominions, placed centinels on
eminences, at convenient distances, where towers were built,
and these centinels gave notice of public occurrences to one ano-
ther, with a very loud and shrill voice, by which means news
was transmitted from one extremity of the kingdom to the other,
with great expedition. But as tin's could be practised only in
the case of general news, which might be communicated to the
whole nation, Cyrus, as Xenophon relates, ^'yropecd. b. viii.) set
up couriers, places for post-horses on all high-roads, and offices,
where they might deliver their packets to one another. This,
says our author, they did night and day; so that no rain or hard
weather being to stop them, in the judgment of many, they went
faster than cranes could fly. The like is said by Herodotus,
b. viii. And he acquaints us farther, that Xerxes, in his famous
expedition against Greece, planted posts from the yEgean sea to
Shushan, at certain distances, as far as a horse could ride with
speed, that thereby he might send notice to his capital city of
whatever might happen in his army. The Greeks borrowed
the use of posts from the Persians; and, in imitation of them,
called them ayya.^01. Among the Romans, Augustus was the
person who set up public posts, who at first were running
lootsmen, but were afterwards changed into post-chariots and
horses, for the greater expedition. Adrian improved upon this;
and having reduced the posts to great regularity, discharged the
people from the obligation they were under before of furnish-
ing horses and chariots. With the empire the use of posts de-
clined. About the year 807, Charlemagne endeavoured to
restore them; but his design was not prosecuted by his succes-
sors. In France, Louis XI. set up posts at two leagues' distance
through the kingdom. In Germany, count Taxis set them up,
and had, for his recompence, in 1616, a grant of the office of
postmaster- general to himself and his heirs for ever. Above
eight hundred years ago, couriers were set up in the Ottoman
empire: and, at this time, there are some among the Chinese;
but their appointment is only to carry orders from the king and
the governors of provinces, and, in a word, for public affairs and
those of the greatest consequence. — Calmet's Dictionary, under
the word.
d Not only the Jews, but a great many others in Shushan,
might be concerned at this horrid decree, either because they
were related to them, or engaged with them in worldly concerns,
or perhaps out of mere humanity and compassion to so vast a
number of innocent people, now appointed as sheep for the
slaughter. They might apprehend likewise that, upon the exe-
cution of the decree, some sedition or tumult might ensue; that,
in so great a slaughter, it was hard to tell who would escape
without being killed or plundered, because those who were em-
ployed in this work would be more mindful to enrich themselves
than to observe their orders. — Poole's Annotations; and Patrick's
and Le Clerc's Commentaries.
e The latter Tar gum, upon the book of Esther, gives us this
account of Mordecai's behaviour upon this sad occasion, namely,
that in the midst of the streets he made his complaint, saying,
" What a heavy decree is this which the king and Hainan have
passed, not against a part of us, but against us all, to root us out
of the earth!" Whereupon all the Jews flocked about him, and
having caused the book of the law to be brought to the gate of
Shushan, he being covered with sackcloth, read therein these
words out of Deut. iv. 30, 31, ' When thou art in tribulation
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY &<•,.
723
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS, A. M. 4947. A
hard fate, even until he came to the palace-gate ; which,
when the queen understood, and sent to inquire the
the cause, he returned her a copy of the king's decree,
whereby she might plainly perceive what mischief was
intended against all the nation, unless, by a timely
intercession with the king, she would endeavour a to
prevent it.
Esther, at first, excused herself from engaging in this
affair, because an ordinance was passed, inhibiting any
person, whether man or woman, upon pain of death,
from approaching the king's presence, without a special
order. But when he returned her in answer, ' that the
decree extended to the whole Jewish nation, without any
exception ; that if it came to execution, she must expect
to escape no more than the rest ; that God very probably
raised her to her present greatness, on purpose that she
might save and protect his people : but that if she ne-
glected to do this, and their deliverance should come some
other way, then should she, and her father's house, by
the righteous and just judgment of God, most certainly
perish :' which so roused her drooping courage, that she
sent him word again, that he and all the Jews in Shu-
shan should b fast for her three days, as she herself in-
tended to do, and offer up their humble supplications to
God, that he would prosper her in so hazardous an under-
taking, and then she would not fail to address the king,
though it were at the utmost peril of her life.
The people fasted as she had enjoined them ; and on
the third day she dressed herself in her royal apparel,
and c went toward the room where the king was sitting
and all these things are come upon thee in the latter days, if
thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt he obedient to his voice
(for the Lord thy God is a merciful God), he will not forsake
thee, nor destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers,
which he sware unto them.' After which he exhorted them to
fasting, humiliation, and repentance, according to the example
of the Ninevites. — Patrick's Commentary.
a Ever since the reign of Dejoces king of Media, Herodotus,
(It. i.) informs us, that, for the preservation of royal majesty, it
was enacted, " That no one should be admitted into the king's
presence; but that, if he had any business with him, he should
transact it by the intercourse of his ministers." The custom
passed from the Medes to the Persians ; and therefore we find it
in the same historian, (b. iii.) that after the seven Persian princes
had killed the Magian who had usurped the throne, they came
to this agreement, that whoever should be elected king, should
allow the others to have at all times a ready access to his pre-
sence (which is an implication that they had it not before),
whenever they should desire it, except only when he was accom-
panying with any of his wives. This, therefore, was the ancient
law of the country, and not procured by Haman, as some ima-
gine: though it cannot be denied, but that the reason of the law
at first might be, not only the preservation of the majesty and
safety of the king's person, hut a contrivance likewise of the great
officers of state, that they might engross the king to themselves,
by allowing admittance to none but whom they should think
proper to introduce. — Poole's Annotations; and Lc Clerc's Com-
mentaries.
b This is not to be understood, as if the people were to take
no manner of sustenance for three days, because few or none
could undergo that, but only, either that they should abstain from
all delicacies, and content themselves with coarse fare, as Jose-
phus expounds it, or that they should make no set meals of dinner
or supper in their families, but eat and drink no more than would
suffice to sustain nature, and support them in prayer to God for
a blessing upon her undertaking. — Patrick's and Lc Clerc's
Commentaries.
c But fust, says the latter Targum, she made a solemn prayer
t" God, with many tears, as soon as she was dressed, saying,
" Thou art the great God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, the God of my father Benjamin; as thou didst deliver
C. 4'J4. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. part OP HAG. ZECII. MAL.
upon his throne in the inner part of the palace. Upon
the first sight of her, he held out his golden sceptre, (a
token that he pardoned her presumption and spared her
life, and then asked her, what the request was that she
had to make to him. At the extension of this favour,
she approached nearer, and having touched <l the end
of his sceptre, only desired that he and Haman would
come to a banquet which she had prepared for him.
Haman, who happened then to be absent, was called to
attend the king ; and when the king and he were at the
banquet, he asked her again concerning her petition, pro-
mising that he would grant it her, even were it to extend
to half his kingdom : but e her request again was no
more, than that he and Hainan would favour her again,
the next day, with their company at the like entertain-
ment, and that then she would not fail to disclose her
request.
Hainan/ was not a little proud of the peculiar honour
Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, out of the fiery furnace, and
Daniel from the lion's den, so deliver me now out of the hand
of the king, and give me grace aud favour in his eyes,' &c.
d A sceptre was the ensign of the highest and most absolute
authority ; and therefore some have observed, that when Morde-
cai was advanced to the greatest dignity next the king, having
the royal robes on, and other ensigns of royal dignity, no men-
tion is made of any sceptre, for that was proper and peculiar to
the king; and the queen's touching, or, as some say, kissing
it, was a token of her subjection, and thankfulness for his favour.
But Josephus has mightily improved upon the story; for he tells
us, " that as the queen with her two handmaids approached the
room where the king was, leaning gently upon one, and the other
bearing up her train, her face being covered with such a blush,
as expressed a graceful majesty, but at the same time, some
doubtful apprehensions upon her approaching of the king, mount-
ed on his throne, and the sparkling glory of his robes, that were
all over embroidered with gold, pearl, and precious stones, she
was taken all on a sudden with a trembling at so surprising a
sight; and upon fancying that the king looked upon her as if he
were uneasy, and out of humour, she fell into the arms of one of
her maids in a direct swoon. This accident, says he, by the
intervention of God's holy will and providence, put the king into
a fright, for fear she might not come to herself again ; so that
making what haste he could from his throne, he took her up in
his arms, and with the kindest words that could be, gave her this
comfort: — That no advantage should be made of the law to her
prejudice, though she came without calling, because the decree
extended only to subjects ; whereas he looked upon her as his
companion and partner in the empire." — Jewish jint. b. xi. c. 6.
e Her intention in desiring thus to entertain the king twice at
her banquet, before she made known her petition, was, that
thereby she might the more endear herself to him, and dispose
him the better to grant her request, for which reason she thought
it a piece of no bad policy to invite his first favourite to come
along with him. But in the whole matter, the singular proi i-
dence of God is not a little conspicuous, which so disposed her
mind, that the high honour which the king bestowed upon Mor-
decai the next day, might fall out in the mean time, and so
make way for her petition, which would come in very seasonably
at the banquet of wine: for as then it "as niost likely for the
king to be in a pleasant humour, so it was most usual for the
Persians to enter upon business of state, when tiny began to
drink. — Lc Clerc's and Patrick's Commentaries-, and Priileaux's
Connection, anno 453.
f Athenreus mentions it as a peculiar honour, which no Gre-
cian ever had before or after, that Artaxerxes vouchsafed to
invite Timagoras the Cretan to dine even at the table where his
relations eat, and to send sometimes a part of "hat was served
up at his own; which some Persians looked upon as a diminu-
tion of his majesty, and.a prostitution of their nation's honour.
In the life of Artaxerxes, Plutarch tells us, that none but the
king's mother, and his real wife, were permitted to sit at his
table; and therefore he mentions it as a condescension in that
prince that he sometimes invited his brothers. So that this par-
ticular favour was a matter that Hainan had some reason to
value himself upon. — Lc C/ere's Commentary.
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which both the king and queen had done him ; but upon
his return home, seeing Mordecai sitting at the palace
gate, and refusing to show him the least obeisance,
though a he restrained himself at present, yet so moved
was he with indignation against him, that when he
came home, and related to his family the favours
which that day he had received, he could not forbear
complaining of the affront and disrespect which Morde-
cai had put upon him ; insomuch, that his wife, and
others that were present, advised him to have a gibbet of
b fifty cubits high instantly erected, and the very next
morning to go to the king, and obtain a grant of him to
have that insolent fellow hanged upon it.
This project he liked very well, and therefore caused
the gibbet to be set up : but when he came to court in
the morning, he found that things had taken quite ano-
ther turn. The king, that very morning, happened to
awake sooner than ordinary, and being not able to com-
pose himself to sleep again, he called for c the annals
of his reign, and ordered a person that was then in wait-
ing to read them to him. The reader went on, until he
came to the passage which made mention of Mordecai's
discovery of the treason of the two chamberlain's ; and
when the king upon inquiry was given to understand,
that the man, for so signal a service, had received no
reward at all, he called unto Haman (who was waiting
for admittance upon a quite different intent), and asked
him, What it was he would advise him to do to the man,
on whom he designed to confer some marks of his fav-
a It may seem a little strange, that so proud a man as Haman
was, should not he prompted immediately to avenge himself on
MordecaJ for his contemptuous usage of him, since he had
enough about him, no doubt, who, upon the least intimation of
his pleasure, would have done it; and since he, who had interest
enough with his prince to procure a decree for the destruction of
a whole nation, might have easily obtained a pardon for having
killed one obscure and infamous member of it. But herein did
the wise and powerful providence of God appear, that it dis-
posed Hainan's heart, contrary to his own inclination and
interest, instead of employing his power against his enemy, to
put tetters, as it were, upon his own hands. — Poole's Annota-
tions.
b That men might at a great distance see him, to the increase
of his disgrace (as Haman might think), and that, struck with
the greater terror by that spectacle, they might not dare for the
future to despise or olicnd him. — Patrick's Commentary, and
Poole's Annotations.
c In these diaries (which we now call journals) wherein was
set down what passed every day, the manner of the Persians was
to record the names of those who had done the king any signal
service. Accordingly Josephus informs us, " That upon the
secretary's reading these journals, he took notice of such a per-
son, who had great honours and possessions given him as a re-
ward tor a glorious and remarkable action ; and of such another
who made his fortune by the bounties of his prince, for his fidel-
ity; but that, when he came to the particular story of the con-
Bpiracy of the two eunuchs against the person of the king, and
of the discovery of this treason by Mordecai, the secretary read
it over, and was passing forward to the next, when the king
Stopped him, and asked it' that person had any reward given him
for his .service?'' &c, which shows indeed a singular providence
of God, that the secretary should read in that very part of the
book, wherein the service of Mordecai was recorded. But the i
latter Targum, to make a thorough miracle of it, tells us, that
when the reader opened the book at the place where mention
was made of Mordecai, he turned over the leaves, and would
have read in another, but that the leaves flew back again to the
same place where he opened it at first, so that he was forced to
read that story to the king. — Patrick's Commentary, and Jew-
ish Antiq. b. xi. c. 6.
Haman, who never dreamed but that the person he
meant of was himself, was resolved to lay it on thick ;
and therefore he gave advice, rf that the royal robe
should be brought, which the king, on solemn occasions,
was wont to wear ; the horse, which was kept for his own
riding, c and the crown, which was used to be set upon
the horse's head,/ and that, with this robe, the person
whom the king thought proper to distinguish should be
arrayed, and the chief man in the kingdom appointed to
lead his horse by the reins, walking before him in the
quality of an officer, and proclaiming, ' Thus shall it be
done to the man whom the king delights to honour.'
' Take then the horse and the robe,' says the king, ' and
do all that thou hast mentioned to Mordecai the Jew,
who has not been yet rewarded for the discovery of the
treason of the two eunuchs that intended to have taken
away my life.'
Nothing certainly oould cut a proud man more to the
d To form a notion of that height of pride and arrogance to
which Haman (who thought all the honours he specified were
designed for him) was arrived, we may observe, that, for any
one to put on the royal robe, without the privity and consent of
the king, was, among the Persians, accounted a capital crime.
To which purpose Plutarch, in his life of Artaxerxes, has related
this story: — " That one day, when in hunting, the king hap-
pened to tear his garment, and Tiribazus was telling him of it,
the king asked him what he should do. Why, put on another,
says Tiribazus, and give that to me. That I will, says the king,
but then I enjoin you not to wear it. Tiribazus, however, who
was a good kind of a man enough, but a little weak and silly,
adventured to put it on, with all its fine ornaments; and when
some of the nobles began to resent it, as a thing not lawful
for any subject to do, I allow him, says the king, laughing at the
figure he made, to wear the fine trinkets as a woman, and the
robe as a madman.'' — Le Clerc's Commentary.
e There was a custom, not unlike this, among the Hebrews,
as appears from the history of Solomon, (1 Kings i. 33,) for the
person that was to be declared successor to the crown, on the
day of his inauguration, to be mounted on the king's horse : and
to the like custom among the Persians, it is highly probable that
the poet Statius, in his description of a young king succeeding to
his father's throne, may allude : — " As an Achemenian youth,
on receiving the throne and lands of his ancestors, hangs in un-
certainty while deliberating to whom he may entrust the various
boundaries of his kingdom, he is still afraid to handle the bow
and mount his father's steed, and to himself he seems scarce able
to bear the load of empire, or as yet to use the badge of majesty."
— Thebaid. b. viii.
f Commentators are not agreed whether this crown was
placed upon the king's head or his horse's. Those who refer it to
the king, will have it to be what we call a turban, made of fine
white and pure linen, which it was death for any one to put on
his head, without the king's express order; to which purpose
Arrian (Ale.v. E.rped. b. vii.) tells us this story: — " That as
Alexander was sailing on the Euphrates, and his turban hap-
pened to fall off among some reeds, one of the watermen imme-
diately jumped in and swam to it; but as he could not bring it
back in his hand without wetting it, he put it upon his head,
and so returned with it. Whereupon most historians that have
wrote of Alexander (says he) tell us that he gave him a talent
of silver for this expression of his zeal to serve him, but, at the
same time, ordered his head to he struck oflj for presuming to
put on the royal diadem." Other commentators are of opinion,
that this keter, which we render crown, being a word of a large
signification, will equally denote that ornament which the horse
that the king rode wore upon his head. As it must be acknow-
ledged that this application of the thing agrees better with the
signification and order of the Hebrew words; with the following
verses, wherein no mention is made of the keter, but only of the
robe and the horse to which this crown belonged ; and with the
custom of the Persians, who used to put a certain ornament (in
Italian called fiocco) upon the head of that horse whereon the
king was mounted. — Le Clerc's aud Patrick's Commentaries,
and Puole'.j Annotations.
Skct. II.]
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725
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A
heart, than to be employed in such an office ; but the
king's command was positive, so that Hainan was forced
to do it, how much soever it might go against the grain:
and when the irksome ceremony was over, he returned
to his house, lamenting the disappointment and great
mortification he had met with, in being forced to pay so
signal an honour to his most hated enemy. But while
he was relating this to his family, and they thereupon
expressing some uneasy apprehensions, as if this were
a very bad omen, one of the queen's chamberlains came
to his house to hasten him to the banquet ; and, having
seen the gallows winch had been set up the night before,
he fully informed himself of the intent for which it was
prepared.
When the king and Hainan were set down to the
entertainment, the king asked Esther again, what her re-
quest was ; renewing his promise, that he would not fail
to grant it her, even though it extended to the half of
his kingdom. ' But my petition, O king,' says she, ' is
only for my own life, and the life of my people, because
there is a design laid against us, not to make us bond-
men and bond-women (for then I should have been si-
lent), but to slay and destroy us all. If therefore I
have found favour in thy sight, O king, let my life and
the life of my people be given at my request.' At this
the king asking, with some commotion, who it was that
durst do any such thing ? the Hainan then present, she
told him, was the contriver of all the plot : whereupon
the king rising up from the banquet in a passion, a went
into the garden adjoining ; and Hainan, taking this op-
portunity, b fell prostrate on the bed where the queen
was sitting, to supplicate his life ; but the king, coming
in the mean time, and seeing him in this posture, ' What,
will he ravish the queen before my eyes !' cried out
aloud : whereupon those that were in waiting came and
covered his face, c as a token of the king's indignation
a Partly as disdaining the company of so audacious and un-
grateful a person; partly to cool and allay his spirit, boiling and
struggling with such a variety of passions; and partly to consider
within himself the heinousness of Haman's crime, the mischief
which himself had like to have clone by his own rashness, and
what punishment was fit to be inflicted on so vile a miscreant.
— Patrick's Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
b It was a custom of the Persians, as well as other nations, to
sit, or rather to lie upon beds, when they ate or drank ; and
therefore, when Haman fell down as a supplicant at the feet of
Esther, and (as the manner was among the Greeks and Romans,
and not improbably among the Persians) embraced her knees,
the king might pretend that he was offering violence to the
queen's chastity. Not that he believed that this was his inten-
tion, but, in his furious passion, he turned every thing to the
worst sense, and made use of it to aggravate his crime. — Pat-
rick's Commentary.
c The majesty of the kings of Persia did not allow malefac-
tors to look at them. As soon as Haman was so considered, his
face was covered. Some curious correspondent examples are
collected together in Poole's Synopsis, in loc. From Pococke
we find the custom still continues. Speaking of the artifice by
which an Egyptian bey was taken off, lie says, {Travels, vol. ii.
p. 179) " A man being brought before him like a malefactor
just taken, with his hands behind him as if tied, and a napkin
put over his head, as malefactors commonly have, when he came
into his presence, suddenly shot him dead." — Harmer, vol. ii. p.
96. This custom maybe traced among the Romans in the pun-
ishment of a patricide, who, when convicted, was immediately
hooded, as unworthy of the common light, (Kcnnclt's Rom.
Antuj. part ii. b. 3, c. 20, p. 14G,) and in that form of pro-
nouncing sentence on a criminal ascribed by Cicero (Pro
Goto Rabirio, c. iv.) to Tarquinius Superbus. '• Go, officer,
C. 464. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEII. paut op HAG. ZECH. MaL.
against him : and when the chamberlain, who had been
to call him to the banquet, acquainted the king of the
gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai, who had
saved the king's life, he gave immediate orders, that d
he should be hanged thereon (which accordingly was
done), and his whole estate given to the queen, whereof
she appointed Mordecai her steward. At the same time
she informed the king of her near relation to Mordecai ,
so that he took him into his royal favour, advanced him
to gTeat power, riches, and dignity in die empire, and
made him keeper of his signet, in the same manner as
Haman had been before.
But though Hainan was thus removed, yet the decree
which he had procured remained still in full force ; nor
could it be repealed, because the laws of the Medes
and Persians were such, that nothing written in the
king's name, and signed with the royal signet, could be
reversed. All therefore that the king could do, upon
the queen's second petition, to have the decree cancel-
led, was to grant the Jews, by another e decree, such a
power to defend themselves against all that should as-
sault them on the day / when the former decree was to
bind his hands, muffle his head, hang him ou the fatal tree." —
Ed.
d Josephus indeed tells us, that he died on the cross : but
others have observed, that crucifixion was not a Persian punish-
ment; and Salmasius (in his book de Cruce) shows that it was
the manner of the Persians first to cut off the heads of malefac-
tors, and then to hang them on a gibbet. However this be, "I
cannot pass over the wonderful harmony of providence/' says
Josephus, " without a remark upon the almighty power, and the
admirable justice and wisdom of God, not only in bringing
Haman to his deserved punishment, but entrapping him in the
very same snare that he had laid for another, and turning a
malicious invention upon the head of the inventor." Neither is
there any law more just, than to ensnare the murderer by his
own artifice. — Antiq. b. xi. c. 6.
e Josephus has given us a true copy, as he says, of this decree,
or, as he calls it, of the letters which Artaxerxes sent to the ma-
gistrates of all the nations that lie between India and Ethiopia,
under the command of a hundred and seven and twenty prin-
ces:— " Wherein he represents the abuse which favourites are
wont to make of their power and credit with their prince, by
insulting their inferiors, by flying in the face of those that raised
them, and, to gratify their resentments, calumniating the inno-
cent, and putting honest men in danger of their lives: wherein
he makes mention of the uncommon favours and honours which
he had bestowed upon Haman, the Amalekite, who had, not-
withstanding, taken measures to supplant him of his kingdom,
to destroy Mordecai, the preserver of his life, together with his
dearest wife the queen, and to extirpate the whole nation of Jews,
who were good and peaceable subjects, and worshippers of that
God to whom he was indebted for the possession and preserva-
tion of his empire : wherein he acquaints them, that for these
wicked and treasonable practices, having caused him and his
whole family to be executed before the gates of Susa, his royal
pleasure, by these presents, was that they should not only dis-
charge the Jews from all the pains and penalties to which they
are made liable by his letters which Haman had sent them; but
that they should likewise aid and assist them in vindicating
themselves upon those that spitefully and injuriously oppressed
them ; and wherein he tells them, that whereas the time ap-
pointed for the utter destruction of these people, was to have been
on the thirteenth day of the month Adar, his further pleasure
was, that the same month and day should be employed in their
rescue and deliverance; and that if any person, either by dis-
obedience oi' neglect, should act in any thing contrary to tile ter-
ror of this his imperial command, he should be liable to military
execution by fire and sword."
f It might be presumed that some, out of hatred to the Jews
might be inclinable to obey Haman's decree: for though he him-
self was gone, yet it cannot be imagined, that all the friends and
creatures that lie had made perished with him. He might have
726
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4917. A.
be executed, as might render it in a great measure in-
effectual.
To this purpose, a fresh edict was drawn up in the
third month, signed by the king, and transmitted to the
provinces : so that, when the thirteenth day of Adar came,
by the means of these different and discordant decrees,
a war was commenced between the Jews and their ene-
mies, through the whole Persian empire ; but as the rulers
of the several provinces, and other officers of the king,
well understood what power and credit Esther and Mor-
decai then had with him, they so favoured the Jews every
where, that on that day they slew, in the whole empire,
75,000 persons, and in the city of Shushan, on that day
and the next, 800 more ; among whom were a the ten
sons of Hainan, whom, by a special order from the king,
they hanged perhaps on the same gallows whereon their
father had hung before ; and in memory of this, their
wonderful deliverance, the Jews did then, and have ever
since, on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month
Adar, kept a great festival, which they called b the ' feast
of lots.' But proceed we now to some other affairs.
a great party every where, and some of them so furiously enraged
at his fall, as, even at the hazard of their own lives, would not
fail to show their indignation at those who were the occasion of
it: and therefore this second decree procured hy Mordecai, gave
them authority, if any attempt was made upon them, either in
great bodies, or small parties, not only to defend themselves and
repel them, hut to make as great a slaughter of them as they were
able, and even to take possession of their goods, as Haman had
procured them license (chap. iii. 13,) to seize the goods of the
Je ws . — Patrick 's Com m cnta ry.
a It is not unlikely, that many might be enraged at his death,
and his sons, in particular, might set themselves at the head of
those who were bold enough to attempt the destruction of the
Jews in Shushan, being resolved to revenge their father's death,
though in so doing they were sure to meet their own. And this
seems to suggest the reason why Esther was so solicitous to have
their dead bodies (for they were slain already) hung upon the
gallows, (chap. ix. 13,) even because they had shown more ma-
lice and indignation against the Jews, and on the day when the
cruel edict came to take place, had made more desperate attacks
upon them than any; though the reason of the state, in this
severity, might be to expose the family to the greater infamy,
and to deter other counselors from abusing the king at any time
with false representations. For though the Jews suffered none
to hang on the tree, as they called the gallows, longer than till
the evening of the day whereon they were executed; yet other
nations let them hang until they were consumed, as appears from
the story of the Giheonite?, (2 Sam. xxi. 9, 10,) or devoured by
crows, vultures, or other ravenous creatures; from whence that
vulgar saying among the Romans, pascere in cruce corvos, had
its rise. — Patrick's Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
B Pur, in the Persian language, signifies a lot, and the feast
at purim or lots, which had its name from Hainan's casting lots
in order to divine which day would be most lucky to prefix for the
murder oi all the Jews in the whole Persian dominions, is, to
this vi -ry day, celebrated by the Jews, with some peculiar cere-
monies, but most of them reducible to these three things, reading,
resting, and feasting. Before the reading, which is performed
in the synagogue, and begins in the evening, as soon as the stars
appear, they make use of three forms of prayer: in the first of
these, they prai e God for counting them worthy to attend this
divine service; in the second, they thank him for the miracu-
lous preservation of their ancestors ; and in the third, they bless
his holy name, for having continued their lives to the celebration
of another festival in commemoration of it. Then they read
over the whole history of Haman from the beginning to the end,
but not out of any printed book, for that is not lawful, but out of
B Hebrew manuscript, written on parchment. There are five
places in the text, wherein the reader raises his voice with all his
might: when tie comes to the place that mentions the nanus of
the ten sous of Haman, he repeats them very quick, to show that
they were all destroyed in a moment; and every time that the
C. 4G4. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. mt of HAG. ZECH. MAIa,
In the beginning of the seventh year of Ahasuerus,
Ezra, a priest descended from c Seraiah the high priest,
who was slain by Nebuchadnezzar, when he burned the
temple and city of Jerusalem, a man of great learning,
and excellently d skilled in the knowledge of the Scrip-
tures, who had hitherto continued in Babylon, with others
of the captivity that had not yet returned, obtained leave
of the king to go to Jerusalem, and to take as many of
name of Haman is pronounced, the children, with great fury,
strikeagaiustthe benches of the synagogues, with the mallets which
they bring for that purpose. After that the reading is finished,
they return home and have a supper, not of flesh, but of spoon-
meat ; and early next morning they arise and return to the syna-
gogue ; where, after they have read that passage in ExocUis, which
makes mention of the war of Amalek, they begin again to read the
book of Esther, with the same ceremonies as before; and so con-
clude the service of the day, with curses against Haman and his
wife Zeresh, with blessings upon Mordecai and Esther, and with
praises to God for having preserved his people. Their resting
on this day is observed so religiously, that they will not so much
as set or sow any thing in their gardens, with full persuasion that
it would not come up if they did ; and therefore they either play
at chess, and such like games, or spend the time in music and
dancing, until it be proper to begin their feasting, wherein they
indulge themselves to such an immoderate degree, that their feast
of purim has, with great justice, been called the Bacchanals of the
Jews. They allow themselves to drink wine to excess, nay,
even to such a pitch, as not to be able to distinguish between the
blessing of Mordecai, and the curse of Haman, as themselves
speak ; and amidst the other sports and diversions of the day,
they used formerly to erect a gibbet, and burn upon it a man made
of straw, whom they called Haman ; but herein it was thought, that
they might have a design to insult Christians, upon the death of
our crucified Saviour; and therefore Theodosius the second,
(Anno Dom. 408,) forbade them to use this ceremony, under the
penalty of forfeiting all their privileges. We have only farther
to remark concerning this festival, that it is always kept for two
days together, and the reason hereof is this: — the Jews at Shu-
shan had two days allowed them to revenge themselves of their
enemies, (Esther ix. 13,) hut the rest of the Jews in other na-
tions had but one. This caused, at first, some dilierence in their
time of feasting; for the Jews in all other parts of the kingdom,
having done execution on their enemies on the thirteenth day,
kept their rejoicing feast on the fourteenth ; but the Jews at Shushan,
being engaged in this work both on the thirteenth and fourteenth
days, kept their festival for their deliverance on the fifteenth.
When Mordecai, however, had made a record of this great de-
liverance, he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the domin-
ions of Ahasuerus, to establish it as a standing ordinance among
them, that they should keep both the fourteenth and fifteenth of
the month Adar every year, as the days whereon the Jews
rested from their enemies: and this is the reason why the festi-
val continues for two days, though the former of them is only
kept with great solemnity. — Patrick's Commentary, HoieeVs His-
tory, in the notes, and Calmet's Dictionary under the word
Purim.
c In Ezra vii. 1, Ezra is called the son of Seraiah, but as the
death of Seraiah occurred 1'cO years before this time, our author
very properly considers the term as implying here a descendant.
—Ed.
d Both the Septuagint, Vulgate, and our translation, render
the words sopher mahir, a ready scribe, (Ezra vii. 6,) as if to
have a quick hand at writing out the law, were any great perfec-
tion, or that any aged man, as Ezra was, should be renowned for it.
It was not then for writing, but for explaining the things con-
tained in the Scriptures that Ezra was so famous. For as sepher
signifies a book, so sopher denotes one skilled and learned in that
book; and as there was no book comparable to the book of the
law, therefore sepher became a name of great dignity, and sig-
nified one that taught God's law, and instructed the people out of
it; in which sense we find the word ygafi/zartTs, or scribes, used
in the New Testament. For when our Saviour is said to have
taught the people, 'as one having authority, and not as the
scribes, this plainly shows, that these scribes were not transcrib-
ers, but teachers and expounders of the laws, though they did
not do it with a proper authority. — Patrick's and Le Clcrc's
Commentaries,
Sfct. II.]
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his own nation with hhu, as were willing to accompany
him thither.
On the first day of the first month, which is called Ni-
san, and might fall about the middle of our March, he
set forward on his journey from Babylon, a with an am-
ple commission and authority to restore and settle the
state, reform the church of the Jews, and regulate and
govern both according to their own Jaws. AVhen he
came to the river Ahava, b he there halted, until the
rest of his company was come up ; and then, having, in
tt solemn fast, c recommended himself, and all that
a It can hardly be imagined, but that some more than ordinary
means were used to obtain so great a favour from the king, as
this commission was; and therefore we may suppose that it was
granted at the solicitation of Esther, who was become the bust
beloved of the king's concubines, though not as yet advanced to
the dignity of queen: for seeing it was usual for the kings of
Persia, on some particular days and occasions, to allow their wo-
men to ask what boons they pleased, it is not unlikely, that, by
the direction of Mordecai, upon some such time and occasion as
this, Esther, though she had not discovered her kindred and na-
tion, might make this the matter of her request. — Pridcuit.r' s
Connection, anno 459. [It is not improbable that the king,
who in the seventh year of his reign, had made Mordecai the
Jew his prime minister, and Esther the Jewess his queen, should
give to Ezra the Jew, a commission conferring such full powers
as we find vested in Ezra, (Ezra vi. vii. viii. 31 ; Esther ii. ; Dan.
ix. 1.) Xerxes might hope, that by thus patronising the Jews, he
should obtain some favour after his unsuccessful campaigns from
the God of heaven, whom the Jews worshipped, and to whom
Cyrus attributed all his victories. This much seems to be inti-
mated by the words of the edict, (Ezra vii. 23.) The commis-
sion of Ezra was given in the seventh year of the king, after the
retreat from Greece. It is no objection to our hypothesis, that
Ezra began his journey on the first day of the first month, and
arrived at Jerusalem on the first of the fifth month, in the
seventh year of Artaxerxes, while Esther is said to have been
declared queen in the tenth month of this year; for the book of
Esther computes the months from harvest, or Tishri, while Ezra
reckons from spring or Nisan. Moreover, the favour of the king
towards the Jews did not commence with the elevation of Esther
to the throne; for before this time Mordecai had a place among
the nobles in the court of the palace, and consequently he must
have been one of the royal officers. The difference of the names
Artaxerxes, Xerxes, and Ahasuerus, need occasion no difficulty,
for these are not so much proper names, as appellatives applied
to every king at pleasure. Thus Daniel calls even Astyages,
Ahasuerus of the Median line.] — John's Hebrew Commonwealth,
vol. i. p. 199 Ed.
b This was a river of Assyria, and very probably that which
ran along the Adiabene, where the river Diava, or Adiava, is
known to be, and upon which Ptolemy places the city of Abane,
or Aavane. Here, some imagine, was the country which, in the
second book of Kings xvii. 24, is called Ava, from whence the
king of Assyria translated the people called Avites into Pales-
tine, and, in their room, settled some of the captive Israelites.
It was a common thing for those that travelled from Babylon to
Jerusalem, in order to avoid the scorching heat of the desert of
Arabia, to shape their course northward at first, and then, turn-
ing to westward, to pass through Syria, into Palestine; but Ezra
haif a farther reason for his taking this route; for as lie intended
to get together as many Israelites as he could, to carry along
with him to Jerusalem, he took his course this way, and made a
halt in the country of Ava, or Ahava, from whence he might
send emissaries into the Caspian mountains, to invite such Jews
as were there to come and join him. — Lc Clerc's Commentary
on Ezra viii., and Calmet's Dictionary under the word Ahava,
c This they had the greater reason to do, because they carried
things of considerable value along with them; were apprehensive
ot enemies that lay in wait for them; and were ashamed to ask
any guard of the king; who being not much instructed in divine
matters, might possibly think that what they said of God's favour
towards them, and the prophecies concerning their restoration,
were but vaiu boasts, in case they should seem to distrust his
power and favour, of whom they had spoken so magnificently, by
A. C. 4G4. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEII. part of HAG. ZECII. MAL.
were with him, to the divine protection, on the twelfth
day he set forward for Jerusalem, where they all safely
arrived on the first day of the fifth month, called Ab,
that is, about the middle of our July, having spent four
whole months in their journey from Babylon thither.
Upon his arrival, Ezra delivered up to the temple the
offerings which had been made to it by the king, his no-
bles, and the rest of the people of Israel that staid be-
hind, which d amounted to a very large sum, and having
communicated his commission to the king's lieutenants
and governors throughout all Syria and Palestine, lie
betook himself to the executing of the contents of it.
He had not been long in his government, before he
found that many of the people had taken wives of other
nations, contrary to the law of God ; and that several
of the priests and Levites, as well as other chief men
of Judah and Benjamin, had transgressed in this parti-
cular. And therefore after he had, e in mourning and
fasting and / prayer, deprecated God's wrath for so sad
making application to the king for his protection and defence.
Rather therefore than give any such umbrage, they were
resolved to commit themselves entirely to God: but then it
was necessary that they should beseech that of him, which, with-
out giving offence, they could not request of the king. — Pa-
trick's Commentary.
d According to the account we have of them, (Ezra viii. 2G,
27,) there were 650 talents of silver, which at 375 pounds to the
talent, make 243,750 pounds. The silver vessels weighed 100
talents, which came to 37,500 pounds. The gold in coin was 100
talents, which at 4500 pounds per talent, made 450,000 pounds;
and besides all this, there were 20 basins of gold of 1000 drachms,
and two vessels of fine copper, as valuable as gold. — Howell's
History in the notes. [Sir J. Chardin, (MS. note,) has men-
tioned a mixed metal used in the east, and highly esteemed
there, which might probably be of as ancient an origin as the
time of Ezra. He says, I have heard some Dutch gentlemen
speak of a metal in the island of Sumatra and among the Ma-
cassars, much more esteemed than gold, which royal personages
alone might wear. It is a mixture, if I remember right, of gold
and steel. Calmbac, is this metal, composed of gold and copper ;
it in colour nearly resembles the pale carnation rose, has a very
fine grain, and the polish extremely lively. Gold is not of so
lively and brilliant a colour.] — Harnicr, vol. ii. p. 490. — Ed.
e The manner in which Ezra is said to have expressed his
concern for the people's unlawful marriages, is, by ' rending his
garment, and his mantle,' (chap. ix. 3,) that is, both his inner
and upper garment: which was a token not only of great grief
and sorrow, but of his apprehensions likewise of the divine dis-
pleasure; and by 'pulling off" the hair of his head and beard,'
which was still a higher sign of exceeding great grief among
other nations, as well as the Jews; and therefore we find in
Homer, that when Ulysses and his companions bewailed the
death of Elpinor, " they sat together lamenting and tearing their
hair." — Odyss. x.
/ The prayer we have in Ezra ix. 6, &c. the purport of which
is this : — ' That he was confounded when he thought of the
greatness of their sins, which were ready to overwhelm them,
and of the boldness and insolence of them beyond measure, even
though they had seen the divine vengeance upon their fore-
fathers, in so terrible a manner, that they had not yet worn off
the marks of his displeasure. He had begun indeed to show
favour to some of them ; but this so much the more aggravated
their wickedness, in that, so soon after their restoration and set-
tlement in their native country, they had returned to their old
provocations, notwithstanding the many admonitions in the law
and the prophets, to have nothing to do with the people of Can-
aan, except it were to expel and root them out. What then can
we expect, says lie, but the utter destruction of the small rem-
nant that is left of us, if, after all the punishments which tied
has inflicted on us, and his beginning now to lie gracious unto
us, we relapse into the same offences for which we have so
severely suffered? For while we remain monuments of his
mercy, and yet appear before him in our abominations, wo must
728
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947.
an apostasy, he caused proclamation to be made for
all the people of the land, that had returned from the
captivity, to meet together at Jerusalem, under the pen-
alty of excommunication and confiscation of their goods ;
and when they met, he endeavoured to make them sen-
sible of their sin, and engaged them in a promise and
covenant before God, to depart from it, by putting
away their strange wives, and the children that were
born of them, that the seed of Israel might not be pol-
luted by such an undue commixture ; and accordingly
commissioners were appointed to inspect this affair, who,
in three months' time, made a proper inquiry, and a
thorough reformation of this enormity.
Upon the death of Zerubbabel, the administration
both of civil and ecclesiastical affairs devolved upon
Ezra ; but in the twentieth year of Ahasuerus, a Nehe-
niiah, a very religious and excellent person among those
of the captivity, and who was a great favourite with that
prince, succeeded him in the government of Judah and
Jerusalem. He had informed himself, from some peo-
ple that were come from Jerusalem, of the miserable
state and condition of that city ; that * its walls were
broken down, and its gates burned, so that its inhabi-
tants lay open not only to the incursions and insults of
their enemies, but to the reproach likewise and contempt
of their neighbours. This mournful relation affected the
good man to such a degree, that he applied himself in
fasting and ' prayer to God, and humbly besought, that
he would be pleased to favour the design which he had
conceived of asking the king's permission to go to Jeru-
salem.
By his office, c he was cupbearer to the king; and
A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. Part of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
therefore, when it came d to his turn to wait, the king,
observing that his countenance was not so cheerful as
at other times, and being told, that the distressed state
of his country, and of the city where his ancestors were
buried, were the only cause of it, gave him, at his re-
quest, through the intercession of the queen (who 2 was
then sitting with him), leave to go to Jerusalem, and a
full commission, as his governor of the province of Ju-
dea, to repair the walls, and to set up the gates, and
fortify the city again in the same manner that it was
before it was dismantled and destroyed by the Babylon-
ians ; but, upon this condition it was, that he should
return to court again, at such a e determinate time.
The king, at the same time, wrote letters to all the go-
vernors beyond the Euphrates, to be aiding and assisting
to him in the work. He sent his order to Asaph, the
keeper of his forests in those parts, to furnish him with
whatever timber he should want, not only for the repar-
ation of the towers and gates of the city, but for the
building of himself a house likewise, as governor of the
province, to live in ; and, to do him still more honour,
he sent a guard of horse, under the command of some of
the captains of his army, to conduct him safe to his
government.
With these letters and powers, Nehemiah arrived at
Jerusalem, and was kindly received by the people ; but
it was three days before he acquainted any one with the
occasion of his coming. On the third day at night, he,
with some few attendants, went privately round the city,
to take a view of the walls, which he found in a ruinous
condition ; and, on the next, called together the chief of
the people, and, / having reminded them of the desolate
1 Neh. i. 5.
be dumb and have nothing to plead in excuse of our detestable
ingratitude. — Patrick's Commentary.
a It may well be questioned whether this Nehemiah be the
same that is mentioned in Ezra (chap. ii. 2, and Neh. vii. 7),
as one that returned from the Babylonish captivity under Zerub-
babel; since from the first year of Cyrus to the twentieth of
Artaxerxes Longimanus, there are no less than ninety-two years
intervening; so that Nehemiah must, at this time, have been a
very old man, upon the lowest computation above an hundred
and, consequently, utterly incapable of being the king's cup-
bearer, of taking a journey from Shushan to Jerusalem, and of
behaving there with all that courage and activity that is recorded
of him. Upon this presumption, therefore, we may conclude
that this was a different person, though of the same name • and
that Tarshatha (the other name by which he is called Ezra ii
US, and Neh. vii. C5,) denotes the title of his office, and both
in the Persian and Chaldean tongues, was the general name
given to all the king's deputies and governors/ — Le Clerc's and
Poole's Annotations.
b The commissions which had hitherto been granted to the
Jews were supposed to extend no farther than to the rebuilding
of the temple, and their own private houses; and therefore the
walls and gates of their city lay in the same ruinous condition in
which the Chaldeans left them after that devastation. — Patrick's
Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
c This was a place of great honour and advantage in the Per-
sian (unit, because of the privilege which it gave him that was
in it, ol being daily in the king's presence, and the opportunity
which he had thereby of gaining his favour, for the obtaining
of any petition that he should make to him. And that it was
a place of great advantage seems evident, by Nehemiah's gain-
ing those immense riches which enabled him for so many years,
(Neh. v. 14, 1!)) out of his own private purse only, to live in his
government with all I hat splendour and expense, that will here-
after be related, without burdening the people at all for it. —
Pridcaux's Connection, anno 445.
2 Neh. ii. 6.
d Commentators have generally observed, that it was almost
four months between his hearing of the disconsolate condition
wherein Jerusalem lay, and his requesting leave of the king to
go thither. But, besides that it might not come to his own turn
of waiting sooner, there might be these farther reasons assigned
for this his long silence and delay: as that he could not take so
long and dangerous a journey in the winter; that he could no
sooner meet with a seasonable opportunity of speaking with the
king upon so critical an affair; or, as others will have it, that he
retired all this intermediate while, and spent it in fasting and
prayer. — Poole's Annotations, and Patrick's Commentary.
e How long this was, it is not certain. It is said indeed that
he was ' governor in the land of Judah for twelve years,' chap,
v. 14 — xiii. 6. But considering what haste he made in des-
patching the building of the walls, which he finished in two and
fifty days, the leave which he asked might be but for a year, or
perhaps half so much ; after which time, it is likely, that he
returned to Shushan, according to his promise; but, some time
after, was sent back again by the king, who found his presence
there serviceable, or perhaps necessary, for the better regulation
of that province, to be his governor for twelve years. — Patrick's
Commentary.
/The speech which Josephus puts in the mouth of the gover-
nor upon this occasion is to this effect: — " You cannot but see
and understand, you men of Judea, that we ourselves are, at this
day, under the power and providence of the same almighty and
merciful God that did so many things for our forefathers Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob, out of a gracious regard to their piety
and justice: and it is by the favour of that God that I have now
obtained leave from the king to enter upon the rebuilding of
your wall, and the putting of an end to the work of the temple
that is yet unfinished. But taking this for granted, that you live
among a sort of malicious and spiteful neighbours, who would
do all that is to be done in nature for the crossing of your design,
when they come once to see you heartily intent upon the under-
taking, 1 shall therefore recommend it to you, in the first place,
resolutely and fearlessly to cast yourselves upon God, who will
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
729
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4917. A. C. 4G4. EZRA iv. 7— END, EST. NEII. v.uvv 01 HAG. ZECH. MAL.
manner in which the walls of their city lay, and exhorted
them to set about the reparation of them, he produced
his commission and letters to that purpose, which, when
they were read, so gladdened and revived their droop-
ing spirits, tliat they joyfully and unanimously cried out
' Let us rise and build.'
In carrying on the building, Nehemiah divided the
people into several companies, and assigned to each of
them the quarter where they were to work, reserving to
himself the reviewal and direction of the whole. But
they had not long proceeded in the work, before San-
ballat, an officer of the Moabites, and Tobiah, a man of
note among the Ammonites, two bitter enemies to the
Jewish nation, began to scoff* and ridicule their under-
taking. As the work, however, advanced, they changed
their note, and apprehending themselves in danger from
the growing greatness of the Jews, were resolved to put
a stop to their future progress.
To this purpose they entered into a confederacy with
some neighbouring nations, to come upon them by sur-
prise, demolish their works, and put them all to the
sword ; but the governor having notice of this their de-
sign, and senduig out scouts daily to observe their mo-
tions, placed a guard well armed to defend and encourage
the workmen ; and ordered, that each workman should
have his arms nigh at hand, in case they were attacked ;
while himself went often in person among them, by his
precept and example, encouraging them to trust in the
Lord, and, in his speeches and exhortations, putting
them frequently in mind, that it was for their wives, their
brethren, and children, (in case they were compelled to
it,) that they fought ; so that, by these means, they se-
cured themselves against all the attempts and designs
of their enemies, until the work was brought to a con-
clusion.
Sanballat, and the rest of his confederates, perceiving
that their plot was discovered, and not daring to attack
Nehemiah by open force, had recourse to craft and
stratagem. To this purpose, under pretence of ending
the difference between them in an amicable manner, they
sent to invite him to a conference, in a certain village,
in the plain of Ono, which belonged to the tribe of Ben-
jamin, intending there to do him a mischief; but Nehe-
miah, very probably suspecting their wicked design,
returned in answer to the four messages of the same
import, which they successively sent, " that the work
wherein he was engaged required his personal attend-
ance, and therefore he could not come."
Sanballat, perceiving that Nehemiah was too cautious
to be insnared by a general invitation, sent by his ser-
vant a letter, a wherein lie informed him, that the current
most certainly defeat, all the practices of your enemies; and, in
the next place, to ply your business day and night, without any
intermission either of care or of labour, this being the proper
season for it." — Jewish Antiquities, b. xi. c. 5.
a To send an open letter, was considered a mark of great dis-
respect. A Ii tter lias its Hebrew name from the circumstance
of its being rolled or folded together. The modem Arabs roll up
their litters, and then flatten them to the breadth of an inch; and,
instead of sealing them, paste up their ends. The Persians make
ap their letters in a roll about six inches long; a bit of paper is
fastened round it with gum, and sealed with an impression of
ink. In Turkey, letters are commonly sent to persons of dis-
tinction in a bag or purse; to equals they are also inclosed, but
i'> interiors, or these win, are held in contempt, they are -cut
< ; "'n or nninclosed This explains the reason of Nehemiah's eb-
report was, — " That he was building the walls of Jeru-
salem only to make it a place of strength, to support his
intended revolt; that, to this purpose, he had suborned
false prophets to favour his design, and to encourage the
people to choose him king ; and that therefore, to stop
the course of these rumours, (which in a short time would
come to the king's ears,) he advised him to come to him,
that they might confer together, and take such resolutions
as were convenient." But Nehemiah, knowing his own
innocence, easily saw through this shallow contrivance,
and returned him for answer, that " all these accusations
were false, and the inventions only of his own naughty
heart;" so that finding himself disappointed here like-
wise, he betook himself to this last expedient.
There was one Shemaiah, the son of Delaiah the priest,
a great friend to Nehemiah, whom Sanballat had bribed
to his interest. This man pretended to the gift of pro-
phecy : and, therefore, when Nehemiah came to his house
one day, he foretold, that his enemies would make an
attempt to murder him that very night, and therefore ad-
vised him to go with him b into the inner part of the
temple, and so secure themselves by shutting the doors.
But though Nehemiah did not apprehend the other's de-
sign, which he came to find out afterwards, yet, out of a
sense of honour and religion, he declared positively,
" That, come what would, c he could not quit his station,
because it would badly become a man in his character,
to seek out for refuge, when he saw danger approaching."
These, and many more difficulties, the good governor
had to contend with ; but by God's assistance he over-
came them all, and in the space of two and fifty days,
having completed the whole work, he afterwards held
servation ; ' Then sent Sanballat his servant unto me with an
open letter in his hand.' In refusing him the mark of respect
usually paid to persons of his station, and treating him contemp-
tuously, by sending the letter without the customary appendages,
when presented to persons of respectability, Sanballat offered him
a deliberate insult. Had this open letter come from Geshem,
who was an Arab, it might have passed unnoticed, but as it came
from Sanballat, the governor had reason to expect the ceremony
of inclosing it in a bag, since he was a person of distinction in
the Persian court, and at that time governor of Judea. — Pa.vton's
Illustrations, vol. iii. p. 241. — Ed.
b By ' the house of God within the temple,' (as it is in the
text, Neh. vi. 10.) Shemaiah certainly meant the sanctuary ;
and to advise Nehemiah to retreat thither, he had a good pre-
tence, because it was both a strong and a sacred place, being de-
fended by a guard of Levites, and by its holiness, privileged
from all rude approaches. But his real design herein might be,
not only to disgrace Nehemiah, and dishearten the people, when
they saw their governor's cowardice, but to prepare the way
likewise for the enemies assaulting and taking the city, when
there was no leader to oppose them ; to give countenance to the
calumny that had been spread abroad, of his ai'eeting to be made
king, because he tied upon the report of it; and, perhaps, by the
assistance of some other priests, that were his con federates, either
to destroy him, or to secure his person, until the city was be-
trayed into the enemy's hands. — Patrick's Commentary, and
Poole's Annotations.
c The words of Nehemiah, upon this occasion, ave very sig-
nificant, as well as magnanimous. " Should such a man as i
flee ? ' I, the chief governor, upon whose presence, and coun-
sel, and conduct, the very life and being of the whole city and
nation does, in a great measure, depend : I, who have professed
such resolution, courage, and confidence in God; I, who have
had such eminent experience of God's gracious, and powerful
assistances, of his calling me to this employment, and carrying
me through it, when the danger was greater than now; shall I
dishonour (rod and religion, and betray the people and city ■!'
God by m\ cowardice ? God forbid."
-t z
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C.4G4. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. part op HAG. ZECH. MAL.
a dedication " of the walls and gates of Jerusalem,
with such solemnity and magnificence as a work of that
nature required.
To this purpose he separated the priests, the Levites,
and the princes of the people, into two companies, one
of which walked to the right hand, and the other to the
left, on the top of the walls. The two companies which
were to meet at the temple in their procession, were at-
tended with music, both vocal and instrumental. When
they came to the temple, they there read the law, offered
sacrifices, and made great rejoicings ; and as the feast
of tabernacles happened at the same time, they failed not
to celebrate it with great solemnity.
When the walls were finished, Nehemiah, to prevent
any treachery from his enemies, either within or with-
out the city, b gave the charge of the gates to his bro-
ther Hainan i, and to Hananiah, marshal of his palace, c
two men in whom he could confide; commanding them
not to sutler the gates to be opened till some time after
sunrising-, to see them safe barred at night, and to set
the watch, which should consist of settled housekeepers
that were careful and diligent men. And for the still
farther security of the city, observing that the d number
of its inhabitants was too few, he ordered that the prin-
cipal men of the nation should there fix their habitations,
and, at the same time, caused the rest to cast lots,
a Dedication is a religious ceremony, whereby any temple,
altar, and vessel thereunto belonging, is, by the pronunciation of
a certain form of blessing, consecrated to the service of God ; and
this dedication, we may observe, extends not only to things
sacred, but to cities and their walls, and sometimes to private
houses, (Deut. xx. 5.) As, therefore, Moses in the wilderness
dedicated the tabernacle, and Solomon the temple, when he had
finished it; so Nehemiah, having put things in good order, built
the walls and set up the gates, thought proper to dedicate the
city, as a place which God himself had chosen, and sanctified by
his temple and gracious presence ; and by this dedication, to re-
store it to him again, after it had been laid waste, and profaned
by the devastation of the heathens. — Patrick's Commentary, and
Poole's Annotations.
/' Nehemiah, very likely, was now returning to Shushan to
give the king an account of the state of affairs in Judea, and
therefore he took care to place such men in the city as he knew
would faithfully secure it in his absence. Hanani is said to be
his brother; but he chose his officers, not out of partial views to
his own kindred, but because he knew that they would acquit
themselves in their employment with a strict fidelity. Hanani
had given proof of his zeal for God and his country, in his taking
a tedious journey from Jerusalem to Shushan, to inform Nehe-
miah of the sad estate of Jerusalem, and to implore his helping
hand to relieve it, chap, i. And the reason why Nehemiah put
such trust and confidence in Hananiah was, because he was a
man of conscience, and acted upon religious principles, which
would keep him from those temptations to perfidiousness which
he might probably meet with in his absence, and against which
a man, destitute of the fear of God, has no sufficient fence
Patrick's Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
C So the house which was built for Nehemiah's residence
might justly he called, because he livid there in great splendour,
though wholly at bis own charge, aud as the king's viceroy,
there gave audience to the people, as a king is wont in his pal-
ace.— Patrick's Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
d One reason why the bulk of the Jews (who were originally
, and lovers of agriculture) might rather choose to live in
tiie country than at Jerusalem was, because it was more suited
to their genius and manner of life. But at this time their ene-
mies were so enraged to see the walls built again, and so restless
in their designs to keep the city from rising to its former splen-
dour, that it terrified many from coming to dwell there, thinking
themselves more safe in the country, where their enemies had
no pretence to disturb them. — Le Gere's and Patrick's Com-
mentaries.
e whereby a tenth part of the whole people of Judah and
Benjamin / became obliged to dwell at Jerusalem,
though those who came voluntarily were better re-
ceived.
While the walls of the city were building, there hap-
pened a kind of mutiny among the common people,
which might have been of fatal consequence, had it not
been timely composed : for the rich, taking the advan-
tage of the meaner sort, had s exacted heavy usury of
them, insomuch, that they made them pay the centesima
for all the money that was lent them, that is, one per
cent, for every month, which amounted to twelve per
cent, for the whole year. This oppression reduced them
so low, that they were forced to mortgage their^ lands,
houses, and tenements, and even to sell their children
into servitude h to have » wherewith to buy bread for
e Though the casting of lots be certainly forbidden, where the
thing is done out of a spirit of superstition, or with a design to
tempt God; yet, on some occasions, it is enjoined by God him-
self; and the most holy persons both in the Old and New Testa-
ment, in particular cases, have practised it. The wise man ac-
knowledges the usefulness of this custom, when he tells us, ' that the
lot causeth contention to cease, and parteth between the mighty,"
Prov. xviii. IS ; and therefore it was no bad policy (as things now
stood) to take this method of decision, since the lot, which all
allowed was under the divine direction, falling upon such a per-
son, rather than another, would be a great means, no doubt,
to make him remove more contentedly to the city. — Pa-
trick's Commentary, and Calmet's Dictionary, under the word
Lot.
f These were the two tribes that anciently possessed Jerusa-
lem, which stood partly in one tribe, and partly in the other : for
which reason, in some places of Scripture, Jerusalem is reckoned
as belonging to the children of Judah, Josh. xv. 62, and Judg.
viii. 28; and in others, to the children of Benjamin, Judg.
xxi. 2S; but what part of the city belonged to the one, and
what to the other, is not so well agreed among learned
men. Since these two tribes, however, were the ancient inhab-
itants of the city, there was all the reason in the world, why, in
this scarcity of inmates, they, above any others, should be
obliged to come and dwell there. — Patrick's Commentary .
g This usury was the more grievous, because it was not only
contrary to their law, and demanded at a time when they were
hard at work, and their enemies threatening to destroy them all ;
but, as some have observed, that the twentieth of Ahasuerus
(wherein this was done) began about the end of a sabbatical year
after the law, which forbade every creature to exact any debt of
' his neighbour or his brother,' Deut. xv. 2, had been so fre-
quently read. This raised the cry of the poor to a greater
height, having been forced to sell their children, and deprived
now of all power of redeeming them, because their lands were
mortgaged to those oppressors. — Patrick's Commentary.
h As to the paternal power of the Hebrews, the law gave them
leave to sell their daughters, (Exod. xxi. 7) ; but the sale was a
sort of marriage, as it was with the Romans. Fathers sold their
children to their creditors, (Isaiah 1. 1); and in the time of Nehe-
miah, the poor proposed to sell their children for something to
live upon; and others bewailed themselves that they had not
wherewith to redeem their children that were already in slavery.
They had the power of life and death over their children, (Prov.
xix. 18). But they had not so much liberty as the Romans, to
make use of this severe privilege without the knowledge of the
magistrate. The law of God only permitted the father and mo-
ther, after they had tried all sorts of correction at home, to
declare to the elders of the city that their son was stubborn and
rebellious; and upon their complaint he was condemned to death
and stoned, (Deut. xxi. 19). The same law was in force at
Athens. — Fleury's Hist, of the Israelites, p. 140. — Ed.
i Not long before this there had been a great scarcity for
want of rain, which God thought proper to withhold, in pun-
ishment for the people's taking more care to build their own
houses than his, as we read, Hag. i. 9, &c. In which time the
rich had no compassion on their poor brethren, but forced them
to part with all they had for bread; and cow (what made them
Skct. II.J
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
731
nanciug any manner of oppression, that he did not ex
act the daily revenue of forty shekels of silver, and the
constant furniture of his table with provisions ; but re-
mitted these and all other advantages of his place, that
might any way be troublesome and chargeable to the
people. Nay, he not only refused the allowance which
was due to him as governor, but, at his own charge, °
kept open house, entertaining every day at his table a
hundred and fifty of the Jews, and their rulers, besides
strangers ; for which he constantly allowed an ox, six
fat sheep, and fowl in proportion, and, on every tenth
day, wine of all sorts. Besides this, he gave 2 many
rich presents to the temple ; and, by his generous exam-
ple, encouraged others, both princes and people, to do
the like.
Thus Nehemiah, with great honour and applause,
having executed the commission with which he was sent
to Jerusalem, at the expiration of the time which was
allowed him, he returned to Shushan, according to his
promise to the king. But before he did that, c Ezra the
learned scribe, at the request of the people, produced
the book of the law, which he had now completed, and
having divided the company into several parts, he, with
thirteen priests more, read from a wooden pulpit, d and
as he went along, expounded it to them. e This they
A. M. 3175. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 4G4. EZRA iv. 7— esu, EST. NEH. tart of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
the support of themselves and their families ; which being
a manifest breach of the law of (iod (for 1 that forbids
all the race of Israel to take usury of any of their bre-
thren), Nehemiah, as soon as he was informed thereof,
resolved to remove so great an iniquity. And, accord-
ingly, having called a general assembly of the people,
wherein he set before them the nature of the offence,
how great a breach it was of the divine law, and how
heavy an oppression upon their brethren ; what handle
it might give their enemies to reproach them ; and how
much it might provoke the wrath of God against them
all ; he caused it to be enacted, by the general suffrage
of the whole assembly, that every one should return to
his brother whatever he had exacted of him upon usury ;
and should likewise release all the lands, houses, and
tenements, that he had, at any time, taken of him upon
mortgage ; which act presently removed all uneasiness,
and pacified the minds of the people. a
The governor himself indeed was so far from counte-
1 Exod. xxii. 25.
still more miserable) another dearth was come upon them,
which might easily happen, from the multitude of people that
were employed in the repair of the walls; from the building-
work, which hindered them from providing for their families
some other way; and from the daily dread they had of their ene-
mies, which might keep them from going abroad to fetch in
urovision, and the country people from bringing it in. — Patrick's
Commentary, and Poole's Annotations.
a In the text, Neh. ch. v. 15, it is said, ' even their ser-
vants bare rule over the people.' By these words it is evident
that some oppressive practices are referred to. They probably
relate to the forcible taking away of provisions from the people
by the servants of former governors. In these countries this was
no uncommon thing; many instances of it might be easily pro-
duced : the one which follows may, however, suffice. After the
jealousy of the poor oppressed Greeks, lest they snouid he pil-
laged, or more heavily loaded with demands by the Turks, had
prevented their voluntarily supplying the Baron du Tott for his
money, Ali Aga undertook the business, and upon the Molda-
vian pretending not to understand the Turkish language, he
knocked him down with his fist, and kept kicking him while he
was rising, which brought him to complain in Turkish of his
beating him so, when he knew very well they were poor people,
who were often in want of necessaries, and whose princes scarcely
left them the air they breathed. " Pshaw! thou art joking,
friend," was the reply of Ali Aga, "thou art in want of nothing
except of being basted a little oftener. But all in good time.
Proceed we to business. I must instantly have two sheep, a
dozen of pigeons, fifty pounds of bread, four oques (a Turkish
weight of about forty-two ounces) of butter, with salt, pepper,
nutmeg, cinnamon, lemons, wine, salad, and good oil of olives,
all in great plenty." With tears the Moldavian replied : " I have
already told you that we are poor creatures, without so much as
bread to eat; where must we get cinnamon?" The whip was
taken from under his habit, and the Moldavian beaten till he
could bear it no longer, but was forced to fly, finding Ali Aga
inexorable, and that these provisions must be produced. A
quarter of an hour was not expired, within which time Ali Aga
required these thing-;, before they were all brought. — Memoirs,
vol. i. part ii. p. 10; and Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. p.
831. — It was nearly dark when we reached the town, if a long
Straggling village may bear this appellation. Ibrahim rode first,
and had collected a few peasants around him, who we could just
discern by their white habits, assembled near his house. In
answer to his inquiries respecting provisions for the party, they
replied, in an humble tune, that they had consumed all the food
in their houses, and had nothing left to oiler. Instantly the
noise of Ibrahim's lash about their heads and shoulders made
them believe that he was the herald of a party of Turks, and
they fled in all directions. This was the only way, he said, to
make those misbegotten dogs provide any thing for our supper.
It was quite surprising to see how such lusty fellows, any one of
whom was more than a match for Ibrahim, suffered themselves
ti be horse-whipped, and driven from their homes, owing to the
2 Neh. vii. 70, &c.
dread in which they hold a nation of stupid and cowardly
Mahometans.' — Clarke's Travels, vol. iii. p. G14.' — Ed,
I) From this great and daily expense, it seems most probable,
either that Nehemiah had large remittances from the Persian
court, even besides his own estate, to answer it, or that he did
not continue at Jerusalem for the whole twelve years together:
or tViat, if he did, he did not continue this expensive way of
house-keeping all the time, but only during the great and present
exigencies and distresses of the Jews, which ceased in a good
measure after that the walls were built, the act against usury
passed, and the people discharged to their ordinary course of
maintaining themselves and families. — Poole's Annotations, and
Le Clerc's Commentary.
c This Ezra, without all controversy, was the same Ezra who
came from Babylon to Jerusalem, in the seventh of Artaxerxes,
with a full commission to assist Zerubbabel in the reformation of
the whole state of the Jewish church. After the death of Zerub-
babel, the whole administration devolved upon him; but as his
commission iasted but twelve years, upon its expiration Nehe-
miah succeeded to the government, and we hear no more of
Ezra, until he is here called upon to read and expound the law to
the people; whether, as some think, he returned to Babylon, to
give the people an account of affairs in the province of Judea, or
whether, in this intermediate time, he employed himself, in
some retirement, in the great work of preparing a new and cur-
rent edition of the Holy Scriptures, of which we shall give a full
account in our next section. — Patrick's Commentary, and Poole's
Annotations.
d This pulpit was to raise him up higher than the people, the
better to be seen and heard by them ; but we are not to think
that it was made in the fashion of ours, which will hold no more
than one person : for, as we may observe by the very next words,
it was made large and long enough to contain fourteen people at
once. — Patrick's Commentary.
c The words in the text (Neh. viii. S,) are, 'so they read in
the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and
caused them to understand the reading.' The Israelites having
been lately brought out of the Babylonish captivity, in which
they had continued seventy years, according to the prediction
of Jeremiah, (xx. 11,) were not only extremely corrupt, but it
appears that they had in general lost the knowledge of the
ancient Hebrew to such a degree, that when the book of the law
was read, they did not understand it: but a certain Levite stood
by, and gave the sense, that is, translated into the Chaldee
dialect. This was not only the origin of the Chaldee targums,
oi translations of the law and the proi liets into that tongue; but
732
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A M. 3170. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4347.
all listened to with a very devout attention, a and cele-
brated the ensuing feast of tabernacles with great glad-
ness of heart ; and, on a day appointed for a solemn fast,
confessing their own sins, in deprecating the judgments
due to the iniquity of their fathers ; acknowledging the
omnipotence of God in creating and preserving all
things, and enumerating his gracious mercies in their
sundry deliverances from their enemies and persecutors,
they made a covenant with him, that they would walk in
his law, which was given by Moses ; and, to b oblige
themselves to a more strict performance of this covenant,
it was ordered to be engrossed, that the prince, priests,
and Levites, might set their " hands and seals to it; and
those who did not set their seals, of what age, sex, or
condition soever, did bind themselves with an oath,
punctually to observe it.
But, notwithstanding all this precaution, Nehemiah had
not been long gone from Jerusalem, before the people
relapsed into their old corruptions ; which, in a great
measure, was owing to the mismanagement of d Eliashib
was also, in all probability, the origin of preaching from a text;
/or it appears that the people were not only ignorant of their
ancient language, but also of the rites and ceremonies of their
religion, having been so long in Babylon, where they were not
permitted to observe them. This being the case, not cnly the
language must be interpreted, but the meaning of the rites and
ceremonies must also be explained; for we find from ver. 13,
&c. of this chapter, that they had even forgotten the feast of
tabernacles, and every thing relating to that ceremony. As we
, no where find that what is called preaching on or expounding a
text, was even in use before that period, we are probably beholden
to the Babylonish captivity for producing, in the hand of Divine
providence, a custom the most excellent and beneficial ever in-
troduced among men. — Br A. Clarke.- — Ed.
a The words in the text are, ' since the days of Joshua, the
son of Nun, unto that day, had not the children of Israel done so,
and there was very great gladness,' (Neh. viii. 17.) But it can
hardly be thought that this festival had never been observed
since Joshua's time; because we read in the foregoing book of
Ezra, that it was kept at their return from Babylon ; but the
nn aniiig is, that the joy since that time had never been so great
as it was upon this occasion; for which the Jews themselves
assign this reason, namely, that in the days of Joshua they rejoiced,
because they had got possession of the land of Canaan, and now
they equally rejoiced, because they were restored, and quietly
settled in it, after they had been long cast out of it. — Patrick's
Commentary ■.
b The observances, which they chiefly obliged themselves to
in this covenant, were, 1st, not to make intermarriages with the
Gentiles. 2dly, to observe the sabbaths and sabbatical years.
3dly, to pay their annual tribute for the reparation and service
of tin; temple. And, 4thly, to pay their tithes and first-fruits
for the maintenance of the priests and Levites: from which par-
ticulars, thus named in this covenant, we may learn what were
the laws of God, which hitherto they had been most neglective
of, since their return from the captivity. — Prideaxix's Connection,
anno 111.
c It signifies little, indeed, what such untoward people promis-
ed ; for what regard would they have to their own hand-writing,
who regarded not the ten commandments, written on tables of
stone by the finger of God? It was very useful, however, that
there should be a public instrument to convince them of their
impiety, and that they might be publicly confounded when they
proved perfidious deserters, by showing them, under their own
hands, their engagements to future fidelity. — Patrick's Comment.
d Some are apt to imagine, that this Eliashib was no more than
a common priest, because he is said to have had ' the oversight
of the chambers of the house of God,' (Neh. xiii. 4,) which was
an office too mean, as tin y think, for the high-priest. But we
cannot sec why the oversight of the ' chambers of the house of
God ' may not import the whole government of the temple, which
certainly belonged to the high-priest only; nor can we conceive
how any une that was Jess tfcs pvernor *>*' the whole
A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. r-ARr OF HAG. ZECH. MAL.
the high-priest, who, being by marriage allied to Tobiah,
the Jews' great enemy, had allowed him an apartment in
the temple, in the very place where the offerings, and
other things appertaining1 to the priests and Levites,
used to be reposited. So that when Nehemiah returned
from the Persian court with a new commission for the
reforming of all abuses, both in church and state, he was
not a little surprised to find such a gross profanation of
the temple, and that chambers should be provided in the
house of God for one who was a declared enemy to his
worship.
He therefore resolved to put an end to this ; but found
himself under a necessity of proceeding with caution
in the affair, because e Tobiah had insinuated himself
into the good opinion of most of the people, and espe-
cially those of note. The first step therefore that he
took towards this reformation was to convince them of
their error, by causing the book of the law to be read
publicly, and in the hearing of all the people ; so that
when the reader came to that place in Deuteronomy,
wherein it is commanded that ' an Ammonite or Moabite
/ ' should not come into the congregation of God, even
1 Deut. xxiii. 3.
temple could make so great an innovation in it. He was assis-
tant, indeed, in the reparation of the walls of the city; but ex-
cepting this one act, where do we read of his doing any thing
worthy of memory, towards the reforming of what was amiss
in church or state, in the times either of Ezra or Nehemiah?
And yet we cannot but presume, that had he joined with them
in so good a work, some mention would have been made of it in
the books written by them. Since, therefore, instead of this, we
find it recorded in Ezra, (chap. x. 18,) that the pontifical house
was, in his time, grown very corrupt, and, not improbably, by
his connivance, began to marry into heathen families, (Neh. xiii.
28,) it seems most likely that it was Eliashib the high-priest
who was the author of this great profanation of the house of God ;
but as he might die before Nehemiah returned from Babylon, for
this reason we hear nothing of the governor's reprehending him
for it. — Prideau.v,s Connection, anno 428.
e By his making two alliances with families of great note
among the Jews: for Johanan his son had married the daughter
of Meshullam the son of Berechiah, (Neh. vi. 18 — iii. 4,) who
was one of the chief managers of the building of Jerusalem, under
the direction of the governor; and he himself had married the
daughter of Shechaniah the son of Arah, another great man
among the Jews ; by which means he had formed an interest,
and was looked upon as a worthy man, though (being an Am-
monite) he could not but bear a national hatred to all that were
of the race of Israel. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 428.
f They who, by 'the congregation of God,' in this place, do
understand ' the public assemblies for divine worship,' lie under
a great mistake ; for no man of any nation was forbidden to come
and pray to God in the temple. Men of all nations, indeed, that
were willing to become proselytes, were admitted into the Jew-
ish communion; and, if they submitted to be circumcised, were
allowed to eat the passover, and to enjoy all the privileges that
true Israelites did, except only in the case of marriage ; and
therefore this phrase of not ' entering into the congregation of the
Lord,' must be understood to mean no more than a prohibition of
marriage ; for this, according to their rabbins, was the case of
such prohibitions. None of the house of Israel, of either sex,
were to enter into marriage with any Gentiles, of what nation
soever, unless they were first converted to their religion, aud
became entire proselytes to it; and even in that case, some were
debarred from it for ever; others only in part; and others again
only for a limited time. Of the first sort were all of the seven
nations of the Canaanites, mentioned in Deut. vii ; of the second
sort were the Moabites and the Ammonites, whose males were
excluded for ever, but not their females ; and of the third sort
were the Edomites and Egyptians, with whom the Jews might
not marry until the third generation; but with all others who
were not of these three excepted sorts, they might freely make
intermarriages whenever they became thorough proselytes to
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
"33
A. M. 3-175. A. C. 529; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4847. A
to the tenth generation for ever :1 they being- sensible of
their transgression in this respect, separated themselves
immediately from the mixed multitude, which gave Neh-
emiah an easy opportunity of getting rid of Tobiah,
who was an Ammonite ; and therefore he ordered the
people, while they were in this good disposition, to cast
his furniture out of the sacred chambers, and to have
them cleansed again, and restored to their former use.
Among other corruptions that grew up during the
governor's absence, there was one of which, as he was a
constant frequenter of the public worship, he could not
but take notice, and that was, the neglect of carrying on
the daily service of the house of God, in a proper and
decent manner. For the tithes, which were to maintain
the ministers of the temple in their offices and stations,
being either embezzled by the high-priest, or withheld
by the laity, for want of them the Levites and singers
were driven from the temple into the country, to find a
subsistence some other way : and therefore, to remedy
this abuse, he forthwith ordered the people to bring in
their tithes of corn, wine, and oil, into the treasury of
the temple ; and having appointed proper officers to
receive and distribute them, he recalled the absent min-
isters, and restored everything to its former order.
The neglect of the service of God had introduced a
profanation of the sabbath : for, during Nehemiah's ab-
sence, the Jews had not only done all manner of servile
works on that day, but had permitted strangers, Tyrians,
and others, to come and sell their fish, and other com-
modities, publicly in the streets of Jerusalem. Against
these wicked and irregular practices, Nehemiah remon-
strated to the chief men of the city with some warmth ;
and, to let them see that he was resolved to make a
thorough reformation in this matter, he gave a strict
order, that towards the evening, before their sabbath
began, the city gates should be shut, and not opened,
until the sabbath was over : and to have this order more
duly executed, he appointed b some of his own servants
for the present to guard the gates, that no burden might
pass through on the sabbath day. So that when the
merchants and other dealers came, and, finding the gates
shut against them, took up their lodgings without the
walls in hopes of selling to the country people, though
their religion. At present, however, because, through the con-
fusions which have since happened in all nations, it is not to be
known who is an Ammonite, who an Edomite, a Moabite, or an
Egyptian, they hold this prohibition to have been long out of
date, and that now, any gentile, as soon as proselyted to their
religion, may immediately be admitted to make intermarriages
with them. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 428.
a The method of purifying any tiling or person that was legal-
ly unclean is thus described : — ' For an unclean person, they
shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin,'
(that is, of the heifer that was sacrificed on the great day of
expiation), ' and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel,'
which being afterwards strained oil' and kept for this purpose, ' a
clean person,' that is, the priest (for to him the work of purify-
ing is appropriated, Lev. xiii.) ' shall sprinkle upon the unclean
person;' and on the seventh day at even, after having bathed
himself, and washed his clothes, he shall be deemed clean; but it
is very likely that things inanimate were, immediately upon their
being sprinkled with this water of separation, as it is called,
(Numb. xix. 9) reputed clean. — Patrick's Commentary.
b It seems as if matters were come to that pass, that he could
not trust the common porters of the gates, and therefore appointed
some of his own domestics (who, he knew, would neither be care-
less nor corrupted) to see that the gates were shut, am! all traffic
prohibited — Patrick's Commentary.
C. 464. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. PART of HAG. ZECH. MAI*
they could not to the citizens, the next day he threatened
to take them into custody, if they did not go about their
business ; and to this purpose, appointed a guard of
Levites c to take up their station at the gate, and to stop
all comers in, that might any way profane the sabbath.
Another reformation, and the last indeed that we find
recorded of Nehemiah, was his dissolution of unlawful
marriages among the Jews. Their law strictly forbade
them to make intermarriages with any foreign nations,
either by giving their daughters to them for wives, or by
taking their daughters to themselves ; but, since their
return from captivity, people of all conditions had paid
so little regard to this command, that even the pontifical
house, which of all others ought to have set a better
example, was become polluted with such impure mixtures,
insomuch that Joiada the high priest had a son, who
married the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite, who,
at that time, very probably was governor of Samaria.
These mixed marriages, besides many other damages
that accrued to the state, would, in a short time, as he
observed to them, quite corrupt their native language,
d because he perceived, that the children already began
to smatter the speech of their foreign parent ; e and
therefore he required them all, under the penalties /
c The reason why he appointed the Levites to this office of
keeping the gates on the sabbath-day, was, because he not only
thought, that, by virtue of their character, they would meet with
more deference and respect than his domestic servants, but that
when he and his servants were gone from Jerusalem, he was
resolved to have this watch continued, until this evil custom of
admitting dealers into the city on the sabbath-day was quite
broken . — Patrick's Commentary
d What the natural language of the Jews at this time was
whether the Hebrew or Chaldee, is matter of some inquiry
among the learned. Those who suppose that it was Hebrew,
produce the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, besides the
prophecies of Daniel, which, for the most part, were written in
Hebrew, and which they suppose the authors of them would not
have done, if Hebrew at that time had not been the vulgar
language. But to this it is replied, that these Jewish authors
might make use of the Hebrew language in which they wrote,
not only because the things which they recorded concerned the
Jewish nation only, among whom there were learned men
enough to explain them ; but chiefly because they were minded
to conceal what they wrote from the Chaldeans, who at that time
were their lords and masters, and, considering all circumstances
might not perhaps have been so well pleased with them, had they
understood the contents of their writings. Since it appears
then, say they, by several words occurring in the books of Mac-
cabees, the New Testament, and Josephus, that the language
which the Jews then spoke was Chaldee; that this language
they learned in their captivity, and, after their return from it,
never assumed their ancient Hebrew tongue, so as to speak it
vulgarly, it hence must follow, that what is here called the lan-
guage of the Jcivs, and their native tongue, was at that time no
other than the Chaldee, for the ancient Hebrew was only pre-
served among the learned. — Lc Clcrc's Commentary.
e From Nehemiah xiii. 23, 21, it appears that there were
children in the same family by Jewish and Philistine mothers.
As the Jewish mother would always speak to her children in
Hebrew or Chaldee, so they learned to speak these languages;
and as the Ashdod mother would always speak to her children
in the Ashdod language, so they learned that tongue. Thus there
were in the same family children who could not understand each
other; half, or one part, speaking one language and the other part
another. Children of different wives did not ordinarily mingle
together; and the wives had separate apartments. This is a
better explanation than that the same child spoke a jargon half
Ashdod and half Hebrew. — Dr A. Clarke. — Ed.
f There are some things in the text, which, as they are made to
proceed from Nehemiah's own mouth, and appear in our transla-
tion,sound a little oddly: T contended with them, and cursed them
and smote certain of them, anil plucked oil' their hair,' c. xiii. 25,
73 1
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 8*75. A. C. 5-:S; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947.
which he inflicted upon some that were obstinate, to put
away their wives, and to have no more communion of that
kind with any foreign nation : in which he proceeded
with such impartiality, that when the son of Joiada re-
fused to quit his wife, he ordered him immediately to de-
part the country ; a which accordingly he did, and with
several others that were in the like circumstances, went
and settled under his father-in-law in Samaria.
These were some of the reformations which Nehe-
miah, as a wise and pious governor, made in the Jewish
church and state. But after his death, it was not long-
before the people relapsed into the same enormities ; for
which reason we find Malachi, b the last prophet under
the law ; who, not long after Haggai and Zechariah,
must have lived in the time of Nehemiah, reproving- the
But the sense ot these words is no more than this: — 'I con-
tended with them,' that is, I expostulated the matter with them.
' I cursed them,' that is, excommunicated them, in the doing of
which I denounced God's judgments against them, 'I smote cer-
tain of them,' that is ordered the officers to beat some of the most
notorious offenders, either with rods or with scourges, according
to Deut. xxv. 2, ' And I plucked off their hair,' that is, I com-
manded them to be shaved, thereby to put them to shame, and
make them look like vile slaves: for as the hair was esteemed a
great ornament among eastern nations, so baldness was accounted
a great disgrace; and to inflict these several punishments upon
them, Nehemiah had a sufficient provocation, because in their
marrying with heathen nations, they had acted contrary, not only
to the express law of God, but to their own late solemn covenant
and promise, Ezrax. 19. — Poole 's Annotations. [The author of
tins note, by the phrase ' plucking off the hair,' (Neh. xiii. 25)
understands shaving the head ; but there is no reason for departing
from the literal sense of the words in our version, particularly
as the words signify to pluck off with violence, as if one were
plucking a live bird. The same word is used in the same sense
Ezra ix. 3, ' plucked off the hair of my head, and of my beard.'
Also in Isaiah 1. (5, ' I gave my cheeks to them that plucked off
the hair.' Not only was this mode of punishment practised
among the Jews, but it was also common in Persia, and some-
times hot ashes were put upon the skin after the hair was
torn off, in order to make the pain the more exquisite. — See
Home's Introduction, Pa.vton's Illustrations, and Gesen. Heb.
Le >\ — Ed.]
a Josephus relates the matter, as if this expulsion had been
ellected by the power of the great Sanhedrim: but whether
the Sanhedrim was at this time in being or no, as we have no
clear footsteps of it until the time of Judas Maccabteus, there
was no occasion for their interposing, since Nehemiah, no doubt
as governor of the province, had authority enough to banish him
out of Judea, as Bertram, (On the Jewish Republic, c. 13.) ex-
pounds the phrase, ' I chased him from me,' (Neh. xiii. 28.)
b Whether the word Malachi be the proper name of a man, or
only a generical name to denote an angel, a messenger, a pro-
phet, or the like, has been a matter of some inquiry. From the
prophet Haggai, (chap. i. 13,) and this other, whom we cite under
the name of Malachi, (chap. iii. 1,) it appears, that in these times
the name of Malach- Jehovah, or the messenger of the Lord, was
often given to prophets; and under this title, the Septuagint have
characterized, and the fathers of the Christian church have fre-
quently quoted, this prophetic writer. But the author of the
Lives ol the Prophets, under the name of Epiphanius Dorotheus,
tells us, that this writer was of the tribe of Zebulun, a native of
Sapha, and that the name of Malachi was given him, because an
angel used visibly to appear to the people after the prophet had
spoken to them, to confirm what he had said ; though most of the
ancient Jews, as well as the Chaldee paraphrast, were of opinion
that Malachi was no other than Ezra under a borrowed name.
However this be, it is agreed on all hands, that he was the last
of the prophets of the synagogue, and lived about 40(1 years
before Christ; of whose coming, and the coming of his fore-
runner John the Baptist, and of whose religion, and the in-
stitution of a catholic and universal church, in the room of the
Jewish, he speaks in very full and express terms, (chap. iii. 1.)
— Calnufs Dictionary under the word.
A. C. 461. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. r.uir of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
priests for their iniquity and scandalous lives, and up-
braiding the people with their neglect of the worship of
God ; with their refusal to pay their tithes and offer-
ings ; with their divorcing- their own wives, and marrying'
strange women ; and with their inhumanity and cruel
usage of their indigent brethren ; the very same enormi-
ties which this good governor laboured to reform.
How long after this Nehemiah lived at Jerusalem, is
uncertain : it is most likely, however, that, notwithstand-
ing all the revolutions c in the Persian court, he conti-
nued in his government to the time of his death, but when
that happened, it is no where said ; only we may ob-
serve, that at the time when he ends his book he couid
not be much less than seventy years old.
CHAP. II. — Objections answered and Difficulties
obviated.
The Jewish law against marrying with heathens runs
thus : — l ' When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into
the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast
out many nations before thee, — Thou shalt not make
marriages with them ; thy daughter thou shalt not give
unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take to thy son.
And the reason of the law is assigned in the following
verse : ' For they will turn away thy sons from following
me, that they may serve other gods : for did not Solo-
mon 2 king of Israel,' as Nehemiah argues with the peo-
ple, ' sin by these things ?' And if so great a one as
he, who excelled all mankind in wisdom, was not safe
from the seducement of these outlandish women, how
shall ye be able to preserve yourselves from their entice-
ments ? And yet, as Moses goes on in his reasoning, 3
' Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God ; and
the Lord hath chosen thee to be a special people unto
himself above all the people that are upon the face of
the earth.'
Here then is an express law, enforced with weighty
1 Deut. vii. 1, 2, 3, 4. 2 Neh. xiii. 26.
3 Deut. vii. 6.
c Upon the death of Artaxerxes, (in Scripture called Ahasue-
rus,) Xerxes, his only son by his queen, for he had several by his
concubines, and among these, the most famous were Sogdianus,
(Jehus, and Arsites, succeeded in the Persian throne ; but, by the
treachery of one of his eunuchs, Sogdianus came upon him while
he was drunk, and, after he had reigned no more than five and
forty days, slew him, and seized on the. kingdom. But his un-
just possession did not hold long, for his brother Ochus, being
then governor of Hyrcania, raised a considerable army, and, hav-
ing gained many of the nobility and governors of provinces to his
interest, marched against him, and, under a pretence of a treaty,
having got him into his power, threw him headlong into ashes, a
punishment used among the Persians for very enormous crimi-
nals ; so that, after he had reigned only six months and fifteen days,
he died a very miserable death, and was succeeded by Ochus;
who as soon as he was settled in the kingdom, took the name of
Darius, and is therefore by historians called Darius Nothus, and
after he had slain his brother Arsites, who thought to have sup-
planted him, as he had done Sogdianus, and Sogdianus, Xerxes,
and suppressed several other insurrections against him, continued
to sway the Persian sceptre for nineteen years, but whether he or
Nehemiah, his governor of Judea, died first, we have no certain
account : all that we know is that the last act of the governor's
reformation, namely, his dissolution of strange marriages, was in
the fifteenth year of this prince's reign, and consequently but four
before his death. — Pridcau.v's Connection, anno 425.
SliCT. II.]
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735
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reasons, against these pagan marriages : and therefore, \
since whatever is done contrary to the law, is ipso facto
null and void, these marriages with idolatrous women,
which were strictly forbidden by God, were, properly
speaking, no marriages at all ; and the children which
proceeded from them, were in no better condition than
those whom we call bastards. l No interposition of civil
authority was therefore needful to dissolve these mar-
riages. The infidelity of the party espoused was as much
an interdiction, as any of the most proximate degTec of
consanguinity, which, by the laws of all civilized na-
tions, is known to vacate the marriage.
But even suppose that the civil authority thought pro-
per to interpose in this matter, yet, wherein had the Jews
any reason to complain, if in just punishment for their
wilful breach of a known and positive law, they were
excluded from cohabiting with these illegal wives ? The
Jews, I say, especially, who for every light and trivial
cause a made no scruple even to give their lawful wives
a bill of divorcement, and might therefore, with much
less difficulty, be supposed willing to repudiate those
whom the laws of their God, for fear of their catching
the infection of idolatry, had forbidden them to live
with.
St Paul, indeed, is not for 'turning away an unbeliev-
ing wife,' in case she is ' willing to dwell with her hus-
band ;' but then he supposes, that this couple were mar-
ried when they were both heathens, and in a state of
infidelity, in which case there was no law, either divine
or human, forbidding them to marry, whereas in these
Jewish marriages with pagans the prohibition is strict ;
and therefore, as there was no sin in their coming toge-
ther at first, and the Christian religion, whether it was
the man or the woman that embraced it, made no altera-
tion in the case, his advice is, that they continue to dwell
together, even though they be of different persuasions in
matters of religion ; because, as he farther adds this
reason, 2 ' the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the
wife ; and how knowest thou, O man, but that by thy
peaceable cohabitation with her, thou niayest convert,
and save thy wife ?'
Though therefore the apostle is not for encouraging
any separation between husband and wife upon account
of their difference in religion, when their marriage was
previous to either of their conversions to Christianity ;
yet, if we will make him consistent with himself, we
must allow, that he is utterly averse to all mixed mar-
riages with infidels, when in his following epistle he
advises all Christians, 3 ' Not to be unequally yoked
together with unbelievers ; for what communion,' says he,
1 has light with darkness, or what concord has Christ
with Belial ?' &c. Whereby he gives us to think, that
he esteemed all marriage with heathens illegal, and that,
1 Patrick's Commentary on Ezra x. 3.
3 2 Cor. vi. 14.
2 1 C(
16.
a The school of Shammah, who lived a little before our Saviour,
taught, that a man could not lawfully he divorced from his wife,
unless he had found her guilty of some action which was really
infamous, and contrary to the rules of virtue. But the school of
Ilillel, who was Shammah's disciple, taught, on the contrary,
that the least reasons, such as, if she did not dress his int. it well,
if she was not agreeable to him in person or temper, or if he
found any other woman that he liked better, were sufficient to
tmMiorizo a man to put away his wife. — Selden's Uxor. Hebraica,
b. iii. c. IS.
had the apostle, at that time, been either of Ezra's or Ne-
hemiah's council, he would have given his vote for their
dissolution among the Jews.
We own, indeed, that it is a very gracious declaration
of God, ' Behold, all souls are mine, as the soul of the
father, so also the soul of the son is mine ; that soul that
sinneth, it shall die ;' but then we are to consider, that as
life signifies, in general, all that happiness which attends
God's favour, so death denotes all those punishments
which are the effects of divine displeasure ; and among
these, the miseries of the next world are chieffy intended.
These indeed shall be allotted to men, according to their
own demerits, without any regard to the faults of their
forefathers, which shall neither be laid to their charge nor
made an aggravation of their guilt ; but as to temporal
evils and calamities, it cannot well otherwise be, but
that, in the very course of tilings, children should suffer
for the iniquities of their parents.
Though therefore it may seem a little hard, that the
children should be included in their mother's divorce,
yet the laws of most nations have determined this
point : — That children are to follow the condition of their
mothers, be it what it will, and, consequently as they are
unlawfully born, they must of course be alienated from
the family, at the same time that the mother is repudiated,
and in virtue of that very law which declares her marriage
to be null. So that it was no arbitrary act in Ezra to
abdicate the children, as well as the mothers: though,4
to prevent the danger of their corrupting the other chil-
dren of the family, if they were allowed to stay, and of
insinuating themselves so far into their father's affec-
tions, as to prevail with them in time to recall their
ejected wives, might be motive enough to a prudent ruler,
considering the then situation of affairs, to put the law
rigidly in execution. As this however was an act of the
government,whereinEzra, and other good men who feared
the Lord, were concerned, we may reasonably presume,
that some provision was made for the maintenance, and
perhaps the education of these poor children, in the prin-
ciples of the Jewish religion, at the public charge.
How long Nehemiah was in finishing the walls of Je-
rusalem, interpreters are not agreed; because some of
them, supposing the space of two and fifty days, 5 men-
tioned in the Scripture, to be too short for the perfecting
of the whole, have begun their computation from the
time that Nehemiah returned his answer to Sanballat's
first message, and others, from the time that the stone-
wall was finished, and so allow the whole fifty-two
days for the perfecting of the rest. But if we look into
the compass of time, from Nehemiah 's being at Shushan,
to the day of the month when these walls are said to have
been finished, we shall find, that no more than fifty-two
days could well be allowed for the perfecting of the
whole.
It was 6 in the first month, called by the Jews Nisan,
that Nehemiah was at Shushan, and obtained of the king
leave to go to Jerusalem : and though we have no ex-
press account what time he spent in his journey, and
when he came to Jerusalem ; yet if we may make a con-
jecture from the time that Ezra expended in the same jour-
ney, we can scarce suppose that he arrived at Jerusalem
before the end of the fourth month. Ezra set out on
4 Poole's Annotations.
Neb., vi. 15.
Neb. ii. 1.
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[Book VII.
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the first day of the first month. He made a ' short stay
indeed at the river Ahava ; but it was the first day of
the fifth month before he reached Jerusalem. Nehemiah
could not possibly set out so soon in the year, because
his commission * from the king-, and instructions to the
neighbouring governors, must have taken some time in
passing through the several offices : and therefore we
can scarce suppose that he reached Jerusalem sooner
than the time specified ; and from thence to the twenty-
fifth day of the sixth month, (including the three days of
rest that he gave himself before he began,) the space
will be much about fifty-two days, wherein we suppose
that the whole work was finished : 3 for if Alexander the
(ireat, as Arrianus and Curtius relate, built the walls of
Alexandria, which Mas seven miles in compass, in the
space of twenty days, why should it be thought a thing
incredible, that avast number, not of hired but voluntary
men, full of zeal for the work themselves, animated by
the example of their rulers, and ranged and distributed
in a proper manner for dispatch, should, in almost thrice
that space of time, be able to finish a work of less com-
pass , when they had long summer days for it, plenty of
stones, and other materials hard at hand, the foundation
of the wall unrazed, some parts of it standing entire,
only some breaches here and there to be amended ; and
when their design in the whole was, not to study curiosity
but strength, and to provide themselves with such a
fortification for the present, as would secure them from
any sudden invasion of their enemies?
How 4 long Nehemiah continued at the Persian court,
after his return from Jerusalem, the sacred history no-
where informs us. It tells us, indeed, that he came back
again, after certain days; but since the word yamin,
which we render days, does equally signify years, and
in many places of the Hebrew Scriptures is used in that
sense, we cannot but wonder how the generality of chro-
nologers, as well as commentators, came to overlook
this sense of the word, and in so doing, to make Nehe-
miah's stay at Shushan much shorter than it possibly
could be. For since he had been twelve years in reform-
ing what he found amiss among the Jews, and Ezra had
been doing the same for thirteen years before him ;
they must, one would think, have brought their reforma-
tion to such a state and stability, that a little time could
not have been sufficient so totally to have unhinged it:
and therefore we may conclude, that his absence at court,
which gave room for these irregularities to grow to such
an height, was not for certain days, but for some years'
continuance; and consequently that the author of this
part of his life had no intention, either to magnify his
good offices, or to relate any thing incredible concern-
ing him; since, though he acquaints us with sundry cor-
ruptions that had sprung up, yet he makes the time of
his absence, if we take his words in their proper sense,
long enough for that purpose.
That Nehemiah was the writer of the account of his
own government in Judea, for that is the subject of his
book, most interpreters are agreed : 5 and, as he appears
in that character, it cannot misbecome him to cive the
i Em viii. 15, .">1. 2 jfeh. ii. 6, &c.
- Patrick's Commentary, ami Poole's Annotations on Neh. vi 15
1 Prideaux's Connection, anno 42S.
5 Patrick's Commentary on Neh. v, !!».
. C. 4GI. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. i-abt op HAG. ZECH. MAL.
world a narrative how himself behaved in that high, sta-
tion ; though, in doing this, he could not avoid the say-
ing of something in his own commendation, unless he
had been minded, out of his excessive modesty, to con-
ceal from posterity (which it had been invidious to do)
an excellent example of his extraordinary virtue, and
love of his country.
St Paul, no doubt, was a very modest man : 6 he
durst not, as he tells us, make himself of the number,
or compare himself with such as commended themselves ;
and yet, in the very next chapter, (that ' he might stop
the mouths of false apostles, and covetous people,) we
find him telling the Corinthians, that he preached the
gospel to them freely, and without desiring any contri-
butions of them for his necessary support. 8 ' I robbed
other churches,' says he, ' taking wages of them, to do
you service ; and when 1 was present with you, and
wanted, I was chargeable to no man : — for in all things
I have kept myself from being burdensome to you, and
so will I keep myself; as the truth of Christ is in me,
no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions
of Acfaaia ; for what I do, that I will do, that I may cut
ofT occasion from those that desire occasion, that where-
in they glory, they may be found even as we :' and after
all this, can any find fault with Nehemiah, for telling his
reader, that 9 ' what was prepared for me daily, was an
ox and six choice sheep, fowls in proportion, and once
in ten days, store of all sorts of wine; yet for all this,
required not I the bread of the governor,' that is, the
allowances which were made to the governors appointed
by the kings of Persia, to provide them a table, ' because
the bondage was heavy upon this people,' and they not
in a condition, without much difficulty, to maintain them-
selves : wherefore ' think upon me, O God, for good,
according to all that I have done for this people.'
To serve God for nothing, or purely for his own sake,
is a notion that perhaps may comport with our glorified
state, where our service will be attended with vision ;
but, at present, it is too romantic, and what the Author
of our being expects not from us. He who made us,
and set the springs in our nature, knows very well, that
we are principally moved by hopes and fears, and for
this reason has propounded rewards and punishments to
us ; nor did we ever find it, till now, accounted a flaw
in the character of the worthies of old, or an indication
of their mercenary spirits, that, in all their good works
or sufferings, they 10 ' had a respect to the recompence
of the reward, which God, the righteous judge,' had
promised to give unto his faithful servants.
Ezra, no doubt, was at this time a man of great esteem
among his brethren, and no less favoured in the Persian
court : otherwise Artaxerxes would never have granted
him a commission to reform and regulate the afiairs of
the Jewish church, fraught with such ample powers.
Ever since that time, the Jews have looked upon him as
another Moses, who, as Moses was the giver of the law,
revived and restored it, after it had been in a manner
quite lost and extinguished in the Babylonish captivity.
There is some reason to believe therefore, that " ' this
scribe of the law of the God of heaven,' was the usual
title or appellation of honour, whereby Ezra was digni-
2 Cor. x. 12.
Neh. v. IS.
7 2 Cor. xi. 7.
lu Heb. xi. 26.
s Ibid. ver. S, &c.
" Ezra vii. 12.
Sect. UJ]
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737
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529 ; OR, ACCORDING TO KA LES, A. M. 4947. A
fied and distinguished among liis countrymen ; and that
Artaxerxes might take it upon common report, and so
insert it in his commission, as the name whereby he was
generally styled among- the Jews, without ever giving
himself time to consider what was the full purport and
intendment of it.
But if even he did attend to this, yet, as the heathens
had different kinds of gods, celestial, terrestrial, and
infernal, he might easily reconcile this to his own princi-
ples, only by supposing that this God of the Jews was
one of the celestial order, and, though a deity peculiar
to them, might nevertheless be reverenced and worship-
ped by him in conjunction with his other gods.
But, after all, if we reflect a little on the ease and in-
dolence, and, in a manner, total sequestration from all
business, wherein these great monarchs of the east were
used to indulge themselves, we shall find reason to be-
lieve, that Artaxerxes knew nothing of the matter. If
he be the same who goes under the name of Ahasuerus
in the book of Esther, he had been imposed on by
Hainan to consent to a bloody decree against the Jews,
with so little thought and consideration of what he was
about, that 1 he did not so much as remember the person
at whose instigation it was done : and yet, notwithstand-
ing the great mischief which this negligence of his might
have brought upon him, we rind him instantly sinking
into the like sleepy and careless temper. 3 ' Write ye
for the Jews, says he to Mordccai and Esther, ' as it
liketh you, in the king's name, and seal it with the king's
ring,' and whatever is thus wrote and sealed, no man
may reverse. And, by parity of reason, why may we
not suppose, that when Ezra applied to court for his
commission, the whole form of drawing it up was referred
to him, and such other Jews as he thought proper to take
into his council ? For, ' Write ye, as it liketh you, in the
king's name,' might, in one case as well as the other,
be all that the king had to say to the matter. And in-
deed, if we look into the contents of the commission
itself, we shall soon perceive that it must have been drawn
by something more than a heathen hand. For if Ezra
himself had been to dictate the words, how could he
have expressed the tenor of his commission more fully
than in these : 3 ' forasmuch as thou art sent by the king,
and his seven counsellors, to inquire concerning Judah
and Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God, which
is in thine hand:' what Jewish king could have given
more pious instructions than these : * ' and thou Ezra,
after the wisdom of thy God, set magistrates and judges,
such as know the laws of thy God, and teach ye them
that know them not? And where can we find a livelier
sense of God's supreme authority, and of that regard
which is due from the greatest kings and potentates to
his commands, more emphatically expressed than here :
' whatsoever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it
be diligently done for the house of the God of heaven ?'
" Words," as Jacobus Capellus, in a kind of rapture,
cries out, " fit to be written upon the palaces of kings in
letters of gold, and engraven on the minds of all the
faithful with a stile of adamant."
5 Who the author of the six iirst chapters of Ezra was,
is a matter of some uncertainty ; though it is generally
Est. vii. 5.
4 Ibid. ver. 25.
'-' Ibid, viii. 8. 3 Ezra vii. 14.
* Iluttii Pemorvst. prop. 4.
. C. 4G4. EZRA iv. 7-end, EST. NEH. part of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
agreed, that the same hand which composed the two
books of Chronicles was concerned in writing that part
of Ezra, because the Chronicle concludes with the very
same words wherewith the history begins, which, in
ancient authors, to connect the thread of the discourse,
as Grotius observes, is no unusual thing. The Jewish
doctors indeed are chiefly of opinion, that these Chroni-
cles were written by Ezra. But this can hardly be, be-
cause the author, whoever he was, continues the c gene-
alogy of Zerubbabel to the twelfth generation, which is
lower than Ezra lived. Nor can Ezra be the author of
the six first chapters of the book which bears his name,
because the person who wTote it 7 is said to have been
at Jerusalem in the time of Darius Hystaspes ; whereas
Ezra 8 did not go thither until the reign' of Artaxerxes.
It is most likely, therefore, that Ezra, upon his coming
to Jerusalem, might meet with certain annals or memoirs
kept, of the several transactions that had happened since
the time of the people's return from captivity, and that
to these, after he had made an extract of such as were
true and authentic, he added a farther continuation of the
history of his own government. For, that the four last
chapters of the book were of his own composing-, is evi-
dent from this testimony. 9 ' And at evening sacrifice,
I arose up from my heaviness, and having rent my gar-
ment, and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread
out my hands unto the Lord.' Then follows the prayer
which he made, and immediately it is subjoined, I0 ' Now
when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, and
cast himself down before the house of God:' which
plainly shows, that Ezra was the author of that part of
the book, which speaks of himself in the first person.
And, in like manner, that Nehemiah was the writer of
what is reputed his, seems to be evident, " not only from
his own declaration in the front of it, (which was the
practice of Herodotus, Thucydides, and other ancient
historians in those days,) but from the testimony of the
Jewish church likewise, which all along received it into
their canon, and from the approbation of the seventy in-
terpreters, who, from the very first, gave it a place in
their translation under that name.
There is some difficulty, indeed, in reconciling- the
account of Josephus concerning Sanballat, and what is
recorded of him in Nehemiah. Josephus 12 tells us, " That
he, being made governor of Samaria under the last
Darius, married his daughter to one whose father had
been high priest of the Jews, and that when his son-in-
law was thereupon driven out of Jerusalem, he obtained
leave of Alexander to build a temple on mount Gerizim,
like that at Jerusalem, and to make him the priest there-
of." Now, to make this accord with what we read in Nehe-
miah, 1S the general opinion is, that there were two San-
ballats,the first the Sanballat of the Holy Scriptures, and
the other the Sanballat of Josephus ; and that there were
two marriages contracted by two different persons, sons
of two different high priests of the Jews, with two differ-
ent women, who were each daughters of two different
Sanballata ; the first the daughter of the Sanballat of the
Scriptures, and the other the daughter of the Sanballat
of Josephus, and that he who married the first of them
6 1 Clnon. iii. 19. 7 Ezra v, and vi. 8 Chap. vii.
3 Chap. ix. 5. 10 Ezra x. 1. " Huetii Demonst. prop. 4,
'-' Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 7 and 8.
13 Piideaux's Connection, anno 409.
5 A
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was the son of Joiada, but he who married the second of
them was the son of Johauan, and brother of Jaddua.
But there is no reason to have recourse to this perplexed
solution, seeing that Josephus has incurred a palpable
mistake in point of chronology. For, ' since this mar-
riage was consummated while Joiada, the son of Eliashib,
was the high priest of the Jews, even in the iiftli year of
his pontificate ; 2 and since he entered upon that office
in the eleventh year of Darius Nothus, who reigned in
all nineteen years, it must follow, that the license which
Sanballat obtained for the building of a temple at Sama-
ria, was not from Alexander, but from this Darius, in the
fifteenth year of his reign, and above eighty years before
the Darius Codomannus whom Alexander vanquished was
known. There is no occasion, therefore, to suppose any
more Sanballats than one, or to extend his life to any
immoderate length; only we may perceive, that Jose-
phus was under a mistake in placing this Sanballat under
the reign of Codomannus, who should have been placed
under a former Darius, sirnamed Nothus; and conse-
quently, that all he tells us of this Sanballat's attending
Alexander in his wars, and obtaining of him a license
to build a temple, is a mere fiction founded on that mis-
take ; because, in Alexander's time, the Samaritans, by
murdering Andromachus, his governor of Syria, had so
incensed that great conqueror against them, that, instead
of granting them any favours, 3 we find him making all
the havoc of them that he could.
Who the author of the book of Esther was, the opinions
of the learned are various. Some ascribe it to Ezra,
others to Mordecai, others to Mordecai and Esther in
conjunction, and others again to the joint labours of the
great synagogue, who, from the time of Ezra to Simon
the Just, superintended the edition and canon of Scrip-
ture. Those who contend for Mordecai, have these words
to allege in his behalf: i ' And Mordecai wrote these
things, and sent letters unto all the Jews, that were in
all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, and the Jews under-
took to do as Mordecai had written to them :' 5 but the
thing is evident, that these words relate, not to the book
itself, but to the circular letters which Mordecai sent to
the Jews, in all tlie provinces of the Persian empire,
signifying what a mighty deliverance God had vouch-
safed them, and, in commemoration of it, instituting an
annual festival to be observed for ever.
And indeed the institution of this annual festival and
its continued observation, is a standing proof that this
history of Esther is real, and not fictitious ; since we can
hardly conceive, how a wise nation should at first ap-
point, and afterwards continue the celebration of this
solemn time of feasting and rejoicing every year, merely
because a certain man among them had once the good
fortune to write an agreeable fable or romance ; much
less can we conceive, from what motive a whole assembly
of learned doctors should receive a writing of no better
character into the canon of their Scriptures, or (to make
it of more universal use) should honour it with a Greek
translation.
It must be owned, indeed, that no foreign author has
taken any notice of this piece of history ; but the reason
jNeh. xiii. 28. 2 Patrick's Commentary.
Joseph, contra Apion, l>. ii. * Est. i\. 20 ~.l'.'..
'' lluttii Dt-inuiist prop. 4.
C. I'M. EZRA \v. 7— end, EST. NEH. part of HAG ZECH. MAL. I
hereof is obvious, namely, 6 because the authors who
wrote of the affairs of Persia at this time, entered no
farther into them than as they were coincident with the
affairs of Greece ; and though the last six chapters of
this history are not to be found in any Hebrew copy, yet
Origen is of opinion, 7 that once they were extant, though
now lost, and that from it the Septuagint formed their
translation ; though others, with more probability, think,
that (as the history of this memorable transaction might
be recorded by divers hands) there were once two He-
brew copies of it, one in a larger, and the other in a less
volume, and that, as the less is what we have at present,
from the larger has proceeded the Greek copy, with its
sundry additions.
Haman, we read, was an Amalekite, one of that
nation 8 against which God pronounced a curse ; and
therefore, upon this consideration, Mordecai might
think himself not obliged to pay him the reverence
which he expected ; and, if the rest of the Jews had the
like notion of him, this might be reason sufficient for his
extending his resentment against the whole nation.
But there seems to be something more in the reverence
which the people were commanded to pay him, than
what is the effect of civil respect. The king of Persia,
we know, expected a kind of divine adoration from
all that approached his presence ; 9 as we read of one
Tiniagoras, upon whom the people of Athens passed
sentence of death, for his worshipping of Darius,
accounting the honour of their whole city debased by
this mean submission of one of their citizens, though at
that time Darius was one of the greatest monarchs
upon earth. And as the kings of Persia did arro-
gate this to themselves, so they sometimes imparted it
to their chief friends and favourites, as it seems at this
time to have been the case with Haman. For we can
hardly conceive, why the king should give a particular
command, lfl ' that all his servants should reverence him,
if by this reverence no more is intended than that they
should show him a respect suitable to his station : but
now, if we suppose that the homage expected from them
was such as came near to idolatry, ll ' we need not won-
der, that a Jew should deny that honour, or the outward
expressions of it, to any man, since the wise and sober
Greeks did positively refuse to give it to the very kings
themselves. And that this was the case before us, the
author of the apocryphal additions to the book of Esther
seems to imply, when he introduces Mordecai as pray-
ing in these words, — 12 ' Thou knowest, O Lord, that it
is not contumacy, nor pride, nor desire of vain glory,
that makes me not worship Haman : for I would willingly
kiss his feet for the safety of Israel. But I do it, that
I may not prefer the glory of a man, to the glory of
God, nor adore any one but thee, my Lord, alone.'
Though we are far from pretending to apologize,
either for the injustice of Ahasuerus in abdicating his
queen, or for the conduct of Esther in going to his bed,
yet a good deal of this might be resolved into the custom
of a nation, where the king was absolute, and his sub-
jects mere vassals, where the will of the prince, I say,
* Huetii Demonst. prop. 4. 7 Patrick's Commentary.
Exod. xvii. 14. s Valer. Max. b. iv. c. 3.
kst. '•'• 2 " Poole's Annotations on Esther iii.
12 Est. xiii. 12, &c.
Skct. II.] FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c. 739
A. M. 3473. A. C. 529; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 40+7. A. C. 4GI. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. part ok HAfi. ZECH. MAL.
was .1 perfect law, and a plurality of wives and concu-
bines reputed honourable. This, however, may be said
in behalf of Ahasuerus, that he did not divorce his wife,
without first consulting his counsellors, and such as were
best acquainted with the laws of their country ; and
therefore, if there was any iniquity in it, they were the
persons chiefly to be blamed, who represented the
queen's disobedience as a crime of such a dangerous
nature, that it would have had a noxious influence upon
the whole nation, had it not been severely punished.
And tliis may be said in excuse for Esther, that the
words which we render, * ' she was brought,' may equally
signify ' she was taken away,' namely, by violence ;
2 for (as the Targum upon this passage relates the matter)
' Mordecai, hearing of the king's edict for the collection
of all the beautiful virgins in his dominions, hid his
cousin in a private place, where the officers could not
find her ; but when Esther (whom all the neighbourhood
knew to be a great beauty) was missing, an order from
the king to Mordecai was procured, which, upon pain of
death, obliged him to produce her.' However this be,
it is certain, that the persons whom the king took to his
bed in this manner, were not reputed harlots, but became
his lawful wives, though wives of an inferior degree ;
and therefore it is no great wonder, that Esther, in these
circumstances, though a very virtuous woman, should
consent; nor can Ave tell, but that Mordecai and she
might have a dispensation from God, (as God, no doubt,
can dispense with his own laws,) supposing there were
any contrariety to the divine laws in this transaction.
To account for the humour of princes, and their
management of public affairs, is next to a thing impos-
sible. We see, even among us, that great men are some-
times unmindful of the highest services that are done
them, and take no care to reward them, especially if the
person be in himself obscure, and not supported by a
proper recommendation. And therefore we are not at
all to wonder, if a prince, that buried himself in indo-
lence, and made it a part of his grandeur to live un-
acquainted and unconcerned with what passed in his
dominions, (as this was the custom of most eastern kings,)
should overlook the great service which Mordecai fiad
done him, or if he ordered him .a reward, that, by the
artifice of those at court, who were no well-wishers to
the Jews, he might be disappointed of it.
There seems, however, to have been a particular direc-
tion of providence in having his reward delayed till this
time, when he and all his nation were appointed to de-
struction, when the remembrance of his services might
be a means to recommend them to the king's mercy, and
the honours conferred on him a deep mortification to his
adversary. These honours indeed were very remark-
aide ; but by Hainan's manner of proposing them, they
seem to have been the usual marks of distinction and
esteem, that the kings of Persia conferred on those
whom they were minded to make conspicuous ; and so
far was Mordecai from being elated with them, that as
soon as the solemnity was over, we read, that3 he
returned to his duty, and attendance at the king's gate.
He had declared himself a Jew, to satisfy the people
at court, that he could not, with a good conscience, coin-
ply with the king's command relating to the reverence
1 Est. ii. 8.
Patrick's Commentary.
Est. vi, 12.
which was to be paid to Hainan ; and the interposition
of Providence in behalf of the Jewish nation, even dur-
ing their captivity, had been so visible, that the wise
men about Hainan might, from experience, form a con-
jecture, that if their God was become their friend, (as by
this strange turn of affairs in favour of Mordecai it looked
as if he was,) no weapon forged against them would
prosper ; because they had seen so many plots, which
would have crushed any other nation, turn to their
advancement, as well as their enemies' destruction. The
advice 4 which Achior gave to Holofernes, is founded
upon the known experience of those times, and bespeaks
a man well acquainted with the state of the Jews : ' Now,
therefore, my lord, and governor, if there be any error
in this people, and they sin against their God, let us
consider that this will be their ruin. — But if there be no
iniquity in their nation, let my lord now pass by, lest
their Lord defend them, and their God be for them, and
we become a reproach before all the world.' Consider-
ing, then, that Mordecai was of the seed of the Jews, a
people whom God had wonderfully raised from under
great oppressions, and that, at this time, there was a
desperate design, by Hainan's management, carrying
on against them, Hainan's wise men might easily, and
without the spirit of prophecy, divine, 5 that as Mordecai
(whom they knew to be a man of great courage and
wisdom,) was now got into the king's favour, ic would
not be long before he would find an opportunity of ap-
plying to him, who was a person of a mild disposition,
for a revocation of the bloody decree which Hainan, by
imposing upon his credulity, had procured, and conse-
quently of ruining Hainan in the king's good graces.
For the known instability of court favours, and the little
quarter that there is given to rivals or enemies, made it
no hard matter, from Mordecai's advancement to read
Hainan's destiny.
Hainan, indeed, was outrageously bent against the
Jews, and what he offered the king in lieu of the damage
which his revenues might sustain by the destruction of so
many of his subjects, is a prodigious sum for any private
man to be owner of; but we read of several such persons
in history, who, in those ancient times, were possessors
of much greater. Pithius the Lydian, for instance, 6
when Xerxes passed into Greece, was possessed of 2000
talents of silver, and of 4,000,000 daricks in gold, which
together, amounted to near L5, 500,000 of our sterling
money ; and 7 Marcus Crassus, the Roman, after he had
consecrated the tenth of what he had to Hercules, feasted
all the people of Rome at 10,000 tables, and gave
a donative of worn to every citizen, as much as would
last him three months, found the remainder of his es-
tate to be 7,100 Roman talents, which amount to above
LI, 500 ,000 of our money. This may seem a little
strange to us at present ; but our wonder will cease, if
we consider that, from the time of David and Solomon,
and for 1500 years afterwards, the riches of this kind
were in much greater plenty than they are nowr. The
prodigious quantities of gold and silver which Alexander
found in the treasures of Darius ; the vast loads of them
which were often carried before the Roman generals,
when they returned from conquered provinces ; and the
4 Judith v. 20, 21.
i Poole's Annot. and Patrick's Comment, on Esther vi. 13.
r' Herodotus, b. vii, ' Plutarch in Ciasso.
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 4C4. EZRA iv. 7
excessive sums which certain of their emperors expended
in donatives, feasts, shows, and other instances of luxury
and prodigality, are of this proof sufficient : ' but at
length the mines of the ancient Ophir, which furnished all
this plenty, being exhausted, and by the burning of cities,
and devastation of countries, which followed upon the
eruptions of the Goths, Vandals, and Huns, and other
barbarous nations in the west, and of the Saracens,
Turks, and Tartars in the east, a great part of the gold
and silver, which the world then abounded with, being
wasted and destroyed by this means, the great scarcity
of both, which afterwards ensued, was occasioned ; nor
have the mines of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, been as yet
able fully to repair it.
The great sum which Hainan would have given to gra-
tify his revenge against the Jewish nation, was an addi-
tional provocation to them, no doubt, to slay every one
who came to annoy them ; but then it must be considered
that, in this, they acted by virtue of an edict, which
authorized them to stand upon their own defence ; that
they were not the first aggressors, but only opposed
those that openly assaulted them, and were for putting an
unjust decree in execution against them; and as the
Amalekites, who might be dispersed throughout the Per-
sian dominions, were the known and inveterate enemies
of the Jews, and, following now the fortune of Haman,
might be forward enough to execute the decree which he
had procured against them, it is therefore reasonably pre-
sumed, that most of those whom the Jews, in their neces-
sary defence, both in Shushan and in the provinces, did
destroy, were of that devoted nation ; and that, by this
their slaughter, the prophecies against Amalek were ac-
complished.
However this be, we cannot take leave of this won-
derful deliverance of the Jewish nation, without making
this one reflection upon it, namely, 2 " That though, in
the whole, there was no extraordinary manifestation of
God's power, no particular cause or agent, that was in
its working, advanced above the ordinary pitch of nature;
yet the contrivance, and suiting these ordinary agents
appointed by God, is, in itself, more admirable than if
the same end had been effected by means that were truly
miraculous. That a king should not sleep, is no unusual
thing, nor that he should solace his waking thoughts by
hearing the annals of his own kingdom, or the journals
of his own reign, read to him, &c. ; but that he should lie
awake at that time especially, when Haman was Match-
ing to destroy the Jews ; and that, in the chronicles of
the kingdom they should light on that place where Mor-
decai'8 unrewarded services were recorded ; that the
king thereupon should resolve forthwith to do him ho-
nour ; that Hainan should come in at the very nick of
time, when he was so disposed, and should ignorantly
determine what honour should be done him, and be ap-
pointed to that ungrateful office himself: this was from
the ' keeper of Israel,' who ' neither slumbers nor sleeps,'
and was truly ' marvellous in his people's eyes.' For
although miracles, in their nature, are more apt to strike
the sense, yet such secret contrivances of God's wisdom
and providence do more affect the understanding : the
one works astonishment, the other admiration."
1 Prideaux's Connection, anno 543.
- Patrick's Commentary on Esther vii. 10.
-end, EST. NEH. tart of HAG. ZECH. MAL.
CHAP. III. — Of Ezra! 's edition of the Holy Scriptures
and the institution of Synagogue-Worsliip.
Ezra, no doubt, in his knowledge of the Holy Scrip
tures, was a great man. The sacred history gives him
this character, that 3 c he was a ready scribe in the law
of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given.' The
Jewish doctors look upon him as the second founder of
it ; and are generally of opinion, that he was the prophet
Malachi, " and had that title given him because he was
sent as God's messenger, to revive their religion, after it
had been, in a manner, quite extinguished. Nay, 5 many
ancient fathers of the Christian church attribute more to
him, in this particular, than even the Jews themselves ;
for they suppose, that, in the Babylonish captivity, all
the Scriptures were entirely lost and destroyed, but that
Ezra, by divine revelation, renewed and recovered them
again. This, however, is carrying the compliment too
far, and leaving the authority of the Holy Scriptures to
stand upon a very precarious bottom ; since some may
be apt to infer, that he who is said thus wonderfully to
have restored them, might much more likely have forged
the whole.
We readily acknowledge, indeed, that in the time of
Josiah, through the two preceding reigns of Manasseh
and Amnion, copies of the law might be very scarce. But
by the pious care of that good prince, we are informed,
that this defect was soon remedied ; that copies were
taken of the original law that was then found in the tem-
ple ; that search was made in the schools of the prophets,
and in all other places where they could be found, for
the other parts of holy writ, and transcripts formed out
of these likewise, so that, in a short time, all that were
desirous to know the law of their God, either by writing
them out themselves, or procuring others to do it for
them, were furnished with copies both of the law and the
prophets. AVithin a few years, indeed, the city and
temple were destroyed, and with them was the authentic
copy of the laws, which was reposited in the temple,
burned and consumed ; but before this calamity befell
the Jews, all the sacred writings then extant were got
into private hands, and carried away with them into
captivity.
That Daniel had a copy of the Holy Scriptures with
him in Babylon, is certain, because 6 he not only quotes
the law, but makes mention likewise 7 of the prophecies
of the prophet Jeremiah, which he could not have done,
had he not had them by him. That, at the finishing' of
the temple, (which was in the sixth of Darius, and above
fifty years before Ezra came to Jerusalem,) copies of
the law were in common use, no one can doubt, who
reads, how the priests and Levites were settled in their
respective functions, s ' according as it is written in the
books of Moses :' and that when the people called for
the Scripture, to have it read unto them, they did not
request of Ezra to get it anew dictated to him, but that
he '■> ' would bring forth the book of the law of Moses,
3 Ezra vii. 6.
4 See Chald. Paraph, in Malach. ; and Buxtorf in Tiberiade, c. 3.
5 See Irenwus against Hreresies, b. lii. c. 15; Tertul. on the
Dress of Women, c. iii ; Hieronym. against Helvidius; August,
on the Miracles of Scripture, b. ii ; and Chrysost. Horn. 8. on
the Epistle to the Hebrews.
6 Dan. ix. 11. 13. ' Ibid. ver. g. s Ezra vi. 18. "Neh.viii. 1.
Sect. 11. J
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
741
A. M. 3475. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A
which the Lord had commanded Israel ;' which plainly
implies, that all the people well knew that this book was
then extant, and needed not such a miraculous expedient
as that of a divine revelation for its recovery.
But if Ezra did not restore the Scripture in this man-
ner, the question is, what did he towards it? Now, to
this it may be answered, that, upon his coming to Jeru-
salem, ' he got together as many copies as he could
meet with, either in private hands, or public repositories ;
that by comparing these copies one with another, he
found out the true reading, and so corrected all the
mistakes that had crept into them, either through the
negligence or ignorance of transcribers ; that, having
thus made the copies perfect, he collected from them all
the books of which the Holy Scriptures did then consist,
(for some books that appeared later were admitted after
this time,) disposed them in their proper order, and so
far settled the canon of Scripture, that, for the illustra-
tion, connexion, and completion of these books, espe-
cially such as were historical, he added some passages
that were not in them before, and changed some names
that were then grown obsolete, for such as were more
modern, and better understood, which, as he was a pro-
phet, lie was authorized to do ; that having thus made
the books, in all their parts, perfect and intelligible, for
the still greater ease and convenience of the vulgar, he
caused the whole to be written out in the Chaldee charac-
ter, which, after the Babylonish captivity, was in general
use among the people, so that the old Hebrew letters
were, from that time, laid aside among the Jews, and
oidy retained by the Samaritans ; and lastly, that to
ascertain the reading of this introduced character, he
added the vowel-points that are now found in our
Hebrew bibles : but whether tins was of his doing-, or
the work of some later hand, is a matter of much debate
among the learned.
Those who maintain that Ezra, whom all held to be
a prophet, was the author of these points, and that they,
consequently, are of the same authority with the text
itself, argue in this manner, — That when the Hebrew
language ceased to be the mother-tongue of the Jews,
as all agree it did after the Babylonish captivity, it
thence became, in a manner, impossible to teach it, with-
out the assistance of the vowel-points ; and therefore,
at least, they must have begun in the time of Ezra, and
continued in use ever after : that two ancient books,
called Baliir and Zohar, which are said to have been
written, the one a little before, and the other a little after
the time of our Saviour, made express mention of these
points in more places than one: that whereas it is said,
on the other side, that the Masorites of Tiberias (above
live hundred years after Christ) were the inventors of
these points ; this appears unlikely, because the schools
which the Jews once had in Judea were at this time all
suppressed : nor was there any number of learned men
left in the nation, of sufficient ability for such a work :
and, lastly, that if it be allowed that the present points
are not of the same authority with the letters themselves,
but only of a late and human invention, this will weaken
the authority of the Scriptures, and leave the sacred text
to an arbitrary and uncertain reading and interpretation.
Those who maintain the contrary opinion, namely,
1 Frideaux's Connection, anno 44(i.
C.4C4. EZRAiv. 7-end, EST. NEH. part or HAG. ZECH. MAL.
that these vowel-points are of a later date than Ezra,
fortify themselves with such arguments as these, — That
the sacred books, which the Jews make use of in their
synagogue-service, neither have, nor ever had, any of
these points in them, which can only be imputed to this,
— That when the Holy Scriptures began lirst to be pub-
licly read in the synagogues, (which was presently after
this edition which Ezra made of them,) there were no
such vowel-points then in being: that if we compare the
translation of the Septuagint, the Chaldee paraphrases,
or the Latin version of St Jerome, with the present
pointed Hebrew bibles, Ave shall in several places find,
that they read the text otherwise than according to the
present punctuation ; which is an argument that these
points were either not in being, or not in any great
authority in those times : and, lastly, that if we consult
Philo Judams, or Josephus, who are two of the oldest
authors of the Jews, or any of the ancient Christian
writers, for several ages after Christ, we shall not find
one word mentioned of these points, though they could
not but have sundry occasions to take notice of them, if
either they had been in use, or of such great credit and
authority with the Jews, as is pretended. And therefore,
to answer the arguments on the other side, they allege,
that the books of Bahir and Zohar are not near so ancient
as they are reputed ; that for above a thousand years
after their pretended composure, the Jews themselves
knew nothing of them, nor were they once mentioned by
any author whatever during that interval ; and therefore
there is reason to think, that a false date of antiquity
was fraudulently put to them, to give them some sanction,
and to recommend them to the world with a better credit.
That the Masorites of Tiberias were certainly in being
a long time in Judea, and in their way of learning were
not a little eminent; for St Jerome himself informs us,
that he made use of them : that though there may be
some difficulty in reading without points ; yet since we
find that the Samaritans, who understand Hebrew no
better than the Jews, have no points to this day, yet can
read the Hebrew text, in the Samaritan character, we
need not doubt but that custom, good sense, and the
coherence of the discourse, will supply rules for the
remedying of these inconveniences. And lastly, since
there is no language in the world, wherein there are not
several equivocal expressions, which may occasion an
ambiguity in the sense ; though points in this case may
be of some use, yet they cannot totally secure us from
error, because faults in transcribing or printing and
variations in pointing, are unavoidable.
To accommodate the matter then, as well as we can,
between these contending parties ; though these vowel
points Mere never anciently esteemed any part of the
Sacred Scripture of the Old Testament, but only addi-
tions of human invention, for the more easy reading of
the text, because they were never received by the Jews,
to whom were committed the oracles of God, into the
books which were read in their synagogues ; yet we have
good reason to conclude, that upon the Hebrew ceas-
ing to lie a vulgar language, as it certainly did in the
time of Ezra, they must of necessity have been intro-
duced.
When every child learned the Hebrew tongue from
his cradle, it was no hard matter for those v>ho thus un-
derstood it by rote, to learn to read it by letters onh,
742
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3475. A. C. 629; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947.
without the vowels ; but when it became <i dead language,
the case was altered : ' for then, instead of understand-
ing it first, in order to read it, they were first to read it, in
order to understand it; and therefore having not the pre-
vious knowledge of the language to direct them herein,
they must necessarily have had some other helps, in or-
der to know with what vowel each syllable was to be
pronounced ; and to give them this help, the vowel-points
seem certainly to have been invented ; and therefore the
time of this invention cannot be placed later than the
time when they became necessary, that is, when the He-
brew became a dead language, and so was acquirable
no other way than by study and instruction.
From this necessity of instruction, and probably not
long after Ezra's edition of the holy Scripture, there
sprung up a set of men among the Jews, whose profes-
sion it was to write out copies of the Hebrew text, and
to preserve and teach the true reading of it. What they
did of this kind, is called by the Jews the Masorah,that
is, the tradition ; because they pretend to have the true
reading, as the Talnmdists pretend to have the true in-
terpretation, of the Scriptures handed down to them from
generation to generation. However, as their whole bu-
siness was to study the true reading of the Hebrew text,
to preserve it from being corrupted, and to teach it to
others, it is highly probable that they were the first in-
ventors of vowel-points, because the whole use of these
points was to be subservient to this purpose.
But though these points might be invented by the He-
brew grammarians, whom we call Masorites, much ear-
lier than some will allow; yet, from their late appear-
ance in the world, it seems very probable, that as at first
they might invent them only for their private use, so, for
some time, they might reserve them to themselves, and
teach them only to their scholars. For the Jews, we
must know, had anciently two sorts of schools, those of
the Masorites and those of the Rabbins : the former
taught only the Hebrew language, and to read the Scrip-
tures in it; but the other taught their -pupils to understand
the word of God, and all the interpretations of it. These
were the great doctors of divinity among them, to whom
the Masorites were as much inferior as the teachers of
grammar schools among us are to the professors of divi-
nity in our universities.
As long therefore as these vowel-points went no higher
than the schools of the Masorites, they were not much
regarded among their learned men ; and this is the rea-
son why we find no mention made of them either in the
Talmud, or in the writings of some .ancient fathers, from
whom it might have been expected. But after the pub-
lication of die Talmud, the Jewish doctors thought it
advisable, in order to preserve the right reading of the
text, as the Mislina and Gemara were supposed to pre-
serve its right interpretation, to take this punctuation of
the Masorites into their divinity schools, and having re-
viewed and corrected it with great care, they added it to
the text, and so gave it all the venerable aspect it now
bears.
But though these vowel-points were added to the text
by such persons as understood the language perfectly,
and having since undergone the review and correction
of many ages, may be justly accounted a work, as com-
1 Prideaux's Connection, anno ilo'.
A. C. 4G4. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. HEH. part of HAG. ZF.CH. MAL.
plete in its kind, as can be done by human art; yet since
it was only done by human art, it is no authentic part of
the Scriptures : and therefore these points are not so un-
alterably fixed to the text, but that a change may be
made in them, when the nature of the context, the ana-
logy of grammar, or the style of the language, shall give
a sufficient reason for it ; especially considering, that
notwithstanding their exact fixation at first, they are still
liable to the mistakes of transcribers and printers, and by
reason of their number, the smallness of their figures,
and their position under the letters, are more liable to
suffer by them than any other sort of writing whatever.
So that, upon the whole, it appears, that though these
vowel-points were not affixed to the Hebrew text by
Ezra himself; yet were they of early date after his edi-
tion of the Holy Scriptures : that, though they did not
immediately appear in the world, nor are taken notice
of by any writer of repute for many ages after ; yet this
was occasioned by their being confined to the schools of
the Masorites, who in all probability were the first in-
ventors of them : and though, being of human invention
only, they cannot be supposed of equal authority with
the text itself; yet are they of excellent use for the pre-
servation of its right reading and for the prevention of
innumerable perplexities and ambiguities, that would
otherwise be incident to it.
The learned are not a little divided concerning the
rise and antiquity of the Jewish synagogues : for some
contend, that they were in use under the tabernacle and
first temple, whilst others assert, that they had no being
until the times of the captivity. The former, in behalf
of their opinion, urge, 2 that, as in the wilderness, the
court of the tabernacle could not contain the hundredth
part of the worshippers of the God of Israel, and, as in
the promised land, the temple was too far distant for
devout persons of every tribe to resort to it every sab-
bath day ; there was a necessity for other places to be
appointed for the service of God, that the sense of reli-
gion might not be extinguished and lost. To this pur-
pose they observe that the Levites were dispersed in
several cities, and the prophets and sons of the prophets
settled in their respective colleges, that they might be
ready at hand, upon all occasions, to expound the law,
and instruct the people in their duty, whenever they met
together for that purpose. And therefore we find the
Shunamite's husband thus expostulating with his wife ; 3
' wherefore wilt thou go to the man of God, to-day, see-
ing it is neither new-moon, nor the sabbath ;' which
plainly implies, that at such stated seasons as these, the
custom was to resort to such teachers for instruction :
and, if this was the custom, there is no question to be
made, but that proper places Avere appointed for their
reception. It is an unworthy imputation therefore to
think that so many temples should be built for idol-wor-
ship, and yet none should have zeal or piety enough to
erect a synagogue for the God of heaven, or that the
Pharisees should set up these useful inventions, and yet
the elders and prophets, and holy men under the Old
Testament, should want them.
These are the principal arguments on that side ; but
the silence of Scripture seems to be a strong confutation
of them : for had these places of religious worship been
■i Mede's Works, b. iv. p. 1049.
3 2 Kings iv. 23.
Sect. II. J
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
743
A. M. 3175. A. C. 529; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947. A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. fart
hi use anion"- the Jews in the time we are now speaking
of, we cannot conceive why there should not as frequent
a mention have been made of them in the Old Testament,
as there is in the New. The common, therefore, and
indeed the most probable, opinion is, ' that there were
no such things as synagogues built before the captivity
of Babylon and the destruction of the temple ; that the
Jews, seeing- themselves carried away into a strange
country, where they had no temple for divine service,
came to .a resolution of building such houses as were
afterwards called synagogues, there to be instructed in
the law, and to worship the God of their fathers, in the
best manner they could, on every sabbath day; and
that, upon their return, finding the great conveniency
of such like buildings, they erected the same in their
own country, as they had done before in the land of their
captivity, and herein were followed by the Jews of the
dispersion, in all parts of the world wherein they lived.
After Ezra had set forth a correct edition of the law,
the prophets, and other sacred writings, which were extant
in his time, his next care was to appoint proper persons,
namely, the most learned of the Levites, and other
scribes, that Mere well skilled in these writings, to read
and expound them to his people.2 This, no doubt, they
did at first in the same manner that himself had done,
that is, by gathering the people together in some wide
street, or open place of the city, that was of the fittest
capacity to receive them. But, in the wet and winter
seasons of the year, the inconvenience of this came to
be felt ; so that, in process of time they erected houses
and tabernacles, wherein to meet for this purpose : and
this was the true cause and original a of such edifices in
Judea.
Synagogues were public edifices, situate either within
or without their city, and generally in an elevated place.
3 They were usually raised above any private house,
except when there was an interdiction from the civil
power, because the Jews have a notion, that it is a dis-
honour to God to have his house inferior, nay, so much
as equal, to those of men, and in whatever city this hap-
pens, they threaten it with a speedy destruction. They
are always roofed, and covered over, and by this are
1 Jurieu's History of Opinions, part i. c. 17.
2 Prideaux's Connection. " Basnage's History of the Jews.
a Mr Basnage, in his history of the Jews, is of opinion, that
the origin of synagogues was not until the reign of the Asmonreans,
some tew ages before Christ, and he imputes it to this occasion :
— The zealous traditionists, who made long commentaries upon
the law, thought it a crime to keep the people, whose applause
they mightily desired, in ignoiance of them; and instead of con-
fining their explications to Jerusalem, where they found them-
selves too much slighted and confined, they carried them into
every city, where there were oratories, and public places of
assembly. Before this, private persons made their prayers to
God in their houses, where they had a place set apart for that
holy exercise. It was generally upon the top of the house, for
their houses were flat-roofed, that the family and their friends
met together, to read some portion of the law on the sabbath
day; and when there was any prophet in the city, the devout
people assembled at his house. But after that the doctors had
added their traditions and commentaries to the law, the business
ot interpreters became so much the more necessary, because
those traditions were not written ; so that the number of inter-
preters and interpretations increased daily. For this reason, con-
venient places were made choice of, that the people might the
better meet together to be instructed; and from hence, in all
probability, it is that they derive their synagogues. — B. v. c. 4.
f HAG. ZECH. MAL.
distinguished from the prosenchcr, which were commonly
in the fields, and open to the heavens. In the midst of
them there is a desk, or pulpit, made very probably in
imitation of that, which, as 4 we read, Ezra made use of,
from whence the book or roll of the law is read very
solemnly, and from whence both he that expounds it, or
he that preaches to the congregation at any time, always
delivers himself. At the upper end of the synagogue,
and over against the door, which ever stands to the west
there is a chest, or press, wherein the book of the law is
kept, wrapt in a fine embroidered cloth, and, what is
uncommon in our churches, during the time of divine
service the women are separated from the men, and
seated in a gallery inclosed with lattices.
Every town, wherein there were ten batelnim, that is,
ten persons of full age and free condition, alwa\s at
leisure on week-days, as well as sabbaths, to attend on
divine service, was thought large enough to have a
synagogue built in it : otherwise it was not ; because
the Jewish notion is, that less than such a number could
not make a congregation, and, without a congregation,
no part of the synagogue service could be performed.
But as their notion was farther, that any person, Gentile
as well as Jew, might be permitted to erect a synagogue,
because the holiness of the place, as they thought, con-
sisted not so much in the fabric, as in its being set apart
and dedicated to holy uses ; it thence came to pass, that
though there were but few at first, yet in process of time
they became so numerous, that, in our Saviour's time,
there was no town in Judea, but what had one or more
in it ; that, in Tiberias, a city of Galilee, there were no
less than twelve, and, if we may credit the Jews, 480 in
Jerusalem. The buildings were contrived much after the
same manner as our parish churches ; had over their door
or entrance this inscription written, This is the gate of
the Lord, the righteous shall enter into it ; and upon the
walls within, were these, or such like sentences. Remem-
ber thy Creator : Keep thy foot when thou goest into the
house of the Lord : Silence is commendable in the time
of prayer : and, Prayers without attention, are like a
body without a soul, &c.
5 1. In the synagogue service the first office was
prayer. Their prayers at first were but very few, but
have since increased to a very large bulk, which makes
the synagogue service very long and tedious. What they
reckon the most solemn part of their prayers are those,
which they call Shemonek Eslireth, that is, the * eigldeen
prayers, which, according to them, were composed, and
4 Neh. viii. 4. 5 Prideaux's Connection.
b These prayers were originally no more than eighteen, but
R. Gamaliel, a little before the destruction of Jerusalem, added
the nineteenth, which is the 12th in the subsequent order,
against Christians, who are therein meant by the names of
apostates and heretics: and that we may judge of the merits of
these prayers, a very learned hand has given us the following
translation of them, in the same order as they are in the Jewish
liturgies.
I. " Blessed be thou, O Lord, our God, the God of our fathers,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
the great God, powerful and tremendous ; the high God.
bountifully dispensing benefits; the Creator and Possessor
of the universe, who rememberest tiie good deeds of our fathers,
and in thy love sendest a redeemer to those who are descended
from them, for thy name's sake, O King, our helper, our Saviour,
and our shield. Blessed art thou, our Lord, who art the shield
of Abraham.'
7U
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3475. A. C. !V29: OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947.
instituted by Ezra, and the great synagogue ; and there-
fore they enjoin all that are at age, oi' what sex or con-
dition soever, either in private or public, to repeat them
three times a day, and on every synagogue-day, they
offered them up, with the greatest solemnity, in their
public assemblies. These prayers, however, are but of
the same nature that the Lord's prayer is in our public
service, that is, the fundamental and principal part ; for
besides these, they have some prayers going before,
some following after, and others interspersed between
them, which make the liturgies very tedious, and justify
our Saviour's finding fault with their long prayers.
2. In the synagogue-service there are three things that
are read, the Shema, the Law, and the Prophets. The
Shema consists of three portions of Scripture ; the first
is, from the beginning of the 4th verse of the sixth chap-
II. ' Thou, O Lord, art powerful for ever. Thou raisest the
dead to life, and art mighty to save. Thou sendest down the
dew, stillest the winds, and makest the rain to come down upon
the earth, and sustainest with thy beneficence all that live there-
in; and of thy abundant mercy, makest the dead again to live.
Thou helpest up those that fall ; thou curest the sick ; thou loosest
them that are bound, and makest good thy word of truth to those
that sleep in the dust. Who is to be compared to thee, O thou
Lord of might ? And who is like unto thee, O our King, who
killest, and makest alive, and makest salvation to spring up as
the herb out of the field? Thou art faithful, to make the dead
rise again to life. Blessed art thou, O God, who raisest the
dead to life.'
III. ' Thou art holy, and thy name is holy, and thy saints do
praise thee every day. Selah. For a great king, and an holy
one art thou, O God. Blessed art thou, 0 Lord, God most
holy.'
IV. ' Thou of thy mercy, givest knowledge to men, aud teach-
est them understanding; give graciously unto us knowledge,
wisdom, and understanding. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who
graciously givest knowledge unto men.'
V. ' Bring us back, O our Father, to the observance of thy
la«, and make us to adhere to thy precepts; and do thou, O our
King, draw us near to thy worship, and convert us unto thee by
perfect repentance in thy presence. Blessed art thou, O Lord,
who vouchsafest to receive us by repentance.'
VI. ' Be thou merciful to us, O our Father, for we have sin-
ned: pardon us, O our King, for we have transgressed against
thee, tor thou art a God, good and ready to pardon. Blessed
art thou, 0 Lord most gracious, who multipliest thy mercies in
the forgiveness of sins.'
VII. ' Look, we beseech thee, upon our afflictions: be thou on
our side, in all our contentions; and plead thou our cause in all
our litigations; and make haste to redeem us with a perfect re-
demption, for thy name's sake: for thou art our God, our King
and a strong Redeemer. Blessed art thou, O Lord, the Redeem-
er of Israel.'
VIII. ' Heal u=, O Lord our God, and we shall be healed-
save us, and we shall be saved; for thou art our praise. Brin«
unto us sound health, and a perfect remedy for all our infirmities3
for all our griefs, and for all our wounds ; for tliou art a God'
who healest, and art merciful. Blessed art thou, O Lord, our
God, who curest the diseases of thy people Israel.'
IX.' Bless us, O Lord, our God, in every work of our hands
and bless unto us the seasons of the year, and give us the dew'
and the rain to be a blessing unto us upon the face of all our
land, and satiate the world with thy blessings, and send down
moisture upon every part of the earth that is habitable. Blessed
art thou, O Lord, who givest thy blessing to the years.'
X. ' Convocate us together by the sound of the great trumpet,
to the enjoyment of our liberty; and lift up thy ensigns to call
together all of the captivity, from the four quarters of the earth
to our own |a„d. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who gatherest to-
gether the exiles of the people of Israel.'
But this is enough for a specimen. The rest are much of the
same strain; but the reader that is desirous to see them, will find
them in Dr Pndeaux's Connection of the Old and New Testa-
ment, part 1. b. vi.
A. C. 4G1. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NEH. part of HAG. ZECH. JUL.
ter of Deuteronomy, to the end of the 9th verse : the
second, from the beginning of the 13th verse of the
eleventh chapter of Deuteronomy, to the end of the 21st
verse : and the third, from the beginning of the 37th
verse of the fifteenth chapter of Numbers, to the end of
the chapter : and because the first of these portions, in
the Hebrew bible, begins with the word Shema, that is,
hear, therefore the reading of the whole is called the
reading of the Shema, which, next to their saying of the
Shemonech Eshreth, or the famous eighteen -prayers, is
reckoned the most solemn part of their religious service.
The five books of the law were divided, as some say,
by Moses himself, but not improbably by Ezra, into fifty-
four sections, because in their intercalated years, (when
a month was added to the year,) there were fifty-four
sabbaths, and so a section, being read every sabbath
day, completed the whole in the space of a year ; but
when the year was not thus intercalated, those who had
the direction of the synagogue-worship, reduced the
sections to the number of sabbaths, by joining two short
ones several times into one, because they held themselves
obliged to have the whole law, from the beginning of
Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy, read over, in this
manner, every year.
In the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, when the
reading of the law was prohibited, in the room of the
fiftyr-four sections of it, the Jews substituted fifty-four
sections of the prophets, which were ever after continued ;
insomuch that when the reading of the law was again
restored by the Maccabees, the section which was read
every sabbath out of the law, served for the first lesson,
and the section out of the prophets for the second ; for
that is the meaning of ' St Paul's ' standing up to preach,
after the reading of the law and the prophets;' that is,
after the reading of the first lesson out of the law and
the second lesson out of the prophets.
3. The exposition of the law and the prophets went
along with the reading of them : for after that the Hebrew
language had ceased to be the mother-tongue of the
Jews, and the Chaldee grew up into use instead of it,
the custom of the synagogue was, that one should first
read a paragraph of the Scriptures to the people in the
Hebrew tongue, and then another interpreted it in the
Chaldee, which they better understood. And this seems
to suggest the reason why these sections of Scripture
came to be divided into verses, namely, that by this
means the reader might certainly know how much he was
to read ; and the interpreter how much he was to inter-
pret at every interval.
4. After that the reading and expounding were over,
any person of learning, and knowledge in the Scriptures,
might address himself to the people, upon what moral
or divine subject he thought proper ; only we may ob-
serve, that this was a compliment usually paid to stran-
gers ; and therefore when St Paul and his company came
to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the place of divine
worship on the sabbath day, 2 ' after the reading of the
law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent
unto them, saying, ye men and brethren, if ye have any
word of exhortation for the people, say on.'
From what has been said it appears, that the ministra-
tion of the synagogue-service was not confined to the
1 Acts xiii. 1G.
* Ibid. 51.
Sue*. II.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
745
A. M. 3175. A. C. 529; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4947
sacerdotal order ; for the priests were consecrated only
to the service of the temple, which was widely different
from this, as consisting- chiefly in the offering" up of sa-
crifices and oblations, but to this in the synagogue any
one that by learning was qualified for it, was admitted.
Only for the preservation of order, there were in every
synagogue some fixed officers, whose business it was to
tnke care that all religious duties were therein decently
performed.
The first of this kind are those whom the Scriptures
of the New Testament call 'rulers of the synagogue :'
but how many of these belonged to each synagogue we
cannot tell, only we may presume, there were more than
one, because they are mentioned in the ' plural number,
in respect of the same synagogue. Next to them, and
perhaps one of them, was the minister of the synagogue,
whose business it was to offer up to God the public prayers
of the congregation ; and being for this purpose dele-
gated, as it were, by them to God, is therefore in the
Hebrew language, called Sheliach Zibber, that is, the
angel of the church, or congregation : from whence the
name of the bishops of the seven churches, mentioned
in the Revelations, is manifestly borrowed. Next to this
angel of the church, were the deacons, and inferior mi-
nisters of the synagogue, called in Hebrew Chazanim,
or overseers, who, under the rulers of the synagogue,
had the charge and oversight of all things in it, and kept
the books of the holy Scriptures, the liturgies, and uten-
sils, which they brought forth, and carried away again, as
there was occasion : and next to these overseers was the
interpreter, whose office it was to recite in Chaldee the
lessons, as they were read in Hebrew, to the congrega-
tion ; and because a good deal of skill in both languages
was requisite for such an undertaking", whenever the
rulers of the synagogue found a person fit for this pur-
pose, they retained him by a salary, and so made him a
standing minister among them.
We have nothing more to add concerning this syna-
gogue-worship, but that the times appointed for it were
three days a week, besides their holidays, whether fasts
or festivals, and thrice on every one of those days, that
is, in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night : and
that when at any of these times the blessing was to be
given, if there was a priest present in the congregation
lie always did the office ; but if there was none there, the
Sheliach Zibber, who read the prayers, in a form of be-
nediction made proper for him, dismissed the people.
Before we dismiss this subject, there is one common
inquiry which, by this time, we may be able to satisfy,
and that is. — How it came to pass, that the Jews were so
prone to idolatry before the Babylonish captivity, and
so strongly bent against it, even to a degree of supersti-
tion, after that captivity Mas ended ? which can hardly
be imputed to any other cause, but that they had the law
and the prophets every week read unto them, after that
captivity, which they had not before. Before the capti-
vity they had no synagogues for public worship, or in-
struction, nor any places to resort to for these purposes,
but either the temple at Jerusalem, or the cities of the
Levites ; and from hence great ignorance grew among
the people : God was little known among them, and his
laws in a manner wholly forgotten ; and therefore, as
occasions offered, they were easily drawn into all the
A. C. 464. EZRA iv. 7— end, EST. NF.1I. mrtof HAG. ZECH. MAIi.
superstitions and idolatrous practices of the heathen
nations that lived about them. But now, when, after
the Babylonish captivity, synagogues were erected in
every city, to which they constantly resorted for public
worship, and where, every week, they had the law at
first, and afterwards both the law and the prophets read
to them ; and where, by sermons and exhortations, they
were, at least every sabbath day, instructed in their
duty, and excited to the performance of it ; this kept
them in a thorough knowledge of God and his laws, as
the comminations in the prophets, when once they
came to be read among them, deterred them from trans-
gressing against them ; for, 2 ' all Scripture,' as the
apostle speaks, 'is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness, that the man of God,' or
every man who resolves to be godly, ' may be perfect,
wise unto salvation, and thoroughly furnished unto all
good works.'
One thing we may observe farther : — That, since there
was a public liturgy established in the Jewish church,
and forms of prayer, though very empty and jejune in
comparison of those that are in use among us ; our bless-
ed Saviour, when upon earth, was contented to join with
the public in these forms, and to frequent the synagogue
3 every sabbath day. And this may inform us, that to
break the union of a church, upon the account of bet-
ter edification, or more ecstatic prayers, is a refinement
that the great Teacher of all righteousness knew nothing
of. In the course of his preaching, he spared not to tell
the Jews freely of all the corruptions that, in his time,
they had run into : and therefore had it been contrary
to the will of God, to use set forms of prayer in his pub-
lic service, or had it been displeasing to him to be ad-
dressed in such mean forms, when much better might
have been made, we may be sure he would have told
them both, and joined with them in neither : but since he
never found fault with them for using set forms, but, on
the contrary, he taught his own disciples a set form to
pray by, since he no where expressed a dislike of the
forms then in use, upon account of their meanness, but,
on the contrary, testified his approbation of them, by
joining with them in their synagogues ; this should con-
vince our separatists, one would think, that neither our
using set forms of prayer in our public worship, nor the
using of such as they think not sufficiently edifying, can
be objections sufficient to justify them in their refusal to
join with us in them, because in both these cases they
have the example of Christ directly against them.
The truth is, whether there be a form or no form, or
whether the form be elegantly or meanly composed ; no-
thing of this availeth to the recommending of our prayers
unto God. It is the true and sincere devotion of the
heart .alone, that can make them acceptable unto him :
for it is this only that gives life and vigour, and a true
acceptance, to all our religious addresses. Without this,
how elegantly, how movingly, soever the prayer may be
composed, and how fervently, how zealously, soever it
may seem to be poured out, yet all this is dead mat-
ter, and of no validity in the presence of our God. But,
on the contrary, the very heathens can tell us, that, be
our prayers and oblations ever so mean, they will be
a ' sacrifice of a sweet smelling savour' unto him, if we
i Mark v. 35 &c. Luke viii, 41 — xifi. 1 1.
^2 Tim. iii. 10, 17.
a Luke iv. 1G.
;4'6
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 359G. A. C. 403; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C. 311. 1 MAC. i-vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c. 7— b. vii. c 14.
bring but to his worship, " a fixed purity of purpose, and
a mind holy at its inmost core, with a will untarnished
by low chicane ; the suppliant yielding these, shall prove
grateful to the sods." l
SECT. III.*
CHAP. I.— From the Death of Nehemiah, to the Death
of Antiochus Epiphanes.
THE HISTORY.
Manasseh, as Josephus calls him, (for we have now left
the sacred history, and have nothing but the books
of the Maccabees, Philo Judasus, and Josephus, with
some fragments of the Greek and Latin writers, to de-
pend on,) being expelled from Jerusalem, with several
others, who would not subnut to Nehemiah's order for their
parting- with their idolatrous wives, went to Samaria, as
we said before, and there put himself under the protec-
tion of Sanballat, his father-in-law ; who, applying to
Darius Nothus, the then king of Persia, did so far insi-
nuate himself into his favour, as to obtain a grant for the
building of a temple on Mount Gerizim, near Samaria,
and for making Manasseh, his son-in-law, the high priest
of it.°
1 Pcrs. sat. 2.
a On the supposition that Nehemiah returned to Judea in the
latter part of the reign of Darius Nothus, it is easy to see what
gave occasion to the mistake of Josephus, who assigns Sanballat,
the chief of the Samaritans, contemporary with Nehemiah, to the
reign of Darius Codomannus; and makes Manasseh, the son of
Joiada and son-in-law of Sanballat, the son of the high priest
Jaddua. Misled by the similarity of the names, he confounded
Darius Nothus with Darius Codomarimis; and this is not at all
surprising, for Josephus in his Antiquities treats of tin's period
very negligently, and has fallen into numerous errors. The more
modern Jews were very ignorant of the later periods of Persian
history. If we correct this oversight of Josephus, it will no longer
be necessary to maintain the very improbable assumption, that
there were two chiefs of the Samaritans of the name of Sanballat,
separated from each other by a century, (B. C. 431 and 331,) each
of whom had a daughter married to a fugitive son of the Jewish
high priest. There was but one Sanballat, chief of the Samaritans,
whose daughter was married to a son of the high priest Joiada,
and that about the year B. C. 408. That important historical
fact, therefore, which Josephus has placed in the reign of Darius
Codomannus, properly belongs to the last years of Darius Nothus.
It was from this last mentioned monarch that Sanballat obtained
permission to build a temple for the Samaritans on mount Gerizim.
This chief had distinguished himself, perhaps by his alacrity iu
furnishing with provisions the army destined lor Egypt; and hav-
ing thus ingratiated himself with the king, his request was the
more readily granted. In this temple Manasseh the son of the
high priest Joiada, whom Nehemiah had expelled from Judea on
account of his connexion with the daughter of Sanballat, was
appointed high priest. Afterwards, according to the testimony of
Josephus, those .lews, who in their own country had been guilty
of criminal offences, or who from any cause became dissatisfied,
took refuge in Samaria. By means of these emigrants the Sa-
maritans were recalled from idolatry, and brought to Worship
Jehovah alone. But this circumstance, far from allaying the
enmity between the two nations, tended rather to increase it,
at least on the part of the Jews, to whom this temple, built after
tiie year B. C. 408, and the reception of fugitive Jews, vtas a
constant source ol provocation. In this manner every thing fulls
naturally and without violence into its proper order of time, and
the succession of the high priests, (Neh. xii. 10, 11,) is completely
reconciled with history. For though this table was evidently
completed by a later hand, this circumstance alone, without other
reasons, cannot prove it incorrect. And no such other proof of
jts incorrectness now remains ; for if Joiada entered on the priest-
The Samaritans * were originally the Cutheans, and
such other of the eastern nations, as Esarhaddon, after
the deportation of the Israelites, planted there ; but after
this temple was built, and Samaria became a common
refuge for ail relractory Jews, this mixture of inhabitants
in a short time produced a change in religion. For
whereas they had hitherto worshipped the God of Israel,
in conjunction with the gods of the east, from whence
they came, when once the Jewish worship came to be
settled among them, and the book of the law ol Moses
to be read publicly, they conformed themselves wholly
to the worship of the true God, and in their performance
of this were as exact as the Jews themselves. The
Jews, however, looking on them as apostates, hated
them to such a degree, as to avoid all manner of con-
verse and communication with them. This hatred first
began from the malice which the Samaritans expressed
against them, both in the rebuilding of their temple, and
in the repairing the walls of their city. It was afterwards
much increased by the apostasy of Manasseh, and his
setting up an altar and temple, in opposition to those at
Jerusalem ; and it was all along kept up, on account of
some particular tenets wherein the two nations were
hood B. C. 412, there are for the eighty years which intervene
between this period and the time of Alexander, three high priests,
namely, Joiada, Jonathan or Johanan (John) and Jaddua; and
it is known that Jaddua was very aged when Alexander visited
Jerusalem. It is accordingly no longer necessary to assume,
without evidence, that there were two high priests of the name
of Jaddua, one at the time of Nehemiah, and a second in the days
of Alexander. — Jahn,s Hebrew Commonwealth. — Ed.
b If we believe their chronicle, which they tell us is of great
antiquity, though others who have examined it, will not allow it
to be as old as Constantine's days, they give us an account of
their origin quite different from what we gather from sacred writ.
They pretend to be descended from Joseph by Ephraim, in a
direct line ; and that when Joshua entered into the promised
land, he caused a temple to be built upon Mount Gerizim, and
appointed one Buz of the seed of Aaron, to officiate as high
priest, from whom they have an exact genealogy, and uninter-
rupted succession ever since. They neither own Jeroboam's
schism, nor the transmigration of the ten tribes, but give this
account of their leaving their country, and returning to
it again : — That when the kings of Jerusalem and Syria had
revolted against Bachtnezzar, so they called Nebuchadnezzar,
he came with an army and took Jerusalem, and thence
marching to the Shechemites, for that is the name they give
themselves, ordered them to leave their country in seven days,
upon pain of military execution, which they readily did: that
when he sent Persians to inhabit the cities which they had left,
they could not live there, because the fruits which seemed fair to
the eye, were tainted with poison, and so destroyed them : that
upon complaints of this, the king consulted with some of the ancient
inhabitants of these provinces, who informed him that the only
remedy was to send the Hebrews back again into their own
country , which when he consented to, a place was appointed
for their general rendezvous: that when they came to this place
a dispute arose between them, whether they should go and rebuild
the temple of Jerusalem, or that of Gerizim, and when Zerubba-
bel was for the former, and Sanballat for the latter, each pleading
the sanction of the Pentateuch, and each pretending that the copy
of his opponent was corrupt, they resolved to end the controversy
by a fiery trial: that Zerubbabel's copy being thrown into the fire,
was immediately consumed, but that Sanballat's endured the
flames three times together, and received no manner of harm;
whereupon the king honoured the Shechemites with rich presents,
and sent Sanballat as the head of the ten tribes, to take possession
of Mount Gerizim. But who sees not that this whole history,
full of falsities and absurdities as it is, was only invented to wipe
on" the shame and disgrace of the Samaritans, for being the off-
spring of proselytes, and a medley of foreign nations ? — Bus-
nage's History of the Jews, b. ji. c. 1., and Universal History,
b. ii. c. 1.
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
747
made Bagoses governor of Syria and Phoenicia, who
took upon him to confer the pontificate, even while
Johanan the high priest, who had been several years
invested with it, Mas alive, upon the high priest's brother
Joshua, and who accordingly came with this grant to
Jerusalem, in order to take possession of the office.
1 But while the one endeavoured by force to get posses-
sion, and the other by force to keep him from it, it so
happened, that Johanan slew Joshua in the inner court
of the temple ; which, when Bagoses heard, he came in
gTeat wrath to Jerusalem ; went into the temple, notwith-
standing the remonstrances that were made against it ;
and, having taken a thorough cognizance of the fact,
imposed a mulct for the punishment of it, and obliged
the priests to pay, out of the public treasury, for every
lamb that they offered in the daily sacrifice, c the sum
A M. 3596. A. C. 408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C. 341 1 MAC. i—vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii—x JOS. HIST.b. xi. c. 7— b xii.c. 14
known to disagree. For the Samaritans received no
other Scriptures than the five books of Moses ; they re-
jected all traditions, and adhered only to the written
word itself ; and they maintained, that Mount Gerizim,
a whereon their temple was built, was the only proper
place for the worship of God ; and from this variety of
causes did ensue all the hatred and virulence, which, in
the course of this history, we shall have but too frequent
occasion to take notice of.
After the death of Nehemiah, who was the last gover-
nor that the kings of Persia sent to Jerusalem, Judea
being added to the prefecture of Syria, was from thence-
forward subjected to the rulers of that province ; and
under them the administration of all public affairs, both
civil and ecclesiastical, was committed to the high priest,
which made that office much more coveted than it used
to be, and many times tempted those who had no right
to it, to invade it.
Upon the death of Darius Nothus, Artaxerxes, who
for his extraordinary memory, is by the Greeks called
the remembrancer , succeeded his father in tire throne
of Persia ; b and towards the latter end of his reign,
a Josephus, in his Jewish Antiquities, (b. xiii. c. 6,) relates a
dispute, which arose in Egypt, in the reign of Ptolemy Philopa-
ter, between the Jews and Samaritans, concerning their temples.
The Samaritans maintained, that their temple upon Mount Ge-
rizim was the only true temple of the Lord : and the Jews on
the contrary affirmed that theirs at Jerusalem was the only true
one. The dispute was brought before the king; advocates on
both sides were named; and it was agreed, that they who did
not make their allegations good, should be condemned to death.
Both parties promised that they would produce all their testi-
monies from the law only. Andronicus, advocate for the Jews,
spake first, and proved so very evidently from the Scriptures,
the antiquity of the temple of Jerusalem, the succession of the
higb priests, and the value which the Asiatic princes always had
for that holy place, while at the same time they never so much as
thought of the temple at Gerizim, that the king and his assessors,
declared he had carried his cause, and ordered Sabhajus and
Theodosius, the advocates for the Samaritans, to be put to death.
Whether there be any reality in this account of Josephus or
no, it is certain that the Samaritans, on behalf of Mount Geri-
zim, have to plead, — That there Abraham, (Gen. xii. (5, 7, and
xiii. 4,) and there Jacob, (Gen. xxxiii. 20,) built altars unto
God, and by their offering up sacrifices thereon consecrated that
place above all others to his worship; that for this reason God
himself appointed it (Deut. xxvii. 12,) to be the hill of blessing ;
and that accordingly Joshua on his entrance upon the land of
Canaan, caused the blessings of God, to such as would observe
liis laws, from hence to be pronounced; and, lastly, that when
he passed the Jordan, he built here an altar of the twelve stones,
which he took out of the river in his passage, (Deut. xxviii. 2 —
7.) according to what God had commanded him by Moses. But
herein the Samaritans are guilty of a great prevarication; for
they have changed the words in the text of Deuteronomy, and
instead of Mount Ebal, as it is in the original, have put Mount
Gerizim, the better to serve their cause. The truth of the
matter is, since Manasseh was resolved to make a schism in the
Jewish church, and Sanballat to build a temple for him, the rea-
sons above mentioned might be inducement enough for them to
make choice of that place, rather than any other; but from thence
to pretend to vie with the temple at Jerusalem, is highly arrogant :
because the Jews have authentic testimonies, that the public
exercise of the true religion was settled among them, and solem-
nized at Jerusalem long before this temple at (ierizim was
thought of. In short, the religious observances of the Jewish
worship did always attend the ark of the covenant, but the ark
was never once at Gerizim, nor indeed was it fixed in any
settled place, until David took it to his palace at Jerusalem, and
Solomon had built a temple for it in the same city. — Prideau.r's
Connection, anno 409, and Calmct's Dictionary under the word
Gerizim.
b Artaxerxis the second, surnamfd Mncmcn, also called
1 Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 7.
Arsaces, ascended the throne on the death of his father, notwith-
standing the exertions of his mother l'arysatis to secure the suc-
cession to her younger son Cyrus. Though at the commence-
ment of his reign he permitted his queen Statira to be guilty of
an act of the most horrid cruelty, and generally yielded too far
to the wickedness of his mother, he was on the whole a just and
magnanimous prince. He pardoned his brother Cyrus, who, on
the information of Tissaphernes, was detected in an attempt to
assassinate him at his coronation, and even reinstated him in his
government of Asia Minor. But Cyrus was so little affected by
his brother's generosity, that he now determined on accomplish-
ing his object by open rebellion. Under pretence of making war
upon Thrace, and afterwards upon Tissaphernes, he levied a
powerful army, and was powerfully supported by the Lacedaemo-
nians, whom he had assisted with money in the Peloponnesian
war. Clearchus, a Lacedrcmonian general joined his forces,
already consisting of 100,000 men of various nations, with a body
of 13,000 Greeks. With these forces Cyrus marched to Baby-
lon, B. C. 401, the same year in which Socrates was put to
death. Artaxerxes, who had been seasonably informed of the
revolt by Tissaphernes, came against him with an army of
900,000 men. They engaged in a bloody battle at the village
of Cunaxa, which was situated about thirty English miles south
of Babylon, between the Tigris and Euphrates. The 13,000
Greeks had already half gained the victory, when Cyrus, pressing
on too zealously against his brother, whom he wounded, was himself
slain by the royal guards. This expedition, and particularly the
astonishing retreat of the 10,000 surviving Greeks by a route of
more than eighteen hundred English miles, have been described
by Xenophon, the eye -witness and director of that, achievement. —
Jahri's Hebrew Commonwealth. — Ed.
c This, if extended only to the ordinary sacrifices which were
offered e\ery day, amounted to 305,000 drachms for the whole
year, which is no more than one thousand one hundred and
forty pounds twelve shillings and sixpence of our money: but, if
it extended also to the extraordinary sacrifices, which on solemn
days, when added to the ordinary, it will come to about half as
much more. For the ordinary sacrifices, which were offered
every day, and therefore called ' the daily sacrifices,' were a lamb
in the morning and another in the evening, which are called
'the morning and evening sacrifices ;' and these, in the whole
year, came to seven hundred and thirty. But, besides these,
there were added, on every sabbath, two lambs more, (Numb,
xxviii. 9, 10;) on every new moon, seven, (Numb, xxviii. 1 1 ;)
on each of the seven days of the paschal solemnity, seven, (Numb.
xxviii. 16 — 24:) besides one more on the second day, when the
wave-sheaf, was offered, (Lev. xxiii. 12:) on the day of Pente-
cost, seven, (ver. 17, IN;) on the feast of trumpets, seven.
(Numb, xxviii. 27; on the great day of expiation, seven, (chap.
xxix. 8;) on each of the seven days of the feast of tabernacles,
fourteen, (chap. xxix. 13;) and on tint eighth day, seven, (Numb.
xxix. 3(3;) so that the additional lambs being three hundred
seventy and one, these, if reckoned to the other, make the whole
number annually oflered at the morning and evening sacrifices,
to be eleven hundred and one: and therefore, if the mulct of
fifty drachms a lamb were paid for them all, it would make the
whole of it to amount to 55,050 drachms, which comes to seven-
teen hundred and twenty pounds six shillings and threepence of
748
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A.M 53)1). A. C. 408j OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. A07j. A.
of fifty drachms, which is about one pound eleven shil-
lings and three pence of our money.
After the death of Artaxerxes Mnjjftew, Ochus succeed-
ed his father, but obtained the crown a by very wicked
and indirect means. He reigned, however, for one and
twenty years, after which ' he was poisoned by his favour-
ite eunuch b Bagoas, who put the crown upon the head of
Arses, his youngest son ; but, in a short time, dispatched
him likewise, and made Codomannus - (one of the same
family, but at some distance, and who, upon his acces-
sion, took the name of Darius) king of Persia.
In the third year of the reign of Ochus, about 35G
years before the birth of Christ, Alexander the Great,
who overthrew the Persian empire, was born at Bella in
Macedonia. His father Philip had been chosen captain-
general of all Greece, which, at this time, made a very
considerable figure in history, for carrying on the war
against Persia ; but when he was just ready to set for-
ward upon that expedition, c he was slain at home, while
he was celebrating the marriage of Cleopatra his daughter
with Alexander king of Epirus.
Upon his death, Alexander his son succeeded him in
the kingdom of Macedon, when he was twenty years
old ; and 3 having been chosen, as his father was, to
command the Grecian forces against Persia, he took the
field, and in one campaign only, overran almost all
Asia Minor ; vanquished Darius in two pitched battles ;
took his mother, wife, and children prisoners ; and,
having subdued all Syria, came to Tyre ; but there he
1 Diodorus Siculus, b. xvii. ~ IbiA
3 Justin, b. xi. c. 2.
our money. But even this sum being too small for a national
mulct, it seems most probable, that all the lambs which were
offered in the temple in any sacrifice, and upon any account
whatever, were taken into the reckoning. We may observe,
however, that whatever this mulct was, the payment of it lasted
no longer than seven years; for, on the death of Artaxerxes,
the changes ami revolutions which then happened in the empire,
made a change in the government of Syria, and he that succeed-
ed liagoses in that province no farther exacted it. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 366.
a Artaxerxes, when he died, left three sons, Ariaspes, Ochus,
and Arsames ; Ariaspes was an easy credulous prince ; and
therefore Ochus so terrified him with menaces, which he pre-
tended came from his father, that for fear of being put to death,
lie poisoned himself. Arsames he caused to be assassinated by
Harpates; and this loss, added to the other, so overwhelmed the
old king with grief, that he broke his heart and died. — Pri-
deaux's Connection, anno 359.
b This eunuch having poisoned both Ochus and his son Arses,
set the crown upon Darius's head : but, finding that he would
not answer his purpose, in permitting him to govern all in his
name, which was the thing he aimed at in his advancement, he
was resolved to have removed him, in the same manner as he had
done his predecessors; and accordingly had provided a poisonous
potion for him. But Darius, being advised of the design, when
the potion was brought to him, made him drink it all himself,
and so got rid of the traitor by his own artifice. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 335.
c Thi F his death is said to be this: — Pausanias, a
young noble Macedonian, and one of his guards, having had his
body forced, and sodomitically abused by Attalus the chief of the
king's confidants, had often complained to Philip of the injury:
but, finding no redress, he turned his revenge from the author of
the injury upon him who refused to do him justice for it, and
slew him as he was passing in great state to the theatre, hav-
ing the images of the twelve gods and goddesses, and his own
in the same pompous habit, carried before him. Hereby he
arrogated to himself the honour of a god; but being slain as
soon as his image entered the theatre, he gave a signal proof
that he was no more than a mere mortal man. — Justin, b. ix.,
Dtodar. SieuL b. wi.
C. 311. 1 MAC.i— vi.7. 2 MAC.iii— x. JOS. HIST.b. xi.e.7— b. xii. c. 14.
met with a stop ; for the Tyrians, 4 in confidence of the
strength of the place, and of assistance from their allies,
when he would have entered the city, denied him admit-
tance.
While his army was besieging Tyre, he sent out his
commissioners, requiring the inhabitants of the neigh-
bouring countries, namely, of Galilee, Samaria, and
Judea, to submit to him, and to furnish him with what
he wanted. Other provinces complied ; but the Jews,
pleading their oath to Darius, by which they thought
themselves bound not to acknowledge any new master
so long as he was alive, refused to obey his commands.
This exasperated the conqueror not a little, who, d in
the flush of his many successes, could bear no contra-
diction ; and therefore, as soon as he had done with
Tyre, e he marched directly against Jerusalem.
4 For an account of the ancient and present state of Tyre, see
b. iv. s. iii. c. 4, pp. 342, 343. — Ed.
d No sooner was he chosen general of all the Grecian cities
confederated against the Persian empire, but he subdued the
Tyrians and Triballians in Thrace; and, upon his return, took
Thebes, that had revolted from the confederacy, and razed it to
the ground. After this, setting out upon the Persian expedition,
he vanquished Darius near the Granicus; and after the action,
took Sardis, Ephesus, Miletum, and Halicarnassus, the next
year he made himself master of all Phrygia, Lycia, Pam-
phylia, Pisidia, Paphlagonia, and Cappadocia. The next year
he gave Darius a second defeat (and a terrible one it was)
at Issus, took his mother, wife, two daughters, and a young son,
prisoners; seized Damascus, and in it immense riches; subdued
in short, all Syria, Ccelo-Syria, and Phoenicia: for every place
yielded to him, none pretending to make any resistance till he
came to Tyre. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 333.
e As soon as he had taken the, town, he burned it down to the
ground, and destroyed and enslaved all the inhabitants. Eight
thousand he slew in the sackage of the town, and two thousand
of those whom he took prisoners he caused to be crucified, a
piece of cruelty this highly unbecoming a generous conqueror.
But, to palliate the matter, he gave out, that it was done by way
of just revenge upon them, for their murdering their masters,
and that, being originally but slaves, crucifixion was the proper
punishment for them. But this depended upon an old story.
Some ages before, the slaves of Tyre, having made a conspiracy
against their masters, murdered them all in one night, (except
only Strato, whom his slave secretly saved) and having married
their mistresses, continued masters of the town, and from them
the present Tyrians were descended. So that Alexander pre-
tended, on this occasion, to revenge on them the murder that
was committed by their progenitors so many ages before, though,
in reality, it was to gratify his rage for being so long detained
before the place, and there so valiantly resisted. Recovering, how
ever, its beauty and riches again, it was invested with the privi-
leges of a Roman city for its fidelity, and in the flourishing times
of Christianity was distinguished as the first archbishopric under
the patriarchate of Jerusalem. It shared the fate of the country in
the Saracen invasion, in the beginning of the seventh century.
It was reconquered by the crusaders in the twelfth, and formed
a royal domain of the kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as an archie-
piscopal see. William of Tyre, the well-known historian, an Eng.
lishman, was the first archbishop. In 12S9, it was retaken by
the Saracens, the Christians being permitted to remove with
their eilects. When the Sultan Selim divided Syria into pa-
chalics, Tyre, which had probably gone into decay with the de-
pression of commerce, was merged in the territory of Sidon.
In 1766, it was taken possession of by the Motoualies, who
repaired the port, and enclosed it on the land side with a wall
twenty feet high. This wall was standing at the time of Vol-
ney's visit (1784). It was a miserable village: its exports con-
sisted of a fi w sacks of corn and cotton, and the only merchant
of which it could boast was a solitary Greek, in the service of
the French factory at Sidon, who could hardly gain a livelihood.
It is only within the last five and twenty years that it has once
more begun to lift its head from the dirt. — See page 343. —
Prideaux's Connection, anno 333; Maundr ell's Journey from
. -'Salem, and IVood. Traveller.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
749
A.M. 3596. A. C. 408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. fit 5070. A. C. 311. MAC. i— vi. 7, 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c. 7, b. xii. c 14.
1 Jaddua the high priest, who at this time hail the
chief government of the Jews under the king of Persia,
was in dreadful apprehensions of what the event might
prove : but having no protection to depend on but
God's, he, and all Jerusalem with him, made their cries
and supplications to him, imploring his mercy for their
deliverance from the approaching storm ; whereupon he
was ordered, in a vision of the night, to go out and
meet Alexander, whenever he should come, in his pon-
tifical robes, with the priests attending him in their
proper habits, and all the people in white garments.
Jaddua, next day, with the priests and people, hab-
ited in the manner directed, went out of the city to a
certain eminence, which commanded the prospect of all
the country round, and there waited the coming of Al-
exander. As soon as the high priest saw him at some
distance, he moved towards him in this solemn pomp ;
which struck the king with such an awe, that, as he drew
near, he bowed down to him, and saluted him with a
religious veneration, to the great surprise of all that
attended him.
While every one stood amazed at this behaviour,
Parmenio, his first favourite, took the freedom to ask
him, how it came to pass, that he whom all mankind
adored, paid such adoration to the Jewish high priest ?
To which his reply was, " That he did not pay that
adoration to him, but to the God whose high priest he
was ; that while he was at Dio in Macedonia, and delib-
erating with himself how to carry on the war with Per-
sia, that very person, and in that very habit, appeared
to him in a dream, encouraging him to pass boldly over
into Asia, and not to doubt of success, because God
would be his guide in the expedition, and give him the
empire of the Persians ; and that therefore from hence
he was assured that he made the present war under the
conduct of that God to whom in the person of this high
priest, he paid adoration." And hereupon, turning to I
Jaddua again, he embraced him very kindly : and so,
going into the city with him, offered sacrifices to God,
in the temple, where the high priest showed him the
prophecies of Daniel, " predicting the overthrow of the
Persian empire by a Grecian king, which he applied to
himself, and thereby confirmed his opinion that God had
chosen him to execute this great work.
When he left Jerusalem, he offered to grant the people
whatever immunities the high priest should desire ; but
he requested no more than a toleration to live according
to their own laws and religion, and an exemption from
the payment of tribute every seventh year, because on
the sabbatical year the Jews were forbidden to till their
ground. This he readily consented to, and having sig-
nified his pleasure, that if any of them were minded to
list in his troops, he would readily receive them, great
multitudes did hereupon offer their service, and followed
him in his other expeditions.
2 No sooner was he well got out of the city, but the
Samaritans met him in great pomp and parade, desiring
1 Joseph, b. xi. c. 8. '-' Ibid.
a Namely, what is written of the ram and the he-goat, chap.
viii. when: that he-goat is interpreted to be the king of Grccia,
who should conquer the Medes and Persians, ver. 20. As like-
wise what is written hy the same prophet, of the same Grecian
king, chap. xi. :i ; for both these prophecies foretold the destruc-
tion of the Persian king. — Prideaum's Connection, anno
of him, that he would likewise honour their city and
temple with his presence. " He was then hastening to
Egypt, he told them, but that when he returned, if his
affairs would permit him, he would not fail to comply
with their desires : and when they requested of him an
immunity from all taxes every seventh year, because
they, as well as the Jews, did every seventh year suffer
their land to lie fallow, he asked them if they were Jews,
because to them only he had granted that privilege.
Their answer was, that they were Hebrews, but that the
Phopnicians called them Sichemites : whereupon, hav-
ing no leisure to make any farther inquiry into the mat-
ter, he referred this likewise to his return, when he pro-
mised to examine into their pretensions, and to do them
justice ; but before his return, they had done enough to
incense him against them.
On his going from these parts into Egypt, he had
made Andromachus, a special favourite of his, governor
of Syria and Palestine ; who 3 coming to Samaria, in
order to settle some affairs, was burnt to death in his
house, which the people set on fire, out of rage and dis-
content, very probably, that the privileges, which were
granted to their enemies the Jews, were denied to them.
This barbarous action exasperated Alexander not a little ;
insomuch that, having caused those who had acted any
part in the murder of the governor to be put to death,
he drove all the rest of the inhabitants out of Samaria,
planted therein a colony of Macedonians, and gave the
rest of their territories to the Jews.
After the death of Alexander, * who did not long sur-
3 Quint. Curt. b. iv, 17. c. 8.
b It is not well agreed among historians, how this great con-
queror of the world died. Some of them are of opinion, that he
was poisoned by the procurement of Antipater, whom he had
left governor of all his dominions in his absence, and who, for
his maladministration, had been lately dismissed ; and, there-
lore, fearing to be called to an account, did, by the hands of his
sons, who were about the person of the king, and one of them
his cupbearer, execute this treason upon his master's life, in
order to save his own; but in the judgment of other historians
he died by nothing but excessive drinking; and thus they relate
the story. " One day after he had been sacrificing to the gods
for the many victories which he had obtained, lie made an enter-
tainment for his friends, wherein he drank very hard, and con-
tinued the debauch till late at night; when returning from the
feast he and his company were invited by a physician of Thes-
salia to come and drink a little more at his house. Alexander
accepted of the ofler : and, as there were twenty in company, he
first drank to each of them in their order, and so pledged them
again, and then called for the Herculean cup. There was in
company one Prodeas, a Macedonian, but a terrible drinker, and
to him the king drank this Herculean brimful, which they tell
us held six of our quarts, and not long after pledged him in the
same; but immediately after the second cup he dropped down
upon the place, and then fell into a violent level-, of which he
died, in the thirty-third year of his age, after a reign of twelve
years, six years as king of Maeedoii, and six more as monarch
of Asia." lie was a man of a hold enterprising spirit, hut fuller
of fire than discretion. His actions, though they were attended
with success, were carried on with a furious and extravagant
rashness; and the few virtues that he had were obscured with
much greater vices. Vain-glory was the predominant passion
hi his soul; and the fables of the ancient (Jreek heroes, the only
chart by which he steered his conduct. This was the reason that
he dragged Betis round the walls of Gaza, in the same manner
aa Achilles hail used Elector; that he undertook that hazardous
expedition into India, as Hercules had done before him; that he
made a drunken procession through Caramania, because Bacchus
is said to have done the like in the same place; and that he
affected to be called the sou of Jupiter, because most of the
750
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 359G. A.C. 408 ; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A.C
vive the unfortunate Darius, a the Grecian or Macedo-
nian empire, for so it was now become, was divided
among the chief commanders of his army, who soon fell
to leaguing and fighting against each other, till after
some years they were all destroyed, except four, and
these agreed to make a partition of the whole among
themselves, and so cantoned it into four kingdoms,
though all this while Aridams, * a bastard brother of
Alexander's, that took upon him the name of Philip, and
after him Alexander iEgus, his own son by his wife
Iioxana, bore both of them the title of kings.
In this division, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, whom
the Greeks call Soter, having taken possession of Egypt,
thought that the provinces of Syria, Phoenicia, and Judea,
would be an excellent barrier for him ; and therefore
ancient heroes pretended, that they had for their fathers one
god "i- other. The truth is, this young conqueror, having the
Iliad of Homer in great admiration, always carried them with
him, laid them under his pillow when he slept, and read in them
on all leisure opportunities; and therefore finding Achilles to be
the great hero in that poem, he thought every thing said of him
worthy of imitation, and the readiest way to become a hero him-
self, which was the main impulsive cause of all his undertakings:
but in reality, were actions to be duly estimated, he could de-
serve no other character than that of the great cut-throat of the
age in which he lived. The folly of mankind, however, and the
error of historians is such, that they usually make the actions of
war, bloodshed, and conquest, the subjects oi their highest en-
comiums, and those their most celebrated heroes that most ex-
cel in these; whereas those only are the true heroes, who most
benefit the world, by promoting the peace and welfare of man-
kind. In a righteous cause indeed, and the just defence of a
man's country, all actions of valour are just reasons of praise ; but
in all other cases victory and conquest are no more than murder
and rapine, and those who thus oppress the world with the
slaughter of man, the desolation of countries, the burning of
cities, and the other calamities which attend war, are the scourges
of God, the Attilas of the age in which they live, and the greatest
plagues and calamities that happen to it ; and therefore to make
these the subject of praise and panegyric, is to lay ill examples
before princes, as il such oppressions of mankind were the truest
ways to honour and glory. — Diod. Sic. b. xvii; Arrian. b. vii;
Jut/tin, b. xii; Quin. Curt. b. x; Plutarch, in Alexundro; and
Pridcan.v,s Connection, anno 328, and 332.
a After the battle of Arbela, wherein he was sore discomfited,
he made his escape into Media, and having got some few forces
together, thought to have tried his fate in one battle more;
when Bessus, his governor of Bactria, and Nabazanes, another
Persian nobleman, conspired together; and having seized the
poor King, and made him their prisoner, put him in chains, and
shut him up in a close cart, and so carried him with them to-
wards Bactria, intending, if Alexander pursued them to pur-
chase their peace by delivering him up into his hands; but if
he did not, to kill him, and seize his kingdom, and so renew the
war. Alexander having heard what these traitors had done,
made all the haste he could to rescue Darius out of their hands ;
but when, after several days' march, he came up with them,
(l»c-;uise Darius refused to mount on horseback, for his more
speedy flight with them,) they gave him several mortal wounds,
and left him dying in the cart. He was dead before Alexander
came ; but when he saw his corpse, he could not forbear shedding
tears at so melancholy a spectacle: and having cast his cloak over
it, he ordered that it should be wrapped up therein, and carried
to his mother Sisygambis, at Shushan, where he had left her with
the other captive ladies, to be buried there with a royal funeral,
for which himself allowed the expense, in the sepulchres of the
kings of Persia. — Prideatut's Connection, anno 330.
b Aridaus, with his wife Eurydice, was put to death by
Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, after he had
borne the title of king for six years and seven months: and
Alexander /Egus, with his mother Iioxana, after a long imprison-
ment in the castle of Amphipolis, was, in like manner, murder-
ed by Cassander, to make way for himself to the crown of
Macedon.
.311. 1 MAC. i— vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c 7— b. xii. e. 14.
1 he first of all attempted to bribe Laomedon, a Mityle-
nian captain of Alexander's, (who after the death of
Andromachus, very probably was made governor of
Syria, and the adjacent countries,) with a vast sum of
money, to deliver them up into his hands : but not being
able to prevail this way, he sent Nicanor, one of his
captains, with an army into Syria, whilst himself, with a
fleet, invaded Phoenicia ; and so having vanquished
Laomedon, and taken him prisoner, he made himself
master of all these provinces.
2 The Jews, however, for sometime, stood out against
him, and upon account of the oath they had taken to
the deposed governor, refused to submit to his authority.
Hereupon he marched into Judea, and, having got pos-
session of most of the country, laid siege to Jerusalem.
The place was strong enough, both by nature and art,
to have made a considerable defence against him ; but
the Jews had then such a superstitious notion for the
observance of the sabbath, that they thought it a breach
of their law, even to defend themselves on it : which
when Ptolemy understood, he made choice of that day
to storm the place, and in the assault took it, because
there were none that would defend the walls against
him. At first he dealt hardly with the inhabitants, and
carried above an hundred thousand of them captives into
Egypt ; but afterwards, considering how faithful they had
been to their former governors, he employed them in his
army and garrisons, and granted them large immunities
and privileges ; whereupon the whole nation of the Jews
became subject to the power and dominion of the kings
of Egypt.
In the fifth year of this Ptolemy's reign, Onias, the
Jewish high priest, died, and was succeeded by Simon
his son, who, from the holiness of his life, and the great
righteousness which shone forth in all his actions, was
called ' Simon the Just.' He continued in his office
for nine years, in which time he did many beneficial
acts c both in the church and state of the Jews ; but
what is chiefly commemorated of him, is his complet-
ing the canon of the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
What Ezra, 3 and the men of the great synagogue,
who, as some say, assisted him, did in this work, we
have taken sufficient notice of before. The books of
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Malachi, as well as the
two Chronicles of the kings of Judah and Israel, could
not possibly be inserted by Ezra himself, because some
of these books claim him for their author and in others
1 Diod. Sic. b. xviii ; Plutarch, in Demetrio.
2 Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 1.
3 Prideaux's Connection, anno 292.
c The commendation which the author of Ecclesiasticus gives
of this high priest, is thus expressed : — ' He, in his lifetime,
repaired the house again, and in his days fortified the temple.
By him was built from the foundation, the double height, the
high fortress of the wall above the temple. In his days, the
cistern to receive water, being in compass as the sea, was cover-
ed with plates of brass. He took care of the temple that it should
not fall, and fortified the city against besieging. How was he
honoured amidst the people, in his coming out of the sanctuary?
He was as the morning star in the midst of a cloud, and as the
moon at the full, or the sun shining upon the temple of the Most
High, and as a rainbow giving light in the bright clouds: —
When he put on the robe of honour, and was clothed with the
perfection of glory, and when he went up to the holy altar, he
made the garments of holiness honourable.' — Ecclus. b. i. ii. &c
Sect. 111.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
751
A. M.:i5!G. A. C. 108; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C,
there are some particulars which refer to times as low as
Alexander the Great, and therefore a later time must be
assigned for their reception into the canon. And if so,
there seems to be none so proper as that when the men
of the great synagogue, who, under the direction and
presidency of Simon the Just, were employed in this
work, ceased to be.
Simon was succeeded in the pontificate by his brother
Eleazar, (for his son Onias was but a minor when he
died) ; and, upon the death of Ptolemy Soter, his son
Ptolemy Philadelphus succeeded in the throne of Egypt,
and pursued his father's example in continuing the mu-
seum, " or college of learned men, which he had erect-
ed, and in augmenting the noble library b which he had
left behind him at Alexandria. To this purpose, hear-
ing that the Jews had among them a famous book, name-
ly, the book of their law, which well deserved a place
among his collection, he sent to Eleazar c the high
a This was a large edifice m Alexandria, which stood in that
quarter of the city called Brachium, and was designed for the
habitation of such learned men as made it their study to improve
philosophy, and all useful knowledge, like that of the lloyal
Society at London, and the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris.
This building, which was not far distant from the palace, was
surrounded with a portico or piazza, where the philosophers
walked and conversed, and had in it a common hall, where they
used to eat together. The members of this society were under
the government of a president, whose office was of that considera-
tion and dignity, that, during the reign of the Ptolemies, he was
always constituted by those kings, and afterwards by the Roman
emperors. The revenues appointed for the maintenance of this
college, from the first foundation of it, were large. From it did
proceed men of very excellent literature; and to it was owing,
that Alexandria, for a great many ages together, was the greatest
school of learning in all those parts of the world; until, in the
war which the Alexandrians had with Aurelian the Roman em-
peror, all that quarter of the city where the museum stood was
destroyed, and with it this college of learned men dissolved.—
Prideaux s Connection, anno 285.
b This library was at first placed in the museum ; but, when
it was filled with books to the number of 400,000 volumes, there
was another library erected within the Serapeum. or the famous
temple where the image of Serapis was set up, which increased in
time to the number of 300, 000 volumes, and the-e two put together
made up the number of 700,000 volumes in the whole, of which
the royal libraries of the Ptolemean kings at Alexandria are said
to ((insist. Their manner of collecting them was not so very
honourable ; for whatever books were brought by any foreigner
into Egypt, these they seized, and sending them to the museum,
whcic they maintained people for that purpose, they caused them
to be transcribed, and then sent the copies to the owners, but
laid up the originals in the library. When Julius C:esar waged
war with the Alexandrians, it so happened, that the library in
the Brachium was burned, and the 400,000 volumes that were
laid up there were: all consumed. But that of the Serapeum
still remained, and soon grew to be larger, and of more eminent
note than the former; but at length, in the year of our Lord 642,
when the Saracens made themselves masters of the city, they
tntally destroyed it. For, when the general of the army wrote
to Omar, who was then the caliph or emperor of the Saracens,
to know his pleasure concerning it, his answer was, "that if
these books contained what was agreeing with the Alcoran, there
was no need of them, because the Alcoran alone was sufficient
for all truth; but if they contained what was disagreeing with
it, they were not to be endured:" and therefore he ordered, that
whatsoever the contents of them were, they should all be de-
stroyed.— Prideaux's Connection, anno 285.
c Josephus hath given us both Ptolemy's letter to Eleazar,
and Eleazar's answer at large; but whether these pieces are
genuine or no, is a matter of some dispute among the learned.
They are too long, however, t» be here inserted ; but the sub-
stance of the letter is, — "That both Ptolemy and his father
had been extremely kind to the Jews; his father, in placing them
in ollices of trust; and himself, in redeeming great numbers of
341.1 MAC. i-vi. 7. 2 MAC. ui— x. JOS. HIST. b.xi. c. 7.— b- xii.c 14.
priest, to desire an authentic copy of it : and, because
it was written in a language that he did not under-
stand, he desired him, at the same time, to send a com-
petent number of learned men, well versed in both the
Hebrew and Greek tongues, who, out of the former, might
translate it for him unto the latter. This Eleazar failed
not to do ; and, from the joint labours of the LXX. or
rather LXXII. translators, that were employed in the
work, the version has ever since gone under the name of
the Septuagint : but of this piece of history we have al-
ready had occasion to s;xy what we thought sufficient,
towards the conclusion of our ll apparatus.
After the death of Ptolemy Philadelphus, e his son
Euergetes came to the crown of Egypt, and Onias suc-
ceeded his uncle, though not immediately, in the pontifi-
cate. He was the son of Simon the Just ; but in many
things, the very reverse of his father. At the best he
was but a weak and inconsiderate man ; ' but being now
grown very old, and very covetous, he took no care to
pay Ptolemy Euergetes the annual tribute of twenty ta-
lents, which his predecessors used to do ; so that, when
the arrears were swelled to a large sum, the king sent
one Athenion, an officer of his court, to Jerusalem, to
demand the full payment of the money, upon peril of
having an army sent among them to dispossess them of
their country.
- Onias had a nephew by his sister's side, whose
1 Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 3. 2 Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 4.
them from slavery, and employing several of them both in his
court and camp ; and that, as a farther testimony of iiis kindness
to them, he proposed to make a translation of their law into the
Greek language, for which he desired them to send a proper
number of such men as he knew were qualified for the under-
taking.'' In answer to which, Eleazar acknowledges the
receipt of his most gracious letter, and of the valuable presents
which he had sent ; and, in return promises, that the people
should not fail to pray to God daily for the protection of his per-
son, and the prosperity of his royal family; and that, pursuant
to his commands, he had sent an authentic copy of the law, and
six men out of each tribe to assist in the translation of it. —
Jeutish Hist. b. xii. c. 2.
d Those who would see more at large what are the opinions of
learned men concerning the Septuagint, and the account whu h
Aristscas gives of the manner in which it was done, may consult
the critics who have expressly handled this matter, such as Sca-
liger, Usher, Walton, Frassen, Dupin, Valdai, Hody, Calmet,
Winston, and Prideaux in his Connection, anno 27 7.
e After the death of his beloved wife Arsinoe, Ptolemy did not
long survive her : for, being of a tender constitution himself, and
having farther weakened it by a luxurious indulgence, he could not
bear the approach of age, or the grief of mind which he fell un-
der upon this occasion ; but, sinking under these burdens, he died,
in the sixty-third year of his life, alter he had reigned in Egypt
thirty-eight years. As he was a learned prince, himself, and a
great patron of learning, many of those who were eminent for
any part of literature resorted to him from all parts, and partook
of his favour and bounty. Seven celebrated poets of that age are
said to have lived at his court: four of which, namely, Theocri-
tus, Callimachus, Lyeophrou, and Aratus, have their works still
remaining; and, among these, the first of them has a whole
Idyllium, and the second, part of two hymns, written in his
praise. Manetho, the Egyptian historian, dedicated his history
to him; and Zoilus the snarling critic, came also to his court;
but how great soever his wit was, he could never recommend
himself to king Ptolemy, who hated him for the bitterness and
ill-nature of it: and, for the same reason, having drawn on him-
self the odium and aversion of all men, he at length died miser
ably ; for some say that he was stoned ; others tl-.at he was burned
to death; and others again, that lie was crucified by king Ptole-
my, for a crime that deserved that punishment. — Prideaux s
Connection, anno 249.
752
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M.3596. A. C.108; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 5070. A. C.341. 1 MAC. i— vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c. 7— b.xii.c. 14,
name was Joseph, a young man of great reputation
among the Jews, for prudence, justice, and sanctity of
life. He, as soon as he heard of the message, which
Athenion had brought, and of the people's great con-
sternation thereupon, went immediately to his uncle, and
severely upbraided him with his ill management of the
public interest, who, for the lucre of a little money, had
exposed the whole nation to such imminent danger,
which now there was no way to avoid, as lie told him,
but by his going immediately to the Egyptian court, and,
by a timely application to the king there, endeavouring
to pacify his wrath.
The bare mentioning of a journey to Alexandria a so
terrified the high priest, that upon his declaring, that he
would quit his station both in church and state, rather
than undertake it, Joseph offered, with his permission,
and the people's approbation to go in his stead. In the
tnean time he took care to entertain Athenion at his own
house, as long as he continued in Jerusalem, in a very
splendid and magnificent manner : when he departed,
he presented him with several very valuable gifts ; and
so sent him away in a good disposition, to make as fa-
vourable a representation to the king as the case would
bear, until himself should come to the Egyptian court, in
order to give him a full satisfaction.
Athenion was so taken with this prudent behaviour,
and kind entertainment of Joseph, that when he came to
give the king a report of his embassy, he could not but
mention his name with pleasure ; and when he told him of
his intentions to come and wait upon him himself, he set
forth his character with so much advantage, that the king
expressed a desire to see him. In a short time Joseph
a This city, which was built by Alexander the Great, A.M.
3G73, was, after his death, made the capital of Egypt, by Ptole-
my and his successors, for almost 300 years. Dinocrates, who
rebuilt the temple of Diana at Ephesus, after it had been burned
by Erostratus, was the architect who drew the plan of it, and had
the chief direction of the work; but to have it carried on with
more expedition, Alexander appointed Cleomenes, one of his
captains to be the surveyor of it; and for this reason, Justin (b.
xiii. c. 4.) calls him the founder of it. The happy situation of
this city between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and upon
the river Nile, drew thither the commerce of the east and west,
and made it in a very little time one of the most flourishing cities
in the world. It has still some small repute for merchandise ;
but what has occasioned the decay of its trade, is the discovery of
the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, on
the south of Africa. Before this discovery the whole spice trade
was carried into this part of the world through this city ; for the
spices were brought from the East Indies, up the Red Sea to
Egypt, and from thence were carried by land on camels to Alex-
andria. When Egypt became a province of the Roman empire,
this city continued the metropolis of it, and when the Arabians
took it, which was about 640 years after Christ, there were 4000
still standing in it, 4000 bagnios, 40,000 Jews paying
tribute, 400 squares, and 12,000 persons that sold herbs and
fruits. Here, as we said, was the famous Serapeum, or temple
oi Serapis, for beauty of workmanship and magnificence of struc-
ture, inferior to nothing but the Roman capitol. Here was the
museum, or collegeof philosophers; and here that noble library,
which was erected by Ptolemy Philadelphia, but unhappily
burned in the war between Caesar and Pompey, but notwith-
standing all its former splendour and magnificence, this city is
now become a poor village, by the Egyptians called Rachot,
without any thing remarkable in it, except its ruins, and the re-
mains of its former grandeur; only without the city, Pompey's
pillar, the shaft whereof is six fathoms high, all of "one piece of
curious granite, is justly admired as one of the finest columns that
is anywhere to be seen. — Calmefs Dictionary under the word ;
ami Wells' Geography of the JS'eiv Testament.
set out for Alexandria ; and falling in upon the road
with several of the chief nobility of Coelo-Syria and
Phoenicia, whose business at court was to farm the royal
revenues of these provinces, he joined company with
them, and having learned from their discourse of what
value these revenues were, he made use of that intelli-
gence afterwards, both to his own and the king's ad-
vantage.
When they all arrived at Alexandria, the king was gone
to Memphis ; l so that Joseph made haste thither, and
had the good fortune to meet him, the queen, and Athe-
nion, all in the same chariot, returning to Alexandria.
The king, upon Athenion's signifying who he was, called
him into the chariot ; and having mentioned his uncle's
ill-usage, in not paying him his tribute, he was there-
upon entertained with so handsome an apology for that
neglect, which he chiefly imputed to his uncle's old age,
and other infirmities, that he not only satisfied the king,
but gave him withal so good an opinion of the advocate,
that, when they came to Alexandria, he ordered him to
be lodged in the palace, and entertained at his expense.
When the day of farming out the revenues to the best
bidder was come, the Syrian and Phoenician noblemen,
with whom Joseph had travelled to Alexandria, beat
down their price, and would give no more for all the
duties of Ccelo-Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, and Samaria,
than eight thousand talents : but Joseph having found
fault with them for undervaluing the king's revenues,
offered to give twice as much, even exclusive of the for-
feitures, which used before to belong to the farmers ;
and was thereupon admitted to be the king's receiver-
general of all these provinces.
Upon the credit of this employment, he borrowed at
Alexandria five hundred talents, wherewith he satisfied
the king for his uncle's arrears ; and having received a
guard of two thousand men, to support him in the collec-
tion of the duties, he left Alexandria, and immediately
entered upon it. In some places he met with opposi-
tion, and very opprobrious language ; but having ordered
the chief ringleaders to be seized, and exemplary justice
to be executed upon them, he hereby so terrified the rest,
that they readily paid him his demands without any mo-
lestation. And in this office he continued for the space
of two and twenty years, under Ptolemy Euergetes, and
b This was a very famous city, and, till the time of the Pto-
lemies, who removed to Alexandria, the place of residence for
the ancient kings of Egypt. It was situated above the parting
of the river Nile, where the Delta begins. Towards the south
of this city stood the famous pyramids, two of which were
esteemed the wonders of the world ; and, in this city, was fed the
ox Apis, which Camhyses slew in contempt of the Egyptians
worshipping it as a god. The kings of Egypt took great plea-
sure in adorning this city; and in all its beauty it continued,
till the Arabians made a conquest of Egypt under the Caliph
Omar. The general who took it built another city just by it,
which was called Fustat, because his tent had been a long time
set up in that place, and the Caliph's Fatamites, when they be-
came masters of Egypt, added another to it, which is known to
us at this day by the name of Grand Cairo. The Mameluke
Sultans, of the dynasty of the Carcassians, having afterwards
built a strong fort on the eastern shore of the Nile, did, by de-
grees, annex a city to it, which came to be called the New Cairo,
as what the Fatamites had built was called the Old; but it must
be observed, that the ancient Memphis stood on the western
shore of the Nile, whereas whatever the Arabians have there
built, from time to time, is on the eastern shore of that river. —
Calmet's Dictionary , under the word.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c
753
A.M. 359G. A.C.408 ; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C. 311. 1 MAC. i-vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c. 7— b. xii. c. 14.
them more furious, were intoxicated with nine, mingled
with frankincense : but the king, the night before, hav-
ing- sitten up late at a drunken carousal, overslept him-
self, so that the show was put off till the day following-;
and, the next night, having- done the same again, the
show, for the same cause, was put off to the third day.
All this while the Jews, continuing- shut up in the Hippo-
drome, ceased not with lifted up hands and voices,
to pray unto God for their deliverance, which, accord-
ingly, he vouchsafed them. For, on the third day,
when the king- was present, and the elephants were let
loose, instead of falling- upon the Jews, they turned
all their rage upon those that came to see the show, and
destroyed great numbers.
This wonderful interposal of providence, in the pro-
tection of these poor people, together with some strange
appearances, at the same time, seen in the air, so terri-
fied the king, and all the spectators, that he ordered all
the Jews to be set free ; restored them to their former
privileges ; revoked every decree that had been made
against them, and, among other favours, indulged them
with his liberty — even to put to death all those Jews,
who, in fear of persecution, had apostatized from their
religion, which accordingly they put in rigorous execu-
tion.
Upon the death of * Ptolemy Philopater, his son
Ptolemy Epiphanes, a child but of five years old, suc-
ceeded him in the throne : but Antiochus the Great, tak
ing the advantage of the young king's inability to oppose
him, marched an army into Ccelo-Syria and Palestine,
and, in a very short time, made himself master of them
The Egyptians, however, under the command of Scapas
their general, endeavoured to regain them, and had
actually recovered Jerusalem into their possession ; but,
upon the approach of Antiochus in person, and the defeat
which he gave them at Paneas, the Jews, who had been
but badly used by Scapas, a very covetous and rapacious
man, submitted to him very cheerfully ; and receiving-
him and his army into the city, assisted him in the reduc-
tion of the castle, where Scapas had left a garrison.
In acknowledgment of which services, he, by a public
edict, granted them many favours, and, among the rest,
a liberty to live according to their own laws and religion,
and a power to prohibit any stranger to enter within the
sept of the temple, alluding to the attempt which Philo-
pater had lately made that way.
But Antiochus had greater things in view, than the
subjection of a province or two ; and therefore, to have
Philopater his son, until Ptolemy Epiphanes, the son of
Philopater lost these provinces to Antiochus the Great.
On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes his son Philopater
^not without some suspicion of having poisoned his fa-
ther) succeeded to the throne ; and, in the fifth year of
his reign, having, at Raphia, a town not far from Gaza,
defeated the army of Antiochus the Great, he afterwards
visited the cities which by this victory he had regained,
among which Jerusalem was one. Here he took a view
of the temple, gave valuable donatives to it, and offered
up many sacrifices to the God of Israel : but, not being-
content with this view from the outer court, beyond which
no Gentile was allowed to pass, he was for going into
the sanctuary, nay, even into the holy of holies itself,
where no one but the high priest (and that only on the
great day of expiation) was allowed to enter. This
made a great uproar all over the city. The high priest
informed him of the sacredness of the place, and of the
law of God, which forbade his entrance. The priests
and Levites were gathered together to hinder it. The
people did earnestly deprecate it ; and great lamen-
tations were every where made, upon the apprehension
of the approaching profanation of their holy temple.
But all to no purpose. The king, the more he was op-
posed, the more resolute he was to have his will satisfied,
and, accordingly, pressed into the inner court ; but as
he was passing farther to go into the temple, he was
seized with such a sudden terror and consternation of
mind, that he was carried out of the place, in a manner
half dead, and, in a short time, departed from Jerusa-
lem, highly incensed against the whole nation of the Jews,
and venting many bitter threatening^ against them.
Nor was he forgetful to put his threats in execution.
For no sooner was he returned to Alexandria, but he
published a decree, and caused it to be engraven on a
pillar erected at the gate of his palace, excluding every
one who would not sacrifice to the god whom he worship-
ped, from having any access to him ; degrading the Jews
from the rights and privileges they had in the city ; and
ordering them all to come, and l be stigmatised with the
mark of an ivy leaf (the badge of his god Bacchus) by
a hot iron impressed upon them, and, as many as re-
fused to come, commanding them to be put to death.
Nor did his rage end here : for, being determined to
extirpate the whole Jewish nation, as many at least as
were in his dominions, he sent out orders to his officers,
requiring them to bring all the Jews who lived any
where in Egypt, bound in chains to Alexandria ; and
having shut them up in the Hippodrome, (a large place,
without the city, where the people used to assemble to
see horse-races, and other shows,) he proposed the next
day to make a spectacle of them, by having them de-
stroyed by his " elephants. The elephants, to make
1 2 Mac. vi. 7.
a In the books of the Maccabees, we find frequent mention
made of elephants, because alter the reign of Alexander the
Great, these animals were very much employed in the armies,
which the kings of Syria and Egypt raised. They were natu-
rally of a very quiet and gentle disposition, and never made use
of their strength, but when they were irritated, or compelled to
it; and for this reason, we find that the elephants which were in
the army of Antiochus Eupater, had the blood of grapes and
mulberries shown them, thereby to animate them to the combat,
(1 Mac. vi. 34,) as those, which here Ptolemy Philopater kept,
were intoxicated with incense dipped in wine, to make them
more mad and furious. When they are thus irritated and in-
flamed, their strength is prodigious, and nothing can stand be-
fore them. Every creature that comes in their way, they
trample under foot, overthrow whole squadrons, knock down
trees, and demolish houses. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the
word.
o This Ptolemy was a man entirely given up to his lusts and
voluptuous delights. Drinking, gaming, and laseiviousness,
were the whole employments of his lite. Agathoclea his concubine,
and Agathocles her brother, who was his catamite, governed
him absolutely; and when Arsinoe, who was both his sister and
wife, complained of the neglect, which, by means of these two
favourites, was put upon her, this so ofiended the king and bis
catamite, that orders wen' given to have her put to death. But
he did not long survive her; for, having worn out a strong con-
stitution by his intemperance and debaucheries, he ended his
life before "he had lived out half the course of it. — Pridcaux" i
Cofinection, anno 204.
5 c
754
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3596, A. C. 409 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C
his armies at liberty to engage the Romans, a who, since
the defeat of Hannibal, in the second Punic war, were
become justly formidable, made a peace with Ptolemy,
nnd, giving him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage,
with her he resigned the provinces of Coplo-Syria and
Palestine, by way of dower.
By this means Judea reverted to the Egyptian crown,
and Joseph, the nephew of Onias, the high priest, was
reinstated in the office of collecting the king's revenues,
in that and the neighbouring provinces. But, as
Ptolemy, in a short time, had a sou by Cleopatra, upon
which occasion it was necessary for Joseph, among other
great officers of state, to congratulate the king and
queen, and to make them such presents as were usual,
lie, being now too old to take such a journey, and his
other sons refusing to go, was obliged to send Hyrcanus,
w !io was the youngest, but the best qualified for such a
negotiation, to make his compliment in his stead. But
the history of the young man's birth is somewhat remark-
able.
1 As Joseph's occasions, in his less advanced years,
called him frequently to Alexandria ; one night while
he was at supper with the king, 2 he fell desperately in
love with a beautiful damsel that danced before him ;
and, not being able to master his inordinate passion,
he communicated it to his brother Salimius, who had
accompanied him in his journey, and carried with him a
daughter of his, with an intent to many her at Alexan-
dria, and desired of him, if possible, to procure him the
enjoyment of her ; but, as secretly as he could, because
of the sin and shame that would attend such an act.
Salimius promised that he would : but instead of that,
he conveyed his own daughter into his bed, and, the
next morning, as secretly conveyed her away, so that
his brother never discovered the deceit. In this man-
ner Joseph accompanied with her several nights ;
till, every time growing more and more enamoured, he
made his complaint one day to his brother, of his hard
fate, who, by the laws of his religion, was forbidden to
marry the woman that he loved, because she was an
alien : whereupon the other discovered the whole matter
to him, and how, instead of the admired dancer, he had
put his daughter to bed to him, as thinking it more
eligible to wrong his own child, than to suffer him to
join himself to a strange woman, which their law ex-
pressly forbade. The surprisingness of this discovery
and the singular instance of his brother's kindness so
wrought upon Joseph's heart, that he immediately made
the young woman his wife, * and of her, the next year
was born this Hyrcanus.
1 Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 4. * Ibid.
a It was by Hannibal's instigation that he entered upon this
war, wherein lie was far from having the success which he cx-
pected. Two years he took up in preparations for it; and had
got together an army consisting of seventy thousand foot, twelve
thousand horse, and fifty-four elephants; but the Romans, with
less than half the number, met him near Magnesia, under mount.
Siphilus, and there gave him a total overthrow.
b According to the Jewish law, an uncle might marry his
niece, though an aunt (Lev. xviii. 12, 13, and xx. 19,) might
not many her nephew, for which the Jewish writers assign this
reason: — That the aunt being in respect of the nephew, in the
same degree with the father or mother, in the line of descent,
had naturally a superiority over him; and therefore for him to
make her his wife, and thereby to bring her down to be in a
degree below him, as all wives in respect of their husbands are
341. 1MAC. l— vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST.b.xi. c. 7— b. vii. c. 14.
Hyrcanus, when he undertook the journey to Alexan-
dria, persuaded his father not to send his presents from
Judea, but to purchase them rather at Alexandria, ob-
tained, by this means, an unlimited credit upon his agent
in that city : and therefore, when he came thither, in-
stead of ten talents, as might be expected, he demanded
a thousand, which in our money amounts to above two
hundred thousand pounds.
With this money he bought an hundred beautiful boys
for the king, and an hundred beautiful young maids for
the queen, at the price of a talent a head ; and when he
presented them, they carried each a talent in their hands,
the boys for the king, and the young maids for the queen ;
so that this article alone cost him four hundred, talents.
The rest he expended all in valuable gifts to the cour-
tiers, and great officers about the king, except what he
kept for his own private use.
By these means growing highly in favour with the
king, queen, and all the court, he made use of his in-
terest to supplant his father ; and under pretence of his
old age and imbecility, obtained of the king a commis-
sion to be the collector of the royal revenues in all the
country beyond Jordan ; which so enraged his brothers,
that, with their father's connivance at least, if not direct
approbation, they conspired to waylay him, and cut him
off, as he returned : but the guards who attended him,
and were to assist him in the execution of his office,
proved too strong in the assault, wherein two of his
brothers fell.
When he came to Jerusalem, however, his father
would not see him, and nobody would own him ; so that
he passed over Jordan, and entered upon the execution
of his office : but upon his father's death, which happened
soon after, a war commenced between him and his sur-
viving brothers, about the paternal estate, which, for
some time, disturbed the peace of the Jews at Jerusalem.
But as the high priest, and generality of the people,
sided with the brothers, he was again forced to retreat
beyond Jordan, where he lived in a strong castle ; until
Antiochus Epiphanes, succeeded to the throne of Syria,
and threatening to punish him according to his deserts,
made him, for fear of his threats, fall upon his sword
and slay himself.
Upon the unhappy death of Antiochus the Great, c his
son Seleucus Philopater succeeded him in the kingdom
of Syria, to which was annexed Judea, and the other
would be to disturb and invert the order of nature ; but that there
is no such thing done, when the uncle married the niece, in
which case, both keep the same degree and order that they were
in before, without the least mutation. — Pridcaux 's Connection,
anno 187.
c On his coming into the province of Elymais, hearing that
in that country there was a great treasure in the temple of Jupi-
ter Belus, and being in great difficulties how to raise money to
pay the Romans, he seized the temple by night, and spoiled it of
all its riches ; which so enraged the people of the country, that
to revenge this sacrilege, they rose upon him, and slew him, and
all that were with him. He was a prince of that laudable char-
acter for humanity, clemency, beneficence, and of great justice
in the administration of his government, and till the fiftieth year
of his life, managed all his affairs with that valour, prudence,
and application, as made him prosper in all his undertakings,
and deservedly gained him the title of the Great; but in the
latter part of his life, declining in the wisdom of his conduct, as
well as in the vigour of his application, every thing he did then
lessened him as fast as all his actions had aggrandized him
before. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 187.
Sect. 1 1 I.J
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
755
A.M. 359G. A. C. 408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A.
adjacent provinces. At his first accession, he favoured
the Jews, and supplied them with all things for the service
of the temple at his own expense; but being, some time
after, informed by one Simon a Benjamite, that there
were great riches in the temple, he sent his treasurer
Heliodorus, to make seizure of them, and bring them to
Antioch. But Heliodorus, going into the temple for
that purpose, and entering into the sacred treasury, was
stopped in his attempt by an apparition of angels, armed,
as it were, to defend the place against his sacrilegious
hands ; for these are the words wherein the history of the
Maccabees relates the matter : ' ' There appeared unto
him an horse, with a terrible rider upon him, and adorned
with a very fair covering, and he ran fiercely, and smote
at him with his fore-feet ; and he that sat upon the horse,
seemed to have a complete harness of gold. Moreover,
two other men appeared before him, notable in strength,
excellent in beauty, and comely in apparel, who stood
by him on either side, scourging him continually, and
giving him many sore stripes,' insomuch that he fell to
the ground ; but being taken up by those that attended
him, and carried oft' in a litter, he continued speechless,
and without all hopes of life, for some time, till, at the
intercession of his friends, the high priest prayed to God
for him, and so he recovered.
Not long after this, the same Heliodorus, aspiring at
the crown, poisoned his master Seleucus, in hopes of
succeeding him; but Eumenes, king of Pergamus, and
Attains his brother obstructed his design, and placed
Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes ; a another son of Anti-
1 2 Mac. iii. 25, &c.
« If we may credit the conjecture of Appian he was surnamed
'ETitfavh; (the Illustrious) because he vindicated the claims of
the royal family against the usurpations of the foreigner Helio-
dorus. He also liore the surname of Qio;, which is still seen up-
on his coins. But as he is represented by historians, he well
merited the surname of Etfipavris (the Insane) which his subjects
gave him instead of Etfitpccvtis. He often lounged like a mere
idler about the streets of Antioch, attended by two or three ser-
vants; and, not deigning to look at the nobles, would talk with
goldsmiths and other mechanics in their workshops, engage in
trilling and idle conversation with the lowest of the people, and
mingle in the society of foreigners and men of the vilest charac-
ter. He was not ashamed to enter the dissipated circles of the
young, to drink and carouse with them, and to promote their
revelries by singing and playing on his flute. He often appeared
among the common people at the public baths, engaging in every
kind of foolish jest without the least regard to the dignity of his
station and character. Not {infrequently did he appear in the
streets in a state of intoxication, when he would scatter his
money about and practise various other fooleries equally extrava-
gant. Sometimes he ^exhibited still more decisive tokens of
madness. He would parade the streets of his capital in a long
robe and with a garland of roses upon his head, and if any at-
tempted to pass by or to follow him, he would pelt them' with
stones which he carried concealed under his garments. When
ilie humour pleased him, he would array himself in a white robe
like the candidates at Rome, and in this dress go about Antioch,
saluting the citizens whom he met, taking them by the hand,
embracing them and supplicating their suffrages for some Itoman
office, of which they probably had never before heard even the
name. When he had thus obtained a number of votes, sufficient
to constitute him a tribune or an edile, he would with great so-
lemnity seat himself in an ivory chair in the market-place, after
the manner of the Romans, listen with deep attention to the most
trifling disputes, and pronounce judgment upon them with all
the gravity of a Roman magistrate. At other times he publicly
appeared in familiar intercourse with panders and common pros-
titutes. His liberality was profusion without bounds, and often
ridiculous. He sometimes presented great sums of money to
C. 341. 1 MAC. i-vi.7. 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST.b. xi. c.7— b. xii. c. 14
ochus the Great, upon the Syrian throne, who proved a
very terrible enemy and persecutor of the Jews. No
sooner was lie settled in the kingdom, but being desti-
tute of money, and having an heavy tribute to pay to the
Romans, 2 he deposed Onias, a man of singular piety
and goodness, from the high priesthood, and for 3G0
talents, which he engaged to pay yearly, sold it to his
brother Jason. But as Jason had supplanted Onias, so
his brother Menelaus, being sent to Antioch with this tri-
bute-money, for 300 talents more than Jason had given,
purchased the priesthood, and had him, in like manner
deposed : whereupon he withdrew to the country of the
Ammonites, waiting for some revolution in his favour.
Thus Menelaus got the chief priesthood by outbidding
his brother ; but being summoned to appear before the
king at Antioch, for non-payment of the money, 3 lie
left Lysimachus, another of his brothers, his deputy in
his absence, and, by his means, got many gold vessels
out of the temple, which he selling at Tyre, and the cities
round about raised money enough, not only to pay the
king his tribute, but to bribe Andronicus * likewise to
murder his brother Onias, because he supposed, that at
one time or other he might stand in his way, and because
he had lately taken the freedom to reprove him sharply
for this gross piece of sacrilege.
Andronicus did it to earn the money, but was soon
overtaken with justice at Antioch, c and Lysimachus (l
2 2 Mac. iv. 7 ; Joseph, on Mac. c. 4. 3 2 Mac. iv. 29.
cities; and often he would give gold to any person whom he
chanced to meet, though an entire stranger; and to another he
would make a present of a few dates, or some such trifle. He
outdid all his predecessors in the splendour of the games which
he celebrated at Daphne in honour of Jupiter Olympius; but his
conduct was so ridiculous that the foreigners who were present
thought him insane. Yet he was so strict as to exclude all females
from the exhibition. He paid little regard to the other gods,
but for Jupiter Olympius he built a magnificent temple, made
offerings to him at -an unprecedented expense, and attempted to
compel all his subjects, and the Jews among the rest, to worship
him. But without referring to this persecution of the Jewish
religion, the other parts of his conduct are amply sufficient to
justify the appellation nnJ, vile, contemptible, which Daniel gives
him. — Jahn's Hebrew Commonwealth. — En.
b This Audrouicus seems to have been left by Antiochus at
Antioch, to govern in his absence, and without this governor's
interposition, Menelaus could not compass his end, to murder his
brother; for Onias had fled to the asylum at Daphne, a small
distance from the city, which always used to be a place of re-
treat, secure and inviolable: and therefore Menelaus was forced
to give the governor a round sum, to engage him, by false pro-
mises of safety, to prevail with his brother to come out, and as
soon as he hail him in his power, to dispatch him. — Calmed
Commentary .
c For Onias having, by his laudable carriage, while he lived
at Antioch, gained much upon the esteem and affections of tho
people of the place, Greeks as well as Jews, they took hi*
murder in such high indignation, that they both joined in a
petition to the king against Andronicus for it. Hereupon, cog-
nisance being taken of the crime, and the wicked murderer con-
victed of it, Antiochus caused him, with infamy, to be carried
to the place where the murder was committed, and there put to
death for it, in such a manner as he deserved. For Antiochus,
as wicked a tyrant as he was, had sorrow and regret upon him
for the death of so good a man; ami, therefore, in the revenging
it, he satisfied his own resentments, as well as those of the people
who had petitioned him for it. — Prideati.vs Connection, anno 172.
d Winn it came to be known that Lysimachus had been tho
chief instrument in robbing the temple, tho multitude, fired with
indignation, gathered themselves together against him, and
though he attempted to form a party, under the command of one
Tyrannus, an old experienced officer, in order to resist their
756
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 359G. A.C.408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C. 311. 1 MAC. i— vi. 7.2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST.b. xi.c. 7— b.xii. c. 14.
slain by the people of Jerusalem ; yet such was the
power of bribery at the Syrian court, that by the strength
of this Menelaus, who was the contriver of all these mis-
chiefs, found means to clear himself before Antiochus,
and to get the three delegates from the sanhedrim, who
came from Jerusalem on purpose to accuse him, con-
temned and executed.
While Antiochus was engaged in war with Egypt, a
false rumour Mas spread in Palestine that he was dead ;
and Jason thinking this a line opportuity for him to re-
cover his station in Jerusalem as high priest, marched
thither with above a thousand men ; and having-, by the
assistance of the party which he had there, taken the city,
and driven Menelaus into the castle, he acted all manner
of cruelties upon his fellow-citizens, and put to death,
without mercy, all that he could light on, whom he took
to be hisadversaries.
Antiochus, hearing of this, and supposing that the
whole Jewish nation had revolted from him, marched
with all haste out of Egypt into Judea ; and ' being in-
formed, on his march, that the people of Jerusalem, on
the news which came of his death, had made great re-
joicings ; the sense of this so provoked him against
them, that laying siege to the city, and taking it by
storm, « he slew of the inhabitants, in three days' time,
40,000 persons, and having taken as many more captives,
sold them to the neighbouring nations.
Nor did all this satisfy his rage ; for, notwithstanding
his father's edict, he forced himself into the temple, * and
1 1 Mac. i. 20, &c; 2 Mac. v. 5, 6.— Joseph. Antig. b.xii.
c. 8.
rage, and defend himself; yet the mob fell on them with such
fury, that wounding some, and killing others, they forced the rest
to (lee: and then seizing upon Lysimachus, him they slew beside
the treasury within the temple, and thereby, for that time, put
an end to this sacrilege. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 172.
a Both the author of the second book of the Maccabees, (chap.
v. 11.) and Diodorus Siculus, (b. xlvi.) tell us, that Antiochus
took Jerusalem by force; and yet Josephus (in his 12th book of
Antiquities, c. 7.) affirms, that he made himself master of it
without any manner of difficulty, because the gates were set open
to him by the treachery of a party he made in the town: but
herein lie is contrary to himself. For in his history of the Jewish
wars, (b. i. c. 1.) he says, that Antiochus took it Kark x^roc,
that i-, by force; and there represents him as enraged by what
lie had suffered in the siege; and in the same history, (b. vi.
c. 1 1 .) lie speaks of those who were slain at the siese, figh'tino- jn
defence of the place. But the history of the Jewish wars, and
that of his Antiquities, he wrote at different times, which might
make him, in some places, not so consistent. — Prideau.v's Con-
nection.
/> Several heathen authors, in their account of their king
Antiochus, make mention of his taking a city, that was at peace
and in alliance with him, meaning thereby Jerusalem, commit-
ting many cruelties there, and plundering the temple, wherein
he found great riches; but Diodorus Siculus, in his relation of
this matter, (b. xxxiv.) is more particular and express. — " That
this prince having intruded into the most sacred place of the
tempi.', which none but the high priest was permitted to enter,)
",""1 ,llrn' a s1 Statue of a man with a long beard, and a
book n. his hand, mounted upon an ass. This lie took for Moses,
the author o the law, and founder of the nation of the Jews, and
of the city ol Jerusalem ; and, therefore, to remove the cause of
that universal hatred which all nations bore to the Jews, he went
about abolishing of their law; and, to this purpose, caused a large
sow to be sacrificed to this image of their legislator, on an altar
which he found there j and, having sprinkled the blood and the broth
that he mad,, of the victim, and therewith polluted the sacred
volume of their law, he made the high priest, and other Jews, eat of
its flesh, and jut out the lamp which used to be kept perpetual-
polluted, by his presence, both the holy place, and the
holy of holies. He sacrificed a great sow upon the altar
of burnt-oflerings, and caused the broth (which was made
of some part of the flesh) to be sprinkled all over the
temple, that he might defile it as much as possible. He
took away the altar of incense, the showbread table, the
candlestick of seven branches, and several other golden
vessels, utensils, and donatives of former kings, to the
value of 800 talents of gold ; and making the like plunder
in the city, he returned to Antioch, 2 leaving behind him
Philip a Phrygian, a man of a cruel and barbarous
temper, to be governor of Judea ; Andronicus, another
of the like disposition, to be governor of Samaria ; and
Menelaus, who was worse than all the rest, to continue
still over them in the office of high priest.
Not long after this, 3 there were seen at Jerusalem,
for forty days together, strange sights in the air of horse-
men and footmen, armed with shields, spears, and swords,
and in great companies lighting against, and charging
each other, as in battle array ; which foreboded those
calamities of war and desolation that soon after happened
in that city and nation. For Antiochus, still breathing
out rage against the poor Jews, sent Apollonius, one
of his generals, with an army of 22,000 men, and .an ex-
press order to kill all the men that remained in Jerusa-
lem, and to sell the women and children for slaves. * On
his first arrival, Apollonius, carried himself peaceably,
concealing his intent, and forbearing all hostilities, till
the return of the sabbath, when he put his bloody com-
mission in execution. 5 For, falling upon the city while
the people were at their devotion, he massacred many
of the inhabitants, plundered the place, led away the
women and children captives, and forced the few that
escaped to betake themselves to deserts and caves for
shelter. Nor was this all ; for in a short time after
Antiochus made a decree, commanding all nations to
leave their ancient rites and usages, and to conform to
the religion of the king ; which, however expressed in
general terms, was chiefly designed against the Jews.
6 The officer who was sent to see this decree put in
execution, was one Athenajus, a man well versed in all
the ceremonies of the Grecian idolatry, and therefore
thought a proper person to initiate the people into the
observance of them. On his coming to Jerusalem, 7 all
sacrifices to the God of Israel were superseded, and the
rites of the Jewish religion suppressed. The temple it-
self was dedicated to Jupiter Olympius, c (whose image
2 2 Mac. v. 22, 23. 3 Tbid ver 2, 3.
4 1 Mac. i. 29, 30. 5 g Mac. v. 24, &c.
6 Chap. vi. 1.
7 1 Mac. i. 44, &c; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 7.
ly burning.'' But several of these circumstances, (more especial-
ly that of a man mounted on an ass,) are no where to be found in
any other history; and may therefore, not improperly, be placed
among those fables, which the heathens invented and published,
on purpose to give some colour for their inveterate hatred against
the Jews.— Catmet's Commentary on 1 Mac. i. 23.
c This profanation of the temple, and the erecting of this
idol in it, had long before been foretold by the prophet Daniel,
under the name of ' abomination of desolation,' chap. xi. 31. For
this is the description which he gives of the reign of Antiochus,
and the bitter persecutions which he raised: 'He shall return
with indignation against the holy covenant, and have intelligence
with them that forsake it. Armies shall stand on his side, and
he shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall takeaway the
daily sacrifice, and there place the abomination, or abominable
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
757
A. M. 3M)G. A. C. 408; OR ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C.341. 1 MAC. i— vi.7. 2 MAC. iii
was set up on the altar of burnt-offerings,) and all the
people, upon pain of death, were obliged to sacrifice to
it. Those who met in caves to keep the sabbath, if they
happened to be discovered, were burned. The book of
the law was torn and cast into the lire ; the circumcising
of infants was forbidden ; and women accused of having
circumcised their children, were led about the streets
with those children hanging about their necks, and then
both cast headlong over the steepest part of the walls.
No less severity was used to enforce upon the people
the heathen worship, which the decree enjoined, than
there was to deter them from their own. In every city,
altars, groves, and chapels, for idols were set up, and
officers sent to compel them, once every month, to offer
victims to the Grecian gods, and to eat of the flesh of
swiue, and of other unclean beasts, that were at that
time sacrificed. In short, no manner of cruelty was
omitted to force the Jews to abandon their religion, and
turn idolaters ; but though, in this terrible persecution,
some of these wretched people yielded to violence, many
of them chose rather to die, than to forsake the law of
their God.
Among the latter sort, ' those of the most memor-
able note were a Eleazar, a chief doctor of the law, and
that heroine Soloniona, and her seven sons. Eleazar
was a very aged man ; yet, when his persecutors would
1 2 Mac. vi.j Joseph, on Maccab.
thing, that maketh desolate, or (as in the margin) quite astonish-
eth. Such as do wickedly against the covenant, shall he corrupt
by flatteries, but the people that know their God, shall do great
exploits; and they that have understanding, shall instruct many;
yet they shall tall by the sword, by famine, by captivity, and by
spoil: and the king shall do according to his will, and skall exalt
and magnify himself above every God. He shall speak wonder-
ful things gainst the God of gods, and shall prosper, till the in-
dignation be accomplished ; for that which is determined shall
be done,' ver. 30.
a Some interpreters are of opinion, that this was the same
Eleazar, who, at the head of the seventy-two interpreters that
were to translate the Sacred Scriptures, was sent into Egypt,
and that he suffered at Jerusalem, in the presence of the gover-
nor named Felix; but Ruffinus (in his Latin paraphrase on the
book of Josephus, concerning the Maccabees) will needs have
it, that not only Eleazar, but the mother and her seven sons,
namely, Maccabseus, Aber, Machir, Judas, Achas, Areth, and
Jacob, (for these are the names which he gives them,) were
all carried from Judea to Antioch, and there suffered martyr-
dom. The reason of the thing, however, as well as the tenor
of the history, which is given us by the author of the second book
of Maccabees, chap. vi. and vii. and by Josephus in the above-
mentioned book, made it much more likely, that Jerusalem, and
not Antioch, was made the scene of this cruelty; especially
since it bring designed for an example of terror to the Jews in
Judea, it would have lost its force had it been executed in any
other country, lint wherever this happened, it is certain that
Eleazar deserved all the commendation which the fathers have
given him: for, whether we consider the purity of his sentiments
or the sublimity of his doctrine, or the delicacy of his conscience,
we must acknowledge, that there are few saints, in the Old Tes-
tament that have given us a more exact pattern of charity, sin-
cerity, and magnanimity. ' It becometh not our age,' saith he,
' in any wise to dissemble, whereby many young persons might
think, that Eleazar being fourscore years old and ten, was now-
gone to a strange religion, and so they, through my hypocrisy,
and desire to live a little time, and a moment longer, should be
deceived by me, and I get a stain in my old age, and make it
abominable. For though, for the present time, I should be deli-
vered from the punishment of men, yet should not I escape the
hand of the Almighty, neither alive nor dead ; wherefore now,
manfully changing his life, I will show myself such a one, as my
age rcqniieth,' 2 Mac. vi. 24, &c. — Calmvt's Cummentari/, and
J'ridcuux's Connccliuji, anno 1(37.
x. JOS. HIST.b. xi. c.7— b. xii.c. 14.
have compelled him to eat swine's flesh, which they
forced into his mouth, he spit it out, and even when
some, in pity to his age, would have given him leave to
elude the sentence, by taking a piece of any other flesh
and eating it as swine's flesh, he scorned to purchase his
life at so sordid a rate, desiring them to dispatch him,
rather than sutler him to be guilty of dissimulation, and
stain the honour of his grey hairs with so mean an act.
Nor were the seven brothers and their mother inferior to
him in religious courage and magnanimity : for when
the king, pretending pity to their youth, and respect to
their family, which was noble, persuaded them to re-
nounce their religion, and embrace that of the Gentiles,
promising them great rewards and promotions, if they
would comply ; and when finding that this would have
no effect, he ordered the great variety of torments, which
he had provided, to be shown thein, thinking thereby
to affright them with the sad prospect of what they were
to sutler ; the instruments of death did no more terrify,
than the allurements of the tyrant did persuade them ;
but inspired with a truly holy zeal and celestial bravery,
" they unanimously declared their obedience to the law
of God, and the precepts which he had delivered by
Moses ; assuring him, that all his cruelty could not hurt
them; that the only effect their tortures could have, would
be to secure to them the glorious rewards of unshaken
patience and injured virtue; but, at t'he same time, ad-
monishing him, that, by the murder of so many innocent
men, he would arm the divine vengeance against him, and
for the momentary pains which he inflicted on them, would
himself become obnoxious to everlasting torments."
This is the main purport of most of their speeches ;
but the variety of their tortures was almost innumerable,
and for the horror of them inexpressible. All this while
their mother stood by, beholding their sufferings, and
exhorting every one, as it came to his turn, to behave
gallantly. At length when herself was only left, and the
soldiers were approaching to carry her to execution, she
prevented their rage, and all attempts upon her person,
by throwing herself voluntarily into the fire.6 Thus end-
ed this doleful, but glorious day, with the death of the
victorious Solomona, who triumphed in the sharpest
agonies of her sons, and her own sufferings, and through
a sea of the most exquisite pains, waded to the port of
eternal rest !
AYhile this persecution raged at Jerusalem, 2 Matta-
thias, the son of John, the son of Simeon, the son of
Asmonaeus, from whom the family had the name of As-
mona;ans,a priest of the course of Joarib, e with his five
3 I Mac. ii. &e. ; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 8.
b The Latin version says, that she was dragged on the ground
to execution, where having cut off her breasts, and scourging her
naked body, they flung her into a boiling caldron: but the Ara-
bic version, en the contrary, confirms, that, having lived to see
her seven sons martyred, and lying dead on the ground before
her, she dung herself into the midst of them, and praying to God
to take her out of the world, immediately expired. — Universal
1 i i. story, b. ii. C. 11.
c This was the first of the twenty-four courses of the priests that
served in the temple, (1 Chron. xxiv. 7.) and because Mattathias
undertook to determine for the necessity of fighting on the sab-
bath, in case tliey were assaulted by the enemy, some have from
hence inferred, that the people had made choice of him for their
high priest: but, besides that, this decision is not sufficie-nt to
[Hove this, and that it no where appears, that he ever performed
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THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M„3:,9G A. C
OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C.34I. iMAC.i— vi.7. 2MAC.iii— x. JOS. HIST. b.xi. c.7-b. xii. c. l-i
sons, John, Simeon, Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan, re-
tired to Modin, a little place in the tribe of Dan, and
there bemoaned the hard fate of their religion and coun-
try. But they had not been long- in this retreat, before
Antiochus sent one of his military officers, named Apel-
les, to put his decree in execution.
Apelles having called the people together, and told
them the intent of his coining, addressed himself more
particularly to Mattathias ; persuading him to comply
with the king's commands, that, by his example, he might
influence others; and promising him withal, that in case
he would do so, lie should be taken into the number of
the king's friends, and promoted to great honour and
riches. But to this Mattathias made answer, with a loud
voice, and in the audience of all the people, that no
consideration whatever should ever induce him, or any
of his family, to forsake the law of their God ; that the
examples of those who had apostatized, were no rule to
him, nor the commandments of the greatest monarch of
any validity, when they were sent to oblige him to em-
brace idolatry : and with these words, seeing a Jew of
the place presenting himself at the heathen altar, in or-
der to offer sacrifice according to the king's injunctions,
he ran up to the apostate, and, with a zeal like that of
Phineas, slew him with his own hand ; and then turning
upon the king's commissioner, by the assistance of his
sons, and those that were with them, dispatched him like-
wise, and all that attended him.
After this, Mattathias overturned the altars, and pull-
ed down the idols that were in the place ; and, having
got together his own family, and invited all that Avere
zealous for the law, to follow him, he retired to the
mountains, in order to make there the best defence he
could : but the Jews a had one principle, which, in the
the office of high priest, but only put himself at the head of a poor
distressed people, as being a person of the greatest power and
authority among them, it is certain, that both Menelaus and Al-
cimus were then alive; and though they were wicked men, and
intruders into the office, yet they were nominated by king An-
tiochus, who then assumed the right of nomination, and so were
looked upon as high priests — Calmtt's Dictionary, under the
word Maflathias.
a By the law of Moses, the Jews were commanded ' to do no
maimer of work on the sabbath day;' but this was a precept
which would admit of some exceptions, and what some people
took in a mire rigorous sense than others. The Samaritans, for
instance, thought themselves obliged to observe it to such a de-
gree of strictness, as not to stir out of their places on that day,
because the law is literally so expressed. (Exod. xvi. 29;) but
the Jews were of opinion, that they were permitted to make
their escape from danger, or to walk such a compass of ground,
which they called a ' sabbath day's journey,' if it were for any
ary occasion on that day. In our Saviour's time, it was
allowable, they thought, to pull any animal out of a pit, or a ditch,
on that day, (Mat. xii. 11.); but the Talmudical doctors were
for revoking that permission, and found fault with him for even
healing the sick and the lame, on the sabbath. Mattathias, and
iiis company, by sundry experiences, were convinced, that too
scrupulous an observance of the sabbath had brought several
calamities upon their nation ; that Ptolemy, the son ofLagus, the
first king of Egypt of that name, by assaulting Jerusalem on the
sabbath day, (wherein the Jews would do nothing to defend
themselves,) became master of it without opposition; and that,
but just lately, a great number of their brethren had been passive-
ly slain, because they would not so much as handle their arms on
that day; and thereupon they came to a resolution to defend
themselves, whenever they were attacked, be the day what it
would; but we do not find that they came to any decision,
whether they themselves were to attack the enemy on the sab-
bath. On the contrary, it seems as if they had determined, that
beginning of this resistance, had like to have ruined
them quite, and that was the scrupulous observation o£
the sabbath, even to such a degree, as not to defend
themselves on that day ; whereof their enemies taking
the advantage, destroyed great numbers of them, with-
out their making the least opposition. Mattathias how-
ever and his followers, finding- the fatality of their mis-
take in this particular, ' made a decree, (which was con-
firmed by the unanimous consent of all the priests and
elders among them,) that, whenever they were attacked
on the sabbath day, it was lawful for them to fight for
their lives, and to defend themselves in the best manner
they could, which afterwards became a general rule in
all their Avars.
While Mattathias abode in the mountains, great multi-
tudes of JeA\s, Avho had any true concern for their holy
religion, came, and joined him ; and, among these,
there Avas a good company of Assidaeans, b men mighty
in valour, and extremely zealous for the law ; so that,
Avhen he had got together such a number, as made the
appearance of a small army, 2 he came out of his fast-
nesses, and, going round the cities of Judah, pulled
doAvn the heathen altars ; re-established the true Avor-
ship ; caused the children to be circumcised ; cut oft* all
apostates, that fell in his way ; and destroyed all perse-
cutors, Avherever he came. Having thus acted the part
of a brave and prudent general, for the small time he
had the command of his little army, Mattathias was
1 1 Mac. ii. 40, 41 ; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 8.
2 1 Mac. ii. 44., &e. ; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 8.
they were only permitted to repel force by force ; and therefore
we lead, that, when Pompey besieged the temple, observing
that the Jews did barely defend themselves on the seventh day,
he ordered his men to offer no hostilities, but only to raise the
batteries, plant their engines, and make their approaches on that
day, being well assured, that in doing of this, he should meet
with no molestation from them; and, by this means, he carried
the place much sooner, than he otherwise would have done. —
Jewish Antiq. b. xiv. c. 8; Jewish Wars, b. i. c. 5; and Cal-
met's Commentary on 1 Mac. ii. 14.
b When the Jewish church came to be settled again in Judea,
after the return of the Babylonish captivity, there were two sorts
oi men among the members of it; the one, who contented them-
selves with that only, which was written in the law of Moses,
and these were called zadikim, that is, the righteous; and the
other, who, over and above the law, added the constitutions and
traditions of the elders, and, by way of supererogation, devoted
themselves to many rigorous observances; and these being
reckoned in a degree of holiness, above the others, were called
chasidim, that is, the pious. From the former of these were
derived the sects of the Samaritans, Sadducees, and Karaites,
and from the latter the Pharisees, the Essenes, and Assidteans.
These Assidseans, or Chasidseans, rather, as they should be writ-
ten, were a kind of religious society, whose chief and distinguish-
ing character was, to maintain the honour of the temple; and
therefore they were not only content to pay the usual tribute for
the reparation of it, but charged themselves with farther expenses
upon that account ; for extvy day, except that of the great ex-
piation, they sacrificed a lamb, besides those of daily oblation,
which was called the * sin-offering of the Assidreans.' They
practised greater hardships and mortifications than the rest, and
their common oath was by the temple, for which our Saviour
reproves the Pharisees, (Mat. xxiii. 16. who had learned that
oath of them. Mattathias, however, being joined by men of this
principle, who made it one of the main points of their piety to
fight zealously for the defence of the temple, which was then fal-
len into the hands of the heathen, was not a little strengthened
in his party, and in some measure able to take the field. — Scali-
ycr, in Elench. Trchcresii, &c; Prideaux's Connection, anno 197;
aud Calmet's Commentary.
Sect. II1.J
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
759
A. M.35W3. A. C. 408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M . 5070. A. C
forced at last to submit to the weight of 140 years ; but
before his death, ' he called his live sons together, and,
having exhorted a them to stand up valiantly for the law
of God, and, with a steady courage and constancy, to
light the battles of Israel against the present persecutors,
he appointed Judas to be their captain in his stead, and
Simeon to be their counsellor; and so, giving up the
ghost, he was buried at Modin, in the sepulchres of his
forefathers, and all the faithful in Israel made great
lamentation for him. *
Judas, who is surnamed Maccabams, as he had taken
upon him the command, went round the cities of Judea,
1 Mac. ii. 49, &c. ; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 8.
a The speech which Josephus puts in the mouth of old Matta-
thias upon this occasion, is widely different from what we find in
1 Mac. ii. 49, &c, but not undeserving of our observation.
" My dear sons," says he, " my life is drawing to an end ; but
I am to charge you, upon my blessing, before I leave you, that
you stand firm to the cause that your father has asserted before
you without any staggering or shrinking. Remember what I
have told you, and do as I have advised you. Do your utmost
to support the rights and laws of your country, and to restore the
order of a nation that wants but very little of being swallowed up
in confusion. Have nothing to do with those that, either for
fear or for interest, have betrayed it. Show yourselves to be
sons worthy of such a father; and, in contempt of all force and
extremity, carry your lives in your hands, and deliver them up
with comfort, if any occasion should require it, in defence of
your country; computing with yourselves, that this is the way
to preserve yourselves in God's favour, and that, in consideration
of so unshaken a virtue, he will in time restore you to the liberty
of your former life and manners. Our bodies, it is true, are
mortal ; but great and generous actions will make us, immortal
in our memory; and that is the glory I would that you aspire
to, that is to say, the glory of making the history of your lives
famous to after ages by your illustrious actions." The rest of
his speech agrees with what we find in the book of Mattathias,
wherein he distributes to each son the office that he knew him
best qualified for; and then concludes, "Do but mind your busi-
ness, and depend upon it, that all men of honour and piety will
join with you.'' — Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 8.
I Why Judas and his successors were called Maccabees is
uncertain. The book from which this epithet is derived, being
written in Greek, we have no certainty which were the original
letters of the word. It might seem, at first sight, to be derived
from the Hebrew term macchabeh , a word which signifies hid,
as a contemptuous epithet bestowed on them by their adversaries,
or their apostate countrymen, because they concealed themselves
in caves and rocks; but who having afterwards wiped oft" that
reproach by their bravery, still retained that appellation in
memory of their former concealment; or, from the word mak-
kebah, n carcm; and so, they might be called caverners, or
those who lurked in caverns. The book itself, which contains
the history of Judas and his successors, down to the death of the
high priest Simon — a period of forty years, — was originally writ-
ten in that dialect of the Hebrew which the Jews used after
{heir return from the Babylonish captivity, lint of which book
we now possess only the Greek version ; but by whom the trans-
lation was made, or the original composed, is unknown. It is
plain, however, that the author of this book has forfeited all title
to an honest veracious historian : his exaggerations are so mon-
strous, and his discrepancies so manifest. I by no means dis-
pute the fact, that a number of faithful Jews stood out against
the invaders of their country, and were zealous for the God of
their fathers. I as really believe this, as I believe in the exist-
ence of Wallace, the hero of Scottish romance. It is the
tissue of gross exaggeration which runs through the whole nar-
rative of the Jewish hero's exploit', with which fault is here
found. Of this I am firmly persuaded, that no sensible, well-
iniormed man, will ever place such a romantic history as that
of the first book of the Maccabees on a level with the historical
books of the Old Testament; as the facts there narrated bear
internal evidence of their truth, and are perfect sobriety com-
pared with the deeds of a hero, whom his biographer has made,
341. 1 MAC. i— vi. 7, 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c. T— b.xii. c. 14.
in the same manner as his father had done, destroying
every where all utensils and implements of idolatry;
slaying all idolaters and apostate Jews ; rescuing the
true worshippers of God from the hands of their oppres-
sors ; and for their better security for the future, fortify-
ing their towns, rebuilding their fortresses, and placing
strong garrisons in them. These proceedings gave the
Syrian court some umbrage ; and therefore Antiochus 2
ordered Apollonius, c his governor in Samaria, to raise
forces, and go against him ; but Judas having defeated
and slain him, made a great havock among his troops,
and, finding the governor's sword among the spoils, he
took it for his own use, and generally fought with it all
his life after. Seron, the deputy governor of some part
of Co?lo-Syria, hearing of Apollonius's defeat, got to-
gether all the forces that were under his command, and,
in hopes of gaining himself honour, 3 came in pursuit of
Judas ; but, instead of that, he met with the same fate,
being vanquished and slain in the manner that Apollo-
nius was.
Enraged at these two defeats, Antiochus sent three
eminent commanders, Ptolemy-Macron, Nicanor, and
Gorgias, to manage the war against the Jews ; who,
with an army of forty thousand foot, and seven thousand
horse, together with a great number of auxiliaries from
neighbouring nations, and renegado Jews, 4 came, and
encamped at Enunaus, d not far from Jerusalem. Judas,
on the other hand, marched with his men to Mizpeh, e
where, having implored God's merciful assistance in
this time of distress, and / encouraged them in words
2 I Mac. iii. 10; Jewish A'ntiq. b. xi. c. 10.
3 1 Mac. iii. 13, &c. ; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 10.
4 1 Mac. iii. 39, &c, and Josephus, ibid.
in the number and splendour of his victories, to exceed all those
recorded of a Joshua and a Jephthah, a Barak and a Gideon:
with this difference, that, in the former, the Israelites obtained
peace and rest in consequence of divine interpositions, whilst, in
the latter, such were wholly unavailing, till the growing weak-
ness of the Syrian power, and the frequent political struggles for
the crown among the worthless descendants of Seleucus, enabled
the Jews gradually to throw off the yoke of their pagan rulers,
and secure their independence. — Bell's Rollin, vol. ii. p. 609.
_Er>.
c This, in all probability, was the same Apollonius whom
Antiochus sent at first to plunder Jerusalem, and afterwards to
set up the statue of Jupiter Olympius, and to compel the Jews
to relinquish their religion. — Calmct's Commentary,
d This was a village lying to the west of Jerusalem, and be-
tween seven and eight miles from it. It was honoured with our
Saviour's presence after his resurrection, and therein were hot
baths, for Emmaus comes from the Hebrew Chaiuath, which
signifies baths of hot voter, that were very beneficial to those
that used them. — Calmct's Dictionary under the word.
c At this time Jerusalem was in the hands of the heathen,
and the sanctuary trodden under foot; so that Judas could not
assemble his men there to implore the assistance of God in this
time of imminent danger; and therefore he repaired to Mizpeh,
a place w here the people oftentimes used to assemble for prayer,
(Jud. xx. 1. 1 Kings xv. 22. 2 Chron. xvi. 0.') Here lie and
all his army addressed themselves to God, in solemn fasting and
prayer, for his assistance and protection: and herein he acted
the part of a wise and religious commander, as knowing that the
battle was the Lord's, and that therefore it would be impious to
begin any such enterprise, without first imploriug the divine
aid. — Prideau.v's Connection, anno 166.
/The speech which Judas makes to his men upon this occa-
sion, as we have it in Josephus, is a very excellent one: — " We
shall never have," says he, " my fellow soldiers and companions,
such an opportunity again of showing our bravery in the defence
of our country, and the contempt of all dangers, as we have now
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[Book VII.
A.M. 3596. A.C.408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C.
proper on such an occasion to fight for their religion,
laws, and liberties, with a courage undaunted, and, as
the cause was God's, with a firm assurance of success,
he led them forth to the engagement. But, having first
caused proclamation x to be made, that all such as had
that year built houses, planted vineyards, betrothed wives,
or were in any degree fearful, should depart, his six
thousand men, which he had at first, were reduced to
three thousand.
a With this handful of men, however, he was resolved
to give the enemy battle. But hearing that Gorgias
was detached from them with five thousand foot, and a
thousand horse, to surprise his camp by night, he coun-
termined his plot by another of the same kind: for,
quitting his own camp, and marching towards the enemy,
he fell upon them, while Gorgias with the best of his
forces was absent, and put them into such a surprise and
confusion, that they took to their heels, and fled, leav-
ing him master of their camp, and three thousand of their
men dead upon the spot.
Gorgias, coming to the Jewish camp, found it empty ;
and concluding from thence, that Judas had fled into
the mountains for fear, he pursued him thither ; but,
when he found him not, and was returning to his own
camp, he understood that it had been entered and
burned ; that the main army was broken and fled ; and
that Judas was ready in the plains to give him a warm
reception. Hereupon he could no longer keep his men
together ; for, seized with a panic fear, they flung down
their arms, and fled : when Judas, putting himself in
pursuit of them, slew great numbers more, so that the
whole amounted to nine thousand, and of those that
escaped from the battle, most were sorely wounded and
maimed. Judas, 3 with his victorious army, returning
from the chase, entered the enemy's camp, where he
found plenty of rich plunder ; and so proceeding in
triumph to Jerusalem, celebrated the next day, which
was the Sabbath, with great devotion, rejoicing and
praising God for this signal and merciful deliverance.
Judas, after this, having intelligence, that Timotheus,
4 governor of the country beyond Jordan, and Bacchides,
another lieutenant in those parts, were drawing forces
1 Deut. xx. 7, 8. 2 I Mac. iv. 1, &c.
3 1 Mac. iv. 23, &c. ; Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 10.
4 Mac. viii. SO, 31.
before us ; for, upon the issue of to-morrow's combat depends,
not only our liberty, but all the comforts and advantages that
attend it; and, over and above the blessing of such a freedom, our
very religion lies at stake with it too, and we cannot secure the
one but by preserving the other. Bethink yourselves well,
therefore, what it is you are to contend for, and you will find it
to be no less than the sum and substance of the greatest happi-
ness that you have ever enjoyed, that is to say, in the peaceable
possession of your ancient laws, rites and discipline. Now,
whether you will rather choose to perish with infamy, and to
involve the miserable remainder of all your countrymen in the
same ruin, or to venture one generous push for the redemption
of yourselves and your friends, that is the single question. Death
is the same to the coward that it is to the valiant man, and as
certain to the one as the other; but there is great difference in
point of honour, and everlasting fame, between a gallant man,
that falls in vindication of his religion, liberties, laws, and coun-
try, and a scoundrel that abandons all for fear of losing a life
which lie cannot save at last. Take these things into your
thoughts, and make this use of the meditation. You have no-
thing to trust to but God's providence, and your own concurring
resolutions, and, at the worst, while we contend for victory, we
can never fail of glory." — Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 11.
341. 1 MAC. i— vi.7. 2 MAC. iii— x. JOS. HIST- b. xi. c. 7— b.xii.c. 14.
together, in order to invade him, marched directly
against them ; and, having overthrown them in a great
battle, slew above twenty thousand of their men, enriched
his army with their spoils, and, out of them, provided
himself with arms, and other things necessary for the
future carrying on of the war.
5 Lysias, whom the king, when he went upon his
expedition into Persia, had constituted chief governor
of all the country from Euphrates to Egypt, being vexed
and ashamed at all these defeats, put himself at the
head of an army of sixty thousand foot, and five thousand
horse ; and marched into Judea, with a full intent to
destroy the country, and all its inhabitants, he pitched
his camp at Bethzura, a a strong place lying to the south
of Jerusalem, near the confines of Idumea. * There
Judas met him with ten thousand men only ; and having
engaged his numerous army, and slain five thousand of
them, the rest he put to flight, and sent Lysias back
again with his baffled forces to Antioch, but with a pur-
pose to come again with a greater strength another
year.
By this retreat of his, Judas having made himself
master of all Judea, thought it his duty to purge the
house of the Lord, and to remove those profanations,
which for three years last past it had been forced to
submit to. To this purpose, he appointed a certain
number of priests to cleanse the sanctuary, to pull down
the altar which the heathens had set up, and to build
another of 6 unhewn stones, to consecrate the courts
anew, and to make all things again fit and commodious
for the service of God.
Antiochus, in his sacrilegious pillage of the temple,
which we have related, had taken away the altar of
incense, the table of the showbread, the golden candle-
stick, and several other vessels and utensils, without
which the service could not regularly be performed ; but
out of the spoils " which Judas had taken from the ene-
my he Avas able to have all these things made anew, of
the same metal, and in the same manner as they were
before ; and having thus put all things in their proper
5 Mac. iv. 26, &c. ; Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 10.
6 Exod. xx. 25; Deut. xxviii. 5; Josh. viii. 31.
7 1 Mac. iv. 49.
a It had been fortified by king Rehoboam, (2 Chron. xi. 7,)
and was, at this time, a very important fortress, as being one of
the keys of Judea on the south side of Idumea. — Universal Hist.
b. ii. c. 11.
b Wherever the name of Idumea, or the land of Edom, occurs
in any of the writings of the Old Testament, it is to be under-
stood of that Idumea, or land of Edom, which lay between the
Lake of Sodom and the Red Sea, and was afterwards called
Arabia Petrrea. But the inhabitants of this country, being
driven out by the Nabathseans, while the Jews were in the Baby-
lonish captivity, and their land laid desolate, they then took pos-
session of as much of the southern part of it as contained what
had formerly been the whole inheritance of the tribe of Simeon,
and half of the tribe of Judah, where, at this time, they dwelt, •
but had not as yet embraced the Jewish religion. And this is
the only Idumea, and the inhabitants of it the only Idumeans, or
Edomites, which are any where spoken of after the Babylonish
captivity. After their coming into this country, Hebron, which
had formerly been the metropolis of the tribe of Judah, became
the capital of Idumea, and between that and Jerusalem lay
Bethzura, a strong fortress, which the author of the second book
of Maccabees, (ch. xi. 5.) places at no more than five furlongs'
distance from Jerusalem; but this is a visible mistake; for
Eusehius makes it, at least, twenty miles distant from it. —
Prideaux's Connection, anno 165.
Skct. III.l
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761
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order, he had the temple dedicated again, with as much
solemnity as the present state of affairs would permit,
and in commemoration hereof, appointed a festival " of
eight days' continuance, which began on the fifth of the
month Chisleu, much about the twentieth of our Novem-
ber, to be annually observed.
But though the temple was recovered and restored to
its former use, yet Apollonius, at his taking Jerusalem,
had erected a fortress on mount Acra, * which com-
manding the mountain of the temple, and being still in
the hands of the enemy, gave him the advantage of
annoying all those who went up to the temple to wor-
ship. To remedy this inconvenience, Judas at first
blocked up the fortress ; but finding that he could not
conveniently spare such a number of men as were neces-
sary for that purpose, ' he caused the mountain of the
temple to be fortified with strong walls and high towers,
and placed therein a sufficient garrison, both to defend
it, and protect those who went up to worship.
When the neighbouring nations came to understand
that the Jews had recovered the city and temple of Jeru-
salem,and again restored the worship of God in that place,
2 they were moved with such envy and hatred against
them, that they proposed to join with Antiochus in the
extirpation of the whole nation ; and accordingly had
put all to death whom they found sojourning among
them : but Judas having first fortified Bethzura, to be a
barrier against the Idumajans, who, at this time, were
bitter enemies to the Jews, made war against them, and
all the other nations that had confederated against him,
in such a manner, and with such success, as shall here-
after be related.
Antiochus, in his expedition into Persia, was not so
1 Mac. iv. 60; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 11.
* 1 Mac. v. 1, &c.
a This festival is commemorated in the gospel, (John ii. 23.)
and our blessed Saviour, we are told, came up to Jerusalem on
purpose to bear a part in the solemnizing of it. Some indeed are
of opinion, that it was another dedication-feast, which Christ thus
honoured with his presence: but besides that the dedications both
of Solomon's and Zerubbabel's temples, who, though they were
very solemnly celebrated at the first erection of these temples,
had never any anniversary feast afterwards kept in commemora-
tion of them, the very history of the gospel, which tells us that
it was kept in winter, confines us to this dedication of Judas
only. That of Solomon was on the seventh month, which fell
about the time of the autumnal equinox: and that of Zerubbabel
was on the twelfth month, which fell in the beginning of the
spring ; but that of Judas Maccabeus was on the twenty-fifth day
of the ninth month, which fell in the middle of winter. So that
the feast of the dedication which Christ was present at in Jeru-
salem, was no other than that which was instituted by Judas, in
commemoration of his dedication of the temple anew, after that
it had been cleansed from idolatrous pollutions ; and from hence
Grotius, in his commentary on the gospel of St John, (ch.x.22.)
very justly observes, that festival days, in memory of public
blessings, may be piously instituted by persons in authority,
without a divine command. — Pr/dcin/.c's Convection, anno 166.
b The word sicra, which is of Greek original, signifies in
general <i citadel, in which sense the Syrians and Chaldeans used
it; but when Antiochus i;ave orders for the building of a citadel
on the north side of the temple upon an eminence, that command-
ed it, the hill itself was called by the name of Acra; which, ac-
cording to Josephus, (b. xii. c. 7, and 14.) was in the form of a
semicircle. John Maccaba-us took it out of the hands of the
Syrians, who there kept a garrison, and pulled down its fortifica-
tions, and in their room were afterwards built the palace of
Helena, and that of Agrippa, a place where the public records
wire kept, and another where the magistrates of Jerusalem as-
sembled.— Calmet's Dictionary under the word.
341.1 MAC. i-vi.7. 2MAC.iii_x.JOS. HIST. b. xi. c. 7-b. xii. c. 14-
successful as he expected : for, 3 being informed that
Elymais, a city in that country, was an opulent place,
wherein stood the temple of Diana, c where immense
riches were to be found, he marched his army thither,
with an intent to plunder both it and the temple : but
the country round about, taking the alarm, joined with
the inhabitants in the defence of the city and temple,
and having beat him off, they obliged him to return to
Ecbatan in Media, where, with shame and confusion,
having received news of the ill success of his arms in
Judea, and how the Jews had pulled down the images
and altars that he had erected, recovered their temple
at Jerusalem, and restored that place to its former wor-
ship, he made all the haste home he possibly could,
threatening, as he went along, utterly to destroy the
whole nation, and make Jerusalem the common place of
sepulpture to all the Jews. But A while these proud
words were in his mouth, the judgments of God overtook
him ; for he was instantly seized with a pain in his bowels,
and a grievous torment in his inward parts, which no
remedy could assuage. Being resolute however in his
revenge, he ordered his charioteer to double his speed ;
but in the rapid motion, the chariot was overturned, and
he thrown to the ground with such violence, as sorely
bruised his whole body, and mashed, as it were, his
limbs with the fall ; so that being able to travel no far-
ther, he was forced to put in at Tabaj, a little town in
the confines of Persia and Babylonia, where he suffered
most exquisite torments both of body and mind. In his
body, a filthy ulcer broke out in his privy parts, where-
in were bred an innumerable quantity of vermin, con-
tinually flowing from it, and such a stench proceeding
from thence, as neither those that attended him, nor even
he himself could well bear : and in this condition he lay,
languishing and rotting, till he died. In his mind, his
torments were no less, by reason of the several spectres
and apparitions of evil spirits which he imagined were
continually about him, reproaching and stinging his con-
science with accusations of the evil deeds which he had
been guilty of. Being made sensible at length by his
3 I Mac. vi. 1, Sic.'
* 2 Mac. ix. 5, &c.
c Other authors agree with the account in the first book of
Maccabees, that the temple of Elymais was prodigiously rich;
and both Polybius and Diodorus Siculus (as they are cited by
St Jerome, on Dan. xi.) mention this attempt of the king of Syria
to plunder it. But the manner in which he came to be disap-
pointed, is related quite differently in the second book of Macca-
bees. For therein we are told, that when Antiochus, pretending
that he would marry the goddess of the temple, whose name
was Nanea, that thereby he might have the better title to the
riches of it, by way of dowry, was let into the temple, to take
possession of them, the priests opened a secret door that was in
the ceiling, and from thence threw upon him and his attendants
such a shower of stones as quite overwhelmed them, and so cut
off their heads, and cast them out, (2 Mac. i. 13, &c); but
who the goddess Nanea, who had this temple at Elymais, was,
the conjectures of the learned are various, since some will have
her to be Venus, and others Cybele the mother of the gods, be-
cause the word in tl>* Persian language signifies mother, though
the most common opinion is, mat she was Diana, or the moon,
the same that Strabo calls Anais, or Anaitis ; for that she was
held to be a virgin goddess is plain, because Antiochus pretended
to espouse her, and that she was a chaste goddess, Plutarch
(de Artaaer*es) seems to intimate, when he tells us, that Arta-
xerxes took the beautiful Aspasia, with whom lie himself was
in love, from his son Darius, and devoted her to a perpetual vir-
ginity, in the service of Anais, the goddess of Ecbatan. — Col-
' iinmentary on I Mac. vi. 1.
5 »
762
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3596. A. C. 408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C
.afflictions, that all his sufferings were from the hand of
God, for his plundering and profanation of his temple at
Jerusalem, and for his hatred and cruelties to his ser-
vants, who worshipped there, l he made an ample ac-
knowledgment of this before he died, and many vows
and solemn promises of a full reparation, in case he re-
covered. But his repentance " came too late : and there-
fore, after having languished out a while in this miserable
condition, and under these horrid torments of body and
mind, at length, being half consumed with the rottenness
of his ulcer, he gave up the ghost, and died, after he
had reigned eleven years.
CHAP. II. — Objections answered.
Of what weight and authority both the history of the
Maccabees, and that of the Jews by Josephus ought to
be accoimted, we shall have occasion to inquire in the
two following chapters, and need only here observe, that
what the Maccabaean history has recorded of Antiochus
Epiphanes is, in a great measure confirmed by the testi-
mony of Polybius, an exact historian, who was con-
temporary with him, and could not therefore be at a loss
for proper instructions in what he wrote, Epiphanes, ac-
cording to 2 him, was a man of great expense, and
squandered away vast sums in the gratification of his
lusts and amours, in the gifts he bestowed upon his fa-
vourites, and the entertainments he made for the people :
but then Athenaeus3 informs us," that all these expenses
were made, partly out of the gifts which his friends sent
him, partly out of the prey which he took from Ptolemy
king of Egypt, when he was a minor ; but chiefly out of
the spoils of the many temples which he sacrilegiously
robbed."
4 ' I was bountiful, and beloved in my power, and 5 I
have done great benefits,' both public and private, to the
Jews. These were the vain boasts of the dying tyrant :
but since the same Polybius 6 tells us, that his distemper
so far grew upon him, as to come to a constant delirium,
or state of madness, these expressions, we may suppose,
came from him, 7 when he was in that condition. For
we know no instance of his kindness, but many of his
cruelty to the people of God ; and, as to his bounty, as
he calls it, this he usually committed in his drunken
frolics, 8 in which he spent a great part of his revenues
and used often to go out into the streets, and to scatter
his money in handfuls among the rabble. We may
therefore reasonably suppose, that such a wild, crack-
1 1 Mac. vi. 12, 13 ; 2 Mac. ix. 11, 18; Joseph. Antiq. b xii
c. 13.
- Deipnosoph. I., vi. 3 Apud Athenreum, 1). v.
1 Mac. vi. II. 5 2 Mac. ix. 26.
fi In the Extracts .,!" Valesius. " Camlet's Commentary.
R Athenfeus, b. x.
a This wicked king is an example of all hardened sinners,
and false penitents, whose only motive of turning to God, is
their fear, or feeling of punishment. The Maccab:ean martyrs
had threatened, or rather foretold, that ' through the judgment
of God, he should receive a just punishment for liis pride,'
(2 Mac vii. 36.), and, therefore, < when he called, God would
not answer;' but, as the royal penman expressed, 'laughed at
his calamity, and mocked when his distress and anguish came
upon him,' Prov. i. 2Q, 2".
341. 1 MAC. i— vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii x. JOS. HIST. !>. xi. c. 7-b. xii. c. 14.
brained creature as this, had seldom any serious thought
of establishing an uniformity in religion, though that
religion, by the bye, was impious, in his dominions ; but
that, to justify the depredations that he made upon the
Jews, and to revenge the defeats which they had so fre-
quently given to his armies, these were the true reasons
of his exasperation against them ; because it is not con-
ceivable, how he could have any sober sense of religion,
who, to satisfy his greedy avarice, was not afraid to rob
the temple of Diana.
This robbing of temples, in the opinion of all sober
heathens, was accounted a crime of so heinous a nature
as justly deserved the vengeance of heaven ; and there-
fore Polybius, 9 as well as the author of the Maccabees,
informs us, that Antiochus, before he died, was scared
with visions, and apparitions of evil spirits ; but then he
supposes, that it was the goddess Diana, that thus haunted
him, for his attempting to pillage her temple at Elymais ;
whereas he himself, in the presence of all his friends,
openly declares, that these troubles were come upon
him, because 10he ' had taken all the vessels of gold and
silver that were in Jerusalem,' and had destroyed ' the
inhabitants of Judea without a cause.'
The sacrilege at Elymais was only intended, not exe-
cuted : but that at Jerusalem was committed, with horrid
impiety against God, and as horrid cruelty against all
those that served him there. But even if the former had
been committed, it was only against a false deity ; where-
as the latter was against the true God, the great and al-
mighty Creator of heaven and earth : and therefore we
need less wonder, that the marks of a divine infliction
were so visible in the nature of his disease. Appian n and
Polybius, 12 as well as Josephus, and the author of the
books of Maccabees, have informed us, that he died with
ulcers, and putrefying sores in his secret parts ; and,
upon this occasion, we cannot forbear remarking, that
most of the great persecutors of the church of God have
been smitten in the like manner; that thus died Herod,
the great persecutor of Christ, and the infants at Beth-
lehem ; thus Galerius Maximianus, the author of the
tenth, and greatest, persecution against the Christians ;
and thus Philip the second, king of Spain, who was as
infamous for the cruelty of his persecution, and the num-
bers destroyed by it, as any of the other three. 13 It is
no small confirmation therefore of what the Jewish
writers relate concerning the judgments of God upon
Antiochus, that these heathen authors, whose credit is
thought indubitable, do agree with them as to the matter
of fact, though they differ from them, in assigning a
wrong cause for it.
14 ' If you will walk in my statutes, and keep my com-
mandments, and do them, ye shall chase your enemies,
and they shall fall before you : five of you shall chase
an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thou-
sand to flight, and your enemies shall fall before you
by the sword.' This is the promise which God made to
the children of Israel, upon their entrance into the land
of Canaan ; and, in virtue of this promise, we find that
their leader Joshua was so very successful, that, after he
had relieved the city of Gibeon, destroyed twelve kings,
9 In the Extracts of Valesius. in j Mac. vi. 12. 13.
" !n Syriacis. 12 \n the Extracts of Valesius.
18 Prideaux's Connection, anno 164. 14 Lev. xxvi. 3, &e.
Sfxt. III.]
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and made himself master of their dominions, in one
campaign only, it is said of him, that l ' he returned, and
all Israel with him, unto the (-amp to Gilgal ;' and there-
fore we need less wonder, that the Jews, who at this
time were under the conditions of God's promise, nay,
under a state of persecution upon the account of their
religion, and were consequently the proper objects
of his more immediate care and compassion, should
come off victorious, even though they were but poorly
armed, and sometimes without the loss of one man, hav-
ing the Lord of hosts on their side, both to inject terror
into their enemies, and to ' cover their heads in the day
of battle ;' but, even without this supposition of a divine
interposal, might there not be some remarkable difference
in the soldiers and generals themselves ?
Judas Maccabams, an excellent commander, bold and
enterprising, with a small body of men, but all deter-
mined to conquer or die, attacks one of no capacity,
with a much larger army indeed, but made up chiefly of
raw men, and forces levied in haste. He attacks him, I
say, and defeats him ; and are not miracles of this kind
very common ? Do not both ancient and modern history
furnish us with victories in great abundance of this sort,
and much more surprising than any obtained by the Mac-
cabees ? 2 The contempt of a weak enemy, whose forces
are so disproportionate to the numerous army which
comes against them, is one of the greatest errors, as
well as dangers, that can happen in war ; because in
this case people are less upon their guard, not thinking
the enemy capable of daring to undertake any thing
against them, until they are surprised in their security;
and an army surprised in their camp, we know, is an
army half conquered.
Though therefore the Jews, under the command of the
gallant Judas, were always fewest in number, yet, con-
sidering the boldness of their undertakings, and the
prudence of their conduct, their skill in the military
art, " and the providence of God, which attended and
prospered their arms, the wonder is not much, that they
were, in a manner, always superior to their enemies.
' There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon,
and in the stars,' that is, in the heavens, where they
move, ' and upon the earth distress of nations, with per-
plexity :' these were the presages, which our Saviour
foretold ; and, accordingly Josephus 3 informs us, that,
before the last siege of Jerusalem, there were seen in
the air, a little before sunset, for some days together,
chariots and armed men, passing along the clouds,
round about the city ; " which I would hardly venture to
report," says he, " but that I can produce sundry eye-
witnesses, that are still alive, to confirm the truth of it."
Several accounts of this kind we have in Livy and
Suetonius : and though it must be owned, that too great
a credulity in some historians may possibly have enlarg-
ed, or multiplied these prodigies, yet we must not there-
1 Josh. x. 43. 2 Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Bethzur.
3 On the Jewish Wars, b. vii. c. 12.
a It is indeed surprising, that Polyhius, an historian, in other
things so punctual, and so well acquainted with the ailairs of
Asia, should make no mention of the Maccabees, nor of the wars
which they maintained with so much glory against Antiochus,
and his successors, especially since lie describes the wars of the
same Antiochus, in other respects, with all the care and exact-
ness that can be desired. — Calmet'6 Dictionary, under the
w 'id Modin.
341. 1 MAC. i— vi. 7.. 2 MAC. iii-x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c. 7-b. xii. c. 14.
fore imagine, that there never were any such things,
because very good reasons may be given why God should
exhibit them : and, as to the phenomena that 4 are now
under consideration, they certainly have all the marks
of credibility in them that we can well desire. For they
are related by an author that was contemporary, or very
near contemporary, with them. They were seen, not
transiently, and by a few weak superstitious people ;
but, for forty days together, they appeared to the view
of a Avhole city, wherein were above an hundred thousand
inhabitants, most of sound intellects, and some of them
of so little superstition, as to abandon the laws and
customs of their country for fear of persecution.
The Jews have a tradition, founded upon what we
read in the second book of the Maccabees, 5 namely,
that, some time before the Babylonish captivity, the
prophet Jeremiah received instructions from God to
hide the ark of the covenant in a cave in Mount Nebo,
which accordingly he did, and at the same time declared
that the place should not be discovered until the people's
return from their captivity ; that, after the people's re-
turn, in the time of Nehemiah, this ark was found out,
and replaced in the sanctuary of the temple ; that when
Pompey 6 entered the sanctuary, he saw an ark and
cherubim, like those which Moses had made ; and that,
some time after, the same ark was carried before Ves-
pasian, when, from the Jewish wars, he returned to
Rome in triumph.
Now, upon the supposition that there is any truth in
this tradition, and the ark of the covenant was in fact
replaced in the second temple, the history of Uzzah will
inform us of what sacred account, in the esteem of God,
this repository of the divine covenant was, and how
severely God, in his case, was pleased to avenge the
least violation of it. For, if the ' anger of the Lord was
kindled against Uzzah,' so that he smote him dead upon
the spot ' for his rashness in taking hold of the ark,'
even because he was no priest, no descendant of the
house of Aaron ; why should it be thought a strange
thing, that God should show some tokens of his dis-
pleasure against an heathen prince, intruding into the
place which he had consecrated for his own presence
and inhabitation ? Or, if we suppose, that the shekinah,
or presence of God, was not resident in the second
temple ; yet still the holy of holies was reserved for
the entrance of none but the high priest ; and there-
fore it is no more than what might be expected, that
he, who, in contempt of the divine command, and the
remonstrances of all about him, would intrude into it,
should meet with some severe rebuke, that thereby he
might be convinced of the power of the God of Israel,
and of the divine institution of their religion. And,
though it be acknowledged that Pompey met with no
remarkable judgment, in the instant when he was guilty
of the like profanation, yet 7 our learned connector of
the sacred and profane history has observed, that after
this act he never prospered ; that this put an end to all
his successes ; insomuch, that this, over the Jews, was
the last of his victories. So mindful has God all along
been, not to suffer the profaners of his sanctuary to go
unpunished !
* Calmet's Commentary. 5 Chap. ii. 4 — 9.
' Calmet's Dissert, on the Ark of the Covenant.
7 Anno C4.
764
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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A. M.3596. A. C. 408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.5070. A. C. 341. 1 MAC i— vi.7.2 MAC. in— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi c.7— b.xii.c.H
The intended destruction of all the Egyptian Jews at
Alexandria, in the barbarous manner wherein the author
of the second book of the Maccabees has related it, can
hardly be thought an incredible thing to those who have
read in Philo, * the like, if not worse, cruelties, which the
same people underwent in the same town, in the reign
of Caligula, and under the administration of Flaccus. —
That they were not only driven from their habitations,
plundered of their goods, and cooped up in a narrow
corner of the city in order to be starved ; but that, if
any attempting to make their escape were apprehended,
they were either knocked on the head, torn limb from
limb, or tortured to death, and their dead bodies dragged
through the streets; and, if any pretended to lament
them, they were immediately seized, whipped without
mercy, and having suffered all the torments that cruelty
could invent, were condemned at last to be crucified : —
That, without any regard to sex or condition, without
any respect to the aged, or compassion to the young,
not only whole families were burned together, but some,
being tied to stakes, had fires of green wood kindled
round them, in order to prolong their torments, and that
the spectators might have the horrid pleasure of seeing
• lie poor creatures suffocated in the smoke. — That, on
the very festival of the emperor's birth-day, which gener-
ally lasted for some time, thirty-eight of their council,
persons of the most distinguished note among them
were bound like criminals, some with chains, and so
dragged through the market-place to the theatre, and
"Were whipped so unmercifully, that some of them did
not long survive it. — Nay, that at this time more espe-
cially, it was a usual tiling with the people, when
they came to the theatre, first to entertain themselves
with scourging, racking, and torturing the poor Jews at
their pleasure, and then, to call for their dancers and
players, and other diversions in use among the Romans :
whoever has read, I say, the account of these cruelties,
as Philo has related them, need not much wonder to find
an exasperated prince, as Ptolemy was, intending the
total destruction of a people he imagined had offend-
ed him ; when a bare Roman prefect, as Flaccus was
no more, without any provocation that we hear of, was
not afraid to treat the same people in this inhuman
manner.
But then, as to the former case, if we will allow the
providence of God, and its interposition in the occur-
rences of this world, we need not want a reason, why he
should turn the elephants, which were designed to de-
stroy the innocent, upon the spectators, who could not
be so ; because both his justice and mercy seem to plead
for the deliverance of those, whose only crime was their
profession of his true religion, and for the punishment of
such as came to glut their eyes with the hellish pleasure
of seeing their fellow creatures trampled to pieces. In
this sense, there seems to be a necessary call for a divine
interposition ; but, abstracted from this consideration,
the wonder is not great, that creatures intoxicated, as
these elephants are said to have been, should mistake
their objects, and fall foul upon those that they were
least of all intended to destroy.
There is something, we confess, more wonderful, in
the appearances of angels mounted, as it were, on horse-
1 Vol. ii. p. 52.">, &c. i'x edit. Mtungi aua.
back, 2 heading the Jewish army, 3 protecting the Jew-
ish general, and 4 defending the sacred treasures of the
temple ; but as we esteem these books of the Maccabees
no part of divine writ, we leave the proper defence of
them to those who have received them as canonical, and
shall only add, 5 with the learned Huetius, upon this
subject, — That, how improbable soever these accounts
may be thought by some, they are not destitute of
examples of the like nature in several heathen histories ;
that, in the battle which the Romans had with the Latins,
at the lake Regillus, Castor and Pollux were seen
mounted on horseback in the Roman army, and, when
the victory was wavering, they restored the fight, and
gained the field, and carried the news thereof to Rome
that very evening ; that, when the Romans invaded the
Lucani and Brutii, Mars, the great founder of their
nation, led their forces to the onset, and assisted them
not a little in taking and destroying great numbers of
their enemies ; and, to name no more, that, at the battle
of Marathon, Pan appeared on the side of the Athenians,
made great slaughter among the enemy's army, and
injected such a terror into them all, as, from that time,
it has obtained the name of a panic fear.
Now, though there might be a good deal of fiction in
these instances, yet since we find some of the best Roman
historians relating them, and so grave an author as Tully,
even 6 in some of his most serious pieces, making mention
of the first of these as a matter of just credibility ,we cannot
but suppose, that the common tradition at this time was,
that, to the victorious army, especially when it was much
inferior in numbers, some celestial and superior beings
were always assistant ; and, consequently, that the author
of the book of the Maccabees, in this respect, wrote
nothing but what at that time was the common sense of
mankind ; nothing, indeed, but what the sense of the
royal psalmist, in military matters, authorized him to
write : for 7 ' let them be turned back,' says he, ' and
brought to confusion, that imagine mischief against me ;
let them be as the dust before the wind, and the angel of
the Lord scatterin"' them.'
CHAP. III.— Of the Jewish Sanhedrim.
Before we proceed to examine into this great national
council among the Jews, which we suppose might have
its rise much about this period of time, it may not be
improper to take a short view of the sundry forms of
civil administration that Avere previous to it.
The government of the Jewish republic was originally
divine : for, 8 if we call a state where the people govern
a democracy, and that where the nobles govern an
asistocracy, there is the same reason why this should be
styled a theocracy ; because God was not only the deity
they were bound to worship and adore, but the sovereign,
likewise, to whom they were to pay all the honours and
rights that w ere due to supreme majesty. Their republic,
however, was not completely settled until God had given
2 2 Mac. xi. 8. a Ibid. ver. 10. " Chap. iii. 25, &c.
5 Qusest. Alnetana, b. ii. c. 12.
6 Tuscu). Qnrcst. b. i. et.de Nat. Deor. I>. ii.
' Ps. mv. 4, 5. 8 Lamy's Introduction, b. i. c. 11.
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them the law from Mount Sinai, when the noise and
thunderings in which it was delivered were so very ter-
rible, that 1 the people requested of him not to speak
any more to them himself, but to make use of the minis-
try of Moses as his interpreter.
Thus Moses, by the people's own election, was ap-
pointed to the administration of all public affairs ; and,
in this important office, as the author of the Hebrews 2
testifies of him, acquitted himself with much faithfulness :
but, in a short time, he found, that lie had undertaken a
work of too much labour and fatigue for any single per-
son to sustain ; and therefore, in pursuance of his father-
in-law's advice, he made choice of some of the most
prudent and understanding- men in every tribe, divided
them into several classes, and gave them names accord-
ing to the authority wherewith he invested them, or the
number of the persons over whom they were to preside ;
3 ' he made them captains over thousands, and captains
over hundreds, and captains over fifties, and captains
over tens, and officers among the tribes.'
But this establishment lasted not long, or at least re-
ceived some change or addition to it. For, as soon as
the Israelites were arrived at Kibroth-Hattaavah, or the
' graves of lust,' as the place is called, but three days'
journey from Mount Sinai, 4 God appointed a body of
seventy elders, to whom he communicated his Spirit, to
assist Moses in bearing the burden of the people : and
from hence it is that the defenders of the antiquity of
the sanhedrim date the first institution of that great
council. But, however this be, it is certain, that this
council continued among them all the while that they
sojourned in the wilderness ; and was, indeed, 5 an in-
stitution proper enough for a people in their circum-
stances, who, being all of one community, could assem-
ble together with ease, and, having no great matters in
possession, could have but few processes, and, conse-
quently, might dispense with a lesser number of judges.
Moses, however, foreseeing that this institution would
not be sufficient, when once the people were settled in
the land of promise, G left it as an injunction behind
him, that, whoever had the government of the nation
should appoint judges and magistrates in every city, to
determine the controversies that came before them ; but
that, when any thing of great moment, or of difficult
discussion, should happen, the contending parties should
carry their cause 7 ' to the place which the Lord had
chosen,' propose it to ' the priests, and to the judge, that
should be in their days ;' and, upon pain of death, ac-
quiesce in their decision.
Moses was succeeded by Joshua ; but his time was
spent in making a conquest of the land of Canaan, and,
till he had done that, he could not put the order which
his predecessor had left him in execution. However,
at his first accession to the government, we find that R all
the people promised the same obedience to him that they
had paid to Moses ; and that, when himself grew old, '■>
' he called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads,
and for their judges, and for their officers,' that is, all the
judges and magistrates which Moses had enjoined him
1 Exotl. xx. 19.
s Chap. iii. 2. 3 Deut. i. 15.
Num. xi. 16.
J Comet's Commentary cm the Government of the Hebrew:
6 Deut. xvi. IS. " Decit. xvii. 9. » Josh. i. ]<j, 17.
9 Cliau. xxiv. 1.
341.1 MAC. i— vi. 7. 2 M AC. iii— x. JOS. HIST. b. xi. c 7- -b. xii. c. 14.
to establish in the country, for the security of the state
and administration of justice.
On this footing Joshua left the civil administration ;
and thus it stood, till the people revolted from the ser-
vice of God, and then all things ran to confusion. In
what manner the state was governed, and justice dis-
pensed during the long succession of judges, it is difficult
to determine : but, towards the conclusion of that form
of government, we find Samuel I0 ' going, from year to
year, in a circuit round the country, to judge Israel,' and
when himself grew impotent and unable to travel, " mak-
ing his sons judges in his stead ; but their mal-adminis-
tration occasioned an alteration in the government.
The institution of regal power dissolved that polity
which Moses had settled : but though he both foreknew
and foretold this change in the constitution, yet we no-
where find him giving any particular directions how
kings were to conduct themselves in the administration
of the state, and the dispensation of justice ; 12 whether it
was that God did not vouchsafe to communicate any
fresh discovery to him upon that subject, or whether he
might think that the rules which he had already pre-
scribed were not incompatible with the authority and
government of kings.
Saul seems to have concerned himself with nothing
but military affairs, leaving the priests and judges the
same jurisdiction that they had before ; but David, when
he came into a peaceable possession of the king-
dom, 13 did himself, in causes of great consequence at
least, administer justice to the people. The famous
decision between the two mothers, u who both laid their
claim to the living child, is a plain proof, that, in per-
plexed and intricate cases, Solomon himself did some-
times the office of a judge; and when we read of this
prince, that he came to is Gibeon, ' with the captains of
thousands and of hundreds, with the judges, and the
chief of the fathers,' we may learn from hence, that
magistrates of the same kind that Moses had ordained
were at this time existing in the kingdom of Israel.
By the revolt of the ten tribes from the house of David
to that of Jeroboam, the civil constitution of the Jews
suffered very much ; because the avowed purpose of that
prince was, to change the religion, and reverse the
orders which Moses had instituted : and, therefore, from
henceforward, we must look only into the kingdom of
Judah for the succession of the true discipline and form
of ancient government of the Jews.
A\ hen Jehoshaphat formed the design of introducing- a
reformation both in church and state, he pursued the
rule which Moses had given him ; for 16 ' he set judges
in the land, through all the fenced cities,' and in Jeru-
salem the capital, erected two tribunals ; l7 one composed
of priests and Levites,to hear appeals from lesser courts
relating to religious matters: and the other, composed
of the ' chief of the fathers of Israel,' to hear such as re-
lated to civil. Nor is their conjecture much amiss, who
suppose, that the seventy men, whom ls Ezekiel saw in a
vision, ' burning incense to idols,' and the ' five and
twenty,' who, 19 ' between the porch and the altar, were
111 1 Sam. vii. 15, 16. U Chap, vii. 1
12 Calmet's Dissert, on the Government of the Hebrews.
13 2 Sam. xv. 2. •< I Kings iii. Hi, ke. l3 2 Chron. i. 2.
H Chap. xix. 5. '" [bid. ver. 8. 18 Ezek. viii. II,
10 Ibid. vtr. 16.
766
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worshipping- the sun in the east,' are the rather men-
tioned, because they were men of eminence, and very
probably the judges of civil and ecclesiastical matters.
What kind of judicature prevailed in the time of the
captivity, it is difficult to say. From the story of Susan-
nah we may learn, that in these circumstances the Jews
were allowed their own courts and judges, even in Baby-
lon itself; but of what number, order, or authority these
judges were, none can tell. It is plain, however, that
upon the restoration Ezra returned with full power from
Artaxerxes, ' ' to set magistrates and judges in all the
land,' who might punish criminals according to their de-
merit, either with death, or banishment, imprisonment,
or confiscation of goods : and in this condition the
Jewish state continued, namely, in the form of an aristo-
cracy, with the high priest at the head of it, sometimes
under the king of Egypt, and sometimes under the king
of Syria, for a considerable time after the return from
the captivity.
The persecution which Antiochus Epiphanes raised
among the Jews, ruined all the economy of their go-
vernment : but Matthias, and his sons, endeavoured to
restore 2 ' the decayed state of the people', as it is
♦•ailed, as far as those troublesome times would permit
them. Judas Maccabams, in a general assembly held
at Maspha, revived the ancient order, and appointed
rulers 3 ' over the people, even captains over thousands,
over hundreds, over fifties, and over tens:' and when
Jonathan, his brother and successor, took upon him both
the sovereign and sacerdotal authority, he, nevertheless,
governed by the advice of a senate, not excluding the
people from some share in their deliberations, as ap-
pears by the letters 4 which the Jews, at this time, sent
to the Lacedemonians.
Aristobulus, who was the first of the Asmonasan race
that took upon him the diadem and title of a king, con-
tinued the senate in great authority, but excluded the
common people from having any part in the administra-
tion ; as the kings who succeeded him, endeavoured to
confirm their own power, by curtailing that of the senate,
till Pompey came, and quite overturned the Jewish state,
by subjecting it to the empire, and making Judea a Ro-
man province.
From this short review of the Jewish republic, we may
perceive, that its form of government, at different times,
has been various ; that Moses (with the concurrence of
seventy chief magistrates) as God's vicegerent, governed
the people in an absolute manner ; that under the judges
the state had been sometimes without any ruler at all
independent sometimes, and, at other times, under the
jurisdiction of its enemies ; that the ancient kin^s of
Judah vouchsafed to administer justice to their subjects,
but that towards the decline of the kingdom, its princes
affected state, and a despotic power ; that from the cap-
tivity to the time of the Asmonaeans, the government,
under the high priest, was partly aristocratical, and
partly popular ; and that the Asmomean kings made it
monarchical, till the Romans destroyed it : and so we
proceed to consider, in which of these periods the famous
council of the Jews, which is usually called their san-
hedrim, might have its rise, with some other particulars
relating to its authority and proceedings.
1 Ezra vii. 2i>, 26.
2 I Mar. iii 13,
' bid. xiv 19.
? Ihid. ver. 55.
Ml. I MAC i— vi. 7. 2 MAC. iii— x.JOS. HIST.b. xi. c. 7— b. xii. c. 14.
When Moses, in conducting the children of Israel
through the wilderness, was teased and wearied out, as
we say, with the perpetual complaints and murmurings
of that people, in the impatience of his soul, he addressed
himself to God in these words : s ' wherefore hast thou
afflicted thy servant, that thou layest the burden of all
this people upon me ? — I am not able to bear all this
people alone, because it is too heavy for me,' &c. Where-
upon the Lord said unto him, ' Gather unto me seventy
men of the elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be the
elders of the people, and officers over them, and bring
them unto the tabernacle of the congregation, that they
may stand there with thee ; and 1 Avill come down and
talk with thee there ; and I will take of the spirit, which
is upon thee, and will put it upon them, and they shall
bear the burden with thee, that thou bear it not thyself
alone.' This command Moses took care to put in exe-
cution : the elders accordingly met at the ' tabernacle of
the congregation, and when the Spirit of the Lord rested
upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease.' These
words, as we said before, are held by the generality of
the rabbins, as well as by some Christian writers, to be
the true origin of that great sanhedrim, " which, from its
first institution here under Moses, subsisted all along in
the Jewish nation, even to the time of their utter disper-
sion under Vespasian, and had the cognizance of all
matters of the greatest moment, both civil and eccle-
siastical."
But for the better understanding of the sense and de-
sign of them, we may observe, 1st, that Moses does not
here speak of the difficulty or multiplicity of business
that was laid upon him, but of the perverse temper of the
people, always addicted to mutiny and sedition, which he
himself alone was not able to withstand. To ease him-
self of the labour of judging the people in all civil and
capital causes, he had, by the advice of his father-in-law,
6 appointed a certain number of judges, and it seems not
unlikely, that some of these seventy Avere of the number
of these judges, because they are called by God himself,
' the elders and officers of the people.' Moses wanted
no assistance therefore in the administration of affairs of
this nature ; but what he wanted, was a sufficient number
of persons of such power and authority among the peo-
ple, as might restrain them from seditious practices, and
awe them into obedience ; and for this reason it was,
that God, when he made choice of them, gave them the
Spirit of prophecy, as an evident sign of his having ap-
pointed them coadjutors to Moses, in the exercise of his
supreme authority, and as a means to procure them the
greater reverence and esteem among the people.
2dly, We may observe farther, that it does not appear
from the foregoing passage, that this assembly of seven-
ty persons was to be perpetuated in the Jewish state, and
when any died, others submitted in their room : on the
contrary it rather seems to have been an occasional in-
stitution, or present expedient for the relief of Moses,
that by the addition of other rulers, (all endued with gifts
extraordinary as well as he,) the murmurs and complaints
of the people might not fall all upon him, but be divert-
ed, some of them at least, upon others ; and that by the
joint influence of so many persons, all possessed with
the same spirit of government, they might either hinder
Num. xi. II, &<_
Exud. xviii. 2i.
Skct. 111. J
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or appease them. And as this was an institution only for
that purpose, there is no reason to believe that it con-
tinued any longer than Moses lived ; because, if we take
a view of the history of succeeding ages, we shall find
no footsteps of it.
After the death of Moses, we find Joshua ruling the
people with an absolute authority ; settling the portions
of the several tribes in the land of Canaan ; dismissing
those who had assisted their brethren in the conquest of
it; receiving all appeals, redressing all grievances, and
acting, in short, as the only governor of the nation,
without one word mentioned of any supreme council to
control him. After the death of Joshua, God raised up
judges, men of courage and wisdom extraordinary, to
deliver his people from the oppressions of their enemies,
and to attend to the administration of justice among them;
and yet we read of no act or decree of this pretended
sanhedrim all this while, ' which could no more have
been omitted in the account of these times, had it been
then existing, than the mention of the Roman senate is
in any of their historians.
"In those days,' as the sacred history informs us,
' there was no king in Israel, but every man did what
was right in his own eyes ;' and 3 where then was this
venerable assembly, whose authority, according to the
rabbins, was superior to that of princes, to interpose in
this time of need ? The Jews certainly could never have
degenerated into such a state of licentiousness, had there
been a court of seventy or seventy-two elders, chosen
out of every tribe, and invested with a supreme authority
to punish criminals, and reform abuses ; nor can we see
what reason the Levite had to cut in pieces the body of his
concubine, abused by the Gibeonites, and to send it to the
several tribes, in demand of justice, if there had been such
a constant tribunal, as this is represented, to resort to.
The kings who succeeded the judges, acted in such a
manner, as to make us believe, that there was no such
thing as a sanhedrim then in being. * They displaced
high priests without opposition ; they waged war without
advising with any ; they made and deposed judges, as
they pleased ; and in short did every thing that other
princes are wont to do, without the sanhedrim's ever in-
terposing its authority, that we read of, to stop the course
of their extravagancies, or curb their exorbitant power.
Some of these kings, we know, were for extinguishing
the true worship of God, and establishing idolatry in its
stead : here then was a proper opportunity for this ve-
nerable body to step in, by condemning idolatry in some
public act of theirs, and opposing the innovations of the
court. But of this we hear not one word ; neither do we
find, that 5 the prophets, who so severely inveighed
against the wickedness of the people, ever referred them
to the sanhedrim, or complained, that that court was
too remiss or negligent in the punishment of crimes.
If ever mention were to be made of this great coun-
cil, it would be, one would think, in the books of Ezra
and Nehemiali, which were written after the Babylonish
captivity, when there was no king in the land, and con-
sequently a fit opportunity for the sanhedrim to appear ;
and yet, even here, we find several matters of great mo-
1 Le Clerc's Dissert, tie Synedrio. '2 Judg. xxi. 25.
3 Sentiments of some Theologians on Critical History.
Calmet's Dissert, on the Government of the Jews.
3 Basnago*s History, l> v. <■. I.
-X. JOS. [[1ST. I) xi. c. 7— b. xii. c. 14.
ment transacted, such as the reformation of the people's
manners, the dissolution of illegal marriages, a stop put
to the profanation of the sabbath, and a covenant of obe-
dience to God, made and signed by the deputies of the
priests, Levites and common people ; but not one word
of the gTeat sanhedrim all this while.
In short, not only the sacred writers, but even Jose-
phus, Philo, Origen, Eusebius, and St Jerome, who were
all well versed in the ancient government of the Jews,
make no manner of mention of any such body of men in
the times that we are now upon ; and therefore we can-
not but think, that this universal silence, in writers of all
kinds, is a very good argument, that this supreme na-
tional council did not then subsist. Its name is confes-
sedly of Greek derivation ; to which purpose Livy 6 ob-
serves, that those senators whom the Macedonians
intrusted with the administration of their government ,
were called synedri : and therefore it seems somewhat
incongruous to look into the first centuries of the Jewish
church for the original of a council, whose very name is
of later extract.
Before the times of the gospel, wherein frequent men-
tion is made of this council, we find it in so great autho-
rity, as even to call Herod, 7 though then governor of
Galilee, upon his trial for some misdemeanour : and
therefore it is no improbable conjecture, that in the time
of the Maccabees, either Judas or Jonathan was the first
institutor of it ; and the reason they might have for this in-
stitution, might be the change which they had made in the
nature of the government, for which they wanted the con-
sent of the people, or at least of a body that represented
them, that thereby they might act with more authority :
and though, as yet, they did not assume the title of kings,
yet they thought it a matter of prudence to have their
resolutions ratified by a council.
The Maccabees, who, in all probability, were the first
institutors of this council, would hardly exclude them-
selves from it; and therefore we may presume, that the
high priest was the settled president, who, for that rea-
son was called nasi, or prince of the sanhedrim, and
in his absence had a deputy called ab-betli-din, or fa-
ther of the house ofjudqment, and a sub-deputy called
chacam, that is, thes ivie; but all the rest had the com-
mon name of elders or senators.
These senators, which are usually taken from other
inferior courts, were to be some priests, and some lay-
men, but all persons of untainted birth, good learning,
and profound knowledge in the law, both written and
traditional. All eunuchs, usurers, gamesters, those that
brought up pigeons to decoy others to their dove-houses,
or made any gain of their fruits in the sabbatical year,
all old men, deformed persons, and such as had no chil-
dren, because they were suspected of being cruel and
hard-hearted, were excluded from this council ; and
those only who were of mature age, competent fortunes,
and comely personages, were admitted to it.
The room in which this council met, was a rotunda,
half of which was built without the temple, and half
within. The nasi, or prince of the council, sat upon a
throne elevated above the rest, at the upper end of the
6 It was decreed by the Macedonian state, tliat senators, will m
they name synedri, should he commissioned for the administra-
tion of the kingdom. — B. xlv. c . .'>".'.
7 Jewish Antiq. b. xiv, c. 17.
'J 68
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[Book VII.'
A. M 3-59G A.C. 408; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5070. A. C. 341. 1 MAC.i—vi.7. 2 MAC.iii— x. JOS. HIST.b. xi.c 7— b. xii. c 14,
room, having his deputy on his right hand, and his sub-
deputy on his left. The senators were ranged in order
on each side ; and the secretaries who were to record
the matters that came before them, were three ; whereof
one WTote the sentences of those that were absolved,
the other had the condemnations under his care, and the
third entered into their books the several pleadings of
all contending parties.
The vanity and ridiculous pride of the rabbins appear
in nothing more, than in the excessive power which they
give to this high-court of judicature. For, according to
them, it not only decided such cases as were brought
before it by way of appeal from other inferior courts,
but had under its jurisdiction likewise a the king, the
high priest, and prophets. ' The king, for instance, if
he offended against the law, if he married above eighteen
wives, if he kept too many horses, if he hoarded up too
much gold or silver, the sanhedrim had him stripped
and whipped in their presence. But whipping, it seems,
among the Jews 2 was not so ignominious a thing-, but
that the king bore it by way of penance, with great pa-
tience, and himself made choice of the person that was
to exercise this discipline upon him. However this be,
it is certain, that all private controversies of difficult
discussion, all matters relating to religion, and all im-
portant affairs of state, were submitted to the determina-
tion of this august assembly, from whose sentence no
appeal could be made, because a demurring to the juris-
diction of their court was punished by death, that is,
while the power of life and death was in their hands ;
but how long this lasted, after that Judea became a Ro-
man province, has been a matter of some dispute among
the learned.
Josephus 3 tells us expressly, that the senate and em-
perors of Rome took no ancient rights from the nations
whom they conquered ; and by the words of Pilate con-
cerning our Saviour Christ, 4 ' Take ye him and judge
him according to your law,' it seems, as though they
still retained their power, though perhap s it might be
under some limitations.
Upon St Peter's 5 speech before the great council, we
find them so exasperated against the apostles, that they
began to think of putting them all to death, and might,
very probably, have proceeded in their design, had they
not been dissuaded from it by the wise advice of Gama-
liel. The stoning of St Stephen was not the effect of any
hasty judgment of some zealots, but of the regular pro-
ceedings of this court. He 6 ' was brought before the
council,' we read ; false witnesses accusing him of blas-
phemy were produced against him ; in his own defence,
he made a long discourse ; but his own defence was not
admitted, nor his innocence acknowledged ; and there -
1 Calmet's Dissertation on the Government of the Hebrews.
2 Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Sanhedrim.
3 Against Apion. Jewish Antiq. book ii. c. 17.
4 John xviii. 31. 6 Acts v. 29, &c. 6 Acts vi. 22, &c.
a This is directly the opinion of Maimonides, (in Sanhed.
per. 2, 3.), but that learned rabbi was strangely prejudiced in
favour of this great council ; and though Josephus is of the same
opinion, yet to allow such an extent of jurisdiction to this court,
so as to indict corporal punishment upon the persons of their
kings, is contrary to the general notions of sovereignty, and the
laws of all kingdoms and nations j besides that the Holy Scrip-
tures are absolutely silent in this particular, and nothing can be
inferred from them, to countenance such a coercive power. —
Lewis's Hebrew Audi], vol. i. c. 6.
fore they sentenced him to be stoned 'according to the
law.
St Paul himself declares before this very court, that
before his conversion to Christianity, 8 he ' persecuted
those of that way' unto death, and ' received letters from
the estates of the elders,' or the sanhedrim, to bring
' Christians from Damascus to Jerusalem in bonds, in
order to be punished.' Tertullus, avIio, in the trial of this
apostle, was council for the sanhedrim, 9 tells Felix, the
governor of Judea, that having apprehended the criminal
at the bar, they thought to have proceeded against him
' according to their law ; but that the chief captain, Ly-
sias, came upon them, and took him out of their hands.'
The true reason why Lysias exerted his power upon
this occasion, and took him out of their hands, was, be-
cause they had accused him, not only of blasphemy, and
profanation of their temple, but of sedition likewise,
which was a crime falling more properly under the cog-
nizance of the civil government, and for which Paul was
therefore brought before Felix, Festus, and Agrippa.
10 So that from an examination of these particulars, where-
in the power of the sanhedrim was concerned, Ave may
conclude, that even after the subjection of the Jewish
state to the Roman empire, this sanhedrim had the
power of life and death in crimes committed against their
own law ; but that in matters of sedition, and crimes
committed against the civil administration, the Roman
governors interposed their authority, and in cases of this
nature took the dispenscition of justice out of their hands.
11 What formality was observed in bringing a lawsuit
before the sanhedrim, Maimonides has in this manner
described : — " The business," says he, " was first to be
examined in the inferior courts ; but if it could not be
decided there, the judges sent to Jerusalem to consult
the judgment-chamber, that sat upon the mount of the
temple. From this first tribunal they proceeded to that
which sat at the temple gate ; and if the matter was not
determined there, they came at last to the great council
chamber, which was held in one of the apartments be-
longing to the temple ; and this last council determined
with so much justice and authority, that there were no
divisions seen, during all the time that the second temple
lasted." And what caution was taken, in passing the
sentence of death upon criminals, by the same tribunal,
the Jewish doctors (if we will believe them) have thus
informed us. — " After the witnesses were heard, and the
matter in question decided, the judge putofTthe sentence
till next morning. Hereupon the sanhedrim went home,
eat but little, drank no wine, and then met again, two
by two, in order to weigh all the particulars of the trial.
The next morning, he that had given his opinion for
condemning of the criminal, had power to revoke it ; but
he who had once given it for absolving him, could not
alter his mind. As soon as the judge had pronounced
sentence, the malefactor was conducted to the place of
execution, while an herald, on horseback, proclaimed,
as he went along, ' such an one is condemned for such
a crime : but if any body can allege any thing in his
behalf, let him speak.' If it happened that any one
came to the gate of the court, the door-keeper made a
sign to the herald to bring back the malefactor, while
7 Deut. xvii. 7. 8 Acts xxii. 4, &c. 9 Chap. xxiv. 6. 7.
10 See Beausobre and L'enfant's Gen. Pref. to the New Test.
11 BaJsnage's History of the Jews, b. 5. c. 2.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
769
A.M.3841.A.C163; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M.5247.A.C.164.1
two judges were appointed to receive what his friend had
to say in his favour, and to consider whether there was
any thing material in it.
These formalities are indeed related in the Mishneh ;
but it is much to be questioned, whether they were not
invented since, on purpose to recommend the justice and
equity of the ancient Jewish tribunals. For, besides
that no other nation did ever yet observe such favourable
proceedings, in relation to those that were found guilty,
there is not the least mention of any thing of this kind
in the sacred history ; and in the Talmud itself we meet
with maxims and matter of fact quite contrary to it.
For 1 therein we are told, that though a prisoner declare
upon oath, at the place of execution, that he was inno-
cent, and in confirmation of this the false witnesses re-
canted ; yet the judges took no notice of their retraction,
but only said, "Let the false witnesses perish; but a
judge cannot recall his sentence, when once it is pro-
nounced."
Upon the whole therefore we may observe, that what
the Jewish doctors tell us of the origin and succession,
the authority and proceedings of their sanhedrim, is in
a great measure fabulous ; that the council of seventy
men, which God instituted in the wilderness, was de-
signed only to serve a particular purpose, and was there-
fore of short continuance in the Jewish state ; that from
the time of Joshua till after the return from the Baby-
lonish captivity, there are no footsteps to be found, either
in sacred or profane history, of such an assembly, as the
rabbins represent their sanhedrim to have been ; but
that in the times of the Maccabees we read of the senate
of the nation, which, under the Asmonsean princes, grew
into great power, and in the days of our Saviour's min-
istry, had matters of the highest consequence committed
to their determination ; till in the final destruction of
Jerusalem, and the dispersion of the Jewish nation, the
very name and authority of that senate was entirely lost.
SECT. IV.
CHAP. I. — From the Death of Anliochus Epiphanes,
to that of John Hyrcanus.
THE HISTORY.
After the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, s his son Anti-
ochus Eupator, a minor, nine years old, succeeded in the
throne of Syria. His father, upon his death-bed, had
constituted Philip, one of his chief favourites, regent of
the kingdom, during the minority of his son, and had
delivered to him his crown, his signet, and other ensigns
of royalty, giving- him strict charge to educate him in
such a manner as would quality him to reign well; but
Philip, when he came to Antioch, found his office usurped
by another. For Lysias, who in the king's absence was
left governor in chief, hearing of the death of Epiphanes,
tookAntiochus his son, who was then under his care, and,
having placed him on the throne, assumed to himself the
tuition of his person, and the government of his kingdom,
without any manner of regard to the will and appoint-
ment of the late king : and Philip, finding himself too
i El G.-mara, tit. Sanhed. c. 6. f. 4.
2 1 Mac. vi. 17: 2 Mac. x. 10, 11 ; Joseph. Antio.b. 12. c. 14.
MAC.v.l. JOS.IIIST.b. xii.o.14— END of MAC. JOS. HIST. b. xiii.t-.I9.
weak at present to contest it with him, fled into Egypt,
in hopes of procuring- some assistance there, which
would enable him at one time or other to make good his
claim.
3 Not long after the death of Epiphanes, Judas Mac-
cabants, hearing of the confederacy which the neighbour-
ing nations were engaged in, namely, to destroy and
extirpate the whole race of Israel, and that they had
already begun to cut oft* as many as were within their
power, 4 marched first against the Idunueans, who were
the forwardest in the conspiracy, and having fallen into
that part of their country which was called Acrabatene, a
he there slew twenty thousand of them. He next fell
upon5 the children of Bean,* another tribe of these
Idumaeans, and having vanquished them in the field,
pursued them to their fortresses, which he besieged, took,
and therein slew twenty thousand more. He then pas-
sed over the Jordan into the land of the Ammonites,
wherein he defeated them in several engagements ; slew
great numbers of them ; took Jahazah, c and its appen-
dant villages ; and after his return to Judea, when Ti-
motheus, the governor in those parts, pretended to follow
him with a numerous army, he fell upon him, and over-
threw him with a great slaughter, so that himself was
forced to fly to Gazara, a city in the tribe of Ephrahu,
where his brother Chereas was governor : but Judas,
pursuing him thither, beset the place, took it in five days,
and there slew Chereas, Timotheus, and Apollophanes,
another great captain of the Syrian forces.
In the mean time, the heathen nations about Galaad
6 had fallen upon the Jews that dwelt in the land of
Tob, which lay on the east of Gilead ; had slain to the
number of a thousand men ; taken their goods for a spoil ;
and carried away their wives and children into captivity :
whereupon most of the other Jews inhabiting those parts
betook themselves to a strong fortress in Gilead, called
Dathema, with a resolution to defend themselves. This
when the heathens understood they drew together, in a
great body, under the command of Timotheus, the suc-
cessor, and (very probably) the son, of the late Timo-
theus, who was slain at Gazara, in order to besiege them,
while the inhabitants of Tyre, Sidon, Ptolemais, and
other parts thereabout, were laying their schemes to cut
oft* all the Jews that were in Galilee ; so that Judas was
sent to, both from Gilead and Galilee, to come to the
succour and assistance of his poor distressed countrymen.
7 In this critical juncture of affairs lie consulted the
sanhedrim, or general council of the nation; and, by
their advice, divided his army into three parts. With
the first, which consisted of eight thousand men, he, and
31 Mac. v. 1, &c. 42 Mac. x. 14, 15. '•> 1 Mac. v. 4, 5
6 1 Mac. v. !>— IS. 7 Ibid. ver. 16, 17.
a It is a canton of Judca, upon the frontiers of ldumtca, to-
wards the southern extremity of the Dead Sea.
b Who these children (if Bean were, it is difficult to say.
Some think, that this Bean was the name of an ancient king,
whose descendants livid in hostility with the children of Israel ;
hut others (with more probability) account it the name of a place ;
and if in the confines of the Dead Sea there was, as some affirm, a
city of this name, without all controversy this was it. — Calmet's
Commentary on 1 Mac. v. 4.
c This city, which lay beyond the Jordan, was first of all
given to the tribe of Gad, and afterwards to the Levites, Josh.
xxi. ."fi. It was situated at the foot of the mountains of Gilead,
near the brook Jazah, which forms a rivulet or torrent, that falls
into the Jordan.
5 K
770
THE HISTORY OF THE DIBLE,
[Book VII.
A.M.3Stl.A.C.ir>3; OH, ACCOKDING TO H ALES, A.M.5247. A.C. 1C1.1
Jonathan his brother, marched for the relief of the Gilcad-
ites : with the second, consisting of three thousand, Si-
mon, another of his brothers, was sent into Galilee ; and
the rest were left at Jerusalem, under the command of
Joseph, for the defence of the place, and the country
adjacent, but with a strict charge from Judas, not to en-
terprise any thing against the enemy, but to stand wholly
upon the defensive, until he and Simon should return
again.
1 Judas and Jonathan passing the Jordan, and march-
ing into Gilead, had intelligence, that, at Bassora, a
town of the Edomites, a great number of Jews were im-
prisoned, in order to be destroyed, as soon as Dathema
was taken : whereupon, by hasty inarches, they came
upon the city sooner than was expected, and, having slain
all the males, taken their spoils, and freed their brethren,
they set it on fire, and so proceeded on their way to
Dathema. On the morning, when they arrived, (for they
marched all night,) Timotheus and his men had begun
to storm the place ; but Judas, coming upon them when
they Fittle expected so sudden and violent an assault,
put them all to the rout, and, in the pursuit, slew eight
thousand of them. He thence marched his army from
place to place, where he understood that any Jews were
oppressed or imprisoned ; and having treated them in
the same manner as he did Bassora, slain all the males,
taken their spoils, and set their cities on lire, he returned
to Jerusalem.
While Judas and his brother Jonathan were thus suc-
cessful in Gilead, the other brother Simon was not idle
in Galilee. For he defeated the enemy ~ in several en-
counters, drove them out of the country, and pursued
them, with a great slaughter, to the very gates of Ftole-
mais: and, being now ready to return, he took along
with him all the Jews, men, women, and children, that
he could find in those parts, because he thought them too
far distant from Jerusalem to be under the eye and pro-
tection of their brethren ; and, having brought them safe
into Judea, with them he repeopled these places which
had been desolated by the enemy, during the persecution
of Antiochus Epiphanes.
3 Joseph, who, with the remainder of the armv, was
left in Jerusalem, hearing of these great successes in
Gilead and Galilee, would needs be doing something;
and therefore, contrary to the orders that had been jyiven
him, led forth the forces on an ill-projected expedition
against Jamnia, a seaport on the Mediterranean, think-
ing to take the place : but GrOrgias, who commanded in
those parts for the king of Syria, fell upon Joseph's
army, put them to flight, and, in the pursuit, slew about
two thousand of them ; which rash attempt ended in the
confusion of those that undertook it ; for Judas had given
contrary orders, and by his wise conduct, and undaunted
bravery, was every where attended with success.
Enraged at these successes, Lysias, * who was com-
mander-in-chief of the Syrian forces, having raised an
army of eighty thousand men, marched against Judas,
with all the horse of the kingdom, and eighty elephants ;
and coming to Bethzura, thought it necessary to take
that place in his way; but while he was besieging it,
Judas came upon him, and having slain eleven thousand
MAC. v. I JOS.HIST.b. xii.c. 14-endof MAC. JOS. HIST, b.xiii.c. 19.
foot, and sixteen hundred horse, put the rest of his army
to flight : so that Lysias, who with much ado escaped to
Antioch, growing weary of so unprosperous a war, and not
knowing where to raise fresh recruits, made a peace with
Judas and his people, whereby the decree of Antiochus
Epiphanes, obliging them to conform to the religion of
the Greeks, was rescinded, and a liberty granted them
to live according to their own laws.
This peace was ratified by Antiochus Eupator, but it
did not last long, 5 because the governors of the several
neighbouring places did not like it. The people of
Joppa were the first that broke it, by drowning in the sea
two hundred of the Jews, who lived among them in that
city ; but Judas severely revenged their cruelty : for,
falling upon them by night, he burned their shipping, put
all to the sword that had escaped the fire, and then hear-
ing that the people of Jamnia had but badly treated the
Jews, he set fire to that haven likewise, and burned all
the ships in it.
Timotheus was one of the governors that was dissatis-
fied with the peace ; and therefore, when Judas under-
stood that he had drawn all his forces together, 6 to the
number of an hundred and twenty thousand foot, and two
thousand five hundred horse ; and that he was going to
give the Jews in Gilead fresh vexations, he marched
against him ; and, having defeated a strong party of wan-
dering Arabs a in his way, and made peace with them,
he first took the city of Caspis, b slew the inhabitants,
and destroyed the place ; then attacked Caraca, which
was garrisoned with ten thousand men, whom he put to
the sword; and, at last, coming up with Timotheus,
near a place called Raphon, on the river Jabboc, he
there gave him battle, slew of his army thirty thousand
men, and 7 took him prisoner ; but, upon condition that he
should release all the Jews that were captives in any
places under his command, he gave him both his life and
his liberty. Understanding, however, that a great part
of the vanquished army had fled to Carnion, a city in
Arabia, he pursued them thither, and having taken the
place, slew twenty-five thousand more of Timotheus's
forces, that had there taken refuge.
In his return to Jerusalem, he took along with him
all the Jews that were in the land of Gilead, for the
same reason that Simon had carried them out of the
land of Galilee the year before, namely, to inhabit and
fortify the cities of Judea, which were not sufficiently
peopled : 8 but being in his way to pass through Ephron, c
Mac v. 21, 8tc.
Ibid. ver. 5"i, &e.
2 Ibid, ver. 21, &c.
4 2 Mac. xi. 1, &c.
5 2 Mac. xii. 2, &c. 6 I Mac. v. 37, &c; 2 Mac. xii. 20—23.
1 2 Mac. xi. 24, 25.
8 1 Mac. v. 40, &c. ; 2 Mac. xii. 21, 28.
a These people lived in tents, and stayed in a place no longer
than it afforded them provision for themselves and their cattle.
They were the descendants of Ishmael, and according to the
angel's prediction of them (Gen. xvi. 12.) 'their hand was against
every man, and every man's hand against them:' for they lived
chiefly upon plunder; but as they were a stout and warlike peo-
ple, and well acquainted with the course of those countries, it
was no bad policy in the Jewish general, after he had forced them
to sue for peace, and had obliged them to furnish him with a
certain quantity of cattle and provisions, to secure their friend-
ship and future services. — 2 Mac. xii. 11; Universal History,
b. 2. c. 11.
fi This is the same as Hesbon, in the tribe of Reuben.
c The Scripture makes mention of this city of Ephron, as
standing upon the Jordan, only in this place; and therefore it is
hard to define its particular situation.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &e.
771
A. M.3841.A.C.163; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 5247.A.C.164.
S strong city, and well garrisoned by Lysias, the people
refused to open their gates ; whereupon he assaulted the
place, and, having taken it by storm, put all the males,
to the number of twenty-five thousand persons, to the
sword, took their spoils, and razed the city to the ground.
After this, repassing Jordan, and returning to Jerusa-
lem, 1 he and his company went up to the temple, to give
God thanks for the great success wherewith he had been
pleased to prosper this expedition, and for his singular
and wonderful protection of them, in that, notwithstand-
ing all the hazardous enterprises they had been engaged
in, they had not so much as lost one man.
This continued series of success gave Judas 2 encou-
ragement to carry the war into the southern parts of Idu-
iiKi-a, where lie took and dismantled Hebron, the metro-
polis thereof: and thence passing into the laud of the
Philistines, took Azotus, formerly called Ashdod ; pulled
down their heathen altars, burned their carved images,
and spoiled the place ; and having done the like to all
the other cities of that country, where he prevailed, he
led his victorious army, laden with the spoils of their
enemies, back again to Judea.
But, notwithstanding all these successes, the Jews
could not call themselves entirely masters of Jerusalem.
The fortress of Acra still held out for the king of Syria,
and the garrison, consisting of Macedonians and rene-
gado Jews, was very troublesome to such as resorted to
the temple. Judas therefore thought it highly necessary
to attempt the reduction of the place ; and having got
engines a and machines for that purpose, he soon strait-
ened the garrison. The besieged, however, found means
to acquaint king Antiochus with their distress, who pro-
mised to relieve them, and, for that end, gathered an
army of an hundred and ten thousand foot, twenty thou-
sand horse, thirty-two elephants, with castles on their
backs full of archers, and three hundred armed chariots
of Avar. With all this force, Antiochus, marching to the
relief of the fortress of Jerusalem, passed through Idu-
ni.ia, where, in his way, he laid siege to Bethzura, which
made a brave defence; for the inhabitants, by bold sal-
lies, so burned and disordered his engines, that he spent
much time about it to no purpose. Judas all this while
pressed the fortress of Acra with all his might; but fear-
ing lest the Bethzurians should be forced to submit to the
superior strength of the enemy, he left the siege of it,
and went to the relief of them.
4 His intent was to surprise the king's forces; and
therefore marching in the night, he fell upon one quarter
of the army in the dark; killed four thousand of them;
and having put the whole army into confusion, retreated
on break of day, without suffering any loss. In the
morning, when both sides prepared for an open battle,
Judas and his men, with great lierccness, began the onset,
and did wonders : for Eleazar, 5 a brother of Judas,
observing one particular elephant, which was higher than
1 1 Mac. v. 54. 2 Ibid. ver. 65— (5S. 3 Chap, vi. 19, &c.
* Ibid. ver. 32. a 2 Mac. xiii. 15, &c.
a These, in Jeremiah vi. 6, are rendered in the margin
'engines of shot,' and, without doubt, resembled in some mea-
sure, the balistu- and catapults among the Romans, which were
used for throwing stones and arrows, and were to them of old
instead of mortars and carcasses. — Lewis's Jewish Antiq. b. 6.
c. 46.
lMAC.v.l. JOS.IIIST.b.xil.c.14— end ok MAC. JOS.H1ST b.xilj.c. 19.
the rest, b armed with royal harness, and supposing
thereby that the king was upon it, at once, both to deli-
ver his country, and gain himself immortal honour, he
made at it with all his might; and having slain every one
that stood in his way, got under its belly, and thrust his
spear into it, so that the creature fell down dead, bwt
unhappily crushed him to death by its weight in the fall.
At length, after having slain about six hundred of the
king's forces, perceiving that they must be overpowered
by so great a number, 6 they withdrew from the right, an d
made a safe retreat to Jerusalem. Antiochus followed
after with one part of his army, but left the other to carry
on the siege of Bethzura, which the inhabitants, seeing
no prospect of relief from their friends, were forced to
surrender. From Bethzura the king's forces 7 marched
to Jerusalem, where Judas had shut himself up, and his
friends, in the temple. They defended the place with
great resolution, but must inevitably have been compelled
to surrender, had they not been relieved by this lucky
and unexpected accident.
In the absence of the king, and the regent Lysias,
that Philip, whom, as we said before, Antiochus Epi-
phanes, at his death, constituted guardian of his son, had
made himself master of Antioch, and taken upon him the
government of the Syrian empire. 8 Upon the receipt
of this news, Lysias found it necessary to make peace
with the Jews, that he might be at liberty to return, and
expel the intruder. Accordingly a peace was gTanted
them upon honourable and advantageous terms, and rati-
fied by oath ; but when Antiochus came to see the strength
of the fortifications belonging to the temple, he caused
them, contrary to the articles he had sworn, to be all
pulled down and demolished, and then returned towards
Syria, where he found that Philip had seized on the im-
perial city; but by one easy battle, wherein Philip was
worsted and slain, he soon recovered the posses, ion
of it.
0 In this expedition against Judea, Menelaus, the high
priest, accompanied Antiochus, and was as busy in offer-
ing him his service against his own people as any: but
falling by some means under the displeasure of Lysias,
he was accused, and condemned, as the author and fo-
mentor of this Jewish war, and accordingly was carried
to Berhfea, c a town in Syria, and there cast headlong
6 1 Mac. vi. 47. » Ibid. ver. 48, &e.
8 Ibid. ver. 55, 56; 2 Mac. xiii. 23. 9 Ibid. ver. 3 — 3.
b Though elephants have an hide impenetrable almost in every
part, except their belly, yet for their greater safety, those that
are appointed for the wars, are usually armed and covered all
over, as it were with a coat of mail. The kings of India, accord-
ing to Q. Curtius, (b. 2.) when they took the field, were drawn
by elephants all covered over with gold ; and Florus described
the elephants made use of in battles, as brilliant with gold, silver,
purple, and their own ivory, (b. 2. c. 8.) harnessed, and set out,
much after the fashion of the war-horse in Virgil: " lie pricked
on his foaming steed, covered over with a skin of brazen scales,
clasped together with gold." — JEn. 11.
c This was one of the punishments of the Persians, whereby
great criminals among them were put to deatr. The manner of
it is described in the Kith chapter of the second book of the
Maccabees, to be thus: An high tower was filled a great way
up with ashes; the criminal, being from the top thrown down
headlong into them, there had the ashes by a wheel continually
stirred up, and raised about him, till he was Suffocated and died.
' Such was (lie death of that wicked man,' says the author of the
book above cited, ' that he had not a burial in the earth, and that
very justly.' But then the reason which he gives for this pro-
772
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A.M.3841.A.C.163; O R, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.5247.A.C. 1G1.1
into a tower of ashes ; but after his death, ' Antiochus
conferred the office of high priest upon one Alcimus, a
man altogether as wicked as the other.
All this while Antiochus Eupater held the crown of
Syria, by an unjust title ; for Demetrius, the son of Se-
leucus Philopater, elder brother to Antiochus Epiphanes,
was the legal heir thereof. He, in exchange for his un-
cle Antiochus, had been sent an hostage to Rome, the
very year that his father died ; and Antiochus returning
at the very nick of time, was unanimously declared king,
in the absence and minority of the rightful heir. But
Demetrius, being now in the twenty-third year of his age,
when his uncle died, and his son Eupater, who was ap-
pointed king in his room, a thought it high time to put
in his claim ; and accordingly moved the senate of Rome
for their assistance in the recovery of his father's king-
dom ; and as an inducement thereunto, he alleged, that
having been bred up in that city from his childhood, " he
should always look on Rome as his country, the senators
as his fathers, and their sons as his brothers." But the
senate having more regard to their own interest, than
the right of Demetrius, and judging it more to their
advantage to have a boy reign in Syria, as Eupater then
was, than a man of mature understanding, as they knew
Demetrius to be, instead of asserting his right, to whom
it belonged, they confirmed Eupater in the kingdom.
Demetrius being excluded from all hopes of any fa-
vour or assistance from the senate, had nothing left to
do, but to endeavour to make his escape from Rome,
and to risk his fortune in his own country : this he did ;
- and landing at Tripolis in Syria, made it believed, that
he was sent by the Roman senate, which would support
his pretensions, to take possession of the kingdom.
Hereupon Eupater's cause, being in the general opinion
given up for lost, everyone deserted from him to Deme-
trius; nay, the very soldiers seized on him, and the re-
gent Lysias, with an intent to deliver them up to this
new comer, as soon as he arrived at Antioch ; but he re-
fusing to see them, ordered them both to be put to death,
1 2 Mar. xiv. 3; Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 15.
2 1 Mac. vii. 1, &c; 2 Mac. xiv. 1, 2; Joseph. Antiq. b. xii.
c. 16 ; Justin, b. xxxiv. c. 3.
viilential judgment upon him is very light and trifling: 'foras-
much as he had committed many sins about the altar, whose fire
and ashes were holy, he received his death in ashes,' v. 7, 8.
Pridmu.v's Connection, anno 424.
a What excited him the rather to do it at this time, was the
murder of Cn. Octavius: for the Roman senate having sent three
ambassadors into Syria, whereof Octavius was chief, to adminis-
ter the atl'airs of the nation, (hiring the minority of the king,
these ambassadors, finding that there were more ships in the navy,
and more elephants in the army, than the treaty made with An-
tiochus the Great, after the battle of Mount Siphilus. allowed of,
caused the ships to be burned, and the elephants to be slain, that
exceeded the number stipulated. This occasioned great mur-
murings and discontent among the people, and provoked one
Leptines to such a degree of indignation, that he fell upon Octa-
vius, as ho was anointing himself in the gymnasium at Laodicea,
and there slew him. Eupater and Lysias did all they could to
clear themselves from having any hand in this vile act, and to
this purpose sent ambassadors to Rome to inform the senate of
their innocence ; but the .-mate, after having heard what the am-
bassadors had to say, gave them no answer, expressing their re-
sentment by their angry silence: and therefore Demetrius thought
this no improper time to move the senate, when he perceived
them thus out of humour with Eupater, the usurper of his king-
dom.— Prideaur's Connection, auno 1C2.
MAC. v. I. JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.14- end of MAC. JOS. HIST, b, xiii.c. IS
and so, without any farther opposition, became thorough-
ly settled in the whole kingdom.
He had not been long so settled, be fore Alcimus, who,
on the death of Menelaus, had by Antiochus Eupater
been constituted high priest of the Jews, but was never
acknowledged as such, because in the time of persecu-
tion he had apostatised, came, and implored his protec-
tion against Judas Maccabasus and his party ; accusing
them of being enemies to the kings of Syria, fomentors
of sedition, and murderers and persecutors of his most
faithful subjects. By this representation Demetrius was
so exasperated that 3 he immediately ordered Bacchides,
the governor of Mesopotamia, to march with an army into
Judea ; and having confirmed Alcimus in the office of
high priest, joined him in the same commissidn for car-
rying on the war in Judea.
No sooner were they arrived in Judea, with a consi-
derable body of troops, but the scribes * and doctors of
the law met together, and consulted what they were to
do upon this occasion. Very desirous they were to have
an high priest again settled among them, and not at all
suspicious that any of the sons of Aaron would do them
any wrong ; and therefore upon promise of safe conduct,
they waited upon them, in order to bring matters to a
peaceable accommodation : but the perfidious Alcimus,
having got them in his power, caused sixty of them to
be seized, and all put to death on one day, which made
the people more cautious of him for the future.
Bacchides, however, returning to Antioch, put Alci-
mus in possession of the country, and left him some forces
to support him in it. With these the wicked high priest
did much mischief, and committed many murders upon
those that were not for him : but as soon as Judas, 4 with
his men, appeared in the field again, he left the country
for fear, and returned to the king with fresh accusations
against him and his brothers, who, as long as they were
permitted to live, as he told him, would never suffer the
king's authority to take place, nor any lasting peace to
be established in the country. So that, upon this repre-
sentation, Demetrius sent another army against the
Jews, under the command of Nicanor, with strict orders
to destroy Judas, disperse his followers, and thoroughly
establish Alcimus in the high priest's office.
Nicanor was not insensible of the courage and conduct
of Judas ; and therefore, loath to come to an engage-
ment with him, he endeavoured to compose matters by a
treaty, and accordingly entered into articles of peace
with him : but the high priest, e not liking the peace, be-
cause his interest, as he imagined, Mas not sufficiently
secured in it, went, the third time to the king, and so
possessed him against it, that he refused to ratify what
was agreed, and sent his positive commands to Nica-
nor, to go on with the war, and not cease prosecut-
ing it, until he had either slain Judas, or taken him
prisoner, and sent him bound to Antioch. Upon these
these instructions, Nicanor being obliged, though much
against his will, to alter his conduct, marched his army
3 1 Mac. vii. 8—20. 4 1 Mac. vii. 23, 24.
6 Ibid. ver. 26—29. 2 Mac. xiv. 12—25.
6 1 Mac. vii. 26—29.
b These, in all probability, were a deputation from the great
sanhedrim, which, at this time, had the government of the na-
tion in their hands; and why Judas, who was at the head of
them, did not think proper to accompany them, the reason is
pretty obvious.— Cal/nct's Commentary on 1 Mac. vii. 12.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
773
A.J1.3SII. A.C. 163; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 5247. A.C
up to Jerusalem, and designing-, by craft and treachery,
to get Judas into his power, ' invited him to a conference,
which the other, upon the presumption of the depending
peace, readily complied with, and came to the place ap-
pointed : but when he found that an ambush was laid
for his apprehension, he lied from his presence, and so
began the war afresh. This war was carried on with
various successes for some time, and with some par-
ticular cruelties on Nieanor's side, " but at length, com-
ing to a decisive battle near a village called Bethoron,
Nicanor was slain in the first onset, which the rest of the
army perceiving, cast away their arms, and lied ; so that,
what with Judas's pursuing them, and the country rising
upon them as they endeavoured to escape, not one of
the whole army, which consisted of five and thirty thou-
sand men, was left to carry home the tidings of their
overthrow.
After the pursuit was ended, the victorious army re-
turning to the Held of battle, took the spoils of the slain ;
and having found Nicanor's body among the dead, they
cut oft' his head, and this right hand which he stretched
out so proudly in his threatenings against the temple,
and hanged them up upon one of the towers of Jerusa-
lem. A general joy overspread the whole city upon this
occasion, and in commemoration of so gTeat a deliver-
ance, it was ordained, that the thirteenth day of their
month Adar, (which answers in part to our February,) the
day whereon this victory was obtained, should be ever
after observed as an anniversary day of solemn thanks-
giving ; and so it is kept even to this present time, under
the name of the day of Nicanor.
2 Judas, having now some respite after this victory,
was thinking of making a league with the Romans.
He had heard much talk of their power, prowess, and
policy ; and was therefore desirous of making an al-
liance b with them, in hopes of receiving thereby some
protection and relief against the oppressions of the
Syrians. To this purpose he sent Jason and Eupolemus,
men of sufficiency for such an embassy, to Rome, who
were kindly received by the senate, and from them ob-
tained a decree, acknowledging the Jews for friends
and allies to the Romans, a league of mutual defence
between them, and a letter to Demetrius, requiring him,
upon the peril of having war denounced against him, to
< 2 Mar. vii. 27—31.
2 Mac. viii. — Jewish Antiq. b. xii. c. 17.
a One instance of this kind was practised upon Razis, an
eminent and honourable senator of the Jewish sanhedrim, who
had not only persevered in his religion through the worst of
tiir.es, but upon all occasions been very munificent to the people.
Him Nicanor was resolved to cut oil', the rather, because he
thought it would be an act of high displeasure to the Jews; and
therefore sent a party to seize him. Razis was, at this time, at
a cattle of his which he had in the country, where he defended
himself against them for some time with great valour; but at
length finding thai he could hold out no longer, he fell upon his
sword. The wound however was not mortal, and therefore he
threw himself headlong over the battlements of the tower where-
on he fought; but finding himself still alive, he thrust his hand
into his wound, and pulling out his bowels, cast them upon the
assailants, and so died, 2 Mac. xiv. 4G.
b Josephus takes notice, that this was the very first treaty
that ever the Jews made with the Romans, which is very pro-
bable from the manner in which the author of the fust book
of Maccabees prefaces his account of it; for there it appears
that the Jews, till this time, had very little knowledge of the
■toman state. — Jus. Antiq. b. xii. c. 17; and 1 Mac. \iii. 1.
lG4.lMAC.v.I.JUS.HIST.b.xii.e.l 1— end op MAC.JOS.HIST.b.xiii.c.19.
desist from giving the Jews any farther molestation ;
but before the return of these ambassadors Judas was
dead.
3 For Demetrius, having received an account of the
defeat and death of Nicanor, sent Bacchides, with Alci-
mus, the second time into Judea, at the head of a very
numerous army, made up of the prime forces and Mower
of his militia. Judas, at their coming, had no more than
three thousand men to oppose them ; and these were so
terrified with the strength and number of the enemy, that
they deserted their general, all to eight hundred men.
However, with these few, he resolved to try his fortune ;
and when his soldiers advised him to retreat, and wait for
a supply ; " God forbid," says he, " that the sun should
ever see me turn my back to my enemies. If provi-
dence has ordained that we should die, let us die man-
fully, lighting for our brethren ; and let us never stain the
honour of our former valorous deeds by an ignominious
flight :" and so animating them by his own example, he
charged and broke the right wing, where Bacchides com-
manded in person, and pursued them as far as the moun-
tains of Azotus ; but having not forces enough to keep
the left wing in play, he was followed and encompassed.
The action was very hot and obstinate : the Jews sold
their lives at a dear rate : their general did every valiant
thing that man could do ; till, being overpowered by
numbers, he was slain, and his men, thus deprived of
their heroic leader, were forced to fly.
Thus fell the great Judas Maccabceus, the restorer
and preserver of the true worship of God, and the re-
liever and protector of his distressed countrymen, while
he lived. His two brothers, Simon and Jonathan, took
up his dead body, and conveying it to the city of Modin,
they there buried it, in the sepulchre of his ancestors,
with all the funeral honour that was due to the memory
of so brave a man, and so excellent a commander.
After the death of Judas, Bacchides made himself
master of the country, and used all the friends and ad-
herents to the Maccabees, wherever he found them, with
the utmost barbarity ; 4 so that Jonathan was in a man-
ner necessitated to take upon him the command in the
room of his brother Judas, and to become the captain
of all those who had preserved their integrity'. To this
purpose, taking with him his brother Simon, and those
that had resorted to him, lie retired into the wilderness
of Tekoa, and there encamped, with a morass on one
side, and the river Jordan on the other, so that they
could not easily be come at. But Bacchides 5 marching
after them, and having made himself master of the pass
that led to their encampment, assaulted them in it on
the sabbath day, expecting to meet with no resistance.
Jonathan, however, reminding his men of the determina-
tion that was made in this case in the time of his father
Mattathias, encouraged them to dispute it bravely ;
which accordingly they did, even till they had slain
about a thousand of the assailants : but then, finding that
they should be overpowered with numbers, they cast
themselves into the river, and, by swimming over to the
other side, made their escape.
Bacchides thought it not proper to pursue them any
farther, but rather to go back to Jerusalem ; where, hav-
3 I Mac. ix. 1, &c.
* 1 Mac. ix. 28—33. 5 Ibid. ver. 43—53.
774
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A.M.384I.A.C.163 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.5247. A. C.151.
ing fortified Mount Acra, ami the neighbouring towns, i
and put garrisons in them, he took hostages for the
fidelity of the inhabitants, and so returned to Syria : a
but, before he departed, Aleimus, the great troubler of
Israel, and whom he had, not long before, settled in the
high-priesthood, was smitten with a palsy, whereof he
suddenly died; so that the land had rest for two years,
and Jonathan an opportunity of bringing his affairs to
some better settlement in Judea.
1 The adverse party, however, was not long easy ;
but, at the end of two years, prevailed with Bacchides
to return with his army into Judea, proposing to seize
Jonathan, and all his abettors, as soon as he was arrived
with his forces to support the enterprise : but when
Jonathan had intelligence of this, he laid hold on fifty
of the principal conspirators, and put them to death,
Which quelled all the rest. Being sensible, however,
that lie could not stand against so great a force as
Bacchides had brought against him, he retired to Beth-
basi, a place strongly situate in the wilderness, and here
lie purposed to make a stand against the enemy.
Bacchides, as soon as he arrived in Judea, went after
Jonathan ; but, upon his approach, Jonathan left Simon
his brother with one part of the forces to defend the
place, whilst himself, with the other part, took the field
to harass the enemy abroad: in which capacities they
both acted so well, Jonathan, by cutting oft' several of
their parties, and now and then falling upon the out-
skirts of their army employed in the siege ; and Simon,
by making frequent sallies upon them, and burning the
engines they had brought against the place ; that Bac-
chides, - growing weary of this undertaking, and not a
little enraged at those who were the occasion of his
return and disgrace, put several of them to death. This
opportunity Jonathan laid hold on, and therefore sent
messengers to him, to desire an accommodation, which
Bacchides readily came into, so that a peace was con-
cluded. The prisoners whom he had in his custody were
all restored, and himself took an oath, never to molest
the Jews .any more : which accordingly he fulfilled ; for
as soon as the peace was ratified on both sides he went
away, and never more returned into the country.
When the wars were thus happily ended, Jonathan
retired to Michmash, a town about nine miles' distance
to the north of Jerusalem, where he governed the people
according to law ; cut oft' all those that had apostatised
from him ; and, as far as in him lay, reformed all abuses
both in church and state ; repairing the city of Jerusa-
lem ; fortifying it on every side, and causing the wall
round the mount of the temple, which had been pulled
down, to be rebuilt.
At this time Alexander, (for that was the name which
he assumed,) pretending to be the son of Antiochus Epi-
phar.es/' laid claim to the Syrian monarchy; and being
l MAC.v.l.JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.14— ENDOFMAC.JOS.HIST.b.xiii.c.19.
well supported by foreign powers, seized Ptolemais, a
city of Palestine, and was making preparations to drive
Demetrius out of the throne. On this occasion the two
rival princes did both make their court to Jonathan, as
thinking him a good ally : Demetrius 3 sent him letters,
constituting him his general in Judea, with full authority
to raise forces, and to provide them with arms to come
to his assistance, and commanding, at the same time,
that the hostages, which were in the fortress of Jerusa-
lem, should be delivered to him; which accordingly was
done. " Alexander, on the other hand, c having sent him
a purple robe and a crown of gold, as ensigns of great
dignity, made him a grant of the high-priesthood, and of
the honour to be called the king's friend. Demetrius
hearing of this, 5 and being resolved to outbid Alex-
ander, made him still more advantageous offers: but the
Jews, remembering what a bitter enemy he had been to
all those that had adhered to the true interest of their
country, and suspecting that these offers proceeded only
from the necessity of his aft'airs, which would certainly
be revoked as soon as the storm was blown over, resolved
rather to enter into league with Alexander : and therefore
Jonathan/* accepting of his grant of the high priest's
1 Ma
1 1 Mac. ix.c.58— 61.
ix. 69—73; Joseph. Antiq. b. 12, c. 1, and 2.
a It is most likely, that Demetrius had, by this time, received
the letters which were Bent to him by the Romans in behalf of
the .IeuS and thereupon gave Bacchides orders to surcease his
vexations of that people; and that, in obedience to these orders,
Bacchides took occasion, on the death of Aleimus, to leave the
conntiy. — Prideatue's Connection, anno l(jO.
/> In the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, one Heraclides "as
lus treasurer in the province of Babylon, while his brother
3 1 Mac. x. 25, &c. ; Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. 4.
4 Ibid. x. 15—20. Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. 5.
5 1 Mac. x. 25, &c; Joseph. Antiq. b. 13, c. 5.
Timarchus, another favourite of the king's, was governor of it ;
but on the coming of Demetrius to the crown, they were both
found guilty of great misdemeanours, for which Timarchus was
put to death; but Heraclides made his escape out of the king-
dom, and took up his residence at Rhodes. While he was there,
Demetrius, having given himself up entirely to luxury and
sloth, so neglected the affairs of government, that his subjects
justly took a disgust against him, and were ready to enter into
auy conspiracy to depose him; which Heraclides understanding,
in hopes of making a revolution in favour of himself, he contriv-
ed this plot. — In the isle of Rhodes there was a youth of a very
mean and obscure condition, called Balas, but, in other respects,
every way fit for his purpose. Him he prevailed with to pass for
the son of Antiochus Epiphanes; and having thoroughly instruct-
ed him how to act his part, he carried him to Rome, where, by
his craft and earnest solicitations, he not only prevailed with the
senate to own him, but procured a decree from them likewise,
permitting him to recover the kingdom of Syria out of the hands
of Demetrius, and promising their assistance in doing it. By
virtue of this decree he raised forces, and with them sailing to
Ptolemais in Palestine, seized that city; and there, by the name
of Alexander, son of Antiochus Epiphanes, took upon him to be
king of Syria. Great numbers, out of disaffection to Demetrius,
flocked to him ; so that, at length, Demetrius being defeated and
slain, Alexander obtained the full possession of the Syrian em-
pire.— Prideaux's Connection, anno 152.
c The letter which he sent him, together with these, is to
this effect: — 'King Alexander, to his brother Jonathan, &c.
Being informed of your power and valour, and that you are
worthy of friendship, we constitute you high priest of your nation ;
and it is our pleasure that you should be enrolled in the number
of the king's friends. To this end we have sent you a purple
robe, and a golden crown, not doubting of a suitable return
from you, for our affection and friendship.' — Joseph. Antiq. b.
13. c. 5.
d From the time of the return from the Babylonish captivity,
the office of high priest had been in the family of Jozadack,
and, in a lineal descent, was transmitted down to Onias, the third
of that name. He was supplanted by Jason his brother, as Jasou
was by his brother Menelaus, and after the death of Menelaus,"
Aleimus, who was of a different family, was put into the office
by the command of the king of Syria. Whether the Asmoneans
were of the race of Jozadack, or not, it is no where said; but it
is certain that they were of the course of Joarib, (1 Mac. ii. 1 .),
which was the first class of the sons Aaron ; and therefore, upon
the failure of the former pontifical family, they had the best right
Sect. IV.l
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c
775
A.M. 3841. A.C. 1G3; OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS.A.M. 5247.A.C. 164. 1 MAC.v.l.JOS.HIST.b. xii.cM— ENDOF MAC.JOS.IIIST.b.xiij.c.19.
office, did, on the feast of tabernacles, which soon en-
sued, put on the pontifical robe, and officiate as high
priest, after that the place, from the death of Alciinus,
hail been vacant seven years.
In the mean time, the two contending kings having
drawn together all their forces, committed the determin-
ation of their cause to a decisive battle, in which Deme-
trius " being defeated and slain, and Alexander, by this
victory, made master of the whole Syrian empire, ' he
sent to Ptolemy king of Egypt, demanding his daughter
Cleopatra in marriage. To this marriage (which was
performed at Ptolemais) Jonathan the high priest was
invited, and was received by both the kings (for Pto-
lemy was likewise at the nuptials) with great favour,
especially by Ptolemy, who, to do him a particular hon-
our, caused him to be clothed in purple, and to take
place near himself, among the first princes of his king-
dom; and, besides making him general of all his forces
in Judea, gave him an office b of great credit and renown
in his palace.
But Alexander himself did not long enjoy this pros-
perous state. Demetrius/ the son of the late Demetrius,
resolving to revenge his father's death, and recover his
kingdom, came from Crete, (where he and his brother
Antiochus had been concealed in the late troubles,) and
with an army of mercenaries, landed in Cilicia. It was
not long before he gained over to his interest Apollonius c
1 1 Mac. x. 54; Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. 7.
1 1 Mar. x. 67 ; Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. 8 ; Justin, b. 35. c. 2.
to succeed. With this right it was, that Jonathan took the
cilice: and in his family it became settled, and continued for
several descents, until the time of Herod, who, from an office of
inheritance, changed it into that of arbitrary will and pleasure.
Whoever had the power after him, put the high priests in or
out, as they thought fit, till at length the office was extinguished
by the destruction of the temple by the Romans. — Prideau.v's
Connection, anno 253.
a In the first onset, Demetrius's left wing put the opposite
wing of the enemy to flight ; but as he pursued them too far, (a
fault in war which has lost many victories,) by the time that
they came back, the right wing, in which Demetrius fought in
person, was overborne, and he slain in the rout: for his horse
having plunged him into a bog, they who pursued him shot
at him there with their arrows, till he died. — Joseph. Antiq. b.
13. c. 5; Justin, b. 35. C 1 Apion, dc Si/riucis; and Poly-
bius, b. 3.
b The word meridarches, which we translate a dulic, Gro-
tius, in his commentary on 1 Mac. x. C5, makes to be the
chief sewer, which, even in the German empire, is an office that
one of the electors bears: but, in his commentary on Matth.
xix. 28., he makes it denote the governor of a province: and if,
in this place, it were so taken, it would better become Jonathan,
one would think, to be made governor of some part of the Sy-
rian empire, than to be the regulator of the dishes at the royal
table. — Prideau.v's Connection, anno 150.
c Apollonius was a common name among the Syro-Macedo-
nians and Greeks; and in the history of the Maccabees we find
so many mentioned of that name, that, for the prevention of
mistakes, it may not be improper to give some account of the
several persons who bore it. The first that we meet with of that
name, is Apollonius, the son of Thraseas, (2 Mac. iii. 5,) who
was governor of Caelo-Syria and Phoenicia, under Seleucus Philo-
pater, when Heliodorus came to Jerusalem, to rob the temple.
He was chief minister of state to Seleucus ; but, on the accession
of his brother Antiochus Epiphanes to the crown, he left Syria,
and retired to Miletus. He had a son of his own name, that
was bred up at Rome, and resided with Demetrius, the son of
Seleucus I'hilopater, who was then an hostage in that place.
\\ hen Demetrius recovered the crown of Syria, this Apollonius
became his prime favourite, and was made governor of Ceelo-
Syiia and Phoenicia, the same government which his father held
the governor of Coelo-Syria, who, to oblige Jonathan to
quit Alexander's party, and join with Demetrius,3
marched an army as far as Jamnia, and from thence sent
a challenge to Jonathan to leave his fastnesses on the
mountains, and come and fight him on the plains.
Provoked at this message, Jonathan inarched out with
ten thousand men. He first took Joppa, in the sight of
Apollonius and his army, and then joining battle, not
only vanquished him in the open field, but pursued his
broken forces to Azotus. Here was a famous temple of
the god Dagon, unto which the Syrians fled for shelter ;
but Jonathan entering the town, burnt it to the ground,
and set the temple on fire ; so that the number of those
who were slain in battle, and perished by the flames,
amounted to no less than eight thousand men. After
this, having treated the neighbouring towns, that belong-
ed to the enemy, in the like manner, he led his victorious
army back to Jerusalem, loaded with spoils ; whither
he had not been long come, before Alexander, hearing
of his renowned actions in favour of his cause, * sent him
a rf buckle of gold, such as none but the royal family were
allowed to wear, and, at the same time, made him a pre-
sent of the city of Ekron, and all the territories thereunto
belonging.
5 When Apollonius, governor of Ccelo-Syria, had de-
clared for Demetrius, Alexander called in his father-
in-law, Ptolemy Philometer, to his assistance. He
marched into Palestine with a great army ; and as he
passed, in all the cities (which, by Alexander's orders,
opened their gates to him) he left a good number of his
own soldiers to strengthen the garrisons. But, whe-
ther or not this might give some umbrage to Alexander,
so it was, that Ptolemy discovered a design, which
Ammonius, Alexander's great favourite, had formed, to
have him cut oil' at his coming to Ptolemais ; and upon
his demanding justice to be done to the traitor, by
Alexander's refusing to give him up, he plainly per-
ceived that the king was a party to the treason, and
thence began to harbour an implacable hatred against
him.
He therefore marched his army to Antioch ; and, hav-
3 I Mac. x. 9—77 ; Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. S.
4 1 Mac. x. SS, S9.
5 1 Mac. xi. 1 — 5; Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. S.
under Seleucus Philopater; and this I take to be the same Apol-
lonius, who, being continued in the same government by Alex-
ander, now revolted from him, to embrace the interest of
Demetrius, the son of his old master, and to engage Jonathan to
do the like, marched his forces against him. Another Apollonius
is spoken of, (2 Mac. iv. 21,) as the chief minister of Antiochus
Epiphanes, who from him was sent as ambassador, first to Rome
and afterwards to Ptolemy Philometer, king of Egypt; and him
I take to be the same, that, with a detachment of two and
twenty thousand men, was sent to destroy Jerusalem, and
build a fortress on Mount Acia. There are, besides these, two
other persons, in the history of the Maccabees, mentioned under
the name of Apollonius. The former of these, being governoi
of Samaria in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, (1 Mac. iii
10,) was slain in battle by Judas Maccabams; anil the latter
(who is called the son of Genneus,) (2 Mae. xii. 2,) being go-
vernor of some toparchy in Palestine, under Antiochus Eupater,
did then signalize himself by being a great enemy to the Jews.
— Prideau.v's Connection, anno 148.
d The golden buckle, which was worn upon the shoulder, was
a very singular mark of distinction both among the Greeks and
the Persians, from whom the Macedonians took it, and was
generally made the reward of great and gallant actions in war,
— Calmcfs Commentary on L Mac. x. 89.
776
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A.M. 3841, A.C. 163; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M.5247. A. C.164.1 MAC. v.l.JOS.HIST.b xii.c.14— end or MAC. JOS.HlST.b.xiii.c.19.
ing taken his daughter from Alexander, gave her to his
rival Demetrius, ami with her assurance to restore him to
his father's throne. ' The Antiochians, taking the op-
portunity of Ptolemy's approach to execute their resent-
ments upon Ammonius, rose in a tumult, ami slew him ;
and then opening their gates to Ptolemy, were all dis-
posed to make him their king ; but he modestly declin-
ing that offer, recommended to them the restoration of
Demetrius, the true heir : whereupon Demetrius was
received into the city, and placed on the throne of his
ancestors.
Alexander, who was then in Cilicia, hearing of this,
came with all his forces towards Antioch, wasting the
country with fire and sword ; but when Ptolemy with his
new son-in-law, met him, and gave him battle, his army
was routed, and himself Avas forced to fly to Arabia,
where Zabdiel, king of the country, cut oft* his head, and
sent it as a present to Ptolemy, who was not a little
pleased with the sight of it. His joys however did not
last long ; for in five days' time he died of the wounds he
had received in battle, leaving Demetrius in quiet pos-
session of his father's kingdom, which he having recov-
ered by virtue of this victory, did thenceforward take
upon him the name of Nicanor, that is, conqueror.
During these transactions, Jonathan 3 laid siege to the
fortress at Jerusalem ; but some of the garrison, escaping
by night, came and acquainted Demetrius with it, who
thereupon marched from Antioch with an army to relieve
it. But coming to Ptolemais,he stopped there and sent
for Jonathan to appear before him, and answer to such
accusations as were preferred against him. Jonathan
went thither, though he ordered the siege still to go on ;
and, when he came to Demetrius, by his rich presents
and wise management, he so mollified the king, and in-
sinuated himself into his good graces, that he not only
confirmed him in the possession of what he had, but
honoured him likewise with many new favours, and upon
the payment of 300 talents, agreed to exempt from all
tolls, taxes and tributes, all the Dlaces that were under
his government.
Jonathan, upon his return to Jerusalem, pressed the
siege of the fortress very closely ; but finding little or
no success therein, he sent an embassy, 3 to Demetrius,
desiring him to withdraw the garrison, which he could
not expel. This and much more Demetrius promised
to do for him, if he would but send him some forces to
reduce the inhabitants of Antioch, who, incensed by his
cruelty and oppression, had taken up arms against him.
Jonathan immediately dispatched 3000 choice men to his
aid, who coming to Antioch, when the people had beset
the place with an intent to murder the tyrant, as they
called him, fell on with fire and sword, and having burn-
ed a great part of the city, and slain of the inhabitants
about 100,000 persons, obliged the rest to have recourse
to the kind's clemency, and pray for peace. But all this
service availed nothing. Demetrius,4 seeing this storm
overpast, forgot the bargains which he had made with
Jonathan at l'tolemais ; and, though he had received the
300 talents in lieu of them, threatened him witli military
1 1 Mac. xi. 13; Joseph. Antiq. I>. xiii. c. S.
2 Ibid. ver. 20, 47; Joseph. Antiq. b. xvii. c. S.
* Ibid. ver. 47 — 52; Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 9.
4 I Mac. xi.53
execution, unless he sent the taxes and tribute which
were usually paid by his predecessors ; and would cer-
tainly have done all that he had threatened, had not
Tryphon found out another employment for his arms.
This Tryphon had formerly served Alexander, as go-
vernor of Antioch, but, in the present king's reign, was
laid aside. Observing, however, that the cruelty and
tyranny, which were every where practised, the disband-
ing the Syrian soldiers, and retaining only foreigners in
pay, together with many more grievances, which the peo-
ple laboured under, had quite alienated their hearts, and
made them ready for a general defection, he thought this
no unfit opportunity to put in practice his long concerted
scheme of advancing himself to the crown of Syria.
To this purpose he goes into Arabia ; 5 gets Antiochus,
son of the late Alexander, into his hands ; brings him
into Syria, claims the kingdom for him ; and, to support
this claim, all the soldiers whom Demetrius had disband-
ed, and several others, whom his ill conduct had made
his enemies, flock in great numbers to the pretender.
With these Tryphon marches against Demetrius, van-
quishes him in battle, forces him into Seleucia, and hav-
ing taken possession of Antioch, places Antiochus upon
the throne, and gives him the name of Theos, or the
Divine.
The ill return which Demetrius made Jonathan, was,
doubtless, the chief reason for his declaring for this new
king ; 6 who, by the advice of those that were about him,
took care, not only to confirm him in the office of high
priest, and in all his other places and dignities, but to
make likewise his brother Simon commander of all his
forces, from Tyre to the frontiers of Egypt. Upon this
defection from him, Demetrius sent all the troops that
were left in Ccelo-Syria and Phoenicia, to chastise him
for it : but he not only repulsed them twice, but took
Gaza likewise, and all the country as far as Damascus ;
while Simon, 7 whom he left in Judea, penetrating into the
land of the Philistines, took Joppa, and placed a strong
garrison in it. Tryphon, who had no other aim in get-
ting young Antiochus into his hands, than to serve his
wicked purposes, knew very well, that, as long as Jona-
than continued in his interest, it would be in vain for him
to attempt the crown ; and 8 therefore, having prevailed
with him to dismiss his army, and to accompany him to
Ptolemais, under pretence of putting that place into his
hands, with no more than a thousand men, they were no
sooner entered, but the garrison, having shut the gates
upon them, seized Jonathan, and put his men to the
sword.
Having thus circumvented Jonathan, he took him along
with him, and marched his army into Judea ; but the
Jews by this time had chosen Simon his brother for their
commander, and were ready to give him a warm recep-
tion. Not finding himself therefore able to engage them,
he sent Simon this deceitful message,—9 " That he had
seized Jonathan only because he owed 100 talents to the
king ; but that in case he would send the money, and
Jonathan's two sons to be hostages for their father's
fidelity, he would set him again at liberty." Simon soon
5 1 Mac. xi. 54 — 56; Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 9; and Apion,
de Syriacis.
6 Ibid. xi. 57 — 59; Joseph, ibid.
" 1 Mac. xi. Ci4: Joseph. Ibid. Ibid. xii. 39— 52.
w Ibid. xiii. 12 — 19; Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. C. 11.
Sect. IV.J
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &o.
777
A. M.3S41.A.C.1G3; OH, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M.5247.A.C.164.
saw through this deceit; but lie complied with the trai-
tor's demand, for fear it should be said that lie had not
done all that lay in his power to save his brother's life ;
and accordingly sent the money, and two young- men.
But when the villain had got them in his power, he put
both them and their father to death ; and thinking that
lie had now nothing to obstruct his main design, he caus-
ed Antiochus to be murdered privately ; and then assum-
ing the crown, declared himself king of Syria in his
stead.
When Simon heard of his brother's death, and that he
was buried at Bascama in the land of Gilead, ' he sent
and fetched his dead body from thence; and, having
buried it with great funeral solemnity in his father's se-
pulchre at Modin, lie erected over it a stately monu-
ment, a all built of white marble, and curiously wrought
and poliohed.
2 Simon, as soon as he was admitted to the govern-
ment of the laud, sent to Demetrius, who was then at
Laodicea, a crown of gold, and ambassadors to treat
with him about terms of peace and alliance. The king
granted to Simon a confirmation of the high priesthood
and principality, and to the people a release of all taxes,
tolls, and tributes, with an oblivion of all past acts of
hostility, on condition that they would join with him
against the usurper: in virtue of which treaty, Simon,
being made sovereign prince of the land, and the land
freed from all foreign yoke, the Jews from this time,
instead of dating their instruments and contracts by the
years of the Syrian kings, as hitherto they had done,
dated them by the years of Simon and his successors.
Having thus obtained the independent sovereignty of
the land, 3 he took a progress through it, to inspect what
was wanting for its security; repairing the fortifications
that were decayed, making new ones where they were
wanted, and besieging and taking the places that stood
out .against him. He had no occasion however to be-
siege the fortress of Jerusalem, because the wall which
his brother Jonathan had built against it had so cut oft'
all communication with the city, that the garrison being
sore distressed for want of provisions, and all other ne-
cessaries, was forced to surrender the place; and Simon,
wisely considering how much the city of Jerusalem had
been infested by that citadel, pulled it down to the
ground, that it might no longer be a retreat to sedition
and faction ; and, to prevent its being built at any time,
levelled the hill on which it was situated ; so that now no
eminence was left but the mount of the temple only.
Demetrius * at this time was prisoner in Parthia, and
1 I Mac. xiii. 25 — 30; Joseph. Antiq. I), xiii. c. 11.
1 1 Mac. xiii. 34—42; Joscp. ibid. J 1 Mac. xiv. 7—33.
a This edifice, being erected on an eminence, was seen far off
at sea; and, on that coast, was taken notice of as a good sea-
mark. Near to the monument Simon placed seven pyramids,
two for iiis father and mother, four for his four brothers, and the
seventh for himself, and then encompassed the whole with a
stately portico, supported by marble pillars, each of one entire
piece, and whereon were engraved ships and arms, and other
military ensigns. Josephus tells us, that tin's whole fabric was
standing entire in his days, and looked upon as a very curious
and excellent piece of architecture; (Antiq, b. 13. c. 11.) and
Eusebius mentions it as still in being in lus time, which was two
hundred years after the time of Joseybus.—Prideaua/'s Connec-
tion, anno 144.
b The reason of Demetrius's being in this condition in this
place, by profane historians, is said to be this: — As the Par-
lMAC.v.l. JOS.IIIST.b.xii.c.M-F.Nn or MAC. JOS.HIST. b. xiii. c. 19.
Cleopatra his queen had shut up herself and her children
in Seleucia; c but, fearing to fall into the hands of the
traitor Tryphon, and being provoked at her husband's
marrying the daughter of Mithridates, king of Parthia, 4
she sent to his brother Antiochus, who still continued in
Crete, offering him the crown, and herself in marriage,
if he would come and join his interest with hers against
Tryphon. This offer he readily accepted of; and, in the
beginning of the next year, landed in Syria, with an army
of mercenaries, which was soon augmented by a large ac-
cession of the usurper's forces, which every day deserted
from him: so that, not being able to keep the held, he
fled from place to place, till at length, coming to Apa-
mea, <l his own native city, he was there taken and put
to death. This end being put to his usurpation, Antio-
chus became fully possessed of his father's throne; and,
being a man much addicted to hunting, he had for that
reason the name of Sicletes, which, in the Syrian lan-
guage, signifies the hunter.
Before Antiochus landed in Syria, to gain Simon over
to his interest, he wrote him a letter, » wherein he made
him many grants, and promised him more; but, as soon
as he was settled in the kingdom, he forgot his promises,
4 Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. 12. s 1 Mac. xv. 2—5.
thians had at this time overrun in a manner all the East, and
had made themselves masters of every country from the river
Indus to the Euphrates, those who were of the Macedonian race
in those parts, not bearing their usurpation and insolence, invit-
ed Demetrius, by repeated embassies, to come to their relief,
promising him a general revolt from the Parthians, and such
assistance of forces against them as would enable him to suppress
these usurpers, and recover to his dominions all the provinces of
the East. Upon confidence of these promises, he undertook the
expedition; and found as soon as he appeared, that the Ely-
ma?ans, the Persians, and the Baetrians, declared for him. By
the assistance of these nations lie overthrew the Parthians in
several conflicts ; but at last, under the show of a treaty of peace,
being drawn into a snare, he was made prisoner, and all his
army cut to pieces. The king that reigned in Parthia at this
time was Mithridates, the son of Priapatites, who, having thus
got Demetrius into his power, carried him round the revolted
provinces, that, by seeing the prince whom they confided in re-
duced to this ignominious condition, they might more easily lie
brought to submit to their former yoke: but, when he had done
this, he allowed him a maintenance suitable to the state of a
king, and gave him one of his daughters, whose name was
Uhodaguna, in marriage. — Justin, b. 41. c. 5, and 6; Joseph.
Antiq. b. 13. c. 9 and 12; and Orosus, b. 5. c. 4.
c Seleucia was a city of Syria, situate upon the Mediterranean,
near the place where the Orontes discharges itself into that sea.
It was generally called Pieria, to distinguish it from other cities
of the same name ; and from it the country adjoining received
the name of Seleucis. To the natural strength of the place, were
added so many fortifications, that, in the opinion of Strabo, the
city was rendered impregnable. Pompey, the Roman general,
conferred on it the privilege uf a free eity, a privilege which was
confirmed by several emperors, as appears from many ancient
medals. The chief deity of the inhabitants, previous to the rece| -
tion of Christianity, was Jupiter, whose worship was splendidly
celebrated on Casius, a neighbouring mountain. It was from the
port of this city that Paul and Barnabas embarked for Cyprus,
Acts xiii. 4; and, like the neighbouring city of Antioch, where
the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. The city of
Seleucia also very early received the gospel, probably about A. D.
43. At a subsequent period it became an eminent Christian city;
but nothing remains of Seleucia at the present time, except ruins,
among which are those of some of its ancient churches and con-
n at -. — En.
d It is a city of Syria, lying upon the Orontes, and was built,
as is believed, either by Seleucus the first king of Syria, or by
his son Antiochus Sett r, in honour of Qui en Apamea the wife of
Seleucus, the mother of Antiochus. — Cahmt's Lit tionary, under
the word.
5 F
778
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A.M.38U.A.C.163; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M.5247.A.C.l6t.l MAC.v.i.JOS. HIST. b. xii. c. 14— end op MAC.JOS.HIST.b.xiii.e.19'.
and sent an ambassador, demanding him to deliver up
Joppa and Gazara, and other places, or else to pay him
a thousand talents of silver for them. 1 These conditions
were thought too unreasonable to be complied with; and
therefore, when Antiochus sent an army under the com-
mand of Cendebeus, to enforce them, Simon, though
very far advanced in years, with a juvenile courage, pre-
pared to give him a warm reception ; and, with his two
sons, Judas and John, who was afterwards called Hyr-
Ctinus, put his army to flight almost at the first onset,
and, in the pursuit, cut oft' a great number of them: but,
to be revenged of him for this defeat, Antiochus concert-
ed the most abominable measures.
Simon had a son-in-law named Ptolemy, whom he
had appointed governor of the plains of Jericho. 2 This
man, who was rich and ambitious, had laid a design,
which he communicated to Antiochus, for the usurpation
of the government to himself; but this could not well be
done without the destruction of Simon and his family.
As Simon, therefore, and two of his sons, Judas and
Mattathias, were making a progress through the cities
of Judah, when they came to Jericho, Ptolemy invited
them to an entertainment which he had prepared for them
in a castle of his own building: but, while they were
drinking and making merry, he caused them, and all that
attended them, to be assassinated; and, thinking there-
upon to make himself master of the whole land, he sent a
party to Gazara, where John Hyrcanus, a Simon's third
son, resided, with a design to slay him likewise. But
Hyrcanus having had intelligence of what passed at
Jericho, was prepared to receive his intended murderers,
and having dispatched them, hastened to Jerusalem to
secure the city, and the mount of the temple, against
those whom the traitor had sent to take possession of
both. After this Hyrcanus was declared high priest and
prince of the Jews, in place of his father Simon, who
was greatly b lamented : but what finally became of this
a ' 1 Mac. xv. 30—36.
Ibid. xvi. 14—22 ; Joseph. Antiq. b. 13. c. 14.
a Why this captain was called Hyrcanus, some impute to the
victory winch he obtained over Hyrcanus, whom the books of the
' Maccabees, and Josephus, call Cendebeus, though others say,
that he had this name from a gallant action against the Hyrea-
nians, perhaps in the expedition wherein he accompanied Alex-
ander Sidetes beyond the Euphrates.— Cahnel's Dictionary, under
the word.
b The commendation which the author of the first book of the
Maccabees, (chap. xiv. 4,) &c. bestows upon Simon, is worth our
observation ; for he therein tells us, that he 'sought the good of
the nation,Mn every thing, ' so that his authority always pleased
them well-.' that during his administration, whilst Syria, and
other neighbouring kingdoms were almost destroyed by wars, the
Jews lived quietly, ' every man under his own vine and fig tree,'
enjoying, without fear, the fruits of their labours, and beholding
with pleasure the flourishing state of their country ; their trade
increased by the reduction of Joppa, and other maritime places;
their territories enlarged; their armies well disciplined; their
towns and fortresses well garrisoned; their religion and liberties
secured; their land freed from heathen enemies, and Jewish
apostates; and their f.iendship courted by all thenationsabout
them, even by the Komans and the Lacedemonians. He observes
lart her, that tins bimon was no less zealous for the service of
bod, in exterminating apostasy, superstition, idolatry, and every
thmg else that was contrary to his laws; that he was a great
protector of the true Israelites, and a friend to the poor; that he
restored the service of the temple to its ancient splendour, and
repaired the number of its sacred vessels: so that we need not
wonder, il the Jewish sanhedrim thought no dignity or honour,
while lie lived, and when he was so basely aud barbarously cut
execrable villain, c we have no manner of account in
history.
3 Antiochus having received from Ftolemy an account
of the death of Simon and his sons, thought that he had
now a fair opportunity to reduce Judea again under the
Syrian empire ; and therefore he immediately marched a
large army thither ; and having overrun the country, and
driven Hyrcanus out of the field, he shut him up and all
his forces within the walls of Jerusalem, and there be-
sieged him. The siege was carried on vigorously; and
the defence of the place was executed as gallantly : but
Hyrcanus being distressed for want of provisions for so
vast a number of people as was in the city, was forced
to sue for peace, which was granted him upon these terms,
that the besieged should deliver up their arms ; that
Jerusalem should be dismantled ; that tribute should be
paid to the king for Joppa, and the other towns which
were held by the Jews out of Judea ; and that, to buy
oft' the fortress of Jerusalem, from being rebuilt, which
Antiochus much insisted on, they should pay him five
hundred talents ; rf three hundred down in hand, and the
3 I Mac. xvi. IS; Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 16.
off, no grief aud lamentation, too great for a man of his uncommon
merit. — Universal History, b. ii. c. 11.
c Josephus has something peculiar in his account of this vile
miscreant, namely, that after he had killed his father-in-law
Simon, he seized on his wife, and two of her children, and with
them betook himself to a certain castle not far from Jerusalem,
called Dagon; that when Hyrcanus came to besiege it, the vil-
lain's custom was, to bring out his mother and brothers, and to
whip and torment them in the sight of all the people, with men-
aces to cast them headlong from the battlements, unless Hyrca-
nus withdrew the siege; that when Hyrcanus, out of tenderness
to his mother and brothers, was thinking of raising the siege, and
suffering the traitor to escape, his mother called aloud to him
from the walls, not to regard her, or her children's sufferings, but
to proceed in the siege with vigour, that so he might do himself
and his family right, in taking a just vengeance upon that execra-
ble monster ; that, notwithstanding this magnanirrfous exhortation,
he could not bear to see his relations tortured, and therefore
delayed the siege, until the sabbatical year came on, wherein the
Jews were obliged to rest; so that Ptolemy, by this means, being
delivered from the war, and the siege, after he had slain the
mother and brothers of Hyrcanus, withdrew to Zeno, surnamed
Catyla, a tyrant who at that time had usurped to himself the
government of Philadelphia; {Antiq. b. xiii. c. 15.) But our
learned Usher is of opinion, that this whole account of Josephus
is fabulous.
d Josephus tells us that Hyrcanus, to find some money for
this, and other occasions of the government, broke up the sepul-
chre of David, and took from thence three thousand talents, and
that Herod the Great did afterwards the like, Antiq, b. xvii.
c. 16, and b. xvi. c. 11. But both these stories are highly im-
probable. David had now been dead nearly nine hundred years,
and what is told of this treasure, supposes it to have been buried
with him all this time. It supposes, that as oft as the city of
Jerusalem, the palace, and the temple, during the reigns of the
kings of Judah, had been plundered of all their wealth and trea-
sure by prevailing enemies, this dead stock still remained safe
trom all rifle or violation. It supposes, that as oft as these kings
were forced to take all the treasure that was found in the house
ol the Lord, as well as in their own, to relieve the exigencies of
the state, they never meddled with this, that was uselessly buried
with David in his grave. It supposes, that when one of the
worst of their kings (2 Kings xv. 8, &c. and 2 Chron. xxviii. 21,
&c.) plundered the temple of its sacred vessels, and cut them in
pieces, to melt them down into money for his common occasions;
and that when one of the best of them (2 Kings xviii. 15, 16.)
was forced to cut oil' the gold wherewith the gates and pillars of
the temple were overlaid, to bribe a destroying enemy, this use-
less treasure still continued untouched. Nay, it supposes, that
when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed both the city and the temple of
Jerusalem ; so that, for many years they both lay in rubbish, this
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY. &c.
779
A.M. 3841. A.C.1C3; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5247. A.C.I
other two in a reasonable time, for which they were to
give hostages.
The treaty being thus concluded, Hyrcanus invited
the king and his army into the city, where he gave them
a splendid and most magnificent reception, and after-
wards, with some of his forces, attended him to the
Parthian war : for Antiochus, under pretence of rescuing
his brother Demetrius Nicanor from the hands of Phra-
ortes king of Parthia, who had long detained him as
prisoner, marched against him with a powerful army.
In three pitched battles he gained the victory, and reco-
vered Babylonia, Medea, and some other provinces that
formerly belonged to the Syrian monarchy ; and as Hyr-
canus had his share in all these actions, he returned with
the glory of them at the end of the year ; but Antiochus
1 and his army, who chose to winter in the east, were
all, in one night," destroyed by the inhabitants of the
country.
In the mean time, Demetrius,2 whom Phraortes b had
set at liberty, was returned to Syria, and, upon his bro-
ther's death, had recovered his kingdom; but still per-
sisting in his vicious courses, and tyrannical way of
government, he had not been long reinstated, before his
subjects rebelled against him, and one Alexander Zabina,
1 Justin, b. xxxviii.
2 Justin, b. xxxviii; Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 16.
treasure in David's sepulchre lay, all the while, safe and secure
under it ; and that when Antiochus Epiphanes, in like manner,
destroyed the city, and robbed the temple of all that he could find,
tiiis treasure still escaped his rapacious hands, nor was ever
molested, till Hyrcanus, at this time, was forced to make bold
with it: all which suppositions seem highly improbable, and be-
yond belief. There is this, however, to be said in the matter,
that as there certainly was a bank or treasury in the temple where
money was laid up for the support of the poor, for the relief of
widows and fatherless children, and for the maintenance of divine
service; and where the great men, and rich men of the nation,
were used to deposit their wealth, for its better security: it is
not improbable, that upon the account of the frequent invasions
and depredations they were liable to, this treasure might be kept
in some secret and subterraneous place, unknown to all, but such
as were at the head of affairs; that Hyrcanus, beiug now under
great difficulty to raise money, might borrow it out of this bank,
till better times enabled him to repay it; and that Herod, when
he plundered it quite, might trump up this plausible story, that
it neither belonged to church, nor poor, nor any private person,
but had been deposited there by David and his successors, as a
proper supply for the state in times of need. — Prideaux's Con-
nection, anno 135; and Universal History, b. ii. c. 11.
a The army, which, together with its attendants, amounted
to the number of nearly four hundred thousand persons, being
forced to disperse all over the country, were quartered at too
great a distance from each other to be able in any time to gather
together in a body ; and as they had grievously oppressed all
places wherever they lay, the inhabitants took the advantage of
this their dispersion, and conspired with the Paithians, in one
and the same day, to fall upon them in their several quarters,
and cut their throats; which accordingly they did, and when
Antiochus, with the forces which he had about him, hastened to
the assistance of the quarters that were near him, he was over-
powered, and slain; so that of this numerous army, there scarce
returned a man into Syria, to carry the doleful news of this ter-
rible overthrow. Phraortes, however, (who was then king of
Parthia,) caused the body of Antiochus to be taken up from
among the dead, and having put it into a silver coffin, sent it
honourably into Syria, to be there buried among his ancestors. —
Justin, b. xxxviii. c. 12 ; Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 1(3. —
Apian dc Syriacis.
b The reason of his releasing Demetrius, and sending him
into Syria, was, that by raising troubles there for the recovery of
his crown, he might force Antiochus to return, in order to sup-
press them. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 130.
64. 1 MAC.v.I.JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.14— END of MAC.JOS.HIST.bxui.e-19.
pretending to be the son of Alexander Balas, laid claim
to his crown ; and by the assistance of Ptolemy Phys-
con, king of Egypt,3 defeated him in a pitched battle.
Demetrius rled for refuge to Ptolemais, where his wife
Cleopatra c then resided ; but she ordered the gates to
be shut against him, so that he was forced to betake
himself for refuge to Tyre, where he fell into the hands
of his enemies, who first made him prisoner, and then
put him to death. Zabina, by this means, ascended the
throne of Syria, but he did not sit long there ; for Phys-
con, expecting that he should hold it in homage from
him, which the other was not inclinable to do, resolved
to pull him down as fast as he had set him up ; and
therefore, having married his daughter Tryphama to
Antiochus Gryphus, the son of the late Demetrius, he
assisted him with an army, which vanquished Zabina, and
compelled him to shut himself up in Antioch : but the
Antiochians, being informed that he intended to rob
their temple of Jupiter of a golden statue, which was
very massy, to enable him to carry on the war, thrust
him out from thence, so that wandering from place to
to place, he fell at last into the hands of those who car-
ried him to Antiochus, by whose direction he was put to
death.
During these divisions and disturbances, Hyrcanus
laid hold on the opportunity, not only to enlarge his
own territories, but to shake off the Syrian yoke like-
wise, and make himself wholly independent. He built
the stiitely tower, or rather castle of Baris, d upon a
steep rock, that was fifty cubits high, and on all sides
inaccessible, except towards the temple. He took
several cities, which the great draughts of men the kings
of Syria had made for their foreign expeditions, had left
unprovided with garrisons : he subdued Shechem, the
chief seat of the sect of the Samaritans, and destroyed
their temple which Sanballat had built them on Mount
Gerazzim: 4he conquered the Idumeans, and prevailed
with them all to become proselytes e to the Jewish reli-
3 Justin, b. xxxix. c. 1, and 2; Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 17.
* Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 17.
c This Cleopatra was the daughter of Ptolemy Philometer,
king of Egypt, and Cleopatra his wife. She was at first married
to Alexander Balas, and afterwards to this Demetrius, in her
father's lifetime. While Demetrius was detained a prisoner in
Parthia, she became the wife of his brother Antiochus Sidetes ;
but, upon the death of Sidetes, the restoration of Demetrius, and
recovery of his kingdom, she returned to his bed again, but never
had any great esteem for him, because in his captivity he had
married the daughter of the king of Parthia. — Prideaux's Con-
nection, anno 127.
d The word baris, which is originally Chaldee, signifies pro-
perly a house, or castle, inclosed on every side, as this was encom-
passed with the wall which Simon built to stop the communica-
tion between the temple and the fortress of Acre. Here it was
that Hyrcanus built an apartment, for the safe keeping of his
pontifical robes and ornaments, whenever he undressed himself;
and here the Asmonean princes took up their abode, and made
it their royal palace, until Hcrcd ascended the throne, and hav-
ing rebuilt, enlarged, and beautified it, gave it the name of An-
tonia, in honour of his friend M. Antony. — Universal History,
b. ii. c. 11.
c Among the Jews there were two sorts of proselytes, namely,
the proselytes of the gate, and the proselytes of justice. 1. The
proselytes of the gate, were so called, because they were permitted
to dwell with the Jews in the same cities, and the occasion of
their name seems to have been taken from that expression in the
fourth commandment, 'the strangers which are within thy gates;
where the word gcr, which we render strangers, does every
780
THE HISTORY OF THE BfBLK
Book VII.
A.M. 3811. A.C.163; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES.A. M. 5247. A.C. 164
gion, so that thenceforward they were incorporated into |
the same church and nation, and in time lost the name
of Idumeans or Edomites, and were all called Jews. He
renewed the alliance with the Romans, and, by a de-
cree " from them, obtained greater privileges and ad-
vantages than the Jews ever had before ; and now,
being much increased in riches and power, he sent his
two sons, Aristobulus and Antigonus, to besiege Samaria,
who on this occasion gave good proofs of their valour
and conduct. The place held out for a whole year ;
but, being forced to surrender at last, by the direction
of Hyrcanus, it was utterly demolished : for he caused
not only the houses and walls to be pulled down, and
razed, but trenches to be dug every way across the ground
whereon it stood, and to be filled with water, that it might
never again be built.
After the taking of Samaria, the remainder of his life
Hyrcanus enjoyed in full quiet from all foreign Avars ;
but, ' towards the conclusion of it, met with some trouble
from the Pharisees, a prevailing sect among the Jews.
They, by their pretences to extraordinary strictness in
religion, had gained to themselves a great reputation
and interest among the common people ; and, for this
reason, Hyrcanus endeavoured to gain their esteem by
all manner of favours. Having therefore, one day, in-
vited several of their leading men to a splendid enter-
tainment, when the banquet was over, he desired them to
tell him, ' if, in the conduct of his life, he had done any
thing contrary to justice and religion, according to the
maxims received and taught amongst them.' As soon
as he had ended his discourse, all began to praise his
'Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 18.
whit as properly signify proselytes. Now, this kind of prose-
lytes was obliged only to renounce idolatry, and to worship God
according to the law of nature, which the doctors of the Talmud
reduced to seven articles, called by them the 'seven precepts of
the sons of Noah.' Whoever performed these were looked upon
;n in a state of acceptance with God; and allowed, not only to
live quietly in their cities, but to resort likewise to their temple,
there to oiler up their prayer*; but then they were permitted to
enter no farther than into the outer court, which was called the
'court of the Gentiles.' 2. The ' proselytes of justice' were so
called, because they took upon them to observe the whole law,
both moral and ceremonial, in the latter of which some of the
Jew.-, and especially the Pharisees, made justification to consist.
The former sort of proselytes had no form of initiation, but these
were admitted by baptism, sacrifice, and circumcision; and when
they were thus admitted, they were received into the Jewish
church, and to all the rights and privileges of church-membership,
in the same manner as if they had been natural Jews. — Preface
Generate sur le Nov. Test, par de Beausoure, and JJ enfant; and
vtur's Connection, anno \2d.
a The ambassadors whom Hyrcanus sent to Rome to renew
the league, which his father Simon had made with the senate,
made their complaint — That Antiochus Sidetes had made war
upon the Jews, contrary to what the Romans had in their behalf
decreed in that league: that they had taken from them several
cities, and made them become tributary to them for others, and
forced them to a dishonourable peace, by besieging Jerusalem:
Whereupon the senate decreed, that whatever of this kind had
been done against them, since the time of the late treaty with
Simon, should be all null and void; that all the places which had
either been taken from them, or made tributary by the Syrians,
should be restored, and made free from all homage, tribute, and
other services; that, for the future, the Syrian kings should have
no right to march their armies through the Jewish territories;
that for all the damages which the Syrians had done the Jews,
reparation should be made them; and that ambassadors should
be scut from Rome to see this decree put in execution. Jewish
Jriiiq. b. xiii. c. 17.
. !MAC.v.l.JOS.IIIST.b.xiJ.c.l4— end of MAC.JOS.HIST. 1>. xiii. c.19
administration, and to give him all the commendations
due to a brave man, and a just and worthy governor.
When the rest had done their encomiums, Eleazar, who
had hitherto said nothing, rose up, and, directing his dis-
course to Hyrcanus, " Since you desire," said he, "to
have the truth freely told you, if you would show your-
self a just man, resign the high priesthood, and content
yourself with the civil government of the nation." Hyr-
canus then asking him for what reason he gave him that
advice ? " Because," replied he, " we are assured, by the
testimony of the ancients among us, that your mother
was a captive taken in the wars, and being therefore the
son of a strange woman, you are incapable of that high
oilice and dignity."
This was an allegation false in fact, and therefore all
the company resented it with a just indignation ; but
Hyrcanus was so exasperated at it, that he resolved to
be revenged in a very signal manner. This disposition
one Jonathan, an intimate friend of his, but a zealous
Sadducee, observing, took the opportunity to endeavour
to set him against the whole sect of the Pharisees, (among
whom Hyrcanus had been bred up,) and to draw him over
to that of the Sadducees. To this purpose he suggested
to him, — " That this was not the single act of Eleazar,
but, most certainly a thing concerted by the whole party ;
that Eleazar, in speaking it out, was no more than the
mouth of the rest ; and that, to satisfy himself in these
particulars, he needed only refer it to them in what man-
ner the calumniator deserved to be punished." Hyrcanus
followed his advice : and therefore, consulting the chief
leaders of the Pharisees with relation to the penalty
which he might deserve, who had thus slandered the
prince, and high priest of his nation, lie received for
answer, — " That as calumny was no capital crime, all
the punishment that it merited could be only whipping '>
or imprisonment :" 2 which fully convinced Hyrcanus,
that what Jonathan had suggested was true, and, from
that very moment, he became a mortal enemy to the
whole sect of the Pharisees. Their traditional constitu-
tions he forthwith abrogated ; he enjoined a penalty on
all that should observe them ; and he himself for ever re-
nouncing their party, went over to that of the Sadducees.
But, notwithstanding this, he was an excellent governor ;
and, from the time of his father's death, having had the
administration of all affairs, both in church and state, for
the space of nine and twenty years, at his death he left
the high priesthood and sovereignty to Judas Aristobulus,
who was the first that, in a formal manner, took upon
him the title of a king, by putting a diadem on his head.
CHAP. II. — Objections answered and Difficulties
obviated.
The name of Maccabees relates not only to Judas and
his brothers, but to all those who joined him in the same
2 Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 18.
Ij This punishment, among the Jews, was not to exceed forty
stripes, Dent. xxv. 3. ; and therefore the whip wherewith it was
inflicted, was made with three thongs, and each blow gave three
stripes, they never inflicted upon any criminal more than thirteen,
because thirteen of these blows made thirty-nine stripes, and to
have added another blow, would have been a transgression of the
law, by inflicting two stripes more than what was prescribed.
Skct. IV.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
781
A.M. 3811. A.C.1G3; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES,A.M.5247.A.C.1C4.1 MAC.v.l. JOS. HIST. b.xii.c.M— end oi-MAC.JOS.IHST.l..xiii.c.l9.
cause ; and, not only to them, but also to all others, who
Buffered in the like cause under any of the Grecian kings,
whether of Syria or Egypt, though some of them lived
long before them. Thus those who suffered under Ptole-
my Philopater, at Alexandria, fifty years before the time
of Judas, were afterwards called Maccabees, as were
likewise Eleazar, and the mother, and her seven sons,
though they suffered likewise before Judas erected the
standard which gave occasion to the name.
1 As therefore those books which give us the history
of .hulas and his brethren, and their wars against the
Syrian kings, in defence of their religion and liberties,
are called the first and second books of the Maccabees;
so that which gives us the history of those, who, in the
like cause, under Ptolemy Philopater, were exposed to
his elephants at Alexandria, is called the third book of
the Maccabees; as that which contains the account of
the martyrdom of Eleazar, and of the seven brothers
and their mother, is called the fourth.
a According to the order of time, indeed, and the sub-
ject matter which they treat of, these books are wrong-
placed; for the third should be set first, the second
placed before the first, and the fourth immediately after
it; so that, to reduce them to right order, the first should
be put in the place of the third, and the third in the
place of the first. Grotius, indeed, is of opinion, that
the third book, though it treats of matters antecedent to
what is the subject of the first and second, was neverthe-
less written after them, even after the book of Ecclesias-
ticus, and upon that account had the name of the third
book given it; but the true reason of its being postponed
is : — that, being of less repute and authority than the
two former, it has always been reckoned after them,
according to the order of dignity, though it be before
them in the order of time.
The first of these books 3 was originally written in the
Chaldee " language of the Jerusalem dialect, which was
the only language spoken in Judea after the return from
the Babylonish captivity, and is a very accurate and
excellent history, coming nearest to the style and man-
ner of the sacred historical writings of any extant. The
second is a compilation of several pieces; of two epis-
tles from the Jews at Jerusalem to those of Alexandria
4 which seem to be spurious; b of a preface preceding
' Prideaux's Connection, anno 21G.
2 Calmet's Preface on the third book of Maccabees.
3 Prideaux's Connection, anno lu'C. 4 Ibid.
Rather than do this therefore, the usual way was, to give one too
few; and therefore St Paul tells us, 2 Cor. xi. 24, that when he
\\as whipped by the Jews, ' he received forty stripes, save one.'
/'. -idea U.e's Connection, in the notes, anno 108.
a H was extant in this language in the time of St Jerome; for
he telk us, that lie had seen it, and that the title which it then
bore, w\ 9 Sharbit sar bene El, that is, the sceptre of the prince
of the sons of Cod, a title which well suited Judas, who was so
valiant a commander of God's people then under persecution.
Prom the Chaldee it was translated into Greek by Theodotion,
as some think, though others account that version elder; and,
from the Greek, both the Latin translation and our English did
proceed — Prideaux's Connection, anno 1G6.
b The former of these epistles calls the feast of the dedication,
'ZKnvirrr.y'ia. h Ka0-1A.11;, that is, the feast of making tabernacles or
booths in C'isleu. Now, as the month CiSleu fell in the middle
ol winter, it can hardly he presumed, that the people could either
lie abroad in these booths, or find green boughs enough at this
time ot the year wherewith to make them. 'Phis is an incon-
gruity enough to explode the former epistle. And then, as to
the history ; and of the history itself, which is an abridg-
ment of a larger work, composed by one Jason, an Hellen-
ist Jew of Gyrene ; but the whole is by no means equal to
the excellence and accuracy of the first. The third,1 'which
seems to have been written by an Alexandrian Jew, d in
the Greek language, is set oft' with enlargements and em-
bellishments of the author's own invention; but, as to the
main ground-work of it, or the reality of such a perse-
cution raised against the Jews at Alexandria, it is un-
doubtedly true; and, though its style be a little too
theatrical, its sentiments in many places are both beau-
tiful and sublime. The fourth, e which is generally
allowed to be the same with what is ascribed to Jose-
phus, the Jewish historian, under the title of " The gov-
erning power of reason," is designed to enlarge and
adorn the history of old Eleazar, and of the seven bro-
thers, who, with their mother, suffered martyrdom under
Antiochus, as it is related more succinctly in the second
book of 5 Maccabees.
The author of the epistle to the Hebrews G has stamped
some authority upon these books, by alluding- to their
history, and the punishment which the Maccabees were
made to undergo ; but we must not therefore receive
them as canonical, because, according- to the report of
St Jerome, neither the Jewish nor the Christian church
ever looked upon them in that capacity : the church in-
deed read the books of Maccabees but did not receive
them among- the canonical writings. They read them as
books which contained lessons of wholesome instruction,
and excellent examples of worthy patriots, and glorious
martyrs suffering- manfully in the defence of their reli-
gion and liberty, and " ' not accepting- deliverance, that
they might obtain a better resurrection.'
s In the whole compass of history, where can we find a
pattern in all respects equal to Judas Maccabaeus? Most of
5 Chap. vi. and vii. 8 Ihh. xi. 35, &c. ' Ibid.
B Calmet's Commentary on 1 Mac. ix. IS.
the second, it is not only written in the name of Judas Maeca-
bams, who was slain six anil thirty years before. the date which
it bears, but also contains such fabulous and absurd stuflj as could
never have been written by the great council of the Jews, assem-
bled at Jerusalem for the whole nation, as this pretends to be. —
Prideaux's Connection, anno ICC.
c This book, though it is in most of the ancient manuscript
copies of the Greek Septuagint, and quoted by several fathers as
an holy and divine book, yet was it never inserted in the vulgar
Latin translation of the bible; and, as our first English transla-
tions were made from that, none of them have it among the
apocryphal books; nor has it ever since been added, though it
certainly deserves a place therein much better than several
other pieces that are there. — Prideaux's connection, anno 214.
Tin's is a mistake. It was added to the other books in Becke's
bible, (1551) and, lastly, ill a new version, in Bishop Wilson's
bible. — Up. Gleig.
d To this day it is extant in most of the ancient manuscript
copies of the Greek Septuagint: as, particularly in the Alexan-
drian manuscript in our king's library, and in the Vatican manu-
script at Rome. But, as it was never inserted in the vulgar
Latin version of the bible, and as that version was the only one
in use through the whole western church, until the reformation,
it thence came to pass, that, in the first translations which we
have of the bible in the English, the third book of Maccabees
has never yet been inserted among other apocryphal tracts,
though it certainly deserves a place there much better than some
parts of the second book of the Maccabees. — Prideaux's Connect
tioJi, anno 2 16.
e This book, in like manner, though it be found in most of
tiie ancient Greek manuscripts, is not to be met with in any of
our Latin bjbles; and has therefore no place among our apo-
cryphal books. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 210.
782
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3841. A. C. 163 ; OR, ACCORDING TO H ALES, A.M.5247. A.C.164.IMAC. v.l.JOS.HIST.b.xU.c.14— end of MAC. JOS.HIST. b.xiii.c.iy.
the commanders we read of were carried away with their
ambition, vanity or vain glory ; and while they valued
themselves upon the subduction of others, had no rule or
command over their own passions. But in this Jewish
leader we find all the characters of a great hero: cour-
age and intrepidity, guided by counsel and wisdom, and
without any allay eitiier of rashness or pride. And what
a profound knowledge he had of the laws of God, and
the principles of true morality, every speech that he
makes to his men, when he is animating them to the
combat, and inspiring them with a contempt of the
greatest dangers, is a sufficient indication.
He died indeed a little unfortunately, and, when his
army had forsaken him, encountered his enemies with an
incompetent strength ; but, as he had all along fought
under the protection of God's good providence, he had
no more reason to be diffident at this time than he had
been formerly. In his first engagement with the Sy-
rians, when he was to encounter ' ' forty thousand horse,
and seven thousand foot,' he made proclamation in the
camp, that all such ! ' as had betrothed wives, or were
building houses, or planting vineyards, or were any ways
afraid,' might return home, which could not but reduce his
army considerably ; and yet we find him, with this hand-
ful of men, routing three generals that were sent against
him at once, forcing and burning their camp, defeating
their troops, and returning loaded with their spoils. His
notion was, that God could save with a few as well as
with a multitude ; and therefore he might look on the
desertion of his forces as a providential thing, to make
the victory more conspicuous, and to magnify the divine
interposition in his deliverance.
3 ' The people that are with thee,' says the Lord to
Gideon,' ' are too many for me to give the Midianites
into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against
me, saying, Mine hand hath saved me : proclaim there-
fore in the tents of the people, that whosoever is fearful
and afraid, let him return, and depart from mount
Gilead ;' which reduced the Jewish army to ten thou-
sand, and these again, by another expedient, were reduc-
ed to three hundred ; and yet even these, by die assistance
of the Lord of Hosts, utterly subdued the vast army of
the Midianites. Upon this presumption, then, that
Judas thought his army under the care and direction of
the same Lord of Hosts, there was no discouragement
in the desertion of his forces, nor any false reasoning in
his speech : " If our time is come, let us die manfully
for our brethren ; which, in the present juncture of our
affairs, is the best thing we can do : but if it be not,
God, we know, is able to give us victory, and to defend
us. For how often have we experienced the effects of
his almighty power? Is not conquest always in his
hands ? Or is there any difference, with regard to him
between a larger or a smaller number ?" These seem to
be the reasons that determined Judas in his choice of
engaging the enemy, though superior in force : and if
these reasons are built upon right notions of God, and
confirmed by a long experience of his goodness, they
will certainly clear him from all imputation of rashness,
or presumptuous tempting of God in this action: an
action for which St Ambrose, in particular, has represent-
ed him as a perfect model of true heroism : for 4 " You
1 1 Mac. iii. U9. 2 I hid vrr. 5<i. 3 Judges vii. 2, &c.
* Ambios. b. i. Oflic. c. 41.
have here," says he, a " warlike bravery, in which there
is no silly appearance of honour and decency, because
he preferred death to slavery and disgrace."
The message which Moses sent to the king of Edom
was delivered in these words, — ' Let us pass, I pray
thee, through thy country. AVe will not pass through
the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we
drink of the water of thy wells. We will go by the
king's highway ; we will not turn to the right hand or to
the left, until we have passed thy borders : and Edom
said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out
against thee with the sword.' But hereupon a question
has arisen, whether the Edomites might lawfully, and ac-
cording to the rules of strict right, deny the Israelites a
passage through their country.
5 Selden is of opinion, that princes have always a
right to deny foreign troops a passage through their
country, not only to preserve their territories from being
invaded, and their subjects from being plundered, but
to prevent their being corrupted likewise, by the intro-
duction of strange manners and customs into their king-
dom. But 6 Grotius, on the other hand, asserts, that this
refusal of the Edomites was an act contrary to the just
rights of human society ; that, after the promise which
the Israelites had made of marching through their coun-
try quietly and inoffensively, they might very justly have
fallen upon the Edomites, had they not been restrained
by a divine prohibition : that, for this very cause, the
Greeks thought proper to make war upon the kings of
Mysia ; and that the principal reason which the powers
of Christendom gave for their carrying their arms against
the Saracens was, because they hindered their brethren
going in pilgrimage to Jerusalem from passing through
their country.
However the sentiments of these two great men may
be, it is certain, that Gideon's severity against the inha-
bitants of Succoth, for denying his army some necessary
refreshments when they were pursuing the enemy, is
justified upon the presumption, that such a refusal was a
kind of rebellion against the state, that those who expos-
ed their lives for the public safety had a right to be
maintained at the public expense, and that no man might
call any thing his own when a demand of this nature
came upon him. And if Gideon, 7 who was sent imme -
diately by an angel to deliver his brethren, and, in all
his achievements, was supported by the Spirit of God,
thought it no injustice to put the people of Succoth 8 to
exquisite tortures for denying his army what they wanted ;
why might not Judas give the people of Ephron up to
military execution, for being so cruel and inhuman as to
deny him a passage through their city, when there was
no possibility of taking his route any other way ?
What the particular situation of this Ephron was, we
can no where learn ; but the author of the book of Mac-
cabees seems to imply, that the country all about it was
impassable, that is, was very probably so full of water
and morasses, that the ' company which Judas had along
with him must have been lost, had they been obliged to
turn either to the right hand or to the left. In their
own defence, therefore, they were necessitated to make
their way through the town ; and if, in the siege and
* Marc Clausum, c. 20. c On the law of War and Peace,
b. ii. c. 2; and Marc Clausum, b. i. c. 1.
Judges vi. 14. 8 Chap. viii. 1C. 9 1 Mac. v. 45, 46.
Sbct. IV.] FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c
A.M.384I.A.C.1G3; OR, ACCORDINGTO HALES, A. M.5247. A. C.lG4.1MAC.v.i.JOS. HIST.b. xii.c.14-
gackage of it, great numbers of people were put to the
783
sword, this was properly the effect of their own folly
and obstinacy, in refusing not so much to do a favour
as an act of common right, even when it was humbly
requested by a general, at the head of a victorious
army.
The strength of the behemoth (which by most inter-
preters, is supposed to be the elephant a) is thus ex-
pressed in the book of Job : ' ' His bones are as strong
pieces of brass, and his small bones like bars of iron ;'
and therefore it is no wonder, that creatures of this pro-
digious strength (when the method of fighting was
chiefly by force) should be made use of in all military ex-
peditions. 2 Some of these creatures have been known
to carry two cannons, fastened together by a cable rope
of three thousand pounds' weight each, for five hundred
paces together, with their teeth ; and what reason have
we to doubt, but that they are able to carry a much greater
weight upon their backs ?
The largest and strongest species of these animals is
said to be bred in India, (for those that come out of
Africa are not near so big ;) and therefore, if we suppose
that the elephants which Antiochus carried to the wars
with him were of this Indian breed, (as 3 the circum-
stances of the whole story make it highly probable that
they were) there cannot be so much difficulty as is imag-
ined in one of these creatures carrying upon its back two
and thirty men light armed, (as archers are known to be,)
with towers, or other such vehicles as might be thought
proper to give them an ascendant in the fight, and so
secure them from the darts and other weapons of the
enemy. For, upon supposition that each of these men,
one with another, weighed an hundred and fifty pounds,
the amount of the weight of thirty-two will be no more
than four thousand eight hundred pounds ; and yet it is
a common thing to meet with elephants of a moderate
size, that will carry you five or six thousand pounds'
weight; so that, upon the lowest computation, we have
full two thousand pounds' weight allowed for the wooden
machine wherein the slingers and archers were seated
and secured.
The danger indeed of approaching this animal, with
such a number of armed men upon its back, is very visi-
ble ; but most of the Jewish doctors and fathers of the
Christian church look upon Eleazar's action in killing
the royal elephant, (as he took it to be,) though at the
expense of his own life, as a singular instance of courage
and magnanimity. Fool-hardiness it would have been,
had he been certainly persuaded, that the creature would
have fallen upon him so directly and so suddenly as it
did ; but why might he not rather think, that it might
possibly tumble down on one side, so as to miss him, or
live for some moments after it had received the wound,
so as to give him an opportunity to escape ?
* The motives which the history assigns for his adven-
turing upon this exploit are not discommendable. The
preservation of our laws, liberties, and religion, requires,
1 Mac. xl. 18. 2 Calmet's Commentary on 1 Mac. vi. 37.
3 Ibid. * 1 Mac. vi. 44.
a This seems to be a mistake. Most of the modern interpre-
ters suppose the behemoth to be the hippopotamus or river-horse.
For the arguments in favour of this, see Taylor's, Calmet's, and
Harris's Natural Hist, of the Bible. — Ed.
end of MAC.JOS.H ST. 1>. xiii. c. 19.
upon a proper occasion, the hazarding our lives : < ur
reputation, too, is a natural good, which we are not only
bound to preserve, but, by all lawful means, allowed to
improve and increase ; and therefore charity 5 will not
suffer us, without very good reasons, to believe, that
these motives, which in themselves were laudable, lost
all their merit, and were adulterated by any sinister ends
that Eleazar might propose to himself. We cannot, I
say, without rashness, blame him, or deny him that justice
which we owe to all actions that are apparently commen-
dable, that is, to believe them really good, so long as we
have no proofs to the contrary : and, as it is no uncom-
mon thing in such heroic acts as these, to find persons
(under the Jewish economy more especially) instigated
by a divine impulse, it will best become us to suspend
our judgments concerning this action of Eleazar's, until
we can find arguments to prove that he had no motive
extraordinary to attempt it.
But there is not the like reason, I think, to suspend
our judgment concerning the action of Kazis, which,
upon due consideration, was no better than self-murder.
6 To consider it, indeed, according to the notion which
some heathens had of courage and magnanimity, contempt
of death, and love of liberty, it comes nearer to what
they called true heroism, than all the great actions
that history has recorded of the Greeks and Romans.
Nay, the Jews themselves are willing to place this man
in the number of their most illustrious martyrs, and from
his example (as well as some others) pretend, that upon
certain occasions, self-murder is not only allowable, but
highly commendable ; never considering, 7 that, in the
sixth commandment, it is as much prohibited as the mur-
der of any one else , and that, if I must not shed the
blood of another man for this very reason, because 8 ' he
is made in the image of God,' I must not shed the blood
of myself, because I also am a man, and made in the
image of God as well as he.
9 Razis, indeed, was sorely beset, and ready to have
been taken by his enemies on every side ; but then he
should have surrendered himself to their treatment, and
testified his magnanimity, not in butchering himself, but
in manfully enduring whatever inflictions they laid upon
him. Had the martyrs of old thought themselves at
liberty to dispose of their own lives upon any emergent
danger, or apprehension of suffering-, we had read little
of their being I0 ' mocked and scourged,' and tormented,
and less of their being 'stoned, and sawn asunder,' but
a great deal of their stepping out of the world, as some
call it, Avhen any difficulty or persecution came to press
upon them.
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that as
this was not the practice of these worthies of old, who ll
' obtained a good report by faith,' it was not true courage,
but the want of it, that put Razis upon committing this
barbarous cruelty to himself; that it was pride, not pa-
tience, which is the proper virtue of a martyr, that made
him fly to death, merely for refuge against these outrages
which he had not strength of mind to withstand ; and
therefore St Austin's short reflection upon the whole is, u
1 Mac. vi. 44. fi Calmet's Commentary on 2 Mac. xiv. 42.
Bishop Fleetwood against Self-murder. 8 Gen. ix. 6.
a 2 Mac. xiv. 42. "> Heb. xi. 36, 37.
11 Heb.xi.39. 12Epist. 61.
7S4
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII-
A. M. 3841.A.C.1G3; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES.A.M.5247. A.C
" The deed hath been told, but not applauded, it is rather
to be considered than imitated."
This reflection indeed will hold good in several other
matters related in the history of the Maccabees, namely,
that the author of it neither commends nor discommends,
but only relates them. Demetrius Soter, for instance, was
the rightful heir to the crown of Syria, and Alexander
Balas no more than a vile impostor ; and yet Jonathan
thought proper to adjoin himself to him, because 1 he
remembered what a bitter enemy Demetrius had all along
been to the Jewish interest ; how oft he had sent his
generals with positive orders to take his brother Judas
dead or alive ; and what ruin and oppression his frequent
invasions had brought upon the whole nation. And there-
fore no wonder, that we find him taking- a contrary part
to the man, whom he looked upon as an enemy to his
country. Demetrius Nicanor, in like manner, Mas the
true heir to the same crown, and Alexander Zabina no
more than a broker's son of Alexandria ; and yet we find
John Hyrcanus entering- into a league and alliance with
the latter, because indeed Demetrius had behaved so
ungratefully to the Jews, (who had rescued him from the
rebellion of his subjects,) as to load them with heavy
taxes, even though he had promised them an immunity
from them to engage their assistance.
The truth is, the kingdom of Syria was always in hos-
tility with Judea. Its kings were tyrants, and great
persecutors of the Jewish religion ; and therefore what
reason had any Jewish prince to trouble himself with the
right of succession in an enemy's country ? All that he
seemed to be concerned in was, 2 to make what advan-
tages he could of their divisions, and by adjoining him-
self to the party, from whence he might expect the best
treatment and support, to secure and establish his own,
and his country's interest.
It is a mistake, however, to think, that Hyrcanus de-
stroyed Samaria, out of the hatred which the Jews bore
to the sect of the Samaritans, because, upon examination,
we shall find, that none of that sect did, at that time,
live in that place. 3 The ancient Samaritans, who were
of the sect that worshipped God on mount Gerizzim,had
slain in a tumult, (as we related before,) one Andro-
machus, a favourite of Alexander the Great, whom he
had constituted governor of Syria ; and in revenue for
this base act Alexander had expelled them all from
Samaria, and in their stead, new planted the city with a
colony of Macedonians, Greeks, and Syrians mixed
together, and they were the descendants of those who
inhabited Samaria, when Hyrcanus made war against it •
for the expelled Samaritans retired to Shechem, where
they settled their abode, and made it the head seat of
their sect ever since.
In like manner, it is a mistake to think, that, because
Hyrcanus is said to have left the Pharisees, and ad-
joined himself to the Sadducees, therefore he espoused
their doctrine against the resurrection and a future state.
4 On the contrary, it seems highly probable, that at this
time the Sadducees had gone no further in the doctrine
of this sect, than their rejecting all the unwritten tradi-
tions which the Pharisees held in so much veneration.
Josephus mentions no other diflerence, in his time, be-
liJI.lMAC.v.l.JOS.TnST.b.xii.c.M-ENDOFMAC.JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.I.'l.
tweeu them ; a nor does he say, that Hyrcanus went
over to the Sadducees in any other particular, than in
the abolishing the traditional constitutions of the
Pharisees ; and therefore we can hardly think, that so
good and righteous a man, as he is represented to have
been, would, upon any provocation whatever, have been
induced to renounce the great and fundamental articles of
his religion ; but it can be no diminution to his character,
we hope, that he made it his business to oppose those
false interpretations of the law, which our blessed
Saviour, in the course of his ministry, so severely
condemned.
1 Prideaux'a Connection, anno 153. ^Ibid 331
3 H»id. 100. « Ibid. 108.
CHAP. III.— Of the Original and Tenets of the
Jewish Sects.
It seems very probable, indeed, that during the times of
the prophets, who, by their commerce with God, were
immediately instructed in his will, no disputes about mat-
ters of religion could possibly arise, because their
authority was sufficient for the decision of every con-
troversy ; but that when this race of prophets dis-
appeared, and their authority ceased, men soon began
to wrangle and dispute, and to form themselves into
different sects and parties, upon the first occasion that
offered.
After the return of the people from Babylon, Joshua
the high priest, and Zerubbabel the governor, together
with the chief elders, their contemporaries and others that
afterwards succeeded them, collected together all the
ancient and approved usages of the Jewish church,
which had been in practice before the captivity. These,
and whatever else pretended to be of the like nature,
Ezra brought under a review, and, after due examination,
having settled them by his approbation and authority,
he thereby gave birth to what the Jews call their Oral
Law. For 5 they pretend, that when God gave unto
Moses the law on Mount Sinai, he gave him, at the
same time, the interpretation of it, with a strict injunc-
tion to commit the former to writing, but to deliver the
other down to posterity only by word of mouth ; that,
pursuant to this injunction, Moses wrote several copies
of the law, which he left behind him among the several
tribes, but, in the interpretation of it, he took care more
especially to instruct his successor Joshua ; that, after
his death, Joshua delivered this interpretation, or oral
law, to the elders who succeeded him, and that they de-
livered it to the prophets, who transmitted it down to
each other, until it came to Jeremiah ; that Jeremiah
delivered it to Baruch ; Baruch to Ezra ; Ezra to the
men of the great synagogue, until it came to Simon the
Just; and that Simon delivered it to others, who handed
it down in a continued succession, until it came to Rab-
bah Judah Hakkadosh, who wrote it into the book which
they call the Mishnah.
But all this is a mere fiction, spun out of the fertile
5 Prideaux's Connection, anno 445.
a There is good ground for supposing that the Sadducees held
the impious tenets ascribed to them in the New Testament, long
before the time of Josephus, and that even Sadoe, the founder
ot the sect, denied that there was any future stale of rewards
and punishments. Indeed the author seems to allow as much in
the succeeding dissertation. — Ed.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
785
A.M.3341.A.C.lG3;OR, ACCORDING TO HALES.A.M.5247.A.C.1C4.
invention of the Talmudists, and the little truth that
there seems to be in it, is only this, — that after the
death of Simon the Just, there arose a sort of men,
(whom the Jews call Tannaim, or Mishnical doctors,)
that made it their business to study and descant upon
these traditions, which had been received, and allowed
by Ezra and the men of the great synagogue, to draw
such consequences and inferences from them, as they
thought proper ; to ingraft these into the body of the
ancient traditions, and to expect from others that
they should receive them, as if they had been as authen-
tic as the other. But this imposition was too gross and
palpable not to be attended with remonstrances from
several : so that, in a short time, the Jewish church
came to be divided into two grand parties, namely, those
who adhered to the written law only, among whom the
Sadducees were the chief ; and those who, over and
above this, received the traditions and constitutions of
the elders, among whom the Pharisees made the greatest
figure. .
1 The most ancient sect among the Jews, was that of
the Sadducees, which took its name from Sodock, the
founder of it. This Sodock (as the Talmudic story is)
was the disciple of Antigonus Socho, who lived, accord-
ing to the Jewish calculation, about three hundred years
before Christ, and used often to inculcate to his disciples,
that they ought to serve God disinterestedly, without any
view of compensation, and not like slaves, who only serve
their master for the sake of a reward : and from hence
his disciples Sodock and Baithus made this wrong infer-
ence, namely, that there was no reward to be expected in
another world, and consequently that the soul dies,
and the body will not rise again. AVhether this mistake
of the doctrine of Antigonus, or, as others suppose, the
dissoluteness of manners which at that time might pre-
vail, gave occasion to the opinion of the Sadducees^
but so it was, that, in process of time, they grew to be
very impious and detestable. They denied the resur-
rection of the dead, the being a of angels, and the exis-
1 Prideaux's Connection, anno 446 ; L'amy and Beausobre's
Introduction.
a In what sense the Sadducees denied the existence of angels,
it is difficult to determine, since they certainly acknowledged the
authority of the Pentateuch. Some pretend, that they accounted
tin; invention of angels but a novel thing, and that their very
name was never heard of, until the return from the captivity,
and therefore they rejected them; whilst others suppose, that
they looked upon them as the inseparable powers of God, which,
like the rays of the sun, without being parted from that planet,
shine and shed their influence here below. But now, consider-
ing that the Sadducees received the five books of Moses, they
could hardly entertain any such notions as these. As therein
they read of frequent apparitions of angels, they could not fancy
them a new invention of the Rabbins that returned from the cap-
tivity* As they saw in these books, that they properly came down
from heaven upon earth, they could not imagine that they were
beings inseparable from the Deity; and therefore we may suppose,
that they rather looked upon them only as so many phantasms ;
and that, as the bodies, which these angels put on, had perhaps
only the appearance of human bodies, the same notion they might
have of the spirits which animated them: because every thing,
except God, in their opinion, was material. — Basnat/e's History
of the Jews, b. ii. c. 6. [Mr Taylor, in his supplements to
Calmct, remarks, that it is more likely when the Sadducees are
charged with denying the existence of angels, we misapply the
term; intending by it celestial angels, whereas they meant it of
disembodied human spirits. If this were the case, it easily
accounts for the reception of the Pentateuch.] — En.
1 MAC.v.l.JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.l4-END or MAC.JOS.HIST.b.xiii.c.l9.
tence of the spirits or souls of men departed. Their
notion was, that there was no spiritual being, but God
only ; that, as to man, this world was his all ; that, at
his death, his soul and body die together, never to live
any more ; and that therefore there is no future reward
or punishment. They acknowledged indeed, that God
made this world by his power, and governs it by his
providence, and for the carrying on of this government,
hath ordained rewards and punishments ; but then they
suppose, that these rewards and punishments are in this
world only ; and for this reason alone it was, that they
worshipped him, and paid obedience to his laws. All
unwritten traditions, as well as all written books, * ex-
cept the live books of Moses, they absolutely rejected ;
and the probable reason why they did so, is, that they
could not so well maintain these opinions, which are not
so llatly contradicted in the Pentateuch, as in the other
sacred books, if once they admitted these books to be
canonical. All supernatural helps to their duty they
utterly denied : for their doctrine was, that God had
made man perfect master of all his actions, with a full
freedom to do either good or evil as he thinks fit, with-
out any assistance to him for the one, or restraint upon
him as to the other ; and for this reason, because they
looked upon all men to have an inherent power to make
their condition better or worse, according as they took
right or wrong measures, whenever they sat in judgment
upon criminals, they were always remarked to pass the
severest sentences ; as indeed their general character
was, that they were a very ill-natured sort of men, chur-
lish and morose in their behaviour even to each other,
but cruel* and savage to every one besides. Their prin-
ciples, one might suppose, would have naturally led
them into all manner of riot and excess ; but it was not
always so. Some of them were men of rigid virtue and
strict probity ; for 2 though they had cast oil* the belief
of a future state, yet as they admitted of a providence
to punish vice, and reward virtue, in this life, their desire
2 Basnage's History of the Jews, b. ii. c. 6.
b Mr Basnage, in his History of the Jews, (b. ii. c. 6*,) though
he allows the question to be difficult, seems to be of a contrary
opinion. 1st, because the Sadducees taught and prayed in the
temple, where the prophets, and other holy writers, were read,
as appears from the example of Christ, who explained a passage
out of Isaiah. 2dly, because Josephus, who ought to have been
well acquainted with the principles of this sect, relates of them,
(b. vi. c. 9,) that they received what was written. And, 3d)y,
because the Pharisees, in their disputes with them about the
doctrine of the resurrection, quote, not only the writings of
Moses, but those of the prophets likewise, and other hagiogra-
phers, whose authority the others do not deny, but only endea-
vour to elude the force of the passages that are thence produced
against them. Upon the whole, therefore, Scaliger (Blench.
Trihar. c. 16.) is of opinion, that these Sadducees did not abso-
lutely reject all the sacred writings, but rather looked upon them
as books composed by holy men, whose memoirs they reverenced,
though they could not believe them of the like authority with the
law of Moses, which to them was the only rule of faith. But
notwithstanding this, " the account which is given us in the
gospel," says the learned Prideaux, " of the disputation which
Christ had with the Sadducees, plainly proves the contrary.
For seeing there are so many texts in the prophets and hagiogra-
pha, which plainly and directly prove a future state, and the
resurrection from the dead, no other reason can be given why
Christ waved all these proofs, and drew his argument, only by
consequence, from what is said in the law, but that he knew,
that the Sadducees, had rejected the prophets and the hagiogra-
pha, and therefore would admit of no arguments, but from the
law only."' — Anno 107.
C a
786
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 3841. A. C. 163, OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5247. A. C. 164. 1 MAC.v.l.JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.l4.END of MAC.JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.15.
mystical way of interpretation, made a considerable
figure : but at length the school of Hillel, by the deter-
mination of a voice from heaven, as was pretended
carried it against the school of Shammai, so that the
Karraites were quite absorbed, till they appeared again
about the sixth century after Christ.
At this time the Talmud, a vast voluminous book,
which contained all the traditions of the Jewish church
was published, and a great deal of deference and venera-
tion was required to be paid to it: but when men of
learning and judgment came to look into it, and found
it, as it is, stuffed with trifling and incredible stories,
they rejected its authority, as not deserving their belief,
and betook themselves wholly to such as were of un-
doubted credibility, ' the writings of the law and the
prophets.' In consequence of which there arose two
parties, one standing up for the Talmud and its tradi-
tions, and the other disavowing both, as containing, in
their opinion, the inventions of men, and not the doc-
trines and commands of God. Those who stood up for
the Talmud and its traditions were chiefly the rabbins
and their followers, from whence their party had the
name of rabbinists, and the others, who were for the
scripture only, were again called Karraites ; under
which two names the controversy was at that time carried
on between them, and so continues even to this day.
Among all the Jewish doctors, these Karraites are
justly accounted the most learned set of men ; but their
number, in these western parts especially, is but small,
4 About the middle of the lasst century there was a parti-
cular account taken of them, wherein it appeared that in
Poland there were 2000 ; at Cafta in Oim-Tartary,
1200 ; at Cairo, 300 ; at Damascus, 200 ; at Jerusalem,
thirty ; in Babylon, 100 ; and in Persia, GOO, which, in
all, amount to no more than 4430 ; a small number in
comparison of the bulk of the nation, which is of the
party of the rabbinists.
The Pharisees were so called from the Hebrew word
Pharcift, which signifies to separate ; because the pre-
vailing passion, or rather ambition, of this sect was, to
distinguish and separate itself from the rest cf the
people, by a greater degree of holiness and piety, but
accompanied with very much affectation and abundance
of vain observances. 5 At what time this sect began
first to appear, is no easy matter to determine. Jose-
phus makes mention of them in the government of
Jonathan, an hundred and forty years before Christ, as
a very powerful body of men at that time ; nor is it im-
probable, that their origin was somewhat earlier, and
that, as soon as the Sadducees discovered their princi-
ples to the world, these men of different sentiments
might not long after rise up in opposition to them : for
it is evident from the character which the Jewish histo-
rian gives of them, that, in the main articles of their
belief, they were entirely repugnant to the Sadducees.
6 The Pharisees believe in a fate, says he, and attribute
all things to it, but nevertheless they acknowledge the
freedom of man ; but how they made these two apparent
incompatibles consist together, is no where sufficiently
explained. They teach, that God will one day judge the
of present and temporal happiness put a restraint upon
their appetites, and kept them within the bounds of their
duty. And for the same reason, they were not without
their expectations of a Messias to come. Nay, upon
this subject they argued with more consistency than the
other Jews did. For confining all their hopes to the
present state of things, and looking upon him as a
temporal king and deliverer only, they had a more than
ordinary interest and concern in his appearance in their
lifetime, that thereby they might reap the fruits of his
conquests, and enjoy the happiness which the prophets
had promised during his reign. Their number was the
1 -west of all the sects of the Jews; but they were men
of the best quality and greatest estates : and as all those
who were of the greatest power and riches, were cut off
in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, it is
generally supposed that this whole sect then perished
with them. "
1 The Jews, who were carried captive into Egypt,
though they kept themselves clear from the idolatry of
the country, did nevertheless, about the time of Ptolemy
Philometer, fall into their method of handling divinity,
and were not a little fond of their allegorical interpre-
tations. This mystical treatment of the scriptures
alarmed others, who, from the word Kara, 2 which signi-
fies to read, obtained the name of Karraites, that is,
such as adhered to the text, and were literal expounders
of scripture. Josephus indeed takes no notice of any
people of this denomination ; but his silence is no argu-
ment against their existence, because we find him omis-
sive in other particulars of the like nature. The Hero-
dians, for instance, a sect well known in the gospel,
and remarkable for their political as well as doctrinal
principles, he makes no mention of, and might there-
fore well pass by the Karraites, who, having no peculiar
tenets, but only that of teaching and expounding the
law according to its literal sense, could not well be
discriminated by the name of any particular sect. These
Scripturists,as they were called,3 when they came to be
headed by Shammai, a learned doctor of the law, who
about an hundred years before our Saviour Christ,
opened a great school against Hillel, who was for the
1 Basnage's History of the Jews, 1). ii. c. 9.
! Lamy's Introduction, b. i. c. 9.
3 Prideaux's Connection, anno 37.
a This is not true. The sect of the Sadducees was not extin-
guished; it was much reduced by the destruction of Jerusalem,
and by the dispersion of the Jews; but it revived afterwards.
At the beginning of the third century it was so formidable in
Kgypt, that Ammonias, Origen's master, thought himself obliged
to write again-t them; or rather against the Jews, who tolerated
the Sadducees, though they denied the fundamental points of
their religion. The emperor Justinian mentions the Sadducees
in one of his edicts, banishes them out of his dominions, and
condemns them to the severest punishments, as a people that
maintained atheistical and impious tenets. Annas or Ananus,
a di-ciple of Juda, son of Nachman, a famous rabbin, about
A. D. 755, declared himself, it is said, in favour of the Saddu-
cees, and strenuously protected them against their adversaries.
They had also a celebrated defender in the twelfth century in
the person of Alpharagius, a Spanish rabbi. Gazor Tornich,
David, p. 1^5. There are still Sadducees in Africa, and other
places, who deny the immortality of the soul, and the resurrec-
tion of the body; but few declare themselves for these opinions.
Some have confounded the Sadducees with such as hold tiie
metempsychosis, and with the defenders of the two principles,
tint is. tiie Manichees; but it is certain these sects are different
horn tile Sadducees. — Taylor a Calmet, 4io. — En.
4 Calmet's Dictionary under the word.
5 See Lamy's Introduction, and Prideaux's Connection.
6 Josephus on the Jewish Wars, b. ii. c. 12.
Sect. IV.]
FltOM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
787
A M3S11.A.C.1G3, OR, ACCORDING TO H ALES, A.M.5247. A.C.1G4 1
world, and punish or reward men according" to their
merits. They maintain, that souls are immortal, and
that, in the other world, some will be shut up in an eternal
prison and others sent back again ; but with this differ-
ence, that those of good men shall enter into the bodies
of men, those of wicked men into the bodies of beasts ;
which exactly agrees with the famous transmigration of
Pythagoras. Their adherence to the law was so exact,
that, for fear of violating the least precept of it, they
scrupulously observed every thing- that had the least
relation to it, even though the law had neither command-
ed nor forbiildeu them. Their zeal for the traditions of
the elders was such, that they derived them from the
same fountain with the written word itself, pretending"
that Moses received both of them from God on Mount
Sinai, and therefore ascribing" an equal authority to both.
They had a notion, that good works were meritorious ;
.und therefore they invented a great number of superero-
gatory ones, upon which they valued themselves more
than upon a due observance of the law itself. Their
frequent washings and ablutions, l their long prayers in
public places, their 2 nice avoidance of reputed sinners,
their fasting" and great abstinence, their penance and
mortification, 3 their minute payment of tithes, their 4
strict observance of the sabbath, and 5 ostentatious
enlargement of a phylacteries, were all works of this
kind ; which nevertheless gained them such esteem and
veneration, that while the common people loved, the
greater ones dreaded them, so that their power and
authority in the state was considerable, though generally
attended with pernicious consequences, because their
hearts were evil : for notwithstanding- their show of
mighty zeal and g-reat austerity, they were in reality, no
better than what our Saviour calls them, vain and osten-
tatious, spiteful and malicious, griping and voracious,
lovers of themselves only, and despisers of others ; in-
somuch, that it was hard to say which was most predo-
minant in them, their insatiable avarice, their insupporta-
ble pride, or abominable hypocrisy.
In conjunction with the Pharisees, the Scribes are often
mentioned in the Scriptures of the New Testament.
They were not however any particular sect, but a pro-
fession of men of divers kinds, following" literature.
For generally all that were any way learned among the
1 Mat. vi. 5, &c. 2 Luke vii. 39. 3 Mat. xxiii. 23.
4 Chap. xii. 2. 5 Chap, xxiii. 5.
a The word phylactery, in the Greek, signifies a place to heep
any thing in; in the Hebrew, it is called tepkillim, which sig-
liilies prayers , because the Jews wear their phylacteries chiefly
"hen they go to their devotion. It is a common opinion, that
these phylacteries were long pieces of parchment, whereon were
written certain passages out of Exodus and Deuteronomy, which
they tied to their foreheads and left arm, in memory of the law;
but a late explainer of the Jewish customs assures us, that they
were parchment cases, formed with vi-vy great nicety, into then-
proper shapes: that the case for their head had four cavities,
into each of which they put a piece of parchment rolled up,
wherein were, written some sections of the law; hut that which
was for the arm, had but one cavity, and into it. they put one
piece of parchment, whereiu four passages of Scripture were
written. {Lamy's Introduction, b. i. c. 16.) The whole of this
custom is founded on Exod. xiii. 9. and Deut. vi. 8; but the
words are only metaphorically to be understood, as a command
to have God's laws perpetually before our eyes, and his deliver-
ance always in remembrance. It cannot be denied, however,
that these phylacteries were generally worn by the Jews in our
Saviour's time, and were not disused so late as St Jerome's
Liuty's Introduction.
MAC.v.l. JOS.H1ST. b. xii. c. ll— end of MAC.JOS. HIST.b. xii. c. 19.
Jews were, in the time of our Saviour and his apostles,
called scribes, but especially those, who by their skill in
the law and divinity of the Jews, were advanced to sit in
Moses' seat, either as judges in their sanhedrim, or
teachers in their schools or synagogues. Botli their
name and profession began immediately after the Baby-
lonish captivity, about five hundred years before the
birth of Christ; for Ezra himself was one of the first.
They were a body of the most learned men of the na-
tion, and chiefly of the sect of the Pharisees, though
some of them might possibly be Karraites, or Anti-tradi-
tionists, as it seems to appear from one of them asking
our Saviour, B ' which was the first commandment of all,
and being so highly pleased with his answer.
Those who were descended from the stock of Levi,
were usually called scribes of the clergy ; but such as
were sprung from any other tribe, were named scribes of
the people. The business of the latter was to take care
to preserve the purity of the text in all the bibles which
they copied out, and to see that no corruption was crept
into the original. It was not held proper for every vul-
gar pen to transcribe the great mysteries of the law, and
therefore this peculiar order of men was appointed to
that purpose ; but they did not so entirely apply them-
selves to it, as not to take in many other matters both of
civil and religious concern, being public notaries in the
sanhedrim and courts of justice, as well as registers in
the synagogues. The office of the scribes of the clergy
was to teach in public, and instruct the people, by ex-
pounding to them the law in their sermons and set dis-
courses ; by which practice they grew into such repute in
the Jewish state, that it was hard to say, whether the
Pharisees or they were held in the greater veneration :
for what the Pharisees gained among the common peo-
ple by their pretences to extraordinary sanctity, these
more justly obtained by their zeal for the written word,
in preserving it from the dangers of corruption, and ex-
pounding it in the ears of the people.
It is supposed, with a good deal of probability, that
the sect of the Essenes began about 150 years before
Christ, and during the persecution of Antiochus Epipha-
nes, when great numbers of Jews were driven into the
wilderness, where they inured themselves to a hard and
laborious course of living. Why we find no mention made
of them in all the New Testament, the probable reason
may be, that the major part of them lived in Egypt at a
considerable distance from Judea, which at this time
was infested with such persecutions and intestine broils,
as were abhorrent to their retired and hermitic course of
life, which, as it secluded them from all places of great
resort, might make them less curious to inquire after our
Saviour's person and doctrine, thinking, very probably,
that if lie was really the Messiah, he would not fail to
seek and find out them ; but that if he was not, he had
already enemies enough to oppose him, without dieir
leaving the solitary and contemplative life they were ac-
customed to, merely to bear testimony against him.
Philo, who gives a full account of these people, tells us
that they were called Essenes, from the Greek word oaiog,
which signifies Itoly, and that there were two sorts of
them : some who, living in society and marrying, though
with a great deal of wariness and circumspection, lived
" Mark xii. 28, &&
783
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 381J. A. C. 1G3; OR. ACCORDING TO H ALES, A.M.5247. A.C.164. 1 MAC.v.l.JOS.HIST.b.xii.c.14— end of MAC JOS.HIST b.3.ii,c. 13.
iii villages, and applied themselves to husbandry and
other innocent trades and occupations, and were there-
fore called practical ; but others who, living a kind of
monastic life, gave themselves wholly up to meditation,
and were therefore called the contemplative Essenes :
but however they differed in their maimer of life, they were
both of the same belief, and followed the same maxims.
They had not indeed the like traditions with the Pha-
risees, but as they were allegorists, they had several
mystical books which served them for a rule in explaining
the sacred writings, all of which, contrary to the Saddu-
cees,they acknowledged and received. Theybelievedthat
trod governs the world, but by such an absolute predes-
tination of every thing, as allowed mankind no liberty of
choice in all their actions. They acknowledged a future
state, thinking that the souls of good men went into the
Fortunate Islands, while those of the wicked were shut
up in subterraneous places ; but as for the resurrection of
the body, and the soul's returning to it again after they
were once parted, of this they had no manner of notion.
All practical religion they reduced to these three kinds-
1, The love of God ; 2, the love of virtue; and, 3, the love
of mankind. 1, Their love of God expressed itself in
accounting him the author of all good, and, consequent-
ly, applying to him every morning and night for the
blessings they wanted : in their abstaining from swearing,
from lying, and all other sins that are abhorrent to his
nature ; and in their strict observance of the sabbath,
and all other holy rites, except sacrificing ; for though
they sent their gifts to the altar, yet they themselves went
not thither, presuming that the sanctity of their lives was
the purest and most acceptable sacrifice to God that they
could offer. 2, Their love of virtue was shown in the
government of their passions, their refraining from plea-
sures, their contempt of riches, their abstinence in eating,
their continence, their patience, the simplicity of their
speech, and the modesty of their carriage. And, 3, their
love of mankind appeared in their great benevolence and
strict justice ; their charity to the poor, and hospitality
to strangers ; and there needs no other proof of their
love to one another, than the union in which they lived.
For they had the same houses, the same provisions, the
same habits, the same tables ; their gains were put in the
common stock ; they divided the care of the sick among
them ; and honoured the elder men of their society with
the same reverence, as if they had been their fathers.
This strictness and regularity of theirs gave them an
eminent character, and made it a matter of no small conse-
quence to be admitted into their society. For when, after
a due course of probation, any one presented himself
for that purpose, they bound him under the most solemn
vows and protestations, " To love and worship God, and
do justice to all men ; to profess himself an enemy to the
wicked, and a friend to the lovers of virtue ; to keep his
hands from theft, and all fraudulent dealings, and his
soul unpolluted with the desire of unjust gain ; not to
usurp upon his inferiors, nor distinguish himself from
them by any ornaments of dress or apparel ; not to con-
ceal any of the mysteries of religion from his brethren,
nor to disclose any to the profane, though it were to save
his life ; but to preserve the doctrine he professed, the
books that were written of it, and the names of those
from whom he had it." This was the form of admission
into their communion which whoever violated in any
gross instance, was immediately excluded, and never re-
ceived again without the deepest humiliation and repen-
tance. And if such was the religion and manner of life
of the Essenes, we have less reason to be surprised, at
our finding some authors so much extolling their courage
and magnanimity upon several occasions, as persons
who, under distresses and persecutions, suffered death,
and the most grievous torments, even with joy and cheer-
fulness, rather than say or do any thing contrary to the
law of God. They are said, however, to have ' greatly
degenerated from their primitive purity of life and doc-
trine. In the time of Trajan and the reign of Justinian,
though they were known under the pompous title of
" angels or angelic persons," yet were they found to come
infinitely short of the beings whose names they assumed,
and, upon that account, falling into great disesteeni, in
a very short time a they dwindled into nothing.
There was another sect among the Jews, 2 mentioned
in the gospels, which, though of later original, may not
improperly be considered in this place, and that is the
Herodians, b who, in their main principles, were not
very different from the Sadducees. They sprang up, no
doubt, in the time of Herod the Great, some twenty or
thirty years before Christ, and had their denomination
from him ; but upon what account is not so well agreed.
The common opinion is, that they looked upon Herod
as the promised Messiah : but it is a very improbable
thing, that any Jew should, in the time of our Saviour's
ministry, above thirty years after the death of Herod,
hold him to have been the Messiah, when they had found
no one of those particulars which they expected from
the Messiah performed by him, but rather every thing
quite contrary. 3 Others therefore suppose, that they
were called Herodians, because they constituted a so-
dality, or club, as we call it, in honour of Herod at Je-
rusalem, as there were several in Rome in honour of
their emperors. c But, since the earliest of these so-
dalities in Rome were not instituted till after the death
of Augustus, who outlived Herod sixteen years and up-
wards, this could be no pattern or foundation for the
institution of the like in memory of Herod, who died so
lonp- before.
1 Basnage's History of the Jews, b. ii. c. 13.
2 Mat. xxii. 16; Mark iii. 16; viii. 15; xii. 13.
3 Scaliger in Animadver. ad Eusebii Cliron. et Casaubon.
Exereit. &c.
a Some indeed are of opinion, that these Essenes did renounce
Judaism, and were converts to Christianity; and that surh
among them as were called Therapentaa became monks, and
were formed into that order by St Mark, who was the first
founder of the Christian church in Alexandria. But though it
seems not unlikely, that some of this sect might be converted,
yet, that the main body of them should embrace Christianity,
and so he lost in the societies of Christian hermits, is far from
being probable ; especially since we find no traces of any such
institution as monkism till after the beginning of the second
century, when these ascetics, who had formerly fled from perse-
cution, finding the sweets of their retirement and solitude, began
to multiply, and so erected themselves into bodies. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 107: and Basnage's History of the Jews, b. ii.
c. 13.
b Accordingly St Mark (chap. viii. 15.) calls that ' the leaven
of Herod,' which Christ styles ' the leaven of the Sadducees,'
Mat. xvi. 6.
c Such were the Augustales, Adrianales, Antonini, &c. con-
stituted in honour of Augustus, Adrian, and Antoninus, and the
rest of the emperors, after their death. — Prideavx's Connection,
anno 1(17.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
789
A. M. 3841. A. C. 163; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
Herod, no doubt, came into the government with great
opposition, and, as he was by birth a foreigner, and had
made his entrance with much blood, his title was not ac-
knowledged by the greater part of the Jews, especially
as long as Antigonus was alive. Those, therefore, that
would own his title and espouse his interest, might, for
this reason, perhaps, go under the name of Herodians ;
but this seems not to be the whole of the matter. Our
blessed Saviour cautions his disciples ' ' against the
leaven,' that is, against the evil and erroneous tenets, of
Herod ; which seems to imply, that Herod himself was
the author of some false notions, which constituted a par-
ticular sect differing from the other sects of the Jews ;
and that his followers, imbibing these principles from
him, had the denomination of Herodians. 2 Forasmuch,
then, that Herod, 3 the better to secure his possession
of the throne, had put himself under the Roman protec-
tion, * contrary to an express precept of the law: and,
to ingratiate himself with the great men at Rome, built
temples, and erected images in them for idolatrous wor-
ship, excusing himself to the Jews, that all this he did
purely in compliance to the commands he was necessi-
tated to obey, and might probably lay it down for a
maxim in religion, that, in case of compulsion, it was
lawful to submit to unjust injunctions ; there is no won-
der at all that some bold men should rise up to justify
the king's practice, and, by the royal permission, call
themselves by his name, whose distinguishing tenet
might probably be, " That although they professed the
Jewish religion, and abominated idolatry in their hearts,
yet, to humour the Romans, and make themselves easy
with their governors, it was not unlawful to comply
sometimes with their demands, and, at least outwardly,
to become occasional conformists." This is the leaven
of the Herodians, which our Saviour cautions his disciples
against ; but it was not of long continuance in the Jewish
church : for Herod Antipas 5 having- lost his credit at
Rome, and being deposed and banished out of Judea,
the sect that was instituted by his father, and supported
by his favour and countenance, could not support itself
after his disgrace.
Another sect, mentioned by Josephus 6 as rising after
this time, was that of Judas of Galilee : for when Arche-
Jius, son of Herod the Great, was sent into banishment,
and Judea reduced to a Roman province, Judas, a a
rative of Galamala, took occasion from some new exac-
tions, to exhort his countrymen to shake off* the Roman
yoke ; pretending, that to pay tribute to any foreign
power was a shameful badge of their slavery. An aver-
sion to the Roman dominion, and an hatred of the publi-
cans, who had the care of receiving the taxes and tributes,
Was natural enough to all the Jews ; but they, whose
zeal led them to join Judas, and form a particular sect,
valued themselves upon their holiness and justice, be-
cause they would not acknowledge any other sovereign
but God ; and, rather than submit to the dominion of
man, or give him the title of Lord, they chose to subject
M. 5217. A. C. 1G4. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end of b. XV.
themselves to any torments, or even to death itself.
Judas indeed perished, ' and all, as many as obeyed
him, were dispersed for a while ;' but in the time of the
Jewish wars they gathered again, and soon became a
faction strong and considerable enough to put every
thing in confusion. They affected the title of zealots,
says 7 Josephus, as if their undertakings had been good
and honourable, even while they outdid the very worst
of men in wickedness. They looked upon themselves,
indeed, as the true successors of Phinehas, s who, out of
zeal for the honour of God, did immediate execution
upon Zimri and Cosbi, for which he received the divine
thanks and approbation. And, in imitation of him, these
men took upon them to execute judgment upon such as
they called notorious offenders, without staying for the
ordinary formalities of law. And, therefore, they made
no scruple of robbing, and plundering, and killing the
principal of the nobility, under pretence of their holding
correspondence with the Romans, and betraying the
liberty of their country. At last, joining with the Idu-
mseans, they committed all manner of outrage, seized on
the temple, and profaned the sanctuary, and slew many
of the high priests themselves. So that, when Jerusalem
came to be besieged, they were perpetually raising
tumults and distractions within, which ended at last in
the destruction of their city and temple, and the total
dissolution of their state.
These were the several sects, which, much about this
period of time, sprang up in the Jewish church ; and, if
the like differences in opinion have since appeared in the
Christian, it is no more than what the Spirit of God hath
foretold : u ' For there must be heresies among you, that
they who are approved may be made manifest among
you.'
1 Mark viii. 15. 2 Prideaux's Connection, anno 107.
8 Joseph. Antiq. I), xv. c. 12. < Deut. xvii. 15.
s Basnage's History, b. ii. c. 14. * Joseph. Antiq. b. xviii.
a Augustus furnished him with a plausible pretence for it, by
issuing out his edict to have the whole province of Syria new
surveyed and taxed about this time.
SECT. V.
CHAP. I. — From the Death of John Hyrcanus, to the
Birth of Jesus Christ
THE HISTORY
Hyrcanus, when he died, left five sons: Aristobulus,
Antigonus, and Alexander, were the three first; who the
fourth was, we no where read; but the name of the fifth
was Absalom. Aristobulus, as eldest, succeeded his
father, both in the pontificate and principality of the
nation, and, as we said before, was the first in Judea,
since the Babylonish captivity, who put on a diadem,
and assumed the title of a king; but he was a man of a
bloody and suspicious disposition. His own mother,
because, in virtue of his father's will, she claimed some
share in the sovereignty, he first cast into prison, and
there starved to death. All his brothers he put under
the like confinement, except Antigonus, who was his
great favourite, and, at first, shared in the government
with him: but he soon cooled in his affections, and at
last had him put to death; though in this piece of cruelty
the instruments about him were more to blame than he.
7 Of the Jewish War, b. iv.
8 Num. xxv. 13. 3 1 Cor. xi. 19.
790
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. If. 3807. A. C. 107 , OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
As soon as he was settled in the throne, he engaged
in a war with the Iturreans ; a and having subdued the
greatest part of them, he forced them to become prosy-
lytes to the Jewish religion, in the same manner as his
father had done to the Idumreans : but returning sick from
the war to Jerusalem, he left his brother behind him to
finish it, which accordingly he did with success ; and so,
returning in triumph, at a time when the feast of taber-
nacles was celebrating, he went directly to the temple,
as did the guards that attended him, with his armour on,
to pay his devotions to God.
The queen, and the courtiers of her party, who envied
the interest which Antigonus had with the king, were
always buzzing in his ears such stories as they thought
would excite his jealousy; and now they come and tell
him, " That it was high time for him to look to himself:
that his brother was gone into the temple in an equipage
not becoming a private man ; and that, in all probability,
it would not be long before he could come with a troop
of his armed soldiers, and execute his wicked design
against him."
This representation made some impression upon Aris-
tobulus, so that he sent to his brother to put ofl" his
armour, and immediately come to him, concluding that
if, pursuant to his orders, he came unarmed, there was
no mischief intended, but that if he did otherwise, there
might be something in what the queen had suggested;
and therefore placing his guards in a subterraneous pas-
sage, which led from the palace b to the temple, and
through which his brother was to come to the king's
apartment, he ordered them, that, if he came unarmed,
they should let him pass, but if otherwise, they should
instantly fall upon him, and dispatch him.
The queen, knowing this, prevailed with the messenger
whom Aristobulus sent to bid his brother come unarmed,
to tell him, on the contrary, that the king being informed
of a very beautiful suit of armour which he had brought
with him from the wars, was minded to see how it became
him, and therefore desired him to come in it; which
accordingly he did, suspecting no ill. When he came
to the place where the guards were posted, they, seeing
his armour on, executed their orders, and immediately
a Iturrea, the country where these people dwelt, was part of
( ii In Syria, bordering upon the north-east part of the land of
Israel, and lying between the inheritance of the half tribe of
Manasseh beyond Jordan, and the territories of Damascus. It
is the same country that is sometimes called Auronitis, and had
its name from Itur, one of the sons of Ishmael, (Gen. xxv. 15.)
who. in our English version, is wrongfully called Jetur. — Pri-
deaux's Connection, anno 107.
b When Ifyrcanus built the palace of Baris, he caused this
passage, which led from thence to the temple, to be made, that
upon all occasions he might have a ready communication with it:
and as over this passage there was a turret, or tower of the
palace, called Straton's tower, Josephus tells us a very remark-
able story concerning it, namely, that one Judas, an Essene,
having foretold that Antigonus should, that very day, be slain in
Straton's tower, which he took to be a town so called, lying on
the sea coast, -d\u] two days' journey from Jerusalem ; and seeing
Antigonus come into the temple, he fell into a great passion, and
began to exclaim against truth itself, as supposing his prediction
impossible now to be fulfilled; but, while be was in this agony,
news In ing brought, that Antigonus was slain in that part of the
subterraneous gallery which was directly under the turret called
Straton's tower, the Essene rejoiced in the comfort and satisfac-
tion of having his prophecy verified, at the same time that every
one else was lamenting the murder of this young prince. — Jewish
t'.nliq. b. 12. c. 19.
M. 530"). A. C. 106 JOS. HIST. 1>. xiii. c. 19— END OP b. xv.
slew him: but, no sooner was the fact committed, than
Aristobulus severely repented it.
For the sense of the loss of a good brother brought to
his remembrance the murder of his mother, and his con-
science flew in his face for both at once. The anxiety
of his mind increased the distemper of his body ; so that,
finding no ease for the one, and no cure for the other,
in the utmost agonies of guilt, and with many bitter
accusations of himself, he gave up the ghost, c and,
after a reign of no more than one year, was succeeded
by his brother Alexander Jannasus.
Ever since his father's death, he had been kept in pri-
son by the late king ; but, upon his decease, his widow
Salome released him, and his other two brothers, from
their confinement ; so that, being now on the throne, and
having discovered that the elder of these brothers had
formed a design to supplant him, he caused him to be
put to death ; but the other, who was called Absalom,
desiring to live quietly, and in a private condition, he
took into liis favour, and under his protection.
As soon as he had settled his matters at home, he led
forth his forces to make war with the people of Ptolemais ;
and, having vanquished them in a pitched battle, shut
them up in the city, and laid close siege to it. This
place, and Gaza, together with the tower of Straton, and
the fortress of Dura, which Zoilus possessed, were the
only places on the coast, which were not under Alexander's
dominion ; and, therefore, dividing his forces, with one
part he besieged Ptolemais, and employed the other in
ravaging the territories of Zoilus, and those of Gaza.
In the mean time, the besieged had sent to Ptolemy
Lathyrus, d the expelled king of Egypt, who reigned
then in Crete, to come to their relief; but afterwards,
bethinking themselves better, they came to a resolution,
which they communicated to Ptolemy, to trust to their
own strength, rather than admit of any auxiliaries.
Ptolemy however was already set to sea, when he
heard this news ; and therefore proceeding in his voyage,
and landing his army in Phoenicia, he advanced towards
Ptolemais ; but the people in the town would neither re-
ceive his messengers, nor send him any answer, so that
he was in no small perplexity what course to take, when
c Aristobulus was a great favourer of the Greeks, for which
reason he was called Philellen, and the Greeks indeed had an
equal favour for him: for, as Josephus tells us out of Strabo, one
of their historians has left his character of him: — " Tliat he was
a prince of equity, and had in many things been very benefi-
cial to the Jews, in that he had augmented their territories, aipl
ingrafted into the Jewish state part of the nation of the Iturceans *:
but the actions of his short reign show him to have been a man
of a quite different disposition. — Prideaux's Connection, anno
106.
d This Ptolemy Lathyrus, by his mother Cleopatra, was made
king of Esypt; by his affecting to reign without her, he so far
incurred her displeasure, that she procured his expulsion by this
artifice. Some of her favourite eunuchs she caused to be wounded ;
and then bringing them out into the public assembly of the Alex-
andrians, she there pretended, that they had suffered this from
Lathyrus, in defence of 1 er person against him, and thereupon
accused him of having made an attempt upon her life; and by
this means she so far incensed the people, that they rose in a
general uproar against him, and would have torn him in pieces,
had he not fled for his life. Hereupon Cleopatra sent for Alex-
ander, her younger son, who, for some time had reigned in
Cyprus, and having made him king of Egypt, forced Lathyrus
to be cunt, i it with Cyprus, upon his brother's leaving it — Justin,
b. xxxix. c. 4.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c
791
A. M. 3897. A. C. 107; Oil, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 53105. A. C. IOC. JOS. HIST. Ij. xiii. c. 19— end of b. xv.
Zoilus, and the Gazeans sent ambassadors, desiring his
assistance against Alexander's forces, which they were
not able to oppose.
Ptolemy, being very glad of any opportunity to make
an honourable retreat from before Ptolemais, readily
marched his army to their relief; but Alexander, not
thinking it advisable to hazard an engagement with him,
withdrew his army into their quarters, and there thought
to gain by policy, what he could not attain by force.
To this purpose he entered into a treaty with Lathyrus,
and engaged to pay him four hundred talents of silver,
on condition that lie would deliver Zoilus, and his terri-
tories, into his hands, which Lathyrus agreed to do, and
accordingly had got Zoilus into his custody ; but when
he came to understand, that at the same time Alexander
was clandestinely treating with Cleopatra, to bring her
upon him with all her forces, he, detesting such double
dealing, broke off all friendship with him, and resolved
to do him what mischief he could.
The two armies therefore met the next year, and a
very fierce battle ensued near Asophus, not far from the
river Jordan, wherein Alexander being vanquished, lost
thirty thousand of his men, besides those that were taken
prisoners. After this victory, Ptolemy made every where
great havoc, and spread the terror a of his name through-
out all the province ; but his mother Cleopatra being
fearful, lest so much success should make him powerful
enough to invade Egypt, set out with a large fleet, and
a numerous army, which she landed in Phoenicia, and
thence proceeded to Ptolemais, expecting that the people
would have opened their gates to her ; but finding the
contrary, she invested the place to take it by force ;
while Ptolemy, believing that it would be easy for him
to recover Egypt in the absence of his mother and her
army, left Syria, and went upon that expedition ; but
meeting with more opposition than he expected, he was
obliged to return to Gaza, where he passed the winter,
and from thence went back again to Cyprus.
As soon as Cleopatra had taken Ptolemais, Alexander
went thither with considerable presents, and was kindly
received as an unhappy prince, who was Ptolemy's
enemy, and had no other refuge but the queen's protec-
tion : and therefore when some about her suggested, that
now she had an opportunity to seize on him and his
dominions, Ananias, one of her generals, who by birth
was a Jew, and by descent a relation to Alexander, by
representing to her the danger and injustice of such a
procedure ; how base and injurious to her own honour,
which for no considerations whatever ought to be tar-
nished; how prejudicial to her interest, by provoking all
the Jews in the world against her ; and how contrary to
(he rules of faith and common honesty, which are ob-
served among all mankind, it would be to treat a friend
and ally in this manner; he prevailed with her to desist
a There is a very cruel and barbarous act, which he is said
to have done at this time, namely, that, coming with his army in
the evening after the victory, to take up his quarters in the ad-
joining villages, and rinding them full ofwomm and children, he
caused them to be all slaughtered, and their bodies to be cut in
pieces, and put in caldrons over the fire to be boiled, as if they
had been for supper; that so he might leave an opinion in that
country, that his men f< I upon human flesh, and thereby create
iter dread and terror of his army. This barbarous cruelty
Strabo and Nicholaus, as Josephus tells us, make mention of. —
Tewieh Antiq. b. xiii. c. 21.
from all thoughts of it; so that, having concluded an
amicable alliance with Alexander, she returned with her
army to Egypt.
As soon as the country was clear of these foreigners,
and Alexander had recruited his shattered forces, he
marched into Ccelo-Syria, where, after a siege of ten
months, he took Gadara, and after that, the strong for-
tress of Amathus, where Theodorus, the son of Zeno,
prince of Philadelphia, had laid up all his treasure ; but
Theodorus falling suddenly upon him, as he was return-
ing from the conquest, not only recovered his treasure
again, but slew ten thousand of his men, and took all
his baggage from him.
All these misfortunes, however, did not discourage
this prince. The next year he marched his forces again
over the Jordan ; and after having taken some neigh-
bouring places, came, and sat down before Gaza, with a
design, if he took it, to use the people with the utmost
severity ; but Apollodorus, who commanded the town,
made a gallant defence, and in a sally with twenty thou-
sand of his men, one night fell so furiously upon Alex-
ander's camp, that he had like to have ruined him
and his whole army ; but as soon as the day appeared,
the Jews, discovering who they were, (for they thought
in the dark that Lathyrus was come again to the as-
sistance of Gaza,) rallied again, and repulsed the Ga-
zeans into the city, with the loss of a thousand of their
men.
The city, however, still held out, till Lysimachus, en-
vying the credit and esteem which hi? brother Apollo-
dorus had gained in the defence of the place, treacher-
ously slew him, and then as treacherously delivered up
the city to Alexander ; who, as soon as he had got pos-
session of it, let loose his soldiers upon it, with a full
license to kill, plunder, and destroy, which produced a
sad scene of barbarity. The Gazeans, thus finding
that they were to have no quarter, stood upon their de-
fence, and sold their lives at so dear a rate, that in the
carnage and sackage of the place, Alexander lost as
many men of his own, as he killed of the enemy ; but
had the horrid pleasure, before he went away, to see this
ancient and famous city reduced to utter ruin and deso-
lation.
When he returned to Jerusalem, he was far from
finding matters there in any peaceable posture. For,
in the feast of tabernacles, while he was ottering the
usual sacrifices as high priest, the people who were
assembled in the temple, had the insolence to pelt him
with citrons, (for during the festival it was a custom
among the Jews to carry * branches of palm-trees, and
lemon-trees in their hands) and to give him very op-
probrious language, telling him, that lie was a slave, c
b The word in the original is Attrog, which the Jews ima-
gine to have been the forbidden fruit, that our first parents ate
in paradi-tj. It very much resembles a citron or lemon, except
that it has a very rough ami uneven rind, which they fondly
imagine, was originally occasioned by Eve's impressing her teeth
on it, and that these marks it has still retained. The custom of
carrying these in their hands is in testimony of their joy, but on
the seventh day, which closes the festival, they break their
branches, and throw them away; and therefore it is supposed,
that it was mi this, day, when the mutinous multitude pelted the
high priest with these attrogs, which, at this time, were very
common in Palestine. — Universal Hktory, b. ii, c. 11.
c In this they alluded to what Eleazar, a leading Ph
had said to his father Hyrcanus, namely, " That his mother was
792
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and unworthy to go up to the holy altar to offer solemn
sacrifices, which enraged him to such a degree, that he
fell upon them with his soldiers, and slew six thousand
of them. After this he surrounded the court of the
priests, wherein the altar and the temple stood, with a
wooden partition, to hinder the people from coming near
him, while he was officiating, and to secure his person
against all future attempts, he took guards into his pay
from Pisidia and Cilicia, (for he durst not trust his own
countrymen,) and of these he had six thousand always
about him.
Having thus, in some measure, laid the storm at home,
lie marched his forces against the Moabites and Ammon-
ites, and made them become tributary to him. He at-
tacked again the fortress of Amathus ; but Theodorus,
not daring to stand his coming, had removed his trea-
sure, and withdrawn the garrison, so that he took it with-
out opposition : but in his war with Thedas, an Arabian
king, he had not the like success ; for falling into an
ambuscade which that prince had laid for him near Ga-
dara, he there lost most of his army, and not without
some difficulty escaped himself.
This loss, added to the hatred which the Jews had
conceived against him, made them fly out into an open
rebellion, so that here a civil war commenced, which
lasted for six years. In most encounters he had the ad-
vantage of his subjects ; but so exasperated were they
against him, that he could never bring them to submit :
for having one day asked them what they would have
him do to please them, they all with one voice replied,
" That he should cut his own throat; for upon no other
terms would they be at peace with him; and well it were,"
they said, " considering the great a mischiefs he had
done them, if they could be reconciled to him, even
after he was in his grave ;" and thereupon they sent
deputies to Demetrius Euchserus who was then king of
Damascus, to desire succours from him against their
sovereign.
Demetrius, at their request, came into .ludea with an
army of three thousand horse, and forty thousand foot,
Syrians and Jews. Alexander marched against him with
six thousand Greek mercenaries, and twenty thousand
Jews, who continued faithful to him ; but in the engage-
ment he was quite vanquished. All his foreign troops
w ere lost to a- man ; and the greatest part of his other
forces was so miserably broken, that he was forced to
flee for shelter to the mountains, with the poor remnant
he could get together.
This misfortune, which, in all appearance, must have
totally ruined his affairs, proved the very means of
re-establishing them. Six thousand of those very Jews
who had so lately appeared in arms against him, when
a captive taken in the wars, and he, consequently, disqualified
to be their high priest." But assuredly the true reason of
their exaspiration against him was, that he followed his father's
Bteps, and not only gave countenance to the contrary sect, but
continued the penal laws against those who should observe the
traditions and customs introduced by the Pharisees.— Universal
Wst'.rij, h. -2, c. 11.
a The fourth book of the Maccabees (chap, xxix.) tells us,
that this war was chiefly between the Pharisees and Saddu-
cees, and that Alexander, having declared himself against the
former, had put fifty thousand of them to death within" the space
of six yars, which so exasperated the rest, that they would
hearken to no accommodation. — Universal History, b. 2 c. 11.
they saw him reduced to this distressed condition, were
moved with compassion, and went over to him : and
Demetrius, being content with the first advantage he
had gained, or fearing, perhaps, that the rest of the
Jews would do the same, retired into Syria, leaving
the rebels to make war against their king with their own
forces.
In most of the conflicts that happened between them
Alexander defeated them, but still he could bring them
to no terms of peace ; till at last coming to a decisive
battle, he cut off the major part of them, and the rest he
shut up in a place called Bethome. This he besieged,
and took ; and having carried eight hundred of the rebels
prisoners to Jerusalem, he there caused them 'to be cru-
cified all on one day, and their wives and children to be
slain before their faces, as they were hanging on the
crosses, whilst he made an entertainment for his wives
and concubines near the place where this scene of terror
was acting-, with an intent chiefly to feast himself and
them with this horrid sight. This was a savage and un-
heard of cruelty : and, upon this occasion, the people
of his own party called him Thracides, that is, as cruel as
a Thracian, as no man indeed could be bad enough to
express so inhuman a procedure.
After these civil wars were ended, Alexander led his
army against the two kings of Damascus, Antiochus first,
and afterwards Aretas, * who, at different times, had
invaded his kingdom. He took several strong places
in the neighbouring territories, and, after an expedition
of three years' continuance, returned to Jerusalem, and
was well received by his subjects. But that felicity he
did not long enjoy : for having at a certain time drank
to a great excess, he thereupon fell sick, and was after-
wards seized with a quartan ague, which he was never
able to shake off. This, however, did not interrupt his
military undertakings, till, being quite exhausted, he
was forced to submit to fate, while he was besieging
the castle of Ragaba, in the country of the Gerasens.
His queen Alexandra, who was with him at the siege,
observing him to draw near his end, was exceedingly
troubled at the ill state wherein she and her children
should be left at his death. She knew how much he had
exasperated the Pharisees, then a powerful sect among
the Jews, and how great hatred the generality of the
people, at their instigation, had contracted against them ;
and therefore she saw nothing else, but that she and her
family would be given up to destruction, and made vic-
tims to the public rage ; and thus she sat by his bedside,
lamenting and"bemoaning herself, while he lay a-dying.
To ease her mind from these dismal apprehensions,
the advice which he gave her was this : — ' " That she
should conceal his death till the castle was taken, and
then, carrying his dead body with her, should lead back
the army in triumph for this success ; that, as soon as she
was come to Jerusalem, she should send for some of th
leading men of the sect of the Pharisees, lay his dead
corpse before them, and tell them, that she resigned it
wholly to their pleasure, either to treat it with indignity, as
his treatment of them had deserved, or to dispose of it as
they thought fit ; and, withal, that she should not forget
1 Joseph. Antiq. b. xiii. c. 23.
b This Aretas was king of Arabia Petraea, but, upon the death
of Antiochus, was chosen king of Damascus likewise.
Skct. V.]
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793
to assure them, that, as her husband had made her regent
during her children's minority, she would do nothing in
the administration without their advice and participa-
tion."
After the reduction of Ragaba, Alexandra returned to
Jerusalem in the manner that was prescribed, and in
every thing else observed her husband's directions most
jmnctually: which succeeded so well, that the usual
invectives against him were changed into encomiums.
All deplored the loss of so valiant a prince, and honour-
ed his funeral with a more than ordinary pomp and
solemnity ; all pitied the queen-dowager, and, in obe-
dience to her husband's will, settled her in the supreme
government of the nation.
Alexander, when he died, left behind him two sons,
Hyrcanus and Aristobulus;, but the regency he invested
in the queen, who had indeed the name of the govern-
ment, but the administration was entirely in the power
of the Pharisees. The first thing therefore that they did,
was to have the decree of John Hyrcanus against their
traditionary constitutions abolished ; next to release all
the prisoners, and recall all the exiles that were con-
cerned with them in the late civil wars ; and then to
demand justice against all those by whose instigation
and advice the eight hundred rebels above mentioned
had been crucified.
To this purpose they exhibited articles against one
Diogenes, a noted confidant of the late king's ; had him
condemned and executed ; and proceeded in like manner
against several others ; so that the late king's friends
and adherents, seeing no end of these persecutions, went
at length to the queen in a body, with Aristobulus, her
younger son, at the head of them, to remonstrate against
these proceedings. They had been old officers to the
kiii», and had faithfully adhered to him in all his wars
and difficulties ; and therefore they requested, that if no
regard were to be had to their services, they might at
least be permitted to depart the land, and seek their
safety elsewhere, or else, to be out of the reach of their
enemies, might be sent into the several garrisons of the
kingdom : and to this last demand of theirs the queen
consented.
In the mean time news was brought to Jerusalem, that
Tigranes, king of Armenia, with an army of five hundred
thousand men. had invaded Syria, and would in a short
time be in Judea. This put the queen, and all the Jews,
into a terrible fright; and therefore they immediately
dispatched away ambassadors, with presents of great
value, to court his friendship, and divert the storm.
The ambassadors found him laying close siege to Ptole-
mais, and when they were introduced, for he was a man
a of great pride and state, he commended their forward-
(i This vain man assumed to himself the title of king of kings j
and, to make his claim to it the better appear, having taken
several petty princes prisoners in his wars with them, he made
them wait on him as his domestic servants. He never went
abroad but he had four of them to attend him; two running by
him on one side of his horse, and two on the other; and thus, in
like maimer, he was served by some of them at his table, in his
bed chamber, and on all other occasions, but more especially
when lie gave audience to ambassadors; for then, to make the
greater ostentation of his glory to foreign nations, he made all
thee captive kings, in the posture rind habit of servants, to range
themstlves oo each side of him. But as proud as he was, when
once he came to feel the power of the Roman arms, he was soon
brought to such a state of mean and abject humiliation, that when
ness in applying to him, accepted their presents, and
assured them of his good inclinations: but the true
reason of all this civility was, that Lucullus, the Roman
general, in pursuit of Mithridates, had entered Armenia,
and was putting the country under military contribution,
which obliged Tigranes to return home, and so delivered
the Jews from the apprehensions of an invasion from
that quarter.
Alexandra, when she was declared queen, made Hyr-
canus high priest, and left Aristobulus to lead a private
life ; but a private life was not agreeable to his aspiring
temper. As soon therefore as he perceived that the
queen was sick and past all hopes of recovery, he
privately in the night went out of Jerusalem, attended
only with one servant ; and having visited all the castles,
in which, by his procurement, his father's friends had
been placed in garrison, in fifteen days' time he secured
to his interest twenty of these fortresses, and thereby
in a manner made himself master of the rest of the
strength of the kingdom ; so that when his mother died,
which was not long after his departure from Jerusalem,
though she had declared his brother Hyrcanus her suc-
cessor, he nevertheless met him in the plains of Jericho ;
but as the two armies were going to engage, most of the
forces of Hyrcanus deserted, and went over to Aristo-
bulus, which obliged Hyrcanus to come to a treaty with
his brother ; in which it was agreed, that he should make
resignation of the crown and high priesthood to Aristo-
bulus, and submit to live quietly upon his own private
fortune ; which accordingly was ratified by public sanc-
tion.
Hyrcanus was a quiet and peaceable man, a lover of
retirement and ease, and therefore his resignation of the
crown was not so great a grievance to him, as it was to
some about him. Among these Antipater, * the father
of Herod, surnamed the Great, was the chief; who hav-
ing persuaded Hyrcanus, that, while he continued in
Judea, his life was in danger, and that he had no other
choice left, but either to reign or die, advised him to
make his escape to Aretas, king of Arabia, and with him
he appeared before Pompey, he plucked his crown or royal tiara
from ofl'his head, and cast himself prostrate on the ground before
him. — Plutarch in the Life of Lucullus and Pompey.
b Eusebius and Julius Africanus tell us, that the father of
this Antipater was a heathen, and an inhabitant of Ascalon;
that a company of robbers having pillaged a temple near Ascalon,
took this young Antipater, the father of Herod the Great, who,
at that time, was the priest of the temple, a«ay with them; and
that his father being not able to redeem him, they carried him
into Idumaca, where he settled, and made his fortune. But
there is much mure probability, that what Josephus, in the his-
tory of the Jewish wars, (b. i. C. 5.) tells us of this great man
maybe true, namely, that he was the son of another Antipater,
who was made governor of lduuuea by Alexander Jannrrus; and
as to his religion, there is no question to be made, but that he
was a .lew and circumcised ; because the IdumceanS had long be-
fore received circumcision and the religion of the Jews, even
when Hyrcanus made a conquest of their country. This Anti-
pater, having had his education in the court of Alexander Jan-
iiteus, and Alexandra his queen, who reigned after him, had
wrought himself into the good graces of Hyrcanus, the eldest of.
their sons, in hopes to rise by his favour, when he should come
to the crown alter his mother; but when Hyrcanus was deposed,
arid Aristobulus made King in his place, all the measures which
he had taken for his advancement were broken; and being too
obnoxious to Aristobulus ever to have any prospect of favour from
him, he thought himself obliged, both in his own interest and
defence, to act the part we find he did. — Culmet's Dictionary,
under the word; and Pridcati.vs Connection, anno 65.
5 H
794
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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to stipulate for forces for the recovery of his kingdom.
Hyrcanus did so ; and upon condition that he would re-
store the towns which his father Alexander had taken
from him, Aretas supplied him with fifty thousand men,
who, being joined with the Jews that were of Hyrcanus 's
party, gave battle to Aristobulus, and having obtained
a complete victory, pursued him to Jerusalem, and thence
to the mount of the temple, where they besieged him,
and committed some outrageous acts. a In the mean
time, Scaurus, one of Fompey's lieutenants, being come
with a Roman army as far as Damascus, Aristobulus
took care, with the promise of four hundred talents, to
engage him on his side ; so that he sent to Aretas to
withdraw his forces from Jerusalem, and threatened him
with the Roman arms in case of refusal. Hereupon
Aretas was forced to raise the siege and march on"; but
in his retreat Aristobulus fell upon his rear, and de-
stroyed about seven thousand of his men.
Not long after this Pompey himself caine into Syria,
and took up his residence at Damascus, where he was
attended with ambassadors from several nations, and,
among the rest, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus sent their
deputies, desiring both his protection and determination
of the controversy depending between them. But when
Pompey had heard what they both had to say, he ordered
that the two brothers should appear in person before
him, that so he might be better able to inquire into the
merits of the cause, and determine it in such a maimer
as justice should direct.
The two brothers accordingly waited upon Pompey to
receive his decision; and, at the same time, several
chief men of the Jews came to remonstrate against them
both. The Jews pleaded, " That it had been formerly
the usage of their nation to be governed by the high
priest of the God whom they worshipped, who, without
assuming any other title, administered justice to them,
according to the laws and constitutions transmitted down
to them from their forefathers. They owned, indeed,
that the two contending brothers were of the sacerdotal
race, but then they alleged, that they had changed the
old, and introduced a new form of government, in order
to enslave the people, and thereupon they prayed that
they might not be governed by a king."
Hyrcanus on his part urged, " That, being the elder
brother, he was unjustly deprived of his birthright by
Aristobulus, who, leaving him only a small portion of
land for his subsistence, had usurped all the rest, and
as a man born for mischief, practised piracy at sea, and
rapine and depredation at land, upon his neighbours."
And for the attestation of all this, there appeared above
a One barbarous action of this kind is thus related by Jose-
phus: — At this time there was at Jerusalem one Onias, a man
of great reputation for the sanctity of his life, and who, by his
prayers, had been thought to have once obtained rain from hea-
ven in an extremity of drought. Upon a fond imagination,
therefore, that his curses would be as prevalent as his prayers,
the besiegers brought him into the camp, and there pressed him
to curse Aristobulus, and all that were with him. He opposed
their request as long as he could; but at length, finding no rest
from their importunities, he lifted up his hands to heaven, and,
as he was standing in the midst of them, said, " O Lord God,
ruler of the universe, since both we, that stand here before thee,
are thy people, and they that are besieged in the temple, are thy
priests, I humbly beseech thee not to hear the prayers of either of
them against the other." Whereupon they who brought him
tnither, were so enraged against the good man, that they fell
upon him, and stoned him to death. — Jewish Antiq. b. xiv. c 3.
a thousand of the principal Jews. What Aristobulus
had to say, in answer to this, was, '' That Hyrcanus
was superseded in the government, by reason of his in-
capacity to rule, and not through any ambition of his ;
that his sloth and inactivity had brought upon him the
contempt of the people, and that therefore he was forced
to interpose, merely to preserve the government from
falling into other hands." And, to witness the truth of
this, he produced several young gentlemen of the nation,
who by the gaudiness of their dress, and the levity of
their carriage, did no great credit to the cause which they
pretended to support.
Upon this hearing, Pompey could not but perceive
the injury which Aristobulus had done his brother ; but
for the present he dismissed them with fair words, and
referred the full determination of the matter, until him-
self should come to Jerusalem, which he would not fail
to do, as soon as he had finished the Arabian war. Upon
the whole, Aristobulus perce:ving which way Pompey's
discourse and inclinations tended, left Damascus without
ever taking leave, and, returning to Judea, there armed
the country in his defence. Pompey had soon done his
business in Arabia, and thence coming to Judea, found
that, upon his approach, Aristobulus had shut himself up
in the castle of Alexandrion, which was a strong fortress,
built by his father (and therefore called by this name)
on a high mountain, that stood in the entrance of the
country of Judea, towards the Samaritan side. Hither
Pompey inarched his army ; and, having encamped be-
fore it, sent a messenger to Aristobulus to come down to
him. Aristobulus, though with much reluctancy, was
forced to comply ; and when Pompey demanded of him
to deliver up his castles, and to sign orders to that pur-
pose to all who commanded in them, he durst not refuse
doing it, though he complained of the force that was thus
put on him ; and, as soon as he got out of Pompey's
hands, fled to Jerusalem, and there prepared for war.
Pompey was not long before he marched after him ;
but when he drew near to Jerusalem, Aristobulus, b re-
penting of what he had done, went out to him, and, en-
deavouring to reconcile matters with him, promised an
entire submission for the future, and a considerable sum
of money besides, if he would but withdraw his forces.
Pompey accepted the proposal ; and accordingly sent
Gabinius, one of his lieutenants, with a body of men, to
receive the money ; but, when he came to Jerusalem, he
found the gates shut against him, and was told from the
walls, that those within would stand to no such agreement.
This was such treatment, that the Roman general,
without any more to do, clapped Aristobulus, whom he
had taken with him, in chains, and so marching forward
with his whole army, was, by the prevalence of Hyrcan-
us's party, received into Jerusalem ; but the other faction,
retiring to the mount of the temple, broke down the
b The fourth book of the Maccabees (chap, xxxvi.), says nothing
of this submission of Aristobulus to the Roman general, but tells
us, that Pompey marched directly against Jerusalem, where
observing the situation of the place, the strength of its walls,
towers, &c. he resolved to try to gain Aristobulus by fair means;
that he invited him to come into his camp, and promised him all
the safety that he could desire ; that accordingly he came to him,
and engaged to deliver up all the treasure of the temple, if he
would but declare for him ; but that the priests having refuset.
to ratify the king's promise, this made the general lay siege to the
temple. — Universal History, b. li. c. 1 1.
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bridges over the deep ditches and valleys that surrounded
it, and so resolved to defend the place : but there was
no withstanding a Roman army long. In three months'
time Pompey a became master of the mount, which he
carried sword in hand ; and, having made a dreadful
carnage upon this occasion, he caused afterwards all
such prisoners ° to be put to death, as were found to
have been the principal incendiaries of this war.
Before he left Jerusalem, he, with several other chief
officers accompanying him, went into the temple, and
caused the most sacred, parts of it, even the holy of holies,
into which himself entered, to be opened. He visited
the treasuries likewise, where he found two thousand
talents of silver, besides vessels, and other things of great
value ; but c touching nothing of all this, he left it entire
for the sacred uses to which it was appropriated. He
thought it advisable, however, to destroy the walls of
Jerusalem ; and though he restored Hyrcanus to the high
priesthood, and made him prince of the country, yet he
deprived him of all the new conquests which his prede-
cessors had made ; would not permit him to wear a dia-
dem ; and obliged him to pay an annual tribute to the
Romans : and having thus regulated all matters, he set
forward on his journey home, carrying with him Aristo-
bultis, his two sons, Alexander and Antigonus, and two
of his daughters, as captives, to be led before him in his
triumph.
Alexander, oy the way, found means to make his
escape ; and, after three years, returning into Judea,
gathered forces, and possessed himself of several places ;
but Gabinius, the Roman governor in Syria, defeated
him in all his attempts, and then coming to Jerusalem,
confirmed Hyrcanus in the priesthood : but the civil
administration d he took from the sanhedrim, and
a It is supposed by Josephus, that the mount of the temple
would have hardly been taken so soon by the Romans, had it not
been for the superstition of the Jews in their observation of the
sabbath. For though they now held it lawful to defend themselves
vigorously on that day, yet they would not stir a hand to annoy
the enemy, or obstruct them in any of their works. This Pompey
Observing, ordered his men to employ the sabbath-day in nothing-
else but in making their approaches, wherein the besieged giving
them no molestation, their engines of battery were brought for-
ward, and without opposition placed just as they pleased; and
so being fitted, and raised to advantage, soon made a breach in
the wall large enough for an assault. — Josephus's Jewish JPars,
b. i. c. 5.
b Among these, it is supposed, that Absalom, a younger son
of the famous Jolui Hyrcanus, suffered; he had lived a private
life, without meddling with public allairs, under the protection
of his brother Alexander Jannreus: but having unhappily married
his daughter to his nephew Aristobulus, he was, by that means,
drawn into his son-in-law's party, and being taken prisoner, in
all probability was put to death: because from that time we find
no farther mention made of him. — Joseph. Antiq. b. xiv. c. 8; and
Universal History.
c But though Pompey was thus modest, yet Crassus soon after
coming that way, not only extorted the two thousand talents,
and a large bar of gold, by way of bribe, to restrain him from
farther plunder, but, contrary to the promise which he had given
upon oath, ransacked the temple all over, and robbed it of every
thing that he thought worth taking away, insomuch, that the
whole of his sacrilegious plunder amounted to the value of ten
thousand talents, which is above two millions of our money. —
Joseph. Antiq. b. xiv. c. 12, and Jewish JPars, b. i. c. 6.
d Before this, the government had been managed under the
prince by two sorts of councils, or courts of justice; one con-
sisting of twenty-three persons, called the ' lesser sanhedrim ;'
and the other, of seventy-two, called the 'greater sanhedrim.'
O: the first sort there was one in eveiy city; only in Jerusalem,
put into the hands of such magistrates as himself made
choice of ; and having divided the whole land into five
provinces, appointed a court of justice, with power ulti-
mately to determine every thing, over each of them.
Aristobulus, late king of Judea, after he had been five
years a prisoner at Rome, having with his son Antigo-
nus made his escape, returned to Judea, with some few
forces which he had got together, was endeavouring to
raise fresh troubles. But Gabinius came upon him be-
fore he was prepared to make a sufficient resistance ; and
having taken him and his son prisoners, sent them both
again to Rome, where his father was kept in durance ;
but his children, upon the intercession of Gabinius, were
immediately sent back to Judea.
Not long after this, the difference between Caesar and
Pompey occasioned a distraction in the Roman affairs,
and a general contention all the empire over. Pompey
had left some forces in Syria ; and Caesar, to oppose
against these, had set Aristobulus at liberty, and pro-
posed to have sent him with two legions into Judea, in
order to secure that province ; but before he could get
out of Rome, he was poisoned by some of Pompey's
party, and his body remained a long time there, em-
balmed in honey, till M. Anthony procured it to be car-
ried into Judea, where it was honourably interred in the
royal sepulchre.
When Caesar returned from the Alexandrian war, An-
tigonus, the second son of Aristobulus, (for Scipio, by
Pompey's order had caused his elder brother's head to
be struck off at Antioch,) met him in Syria, and having
complained of the hard fate which his father and brother
had met with, he charged Hyrcanus and Antipater with
having possessed themselves of the government by force ;
but Antipater, who was then with Caesar, defended his
own and Hyrcanus's cause so very well, that Caesar, in-
stead of restoring Antigonus, as he desired, made it a e
decree, that Hyrcanus should hold the office of high
because of the greatness of the place, there were two, which
sat apart from each other in two distinct rooms. Of the latter
sort there was only one in the whole land. The lesser sanhe-
drim despatched all affairs of justice arising within the respec-
tive cities where they sat, and the precincts belonging to them.
The great sanhedrim presided over the aflairs of the whole nation,
received appeals from the lesser sanhedrims, interpreted the laws,
and, by new institutions from time to time, regulated the exe-
cution of them. All this Gabinius abolished ; and, instead thereof,
erected five courts, or sanhedrims, and invested them all with
sovereign power, independent on each other. The first of them
he placed at Jerusalem; the second at Jericho; the third at
Gadra; the fourth at Amathus; and the fifth at Sepphorus; and
having, under these five ci'ies, divided the land into five pro-
vinces, he ordered the inhabitants of each to repair to the court
which he had there erected, and from which there was no appeal,
except it was to Rome. Besides the two sorts of sanhedrims
above-mentioned, there was a third court among the Jews, which
was not affected by any of these alterations, and that was the
court of three, instituted for the deciding of all controversies about
bargains, sales, contracts, and all other such matters of common
right between man and man. In all which cases, one of the
litigants chose one judge, and the other another, and these two
chose a third, which three constituted a court to hear, and ulti-
mately determine the matter in contest. — Talmud on the San-
hedrim; Lightfoot's Prospect of the Temple, c. xx.andxxii; and
Joseph. Antiq. b. xiv. c. 10.
e This decree, which at once abolished the aristocracy which
Gabinius had lately set up, and restored the Jewish state to its
pristine sovereignty, according to Josephus, runs in this form: —
"Julius Crcsar, emperor, the second time dictator, and Ponti-
fex Maximus, &c. Forasmuch as Hyrcanus, the son of Alexau-
796
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
\. M. 3935. A.C.69; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5342. -A. C. 09. JOS. HIST. b. xiii.c. 19— end op b. xv.
priest at Jerusalem, and the principality of Judea with
it, to him and those of his family in a perpetual succes-
sion ; by which he restored the government to its ancient
form, and abolished the aristocracy which Gabinius had
instituted, and that Antipater should be the procurator of
Judea under him.
This Antipater, who was a person of great wisdom, of
powerful interest in several places, and in high favour
with the Romans, had two sons, Phasael and Herod ; to
the former of which lie gave the government of the coun-
try about Jerusalem, and to the other that of Galilee.
Phasael behaved himself in his administration with great
lenity ; but Herod was a man of a different character,
and his boisterous temper made him less acceptable to
the Jews.
At this time there was a gang of thieves that infested
Galilee, and the neighbouring parts of Ccelo-Syria, whom
Herod fell upon, and having taken one Hezekiah their
ringleader, with several of his associates, put them all to
death. Those who envied the prosperity of Antipater,
and the growth and greatness of his power, made this
a handle to accuse Herod to Hyrcanus for executing
men without a legal trial, and obtained a citation from
him to summon Herod to answer for it before the sanhe-
drim. He came ; but as he made his appearance in a
purple robe, and surrounded with his guards, he so over-
awed that great council, that they all sat silent without
saying a word against him, until Simeas, a man of gTeat
justice and integrity, rose up, and with a becoming pre-
sence of mind, complained, that he never sawr a criminal
appear in a court of justice so attended; that it looked
as if he meant to make the administration thereof more
dangerous to the judges, than the malefactor: " but this,"
says he, turning to the high priest, " is not so much to be
imputed to his insolence, as to your connivance, which
encourages it : yet know," continued he, " that his per-
son whom you screen from the justice of the laws, will be
a scourge to you all," Nor was he in this a false pro-
phet.
For Herod having, by the persuasion of the high priest,
for fear that the sentence of the sanhedrim should pass
against him, made his escape from Jerusalem, and retir-
ed to Damascus, where Sextus Cfesar, the prefect of
Syria, then resided, and put himself under his protection,
he so far insinuated himself with him, that for a sum of
money, with which he presented hint, he obtained the
government of Cudo-Syria, where he soon raised an
army, and marched it into Judea, with an intent to have
deposed Hyrcanus, and cut off the whole sanhedrim for
the indignity they had put upon him by their late process ;
but his father Antipater, and his brother Phasael, met
tier, a Jew, has, at all times, as well in war as peace, approved
himself to lie our good and trusty friend anil ally, as appeareth
by several attestations of unquestionable credit, &C. These ser-
vices and good offices duly considered, I do hereby confirm and
establish to him and his heirs, the perpetual government of the
Jews, both as their prince and high priest, after the manner and
method of their own laws; and from this day forward, enrol them
among the number of my trusty and well beloved friends, and
ratify an affinity with them as my associates. I ordain likewise
that all the legal pontifical rights and privileges be devolved upon
him, and his sons fur evi r ; and that in case any controversy shall
arise among the people concerning the Jewish discipline, himself
and his family, in the course of succession, shall be the only
judge of it." — Joseph. Antiq. b. xiv. c. 17.
him, and dissuaded him from it; so that, for the present,
he dropped his resentment.
As long as Julius Cfesar lived, the Jews were held in
great honour and esteem by the Romans, and had several
decrees passed in their favour : but a after his untimely
death, their country became a prey to every hungry
general of Rome. Cassius, having made himself master
of Syria, exacted of the Jews about seven hundred
talents of silver, which Antipater prevailed with his two
sons to pay him, and so preserved himself the longer in
the government of Judea. He was, as we said, procu-
rator of the province under Hyrcanus ; and the next
man to him in power and authority was Malicus : but
not being contented to be the second marr next the
prince, he would fain have been the first ; especially
since he was a natural Jew, and Antipater but an Idu-
mean. Antipater had all along been his fast friend,
and upon more occasions than one saved his life : but
he, like an ungrateful wretch, was continually laying
plots against him ; and, at length, taking the opportu-
nity of his dining- one day with Hyrcanus, he bribed the
butler to give him poison in his wine, of which he died,
and then, with an armed force, seized on the govern-
ment of Jerusalem. Phasael and Herod had, for a long
time, suspected this traitor's design against their father,
and when they heard of his death, they concluded that
he was the author of it. They thought proper, however,
to conceal their resentment for the present; but as
soon as Herod found a fit opportunity, * he had him
taken off.
a While Julius Ccesar was preparing for an expedition against
the Parthians, in order to revenge the death of Crassus, and the
Romans that were slain with him at the battle of Carrhre, on the
ides of March, that is, on the fifteenth day of that month, four
days before he intended to set out upon that expedition, he was
murdered in the senate-house, by a conspiracy of the senators.
This was the most villanous act, and the more so, because the
prime authors of it, namely, Marcus Brutus, Decimus Brutus,
Cassius, Trebonius, and some others of them, were the very per-
sons whom Ccesar, in the highest manner, had obliged; yet it
was executed under the notion of a high heroic virtue, in thus
freeing their country from one, whom they called a tyrant: and
the manner in which it was executed, is this: as soon as he came
into the senate-house, Attilius Cimher, who was one of the
conspirators, presented himself, according as it was agreed among
them, to demand his brother's pardon, who was banished; but
upon Caesar's refusal, under pretence of begging it with greater
submission, laid hold of the bottom of his robe, and pulled it so
hard, that he made him bend his back: then Casca drew his dag-
ger, and stabbed him in the shoulder, but the wound proved but
slight, so that Ccesar fell upon him: but as they were scuffling,
another of the conspirators came behind and stabbed him in the
side, Cassius at the same time wounded him in the face, and
Brutus pierced his thigh. With much courage he still defended
himself; but the blood he lost through so many wounds having
much weakened him, he went to the foot of Pompey's statue,
where he fell and expired, after having been stabbed in three and
twenty 'places by the hands of those whom he thought he had
disarmed by his good offices. — Prideaux's Connection, anno 44,
and Vertot's Revolution of Rome, c. 13.
b The matter was conducted thus: — Cassius being informed
by Herod of the manner of his father's death, gave him leave to
revenge himself on the murderer, and sent his orders to the
forces, under his command at Tyre, to be assistant to him
therein. On Cassius's taking Laodicea, all the princes and
chief lords of Syria and Palestine hastened thither with their
presents and congratulations. Hyrcanus, together with Malicus
and Herod, put himself upon the road for the same purpose;
and as they drew near to Tyre, where they were to lodge that
night, Herod invited all the company to sup with him ; and
sending his servants before, under pretence of providing the
Shot. V .]
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797
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C 19— END OF b. XV.
No sooner was the death of Malicus, and the manner
of it known at Jerusalem, but a party of his friends rose
in arms to revenge it on the sons of Antipater ; and
having- gained Hyrcanus, and Felix the commander of
the Roman forces on their side, put the whole city in an
uproar. Herod was then with Fabius, the Roman
governor of Damascus, and there laid up with sickness ;
so that the whole storm fell upon Phasael, which he
weathered with full success : for he drove Felix and all
that tumultuous party out of Jerusalem, and when his
brother recovered and returned, they both together soon
quelled the faction, and would doubtless have resented
the high priest's behaviour upon this occasion with more
severity, but that, at this time a match was set on foot
between Herod and his grand-daughter Mariamne, a
which reconciled all differences. But though the faction
was, for the present, suppressed, it was not long before
it revived.
After the defeat of Brutus b and Cassius, by M.
Anthony and Cresar Octavianus c at Philippi, Anthony,
coming into Asia, was attended by the deputies of most
princes and states in that part of the world, and, among
others, with several principal persons of the Jewish
nation, who were sent to accuse Phasael and Herod of
usurping the government from Hyrcanus : but partly by
money, and partly by interest, Herod had so far pre-
Bupper by them, he communicated the orders of Cassius to the
commanders of the Roman garrison in the city, who accordingly
sent out a party of armed men, that fell upon Malicus as he
drew near to the place, and slew him. — Joseph. Antiq. b. xiv.
c. 10 ; and Jewish Wars, b. i. c. 9.
a She was the daughter of Alexander, the son of king Aristo-
bulus, by Alexandra the daughter of Hyrcanus the second, and
therefore was grand-daughter to both these brothers. She was
a lady of extraordinary beauty and great virtue, and in all other
laudable qualifications, accomplished beyond most of her time;
but the true motive for Herod's desiring to make her his wife
was, because the Jews at this time had a very zealous affection
for the Asmonrcan family; and therefore he thought that, by
marrying this lady, he should the easier reconcile the hearts of
the people to him. — P rideaux' s Connection, anno 38.
I Philippi is a town of Macedonia, to the inhabitants of which
St Paul wrote his epistle ; but what made this place the most
remarkable, was the famous battle that was fought near it, be-
tween the army under Octavianus and Anthony, and that under
Brutus and Cassius, consisting of near a hundred thousand men
each. Brutus and Cassius both commanded in the action; but
Octavianus being sick in his tent, the command of the other
army it'll wholly upon Anthony. The forces commanded by
Cassius were sunn repulsed, so that he retired to a hill, there to
wait for an account of that part of the army which was com-
manded by BrutUS; but in the confusion and dust, not being
able to perceive what was doing, his mind misgave him that
Brutus was overcome, and thereupon he commanded his servant
Pindarus to cut off his head. Brutus, in the first day of action,
was so successful, that he made the enemy retire, and took
Octavianus's camp; but in a few days after, coming to a second
engagement, lie was entirely routed ; and being loath to fall into
the enemy's hands, prevailed with his friend Strabo to despatch
him: and what is very remarkable in these two men's deaths, is,
that they were both killed with the same swords wherewith they
had murdered Caesar. — Pint, on Brutus; VeUehu Paterculus,
b. ii. c. 70; Apiort on the Civil Wars, b. iv. ; and Dion Cassius,
'. xlvii.
c Octavianus was the son of Caius Octavius, by Atia the
daughter of Julia, sister of Julius Cssar; and therefore Julius
adopted him, as being his nephew and next male relation, to be
his son: upon his uncle's death he took upon him the name of
Caius Julius Cssar Octavianus, and by this name he was after-
wards known, till that of Augustus, which was given after the
victory at Actium swallowed up all the rest. — Prideaux's Con-
nection, anno 4«. «
vailed with Anthony, that he would not so much as hear
them. This, however, did not discourage the Jews that
were his enemies : for when Anthony came to Daphne
near Antioch, a hundred of the most considerable
among them waited upon him with the like complaints.
Here Anthony gave them a hearing ; and when he put
it to Hyrcanus, whether the two brothers or their accus-
ers were in his opinion fittest to govern the state under
him, he gave it for the two brothers ; and Anthony,
being minded to do them a farther favour, made them
both tetrarchs, d and committed all the affairs of Judea
to their administration. This he continued by letters
to the Jews ; and to oblige them to obey what he had
done, he detained fifteen of the hundred as hostages, and
would have put them to death, had not Herod saved them
by his intercession.
This notwithstanding, they did not still give over their
solicitation ; but when Anthony came to Tyre, they sent
a thousand of their principal men with the like accusa-
tions against the two brothers : but looking on this as a
tumult, rather than embassy, he directed his soldiers to
fall upon them, so that some of them were slain, and
more wounded; and at the same time he sent a peremp-
tory order to the magistrates to assist Herod in the re-
covery of his government. With this order Herod went
to Jerusalem, and would have persuaded the people to
receive him, by expostulating the danger of disobeying
him, and provoking the Roman general ; but instead of
regarding his threats or advice, they fell upon him ; and
by killing some and wounding others of his attendants,
so enraged Anthony against them, that he ordered their
fifteen hostages to be put to death, and threatened a
severe revenge against the rest.
In the mean time Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus,
having had long before attempted to possess himself of
Judea, but being defeated; and expelled by Herod, fled
to Parthia, and was there kindly received and protected.
After he had been there some time, and established an
interest among the most considerable persons of that
nation, he promised them 1000 talents, and 500 of the
finest e women in the country, if they would assist him in
the recovery of his father's kingdom. The Parthians
accepted of the proposal, and the king sent his general
along with Antigonus, at the head of a powerful army,
to invade Judea. As soon as they had entered the
country, great numbers of the Jews joined them in their
march ; and when they came to Jerusalem, the faction
that hated the two brothers declared for them : so that
d This word, which sometimes occurs in scripture, and is
pretty frequent among the descendants of Herod the Great,
according to the force of the Greek, signifies a lord that has the
fourth part of a state, province, or kingdom, without wearing a
diadem, or bearing the title of a king: but it must not always
be understood in a rigorous sense, because the name of tetrarch
was given to him that possessed sometimes a half, and some-
times a third part, of any principality ; nay, oftentimes the name
of a king was given to him that was but a tetrarch, and that of
a kingdom, to a tetraichy. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the
word.
e The fourth bunk of Maccabees (chap, xlix.) says 800 women,
the fairest and best bred in all the country: but Josephus adds,
that Antigonus was not able to make good his contract, by rea-
son that Herod had seized on most of the fine women, and sent
them away with his wife and family to Massada, a place of safe
retreat, whilst himself stayed behind with his guards, to cover
their march, and prevent their being pursued.
798
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 393:. A. C. 69 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
Herod, not being able to defend the city, especially
after he found that Hyrcanus, and his brother Phasael
were taken by the Parthians, and put in chains, made
his escape by night ; and taking- his mother Cypros, and
his sister Salome, Mariamne his bride, and Alexandra
the mother of Mariamne with him, made the best of his
way to Massada, a prodigious strong fortress, built on
the top of a very high mountain, near the west side of the
lake Asphaltites; and having furnished it with provisions
for several months, he there left his mother, and the
other women of quality, whom he had brought with him
from Jerusalem, under the care and government of Jo-
seph, another of his brothers, and so took his way to
Petra in Arabia, hoping to procure some assistance from
Malchus, who had succeeded Aretas, as king of that
country : but before he reached Petra, he received a
message from Malchus, desiring him to depart his domin-
ions, because he was afraid he should offend the Par-
thians, who were his neighbours, if he should receive
him.
The Parthians, when they found that Herod was gone
from Jerusalem, after they had plundered the place, and
the country round about, made Antigonus, as they had
agreed, king of Judea, and delivered to him Hyrcanus and
Phasael in chains. Phasael, knowing that his death was
determined, put a voluntary end to his life and suffer-
ings. For not having the liberty of his hands to dis-
patch himself, he beat out his brains against the wall of
the prison, and Hyrcanus, to incapacitate him from
being any longer high priest, had his ears cut off, and
was then delivered back again to the Parthians, by them
to be carried into the east, who, upon their return, left
him at Seleucia.
Herod, having met with this unworthy treatment in
Arabia, made what haste he could into Egypt, but when
he came to Rinocorura, he there was informed of his bro-
ther's death, and in what manner he had effected it ; from
thence he went to Pelusium,andsoto Alexandria, where
he took ship, and after a voyage of no small danger and
difficulty, landed at Brundusium, from whence he pro-
ceeded to Rome ; and having acquainted M. Anthony
with the miserable state of his affairs in Judea, he most
earnestly prayed his aid.
Anthony, remembering his friendship which he had
with his father first, and afterwards with him, and being-
exasperated against Antigonus, whom he always looked
upon as an enemy to the Roman people, and not a little
affected with the promises which Herod had made, of
giving him a large sum of money, if ever he should be
reinstated ; not only warmly espoused his cause himself,
but engaged likewise Octavianus, who was afterwards
called Augustus, so closely in his interest, that, by the
help and influence of these two men, the senate unani-
mously decreed that Herod should be king of Judea,
and Antigonus declared an enemy to the commonwealth.
Having in the short space of seven days dispatched his
affairs thus prosperously, he left Rome, and landing at
Ptolemais, began to raise forces, with a design to march
against Antigonus, who, ever since his departure, had
besieged the fortress of Massada. With these, and such
Roman auxiliaries as he received from Ventidius, An-
thony's general, and Silo his lieutenant in Palestine, he
i Lev. xxi. 18—21.
M. 5342. A. C. 69. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end of b. xv.
made himself master of the greatest part of the country,
took Joppa, relieved Massada, and, taking the castle
of Ressa in his way, marched directly to Jerusalem, and
there encamped on the west side of the city. Antigonu3
had provided the place with all warlike munitions, and
a good garrison, which, with darts and stones from the
walls, and flying parties frequently making excursions,
very much infested Herod's army. Herod, in hopes
of making easy work of it, sent a herald about the walls,
to proclaim indemnity to all that would submit. Anti-
gonus, on the contrary, directed his speech to Silo and
the Romans, complained of the injustice they did him, in
transferring- the crown from him, who was of royal de-
scent, to a plebeian, and half Jew, as Herod was : and
from these, and such like reproaches on both sides, they
came at length to acts of hostility, wherein Antigonus
and his men behaved themselves so valiantly, that they
soon drove the enemy from the walls.
Ventidius, indeed, had left Silo in Judea, to be assis-
tant to Herod in the reduction of Jerusalem : but in his
manner of managing the war, which was to get great
sums from Herod to promote his interest, and greater
from Antigonus to hinder it, he did him more harm than
good : for he did not only take all methods to squeeze
him, but encouraged his soldiers likewise to mutiny, on
pretence of wanting forage and provisions, more com-
modious quarters, and better pay ; which, when at any
time Herod endeavoured to remedy, Antigonus, having
notice of all that passed, with flying parties and ambus-
cades, frequently intercepted and cut oft' the convoys
that were designed for the united army : though Herod,
who was as active and diligent as the enemy, very often
came up with them, and pursued his advantage so closely,
that, having with some difficulty recovered all Galilee
from Antigonus, he, after that, betook himself to rid it
of those gangs ° of thieves and banditti, which at that
time very much infested it.
All this while the siege of Jerusalem went on but slow-
ly; and Herod, perceiving that the Roman generals
were very cool to his interest, was resolved to go again
to Anthony, who was then besieging Samosata, a city
upon the Euphrates, to make a representation of their
behaviour. During his absence, he left his brother
Joseph to command in Judea, giving strict orders to put
nothing to the hazard until his return ; but Joseph for-
getting this, ventured upon an expedition against
Jericho, where, being circumvented by the enemy, ,he
was slain himself, and most of his forces cut to pieces ;
which gave those that were disaffected to Herod, both in
Galilee and Idumsea, an opportunity of revolting.
Anthony, when he heard that Herod was coming, drew
out his army to receive him, and, while he staid with
him, showed him all the marks of friendship and esteem :
but, designing himself to go into Egypt, * he left the
a These thieves had so sheltered themselves in the caves, and
holes of the mountains, that it was no easy matter to come at
them, because the steepness and cragginess of the mountains
made it almost impossible, either to scale them from below, or
from above to get down to them by any passage ; and therefore,
to ferret them out of their dens, Herod was forced to make cer-
tain large chests, and, filling them with soldiers, to let them
down into the entrance of these caves by chains from engines
which he had fixed above ; by which means, he either destroyed
all that lurked in them, or else reduced them to terms of sub-
mission.— Joseph. Antiq. b. xiv.
b Where Cleopatra, at this time, was queen: who, by the,
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
799
A. M. 393--1. A. C. 69; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5342. A. C.G9. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19. end op b. xv.
army with Soeius, ordering him to assist Herod upon all
occasions ; and he accordingly gave him two legions for
the guard of his person, and inarched after himself with
the rest of the forces.
Upon his return from Anthony, Herod, while he was
at Daphne, had an account of his brother's death and
defeat, which made him hasten to mount Lebanon, where
he raised eight hundred of the natives, and with these
and the Roman forces came to Ptolemais, and thence
inarching- by night, he passed through Galilee, subdued
all that came in his way, and forced the rest into their
strongholds. But while he was hastening towards
Jericho, with an intent to avenge his brother Joseph's
death, a party of six thousand of the enemy came reso-
lutely down the hills, and put the Romans into great
consternation, beating back the vanguard, and pursuing
them home to their camp, where they so warmly engaged
them, that Herod himself was wounded in the conflict:
but, not long after, when Antigonus, Hushed with this
success, had sent Pappus his general, with the main
strength of his forces against him, he gave them an en-
tire defeat, slew Pappus in the rout, and, had it not been
for the severity of the winter, which was now approach-
ing, had gone immediately to Jerusalem, and so made
an end of the war : but that he was forced to refer to the
operations of the next campaign.
When Herod came before Jerusalem, his own army
consisted of about thirty thousand, to which Soeius a
brought eleven legions of foot, and six thousand horse,
besides the auxiliary troops of Syria. However, the city
held out several months with a great deal of resolution ;
but, at last, the besieged being beaten out of all their
places of defence, and the enemy exasperated at the
length and tediousness of the siege, all things were in
the utmost confusion. Rapine and devastation was the
general work; and death and slaughter raged every
where, without distinction of age or sex. In vain did
Herod endeavour to put a stop to this rage and cruelty.
" The spoils of the city, he was told, were the soldiers'
due, as a reward for their Labour and valour in taking-
it. " So that, with a large sum of money, he was forced
to preserve and redeem it.
charms of her beauty and wit, had drawn him into those snares
which held him enslaved to her as long as he lived, and, in the
end, caused his ruin. She was a woman of great parts, and
spoke several languages, as well as Latin and Greek, very
fluently; hut then she was a person of great vices, and, among
others, of such insatiable avarice and ambition, that she made a
conscience of nothing if she could but get by it. Her brother,
a youth of about fifteen years of age, she caused to be dispatched,
and prevailed with Anthony to have her sister Arsinoe cut off
at Ephesus, even in the temple of Diana. Anthony indeed was
a man of a sweet temper, and great generosity, an eloquent
speaker, and a complete master in all military abilities: hut then
he was a great libertine in his way, and so eager in the pursuit
of his unlawful pleasures, that he stuck at nothing to attain
them ; by which means he brought himself so absolutely under
the command of this wicked and voluptuous woman, that, as
Josephus expresses it, " she seems, not only to have captivated,
but bewitched him." — Prideaux's Connection, anno 30, and
Josejjh. slntiq. b. xv. c. 4.
a It is generally thought, that a legion was composed of ten
cohorts; a cohort, of fifty maniples; a maniple, of fifty men, and
consequently that a legion was a body of six thousand soldiers;
but others are clearly of opinion, that it was an uncertain num-
her, and contained sometimes four, sometimes five, and some-
times six thousand men. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the word,
ami Prideaux's Connection, anno 37, in the notes.
Antigonus, seeing all lost, surrendered himself to
Soeius, and, in a submissive and abject manner, fell at
his feet, imploring mercy: but Soeius, insulting his
meanness of spirit and want of courage, had him put in
chains ; and so leaving Herod in full possession of the
kingdom, took his prisoner along with him to Anthony.
Anthony, at first, intended to have reserved Antigonus
in order to grace his triumph ; but Herod, not thinking
himself safe in his kingdom, as long as this remainder
of the royal family continued alive, never left soliciting
him, till at length, by a good sum of money, he obtained
that this poor prince should be put to death ; and, with
him ended the reign of the famous and illustrious house
of the Asnionteans ; illustrious in itself, for the long con-
tinuance of the regal and sacerdotal succession in it,
and no less famous for the many signal services which
they and their ancestors, from time to time, had done
the public, after it had lasted, from the beginning of
Judas Maccabteus to this time, one hundred and twenty-
nine years.
As soon as Herod had got full possession of the king-
dom of Judea, he began to revenge himself on all those
whom he looked upon as his enemies ; and, among these,
put all the members of the great sanhedrim to death,
except Pollio b and Simeas, who, during the siege,
were all along for delivering up the city to Herod,
whereas all the rest opposed the motion, and did what
they could to excite the people to that fierce and obsti-
nate resistance which they made. All this while Hyr-
canus was captive in Parthia ; and, as the people wanted
a high priest, Herod's business was to choose a man of
obscurity to that office, who, having no credit or interest
at Jerusalem, might not be capable, notwithstanding his
high station and dignity in the church, to interfere with
b They are so named by Josephus; but the Jewish writers
generally call them Hillel and Shammai ; and of Hillel, in par-
ticular, they give us this account, namely, that he was born in
Babylonia, and there lived till he was forty years old ; that when
he came to Jerusalem, he betook himself to the study of the law,
in which he grew so eminent, that, after forty years more, he
became president of the sanhedrim, and that in this ollice he
continued forty years after; so that, according to this account,
he lived full a hundred and twenty years; but the Jewish
writers, for the sake of a round number, are frequently negligent
whether they are exact or not in their chronological computa-
tions. Of Shammai they likewise tell us, that he was for some
time the scholar of Hillel, and upon the removal of Manahem
into Herod's service, was made vice-president of the sanhedrim
in his loom; and that of all the Tannaim or Mishnical doctors,
he came nearest to his master in eminence of learning, though
in many points he dirlered in opinion from him. AVhat we are
chiefly to observe in relation to these two men at preseut is, —
that Herod should thus generously forgive them both, though
Shammai, or Simeas, was the person who appeared so intrepid
against him at his trial before the sanhedrim, and Hillel, or
Pollio, had all along warmly espoused the party of Hyrcanus.
It must lie presumed, however, that these two great men, whom
he not only spared above all the rest, but took into his especial
favour and confidence, had, dining the siege, taken care to make
their peace with him, by exhorting the besieged to a surrender:
for while the contrary faction was encouraging the people with
crying out, ' The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,'
and making them expect some miraculous deliverance, these
two wise politicians, foreseeing that the city could not hold out
much longer against such a vigorous siege, and under the exces-
sive want of all provisions, told them, in short, that all resistance
was in vain, since God, for their sins, was now bringing them
into subjection to this foreigner; and this piece of service, had
Herod been of a more viudictive temper than he really was,
could not well fail of reconciling them to his favour. — Prideaux's
Connection, anno 37; and Joseph. .Inliq. h. xv. c. 1.
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the regal authority ; and accordingly he sent for one
Ananel from Babylon, who was of the pontifical family
indeed, but of no farther merit, than that he Mas an
acquaintance of Herod's, and put him into the office.
Mariamne, his best beloved wife, had then a brother,
whose name was Aristobulus, to whom by right of birth
the high priesthood did belong ; and, as she was con-
tinually soliciting- him in behalf of her brother, so her
mother Alexandra, who was the daughter of Hyrcanus,
and a woman of a high spirit, wrote to Cleopatra queen
of Egypt, who had an absolute ascendant over Anthony,
to incline him to bestow the pontifical honour upon her
son : so that for fear of offending Anthony, more than
for gratifying of the ladies, he deposed Ananel, a and
made Aristobulus, who was then but a youth of seven-
teen years old, high priest in his stead.
When Phraortes came to be king of Parthia, and was
informed of Hyrcanus 's character and quality, he treated
him with great courtesy : for he ordered him to be
released from his chains, and allowed him to reside at
Babylon, which was then part of the Parthian empire,
and where a great number of Jews dwelt, who paid him
both the reverence due to a high priest, and the honour
due to a king.
In this condition Hyrcanus might have lived and
ended his days very happily ; but, being desirous of
returning^ to his native country, he began to entertain
great hopes of Herod's friendship, as having been once
the preserver of his life, when he was arraigned before
the sanhedrim, and the founder indeed of all his for-
tunes. Herod, on the other hand, was as desirous to
have Hyrcanus in his power as the other was to come :
and therefore he not only invited him with great earnest-
ness and greater promises, but sent an embassy to
Phraortes to solicit his return. Thus having obtained
the king's dismission, the unfortunate old prince was
carried back to Jerusalem, and, for some time, treated
by Herod with all the outward tokens of kindness and
respect.
His daughter Alexandra having, by her interest with
Cleopatra, obtained the high priesthood for her son,
thought that (as it was his right) she might by the same
means procure him the crown, and therefore went on
intriguing with Cleopatra, which when Herod came to
understand, he confined her to the palace, and set spies
upon her. This she resented with great indignation, as
being made a prisoner, and therefore formed a design
to make her escape, and to carry her son with her into
Egypt to Cleopatra, who, upon this occasion, had in-
vited them thither. But the design was discovered, and
a This is the third person that had been deposed from the
pontifical dignity since the time of the return from the Babylon-
Mi captivity; and Herod was so sensible of the illegality of it,
that when Anthony sent to him to desire him to put Aristobulus
into Ananel'a place, at first he excused himself, by alleging,
that such depositions were contrary to the Mosaic, law, which
enjoined that the dignity should last as long as the life of the pos-
sessor, miles-; some defect happened to disqualify him. The first
instance «•■ meet with of this kind is that of Jason's supplanting
his brother Ouias, and by a larger sum of money, buying that
office of Aiitiochus in prejudice of the incumbent. The other
was that of Hyrcanus, by his nephew Aristobulus, who wrested
that dignity from him by main force. But these deposi-
tions became afterwards so frequent, that there was hardly any
other way of corning into that office, but by the expulsion of the
incumbent. — Universal Ilhtury, b. ii. c. 11.
their journey stopped. Herod, however, for fear of
Cleopatra, was forced to suspend his resentment, and
making a virtue of necessity, pretended with great
clemency to pardon in both what he could not well
punish in either : but in a short time he had his revenge.
At the approach of the feast of tabernacles, Aristo-
bulus was to officiate as high priest. He was a very
beautiful person, tall and well shaped, and in the eigh-
teenth year of his age. In the time of his officiating he
discharged himself with so becoming a reverence, and
the splendour of the pontifical robes added such a lustre
to the gracefulness of his person, that by both these he
captivated the affections of the people, and every man's
mouth was full of his praises ; which raised the tyrant's
jealousy to such a degree, that as soon as the festival
was over, he had him drowned at Jericho, b though, to
make his death pass for an unhappy accident, wherein
he had no hand, he acted the part of chief mourner, and
expended a large sum in a splendid funeral for him : but
his hypocrisy was seen through, and detested by all.
Alexandra, in particular, was inconsolable for the loss
of her son ; nor could she have survived it, but for the
hopes of having an opportunity of being revenged. To
this purpose, having acquainted Cleopatra with the mur-
der, she so represented Herod's villany, and her own
distress, as moved the queen's compassion, and engaged
her to do her utmost to revenge her cause : for she never
left soliciting Anthony, till, at length, she prevailed with
him to call Herod to an account for this wicked fact.
But when Herod appeared before him, by fair words
and large presents, he so effectually wrought upon An-
thony, that instead of condemning, he seemed to vindi-
cate him for what he had done : whereupon, returning
with much joy, and in triumph as it were over his ac-
cusers, he grew more tyrannical than ever, and in a short
time shut up Alexandra in close confinement.
When he went to appear before Anthony, he left his
uncle Joseph in the administration of the government,
and gave him particular charge, that in case Anthony
should put him to death, he should not suffer Mariamne,
his best beloved wife, to survive the first news of it, that
none, as he proceeded, c might enjoy so rare a beauty
but himself. In his absence, some words had passed
between Mariamne and his sister Salome, wherein the
queen reproached her with the meanness of her original,
in comparison of the royal stock of the Asmonreans,
from whom she descended. This the other was resolved
b Herod had invited him to an entertainment at Jericho, and
when after dinner several of his attendants bathed themselves
in a fish pond, Aristobulus was prevailed upon to bear them
company ; but no sooner was he plunged into the water, but
those that were in it before, according as they were directed
by Herod, ducked and dipped him, by way of sport and play, as
they pretended, so long under water, that at length he was actu-
ally drowned. — Jewish. Antiq. b. xv. c. 3.
c This he did, not so much that none else might have the en-
joyment of the beautiful Mariamne, as that none might be left
alive of the Asmonrean family to claim the crown, in oppositiou
to that disposal which he had made of it to his brother Pheroras.
Alexandra, the mother of Mariamne, he knew veiy well was a
crafty and aspiring woman; and, therefore, being apprehensive
that the scheme which he had laid for the succession, cotdd not
take place, if either she, or her daughter were left alive after
him, he ordered that both of them should be put to death, in
case he should miscarry in his application to Anthony. — Joseph.
Antiq. b. xv. c. 1 1.
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to revenge ; and, therefore, as soon as Herod returned,
she accused Mariamne of having too great a familiarity
With Joseph, whom, though he was her own husband, as
well as her uncle, she was content to sacrifice rather
than not obtain her will upon the other. One thing that
might contribute to the increase of Herod's jealousy,
and the confirmation of what his sister had told him,
was the fatal secret which Joseph had indiscreetly
blabbed out, and Mariamne, in her passion, could not
retain ; for nothing less than an adulterous conversation,
he thought, could have produced such a discovery; and,
therefore, when she upbraided him with it, he was going
to draw his dagger, and strike her to the heart ; but
though his love interposed to save her, he ordered his
uncle immediately to be executed, without allowing him
leave so much as to speak for himself ; which when he
came to know his innocence, and the queen's virtue, he
could not but regret.
While these things were thus going on in Judea, there
happened a grievous breach a between Anthony and
Octavianus, which terminated in a civil war, wherein
Anthony at the battle of Actium was quite ruined and
undone. During the whole course of this war, Herod
had always followed Anthony's party, and had therefore
reason to fear that the conqueror would deprive him of
his kingdom for being so firm a friend to his enemy, and
perhaps restore again Hyrcanus, who had once reigned
under the protection of the Romans ; and, therefore, to
prevent this, upon pretence of his holding correspon-
dence with Malchus king of Arabia, in order to accom-
plish some treasonable designs against him, he * caused
him to be put to death, after he had passed the eightieth
year of his age. His wife Mariamne, and her mother,
he secured in the castle of Alexandrion, with a strong
guard under the command of Sohemus, and with the
same order that he had left with his uncle Joseph before ;
and having committed the government of the kingdom to
the care of Pheroras, another of his brothers, he set for-
ward on his journey to meet Octavianus.
Octavianus was then at Rhodes, where Herod, having
obtained audience, as he entered into his presence, laid
aside his diadem, and in his address to him freely owned
all that he had done for Anthony, and what he was far-
os Anthony had provoked Octavianus against him, l>y the
wrong done to tMavia his sister, whom Anthony had married,
and yet divorced her tor the gratification of Ids adulterous love
to Cleopatra, though Octavia was mneli the handsomer of the
two. Anthony had likewise given out, that Cleopatra had heen
married to Julius Csesar, and that Cesarion, whom she had by
him, was his lawful son, and consequently had the proper right
to the inheritance, which Octavianus held only as his adopted
son. These things were objected against Anthony; and An-'
thony, by Ins agents and letters, was not forgetful to recriminate.
But these things were no more than pretences: the true reason
ol their disagreement was, that both these two £veat men, being
not contented with half of the Roman empire, were each re-
solved to have all, and accordingly agreed to throw the dice of
war for it. — Plutarch on AntonUtSj and Prideaux's Coimectiun,
anno .'i.'i.
b The character which Josephns gives of this prince is to this
effect: — He was a man of eminent candour, justice, and modera-
tion; but a lover of his ease, and so conscious to himself of his
own insufficiency for the offices of public administration, that,
for the most part, he intrusted that charge in other hands. This
facility of Ins was the making of Antipater and Herod's fortune,
though, without any colour of law or equity, it cost him Ids
life. — Jewish Aiitii/. b. xv. c. 9.
. 5374. A. C. 74. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end of l>. xv,
ther ready to have done, had he required itof him. " Tins,"
he said, " he thought himself obliged to, by the friendship
that was between them ; and would he be pleased to
think the like friendship worthy of his acceptance, since
Anthony was now quite lost, he would not fail to serve
him with the same zeal and fidelity." This Herod de-
livered with such an intrepidity, that Octavianus, pleased
with the spirit of the man, caused him to put on his dia-
dem again, accepted of his friendship, and confirmed
him iu the kingdom of Judea.
Pleased with this good success, Herod went back to
Judea with great joy; but on his arrival found all his
felicity soured with the troubles of his own family.
Mariamne, his most beloved wife, in whose conversation
he took the greatest delight, having bribed the secret out
of Sohemus, conceived thereupon such a strong hatred
and aversion to him, that she received his embraces with
scorn, and concealing the true cause of her resentment,
was perpetually upbraiding him with the murder of her
nearest relations f so that, by this provoking treatment,
his patience was almost quite worn out. Hearing, how-
ever, of the death of Anthony and Cleopatra, and how
Octavianus had thereupon made himself master of all
Egypt, he thought himself obliged to wait on him thero
likewise.
He was received with great kindness, and having, in
his return, accompanied him to Antioch, he so far in-
gratiated himself with him on the way, that he granted
him several places in augmentation of his dominions,
and, for ever after, of all the tributary princes in the
Roman empire, gave him the first place in his favour.
But how prosperous soever he was in his affairs abroad,
when he returned, he found nothing but trouble and vex-
ation at home. Mariamne still retained her resentment,
for the cruel commission given to Sohemus ; so that,
when he offered her his caresses, she not only rejected
them, as usual, with the utmost aversion, but added, over
and above, such bitter reproaches for the death of her
relations, as provoked and enraged him to so high a
degree, thathe could hardly forbear laying violent hands
upon her. This fit of rage her implacable enemy Salome
took the advantage of, and sent in his butler, whom she
had before suborned for that purpose, to accuse the queen
of having tempted him to give the king poison ; there-
upon he ordered her favourite eunuch, without whose
privity he knew she did nothing, to be put upon tfie rack ;
but all that he confessed was, that something which So-
hemus had told Mariamne, was the cause of her being
out of humour.
Upon the hearing of this, Herod fell into a rage of
jealousy; and, supposing that nothing but a criminal
intimacy could have induced Sohemus to betray this
secret to her, he ordered him immediately to be put to
death ; and then, calling together a council of his friends,
and accusing her of an intention to take away his life,
he had her condemned, but not with a design to have
her put to death ; but the malice of his mother and sister
was so bitter against her, they would not let him be
quiet. They knew very well his temper ; and, being ap-
prehensive, that as long as she was alive, he might
easily relapse into his former fondness, they urged the
necessity of her speedy execution, and had that influence
over him, that he commanded her immediately to be put
to death. But he soon repented him of his rashness.
5 i
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For, after that his rage was quenched by her blood, his
love revived, and the consideration of what he had done
filled his mind with the agonies of remorse, and the re-
gret of her loss alt'ected him so, that he fell dangerously
ill ; but, upon recovery, he nevertheless gave orders for
the execution of Alexandra, for having too easily credited
the news that was spread abroad of his death.
He had two sons by Mariamne, Alexander and Aristo-
bulus, whom he had sent to Rome for the benefit of edu-
cation ; but, upon their return home, by the same instru-
ments that had procured their mother's death, they fell
under their father's displeasure. For having in the heat
of their youth let fall many rash words, which expressed
their resentment of their mother's hard usage, with threats
of revenge upon those that had been the chief authors of
it ; all this was carried to their father, with such malicious
glosses and comments upon it, as made him believe that
they were hatching ill designs against his person. He
was naturally of a jealous temper, and this was so im-
proved by the artifices of Pheroras and Salome, his
brother and sister, that, in a council which consisted of
none but his own creatures, he procured their condemna-
tion, a and so ordered them to be strangled : and it was
upon the account of their fate, and the execution of An-
a Josephus has represented this whole proceeding in this light:
When Herod had complained to Augustus of the undutiful be-
haviour of his sons, how they had plotted against his life, and
designed to have made their escape out of his dominions,
Augustus advised him to call together a council at Berytus in
Phoenicia, and so to inquire into the nature of their offences.
This Herod accordingly did ; but when he came into the assembly,
which consisted of a hundred and fifty persons, such asAugustus
had directed him to, (except Archelaus, king of Cappadocia,
who, being father-in-law to Alexander, was thought by Herod
too much engaged by that relation, to be an impartial judge in
this matter,) he began to accuse his sons with great vehemence
and passion, and, alter having spoken in terms very unbecoming
a father, he said, "that not only Augustus made him master of
his sons' destiny, but that the very laws of the Jews declared,
that if a son was accused by his parents, and they put their hands
upon his head, all who were present should stone him, and put
him to death; and therefore, though he might treat his sons in
this manner, after the crimes whereof they stood convicted, yet
he chose rather to have their opinions upon the matter, not
doubting but that they would join with him in giving an example
to future ages, of that just severity which ought to be exercised
upon unnatural children." Saturinus, a man of consular dignity,
who was at the head of the council, was for punishing Alexander
and Aristobulus, but not with death; and three sons, who were
present with him, concurred in the same opinion; but Volum-
nius pronounced that they were worthy of death, which the
majority of the assembly too readily coming into, carried the
question. On this occasion every one pitied the two princes,
but no one durst speak plainly, for fear of incurring the king's
displeasure: but at last, an old soldier of the king's, who had a
son about Alexander's age, and his particular friend, took the
liberty to make Bome sharp remonstrances to the king, telling
him withal, that not only the officers and soldiers, but the whole
body of the people, was moved with compassion for the young
princes, and pitied their sad fate. Whereupon the king, losing
all patience, commanded the soldier and his son to be seized, and
all besides whom lie had named. When the old man was put
upon the rack, he confessed that he had taken up a resolution to
kill the king, and to expose himself, for the love of Alexander,
to all sorts of punishment. This confession both enraged and
intimidated Herod, so that he sent his sons immediately to
Sebaste, (formerly called Samaria,) and there ordered them to
be strangled. And thus ended the life of these two unfortunate
brothers, who, by too much expressing their resentment for their
mother's death, provoked those who had been the chief authors
oi it, by tin; like artifices, to procure theirs. — See Josephus's
reflection hereupon.-— Joscjjh. Antiq. b. xvi. c. 17.
tipater, h another of his sons after this, (who was, in re-
ality, for procuring- his father's death,) that Octavianus,
then called Augustus, was used to say, that it was bet-
ter to be Herod's hog- than his son.
But whatever opinion Augustus might have of Herod,
it is certain that Herod had no small veneration for him,
or at least carried his compliments very far. For he
not only built two stately cities, and called them both
by his name, c but in the very city of Jerusalem built
a theatre and an amphitheatre, and, in honour of Augus-
tus, celebrated games, and exhibited shows, which gave
great disgust to the Jews, as things inconsistent with the
legal constitutions and religion of their country. Nay,
to such a degree of complaisance proceeded^ he, as not
only to set up the Roman ensign, d which was the figure
b This Antipater was Herod's eldest son by Doris, a woman
of no quality, whilst himself was a private man ; for which reason
he kept him and his mother, for some time, at a distance from
court: but when he began to take offence at Alexander and
Aristobulus, his two sons by Mariamne, he thereupon treated
him with a great deal of distinction, and, in a full assembly of
the people, declared him his immediate heir to the crown. After
the death of Mariamne's sons, he had nothing that stood in his
way, but only the life of his father Herod : and, to get rid of him,
he formed a conspiracy with his uncle Pheroras, (who, at this
time, was in some disgrace with his brother the king,) to have
him poisoned: but, that there might be no suspicion of his being
concerned in the thing, he procured some of his friends to send
for him to Rome, where he had been before under Agrippa's
protection, on pretence of waiting upon Augustus. Herod,
however, having found out the whole plot, wrote to his son,
without giving him the least hint of it, to hasten his journey
home, lest something should happen in his absence to his great
disadvantage; whereupon he returned into Palestine, without
the least suspicion of what had passed. When he came to Jeru-
salem, his friends, who attended him, were not permitted to
enter the palace ; and when he went to embrace the king, the
king thrust him from him, upbraiding him with the murder of
his brothers Alexander and Aristobulus, and with the parricide
which he intended to have committed on his person, and whereof
he accused him the next day, before Quintilius Varus, the gov-
ernor of Syria. The proof was so plain against him, that Anti-
pater, having nothing to say in his justification, was loaded with
irons and put in prison. But while he was there, a false report
being spread, that Herod was dead, he begged of his keeper to
set him at liberty, and made him large promises if he would do
it, which being brought to his father's ear, as weak as he was,
(for he died in a few days after,) he raised himself upon his elbow,
and calling one of his guards, sent him that moment to dispatch
his son. — Joseph. Antiq. b. xvii. c. 7. and 9; and Jewish Wars,
b. i. c. 2\.
c The one was Sebaste, which signifies the same in Greek as
Augustus does in Latin. It was situated on the same place
where stood Samaria, which Hyrcanus had destroyed, and was
in part rebuilt by Gabinius, when he was governor of Syria, and
called after his name: hut as he was soon turned out of his
government, it advanced no farther than a good large village,
until Herod, who, from his stately structures, was afterwards
called the Great, undertook to finish it, and, in so doing, spared
no cost to make it one of the richest and most beautiful cities in
his kingdom. The other was Cajsarea, so called in honour of
the emperor, though its former appellation was " the Tow er of
Straton." It stood by the sea side, on the coasts of Phoenicia,
upon the pass into Egypt, and was very convenient for trade,
hut that it had a bad harbour. To remedy this, therefore, he
ordered a mole to be made in the form of a half moon, and large
enough for a royal navy to ride in. The buildings of the town
were all of marble, private houses as well as palaces ; but the
master-piece of all was the port, whereof we meet with a descrip-
tion in Joseph. Antiq. b. xv. c. 13.
d This gave great offence to the Jews, because the Romans
were known to pay divine honours to their ensigns, which they
used to set up in some eminent place in their camp; according to
that known passage of Tertullian, " the religion of the Romans
was wholly of a warlike nature; the standard they venerated, by
Sect. V.]
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of an eagle, over one of the gates of the temple, but even
to raise a sumptuous temple, all of white marble, in
memory of the favours which Augustus hail conferred
on him ; though, by this act of idolatrous Mattery, he
alienated the hearts of the Jews, and raised some con-
spirators " against his life.
To recover therefore their good opinion, and to make
some amends for these breaches upon their law, in the
nineteenth year of his reign he formed a design for re-
building the temple, b which, by length of time, having
the standard they swore, the standard they preferred to all their
gods.''
a There is a remarkable one of this kind, which is related by
Josephus to this e fleet: — Ten citizens, taking offence at Herod's
bringing in the rites of heathenish superstition, entered into a
Conspiracy to cut him ofl'by an assassination. One of these con-
spirators was blind, and though in no condition to act any
thing for the public good, ottered to bear his part in suffering for
it, and by his generous offer settled them all in their determina-
tions. They therefore provided themselves with daggers under
their garments, and went to the theatre, where Herod was to
come, with a full intent to slay him there. But, as he was
entering the theatre, one of his spies, for he had great plenty of
them, having got some notice of the matter, made a discovery of
it to him; so that, returning to his palace, he sent for the con-
spirators, who were so far from denying their design, that they
produced the very daggers that were to have done the execution,
alleging for themselves, " that they were not engaged in any
criminal combination, to gratify their passions or interests, but
in a secret league, lor the common good, and the defence of their
laws, which all true patriots and professors were bound to main-
tain with their lives." After this declaration they were hurried
away to death, and made to undergo the most exquisite torments.
But the infamous informer did not long survive them ; for, having
incurred the general odium of the people, he was met by some
in a private place, and torn to pieces. — Jewish Antiq. b. xv. c. 11.
b Whatever some Jewish Rabbins may tell us, it is certain
that the temple of Herod was widely different from that of Solo-
mon, and from that which was built by Zerubbabel after the cap-
tivity; for the description of it, according to Josephus, who him-
self had seen it, is much to this purpose: — The front of this
magnificent building, which resembled that of a royal palace, was
adorned with many rich spoils, which the kings of the Jews had
dedicated to God as the monuments of their victories. The
middle of it, which was much higher than the two extremes,
aflbrded a very agreeable prospect to the extent of several fur-
longs to those that either lived in the country, or were travelling
to the city. The gate of it was a very curious piece of work-
manship. From the top of it hung a variety of rich tapestry, of
several colours, embellished with purple flowers. On each side
of it stood a stately pillar, with a golden vine creeping and twin-
ing about it, whose branches were laden with a cluster of grapes,
that hung dangling down from the cornices. Round about the
temple were large galleries, answerable to the rest of the work
in magnificence, and in beauty much exceeding all that had been
before. The temple was surrounded by three courts or inclo-
sures. The first inclosure, which was a square of a furlong on
every side, had a gate on the east, another on the south, and
another on the north side; but it had four towards the west; one
leading to the palace, another into the city, and two more into
the fields. It was secured without by a strong wall, and within
was adorned with stately porticoes or galleries, sustained by no
less than 1C2 columns of Corinthian work, and all so very thick,
that hardly three men could grasp one with their arms. They
supported a roof of cedar very curiously wrought, and made three
galleries ; the two outermost of which were of the same dimen-
sions, that is, thirty feet, in breadth, fifty in height, and a fur-
long in length ; but that in the middle was half as broad again
as the other, and twice as high. The court or area before these
galleries was paved with marble of several colours, and, at a little
distance, was a second inclosure, formed by a handsome balus-
trade of stone, and pillars at equal distances, whereon were in-
scriptions in Greek and Latin, giving warning to all strangers
not to proceed any farther upon pain ot death. To this inclosure
there was but one entrance towards the east, but towards the
north and south, at equal distances, time. In the middle of
now stood five hundred years, as well as the violence of
enemies, was in a very decayed and ruinous condition.
In two years' time he got together all proper materials,
and in nine c and a half more, had it so far finished as
to make it lit for divine service ; though, to carry on the
outbuildings, workmen were continued about it to the
time of our Saviour's ministry, and longer.
While these tilings were doing in Judea, the temple
of Janus was shut at Rome. In times of war the cus-
tom was to have its gates laid open, but shut in the
time of peace ; and it was now the fifth time, since the
building of that city, that the gates of this temple had
been shut. The first time was in the reign of Nuina ;
the second, after the end of the first Punic war; the
third, after Augustus's victory over Anthony and Cleo-
patra ; the fourth, upon his return from the Cantabrian
war in Spain ; and the fifth, now in the twenty-sixth year
of his reign, and in the thirty-third of Herod's, when a
general peace, which lasted for twelve years together,
prevailed over the world, and was a proper prelude for
ushering in the advent rf of the Prince of peace, even
these two inclosures, there was a third, which included the
temple, strictly so called, and the altar of burnt sacrifices, which
was fifty cubits high, and forty cubits wide every way, all built
of rough stone, on which no tool had ever been used. Into this
court, which none but priests were permitted to enter, there
were nine gates ; one towards the east, four towards the south,
and as many towards the north ; but towards the west there was
no gate, only one great wall ran all along from north to south.
At the entrance of each gate within were large rooms in form
of pavilions, of thirty cubits square, and forty high, supported by
a pillar of eighteen feet in circumference; and the whole was
adorned with porticoes, sustained by two rows of pillars, to the
east, north, and south, but towards the west there was nothing
but the wall just now mentioned. This is the description of the
temple, as it was repaired by Herod, that may be extracted from
Joseph. Antiq. b. xv. c. 13; but whoever is desirous to know
these things more minutely, must consult those authors that
have written upon them professionally; among which Mess, de
Beausobre and L'enfant, in their general preface to the New
Testament, have given us no bad sketch ; and Juries, in his
History of Opinions, &c. has rectified some mistakes in the ac-
count of Josephus, part ii. c. 4.
c And yet the Jews could tell our Saviour, that ' forty and
six years had the temple been building,' (John ii. 20); but this
is easily reconciled. For, though at the time, when the Jews
spake to our Saviour, six and forty years had passed from the
time that this building was begun, yet in nine years and a half
it was made fit for divine service. The outbuildings however
were far from being finished ; and therefore a great number of
labourers and artificers were continued at work all the time that
our Saviour was upon the earth, and for some years after; till
upon the coming of Gessius Floras, to be governor of Judea,
eighteen thousand of them were discharged at one time, and
these for want of other employ, began those mutinies and sedi-
tions, which at last drew on the destruction cf Jerusalem, and
the temple with it Joseph. Antiq. b. xx. c. 8.
d According to the vulgar era, Christ was born in the four
thousand and fourth year of the world's creation; bui this way of
computation, though it be commonly used, especially in this
western part of the world, is a manifest mistake, which Diony-
sius Exiguus, a Scythian by birth, and afterwards a Roman abbot,
was the first author of. In the first ages of Christianity, Chris-
tians had no particular epocha to themselves; they generally
used that of the building ol the city, or the years of the Cccsars
in common with the Romans. The first that they made use of,
was the era of Dioclesian ; for his terrible persecution had made
such an impression on their minds, that the time when it hap-
pened was long had in remembrance. It was in the year 527 of
the vulgar Christian era, and not sooner, that the world began to
compute time from our Saviour's birth; and therefore the wonder
is less, that, after so great a distance of time, this Roman abbot
should make a mistake in fixing the first year of it; but the mis-
804
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI L
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A.
Christ our Lord, who, according to the exactest com-
putation, was born in the 4000th year a [the 541 1th
year according- to Hales] of the world's creation.
CHAP. II. — Objections answered.
It cannot be expected, indeed, that any human compo-
sition should be without faults, and least of all can his-
tory promise itself that exemption, when it has so many
distant and abstruse matters to inquire into, and is forced
in many cases to take up with the testimony, and some-
times the conjectures of others. It may be said, how-
ever, in favour of Josephus, that the records from whence
he compiled his history of the Jews, were either those of
their own sacred Hebrew books ; those of the prophets
during the continuance of their succession ; or those of
the most authentic writers that flourished in their nation
all along afterward. For, in the main, he was not so
much an original historian himself, as an abridger of
such ancient histories as he found in the highest esteem
and veneration ; and how fair and impartial he has been,
about these times more particularly, in making this
compilation, any one may perceive that will but give
himself the trouble of comparing his abridgment of the
first book of the Maccabees with the book itself. So
fortune was, that, before the mistake was discovered, our country-
man Bede's taking it without examination from him, and using
it in all his writings, gave it a sanction; nor has the learned
world as yet thought fit to correct it, out of a persuasion, I pre-
sume, that there may be some danger in altering things that are
settled. It is thought sufficient for the purposes of chronology,
that there is a certain Christian era fixed, which every one knows,
and reckons by, though there may be some mistake, as to the
particular time when it should have commenced. In short, this
error has been too long followed to be corrected, which must of
course alter all dates, and give the world too much trouble; and
therefore it is but calling it a vulgar Christian era, and remember-
ing that Christ was born four years before it began ; it is but re-
membering, I say, that the year ivhich we now write, 1743, ought
to be 1747, and all is well. — Prideaux's Preface to the first part
of his Connection; and Hearne's System of Universal History,
b. i. c. 8.
a This, we may observe, falls in exactly with the time where
an old tradition of the Jews places the beginning of the days of
the Messiah. According to that tradition, the world was to last
six thousand years; two thousand before the law, two thousand
under the law, and two thousand under the Messiah. This tra-
dition is of great antiquity, and esteemed as authentic as any of
this sort; and though its pretending to foretel when the world
shall end, (which the scriptures make a secret that God has re-
served for himself,) sufficiently shows its vanity ; yet since the
Jews have thought fit to place it among the most authentic of
their traditions, it serves against them, 1st, To prove the time
when, according to their own doctrine, the Messiah was to come:
and, 2dly, To convict them of their gross and most perverse in-
fidelity, in that, though Christ was born in the 4000th year of
the creation, from which, according to this their tradition, his
appearance was to commence, they have now suffered above
seventeen hundred and twenty years to pass, and have not yet
acknowledged him. — Prideaux's Connection anno 4. [This is verv
well argued, if the Jewish tradition respecting the ages of the
world, were exactly such as it is here said to have been; but
there is good reason to believe that it was \cry different. Ac-
cording to the rabbinical tradition founded, as the Jews pre-
tended, on prophecy, the world was to last 7000 years, and the
Messiah to make his appearance about the middle of the sixth
millenary, or the year of the world 5500; and, according to Dr
IIalesrs computations, he actually appeared in the year 5111.] —
Up. Glei'j. — Ed.
M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST, b xiii. c. 19— END of b. xv.
justly might Suidas give 1 Josephus the title of a " lover
of truth ;" and so truly might Josephus say of himself, at
the conclusion of his Antiquities, as well as of his Jewish
Wars, " As for the style and manner of my writing them,
that 1 submit to the judgment of my readers ; but as for
the candour and sincerity of my accounts, I do here de-
clare to the world, that I have kept strictly to the truth,
and have had nothing else in view, through the course of
my whole work."
2 That Alexander the Great, after his ha\ing taken
the city of Tyre, invaded the northern parts of Judea,
and went as far as the balsam trees, near Jericho, not
only Eusebius in his Chronicon, but Pliny, * in his Na-
tural History likewise, direc ly informs us ; and that he
not only subdued that part of Syria, which is called
Palestine, but went also about at this time to those cities
that refused to submit to him, we have the concurring
testimony both of Curtius 3 and Arrian ; 4 and if their
testimony be true, it is very presumable that he did not
forget to visit Jerusalem in his indignation for its having
refused to send him supplies.
The Samaritans, indeed, acted another part : they
obeyed Alexander's summons, and went in a body of
8000 men to his assistance at Tyre. As soon as he had
carried the place, they marched with his army to Jerusa-
lem, and these are the men whom Josephus joins with
the Phoenicians, though by an error of the press, or tran-
scription at first, they are called Xu7\0»iov;, instead of
~5Lvdcciovs, according to Bishop Loyd's emendation, Chal-
deans, instead of Cutheans or Samaritans, the old inve-
terate enemies of the Jews, and who therefore were glad
of this opportunity of destroying them, and promised
themselves, as Josephus 5 expresses it, " all the licence
of blood and pillage upon the high priest himself, as
well as upon the citizens, that rage or revenge could
draw from a victorious prince, under the sense and pro-
vocation of the affront he had received."
Alexander accordingly comes, breathing out wrath
against the Jews, and, with his victorious army, is ready
to revenge the insolent message of their being unwilling
to light for any but his enemy Darius : but, instead of
that, in a day or two he goes away with the greatest love
and kindness for them ; permits them to live by their
ancient laws ; forgives them the tribute of the sabbatical
year ; readily invites them to fight for him as his allies,
and, the very next year, in his own new built city of
Alexandria, gives them all equal privileges with the
Macedonians themselves. Now this sudden alteration
of his cannot well be imputed to any thing else but a
divine interposition ; and therefore, since Plutarch 6 in-
forms us, that it was no unusual thing for this great man
to be influenced in his conduct by dreams and visions on
other occasions, it is highly probable, that this remarka-
ble change in him did likewise depend upon the remem-
brance of the vision which he had at Dio in Macedoiua,
as himself relates in the history.
1 Page 1261. 2 Mr Winston's Alexander at Jerusalem.
3 B. iv. c. 17. 4 B. 1. 5 Jewish Antiq. b. xi. c. 8.
6 In Alexandro
b Therein he tells us, that as this tree was peculiar to Judea,
he might have said to that part near Jericho, Alexander, when
he waged war there, caused an experiment to be made of the
quantity of balsam that distilled from one of these trees ; and upon
trial it was found, that, on a summer's day, so much would drop
from one as filled a coucha. — Natural History, b. xii. c. 25.
Skct. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
805
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
1 The like is to be said of the change that was made
at this juncture in the conduct of the high priest, and all
the people. For since, before this, they durst not light
against Darius for their oath's sake, and yet could now,
without any scruple, go into that very army which had
twice conquered his forces, and was then going to take
away all his dominions, they must have had such a di-
vine warrant for doing this, as the vision and admonition
which, the night before, was given to the high priest, may
be interpreted to imply. This, indeed, we own, is all
providential and miraculous : but, if we look into their
histories, whether canonical or apocryphal, we shall find,
that from the days of Abraham to the days of Josephus
himself, things of this nature were very common among
the Jews.
The short of the matter is this, — The Jews at this
time had certainly a great and eminent deliverance ;
but then the question is, AVhence did this deliverance
come ? 2 If we judge by the entire history of the Jewish
nation, we shall expect it to have been after some extra-
ordinary and providential manner. The Jewish records
tell us, that it Mas really so, and give us the particular
account of it. The heathen records say nothing at all,
either against it or about it ; and therefore we must be
left at liberty to think, that the authority of the Jewish
historian who relates it, if nothing absurd or incongruous
appears in his relation, does certainly preponderate such
a negative argument, as the bare omission of one trans-
action by some later heathen historians can amount to.
Upon the supposition then, that Alexander, by this
supernatural direction, entered Jerusalem in a peaceable
manner, his offering sacrifice to the God of Israel, whom,
according to the principles of his own religion, he might
take for the national god of the Jews, was exactly agree-
able, as appears by the several accounts of his life, to
his usual method upon the like occasions ; and his pro-
mising to grant the same immunities he had given to them
in Judea, to the Jews in Media and Babylonia, though
he had not as yet conquered these countries, was the
natural result of his having seen the prophecy of Daniel,
which, both he and the high priest fully persuaded them-
selves, that he was the person appointed by Providence
to fulfil.
Now, whoever considers the natural effects of con-
quests, what changes and revolutions they make, not only
in the constitution, but in the language likewise, of any
kingdom, and how fatally prone the very conquered are
to learn the speech, as well as imitate the manners, of
those that have brought them under subjection, will have
no occasion to wonder, that, after the reduction of Judea,
by a Grecian prince, and a prince who had distinguished
that nation above all others with his royal favours, the
Grecian language should soon grow into request, espe-
cially among the people of the better fashion, and such
as made learning their profession.
3 The Macedonians had not long made themselves
masters of Babylon, before Berosus, who is said by Tatian
to have lived in the time of Alexander, became such a
proficient in the Greek tongue, that in it he wrote the
history of the affairs of the Chaldeans, and the actions
of their kings, whereof we have some fragments in the
. M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end opb. jv.
writings of Josephus and Eusebius ; and,4 not long after
him, Manetho, a priest of Heliopolis in Egypt, in the
same language wrote his commentaries of the Egyptian
affairs, which he dedicated to this very Ptolemy Phila-
delphus, for whose use the Septuagint translation was
made. The Greek language, in short, spread itself
abroad wherever Alexander's arni3 prevailed, and soon
became the universal language of the polite and learned ;
and therefore we can hardly suppose, but that in a popu-
lous nation there should be found a competent number
of persons duly qualified to translate a short book, for
the Pentateuch a was all that they translated, and this,
every one knows, is far from being a long one, into a
language that was then in the highest vogue, from ano-
ther in which some of their doctors are said to have been
so critically, so minutely skilled, as to be able to tell
how often each letter occurred in the whole.
Demetrius Phalereus was not only a learned philoso-
pher, but a person likewise of great wisdom, justice, and
probity, as appeared by his government of Athens, 6 un-
der Cassander, one of Alexander's captains : but being
expelled from thence by the prevailing power of Deme-
trius, the son of Antigonus, and, after the death of Cas-
sander, forced to withdraw into Egypt, he was there
received with great favour and honour by Ptolemy Soter,
and became one of his chief counsellors. He dissuaded
the king from making any of his sons co-partner with
him in the kingdom, and 5 told him the inconvenience of
it: but we do not perceive from Laertius, or any other
historian, that he any ways opposed the succession of Phi-
ladelphus. The king indeed did not follow his advice in
this particular ; but still we find him in great favour and
request at court both with the father and son : and there-
fore, if, after the son's accession he fell into some dis-
grace, whatever the occasion of it might be, it is but
supposing, either that this misfortune befell him some
years after the king's accession, or that he, after a short
disgrace, was restored to favour again, and then we may
allow him space enough, and without any disparagement
to his character, to have, at one and the same time, both
the direction of the Septuagint version, and the superin-
tendency of the royal library. For whatever some may
think of the servile employment of looking after books,
it is very well known B that, at Rome, one of the prime
cardinals always holds the office of librarian to the pope,
and, as to the king's library in France, it is not long
since the archbishop of Rheims, who is by his place pri-
mate of the Gallican church, and first peer of the whole
realm, thought it no disparagement to his honour to be
appointed to the same office.
It is natural to suppose, that a prince, who himself
was a man of great learning, and had always a long train
of learned men about him, should be for making some
trial of the abilities of the Jewish interpreters, before he
1 Mr Winston's Alexander at Jerusalem.
3 Prideaux's Connection, anno 2C0.
2 Ibid.
4 Prideaux's Connect, anno 250. 5 Diod. Laertius in Phalereo.
6 Prideaux's Connection, anno 284.
a Aristeas, Aristobulus, and Philo say, that the law only was
translated by the LXX ; and Josephus in the preface to his An-
tiquities, expressly tells us, that they did not translate for Ptolemy
the whole scriptures, but the law only.
6 In acknowledgment of his just government, the Athe-
nians erected for him as many statues in their city as there were
days in a year, which was the greatest honour that ever was done
to any citizen in that place — Diog. Laertius in the Life of De-
metrius Phakrius; and Diodor. Sicul. b. xviii.
806
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 1001. A.C. 3; OR, ACCOKDINOTO HALES, A
set iheni about the work; and therefore, if the questions
which the king made, and the answers which the inter-
preters returned, be but adapted to their respective cir-
cumstances, instead of being an argument against, they
will prove a confirmation of the truth of the account
which Josephus gives us of this transaction. Now, who-
ever looks into these questions and answers, as they are
set down in Aristeas, will find that the former, which are
said to have been suggested by Demetrius, are chiefly
philosophical, such as savour of the museum or college
of learned men that had lately been erected at Alexan-
dria ; ' such as became an inquisitive heathen philoso-
pher, who, in a great measure, was grown weary of
the gross polytheism and idolatry of the Egyptians,
and, by his conversation with the Alexandrian Jews, more
inclinable to the belief that one invisible and true (iod,
whom they worshipped : and that the latter are every one
made with such a distinct regard to God and his provi-
dence, as is always uppermost both in the words and
writings of every wise and religious Jew.
The character which Appian 2 gives us of Ptolemy
Philadelphia, is, that "he was the most splendid and
magnificent of all the kings of his time in expending his
money ;" and therefore we may less wonder at his giving
so much for the redemption of the captive Jews, 3 when
we find him bestowing upon Aratus the Sicyonian, for
his having been serviceable to him in the collection of
some books and pictures, the sum of 150 talents to ad-
just the properties and settle the peace of his city ; 4 may
less wonder at his sending away the Jewish interpreters
so amply rewarded, when we find him presenting the
Roman ambassadors every one of them with a crown of
gold, and, upon their taking their leave, heaping upon
them gifts of an inestimable value; may less wonder, in
short, at his profusion in this particular, when we find
him, 5 as Atheiueus assures us, spending 2200 talents in
one pompous festival to Bacchus.
His own inclination,6 prompted by Demetrius Phala-
reus, led him to be prodigiously fond of the most com-
plete and authentic copies of any curious book. Fifteen
talents he gave for such copies of the tragedies of /Ks-
chylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and yet these were
already written in Greek and needed no translation ; 7
whereas the bare permission of a version of the Jewish
law, that nation's peculiar and inestimable treasure, was
a favour that had never been asked before, and what
upon any common application, would probably have been
denied : and as the authenticity of this version must
entirely depend on the skill and faithfulness of the
Jewish translators, since they were the only persons that
understood the Hebrew language, the king had no other
way to obtain a confidence herein, than by gaining the
entire good opinion of the high priest and people of the
Jews.
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that
though the sums bestowed upon the Jews upon account
of this translation be very large, yet considering the
king's vast liberality upon other occasions, the objection
would have been stronger, had the sums been less ; since,
i Winston's Defence of Aristeas. 2' In Pra-fat. ad Opera Hist.
J Plutarch in Arato. * Livy xiv.; Eutropius, b. ii. Diog.
* Laeitius in Strata _ s Van Dale's Dissert, de Aristea.
7 Winston's Defence of Aristeas.
M. 5110. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST. l». xiii. r. 19— KNn op 1>. xv.
upon the highest computation, his whole expense in re-
deeming the captives, in presents to the temple and altar,
and in rewards to the interpreters and high priest, being
all put together, does not amount to so much as he spent
in one festival to Bacchus.
In so great and pompous a court as this of Philadel-
phia must needs have been, we need not be solicitous
to answer the objection of his being addressed to by
way of letter, or memorial, even by persons that had
otherwise a constant access to him ; because in matters
of great importance, this, in most courts, is the common
method of proceeding even now. But this we may safely
add, that how warmly soever some modem critics have
attacked the history of this Septuagint version, yet the
ancient testimonies of such authors as have made men-
tion of it, namely, of Alexander Polyhistor, s a learned
heathen, who was greatly inquisitive about the affairs
of the Jews ; of Aristobulus, the peripatetic philosopher,
and tutor to Ptolemy Philopater ; of Philo, who lived
at Alexandria, the very place where this version was
made ; of Tertullian, one of the most accurate writers
of Christian antiquity ; of Eusebius, a learned and faith-
ful ecclesiastical historian ; of St Jerome, a vehement
enemy to this very version, as compared with the Hebrew
copy; and of several others, that might be produced,
are a confirmation of what Josephus (a priest of that
very temple, to which the presents from Philadelphia
were sent) relates concerning it, and such strongholds
and fastnesses, as the maintainers of its antiquity have
not yet been prevailed upon to give up.
CHAP. III.
■Of the Profane History during this
period.
Most of the historical facts in profane authors, that had
any relation to the sacred records, we have, in the course
of this history, endeavoured to abridge, and reduce into
notes, at their proper periods ; and have nothing more
now to do, but only to take notice of some extraordinary
and remarkable events in the Persian, Grecian, and
Roman empires, down to our Saviour's time, which did
not then so properly fall in with our design.
After the dissolution of the ancient Assyrian monarchy,
by the death of Sardanapalus, there arose up two lesser
empires in its stead ; one founded by Arbaces, governor
of Media, and the other by Belesis, governor of Baby-
lon, the two principal commanders who headed the con-
spiracy, whereby the former empire was brought to an
end.
Arbaces, who in scripture ? is called Tiglath Pileser,
had the larger share of empire, and therefore fixed his
seat at Nineveh, where the former Assyrian kings used to
have their residence, and there governed his new erected
empire for nineteen years. He was succeeded by his
son Salmanassar ; Salmanassar by Senacherib ; Senach-
erib by Esarhaddon ; Esarhaddon by Suosduchinus, in
lu the book of Judith called Nabuchodonosor ; Suosdu-
chinus by Chyniladanus ; Chyniladanus by Nabopolassar ;
and Nabopolassar by his son Nebuchadnezzar the Great,
°2Ki
8 Whiston's Defence of Aristeas.
;s xv. 29, and xvi. 7, 10. :* Juditl
i i. 1.
Sect. V.]
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807
A.M. 4001. A. C. 3: OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5410. A. C. I.JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— r.ND of b. xv.
of whom we have said so many things ; Nebuchadnezzar
the Great was succeeded by his son Evilmerodach ;
Evilmerodach by Neroglissor ; and Neroglissor by Bel-
shazzar ; in whom the united empire of the Assyrians
and Babylonians terminated.
Belesis, who in scripture is called "■ Baladan, took up
his residence at Babylon, and was succeeded by his son
Merodach ; but who were his successors, we have no
account to be depended on, only we know, that Esar-
haddon, king of Assyria, conquered the kingdom of
Babylon, and that he and his successors Suosduchinus
and Chyniladanus possessed it, until Nabopolassar,
governor of Babylon, and general of the Assyrian forces,
joining his arms with Astyages, the son of Cyaxares
king of Media, slew Chyniladanus, took and destroyed
Nineveh, and translated the empire to Babylon.
After the terrible blow which Sennacherib's forces re-
ceived in Judea, the Medes, understanding in what a
low condition he was, returned to Nineveh, immediately
shook oft* his yoke, and made Dejoces, who in scripture
is called Arphaxad, their king; who, having beautified
and enlarged Ecbatana, made it the royal seat of his
kingdom, and there reigned for fifty-three years. He
was succeeded by his son Phraortes ; Phraortes, by
Cyaxares 1.; Cyaxares I., by Astyages; Astyages, by
Cyaxares II., called in scripture Darius the Mede, who
conquered Belshazzar, and began to lay the foundation
of the Persian monarchy, which, during his life, was
called the empire of the Medes and Persians, but, after
his death, was united by Cyrus."
Cyrus succeeded his father Cambyses in the kingdom
of Persia, and his uncle Cyaxares, in the kingdom of
the Medes, and empire of Babylon, by this means found-
ed the second great monarchy, which was the Persian.
His wars with the Assyrians, his defeat of Croosus king
of Lydia, his wonderful taking of Babylon, and obliging
all the east to submit to his power, are subjects that we
have already touched upon, either in our history or
notes : but there are some things in his Mar with the
Scythians, might we but credit their story, that justly
deserve our observation.
2 At the time when he made his expedition into Scy-
thia, Tomyris was queen thereof, a woman of great
courage and bravery of mind ; for, though she could
have hindered Cyrus's army from passing the river
Araxes, she permitted them to do it, in confidence of
fighting them with more advantage within her own domin-
ions, and of making their retreat more difficult, by their
having the river on their backs. Cyrus took this oppor-
tunity to pass the river, and, having marched a little into
the country, and pitched his camp, the next day he
abandoned it as if he had fled for fear, leaving plenty of
wine, and other provisions behind him. Tomyris having
intelligence of this, sent her son, with the third part of
her forces, in pursuit of the enemy ; but when he came
to their camp, as if he had been sent to a banquet, not a
battle, he suffered his men, who were strangers to that
1 Isa. xxxix. 1. 2 Justin. b. i. c. 8.
a This series of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Median kings is
not perfectly correct. Such parts of it as may seem to affect the
credit of the Scripture History have been already corrected in
different notes on the preceding books of this work; and those
who are desirous to see the whole adjusted and rendered consis-
tent with itself, and with unquestionable eras, may have recourse
to Dr Hales's Analysis of Ancient Chronology. — JSp, Glciy. Ed,
kind of liquor, to intoxicate themselves with wine to su.h
a degree, that when Cyrus marched his army back again
in the night time, and came upon them, he found them
incapable of fighting, or of making any resistance, and
therefore put them all to the sword.
Upon the loss of so "Teat an army, and, what more
nearly concerned her, the loss of her only son, Tomyris
did not betake herself to tears, the usual refuge of
women upon such occasions, but cast about in her mind
how she might revenge herself of the enemy ; which, in
a short time, she did by the like stratagem, and with the
like success. For, observing that the Persians were
now grown secure by reason of their late victory, she
retired before them with her army, as if she had been
afraid to venture the decision of a battle, until she had
drawn Cyrus unawares into a defile, where, having placed
an ambuscade in the mountains, she killed two hundred
thousand of his men, insomuch that there was not one
left to carry home the news, and himself upon the spot.
Thus fell this great prince, in the seventieth year of his
age, though Xenophon, and from him other historians,
are clearly of opinion, that he died peaceably in his a
bed.
b Xenophon adds, (b. viii.) that finding his death approaching,
he called his nobility together, his two sons, Cambyses and Ta-
naoxares, to Ins bedside, and after a long speech concerning the
immortality of the soul, and rewards or punishments consequent
upon every man's good or ill conduct in this life, he exhorted his
sons, by the strongest arguments, to a perpetual concord and
agreement, and uttered many other things, which make it not
improbable, that he received the knowledge of the true God
from Daniel, when he governed Shushan in Persia. Strabo as-
sures us, (b. xv.) that he was buried in a city called Pasagardes,
which himself had built, and where his monument, even in his
time, was with this inscription, " O man, whoever thou art, and
from whatever place you come, for 1 was not ignorant that you
would come here; I am Cyrus, who gave laws to the Persians;
do not envy me this little heap of earth with which my body is
covered o'er." This very tomb, Alexander the Great, according
to Q. Curtius, opened, either in hopes of some treasure, which
he imagined might have been there deposited, or with a desire
rather to do honour to his remains: for so we are told, that he
caused the coffin, wherein his body lay, to be covered with his
own garment, and a crown of gold to be set upon it: all which
gives credit to the account we have in Xenophon, but derogates
not a little from Herodotus, who leaves his body in the hands of
Tomyris. — Raleigh's Hktory, b. iii. c. 6. [The whole story of
the invasion of Scythia by Cyrus is rejected as false, by Dr Hales,
who produces, lrom Scripture, the Persian writers, Xenophon, and
others, such evidence in support of his own opinion, that Cyrus,
far from being a mad conqueror, thirsting for blood, was revered
as the father of his people, as is much more than sufficient to
counterbalance the testimony of Herodotus and Justin. " Hero-
dotus viewed Cyrus with aversion as the enslaver of his country.
And this antipathy biased an historian, elsewhere so candid and
impartial, to prefer a worse account before the better, of which
lie was not ignorant, and which was afterwards furnished by Xe-
nophon, tacitly vindicating the character of his hero from the
aspersions of Herodotus.'' — "The Persian writers relate, that
after a long and bloody war Khesru (Cyrus; subdued the empire
of Turen. and made the city of Balk, in Choresen, a royal resi-
dence, to keep in order his new subjects; that he repaid every
family in Persia the amount of their war taxes, out of the im-
mense spoils that he had acquired by his conquests; that he en-
deavoured to promote peace and harmony between the Turenians
and [remans; that he regulated the pay of his soldiers, reformed
civil and religious abuses throughout the provinces ; and at length,
after a long and glorious reign, resigned his crown to his son Lo-
horesh (Cambyses), and retired to solitude, saying, ' that he had
lived long enough for his own glory, and that it was now time to
devote the remainder of his days to God.' " That Cyrus was a
monotheist; that he was well acquainted with the prophet Da-
niel; and that the God whom he worshipped was the Lord, the
808
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A
He was succeeded by his son Canibyses, and Camby-
ses by the Magian, who, under the false name of Smerdis,
usurped the throne, and brought discredit upon the whole
sect, until its character came to be restored again by
the management and reformation of Zoroastres.
At what time this Zoroastres, or Zardusht, as the Per-
sians call him, lived, there is a wide difference both
among the Greek and oriental writers ; since some of
them will have it, that he lived many years before the
flood, others in the days of Abraham, and others again
not before the reign of Darius the son of Hystaspes.
Moses, according to the sentiments of several learned
men, speaks of the pyra?a, or temples consecrated to
the worship of fire, when he brings in God threatening
the Israelites, ' ' to overthrow their high places, and de-
stroy their chaminim, or places appointed for the worship
of lire, and to cast their carcasses upon the carcasses of
their idols ;' a although they are certainly mistaken who
think, that the fire which he ordered to be kept always
burning upon the altar of the Lord, was in imitation of
the lire of the Magians.
If then we suppose that Zoroastres was the first author
of the worship of fire, we must acknowledge him more
ancient than Moses, but if we look upon him only as the
reformer or restorer of it, though we cannot tell the pre-
cise time when he flourished, it must not be long after the
Magians fell into disgrace, and may therefore very pro-
perly be thought to be in the reign of Darius Hystaspes.
He was a man of a mean and obscure parentage ; * by
1 Ezek. vi. 4, &c.
God of heaven, who ' had given to him all the kingdoms of the
earth, and charged him,' as he said himself, ' to build him a
house at Jerusalem,' there seems to be no room for doubt.]
Hales's Analyses, vol. iv. second edition. — Bp. Gleig. — Ed.
a That the worship of the sun — the source of light and heat,
was more ancient than Moses there can be no doubt; but that
the worship of the element of fire or of fires burning on earth was
more ancient can never be proved by this text of Ezekiel. They
were the idolatrous Jews of his own age that the prophet thus ad-
dressed in the name of Jehovah ; and they certainly had idols or
images, perhaps indeed images of the sun, which the prophet
assured them should be broken ; but the Persian worshippers of
fire or light allowed no other images of their god. No ground
therefore is furnished by this text from which an argument can
be drawn to ascertain the era of Zoroaster. — Bp. Gleig. Ed.
b To this purpose we may observe, that most of his reforma-
tions in the old religion of the Magians are taken either from the
ancient writings or the ancient usages of the Jews. For whereas
Moses heard God speak to him out of a flame of fire in the bush,
Zoroastres pretended that he in like manner heard God speak to
him, at the time when he was taken up to heaven. Whereas the
Jews had a visible shechinah of the divine presence among them,
resting over the mercy-seat in the holy of holies, unto which they
turned themselves when they prayed ; Zoroastres taught his dis-
Ciples, that in the sun, and in the sacred fires in their temples,
God more especially dwelt; and therefore he obliged them to ofler
up all their pi ayers with their faces turned to both these. Whereas
the Jews had a sacred fire which came down from heaven upon
their altar of burnt offerings, which as long as Solomon's temple
stood, was preserved with the utmost care from extinguishing ;
Zoroastres pretended, that when he was in heaven, he brought
some of that holy fire out of which God spake unto him: and
therefore he enjoined that it should be kept with diligent care,
and that all the fires on the altars of the new erected fire temples,
should at first be lighted only from thence : and whereas the
Jews were very nice in using no wood on the altar of their tem-
ple, but what was reputed clean, and had it therefore all barked
and examined, before it w'as laid on, and, when it was laid on,
allowed of no bellows to blow it, but left it to kindle and flame out
of itself; Zoroastres ordained his followers, in relation to the sacred
. M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end of k xv.
birth and education very probably a Jew, and, as some
suppose, a servant to the prophet Daniel ; because he
was certainly a man of great learning, and thoroughly
acquainted with the books of Moses. As soon as he took
upon him the prophetic office, he retired into a cave, and
there lived a long time as a recluse, pretending to be
abstracted from all worldly considerations, and to be
given wholly to prayers and divine meditations. In
this retirement he composed the book, c wherein all his
pretended revelations are contained. 2 The first part of
it contains a liturgy, which the Magians, in all their ora-
tories and fire temples, make use of to this day. The
rest is an historical account of the life, actions, and pro-
phecies of its author, the several articles and branches
of his superstition, together with rules and exhortations
to morality, wherein he is very pressing and exact, except
his allowing of incest ; and the whole being interspersed
with several things taken out of the Old Testament,
abundantly shows that his original was from the Jews.
Upon leaving his retirement, he went into India among
the Brachmans, where, having learned all their knowledge
in mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy, he
came back, and taught his disciples these sciences, which
gained him so great a reputation, that, for many years
after, a learned man and a Magian became equivalent
terms. Nay, he pretended, that, once upon a time, he
was taken up into heaven to be instructed in those doc-
trines which he was to deliver unto men ; that there he
heard God speak out of the midst of a great and bright
flame of fire ; and for this reason he taught his followers
that fire was the truest representation of the divine pre-
sence, and the sun, as the most perfect fire, the more im-
mediate throne of his glory ; that of the fire from whence
God spake, he upon his return brought some with him,
and placed it on the altar of the first fire-temple he
erected ; from whence, as they say, it was propagated
to all the rest, and this is the reason they give for keeping
it so carefully, and treating it with so much superstition.
Having thus qualified himself to be a prophet, he made
his first appearance in Media, in the city of Ziz, say some,
or in Ecbatan, now Taurus, according to others ; where
the principal doctrines that he professed, as a refine-
ment upon what the old Magians maintained, were these,
— " That there was one Supreme Being, independent,
and self-existing from all eternity ; that under him there
2 Prideaux's Connection, 486.
fires of their temples, to observe both these particulars, com-
manding them to bark all their wood, and use no other means for
the kindling it up into a flame but the pouring oil, and leaving
it to the blasts of the open air: and that he should, in so many
singular and unobvious things, imitate the Jewish religion in the
scheme of his reformations, it can hardly be imagined, without
supposing, that at first he had his education in it ; nor is it im-
probable, that if, as some think, he was the disciple of Daniel, his
seeing that great and good man arrive at such a height ot dig-
nity, by being a true prophet of God, might put him upon the
thoughts of being a false one, in hopes that, if he acted his part
well, he might obtain to himself the like advancement. — Light-
f out's Temple Service; Hyde's Religion of the Ancient Persians;
and Prideaux's Connection , anno 486.
c This book is called Zendavesta, and by contraction, Zenda,
which signifies a fire-hindler, such as a tinder box is with us;
and this fantastical name the impostor gave it, because, as he
pretended, all that would read this book, and meditate thereon,
might from thence kindle in their hearts the fire of all true love
to God, and his holy religion.— Prideaux's Connection, anno 486.
Sbct. V.]
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were two angels, one the angel of light, who is the author
and director of all good, and the other the angel of dark-
ness, who is the author and director of all evil, and that
these two out of the mixture of light and darkness, made
all things ; that they are in perpetual struggle with each
other, and that where the angel of light prevails, there the
most is good, where the angel of darkness, there the most
is evil; that this struggle shall continue unto the end of the
world, when there shall be a general resurrection, a day
of judgment, and a retribution to every one according to
his works; and that after this, the angel of darkness and
his disciples shall go also into a world of their own, where
they shall sutler, in everlasting darkness, the punish-
ments of their evil deeds ; and the angel of light and his
disciples, shall go also into a world of their own, where
they shall receive, in everlasting light, the reward due
to their good deeds, whereupon they shall remain sepa-
rated for ever, and light and darkness are to be no more
mixed together to all eternity." And all this, the re-
mainder of that sect, which is now in Persia and India,
do, after so many ages, still hold without any variation,
even to this day.
After Zoroastres had acted the part of a prophet in
Media, and there settled all things according to his inten-
tions, he removed from thence into Bactria, the most
eastern province of Persia, and their settling in the city
of Balch, which lies on the river Oxus, in the confines
of Persia, under the protection of Hystaspes the father
of Darius, he soon spread his imposture through all that
province with success. From Bactria he went next to
the royal court at Susa, where he managed his preten-
sions with so much address and insinuation, that he made
Darius likewise a proselyte, and, from his example,
drew over the courtiers, nobility, and great men of that
city into the same profession : but when, upon his re-
turn into Balch, he attempted the like upon Agarsp,
king of the oriental Scythians, and a zealous Sabian,
and pretended an authority from Darius to that purpose,
the Scythian prince resented it with such indignation,
that he invaded Bactria with an army, and, having there
defeated the forces that opposed him, slew Zoroastres,
with all the priests of his patriarchal church, amounting
to the number of eighty persons, and demolished all the
fire-temples in the province ; but it was not long before
Darius a fell upon him, and revenged the injury. 4
a After he had overthrown him with a great slaughter, and
driven him out of the province, he rebuilt all the fire-temples,
and especially that of Balch, which, as it was the patriarchal
temple of the sect, he failed not to erect with a grandeur suitable
to its dignity, and had it called after las own name. For he was
a zealous promoter of tins religion, and after the death of its
author, continued to propagate it with the same ardour as before.
— Pridcau.v's Connection, anno 486.
b According to Dr Hales there were two Zoroasters — the
former contemporary with Abraham, and king of Bactria; the
latter a disciple of the prophet Daniel, who flourished in the
reign of Darius Hystaspes. Of the religion taught by the former,
he speaks in terms of the highest praise, as a sublime system of
pure atheism, similar to the religion of Abraham and the other
patriarchs of the Old Testament; and the object of the teaching
of the latter, was to bring back the religion of Persia to its ori-
ginal purity, by the expunging from it the corruptions which
had been introduced into it from Zebiism. All this seems to be
very probable : but what the modern Persian writers, together
with Abulfaragi, say of his foretelling the precise time of the
birth of a Divine Child in Palestine, and his doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead, and a future state of rewards and punish-
This Darius was one of the seven lords who slew the
false Smerdis ; and by an artifice he obtained the king-
dom of Persia ; but it was by the cruel policy of Zopy-
rus, that he made himself master of the city of Babylon.
This city having for many years, during the Babylonish
empire, been mistress of the east, and domineered over
all its neighbouring countries, could not bear the subjec-
tion it was fallen under to the Persians ; especially since
the removal of the imperial seat to Shushan, whereby its
wealth and grandeur were much diminished. Taking
the advantage therefore of the late revolution which had
happened in the Persian empire, the Babylonians resolv-
ed to set up for themselves ; and accordingly, having
stored the city with a sufficient quantity of arms and
provisions, in the fifth year of the reign of this Darius,
they broke out into an open revolt.
1 The city, by reason of the strength and height of its
walls, was impregnable against all storms, batteries,
and assaults ; and as it was furnished with provisions
for a great many years, and had large quantities of
void ground within the walls, from whence it might
annually be supplied with more, could never have been
starved into a surrender, and must have worn out Darius
and all his army, had it not been for a stratagem of
Zopyrus, one of his commanders.
The army had now lain before the city a year and
eight months, without having made any great progress
in the siege, which raised the indignation of Zopyrus to
such a degree, that, having cut oft' his nose and ears,
and mangled his body all over with stripes, in this con-
dition he tied to the besieged, and feigning to them that
he had suffered all this by the cruel usage of Darius, he
thereby insinuated himself so far into their confidence,
that at length they made him the chief commander of
their forces, which trust he made use of to deliver the
city, which could not otherwise have been taken, into
his master's hand ; and, for this remarkable piece of ser-
vice, was rewarded with the highest honours that his
prince could heap on him, all his life after.
By this hardy stratagem Darius recovered the city of
Babylon ; but in his war with the Greeks he was so far
from having any good success, that, 2 at the battle of
Marathon, his vast army received a total overthrow by
Miltiades, prince of the Thracian Chersonesus, and his
two generals, Dotis and Artaphernes, were forced to
return home witli baffle and disgrace.
He was succeeded by his son Xerxes, who, 3 after ten
i Prideaux's Connection, anno 516.
2 Herod, b. vi. : Justin, b. ii. c. 9. 3 Herod, b. ii. ; Diod. Sic. b. ii.
ments, much more perspicuous than any thing on the subject
that is to be found in the Old Testament, is unquestionably a
legend forged since the general propagation of Christianity.
This led Warburton to deny the very existence of the second
Zoroaster, and to treat with contempt, as a set of fablers, all the
Persian writers by whom he is mentioned ; but this was surely
going too far. That the Seilder and Zendaviste are unworthy of
the Persian reformer, or of regard, is indeed true ; but, as Dr
Hales well observes, the rejection of such spurious productions,
as well as of the legends of Abulfaragi and others, by no means
invalidates the actual existence of such a reformer of the Magian
religion, as Zerdusht or the younger Zoroaster; for what ancient
teacher of religion has there been, of whom fables have not beeD
told in the course of ages? In all probability Zoroaster himself
never pretended to have gone to heaven for the sacred fire, of
which he may have conceived the idea from Daniel's account of
the sacred fire among the Jews. — Bp. Gleig. — Ed.
5 K
810
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book VII.
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3; OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19-end of b. xv.
years' preparation, renewed the war with the Greeks ;
but with worse success than his father: for, at the
straits of Thermopylae, Leonidas, the king of the
Lacedemonians, with a handful of men, slew twenty
thousand of his forces: at the straits of Salamis,
Themistocles, the general of the Athenians, ruined the
greatest part of his fleet : in Sicily, Gelo, the king there-
of, made great havoc among his confederates the Car-
thaginians : at Platea, Pausanias slew his general Mar-
donius, and cut his army to pieces ; and at Mycale,
Leotychides both vanquished his troops by land, and
burned the remainder of his fleet ; so that never was there
a man who set out with so great an armament both by
sea and land, and returned in so abject and disgraceful
a manner. He was succeeded by his son Artaxerxes ;
Artaxerxes by Xerxes II.; Xerxes II. by his brother
Soo'dianus ; and Sogdianus by his brother Ochus, who is
commonly called Darius Nothus. Ochus was succeeded
by Artaxerxes II., surnamed Mnenion ; Artaxerxes II.
by another Ochus, who took upon him the name of
Artaxerxes III.; this Ochus by Arses; and Arses by
Darius Codomanus ; in whom the Persian monarchy,
terminating by Alexander the Great, was translated to
Greece.
The army which Alexander carried into Asia, accord-
ing to the highest computation, amounted to no more
than thirty thousand foot, and five thousand horse ; and
yet, with these few forces, he not only attempted, but
accomplished likewise the conquest of the whole Persian
empire, and added India likewise to his acquisitions :
but what was the most remarkable thing in his expedi-
tion is, that he set out upon it with no more than seventy
talents, which was scarce enough to supply the army
with necessaries for thirty days ; but, as he trusted in
providence, providence did not fail him. In a few days,
at the river Granieus, he encountered Darius, and, having
vanquished his troops, though they were five times more
in number, he thereby got possession of a great part of
his treasure, and all the provinces of the Lesser Asia.
Not long after this, at Issus in Cilicia, he gave him
another defeat; where, having taken all his camp, ba»-
and baggage, with his mother, wife, and children, he
left a hundred thousand Persians dead upon the field
of battle : and about two years after, not far from Arbela
he gave him a final overthrow : for there, with no more
than fifty thousand men, he vanquished the vast army of
the Persians, which consisted of above twenty times as
many, and thereby determined the fate of the Persian
and established the third great monarchy, which Mas the
Grecian, in the person of Alexander. It lasted no
longer than six years and ten months : for, after his
- death, it was divided among his generals, and, as Judea
lay between Syria and Egypt, according as their arms
prevailed, it was generally under the dominion of one
of these, until the Roman power began to exert itself.
The Romans, having built their city, and out of the
neighbouring villages ' (as we related the story before)
furnished themselves with wives, for seven successions
lived under the dominion of kings ; but in the family of
Tarquin, which had justly incurred the people's displea-
sure, " that form of government was quite dissolved.
1 bee p. 675.
a To make his way to the throne, he murdered his father-
Many, however, and fierce were the wars which, both in
their regal and consular state, the Romans waged with
the nations round about them, but their conquests were
confined to the bounds of Italy only ; nor was the glory
of their name much known to foreign nations, until the
war which they had with Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, gave
them an opportunity b to signalize their bravery and
qreatuess of mind, which excited Ptolemy Philadelphus,
then king of Egypt, to send them an embassy, congratu-
lating their successes, and desiring to enter into alliance
with them.
2 To make a return of the like respects, the Romans
next year sentQ. Fabius Gurges, Cn. FabiusPictor, and
Q. Ogulinus, their ambassadors to the Egyptian court,
whose behaviour, in that capacity, was very remarkable ;
for when the king, having invited them to supper, in the
conclusion of the entertainment, presented each of them
2 Livy, b. xiv. ; Eutropius, b. ii.; Valerius Maximus, b. iv.
in-law Servius Tullius, and, upon his ascending it, put all his
friends to death. The aflairs of the state he managed by him-
self alone, slighted the senate, diminished their authority, cut
off several of them upon frivolous pretences, and seized upon
their estates. Among these Marcus Junius was one, who left
behind him a son named Lucius Junius: but he, fearing the fate
that his father and brother had undergone, counterfeited the fool
(and was thence called Brutus) so very artfully, that he was taken
by Tarquin into his house to make his children sport. In the
mean time, Sextus, one of Tarquin's sons, inflamed with the
beauty of Lucretia, got privately to Collatia, where she resided,
and ravished her; whereupon she sent for her father from Rome,
and her husband Collatinus from the camp, which was then
before Ardiea, desiring them to bring along with them some of
their particular friends. Publius Valerius came with her father
Lucretius, and Lucius Junius Brutus with her husband; to
whom, as soon as they were arrived, she related the whole story,
and then with a poniard stabbed herself to the heart. Upon the
sight of this they were all filled with grief and indignation: but,
to their great surprise, Brutus, throwing off the disguise of his
folly, declared his resolution, and made them swear upon the
bloody poniard to assist him in revenging this, and the other
wickednesses of Tarquin and his family, by expelling him and
them from the government, which accordingly they did, thereby
putting an end to the regal power at Rome, and turning it into
a consular state Hearne's System, b. iii.
b One great instance of this appeared in the course of this war,
which is thus related by Plutarch: — When Fabricius was consul,
and at the head of his army, an unknown persou came into the
camp, and delivered him a letter from king Pyrrhus's chief
physician, offering to take him off by poison, and so end the war
without any farther hazard to the Romans, if he might have a
reward proportionable to his service. Fabricius, enraged at the
villain/ of the man, and disposing the other consul to the same
opinion, sent dispatches immediately to Pyrrhus to caution him
against the treason. His letter was to this effect: — " Caius Fa-
bricius, and Quintus /Emilius, consuls of the Romans, to Pyr-
rhus the king, health. You seem to have a very ill judgment
both of your friends and enemies. You will understand by this
letter, which was sent to us, that you are in war with honest
men, and trust knaves and villains: but we have not discovered
this to you to insinuate into your favour, but lest your ruin might
bring a reproach upon us, as if we had ended this war by treach-
ery, when we were not able to do it by our courage and virtue."
When Pyrrhus had read the letter, and made strict inquiry into
the treason, he caused the physician to be executed, and, in
acknowledgment of this civility of the Romans, sent to Rome
the prisoners without ransom, and again employed Cineas to
negotiate a peace for him. The Romans, who were above re-
ceiving from their enemy a recompence for not having been
guilty of the vilest injustice, disdained to accept of the prisoners,
without returning to him an equal number of Samnites and Tar-
entines ; but, as for the peace, they would not sutler Cineas so
much as to mention it, until Pyrrhus had removed his arms and
forces out of Italy, and sailed back to Epirus in the same ships
that brought him over.— Plut. on Pyrrhus.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
811
A. Mi. 4001. A. C. 3; OK, ACCOKDING TO HALES, A.
with a crown of gold, they accepted of the crowns, upon
account of the honour that was done them, but, next
morning, they crowned therewith the statues of the king
that stood in the public places of the city ; and when
again, at their audience of leave, he presented them with
very valuable gifts, they took them indeed for fear that
their refusal should give offence ; but as soon as they
were returned to Rome, they delivered them all into the
public treasury, before they appeared in the senate to
give an account of their embassy, whereby they declared,
that they desired no other advantage from the service of
the public, than the honour of discharging it well.
This spirit of moderation and disinterestedness, while
it continued in the state, and the many great instances of
invincible courage and resolution, which upon all occa-
sions they showed, made the Romans of great note in
the world, and after the defeat of the Carthaginians in
the second Punic war, they became indeed the terror of
all other nations.
Hannibal was certainly the most dangerous enemy
that ever Rome had. As soon as war was declared be-
tween these two states, he left Spain, where he then was,
and at the head of fifty thousand foot and nine thousand
horse, marched directly towards Italy. He crossed the
Pyrenoean mountains into Gaul, crossed the Rhone, and
came to the foot of the Alps, which, in fifteen days' time
he got over, but not without much danger and difficulty,
as well as the loss of half his army. When he got foot-
ing in Italy, he defeated Scipio, one of the Roman con-
suls, at Pavia, and his colleague Sempronius, in another
action near Trebia. Near the lake Thrasymene he cut
off the Roman army, and their consul Flaminius, even
after he had destroyed a detachment of forty thousand,
which the other consul Servilius had sent to his assistance ;
but in the famous battle at Cannae, he made the greatest
slaughter of them ; for therein he defeated the whole
army, and slew iEmilius, one of their consuls ; killed
50,000 men, two questors, twenty-one tribunes, eighty of
the senatorial!, and of the equestrian order a much
greater number.
This last defeat caused a dreadful consternation in
Rome, but did not abate the people's courage, who still
refused to hearken to any overtures of peace ; till, having
sent Scipio the Younger into Africa, they by that means
gave the Carthaginians so much disturbance, that they
were forced to recall Hannibal, who, coming to a
decisive battle, was routed by the Romans, and his
countrymen forced to sue for a peace, which was granted
them upon terms very honourable and advantageous to
Rome.
After this peace with the Romans, Hannibal ] lived
quietly at Carthage for the space of six years ; but, being
under a suspicion of holding correspondence with Anti-
ochus, surnamed the Great, (between whom and the Ro-
mans there was at that time a misunderstanding,) and of
plotting with him to bring a new war upon Italy, some
of his enemies at Rome procured ambassadors to be sent
to Carthage, in order to inquire into the matter, and if
they found any reason for it, to have him delivered into
their hands ; which when Hannibal understood, he made
his escape before the ambassadors had time to deliver
1 Livy, b. xxxiii.; Cornelias Nepos, on Hannibal; Justin, b.
xxxi c. 2, S
M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST.b. xiii. c. 19— end OFb. xv.
their message, and put himself under the protection of
Antiochus.
* Antiochus, at this time, was in debate with himself
on the point of entering into war with the Romans, but
at the coming of Hannibal he soon determined for war ;
and had he taken Hannibal's advice of carrying it into
the bowels of Italy, he might probably have met with a
better event ; a but his resolution was to begin it in
Greece, where being shamefully defeated in every en-
gagement, both by sea and land, he was forced at last
to send an embassy to the Roman consuls, desiring con-
ditions of peace, which were granted him upon these
hard terms : — That he should pay the whole expenses of
the war, which were estimated at fifteen thousand talents
of Euba^a ; 4 should quit all Asia on that side the mount
Taurus, and deliver up Hannibal the Carthaginian, and
Thoas the JEtolian, as the chief incendiaries of the war :
but as soon as these heard that a treaty was begun, they
easily foresaw what would be the result of it, and there-
fore both took care c to get out of the way before it came
to a conclusion.
1 Livy, b. xxxvii.; Justin, b. xxxi. c. 8; Appian. de Syriacis.
a Antiochus's army is said to have consisted of seventy thou-
sand foot, twelve 'thousand horse, and fifty-four elephants: where-
as all the Roman forces amounted to no more than thirty thou-
sand, and yet Antiochus was totally overthrown: for in the field
of battle he lost fifty thousand foot, and four thousand horse ;
fourteen bundled were taken prisoners, and himself with much
difficulty escaped to Sardis. — Appian. in Syriacis; Livy, b. xxxvii.
and Justin, b. xxxi. c. 7.
b There is a difference between Livy and Polybius in this
matter; for whereas in Polybius the words are, that the money
to be paid to the Romans should be agyuoiau 'Attikcu a^'ia-rco,
Livy, mistaking the meaning of the Greek phrase, rendered
it Attic talents; whereas Polybius meant it only the Attic
standard; for as the Eubsean talent was the greatest weight, so
the Attic money was the finest silver of any in Greece, and by
this treaty the money was to be paid according to both, that is,
the Romans, having conquered Antiochus, not only obliged him
to pay this vast sum for his peace, but also made him pay it in
talents of the highest weight, and of silver of the best and finest
standard in all Greece. — Prideau.vs Connection, anno 290.
c What became of the /Etolian we are not concerned to in-
quire; but Hannibal, after he was deserted by Antiochus, fled
to Prusias, king of Bithyuia; where, being slighted by him, and
in danger of being delivered to the Romans, it is generally said
that he put an end to his days, for which purpose he carried poi-
son always about him concealed under the stone of his ring.
This is the account we have in Livy, b. xxxix. c. 51 ; and what
Plutarch and the Roman satirist dots more than allude to. — " O
glory, what art thou ! The same man, (namely, Hannibal,) is van-
quished, and flies precipitantly into exile, where he sits, the great
and wonderful suppliant ! beside the king's tent, until it pleases
the Bithynian tyrant to protect him. Neither swards nor stones,
nor darts, but that ring, the avenger of Camee, and the puuisher
of so much slaughter, shall put an end to that soul which once
confounded all human affairs." — Juv. Sat. x. He was born a
soldier; and a continual exercise of arms made him a great cap-
tain. Hi was always just in his schemes, and immense in hi*
views: had an admirable genius at hitting the true means for the
execution of his designs, anil the greatest artifice in acting with-
out being discovered. He was infinite in expedients, and as
skilful in recovering himself out of danger, as he was in drawing
others into it. But then he was a person of no fidelity, no re-
ligion, no humanity, though he had the art of putting on the ap-
pearance of all these virtue--, whenever lie thought it subservient
to his interest. — J'ertut's Revolution of the Human Republic.
[The author seems to have founded his opinion of Hannibal trom
the Roman writers, who have loaded his memory with every im-
putation of cruelty and perfidy. It is however evident that the
Romans were actuated by feelings of the most bitter hostility
and resentment against Hannibal, and were therefore little in-
812
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 40:1. A. C.3; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
a Next to the Carthaginian war, the longest and most
obstinate that the Romans ever had, was the war which
Mithridates king of Pontus, in the reign of Alexander
Jannams at Jerusalem, waged with them. For, having
very unjustly seized on the kingdoms of Cappadocia
and Bithynia, when the Romans interposed for the sur-
render of them to the persons to whom they had decreed
them, he refused to obey, and thereupon hostilities en-
sued. l For some time at first Mithridates was success-
ful ; but b was very cruel, while he had the superiority ;
till, having sent into Greece an army of three hundred
and ten thousand men, under the command of three of
his best generals, Sylla alone, with no more than fifteen
thousand foot, and fifteen hundred horse, vanquished
them all in several battles; and Fimbria, the next year,
With another Roman army, pressed Mithridates himself
so very close, that inPatana, a maritime town in J^tolia,
he was in imminent danger of being made a prisoner, 2
which terrified him to such a degTee that he sued for
peace, which, upon these conditions, was granted him : —
" That he should restore Bithynia to Nicomedes, and
Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, and to the Romans what-
ever he had taken from them in the late war ; that he
should content himself with his paternal kingdom of
Pontus, yield to the Romans seventy of his ships ; and
pay them three thousand talents for the charge of the
war."
1 Plutarch on Sylla; Appian on Mithridates; and Velleius
Paterculus, b. ii. c. 23.
2 Ibid.
clined to do justice to his character. It cannot be denied that he
was one of the most consummate masters of the art of war re-
corded in ancient history, and although profuse of human blood,
and but little scrupulous as to the manner in which he accom-
plished his ends, he showed on several occasions that he was not
destitute of noble and generous sentiments. For a particular ac-
count of this illustrious general, and a vindication of his character
from the aspersions of Livy, see Hooke's Roman History.] Ed.
a The war with Jugurtha intervened indeed, but this was not
of any long continuance, nor is it any where referred to in the
sacred history: however, it may not be improper to mention thus
much of it : — That this Jugurtha was nephew to Micipsa, king of
Nnmidia, who left behind him two sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal,
both of whom Jugurtha murdered, and then usurped their king-
dom; that when the Romans were for calling him to an account
for all this wickedness, he for a long while bribed the commis-
sioners and generals that were sent against him, till at length
being defeated first by Metellus, and afterwards by Marius" he
was betrayed by Bocchus king of Mauritania, who was both' his
ally and father-in-law: that being thus betrayed and seized, he
was laden with chains, and given up to Sylla, who delivered him
into the hands of the general Marias, and he, in the triumph
that was given him, dragged him like a slave at the wheels of
hi-; chariot: and that, after this ceremony was over, he was led
to prison, stripped of his royal robes, and then pushed naked into
a dungeon, where he was condemned to be starved to death.
Sidlust'x Jugurthine War.
b To this purpose historians have observed, that when, upon
a defeat given the Roman forces, he had taken Manlius Auuilius
and QuintUS Oppius, the two generals, prisoners, he not only
treated them with the utmost indignity, but afterwards with
equal cruelty tortured them to death ; and that, finding a great
number of Romans and Italians, upon one occasion or other, dis-
persed through all the provinces and cities of the Lesser Asia,
lie sent secret orders to all the governors of these provinces, and
magistrates of these cities, to put them all to death in one and
the same day, which was accordingly executed with such rigour,
that no less than eighty thousand, say some, near double that
number, say others, of Romans and Italians were then massacred
in that country.— Appian. in Mithrid. epist.; Liv. b. lxxvii
Ixxviii.; and L. Floras, b. iii. c. 5.
M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end of b. xv.
But the terms of this peace were too hard long to be
submitted to by a man of Mithridates's spirit ; and there-
fore, as soon as Nicomedes, who left the Roman people
his heirs, was dead, he again seized on Bithynia and
Paphlagonia, and the Romans again were forced to
declare war against him.
3 The two consuls for the year, Lucius Lucullus and
Marcus Cotta, were sent to carry on this war ; but the
latter of these, being no ways skilled in military affairs,
was overcome by Mithridates not far from Chalcedon,
with the loss of most of his men, and a good part of his
fleet, which was there to defend the coasts ; till Lucullus,
coming- to his assistance, not only drove Mithridates
from the siege of Cyzirus, a city on the Propontis, that
was in the Roman interest, but destroyed his fleet in the
Hellespont, retook Bithynia and Paphlagonia from him,
pursued him into his kingdom, besieged his very capital,
and in one engagement ruined all his forces, and com-
pelled him to flee into Armenia, there to implore the
protection and assistance of Tigranes, his son-in-law.
Nor was this all ; for, as soon as Lucullus understood
that Tigranes was engaged in the war with him, he im-
mediately marched his army against him, passed the
Euphrates, passed the Tigris, defeated the forces that
were sent against him, and having- besieged his metro-
polis, with not the twentieth part of their number, in one
battle gained a complete victory over an army of three
hundred and six thousand men that were coming to
relieve it. Lucullus, in short, had in every place the
advantage against these two confederate kings, 4 until,
by the management of Publius Clodius, his own soldiers
began to mutiny against him, insomuch, that having lost
all the power and authority of a general, he was forced
to deliver up the army to Pompey, and return to Rome.
Pompey, at his first entering upon the war, had taken
into alliance with him Phraortes king" of Parthia ; but the
mutiny which had happened in the latter end of Lucullus's
time, had given Mithridates an opportunity of recovering
a good part of his kingdom, and of getting together a
great number of forces, wherewith he endeavoured to
harass and distress the Roman army, till Pompey at
length fell upon him by surprise, vanquished his troops,
made him flee for shelter northward beyond the springs
of the Euphrates, and then marched directly against his
confederate Tigranes ; but Tigranes, terrified at this,
and not sufficiently provided to resist the power that was
coming against him, was resolved to surrender both him-
self and his kingdom into the hands of the Roman
general ; who, upon his paying the Romans six thousand
talents for making a causeless war against them, and
yielding up to them all his conquests on this side the
Euphrates, ordered that he should still reign in his pa-
ternal kingdom of Armenia the Greater, and his son c jn
3 Plutarch on Lucullus; and Appian on Mithridates.
4 Plutarch on Lucullus and Pompey; and Dion Cassius, b. xxxvi.
c The reason why Pompey made this partition of Tigranes's
kingdom, was, because Tigranes's son had put himself under the
protection ot the Romans. The father Tigranes had three sons
by Cleopatra, the daughter of Mithridates, two of whom he had,
upon slight occasions, put to death; and therefore this third, not
thinking his lite safe within the power of so cruel a father, fled to
1 hraortes, king of Parthia, whose daughter he had married, and
by him was assisted to invade his father's dominions, and lay
siege to Artaxata, his capital city; but, being routed by Tigranes
the lather, and driveu out of the country, he betook himself to
Sect. V.] FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5110. A. C. I. JOS. HIST.b. xui. c. 19-bnd op b. xv.
Gordena and Sophena, two provinces that bordered
upon it.
1 In tiie mean time Mithridates, having passed through
several Scythian nations, came at last into the Cimmerian
Bosphorus, now the country of the Crim Tartars, which
was part of his dominions, and where he had appointed
one of his sons, called Machares, a to reign. From
heme he sent ambassadors to Pompey, offering in his
behalf, that in case he might be allowed to hold his
paternal kingdom, as Tigranes had been, he would pay
tribute to the Romans for it, and relinquish to them all
his other dominions ; but, when he understood that Poni-
pey would listen to no proposals of peace, upon any
other condition than that he should come and surrender
himself as Tigranes had done, he could not bring him-
self to submit to that ; and, therefore, having got toge-
ther a considerable number of forces out of the Scythian
nations, wherewith he augmented his own army, and sent
agents to engage the Gauls to join him, as soon as he
approached the Alps, 2 he resolved to make a desperate
expedition b through the way of Panonia, and the Taren-
tine Alps, into Italy itself, and there assault the Romans,
as Hannibal had done, at their very doors. But when
the army was to go upon their march, they were so
frightened at the thoughts of it, that they conspired
against him, and made Pharnaces his son their king.
Mithridates dreaded nothing so much as to fall into
the hands of the Romans, and be led in triumph by them ;
and, therefore, being apprehensive that his son might
deliver him to Pompey, and finding no possibility of mak-
ing his escape, he retired into his apartment, and hav-
ing there distributed poison to his wives, his concubines,
and daughters, that were with him, he took a dose
of it himself ; but when he found it did not sufficiently
operate upon him, he had recourse to his sword to finish
the work, c and so died, after he had lived seventy-two
years, and reigned sixty of them.
813
1 Appian. in Mithrid.; Epit. Liv. b. ci.; and Dion Cassius,
b. xxxvi.
2 Plutarch on Pompey; Dion Cassius, b. xxxvii.; Appian. in
Mithrid.; Epit. Liv. b. cvi.; and L. Florus, b. iii. c. 5.
the Roman camp, and there by way of a supplicant, cast himself
at the feet of Pompey. Pompey at first received him very kindly ;
but when he seemed dissatisfied with the portion of his father's
kingdom that lie had allotted him, and was for exciting the nobility
of Armenia to renew the war against the Romans, and the Par-
tisans to join in it, Pompey put him among those whom he re-
served for Ids triumph, and after that triumph left him in prison.
— Pridcaux's Connection, anno 6(j.
a This young prince having been hard pressed by the Romans,
while they lay at the siege ofSinape, and had then by their fleet
the mastery of the Euxine sea, which lay between Sinape and the
kingdom of Machares, had made a peace with them, and ever
since maintained the terms of it. By this means he had much
(licensed his father, and dreaded his approach. While, therefore,
he was on the way, he sent ambassadors to him to make his peace,
and to urge in excuse, that what he had done in that respect was
by the necessity of his allaiis, and not by choice: but, finding his
father implacable, and no possibility of making his escape, he slew
himself, to avoid falling into his hands. — Appian. in Mithrid.
b A desperate expedition indeed, which contained a march of
about two thousand miles, through all those countries which are
now called Tartaria Crimea, Podolia, Moldavia, Walachia,
Transylvania, Hungaria, Stiria,Carmthia, Tyrol, and Lombardy,
and over the three great rivers of the Boristhenes, the Danube,
and the Po. — Prideau.v's Connection, anno C4.
c The character which Velleius Paterculus gives us of this
great man, is expressed in these words : — " During these times
Mithridates a king of Pontus lived. He was a man whose
The Romans, after they had overcome all foreign
powers and potentates that pretended to rival them, and
thereby become masters of the greatest part of the then
known world, fell soon into contests with one another
about the government of it, and in every age some one
appeared, who, at the expense of the public peace, af-
fected to become the sole regent of it : but the most re-
markable struggles of this kind, that any way relate to
the scripture history, were between Sylla and Marius,
Ccesar and Pompey, Anthony and Augustus.
The occasion of the difference between Sylla and
Marius was the choice of a general to the Mithridatic
war. Marius, 3 who was by birth a plebeian, and of a
very mean parentage, had, by his military prowess and
interest with the common people, raised himself to the
chief command of the Jugurthine war; and, in the war
against the Teutones and Cimbri, had gained himself
immortal honour ; but, being now upwards of seventy
years old, in the late confederate war he had not so well
maintained his reputation ; whether it was that old age
rebated his activity, or fortune had not thrown occasions
of signalizing himself in his way. Sylla, on the contrary,
a patrician by birth, and one of the most illustrious fa-
milies in Rome, was lively, active, and impetuous, had
gained great battles, taken considerable towns, and,
through the whole course of the war, so distinguished
himself by his many and glorious successes, that he soon
had the consulate conferred on him, and was afterwards
declared governor of Asia Minor, and commander-in-
chief in the war against Mithridates. Marius, who thought
that all the preferments of the commonwealth did of right
belong to him, looked upon this preference as an injustice
done him, and was therefore resolved to carry by force,
what he had not attained by the people's choice.
3 Vertot's Revolutions of Rome, c. x.
character can neither be passed over in silence, nor spoken of
without care. In war he was most acute, in valour most illus-
trious; sometimes by fortune and always with judgment was his
success obtained ; in the closet he was a leader, in the field a
soldier, and his hatred towards the Romans was that of a Hanni-
bal ;" and from other historians we may learn, that he was naturally
a man of great capacity and understanding, which he had taken
much care to improve: for he was not only well skilled in all the
learning of those times, but, though he had two and twenty dirier-
ent nations under his dominions, yet he could speak'to everyone
of them in their own proper language. He was a prince of great
undertakings; and though lie lailed in most of those wherein he
had to do with the Romans, yet, after every overthrow, we find
him still rising up again with new vigour; for his last design of
invading Italy sufficiently shows, that, though his fortune often
forsook lu'm, yet his stout heart, his courageous spirit, and his
enterprising genius never did. After all, he was a man of great
vices, as well as virtues. His cruelty was shown in the murder
of his mother, and his brother, and the great number of his sons,
friends, and followers, whom, at several times, and often on slight
occasions, he put to death. His ambition was manifest by his
many unjust invasions of other men's rights for the augmentation
of his own dominions, and the many wicked methods of treachery,
murder, and perfidiousness, that he took to accomplish his end.
And his lust appeared in the great number of wives and concu-
bines he had to serve it: for, in the one or other of these capa-
cities, wherever he found a handsome woman, he always took
her to him, and carried some of these with him wherever he
went: but, when reduced to any distress, he always poisoned
those whom he could not carry oil', in like manner as he did his
sisters and daughters in this case, that none of them might fall
into the enemy's hands. — Velleius Paterculus, b. ii. c.18; J'ale-
rius Maximus, b. viii. c. 7; Appian. in Mithrid.; and Plu-
tarch on Lucullus and Pompey.
814
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII.
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3. OR, ACCORDING TO HALKS, A. M. 5410. A. C. l.JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end of b. xv.
To this purpose he drew over to his interest a tribune,
called Publius Sulpicius, an inveterate enemy to Sylla, and
who, by his power and authority among the people, pro-
cured a law to pass, which took from Sylla the command
of the army against Mithridates, and conferred it upon
Marius. Marius accordingly sent some officers of his
party to take possession of the command of the army,
until he himself could come to them ; but Sylla had pre-
vented them, and made so sure of the affections of the
soldiers, that, instead of obeying the orders sent from
Marius, they killed his officers, and besought Sylla to
lead them against his enemies at Rome, before he trans-
ported them into Asia. Incensed at the death of his
officers, Marius had caused several of Sylla's friends to
be put to death, and their houses to be plundered. This
made Sylla hasten his march to Rome, where he soon
defeated the body which Marius and Sulpicius had raised
to oppose him, and entered the city sword in hand. The
decree which transferred the command of the army from
him to Marius, he caused to be repealed, and articles of
impeachment drawn up against C. Marius, young Marius
his son, the tribune Sulpicius, and twelve senators, who
were of their party, for having been the authors of the
late insurrection. Hereupon they were declared enemies
to the Roman commonwealth ; were interdicted water
and fire, that is, all manner of sustenance, or assistance
from any body ; had rewards set upon their heads, and
troops on all sides detached to hunt them down.
Sulpicius in the search was apprehended by some of
Sylla's soldiers, who cut off his head, and carried it to
Rome, and nailed it to the rostrum ; but Marius had the
good luck to make his escape, though a he underwent
many dangers and hazards of his life during the time of
his exile.
In the mean time, Cornelius Cinna, who, though a
a After he was upwards of seventy years of age, and had been
six times consul, he was forced to fly from Rome on foot, without
either friend or servant to accompany him; and to avoid Sylla's
people, that pursued him, to throw himself into a morass, where
he lay the whole night, sunk, and buried in mud up to the neck.
In the morning, when he got out, and endeavoured to gain the
sea shore, in hopes of meeting some vessel to carry him out of
Italy, he was known by the people of Minturnre, seized and car-
ried into the town, with a rope about his neck, all naked and
muddy. The magistrates of the place, in obedience to the decree
of the senate, which had attainted him, and set a price upon his
head, sent a public slave, a Cimbrian by birth, to put him to
death; but as the slave approached with his naked sword, " Canst
thou, thou barbarian," said he with a loud voice, "have the as-
surance to assassinate Cains Marius!'' Whereupon the siave,
frightened at the sound of a name so terrible to his countrymen,
threw down his sword, and ran out of the prison in great disorder,
crying out, "that it, was not in his power to kill Marius." The
magistrates of Minturnse, looking on this as an interposition of
heaven for the preservation of this great man, not only set him
at liberty, but furnished him with a vessel, wherein he sailed
first into the island of yEnaria, and thence, designing for Africa,
lie was forced, either by stress of weather, or want of water, to
go on shore on the coasts of Sicily, where he met with new
dangers. For a Roman qutestor, who had the chief command
there, offered to seize him; so that Marius, being forced to defend
himself, lost sixteen of his men, who made a stand just upon the
shore whilst others helped him on board. From Sicily he sailed
to Africa, and landed at Carthage; but from thence he was ex-
pelled by Sextilius, who, as pretor, commanded in that province,
and, notwithstanding the rigour of the season, was forced to go on
board, and spend a good part of the winter in his ship, wandering
up and down those seas, till being informed of what was doing at
Rome by a messenger from Cinna, he returned to Italy, joined
Cinna, besieged Rome, and revenged himself too severely on his
enemies. — Fertot's Revolutions of Rome, b, x.
patrician by birth, had devoted himself to the plebeian
party ; when once he was created consul, and Sylla was
gone to his command in Asia, was for rescinding the
decree, whereby Marius was proscribed : but, when the
senate perceived his design, they soon passed sentence
upon him, declaring him fallen from the right of a citizen,
and deprived of the dignity of a consul, and in his room
they elected Lucius Merula. Cinna, who was naturally
proud and fiery, upon hearing of this sentence, raised an
army with purpose to revenge himself upon the authors
of it, and sent to Marius to come to his assistance, who,
as he passed through the cities of Italy, was joined by
some veterans that had formerly served under him, and,
by promising freedom to all slaves that would come
under his banner, had got together a good body of men.
With these, and the forces that Cinna had collected, they
both marched directly to Rome, where, of the two con-
suls, Octavius was killed on his tribunal, and Merula,
to prevent the enemy from putting him to a worse death,
had his veins opened ; where several senators of great
note were by the order of Marius murdered in the streets,
their heads cut off, and laid upon the rostrum, and their
mangled bodies left to be devoured by dogs ; and where
he caused Sylla's house to be razed, his goods confis-
cated, his wife, children, and friends to be proscribed,
and himself to be declared an enemy to the common-
wealth, even while he was adding large provinces and
kingdoms to the Roman state.
In the mean time, his wife, children, and friends, who
had fled to his camp for protection, were continually
soliciting him to turn his arms against his private enemies,
and to free his country from these tyrants, who had so
long oppressed it : so that, having concluded a peace
with Mithridates upon very advantageous terms, he passed
over with his army into Italy. But, before he was ar-
rived, Marius was dead of a pleurisy, occasioned by
excessive chinking, to which, in the decline of life, he
accustomed himself ; and young Marius, who inherited
his father's cruelty, as well as power, entered into a close
league with Cinna, and engaged Valerius Flaccus, whom
they procured to be made consul, in their interest, and
design of opposing Sylla. But Sylla, as soon as he
landed in Italy, defeated Marius, and reduced him to
the necessity of laying violent hands upon himself; and
having vanquished all his other enemies, entered Rome
at the head of his victorious forces, and there gave a
loose to his licentious passion of revenge. All the po
people, that had appeared against him in arms, even
though they came to beg quarter, he ordered to be mas-
sacred. Fourscore senators, and six hundred knights,
together with an infinite number of the richest citizens of
Rome, he caused to be proscribed : their sons and
grandsons he degraded from all their rights and privi-
leges : those that should protect or harbour any of them,
he threatened with the like proscription ; and to those
that should apprehend or murder any of them, he pro-
mised a reward of two talents ; so that it became no un-
common thing for slaves that had murdered their masters,
nay, for children that had murdered their fathers, to come,
with their hands reeking in blood, to demand the reward
of their treason or parricide.
Nor was it only the party that favoured Marius which
suffered in this barbarous manner, but, as Sylla ' made
1 Vertot's Revolutions of Rome, b. x.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &<
815
A.M. 4001. A. C. 3; OK, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
little or no account of any man's life, he permitted his
friends and officers, with impunity, to revenge themselves
of all their private enemies, insomuch, that fresh numbers
were proscribed, and murdered every day, and no one,
especially if ne was rich and wealthy, was secure of Ii is
life for a moment : nay, to such an excess of cruelty and
arbitrariness did he proceed at last, that, without naming
any particular persons, he proscribed whole cities and
nations, and, by way of confiscation, seized on all the
estates, houses, and territories, belonging" to such towns
in Italy as had declared for Marius during the civii war,
which, to attacli them more liriuly to his interest, he took
care to distribute among his soldiers.
Some, however, that were about him, .and had pro-
bably been benefited by these usurpations, being appre-
hensive that such violent proceedings might not last long,
to give them the better sanction, and some colour of
law, advised him to take upon him the office, not of a
temporary, but perpetual dictator. The power of this
supreme magistrate was boundless. The authority of
the consuls, and all other magistrates, except that of the
tribunes, was superseded by it. He had power of life
and death over his fellow citizens, was sole arbiter of
peace and war, was at liberty to raise or disband forces
as he thought fit, and under no obligation to give an
account of his conduct to any body. In a word, he had
all the power of the most absolute king, greater indeed
than any of the ancient kings ot Rome ever had ; but
then it was only in the times of the greatest exigences
of the commonwealth, when it was endangered either by
powerful enemies abroad, or by civil commotions at
home, that such an officer was appointed ; and, lest such
a large power should be abused, no man was invested
with it for longer than six months. But Sylla, who had
terrified the people into a tame submission, and made
himself absolute at Rome, would have it conferred on
him for a time undetermined ; so that the Romans, who
had changed kingly government into the republican
under consuls, and military tribunes, after many ages,
relapsed again into the absolute power of one ; though
Sylla, to lessen the aversion which all republicans could
not but have to such a form of government, took care to
disguise what was in reality a royalty, under the less
odious title of a a dictatorship.
This success of Sylla's in climbing up to the empire,
and supporting himself therein, made it apparent to those
a One thing is wonderful in this Sylla, that after he had
destroyed more than a hundred thousand of his fellow citizens
in the civil war, and had caused ninety senators, of which
fitteen had been consuls, and more than six and twenty hun-
dred knights to be put to death, he had the courage to lay
down the dictatorship, and to reduce himself to the level of a
private citizen, without fearing the resentment of so many illus-
trious families, whose heads he had destroyed by his cruel pro-
scriptions. The Romans in general looked upon this his abdi-
cation of the sovereign power, as an instance of the greatest
magnanimity, and gladly forgave him all the murders, for the
sake of the liberty which he thereby restored them; but his ene-
mies imputed it to the natural uneasiness of his mind, and his
continual fear, lest some Roman might be bold enough, at one
stroke, to deprive him of both his empire and his life. However
this be, it is certain, that, after having shed so much blood, he
died peaceably in his bed, and a few days before his death, com-
posed his own epitaph, which comprises his true character,
namely, " That no body had ever outdone him, either in obliging
his fiiends, or persecuting his enemies." — Fcrtot's Revolutions,
b. xi.
M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST, b xiii. c. 19— end orb. xv.
that came after him, that the Romans could bear a master,
and gave occasion to the violent contests which after-
wards happened between Cajsar and Pompey, who, after
the death of Crassus, * and the Parthian war, were the
two great competitors for the sovereignty of Rome.
Cneius Pompeius, whose father being of the same
name, had been consul, and served his country faithfully
in the wars, was, from his very youth, the darling of the
Roman people ; created a general before he had been a
soldier ; and through the whole course of his life attend-
ed with a wonderful train of victories and successes : '
but being all along accustomed to the command of ar-
mies, he could not so well, upon the expiration of his
commission, reduce himself to the simplicity of a private
life ; and therefore, whenever he appeared in public,
he was always followed by a crowd of his dependents,
whose numerous appearance looked more like the court
of some great prince, than the attendants of a citizen of
any republic. It must be owned, however, that in his
pursuit of dignities, he was less fond of the power that is
inseparable from them, than of the honours and splen-
dours that surround them ; that, in short, he was a man
of show rather than real ambition ; and, if he affected any
high office in state, it was chiefly to raise himself above
all the commanders of his time ; for the great pride of
his soul was, to be thought the only general of the com-
monwealth, whereas, he ought to have contented him-
self with being the first.
2 Caius Julius Caesar was bom of the illustrious fami-
ly of the Julii, and was indeed the most extraordinary
person of his age. Nature, which seemed to have form-
ed him for the command of the rest of mankind, had
given him an air of empire, and a dignity of aspect in-
expressible ; but then this air of grandeur was allayed
by the gentleness and sweetness of his behaviour, which
gained him the hearts of those he conversed with, and
laid the foundation of his future greatness. He was a
man of exalted courage and insinuating eloquence, ex-
tensive in his designs, indefatigable in pursuing them
1 Vertot's Revolutions, b. xiii.
2 Ibid.
b When Crassus led his army into Mesopotamia, there came
to him a certain chief of an Arabian tribe, who, having served
in the wars under Pompey, had contracted an acquaintance
with several of the Romans, and was therefore a proper instru-
ment for Surenas, the Parthian general, to employ upon this
occasion. He told Crassus, inquiring about the strength of the
enemy, that they were unable to stand before him, and that, to
obtain a complete victory, he had nothing to do but to march
directly against them, for which purpose he offered himself to be
their guide; Crassus was weak enough to accept of his offer;
and accordingly the crafty man led them along the plains of Me-
sopotamia, until he had brought them into a sandy desert, where
the Parthians, he knew, would have the best opportunity of de-
stroying them, and then rode oil' to acquaint Surenas with it,
who immediately fell upon them, and gave them a terrible de-
feat. Nor was this the only false Step that Crassus made : for
having rested the remains of his army for one day at Carrha;, not
far from the place where the battle was fought, when, in the night
following, he endeavoured to make his escape, he committed
himself to the guidance of one Andromachus, another traitor,
who led him into the midst of bogs and morasses, where Sure-
nas overtook him, slew him, and gave his army the greatest
overthrow that the Romans had ever received since the battle ol
Cannffi; for, in this engagement, twenty thousand were slain,
and ten thousand taken prisoners ; and the rest forced to make
their escape by several ways into Armenia, Cilicia, and Syria. —
Plutarch, in Crasso; /1/>pian. in Parthicis; and Dion Cassius,
b. xl.
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[Book VII.
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
and ambitious of the great offices of state, chiefly for
the increase of his interest and power, and for the means
and opportunity which they afforded him, by gentle de-
grees, of becoming the master and sovereign of his
country.
Upon the death of Crassus, who held the balance be-
tween these two great men, the emulation between them
began to break out. Caesar was in Gaul, pursuing his
victories against the Helvetians, the Germans, the Bel-
g£e, the Britons, and several other nations, and astonish-
ing all the world with the fame of his great exploits ; but
Pompey, since the time of his victories in Asia, had con-
tinued, now for the space of twelve years, for the most
part in Rome, notwithstanding he had obtained a large
commission to govern the provinces of Spain and Af-
rica.
By his constant residing at Rome, he had got a per-
fect ascendancy over the senate ; and some, to remedy the
disorders they then laboured under, were for creating
him dictator, till Cato, who was always watchful for the
public liberty, proposed rather to choose him sole consul,
without a colleague ; because a consul was responsible
to the people and senate for his conduct, which a dic-
tator was not.
The senate approved of this expedient, and accord-
ingly made Pompey the sole consul. They continued
him likewise in his former governments, and for the
payment of the forces he had under him, gave him an
annual allowance of a thousand talents out of the ex-
chequer : but, as all good understanding between him
and Caesar was now vanished, he took care to prefer two
laws, which the senate readily agreed to, namely, " That
the miscarriages of officers, for twenty years last past,
should be inquired into ; and that all absent persons
should not be allowed to demand any public employ-
ments ;" the latter of which was more immediately level-
led at Caesar : for Pompey's design herein was, to oblige
him to abandon the government of the two Gauls, and
the command of his army, in order to come in person to
solicit the consulate, which he in his return, as he assign-
ed by his letters, expected to have conferred on him.
Caesar was very well aware of Pompey's design ; but,
instead of relinquishing his government and returning to
Rome, he chose to remain at the head of his forces, and
■when the senate, by Pompey's procurement, came to a
resolution of taking the government from him by naming
his successor, he wrote several letters to them, with a
great deal of temper, requesting either that they would
continue him in his government, as they had done Pom-
pey, or permit him, though absent from Rome, to put up
for the consulate; but the majority of the senate, that
was entirely under Pompey's direction, rejected every
proposal that he sent ; so that, finding himself treated
with contempt, he passed the Alps at the head of the
third legion, and halted at Ravenna, from whence he
sent Fabius, one of his lieutenants, with letters to the
senate, ' "wherein he magnified his own exploits, expect-
ing that some regard should be had to his services ; and
wherein he declared his readiness to lay down his com-
mand, in case Pompey would do the like ; but that if
that general pretended to retain his forces, he knew
very well how to defend himself at the head of his le-
1 Vertot's Revolutions, b. xiii
M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19— end of b. xv.
gions, and would in a few days be at Rome, to revenge
the injuries which were done to him, as well as the
public."
This letter, when read to the senate, was represented
as a kind of declaration of war, and accordingly procur-
ed a " decree that Lucius Domitius should be Caesar's
successor, and have four thousand new levies to enable
him to go and take possession of his government; and
that in case Caesar refused to disband his army within
such a time, he should be prosecuted as an enemy to the
commonwealth." AYhen Caesar was informed of this de-
cree, he sent orders to such of his troops as were near-
est at hand, to advance towards the Rubicon, a small
river that parted his government of Gallia Cisalpina from
the rest of Italy. When he came up the next day, he
found there five thousand foot, and three hundred horse ;
and having halted a while on the bank of the river, he
is said there to have been seized with some remorse upon
consideration of what he was about to do ; till hav-
ing reflected on the hatred and inveteracy of his ene-
mies, he threw himself into the river at once, passed it,
and took Ariminum by surprise ; and from thence put all
Rome in such a disorder, that Pompey, not having suffi-
cient forces to resist him, with the consuls and a great
number of senators, retired to Capua, and thence to
Brundusium, where taking shipping, they soon arrived
at the port of Dyrrachium, a city of Epirus, where Pom-
pey intended to gather together such an army as might
enable him to make a stand.
Upon the retreat of Pompey, Caesar, in the space of
sixty days, made himself master of all Italy, and came
to Rome, where he promised the people every thing
should be done for the good of the commonwealth : and
having filled up the senate, and settled some kind of
government among them, he marched his army directly
into Spain, where Pompey was governor, and had left
several troops attached to his interest. As soon as he
came thither, he fell upon Afranius and Petreius, Pom-
pey's lieutenants ; and having driven them out of the
province, he made himself master thereof, and so returned
to Rome, where he was declared dictator, though after
eleven days, he laid down that office, and, together with
Servilius Isauricus, was elected consul for the year
ensuing.
Pompey, by this time, had been in Epirus for the space
of a year, and had got together a considerable army out
of Greece, Asia, and all the eastern countries, to support
his interest ; but when Caesar went after him, the season
of the year was too far advanced, either for the fleets to
be at sea, or the armies to take the field, and so both
sides lay still in their winter quarters.
In the spring both armies took the field, and encamped
against each other near Dyrrachium, now Durazzo,
where, in several skirmishes, Caesar had the better ; but
at length in one of them he received so great a defeat,
that himself acknowledged he must have been utterly
undone, had Pompey seen his advantage, and pursued
it. For fear of the like disaster, therefore, or the want of
provisions for his army, Caesar decamped the next day,
and marched towards Thessaly, where he found plenty
of all things, and there waited to give Pompey battle.
Pompey had an army of forty-five thousand foot, and
five thousand horse, but they were most of them raw in-
experienced men, raised out of the effeminate nations of
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
817
A.M. 4001. A.C..1;OR. ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 5410. A. C. !. JOS. HIST. b. xiii. c. 19
Asia, ami some Roman senators, and other gentlemen,
v.'ho knew very little of war. Caesar, on the other hand,
bad an army of twenty-two thousand foot, and one
thousand horse ; but then they were most part of them
veteran soldiers, who, for the space of ten years, had
been accustomed to war and victory in Gaul. On the
plains of Pharsalia these two armies met with two of the
greatest generals in the world at the head of them, dis-
puting for universal empire. The engagement for some
time was sharp on both sides : but, at length, Poinpey's
army was vanquished and broken. Fifteen thousand of
them were slain; twenty-four thousand made prisoners;
their camp was taken, and their general, with much ado,
forced to make his escape in disguise, and, after having
wandered from place to place, was, at length, in Egypt, "
perfidiously slain in the fifty -ninth year of his age.
After the death of Pompey, and the return of Cfesar
to Rome, the senate decreed him uncommon honours,
and an unlimited authority. He was appointed consul
for ten years, and perpetual dictator ; had the name of
' imperator ' given him, and the august title of 'father of
his country.' His person was declared sacred and in-
violable ; and at all public games he had the privilege
of sitting in a gilded chair, with a golden crown upon
his head ; but, notwithstanding all this profusion of
honours, we find in what a barbarous way he was murder-
ed at last.
After the death of Julius Cassar, great confusion and
disorders happened in the Roman state, till at length
Anthony and Octavianus, upon the forced abdication of
Lepidus, became the two great men in the empire. An-
thony had all the east, and Octavianus all the west; but
not content with this, they soon took occasion to differ
with each other, and entered into contest who should have
the whole.
'/ After the defeat of his army, Pompey, not well knowing
which way to betake himself, determined at last to go to Egypt.
He had been a very considerable friend to the late king Ptolemy
Aulet.es, and therefore he expected a kind reception from his son.
Taking therefore his wife Cornelia, and his younger son Sextus
with him, lie steered his course towards Egypt, and, as he drew
near to land, sent messengers to the king, desiring his protection
and aid in his present distress. The king was then a minor,
under the tuition of Pothynus a eunuch, and Achillas the gen-
eral of his army, who, taking Theodotus, and some others into
the consultation, advised together what answer to send. Some
were for receiving, and others for rejecting him; but Theodotus
was nt opinion, that their only safe way was to despatch him:
for should they receive him, as lie argued, Caesar would revenge
it; should they reject him, if ever he recovered power, himself
would revenge it; and therefore the only method to secure them-
selves from both, was to cut him oil'; for hereby they would
certainly make Caesar their friend, and prevent the other from
doing any mischief; 'for dead men,' said he, according to the pro-
verb, 'never bite.' This advice prevailed, and accordingly
Achillas, with Septimus a Roman commander, then in the service
ot the kin;; of Egypt, was sent to put it in execution. Under
the pretence therefore of conducting Pompey to the king, they
took him out of the ship into a boat; hut as soon as they came
near the shore, they fell upon him, and slew him, cut oll'his head,
and cast his dead carcass on the strand. His wife and son, seeing
this barbarous murder, raised bitter cries and lamentations: but.
all to do purpose: perceiving therefore themselves hi the like
danger, they hoisted sail and made on", leaving this great man,
who, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, came to this woi'ul end.
no other funeral, than what Philip, an enfranchised bondman of
his, and a poor Roman, who came thither by accident, could give
him, by making a funeral pile of the broken pieces of an old boat,
that lay wrecked on the shore. — Plutarch on Pompey; and
stppian on the Civil Wars, b. ii.
END OF b. XV.
Anthony was a person of great note for his military
skill and abilities. At the battle of Pharsalia he did
wonders : and in that of Philippi, where Octavianus b
behaved but very meanly, the whole victory was owing
to his courage and conduct ; but he was exceedingly
addicted to vice, especially to the love of women, which
Cleopatra observing, laid hold on him on this weak side,
and for the gratification ol her ambition and avarice,
which were the two predominant passions in her, put
him upon such measures, as gave a general offence to
the Romans.
Octavianus, on the other hand, though he was always
successful, yet for this he was indebted not so much to
his courage, as his cunning and management ; for, though
he had a genius capable of framing the greatest projects,
yet, in cool blood, he found himself incapable of facing
the meanest danger. And therefore being conscious of
his weakness in this respect, he contented himself with
supplying the schemes, and called in the valour of other
men to put them in execution. In most of his military
undertakings, he borrowed, as it were, Agrippa's courage,
and the rather made use of him, because he was a mere
soldier of fortune, and, consequently, incapable of
creating any jealousy, or making himself head of any
party.
After c a vast preparation for war, these two great men,
of different characters, met with their armies and fleets
near Actium, a town on the coast of Epirus, there to de-
cide the empire of the world. Canidius, who had the
chief command of Anthony's army, persuaded him to de-
camp and march into the country of Thrace, or Mace-
don, there to try his fortune in a battle at land, because
his army was much more to be depended on than his
fleet : but Cleopatra, who was then in company with
Anthony, advised him rather to decide the matter by a
fight at sea ; and her advice prevailed.
On the second of September, therefore, a. m. 3973,
a. c. 31, the two fleets engaged before the mouth of
the Ambrasian gulf, in the sight of the two armies,
the one drawn up on the north, and the other on the
south, side of the straits which entered the gulf, there
to attend the event of the battle. The fight for some
time continued dubious, with as fair a prospect of suc-
cess for Anthony as for his adversary, until Cleopatra
forsook him : for she, being affrightened with the noise
and terror of the battle, gave orders to the captain that
commanded her ship to sheer off', and so drew after her
the whole Egyptian squadron, which consisted of sixty
large men of war.
Anthony, giving all for lost, made after her as fast as
he could, and so, by his flight, yielded the victory to
Octavianus ; but after he was gone, his ships fought so
* On the eve before the battle at Philippi, under pretence of
some indisposition, he left the body which he commanded, and,
while the two armies were engaged, hid himself amongst the
baggage; and, in a sea fight against young Pompey, he had not
the courage to see the two fleets engage, but lay in the bottom of
the ship, with his eyes lift up to heavi n, as if he had been in a
trance, and never once showed himself to his soldiers, until news
was brought him that the enemy was lied. — I'crtot's Revolutions
of Rome, b. xiv.
c Anthony's forces, by land and sea, consisted of a hundred
thousand loot, twelve thousand horse, and five hundred ships of
war : and Oetavianus's of eighty thousand foot, twelve thousand
horse, and two hundred and fifty ships of war. — Plutarch on
Antony; and Dion Cassius, b. lxxx.
5l
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valiantly, that, though the engagement began at noon, it
was not ended till it was night.
In the mean time, Anthony and Cleopatra got to Te-
neros, in Laconia, whither some of his ships, that, had
escaped the fight, and several of his friends, repaired to
him, from whom we understand, that though his fleet was
destroyed, his land-army was still safe ; and therefore
he wrote to Canidius to retire with it through Macedonia
into Asia, in hopes of being able, by that means, to renew
the war : but Canidius, in his march, being overtaken
by Octavianus, fled by night to Anthony, and the army,
finding themselves deserted by their generals, went over
to the enemy, as the foreign forces, which had come to
the assistance of Anthony, fled all home to their respec-
tive countries, and made their peace afterwards with the
conqueror on the best terms they could.
By this time Anthony and Cleopatra were both return-
ed to Alexandria, and it was not long before Octavianus
went in pursuit of them. On their first coining, Anthony
fell upon the Roman troops, while under the fatigue of
their march, and put them to a total rout ; but in a
second engagement with them, he was vanquished, and
driven back into the city with great loss. The next
morning, when he went down to the harbour to put the
fleet in order to engage the enemy, no sooner were they
drawn up in line of battle, but he saw them desert and
go over to them, and, to his great mortification, when he
returned to the city, he found that all the land-forces,
both horse and foot, had in like manner revolted from
him.
^ hen Anthony understood that all this was done by
Cleopatra's treachery, and in hopes of making her peace
with Octavianus, he could not forbear expressing his re-
sentment of it in loud complaints ; so that Cleopatra, for
fear of him, but, as she pretended, to secure herself
from the enemy, fled to a monument, which she caused
t > be built of a great height, and wonderful structure,
and having there shut herself up with two maids and one
eunuch, she had it given out that she was dead. An-
thony no sooner heard the news, but, supposing it to be
true, fell upon his sword ; however, having intelligence
some time after, that Cleopatra was still alive, he order-
ed those about him to carry him to her monument, where
might be seen one of the most deplorable spectacles that
can lie imagined. Anthony, all over bloody, and breath-
ing out his last, was, by the hands of Cleopatra and her
two maids, drawn up by the ropes and pulleys that were
employed in the building, to the top of the monument
and there, in a few moments, expired in her arms.
After the death of Anthony, the great care of Octavi-
anus was to make himself master of Cleopatra's person
and riches : of her person to adorn his triumph ; and of her
riches to defray the expenses of the war: but after he had
luckily compassed both, she, having private notice giv-
en her of her being designed to be carried to Rome, to
make part of the show in her conqueror's triumph, caus-
ed herself " to be bitten with an asp, and so, to avoid this
n The asp i- a serpent of Egypt and Libya, and proper only
to those climates. Those that air bitten by it die within time
hours, m a kind of gentle sleep or lethargy, without any srnsa-
ti' f pain ; and therefore Cleopatra, who had experienced all
kinds oi poisons upon other creatures, mad.; choice of this, as
the easiest way of dying; and, to deceive her keepers, kept an
asp always hid. in her chamber, under figs, grapes, and flowers,
which, when she was determined to die, she took and held t<.
M. 5410. A. C. I. JOS. HIST. h. xiii.e. 19— end OFb.xv.
infamy, h died, after she had reigned, from the death
of her father, twenty-two years, and lived thirty-nine.
Octavianus, ' though much concerned for having thus
lost the chief glory of his triumph, did nevertheless make
for Cleopatra, as he had permitted her to make for An-
thony, a splendid and royal funeral. He had them both
deposited in the same monument which they had begun,
and gave orders to have it finished. Having thus settled
his affairs in Egypt, and cut oft* all those from whom he
might expect any fresh disturbances, he made a review
of the several provinces of the Lesser Asia, and the isles
adjoining, and so, passing through Greece, returned to
Rome, where he triumphed for three days successively,
for his victory over the Dalmatians, and for the sea-fight
at Actium, and for the conquest of Egypt ; in the last of
which were led before him the children of Cleopatra,
and though herself had escaped that fate, her effigy was
carried in procession, with an asp hanging at her arm,
to denote the manner of her death.
After this triumph, he held a private consultation with
Agrippa and Mecaanas, his two chief ministers and prin-
cipal instruments of his greatness, whether he should
restore the commonwealth to its ancient state, or retain
the sovereign power. Agrippa was for restoring, but
Meca^nas for the retaining part ; whereupon Octavianus,
knowing that the senate was tilled with his creatures,
whose fortunes depended on his holding the sovereign-
ty, proposed indeed, in a formal speech, to resign his
authority ; but, no sooner was the proposal made, than
the whole senate, with a unanimous voice, dissuaded
him from it, and, with all manner of arguments, pressed
him to take upon him the sole administration of the go-
vernment, which, with much seeming reluctancy, at length
he consented to. But by no means would he submit to
accept of it for a longer term than ten years, though
from ten years to ten years, upon one pretence or other,
he continued himself in it as long as he lived, and so
transmitted it to his successors.
With this new power the senate was determined to
confer on him a new name. Himself iiad taken upon
him the common title of imperator , which the soldiers,
during the times of the republic, used to give to victori-
ous generals ; but this was not thought adequate to his
merit : and therefore, since the word Augustus seemed to
signify something that, above human, was sacred and
venerable, this was made choice of, and, by the general
suffrage of the senate, first given to him, with many
more things decreed to his honour, by the flattery of
some who courted his favour, and the fear of others,
who dreaded his power.
Augustus, for so we must now call him, having raised
himself to this height of power and glory, as soon as
Lepidus, c who had been pontifex maximus, or high
1 Dion Cassias, b. ii. ; and Suetonius on Octavianus.
her arm, and, soon after its biting her, fell into a sleep, and so
died.
l> In her death ended the reign of the family of the Ptole-
mies in Egypt, which hereupon was reduced into the form of a
Roman province, and was governed by a prefect sent, thither
from Rome. Under this form it continued a province of the
Roman empire six hundred and seventy years, till it, was taken
from them by the Saracens, in the year of our Lord 641.— Pri-
dea/ux's Connection, anno 30.
c Tin's Lepidus was one of the triumvirate with Octavianus
and Anthony, but a man of no manner of merit. He joined
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, &c.
819
A. M.4001. A.C.3j OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A
priest of Rome, was dead, assumed to himself, as did
his successors in the empire, that office ; and the first
tiling lie did, was to examine into the prophetical books,
which at that time went abroad under the name of the
sibyls. "■
That in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, there came
a strange woman to Rome, who offered to sell to the
king nine volumes of these sibylline oracles, but, upon
Ins refusing to purchase them, burnt three of them, and
afterwards coming- with six, and being- rejected, burnt
three more, and yet at last obtained the full amount of
what she had asked at first for the three remaining- : that
these volumes when purchased, 1 were laid up in the
capitol, committed to the custody of proper officers,
never consulted but upon great exigences of state, and
carefully preserved, until at the burning of the capitol
in the civil wars between Sylla and Marius, they hap-
pened to be consumed : that, upon the rebuilding- of the
Capitol, 2 the Romans, with great care, made another
collection of sibylline oracles from several countries,
and, after they had selected such as their church and
state did approve of for their purpose, laid them up in
the new capitol, instead of those which the fire had con-
sumed ; that, besides those capitoline volumes, there were
a great many more sibylline oracles in the world,3 which
Augustus, in the beginning- of his office of pontifex maxi-
1 Dionys. Haliear. b. iv. ; Pliny's Natural History, b. xxiii. ;
Solin. Polyliist. b. ii. : ami Aul. Gel. b. i. c. 19.
2 Tally on Divination, b. i. ; Dionys. Haliear. and Aul. Gel.
ubi supra.
3 Lactantius on a false Religion, b. vi. and on the Wrath of
God, c. xxii.
Ovtavianus, in carrying on the war against Sextus Pompeius, the
son of Pompey the Gnat ; but when he arrogated the whole
honour of their successes to himself, Octavianus drew overall his
army to desert him, and so reduced him to the necessity of begging
his life, and of being content to lead the remainder of it in a pri-
vate and mean condition, at Circeii, a small maritime town
among the Latins, where he was sent into banishment, and
there died in obscurity and contempt. — Suetonius in Octavio,
b. xvi.; Appian on the Civil Wars, b. v.; L. Florics, b. iv. c. 8.
a The sibyls were women of ancient times said to be endued
with a prophetic spirit, and to have delivered oracles, foreshow-
ing the fates and destinies of kingdoms. We have in the writ-
ings of the ancients, mention made often of them: the Cumsean,
the Cumanian, the Persian, the Ilellespontican, the Lybian, the
Samian, the Delphian, the Phrygian, the Tihurtine, and the
Erythraean: but some are of opinion, that the Cuma:an and the
Erythraean was one and the same sibyl: that she was born at
Erythrae in Ionia, and therefore was by the Greeks called Erythra;;
lut, having removed from Erythrae to Cuma: in Italy, and there
delivered all her oracles, she was from thence by the Romans
and Italians called Cumaa. These sibyls, among the pagans,
were what the prophets and prophetesses were accounted among
the Hebrews; and, as the most ancient of these were named
Sibylla, so all others of the same sex. who pretended to the like
fatidical spirit, were called sibyls. The place from whence
these sibyls gave out, their oracles, was generally a cave or sub-
terraneous vault, if we may judge of others by that at Cuma;,
whereof Justin Martyr gives us this account. " I have seen the
place," says he, " which is a large chapel, or oratory, hewn out
of the main rock, and must have been a work of great labour.
Here the sibyl, as the inhabitants, who had a tradition thereof,
told me, gave forth oracles. In the middle of the chapel they
showed me three hollow places hewn out of the same rock, in
which, when filled with water, the Sibyl used to Bathe herself,
and so having put on her garment retired into the innermost cell
ot the chapel, which was likewise hewn out of the same rock, and
having placed herself upon an elevated seat, which jutted out into
the middle of the cell, she there uttered her oracles.'' — Lactan-
tius on a False Religion, b. i. c. 6; Salmasius in his Es,
Solinus, p. 8: and Justin Martyr's Exhortation to the Greeks.
M. 5410. A. C. 1. JOS. HIST.b. xiii.r. 19— r.NDor b. xv.
mus, endeavoured to collect, and what he reputed genu-
ine, or rather what suited his purpose best, these he
deposited likewise in the capitol, burning the rest: that
4 Tiberius made another review of these oracles, and
condemned several volumes of them to the flames ; but
the capitoline copies were still held in great veneration,
0 until they fell into disgrace in the reign of Honorius,
and, by his order and appointment, were burnt and de-
stroyed ; 6 these are facts that are confirmed by all anti-
quity, and what comprise indeed the whole history of
these sibylline writings. But if they were all thus finally
destroyed, the question is, how came we by the present
collection of Greek verses, comprised in eight books,
which go under the name of sibyls, and of what merit
and authority are we to account them ?
Now, in answer to this, it is to be observed, 7 that,
long before the times of Christianity, there were extant,
among the heathens, several oracles, or predictions of
future events, ascribed to one or more of these pro-
phetesses, who were styled sibyls, that these predictions
were held in great esteem among the ancients, as con-
taining notions consonant to true religion, the worship
of one God, the conflagration of the world, the renova-
tion of it again, the general resurrection, and the rewards
and punishments hereafter ; and that both heathen,
Jewish, and Christian authors, who make mention of
these sibyls give a strong sanction to their authority.
Varro looks upon them as inspired prophetesses ; Virgil
does them honour in citing their predictions ; Josephus
thinks them useful to establish some positions in
sacred history ; and Clemens Alexandrinus, as he quotes
a more ancient author for it, brings in St Paul address-
ing himself to a heathen audience in these words :
" Take the Greek books in your hands, read the sibyls,
and see what they say of the unity of God, and how they
foretel what is to come, and you will there (dearly lind
the Son of God." It must be acknowledged, indeed,
that the whole collection of these sibylline oracles, as
they are now extant, in eight entire books, is far from
being genuine. The first, second, and most of the fifth,
all the sixth, seventh, and eighth books, seem to be a
manifest forgery, the spurious production of some zealous
Christian, perhaps about the middle of the second age
after Christ, for the promotion of the religion he pro-
fessed.
s In one place, he explicitly declares himself to be a
Christian, and speaks of the whole mystery of our sal-
vation, and of the methods whereby it was accomplished ;
of the incarnation and birth, the circumcision and death,
the resurrection and ascension of our Saviour Christ,
with as much accuracy as do the evangelists. ' In another
place he mentions Christ's future reigning here upon
earth, according to the notion of the niillennarians,
which was not started till the second century ; and, I0 in
another, gives us a succession of the Roman emperors,
in their order, from Julius Caesar to Antoninus Pius,
together with the adoption of Marcus Aurelius, and
Lucius Verus, which has much more the air of an histori-
cal narrative, than a prophetic prediction.
4 Sueton in Octavio.
5 Dion. Cassius, b. Ivii.; Tacit. Annal. b. vi.
6 Aug. de Civitate Dei, b. xxiii. c. 53, 54.
7 Winston's Vindication of the Sibylline Oracles.
8 B. viii. 9 Ibid. b. ii. 10 Ibid. b.
820
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
LBook VII.
A.M. 4031. A.C.3; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M.54I0. A. C.I.JOS. HIST. b. xiii.c. 19-eno of b. XV.
These things discover a forgery, at least a great part
of these pretended oracles, a little too palpably ; but
then, it must be observed, that neither the heathens be-
fore, nor the Christians for the three first centuries after
Christ, knew any thing of these spurious pieces, because
we no where find them making any citations from them ;
but now, ' from the whole proem, the greatest part of the
third, all the fourth, and a small branch of the fifth book,
which are the only parts of the present collection, that are
either cited or referred to by the ancient heathens, their
quotations are innumerable : and therefore we may justly
infer, that the present copy of eight books is not the
same with what was extant before, and in the first ages
of Christianity, but widely different from it; that those
are the genuine prophecies only, which we find the
ancient heathens, and primitive Christians, so frequent-
ly citing, and so generally esteeming, upon the account
of their divine inspiration ; and that the rest, which have
visible marks of forgery upon them, were probably the
spurious additions of such conceited Christians as called
themselves Gnostics : because Epiphanius tells us, that
this set of men boasted of having books written by the
daughter of Noah, even as the pretended prophetess, at
the end of the third book, which is a spurious addition
to what went before, gives us to know that she was a
wife to one of the three sons of Noah, and was with him
in the ark during the whole time of the deluge.
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that
though in the collection which we now have of the
sibylline prophecies, several whole books, and some
parts in others, are confessedly spurious, yet others there
are, which have all the evidences we can desire of their
being genuine : and therefore to condemn them all in
the Jump, and, because some appear to be palpable
forgeries, to include all under the same category, is an
act of great injustice.
If indeed we attend ever so little to the contents of
those oracles, which we deem genuine, we cannot but
perceive, that neither heathens, Jews, nor Christians,
could consistently with themselves, be any ways the
forgers of them. 2 The heathens could not, because they
are directly levelled against their wickedness, idolatry,
and polytheism. The Jews could not, because they
foretell the subversion of their state and temple by the
Romans, which we all know they would never believe :
and the Christians could not, because many quotations
out of these oracles are found in other authors previous
to Christianity ; and in the beginning of it several of
them are cited by the first Christians, in the open view
of all men, as very ancient at that time, very well known,
and universally received over all the heathen world.
If then these genuine prophecies of the sibyls were
not of human contrivance and invention, the conclusive
question is, from whence was it that they derived their
original? God, no doubt, who forced Balaam, contrary
to his will, to bless the Israelites, and to prophecy 3 ' the
coming (if his Son out of Jacob,' could, in what manner
he pleased, control the diabolical spirits, which pre-
' Clemens Alexandrinus, b. v.
-' Wniston's Vindication of the Sibylline Oracles.
3 Num. xxiv. 5, &c.
sided in the heathen oracles, and make them utter things
even relating to the kingdom of the Messiah, which
otherwise they might have no incluiation to utter. But
there is no necessity for our having recourse to this ex-
traordinary expedient ; since the contents of the sibylline
oracles, those I mean that are genuine, are every where
agTeeable to the scriptures, and foretell, for the main part,
the same great revolutions of providence that they do ; it
is no way inconsistent with the divine attributes to sup-
pose, that though God gave positive laws, or an institu-
tion of religious worship to the Jews only, and intrusted
none but them with those divine oracles, which related
to that worship ; yet he might not wholly confine divine
inspiration to that nation, but might support the law and
religion of nature, and the right worship of himself, as
the one true God, among the heathens likewise, by the
help of these oracles, until 4 ' the day dawned,' that is,
a more perfect revelation came, and ' he who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness, gave the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ.' a
* 2 Cor. iv. 6.
a The most rational and consistent account of the sibylline
oracles, that is perhaps anywhere to be found within a small
compass, is given by Bishop Horsley in his ingenious ' Disser-
tation on the prophecies of the Messiah dispersed among the
Heathen.' In that dissertation there are one or two positions
strenuously maintained, which I cannot admit; but the general
principle on which the reasoning rests as its foundation, no re-
flecting Christian can, I think, call in question. It is, that the
rise and progress of idolatry were partial and gradual: that all
nations did not become idolaters at the same period of time ; that
the first idolaters no where abjured the worship of the true God,
when they began to worship subordinate deities in conjunction
with him; and that they carefully collected and religiously pre-
served the prophecies of the patriarchal ages, until they degener-
ated so far as to forget the worship of the true God entirely.
Even then they would not destroy the sacred books of their more
orthodox and pious ancestors, but would rather add to them
other predictions or pretended predictions, derived from an im-
pure source ; for, as he jnstly observes, superstition has uniformly
been in its own nature timid, and more likely to give credit to
false predictions than to destroy the books which contain predic-
tions that are true. He supposes therefore that the sybils were
fictitious beings who never really existed; but that the oracles
attributed to them were collections of true and false prophecies —
of prophecies which had really been delivered under the influence
of the Spirit of God to the patriarchs of the human race, and of
false prophecies which had been added to these by the heathen
priests and soothsayers, to whom were committed the original
sacred oracles. Such a mixture of truth and imposture he sup-
poses to have constituted the matter of the sybilline books which
were preserved in the capitol of Rome; which the early fathers
of the Christian church, such as Justin Martyr and Clemens
Alexandrinus quoted; and which furnished Virgil with the
ideas which run through his sublime eclogue entitled Pollio.
Four-fifths of the oracles quoted from these books by the latter
fathers, after pious frauds became frequent, he justly considers
as palpable forgeries by some indiscreet Christians, who absurdly
hoped to serve their cause by means calculated to injure it among
thinking men. It is not, I confess, clear to me that Virgil took
his ideas from the sybilline books, though he quotes them, or
rather refers to them ; for the Old Testament, having long be-
fore been translated into Greek, was accessible to Virgil, who
was himself a learned man of great curiosity; though, wishing to
pay a compliment to a great man of Rome, he might not choose
to rest the foundation of that compliment upon the sacred books
of a people so generally hated and despised as were the Jews by
the Romans. — Bp. Ghig. — Ed.
INTRODUCTION
HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
CHAP. I. — Judaism preparatory to CJiristianity.
" That the Mosaic dispensation was from the first intend-
ed not for the exclusive benefit of the chosen people, but
as instrumental to the introduction of an universal blessing
to mankind, is evident from the very first promise made
to Abraham ; which to the personal and national blessing,
with which it encouraged and rewarded the faith and
obedience of the patriarch, added this remarkable de-
claration, as the crown and completion of all : ' 'And
in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed ;' a de-
claration again repeated to the same patriarch on two
solemn occasions. 2 First on disclosing to him the in-
tended punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah, and receiv-
ing with the most gracious condescension, his humble
but earnest intercession in favour of those few righteous
who might be found in those receptacles of guilt ; and
again still more emphatically, in consequence of his
obeying the voice of God, and 3 ' and not withholding
his son, his only son.'
" It deserves to be particularly noticed, that in the for-
mer of these transactions, the patriarch interceding with
God, ' ' as Judge of all the earth,' was an evident re-
presentation of the Great Intercessor whose appearance
was predicted in the promised blessing: and that in the
latter he beheld, in the commanding sacrifice, and the
providential restoration of his only begotten son, the
clear representation of the only begotten Son of God ;
prefiguring at once the voluntary sacrifice and the tri-
umphant resurrection of that Christ who was the promised
seed, ' in whom all the nations of the eartli were to be
blessed.' So that in both cases, but especially the last,
the nature of the promised blessing was not obscurely
intimated, by the immediate circumstances attending the
divine declaration.
" As the patriarch thus ' rejoiced to behold the day of
Christ,' it cannot be doubted but he communicated to his
family this joyful hope, and explained the great object
to which it was directed ; so that when the same promise
was solemnly renewed, first to Isaac;, 5 and afterwards to
Jacob, 6 its meaning and object were distinctly under-
stood by these patriarchs : and that wherever the bles-
sing of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is referred to, or the
covenant which God made with them and their posterity
recognized as the glory and the hope of Israel ; this es-
sential part of it, the promise of the Messiah, and the
blessing by him to be communicated to all the nations of
the earth, must have been equally and perpetually recog-
nized as the great object of the Jewish scheme, to which
every other part of it was instrumental and subordinate.
So that the original foundation and primary characteris-
tic of this scheme, far from being partial and exclusive,
avowedly extended to all the nations of the earth, and
centered in that Messiah, who is the grand object of all
the divine dispensations, from the creation of the world
to its close.
" This original and perpetual purpose of God, to extend
the effects of the Jewish dispensation to all the nations of
the earth, is also most clearly recognized in the cele-
brated prophecy of Jacob ; * * The sceptre shall not de-
part from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
until Shiloh come ; and unto him shall the gathering of
the people be.' Whatever difference of opinion may
exist as to the event described, and the period marked
out by the ' sceptre's departing from Judah, and the law-
giver from between his feet ;' there appears no reason-
able ground for doubting, that the word Shiloh designates
the Messiah, and that the gathering of the people to him,
* Gen. xxvi. 4.
6 Ibid, xxviii. 14.
» Gen. xii. 3.
2 Ibid, xviii.
1 Ibid, xviii. 25.
3 Ibid. x\ii, 18.
a Gen. xlix. 10. I am disposed to adopt Warburton's inter-
pretation of this prophecy, in preference to any other; and to
believe that it denoted the continuance of the theocratic sceptre
over the Jews, which remained until our Saviour came, who insti-
tuted in its place his kingdom ' not of this world.' (See Warhurton,
b. v. sect. 3. subsect 3. roL iv. p. 243—866.) The interpreta-
tion of Patrick from YVagenseil, seems the next in clearness and
probability. Consult also Newton's fourth Dissertation, l'oli
Synopsin, Dcdd, and the Bibliotheca Biblica, in locum.
822
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
presignifies the extension of the church to all nations
without distinction.
" The admission of the Gentiles into the church of God,
is indeed an event which the inspired psalmist predicts
in a variety of passages with the greatest clearness ; and
which all the prophets dwell on with such distinctness,
copiousness and animation, as prove beyond controversy,
that this great consummation was uninterruptedly the
leading object of the divine purposes and communica-
tions, to which the whole Jewish scheme was merely pre-
paratory and subordinate. It is expedient to cite a few
passages to illustrate this assertion ; a few, however, will
be sufficient, for its truth is so certain, it scarcely requires
confirmation, and the passages establishing it are so
numerous, to transcribe them all would be at once tedi-
ous and unnecessary.
" In the second psalm, which is clearly and exclusively
prophetic of the Messiah, the psalmist asks, ' AVhy do
the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take
counsel together against the Lord, and against his a
Anointed ; saying, Let us break the bands asunder, and
cast away their cords from us.' This clear prophecy of
the resistance which would be attempted, against the es-
tablishment of the Messiah's kingdom, is followed by as
clear a prediction that this opposition would be ineffec-
tual. ' He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the
Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak
unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displea-
sure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of
Zion ; I will declare the decree the Lord hath said unto
me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.'
Thus, emphatically and distinctly does the inspired pen-
man predict the divine nature and supreme exaltation of
the Messiah, and he then proceeds to declare the univer-
sal extent of his dominion. ' Ask of me and I shall give
thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utter-
most parts of the earth for thy possession : thou shalt
break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them
in pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise now there-
fore, 0 ye kings, be instructed, ye judges of the earth ;
serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling :
kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the
way ; when his wrath is kindled but a little, blessed are
all they that put their trust in him.' It seems impossible
to describe in clearer terms the Messiah's reign, as not
confined like the Mosaic law to a single nation, but in-
cluding within its sway all nations and regions of the
earth.
" In the twenty-second psalm, which describes with
equal distinctness, the rejection, the sufferings, and the
deatli of the appointed Saviour, even to the minutest
a All the versions agree in translating this passage in a man-
ner applicable to the Messiah. The Chaldee Targum uses the
xery word, Messiah, and the Seventy the word Christ or Anoint-
ed. Sue Bihlia Polyglotta Waltoni ; indeed the seventh, eighth,
arid twelfth verses are entirely incapable of being fully accom-
plished or charly understood, except as applied to the Messiah.
The only variety of any moment is in the eleventh verse, where
instead of ' kiss the Son,' that is, as we explain it, adore him, all
the versions except the Syriac read, ' receive instruction lest the
Lord be aiizry,' &c. This makes the sense more clear and co-
herent, and is justified by a very slight change in the original.
^ el Efoubigant, whose authority is considerable, retains the pre-
sent reading of our Hebrew text, and translates it, « adore the
Son.'
particulars of ° ' their piercing his hands and his feet,
parting his garments among them, and casting lots upon
his vesture.' The prophecy goes on to declare that,
notwithstanding this apparent depression, God would re-
gard and exalt the sufferer. ' He hath not despised nor
abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he hid
his face from him, but when he cried unto him he heard
him.' And it proceeds to declare that the final event
would be, his extending universally the dominion of true
religion. ' All the ends of the world shall remember and
turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations
shall worship before thee ; for the kingdom is the Lord's,
and he is the governor among the nations.'
" AVith equal sublimity does the forty-seventh psalm call
on all nations ; ' O clap your hands, all ye nations ; shout
unto God with the voice of triumph, for God is the king
of all the earth ; sing ye praises with understanding,
God reigneth over the heathen, God sitteth upon the
throne of his holiness ; the princes of the people are ga-
thered together unto the people of the God of Abraham ;
for the shields of the earth belong unto God, he is great-
ly exalted.'
" The sixty-seventh and the seventy-second psalms, are
not less express in predicting that a period should arrive,
when the dominion of the God of Israel should be ac-
knowledged by all the nations of the earth. The seventy-
second especially declares, that a Son should inherit the
kingdom of David, ' who should judge the people with
righteousness, and the poor with judgment ;' and the ex-
tent and effects of his dominion are described in terms
applicable only to the Messiah's reign. ' In his days
shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so
long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion
also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of
the earth ; they that dwell in the wilderness shall bow
before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust. The
kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents,
the kings of Arabia and Seba shall offer gifts ; yea
all kings shall fall down before him, all rations shall
serve him.' The nature of this homage and its motives
are declared to be spiritual and religious : 'for he shall
deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also and him
that hath no helper ; he shall spare the poor and needy,
and shall save the soul of the needy ; he shall redeem
their souls from deceit and violence, precious shall their
blood be in his sight. His name shall endure for ever,
his name shall be continued as long as the sun, and men
shall be blessed in him, all nations shall call him bles-
sed.' Enraptured at the glorious prospect of the univer-
sal dominion of him, in whom, according to the promise
made to Abraham, ' all nations were to be blessed,' the
psalmist exclaims, ' Blessed be the Lord God, the God
of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things ; and blessed
be his glorious name for ever, and let the whole earth
be filled with his glory : amen and amen.'
" Isaiah, the great evangelic prophet is still more ex-
plicit, in predicting the extension of the Messiah's king-
dom over the Gentile world : and that the character of
the religion to be by him established, would be in the
highest degree spiritual and comprehensive, free from
any local or national restriction, and unincumbered with
Ps. xx. 17, IS, 19.
b See Mat. xxvii. 46, where our Lord appropriates this psalm
as directly applicable to his sufferings.
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
823
any burdensome ritual or ceremonial observances. Yet
that Israel should be instrumental in forming this king-
dom, and should, ultimately at least, partake of the bless-
ings it confers. ' ' It shall come to pass,' says he, ' in the
last (or latter) days, that the mountain of the Lord's house
shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall
be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto
it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye and Jet
us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of
the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and
we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go
forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,
and he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke
" many people ; and they shall beat their swords into
plough -shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks ;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war any more.'
" This prediction of the extent and effects of the Mes-
siah's reign, though exactly descriptive of the genuine
character of the Christian religion, and its perpetual
tendency to produce the full effect here described, yet
undoubtedly peculiarly relates to a period in the. history
of the church of Christ not yet arrived ; to the final result
of a system yet in progress : which, whenever it shall be
accomplished, will display in full lustre the wisdom and
the mercy of the divine dispensations ; but it is such a
result as the continuance of the Jewish ritual, and the
restrictions of the Jewish law could never produce. It
therefore implies an improvement of that law, and a
breaking down of that wall of partition between Jews
and Gentiles, founded on the Mosaic ritual, which the
Messiah, appearing as a new lawgiver, could alone have
authority to remove.
" In various subsequent chapters, the prophet with still
greater clearness predicts the extension of the Messiah's
kingdom over the heathen world. I select only one pas-
sage; as remarkable from its connecting this prediction
with the declaration of the Messiah's humiliation; and
therefore proving the kingdom described by the prophet
was spiritual not temporal. 2 ' And now, saith the Lord,
that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring
Jacob again to him ; though Israel be not gathered, yet
shall 1 be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God
shall be my strength. And he said, it is a light thing
that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise up the tribes
of Judah, and to restore the preserved of Israel ; I will
also give thee as a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest
be my salvation to the ends of the earth. Thus saith the
Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One : to
him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhor-
relh, to a servant of rulers ; kings shall see and arise,
princes also shall worship the name of the Lord that is
faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose
thee.'
" Thus expressly do the prophets foretell the universal
extent and the spiritual nature of the Messiah's reign.
Now, had no distinct and direct intimation been given,
that a change must take place in the character of the re-
ligion established by divine interposition, in order to fit
it for this greater extension, and more spiritual efficacy ;
1 Is. ii. 2 et seq * Is. xlix. 5.
a Instead of this line, 'he shall rebuke many people,' Lowth
translates, • he shall work conviction in many peoples,' which
gives a much more clear and consistent sense.
| yet the nature of the case would compel us to infer the
necessity of such a change.
" A religion which was to be received in every nation
and region of the globe, could not, like the Jewish law,
require that all the adult males of every nation profess-
ing it, should visit the temple at Jerusalem, three times
each year, to celebrate the three great festivals : this
would be physically impossible. It could not enjoin the
observance of those various rites, ceremonies, and insti-
tutions, which were either commemorative of events, in
which the Jewish nation alone were interested ; or which
were calculated to separate them from all other nations,
by a marked opposition of laws and manners : this would
be totally unnatural and irrational, when it was predict-
ed that the Jewish dispensation should terminate in a
religious system, calculated to attract, not to repel the
rest of mankind, and destined to embrace all the nations
of the earth.
" It is indeed unreasonable to expect, that the Jewish
lawgiver at the very moment he was delivering his Jaw,
should be directed by God to weaken the reverence of
the nation for it, by declaring that its duration would be
short, and its obligation transitory ; or that while he was
labouring to impress the necessity of avoiding all simi-
larity of manners, principles, and religion, with the sur-
rounding nations, he should at the same moment distinct-
ly announce, that it was for the sake of these very nations
ultimately, that the peculiar scheme of the Jewish insti-
tutions was formed, and that this scheme would terminate
in the abolition of all the distinctions now established.
** We know the Jews were at that time at once dull and
carnally minded, very averse to the restraints their law
imposed, and above all to its prohibitions against imi-
tating the manners of their neighbours, sharing in their
festivities and idolatries, and uniting with them by inter-
marriages. And we can hardly conceive it possible for
Moses to have expressed to them such sentiments as
these, without utterly alienating them from the system he
proposed, and subverting the influence of his laws, by
the very manner of promulgating them : and this without
the least conceivable necessity for acting so hazardous
a part, or the prospect of any advantage to be derived
from it.
" The divine wisdom is indeed most conspicuous in the
conduct of this, as of every other part of the Jewish
scheme. In the infancy of the Jewish people, while they
were immature in intellect, and wedded to external ob-
jects, a law adapted to that state, and calculated at the
same time to prepare for a more universal and perfect
religion, was employed to control them by its restraints,
while it attracted and engaged them by its ceremonies and
its festivals. During this stage of their progress it was
unnecessary, and would probably have been injurious,
to have announced distinctly the future abrogation of the
ceremonial law, and the admission of the Gentiles into
the church of God. But .as soon as the adherence of the
people to that law was sufficiently secured by its long
establishment, and by the erection of the temple, the
prophets were empowered to predict this constantly in-
tended change in the divine dispensations with perpe-
tually increasing clearness, as that change approached.
" It ought however to be observed, that the Jewish law-
giver, to prevent all suspicion of inconsistency in the
divine conduct, not only recorded the promise to Abra-
ham and the prophecy of Jacob, but was himself em-
824
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
powered to intimate the purpose of God, to send, .at some
future period, another lawgiver, authorized to promulgate
a new law.
" This seems plainly the purport of his celebrated pro-
phecy, delivered towards the close of his own ministry.
' The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet
from the midst of thy brethren, like unto me : unto him
ye shall hearken. According to all that thou desiredst
of the Lord thy God, in the day of the assembly, saying ;
Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God,
neither let me see this great fire any more, that 1 die not.
And the Lord said unto me, they have well spoken that
they have spoken, I will raise them up a prophet from
among their brethren like unto thee ; and I will put my
words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that
1 shall command him ; and it shall come to pass that
w hosoever will not hearken unto my words, which he shall
speak in my name, I will require it of him.'
" It has been justly observed, " that this prophet to be
like unto Moses must be a lawgiver ; for this appears the
essential distinction between him and all inferior pro-
phets. We cannot suppose the divine messenger thus
pre-eminently marked out, Mas to do nothing more than
cause the ancient statutes of his predecessor to remain
as originally established ; since that essential character
of similarity would thus be wanting, and no sufficient
reason would appear for his mission being peculiarly
predicted. And since the promulgation of a new law
implies a change of the pre-existing system, the certain-
ty of such a change being intended, may be fairly inferred
from this prophecy.
" We cannot but observe how accurately the meek and
humble tenor of our Saviour's life, and the merciful
nature of all his stupendous miracles, accords with the
motive assigned by the Jews, for imploring that they
might not again receive the will of God in the same man-
ner as they had done at Mount Sinai ; even the over-
whelming terror with which they were then filled, ' Let
me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither
let me see this great 'fire any more that I die not.' God,
indulgent to this weakness of huntan nature, approves of
and grants this entreaty ; and as the mode of impressing
the Jewish law was suited to its nature as a system of
coercion; so the gospel scheme, which proclaimed not
only ' * glory to God in the highest,' but ' on earth peace
and good will to man,' was ushered in with the most at-
tractive manifestations of mildness and mercy, benignity
and love. As Moses deserved the epithet of the 'meek-
est of men,' so the Son of God displayed meekness and
forbearance as much greater, as the dignity from which
he stooped was unspeakably exalted, his voluntary hu-
miliation profound, and his sufferings unparalleled.
How wonderful the coincidence of the prophetic de-
1 Luke ii. 14.
a See Newton's sixth dissertation, where it seems to me
clearly proved, that this prophecy cannot be applied either to
Joshua or any other successor of Moses, as judge or king; nor
yet to any single prophet or succession of prophets; particularly
from the three concluding verses of Deuteronomy, probably added
by Ezra, and the history in Numbers xii. from 1 to 8. See also
Mr Faber's Horse Mosaics, vol. ii. b. ii. sect. 3. ch. 3. This
learned writer has very fully treated of the subject of this entire
Lecture in lus second book, to which I would refer my reader; as
I conceive it unnecessary for me to dwell more fully than I have
done, on a subject which has been so lately and amply discussed
t>y this learned divine.
scription and the real history ! 2 ' Behold,' the evangelic
prophet thus anticipates the facts, ' my servant whom I
uphold, mind elect in whom my soul delighteth ; I have
put my Spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to
the Gentiles ; he shall not cry nor lift up, nor cause his
voice to be heard in the street ; a bruised reed shall he
not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench, lie
shall bring forth b judgment unto truth ; he shall not fail
nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the
earth, and the isles shall wait for his law.' And again,
3 ' He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth ; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as
a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his
mouth.' Yet notwithstanding this humiliation, he dis-
played a dignity as a divine lawgiver, which, no other
prophet presumed to claim. ' He spake as one having
authority,' as exercising a right not only to explain and
enforce the Mosaic laws, but to repeal, to alter, and to
improve them ; as in the instance of the libertywith re-
spect to divorce, which our Lord states Moses to have
yielded to the Jews ' for the hardness of their hearts ;' but
which he disallows, as inconsistent with the original
strictness of the marriage tie, and the perfect purity of
the gospel scheme.
" And to complete the accurate accomplishment of the
Mosaic prediction, how awfully is that clause fulfilled,
which declares in the name of Jehovah, ' AA hosoever will
not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my
name, 1 will require it of him.' The Jewish nation did
not hearken to the promised prophet, and of the whole
nation how awfully has it been required? 1800 years'
dispersion and degradation has not yet closed the effect
of that dreadful imprecation, ' his blood be on us and on
our children.'
" Thus is Jesus of Nazareth, though in his divine nature
infinitely superior, yet as a prophet accurately like unto
Moses ; c in his office as legislator ; in his full partici-
pation of the divine councils and the divine influence,
for ' God gave not the Spirit by measure unto him :' in
the magnitude and variety of his miracles : in the impor-
tance and permanence of that religious system which he
introduced : in the meekness of his character, and the
signal punishments with which God has vindicated the
authority and punished the neglect of his laws.
" Subsequent intimations of the intended substitution
of a more spiritual religion, and a more refined and
perfect law, in place of the Mosaic, are frequent and
clear. The fact recorded by the Jewish lawgiver, of the
great patriarch Abraham having paid religious reverence
to Melchizedek, ' the priest of the most high God ;' re-
ceiving his blessing and paying him tithes, is alluded to
by the inspired psalmist, at the very period when the
Levitical priesthood and the ceremonial law were most
fully established : when he describes that promised ruler
whom he terms ' his Lord,' declaring, ' the Lord said
unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make
2 Is. xlii. 1. 3 Is ]i;i 7>
b Lowth for the words ' he shall bring forth judgment unto
truth,' reads ' he shall publish judgment so as to establish it per-
fectly ;' which gives a much more clear sense.
c For a variety of more minute points of resemblance con-
sult Bishop Newton's sixth dissertation: Eusebius, Demonstrate
Evangelica, b. i. c. 3, and b. ix. c. 11, and Collatio Philippi a
Limborch cum erudite Judseo, pp. 4, 31, 2S9, et seq. ; and
Faber's Horse Mosa'c.T, vol. ii. pp. 145 and 26G.
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
825
thine enemies thy footstool ;' to whom lie ascribes as a
distinguishing feature of his character, his possessing a
priesthood similar to that of Melchizedek. ' The Lord
hath sworn and will not repent, thou art a priest for ever
after the order of Melchizedek.' This declaration the
apostle to the Hebrews" argues on at large, and irrefut-
ably proves, that it implies the abrogation of the Leviti-
eal law, and the substitution of a more perfect religion.
1 If says he, 'perfection were by the Levitical priest-
hood, for under it the people received the law, what far-
ther need was there that another priest should rise after
the order of Melchizedek, and not be called after the order
of Aaron ; for the priesthood being changed there is made
of necessity a change also of the law.' For the full
illustration of this argument, I refer to the learned com-
mentators who have explained the passages in which it
is contained, the conclusion thus staled by the apostle,
is evidently contained in the scriptures, and is that which
1 wish to impress, as it proves the consistency, and illus-
trates the connexion, of the Mosaic and the Christian
codes.
" With equal clearness the same great apostle argues
from the very nature of the Levitical law, that it was in-
tended as the type and introduction of the Christian
scheme ; and here again adduces the prophetic declara-
tion of the inspired psalmist. ' The law having a sha-
dow * of good things to come, and not the very image
a The general scope of the apostle's argument is, that Abra-
hani acknowledged the superiority of Melchizedek; that his order
of priesthood was therefore prior and superior to the Aaronical
order, and that Christ being of that order, as the psalmist pro-
phesies, his priesthood is superior to and supersedes the Aaroni-
cal, which must therefore he changed, and with it the Levitical
law. In the second verse the apostle declares Melchizedek was
by interpretation king of righteousness, and after that also king
of Salem, that is, ' king of peace.' In these great and peculiar
characters the priesthood of Christ was pre-eminently distinguish-
ed. The apostle then in the third verse, describes the priest-
hood of Melchizedek by additional characters, which belong not
to him as a human individual, but to the priesthood he possessed.
* In this sense he was without,' that is, independent of, ' father,
without mother, without descent,' that is, independent of his de-
scent, ' having neither beginning of days, nor end of life,' as to
his priesthood, ' but being made like unto the Son of God, abideth
a priest continually.' ' See Macknight's very clear illustration
of this passage, in his view and illustration prefixed to this chap-
ter. Like Melchizedek: Christ is a king as well as a priest, be-
ing the Son of God and Lord of all. He is also king of righteous-
ness, to promote which is the object of his moral government.
He is also king of peace, reconciling sinners to God and to one
another. Like Melchizedek Christ is not descended from parents
who were priests, but derives his priesthood from the special de-
signation of God, independent of all limitations of descent, and his
priesthood is of a nature so excellent as to have no companion nor
successor in it, but he liveth for ever to execute it himself. Like
Melchizedek, Christ's priesthood did not, as that of the Levites,
begin at thirty and end at fifty years ; hut he exercised it from
the first, and retains it through his whole existence: and finally,
like Melchizedek, he acts as priest, not for one particular nation,
but for all the true worshippers of God.
b ' The law having a shadow of good tilings to come, and not
the very image of the things.' On these words it is remarked,
" The word s'i*ova, rendered image, seems from the tenor of the
apostle's argument, to be used for the essential or substantial form
of a thing, that is, for the very thing itself, as opposed to its <rx.ia,
shadow or delineation; so it is paralleled to <rcoy.x, the body or
substance, which the apostle elsewhere opposes in like manner to
its CKia, or shadow, (Col. ii. 17.) Accordingly the Syriac version
explains ukoio. by the substance, and Chrysostom by the truth
or reality as opposed to types or emblems. Cicero has used
almost the same expression in the same sense; "We have
no solid and express substance of true law, the sister of justice ;
we use only its shadow and semblance." (X>e Officiis, b. iii.
of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they
offered year by year continually, make the comers
thereunto perfect ; for then would they not have ceased
to be offered, because that the worshippers once purged,
should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those
sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins
every year ; for it is not possible that the blood of bulls
and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when lie,
(the promised Redeemer predicted by the psalmist in the
fortieth psalm,) cometh into the world, he saith, Sacri-
fice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast
prepared me ; in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sins,
thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, lo I come, (in
the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will,
O God. Above when he said, sacrifice and offering,
and burnt-offerings, and offering for sin thou wouldest
not, neither hadst thou pleasure therein (which are offer-
ed by the law). Then he said, lo I come to do thy
will, O God ; he taketh away the first that he may estab-
lish the second ; by the which will we are sanctioned,
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all.'
" The prophet Jeremiah, who is also appealed to by the
great apostle of the Gentiles, foretells the propagation of
a pure and spiritual religion, the abolition of legal or-
dinances, the call of the Gentiles, and the final restora-
tion of Israel. Calling upon ' back-sliding Israel ' to
return from her transgressions and idolatries. The pro-
phet encourages their repentance by declaring-, 1 ' I will
give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall
feed you with knowledge and understanding ; and it
shall come to pass when ye be multiplied and increased
in the land, in those days, saith the Lord, they shall say
no more, the ark of the covenant of the Lord, neither
shall it come to mind, neither shall they remember it,
neither shall they visit it, neither shall that be done any
more. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne
of the Lord, and all the nations shall be gathered unto
it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem ; neither shall
they walk any more after the imagination of their evil
heart. In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the
house of Israel ; and they shall come together out of the
land of the north, to the land that I have given for an inhe-
ritance to their fathers.' And still more expressly in a sub-
sequent chapter, 2 ' Behold the days come, saith the Lord,
that I will make anew covenant with the house of Israel,
and with the house of Judah ; not according to the cove-
nant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took
them by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt;
which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband
unto them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel, after those
i Jer. iii. 14—19. 2 Jer. xxxi. 31, et seq.
c. 17.) The apostle means to illustrate the imperfection of the
law, that it could not bring men to perfection, that the good things
it promised were but a shadow of the great realities secured by
Christ, the veriest sketch or outline, in comparison of the perfect
and exact picture. See Dodd, Macknight, Heylin, and Wolfius
on Heb. x. 1. and Suicer's Thesaurus, and Parkhurst on the word
'E'ikuv. It is necessary to remark, that in the words ' a body hast
thou prepared me,' the apostle follows the Septuagint, and not
the Hebrew text as it now stands. But for the probability of a
corruption in the Hebrew text, consult Dr Thomas Randolph's
comparison of the citations in the New Testament, with the
Hebrew and the Septuagint, No. 159, p. 22 and 44, and the
authors by him referred to.
5 M
826
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
days, saith the Lord ; I will put my law in their inward
parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God,
and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no
more every man his neighbour, and every man his bro-
ther, saying, know ye the Lord, for they shall all know
me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith
the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and will re-
member their sin no more.' According to this predic-
tion the ancient Levitical covenant was to be dissolved,
and the ordinances of Moses to be succeeded by a law
not in any degree typical, but entirely promotive of real
virtue ; not requiring ceremonies to preserve it, but in
its very essence practical and influential, regulating the
temper and written in the heart."
CHAP. II. — Judaism preparatory to Christianity,
continued.
" Let us next proceed to evince, that as the law and the
prophets were thus avowedly designed to predict and
introduce the gospel of Christ ; so they did in fact ac-
complish this design, their pre-existence being indispen-
sably necessary to prepare for the reception of that
gospel, and in a variety of ways illustrating its impor-
tance and facilitating- its promulgation.
" To place this conclusion in a clear light, let us reflect
what would probably have been the situation of mankind
as to religion and morality, if no such nation or system
as the Jewish had existed, before the appearance of our
Lord. It seems certain that the whole world would have
been sunk in the most gross idolatry, and an almost total
ignorance of the principles of natural religion. The
very idea of the Supreme Creator and Ruler of the uni-
verse would have been obliterated from the minds of
men ; or at most thought of only by a few speculative
philosophers, who had never ventured to inculcate the
necessity of confining adoration to the one true God, or
openly to condemn the absurdities and profanations of
idolatry, which would have prevailed over the world, un-
censured, we may almost say unsuspected of error or
depravity ; since no purer system would have existed, to
which an appeal might have been made, as clearly true,
or supported by any acknowledged authority.
'* In such a state of religious blindness, all expectations
of a future retribution would have appeared ridiculous or
incredible, from the falsehoods and extravagancies with
which that opinion had been universally encumbered and
disgraced. The evidence from prophecy could not have
existed ; and any appeal to miracles would have been
disregarded or discredited, from the multitude of lying
wonders which had usurped that name, without a single
instance of any plainly supernatural interposition.
" Had the world been permitted to sink thus universally
into ignorance, idolatry, and depravity ; almost deprived
of all ideas of true religion, and totally estranged from
every feeling of pure morality ; without any fixed prin-
ciples to recur to on these subjects, nay almost without
a language in which to speak of them : it seems nearly
impossible to conceive any means, by which mankind
could have been instructed or reformed, without utterly
subverting the whole course of nature, and forcibly con-
trolling the moral character of man. Darkness would
have overspread the earth and thick darkness the nations ;
and amidst this universal moral chaos, no spot could have
been found, on which the foundation of the church of God
could have been laid ; no nation, or tribe, or family, who,
if the standard of true religion were reared, could be
expected to rally round it and support the sacred cause.
" A degeneracy so fatal and irremediable was effectual-
ly prevented by the operation of the Jewish scheme. The
world was rapidly sinking into idolatry with all its pro-
fanations and crimes, the pure principles of that patriar-
chal religion, which had originally enlightened mankind,
were preserved in the family of Abraham by the trans-
mission of parental instruction, until that family became
a nation: that then this nation, which would otherwise have
been hurried away by the resistless torrent of universal
corruption, was placed under the immediate government
of Jehovah, as their national Lord and King ; rescued
from Egypt and settled in Canaan, by a series of mira-
culous interpositions, which exhibited an irrefragable
proof of the power, the providence, and the majesty of
the true God, as well as the impotence and nullity of those
base idols, who usurped his honour in a deluded world.
" To preserve this nation as a lasting monument of the
divine supremacy, and a permanent asylum, where the
truths of religion and the principles of morals might take
refuge, and be preserved for a more favourable period,
when their salutary influence might be again extended to
all mankind with effect by the promised Messiah, ' in
whom all nations were to be blessed,' the Mosaic law
was given, which in this infancy of human reason and
human virtue, was to act as the ' schoolmaster to bring
men to Christ ;' a task which it effected by a variety of
means which can here be only briefly hinted at.
" First, it maintained the radical principles of true theo-
logy, while it clothed them in such a form, and promul-
gated them in such circumstances, as without detracting"
in the slightest particular from their purity and truth,
rendered them interesting and attractive to a nation,
which could scarcely have been induced to attend to any
mere abstract doctrines concerning the being and attri-
butes of the Deity, if he had not authorized them to look
up to him as their peculiar, national, and guardian God.
" The same law inculcated the principles of pure mo-
rality, with a similar attention to the feelings and the
character of the Jewish nation ; enforcing the entire sys-
tem by temporal sanctions, which alone were capable of
influencing a people, short-sighted, incredulous, attached
to present objects, and habituated from the example of
the rest of mankind, to consider temporal prosperity and
success as the criterion of the power and fidelity of that
God, who allowed them to consider him as their national
and peculiar Lord and King.
" Such a system could be carried into effect, only by a
particular providence proportioning the visible prosperi-
ty both of the state and of individuals, to their obedience
to the divine law. The continued display of this won-
derful providential interference, supplied a perpetually
increasing proof of the power, the justice, and the mercy
of Jehovah, and exhibited the most awful and instructive
examples to mankind, of the general conduct of God's
moral government.
" The Mosaic law not only promulgated a system of
true religion and pure morality, and supported that sys-
tem by the most powerful sanctions; but it guarded it
from the contagion of that idolatry and vice which uni-
versally prevailed, by a corresponding system of peculiar
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
827
laws and manners, rites and ceremonies, calculated to
form a barrier between the chosen people and the idola-
trous world : while by the multitude of its rites, the mag-
nificence, first of the sanctuary, and afterwards of the
temple, the solemnity and attraction of its festivals, and
finally by the influence of the priests and Levites, who
were set apart as the public instructors of the nation in
morals and religion, it supplied the means of counteract-
ing the attractions of idolatry.
" Further, the Mosaic institution combining the civil
government, the national religion, the tenure of private
property, aud the regulations of domestic life in one
connected scheme ; all whose parts tended to one ob-
ject, the permanence of the entire system : it effectually
secured that object, notwithstanding the crimes and
errors of the chosen people, their idolatries and apos-
tasies both private and public, which no system of moral
government could totally prevent ; amidst the power-
ful temptations from without, and the wrong propen-
sities from within, necessarily arising from the general
state of the world, and the peculiar character, of the
Jewish people, during the entire period from Moses to
Christ.
" In truth, the adherence of the Jewish nation to their
law from its delivery to this hour, a period of near 3300
years, is an event so unparalleled in the history of man-
kind, particularly when we consider the calamitous cir-
cumstances of the Jews for the last 1750 years, as seems
sufficient, even if considered singly, to prove the reality
of a providential interposition, unprecedented in the his-
tory of any other nation. But when we reflect that the
chastisements which should attend the misconduct of the
Jews, were distinctly announced by their lawgiver, the
preservation of their nation as a peculiar people, pre-
dicted by him, nay the circumstances of their present
dispersion not obscurely sketched out ; such a prophecy,
decidedly antecedent by ages to the events which it pre-
dicts, and predicting events which as nothing but an im-
mediate and peculiar interposition of Providence could
bring about, so nothing but a divine sagacity could fore-
see ; seems to supply a decisive proof of the divine
original of the Jewish scheme.
" But we are still to view this scheme in another light
clearly illustrative of its divine original, as introductory
to the Gospel. And here we must observe, that the chief
rites and festivals of the Mosaic ritual were not only cal-
culated to commemorate the leading interpositions of
God, in the deliverance and settlement of the nation,
and to exclude the infection of idolatry ; but that they
had a prospective signification, and were clearly a typical
and figurative of the Messiah's character and kingdom.
" This typical character of the ritual law has been illus-
trated by so many eminent writers, and above all has
been so clearly established by the gTeat apostle of the
a This typical significance of Judaism lias been fully and
learnedly expounded by the Rev. Samuel Mather, a clergyman
of Dublin, in a quarto volume published in 1683, entitled the
Figures and Types of the Old Testament, &c. Consult particu-
larly the Gospel of the Perpetual Types, pp. 208 — 218, also the
Gospel of the Sacrifices and Offerings, pp. 232 — 254, and the
Gospel of the Jewish Festivals, from pp. 520 — 545; see also the
learned Mr Faber's Horse Mosaics, b. ii. sect. 2, on the Con-
nection between Judaism and Christianity by Means of Types,
vol. ii. pp. 40 — 173; also the learned Outram on Sacrifice, par-
ticularly b. i. c\ 18, and b. ii. c. 7: also Hartley on the Truth of
Christianity, propus. 30 — 33.
Gentiles, in the epistle to the Hebrews, that I need only
touch on it; and observe, that the whole system of
bloody sacrilices, which had plainly preceded the Mosaic
institutions, and leads us, when tracing its origin to the
very earliest revelations of God to man ; as it served to
awaken in the minds of the offerers a strong sense of the
danger of sin, and the punishment it merited even unto
death ; so it most evidently prefigured that great sacri-
fice, by which Christians ' are sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.'
" This prefiguration of the Messiah is peculiarly re-
markable in the ceremonies observed in the great day of
atonement, when the high priest entered once a year into
the holy of holies, ' not without blood, which he offered
for himself and for the errors of the people, being,' says
the apostle to the Hebrews, 'the figure of him, who by
his own blood entered in once into the holy place, hav-
ing obtained eternal redemption for us,' a redemption
which, as the apostle explains, essentially implies ' a pu-
rification of the conscience from dead works to serve the
living God.'
" Of the three great festivals of the Jewish law, two, the
passover and the feast of pentecost, as they Avere com-
memorative of the deliverance from Egypt, and the pro-
mulgation of the law on Sinai ; so were they as clearly
figurative of the sacrifice of Christ and the effusion of
the Spirit by which the gospel was disseminated over the
world.6
b The analogy between the paschal sacrifice and our Lord's
suffering, between the delivery of the law and the effusion of
the Holy Spirit, has been remarked from the earliest period of the
gospel. But it has not, as far as I can recollect, been noticed
by any, that our not having as yet discovered any event in the
history of Christianity, corresponding to that commemorated in
the Feast of Tabernacles, or any Christian festival similar to that
feast; instead of supplying an instance of dissimilitude between
the two systems, strongly confirms their perfect analogy, when
we consider the further progress of the gospel, which the word of
prophecy leads us to expect. This observation has been sug-
gested to me by my learned friend the Hev. Dr Ellington, late
fellow of Trinity College, Dublin; and who, in the course of
sermons he preached and published as Donnellan's Lecturer, in
the year 179(3, has so ably illustrated the truth of the gospel mi-
racles, and exposed the sophistry of Hume. As his ideas on the
present topic appear to me both original and just, I annex his
own statement of them. "That the Jews annually observed
tlu-ee great festivals at Jerusalem, and that two of them, the pas-
sover and the feast of pentecost, had a reference to events, which
were to happen under the Christian dispensation, is well known.
Hence we are led to consider, whether the third solemnity was
of a similar nature and has received a similar completion. This
was the feast of tabernacles, beginning on the fifteenth day of the
seventh month ; when for seven days all that were Israelites bom
were to dwell in booths in remembrance of their duelling in
booths when they were brought out of the land of Egypt, and on
the eighth day to return to their houses, celebrating it with great
rejoicings, Lev. xxiii. 34 — 36, 42, 43. Now it is evident
that no circumstance attending the establishment of Christianity,
had any resemblance to the journey through the wilderness, and
the dwelling there under tents; nor has any attempt, I believe,
been made, to prove a similarity of the sort. We must therefore
either admit, that this feast of tabernacles differs from the others
iri having no prospective reference; or we must seek in some
future event its completion or antitype. And it will probably
incline us to this latter opinion, when we consider, that the
Jews will undoubtedly be brought back to Judea when the fulness
of the Gentiles shall be come in ; and if we suppose the season of
the feast of tabernacles, to coincide with that of their future
return, as it appears to have done with their return from the
Babylonish captivity, we shall have a fulfilment of the three
Jewish festivals completed finally in the conversion of the Jews
to Christianity; which, with their return to their own land, will
828
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
" The Jewish law not only prepared for the introduc-
tion of the gospel, by its types and prophecies, and by
preserving the principles of sound theology and pure
morals ; which without it would probably have been al-
most irrecoverably banished from the earth. But by the
strictness of its moral prohibitions, audits denunciations
of God's displeasure against sin, it probed and exposed
the moral maladies of man. It proved to him by deci-
sive experience, his proneness to violate the commands of
his God, even when most distinctly promulgated, and his
culpable neglect of duties of the most obvious necessity ;
so that he could not but acknowledge how infinitely im-
probable it was, that he could by his own unassisted
strength escape sin ; and that consequently far from
being able to claim eternal happiness, as a reward which
human merit might challenge from divine justice, he was
liable to condemnation and punishment.
" Thus the law prepared men to hail with fervent grati-
tude the glad tidings of the gospel of peace, which offers
the aid of the Divine Spirit, to assist the weakness of those
who will humbly implore and diligently improve it ; and
proclaim free pardon to all who, repenting of their sins,
and acknowledging their own inability to escape from
their power, or expiate their guilt, embrace with faith
and joy those gracious terms of pardon and acceptance,
offered by the mediation of that Jesus, who was ' ' deli-
vered for their offences, and raised again for their justi-
fication; who still liveth to make intercession for us :
thus destroying the power of death, and 2 ' bringing life
and immortality to light.' Not that in the gospel the
doctrine of a resurrection and a future retribution was
first promulgated, for they were intimated by Moses and
clearly taught by the prophets, but because the means a
1 Rom. iv. 25. 2 2 Tim. i. 10.
furnish a perpetual cause for thanksgiving and religious observ-
ance. Of the reference of this festival to the final restoration of
the Jews, some of their traditions and practices may perhaps
afford a further confirmation. It was their custom on the last
day of the feast, to bring water from the fountain of Siloah, which
the priest poured on the altar, singing the words of Isaiah,
(xii. 3,) ' With joy shall ye draw water from the fountain of sal-
vation ;' which words the Targum interprets, ' With joy shall
ye receive a new doctrine from the elect of the just;' and they
appear, from the preceding chapter, to relate to the final restora-
tion of the Jews. The feast itself was also called Hosanna, save
we beseech thee; and was the time when our Lord spoke the
remarkable words mentioned in St John (vii. 37, 3S,) marking
the relation which the ceremony of pouring out the water bore to
his ministry. And amongst the traditions of the Jews we find
that the defeat of Gog and Magog shall fall out upon the feast of
tabernacles, or that the consequent seven months' cleansing of the
land (Ezek. xxxix. 12.) shall terminate at that period ; and there
seems little reason to doubt the reference of that prophecy to the
final restoration of the Jews.
a I am aware that commentators in general interpret this verse
solely of the gospel's bringing to light the doctrine of life and im-
mortality; and Warburton advances as an irrefutable argument,
that as it was reserved to be so brought to light by the gospel, it
must have been unknown under the Old Testament. Now as I
think I have proved it was not unknown under the Old Testament,
it follows it was not reserved to be brought to light by the gospel
alone. Undoubtedly where the Jewish religion was unknown,
the doctrine was first clearly promulgated by the gospel, and even
amongst the Jews it was supported by such additional miracles
and examples, as threw round it a brightness of conviction, com-
pared with which, the assent previously yielded to it was doubt-
ful and dim. So that this expression may bear the sense usually
given it, without supporting the inference which Warburton
would deduce from it. But I cannot but think the apostle meant
to express much more than a bare promulgation of the doctrine
of life and immortality. He encourages his beloved son in the
f of securing life and immortality were then first clearly
and satisfactorily ascertained, and placed within the
reach of all who would embrace the gracious offers of
pardon and mercy held out by the Redeemer of man.
" Such is the strict unity of design and the accurate
harmony of parts, between the Jewish and the Christian
schemes, so clearly establishing their common and hea-
venly original. As the period approached when the
promised Messiah was to appear, we have seen this unity
and harmony display itself in more illustrious characters.
The visible and immediate interference of Providence in
rewarding virtue and punishing vice, seems to have been
gradually withdrawn from amongst the Jews after the
Babylonish captivity ; and the expectations of a future
retribution, now plainly and authoritatively established
by their sacred writers, left to operate in its room ; so
that at the time of our Lord's appearance, these expec-
tations were a leading article of the popular creed ; and
when promulgated anew with additional miracles, to im-
press them on mankind in general, found amongst the
Jews minds prepared to receive them, wherever worldly
views or vicious propensities did not resist and defeat
the influence of truth.
gospel, to perseverance in the faith, for which he himself cheer-
fully sustained persecution and bonds ; and for this purpose he
describes in the strongest terms the blessedness of a true Chris-
tian's temper, views, and hopes. ' God,' says he, ' hath not given
us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound
mind,' that is, strength to resist evil, derived from the assistance
of the Holy Spirit; accompanied with a sincere and active love
of God, and a just discrimination of things, which clearly recog-
nizes the superiority of future and heavenly objects above present
and sensual; thus comprehensively describing a perfect Chris-
tian; whose will is rectified, whose affections are purified, and
whose understanding is spiritually enlightened. To attain or
preserve such a character is the most glorious object of human
ambition; ' Be not thou therefore,' says the apostle, 'ashamed
of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner ; but be thou
partaker of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power
of God, who hath saved and called us with an holy calling, not
according to our works, but according to his own purpose and
grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world be-
gan ; but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour
Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life
and immortality to light through the gospel, whereunto I am ap-
pointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.'
Now is it not evident, that the apostle here means to unfold the
whole scheme of the gospel, the eternal purpose of God to admit
in the fulness of time the Gentiles into his church, notwithstand-
ing their antecedent idolatries and crimes; the abolition of death,
by depriving it of its terrors and its sting, and redeeming men
from the power of death eternal ; and aid to secure eternal life,
arising from that spirit of power and love and religious wisdom,
with which divine grace supplies the true Christian. It is not
then the simple promulgation of the doctrine of a future life, which
the apostle here understands ; but a promulgation of it, accom -
panied with such clear instruction how to seek, and such merci-
ful assistance to obtain life and immortality, as were now first
brought to light by the gospel. Thus, to adopt the words of the
pious Doddridge, " hath Jesus Christ in effect abolished death,
hath deposed it from its tyrannical empire, and thrown a light on
the important doctrine of life and immortality by the gospel,
which gives us a more express assurance and a more lively view
of it, than any former dispensation had ever done or could pos-
sibly du." See also Parkhurst's exposition of this passage as
quoted by Dodd in locum: Bishop Sherlock's opinion in opposi-
tion to Warburton, illustrated and vindicated by Dr Parry, in
his defence of the bishop of London: and the judicious Benson
in his paraphrase and notes on this passage, who admits " the
Jews had expectations of a resurrection even before the coming
of our Saviour, and refers to Matt. xxii. 32, and Dan. xii. 2; but
the more full and clear discovery is owing to the Christian re-
velation."
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
8ii9
" Thus also the gracious intention of Providence, to ad-
mit the heathen world into the church, and for this pur-
pose abrogate that ritual which formed the wall of sepa-
ration excluding them, was gradually more plainly
notified ; until by the last prophets it was distinctly an-
nounced ; and as we perceive, clearly understood by all,
whom national pride and prejudice did not induce to
close their eyes against the light. Of this we find signal
instances in John the Baptist and the devout Cornelius;
and certainly there were multitudes of others amongst
the Jews and Gentiles, who like them looked for salva-
tion by the appearance of that Messiah, ' who was to be
a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his peo-
ple Israel ;' and we know that the whole nation of the
Samaritans acknowledged the same truth.
" As this glorious era drew near, we see various events
crowding on our observation preparatory to its arrival ;
the translation of the Jewish scriptures into Greek ; the
general expectation of a great king to arise in Judea,
diffused over the East ; the increasing light of philoso-
phy ; the extension of the Roman empire ; all combine
to prepare for and facilitate the promulgation of the gos-
pel. But still the Jews are the more immediate instru-
ments whom God meant to employ in effecting his
gracious purposes ; and accordingly Ave find that, after
the Babylonish captivity, they are rapidly prepared to
act their part in the great and important change which
now approached.
" It is certain that in the interval between the Babylon-
ish captivity and the advent of the Messiah, the Jews
were gradually settled and multiplied, not only in Egypt,
but in all Asia, Greece, Italy, and the western regions
of Europe. The Jewish historian l cites numerous de-
crees of the magistrates, the senate, and the emperors of
Rome, encouraging and protecting them. Julius Cassar
ordered that tables of brass, containing his decrees to
this effect, should be fixed in the capitol,and communi-
cated to the qmestors and praetors where the Jews
resided. We find similar decrees formed by, or direct-
ed to the governors and people of Ephesus, Sardis, and
Miletus, Athens and Pergamus, as well as the islands of
the ./Kgean Sea : and we have the most decided classical
authorities, "■ to prove the multitude of the Jews at Rome,
the number of their proselytes, and the popularity of
their opinions.
" As the Jews were thus dispersed and situated, so that
they might most generally spread their opinions, there is
also reason to believe that their general character and
conduct, especially in heathen countries, were such as to
1 Sec Josephus's Antiquities, b. iv. c. 10, where extracts from
the original decrees are given; also b. xvi. c. 2, and xix. c. 5;
also Lardner'a Credibility, part 1. b. ii. c. 2 and 3.
a See Horat. Sat. b. i. satyra ix. line G9 — 71, and still more
expressly sat. iv. line 140; and sat. v. line 100; where the
" credat Judeua Apulia" is used as a proverbial expression,
opposed to the incredulity of the Epicureans. The sarcasm of
Persius, sat. v. line 184, " You shudder at the sahhath of the
circumcised," equally shows the prevalence of the Jewish opin-
ions. See also Martial's epigram, b. iv. 4, " fastings of the
Sabbatarians,"' &c, and various passages of Juvenal, sat. iii. line
13, sat. vi. 158, and from line 541 to 540, and particularly sat.
xiv. from 95 to 105. See also Lardner's Credibility, part 1, b.
i. C. 2, on the state of the Jews in Judea, who gives also much
information on the general state of the nation in Egypt and else-
where ; but especially his second chapter, on the state of the
Jews out of Judea. See also Tauitus Annal. b. ii. c. 85: Sue-
tonius, Vita Tiburii, c. 3G.
recommend them ; they seem in general to have been
humble and rational, peaceable and industrious. " Na-
tural justice," says their historian, " is most to the advan-
tage of all men equally, Greeks and barbarians, to which
our laws have the greatest regard ; and thereby render
us, if we abide in them after a pure manner, benevolent
and friendly to all men ; on which account we have
reason to expect the like return from others, and to in-
form them that they ought not to esteem difference of
positive institutions, a sufficient cause of alienation, but
join with us in the pursuit of virtue and probity."
" By this providential distribution and settlement of the
Jews, in almost every part of the civilized world ; they
were every where to be found carrying with them their
law and their prophets, establishing their synagogues,
celebrating their sabbaths, bearing constant testimony
to the unity, the supremacy, and the providence of God,
in opposition to pagan superstition and idolatry ; and
numbers of them declaring their firm belief in a future
state of retribution ; while all maintained a constant con-
nexion with Jerusalem, attended there at the three great
festivals, whenever it was practicable, sent thither their
pious and charitable contributions, and universally glo-
ried in the expectation of that Messiah, ' who was to be
a light to lighten the Gentiles,' as well as ' the glory of
his people Israel.'
" The influence of such a preparation for the reception
and diffusion of the gospel, must have been great and
salutary ; every where its preachers found synagogues,
where the law and the prophets were expounded each sab-
bath ; every where they found not only Jews, but pro-
selytes of righteousness, who, without binding themselves
under the heavy yoke of the Mosaic ritual, acknowledged
the great truths of natural religion, and complied with
the sacred precepts of the moral law ; every where some,
like the officer 2 of Candace queen of Ethiopia, studied
the scriptures ; others there were like the devout Corne-
lius, 3 ' who feared God with all his house, and gave much
alms to the people, and prayed to God always.' Hence
the preachers of Christianity almost every where instantly
found hearers who could understand and feel their ad-
dresses. Thus at Antioch in Pisidia, Paul and Barnabas
4 were invited to preach by the rulers of the synagogue ;
and after the Jews went out of it, ' the Gentiles and
religious proselytes besought that these words might be
preached to them the next sabbath : and on that day came
almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.'
Thus also at Iconium, 5 when these apostles went to the
synagogue, they found an audience not only of Jews but
of Gentiles, who were undoubtedly such proselytes, and
' when they had preached, a multitude both of Jews and
Greeks believed.' Thus again at Thessalonica, 6 ' of
the Jews some believed, and of the devout Greeks a great
multitude, and of the chief women not a few.' And fi-
nally we see that 7 ' at Jerusalem were dwelling Jews,
devout men out of every nation under heaven ;' who were
attracted by the very first sound of the gospel of Christ,
for when the apostles ' were filled with the Holy Ghost,
and began to speak with tongues as the Spirit gave them
utterance, the multitude came together, and were con-
founded, because every man heard them speak in his own
language ; Parthians and Medes, and Elamites, and the
2 Acts viii. 27, &c. " Ibid. x. < Ibid. xiii. 15, 42, and 41.
5 Ibid. xiv. 1—3. 6 |bil]. Xvii. 1—4. 7 Ibid. ii.
830
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
dwellers in Mesopotamia, and Judea, and Cappadocia,
in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt
and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers
of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians,
exclaimed, we do hear them speak in our tongues the
wonderful works of God.'
" Of this assembly, which may be considered as a col-
lective representation of all the nations of the earth, three
thousand souls converted on this memorable day, and at
least two thousand ' on a second illustrious miracle with-
in a few days after, formed a body of missionaries, to
bear to their respective countries the tidings of the ap-
pearance of that promised Messiah, ' in whom all the
kindreds of the earth were to be blessed ;' a promise
which in these signal instances began to be so conspicu-
ously verified.
" The rejection of Christianity by the great bulk of the
Jewish nation, assuredly forms no valid objection to the
connexion and consistency of the law and the gospel.
This rejection was not 2 obscurely intimated by the pro-
phets, was expressly 3 predicted by our Lord ; and was a
the natural consequence of that national ambition, that
carnal and worldly temper, which induced the great bulk
of the Jewish people to misunderstand and misinterpret
the prophecies ; by directing their attention exclusively
to those predictions, which speak of the supremacy and
extent of the Messiah's kingdom, and which they under-
stood of a temporal instead of a spiritual reign, by which
the Jewish nation, as they vainly imagined, was to be
rescued from the Roman yoke, and exalted to the do-
minion of the world ; while they wilfully overlooked the
equally clear predictions of the same Messiah's humi-
liation and sufferings, and the express declarations, that
the new dispensation should not be confined to one
chosen people, like the old ; but should embrace without
distinction all nations, who, according to the original
promise of God to the great patriarch Abraham, were to
' be blessed in his seed.' But the true interpretation and
application of the prophecies is not obscured, or the
proof of divine foreknowledge, and co-operation in the
establishment of the gospel arising from them subverted
by the errors or the obstinacy of the Jews. The pro-
phecies are open to our inspection as well as theirs ; and
when by combining the temporal humiliation with the
spiritual dominion of the Messiah, both which the gospel
attests, we perceive all the predictions respecting him
accomplished, however apparently opposite ; the proof
thence resulting is the more decisive as it was more
difficult for mere human sagacity to anticipate, or
mere human agency to produce so extraordinary a coin-
cidence.
'; The rejection of the gospel by the Jews is indeed so
far from weakening, that it greatly confirms the proof
from prophecy, by establishing the authenticity and un-
1 Acts iv. 4.
2 See Doddridge's Lect. leet. cxxx. prop. 112; Is. xlix. 16,
11. Hi ; the entire liii. 1—9, and the passages quoted in the first
chapter.
3 Mat. xvi. 21 ; xxvi. 2, and the parallel passages.
a I refer for a full refutation of the objection against the truth
of the gospel history, derived from the rejection of Christianity
by the Jews, to two sermons preached in the chapel of Trinity
College, by Dr Elrington, and published at the desire of the
provost and senior fellows. I have only taken such a brief view
of it as my subject indispensably required. See ako Larduer's
Collection of Jewish Testimonies, c. ii. and vii.
corruptedness of these great records of divine truth, of
which the Jews are unsuspected, because hostile vouchers.
Had their nation universally or generally embraced the
gospel at its first publication, the sceptic might with
some plausibility allege, that the prophecies might have
been fabricated or altered to fit them to the events ; the
contrary is now certain. And so great is the importance
of this circumstance, as appears to me, to establish the
truth of Christianity ; that I firmly believe it to be one
of the great causes, why the national conversion of the
Jews is delayed 4 ' until the fulness of the Gentiles shall
come in.' They are to continue the guardians of the
prophetic records, till these shall have had their contents
examined, and their application ascertained, by every
other nation in the world.
" A little reflection will also evince, that the rejection
of Christianity by the Jewish nation, does not subvert,
but on the contrary confirms the certainty of the miracles
recorded in the gospel history. It not only appears
from that history, 5 but from the admission c of the
Jews themselves, that the cotemporaries of these mira-
cles did not deny their performance, but on the con-
trary admitted it ; though they would not upon their
evidence embrace the gospel, because they conceived
this contrary to the Mosaic law, whose obligation their
carnal and ambitious views led them to believe was eternal,
and which they conceived no miracles could prove was
abrogated. They therefore contented themselves with
asserting, that the miracles of Christ and his apostles
must be ascribed to magical influence, diabolical agency,
or the mysterious potency of the ineffable name of God,
which they conceived our Lord had learned to pronounce.
But these opinions of the Jews affect not the reality or
greatness of the gospel miracles : we can judge as clearly
as they could possibly do, whether the scriptures des-
cribe the Mosaic law as of strictly eternal obligation, or
on the contrary represent it as designed to introduce a
more perfect and universal religion ; and our improved
reason and philosophic knowledge reject without hesita-
tion the wild and absurd causes to which they imputed
works, which the fair and candid reasoners amongst them-
selves confessed, ' no man could do except God was
with him.'
" In truth the hostility of the Jewish nation to Chris-
tianity from the first, confirms the truth of the gospel mi-
racles. Had the Jews been universally or even generally
converted by them, the sceptic might argue with some ap-
pearance of probability, that the facts had been invented
or exaggerated to gratify the national propensity, credit-
ed without examination or proof, and all inquiry into them
checked at the only period when inquiry could have de-
tected imposition. On the contrary, we are now certain,
that the gospel miracles were wrought in the presence ot
enemies, and thus subjected to the severest scrutiny, and
that they carried with them conviction to multitudes, not-
withstanding the fiercest opposition which national pre-
judice, bigotry, and vice could excite, and the strictest
research which could be formed by the most vigilant
hostility.
' Undoubtedly the most powerful cause of the rejection
4 Rom. xi. 25.
s Matt. ix. 34; xii. 24; Mark III. 22; Luke xi. 15, and the
corresponding passages.
6 See Wagenseil's Fiery Darts of SataD, and Lardner's Jewish
Testimonies, ch. v. awl vii.
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
831
of the gospel by the Jews, was the deplorably vicious
and depraved character of the nation at large, ' so
strongly attested by their own historian, and incontro-
vertibly established by the facts which he relates. And
this depravity, it may be said, disproves every thing- 1
have adduced to show, that Judaism was designed or
adapted to prepare for the reception of the gospel. But
let it be remembered, that notwithstanding this allowed
depravity of the Jews in general, it has been proved that
amongst them were preserved the principles of true
theology and pure morals, which the gospel adopts, and
which were banished from all mankind beside. Let it
be remembered, that amongst them, and the various de-
scriptions of persons connected with and enlightened by
their religion, the gospel found its first teachers and
hearers, its first converts and missionaries ; and that the
noblest and purest principles of piety adorned these
great instruments, employed by God for dispensing his
mercies to mankind ; instruments which through every
other region of the world would have been sought in vain.
Finally, let us recollect the great probability, that the
gospel attracted, and as it were detached from the Jew-
ish nation every thing pure and pious, candid and vir-
tuous ; and left behind the dregs and dross alone, the
hypocritical Pharisees, the epicurean Sadducees, the
worldly-minded Herodians, the fierce zealots, the de-
praved and seditious rabble. Thus, according to the
intimation of its divine founder, sifting the chaff from the
wheat, separating the tares from the good seed, 2 ' ga-
thering the one into his barn, and consuming the other
with fire unquenchable.'
" In truth, after the Jewish nation had obstinately re-
jected the Messiah, rebelled against his authority, and in
opposition to his religion maintained, that the perpetual
observance of the Mosaic ritual was an indispensable
condition of divine acceptance, and their own nation
exclusively the chosen people of God. It was indispen-
sably necessary to put an end to their national establish-
ment, and destroy that temple with which tfte observance
of their ritual was essentially connected ; in order to
maintain the universal sovereignty of the Messiah, in
opposition to their rebellion, as well as to prevent all
possibility of corrupting Christianity by the adoption of
their errors, and of their now burdensome because useless
ceremonies. Whoever observes the struggles of the
Judaizing Christians, thus to encumber the religion of
Christ, and the extreme difficulty with which their efforts
were resisted, even by direct revelation, and apostolic
authority, in the very first and purest era of the church,
will easily perceive the necessity of this precaution, to
preserve the purity, and extend the dominion of the gos-
pel ; and that in this view, 3 ' through the fall of the
Jews salvation is come unto the Gentiles.'" — Graves'
Lectures on the Pentateuch.
CHAP. III. — On the Genuineness and Authenticity of
the Books of the Old and New Testaments.
" There are now, in various parts of the world, a
numerous body of people called Christians ; and others
1 See Josephus's History of the Jewish War, particularly b.
iv. v. and vi.: or Lardner's judicious view of his testimony to
the fulfilment of our Lord's predictions, in his Jewish Test. c. iii.
2 Mat. iii. 12 ; xiii. 30. 3 Rom xi j ,
denominated Jews, who are scattered among the various
nations of the earth. When we inquire into the reason
of these denominations, we find the former are so called
from their belief in, and adherence to, a divine teacher,
called Christ; and the latter, from their being the de-
scendants of Judah,one of the twelve patriarchs, sprung
from Jacob. The former maintain certain opinions
which were taught by Christ; they observe certain rites
appointed by him ; and they meet on the first day of the
week to worship the Deity by prayer and praise. They
have among them wi-itten books which they account
sacred ; and one part of their worship is, for a person
properly qualified to read some portion of these books,
and to explain to them the various duties which man owes
to his Creator, himself, and his neighbour.
" In every country where Christians are numerous,
they erect edifices for the purpose of divine worship; and
where they are few, they assemble in some house with
the same design. For public worship is essential to
Christianity; and one day in seven has been, and is now,
kept sacred, and spent in the exercises of devotion.
When we inquire into its origin, the most authentic his-
tory carries us back near eighteen centuries ; and, from
the testimony of those who then lived, we are sure that
there were persons at that period denominated Christians,
and that they had among them the same sacred books
which they now have, and that they observed the same
rites, and believed the same doctrines. Happily we have
not only the testimony of Christian writers, but of poly-
theists who were the avowed enemies of Christianity.
" Tacitus, writing the life of Nero, who set the city of
Rome on fire, the report of which rendered him odious,
tells us, that Nero imputed it to a set of people called
Christians. The founder of that name was Christ, who
suffered death in the reign of Tiberius, under his procu-
rator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, thus
checked for a while, broke out again ; and spread not
only over Judea, where the evil originated, but through
Rome also, whither every thing bad upon earth finds
its way and is practised. Some, who confessed their sect,
were first seized, and afterwards, by their information, a
vast multitude were apprehended, who were convicted,
not so much of the crime of burning Rome, as of hatred
to mankind. Their sufferings at their execution were
aggravated by insult and mockery ; for some were dis-
guised in the skins of wild beasts and worried to death
by dogs ; some were crucified ; and others were wrapt
up in pitched shirts, and set on fire when the day closed,
that they might serve as lights to illuminate the night.
" This testimony proves, first, that the founder of
Christianity was put to death : secondly, that, in the
same country in which he was put to death, the religion,
after a short check, broke out and spread : and, thirdly,
that it so spread that, within thirty-four years from the
author's death, a very great number of Christians were
found at Rome. This testimony from a heathen historian
establishes the leading facts of the Christian records.
His opinion of this sect is what we might expect from
his habits and principles. Suetonius gives the same
account of the sufferings of Christians at that period.
"On examining the books held as sacred and divine
by Christians, we find that four of the disciples of Christ
WTOte narratives of his life. They differ in their manner,
style, and in the order they observe, but agree in a most
wonderful manner as to the facts they record. They
832
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
write like persons who had heard and seen what they
relate, or who had received information from such as
had ; and through the whole of their narratives an artless
simplicity prevails which strongly prepossesses the mind
in favour of their veracity. Another book contains a
history of the persecutions of Christians, and the pro-
gress of Christianity, during a period of about thirty
years. The remaining books are letters directed to dif-
ferent Christian societies ; and were evidently wi-itten on
particular occasions, either to oppose some error or to
explain and enforce some part of Christian truth. One
book is so peculiar in its style, imagery, and design,
that it has been considered prophetical, and as emble-
matically setting forth the events, whether adverse or
prosperous, of the Christian church till the consummation
of all things.
" It is generally admitted that Matthew wrote his gos-
pel for the use of the church in Jerusalem, and of the
Jews in Palestine. According to the testimony of
antiquity, it was written in Hebrew, a or the language
the Jews then spoke ; and of course it would be acces-
sible to the whole Jewish nation. The time when this
gospel was composed has not been precisely ascertained.
Dr H. Owen thought that it was written as early as Anno
Domini 39 or 40, or about six years after our Lord's
ascension. Lardner, however, supposes it was not
written till the year 64. It is most probable that Mat-
thew wrote his gospel while Peter and Mark were in the
northern part of the Lesser Asia, which might be while
Paul was preaching in Greece, about the year 54.
Peter, we know, was at Antioch about this period ; and
might with Mark thence go to Pontus and Bithynia.
" On the establishment of Christian societies beyond
the boundaries of Judea, it is natural to suppose that an
authentic narrative would be given in Greek, the lan-
guage then most generally spoken. Accordingly, the
gospel of Mark is said to have been the second narrative
presented to the church; but when published is uncer-
tain. He was the companion and attendant of Peter,
as the Christian fathers relate : and, with the greatest
probability, is supposed to be the person he mentions
in his first epistle, chap. v. 3, and calls his son.
" It is not improbable that, while Paul was at Rome,
Peter again visited Antioch, find afterwards, the churches
in Pontus, Galatia, &rc. ; and Mark, his convert and
attendant, as the fathers relate, might write his gos-
pel for the use of those churches ; and as it would have
the approbation of Peter, it would often be called the
gospel of Peter, as in fact it was called; Peter after-
wards going to Rome, and communicating a copy of
Mark's gospel to that church, the tradition might arise
that it was written for that church. After weighing the
statements of the fathers and the opinions of learned
men, this seems the most probable hypothesis.
" The evangelist Luke has given to the church the
fullest history of its founder and head. There is no
ground for doubt but that he is the person who accom-
panied Paul, and who wrote afterwards the Acts of the
Apostles. Paul has mentioned him with the highest re-
spect in his epistles. ' From Acts, it appears that he
1 Col. iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. iv. 11 ; Phil. 24.
a Eusebius has preserved the testimony of Papias to this fact,
who informs us that " Matthew wrote his Divine Oracles in the
Hebrew tongue, and every one interpreted them as well as they
were able." (Euseb. h. iii. c. 39.) Irenaius and the following
fathers giv<» us the same account.
regularly attended Paul from his voyage into Macedonia
till he was carried prisoner to Rome, whither the evan-
gelist also went with him. Compare Acts xx. 5, where
Luke speaks of himself as with Paul, and he ever after
uses the same mode of speaking.
" The style of Luke proves that he was a Jew by
descent ; and most probably one early converted to
the faith. It does not appear, from what he says,
that he had personally seen Christ, but had derived
his knowledge from the apostles, who had been eye
and ear witnesses of what our Lord did and taught ; and
especially from Paul, to whom the gospel had been
communicated by special revelation.2 Dr Campbell
thinks it highly probable that he was a native of Antioch,
the capital of Syria, where the Greek language had been
long cultivated, and was generally spoken by the higher
classes. If Mark wrote his gospel while Paul was a pri-
soner at Rome, whither Luke had accompanied him,
and where he continued till the release of the apostle,
as is nearly certain from Paul's mentioning- him in the
epistles which he there wrote, 3 he could not, I think,
have written his gospel sooner than a. d. 63, and most
probablv in Greece.
" It has been observed that the language of Luke is
more pure and copious, and there is more of composi-
tion in his sentences than in those of the other evangel-
ists. From his profession as a physician, he might have
received a superior education ; and from his intercourse
with men might have derived his superior accomplish-
ments in the Greek language. In relating the same facts
which Matthew and Mark had related, he uses, in some
instances, the same expressions, and in others there is
but little variation. From him we learn whatever relates to
the birth of John the Baptist, the annunciation, and other
important circumstances concerning the nativity of the
Messiah ; the occasion of Joseph's being then in Beth-
lehem ; the vision granted the shepherds ; the early testi-
mony of Simeon and Anna ; the wonderful manifestation
of our Lord'^roficiency in knowledge when only twelve
years old; his age at the commencement of his ministry,
connected with the year of the reigning emperor. »
" He has given us also an account of several memora-
able incidents and cures which had been overlooked by
the rest ; the conversion of Zaccheus the publican ; the
cure of the crooked woman, of the dropsical man, the
cleansing of the ten lepers, the repulse he met with when
about to enter a Samaritan city, and the instructive re-
buke he gave on that occasion, to two of his disciples
for their intemperate zeal : also the affecting interview
he had, after his resurrection, with two of his disciples,
in the way to Emmaus, and at that village. Luke has
likewise added many edifying parables to those which
had been recorded by the other evangelists. Of this
number are the parable of the creditor who had two debt-
ors ; of the rich fool who hoarded up his increase, and,
when he had not one day to live, vainly exulted in the
prospect of many happy years ; of the rich man and La-
zarus ; of the reclaimed prodigal ; of the pharisee and
the publican praying in the temple ; of the judge who
was prevailed on by a widow's importunity, though he
2 Gal. i. 11, 12. 3 Col. iv. 14.
6 These facts he might learn from some of the kindred of our
Lord, or from John, with whom his mother Mary dwelt after
the crucifixion, who had preserved and would not fail to com-
municate them to him and to the church.
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
833
feared not God nor regarded man ; of the barren fig-
tree ; of the compassionate Samaritan ; and several
others ; most of which so early a writer as Irenams has
specified as peculiarly belonging to this gospel.
" On comparing these three gospels, it is clear that one
was not copied from another ; for in this case there
would have been not only the same facts, but the same
order. It is equally clear that the two latter could not
be translations of Matthew's Hebrew original ; we must
then deem them independent testimonies to the same
facts, and account for the coincidences and verbal agree-
ment from the materials they possessed ; and for the va-
riation of the order and arrangement, from the judgment
of each writer, and from the circumstances and design he
had in view.
" Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, which con-
tains the history of the church till Paul obtained his li-
berty, about the year 63. He has traced the most ma-
terial occurrences during this period, and the history
may be considered as a continuation of his own gospel.
His information was derived from the best sources: and,
in regard to many transactions, he was personally con-
cerned. This book is of the greatest value, as it shows
the manner in which the apostles fulfilled their commis-
sion and propagated the gospel abroad.
"The gospel of John is uniformly stated to have been
written the last ; and he has designedly omitted most of
what the others had related, with whose writings he was
acquainted ; and has given many interesting discourses
of our Lord at great length. It is generally admitted
that John lived to an advanced age : and that one de-
sign of his gospel was to refute the errors which had al-
ready sprung up in the church. John himself mentions
the Nicolaitans, ' a sect of the Gnostics. They intro-
duced into the Christian church the most absurd specu-
lative doctrines respecting the person of the Saviour,
his works, sufferings, and resurrection. John, in con-
sequence, begins his gospel, with establishing his glory
as God, and the Creator of all things. He is wonder-
fully simple .and artless in his style and manner ; and
every where discovers the most amiable and affectionate
temper. From internal evidence he is supposed to have
written previously to the destruction of Jerusalem. 2 In
the year 70, this city was taken and in a great measure
destroyed ; and had John written after that event, it is
natural to think he would have referred to it.
" The epistles of Paul have been generally admitted
genuine. When considered in connexion with the Acts
of the Apostles, there is such an undesigned coincidence
of persons, circumstances, and facts, as not only proves
their genuineness, but their truth. It is concluded, from
evidence contained in the Acts and epistles themselves
that they were written in the following order, according
to Dr Wall. 1. The first epistle to the Thessalonians,
a. d. 54, from Corinth. " The copiers at the end of this
epistle say it was written from Athens : and the English
have thought that note of theirs worth translating : but
whoever reads Acts xviii. 5, will see that it was at Co-
rinth that Silas and Timothy came to Paul ; and they
join in the epistle." 2. The second epistle to the Thes-
salonians, in the same year, 54, from the same place. 3.
The epistle to the Galatians from Ephesus, a. d. 55. 4.
The first epistle to the Corinthians from Ephesus, a. d.
1 Rev. ii. 15.
Ibid. v. 2.
57. 5. The second epistle to the Corinthians from the
same place, in the following year. C. The epistle to
the Romans from Corinth, a. d. GO, Usher ; 58, Pearson.
7. The epistle to the Philippians from Rome, during his
imprisonment, a. d. 62. 8, 9, and 10. The three epistles
to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon were written
from the same place, and sent by the same person, Ty-
chicus, during the same period. From internal evidence
it is now generally admitted that the epistle to the Ephe-
sians is the same as that to the Laodiceans, and Paley
considers that the true reading is "Laodicea."3 11.
The epistle to the Hebrews, soon after the former, in
the opinion of Wall, but whether sent to the church at
Jerusalem, or some other church of Judea, is not known.0
12. After Paul obtained his liberty, he travelled into
various parts ; and having left Timothy at Ephesus, he
sent from Laodicea the first epistle to Timothy, about
a. d. (15. b 13. About the same time, he wrote the epistle
to Titus, whom he left the year before in Crete. 14. Paul
was again a prisoner at Rome when he wrote the second
epistle to Timothy. This last letter of the great apos-
tle contains intimations that he considered his course as
now run, and that he was ready to be offered up as the
victim of persecution.
" The first epistle of John and the first of Peter are, by
the consent of antiquity, admitted to be genuine. The
second and third of John, and the second of Peter, as
well as of James and Jude, were not so generally re-
ceived. They possess, however, such internal evidence
as must satisfy any impartial inquirer, and, accordingly,
they have been admitted into the canon. The book of
Revelation was for some time undisputed, and, as far as
external authority goes, it is better supported than most
others.
" James is called the brother of our Lord, that is, kins-
man ; and is said to have been the first stated bishop or
pastor of the church at Jerusalem. He was eminently
pious, and was called James the just. Josephus has
mentioned the manner in which Herod, to please the
Jews, put him to death in the latter end of the year
62, or the beginning of 63. The epistle might be
written the year before. It is directed to the twelve
tribes of Israel, or to those who dwelt among the Gen-
tiles ; but I consider it as particularly referring to such
as had embraced the gospel. It is wholly practical.
" The first and second epistles of Peter were addressed
to believing Jews and Gentiles, scattered through Pon-
tus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. It is
evident, from the design of the first epistle, that those to
whom it is directed were in a state of suffering and per-
3 See Griesbaeh's Greek Testament.
a Thi-i epistle was not so soon known or admitted into the
canon a-; the rest. As it was written to the Hebrews, and chief-
ly respected them, it is natural to infer, it might be some time
before it was "communicated to the Gentile churches. On hav-
ing examined the testimonies of the fathers, Lardner observes,
" It is evident that this epistle was genorally received, in an-
cient times, by those Christians who used the Greek language,
and lived in the eastern parts of the Roman empire. Professor
Stuart, in his valuable critical examination of this epistle, has
made it probable that it was composed and sent to the Christian
church at Cssarea, where Paul had resided as a prisoner more
than two full years. — Acts xxiv. 27.
b Bishop Pearson, Paley, and others, have justly observed,
that the epistle to Timothy and that to Titus must have been
written subsequent to Paul's imprisonment at Rome, recorded in
the Acts. — See Hone Pauliiicr, pp. 320 — 322.
5 N
834
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
sedition: and sonic think it was- written about the same
time with the above. The second is supposed to have
been written just before the breaking out of the Jewish
war, a. d. 66.
"The epistle of Jude is thought to refer to the second
of Peter, v. 17, and of course was written after it. He
calls himself the brother of James. It might be written
soon after the above, about the year 70. The epistles
of John are thought to have been written as late as the
year 90. The first breathes the spirit and manner of the
evangelist; the two latter are directed to two pious in-
dividuals, and the sameness of style would justify us in
considering John the author, had we no other testimony.
"The Revelations were communicated to John in the
isle of Patmos, and contain the last divine revelations
given to the church. They are, with the greatest proba-
bility, supposed to have been given about the year 96.
"The four gospels and the epistles were communicated
by one church to another, and were most of them read
and commented on in the churches on the Lord's day.
Some of them are quoted or alluded to by Clement of
Rome, by Hermes, by Ignatius, by Polycarp, disciples
and contemporaries with the apostles, and by every Chris-
tian writer that followed in the next age ; by Justin
Martyr, Irenasus, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria,
Tertullian, and others. Tertullian refers to the churches
as then possessing the very letters which Paul addressed
to them. He bids " any one who is willing to exercise
his curiosity profitably in the business of his salvation, to
visit the apostolical churches, in which their very authen-
tic letters are recited, ipsa authentic^ literce eorum
recitantur" Then he goes on : " Is Achala near you ?
You have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia,
you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. If you can
go to Asia, you have Ephesus ; but if you are near to
Italy, you have Rome."
" Little more than seventy years after the death of our
Lord nearly the whole of the canonical books were trans-
lated into Syriac, which still remains. The accurate
Lardner observes, ' In the remaining works of Irennsus,
Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, there are per-
haps more and larger quotations of the small volume of
the New Testament, than of all the works of Cicero, in
the writings of all characters for several ages.'
"Having stated, according to the best evidence extant,
the manner and the time when the books of the New Tes-
tament were published, we may justly infer that nothing
can be brought to invalidate either their genuineness or
authenticity. a As far as the authority of external testi-
mony goes, it is wholly in their favour, without any di-
rect opposing testimony.
" There is strong reason to believe that, within forty
years after the ascension, the evangelists and the chief
part of the epistles were collected together, and read
and commented on in the Christian churches, as the law
and the prophets were in the Jewish synagogues. Ig-
natius contrasts the gospel with the prophets. ' Ye
ought,' says he, ' to hearken to the prophets, but espe-
a Bishop Watson has pertinently observed, that there is an
important distinction between the genuineness and authenticity
of any book. " A genuine book, is that which was written by
the person whose name it bears, as the author of it. An authen-
tic book is that which relates matters of fact as they really hap-
pened. A book may be genuine without being authentic j and a
book may be authentic, without being genuine."
daily to the gospel, in which the passion has been ma-
nifested to us, and the resurrection perfected.'
"Supposing the books of the New Testament the mere
invention of men, and the facts they relate respecting
the person of Jesus Christ to be without foundation, it is
difficult, nay impossible, to account for the rise, spread,
and duration of Christianity in the world. General ex-
perience supports the remark, that on no subject are
men, in general, more indisposed and disinclined to en-
tertain and cordially receive a new sentiment than on
religion.
" Were the Christian records merely the invention of
artful and designing men, how could it have been possi-
ble to persuade either Jews or heathens to become Chris-
tians ? It cannot be denied that these books contain
doctrines and precepts wholly opposed to the known
prejudices, sentiments, and practices of both those class-
es of men. By the doctrine of Christ their religious ri-
tual and ceremonies were represented as of no intrinsic
importance, and, unless accompanied with faith, purity
of heart, and integrity of life, unavailable in the sight of
God. Another part of the Christian doctrine was equal-
ly opposed to Jewish pride and prejudices, that the Gen-
tiles should enjoy equal privileges with them under the
Messiah's reign.
"In the same manner was the Christian doctrine oppos-
ed to the opinions and prejudices of the heathens. They
had gods many and lords many ; and were ready to ad-
mit any new god to a place in their pantheon. The
Christian doctrine on this point was opposed to every
article of their mythology ; it denied the very existence
of every object of their worship. It taught that an idol
was nothing but an imagination. It is evident that such a
sentiment must have tended to overthrow every statue, al-
tar, and temple in the world ; and how could a doctrine
like this prevail, unless founded in truth, and supported
by such evidence of its divine origin, as must have been
most convincing to those who embraced it ?
"Were men induced to become Christians by the pros-
pect of temporal gain ? Were riches and honours the con-
sequence of embracing Christianity ? No; this was a sect
every where spoken against ; and Christians had nothing
to expect but reproaches, insults, and persecutions.
During a considerable part of the first three centuries,
Christians had to endure whatever the malice of Jews
and heathens could inflict. The civil power was exerted
in every way to induce them to renounce Christianity,
and to conform to the established and prevailing super-
stition. They were plundered of their property, many
were banished, many immured in prisons, and great num-
bers tortured and put to death in the most painful man-
ner.
"The arguments in proof of the reality and certainty of
the Christian doctrine, derived from these sufferings, un-
dergone only on account of their testimony to Jesus, and
their adherence to him, are strong and decisive. When
was it found that men, without any temporal interest,
and in the face of the most formidable difficulties, per-
sisted in a scheme of falsehood ? The Christian records
only assign adequate causes of the effects which are ac-
knowledged to exist ; and from them we see why the
first Christians chose rather to suffer than to be silent,
or to deny their Lord. The objects then which usually
influence the human mind are here out of question ;
and it must be admitted, either that the first Christiai s
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
835
acted contrary to the known principles of human nature,
or that the facts they believed, on the evidence of their
own senses, were true. To admit the former supposi-
tion is to admit a miracle ; for what is a miracle, but a
fact above, or contrary to, the usual course of nature .
To admit the latter, is to admit that Christianity is found-
ed in truth.
" The facts contained in the New Testament were the
continual topics on which the apostles of our Lord dwelt
in their public ministry ; and if these facts were not true,
their enemies would not have failed to expose them ; as
they could not have wanted either the inclination or the
opportunity. The books of Christians were not locked
up, but alike accessible to friends and to foes. Curios-
ity, as well as a desire to invalidate their authority,
must have stimulated the latter to peruse them ; and had
they not been supported by the most decisive evidence,
we should have had refutations without end. After a
lapse of more than a century, an attempt was made, nol
to prove that the Christian records were a mere fiction,
but to account for the miracles they contained from the
supposed powers of magic. The Christian records
could not, therefore, be a cunningly devised fable, but
must have been allowed to contain a faithful narrative of
facts, which courted the strictest scrutiny, and which did
not admit of refutation.
"These three circumstances support both the genuineness
and authenticity of the books of the New Testament.
First, the recognition of the facts, doctrines, and pre-
cepts they contain, by a series of succeeding writers ;
secondly, the total absence of anyr account of the origin
of Christianity substantially different ; thirdly, the early
and extensive prevalence of rites and institutions, found-
ed on the facts and doctrines contained in the Christian
records.
" Admitting the authenticity of the New Testament, we
cannot reasonably doubt that of the books of the Old.
The evangelists and apostles appeal to them, and often
quote largely from them. We have in their writings re-
ferences to most of the books of the Old Testament : to
the five books of Moses, to Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
Kings, Chronicles, Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, and the
Prophets. Independently of this evidence, we have a
translation of these books into the Greek language,
made, at least in part, in the time of Ptolemy Philadel-
phus, more than two hundred and fifty years before the
Christian era. The Samaritans, who were opposed to
the Jews in many tilings, retained the law, or the five
books of Moses, in the old Hebrew character, which the
Jews used prior to their captivity in Babylon. This
carries us back a considerable period ; and the existence
of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the version of the Se-
venty, incontestably prove that the authenticity of the
books of the Old Testament was then admitted.
" The books of Moses contain the civil and religious
institutions of the Jewish nation, and the body of their
laws ; and it cannot admit of doubt that their civil po-
lity and religious ritual and conduct were regulated by
these laws. Their whole history proves this ; and the
unvarying testimony of Greek and Roman writers cor-
roborates the fact. All the subsequent writers of the
Old Testament refer to the facts and laws contained in
the five books of Moses ; the state of the earth when cre-
ated— the primeval darkness — the division of time into
weeks which has obtained among the most ancient na-
tions— the creation of man, and the happiness of the
paradisiacal state — his fall and consequent depravity
and misery — the longevity of the antediluvians — Noah's
Hood, and the manner in which he and all with him were
saved in the ark — the increase of mankind and rise of
ancient nations, have been either more expressly or more
obscurely referred to by the most ancient heathen histo-
rians and poets. Josephus refers to Berosus, Manetho,
Hesiod, Hecata;us and others in proof of what Moses
relates. l
" The history of Abraham, and of his posterity, is so
full of particulars and incidents that it may be regarded
as a family memorial. The promises and predictions
made to him we find subsequently fulfilled. His poster
ity increased wonderfully on their having gone down to
Egypt, and were afterwards enslaved and greatly op-
pressed. Moses was raised up, by a special provi-
dence, to be their deliverer, lawgiver, and ruler. God
furnished him with talents and power to do what he de-
signed ; and by .a series of miracles and judgments,
Pharaoh and his people were compelled to permit the
Israelites to depart from Egypt. The events which fol-
lowed the exodus, the passage of the Red Sea, journey
to Sinai, the giving of the law, the idolatry of the peo-
ple, erection of the tabernacle, the pillar of cloud and
of fire, the manna, &c, are clearly described, and by
one who was eye-witness of what he relates. The his
torians and prophets of after-times borrow their lan-
guage and imagery from the facts Moses relates.
" On the whole, there is no ground for doubt as to the
genuineness or authenticity of the Old any more than of
the New Testament. The external evidence is as com-
plete as could be expected in respect to writings by far
the most ancient in the world. The internal evidence
arising from the style, foreign terms, simplicity, brevity,
sublimity, and grandeur, the pure morality, elevated
views of the divine nature, of the works of God, of his
providence, his universal dominion, power and glory,
not only prove the truth of the Old Testament, but its
inspiration and divine authority.
" The scriptures are not only genuine and authentic,
but inspired. Inspiration consisted in a supernatural
influence on the human mind, elevating and directing
its natural powers, and imparting such truths, and such
knowledge of God's will, as could not be otherwise at-
tained. Inspiration must, from its very nature, have
been personal, and the inspired person must have been
fully assured of it from his own consciousness. Inspi-
ration included both the divine influence, and the effect
of it, in the communications or discoveries made ; and
these communications and discoveries, when embodied
in language, constituted a divine revelation. A revela-
tion indeed might be made without inspiration. God
might, and from scripture we know, he actually did,
assume some form, and make known his will to men ;
or without any form, speak in human language, as
at the giving of the law, and on many other oc-
casions. In these cases, the discoveries made would bo
of the same nature and deserve the same regard as truths
directly inspired.
" From this statement, it appears that inspiration was
miraculous. An uncommon influence was exerted, and
knowledge imparted, without the intervention of the us-
1 Antiquities, b. i. c. 8.
836
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
ual means. How was it possible for the inspired per-
son to convince others that God had inspired him ; and
that the truths he announced were divine revelations ?
Such a pretension would be regarded with suspicion, as
being contrary to general experience ; and, without
some sensible, evident proof of divine power and in-
fluence, would command no respect, nor produce any
beneficial effects. If the inspired person should work
miracles, or should miracles be wrought at his word, this
must with all reasonable men, establish his claim ; for it
would be absurd to suppose the God of truth would
give his sanction to falsehood and imposture. As a mi-
racle is an effect above the power of created beings to
produce, and a deviation from the laws and course of
nature, it is the strongest and most convincing proof of
the agency of God. Nicodemus reasoned justly, when
he said to our Lord, ' We know that thou art a teacher
come from God : for no man can do these miracles that
thou doest, except God be with him.'
" 1. Inspiration has been properly divided into that of
superintendence and that of suggestion. ' The former
implies such a divine influence on the mind, as to se-
cure the person who speaks or writes from error in the
statements of facts, or the declaration of any doctrine.'
It cannot be denied that such an influence is possible.
Such an influence as this is also consistent with the free
exercise of the persons own faculties : so that he would
express himself in his own usual manner, in words and
phrases to which he had been accustomed. Such an in-
spiration, the writers of the historical books of the holy
scriptures enjoyed ; so that what they wrote contained
only truth, though expressed in their own style. And
though they availed themselves of well-authenticated
documents, and the oral testimony of honest and com-
petent witnesses, yet, in arranging these materials, and
stating circumstances, they enjoyed this superintending
inspiration.
" From the Acts, it is evident that the apostles and
other disciples were in a most wonderful manner inspir-
ed by the Holy Spirit. They were originally Galilean
fishermen ; and their circumstances must have precluded
any literary advantages. They attended the ministry
of Jesus, but they had no opportunity of acquiring the
knowledge of any foreign language. How then was it
possible for these men to speak at once in various lan-
guages, unless they had been inspired ? Whoever re-
flects on the nature of language must be sensible that
there could, in this, be no collusion. When the multitude
heard the disciples speaking and praising God, each in
his own tongue, well might they be amazed, and say,
' Are not all these who speak Galileans ?' The gift of
tongues was essentially necessary in their circumstances
to spread the doctrines of their Lord and Saviour ; and
the power of conferring this gift seems to have been be-
stowed on the apostles. Hence, those who went forth
to preach the gospel were, by this supernatural gift, qua-
lified for the work, and with the strictest truth the apos-
tle might say, that the gospel was preached, ' not in the
enticing words of human wisdom, but in demonstration
of the Spirit.'
" If inspiration were necessary to those who first preach-
ed the gospel, and if the preachers assert that they en-
joyed it, it is not reasonable to suppose that those apos-
tles and evangelists who wrote the life, and stated and
illustrated the doctrines of our Lord, should be consi-
dered as having been unaided in this important work.
The interests of Christianity were involved in the accu-
racy, faithfulness, and truth of their writings, and had
they not enjoyed as full an inspiration as was neces-
sary, their writings would have been of less authority
than their oral testimony. Examine their writings, and,
unless I am greatly deceived, their agreement in the
facts they record, their harmony in doctrinal sentiments,
in moral precepts, directions, cautions, and exhortations
to duty, will produce the fullest conviction that they
wrote under the influence of the same Spirit. In short,
the excellence of the doctrines delivered in their writ-
ings, their elevation, holiness, and spirituality, their ob-
vious tendency to raise the moral state of man, and to
promote his happiness, demonstrate their divine origin.
"As the miracles which the Saviour wrought demonstra-
ted his divine mission, so those of the apostles and dis-
ciples support the inspiration and truth of their writings.
Those to whose writings we are most indebted wrought
miracles, and by this clearly evinced that they were
under a special divine influence.1
" Think of the lustre of those astonishing works which
were wrought by Paul wherever he went, and of those
wrought in his favour, which showed him so eminently
the care of heaven : demons ejected, distempers cured,
sometimes with a touch, and sometimes without, by a
garment sent from him to the patient ; his motions guid-
ed from place to place by a divine oracle ; Elymas
struck blind for opposing him ; his bands loosed by an
earthquake ; his strength and vigour instantaneously re-
stored, when the rage of the mutable and barbarous po-
pulace at Lystra had stoned him and left him for dead ;
and, to add no more, his safety in a shipwreck, with that
of near three hundred more in the same vessel for his
sake, promised by an angel, and accomplished without
the loss of a single person.
"John is associated with Peter in the cure of the impo-
tent man ; - and to him Jesus appeared in the isle of Pat-
mos, and made use of him as his amanuensis, expressly
dictating to him the letters he was to send to the seven
churches of Asia. Is it possible then to think that he
was not under an inspiration of superintendency, or of
suggestion, when he wrote his gospel and his epistles ?
"The sacred writers expressly assert such a divine in-
spiration.3 They represent their Lord and Saviour,
while he was yet with them, as giving them power to ef-
fect miraculous cures and other wonders in his name ;
and also as promising that, after his departure from
them, he would send them the ' Spirit of truth.' *
" If the apostles and evangelists did not receive this
Spirit, and were not divinely inspired in their preaching
and writing, they furnished their enemies with an argu-
ment to prove that Jesus was a deceiver ; but their writ-
ings show us that our Lord fulfilled, in the most ample
manner, the promises which he had made. Under the
influence of this ' Spirit of truth,' their mistakes re-
specting the nature of our Lord's kingdom were correct-
ed, their timidity was converted into a holy boldness,
and they displayed, through the whole course of their
ministry, a wisdom truly heavenly, a fortitude, patience,
meekness, love, and zeal suitable to the cause they ad-
1 Acts iii. 7; v. 5—10; ix. 32—43. 3 Acts iii. 3, 4.
3 1 Cor. ii. 10, 12, 13; iii. 21—23; Gal. i. 11, 12; Eph. iv.
11, 12; 1 Peter i. 12: 1 John iv. 6.
4 Jolm xiv. 20, 27; xvi. 7.
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
837
vacated, and according with the example of their Lord j
and Saviour.
"Collateral proof of the inspiration of the New Testa-
ment may be derived from a comparison of these writ-
ings with the spurious writings handed down to us under
the name of the apostles. Let any man read the gospel
of Nicodemus, of the Egyptians, or the remains of that
of the Ebionites,and compare them with Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John : and if he possess any judgment, he will
not hesitate to conclude that, while the latter possess all
the characters of truth, and are worthy of the high claims
which they maintain, the former contain ridiculous sto-
ries, in language and style below notice.
"The belief of the first Christians in the divine authority
of the scriptures, the regard they paid to them, and the
care with which they read and transcribed them, furnish
a strong presumptive proof of their genuineness, authen-
ticity, and inspiration. a They found here recorded
the facts and doctrines taught them by the apostles and
the first Christian preachers ; and thus their faith would
be strengthened. On the doctrines taught by our Lord
and his apostles, and contained in the writings of the
New Testament, the Christian church was founded; and on
the preservation of these, its purity, perpetuity, and safe-
ty depended. If our Lord intended that his kingdom
should continue among men, that the great purposes of
his divine mission, sufferings, and death should be ac-
complished, it was necessary, either that the power of
miracles should be continued to his disciples, or, that
they should leave behind them written records of what-
ever was requisite for faith and practice, and that these
records should contain nothing but the truth ; or in other
words, that they should be sanctioned by divine authority.
Such authority was at first admitted, and on the same
authority Christians now build their faith and their hopes.
" 2. The second kind of inspiration is that of sugges-
tion, in which God by his Spirit speaks directly to the
mind, making such discoveries as could not otherwise
be in any manner known. Thus, if a man was to give a
just aceount of what another did at a distance, at any
given moment, it must be evident that this was given to
him by an inspiration of suggestion. In like manner, if
a man declare what will come to pass in any future pe-
riod, and the event happen accordingly, he must be un-
der the influence of the same kind of inspiration. For
instance, should a man inform us that a person of such
a name shall exist a hundred or a thousand years hence,
that he shall obtain power, and reign over such a king-
dom, and vanquish the surrounding nations, and should
it happen accordingly, who could doubt but that this had
been revealed to him ? In the New Testament we have
many instances of this inspiration. Indeed, every pre-
diction of future events, and every revelation of doc-
trines and truths, which unfolds what are the designs of
the divine wisdom and mercy, comes under this species
of inspiration. When the inspired person was to commit
such discoveries to writing, that of superintendence was
a The attachment of the early Christians to the word of God
was exceedingly strong, and manifested itself in various ways,
according to the circumstances and inclinations of different
persons. Women wore it hanging at their necks. Children
were trained up from their infancy to repeat it hy heart. Most
persons carried it about with them. Some washed their hands
before they took it up to read. And many have been found bu-
ried with the gospel lying on their breasts." — Plenty, Mains
des Chretiens, s. 7.
necessary to preserve him from mistake or error. Hence
both kinds were often united. h
"The marks and evidences of inspiration, in the books
of the New Testament, are equally manifest in those of
the Old. The prophetical books contain many singular
predictions of events which were to happen at distant
periods, and which in the New Testament are said
to be fulfilled. In the writings of the prophets
there is a frequent reference to the future Saviour ;
his incarnation and his miraculous birth, his family,
his poverty, his miracles, his sufferings, his death, his
resurrection, his kingdom and glory are described
with an accuracy which defies misapplication. Circum-
stances the most minute are noticed ; and though the
Jews have rejected our Lord as the Messiah, they still
apply the same prophecies to him whom they expect.
Of the inspiration of the prophets, in the highest sense,
there can be no doubt ; unless it can be proved that they
wrote after the events which it is pretended they predict-
ed ; but this is impossible, as the Jews never would have
supplied arguments in favour of Christianity.
" In regard to the Psalms, some are prophetical, others
didactic, and others only commemorative. The Pro-
verbs and Ecclesiastes contain maxims of prudence and
wisdom. The evident design and tendency of these
writings establish their claim to a divine inspiration,
either of superintendence or suggestion. The same view
may be taken of the historical books. We may also
add that our Lord affirms their divine authority, and he
directs his hearers to search them. As to the writings
of Moses, they have the highest authority God spoke
to him with an audible voice, ' as a man speaketh with
his friend.'
"Considering the laws of Moses, in respect to civil po-
lity or religion, they are so peculiar that little doubt can
be entertained of their divine origin. On these laws the
Jewish state was founded, and continued with little in-
terruption for a period of more than fifteen hundred
years. The prophets refer to these laws as of divine
origin, and our Lord and his apostles in like manner.
We may then conclude that the writings which Jews
and Christians deem sacred, are not only genuine and
authentic, but, in the sense explained, divinely inspired.
They mutually illustrate and support each other.
"We may fairly, and in all reason, incontrovertibly in-
fer, the inspiration of the holy scriptures from a compa-
rison with the writings of the most enlightened and po-
lished heathens. The Jews were never celebrated for
their attainment in science or literature. We have rea-
son to believe that they never carried the arts to any
high degree of perfection. Solomon, in erecting the
temple, and in accomplishing his other works, availed
himself of the superior skill of the Tynans, and proba-
b God, in communicating his will, spoke at various times and
in various manners to the fathers, by the prophets. Sometimes
in a dream. (Compare Geu. xv. 12 — 15, and xxviii. 12 — 17,
and other places.) Sometimes in a vision. By this term is
meant, such a representation to the mind of things, distant or
future, as occupied and abstracted it from all other things. In a
dream, the person was asleep : hut in a vision awake. The pro-
phets in general received the divine will in the latter method.
(Compare Ezek. viii.) Sometimes the word of Jehovah came to
the prophet in an audible voice, and he was expressly told what
to speak or do. (Compare 1 Sam. iii. 1, &c.) It is probable
that this was the case when the prophets assert that, 'Thus
saith the Lord.'
838
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
bly of other neighbours. The Jews were employed in
agriculture, a calling which, while it furnishes the means
of subsistence, does not require to call forth the active
and inventive powers of the human mind. A people de-
voted to the labours and toils of agriculture have neither
leisure, means, nor inclination to indulge in speculation,
to investigate the laws of matter or the properties of
mind. Content with the produce of their lands and
flocks, their vine-yards and olive-yards, they remain
nearly stationary in arts and speculative sciences.
"Such being the general state and character of the Jews,
from their origin down to their dispersion, the question
forces itself on the mind, how did this people attain
such just notions of the divine nature, of the unity, spiri-
tuality, omnipotence, omniscience, and other natural and
moral perfections of God ? How did they discover the
Creator in his works, and inform others that he made the
world and governed it ? Are these things so evident
that men in the lowest state of mental culture perceive
and understand them ? Why then has not pure theism
every where prevailed ? It is well known that the re-
verse is the fact, and that men have in every age and
country where divine revelation has not been enjoyed,
worshipped the creature and not the Creator. Will it
be said that they received these just and noble senti-
ments from Abraham ? The question still recurs, whence
did he receive them ? To say, by tradition from his
fathers, will not satisfy the inquirer after truth. For
why did not others secure and retain the same truths in
the same manner ?
"Will it be said that Moses, by the force of his own
genius, aided by the learning of Egypt, discovered
these truths, and founding his civil and religious
polity on them, perpetuated them among- that people ?
It may readily be granted that Moses possessed great
powers of mind, and that these were improved by the
literature of Egypt : but this supposes that the Egyp-
tians also possessed great powers of mind ; and how is
it that, so far from acknowledging the unity and perfec-
tions of the divine nature, they were the most degraded
for worshipping the vilest idols ? Had Moses received
no instruction but from the Egyptians, from the penetra-
tion, genius, and force of his mind, he might, like Ho-
mer, have written an epic poem, and converted the
Egyptian pantheon into the machinery of it : but there
is no reason to think that his ideas would have excelled
those of the Grecian bard.
"In short, the just sentiments respecting the divine na-
ture, good and evil, providence, the state and condition
of man, his civil, social, and relative duties, his account-
ableness, and final state, scattered through every part of
the holy scriptures, clearly prove that the authors were
inspired ; or else we must admit, what must be deemed
altogether miraculous, that shepherds, herdsmen, and
Galilean fishermen, without literature, possessed wisdom,
and made discoveries in moral science unattained, and
it may be said, unattainable by all the heathen sages of
the east and west, north and south. It has already ap-
peared that the sacred writers ascribed all their know*
ledge to divine influence, they asserted that Jehovah
spoke by them, and that his word was on their tongues.
It remains for those who deny their divine inspiration to
account for their attainments, which has not yet, and on
their principles, never will be done.
" Another argument may be derived from the harmony
of the sacred writers. From Moses to the close of reve-
lation elapsed a period of above fifteen hundred years ;
and the sacred authors lived and wrote at successive in-
tervals. In matters of opinion, we find one writer dif-
fering from another, and each controverting the reason-
ing of his antagonist. The sentiments of one age are
exploded by the following ; and on a variety of inter-
esting subjects the human mind is kept in suspense. The
schools of philosophers were only the arenas where the
masters and scholars exercised their powers in opposing
one another ; and after an impartial person has read all
that they have said on religion and morals, he will be
constrained to admit that they have done little more than
' darken counsel by words without knowledge.'
"Go to the sacred scriptures, examine them closely and
critically. Can you find one writer controverting the
statements or opinions of his predecessor ? — one his-
torian who disputes any fact which another had stated ?
Is there in the prophets any discrepancy in doctrines,
precepts, or predictions ? However they vary in style
or manner of illustration, the sentiment and the morality
is the same. In their predictions they exceed one ano-
ther in particularity and clearness : but where is there
any contradiction ? The same remarks apply to the New
Testament. Whence then arises this harmony of scrip-
ture ? Had the writers been under no peculiar divine
influence, they would have reasoned and speculated like
others, and their writings would have opposed each
other. But if they were inspired, if they all spoke and
wrote under the influence of the same Spirit, then is this
harmony accounted for, and it is impossible to account
for it on any other principle. Hence we may conclude
that all scripture is not only genuine and authentic, but
divinely inspired, ' and is profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness :
that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnish-
ed unto all good works."' — BoothroycCs Introduction
to the Holy Bible, chap. i.
THE
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
BOOK VIII.
r~XTTAINlNG AN ACCOUNT OF THINGS FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE COMPLETION OF THE CANON OF
THE NEW TESTAMENT, IN ALL ABOUT 97 YEARS.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
We have now perused the history of the divine dispen-
sations from the beginning of the world to the coming of
Christ. We are, therefore, about to survey those great
events by which human redemption was procured, and
the mighty effects which resulted from these events.
The incarnation of the Son of God is one of those
events, and one which may well awaken our surprise and
gratitude. He who was God, assumed the likeness of sin-
ful flesh, and the form ot a servant. He did so, that he
might be capable of acting as the Surety and Saviour of
sinners, in obeying and suffering in their room ; and
that he might thus satisfy divine justice, and reconcile
them to God. He came into the world at a time, which
to infinite wisdom appeared the most fit and proper.
1 ' When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that
he might redeem them that were under the law, and that
they might receive the adoption of sons.'
The time chosen for this great event was, on every
account, the most fitting. During the interval which in-
tervened since the fall, the effects of the curse had been
developed'; the hardening nature of sin, and the misery
which it produces, had been shown ; and the necessity
of the gracious interposition of God for the redemption
of mankind had been fully demonstrated.
What were the means by which this redemption was
procured ? These were the obedience which was ren-
dered by the Son of God, and his atoning sufferings and
death His satisfaction for sin was not only by his last
sufferings, though it was principally by them ; but all his
sufferings, and all the humiliation that he was subject to,
from the first moment of his incarnation to his resurrec-
tion, were propitiatory or satisfactory. In like maimer.
his meriting eternal life for his people, consisted not only
in the obedience of his whole life, but in his laying down
his life in compliance with the will of his father. One
and the same act of Christ, as Edwards remarks, consi-
1 Gal. iv. 4.
dered with respect to the obedience there was in it, was
part of his righteousness, and procured heaven ; but con-
sidered with respect to the self-denial, and difficulty,
and humiliation with which he performed it, had the
nature of satisfaction for sin, and procured our pardon.
Thus, his going about doing good, preaching the gos-
pel, and teaching his disciples, was a part of his right-
eousness, and purchase of heaven, as it was done in obe-
dience to the Father ; and the same was a part of his satis-
faction, as he did it with great labour, trouble, and wea-
riness, exposing himself to reproach and contempt. His
laying down his life had the nature of satisfaction to
God's offended justice, considered as his bearing our
punishment in our stead ; but considered as an act of
obedience to God, who had given him his command that
he should lay down his life for sinners, it was a part of
his righteousness and purchase of heaven.
He obeyed all the commands of the moral law ;—
all the precepts of the ceremonial law ; — all the obli-
gations of the mediatorial law. And the history record-
ed by the evangelists consists in an account of this infi-
nitely perfect and meritorious obedience of the Son of
God : — an obedience which he rendered in room of his
people, during the whole of his life, public and private;
and in the rendering of which, he exercised all the vir-
tues of sinless humanity.
In making atonement for sin, he was subject to great
humiliation and suffering. Born in a low condition, he
became the object of persecution from his infancy. The
Son of God, tiie Creator of heaven and earth, veiled his
glory, and made himself of no reputation. ' The foxes
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the
Son of Man had not where to lay his head.' He was
despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief. He came to his own, and his
own received him not. He endured the contradiction
of sinners, and the reproach and derision of the wicked.
It was, however, in the close of his course of deep hu-
miliation, that he suffered more peculiarly the wrath ot
God due to us for sin. It was then that his soul was
sorrowful, even unto death ; — that he was smitten, strick-
en of God, and afflicted ; — that lie was wounded for our
840
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.
[Book VIII.
A. M. 3999. A. D. 1 ; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5406. A. D. 5. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT.
ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, the chas-
tisement of our peace having been laid upon him, that
by his stripes we might be healed. It was thus he
finished the great work which had been given him to do—
the work of redeeming sinful men from the condemna-
tion and the misery of sin, and of making provision for
bringing them to God and to happiness.
But it was necessary for carrying on the great and
gracious designs of his death, that he should rise from
the dead. This formed a part of his promised reward.
' Because he humblod himself, God highly exalted him,
and gave him a name which is above every name : that
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every
tongue should confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father.' Till Christ rose from the
dead, the Old Testament Dispensation remained ; but
with that event it ceased, and that new and glorious eco-
nomy began, which is to continue till the end of time,
and under which all the nations of the earth are to be
blessed.
The reader will observe, that, at the commencement
«>f this dispensation, the Saviour commissioned his apos-
tles to go into all the world, and teach all nations, bap-
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost. After his ascension into hea-
ven, he copiously poured out the Holy Spirit, and plen-
teously endued his servants with his saving iniluences
and miraculous gifts. Hence the extraordinary success
of the gospel in all parts of the world, and the estab-
lishment of the Christian church. Hence, also, the clear
and full revelation of those glorious doctrines of tlie
gospel, which, under the Old Testament, had been ob-
scurely made known : — ' even the mystery which hath
been hid from ages and generations, but now is made
manifest to his saints.'
"A person was selected and qualified for the apostolic
office, who was eminently instrumental in the furtherance
of the great designs of redeeming mercy. As Paul was
the apostle of the Gentiles, so it was mainly by his
ministry that the Gentiles were called, and the gospel
spread through the world ; and our nation, and the other
nations of Europe, have the gospel among them chiefly
through his means. To the labours, trials, and suffer-
ings of this apostle, our attention is directed in the
greater part of the Acts of the Apostles. This extraor-
dinary man, as presented to our view in that inspired
record, and in his own epistles, belongs not particularly
to the period in which he lived, but is equally the pro-
perty of the Christian church in every successive age.
Time does not diminish our interest in him. He is as
fresh to every country as to his own ; and the truth he
preaches will be as intimately connected with that age
which shall precede the dissolution of the world, as with
that in which he wrote. By the Christians of all coun-
tries Paul will be considered as a cosmopolite, and by
those of all ages as a contemporary."1
The books of the New Testament were committed to
writing by the direction and infallible inspiration of the
(Spirit of God. AVith the exception of Mark and Luke,
the penmen were the apostles. The historical books
are the writings of the four evangelists, giving us the
history of Christ and his purchase of redemption, and
1 Mrs H. More's Essay on St Paul, vol. i. p. 251.
his resurrection and ascension : and the Acts of the
Apostles, giving an account of the great things by which
the Christian church was first established and propagat-
ed. The doctrinal books are the epistles, fourteen of
which were written by Paul ; two by Peter ; three by
John ; one by Jude. There is one prophetical book
which takes place after the end of the history of the
Avhole Bible, and gives an account of the great
events which were to come to pass, by which the work
of redemption was to be carried on to the end of the
world.
All these books are supposed to have been written be-
fore the destruction of Jerusalem, excepting those which
were written by the apostle John, who lived the longest
of all the apostles. To this beloved disciple it was that
Christ revealed those wonderful things which were to
come to pass in the church to the end of time ; and he
was the person who put the finishing hand to the canon
of scripture, and sealed the whole of it. A curse is de-
nounced against him that adds anything to it, or dimi-
nishes anything from it. The means of grace, and ordi-
nances of religion, were settled by divine authority be-
fore the death of the apostle John, and are to remain
unaltered to the day of judgment.
SECT. I.
CHAP. I. — From the Birth of Christ, to the beginning
of the first Passover.
THE HISTORY.
As soon as the time foretold by the prophets, a for the
incarnation of the Son of God, began to draw near, b
a The two principal prophets who determine the period when
our Lord was to appear in the world, are Daniel and Haggai.
Daniel foretells, that, at ' the end of the seventy ' prophetical
' weeks,' that is, at the expiration of four hundred and ninety years
after the building of the walls of Jerusalem, the ' Messiah should
come,' chap. ix. 25; and Haggai prophesies that, before the de-
struction of the second temple, (even when the ' sceptre was de-
parted from Judah,' Gen. xlix. 10,) the ' desire of all nations
should come,' and by his frequent personal appearance in the
temple, make the ' glory of that latter house' much ' greater than
that of the former,' chap. ii. 7, &c.
b The word zvayyiXiov signifies, in general, good neivs, and is
of the same import with our Saxon word gospelj only in the sacred
use of them both there seems to be a metonymy, whereby the
words that denote good news are set to signify the history of that
good news, namely, of the birth and life, the miracles and doctrine,
the death and resurrection of our Saviour Christ; all of which
put together do make up the joyful tidings which we call the
gospel; and from the etymology of the words the persons who
have recorded the life and actions of our Saviour are called
evangelists, or writers of the gospel. The works of this kind,
which are received as canonical, are but lour, namely, that of St
Matthew, St Mark, St Luke, and St John; but the spurious
pieces which are handed down to us, even though several of them
be lost, do exceed the number of forty. The truth is, the ancient
heretics began generally with attacking the gospels, in order
either to maintain their errors, or excuse them. To this purpose
some rejected all the genuine gospels, and substituted others that
were spurious in their room. This produced the gospels of Apel-
les, Basilides, Cerinthus, the Ebionites, and Gnostics. Others
corrupted the true gospels, by suppressing whatever gave them
any trouble, and inserting whatever might favour their erroneous
doctrines. Thus the Nazarenes corrupted the original gospel3
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
841
A. M. 3999. A. 1). I; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5406. A. D. 5
the evangelist St Luke gives us this account of the birth
o! his great forerunner John the Baptist. a
While his father b Zacharias, who was a priest of the
eighth course, namely, the course of Abia, was executing
his office at Jerusalem, which was in the latter part of
of St Matthew, as the Marcionites did that of St Luke; while
the Alogians rejected St John, as the Ebionites did St Matthew,
and the Valentinians only acknowledged St John, as the Cerin-
thians did St Mark. — Hammond's Annotations; M. Fabricius's
Codex apocryphus N. Test.; and Calmet's Dictionary, under the
word Gospel.
a There are two places in the prophets referred to, hotli hy our
Saviour and his evangelists, wherein the Baptist is described
under this character. The former is in the prophet Isaiah,
' The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way
of the Lord, make straight in the desert an high way for our God.'
chap. xi. 3; and the latter, which is inure plain and express, is in
Malachi, ' Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall pre-
pare the way before me,'&c, chap. iii. 1. Both the passages allude
to harbingers, and such other officers as, upon the journeys of
princes, are employed to take care that the ways should be levelled
and put in order, and all such obstructions removed as might
hinder their passage, or tender it less commodious; and the
manner in which the Baptist thus prepared the way of the Lord
was by his preaching and by his baptism. By his preaching
he endeavoured to bring the Jews to a due sense of their sins ;
to abate their confidence in being of Abraham's seed, and punctual
observers of the ceremonial law ; and to forewarn all of the dread-
ful effects of God's anger, who did not bring forth fruits worthy
of repentance: and by his baptism, when administered to such
persons as were under the obligation of the law, he plainly show-
ed, that he was therein admitting them to some privileges which
they had not before, namely, the remission of their sins, upon
their faith and obedience to him who was the messenger of the
covenant. Since therefore the Baptist was born six months be-
fore our Saviour, and entered upon his ministry six months be-
fore our Saviour began his; and since no part of his doctrine
terminated in himself, and his baptism referred every one to
Christ for acceptance and salvation; he is very properly said to
be his harbinger, ' a messenger sent to prepare his way before
him,' or to set all things in readiness for his approach, by putting
an end to the old, and making an entrance into the new dispen-
sation, in which sense he is represented by the fathers as a kind
of middle partition between the law and the gospel; of the law,
as a thing now come to a period ; and of the gospel, as commenc-
ing under him who was shortly to make his appearance. — Stan-
hope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
b Some of the fathers were of opinion that this Zacharias was,
at this time, high priest, upon a false supposition that the offer-
ing of incense was reserved to the high priest only: but, besides
the testimony of Josephus, who tells us expressly that Simon,
the son of Boethus, was high priest this year; it appears from
St Luke himself, that Zacharias was no more than an ordinary
priest of the family or course of Abia, which, of the four and
twenty courses appointed by David for the service of the temple,
when it should be built, was the eighth, 1 Chron. xxiv. 10. For
though it was the high priest's prerogative, on the great day of
expiation, to enter into ' the holy of holies,' and there burn in-
cense, which no ordinary priest might do, Lev. xvi. 12; yet,
in the common service of the day, each priest whose lot it was,
went every morning and evening into the sanctum, or body of
the temple, and there burnt the daily incense upon the altar,
which was placed before the veil of the most holy place, Exod.
xxx. 6, &c. For these, and several other reasons which anno-
tators have produced, it seems plain that Zacharias could not
possibly be high priest at this time; and, whatever credit may
be given to the tradition, — That, by the order of Herod the Great,
he was put to death between the porch and the altar, namely, in
the inclosure that surrounded the altar of burnt-offerings; and
that, when every one was ignorant of this murder, a certain
priest, thinking that he staid too long, entered into the temple,
and found him dead, and his blood congealed upon the ground,
and, at the same time, hearing a voice that it should never be
wiped out until his revenger came: — whatever credit, I say, may
be given to this tradition, it was doubtless upon this foundation
that many of the ancients thought, that Zacharias, the father of
John the Baptist, was that Zachariah, son of Barachiah, mention-
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. I.
the reign of Herod the Great,c it came to his lot d to go
into the temple with his censer in his hand, in order to
burn incense, while the people without were e offering
up their supplications in the court that was called ' the
court of Israel.' At the altar of incense /he was great-
ly surprised with the sight of an angel standing on the
right side of it : but the angel soon dissipated his fears
with the joyful news, that God intended to bless him with
a son, whose name should be John, who would prove
a person of uncommon merit, and be appointed to the
office of harbinger to the Messiah, S who, in a short time,
was to make his appearance.
ed by our Saviour in the gospel, whose blood was shed between
the temple and the altar. — Poole's and IVhitby's Annotations;
and Calmet's Dictionary.
c St Luke, in particular, takes notice, that the time when our
Lord's forerunner was to be conceived, was in the reign of He-
rod, son of Antipater, (for it was Herod Antipas that put him to
death,) commonly called the Great, who, under the Romans,
fought his way to the government of the Jews, and came to his
throne by the slaughter of their sanhedrim, by which means he
extinguished all the dominion which, till that time, they held in
the tribe of Judah, not in a single person indeed, for that was ex-
tinguished in the Asmoiifean family, but in a select number out
of that royal tribe, and so verified the prophecy of Jacob, (Gen.
xlix. 10,) 'that the sceptre,' or government, ' was departed
from Judah, and the lawgiver from between his feet,' which was a
certain sign thatShiloh, that is, the Messiah, was shortly to come.
— Poole's Annotations.
d The several courses of the priests began on the sabbath day,
and continued to serve till the sabbath following; but because
they were now increased to a great number, (Josephus tells us
there were no less than a thousand in each course,) there were
several parts of the priestly office, whereof burning of incense was
one, which the course that then ministered seems to have divided
among themselves for the week that they were to attend by lot.
— Poole's and Whitby's Annotations. See also Jenning's Jewish
Antiquities, vol. i. p. 269.
e A Jewish congregation, for the most part, consisted of all the
priests of the course which was then in waiting, of the Levites, and
of certain stationary men, as they called them, who represented
the body of the people, besides some accidental worshippers; and
when the priests went into the sanctuary, or within the first veil,
to offer incense, notice was given by the sound of a bell, that it
was then the time of prayer; whereupon every one present offered
up his supplications to God silently: and though this silent prayer
was not commanded, yet there seems a manifest allusion to it in
those words of St John, where, ' at the offering of incense with
the prayers of the saints,' it is said ' there was silence in heaven
for half an hour,' (Rev. viii. 1, &c.) Nor is that passage in Ec-
clesiasticus, (chap. 1. 19, 20,) any bad representation of this part
of the Jewish worship, 'And the people besought the Lord, the
Most High, by prayer before him that is merciful, till the solem-
nity of the Lord was ended ; and then he went down,' namely,
Simon the high priest, ' and lifted up his hands over the whole
congregation of the children of Israel, to give the blessing of the
Lord with his lips.' — Hammond's and IVhitby's Annotations.
./"The Jews had a peculiar notion, that such like apparitions
were always fatal to those that had them, and a sure token of their
instantaneous death (Gen. xvi. 7; xxii. 11, 15: Exod. xx. 19,
&c): but it this were not, it is natural for men to be afiHgbtened
at sudden and unusual things, especially at any divine appear-
ances, whether of God himself taking a visible shape, or authoriz-
ing an angel so to do. For though God does not make the
appearances to afirighten us, yet such is the imbecility of our
nature, that we cannot but be startled at them; and reason good
there is that God, by this means, should both declare his own
glory and majesty, and humble his poor creatures, in order to
make them more susceptible of his divine revelations. — Pvdc's
Annotations, and Calmet's Dictionary.
y This word is derived from the llebrew mashach, to anoint,
and is the very same with X{;<rT«$, the anointed, in Greek. It is a
name sometimes given to the kings and high priests of the He-
brews, (1 Sam. xii. 5, &c, Ps. cv. 15.); but principally, and by
way of eminence it belongs to that sovereign Deliverer who was
So
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The sense of his own great age, as well as his wife's
long sterility, made Zacharias a express a kind of diffi-
dence in this promise, and for his farther satisfaction, de-
sire some miracle in confirmation of it; wliereupon the
angel let him know, " That he was no less than Gabriel,
a special attendant on God's throne, and despatched on
purpose to inform him of this gTeat happiness ; but that,
since he was so incredulous as to require a sign, he should
have such an one as would be both a punishment of his
unbelief, and a confirmation of his faith ; for, until the
birth of the child, he should be both deaf and dumb ;" b
which accordingly came to pass : for, when he came
expected by the Jews, and whom they vainly expect even to this
day, since he is already come at the appointed time, in the person
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Jews were used to
anoint kings, high priests, and sometimes prophets. Saul, Da-
vid, Solomon, and Joash, kiugs of Judah, received the royal mic-
tion. Aaron and his sons received the sacerdotal ; and Elisha
received the prophetical, at least God ordered Elijah to give it to
him. But now, though Jesus Christ united in his own person
all the offices of prophet, priest, and king, yet we no where find
that he received any outward or sensible unction ; and therefore
the unction which the prophets and apostles speak of, with regard
to him, is the spiritual and internal unction of grace in the Holy
Ghost, of which the outward unction was no more than a figure
and symbol. — Calmet's Dictionary.
a The words of Zacharias to the angel are, ' Whereby shall I
know this ? For I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in
years? (Luke i. 18,) much of the same import with those of
Abraham upon a like occasion, ' Whereby shall I know that I
shall inherit the land of Canaan?' (Gen. xv. 8.) How then came
it to pass that Abraham was gratified with a sign in the same
request for which Zacharias was punished with dumbness? Now,
though there may be a very great similitude in the words which
are spoken by several persons, yet there may, at the samo time,
be a very considerable difference in the heart aud habit of mind
from whence they proceed, which, we must allow, God can see
much better than we can perceive by words. In relation to
Abraham, then, the Holy Spirit bears him testimony, that ' he
staggered not at the promise through unbelief, but was strong in
faith, giving glory to God, being fully persuaded, that what he
had promised, he was able to perform ' (Rom. iv. 19, 20, &c.);
and therefore if he asked a sign, it was not to beget, but to nou-
rish and confirm this faith in him. But in Zacharias, the asking
of a sign savoured of perfect infidelity, in that he believed not an
angel appearing to him in the name of the Lord, and in a place
where evil angels durst not come: an angel telling him his prayer
was heard, which evil angels could not know; and acquainting
him with things which tended to the glory of God, the com-
pletion of his promises, and the welfare of mankind, which evil
angels would not do. His punishment therefore was the just
result of his unbelief; but, (what shows the mercy of God in
inflicting it,) it was a punishment of such a nature, as carried
with it an answer to his desire, being no more than a priva-
tion of speech, until the words of the angel were fulfilled. — Poole's
and IVhitby's Annotations.
b The words of the text are, ' Behold thou shalt be dumb and
not able to speak,' (Luke i. 20.) " The affirmation of a thing,
joined with the denial of its contrary, is an idiom peculiar to the
Jewish language, and is used to express the strongest affirmation
possible. The style of the evangelist John is remarkable for the
frequency of this idiom, and many instances of it are to be found
in the Old Testament. — Macknight. There is no authority
whatever in the text for the author's assertion, that Zacharias
was deprived of his hearing, as well as of the power of speech.
In verse 62 it is indeed said that his friends made signs to him,
how he would have his son called, and some have inferred from
this that he was both deaf and dumb, because, if he had only been
dumb, there was no necessity for making signs to him, or for not
asking the question directly in words. " But it must be observed,
that we often use signs and gestures to those who hear us very
well. So John xiii. 24. And this is especially done towards
those who have lost the faculty of speech. Nor are we told that
the friends of Zacharias did not also use words, and it is very
probable that they did so." — Bloomfield. — En.
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. l
out to the people, who waited to ' receive his benediction,
he made signs, that he was not able to speak to them,
and they thence inferred that he had seen some extraor-
dinary vision within. After the time of his ministration,
however, was over, he returned home, and it was not
long before his wife Elizabeth perceived herself with
child, though her modesty made her conceal it for the
space of five months.
Six months after Elizabeth's conception the same
angel Gabriel was sent to c Nazareth, a city of Galilee,
to a virgin named Mary, a near relation to Elizabeth,
and of the house of David, who had lately been <* es-
1 Num. vi. 24.
c Nazareth was a little town of Zebulun in Lower Galilee,
west of Tabor, and east of Ptolemais, celebrated for having been
the residence of Christ for the first thirty-three years of his life.
It is situated upon the side of a barren rocky elevation, facing
the east, and commanding a long valley of a round concave form,
and encompassed with mountains. — Calmet. "It seems,''
says our writer, "as if fifteen mountains met to form an en-
closure for this delightful spot; they rise round it like the edge
of a shell to guard it from intrusion. It is a rich and beautiful
field in the midst of barren hills." The place is shown
where the house of the Virgin Mary stood ! hut the house
itself, say the Catholics, was transported by angels to Loretto ! !
Dr E. D. Clarke, who describes Nazareth, mentions the vil-
lage of Sephourg, in which is shown the house of St Anne, the
mother of the Virgin Mary, five miles from the town; the
fountain near Nazareth, called "the Virgin Mary's fountain ;"
the great church or convent, at that time the refuge of wretches
afflicted with the plague, hoping for recovery from the sanctity
of the place ; Joseph's workshop converted into a chapel ; the
synagogue wherein Jesus is said to have preached, now a church ;
the precipice whence the inhabitants would have thrown our
Lord, concerning which the words of the evangelist are remark-
ably explicit, and it is probably the precise spot alluded to in the
text of St Luke's gospel. A stone that is said to have served
as a table to Christ and his disciples is an object of worship to
the superstitious of Galilee. Buckingham estimates the inhabi-
tants of Nazareth at about 2000, and the houses at 250, which
are built of stone, flat-rooted, and of one story, but sufficiently
spacious and commodious for the accommodation of a large fam-
ily. The streets are steep, from the inclination of the ground on
which they stand, narrow from custom, and dirty from the loose-
ness of the soil. — Ed.
d Espousing or betrothing was nothing else but a solemn pro-
mise of marriage, made by two persons, each to other, at such a
distance of time as they agreed upon. The manner of perform-
ing this espousal was either by a writing, or by a piece of silver
given to the bride, or by cohabitation. The writing that was
prepared on these occasions ran in this form — " On such a day,
of such a month, in such a year, A, the son of A, has said to
B, the daughter of B, ' Be thou my spouse according to the
law of Moses and the Israelites, and I will give thee for the
portion of thy virginity, the sum of two hundred zuzims, as it is
ordained by the law.' And the said B has consented to become
his spouse upon these conditions, which the said A has promised
to perform upon the day of marriage. To this the said A
obliges himself; and for this he engages all his goods, even as
far as the cloak which he wears upon his shoulders. Moreover,
he promises to perform all that is intended in contracts of mar-
riage, in favour of the Israelitish women. Witnesses, A, B,
C." The promise by a piece of silver, and without writing,
was made before witnesses, when the young man said to his mis-
tress, " Receive this piece of silver as a pledge that you shall
become my spouse." — Poole's Annotations; Calmet' s Dictionary .
— The espousals by money, or a written instrument, were per-
formed by the man and woman under a tent or canopy erected
for that purpose. Into this chamber the bridegroom was accus-
tomed to go with his bride, that he might talk with her more
familiarly ; which was considered as a ceremony of confirmation
to the wedlock. While he was there no person was allowed to
enter; his friends and attendants waited for him at the door,
with torches and lamps in their hands ; and when he came out
he was received by all that were present with great joy and ao-
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &o.
843
A. M.3999. A. C 1; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5406. A. C. 5. FROM BEGIN. OF GOS1
poused to one Joseph, a person of the same pedigree
indeed, but of no higher profession than that of a car-
penter. The angel, approaching the pious maid, began
to congratulate her with ' being highly in the favour of
God, and blessed above all the rest of her sex ; because
she should have the happiness of bearing a son, called
by the name of Jesus a or Saviour, the long expected
Messiah,' to whom God would jnve the throne ° of his
elamation. To this ancient custom the psalmist alludes in liis
magnificent description of the heavens: 'In them he set a tab-
ernacle for the sun; which, as a bridegroom coming out of his
chamber, rejoices as a strong man to run a race.' A Jew-
ish virgin legally betrothed, was considered as a lawful wife;
and by consequence could not be put away without a bill of
divorce. And if she proved unfaithful to her betrothed hus-
band, she was punished as an adulteress; and her seducer incur-
red the same punishment as if he had polluted the wife of his
neighbour. This is the reason that the angel addressed Joseph,
the betrothed husband of Mary, in these terms: ■ Joseph, thou
son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that
which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.' The evangelist
Luke gives her the same title: ' And Joseph also went up from
Galilee unto Bethlehem, to be taxed, with Mary his espoused
wife.' Ten or twelve months commonly intervened between the
ceremony of espousals and the marriage; during this interval
the espoused wife continued with her parents, that she might pro-
vide herself with nuptial ornaments suitable to her station. This
custom serves to explain a circumstance in Samson's marriage,
which is involved in some obscurity: ' He went down,' says
the historian, ' and talked with the woman (whom he had seen
at Timnath), and she pleased him well.' These words seem to
refer to the ceremony of espousals; the following to the subse-
quent marriage, ' And after a time he returned to take her.'
Hence, a considerable time intervened between the espousals
and their actual union. From the time of the espousals,
the bridegroom was at liberty to visit his espoused wife in
the house of her father, yet neither of the parties left their
own abode during eight days before the marriage, but per-
sons of the same age visited the bridegroom and made
merry with him. These circumstances are distinctly marked
in the account which the sacred historian has given us of
Samson's marriage: 'So his father went down unto the
woman, and made there a feast; for so used the young men to
do. And it came to pass when they saw him, that they brought
thirty companions to be with him.' These companions were
the children of the bridechamber, of whom our Lord speaks:
'Can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the
bridegroom is with them?' — Pa.vton's Illustrations < f the Holy
Scripture*, vol. iii. pp. 137, 138. — Ed.
a We read but of few instances in scripture, where men had
names determined for them by particular appointment from
heaven, and before the time of their birth; and, as such names
appear to be very significant, so the persons distinguished by
them were always remarkable for some extraordinary qualities
or events which their respective names were designed to de-
note. Our Lord's name indeed, in sense and substance, is the
same with Joshua, that famous leader heretofore, who, after the
death of Moses, settled the Israelites in the promised land, and
subdued the enemies that opposed their entrance into it. But,
as that earthly was a figure of the heavenly Canaan, so was the
captain of that an eminent type of our salvation; and if he was
worthy to be called a Saviour, much more is this Jesus what his
name imports; for he delivers us from the heaviest of all bond-
ages, and from the most formidable of all enemies, as he, and he
only it is, who saves his people from their sins. — Stanhope on
the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
o The prophets in their predictions are very full and express,
that the Messiah should be a great king, and descend from the
line of David; (see Ps. x. 16, Is. ix. G, 7, Dan. vii. 14, and
Lzek. xxvi. 7) and therefore the angel in his message to Mary
characterizes him as a successor to that prince's throne, and
seems to accommodate himself in some measure to the preju-
dices of the Jews, and perhaps of the virgin-mother herself,
who, being hied up in the synagogue, might expect that the
Messiah should be a temporal prince, as well as they; but our
Lord's kingdom, as himself plainly declares, is not of this world,
TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 2J. LUKE vi. 1.
father David, and of whose sovereignty and dominion
there should be no end.'c
Conscious of her own virtue, and yet surprised at this
uncommon appearance and salutation, the holy virgin
fl began to expostulate with the heavenly messenger the
possibility of the thing, since she had all along lived in
a strict state of virginity. But the angel, to satisfy her
in this particular, told her " that this wonderful work
was to be effected by the invisible power and operation
of the Holy Ghost ; e and, to show her that nothing was
nor of the like nature with other empires upon earth. His
reign is in the hearts and minds of men, and his dominion is in
the church, against which ' the gates of hell shall not prevail,'
and in which, 'of the increase of his government and peace there
shall be no end,' (Is. ix. 7) * until the end cometh, when he
shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father,' (1 Cor.
xv. 24). — CalmeCs Commentary.
c So the prophet Isaiah, ch. ix. 6, 7, ' Unto us a child is born,'
&c. • Of the increase of his government and peace ' there shall be
' no end.' The kingdom of Christ is twofold: 1. His spiritual
kingdom, or the dominion of righteousness in the minds of men:
2. His temporal kingdom, or the outward dispensation of the
gospel, together with an exercise of government over the world,
by which all events are ordered, so as to promote the empire of
righteousness in the hearts of men. This distinction removes
the difficulty arising from 1 Cor. xv. 2S, where we are told, that
after the worlds are judged, Christ shall deliver up the kingdom
to God the Father: compared with what Gabriel said to Mary
on this occasion, and with the other passages of scripture, which
affirm that our Lord's kingdom shall be everlasting. His tem-
poral kingdom, or the gospel dispensation, will end with the
world being of no farther use. At that period likewise he will
deliver up to God the government of the world that was com-
mitted to him for the good of his church, after having accom-
plished the end of his coming, by putting down all rule, and all
authority and power opposite to God's. But his spiritual king-
dom, or the dominion of righteousness in the minds of reasonable
beings, which he came down to establish, will continue «vith
them to all eternity. Or we may suppose, that after the man-
agement of the world is delivered up to God, Jesus will still pre-
side as head over the redeemed society in heaven, and perform
such acts of government as their condition allows and circum-
stances require, though still in subordination to God. For the
apostle says expressly, that ' then shall the Son also himself be
subject unto him that put all things under him, that God
may be all in all.' Or the epithet everlasting, when applied to
Christ's kingdom, may be taken in a popular sense, for a duration
to the end of time, in opposition to the short continuance of
earthly kingdoms. — Macknights Harmony of the Gospels.
d The words of her expostulation arc, ' How shall this be,
seeing I know not a man?' Which some look upon as no more
than a reply of admiration, and a desire to be further informed
in what manner God intended to etl'ect such a wonderful work;
though others perceive in them some small indications of diffi-
dence, but what might be more excusable, because there had
been no such precedent of the divine power made in the world,
as to cause a virgin to conceive, and bring forth a son. — Poole's
Annotations.
e The words in the text are, ' the Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow* thee;'
wherein, according to the usual modesty of scripture language,
is implied all that action of the Holy Ghost whereby the blessed
virgin was enabled to become fruitful, and the place of ordinal**
generation was in this case supplied. Now, when this action is
in scripture represented as entirely the work of God, and yet
is attributed to the Holy Ghost in particular, we are not to
understand it so peculiarly his, tliat the two other persons, sub-
sisting in the Godhead should have no concern in it: for hem
that rule of the school takes place, that the entire union of the
divine nature makes all such actions common to all the three
as do nut. refer to the properties and relations by which they
stand distinguished from each other. As therefore the Holy
Spirit began the first creation by moving, or brooding, as it
were, upon the face of the waters, so did he here begin the
new creation, by conveyuig a principle, or power of fruitful-
844
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A M.3.999. A. D. 1; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 54C6. A. D. 5. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8, MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi.I.
in she recounted his mercies, and the promises which he
had made to the people of Israel, and which, by making
her the blessed instrument of them, he was now about to
fulfil.
About three months Mary continued with her cousin
Elizabeth, and then returned home. Elizabeth, not long-
after, was delivered of a son ; but, on the eighth day, d
when the child was to he circumcised and named, his
relations and friends were not a little surprised to hear
that he was to be called John,e since none of the family
bore that name ; but their surprise became much greater
when they found that, upon this occasion, his father's
speech was immediately restored to him,/ which he em-
ployed in the praises of Almighty God, who had wrought
such prodigies among them.
The holy virgin, being returned to Nazareth, still
concealed the mystery which God had wrought in her
from her espoused husband ; but her pregnant symptoms
soon discovered it ; and though her deportment had been
extremely chaste and modest, yet he might be well as-
sured that she was with child. This raised no little con-
cern in his breast ; but, being a merciful good man/ and
impossible to the Almighty, gave her to understand that
her cousin Elizabeth, notwithstanding her old age, and
former sterility, had been now six months with child."
Whereupon the holy Virgin humbly acquiesced in what-
ever God had determined to do with her ; and, as soon
as the angel was departed, made preparations for her
journey to Hebron,ffi where her cousin Jived.
As soon as she arrived at Zacharias's house, Eliza-
beth, upon hearing her h'rst salutation, perceived that
the child6 sprang in her womb, and, being inspired with
the Holy Ghost, she cried out, " Blessed art thou above
thy sex ! blessed is the fruit of thy body ! and how vast
is my felicity to be visitetl by the mother of my Lord !"
And having, by the same prophetic spirit, assured Mary
of the accomplishment of every thing that the angel had
told her, she so transported the blessed virgin, that she
broke out into a rapture of thanksgivings0 to God, where-
ness, into a person otherwise incapable of it. And yet, as there,
without the Father, and his divine Word or Son, ' not anything
was made that was made,' (John i. 3,) so did he here bring this
second, ' tin's creation of a new thing,' (Jer. xxxi. 22,) to effect,
by the same co-operation of the whole undivided Trinity, as
he had done the former. — Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels,
vol. i.
a This very probably was the place where Zacharias and
Elizabeth lived, and where John the Baptist was born; because
it was not only one of the cities appointed for the priests to dwell
in, (Josh. xx. 7.) but situated likewise in mountains, which run-
ning cross the middle of Judea from south to north, gave the
tract which they run along, the name of the ' hill-country.'
Hebron was ten leagues distant from Jerusalem, and about forty
from Nazareth, which made it a long journey for the blessed
virgin, had not her zeal to go and partake in her cousin's joy
(more than to satisfy her curiosity, whether what the angel had
told her was true; made her surmount all difficulties. — /Fell's
Geography of the New Testament ; and Calmct's Commentary.
[Mary and Elizabeth might be cousins, as the text affirms,
although the former was a descendant of David, and the latter
a daughter of Aaron; because the law (Num. xxxvi. 6.) for-
bidding women to marry out of their own tribes, related only to
heiresses, and consequently did not include the tribe of Levi,
which had no particular heritable possessions that could be ali-
enated by such marriages. Accordingly (Lev. xxii. 12.) it is
supposed, as a common case, that a priest's daughter might be
married to a stranger. — Maeknight's Harmony. —'En.
b It is said indeed of the Baptist, that he ' should be filled
with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb;' and from hence
some have thought that this extraordinary motion of the child
in Elizabeth was an act of his own, and proceeded from a sen-
sation of joy, which himself felt at the salutation of the hlessed
virgin: but, besides that being filled with the Holy Ghost from
his mother's womb, means no more, than that the power of the
Holy Ghost should be discerned to be upon him very early, it
is certain that infants in the womb are not capable of any joy
themselves, as having no apprehensions of good to be enjoyed,
or evil to be avoided ; but, as they are sensibly affected with the
joy, or grief, or surprise of the parent, to whom they are united,
the uncommon motion of the child, at this conjuncture, must
have been occasioned by the joy which transported his mother.
— Hammond's and Whitby's Annotations.
c It was customary among the Jews, for pious and devout
persons, when they found themselves inspired, upon great and
solemn occasions, to celebrate the praises of God in songs made
on purpose. Several of this kind we meet with in the Old
Testament; but this of the blessed virgin is the first that oc-
curs in the New, and, for the majesty of its style, the nobleness
of its sentiments, and that spirit of piety which runs through
the whole, is inferior to none.— Calmet's Commentary. [The
song of the virgin is considered by many to be the first piece
of poetry in the New Testament; but the address of the angel
to Zacharias, (ver. 13—17,) is delivered in the same way; so is
that to the virgin, (ver. 30—33,) and so is also Elizabeth's ans-
wer to Mary, (ver. 42—45.) All these portions are easily re-
ducible to the KemUich form, in which the Hebrew poetry
of the Old Testament is found in many MSS., and in which
Dr Kennicott has arranged the psalms and other poetical parts
of the sacred writings. — Dr A. Carke on Luke i. 46.] — Ed.
d The Jews had a positive command in their law, that no
child should be circumcised before the eighth day; because the
mother for seven days was reputed unclean, and so was the
child by touching her, (Lev. xii. 1, 2,) but the law appointed
no certain place in which circumcision was to be done, nor any
certain person that was to perform it; neither did it enjoin that
the child should have his name given him at that time, only the
custom prevailed of doing it then ; because, when God instituted
the rite, he changed the names of Abraham and Sarah.. — Whit-
by's Annotations.
e The Jews, from their first beginning, seem to have made
it a point of religion, to give such names to their children as
were significative either of God's mercy to them, or of their
duty to God, and from the passage now before us, (though it
was no ancient usage,) it seems to be a custom introduced, at
least in the days of Zacharias, to call children by the name of
their parents, or the nearest relations, as it is usual now among
us, if there was no particular reason to the contrary. — Poole's
Annotations ," and Calmet's Commentary.
/These extraordinary circumstances, I mean the appearing
of the angel to Zacharias in the temple; Zachaiias's dumbness;
Elizabeth's pregnancy, when past the age of child-bearing; and
the restoration of Zachaiias's speech on the day of his son's cir-
cumcision, were all wisely ordered by Providence, to accom-
pany the conception and birth of John, that he who was the
Messiah's forerunner might not seem an obscure and ordinary
man, but one that was the peculiar object of the decrees and
counsels of Heaven. He was introduced into the world in this
magnificent manner, that, the attention of his countrymen being
awakened, and high expectations of him raised, he might exe
cute the duties of his ministry with greater advantage, and ef-
fectually prepare the people for receiving the Messiah himself,
who was soon to appear in person. — Maeknight's Harmony. —
Ed.
g The words in the text, as we translate them, are — ' Jo-
seph her husband being a just man:' but, if he was a just man,
and was satisfied that his intended wife had, some way or other,
violated her chastity, (as he knew nothing to the contrary at
that time,) instead of screening her crime, he ought to have
brought her to punishment, (Deut. xxii. 20, 21.) Now, it is to
be observed that, upon the discovery of his wife's pregnancy, Jo-
seph had the choice of three things. 1st, either he might, not-
withstanding this, have taken her to his house as his wife,
because the law of divorce laid none under an obligation, hut
gave a permission only, in case of some discovered unclean-
ness, to put away the wife: or, 2dly, he might give her a
bill of divorcement, either in public or in private, (for that was
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &o.
845
A. M.3999. A.D.I; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5406. A. D. 5. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix.8. MARKii. 23. LUKE vi. 1
unwilling either to expose the honour of her family,
.vhich he thought she had stained, or to inflict public
punishment upon her, according to the sentence of the
law, he resolved upon a separation " with the utmost
privacy : but before he came to put it in execution, an
angel from heaven '' appeared to him in a vision, in-
1 Deut. xxii. 23.
left to his opinion,) cither before two or three witnesses, or be-
fore a proper magistrate, and that without specifying any crime
against her: or, odly, lie might, according to the law, have
brought her upon her trial, whether in the matter of her preg-
nancy she had suffered a rape, or was herself consenting,
(Dent. xxii. 23, 24.) Had therefore Joseph dune the first of
these, he must have acted counter to his own honour, and have
incurred the common reproach, that he who retaineth an adul-
teress is a fool. Had he done the last of these, he was not sure
of convicting her, because, upon examination, it might appear
that she had been forced; and, in that case, the man that did it
was to die, (Deut. xxii. 25:) or she might have been with child
before her betrothing, and, in that case, she was only obliged to
marry the person that had abused her, (ver. 28, 29.) Upon the
whole, therefore, Joseph thought it the best and justest way to
proceed upon the foot of a divorce. Mary's being visibly with
child was reason sufficient to authorize his parting with her:
but he did not know for certain that she was guilty of adultery,
or that consequently she deserved to die ; and therefore he did
not think it right, by bringing her upon her trial, to expose her.
— Poole s Annotations ; and Calmet's Commentary ; and Spati-
hcim's Dub. Evang. part i. dub. 31. [Considerable diversity
of opinion exists as to the interpretation of the text here quoted.
Instead of ' a just man,' as in our version, Dr Campbell ren-
ders 'a worthy man,' and others, such as Grotius, Hammond,
Rosenmiiller, Kuinoel, ' a kind or humane man.' Dr Booth-
royd's version is ' a righteous man,' which certainly expresses
the usual sense of the original term 1ix.tr.wi, and includes, as he
remarks, " all that is essential in a truly good and pious char-
acter." Dr Bloomfiekl observes, that the term Sixains in its
usual acceptation denotes ' lover of justice,' and ' a man of up-
rightness and integrity.' Joseph being such, determined to put
away his betrothed wife by law ; and yet with that mercy which
ever accompanies true justice, he waited not to make her a pub-
lic example, but to put her away privately ; that is, with only
two witnesses required to attest the delivery of the bill of di-
vorce; which did not necessarily state the reason, for the di-
vorcement.]— Bloom field's Greek New Testament — Ed.
a The common way of separation among the Jews was, by the
man's giving the woman a letter of divorce. This, in their
language, is called Ghetb, and the substance of it is to this effect :
i — " On such a day, month, and year, and at such a place, I A
divorce you voluntarily, put you away, and restore you to your
liberty, even you B, who was heretofore my wife; and I permit
you to marry whom you please." When the day of divorce
conies, the rabbi that attends, having strictly examined both
parties, and finding that they are resolved to part, bids the woman
open her hands, and, when she has received the deed, to close
them both together, lest it should chance to fall to the ground.
The man, when he gives her the parchment, (for on parchment
the bill of divorce was to be written, in the presence of two rab-
bins, and with many other trifling circumstances,) tells her,
" Here is thy divorce, I put thee away from me, and leave thee
at liberty to many whom thou pleasest;" and, when the woman
has taken it, and the rabbi read it over once more, she is entirely
free. There is in this ceremony, however, to be remarked, that
they always endeavour to have ten or twelve persons at it, besides
the two witnesses who si^n the deed. When therefore Joseuh
intended to dismiss Mary privately, it could not be, by having
no witnesses at all, but as few as the nature of the thing would
bear, and by giving her the letter of divorcement into her own
hand, which she might suppress, if she thought fit, or by insert-
ing no accusation against her in it, in case it came to be read
before the company.-— Co Imet's Dictionary under the word Di-
vorce; JFhitby and Beausobre's Annotations.
b This visiun was in a dream, and while he was asleep; and
dreams, we know, were one way whereby God revealed his mind
to the people formerly, (Job vii. 14,) whereby he made himself
known to his prophets, (Num. xii. 6,) and not to prophets only,
forming him, " that his wife's conception was the im-
mediate work of the Holy Ohost, that she should bear
a son, the same person 3 whom the prophet had foretold
under the name Emanuel, or God xvith us :" where-
upon Joseph was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,
but taking the holy virgin home to him, he lived with
her, to all outward appearance, in conjugal love, though
he certainly had no carnal knowledge of her, c till she
was delivered of her first-born son, who, by a lineal
descent, was true heir to the kingdom of Israel, as sprung
from the house of David.
Some time before this, Augustus Cffisar had issued
out a general edict, that all persons in the lioman em-
pire, with their estates and conditions, should be re-
gistered at certain appointed places, according to their
respective provinces, cities, and families. By virtue of
this edict, Joseph and his wife Mary being both of the
tribe of Judah, and family of David, were obliged to go
2 Is. ix. 6.
but to pagan princes sometimes, as appears by the instances, both
of Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar, (Gen. xli. 1.; Dan. ii. 1.) But
how to distinguish divine from natural dreams, it is difficult to
say, unless it be by the clear and distinct series of their repre-
sentation, and the forcible impression which they leave upon
men's spirits ; whereas natural dreams, for the most part, are
rambling and inconsistent, aud ' whoso regardeth them,' says the
wise son of Sirach, ' is like him who catcheth at a shadow, or
followeth after the wind,' (Ecclus. xxxiv. 2.) — Poole's Annota-
tions. Why God reveals himself by dreams, and in the night-
time; see Spanhehn's Dub. Evang. part ii. dub. 59.
c The word first-born in scripture admits of various significa-
tions. Sometimes, and most commonly indeed, it denotes the
eldest of two or more children, as Eliab is called the first-born of
Jesse, 1 Sam. xvii . 13; at others, the first that is born, without
regard to any else, as when God says to Moses, ' sanctify me
all the first-born,' Exod. xiii. 2. In some places it imports
figuratively what is most dearly beloved by us; in which sense
God frequently calls the Israelites his first-born; and in others,
what is most remarkable for greatness or excellency, as God
promises David, who was but a younger brother of the family, to
' make him the first-born of the kings of the earth,' Ps. lxxxix.
27. In any of these three last senses our Saviour might very
properly be called his mother's first-born son, forasmuch as he
was really her first child ; her most and only beloved ; and the
most illustrious of his race : but then Joseph's not knowing his
wife until she was delivered of her first-born son, seems to imply,
that he knew her afterwards. Those who maintain the perpetual
virginity of the blessed mother, tell us, that \u>; ov, which we
render until in several places of scripture, has relation only to
the time which precedes, and not to that which follows any
event; so that ' he knew her not until,' may be taken in the
same sense as Samuel ' came not to see Saul till the day of his
death,' 1 Sam. xv. 35, that is, he never came to see him : but,
besides that most of the passages which are produced to this pur-
pose, are far from coming up to the case in hand, since the angel
commanded ' Joseph to take Mary as his wife,' without any in-
timation that lie should not perform the duty of a husband to
her, it is not easy to conceive why he should live twelve years
with her, and all that while deny that duty which both the law
and the canons of the Jews command the husband to pay his
wife, Exod. xxi. 10. If we imagine, that our Saviour would
have been dishonoured in any other's lying in the same bed after
him, we seem to forget how much he humbled and debased
himself in lying in that lied first, and then in a stable and a
manger. But, leaving this question to those who aflect to be
curious beyond what is written, we may safely conclude with
St Basil, " That though it was necessary for the completh n
of the prophecy, that the mother of our Lord should continue a
virgin, until she had brought forth her first-born; yet what she
was afterwards it is idle to discuss, because it is of no manner
of concern to the mystery." — HoicclVs History in the notes ;
Poole's and Whitby's Annotations; and S/panheimZi Dub.
Evang. part i. dub. 28..
846
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
that no better place could be found for their lodging
than a stable, where they had not been long before the
blessed virgin was delivered of a son, whom (herself
performing the office of a midwife) c she bound in swad-
dling clothes, and laid down to rest in a manger. But,
notwithstanding this obscurity of our Saviour's birth,
God was pleased, that very night, by the message of an
angel, with a radiant light surrounding him, to make a
pompous revelation of it to certain poor shepherds who
were attending their flocks on the plains of Bethlehem ;
and, after one angel had delivered the joyful tidings, an
innumerable company of the same celestial choir broke
out all together into this triumphant doxology, ' Glory
be to God on high, peace on earth, and good will
towards men.'
A. M. ?TO9. A. C.5 ; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5106. A. C. 5. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. EUKE vi. 1.
as far as Bethlehem, a which was the mother city of their
tribe, there to have their names and estates enrolled. 1
The great conflux of people upon this occasion had
already filled all the inns, * and houses of reception, so
1 Respecting this enrolment, see next chapter.
a Bethlehem, now called Beit-Lahhm, was a celebrated city
about six miles south-west from Jerusalem: it was formerly
called Ephrath or Ephrata. (Gen. xxxv. 19. ; xlviii. 7. ; Mic. v.
2.) It was a city in the time of Boaz (Ruth iii. 11.; iv. 1.),
and was fortified by Rehoboam. (2 Chron. xi. 6.) In Mat. ii.
1, 5, it is called Bethlehem of Judiea, to distinguish it from
another town of the same name situated in Lower Galilee, and
mentioned in Josh. xix. 15. In Luke ii. 4, it is called the ' city
of David,' because David was born and educated there. (Com-
pare John vii. 42.; and 1 Sam. xvi. 1, IS.) This city, though
not considerable for its extent or riches, is of great dignity as the
appointed birth-place of the Messiah (Mat. ii. 6. ; Luke ii. 6 —
15..) : it is pleasantly situated on the brow of an eminence, in a
very fertile soil, which only wants cultivation to render it what
the name Bethlehem imports — a house of bread. Between the
clefts of the rock, when the soil is cultivated, vines, figs, and
olives, appear to grow in great luxuriance. Bethlehem is said
to be nearly as large as Nazareth, and to contain from a thousand
to fifteen hundred inhabitants, who are almost wholly Christians.
On the north-eastern side of it is a deep valley, where tradition
says that the angels appeared to the shepherds of Judaea, with the
glad tidings of our Saviour's nativity (Luke ii. S — 14.); and in
this valley Dr Clarke halted at the identical fouutain for whose
delicious water David longed. (2 Sam. xxiii. 15 — 18.) Of the
various pretended holy places which are here shown to Christians,
the cave of the nativity is the only spot verified by tradition from
the earliest ages of Christianity. Between one and two miles
from this place, on the road to Jerusalem, stood the site of
Rachel's tomb, (Geu. xxxv. 19, 20.; 1 Sam. x. 2.) which is now
covered by a small square Mohammedan building, surmounted
by a dome, and resembling in its exterior the tombs of saints
and sheiks in Arabia and Egypt." In the vicinity of Bethlehem
are the pools of Solomon, which seem to have been connected
with a scheme for supplying Jerusalem with water. — Hume's
Introduction. — Ed.
b There appear to be three descriptions of these buildings.
Some are simply places of rest, by the side of a fountain, if pos-
sible, which being at proper distances on the road, are thus
named, though they are mere naked walls ; others have an at-
tendant, who subsists either by some charitable donation, or the
benevolence of passengers ; and others are more considerable
establishments, where families reside and take care of them, and
furnish many necessary provisions. Conformably to these ideas,
the scripture uses at least two words to express a caravanserai,
though our translators have rendered both by the same term inn,
Thus, Luke ii. 7. ' There was no room for them in the inn.'
(x«™Xii^«Ti,) " the place of untying," of beasts, &c., for rest.
(Luke x. 34.) The good Samaritan ' brought him to the {yra^o-^uoi)
inn,' (whose keeper is called in the next verse IlavSo^ju,-,) a re-
ceptacle open to all comers. It may reasonably be supposed,
that a caravanserai in a town should be better furnished than one
in the country, in a retired place, and where few travellers pass;
and Mr Taylor therefore iuelines against Harmer, (Obs. vol. iii.
p. 2 IS,) to think that the inn, to which the good Samaritan is
represented as conducting the wounded traveller, was intentional-
ly described of an inferior kind,, If so, we may reasonably take
the other word, " the untying place," as denoting a larger edifice ;
and this accounts for the evangelist Luke's mention of there being
no room (ro*o;) in it : as if he had said, " though it was large
enough for such occasions as usually occurred in the town of
Bethlehem, yet now every apartment in this receptacle; was
occupied; so that no privacy fit for a woman in the situation of
Mary could be had :" especially, as Colonel Campbel has in-
formed us, " they are continually attended by numbers of the
very lowest of the people" — very unfit associates for Mary at any
time, and certainly in her present condition ! " Caravanserais
were originally intended for, and are now pretty generally applied
to, the accommodation of strangers and travellers ; though, like
every other good institution, sometimes perverted to the pur-
poses of private emolument, or public job. They are built at
proper distances through the loads of the Turkish dominions,
0-ud afford to the indigent and weary traveller, an a vlum from
the inclemency of the weather. They have commonly one story
above the ground-floor, the lower of which is arched, and serves
for warehouses to store goods, for lodgings, and for stables, while
the upper is used merely for lodgings; besides which they are
always accommodated with a fouutain, and have cooks' shops
and other conveniences to supply the wants of lodgers." — Camp-
bell's Travels, part ii. p. 8. This description applies, of course,
to the better sort of caravanserais. The nearest construction
amongst us to a caravanserai, appears in some of our old inns,
where galleries, with lodging rooms in them, run round a court,
or yard ; but then, as travellers in the east always carry with
them their own bedding, &c, it is evident that our inns are
better provided than the best Eastern caravanserais. It is neces-
sary to keep this in mind ; because we must not suppose that
Joseph and Mary travelled without taking the necessary utensils
with them; or that they could have procured, in this inn, any
thing beyond provisions and lodging. Perhaps even they could
not have procured provisions. But of the poverty of their eastern
inns, we shall obtain a pretty distinct idea from the following ex-
tract : "There are no inns any where ; but the cities, and common-
ly the villages, have a large building called a Kan, or Kervanserai,
which seives as an asylum for all travellers. These houses of
reception are always built ' without the precincts of towns, and
consist of four wings round a square court, which serves by way
of enclosure for the beasts of burden. The lodgings are cells,
where you find nothing but bare walls, dust, and sometimes
scorpions. The keeper of this khan gives the traveller the key
and a mat; and he provides himself with the rest. He must,
therefore, carry with him his bed, his kitchen utensils, and even
his provisions ; for frequently not even bread is to be found in
the villages. On this account the orientals contrive their equi-
page in the most simple and portable form. The baggage of a
man who wishes to be completely provided, consists in a carpet,
a mattress, a blanket, two saucepans with lids, contained within
each other, two dishes, two plates, and a coflee-pot, all of copper
well tinned; a small wooden box, for salt and pepper; a round
leathern table, which he suspends from the saddle of his horse ;
small leathern bottles or bags for oil, melted butter, water, and
brandy, if the traveller be a Christian; a pipe, a tinder-box, a
cup of cocoa-nut, some rice, dried raisins, dates, Cyprus cheese,
and above all, coffee-berries' with a roaster, and wooden mortar
to pound them. I am thus particular, to prove that the Orientals
are more advanced than we, in the art of dispensing with many
things, an art which is not without its use. Our European mer-
chants are not contented with such simple accommodations."—
{Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 419, Eng., edit.) The reader will
bear this account in mind ; for we shall find that he is not a poor
man in the east, who possesses this quantity of utensils. One
would hope that at Bethlehem, " the house of bread," it was not
difficult to procure that necessary of life." — Calrnet's Dictionary .
— Ed.
e Which she could not have done, to be sure, had she been
delivered in the common manner of other women : but it was
always the opinion of the church, from the days of Gregory
Nazianzen until now, though before his days there were some
opinions to the contrary, that, as there- was no sin in the con-
ception, so neither had the virgin any pains in the production ;
for to her alone the punishment of Eve, that ' in sorrow she
should bring forth children,' did not extend; because, where
nothing of sin was the ingredient, there nothing of misery couid
cohabit. — Taylor's Life of Christ.
Skct. I.j
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c
817
A.M. 4001. A. C. 3; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5107. A. C. 4. FROM BEGIN. Or GOSP. TO MAT. Ix. 8. MARKxi.23. LUKE vi. I.
No sooner was this heavenly concert ended, but the
overjoyed shepherds, remembering' the signs which the
angel, before he disappeared, had given them, immedi-
ately hastened to Bethlehem,wherc they found the virgin-
mother, and Joseph the supposed father, attending the
Godlike babe, whom, in humble reverence they adored,
and then returned, praising and extolling the mercies of
God, and, to the great amazement of all that heard them,
publishing in all places what they knew concerning this
child.
As soon as the child was eight days old, his parents
had him circumcised " according to the law ; when, pur-
suant to the order which the angel had given before
his conception, they called his name Jesus; and, as
soon as he was forty days old, two other ceremonies
were pevformed, namely, the purification * of his mother,
and the presentation of her first-born. Though therefore
her son's immaculate conception needed not that cere-
mony ; yet the holy virgin went up with Joseph to Jeru-
a Our blessed Lord, as he was the supreme lawgiver of the
world, was not in strictness bound to the observation of his own
law, nor did he stand in any need of circumcision, considered as
a remedy against original sin; because, in his incarnation, he
contracted no pollution ; but, as he was ' made of a woman, made
under the law,' and 'came (as himself testifies, Mat. iii. 15.)
' to fulfil all righteousness,' it became him to receive the charac-
ter which distinguished the Jews from all other nations. Among
the Jews, indeed, it was thought a reproach to keep company
with persons that were not circumcised: ' thou wentest in to men
uncircumcised, and didst eat with them,' is the accusation which
they brought against St Peter, Acts xi. 3; and therefore, as our
Lord was sent chiefly to the lost sheep of Israel, he could not
have been qualified for their acceptance and free conversation
had he not submitted to this ordinance. Of him was that most
gloi ions of all the promises made to Abraham intended, ' In thy
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,' Gal. iii. 16.
And therefore fit it was that he should have the seal or testimony
of circumcision, in order to show that he was truly and rightly
descended of that ancestor : and, as he was come to be the Medi-
ator of a new and better covenant, it was but decent that the
former should recede with houour, and, that it might do so, him-
self should approve of a sacrament which was both of divine
institution, and a means of admission into that former covenant.
— Poole's Annotations ; and Stanhope on the Epistles and Gos-
pels, vol. i.
b The law concerning the purification of women, we have in
the twelfth chapter of Leviticus, wherein it is ordained that a
woman, after bearing of children, should continue, for a certain
number of days, in a state which the law termed unclean. For
the first seven days, all conversation or contact polluted them
that approached her, and lor three and thirty days more, which
in all amounted to forty, she was still, though in an inferior de-
gree, reputed unclean : but, at the expiration of this term, if her
child was a son, (for the time was double for a daughter,) she was
commanded to bring a burnt-offering, and a sin-offering, which
wiped out the stain which the law laid upon her, and restored
her to all the purity and privileges she had before. Now, though
the miraculous conception of the blessed virgin set her quite
above any obligation to the law of impurity, yet, since her being
a mother was sufficiently notorious, though the manner of her
being so was a secret, it was fit that she should submit, as the
known mother of a son, to the ceremonies expected from her.
Her sin-offering was not indeed due in any sense; but she lay
under the same legal incapacity in the eye of the world as other
women did, and was to be restored to the temple by it. Her
burnt-offering was not due as that of other parents is, to com-
memorate a deliverance from pangs and danger; but never sure
were thanks so justly due for any son as this; never from any
mother as from her, who had the honour to bring forth her own,
and the world's Saviour, the blessing and expectation of all
the earth. As therefore he was circumcised in his own person,
though the mystical and moral part of circumcision had nothing
to do with him; so bis mother submitted to all the purifications
saleni, there to offer the sacrifice c prescribed by the law
for her own purification, and there to present her son to
the Lord, by delivering him into the priest's hands, and
redeeming him .again for five shekels. d But, while she
was in the temple performing this, old Simeon e who had
long waited for the redemption of Israel, and had been
promised, by the mouth of heaven, that lie should not
leave this world, before he had seen the illustrious person
who was to affect it, came in, and taking the blessed
infant in his arms, in an heavenly ecstasy praised God
for the completion of his promises, in letting him live to
see the Saviour of the world, before he quitted it. / And
no sooner had he ended his divine rapture, but an ancient,
widow of the tribe of Aser, whose name was Anna, and
whose piety and devotion, severity of life, and con-
stant frequeutation of the public worship, were very
remarkable, coming into the temple, and being her-
self likewise excited by a prophetic spirit, gave
God thanks for his infinite mercies ; testifying that this
child was the true Messiah, and declaring the same to
all such devout persons in Jerusalem as waited for his
coming.
After these legal performances and solemn testimon-
ies in favour of the child, Joseph and Mary returned to
of any other Israelitish woman, though she partook not in any
degree of the infirmities and pollutions common to other births.
— Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
c What the blessed virgin offered, we read, was a pair of turtles,
which being the oblation appointed only for the meaner sort of
people, Lev. xii. 6. 8, discovers the poverty of Joseph and Mary,
that they could not reach to a lamb of the first year, the offering
which they who iiad ability were obliged to make. — TFhitby's
Annotations.
d The rite of redemption was instituted to perpetuate the
memory of the divine mercy, which spared the first-born of Israel,
when those of Egypt, men and beasts, were destroyed. Accord-
ingly, by this title God claimed the whole first-born of Israel, in
all succeeding generations, as his property; ordering the firstlings
of clean beasts to be offered to him in sacrifice, and the first-born
of men to be presented before him in the temple, as an acknow-
ledgment of his right to them; but at the same time permitting
their parents to redeem them, by paying to the priests five shekels
in value about twelve shillings and sixpence of our money ; a
sum that was exacted for the redemption of every first-born son
whatever, without regard to the condition of the family. Num.
xviii. 15, 10. — Macknight's Harmony Ed.
e Some are of opinion, that this Simeon was the son and suc-
cessor of Hillel, a very famous doctor in the Jewish church before
our Saviour's time, and that he was either the father or master
of Gamaliel, at whose feet St Paul was educated. But, besides
that, we can hardly suppose, how a person of this note could make
so public a declaration in favour of our Lord, and yet no more
notice be taken of it, if we look into the several revelations which
God at this time was pleased to give of his Son, we shall find
that none of them were directed to any of the Pharisees, or prin-
cipal doctors of the law, but that to Joseph a carpenter, to
Zacharias an ordinary priest, and to a company of poor shepherds,
such discoveries were made: and therefore it is much more
reasonable to presume that this Simeon, to whom God had reveal-
ed the time of Christ's coming, was some honest plain man, more
remarkable for his piety and devotion than any other quality oi
accomplishment. — Poole's Annotations; Calmet's Commentary
and Dictionary, under the word Simeon.
f The words of the text are, ' Lord, now Iettest thou thy servant
depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen
thy salvation,' Lu. ii. 29, 30. The sense of the passage is ' now
Lord thou dost, by this sight, dismiss me to the grave as thou
promisedst, in peace and tranquillity, because mine eyes have seen
thy salvation;' that is, the author of it. The aged saint, by a
beautiful figure, takes this sight of his Redeemer as a dismissal
from tiie burden of life, a sort of go in peace. — Bloomjield's Greek
Test— Ed.
818
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book. VIII.
A. M. 4001. A. C. 3; ACCORDING TO HALES, A
Bethlehem, a where, in a very short time, they were
visited by certain strangers, coming from afar, of a rank
and character somewhat extraordinary. For God, to
notify the birth of his Son to the Gentiles as well as to
the Jews, caused an uncommon star to arise in the east,
which some wise men, or astronomers, in those parts
observing-, and understanding withal that this was to
signify the birth of the Messiah promised to the Jews,
travelled to the metropolis of Judea, there inquiring
after this new-born prince, that they might testify their
homage and adoration of him. Their public character
and appearance, and their openly calling him the 'king
of the Jews,' put Herod h into a great consternation,
and the whole city indeed into no small commotion, as
both fearing and hoping something extraordinary.
Herod however, being resolved to destroy this sup-
posed rival in his kingdom, immediately assembled the
whole body of the sanhedrim, and demanded of them
the very place where the Messiah should be born. Beth-
lehem, in the land assigned to the tribe of Judah, they
told him, was the very spot which the Holy Spirit, by
the prophet Micah,had marked out for this great event;
which when he understood, he dismissed the assembly ;
and sending for the above-mentioned astronomers, with
the utmost secrecy he inquired of them the exact time
of the star's first appearance, and then dismissed them
to Bethlehem, with orders to make diligent search for
the young prince, and, when they had discovered where
he was, to bring him Avord to Jerusalem, that he, in like
manner, might go and pay him his homage : but this
pretence of worshipping was no more than a cloak to
his intention of killing the child.
These persons, however, having received the king's
instructions, ° departed towards Bethlehem, and in their
M. 54C7. A. C. 4. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. t
a The words in St Luke are, ' When they had performed all
things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into
Galilee, to their own city Nazareth,' chap. ii. 39, which must be
interpreted of some time at least after they had performed these
things; for, upon supposition that the magians came to Beth-
lehem, after that Joseph and Mary had been at Jerusalem with
the child, upon the child's return from thence, his parents must
have taken Bethlehem in their way, and there made some small
stay, in which time we suppose that the wise men came, before
they departed to the place of their settled abode : because the
other two suppositions, namely, that the wise men came to
Bethlehem before the presentation of the child at Jerusalem,
or that they came not till he was in the second year of his age,
when his parents, upon some business or other, happened to be
at Bethlehem, are attended with more difficulties than can be
easily surmounted. — See Spanheim's Dub. Evang. part ii. dub.
25, 26.
b Herod, who was naturally of a jealous and suspicious temper,
knew very well that himself was hated by the Jews, and that
the Jews were then in full expectation of the Messiah, a prince
that was to subdue all other nations, to come and reign over
them, and had therefore great reason to fear that this rumour of
a king's being born among them, confirmed by such extraordi-
nary means, as persons coming from a far country, and con-
ducted to Jerusalem by the guidance of a wonderful star, might
be a means to excite sedition among the people, and occasion
perhaps a revolution in the government. — Calmct's Comment-
ary.
c Some upon this occasion are apt to wonder why none of the
Jews should have the curiosity to attend the wise men in their
journey to Bethlehem ; &\\& the reason that is commonly as-
signed for their omission in this respect, is the dread they might
have of offending the tyrant under whom they lived: but, as it
is highly probable that when the wise men came to Jerusalem,
they made their immediate application to court as the most
likely place where to gain intelligence of him that was bom
way were very agreeably surprised Avith a new sight of
the same miraculous star they had seen in their own
country, which went before them, and like the fiery pil-
lar in the wilderness, directed them to the very house
where Jesus and his mother abode. As soon as they
entered in they fell prostrate on the ground, according
to the eastern custom, and having in this manner adored
the child d presented him with the richest products of
their country, gold, and precious odours, more particu-
larly frankincense and myrrh.
Having thus performed their homage and congratula-
tions, these eastern strangers were thinking of nothing
more than to return to Jerusalem, and acquaint Herod
with the happy discovery they had made ; but God, who
knew the heart of that tyrant, prevented them by a vision
that very night, which directed them into their own
country another way ; and, not long after, sent an angel
to Joseph to acquaint him with Herod's intended cruelty
against the child, and to order him to retire into Egypt
with him and his mother, and there to continue till far-
ther notice ; which Joseph instantly obeyed, and, for
fear of discovery, taking the advantage of the night, with
all possible speed set forward for Egypt.
In the mean time Herod waited impatiently for the
return of the eastern sages ; but at length, finding him-
self deluded, and his most secret and subtle designs
king of the Jews; and as it is much to be questioned whether
Herod, when he convened the doctors of the law, made any
mention of the wise men's coming, but nakedly propounded the
question to them, ' Where Christ was to be born?' So there is
great reason to presume that he sent them away so privately,
that if any of the Jews had been courageous enough to have
gone along with them, they possibly might not have had an op-
portunity. The greater wonder of the two therefore is, that
Herod, should send none in whom he could confide to be present
at the discovery of this rival prince, and to bring him word
thereof, if not dispatch him ; but in this the protection and pro-
vidence of God was visible. — Poole's Annotations.
d Some of the ancients are of opinion, that in the presents
which these eastern sages made, they had a mystical meaning,
and designed to signify their acknowledgment both of the divin-
ity, royalty, and humanity of our blessed Saviour: for the in-
cense, say they, was proper to be given to him as a God, the
gold as a king, and the myrrh as a mortal man, whose body was
to be embalmed therewith. But all this is no more than the
sport of a luxuriant fancy. It is certain that the eastern people
never came into the presence of their princes without some pre-
sents, and that their presents were usually of the most choice
things that their country did afford. All that they meant, there-
fore, was to do homage to a new born prince of a neighbouring
nation, in the best manner they could ; and if what naturalists
tell us be true, namely, that myrrh was only to be found in
Arabia, and frankincense in Sabrea, which is part of Arabia, and
that tliis country was not destitute of gold (2 Chron. ix. 14),
and at the same time was famous for men conversant in astron-
omy, this makes a \evy probable argument, that the wise men
came from thence. But of this we shall see more hereafter. —
Poole's Annotations. — [The gold and frankincense which the
wise men presented was a most seasonable and providential as-
sistance to furnish Joseph and Mary for so long and expensive a
journey as that into Egypt, a country where they were entirely
strangers, and yet were able to abide there for some considerable
time. I take it for granted that the magi had some divine or
human instruction, which Joseph and Mary might indeed give
them, that Jesus was to save his people from their sins,
and was Emmanuel, God with us. Surely God would not
have guided them in this extraordinary manner merely to
pay a transient compliment to Jesus. Their prostration pro-
bably expressed religious adoration as well as civil respect; and it
is not unlikely that their report might in due time make way for
the reception of the gospel in the country from whence they
came. — Doddridge's Expositor. — Ed.
Sect. 1.1
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
849
A. M 4001. h. C. 3; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5407. A. C. 4. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
blasted, he fell into a most violent rage and fury ; and,
having resolved to effect by cruelty what he had been
disappointed of doing by policy, he sent out his sol-
diers, and a made a bloody massacre of all the children
in the city of Bethlehem, and the neighbouring towns,
that were * two years of age and under, including herein
the whole time, and more, that the wise men had told
him, and not doubting, but that, in this general slaughter,
he should dispatch the young prince whom he so much
dreaded : but God had provided him with a safe retreat.
The shrieks, however, of tender mothers for their innocent
babes, and the groans of expiring infants, which on this
occasion filled the skies, were inexpressible, and were
one reason, doubtless, why the divine vengeance, not
long after, overtook this tyrant, and c smote him with a
a It is thought strange by some that Josephus, who writes the
life of Ileroil in most of its circumstances, should make no man-
ner of mention of the murder of these innocents: but, when it is
considered that Josephus was only born in the first year of Cali-
gula, and the thirty-seventh year of Christ, that he wrote his
history of the Jewish wars, which he extracted from public
records, in the fifty-sixth year of his age; and that it can
scarce be supposed an action so inglorious to the memory of
Herod as this massacre was, should be preserved in the Jewish
records; it is not so very wonderful that he, who wrote above
ninety-three years after the fact was committed, should make no
mention of it ; nor is it very material that he did not, since we
find Macrobius, an heathen author, about the latter end of the
fourth age, not forgetting to acquaint us, that, "Herod the king
ordered to be slain in Syria, which, in Roman authors, is fre-
quently set for Judea, some children, that were under two years
old:" though he is mistaken in the circumstances of the story,
when he makes Herod's own son to be one of them. — Saturn, b.
ii. c. 4. — The massacre of the infants is likewise noticed in a
rabbinical work called Toldoth Jeshu, in the following passage:
i — " And the king gave orders for putting to death every infant
to be found in Bethlehem, aud the king's messengers killed every
infant according to the royal order." — Dr. G. Sharpe's first
Defence of Christianity. — Ed.
b Some will needs infer from heuce, that this dreadful massa-
cre was not committed until our Lord was almost two years old,
because they were children of that age, and under, whom Herod
ordered to be slain: but, besides that the word "Snrvg, may signify
one who has lived one year only, and so the words avro Parous
x.a) KecTUTi^ei), may be translated, from a year old, and under;
Herod might possibly think, that the star did not appear till some
considerable time after the young king's birth, and so, to make
sure work, might be induced to slay all born at Bethlehem a year
before, and more even to the time of the star's appearing. For
he who had the heart to slay three of his own sons would hardly
be sparing of the blood of other people's children. — Whitby's
Annotations.
c The disease of which he died, and the misery which he suf-
fered under it, plainly showed, that the hand of God was then,
in a signal manner, upon him. For, not long after the murder
of the infants at Bethlehem, his distemper, as Josephus informs
us, daily increased, after an unheard of manner, and he himself
laboured under the most loathsome and tormenting accidents that
can be imagined. " He had a lingering and wasting fever, and
grievous ulcers in his entrails and bowels ; a violent cholic, an
insatiable appetite, venomous swelling in his feet, convulsions in
his nerves, a perpetual asthma, and stinking breath, rottenness
in his joints and privy members, accompanied with prodigious
itchings, crawling worms, and intolerable smells, so that lie was
a perfect hospital of incurable diseases." And thus he died in
horrid pain and torment, being smitten by God for his many
euormous iniquities. For, setting aside some appearances of
generosity and greatness, there was never a more complete tyrant
than he. He suppressed and changed the high priest's office as
he thought fit, aud even profaned the temple itself. He slew
the legal king of the Jews, extirpated all the race of the Macca-
bees, destroyed the whole sanhedrim, and substituted others in
their room: nor was his rage confined to the Jews, but descend-
ed to his own family and nearest relations, even to the executing
strange and terrible distemper, which put an end to his
wicked and brutal life.
1 Before his death, he had, by will, which, in some
measure, Augustus confirmed, settled his dominions upon
his sons, and his sister. Archelaus he had made his suc-
cessor in that part of his kingdom which included Judea,
Idumsea, aud Samaria ; to Philip he had given Auronitis,
Trachonitis, Panea, and Batanea : to Herod Antipas,
Galilee and Perasa ; and to his sister Salome, some
particular cities, with a considerable sum of money.
After his death, therefore, which was notified to Joseph
by a vision, God ordered him to return, with the child
and his mother, into the land of Israel, which Joseph
readily obeyed ; but, when he arrived in Judea, hearing
that Archelaus succeeded Herod in that part of the
country, and being apprehensive that the cruelty and
ambition of the father might be entailed upon the son,
he feared to settle there ; and, therefore, being directed
by God in another vision, he retired into the dominions <*
1 Joseph. Antiq. b. xvii. c. 8.
his beloved wife Mariamne, and his own sons, Alexander and
Aristobulus, upon slight and trivial occasions. So wicked a
prince, as he was conscious he had been, could not, he knew,
occasion any true lamentation at his death, but rather a great
deal of gladness and rejoicing all the kingdom over ; and therefore,
to prevent this, he framed a project, which was one of the most
horrid that ever entered into the mind of man. All the nobility,
and most considerable men in every city, town, and village in
Judea, upon pain of death, he summoned to come together to
Jericho, where he was then lying sick, and when they were come,
commanded his soldiers to shut them all up in a spacious place,
called the Hippodrome: when having called his sister Salome
and her husband Alexas, with some choice friends, he told them
with tears, " that he was sensible of the Jews' hatred to his gov-
ernment and person, and that his death would be a high satis-
faction to them: that his friends therefore ought to procure him
some solace in the midst of his bitter anguish, which if they
performed according to his order, the mournings and lamentations
at his death would be as great and magnificent as ever any prince
had ; and this order was, that, on the same hour when he expired,
the soldiers should surround the Hippodrome, and put all the
enclosed persons to the sword, and then publish his death, which,
as he said, would cause his exit to be doubly triumphant, first,
for the posthumous execution of his commands ; and secondly,
for the quality and number of his mourners." But Salome and
Alexas, not being wicked enough to do what they had been made
solemnly to promise, chose rather to break their obligation, than
make themselves the executioners of so bloody a design ; and,
therefore, as soon as Herod was dead, they opened the Hippo-
drome, and permitted all that were shut up in it to return to
their respective homes. — Josephus on the Jewish War, b. i. c. IS.
Prideaux's Connection, part ii ; and Eackard's Ecclesiastical
History, b. i.
d This Antipas, his father Herod had once appointed to be his
successor in his kingdom, but afterwards expunged him out of
his will, and only made him tetrarch; but, not long after his
brother's accession to the throne, he went to Rome, with a pur-
pose to dispute the kingdom with him, on pretence that his father's
former will, by which he was constituted king, ought to take
place before the latter, which was made when his understanding
was not so perfect. Both the brothers procured able orators to
set forth their pretensions before the emperor, but the emperor
nevertheless refused to decide any thing concerning their affair,
nor did he at length give Archelaus the title of a king, but only
of an ethnarch, with one moiety of the territories which his
father enjoyed: but these, in a few years after, he, by his ill
conduct, forfeited. Of all the sons of Herod, indeed, this Arche-
laus is said to have been of the most fierce and bloody temper.
At his first accession to the government, under the pretence of
a mutiny, he had killed near three thousand of his subjects; and
therefore Joseph, hearing of this, might well dread to go aud
settle in any part of his dominions; but, as Antipas was a man
of a more mild disposition, and the birth of Jesus not made so
5p
850
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4001. A.C. 3 s ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5410. A. C. 1. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
of his brother Herod Antipas, in Galilee, to his former
habitation in Nazareth, where the strange occurrences of
our Lord's birth were not so well known. a After this,
we have no certain account either of him, or his parents,
only that they annually repaired with him to Jerusalem
at the passover ; and that, as his body increased in
stature, so, * more especially the faculties of his soul
were enlarged, being highly replenished with wisdom,
and the grace of God.
In the mean time, l Archelaus, following the steps of
his father, made himself so odious to the Jews, that the
principal men among them, joining with those of Samaria,
made a public complaint of him to Augustus, who, upon
a full hearing both of his crimes and vindication, deprived
him of his government, confiscated all his goods, banish-
ed him to Vienna, a city in Gaul, and reduced his do-
minions to the form of a Roman province, which, for
ever after, was nded by a governor sent from Rome,
who was called by the name of procurator, but, in some
cases, was subject to the president or governor of Syria.
When Palestine was reduced to this state, and our
blessed Saviour now advanced to the twelfth year of his
age, c he went up with his parents, according as their
1 Jewish Antiq. b. xvii. c. 12. and Jewish Wars, b. ii. c. 2.
public in Galilee, and at Nazareth, as it was at Bethlehem, and
even at Jerusalem, by the coming of the wise men, and what
happened at the purification of the blessed virgin, it was thought
more advisable to retreat into this village, than to set up his
abode in any populous city. — Poole's Annotations.
a N. B. That the vulgar Christian era, according to Diony-
sius Exiguus, which commences four years after the true time
of Christ's birth, may begin to be computed much about this
time, namely, from the beginning of the fourth year of Arche-
laus's, and the thirty-first of Augustus's reign, computing from
his victoiy over Anthony and Cleopatra.
b The words in the text are, ' Jesus increased in wisdom, and
in stature, and in favour with God and man,' (Lu. ii. 52.) But
if it be asked, how he, who was the eternal wisdom of the father,
could be improved in any quality of his mind? the answer is,
that all things in scripture, which are spoken of Christ, are not
spoken with respect to his entire person, but only with respect
to one or other of the natures that are united in that person. His
divine nature was infinite, and, consequently, capable of no im-
provements, but his human was: and, therefore, though the divine
Xoyis was united to the human soul by its conception, yet might
the divine nature communicate its powers to the human by dis-
tinct and gradual illuminations; and accordingly, we may ob-
serve, that all public manifestation of it to the world seems to
have been industriously declined, till ripeness of years and judg-
ment had carried him up to the perfections of a man. So little
reason have we to suppose, that he, who condescended to be like
us in body, should think it below him to be so too in that other
no less essential, but much more noble part of us, our soul, with-
out which, it was impossible for him to be man; so little reason
to imagine, that the divine essence in him supplied the place
and offices of intellectual faculties. — Whitby's Annotations; and
Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii.
c It is commonly observed by those that are learned in the
customs and institutions of the Jewish church, that, till a child
was twelve years old, he was not obliged to go to Jerusalem at
the time of the passover, and that though their youth were
usually thirteen before they were brought before the masters of
the synagogue to give an account of their proficiency in religion,
which answers in a great measure to the Christian rite of confir-
mation, yet, since the season then appointed was accommodated
to the capacities and attainments of children in general, without
forbidding those of qualifications extraordinary, and whose genius,
in the Jewish phrase, did run before the commandment, to ap-
pear sooner, our Saviour might offer himself to his examination
a year before the common time: and this is the best reason that
can be assigned for his staying behind his parents, when he could
not but know, that they were departed from Jerusalem without
custom was, to Jerusalem at the time of the passover.
His parents, after a stay of the whole seven days, having
performed the usual ceremonies of the feast, were now
returning, with great numbers of their neighbours and
acquaintance, towards Galilee, and, never doubting
but that Jesus had joined himself with some of the com-
pany, they travelled on patiently for a whole day's jour-
ney : but, when night came on, and, among their relations
and particular friends they could hear no tidings of him,
it is not easy to imagine the greatness of their fears and ,l
apprehensions, which made them return to Jerusalem
with the utmost speed, to make all possible inquiry, for
him.
e At the end of three days, they found him }n one of
the rooms of the temple, probably in that of the grand
sanhedrim, sitting among the learned doctors and mas-
ters of Israel, hearing them discourse, and propounding
such questions to them as raised the admiration of all
that heard him, and made them astonished at the ripeness
of his understanding. Nor were his parents less surpris-
ed to find him in that place ; but, when his mother told
him, with what impatience they had sought him, and, in
some measure, blamed him for putting them in such a
fright, the excuse which he made for himself was, 'know
ye not, that I must be employed in my Father's house ?' /
him, and for his being found in one of the rooms adjoining to the
temple, where the doctors of the law used to meet, not only to
resolve the questions that were brought before them, but to ex-
amine likewise and confirm such of the youth as they found to
be qualified for that ceremony, which, according to the same
authors, was actually performed by devout prayers and solemn
benedictions. — Grotius on Lu. ii. 45; Beausobre and Poole's
Annotations; and Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii.
d It may seem a little strange, perhaps, that Mary and Joseph,
who had been sufficiently instructed, one would think, in the
great article of Christ's divinity, and therefore must certainly
know, that, as he was the power and wisdom of God, he could
neither fall into any danger, nor come to any harm, should so
mightily afflict themselves, when they came to miss him. The
reason which Origen {Horn. i. 9. in Luc.) seems to assign is, not
that his parents supposed that he was lost or come to any mis-
chance, but were apprehensive that he had withdrawn himself to
some other place, and was possibly gone up to heaven, there to con-
tinue, till his eternal Father should think proper to send him down
again : but the most easy and natural solution is, that without ever
considering what they had sufficient reason to believe concerning
his divinity and omnipotence, they suffered themselves to be car-
ried away by their natural tenderness ; and could not, without
great concern, see themselves deprived of his company, uncertain
of what had befallen him, or for what possible reason he should
absent himself from theirs. It must not be denied, however, that
though something may be allowed to a parent's fondness, yet it
does not appear lrom their whole conduct, and especially from
Mary's complaint, and our Saviour's reply, ver. 48, 49, that
they had, as yet, a clear and perfect knowledge of his divine
nature in union with the human : and therefore the evangelist
has remarked upon them, * that they understood not the saying
which he spake unto them,' ver. 50. — Calmet's Commentary; and
Poole's Annotations.
e The words in the text are, ' after three days they found him ;'
but we need not from thence infer, that they were three day3
a seeking him, but rather, that it was three days from the time
they set out from Jerusalem ; going on their journey the first
day; returning to Jerusalem the second ; and finding him in the
temple on the third: for, since they found him in the temple,
which, in all probability, was the first place they sought for him
in, we can hardly imagine, that they should be three days in
Jerusalem before they found him. — Poole's Annotations.
/The words of the text (Lu. ii. 49.) ' wist ye not that I must
be about my Father's business,' contain an ambiguity; that is,
according to the original, our Saviour may either refer to the
work which his Father had given him to do, or to the templo
Sect. I.J
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words which, though she at that time did not rightly
understand, she took care nevertheless for ever after to
register in her mind !
Being thus happily found by his parents, he returned
with them to Nazareth, and there living in all dutiful
subjection to them, wrought, very probably, with his re-
puted father in the trade of a carpenter ; and, after his
father's death, which is supposed to have happened about
a year before the preaching of John the Baptist, * still
continued in the same occupation : as indeed we can
scarce help inferring, from the rude treatment of the
Nazarenes his townsmen ; as also from the total silence
of the evangelists as to the intermediate actions of his
life, a that, though he ' grew in favour with God and
man,' yet considering his excellences, he lived in a
very obscure manner, and, till the time of his manifesta-
tion to Israel, showed no miraclous marks to distin-
guish him from the rest of mankind.
In the eighteenth year of our Saviour's life, died
Augustus Ccesar at Nola, in Campania, after a reign of
near forty years, to the inexpressible grief of all his sub-
jects, and was succeeded by Tiberius, the son of his wife
1 Mark vi. 3. 2 Joseph. Antiq. b. xviii. c. 3. and Dion,
where Joseph and Mary found him sitting with the doctors.
Campbell, Boothroyd, Bloomfield, Doddridge, and many other
eminent critics, both ancient and modern, follow the latter sense,
and contend that the passage ought Co be translated, ' wist, or
knew ye not, that I must be in my Father's house.' Doddridge
well observes that " though a general apprehension of our Saviour's
being well employed might be a reason against the excessive
anxiety of his parents, yet it could not, (as the words taken in
connexion seem to imply) have directed them where to find him.
It is to be remembered that this was the first visit Christ had
ever made to the temple since he was a child in arms; and it is
no wonder therefore that the delight he found there inclined him
to prolong his visit.' — Dodd. Fam. E.vpos. — Ed.
a It may possibly be made a question, why the evangelists
have given us no account of our Saviour's life from the twelfth
year of his age, till he began his ministry, which, according to
the vulgar era, was about the thirtieth; because if, in this inter-
mediate space, he did any thing worthy of remembrance, it
ought in all reason to have been recorded. But when it is con-
sidered that the end of the sacred penmen was, not so much to
gratify our curiosity, as to consult our profit, we cannot but
admire the great wisdom of God, by whose inspiration they wrote,
in passing by the less active parts of our Lord's life, which
would certainly have swelled their gospels to immensurable
volumes, fit for the perusal of none but the studious and such as
had plenty of time at their command: whereas now, taking the
four gospels together, they make hut a small book, and sepa-
rately, no more than little manuals that may be carried about
with us wherever we go; may be soon read over, and easily re-
membered even by men of mean capacities and no great leisure;
and yet they contain all the transactions of our Saviour's life
which chiefly concern us to know; I mean such as relate to his
mediatorial office, as that he came into the world to teach us;
to die, and to rise again for us; to instruct us by his heavenly
doctrine, as our prophet; to ofier himself as a sacrifice upon the
cross as our priest ; and to loose the bands of death, and ascend
triumphant into heaven, as our king. Therefore those periods,
says the learned Spanheim, are notified, ' which are of chief con-
cern to us, which were spent for our benefit, which seem to add
to the security of our faith, which exhibit Christ either in the
temple, or on the cross, or on the throne; for thus it has been
demonstrated, that those things are only to be inquired after, and
investigated in the character of the Messiah, which relate to the
acts of his offices, both as prophet, priest, and king, for the sake
of which aloue he came to earth.' ' For there are also many other
things,' says the evangelist, ' that Jesus did, which are not writ-
ten in this book; hut these are written, that ye might believe
tint Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye
might have life through his name, John xxi. 25; and xx. 31. —
Sjanheim's Dub. Evang. part ii. dub. 9G.
Livia, by a former husband, but a prince of a quite con-
trary disposition to his predecessor. In the second
year of his succession to the empire, he recalled Rufus
from the government of Judea, and sent Valerius Gratus,
who was the fourth governor in these parts since the
banishment of Archelaus, to succeed him. 3 Gratus hav-
ing continued in Judea about eleven years, was at length
recalled, and Pontius Pilate, a person too like his master
Tiberius, of a fierce and irreconcilable spirit, and of
a b cruel and covetous disposition, was sent governor in
his place. In the first year of his coming, which was
the fifteenth year of Tiberius, from the time that he was
admitted to reign in copartnership with Augustus, c John
the Baptist began to open his commission for the pre-
paration of our Saviour's way before him, d by preaching
' the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.'
8 Joseph. Antiq. b. xviii. c. 3. and Dion.
b Josephus has given several instances of Pilate's great cruelty
in the course of his government, namely, that he caused the
Roman soldiers to fall upon a great number of Galileans, very
likely the followers of Judas Gaulonites, and to slaughter them
like so many sheep in the temple, and on the very day appointed
for the killing of the passover, and so ' mingled their blood with
their sacrifices,' Luke xiii. 1. That when the people clamoured
against his taking some of the sacred money out of the temple,
he ordered the soldiers, upon a signal giveu, to fall upon them
with large batoons, so that many died of the blows which they
received, and many were trodden to death in the throng: and
that the Samaritans, as well as the Jews, felt the severity of his
administration, when he destroyed great numbers of them near
Tirathaba; and of those whom he took, that were of any interest
or quality among them, struck off their heads. — Josephus's Jewish
JFar, b. ii. c. 8; and Antiq. b. xviii. c. 5.
c [How Johu passed the former part of his life the scripture is
silent: but there is surely no reason to suppose, with many
fathers and interpreters, that he was in the desert from his in-
fancy. It has been well observed by Basnage, that he retired
thither at an age when he was sufficiently furnished with strength
of body to provide food, and of mind to bear solitude. His re-
tirement originated in two reasons : 1st. That by using no
teachers, and frequenting no schools, his mind might not be cor-
rupted by rabbinical errors, but be enlightened only by the Holy
Spirit, so that he might appear to the Jews a teacher sent from
God ; 2dly, that, remote from all communication with Christ, he
might avoid all suspicion of collusion with him, in announcing
a new religion, and thereby add greater weight to the opinions
he should ofier, and the testimony he should bear, respecting
Christ. Lightfoot supposes the desert in which John lived to
have been some spot in the hill-country near Ziph and Maone
(as in 1 Sam. xxiii. 14, 25.), not far from Hebron, where he
was born. But it has not been satisfactorily determined where
John was born. The period of his retirement 'a with probability
supposed to have been at the age of puberty."]— Bloumjield's Crit.
Digest of Annotations on the New Testament. When he began
his preaching it is also not well agreed. Lightfoot, and some
others who believe that our Saviour was born in September, and
that John was now beginning to be thirty years of age, are of
opinion that he began his ministry about the passover; but Usher,
and his followers, do, with more probability, suppose that his
preaching began upon the tenth day of the seventh month, which
answers to our nineteenth day of October, five days before tho
feast of tabernacles, upon the great day of expiation, when the
high priest entered the holy of holies, and whin so solemn a fast
was enjoined, that whosoever did not afi'iict his soul at that time
was to he cut oil' from the people. — Ed.
d The meaning of this phrase is, that John preached repent-
ance, (Mat. iii. 2.) and baptized those that were penitent, in
token of the remission of their sins, even as they, on their parts,
received baptism in testimony of the sincerity of their repent-
ance. Now, baptism, we know, was no new or strange thing
among the Jews. It was acknowledged, and practised as an
emblem of purification from past guilt, and a rite of entering so-
lemnly into covenant with God. The expositors of their law
agree, that this ceremony passed upon the whole congregation of
852
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 40S3. A.D. 30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5437.A. D. 2G. FROM BEGIN. OFGOSP. TO MAT. ix.8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE yi. I.
He had been a bred up in the wilderness, and lived an
austere life. b Locusts and wild honey, such as nature
Israel, just before the law was given at mount Sinai ; and their
custom, in all succeeding ages, has been to receive their heathen
proselytes by baptism, as well as by sacrifice and circumcision.
In conformity to this, therefore, John both administered and ex-
norted his followers to this ordinance of baptism, as an evidence
of their penitence for past sins, and profession of better obedience
for the future. But then as faith is a qualification for baptism as
well as repentance, he propounded our Lord for the object of faith
to all who received this ordinance at his hands. ' For John verily
baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people
that they should believe in him who should come after him,' that
is, on Christ Jesus, (Acts xix. 4.) It is a great mistake there-
fore in some, to suppose that the baptism of John was, in sub-
stance, the same with what Christ did afterwards institute: for
John neither did, nor could baptize his disciples in the ' name of
the Holy Ghost,' as the apostle did, because the ' Holy Ghost
was not yet given,' (John vii. 39): he did not baptize them in the
name of Christ; for had he done so, there had been no occasion
for the question, ' whether he himself were the Christ,' or not ?
(Luke iii. 15.) Herein therefore lay the imperfection of John's
baptism, that though it prepared men to be Christians, yet it did
not make them so; and therefore we find St Paul baptizing again
some disciples at Ephesus, (who had before received the baptism
of John,) in order to fit them for the reception of the Holy Ghost
(Acts xix. 5, 6.) — Whitby's Annotations; and Stanhope on the
Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
a A wilderness among the Jews did not signify a place wholly
void of inhabitants, but a place that was more mountainous, less
fruitful, less peopled, and where the inhabitants were more dis-
persed, than in other parts of the country. For, as it is incon-
gruous to suppose that the Baptist should preach the doctrine of
repentance to stocks and stones, and wild beasts : the wilderness
here must be understood in a comparative sense, and consequently
the wilderness of Judea, where he preached and baptized must
be that tract of land which lay on each side of the river Jordan
on the confines of Enon and Salim. — Whitby's Annotations;
Wells'' Geography of the New Testament; and Spanheim's Dub.
Evang. part ii. club. 97.
b The Jews were allowed to eat locusts; (Lev. xi. 22.) and
when sprinkled with salt, and fried, they are not unlike our fresh
water cray fish. The Acridophagi must have preferred them to
almost every other species of food, since they derive the'ri name
from their eating locusts. We learn from the valuable work of
Dr Russel, that the Arabs salt and eat them as a delicacy.
Locusts were accordingly the common food of John, the precur-
sor of Christ, while he remained in the wilderness. In feeding
on that insect, the Baptist submitted to no uncommon privation,
and practised no savage rigour, like many of the hermits who
inhabited the deserts ; but merely followed the abstemious mode
of living, to which the people were accustomed, in the less fre-
quentod parts of the country. The food upon which he subsisted
in the wilderness appears to be particularly mentioned, merely
to show that he fared as the poorest of men, and that his manner
of living corresponded with the meanness of his dress. Much
unnecessary pains have been taken by some squeamish writers,
to prove that the locusts which John used for food, were the fruit
of a oertaiu tree, and not the carcass of the insects distinguished
by that name; but a little inquiry will fully clear up this matter,
and show that, however disgusting the idea of that kind of meat
may appear to us, the orientals entertain a different opinion.
Many nations in the east, as the Indians of the Bashee islands,
the Tonquinese, and the inhabitants of Madagascar, make no
scruple to eat these insects, of which they have innumerable
swarms, and prefer them to the finest fish. The ancients affirm
that in Africa, Syria, Persia, and almost throughout Asia, the
people commonly eat these creatures. Clenard, in a letter from
Fez, in 1541, assures us, that he saw wagon loads of locusts
brought into that city for food. Kirstenius, in his notes on
Matthew, says, he was informed by his Arabic, master, that he
had often seen them on the river Jordan; that they were of the
same form with ours, but larger ; that the inhabitants pluck off
their wings and feet, and hang the rest at their necks till they
grow warm, and ferment; and then they eat them, and think
them very good food. A monk, who had travelled into Egypt,
asserts, that he had eaten of these locusts, and, that in the coun-
try they subsisted on them four months in the year. In Bushire,
produced in these desert places, was the chief die. lie
lived upon, and a loose coat made of camel's hair c and
fastened with a leathern girdle, the only garb he wore ■
and therefore no person was so proper to inculcate the
doctrines of repentance and reformation, as he who, by
his free and resolute preaching, joined with this great
severity of life, soon procured a vast auditory, and
they are used by the lowest peasantry as food. The Arabs feed
on them to this day, and prepare them for use in the following
manner : They grind them to flour in their hand mills, or
powder them in stone mortars. This flour they mix with
water to the consistency of dough, and make thin cakes of
it, which they bake like other bread on a heated girdle ; and this,
observes Hasselquist, serves instead of bread to support life for
want of something better. At other times they boil them in
water, and afterwards stew them with butter, and make a sort
of fricassee, which has no bad taste. There is no reason
for men to puzzle themselves about what this piXi aypmv, or
' wild honey,' means, since e\ery one knows that Judea was
famed for plenty of honey, that, in several places of scripture,
it is said to flow with honey ; and from the instances of Samson,
Judg. xiv. 8, and Jonathan, 1 Sam. xiv. 25, it must be con-
cluded, that wild honey, such as either distilled from the
boughs like dew, or was found in the clifls of rocks, or hollow
trunks of trees, was no uncommon thing in that country. But
though these locusts and wild honey may very properly be taken
in their natural and most obvious sense, yet it must not therefore
be thought, that John never eat any thing else, but that, for the
generality, he made use of such slender diet, and contented him-
self with what the desert place, which he chose for his habitation,
could afibrd him. — Spanheim's Dub. Evang. part ii. dub. 99.
c The raiment of John was not made of the fine hair of the
camel, whereof an elegant kind of cloth is made, which is thence
called camlet, in imitation of which, though made of wool, is the
English camlet, but of the long and shaggy hair of camels, which
is in the east manufactured into a coarse stuff anciently worn
by monks and anchorites. It is only when understood in this
way, that the words suit the description here given of John's
manner of life. — Campbell's Translation of the Gospels, note.
It is, indeed, sufficiently apparent, that the inhabitants of the
wilderness, where John spent his days before he entered upon
his ministry, and other thinly settled districts, manufactured a
stuff, in colour and texture somewhat resembling our coarse hair-
cloths, of the hair which fell from their camels, for their own
immediate use, of which the raiment of that venerable prophet
consisted. In the same manner, the Tartars of modern times,
work up their camel's hair into a kind of felt, which serves as
a covering to their tents, although their way of life is the very
reverse of easy and pompous. Like the austere herald of the
Saviour, the modern dervishes wear garments of the same texture,
which they too gird about their loins with great leathern girdles.
Elijah, the Tishbite, seems to have worn a habit of camel's hair,
equally mean and coarse ; for he is represented in our translation
as a 'hairy man,' which perhaps ought to be referred to his dress,
and not to his person. A garment of haircloth was, in those
times, the costume of a prophet; and was assumed occasionally
by impostors, to enable them with greater ease and success to
deceive their credulous neighbours. ' And it shall come to pass
in that day, that the propheis shall be ashamed every one of his
vision, when he hath prophesied ; neither shall they wear a rough,'
or hairy, ' garment to deceive.' The prophet Isaiah was clothed
in the same stuff,' for God required him to ' loose the sackcloth
from off' his ' loins.' Sackcloth of hair was deemed a badge of
humiliation and self-denial; and was probably, for this reason,
selected as the most proper material for the official habiliments
of an ancient prophet. Joel accordingly commands the priests
and Levites; ' come, lie all night,' or constantly, 'in sackcloth,
ye ministers of my God.' In allusion to the same mode ot think-
ing, it is said, ' the sun became black as sackcloth of hair.' And
Isaiah declares in the name of the Lord, ' I clothe the heavens
with blackness, I make sackcloth their covering.' These state-
ments throw light on that expression: 'my two witnesses shall
prophesy, clothed in sackcloth:' — arrayed in the official dress of
ancient prophets, and like them humble and self-denied, but very
jealous for the Lord God of hosts, and fearless in the discharge
of their duty. — Paxton's Illustrations. — Ed.
Sect. 1.]
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853
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numerous proselytes of all ranks and qualities, from
Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region about Jor-
dan, confessing their sins before God, and entering- into
this new institution by baptism.
Among the great multitudes that came to his preaching
and baptism, there were Pharisees, a and Sadducees not
a few, whose confidence and immorality he sharply re-
proved ; while, at the same time, he exhorted the common
people to works of extensive charity ; the publicans, b
to avoid oppression and injustice ; the soldiers, to abs-
tain from plunder and violence ; and every one, in short,
to beware of those crimes to which their employments
and manner of life did most expose them.
These solemn admonitions, pronounced with so much
weight and authority, procured him a mighty veneration
among the people, insomuch, that several began to look
upon him as the promised and now expected Messiah ;
but, to remove all thoughts of this kind, he freely de-
clared, " that he only baptized them with water to repen-
tance, and a new life, but that there was one coming-, and
ready to appear among them, who would baptize them
with the eftusion of the Holy Ghost, and who so far ex-
ceeded him in power and excellency, that he was not
worthy to do for him the meanest or most servile office." c
These were the doctrines which John preached, and this
the testimony which he gave of Jesus, even before he
had the happiness to know him.
After John had continued in his ministry for several
months, our Lord thought fit to remove from his private
retirement at Nazareth, and, taking leave of his mother
and his trade, passed over into Judea, to Bethabara, d
on the banks of the river Jordan, where John was then
baptizing.
He who was innocence and purity itself, had certainly
no need of the baptism of repentance, but beino- minded
to honour and sanctify the institution, e he offered him-
self to John, and when John, inspired with a prophetic
spirit, /knew him, and thereupon endeavoured to decline
a We have already, in a separate dissertation, given a particu-
lar account of the rise and principles of the several sects among
the Jews, and need only take notice here, that the Pharisees are
thought to take their name from the word parash, which signi-
fies separation, because they were separated from all others in
thu'r extraordinary pretences to sanctity, and some particular
observances; and that the Sadducees, who were directly opposite
to the Pharisees both in temper and principles, derived their
name, either from Sadoc, who lived near 300 years before
our Saviour's birth, and is supposed to be the founder of the sect,
or, as some thick, from sedeck, which ignifies justice, be-
cause they pretended to be the only exact distributers of justice,
and were rigid indeed in the execution of it. — Eachard's Ecclesi-
astical History, in the introduction.
b The publicans were persons of no particular sect, nor of any
religious function among the Jews, but certain public officers
whom the Romans employed to collect their tributes, tolls, and
imposts. This office was once of great account among the
Romans, and conferred upon none less than the equestrian order;
but, when it came to fall into the hands of the Jews, who farmed it
of the Romans, it soon became base and infamous, and more
especially odious to the Jews upon these two accounts: 1st,
because these tributes were looked upon as a standing instance
of their slavery, which they, who made such boasts of their being
a fine-born people, and invested in that privilege by God himself,
could least of all endure. And, 2dly, because these publicans,
having farmed the customs of the Romans at high rates, did
generally make use of all methods of extortion and oppression, to
enable them both to pay their rents, and to raise some advantage
to themselves. Upon these accounts, the publicans, as conspiring
with the Romans both to impoverish and enslave their country-
men, became so universally abhorred by the Jewish nation, that
they held it unlawful to do them any act of common courtesy,
nay, even to eat or to drink with them, for which we find them
so frequently blaming our Saviour. — Eachard's Ecclesiastical
History, in the introduction, page 27.
c ' Whose shoes,' says John, 'I am not worthy to bear.' The
custom of loosing the sandals from oil' the feet of an eastern wor-
shipper was ancient and indispensable. It is also commonly
observed in visits to great men. The sandals or slippers are
pulled oft' at the door, and either left there, or given to a servant
to bear. The person to bear them means an inferior domestic,
or attendant upon a man of high rank, to take care of, and return
them to him again. — See Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 239 : Plu-
tarch, Sympos. b. vii. qu. 8. 712. This was the work of ser-
vants among the Jews; and it was reckoned so servile, that it
was thought too mean for a scholar or a disciple to do. The
Jews say, ' all services which a servant does for his master, a
disciple does for his master, except unloosing his shoes.' John
thought it was too great an honour for him to do that for Christ,
which was thought too mean for a disciple to do for a wise man.
See Kypkins, in loc. ; Braumins de Vest. Sac. Heb. p 59 ; Pig.
norius de Servis,p. 206; Denlingi. Obs. s. iii. 26. 8; Bynceus
de Calceis. Heb. c. 6; Eisner. Comment. Crit. Phil, in Mat. t.
i. p. S4. — Ed.
d Bethabara does, in the Hebrew language, signify as much
as a place of passage, and therefore, whereas we lead, Jos. ii. 7,
23, that there was a fording place over Jordan not far from Jeri-
cho; and again, Jos. iii. 16, that the people passed over right
against Jericho, it is probably conjectured, that hereabouts stood
Bethabara, and was the place of reception and entertainment for
passengers out of Judea into Petrcea, or the country beyond Jor-
dan; nay, it is imagined by some that, in the very same place
of the river where the ark stood, while the Israelites passed over,
our blessed Saviour, the ark of the covenant of grace, was baptized
by John the Baptist. — Wells' Geography of the Neiu Testament.
Almost all the ancient manuscripts and versions instead of
Bethabara here have Bethany, and this is doubtless the true read-
ing. There was a Bethany about two miles east of Jerusalem,
but there was also another in the tribe of Reuben, on the east
side of the river Jordan, and in this place probably John was
baptizing. It is about twelve miles above Jericho. — Barnes on
the Gospels.
e There are some other reasons which might induce our Lord
to come to John's baptism, besides what himself alleges, namely,
' the performance of all righteousness,' or whatever had a ten-
dency to the people's edification; as, that he might authorize
this baptism of John by his public approbation ; that by this rite
he might be initiated to his prophetic office, and consecrated to
the service of God; that hereby he might abolish the ceremony
of the Jewish baptism, and more eil'ectually recommend that of
his own institution, to which this of the Baptist was an intro-
duction ; and more especially, that, in the presence of the Bap-
tist, and all the company that had resorted to him, he might
obtain the testimony of the Holy Ghost, and of his heavenly
Father, to confirm John in the belief of his being the promised
Messiah, and to induce the people, as soon as he began his minis-
try, to follow and attend to him. — Calmefs Commentary.
f The words in the text are these, ' Then cometh Jesus from
Galilee to Jordan unto John to be baptized of him, but. John for-
bade him,' (Mat. iii. 13, 14): but how could John forbid him,
when he says of himself ' I knew him not, but he that sent me
to baptize with water, the same said unto me, upon whom thou
shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same
is he who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost,' (John i. 33.) Now
to this it may be answered, that since one part of John's minis-
try was ' to bear witness of that light which lighteth every man
that cometh into the world,' it was highly necessary that our
Saviour should be unknown to him in person before he came to
his baptism, that the world might have no suspicion of any col-
lusion, or that the Baptist testified of him by compact. Though,
therefore, lie had never seen the face of our Saviour, because they
were bred up in ditierent countries, yet, by a particular revelation,
he knew that he was already come into the world, and was short-
ly to baptize with the Holy Ghost; and therefore, when out
Saviour came, and presented himself to be baptized, he htd im-
mediately another revelation, that this was the great person nf
whom he had been told before; even as Samuoi having been told
854
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the office, he gave him such reasons for the expediency
of the thing, as made him no longer hesitate, but imme-
diately baptized him. Jesus a was no sooner got out of
the water, but, as he was making his addresses to heaven,
the sky on a sudden was divided by a great radiancy,
6 and the Holy Ghost, in the manner of a c dove, de-
by God, that, ' on the morrow a man should come to him to be
the captain over his people Israel,' (1 Sam. ix. 16.) Upon Saul's
appearing, had another inspiration resembling the Baptist's here,
' Behold the man of whom I spake to thee, (ver. 17.) — JFhWy's
Annotations.
a The observation of the Greek church, in relation to this mat-
ter, is this, that he who ascended out of the water must first
descend down into it; and consequently that baptism is to be
performed, not by sprinkling but by washing the body. And
indeed he must be strangely ignorant of the Jewish rites of bap-
tism, who seems to doubt of this, since to the due performance
of it, they required the immersion of the whole body to such a
degree of nicety, that if any dirt was upon it that hindered the
water from coming to that part, they thought the ceremony not
rightly done. The Christians, no doubt, took this rite from the
Jews, and followed them in their manner of performing it. Ac-
cordingly, several authors have shown, that we read no where in
scripture of any one's being baptized, but by immersion, and,
from the acts of councils and ancient rituals, have proved that
this manner of immersion continued, as much as possible, to be
used for thirteen hundred years after Christ. But it is much to
be questioned, whether the prevalence of custom, and the over
fondness of parents, will, in these cold climates especially, ever
sutler it to be restored. — TJrhitby's Annotations. — There seems
indeed to be no necessity for doing so. When Paul and Silas, in
the middle of the night, baptized the jailor and his household
in the common prison, (Acts xv. 33.) there is no reason to sup-
pose that they had water sufficient for the purpose of baptizing
the converts by immersion. It is as little likely that three thou-
sand people could, in the midst of Jerusalem, be in one day bap-
tized by immersion (Acts ii. 41.); for though this might have
been done in the brook Kedron, is it supposable that the chief
priests and rulers of the Jews would have permitted so great a
multitude to go quietly out of the city for such a purpose ? —
Gleig. — Ed.
b The words of St Matthew are : — ' Lo, the heavens were
opened ;' in St Mark ' cloven or rent.' The common people of
the Jews indeed were of opinion, that the heavens were firm and
solid, and that the fire which fell from thence upon the face of
the earth burst through this firmament, and made an opening in
this vast concave that surrounds us; and therefore it is, that the
evangelists express themselves in this manner, in accommoda-
tion to the prejudices and capacities of the vulgar. But by the
phrase we need understand no more, thau that a sudden beam of'
radiant light came darting from the skies, like a flash of lightning
from the clouds, and made it seem as though the heavens had
been opened or rent to let it out; because to the naked eye, the
air at that time seems to divide, to make a clearer and fuller way
for the light. — Calmct's Commentary , and Poole's Annotations. —
There is no doubt that the light spoken of was preternatural,
and that it accompanied the divine Spirit — such a light as ac-
companied Jesus on being visibly revealed to St Paul at his con-
versi on . — Bloom field. — Ed .
c The ancients were generally of opinion, that the Holy Ghost,
in his descent upon our Saviour, assumed the real shape of a dove,
which, at that time more especially, was a very proper repre-
sentation of his dove-like nature (Isa. xlii. 2.) and of all such as
were to receive the same Spirit, and are required to be as harm-
less as doves: but most of the moderns (though they allow that
the blessed Spirit did, at this time, assume a visible shape, to
render his descent manifest) do maintain that the iiaii vrigirregcl
relates not to the body or shape of a dove, but to the manner of a
dove's descending and lighting on any thing; and thence they
infer, that it was this body of light which issued from the skies
that came down upon Christ, and, while he was praying, hung
hovering over his head, just after the manner and motion of a
clove, before it settles upon any thing. Whether of these opinions
should prevail, it is idle to dispute, since neither of them is desti-
tute of some countenance from scripture, neither of them injurious
to the dignity of the Holy Ghost. — Calmct's Commentary; and
Hammond's Annotations. — The dove, among the Jews, was
FROM BEGIN. Ol GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK. ii. 23. LUKE vi. X.
scended upon his sacred head, with an audible voice
from heaven, wherein God declared him ' his beloved
Son, in whom he was well pleased.'
Our blessed Lord, being thus by baptism, and the
unction of the Holy Ghost, prepared for his prophetic
office, was, by the impulse of the divine Spirit, carried
further into the wilderness of Judea, where, after he had
fasted forty days and forty nights/* as Moses did on
Mount Sinai, and was now very hungry, the devil « as-
sumed a bodily shape, and set upon him with a threefold
temptation. 1st, From his hunger he took occasion to
tempt him to despair, and distrust of his Father's care of
him, who had abandoned him in that condition, and
therefore, persuading him that he was not the Son of God,
he put him upon the experiment of his being such, by
making the stones become bread ; but our Saviour soon
answered him by a ' passage out of the scripture, inti-
mating, that " God, when he pleased, could employ means
extraordinary for the support and nourishment of men."
2dly, His next essay was, to try how far pride and pre-
sumption would affect him ; and, therefore, carrying him
through the air, and setting him upon the / highest part
1 Deut. viii. 3.
the symbol of purity or harmlessness (Mat. x. 16), and of soft-
ness (Ps. lv. 7.) The form chosen here was doubtless an em-
blem of the innocence, meekness, and tenderness of the Saviour.
The gift of the Holy Spirit, in this manner, was the public ap-
probation of Jesus (John i. 33), and a sign of his beiug set apart
to the office of the Messiah. We are not to suppose that there
was any change wrought in the moral character of Jesus, but
only that he was publicly set apart to his work, and solemnly
approved by God in the office to which he was appointed. The
baptism of Jesus has usually been considered a striking mani-
festation of the doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine that there
are three persons in the divine nature. 1. There is the person
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, baptized iu the Jordan, else-
where declared to be equal with God. (John x. 30.) 2. The
Holy Spirit, descended in a bodily form upon the Saviour.
The Holy Spirit is also equal with the Father, or is also God.
(Acts v. 3, 4.) 3. The Father addressing the Son, and declaring
that he was well pleased with him. It is impossible to explain
this transaction consistently in any other way than by supposing
that there are three equal persons in the divine nature, or essence,
and that each of these sustains important parts in the work of re-
deeming men. — Barnes on the Gospels. — Ed.
d Whoever considers the frailty of human nature, cannot but
allow, that so great and so long an abstinence, without any sense
of hunger, (for the evangelists tell us, that our Saviour was oidy
hungry afterwards,) must be altogether miraculous, and so no
duty to us; and, if he reflects withal, that the end of his fast
was not to chastise, or subdue that body, which was never irre-
gular, as the design of all our fasting is, he must allow, that our
Saviour, in this particular, set no precedent to us ; and therefore
it is cruelty, or a superstitious folly at least, in a matter so super-
natural, to enjoin men to follow his steps. — Whitby's Annotations.
e This word, which answers exactly with the Hebrew Satan,
signifies a calumniator or accuser; and, as it occurs in scrip-
ture always in the singular number, is supposed to denote that
evil spirit who tempted our first parents, the chief of the rebel
angels, and the avowed enemy of the saints, (1 Thess. iii. 5, and
1 Pet. v. 8, &c.) — Beausobre's Annotations.
f According to the description that Josephus gives us of the
temple which Herod built, we hear of no pinnacles or lofty turrets
above the rest of the building; and therefore have reason to think,
that the TTTtgvyiov which is rendered pinnacle, should rather signify
the battlement, or that parapet-wall which was carried round the
top of the temple, as well as private houses, (Deut. xxii. 8.) to
keep men from falling horn the roof; and, if we may be allowed
to conjecture on what part of the battlement it was that the deul
placed our Saviour, it seems very likely, that it was on the top
of that gallery, whose building, according to the same author,
was so prodigiously high, and the valley underneath it so prodigi-
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
855
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of the temple, he put him upon the proof of his being the
Son of God, by throwing himself ort' from thence, and
dying in the air, alleging a text out of the Psalmist * to
encourage him; but Jesus as soon answered him by an-
other text, commanding men 2 not to tempt God or depend
upon his providence for their conservation in dangers of
their own seeking. 3dly, His last experiment was, to
tempt him with the charms of ambition; and, therefore,
transporting him again through the air, to the top a of an
exceeding high mountain, he there made a lively repre-
sentation to him of all the kingdoms of the world, with
all their dazzling glories, at one view, and then told him
that " these, with all their pomp and splendour, were de-
livered to his disposal, and should be given to him, if he
would but acknowledge his benefactor, and worship
him ;" but this was a boldness and blasphemy, such as
provoked our Lord to exert his divine power, and to
command him peremptorily to be gone, but with this
memento out of the scripture likewise, 3 ' Thou shalt
1 Ps. xci. 11. 2 Deut. vi. 16. 3 Deut. vi. 13.
oasly deep, that it turned one's eyes and head to look from the
top to the bottom of it, and was indeed one of the most confound-
ing spectacles under the sun. — Hammond's Annotations; and
Jewish Antiquities, b. xv. c. 14. — Scripture is silent as to the
precise manner in which the tempter conveyed our Saviour to
the top of the temple, but surely this might have been effected in
an ordinary way. The phrase to take up in the original signifies
to conduct one, to lead one ; to attend or accompany one ; or to
induce one to go. It is used in many parts of scripture in such
a sense. Here no more is meant by the evangelist than that Satan
conducted Jesus, or accompanied him, and that this was not done
contrary to the will of Jesus. — Barnes on the Gospels. — Ed.
a The best account that we have, both of the wilderness and
high mountain where our Lord was tempted, is in the travels of
Mr Maundrell, (for the ancients tell us very little of them,) who
informs us, that in his journey from Jerusalem to Jordan, after
he had passed over Mount Olivet, he proceeded in an intricate
way, among hills and valleys interchangeably: and, after some
hours' travel in this sort of road, arrived at the mountainous
desert, into which our blessed Saviour was led by the Spirit, to
be tempted by the devil: " A miserable dry place," says he, " it
is, consisting of high rocky mountains so torn and disordered, as
if the earth had here suilered some great convulsion, in which its
very bowels had been turned outward. From the tops of these
hills of desolation, we had, however, a delightful prospect of the
mountains of Arabia, the Dead Sea, and the plains of Jericho,
into which last we descended after about five hours' march from
Jerusalem. As soon as we entered the plain, we tinned upon
the left hand, and going about one hour that way, came to the
foot of the Quarantania, so called from our Loid's forty days'
fast, which, they say, is the mountain where the devil tempted
him with the visionary scene of all the kingdoms and glories of
the world. It is very high, and steep, and its ascent not only
difficult but dangerous." This is the account which our country-
man gives us of the place where our Saviour was probably tempted ;
but it is not supposable, that, even from the highest mountain
of the world, the devil could show all the kingdoms of it; and
therefore the most rational account of this matter is, that, " as
he was the prince of the power of the air, he formed an airy
horizon," as Dr Lightfoot expresses it, " before the eyes of Christ,
which might cany such a pompous and glorious appearance of
kingdoms, states, and royalties in the face of it, as if he had seen
those very kingdoms and states in reality." God, we are told,
caused Moses to see the whole land of promise from the top of
Nebo, as it is generally thought, by representing it to him in a
large plan or map of it, in all the valleys round about him; and,
in like manner, by divine permission, in all the valleys round
about the high mountain on which our Lord stood, the devil
might make a large draught of the stately edifices, the guards,
and attendants of kings and princes, appearing in their splendour,
visible to his eye, which he could not have seen so advantageously
had he stood on a plain. — [Pells' Geography of the New Testa-
ment; Calmet's Commentary; and Poole's and ff'hitby's Annota-
tions.
FKOM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1 .
worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve;'
whereupon the devil left him for that time, and angels,
sent from heaven, came with refreshments for him, after
his triumphant combat.
During our Saviour's fasting and temptation in the
wilderness, his faithful forerunner John the Baptist,
being thus assured both by the descent of the Spirit, and
the voice from heaven, that Jesus was the true and
long expected Messiah, made full and open declarations
of it to all the multitude that came to hear him ; and
When the sanhedrim at Jerusalem had sent a deputation
of their priests and Levites, who were of the sect of
the ° Pharisees, to demand of him, who he was ? He
very readily acknowledged that he was not the Messiah,
whom they expected, nor Elias, who, as they imagined,
would personally appear among them, nor any other
prophet c risen from the dead, but then he gave them to
understand, that, though he was not Elias himself, yet
he was the prophet whom Isaiah intended, when he call-
ed him ' the voice of one "* crying in the wilderness,
Make straight the way of the Lord,' that his baptism was
only of water, but the efficacy of it depended upon one
among them, whom they knew not ; one, who succeeded
him indeed in time, but so far surpassed him in dignity,
that he was not worth so much as to be his servant.
The very next day, after the departure of the Phari-
sees, as our Saviour was returning from the wilderness
to Bethabara, John pointed him out to the multitude ' as
the immaculate Lamb e of God, which taketh away the
b The sanhedrim, whose business it was to take cognisance of
the pretensions of all prophets when they began to appear in the
world, and to inquire into their authority and mission, thought
proper, out of their body, to depute such as were of tins sect,
because, as they were persons who believed the immortality
of the soul, and the resurrection of the body, they were better
qualified than the Sadducees, who believed neither, to inquire of
John, Whether he was Elias ? Being in this particular mere
Pythagoreans, and fancying, that the soul of one great or good
man might frequently pass into another's body. — See Joseph.
Antiq. b. xviii. c. 2 ; and Jewish War, b. ii. c. 8. And as they
were the patrons of tradition, and exact in all the ordinary rules
and customs that were to be observed, they were the properest
persons to examine into this new rite of baptism, by way of pre-
paration for the Messiah, of which their traditions were wholly
silent; and therefore they ask him, Why baptizest thou? that is,
" Why usurpest thou an authority which belongs to none but
either to the Messiah, Elias, or some other prophet, by initiating
us, who are already under the covenant into a new doctrine by
baptism, which is usually administered to none hut heathen
proselytes?" And from hence it appears, that the Pharisees were
the properest men to send to the Baptist upon this message. —
Calmet's Commentary; and JFhitby's and Bcausobre's Annota-
tions.
c It was a received tradition among the Jews, that at the
coming of the Messiah, several of the ancient prophets should
arise from the dead. — Bcausobre's Annotations.
d It is the opinion of some, that John chose rather to preach
and to fulfil his ministry in the wilderness than in the temple, in
order to make a more illustrious difference between himself, who
was but a messenger whose office it was to prepare his Lord's
way, and his Lord himself, of whom it was prophesied that he
should frequently appear and teach in the temple, Mai. iii. 1. —
Poole's Annotations.
c Under the Jewish law, when any sacrifice was offered for
sin, he that brought it, laid his hand upon it, according to the
commandment of God, Lev. i. 4; iii. 2: iv. 4, and by that
rite, transferred his sins upon the victim, which, after such act,
is said to take and to carry them away. Accordingly, in the
daily sacrifice of the lamb, the stationary men, who were the re-
presentatives of the people, laid their hands upon the lambs that
were to be offered, and when they were thus offered, they are
856
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A. M. 4034. A. D. 30 ; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5438. A. D. '27.
sins of mankind ;' and then freely declared that he was
the very person, of whose superiority, both in dignity
and existence, he had spoken, and of whom, by certain
tokens, he both knew and could bear record, that he was
the Son of God.
To two of his own disciples, the next day, he gave the
same testimony, insomuch that they left their old master
and followed Jesus ; and when Andrew, a who was one
of them, went and discovered the same thing to his elder
brother Simon, he, in like manner, became one of his
disciples, to whom, the day following, were adjoined
Philip, an inhabitant of the city Bethsaida, * and an
intimate friend of his ' named Nathaniel of Cana in Ga-
lilee, and supposed to be the same with the apostle Bar-
tholomew.
This Nathaniel, at his very first coming, upon our Sa-
viour's expressing some tokens of his omniscience, made
a liberal confession of his being the Messiah, the Son of
God ; whereupon our Saviour assured him, that, in a
short time he should have a fuller conviction of his di-
vinity, when he should see the angels of heaven c as-
cending and descending, as they did once in a vision to
Jacob, to attend the person, and execute the orders of
the Son of Man. <*
1 John xxi. 2.
said to make an atonement for their souls, Exod. xxx. 15, 16;
and, in analogy thereunto, Christ is here called, by way of emi-
nence, ' the Lamb of God,' because God intended to ' lay upon
him, who was manifested to take away sin,' 1 John iii. 5, and
came to suffer in our stead, the punishments due to the iniquities
of us all. — Jlliithy's and Beausobre's Annotations.
a The other, in all probability, was John, the beloved apostle
and evangelist, because he describes the circumstances of the
time and conversation that passed so very punctually, John i. 40;
but in this, and several other places of his gospel, according to
his wonted modesty, he chooses to conceal his name. — Ham-
mond's Annotations.
b There is no mention of this place in the Old Testament,
and the reason is, because, as Josephus tells us, it was but a veiy
small village, till Philip the tetrarch built it up to the bulk and
appearance of a very magnificent city, and gave it the name of
Julias, out of respect to Julia, the daughter of Augustus Cresar.
Its original name, in the Hebrew tongue, imports a place of fish-
ing or else hunting, and for both these exercises it was very
commodiously situated. As it belonged to the tribe of Naphtali,
a country remarkable for its plenty of deer, Gen xlix. 21, it was
excellently fitted for the latter of these pastimes; and as it lay on
the north end of the lake of Gennezareth, just where the liver
Jordan runs into it, it was so commodious for the former, that
two of the persons just now mentioned, namely, Peter and An-
drew, were fishermen by trade. — Wells' Geography of the New
Testament.
c To ascend and descend, to come and go, according to the
Hebrew manner of expression, denotes a free and familiar com-
merce: and such, no doubt, was the ministry of angels at our
Saviour's temptation aud agony, at his resurrection and ascen-
sion. The words however must be owned to be a plain allusion
to Jacob's ladder, Gen. xxviii. 12, 13. on the top of which was
the divine majesty, and the angels ascending to receive his com-
mands, and descending to execute them: and therefore others
have thought that Christ by these words intended to inform his
apostles, " that the miracles which they should soon see him per-
form, would declare the divine majesty present with him, and
giving him such commands as he was to execute in his prophe-
tic office, as clearly and manifestly as if they had seen the angels
of God ascending and descending upon him."— Whitby's Annota-
tions.
d It is observed by several, that only Ezekiel in the Old Tes-
tament, and our Saviour in the New, are called by this name ;
that our Saviour is never called so but by himself: and that that
is the common appellation that he gives himself. Ezekiel was
doubtless so called, to distinguish him from those spiritual beings,
FROM BERIN. OFGOSP. TO MAT. be. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. I.
With these five disciples, Jesus, e and his mother,
were invited next day to a marriage-feast in Cana, J a
small place in Galilee, not far from Nazareth. At this
solemnity there happened to be a scarcity of wine, which
when his mother understood, she mada 'her application
to him, in hopes that, by some means or other, he would
not fail to supply the defect. In other instances, no
doubt, she had been made sensible of his supernatural
power ; and therefore, though his answer to her seems
to carry in it the appearance of a denial, she still expect-
ed something extraordinary from him ; and therefore
ordered the waiters to obey his commands with the utmost
exactness, s
with whom he so frequently conversed : and our Saviour took
upon him that title not only to distinguish his human from his
divine nature, but to express his humility likewise, and want of
reputation, while he continued in the form of a servant. Chem-
nitius, however, puts another construction upon this title. He
thinks that, as the term Messiah, which is commonly called
Christ, is taken out of Daniel, so that other of the Son of
Man, is taken from thence likewise ; for behold one, ' like the
Son of Man,' says the prophet, ' came with the clouds of heaven,
and came to the Ancient of Days,' c. vii. 13, and that therefore
our Saviour did usually call himself so, in compliance to the pro-
phecy, as well as to assert his humanity, and declare himself his
Father's servant, according to the character given of him by
Isaiah xlii. 1.. — Poole's Annotations.
e Iu all probability it was at some relation's house that this
marriage was kept, because Mary was so solicitous for the sup-
ply of. wine; and the opinion of the ancients is, that it was at
the house of Alphceus, otherwise named Cleophas, whose wife
was Mary, the sister or cousin-german of the blessed virgin, and
who, at this time, married his son Simon the Canaanite, Mat.
x. 4: though others will have it, that the bridegroom was
Nathaniel. — Calmet's Commentary and Whitby's Annotations.
f This is called Cana of Galilee, to distinguish it from
another town of the same name, mentioned, Jos. xiv. 28, belong-
ing to the tribe of Asher, not far from the city of Sidou, aud so
situated much more north than this Cana was. — Wells' Geo-
graphy of the New Testament. — The village now bearing the
name, and supposed to occupy the site of the ancient town, is
pleasantly situated on the descent of a hill, about sixteen miles
north-west of Tiberias, and six north-east of Nazareth. It is
worthy of note, says Dr Clarke, that walking among the ruins
of a church, he saw large massy stone pots, answering the de-
scription given of the vessels of the country; not preserved nor
exhibited as relics, but lying about disregarded by the present
inhabitants, as antiquities with whose original use they were un-
acquainted. From their appearance, and the number of them,
it was quite evident, that a practice of keeping water in large
stone pots, each holding from eighteen to twenty-seven gallons
was once common in the country. Cana, or as it is now called
Kessen, Kenna, or Cane Galit, contains about 300 inhabitants;
who are chiefly Catholic Christians. — Ed.
g John ii. 1. — 11. Marriage is here sanctioned by our Lord as a
holy and honourable institution. It is an ordinance of God, and,
therefore, the duties of those who enter into its sacred engage-
ments are particularly specified in the scriptures. 2. That con-
vivial meetings, when conducted with decorum and temperance,
may be attended by Christians. It is difficult to lay down any
general rule on this subject: for whilst, on the other hand, the
disciples of Christ are charged not to be present at meetings
which ever approximate to the tenets of intemperance, it is evi-
dent, on the other hand, that they may, on certain occasions,
cheerfully enjoy with their friends the bounties of providence.
But in all cases our festivities should be conducted as if Jesus
himself were present. 3. Our relations must not interfere with
us in the discharge of the great duties we owe to God and re-
ligion. We are to receive their directions only in so far as they
coincide with the revealed will of God. The language of the
apostles on this subject after their conversion was; henceforth
know we no man after the flesh. 4. Let us deserve and imitate
the example of kindness and condescension which the Saviour
has here set before us. If he wrought a miracle to supply the
wants of his people, let us also minister to the necessities of our
gWT. I.'J
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The custom of the Jews, in all their entertainments,
was to use frequent washings ; and for this purpose there
were, in a certain private room, six water-cisterns, con-
taining" each about twenty gallons of our measure. These
our Saviour commanded the servants to fill up to the
brim, and when they had so done, to carry the liquor to
the governor of the feast, for him to distribute to the rest
of the company, as the manner then was. But when the
governor had tasted it, he was not a little surprised ; and
calling to the bridegroom, told him, with a pleasant air,
that, at most entertainments like this, it was an usual
thing for people to bring out their best wine at first, and
worse, when the guests had drunk plentifully ; but that
he, contrary to the common custom, had reserved his
best to the latter end of the feast.
This was the first miracle our Saviour did in any public
manner, which proved both a manifestation of his own
divinity, and a confirmation of his disciples' faith. From
Cana he went down to a Capernaum, the place where he
usually afterwards resided ; but his stay at this time was
not long there, because his purpose was to go to Jerusa-
lem, at the approaching feast of the passover. b
brethren. 5. Without being fanciful in our use of scripture, it
may be here worthy of our notice, that Jesus began his ministry
by changing water into wine, — teaching us that he came not to
destroy men's lives but to save them, and he confers on his people
the blessings of joy and salvation. Moses, on the other hand,
began his ministry by changing water into blood,' — a fit emblem
of that ministry of death which was entrusted to him, — but to
Jesus and his apostles was committed the ministry of reconcilia-
tion, that God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed
unto them the word of reconciliation. 6. The manner in which
this marriage-feast was conducted is a fit emblem of the way in
which God deals with his people. They are, whilst on earth, but en-
joying the foretastes of those blessings which God has reserved for
them. They will be put in possession of his greatest and his best
gifts when they sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to
the marriage supper of the Lamb. — Ed.
a This city is no where mentioned in the Old Testament,
either under this, or any name like it; and therefore it is not
improbable, that it was one of those towns which the Jews built
after their return from the Babylonish captivity. It stood on
the sea-coast, that is, ' on the coast of the sea of Galilee, in the
borders of Zebulun and Naphtali,' Mat. iv. 15, 16, and conse-
quently towards the upper part thereof. It took its name, no
doubt, from an adjacent spring of great repute for its clear and
limpid waters, and which, according to Josephus, is by the na-
tives called Capernaum. As this spring might be some in-
ducement for the building of the town in the place where it stood,
so its being a convenient wafting place from Galilee to any parts on
the other side of the sea, might be some motive to our Lord for his
moving from Nazareth, and making this the place of his most con-
stant, residence. Upon this account Capernaum was highly honour-
ed, and is said by our Lord himself to be exalted unto heaven ; but
because it made no right use of this signal favour, it chew from him
the severe denunciation, that it should be brought down to hell. —
Wells' Geography of the New Testament. — Buckingham,
Burckhardt, and some other writers, believe it to have been the
place now calledTalhhewn, or Tel Houm, which is upon the edge
of the sea, from nine to twelve miles N. N. E. of Tiberias, and
where there are ruins indicative of a considerable place at some
former period. Dr Richardson, however, in passing through the
plain of Gennesareth, inquired of the natives whether they knew
such a place as Capernaum? to which they replied, " Cavernahum
wa Chonasi, they are quite near, but in ruins." This should,
perhaps, induce us to fix the site of Capernaum further south; but
our Saviour's denunciation against it seems to have been literally
accomplished ; and it has been cast down into the grave, for hither-
to no satisfactory evidence has been found of the place on which it
stood, Mat. xi. 23. — Cahnefs Dictionary, art. Capernaum. — Ed.
6 This feast is so well known, and has been so fully explained
the at time of its first institution, Exod. xii. that we need only
remind our reader, that, from the word pasach, which signifies
FKOM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
As soon as our Saviour came to Jerusalem, the first
thing he did was to reform the public abuse and profa-
nation of the temple, occasioned by the shops which
money-changers had set up, and the beasts which the
dealers therein used to bring into the courts of the Gen-
tiles. c This our Lord's zeal for his Father's honour
could not well brook ; and therefore, with a scourge
made of cords, he drove all the sellers d and barterers
from the sacred ground, overturned the tables e of the
money-changers, and commanded those who dealt in
doves or pigeons, to take away their goods, and make
his Father's house no longer a house of merchandise.
to leap or skip over, the Jews gave the name of pascha, or
Passover to that great festival, which was annually appointed,
in commemoration of their coming forth out of Egypt ; because
the night before their departure the destroying angel, who slew
the first-born of the Egyptians, passed over the houses of the
Israelites, which were marked with the blood of the lamb, killed
the evening before, and for this reason called the paschal lamb.
The feast itself began on the fourteenth day of Nisan, which is,
the first month in their sacred, but the seventh in the civil years,
and answers in part to our March and April ; but as the Jews
began their days at six in the evening, this feast was to continue
seven days complete, and so ended on the one and twentieth day
in the evening. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the word.
c There were three courts belonging to the temple. The court
of the priests, where the altar of incense stood: the court of the
Israelites, where the Jews that were clean, and the proselytes of
justice, that is, those who had embraced circumcision, and the
whole law of Moses, met at their devotions; and the court of the
Gentiles, where the unclean Jew, and the Gentile, who owned
the true God, without professing Judaism, were permitted to
come and worship. Now, under the same pretext of having the
sacrifices near at hand, as well as out of a contempt of that court,
where the Gentile worshippers were permitted to enter, the
priests, for their sordid gain, had permitted beasts and poultry to
be brought within this court, and graziers and hucksters, whose
business properly was in the markets of Jerusalem, to mix with
people at their devotions, which was an abuse notoriously scanda-
lous.— Whitby s Annotations ; and Eachurd's Ecclesiastical His-
tory, c. iii.
d It may possibly be asked, how our blessed Lord, with nothing
but a whip in his hand, should be able to execute this heroic act
upon a multitude of people, who might sutler damage in then-
wares, and consequently be in a disposition to resist him? Now,
whoever considers that our Saviour had done enough already to
prove himself a prophet sent from God, and that the general con-
cession was, that the prophet thus sent had sufficient authority to
rectify disorders ; if he remembers, at the same time, the great
reverence that was constantly paid to the temple, and what titles
of honour and respect were given it by God himself, cannot hut
allow that the present abuse of it was abominable, our Saviour's
zeal in redressing it commendable, and that, from all thinking
and disinterested persons, it would consequently meet wit1-
countenance and approbation. Nor is it to be doubted but that
a consciousness of guilt in the profaners themselves might, in
some measure, contribute to their submission and acquiescence,
even in the same manner as his enemies were struck backwards
with a sense of their own guilt, as well as the majesty of his ap-
pearance, and fell down to the ground) when they rame to appre-
hend him in the garden, John xviii. fa'. — Poole's Annotations,
and Pishop Smallbrook's Vindication, p. 146.
e It was an appointment of the law that every man, from
twenty years old and upwards, should annually pay into the
treasury of the temple, in order to defray the expense of the daily
sacrifices, the sum of half a shekel, Exod. xxx. 12. 15. This,
and the voluntary oblations of people of all ranks occasioned a
necessity of changing greater coin into less, and very often of
foreign coin into that which was current in the nation. Under
the pretence, therefore, of having things near at hand, the priests
took this opportunity to gratify their covetousness, by letting out
places to money-changers, who, to make up their rent, which
very likely was exorbitant, might extort from those that came
to them, or, as Origen imagines, give them u^-yu^io* ahoxim*
base money, instead of good, and so made the temple a den of
thieves. — Whitby's Annotations on Mat. xxi. 13.
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This extraordinary procedure incensed the Jews to
such a degree, that they came and demanded of him by
what a authority he did these things, and to give them
some evidence of his having a commission so to do : but
to this he made no other reply, than by foretelling his
own resurrection, expressed in the metaphor of the temple,
which they understood of the temple at Jerusalem, that
had been b six and forty years a-building, but he, of the
temple c of his own body, which in three days after they
had slain it, he promised to revive. Though therefore
at this time he refused to work any miracle at the insti-
gation of the Jews, yet, shortly after, we find him work-
ing many, which surprised the whole city, and excited
the curiosity of one person in particular, whose name was
Nicodemus, a considerable man in the sanhedrim, and
of the sect of the Pharisees, to repair to him, but pri-
vately, and in the night-time, for fear of being known,
and to declare freely to him, " that he verily believed he
was come immediately from heaven, because the mira-
cles d which he wrought were a demonstration of it."
e Hereupon our blessed Saviour took occasion to let
a Whether it were the priests, the magistrates, or the common
people, that put this question tu our Saviour, it is certain, that
they do not in the least pretend to justify the profanation which
he had thus reformed ; and therefore their principle seems to
have been, " that, let the corruptions and abuses in a church be
never so great, yet they were not to be reformed, but either by
the ordinary authority of the magistrate, or by an extraordinary
authority from God. Such an authority they were ready to ac-
knowledge in prophets; but then they expected that those who
pretended to this, and to have their mission from God, should be
able to prove that mission by some miraculous operations." But
how they came to put this question to our Lord, after they had
seen his miracles, and knew that he claimed a divine commission,
and had told them, ' that the works he had done in his Father's
name bore witness of him,' (John v. 36,) can be imputed to nothing
but their perverseness, and obstinate infidelity. — Poole's Annota-
tions.
b From Herod's beginning to rebuild the temple, to this first
passover after our Saviour's baptism, it is agreed, that the time
was exactly six and forty years; but then Josephus {Antiq. b. xv.
c. 14.) tells us, that the whole was finished iu nine years and a
half. But this is to be understood of the general building only,
since, according to the same author, (b. xx. c. 8.) several new
works and decorations were still carrying on, and near eighteen
thousand men employed therein, even to the time that young
Agrippa was made king of Judea, which was about the sixtieth
year of the Christian era. — Calmet's Commentary; and Beauso-
bre's Annotations.
c The Jews had a maxim, or proverbial speech among them,
that ' the sanctuary of sanctuaries was the Messiah,' and therefore
there could be no impropriety in our Saviour's calling his body
a temple; for if the apostle calls our bodies. ' the temple of
God,' as he does, 1 Cor. iii. 16, and 2 Cor. vi. 16, how much
more does that title belong to the body of Christ, in which the
fulness of the Godhead dwelt always, and inseparably. — Poole's
and Beatuobre's Annotations.
d But are miracles alone a demonstration of a person's being
sent by God? Nicodemus was not ignorant of the caution which
Moses had given the Jews against false prophets, Deut. xii. 1,
&c; nor does he here speak of miracles in general, but of those
particular ones which Jesus had done in the time of the passover,
and these were so great in their nature, so solid in their proof,
so beneficial in their effects, and in their end so well designed to
confirm a doctrine every way suitable to the divine attributes,
and to fulfil the prophecies concerning the Messiah, the Suu of
Righteousness, who was to rise with healing in his wings, {Mai.
iv. 2,) that there was the greatest assurance that none, without an
omnipotent hand, could do them. Not to say that Nicodemus
might have both examined the doctrine, and inquired into the
life of Jesus, before he made that inference from his miracles. —
Poole's Annotations; and Calmet's Commentary.
c Some have imagined, from the seeming abruptness of the
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23 LUKE vi. \.
him know, that this belief was not the only qualification
requisite to become his disciple, and then proceeded to
instruct him in the great mystery of regeneration, telling
him, " That, as no production could transcend the na-
ture and condition of its parent, flesh, for instance,
though never so much diversified, could still produce no
more than flesh ; so this formation of a new creature was
to be effected by different principles, namely, by the
water of baptism / washing away sins, and by the Holy
Spirit, giving a power and efficacy to men's endeavours
to do well ; which Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and is,
as the wind, certain and notorious in its effects, but secret
in the principle and manner of its production."
This doctrine of regeneration, which to Nicodemus 3
answer which our Lord gives Nicodemus, that Nicodemus might
have put some previous question to him, not recorded by the
evangelist, concerning the means of attaining the kingdom
of God, that is, eternal happiness, or of qualifying himself to
be a disciple of the Messiah ; for in that sense the kingdom of
God is likewise taken. But, besides that the term answered
does not always, in the New Testament, signify a reply to a
question already propounded, but very frequently no more than
the beginning of a new speech, the connexion between the com-
pliment which Nicodemus makes our Lord, and our Lord's re-
ply to it, will not be amiss, if we can but suppose in the words
this implication: — " Thy acknowledgment of my divine mission
and authority, free and generous though it be, will not be sufficient
to render thee a member of that kingdom which I am going to
set up ; for, except a man be born again, that is, renewed in his
mind, will, and affections, by the operation of the Holy Ghost,
and so become a new creature, he cannot see the kingdom of
God, that is, he cannot be a Christian here, or a saint hereafter."
— Poole's, JFhitby's, and Hammond's Annotations.
/Those who make the water and the Spirit, here mentioned
by our Saviour, one and the same thing, (which to every com-
mon reader, must, at first sight, appear to be distinct,) would do
well to consider, that the question between Christ and Nicodemus
was about what was requisite to prepare a man for the kingdom,
that is, God's church, and make him partaker of the gospel bles-
sing. Certain it is, that baptism by water was not only the com-
mon method of receiving proselytes into the Jewish church, but
it is declared likewise by our Lord himself to be the ordinary
way of entering into his kingdom; ' for he that believeth, and is
baptized,' says he, ' shall be saved,' (Mark xvi. 16); and there-
fore he gave commission to his apostles to make disciples in all
nations by baptizing them. (Mat. xxviii. 19.) Nay, so far are
the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit from superseding the ne-
cessity of this ordinance, that, in the apostolic age, we find them
rather esteemed a proper predisposition for it: for, when the
Holy Ghost fell upon Cornelius and his company, in the same
manner that it fell upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, .
(Acts ii. 1,) what is St Peter's inference from these miraculous
gifts ? Is it that the persons on whom they rested had no need of
baptism ? No; but rather that these extraordinary pifts were a
full evidence, that they were the proper objects of it; for, 'can
any one,' says he, ' forbid water, that these should not be bap-
tized ?' So far is the baptism of the Spirit, even where it is un-
deniable, from excluding the baptism of water, and so strong a
proof is the instance before us, that the graces of the Spirit may be
the foundation of a just claim to baptism, but never, where the
sacrament can be had, a lawful dispensation to any man for the
refusal or neglect of it. — JFhitby's Annotations; and Stanhope
on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii.
g Our blessed Saviour might well wonder at Nicodemus's
ignorance iu the point of regeneration, when this was the com-
mon notion of proselytism among the Jews, that he who was
washed and circumcised, was looked upon as an infant new-bom:
and where there were so many passages in the law and the pro-
phets, relating to this veiy doctrine ; for what else can the mean-
ing be of the circumcision of the heart, commanded by Moses,
(Deut. x. 16.) of the renewal of a clean and right spirit, prayed
for by David, (Ps. Ii. 10.) of the putting God's law in the in-
ward parts, mentioned by Jeremiah, chap. xxxi. 33, and the
giving his people a new heart, and a new spirit, promised by God,
(Ezek. xxxvi. 26) ? These, and many more, were intimations of
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seemed so very abstruse, " our Saviour proceeds to tell
Lim was no more, in respect of other mysteries of the
gospel, than the earth is in comparison of the heavens ;
and so goes on to acquaint him with matters of a more
sublime nature ; with his descent from heaven, his death,
his ascension, and the blessing of that redemption which
he came into the world to accomplish. He instructs
them in the love of the Father, the mission of the Son,
the rewards of faith, and the glories of eternity. He
upbraids the unbelieving and impenitent, and declares
the difference between a pure and corrupt conscience,
the shame and fears of the one, and the confidence and
serenity of the other."
This is the substance of our Saviour's discourse to
Nicodemus, who afterwards became a convert; and no
sooner was the passover ended, but our Lord, in com-
pany with many of his disciples, who, by his miraculous
works, were convinced of his divinity, went about the
province of Judea, a making proselytes wherever he
came, and causing them to be baptized by the hands of
his disciples, because himself was employed in greater
affairs, namely, in teaching the people, and relieving
their necessities.
John the Baptist had, at this time, removed his station
from Bethabara to iEnon, a place remarkable, as its
name imports, for springs and waters, and therefore of
great conveniency for baptizing. While he was there, a
dispute happened to arise between his disciples and cer-
tain Jews, who were present, which of the baptisms, that
of John, or that of Jesus, was preferable ? And when his
disciples, by way of appeal to John, came and acquainted
him that the person of whom he had given such honour-
able testimony, received proselytes, and that in vast
numbers, by the same ceremony of baptism as he did,
John repeated the same testimony again, and reminded
his disciples how frequently he had told them, " That
the person of whom they spake, was the Messiah whom
God had sent into the world for the salvation of man-
kind, and himself no more than his herald ; and that his
ministry therefore was now going to decline, even as,
upon the approach of the sun, the glory of the morning
star decreases." And having said many things of the
like nature, to prove Jesus to be the Son of God, and
co-equal with the Father, he closed up his commission
with these important words, ' He that believes on the
Son, hath everlasting life ; but he that believeth not on
the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth
on him.'
John was at this time in the territories of Herod Anti-
pas, b and, as he was a man of great freedom of speech
the doctrine of regeneration ; but the Pharisees were so taken up
with their rites and traditions, that they gave small attention to
the spiritual things of nearer and much greater concernment to
their souls. — Poole's and Beatisobre's Annotations.
a The evangelist no where mentions the particular place
where our Saviour began his baptism ; but there is reason to pre-
sume, that it was somewhere about Jericho, because there it was
that John the Baptist first entered upon his ministry; because it
seems expedient, that lie should open the first scene of his office
where his faithful forerunner had given such glorious and advan-
tageous testimonies of him, and, in one and the same place, com-
plete John's baptism of repentance for sins, which was preparatory
tu his coming, by the baptism of remission of sins, which he alone
had proper power to give. — Calmet's Commentary.
b This Antipas, or Antipater, for they are words of the same
signification, was the son of Herod the Great, by one of his wives,
upon all occasions, he was not afraid, when he came to
Herod's court, to reprove him for his many enormities,
and particularly for bis cohabiting with Herodias, c the
wife of his brother Philip, who was still living. This ex-
asperated the woman against him to such a degree, that,
though Herod at first had some esteem and reverence
for him, yet, by her malicious instigations, d she prevail-
ed with him to cast him into prison, with a purpose to
have him destroyed whenever he could find out a proper
opportunity.
About the time of John's imprisonment, our Lord,
who, by the hands of his apostles, * had been baptizing
for near seven or eight months in Judea, understanding
named Cleopatra, a native of Jerusalem. In his first will, his
father, as was said before, named him successor to his kingdom;
but afterwards he changed his mind, made his son Archelaus
king of Judea, and gave to Antipas the title only of tetrarch of
Galilee and Petraa, which made him appeal to Augustus at
Rome, in order to have his father's former will confirmed, and
the latter reversed ; but he did not obtain his end. — Joseph. Antiq.
c This woman was the daughter of Aristobulus and Bernice,
sister to king Agrippa, and grand-daughter to Herod the Great.
She was at first married to her uncle Philip, son of the same He-
rod by Mariamne, by whom she had a daughter named Salome,
the same who pleased Herod so well in her dancing; and how
she came to run from one brother to live with another, Josephus
has thus related the story: — " Antipas, in his passage to Rome,
made some stay with his brother Philip, where he fell so passion-
ately in love with his wife Herodias, that he could not forbear
expressing it to her, and promised her withal, that, at his return
from Rome he would put away his own wife, and many her.
Upon these conditions Herodias accepted of the offer, and, as
soon as Antipas was returned, and his wife gone, (for she, having
notice of the engagement between her husband and Herodias,
made her escape to her father Areta, king of Petraa,) she, with
her daughter Salome, left her husband Philip, and coming di-
rectly to Antipas, for ever after lived with him in a state of in-
cest, Lev. xviii. 15. Nor was her ambition much less criminal
than her lust: for, growing uneasy to see her brother Agrippa
promoted to the title of a king while her new husband Antipas
had no more than that of a tetrarch, she pressed him so much
that he determined to make a journey to Rome, with an inten-
tion to ask the like dignity of Caligula the emperor; but the em-
peror, being prejudiced by several letters, which Agrippa had
written against Antipas, instead of advancing him, deprived him
of his tetrarchy, and condemned him to perpetual banishment."
The emperor, however, understanding that Herodias was Agrip-
pa's sister, showed an inclination to pardon her ; but she chose
rather to follow her husband in the calamity she had brought
upon him, than to owe any thing to her brother's fortune, so that
they were both confiscated, and banished together, first into
Fiance, and afterwards into Spain, where they died. — Jewish
Antiq. b. 8. c. 9.
d The evangelists have assigned the true reason for the Bap-
tist's imprisonment. But since the Pharisees, very probably,
represented him as the author of a new sect, a promoter of sedi-
tions and rebellions, and a person dangerous to the government,
by reason of the multitude of his followers, Antipas craftily made
that his pretence, as appears from Josephus, (b. xviii. c. 7.) for
confining him ; and the better to remove him from the people, sent
him bound out of Galilee, into Petraa, to a strong castle, called
Mariuerus, near the Dead sea, and towards the borders of Ara-
bia, where he continued above a year in prison Eachard's Ec-
clesiastical History, c. 3.
e Several reasons may be assigned why our Saviour delegated
the office of baptizing to his apostles. 1. Because it was nowise
proper for him to baptize in his own name. 2. Because the bap-
tism that was peculiarly his was the baptism of the Holy Ghost,
Acts xi. 16. 3. Because it was an office of more importance, to
preach the gospel than to baptize, 1 Cor. i. 17. And, 4. Be-
cause Christ's baptizing of any might possibly have occasioned
disgusts and jealousies among the disciples, in the same manner
as, in the early ages of the church, we find people valuing them-
selves and despising others, upon their being baptized by such or
such an eminent apostle, 1 Cor. i. 12. — Bcausobre's Annota-
tions.
860
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
TBook VIII.
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that the Pharisees began to be envious at him for the
great multitudes of people that resorted to him, resolved
to leave that province, and pass into a Galilee, in order
to enter upon the more solemn part of his ministerial
function. In this journey it was necessary for him to
pass through Samaria ; * and, as he travelled on foot,
and the weather was hot, when he came within a little of
c Sychar, he sent his disciples in to the city to buy pro-
as It is a province of Palestine, which extends itself chiefly into
the northern parts thereof. The tribes which it contains, are
Issachar, Zehulun, Naphtali, and Asher, with part, as some say,
of Dan, and Penca, beyond the Jordan. On the north, it is
bounded by Lebanon and Syria : on the west, by Phoenicia ; on
the south, by Samaria; and on the east mostly by the river Jor-
dan, and the sea of Galilee. It is generally divided into two
parts, the Upper and the Lower Galilee, whereof the former is cal-
led ' Galilee of the Gentiles,' (Mat. iv. 15.) either because it was
chiefly possessed by the Gentiles, with Jews interspersed among
them, or rather because it bordered upon Gentile nations, such
as the Phoenicians, Syrians, and Arabians. The whole country,
according to Josephus, was fruitful, and well cultivated, and
the people laborious and industrious. The number of its towns
and villages was prodigiously great, and so well inhabited, that the
least of them did not contain less than fifteen thousand souls.
The natives were a bold intrepid race of men, who defended
themselves bravely against the foreign nations that surrounded
them ; but then their wealth and prowess made them seditious, and
very apt to rebel against the Romans, for which they sometimes
suffered very much. — Whitby's Alphabetical Table. — " Galilee,"
says Chateaubriand, " would be a paradise were it inhabited by an
industrious people under an enlightened government. Vine
stocks are to be seen here a foot and a half in diameter, forming,
by their twining branches, vast arches and extensive ceilings of
verdure. A cluster of grapes, two or three feet in length, will
give an abundant supper to a whole family. The plains of Es-
draelon are occupied by Arab tribes, around whose brown tents
the sheep and lambs gambol to the sound of the reed, which at
night-fall calls them home. For some years this fine country
has groaned and bled under the malignant genius of Turkish
despotism ; the fields are leit without cultivation, and the towns
and villages are reduced to beggary ; late events encourage us to
hope that a milder administration will soon change the aspect of
affairs, and bestow on the Syrian provinces at large some of the
benefits which the more liberal policy of Mohammed Ali has
conferred upon the pashalic of Egypt." — Ed.
b It is a province of Palestine, so called from its city of the
same name, that was once the capital of the kingdom of Israel,
which lies exactly between Judea to the south, and Galilee to
the north, and extends itself from the Mediterranean sea west-
ward, to the river Jordan eastward, taking up the most consid-
erable part of what, formerly belonged to the tribe of Ephraim,
and the half tribe of Manasseh, on the west side of Jordan.
Wells' Geography of the New Testament.
c Sychar is only a corrupt pronunciation of Sychem, or
Shechem, which is the capital of the country that was once called
Samaria. At present it is called Naplosa, and stands in a
narrow valley, between Mount Gerizim on the south, at the
foot of which it is situate, and Ebal on the north. On Mount
Gerizim they had once a temple, which seemed to rival that of
Jerusalem ; but in the time of the Maccabees, it was destroyed
by Hyrcanus, and what they have now is only a little place of
worship, to which, at certain seasons, they nevertheless repair
for the performance of the rites of their religion; but what those
rites are, it is not, easy to say. — Wells' Geography of the New
Testament. — The ancient Shechem is one of the most prosperous
towns in the holy land, being still the metropolis of a rich and
extensive country, and abounding in agricultural wealth. Nor
is there any thing finer than its appearance when viewed from
the heights by which it is surrounded. It strikes the eye of the
traveller who advances from the north, as being embosomed in
the most delightful and fragrant bowers, half concealed by rich
gardens and stately trees, collected into groves all round the
beautiful valley in which it stands. There is a considerable trade,
as well as a flourishing manufacture of soap; and the population
has been reckoned as high as ten thousand, — an estimate, however,
vi liich Mr Buckingham thinks somewhat overrated. Within the
visions, and sat himself down by the side of a famous
well, called Jacob's well. d
While he was sitting there, a woman of a loose life
and conversation came out of the city to draw water, and
when he requested some of her to drink, she, perceiving
that he was a Jew, took the freedom to ask him, how he
could offer any such request to a Samaritan, since there
were so great feuds, and so little dealings e between
town are six mosques, five baths, one Christian church, an ex-
cellent covered bazar for fine goods, and an open one for provis-
ions, besides numerous cotton-cloth manufactories, and shops of
every description. The inhabitants are chiefly Mohammedans.
The Jews, inheriting their ancient enmity towards the Samari-
tans, avoid the country which the latter formerly possessed ; while
the Christians, alienated by the suspicion of heresy among their
brethren at Nablous, prefer the more orthodox assemblies at Jer-
usalem and Nazareth. The Samaritans themselves do not exceed
forty in number. They have a synagogue in the town where they
perform divine service every Saturday. Four times a year they go
in solemn procession to the old temple on Mount Gerizim; on
which occasion they meet before sunrise, and continue reading the
law till noon. On one of these days they kill six or seven rams.
They have but one school in Nablous where their language is
taught, though they take much pride in preserving ancient manu-
scripts of their Pentateuch in the original character. Mr Con-
nor saw a copy which is reported to be three thousand five hun-
dred years old; but was not allowed to examine nor even to touch
it. If any thing connected with the memory of past ages be calcu-
lated to awaken local enthusiasm, the land around this city is
eminently entitled to that distinction. The sacred record of
events transacted in the fields of Shechem is from our earliest
years remembered with delight. "Along the valley," observes
a late traveller, " we beheld a company of Ishmaelites coming
from Gilead, as in the days of Reuben and Judah, with their
camels, bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh; who would gladly
have purchased another Joseph of his brethren, and conveyed
him as a slave to some Potiphar in Egypt. Upon the hills around
flocks and herds were feeding as of old; nor in the simple garb
of the shepherds of Samaria was there any thing to contradict
the notions we may entertain of the appearance formerly exhibit-
ed by the sons of Jacob." — Ed. Cab. Lib. — Ed.
d It is much to be questioned, whether the well that is at
present shown to travellers as Jacob's well, be that where our
Saviour discoursed with the Samaritan woman, because it seems t<?
be too remote from the town for women to come thitherto draw
water; unless we may suppose that the city did formerly extend
itself farther that way than it does now. However this be, the
well is at present covered with a small vault, into which you
get down by a very strait hole, and then removing a broad
flat stone, you discover the mouth of the well itself. It is dug
in a firm rock, about three yards in diameter, and thirty-five in
depth; and to confute the story, which is commonly told to tra-
vellers, namely, that it is all the year dry, except on the anni-
versary when our Saviour sat upon it, but that then it bubbles
up with abundance of water, Mr Maundrell tells us, that when
they came to sound it, they found no less than five yards of water
in it. — Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem; and Wells' Geogra-
phy of the New Testament.
e The chief reasons of the Jewish hatred against the Samari-
tans were these three : 1. the foreign extraction of the Samari-
tans, they being most of them descendants from the Cutheans,
whom Salmanazar sent to Samaria, when he carried away the
ten tribes into captivity, (2 Kings xviii. 9.) 2. the difference of
their religion and worship, forasmuch as that of the Samaritans
was a kind of mixture of Jewish and Pagan rites together; and,
3. the rival temple, which the Samaritans had built on Mount
Gerizim, and consecrated to Jupiter Olympius, in order to avoid
the persecution of Antiochus. — Joseph. Antiq. b. xii. c. 2.
These were the chief causes of the animosities between them.
The Jews, however, did not carry their resentment so high, but
that, in some cases, they would traffic or buy any thing of them ;
but then the Pharisees came in with a tradition, that they were
not to borrow any thing of them, or receive any kindness from
them, nor drink of their water, nor eat of their morsels. This,
however, our Lord despised, as having no foundation either in
the law of God or equity, and as lending to impair the law of
Ssct. I.]
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861
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them and the Jews ? Little did the woman know the ex-
cellency of the person who asked her so small a favour ;
but in some measure to convince her, our Lord took
occasion from hence, under the metaphor of water, to
discourse to her of spiritual blessings ; and to make her
sensible of his omniscience, he reminded her of some
passages of her life, particularly of the a five times she
had been divorced for her adulteries, and of the state of
fornication wherein she then lived.
Convinced by this discovery that he was a prophet,
she propounded to him the great question so much con-
troverted between the Jews and Samaritans, namely,
Which was the proper place of public worship, Gerizim
or Jerusalem ? To which our Saviour, in his answer, gives
manifestly the preference to the Jewish form and place
of worship ; but makes it a question of no great moment,
since the time was approaching when all sacrifices and
ceremonial rites should cease, and when God, who is a
spirit, expected to be worshipped in a more b rational
and spiritual manner than hitherto he had been.
common friendship and humanity; and therefore we find him
asking to drink with the Samaritan woman, and afterwards going
into the city and eating with the Sechemites. — Beaitsobre and
Whitby's Annotations.
a The words of the text are, ' thou hast had five husbands ;'
but whether five successively, and after the death of one another
or five from whom she had been divorced for adultery, is not
agreed. The most modern interpreters, however, judge that
she had been manned to five several men, but so behaved herself
towards them, that for her adultery, or some other froward be-
haviour, they had given her a bill of divorce. This seems more
likely to be the true sense, than that, after the death of five legal
husbands, she should live in whoredom with a sixth person. —
Poole's Annotations.
b The Jews gave out that the Samaritans worshipped God
in the image of a dove; but this seems to be a mere forgery on
them. 1. Because among all the idols which they worshipped
when they came from Assyria, there is not the least hint of the
image of a dove. 2. Because Josephus, who, in several places
of his history, inveighs against them bitterly, does no where
charge them with this crime. And, 3. Because it is a thing
utterly inconsistent with the law of Moses, which they embraced ;
for, as it forbids all images, so it requires men to sacrifice the
dove to God ; and surely nothing can be more absurd, than to
worship that which we are bound to sacrifice. It is very likely,
therefore, that the Samaritans had no false objects of worship
among them, and yet they, as well as the Jews, might not be
furnished with right apprehensions of the true one. They both
were to blame, no doubt, in confining the worship of God to
any particular place, and thinking that he could not be rightly
adored, but either at Gerizim, according to the one, or at Jer-
usalem, according to the other, when his presence is certainly
e\ery where, and in every nation, 'he that feareth him, and
worketh righteousness, is accepted with him,' Acts x. 35. They,
as well as the Jews, might think that God was pleased with out-
ward ordinances, with sacrifices and expiations, which sanctified
only to the purifying of the flesh; but perhaps they never sup-
posed that these things were but types and figures of what was
to succeed, and therefore to be of no longer continuance, than
until the substance of the things themselves were come. They
doubtless both had some expectations of a Messiah: but perhaps
it never entered into their heads that he should be the angel of the
covenant, who, with the incense of his blood,' should offer up the
prayers of all the saints upon the altar that is before the throne,'
Rev. viii. 3. So that our Saviour, by this part of his discourse
with the woman, plainly intimates, that, after his resurrection,
and the promulgation of his gospel, not only the Jews and Sama-
ritans, but the people of all nations whatever, should have righter
notions of God, the only object of religious worship, of the extent
and universality of his church, of the qualifications requisite in
true worshippers, and of the Mediator appointed by God to in-
troduce and enforce their prayers. — Whitby's Annotations and
Culmet's Commentary.
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix.8. MARKii. 23. LUKEvi. I.
Our Saviour, before he had done talking with the
woman, and just as his disciples were returned from the
city, had informed her, that himself was the ' Messiah
whom she spoke of; whereupon, leaving her water-pots,
she ran into the city, proclaiming aloud that she had met
with a person who had told her all the secrets of her
life, and who could be no other than that great prophet
who was to come into the world ; so that the inhabitants
waited on him at the well, invited him into their city, re-
ceived him with great civility ; and though some believ-
ed on him from the testimony of the woman, many more
did so, from their own conviction, on hearing his ser-
mons and divine discourses.
After two days' stay in the city, our Lord proceeded
to Cana, where he had changed the water into wine, and
where the Galileans, who at the passover had seen the
miracles which he did at Jerusalem, received him with
great kindness and respect. Hither it was that an offi-
cer belonging to the court came, and addressed himself
to him with great humility and reverence, desiring him
that he would come and cure his son, who was just at
the point of death ; and when, with more importunity,
he renewed his request, and our Lord, to show the ex-
cellency of his power, that could cure in absence as
well as presence, dismissed him with this assurance, that
his son was restored to health, the believing father joy-
fully returning home, was by the way congratulated with
the welcome news of his son's recovery ; and inquiring
of his servants the hour when the child began to amend,
by the account which they gave him he perceived that
it was at the very instant that Jesus declared to him,
'thy son is well :' whereupon both he and his whole fami-
ly, being convinced of our Saviour's divinity, were con-
verted to the Christian faith.
The imprisonment of John had put an end to his
ministry ; and therefore, to supply that loss, our Saviour
himself began to preach the sum and substance of the
gospel, faith, hope, and repentance, in the province of
Galilee ; and this he did in such an extraordinary man-
ner, that he was admired by all, and his fame spread
through the whole country. Coming however to Naza-
reth, the place of his education, he went into the syna-
gogue c on the sabbath-day, and when he stood up,
1 Her words are, ' I know that the Messiah cometh, who is
called Christ,' John iv. 25.
c That the synagogue worship was, at this time, loaded with
rites and ceremonies of human invention, that the priests were
very defective in the discharge of their functions, and the man-
ners of those who met there very much corrupted, no one can
doubt, who is at all acquainted with the scriptures and the Jewish
history; and yet we find that our Saviour and his disciples, as
members of the church of Nazareth, went constantly every sab-
bath-day to these synagogues, preserving thereby ' the unity of the
Spirit in the bond ol peace,' and not upon slight pretences ' forsak-
ing the assembling of themselves together, as the manner ol some
is,' Heb. x. 25. — Whitby's Annotations. The scribes ordinarily
taught in the synagogues, but it was not confined to them, as it
appears that Christ did the same. It has been questioned by
what right Christ and his apostles, who had no public character
among the Jews, taught in their synagogues. In answer to this
Dr Lightl'oot observes, " That though this liberty was not allow-
ed to any illiterate person or mechanic, but to the learned only,
they granted it to prophets and workers of miracles; and such as
set up for heads and leaders of new sects, in order that they
might inform themselves of their dogmata, and not condemn
them unheard and unknown. Under this character Christ and
his apostles were admitted to this privilege.
862
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
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and read, a as the custom for laymen was at that time, a
passage in the prophet Isaiah, beginning with these
words, l ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon nie, because he
hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor,' &c.
which he applied to himself, but in general terms, and
spake thereupon with so much gracefulness, that the
eyes of the whole congregation were turned upon him,
admiring his discourse ; many who had known him in
the disadvantages of his education, began to have abject
thoughts of him upon the meanness of his extract, as if he
had been no more than a carpenter's son ; so that his
taking an occasion to upbraid them with their ingratitude
and insensibility, so far provoked the whole assembly,
that they hurried him out of the city, and brought him
to the brow of the hill on which it was built, with a de-
sign to have b cast him down from thence, and destroy-
ed him, had not he, by a miraculous power, c withdrawn
himself from the fury of these wretched people, and left
their city.
This barbarous treatment of the Nazarenes made our
Saviour remove from them, and settle his habitation in
Capernaum, which was the metropolis of Galilee, and by
1 Isaiah lxi. 1.
a What the nature and design of synagogues were, and at what
time, and upon what occasion they were at first erected by the
Jews, we have, in a particular dissertation, already discussed, and
need only take notice that, though every synagogue had a settled
reader, to whom was allowed an annual stipend, yet, when any grave
and learned person came in, especially if he was a stranger, it
was customary to make him the compliment of reading the por-
tion of scripture appointed for the day, (Acts xiii. 15.) which
he always did in a standing posture. For, as the law was given
with reverence, say the Jews, so it is to be handled with reve-
rence; and, when he had read what he thought fit, he might, if
he was so disposed and qualified, expound and comment upon it.
The character which John the Baptist had given of our Saviour,
and the miracles which he had lately done in Cana and Caper-
naum, might possibly excite the curiosity of the master of the
synagogue to hear him read and expound ; read in Hebrew, and
expound in Chaldee, as Ezra had introduced the custom. In
reading the law, people were confined to the lesson of the day ; but
the rabbins have observed, that, in reading the prophets, there
was a greater license allowed; and therefore, though our Saviour
might read just where the book opened, yet there seems to be a
good deal of the hand of God in directing him to a place which re-
lated to himself, and gave him so lair an opportunity of declaring
the purpose of his coming into the world, namely, to publish re-
demption and liberty, pardon and reconciliation with God.
b Such kinds of popular executions were sometimes tolerated,
and, under pretence of zeal for the law, several were put to death,
especially in times of public calamity, and when the Jews were
in their greatest distress, (Josephus on the Jewish IFar, b. 5.)
without the formality of justice. But what made the Nazarenes
so exceedingly outrageous against our Saviour was, his declaring
them unworthy of the miracles he had done at Capernaum, his
equalizing himself to some of the greatest of the ancient prophets,
and, by the instances of the Sidonian woman, and Naaman the
Syrian, plainly intimating that his gospel should chiefly be re-
ceived by the Gentiles Calmet's Commentary, and JFhitby's
Annotations .
c How he got out of their hands, when they had laid hold of
him, the scripture does not tell us; nor is it our concern to be
curious to inquire. We know very well that it was an easy
thing for him, who was God as well as man, to quit himself of
any mortal enemies; but how he did it, whether it was by blind-
ing them for the present, or making himself invisible, or merely
by allaying their rage and changing their wills, it is impossible
to determine. Which way soever he did it, it was certainly
something miraculous, and therefore deprived the Nazarenes of
the liberty of complaining that he had done no miracles among
them. — Poole's Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
reason of the lake 2 which was near it, a place highly
convenient for his designs. He had not long been here
before great multitudes flocked to him ; and as he was
walking one day by the side of the lake, with a crowd
of people pressing upon him, he saw two fishing ves-
sels, d one belonging to Peter and Andrew, and the other
to James and John, who were all partners and companions
in that business, and stepping into Peter's ship, he de-
sired him to put a little from the shore, that from thence
he might preach to the people.
Peter and his companions had been hard at work all
night, but without any manner of success ; and, therefore,
when sermon was ended, and our Saviour ordered Peter
to launch out further, and to let down his nets for a
draught, he modestly told him of their unsuccessful toil-
ing all night, but, nevertheless, in obedience to him, he
was willing : nor had he cause to repent ; for, upon
letting down the nets, they inclosed such a multitude of
fishes, that their tackle began to break, so that they were
forced to call to their partners in the other ships, to come
to their assistance, because the draught was such that it
loaded both the vessels so very deep, that they were in
some danger of sinking before they got to shore.
Amazed at this marvellous sight, and dreading the
visible appearance of so great and so divine a power just
by him, Peter threw himself down at our Saviour's feet,
desiring him to e depart from him, because he was a
person no ways worthy of his presence. But our Saviour
a For an account of this lake, see page 352. — Ed.
d St Matthew and St Mark, in their relations of this trans-
action, are pretty uniform: but St Luke differs from them so
widely, that interpreters have been at some pains to reconcile
them. For, whereas the two former tell us, that these fishermen
were casting a net into the sea. St Luke informs us, that they
were gone out of their ships, and had washed their nets, besides
some other variation in the manner of the call of the four apostles.
But not to enter into a minute examination of particulars, we
ought to consider, that some allowances are reasonable, and ne-
cessary to be made for the variation of circumstances in one his-
torian, who makes it his business to recount matters distinctly,
and at large, and in another, whose intention it is, only to de-
clare facts in general, without entering into the series and order
of each action. Now, this is the case of the two former evangelists,
they designed no more than a summary account of these four
apostles' call, and their compliance with it; and therefore they
contented themselves with setting down a part, so much first, as
relates to Andrew and Peter, and afterwards what related to
James and John. But St Luke, who proposes to show the man-
ner and whole process of the call, records the miracle at large,
and interweaves several remarkable passages, which were not
needful to be mentioned in the brief account of St Matthew and
St Mark, but highly conducive to St Luke's purpose of under-
taking to describe the miraculous draught of fishes, (Luke v. 10.)
which, upon our Lord's command to make a fresh experiment,
was taken. — Stanhope on the Epistles arid Gospels, vol. iii.
e We have several instances, both in the Old and New Testa-
ment, of persons struck with dreadful apprehensions at the pre-
sence of the divine majesty, or even of some angel or a prophet
delivering a message from him. And therefore Giotius supposes
that Peter's case was much the same with that of the widow of
Sarepta, when she complained to Elijah, ' What have 1 to do
with thee, O thou man of God, art thou come unto me to call
my sins to remembrance ?' (1 Kings xvii. 18.) But others more
justly think that Peter's words are expressive, rather of his high
sentiments of our Lord, and the consciousness of his own un-
worthiness to be found in such a person's company, and that
therefore they do not a little resemble that glorious declaration of
the centurion in the gospel, ' Lord, I am not worthy that thou
shouldst come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my
servant shall be healed,' (Mat. viii. 8.) — Calmet's Commentary;
and Poole's Annotations.
Sect. I.]
FR(M THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
863
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bid him be of good comfort, and from the present inci-
dent, took occasion to inform him that he had a nobler
work and employment for him. even the a gaining of men's
souls to salvation, if he would adjoin himself to him; and
having given the like invitation to the other three, An-
drew, James, and John, they all obeyed his call, and leav-
ing their vessels, nets, relations, and employments, * be-
came ever after his constant and inseparable disciples.
After the choice of these four disciples, our Saviour
returned with them into the city; and, on the next sabbath
day went into the chief synagogue, and there preached
to the people, with so much force and authority, and in
a manner so widely different from their usual teachers
the scribes, c that all were astonished at him; and to in-
a The words in our translation are, ' From henceforth thou
shalt catch men,' hut in the Greek cttta too tvv avUoavoui i<rn
Z,uiyoa*, there is something very remarkable. For it does not
say that Peter should catch men, as people generally do wild
beasts or fishes, in order to kill them, and eat them; but that he
should take them alive, as such fish and wild creatures are taken
that are designed to be put in stews and parks ; and therefore the
sense of the word is, ' Thou shalt be a fisher of men,' but such a
fisher, as shall preserve them alive; as shall retrieve them, in
short, from error anil ignorance, and death ; and conduct them to
truth and knowledge, and eternal life. — Hammond's Paraphrase;
and Calmet's Commentary.
b Towards the conclusion of the first chapter of St John's
gospel, we meet with a call of some five of our Lord's disciples
about a year prior to this; but, by the account of the other
evangelists, it appears that they did not, at this time, become
our Saviour's constant attendants, because it is presumable, that
though he took this opportunity to make himself known to them,
yet he had not as yet any immediate occasion for them, and
therefore remitted them to their respective trades. Only Philip
is supposed to have retained to him fiom the very first, because
he seems to have called him in a formal manner, as he did not,
at that time, the rest, (John i. 43.); and because we find no
further interview between him and Philip upon this score, as
there was between him and three, at least, of the rest, (Luke v.
10, 1 1.) These three disciples, therefore, namely, Andrew, Peter,
and John, were twice called ; but the former calling was rather
a warning to hold themselves in readiness for it, than an actual
engaging them in his service; hut now in Philip we meet with
no other call than what he had at first; and, therefore, though
the fathers, and some ancient writers, have given the honour to
St Andrew, of being the first disciple ; yet that prerogative is
evidently St Philip's. For, though Andrew and Peter were the
first that came and conversed with our Lord, yet we find them
returning to their trades again, and not ordained to their dis-
Cipleship, till after the time that the Baptist was cast into prison.
— fieausobre's Annotations, and Calmefs Commentary; and
Howell's History, b. ii. in the notes.
C There are several opinions wherein the excellency of
Clirist's preaching, above that of the Jewish doctors, did consist.
Some think that his teaching was not so much in the manner of
an instructor, as a legislator, and one who, in his own name, had
power to propound the terms of life and death. But though this,
in relation to Christ's divinity, be certainly true, yet it is not so
agreeable, either to his prophetic office, or his frequent declara-
tions, ' that the doctrine which he taught was not his own, hut
his who sent him; and that he spake not of himself, but as his
Father had commanded him,' (John vii. 16'. and xi. 61.) Others
imagine, that the excellency of Christ's preaching consisted in
the miracles wherewith he confirmed his doctrine: for so the
evangelist represents the matter: ' They all marvelled, saying,
What new doctrine is this ? For with authority he commanded
the unclean spirits, and they obey him.' (Mark i. 27.) But he-
cause another evangelist tells us, that it was his doctrine, with-
out his miracles, that astonished the people, (Mat. vii. 29.)
Others are of opinion, that his excellency lay in the graceful and
lively manner of his delivery, not like the teachers of the Jews,
who read their lectures of the law so coldly, so perfunctorily, as
never to affect the hearts of their hearers: and that, in short, he
spake as a prophet, who had a full commission from God to de-
liver his message to them ; not as the scribes, who pretended only
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. be. 8. MARKii 23. LUKE vi. 1.
crease their admiration, one in the congregation, whose
body was possessed with an unclean spirit, d cried out
in a hideous manner, ' Let us alone, what have we to do
with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to
destroy us ? * I know thee who thou art ; the Holy One
of God.' But Jesus, who wanted the testimony of no
such confessors, commanded his silence, and departure
out of the poor man's body ; which immediately was
done, to the great surprise and amazement of all the
spectators.
From the synagogue our Lord retired to Peter"*
house, where his wife's mother lay sick of a fever ; but,
upon his approaching the bedside, and taking her by the
hand, he commanded the fever / to depart, and that mo-
to deliver the traditions of their forefathers. — TFhitby's and
Poole's Annotations.
d Those who are minded to depreciate our Saviour's miracles
will needs persuade us that the Jews, having a notion that the
diseases whose symptoms they could not account for were in-
flicted by devils, whom God might employ to chastise mankind,
did therefore give the name of evil spirits to several distempers
which proceeded merely from natural causes ; that, of these dis-
tempers, such as had any thing loathsome or nauseous attending
them, they generally called by the name of ' an unclean spirit;'
and that, because sepulchres, of all other places, were reputed the
most polluted; therefore whenever any crazy or melancholic
people took it in their heads to frequent such places, they were
always said to be possessed with such spirits ; see Heausobre's
Annotations on Mat. iv. 24. and x. 1. But how groundless this
whole hypothesis is, we shall take occasion to show at large, in
our answer to the objections belonging to this chapter.
e It may justly be made a question, whether the devil, who
possessed this man, did actually know our Saviour to be the Son
of God, as he pretended ? There are two evangelists who relate
this miracle, and, in the conclusion of it, both tell us that our
Saviour ' suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him
to be Christ,' (Mark i. 34; Luke iv. 41.) But, notwithstand-
ing this, some interpreters do not scruple to affirm the contrary,
namely, that the devil had no perfect perception of our Lord's
divinity, until his resurrection from the dead. The state of
humiliation which he chose, the obscurity in which he lived, and
the persecutions which he suffered, without ever employing his
power to redress them; the care which he took to conceal his
most renowned actions, and to refer the glory of them all to God
alone, deceived the devil, and kept him in suspense. For, had
he known Jesus, say they, he would never have put it into the
heart of Judas to betray, or of the Jews to crucify him, since
this was the proper way to accomplish man's redemption. But
the answer to this is obvious. That though the devil did know
Jesus to be the Messiah, yet he did not know the mystery of
man's redemption. When he first essayed our Lord in his temp-
tations, he spake indeed in a different manner, ' If thou he the
Son of God ;' but by his defeat he soon perceived that his anta-
gonist was more than man. Though, therefore, he perfectly
knew him to be the Son of God, yet seeing him invested with
our nature, he might, very likely, be so far infatuated as to think
that, by destroying his humanity, he might possibly defeat God's
great design. For how sublime soever we may suppose his in-
tellective faculties to be, yet the wonderful work of man's salva-
tion by the death of Christ, the apostle plainly tells us, is what
no finite understanding could comprehend, until ' God was pleased
to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which
from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, to the in-
tent that now, unto principalities and powers in heavenly places,
might he known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, ac-
cording to the eternal purpose, which he purposed in Christ Jesus
our Lord,' Eph. iii. 9, Kcc. — Calmet's Commentary.
f Fevers are common distempers, and very often cured by
ordinary means, so that the nature of this miracle did not lie in
the cure of an incurable disease, but in the manner of the cure,
which was with a touch ; the suddenness of it ; her fever imme-
diately left her ; and the perfectness of it, in that she was able to
rise and wait on the company. This is said to be Peter's wile's
mother; and from hence it may he presumed, that Peter, who
was himself of Bethsaida, had married a woman of Capernaum,
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nient restored her to such perfect health, that immediate-
ly she arose, and, as if she had never been sick, waited
on the company. This, and the other miracle in the
synagogue, as soon as the sun was set, and the sabbath
ended, gathered all the city together about Peter's house,
bringing demoniacs, a and diseased people of all kinds,
and begging the relief of this heavenly physician, who
very readily cured them all, by a touch only, or the im-
position of his hand.
The next morning he retired very early into a private
place, that, being free from the noise and importunities
of the multitude, he might have an opportunity to pray ;
but even in his solitude he was found out ; and therefore,
to disengage himself from such a crowd of attendants,
he told his disciples that the purport of his mission was
to preach the gospel in other neighbouring cities ; and,
therefore, leaving Capernaum, he made a progress into
Galilee, preaching in their public synagogues, curing all
kinds of distempers, and dispossessing all demoniacs
that were brought to him.
In his progress through Galilee, he met with a man
overspread with a foul leprosy, b whom, upon his humble
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1
petition, with one touch c he immediately healed, but at
the same time d gave him direct charge not to discover
it to any one, until he e had presented himself before the
and there lived with his mother-in-law. — Poole and Beausobre's
Annotations.
a This plainly shows, that the curing of diseases, and the cast-
ing out of devils, were two distinct things, and consequently the
error of those who, in their annotations upon the very texts
where they are mentioned separately, endeavour to persuade us
that the devils cast out were only diseases. — Whitby's Annotations.
b No disease with which the human family has been afflicted,
has been more dreadful than that which is often mentioned in the
Bible as the leprosy. It first exhibits itself on the surface of the
skin. The appearance is not always the same, but it commonly
resembles the spot made by the puncture of a pin, or the pustules
of a ring worm. The spots generally make their appearance very
suddenly. Perhaps its appearance might be hastened by any
sudden passion, as fear or anger. (See Num. xii. 10; 2 Chron.
xxvi. 19.) The spots commonly exhibit themselves, at first, on
the face, about the nose and eyes, and increase in size a number of
years, till they become as large as a pea or a bean. There are
three kinds of leprosy, distinguished by the appearance of the
spots : the white, the black, and the red leprosy. These spots,
though few at first, gradually spread till they cover the whole body.
But though the appearance of the disease is at first in the skin, yet
it is deeply seated in the bones, and marrow, and joints of the body.
We have reason to suppose that it is concealed in the system
for a number of years, in children, till they arrive at the age of
puberty; and in adults, for three or four years, till at last it gives
fearful indications on the skin of its having gained a well rooted
and permanent existence. A leprous person may live twenty, or
thirty, or even fifty years, if he received the disease at his birth,
but they will be years of indescribable misery. The bones and
marrow are pervaded with the disease. The malady advances
from one stage to another with slow and certain ruin. ' Life
still lingers amidst the desolation;' the joints, and hands, and
feet, lose their power; and the body collapses, or falls together,
in a form hideous and awful. There is a form of the disease in
which it commences at the extremities : the joints separate; the
fingers, toes, and other members one by one fall oh"'; and the
malady thus gradually approaches the seat of life. The wretched
victim is thus doomed to see himself dying piecemeal, assured
that no human power can arrest for a moment the silent and
steady march of this foe to the seat of life. This disease is con-
tagious and hereditary. It is easily communicated from one to
another, and is transmitted to the third and fourth generation.
The last generation that is afflicted with it commonly exhibits
the symptoms by decayed teeth, and fetid breath, and diseased
complexion. Moses gave particular directions by which the real
leprosy was to be distinguished from other diseases. (See Lev. xiii.)
The leprous person was, in order to avoid contagion, very pro-
perly separated from the congregation. The inspection of the
disease was committed to the priest; and a declaration on his
part that the person was healed, was sufficient evidence to re-
store the afflicted man to the congregation. It was required also
that the leprous person should bring an offering to the priest of
two birds, commonly doves, one of which was slain, and
the other dismissed, (see Lev. xiv.) In compliance with the
laws of the land, Jesus directed the man that he had healed to
make the customary offering, and to obtain the testimony of the
priest that he was healed. — Barnes on the Gospels. — Ed.
c But how came our Saviour to run the hazard of making
himself unclean, (Lev. v. 3,) by touching one that was mani-
festly so? No, whatever the law concerning the leper's unclean-
ness might be, it seems as if the priest that officiated about him
was not affected by it, because we find him directed to make so
near an examination and inspection into his distemper, (Lev.
xiii. 14, &c.) Aaron, we may observe, though he officiated
about his sister Miriam in her leprosy, is not said to have con-
tracted any pollution by it; and therefore well might a much
greater high priest than Aaron, in virtue of his office, claim the
same immunity. But then, in virtue of his divinity, it was im-
possible for him to incur any legal uncleanness. As therefore the
effect wrought upon this leper was a plain demonstration, that
the finger of God was in it, and he consequently approved pf
the action; so the Jews make it a received rule, that a prophet
might vary from, and even change, the ritual law: and from
hence we may infer, that as Elijah and Elisha both might touch
the dead children whom they raised to life again, without im-
putation of uncleanness, (1 Kings xvii. 19, and 2 Kings iv. 34,)
so might our Saviour touch this leper: though the opinion of
some is, that he did not properly touch him as a leper, because
the moment that he stretched out his hand, the leprosy was
cured: but if it were not, the observation of Theophylact, on
Luke vii. 13, still stands good, namely, "That our Lord might
touch the leper, in order to show that it was not necessary to
observe those lesser matters of the law; that touching an un-
clean person did not defile one that was pure himself; and that
the only thing indeed that did defile was the leprosy of the soul.
Calmet's Commentary, and IFhitby's Annotations.
d If it be asked, why our Saviour should so often command
the concealing his miracles? we may assign for reasons, not only
his modesty and great humility, that there might be no appear-
ance of ostentation in him, and that the Jews might have no
pretence to accuse him of seeking his own glory, (Mat. xii. 16,)
but because at this time it vvas not proper to irritate the scribes
and Pharisees, who had already made him quit Judea, too
much. He knew that in such a determinate space, they would
bring about what God in his counsel had decreed. In the mean
time, he was to ' work the works of him that sent him, while it
was day,' (John ix. 4,) and to propagate his gospel, as much as
possibly he could, both among the Jews and the Gentiles, which
could not have been so conveniently done, if the greatness of his
miracles had once provoked the malice and envy of his enemies
to make their utmost opposition against him. He knew likewise
the mad and capricious humour of the multitude, and had rea-
son to apprehend that they might ' come and take, him away by
force, and make him a king,' (John vi. 15,) if all his miracles
had been blazed abroad, before he had sufficiently instructed them
in the spiritual nature of his kingdom. As therefore he was far
from being a friend to popularity or sedition, he desired that
several of his miracles might be suppressed, lest any bad con-
sequences should attend the publication of them, until his own
resurrection from the dead should be an undeniable proof and
confirmation of all the rest. And this I take to be the reason of
his referring the Pharisees, when they came to demand a sign
of him, to that of the prophet Jonah, (Mat. xii. 39,) whereby
he implied that he would use no more means for their convic-
viction, until, by the miracle of his resurrection, his divine
power, and the completion of the ancient types and prophecies
should be so di lucidly manifested, as to leave them without any
excuse. — Calmet's Commentary; Beausobre and Hammond's
Annotations.
e The priesthood, at this time, was much degenerated from
its primitive institution, and many human rites and ordinances
were added to God's law concerning the priest's examination of
the leper who pretended to be clean ; and yet our Lord sent this
leper to submit to all these newly invented ceremonies, as know-
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OP CHRIST, &c.
865
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priest, and offered the sacrifice that was appointed for a
testimony a of his cure : but the poor man, out of the
abundance of his joy, could not refrain from publishing
it abroad wherever he came, which still increased our
Saviour's fame, so that he avoided returning openly to
Capernaum, lest the multitude of his followers should
give some umbrage to the state ; and therefore, having
finished his progress through Galilee, which lasted for
almost three months, he retired into a desert place, and
there employed some part of his time in prayer.
Upon leaving his retirement, he went privately into
Capernaum, but it was not long before he was discov-
ered ; and as soon as he was, such vast crouds were
gathered together to hear his sermons, and to bring their
diseased for cure, that the house where be was, and
all the court-yard about it, were not sufficient to con-
tain them. In the house were many great persons,
Pharisees and doctors of the law from Jerusalem and
Judea, as well as Galilee, who, led thither by their curi-
osity, sat hearing his discourses, and observing his
miracles, when four men came bearing a paralytic * on
ing that though they did indeed corrupt, yet they did not extin-
guish the divine institution. The divine institution was no
more than this, — That when a leper was cured he was to ap-
pear at the city gate, and the priest was to examine whether he
was truly healed or no; that if he was, the priest received him
into the city, and by degrees into the temple, whither he should
bring two clean birds of any kind, the marginal note says spar-
rows, and, having made a bunch of cedar and hyssop mixed
together, should tie them with a scarlet riband made of wool ;
that to this bunch of cedar and hyssop one of these birds should
be fastened alive, and the other killed by the leper that was cured,
and its blood received in a vessel, filled with water; that
when this was done, the priest should take the bunch with the
live bird, and having dipped both in the water, tinged with the
blood of the other bird, should seven times sprinkle the leper
with it; and that, after this, the live bird should be let loose to
fly where it would, and the person, thus healed and purified,
should again be admitted to the society of the healthy, and a com-
munion in religious offices. (Lev. xiv. 1, &c.) — Whitby's and
Hammond s Annotations .
a Various are the senses of the words, ' a testimony to them ;'
for they may signify, that the gift or oblation which the leper
was to carry, would be a means to evince the perfection of his
cure, when the priests had examined and admitted it as such;
that this would likewise be an evidence to the people, who stood by
at that time and saw him cured, when they should hear that the
priests had pronounced him clean; a proof to the priests, that
himself was an observer of the law, by requiring his patient to
comply with the ceremonies of it; and a full demonstration that
he was a prophet come from God, since they themselves owned,
that a leprosy could only be cured by the finger of God. — Beau-
sobre's, Hammond's, and JFhitby's Annotations.
b The palsy of the New Testament is a disease of very wide
import, and the Greek word, which is so translated, compre-
hended not fewer than five different maladies, namely, (1.) Apo-
plexy, a paralytic shock, which affected the whole body; — {2.)
Hemiplegy, which affects and paralyzes only one side of the body;
the case mentioned in Mat. ix. 2, appears to have been of this
sort; — (3.) Paraplegy, which paralyzes all the part of the sys-
tem below the neck; — (4.) Catalepsy, which is caused by a
contraction of the muscles in the whole or part of the body ; the
hands, for instance. Tiiis is a very dangerous disease; and the
effects upon the parts seized are very violent and deadly. Thus,
when a person is struck with it, if his hand happens to be ex-
tended, he is unable to draw it back: if the hand be not extended,
when he is so struck, he is unable to extend it. It seems to be
diminished in size, and dried up in appearance ; whence the He-
brews were accustomed to call it a ' withered hand.' The
impious Jeroboam was struck with catalepsy (1 Kings xiii.
4 — 6.); the prophet Zechariah, among the judgments he was
commissioned to denounce against the ' idol shepherd that leaveth
the flock,' threatens that 'his arm shall be dried up.' (Zech. xi.
his bed; but finding it impossible to pass through the
throng, they adventured to uncover the house, c and to
let down the sick man, bed and all, into the very room
where he was sitting.
Our Blessed Saviour, being not a little pleased with
such an instance d of their faith, and reliance on his
mercy, was resolved to cure the man ; and accordingly,
in the first place, he gave him an absolution e from his
17.) Other instances of this malady occur in Mat. xii. 10, and
John v. 3. 5. — (5.) The Cramp. This, in oriental countries, is
a fearful malady, and by no means unfrequent. It originates
from the chills of the night: the limbs, when seized with it,
remain immovable, sometimes turned in, and sometimes out, in
the \ery same position as when they were first seized. The per-
son afflicted resembles a man undergoing the torture, (Zxtrcaii-
go/u.sv!,i, and experiences nearly the same sufferings. Death
follows this disease in a few days. Alcimus was struck with it
(1 Mac. ix. 55 — 5S,) as also was the centurion's servant. (Mat.
viii. 6.) — Home's Introduction, vol. iii. pp. 516, 517. — Ed.
c But how could they possibly uncover the house, when they
could not so much as get to it, much less get upon it, by reason of
the throng that was before the door? Now, to have a right
notion of this matter, we must observe, that the houses in Judea
were, for the most part, even as they are to this day, (Sandys's
Travels, p. 36,) low built, and flat roofed, and surrounded with a
battlement about a breast high, according to God's own injunction,
Deut. xxii. 8; so that, to go up to the top of their houses, the
Jews had two ways ; one by a pair of stairs within the house,
leading up to the trap-door, which lay even with the roof; and
the other on the outside of the house, by a ladder, or pair of stairs
rather, either fixed or movable, by which they could ascend to the
roof when they pleased, without ever going into the house itself.
Since this then was the general fashion of Jewish houses, we need
not doubt but that this at Capernaum was of the same figure
and make; and therefore the bearers of the paralytic, finding that
they could not come at the door by reason of the crowd, be-
thought themselves of another expedient. They went round
about a private way, and coming to the stairs which stood on the
outside of the house, up these they carry him, and presently gain
the top. But finding the trap-door, or way of the roof, as the
Jews call it, shut against them, immediately they go to work,
and forcing it open, which St Mark calls ' uncovering or break-
ing up the roof,' (chap, ii 4.) because the door, which lay even
with the roof, when let down and shut, was reputed a part of it,
they conveyed him down that way, which St Luke calls letting
him down through the tiling, that is, through the roof, which,
except where the door was, was all paved with large tiles, and
by this means they found it no difficult matter to place him in
the midst before Jesus. — Calmet's Commentary ; and Pearce's
Vindication of our Saviour's Miracles ; see on this subject
Calmet's Dictionary, art. House ; Home's Introduction, vol. iii.
pp. 385, 386 ; Paxton's Illustrates, vol. ii. pp. 537—540. — Ed.
d Some have supposed that, because the history makes no
mention of any faith, but that of the friends and bearers of this
impotent man, therefore the patient himself had no part in
that virtuous disposition which inclined our Saviour to compas-
sionate him ; and thence they infer how far a man may be bene-
fited by the faith and intercessions of others in his behalf. But it
is a mistake to think that the words ' their faith ' exclude that
of the sick person: for had he not been persuaded that Christ
was able to cure him, he would never have suffered himself to
be presented to him, in a method so troublesome to his weak
condition. We read indeed of no petition he made to our
Lord, but the violence of his distemper might possibly have
deprived him of the use of speech; or, if it had not, the very
spectacle of a body so debilitated, the manner of the action,
and the fatigue which he must have undergone in it, all spake
for him, and carried a more moving eloquence than it was
possible for any tongue to utter. — Stanhope on the Epistles and
Gospels, vol. iii.
e The Jews were of this persuasion, — That every disease of
the body, those especially which were of a grievous nature, were
sent upon men for the punishment of their sins ; and though they
might carry this maxim too far (John ix. 3.), yet sure it is, that
the scriptures represent most of the calamities of life as the
natural effect of men's iniquities. And therefore some have
5r
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.sins. This provoked the indignation of the scribes and
Pharisees, as deeming him guilty of blasphemy a because
none, as they imagined, could forgive sins, but God
alone. But he, knowing their secret thoughts, first re-
proved their censoriousness ; and then, by curing the
patient before them, plainly demonstrated what authority
he had to forgive sins. For though the power of healing
be much inferior to that of forgiving sins ; yet, because
it is not so easy to impose a cure upon the world, where
men's senses are witnesses, as remission of sins, which
is a secret and invisible operation ; therefore all the
people, who were convinced by their eyes of the efficacy
of Christ's last words, « Rise and walk,' were satislied
of the truth of the former, ' Thy sins are forgiven thee.'
And accordingly they glorified the Almighty, who had
manifested such power on earth, and being filled with
reverential fear declared that ' they had seen strange and
wonderful things that day.'
While our Lord continued at Capernaum, he went
out one day, as frequently he did, to the lake-side,
and finding one Matthew, b otherwise named Levi, the
observed, that as the word sins is frequently put for the punishment
of sins, our Saviour's forgiving the man's sins was no more than
a declaration of his intention to cure his distemper. Instead of
' thy sins be forgiven thee ' (Mat. ix. 5), it is better to render
'thy sins are forgiven thee,' affirmatively; for, had it been a
prayer, the Jews would not have objected to it. If nothing more
was meant by our Saviour's words, than the removal of the tem-
poral punishment of sin, the scribes could not have charged
Christ with blasphemy. There would be no blasphemy in a
miraculous cure. It is plain therefore that they understood our
Lord as remitting the eternal punishment of the paralytic's sins,
and that he does assume this power appears from ver. 5, ' Whether
is it easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and
walk,' which shows that Christ makes a distinction between the
forgiveness of sins and the cure of diseases ; and in the next
verse he lays claim to the former, and performs the miraculous
cure as a proof that he 'had power on earth to forgive sins' — a
proof of Christ's Deity, as God only can forgive sins. — Holden's
Christian Expositor. — Ed.
a This word, in heathen writers, signifies no more than
slander, calumny, or opprobrious language of any kind, such as
tends to impair a man's good name ; but in the sacred style it
means unworthy and injurious talk concerning God's nature or
attributes ; as when we ascribe unto him such qualities as belong
not to him, or rob him of those that do: to him, the infirmities
of man; or to man, the perfections of God. This is the nature
of the sin ; and the punishment of it, under the law, was ' stoning
without the gates of the city,' Lev. xxiv. 15, 16. — Calmet's
Commentary .
b Grotius, and those that follow him, are of opinion, that the
Levi mentioned, Luke v. 27, is not the same with Matthew, in
Mat. ix. 9, because Matthew never calls himself Levi, nor does
Mark or Luke ever call Levi Matthew. But the answer to this
has long since been given by St Jerome, in Mat. ix. 9, namely,
that the other two evangelists, as their charity and good nature be-
came them, endeavour to cover the infamy of their brother's former
way of life, and therefore never call him the publican, lest they
should seem to reproach him with the remembrance of his former
conversation, but speak of him under his other name; though he,
out of his great humility, in the gospel written by himself, does
not only take the more commonly known name of Matthew, but
adds that odious title likewise of Matthew the publican. Since
then the custom of having more names than one, is known to
have prevailed amung the Jews; and as St Mark calls him Levi,
the son of Alpheus; so Matthew, in all church history, is said to
be the son of one of the same name ; and since the history of the
person called Levi in Mark and Luke, agrees so exactly with
what is said of him, who, in the other evangelist, is called Mat-
thew, that there is not one circumstantial difference to be per-
ceived, we cannot but conclude that this Matthew and Levi were
one and the same person. — Whitby's Annotations, and Stanhope
on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
son of Alpheus, a rich publican, sitting in his office, c
he asked him to be one of his disciples, who immedi-
ately d forsook his gainful employment, and afterwards
became both an apostle and evangelist. Within a few
days after his conversion, Matthew invited our Saviour
and his disciples, and, among others, some of the pro-
fession which he had forsook, to a feast. The scribes
and Pharisees, who accounted all in a manner sinners,
besides themselves, but more especially these epublicans,
began to expostulate with these disciples, how it came
to pass that their Master, who set himself up for a
preacher of righteousness, and a reformer of others,
came to be so intimate with these lewd and lost wretches,
as to sit and eat with them at the same table : but, when
our Saviour undertook the argument, he gave so fair an
account of the reasons for his conversing with these
people, as made the very objection /become his apo-
c ' Sitting at the receipt of custom.' The publicans had
houses or booths built for them at the foot of bridges, at the
mouth of rivers, and by the sea shore, where they took toll of
passengers that went to and fro. Hence we read of the tickets
of seals of the publicans, which when a man had paid toll on one
side of a river, were given him by the publican to show to
him that sat on the other side, that it might appear he had paid.
On these were written two great letters, larger than those in
common use. — Ed.
d The old enemies of our religion, Julian and Porphyry, ac-
cused Matthew of folly and inconsiderateness, in following a
man whom he knew nothing of. But St Jerome's reply is, —
That he could not want a sufficient knowledge both of our Savi-
our's doctrines and miracles before his call. The publicans, we
find, were great frequenters of the synagogues and other places
where our Saviour taught, and, of all others, expressed the
greatest eagerness to be instructed by him; and therefore, if
Matthew was of the same disposition, he could not want oppor-
tunities of being acquainted with our Saviour's preaching, and
of the wonderful works which he did every where, but more
especially at Capernaum. It is very probable, therefore, that
Matthew, upon such conviction, was inclinable to become one
of our Saviour's disciples, even before he asked him: but if he
was not, the lustre and majesty of the divinity hid under the
manhood, but shining conspicuously in the face of Jesus Christ,
was enough to attract every one that he cast his eyes upon ; at
least, that powerful impulse which he, to whom all hearts are
open, knew how to inject into Matthew's breast, could not fail
to do it: and from this supernatural movement doubtless it
chiefly was, that so readily, and without the least hesitation, he
left all, and followed Christ. — Calmet's Commentary.
e Nor was it only among the Jews, but among the heathens
likewise, that the name of & publican was infamous. For, ac-
cording to their writers, they were accounted no better than
thieves and cheats: free violence, and unpunished rapine, and
shameless covetousness, were their public profession. JJatn-ii
TiXavcci vravrss iicriv ugvrxyss, was the saying of the poet; and it is
said of Theocritus, that being asked, which was the most cruel
among the beasts r1 his reply was, "That, of those in the
mountains, the bear and the lion ; but of those in the city, the
publicans and sycophants." — Whitby's and Hammond's Annota-
tions.
f The arguments which our Saviour uses to the Pharisees for
his keeping company with publicans and sinners, are these
three: — 1st. 'They that are whole need not a physician, but they
that are sick,' Mat. ix. 12 ; by which he intimates to them,
that, in conversing with such sort of persons, he was about the
discharge of his proper business ; and that as a physician's pro-
fession did sometimes call him among patients that had the
most virulent distempers ; so he, whose office it was to heal
souls, ought not to refuse his assistance to those whose circum-
stances most of all wanted his help and advice. 2d. God's say-
ing, in the prophet Hosea, (chap. vi. 6.) ' that he would have
mercy,' meaning thereby all the kind offices whereby we pro-
mote our neighbour's advantage, ' rather than sacrifice,' that is,
the rites and ordinances of the ceremonial law ; whereby he
taught them, that though these latter might, in their due place
Sect. I.]
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logy. But all this would not content the Pharisees ; and
therefore, joining with some of John's disciples, that
were then present, they came and demanded of him,
why it was that his disciples observed no fasts, when a
they, and John's disciples, were known to keep many,
to which he replied, ' that it was not the proper season
for the b friends of the bridegroom to fast and afflict
themselves, c while they had the bridegroom's company,
and season, be acceptable to God, yet charity to the souls of men
(which was the highest act of mercy, and that wherein he was
then employing himself) was much more esteemed by him. 3d.
That ' he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent-
ance ;' or that the great design of his appearance in the world
was, to change the corrupt manners and dispositions of men ; a
change, which the righteous standing less in need of, should no
more grudge the opportunities of it to sinners, than the health-
ful ought to think themselves disparaged, when the physician
forbears the visits to them which he makes to the sick. Some
commentators however have observed in this last argument a
severe irony, and thus they expound it; "I am not come to
cure those that think themselves well, nor to save those that
account themselves righteous, as you Pharisees seem to do ; but
I am come to cure those who find themselves sick, and are
sensible of the burden of their manifold iniquities, as these pub-
licans seem to be." — Stanhope on the Ejnstles and Gopeis, vol.
iv; and Calmct's Commentary.
a Besides the public fasts appointed by the church, the Pha-
risees in general did fast two days every week, and those of
more strictness than ordinary, four. The disciples of John too,
who was himself a man of such abstinence, that our Saviour says
of him, 'he came' comparatively, 'neither eating nor drinking,'
(Mat. xi. 18.) did, no doubt, in a great measure follow the ex-
ample of their Master ; and, now that he was confined in prison,
might, very probably, double their fasts and their prayers
to God for his deliverance. And if they and the Pharisees were
able to do this, why should the disciples of Christ be deemed
insufficient? Now, to this it may be answered, that among the
Jews there were not only the sects of the Essenes and Phari-
sees, who led an austere life, but also schools of the prophets,
many of whom were Nazarites, and consecrated to the service
of God ; and that, besides these, the Jews had likewise aca-
demical and private schools, from whence might come disciples
to John, and the Pharisees, already trained up to fasting and
penance, and other severe duties of religion. But now it is
certain, that the disciples of our Lord were chosen from their
fishing trade, and so came to him wholly unacquainted with,
and unfitted for these austerities, which to impose upon them
now was not necessary, because his continuance among them
was not to be long, and after his departure they would have
occasion more than enough, to exercise these, and many more
painful duties, in the propagation of the gospel, and the persecu-
tions which should attend it. — Whitby's Annotations.
b The Baptist, in his discourse to his disciples, had compared
our Saviour to a bridegroom, and himself to his friend, or chief
guest, John iii. 29; and therefore, as our Saviour designedly
makes use of the same allusion, his argument runs thus, — " I am
the bridegroom, and my church is my bride; as long as I am
here, lasts the marriage-feast, and my disciples are the children
or friends of the bridegroom, and so are not to mourn, but to re-
joice with me while this time lasts: but, at my death and de-
parture, this bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then it
will be time for them to fast and mourn." — ffhitby's Annotations.
c 'Children of the bride chamber.' Great mirth and cheer-
fulness accompanied the celebration of nuptials among the Jews.
The children of the bride-chamber were the friends and acquain-
tances of the parties, and assisted in those rejoicings. But to
set some bounds to their exultations, a singular ceremony was
introduced, according to the rabbins: — a glass vessel was brought
in amongst the company, and broke to pieces, that they might
by this action restrain their joy, and not run to excess. The
Gemara produces some instances of this sort. Mar, the son of
Rabbena, made wedding feasts for his son, and invited the rab-
bins; and when he saw that their mirth exceeded its bounds, he
brought forth a glass cup, worth four hundred zuzees, and broke
it before them, whereupon they became sad. The reason which
they assign for this action is, because it is forbidden a man to fill
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. L
but when they were deprived of it ; and that it would be
as imprudent and preposterous a thing, to impose rigor-
ous austerities upon his disciples, who were but novices
in religion, and inured to another way of life, as it would
be to sew a piece of new cloth upon a rotten garment,
which, upon any stress, would make the rent worse ; or
to put new wine d into old leathern bottles ; which, upon
the least fermentation, would both burst the bottles and
destroy the liquor; for see the prevalence of custom,
and how difficult it is to change an inveterate habit, for-
asmuch as 1 ' none having drank old wine desireth new ;
for he saith the old is better.'
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated and Objections
answered.
That the evangelists were persons of too much probity
to deal in lies, and cunningly devised fables, is evident
from their writings ; wherein we find, not only the strict-
est prohibitions against guile and dissimulation, both
in words and deeds, but such evident tokens of their
simplicity and godly sincerity, as show that they would
not be prevailed upon to conceal truth, even though it
might tend to their lasting dishonour. For let any one
tell me, how they can be supposed capable of forging
any thing for the advancement of their cause, 2 who have
not been wanting to record the obscurity of their Mas-
ter's birth and life, the poverty and reproaches he en-
dured in his ministry, the ignominy of his passion and
death, and the terrors and agonies of his mind upon the
approach of them ; nay, who have not dissembled their
own faults and failings, their mean extraction and em-
ployments, their ignorance and mistakes, their cowardly
desertion of their Lord, and many unsuccessful attempts
to convert others by their preaching? Men that were
thus frank and open in their proceedings, could never
designedly palm any falsehoods upon the world ; and if
they were mistaken in some passages, it must be esteem-
ed their misfortune, not their crime.
They were indeed illiterate men all, except St Luke,
and brought up in mean employments ; so very mean,
that we cannot suppose them capable of writing a regu-
lar history of any kind, had they not been directed in it
by the Spirit of Truth ; but then to frame such an excel-
lent system of morality as is contained in the gospels ;
to give such an extraordinary account of the satisfaction
for sin, and of the nature and office of a mediator; to
feign the life and actions of a Messiah, which should
l Luke v. 39.
Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures.
his mouth with laughter in this world. — Light/out's JVorhs, vol.
ii. p. 172.— Ed.
d The bottles which were in use in the east, and at this time
are very common in other countries, were not made of glass, as
ours are, but were certain bags made of goats' skins, being well
pitched and sewed together. They are very good vessels to
preserve wine, oil, or any other liquor in; and in this respect,
more especially, very convenient to carry from place to place,
because, fall they ever so often, they will not break, unless they
be very old or decayed. In which sense our Saviour compaier
his disciples, before the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them,
to old bottles, because they were not capable either of compre
bending or practising all that perfection which he came into the
world to teach mankind. — Calmct's Commentary.
868
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agree so exactly with the predictions of the prophets,
and the types and prefigurations of the Mosaic law ;
this they were no more able to do, without the assistance
of the same Divine Spirit, than they were to create a
world: and yet, notwithstanding the great variety and
difficulty of this province, it is wonderful to observe how
all the four evangelists, who wrote at different times,
and in distant places, agree, not only in the main topics,
but sometimes in the most minute circumstances, l inso-
much that whenever they seem to disagree, which chiefly
arises from them not confining themselves to the same
words, or the same order of time, it looks as if the
Spirit of God designed on purpose that it should be so,
not only that they might be distinct witnesses of the same
things, but that all succeeding ages of the Christian
world might see with their eyes, that they had neither
transcribed from one another, nor combined together like
crafty knaves.
2 The truth is, though the evangelists no where con-
tradict themselves, or one another, yet they were not so
solicitous to prevent their being suspected of doing
so by injudicious and rash men, as they would have been
had they recorded any thing but truth ; because it is suit-
able to the simplicity of truth, not to be over nice and
curious about any punctilio, and smaller circumstance,
as the manner of falsehood is, but to speak fully and
intelligibly, and then leave it to men whether they will
believe or not. Instead of criticising, therefore, upon
some difficult parts of the evangelical writers, we ought
to consider their whole design, method, and contrivance ;
and if in these we rind them rational and uniform, the
common candour of mankind will hinder us from think-
ing them capable of any gross mistakes or inconsisten-
cies, and where we perceive the appearance of any such,
put us upon the charitable office of adjusting and recon-
ciling them.
There is, indeed, a great and uncommon difference
between St Matthew and St Luke, in their genealogies
of our Saviour ; but to accommodate this, we may ob-
serve, 1st. That these two evangelists were men of dif-
ferent nations, and in that respect had different designs.
For 3 St Matthew was by birth a Jew, wrote his gospel
for the benefit of the Jewish converts ; and wrote it, very
probably, in their language : and as he adhered to the
received custom of the Jews in this matter of genealogy,
he began his deduction no higher than Abraham, the
father of the Hebrews ; but St Luke was a Gentile, and
may truly be called the evangelist, as St Paul was the
apostle of the Gentiles ; and, therefore, when he comes
to relate the pedigree of Jesus, he takes a different
method, and carries it up as far as Adam, the father of
all mankind.
2d, We may observe, likewise, that St Matthew 4 in-
tends only to set down our Lord's a political or royal
1 Grew's Cosmologia Sacra, p. 304.
* Jenkin's Reasonableness of the Christian Religion, vol. ii. c. 8.
3 Bishop Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, part ii, c. 14.
4 South's Sermons, vol. iii.
a That St Matthew used the word begat only in a political
sense, is clear from hence, — That he applies it to him who
had no child, even to Jeconiah, of whom is expressly said,
(Jer. xxiii. 30.) that God wrote him childless; whereupon,
being deposed by the king of Babylon, Zedekiah his uncle was
made king, and afterwards upon the removal of him likewise,
pedigree, by which he had a right to the crown of the
Jews, but St Luke shows his natural descent through
the several successions of those from whom he took
flesh and blood : and, to this purpose, we find St
Matthew, as we said just now, beginning his reckoning
only from Abraham, 5 to whom the first promise of the
kingdom was made ; whereas St Luke runs his line up
to Adam, the first head and fountain of human nature ;
which plainly shows, that the one deduced only his title
to the crown, and the other the natural descent of his
humanity.
3d. We may observe farther, that as David had seve-
ral sons by former wives, so by Bathsheba likewise he
had three besides Solomon, whereof the eldest, next
to him, was Nathan, and that Christ descended naturally
from David, not by Solomon, but by Nathan : for,
though it be frequently said in scripture, that the Mes-
siah should spring from David, it is never said that he
should descend from Solomon ; for which reason St
Luke only deduces Nathan's line, which came into the
possession of the throne, upon Jeconiah's captivity, and
want of issue, in the person of Salathiel.
4th. We may observe again, that the crown of Judah,
being now come into the line of Nathan in the person of
Salathiel, and after him, in the great and renowned
Zorobabel, forasmuch as the two evangelists agree from
Jeconiah to Zorobabel, and after him divide, each ascrib-
ing to him a different successor, namely, the former
Abiud, and the latter Rhesa, we may rationally suppose
that these two were the sons of Zorobabel, and that from
Abiud, the elder brother, lineally descended Joseph,
according to the computation of St Matthew, and
from Rhesa, the younger brother, descended Mary, of
whom Jesus was born, according to the description of
St Luke.
5th. Once more we may observe, that it was a custom
of the Jews, not to reckon the woman by name in her
pedigree, but to reckon the husband in right of his wife,
for which reason, we are not to think it strange, that we
find Joseph twice reckoned, first in his own right by St
Matthew, and then in his wife Mary's right by St Luke ;
for it is certain, that Mary was properly the daughter of
Eli, and that Joseph, who, in the account succeeds him,
is so reckoned, not as his natural son, but as his son-in-
law, instead of his wife Mary, as the manner of the Jews
was : and accordingly it is remarked by some learned
men, that St Luke 6 does not say of Joseph, that he was
the son of Eli, but only tov 'Ha/, he was of Eli, namely,
related to him, and belonging to his family, as his son-
in-law. Fit however it was, that the genealogy of Jesus
should be deduced from Joseph, because it was so gene-
rally received by the Jews, that Jesus 7 was the son of
the carpenter, 8 the son of Joseph ; so that if Joseph
had not been acknowledged to have been of the tribe of
Judah, and of the family of David, 9 since, according
5 Gen. xviii. 8. 6 Chap. iii. 24.
7 Mat. xviii. 55. 8 John vi. 42. 9 Whitby's Annotations,
there remaining no more of the line of Solomon, Salathiel, being
next of kin, was declared king of the Jews; which Salathiel,
upon that account, is said by Matthew (chap. i. 12,) to have
been begotten by Jeconiah, not because he was naturally
his son, but only legally or politically so, as succeeding in
the kingdom during Jeconiah's captivity. — South's Sennons,
vol. iii.
Sect. f.J
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to preserve the stems of the royal family of David.
Since then the Jews, who lived in the time when the
Lo the received rule of the Jews, " the family of the mo-
ther is not called a family," they would not have failed
to have objected this as a just prejudice against all our
Lord's pretences of being- the Messiah.
The sum of these observations, in short, is this
1 That the royal line of David by Solomon being' ex-
tinct in Jeconiah, the crown and kingdom passed into
the next younger line of Nathan, another son of David,
in Salathiel and Zorobabel, which Zorobabel having two
sons, Abiud and Rhesa, the royal dignity descended of
right upon the line of Abiud, of which Joseph was the
last ; and he marrying the Virgin Mary, who sprung
from the line of Rhesa, the younger son of Zorobabel,
and, as some imagine, having no issue himself, his right
passed into the line of Mary, being next of kin, and, by
that means, upon Jesus her son ; so that he was both na-
turally the son of David, and also legally the king of the
Jews, the latter of which is accounted to us by St Mat-
thew, as the former is by St Luke.
This seems to be a pretty clear deduction of our Sa-
viour's pedigree, and is capable of giving a fair solution
to a great many of those objections, which arise from the
different names, or the unequal numbers in the names,
or the unequal distances from each other, which are dis-
cernible in the two genealogies. But perhaps interpre-
ters might save themselves the trouble of giving- a reason
for several difficulties occurring therein, by saying that
St Matthew, 2 concerning whom the main dispute is, re-
cites his account as he found it in the authentic copies of
the Jews, who doubtless in every family had preserved
some known and approved genealogy of their descent
from Abraham, the father of their nation, in whom they
so much gloried, and from whose loins they expected the
promised Messiah. a
That even in our Saviour's time, the Jews 3 had gene-
alogical tables, wherein they kept an account of their
families and tribes, is evident from what Josephus says,
namely, 4 That he gave the succession of his family, as
he found it written in the public books ; nor need we
question but that the like, or greater, care was employed
1 South's Sermons.
! Bishop Kidder's Demonstration, part ii, c. 14.
8 Whitby's Annotations on Mat. i. 2. 4 Chap. iv. 5.
a Dr Hales has the following observations on the genealogies
of Christ, which appear very satisfactory, and remove at once
every difficulty, in so natural and consistent a manner, that his
interpretation can hardly be rejected. " There are," says he,
"two distinct genealogies given in the introductions of St
Matthew's and St Luke's gospels: the former, principally design-
ed for the Jews, traces Christ's pedigree as the promised seed,
down from Abraham to David, and from him through Solomon's
line, to Jacob the father of Joseph, who was the reputed or legal
father of Christ, (St Mat. i. 1 — 16.) The latter, designed for
the Gentiles, also traces it upwards from Heli the father of Mary,
to David, through his son Nathan's line, and from David to
Abraham, concurring with the former, and from Abraham up to
Adam, who was the immediate ' son of God.' (St Luke iii. 23
— 38.) That Luke gives the pedigree of Mary, the real mother
of Christ, may be collected from the following reasons: — 1. The
angel Gabriel, at the annunciation, told the Virgin, that 'God
would give her divine Son the throne of his father David (St
Luke i. 32); and this was necessary to be proved by her genea-
logy afterwards. 2. Mary is called by the Jews ' ?V fo, ' the
daughter of Eli' (Lightfoot on Luke iii. 23); and by the early
Christian writers, the daughter of Joakim and Anna. But
Joakim and Eliakim (as being derived from the names of God
MP and ?** Jahoh and JEt) are sometimes interchanged, as in
gospels were published, though exactly curious in things
of this nature, and withal maliciously bent against Christ
and Christianity, never once endeavoured to invalidate
the account which these evangelists give us ; this seems
to be a sufficient proof, that these genealogies, when
first they came abroad, were neither thought erroneous,
nor inconsistent, but agreeable to the public records
then in use ; and if any difficulties now arise in them
they are not to be attributed to any real and intrinsic
cause, but accidentally to the ignorance of interpreters,
for want of proper helps, at this distance of time, whereby
to explain them.
It may seem a little incongruous, perhaps, that the
Baptist should deny what our Saviour confirms concern-
ing him, namely, that he was the Elias who was to be
sent before, to make preparations for his coming ; but in
this there will be no manner of contradiction, if it does
but appear that the affirmation of the one, and the ne-
gation of the other, proceed upon different considera-
tions. Now the state of the matter is this, — The Jews
at this time were in full expectation of the Messiah ; but
then it was an universal belief among them, that Elias
should appear before him, and that his appearance should
be a certain token of his coming : this belief they found-
ed on the prophecy of Malachi, ' Behold, I will send
you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great
and dreadful day of the Lord ;' but then they imagined,
either that the body of Elijah was preserved in para-
dise, and should again appear upon earth at this season
appointed for it, or that his body being dissolved, God
would infuse the spirit of Elijah into a new one, creat-
ed for that purpose. When therefore the great coun-
cil of Jerusalem sent to inquire of the Baptist, whether
he was either the Christ or Elias, now returned from
heaven, as they imagined he was to do upon Christ's
appearance, to this their sense of the question he replies,
in express terms, that he Avas neither the one nor the
other. But this does not at all interfere with our Lord's
affirming, that he was the person foretold under the name
and character of Elias, in the true signification of
Malachi's prophecy. He was not indeed the very Elias,
who had lived in king Ahab's time, of whose second
coming into the world the sanhedrim now inquired,
according to their misconstruction of that prophecy ; but,
according to the true construction thereof, he was the
person who came in the spirit and power of Elias, of
(2 Chron. xxxvi. 4.) Eli therefore, or Heli, is the abridg-
ment of Eliakim; nor is it of any consequence that the rabbins
call him '•'V, instead of *'**, the aspirates aleph and ain being
frequently interchanged. 3. A similar case in point occurs else-
where in the genealogy. After the Babylonish captivity, the
two lines of Solomon and Nathan — the sons of David — unite
in the generations of Salathiel and Zorobabel, and thence diverge
again in the sons of the latter, Abiud and Rhesa. Hence, as
Salathiel in St Matthew was the son of Jechoniah or Jehoiachin,
who was carried away into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, so, in
St Luke, Salathiel must have been the grandson of Neri, by his
mother's side. 4. The evangelist has himself critically distin-
guished the real from the legal genealogy, by a parenthetical re-
mark: 'iwrou; — iv {ois ttofti£tro) vio; 'la/tr;/)<p \_aXk' hrui"\ uii; tdu
'HXi. 'Jesus being, as was reputed, the son of Joseph, [but in
reality J the sou or grandson of Heli,' by the mother's side ; for so
should the ellipsis involved in the parenthesis be supplied. — Hales'
Analysis, vol. iii. pp. 42, 43, second edition. — Ed.
870
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[Book VIII.
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whom Elias was a type, and whose temper and manner
of life Elias much resembled.
How usual a thing it is for persons, who resemble
others in qualities, offices, or actions, to be described by
the names a of those whom they resemble, no one can be
ignorant, who is the least acquainted either with the
phrase of scripture, or with the common forms of speech.
Thus the Messias is promised by the name of David,
because he was to be a king ;' Zadock the high priest,
and his sons, are recorded by the name of Aaron, and
his sons, by reason of their office ; and, among us, it
is no uncommon thing to call the rich man, a Croesus ;
the wise man, a Solomon; the warrior, a Caesar, an
Alexander, or the like ; and where then, 1 pray, can be
the misapplication, in our Saviour's calling the Baptist
by the name of Elias, when, in the severity of his life,
his zeal for God's glory, his suffering persecution, his
bold rebuking of vice, his reproofs of Herod, and the
hatred of his incestuous queen, answerable to the pro-
phet's chidings of Ahab, and the malice of Jezebel, he
so nearly resembled the Tishbite ? 2 He was not indeed
the real Tishbite ; but, by the answer which he returns to
these delegates from the sanhedrim,3 ' I am the voice of
one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of
the Lord,' &c, he plainly intimates that he was the very
messenger promised in Malachi, and came to discharge
the office assigned to him in that prophet. So far is
John's answer from contradicting what our Lord asserts
of him, that it is indeed a confirmation of it.
The better to understand the nature of that taxation
which St Luke 4 refers us to, we must observe, that every
fifth year, it was a customary thing to take an account
of the citizens of Rome, for which purpose there were
proper officers appointed, who were called censors ; 5 that
their business was to make a registration of all the
Roman citizens, their wives and children, with the age,
qualities, trades, offices, and estates, both real and per-
sonal of them all ; that Augustus Caesar was the first that
extended this to the provinces, and three times in his
reign, first in the twenty-eighth year before the Christian
era; secondly, in the eighth before it; and thirdly, in
the fourteenth year after it, caused the like description
to be made of all the provinces belonging to the Roman
empire, and that this second enrolment, which was in the
eighth year of the vulgar Christian era, that is, three
years before that in which Christ was born, was the
description to which Luke refers us.
Now, supposing the execution of Caesar's decree, in
every province of the Roman empire, to be committed
to the govenor of it ; the carrying this work through all
the countries that made up the province of Syria, namely,
through Syria, Ccelo-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judea, could
not well take up less than the space of three years ; for
1 Exek. xxxiv. 23, 24.
2 Kidder's Demonstration, part ii. c. 16 ; and Stanliope on
the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
3 Mark i. 3. * Chap. ii. J. 5 Prideaux's Connect., part ii. b. 9.
a Thus the poet calls Turnus another Achilles:
-In Latium there has appeared another Achilles, and he
is also born of a goddess-
And elsewhere he uses the same liberty of speech:
There shall be another Typhis, and another Argo, which
will carry the bravest of heroes ; there shall be also other wars,
and once again the mighty Achilles shall be sent to Troy.
t'irg. Mn. 6, and Eclog. 4.
if Joab b was nine months and twenty days in taking an
account only 7 of the ten tribes of Israel, and in them only
of such persons as were able to bear arms, we cannot
think it unreasonable that the execution of the survey,
which extended to all manner of persons, their posses-
sions, qualities, circumstances, should in so large a pro-
vince take up less than three years.
It is to be observed farther, that though the registra-
tion was made at this time, yet the taxes thereupon were
not paid till Judea was made a Roman province, and
Publius Sulpicius Quirinus, who in Greek is caUed
Cyrenius, was made governor of Syria ; for, before
Archelaus was deposed, the Jews paid their taxes to
their princes, and their princes paid their tributes to
the Roman emperors ; but, when Archelaus was deposed,
and Judea made a Roman province, the tax was levied
according to the valuation that was made eleven years
before.
Upon the whole therefore it appears, that in this affair
there were two distinct particular actions, done at two
distinct particular times, namely, first, the making of the
survey, and then the levying the tax thereupon ; so that,
if what is said in Luke ii. 1, be understood of the for-
mer of these, and what he said in verse 2, only of the
latter, this will remove all difficulties, and reconcile that
evangelist with Josephus ; and that it is to be thus
understood we have the opinion of many learned inter-
preters.
The truth is,8 this levy of the tax, which was settled
eleven years before, in the time when Cyrenius was pro-
curator of Syria, a was attended with so many commo-
tions and seditious tumults, that the evangelist thought
he could not make mention of its being decreed, without
giving some hint of the manner of its being executed :
and therefore he puts it in, by way of parenthesis, that 9
' this taxing was first made,' that is, first put in execution,
' when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.' b
There is a passage indeed in the prophet Isaiah, which
6 2 Sam. xxiv. 8. '' 1 Chron. xxi. 6.
8 Beausobre's Annotations. 9 Luke ii. 2.
a The account which Josephus gives us of this matter is
this: — " Cyrenius, at this time," says he, " was sent governor
by Cresar into Syria. He was a man of eminent fame, a Roman
senator, and one that had passed through all the degrees and
offices of honour up to the dignity of a consul. Coponius, who
commanded the horse, went along with him as governor of Judea;
but Judea being already annexed to Syria, it was Cyrenius's
province to tax and cess the Jews, and to make seizure of the
monies and movables of Archelaus. The Jews grumbled at this
way of assessing at first, but through the persuasion and authority
of the high priest Joazar, the son of Boethus, they were per-
suaded to submit and comply without any further trouble, until
one Judas, a Gaulonite, of the city of Gamala, together with one
Sadducus a Pharisee, inveigled the people into a revolt. Taxes,
they said, were only marks of slavery, and therefore the whole
nation should do well to stand up for an universal liberty ; and
one lucky hit would make them free and easy for ever, and ad-
vance them in their reputation, as well as secure them in their
possessions. This was enough to put the multitude in tune for
any sort of mischief; nor is it to be expressed the havoc these
turbulent incendiaries made in the nation, and what murders,
robberies, and depredations, without distinction of friend or foe,
they committed, under the pretence of advancing the common
good of liberty and property, when nothing but passion and
private interest was at the bottom." — Antiq. b. xviii. c. 4.
b If the solution be not satisfactory, the reader may consult Dr
Hales' Analysis, vol. iii. page 48, et seq. ; the disquisition is too
long to be inserted here. — Ed.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &<
871
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St Matthew applies to the birth of Jesus, yet, according
to the context, it seems at first sight to have a more im-
mediate reference to another event ; but let us exaxnine
the history from whence it is taken. In the days of
Ahaz, king of Judah, and probably in the second or
third year of his reign, Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah,
king of Israel, united their forces to come against Jer-
usalem, which put the king and his people in such con-
sternation, ' ' that their hearts were moved,' according
to the scripture expression, ' as the trees of the wood
are moved by the wind.' Hereupon Isaiah is command-
ed to take his little son Shear-jashub with him, and to
go and meet Ahaz, in order to assure him, that the design
formed against him by the two confederate kings should
not prosper : but finding no credence with the king, the
prophet undertakes to perform whatever miracle he should
ask, in confirmation of the truth of what he had promised
him. Ahaz however still refusing, out of a specious pre-
tence of not being willing to tempt God, the prophet
turns from him, and addressing himself to the nobles of
the roval blood, a ; Hear ye now, O house of David,' says
he, ' the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a
virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel.'
Now, not to insist upon the original word Alma, a
which, as 3 learned men have observed, signifies almost
always a virgin untainted by man, and which the Greek
translators before Christ, who were not interested in the
controversy, and yet knew the signification of Hebrew
words much better than any moderns can pretend to,
have so rendered this place ; and, not to insist upon the
tradition which prevailed among the Jews, not long be-
fore our Saviour's appearing, namely, that the Messiah
should come into the world in such an extraordinary
manner, that ' no man should know whence he was,' and,
as the Talmud expresses it, ' that his birth should be like
the dew of the Lord, as drops from the grass, expecting
Is. vii. 13, 14.
1 Is. vii. 2.
3 Kidder's Demonstration, part ii. c. 5.
a Alma comes from the Hebrew word, which signifies to hide,
and very fitly agrees with the customs of the eastern countries,
who were wont to keep their daughters, while they were in their
virginity, from all company and public conversation, and inter-
views. Thus, it is said, upon a public and extraordinary con-
sternation, ' the virgins, who were kept in, ran, some to the
gates, and some to the walls, and others looked out of the windows,'
2. Mac. iii. 19. But there is another, and more proper signi-
fication, which, from the same word, that signifies to hide or
cover, this Alma will bear, namely, as it denotes one who has not
known man, or, according to the scripture phrase, one whose
nakedness has not been uncovered. The knowledge of a woman
is expressed in the law of Moses by ' uncovering her nakedness;'
and, agreeably hereunto, Alma is a most proper word for a virgin,
who is covered, and whose nakedness was never uncovered, or
revealed by the knowledge of man. This account is perfectly
agreeable to the Hebrew manner of speech, and to the style of
the law of Moses. But this is not all ; as several learned men
have shown, that there is a great affinity between the Hebrew
and Punic language, this makes the words of St Jerome more
remarkable: " In the Punic language, which is said to be derived
from the Hebrew, she who is properly a virgin is called Alma,"
in Isaiah c. vii. especially considering that St Matthew renders
it by the word vx^hvo;, which signifies a virgin, properly so call-
ed, the very same word that the Seventy interpreters made use
ot, about three hundred years before St Matthew wrote his gos-
pel, and consequently long enough before this controversy arose
between Jews and Christians. — Bishop Kidder's Messiah, part
ii. c. 5.
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSF. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE tuI.
not the labour,' or action of men ; not to insist on these
things, I say, though they make very much for Christ's
title to the prophecy, 4 how can we imagine, that, after
so pompous an introduction, and so important a name,
the prophet should mean no more at last, by a virgin's
conceiving, than that a young woman should be with
child? What, does Isaiah offer Ahaz a miracle, either in
the depth or in the height above ? and when he seems to
tell the house of David, that God, of his own accord,
would perform a greater work than they could ask, does
he sink to a sign that nature produces every day ? Is that
to be called a wonder, which word implies an uncommon,
surprising, and supernatural event, which happens con-
stantly by the ordinary laws of generation ? How little
does such a birth answer the solemn apparatus which the
prophet uses, to raise their expectation of some great
matter ? ' Hear ye, O house of David, — Behold, the Lord
himself will give you a sign,' worthy of himself, and what
is it ? why, a young married woman shall be with child.
How ridiculous must such a discovery make the prophet,
and how highly must it enrage the audience to hear a
man, at such a juncture as this, begin an idle and imper-
tinent tale, which seems to banter and insult their misery,
rather than administer any consolation under it.
5But of what use or consolation could the future birth
of the Messiah be to the house of David at that time ? Of
very great use, without all doubt ; for it assured them of
the truth of God's promise, in that he would not sutler
them to be destroyed, nor, 6 ' the sceptre to depart from
Judah,' until the Messiah came. It assured them of his
almighty power, in that he could create a new thing in
the earth, by making a virgin conceive, and thereby show
himself able to deliver them from their most potent
enemies; and it assured them likewise of his peculiar
favour, in that he had decreed the Messiah should de-
scend from their family ; so that the people to whom he
had vouchsafed so high a dignity, might depend upon
his protection, and, under the shadow of his wings, think
themselves secure. ' In short, God had promised the
Messiah should spring from the tribe of Judah, and from
the family of David, even while that tribe, and that fam-
ily, continued a polity undestroyed ; and therefore, since
that promise was not yet absolved, nor the Messiah as
yet come, there was no fear of the extinction of Judah,
and the house of David, at that time, whatever their
present distress might be ; but as God's promises were
immutable, they had all manner of reason to believe,
that the enemies now combined against them would, by
some turn of Providence or other, be disappointed iu
their design.
Thus one great prophecy at least in the Old, as well
as sundry promises in the New Testament, made it a
thing necessary that when the Son of God came to be
incarnate, he should be born of a pure and immaculate
virgin ; and it is impious to dispute the possibility of
the thing, when God Almighty was the agent of it : but
why this virgin should be 8 married, rather than a single
woman, is the other question we are to resolve. And in
order to do this, we must observe, that by this means
Mary's genealogy, not only by her father's side, which
4 Bishop Chandler's Demonstration of Christianity.
5 Collins's Grounds and Reasons, p. 43. 6 Gen. xlix. 10.
7 Spanheim's Dub. Evang. part i. dub. 27.
8 Kidder's Demonstration, part ii. b. 5.
872
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4034. A. D. 30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 5439. A. D.28. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
St Luke has recorded, but by her husband's likewise,
which St Matthew has done, came to be deduced ; and
so we have a double testimony, that she sprang from the
seed of David, and, according to the promises of old,
was the true mother of the Messiah ; and by this means we
have the testimony of her husband Joseph concerning
her virginity, who was not a little uneasy in his mind,
before he had satisfaction given him by the angel, and
might possibly have been the first that would have blasted
her reputation, had he not been fully convinced of her
innocence and modesty ; that by this means our Lord's
birth was secured against all imputation of spuriousness,
and his mother's character protected from the persecu-
tion of opprobrious tongues, which she must have endur-
ed, if not the censure of the law, and brought withal a
perpetual scandal upon her family, had not her preg-
nancy, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, been con-
cealed under the umbrage of a common husband ; and
that by this means our Lord was provided with a guar-
dian in his childhood and minority, and his mother with
a companion in her journey she was shortly to take, from
Nazareth to Bethany, and from thence into Egypt, and
both of them with a supporter, who, by honest labour in
his proper occupation, might provide them with the
necessaries of life.
These, and several other reasons, might be assigned
for our Lord's choosing to be born of a virgin that went
under the notion of being married • but how came he to
be a man of poverty and affliction, to live meanly, and
die ignominiously, when, had he been the true Messiah,
he must, according to the representations made of him
in the prophets, have appeared as one of the greatest
monarchs in the world. This is the grand objection of
the Jews ; and therefore, to give it a proper solution, it
ought to be considered that the ' Messiah, in order to
accomplish the prophecies concerning him, was to sus-
tain three different characters ; for he was to be a pro-
phet and a priest, as well as a king. The predictions
indeed which refer to his kingly office, are more in
number, and enlarged upon more copiously, than either
of the other ; yet both the other are so essential to the
character of the Messiah, that had any one of these been
wanting in him, the scheme of man's redemption had
been broken and imperfect : and yet it is certain, that
these three offices require operations, not only dis-
tinct and peculiar to each, but such as could not equally
be exercised at one and the same time, by one and the
same person.
As a prophet, the Messiah was not only to teach and
instruct his people, but to undergo the common fate of
prophets, in being despised, contradicted, persecuted,
and in bearing testimony of the truth of his doctrine, by
the example of his sufferings for it. As a priest, he was
to make sacrifice for the sins of his people, which in
this case could not be otherwise done than by offering
his own blood, and consequently dying in their stead.
Now, both these, in the course of things appointed by
God, were to go before the entrance upon his kingly
office, because the prophecies mentioned this last as a
recompence for the faithful discharge of the other two.
This is a matter that both the 2 royal and 3 evangelical
1 Stanhope on the Epistlt;s and Gospels, vol. iii - and his
seventh sermon at Boyle's Lectures.
g Ps. xxii. 3 Is. liii.
prophet express so very plainly, that St Paul in effect
does but expound these passages, when he tells the
Hebrews, * that Jesus, ' for the suffering of death, was
crowned with glory and honour:' and the Philippians,5
that ' for his taking upon him the form of a servant, and
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross, God had highly exalted him, and given him a name,
which is above every name,' &c. Since, therefore, his
regal office was not to commence till after he had ac-
complished his other two, to complain, that his kingly
power was not exercised at his first coming, is to mis-
understand the prophecies, and confound the order of
events : it is to expect a full accomplishment of predic-
tions within a very narrow space, that strictly Jbelong to
an office still in exercise, and to which, the scripture
says, 6 ' there shall be no end.'
2. It is to be observed farther, that the style and man-
ner of the prophets, especially when they treat of sub-
jects uncommon, sublime, and spiritual, abound with
figurative schemes of speech, and such pompous and
bold metaphors and descriptions, taken from sensible
objects, as awaken in our minds the most lofty ima-
ginations we are capable of. This the Jews themselves
make no difficulty to allow, and ' some of their greatest
doctors have laid it down for a rule, in the interpreta-
tion of the prophets, that in many places they are not
literally to be understood, by reason of those metaphor-
ical expressions, whose true intent is to represent things,
according to our capacity, by images familiar to our
senses. If, therefore, most of these great and pompous
things that are said in the prophets concerning the glori-
ous reign of the Messiah, may be understood of the
spiritual benefits which we have received by his coming ;
such as, the grace of our regeneration and sanctification,
the wisdom of his laws, the comforts of his ordinances,
the holy and peaceable temper which his gospel inspires,
the large extent of its propagation, and the blessed
effects which in all places where it is sincerely believed
and practised it produces : if things be reduced to this
sense, I say, I cannot see but that the character of a
powerful prince has been fulfilled in our Saviour already;
for what king was ever so prosperous as he, who by the
propagation of his gospel has enlarged his dominions so
wonderfully over the most distant regions of the habit-
able world ? Or what conquest was ever so glorious as
that which he hath gained over errors and prejudices, the
lusts and passions of wicked and mistaken men, nay,
even over all the powers of darkness, and sin, and death,
and hell ?
But be it granted, as it seems indeed very probable,
that several passages in the prophets relate to the tem-
poral greatness, prosperity, and peace, that shall attend
the government of the Messiah : yet we are to consider,
3. That, before the consummation of all things, there
will be an enlargement of Christ's kingdom, even here
upon earth. For, though he have all power both in
heaven and earth, already vested in the human nature,
united with his own divine person, yet is not that power
so visibly and fully executed, as it shall one day be ;
nor are all these glorious effects as yet accomplished,
4 Chap. ii. 9. s Chap. ii. 8, 9.
6 Is. ix. 7.
' Maim. More Nevocli., part ii. c. 39, 47 ; Mciias Ben. Israel,
Qu. in Gen. xxx.
Skct. I.J
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
873
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which the prophets foretold, when describing the vic-
torious and peaceable, the unlimited and everlasting,
dominion of the Messiah. The enlightening of the Jews
and Gentiles, by bringing such multitudes of the one and
so many nations of the other sort, to the acknowledg-
ment of the truth, is already a partial completion of the
prophecies ; but there is still a nobler in reserve, when
the fulness of both shall come in. He reigns now actu-
ally in the hearts of men, and subdues the most formid-
able of our enemies, by the holiness of his laws, and the
mighty operations of his grace ; but that dominion and
conquest will be much more absolute, when the time
comes for every enemy to be utterly destroyed. Though
therefore the whole be not, yet abundantly enough has
already been fulfilled, to make us acquiesce in a stedfast
assurance, that what is still behind will most certainly
come to pass. For sure, how meanly soever they that
consider things imperfectly, may think of a despised and
crucified man ; yet there is nothing so gloriously great
that may not most reasonably be expected from that very
man when i ' declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection
from the dead.'
It is made a strong objection by the Socinians, against
our Saviour's being the Son of God, that, at the time of
his baptism, the Holy Ghost descended upon him, for
which there had been no manner of occasion, say they,
had the Divinity, which was certainly no less powerful
than the Holy Ghost, been personally united to him.
AVhile our blessed Saviour was discoursing concerning
his approaching death, and a voice from heaven was
heard speaking unto him, he told the people, who seemed
to be divided in their opinions of it, 2 ' This voice came
not because of me,' that is, to satisfy me of the divine
favour, or to comfort me against the agonies of death,
' but for your sake,' that ye might believe in me : and,
in like manner, it might be a sufficient answer to this
objection, that this visible descent of the Holy Ghost
upon our Saviour was not for his sake, or to convey
any virtue or power, that he was not equally possessed
of by the divine nature that resided in him, but for the
sake of the Baptist, and those that were then present with
him, even to inform them of the excellency of his person,
and divine mission : for though the voice, which immedi-
ately follows the prodigy, 3 ' This is my beloved Son,
in whom 1 am well pleased : 4 Hear him ye him,' plainly
shows that this whole transaction was designed for the
instruction of all the company. Our Saviour indeed was
now entering upon his prophetic office, and fit it was
that the world should have some previous notice of it,
before he came to open his commission. When he came to
offer himself to John for baptism, John indeed, by some
sudden inspiration, knew him; but he had not, as yet,
made any public declaration of that knowledge ; and
therefore God took care to give the company this glori-
ous manifestation of his being his Son, and a person
sanctified by this descent of the Holy Ghost upon him
to declare his will to the world, according to the pro-
phecy 5 concerning him, and whose words and doctrine
it therefore concerned all men to hear and obey. Our
blessed Saviour indeed, as he Avas God, had no need of
Rom. i. 4. - John xii.
4 Mat. xvii. 5.
30.
a Mat. iii. 17.
Is. xiii. 1.
this unction of the Holy Spirit, but as he was to exe-
cute the prophetic office, it was expedient for him to
have it : for, as a prophet is not to speak in his own
name, but in the name of God, and what he has suggested
to him by the Spirit of God ; so this prophetical office
was to be performed, not by the divine nature of our
Lord, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. " We
must therefore," with a great divine 6 of our church, " dis-
tinguish between the excellencies and perfections of
Christ, which flowed from the hypostatical union of the
two natures, and those which flowed from the donation
and anointing of the Holy Spirit. From the hyposta-
tical union of the natures flowed the infinite dignity of
his person, his impeccability, his self-sufficiency to fulfil
the law, and satisfy the divine justice ; as from the
anointing of the Spirit flowed his knowledge of all evan-
gelical mysteries, the doctrines and precepts which he
delivered in his Father's name, and the miraculous works
which he did in confirmation of his mission and doctrine."
For this is plain to every one that looks into the gospels,
that almost in every page our Saviour " owns his mission
from God ; that the doctrines which he taught were not
his own, but God's ; that they were all dictated by the
Spirit of God ; and that the miracles which he exhibited,
in testimony of these, proceeded from the same Spirit
of God. Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude,
that Jesus Christ being now in a state of humiliation,
and emptied of the form of God, acted, in things relat-
ing immediately to his prophetic office, not as God, but
only as a prophet sent from God ; not by the power of
his divine nature, but of that Spirit by which he was
anointed, and sanctified to that office ; though, notwith-
standing this quiescence in the Deity, being still God,
of the same essence derived from the Father, he might
do many other things by virtue of his divinity, such as
discerning the hearts of all men, walking upon the sea,
and stilling the stormy winds with a word, &c. And as
this divinity was part of the doctrine he was to publish,
he might, without any contradiction to himself, assert,
that God was properly his Father, and lie properly his
Son ; that he and his Father were one ; and that ' all
men were to worship the Son, even as they worshipped
the Father.'
Something of the like nature is to be said in relation
to our Saviour's being tempted by the devil, <* namely,
« Dr Lightfoot, on Mark xiii. 32.
7 See Whitby's Preface to the Gospel of St John.
a Tt has been said that the circumstances which occur in the
narrative of the evangelists regarding the temptation of our
Lord, may be viewed, cither as events which happened in the
most literal meaning which the words convey; or, they may be
regarded as the representation of scenes that were exhibited only
in vision to the mind of Jesus; or, they may be considered as a
picturesque and lively description of the seductive conceptions
that were actually suggested to his mind by Satan — a description
in which the tempter and his arts are brought forth before our
imagination as a specimen of what takes place in every tempta-
tion that assails us. The first of these suppositions is that which
has been generally adopted, and it is that to which I feel myself
bound to adhere. For, dues not the scripture assert in point of
fact, that the devil has occasionally been permitted to appear in
a bodily form? And if, as has been remarked, in the form of a
serpent, he seduced the first Adam from his duty, there is nothing
incongruous in the supposition that he assumed the form of a
man to assail the second. He had just left the state of privacy
in which his youth was spent; his approach as the Messiah pro-
5 S
874
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 103-1. A. D 30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5439, A. D. 28.
that though his divinity did set him far above the utmost
opposition of any created being, yet did not that divinity
mised to the fathers had just been publicly announced to his
countrymen by the messenger appointed to prepare the way be-
fore him; the Spirit of God had visibly descended on him in
baptism; and a voice from heaven had declared, 'This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' The time therefore
was come for his appearing on a new scene — as the Teacher and
Redeemer of mankind. To fulfil all righteousness, and to prove
him worthy of his office, it remained that he should be tried by
temptation. For this purpose he was led by the Spirit of God
into the wilderness. The plan of redemption rendered it neces-
sary that he should assume the character of the Son of man ; and
as a man he was liable to the same temptations which encompass
his followers ; for it behoved him to be made like unto his
brethren, and in all points tempted like as we are, though with-
out sin. But if there be no improbability in the supposition that
Jesus should be subjected to trials, it surely cannot appear in-
credible that the agent should have been the same malicious spirit
who in the beginning deceived our first parents, and gave rise
to all the wickedness and miseiy which we observe among their
descendants, and from which it was the great object of Christ's
incarnation to redeem the human race. Satan, indeed, could
not but know that Jesus was the Holy One of God, who had come
into the world to destroy the works of the devil; but, notwith-
standing he may have had some presumptuous expectations of
success in assailing him. As he had already put it into the heart
of Herod to murder Jesus in his infancy, he now attempted to
draw him into sin, with the view of frustrating the plan of re-
demption. It is probable that. Satan renewed his temptations,
from time to time, during the whole forty days, continually in-
terrupting Christ's holy meditations with his hateful suggestions.
Those who allege that Satan did not appear in a bodily form on
tliis occasion, but merely assailed our Lord by his usual artifices
of deceit, argue, that the method in which Satan is commonly
represented in scripture as seducing mankind, is by working on
their imagination and passions. He does not appear to them
himself, but he places before them occasions of sin, influences the
train of their thoughts, and employs against them all the deceiv-
ableness of unrighteousness, by suggesting to their minds such
views as are most favourable to his purpose, by inflaming their
desires, and through this medium hurrying them forward to the
commission of iniquity. The power which he exerts over them
operates through the force of motives and persuasion, and in a
manner similar to that by which one man corrupts the principles
and undermines the virtue of another. And what reason have
we to believe that he acted differently in the present instance?
Why may we not suppose that he employed against the human
nature of Christ the same artifices that he employs against our-
selves? Is it incredible that he should suggest to Jesus, pinched
with hunger, that he ought no longer to wait, confiding in pro-
vidence, for the usual appointed means of nourishment, but to
exert his miraculous power for creating bread to himself? Is it
incredible that he should suggest to Jesus, deliberating on the
obligations involved in his arduous commission, some difficulties
concerning the expediency of the gradual humiliating plan com-
mitted to him by his Father: and that he should inspire the
thought of producing more immediate conviction on his country-
men, by descending from the pinnacle of the temple, or from the
clouds of heaven; or of extending the benefits of his religion at
once to the whole race, by appearing in his native dignity as the
King and Sovereign of the nations? That there is nothing either
incredible or improbable in supposing that Satan might labour to
insinuate such thoughts into the mind of Jesus, is demonstrated
by the fact that these are the very suggestions which he has com-
mitted to all his emissaries since that time, as sources of agree-
ment against the wisdom of the plan pursued by Christ for in-
structing and saving mankind. Now, there can be no doubt that
Satan often acted as an invisible tempter in regard to Christ,
suggesting thoughts to his mind, as he does to the minds of his
followers: but the form of the narration leads to the conclusion,
that in the progress of the temptation, Satan assumed a bodily
appearance. It has been thought that in the character in which
he presented himself, he professed to be a friend, and proposed
to him, that, if he were indeed the Son of God, he should com-
mand the stones before him to be made bread. Some think, that
the temptation was chiefly intended to make him question,
whether he were indeed the Son of God ; but this seems rather
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi.l.
exert itself upon all occasions, but sometimes suspended
its operations, and was quiescent, as we said before.
1 That the divinity was thus quiescent in Christ, until he
entered upon the public exercise of his prophetic office,
is generally thought by most orthodox divines ; that, in
all the actions relating to the execution of that, his office,
it ceased in the like manner to act, we have just now
endeavoured to prove ; and it is generally thought that
this was the case of his temptation by the devil, in which
his divine perfections lying by, as it were, and forbear-
ing to engage, he is to be considered abstractly as a
man, though much more perfect than any other man.
For fit it was that he, who, for this very reason, perhaps,
is called the second Adam, should overcome the great
enemy of mankind, in that very nature alone, and unas-
sisted, wherein the first Adam was so miserably foiled.
Whether the devil might know that our Saviour was
in reality the Son of God, or only some peculiar favour-
ite of his, divines are at a stand to determine. It is the
observation of Origen, that s all the while that our Sa-
viour was under the temptation, he never confessed him-
self to be the Son of God : and therefore, 3 since the
dispensation of the gospel was not fully and perfectly
understood by good angels, but gradually manifested to
them, it is no wonder that the devil should be ignorant
of the mysteries of the gospel, particularly that ' great
mystery of godliness, God's manifestation in the flesh.'
The devil therefore, seeing our Saviour, after he had
been 4 declared the Son of God, so long in the wilder-
ness with wild beasts, and hungry, without any food to
sustain him, might be induced to question whether he
was indeed the Son of God, in the most proper and
highest sense of the words, and thereupon incited to
assail him : but if even he knew him ever so well, sucli
is his inveterate malice, that it hath often prevailed with
him to attempt things very foolish and impossible. For
what could be more so, than for a creature to attempt
to be like God, or to annul the truth of the prophecies
concerning Christ ? What could be more pernicious to
him than the death of the Lord of life for the redemption
of mankind ; and yet this he attempted with the utmost
eagerness, and by setting all his instruments to work to
accomplish it, though 5 ' it was impossible for our Lord
to be held under the power of death :' whatever Satan,
therefore, might conceive of Christ, as Petavius retorts
the argument upon the head of Crellius, he could not but
certainly know from the scriptures, that he was to be
the Redeemer of mankind, and the Author of their salva-
tion ; that he was ' the seed of the woman, who was to
bruise his head, to sit on the throne of his father David,
and there rule for ever :' and therefore, knowing all this,
he could not hope to prevail in his temptations of our
Lord, unless he could believe that he was able to reverse
both the decrees and oath of God. Whether therefore
the devil knew, or knew not, our Saviour, it may well
1 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii.
2 Horn. 6. in Lucam. 3 Eph. i. 10. and 1 Pet. i. 12.
4 Mat. iii. 17. 5 Acts ii. 24, 25.
to have been assumed as a kind of principle, about which queries
were to be proposed ; in something of the same manner, as when
Eve was tempted by the serpent. But the great enemy was
baffled, and angels came to honour the Redeemer, and torr.inistei
to him, — Fi?ilai/son's Sermons, — 7 &8th; Scott's Commentary,
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
875
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be deemed an infatuation in him, to think of being able
to pervert him, as he had done our first parents in their
obedience to God ; but then, it was far from being a
foolish or unnecessary thing for our Lord thus to suffer
himself to be tempted, 1 since thereby he hath instructed
us, that not any, the best, and most exalted degree of
virtue sets men above temptations ; and since thereby he
has encouraged us to hope for his assistance and support
under the like circumstances ; both because 2 ' himself
hath suffered, being tempted,' and because 3 'he was in
all points tempted like as we are, he cannot but be touch-
ed with the feeling of our infirmities.' These were the
true ends and reasons, why our Saviour suffered tempta-
tion, and the proper and natural inference from hence is
that which the same author to the Hebrews makes, 4 ' Let
us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we
may obtain mercy, and find grace to help us in time of
need.'
There are few things wherein mankind seem to be
more agreed, than in the acknowledgment and accep-
tance of miracles, as an authentic and indisputable testi-
mony, that the persons intrusted with such power were
employed by God ; because the constant apprehensions,
which both reason and revelation have given us of God,
are, that he will not employ his power, as no true mira-
cles can be done without the concurrence of his power,
to deceive his creatures ; and therefore, the reasoning of
Nicodemus, when he came to visit our Saviour, was
right, 5 ' Ave know that thou art a teacher come from God,
because no man can do these miracles that thou doest,
except God be with him.' Since miracles then are the
avowed effects of a divine power, we must certainly be
mistaken in our judgment of them, when, with regard
to their author, we esteem one greater than another. In
effects, indeed, that are produced by human power, we
are apt to say, that some of them are greater than others,
that is, that they require more and greater degrees of
power for the production of them ; but this distinction
vanishes in our consideration of the Supreme Being, to
whose omnipotence the greatest effect we can imagine,
gives no limitation, but is equal with the smallest, under
the compass of his acting. To us, perhaps, it may seem
a greater cure to dispossess a demon, than to drive away
a fever ; but in the hand of the Son of God, while he
dwelt among us, they were operations equally easy ; and
yet a misconception in this matter has certainly led some
into an opinion, that the several demoniacs mentioned
in the gospels, were only so many persons afflicted with
some strange and uncommon diseases.
But that these demons, or evil spirits, which our Savi-
our, his apostles, and the primitive Christians, expelled
out of the bodies of men, could not be diseases, is plain
both from the scriptures, and ecclesiastical writers, who
make a constant and manifest distinction between the
curing diseases and casting out of devils ; for, when the
evangelist tells us, that 6 ' they brought unto Christ all
sick people, that were taken with divers diseases, and
those which were possessed with devils, and those that
were lunatic, and had the palsy, and he healed tliem ;'
when 7 ' he gave to the apostles power against evil
i Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii. 2 Heh. ii. IS.
3 Heb. iv. 15. " I bill. iv. 10. 5 John iii. 2.
"Mat.iv. 24. r Ibid. x. 1.
D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OFGOSP. TO MAT.ix.8. MARKii.23. LUKE vi. 1
spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sick-
nesses and diseases ;' and accordingly, 8 ' they healed
many that were sick with divers diseases, and cast out
many devils ;' when Irenaius 9 informs us that the Chris-
tians, in his days, ' did truly cast out devils, and heal
the sick by imposition of hands ;' and lu Origen, that
' they cast out devils, and healed many diseases ;' can
any one of tolerable understanding think, that the dis-
eases healed and the devils cast out, were one and the
same thing ?
That there were evil spirits of this kind, the holy
scriptures have taken such abundant care to acquaint us
with their origin and fall, their names and numbers, their
government and orders, their malicious designs, and em-
ployments, &c, that no one can doubt of their existence,
who believes these holy oracles to be true. That both
among the Jews and Gentiles, before our Saviour's ad-
vent, men were possessed with these evil spirits, is evi-
dent from the testimony of u Josephus, who tells us of a
very powerful form of exorcism, which descended from
Solomon, who learned it of God ; and from the testimony
of 12 Plutarch, who acquaints us, that the exorcists of most
nations advised those that were possessed, to repeat the
Ephesian letters. And, that these evil spirits, in our
Saviour's time, were distinct substances, and not the
diseases of mankind, is evident from the circumstances
of their ejection, from their expostulating with him, ' what
have we to do with thee ? Art thou come to destroy us ?
Art thou come to torment us before the time ?' And from
his commanding them sometimes to be silent, and some-
times to come out of the man, and enter into him no
more, &c.
The truth is, these apostate spirits had gotten so far
possession of the world, that they began to rival God in
his worship ; and therefore one end of his Son's incar-
nation is said to be this, 13 ' that he might destroy the
works of the devil,' and l* ' overcome the strong one, and
divide his spoils.' And this, by the way, may suggest
a reason, why at or about the time of our Saviour's ad-
vent, and perhaps more especially in the places which
he frequented, God might permit the devil to exert him-
self in an unusual manner, in order to be the more sig-
nally triumphed over by the Saviour of the world, and
those that were delegated by him to convert mankind to
his religion. Nay, had I leisure to proceed to ecclesi-
astical writers, I might easily show how victorious the
name of Christ was over these principalities and
powers of darkness, even after his departure out of this
world ; for " that our Lord was sent for the destruction
of these evil spirits, you may now learn," says Justin
Martyr, 15 " from what is done before your eyes ; for many
Christians, throughout all the world, and in every city
of your empire, have healed many that were possessed
of the devil, and still do they eject them, by the invoca-
tion of the name of Jesus, whom none of your enchan-
ters, conjurers, or sorcerers, were able to expel :" " and
give me a man," says Tertullian, 1C in thatnoble challenge
of his to the heathen powers, " give me a man here before
your tribunals, that is visibly possessed by the devil ;
8 Mark i.34.
"' Contra Celsum, b. i.
" Sympos. l>. i. ij. 5.
'« Luke xi. 22, 23. I5 Apol. i.
9 B. ii. c. 16.
1 Antiq. b. viii. c. 2.
13 I John iii. 8.
. 4o. '6 Ajpol. C. fcft.
876
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4034. A.D 30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
and if, when he is commanded by any Christian to de-
clare what he is, he don't immediately confess himself
to be a devil, not daring to lie to a Christian, then let
the blood of that Christian be shed before you, in that
very place." a But 1 forbear, and so proceed to the next
objection, which relates to our Saviour's behaviour at
the marriage feast.
a Lardner, and some other writers, have supposed, that the
demoniacs, or persons who were possessed by evil spirits, were
only lunatics or diseased persons. They argue against the exis-
tence of real possessions on various grounds, more especially, of
their being inconsistent with the wisdom and goodness of the
divine government. All the persons, they say, spoken of in the
New Testament as possessed with devils, were either mad or
epileptic, and precisely in the same condition with the madmen
and epileptics of modern times. Some of the Jews, offended
with Christ's discourses, said, he hath a devil, and is mad; why
hear ye him? The expressions, ' he hath a devil, and is mad,' were
used, as they suppose, on this occasion, as synonymous. Those
who thought more favourably of Christ, replied to the calumny
of his enemies, ' These are not the words of him that hath a
devil;' meaning, that they did not discover in his discourse the
incoherence of a madman, or of one disordered in his understand-
ing. Every thing, they allege, related in the New Testament
concerning demoniacs, shows that they were persons affected
with such natural diseases as are not uncommon among mankind
in the present age. VVhen the symptoms of the disorders which
were cured by our Lord and his apostles, as cases of demoniacal
possession, correspond so exactly with those of diseases well known
as natural at the present time, why should we impute them to
a supernatural cause? Is it not more consistent with common
sense and sound philosophy, to suppose that our Saviour and his
apostles adopted the vulgar phraseology in speaking of those un-
fortunate persons, who, without any foundation, were imagined
to be possessed with demons? Now, I agree with Bishop Gleig
in regarding all these objections to the literal interpretation of
this part of scripture, as proceeding either from a desire to re-
present Christianity as nothing more than a republication of
natural religion, or from a groundless apprehension of giving
countenance to the lying wonders of the Church of Home. That
Christianity is something very different from any system of re-
ligion which can be called natural, it has been a main design of
this work to establish. The triumphs of our Lord over the powers
of darkness were an essential part of the great scheme of redemp-
tion, 'for the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy
the works of the devil.' Though some of the Jewish prophets had
performed many and great miracles, and even restored the dead to
life, it was yet reserved for the Son of God — the Saviour of the
world — to compel the spiritual powers that were opposed to his
kingdom to proclaim their own ruin: — ' What have we to c!o with
thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ; art thou come hither to torment us
before the time?' "When I find," says Dr Campbell, (Prelimi-
nary Dissertations to the Gospels, Diss, xi.) " mention made of the
number of demons in particular possessions, their actions so ex-
pressly distinguished from those of the man possessed, conversa-
tions held by the former in regard to the disposal of them after
their expulsion, and accounts given how they were actually dis-
posed of; when I find desires and passions ascribed peculiarly to
them, and similitudes taken from the conduct which they usually
observe; it is impossible for me to deny their existence, without
admitting that the sacred historians were either deceived them-
selves in regard to them, or intended to deceive their readers.
The language in which the demoniacs are mentioned, and the
actions aud sentiments ascribed to them in the New Testament,
show that our Saviour and his apostles did not consider the idea
of demoniacal possession merely as a vulgar error concerning the
origin of a disease or diseases produced by natural causes. If
any person, in compliance with popular opinions, should talk
seriously of the existence, dispositions, declarations, and actions,
of a race of beings whom he knew to be entirely fabulous, we cer-
tainly could not praise him for his integrity. Our Lord and his
apostles talked and acted as if they believe d that evil spirits had
actually entered into those who wore brought to them as possessed
with devils, and as if those spirits had been actually expelled by
their authority from the unhappy persons possessed. They also
demanded that their authority and declarations should be believed,
in consequence of their performing such mighty works, and thus
Our blessed Saviour indeed was a person of so grave
and serious a deportment, that, whatever instances we
find of his pity and compassion to mankind, of his griev-
ing and being troubled, and even weeping upon some
triumphing over the powers of hell." The reality of demoniacal
possession rests on the same evidence as the gospel system in
general. There is nothing unreasonable in this doctrine. We
often fancy ourselves able to comprehend things to which our un-
derstanding is wholly inadequate; we frequently persuade our-
selves that the whole extent of the works of the Deity must be
well known to us, and that his designs must always be such as
we can understand. We are then ready, whenever any difficulty
arises in considering the conduct of providence, to model things
according to our own ideas, to deny that the Deity can be the
author of things for which we are not able to account, and to as-
sert that he must act on every occasion in a manner 'consistent
with our narrow views. This is the pride of reason, which seems
to have suggested the strongest objections against the reality of
demoniacal possessions. But the Supreme Being may surely
employ whatever agents he may think proper, in the execution
of his purposes. All that divine revelation makes known, all
that human reason can conjecture, concerning the existence of
various orders of spiritual beings, good or bad, is perfectly con-
sistent with, aud favourable to, the doctrine of demoniacal pos-
session. It is mentioned in the New Testament in such language,
and such narratives are related concerning it, that the gospel can
be regarded only as parts of an imposture, if this doctrine be only
a vulgar error. In confirmation of these views, it may further
be remarked, that the demons mentioned in the New Testament
as possessing persons were conceived to be malignant spirits.
They are exhibited as the causes of the most direful calamities
to the unhappy persons whom they possess — dumbness, deafness,
madness, palsy, epilepsy, and the like. The descriptive titles
given them, always denote some ill quality or other. Most fre-
quently they are called unclean spirits, sometimes malign spirits.
They are represented as conscious that they are doomed to misery
and torments, though their punishments be for a while suspend-
ed. It is evident that the devil and his angels, according to all
that we can learn of them in the sacred books, are real beings,
that the demons of the New Testament are malignant spirits,
arid that they act upon the same principles, and even under the
authority of Satan himself, who is otherwise called Beelzebub,
and the prince of the devils. Nay, in these very cases of pos-
session, the chief of the apostate angels is clearly set forth as
acting either in his own person or by means of his infernal agents.
And it is on this supposition alone that we can explain the lan-
guage of Christ in that remarkable declaration which he makes
to the Pharisees and rulers of the Jews, and which we find re-
corded in the twelfth chapter of the gospel Ly Matthew : ' the
Pharisees heard it, and they said, this fellow doth not cast out
devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. And Jesus
knew their thoughts, and said unto them, every kingdom divided
against itself is brought to desolation, aud every city or house
divided against itself, shall not stand: and if Satan cast out Satan,
he is divided against himself, how shall then his kingdom stand?'
It should also be observed, that the inspired writers uniformly
make a distinction between diseases occurring in the ordinary
course of nature, and diseases occasioned by the agency of evil
spirits. " There is every where," says Bishop Porteus, " a plain
distinction made between common diseases and demoniacal pos-
sessions, which shows that they are totally different things. In
the fourth chapter of the gospel by Matthew, where the very first
mention is made of these possessions, it is said that our Lord's
' tame went throughout all Syria, and that they brought unto him
all sick people, that were taken with divers diseases and torments,
and those which were possessed with devils, and he healed them.'
Here, those that were taken with divers diseases and torments,
and those possessed with devils, are mentioned as distinct and
separate persons: a plain proof that the demoniacal possessions
were not natural diseases; and the very same distinction is made
in several other passages of holy writ. There can be no doubt,
therefore, that the demoniacs were persons really possessed with
evil spirits; and although it may seem strange to us, yet we
find from Josephus and other historians, that it was in those times
no uncommon case." — Por/eus's Lectures on St Mat., vol. i. p.
'2H4 : Fanner's Essay on the Demoniacs of the New Testament i
Jorlin's Remarks on F.cclcs. Hist. vol. i. ; Lardner 's /forks, vol. i.
—En.
Sect. I.]
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877
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occasions, we can meet with none of his laughing, nor
any token of a mirth or joy extraordinary, in the whole
history of his life : but we must not from hence infer,
that he was of a stiff' and precise temper, or in any degree
an enemy to such forms of civility, or social usages, as
were then in practice. If therefore we may be allowed
to suppose, what seems indeed highly probable, that this
marriage at Cana was between persons of his own kin-
dred and acquaintance, and that by the very rules of
celebrating such festivals among the Jews, all excess
and intemperance was excluded, then will it follow, that
it could be no disparagement to our Saviour's character
to accept of the invitation that was made him, and to be
present at such a meeting.
Among us indeed, especially among the vulgar sort,
there are sometimes, on these occasions, liberties taken
that are not so justifiable ; but, among the Jews, there
was always the greatest decency and sobriety imaginable
observed in the celebration of their marriages. " To this
purpose a governor of the feast, as some say of the
sacerdotal race, was always chosen, whose office it was
to have the superintendency of the dishes and wine, and
to oblige the guests to observe all the deeorums that
religion required ; and not only so, but other persons, at
this time, were likewise appointed to break glass vessels,
as a common signal, to give the company notice, that
they had already drank enough, and were not permitted
to run to excess. Under this regulation, it is scarcely
imaginable that the guests, at a Jewish marriage, could be
guilty of any intemperance, and least of all at this in Ga-
lilee, where our Saviour's presence and observation, the
gravity of his behaviour, and the seasonableness of his dis-
course, might well be presumed to heighten the decorum,
and to keep all the company under a proper restraint.
What therefore the governor of the feast says to the
bridegroom, 2 in relation to the water that was turned
into wine, is to be understood only as a general repre-
sentation of a custom, usual at other festivals, which was,
to bring the best wine at first, and towards the conclusion,
that which was worse ; which custom, as the governor
tells him, was not observed here ; for the difference be-
tween this entertainment and others is, that ' thou hast
kept the good wine until now.' 3 So that ' when men
have well drunk,' is only a circumstance thrown in to
illustrate the comparison, or describe the latter end of a
feast, and has no manner of reference to the condition
of the company then present. But allowing the words
orctv ftidvaduoi, to be a description of the condition that
die company were then in, yet it will by no means fol-
low, that they had proceeded to any intemperance, be-
cause the words are equally capable of an innocent, as
well as vicious meaning. * Mi6vttv indeed, in its primi-
tive signification, means no more than ' drinking after
the sacrifice ;' and as there is nothing in the etymology
that determines this to be done to excess, or beyond the
proper bounds of joy in a festival, so there are several
instances in scripture, wherein it was certainly done
according to the rules of sobriety and moderation.
Thus, to mention one out of many, in the Seventy's ver-
sion of (ienesis, where it is said, that 5 ' Joseph's brethren
drank, and were merry with him,' the words are ifitdva-
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. I.
%actv per ctvrov, and yet no one can imagine, but that,
in their present circumstances, thinking no other than
that he was the governor of Egypt, and being apprehen-
sive that he had no good design against them, they were
too much upon their guard, and solicitous about their
own safety, to give any way to intemperance in his
presence : and, if the expression here, and in « several
other passages, may be taken in a virtuous sense, we
cannot but conclude, unless we can suppose that St John
designed to expose his Master's behaviour upon this
occasion, that he intended we should understand him in
the most favourable acceptation. «
We, indeed, in our translation, say, that the water-
pots, wherein the wine was created, 7 contained two or
three firkins apiece ; but some, who have looked more
nicely into ^e-rgjjTijj, or measure, here spoken of, 6 have
brought it so low, as to make the whole six pots hold no
more than about fourteen or fifteen gallons of our
English measure. But not to descend so low, we will
suppose, at present, that the quantity of wine made by
our Saviour at this feast, was as large as our translation
represents it ; yet whoever considers the nature of
Jewish marriages, how they were celebrated with feast-
ing and rejoicings, not only on the day of solemnity,
as it is with us, but for six or seven days after, and that
at these feasts not only all their relations, and neigh-
bours, and acquaintance, were invited, but that it was
well taken likewise, if any others, though not invited,
would come to partake of the entertainment, and bear a
share in the joy : whoever considers this, I say, cannot
but imagine, that a very large quantity of wine must
needs be requisite at such a time, since it was to be a
supply, not for that day only, but for all the succeeding
days, until the time of the feasting was expired.
Nay, even supposing farther, that our Lord, upon this
occasion, did not confine himself to a precise quantity,
proportionate to the company, or period of the festival,
and, what is more, 9 that some of the company might
abuse his liberality by their intemperance, which is a
concession not to be gathered from the text, yet he can-
not therefore be charged with the administering to their
excess, by making such an ample provision, any more
than we can charge the providence of God with being
instrumental to all the gluttony and drunkenness which
is committed in the world, merely because he affords that
1 Lewis's Antiq. of the Heb. Repub. vol. iii. 2 John ii. 10.
Dr Poarce's Vindication of our Saviour's Miracles, part iii.
* Ibid. >■ Chap, xliii. 31.
6 See Whitby's Annot. ad locum.
7 John ii. 6. 8 See Cumberland, of Weights and Measures.
9 Whitby's Annot. in locum.
a The probability is, that the expression under consideration
relates not at all to excess, nor indeed to drinking at any other
feast than that which was kept at a marriage. The Abbi Mariti,
speaking of the age of the wines of Cyprus, says, — ' It is certain,
that at the birth of a son or daughter, the father causes a jar filled
with wine to be buried in the earth, having first taken the pre-
caution to seal it hermetically; and in this manner it is kept till
the child's marriage. It is then placed on the table before the
bride and bridegroom, and is distributed among their relations,
and tlie other guests invited to the wedding.' If such a custom
prevailed formerly, and prevailed among the Jews, it is evident
that the wine first drunk at a marriage feast must have been the
best, as nothing but wine of a very superior quality could have
been preserved from the birth of a child to his or her marriage,
even at the early age at which marriages were made in Judea.
The probability therefore is, that the governor of the feast meant
nothing more than to express his surprise at the bridegroom's
having deviated, as he supposed, from the common practice of
presenting, the jar of old and superior wine at first. — See Bur-
tier's Oriental Customs.
878
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4034. A. D. 30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28.
meat and drink, which men of inordinate appetites abuse
to excess. The truth is, as it is a high commendation
of providence, that it crowns us with plenty, whatever
use we make of it, and bestows upon us all things richly
to enjoy ; so was it not unbecoming a person, invested
with a divine commission, to give, on this occasion, an
eminent instance of his flowing liberality, and, by his
generous provision for the family, to leave a grateful
memorial of his benevolent regard to two persons that
very likely were his relations, and had just entered into
the honourable state of matrimony.
Since therefore our Lord answered, in so free and
plentiful a manner, his mother's request at last, there
seems to be something in their supposition, who, from
the propriety * of the Greek expression, think that his
mother spake to him, before the wine was out, but when
it grew so low that she plainly perceived there would
not be enough for the company ; and therefore our Savi-
our's reply to her will very justly bear this sense, TV ifiol
xxl vol ; ' what is it to you or me ?' that is, the care of pro-
viding wine upon this occasion does not properly belong
to you or me ; but admitting it did, ' my hour is not yet
come.' It is too soon as yet to set about it ; because it
is highly fitting that the necessity of that supernatural
supply, which 1 intend them, should be a little more felt,
in order to recommend the benefit itself, and to give the
manner of attaining it a power of making a deeper im-
pression on their minds.
This seems to be no unnatural construction of the
words, and removes all the seeming harshness of our
Saviour's answer, ' woman, what have I to do with thee?'
We mistake the matter, however, very much, if we think
that the word yyvij, which we render woman, was any
title of disrespect or indifference, as it seems to be in
our translation, since it is frequently used by the best
authors, when the highest marks of esteem are intended.
The polite Xenophon himself puts it in the mouth of one
of his Persian chiefs, when he was addressing himself to
a captive lady, and comforting her under her unfortunate
circumstances ; and certainly a time there was, that our
Lord called his mother by this appellation, when he was
far from being harsh or undutiful to her, even when he
was hanging on the cross, and tenderly recommending
both his mother to the care of his beloved apostle, and
that apostle to his mother's love and affection,2' woman
behold thy son.' So little does our Saviour's conduct,
in this whole transaction, deserve these horrid and im-
pious censures which of late have been thrown upon it !
W hatever some modern Jews and infidels may allege
against the abuse, as they pretend, which the writers of
the New Testament have put upon the prophecies of
the Old, by applying them to a wrong sense ; 3 no man
need be told, that an attempt of this nature had been
as impertinent, the affront to man's reason as insolent,
and the event as fruitless, nay as fatal to their cause,
had they imposed a false, or even controverted, sense
upon the predictions confessedly relating to the Messiah,
as it would have been had they urged such predictions
as were not acknowledged to belong to him at all. The
truth is, if the Jews understood the prophecies relating
to the Messiah in one sense, and the apostles, in their
1 'VrrrfiffuvTo; o'/vou, ver. 3. 2 John xix. 25. 27.
• Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures, sermon viii.
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
address to them, applied them in another, we cannot
see how they could ever have made one proselyte,
being in the same condition with what St Paul describes,
when he tells us, that, 4 ' he who speaketh in an unknown
tongue,' and why not he that speaketh in an unknown
meaning, speaketh to the air, and becometh a barbarian
to him that heareth, but understandeth him not. So that
every Jew converted to the Christian faith is an implicit
proof of the apostle's applying the ancient prophecies in
a sense that was then current and familiar to them.
That the famous prophecy in Isaiah 5 is thus applied by
St Matthew, 6 to prove that Christ was born of an immacu-
late virgin, we took occasion to show. The remaining
allegation is, that the name of the person of wjioni the
prophet speaks was to be Immanuel ; whereas the name
of that son of Mary, of whom St Matthew speaks by
God's express command, was Jesus ; and therefore the
words of the prophet are misapplied by the evangelist.
Now, nothing is more common in scripture than by
the calling or naming of a person or thing, not to mean
that the person or thing would be commonly distinguished
by that name, but only that it should have such properties
and qualities in it as that name did denote ; or, in other
words, that it should really be what the full sense of that
name imported. Thus, of the city of Jerusalem it is
foretold by the prophet, 7 that it should be called ' the city
of righteousness,' when it really was to be such a city ;
for in the foregoing words it is promised, ' that God would
restore her judges as at the first, and her counsellors as
at the beginning.' And in like manner, though it be
declared by this prophet, 8 that the wonderful child which
God promised to the house of David should be called
Immanuel ; yet if he was but what that name properly
imports, God with us, in a most eminent and pe-
culiar manner, it is not to be doubted but that the pro-
phecy received its full completion in the person of our
Saviour Christ.
For, besides God's universal presence, there is a pre-
sence of favour and distinction, whereby he is said to
be, in a more peculiar manner, with those whom he loves
and blesses above others. And in this regard the child
here spoken of is justly called Immanuel, because, as
St Paul speaks, 9 ' God was in him reconciling the world
to himself,' for his sake and sufferings, ' not imputingtheir
trespasses unto them ;' so that by him lu they who were
some time afar oft' are made nigh, have access to the Fa-
ther, are accepted in the Beloved, u ' and become, of ene-
mies and strangers, friends and children, insomuch that
God vouchsafes to dwell in them and to be one of them.
And as God unites us to himself by grace, so did he, in this
child, condescend, by an ineffable generation, to unite
our substance and nature to himself, "to be perfect God
and perfect man,12 that so he might be the first-born among
many brethren, and redeem the children from death, who
are partakers of flesh and blood, by himself taking part
of the same." Let it not then be any more objected, that
the child in the prophecy could not be called Immanuel,
whom we confess to have been called Jesus ; for he is
therefore our Immanuel, because our Jesus ; therefore,
most eminently, most literally, ' God with us,' because, by
4 1 Cor. xiv. 2.
6 Chap. i. 23. ■■
" 2 Cor. v. 19.
11 Ibid. i. 6.
5 Chap. vii. 14.
Is. i. 26. " Ibid, chaj). vii. 14.
'"Eph. ii. 13. 18
12 Rom. viii. 29; Heb. ii. 14.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
879
A. M. 4034. A. D.30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A M. 5139. A. D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO M AT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
so miraculous an union, ' a Saviour of his people from
their sins.'
It may seem perhaps surprising to some, that St Mat-
thew should so frequently introduce his citations with a
1 This was done, that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by the prophet:' but whoever considers the
idiom of the Hebrew tongue, cannot but know that the
phrase, answering to the expressions, ' that it might be
fulfilled,' means no more, than that hereby was verified,
or that this event answered to the prediction, or the like.
Nay, the Jews were accustomed to say, that a passage
of scripture was then fulfilled, when any thing happened
that was applicable to it ; and therefore it is no wonder,
that St Matthew, who himself was a Jew, and very pro-
bably wrote his gospel in the Hebrew tongue for the
benefit of his countrymen, should naturally fall into their
style and manner of expression.*
* Though it should be admitted, that the word ■x'kYiooiSn in
Mat. i. 22, is used in the strictest sense, to express the fulfil-
ment of a prophecy, which pointed to this single event; it can-
not be denied that the general import of the verb -rXn^ou, in the
gospel, is more properly expressed by the English verb verify,
than by fulfil. Those things are said ■rknguSwa,!, which are
no predictions of the future, but mere affirmations concerning
the present, or the past. Thus, chap. ii. 15, a declaration from
the prophet Hosea, (xi. 1.) which God made in relation to the
people of Israel, whom he had long before recalled from Egypt,
is applied by the historian allusively to Jesus Christ, where all
that is meant is, that, with equal truth, or rather with much
greater energy of signification, God might now say, "I have
recalled my Son out of Egypt." Indeed the import of the
Greek phrase, as commonly used by the sacred writers, is no
more, as Le Clerc has justly observed, than that such words of any
of the prophets may be applied with truth to such an event.
For it is even used, where that which is said to be fulfilled is
not a prophecy, but a command ; and where the event spoken of
is not the obedience of the command (though the term is some-
times used in this sense also,) but an event similar to the tiling
required ; and which, if I may so express myself, tallies with
the words. Thus, in the directions given about the manner of
preparing the paschal lamb, it is said, (Exod. xii. 46.) ' none of
his bones shall be broken.' This saying the evangelist John
(xix. 36.) finds verified in what happened to our Lord, when the
legs of the criminals who were crucified with him, were broken,
and his were spared. ' But were not the recall of Israel from
Egypt, and the ceremonies of the passover, typical of what hap-
pened to our Lord ? I admit they were. But it is not the
correspondence of the antitype to the type, that we call properly
fulfilling: this English word, if I mistake not, is, in strictness,
applied only, either to an event to which a prophecy directly
points, or to the performance of a promise. Whereas the Greek
word is sometimes employed in scripture to denote little more
than a coincidence in sound. In this sense I think it is used,
chap. ii. 23. We have an instance of its being employed by the
Seventy, to denote verifying or confirming the testimony of one,
by the testimony of another, 1 Kings i. 14. The word fulfill-
ing, in our language, has a much more limited signification:
and to employ it for all those purposes, is to give a handle to cavil-
lers, where the original gives none. It makes the sacred penman
appear to call those things predictions, which plainly were not,
and which they never meant to denominate predictions. The most
apposite word that I could find in English is verify; for, though
it will not answer in every case, it answers in more cases than
any other of our verbs. Thus, a prophecy is verified (for the
word is strictly applicable here also), when it is accomplished;
a promise, when it is performed ; a testimony, when it is con-
firmed by additional testimony, or other satisfactory evidence ;
a maxim or proverb, when it is exemplified; a declaration of any
kind may be said to be verified by any incident to which the
words can be applied. 1 acknowledge that this word does not,
in every case, correspond to •x\i\^oa. A law is fulfilled, not
verified; and if the import of the passage he to denote that addi-
tional strength is given to it, it is better to say confirmed, or
ratified. In some places it means to fill-up, in others to perfect,
in others to make known. — Campbell oti the Gospels, vol. ii. — En.
Now, whoever considers the state of the Jews in
Egypt, their bondage, and danger of utter extinction, by
reason of the decree which passed for the destruction of
all their male children, (had not the providence of God
prevented the execution of it) will soon perceive the
cause, why Egypt is made in scripture the common figure
and emblem of extreme danger, and imminent death ;
and why a deliverance out of Egypt should be applied
to every great act of preservation, where there seemed
to be no visible means of escape ; insomuch, that when-
ever any instance of such a watchful and protecting pro -
vidence happened, it was an usual and proverbial speech
among the Jews (who were wont then, as they are still,
to apply sentences out of holy writ to the common oc-
currences of life) to say, in scripture phrase, ' Out of
Egypt have I called my Son,' or ' He hath called him
out of Egypt,' that is, he hath rescued him from the jaws of
death, or from the like danger that the Israelites were
in when he brought them out of Egypt with a mighty
hand and a stretched-out arm. Since Joseph then was
ordered to flee to Egypt, and tarry there until Herod was
dead, for this reason, because Herod sought the young
child's life ; this distinguishing preservation of Jesus,
by means of his retreat, till the danger was over, will
justify the evangelist (even though it had been any other
country, as well as Egypt, whereunto he retired) in
applying to him the proverbial saying upon that occa-
sion, l "Out of Egypt (that is, out of manifest danger)
have I called my son."
The deportation of the ten tribes from their native
country into a foreign land, there to die or live in
slavery, was so grievous a calamity, that the prophet
Jeremiah 2 byway of prosopopoeia, introduces Rachel,
the favourite wife of Jacob , that great progenitor of the
Israelites, making bitter lamentation for their loss, and
refusing all consolation, because there were no hopes of
their recovery. And the murder of so many innocent
babes at Bethlehem, by the bloody decree of Herod,
was an event so dolorous to their tender parents, that
the evangelist, when he came to relate it, thought he
might justly, by way of accommodation, apply the
words of the prophet, and, in the name of all the mis-
erable mothers that had lost their children, make Rachel
upon this occasion, and as a farther accomplishment of
the prophecy, return to her weeping again. The rather
because Rachel, having been long dead before the cap-
tivity, may, with equal propriety, by the evangelist, as
she is by the prophet, be introduced weeping; the rather,
because she was 3 so fond a lover of children, that she is
fitly enough brought in here in the room of the tendor
mothers who wept for the loss of theirs ; and the rather,
because the slaughter of the Bethlehemites might be call-
ed that of her children, because among them * was the
place of her sepulchre, after that she had lost her life in
the bitter pangs of childbirth.
There is no prophet, we own, wherein it is expressly
said, that the Messiah should be called a Nazarene ; 5
but the observation of St Jerome, in his comment upon
this place, is not amiss, namely, that when St Matthew 6
1 Mat. ii. J 5. s Chap. xxxi. 15.
3 Gen. xxx. 1. < Ibid. xxxv. 19.
Bishop Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, part ii. c. 3,
"Chap. ii. 23.
880
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4034. A. D. 30. ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5139. A. D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. '2*f. LUKE vi. I.
learning, and integrity ; of which ours, and some other
translations of the Bible, have been so sensible, as very
prudently to decline the odious name of magicians ,
and to call them ' the wise men of the east ;' but what
part of the east it was that they came from, few interpre-
ters have agreed.
7 Some have imagined that these travellers came out
of Persia ; others from Chaldea, others from Arabia, and
others again from Mesopotamia. All these countries
lay eastward from Jerusalem and the Holy Land ; and
in each of these, some antecedent notions of the Messiah
may be accounted for. In Chaldea and Persia, by the
captivity of the Jews, and the books of Daniel ; in
Arabia, by the nearness of their neighbourhood, and
frequent commerce ; and in Mesopotamia, besides these
common helps, they had the prophecy of their country-
man Balaam, concerning a star 8 that should come out
of Jacob to direct them. 9 But as we know of no re-
cord, wherein this prophecy was preserved, but the book
of Moses, which the people of Mesopotamia neither read
nor believed, so it seems evident, that Balaam's words
do not refer to a star that should arise at any prince's
birth, but to a certain king, who should be as glorious
and splendid in his dominions, as the stars are in the
firmament. Upon the whole, therefore, it seems most
likely that these wise men came out of Arabia, 10 which,
according to Tacitus, was the bound of Judea eastward,
not only because the gifts which they presented were the
natural products of that country, which was famous like-
wise for its magi, insomuch that Pythagoras, as Porphyry
informs us, went into Arabia to acquire wisdom ; but be-
cause its neighbourhood to Judea might give these wise
men the advantage of discerning the star better than any
more distant nation had.
For, that this star was no celestial one, and such as
might be seen at a vast distance, its motion, contrary to
the ordinary course of stars, its performing the part of
a guide to the travellers, and that by day, very probably,
as well as night, its accommodating itself to their neces-
sities, and disappearing and returning, as they could
best, or least, be without it ; and, what is a circumstance
as remarkable as any, its pointing out, and standing over
the very place where the child was, which the height and
distance of common stars makes it impossible for them
to do, are a sufficient demonstration. It seems not im-
probable, therefore, that what the evangelist calls a star,
was only that glorious light u that shone upon the Beth-
lehem shepherds, when the angel came to impart unto
them the tidings of our Saviour's birth ; for that this light
was exceeding great, is clear from that expression, which
styles it the I2 ' glory of the Lord,' and that it was a light
from heaven hanging over their heads, the words in the 13
Greek, as well as 14 Latin version, sufficiently inform us.
Now, every one knows, that such a light, at a great
distance, appears like a star ; or at least, after it had
thus shone about the shepherds, it might be lifted up on
high, and then formed into the likeness of a star, where
standing vertically over Judea for some time, it might
direct the Arabian astrologers, whom so strange a phe-
nomenon could hardly escape, to the capital city, as the
mentions the word prophets in the plural number, whereas,
in other places, he had always cited some particular
prophet, he thereby shows that he did not take the words
from the prophets, but only the sense. Since then the
title of Nazarene bodi Jews and other enemies of Chris-
tianity have always, by way of contempt, given to our
blessed Saviour, because he was supposed to come out
of that very city, from whence it was thought impossible,
that l any good thing should come ; and since most of
the prophets speak of Christ, as a person that was to be
reputed vile and abject, 2 a stranger to his brethren, and
even an alien to his mother's sons, 3 despised and re-
jected of men, despised and esteemed not, here is the
plain sense of the words, ' he shall be a Nazarene,' 4 and
the angel, by God's appointment, no doubt, sent him
to this contemptible place, that he might thence have a
name of infamy and contempt put upon him, ac-
cording to the frequent intimation by the prophets.
5 The word we render wise men, in its original, sig-
nifies magicians ; which, however now it bespeaks not
so good a character, was, nevertheless, heretofore a
name of very innocent and honourable signification.
The studious and inquisitive, whose business and profes-
sion led them to search into nature, its most abstruse
causes and effects, and more particularly into the motions
and dispositions of heavenly bodies, were distinguished
by this title : and in what profound veneration and re-
spect they were held, appears from the most important
matters, both sacred and civil, being committed to their
administration. They were the counsellors, the judges,
the priests, the princes, in a word, the oracles of the
eastern countries. But, as the best arts are sometimes
perverted to ill purposes ; so it happened to these, that,
falling into the hands of bad men, who met with people
ignorant and credulous, and not only easy, but even
glad, to be deluded, they degenerated into the cheats of
judiciary astrology ; and. these abuses grew so general,
as, at last, to fix an ill sense upon the word, and a
scandal on the science itself.
It were a wrong and great indignity to the persons
now before us, not to believe them of the nobler and
better sort; but we can hardly be persuaded, though
some would endeavour to do it, that they were persons
of royal dignity, 6 because we cannot reasonably sup-
pose that the evangelist would have omitted a circum-
stance of so great moment, both for their honour and
our Lord's. We can hardly think but that some account
would have been given of their royal train and equipage
and that all Jerusalem would have been moved as much
to see their entry, as they were to hear their questions :
nor can we imagine that it would have been decent in
Herod to have received them with no more respect ; to
have dismissed them to Bethlehem without attendants ;
much less to have laid his commands upon them to return
back, and bring him an account of the child, as soon as
they had found him, had they been persons of equal rank
and dignity with himself. Upon these considerations
we may justly deny them the title of kings, though we
cannot but allow them to be persons of great wisdom,
Is. liii.
1 ^hn i. 46. *ps. ixjx< 8<
4 W hitby's Annotations in locu....
5 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels," vol
6 Whitby's Annotations on Mat. ii. l, &c
' Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
8 Num. xxiv. 17. 9 Whitby's Annotations.
^ ,0 Ibid. > H Ibid. a Lake ii. 9.
3 ni£iixaf*-j,ii ccItous. '< Emicuit ex alto.
Shot. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &<
881
A.M. 4134. A. D.30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5439. A. D. 2S. FROM BEGIN. OFGOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 21 LUKE vi. 1.
tendency is to another ; and then it will appear, that
there is no certain measure to be taken of the divine
justice or goodness, towards us, without taking in the dis-
tributions of that other life, which, indeed, is the main
end of our living at all. What Solomon, therefore, in
his wisdom, says of the righteous in general, is much
more verified in the case of these harmless babes : 8 ' In
the sight of the unwise, they seemed to die, and their
departure is taken for misery ; but they are in peace :
for, though they were punished in the sight of men, yet
is their hope full of immortality.' 9 For a frail, a short,
a troublesome, a dangerous life, God gives them the re-
compence of an immortal, a securely happy, a complete-
ly glorious one ; which not only vindicates, but magnifies
his goodness and liberality to them. He considers their
infancy, and the noble fruit which might have sprung
from these tender plants, had they been allowed to grow
to full maturity, and accordingly rewards them : for,
though they wanted the will of martyrdom, which riper
years may have, yet it must be allowed, that they were
clear of that voluntary and actual sin which those riper
years would have contracted : and therefore, as in the
most literal sense, 10 they were not defiled with sensual
pleasures, but left the world in virgin-innocence, as they
were truly redeemed from among men, whose early trans-
lation to a state of bliss, prevented the hazards and
temptations of a wicked world ; and, as they were,
strictly speaking, the first fruits unto God and the Lamb,
who began to shed their blood in the cause of a new born
Saviour, so God hath been pleased to vouchsafe them a
peculiar honour, iU to sing, as it were, a new song before
the throne, and to follow the Lamb whithersoever he
goeth, because in their mouth was found no guile ; for
they were without fault before the throne of God.'
We have but one objection more to answer, and that
is a seeming inconsistency in our Saviour, in discovering
to the Samaritan woman his divine character, which he
had so often desired his disciples to conceal. Our
Saviour, it is true, was so far from making any unneces-
sary declarations of himself, that, both upon 12 St Peter's
confessing him to be the Christ, and13 after his transfig-
uration, wherein he was declared to be the Son of God,
we find him charging his disciples to say nothing of this,
until his resurrection ; H because their testimony, in these
points, might not only be like a matter concerted between
him and them, but because indeed they were not qualified
to be his witnesses in these things, until they had received
power from on high, by the coming down of the Holy
Ghost. It is to be observed, however, that, when our
Lord is himself fairly called upon, and especially by
persons invested with authority, he never once conceals
his divine nature and commission.
When 15 the Jews came round in Solomon's porch, and
said unto him, ' How long dost thou make us doubt ? If
thou be the Christ, tell us plainly ;' his answer is express ;
' I told you, and ye believed not : the works that I do
in my Father's name, they bear witness of me ; for I and my
Father are one.' AA hen he stood before the judgment-
seat, and the high priest demanded of him, 16 ' I adjure
likeliest place to gain intelligence of the new-born king,
whose ' star they had seen in the east,' that is, from the
place of their abode, which was in the east : for, should
we suppose that this light was placed in any part of the
eastern hemisphere, it would have denoted something
extraordinary among the Indians, or eastern nations,
rather than among the people of the Jews.
1 But how came these eastern sages to know that this
star, or luminous appearance in the heavens, place it where
we will, denoted the birth of a king? Now, for the re-
solution of this question, it must be observed, what "
some heathen historians tell us, namely, ' that through
the whole east it was expected, that about this time a
king was to arise out of Judea, who should rule over all
the world.' Nor could it well be otherwise, since, from
the time of the Babylonish captivity, we find the Jews
dispersed 3 through all the provinces of the Persian
monarchy, and that * in great numbers, and 5 many
people of the land becoming Jews ; and, after their
return home, increasing so mightily, that they were
dispersed through Africa, Asia, and many cities and
islands of Europe, and, as Josephus 6 tells us, wherever
they dwelt, making many proselytes to their religion.
a 7 Now these wise men, living so near to Judea, the seat of
this prophecy, and conversing with Jews, that is, with
those who every where expected the completion of it at
that time, as soon as they came to see this extraordinary
star, or body of light, hovering over Judea, they might
rationally conjecture that it signified the completion of
that celebrated prophecy concerning the king of Jewry,
over the centre of which land, they, being then in the
east, might see this meteor hang.
Not long after the departure of these eastern sages
from Bethlehem, we find a prodigious multitude of inno-
cent babes inhumanly put to death, upon the account of
him whom these wise men came to adore. But, to vin-
dicate the justice and goodness of providence in this
proceeding, we need not appeal to God's universal
dominion over all his creatures, and the right he has to
take away, in what manner he pleases, the being which
he gives us ; we need only consider the present life, not
as our last .and final state, but as one whose principal
1 Whitby's Annotations.
2 Tacit. Hist, and b. 5; Suet, de Vita Vesp. p. 4.
3 Est. iii. 8. 4 (bid. ix. 2. 5 Ibid. iii. 13.
6 Antiq. b. xiv. c. 12. ' Whitby's Annotations.
a This visit which the magi, under the divine direction, made
to the Son of God at his entrance into the world, answered
several valuable purposes. 1. The principal thing was to show-
succeeding generations what expectations of him were entertained
at this very time among the Gentiles, and thereby to confirm in
latest ages, the existence of those prophecies which had raised
such a general hope in the breasts of mankind. 2. It is far from
being absurd to suppose, that these philosophers, by the tidings
wbicb they carried home concerning the king of the Jews, might
prepare their countrymen for becoming his subjects in due time,
For if their report was remembered by the succeeding generation,
it must have contributed not a little to their cheerful reception
of the gospel when it was preached to them. 3. The coming of
the magi occasioned the answer of the sanhedrim, wherein it
was declared to be the unanimous opinion of the most learned
Jewish doetors then living, that, by the designation of heaven,
Bethlehem was to be the place of their Messiah's nativity. 4.
The seasonable beneficence of those learned strangers, put Joseph
in a condition to subsist his family in Egypt, whither he was
soon to be sent from the wrath of the king. — Macknight's Har-
x>Kny, vol. i. — Ed.
s Wisdom iii. 2, &c.
9 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol i
10 Rev. xiv. 4. " Ibid. ver. 3 — 5. '' Mark viii. 29.
'» Mat. xvii. 9. '4 Whitby's Annotations on Mat. ix. 30.
' ' John x. 25, &c. 16 Mat. xxvi. G3, 04.
5 T
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thee by the living- God, that thou tell us. whether thou
be the Christ, the Son of God ;' his answer is, ' thou hast
said ;' or, as St Mark 1 expresses it, 'lam; and ye shall
see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power,
and coming in the clouds of heaven.' Nay, there arc
some instances, wherein, of his own accord, and without
any provocation of this kind, he freely discovers who he
was ; for, having cured the man that was born blind, and
afterwards meeting hiin accidentally, 2 ' Dost thou be-
lieve on the Son of God?' says he. Whereupon the man
asking, ' Who is the Son of God, that 1 may believe on
him ?' Our Saviour replies, ' Thou hast both seen him, and
it is he whotalketh with thee :' and therefore we need less
wonder that, when this Samaritan woman had first of all
confessed him to be a prophet, and, as her words seem
to imply, 3 was a little dubious whether he was not the
Messiah, our Saviour should prevent her inquiry, and
tell her voluntarily that he was. Especially con-
sidering, that * such a declaration might be a means to
prepare her, and the rest of the Samaritans, whenever his
apostles should come and preach the gospel unto them,
to receive their testimony, as we find, by the history of
the apostolic acts, that they did it with great gladness.
Thus have we endeavoured to satisfy all the exceptions
of any weight, that the lovers of infidelity have hitherto
made to this part of the evangelical history ; and, if Chris-
tianity stood in need either of the support or testimony of
heathen authors, we might say, that the incarnation of
Christ the Son of God, is no more than 5 what the Greeks,
as Julian avers, affirm both of iEsculapius and Pythago-
ras, namely, that they were both the sons of Jupiter, though
they appeared in human nature, which doctrine, in the
evangelist St John, Amelius, a the master of Porphyry,
allows to be true : That the birth of our blessed Jesus of
a virgin immaculate is no more than 6 what the ancient
Jewish doctors expected in their Messiah ; and therefore
Simon Magus, who greatly affected that character, pre-
tended that his mother Rachel bore him without the loss
of her virginity : That the new star, or body of light,
which, upon our Saviour's birth, conducted the wise men
to him, u is acknowledged by Julian, though he would
gladly ascribe it to natural causes, is set off with great
eloquence by Chalcidius, in his comment upon Plato's
Tima?us,and perhaps might be that very phenomenon, c
1 Mark xiv. 62. 2 John ix. 35, &c. 3 Ibid. iv. 25.
* Whitby, in locum. 5 Huetii Qurest. Alnet. b. ii. c. 13.
6 Ibid. c. 15. ' Ibid. Demons, prop. 3.
a This Platonist, upon reading the beginning of St John's gos-
pel, swore by Jupiter, "That the Barbarian" as he called him,
" had hit upon the right notion, when he affirmed that the Word,
which made all things, was in the beginning, in place of prime
dignity and authority with God, and was that God who created
all things, and in whom every thing that was made, had, according
to his nature, its life and being ; that he was incarnate, and cloth-
ed with a body, wherein he manifested the glory and magnificence
of his nature ; and that, after his death, he returned to the re-
possession of his divinity, and became the same God which he was
before his assuming a body, and taking the human nature and
flesh upon him." — Euseb. Prap. ix. Evang. b. xi.
b In his relation of some portentous significations of stars, he
adds : "There is another tale told of a more sacred and holy nature ;
it says that, at the appearance of a certain unusual star, diseases,
and pestilences were not, as is commonly the case, foretold, but
the descent of a holy God, for the benefit of the human race, and
its affairs; the star is said to have been.seen by Chaldeans, who
worshipped the young God by the ollering of gifts." — Hammond's
Annotations on Mat. ii. 2.
c The words of Huetius concerning this matter are these: —
which Pliny 8 describes under the name of a comet : that
our Lord's forerunner, John the Baptist, was such a per-
son as the gospel represents him, namely, an exhorter of the
Jews, to the love and practice of virtue, and to regenera-
tion by baptism and newness of Jife, we have an ample tes-
timony in Josephus : that our Lord himself was certainly a
prophet, Phlegon,9rf who was the emperor Adrian's freed -
man, acknowledges, and in his history has related
several events which he foretold ; that he was 10 a great
worker of miracles, the authors of the Talmud own ; nor
can Celsus and Julian, his bitterest enemies, deny it, only
they would gladly impute them to a wrong cause, his great
skill in magical incantations : that human bodies were
frequently possessed with devils, who afflicted them with
grievous and tormenting diseases, is the joint concession
both of u Jamblicus and Minutius Felix ; e and that our
blessed Lord had the power of curing these, 12 and of
destroying the dominion of evil spirits, wherever he came,
is the great complaint of Porphyry, who makes it no
Avonder that their cities should be wasted with plagues,
since iEsculapius, and the rest of the gods, ever since
the admission of the Christian religion, were either be-
come useless or fled. So prevalent is the force of truth,
that it seldom fails to draw confessions from those who
least of all intend them.
CHAP. IV. — An account of the marriage ceremonies
of the east.
SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.
Marriage is evidently meant by scripture and reason,
to be the union of one man with one woman. When God
said, ' It is not good that the man should be alone,' he
promised him the help only of a single mate : ' I will
make him an help meet for him.' 13 This gracious promise
he soon performed in the formation of one woman who
should be joined in wedlock. This design Adam re-
cognized and acknowledged in express terms ; and his
declaration was certainly meant as a rule for his descen-
dants in every succeeding age. ' Therefore shall a man
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his
8 B. ii. c. 25. 9 Antiq. b. xviii. c. 7.
10 Huetii Demons, prop. iii. " De Myster. sect. ii. c. 6.
12 Huetii Demons, prop. iii. '3 Gen. ii. IS.
"Pliny writes that at a certain time there had appeared a brilliant
comet, the silvery hair of which shone so clearly that it could
not be beheld by the human eye, and that it contained in it the
appearance of a God in the shape of a man." — Qurest. Alnet. b.
ii. c. 16.
d He composed a history, digested by Olympiads, as far as
the year of Christ 140. In his history he takes notice, that, in
Olympiad, which determines about the middle of the 33d y«:ar
of the common era, there happened the greatest eclipse of the
sun that ever had been seen, insomuch, that the stars were vis-
ible at noonday, and that afterwards there was a great earth-
quake in Bithynia. Several critics believe that this was the
darkness which happened at the death of Jesus Christ, which is a
matter we shall have occasion to inquire into, when we come to
that part of his history.
e The words of Minutius are worth observing, — " Evil spirits
harass life, disturb our sleep, and even like thin air creep into
our bodies; they create distempers, terrify the mind, rack the
limbs, and compel men to worship them.''
Sbct. L]
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wife, and they shall be one flesh.' These quotations,
which are all couched in terms of the singular number,
are inconsistent with the doctrine of polygamy. The
original appointment was confirmed by our Lord in these
words : ' ' Have ye not read, that he which made you at
the beginning, made them male and female ; and said,
For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and
shall cleave to his wife ; and they twain shall be one
flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh.'
The apostle is not less decisive in his direction to the
churches : 2 ' nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every
man have his own wife ; and let every woman have her
own husband.' But though the law is so decisive, it
cannot be doubted that polygamy was introduced soon
after the creation ; Lamech, one of the descendants of
Cain, and only the sixth person from Adam, married two
wives ; he was probably the first who ventured, in this
manner, to transgress the law of his Maker. This un-
warrantable practice, derived from the antediluvian world,
seems to have become very common after the flood ; for
it is mentioned as nothing remarkable that Sarah, when
she despaired of having children, took her handmaid
Hagar, and gave her to Abraham her husband, by whom
she had a son. Both Esau and Jacob had a number of
wives ; and that is undoubtedly one of the practices
which Moses suffered to remain among his people, be-
cause of the hardness of their hearts, prohibiting only
the high priest to have more than one wife.
Every transgression of the divine law is attended by
its corresponding punishment. Polygamy has proved
in all ages, and in all countries where it has been suf-
fered, a teeming source of evil. The jealousy and
bitter contentions in the family of Abraham, and of his
grandson Jacob, which proceeded from that cause, are
well known, and still more deplorable were the dissen-
sions that convulsed the house, and shook the throne of
David. Such mischiefs are the natural and necessary
effects of the practice ; for polygamy divides the affec-
tions of the husband, and, by consequence, generates in-
curable jealousies and contentions among the unhappy
victims of his licentious desires. To prevent his abode
from becoming the scene of unceasing confusion and
uproar, he is compelled to govern it, as the oriental
polygamist still does, with despotic authority, which at
once extinguishes all the rational and most endearing
comforts of the conjugal state. The husband is a stern
and unfeeling despot ; his harem, a group of trembling
slaves. The children espouse with ardour, unknown to
those who are placed in other circumstances, the cause
of their own mother, and look upon the children of other
wives as strangers and enemies. They regard their
common father with indifference or terror ; while they
cling to their own mother with the fondest affections, as
the only parent in whom they feel any interest, or from
whom they expect any suitable return of attention and
kindness. This state of feeling and attachment is at-
tested by every writer on the manners of the east : and
accounts for a way of speaking so common in the scrip-
tures, 3 ' It is my brother ; the son of my mother,' ' they
were my brethren,' said Gideon, * the sons of my
mother ; as the Lord liveth, if ye had saved them alive,
I would not slay you.' It greatly aggravated the afflic-
1 Mat. xix. 4.
I Cur. vii. 2.
3 Judges viii. 19.
tion of David, that he had become an alien to his mother's
children ; 4 the enmity of his brethren, the relations of his
father's other wives, or his more distant relatives, gave
him less concern ; ' I am become a stranger to my
brethren, and an alien to my mother's children.' The
same allusion occurs in the complaint of the spouse :
' Look not upon me because I am black, because the
sun hath looked upon me : my mother's children were
angry with me : they made me the keeper of the vine-
yards.' s The children of one wife scarcely looked
upon the children of the other wives as their brothers
and sisters at all ; and they scarcely felt more regard
for their father. An oriental, in consequence of this
unnatural practice, takes little notice of an insult offered
to his father, but expresses the utmost indignation when
a word is spoken to the disadvantage of his mother. To
defame or to curse her, is the last insult which his enemy
can offer ; and one which he seldom or never forgives.
' Strike,' cried an incensed African to his antagonist,
' but do not curse my mother.' 6
Marriage contracts seem to have been made in the
primitive ages with little ceremony. The suitor him-
self, or his father, sent a messenger to the father of the
woman, to ask her in marriage. Abraham sent the
principal servant of his household, with a considerable
retinue and costly presents, to the city of Nahor, to take
a wife unto his son Isaac, from among his relations.
The father of the suitor sometimes solicited the person
whom he had chosen for his wife ; for Hamor, the father
of Shechem, went out unto Jacob, to treat with him about
the marriage of Dinah to his son, the heir of his house,
and the hope of his family. If the woman resides under
her father's roof, the parents were consulted, and their
consent obtained ; and the damsel was asked if she
agreed to the proposal. The servant of Abraham stated
the design of his journey to Bethuel and Laban, the
father and brother of Rebekah, and solicited their con-
sent ; and when they had agreed to his request, they
said, ' We will call the damsel and inquire at her mouth.
And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go
with this man ? And she said, I will go.'
The kings and nobles of Israel were not more cere-
monious on these occasions. When David heard that
Nabal was dead, he sent messengers to Abigail to solicit
her hand in marriage. 7 'And they spake unto her, saying,
David sent us unto thee, to take thee to him to wife. And
she arose and bowed herself on her face to the earth,
and said, Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to
wash the feet of the servants of my Lord.' After the
death of Urijah, the same prince sent and fetched Bath-
sheba to his house, and she became his wife. This en-
tirely corresponds with the manner in which the oriental
princes generally form their matrimonial alliances. The
king of Abyssinia " sends an officer to the house where the
lady lives, who announces to her, that it is the king's
pleasure she should remove instantly to the palace. She
then dresses herself in the best manner, and immediately
obeys. Thenceforward he assigns her an apartment in
the palace, and gives her an house elsewhere, in any
part she chooses. The nearest resemblance to marriage
4 Ps. lxix. 8.
Song df Solomon, i. G; sue also chap. viii. 1, 2.
Park's Travels, vol. i. ' 1 Sam. xx\. 10, 41.
884
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
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is when he makes her iteghe or queen ; for whether in
the court or in the camp, he orders one of the judges to
pronounce in his presence, that he, the king, has chosen
his handmaid, naming her, for his queen ; upon which
the crown is put upon her head, but she is not anoint-
ed." »
In the primitive ages, women received no portions
from their relations, when they were married ; but were
purchased by their husbands, whose presents to the
woman's relations were called her dowry. Thus, we
find Shechem bargaining with Jacob and his sons for
Dinah. 2 ' Let me find grace in your eyes, and what ye
shall say unto me, I will give : ask me never so much
dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall
say unto me ; but give me the damsel to wife.' The
practice still continues in the country of Shechem ; for
when a young Arab wishes to marry he must purchase
his wife ; and for this reason, fathers, among the Arabs,
are never more happy than when they have many daugh-
ters. They are reckoned the principal riches of a house.
An Arabian suitor will oiler fifty sheep, six camels, or
a dozen of cows ; if he be not rich enough to make such
offers, he proposes to give a mare or a colt ; considering
in the offer, the merit of the young woman, the rank of
her family, and his own circumstances. When they are
agreed on both sides, the contract is drawn up by him
that acts as cadi or judge among these Arabs. In some
parts of the east, a measure of corn is formally mentioned
in contracts for their concubines, or temporary wives,
besides the sum of money which is stipulated by way of
dowry. This custom is probably as ancient as concu-
binage, with which it is connected ; and if so, it will
perhaps account for the prophet Hosea's purchasing a
wife of this kind, for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an
homer of barley, and an half homer of barley. 3 When
the intended husband was not able to give a dowry, he
offered an equivalent. The patriarch Jacob who came
to Laban with only his staff, offered to serve him seven
years for Rachel ; a proposal which Laban accepted.
Saul, instead of a dowry, required David to bring him
an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, under the pre-
tence of avenging himself of his enemies. This custom
has prevailed in later times ; for in some countries they
give their daughters in marriage to the most valiant men,
or those who should bring them so many heads of the
people with whom they happen to be at war. It is re-
corded of a nation in Carmania,thatno man among them
was permitted to marry till he had first brought the head
of an enemy to the king. Aristotle admits, that the
ancient Greeks were accustomed to buy their wives ;
but they no sooner began to lay aside their barbarous
meanness, than this disgusting practice ceased, and the
custom of giving portions to their sons-in-law, was sub-
stituted in its place. In like manner, the Romans, in
the first ages of their history, purchased their wives ; but
afterwards, they required the wife to bring a portion to
the husband, that he might be able to bear the charges of
the matrimonial state more easily.
The contract of marriage was made in the house of
the woman's father, before the elders and governors of
the city or district. The manner of contracting or es-
pousing was various. Sometimes the man put a piece
of money into the woman's hand before witnesses, and
said, 'Be thou espoused to me according to the law of
Moses and Israel ;' or it was done by writing, which was
no more than writing the same words with the woman's
name, and delivering it to her before witnesses ; or lastly,
by cohabitation, when the law obliged the man to marry
her whom he had dishonoured, if her father gave his con-
sent. They had also several forms of betrothing in
Greece ; of which one is quoted by Clemens of Alexandria,
out of Meander : ' I give you this my daughter, to make
you father of children lawfully begotten.' According to
Xenophon, the dowry was sometimes mentioned ; for
when Cyaxares betrothed his daughter to Cyrus, he ad-
dressed him in these words : ' I give you, Cyrus, this
woman, who is my daughter, with all Media for her
dowry.'
The espousals by money, or a written instrument, were
performed by the man and woman under a tent or canopy
erected for that purpose. Into this chamber the bride-
groom was accustomed to go with his bride, that he might
talk with her more familiarly ; which was considered as
a ceremony of confirmation to the wedlock. While he
was there, no person was allowed to enter ; his friends
and attendants waited for him at the door, with torches
and lamps in their hands ; and when he came out, he was
received by all that were present with great joy and ac-
clamation. To this ancient custom, the psalmist alludes
in his magnificent description of the heavens : ' In them
he set a tabernacle for the sun ; which as a bridegroom
coming out of his chamber, rejoices as a strong man to
run a race.' *
A Jewish virgin legally betrothed, was considered as
a lawful wife ; and by consequence could not be put
away without a bill of divorce. And if she proved un-
faithful to her betrothed husband, she was punished as
an adulteress ; and her seducer incurred the same punish-
ment as if he had polluted the wife of his neighbour.
This is the reason that the angel addressed Joseph, the
betrothed husband of Mary, in these terms : 'Joseph, thou
son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife ;
for that which is conceived in her is of the holy Ghost.'
The evangelist Luke gives her the same title : 'and Joseph
also went up from Galilee unto Bethlehem, to be taxed
with Mary his espoused wife.' 5
Ten or twelve months commonly intervened between
the ceremony of espousals and the marriage ; during
this interval, the espoused wife continued with her
parents, that she might provide herself with nuptial orna-
ments suitable to her station. This custom serves to
explain a circumstance in Samson's marriage, which is
involved in some obscurity : ' He went down,' says the
historian, ' and talked with the woman (whom he had
seen at Tinmath,) and she pleased him well.' These
words seem to refer to the ceremony of espousals ; the
following to the subsequent marriage, ' And after a
time he returned to take her.' 6 Hence a considerable
time intervened between the espousals, and their actual
union.
From the time of the espousals, the bridegroom was
at liberty to visit his espoused wife in the house of her
1 Bruce's Travels, vol. i.
2 Gcu. xxiv. 2. 3 Chardiu's Travels.
4 Ps. xix. 4. s Luke ii. 4, 5.
6 Judg. xiv. 7, &c.
Skct. I.]
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father ; yet neither of the parties left their own abode
during eight days before the marriage ; but persons of
the same age visited the bridegroom, and made merry
with him. These circumstances are distinctly marked
in the account which the sacred historian has given us of
Samson's marriage : ' so his father went down unto the
woman, and made there a feast ; for so used the young
men to do. And it came to pass when they saw him,
that they brought thirty companions to be with him.' 1
These companions were the children of the bride-cham-
ber, of whom our Lord speaks ; ' can the children of
the bride-chamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is
with themP'^
An eastern bride submitted to various purifications,
before the celebration of her nuptials. The virgins of
Persia were prepared for the bed of Ahasuerus, ' six
months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet
odours, and with other things, for the purifying of the
women.' It was a custom among the ancient Jews, to
adorn the married couple with bridal crowns, which were
generally of gold, made in the form of a tower. We
discover this usage in the invitation of the spouse to her
companions ; ' go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and
behold king Solomon, with the crown wherewith his
mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in
the day of the gladness of his heart.' 3 And in the com-
pliment of the bridegroom ; ' thine head upon thee is
like Carmel ;' rising with the tower -shaped crown, ' like
that mountain in shape ; and rough with jewels as that
mountain is with protuberances.'4
The prophet Isaiah makes an allusion to the same
custom, where he celebrates, in strains of rapturous
pleasure, the future prosperity of Zion : ' I will greatly
rejoice in the Lord ; my soul shall be joyful in my God ;
for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation ;
he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a
bridegroom decketh himself with garments ;' 5 literally,
decketh himself witli a crown.
The Greeks were decked with garlands of various
herbs and flowers on their marriage day ; whence Cly-
temnestra, in Euripides, speaks thus to Achilles about
her daughter lphigenia. ' But oh, in vain, though I
had crowned her to be wedded to thee.'6 The hair of a
Roman bride was, in like manner, crowned with flowers,
after being divided into six locks with the point of a
spear. This very ancient practice of crowning the bride-
groom and the bride, has been continued among the
members of the Greek church in Egypt, to our own
times.
The marriage ceremony was commonly performed in
a garden, or in the open air ; the bride was placed
under a canopy, supported by four youths ; and adorned
with jewels according to the rank of the married persons ;
all the company crying out with joyful acclamations,
Blessed be he that cometh. It was anciently the custom,
at the conclusion of the ceremony, for the father and
mother, and kindred of the woman, to pray for a blessing
upon the parties. Bethuel and Laban, and the other
members of their family, pronounced a solemn benedic-
tion upon Rebekah before her departure : ' and they
1 Judg. xiv. 10. • Mat. ix. 15. 3 Song of Solomon iii. 11.
4 Ibid. vii. 5: See Calmet, vol. iii. s Is. Ixi. II.
■ Potter's Gr. Autin. p. 023, Boyd's edition, 1837.
FROM BEGIN. OK GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. I.
blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister,
be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy
seed possess the gate of those which hate them.' 7 And
in times long posterior to the age of Isaac, when Ruth
the Moabitess was espoused to Boaz, ' all the peonle
that were in the gate, and the elders said, We are wit-
nesses : the Lord make the woman that is come into
thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did
build the house of Israel ; and do thou worthily in Eph-
ratah, and be famous in Bethlehem.' 8 After the bene-
dictions, the bride is conducted, with great pomp, to the
house of her husband ; this is usually done in the evening ;
and as the procession moved along, money, sweetmeats,
flowers and other articles were thrown among the popu-
lace, which they caught in cloths made for such occasions,
stretched in a particular manner upon frames. The use
of perfumes at eastern marriages is common, and upon
great occasions very profuse. Not only are the garments
scented, till, in the psalmist's language, they smell of
myrrh, aloes, and cassia ; it is also customary for virgins
to meet, and lead the procession, with silver -gilt pots of
perfumes ; and sometimes aromatics are burned in the
windows of all the houses in the streets through which
the procession is to pass, till the air becomes loaded
with fragrant odours. In allusion to this practice it is
demanded, ' Who is this that cometh out of the wilder-
ness, like pillars of smoke perfumed with myrrh and
frankincense.' 9 So liberally were these rich perfumes
burned on this occasion, that a pillar of smoke ascended
from the censers, so high, that it could be seen at a con-
siderable distance ; and the perfume was so rich, as to
equal in value and fragrance all the powders of the mer-
chants. The custom of burning perfumes on these occa-
sions, still continues in the east ; for Lady Mary Wortley
Montague, describing the reception of a young Turkish
bride at the bagnio, says, ' Two virgins met her at the
door; two others filled silver-gilt pots with perfumes,
and began the procession, the rest following in pairs to
the number of thirty.'
It was the custom among the ancient Greeks, and the
nations around them, to conduct the new-married couple
with torches and lamps to their dwelling, as appears
from the messenger in Euripides, who says, he called to
mind the time when he bore torches before Menelaus and
Helena. These torches were usually carried by servants ;
and the procession was sometimes attended by singers
and dancers. The Roman ladies were, in like manner,
led home to their husbands in the evening, by the light
of torches. A Jewish marriage seems to have been con-
ducted in much the same way ; for in that beautiful
psalm, where David describes the majesty of Christ's
kingdom, we meet with this passage : ' and the daughter
of Tyre shall be there with a gift ; even the rich among
the people ?hall entreat thy favour. The king's daughter
is all glorious within : her clothing is of wrought gold.
She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needle-
work ; the virgins, her companions that follow her, shall
be brought unto thee. With gladness and rejoicing shall
they be brought : they shall enter into the king's
palace.' 10 In the parable of the ten virgins, the same
circumstances are introduced : ' they that were foolish
7 Gen. xxiv. GO.
Sung of Solomon iii. G.
B Ruth iv. 11.
Psalm xlv. 12— 1U.
886
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4034. A. D. 30 ; ACCORDING TO H AXES, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
took their lamps, and took no oil with them : but the
wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While
the bridegroom tarried,' leading the procession through
the city, the women and domestics that were appointed
to wait his arrival at home, ■ all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the
bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to meet him. Then all
those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the
foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil ; for our
lamps are gone out.' *
But among the Jews, the bridegroom was not always
permitted to accompany his bride from her father's house ;
an intimate friend was often sent to conduct her, while
he remained at heme to receive her in his apartment.
Her female attendants had the honour to introduce her ;
and whenever they changed the bride's dress, which is
often done, they presented her to the bridegroom. It is
the custom, and belongs to their ideas of magnificence,
frequently to dress and undress the bride ; and to cause
her to wear on that same day all the clothes made up for
her nuptials. For the same reason, the bridegroom's
dress is less frequently changed. These circumstances
discover the propriety and force of John's language, in
his magnificent description of the Jewish church in her
millennial state : ' and I, John, saw the holy city, new
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, pre-
pared as a bride adorned for her husband.' 2
Those that were invited to the marriage, were expected
to appear in their best and gayest attire. If the bride-
groom was in circumstances to afibrd it, wedding gar-
ments were prepared for all the guests, which were hung
up in the antechamber for them to put on over the rest
of their clothes, as they entered the apartments where the
marriage feast was prepared. To refuse, or even to
neglect putting on the wedding garment, was reckoned
an insult to the bridegroom, aggravated by the circum-
stance that it was provided by himself for the very pur-
pose of being worn on that occasion, and was hung up
in the way to the inner apartment, that the guests must
have seen it, and recollected the design of its suspen-
sion. This accounts for the severity of the sentence
pronounced by the king, who came in to see the guests,
and found among them one who had neglected to put it
on : ' and he saith unto him, friend, how earnest thou in
hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was
speechless,' because it was provided at the expense of
the entertainer, and placed full in his view. ' Then said
the king to the servants, bind him hand and foot, and
take him away and cast him into outer darkness : there
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 3 The arrival
of the bride at the house of her husband, was followed
by the marriage feast, at which they indulged in great
mirth and hilarity. It was made entirely at the expense
of the bridegroom ; thus Homer sings ; ' a shot-free
banquet, or a marriage feast, not such as is by contribu-
tion made.' 4
From the parable of the marriage feast, we have a
right to conclude that such entertainments among the
Jews were equally free. ' The kingdom of heaven is
like unto a certain king which made a marriage for his
son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were
bidden to the weddinar.' 5
1 Mat. xxv. 6. 2 Rev. xxi. 2.
4 Potter, p. 62 J, Boyd's Edition, 18o7.
3 Mat. xxii. 11.
5 Mat. xxii. 2.
The marriage feast was of old frequently protracted
to the length of seven days : for so long Samson enter-
tained his friends at Timnath. * To this festival Laban
is thought by many divines to refer, in his answer to
Jacob's complaint, that he had imposed Leah upon him
instead of Rachel ; ' fulfil the week of the marriage, and
we will give thee this also.' This feast was called the
nuptial joy, with which no other was to be intermixed ;
all labour ceased while it continued, and no sign of
mourning or sorrow was permitted to appear. It may
be only further observed, that even in modern times
none but very poor people give a daughter in marriage
without a female slave for a handmaid, as hired servants
are unknown in the oriental regions. 7 Hence Laban,
who was a man of considerable property in Mesopota-
mia, ' gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid, for
an handmaid ;' and ' to Rachel his daughter, Bilhah his
handmaid, to be her maid.' 8 In Greece also the mar-
riage solemnity lasted several days. On the third day
the bride presented her bridegroom with a robe ; gifts
were likewise made to the bride and bridegroom, by the
bride's father and friends ; these consisted of golden
vessels, beds, couches, plates, and all sorts of neces-
saries for housekeeping, which were carried in great state
to the house by women, preceded by a person carrying
a basket, in the manner usual at processions, before whom
went a boy in white vestments, with a torch in his hand.
It was also customary for the bridegroom and his friends
to give presents to the bride, after which, the bridegroom
had leave to converse freely with her, and she was per-
mitted to appear in public without her veil. 9 To these
circumstances the holy psalmist certainly refers, in his
magnificent description of Messiah's kingdom ; ' and
the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift ; even the
rich among the people shall entreat thy favour'1" with
gifts and offerings suited to their wealth and thy dignity.
The apartments of the women are counted sacred and
inviolable, over all the east ; it is even a crime to inquire
what passes within the walls of the harem, or house of
the women. Hence, it is extremely difficult to be in-
formed of the transactions in those sequestered habita-
tions ; and a man, says Chardin, may walk an hundred
days, one after another, by the house where the women
are, and yet know no more what is done there than at
the farther end of Tartary. This sufficiently explains
the reason of Mordecai's conduct, who ' walked every day
before the court of the women's house, to know how
Esther did, and what should become of her.' u
The Arabs are not so scrupulous as the Turks about
their women ; and though they have their harem, or
women's apartment in the tent, they readily introduce
their acquaintances into it, or those strangers whom they
take under their special protection. Pococke's conduc-
tor, in his journey to Jerusalem, led him two or three
miles to his tent, where he sat with his wife and others
round a fire. The faithful Arab kept him there for
greater security, the wife being always with him : no
stranger ever daring to come into the women's apsrtatbOHt
unless introduced. We discover in this custom, the reason
of Jael's invitation to Sisera, when he was defeated by
Barak : ' turn in, my lord, turn in to me, fear not.' 12
6 Judg. xiv. 1. 7 Chardin's Travels. 8 Gen. xxix. 24, 29.
9 Potter's Gr. Antiq. p. 628, Boyd's Edition, 1837.
10 Ps. xlv. 12. " Est. ii. 11. '* h\d«. iv. 18.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, ike.
887
A. M.4031. A. D. 30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M 5139. A. D. -2*. FItoM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ii. S. MARK \i. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
She invited him to take refuge in her own division of
the tent, into which no stranger might presume to enter ;
and where he naturally supposed himself in perfect
safety. '
CHAP. V. — Of the four evangelists and their writings.
Before we proceed any farther in the history of our
blessed Saviour's life, it may not be amiss to give
some short account of the four evangelists that have re-
corded it. I call them four, because, whatever spurious
pieces gained credit in the world afterwards, the tradition
of the church from the beginning of the second century
makes it evident, that the gospels then received were
only the four gospels which we now own.
St Matthew, who stands in the front of these evangelists,
and is generally allowed to be the first who committed the
gospel to writing, was the son of Alpheus, a Galilean by
birth, a Jew by religion, and a publican by profession.
Among the Jews, as well as other nations, the custom at
this time prevailed of having more names than one ; and
therefore we find his brother evangelist St Mark 2 and
Luke, 3 giving him the name of Levi, with a civil intent
to avoid all mention of his former not so reputable pro-
fession, before he was called to the apostleship ; but, what
is no less an instance of his own modesty, in the gospel
written by himself, he not only takes the name by which
he was most commonly known, but generally adds the
odious epithet to it of ' Matthew the publican ;' in-
tending thereby no doubt to magnify the grace of God,
and the condescension of our blessed Saviour, who did
not disdain to take into the highest dignity of the
Christian church those whom the world rejected, and ac-
counted vile.
* \V hether he wasborn in Nazareth or no, it is certain that
his ordinary abode was at Capernaum,5 because his proper
business was to gather the customs on goods that came by
the sea of Galilee, and the tribute which passengers were
to pay that went by water ; for which purpose there was
a custom-house by the sea-side, where Matthew had his
office, or toll-booth, 'there sitting at the receipt of custom.'
Our Lord having lately cured a famous paralytic, retired
out of the town, to walk by the sea-side, where he taught
the people that flocked after him ; and having espied
Matthew in his office, he asked him to become one of his
disciples ; whereupon, without any manner of hesitation,
without staying so much as to settle his accounts, and put
his affairs in order, he left all and followed him. a
We cannot but suppose that, as he lived in Capernaum,
the place of our Lord's usual residence, and where his
sermons and miracles were so frequent, he must have
been acquainted with his person and doctrine before
this time ; and consequently in a good preparation to re-
ceive the call with gladness. And that he did so, a good
evidence it seems to be, his entertaining our Lord and
his disciples at dinner next day in his house ; whither he
invited several of his own profession, in hopes, no doubt,
that our Saviour's company and converse might make the
like impression upon them.
From his election to the apostolate he continued con-
stantly with our Lord, during his abode upon earth ; and
after his ascension for the space of eight years preached
the gospel in several parts of Judea : but being now to
betake himself to the conversion of the Gentiles, he was
entreated by the Jews, who had been converted to the
Christian faith, to commit to writing the history of our
Lord's life and actions, and to leave it among them as a
standing record of what he had preached to them ; which
accordingly he did, and so composedHhe gospel which
we have now under his name.
6 The countries in which he preached were chiefly
Parthia and Ethiopia, in the latter of which he con-
verted multitudes, settled churches, and ordained ministers
to confirm and build them up ; and having signalized his
zeal in the ministry of the gospel, and his contempt of
the world in a life b of most exemplary abstinence, he is
most probably thought to have suffered martyrdom at
Nadabar, c a city in Ethiopia ; but of the time and manner
of his death no certain account is transmitted to us.
At the request of the Jewish converts, as we said, and,
as some add, at the command of the rest of the apostles,
St Matthew wrote his gospel, about eight or nine years
after our Lord's resurrection : for that it was extant be-
fore the dispersion of the apostles, is plain from Barthol-
omew carrying it with him into India, where, as Euse-
bius 7 informs us, it was found by Pana^tus, when he went
Cave's Lives of the Apostles.
Hist. Eccl. b. v. c. 10.
1 Paxton, Harmer. 2 Chap. ii. 14. 3 Chap. v. 27.
* Kirslin, on the life of the four Evang. says he was, part 22.
s Cave's Lives of the Apostles.
a This is a rash conjecture. Although it is said in the text
(Luke v. 27.) that Levi, or Matthew left all, rose up, and followed
Clirist, it is not necessary to infer from this, that in obeying the
divine call he committed an act of injustice to his employers,
and made no settlement of his accounts. He might have left his
office to the care of some of his friends, or he might have returned
soon afterwards to arrange his affairs. Surely he who said, ' render
unto Ciesar the things which are Coesar's,' would not encourage
one whom he had chosen to be his follower to act the part of an
unfaithful steward even in temporal concerns. "The feast," says
Doddridge, *' was made the day following his calling, or perhaps
sonic months after it, when he had made up his accounts, and
passed his busiuess into other hands. And an attentive consid-
eration of the context, and the mode of the gospel narratives,
will show that this is no way inconsistent with the mention of
the feast immediately after his call." — Ed.
b Clemens Alexandriuus tells us, that he abstained from the
eating of flesh: and that the chief of his diet was herbs, roots,
seeds, and berries. — Padag. b. ii. c. 1.
b This is contradicted by the account of Heraclion, a learned
Valentinian of the second century, who, as cited by Clement of
Alexandria, reckons Matthew among the apostles that did not
die by martyrdom ; and as his statement is not contradicted by
Clement, it is more likely to be true than the relation of Socrates,
who did not flourish until three hundred years after Heraclion.
— Home's Introduction, vol. iv. — Ed.
c Matthew is generally allowed to have written his gospel
before the other evangelists; though vthe precise time when it
was composed cannot be determined. Dr Mill, Michaelis, and
Bishop Percy, alter Irenreus, assign it to a. d. 61 ; Dr Hales to
63; Dr Laidncr and Mr Hewlett to 64; Baronius, GroCius,
Wetstein, J. Jones and others after Eusebius, to 41; Dr Owen
and Bishop Tomliuc, to I3S. It is proper to remark that Calvin,
Beza, Gomarus, the antagonist of Arminius, Lardner, Michaelis,
Dr Macknight, and others, seem all to have been decidedly of
opinion that Luke wrote before Matthew. But the question,
really, is of no importance. For the evidence of the inspiration
of Luke, which has lately been controverted by divines both in
England and in Germany, does in no degree depend upon
it. — Ed.
888
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
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to propagate the faith in those parts, and by such as
retained the knowledge of Christ, was reputed a valuable
treasure.
a As it was primarily designed for the benefit of the
Jewish converts, whatever some moderns may say to the
contrary, the voice of all antiquity must carry it against
them, that it was originally wrote in Hebrew, not in the
ancient pure Hebrew, for that, in a great measure, was
lost among the vulgar, but in a language commonly used
at that time by the Jews of Palestine, and therefore
still called the Hebrew tongue, because wrote in He-
brew characters, which was the Syriac, with a mixture of
Hebrew and Chaldee.
This gospel of St Matthew was, for a long time, in use
among the Jews, who had been converted to Christianity,
and when, some time before the Romans laid siege to Jer-
usalem, they retired to Pella, they carried it thither along
with them ; from whence it was diffused into Decapolis,
a There is a diversity of opinion respecting the language in
which it was written: many learned men have contended, that
it was written in the Hehrew, or Syro-Chaldaic dialect then
spoken by the Jews; and others have as strenuously vindicated
the Greek original. A third opinion has been offered by Dr
Townson, to whose opinion great deference is due, and some
other modern divines, that there were two originals, one in He-
brew, and the other in Greek. He thinks that there seems to be
more reason for allowing two originals than for contesting either;
the consent of antiquity pleading strongly for the Hebrew, and
evident marks of originality, for the Greek. Dr Campbell argues
strongly in favour of a Hebrew original. After adducing the
external testimonies in support of this view of the matter, he
says, have we not reason to conclude, from the express order, as
well as from the example of our Lord, and from the uniform
practice of his disciples, that it was suitable to the will of Pro-
vidence, in this dispensation of grace, that every advantage should
be first ottered to the Jews, especially the inhabitants of Jerusa-
lem; and that the gospel which had been first delivered to them
by word, both by our Lord himself, and by his apostles, should
be also first presented to them in writing, in that very dialect in
which many of the readers, at the time of the publication, might
remember to have heard the same sacred truths, as they came
from the mouth of him who spake as never man spake, the great
oracle of the Father, the interpreter of God. This loss of this
gospel proved the prelude to the extinction of that church. But
we have reason to be thankful that what was most valuable in the
work, is not lost to the Christian community. The version we
have in Greek is written with much evangelical simplicity, en-
tirely in the idiom and manner of the apostles. It only remains
that we notice the third opinion above mentioned, namely, that
there were two originals one in Hebrew, the other in Greek,
but both written by Matthew. This opinion, we believe, was
first intimated by Sixtus Senensis, from whom it was adopted
by Drs Whitby, Benson, Hey, and Townson, and some other
modern divines. It has been conjectured, that Matthew on his
departure to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, left with the church
at Jerusalem, the Hebrew or Syriac narrative of our Lord's doc-
trines and miracles, and that the Greek gospel was written long after
the apostles had quitted Jerusalem, and dispersed themselves in the
discharge of the duties of their office. This conjecture receives
some countenance from the terms in which Eusebius, when giving
hu own opinion, mentions Matthew's gospel. Matthew, says that
historian, having first preached to the Hebrews, delivered to them,
when he was preparing to depart toother countries, his gospel com-
posed in their native language: that to those, from whom he was
sent away, he might by his writings supply the loss of his presence.
This opinion is further corroborated by the fact, that there are in-
stances on record, of authors who have themselves published the
same work in two languages. Tims Josephus wrote the History of
the Jewish war in Hebrew and Greek. Upon the whole, the evi-
dence preponderates in favour of the opinion that Matthew wrote
first a Hebrew gospel for the use of the first Hebrew converts ;
and that afterwards, within a few years after our Lord's ascen-
sion, the same evangelist wrote his gospel in Greek. Ed.
and all the countries beyond Jordan, where the Juda-
izing Christians still made use of it in the time of
Epiphanius 1 and Eusebius 2 of Cajsarea. But these
Christians 3 did not preserve this sacred depositum,
with all the fidelity they should have done. They added
to it several things, which perhaps they might have heard
from the mouths of the apostles, or from their immediate
disciples, and this in time brought it under the suspicion
of other believers. The "Ebionites, at length, got it into
their hands, and by their additions and defalcations, in
favour of some errors they had fallen into concerning the
divinity of our Saviour and the virginity of the blessed
mother, so corrupted it, that at length it was given up
by other churches which adhered to the form of sound
doctrine. It continued, however, a long time in its prim-
itive purity in the hands of the Nazarenes, or first
believers in Palestine, who, though they were zealous in
the observation of the law, embraced no such opinions
as the Ebionites did, nor made any alterations in the gos-
pel. But after the extinction of this sect, we hear no
more of the genuine gospel of St Matthew, because the
ancient Greek version, which, in the apostolic times,
was made from it, having always preserved its primitive
integrity, did, long before this, universally prevail, and
was looked upon as authentic as the original ; for, though
its author be uncertain, yet every one who mentions it,
always ascribes it to some one apostle or other. b
When St Matthew began to write, the great question
among the Jews was, Whether our blessed Saviour was
1 Epiphan. Hceres. xxix. c. 7. '2 Hist. Eccl. b. iii. c. 25.
3 Calmet's Dictionary, and Preface to St Matthew's Gospel.
b Those who maintain that St Matthew wrote in Greek,
produce these arguments for their opinion. 1st, That some of the
fathers, such as Origen, Epiphanius, and St Jerome, quote indeed
the Hebrew of St Matthew, but quote it as a book of no great
authority, which they would not have done, had it been the true
original. 2c/, That had St Matthew wrote in Hebrew, the
Hebrew names in his gospel would not have been interpreted into
Greek, nor would he have quoted the Old Testament, according
to the Septuagint translation. 3d, That the Greek language was
then very common in Palestine, and all the east. And, 4th, since
all the other authors of the New Testament wrote in Greek, why
should St Matthew alone write his gospel in Hebrew? But to
these arguments it may be replied, 1st, That the uniform testi-
mony of all the ancients, who tell us that St Matthew wrote his
gospel in Hebrew, is certainly of very great weight; but then
we must know that there were two of these copies of St Matthew,
the one pure and uocorrupted, of which they have spoken with great
esteem, the other depraved by heretics, which they have contemn-
ed, and looked upon as apocryphal. 2d, The Hebrew names, in-
terpreted into Greek, prove the \ery contrary to what would be
inferred from it; for this demonstrates that the translation was
Greek, and the original Hebrew. 3d, Of the ten passages iu the
Old Testament that St Matthew cites in his gospel, there are
seven of them which resemble the Hebrew more than the Sep-
tuagint; in the other three, the Septuagint and the Hebrew them-
selves agree ; but the plain truth is, that St Matthew quotes by
memory, and relates, not so much the words, as the sense,
of the passages. 4th, However common the Greek tongue might
be in Palestine among the better sort of people, yet it is certain
that the generality of the Jews spoke commonly what they called
Hebrew, which was Syriac and Chaldee mixed with Hebrew.
And, 5th, Though all the rest of the New Testament were writ-
ten in Greek, yet that is no argument why this part of it should ;
though, if convenience were considered, it should rather, one
would think, be adapted to the general use and capacity ot those
for whom it was wrote. The dispute, however, is about matter of
fact, and this is a fact attested by all the ancients, many of whom
had seen the original, and were capable of making a judgment of
it. — Whitby's Prefatory Discourse to the four Evangelists; and
Calmet's Dicticmary , under the word Matthew.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &.
839
A.M. 4031. A.D.30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5139. A. D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OF l.OSP. TO MAT. iv 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
apostles, .iiul most likely by St Peter, to whom he was a
constant retainer, .and served him in the capacity of an
amanuensis, and an interpreter. 10 For, though the apostles
the true Messiah or no ? and the main tendency of his
gospel seems to prove this. For he shows by his mighty
deeds, that he was the Christ, the Son of God ; that his
mother Mary was a virgin ; that he was not come to destroy
the law, but to fulfil it; and that his miracles were not
magical operations, nor the effects of any human art, but
incontestable proofs of the power of Cod, and of his divine
mission. * St Ambrose observes, that none of the apostles
has entered so far into the particulars of our Saviour's
actions a as has St Matthew ; that none of them has re-
lated the history of the wise men coming from the east,
or the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, and some
others, but he ; that, in short, he has given us more rules
for the conduct of life, and more lessons of morality,
suitable to our necessities, than any ; and all this 2 in a
natural and easy style, (though sometimes mixed with
Hebraisms,) such as becomes an historian, and especially a
sacred historian, whose narration should be free from
affectation, and all such trifling ornaments as do not
agree with the gravity and dignity of his subject.
Though the name of Mark seems to be of Roman ex-
traction, yet the evangelist now before us was born of
Jewish parents, and originally descended from the tribe
of Levi. What his proper name was, or upon what
change or accident of life he might assume this, we have
no manner of intelligence ; but as it was no unusual thing
for the Jews, when they went into the European pro-
vinces of the Roman empire, to conform to the customs
of the country, and while they continued there, to be called
by some name of common use ; so some have conjectured,
that when Mark attended upon St Peter to Rome, he
might at that time take upon hiiu this name, which, as he
never returned to Judea to reassume his own, he for ever
after retained. In the writings of the apostles we read
of several called by this name. There is John,3 whose sur-
name was Mark ; * Mark, the sister's sou of Barnabas ;
Mark, 5 who was employed in the ministry ; Mark, whom
St Paul calls his fellow labourer ; 6 and Mark, whom St
Peter 7 styles his son : but which of these was the evan-
gelist, or whether the evangelist might not be a person
distinct from each of these, has been a matter of some
doubt among the learned.
That he was one of the seventy disciples, and amon»-
them one of those who took offence at our Lord's dis-
course of 8 eating his rlesh and drinking his blood, some
of the ancients have affirmed ; but Eusebius, 9 from Papias
who was bishop of Hierapolis, and lived near those
times, tells us positively that he was no hearer or follower
of our Saviour. He was converted by some of the
i Ambros. Pref. in Luc.
3 Acts xii. 12.
6 2 Tim. iv. 11.
8 John vi. CO.
2 Beausobn 's Pref, on St Matthew.
4 Cul. iv. 10.
Phil. ver. 24. 7 1 Pet. v. 13.
9 Hist. Eccl. h. iii. c. 39
a If we compare St Matthew with the tin-, e other evangelists,
we may perceive a remarkable difference in the order and suc-
cession of our Saviour's actions, and from chap. iv. 22 to
chap. xiv. 13, which has much perplexed chronologers and
interpreters. Some pretend, that St Matthew should be followed,
but others think it more reasonable to submit to the authority of
the other three, especially since St Murk, who follows him elose
enough in every other thing, forsakes him in this particular.
However, this be, it can prove no prejudice to the truth of facts,
whiefa are the essential part of the gospel: and as to the order
oi' time, the sacred authors are not always solicitous to follow it
exactly. — Colmel's Dictionary under the word Matthev.
were divinely inspired, and, among other miraculous
powers, had the gift of languages conferred on them ; yet
the interpretation of tongues seems to be a gift more pe-
culiar to some than others; and it might be St Mark's
talent, either by word or writing, to expound St Peter's
discourses to those who understood not the language
wherein they were delivered. h
10 Cave's Lives of the Apostles.
h With regard to the evangelist Mark, all that we learnfrom the
New Testament, concerning him is, that he was sister's son to Bar-
nabas, (Col. iv. 10.) and the son of Mary, a pious woman of Jeru-
salem, at whose house the apostles and first Christians often
assembled. His Hebrew name was John, and Miehaelis thinks
that lie adopted the surname of Marie when he left Judea to
preach the gospel to foreign countries — a practice not unusual
among the Jews of that age, who frequently assumed a name
more familiar to the nations which they visited than that by
which they had been distinguished in their own country. But
Dr Campbell, and others, were not convinced that the nephew
of Barnabas is the person who wrote the gospel which bears the
name of Mark. Of John, surnamed Mark, says Dr Campbell, one
of the first things we learn is, that he attended Paul and Bar-
nabas in their apostolical journeys, when these two travelled to-
gether, Acts xii. 25. xiii. 5. And when afterwards there arose a
dispute between them concerning him, insomuch that they separ-
ated, Mark accevnpanied his uncle Barnabas, and Silas attended
Paul. When Paul was reconciled to Mark, which was probably
soon after, we find Paul again employing Mark's assistance, re-
commending him, and giving him a xmy honourable testimony,
Col. iv. 10. 2 Tim. iv. 11. Phil. 24. But we hear not a syllable
of his attending Peter, as his minister, or assisting him in any
capacity. This is so different from the accounts which the most
ancient writers give of the evangelist Mark, that though they
cannot be said to contradict each other, they can hardly be un-
derstood as spoken of the same individual. The evangelist is not
said to have derived any part of his information from our Lord
himself, or even from any of his apostles, except the apostle
Peter, whose disciple he is always represented as having been;
and who doubtless speaks of him when he says, 1 Pet. v. 13,
' Marcus my son salutethyou ;' a denomination commonly given in
those times by the minister, to everyone who by his means had been
converted to the Christian faith. In brief, the accounts given of
Paul's attendant, and those of Peter's interpreter, concur in
nothing but the name, Mark, or Marcus ; too slights circumstance
to conclude the sameness of the person from, especially when we
consider how common the name was at Rome, and how customary
it was for the Jews, in that age, to assume some Roman name
when they went thither. — (Dr Campbell's Preface to Mark, vol.
ii. p. 1 lo'J But this is a question of no great importance. That
Mark was the author of the gospel which bears his name, is proved
by the unanimous testimony of the Christian writers of the four
first centuries. From the earliest ages of the church this gospel
was received net only as genuine and authentic, but as divinely
inspired. — It has always been fully admitted, that the apostle
Peter during his residence in Rome saw the gospel of Mark, and
approved of it; so that the work comes to us with the highest
apostolical authority. The deep humility of Peter has been justly
inferri d from the fact, that in this gospel, which was writti n
under his superintendence, his denial of his Master is described
with circumstances of higher aggravation) and with fainter views
of his repentance, than are to be found in the other gospels. In
regard to the time when this gospel was written there are differ-
ent opinions. But as it is evident from the evangelist's own
narrative, (Mark xvi. 20.) that he did not write until after the
apostles had dispersed themselves among the Gentiles, and hi 1
preached the gospel every where, the Lord working with them,
am! confirming the word with si^ns following; and as it does
not appear that all the apostles quitted Judea earlier than the year
50^ perhaps we si all approximate nearest to the real date, if we place
it bi twice, the years CO and 63. That Mark is not to be con-
sidered as an abridger of Matthew's gospel, as he has been re-
presented by some modern divines, may be proved by the following
5 u
890
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4034. A. D.30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE ?i. 1.
the senseless idols of the Egyptians, so exasperated their
rage, that they were resolved to destroy this introducer
of a new religion among them. It was at the time of
Easter when the great solemnities of their god Serapis
happened to be celebrated ; at which festival the minds
of the people being excited to a passionate vindication
of the honour of their idol, they broke in upon St Mark,
then engaged in the solemn celebration of divine worship
and binding his feet, they dragged him through the streets,
and other rugged places, to a precipice near the sea ;
but for that night they thrust him into a dark prison,
where his soul, by a divine vision, was strengthened and
encouraged under the ruins of a shattered body. Early
next morning the tragedy began again. For, in the same
manner as they had done the day before, they dragged
him about, till, his flesh being raked off, and his veins
emptied of blood, his spirits failed, and he expired : but
their malice died not with him ; for taking the poor
remains of his body, they threw them into a fire, and so
burned them ; but his bones and ashes the Christians
gathered up, and decently entombed near the place where
he usually preached. b
2 After the defeat of Simon Magus, whereof we shall
have occasion to say more hereafter, the reputation of
the Christian religion grew so great, and converts at
Rome became so many, that they were desirous to have
in writing those doctrines which had hitherto been im-
parted to them by word of mouth only. St Mark, to whom
this request was made, accordingly set himself to recollect
what he, by long conversation, had learned from St Peter,
who, when the other had finished the work, perused, ap-.
proved, and recommended it to the use of the churches :
and for this reason it is, by some of the ancients, styled
St Peter's gospel ; not that St Peter dictated it to St
Mark, but because St Mark did chiefly compose it out
of that account which St Peter usually delivered in his
discourses to the people : and accordingly St Chry-
sostom 3 observes that the evangelist, in his nervous style
and manner of expression, takes a great delight to imi-
tate St Peter.
c This gospel indeed was principally designed for the
He accompanied St Peter in all his travels, preached
Christianity in Italy, and at Rome, and at the request
of the Christians in those parts, composed his gospel,
which St Peter afterwards revised and approved. From
Italy he went into Egypt, and having fixed his chief resi-
dence in Alexandria, he there, and in the country round
about, propagated the Christian faith with such success,
that multitudes of both men and women, not only be-
came converts, but engaged themselves likewise in a
more strict profession a of the religion that he taught
them than ordinary.
From Alexandria he removed westward; and passing
through the countries of Marmorica, Pentapolis, and
some others in his way to Libya, though the people were
barbarous in their manners, as well as idolatrous in their
worship, by his preaching and miracles, he not only con-
verted, but, before he departed, confirmed them in the
profession of the gospel. Upon his return to Alexandria,
he preached with all boldness, ordered and disposed of
the affairs of the church, and wisely provided for the con-
tinuance thereof, by constituting governors and pastors
in it. ' The great number of miracles which he wrought,
and the reproaches which some of the converts made upon
1 Cave's Lives of the Apostles.
circumstances: first, he omits altogether several things related
by Matthew — our Lord's pedigree, his birth, the visit of the
magians, Joseph's flight into Egypt, and the cruelty of Herod.
As his intention appears to have been to give in brief the history
of our Lord's ministry, he begins very properly with the preach-
ing of the Baptist. Secondly, it is clear, that whereas Matthew
had designed his gospel chiefly for the Jewish Christians, that
of Mark was principally intended for Gentile believers. Thus,
the first time the Jordan is mentioned, the appellation river is
added to the name, Mark i. 5. As the Romans could not
understand the Jewish phrase of defiled or common hands, this
evangelist adds the parenthetical explanation of it, that is, unwash-
en, Mark vii. 2. When he uses the word corban, he subjoins the
interpretation, ' that is a gift' (vii. 11.): and instead of the word
mammon, he uses the common term riches. — Br Toivnson's
/Forks, vol. i. p. 151. The manner in which Mark relates the
life of our Saviour is an additional evidence that he wrote for
Gentile Christians. His narrative is clear and concise, and while
the other evangelists style our Saviour the Son of Man, he an-
nounces him as 'the Son of God.' Thirdly, there are some
things in Matthew, of which, though they fall within the time
to which Mark had confined himself, he has taken no notice;
and some things are mentioned by Mark which had been over-
looked by Matthew. Fourthly, he has not always followed the
same arrangement with his predecessor; and his relation of some
facts, so far from being an abridgment of Matthew's, is the more
circumstantial of the two. His style in general, instead of beinf
more concise, is more diffuse. — Campbell; Michaelis; Koppe;
Jones. — Ed.
a Philo, in his ' Treatise of a contemplative Life,' gives us a
long account, and high commendation, of a set of people, whom
he calls ®i£arr<.ura'i, who, in a pleasant place near Maraeotic lake
in Egypt, formed themselves into religious societies, and lived
a strict philosophic life, and these Eusebius {Hist. Eccl. b. ii. c.
16.) affirms to have been Christians, converted and brought un-
der these admirable rules by St Mark, at his coming into Egypt:
but whoever seriously considers Philo's account, will plainly
find that he intends it of Jews, and professors of the Mosaic re-
ligion, and not of Christians; partly because it is improbable
that Philo, being a Jew, should give so great a character and
commendation of Christians, who were so hateful to the Jews at
that time in all places of the world; partly because Philo speaks
of them as an institution of a considerable standing, whereas Chris-
tians had but lately appeared in the world, and were later come
into Egypt; and partly because many things in Philo's account
do no way suit with the state and manners of Christians at that
time. — Cave's Life of St Mark.
2 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
3 Horn. iii. in Mat.
b The martyrdom of St Mark is not mentioned by Eusebius,
or any other ancient writer, and is contradicted by Jerome, whose
expressions seem to imply that he died a natural death. — Home's
Introduction. — Ed.
c The original Greek copy, under St Mark's own hand, is said
to be extant at Venice at this day, written, as they tell us, by
him at Aquileia, and thence, after many hundred years, translated
to Venice, where it is still preserved, though the letters are so
worn out with length of time, that they are not capable of being
read. There are likewise some Greek manuscripts, wherein the
last twelve verses of this gospel are omitted ; but they are extant iu
the greatest number of the most ancient and authentic copies, as
well as in the works of Irenseus, an author of prior date to any of the
mauuscripts that want them. It is not to be questioned, there-
fore, but that they originally belonged to St Mark's gospel, and
were suppressed by some ignorant or conceited transcriber, upon
the account of some seeming contradictions between St Matthew
and this other evaugelist, which, with a small skill in critical
learning, may be easily reconciled. — Cave's Lives of the Apostles;
and Beausobre's Preface on St Mark. — The story of the auto-
graph of St Mark's gospel, said to be preserved at Venice, is now
proved to be a mere fable, for the Venetian MSS. formerly made
part of the Latin MSS. preserved at Friuli, most of which was
printed by Blanchini in his Evangeliorum Quadruplex. The
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
891
A. M.4034. A. D. 30 ; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. M ARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
use of the Christians at Rome, and from hence some may
be apt to think it highly congmous that it should at first
be written in the Latin tongue : but it must be considered,
1 that as the Jewish converts, in that city, understood but
little Latin, so there were very few Romans that did not
understand Greek, which, as appears from the writers of
that age, was the genteel and fashionable language of
those times ; nor can any good reason be assigned, why
it should be more inconvenient for St Mark to write his
gospel in Greek for the use of the Romans, than that St
Paul should in the same language, write his epistle to
that church.
We cannot compare St Matthew and St Mark together
but must perceive, that the latter had seen the writings
of the former, because he often uses the same terms, re-
lates the same facts, and takes notice of the same circum-
stances; but we must not therefore infer, that all he in-
tended in his work was simply to abridge him ; because
he begins his gospel in a different manner ; he omits
several things, particularly our Lord's genealogy ; he
varies from him in the order of his narration ; he relates
some facts that the other has omitted ; he enlarges upon
others in many particulars, and, what is no mean argu-
ment of his truth and impartiality in all the rest, the
shameful lapse and denial of his beloved master St
Peter he sets down, with more and more aggravating
circumstances than any of the other evangelists have
recorded.
St Luke, who by some ancient authors, is called
Lucius and Lucanus, was a Syrian by birth, a native
of Antioch, and by profession a physician.2 a Antioch 3
1 Cave's Lives of the Apostles.
3 Beausobre's Preface on St Mark.
' Cave's Lives of the Apostles.
Venice MSS. contained the first forty pages, or five quaternions
of Mark's gospel ; the two last quaternions or sixteen pages are
preserved at Prague, where they were printed by M. Dobrowsky,
under the title of Fragmentum Pragense Evangelii S. Marci
vulgo Autographi, 1773, 4to. — Home's Introduction. — Ed.
a As to whether Luke was originally a Jew or a pagan, different
opinions have been entertained. Some have inferred the latter
opinion from an expression of the apostle Paul to the Collosians,
(chap, iv, 10 — 14,) where, after naming some with this ad-
dition, ' who are of the circumcision,' he mentions others, and
among them Luke, without any addition. These, are therefore,
supposed to have been Gentiles. But this, though a plausible
inference, as Dr Campbell observes, is not a necessary conse-
quence from the apostle's words. He might have added the
clause, ' who are of the circumcision,' not to distinguish the
persons from those after-mentioned as not of the circumcision,
but to give the Colossiahs particular information concerning those
with whom perhaps they had not previously been acquainted. If
they knew what Luke, and Epaphras, and Demas, whether Jews
or Gentiles, originally were, the information was quite unneces-
sary with regard to them. It will perhaps add a little to the
weight of this consideration to observe, that in those days, in in-
troducing to any church such Christian brethren as were unknown
to them before, it was a point of some importance to inform them,
whether they were of the circumcision or not, inasmuch as there
were certain ceremonies and observances, in which the Jewish
converts were indulged, which, if found in one converted from
Gentilism, might render it suspected, that his conversion was
rather to Judaism than to Christianity. — But that Luke was,
with all the other writers of the New Testament, a convert to
Christianity from Judaism, not from Gentilism, is, upon the
whole, sufficiently evident from his style, in which, notwith-
standing its greater copiousness and variety, there are as many
Hebraisms, as are found in the other evangelists, and such as,
I imagine, could not be exemplified in any writer, originally
Gentile, unless his conversion to Judaism had been very early
in life. — Dr CamptwWs Preface to Lnke,vo\. ii. p. 129. — Ed.
the metropolis of Syria, was, at this time, a city cele-
brated for the pleasantness of its situation, the fertility
of its soil, the riches of its traffic, the wisdom of its sen-
ate, the learning of its professors, and the civility and
politeness of its inhabitants, by the pens of some of the
greatest orators of their times ; and yet, above .ill these,
it was renowned for this one peculiar honour, that in this
place it was, where the disciples were first named
Christians.
In Antioch there was a famous university, well re-
plenished with learned professors of all arts and sciences,
where St Luke could not miss of a liberal education;
however, he did not only study in Antioch, but
in all the schools of Greece and Egypt, whereby he
became accomplished in every part of human literature,
and, as the Greek academies were then more especially
famous for the study of physic, our evangelist, for some
time, applied himself solely to the practice of that ; and,
after his conversion, continued, very likely, in the same
profession, which was far from being inconsistent, but
rather subservient to the ministry of the gospel, or the
cure of souls.
As to his other accomplishment, the art of painting, the
ancients knew nothing of it. Nicephorus " isthe firstauthor
that mentions it ; and though a great deal of pains has
been taken to prove, that some pieces, still extant, were
drawn by his own hand, yet the ancient inscription found
in a vault near St Mary's church, in the Via lata at Rome,
the place where St Paul's house is said to have stood,
where mention is made of a picture of the blessed virgin,
as one of the seven painted by St Luke, is an argument
of better authority for his skill in that art, than any that
the Jesuit Gretser, in his laborious treatise, 5 * has pro-
duced. But, whether our evangelist ever painted the
blessed virgin or not, it is certain that he has left us so
many particulars, omitted by others, relating to the con-
ception, birth, and infancy of her son, 6 that he seems to
have been acquainted with her, and to have had some share
in her confidence.
That he was one of the seventy disciples, is a notion
inconsistent with his own declaration, in the preface to
his gospel, wherein he informs us, that the facts therein
contained were communicated to him by others, who
had been 7 eye-witnesses, and ministers of the word from
the beginning ; and therefore the most probable opinion
is, that, as the Jews lived in great numbers, and had their
synagogues, and schools of education at Antioch, St
Luke was at first a Jewish proselyte, but afterwards, by
St Paul, while he abode in this city, converted to the
Christian faith. A companion of his travels and suf-
ferings he plainly appears to have been, if not from his
first conversion, at least from the time of St Paul's first
going into Macedonia ; for there, in his account of
the apostle's actions, he changes his style, and, 8 in-
cludes himself ever after as a party concerned in the
narrative.
The truth is, he followed him in all his dangers, was
4 B. ii. c. 43.
5 De Imagine non manuf. et a St. Luca pict. c. 18, 19.
* Grotius on Luke ii. 51. ' Luke i. 2.
8 Acts xvi. 10.
* The tradition that St Luke was a painter is utterly unworthy
of credit,; it rests on no solid foundation, and is countenanced by
no authorities. — Ed.
892
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4034- A.C. 30; ACCORDING TO HALES, A.M. 5139. A. D. 88. FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii.23. LUKE vi. 1.
with him at several arraignments at Jerusalem, and
accompanied him in his desperate voyage to Rome, where
he still attended on him, to serve his necessities, and
supply those ministerial offices which the apostle's con-
finement would not suffer him to undergo. Nay, it ap-
pears from a passage of St Paul 1 to Timothy, that he re-
turned with him to Rome the second time, waiting on him
in the same capacity, and especially in carrying mes-
sages to those churches where they had planted
Christianity : nor can we well forbear thinking, that he
continued his attendance on him until the apostle had
finished his course, and crowned his ministry with his
martyrdom ; by which kind offices he infinitely endeared
himself to St Paul, who owned him for his fellow-labourer,
and called him ' the beloved physician,' 2 and ' the
brother, whose praise is in the gospel, throughout all the
churches.'
After the death of St Paul, how he disposed of him-
self is not so certain. Some are of opinion that he
returned into the east, and in Egypt and Lydia preached
the gospel, wrought miracles, converted multitudes, and
constituted guides and ministers of religion ; but others
rather think, that he travelled into Dalmatia, Gallia, Italy,
and Macedonia, where he spared no pains, nor declined
any dangers, that he might faithfully discharge the trust
committed to him. 3 Upon his coming into Greece, those
who make him die a violent death, for some are of a
contrary opinion, tell us, that he preached with great
success, and baptized many converts into the Christian
faith, till a party of infidels, making head against him,
drew him to execution, and, for want of a cross whereon
to dispatcli him, hanged him upon an olive-tree, in the
eightieth year of his age. a
We have two pieces of his, namely, his gospel, and
the history of the apostolic acts, wrote for the use of the
churches, and both dedicated to Theophilus : but who
this Theophilus was, it is not so easy a matter to determine,
since many of the ancients themselves have taken this
name in a general appellative sense, for a lover of God,
a title common to every good Christian ; but others, with
better reason, have thought, that it is the proper name of
some person of distinction, since the title of ' most ex-
cellent ' is annexed to it, which is the usual form of ad-
dress to princes and great men. But who this person of
distinction was, it is impossible to tell, only we may
suppose, that he was some considerable magistrate, whom
St Luke had converted, and to whom he now dedicated
his books, not only as a testimony of honourable respect,
but as a means of giving him a farther information of those
things wherein he had instructed him.
4 The occasion of his writing his gospel was, as himself
intimates, the rash and wrong accounts given to the
world by some, who, either out of ignorance or design,
had misrepresented the actions and doctrines of Christ,
and sowed the seeds of error in the church. * It is certain,
1 2 Tim. iv. 11. 22 Cor. viii. IS.
3 Cave's Life of St Luke.
Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
a In regard to the latter part of the life, and to the death of
this evangelist, antiquity has not furnished us with any accounts
which can he relied on. — Campbell. — Ed.
b St Luke does not charge those who had written before him,
cither with misrepresenting the actions and doctrines of Christ,
or with sowing the seeds of error in the church Mis design
that this evangelist is more circumstantial in relating the
facts, and more exact in the method and order of them,
than either of the two who wrote before him. a The his-
tory of Zacharias, the generation of John the Baptist,
the angel's coming to the blessed virgin, Elizabeth's
salutation of her at the first interview, the occasion of
Joseph and Mary's going to Bethlehem, the cir-
cumstances of our Saviour's birth there, the publication
of it to the shepherds, and the testimony which Simeon
and Anna gave to him in the temple ; these, and several
other pieces of history, as well as the parables of the
lost sheep, lost piece of money, and returning prodigal
son, &c, are not related by any other evangelist. His
history therefore is an excellent supplement of what they
have omitted ; nor does it in the least detract from the
authority of his relations, that he himself was not pre-
sent at the doing of them : for, if we consider who were
the persons from whom he derived his account of things,
he had a stock of intelligence sufficiently authentic to
proceed upon ; and, when he had finished it, had the
sanction and approbation of an apostle, divinely inspired,
as himself likewise was, even of the great apostle of the
Gentiles, to confirm it.
Whoever looks into the beginning of St Luke's history
of the apostolic acts, may easily perceive that it is a con-
tinuation of what he had related in his gospel ; for it
takes up the story at our Saviour's ascension, and con-
tinues it to St Paul's arrival at Rome after his appeal to
5 Poole's Argument on St Luke.
in writing this gospel was to supersede the defective narratives
of the life of Christ which were then in circulation, and to
furnish the church with a genuine account of the life, doc-
trines, miracles, death, and resurrection of our Saviour. Dr
Campbell truly observes, that the very circumstance of the
number of such narratives at so early a period is itself an evidence
that there was something in the first publication of the Christian
doctrine, which, notwithstanding the many unfavourable circum-
stances wherewith it was attended, excited the curiosity, and
awakened the attention of persons of all ranks and denominations •
insomuch that every narrative which pretended to furnish men
with any additional information concerning so extraordinary a
person as Jesus, seems to have been read with avidity. Who
they were to whom the evangelist alludes, who had published
narratives not entirely to be depended on, it is impossible for us
now to discover: but we are certain they were not the evangelists
Matthew and Mark, because they could not be called ' many ;'
and the former of them at least wrote from his own personal
knowledge, as well as under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
while the persons to whom Luke refers had written merely from
report. Some writers have supposed that Luke derived his in-
formation chiefly from the apostle Paul, whom he had faithfully
attended. But though Paul, who was divinely enlightened in all
that concerned the life and doctrine of his Master, must have
been of great use to this evangelist, it appears from Luke's own
words, that the chief source of his intelligence, as to the facts
related in his gospel, was from those who had been eye and ear
witnesses of what our Lord both did and taught. Now of this
number Paul evidently was not. At the same time, the sanction
of the apostle, and the early and unanimous reception of the
writings of Luke, as divinely inspired, and a part of the canon
of Scripture, are sufficient to satisfy us of the divine authority
both of the gospel which bears the name of this evangelist, and
of the acts of the apostles. As to the time when this gospel was
written, the majority of biblical critics are of opinion that >t was in
the year 63, or 64. As to the place of publication, though
nothing certain can be affirmed, it has been conjectured with
much probability that it was written by Luke while he attended
on Paul during his two years' imprisonment at Cjesarea ; and
that before he set sail with the apostle for Rome, he sent it to
fhi oj luius, wherever that person was residing Ed.
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &o.
893
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Csesar, and so, properly speaking, is but one history
divided into two parts. The main difference between
the gospel and the Acts is, that in the former he writes
from the information he had from others, but such as
were true and authentic witnesses ; in the latter, from
his own knowledge, and personal concern in the things he
relates.
His chief design, in the composition of this work, was,
to write a true history of the apostles, and of the founda-
tion of the Christian church, in opposition to the false
Acts, and false histories, which began then to be dispersed
about the world. This history, however, does not com-
prise the acts of all the apostles, but confines itself chief-
ly to the most remarkable passages of two, St Peter and
St Paul, and even of these two, it gives us but a short
and summary account. St Peter's story carries it down
no lower than his deliverance from Herod's imprisoning
him, and the death of his persecutor, which happened in
the year of our Lord 44 ; and yet, the apostle lived four
and twenty years after this. And in like manner, the
history of St Paul is far from being complete, for, as
from the time of his conversion, there is very little
said of him, to his coming to Iconium, which was twelve
years after ; so his story proceeds no farther than to his
first coming to Rome, in the year of our Lord 58 ; and
yet, after this, he lived ten years, and having preached
the gospel in Spain, and other parts of the west, at last
returned to Rome, and there suffered martyrdom.
1 It must be owned, however, that the evangelist is more
particular in his account of St Paul, than of any other
of the apostles, and that not only because he was more
finally active in the cause of Christianity, but because
St Luke was his constant attendant, an eye-witness of
the whole carriage of his life, and privy to his most in-
timate transactions, and therefore capable of giving a
more full and satisfactory relation of them.
2 The evangelist's design, in short, was not to compose
a large volume, but only to single out some few things
which he thought necessary for the instruction of the faith-
ful ; and in this respect his work may be called 'An his-
torical Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian re-
ligion ;' since therein we perceive our Lord's promises
fulfilled in his mission of the Holy Ghost, in his re-
surrection, and ascension into heaven, in the sovereign
power he exercises there, in the miracles he enabled his
followers to work, in the rise and wonderful progress
of his religion, and, in one word, in the Christian church
becoming the church universal by the call to the Gentiles.
We have only one thing more to remark concerning
this history, namely, That as St Luke wrote it at Rome
and at the end of St Paul's two years' imprisonment
there, with which he concludes his story ; so his way and
manner of writing is exact and accurate ; his style polite
and elegant, sublime and noble, and yet easy and per-
spicuous, flowing with a natural grace and sweetness, ad-
mirably adapted to an historical design, and all along
expressed in a vein of purer and more refined lan-
guage than is to be found in the other writers of the sacred
story.
St John, though the last in order, yet first in quality,
among the evangelists, was by birth a Galilean, the son
1 Cave's Life of St Luke.
* Beausobre's Preface on the Acts of the Apostles.
FROM BEGIN. OFGOSP. TO MAT.ix.8. MARK ii. 23. LUKS vi. 1.
of Zebedee and Salome, one of those devout women
who constantly attended our Lord in his ministry, and
brother of James, who, to distinguish him from another
apostle of the same name, is generally called ' James the
great.' Before his adjoining himself to Christ, he seems
to have been a disciple to John the Baptist, and is thought
to have been that other disciple who, in the first chapter 3
of his gospel, is said to have been present with Andrew
when John declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God,
and thereupon to have followed him to the place of his
abode.
He was by much the youngest of the apostles ; yet
was he admitted into as great a share of his Master's con-
fidence as any. He was one of those to whom he com-
municated the most private passages of his life ; one
of those whom he took with him when he went and
restored Jairus's daughter to life ; one of those to whom
he exhibited a specimen of his divinity, in his trans-
figuration on tiie mount ; one of those who were present
at his conference with Moses and Elias, and heard that
voice which declared him the beloved Son of God ; and
one of those who were companions of his solitude, and
most retired devotions, and bitter agonies in the garden.
Thus, of the three who were made the witnesses of their
Master's actions, which he saw convenient to conceal, St
John had constantly the privilege to make one. Nay, even
of these three he seems, in some respects, to have the pre-
ference ; to be known by the most desirable of all titles,
' the disciple whom Jesus loved ;' to have the honour of a
leaning upon his Lord's bosom at meat ; to have the in-
timacy with him to ask him a question, namely, who in
the company was the traitor ; which even St Peter himself
had not courage to do ; and, what is the highest instance
of his affection, to have his mother, his sorrowful and dis-
consolate mother, with his last dying breath, committed to
his care and comfort; 4 which peculiar tokens of his
Master's favour and esteem, some have ascribed to the
apostle's eminent modesty, others to his unspotted chas-
tity, others think it an indulgence due to his youth ; but
they seem to have the brightest notion who impute it to a
nearness of relation, and a peculiar sweetness of disposi-
tion conspiring to recommend him.
5 Upon the division of the provinces, which the apos-
tles made among themselves, Asia fell to St John's
share, though he did not immediately enter upon his
charge, but staid at Jerusalem, at least till the death of
the blessed virgin, which was about fifteen years after
our Lord's ascension. After he was thus released from
his trust, he took his journey into Asia, and industriously
applied himself to propagate Christianity, preaching
where the gospel had not yet taken place, and confirming
it where it had been already planted. Many churches
of note and eminence were of his foundation ; but the
chief place of his residence was at Ephesus, where, though
St Paul had many years before settled a church, and
constituted Timothy bishop of it, yet considering that it
was a city of exceeding great resort, both upon the account
3 Voi'. :;5— 40. 4 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol i.
5 Cave's Lite of St John.
a Among the eastern people the custom was, not to sit on
chairs, as it is with us, hut to lie along at meals upon couches;
so that the second lay with Ins head in the hosom of him thai
afore hirn.
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of its traffic, and the convenience of its port, the apostle
thought he could not be seated more commodiously
than here for dispersing the knowledge of his doc-
trines to natives of several nations and quarters at
once.
After several years, some say twenty-seven, spent
here, he was accused to Domitian, who had then begun a
severe persecution, as a great asserter of atheism and
impiety, and a public subverter of the religion of the
empire ; so that, by his command, the proconsul of Asia
sent him bound to Rome, where, as Tertullian relates,
in a manner importing the fact abundantly notorious, he
was plunged into a caldron of oil set on lire ; but God,
who had reserved him for farther services to the truth, re-
strained the heat of it, as he did in the fiery furnace of
old, and so preserved him from this seemingly unavoid-
able destruction. The emperor, however, unmoved
with his miraculous deliverance, ordered him to be ban-
ished to Patmos, a small disconsolate island in the
Archipelago, where he remained several years, instruct-
ing the inhabitants in the faith of Christ ; and where he
was vouchsafed those visions and prophetical represen-
tations which he then recorded in his book of Reve-
lation, reaping this great advantage from his exile,
that though he was cut off* from the society of men,
he was the more entertained with immediate converses of
heaven.
Upon the death of Domitian, and the succession of
Nerva, who rescinded all the odious acts of his pre-
decessor, and, by public edict, recalled those whom the
other's fury had banished, St John took the opportunity
to return into Asia, and fixed his seat again at Ephesus ;
the rather, because the people of that place had lately
martyred their bishop, Timothy. Here, with the assis-
tance of seven other bishops, he took upon him the govern-
ment of the large diocese of Asia Minor, erected ora-
tories, and disposed of the clergy in the best manner
that the circumstances of those times would permit ; and
having spent his time in an indefatigable execution of his
charge, travelling from east to west to instruct the world
in the principles of the holy religion which he was sent
to propagate ; and shunning no difficulties or dangers,
to redeem men's minds from vice, error, or idolatry, he
finished his course, in the beginning of Trajan's reign,
in a good old age, and, in the ninety-ninth year of his
life, died a natural death, and was buried near Ephesus ;
a wonderful pattern of holiness and charity, and a writer
so profound, as to deserve, by way of eminence, the
character of St John the divine.
The first in time, though placed last, is his Apocalypse,
or book of Revelation, which he wrote in his confinement
at Patmos. After the preface, and admonition given to
the bishops of the seven churches in Asia, it contains the
persecutions which the faithful have suffered from the
Jews, heretics, and Roman emperors, down as far as
Julian the apostate. After this we have a view of that
vengeance which God has exercised against the persons
of persecutors, against the Roman empire, and the city of
Rome, which is described under the name of Babylon,
the great prostitute, seated upon seven hills ; then we have
a description of the peaceable and flourishing state of
the church for a thousand years, and, after some moles-
tation from the Turks, as is supposed, the happiness of
the church triumphant, set off' with all the imaginable
beauties of rhetoric ; and, at last, we come to a formal
conclusion of the whole matter, and a severe commination
to all those who shall presume either to add or diminish
any thing from this prophecy.
1 That St John the evangelist was the author of the book
of revelation, all the most ancient ecclesiastical writers
were agreed, until Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, in
his answer to one Nepos, another Egyptian bishop, Avho
had revived the gross notion of Cerinthus, concerning
the millennium, in order to evade the use which this
Nepos had made of the Apocalypse, called in question
its authority, by asserting that several of the ancients
had disowned this book to have been wrote by any apos-
tolic man ; that Cerinthus had prefixed John's name to it,
to give the better countenance to his dream of Christ's
reign upon earth ; and that, though it might be the work
of some inspired person, it could not possibly be St
John's, because its style, matter, and method, did by
no means agree with his other writings. Now, whoever
looks into the ancient writers of the church, will find
that Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who, according to z
Irenseus, had seen St John ; Ignatius, bishop of Antioch,
who, according to St 3 Chrysostom, was conversant with
the apostles ; Justin Martyr, 4 Irenseus, * Clemens 6 of
Alexandria, and Tertullian, 7 authors all of the second
century, are unanimous in their ascribing this work to
the same hand from whence the gospel and epistles did
proceed ; and that therefore the opinion of one private
doctor should not prevail against the authority of so
many writers, who were either cotemporary, or nearly
subsequent to the apostles. For, be it allowed that
there is a diversity of style, yet does not every able
writer vary that according to the nature of the subject he is
upon ? In history, the style should be simple ; in epistles,
familiar ; and in prophecies, majestic and sublime ; and
therefore what wonder is it, if, in arguments so vastly
different, the same person did not always observe the same
tenor and way of writing ? Nothing can be more different
in their method and diction, than the book of Proverbs and
the book of Canticles, and yet few have doubted but
that Solomon was the writer of both : but now, that
Cerinthus should be the author of a book which con-
tains doctrines directly opposite to the errors which he
broached, is a thing incredible. For, whereas Cerinthus
did not believe that God made the world, or that Christ
died, and rose again ; the author of the Revelation 8
ascribes to God the work of the creation, and calls our
blessed Saviour 9 the ' first begotten of the dead ;' and
whereas Cerinthus made Jesus merely the Son of Joseph,
and a being different from that of Christ ; the author of
the Revelation calls him expressly 1U ' the Son of God,'
and makes him u one and the same person with Christ.
Though therefore there may be some similitude between
St John's expressions, and the notions of Cerinthus, in
regard to Christ's reign of a thousand years, yet it had
been much more prudent in Dionysius, to have given a
spiritual sense and interpretation of these expressions,
than to ascribe to a wicked and sensual man, as Cerin-
thus was, a book, which breathes nothing but piety and
1 Boausobre's Preface on the Apocalypse. 2 Iren. b. iii. c. 3.
3 Horn, in Ignatium. 4 Dial. cum. Tryph. 5 B. iv. c. 37.
6 Strom. 1. 7 De Resurrect, c. 58. 8 Chap. x. 6.
9 Rev. i. 5. ■" Chap. ii. IS. u Chap. i. 5.
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holiness, an awful dread of God, and a devotion such
as the angels perform in heaven.
The truth is, all circumstances concur to entitle our
apostle to be the author of this book. His name fre-
quently expressed in it ; his writing it in the island of
Patmos, whither none but he was banished ; his directing
particular epistles to the seven churches of Asia, which
had either been planted or cultivated by him, and his
styling himself ' their brother and companion in tribulation,
and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ :' these,
and many more circumstances that might be mentioned,
added to the doctrine contained in it, which is highly
suitable to the apostolic spirit and temper, evidently
bear witness, that this book was the work of St John, and
consequently, of divine and canonical authority.
1 Next to the Apocalypse, in order of time, are the
three epistles, which St John wrote. The first of these
is catholic, calculated for all times and places, and
contains most excellent rules for the conduct of the
Christian life, and for preservation against the crafty
insinuations of seducers. The other two are but short,
and directed to particular persons : the one to a lady
of honourable quality ; and the other to the charitable
and hospitable Gaius, so kind a friend, and so courteous
an entertainer, of all indigent Christians.
2 Eusebius, and after him St Jerome, informs us, that
St John, having perused the other three gospels, ap-
proved and confirmed them by his authority ; but observ-
ing withal, that these evangelists had omitted several
of our Saviour's actions, such especially as were done
before the Baptist's imprisonment, he wrote his gospel
in order to supply what was wanting in them : a and be-
cause at this time there were several heretics, such as
Cerinthus, Ebion, and their followers, sprung up in the
church, who denied the divine nature of Jesus Christ,
another end of his writing was, to antidote the world
against the poison of these heresies, by making it appear
that our blessed Saviour was God from all eternity, and
before his incarnation ; 3 and that as other evangelists
had written the series of his generation according to the
flesh, he might write a spiritual gospel, beginning from
the divinity of Christ : which was a subject reserved
for him, as the most excellent person by the Holy
Ghost.
When therefore the bishops of Asia, and several
ambassadors from other churches, had been for some
FROM BEGIN. OF GOSP. TO MAT. ix. 8. MARK ii. 23. LUKE vi. 1.
time soliciting him, he caused them to proclaim a general
fast, to seek the blessing of heaven on so great and
momentous an undertaking ; and when this was done,
he set about the work, and * completed it in so excellent
and sublime a manner, that the ancients generally re-
sembled him to an eagle soaring aloft within the clouds,
whither the weak eye of man was not able to follow him :
for, 'as the evangelical writings,' says4 St Basil, 'tran-
scend all the other parts of the holy scriptures, because
in other parts God speaks to us by his servants the pro-
phets ; but in the gospels our Lord, who is God blessed
for evermore, speaks to us himself : so among all the
evangelical preachers none is like St John, the son of
thunder, for the sublimity of his discourses, beyond any
man's capacity duly to reach and comprehend.'
1 Cave's Life of St John. 2 Hist. Eccl. b. iii. c. 24.
3 Whitby's Preface to St John's Gospel.
a It is manifestly not without design that he commonly passes
over those passages of our Lord's history and teaching, which
had been treated at large by the other evangelists, or, if he
touches them at all, he touches them but slightly, whilst he re-
cords many miracles which had been overlooked by the rest, and
expatiates on the sublime doctrines of the pre-existence, the di-
vinity, and the incarnation of the Word, the great ends of his
mission, and the blessings of his purchase. This gospel may
be truly said to interfere less with the rest than these do with
one another: in consequence of which, if its testimony cannot
often be pleaded in confirmation of theirs, neither is it liable to
be urged in contradiction. It is remarkable also, that though
this evangelist appears, more than any of them, to excel in that
artless simplicity, which is scarcely compatible with the subtlety
of disputation, we have, in his work, a fuller display of the evi-
dences of our religion, on the footing on which it. then stood,
than in all the rest put together. — Campbell's Preface to John's
Gospel. — Ed.
CHAP. V. — On Philo and Josephus.
(supplemental by the editor.)
It is proper that the reader should have some acquain-
tance with the general character and principles of the
two highly respectable Jewish writers whose names are
at the head of this chapter.
Philo, who is called Judasus, to distinguish him from
Philo the Carpathian, lived when Christ appeared on
earth. He is generally regarded as a Jew of Alexan-
dria : from his own account, however, Ave learn that he
Avas born at Jerusalem ; and he doubtless repaired to
that city occasionally to attend at the festivals. He
Avas a man of distinguished family, and of great author-
ity at Alexandria, being brother to Alexander Lysima-
chus, Avho was alibarch, or chief of the fiscal scribes, in
that city ; exercising an office which is supposed to have
had the direction of the territorial revenue, and which
Avas probably a situation of considerable rank, as his
son married Bernice, the daughter of Agrippa.
Philo appears to have been brought up a Pharisee,
4 Horn. 16. t. i.
I His gospel was originally written in Greek, but in a Greek
that abounds with Hebraisms, as do the other evangelists. His
words are peculiar to himself, and his phrases used in an uncom-
mon sense, which may possibly make his way of writing not so
grateful to some nice masters of eloquence. In citing places
from the Old Testament, though he sometimes makes use of the
Septuagint, yet he usually translates from the Hebrew original,
and generally renders them word for word: for being an Hebrew
of the Hebrews, and admirably skilled in the language of his
country, this probably made him less exact in his Greek com-
posures, wherein he had no advantage besides what was imme-
diately communicated from above. But what he Avanted
in the politeness of his style, was abundantly made up in the
excellence and sublimity of his matter. — Cave's Life of St John.
— One thing very remarkable in John's style, is an attempt to
impress important truths more strongly on the minds of the
readers, by employing, in the expression of them, both an affir-
mative proposition, and a negative. Thus: 'All things were
made by it, (the word,) and without it not a single creature was
made. He acknowledged and denied not, but acknowledged.'
Pleonasms are very frequent in this gospel : ' This man came
as a witness to testify concerning the light:' tautologies also,
and repetitions. Thus it follows: 'He was not the light, but
came to testify concerning the light.' Again: 'In the be-
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word Avas God. This Avas in the beginning with God.' —
Campbell's Preface to John's Gospel. — Ed.
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and to have attained extensive and various information,
and great knowledge of the scriptures of the Old Tes-
tament, which he read probably in the Septuagint ver-
sion, not having-, it is supposed, been acquainted with
the Hebrew, being an Hellenist, and writing himself in
the Greek language. He was a man of very eminent
qualities, and highly revered ; and a remark of his
wife which is recorded, bears testimony to his worth,
since, on being inquired of wherefore she did not wear
ornaments, she answered, ' that the virtue of an husband
was a sufficient ornament for a ivife.'
He was deputed by the Jews of Alexandria upon an
embassy to Rome, in the fourth year of Caligula, a.d.
40, or 41. The object was to counteract the calumnies
of Apion, and to make a complaint to Caligula on the
subject of a persecution excited against these Jews, for
having refused divine honours to the statues of the
emperors, while the rest of the world was submitting,
with servile flattery, to adore a weak and depraved
mortal as a god. Philo describes his reception by the
emperor at a villa, which had belonged to Mecaenas,
near Rome. He was treated with a contemptuous
levity, equally unbecoming the imperial dignity, and
the venerable character of Philo. He, however, mani-
fested his firmness, and upon the failure of his petition,
turned to the Jews who accompanied him, and encour-
aged them by saying, ' Now Caius is against us, God
will be with us.'
Eusebius and Jerome state, that during Philo's stay at
Rome, he conversed with St Peter ; and some have affirmed
that he was converted to Christianity either by that
apostle, or by reading the gospel of St Mark at Alex-
andria, and that he afterwards renounced the Christian
faith. l These accounts have been disputed by the
learned editor of the works of Philo, and it has been
maintained that it is not probable that St Peter was at
Rome so early as Philo's time, if at all, and that St
Mark's gospel was not published till a. d. 45. Bry-
ant, however, contends, that Philo's age is placed too
far back when it is assigned to the time of Julius Cassar,
that he was a contemporary of the apostles, and lived
so late as the reign of Nero ; and that as St Mark came
to Alexandria in 48 or 49, Philo had an opportunity of
conversing with the apostle, and of seeing his gospel,
which some suppose to have been published in 45.
In the works of Philo, we discover a great devotion
to the Old Testament, but he sometimes follows a vague
strain of allegory, particularly in interpreting the his-
tory of the temptation in paradise ; he expected that all
nations should be converted to the law of Moses ; and
conceived that the promises relating to Christ referred
only to a temporal Messiah, describing him as a man,
who, as the oracle foretold, should ' go forth warring and
conquering, and who should subdue great and numerous
nations. Though he appears to have conceived that the
divine could not be united to the human nature, he had
nevertheless been led to form very just apprehensions,
in some respects, of the eternal nature and attributes of
the Logos, and to describe him as a real and acting
being, ' the first begotten Son,' ' the express image of
God, esteemed the same as God, the great Cause of all
things, by whom all tilings were produced and disposed,'
1 Euseb. Hist. Ecd. b. ii. c. 17. vol. i. p. 65.
" the person who visibly appeared to Abraham, to Jacob,
and to Moses in the bush, the appointed mediator and
intercessor for the sins of the world ; the Word of the
Supreme God, by whom a ransom and price of redemp-
tion of the soul may be paid."
Philo speaks also remarkably of the Holy Ghost, and
styles him ' the all-wise Spirit, the divine power which
breathed the breath of life into man, being sent from
God for abode here, to the advantage of the human race,
that if man be mortal as to the visible, he might at least
be rendered immortal as to the invisible part.' He re-
presents a prophet also as ' not manifesting any thing
of his own, but as being an interpreter, — the divine
Spirit coming upon and dwelling in him, impelling and
directing the organism of his voice to a distinct mani-
festation of what the Spirit predicts.' Philo then,
though he does not state an association and equality in
the mysterious union of the Godhead, still must be al-
lowed to have caught, either from the scriptures or
from Plato, some outline of the doctrine of the Trinity ; *
and he appears in one instance, if the present reading
of the passage be adhered to, to represent the Logos as
' bearing the similitude of man, and as the shepherd of
the holy flock.'
The observations, however, expressed by Philo upon
these and other points of faith, and particularly upon
regeneration and the divine grace, so much resemble what
is communicated by St Luke and St James, and by the
author of the epistle to the Hebrews, that we may sup-
pose them to have been borrowed from the inspired
writings, if we admit that these scriptures were produced
sufficiently early for that purpose. AA e have seen
indeed that Philo might possibly have conversed with
St Mark, and seen his gospel ; and if he had not any
intercourse with the early disciples, he might at least
have caught the distant reports of those preachers,
whose sound went forth with rapid communication into
all lands. On the other hand, it is attended with diffi-
culties to suppose, that the testimonies to the word of
Christ should have been presented to Philo, and not
have been noticed by him. Many who like him ima-
gined that the divine perfections could not be united to
the flesh, maintained, as did the Nicolaitans, and after-
wards the Gnostics, that the body of Christ was a heav-
enly substance, which assumed merely the appearance
of the human form ; it is probable, therefore, that Philo
either did not hear, or was withholden by his belief in
the perpetuity of the Mosaic dispensation, from receiv-
ing the witness of the evangelists, if brought before him.
He was employed, however, by providence, indirectly
to support the cause of religion, and to bear his suffrage
to many doctrines communicated in the gospel : thus,
for instance, he gives a remarkable account of Pilate,
the Roman governor, being apprehensive that the Jews
should send an embassy to Rome, to represent the crimes
of his government, and the murder of eminent persons
who had been condemned by him.
The attempts which are recorded in the Acts of the
Apostles to have been made upon the life of Paul will
be more readily accounted for, and the danger from
which he was delivered be more fully understood, if we
consider that the Jews were so blinded by bigotry and
a persecuting spirit, that even Philo states it to be
I proper that all who had a zeal for virtue should have a
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ri°kt to punish, without delay, and with their own hands,
those who forsook the worship of the true God, not car-
rying- them before a court of judicature, or the council,
or any magistrate whatsoever, but indulging the abhor-
rence of evil and the love of God, in the immediate
punishment of those impious wretches ; and from such
principles might originate the custom among the Jews
of making a vow not to eat and drink until they had
killed the object of their religious abhorrence.
The writings of Philo, which abound with just senti-
ments eloquently expressed, furnish much that has a
general claim to regard. He speaks of God, and of the
worship and purity becoming his creatures, and describes
the duties of life, and the rewards and punishments of
sin, with great solemnity and effect. The elevation of
his thoughts sometimes swells out his representations
beyond a strict and literal accuracy. He bears, how-
ever, the testimony of an enlarged mind to the truth of
revelation, and to the harmony and importance of its
communications ; and his works illustrate the provi-
dence of God, who at no time left himself without a
witness, and employed in different ages and countries
distinguished men to diffuse a light around them, which,
however defective when compared with the brightness of
gospel knowledge, served at least to open the minds of
men for the reception of some preliminary convictions.
Philo, by his wisdom and eloquence, attracted much
attention at Alexandria to his writings, which were
widely spread, excited doubtless a reverence for the
Hebrew scriptures among many who were not acquaint-
ed with them.
With respect to JosEPHUs,his character as an historian
is entitled to very particular consideration, and the tes-
timonies which he affords in support of Christianity have
an especial claim to regard.
This eminent man appears to have been raised up by
providence for purposes equally remarkable and impor-
tant. He stands on a distinct ground between sacred
and heathen writers, and his works afford most valuable
illustrations of the divine authority of the scriptures,
and of the truth of many facts on which the claims of
religion rest. The attestation which he gives to the
fidelity of the sacred accounts of the Old Testament, is
so full, that he transcribes almost every part, with such
variation as might naturally be expected from an his-
torian who composes a work in his own style, but with
an evident deference to the sacred writers, demonstrat-
ing the deep veneration for, and entire confidence in
them. It has been alleged that lie suppressed some
miraculous circumstances, in accommodation to the opin-
ions and manners of a people who differed in all respects
so much from his countrymen ; and that he was not him-
self sufficiently aware of the spiritual import of the Jew-
ish dispensation, and of the figurative application of its
prophecies. It does not however appear that he in-
tended to withhold the proofs of the miraculous economy
under which the Jews were governed in subjection to a
the icracy. The detail of circumstances which he re-
cords, every where demonstrates the direction and sup-
port of providence, manifesting its interference, and
exhibiting the signs of peculiar protection.
He mentions the frequent disclosures of the divine
presence ; the descent and ministry of angels convers-
ing with the patriarchs and others ; the miraculous
deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and their
support in the wilderness, with many subsequent indica-
tions of God's special direction ; the descent of celes-
tial fire on the altar, consuming the sacrifices ; the per-
manent abode of a divine oracle, or source of illumin-
ation from which revelations were obtained by the high
priest, by means of the Urim and Thutnmini, the opera-
tion of which was expected to be restored when the
temple was rebuilt in the time of Nehemiah, 1 and which
Josephus represents to have ceased two hundred years
before he composed his antiquities. 2
In treating of the declarations of God, which were
prophetic, as relating to the Messiah, he sometimes gen-
eralizes what is particular, from not apprehending the
import of the words now distinctly seen by those who
have the veil of prejudice taken from their hearts. He
qualifies, therefore, or omits that spiritual meaning which
is included in the inspired promises : thus, in speaking
of the first intimation of the Messiah, delivered by God
at the fall in paradise, he interprets the divine threat,
with respect to the bruising of Satan by the triumph of
Christ, to imply only that men should direct their strokes
against the serpent's head.
The works of Josephus consist of the Jewish
Antiquities, the W ars of the Jews, his own Life,
his books against Apion, and a few other smaller
pieces. He was the son of Matthias, of sacerdotal
extraction, and of royal descent, on the mother's side,
she being of the Asmonean race. He was born at
Jerusalem, a. d. 37, and died in 93. He appears to
have been educated in strict adherence to the Mosaic
law. He appears to have entertained some apprehen-
sion of the approaching termination of the Jewish dis-
pensation, as he combated the opinions of his country-
men with respect to the necessity of circumcision,
maintaining that every man should be left to serve God
in his own way, and he seems to have expected the fall
of Jerusalem. But whatever his religious persuasions
were, he certainly established a high character by his
judgment and attainments, so as to have been consulted
at a very early age by those who had the direction of
public affairs. He obtained stations of considerable
authority, and was employed in many undertakings of
great moment and enterprise, in which he displayed
much activity and courage. His distinguished talents
enabled him to record his own actions, and to transmit
the memorial of them, with that of the history of his
country, to after ages.
He went to Rome in the twenty-sixth year of his age,
a. d. 63, and having been introduced by an Hebrew
comedian to Pappfea the empress, he experienced much
favour from her. On his return to his country, he ob-
tained the command of some forces, and distinguished
himself in the defence of Jolapata against Vespasian
and Titus. When the place was reduced, he was not
only pardoned at the intercession of Titus, but received
into much consideration and favour with Vespasian, who
took him to the siege of Jerusalem. Josephus, after
beholding the accomplishment of the divine predictions,
in the siege and destruction of that place, accompanied
Titus to Rome, and obtained the freedom of the city,
and an allowance from Vespasian, which he enjoyed for
Neh. vii. 6.
5 x
: Antiq. b. iii. c. 8.
898
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 409". A. D.93; ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 5502. A. D. 91, &c.
many years, employing" his time in the study of the
Greek language, and in composing his works. He
wrote his history of the Jewish war at the command of
Vespasian. Some think that it was first written in
Hebrew ; and Hebrew manuscripts, either of this ori-
ginal or of a subsequent version, are occasionally men-
tioned, one particularly that was in the Vatican. The
work, however, was presented to Vespasian in the
Greek language, and the emperor with his own hand
wrote an order for it to be published ; and it afterwards
obtained the approbation of king Agrippa, Archelaus,
and Herod. It was deposited in the public library at
Rome, and a statue was erected in honour of the author. 1
It is indeed greatly to be admired for the striking and
animated manner in which it describes the affecting
scenes which the author beheld.
The Jewish Antiquities, which extend to twenty
books, bring down the history from the beginning of the
world to the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, when the
Jews rebelled against the Romans. This work was fin-
ished in the thirteenth year of Domitian, a. d. 93. It
is almost a transcript of the sacred history, written with
the latitude of a paraphrase. The author introduces
dates with more attention to chronology than is usual in
ancient writers, but still with less accuracy than might
be wished, as they do not correspond with the chron-
ology of the Hebrew text or of the Septuagint version.
It is possible, however, that the copies may have been
mutilated, since they differ from each other in many
points, as well as in chronology, and vary also from
the accounts of other writers. The history of his own
life, which seems originally to have been annexed to the
Antiquities, is continued down to the reign of Domitian,
who distinguished him for some time by his favour.
His two books against Apion were written after his
Antiquities. Apion was a grammarian of Alexandria,
who entertained great prejudices against the Jews, and
made many misrepresentations concerning them, which
were refuted by Josephus, who has preserved in his work
some interesting fragments of ancient historians, which
repeat or confirm many accounts in scripture. How
many years Josephus lived after completing this work is
not exactly known. It has been conjectured that he did
not long survive his patron Epaphroditus, who was put
to death by Domitian, a. d. 95, after which, it has been
suspected, that the historian fell a victim to the malice
of his enemies. 2
Another work also, entitled the History of the Mac-
cabees, has been ascribed to him, but some writers at-
tribute it to another Josephus.
Josephus, as an historian, is justly celebrated for his
fidelity and correctness. If he admitted some relations
of questionable character into his earlier accounts, and
even intermixed them with particulars of sacred history,
and also disagreed with other writers, yet upon an im-
partial judgment, he is entitled to the highest regard
and respect; and Scaliger justly observes that it is
more safe to believe him, not only as to the affairs of
the Jews, but as to those of foreign nations, than any
of the Latin writers, and that his fidelity and compass
of learning are every where conspicuous. A great mass
of information might be collected from the works of
1 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. b. iii. c. 9. 2 Dodwell's Dissert, vi.
Josephus, in confirmation of the evidence of Christi.
anity ; it is intended, however, here to adduce only
such particulars as occur on a general view of his writ-
ings.
These will be found to relate to the establishment of
facts, as well those which illustrate the completion
of prophecy, as those which tend to verify circumstances
on which the credibility of the gospel depends. AVe
shall not, however, insist much upon the many proofs
which might be adduced from the works of Josephus, in
confirmation of the prophecies of the Old Testament,
relating to events completed before the time of Christ,
since, as being a Jew, he may be supposed to have had
a bias in favour of such prophets : he acknowledged as
sacred all the canonical books of the Old Testament as
now received by the protestant church ; as, for instance,
when he relates that Antiochus Epiphanes spoiled the
temple, and put a stop to the constant practice of offer-
ing a daily sacrifice or expiation during three years and
six months. The general picture of the corruption of
manners among the Jews which Josephus has furnished,
is full of interest, from the relation which it bears to the
argument for the necessity of the divine mission of
Christ, and of his interposition as a mediator.
The first particular which may be mentioned as de-
monstrating strongly the advantage to be derived from
attention to the writings of Josephus is, that the histor-
ian appears to relate with minute and unusual accuracy
and detail of dates, that Nehemiah, by unwearied perse-
verance, finished the rebuilding of Jerusalem, after
three years and four months' exertion, in the twenty-
eighth year of Xerxes, and in the ninth month. Again,
although he seldom adverts to astronomical circum-
stances, he mentions an eclipse of the moon, which took
place a little before the death of Herod the Great. By
these chronological notices some most important points
relating to the history of Christianity have been ascer-
tained, as the explication of the seventy weeks of Dan-
iel, the duration of our Lord's ministry, and the time of
his death, in conformity to the prediction of the prophet.
The historian, in describing Daniel's interpretation of
the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, when he comes to the
part which relates to the stone cut out of the mountain
without hands, which was to break in pieces the iron,
the brass, and the clay, the silver and the gold, and
which is generally supposed to relate to the kingdom
of the Messiah, speaks thus : " Daniel did also declare
the meaning of the stone to the king, but I do not think
proper to relate it, since I have only undertaken to
describe things past, or things present, but not things
future ; yet, if any one be so very desirous of knowing-
truth as not to waive such points of curiosity, and cannot
curb his inclination for understanding the uncertainty
of futurity, and whether they will happen or not, let him
be diligent in reading the book of Daniel, which he will
find among the sacred writings."
Upon this intimation of the belief of Josephus in a
prophecy relating to Christ, Havercamp observes, that
it is not to be wondered at, that the historian would not
meddle with things future, for he had no mind to pro-
voke the Romans by speaking of the destruction of that
city which they called the eternal city. Josephus
admits that Daniel predicted that the Jews should be
destroyed by the Romans. He was induced by some
Sect. I.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
899
A. M. 4007. A. D. 93. ACCORDING TO HALES, 5502. A. D. 91, &c.
interested view to apply the prophecies relating to
Christ to Vespasian, since he himself afterwards inti-
mated that the Messiah was yet to come ; and he en-
deavours to introduce a latitude of opinion upon the
subject, by saying that interpretations go by fancy,
some one way, some another, and that the Jews in the
end came to suffer for their mistakes with the irreparable
destruction of their country. The account which he
gives of the twenty-two books of the canon, and of the
conviction which the Jews entertained of the divine
authority of those books, not in any case adding to or
altering any part of them, is highly important. The
circumstantial detail likewise which he recites of the
translation of the Mosaic law, under Ptolemy Phila-
delphus, exhibits a proof of the care with which provi-
dence substantiated to heathen nations the authority of
the Pentateuch, securing its distribution in a language
generally understood long before the promulgation of
the gospel.
The passages in which Josephus confirms the accounts
of the evangelists are numerous ; thus, for instance, the
description which he gives of the Jewish sects, particu-
larly of the Scribes and Pharisees, corresponds with
what is stated of them in the gospel. He observes that
the Pharisees asserted that God had decreed to put an
end to Herod's government ; which confirms the account
given by the evangelist Matthew, that the chief priests
and scribes, many of whom were Pharisees, declared
that it was written in the prophets, that out of Bethle-
hem should come a governor, who should rule over the
people Israel.
The dissensions, the incestuous marriages in violation
of the laws of Moses, and the other abominable crimes
of the family of Herod, especially their conduct with
respect to Christ and the Baptist, and his disciples,
drew down the divine vengeance, and effected the de-
struction of their house. The fate of Herod was distin-
guished by the most striking miseries ; and his death
was characterized by a malignity which preserved to the
last the same spirit that had led him to murder the chil-
dren of Bethlehem. Josephus states that not long
before he expired, he sent orders through Judea, requir-
ing the presence of all the chief men in Jericho, and
he earnestly enjoined his sister Salome, and her husband
Alexis, to kill them when he should die. The other
accounts with respect to Herod and his successors
accord with the circumstances of their reigns and char-
acters, incidentally mentioned, or alluded to, by the
evangelists. The historian informs us, that Herod, by
his will, appointed Archelaus to succeed him in Judea,
with the title of king, and assigned the rest of his
dominions to Herod Antipas, as tetrarch of Galilee,
and to Philip, with the exception of a small part given
to Salome. The will was ratified in part by Augustus,
and Archelaus was appointed ruler over ldumea and
Judea, with the title of ethnarch, that of king being
reserved till he should deserve it. He, however, soon
assumed it, and Josephus, who admits the restriction
imposed, nevertheless calls him "the king who succeeded
Herod." The historian adds, that Herod Antipas con-
tinued tetrarch of Galilee till removed by Caligula,
thus confirming the account of St Luke, that our Lord
was sent to Herod, who himself was at Jerusalem at
that time, because he belonged unto his jurisdiction :
and attesting the justice of the punishment inflicted
upon the man who had dared to set at nought the Savi-
our of the world.
The history shows how fully the prophecy was accom-
plished, which declared that the sceptre should not de-
part from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
till Shiloh come. This is considered by Prideaux to
relate to a. d. 12, at which time Christ made his first
appearance in the temple. According to Josephus, it
was in the same year that Coponius was sent into Judea,
to govern it as a Roman province. Julian seems to
have considered the government as passed away from
that time, since he states it as an objection to the Chris-
tians, that Jesus, whom they proclaimed, was one of
Caisar's subjects. The census was suspended on the
reconciliation of Augustus to Herod, and afterwards
completed when Archelaus was deposed, on the com-
plaint of the Jews, who requested that Judea might be
rendered a province, and, then, if the sceptre departed,
the Shiloh was come.
Josephus mentions the government of Felix and that
of Porcius Festus, and others, in a manner which con-
curs Avith the representations of sacred history, and the
circumstances stated by the evangelical writers. He
also relates in regard to that same Agrippa before whom
Paul defended himself, that he was a man of great ac-
tivity and experience, who had been appealed to upon
disputes concerning the Jews. Josephus speaks of
Pontius Pilate, and confirms the account of Caiaphas be-
ing high priest during his government. The evangelist
Luke mentions that Pilate, when he knew that Jesus be-
longed to Herod's jurisdiction, sent him to Herod, the
tetrarch of Galilee, who himself was at Jerusalem at
that time ; and it is deserving of notice, that Josephus
alludes to the practice of Herod to go up to Jerusalem
at the feast of the passover.
In the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, the following
passage occurs : " Now there was about this time, Jesus,
a wise man, if we ought to call him a man, for he was a
doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as re -
ceive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him
many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles : he was the
Christ ; and Pilate, upon the denunciation of the princi-
pal men amongst us, having condemned him to the pun-
ishment of the cross, they that loved him at the first did
not cease (to love him,) for he appeared unto them alive
again the third day ; the divine prophets having spoken
these, and ten thousand other things concerning him :
the sect of Christians, so named from him, have con-
tinued until this day."1
There appears to have been a strong disposition in
some writers to consider this passage as spurious, though
Fabricius represents it to have been in all the Greek
and Latin editions and manuscripts which Bosius Bigo-
tius and Lambecius examined ; in a very ancient He-
brew version in the Vatican, but afterwards erased, as
it was said, by the Jews ; and in two manuscripts of an
Hebrew version, spoken of by Robert Canute in the
twelfth century. It has been objected against the pas-
sage, that it is not cited by Justin Martyr, Tertullian,
Chrysostom, Origen, or Photius, even when some of
these writers argue against the Jews ; but the testimony
1 13. xviii. c. 4. s. 3.
900
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM MAT. xii. 1-
was of less importance in early times than it may now
be deemed ; and it seems to be cited in a discourse,
which some consider as genuine, addressed to Diocle-
sian by Macarius, who held an office of distinction in
that emperor's court : it is referred to likewise by
Jerome, by Eusebius in the most express manner, by
Ambrose, Hegesippus and others.
It has however been urged, that the passage speaks
in such clear terms of Christ, and with such apparent ac-
knowledgment of some of his claims, that if it were gen-
uine, the author must have been a believer in the divine
authority of the gospel, since it admits that Jesus was
Christ or Messiah, and attests his resurrection on the
third day from the grave, in agreement with the predic-
tions of the prophets. But in answer to this it may be
observed, that Josephus could not omit all mention of
Christ, without convicting himself of a manifest sup-
pression of facts ; and that, considering the passage as
genuine, the historian may perhaps be understood to
relate the account only as it was currently received,
without intending to substantiate it, or allowing our Sa-
viour to be the Messiah in the Christian construction of
the word, but only to be the person known under that
designation. Jerome cites the passage as speaking of
him who was believed to be the Christ. Origen men-
tions a passage in Josephus, in which the historian spoke
of Christ's discourse with the doctors in the temple, but
the passage is not to be found in the works which are
extant. The Jews accused the Christians of interpolat-
ing, and the Christians reproached the Jews for erasing
testimonies to their cause.
The representation which Josephus gives of the des-
truction of Jerusalem verifies in the fullest and most
circumstantial manner the completion of our Saviour's
denunciations with respect to that ever memorable event :
some particulars, in illustration of this fact, might be
here produced, but the whole relation of Josephus is an
exact and striking comment upon the prophecies of
Christ ; and nothing can be more interesting than to pur-
sue the subject by comparing the specific declarations
of our Lord with the history of their accomplishment.
A spectator and an historian of the events, he verifies
the completion of the divine revelation in every part,
and while he thought, possibly, that he was describing
only the fulfilment of the Jewish prophecies, he unin-
tentionally substantiated the exact accomplishment of
the denunciations of our Lord. He, and the writers
who consent with him, inscribe a title in Greek, Latin
and Hebrew, which, with whatever view it was written
is written, and declares that " Jesus is the King of the
Jews.'"1
SECT. II.
('HAP. I. — Fro)?i the beginning of the second passover
to our Lord's transfiguration; in all, one year and
about four months.
THE HISTORY.
Our Blessed Saviour was now in the second year of his
public ministry, when the near approach of the passover,
1 Whiston's Josephus; Gray's Connection; &c; Eusebius's
Ecclesiastical History; Cave's Hist. Literal.; Huet. Demonst.
Evang, prop. 3. s. 13.
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
a which was the second after his baptism, called him to
Jerusalem. On the south-east side of the city there was
a famous pool, and an hospital called Bethesda, * which
consisted of five porticos, in which lay a great multitude
of poor impotent people, with distempers of all kinds,
waiting for the moving of the water ; for at certain times
an angel came from heaven, and putting the pool in a
fermentation, conveyed such a medicinal virtue into it,
that the first person who entered it, after such commo-
tion, was cured of whatsoever distemper he had. On
a From the time that our Lord first began his ministry, to the
conclusion of it, there had been four passovers held at Jerusalem ;
all, except the last, are not mentioned by the three first evan-
gelists; but St John has been mindful to set every pne down;
the first, chap. ii. 13.; the second, chap. v. i.; the third, chap,
vi. 4.; and the fourth, chap. xiii. I. — Poole's Annotations.
b The words of the text (John v. 2.) are ' Now there is in Jeru-
salem by the sheep-marhet a pool, which is called in the He-
brew tongue Bethesda having five porches.' The word market
is supplied by the translators, there being an ellipsis in the ori-
ginal, but the most eminent modern critics, among whom are
Bloomfield, Campbell, and Boothroyd, instead of sheep-market,
render sheep-gate, and observe that this rendering is confirmed
beyond a doubt by Nehem. iii. 1, 32, and xii. 39, where men-
tion is made of the sheep-gate, and also that there is no evi-
dence of there having been any such place there as the sheep-
market. The word xoXufifiyifya. signifies a lath or bathing pool,
as is evident from its etymology, but it would seem to denote
here not only the pool, but the buildings connected with it. Be-
thesda, which is a Syro-Chaldaic word, signifies the house of
mercy, or charity-hospital. " Some have supposed that the
pool received its name because the sheep used for sacrifice in
the temple were washed in it ; and others, because it served as
a kind of reservoir for the blood of the sacrifices. But it is well
known that the sheep were washed as soon as they were bought
in the adjoining market, from which they were driven to this
pool; and the supposition that the blood of the sacrifices ran into
it, which was Dr Pococke's opinion, is erroneous, when we
know that there was a drain or ditch between this pool and the
temple, over which a bridge was thrown for access to the latter.
Besides, Dr Lightfoot has sufficiently proved, that from the sit-
uation of the sheep-gate, near which the pool of Bethesda stood,
which was on the south-east wall of Jerusalem, a part of the city
lay between it and the temple. The interpretation, therefore,
the house of mercy, is more in unison with the design for which
this pool or bath was constructed, and the purposes to which it
was applied." " Tradition now points out this pool on the east
side of the mount on which the temple stood, where there is an
empty tank one hundred and twenty feet long, forty broad, and
about eight feet deep, walled round with stones, but without
water. This agrees with Maundrell's measurement, who sur-
veyed it in 169(3, and found at the west end three old arches
built or choked up, which are said to be the remains of the five
original porches in which sat the lame, blind, and withered of
Jerusalem. Sandys was in Jerusalem on Good Friday, a. p.
1611, and says he saw the spring running, but in small quanti-
ties. The erection of the pool of Bethesda is ascribed to King
Hezekiah. The following observations on it are given by the
author of ' Letters from Palestine,' an anonymous work published
in 1S19: — 'Towards the eastern extremity of the town, not far
from the gate of St Stephen, is the Piscina d' Israel. This is
the pool of Bethesda, which an angel was commissioned periodi-
cally to trouble. It appears to have been of considerable size,
and finished with much care and architectural skill ; but I was
unable to ascertain either the depth or the dimensions for its
contiguity to the enclosure which contains the Mosque of Omar
made it rather hazardous to approach even the outer borders, and-
our dragoman entreated us to be satisfied with a cursory view.
Near to this place is the church of St Anna, so named from be-
ing erected on the ground where the house of the virgin's mo-
ther formerly stood, and where the virgin herself was born.
Between that structure and Pilate's palace is the tower An-
tonia, which has a more striking air of antiquity than any in the
city.' — Scripture Gazetteer, part 4. art. Bethesda. p. 320.
Edinb. 1836 — See more on this subject in Answers to Ob-
jections, next chapter. Ed.
Sect. II.]
PROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
901
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM MAT. xii. 1.-
the sabbath-day our Saviour came to this place ; an<l
seeing a poor paralytic," who had been in that condition
for the space of eight and thirty years, and lain there a
long- while in expectation of a cure, but all in vain, be-
cause, whenever the water Avas moved, some one or other
always stepped in before, and prevented him ; * he im-
mediately healed him with a word's speaking, and at the
same time c ordered him to take up his bed, and walk
home ; but while he was doing- this, the Jews exclaimed
against him for bearing a burden on the Sabbath-day, a
a The word atrSin'tx, which we rentier infirmity, or weakness,
is indeed a general name for almost all distempers; but here it
is so limited in its signification, by the circumstances occurring
in the man's history, that it can properly denote no other dis-
ease than what we call a confirmed palsy . For, besides that the
symptoms of no other distemper do so exactly agree with the
description given of this infirmity, both in point of its long con-
tinuance, and extreme weakness; the very word weakness, in
its most obvious sense, answers exactly to such a relaxation of
the nervous system, as the palsy is known to be ; and, what is
no mean circumstance, our Saviour makes use of the same
form, and method of cure, to this very man, that he applies to
another paralytic, ' Rise, take up thy bed and walk,' Mat. ix. 6.
b If it be asked, how it came to pass, that of the multitude of
infirm people, who lay at this pool, our Saviour should think fit
to cure but one? the answer is obvious, because he was an ob-
ject most to be compassionated of any in the place, not only be-
cause he was too feeble to step into the water himself, and too
poor to have any to assist him, but, more especially, because
he had been now a long while in this condition, and yet still de-
pended upon the good providence of God for an opportunity to
be cured at one time or other. To cure at once whole multi-
tudes, indeed, sounds more popular, and carries the face of a
more extensive goodness; but, besides that our Saviour might,
in this case, very probably conform to the rule of cure established
providentially at Bethesda, which was, to heal but one person at
one time, his great design, in every action of this kind, was to
prove his character and commission from God, to which end one
single and incontestible miracle was as sufficient an evidence as
a thousand. The short is, since our Lord was at liberty to do
what he would with his own, or to bestow his favours where he
pleased, his goodness was conspicuous, in choosing the most
nelpless object, and his wisdom no less manifest, in leaving the
rest to the standing miracle of the pool. — Bishop Smallbroke's
Vindication of our Saviour's Miracles, p. 525.
c It is very observable, that whenever our Lord did any miracle,
he generally adjoined some circumstance or other, to denote the
truth and reality of it. Thus, after his multiplication of the.
loaves and fishes, he ordered his disciples to gather up the frag-
ments, which amounted to twelve baskets full. Upon his
changing the water into wine at Cana, he commanded the ser-
vants to cany it to the ruler of the feast, for him to taste it.
When he had healed the leper near Capernaum, he sent him to
present his oblation in testimony of his cure. And here, for the
same reason, namely, the demonstration of the completeness of
his cure, he bids the paralytic take up his bed and go home.
But why did he this on the sabbath-clay? Even to make his
divine power and mission more universally known, especially in
Jerusalem, the capital of the nation, and centre of the Jewish
chinch, by first working this miracle on the sabbath-day, when
there were more people at liberty to view and consider it; and
then sending his patient along the streets in a very uncommon
manner, and, to make the people more inquisitive, with his bed
upon his back. — CalmeVs Commentary.
d The sabbath was originally instituted as a day of sacred
rest, and was to be employed in the service of God. Of
tliis latter circumstance the Jews had so far lost sight, that they
substituted their own superstitious rites in the place of divine
ordinances, and thus exchanged a spiritual for a merely cere-
monious observance of the day. Concerning some of the super-
stitious which prevailed among the people, M. Basnage thus
speaks: " In the places where they had liberty, in Maimonides's
time, they sounded the trumpet six times, to give notice tbat the
sabbath was beginning. At the first sound the countryman left
his plough, at the second they shut up their shops, at the third
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. MJKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v.l-vii. 1.
which was e directly1 contrary to their law. The man ex-
cused himself, by declaring that the person who had
miraculously cured him, commanded him to do so, which
he thought a sufficient warrant ; but, when they under-
stood that it was Jesus, they,/ brought him before the
sanhedrim, with a design to take away his life, as an
open profaner of the sabbath. Here, in defence of
himself, he alleged, — That, " since God," from whose
rest they took the observation of the sabbath, " did, on
that day, and all others, exercise the works of providence,
preservation, and mercy, there could be no reason why
he, who was his Son, and invested with full authority
from him, (as 2 he proves immediately in a set speech
before the council,) might not employ himself on the
sabbath, as well as any other day, in actions of the like
nature ;" which provoked the Jews still more and more
against him, for they looked upon him now, not only as
a sabbath-breaker, but a blasphemer likewise, who by
1 Jer. xvii. 21.
2 John v. 19. to the end.
they covered the pits. They lighted candles, and drew the
bread out of the oven ; but this last article deserves to be insist-
ed upon because of the different cases of conscience, about
which the masters are divided. When the sound of the sixth
trumpet surprised those that had not as yet drawn their bread,
what was to be done? To fast the next day was disturbing the
feast; to draw their bread at the beginning of the sabbath was to
violate it. The perplexity is great: some have not ventured to
decide it, others have given leave to draw out what was neces-
sary for the three meals of the sabbath. But this permission
has caused abuses ; for a multitude of people meet, who under
pretence of drawing out the quantity of bread they have need of
for their three meals, take out all that might be spoiled. The
difficulty is increased if any one suffers his bread to bake after
the sabbath is begun. If he has sinned knowingly, he must
leave his bread there, and fast to expiate his fault. Nothing
but ignorance is ground sufficient to permit them taking where-
with to subsist their family for twenty-four hours. But how is
this bread to be taken out? They must not make use of a peal,
but a knife, and do it so nicely as not to touch the stones of the
Oven, for that is a crime. Such are the questions that arise
upon the entrance of the sabbath." — History of the Jews, p. 443.
Similar superstitions are related by this author concerning other
particulars which affect the Jews. See Stehelin's Traditions of
the Jews, vol. ii. p. 263.' — Ed.
e The prohibition runs in these words: — 'Thus saith the
Lord, Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sab-
bath-day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem, neither
carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath-day,
neither do ye any work, but hallow ye tlxe sabbath-day as I
commanded your fathers,' Jer. xvii. 21, 22; and according to
the Jewish canons, those who did this, were punishable, either
by death or scourging. It must be acknowledged, therefore, that
our Saviour's injunction to the late impotent man, was contrary
to the letter of the law; but then it may be justly said, that it
was not contrary to the sense and intention of it. The law only
prohibited civil labour, and restrained men from carrying such
burdens as they were wont to do in the way of their trade; but
it did not forbid the doing of any thing that might be a testimony
of God's mercy or goodness to mankind. As therefore the sab-
bath was made for the honour of God, and this action was a pub-
lic monument of his mercy and power, the man, properly speak-
ing, did not break the sabbath, neither did our Lord deserve
any censure from the Jews, especially considering, that as he
was a prophet, even by their own rules, he had power to require
what was contrary to the ceremonial rest of the sabbath. — Poole's
and Whitby s Annotations; and Calmet's Commentary.
/John v. 1C. It certainly doth not appear from this verse,
nor from any part of the chapter, that a meeting of the sanhe-
drim, or great council, was called for the purpose of trying Jesus
for a breach of the law. They were probably members of that
council who challenged him for what he had done, and with
whom he condescended to reason ; but it seems evident that he
was not brought to trial for his offence. — Ghig
902
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
a From hence it seems to follow, that though the Jews of our
Saviour's time had very high conceptions of the Messiah, and
were confident, that when he came, he would be a mighty prince,
and subdue all other nations under his feet ; yet they never once
imagined that he would be God ; or, in the strict and sublime
sense of the word, ' the Son of God,' though in the very pro-
phecies, which, as they themselves acknowledge, relate to the
Messiah, he is called Immanuel, Isaiah vii. 14., and else-
where, ' the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace,' Isaiah ix. 6.. — Whitby's Annotations.
b What our Lord's disciples did in this case, could not be
accounted any unjust invasion of another's property, because the
law had indulged them thus far : — ' When thou goest into thy
neighbour's standing corn, thou mayest pluck the ears with thy
hand, but thou shalt not move a sickle to thy neighbour's stand-
ing corn,' (Deut. xxiii. 25.) It was not then for plucking the ears
of corn, much less, as some say, for breaking their fasts, before
they had celebrated the public offices, (which was contrary to the
custom of the Jews, Acts ii. 15.) that the Pharisees took ex-
ceptions to the disciples, but for plucking them on the sabbath-
day, whereof they thought this action, which at other times was
lawful enough, to be a violation, and accordingly our Saviour's
whole vindication of them turns upon this supposition. — Ham-
mond's and Whitby's Annotations.
c There is something very cogent in our Saviour's argument,
taken from David's practice, because, according to the conces-
sion of the Jews themselves, his example contains two things
tending to excuse the violation of the sabbath; 1. That they
suppose, that David and his men fled on the sabbath-day, and
yet were not guilty of breaking the rest of the sabbath; for "our
masters think it lawful," say they, " in him whom the Gentiles,
or thieves, pursue, to profane the sabbath, by the preservation
of his life, even as David, when Saul pursued to kill him, fled
and escaped." 2. That their own canons allowed the laity to
eat of the shew-bread for the preservation of life; for " it is a
small thing," say they, " to hold that it is lawful for us to eat of
the bread removed from the table; it would be lawful for us, in
the extremity of hunger, even to eat of the bread now sanctified
upon the table, if there were no other." And indeed this
opinion, that it was lawful to violate the sabbath for the preser-
vation of life seems plainly to have obtained before the translation
of the Septuagint, who render the words in Exod. xii. 16, to
this purpose, ' Ye shall do no servile work on it, but that which
shall be done for the safety of life." — Whitby's Annotations.
d The shew-bread, which in Hebrew is literally the bread of
faces, was so called, not because it was set upon the golden table,
which was in the sanctuary, but because it was placed ' before
the Lord,' that is, not far from the ark of the covenant, which
was the symbol of his more immediate presence. These loaves,
according to the number of the tribes, were twelve: they were
made four square, covered over with leaves of gold, and were of
a considerable bigness, having about three quarts of flour in each.
They were served up hot every sabbath-day, and, at the same
time, the stale ones, which had been exposed the whole preceding
week, were taken away, and allowed to be eaten by none but the
priests, and that only in the holy place, which was the tabernacle
at first, and afterwards the temple, (Lev. xxiv. 5, &c.) And
the reason of this institution seems to have been to represent,
in a more lively manner, to the people, God's government and
presence among them ; that, as the tabernacle first, and then the
temple, was his palace and place of residence, so these weekly
A. M. 403 >. A. D.31 ; OR, A. M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM MAT. xii. 1—
making himself the Son of God,« had claimed a co-
equality with him.
What the result of our Saviour's defence before the
sanhedrim was, we cannot tell, because none of the
evangelists have acquainted us ; but the sequel of the
history informs us, that it no ways abated the malice of
the Pharisees, because, on the very next sabbath-day,
upon his disciples pulling some ears of corn,4 as they
passed through the fields, rubbing them in their hands,
and so eating them, because they were really hungry,
they began again to clamour against this violation of
the sabbath ; until our Saviour, in vindication of his
disciples, both from the example of David c and his
attendants, who ate the shew-bread ; d which it was un-
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I,
lawful for the laity to eat, when they were hungry, and
from the example of their own priests, Avho performed
the work of the temple on the sabbath-day, endeavoured
to convince them, "that works of necessity were some-
times permitted, even to the breach of a ritual command ;
that acts of mercy e were the best and most acceptable
method of serving God upon any day whatever ; that it
was inverting the order of things, to suppose that man
was made for the sabbath, and not the sabbath for the
benefit of man : but, if even it were not so, that he, a\
the Son of God/ and, consequently, Lord of the sabbath,
had a power to dispense with the ceremonial laws 1 con-
cerning it.
Not long after this, our Saviour left Jerusalem, and
returned into Galilee, where on another sabbath-day,
Avhile he was preaching, there stood before him a man,
whose right hand was shrunk, and withered ; and when
1 Mark ii. 27.
services of bread, wine, and salt, say the Jews, were to denote
his habitation among them, as if he had been an earthly prince,
for whom such provisions are made Calmet's Dictionary under
the word, and Lamy's Introduction.
e On the text here alluded to, ' I will have mercy and not
sacrifice,' (Mat. xii. 7.) Doddridge has the following important
note: "I must here repeat a very obvious remark, because the
sense of so many important scriptures depends upon it, namely,
that according to the genius of the Hebrew language, one thing
seems to be forbidden, and another commanded, when the mean-
ing only is, that the latter is greatly to be preferred to the former.
The text before us is a remarkable instance of this ; as likewise
Joel ii. 13; Mat. vi. 19. 20; John vi. 27; Luke xii. 4, 5, and
Col. iii. 2. And it is evident that Gen. xlv. 8, Exod. xvi. 8,
John v. 13, and vii. 19; and many more passages are to be ex-
pounded in the same comparative sense. A late ingenious
writer says, "our Lord does not compare moral and positive
duties together here, but only the commandments of men with
the commandments of God." But it is plain, the series of our
Lord's arguments here is intended to prove that circumstances
of necessity dispense with some ceremonial observances which
were in the general commanded by God, and manifestly goes
upon this foundation, that ceremonial institutes being the means
of religion, if circumstances occurred in which they interfered
with the end of it, they were suspended of course, and when
this is the case, the conscience of particular persons is to judge
as in the sight of God. — Ed.
/There are some who pretend to infer, from the passage
of St Mark ii. 27, that the words in St Matthew, < the Son
of Man is Lord also of the sabbath,' chap. xii. 8, are of the
same import with, ' the sabbath was made for man;' so that the
Son of man is here put for all men in general, and, consequently,
the sense of the words must be, that every one is lord of the
sabbath, to observe or dispense with it, according to the call or
exigency of his affairs. But besides that the phrase, ' Son of
Man,' which is used no less than eighty-eight times in the New
Testament, is, in all other places, set to denote our blessed Lord,
and in Dan. vii. 13, from whence it is originally taken, it is
thought by all ancient Jews as well as Christians, to signify
the Messiah only; it is plain that these two passages are dis-
tinct propositions in St Mark, chap. ii. 27, 28, and that they can
relate to no other than our Saviour Christ ; because he tells the
Pharisees, and therein means of himself, that, in that place,
'there was one greater than the temple,' that is, whose prophetic
office was of more consequence to the world than the sacerdotal
administrations in the temple, and ought therefore, least of all,
to be interrupted by a superstitious observation of the sabbath.
' The sabbath was made for man,' must therefore signify, that it
was first appointed for the good and benefit of man ; and, being
so, it cannot reasonably be supposed to oblige him to any thing
so contrary to humanity as starving or debilitating his nature ;
and therefore, as ' the Son of Man came not to destroy men's
lives, but to save them,' he must have power, in such cases as
concern the good and welfare of mankind, to dispense with the
strict rest of the sabbath which the law required. — Calmet's
Commentary; and Hammond's and Whitbv's Annotations.
Skct. I I.J
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
903
A. M. 4(35. A. D. 31 ; OR, A.M. 5439. A. D. 28. FROM MAT. xii. 1
the scribes and Pharisees insidiously watched himwhether
he would cure him or not, our Lord bade him stand up
in the midst of the assembly as an object of public com-
miseration, and turning to these superstitious observers
of the sabbath, put the question" to them, whether they
' thought it lawful, on the sabbath-day, to do good or
ill, actually to save life, or negligently to destroy it?'
And then, from their own practice, in running to the
relief of any dumb creature on the sabbath-day, he fairly
inferred, that whatever their hypocritical pretences might
be, they themselves esteemed it lawful to do good on
that day ; and so, looking about him with some marks of
indignation for their strange perverseness, he commanded
the poor man to stretch out his lame hand, and that very
moment it became as sound as the other.
The Pharisees, however, though silenced by his argu-
ments, and surprised at his miracles, would not surcease
their malice, but joined in consultation with the Hero-
dians, though a sect quite opposite to them in principles,
how they might take away his life ; which when our
Saviour understood, he withdrew with his disciples*
toward the sea-side ; but which way soever he went, his
name was now grown so famous, that vast multitudes,
not only out of Galilee, but from Jerusalem, from the
a This is not contrary to what St Matthew, (xii. 10)
tells us, namely, that they asked him, because both are true.
They asked him, ' whether it was lawful to heal ?' And he, in
reply, says, ' I also will ask you one thing: is it lawful on the
sabbath-day to do good, or to do evil ?' (Luke vi. 9.) We are
not however to suppose, that by doing evil our Saviour pro-
pounded to the Pharisees, whether, on the sabbath-day, it was
lawful to do that which, on any other day, is utterly unlawful;
for then, without doubt, they would have had a ready answer for
him; but only, whether, according to the distinction of the
sabbath, it was lawful to do good, or not to do it, to save life, or
not to save it, when a man had it equally in his power. And
the reason why our Saviour instances in saving a life is, because
it was a maxim then among the Jews, that, on the sabbath-day,
all servile work was prohibited, except where the life of any
man or beast was concerned ; but the modern Jews are of a con-
trary opinion, and in hatred to Christians, as Grotius thinks,
have loaded the observation of the sabbath with such trifling and
superstitious practices, as their forefathers and ancient doctors
knew nothing of. — Whitby's and Beausobre's Annotations, and
Calmet's Commentary.
b It was a direction which our Saviour gave to his disciples,
' when they persecute you in this city, flee to another,' (Mat. x.
23.) and a rule which himself put in practice: for, when by his
doctrine arid miracles he could do no good upon men by reason
of the hardness of their hearts, (Mark iii. 5.) he usually departed,
and retired, that he might give place to their wrath, and secure
himself from their malice, (Mat. xii. 15; and John viii. 59.)
When the providence of God brings trials upon us, we may
reasonably hope, that his mercy will be magnified in our rescue
from them : but there is not the same assurance due to those
troubles which our own forwardness or indiscretion involves us
in. God hath no where promised to work miracles for our de-
liverance, nor engaged to save those who are not careful to save
themselves. He hath commanded us ' to take up our cross,'
when he lays it in our way; but he hath not commanded, that
we should go out and seek it; nay, or that we should meet it,
when we can pass by another way, and honestly, and with a
good conscience, escape from it. He hath promised to succour
them that are tempted, that is, such as are purely passive in the
thing; but, when men break their ranks, and, without orders
from their commander, will needs march up, as it were, to the
mouth of a loaded cannon, by turning their own tempters, this
is not courage, but fool-hardiness; and, whatever expectations
these men may cherish of God's assistance in such cases, they
are not the effects of a vigorous faith and well-grounded trust,
but of a blind and hot-headed presumption. — Stanhope's Occa-
ii vital Sermons.
— xvii. 14. MARKii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37.JOHN F.-viLl.
provinces of Judea, and Idumea c and all the country
about Jordan, as far as the Mediterranean sea, to the
coasts of Tyre and Sidon, hearing the report of his
miraculous power to cure all diseases with a word of his
mouth, the touch of his hand, or barely the touch of hi3
garment, came, with their sick and possessed, for help,
and, as fast as they came, he cured them. Nay, to such
a degree was his fame increased, that the very devils and
unclean spirits publicly confessed that he was ' the Son
of God,' till, upon all occasions, they were restrained
and compelled to silence.
Finding some inconvenience in the pressures of the
people, he ordered his disciples, for the time to come,
to have a small vessel always in readiness for him to
step into upon occasion ; and so retired to a solitary
mountain,** where he continued all night in prayer, in-
tending next morning to make an election of some
particular persons, both to be witnesses of his actions
and discourses, and, after his departure out of the world,
his vicegerents upon earth, founders of his church, and
propagators of his gospel.
The number of these, according to the patriarchs, was
twelve ; Simon, who is likewise named Peter, and An-
drew ; James,e commonly called the Great, and John :
c Though this be no more than a Greek name derived from the
Hebrew idiom, yet it is not to be understood of the original
habitation of the Edomites, mount Seir, but rather of that
southern part of the province of Judea, which, during the cap-
tivity of the Jews at Babylon, being left destitute, or not suffi-
ciently inhabited by its natives, seems to have been possessed by
the neighbouring Idumeans. These Idumeans, when afterwards
conquered by the Maccabees, chose rather to embrace the Jewish
religion than to quit the habitations they had taken possession of;
and, though hereupon they were incorporated into the body of
the Jewish nation, yet that tract of Judea which they inhabited
did not so soon lose the name of Idumea, derived from them, but
retained it, not only in our Saviour's days, but for a considerable
time afterwards. — IVelVs Geography of the New Testament.
d Some have thought that the words tv ?n <rgoiriv%ri too ©saw,
should be rendered ' in an house of prayer of God,' or in a syna-
gogue dedicated to the service of God ; but then they will be
concerned to find out any house of prayer which at this time
stood on a mountain, or any place, except the temple, which was
called by that name: nor can we conceive why our Lord should
go into a mountain to pray, if it were not for the privacy and
retirement of it, which he could not have had in any common
place of divine worship. Our Saviour however, being about to
send out his twelve apostles, thought that so great a work as this
could not be done, without offering up his solemn addresses to
God for their success, and accordingly having found out a place
of retirement, he thither betook himself, and as the evangelists
inform us, continued 'all night in prayer,' leaving the bishops
and governors of his church an example what they are to do in
the great and momentous affair of appointing persons to the
ministry of the gospel. — Whitby's and Poole's Annotations.
e These two brothers our Saviour calls Boanerges, a word
composed of two Hebrew or Syriac words, but which have suf-
fered some alteration in their passing into the Greek language.
For whether it be that the Greek transcriber has mistaken them,
or that this might be the corrupt way of pronouncing them in
Galilee, certain it is, that the originals are benei rehem, denoting
sons of thunder, or of a tempest; a name given to them in
allusion to the natural heat and zeal of their temper, and that
vehemence and efficacy wherewith our Saviour foresaw that they
would preach the gospel. Of the former of these they gave an
early instance, in their desire to call down fire from heaven to
consume the Samaritans, (Luke ix. 54:) and, in the Acts of the
Apostles, we find that Peter and John are the chief actors and
speakers in the defence and propagation of the gospel, and that
the zeal of James and Peter seems to be the reason why the one
was slain by Herod, and the other imprisoned, in order to the
like execution. — Calmet's Commentary, and Beausobre's and
HTiitby's Annotations.
904
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4035. A D. 31; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 1*. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
Philip and Bartholomew ; a Matthew and Thomas;6
James, commonly called the Less, and Simon c the
Canaanite ; Judas, the brother of this James, and d
Judas Iscariot, who so justly deserved the title e of
a The name given here to this apostle is not his proper but
patronymical name, and imports oniy the son of Tholomew, or
Tolmai ; so that we are still at a loss for his personal name,
unless we will admit of the conjecture, that he was indeed no
other than Nathanael. To this purpose it is remarkable, 1st,
That as no other evangelist makes mention of Nathanael but
St John, so he never once makes mention of Bartholomew.
2dly, That in the catalogue of the apostles, Philip and Barthol-
omew are always coupled together, and were, very probably,
sent out together to preach the gospel: and fit companions they
were, supposing Nathanael to be the man with whom it is
plain that Philip had an intimacy, and was the first instrument
of bringing him to Jesus. 3dly, That this Nathanael is by St
John (chap. xxi. 2.) named in company with several of the
apostles upon our Saviour's showing himself at the sea of Tiber-
ias, after his resurrection, which the evangelist tells us was the
third time of his doing so, (ver. 14.) and some presumption
that he was one of them. 4thly, That, at the two former times,
it is expressly said, that he appeared to the eleven. John xx.
19, 26. And here, at the third time of his appearance, those
that are named with Nathanael are. all of that number. From
these considerations, it is more than probable that Nathanael
was one of the apostles ; which can only be accounted for by
supposing that St John calls the same person by his proper
name Nathanael, whom the other evangelist calls by his patro-
nymical,Bartholomew. — Stanhope on the Epist. and Gos., vol.iv.
b Thomas, in Hebrew or Syriac either, signifies a twin, and
so is the same with Didymus, that other name whereby this
apostle is sometimes called.
c Simon, the cousin of our Lord, and brother of James the
Less, is called by Mark ' the Canaanite.' But it is plain that the
epithet does not express his descent, otherwise his brothers
James and Judas ought to have been termed Canaanites like-
wise. Luke calls him Simon Zelotes, which seems to be the
Greek translation of the Hebrew appellation given him by Mark.
For from n:s zclotypus fuit, he was jealous, comes the Chaldaic
word [:p, zelotes, a zealot, (Buxtorff, on the word). Put the
Greek termination to this Chaldaic word, and it becomes xavav-
trii. Wherefore, the appellation of Canaanites, given to Simon
by Mark, and Zelotes, the epithet which he bears in Luke, are
as perfectly the same as Cephas and Petros, Tabitha and Dorcas.
The zealots were a particular sect or factiun among the Jews,
who, in later times, under colour of zeal for God, committed all
the disorders imaginable. They pretended to imitate the zeal
which Phiuehas, Elijah, and the Maccabees expressed in their
manner of punishing offenders. But they acted from blind
fury, or from worse principles, without regard either to the laws
of God or to the dictates of reason. Some are of opinion that
Simon the apostle had formerly been one of this pestilent fac-
tion. But as there is no mention made of it till a little before
the destruction of Jerusalem (Josephus's JFars, b. iv. c. 3.), we
may rather suppose that the surname of Zelotes was given him,
on account of his uncommon zeal in matters of true piety and
religion. — Macknight's Harmony. — Ed.
d This man's surname may be taken, either from the place of
his birth, which was Carioth, in the tribe of Issachar, whereof
we have mention in Josh. xvi. 25, and Amos ii. 2, or from the
Syriac word secariat, denoting the purse or wallet which it was
the office of this Judas to carry; or from the word ashara, or
iscara, which signifies to strangle;' and therefore a name which
the evangelists might give him after his death: but all these
etymologies are no more than mere conjectures. — Hammond's
and Beausobre's Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
e The wisdom of Christ saw fit to admit Judas into the num-
ber of his disciples, that by him the counsel of God, in giving
up his Son to death, and the predictions of the prophets, might
be fulfilled (Acts i. 16). This very person, however, is by our
Lord sent to preach the gospel, to cure diseases, and to cast out
devils, who had himself a devil, (John vi. 70.) thereby to teach
us, that the mission of a person may be valid, though he be not
sanctified; and that in things belonging to the ministerial office
we should hearken even to such persons, and obey them.
TFhitby's Annotations.
traitor. To these he gave the name of apostles, / and
as he perceived the multitude gathering round him,
these he called nearer than the rest to him, and began
that most excellent discourse, which comprises all the
great principles of the Christian religion, and is com-
monly called the s Sermon on the Mount.
Herein he pronounces divers blessings, both spiritual
and temporal, to such as the generality of the world
esteemed miserable ; to the poor in spirit, or humble-
minded ; to the kind and merciful ; to the pious mourn-
ers ; to the peace-makers ; to the meek and patient ; to
the pure in heart ; to such as hunger and thirst after
righteousness ; and to such as are persecuted upon the
account thereof. Herein he instructs the apostles more
/The word avoaroXoi signifies an envoy, and was a name
given by the Jews to any messenger in general, but more espe-
cially to such persons as were sent by the high priest and heads
of the people, to collect., the tithes and other dues belonging to
the temple or synagogue, or to carry their orders and mandates
to the cities and provinces, when any affairs relating to religion
were transacted ; and to this custom St Paul seems to allude,
where he styles himself ' an apostle, not of man, neither by
man, but by Jesus Christ.' (Gal. i. 1.) Our Saviour indeed,
as he was no lover of innovations, took the word from among
the Jews ; but then he raised it to a much higher and more
honourable signification; for himself declares, that he sent out
his apostles, even as his Father sent out him, (John xx. 21.)
that is, with a full commission to act in his stead, even as he
did in God's: and accordingly we may observe, that as the
Father gave judgment to the Son, (John v. 22.) so in effect the
Son gives judgment to the apostles, (Mat. xix. 28. and Luke
xxii. 30.); that as the Father gave the Son power to forgive
sins upon earth, (Mat. ix. 6.) so the Son gives power to the apos-
tles to remit sins on earth likewise (John xx. 23.) ; that as the
Father gave the Son the honour to sit down with him on his
throne, so the Son gave the apostles the privilege to sit with
him on thrones (Mat. xix. 28. and Luke xxii. 30) ; and that as
the Father gave the Son to be the foundation or corner-stone of
the church, (Mat. xxi. 42.) so the Son gave the apostles to be
foundations upon a foundation ; for so the church is said to be
built upon the foundation of the apostles, ' Christ being the chief
corner stone.' (Eph. ii. 20.) — Hammond's Annotations.
g The mountain where our Lord delivered his discourse
is generally supposed to be Tabor ; for by comparing St
Mark iii. 13, with the other two evangelists, Matthew
xiv. 23, and Luke vi. 12, &c, we may perceive that it
was not far distant from some part of the sea of Tiberias, whi-
ther our Lord had retired very lately from the Pharisees, and
about five or six leagues from Capernaum, whither he returned
after his descent from this mount. But then the question is,
whether this sermon be the same with what we find recorded
by St Luke, vi. 20 ? Now, in order to resolve this, we
may observe, 1st, That the sermon in St Matthew was deliv-
ered before the healing of the leper, viii. 2 ; whereas St Luke,
who promises to discourse in order of what Christ did, gives us
first the story of the leper, (v. 12.) and then an account of
Christ's sermon, (vi. 20.) 2dly, That the sermon in St Mat-
thew, our Lord preached on the mount, and called his disciples
up to him ; whereas St Luke informs us, that our Lord came
down with his disciples from a mount, and stood in the plain,
and from thence preached what he recorded ver. 20. And,
3dly, That St Luke omits the much greater part of the sermon,
as it is recorded by St Matthew, mentions only four beatitudes;
whereas St Matthew speaks of eiyht, and has added four woes,
(ver. 24, &c.) whereof we find no indications in St Luke.
Since the sermons then are so very different in their matter, as
well as in the circumstances of time and place, it is reasonable
to suppose that they were not the same; though, considering
that after both the sermons we find our Lord returning to Ca-
pernaum, and healing the centurion's servant, (Mat. viii. 5.
and Luke vii. I.) we may probably conjecture, that he spake the
sermon in St Matthew, whilst he was sitting on the mount, to
his disciples ; but that in St Luke he afterwards spake when he
came down into the plain (vi. 20.) in the audience of all the
people, (vii. 1.) — Whitby's Annotations.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
905
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FKOM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
especially in their duty ; and in several comparisons
setting before them the high station wherein he had so
lately placed them, and how much it would redound to
their honour if they behaved well, and to their dishonour
if otherwise ; lie recommends to them, above all other
things, purity of life and conversation. Herein he
expounds the true meaning, and shows the just extent
of several moral precepts, namely, the laws against
murder, against adultery, against perjury ; that con-
cerning retaliation, and that of loving our neighbour :
and rescues them from the wretched glosses and inter-
pretations which the Jews had put upon them. Herein
he explains and teaches the proper method of perform-
ing with acceptance the several duties of charity to the
poor, prayer and fasting. Herein he dissuades us from
all covetous inclinations, and anxious thoughts concern-
ing the things of this world, from a consciousness of our
being under the providential care of God ; and having
laid down several other precepts and instructions, he
eoncludes the whole with this admonition, ' That who-
ever heard, believed, and practised the things contained
in his discourses, would, in the event, be like a wise
builder, who laid the foundation of his house upon a
rock, not to be affected by wind or weather ; but that he
who heard and practised them not, would be like a man
who built his house upon the sand, soon to be blown
down by the winds, and washed away by the floods.' «
This sermon was delivered with such a grace and ma-
jesty, as gained the applause of the whole audience, and
made them very readily declare their sense of the differ-
ence between such divine discourses, and the jejune
harangues b of their ordinary teachers, the scribes ; and,
a The words of the text, Mat. vii. 24 — 27, Bishop Jebb lias
arranged into two stanzas of six parallel lines each; thus,
Whoever, therefore, heareth these my words, and doeth them,
I will liken him to a prudent man,
Who built his house upon the rock:
And the rain descended,
And the floods came,
And the winds blew,
And fell upon that house :
Audit fell not; for it was founded upon the rock.
And eiery one bearing these my words, and doing them not,
Shall be likened to a foolish man,
Who built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended,
And the floods came,
And the winds blew,
And struck upon that house ;
And it fell ; and the fall thereof was great.
In these two connected stanzas, he observes, the language maybe
justly termed picturesque. The marked transition in each of
them from a long and measured movement, to short rapid lines,
and the resumption, at the close, of a lengthened cadence, are
peculiarly expressive. The continual return, too, in the shorter
lines, of the copulative particle (a return purely Hebraic, and
foreign from classic usage) has a fine effect: it gives an idea of
danger, sudden, accumulated, and overwhelming. These are
beauties which can only be retained in a literal translation; and
which a literal translation may exhibit very competently.
Jebb's Sacred Literature, vol. ii. p. 438. — In the above passage
there is a manifest allusion to the rains of Palestine, which de-
scend with great violence, and the torrents which they form
sweep away often whole villages, the houses being generally
constructed of sun-dried bricks En.
b The words in the text are, ' he taught them as one that
had authority, and not as the scribes,' (Mat. vii. 29.) But they
certainly are mistaken who interpret the words in this sense :
" He taught them as the author of the doctrine which he preached;
as one who had authority in his own name to propound the
terms of life and death ;" because it is not only contrary to the na-
ture of his prophetic office, but to his own frequent declarations,
to confirm his doctrine by the testimony of miracles, our
blessed Saviour, upon his descent from the mount,
healed a leper, and then remitted him to the priest, to
make his oblation, in acknowledgment of his cure.
At his return to Capernaum he cured, at a distance, the
favourite servant of the Roman centurion, c who had made
an ample declaration of his divine power, and thereupon
received from him as ample commendation of his faith ;
and, at his arrival at the gates of Nain, d he restored to
life a widow's only son, as the people were carrying him
out to his funeral, e to the great joy and comfort of his
parent, and the no less wonder and astonishment of the
spectators, who, upon this occasion, glorified God, and
that " the doctrine which he taught was not his own, but his who
sent him ; and that he spake not of himself nor in his own name,
but as he had heard from his Father, and as he had commanded
him to speak" (John vii. 16, 17, 18; viii. 28; xii. 49; xiv. 10.);
and therefore the truer interpretation is, what Lightfoot and
others give us, namely, " That he spake as a prophet, having
authority from God to deliver his message to them, and not as
the scribes, who pretended only to deliver the traditions of their
forefathers, and to teach them no more than what they had
learned from Hillel, Shammai, Abtalion," &c. — JFhitby's An-
notations.
c He was an officer, commanding an hundred men, much of
the same rank and station as one of our captains, and belonged
to the iron legion, as it was called, which was usually quartered
in Judea. — Howell's History, in the notes.
d Nairn or Nain, so called for the pleasantness of its situation,
was a town of Galilee, about two leagues from Nazareth, and not
so much from mount Tabor, between which and the city ran the
river Kison. From our Saviour's meeting the funeral coming
out of the gates, we may learn, that it was a custom among the
Jews to bury their dead in the day-time, when their nearest
friends and relations followed the corpse, which was usually carried
in procession through the streets and public places, to the ceme-
teries, which were generally at a considerable distance from the
city, because they looked upon their graves as places fidl of pollu-
tion.— Whitby's Table of Places; and Calmet's Commentary on
Luke vii. 12. The raising of this young man, was one of the
most decisive and instructing of our Lord's miracles. It was
decisive. There was no doubt that he was dead. There could
be no delusion — no agreement to impose upon the people. He
came near to the city with no reference to this young man ; he
met the funeral procession, as it were by accident ; and by a
word he restored him to life. All those who had the best op-
portunity of judging, the mother, and friends, believed him to be
dead, and were about to bury him. The evidence that he came
to life was decisive. He sat up, he spoke, and all were inform-
ed witli the full assurance that God had raised him to life. Many
witnesses were present, and none doubted that Jesus, by a word,
had restored him to his weeping mother. The whole scene was
affecting. Here was a widowed mother, who was following her
only son, her stay and hope, to the grave. Here was borne
along one in the prime of life, and the only comfort of his parent
— impressive proof that the young, the useful, the vigorous, and
the lovely, may die. Jesus met them — apparently a stranger.
He approached the procession, as if he had something important
to say — he touched the bier, and the procession stood still. He
was full of compassion for the weeping parent; and, by a word,
restored the youth, stretched upon the bier, to life. He sat up,
and spoke. Jesus therefore had power over the dead. He also
has power to raise sinners, dead in trespasses and sins, to life.
He can speak the word; and though in their death of sin they
are borne along towards ruin, he can open their eyes and raise
them up, and teach them to speak his power, and restore them
revived to real life, to their friends. Often he raises up children
in this manner, and gives them, converted to God, to their
friends; imparting as real joy as he gave to the widow of Nain,
by raising her son from the dead. — Barnes on the Gospels — En.
c The Jews had different ways of carrying their dead to the
grave. A child under a month old was carried out in the bosom
of a person: if a full month old, in a little coffin which they car- 4
ried in their arms; one of a twelve month old, was carried in a
little coffin on the shoulder: and one of three years old on a
bier or bed ; in this manner was this corpse carried out. Ac-
5t
906
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M. 5410. A. J). 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— xi 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
publicly declared, that ' ' a mighty prophet was sprung
up among them ; and that God a had visited his people.
Upon the fame of this, and several other miracles,
which our Saviour did daily, John the Baptist, who was
still in prison, sent two of his disciples to inquire of
him, 6 whether he himself was the promised Messiah, or
some other person was to appear in that character ? As
our Lord was at that time working many miracles, c cu-
ring the deaf, the blind, the lame, &c, and instructing
the people that were gathered about him ; instead of giv-
ing a direct answer to their question, be bade them go
and report what they saw to their master. And having
thus dismissed them, he began to discourse to the people
concerning John, giving a large encomium of the
austerity and holiness of his person, d the greatness of
1 Luke vii. 16.
cording to the age of persons was the company that attended them
to the grave. If it were an infant not a month old, it was buried
by one woman and two men ; but not by one man and two
women. If a month old, by men and women: and whoever was
carried out on a bier or bed, many mourned for him. Persons
well known were accompanied by great numbers ol people. It
was looked upon as an act of kindness and mercy to follow a
corpse to the grave, and, what must have tended to increase the
number of persons who attended at such a time, it was forbidden
to do any work at the time a dead man was buried, even one
of the common people. — Ed.
a The people of Nain, in these words, acknowledge Jesus
to be the Messiah, or tliat great prophet whom Moses had pro-
mised to the Jews: 'the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee
a prophet, from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me,
unto him shall ye hearken,' Deut. xviii. 15 ; for they describe
this prophet in the very same terms that Zacharias, the father of
■f John the Baptist, makes use of to denote the Messiah: 'the
Lord hath visited his people,' Luke i. 6S. — Calmet's Com-
mentary.
b The words in the text are, ' art thou he that should come,'
or rather, ' he that is coming?' For the prophecies of the Messiah
in the Old Testament were so plain, and yet his person or name
so unknown to the Jews, that they were wont to express it by some
circumlocution, and more especially, by this of o i^o^iioi, he that
cometh; for so he is termed, Mat. iii. 11. xxi.9. Luke vii. 20.
xix. 38. John xii. 13. and Heb. x. 37, &c; and this name
they gathered from Habakkuk, where he is called, ' he that shall
come,' chap. ii. 3; and from Daniel, where he is styled, 'he
that cometh with the clouds of heaven,' chap. vii. 13. — Ham-
mond's and Whitby's Annotations.
c If it be asked, how the seeing of these things done by our
Saviour could be a sufficient argument to John's disciples, that
he was in truth the Messiah ? The reply is, that the per-
formance of these things was exactly answering the character
which the prophet had given of the Messiah, namely, that, ' at
the coming of God to save them, the eyes of the blind should be
opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped ;' that ' the lame
should leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb should sing,'
Is. xxxv. 4, &c. And therefore, instead of giving them a
direct answer, which might be liable to the old objection of his
bearing record of himself, (John viii. 13.) our Saviour refers them
to the miracles they saw him do ; miracles of the same kind that
were predicted of the Messiah, and then leaves it to their own
master to draw the conclusions from thence ; which was a method
of conviction more short and strong, and withal more agreeable
to our Saviour's modesty and great humility, than any long de-
tail ot arguments would have proved: — Poole's Annotations, and
Calmet's Commentary.
d Maimonides observes, that though the Jews generally
reckon eleven degrees of prophecy ; yet two of these were some-
thing more sublime and excellent than ordinary prophecy. The
^ one of these was what they call yrudus Mosaieus, when the
prophet had a familiar converse with God upon all occasions, and
the other, when he had his revelations, not from a dream or
ecstasy, but an immediate dictate of the Holy Ghost. Of this
sort was John the Baptist, who was plainly told by the Father,
(Mat. iii. 17. John xiii. 3.); and as plainly proclaimed it to others,
his function, and divinity of his commission ; and hence
taking occasion to blame the perverseness of the age, in
rejecting both his and the Baptist's testimony, though the
Baptist was a man of a mortified deportment, and he a
person of a free and affable behaviour, so that e nothing
woidd please them, he proceeded to upbraid the several
cities where most of his miracles had been wrought, name-
ly, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and more especially Caper-
naum, with their obstinacy and impenitence, and having
declared that the mysteries of the gospel-revelation were
better adapted to the humble and modest, than to the
proud and worldly-wise, he concludes his discourse with
an exhortation to such as were thus qualified to be his 2
disciples, ' come unto me,/ all ye that labour, and are
heavy laden, and 1 will give you rest,' &c.
No sooner had he finished this discourse, but a rich
Pharisee, whose name was Simon,£ invited him to din-
2 Mat. xi. 28.
that Jesus ' was the Lamb of God.' Other prophets spoke of the
coming of Christ, but then they did it in a dark and obscure
manner. They saw him only at a distance in a dream, or in a
vision of the night, and couched their predictions under a veil
of enigmatical phrases, but the Baptist spoke of him openly and
distinctly. He knew him; he was conversant with him; he
pointed him out to the people ; had, in short, the honour of baptiz-
ing him, and hearing the voice from heaven testifying of him,
' this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' And,
upon these accounts, we find him called a great and illustrious
person, (Luke i. 15,) one 'filled with the Holy Ghost,' and, by
way of excellence, the ' Prophet of the Highest,' verse 76. —
Hammond's Annotations; and Calmet's Commentary.
e The words of our Saviour, to illustrate this, are these. —
' We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have
mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented,' (Mat. xi. 17.)
which seem to be a proverb, founded upon a custom among the
Jewish children, to imitate what they saw done by others upon
greater occasions, and particularly the custom in festivities, or
funerals; when, in the former, as soon as the musician struck up
a tune, the company began to dance to his pipe ; and in the latter,
as soon as some old women had begun the mournful song, the
rest followed, lamenting and beating their breasts. These the
children were used to act and personate in the streets at play ;
and when one had begun the musician's part, and another
the old woman's part, and the rest did not follow them in theirs,
this gave occasion to the proverbial saying which our Saviour
applies to the present purpose, in this sense. " I and John have
both of us invited you to enter into the kingdom of heaven, or
to turn to God by repentance. John, by the austerity of his
life, and I by my affability and courtesy, have endeavoured to
recommend ourselves ; but all to no purpose. You will neither
mourn with him, nor laugh with me; but, for that very reason,
censure and revile our different behaviour, accounting him, for
his reserved temper, no better than a ' melancholic kind of mad-
man ;' and me, for my free and open conversation, a mere glutton
and wine-bibber." — Hammond's Annotations; and Calmet's Com-
mentary.
f ' To come unto Christ,' in the phrase of the New Testament,
is to believe in him, and to become one of his disciples; and this
invitation our Saviour gives to all mankind in general, and to
the Jews in particular. To all mankind, forasmuch as all,
without the knowledge of Christ, are heavy laden with the
burden of their sins, and the calamities incident to life ; are
surrounded with a cloud of ignorance, and held in bondage
through the fear of death : and to the Jews in particular, as they,
under their dispensation, were oppressed with a load of cere-
monies, ' a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able
to bear,' (Acts xv. 10.) besides the additional weight which the
Pharisees laid upon them, by their traditions, ' heavy burdens,
and grievoustobe borne,' Mat. xxiii. 4. — Whitby's Annotations;
and Calmet's Commentary.
g Is it not a little strange, that any interpreters should ever
imagine, that this is the same story with what we find related
in Mat. xxvi. Mark xiv. and John xii; since the histories agree
scarce in any thing, unless it be in bringing the alabaster box of
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
907
A. M. 403?). A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5410. A. D. 29. FROM MAT.xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23.-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
ner ; but while he was at table there happened an inci-
dent somewhat remarkable : for a certain woman, who
not long before a had been noted for a lewd liver, came
into the house, and* throwing herself at the feet of
ointment, and anointing our Saviour's feet, which in these
countries, especially at great entertainments, was no uncommon
thing. But now the anointing, in the other evangelists, was
done at Bethany, within two miles of Jerusalem ; this in St Luke,
in Galilee; that in the house of one Simon the leper; this in the
house of one Simon a Pharisee; that but a little before our
Saviour's passion: this a considerable time before it: at that,
Judas was offended for the waste of the ointment ; at this Simon
for the woman's touching our Saviour: upon that occasion our
Lord vindicates the woman from one head of argument, and
upon this from another. So that all circumstances make it plain,
that these were different actions, done by different persons, and
at different times.— Poole's Annotations.
a Who this woman was,the gospel no where tells us. We read
indeed of three persons, who by several evangelists are said to
have anointed our Lord's head and feet, namely, Mary Magda-
lene, Mary the sister of Lazarus, and this other woman, whom
St Luke calls a siuner: and some commentators make these three
to be one and the same person. It is to be observed, however,
that the sister of Lazarus is all along represented as a person of
great sobriety and virtue, who always lived at Bethany, was
none of our Lord's attendants, nor ever came into Galilee ; and
consequently was a woman distinct from Mary Magdalene, who
was of his retinue, (Luke viii. 2,) and from this other woman who
anointed his feet in Simon's house: but whether this Mary
Magdalene, and this woman, here called a sinner, might not be
the same person, is not so easy to determine. The characteristic
of Magdalene is, that she was the person out of whom our Lord
had cast seven devils; but then, if the ejection of these devils be
understood, as some will have it, in an allegorical sense, the
words will well enough suit with the sinner in St Luke ; or
suppose they were real devils, the ejection of them might be
some time before her coming into Simon's house, and, as our
Saviour's vindication of her seems to imply, her reformation con-
sequent thereupon, though Simon knew nothing of it. For these
reasons some have imagined, that the sinner in St Luke and
Mary Magdalene were both the same person ; and that she was
called Magdalene from the town and castle of Magdal, where her
husband, who had been a man of great distinction, but then dead,
had lately had his habitation. It must not be dissembled, how-
ever, that the most general and prevailing opinion is that these
were two dillerent and distinct women. — Calmet's Dissertation
on the three Marys; and Hammond's Annotations.
b On the passage here alluded to Dr Campbell thus observes : —
To show that errors in translation, however trivial they may
appear, are sometimes highly injurious to the sense, and render
a plain story not only incredible but absurd, I must entreat the
reader's attention to the following passage, as it runs in the
common version: (Luke vii. 36. 38.)' One of the Pharisees desired
Jesus that he would eat with him ; and he went into the Pharisee's
house; and sat down to meat. And behold a woman in the city,
which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the
Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood
at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with
■ears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed
his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.' Now a reader
of any judgment will need to reflect but a moment to discover,
that what is here told is impossible. If Jesus and others were
in our manner sitting together at table, the woman could not be
behind them, when doing what is here recorded. She must in
that case, on the contrary, have been under the table. The
chairs, on which the guests were seated, would have effectually
precluded access from behind. It is said also that she stood,
while she bathed his feet with tears, wiped them with the hairs
of her head, anointed and kissed them. Another manifest ab-
surdity. On the supposition of their sitting, she must have been
at least kneeling, if not lying on the floor. These inconsistencies
instantly disappear, when the evangelist is allowed to speak for
himself, who, instead of saying that Jesus sat down, says ex-
pressly that he lay down, a.nx\i$n. And to prevent, if possible,
a circumstance being mistaken or overlooked, on which the
practicability of the tiling depended, he repeats it by a synony-
mous term in the very uext verse. * When she knew that Jesus
Jesus, washed them with the tears which flowed from her
eyes, and then, having wiped them with her hair she
kissed them and anointed them with very precious oint-
ment. c
Simon, who still retained something of the censorious
spirit of his sect, seeing this woman thus busy in ex-
pressing her love and veneration for Jesus, began to
think within himself, that d he could not possibly be a
prophet, otherwise he would have known the woman to
be infamous, and consequently not suffered her to touch
him ; but our Saviour, who well understood Simon's
thoughts, proposed to him a parable of a certain cred-
lay at table,' amxurai. The knowledge of their manner at
meals makes every thing in this story level to an ordinary capacity.
At their feasts, matters were commonly ordered thus: Three
couches were set in the form of the Greek letter U, the table was
placed in the middle, the lower end whereof was left open, to
give access to the servants, for setting and removing the dishes,
and serving the guests. The other three sides were inclosed by
the couches, whence it got the name of triclinium. The middle
couch, which lay along the upper end of the table, and was there-
fore accounted the most honourable, and that which the Pharisees
are said particularly to have affected, was distinguished by the
name •x^uroK'Kuna.. (Mat. xxiii. 6.) The person intrusted with the
direction of the entertainment was called ag%irgiK\ms. (John. ii.
8.) The guests lay with their feet backwards, obliquely, across the
couches, which were covered, for their better accommodation,with
such sort of cloth, or tapestry, as suited the quality of the enter-
tainer. As it was necessary, for the conveniency of eating, that
the couches should be somewhat higher than the table, the guests
have probably been raised by them three feet, and upwards, from
the floor. When these particulars are taken into consideration,
every circumstance of the story becomes perfectly consistent and
intelligible. — Campbell on the Gospels. — Ed.
c That it was a customary thing among the ancients, especially
at great entertainments, to use ointments and costly perfumes,
appears from several authorities. The psalmist plainly informs
us, that this was the custom of the Jews, when in acknowledg-
ment of God's great bounty to him, he declares, ' Thou hast
prepared a table for me ; thou hast anointed my head with oil,
and my cup shall be full,' (Ps. xxiii. 5.) The scholiast upon
Aristophanes acquaints us with the same custom among the
Greeks, when he makes it a rule that they who invite to an en-
tertainment should bring forth to their guests crowns and oint-
ments. And that among the Romans the like usage prevailed,
is evident from that sharp, jocular epigram in Martial b iii. 'I con-
fess Master, that thou hast given the guests plenty of ointment, but
no victuals have they tasted, it is an inconsistent thing for a
man to have scented locks and a hungry belly — yes, Fabullus,
he who is supperless and perfumed seems to me something like
a corpse." — The general custom indeed, upon these occasions,
was, to anoint the head, and very seldom the feet: but, besides
that the latter was a token of more humility, and no less esteem
in this woman, she could not perhaps have an opportunity of
coming at our Saviour's head, without giving some disturbance
to the company. — Hammxmd's Annotations.
d Though the Jewish religion permitted harlots of their own
nation to enjoy all the privileges of other women, except that
their oblations were rejected as impure, yet the Pharisees, who
pretended to a greater degree of sanctity than others, would not
admit them to civil usage, or the common benefits of society,
and thought religion itself, and the honour of every prophet con-
cerned in this preciseness. This was the reason of Simon's
making this objection within himself. But therein he draws
three false conclusion*: 1st, That had Jesus been a prophet, he
must have known what the woman was ; as if prophets knew
every thing, and were able to look into the secrets of the heart.
2dly, That as this woman was a sinner, our Saviour should not
have suffered her to touch him ; as if the external touch of a
person engaged in any vicious course could communicate pollu-
tion to one that was innocent. And, 3dly, That this wo-
man, whom he knew to be a sinner some time before, was still
in the same condition; as if it were not in the power of God at
any time to touch the heart, and in a moment to inspiic sincere
repentance. — Calmet's Commentary.
908
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. I— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
itor who had two debtors, one of whom owed him ten
times as much as the other, but because both of them
were insolvent, he frankly forgave them both ; and then,
gaining from him a confession, that the debtor to whom
the larger sum was forgiven, would, in gratitude, be bound
to love the creditor most, he turned to the woman, and,
by way of application, not only apologized both for her
behaviour and his own, but reproached his host likewise,
for having omitted some instances of respect and civility
which this contemptible woman, as he esteemed her, had
abundantly supplied. And therefore, in return for such
uncommon kindness, he gave her a full pardon and ab-
solution of her sins, which some in the company seemed
to resent, as an invasion of the divine prerogative ; but
that gave him no manner of uneasiness.
Upon his leaving Nain, he made a progress, for some
months, round other parts of Galilee, accompanied with
his apostles, and several devout women, whom he cured
of sundry diseases, and who, in gratitude, attended his
person, and, out of their own substance, administered a to
his necessities : till returning at length to his own city
Capernaum, such multitudes of people, upon the rumour
of his being come again, resorted to him, that neither he
nor his disciples could find time to eat. But ' his meat
was to do the will of God,' by healing the sick and re-
lieving the oppressed ; and therefore, as soon as a poor
demoniac, both blind and dumb, was brought before
him, he immediately restored him both to his speech and
eyesight, insomuch that all who saw it were greatly
astonished, and, with a general voice, declared that the
person who did such wonderful works could be no other
than the promised Messiah.
The Pharisees, however, and doctors of the law, who
came from Jerusalem, gave another turn to this miracle.
They ascribed it to the power of the devil, * even to
Beelzebub, c the chief of the devils ; and therefore our
a It was customaiy, says St Jerome on Mat. xxvii. 55,
among the Jews, for women, and especially for widows, to min-
ister necessaries to their teachers; and this without any scandal
or imputation upon their honour. Our Saviour lays it down as
a general rule, that ' the labourer is worthy of his hire,' (Luke
x. 7.) ; and the apostle accounts it no more than justice, that
they who sow to others spiritual things, should be allowed to reap
their carnal things. (1 Cor. ix. 11.) Of what condition or quality
these women were that attended our Lord, we are not told.
They might be virgins, widows, or wives, who had an allowance
for themselves from their husbands: however, it could be no in-
justice done their families, to give unto him, who was Lord of
all that they and their husbands possessed; and who, ' though
he was rich, yet, for our sakes became poor, that we, through
his poverty, might be rich.' (2 Cor. viii. 9.) — Whitby's and
Poole's Annotations.
b That which made the Pharisees thus calumniate our Sav-
iour's miracles, was their finding the people induced by them to
believe that he was the Son of David, (Mat. xii. 23.) which was
but another word for the Messiah, the king of the Jews. For,
though they might have some apprehensions, that if this belief
obtained, it might possibly bring the power of the Romans upon
them (John xi. 48.); yet their chief fear was, that the greatness
of his miracles and excellence of his doctrine would put an end
to their credit and authority among the people, since they were
conscious to themselves, that they could not vie with him in
either — Whitby's Annotations.
c By several passages in the gospel it seems evident, that the
Jews at this time had a notiou of a kind of empire, and subordi-
nation among the infernal powers, and that the prince of this
empire was called Beelzebub. Beelzebub signifies properly the
god of flics; but why a name of so mean an import should
denote the head of the apostate angels, is not so easy a matter
" blessed d Saviour, by the comparison of a kingdom, or
house, divided against itself, which is the readiest way
to bring it to desolation, shows the absurdity of their
allegations, since, by that means, the devil would take
the most effectual course to destroy his own empire.
Nay, he argues from their own pretensions of having
certain allowed exorcists, e among them, that evil spirits
might be cast out by the finger of God ; that, when
they were apparently so, it was very manifest, that the
kingdom of God, or the Messiah, was come among them,
that obstinately to resist the evidence of such miracles,
or to ascribe them to a diabolical power, was that sin
against the Holy Ghost, which is of a nature unpardon-
able ; and that, since they had been so impious, as to
blaspheme the Holy Spirit by which he Avrought them,
nothing less could be expected, than that the devils
ejected by him, finding no where among the heathens
such desirable habitations of rest and contentment, as
among them, would endeavour to return, with several
others worse than themselves, and, by their prodigious
wickedness and obstinate infidelity, finding them more
prepared than ever to receive them, would there take up
their settled abode ; and having made them more incred-
to determine, unless we will admit of this conjecture, namviy,
that as the people of Ekron had an idol which they styled Beel-
samen, that is, the God of heaven, by other nations called Jup-
iter Olympius, the Jews, who used to give nicknames, or names
of contempt, to all false gods, called it sometimes Beelzebub, or
the god-fly, because these heathens worshipped it under the fig-
ure of that insect, and sometimes Beelzebul, or the god of or-
dure, because some sort of flies delight to feed on excrements.
However this be, it is certain that the apostles, in several places
of their writings, seem to insinuate, that among the apostate
spirits there was one superior to the rest, whom therefore they
call ' the prince of darkness,' (Luke xxii. 53.) ' the prince of this
world,' (John xii. 31.) and ' the prince of the power of the
air,' (Eph. ii. 2.) who, in the days of Tobit, went under the
name of Asmodeus, (c. iii. 8.) and is now by the Jews generally
called Sammael, and by the Christians Lucifer. — Beausobre's
Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
d The argument which our Saviour employs against the Jews
upon this occasion is what we call ad hominem. He supposes,
as they did, that among evil spirits there was a form of govern-
ment, which was to last unto the end of the world, and in it a
certain subordination, which made it subsist; and from this
principle he argues, "that it was impossible that an empire
divided against itself should last long ; incongruous to think, that
a prince, who knew his own interest, would send part of his
forces to engage his own generals, and compel them to surrender
to the enemy what they had lately taken from them ; and there-
fore a thing utterly incredible, that the prince of the devils
should give orders to other inferior devils to quit the bodies
which they had taken possession of, and consequently that he
should expel any in the name or by the authority of Beelzebub."'
— Calm.et's Commentary.
e That it was customary among the Jews to cast out devils
by the invocation of the name of the Most High, we may learn
from Justin Martyr, who, in his dialogue with Trypho, tells
him, " that if any Jew exorcised a devil in the name of the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, perhaps he would obey him ;"
from what Irenseus tells us, namely, " that by the invocation of
the name of God, even before the advent of our Lord, men were
saved from evil spirits, and all kinds of demons ;" and from what
Origen (contra Cels.) affirms, namely, " that the name of the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob being used by the Jews,
in the incantation of devils, did great miracles:" and if this
was a common practice among the Jews, then will the force of
our Saviour's argument be this: " You make no doubt, but that
your exorcists, who use the name of God, do eject devils by vir-
tue of that, name ; and how partial is it then in you, to pass an
unjust censure upon me, in whom you see far greater evidences
of the finger of God, in my casting out all manner of evil spirits,
and healing all kinds of diseases?" — Whitby's Annotations.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
909
A. M.4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5U0. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK
ulous and obdurate, more impure and wicked, more
hypocritical and blasphemous than they were before,
would bring upon them too a more lamentable destruc-
tion."
All this, however, hindered not the Scribes and Phari-
sees from demanding of our Saviour some new sign or
miracle in evidence of his mission ; but as he had given
them a sufficient number of these already, he only refer-
red them to one, that would not come to pass till after
his death, namely, that of Jonas, whose deliverance
from the whale's a belly, after three days' confinement
was an eminent type of his resurrection, after as long a
continuance * of his body in the bowels of the earth : and
thence he took occasion to remind them, " that the in-
habitants of Nineveh, c a pagan city, and also the queen
of Sheba <* should rise up in judgment e against that gen-
eration, and condemn it, because the former repented at
the preaching of Jonas, and the latter took a vast jour-
ney to partake of the benefits of Solomon's wisdom ;
whereas they refused to hearken to one who was incon-
testibly/ greater than either Jonas or Solomon,"
a The word iu the original signifies not a whale, but any large
fish; and some naturalists are of opinion, that it was not a whale,
whose gullet is too narrow for that purpose, but rather what the
Greeks call the lamia, or dog-fish, as we showed elsewhere,
whose throat is more capacious, that swallowed up Jonah ; how-
ever, this fish may either have been the lamia, as was sup-
posed, or the shark, both of which are found in the Mediter-
ranean. Whales do not inhabit that sea. — Ed.
b But how can our Saviour be said to have continued as long
in the grave, as Jonah did in the whale's belly, when there were
no more than two nights, and one whole day, between his death
and his resurrection? Now for a resolution of this, we must
observe, 1st, That the Hebrews began their computation of a
natural day from the evening or night preceding ; so that, from one
sunset to another sunset, they reckoned a complete day, even as
Moses does, when he says, ' the evening and the morning were
the first day,' Gen. i. 5. 2dly, That it is a common thing with
them, as well as other nations, to put part of a day for the whole;
so that, whatever is done in any part of the day, is properly
enough said to be done on that day: and, 3dly, That they usu-
ally reckon that to be done in so many days, or so many days
and nights, which begins in any part of the first, and ends in
any part of the last day. Now, allowing this manner of compu-
tation, and reckoning that the first day began on Thursday at
sunset, and ended upon Friday at sunset; since our Saviour
died on Friday about three in the afternoon, by putting a part
for the whole, here we have one day. Saturday is allowed on all
hands to be another; and, since the third day began on Saturday
at sunset, and our Saviour rose on the morning following, that
part of the day being likewise put for the whole, is fairly com-
puted for the third. The Hebrew child, according to law, was
to be circumcised the eighth day, but then the day of its birth
and of its circumcision, were both counted; and, in like manner,
if we reckon the day on which Christ died for one, and that on
which he rose for another, including withal the night belonging
to the former, we may properly enough say, that, in imitation of
the prophet Jonah, ' he was three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth.' — Whitby's and Hammond's Annotations, and
Bishop Kidder's Demonstration, b. i. c. 8.
c This city is generally supposed to have been built by Nim-
rod, was situate upon the river Tigris, and famous once for be-
ing the metropolis of the first, that is, the Assyrian empire. —
Wells' Geography of the New Testament.
d Sheba, or Saba, is a province of Arabia Felix, lying to the
south of Judea, and on the extreme part of the continent, and,
being bounded by the ocean, is therefore said to be ' the utmost
part of the earth.' — Wells' Geography of the New Testament.
e This is spoken in allusion to a custom among the Jews and
Romans, which was, for the witnesses to rise from their seats,
when they accused criminals, or gave any evidence against them.
'—Beausobre's Annotations.
f Since God had promised Solomon, that as there was none
23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37- JOHN v. 1— vi». 1.
While he was continuing his discourse in this manner,
word was brought that his mother s and some other kins-
folk were at the door, desiring to speak with hiin ; (for
fearing either that he might be too much transported by
his ministry, or grow faint for want of eating, or be en-
dangered by the throng, they came to get him away,) but
being dissatisfied with their unseasonable interruption, he
took occasion to inform the audience, " that all worldly
relations were of less consideration than the ties of duty
and religion; that the names'* of mother and brother,
which are sanctified by the laws of God and nature, were
made much more sacred, when a spiritual kindred does
supervene ;" and so turning to his disciples, he declared,
" that they were his truest relations who heard the word
of God, and practised it."
The same day he went out of the house where he com-
monly abode, and, for the greater conveniency of teach-
ing the people, repaired to the sea-shore, where, being
followed by the same multitudes, to avoid the throng, he
went on board a vessel, and from thence taught them in
like him before him, so after him none should arise like him for
wisdom, (1 Kings iii. 12.) our Saviour's declaring that in this
respect he was greater thau Solomon, must be plainly avowing
himself to be more than man. — Whitby's Annotations. — Our
Lord chooses on this occasion rather to insinuate, than to affirm
the dignity of his character ; and to afford matter of reflection to
the attentive among his disciples, without furnishing his de-
clared enemies with a handle for contradiction. — Dr Campbell.
—Ed.
g The words in the text are, 'his mother and his brethren,'
Mat. xii. 46; but as the word brethren, according to the lan-
guage of the Jews, (Gen. xxix. 12; Lev. x. 4.) is of great lati-
tude, these brothers are supposed to be either Joseph's sons by a
former wife, and so our Saviour's brothers-in-law, or the chil-
dren of Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and so his cousins-german.
There is, indeed, a tradition in the church, that before his es-
pousing the virgin Mary, Joseph had another wife, whose name
was Ischa, by whom he had six children, four sons, James, Jo-
seph, Simon, and Jude, and two daughters, whose names, some
say, were Esther and Thamar, others Mary and Salome. But
whoever compares Mat. xiii. 55 — xxvii. 56. Mark xv. 40, and
John xix 25, together, will find, that the four persons there said
to be our Saviour's brothers, were the sons of Mary, the wife of
Cleophas, (or Alpheus, for the name is all one,) and sister to the
blessed Virgin ; and so these brothers of his, as we said, were
no more than his cousins-german. Others, however, strenu-
ously maintain the former opinion, namely, that Mary the mo-
ther of Jesus was their mother, that is, their stepmother, and
they consequently his brothers-in-law; and that, 1st, because
this opinion retains the proper signification of the word brothers,
in which the Jews always seem to use it, when they speak of our
Lord's brothers and sisters: and 2dly, because it agrees with the
sense of antiquity, which, ever before St Jerome's time, (says
the learned Pearson,) looked upon them as the brothers of our
Lord, who lived with his mother, and are therefore so frequently
found together, Mat. xii. 46. John ii. 12. — Calmet's Commen-
tary, and Beausobrc's and Whitby's Annotations.
h We have another speech of our Saviour's, much of the same
import with this. For when a certain woman in the company,
upon hearing his excellent doctrine, broke out into this exclama-
tion, ' blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which
thou hast sucked!' his reply is, 'yea, rather blessed are they that
hear the word of God and keep it,' (Luke xi. 27. 28.) for ' who-
soever shall do the will of my Father, who is in heaven, the same
is my brother, and sister, and mother, (Mat. xii. 50.) which
texts do not derogate any thing from the honour truly due to the
blessed virgin, as the mother of the Messiah; hut only show the
folly of some who exalt her above Christ, whom, considered only
as his mother, Christ himself seems here to set beneath every
true believer ; though, considered as a believer likewise, she has
a just title to pre-eminence; and it is by that she is infinitely
more happy than if she had only been his mother according to
the flesh. — Chrysostom, horn. 45; Calmet's Commentary, and
Poole's Annotations.
910
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5410. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 11. MARK ii. 23-ix. 11. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
parables, an usual way of instruction among- the Jews,
but what he had not practised before, thereby to engage
the attention, and accommodate himself to the capacity
of those that heard him. By the parable of the sower,
he represented the different successes of the gospel,
according to the different dispositions of its hearers ; by
the tares growing among the good seed, the mixture of
the wicked and godly under the same profession of
Christianity ; by the grain of mustard seed, and the little
piece of leaven, the wonderful increase and propagation
of the gospel from small beginnings ; by the treasure in
the field, and the pearl of great price, the inestimable
benefits that would accrue to the true professors of re-
ligion ; but that the profession of it would include a mixed
multitude, and be therefore like a net cast into the sea,
which incloses fishes of all kinds, some good and some
bad, the good to be preserved, but the bad cast away.
This is the explanation which our Lord gave his disciples
of these several parables; and Avhen, by their answer,
he perceived that they understood them all, he concluded
his discourse with one similitude more, namely, that1
" every gospel-teacher ought to resemble a well furnished
house-keeper," who brings all things out of his repository,
both old and new, according to the occasions of his
guests."
He had not continued long in Capernaum, before he
resolved to cross the lake or sea of Galilee, and to that
purpose had ordered his disciples to prepare a vessel
for him: but just as he was going on board, a certain
scribe6 came, and offered to attend him wherever he
1 Mat. xiii. 52.
a And what this house-keeper was iu his own family, that
should every minister of the gospel be in the church of Christ.
He should be thoroughly instructed in the word of God, and
capable of amassing a plentiful provision of all knowledge, both
sacred and profane. 'To bring out of his treasure,' or store-
house,' things new and old,' was a kind of proverbial saying among
the Hebrews, and denoted a man's giving a plentiful or liberal
entertainment to his friends, and such as came about him. And
therefore, as the householder, if a man of substance and suffi-
ciency, of a large stock, and as large a mind, will entertain his
friends and guests with plenty, and variety of provisions, answer-
able to the difference of men's palates, as well as to the difference
of the seasons; so our gospel-scribe, or teacher, in the entertain-
ment of his spiritual guests, is not always to set before them only
the main substantial of religion, whether for belief or practice
but, as the matter shall require, to add also illustration to the
one, and enforcement to the other, sometimes persuading some-
times terrifying; and accordingly addressing himself to the
afflicted and desponding with gospel lenitives, and to the hard
and obstinate, with legal corrosives: and, since the relish of all
is not the same, he is to apply to the vulgar, with plain familiar
similitudes, and to the learned, with greater choice of language,
and coolness of argument, and so suit his discourses to the various
circumstances, tempers, and apprehensions of his hearers.
Calmefs Commentary; and South's Sermons, vol. iv.
b What might possibly be the motive of this scribe's offering
to attend our Saviour, the conjectures of commentators have been
different. Some think, that he did it with a sincere desire to
became his disciple; others, with a design to turn spy upon him;
some, out of a spirit of vanity, to distinguish himself, by being a
retainer to a master in so great reputation among the people;
others, out of a principle of self-interest, that he might obtain
some post of honour and advantage, upon our Lord's advancement
to his kingdom. This, indeed, seems to be the most probable
ground of his resolution; and accordingly the design of our
Saviour's answer is to discourage him from being his disciple
upon such secular views, 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of
the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his
own head,' (Mat vlii. 20.) and therefore much less any aecom-
went ; but when he understood, that no temporal emolu-
ment was to be obtained by such attendance, he v«?ry
probably retracted. A disciple of his own at the same
time desired leave c to bury his father before he went
along with him; but he commanded him to follow him,
and to leave such offices to the children d of this world ;
and, when another was for taking leave of his family, and
disposing of his effects before he went, our Saviour let
him know, 2 ' that whoever laid his hand to the plough, e
and looked back, was not fit for the kingdom of God.'
8 Luke ix. 62.
modation or prospect of preferment for his followers. — Calmefs
Commentary, and JVTiitby's Annotations.
c It is generally supposed that Luke has given this branch of
the history, chap. ix. 57, but it appears to be a very different
passage. For here Jesus was beside the sea of Galilee ; there he
was passing through Samaria. Here a scribe being present,
when he ordered the disciples to carry him to the other side,
offers to accompany him ; there one comes running to him, as he
travelled on the road, and of his own accord said that he would
follow him. It is true, the answer given to both was the same ;
but it might easily be so, on supposition that the men had the
same sentiments and dispositions. Sir Isaac Newton, however,
supposing with most harmony writers, that the two evangelists
are speaking of the same transaction, thinks that Jesus was now
crossing the lake in his way to the feast of tabernacles, mentioned
John vii. 2. But the circumstances both of time and place,
distinctly marked by the two historians, overturn his hypothesis
entirely. — Macknight's Harmony, vol. i. 180. — Ed.
d The words in the text are, — ' Let the dead bury the dead,'
(Mat. viii. 22.) which is a form of speech common in all sorts
of authors, when in the same place they use the same words
twice, though very frequently in different senses. Thus the
psalmist, speaking of God, says, ' with the froward thou shalt
show thyself froward,' (Ps. xviii. 26.) even as Moses introduces
God speaking of himself, ' if ye walk contrary to me, I will
also walk contrary to you.' (Lev. xxvi. 23, 24.) where the words
froward and contrary, as they relate to God, denote the punish-
ments which he intended to bring upon the obstinate, and are
the rather used, because the same words went before. And, in
like manner, 'let the dead bury their dead, but follow thou me,'
may signify, 'let others bury the dead; thou hast work of more
consequence to do.' It must not be dissembled, however, that
by the dead, both sacred and profane authors do frequently
mean, not only those who, in a natural sense, are dead, but those
likewise who in a spiritual sense are so, by being ' alienated from
the life of God, and dead in trespasses and sins.' Thus Clemens
of Alexandria tells us, that the philosophy of the barbarians
called those dead, who deserted their doctrines, and subjected
their minds to sensual pleasures, which Pliilo calls the death of
the soul, entombed in passions and all manner of wickedness.
And therefore the full import of our Saviour's words must be,
" Let those who are unconcerned for the things of God, and
unfit to engage in promoting them, perform such offices, which
they can do as well as others ; but thou who hast begun to fol-
low me, and to attend upon the kingdom of God, go on with
resolution, and without allowing thyself any avocation from that
work:" hereby teaching us, that they who are called to the
preaching of the gospel, and the salvation of souls, should not
suffer any earthly business, which may be done as well by others,
who are unfit to be employed in spirituals, to give them the
least impediment or molestation. — Hammond's and JFhitbys
Annotations.
e ' To put the hand to the plough,' is a proverbial saying not
only among the Greeks and Hebrews, but many other nations,
and denotes in general the beginning of any enterprise; This
our Saviour applies to spiritual husbandry : and thereby gives us
to understand, that as he who undertakes to plough, should not
look behind him, for fear of making his furrows crooked nr un-
equal; so he that engages in the ministry of the gospel should
not suffer himself to be encumbered with much serving about
other matters, but, in the language of the apostle, ' forgetting
those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things
which are before, press toward the mark for the prize of the
high calling of God in Jesus Christ. '(Pfcif. iii. 13, 14.)— Whitby i
Annotations, and Calmefs Commentary.
II.1
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
911
A. M. 403a a. D. 31 , OR A. M. 6440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. I—:
While the ship was under sail, and Jesus asleep in
the stern, there arose a most terrible storm, so violent
and impetuous that the whole ship was almost swallowed
up by the waves. Hereupon his disciples, in great con-
sternation, awoke him ; and when he arose, at his rebuk-
ing the waves, they obeyed his command, and
immediately composed themselves into a profound
calm, a to the no small astonishment of every one that
saw it.
The next morning, as our Lord landed on the east
side of the lake, in that part of the province of Tracho-
nitis, b which is called ' the country of the Gadarenes,' c
two demoniacs, d most grievously distracted, with some
a The stilling of the raging of the sea was so peculiar a pre-
rogative of God (Ps. lxxxix. 9. and cvii. 25, 29.) that it is not at
all to be wondered that our Saviour's disciples should be con-
vinced of a divine power residing in him who was able to do
this with the breath of his command. — fFhitby's Annotations.
b This country, which is so called by the Greeks from its
rough and craggy mountains, together with Ituraia, made in our
Saviour's time one tetrarchy, that is, one fourth part or rather
division (for they were not equal parts) of the kingdom of Herod
the Great when he died. It was anciently called Argob, (Deut.
iii. 13.) and, according to the best account, is bounded to the
east by Arabia Deserta; to the west, by Batanrea; to the south,
by Ituraa; and to the north by the country of Damascus: and
as it was a province full of rocky hills, which served for an har-
bour to a great number of thieves and robbers, it often found
employment for Herod the Great, as we may see in the history
of Josephus, to expel them. — Wells' Geog. of the New Test., and
Whitby's Table.— The singularly rocky country described by
Burckliardt, on the south of Damascus, called El Ledja, corres-
ponds in a remarkable manner with Trachonitis, as described
by Josephus and Strabo. — Ed.
c This, in St Matthew, is called the country of the Gerge-
senes, because it lay in the neighbourhood of the two cities, Gad-
ara and Gergesa, which were both situated within the district of
Decapolis. Gadara, which took its name from the tribe of Gad,
to whom it fell by lot in the division of the land, was a famous
city beyond Jordau, the capital of Parcea, as Josephus (Jewish
War, b. v. c. 3.) tells us, and stood eastward of the sea of
Tiberias, about sixty furlongs from the shore. Gergesa was a
place of some importance likewise, according to the same histo-
rian ; and the adjacency of these two towns made the evangelists
call the country that lay between them sometimes by one name
and sometimes by another. — I Veils' Geog. of the New Test.
Gadara was one of the ten cities of the Decapolis ; and, according
to an article in the tweuty-sixth volume of the Quarterly Review,
which uses the authority of Mr Bankes, is at present found
under the name of Oomkais: where are extensive ruins, and
numerous caverns on the east side of the hill, which are the
ancient tombs; in many of which Burckhardt found sarcophagi.
This traveller expresses himself doubtful as to what city these
ruins belong: his editor, however, considers Oomkais to be
Gamala; and that Gadara was situated at the hot springs at the
foot of the hill. Mr Buckingham has given a very good de-
scription of this place ; mistaking it, however, as appears, for
Gamala. — Hansford's Gazetteer, p. 178. — Ed.
d There is some difference between the evangelists in their
account of this cure: for whereas St Mark (v. 2.) and St Luke
(viii. 27.) take notice only of one demoniac, St Matthew (viii.
28.) makes mention of two. Now, to reconcile this seeming
difference, Dr Lightfoot ingeniously conjectures that one of
these two was a Gergesen, and a Jew, and so in casting the
devil out of him, our Lord did no more than what he had fre-
quently done in Judea; but the other a Gadaren, that is, one of
an heathen city, as Josephus testifies; for which reason St
Mark and St Luke take chiefly notice of him, as a more remark-
able instance, because he and the Syroplunician woman were
the only two heathens we read of that our Saviour cured. But
there is a farther reason for the evangelist's taking notice of one
rather than the other, and that is, that the one, in his behaviour,
was more remarkable than the other; was possessed of an un-
clean spirit, called himself legion, and could not be bound with
letters or chains ; went about naked, and cutting himself with
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-rii. I.
poor rags about them, came running towards him, and
fell at his feet, and worshipped him. Hideous specta-
cles were they both; but one, much fiercer than the
other, made dismal outcries both day and night, and cut
his flesh with sharp stones ; and though he had been
often bound with fetters and chains, yet he as often
broke them to pieces, ranging, with his companion,
among the rocks e and tombs, and so very furious and
outrageous, that no traveller durst pass that way.
Upon their approach to Jesus, the devils who spake by
their mouths, declared him to be the Son of God, and
expressed their fear of his being come to / torment
them before their time. They acknowledged their number
to be vastly great, and, if he cast them out of the pos-
sessed persons, implored him to sutler them to enter s into
stones; and when he was cured, distinguished himself, by desir-
ing to follow Christ: circumstances all which St Matthew
omits, but St Mark and St Luke have particularly related, and,
upon these accounts, might very likely think that he fell more
properly under their consideration than the other. — Whitby's
and Beausobre's Annotations.
e The tombs which the evangelists here mention are said to
be in the mountains, and in the wilderness. For the custom of
the Jews was, to have their tombs, like so many little cells, cut
out in the sides of caverns, and hollow parts of rocks and moun-
tains, at some distance from their towns, and usually in very
lonely and desert places; "hence they often served as places of
shelter to the houseless wanderer, or such poor wretches as lep-
ers or demoniacs, who were driven from human habitations;
places indeed which might seem not unsuitable to the latter,
since the ancients supposed that evil demons hovered about
sepulchres." — Dr Bioomfie Id.— Mr Buckingham tells us that
the account given in the gospel of the habitation of the demoniac
out of whom the legion of devils was cast, struck him veiy for-
cibly while wandering among savage mountains and surrounded
by tombs, still used as houses by individuals and even by whole
families. A finer occasion for expressing the passions of mad-
ness in all their violence, contrasted with the serene virtue and
benevolence of him who went about continually doing good,
could hardly be chosen for the pencil of an artist; and a faithful
delineation of the rugged and wild majesty of the mountain
scenery on the one hand, with the still calm of the lake on the
other, would give an additional charm to the picture. — Buck-
ingham's Travels. — Ed.
f St Jerome, upon the passage now before us, is apt to ima-
gine, that as slaves, who have a long while run from their mas-
ter, no sooner see his face, but they bethink themselves of the
punishment which they have deserved; so the devils, finding
our Saviour upon earth, thought at first sight that he was come
to judge and condemn them ; and therefore they ask, ' Art thou
come hither to torment us before the time?' that is, before the
time of the last judgment, when they expect no other than to be
eternally punished, or, as the scripture expresses it, ' to be cast
into the lake of fire and brimstone for ever.' — Calmet's Commen-
tary.
g In Luke viii. 31, it is said, that ' the devils besought him
that he would not command them to go out into the deep.'
The word a&vaaof, rendered deep, signifies, in this passage, the
place where wicked spirits are punished ; as it does likewise,
Rev. xx. 3, where it is translated the bottomless pit. Properly
it denotes a place without a bottom, or so deep that it cannot be
fathomed. The Greeks described their Tartarus in this man-
ner; and the Jews, when they wrote Greek, did not scruple to
adopt their expressions, because they were universally under-
stood. Besides, the Hebrew language did not furnish proper
words for these ideas, which was the reason that the first Chris-
tians also, when they had occasion to speak of the state of evil
spirits, made use of terms purely Greek, such as ri'Sxj, tx^tu.-
£utras, &c. (See 2 Pet. ii. 4.) Mark says the devils begged
that Jesus would not send them out of the country. To explain
this circumstance, some pretend that particular genii preside
over particular regions, founding their opinion on Dan. x. 13,
20. And because the prophet speaks there of angels contending
with one another, and of Michael's assisting one of the parties,
912
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[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-
a herd of swine that were feeding on the mountains not
far off. Accordingly he permitted them : whereupon
the whole herd, to the number of two thousand, ran vio-
lently upon the rocks, and casting themselves headlong
into the lake, were all drowned and utterly lost.
The keepers of the swine fled in the utmost fright,
and reported this strange accident in the city of Gadara
and the neighbouring villages, which brought great mul-
titudes to the place, where they found the man, who had
been the more furious of the two, sitting at our Saviour's
feet, clothed, and in his perfect senses. But, whether it
was that they took amiss the destruction of the swine, or
thought themselves unworthy of his divine presence, so
it was that they intreated our Lord to depart out of their
country ; which accordingly he did ; a but, instead of
permitting the man, out of whom he had cast the most
devils, to go along with him, as he desired, he ordered
him l * to return to his house, and his friends, and there
to declare what wonderful things the Lord had done for
him.'
As soon as our Lord had repassed the lake, and was
returned to Capernaum, the people came flocking about
him as usual ; and, while he was teaching them, one
Jairus, b a chief ruler of the synagogue, falling prostrate
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi, 1— ix. 37. JOHN v, 1— vii. 1.
at his feet, humbly besought him to come and cure his
daughter, who was at the point of death ; not doubting
but that, if he laid his hands upon her, she would instantly
recover. The forwardness of the ruler's faith claimed
our Saviour's compassion and assistance ; and therefore
he immediately rose, and followed him : but, as he was
on the way, and pressed with great throngs of people,
a certain woman, c who had been diseased with an un-
natural flux of blood for twelve years, and, in hopes of
a cure, had in vain spent all her estate upon physicians,
being now confident, that if she could but come to touch
the hem d of his garment, she should be healed, pressed
forward ; and having got a touch of it privately, as she
thought, found herself perfectly sound. But she was not
unknown to Jesus ; and, therefore, when he, perceiving
that e ' virtue was gone out of him,' turned about in the
throng, and demanded who it was that / had touched
iMark v. 19.
(ver. 13.) they think the war was waged between good and bad
genii. For as kingdoms and provinces are supposed to be com-
mitted to the care of benign tutelar powers, so the evil genii
have their provinces assigned to them by their chieftain, in
which they are to do all the mischief they can to mankind.
Pursuant to this hypothesis, its abettors fancy that the band of
evil spirits which tormented these miserable men were stationed
in this part of the country to oppose Christ, and so begged that
they might not be expelled, thinking they could do more mis-
chief here than elsewhere. But whatever be in this, certain it
is, that by making such a request, the devils acknowledged that
it was not in the power even of a legion of them, to do any mis-
chief to so contemptible a creature as a swine without Christ's
permission, far less could they destroy the man in whom they
lodged. The whole of this history teaches us to rely on the
providence of God, and not to live in fear of evil spirits. They
are under the strictest restraint, and cannot hurt us without the
divine permission. — Macknight's Harmony, vol. i. 18S ■ — Ed.
a One reason, as some imagine, why this man desired to be
with Christ, was his fear lest the devil, at his departure, might
seize upon him again ; and it was partly to avoid the suspicion
of vain glory, whereof our Lord might have given some umbrage,
had he carried about with him all those upon whom his greatest
miracles were wrought, and partly to show, that in his absence
he was able to protect such as believe and trust in him, from the
malice of evil spirits, that he would not accept of his company.
— Whitby's Annotations.
b Some learned men are of opinion, that this ruler of the
synagogue was the president of the consistory of the twenty-
three judges, who were appointed in every city to punish such
offences as were not capital; but it is more generally thought,
that he was not a civil magistrate, but a leading man in the
synagogue of Capernaum, who had, in a great measure, under
his direction such things as related to the service of God. We
are to observe, however, that the word cc;>xHrvva.'yoyos is some-
times taken, in a strict sense, for the person who was the president,
the head and master of the synagogue, who, according to this
acceptation, was but one ; and, at other times, in a larger sense,
so as to comprehend the presbyters, and elders likewise, in which
sense the rulers of the synagogue were more than one. How
many they were, is no where denned because that depended upon
the largeness of the city, and the number of those who frequented
the place of divine worship ; only we may observe, that Jairus
was not the chief president, because he is called ' one of the
rulers of the synagogue,' (Mark v. 22.) — Vitringa de Regim.
Sj/nag. b. ii. c. 11 ; Calmct's Commentary, and Hammond's
and f Hatty's Amiotations.
c The case of this woman was a very afflicting one : 1 . Because
of the nature of her malady ; it was such as could not be made
public, without exposing her to shame and contempt. 2. It was
an inveterate disorder ; it had lasted twelve years. 3. It was
continual ; she appears to have had no interval of health. 4.
Her disorder was aggravated by the medicines she used — she
suffered much, &c. 5. Her malady was ruinous both to her
health and circumstances — she spent all that she had. 6. She
was now brought to the last point of wretchedness, want, and
despair ; she was growing worse, and had neither money nor
goods to make another experiment to procure her health. 7.
She was brought so low by her disorder as to be incapable of
earning any thing to support her wretched life a little longer.
It has been said, and the saying is a good one, "man's ex-
tremity is God's opportunity." Never could the power and
goodness of God be shown in a more difficult and distressful case.
And now Jesus comes and she is healed. — A. Clarke on Mark
v. 23.
d Mark ix. 20. This woman having probably been a constant
witness of the many wonderful miracles wrought by Christ, was
convinced that he was a divine person, and that every thing
belonging to him was sacred: and therefore, as, according to
the custom of the eastern nations, to kiss the fringe of any con-
secrated robe, {Arabian Nights, vol. iv. p. 236.) was an act of
the most profound reverence, so by touching the hem of our
Saviour's garment she was persuaded that she should not only
pay him the greatest respect, but dispose him to pity her, and
heal her disease ; which was instantly done. The garment of
Christ, in consequence of the humble appearance which he made
upon earth, was not ornamented with that striking appendage
which usually adorned the borders of the eastern garments, a
beautiful fringe. Had his garment been in the prevailing fashion
of the east, the woman probably would have been represented
as touching the fringe of his garment, instead of its hem. — Ed.
e Hence it is evident, that the virtue, whereby our Saviour
did these miraculous cures, was not communicated to him, but
resided in him, and consequently proves that he was God. For
the virtue whereby the prophets and apostles did their cures is
ascribed to God: as when it is said, that ' God did special mira-
cles by the hand of Paul, (Acts xix. 11. ;) but the miracles done
by Christ are imputed to ' the virtue which went out of him,
and healed all that sought to touch him,' (Luke vi. 19.) ' The
virtue's going out of him,' however, is a popular expression,
which must not be taken in its literal sense, as if it were a
quality distinct from the person of Christ, and what might pass
from him to another ; because the divine power residing in him
was incapable of any alienation or diminution, be the cures he
performed ever so many, ever so miraculous ; and therefore
the only meaning of the expression must be, that it went out,
with regard to us, or according to our conceptions and apprehen-
sions of things, when it discovered and manifested itself in the
cure of some disease, or any other outward effects. — Whitby's
Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
f Our Saviour's disciples, we find, admired at his asking this
question, (Mark v. 31.) but the reason for his doing so, we may
suppose, was to discover to the people the greatness of the mira--
cle, which, without this examination, might have gone offwithout
Skct. ii.] FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c. 913
A M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. l-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. 1,
him ? The poor woman came trembling, and falling down
at his feet, declared to all the company, both the cause
and miraculous effects of her touching him, which he was
so far from blaming, that he commended her faith, and
imputed her cure to the wonderful strength of it.
During this transaction, the delay proved fatal, as one
might imagine, to Jairus ; for a message was brought
him, that his daughter was actually dead, and therefore
there was no occasion to give Jesus any farther trouble ;
but our Saviour, who overheard what the messenger said,
bid the father not fear, but only believe, and then he
should find the blessed effects of his faith in the recovery
of his daughter : but he had scarce spoke these words,
when approaching the house, he found the musicians a
and mourners already come, who were deploring her
death with melancholy tones and loud lamentations, ac-
cording to the custom of those times. He desired them
however, as he went in, to cease their funeral ceremonies,
because at that time, b there was no occasion for them ;
and so, with the young woman's parents, and Peter, and
James, and John, going into the chamber, he approached
the bed where she lay, and taking her by the hand, com-
manded her to arise ; at which powerful word she imme-
diately revived, and walked round the room, to the no
small amazement of her parents. At his departure, he
ordered them to give her something to eat, and left a
strict charge with them that they should make the miracle
a secret; but their joy was too great to conceal what,
being known ; to show them the strength and virtue of the
woman's faith and confidence in his power ; and thence to con-
vince Jairus, who began a little to stagger in his faith, that he
was able to revive his daughter, even though she was dead, if he
<lid but believe. — Calmet's Commentary, and Beausobre's
Annotations.
a In all the books of the Old Testament, there is not the least
hint given us of any musical instruments employed in funerals.
We read indeed of a good deal of mourning for the dead, of
mourners hired on purpose, and of the dismal ditties which these
people sung, to excite sorrow in others : but the use of music
was reckoned an incongruous thing, and nowise comporting
with the solemnity of this sad season. Among heathen authors
there is frequent mention made of it, as a thing long in use, both
with the Greeks and Romans ; and therefore we may presume,
that from these nations it was that the Jews borrowed, and adopted
it into their funeral ceremonies. That among them it was in
use in our Saviour's time, at least among persons of the better
rank, is plain from the passage now before us: that it was an
established custom in the time of Josephus, is evident from his
own testimony; and that it grew into a kind of superstitious use,
in the times following, is evident from what the rabbins enjoin,
namely, that none, even of the meaner sort, should, at the funeral
of a wife, have fewer than two flutes, besides the voices of old
women, who, by their sad modulation, were to extort lamentation
from others. — Seldenrs Uxor. Hcbr. b. iii. c. 8.; Hammond's
Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
b The reason which our Saviour gives for this, is, — That ' the
maid was not dead, but asleep,' (Mat. ix. 24.) Now, in several
places of the New Testament especially, death is called a sleep,
(John xi. 11. Act-i vii. CO. 1 Cor. xv. 6. &c.) and therefore our
Saviour only makes use of this word of a softer signification, not
so much with a design to impose upon those to whom he directed
his speech, as tr testify his humility, and great modesty, in his
desire to concea his divine power. The persons he spoke to
were certainly those who were preparing for her interment, and
performing the funeral rites belonging to it; and therefore he
only intimates, that she was not so dead as they accounted her,
tbat is, not to come to life again before the resurrection; but
that her death was no more than what he could remove with the
same facility as another might be awakened out of sleep. —
Whitby's, and Poole's Annotations.
in gratitude for so great a mercy, they thought they were
obliged to divulge.
In his return from Jairus, our Lord was followed in the
streets by two blind men, imploring his aid, who, as soon
as he had entered the house, came after him, and when he
had cured them, were dismissed with a strict charge
to conceal the miracle, which, out of the abundance
of their joy, they could not do. And no sooner were
the blind men gone, but the people brought to him a
dumb man possessed with a devil, which when he had
cast out, the person immediately recovered his speech,
to the great astonishment of the multitude, who unani-
mously acknowledged that the like had never been in
Israel ; only the Pharisees persisted in their old malice,
and insinuated to the people, as formerly, that he ejected
devils by the help of some supreme devil, who had the
rest under his control, and with whom he was confed-
erate.
After a short stay at Capernaum, our Lord departed,
with his disciples, into some other parts of Galilee.
About a year before, he had been barbarously treated by
the inhabitants of Nazareth, the place of his education ;
and yet, notwithstanding this, he was resolved once more
to make them a fresh tender of mercy. To this purpose
he went into their synagogue on the sabbath-day, and
taught the people ; but, instead of being converted to the
faith, though they were astonished at his abilities, they
were scandalized at his person, and began to upbraid him
with the meanness c of his parentage and employment,
as they had done before ; insomuch, that being sensible
that d ' a prophet never wanted honour but in his own
country,' he did not abide with them long : nor did he
work any miracles there, except the cure of a few sick
persons; by reason of their infidelity. e
Upon his departure from Nazareth, he visited most of
the cities and villages of Galilee, teaching in the syna-
gogues, preaching the gospel, and curing all kinds of
diseases among the people ; and as he observed, one
day, the numerous throngs and multitudes that resorted
to him, he looked upon them with an eye of pity and
compassion, as so many sheep dispersed and destitute
of shepherds : and from thence formed a resolution to
c The word rixrav is of general signification, and denotes any
worker, either in wood, metal, or stone; but the tradition of the
church has all along been, that our blessed Saviour was, what our
translation has specified, a carpenter; and Justin Martyr assures
us, that he made ploughs and yokes, which at that time were
the carpenter's business. However this be, it is certain that by
the Jewish canons, all parents were bound to teach their children
some trade: that their most celebrated rabbins thought it a great
reproach not to be of some profession ; and that there was a
peculiar reason, why our Saviour should he of one, and that no
very liberal one neither, even to take ofl'all suspicion of his being
bred up in curious arts, which his enemies at all times were
forward enough to say, notwithstanding the disadvantages of his
education. — Beausobrc's and Whitby's Annotations.
d This was a common proverb among other nations, as well as
the Jews ; and therefore Aristides was wont to say, that ' a philo-
sopher was never worse than at home.' — Grotius on Mat.
xiii. 57.
e Our Saviour could not work miracles among his countrymen
the Nazarenes, says Theophylact, not because he wanted power,
but because the subjects of the miracles were unbelieving, and
therefore, as Whitby says, wanted the condition on which alone
it was fit he should heal them ; Christ could not, consistently
with the rule on which he invariably acted in performing mira-
cles, namely, to require faith in his divine mission, perform
these miracles among the Nazarenes. — Btoomfield. — En.
5 z
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send out his twelve apostles, by two and two together,
into the more distant parts of Judea, whilst himself con-
tinued preaching in Galilee, and the places adjacent.
To this purpose a he invested them with a full power
to cure all diseases, eject devils, and even raise the
dead. h He gave them instructions in what manner they
were to behave in the places whither they went ; but for-
bade thenr., at the same time, to address themselves to any
of the Gentiles, or Samaritans, but only to the lost c sheep
of the house of Israel. He told them the consequences of
their ministry, which, after his death more especially,
instead of entitling them to temporal advantages, would
expose them to sundry kinds of persecutions ; but for
their encouragement, he acquainted them, that those who
rejected their message should be treated with severity,
at least at the righteous judgment of God ; whereas those
that received them kindly, and gave, were it but a cup
of cold water, to the least of his disciples, for their
Master's sake, should in no wise miss of their reward.
With this commission the apostles went into all the parts
of Palestine, where the Jews inhabited, preaching the
gospel, and the doctrine of repentance as part of it,
working miracles for its confirmation, and d anointing
a Among all the accounts which the heathens have given us
of their famous magicians, and workers of wonders, there are
none to be found who ever pretended to a power to delegate their
virtue to others, or to impart their power to them, upon the in-
vocation of their names, or belief of their doctrine. Hence Ar-
nobius, (advers. Gentes, b. i.) having summed up the miracles
which our Saviour did, adds, that he not only did them by his
power, but permitted many others to do them by invocation of
his name, nor did he any peculiar and astonishing miracles him-
self, that he did not enable his little ones, and even rustics, to
perform. Whereupon he asks those he writes to, Did ever
that Jupiter, whom the Romans worship in their capitol, give the
like power to any mortal? And then concludes this to be a de-
monstration of a truly divine power: for, to transfer your mira-
culous power to a man, and to give authority and strength to a
creature to do that which you alone can do, is an infallible evi-
dence of one who hath power over all, and the causes of all things
at his beck. — Whitby's Annotations.
b The clause * raise the dead ' (Mat. x. S.) is rejected by the
generality of critics, as it is wanting in many ancient copies of
authority, and also as it does not appear that the disciples raised
any dead persons previous to our Lord's resurrection. Other
critics, however, defend the clause, and it would appear that
the evidences for and against it are pretty nearly balanced. If it
be retained, it may be considered as having a reference to events
which were not to take place till after our Lord's resurrection,
when his apostles received a more extensive commission. — Ed.
c He calls all Israel sheep, though they were not obedient to
the voice of the shepherds as being all chosen people. He calls
them lost sheep, because they were in great danger of being lost
and mined by the ignorance and wickedness of their guides;
and to them the apostles were sent, because they were the
children of the kingdom, (Mat. viii. 12,) to whom the promise of
the Messiah was made, (Gen. xvii. 1,) and of whom as concerning
the fl« sh he came, (Rom. ix. 5;) and therefore it was the divine
will, that they should be first honoured with the preaching of the
gospel, and alone enjoy the ministry of Jesus Christ, and his
disciples, while he continued upon earth. But, upon their re-
jecting of so great salvation, the apostle's commission was en-
larged. For ' it was necessary,' says St Paul to the Jews, ' that
the word of God should first have been spoken to yon; but seeing
you put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting
life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.' (Acts xiii. 46.) — Whitby's and
licaiisobre's Annotations.
d That it was usual with the Jews to prescribe oil as a proper
thing to anoint the sick, in order to their recovery, Dr Lightfoot,
upon Mark vi. 13, has fully proved; nor can we think that the
apostles, having no command from Christ to do so, would have
used this ceremony, had it not been customary among tlieir
the sick, for a token of their recovery, whilst our Lord
continued the course of his ministry in Galilee.
It was now about a year since Herod Antipas had
committed John the Baptist close prisoner to the castle
Macha;rus,e and upon the return of his birthday,/ having
made a splendid entertainment for the lords and chief
officers of his dominions, he was infinitely pleased with
the dancing of a young lady, daughter to his unlawful
wife Herodias/ insomuch that, in the height of his mirth
and jollity, he promised, with the addition of an oath,
to grant her whatever she demanded/' though it amounted
to half of his dominions. Unwilling to lose so fair an
opportunity, she immediately consulted with her mother
what favour to ask, who, being prompted by the height
of her malice and revenge, named the head of John the
Baptist* to be given her ; which the daughter accordingly
countrymen: bnt whether they did it symbolically, in hopes of
obtaining to the patient the oil of gladness, or only medicinally,
it is certain, that the virtue which attended it, when used by the
apostles, could not be natural and inherent in the oil, but must
be supernatural, and derived from him who sent them, because
this unction always produced a certain and constant cure in those
that were anointed. — IVTiitly's Annotations.
e Both the city and fort that were called by this name, were
situated beyond Jordan, about two leagues from that river, on
the north-east side of the lake Asphaltites, or Dead Sea, and
not far distant from the place where the river discharges itself
into it. It was in the hands of Aretas, king of Arabia, when he
married his daughter to Herod Antipas ; but how it afterwards
came into Herod's possession, as it certainly was when he be-
headed John the Baptist, we have no account from history. —
CalmeVs Commentary.
/That it was an usual custom with kings to celebrate the day
of their birth, and that of their accession to the throne, for the
word may be applied to either, with great solemnity, we have an
example as old as Pharaoh, (Gen. xl. 20,) nor need we doubt but
that, on such joyful occasions, there were music and dancing,
and all manner of diversions to entertain the company; but that
persons of the first rank and distinction should act any part in
these diversions, was a rare and unwonted thing; and therefore St
Chrysostom, (in Mat. horn, xlix.) is of opinion, that Herodias,
foreseeing what would happen, forced this young lady upon a
thing which would have better become an actress upon the stage.
— Calmet's Commentary.
y This Herodias, as Josephus relates the matter, in contempt
of the laws of her country, was married again to Herod, the
natural brother of her husband, separating herself from him
whilst living, although he had a child by her ; so that being
guilty both of incest and adultery, she might well be called his
unlawful wife. — Antiq. b. xviii. c. 17.
h An offer like this we find Ahasuerus, a great Persian
monarch, making Queen Esther, chap. v. 3.
i It may not be improper here to take notice of the remarkable
providence of God, in avenging the death of this righteous man
upon Herod, Herodias, and her daughter. 1st, As the war
between Herod and Aretas, king of Arabia, was occasioned by
Herod's wicked contract with Herodias to eject his daughter,
who was his lawful wife, and to marry her who was his brother
Philip's; so Josephus declares, that the Jews looked upon his
putting John to death as the cause of the miscarriage of his arm)',
God being angry with him for the death of John the Baptist.
2d, Envying the glory of her brother Agrippa, upon whom Cali-
gula had conferred the title of a king, Herodias prevailed with
her husband to repair to Rome, in order to request the like favour
of the emperor; but the emperor, having received a bad im-
pression against him, instead of granting what he desired, deprived
him of his government, and banished both her and him to Lyons
in France, where they lived ingloriously, and died miserably;
and this, according to Josephus, {Antiq. b. xviii. c. 9.) was done
in punishment of her envy, and of his readiness to hearken to
her solicitations. And, 3d, Of her daughter, it is related, that
as she was going over the ice in winter, the ice broke, and let
her in up to the head, which, upon the meeting of the ice again,
was severed from her body. And this stoiy, if it be true, as it
is confidently told us by Nicephorus, Hist. Eccl. b. i. c. 20, is &
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
915
A.M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT . xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. «— vii. I.
demanded of the king, in the presence of the whole
assembly.
This strange request at first caused an exceeding' damp
upon the king's spirits ;a but having recovered himself,
out of a pretended reverence to his oath, and respect to
his nobility then present, he sent an executioner, b who
beheaded c John, and brought his head in a charger to
the young lady, which she presented to her mother ; but,
as for his body, his disciples, when they came to hear of
his death, took care d to bury it, and to bring Jesus the
news of the tragical fate that had befallen their Master.
wonderful instance of God's avenging providence. — Whitby's
Annotations.
a Herod was no more than a tetrarch, or one of those four
among whom his father's kingdom was divided; but St Mark,
(vi. 14,) gives him the title of a king, as himself no doubt was
fond enough of it, and perhaps, in the provinces under his
dominions, was generally called by it. Why he came to be con-
cerned at the young lady's desiring so strange a boon as that of
the Baptist's head, is no wonder. The very mention of such a
thing from such a person, and in. such an assembly, was enough
to shock any man of less than uncommon barbarity ; but then the
evangelists inform us, that Herod had conceived a good opinion
of the Baptist, as a just and holy man, and when he heard him,
as he did it very gladly, in many things he followed his advice,
(Mark vi. 20;) and not only so, but feared the resentment of the
people likewise, with whom he was in high esteem, when they
should come to be informed of the cause and circumstances of
his death, (Mat. xiv. 5.) There might, however, be another
reason, less observed, for Herod's concern upon this occasion.
It was now his birth-day ; and it was usual, even among heathen
princes, at such a time to be gay and merry, to think of no ill
omens, to surcease all contentions, and not so much as to de-
prive of life even condemned criminals, on that day when the
sovereign of the country received his, lest they should offend or
sadden the genius that presided over their nativity; and there-
fore it is more than probable that Herod, who was more than
half a pagan, might have the same notion of the thing. But if
he had not, it can hardly be thought but that such an execution
would damp the joy of the meeting, and procure him more ene-
mies among the thinking part of the company, than the non-per-
formance of a wicked and illegal oath could have done. — Ham-
mond s Annotations and C'almct's Commentary.
b The word airiKivXaru^, which we render executioner, in the
history of the Roman emperors, signifies a soldier of the guard;
and among the Jews, Romans, Chaldeans, and Egyptians, it
was customary for one of the king's guard to be the executioner
of those whom he had condemned to death. — Hammond's An-
notations.
c Thus died the great forerunner of our blessed Saviour, about
two years and three months after his entrance upon his public
ministry, in the thirty-fifth year of his age, and was the first
who suffered upon the account of the gospel, though seldom
called the first martyr. " lie was indeed a man," according
to the character which Josephus gives of him, " endued with all
virtue, who exhorted the Jews to the practice of justice towards
men, and piety towards God, and also to baptism, which would
become acceptable to God, if they renounced their sins, and to
the cleanness of their bodies added the purity of their souls." —
Antiq. b. xviii. c. 7.
d When Herodias had got the Baptist's head in her posses-
sion, it is said, that she thrust his tongue through with her bod-
kin, and for fear that the head, if buried with the body, should
be reunited, and rise again to disturb her unlawful lust, and dis-
quiet Herod's conscience, she buried it in her own palace: but
where his disciples buried his body, the evangelists have not
informed us; only we are so told, that in the time of Julian the
apostate, his tomb was shown at Samaria, where the inhabitants
of the countiy opened it, and burnt part of his bones ; but the
rest were saved by some Christians, that carried them to one
Philip, an abbot at Jerusalem, who presented them to St Atha-
nasius; but some time after, when Theodosius built a church in
honour of the Baptist, in the place where the temple of Serapis
stood, a. D. 396, these holy relics were reposited in it. Though
tvliat became of his head we no where read ; only the Abbot
About the same time that Jesus was informed of John's
death by his disciples, his own apostles returned from
their several journeys, and gave him an account of all
their transactions. The fame of the miracles which our
Saviour, both by himself and his apostles, had wrought,
gave Herod some ground to think, that the person who
did them was John, whom he had unjustly murdered, and
who now very probably e was risen from the dead to revenge
his blood upon him ; and therefore, knowing the subtilty
and cruelty of that prince, our Saviour ordered his apos-
tles to prepare a vessel, wherein he, and they only, might
cross the sea of Galilee, and retire for a little while from
the multitude to a desert near Bethsaida. But in vain
was it for him to think of concealing himself: the
people, seeing where he took shipping, ran after him on
foot by the lake side, and, though they had a great cir-
cuit of land to take, were got into the desert almost as
soon as he ; which singular instance of their zeal so af-
fected his compassion, that though he came to that place
for the sake of retirement, he could no longer withhold
his presence from them ; but, ascending a mountain, and
taking his disciples with him, he there first instructed
them in several things concerning the kingdom of God,
and having afterwards cured their sick and diseased, he,
at last, fed them all, to the number of five thousand men,
besides women and children, with five barley-loaves,
and two small fishes, having at first invoked a blessing /
Villeloin tells us in his Memoirs, that he saw one at Amiens,
but that this was the fifth or sixth head of the Baptist that, in
the course of his travels, he had the honour to kiss. — Theodoret.
Hist. Eecl. b. ili. c. 3. Rvffin. Hist. c. 27. and CalmeVs Dic-
tionary under the word.
e Erasmus indeed thinks, that as Herod was of the sect of the
Sadducees, who denied the immortality of the soul, (comp. Mat.
xvi. 6. Mark viii. 15.) he might say by way of irony to his ser-
vants, (Mat.xiv.2.) 'This is John the Baptist: he is risen from
the dead;' ridiculing the notions of the vulgar, and those who
joined in that opinion. And the solution might have passed,
had not Herod been perplexed on this occasion, Luke ver. 7.
The image of the Baptist, whom he wrongfully put to death,
presented itself often to his thoughts, and tormented him.
Therefore, when it was reported that he was risen from the dead,
and was working miracles, Herod feared some punishment would
be inflicted on him for his crime, and in the confusion of his
thoughts, said, that John was risen from the dead, notwithstand-
ing he was a Sadducee. Nay, he might say this, although he
had heard of Jesus and his miracles before, there being nothing
more common, than for persons in vehement perturbation to talk
inconsistently. Besides, it is no easy matter to arrive at a steady
belief of so great an absurdity as the annihilation of the human
mind. The being of a God, the immortality of the soul, the
rewards and punishments of a future state, with the other great
principles of natural religion, often obtrude themselves upon un-
believers, in spite of all their eflbrts to banish them, and leave a
sting behind them in the conscience, whose pain, however it
may be concealed, cannot easily be allayed. Of this, Herod is
a remarkable example. For, notwithstanding he was a kiny,
his conscience made itself heard and felt amidst all the noise,
the hurry, the flatteries, and the debaucheries of a court. —
Mackniyht 's Harmony. — En.
/The evangelists make use of two words upon this occasion,
' blessing,' and ' giving thanks ;' and by the former of these some
interpreters understand the multiplying virtue, which he then
commanded down upon the sustenance that he was going to give
to the people, and its marvellous increase in the hands of the
distributors, whereby it became a repast sufficient for sn
large a multitude: though others think that he did no more than
what we call 'saying grace,' that is, thanked God for his boim
tiful provision of all things, and bogged his blessing upon what
he was going to dispense among the people, that it mi-fit tend
to the wholesome nourishment of their bodies. However this
916
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. It. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. »— ix. 37 JOHN v. I — viii. I
upon them, and that with a plenty so exuberant, that
the very fragments a which remained filled twelve
baskets.
This miraculous multiplication made such an impres-
sion upon the multitude, that they no longer doubted of
his being the Messiah, and were therefore resolved to
set him up for their king by main force ; but he, knowing
the mischief of such a design, constrained his disciples,
who were forward enough perhaps to join in the thing,
immediately to take shipping, and to pass by Bethsaida *
to Capernaum, whilst himself dismissed the multitude;
and, when he had so done, continued, till after midnight,
in meditation and prayer.
In the mean time, the ship where the apostles were on
board was tossed with a great storm in the middle of the
lake. The waves ran so high, and the wind was so con-
trary, that as soon as morning appeared, they had not
got much above a league on their voyage, when our Sa-
viour came walking c upon the surface of the sea, and
drew near towards the ship. This strange appearance,
d which they took for a spirit, increased their fear not a
little. Our Lord indeed, to dispel it, told them who he
■ 1 — •
be, it is enough to warrant the indifferent use of these two
words, that the forms of address to Almighty God, upon the use
of his gifts for our refreshment, have usually been of a mixed
nature, as consisting partly of praises, and partly of petitions ;
because the end of such devotions is manifestly twofold, namely,
to render our acknowledgments to God for his liberality, and
then to beg of him that the good creatures which he hath given
us may be sanctified to our use Stanhope on the Epistles and
Gospels, vol. ii.
a It was a sufficient reason for our Saviour's ordering the
fragments to be gathered up and put into baskets, that from them
might appear both the reality of the miracle and the exceeding
greatness of the increase ; but because our Lord assigns another,
by saying, ' Gather up the fragments, that nothing may be
lost,' he hath herein showed us that all reserving for the future
is not unlawful; that charity is very consistent with frugality;
indeed, not only that they may, but that they should go toge-
ther; for God will be sure to make a mighty difference between
the virtue and the specious extreme beyond it; between the lib-
eral and the lavish man. — Ibid.
b St Mark tells us, that our Saviour ordered his apostles to
cross the sea, and wait for him on the other side at Bethsaida.
(vi. 45.) St John writes, that accordingly they entered into
the ship, but instead of going where they were directed, they
steered their course towards Capernaum, (chap. vi. 17.) and yet
after all, if we will believe St Matthew, they landed at last, nei-
ther at Bethsaida, nor Capernaum, but in the country of Gen-
nesareth, (chap. xiv. 34.) Now, to reconcile this, we need only
remember what all the evangelists tell us, namely, that while the
apostles were on board, there arose a strong gale of wind, which,
blowing them from the north, proved, in a manner, quite con-
trary to them, so that, instead of making the port of Bethsaida,
which is on the north coast of the sea of Galilee, the next morn-
ing they found themselves on the opposite side, not far from
Tiberias, and to the south of Capernaum. Though therefore our
Saviour ordered them to go to Bethsaida, yet they could not do
it, because the wind was against them. Their next attempt
therefore was to get to Capernaum ; but even that they could not
do; but being forced to yield to the storm, were carried a good
way below to the south of it, from whence they just touched at
Nazareth, and thence proceeded to Capernaum. — Calmet's Com-
inentary.
c Among several other instances of God's omnipotence, Job
mentions this as one, that ' he treadeth upon the waves of the
sea,' Job ix. 8.
d It was a common opinion among the Jews, that spirits did
sometimes appear clothed in a human form; but what put the
apostles at this time in the greater fright, was their imagining,
that those who appeared at night, were usually evil spirits, and
that this, which they now saw, might possibly be the demon who
had raised the storm. — Beausobre's Annotations.
was ; but Peter, still doubtful, wanted a demonstration,
which when he permitted him to try, and the apostle7
upon the experiment, was ready to sink, he graciously
reached out his hand, and, with a gentle rebuke for the
weakness of his faith, setting him again upon the top of
the waves, walked along with him to the vessel ; which
they had no sooner entered, but the winds, knowing their
duty to their sovereign, ceased. This the rest of the
disciples observing, came and adored Jesus, acknow-
ledging his omnipotence, and admiring the divinity of
his power and person ; and as it was not long before the
ship gained the port, great numbers out of the country,
as soon as they understood that he was arrived, brought
their sick and diseased on beds, and laid them before
him in the streets, beseeching him to permit them only
to touch the border of his garment, and as many as
touched him were made whole.
The multitudes whom our Lord had miraculously fed
in the desert near Bethsaida, were in expectation of find-
ing him the next morning on the mountain ; for they had
seen the disciples take shipping without their Master,
and no other vessel left for him : but perceiving that he
was gone, as well as his disciples, and having an oppor-
tunity of other vessels from Tiberias, they passed over
with all expedition to Capernaum, where they found him
teaching in the synagogues ; and being in no small sur-
prise, desired to know of him how he got thither ? But
instead of gratifying their curiosity e with a direct an-
swer, he, who knew their corrupt expectations, and that
they came after him, not so much for his miraculous gifts
as the gratification of their own appetites, took occasion
from thence to discourse/ to them of a certain food, dif-
ferent from what he had given them in the desert of
Bethsaida, infinitely more deserving of their inquisition,
and whereof the manna in the wilderness was no more
than a figure, or a type. What this food was, he signi-
fied to them, namely, the merits of his future death and
passion, which alone could be available for the obtain-
e We may observe from several parts of the gospel, particu-
larly from Luke xiii. 23, 24 ; John xii. 34, 35, that it was usual
with our blessed Saviour to answer nothing to such curious
questions as had no tendency to edification, but to divert the
people from them, by proposing some more profitable subject. —
Whitby's Annotations.
f Our blessed Saviour, through the greatest part of the sixth
chapter of St John's gospel, takes an occasion, from the multi-
tude's coming after him out of a greedy desire to be fed, to dis-
course to them of spiritual blessings, under the metaphors of
meat and drink ; and for his apology in so doing, we may ob-
serve, that among the oriental and Jewish writers, no metaphor
was more common than this; that to this purpose Solomon, in
his book of Proverbs, introduces Wisdom crying in the streets,
' Come, eat of my bread, and drink of my wine, which I have
mingled,' (Prov. ix. 5.) ' For they that eat me shall yet be hun-
gry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty,' says the wise
son of Sirach, "for the soul," as Plato expresses it, "is nourished
by receiving and practising good things ; and wisdom, temperance,
and piety, are the food of a soul that can suck them in:" that as
our Saviour calls himself the bread which came down from hea-
ven, Philo upon the words of Moses descants, "what food can
God rain dowD from heaven, but that heavenly wisdom which he
sends down upon the soul that desires it?" That as he exhorts
the people to labour for the meat that perishes not, Philo declares,
that the wisdom of God is the "nurse and nourisher of those that
desire incorruptible diet." And from hence we may perceive
why our Saviour insists so much upon this metaphor, even be-
cause it was familiar to the Jews, and used by their most cele-
brated writers. — ff 'kitty's Annotations.
Skct. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
917
A.M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A.M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARKii. 23— ix. 14. LUKEvi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii.l.
ing of eternal life to such as believed in his divine mis-
sion, and descent from heaven.
But these sublime truths, which for the present he
thought proper to couch in terms obscure and figurative
enough, so gravelled the intellects of his auditory, that
even his disciples began to murmur, and many of his fol-
lowers, mistaking the words in a literal, which he in-
tended in a spiritual, sense, and thence inferring that he
was not such a Messiah as they imagined, wholly de-
serted him, insomuch that lie began to suspect the fide-
lity of his very apostles, until Peter, in behalf of all the
rest, declared their fixed purpose of adhering to him,
upon full conviction that he was the Messiah, the Son of
the living God. But notwithstanding this liberal and
frank confession, our Lord gave them to understand,
that they were not equally sound ; for among the twelve
whom he had selected, one of them was to prove a trai-
tor, meaning this of Judas lscariot, who justly deserved
that name, because he afterwards betrayed him.
Whether our blessed Saviour was at Jerusalem on the
third passover after his baptism, the evangelists have not
informed us ; but it is very probable, that he who came
to fulfil all righteousness, would not neglect so great an
ordinance. Upon this presumption, it is most generally
believed that he was there, though very likely he might
not stay long, but as soon as the festival was over, re-
turn into Galilee, J because the rulers, at Jerusalem, lay
in wait for an opportunity to put him to death.
Upon his return into Galilee, a certain number of
Scribes and Pharisees a were sent from Jerusalem to be
spies upon his actions, and to criticise upon his doctrine.
These men observing, that, when he and his disciples
were to eat, they frequently sat down without washing
their hands, contrary to the common custom of the Jews,
which, as they pretended, was founded upon a tradition,*
l John vii. 1.
a The sanhedrim, which sat at Jerusalem, and was the su-
preme court in all religious affairs, sent messengers to John the
Baptist, when he began his preaching, inquiring who he was,
and by what authority he baptized, John i. 19. And as the
Pharisees had charged our Saviour's disciples with a violation of
the sabbath, in plucking and rubbing the ears of the corn, and
himself with the same crime, in curing the sick on the sabbath
day, it is not improbable that these accusations had reached
Jerusalem, and that the Scribes and Pharisees, here mentioned,
were emissaries sent from the sanhedrim to watch and observe
our Saviour. And this seems the rather to be so, because they
were so very ready, when they could find him guilty of no vio-
lation of the laws of God, to pick a quarrel with him about some
rites and ceremonies of the church, which he and his disciples
thought not so very necessary to be observed. — Poole's Annota-
tions.
b The traditions, in the Jewish church, came to gain credit,
upon this presumption, that Moses, when he received the law
from God on mount Sinai, which he recorded in his five books,
was instructed at the same time in several things, which God
enjoined him not to commit to writing, for fear that the heathens
should transcribe them: that, in these things, Moses instructed
his successor Joshua, and, from Joshua, they were transmitted,
through the elders of the people, by oral conveyance only, until
Ezra, after the return from the Babylonish captivity, collected
them all together, and made the Cabbala, in seventy-two books,
which was kept by Gamaliel, and others tliat succeeded, as
heads of the sanhedrim, until the destruction of Jerusalem:
that, about an hundred and twenty years after this, R. Judas,
the son of Simon, composed a book of them, called the Mishna,
that is, the second law, which is indeed the most ancient
collection of traditions that the Jews have: that three hundred
years after this, R. Jonathan, meeting with more, compiled
expostulated with him the reason for so doing : but, in-
stead of answering them directly he put another question
to them, by way of recrimination, namely, why they, by
their pretended traditions,0 vacated the laws of God,
particularly, that so solemn one of honouring their pa-
rents, and relieving them in their wants? And there-
upon, looking upon them as so many hypocrites, d with
whom he disdained to hold any farther converse, he
turned to the multitude, and informed them, " that true
them into a larger volume: and an hundred years after this, an-
other rabbi made a collection of such as were found among the
Jews who remained in Babylon: that these two, which are a
kind of supplement and explication of the Mishna, are called,
the one the Talmud of Jerusalem, and the other, of Babylon ;
and that by these, the Jews, at this day, are governed in matters
ecclesiastical all the world over. In relation to the particular custom
of washing before meat, their canon is, that " whosoever despiseth
the washing of hands, is worthy to be excommunicated: he comes
to poverty, and will be extirpated out of the world:" for, accord-
ing to the sense of one of their doctors, namely, R. Aquiba, "he >
that takes meat with unwashed hands is worthy of death ;"' and
therefore when the same doctor was in prison, and had not water
enough both to drink and wash his hands, he chose to do the lat-
ter; because "it is better," says he, "to die with thirst, than to
transgress the tradition of the elders." It is no wonder then
that persons inured to those notions, should so readily take ex-
ception at our Saviour's omitting what were indeed, though they
thought not so, matters of an indifferent nature.— Poole's, Whit-
by's, Hammond's, and Beausobre's Annotations ; and Lightfoot
on Mat. xv. 2.
c The way whereby the Jews made the law of honouring and
subsisting their father and mother of no effect, was by pretending,
that whatever their parents requested of them, was a Corban,
that is, that they had devoted it as a gift or offering to God, or
to his temple ; and whatever was thus devoted, was not to be
touched, be the necessity ever so urgent. For their canon about
vows was. — "That they reach even to things commanded, and
take place as well in things required by the law, as things in-
different; that a man may be so bound by them, that he cannot,
without great sin, do what God had commanded to be done ; and
that, in this case, if he makes a vow, which cannot be perform-
ed without breaking a commandment, his vow must be ratified,
and the commandment violated." This was a superstition which
the Pharisees, and other doctors of the law, who had a property
in the gifts and oblations that were made to the temple, thought
themselves concerned to indulge; and therefore, when any pre-
tended that their parents stood in need of their help, they told
them, that if they did but acquaint them that it was a gift, or
that they had vowed such a portion of their estate to sacred uses,
that would, before God, excuse them from relieving them: nay,
they affirmed farther, that if a man but did in a passion say, that
the thing which another asked of him was a corban, though it
were not actually consecrated to religious uses, this was vow
enough to prevent his relieving that other person, even, putting
the case, that it were his own father; unless they should absolve
him from it, which they would undertake to do for so many
shekels of silver, Lev. xxvii. Such abundant reason had our
blessed Saviour to charge the Jewish doctors with making one
of the greatest commands in the second table of the law void by
their traditions concerning vows. — Poole's and JFhitby's Anno-
tations, and Pocock's Miscel. p. 415.
d In several places of the gospel, our Lord calls the Pharisees
hypocrites not only because they placed the worship of God, and
a great deal of sanctity and religion, in ceremonies of human in-
stitution, and though they pretended to extraordinary purity, did
all their good works to be seen of men, Mat. xxiii. 5. but more
especially in this place, because, being superstitiously careful to
avoid the outward pollution of the body, by abstaining from the
touch of any thing which they reputed unclean, and washing
their hands whenever they thought they had done so; they left
that which was within, namely, their hearts and affections, full
of iniquity, uncleanness, extortion, and excess, Mat. xxiii. 25.
and Luke xi. 39. But from Christ's example in this particular
we must not be forward to pronounce men hypocrites, because
we have neither that authority, nor that knowledge of their
hearts, which he had. — HTiitby's Annotations.
918
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5140. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vji. 1.
piety did not consist in outward ceremonies, but in a
sincere observance of the laws of God ; that no pollution
could be in what entered into a man's mouth, but only
in what proceeded from it ; for," as he afterwards ex-
plains the thing to his disciples, whatever we eat does
not affect the mind, the only seat of defilements ; for it
passes into the stomach, and is soon thrown out of the
body, so that, be it never so gross or unclean, it cannot
pollute the eater: but all pollution is from within, from
the corruption of the heart, such as impure thoughts, un-
chaste desires, unholy purposes, immodest and indecent
speeches, &c. These are the things that leave a lasting
stain upon the soul, which a thing so merely external,
as omitting to wash before meat, cannot do."
This was a doctrine not well pleasing to the Phari-
sees, as his disciples told him ; but they were a set of
people whose censure he justly despised, ' blind leaders
of the blind,' as he properly enough calls them, whose
vain traditions, as having nothing of divine institution
in them, his purpose was to abolish. And from thence,
in departing to the coasts of Tyrea and Sidon, lie en-
tered into a house, with a design to conceal himself:
but a certain Syro-phcenician woman, having got intel-
ligence where he was, came, and earnestly requested of
him to cure her daughter, who was sadly tormented with
a devil. Our Lord, for the trial of her faith, seemed at
first to take no notice of her, until his disciples, to get
rid of her importunity, desired him to grant her request,
and dismiss her. His ministry, he told them, was con-
fined to Judea, nor was he properly sent to any, but the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. All this the poor
woman heard, but so far was she from being discouraged
by such coldness, that, advancing nearer, she threw her-
self prostrate at his feet, imploring his help for her
child ; and when, in an harsh metaphor, he told her, that
it was not proper to work those miracles for an heathen,
which were originally designed for God's people, the
Jews ; the afliicted mother owned indeed the truth of
what he had alleged, but then, continuing the same
figure, she humbly hoped, that a poor distressed heathen
might, in some small measure, partake of the mercies
which were more peculiarly promised to the Jews. Which
answer was so highly expressive of the woman's humility,
faith, and reliance, that he granted her petition ; so that,
when she returned home, she found her daughter laid
upon the bed, and perfectly well.
From the coasts of Sidon, our Lord passed eastward
to Decapolis,' and from thence, towards the sea of
Galilee, where, in his way, he cured a deaf and dumb c
a For an account of the ancient and present state of Tyre and
Sidon see supplement on the land of Canaan, ante pp. 341 — 343.
— Ed.
b It is a country in Palestine, which was so called, because it
contained ten cities, some situated on the east, and others on
the west side of the river Jordan; the first and principal city is
Scythopolis; and the rest, according to Pliny, are, 2d, Phila-
delphia; 3d, Raphanoe; 4th, Gadara; 5th, Hippos; 6th, Dion;
7th, Pella; 8th, Gerasa; 9th, Canatha; and 10th, Damascus;
though others reckon them after another manner, as Pliny him-
self observes, b. v. c. 18.— Calmefs Dictionary, under the word.
c This is a mistake. Mark (vii. 32.) does not say that the man
was dumb absolutely, but that he had an impediment in his
tpeech; for so the word poy,Xu\ov, is rightly translated, and be-
sides it is said, v. 35, that ' the string of his tongue was loosed
and he spake plain,' evidently implying that he spoke before,
although in an inarticulate or stammering manner, and that his
man, by putting his fingers d in his ears, and some of
his spittle upon his tongue ; and thence repairing to a
mountain, he not only cured every person that was
brought unto him, whatever his malady or distemper was,
but, in the conclusion, fed all the multitude, which
amounted to four thousand men, besides women and
children, and who, for three days successively, had been
attending him, with seven loaves, and a few small fishes.
Having thus dismissed the company, he embarked
with his disciples for the coast of Dalmanutha ;e but no
sooner was he arrived there, than the Pharisees, joining
with their enemies the Sadducees, came, and demanded
of him a sign from heaven, in order to convince them
that he was the true Messiali : but having first upbraided
them with their acuteness in discerning the face of the
sky, and from thence the prognostics of fair or foul
weather, and their blindness in not perceiving the mani-
fest signs of the Messiah's coming, he remitted them,
as he had done before, to the miracle of his own resur-
rection, and so sailed back with his disciples.
His disciples, in the hurry of their departure, had for-
got to take bread with them ; and therefore, when our
Saviour, in their passage, gave tiiem caution to take
care of the leaven/ of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and
they were ignorant enough to take his words in a literal
sense, he first gently reproved the blindness of their
impediment arose from the state of his tongue ; so that he appears
to have been, as we say, tongue-tied. — Ed.
d Christ often made use of visible signs to represent that divine
invisible virtue which was inherent in him, and which, upon
that occasion, he intended to exert; and therefore, because deaf
persons seem to have their ears closed, he put his fingers into the
man's ears, to intimate, that, by his power, he would open them ;
and, because the tongue of the dumb man seems to be tied, or
to cleave to the palate, therefore he moistened it with spittle, to
signify that he would loose and give free motion to it. These,
it is true, were not capable to effect the cure, but they had this
use in them, that they excited the observation and attention of
the people before whom these cures were wrought. — TVnitby^s
and Beausobre's Annotations. Since this, and the other
action mentioned, could contribute nothing to the cure (though
we find such used on other occasions as Mark viii. 23,
and John ix. 6.) it has been asked why our Lord used them.
Such inquiries are often rash, and we are not bound in all
cases to give a reason (since our Saviour's adoption of an
action shows its fitness) ; yet here we can be at no loss. The
reason was, no doubt, that assigned by Grotius and Whitby, and
adopted by most recent commentators, as Kuinoel and Fritz. ;
namely, that Christ was pleased, in condescension to human
weakness, to use external actions significant of the cure to be
performed; and thereby to strengthen the faith and confirm the
hopes of the sick persons, and those who brought them ; and,
moreover, to show that the power he was about to exert resided
in himself. Our Lord adopted these actions, and also the usual
one of laying his hands on the sick, in order to show that he was
not confined to any one particular mode. — Bloonifield's Greek
Testament Ed .
/ What St Matthew calls Magdala, St Mark names Dalma-
nutha, and the reason hereof is, because these two places lay very
near together, and Dalmanutha very probably within the precincts
of Magdala. — Welts' Geography of the New Testament, and
Beausobre 's Annotations.
g The leaven of the Pharisees was their hypocrisy, and too
scrupulous observance of the traditions of their elders; and that
of the Sadducees was their denial of the existence of angels and
devils, the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the
soul; so that the meaning of our Saviour's caution to his apostles
is: — To avoid the principles of those, who place the sum of their
religion in outward performances, which avail nothing to the
sanctification of the soul ; and to reject all such doctrines as
tended to subvert religion, by cutting off' all hope' of happiness in a
future state. — Calmefs Commentary, and Whitby's Annotations.
6£cr; !L] FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c. 919
A. H. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OK, A. M. 5110. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-xi. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. 1.
understandings, and the shortness of their memories, who
had so soon forgotten his miraculous multiplication of
the loaves and fishes, at two different times, and then
gave them to understand, that his words did not concern
the leaven of bread, but the corrupt doctrines of the
Pharisees and Sadducees.
With this discourse they landed at Bethsaida, which,
though the birth-place of several of his apostles, had by
the perverseness and infidelity of its inhabitants so
offended him, that, when a blind man was presented to
him for cure, he would not do it in the city in the sight
of the inhabitants ; but taking him out of the gate, he
anointed his eyes with his spittle, and laid his hands on
them. The man at first saw objects indistinctly, men
like trees walking ; but when our Lord had laid his
hands upon him the second time, he restored him to his
perfect sight ; and so sent him home, with a charge a not
to return into the city, nor to discover the thing to any
person belonging to that place.
From that place he departed into the coasts of Cassarea
Philippi, b where, being minded to make some trial of
his apostles' faith and proficiency, he demanded of them
what opinion mankind had of him, and whom they took
him to be ? Some, say they, take you to be John the
Baptist c risen from the dead ; some Elias sent down from
a The reason of our Saviour's giving the man this charge, is
founded upon the infidelity of the people of Bethsaida, wherewith
he upbraids them, Mat. xi. 21.
b Ctesarea Philippi, fcefore called Paneas, and now Banias,
was situated at the foot of mount Paueus, near the springs of the
Jordan. It has been supposed, that its ancient name was Dan,
or Laish ; and that it was called Paneas by the Phoenicians only.
Eusebius, however, distinguishes Dan and Paneas as different
places. Ctcsarea was a day's journey from Sidon, and a day and
a half from Damascus. Philip the tetrarch built it, or, at least,
embellished and enlarged it, and named it Csesarea, in honour of
the emperor Tiberius; but afterwards, in compliment to Nero, it
was called Neronias. The woman who had been troubled with
an issue of blood, and was healed by our Saviour, (Mat. ix. 20.
Luke vii. 43.) is said to have been of Cresarea Philippi, and to
have returned thither after her cure, and erected a statue to her
benefactor. The present town contains, according to Burekhardt,
about 150 houses, inhabited mostly by Turks. The goddess
Astarte was worshipped here, as appears from the medals extant.
The Greek language was more used in this city than the Latin:
yet it struck medals in each language. It seems to have been
made a Roman colony; though not mentioned as such by any
writer. It is likely that Ca;sarea Libanus was among the most
forward cities to compliment Severus, since several authors report
that it was his birth-place. Lampridius even says, that he was
named Alexander, because his mother was delivered of him in a
temple dedicated to Alexander the Great, on a festival in honour
of that hero, at which she had assisted with her husband. The
editor of the Modern Traveller has industriously collected and
judiciously compared the several notices of this place which are
found in modern writers. Palestine, pp. 353 — 363. — Calmet's
Dictionary. — Ed.
c Those who held that Jesus was John the Baptist risen from
the dead, were of the same opinion with Herod the tetrarch,
(Mat. xiv. 2.) and seem to have imbibed the notion of the Phari-
sees, who, according to Josephus, used to say, ' that a good man
might easily return to life again.' Those who took him for Elias,
ran into the general opinion of the nation, that Elias was to come
before the Messiah, and anoint him when he came ; and there-
fore, notwithstanding his doctrine and miracles, they could not
conceive him to be the Messiah, so long as his mean appearance
was contrary to their expectations: and those who thought him
to be Jeremias, seem to have espoused the sentiment of some of
their doctors, who looked upon that prophet as the head of the
whole order, not improbably upon the character which God gives
him, 'Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee, and before
thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I or-
heaven ; and others Jeremias, or some other of the ancient
prophets, restored to life again : but when he continued
asking what their notion of him was, and Simon, d in the
name of the rest, had made an open confession that he
was Christ, the Son of the living God, he not only al-
lowed that confession to be true, and what was confirmed
by the attestation e of God himself, but, in allusion to
the name he had given him, which signifies a rock f or
dained thee a prophet unto the nations,' Jer. i. 5. — JUiitby's and
Bcatisobre's Annotations.
d That the rest of the apostles knew and believed the great
truth which St Peter here declares, no one can doubt, who calls
to mind the attestation made of it before by John the Baptist,
(John i. 34.) the frequent confessions of it by evil spirits dispos-
sessed before their eyes, (Mark iii. 15.) and that full declaration
of it in the name of the whole fraternity, ' We believe, and are
sure, that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God,' John
vi. 69. For which reason we find the fathers, upon this occasion,
speaking of St Peter as the mouth, the tongue, the voice of the
church, and a kind of foreman to the rest of the apostles ; for this
they might think a matter of decency and good manners, a means
to prevent confusion and disorder, and a token of that union and
harmony which was among them, that one man should speak for
all the rest. And why that one man should be St Peter, rather
than any of the rest, may very reasonably be imputed to the
seniority of his age, the natural fervour of his temper, and his
longer attendance upon our blessed Saviour than several of the
rest had been employed in. These are sufficient reasons for his
delivering the judgment of the company, and for our accounting
his confession the common voice of all, to a question which had
evidently been propounded to them all. — Stanhope o?i the Epistles
and Gospels, vol. iv.
e The words in the text are, ' Flesh and blood hath not revealed
this to thee, but my Father which is heaven,' Mat. xvi. 17. But
how did God reveal this to Peter? Those who pretend that he
had a particular revelation, not vouchsafed to any others, without
which he could not have owned Christ to have been the Son of
God, must not only allow the like revelation toNathanael, (John
i. 49.) to the centurion who was present at our Lord's crucifixion,
(Mat. xxvii. 54.) and to all others who made declaration of the
same faith ; but must likewise excuse all those Jew-s who did not
believe in Christ, because it was not in their power so to do
without this peculiar revelation. Without running ourselves
into these premunires therefore, we may reasonably conclude,
that the sense of our Saviour's words is this, — " What others say
of me, namely, that I am John, Elias, Jeremias, or the like, this
thou hast learnt from men ; but the faith which thou hast now
confessed concerning me, though it required of thee a due atten-
tion to the proofs given of it; yet since those proofs are the
doctrine which I teach from God, and the miracles done in con-
firmation of it, are apparently the finger of God, thy faith must
be acknowledged to be the result, not of human wisdom, but of
divine revelation. God has given thee a teachable and intelli-
gent mind, to perceive, by my doctrine and miracles, that I am
the true Messiah, notwithstanding the obscurity of my appear-
ance, and therefore thou mayest be truly said to be taught of God,
because my doctrine is the word, and my miracles are the power
of God.'' — Whitby's Ayinotations and Cdlmefs Commentary,
f We are now advanced to a passage on which, as the church
of Home mainly rests its doctrines of the supremacy and infalli-
bility of the Pope, and the power of the church, we are bound to
discuss the sense with especial care. Let us, then, examine the
words and clauses in order, as they ofler themselves. First,
from the very form of expression in Kiyu It <ro) \iyoj, it is plain,
that what is here said by Christ is meant to correspond to what
had been just said by Peter. As he had declared to Jesus: 2u
8T — 'C,uivros, "thou art the Christ the Son of the living God,' so Jesus
says to him : Kiyu Ss ao\ Xiyco, the sense of which is: ' Moreover
I also say to thee." In the next clause on cu u W\ too;, ' that thou
art Peter,' we are to bear in mind that Peter was not the original
name of this disciple ; but a surname, given to him, (as was cus-
tomary with the Jewish rabbis at the baptism of proselytes.) at his
conversion. And as those names were often given with allusion to
some peculiar quality or disposition; so, in the case of Simon, it
had reference to that zeal and firmness which he displayed : as well
( in first making this confession of faith in Christ, as in afterwards
920
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI] I.
A.M. 4035. A. D.31; OK, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— Lx. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vis. 1.
atone, he told Simon, " that he would make him a founda-
tion stone, or a prime minister in building his church,
building up the church and establishing the religion of Christ.
For examples of this kind of Paronomasia in giving names, see
Gen. xvii. 5. xxxii. 27. and compare Gen. xxvii. 36. Eurip.
Phoen. 645. jEschyl. Prom. 472. Theb. 401. Agam. 670. So
also Christ, in like manner, surnamed James and John Boan-
erges, sons of thunder. Moreover Peter, or rather Cephas, (for
n£f£«; is only the name Grecized,) means, not stone, as some
affirm, but rock, as Cephas often does, and ■riT^at not unfre-
quently in the classical writers, as Herodot. ix. 55. Soph. (Ed.
T. 334. Callim. Hymn in Apoll. 22. So Juvencus {Hist. Ev.
iii. 275.) must have understood it, who well expresses the sense
thus: "Tu nomen Petri digna virtute tueris. Hac in mole
mihi, Saxique in robore ponam Semper mansuras sterols
mcenibus redes." " With worthy faith dost thou maintain the
name of Rock, on this structure and on the strength of this
Rock will I plant my church to remain with eternal walls for
ever." Moreover, <rv ii may be rendered " thy name denotes."
So Mark iii. 17. Bouv.gyts a lem, vloi (Zgovrws, Boanerges, that
is, ' sons of thunder.' But commentators, both ancient and
modern, are not agreed as to what is meant by \ir) raurn tn Tir^a,
' on this Rock.' Now that depends upon the reference which
some suppose to be the confession of faith just made by Peter, while
others, and indeed almost every modern expositor of any note, refer
it to Peter himself: and with reason ; for certainly, as is observed
by Bishop Marsh (comp. View, App. p. 27.), " it would be a des-
perate undertaking to prove that Christ meant any other person
than Peter." In fact, they can indicate no other, consistently
with the rules of correct exegesis; for, not to mention that the
profession had not been Peter's only, but in making it, he spoke
not for himself alone, but for all the apostles, and in that quality
returned answer to a question which had been addressed to them
collectively: "Whom say ye that I am?" &c, the connexion
subsisting in the reason given for the surname which had been
bestowed on Simon, confines it to that alone ; as also does the
parallelism between Christ's reply to Peter, and the answer which
he had given. And when the expositors above alluded to con-
jecture that, in pronouncing the words, Christ pointed to himself,
as the great foundation, they argue upon a wholly gratuitous and
very improbable supposition. Moreover, the words following
kcu <ro) \u<ra ' besides to thee I will give,' imply that there had
been some previous gift or distinction. In short, the sense is:
" Thou art by name Rock; that is, thy name means Rock, and
suitably to that will be thy work and office : for upon thee, that
is, upon thy preaching, as upon a rock, shall the foundation of
the church be laid." It may, indeed, seem strange, that so
natural and well-founded an interpretation should have been
passed over by any. But that may be attributed partly, to the
causeless fears into which protestants have been betrayed; lest,
by admitting it, they should give a countenance to the papal
claim of supremacy; and partly, to an idea, that such a sense
would be contrary to what is elsewhere said in scripture,
namely.thatChrististheonlyfoundation. (Seel Cor. iii. 11.) But
as to the first, the fear is groundless: it being, as Bishop Mid-
dleton observes, "difficult to see what advantage could be gained ;
unless we could evade the meaning of §w<w aoi t«; x\us, 'I will
give to thee the keys,' which follows. And as to the latter fear,
it is equally without foundation; since the two expressions are
employed in two very different senses. In St Peter's case, it
was \ery applicable ; for as he was the first apostle called to the
ministry, so he was the first who preached the gospel to the Jews,
and also the first who preached it to the Gentiles. So that, to
use the words of Bishop Pearson on the Creed, "the promise made
here was punctually fulfilled, by Christ's using Peter's ministry
in laying the foundation of the Christian church among both Jews
and Gentiles; and in his being the first preacher to them of that
faith which he here confesses, and making the first proselytes to
it: for St Peter laid the first foundations of a church among the
Jews, by the conversion of 3000 souls, (Acts ii. 41.) who, when
they gladly had embraced St Peter's doctrine, were all baptized ;
and then, ver. 47, we first find mention of a Christian church.
St Peter also laid the first foundation of a church among the
Gentiles, by the conversion of Cornelius and his friends, Acts
x. " If," says Bishop Taylor, "St Peter was chief of the apostles,
and head of the church, he might fairly enough be the repre-
sentative of the whole college of apostles, and receive this
which should be so firmly established, that all the power
a and policy of its enemies should not be able, at any
time, to destroy it ; and that, for the more orderly gov-
promise in their right, as well as his own ; — that promise, [ say,
which did not pertain to Peter principally and by origination,
and to the rest by communication, society, and adherence ; but
that promise which was made to Peter first ; yet not for himself,
but for all the college, and for all their successors: and then made
a second time to them all, without representation, but in diffusion,
and performed to all alike in presence, except St Thomas." In
fact, the apostles generally are, in other parts of the New Testa-
ment, called the foundation on which the church is built, as in Eph.
ii. 20. and Rev. xxi. 14. as being the persons employed in erecting
the church by their preaching. And what they all, more or less,
did, Peter commenced the doing thereof, and might therefore be
said to be the first foundation; though in matters of doctrine,
the Christian church rests on the testimony, not of one, but of
all. — Bloom, fie Id's Greek Testament, Mat. xvi. 18, 19. — Ed.
a ' The gates of hell shall not prevail against it,' (Mat. xvi.
18,) may with more propriety be rendered, ' the gates of hades
shall not prevail against it.' It is obvious that the term hell
which occurs so often in our English bibles does not always
denote the same place or thing. Dr Campbell has investigated
this subject with great ability and accuracy, and has thereby
done much service to the cause of sound scripture criticism.
He observes that in the Hebrew scriptures the word sheol often
occurs, and uniformly denotes the state of the dead in general,
without regard to the virtuous or vicious characters of the per-
sons, their happiness or misery. The Seventy have almost in-
variably rendered the same Hebrew word, by the Greek term
hades, which means the receptacle of the dead, and ought rarely
to have been translated hell in the sense in which we now use
the word, namely, as the place of torment. To denote this latter
place, the New Testament writers employ the Greek word yiwvx,
gehenna, compounded of two Hebrew words ge hinnom, that is,
' the valley of Hinnom,' a place near Jerusalem, where children
were cruelly sacrificed by fire to Moloch, and which is some-
times called Tophet. (See a subsequent part of this work.)
As in process of time this place came to be considered an
emblem of hell, or the place of torment, reserved for the wicked
in a future state, the name Tophet came gradually to be used in
this sense, and at length to be confined to it. In this sense also
the word gehenna, a synonymous term, is always to be under-
stood in the New Testament, where it occurs about a dozen
times. The confusion that has arisen on this subject has been
occasioned not only by our English translators having rendered
the Hebrew word Sheol, and the Greek word gehenna, fre-
quently by the term hell; but the Greek word hades which
occurs eleven times in the New Testament, is in every instance
except one translated by the same English word hell, which it
ought never to have been (see Jones' Biblical Cyclopedia!) With
regard to the meaning of the expression, 'gates of death (hades) '
Dr Campbell observes, ' it is by death, and by it only, that the
spirit enters into hades. The gate of hades is therefore a very
natural periphrasis for death; insomuch that, without any positive
evidence, we should naturally conclude this to be the meaning
of the phrase. But we have sufficient evidence, both sacred and
profane, that this is the meaning. The phrase occurs in the
Septuagint, in the thanksgiving of Hezekiah, after his miraculous
recovery from the mortal disease he had been seized with (Is.
xxxviii. 10.) I said, ' I shall go to the gates of the grave,' tv
<7tv\a.is a'Sov. It follows, ' I am deprived of the residue of my
years.' Nothing can be plainer than that -rvXai alou here means
death, in other words, I shall die and be deprived of the residue
of my years. But, though the phrase is the same (for tvXxi
ahou is a literal version of the Hebrew) with that used by our
Lord, our translators have not liked to make Hezekiah, who was
a good man, speak as if he thought himself going to hell, and
have therefore rendered it the grave. Another example we have
in the Wisdom of Solomon, which, though not canonical scrip-
ture, is, in a question of criticism, a good authority, (JJ'isd. xvi.
13.) ' Thou hast power of life and death, thou leadest to the
gates of hades, si; vrvka; alou, and bringest up again.' This
passage is as little susceptible of doubt as the former. The
classical use of this phrase is the same with that of the inspired
writers. Homer makes Achilles say, as rendered by our English
poet, (Iliad i. 312.)
Sect. II. 1
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c
921
M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OH, A. M. 5440. A. D.29. FROM MAT.xu. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23 — ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37- JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
eminent of it, he would give him the keys of the kingdom
of heaven, so that his sentence, whenever it should regu-
larly exclude or admit any person into the bosom of the
church upon earth, should in like manner be ratified and
confirmed in heaven." But then, to prevent the ill use
that might be made of this discovery, he strictly charged
his apostles a not to declare to any man, that he was the
Messiah.
Perceiving, by this discourse with Peter, that his dis-
ciples had got a right notion of his office and divinity,
he began thenceforward to prepare their minds for his
sufFerings, and to talk more openly of his death and
resurrection. One day, therefore, as he was insisting
on the sufferings which he was to undergo at Jerusalem,6
and Peter, unable to endure a thought so disagreeable
to the dignity of his Master, desired him to desist,0 he
Who can think one thing, and another tell,
My soul detests him as the gates of hell :
ofiui ai^ao xvXytri.
that is, I hate him as death, or I hate him mortally. To say
then that the gates of hades shall not prevail against the church,
is, in other words, to say, It shall never die, it shall never be
extinct. Le Clerc, though meaning the same thing (as appears
by his note,) has expressed it inaccurately: ' Les portes de la
mort ne la surmonteront point;' the gates of death shall not
surmount it. We see at once how appositely death is called the
gates of hades. But what should we call the gates of death?
Not death itself, surely. They must be diseases; for by these we
are brought to death. But in this sense we cannot apply the
promise. For many direful diseases has the church been
afflicted with, if the introduction of the grossest errors, the most
superstitious practices, and senseless disputes, are to be accounted
such; but they have not hitherto proved mortal, and we have
reason to believe never shall. — Br Campbell's Preliminary
Dissertation vi. part ii. sect. 17. — Ed.
a In several parts of the gospel we find our Saviour enjoining
the people whom he had cured, not to make any publication of
his miracles, (Mat. viii. 4. and ix. 30,) but it is an injunction of
a particular nature, not to discover that he was the Christ,
though this was an article necessary for every man to know and
believe in order to his salvation. Now, though this was a point
necessary for all to know, yet the apostles were not the proper
persons at this time to declare it, because it might look like a
kind of confederacy between them, if they should prove too lavish
in the commendations of their Master. It would much better
become his infinite wisdom, therefore, to find out himself a proper
opportunity for the discovery of this great truth, without drawing
the envy of the Pharisees upon him, and obstructing the pro-
gress of the gospel, which could hardly be believed, considering
the low circumstances wherein he appeared; and which, had it
been believed, might have encouraged the attempt of the Jews
to come, and make him a king, John vi. 15. What therefore
our Saviour says to his three apostles, in relation to his trans-
figuration, that they should ' tell no man of it, until he was risen
from the dead,' (Mat. xvii. 9.) is applicable to this passage like-
wise. Fur, after his resurrection, they were by office to be his
witnesses, and to declare toothers that he was the Christ, because
they could then do it, not only without suspicion of confederacy,
but with great advantages and success, after that Christ had
taken possession of his kingdom, and had testified this, by sitting
down at the right hand of power, and, by sending down upon
them the Holy Ghost, to enable them to confirm their testimony.
•—Poole's, Beauso'/re's and Whitby's Annotations.
b Jerusalem was the place where this tragedy was to be acted,
because, as our Lord observes, a prophet could not sutler out of
that city, (Luke xiii. 33,) for there sat the sanhedrim that was tc
try him; and there lived the Roman governor who had the
power of life and death, and was to condemn him. — Whitby's
Annotations.
c Peter's words in the Greek are "xiu; <roi, Kvgu, (Mat. xvi.
22,) which we may render propitius esto tibi, Bomine, favour
thyself, or be kind to thyself. " Since the rulers at Jerusalem
have such malevolent designs against thee, why shouldst thou
thiuk of going any more among them? If they intend to evil
gave him a very sharp rebuke,** as a person whose advice
crossed his gracious purposes of mans redemption, and
savoured of nothing but worldly grandeur ; and therefore,
to extinguish in them all notions of a temporal kingdom,
he called his disciples, and told them, that " whoever
pretended to possess his religion, should take up his
cross, e or patiently submit to all manner of persecutions,
in sure and certain hope of a happy immortality, which
he would procure for his followers, when he was in his
kingdom, in which some, that were then present among
them, ere it was long, but certainly before the day of
their death, /should see him happily instated."
s About eight days after this, our Lord, to revive the
entreat thee, and take away thy life, be thou kind and favourable
to thyself; avoid the danger by keeping at a distance from it,
and consult thine own preservation by continuing here." This
seems to be the proper sense of St Peter's words, and they were
doubtless spoken with a good intention, and singular affection for
his Master; but still they argued great weakness in him, in pre-
tending to contradict one whom he had just before acknowledged
to be the Christ, the Son of God, and denote him ignorant of
the redemption of mankind by that death which God in his wise
counsel had determined. — Poole's Annotations; and Young's
Sermons, vol. ii.
d The words of our Saviour upon this occasion are, — ' get thee
behind me, Satan; thou art an offence to me,' (Mat. xvi. 23.)
Not that we are to thiuk, that our Saviour ever imagined that
St Peter, in this advice, had any pernicious designs against him,
as the great enemy of mankind has, when he tempts and deludes
them into sin; but his only meaning is, that his interposition in
this affair was very unreasonable, and highly repugnant to his
design of coming into the world, which was to save it. " Thou
thinkest perhaps," says he, " Peter, that in this thy advice thou
showest thy kindness to me, as a friend that respects my welfare,
and art tender of my preservation; but, instead of that, thou art
an adversary to me, (for so the word Satan signifies, Num. xxii.
32. 2 Sam. xix. 23. 1 Kings v. 4. &c.,) in thy endeavouring
to draw me aside from doing what is my Father's will and com-
mand, (John x. 18,) I told thee that I must sutler ; that such is the
determinate counsel of God, and such my fixed purpose and re-
solution; and therefore all advice to the contrary is so far from
pleasing, that it is an offence to me; I cannot away with it;
and therefore get thee behind me, Satan: for, though there is no
malice in thy intention, yet imprudently hast thou run upon the
same advice, that Satan uses the most successfully of all others
to undo men by, and that is, the advice of self-indulgence. For
favour thyself is the most artificial of all the suggestions of the
devil; because that being made specious with the pretences of
reason and justice, and sweetened by its agreeableness to that of
self-love, with which all men do naturally abound, it seldom fails
of being swallowed, though poison and death lurk under it." —
Poole's and Whitby's Annotations; Calmet's Commentary and
Young's Sermons, vol. ii.
e Among several nations, it was a custom for the criminal to
bear the cross whereon he was to sutler, to the place of execution ;
(Lipsus de Cruce, b. ii. c. 65.) and, in allusion to this, our Sa-
viour makes use of the phrase, to denote our cheerfully bearing
those trials and persecutions which the divine providence brings
upon us in the execution of our duty, and our adherence to his
most holy religion. — Poole's and Beausobre's Annotations.
f Our Saviour's words are these: — 'Verily I say unto you,
there are some of them, who are standing here, who shall not
taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his
kingdom,' Mat. xvi. 28. " Of the various interpretations of this
verse, the most easy and natural is, that some of Christ's disci-
ples should live to see him fully enter upon, that is, establish
that spiritual and mediatorial reign, at the consummation of
which he will come in the glory of his Father, to reward every
man according to his works, (Mat. xvi. 27.) And he did thus
establish it by his resurrection and ascension, by the diffusion of
the Holy Ghost, by the gift of miraculous powers, by the trium-
phant success of the gospel, and the punishment of the unbelieving
Jews, by the destruction of their city and polity; which St John
at least lived to witness." — Hotden's Christian Expositor of the
Neio Testament.
g What St Luke calls uaii h/ii^a-i oxrv, ' about eight days/
G A
922
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR,A. M. 5410. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1.— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. It. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. 1.
hearts of his disciples, as well as to instruct them more
fully in the nature of his kingdom, thought it not improper
to give some of them at least a specimen of his future
glory ; and accordingly, taking with him his three most
intimate apostles, Peter, James, and John, he ascended
a high mountain, a and there, while he was employed
in prayer, he was suddenly transformed into another
kind of appearance ; for a bright lustre darted from his
face, more glorious than the sun, and a dazzling splen-
dour, piercing from his body through his garment, made
them appear whiter than snow, and more radiant than the
light. During this heavenly scene there appeared Moses
and Elias, clothed with all the brightness and majesty
of a glorified state, familiarly conversing with him, and
discoursing of his death and sufferings.
While the intercourse continued between these three,
Peter, and his two fellow apostles, were fallen asleep ;
but waking just before their departure, they were exceed-
ingly surprised and terrified at the sight of so much glory
and majesty. Peter indeed begged of his Master, that
they might continue in that happy place, and erect three
tents, one for him, and the other two for Moses and Elias :
but while he was thus talking, scarce knowing what he
said in his fright and transport, a bright and shining
cloud suddenly came over them, and a voice from thence
proclaimed, ' This is my beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased; hear ye him.' Upon which the apostles were
seized with a greater consternation than ever, and fell
prostrate upon the ground ; but upon our Lord's touching
and encouraging them, they looked up, and saw none
but him ; for the other two were vanished.
chap. ix. 28, St Matthew and St Mark make 'after six days:'
but the reason of this seeming disagreement is, that the two last
evangelists compute only the entire clays between our Saviour's
discourse, and his going up into the mount, and therefore style
them six: whereas St Luke, including both the days of his dis-
course and his ascent, calls them eight days. And this is evi-
dent from the word uas) which, when any sum is mentioned, is
always added to signify, that it is not exact, but wants something
to make it complete, as may be seen in Mat. xiv. 21. Luke i.
56. — iii. 23. — xxiii. 44. John iv. 6. — xix. 14. Acts ii. 41, &c.
— Whitby's Annotations.
a An opinion has been entertained among Christians since the
days of Jerome, that mount Tabor was the scene of the trans-
figuration. On the eastern part of the hill are the remains of a
strong castle ; and within the precincts of it is the grotto, in
which are three altars in memory of the three tabernacles, that
St Peter proposed to build, and where the Latin friars always
perform mass on the anniversary of the transfiguration. It is
said there was a magnificent church built here by Helena, which
was a cathedral when this town was made a bishop's see. On
the side of the hill they show a church in a grot, where they say
Christ charged his disciples not to tell what things they had seen
till he should be glorified. It is very doubtful, however, whether
this tradition be well founded, or whether it has not, as Mr
Maundrell and other writers suspect, originated in the misinter-
pretation of a very common Greek phrase. Our Saviour is said
to have taken with him Peter, James, and John, and brought
them into a high mountain 'apart;' from which it has been
rather hastily inferred that the description must apply to Tabor,
the only insulated and solitary hill in the neighbourhood. We
may remark with the traveller just named, that the conclusion
may possibly be true, but that the argument used to prove it
seems incompetent ; because the term ' apart ' most likely re-
lates to the withdrawing and retirement of the persons here spoken
of, and not to the situation of the mountain. In fact, it means
nothing more than that our Lord and his three disciples betook
themselves to a private place for the purpose of devotion.— Edin-
burgh Cabinet Library, Palestine, pp. 306 — 309. For a descrip-
tion of Tabor, see note a. p. 402. — Ed.
As they descended the mount, he strictly commanded
them not to tell any man what strange things they had
seen until he was risen from the dead. They were ready
to obey his commands, but did not rightly understand
his last words ; * and therefore they had some altercations
among themselves concerning the meaning of his rising
from the dead : and another difficulty they had to solve ;
for having seen Elias with our Saviour upon the mount,
they could not forbear asking him, what reason the
Scribes and Pharisees had for asserting that that prophet
was to come upon the earth before the Messiah ? To
which our Saviour replied, that these Jewish doctors were
not mistaken in their notion, because Elias was in effect
come already, and had received the same bad treatment
from his countrymen that himself in a short time was to
expect ; from whence they perceived, that by the Elias
he spoke of. he plainly intended John the Baptist.
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated and objections
answered.
St John, according to the general sense of antiquity,
having perused the other evangelists, and observed in
what particulars they were defective, at the persuasion
of the other bishops of Asia, was prevailed upon to write
his gospel as a supplement to their omissions. Who-
ever will give himself the trouble to compare his history
with that of the other evangelists, will find this notion
in a great measure verified. For, not to mention other
particulars, our Saviour's miracles, antecedent to his
resurrection, as they are recorded by St John, are no
more than eight. 1st, His turning water into wine at
the marriage of Cana in Galilee. 2d, His telling the
Samaritan woman the secrets of her life. 3d, His heal-
ing the nobleman's son at Capernaum. 4>th, His curing
the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. 5th, His feeding
five thousand men with five barley loaves and two fishes.
6th, His walking upon the surface of the water, and
calming the storm at sea. 1th, His giving sight to a
blind man by anointing his eyes with clay. And 8th,
His raising Lazarus from the dead. Now, all these are
omitted by the former evangelists, except the 5th and
6th, which St John seems to have recorded chiefly to in-
troduce a moral discourse which our Saviour took occa-
sion to make to the people, and which the other sacred
penmen had omitted ; which is a plain argument that the
intent of St John's gospel was to supply the defects of
b The doctrine of the general resurrection they could not but
understand; for that the Pharisees believed, (Acts xxiv. 15.)
and of that Martha makes acknowledgment, (John xi. 24 ;) nor
could they be ignorant of the meaning of any particular man's
rising from the dead; for of that they had instances in the Old
Testament, and had lately seen an example of it in the gates of
Nairn, (Luke vii. 15.) But being taught out of the law, that
Christ was to abide for ever, (John xii. 34.) and that of his
kingdom there should be no end, (Luke i. 33.) they could not
tell how to reconcile his death, which was to be previous to his
resurrection to the predictions of the prophets, and their own
conceptions of his temporal kingdom; and therefore we may
observe, that when Christ was dead, their hopes died with him:
' we trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed
Israel,' (Luke xxiv. 21;) but that at his resurrection they
revived again, which made them ask, ' wilt thou at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?' (Acts i. 6.) — IFhitby's Anno-
tations.
Sbct. I I.J
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &<
923
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M. 5140. A.D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v.l— vii. 1.
the other three ; and that therefore their silence is no
manner of argument against St John's account of the
pool of Bethesda.
It may seem a little strange, indeed, that Josephus
should give us no account of it, especially when the
sanative virtue of its waters, occasioned by so extraor-
dinary a means, could not but redound to the honour of
his country. 1 But when it is considered that the like
omissions have been frequently made by other historians,
who in their writings have neglected to insert several
considerable matters of antiquity, merely because they
were so familiar and well known to them. 2 When it is
considered that Josephus, in particular, wrote his history
for the information of the Greeks and learned Romans,
who were heathens, and for fear of shocking their belief,
is very tender of dwelling too much upon miracles:
when it is considered, that he is entirely silent in several
other instances that bear some relation to our Saviour
Christ ; that he does not so much as intimate the slaughter
of the infants at Bethlehem, mentioned by St Matthew,3
nor give any clear account of the Roman census or taxa-
tion, which occasioned our Lord to be born at Bethlehem,
as it is recorded by St Luke : 4 when it is considered,
that the miraculous cure of the impotent man by Jesus
had so visible a connexion, that he could not, in
decency, give an account of the one without making
some mention of the other ; and therefore chose rather
to decline the history of both : and, lastly, when it is
considered, that this pool, according to 5 Tertullian,
" ceased to be beneficial to the Jews, upon their final
perseverance in blasphemy and infidelity against Christ ;"
there is no wonder at all that Josephus, who was very
defective in other matters, and no great lover of miracles,
should omit giving us an account of a pool, whose virtue
was extinct and gone when first he wrote his Antiquities,
and which he could not well make mention of, without
giving an implicit honour to Christ.
That, upon the death of our blessed Saviour, this pool
might lose its sanative quality, is no improbable con-
jecture, because the Jews no longer deserved such a
peculiar blessing ; but when at first it came to be im-
pregnated with it, is not a matter of so easy solution.
The words in the text are, that ' anB angel went down,'
Kccrei xcuqov, 'at a certain season,' which7 a learned
author chooses rather to render ' at the season,' that is, of
the passover, ' and troubled the water ;' from whence he
infers, that the first time of this supernatural moving of
the water, and consequently of the pool's receiving a
miraculous healing quality, was at this passover ; which
was the second after the commencement of our Saviour's
public ministry : and the reason he assigns for its being
this rather than any other passover, is, — " That our
Saviour, having gone through all the cities of Galilee,
and most of the other parts of the country of Judea,
preaching and healing diseases, came up to Jerusalem
at the passover, with an intent to fix his abode there ;
that, to prepare his way before him, God might give this
pool an healing quality,8 thereby to show the Jews, in
a typical manner, that the messenger of the covenant
1 Bishop Smallhrook's Vindication, p. 49S.
» Dr Pearce'a Vindication, part 4. p. 19. s Chap. ii. 16.
4 Chap. ii. 1, 2. 5 Adv. Jud. c. 13. 6 John v. 4.
7 Dr Pearce's Vindication, part 4.
8 Whithy's Annotations on John v. 4.
was coming among them, to 'open a fountain9 to the
house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for
sin and for uncleanness ;' but that, instead of giving him
a kind reception, they took counsel together how they
might take away his life, which made him withdraw him-
self from them, and, upon his departure, the miraculous
virtue of the water ceased." The only objection against
this hypothesis is, that it makes the miracle of no more
than a week or ten days' continuance, which is too short
a space for so great a company as is here represented,
to be gathered together ; to have taken up their abode, as
it were, in the apartments of this hospital ; and to be
acquainted so perfectly, as the paralytic, in his discourse
with our Saviour, seems to be, with the nature of the
pool, and the manner of its preternatural perturbation.
And therefore, to follow the generality of commenta-
tors, though we should suppose, that its medicinal virtue
began at the time of this second passover, yet we may
still adhere to the opinion of Tertullian, and say, that, at
certain times at least, it continued with the Jews, and
a singular blessing it was, until they had filled the
measure of their iniquity, 1U by denying the Holy One,
and the Just, and by killing the Prince of Life.
How the waters of this pool came by their sanative
quality, opinions, in some measure, have been divided.
Our n learned Hammond, who sometimes afreets a singu-
larity of interpretation, supposes, that the waters became
medicinal by being impregnated with a healing warmth
from the blood and entrails of the sacrificed beasts that
were washed there, and that the angel in the text is not
to be understood of any of those celestial beings that
are usually distinguished by that name, but only of a
common messenger, namely, an officer or servant of the
priests, who, at a proper season, was sent by him to stir
the pool. The great 12 Bartholine supposes, that these
waters were naturally medicinal, and that their com-
motion was occasioned by an extraordinary fermentation
of some mineral in them ; and therefore he makes the
angel no more than a divine power, which originally
gave this efficacy, though it was exerted in a natural
way. But besides that the word olyye^o; seldom occurs
in the former, and never in this sense, in any historical
narrative in scripture, there are these plain objections
against both hypotheses, namely, 13 That, be the waters
impregnated with what ingredient Ave please, had their
operation been mechanical, they must necessarily have
cured more than one person, at every commotion or
fermentation ; and yet they never can be supposed of
efficacy enough to cure all manner of diseases in an
instant, and at one single immersion, as the waters of
Bethesda are represented to do : and therefore, waving
all such groundless suppositions, we may be allowed to
set the authority of an ancient father of the church
against these modern names, and say, " That the angel,
which descended at a certain seoson, gave the water its
medicinal virtue ; for the nature of the water was not
sanative in itself, if it had, cures would have always
happened, but the whole depended on the virtue com-
municated to it by the angel."
9Zeoh. xiii. 1. 10Acts iii. 14, 15.
11 Annotations on the 5th chapter of St John.
12 On the Paralytics of the New Testament.
13 Whitby's Annot. and Bp. Smallbrook's Vindication, p. 507.
924
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARKii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
Now the true reason why the virtue thus communicated
to the water by the operation of an angel, was effectual
only to the curing of one person at one time, was to
evince the miraculousness of the cure. Had many been
cured at once, the soeptic might have imputed their cures
to the natural virtue of the water, and, upon this sup-
position, been emboldened to ask, " Where is the wonder
of this ? Do not many medicinal baths cure various kinds
of diseases, and multitudes of such as labour under each
disease, provided their case be curable ? Had one only
indeed been cured, the first that could get in after the
troubling of the water, there would have been then a
great and real miracle : but now the numbers make the
fact suspicious. To make it appear a miracle indeed,
its effects should have been confined and limited to par-
ticular times and persons, and otherwise so circum-
stantiated, as that the power of God, and not of blind
nature, might have been apparent in it." But all this
language is effectually silenced by the method which the
wise providence of God took in this case, and the miracle
established upon such evident conviction, as the mouth
of infidelity itself cannot gainsay."
a The nature and manner of the cures performed here, and
the times of their performance, as a subject of great interest,
has exercised the speculations of most commentators. As to the
nature of the cures, or the sensible means, if any, employed in
effecting them, as the whole is represented as a special miracle,
second causes are out of the question: all that was required on
the part of the patient, let his case be what it might, being the
mere act of immersion; the water having at other times no
power to convey any specific benefit. We are consequently re-
leased from all such unscriptural and unphilosophical opinions as
that entertained by Dr Hammond ; who ascribes the medicinal
properties of the pool to the stirring up of the blood and entrails
of the slaughtered animals, and other filth contained in it: which,
as observed by Dr Jennings, must make the bath so foul and
fetid, that it would be more likely to poison than to cure. But
this part of the inquiry involves another question, which although
not essential either to the truth or to the right understanding of
the history, has acquired an accidental importance, namely, the
mode by which the miraculous but transient virtue was conveyed
to the water. An angel is said to have gone down on these oc-
casions into the pool, and to have troubled or agitated the water:
the visible and supernatural effect being probably, as conjectured
by Grotius, Lightfoot, and Doddridge, caused by an invisible and
celestial agent: this mode of expression, in fact, implying a con-
viction, common with the Jews, that such things were effected
by the ministration of angels. From the omission, however, in
some ancient manuscripts, of the fourth verse of this chapter,
and its being found in another in the shape of a marginal note,
it has been contended by some, that this part of the narrative has
been inserted without authority, in support of a popular supersti-
tion. The case of this disputed text is thus stated by Bishop
Marsh, in his notes on Michaelis's Introduction to the New
Testament: " The Codex Ephrem (a very ancient Greek MS. of
the New Testament in the Royal Library at Paris) has many
marginal notes written in uncial letters, without accents. This
proves what has been sometimes doubted, that marginal notes
were made in the most ancient MSS., and that this practice
prevailed in the early ages of Christianity. But these marginal
scholia seem to have been confined to such MSS. as were in the
hands of private persons; while those which have been used for
church service, such as the Codex Bezae, are without them. It
is likewise remarkable, that in this MS., the disputed, or rather
spurious text of John v. 4, is written, not in the text, but in a
marginal scholion. Now, as this verse is totally omitted in the
Codex Bezae and the Codex Vaticanus, which are the two most
ancient MSS. now extant; as it is likewise omitted in the Codex
Ephrem (which is inferior in age to the Codex Bezfe), but writ-
ten in the margin as a scholion; is written in more modern
MSS. in the text, but marked with an asterisk, or obelus, as
suspicious; and in MSS. still more modem is written without
That the widow of Nain's son, and the ruler of the
synagogue's daughter, were both of them really dead,
any mark; we see the various gradations by which it has acquired
its place in our present text; and have proof positive, that the
verse was originally nothing more than a marginal scholion, and
of course spurious. Other passages likewise in the Greek Testa-
ment owe their present existence in the printed editions to the
same cause." But the rejection of the fourth verse as spurious,
so long as the seventh remains an undisputed portion of the
sacred text, is of very little importance ; for here the two prin-
cipal facts which the fourth verse relates, namely, the miraculous
agitation of the water, and the single cure, which of course must
also have been miraculous, are both implied. It matters not,
indeed, in this view of the case, whether an angel was known,
or only inferred, to have been present. It was the belief of the
Jews, a belief warranted by numerous instances of the kind re-
corded in their scriptures, that every supernatural occurrence
was effected by the agency of a heavenly messenger, or angel,
specially appointed for that purpose; and it is as easy to conceive,
that, in the present instance, the water was moved, and the
healing virtue imparted to it, by an angel, as that these miracu-
lous effects were caused in any other way. Admitting then the
spuriousness of the disputed text as proved, neither the character
nor the credibility of the miracle are thereby affected : the seventh
verse implies as much of the statement of the fourth as it is
necessary for us to know. And with respect to the means by
which the miracle was accomplished, the revealed mode in
which it has pleased the Almighty that supernatural events
should frequently be brought about, and the belief of the Jewish
church on this subject, leave it highly probable that the same
mode was adopted in the present instance, although the evan-
gelist has been silent on the subject. With respect to the times
at which the miracle was performed, some confine it to a par-
ticular season; as, for instance, to that of the festival mentioned
in the first verse. But the original implies no fixed and par-
ticular season ; much less one of so rare occurrence as an annual
feast. The words Kara, xcuoav, which are rendered in our
translation ' at a certain season,' imply as well, according to
time, or from time to time, or at times; on occasion, or occa-
sionally: x.a.f hfitgar, ' with the day,' or ' daily' (Acts ii. 46, 47);
xar' iviaurov, ' from year to year,' or ' year by year' (H'eb. ix. 25;
x. 1) ; xar oixo)i, ' from house to house' (Acts ii. 46) ; xar' uxota.
npiTi^av xat xaf bpoioxnv (Sept.), ' iu,' or ' according to, our
image and our likeness.' The precise time of the angel's visit
was thus perhaps uncertain. At whatever time, however, and
under whatever circumstances, this visit was made, we have
reason to believe, from the terms employed, and from the bene-
volent object of the visit itself, that it was more frequently re-
peated than once in a year. Thus one happy individual at least,
on each occasion, was relieved perhaps from agonising pain, and
restored to health and his friends. But then, how many must
have returned to their homes, bearing their diseases back with
them, with the addition of fatigue and disappointment! True:
but let it be remembered, that every one of these disappointed
sufferers of Jerusalem possessed an advantage over the sick of
all other places, and one which even we, at the present day,
with all the means which the improved state of medical science
can furnish, do not possess, namely, the knowledge, that let his
case be ever so desperate, there existed a certain cure ; which,
although he had not been so fortunate as to find on this occasion,
the ensuing one would renew the opportunity of obtaining. Thus
hope was kept alive, pain mitigated, and faith exercised; and it
is probable, that none who visited the pool duly impressed with
their own helplessness, the greatness of the gift, and the power
and goodness of the Giver, failed, sooner or later, of receiving
the reward of their faith and perseverance. It is further to be
observed, that, from the simple style of living of the ancient
Jews, diseases were comparatively few; the number furnished
by the population of Jerusalem bearing, in all probability, no
proportion to that found in a similar population in civilized
society at the present day. So that, supposing all the cases
which had failed of obtaining relief elsewhere to have resorted
to this last resource, and that in the aggregate they were justly
entitled ' a great multitude,' the number might not have been
so great as to preclude the chance of each being healed in course
of time. Neither Philo nor Josephus notice this miracle; hut
that, as observed by Dr Macknight, in no way affects its credi-
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
925
A.M. 4035. A. D.31; OR, A. M. 5440. A. I). 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I.
is evident from the sense of all that were about them,
who were actually carrying the one to his burial, and
making preparation for the funeral of the other ; so that
had not our blessed Saviour been confident of the divine
virtue residing in him, whereby he was able to recover
them to life again, it would have been madness in him
to have attempted to do it.
" He might suppose, perhaps, that there was a mistake
in the people that were about them, and that these two
young persons might possibly be in a lethargic state."
But, besides the folly of presuming upon a thing, which
scarce happens once in a century, how could he tell,
that, upon his touching the bier of the one, or the hand
of the other, and calling upon them, they would instantly
awake ? And if they did not awake at his call, his whole
pretensions of being a prophet sent from God, with a
power to restore life to the dead, must as effectually
have been ruined, as if the persons here supposed in a
lethargy only, had actually been dead. But now, if we
examine a little into our Lord's conduct in both these
cases, we shall find that he acted not upon any supposi-
tion of mistake in the people, but out of the fulness of
the Godhead that dwelt in him bodily. He, coming to
the city of Nain, attended with his disciples, meets at
the gate the funeral of a certain young man, the only
son of a woman that was a widow. The consideration
of her destitute condition moved his compassion indeed ;
but, for all that, he might have let the funeral pass.
None of the company either asked or challenged him to
raise the dead youth : it was entirely his own offer ; and
an offer that no wise man, who set up for a prophet,
would have ever made, had he not been conscious, as we
find he was, that he was able to perform it.
While he was at Capernaum, a person of some note
requests of him to go and heal his daughter, who was at
the point of death. Before he could get to the house, a
messenger comes, and acquaints the father that she was
actually dead.1 Here our Lord had a fair opportunity
to excuse himself; for, though he might pretend to cure
diseases, which was all that Jairus requested of him, yet
it did not therefore follow that he was to raise the dead.
But, instead of retracting, he offers, of his own accord,
to go forward, and tells the father, as he afterwards did,
that he would raise her to life again : 2 be not afraid ;
only believe, says he, and she shall be made whole,
which he could never have said from any other principle
than a consciousness of that 3 almighty power whereby
he is able to subdue all things to himself.
But, though our Lord was conscious of his divine
power, yet, upon his coming to the ruler's house, instead
of making any ostentatious boast of it, we find him, by
the modesty of his expression, the maid is not dead, but
sleepeth, endeavouring to conceal it. It is, in a great
measure, indeed, owing to his modesty, and great
humility, that, instead of proclaiming, lie requires the
1 Defence of the Scripture History, p. 17. 2 Luke vii. 50.
3 Phil. iii. 21.
bility ; as these writers have omitted other and greater transac-
tions, which they had an opportunity of knowing. Dr Doddridge
supposes the waters of this pool to have been endued with their
miraculous properties not long before the ministry of Christ, and
thiit these properties ceased at his death; which is, in fact, what
is related of them by Tertullian. — Munsford's Scripture Gazet-
teer.— Ed.
people so frequently to suppress the fame of his mar-
vellous works : but in the present case he might have
some regard to the character of Jairus, as ruler of the
synagogue, and, by this advice of silence, dispense with
his speaking publicly of a miracle, which might possibly
draw the malice of the Scribes and Pharisees upon hint,
as well as upon himself. In the case of his raising
Lazarus, we find, that, 4 ' because, by reason of him
many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus, the
chief priests consulted,' not only how to destroy Jesus,
but ' to put Lazarus likewise to death:' and much of the
same design might have been suspected, which our
Saviour, by this kind caution, endeavoured to prevent,
if it once came to their knowledge, that so great a man
as a governor of a synagogue, by the miraculous recovery
of his daughter, had forsaken the religion of his ances-
tors, and was become a convert to the Christian faith.
Gadara was one of the cities beyond Jordan, belong-
ing to the country called Decapolis, which was some-
times in the hands of the Jews, and sometimes of the
Syrians, but, at this time, was inhabited by both. The
Syrians were heathens, and, consequently, made use of
swine, not only for food, but for sacrifices likewise :
and it is not improbable, that the Jews of the country
might be tempted to feed swine, by the advantage they
made in selling them to their heathen neighbours. 5 This
was against a prohibition of their law, it is true ; but
laws, we know, are not always observed, and perhaps
least of all at Gadara, which, being in the extremities of
the Jewish territories, and under the jurisdiction of
heathens, left the Jews without any restraint upon them,
but that of conscience, which is too frequently violated
for the sake of gain.
To bring the matter then to a narrow compass. The
swine which were destroyed, in consequence of the per-
mission which our Saviour gave the evil spirits to enter
into them, belonged either to the Jews, or Gentiles of
Gadara : if they belonged to the Jews, it cannot be de-
nied, but they were justly punished for breaking their
own laws and constitutions, which forbade them to keep
any ; nor can our Saviour's right of inflicting the punish-
ment be called in question, because it was a received
maxim among the Jews, that any person invested with
the character of a prophet, and acting by the Spirit of
God, might, without the assistance of a magistrate, put
the laws in execution against offenders : and therefore,
we, who acknowledge our Jesus to have been more than
a prophet, can never be at a loss to account for his ex-
ercising an authority among the Jews, which, according
to their own confession, was allowable in the lowest of
that order. But, if the heathens of Gadara were the
owners of these swine, our Saviour might be induced to
permit the devils to enter into them, not only to teach
them the sacredness of the Jewish laws, which they, on
account of the prohibition of swine's flesh, may be sup-
posed to have ridiculed ; but to cure them likewise of
their idolatrous worship of demons, and to engage them
to embrace the Christian faith. For when they saw our
Lord's power over such a multitude of devils, exhibited
in their possession of such a number of swine, had they
made a right application of the miracle, they could not
but perceive the truth and divinity of his doctrine, and
* John xii. 10. 11.
* Dr Pearce's Vindication, part 2.
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book V1IL
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1 —
the madness^ of their worshipping such impure spirits, as
were both cast out of the men at his command, and could
not enter into the swine without his permission.
They could not but perceive, I say, that our Saviour
was a prophet sent from heaven ; that what he did was
by a commission from God ; and, consequently, that he
could not be guilty of any injustice in the destruction of
the swine, which, upon this supposition, was not his act,
but the act of providence. He indeed, as a man, had
no right to destroy the people's swine ; but God, who is
the supreme proprietor of the whole earth, most certainly
had ; and shall we then complain of him for such a pun-
ishment as this, when every day we see more surprising
instances before our eyes ? When we see him laying
whole nations waste with pestilence, with famine, and
with earthquakes, shall we confess his sovereign authority
in these cases, and yet, upon the loss of two thousand
swine, cry out, and say, why hast thou done this ? The
heathens themselves, upon the supposition of a provi-
dence, will acknowledge this to be unreasonable ; nor
can our Saviour, as acting by a divine commission, ever
be justly blamed, because he once or twice did the same
thing which God does every day.
But, after all, whether the proprietors were Jews or
Gentiles, * the words in the text do not imply, that our
Saviour was either principal or accessory to the destruc-
tion of the swine. St Mark, indeed, tells us, that ' he
gave the devils leave ;' and St Luke, that ' he suffered
them' to enter into the swine ; but by this is meant no
more, than that he did not prevent them ; that he did not
interpose his divine power, in order to hinder them from
entering ; but, if this made our Saviour a sharer in the
destruction of the swine, by parity of reason, it will make
God, because he permits it, answerable for all the evil
that is done under the sun. Thus, whether we suppose
the Jews or heathens owners of the herd of swine, our
Saviour's permitting the devils to enter into them made
him not accessory to their destruction ; or, if it be said,
that he did it with a punitive intent, it was either to make
the Jews suffer for the breach of their law, or the heathens
for their obstinate idolatry ; which his character of a
prophet, and the testimony of his being the Son of the
most High, without all controversy, authorized him to do.
To know the true end and design of our Saviour's
transfiguration, it may not be improper to look back a
little into the context, where we find, that after Peter's
confessing him to be 2 ' the Christ, the Son of the livino-
God, from that time he began to show unto his disciples,
how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many
things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and
be killed, and be raised again the third day.' Nor was
this all ; for he foretold them, that they likewise were to
suffer many grievous persecutions for his name's sake ;
and therefore he recommended to them the unpleasant
doctrines of 3 < self-denial, and taking up the cross, and
following him,' with this great, though distant, encourage-
ment, that 4 < when the Son of Man should come in the
glory of his Father, with his angels, he should reward
every one according to his works.'
These predictions, doctrines, and promises, were so
contrary to the expectations of his disciples, who hoped
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— is. k4. LUKE vi. 1— ix- 37JOHN y. 1 — vii. 1.
in him to have a temporal prince and deliverer, a restorer
of the decayed state of Israel, and promoter of themselves
to great honours and employments, that our Saviour
thought proper, not many days after, in order to revive
their faith and trust in him, and 5 to fortify their minds
against what was likely to ensue, to take as many with
him into the mount, as made up a legal evidence, and
there to give them ocular conviction of what he had pro-
mised, in recompense of what they were to suffer, by
assuming, for a while, the lustre a and appearance of a
glorified body ; which so raised their drooping hearts,
that we find St Peter immediately declaring, 6 ' Lord, it
is good for us to be here ; and, if thou wilt, let us make
here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses,
and one for Elias.' For the design of these words is,
not only to secure his Master, by staying in that retreat,
from the sufferings and death, which would be the con-
sequence of his going up to Jerusalem, as St Chrysostom
and others understand it, but to express likewise the
pleasure and satisfaction he took in this transfiguration,
and glorified company ; and how he resumed fresh spirits
and comforts from a miracle, which was emblematical of
the glorious state, not of Christ only, but of all good
Christians, after their resurrection.
The only instance we have in scripture of any transfigur-
ation like unto this, is in the case of Moses, ' after he
had been forty days and forty nights with God on mount
Sinai ; for, upon his descent, we are told, ' that the skin
of his face so shone, that the children of Israel were
afraid to come nigh him ; and therefore he put a veil on
his face, while he talked with them.' That our blessed
Lord, in the act of his transfiguration, might probably
have respect to this preceding one of Moses, and, both
in the nature of the change, and the place where it
was wrought, design some conformity thereunto, is what
we are at liberty to suppose ; and consequently can
account why the scene of this transaction was in a moun-
tain, rather than a valley : and why the three apostles,
Peter, James, and John, and not the whole multitude,
were allowed to be spectators of it, we have several rea-
sons to allege.
For besides that this was a vouchsafement, fit only to
be communicated to such as were of his more immediate
confidence, and stood in the highest degree of his esteem ;
to such as, for their zeal and affection to him, were hon-
oured and distinguished 8 with a peculiar title, and, after
his resurrection, appointed by providence to be the great
pillars of his church ; and besides, that it would have
looked like vanity and ostentation in him to have taken
the multitude into the mount, and there made a public
sight of his miracles, which was the thing he always care-
fully declined: besides this, I say, there seems to be
1 Dr Pearce's Vindication, part 1. p. 23. 2 Mat. xvi 21 &c
3 Ibid. ver. 24. < l|)i(]_ vw_ g? '
Young's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 360.
' Exod. xxxiv. 28, &c.
6 Luke ix. 33.
Luke vi. 13.
a This is the proper meaning of the word fitrafioeQufa. For
p.o£<Qrt, both in the Old and New Testaments, doth not signify the
essence or constituent properties of a man, but only his external
shape or appearance : as when it is said of Belshazzar, (Dan. v. 1 0.)
and of Daniel, (chap. viii. 28.) that h po^n vkXiatv, their forms
were changed; of Nebuchadnezzar, that » ^<p»i poZ Wiht^i*
W l/ii, ' my form returned to me,' (Dan. iv. 36.) and of Christ
that he appeared to two of his disciples iv irioa po^Qn, ' in another
form,' (Mark xvi. 12.) and therefore the word which is derived
from it, can extend no further than to a change of the outward
form or appearance only. — Whitby on Phil. ii. 6.
Sect. II.] FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29, FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14,
927
something in the transfiguration itself, which might have
been of dangerous consequence for the multitude to have
been admitted to.
St Peter, who himself was one of those who were with
him on the holy mount, gives us this account of it. 1 ' We
have not followed cunningly devised fables,' says he,
' when we made known unto you the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of his majesty ; for
he received from God the Father, honour and glory,
when there came such a voice to him from the excellent
glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleas-
ed.' Now, 2by his majesty in this place, most properly
is to be understood that lustre and radiancy wherein he
appeared, when his ' face shone as the sun, and his gar-
ments,' pierced through with the beams that were darted
from his body, ' became white as light :' 3 For to shine as
the sun, is a phrase expressing something belonging to
celestial majesty ; and white and splendid garments are
proper for kings, and 4 royal ministers of the heavenly
court. And, in like manner, by the ' excellent glory',
from whence the voice proceeded, can be meant nothing
but the bright and shining cloud that then appeared,
which the Jews call the schechinah, and is made up, as
most imagine, of an host of angels, the constant symbol
of the divine presence ; and how great and magnificent
this symbol is, we may, in some measure, learn from the
vision of the prophet Daniel : 5' the ancient of days did
sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of
his head like pure wool. His throne was like the fiery
flames, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream
had issue from before him ; thousands of thousands min-
istered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand
stood before him.'
Supposing then that this was the manner of our Savi-
our's transfiguration ; that not only, in his own person,
he was arrayed with all his glory and lustre, but had
likewise an angelic host surrounding him, two of the
greatest prophets of ancient ages attending- him, and a
voice from heaven, declaring him to be the well-beloved
Son of God : while the multitude stood by, and saw and
heard all this, it would have been almost unavoidable,
but that, upon such conviction of his being the Messiah,
6 ' they would have taken him by force, and made him a
king.' But since, as our Saviour tells us, his 7' king-
dom was not of this world,' nor to come with the pomp
and observation which the Jews expected ; and since one
of his great concerns was, that no disturbance of the
civil government should be occasioned by him, or laid
to his charge, he wisely made choice of three only, but
these the principal of his apostles, to whom he exhibited
a specimen of his future glory ; which had he done to the
multitude, it might probably have occasioned a general
insurrection ; and, as he came down from the mount, he
charged them, ' that they should tell the vision to no
man, till after his resurrection.'
From the word, '6^»tux which we render vision, some
have supposed that Moses and Elias were not there in
their proper persons, but that the apostles, in their fancy
and imagination, had only a strong idea or impression
of them ; or, at most, that their spectres, or some sha-
1 9 Pet. i. 16, &c.
Mat. xiii. 43.
6 John vi. 15.
2 See Whitby on 2 Pet. i. 1G.
Ilev. iii. 4. 5 Dan. vii. 9, 10
7 lb. xviii. 3o.
LUKE vi.V-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii 1.
dowy resemblance of them, only were there. Since the
evangelists, however, speak of them in a personal char-
acter and capacity ; since they represent thenras talking
with Christ, and speaking of his decease, which Tie was
to accomplish at Jerusalem ; since they tell us, that \\h. a
they were come out of the ecstasy into which this vision
had cast them, they saw two men standing with him ; it
is much more probable to think, that Moses and Elias
were really there, and that God had, somewhere or other,
from the time of their departure out of this world, pre-
served both their bodies to this end. The scriptures,
indeed, are express as to Elias, that he was translated
into heaven by the ministry of angels resembling s a
chariot of fire, and horses of fire ; and it is a pretty gen-
eral opinion, 9 both among Jewish and Christian •authors
taken, as is supposed, from some apocryphal book, that
Moses did not die, but was translated into heaven, or
some terrestrial paradise, in the same manner as were
Enoch and Elias. There is a passage in St Jude, where
iU Michael the archangel is said to contend with the devil,
and dispute about the body of Moses which, if taken in
a literal sense, will greatly favour this opinion ; for if
we can but suppose that u the contest between this good
and evil angel concerning Moses's body, related not to
its burial, as some will have it, but its assumption into
heaven, or some other place of happiness, which the
devil might oppose, and urge the obligation of his dying
the common death of all men, for this reason more espe-
cially, because he had once taken away the life of an
Egyptian : if we can but suppose, I say, that the contest
arose upon this subject, then Ave may easily conceive
both how Moses might subsist in a separate state from
the time of his assumption, and how he, together with
Elias, might be dispatched from thence upon this occa-
sion, to set oft' the lustre of our Lord's transfiguration,
by their appearing at the same time in their resplendent
robes of glory.
And indeed, if this was the purpose of their errand,
what subject can we suppose so proper, and so well be-
coming the conversation of three such illustrious persons,
as the redemption of mankind by the death and passion
of the Son of God ? What these two ancient prophets
had in their times imperfectly revealed* nay what the
angels of heaven desire at all times to look into, namely,
the harmony of the divine attributes in this stupendous
work, 12< the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and
knowledge of God,' and 13 ' the breadth, and length, and
depth, and height, of the love of Christ, which passeth
knowledge ; M mysteries which have been hid from ages,
and from generations, but are now made manifest to th *.
saints :' these were the sublime subjects, for these are>
implied in 15 their speaking of Christ's decease, of their
conversation at this interview ; and, in comparison of
these, how jejune and worthless are all the wise sayings
of philosophers, or compositions of human wit? "With
good reason, therefore, might the great apostle of the
Gentiles, who himself was no mean proficient in what
the world falsely calls knowledge, instead of the 16 ex-
8 2 Kings ii. 11.
9 See Calmet's Dissert, on the Deatli and Burial of Mo>es, vol. iii.
10 Jude 9. u See Whitby in locum, n Rom. xi. 3o.
13 Eph. iii. 18, 19. M Col. i. 26. 15 Luke ix. 31.
16 1 Cor. ii. 1, 2.
928
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M. 5410. A. D.29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23- ix. 14. LUKE vi, 1— ix. 37. JOHN v, 1-vii. I.
not send this message with a design to satisfy any scruples
of his own, but purely for the sake and conviction of his
disciples who brought it ; to set them right in their
cellence of speech and wisdom, determine to know
nothing among his Corinthians, ' but Jesus Christ, and
him crucified :' for l ' we preach Christ crucified,' says
he, ' unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the
Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which are called, both
Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wis-
dom of God ; for 2 of God he is made unto us wisdom,
and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.'
The scriptures, upon all occasions, acquaint us, that
the Baptist, through the whole course of his ministry,
had borne constant and ample testimony to our Saviour's
divine mission ; that he exhorted those who came to him
to rest their faith, not on himself, but on him that should
come after him ; and that as soon as he was acquainted
who he was, by a visible descent of the Holy Ghost, and
a voice from heaven, he made it his business to dispose
the Jews in general, and his own disciples in particular,
to receive and reverence him, by testifying every where,
that he was the Son of God, the Lamb of God, who came
from above, and spake the words of God, and to whom
God had not given the Spirit by measure. And yet after
all this, 3 some are of opinion, that the Baptist might
have the same conception of Christ's temporal kingdom
that the rest of the Jewish nation had ; and that his long
and irksome imprisonment might by this time have
tempted him to doubt, whether he, who by birth was his
relation, and from whose assistance, very probably, he
expected a deliverance, was in reality the Messiah. 4 It
seems, however, not a little injurious to the character of
the Baptist, to suppose either his constancy so shaken,
or his behaviour so inconsistent with itself, as, after such
open and solemn declaration, to admit of any doubt,
whether our Lord were he that should come, that is, the
long promised and universally expected Messiah. And
therefore a the safest way is, to conclude, that he did
notions, and confirm them in the belief of Jesus, and so t
turn them over to their proper and better master, now
that himself was upon the point of leaving the world.
And this was the rather necessary, because their immo-
derate zeal, and partial respect for the Baptist, had
hitherto made them averse to Jesus, and envious at his \
honour and miracles. What John had discoursed to
them formerly upon this subject had made but little im-
pression upon them ; and therefore, in compassion to
their infirmities, he condescended to have their scruples, .
propounded in his own name ; and our Saviour's method
of resolving them, which was by showing them that the
miracles which he wrought were the same kind that the
Messiah was to do, gave so great satisfaction, that when
their former master was gone, they repaired to him with
the melancholy news of his death, and, according to the
received tradition, for ever after became his constant
disciples.
5 The frequent use of parables and emblems in the
discourses and writings of the oriental sages, and espe-
cially of the Jewish doctors, s is so very well known,
s Whitby's Annotations on Mat. xiii.
supernatural endowments as should completely answer to the
predicted character of the Messiah; and then sent them to their
master for the application. With respect to the reply itself,
both the manner and the matter of it are highly deserving of at-
tention. As to the former, it is, as Bp. Atterbury observes, not
direct and positive, but so ordered only, as to give them an oc-
casion of answering the question themselves, which they had
proposed to Christ. As to the latter, the learned prelate, with
his usual taste, ably points out the gradation to be observed in
the particulars, and the appositeness of it in relation to the in-
quiries. So that the words, 'Go show John,' &c, may mean,
"You come to learn of me whether I am the Messiah. Your
master has often told you I am he, but you will not believe him.
To him you should have gone as my forerunner: to me it belongs
not so properly to proclaim my own titles, which might excite
your suspicion. Behold therefore the testimony of God! for the
works which I am doing before your eyes bear witness that the
Father hath sent me." The description of the works in question
is so framed as to be taken from a prophecy of Isaiah lxi. 1. and
xxxv. 5. 6. of the Messiah. Thus it is as if our Lord had sard,
"Ye believe not the Baptist's testimony, that I am he who
should come. Yet surely Isaiah, whom ye so reverence, and
upon whose authority ye have received the Baptist himself, will
obtain credence with you; and he has thus prophesied of me.'' —
Bloomjield's Greek Testament on Mat. xi. 3.
b The Jews, above all nations, delighted in this way of reason-
ing. Their books, at this day, are full of such parables as our
Saviour used ; and are generally introduced in a form of speech
not unlike his. ' Whereunto shall I liken such or such a thing?
Nay, in the talmudieal treatises, such as the treatise Killaim,
there is a dispute of sowing upon the rocks and stones, and of
mixing wheat and tares together; and in Peah, a tract in the
Jerusalem Talmud, there is mention made of a tree of mustard-
seed, which one might climb up into, like other trees. So that
our Saviour was by no means to blame, but rather highly to be
commended, for pursuing this parabolical way of teaching mor-
ality, which was the most celebrated method among the Jews.
For his farther vindication, however, some have observed, that
what our Saviour delivered in this manner did not contain the
fundamental precepts and doctrines of the gospel, for these were
against John, the rebuke is levelled. It should seem that for taught with sufficient clearness in the 5th, 6th, and 7th chap-
their satisfaction John had sent; and as they would not heed his | ters of St Matthew, but only the mysteries relating to the pro-
repeated endeavours to remove their doubts, he resolved to refer | gress of the gospel, and the event of it among the Jews and
them to Christ himself, for the removal of their scruples: and | Gentiles; and the Jews themselves acknowledge, that the pre-
that our Lord, well aware of his intention, took the surest means j dictions of this nature were usually taught in allegorical and
of fixing the wavering minds of his disciples, by displaying such | emblematical expressions, being not so necessary to be known,
1 1 Cor. i. 23. 2 Ibid. ver. 30.
3 Lightfoot and Beausobre in locum.
* Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
a Few questions have been more debated than the purpose of
John's sending this message to Jesus. Some ancients and many
moderns think that he sent in order to satisfy certain doubts
which had occurred to his mind during his confinement. But
surely his view of the descent of the holy Ghost at Christ's bap-
tism, the testimony he then heard from heaven, the divine im-
pulse by which he recognised Jesus as ' the Lamb of God that
taketh away the sin of the world,' and his own reiterated testi-
monies forbid such a supposition: and to imagine that John's
confinement should have affected the strength of his resolves, or
drawn from him the language of fretful remonstrance, or peevish
complaint, would do great injustice to so noble a character. In
short, the opinion has been shown to be utterly untenable by
Chrys., Euthem., Theophyl., and Greg., of the ancients; and of
the moderns, Hamm., Whitby, Doddr., Bp. Atterbury, and Mr
Benson (Hulsean Lectures, 1S20, pp. GO — 67.); who maintain,
that John sent for the satisfaction of his disciples, who, mortified
at seeing their master imprisoned for preaching the coming of
the Messiah; and disappointed that he whom he testified to be
such, should make no such claim ; nor make any attempt to de-
liver his forerunner: stumbling, too, at the humbleness of Jesus's
birth, and the lowliness of his station; and offended at his differ-
ence in character from their own ascetic master, had entertained
doubts as to his Messiahship. Against them, therefore, and not
It should seem that for
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &<
929
A. 84.4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. I). 29. FKOM MAT. xii. 1
Unit a man must discover his ignorance, who pretends to
assert that our blessed Saviour attempted any innovation,
when lie lirst began to instruct the people in a parabolical
way ; since several of his discourses of this kind, parti-
cularly that l of the rich glutton, and 2 of the foolish
virgins, 3 are acknowledged to be borrowed from the
writings of their rabbins.
The truth is, 4 the eastern way of reasoning- was so
different from that of the west, that the soundest philoso-
phy of Greece or Rome would have been mere jargon
and cant at Jerusalem. The only method of reasoning,
which was agreeable to the Jewish taste, was to usher in
a handsome simile, or story, apposite to the matter in
hand ; to apply a smart saying of some ancient worthy ;
or to bring good proof from their law, or ancient tradi-
tion ; but to go to prove morality to them, as Plato or
Tully do, from the eternal rules of justice, from the rec-
titude and honourableness of virtue, and the depravity and
turpitude of vice, would have been such a way of talking,
as the wisest men of their way of education would have
greatly despised; and therefore our blessed Saviour,
who was well acquainted w ith the temper and customs of
the people with whom he conversed, took care that his
way of instructing them should be such as was most
agreeable to their education, and consequently such as
would tend more to their edification, than if he had in-
troduced the philosophic method of morality, which was
only in use in such nations as were destitute of the bene-
fits of a divine revelation.
The heathens indeed couched their religious mysteries
under fables and allegories, out of a principle both of
fear and policy, to conceal them from the contempt of
the vulgar, and to excite the study and curiosity of the
learned. But in this latter design they seem to be mis-
taken, because the learned could no sooner look into the
matters hid under these fables, but they must have dis-
covered their shame, absurdity, and ridiculousness. The
design of our Lord's speaking to the people in parables
was quite contrary to this, as himself declares, namely,6
' because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not,
neither do they understand,' which words, a both in sacred
and profane authors, are a proverbial expression, con-
cerning men so wicked and so slothful, that either they
attend not to, or will not follow, the clearest intimations
and convictions of their duty ; and therefore, to awaken
their attention, and make the stronger impression upon
them, our Saviour was forced to have recourse to para-
bles.
1 Luke xvi. 19. s Mat. xxv. 1. ' Sheringham, Pncf.
4 Nichols's Conference, part 3, page 413. ' Mat. xiii. 13.
as were the fundamental rules of faith and manners. — Lightfoot's
Harmony < f the New Testament, page 30; Nichols's Conference,
part 3, page 413; and Whitby's Annotations on Mat. xiii. 10.
a To this purpose the prophet Jeremiah, to a revolting and
rebellious people, which had cast off the fear of God, speaks in
this wise: ' hear now this, ye foolish people, and without under-
standing, which have eyes, and see not, which have ears, and
hear not,' chap. v. 21. And in like manner God speaks to
Ezekiel: ' Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious
house, which have eyes to see, and see not ; that have ears to
hear, and hear not, for they are a rebellious house,' chap. xii. 2.
Philo uses the phrase in the same signification; for, speaking of
tlinse that were addicted to wine, and sensual pleasures, he says,
iva/ura, mix o^uiri, xai axovotrt;, ovx uxovoviri, ' they seeing, see not,
and hearing, do not hear;' and Demosthenes mentions it as a
common proverb, i^uvra;, fj.n oexv, xa\ uxovovras, fun axouuv. —
Whitby's Annotations on .Mat. xiii.
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. l-xi. ?,7. JOHN v. 1-vii.
This passage, indeed, in the other evangelists that
mention it, seems to bear a different sense, 6 ' unto them
that are without, all these things are done in parables,
that seeing they may see, and not perceive, and hearing
they may hear, and not understand -.' or, as it is in St
Luke, 7 ' that seeing they might not see, and hearing
they might not understand :' as if our Lord had spoken
to the multitudes in parables, that is, in a plain and
familiar way, on purpose that they might not understand
him, which, besides the contradiction, seems to include
a spice of malevolence, where there never was any. 8
But all this is occasioned by the mistake of our transla-
tors, who, both in St Mark and St Luke have rendered
the word IW, by that, which should have been because;
for this gives the words a quite different turn : in St Mark,
' because seeing they do see, and not perceive,' and in
St Luke, ' because seeing they see not, and hearing they
understand not.' The natural import of which is this, —
" That the Jews, by reason of their prejudices, not being
able to understand the great mysteries of the gospel, our
Saviour, out of love to their souls, accommodated himself
to their capacities, by speaking to them in parables, that
is, in metaphors and similitudes, borrowed from things
temporal and corporeal, in order to bring them to a more
competent understanding, of his doctrine." b
6 Mark iv. 11. 12. J Chap. viii. 10.
8 Howell's History, in the Notes.
b The passage which the author here attempts to explain is
thus paraphrased by Doddridge. — " And he replying said unto
them, I thus express myself in parables, because, though it is
granted, through the divine goodness, to you, whose hearts are
open to receive the truth in the love of it, to know and understand
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, which have been long
concealed ; yet it is not granted to others, who are prejudiced
against them, but they are justly suffered to continue unacquainted
with them: and therefore to them that are without, and who are
strangers, through their own neglect and folly, to what they
might before have learned, all these things are now involved in
parables and figures : which, though they affect the mind of the
attentive hearer, and promote his edification, are disregarded by
the rest, and only looked upon as an empty amusement. For to
every one who hath any talent committed to him, and shows that
he hath it by his diligent improvement of it, yet more shall be
given, and he shall have a still greater abundance of means for
his further improvement; but even that which he already hath
shall be taken away from the slothful creature, and be withdrawn
from him who acts like one who hath not any thing to improve,
(compare Luke viii. IS.) Thus wise men deal with their ser-
vants; and thus God will generally act in dispensing opportuni-
ties of a religious nature. And therefore, on this very principle
do I now speak to them in parables, whereas I have formerly
used the plainest manner of discourse: because seeing, they see
not; and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand;
inasmuch as they do not honestly use the faculties that God has
given them, but are like persons that have their eyes and ears,
and yet will neither see nor hear. So that it is in just displeasure
that I preach to them in this obscure language, that what has been
their crime may be their punishment; that seeing my miracles,
they may see the outward act, but not perceive the evidence
arising from them : and hearing my discourses, they may indeed
hear the sound of them, but not understand their true intent and
meaning; lest at any time they should be converted, and their
sins shall be forgiven them, which to many of these people they
never shall. And thus in them is the prophecy of Isaial most
exactly fulfilled, (Isa. vi. 9, 10.) which indeed was originally
intended to include them, and saith, ' By hearing, you shall
hear,' (or you may still go on to hear with eagerness,) but you
shall not understand; and seeing you shall see, or you may still
go on to see, but you shall not perceive. For, like a wretch
who lias besotted and stupified himself with riot, the heart or
intellectual faculty of this people is, as it were, grown stiff with
fatness, and they hear with heavy ears, and draw up their eyes
6 B
930
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIIL
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR,A. M. 5410. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. '23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-yii. 1.
companions ; were more disposed to receive his doctrine ;
1 ' To you it is given to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven, but not to them,' does not therefore
imply, that our Saviour's parables were dark and obscure,
and that by speaking- to the people in this manner, he
had a design to conceal any truth that was requisite for
them to know ; but only, that he made a fuller discovery
of his doctrine to his disciples, than it was necessary at
that time to make to the multitude ; that he instructed
them in private, and enlarged upon the sense of his para-
bles, and let them into the knowledge of several things,
that were not yet proper to be communicated to all,
because they were his peculiar friends, and his constant
1 Mat. xiii. 11.
as if they were more than half asleep; so that one would imagine
they were afraid lest at any time they should happen to he roused,
so as to see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and un-
derstand with their hearts, and should he converted, and I should
heal and save them. I therefore justly leave them to their own
obstinacy, and direct thee, O Isaiah, to methods which I know
will increase it." — Doddridge's Family Expositor, end of sect. 65.
On the same subject Doddridge has the following notes: —
A late learned writer has endeavoured to prove that Christ's
use of parables was not in displeasure, but in tender condescen-
sion to their aversion to truths delivered in a less pleasing man-
ner: but this is in effect supposing both Mark, (chap. iv. 12.)
and Luke (chap. viii. 10.) to have reported what our Lord
says in a sense directly contrary to what he intended ; for they
say in so many words, it was that the multitude might not per-
ceive, nor understand; and it also makes Mat. xiii. 12. both
foreign and opposite to the purpose for which it was spoken. We
must therefore submit to the difficulties which attend this natural
interpretation; which are much lessened by considering that this
happened after Christ had upbraided and threatened the neigh-
bouring places, (from whence doubtless the greatest part of the
multitude came,) which was some time before this sermon: (see
Mat. xi. 20 — 24. s. 58.) And it is not improbable, that the
scribes and Pharisees, who- had so vilely blasphemed him this
very morning, (Mat. xii. 24.) might with an ill purpose have
gathered a company of their associates and creatures ahout
Christ to insnare him; which, if it were the case, willfully ac-
count for such a reserve. — It signifies little to plead on the other
side, that these parables are plain. Their being so to us, is no
proof they were so to these hearers: and since the apostles them-
selves did not understand even that of the sower, it is no wonder
if the rest were unintelligible to the careless and captious hearer.
— Consistent with all this is what was said of the advantages at-
tending this method, to those who were honest and attentive; in
the paraphrase on Mark iv. 2. Seeing you shall see, but
you shall not perceive. This is a just translation of the original,
both here and in Isaiah; and is another considerable argument
for the interpretation here given of the whole context. — A pious
and learned friend, by whose kind animadversions I have been
led to insert some additional notes in this work, has urged several
arguments to prove that this clause should be rendered, 'seeing,
&c, you will not perceive.' But on the maturest review of this
passage both in Isaiah and the several places where it occurs in
the New Testament, I cannot apprehend that it was spoken
merely by way of complaint, but think it plain that it was intended
also as a prediction; (compare Mark iv. 12; Luke viii. 10; John
xii. 40; Acts xxviii. 26,27; Rom. xi. 8.) Now in predictions,
we generally render the future form, " Such or such a thing shall
happen," though we only mean to express the certainty of the
event, without denying the freedom of the moral agents concerned
in it, or detracting from it in any degree. (Ibid, notes (k) and (1).
The correction of the received translation which the author pro-
poses in Mark iv. 12. and Luke \iii. 10, does not rest upon suffi-
cient ground, and is evidently introduced to get rid of an apparent
difficulty, which is removed by the above extract from Doddridge.
Dr Boothroyd follows the received translation of the passage, and
DrBloomfield contends that the Jvadoes not signify because, but
with the design that, co consilio ut, and observes that the sense of
Mark iv. 1, 2. is ; •' To the multitude, all things are propounded by
the intervention of parables; with the intent that, as the prophet
says, since they have eyes and years perfect, and yet see not,
nor understand, they may not repent and obtain forgiveness oi
their sins." — Ed.
were afterwards to be the preachers of it ; and at length
to seal the truth of it with their blood.
They were honest and well-designing men ; but it
would be doing too great a compliment to their under-
standing, to say, that there was any thing extraordinary,
until they were endued from above, in their sagacity and
penetration : and therefore we are not to impute it to
the obscurity of our Saviour's parables, that we find his
disciples so frequently at a loss for the meaning of them,
since some of them were quoted from Jewish authors,
and many of them taken from the most obvious and com-
mon things, but we should rather impute it to their natural
dulness and want of apprehension, as we find Our Saviour
himself does, when, upon their requesting him to expound
the plain parable of the sower, he could not forbear say-
ing, Avith admiration, 2 ' Know ye not this parable, and
how then shall ye know all parables ?'
It was not then to cloud and obscure, but rather illus-
trate and enforce his meaning, that our Lord delivered
himself so frequently in parables ; and the reason why
he refused to gratify the Pharisees in their desire of a
sign from heaven, was, because he had already done
miracles enough to satisfy them, had not their obstinacy
been proof against all conviction. In that very chapter 3
wherein they make this insolent demand, they had seen,
before their faces, * a withered hand made whole, and, 5
upon the ejection of a devil, a blind and dumb man re-
stored to his sight and speech ; but observe the turn
which their resolute infidelity gives to the miracles : 6
' this fellow does not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub,
the prince of the devils :' and yet these very men have
the modesty, in a few verses after, to come to the person
they had just before reviled and blasphemed at this rate,
with this arrogant demand ; 7 ' Master, we would see a
sign from thee.' After such an affront, would it have
become the meekest man upon earth to gratify these men
in any request whatever ? But much more, would it have
become the majesty of the Son of God to prostitute his
divine power, merely to satisfy the curiosity, for that was
all they wanted to have satisfied, of such abandoned
miscreants ?
The sign, which they wanted to see, may be supposed
to be, either such 8 a shower of manna, as Moses ; or
such y a clap of thunder, as Samuel ; or 1U such a fall of
fire, as Elijah ; or11 such an arrest of the sun, as Joshua
once called for. Now, supposing that our Saviour had
been flexible enough to humour them in their unreason-
able request, 12 what grounds have we to think, that these
aerial or celestial prodigies would have wrought in them
any more conviction than those miracles, which were in-
contestable, done in their presence, within their feeling,
and compass of examination ? These, we see, they im-
puted to a diabolical power, and much more might they
do it to those that were at so vast a distance, since they
could not be ignorant of what is said of the prince of the
power of the air in the book of Job, namely, that the fire,
which fell from heaven, and consumed that holy man's
substance, as well as the wind which overturned the house,
2 Mark iv. 13. 3 Mat. xii. 38. 4 Mat. xii. 13,
5 Mat. xii. 22. 6 Mat. xii. 24. ' Mat. xii. 38.
8 Exod. xvi. 14. 9 1 Sam. vii. 10. 10 1 Kings xviii. 38
11 Josh. x. 12. a Calmet's Commentary on Mat. xii. 38.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &<
931
A. M. 4U35. A. D. 3i ; OR, A. M 5140. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1
where his children were met together, were the effects of
Satan's procuring.
What notions the ancient Jews had of the power of
magic, we cannot positively say ; but it is certain, that
the heathen magicians made it their boast, a that they
could stop the course of the sun, moon, and stars, turn
them into darkness, as they pleased, and make them
obey their voice : and, if the Pharisees had the like
notions of these things, their demanding a sign from
heaven was to no manner of purpose ; because, upon
their own supposition, that our Lord acted by a magical
power, what they desired him to do, was not above the
sphere of his ability, and, if they thought it so, it could
never have wrought in them any good conviction ; because
the same hardness of heart, and hatred of him, would
have kept them under the same persuasion still, that all
his wonders, whether above or below, whether in heaven
or on earth, whether on human or celestial bodies, were
done by the assistance of the devil.
Since then no sign that the Pharisees could ask, even
had our Saviour condescended to work it, would have
been effectual to their conviction, our Saviour was not
unkind in remitting them to one, that would not fail of
convincing them, that what he did was not by a diabolical
but divine power. For, since it was agreed on all hands,
that a person, when dead, whatever he had in his lifetime,
could not then have the devil at his command ; if, after
they had crucified him, they should find him restored to
life again, this would be a sign wherein there could be
no fallacy ; that as his restoration was from the hand of
God, so his commission had all along been from the
same ; and * that, as Jonas's miraculous escape from the
whale's belly, wherewith the Ninevites were doubtless
acquainted, was a powerful means to confirm to them the
truth of his prophetic office ; so now, though all Christ's
miracles, while living, prevailed but little, yet, after his
death and resurrection from the grave, he would then be
credited, in the same manner as Jonas was ; 2 ' he would
then draw all men after him,' and the very Pharisees
themselves would be prevailed upon to acknowledge his
divine mission. This is the sense of his comparing
himself so often with the prophet Jonas : and that the
chief priests and Pharisees understood the comparison
in this sense, is manifest from what they say to Pilate : 3
' Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was
yet alive, after three days I will rise again ;' for I no
where remember, that he made any declaration to the
chief priests and Pharisees, though he did it frequently
to his apostles, of his intended resurrection after three
days, but only in this comparison of himself to Jonas.
Had human wisdom indeed been consulted in the elec-
tion of Christ's apostles, it would have made choice of
the profoundest rabbins, the acutest philosophers, and
the most powerful orators, who, by the strength of reason,
and arts of eloquence, might have triumphed over the
minds of men, grappled with the stubbornness of the
Jews, and baffled the fine notions and speculations of
the Greeks and Romans ; but then it must be allowed,
that one argument for the proof of the divinity of the
a The witch who with ht:r voire draws down the enchanted
Btars and moon from heaven — Hor. in Canidiam.
1 Whitby's limitations on Mat. xii. 39.
2 John xii. 32. Mat. xxvii. G3.
xvii. H. MARK ii, 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1,
Christian religion had been lost. Nay, it might have
been objected, " that no wonder, indeed, that this religion
should thrive so well in the world, when it had all human
advantages to assist it, and was supported and carried
on by the united force of the reason and eloquence of
such renowned scholars." But now, by making choice
of weak and illiterate persons to be his apostles, and
first publishers of the gospel, our Lord has taken an
effectual means, that 4 ' our faith should not stand,' as St
Paul expresses it, ' in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God,' because ' their speech and their preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in the
demonstration of the Spirit, and of power.'
And, indeed, what less than a divine power could have
enabled a few illiterate mechanics, who had no art, no
address of their own, to propagate a new and unheard-of
religion, contrary to the laws every where established,
and contrary to man's natural passions and appetites,
with such a wonderful success, as, in the space of twenty
or thirty years, to extend it over all the principal parts of
the Roman empire, and, in the next age, to fill all places,
cities, and islands, castles and boroughs, palaces and
senates, courts and camps, with multitudes of converts,
as the great apologist, Tertullian, justly glories ? Doubt-
less, if ever there was an intervention of divine power
in human affairs, it was here, ' when 5 God chose the
foolish and ueak things of the world to confound the
wise and mighty,' and when simplicity and ignorance
not only had the advantage, but absolutely triumphed
over all the wit, and learning, and power, and policy of
the world.
That therefore the mighty force of Christianity, to
make its way through the greatest obstacles, might more
evidently appear, the instruments which our Saviour
employed in the propagation of it, so far as their own
abilities, either natural or acquired, were concerned, were
the meanest that can be imagined, but, by an extraordi-
nary communication of his blessed Spirit to them, he in-
spired them with the gift of languages, that they might
be able to address themselves to people of all nations ;
with the power of working miracles, that they might be
able to confirm the truth of the doctrine which they
taught ; and, upon all emergencies, 6 ' with such a mouth
and wisdom, as all their adversaries were not able to
gainsay or resist.'
These, and several other gifts extraordinary, did more
than supply the natural defects which the apostles
laboured under in the execution of so great a work ; but
now that these gifts are withdrawn, our religion establish-
ed, and the canon of the holy scriptures completed, their
successors have a different province to manage. Instead
of travelling all the world over, and compassing sea and
land to gain proselytes to the Christian faith, their duty
is, to keep in order the things that are settled, and 7 ' to
feed the Hock of God that is among them, taking the
oversight thereof, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready
mind ; not as lords over God's inheritance, but as en-
samples to their flocks ;' and, instead of delivering to
their respective churches such writings as might, in all
ages, be the pillar and foundation of truth, their business
is to study the scriptures, which they have received, to
1 Cor
' I.uU
ii. 4, 5.
xxi. 15.
s Ibid. i. 27.
■ 1 Pet. v. ■/.
932
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 4. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I.
defend their authority, and expound their sense ; l ' to
preach the word,' as the apostle to Timothy specifies
their office ; ' to be instant in season, and out of season ;
to reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all long-suffering
and doctrine ;' and what compass of learning- and share
of influence among the people are requisite to a due
discharge of all this, ' as 2 a workman that needeth not
to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of God,' wants
no detail of arguments to prove, since we find the great
apostle St Paul, amidst all the gifts that were then dis-
pensed to the church, and the particular revelations which
were vouchsafed him, upon the consideration of the
weightiness of his office, crying out, and saying, 3 ' who
is sufficient for these things ?' Upon the whole, therefore,
we may observe, that it was highly requisite, that the
apostles and first publishers of the gospel, and the
present ministers and preachers of it, should be men of
different characters and abilities ; that the former of
these, for the more effectual discharge of their office,
should have several kinds of gifts supernatural, the latter
no more than was the product of their own labour and
acquisition ; or, to speak in the phrase of the scripture,
that as, at first, our Saviour * ' gave some apostles ; some
prophets ; and some evangelists ;' so now he should ap-
point some ' rulers, some pastors, and some teachers ;
for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the min-
istry, for the edifying of the body of Christ ; till we all
come, in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of
the stature of the fulness of Christ.'
* That anger, considered in itself, and upon all occa-
sions whatever, is unlawful, neither the most rigid philo-
sophers, nor the most severe Christians, have ever been
able to prove. It is one of those passions that are im-
planted in us by the God of nature. The first motions
of it seem to be mechanical, and the hastiness or slowness
of it depends, in a great measure, upon the temper of
the body, and the animal spirits : so far then as it is
natural, we dare not account it criminal, for fear of
making God, who hath implanted it in us, the author of
sin. Those who define it ' a desire of revenge,' or of
doing evil to another, purely because he has done so to
us, make it indeed a sinful passion, and a plain violation
of that command which requires us 6 ' not to avenge
ourselves, but rather give place unto wrath ;' but if it be
considered 7 as proceeding upon a desire of obtaining
satisfaction for some injury done to us, or to those for
whom we are concerned, the honour of God, the reverence
due to the laws, the love of virtue, and the protection of
good men, may make this not only innocent, but highly
necessary and commendable. There is a tameness of
spirit that justly deserves censure; and in some cases
we even do not well unless we are angry : and for this
reason, I make no doubt it was, s that our blessed Sa-
viour, on some occasions, suffered himself to be seen in
some degrees of this passion, namely to evince the law-
fulness of it, and, by his example, to confute the doctrine
of those heathen stoics, who condemned the use of all
' 2 Tim. iv. 2.
Ibid. ii. 15.
Eph.iv. 11, &c.
2 Cor.
L6.
s Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii.
« Rom. xii. 19. ' Whitby's Aniic.tat.iuns on Mat.
6 Nichols's Conference, part o. p. 410.
passions, and were for making those natural tendencies
which God has given us altogether superfluous.
For religion admits of no such paradoxical notions ;
when it requires us to be 9 slow to wrath, it allows of the
passion upon a just provocation, and only blames him1*
who is angry with his brother without a cause ; and when
it gives us this caution, u ' be angry and sin not, let not
the sun go down upon your wrath,' it supposes the thing
itself warrantable, and only prohibits the excess or long
duration of it. It is the rash, causeless, and continued
anger, that our holy religion condemns : but Avho shall
say, that our Saviour's resentment to the Pharisees was
not upon good grounds, when they, by their traditions,
had made void the moral law, excused men from doing
what God had commanded, and laid upon them other
unnecessary burdens, which he had no where enjoined ?
When the pride and arrogance of their sect, and their
contempt and hatred of all that contradicted them, made
it necessary for him to use some smartness in his repre-
hensions, thereby to excite them to sensibility of their
errors, they 12 had consulted with the Herodians how
they might destroy him ; the works which he did by the
finger of God, they had ascribed to a diabolical power ;
and therefore no wonder that he should look upon th«m
with indignation, because of the hardness of their hearts.
But when there was no such cause for any degree of
anger, and where the glory of God was not immediately
concerned, his whole life was the most perfect pattern
of meekness and patience, according to that prediction
concerning him, 13 ' he shall not cry, nor lift up, nor
cause his voice to be heard in the streets, a bruised reed
shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not
quench.'
But how comes it then, that St Mark, in his gospel,
represents our Saviour a person that was supposed 14 to
be beside himself? Various are the significations which
are given to the word i%t<ri% in this place ; but there are
three that bid fairest for the solution of that difficulty. 15
In the preceding verse it is said, that the multitude came
so fast upon him, that he had not time to take any food
to recruit his spirits ; and thereupon some interpreters
would have the word signify his fainting through hunger,
or being in danger of falling into a deliquium by spend-
ing his spirits, and taking no manner of refreshment to
revive them.1(i Others had rather mean by the word such
an ecstasy, or transport of mind, as those who are moved
with a vehement zeal, or prophetic spirit, are wont to
be affected with; and consequently that his friends'
apprehensions were, that, in the execution of his pro-
phetic office, that is, in his preaching1 and instructing the
people, he expended his strength too much, forgetful of
that care and preservation which he ought to have had
of himself. But for my part I cannot see why the word
may not here be taken in its common and ordinary
sense, for what is called madness and distraction. We
acknowledge, indeed, that our Lord, neither in his
actions nor gestures, showed ever any symptoms of a dis-
ordered mind : nor could his relations, from any be-
haviour of his, conceive any such thing of him : but then
the words in the text, I'Asyoi/ yoL^, ' for they said,' may
9 James i. 19. io Mat. v. 22. " Eph. iv. 2fi.
12 Mark iii. 6. » ISl xlii. 2, 3. " Mark iii. 21.
'•' Wltithy in locum. '6 Hammond's Annotation.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
933
A. M. 403V A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5410. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-
not relate to his friends, but to other people who had
raised this report of him. The Pharisees had given out
that he had a devil, and did all these miracles by a con-
federacy with him : and others who did not run to this
length of blasphemy, said nevertheless that he was mad,
and his head turned ; and when this came to his friends'
ears, they, out of a charitable design perhaps, went to
apprehend him, supposing that he might possibly be
under some such disorder ; and not rightly understanding
the end of his mission, as the evangelist1 informs us,
that some of his kindred did not believe in him. And
indeed, z if we consider with ourselves how common a
thing it is to look upon those who think or speak, or act
in a manner different from other people, as fools and
madmen ; how this was the fate 3 of the young prophet
before Jehu's companions, and of St Paul 4 before
Festus ; we shall not think it strange that our Lord
should fall under the same opprobrious imputation, or
that his relations, who had no true conception of him or
his office, hearing of this rumour, should endeavour to
get him into their custody, and so prevent his exposing
himself to the scorn and derision of those that hated
him. For though some of the people were of opinion,
that ' he spake as never man spake, 5 yet many of them
said, he has a devil, and is mad, why hear ye him ?'
The name of Peter or Cephas, as it is in the Syriac,
our blessed Lord gave to Simon, when his brother
Andrew first brought them together ; and in allusion to
this name it is, that he calls him the rock, or stone, upon
which lie intended to build his church. Some indeed by
this rock think, that our Saviour intends himself, 6 and
that, in uttering these words, he pointed at his own per-
son, as he seems to have done upon another like occa-
sion, when he speaks to the Jews,7 destroy this temple,
meaning his own body, and in three days I will raise it
up : but the sense seems abstruse, and the transition
abrupt, that our 8 Saviour, speaking to Peter, and call-
ing him a rock, should, with the same breath, pass to
himself, and yet not say, upon myself but upon this
rock, and St Peter was the only rock he mentioned, will
I build my church." Others therefore would rather have
St Peter's faith and confession to be the rock here
spoken of, as it must be acknowledged indeed, that, in
tliis confession of his, the sum and substance of the
Christian doctrine is comprised ; but then it should be
considered, that as our Lord, without all doubt, meant
to say something singular to St Peter, as a reward of
his frank confession of him, if this confession was all
the rock he intended, here was nothing particular said
to the apostle, and yet, at the same time, the whole
grace of the allusion to his name was entirely lost. It
is reasonable therefore to think, 9 that as our Saviour
here directs his speech, not to the whole college of the
1 John vii. 5. aCalmet's Commentary in locum.
'2 Kings ix. 11. '•Acts xxvi. 24. 5 John x. 20.
c Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv. 7 John ii. 19.
8 Poole's Annotations on Mat. xvi. 18.
9 Whitby's Annotations in locum.
a Promising that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his
church, our Lord promises not only perpetuity to the church, to
the last moment of the world's existence, notwithstanding the
successive mortality of all its members in all ages, but what is
much more, a final triumph over the power of the grave. Firmly
as the gates of hades may be haired, they shall have no power
to confine his departed saints, when the last trump shall sound,
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v.l— vii. 1.
apostles, but to St Peter only, and seems to promise
him something peculiar as the reward of his liberal con-
fession, the sense of the expression should be, that he
would, in a more eminent manner, make use of his
ministry, in laying the first foundation of the Christian
church, both among the Jews and Gentiles, as we find
he did the former, 10 in his most efficacious sermon at
the day of pentecost, and the latter, u in the conversion
of Cornelius and his company.
There is a passage in Isaiah, which, as some imagine,
helps us to the knowledge of what our Saviour means
1 by the keys of the kingdom of heaven ;' * it is where
God foretells Eliakim,12 that he ' will call him and clothe
him with the robe of Shebna, (who 13 was over the house-
hold,) and strengthen him with his girdle, and commit his
government into his hand and lay the key of the house
of David c upon his shoulder,' &c. Now, because the
'0 Acts ii. 1' Ibid. x. »* Is. xxii. 20. " Ibid. ver. 15.
and the voice of the archangel shall thunder through the deep. —
Horsley's Sermons. — Ed.
b On this subject Bishop Horsley has the following excellent re-
marks. St Peter's custody of the keys was a temporary, not a
perpetual authority: its object was not individuals, but the whole
human race. The kingdom of heaven upon earth is the true
church of God. It is now, therefore, the Christian church ; —
formerly the Jewish church was that kingdom. The true church
is represented in this text, as in many passages of holy writ,
under the image of a walled city, to be entered only at the
gates. Under the Mosaic economy these gates were shut, and
particular persons only could obtain admittance, — Israelites by
birth, or by legal incorporation. The locks of these gates were
the rites of the Mosaic law, which obstructed the entrance ot
aliens. But, after our Lord's ascension, and the descent of the
Holy Ghost, the keys of the city were given to St Peter, by that
vision which taught him, and authorised him to teach others,
that all distinctions of one nation from another were at an end.
By virtue of this special commission, the great apostle applied
the key, pushed back the bolt of the lock, and threw the gates of
the city open for the admission of the whole gentile world, in
the instance of Cornelius and his family. To this, and to this
only, our Lord prophetically alludes, when he promises to St
Peter the custody of the keys. With this, the second article of
the promise, the authority to loose and bind, is closely connected.
This again being, by virtue of our rule of interpretation, peculiar
to St Peter, must be a distinct thing from the perpetual standing
power of discipline, conveyed upon a later occasion to the church
in general, in the same figurative terms. St Peter was the first
instrument of providence in dissolving the obligation of the
Mosaic law in the ceremonial, and of binding it in the moral
part. The rescript, indeed, for that purpose, was drawn by St
James, and confirmed by the authority of the apostles, in
general, under the direction of the Holy Ghost; but the Holy
Ghost moved the apostles to this great business by the suggestion
and the persuasion of St Peter, as we read in the fifteenth chapter
of the Acts of the Apostles. And this was his particular and
personal commission to bind and loose. I must not quit this
part of my subject without observing, that no authority over the
rest of the apostles was given to St Peter, by the promise made
to him, in either or in both its branches; nor was any right con-
veyed to him, which could descend from him to his successors
in any see. The promise was indeed simply a prediction that
he would be selected to be the first instrument in a great work
of providence, which was of such a nature as to be done oik e
for all; and, being done, it cannot be repeated. The great
apostle fulfilled his commission in his lifetime. He applied his
key, — he turned back the lock, — he loosed and he bound. The
gates of the kingdom of heaven are thrown open, — the ceremonial
law is abrogated— the moral is confirmed; and the successors of
St Peter, in the see of Rome, can give neither furtherance nor
obstruction to the business. — Horsley's Servions. — Ed.
c This custom of carrying keys upon men's shoulders may
seem very strange to us: but the ancients had their keys made
very large, and in the form of a sickle, and the weight and shape
of them was such, that they could no otherwise be carried con-
934
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D.31 ; OR, A. M. 5410. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. I.
key was an ensign of great honour and power, and what
the chief stewards in princes' palaces usually wore, as an
indication of their office, our Saviour makes use of this
expression, to denote that authority and jurisdiction
wherewith he invested the apostles and their successors
in the administration of the affairs of his church. But,
besides the key of government, there is 1 the key of
knowledge, which the scribes and Pharisees are blamed
for having taken away ; and therefore as the use of a key
is to open a door or gate, we should rather think the
import of Christ's promise here to Peter is, 2 that he
should be the person who should first open the mysteries
of the gospel-dispensation, both to Jew and Gentile ;
by the power of his preaching, make the first converts
among both; and, by the rite of baptism, receive such
converts into the pale of the Christian church : and by
the binding and loosing which follow, though some are
willing to extend them to the power of excommunication
and absolution, I should rather be inclined to think,
that, according to the language then in use among the
Jews, our Saviour means the forbidding or permitting
such and such things ; that 3 he is here declaring his will,
that his apostles should settle the affairs of his church
by virtue of their infallible Spirit; should determine
what was lawful or unlawful for Christians to do, and
that such their determinations should be ratified in
lieaven; " whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, that is,
declare, to be forbidden, shall expose the man that com-
mits it to punishment ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose
on earth, or declare to be lawful now, though formerly
forbidden, shall be allowed to be done, without any
one's incurring my displeasure." So that in this sense
the words are a foundation of our faith and obedience
to the doctrines and commands of the apostles, and of
the cessation of the ritual precepts of the law of Moses.
According to this exposition, the sense of our Lord's
promise to Peter, supposing it personal, and directed to
him only, will be this — 4 " Thy name signifies a rock,
and, suitable to that name shall be thy work and office ;
for upon thee, that is, upon the strength of thy preach-
ing, shall the foundation of my church be laid. Thee I
will appoint to make the first converts, both of Jews and
Gentiles, to my holy religion, and, by the ordinance of
baptism to admit them into the communion of saints ;
and to thee I will give power to enact laws, for the good
government of my church ; to determine what is proper
or improper to be done, and to release my people from
the observation of legal ceremonies."
This is the full force of our Saviour's speech to
Peter ; and yet it neither denotes nor implies any oecu-
menical, pastoral power in him, much less in his suc-
cessors, above the rest of the apostles. For, if he be
here called the rock, or foundation-stone, the same
honour is attributed to the rest, where it is said, that 5
' we are built upon the foundation of the prophets and
apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-
stone.' If he had the power of the keys intrusted with
him, and thereby admitted the first converts, both Jews
1 Luke xi. 52. 2 Whitby's Annotations on Mat. xvi. 19.
s Poole's Annotations on Mat. xvi. IS.
4 Whithy's Annotations. * Eph. ii. 20.
veniently, but as wo see our reapers carry their sickles. — Cal-
l/ut'i Dictionary under the word Key.
and Gentiles, into the Christian church ; both James and
John exercised the same office, in converting those of
the circumcision ; and St Paul opened the kingdom of
heaven to many more Gentiles than ever he did. If he
had authority to discharge the converts he made from
the observation of the ceremonial law, St Paul, without
doubt, had the same with regard to this, and perhaps a
clearer notion of the Christian liberty, than St Peter
seems to have had, when he gave occasion to the other
to 6 withstand him to the face, and so frequently to
declare, ' that we are not justified by the works of the
law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ:' and, whatever
the sense of binding and loosing may be, it is certain,
that the same power and authority was given, in as
ample a manner to all the apostles in general, where it
is said, 7 'whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be
bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth,
shall be loosed in heaven :' and again s ' whosesoever sins
ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever
sins ye retain, they are retained.' So wisely did our
blessed Saviour settle an equality among his apostles,
that9 ' there might be no schism in his church,' but that 10
' in him all the building fitly framed together,' as the
apostle continues the metaphor, ' might grow unto an
holy temple in the Lord !'
Nothing certainly can be plainer in scripture, than
that the sin against the Holy Ghost, which our Saviour
mentions as a sin unpardonable, is to be understood of
the Pharisees imputing the miracles, which he wrought
by the power of the Holy Ghost, to the power of the
devil ; and yet, I know not how, a great many learned
men have made shift to mistake it. n A denial of
Christ's divinity, a denial of his religion for fear of
suffering, a wilful opposition to the truth, a malicious
envying other men's graces, gross relapses into sin, or
final impenitence, and perseverance therein, have, some
by one, and some by others, been made the character-
istics of this sin ; and yet the very occasion of our
Saviour's discourse concerning it cannot but give us
quite different conceptions.
12 He had just now healed one possessed of a devil,
blind and dumb, whereat the people were much amazed,
and began to say among themselves, ' is not this the son
of David ?' that is, the promised Messiah : which when
the Pharisees understood, they gave this vile and malici-
ous turn to the miracle, ' this fellow does not cast out
devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.' This
calumny our Saviour undertook to confute, by showing
how unlikely a thing it was, that the devil should lend
him his power to use it against himself; and then pro-
ceeds to discourse of this sin, 13 ' wherefore I say unto
you, all manner of sin and blasphemy,' which is of
another nature, ' shall be forgiven unto men, but the
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven
unto them.' The Pharisees therefore are the persons
charged with the sin, and the sin is, their attributing
what was done by the finger of God to a diabolical
power.
14 A learned annotator of our own is of opinion, that,
6 Gal. ii. 11. 16. ' Mat. xviii. 18. 8 John xx. 23.
9 1 Cor. xii. 25. 1Q Eph. ii. 21. u Tillotson's Sermons, vol. i.
18 Mat. xii. 22. 13 Ibid. ver. 31.
'4 Whitby, in his Appendix to the xiith chapter of St Matthew.
Seat. II.]
PROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
935
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D.29. FROM MAT.xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 83.— Ix, I I. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37- JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
resist the last and utmost means of their conviction, and,
consequently, neither will nor can repent ; especially,
though our Saviour entered upon this discourse, because
the Pharisees imputed his miracles to a confederacy with
Satan, yet his chief design was to deter his hearers
from blaspheming the ensuing dispensation of the Holy
Ghost, which, upon his resurrection and ascension, he
had promised to send down from heaven : so that this
sin against the Holy Ghost neither was, nor could be
committed, when our Saviour spake these words, not
until the time that its miraculous gifts were communicated
to the apostles, which was on the day of Pentecost.
But, besides that our blessed Saviour had not as yet
made mention either of his own ascension, or of the
mission of the Holy Ghost, since the power, whereby
both he and his apostles wrought their miracles, pro-
ceeded from the same divine Spirit, a reviling this
power, when our Saviour did the miracle, must be blas-
phemy against the Holy Ghost, as much as it was when
his apostles did it ; and so the difference amounts to
nothing.
1 Our blessed Lord indeed, to show that he was sent
from God, wrought miracles, such as did plainly evince
a divine power and presence accompanying him. These
miracles, to which he frequently appeals, the Pharisees
were eye-witnesses of, and therefore could not deny
them ; yet such was their hatred and opposition to him
and his doctrine, that, rather than allow his divine mis-
sion, they were resolved to ascribe all he did to the
power of the devil. Their design in this was to destroy
the whole credit of Christianity, and, by making him a
confederate with Satan, to represent his religion as the
work and contrivance of hell, and such only as would
tend to the mischief and destruction of mankind. To
slander and calumniate the Son of Man, was a great
sin, no doubt, but such as might more easily be forgiven
them, because of his state of humiliation, and poor
appearance, which might occasion their disesteem : but
to represent the Spirit of God as an apostate angel, and
whatever he did for the good and salvation of mankind,
as the work and intrigue of the devil, is a sin of such a
horrid nature, as may well deserve a particular exemp-
tion from the general promise and covenant of pardon.
2 God, no doubt, can, if he will, work so powerfully
upon the minds of men by his grace and Spirit, as to
convince the most obstinate ; and, supposing them to be
convinced, and repent, it cannot be denied, but that
they would be forgiven: and therefore, when our Saviour
says, that such 'as blaspheme against the Holy Ghost,
shall not be forgiven,' it is reasonable to suppose, that
he means, that when men are come to such a degree of
inveterate malice, God, as he justly may, will withdraw
his grace from them, and leave them to the bent of their
perverse minds, which will insensibly engage them in a
further opposition to the truth, and sink them finally into
perdition ; so that being deserted of God, and, for want
of the necessary aid of his grace, continuing finally
impenitent, they become incapable of forgiveness ' both
in this world, and in that which is to come.' The short
then of all is this, that the sin against the Holy Ghost
is unpardonable, not because there is not a sufficiency
of merit in Christ to atone for it, or of mercy in God the
Father to forgive it, but because those who commit it
are of such a refractory and incorrigible spirit, that they
if God in judgment, as it sometimes happens, and 3 ' be-
cause they received not the love of the truth, that they
might be saved, should send upon them a strong delu-
sion, that they might believe a lie.'
That which has made some passages in the Gth chapter
of St John's gospel, and especially the command of '
' eating the flesh, and drinking the blood of the Son of
Man,' a matter of so much perplexity, is the want of
attending to the occasion of his discourse, and the
figurative forms of expression that were then in use in
the eastern nations. Our Lord, it seems, but the day
before, 5 had fed a great number of people with a very
small matter of provisions. The day following they
resort to him, in hopes of the same bounteous supply.
Our Lord, who knew their design, rebuked their greedy
appetite. They, in return, reminded him of Moses's
liberality, much superior to his, in providing them manna
for the space of forty years. Hereupon our Lord took
occasion to acquaint them, 6 ' that he was the bread of
God, which came down from heaven,' "■ highly preferable
to manna ; forasmuch as that gave only their forefathers
a transitory, but this an everlasting life to the whole
world : for 7 ' he that cometh to me,' continues he, ' shall
never hunger ; and he that believeth in me shall never
thirst ;' and again, 8 ' I am the living (or rather life-
giving) bread, which came down from heaven ; if any
man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever, and the
bread that I will give him is my flesh, which I will give
for the life of the world. 9 For my flesh is meat indeed,
and my blood is drink indeed : he that eateth my flesh,
and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise
him up at the last day.'
Now, whosoever considers the genius of the eastern
languages, abounding in lofty, and sometimes abstruse,
figures, and how common a thing it was, among the Jews
especially, to use the metaphors of eating and drinking
in a spiritual sense, namely, to denote the exercise or
l.Tillotsou's Sermuua. vol. i.
2 Ibid.
3 2 Thess. ii. 10. 11. 4 John vi. 52. 5 Ibid. ver. 9, 10.
6 Ibid. ver. 33. 7 Ibid. ver. 35. 8 Ibid. ver. 51 .
» Ibid. ver. 54, 55.
a There is a beautiful gradation observable in our Lord's dis-
course. The first time that he called liimself the bread of life,
(John vi. 35.) he assigned the reason of the name somewhat
obscurely. ' He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he
that believeth on me shall never thirst.' The second time that
he called himself ' the bread of life,' verse 47, he spake to the
same purpose as before, but more plainly ; ' he that believeth on
me, hath everlasting life;' therefore 'I am the bread of life.'
And by connecting tbis with his affirmation, verse 46, that he
was the only teacher of mankind that had ever personally seen
and been taught of the Father, he insinuated that he gave life
to men by his doctrine, being on that account also the bread of
life. The third time he called himself bread, he added to the
name the epithet of living, not only because he gives life to men
by raising them from the dead, and making them eternally
happy, but because he giveth them this life by means of his
human nature, which was not an inanimate thing like the
manna, but a living substance. For he told them plainly that
the bread or meat which he would give them was his flefh,
which he would give for the life of the world, and spake uf
men's eating it, in order to its having that effect. But the
meaning of this expression he had directed them to before,
when in calling himself the bread of life, he always joined be-
lieving on him, as necessary to men's living by him. AV here-
fore, to eat, in the remaining part of tiiis discourse, is to believe.
— Mack-night's Harmony. — Ed,
936
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIH.
A. M. 4035. A. D.31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
improvement of any of the intellective faculties of the
soul, will not be much surprised at our Saviour's expres-
sing- himself in this manner. ' ' Ho, every one that
thirsteth,'says the prophet, exhorting the people to hear
his instructions, ' come ye to the waters, and he that hath
no money, come ye, buy and eat, yea, come buy wine
and milk, without money and without price ; and eat ye
that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in
fatness.' To the same purpose we frequently find Philo
calling- wisdom and virtue the food of the soul, which
nourishes it to eternal life ; and 3 the Talmudists telling
us, " that all the eating and drinking which is mentioned
in the book of Ecclesiastes, relates to the observation of
the law, and good works :" nay, manna, in particular,
according to the sense of some Jewish authors, was an
eminent type of Christ ; and therefore," the good man,"
3 says Philo, " lifts up his eyes to heaven, looking to the
manna, the divine and heavenly "hoyog, the incorruptible
food of the soul, that loves God ;" and if this was the
Jews' sense of things, our Saviour was guilty of no pre-
sumption in styling himself the ' true bread which came
down from heaven,' nor of any absurdity in insisting upon
a metaphor which so frequently occurred in the best of
their authors. The only question is, whether our Savi-
our's words in this place are to be taken in a literal or
metaphorical sense ? that is, whether they relate to a
corporeal or spiritual eating his flesh ?
There is something so shocking in the very notion of
one man's eating the flesh of another, that when the Jews
heard our Saviour, as they imagined, discourse at this
rate, they might well say, * " How can this man give us
his flesh to eat? 5 Will he cut it to pieces, and distribute
to every one of us a share ? It is no agreeable thought
to eat human flesh ; but, supposing we could bring our-
selves to that, how could he multiply himself into so many
parts, as that each of us might have one ? Or how could
himself subsist, if he should, in this barbarous .and in-
human manner, cut and mangle his own body ?" This
seems to be the reasoning of the Jews upon the case : 6
but, on all hands, it is agreed, that they mistook the sense
of our Saviour's words, and fancied such a meaning in
them as he never intended ; whereas, had the literal sense
been the proper and intended meaning, it is certain, that
they imposed no false construction upon what he said ;
since, upon this supposition, he intended that his human
flesh should properly be eaten, and they, in their ques-
tioning the truth of what he said, meant no more.
We may observe farther, that when our Saviour knew
within himself that the abstruseness of his discourse upon
this subject had given some disgust to his disciples, 7 ' he
said unto them, Does this offend you ? What, and if you
should see the Son of Man ascend up where he was be-
fore ?' The only sense of which words can be,8 "Are
you offended that I thus speak of giving you my flesh to
eat? Do you look on this expression now us a thino- so
very absurd and unintelligible ? What then will you think
of it, when this body is removed hence into heaven ? that
is, How will you then be scared, and think it still more
difficult, and more impossible to apprehend, how ye shall
10.
.52.
' Is. lv. 1, 2. 2 Maimon. More. Nev. b. i.
s L. De eo quud deterius. page 137. 4 Jolm
* Calmet's Comment, in locum.
0 Whitby's Annotations in locum. 7 John vi. 61. 62.
s Whitby's Annotations.
then eat my flesh, and drink my blood, provided ye go
on to understand my words in a gross and carnal manner?"
For St Athanasius has well observed, that our Saviour
here mentions his ascent into heaven, that he might divert
his disciples from entertaining a carnal sense of his
words : and therefore his argument is, — " Since it will
be then impossible for you to eat my flesh corporeally,
when it is so far removed from you ; by this you may
perceive, that my purpose is, that you should understand
my words in a spiritual sense."
We may observe again, that when several disciples
revolted upon the account of this hard saying, as 9 it is
called, and our Saviour was apprehensive that his apos-
tles might do the like, St Peter, in the name of-the rest,
answers him,10 ' Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast
the words of eternal life :' whereas had he understood
our Saviour as speaking here of oral manducation, his
answer very probably would have been to this effect :
" Whatsoever appearance there may be of inhumanity,
absurdness, and impossibility, in eating thy natural flesh,
and drinking thy blood, yet we believe it because thou
hast said it, who art truth itself, and able to make good
thy words." But since we hear nothing from him of this
tendency, we may reasonably conclude, that he had no
such notion of our Saviour's words. And indeed our
Saviour, one would think, had done enough to explain
his own meaning, when he tells us, that the eating which
he intends is ll believing on him, and that it was such an
eating as would make a man 13 live for ever ; that 13 flesh,
if we could eat it, profiteth nothing, since the soul can
only be nourished by spiritual food ; and that therefore
the words which he spake unto them were spirit, that is,
were to be understood in a spiritual sense, otherwise they
would not be conducive to eternal life : and therefore u
Eusebius introduces our Saviour as thus addressing his
disciples, " Do not think that I speak of that flesh where-
with I am compassed, as if you must eat of that ; neither
imagine that I command you to drink my bodily blood,
but understand well, that the words which I have spoken
unto you. they are spirit and life." For, as St Austin
15 lays down the rule for the exposition of scripture-
phrases, '* if the saying be preceptive, either forbidding
a wicked action, or enjoining a good one, it is no figura-
tive speech ; but if it seems to command any wickedness,
or to forbid what is profitable and good, it is figurative."
Accordingly this saying, " except ye eat the flesh of the
Son of Man, and drink his blood, seems to command a
wicked thing, and is therefore a figure, enjoining us to
communicate in the passion of our love, and sweetly and
profitably remember, that his flesh was wounded and
crucified for us." 16 In this sense, his flesh and blood
are d^nSag, truly meat and drink ; because the eating of
this flesh by faith in his salutary passion doth nourish
the soul to life eternal ; and the drinking of his blood
by faith, as that which was shed for the remission of sins
does refresh the person thirsting after righteousness,
and convey into him a principle of living well, and of
living for ever. a
9 John vi. 60. 10 Ibid. ver. 6S. n Ibid. ver. 47.
12 Ibid. ver. 51. 13 Ibid. ver. (ij-i.
14 De Eccles. Theolog. b. iii. c. 12.
,5 De Doctrin. Christian, b. iii. c. IK.
16 Whitby's Annotations on John vi. 55.
a It is a disputed point whether in what is said at ver. 50. about
Sect. 11.1
FROM THE BIRTH OP CHRIST, &c
937
A. M. 4035. A. \j. 31; OR, A. M. 54-10. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MAHKii.23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. I— vii.
Thus we have gone through the several objections
that are usually made to the facts contained in the evan-
gelical history of this period ; and, if it would be of any
farther satisfaction to those that delight to make them,
we might show, that whatever is recorded of our blessed
Saviour, the like, in one instance or other, the heathens
themselves have acknowledged in their deified heroes
and great men : ' that the same power of curing all
kinds of diseases the Greeks ascribe to their jKsculapius,
and the Egyptians to their Serapis and Isis. That Ha-
drian, according ~ to Spartianus, was cured of fever, by
the touch of a certain blind man : that Sesostris, king of
Egypt, upon offering a sacrifice to the god Mnevis, was
restored to his eyesight : that Vespasian, if we may
believe Tacitus, cured a man of his lameness, and an-
other of his blindness, by anointing his eyes with spittle,
in the manner that our Saviour did : and that Apollo-
nius Tyanseua, whom 3Philostratus sets up as a powerful
rival of our Lord's miracles, cured a young man that was
possessed with a devil ; and when he had restored him
to his right senses, received him into the number of his
disciples. Simplicius, in his dissertations upon Epicte-
tus, seems to promise to all pious and wise men the
power of calming the waves of the sea ; and how Neptune
rebuked and allayed the winds, which, without his per-
mission, had raised a tempestuous storm, is a story well
known, and well set off in 4 Virgil. Every poet almost
mentions this same Neptune's riding in his chariot on the
surface of the sea ; and the tradition is, that to his son
Euphemus, and his nephew Orion, he gave the faculty of
walking upon it without fear of sinking. Nothing can be
more common among the fictions of these writers, than the
transfiguration of their gods upon one occasion or other ;
and that our Saviour's method of electing his disciples
might not want a precedent in profane history, s we are
told that the famous eastern philosopher Confucius, out
of the three thousand followers that he had, made choice
of seventy-two of principal note, and, out of these, of
twelve only to be his more immediate companions, and
to whom he committed the hidden mysteries of his
1 Huetii Qurcst. 18. Alnet. b. ii.
* ^Elius Spartian. Hadrian, c. 25.
3 Philost. Vit. A poll. b. iv, c. 6. i iEneid 1.
5 Martin, Hist. Sinica, b. iv.
eating, &c, there is a reference to the eucharist, or not. The
affirmative was maintained by most ancients, and is by most
moderns, especially the Romanist interpreters: while the nega-
tive has been adopted by many of the most eminent expositors,
of the ancient ones by Tertull., Clem., Alex., Origan, Cyrill,
Chrys., and Augustine; and of the moderns, by Grot., Whitby,
Wolf, Lampe, Tittm., and Kuin., who show that the context will
not permit us to take the words of the eucharist. (See Reccns.
St/nop. and Tittm.) But though they successfully prove that by
eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ, must here be
meant securing to ourselves the benefits of the sacrifices of Christ
by a true and lively faith, yet that will not prove that there is no
reference by allusion to the eucharist. Hence I would, with Dr
Hey and Mr Holden, steer a middle course, and take the passage
primarily of the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, and the benefits
thence derived by faith ; and secondarily, as a prophetic intima-
tion of the advantages to be derived from a worthy participation
of the sacrament of the Lord's supper; since the two have so
close a relation one to the other, that the mention of the one
must suggest the other. Thus in speaking of the offering of his
body, our Lord may be supposed to have had reference, by anti-
cipation, to that sacrament, soon to be instituted, in which, to
the end of time, that sacrifice would be typified and its benefit,
applied. — BloomfieUV t Greek Testament. — Ed.
philosophy : but our happiness is, that the credibility
of the scripture history wants no such weak supports as
these.
CHAP. III. Of the Prophecies relating to the
Messiah, and their accomplishment in our blessed
Saviour.
One great evidence of our Saviour's divine mission,
and, consequently, of the truth of his religion, is the
completion of the ancient prophecies, relating to the
Messiah, in his person, doctrine, and miracles. He in-
deed makes more frequent appeal to his miracles : 6 ' The
works which the Father hath given me to finish,' says he,
'the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the
Father hath sent me.' But since, at the same time, he
lays claim to the character of being the person spoken of
by Moses and the prophets, when he bids the people 7
' search the Scriptures, because they testified of him ;'
it is certain, that his title to the Messiahship must be tried,
by the testimony of the prophets ; and all the miracu-
lous works which he did, Avill not prove him to be the
Messenger of the covenant, whom God was to send, un-
less the several predictions, which his servants the pro-
phets gave of that renowned person, are found to unite
and agree in him. It can hardly be thought, but that
God almighty, who designed such an inestimable benefit
for mankind, as the sending his own Son into the world
for the redemption of it, should give some previous
notice of his coming, and draw his picture, as it were,
so much to the life and likeness, that, when the original
should be brought to view, it might be known and dis-
tinguished by it. It is acknowledged, I think, on all
hands, that the prophets, at sundry times, and in divers
manners, have done this ; s that each of them, in his
turn, has drawn out a feature, if I may so say, and left
some masterly stroke behind him of this great personage
that was to come from heaven ; that one has described
his parentage, another the time, another the place, and
another the uncommon manner of his birth ; that some
have taken notice of the most remarkable actions and
events of his life, and several of the most minute and
altogether singular circumstances of his death ; that by
some his resurrection is foretold, by others his ascent to
the throne of God, and by others, the perpetual duration
of his kingdom. And, if the prophets are allowed to
have done this, our only inquiry is, Whether the linea-
ments, which they, in their several capacities, have
drawn of the promised Messiah, when all brought to-
gether, be answerable to the account, which the evan-
gelists have given us in their history of the blessed
Jesus ?
We readily own indeed, that there is a great obscurity
in the ancient prophecies." They are generally penned in
o John v. 36. » Ibid. v. 39.
8 Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's lecture.
a There has been much complaint about the obscurity of pro-
phecy. But the absurdity of the complaint has been so often ex-
posed, and is so palpable to the reflecting mind, that it cannot be
necessary to say much respecting it. The language of prophecy
might be so clear and ambiguous as altogether to defeat its own
object. Were it as explicit as seems to be demanded, an indi-
vidual, placed in favourable circumstances for the purpose,
G c
9^8
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-
a very exalted style, and abound with so many bold meta-
phors, and hyperbolical expressions, so many allegories
and parables, and other abstruse forms of speech, as
make it very difficult for the interpreters of scripture to
discover their true scope or meaning. The prophecies
relating to the Messiah are still more obscure ; because,
p.s they consider him in the different capacities of his
humiliation and exaltation, unless this distinction is taken
along with us, when we apply them to one and the same
person, they will seem to load his character with con-
tradictions. But still, since it is acknowledged, that
the great design of prophecy was to acquaint the world
with the Messiah, and that upon whatever particular
occasions God sent his messengers, he always made
this one part of their errand, we can hardly believe, that
he would multiply these messages to no purpose ; or,
when he pretended to reveal this matter to them, mock
them with unintelligible words, and leave them as much
in the dark as he found them. He might indeed, for
wise purposes, 1 ' multiply visions, and use similitudes,
2 dark speeches, by the ministry of the prophets ;' but in
this grand discovery of all, he certainly left such indi-
cations as enabled those, who looked for the redemption
of Israel, and accordingly made it their business to
search the scriptures, and inquire into the marks of the
Messiah, to attain to a competent knowledge of them.
Nor can it be well doubted, but that the Jews had some
fixed and well known rules, though they have not
descended to us, whereby they distinguished the pas-
sages in the prophetic writings which related to this im-
portant subject, from any others, a because we find, that
1 Hos. xii. 19. 2 Num. xii. 8.
would have it in his power so to conform his own pretensions, as
well as his own appearance and manner of life, to what had been
foretold, as to impose himself on the world for the person actually
designed in the language of the prophet ; — Or, if no such de-
ceitful attempt were made, still the person designed would, in a
great measure, lose the advantage which the fulfilment of pro-
phecy was intended to afford him ; for it would be urged with
too much seeming reason, that the prophetic language had put
it in his power to bring about its fulfilment in the way best cal-
culated to accomplish his object. It was therefore wisely
ordered that the prophecies concerning the Messiah should be
involved in as much obscurity as to leave no ground for this
objection. Yet we shall find, on the other hand, that the cir-
cumstances connected with their fulfilment reflect such li»ht on
the prophetic language, as may now satisfy every candid mind
respecting its original import. It is, besides, to be considered
that, if the language of the prophets respecting the advent and
character of the Messiah had been so explicit as to make it im-
possible for any one to misconstrue or misapply it, we can
scarcely suppose that the „ iws would have put him to death,
without their minds being so overruled of God as to deprive
them of their free agency. The operation and effect, therefore,
of such prophecies might, for aught we know, be incompatible
with the condition of men as accountable creatures. It is only
from such a degree of obscurity in the prophetic language as its
fulfilment effectually removes, that we have assurance of its
being a fit instrument iu the hands of an all-wise Being for
the accomplishment of his gracious purposes. — Br Inglis' Vindi-
cation of the Christian Faith. — Ed.
a This is by no means probable. If we look into the first
epistle of St Peter, we shall find that the ancient prophe-
cies, iu the text, and which he styles the ' more sure word
of prophecy,' were not apprehended or clearly unders'ood by
those inspired persons who delivered them; for there he re-
presents them ' searching what or what manner of time the
Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it tes-
tified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that
should follow:' i. 11. To the same purpose our Saviour speaks.
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
3 ' when Herod summoned the sanhedrim together, and
demanded where ' Christ was to be born,' they readily
replied 'at Bethlehem in Judea,' having the prophecy of
Micah 4 to that purpose ready to produce.'
We acknowledge again, that the prophecies concern-
ing the Messiah were delivered, not only in an obscure
manner, but in different proportions, and at very distant
times. Thus to Adam and Eve he was promised in
general, 5 as a man ; b to Abraham, 6 as his posterity ; to
3 Mat. ii. 3, etc. 4 Chap. v. 2. 5 Gen. iii. 15.
6 Ibid. xxii. 18.
Matt. xiii. 17. ' Many prophets and righteous men have desir-
ed to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them ;
and to hear those things which ye hear, and haver not heard
them.' St Paul gives the like account of the gift of prophecy
under the gospel dispensation: 'we know in part, and we pro-
phecy in part ; but when that which is perfect is come, then that
which is in part shall be done away. Now we see through a
glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part, but
then shall I know even as also I am known:' 1 Cor. xiii. 9,
10, 12. Now if the prophets and righteous men of old, to whom
the word of God came, did not clearly understand the things
which they foretold, but employed themselves in searching and
examining the prophetic testimonies of the Spirit which was in
them ; if the prophets of the New Testament knew only in part,
and prophecied only in part, seeing but darkly as through a glass;
it is most evident that others, in all appearance less qualified than
they to understand the determinate sense of the prophecies, could
have but a confused and indistinct notion of the things foretold.
The prophet Daniel, after a very extraordinary vision, which he
reports in his last chapter, immediately adds, ' I heard, but I
understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end
of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel; for the
words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.' The
answer here given to Daniel is very like the answer which our
Saviour gave the apostles, on an inquiry made by them: they
ask, ' Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to
Israel? And he said unto them, it is not for you to know the
times and seasons which the Father hath put in his own power:'
Acts i. 6, 7. It did belong to them undoubtedly and to eveiy
believing Jew, ' to give heed to the word of prophecy' accord-
ing to St Peter's exhortation in the text; and since it did not
belong to them to know the times and seasons, it is evident the
word of prophecy was not intended to give a clear and distinct
light in this case. — Sherlock on Prophecy, Discourse 2. — En.
b This prophecy was to our first parents but very obscure: it
was, in the phrase of St Peter, but a light shining in a dark
place: all that they could certainly conclude from it was, that
their case was not desperate ; that some remedy, that some de-
liverance from the evil they were under, would in time appear;
but when, or where, or by what means, they could not under-
stand : their own sentence, which returned them back again to the
dust of the earth, made it difficult to apprehend what this victory
over the serpent should signify, or how they who were shortly to
be dust and ashes, should be the better for it. But after all that
can be urged on this head to set out the obscurity of this promise,
I would ask one question: was not this promise or prophecy,
though surrounded with all this obscurity, a foundation for reli-
gion, and trust and confidence towards God after the fall, in hopes
of deliverance from the evils introduced by disobedience? If it
was, it fully answered the necessity of their case to whom it was
given, and manifested to them all that God intended to make
manifest. They could have had towards God no religion without
some hopes of mercy: it was necessary therefore to convey such
hopes; out to tell them how these hopes should be accomplished,
at what time and manner precisely, was not necessary to their
religion. And what now is to be objected against this prophecy?
It is very obscure you say; so it is: but it is obscure in the
points which God did not intend to explain at that time, and
which were not necessary to he known. You see a plain reason
for giving this prophecy, and as far as the reason for giving the
prophecy extends, so far the prophecy is very plain: it is obscure
only where there is no reason why it should be plain; which
surely is a fault easily to be forgiven, and very far from being a
proper subject for complaint. — Sherlock on Prophecy, Discourse
3.— Ed.
939
Skct. iij FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &o
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ■; OR, A.M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. 1.
Jacob, ' as descending from the tribe of Judali in parti-
cular; to David, that he should be of his family, and
the fruit of his body ; to Micah, that he should be born
at Bethlehem ; 3 to Isaiah, that his birth should be mira-
culous, and his mother a virgin ; 4 to the same prophet,
that his death should be for 5 the redemption of man-
kind ; to Daniel, 6 when the precise time of his suffering
should be ; to Haggai, lastly, and Zechariah and Mala-
chi, that 'all these events should be accomplished be-
fore the destruction of the second temple. 8 Now, not
to mention any more, if we compute the seasons of these
few, the general prediction of a Saviour in human
nature, will be found to bear date before that of his
being Abraham's seed, about two thousand and four-
score years ; from this, to the declaration of his parti-
cular tribe, were two hundred and fourscore years ;
thence to the prophecy of his particular family, above
six hundred years ; after that, to the signification
of his miraculous nativity, more than three hundred
years ; and from thence to the time of his public appear-
ance in the world, three hundred and fifty years, a or
thereabouts. Now, since these prophecies were thus de-
livered by degrees, and at such distant and different
times, it may easily so happen, that considering them
singly and apart, we may find some other person and
event, to which they may be adapted, without any great
violence to the text : but then the right way, in this case,
to make a judgment, is, not by separate and particular
passages, but by connexion of the whole, by the exact
coincidence, and entire agreement of all the prophecies,
which, at several times, denoted the Messiah, brought
into one point of light, and laid together. b This is the
only method we have to determine the matter : and ac-
cordingly, let us now look into some of the principal
passages of our Saviour's life, as it is recorded by the
lGen. xlix. 10. * Ps. cxxxii. 11. 3Chap.v.2 4 Is. vii. 14.
5 Ibid. lilt. 6 Chap. ix. 7 Hag. ii. Zech. xv. Mai. iii.
8 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
a These dates are all different from those given by Hales.
The rectified dates of that author will be found in the previous
part of this work. — Ed.
b Of any single text of prophecy, it is true that it cannot be
its own interpreter; for this reason, — because the scripture pro-
phecies are not detached predictions of separate nor independent
events, but are united in a regular and entire system, all termi-
nating in one great object — the promulgation of the gospel, and the
complete establishment of the Messiah's kingdom. Of this sys-
tem, every particular prophecy makes a part, and bears a more
immediate or a more remote relation to that which is the object
of the whole. It is therefore very unlikely that the true signi-
fication of any particular text of prophecy should be discovered
from the bare attention to the terms of the single prediction,
taken by itself, without considering it as a part of that system to
which it unquestionably belongs, and without observing how it
may stand connected with earlier and later prophecies, especially
with those which might more immediately precede or more im-
mediately follow it. Again, of the whole of the scripture pro-
phecies, it is true that it cannot be its own interpreter. Its
meaning never can be discovered, without a general knowledge
of the principal events to which it alludes ; for prophecy was not
given to enable curious men to pry into futurity, but to enable
the serious and considerate to discern in past events the hand of
providence. Every particular prophecy is to be referred to the
system, and to be understood in that sense which may most aptly
connect it with the whole; and the sense of prophecy in general
is to be sought in the events which have actually taken place,
the history of mankind, especially in the article of their religious
improvement, being the public- infallible interpreter of the oracles
of God. — Horsley's Sermons. — El).
evangelists, and so see whether they do not exactly agree
with the several characters which the prophets have given
us of the Messiah.
Our Lord Jesus, we are told, 9 was conceived and born
of a pure virgin, without the concurrence of any man :
for so the prophecy had foretold, that, 10 ' the seed of the
woman should bruise the serpent's head,' and that n ' a
virgin should conceive, and bear a son, and call his name
Innnanuel.' He was descended 12 of the family of David,
and born 13 at the town of Bethlehem ; because, in favour
to that king, God had promised that " ' he would estab-
lish his seed for ever,' and that 15 'out of Bethlehem a
ruler of Israel should come, whose goings forth had been
from everlasting :' and he was born I6 in the reign of king
Herod, that is, before the total dissolution of the Jewish
government, and during the standing of the second tem-
ple ; because one prophecy says, that 17 ' the sceptre
should not depart from Judah until Shiloh come ;' and
another, that 1S ' the desire of all nations should coine,'
and, by his presence, ' make the glory of God's latter
house greater than that of the former.'
Well : but before his appearance in the world, 19 John
the Baptist was appointed his forerunner, and came to
bear witness of him, because the Lord, by the mouth of
his prophets, had said, 20 ' Behold, I send my messenger,
and he shall prepare the way before me: 21 he shall cry
in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
straight an highway for our God.' When he made his
appearance in the world he took up his chief residence 22
in the province of Galilee ; because the prophet, speak-
ing of the inhabitants of that country, tells us, that ' upon
them 23 who dwelt before in the land of the shadow of
death, did a great light shine,' when they had it to say,
' Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
government shall be upon his shoulder,' &c. When he
came to converse in it, such was his quiet and inoffensive
temper and behaviour, that the prophet did not misrepre-
sent him, when he styled him 2i ' the Prince of Peace,'
and one 25 ' who would not cry, nor cause his voice to be
heard in the streets.' When he entered upon his public
ministry, the very actions which the evangelical prophet
had foretold of the Messiah, he performed to a tittle ;
' for 26 he preached good tidings to the meek, and pro-
claimed liberty to the captives ; he 27 opened the eyes of
the blind, and unstopped the ears of the deaf ; he made
the lame man to leap as an hart, and the tongue of the
dumb to sing.'
But, during the course of his ministry, our Saviour,
we read, lived in a very mean, obscure condition, and
suffered at last a violent death : and why so ? Because
of the Messiah it was foretold, that 2S ' he should be de-
spised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and ac-
quainted with grief; who should be cut off from the land
of the living, and pour out his soul unto death.' But,
for whom should he suffer all this ? ^ For us men, and
our salvation ; for so it was appointed, that the Messiah
should M ' bear our griefs, and carry our sorrows ; that
9 Mat. i. 18. and Luke i. 26, &c.
n Is. vii. 14. « Mat: i
10 Gen. iii. 15.
1. and LuKe i. 27.
>3 Mat. ii. 5. 6. M Ps. lxxxix. 4. 15 Mic. v. %
l(i Mat. ii. 1. and Luke vii. 27. ir Gen. xlix. 10.
18 Hag. ii. 7. 19 Mat. iii. 1. 20 Mai. iii. 1.
»" Is. xl. 3. " Mat. ii. 22, 83. !3 Is. ix. 2, G.
21 Ibid. v,r. (i. » Ibid. xlii. 2. M xli. 1. 27 Ibid. xxxv. 5, fi.
2t Ibid. liii. 3. 29 Col. i. 14 30 Is. liii. 4. 5, G.
940
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D.31 ; OR, A. M.5440. A. D.29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
he should be wounded foi our transgressions, and bruised
for our iniquities ;' because ' the Lord would lay upon
him the iniquities of us all.' And in what manner was
he to suffer ? With a patience and meekness answerable
to the prophecy, 1 ' he was oppressed, and he was afflict-
ed, yet he opened not his mouth ; he was brought as a
lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.'
It might seem a little strange, that our Lord, who all
his lifetime affected no popularity, should a little before
his death, 2 make his public entry into Jerusalem, and in
a manner so very singular, had not the prophet called
upon 'the daughter of Zion 3 to rejoice greatly, because
her King was coming unto her, bringing salvation, lowly,
and riding upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.'
Strange, that 4 he should be betrayed by his own disciple,
to whom he had been so very kind, had not the psalmist
foretold it in these words : 5 ' mine own familiar friend,
in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lift
up his heel against me :' and strange, that of all other
deaths, he should be sentenced to crucifixion, which was
neither a Jewish punishment, nor proper to be inflicted
6 for the crime of blasphemy, 7 that was alleged against
him, had not the same royal prophet determined the mat-
ter in these words : 8 ' they pierced my hands, and my
feet; ' they stand staring, and looking upon me.'
Such then was the will of God, that the Saviour of the
world should be crucified ; but in what company did he
suffer ? The gospel tells us, 9 ' between two thieves,'
because the prophecy had declared, that he should 10 ' be
numbered with the transgressors.' But how did the
spectators behave while he was thus hanging on the
cross ? Just in the manner that the psalmist described : u
' All they that see me laugh me to scorn, they shoot out
the lip, and shake the head, saying, he trusted in the
Lord, that he would deliver him, let him deliver him, if
he would have him,' what did they give him to drink in
the mean time ? a A narcotic potion was generally al-
lowed, in such cases, to stupify the sense of pain ; but
in his, nothing but vinegar was allowed ; because the
prophecy before had specified the liquor : 12 ' They gave
me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty, they gave me
vinegar to drink :' and what became of his clothes ? All
disposed of according to the prophecy : l3 ' They parted
my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they
cast lots.'
But under all these provocations and indignities, what
did he do ? Why he prayed to God for the forgiveness
of his crucifiers ; because the prophet had foretold, that 14
1 Is. liii. 7. 2 Mat. xxi. 2, &c. 3 Zech. ix. 9.
* Mat. x. 4. 5 Ps. xli. 9. 6 Lev. xxiv. 16.
' Mat. xxvi. 65. 8 Ps. xxii. 16, 17- 9 Mat. xxvii. 38.
10 Is. liii. 12. « Mat. xxvii. 39. &c; Ps. xxii. 7, 8.
12 John xix. 28, 29; Ps. lxix. 21.
la Mat. xxvii. 35; Ps. xxii. 18. 14 Luke xxiii. 34; Is. liii. 12.
a For this the Jews ground themselves upon the words of
Solomon: ' give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and
wine to those that are of an heavy heart: let him drink, and
forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more,' Prov.
xxxi. 7. The usual portion of this kind was frankincense in a
glass of wine; and there is a tradition among them, that the ladies
of the city of Jerusalem were at this charge, out of their own
good will, for the ea«e of the poor sufferers : but notwithstanding
this custom, what God foretold was fulfilled. — Kidder's Demon-
stration of the Messiah, p. 80.
' while he poured out his soul unto death, he should also
make intercession for the transgressors.' In his greater
agonies, what were his ejaculations to God ? The same
that the royal psalmist, personating the Messiah in his
extremity, has left upon record : 15 ' My God, my God,
look upon me : why hast thou forsaken me, and art so
far from my help, and from the words of my complaint ?'
What the words wherein he gave up the ghost ? The very
same that the psalmist, in another place, had prescribed :
16 ' Father ; into thy hands I commend my spirit.' But
after our Saviour's death, in what manner was his body
disposed of? Contrary to the custom of the Romans,
who left those that suffered in this manner hanging upon
the cross until they were consumed ; and, contrary to
the intention of his enemies, who wished him no better
than a malefactor's funeral, he was honourably and nobly
interred ; because it was pre-ordained, that 17 ' he should
make his grave with the rich in his death.' After his
burial, Avhat became of his body ? It was raised again,
and restored from the state of the dead ; because, in
confidence of this, he laid down his life, that 18 ' God
would not leave his soul in hell, nor suffer his Holy One
to see corruption.' After his resurrection, and continu-
ance for some time upon earth, what did he do next ? In
the sight of his disciples, and several other spectators,
ascend triumphantly into heaven ; for so the divine
order was, 19 ' Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye
lift up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may
come in.' After his ascension into heaven, what did he
finally do ? Sent down the Holy Ghost upon his apostles,
to enable them to propagate his religion all the world
over ; for such is the purport of the prophecy : 20 ' Thou
art gone up on high, thou hast led captivity captive, and
received gifts for men, that 21 the mountain of the Lord's
house might be established on the top of the mountains,
and exalted above the hills, and that all nations should
flow unto it.'
Upon the whole, then, w-e may perceive, that the
several things which the prophets had foretold of the
promised Messiah, were fulfilled in the person and actions
of our blessed Saviour ; but then there is something
farther to be considered in this matter, and that is, the
visible interposition of an overruling providence, in the
completion of these predictions. 22 For that our Lord
should be born of a virgin, contrary to the known laws
of nature, at the city of Bethlehem, when he was con-
ceived at Nazareth, and under the declension of the
Jewish polity, as it was predicted : that upon the cruelty
of Herod he should be carried into Egypt, upon the
succession of Archelaus, return into Judea, and settle
his abode in the obscure country of Galilee, whence no
good thing, much less so eminent a prophet, could ever
have been expected to come : that the judge who pro-
nounced him innocent should deliver him to death, and
to the death of the cross, who, had he been guilty, must,
by the law of the land, have been stoned : that he who
had so many enemies should be betrayed by one of his
disciples ; and by a disciple who carried the bag, and
15 Mat. xxvii. 46; Ps. xxii. 1. I6 Luke xxiii. 46 ; Ps. xxxi 5.
17 Mat. xxvii. 57 ; Is. liii. 9. ls Mat. xxviii. 6 ; Ps. xvi. [0.
19 Luke xxiv. 51 ; Ps. xxiv. 7, 9.
20 Acts ii. 1. &c; Ps. lxviii. 18. 21 Is. ii. 2.
22 Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, p. 331.
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c. 941
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvil. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii.'
Sbct. II.]
consequently all his master's riches, for a vile sum of
money : and that this money, the price of blood, should
be employed in a work of charity, to buy a field to bury
strangers in : that he who spent all his time in doing
good, should be doomed to sutler among thieves and
malefactors ; and the multitude, who were wont to pity
dying criminals, should insult and deride him in his
greatest misery : that in the division of his clothes, they
should cast lots for his coat, and, contrary to the usage
of the country, in the midst of his agonies, give him vine-
gar to drink : that, contrary to the practice of the Romans,
he that was crucified should be permitted to be buried,
and, although he died among malefactors, have persons
of the first rank and character joining together in his
honourable interment: these, and several other particu-
lars that might be produced, are so very strange and
surprising, that they must needs strike every pious and
devout soul with a profound sense of the unspeakable
wisdom, as well as goodness of God, in accomplishing
in Jesus what he had promised and foretold of the Mes-
siah, by ways and means to human wisdom very unlikely,
and very disproportionate. And, if the predictions re-
lating to the Messiah have, in this wonderful manner, and
by the particular direction and appointment of provi-
dence, thus met in the blessed Jesus, like lines in one
common centre, the natural result of this contemplation,
is, ' that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living
God.'
1 For can it be imagined, with any worthy conception
of God, that a work of love and wonder, so great as the
sending his Son to redeem the world, should be in
agitation for full four thousand years : that each suc-
ceeding age, in this long space, should have some
notices of it ; that the several characters he was to sus-
tain, should be described by different prophets, living
at times and places so remote, that no confederacy
could be suspected ; that each of these prophets should
draw, some one line of him, and some another, and
point him out, some in one capacity, and some in
another ; and above all, that every one of these strokes
or lineaments should be directed by the unerring hand
of God, to make at least one finished picture, on purpose
that the original, when it appeared, might be found out,
and distinguished by it ; can it be imagined, I say, that
a God of infinite truth, wisdom, and goodness, would
have ever permitted, much less appointed, that our
blessed Lord should, in every part and line, be so ex-
actly like that piece, unless he intended that we should
receive him as the true original ? Unless we can entertain
a thought so unworthy of God, I say, as that he designed
to impose upon us in this whole dispensation, we cannot
but conclude, that he would never have permitted all the
marks belonging to the Messiah, to have concurred in
the life of our blessed Saviour, and by these marks, have
suffered so many millions of souls to have been mistaken
in the object of their faith and worship, and thereupon,
without any fault of theirs, deluded into the heinous sin
of idolatry, had he not appointed the man Christ Jesus
to be the great Saviour of the world, and the Lord of
life and glory.
1 But, you are frequently mistaken,' says the Jew, to
avoid the force of this, ' in your application of these pro-
phetical passages to your Jesus, which properly belonged
to another person, and in him received their utmost ac-
complishment. The 22d psalm, for instance, which
complains of the sufferings and indignities which its
author endured, you refer to the Messiah, and thence
apply to your Jesus ; whereas it relates entirely to
David, and the troubles he underwent under the perse-
cution of Saul. 2 The prophecy of Micah, which makes
mention of a ruler, whose goings forth had been from
everlasting, whatever use you may make of it, was only
intended of Zerubbabel, who was sprung from the ancient
house of David ; and that famous 53d chapter of Isaiah,
which is so frequently cited by the apostles, when rightly
inquired into, is nothing else but a lively description of
the sufferings of the Jews, under the Babylonish, or
some other captivity. Thus, by misapplying, and mis-
interpreting several texts, in such a sense, as the Jewish
church never received, and the Spirit of God never in-
tended, you bedeck your Jesus with feathers that are
none of his own, and then cry out, how well he becomes
them, and how exactly they befit him !'
The completion of prophecies, in the person of our
Saviour Christ, is one of the most general arguments
that the first Christians made use of, ° in order to con-
1 Stanhope's Sermon? at Boyle's Lectures.
2 Collins's Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons, p. 44.
a They who are educated in the belief of Christianity, and
taught to receive the books of both Testaments with equal rever-
ence, are not apt to distinguish between the evidence for their
faith, arising from the one and the other. But if we look back
to the earliest times of preaching the gospel, and consider how
the case stood as to the Jewish converts on one side, who were
convinced of the divine authority of the Old Testament, and as
to the Gentile converts on the other, who had no such persuasion,
the distinction will appear very manifestly. The ancient pro-
phecies, though they are evidence both to the Jew and to the
Gentile, yet are they not so to both in the same way of reason-
ing and deduction, nor to the same end and purpose. For
consider ; the Jew was possessed of the oracles of God, and
firmly persuaded of the truth of them ; the very first tiling there-
fore which he had to do on the appearance of the Messiah was
to examine ' his title by the character given of him in the
prophets ; he could not, consistently with his belief in God and
faith in the ancient prophecies, attend to other arguments, till
fully satisfied and convinced in this. All the prophecies of the
Old Testament relating to the office and character of the
Messiah were immovable bars to all pretensions, till fulfilled
and accomplished in the person pretending to be the promised
and long-expected Redeemer. For this reason the preachers of
the gospel, in applying to the Jews, begin with the argument
from prophecy. Thus St Paul, in his discourse with the Jews
at Antioch in Pisidia, begins with the call of Abraham, and
after a short historical deduction of matters from thence to the
times of David, he adds, ' of this man's seed hath God, accord-
ing to his promise, raised unto Israel a Saviour Jesus:' (Acts
xiii. 23.) where you see plainly that the whole argument rests
on the authority of prophecy; and all the parts of this apostolical
sermon are answerable to this beginning, proceeding from one
end to the other on the authority of the old prophets. But the
very same apostle St Paul, preaching to the people of Athens,
Acts xvii. argues from other topics; he says nothing of the pro-
phets, to whose mission and authority the Athenians were per-
fect strangers, but begins with declaring to them, ' God that
made the world and all things therein:' he goes on condemning
all idolatrous practices, and assuring them that ' God is not
worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing.'
He accounts to them for the past times of ignorance at which
God winked, and tells them that now he calls all men to repen-
tance, having appointed Christ Jesus to be the judge of all men ■
for the truth of which he appeals to the evidence of Christ's
resurrection, 'whereof,' says the apostle, 'he hath given
assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the
942
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4033. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1
vert such as were persuaded of their divine authority.
St Peter, l in his first public sermon that he made, out
of the IGth and 110th psalms, cites two passages, which
he plainly shows, could not be intended of the patriarch
David, to prove our Lord's resurrection, and exaltation
to glory. 2 St Paul, who by being brought up at the
feet of Gamaliel, understood the force of his argument,
uses more proofs of this kind than any other writer of
the New Testament, as the least cast of an eye into his
epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, will
show : 3 and St Matthew, who wrote his gospel for the
use of the Jews more particularly, and for that reason,
as some imagine, in the Hebrew tongue, is more express
and copious in his application of the prophecies to our
blessed Saviour than any of the other evangelists.
Now, to mention no more than these, how absurd
would it have been for these apostles, who were no
strangers to the Jewish way of arguing, to allege any
passage in the prophets as relating to the Messias,
which properly belonged to another person, in whom it
had its accomplishment ? Such a method of proceeding
could not fail of discovering their confidence and folly,
of exposing them to the scorn and ridicule of their ad-
versaries, and, instead of gaining proselytes, of ruining
the cause, which by such unfair practices they endeav-
oured to maintain. It is but supposing then, that these
apostles were men of common sense, and desirous to
promote the cause that they had taken in hand, and
then we can hardly think, that they argued from any
prophecies concerning the Messiah, but such as really
belonged to him, and such as the whole Jewish church
acknowledged so to do.
St Peter, by virtue of the sermon which he preached
on the day of Pentecost, made about three thousand
converts to the Christian faith ; and yet, it is obvious
that the whole hinge of his discourse turns upon the tes-
timony of the prophets : had he therefore applied this
testimony, either to persons, to whom it did not belong,
or in a sense contrary to its true intendment, his doc-
trine must have been exploded at once, and could never
have met with such uncommon success. And, in like
manner, as to the subsequent conversions which the
apostles made, 4 how can we imagine, that such a num-
— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi, 1— ix. 37. JOHN v, 1— vii I.
1 Acts ii. 14, &c. 2 Ibid. xxii. 3.
3 Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures.
4 Bishop Chandler's Defence of Christianity.
dead:' ver. 31 . Whence comes this difference? How comes St
Paul's argument, on one and the same subject, in Acts xiii.
and xvii. to be so unlike to each other? Can this be accounted
for any other way than by considering the different circumstances
of the persons to whom he delivered himself. Iq Acts xiii. he
argues professedly with Jews, to whom were committed the
oracles of God, and who, from these oracles, were well instructed
in the great marks and characters of the expected Messiah. It
had been highly absurd therefore to reason with them on other
arguments, till he had first convinced them by their prophets;
and having so convinced them, it would have been impertinent.
To them therefore he urges and applies the authority of prophecy
only; but to the Athenians, who knew not the prophets, or if
they knew them, yet had no reverence or esteem for them,. it
had been quite ridiculous to oiler proofs from prophecies: the
appeal therefore before them is made to the sound and clear
principles of natural religion, and to the miracles of the gospel,
the fame of which probably had, long before, reached to Athens:
and the truth of which, they being mere matters of fact, was
capable of undeniable evidence and demonstration Sherlock on
rrvphecy, Discourse 6. — Ed.
ber of Jews of all degrees, rulers, priests, and scribes of
all sects, men of learning, and who by their station and
profession, were obliged to know the scriptures, should
forsake the religion they were accustomed to, upon the
authority of passages, which, in their proper meaning
and intendment, were so far from countenancing, that
they openly confronted the new religion they were to
embrace ; and all this without any view of worldly
interest, with the certain hazard of their lives here,
and the loss of God's favour hereafter, in case of insin-
cerity. 5
Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that
every Jew converted to the Christian faith, is an implicit
proof, that the apostle's allegations of the ancient pro-
phecies, both as to the ground and sense of them, were
agreeable to their received notions of them; insomuch
that, were we at leisure to enter into particulars, we
might show, that it is hardly possible to name one single
prediction of the many applied to the blessed Jesus,
which one or other of their most celebrated writers do not
acknowledge to belong to the Messiah.
The modern Jews, it must be owned, have fallen off
from the notions of their more ingenuous ancestors, and
do deny the prophecies quoted in the New Testament
those views that we would ascribe to them : 6 but who-
ever considers the destruction of their city and polity,
which confounded all the expectations of a glorious
Messiah, and put them upon new measures in the appli-
cation of such predictions as they saw must needs have
been fulfilled while their state and temple stood. Who-
ever considers the darkness and ignorance that would
necessarily ensue upon their long dispersion, and many
sad calamities, when they fell into the hands of perse-
cuting powers, who hated them and their religion most
implacably : whoever considers their neglect of apply-
ing themselves to the study of the written law, and at-
tending wholly to their oral, and affecting to be curious
in ceremonies, while they continued careless of their doc-
trines : whoever considers their violent prejudice against
Jesus and his disciples, which, as it stuck at nothing,
though ever so false or wicked, to oppose them, might
easily put them upon tampering with the scriptures, and,
by interpolations or defalcations, labouring to make
them look another way : and, lastly, whoever considers
that judicial blindness and hardness of heart, so often
and expressly threatened, and so visibly and lamentably
inflicted upon this once elect people of God : may he,
in his infinite mercy, so open their eyes, that they may
see the wondrous things of the law, and its agreement
with the blessed gospel ! Whoever considers these
things, I say, will not be at a loss for reasons why the
present synagogue have departed from the sentiments of
the ancient, and are so earnest to apply to David, Solo-
mon, Hezekiah, Zerubbabel, or a:iy other person of note,
what their ancestors never thought of attributing to any
other than the promised Messiah.
7 One of their famous interpreters, in his comment
upon the *22d psalm, after some feeble efforts to wrest
that evidence out of our hands, makes at length this am-
ple confession : s " Our great masters," says he, "have
interpreted this psalm of Messiah the King ; but I shall
5 Jones's Biblical Cyclopedia.
6 Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures.
8 It. Sol. Jarchi.
7 Ibid.
Sect. II1.J
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
943
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v.l— vii. 1.
interpret it of David himself, that we may have where-
with to answer the heretics." But, with all his art and
subtilty he can never make it out, how David, with any
propriety, can say of himself, 1 ' As for me, I am a
worm, and no man, the very scorn of men, and the out-
cast of the people.' The greatest affliction that ever
befell that prince, was his expulsion from the capital city,
upon the rebellion of his son Absalom : and t Shimei's
cursing and upbraiding him may seem perhaps to coun-
tenance this complaint, 3 ' All they that see me, laugh
me to scorn, they shoot out their lips, and shake their
heads ;' but we no where read in his history, that his
enemies ever 4 ' pierced his hands or his feet,' much less
that, after they had made an end of him, ' they parted
his garments among them, and cast lots upon his vesture.'
It was our blessed Saviour alone in whom this predic-
tion was verified ; of him alone, that his enemies took
up the taunting proverb, and said, 5 ' He trusted in God
that he would deliver him, let him deliver him, if he
would have him ;' to him alone, that these words can,
with any tolerable construction, belong, ' ' Many oxen
are come about me, fat bulls of Bashan close me in on
every side ; they gape upon me with their mouths, as if it
were a ramping and roaring lion ;' as he indeed appro-
priates the whole psalm to himself, when, in his dying
minutes, he uttered this citation, 7 ' My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me ?'
David, indeed, in all his troubles, had no occasion to
make this lamentation ; for though the malice and per-
secutions of Saul were upon him, yet he had always
abundant reason to say of God, 8 ' Thou art my stony
rock, and my defence, my Saviour, my God, and my
might : my buckler, the horn also of my salvation, and
my refuge : therefore will I follow upon mine enemies,
and overtake them ; neither will I turn again till I have
destroyed them.' His splendour and greatness, his vic-
tories and conquests, the reduction of his foes, and the
enlargement of his kingdom, made him a proper emblem
of our Saviour's exaltation, and triumph over our spirit-
ual enemies ; but there are few passages in his life re-
semblant of his sufferings, and none at all that will
justify this complaint, 9 ' I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint ; my strength is dried
up like apotsherd,and my tongue cleaveth to my gums.'
So true is that observation of Grotius, 10 " That partiality
was the cause of these new explications, among the Jews,
and that those which they formerly received, agreed very
well with the sense of Christians."
Upon the decree of Cyrus, for the restoration of the
Jews, we find Zerubbabel, among other princes of the
people, superintending matters, and taking upon him the
government of the tribe to which he belonged ; but that
he should be the person intended by Micah's prophecy,
is a thing impossible ; because he was not born in Beth-
lehem, which is the place assigned for the birth of a ruler
that the prophet mentions, but in Babylon, as his name
imports. That it was essentially necessary for the Mes-
siah to be born in " Bethlehem, and no where else, is
I lain from the answer which the scribes and Pharisees
1 Ps. xxii. 6. 2 2 Sam. xvi. 7, 8. 3 Ps. xxii. 7.
4 Ibid. ver. 17, 18. 5 Ibid. ver. S. 6 Ibid. ver. 12, 13.
; Il.id. ver. 1. s Ps. xviii. 2, 37. u Ps. xxii. 14, 15.
>» Grotius deVerit. b. v. s. 18. u Mat. ii. 1, etc.
make Herod, upon his consulting them, and their quota
tion of Micah for the proof of it ; is plain from the gen-
eral notion which, not only the learned, but the vulgar,
at this time, had imbibed, namely, 12 ' That Christ was to
come of the seed of David, and out of the town of Beth-
lehem, where David was born ;' and is plain from the
petition in their liturgy, wherein they still pray for the
advent of the Messiah, in these terms : 13 " Shake thyself
from the dust, arise, put on thy beautiful garments, O
my people ; by the hand of Benjesse, the Bethlehemite,
bring redemption near to my soul :' so that the pro-
phecy, in all reason, must be applied to the person that
was born there, and not to one whose place of nativity
was in a distant country. It is to be observed farther,
that Zerubbabel was never any ruler of Israel ; for though
he might be at the head of the capacity for some years,
yet it was without the title or authority of a governor,
and when he had executed his commission, he returned
to Babylon, and there died. But even supposing he
were never so much a governor, it is certainly carrying the
matter too far, to say of him, that he 14 ' should stand and
rule in the strength of the Lord, and in the majesty of
the Lord his God ;' much more it is so, to say, that the
going forth or birth of this ruler was of old, and from
the days of eternity, as the marginal note has it, which
is only applicable to the Messiah, and, in a proper sense,
only verified in our blessed Saviour, lb ' who in the be-
ginning was with God.'
And, in like manner, if we consider the words of the
prophet Isaiah, in the 53d chapter, and compare them
with our Lord's history, as the evangelists have recorded
it, we shall soon perceive that they are applicable to
none but our blessed Saviour only ; for, to waive other
arguments that might be drawn from them, with what
propriety of construction can any of these passages,
16 ' he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruis-
ed for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was
upon him, and by his stripes we are healed,' be applied
to the Jewish nation ? When did we ever hear that the
Jews bore the griefs, and carried the sorrows of others ;
that they were wounded for other men's transgressions,
and bruised for iniquities not their own ? The public
calamities which God, at any time, sent upon them, are
by all the prophets imputed to their own sins ; but the
person here afflicted is said to have done ' no violence,
neither was any deceit found in his mouth ;' and does
this character suit them under any captivity, or other
sort of calamity, that the prophet might have in view ?
If we will believe him, it is plain, that he had another
opinion of them, when, in the very beginning of his pro-
phecy, we find him lamenting them and their captivity,
in these words : 17 ' Ah, sinful nation ! A people laden
with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are
corrupters ; they have forsaken the Lord, they are
gone backwards ; wherefore your country is desolate,
your cities are burnt with fire, your land strangers de-
vour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown
by strangers.
The sum of our answer is this : if our Saviour and his
12 John vii. 42.
13 Sec Bishop Chandler's Di Knee, of Christianity.
ii Micah v 4. l:' John i. 2. 1G Is. Jiii. 4, 5.
17 Ibid. i. 4, etc
944
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5141. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARKii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii 1.
apostles cannot be supposed, with any justness of rea-
soning, or prospect of success, to allege prophecies
concerning the Messiah, which the Jewish church, at that
time, did not acknowledge to be intended of him ; if all
the prophecies thus alleged do even yet appear, by sev-
eral of their most renowned doctors to be interpreted of
the Messiah ; if the 22d psalm cannot, with any propriety
of construction, be applied to David, nor the 4th chap,
of Micah to Zerubbabel, nor the 53d of Isaiah to the Jew-
ish nation in general ; and if good reasons may be
assigned, why the present and ancient doctors of the
Jewish church do differ in the manner of applying the
predictions of the prophets ; then is the Christian inter-
pretation of them, which appears to be plain and natural,
and lias antiquity on its side, not to be less esteemed,
because some, out of partiality and prejudice, have for-
ced their wits to invent another.
Nay, even supposing that there were more grounds than
what hitherto have appeared, to dispute the justness of
the allegation of any prophecy ; yet still we Christians
must aver, that the application of Christ and his apostles
is to be preferred before that of any other, because it
was attended with such irresistible proof of its truth and
fidelity, as must overbear all objections to the contrary.
1 For, upon a dispute of the application of some passage,
or a competition of two different senses of the same pas-
sage, can any thing in nature be more decisive than the
testimony of God ? And can the testimony of God ap-
pear by any stronger evidence than by the power of
miracles supporting the allegation? God certainly knew
the intention of every prophecy delivered by his Spirit ;
and therefore, if Christ and his apostles, when they
applied any prophecy to the Messiah, gave the best
proof that could be given of their being sent by God,
and of their speaking and acting by his commission,
God himself must be understood as confirming their ap-
plication. The authority of the application, or of the
exposition, must, in such a case, be equal to that of the
prophecy ; for there cannot be a better proof that the
prophet was sent from God, than the expositor gives of
his mission : and the reason for his assenting to the one
as well as the other, is on both sides the same.
The result of this whole inquiry is this, — That, since
our blessed Saviour appeals to the writings of the pro-
phets for the proof of his being the Messiah or messenger
sent from God to deliver his will to mankind ; and since
the marks and characters which the prophets give of the
Messiah, are found all to agree and unite in him, ac-
cording to the account which the evangelists give us of
his life, we have all the reason in the world to believe,
that he was really the person he pretended to be ; that
his doctrine, consequently, is the word of God, and his
religion2 ' the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, and
hath appeared unto all men ; teaching us, that denying
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly, in this present world ; looking
for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the
great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'
SECT. III.
CHAP. I. — Containing an account of things, from our
Lord's transfiguration to his last entry i?ito Jerusalem.
THE HISTORY.
The day following our Lord's transfiguration, (for that
transaction was very probably in the night-time,) a as
he came down from the mount, he perceived the scribes
in deep debate * with the apostles he had left behind
him, and while he was inquiring into the subject of their
dispute, a certain man, breaking through the crowd,
came and fell prostrate at his feet, and besought him to
have pity upon his only son, a deplorable object, a
lunatic, c and possessed, deaf and dumb, often thrown
upon the ground, and into the fire and water, racked
with violent convulsions, accompanied with dismal out-
cries, foamings, bruises, and torments, and every way in
so desperate a condition, that his disciples, in his
absence, were not able to cure him. Our Lord, upon
hearing of this, was^ not a little grieved at the want of
faith in his disciples, but ordered the child to be brought
1 Rogers's Necessity of Revelation. 2Ti* ii. 11, &c.
a The evangelist acquaints us, that while our Saviour was at
prayer on the mount, St Peter, ' and they that were with him,
were heavy with sleep,' (Luke ix. 32.) which, in some measure,
confirms the conjecture, that the transfiguration was in the
night ; a time much more proper for the display of the lustre of
such an appearance, than if it had happened in the broad day-
light.— Calmet's Commentary.
b What the subject matter of this debate was, the evangelists
have not informed us; but it seems not unlikely, that the scribes
were disputing with the apostles about their master's method of
ejecting devils, and the power which, in that matter, he had
conferred upon them; because, in the case before them, they
saw them nonplused, and not able to cast a devil out of one,
who, in his absence, was brought to them. This is the rather
probable, not only because our Saviour's dispossessing devils was
what gravelled and vexed the scribes and Pharisees more than
all his other miracles, and forced them to the sorry refuge of,
'he casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils;' but
because, upon his coming to the timely relief of his apostles, and
demanding of the scribes, what they were questioning and dis-
puting about, it immediately follows, one of the multitude an-
swered and said, ' Master, I have brought unto thee my son,
which hath a dumb spirit: — And I spake to thy disciples, that
they should cast him out, and they could not,' (Mark ix. 17. 18.)
— Poole's Annotations.
c The word o-s\r,viu.£t<rai, comes from aiXwti, the moon, and
signifies literally, "he is moon-struck.'' From the symptoms
mentioned here and at Mark ix. 18. this disorder is supposed to
have been epilepsy; under whose paroxysms those afflicted with
it are deprived of all sense, bodily and mental, and nearly all
articulation. And as we find, in the ancient medical writers,
epileptic patients said to be moonstruck, agreeably to the
common notion, of the influence of the moon in producing the
disorder, it is very possible that the disorder in question was
epilepsy. Be that, however, as it may, the symptoms are all
reconcilable" with demoniacal influence. — Bloom field' s Greek
Testament. — Ed.
d The rebuke which our Saviour utters upon this occasion,
' O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with
you,' &c. (Mat. xvii. 17.) seems to be intended for the whole
company, and every one to have a share in it, in proportion to
their deserts. The disciples are not exempted; for they are
charged with infidelity, ver. 20. The father of the patient is
pointed at, for his faith was wavering, Mark ix. 21, &c. And
the whole nation of the Jews is included in it; for this was ex-
pressly their character of old, ' a very froward and perverse
generation, and children in whom is no faith,' (Deut. xxxii. 5.
20.) — Beausobre's Annotations.
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
945
A. M.4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— xi. 37. JOHN v. I-vii. 1.
to him. As he was drawing near, the devil began to rack
him with convulsions, which put the father in a terrible
fright ; and when our Lord commanded the evil spirit to
depart out of the young man, and never to molest him
more ; after some hideous outcries, he tore and distorted
him to such a degree, that he left him breathless on the
ground, so that many concluded he was quite dead : but
Jesus, taking him by the hand, lifted him up, and de-
livered him to his father, perfectly cured, to the great
astonishment of all the spectators. And when his dis-
ciples in private desired to know the reason why they
could not cast out this spirit, he imputed it, partly to
their want of faith, and partly to this spirit's being of a
kind" which was not to be ejected without fasting and
prayer.
From the mount of transfiguration, our Lord pro-
ceeded in his journey through the other parts of Galilee
towards Capernaum, and, as they were in the way, he
acquainted his disciples, the second time, with his
approaching death and resurrection, desiring them to
take good notice of what he told them ; but the hopes of
a temporal kingdom had so intoxicated their minds, that
they found it very difficult to believe, l> or conceive
a Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, and well acquainted
with the notions of every sect among the Jews, gives it for a
current opinion, that the demons, in his and some preceding
ages, were nothing else but the souls of wicked men, who after
death took possession of the living, and were continually either
afflicting and tormenting, or exciting and soliciting them
to such sins, as they found were agreeable and complexional
to them; and that, according to their different ways of vex-
ing or tempting those that they possessed, they had different
appellations given them, an uuclean spirit, a deaf and dumb
spirit, a spirit of infirmity, &c. In conformity to this notion
|)€iliaps it is, that our Saviour here takes notice of the different
kinds of evil spirits, and as, among wicked men, there are dif-
ferent degrees of impiety, and some are more hardened and
profligate than others ; so he seems to intimate, that some of these
spirits are more desperate and malicious than others; (Mat.
xii. 45.) but all of them obstinate enough, and, might they
have their own option, unwilling to leave the bodies they have
taken possession of. Here they think themselves safe, and, in
some measure, screened from the divine vengeance; and there-
fore, we find them at some times crying to our Lord, 'Let us
alone; what have we to do with thee? Art thou come to tor-
ment us?' (Mat. viii. 29.) And, at others, when commanded
to depart, tearing and torturing the possessed, and quitting
their habitation not without much reluctaucy. (Mark ix. 2C)
The apostles, no doubt, had conjured this evil spirit before in
their master's name, and, on several occasions, had found the
prevailing power of faith, even when theirs was not so well
improved as it was at present; and yet, how faith becomes neces-
sary in the exorcism of devils, when we find straugers doing it
in tin: name of Christ, (Mark ix. 38.) or how the faith of the
apostles came to be defective now, when, not many days before,
it was so very effectual; why some evil spirits were proof
against the name of Christ, whilst others fled at the bare men-
tion of it; and why some surrendered at the first summons,
while fasting and prayer were the only artillery that could dis-
lodge others. These, and many other questions that might be
raised from our Saviour's words, are points wherein the best
commentators we have met with have not once attempted to
give us any satisfaction. — Calmet's Commentary. — Campbell
and other commentators suggest that the words ' this kind ' do
not refer to a particular kind of demons, but mean " this kind
or order of beings called demons," and perhaps this is the most
satisfactory sense of the passage, which is confessedly difficult.
—Ed.
b The words in the text are, ' they understood not this say-
ing, and it was hid from them.' (Luke ix. 45.) They understood
our Saviour's words, no doubt, and what the import was of his
being ' delivered into the hands of men and put to death;' but
what he said, and yet they were afraid to ask him to
explain it.
In the same journey there arose a dispute c among
the apostles, which of them should have the chief place
of dignity d in their Master's kingdom, still dreaming of
a temporal sovereignty. This our Saviour by his divine
Spirit knew ; and therefore, to give an effectual check
to their ambitious thoughts, he first informed them, that
then they could not comprehend how their master, whom they
knew to be the Messiah, and Son of God, and whom conse-
quently they believed to be immortal and eternal, could possibly
be put to death, or suffer the affronts and outrages of men.
These notions to them seemed incompatible, and therein they
conceived a mystery, which they could not understand. But
the modern Jews have endeavoured to reconcile these two
notions, by inventing the distinction of Messiah Ben Joseph,
who was to die, and Messiah Ben David, who was to triumph
and live for ever. — Calmet's Commentary, and Whitby s Anno-
tations.
c There is some small difference in the several ways wherein
the evangelists have related this matter. St Matthew tells us,
that ' the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven?' (c. xviii. 1.) St Mark, that Christ put
this question to them, 'and they held their peace,' (ix. 34.)
and St Luke, that they had been disputing this point among
themselves, and Jesus, ' perceiving the thoughts of their hearts,
took a child,' &c. (ix. 46, 47.) Now, to reconcile this seeming
repugnancy, we must observe, that as our Saviour was going to
Capernaum, his disciples followed him, ' discoursing among
themselves,' as St Mark has it, ' who of them was to be the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven ;' that when they came to him in
the house, having still the same ambitious notion in their minds,
he asked them, ' What was it that you discoursed of in the way?'
But they, being ashamed to tell him, 'held their peace;' and
that then our Saviour, who well understood what the subject of
their discourse had been, endeavoured, by the example of a
child, to cure their distemper, and to inform them what disposi-
tion of mind was .proper to qualify them both for his kingdom of
grace here, and his kingdom of glory hereafter. St Matthew
indeed, according to our translation, represents the thing as if
the disciples had put the question to their master, ' Who should
be greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' But that the particle
xiyovris relates not to Jesus, but to the disciples, and means
not the external speech, but the inward reasoning of their minds,
is obvious from their silence, which St Mark takes notice of,
and our Saviour's perceiving the thought of their hearts, which
St Luke remarks. For, had themselves propounded the ques-
tion to our Saviour, as the version in St Matthew seems to
imply, we cannot see why they should not answer his demand,
which tended to the same purpose; nor can we imagine why he
should be represented as ' perceiving the thoughts of their hearts/
bad they already declared these thoughts in plain words. —
JP7iitby's Annotations.
d The apostles, as well as the other Jews, had imbibed the
notion, which they never got quit of, until the descent of the
Holy Ghost instructed them better, that the Messiah, when ho
came upon earth, should erect a temporal kingdom ; and, as the
Jews in general expect, that they should then be constituted
lords over all other nations; so the apostles, who believed their
master to be the Messiah, were naturally led to think that they
should have the preference before all other Jews ; and that,
since the king Messiah, according to the custom of other sove-
reigns, was to have some officers of the highest rank, they made
no question but that some of them would be made choice of,
though they were not so well agreed who were the fittest or
most deserving of these high posts of honour. Some of them
were our Lord's relations, and others had parts and endowments
extraordinary ; of some he had given high commendations, and
others he had admitted to a participation of his most secret
retirements. These things might possibly raise some emulation
among them: and therefore, as our Saviour's dominion was not
of this world, he plainly tells them, that all such worldly desires
and expectations were inconsistent with that spiritual kingdom
which lie was to erect, and wherein he ' who desired to be first,
was to lie last of all, and servant of all.' (Mark ix. 35.) — ffltitby's
and Poole's Annotations.
a d
946
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A, M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR.A. M. 5441. A. D.30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. 14.
the only way for any man to become great in his king-
dom, was to be lowly in his own esteem ; and then, calling
a little child,0 and setting him in the midst of them, he pro-
posed him as a pattern of meekness and humility ; recom-
mended such children, and, in them, all humble Christi-
ans, to the favour of mankind ; cautioned them against
doing any injury, b or giving any offence to such, because
of their guardian angels ; a and, to remove the occasion
of all such offences, exhorted them to mortify their in-
ordinate affections, though they were as dear to them as
an eye, a hand, or a foot, because his heavenly Father,
like a diligent shepherd that delights in the recovery of
a stray sheep, was unwilling that any believer should
perish. Together with these reasons against scandal
and offences, he prescribed some excellent rules in re-
lation to brotherly reproof, church censures, and forgive-
ness of injuries ; and for the enforcement of this last
duty, lie propounded the parable of a certain king, avIio,
calling his servants to account, found that one of them
owed him an immense sum, no less than ten thousand
talents, which, upon his insolvency, and humble peti-
tion, he freely forgave ; and yet, this very wretch was
no sooner out of the king's presence, than he seized upon
his fellow servant for a trifle of a debt, a debt of an
hundred pence only, and cast him into prison, even
a Some of the ancients are of opinion that this child was St
Ignatius, who was afterwards bishop of Antioch, and famous in
the Christian church for his writing and dying in defence of the
truth. However this be, it is certain that a child, who has no
concern for dominion or empire over others, who is free from all
covetous desires of wealth, and knows nothing of what a post of
honour means, was, in this case, a very proper emblem of that
simplicity, innocence, and humility, that our Lord requires in
all Ills disciples.— Calmet's Commentary, and JPliitby's Annota-
tions.
b The words in the caution are, ' whoso shall offend one of
these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that
a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned
in the depth of the sea' (Mat. xviii. 6.) To offend or scandalize is
to discourage men in the profession and practice of religion, and
by indignities and persecutions, as well as by bad examples, to oc-
casion their apostatizing from the faith: for we can hardly ima-
gine, that so severe a punishment as is here threatened, should
be inflicted for a crime of less aggravation than what this amounts
to. Grotius, upon the place, is of opinion, that the millstone
about the neck alludes to a custom of drowning among the
Syrians. But St Jerome thinks that this manner of execution
was in use among the Jews; for, according to Dr Alix, it was
customary for them to cast execrable men into the Dead Sea,
with a stone tied to them. It is certain from Diodorus Siculus,
and others, that among the Greeks this was the ancient punish-
ment for sacrilegious persons ; and from Suetonius we may learn,
that for the pride and covetousness wherewith some in public
offices had infested the province where they lived, Augustus had
them cast into the river, with great weights about their necks. —
JFhitby's Annotations.
c The fathers looked on this as an argument that each good
man had his particular guardian angel: (see Suicer. Thesaur.
vol. i. p. 43.) And Grotius seems to allow the force of it. I
apprehend this passage rather intimates, that the angels, who
sometimes attend the little ones spoken of, at other times
stand in God's immediate presence; and consequently that dif-
ferent angels are at different times employed in this kind office, if it
be incessantly performed. The general sense is plain, that the
highest angels do not disdain, on proper occasions, to perform
services of protection and friendship for the meanest Christian;
but as St Paul says, they are ' all ministering spirits sent forth to
minister to the heirs of salvation ;'(Heb. i. 14.) 1 say the highest ;
because ' to behold the face of God ' may signify ' waiting near his
throne,' and be an allusion to the office of chief ministers in
earthly courts, who daily converse with their princes. See Gro-
tius: and compare 2 Sam. vi. 19. 1 Kings xii. 6; Esth. i. 14;
and Luke i. j9. — Doddridge's Expositor. — Ed.
though he had used the same pathetic entreaties to him
that himself had done to the king his master : which
when the king came to understand, he sent for the un-
grateful villain, upbraided him with his baseness and
cruelty, and then, in great rage, ordered him to prison
until he should discharge the whole debt : " and so like-
wise shall my heavenly Father," says our Lord in the
application, " deal with all such as will not forgive their
brother's trespasses from their hearts."
While he was giving these instructions to his disciples,
he was interrupted by John, the son of Zebedee, inform-
ing him of a certain stranger, d who cast out devils in
his name, but because he was not of their fraternity, that
he had forbidden him; which conduct Jesus by no means
could approve of, because he looked upon it as a sure
argument, that whoever did miracles in his name, could
be no enemy to his person.
With this discourse they arrived at Capernaum, where
the collectors e of a certain tribute for the use of the
temple, came to Peter, and asked him if his master was
accustomed to pay it ? And, when Peter went in to ac-
quaint him with the officer's demands, ' Of whom,' says
our Lord, preventing him, 'do the kings of the Gentiles
take tribute ? Of their own children, or of strangers ?'
Peter answered, ' Of strangers : if so,' rejoined our Sa-
viour, 'then are the children free :' meaning, that since
Gentile kings did not exact tribute of their own house-
hold, this tribute, which was paid to God for his temple,
was not due from him, who was his Son, nor from them,
who were his domestics ; however, to avoid all occasions
of offence, he ordered him to go, and cast an hook into the
sea, because in the mouth of the first fish that he caught
he would find a piece of money, /just of proper value to
give to the collectors for them both ; which accordingly
came to pass.
d That this man did truly cast out devils, our Lord's answer
supposes, and his disciples saw with their eyes : but then the
question is, — How a person, who did not follow Christ could
cast out devils in his name: to which it may be answered, 1st,
That this person might believe in Jesus, without being one of
his retinue, and follow his doctrine, though he did not his person.
2dly, He might do miracles in the name of Jesus Christ, without
being one of his true disciples, even as Judas is supposed to have
done, and those others to whom our Lord will profess, ' I never
knew you; depart from me, ye workers of iniquity,' Mat. vii.
23. Or, 3dly, He might be a disciple of John the Baptist, and
so do his miracles in the name of Christ, shortly to come. But
by what means soever it was that he did them, it is no small
confirmation of the truth of Christianity, that our Saviour's name
was thus powerful, even among those that did not follow him,
and therefore were incapable of doing any thing by way of com-
pact with him. — IFhitby's and Poole's Annotations; and Calmet's
Commentary.
e Every Jew that was twenty years old, was obliged to pay
annually two Attic drams, or half a shekel, about fifteen pence
of our money, for the use of the sanctuaiy, (Exod. xxx. 13, 16.)
or to buy sacrifices, and other things necessary for the service of
the temple: and that this was the tribute which the collectors
here demanded, and not any tax, payable to the Roman emper-
ors, as some imagine, is evident, not only from our Saviour's
argument, namely, that he was the son of that heavenly King
to whom it was paid, and, consequently, had a right to plead his
exemption ; but from the word l'i}ga.%fta, which, according to
Josephus, [Antiq. b. 18. c. 12.] was the proper word for this
capitation-tax that was paid to the temple at Jerusalem ; whereas
the Cesarean tribute money was the denarius, a Roman coin,
and would have been gathered by the usual officers, the publi-
cans, and not by the persons who are here styled, as by a known
title, ' they that received the 2ibg*%(<ui. — Hammond's and
fPTiitby's Annotations.
f This piece of money is called trrarri^, which amounted to
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST &,;.
947
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-
About this time the a feast of tabernacles drew
near ; and some of our Lord's relations, out of vanity
more than good-will, were very earnest with him to go
up to Jerusalem at this great concourse of people, in
order to show his miracles in the capital, which hitherto,
as they said, had been concealed in an obscure part of
the world : but our Lord, for the present, b would not
yield to their importunity, though, in a short time, he set
forward to Jerusalem, but in a very private manner, for
fear of awakening the jealousy of his enemies. As he
was to pass through the province of Samaria, c he sent
four drachmas, or one skekel, in our money about half a crown ;
and the reason why our Saviour paid for none of the apostles but
St Peter only, was, because these receivers demanded it only of
those that dwelt at Capernaum, as our Saviour and St Peter did,
leaving the other apostles to pay it in the several places of their
abode. — Hammond's Annotations. — Here is a proof that Jesus
was possessed of divine attributes. He knew that in the first fish
that came up, there would be such a coin ; which proved his om-
niscience. It is by no means strange that a fish should have
swallowed a silver coin ; such cases have often occurred. —
Barnes. — Ed.
a The feast of tabernacles, kept in commemoration of the Is-
raelites' sojourning in the wilderness, and living in tents for the
space of forty years, was one of the three great annual festivals,
wherein all the males were obliged to appear at Jerusalem. It
began to be celebrated on the fifteenth day of the month Tizri,
which answers in part to our October and September, and is the
first month of their civil, and the seventh in their sacred year
Calmct's Commentary.
b Our Lord well knew the rancorous prejudice of the in-
habitants of Jerusalem, and therefore did not think proper
to reside among them any longer than was absolutely necess-
ary. They had more than once attempted his life, and therefore
veiy little hopes remained that they would believe his mira-
cles, or embrace his doctrine ; but, on the contrary, there
was great reason to think they would destroy him, if possible,
before he had finished the work for which he assumed the veil of
human nature, and resided among the sons of men. ' My time,'
said the blessed Jesus to these unbelieving relations, ' is not yet
come ; but your time is alway ready. The world cannot hate
you ; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works
thereof are evil. Go ye up unto this feast ; I go not yet unto
this feast; for my time is not yet full come,' John vii. 6, 7, 8.
As if he had said, It is not proper for me to go before the feast
begins ; but you may repair to the capital whenever you please ;
the Jews are your friends, you have done nothing to displease
them: but the purity of the doctrine I have preached to them,
and the freedom with which I have reproved their hypocrisy and
other enormous crimes, have provoked their malice to the utmost
height, and therefore, as the time of my sufferings is not
yet come, it is not prudent for me to go soon to Jerusalem.
There was also another reason why our blessed Saviour refused
to accompany these relations to the feast of tabernacles: the
roads were crowded with people, and these gathering round him,
and accompanying him to Jerusalem, would doubtless have
given fresh offence to his enemies, and have in a great measure
prevented his miracles and doctrines from having the desired
etiert. He therefore chose to continue in Galilee, till the crowd
were all gone up to Jerusalem, when he followed, ' as it were
In secret,' neither preaching, nor working miracles by the way;
so that no crowd attended him to the feast. — Ed.
c Samaria was a province that lay between Galilee and Judea,
and our Saviour's nearest way to Jerusalem was through it. But
then it may be questioned, why the Samaritans, who lived at a
less distance from Jerusalem than the Galileans, came to be
more corrupted in their religion ? To which the most probable
answer is, — ' That when the king of Assyria had taken Samaria,
and carried away the people captive,' 2 Kings xvii., in then-
room he planted colonies of his own subjects, who were gross
idolaters, and more especially in the country of Samaria, properly
so called, because it was a province which lay in the heart of his
new conquest, and might therefore keep the others, that depend-
ed on it, in subjection. Now, these idolaters, mixing with the
Jews that were left behind, made up a strange medley of reli-
xvii. H. MARK ii. 23-ix. u. LUKE vi. l_ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I.
some of his apostles to provide him lodgings d in one
of the villages ; but the inhabitants, perceiving that he
was going to Jerusalem to the feast/ were so uncivil as
to refuse him entertainment.
This indignity put upon their master, so exasperated
James and his brother John, that they desired leave of
him, in imitation of /Elias, to command lire down from
heaven to consume such inhospitable wretches ; but in-
stead of giving any such permission, S our Saviour took
gion, which was not quite reformed, even in our Saviour's time ;
and therefore he tells the Samaritan woman, at Jacob's well,
' ye worship ye know not what,' (John iv, 22,) whereas the peo-
ple of Galilee, having few of the Assyrians planted among them,
kept their religion more pure and unmixed, and, after the des-
truction of the temple of Gerizzim by John Hyrcanus, held
constant communion with the temple of Jerusalem, even though
Gabinius, when he was governor of Syria, had built the Sa-
maritans another; and in relation to this communion it is, that
our Saviour tells the same woman, speaking of himself among
other Galileans, 'we know what we worship ; for salvation is of
the Jews.'
d The great multitude that accompanied our Saviour, and the
little or no provision that he usually carried with him, made it
necessary for some to go before to make preparation for his re-
ception ; and his two apostles, James and John, are supposed to
be the persons employed in this capacity ; because we find them,
in particular, resenting the indignity put upon their master. —
Calmct's Dictionary .
e Josephus tells us, — "That, as it was an usual thing for the
Galileans to travel by the way of Samaria to Jerusalem, upon
the celebration of their festivals, one time, as they passed by a
village, called Nais, under the jurisdiction of Samaria, and situ-
ated in the great Plain, there happened a quarrel between the
passengers and villagers, wherein several of the Galileans were
slain, and which afterwards occasioned a civil war between these
two provinces." And as it was a common thing for the Sama-
ritans to be angry with the Galileans in general lor passing by
their temple to go to Jerusalem; so they might much more re-
sent it in our Saviour, because as he was accounted a prophet
sent from God, by this action he plainly decided the contro-
versy between them and the Jews, touching the place which
God had appointed for his religious worship. — Joseph. Antiq. b.
20, c. 5; Jewish JVars, b. 2, c. 11, and Whitby's Annotations.
f The history of Elias, to which the apostles refer us, is
doubtless that, where, by the direction of God, that prophet call-
ed for fire from heaven to destroy those captains and their com-
panies whom king Ahaziah sent out to apprehend him, 2 Kings
i. 10, &c. And when these two apostles desired the like judg-
ment upon the village of Samaria, for refusing to receive their
master, they verified their name of being sons of thunder, which,
upon account of their fiery zeal, their master had before given
them, (Mark iii. 17.)
g What the two apostles had to allege in behalf of their in-
tended severity against these Samaritans, was, — " That they were
schismatics, and had set up another temple in opposition to that
at Jerusalem; that they were heretics, and, together with the
worship of the God of Israel, had mixed that of pagan idols;
that the person whom they had affronted, had a character much
superior to that of Elias ; and that, by an exemplary punishment
inflicted upon this village, they might convince the rest of the
Samaritans of God's displeasure against their way of worship, and
of the divine mission of their master, who was the true Messiah.
But, notwithstanding these plausible allegations, our Saviour re-
buked them, and in his rebuke gave them to understand, that a spirit
of severity towards erroneous persons, in whomsoever it is found,
is highly opposite to the calm temper of Christianity, which is
' pure and peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of
mercy, and good works,' (James iii. 17,) and that it was repug-
nant to the end for which he came into the world, which was to
discountenance all fierceness and rage, and furious zeal, that occa-
sion so many mischiefs among mankind, and to beget in all his
followers such a disposition as exerts itself in ' love, peace, long-
sutlering, gentleness, goodness, and meekness,' (Gal. v. 22,23,)
even to those of the most contrary tempers and persuasion. —
Whitby s Annotations.
948
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4033. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1—
care to inform them, that the marks of a Christian were
meekness and love, not fury and revenge ; that the true
end and design of his coming into the world ' was, not
to destroy, but to save men's lives ;' and, that he might
prove his doctrine by his practice, when ten leprous per-
sons, who came out of the neighbourhood, where he had
been so rudely treated, presented themselves with loud
cries to him for help, his compassion was as ready to
relieve, as their necessity to ask; for while they were
going to a show themselves to the priest, as he directed
them, they all found themselves cured. But see the great
ingratitude of human nature ! Of the ten who received
this miraculous blessing, but one returned to give our
Saviour thanks, and he was a Samaritan.
Having thus returned good for evil, and the greatest
kindness for the most palpable affront, our Lord pro-
ceeded on his journey, and came to another village
where he lodged that night ; but before he arrived at
Jerusalem, he sent out seventy b of his disciples, by two
and two together, in the same manner as he had sent his
twelve apostles, into those places which he himself, in a
short time, intended to visit, and gave them instructions
much of the same import with what, upon the like occa-
sion, he had given his apostles.
The feast of tabernacles always continued eight days ;
but, for some time after his arrival, our Saviour did not
appear publicly, which occasioned no small inquiry, and
various discourses concerning him ; some saying that he
was a good man, and others an impostor, who deluded
the people. At length, when every one began to de-
spair of seeing him, about the middle of the feast, he
showed himself openly, and went and taught in the tem-
ple, to the great admiration of the Jews, who were not
a little surprised to find him, whose education had been
a By the priests, to whom our Saviour remits these lepers,
we are to understand the priests at Jerusalem ; for we can hard-
ly suppose that he would send them to those of mount Gerizzim,
when himself, both in his words and practice, had sufficiently
declared the illegality of their institution: 'and therefore, by
sending them to Jerusalem, where they were to make their offer-
ings for their cleansing,' (Lev. xiv. 2, etc.) he not only decided
the controversy between the Jews and the Samaritans, but gave
them likewise to understand, that, before they reached Jerusalem,
he would undoubtedly heal them — Whitby's Annotations and
Hammond's Paraphrase.
b In place of the common version, Luke xvi., we should rather
read seventy others, not other seventy, as our translation has it,
which seems to intimate that he had appointed seventy before this
time, though, probably, the word other has a reference to the twelve
chosen first: he not only chose twelve disciples to be constantly with
him ; but he chose seventy others to go before him. Our blessed
Lord formed every thing in his church, on the model of the Jew-
ish church ; and why? Because it was the pattern shown by God
himself, the divine form, which pointed out the heavenly sub-
stance which now began to be established in its place. As he
before had chosen twelve apostles, in reference to the twelve
patriarchs who were the chiefs of the twelve tribes and the heads
of the Jewish church, he now publicly appointed (for so the word
avilti%tv means) seventy others, as Moses did the seventy elders
whom he associated with himself to assist him in the government
of the people. (Exod. xviii. 19, xxiv. 1 — 9.) These Christ
sent by two and two: 1. To teach them the necessity of concords
among the ministers of righteousness. 2. That in the mouth
of two witnesses every thing might be established. And 3.
That they might comfort and support each other in their difficult
labour. See on Mark vi. 7. Several MSS. and Versions have
seventy-two. Sometimes the Jews chose six out of each tribe:
this was the number of the great sanhedrim. The names of
these seventy disciples are found in the margin of some ancient
MSS., but this authority is questionable. — Ed.
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
destitute of all learning, so perfect in the Scriptures.
But, to obviate this exception, he gave them to under-
stand, that the doctrine wherein he instructed them, was
not of human acquisition, but divine inspiration ; and that
it was a very base and ungenerous thing in them, to endea-
vour to take away the life of one, who taught them no-
thing but what was agreeable to the law of Moses,
whereof they made so loud a profession. In this man-
ner he preached to the people for the remaining part of
the feast ; and, c on the last and greatest day thereof,
took occasion, from the custom of fetching water from
the fountain of Siloah in great pomp, and pouring it upon
the altar of burnt-offerings in great abundance, to ac-
quaint them with the future effusion of the Holy Ghost,
which he intended to send down upon all those that be-
lieved in him.d
Those who knew the great hatred which the ruling
part of the nation had conceived against him, admired
to hear him speak with so much freedom and intrepidity;
and those who had seen the number and greatness of
his miracles, were by them convinced that he was the
true Messiah ; but the prejudice of his being a Galilean,
and not acknowledged by any of their rulers and learned
rabbis, led others into a contrary persuasion. In the
confusion, officers were sent from the sanhedrim to
apprehend him ; but they were so taken with his person
and preaching, that they became his disciples ; for,
c From the twenty-ninth chapter of the book of Numbers we
learn, that on the first day of this feast, thirteen bullocks were
to be offered: on the second, twelve; on the third, eleven; on
the fourth, ten; on the fifth, nine; on the sixth, eight; on the
seventh, seven; and on the eighth, or last, only one; so that,
in regard to the sacrifices, the last day was the least of all, and
yet the Jews accounted it the greatest, because on that day the
King of Israel, as the Talmudists love to speak, was entertained
by his own people only, and not by those of any other nation.
For their tradition is, that on the first day of the feast their
ancestors when the temple was standing, sacrificed seventy bul-
locks for the seventy nations (for they supposed just so many)
that are upon the face of the earth ; but on the last day no more
than one, but that in the name of the people of Israel only.
And, as they imagine that an earthly prince may sometimes
instead of a vast entertainment, desire but a small collation with
his first favourite, that they may have an opportunity of some fami-
liar converse together; so upon the account of the intimate friend-
ship with God, which the Jews on that day thought themselves
admitted to, and the excessive joy which, from the sense of
that friendship, they expressed in all the outward significations
of music, singing, and dancing, the last day of the feast of taber-
nacles was always accounted the greatest. — Surenkusii Concilia-
tiones, in loca V. T. apad Johan.
d The last day grew into high esteem with the nation because
on the preceding seven days, they held that sacrifices were
offered not so much for themselves, as for the whole world. They
offered, in the course of them, seventy bullocks for the seventy
nations of the world; but the eighth was wholly on their own be-
half. They had then this solemn offering of water, the reason
of which is this ; — at the passover the Jews offered an omer to
obtain from God his blessing on their harvest; at Pentecost, their
first fruits, to request his blessing on the fruits of the trees ; and
in the feast of tabernacles they ofiered water to God, partly re-
ferring to the water from the rock in the wilderness, (1 Cor. x.
4,) but chiefly to solicit the blessing of rain on the approaching
seed-time. These waters they drew out of Siloah, and brought
them into the temple with the sound of the trumpet and great
rejoicing. " He who hath not seen the rejoicing on the drawing
of this water, hath seen no rejoicing at all, (Succah. fol. Ii. 1. —
Lifffitfoot.) Christ, alluding to these customs, proclaims, 'if any
man thirst let him come unto me.' He takes, as very usual
with him, the present occasion of the water brought from
Siloah, to summon them to him as the true fountain. — Ed.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c
949
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30, FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
upon their return, they told the council that they could
not execute their office, because a ' never man spake
like him;' so that the Pharisees, who were part of the
assembly, being more enraged at their reason which
they gave than the neglect of their duty, upbraided them
for being so easily seduced, and for following the error
of an ignorant mob ; until Nicodemus, who had formerly
conversed with our Lord, and was indeed a secret dis-
ciple of his, seeing with what violence his enemies were
bent against him, could not forbear interposing in his
behalf, by urging the unlawfulness of condemning a
person without hearing ; so that, after some reflections
thrown upon him, as a favourer of this Galilean, b who
could have no pretensions, as they said, to the title of a
prophet, the assembly c broke up, without proceeding
any farther against him ; because, indeed, as yet his
time was not fully come.
In the evening, Jesus repaired to the mount of Olives,
about a mile from the city, and where he sometimes used
to pass the night with his apostles. Early next morning
he returned to the temple, and as he was teaching the
people that were gathered about him, the Scribes and
Pharisees brought in a woman, taken in the act of adul-
tery, and desired him to give his judgment in the case.
Their purpose was to find an occasion of accusing him,
either of assuming a judicial power, if he condemned
her, or of nulling the law, if he acquitted her. But he,
as if he had not much minded them, stooped down, and
wrote d something with his finger upon the dust of the
a In these words there are two things remarkable : 1st, The
power of Christ's preaching to change the frame and temper of
men's spirits; for these men came with hearts alienated from
Christ, and with intention to apprehend and carry him before
the chief priests, but returned with great admiration of his
excellency and worth. 2dly, The honesty and integrity of these
men is wry remarkable ; for they do not return with a pretence
that they feared the multitude, and therefore thought it danger-
ous to apprehend him, but ingenuously confess that they could
not prevail with themselves to lay violent hands upon a person
whose discourses were so excellent and divine. — Whitby's
Annotations.
b Our blessed Saviour was neither by birth nor by descent a
Galilean ; but, admitting he had been so, it is a false assertion to
say, that no prophet ever arose out of Galilee since Nahum,
though originally of the tribe of Simeon, according to the testi-
mony of St Jerome, who himself was a Galilean, was born in
that province, and in Elcisi, the same town which that father
came from ; since Jonas was undoubtedly of Gath-hepher, in the
tribe of Zelmlun, which lay in the land of Galilee (2 Kings xiv.
25.), and in the opinion of several, Malachi was of the same
tribe, and born in the city of Sapha. For, as there can be no
reason in nature, so is there no declaration of the divine will why
a Galilean should not be inspired with the gift of prophecy as
well as any other Jew. — Poole's and Beausobrc's Annotations,
and Calmet's Commentary.
c Some are of opinion that the party of Sadducees in the
council, who held the rites and traditions of the Pharisees in
great contempt, joined with Nicodemus, in not having Christ
condemned without a fair hearing, which was no more than
what the law required. (Deut. i. 16, 17.) — Poole's Annotations.
d It is generally agreed, that upon this occasion our Lord
wrote some memorable sentence or other, but what that sentence
was, the conjectures of learned men have been various. Some
have imagined that it was the reproof against a rigid and un-
charitable temper, which occurs in his sermon on the mount:
' Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?' (Mat. vii. 3.)
others, that it was the very words which, upon raising himself
up, he pronounced to the woman's accuser: ' He that is without
sm among you, let him fust cast a stone at her,' (John viii. 7.)
pavement ; till, upon their importuning him for an an-
swer, he raised himself up, and said, e ' He that is with-
out sin among you, let him cast the first stone ;' and so
stooping down, wrote as before. This unexpected
answer baffled these insidious accusers, who, thoroughly
convinced of their own crimes, retired, one by one, and
/ left the woman alone ; so that, when our Lord lift up
himself again, and found none but the woman standing
by him, he asked her, what was become of her accusers,
and whether any one had condemned her ? And when he
understood, by her answer, that no one had, fi ' neither
do I condemn thee,' said he, ' go, and sin no more.'
and others again, that it might rather be that passage in the
psalmist: 'Unto the ungodly said God, Why dost thou preach
my laws, and takest my covenant in thy mouth? Whereas
thou hatest to be reformed, and hast cast my words behind thee.
When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him, and hast
been partaker with the adulterers.' (Ps. 1. 16, &c.) But all this
is mere guess-work: and it seems more prudent to say nothing
of the actions of our Saviour, when we are not admitted to the
reasons of them. — Calmet's Commentary, and Beausobre's An-
notations.
e The rabbinical writers tell us, that when a man or woman
was convicted of adultery they were led out to the brow of a
hill, with their hands tied behind their backs, where their
accusers pushed them down headlong ; that, if with the fall
they were killed, there was no more done to them; but if they
were still alive, the same accusers were to roll great stones upon
them, and if these did not despatch them, the company then
all took up stones, and quite overwhelmed them with them.
But we have nothing of all this in the law of Moses. In all the
places where he makes mention of this punishment, we only
find, that the criminal was to be led out of the city, ' and stoned
with stones till he died,' and that ' the hands of the witnesses
should be first upon him, to put him to death, and afterwards the
hands of all the people,' Deut. xvii. 7. It is in allusion to this
passage, that our Saviour says, ' Let him that is without sin
among you cast the first stone ;' because it badly becomes those
who are guilty either of the same or greater crimes, to be so very
zealous for the punishment of others. This however hinders
not, but that magistrates, who are intrusted with the execution
of the laws, should put them in force against malefactors, even
though themselves are not entirely exempt from sin; but still it
reminds them that they should execute judgment with compas-
sion and tenderness, and as much moderation as the law will
allow them ; considering that they themselves are not free from
guilt, but as obnoxious to punishment for other sins, as those
poor creatures are, who have fallen into crimes that are punish-
able by human judicatures. — Calmet's Commentary, and Poole's
Annotations.
/"In the very next words it is said, that the woman 'stood in
the midst of the people,' and our Lord's apostles, who were his
constant attendants, were doubtless not far from him ; the meau-
ing therefore of the expression must be, that she was left without
any of her accusers, who, out of shame, sneaked away ; being
convicted in their consciences, that, whatever the woman was,
they were no proper evidences against her: for, 'not only the
accuser, but not even the rebuker is to be endured, (says Tully, in,
Verron. Orat. 5.) — the man who is himself found guilty in that
which he blames in others.' Nor is it to be wondered, that upon
this occasion, all the woman's accusers departed from her, since
the Jews themselves own, that adulteries did multiply under the
second temple, when their rabbins came to permit every one,
"to have four or five wives, and said, that they sinned not, if,
after the example of the patriarchs, when they saw a beautiful
woman, they desired to have her.". — Just. Mart. Dial. p. 363;
Calmet's Commentary, and tVhitby $ Annotations.
y Both Seldeu and Fagius are of opinion, that this woman
might come under the number of them whose case is thus re-
presented in the words of Deuteronomy: 'If a damsel that is a
virgin, he betrothed to a husband, and a man find her in the
city, and he lie with her, then shall ye bring them both out unto
the gate of the city, and ye shall stone them with stones, that they
die ; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city ; and
950
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I,
After this interruption, Jesus returned to the business
of instructing the people, and, in a sublime discourse,
opened several great mysteries of Christianity, namely,
his divine mission, his co-equality with the Father, his
ability to give eternal life to his followers, and the
necessity of believing in him, which would be more evi-
dent after his crucifixion ; and thence taking occasion
to expose the wickedness and degeneracy of those, who
sought to take away his life, and how unlike to the be-
haviour of the sons of God and Abraham whom they
boasted themselves to be, such causeless and inveterate
malice was, he so provoked them with his severe reflec-
tions, and especially with the superiority which he claim-
ed above Abraham that they took up stones to cast at
him, had he not miraculously conveyed himself out of
their hands. a
Before our Lord left Jerusalem, the seventy disciples,
whom he had sent to preach the gospel, returned from
their journey and ministry, greatly rejoicing, because
the very devils, by virtue of his name, b were subjected
to them ; whereupon our Lord promised them still greater
success ; invested them with power to tread upon the
most venemous beasts, c and all the malignant instruments
the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife,' Deut.
xxii. 23, 24. The punishment of stoning, which this law men-
tions, and the accusers of this woman here insist on, seem to
favour this notion : and the indulgence which our Saviour showed
her, looks as if she had suffered some kind of violence, though she
was not entirely innocent. Our Saviour, however, could not act in
the capacity of a judge, because that was no part of his present
ministry: though therefore he was so far from approving her
conduct, that he sufficiently blamed her, in bidding her ' sin no
more,' yet was he restrained from pronouncing any sentence of
condemnation upon her; because the end of his coming at this
time into the world was, ' not to judge the world, but to save it,'
John xii. 47. — Selden, Uxor. Heb. b. iii. c. 11; Fagius in
Deut. xxii. 22. and Calmet's Commentary.
a After describing various punishments which were inflicted
by the Jews upon offenders and criminals, Lewis, (in his Origines
Hebrccoe, vol. i. p. 85) says, " there was another punishment,
called the rebels ' beating, which was often fatal, and inflicted by
the mob with their fists, or staves, or stones, without mercy, or
the sentence of the judges. Whoever transgressed against a
prohibition of the wise men, or of the scribes, that had its foun-
dation in the law, was delivered over to the people to be used in
this manner, and was called a son of rebellion. The frequent
taking up of stones by the people to stone our Saviour, and the
incursion upon him, St Stephen for blasphemy, as they would
have it, and upon St Paul for defiling the temple as they supposed
were of this nature." — Ed.
b The power which our Saviour gave to the Seventy, when
he sent them out to preach the gospel, was only that of healing
the sick wherever they went, (Luke x. 9.) but finding that, upon
naming their Master's name, they were able likewise to cure
those that were possessed of devils, this they made the greater
matter of their joy, and, at their return, told it witli more
pleasure, because it was no part of their commission. It is to be
observed, however, that our Lord himself cast out devils by a
divine power residing in himself; his disciples only, in virtue
of his name, or by a power derived from him. Seeing then that
this power accompanied them, in all parts of the world, it was
necessary that Christ's presence should be with them every where,
and such a presence was a certain proof of his being God. —
Whitby's Annotations, and Hammond's Paraphrase.
c These words seem to have a plain allusion to those of the
psalmist, where, under the metaphor of ' treading on the scorpion
and basilisk,' (Ps. xci. 13.) God promises the good man a more
than common protection from all sorts of dangers and enemies.
But there is no reason, however, I think, why our Saviour's
words may not here be taken in a literal sense, since they agree
so well with what he promises all true believers in another
place, ' they shall take up serpents,' as we find one fastened upou
of Satan, without the least harm : and, at the same time,
gave them assurance of a blessing more peculiarly theirs,
namely, that their d names were recorded in heaven ; and
so broke out into a rapture of joy, glorifying God for
concealing the mysteries of the gospel from the great
and wise, and revealing them to the simple and ignorant,
and to his disciples more especially, who, in virtue of that
revelation, enjoyed a happiness which many kings and
prophets had in vain desired.
Our Lord had scarce ended his discourse, when a
doctor of the law stood up, and inquired of him, what
was necessary to be done for the attainment of that
eternal life, e which he was so very liberal in promising
to his followers. Whereupon our Lord remitted him to
the law, which, according to the doctor's own account,
consisted chiefly in the love of God and the love of our
neighbour. But when he demanded farther what the
notion of a neighbour/ implied ? our Saviour thought
proper to answer this question, by telling him, " that,
once upon a time, a certain Jew, as he was travelling in
the road between g Jerusalem and Jericho, was robbed,
St Paul's hand without doing him any harm, (Acts xxviii. 3.)
' and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them,'
Mark xvi. IS. — Whitby's Annotations; and Calmet's Commen-
tary.
a! The words allude to a known custom in well-governed
cities, where registers are kept of the names of their inhabitants,
and do plainly denote the title which believers have to eternal
happiness; but by no means an absolute election to it. For, as
a citizen, when he misbehaves egregiously, and thereupon be-
comes infamous, has his name razed out of the city-register, and
is himself disenfranchised of all his privileges; so we read of
some, of whom Christ threatens ' to blot out their names out of
the book of life,' (Rev. xxii. 19.) For, " as men are written in
this book," says St Basil (in Is. iv. 3.) when they are converted
from vice to virtue, so are they blotted out of it, when they
backslide from virtue to vice." Of the twelve we read that one was
certainly a reprobate ; and though it becomes us to hope better
of the Seventy; yet our Saviour's words give us no room to
think that they were all predestinated to eternal life, since his
meaning only is, that his disciples, instead of estimating their
happiness from the power of working miracles, should rather
make it consist in this, that he had called, chosen and separated
them from great numbers that would perish; that he had given
them the grace of faith and admission to the Christian covenant,
but that on themselves it was incumbent, by the preservation of
their faith, and the practice of good works comporting therewith,
to make their calling and election sure. — Hammond and WTiit-
by's Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
e The law of Moses does no where expressly promise eternal
life to those that observed its precepts. It is wholly taken up
with temporal blessings and prosperities; and yet the generality
of the Jews were not destitute of the hopes of another life, be-
cause their writers, a little before, and after the captivity, are
very full of it, so that it became the prevailing opinion of the
whole nation, and was received by their two principal sects, the
Pharisees and Essenes: for, as for the Sadducees, who had other
notions of the matter, their religion was very little, and their
principles purely Epicurean. — Calmet's Commentary.
/In our Saviour's time, the Pharisees had restrained the
word neighbour, to signify those of their own nation, their own
religion, and their own friends only: and all who differ from
them in any of these respects, they indulged the people the liberty
to hate ; nor would they permit them to extend the least office
of common civility to any such. But our Saviour overthrew
these false maxims of the Jewish doctors, and reduced the pre-
cept of universal charity to its first intention, when, In this
parable of the Jew and the Samaritan, he plainly demonstrated,
that no difference of nation or religion, no quarrel or resentment,
no enmity or alienation of affections, can exempt us from owning
any person to be our neighbour. — Whitby's Annotations.
g Between Jerusalem and Jericho, which were about seven
leagues distant, the road was very infamous for murders and
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
951
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 , OR A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1
stripped, barbarously used, and left almost dead with
his wounds ; that by chance a priest a came that way,
and saw the poor wretch weltering in his blood ; but the
horror of the sight did not affect him ; he passed along
unconcerned ; that next came a Levite ; but he too was
as void of tenderness and compassion as was the priest,
though both of them were of the same country with the
sufferer; that at last a Samaritan, a stranger, and one
abhorred by the Jews, seeing this distressed person,
with great compassion came to him, raised his head,
recalled his fainting spirits, and closed his gaping
wounds with the best medicines b he had then, mounting
him on his own horse, he gently conveyed him to the
first inn, where, at his own cost, he entertained him,
while he staid with him, and, at his departure, c promised
the host to be at whatever expenses more should accrue."
From which plain narration, the Doctor himself d could
not but conclude, that the Samaritan was the neighbour
to the person in distress, and consequently that the
— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. It. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
robberies; for in it was a place called ' the valley of Adommim,'
or ' of bloody men,' because of the great quantity of blood that was
there spilt; and for this reason it is that our Lord lays the scene
of his parable in this place. — Calmet's Commentary. — This road
is described by Buckingham as being of the most wild and
gloomy character, passing through a series of rocky defiles, and
on the edges of cliffs and precipices. It is considered the most
dangerous in Palestine, and Mr Wilson remarks, that a country
more favourable for the attacks of banditti, and dens better
adapted for concealment, can hardly be imagined. It is remark-
able, that both Chateaubriand, and Sir Frederick Henniker met
with serious adventures with the robbers of this region. — Ed.
a To make the description more lively, our Saviour instances
in two men, a priest and a Levite, who took no pity of this Jew
in distress, though they were of the same religion and country;
nay, though they were the ministers and teachers of the religion
which he professed, and might therefore be presumed, even in
virtue of their office and education, to have more extensive
notions, and hearts more capable of tender impressions, than the
ruder vulgar: and, for the same reason, he introduces a Samari-
tan acting a different part, and taking all imaginable care of this
wounded Jew, though between Jews and Samaritans there was
a most inveterate hatred.
b The words in the text are, pouring in wine and oil ; oil, to
ease and assuage the pain; and wine, to cleanse and heal the
wound: and these things the good Samaritan had about him,
because the inns in the eastern countries, even as it is still,
afforded nothing, but barely house-room; and therefore the
custom was, for the traveller to carry all kinds of necessaries,
both for his bed and board, along with him. — Calmet's Com-
mentary.
c The words in the text are, ' when he departed he took out
twopence,' (Luke x. 35.) The S«vaj/ov, which we render a
penny, was a kind of Roman coin, much about sevenpence
halfpenny of our money. In the New Testament, for it never
occurs in the Old, it is usually put for a piece of money in
general, that is for a shekel, which was the most common coin
among the Jews before they became subject to the Greeks and
Romans; so that, in this sense, what the Samaritan gave the
host amounted to five shillings, or thereabout, which is more
consistent with the rest of his character than that he should
leave so small a matter behind him. — Calmet's Commentary.
d Had our Saviour propounded the parable in this manner,
that a certain Samaritan fell among thieves, and that a priest
and a Levite passed by without offering him any help, this
doctor of the law might have replied, that he did nothing but
right, because the Samaritan was no neighbour of theirs: but,
now, as he makes a Jew the subject of the parable, and the
object of the Samaritan's compassion, he draws him in to
acknowledge the voice of nature, which declares that every man
is neighbour to his fellow-creature, and that the law of Moses
has not annulled, but perfected the law of nature, by command-
ing us to ' love our neighbour as ourselves,' (Lev. xix. 18. —
Calmet's Commentary.
notion of a neighbour comprehended men of all nations
and all religions whatever.
As soon as the feast of tabernacles was ended, our
Lord departed from Jerusalem, and, in the beginning
of his journey, went to a small village called Bethany,
about two miles east of Jerusalem, where he was joy-
fully received by a woman named Martha, who, with her
sister Mary, and her brother Lazarus, was highly in
favour with him. While Martha was busy in making
preparation for his entertainment, her sister Mary sat
with the company listening to his instructions ; and
when Martha complained to him that her sister had left
the whole burden of the business upon her, and there-
upon desired him to send her to her assistance, our Lord
commended Mary's choice, and though he did not slight
Martha's civility, yet her sister's devoutness and atten-
tion to his doctrine/ which Avas one thing chiefly neces-
sary, he preferred before it.
Upon his return to Galilee, as he was one day pray-
ing with his disciples in a private place, /they, taking
it into consideration how necessary it was for them to
be directed in the right performance of that duty, desired
of him to compose a form of prayer for their use, as the
Baptist had done for his disciples. Whereupon he not
only gave them the same excellent form, called the
Lord's prayer, which he had given them about eighteen
months before, in his sermon on the mount, but encour-
aged them likewise, from the consideration of God's
goodness and fatherly affection (far more indulgent to
his children than any earthly parent's were to theirs) to
be constant in their petitions to him, with fervour, S im-
portunity, and an indefatigable perseverance as the like-
liest way to obtain a gracious answer to them.
Not long after this, upon our Lord's curing a demon-
iac that was dumb, the Pharisees renewed their old
senseless cavil, of his ejecting devils by Beelzebub,
which he confuted by the same arguments he had for-
merly used upon that account ; and when they again de-
manded of him a sign from heaven, he again made them
the same reply. Nay not only so, but when he was
invited to dinner one day by a certain person of that
sect, who was not a little offended at his sitting down
to meat without washing his hands, he took occasion
from thence to inveigh very severely against their ridi-
e Interpreters have given themselves some trouble in deter-
mining what that one thing is which onr Saviour accounts need-
ful. Some of the ancients are of opinion that our Lord, in this
expression, told Martha that one dish was enough. But besides
the lowness of the sense, the great company that attended our
Lord, seventy disciples and twelve apostles, to be sure, if no
more, shows the incongruousness of it. Others will have this
one thing needful to be a life of meditation and contemplation,
which Mary had all along addicted herself to; but her choosing
to take advantage of our Saviour's company, to hear him for an
hour or two rather, than prepare a supper for him, is not founda-
tion enough for this conjecture; and therefore we cannot but
think that the most general interpretation concerning the care
of the soul with reference to eternity is the best. — Poole's An-
notations.
f These disciples must have been some of the seventy who
were not present when our Lord delivered his sermon on the
mount, wherein he first of all prescribed to his apostles this form
of prayer.^ — Beausobre's Annotations.
g The word xvaibila properly signifies impudence, and might
here be used in conformity to the saying of the Jews, " The
impudent man overcomes the modest and the bashful, how much
more God, who is goodness itself." — ir/iitliy's Annotations.
952
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book \ III.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT . xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1
culous superstition, in affecting outward neatness in
their manner of living, while they neglected to cleanse
their souls from internal pollutions. And so proceed-
ing to reproach both them and the scribes, the teachers
of the law, with their pride and prevarication, their
hypocrisy and spirit of persecution, he so exasperated
them, that they used all possible methods to ensnare
him in his speech, and to find some accusation against
him, whereby they might destroy him.
One of the company, however, seeing with what au-
thority he reproved and determined among the people,
desired of him a to arbitrate between him and his bro-
ther concerning an estate which had lately fallen to
them. But this office he chose to decline, and thence
took occasion to preach against covetousness, or plac-
ing our felicity in worldly possessions ; and to enforce
this, he propounded the parable of a certain rich man,
who, when he had acquired estate enough, proposed to
indulge himself in voluptuousness, but was sadly disap-
pointed by the intervention of a sudden death. He
therefore exhorted his disciples not to be too anxious
about the things of this life, but to cast their care upon
God's providence, who, having promised them a king-
dom in heaven, would not fail of supplying them with
what was necessary here. He exhorted them to charity,
to watchfulness, to preparation against the day of judg-
ment, or the arrest of death, and, under the emblem of
stewards or governors in great men's houses, recom-
mended gentleness and temperance, and cautioned
them against indulging themselves in any kind of ex-
cess upon the confidence of their Lord's absence or
delay.
While he was thus discoursing to his disciples, news
was brought him of * the massacre which Pilate had
a The practice among the Jews of referring civil matters to
ecclesiastical persons as judges, began in the captivity of Baby-
lon, when, by this means, the Jews avoided the bringing their
differences before heathen judges. Under the dominion of the
Romans, they were indulged a greater liberty, and had civil
courts made up of persons of their own religion. In cases of
private difference between man and man, it was usual to make
either the consistory of three, or some persons chosen by the
contending parties, arbitrators. Whether both these brothers
had agreed to refer their difference to our Lord's determination,
or this one of them only desired him to interpose his authority,
if not to enjoin, at least to persuade, his brother to come to an
accommodation, it is difficult to say, because the scripture is
silent. But this we may observe, that the ordinary rule of
inheritance among the Jews was, for the eldest son to have a
double portion of his father's estate, and the rest to be divided
equally among the other children; but in what came by the
mother, the eldest had no prerogative above the rest; the divi-
sion among them was equal. Whatever then the controversy
between these brothers was, our Saviour might very justly refuse
to intermeddle in it; and that, not only because it was incon-
sistent with his design of coming into the world, which was to
promote men's spiritual, rather than their temporal interests,
but because it might probably have drawn upon him the envy
and calumny of the Jewish rulers, who might be apt to say that
he took upon him an office to which he had no call, in prejudice
to them who were legally appointed to it. — Poole'' s and Whitby 's
Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
b The general opinion is, that this piece of history relates to the
sedition which Judas Gaulonites raised against the Roman govern-
ment in Judea, when he and one Sadducus, a Pharisee, possessed
the people with a notion, "that taxes were a badge of their slavery ;
that they ought to acknowledge no sovereign but God himself,
nor pay any tribute but to his temple." It was in Galilee, very
probably, where this Judas first broached these sentiments, and
ix. 37- JOHN v. 1 — vii. 1.
caused to be made of some Galileans, while they were
offering- their sacrifices at the altar ; and the con-
sequence which he drew from thence, as Avell as from
another sad accident that had lately happened in Jeru-
salem, where the fall of the tower of Siloam c had de-
stroyed no less than eighteen persons, was, not that these
sufferers were greater sinners than their neighbours, but
that their sufferings were intended to lead others to
repentance, which, if they did not, in all probability
they would meet with the like or worse judgments. d
And then, to engage them all to a speedy repentance,
he set forth the patience of the Almighty towards them,
in the parable of a fig-tree, which the master of the
vineyard ordered to be cut down, because for three
years, e it had borne no fruit ; but, upon the gardener's
there acquired such a multitude of followers and abettors as
made Josephus call him Galikeus, as well as Gaulonites. {Antiq.
b. xviii. e. 2.) Nay all his followers in general, though they
were of different provinces by birth, obtained the same name.
But when they came to Jerusalem at one of the great festivals,
and began to spread these seditious notions against Cresar, Pilate,
who was then the Roman governor, having had intelligence of
it, caused a considerable number of them to be slain in the
temple while they were sacrificing. — Whitby s and Beausobre 's
Annotations.
c The fountain of Siloam rose at the foot of the wall of the
east part of the city of Jerusalem. The tower called after its
name was doubtless built upon the wall not far from it; and
being now become ancient, might fall upon such a number of
people, either passing by or standing under it. But how this
accident came to pass we have no manner of certainty, because
this passage in St Luke is the only place where we find any
mention made of this piece of history. — Calmet's Commentary.
d To verify this prediction of our Saviour's upon the impeni-
tent Jews, we may remember what Josephus has told us of
them, namely, that under the government of Cumanus, twenty
thousand of them were destroyed about the temple. {Antiq. b.
xx. c. 4.) That, upon the admission of the Idumaeans into the
city, eight thousand and five hundred of the high priest's party
were slain, insomuch that there was a flood of blood quite round
the temple. {Jewish War, b. iv. c. 7.) That, upon the three-
fold faction that happened in Jerusalem, before the siege of the
Romans, ' the temple was everywhere polluted with slaughter ;
the priests were slain in the exercise of their function ; many
who came to worship fell before their sacrifices ; and the dead
bodies of strangers and natives were promiscuously blended to-
gether, and sprinkled the altar with their blood;' (Jewish War,
b. vi. c. 1.) and that, upon the Romans taking the city and
temple, " mountains of dead bodies were piled up about the altar ;
streams of blood ran down the steps of the temple; several were
destroyed by the fall of towers, and others choked in the sultry
ruins of the galleries over the porches." {Jewish War, b. vii.
c. 10.)
e Some of the ancients are of opinion that by these three years
we are to understand the three dispensations under which man-
kind have lived, namely, under the natural law, from the begin-
ning of the world to the time of Moses; under the written law
from Moses to Jesus Christ; and under the evangelical law,
from Jesus Christ to the end of the world. Others rather mean
by them the three kinds of government under which the Jews
had lived, namely, the government of judges, from Joshua to
Saul ; the government of kings, from Saul to the Babylonish
captivity; and the government of high priests, from the captiv-
ity to the time of Jesus Christ. But these explications are a
little too arbitrary; nor will the three years of our Saviour's
preaching among the Jews come up to the point, because the
Jews were not destroyed the next year, as the barren fig-tree
was to be cut down, but forty years after our Lord's ascension.
All that is meant by the expression therefore is, that God gave
them all the time and all the means that could be desired, to
make them inexcusable; and the term of three years seems
rather to be mentioned, because the fruit of some fig-trees
comes not to maturity till the third year. — Calmet's Commen-
tary, and Whitby's Annotations.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
953
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 : OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1.— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— is. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I.
promising to use «a more than ordinary care and dili-
gence about it, he was prevailed on to let it stand one
year longer, but with this determination, that if it still
continued unfruitful, he would not then fail to cut it
down.
Every sabbath-day our Lord's custom was to preach
in one of the Jewish synagogues, and, while he was thus
employed, he observed a woman, who, for the space of
eighteen years, had laboured under a spirit of infirmity, «
which bowed down her body so, that she was not able
to lift herself up. Here was a proper object for his
compassion and power to exert themselves ; and there-
fore, calling the woman to him, he laid his hands upon
her, and immediately she became straight, and glorified
God. At this the ruler of the synagogue b became so
very envious and displeased, that he told the people
there were six days in the week allowed by God for
labour, and that on those they might come for cure, but
not on the sabbath, which was a day appointed for
rest. But our Lord soon made hi in ashamed of his
hypocrisy, c by an argument drawn from their own
practice of loosing an ox or an ass from the stall on the
sabbath-day, and leading them away to watering ; and
much more then might he be permitted to cure on that
day a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan for so many
years had afflicted with a sore disease. Whereupon his
adversaries were silenced, but the people were all glad,
and rejoiced at his glorious actions.
The feast of dedication d was now approaching,
a It is very evident the Jews apprehended that all remarkable
disorders of body proceeded from the operation of some malig-
nant demons. Perhaps they might draw an argument from
what is said of Satan's agency in the affliction of Job (chap. i.
and ii.), and from Ps. xci. 6. (comp. Septuagint) and 1 Sam. xvi.
14. They also considered Satan as having the power of death.
(Heb. ii. 14.) And that in some maladies this was indeed the
case, is intimated by our Lord's reply here (ver. 16.), and by St
Paul's words (1 Cor. v. 5,), where he speaks of delivering an
offender to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. The topic is
very judiciously handled by that illustrious writer Mr Howey
(see his works, vol. ii. pp. 360, 361); and there are some curious
and entertaining remarks in Wolfius on this text. — Doddridge's
Expositor. — Ed.
b In every synagogue there was a considerable number of
doctors of the law, who in the gospel are frequently called rulers
or governors, and over these there was usually one chief presi-
dent. But the person here seems not to have been the chief
president, but one of the subordinate rulers, because we find
him, not addressing himself particularly to Christ, (which, not
improbably, had he been the president, he would have taken
courage to do,) but only to the people in general ; though by them
he obliquely struck at our Saviour. — Bcausobre's Annotations,
and Calmet's Commentary.
c Our Saviour declared this ruler of the synagogue to be an
hypocrite, partly because he placed his holiness in the observa-
tion of the ritual precepts of the law, such as bodily rest on the
sabbath-day, to the disparagement of the works of mercy, and
other great matters of eternal obligation ; and partly because he
pretended to a great zeal for the performance of God's com-
mands, when, all the while, he was rather actuated by a male-
volent envy to the glory of Christ, which he, to whom his heart
was open, perfectly knew. — Whitby's Annotations.
d When Judas Maccaboeus had cleansed the temple, which
had been polluted by Antiochus Epiphanes, he again dedi-
cated the altar ; (1 Mac. iv. 59. and 2 Mac. x. 8.) and this is
supposed to be the dedication, in memory of which the Jews
continued to celebrate a feast, which fell out in the winter, in
the month Chisleu, between the 13th and 14th of our Novem-
ber; and being the same, in all probability, with what in the
gospel is called to. lyKaivia, was honoured and approved by our
Saviour's presence, though but of human institution. — Whitby's
when, after several removals, our Lord repaired again
to Jerusalem, and, as he was walking in the streets on
the sabbath-day, e saw a poor man that was blind from
his very birth. Upon his calling the man to him, his
disciples asked him, whether it was the / man's own or
his parents' sin that had brought that calamity upon
him ? But his blindness, as he told them, was not sent
for a punishment of any one's sin, but e for the greater
manifestation of God's glory ; and so, spitting upon the
ground, he made some clay, and having anointed his
eyes therewith, he h sent him to wash them in the pool
of Siloam ; which accordingly he did, and returned with
Annotations, Hammond's Paraphrase, and Echard's Eccl.
Hist., b. i. c. 5.
e It has been observed before, that our Saviour made choice
of the sabbath-day as a day wherein he did many of his mighty
works. It was on this day that he cured the impotent man who
lay at the pool of Bethesda (John v. 10.) on this day that iie
healed him who had the withered hand, (Mat. xii. 10.) and
now on this day likewise that he gave sight to the man who was
born blind, (John ix. 14.) and possibly he might choose this,
because it was the day whereon he ordinarily preached that
heavenly doctrine, which he confirmed by these miraculous
works ; or perhaps, that he might instruct the Jews, if they
would have received instruction, in the right observation of the
sabbath, and arm his disciples against that pernicious doctrine
of the Pharisees, namely, that it was not lawful to do good, or
perform works of mercy and compassion on that day. — Poole's
and Whitby's Annotations.
f What the disciples might mean by the sin of the blind man's
parents, is no hard matter to solve, considering the strict prohibi-
tion in the law, (Lev. xx. 18.) of not coming near a menstruous
woman, which was thought to have so ill an influence upon the
child, as to make it obnoxious to leprosy, or mutilation, and
might consequently be the cause of this person's blindness.
But what we are to understand by his own sin, before he was
born, isnot so easy to be determined. That it cannot relate to
the original sin which he brought into the world with him is
evident, because all mankind, our Lord only excepted, are
equally guilty of this ; nor does this entail upon them any cor-
poreal imperfection: and therefore the sin here intended must
be something special and personal. Now, whoever considers
that the opinion of the Platonists and Pythagoreans concerning
the pre-existence of souls, their transmigration from one body to
another, and being sent into bodies better or worse, according to
their merit or demerit, had obtained among the Jews, and more
especially among the Pharisees, need not much wonder to find
our Lord's disciples infected with it, or, at least, desirous to
know their master's sentiments about it. The author of the
book of Wisdom, where speaking of himself, he tells us, ' that,
being good, he came into a body undefiled,' that is, free from any
notable infirmity, (chap. viii. 20.) gives countenance to this
doctrine ; and, in the writings of Philo, (on Giants, p. 2S5, and
Dreams, p. 586.) and of Josephus, (Jewish War, b. ii. c. 12.)
we have it confirmed to us. And therefore the disciples may
well be supposed to inquire here, whether our Lord allowed of
the prevailing notion, namely, that the soul of this man might
be put into this imperfect body, for the punishment of what he
had done, either in or out of the body, in a pre-existent state.
— Whitby's and Hammond's Annotations, and Calmet's Com-
mentary.
g It must not be thought that God did any ways actively con-
cur to make this man blind, though, in his wisdom, he thought
fit to leave this imperfection in the plastic matter whereof lit
was formed unrectified, that thereby he might show his miracu
lous power in giving sight to such an one for the confirmation
of Christ's doctrine ; thereby display his goodness, in illuminat
ing both the soul and body of this man at once ; and thereby
give all others, who beheld this miraculous cure, a powerful
motive to believe. — Whitby's Annotations.
h We read of nothing medicinal in this water, only our Lord
was pleased to send the blind man to wash his eyes here, as a
probation of his faith and obedience, in the same manner as, of
old, Naaman the Syrian was sent to wash in the river Jordan.
(2 Kings v. 10.) — Poole's Annotations.
6e
954
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31. OR, A. M. 5411. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1
such perfect eyesight that his neighbours were amazed,
and began to question whether he was the same man
that used to sit begging, until he assured them that he
was the very person ; and, to satisfy them farther, not
only told them who his physician was, but in what man-
ner his cure was effected.
Various were the censures and opinions of men upon
this occasion. The Pharisees, to diminish the credit of
the miracle, said that Jesus could not be a prophet sent
from God, a because he violated the sabbath ; but others
again replied, that no impostor could be permitted to
work such miracles as had apparently the finger of God
in them. Those who were averse to believe the miracle,
or in hopes of making the thing look intricate, sent for
the parents of the man that was cured, and asked them
these three questions : Whether he was their son ? Whe-
ther he was born blind? and Whether they knew how
and by whom he was cured ? To the two first questions
they answered directly, that he was their son, and was
born blind ; but, as to the last, they referred them to
him, who, as they told them, was of age to answer for
himself; not daring to say any more for fear of the
sanhedrim, who had made * an order to excommunicate
— xvii.14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14 LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— Vii. I.
any person who should acknowledge Jesus to be Christ,
Him therefore they began to examine ; and to draw
him from the good opinion he had conceived of his phy-
sician, bid him ascribe the glory of his cure wholly to
God, and not to look upon Jesus with any veneration,
who was a sinner and sabbath-breaker, and consequently
could not come from God. To which the man boldly
replied, " That it was very unaccountable that they
should not perceive from whence the man was, whom
God had endued with such a miraculous poAver of open-
ing the eyes of one born blind, c a thing that was never
heard of before since the world began ; and that since
it was a certain truth d that God heareth not sinners, if
a And yet they themselves acknowledge that a prophet might
do and command things contrary to the rest required by the
sabbath, which they al=o prove by the example of Joshua, who
commanded that ' the ark should be carried round Jericho, the
aimed men going before and after it seven days,' one of which
must be the sabbath (John vi.) How then could that which pro-
phets, by the known principles of the Jews, were allowed to do, prove
that Jesus was no prophet, especially if we consider that by these
actions of mercy and goodness he did not indeed violate the rest
of the sabbath, but only their corrupt traditions concerning it. —
Whitby's Annotations.
b Exclusion from sacred worship, or excommunication, was
not only an ecclesiastical punishment, but also a civil one ; be-
cause in this theocratic republic, there was no distinction between
the divine and the civil right. The fancies of the rabbins
relative to the origin of excommunication are endless. Some
affirm that Adam excommunicated Cain and his whole race ;
others, that excommunication began with Miriam for having
spoken ill of Moses ; others, again, find it in the Song of De-
borah and Barak, (Judg. v. 23. * Curse ye Meroz,') interpret-
ing Meroz as a person who had refused to assist Barak. But it
is most probable that the earliest positive mention of this pun-
ishment occurs after the return from the Babylonish captivity,
in Ezra x. 7, 8, or in the anathema of Nehemiah (xiii. 5.)
against those who had married strange women. In later times,
according to the rabbinical writers, there were three degrees of
excommunication among the Jews. The first was called vi:
(nzdui), removal or separation from all intercourse with society:
this, in the New Testament, is frequently termed casting out of
the synagogue. (John ix. 22. xvi. 2. Luke vi. 22, &c.) This
was in force for thirty days, and might be shortened by repen-
tance. During its continuance, the excommunicated party was
prohibited from bathing, from shaving his head, or approaching
his wife or any other person nearer than four cubits: but if he
submitted to this prohibition, he was not debarred the privilege
of attending the sacred rites. If, however, the party continued
in his obstinacy after that time, the excommunication was
renewed with additional solemn maledictions. This second
degree was called onn (cHeRe.ii), which signifies to anathematise
or devote to death : it involved an exclusion from the sacred
assemblies. The third, and last degree of excommunication
was termed jmw ao (shmi-atha) or njin pis (waRaN-ATHA),
that is, the Lord comcth, or -may the Lord come; intimating that
those against whom it was fulminated had nothing more to ex-
pect but the terrible day of judgment. The condition of those
who were excommunicated was the most deplorable that can be
imagined. They were perpetually excluded from all the rights
and privileges of the Jewish people, were debarred from all
social intercourse, and were excluded from the temple and the
synagogues, on pain of severe corporal punishment. Whoever
had incurred this sentence was loaded with imprecations, as
appears from Deut. xxvii. where the expression cursed is he,
is so often repeated : whence to curse and to excommunicate
were equivalent terms with the Jews. And therefore St Paul
says, that ' no man speaking by the Spirit of God, calleth Jesus
anathema or accursed ' (I Cor. xii. 3.) that is, curses him as the
Jews did, who denied him to be the Messiah, and excommuni-
cated the Christians. In the second degree, they delivered the
excommunicated party over to Satan, devoting him by a solemn
curse: to this practice St Paul is supposed to allude, 1 Cor. v,
5; and in this sense he expresses his desire even to be 'ac-
cursed for his brethren,' (Rom. ix. 3.), that is, to be excom-
municated, laden with curses, and to suffer all the miseries con-
sequent on the infliction of this punishment, if it could have
been of any service to his brethren the Jews. In order to
impress the minds of the people with the greater horror, it is
said that when the offence was published in the synagogue, all
the candles were lighted, and when the proclamation was fin-
ished, they were extinguished, as a sign that the excommuni-
cated person was deprived of the light of heaven; further, his
goods were confiscated, his sons were not admitted to circumci-
sion; and if he died without repentance or absolution, by the
sentence of the judge a stone was to be cast upon his coffin or
bier, in order to show that he deserved to be stoned. — Home's
Introduction, vol. iii. pp. 149, 150.
c They who lose their sight by a disease may be cured; but
no man, no not Moses or any of the prophets, ever did or ever
could, without the assistance of a divine power, give sight to one
bom blind : for which reason the Jews reckon this among the
signs of the Messiah, that he ' should open the eyes of the blind.'
i — Whitby's Annotations. — Rosenmuller, and Michaelis observe,
that restoration of sight to those born blind has been recently
effected by the famous surgeon Cheselden. But the former adds
that therefore what Christ did in his time was a miracle. This,
however, is not applicable to the true nature of a miracle. Re-
storing sight to the blind is, as it now appears, in certain cases
possible, and therefore not miraculous, that is, not involving any
thing contrary to the laws of nature. Yet this requires the most
exquisite human skill and labour, and it would be equally a
miracle to restore sight without these human means. — Bloom-
field's Grit. Dissert. — Ed.
d But doth not God hear sinners? Then whom can he
hear, since no man liveth and committeth not sin against God?
It is true indeed: but then the sinners which the poor man
may be supposed here to mean are not those who become such
through ignorance, weakness, or human infirmity, but such
notorious and presumptive sinners as go on in their impie-
ties with a high hand, and an hardened heart, of whom the
Spirit of God declares, ' when they spread forth their hands, I will
hide myself from them, and when they make many prayers I will
not hear.' (Is. i. 15.) The maxim however is here to be understood
not in a general but restrained sense, namely, that God useth
not to honour notorious and flagitious sinners, especially when
they pretend to come with a message from him, by giving them
a power to work miracles, in order to confirm the truth of what
they say. For this is the force of the poor man's argument,
that Christ could not be such a notorious sinner as he was re-
presented to him, because it was inconsistent with the attributes
of God, to honour such persons with his presence and assistance,
in doing such works as none could do, without a divine power
committed to them. — Poole's Annotations.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
955
A. M. 4035. A. D 31. OR, A. M. 5441. A, D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1
he were not sent, and empowered by God, he could
never do such wonderful cures as these." This pro-
voked them so highly that they first upbraided him with
his former blindness, as a character of some extraordi-
nary ill in him, and then cast him out of the synagogue
with disgrace ; but Jesus shortly after met him, and
received him into his own church. He declared himself
to him that he was the Messiah ; and the poor man, be-
lieving on him, immediately fell down prostrate at his
feet, and adored him.
After that our Lord had received the poor man's
homage, he continued his discourse, and under the
allegory of a a shepherd and his sheep, proved the
Pharisees to be no better than blind guides, nay than
thieves and robbers, who had* climbed up into the
a That this allusion was very proper and pertinent with regard
to the persons to whom our Saviour addressed his discourse, the
condition and custom of that country may convince us. For
the greatest part of the wealth and improvement there consisted
in sheep; and the examples of Jacob and David in particular,
are proofs that the keeping of these was not usually committed
to servants and strangers, as it is among us, but to men of the
greatest quality and substance. The children of the family,
nay, the masters and owners themselves, made it their business,
and esteemed the looking to their flocks, a care and employment
in no case below them. Hence probably came the frequent
metaphor of styling kings, the shepherds of their people. Hence
the ancient prophets describe the Messiah in the character of a
shepherd ; and our blessed Saviour, to show that lie was the
person intended by the prophets, applies the same character to
himself,' thereby to represent his government of the church, and
tender concern for mankind: 'he shall feed his flock like a
shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arms, and carry
them in his bosom; shall seek that which was lost, and bring
again that which was driven away; shall bind up that which was
broken, and strengthen that which was sick, and gently lead
those which were with young,' (Is. xl. 11. and Ez. xxxiv. 16.)
all lively emblems of our Lord's pastoral care, and of the various
methods which he hath employed to accommodate his dispensations
to our wants, in order to promote our eternal salvation. And
as the character of a shepherd did well become our gracious
Saviour, so there is something in the very nature and disposition
of sheep, which appears so innocent and inoffensive, so peaceable
and gentle, so patient and submissive, so honest and undesign-
ing, as carries a near resemblance to that plainness and probity,
that modesty and humility, that quietness and submission, which
are indeed the first elements of the Christian religion, as well
as the qualifications requisite to the reception of it. It is to be
observed, however, that as the shepherd's art in managing his
sheep, in the eastern countries, was different from what is among
us, to which purpose we read of his going before, leading, and
calling his sheep, and of their following, and knowing his voice;
whereas our shepherds go after and drive their sheep, so these
several expressions do, in the moral, denote our Lord's receiving
into the number of Christians all those humble and obedient
souls that come to him iu the spirit of meekness, not in the
clothing, but in the real qualities, of his sheep, and making
provision for their growth in grace and improvement in all
virtue and godliness of living. — Stcmkope on the Epistles and
Gospels, vol. iii. and Hammond's Annotations.
b According to the primary institution of God, it was the
proper province of the sons of Levi ' to teach the children of
Israel all the statutes which the Lord had spoken unto them by
the hand of Moses,' (Lev. x. 11.) and therefore it was required
that ' the priests' lips should preserve knowledge, and the people
seek his law at their mouths,' (Mai. ii. 4. 7). But, however it
came about, no sooner did their traditions grow in esteem, than
the Scribes and Pharisees, not only took upon them to be the
guides and teachers of the people, but maintained likewise, that
others were to receive authority to teach from their commission
and ordination to that office ; though we no where find that they
received any such authority from God ; for which reason our
Saviour represents them as a plantation which his Father had
not planted, (Mat. xv. 13.) aud bids his disciples beware of their
xvii. 14. MARKii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37- JOHN v. 1— viii. 1.
sheepfold, or made themselves rulers and governors in
God's church without any proper commission from him.
Upon the same ground he condemned all those false
Christs c who before him had usurped the title of the
Messiah, asserted his own right to it by an argument
that no other shepherd durst produce, namely, his laying
down his life for his sheep,1' which were to consist of
Gentiles e as well as Jews, and all together make up
one flock.
Before the conclusion of the feast, as he was walking
in Solomon's porch, / several of the Jews came, ami
doctrine, (Mat. xvi. 12.) because ' they taught for the doctrines
of God, the commandments of men, and made void the com-
mandments of God by their traditions,' (Mat. xv. 6. 9.)—?Fhit-
by's Annotations.
c In several of the Greek copies, as well as the Syriac, Per-
sian, and Gothic, the words ' before me,' for our Saviour in the
text speaks in his own person, are omitted ; and some critics are
of opinion, that this omission was early, because the Manichees,
according to Theophylact, made no scruple to infer from hence,
that the prophets of the Old Testament had not their mission
from God. Our Saviour, however, in several places where he
quotes them, has sufficiently established the authority of the
prophets ; and by this passage means no more than that all those
who before him had taken upon them the title and quality of the
Messiah, such as Theudas and Judas Galilreus, whereof we find
mention, Acts v. 36. 37; were thieves and robbers, because they
usurped a character which they had no right to; and that all
before him, who either had not their commission from God, or
could not prove it by extraordinary miracles, sucli as the authors
of the rabbinical traditions, and of all the other reigning sects
among the Jews, were far from being the true shepherds of
God's people. — Calmct's Commentary.
d His sheep are here supposed by some to be his elect peculiar
friends; and thence they infer, that Christ laid down his life fur
them only. Now, if we respect the counsel of God, and the
design of Jesus Christ, nothing is more certain than that he
gave himself a ransom for all, (1 Tim. ii. 6.) and tasked death for
every man, (Heb. ii. 9.) and was a propitiation for the sins of the
whole world, (1 John ii. 2.) but then because the world can no
otherwise lay hold on the benefits of this propitiation, than by
believing, and being obedieut to the voice of this shepherd, he
therefore is said to do this more eminently for his sheep. The
apostle, I think, has determined the whole controversy in a
few words, ' he died for all, that they who live might not live
unto themselves, but unto him who died for them,' (2 Cor. v.
15.) so that if any perish, it is not because he died not for them,
but because they will not perform the conditions required to
make his death efficacious to them ; they will not live unto him
who died for them JFhitby's Annotations.
e These our Saviour calls 'his other sheep,' (John x. 16.) by
way of anticipation, because he foreknew that many of them,
when once his gospel came to be tendered to them, would give
it a ready reception, be converted and baptized ; and because the
ceremonial law, which was the partition wall between the Jews
and Gentiles, was shortly to be broken down, and the Gentiles
admitted to the same privileges with the Jews that believed in
his name. — JFhitby's Annotations.
f The first or outer court, which encompassed the holy house
and the other courts, was named the court of the Gentiles;
because the latter were allowed to enter into it, but were pro-
hibited from advancing further. It was surrounded by a range
of porticoes or cloisters, above which were galleries, or apart-
ments, supported by pillars of white marble, each consisting of a
single piece, and twenty-five cubits in height. One of these was
called Solomon's Porch, or piazza, because it stood on a vast
terrace, which he had originally raised from a valley beneath,
400 cubits high, in order to enlarge the area on the top of the
mountain, and make it equal to the plan of his intended building ;
and as this terrace was the only work of Solomon's that remained
in the second temple, the piazza which stood upon it retained
the name of that prince. Here it was that our Lord was walking
at the feast of Dedication, (John x. 23:)andthat the lame man,
when healed by Peter and John, glorified God before all the
people, (Acts iii. 11.) This superb portico is termed the royal
956
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VII f.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvu. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— rii. 1.
required him to tell them, in positive terms, whether he
was the Messiah or not. To which his answer was, that
he had already sufficiently informed them of that, but to
no effect; that the miracles which he wrought in his
Father's name, were a full evidence of his mission ; that
the reason a why they believed him not was, because they
were not of a disposition proper for his sheep ; that to
such as were his sheep, and followed him, he would give
eternal life ; and that none could pull them out of his,
or his Father's hands, because he and his Father were
one. * Upon this last expression, the Jews concluded
portico by Josephus, who represents it as the noblest work be-
neath the sun, being elevated to such a prodigious height, that
no one could look down from its flat roof to the valley below,
without being seized with dizziness; the sight not reaching to
such an immeasurable depth. The south-east corner of the roof
of this portico, where the height was the greatest, is supposed to
have been the wri^vyiov, pinnacle, or extreme angle, whence
Satan tempted our Saviour to precipitate himself. (Mat. iv. 5;
Luke iv. 9.) This also was the spot where it was predicted that
the abomination of desolation, or the Roman ensigns, should
stand. (Dan. ix. 27; Mat. xxiv. 15.) Solomon's portico was
situated in the eastern front of the temple, opposite to the mount
of Olives, where our Saviour is said to have sat when his disci-
ples came to show him the grandeur of its various buildings, of
which, grand as they were, he said, the time was approaching
when one stone should not be left upon another. — Mansford's
Scripture Gazetteer. — Ed.
a Some are of opinion, that the words in the text ou yap, which
we render because, are not rational, or do not render a reason
for these people's infidelity, but only intimate that their infidelity
was consequential to their not being his sheep ; or in other words,
that they could not believe because they were not elected. But
to obviate this we must observe, that the reason which our Lord
here assigns for this defect of faith, is doubtless such as made it
a great crime in them ; for sure that must be such for which
they were to die in their sins, John viii. 24. It is therefore
certain, that this unbelief cannot be resolved into any natural
defect of knewledge ou their part, nor any act of reprobation on
God's part, but purely to the want of a teachable and well dis-
posed mind. For were it the same thing to be one of Christ's
sheep and to be predestinated to faith and salvation, the import
of our Saviour's words must be this, — ' Ye therefore believe not,
because ye are not of the number of the elect, but of those whom
God hath from eternity rejected.' Now, by this account of the
matter, our Saviour would not have accused but excused the in-
fidelity of the Jews; and they, with as good reason, might have
replied to him,—' We therefore believe not, because God, by
his act of reprobation, hath shut the door of faith against us, and
so our infidelity is not to be imputed to us, but God.' — Whitby's
Annotations.
b That is, one in essence and nature; one in authority and
power ; and not barely one in will and consent : and that this is
the genuine signification of the words, appears, 1st, From the
original text, where it is not said, I and my Father are one, u;
person, in the masculine gender, but h, one thing, in the neuter.
Now, if thing be not the Divine Being, they cannot be one; for
since the Father is confessed to be God, the Son cannot be one
thing with the Father, if he be not God too. 2dly, It appears
from the context, where our Saviour, having, in the preceding
verses, ascribed the preservation of his sheep to the power of his
Father, ' None is able to pluck them out of my Father's hands,'
(John x. 29.) ascribes the same also to his own power, ' Neither
shall any pluck them out of my hand,' (ver. 28.) plainly intimat-
ing, that his sheep were equally safe in his own hand, as in his
Father's; because, says he, ' I and my Father are one, (ver. 30.)
And, 3dly, It appears from the verses which immediately follow;
for when the Jews took up stones to stone him, as guilty of
blasphemy, because he made himself God, he does not evade the
charge, by saying, that he only conspired with the will of God,
as all true prophets did ; but appealed to the works which he
performed by the power of the Father residing in him, which
plainly carries it to an unity of power, not of will only; and
then St Chrysostom's inference is undeniable, that ' if the
power be the same, the essence also is the same.' — Whitby's
Annotations.
him to be a blasphemer, and were going to stone him ;
and though he reminded them of the many good actions
he had done for them in his Father's name, and endeav-
oured to apologize c for his calling himself the Son of
God, even because in scripture we find judges and magi-
strates frequently so styled, and much more then might
he, who was consecrated and sent by God, assume that
title, yet all this would not appease their rage, so that
he was forced to leave the city, and went thence over
Jordan to Bethabara, where John had formerly baptized ;
where great multitudes resorted to him, both to hear his
instructions, and to be healed of their diseases; and
where he made many disciples, because the place put
the people in mind, that whatever John had reported of
him was true.
While he continued in these parts, a certain person
put a curious question to him, d concerning the number
of those that should be saved : whereupon he took occa-
sion to admonish his hearers, " That they ought to use
their utmost endeavours to enter in at the strait gate e of
c This is an improper expression, the word apologize, accord-
ing to its ordinary acceptation conveys an idea of some degree of
blame, and when a person is said to apologize, we generally un-
derstand that he admits himself to have been in some respect
blamable, but at the same time, advances some circumstances to
excuse or palliate his conduct. In the present case our Saviour
vindicated his claim to the title of Son of God. His answer to
the charge brought against him is, ' Is it not written in your
law, I said, ye are gods? If he called them gods unto whom the
word of God came, and the scriptures cannot be broken,' that is,
if the language of Scripture be unexceptionable, 'say ye of him
whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, thou
blasphemest, because I said I am the Son of God?' These
words are quoted, in support of their opinion, by those who hold
that our Saviour is called the Son of God purely upon account
of the commission which he received. But the force of the
argument, and the consistency of the discourse, require us to
affix a much higher meaning to that expression. Our Lord is
reasoning a fortiori. He vindicates himself from the charge of
blasphemy in calling himself the Son of God, because even those
who hold civil offices upon earth are called in scripture gods.
But that he might not appear to put himself upon a level with
them, and to retract his former assertion, ' I and the Father are
one,' he not only calls himself ' him whom the Father hath
sanctified and sent into the world,' which implies that he had a
being, and that God was his Father before he was sent ; but he
subjoins, ' If I do not the works of my Father believe me not.
But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works, that
ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in
him ;' expressions which appear to be equivalent to his former
assertion, ' I and the Father are one,' and which were certainly
understood by the Jews in that sense ; for, as soon as he had
uttered them, ' they sought again to take him.' The full argu-
ment of our Lord is, that the union between the Father and him
gives him a much better title to the name of the Son of God
than any office can give to men the name of gods: and thus at
the very time that he shelters himself from the charge of blas-
phemy under this scripture expression, he intimates repeatedly,
in the hearing of those who accused him of blasphemy for what
he said, the superior dignity of his person. — Hill's Lectures on
Divinity, vol. i. p. 457. — Ed.
d The man, who proposed this question to our Saviour, had
doubtless in his thoughts the common opinion of the Jews, that
all the Israelites, how much soever they may suffer in this, might
have their portion in the world to come ; but this was a question
of too much needless curiosity for our Saviour to answer, because
it is no part of our concern, how many shall be saved? But only
how, and by what means, we are to work out our own salvation-
and therefore he took occasion from hence to instruct the man,
and in him all others, in what might be of much more substantial
benefit to him. — Whitby's Annotations.
e The Persians send a deputation to meet their guests: this
deputation are called openers of the way ; and the more distin
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
957
A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK & 23.-ix. 14. LUKE vi. l.-ix. 37. JOHN v. l.-vii.
salvation, because the number of those, who should not
attain it, would be large ; that they ought to do it with
all expedition, because, when once the gate was shut,
and the means of salvation withdrawn, all pretences of
having heard the glad tidings of the gospel, and of
having been conversant with him upon earth, would gain
them no admittance ; that all workers of iniquity should
be utterly excluded ; and therefore the Jews, in particu-
lar, would have cause to lament, when they should see
many heathens, from all parts of the earth, possessed
of the glories of heaven, with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, and all the ancient prophets, while themselves,
who were the heirs of the kingdom, should be thrust out,
and so made the last, who were once the first."
As he was discoursing in this manner, some of the
Pharisees, who could no longer bear with patience the
power and authority which he had gained among the
people, in hopes of getting rid of him, a came and sug-
guished the persons sent, and the greater the distance to which
they go, so much greater is the honour. So it is proclaimed ;
' Go forth and behold king Solomon, with the crown wherewith
his mother crowned him. The bridegroom cometh, go ye forth
to meet him.' The names of the persons to be invited, were
inscribed upon tablets, and the gate was set open to receive those
who had obtained them ; but to prevent any getting in that had
no ticket, only one leaf of the door was left open ; and that was
strictly guarded by the servants of the family. Those who were
admitted, had to go along a narrow passage to the room ; and
after all who had received tickets of admission were assembled,
the master of the house rose and shut to the door; and then the
entertainment began. — Morier's Trav. vol. i. p. 142; Potter's
Grecian Antiq. vol. ii. p. 365. et seq. The Greeks also issued
tickets of admission to their entertainments, although relations
often went without invitation ; thus in Homer, the valiant Mene-
laus went to an entertainment in Agamemnon's tent, without
being invited:
Aurofix.ro; 2s oi *\h (Zonv ayahs MtvO.aog. — //. lib. ii. 1. 408.
it appears from this statement, that the Jews were much stricter
in admitting persons to their tables than the Greeks, although
both used the formality of written invitations. Our Lord evi-
dently refers to the custom of his own nation, in his answer to
oue who idly inquired, ' Are there few that be saved?' ' Strive,'
said he, 'to enter in at the strait gate; for many, I say unto you,
will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the mas-
ter of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye
begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord,
Lord, open unto us: and he shall answer and say unto you, I
know you not whence ye are.' (Luke xiii. 24.) — Paxton's Illus-
trations of Scripture, vol. iii. pp. 88, 89. — Ed.
a But, whether they came upon their own account, or by
the instigation of Herod, is the question: — If they came upon
their own account, it is certain, that they came not out of any
kindness to our Saviour; because the whole history of the
gospel informs us, that they were far from having any af-
fection for him; and therefore they must come with a design,
either to scare him out of Galilee, where he had been too popu-
lar for them, or to drive him into a trap which they had laid
for him in Judea. This seems to be a genuine interpretation
enough of the sense of the evangelist; and therefore, in our his-
tory, we have followed it: but still it seems not improbable,
that, considering the present circumstances Herod was under,
he might send these messengers to our Saviour. He had but
lately gained himself no good reputation among the Jews, by
murdering John, whom all the world looked upon as a prophet:
and therefore seeing that our Saviour excelled John, especially
in the fame and renown of his miracles, he was unwilling to
augment the odium which already lay upon him, by any fresh
acts of violence to a person, that was reputed a prophet, much
superior to the Baptist, whom he had slain: he had got a notion
too, that the Baptist, at least the soul of the Baptist in another
body, was risen from the dead, and what the effect of his
ghost's haunting his dominions might be, be could not tell; and
therefore he might think it convenient to put these Pharisees
gested the danger he was in from Herod Antipas, so
long as he continued in Galilee, which was part of his
dominions : but, far from betraying any fear upon such
information, he let the Pharisees know, that, having but
a few days longer to live, b he was determined to devote
them to the relief of the distressed, the curing diseases,
and casting out devils ; and as to Herod's c subtilty,
and designs against his life, they were altogether super-
fluous, because he foreknew that he was to suffer death at
Jerusalem, d which was the place appointed, as it were,
for the slaughter of all the prophets : and hereupon he
broke out into a most pathetic exclamation against
the inhabitants of that unhappy city, reproaching them
with their rejecting the kind offers of the gospel, and
with their killing the messengers sent from God, and
upon some expedient to get our Saviour, whom possibly he
might take for John revivified, removed farther from him.
However this be, it is certain, that either he or the Pharisees, or
both, had a mind to have him gone somewhere else, and that,
for this purpose, the message was brought him. — Poole's Annot-
ations.
b Some apply this passage (Luke xiii. 32,) to the years of
Christ's ministry, supposing that a day is put for a year. But
the explication is improper; because if the three days here men-
tioned were intended to comprehend the whole years of our
Lord's ministry, this conversation must have happened in the
first year thereof; contrary to Luke himself, who tells us, (chap.
ix. 51,) that the time was come when he should be received up.
Besides, according to this interpretation, Christ's being perfect-
ed on the third day will imply, that he was to suffer in the third
year of his ministry, which is far from being a certain point. Were
we to conclude any thing concerning the length of our Lord's
ministry from the days mentioned, it would be, that he did not
suffer till the third year after this conversation. But the real
meaning of the words seems to be as follows: — " I shall not be
very long with you on earth ; yet while I am here, I will per-
form the duties of my ministry, without being afraid of any
man ; because my life cannot be taken from me, but in the place,
and at the time, appointed by God." — Macknight's Harmony,
vol. ii. s. 91, note *. — Ed.
c Our Lord, speaking of Herod, who had threatened to kill him,
applies to him metaphorically the name or character of the fox or
jackal: " Go, tell that fox— that crafty, cruel, insidious, devour-
ing creature — that jackal of a prince — who has indeed expressed
his enmity by his threats, as jackals indicate their mischievous
dispositions by their barking, and who yelps in concert with other
of my enemies, jackal-like — go, tell him that I am safe from his
fury to-day and to-morrow; and on the third day I shall be
completed, — completely beyond his power:" — alluding, perhaps,
to his resurrection on the third day. There have been some
doubts as to the propriety of our Redeemer's speaking in such
terms of a civil ruler, whose subject he was, and whose character
he was therefore bound to respect and to honour. For these scru-
ples, however, there is no ground ; the character of Herod as a
cruel, insidious, and crafty prince, was too notorious to be dis-
guised among any part of his subjects ; and he who knew his
heart as well as witnessed his conduct, could speak with certainty
as to his dispositions and motives. Besides this, such metapho-
rical applications as these are much more common in the East
than liere, and would, therefore, not appear so strong to our
Lord's attendants as to us. This is shown by a passage in Bus-
bequius: (p. 58.) "They [jackals, or ciacals, as the Asiatics
call them] go in flocks, and seldom hurt man or beast; but get
their food by craft and stealth, more than by open force. Thence
it is that the Turks call subtle and crafty persons, especially the
Asiatics, by the metaphorical name of Ciacals."' — Calmet's Dic-
tionary.— Ed.
d Some are of opinion, that, because the Jews had referred
to the sanhedrim, which sat at Jerusalem, the whole cognisance
and trial of prophets, therefore a prophet was not to suffer out of
that city ; but this interpretation seems to enervate our Saviour's
sentiment, whose design certainly was, to represent the city of
Jerusalem, so accustomed to shed the blood of the prophets, that
there was scarce a possibility for any prophets dying out of it.—
Calmet's Commentary.
958
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23 - ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v, 1— vii. i.
then denouncing their sad approaching destruction and
calamity.
a One sabbath day, when Jesus was invited by a Pha-
risee of some distinction, to dine with him, a man dis-
tempered with the dropsy came after him ; and, when
several of the company narrowly observed how he would
behave upon this occasion, 6 he first cured the poor man,
and then justified his doing so, by the same argument
he made use of to those who reprehended him for curing
the crooked woman on the sabbath day. Observing,
however, how eager the guests were to take every one
the uppermost places at the table, he endeavoured to
convince them, how commendable it was for a man to
seat himself in a place below, rather than above, his rank
and condition, because daily experience showed us, that
humility was a virtue, which was so far from debasing,
that it raised and exalted the person who practised it.
And then, turning his discourse to the master of the
house, whom he found too regardless of the poor and
needy, he gave him, and in him all others, the good ad-
vice c of inviting the poor, the blind, and the lame, who
could make no requital, rather than his own friends, dor
rich acquaintance, who were able to return the compli-
ment, to his entertainments, and in so doing, he might
depend upon a recompence from God in the kingdom of
heaven.
a The sabbath was to be devoted to cheerful rest, that not
only the Israelites, but also strangers living with them, as well as
their cattle, might be refreshed. (Exod. xxiii. 12.) Hence, it
is not probable, that they celebrated sacrificial or offering feasts,
to which, from the commencement of their polity, the poor were
invited. In later times, at least, we know from history, that
the Jews purchased and prepared the best viands they could pro-
cure for the sabbath-day, in order to do it honour; and that they
actually had sabbath-feasts, to which they even invited persons
with whom they were unacquainted. — Home's Introduction, vol.
iii. p. 303 — 4. We cannot suppose that there was any thing
improper in their sabbath-feasts, otherwise our Saviour would not
have countenanced them. — Ed.
b The presence of the dropsical man, and its being the sab-
bath day, would involve our Saviour, as they thought, in this
difficulty; that either by forbearing to heal at that time, he
would betray his fear, and strengthen their superstitions with re-
gard to such ritual observances; or else, that, by doing it, he
must incur the censure aud odium of a sabbath-breaker, and a
contemner of the law: but he, who was well aware what spies he
had upon him, so ordered the matter, as to accomplish what he
saw fit, without any opportunity given for his enemies to com-
pass their ends by it. — Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels,
vol. iii.
c Whether this precept is to be understood in a literal sense
or no, may in some measure admit of a debate. Our Saviour,
when he acted the part of a rich man, in feeding the multitude,
had people of the meanest rank, and, among these, the poor, the
maimed, the lame, and the blind, who daily resorted to him for
cure, for the chief of his guests: but most men think, that these
extraordinary actions of his were no proper patterns for us in the
dispensation of our charity, but that we answer the intent of
the precept as well, if we do what is equivalent to us in respect
of charge, and more advantageous to them and their families, by
sending them meat, or money, to refresh them at home. — JFhit-
by's Annotations.
d The words in the text are, ' when thou makest a dinner or
a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kins-
men nor thy rich neighbours,' (Luke xiv. 12.) It is to be ob-
served in our expounding of scripture, that, as comparative par-
ticles are sometimes used in a sense negative, for so wc find the
chief priests moving the people, ha pZ\\ov ia^a^o^ a'urois,
' that he should rather release Barabbas to them,' that is, that
he should release Barabbas, and not Jesus/ so negative particles
are ofton used in a sense comparative; as when we read in l'rov.
At the hearing of these last words one in the company
repeated that common saying among the rabbins,
' blessed is he that shall eat bread e in the kingdom of
God ;' whereupon our Lord took occasion to represent
the different success of the gospel, the rejection of the
Jews, and the call of the Gentiles, under the/ emblem
of a feast, to which those that were invited, upon sundry
pretences, refused to come, s so that the master of the
viii. 10, 'receive my instructions, and not silver;' and in
Joel ii., ' rend your hearts, and not your garments,' the mean-
ing is rather than silver, or your garments ; in like manner as
here, ' call not thy friends, nor thy brethren,' that is, be not so
much concerned to call them, as the poor. For it can hardly be
thought, that our Saviour's intent in this precept was absolutely
to forbid all invitations of our neighbours or friends to dine or sup
with us. This is an act of kindness and civility, and of good ten-
dency sometimes to maintain and promote amity and friendship
among neighbours and acquaintance; but his only meaning is,
that we should not invite them out of a prospect of a compensa-
tion from them again, which is making a kind of traffic with
our generosity ; but, instead of this, that we should expend our
money in the exercise of charity to such as are in no condition
to make us a retribution. — Whitby's and Poole's Annotations.
e Dr Campbell translates ' in the reign of God,' and observes
the English Testament makes, to appearance, the word jia.<riKua,
reign, here refer solely to the future state of the saints in heaven.
This version makes it relate to those who should be upon the
earth in the reign of the Messiah. My reasons for preferring
the latter are these: 1st, This way of speaking of the happiness
of the Messiah's administration suits entirely the hopes and
wishes which seem to have been long entertained by the nation
concerning it. (See chap. x. 23, 24. Mat. xiii. 10, 11.) 2dly,
The parable which, in answer to the remark, was spoken by our
Lord, is, on all hands, understood to represent the Christian
dispensation. 3dly, The obvious intention of that parable is to
insinuate that, in consequence of the prejudices which, from
notions of secular felicity and grandeur, the nation in general
entertained on that subject; what, in prospect, they fancied so
blessed a period, would, when present, be exceedingly neglected
and despised; and in this view nothing could be more apposite;
whereas there appears no appositeness in the parable on the
other interpretation. — Campbell on the Gospels, vol. ii. pp. 570,
571.
f If we compare this with another passage elsewhere, (Mat.
xxii. 2.) we may be farther satisfied, that by ' the kingdom of
heaven ' is here represented the ' gospel dispensation ;' and
this, as it ministers true plenty and pleasure, all that men can
want, and all that they can wish, to render them perfectly
happy, is compared to a supper. The bounty and infinite love
of Almighty God are signified by the greatness of that supper,
and the multitudes bidden to it. The first bidding implies all
the previous notices of the Messiah, by which the law and the
prophets were intended to prepare the Jews for the reception of
him and his doctrine. The second bidding, when all things
were ready, seems to import all that Jesus did, and taught, and
suffered for their conversion and salvation, and all the testimon-
ies and exhortations of his apostles and other preachers of the
gospel, to the same purpose. The excuses sent for their ab-
sence are the prejudices and passions and worldly interest which
did not only hinder those Jews from coming into the faith, but
disposed them likewise to treat all attempts to win them over
with the utmost obstinacy and contempt. The guests brought
in from abroad to supply their places, are the Gentile world, to
whom, after that the Jews had thrust it from them, the subsequent
tenders of this grace and salvation were made. And the declar-
ing that ' none of those who were bidden should taste of this
supper,' denotes the giving those Jews over to a reprobate sense,
and leaving them under that infidelity and perverseness in which
they continue hardened to this very day. — Stanhope on the
Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii,
ff The hospitality of the present day in the east exactly
resembles that of the remotest antiquity. The parable of the
' great supper,' is in those countries literally realized. (Luke
xiv. 16.) — Forbes' s Orient. Mem. vol. iii. p. 187. — And such
was the hospitality of ancient Greece and Rome. When a
person provided au entertainment for his friends or neighbours.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
959
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OK, A. M. SMI. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. H. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
house was obliged to send out into the streets and lanes
of the city, and into the highways and hedges to collect
a sufficient complement of guests, being determined that
none of those who were first invited should taste of his
supper. °
he sent round a number of servants to invite the guests ; these
were called vocatores by the Romans, and xXriruoif by the
Greeks. The day when the entertainment is to be given is
fixed some considerable time before; and in the evening of the
day appointed, a messenger comes to bid the guests to the
feast. The custom is thus introduced in Luke: 'A certain
man made a great supper, and bade many ; and sent his servant
at supper time, to say to them that were bidden, Come, for all
things are now ready.' (Luke xiv. 16, 17.) — Morier's Trav.
vol. i. p. 142 They were not now asked for the first time;
but had already accepted the invitation, when the day was
appointed, and were therefore already pledged to attend at the
hour when they might be summoned. They were not taken
unprepared, aud could not in consistency and decency plead any
prior engagement. They could not now refuse, without violat-
ing their word and insulting the master of the feast, and there-
fore, justly subjected themselves to punishment. The terms of
the parable exactly accord with established custom, and contain
nothing of the harshness to which infidels object. — Paxton's Il-
lustrations.— Ed .
a The following extracts will serve to explain the customs
alluded to in this parable. In the account of the parable by the
evangelist Matthew (chap. xxii. 1 1.) it is said, ' And when the
king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man who had
not on a marriage garment.' The Persians, " in circumstances
of grief or joy, visit each other with great attention, which is a
tribute of duty always expected from persons of inferior condi-
tion, especially if they be dependent. The guests are ushered
into a large room, and served with coffee aud tobacco. After
some time the master of the house enters, and his visitors, rising
to receive him, continue standing till he has passed through the
whole company, and paid his respects to each ; he then takes his
seat, and by signs permits them to be also seated." — Goldsmith's
Geography, p. 216. — In the parable now referred to, the cir-
cumstances of which may reasonably be supposed conformable to
existing customs, it is evidently implied that the guests were
collected together previous to the appearance of the king, who
came in to see the guests. So also in Luke xiv. 10, in a simi-
lar parable, it is said, ' when thou art bidden, go and sit down in
the lowest room, that when he that bade thee cometh, he may
say unto thee, go up higher.' This unquestionably confirms the
application of the Persian ceremony to the parable first cited.
It may first be farther observed, that in the last mentioned pas-
sage, it seems as if it had then been the prevailing practice for
the master of tire house "to pass through the guests, and pay
his respects to each of them," as was certainly the case in Per-
sia. With respect to the wedding garment, it was usual for
persons to appear at marriage feasts in a sumptuous dress, gener-
ally adorned with florid embroidery, as some writers tell us
(see Rev. xix. 8., and Dr Hammond in locum) ; but as it
could not be expected that travellers thus pressed in should them-
selves be provided with it, we must therefore conclude, not only
from the magnificence of the preparations to which we must sup-
pose the wardrobe of the prince corresponded, but likewise from
the following circumstance of resentment against this guest, that
a robe was ottered, but refused by him: and this is a circum-
stance which, as Calvin observes, is admirably suited to the
method of God's dealing with us, who indeed requires holiness
in order to our receiving the benefits of the gospel, but is gra-
ciously pleased to work it in us by his Holy Spirit, and there-
fore may justly resent and punish our neglect of so great a
favour. — Doddridge in locum. — The following extract will
show the importance of having a suitable garment for a mar-
riage feast, and the offence taken against those who refuse it,
whea presented as a gift. " The next day, Dec. 3, the king
sent to invite the ambassadors to dine with him once more.
The mehemander told them, it was the custom that they should
wear over their own clothes the best of those garments which
the king had sent them. The ambassadors at first made some
scruple of that compliance: but when they were told that it was
a custom observed by all ambassadors, and that no doubt the
king would take it very ill at their hands if they presented
As he was going from the Pharisee's house where he
dined, being attended with a mighty concourse of people,
he began to explain 6 to them what they were to trust to,
if they intended to become his disciples ; that they were
to c renounce even some of their most lawful affections,
and prepare themselves to undergo the most unjust per-
secutions, if they thought of making profession of his
religion ; and therefore, that they might not fail in the
day of trial, he advised them to consider well before-
hand what such a profession would cost them : " for, as
he who begins to build, and has not money to accom-
plish it, leaves his work imperfect, and himself becomes
ridiculous ; or as he that designs a war, and has not men
and money enough to go through with it, had better
never have engaged in it ; so he that undertakes to be
a Christian, must resolve to renounce all that is pre-
cious, and to bear all that is afflictive to him in this
world, or else he will never be able to hold out."
Among the great multitudes that daily resorted to our
Saviour to hear his discourses, were many publicans and
sinners.** This gave great offence to the Scribes and
Pharisees, e who murmured at his condescending good-
ness in so freely conversing and eating with such infa-
mous people. But to vindicate himself in this respect,
he compared his conduct to that of a man, who, having
an hundred sheep, left the ninety and nine / in quest of
themselves before him without the marks of his liberality, they
at last resolved to do it, and, after their example, all the rest of
the retinue." — Ambassador's Travels, p. 188; see Altmanni
Melematemata, Phil. Crit. t. i. p. 118.; and Br Clarke's Trav-
els, vol. ii. p. 352, note. — Ed.
b It was a custom of the Jewish doctors to lay down before
their proselytes what inconveniences would attend upon their
precepts ; and in conformity to this, our Saviour acquaints his
disciples with two things that would be a means to deter them
from embracing his religion, namely, the difficulty of the duties
that would be required of them, and the greatness of the suffer-
ings to which they would be exposed.
c The words in the text are ' If any man come to me, and
hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be
my disciple,'(Luke xiv. 26.) But their meaning in this place is
not, that a man should, properly speaking, hate his father and
his mother; for certainly our blessed Lord, who enjoins us to
love our enemies, would never make it our duty to hate our
parents. And therefore the word piani, which is a Hebraism,
must necessarily here be taken in a lower sense, namely, to love
or esteem less, in the same manner as it is said of Leah, that
'Jacob hated her,' (Gen. xxix. 31.) that is, did not love her
so well as he did Rachel. For that this, and no more is here
the import of the expression, is plain from a parallel text, ' He
that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.'
(Mat. x. 37.) — Whitby's Annotations.
d They whom the scripture generally, and this portion of it
in particular, characterizes by the name of sinners, are the habit-
ual and obdurate, the great and eminent offenders. — Stanhope
on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii.
e The Scribes and Pharisees looked upon the publicans as
unfit to be conversed with upon any account, even though it was
to reclaim them from their evil courses. Our Saviour had told
them that he conversed among such people as their physician,
and not as their companion, and that therefore his proper busi-
ness was among such patients. (Mat. ix. 12, 13.) But this
apology would not silence their murmurings, because their opin-
ion was, that God had cast off all care of them, and never in-
tended to grant them repentance unto life. — Burkit and JVhitby's
Annotations.
f Here Christ sets ninety and nine just persons in opposition
to one sinner, not that it is so in proportion : for there are very
few who live according to the rule that is prescribed them; but
because, even upon a supposition that it were so, such is the
960
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
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A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M.5441. A. D.30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. H. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
one a which was gone astray ; to that of a woman
searching-, with all diligence, for a piece of silver6 that
was lost, and rejoicing exceedingly when she found it ;
and to that of a father, c receiving his returning prodi-
gal son with all the indications of joy and tenderness,
notwithstanding the remonstrances of his elder brother.
For under the name of the elder brother, he reproved
the unjust murmurings of the Pharisees, who were dis-
pleased at his entertaining sinners, though the salvation
of such was the main end of his coming into the
world.**
Having thus exposed the pride and envy of the
Pharisees, he proceeded, in the next place, to reprove
their covetousness, and, at the same time, to instruct his
disciples what the proper use was that they were to
make of their riches. To this purpose he introduces an
value of our immortal souls, that great care and pains ought to
be taken even for the sake of one. — Grotius in locum.
a A sheep, when once it has strayed away, is a creature
remarkably stupid and heedless. It goes wandering on, without
either power or inclination to return back, though each moment
it is in danger of becoming a sacrifice to every beast of prey
that meets it. And such, in truth, is the condition of people
addicted to vice, when they have broken out of God's fold, and
forsaken the pleasant pastures which he provides for them.
They grow careless and inconsiderate, and are exposed to snares
and temptations every moment. They are hardened by custom;
are depraved in their affections and judgment; are neither dis-
posed to grow wiser, nor of themselves capable of conquering
inveterate habits of vice, though they should now and then show
some good inclination to attempt it. — Stanhope on the Epistles
and Gospels, vol. iii.
I By this comparison of a lost piece of money, we are given to
understand, that God esteems the souls of men precious, and
reckons them among his wealth and his treasures. And this
indeed they are ; made and formed by his own hand ; impressed
with his own image and superscription ; and from that stamp,
which carries a resemblance to the great King of the whole
world, deriving all their currency and value. But when they
abandon God's laws, and forsake the divine and rational life, a
life of goodness and wisdom, renounced for one of sensuality, and
madness, and mischief, then they are lost; lost to themselves;
lost to God. Then this coin is debased ; the impression obli-
terated and gone ; and that piece of money, as to the worth and
use of it, is in a manner as if it were no longer in being.
Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii.
c This parable is deservedly reckoned a masterpiece in its
kind, and what cannot be paralleled by any of the apologues or
allegorical writings of heathen authors. It is adorned and
beautified with the most glowing colours and lively similitudes.
It is carried on and conducted with admirable wisdom and propor-
tion, in the parts as well as in the whole; and there is so exact
a relation between the things represented, and the representa-
tions of them, that the most elevated understanding will admire,
and the lowest capacity discover, the excellent and most useful
moral that lies under so thin and fine a veil.
d Many commentators have considered this parable in a view
of peculiar application to the Jews and Gentiles; and have ob-
served that the murmurs of the Jews against the apostles for
preaching the gospel to the Gentiles (see Acts xiii. 42 — 50.
xxii. 21, 22, and 1 Thes. ii. 16.) are represented by the con-
duct ot the elder brother. — This was certainly a case compre-
hended in our Lord's design ; but he undoubtedly had something
more in his intention. He meant to show that, had the Phari-
sees been as eminently good as they themselves pretended to
be, yet it had been very unworthy their character to take
offence at the kind treatment which any sincere penitent might
receive. Thus does he here, and in many parallel texts, con-
demn their conduct on their own principles; though elsewhere,
on proper occasions, he shows the falsehood of those principles,
and plainly exposes their hypocrisy and guilt. Thus the judi-
cious Calvin states the matter; and it is strange so many learned
writers should have puzzled themselves and their readers in so
clear a case. — Doddridge's Expositor. — Ed.
unjust steward, « who, after having abused his trust, and
wasted his master's substance, is contriving what pro-
vision to make for himself, which he does by abating his
master's debtors in their bills, when he came to be re-
moved from his place ; and thereupon he teaches his
disciples, not to imitate-^ the injustice, but the forecast
and policy of this steward, by employing their earthly e
riches to make them friends in the persons of the poor, that
when they should come to leave this transitory world, they
might, by this means, be received into everlasting habi-
tations in heaven ; and so the children of light become
as prudent in things relating to their salvation, as the
children of this world are in the management of their
temporal affairs.
This discourse made little or no impression upon the
Pharisees ; and therefore, to awaken their attention, he
propounded to them the parable of a certain rich man, A
e There is a good deal in this and the following parable, that
alludes to the notions of the Jewish rabbius, and their manner
of expressing them. " The fruits of the earth," says one of their
doctors, " are like a table spread in an house ; the owner of this is
God; man in this world is, as it were, the steward of this house:
if he behaves himself well, he will find favour in the eyes of his
lord ; if otherwise, he will be removed from his stewardship ;"
Kimchi on Isa. xl. And so the scope of this following parable seems
to be this: — that we are to look upon ourselves, not as lords of the
good things of this life, as though we might use them at our
pleasure, but only as stewards, who must be faitliful in the ad-
ministration of them. The parables indeed make mention of no
other goods but those of riches ; but we must not therefore
imagine, that rich men only stand in the capacity of stewards,
since eveiy advantage of nature or of grace, as well as those of
fortune, our life, our health, our strength, our wit, and parts,
our knowledge natural and acquired, our time, our leisure, our
every ability, our every opportunity, our every inclination to do
well, are all our master's goods: all intrusted with us; all capable
of benefiting others; and will all, at last, be brought to our
account.' — ff'hitby's Annotations, and Stanhope on the Epistles
and Gospels, vol. iii.
/It is said, 'and the Lord commended the unjust steward,'
namely, the master of this unjust steward. He spoke highly of
the address and cunning of his iniquitous servant. He had, on
his own principles, made a very prudent provision for his sup-
port; but his master no more approved of his conduct in this,
than he did in his wasting his substance before. From the
ambiguous and improper manner in which this is expressed in
the common English translation, it has been supposed that our
blessed Lord commended the conduct of this wicked man: but
the word xu^tos, there translated lord, simply means the master
of the unjust steward. — Clarke's Commentary on the New Testa-
ment.— Ed.
g The words in the text are, ' make yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness,' (Luke xvi. 9.) Now, mammon,
or mammona, is a Syriac word, and properly denotes riches or
treasure. It comes from an Hebrew root, which signifies, to
be hid, and is therefore thought to comprehend, not only gold,
silver, and other metals, that are hid in the bowels of the earth,
but stores likewise of com, wine, and oil, a great part of the
riches of the eastern people, which they often buried in subter-
raneous caverns, to conceal them from their enemies. These
are called the mammon of unrighteousness, because they fre-
quently occasion much iniquity in the world, and are often
acquired by very indirect means; but our Lord, by this expres-
sion, must not be supposed to command alms to be given of that
which is gotten by fraud or injustice, because such charity can
never be acceptable to God. No, the duty of those who have
acquired wealth unrighteously is, to make restitution to the
persons they have injured; if these be dead, then to their heirs
or executors ; and the poor are only then receivers of the fruits
of injustice, when a person is conscious that he has been unjust,
but does not know the persons to whom he has been so. — Cal-
met's Commentary, and Beausohre' s Annotations.
h Whether this representation, which our Saviour here makes
of the different fates of the rich man and the poor, be a parable
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c
961
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM JM AT. xii. 1
living in pride, and ease, and luxury, who, after his
death, was carried into the dismal regions of the damned ;
and of a certain poor beggar, named Lazarus, a lying
at his gate, b full of sores and ulcers, and desiring the
fragments that came from his table, who, when he died,
was transported by angels into Abraham's bosom; c " that,
in these different states, the poor man, in compensation
for his former misery enjoyed all the felicity that his
heart could wish ; while the rich man, in punishment of
his luxury, and want of mercy to the poor, was forced to
undergo the most inexpressible torments, without being-
able to procure so much as one drop (1 of water to cool his
— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKEvi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. l.
inflamed tongue, and without being able to prevail for
the once despised Lazarus to be sent upon a message of
admonition to his surviving brethren, because they had
Moses e and the prophets for their instructors, or a stand-
or a real history, is a matter wherein several commentators are
not agreed. We are told, however, that in several manuscripts,
both Greek and Latin, there are these words in the beginning
of the 19th verse, 'he spake to them another parable,' and that
this very parable is in the Gemara Babylonicum ; from whence
it is cited by the learned Sheringliam, in the preface to his
Ioma, as indeed, if we look into the circumstances of it, such as
the rich man's ' lifting up his eyes in hell,' and seeing ' Lazarus
in Abraham's bosom,' his discourse to Abraham, his complaint
of being tormented with flames, and his desire that Lazarus
might be sent to ' cool his tongue,' or, at least, to convert his
surviving brethren: if, together with the great gulf that is
fixed between the two places of bliss and torment, we do but
consider these particulars, I say, we must needs conclude, that,
as they cannot be understood of any departed soul, in a literal
sense, they must be an allegorical representation of things in-
visible, by terms in some measure suitable to the opinion of the
Jews concerning the state of souls after death. — Calmet's Com-
mentary and Whitby's Annotations.
a Lazar, which, according to most, is but a contraction from
Eleazar, is the \tiry same with Ania-chad, a poor man in the
Gemara, and properly signifies one without help, or rather one
that has God only for his help: but, in the times of our blessed
Saviour, we may observe, that it was a common name among
the Jews, and given to men of some distinction, as we find it
was to the brother of Martha and Mary. — Whitby's Annotations,
and Calmet's Commentary,
b This was the place where beggars stood or were laid, and ask-
ed alms: hence i< that rule with the Jews, 'if a man die and
leave sous and daughters, if he leave but small substance, the
daughters shall be taken care of, and the sons shall beg at the
gates.' — Ed.
c The garden of Eden and Paradise, the Throne of Glory, and
Abraham's Bosom, were common expressions among the Jewish
doctors, to denote a future siate of felicity ; for so Josephus, in
his discourse of the Maccabees, says of good men, that " they
are gathered to the region of the patriarchs, and that Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, do receive their souls:" and they tell us far-
ther, that the souls of such men are carried thither by angels;
for so the Targum on Cant. iv. 12, says, that " no man hath
power to enter into the garden of Eden, but the just, whose
souls are carried thither by the hands of good angels." Our
commentators, however, have perceived something peculiar in
the phrase of Abraham's bosom. They imagine, that the Jew-
ish notion of paradise was a place abounding with delights and
perpetual (eastings, where Abraham, the great founder of their
nation, enjoys the uppermost place at the table, and while all his
children sit down with him, some at a nearer, and some at a far-
ther distance from him, Ik; who has the honour to recline
upon his bosom, as Lazarus is here represented, is in a higher
degree of felicity than ordinary. But others deride all this
notion, and assert that Abraham's bosom, was so called, not
from any posture of guests at table, but from little children, whom
their tender parents do sometimes take in their bosom, and
sometimes cause them to sleep there. For since those that die
in the Lord, say they, are said to sleep, or rest from their labours,
where can they be said to enjoy this rest or sleep better than in
the bosom of the father of the faithful? — Beausobre's and Whit-
by's Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
d A good deal of this is to be taken in a figurative sense ; but
our Saviour might possibly insert this passage in the parable,
on purpose to strike at a vain imagination. which some of the
Je«s wero apt to entertain, namely, tint lull-fire had no power
over the sinners of Israel, because Abraham and Isaac came
down thither to fetch them from thence, which could not fail of
being effectually confuted, when they heard Abraham, as it
were with his own mouth , declaring, that no help was to be ex-
pected from him, when once they were got into that place. —
Whitby's Annotations,
e This appears, by considering the temper of infidelity; for
where unbelief proceeds, as generally it does, from a vitiated and
corrupted mind, which hates to be reformed ; which rejects the
evidence, because it will not admit the doctrine, and the doc-
trine, because it cannot admit the evidence; in this case all
proofs will be alike, and it will be lost labour to ply such a man
with reason or new evidence, since it is not want of reason or
evidence that makes him an unbeliever. And tins case chiefly
our Saviour seems to have in his view; for the request to Abra-
ham to send one from the dead was made in behalf of men who
lived wantonly and luxuriously ; who, as the psalmist expresses
it, ' had not God in all their thoughts.' The rich man in tor-
ment could think of no better expedient to rescue his brethren
from the danger they were in of coming into the same condition
with himself, than sending one from the dead to admonish them,
and to give them a faithful account how matters stood there, and
how it fared with him. To which Abraham answers, that they
had already sufficient evidence of these things; that they wanted
no means of knowledge, if they would make use of these they
had : ' they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.'
But still he insists, ' nay, Father Abraham ; but if one went
unto them from the dead, they will repent.' Then follows the
text, which is the last resolution of this case, ' if they hear not
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though
one rose from the dead.' And indeed where infidelity is the
effect of such profligate wickedness, it deserves not so much re-
gard from God, as that he should condescend to make par-
ticular applications to it by new lights and evidences: and should
he do it, there is reason to suspect it would be ineffectual. We
see, in the ordinary course of providence, many judgments in-
flicted on sinners to reclaim and amend them; but they harden
themselves against them; so that their last state is worse than
their first. I will not answer for the courage of sinners, how
well they would bear the sight of one from the dead ; nay, I am
apt to imagine it would strangely terrify and amaze them. But
to be frightened and to be persuaded are two things: nature
would recover the fright, and sin would recover strength, and
the great flight might come to be matter of ridicule. How easy
would it be, when the fright was over, to compare this event
with the many ridiculous stories we have of apparations, and to
come at last to mistrust our own senses, and to conclude that we
were misled, like a man in a dark night who follows an ignis
fatuus ? And what is worse, when the infidel had once con-
quered his own fears, and got loose again from the thoughts of
religion, he would then conclude thatall religion is made up of that
fear which he felt himself, which others cannot get rid of, though
he so manfully and happily subdued it. You may think it per-
haps impossible that a man should not be convinced by such an
appearance ; the same I believe you would think of the judgments
which befell Pharaoh, that it is hardly possible any man should
withstand them ; and yet you see he did : nay, did not the
guards, who were eye-witnesses of our Saviour's resurrection;
who saw the angel that rolled away the stone from the mouth of
the sepulchre ; who shook and trembled with fear, and became
as dead men; did not they, after all this, receive money to
deny all they saw, and to give false evidence against the per-
son they beheld coming from the grave ? So you see, it is in
the nature of man to withstand such evidences, where the power
of sin is prevalent. Besides, there are many sinners who arc
not infidels: they may believe Moses and the prophets, though
they will not heal- them, that is, obey them. Now, should one
come from the dead to these men, the most they could do would
be to believe him: but that does not apply their obeying him ;
for they believe Moses and the prophets, Christ and his apostles,
and yet obey not them; and why should obedience be the conse-
quence of belief in one case more than another ? There can be
no greater arguments for obedience than the gospel affords; and
therefore he who believes the gospel, and disobeys it, is out of
6 f
982
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
ing- revelation of the divine will, (and if it prevailed not
with them, nothing would,) for the direction of their
lives."
Of the great numbers of people who attended our
Lord wherever he went, some came out of necessity,
others out of curiosity ; some out of a spirit of devotion,
and others out of a spirit of captiousness, and with an
intent to entangle him in his discourse. Of this last sort
were the Scribes and Pharisees, who, taking the question
of divorces " to be somewhat intricate, put it to our
Saviour ; but he, limiting the permission of such separa-
tions to the case of adultery only, reminded them of that
strict and natural union * between man and wife, which
God had appointed at their first creation, and was not,
consequently, to be disannulled by any human institution.
Here the Pharisees, thinking that they had got the ad-
vantage of the argument, objected the precept * of Moses,
wherein he permitted the husband, c in many cases, to
1 Deut. xxiv. 1, &c.
hope to be reformed by any other evidence. So that, considering
the case with respect to all manner of infidels or sinners, there
is reason in our Saviour's judgment ; ' if they will not hear Moses
and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose
from the dead.' — Bishop Sherlock. — Ed.
a The Jews, at this time, were divided in their opinions as to
the matter of divorces. Some of them, who followed the senti-
ments of the school of Shammai, held, that the wife was to be
put away only for the crime of adultery, because Moses directs,
that this might be done, in case the husband had found some
uncleanness in her, Deut. xxiv. 1. But others, who adhered
to the notions of the school of Hillel, and they by much were the
greater number, maintained, on the contrary, that this was per-
mitted to be done for any cause whatever; because, in the same
verse it is expressed, that, if she found not grace in her husband's
eyes, she was divorceable. This was the question which the
Pharisees brought to our Saviour, thinking, that he must have
decided it, either against the law of Moses, or against the deter-
mination of one of these two famous schools, and, one way or
other, have become offensive to the people ; but our Saviour
evaded all this, by reducing matrimony to its original institution.
— JVhitby's and Beausobre's Annotations.
b Our Saviour replied to the insidious question of the Phari-
sees by referring to the history of the creation, and the original
institution of marriage ; intimating that this was the standard by
which all transactions in this important concern, ought to be
regulated, as every deviation was an abuse consequent on man's
depravity. The Creator first formed Adam, and from his side
took the rib of which the woman, was made ; from this one woman
and one man the whole species had descended. When the Lord
brought the woman, Adam acknowledged her as a part of himself,
and it was added (either by Adam as immediately inspired or by
Moses,) that, ' for this cause ' in all future ages, ' a man should
leave father and mother,' foregoing many of the comforts, and
relinquishing many of the duties of those endeared relations and
' cleave to his wife,' as a part of himself. Thus these two would
constitute, as it were, one body, never more to be separated, except
by God himself, who in this appointment of marriage had joined
them together, but to have ever after the same interests, and to
share each other's comforts or sorrows, as members of the same
body do. — When marriage was instituted, sin and death had not
entered, the sinful cause of separation afterwards mentioned, and
the natural dissolution of the union was therefore not referred
to, but they have since been specified, and resemble the cutting
off of a mortified limb, and the separation of the parts of the body
by death. In all other respects, the union is to be considered as
indissoluble. It is observable that Christ inserts the word
' twain,' which is not in the original institution, but added by the
Seventy purposely, as it seems, to obviate all misconstruction of
his meaning. — Ed.
c The Pharisees, in their reply to our Saviour, seem to inti-
mate that the lawfulness of divorces was founded upon a divine
command : ' why then did Moses command to give her a bill of
divorcement, and put her away ?' (Mark x. 4.) But Moses no
where commands, but only, in some cases, permits the doing of
give a bill of divorce to ihe wife : but to this our Saviour
replied, that, though under the Mosaical dispensation,
God, knowing their obstinacy and perverse inclinations,
allowed a dispensation d in this point, by tolerating
divorces ; yet, according to the original institution of
marriage, it was not so ; and therefore, to reduce the
matter to its primary establishment, he determined, that
all divorces, e for any less cause than that of fornication,
this; nor is the design of the whole precept to give any en-
couragement to this practice, but only to provide, that, in case
men will be so perverse and hard-hearted, as to turn away their
wives upon every slight occasion, the thing might be done in a
proper and public manner, not by word of mouth, but by bill of
divorcement, delivered in form, that, when the woman is thus
dismissed, she may not be quite ruined, but left at hef liberty to
become another man's wife, Deut. xxiv. 2.
d But here the question is, — Whether this dispensation ex-
cused the common divorces among the Jews, which our Saviour
looks upon as an infringement upon the primitive institution of
marriage, from all sin, especially that of adultery, in the sight of
God? It is granted, indeed, that these divorces were contrary to
the equity and genuine intention of God's first institution of mar-
riage; but then it must be added, that God, by his servant
Moses, had dispensed with his own institution ; that under such
his dispensation there could be no prohibition ; and that, where
there was no prohibition, there could be no transgression ; unless
we can suppose, that God could forbid and permit the same thing
at the same time. Our Saviour, indeed, upon this occasion, pre-
scribes a new law, which had not before obtained among the
Jews; he retracts the dispensation that Moses had given; he
reduces marriage to its primitive institution; and, except in
cases of adultery, allows of no divorces, but accounts them all
null and invalid : however, under the Mosaic dispensation it was
not so. From the permission given to the women, when they
were thus divorced, to be married to others, it is evident, that
these divorces quite dissolved the bond of matrimony, otherwise
we must say, that God gave these women, when they married
again, a toleration to live in a state of adultery, and so, at long
run, the whole commonwealth of Judea, must, by a divine per-
mission, have been filled with adulteries, and a spurious offspring;
which is incongruous to the wisdom and purity of Almighty God
to imagine. — Whitby's Annotations.
e Divorces seem to have been permitted among the Jews,
before the law; but we find no example of that kind in the Old
Testament written since Moses. They have been less frequent
with the Jews, since their dispersion among nations which do
not permit the dissolution of marriage upon light occasions. In
cases where it does take place, the woman is at liberty to marry
again, as she shall think proper, but not with the person who gave
occasion for the divorce. To prevent the abuse which the Jewish
men might make of the liberty of divorcing, the rabbins appoint
many formalities, which consume much time, and give the mar-
ried couple opportunity to be reconciled. Where there is no
hope of accommodation, a woman, a deaf man, or a notary draws
the letter of divorce. He writes it in the presence of one or
more rabbins, on vellum ruled, containing only twelve lines, in
square letters ; and abundance of little trifling particulars are
observed, as well in the characters as in the manner of writing,
and in the names and surnames of the husband and wife. He
who pens it, the rabbins and witnesses ought not to be relations
either to the husband, or to the wife, or to one another. The
substance of this letter, which they call gheth, is as follows-
" On such a day, month, year, and place, J, N. divorce you
voluntarily, put you away, restore you to your liberty, even you,
N. who were heretofore my wife, and I permit you to marry
whom you please.'' The letter being written, the rabbi examines
the husband closely, in order to learn whether he is voluntarily
inclined to do what he has done. They endeavour to have at
least ten persons present at this action, without reckoning the
two witnesses who sign, and two other witnesses to the date.
After which the rabbi commands the wife to open her hands, in
order to receive this deed, lest it fall to the ground ; and after
having examined her over again, the husband gives her the
parchment, and says to her, Here is thy divorce, I put thee away
from me, and leave thee at liberty to many whom thou pleasest.
The wife takes it, and gives it to the rabbi, who reads it once
Sect. 111.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
963
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. Mil. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
were illegal, and, on both sides, attended with adultery ;
which when some of his disciples heard, and, since the
engagement was so rigorous, began to express their dis-
like of marriage, our Lord allowed it to be true, that in
those who had the gift of continency, a single life was
more conducible towards the attainment of the kingdom
of heaven ; a but that those who had it not, and thought
proper to marry, ought by all means to adhere to the
first institution.
After this, he began to remind his disciples of several
things he had instructed them in before, namely, of the
impossibility of preventing scandals and offences ; of the
duty of forgiving our brother his repeated transgressions ;
of the necessity and efficacy of faith, in order to be
heard in our requests to God ; of humility in the per-
formance of our duty, because at the best we are but un-
profitable servants ; and especially of humility in our
addresses to God, for which he gave them a parabolical
instance, in the behaviour of a Pharisee ° and publican ;
the Pharisee, vaunting over his own praise at his devo-
tion, and preferring himself before all others : but the
more, after which she is free. — Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible,
art. Divorce. — Ed.
a The author here seems to favour the notion of the Romanists
with regard to celibacy, but what our Lord says (Mat. xix. 11,
12.) of a single life, is entirely perverted by the papists, when
they produce it to discredit matrimony, and exalt celibacy
as the more perfect state. For on this very occasion marriage
is declared to be an institution of God. And lest any one
might have replied, that it was a remedy contrived purely
for the weakness of our fallen state, it is particularly observed,
that it was an institution given to man in innocence. Where-
fore, as the apostle tells us, marriage is honourable in all
ranks and conditions of persons, provided the duties thereof are
inviolably maintained. Besides, it is false to affirm that our
Lord recommends celibacy. He only gives permission for it as
a thing lawful, telling them that if they were able to live conti-
nently, they would not sin though they did not many, especially
as the times they lived in were times of persecution. In which
light also the judgment of the apostle Paul is to be considered,
when he declared it to be better for Christians, as matters then
stood, not to marry, 1 Cor. vii. 26. — Macknight's Harmony. —
Ed.
b The Pharisee's temper is sufficiently discovered in the form
of his prayer: ' God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men
are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican,'
(Luke xviii. 11.) The style is insolent and boasting; that of an
herald, rather than a supplicant ; and does not so much render
God his praises, as proclaim his own. But, admitting this lofty
opinion of his own excellencies to be never so just, yet what
warrant or privilege could he have to disparage and vilify his
\ rethren? ' I am not as other men:' what could be more fulsome
vanity, than thus to set himself off, as an exception to a whole
world at once? 'Or even as this publican:' to break that bruised
reed, and, with scornful reproaches, to fall foul on a wounded
soul, whose penitent sorrow called for the compassion of every
stander by. The publican, quite contrary in all his expressions,
in all his deportment, speaks nothing but shame and confusion,
the tenderest contrition, and most profound humility. He stands
afar off, as not presuming upon a nearer approach to the presence
of so holy a majesty. He lifts not up so much as his eyes to
heaven, but, by the guilt and melancholy of his countenance,
takes to himself the ignominious titles so liberally bestowed by
his scornful companion. He smites upon his breast, as conscious
of the pollutions lodged there ; looks not abroad, but confines his
thoughts to his own misery; alleges nothing in his own behalf,
no mixture of good to mitigate the evil of his past life; feels no
comfort, seeks no refuge, except in the mercy of a forgiving God ;
brings no motive to incline that mercy, but a sorrowful sense of
his own unworthiness, and an humble hope in God's unbounded
goodness: and therefore upon this, this saving, this only support-
ing attribute, he casts himself entirely, with a 'God, be merciful
to me a sinner!' — Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii.
publican, with a dejected heart, confessing his sins, and
imploring God's mercy ; and yet the latter, according
to our Lord's judgment, departed more acceptable to
God than the other ; because the divine decree is, ' that
pride should be abased, and humility exalted.'
The Pharisees, who waited for the coming of the
Messiah, and had drawn up a romantic scheme of his
appearing with the utmost glory of a temporal prince,
came about this time and demanded of him, ' when the
kingdom of God,' c whereof he had told them so much,
' was to appear ?' To which he gave them in answer,
" that it should not appear with any outward pomp or
splendour, as they vainly imagined ; and that, in truth,
it was already begun among them, though they had no
perception of it." And then, turning to his disciples,
he strictly cautioned them not to be deluded by false
Christs, and false prophets, d who would pretend to
c Whether the Pharisees put this question to our Saviour in
derision, because in his discourses he had so often mentioned the
kingdom of God, or in sober seriousness, because at this time
they were in strong expectations of the coming of the Messiah,
and his erecting a secular kingdom among them, is not so easy
a matter to determine. Their contemptible opinion of Christ
inclines some to think the former; but their generally received
opinion about the Messiah gives some countenance to the latter;
but, in whatsoever sense they intended the question, our Sav-
iour's answer perfectly fits them. Only we may observe, that
by the kingdom of God here, the Pharisees and our Saviour meant
two very different things: the Pharisees a flourishing kingdom,
wherein the Messiah was to reduce all other nations under the
Jewish yoke ; but our Saviour a kingdom of wrath and ven-
geance, which he designed to exercise even upon the Jews them-
selves; and withal a spiritual kingdom, which he intended to
erect in the hearts of men by the kindly operations of his word
and Spirit, when his gospel should be more fully propagated.
For this is the meaning of that comparison, ' As the lightning,
which shineth from one part of heaven to the other part under
heaven, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be in his
day.' (Luke xvii. 24.) He had told them, that the kingdom of
God was already come among them, and had appeared in the
purity of his doctrine, and the miracles which he had wrought
to confirm it, though not in that glaring light as to make them
take a proper notice of it; and here tells them farther, that, after
his resurrection, it would shine with such a fresh and glorious
brightness, by the effusion of the Holy Ghost on his disciples, as
would render it equal to the splendour of the sun, shining from
one part of heaven to the other, and cause it to be propagated
almost as quick as lightning through the world: and that then
this Son of Man, so scornfully rejected by them, would also
appear suddenly and gloriously, to revenge upon them their
infidelity, and the affronts which they had otiered to him.. —
Poole's and Whitby's Annotations.
d The distinction between false Christs and false prophets is,
that the former took upon them to be Christ, and came under
that name ; the latter were such as promised and foretold false
things. Among the number of the false Christs who appeared
in the time prefixed by our Saviour, that is, between his resur-
rection and the destruction of Jerusalem, are generally reckoned
Dositheus, who, according to Origin, gave it out that he was the
Christwhom Moses foretold. (Basnagc. Hist. of Jews, b.ii. c. 13.)
Simon Magus, who bewitched the people by his sorceries, and
made himself pass ' for the great power of God,' (Acts viii. 9,
10.) and those many more whom the " time of the advent of their
king Messiah", as Josephus expresses it, " prevailed with to set
up for kings;" (Jewish War, b. i.) Among the number of
false prophets who appeared in this period are likewise reckoned
Theudas (not the person mentioned Acts v. 36.) who, in the
government of Fadus, promised his followers that he would
divide the river Jordan, as it was in the days of Joshua and
Elias, and give them a free passage (Joseph* Antiq. b. xx. c. 1.)
The Egyptian Jew, who, in the government of Felix, drew thirty
thousand after him to the mount of Olives, where he promised by
his prayers to make the walls of Jerusalem, as those cf Jericho
once did, fall flat on the ground; thence drive the Romas
964
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4035. A. D.31; OR, A.M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. '23— i.\. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. I.
show them the kingdom of God where it was not ; and
that, before he could enter into his glorified state, he
was to suffer many things, and be rejected by the Jews ;
but that after his death, he would give incontestable
proofs of his power and dominion, by the wonderful
propagation of his gospel, and by the speedy and
amazing vengeance which he intended to take of
that nation. He therefore exhorted them, not to
imitate the security of the people in Noah's time, or
of the inhabitants of Sodom, nor to express any
concern for the destruction of their country, as did
Lot's wife for the burning of Sodom ; a but to use
their utmost care and diligence, when they saw the
Roman b armies advancing, not to be involved in the
general calamity : and because, in involving some, and
preserving others, there would be much of God's distin-
forces, and there fix the seat of his empire (Jetcish War, b. ii.)
A certain magician, who, in the government of Festus, led great
numbers of Jews into the desert, and promised them a deliver-
ance from all their troubles. (Antiq. b. xxii.) And several
others, as the same historian informs us, (Jewish IFar, b. vii.)
who taught the Jews, "even to the last, to expect help and
deliverance." Good reason therefore had our blessed Saviour to
caution his disciples against all such pretenders to a divine mis-
sion, since, according to his prediction, and, as the same histor-
ian expresses it, " the land at this time was quite overrun with
impostors and seducers, who drew the people after them in
shoals, though the Roman governors were so very severe, that
there hardly a day passed without the execution of some of them."
(Antiq. b. xx. c. 6.)
a Instead of making haste to save herself, as the angel had com-
manded her, she, out of a vain curiosity, must needs look back,
either regretting what she had left behind her in the city, or
concerned for those that were destroyed in it, till she was over-
taken by the flames, and changed into a statue of salt, or into
the condition of a corpse salted and embalmed, which continued
as a monument of her disobedience for many ages after. And,
in like manner, if any of our Saviour's disciples neglected the
advice which he here gave them, and continued in Jerusalem,
when the Roman army had closely invested it, they very likely
were involved in the common destruction. — Caimet's Commen-
tary.
b The words in the text are, ' Wheresoever the body or the
carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. (Mat.
xxiv. 28. Luke xvii. 37.) These words, which our Saviour
here makes proverbial, seem to have been borrowed from that
passage in Job, where he speaks of the eagle in this manner:
'She dwelleth, and abideth on the rock upon the crag of the
rock, and the strong place. From thence she seeketh the prey,
and her eyes behold afar off. Her young ones also suck up
blood; and where the slain are, there is she.' (Job xxxix. 28,
&c.)- Upon the account of the swiftness, the strength, and
invincibleness of this bird, no doubt it was, that the Romans
made the eagle their ensign in war. And therefore our Saviour,
by making use of this expression, gives us to understand that
the Romans would come upon the Jews with a sudden destruc-
tion; surround them so, that there should be no escaping their
hands; and, in whatsoever country they found them, there put
them all to the sword. For the eagle, mentioned in Job, our
translators have rendered by a word, which signifies a vulture, a
bird consecrated to Mars, because it loves to feed upon man's
flesh ; and therefore by a kind of natural instinct, " travels along
with armies in expectation of the carcasses that fall there." Nor
is it an uncommon thing for the prophets to express the day of
God's vengeance under the idea of a feast, which he hath pre-
pared for the ravenous birds and beasts of the field ; for thus
saith the Lord, ' Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every
beast of the field ; assemble yourselves, and come, gather your-
selves on every side to my sacrifice, that I do sacrifice for you,
even a great, sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may
eat flesh and drink blood, even the flesh of the mighty, and the
blood of the princes of the earth.' (Ezek. xxxix. 17, 18. See Is.
xxxiv. (5. and Jer. xlvi. 10.) — Hammond's Annotations, and
Caimet's Commentary.
guishing providence concerned ; he therefore exhorted
them to pray without fainting, or being discouraged at
any thing ; and, to this purpose, propounded a parable
of a poor woman, who, by her continued importunity
alone, prevailed with an unjust judge c to vindicate her
wrongs, though he feared neither God nor man.
Shortly after this, Jesus crossed the river Jordan into
Perea, d where he was followed again by vast multitudes
of people, whom he both taught and cured of such dis-
tempers as they had, insomuch, that several of the com-
pany, perceiving how ready he was to do good to all
that came unto him, brought their little children c with
them, in order to partake of his divine benediction ; but
his disciples thinking it below the dignity of their mas-
ter to be disturbed and interrupted by infants, at first re-
fused admittance to those who brought them, until Jesus,
having reproved them for so doing, and withal recom-
mended the innocence and simplicity of these babes,
as a pattern for their imitation, commanded all to be
introduced, and, taking them up in his arms, he laid his
c Though it were blasphemy to think, that God acts upon
the same motives with this unjust judge, yet this we may learn
from the nature of the parable, that if a person, who neither
fears God nor regards man, who had neither any sense of reli-
gion nor humanity, may be supposed to be so far prevailed upon
by the earnestprayer of a miserable necessitous creature, as to grant
the request made to him, and to administer relief to the supplicant,
merely upon the continuance and importunity of the petitions
that are put up; how much more ought we to think that God,
who is infinite goodness itself, who is always kind and bountiful
to his creatures, who delights to do them good, even without their
desiring it, and who is able to do them good, with much less
pains than they can request it ; how much more ought we to
think, I say, that this God, upon our earnest and hearty prayer
to him, especially if we be importunate, and persevering in our
devotions, will return us a kind answer, and grant us such sup-
plies, such protection or assistance, as shall be needful for us. —
Bishop Smalridge's Sermons.
d This word is derived from the Greek, a-sjav, beyond, and
signifies the country beyond Jordan, or on the east side of that
river. It was bounded, according to Josephus, to the west, by
Jordan; to the east, by Philadelphia; to the north, by Pella;
and to the south, by Macheron ; and was a fruitful country,
abounding with pines, olive-trees, palm-trees, and other plants,
that grew up and down in the fields in great plenty and perfec-
tion; and, in the excessive heats, was well watered and refresh-
ed with springs and torrents from the mountains. — Jewish War,
b. iii. c. 2. — It comprehended the six cantons of Abilene, Trarh-
onitis, Ituraea, Gaulonitis, Batavia, and Peraea, strictly so
called. It was to this latter canton that our Saviour repaired on
this occasion. See Macknight's Harmony, s. 84, note to John
x. 40 Ed.
e The parents who brought their children to Christ, were
doubtless such as believed him to be a prophet sent from God,
and were persuaded, that the touch, or imposition of his hand,
would be of great benefit to them, both to draw down a
blessing from heaven upon them, and to preserve them from
diseases which they saw him cure in persons more advanced in
years. We may observe, therefore, that though these children
were no more than infants, as appears by our Saviour taking them
up in his arms, (Mark x. 16,) yet their parents thought them
capable of spiritual blessings, and of receiving advantage by our
Saviour's prayers. They however might bring them, with no
further intent than what is customary among the Jews even now,
when they present their children to any of their famous doctors,
namely, to obtain his blessing; but by the reason which our Sa-
viour gives for their admission into the kingdom of heaven, it
appears, that he perceived something in them, besides their being
emblems of humility, that qualified them to come unto him; and
what could that be, but a fitness to be dedicated to the service of
God, and to enter into covenant with him early, as the Jewish
children did, by the rite of baptism, which was his institution,
even as the other did by that of circumcision. — Caimet's Conw
mentary, and Whitby's Annotations.
Shut. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c
9G5
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OK, A. M. 5441. A
hands upon them, a and blessed them, and so departed
from the place where this transaction happened.
As he was on his journey, a young person of distinc-
tion who was very rich and wealthy, desired to know of
him, what he was to do in order to obtain eternal life.
Our Saviour proposed to him the observation of the
moral law, and remitted him, in particular, to the com-
mandments of the second table, b as a certain sign of his
keeping those of the first ; but when the young gentleman
told him, that all these he had made it his study to ob-
serve from his youth, and our Lord, who knew his covet-
ous temper, and was willing to touch the secret sore of
his mind, told him, that if he aimed at perfection in reli-
gion, his only way would be to sell his estate, c and give
it to the poor, in hopes of a greater treasure in heaven,
and to come and be one of his disciples ; the young man
went away very pensive and melancholy, being loath to
part with his present possessions for any treasure in
reversion.' Whereupon our Lord, turning to his disci-
ples, began to declare what an insurmountable obstacle
riches, without the grace of God, were to any man's sal-
vation, d and that ' it was easier,' according to the He-
a It was common with the Jews to bring their children to
venerable persons, men of note for religion and piety, to have
their blessing and prayer, (Gen. xlviii. 14.) And it appears to
have been customary among the Jews, when one prayed for ano-
ther, who was present to lay his hand upon the person's hand. —
Campbell's Translation of the Gospel, Note. — Ed.
b We must not imagine, because our Saviour refers this young
man to the precepts of the second table only, that therefore they
are of more obligation to us, than those of the first, or that, by
performing them alone, we may attain eternal life: our Lord
has elsewhere determined, that the great commandment of all is,
'to love the Lord our God with all our hearts;' and here he
instances in those of the second table, not only because the love
of our neighbour is an excellent evidence of our love to God, but
because the Pharisee, of which sect very probably this person was
oue, thought these commandments of trivial account, and easy
performance ; and yet by some of these it was, that our Saviour
intended, by and by, to convince this inquirer, that he neither had
kept nor could keep them. — Poole's Annotations.
e Since our blessed Saviour here requires of this young man,
not only to withdraw his heart from an inordinate love of his pos-
sessions, but to sell them all and give the money to the poor, we
may be sure that this was a particular command to him, in order
to convince him of the insincerity of his pretended love to life eter-
nal, and not a precept common to all Christians. That there
were rich men in the church, we learn from several passages in
scripture, (I Tim. vi. 17. James i. 10, and ii. 2.) St Peter,
in his speech to Ananias, permits Christians to retain what is
their own, (Acts v. 4.) and St Paul does not enjoin the Corin-
thians to sell all, and give alms, but only requests them to admin-
ister to their brethren's wants out of their abundance, (2 Cor.
viii. 14.) So that if riches fall into the hands of one who know-
eth how to use them to God's glory, and the relief of indigent
Christians, as well as to supply his own needs, it seems a contra-
diction to conceive, that God requires him to part with them,
and so divest himself of any further opportunity of promoting his
glory and doing good to his needy members. This precept
therefore of selling all we have, can only take place when we are
in the same situation with this young man, namely, have an ex-
press command from God so to do, or when we find our riches are
an impediment to the securing of our eternal interest; for in that
case we must part with a right hand, or a right eye, the nearest
and dearest things we have, ' rather than be cast into hell-fire.' —
ff'hitby's Annotations.
d Drs Campbell and Boothroyd thus translate Mat. xix. 23,
' It is difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.' By
the kingdom of heaven is sometimes understood, in the gospel his-
tory, the Christian church, then soon to be erected, and some-
timi is the state of the blessed in heaven, after the resurrection. In
regard to this declaration of our Lord, 1 take it to hold true, in
D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— xi. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii. 1.
brew proverb, ' for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle, e than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom
of heaven.' At which expression, when his disciples
were not a little startled, to remove their fears, he let
them know, that the salvation of the rich, though a matter
of some difficulty, was not impossible with God, who
could change the hearts and affections of men as he
pleased.
When the apostles heard their master bidding the
' young man sell all,' and ' give it to the poor, and follow
him,' and promising him, for a reward, a treasure in
heaven, they began to think, that possibly it might be
their case, and the promise, in like manner, concern
them ; and therefore, when, in the name of the rest, Peter
desired to know of him what reward they were to expect,
who had actually relinquished all and followed him ; his
reply was, that at the general resurrection, / ' when him-
which way soever the kingdom be understood. When it was
only by means of persuasion that men were brought into a soci-
ety, hated and persecuted by all the ruling powers of the earth,
Jewish and pagan; we may rest assured that the opulent and
the voluptuous, characters which, in a dissolute age, commonly
go together, who had so much to lose, and so much to fear, would
not, among the hearers of the gospel, be the most easily per-
suaded. The apostle James, (ii. 5, 6.) accordingly attests this
to have been the fact; it was ' the poor in this world whom God
hath chosen rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom;' whereas,
they were ' the rich in this world who oppressed them, dragged
them before their tribunals, and blasphemed that worthy name
by which they were called.' As little can there be any doubt of
the justness of the sentiment, in relation to the state of the
blessed hereafter, when the deceitfulness of riches, and the snare
into which it so often inveigles men, are duly considered. So
close an analogy runs through all the divine dispensations, that
in more instances than this, it 'may be affirmed with truth, that
the declarations of scripture are susceptible of either interpreta-
tion.— Campbell on the Gvspels. — Kd.
e There are three different opinions among interpreters con-
cerning the meaning of this proverbial saying. Some imagine,
that, at Jerusalem, there was a gate, so very low and narrow,
that a loaded camel could not pass through it, and that, by reason
of its littleness, it was called the needle's eye; but all this is a
mere fiction, devised on purpose to solve this seeming difficulty.
The Jews indeed, to signify a thing impossible, had a common
proverb among them, that ' an elephant cannot pass through the
eye of a needle.' Now, our Saviour, say some, was pleased to
change this proverb from an elephant, which was a beast that
few had seen, to a camel, a creature very common in Syria, and
whose bunch on his back hindered him from passing through any
strait entrance. But others, not able to discern any analogy be-
tween a camel and a needle's eye, think, that the word VL«.p.r,ko;,
here signifies a cable, or thick rope, which mariners use in cast-
ing their anchors ; and that the rather, not only because there is
some similitude between a cable and a thread, which is usually
drawn through the eye of a needle, but because the Jews, as the
learned Buxtorf acquaints us, have a proverb of the like import
relating to the cable, as they have to the elephant; for so they
say, that as " difficult is the passage of the soul out of the body,
as that of a cable through a narrow hole. " Whether of these
two interpretations takes place, it is a matter of pure indiffer-
ences only we may observe, that the application of the proverb
to the rich man's entering into the kingdom of "heaven, muM
not be understood absolutely, hut only so as to denote a thine
extremely difficult, if not impossible, without an extraordinary
influence of the divine grace. — Calmet's Commentary; Ham-
mond's and Poole's Annotations.
./"The word, in the original, is <ra.\iyy%n<ri«., which properly
signifies a neiv and second state, and is used among the Pytha-
goreans for the return of the soul, after it had left one body to
take possession of another: and agreeably hereunto it is used, by
sacred writers., to denote either the future resurrection, which
will he the re-union of the soul and body, or that great change
which was to be effected in the world by the preaching ol the
gospel, and, more especially, by the mission of the Holy Ghost
968
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI I L
A.M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A.M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT . xii. 1-
self should be seated upon his throne of glory, they also
should sit upon twelve thrones, ° judging the twelve
tribes of Israel ;' and that not only they, but all others
likewise, who, for his and the gospel's sake, should quit
any worldly advantages or possessions, should receive
such comforts * in this world as would vastly surpass
their losses, and in the world to come, eternal life : but
then, to show them that such high rewards proceeded
from the bounty of heaven, and no other title, he repre-
sented the freedom of God, in the distribution of his
favours, under the emblem of a certain master of a family,
sending labourers into his vineyard, some sooner, and
some later, but giving them all the same wages : wherein,
though he seemed kind to some, yet was he unjust to
none, because he paid them all according to his agree-
ment, and, having done so, was then certainly left to
his option, whom to make objects of his liberality.
Our Saviour had not been long in Perea, before he re-
ceived a message out of Judea, from two sisters in Beth-
any, c Martha, and Mary, of the dangerous sickness of
after our Lord's ascension into heaven. — Hammond's Annota-
tions.
a Some interpreters refer these words to that authority, both
in matters of discipline and doctrine, which the apostles, after
the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them, were, by our Lord's
commission and appointment, to exercise in the Christian church ;
but most understand them of the honours that are to be conferred
upon them in a future state. And here some have taken great
pains to determine what judgment these persons shall pass; as
that they shall condemn the errors of wicked men by their doc-
trines, and the malice and obstinacy of infidels by their persecu-
tions, &c, while others have undertaken to assign them their
parts in the process of the last great day, and represent them, as
so many assessors, to the Supreme Judge sitting upon the ex-
amination and trial of mankind, while all the rest stand at the
bar. But though we are well assured, that such a judgment
shall be, yet, as to the particular circumstances and formalities
of it, the scripture seems to give us but a slender insight; and
therefore, setting aside all dark conjectures about this matter,
the most safe and probable way of applying this passage is, to
look upon it as spoken after the manner of men, to signify in
general, a brighter crown or more exquisite degree of happiness
and glory. The apostles accompanied and stuck close to Christ
ill his low estate. They kept the faith under the greatest pres-
sures and temptations. They were indefatigably diligent, un-
dauntedly constant in their labours and sufferings for the truth,
and most eminently serviceable in advancing the kingdom of
Christ upon earth ; and therefore they shall receive an eminent
distinction in the kingdom of heaven. — Stanhope on the Epistles
and Gospels, vol. iv.
b That is, the comforts of an upright conscience, a full content
of mind, the joys of the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and hopes
of glory. They should have God for their father, and Christ for
their spouse, and all good Christians for their friends and brethren,
who would honour, succour, and support them, more than those
that were allied to them by the strictest bonds of nature. —
Whitby's Annotations.
c Bethany took its name from the tract of ground wherein it
stands, so called from the word n:ttn, which signifies the fig or
grief tree, that grew there in great plenty. It was a con-
siderable place, situated at the foot of the mount of Olives about
fifteen furlongs, or near two miles eastward from Jerusalem;
but at present it is but a very small village. One of our
modern travellers acquaints us, that at the first entrance into
it, there is an old ruin, which they call Lazarus's castle, sup-
posed to have been the mansion-house where he and his sisters
lived. At the bottom of a small descent, not far from the castle,
you see his sepulchre, which the Turks hold in great venera-
tion, and use it for an oratory, or place of prayer. Here, going
clown by twenty-five steep steps, you come at first into a small
square room, and from thence creep into another that is less,
about a yard and a half deep, in which the body is said to have
been laid. About a bowshot from hence, you pass by the place
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix- 37. JOHN v- 1 vii. 1.
their brother Lazarus, a person highly beloved and esteem-
ed by him ; but he proposing, on this occasion, to manifest
the glory of God, as well as his own divine power and
mission, by a greater miracle than a simple cure would
be, delayed his going until Lazarus was dead, d and
then set forward.
While he was in his journey, he took his apostles
aside, and e told them still more plainly what the event
of it would be ; namely, that at this time of his going to
Jerusalem, the chief priests and scribes would appre-
hend, and condemn him, and then ' deliver him to the
Gentiles, who would scourge, and mock, and crucify
which they say was Mary Magdalen's habitation'; and then,
descending a steep hill, you come to the fountain of the apostles,
which is so called, because, as the tradition goes, these holy
persons were wont to refresh themselves here, between Jeru-
salem and Jericho, as it is very probable they might, because
the fountain is both close to the road-side, and is very inviting
to the thirsty traveller. — JJliitby's Alphabetical Table, Wells'
Geography of the New Testament, and MaundreW s Journey
from Aleppo to Jerusalem.
d Our Saviour's stay for two days after the message, and
modest address of the two mournful sisters, kept them indeed a
little longer in suspense and grief; but it showed his perfect
wisdom and goodness, as it made the wonderful work more re-
markable, and conducive to the fuller conviction of the specta-
tors. Had he gone before Lazarus was dead, they might have
attributed his recovery rather to the strength of nature than to
Christ's miraculous power ; or had he raised him as soon as he
was dead, they might, peradventure, have thought it rather
some trance or ecstasy, than a death or dissolution: but now, to
raise a person, four days dead, offensive, and reduced to corrup-
tion, was a surprise of unutterable joy to his friends ; removed
all possible suspicion of confederacy; silenced the peevish cavil-
ling, and triumphed over all the obstinacy of prejudice and in-
fidelity.— Bishop Blackhall's Sermons.
e In the course of the gospel, we find our Lord forewarning
his disciples, no less than three times, of his approaching suffer-
ings and resurrection. The first intimation of this kind was in
the coasts of Casarea Philippi, when, after St Peter's confession
of him to be ' the Christ, the Son of the living God, he began to
show unto his disciples, how he must suffer many things,' &c,
(Luke ix. 22.) The next we meet with was immediately after
his transfiguration in the mount, when, as he came down thence,
with the three apostles who were the companions of his pri-
vacies, he reminded them of what he had told them before,
namely, 'that the Son of Man should be delivered into the
hands of men,' (Luke ix. 44.) The third warning was that
which he gave his apostles apart, when he was going to Jeru-
salem to sutler, or, as some rather think, when he was going to
Bethany, in order to raise Lazarus from the dead: and it is
observed of these several warnings, that they rise by degrees,
and grow more full and distinct, in proportion as the things
drew nearer. Thus, the first is delivered in general terms:
' the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected, and
slain, and raised the third day.' The second is enforced with
this solemn preface, ' let these sayings sink down in your ears,'
(Luke ix. 44.) And the third descends to a more particular
description of that tragical scene: 'he shall be delivered to the
Gentiles, and mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:
and they shall scourge him, and put him to death, and the third
day he shall rise again,' (Luke xviii. 32, 33.) Now, whether we
consider the danger the apostles were in of being oppressed with
an affliction so sensible as the death of their master; or the
general mistake wherewith they were infected, concerning the
splendour and worldly pomp of the Messiah's kingdom, or the
scandal that would necessarily rise from a crucified Saviour,
this method of forwarning his disciples of what was to come
upon him, was highly requisite, to sustain them in their tri-
bulation, to rectify their sentiments, and remove all offences; as
it showed that his death was voluntary, consonant to the pre-
dictions of the prophets, and agreeable to the council and appoint-
ment of God, and the shame of his crucifixion abundantly re-
compensed by the glories of his resurrection. — Stanhope on the
Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
967
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1—
him;' but that ' on the third day he would rise again.'
Upon the mention of his resurrection, which they vainly
imagined would be the beginning of his terrestrial great-
ness, James and John, by the mouth of their mother
Salome, a requested of him, to have the first places in
his kingdom. The first places in his kingdom, he told
them, were to be disposed of according to the predeter-
mination of bis Father ; but a proper qualification for
them it was, to be able to take the greatest share of the
bitter cup of his sufferings, * which very probably might
be their fate ; c and when the ambition of these two
brokers provoked the indignation of the other ten apos-
tles, lie declared to them all, that his kingdom d was far
a This their mother might be encouraged to ask, upon the
account of her near relation to the blessed Virgin, her constant
accompanying' our Saviour, and diligent attendance upon him;
and might conceive some hopes of her sons' future exaltation,
from the pompous name which our Lord had given them, and
the great privilege to which he had admitted them, but ex-
cluded others, of attending him in his privacies. — JVTiitby's An-
notations and Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
h It was anciently the custom, at great entertainments, for
the governor of the feast to appoint to each of his guests the kind
and proportion of wine they were to drink, and what he had
thus appointed them, it was thought a breach of good manners,
either to refuse, or not to drink up. Hence a man's cup, both
in sacred and profane authors, came to signify the portion,
whether of good or evil, which befalls him in this world.
Homer introduces Achilles, thus comforting Priamus for the
loss of his son :
Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good,
From thence tbe cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to those, to these distributes ills ;
To most he mingles both ; the wretch decreed
To taste the baJ unmix'd is curs'd indeed ;
Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driv'n,
He wanders, outcast both of earth and heav'n.
The happiest taste not happiness sincere,
But find the cordial draught is dash'd with care. — Iliad xxiv.
Not unlike what we meet with in the psalmist, ' in the hand of
the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red ; it is full mixed,
and he poureth out of the same: as for the dregs thereof, all the
ungodly of the earth shall drink them out,' (Ps. lxxv. 9, 10.)
And what our Saviour means by the expression, we cannot be
to seek, since, in two remarkable passages, (Luke xxii. 42, and
John xviii. 11.) he has been his own interpreter; lethale pocu-
lum Inhere, or to taste of death, was a common phrase among
the Jews, and from them we have reason to believe that our
Lord borrowed it. — Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol.
iv. and Whitby's Annotations.
c This prediction was literally fulfilled in St James, who was
put to death by Herod, and so, in the highest sense of the words,
was made to drink of our Lord's cup; and, though St John was
not brought to sutler martyrdom, yet his being scourged and
imprisoned by the council at Jerusalem, (Acts v. 18. 40.) put
into a caldron of burning oil at Ephesus, (Euseb. b. iii. c. 18,)
and banished into Patmos, 'for the word of God, and for the
testimony of Jesus Christ,' (Rev. i. 9.) may well be supposed to
he some part of that bitter cup which our Saviour drank; and
that he, who underwent such torments, as nothing but a miracle
could deliver him from, may, with very great justice, be
esteemed a martyr. — Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels,
vol. iv.
d The words in the text are, ■ the princes of the Gentiles ex-
ercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise
authority upon them ; but it shall not he so among you: but, who-
soever will be great among you, let him be your minister, (Mat.
xx. 25, 20,) and from hence some have inferred, that our Savi-
our forbids them who will he his disciples, or the subjects of his
kingdom, the exercise of all civil and ecclesiastical dominion.
But if it be considered, that civil government was, from the
beginning of the world instituted by God, and therefore called
his ordinance, (Rom. xiii. 2,) for the punishment of evil doers,
and for the defence of those that do well: that Christianity,
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN r. 1— vil. 1.
different from those of this world, whose princes and
governors strove to exercise their utmost power and do-
minion over their subjects : whereas, whoever expected
to be great and chief among his followers, must be a
servant to the rest, according to his own example, who
came, not to take state upon him, but to serve others,
and even to lay down his life for their redemption.
As he drew near to Jericho, attended with a numerous
company, one Bartimeus, who had long sat by the way-
side begging, hearing the noise of a vast crowd of peo-
ple passing by, and being informed that Jesus of Nazar-
eth was among them, with e another blind man who
when it came into the world, made no alteration in things of this
nature, but left the magistrate, after his conversion, still bearing
the sword, in the same manner as he did before; and that the
exercise of his power is a thing so sacred, as to entitle not only
princes, but even their deputed ministers of justice, to the style of
gods in scripture; it must needs be allowed, that what is reputed
so honourable, and found so beneficial, so strict a bond of human
virtue, and so firm a guard against all kinds of wickedness, can
never be forbidden in any Christian commonwealth. And, in like
manner, since among the gifts distributed for the use of the
church, we read of ' governments,' (1 Cor. xii. 28,) and find
mention made of ' those who are set over us in the Lord,' (1
Thes. v. 12,) to whom we must yield obedience, and submit our-
selves, (Heb. xiii. 7, 17,) since we find that the apostles had the
rod, (1 Cor. iv. 21,) and power given of the Lord, to 'deliver
to Satan, (1 Cor. v. 5,) and to 'revenge all disobedience,' (2
Cor. x. 6,) and since, in the nature of the thing, it is eveiy
whit as impossible for a church to subsist without ecclesiastical
government, as it is for a state without civil, it must needs
follow, that the one is necessary, and of divine institution, as
much as the other. All, therefore, that our Saviour can be pre-
sumed to forbid in these words, is such a dominion, whether in
church or state, as is attended with tyranny, oppression, and a
contempt of the suhjects that live under it. Such, for the most
part, was the government that obtained in eastern countries ; and
therefore, in contraposition to this, our spiritual rulers are put in
mind, that they ' feed the flock, which is among them, taking
the oversight thereof, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind,
neither as being lords of God's inheritance, but examples to the
flock,' (1 Pet. v. 2, 3,) that their highest station in the church
is not so much a place of dignity, as a charge and office, which
subjects them to the wants and necessities of those they rule over;
and that the most honourable post they can have in Christ's
kingdom, is only a larger ministry, and attendance upon others ;
for, ' who is Paul ? who is Apollo ? but ministers by whom ye
believed,' (1 Cor. iii. 3.) ' For we preach not ourselves,' says
the apostle to the Corinthians, ' but Christ Jesus the Lord, and
ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake,' (2 Cor. iv. 5.) — Whitby's
and Beausobre's Annotations.
e There is a considerable variation in the accounts of this mi-
racle by the three evangelists. Mark and Luke notice only one
blind man, Matthew two; Luke represents the miracle as per-
formed ' when Jesus was drawing nigh to Jericho,' before he en-
tered it; Matthew and Mark, after he had left Jer'cho. The
joint testimony, however, of Matthew and Mark, as to the time
seems to outweigh that of Luke, who is not so observant of chro-
nological order; and as all agree, that Christ was then attended
by a ' multitude,' who * led the way,' and who ' followed him '
towards Jerusalem, it is more probable that the incident took
place after he left Jericho, where this multitude seems to have
been collected. For he came privately from Ephraim to Jericho,
attended only by the twelve. — Hales. — The minute discrepan-
cies in this narrative, compared with those of Mark and Luke,
involve no contradiction; since, though those evangelists men-
tion one blind man as healed ; and Mark and Luke in mentioning
one might mean to point out that one who was the more known.
Again, the apparent difference between Matthew and Mark, as
compared with Luke, with regard to the place where the miracle
was performed, may, it is thought, be removed by reading in
Luke ' when, or while, Jesus was near Jericho.' If, however,
the trifling discrepancies adverted to were really irreconcilable,
still they would not weaken the credit of the evangelists, being
such as are found in the best historians; nay, they may be rather
968
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D.30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
begged along with him, called aloud upon Jesus to have
mercy upon him. The people who accompanied our
Lord, supposing that the man asked an alms, bade him
cease his noise ; but the benefit which he desired was of
gTeater moment, and therefore he raised his voice, and,
with more importunity, cried, ' thou son of David, have
mercy upon me !' Which when our Lord perceived, he
commanded both him and his companion to be brought
before him ; and, upon them declaring what favour they
expected, he touched their eyes, and immediately they
received their sight, and followed him, glorifying God,
as indeed all the company did, who had been eye-wit-
nesses of this miracle.
As our Lord was passing through Jericho, a a certain
man, named Zaccheus, of great wealth and figure among-
the publicans, was not a little desirous to see him ; but,
as he was a man of a low stature, and could not gratify
his curiosity in the crowd, he ran before, and climbed up
into a sycamore tree, where he could not fail of having
a full view of him. When our Saviour came near the
place, he called him by his name, and bade him come
down, because he intended to be his guest that day :
whereupon Zeccheus received him with the greatest ex-
pressions of joy and respect,whilst others could not for-
bear reflecting upon him, for entering the house of a man
of so scandalous a profession. But, notwithstanding all
their censures, our Saviour, who from the intuition of his
heart, as well as his own declaration, knew him to be a
just and charitable man, pronounced him and his family
in a state of salvation, and that he, though a publican,
and an alien to the commonwealth of Israel, was never-
theless one of those to whom the promises b made unto
Abraham did belong.
The nearer they came to Jerusalem, the more the dis-
ciples began to think that their master had taken that
journey to the passover, on purpose to seat himself upon
his throne, and assume his regal authority ; and therefore,
to cure their minds of all such thoughts, he propounded a
parable c to them, ' of a certain great man, born heir to
thought to strengthen their authority as independent witnesses.
— Blooinfield's Greek Testament. — Ed.
a For an account of Jericho, see note b, p. 363. — Ed.
b Though some commentators, with our author, are of opin-
ion that Zaccheus was a Gentile. Yet with Scott, Boothroyd,
Doddridge, and others, we are disposed to conclude that he was
a Jew; and the passage, Luke xix. 9, which has given rise to
the doubt, seems judiciously explained by Scott, as follows:
" Jesus, knowing the sincerity and humility of his professed sub-
jection to the gospel, declared, 'that salvation was that day come
to his house,' he and his family had before been estranged from
it, but it was now come thither for the benefit of all belonging to
it; 'for so much as he also was a son of Abraham,' not only
according to the flesh, but as being now made partaker of Abra-
ham's faith and privileges, and the promises made to him and his
seed. — Ed.
c This parable, we may observe, consists of two parts. The
former of which is contained in Luke xix. 12, 14, 15—27, and
relates to the rebellious subjects of this prince, who ' went into a
far country to receive a kingdom;' the latter is included in the
L3th, 15th, and so on to the 27th verse, and relates to this prince's
servants, to whom he had committed his money for them to
improve in his absence: and the explication of the whole is
generally supposed to be this: — The nobleman or prince here is
our Lord himself, the eternal Son of God ; his going into a far
country to receive a kingdom, is his ascension into heaven, to
sit down at the right hand of the Divine Majesty, and take pos-
session of his mediatorial kingdom; his servants may be either
his apostles and disciples, who, upon his return, were to give
an account of the progress of his gospel, or Christians in general,
a kingdom, and going into a far country to take pos-
session of it ; but before he departed, calling his ser-
vants together, and giving each a sum of money to trade
withal, until he should return. The reason of his jour-
ney to this foreign land was, because his own country-
men, over whom he had a right to reign, were obstinately
set against him, and disclaimed him for their king.
When therefore he had obtained his new kingdom, and
was returned home, he first called his servants, with
whom he had intrusted his money, to an account, re-
warding the diligent with gifts proportionate to their
improvements, and punishing the negligent with per-
petual imprisonment ; and then taking cognizance of his
countrymen, who, upon his going to be enthroned in
another kingdom, disclaimed all obedience to him, he
ordered them, in his presence, to be put to death as
so many rebels ; intimating hereby both the punishment
of negligent Christians, and the destruction of the con-
tumacious Jews.
By the time that our Lord arrived at Bethany, Laza-
rus had now been four days dead d and buried ; and
several friends and others from Jerusalem, were
come to condole with the two sisters, ' Martha and
who, for every talent, whether natural or acquired, are account-
able. His citizens are, questionless, the Jews, who not only
rejected him with scorn, but put him to an ignominious death;
and his return is the day of his fierce wrath and vengeance upon
the Jewish nation, which came upon them about forty years
after this time, and was indeed so very terrible, as to be a kind
of emblem and representation of that great day of accounts, when
he will render 'to every one according to his works.' It is
observable, however, by some commentators farther, that our
Lord took the rise of this parable from the custom of the kings
of Judea, such as Herod the Great, and Archelaus his son, who
usually went to Rome to receive their kingdom from Caesar,
without whose permission and appointment they durst not take
the government into their hands. In the case of Archelaus,
indeed, the resemblance is so great, that almost every circum-
stance of the parable concurs in him. He was this ivyivns, or
man of great parentage, as being the son of Herod the Great.
He was obliged to go into a far countiy, that is, to Rome, to
receive his kingdom of the emperor Augustus. The Jews, who
hated him because of his cruel and tyrannical reign, sent their
messengers after him, desiring to be freed from the yoke of
kings, and reduced to a province of Rome. Their complaint,
however, was not heard. He was confirmed in the kingdom of
Judea; and, when he returned home, tyrannized for ten years
over those that would have shook off his dominion. But then
there is this remarkable difference between his case and that in
the parable, that the Jews, upon their second complaint to
Caesar, prevailed against him, and procured his banishment to
Vienna. — Calmet's Commentary, and Beausobre's and IVldtby's
Annotations.
d It was customary among the Jews, as Dr Lightfoot tells us
from Maimonides, and others, to go to the sepulchres of their
deceased friends, and visit them for three days; for so long they
suppose that their spirits hovered about them. But when once
they perceived that their visage began to change, as it would in
three days in these countries, all hopes of a return to life were
then at an end. After a revolution of humours, which in
seventy-two hours is completed, their bodies tend naturally to
putrefaction ; and therefore Martha had reason to say that her
brother's body, which appears by the context to have been laid
in the sepulchre the same day that he died, would now in the
fourth day begin to stink. — fVhitby's and Hammond's Annota-
tions.
e The time of mourning for departed friends was anciently,
among the Jews, of longer continuance. For Jacob they
mourned forty days, (Gen. 1. 3.) and for Aaron and Moses
thirty, (Num. xx. 29. and Deut. xxxiv. 8.) For persons of an
inferior quality the days very probably were fewer, but some
they had for all, and the general term, both among the Jews and
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
969
A. M. 403.'). A. D. 31 ; OR, A. It. 5111. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1 —
Mary, for the loss of their brother. Upon the first news
of our Lord's approach, the two sisters, attended with
some of the company that was in the house, went out to
meet him ; and, pouring- out a flood of tears for the loss
of their dear brother, fell prostrate at his feet, and
wished, over and over again, that he had come a little
sooner ; for then they were certain that he would not
have died. The sight of their tears and sorrow, accom-
panied with the lamentations of their followers, affected
the Son of God so that he groaned within himself; and
then demanding- where they had laid the body, a he fol-
lowed them to the place, sympathizing with their sorrow,
and weeping* as well as they, which made some of the
company remark how well he loved, and others wonder
why he did not prevent his death. '' When he was come
to the grave, c and had ordered the stone to be removed
Gentiles, was seven; for so Ovid brings in Orpheus lamenting
the death of his wife: "Yet for seven days he sat squalid on
the bank, without the gift of Ceres: anxiety and grief of mind,
and tears, were his food." — Metam. b. x. — An expression not
unlike that in the royal psalmist, ' my tears have been my meat day
and night.' (Ps. xlii. 3.) During this time their neighbours
and friends came to visit them, and to alleviate their sorrows
with the best arguments they could. They pray with them;
they read with them the forty-ninth psalm: pray for the soul
of the dead, and distribute their comforts in proportion to their
loss; but nobody opened his mouth until the afflicted person had
first spoken, because Job's three friends, who came to comfort
him, we find did the same (Job ii. 13.) All which ceremonies
made the concourse to Martha's house at this time the greater,
and gave more Jews an opportunity to be the eye-witnesses of
her brother's resurrection. — Poole's and Beausobre's Annota-
tions, and Basnage's History of the Jews, b. v. c. 23.
a Our Saviour could not look on the affliction of the two sis-
ters and their friends without having a share in it. Besides he
groaned deeply, being grieved to find that his friends enter-
tained a suspicion of his loving them less than their great love
to him might claim; 'and was troubled.' In the Greek it is
he troubled himself, tra^a^it iccurov, he allowed himself to be
angry at the malice of the devil, who had introduced sin into
the world, and thereby made such havoc of the human kind.
But to keep them no longer in suspense, he asked where they
had buried Lazarus, that he might go to the grave, and give
them immediate relief, by bringing him to life again. On this
occasion it appeared that Jesus was possessed of a delicate sensi-
bility of human passions. For when he beheld Martha and
Mary, and their companions around him all in tears, the tender
feelings of love, and pity, and friendship, moved him to such a
degree, that he wept as he went along, (John xi. 34.) ' And
said, Where have ye laid him? they say unto him, Lord, come
and see. (35.) Jesus wept.' In this grief of the Son of God,
there was a greatness and generosity, not to say an amiableness
of disposition, infinitely nobler than that which the stoic philo-
sophers aimed at iu their so much boasted apathy. — Macknight's
Harmony .~— Ed.
b The words in the text are, ' some of them said, Could not
this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that
even this man should not have died?' (John xi.37.) which some
imagine were spoken only in admiration, that having given sight
to a blind man that was a mere stranger to him, he did not cure
his sick friend. But others conceive a vile sarcasm in the
word';, as if they went about to weaken his reputation, in a
miracle wherein he had manifestly shown his divine power,
because he did not preserve his friend from dying.' — Poole's
Annotations.
c In the 23d chapter of Genesis, we have the earliest notice
of the practice, which was formerly very prevalent in the east,
of depositing the dead in natural or artificial caves, great num-
berfi of which are still to be found in Palestine, Syria, Egypt,
and Persia. In the mountainous country of southern Palestine
there are abundance of natural caves in the rocks, which might
easily be formed into commodious sepulchral vaults; and where
such natural caves were wanting, sepulchres were hewn in the
rock for such families as were able to incur the necessary expense ;
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23.— ix. 14. LUKE vi. l._jx. 37. JOHN v. 1.— vii. 1.
from it, after a short address of adoration and thanks-
giving- to his Father for his readiness to hear him,
d he cried with a loud voice, - Lazarus, come forth ;' e
whereupon he that was dead immediately arose from his
bed of darkness, and in such sound health, that when
his grave-clothes were unloosed, he was able to walk
along with them to Bethany.
This great and apparent miracle caused the utmost
surprise and astonishment among all the spectators, and
the greatest part of them was, from that time, convinced,
and believed on him ; but others, more obstinate, went
and reported the thing to the Pharisees at Jerusalem,
who thereupon called together their sanhedrim, where,
after some solemn debate, it was concluded, ' that
whether the man was a prophet sent from God or not,
for fear of giving any umbrage to the Roman powers,/
for this was the mode of sepulture decidedly preferred by those
who could obtain it. The arrangement and extent of these caves
varied with circumstances. Those in the declivity of a mountain
were often cut in horizontally; but to others there was usually a
descent by steps from the surface. The roofs of the vaults are
commonly arched ; and sometimes, in the more spacious vaults,
supported by colonnades. These rocky chambers are generally
spacious, being obviously family vaults, intended to receive seve-
ral dead bodies. Niches, about six or seven feet deep, are
usually cut in the sides of the vault, each adapted to receive a
single corpse; but in some vaults small rooms are cut in the
same manner; and in others, stone slabs of the same length are
fixed horizontally against the walls, or cut out of the rock, one
above another, serving as shelves on which the corpses were de-
posited : in others, however, the floor itself is excavated for the
reception of the dead, in compartments of various depths, and in
the shape of a coffin. Some of the bodies were placed in stone
coffins, provided with sculptured lids ; but such sarcophagi were
by no means in general use; the bodies, when wound up in the
grave-clothes, being usually deposited without any sort of coffin
or sarcophagus. The vaults are always dark, the only opening
being the narrow entrance, which is usually closed by a large
stone rolled to its mouth ; although some of a superior description
are shut by stone doors, hung in the same manner as the doors
of houses, by pivots turning in holes in the architrave above and
in the threshold below. — Pictorial Bible. — Ed.
d As our blessed Saviour, in virtue \A his union with God the
Father, had naturally, and in himself, a power of working mira-
cles, there was no need for his addressing himself to heaven
every time that he did any: however, upon this and some other
occasions, we find him praying to God under the title of his
Father, that all the company might know, that what he did was
by a divine, not a diabolical power, and that God, in granting
his petition, acknowledged him to be his Son. — Beausobre's
Annotations.
e The form of the Jewish sepulchre already described sug-
gests an easy solution of a difficulty in the resurrection of Laza-
rus. The sacred historian states, that when our Lord cried with
a loud voice, ' Lazarus come forth, he that was dead came forth,
hound hand and foot with grave-clothes.' Upon this circum-
stance, the enemies of revelation seize with avidity, and demand
with an air of triumph, how lie should come out of a grave, who
was bound hand and foot with grave-clothes? But the answer is
easy: the evangelist does not mean that Lazarus walked out of
the sepulchre, but only that he sat up, then putting his legs over
the edge of his niche or cell, slid down and stood upright upon
the floor; all which he might easily do, notwithstanding his arms
were bound close to his body, and his legs were tied strait to-
gether, by means of the shroud and rollers with which he was
swathed. Hence, when be "as come forth, Jesus ordered his
relations to loose him and let him go: a circumstance plainly
importing the historian's admission that Lazarus could not walk
till he was unbound. — Paxtoti's Illustrations, vol. iii. pp. 268,
20"o._Ed.
f The Jews, seeing the miracles which Jesus did, this espe-
cially of raising Lazarus, did greatly fear, lest, taking upon him
the public character of the Messiah, he would attempt to make
himself king, and by the admiration which he had gained among
6 G
<no
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31. OR, A. M. 5141. A. U.3D. FROM MAT. xii. I— xvii.14. MARKii. 23-ix. U. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
it was highly expedient that he should die, rather than
that the whole nation, for his sake, should incur the
danger of being ruined : and from that time they entered
into a combination to have him apprehended and put to
death ; but, as ' his hour was not yet come,' at present
he declined their fury, by retreating from the public, and
retiring to a little place, called Ephraim, a in the tribe
of Benjamin, where he continued, for a few days, with
his apostles, until the time of the passover was ap-
proaching.
Six days before that solemn feast began, our Lord,
in his way to Jerusalem, called at Bethany, where he
was kindly entertained at supper * by the two sisters of
Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Martha, according to her
custom, dressed the supper, but Lazarus, whom he had
raised, was one of the company that sat at table with
him, while Mary, to express her love and bounty, took
a vial of the most valuable essence, made of spikenard, c
the people, be quickly enabled to accomplish his ends, unless lie
was timely prevented. If then he was permitted to go on in his
pretensions, the consequence seemed visible to them, that the
Romans, to whom they were already subject, would look upon
this as a rebellion, and so be provoked to come with an army
and destroy them utterly. That this was their fear, is evident
from the many groundless objections which they made against
our Saviour, as that, he forbade to give tribute to Csesar, and
that he made himself a king, and so opposed the title of Tiberius.
Not that they desired the continuance of Cfesar's dominion over
them, but the apprehension of a still farther conquest from the
Romans, made them unwilling to provoke them, and that more
especially because they had an ancient tradition, that one Armo-
lus, which is, by an easy change, Romulus, before the end of
the world, would come and destroy them. This seems to be
but the depravation of some prophecy from God, which foretold
the coming of the Romans in the last days, meaning thereby the
days of the Messiah, to destroy them. It demonstrates, however,
that they both believed and expected, that the Romans were the
people, from whom the change of their religion, and the total
subversion of their government, were to come ; and for this
reason they were, upon all occasions, so very fearful to offend
them. But herein they were sadly mistaken: for the prophecy
of the Romans coming to destroy their temple and nation was
fulfilled, not by their letting Christ alone, or believing in him,
but by their thus opposing and conspiring against him. Ham-
monds Annotations.
a It was situated between Bethel and Jericho, about twenty
miles to the north of Jerusalem. — Josephus on the Jewish JT'ar
b. v. c. 8.
b Some interpreters are of opinion, that this was the same
supper which our Saviour was invited to in the house of Simon
the leper ; that St John has related it in its proper place, as a
thing which happened six days before the passover; but that the
other evangelists have mentioned it, by way of recapitulation, to
show what might he the probable occasion of Judas's treachery,
even his vexation for being disappointed of the money that
might have been made of this precious ointment, had it been sold
and put into the bag for him to purloin. But others suppose
that this supper was different from that which is mentioned,
(Mat. xxvi. 6. and Mark xiv. 3.) 1st. Because this was in the
house of Lazarus, (John xii. 2.) that in the house of Simon the
leper, (Mat. xxvi. 6.) 2dly. Here Mary anoints the feet of
Christ, (John xii. 3.) there a woman not named pours ointment
on his head, (Mat. xxvi. 7.) 3dly. This supper was six days
before the passover, (John xii. 1.) that only two, (Mat. xxvi. 2.
Mark xiv. 1.) and if the suppers were not the same, the Mary
that anointed Christ's feet here, and the woman that anointed
his head there, were not the same. — Calmefs Commentary;
Beausobre's and JTrhitliys Annotations.
a The spikenard (Hcb. -n: nard) is a plant belonging to the
order of gramina, and is of different species. In India, whence
the best sort comes, it grows as common grass, in large tufts
close to each other, in general from three to four feet in length.
So strong is its aroma, which resides principally in the husky
and, pouring it upon his feet, anointed them, and wiped
them with her hair, so that the whole house was filled
with the fragrancy of its perfume. This action Judas
Iscariot, who afterwards betrayed his Master, and had,
at that time, the custody of the bag, wherein money, for
charitable and other necessary uses, Avas kept, highly
blamed, as a piece of prodigality, in throwing away
what might have been sold for three hundred pence, d
and given to the poor ; not that he valued the poor, but
because he was a greedy wretch, who was always pur-
loining some part of the public money to himself. Our
Saviour, therefore, who knew the sincerity of Mary's and
the naughtiness of Judas's heart, in a very gentle reply,
commended what she had done, as a seasonable ceremony
e to solemnize his approaching death ; but blamed the
other's pretended concern for the poor, since objects of
this kind they had always with them, but his continuance
among them was not to be long. AVhile they were sit-
ting at this supper, great numbers of Jews, out of curio-
sity, came to Bethany, not only to have a sight of Jesus,
but of Lazarus likewise, whom he had raised from the
dead ; but, when the sanhedrim understood that the
resurrection of Lazarus occasioned many people to
believe on Jesus, / they consulted how to destroy him
likewise.
roots, that when trodden upon, or otherwise bruised, the air is
filled with its fragrance. Dr Blane, who planted some of the
roots in his garden, at Lucknow, states, that in the rainy season
it shot up spikes about six feet high. This plant was highly
valued among the ancients, both as an article of luxury, and as
a medicine. The Unguentum Nardinum, or ointment manu-
factured from the nard, was the favourite perfume used at the
ancient baths and feasts ; and it appears from a passage in Horace,
that it was so valuable, that so much of it as could be contained
in a small box of precious stone was considered a sort of equiva-
lent for a large vessel of wine ; and a handsome quota for a guest
to contribute to an entertainment, according to the custom of
antiquity. In Mark xiv. 3. it is said that there came ' a woman,
having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious;
and she brake the box and poured it on his [Christ's] head.' In
verse 5, this is said to have been worth more than three hundred
pence, denarii; and John (ch. xii. 3.) mentions 'a pound of
ointment of spikenard, very costly ;' — the house was filled with
the odour of the ointment; — it was worth three hundred pence,
denarii. As this evangelist has determined the quantity, says
Mr Taylor, — a pound — and the lowest value (for Mark says
more) was eight pounds fifteen shillings, we may safely suppose
that this was not a Syrian production, or made from any fragrant
grass growing in the neighbouring districts; but was a true otar
of Indian spikenard, ' very costly.' In the answer of our Lord on
this occasion, there seems also to be some allusion to the remote-
ness of the country whence this unguent was brought, ' Where-
soever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world,
this also that she hath done, shall be spoken of for a memorial of
her,' (Mark xiv. 9.) As much as to say, " This unguent came
from a distant country, to be sure, but the gospel shall spread to
a much greater distance, yea, all over the world ; so that in India
itself, whence this composition came, shall the memorial of its
application to my sacred person be mentioned with honour." The
idea of a far country, connected with the ointment, seems to
have suggested that of ' all the world.' — Calmefs Dictionary,
p. 836.— Ed.
d As the Roman penny was sevenpence halfpenny of our
money, so three hundred pence must amount to nine pounds
seven shillings and sixpence.
e It was a custom in these eastern countries, for kings and
great persons, to have their bodies at their funerals embalmed
with odours and sweet perfumes; and, in allusion hereunto,
our Saviour here declares of Mary, that she, to testify her
faith in him, as her King and Lord, had, as it were before-
hand, embalmed his body with precious ointment for his
burial.
f Never was there rage and malice more unreasonable than
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
971
A. M. 4035. A. E. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5U1. A. 1). 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1
In the mean time, Jesus, having- tarried all night at
Bethany, set forward next morning with his disciples,
and others attending him on his way to Jerusalem. When
he came to a place called Bethphage, « on the side of
mount Olive, b he senttwo of his disciples into the village
to bring from thence an ass, and her colt, e which was
not yet backed, that, to accomplish a remarkable pro-
phecy, ' he might ride thereon to Jerusalem. d The dis-
] Is. lxii. 11; Zech. ix. 9.
this; for admitted that Christ had broke the sabbath, and spoken
blasphemy, yet what had Lazarus done ? No crime was ever
alleged against him ; and yet these rulers of the people conspire
to put him to death, merely to preserve their own honour, and
reputation. But see the providence of God, which notwithstand-
ing all their contrivances, was pleased to preserve him, as
a monument of his glory, and a testimony of the miracle which
Jesus performed on him, thirty years after our Saviour's death.
— Poole's and Whitby's Annotations; and Taylor's Life of
Christ.
a Bethphage signifies the house of Jigs or dates, and might very
probably have its name from the several trees of these kinds that
grew there. It was a small village of the priests, situate on mount
Olivet, and, as it seems, somewhat nearer Jerusalem than Beth-
any.— Beausobre's Annotations, and Wells' Geography of the
Neiv Testament.
b This place, doubtless, had its name from the great number
of olive trees that grew upon it. It lay a little without Jerusa-
lem, on the east side of it, about five furlongs from the city, says
Josephus ; but he must be understood of the very nearest part of
it, since St Luke makes the distance to be a sabbath-day's jour-
ney, that is, eight furlongs, or a mile, unless we suppose, that he
means the summit of the hill, from which our Saviour ascended,
(Acts i. 12.) Mr Maundrcll tells us, " that he and his company
going out of Jerusalem at St Stephen's gate, and crossing the
valley of Jehosaphat, began immediately to ascend the mountain ;
that, being got above two-thirds of the way up, they came to
certain grottos, cut with intricate windings and caverns under
ground, which were called the ' sepulchres of the prophets ;' that
a little higher up were twelve arched vaults under ground,
standing side by side, and built in memory of the apostles, who
are said to have compiled their creed in this place ; that, sixty
paces higher, they came to the place where Christ is said to have
uttered his prophecy concerning the final destruction of Jerusa-
lem ; and, a little on the right hand, to another, where he is said
to have dictated a second time the Lord's prayer to his disciples ;
that, somewhat higher, is the cave of a saint, called Pelagia; a
little above that, a pillar, denoting the place where an angel
gave the blessed virgin throe days' warning of her death ; and, at
the top of all, the place of our blessed Lord's ascension. — Wells'
Geography of the New Testament.
c It is well remarked by Grotius, that such animals as were
never employed in the service of men, were wont to be chosen
for sacred purposes, insomuch, that the very heathens thought
those things and sacrifices most proper for the service of their
gods, which had never been put to profane uses. Thus the
Philistines returned the ark in a new cart, drawn by heifers that
had never before undergone the yoke, (1 Sam. vi. 7,) and thus
Apollo's priest admonished /Eneas: " let one be enjoined, from
the select herd to take seven heifers," (JEn. vi.) But the chief
design that our Saviour might have, in the orders which he gave
to his disciples, was, that the prophecy might, by this means,
receive its full completion: ' tell ye the daughter of Sion, behold
thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and
a colt, the foal of an ass.' The former part of the verse is taken
from Is. lxii. 11, and the latter from Zech. ix. 9. Both by the
Jews are acknowledged to relate to the Messiah: and with re-
gard to the latter, It. Joseph was wont to say, " May the Mes-
siah como, and may I be worthy to sit under the shadow of the
tail of his ass!" — Whitby's Annotations, and Surenhusii Concil.
in loc. ex V. T. apud Mallhtcum.
d A great contest there is among learned men, whether our
Lord rode upon the ass or the colt, or on both alternately.
Those who contend for his riding upon both, observe from the
words of the prophet, Zechariah, (chap. ix. 9,) that mention is
r.i ide of riding both ' upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass;'
xvii. H. MARK ii. 2:;— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. »,
ciples e did as they were ordered : and, having mounted
their master on the colt, he proceeded as it were in tri-
umph, towards the city, amidst the loud acclamations of
an innumerable multitude, whilst crowds of people came
forth to meet him with branches / of palm-trees in their
hands, some spreading their garments s in the way, others
cutting down branches, and strewing them where he was
and from St Matthew, (chap. xxi. 7,) they observe further, that the
disciples having brought the ass and the colt which our Saviour
had sent them for, ' put on them their clothes, and set him there-
on.' Since, therefore, the relation of St Matthew thus literally
agrees with the prophecy of Zechariah, and both expressly as-
sert, that our Saviour did ride upon the ass as well as the colt,
they see no reason why these texts should not be taken in their
most plain and obvious meaning, and do hence infer, that, for
the more exact fulfilling of the prophecy, our Saviour did actually
ride part of the way upon the one, and the remaining part upon
the other. The generality of interpreters, however, are against
this. They suppose, that, as there was no occasion for our- Saviour's
riding upon both in so short a journey, and as the other three
evangelists only make mention of the colt, there seems to be a
necessity for admitting of the figure called enallage numeri in this
place ; and that, as when we read, that ' the ark rested upon the
mountains of Ararat,' (Gen. viii. 4,) we understand only upon
one of them ; so here, when St Matthew tells us, that the disci-
ples brought ' the ass and the colt, and put their clothes on
them,' by ItcLvu ahrat, he must necessarily mean, Irava ho;
autut, ' upon one of them,' that is, the colt, as the words of the
prophecy itself will fairly bear: nor was there any other reason
for bringing the mother along with it, but that foals will not
usually go without their dams. — Wells' Geography of the New
Testament, part i. and Surenhusii Concil. in loca ex V. T.
apud Maltkceum.
e Very remarkable is our Saviour's prescience, even as to
the most minute matters, in the orders which he gives his dis-
ciples, namely, 1. You shall find a colt; 2. On which no man
ever sat: 3. Bound with his mother; 4. In bivio, or where two
ways meet; 5. As you enter into the village; 6. The owners of
which will, at first, seem unwilling that you should unbind him ;
7. But when they hear that I have need of him they will let him
go. And no less remarkable is the cheerful obedience of these
disciples to a command, which carnal reasoning might have
started many objections against, and which nothing less than a
steadfast persuasion, that he who sent the message would be sure
to give success to it, could have prevailed upon them to execute,
as they did, without any demur or delay. — Whitby's Annotations,
and Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
/ At the feast of tabernacles, it was a custom among the
Jews, not only to sing hosannas with the greatest joy, but also
to carry palm-branches in their hands, (Lev. xxiii. 40,) and to
desire, as the Jews still wish at the celebration of this feast, that
they may rejoice in this manner at the coming of the Messiah.
Nor was it only at this festival, but upon any other occasion of
solemn rejoicing, that the Jews made use of this ceremony: for
we find, that, upon the enemy's evacuating the tower of Jerusa-
lem, Simon and his men 'entered into it, with thanksgiving, and
branches of palm-trees, and with harps and cymbals, and with
viols, and hymns, and songs,' (1 Mac. xiii. 51.) Nay, the very
same manner of expressing their joy prevailed among other na-
tion?, as well as the Jews ; for so Herodotus relates, that they
who went before Xerxes, as he passed over the Hellespont,
strewed the way with myrtle-branches: and therefore we need
less wonder that we find such of the company as were by our
blessed Saviour's miracles convinced of his being their king,
and the promised Messiah, testifying their joy upon this his in-
auguration into his kingdom, in such a manner as they, as well
as other nations, upon such joyful occasions were accustomed to.
—Whitby's Annotations, and Surenhusii Concil. e.v V. T. apud
Matthaum.
g It was a common practice among the people in the east,
upon the approach of their kings and princes, to spread their
vestments upon the ground, for them to tread or ride over. In
conformity to which custom, we find the captains, when they
proclaimed Jehu king, putting their garments under him, (2
Kings ix. 13.) and Plutarch relating that when Cato left his
soldiers t" return to Rome, they spread their clothes in the «vay
972
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5141. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. I— xvii. U. MARKii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37- JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
to pass, a and all, as it were with one voice, crying, b
' Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord ! Hosanna in the
highest.'
In this triumphant manner they advanced till they
came to the descent of mount <■' Olivet, when the whole
body of disciples, being transported with the honours
shown to their master, broke out into raptures of thanks-
givings and loud doxologies to God for all the mighty
works which they had seen ; while the whole body of
the people, as well those that went before as those that
followed after, joined with the disciples in their hosan-
nas and acclamations ; so that when some Pharisees,
being envious of his glory, desired him to command
their silence, ' if they should be silent,' he told them,
ll * the very stones would proclaim his praise.'
But, notwithstanding all this glorious procession, as
he advanced nearer to Jerusalem, so as to have a full
which was an honour, as he observes, then done to few emperors.
But the Jews that accompanied our Saviour at this time looked
upon him as greater than any emperor ; as a prince that was
come to rescue them from the Roman yoke, and reduce all
nations under their subjection; and therefore in this manner
they chose to testify their homage and veneration of their uni-
versal monarch, making now a public entry into his capital of
Jerusalem . — TVhitbys Annotations.
a It was usual in the east to strew flowers and branches of
trees in the way of conquerors and great princes. So we find that
those who esteemed Christ to be the Messiah, and their king,
acted towards him. A similar instance may be found in Hero-
dotus, (vii. p. 404.) He informs us that people went before
Xerxes, passing over the Hellespont, and burned all manner of
perfumes on the bridges, and strewed the w-ay with myrtles.
Boughs and hymns were usual among the Grecians on any time
of festivity. Nero had flowers strewed before him upon his re-
turn from the Grecian games. — Tacitus Ann., Appendix by
Murphy, b. 16, 12. — Suetonius, p. 25. — See Adumi Observat.
p. 150. — Altmano Obs. vol. ii. p. 420. — J. Lydius in Agonist.
Sacr. p. m. 152; aud Kuinoel Comment, vol. i. p. 528. — Ed.
b Hosanna, or rather hosa-na, is a Hebrew word, which sig-
nifies, save, I beseech thee, and was a common acclamation,
which the Jews used in their feast of tabernacles, not only in
remembrance of their past deliverance from Egypt, but in hopes
likewise of a future one, by the coming of the Messiah. Now,
the reason why the acclamations upon this occasion ran rather in
these words than in the common form of ' long live the king,' or
the like, was because in the character which the prophet gives
of the Messiah, he is called a ' Saviour,' or ' one bringing salva-
tion to them.' (Zech. ix. 9 ) And therefore, to show the excel-
lency of this above all other kings, the people address him in
words taken from the psalmist, ' Help us now, O Lord, send us
now prosperity.' (Ps. cxviii. 25.) But because hosanna is like-
wise a form of blessing, and, in the inauguration of princes,
people are always pleased with the rightful succession; therefore
they adjoin ' hosanna to the Son of David,' that is, the Lord
prosper and heap favours and blessings upon him. Now, because
(iod had promised the Jewish nation a king descended from that
royal line, therefore they continue their good wishes, ' blessed
is he that cometh in the name of the Lord ;' and because again
it is natural for men, in such transports, to reiterate their joyful
acclamations, even as if they desired to make them reach heaven
as well as earth, therefore it is added, ' hosanna in the highest.'
— Hammond's and Beausobre's Annotations, and Surenhusii
Co net I. ex V. T. apud Matthaum.
c Between this mount and the city of Jerusalem there lay
nothing but only the valley of Jehosaphat, through which ran the
brook Kedron. — Calmct's Commentary.
d This is a proverbial expression, and signifies no more than
that God was determined to glorify our Saviour that day; and
therefore, if these his followers should be prevailed upon to hold
their peace, and say nothing in his praise, God would find out
some other means, though not so competent perhaps, to make it
effectually be known. — Beausohre's and f/'hitby's Annotations.
view of the city and temple, he paused and looked sted-
fastly on the city, and then, with tears in his eyes, e
made this lamentation over it: 'Oh! that thou hadst
known, at least in this thy appointed day, the things
conducing to thy peace ; but now, alas ! they are hid-
den from thine eyes. For the fatal time shall come,
when thy enemies /shall throw up trenches about thee,
hem thee in on every side, destroy thy children, demo-
lish thee, and s not leave in thee one stone upon another,
because thou wouldst not know the time of thy visita-
tion.' *
CHAP. II. — Difficulties obviated, and Objections
answered.
1 At a former passover, when the people, in admira-
tion of our Saviour's miracles, would have paid him
kingly honours, he withdrew, and refused that unseason-
able testimony of their zeal, because the accepting
these honours then would have been liable to misrepre-
sentation, and might have obstructed the efficacy of his
preaching. But now that the course of his prophetic
office was finished, and the time of his leaving the
world and returning to his Father so near at hand, he
thought it not amiss to accept of their readiness to ac-
knowledge and proclaim his royal dignity, and himself
to go up to Jerusalem in a more public manner than
usual, that thereby he might exasperate his blood-thirsty
enemies, and so draw on his intended passion.
1 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
e The tears which our Saviour shed upon this occasion were
such as proceeded from a profound charity and deep commisera-
tion of the evils that were coming upon Jerusalem, in both
which virtues he came to be an example to us; and therefore
his behaviour in this respect could not be unworthy of himself.
They farther show that the calamities which befell that impious
city might have been avoided, had they made a right use of the
time of their visitation ; otherwise his tears may rather be looked
upon as the tears of a crocodile than those of true charity and
commiseration. — IVhitby's Annotations.
f How exactly this prediction was fulfilled by the Romans
we may learn by the Jewish historian, who not only tells us
that in this very mount Olivet, where our Lord spake these
words, the Romans first pitched their tents, when they came to
the final overthrow of Jerusalem ; but that, when Vespasian
began the siege of it, he encompassed the city round about, and
kept them in on every side ; that to this purpose, how imprac-
ticable soever the enterprise might seem, Titus prevailed with
the soldiers to build a wall of thirty-nine furlongs, quite round
the city, with thirteen turrets in it, which, to the wonder of the
world, was completed in three days ; and that, when this was
done, all possibility of escaping was cut off, and the greatest
distress that ever befell a city ensued, whereof that author gives
a very lively but most dolorous account. (Joseph. JJ'ar, b. vi. c.
13, &c.)
g How exactly this was likewise fulfilled, the same historian
relates, namely, that Titus, having ordered the soldiers to lay
the city level with the ground, and to leave nothing standing
but three of the most famous turrets, that overtopped the rest,
as monuments to posterity of the Romans' power and conduct in
taking the place, his orders were so punctually executed, and all
the rest laid so flat, that the place looked as if it had never been
inhabited. (Joseph. War, b. vii. c. 18.)
/; The word visitation may be taken either in a good or bad
sense, for either the mercies or judgments of God ; but here it
denotes the former, and particularly the dispensation of the gos-
pel, first by the ministry of John, then by the preaching of
Christ himself, and afterwards by the labours of his apostles and
disciples. — Beausobre's and Poole's Annotations.
Si
III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
973
A. M. 4035. A D. 31; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1—
To exasperate his enemies, indeed, a more pompous
appearance might have been more conducive and more
agreeable to his regal dignity ; but in this our Saviour
was not left to his own option. Since the prophet so
long before had prescribed the form of his entry into
Jerusalem, as a characteristic of his being the true
Messiah, there could be no deviating from it, even though
he could have procured his numerous guards and tri-
umphal chariots, splendid attendants, and other ensigns
of royalty, to adorn the day of his inauguration. ' ' Re-
joice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem, behold thy king cometh unto thee ! He is
just, and having salvation, lowly, and riding upon an
ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.' This is the
prophecy whereby our Saviour was directed at this time,
in his approach to Jerusalem ; and, to justify his con-
duct in this particular, it may not be amiss to inquire
a little into the true reason of it.
To this purpose we may observe, with a learned pre-
late2 of our own, that the law which God gave to the
kings of Israel, whenever there should be any, 3 not to
multiply horses to themselves, was founded upon a
special promise, that he would continue to be, as he had
all along been,* their defence against their enemies;
that this was a law wherein every prince that was to
succeed to the government of Israel was concerned, and
designed for a standing trial, both of prince and people,
whether they had trust and confidence in God ; that,
while this law was observed, the troops of Israel were
victorious, and though few in number, and seemingly
unfit for action, proved an overmatch for royal armies;
that, when it came to be laid aside, and kings, as they
declined in their confidence towards God, began to
multiply their horses and chariots of war, they soon
sunk in their military successes, till at length the whole
land was (tarried away captive : and therefore, 5 ' woe
unto them,' says the prophet, ' that stay on horses, and
trust in chariots, because they are many, and in horse-
men, because they are strong, but look not unto the
Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord.'
Now, to apply this to the prophecy before us. Since
the kings of Israel were obliged to renounce the assis-
tance of horses and horsemen, and to depend on God
for success in the day of battle ; and since those who
did so were their nation's deliverers, and those that did
otherwise were destroyers of it, under which of these
capacities, think we, should the king, whom God pro-
mised to the daughter of Jerusalem, come? should he
appear, as some of the late kings of Israel did, in all
the pomp and pride of war, surrounded with horses and
chariots, in direct opposition to the law of God ? Or
should he appear, like some of the ancient worthies, 6
' who by faith subdued kingdoms, and out of weakness
were made strong ?' Kings who feared God, and there-
fore feared no enemy ; and who, though mounted on
asses, were able to put to flight the thousands and ten
thousands of chariots and horses that came against
them ? To resolve its in this inquiry, the prophet himself
1 Zech. ix. 9.
- Bishop Sherlock's fourth Dissertation, annexed to his I'so ami
Intent of Prophecy,
sDeut. xvii. lti. *Ibid. xx t. • Is. xxxi. 1.
•Hcl). xi. S3, lit.
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v.l— vii. 1.
comes in to our aid ; for immediately after his descrip-
tion of the promised king, he adds, 7 ' and I will cut off
the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem :'
plainly showing that the character given of the Messiah,
namely, that he should ride on an ass, was in opposition
to the pride of their warlike kings, who, by their strength
in chariots and horses, had ruined themselves and their
people."
Thus necessary it was for the promised Messiah, and
for our Saviour, consequently, who came in that char-
acter, to approach the daughter of Zion, riding on an
ass, even though it were a creature more despicable than
we imagine it. But, after all, it is mere prejudice, and
too fond an attachment to the maimers and customs of
our own country, that make us conceive any thing con-
temptible in an ass, or any thing ridiculous or incon-
sistent with the gravity and dignity of our blessed
Saviour in riding upon one. For 8 if we look into other
countries, particularly into Judea, we shall find persons
of the highest distinction usually so mounted. We shall
find 9 the chief governors of Israel, described in the
song of Deborah, as riding on white asses; and10 the
thirty sons of Jair, who was judge and prince of the
country for two and twenty years, riding upon as many
asses, and commanding in thirty cities. Nay, we shall
find Absalom, though in other respects u a man of pomp,
in the very day of battle, 12 mounted on a mule, the colt
of an ass ; and, on his coronation-day, Solomon provided
with no better equipage. And therefore we can never
account it any reproach for the meek and humble Jesus
to ride into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass, when
David, the greatest of his ancestors, and Solomon, the
wisest, as long as he was wise, rode in the same manner.
13 The persons who attended him in this procession
' Zech. ix. 10.
8 Bishop Sherlock's fourth Dissertation, annexed to his Use and
Intent of Prophecy.
9 Jud. v. 10. "> Ibid. x. 4. " 2 Sam. xv. 1.
12 Ibid, xviii. 9.
13 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, v. i.
a That the prophecy of Zechariah chap. ix. 9, is twice ex-
plained of the Messias in the Talmud, few of the latter Jews
disagree. One that is of the greatest authority with them, saith, it
is impossible to expound this text of any other than the
Messias; and they that would divide it, between Messias the
son of David, and Messias the son of Joseph, which is a late
hypothesis to answer the two comings of the same Christ, at the
same time acknowledge, that the true Messias is here prophesied
of. Let them fancy what they will, the Jews in Jesus Christ's
time knew but of one Messias, and to him they applied this
text. For Jesus going up to Jerusalem upon an ass, at his last
passover, to ease and defend himself from the crowd that followed
upon the sight of his works, and the fame of Lazarus whom he
had newly raised from the dead ; the people were struck with
this circumstance of his entry, which, however accidental it was,
made them straight conclude he must be the Messias. Their
actions and exclamations are ample proof of their sentiments.
For what did they hereupon? ' Great multitudes spread their
garments, and palm-branches in the way,' as at the reception of
some great prince ; ' before and behind they cried out, hosanna
to the son of David, blessed be the king of Israel, blessed be the
kingdom of our father David, blessed be he that cometh in the
name of the Lord.' Seeing him equipt, like Zechariah's
Messias, they thought him to be no other than the king, that
Saviour, whom they expected also at the time of the passover.
After what had been thus said, and owned by the Jews, who
could with any face question the evangelist for observing upon
this action of Jesus, that BO it was fulfilled which was spoken by
the prophet Zechariah. — Chandler's Defence of Christianity. —
Ed.
974
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OH, A. M. 5141. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xli. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v- 1 — vii. 1.
tion, even when most zealous, and seemingly most sin-
were a mixed multitude, consisting of disciples and
common people, such as were moved to do thus, from
the doctrines and miracles which they had heard and
seen, and were forward to pay him what honour they
could. They had no quality or outward splendour,
indeed, no titles or eminent posts to recommend them;
but they were very remarkable for their sincerity and
honest zeal, their hearty affection to Christ, and firm
persuasion of his being the true Messiah ; and these, to
him who is no respecter of persons, and who came to set
lip a kingdom not of this world, rendered those tributes
of praise and acknowledgment, though from men mean
and insignificant as to any temporal respects, more
acceptable, more becoming his character, and more
truly for his honour, than any dissembled or interested
homage of rulers or rabbins, the greatest or wisest of
the sanhedrim, could have been ; for external advantages
are of no consideration with God, while they want good
dispositions within to recommend them.
Whether this was the same multitude, or not another
spirited up, that clamoured so loudly against our blessed
Saviour but five days after these joyful acclamations, it
is much to be questioned ; but supposing it was, whoever
considers the subtle management of men in post and
power, and the easiness and servile fears usual in those
of a mean depending condition, will not be much sur-
prised at such a sudden change. Popular applause is
at all times a very fickle and uncertain thing ; but in
the case before us, there were some incidents which
might occasion this instability. Our Saviour, after his
triumphant entry into Jerusalem, seemed to assume a
kind of sovereignty : he purged the temple from its
abuses, healed the diseases of the people, received the
hosannas of the children, and for some few days,
preached, exhorted, and rebuked with all authority ; so
that during this time, no one almost doubted but that
he was the mighty prince who was to gird his sword
upon his thigh, and bring salvation unto Israel. But
when, instead of this, they saw him fallen into the hands
of his enemies, and quite deserted by his friends ; appre-
hended by the public officers as a common malefactor,
hauled from one high-priest to another, and there blind-
folded, spit upon, buffeted, and insulted ; when, in the
midst of all this distress, they saw him left alone, with-
out any disciple to stand by him ; any messenger from
heaven, as they might expect, or any exertion of his own
power, to rescue him ; nay, on the contrary, when they
saw that one of his own servants had sold and betrayed
him, another denied and abjured him, and all unani-
mously had fled and forsook him ; and yet these were
the persons who, for some years, had been his constant
companions, and consequently were the best judges of
ids merit and pretensions : when the multitude, I say,
saw matters reduced to this extremity, and that terror
and desertion was on every side, while the rulers con-
spired to take away his life, it is no wonder, that, at the
instigation of these rulers, they changed their tone, as
they saw the scene change, and their hopes vanish, and
struck in with the prevailing party : for, whoever has
seen a great man disgraced at court, even though before
he was the nation's darling, may easily satisfy himself,
what very reeds the affections of the populace are ; how apt
they are to bend to every wind of faction and interest,
and to be swayeti by every calumny, or malicious insinufl-
If we take a view of the vast extent of the subject
which the evangelists had before them, and the intended
brevity of their books, to make them more useful to the
generality of mankind, we cannot but perceive, that it
was absolutely necessary for them to omit several things
which must have occurred to their remembrance. The
whole four gospels, bound together, make not a
large volume, but each singly is a very small book ; and
yet, besides the miracles of our Saviour, attended, as
they are, with the circumstances of place and time, the
names of the persons and the occasions of their being
wrought, they have, in these small tracts, inserted an
account of the wonderful manner of our Saviour's birth,
the dangers of his infancy, the miraculous appearances
of providence in his favour, and his removals and jour-
neyings from one place and country to another. They
have recorded the substance of his doctrine in plain
terms ; they have set down many parables, spoken by
him, together with their explications ; and given us a full
account of the mission of his twelve apostles, and the
other seventy disciples. The cavils and questions of
the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians, together with
his answers and solutions ; the observations and reflec-
tions of the people; his public discourses before all,
and his private instructions to his disciples ; his predic-
tions of his own sufferings ; of the destruction of Jeru-
salem, and many other events ; a long and particular
account of his persecution, condemnation, and crucifix-
ion ; as also of his resurrection and ascension, not to
mention the history of the birth, preaching, baptism, and
sufferings of John the Baptist, his forerunner ; are all
comprised in a short volume. And therefore, having
such plenty of matter before them, they were obliged to
be silent as to some particulars, after they had related
others of the like nature, for fear of incurring that pro-
lixity which they had determined to avoid. And hence
it is easy to suppose, in behalf of the three first evange-
lists, that, when they came to a certain period in their
history of the ministry of Jesus, and observed, that they
had given a sufficient account of his doctrine and mira-
cles, being to reserve a space for his last sufferings and
resurrection, they thought proper to pass over in silence
whatever happened between that period and his last
journey to Jerusalem. Thus some have observed, that,
from the time when our Saviour returned into the coasts
of Judea beyond Jordan, which, as St John ] tells us,
was soon after the feast of the Dedication, and that was
always observed in winter, to the time of his last going
up to Jerusalem, a little before Easter, these three evan-
gelists make no mention at all of any journeys or movings
from thence ; and yet from this country, according to
St John's account, it was, that Jesus afterwards came up
to Bethany, and raised Lazarus, and then 2 ' went intc
the country near the wilderness, into a city called Epli-
raim, and there continued with his disciples.' And there-
fore, since these sacred penmen, for the avoidance of
prolixity, thought it not proper to take any notice of
what passed in this interval of time, they could not, with
any justness or propriety, introduce into their gospels
an account of the resurrection of Lazarus. a
1 John x. 22. " Ibid. xi. 54.
a The other evaugi lists have not nu'iiiioned this miracto,
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
075
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30, FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1 -vii. 1.
But there is a farther reason, which some learned men
1 have given us for their silence in this respect. They
tell us, that, according to an ancient tradition, Lazarus
lived thirty years after his being raised from the dead ;
and that, as the latest of these three evangelists wrote
but fifteen years a after our Lord's ascension, they might
think it a needless matter to mention a miracle concern-
ing a person living so near Jerusalem, when the fame of
it was so great, and so many witnesses living to attest
it : nor can they suppose, but that, in point of prudence,
the evangelists declined mentioning this story, for fear
of exasperating the Jews, and giving their rage and
malice a fresh provocation to cut off Lazarus. But now
St John, undertaking to write his gospel, on purpose to
supply the omissions of the former evangelists, above
sixty years after our Lord's ascension, when, by the
death of Lazarus, and most of the witnesses, who were
present at his resurrection, the fame of it might be much
impaired, had good reason to perpetuate his memory by
a full and particular rehearsal.
He had not however, given us so fair and unexception-
able an account of the matter, had he not represented our
blessed Saviour compassionating the circumstances of
his friends, and weeping upon so sad an occasion as the
death of Lazarus. For ' there is something in human
nature,' as an ingenious author 2 elegantly expresses it,
' resulting from our very make and constitution, while it
1 Grotius and Whitby on John xii.
* Religion of nature delineated, sect. vi. p. 136.
perhaps out of delicacy to Lazarus, who was alive when they
wrote. They did not choose to expose the friend of their master
to the fury of the Jews, by holding him forth in writings that
were to go through the world, as a monument of his power. But
John, who lived to see the destruction of Jerusalem, probably
survived Lazarus; and there was every reason why this evange-
list, who has preserved other miracles and discourses which the
former historians had omitted, should record this event. It is a
subject suited to the pen of John: the beloved disciple seems to
delight in spreading it out; for he has coloured his narration
with many beautiful circumstances, which unfold the characters
of the other persons, and discover his intimate acquaintance with
his master's heart. It is a striking instance of that strict propriety
which pervades all the books of the New Testament, and which
marks them to every discerning eye to be authentic writings,
that the tenderest scenes in our Lord's life, those in which the
warmth of his private allections is conspicuous, are recorded by
this evangelist. From the others we learn his public life, the
grace, the condescension, the benevolence which appeared in all
his intercourse with those that had access to him. It was re-
served to ' the disciple whom Jesus loved ' to present to succeed-
ing ages this divine person in his family, and amongst his friends.
In his gospel we see Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at
the last supper that he ate with them. It is John, the disciple
that leaned on the bosom of Jesus while he sat at meat, who re-
lates the long discourse in which, with the most delicate sensi-
bility for their condition, he soothes the troubled heart of his
disciples, spares their feelings, while he tells them the truth,
and gives them his parting blessing. It is John, whom Jesus
judged worthy of the charge, who records the filial piety with
which, in the hour of his agony, he provided for the comfort of
his mother; and it is John, whose soul was congenial to that of
his Master, tender, affectionate, and feeling like his, who dwells
upon all the particulars of the resurrection of Lazarus, brings
forward to our view the sympathy and attention with which Jesus
took part in the sorrows of those whom he loved, and making us
intimately acquainted with them and with him, presents a picture
at once delightful and instructive. — Hill's Lectures in Divinity,
vol. i. — Ed.
a According to the best authorities, St Luke did not write his
Gospel till a. d. C3. or C<4. — Ed.
retains its genuine form, and is not altered by vicious
habits, or oppressed by stupidity, which renders us ob-
noxious to the pains of others, causes us to sympathise
with them, and almost comprehends us in their case.
This compassion appears eminently in those, who, upon
other accounts, are justly reckoned among (he best of
men. They, who, of all writers, undertake to imitate
nature most, often introduce even their heroes weeping.
The tears of men are, in truth, very different from the
cries and ejaculations of children ; they are silent
streams, and flow from other causes ; commonly some
tender, and perhaps philosophical reflections.' And in
the case now before us, there might be other considera-
tions, besides the loss of Lazarus, and the lamentation
of his friends, that might draw from our Saviour these
tears of compassion.
He might at that time be affected with the thought of
the many afflictions to which human nature is liable in
this imperfect state ; and his groans and inward grief
might proceed from the want of faith observable in the sis-
ters, and the company attending them, and their diffidence
of his ability to raise the dead, notwithstanding they had
seen so many, so frequent manifestations of a divine and
omnipotent power residing in him. He knew, that the
obstinacy and inveterate prejudices of some of the spec-
tators, and of the generality of the Jewish people were
such, that the astonishing miracle he was going to work
would not have its due effect upon them. This recalled
to his mind that scene of misery and desolation which
he foresaw would overtake them ; and therefore he
grieved, and sighed deeply at the prospect of the ca-
lamities which that perverse people were bringing upon
themselves, and which all his endeavours, his miracles
and sufferings, could not prevent. So that upon the
whole, the concern which our Lord expressed upon this
occasion, proceeded from the noblest motives, wisdom,
goodness, friendship, compassion, and every view that is
just and laudable, when he sympathised with his friends,
and grieved for his enemies.
With these genuine expressions of solemn grief and
sorrow, our Saviour drew near to his friend's sepulchre,
which, as we may conjecture, was a hollow place hewn
in a rock, whose entrance, which was closed with a
stone, lay level with the surface of the earth ; but then,
we have so imperfect an account of the funeral habits
that were in use among the Jews, that we can form no
notion how far Lazarus, when revived, and set upon his
feet, might be able of himself to walk to the mouth of
his tomb. * In this, however, we may satisfy ourselves,
that our Saviour, who was able to recall his soul from its
separate state, and convey fresh life into his body almost
putrified, could give that body, though bound hand and
foot, a power of moving forward, even though we sup-
pose, as most of the ancients do, that herein he put him-
self to the expense of a second miracle, because the
proper demonstration of the reality of the resurrection
was, not to send any body into the tomb to unbind him,
which might occasion a suspicion of some clandestine
practice, but to have him conic forth alive, in the pre-
sence of all the spectators, fairly, and without any
change or alteration in his funeral dress, but what was
b See this satisfactorily explained in note, c. p. 969. on the
words ' cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth.' — Ed.
976
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4033. A. D. 31 ; OR. A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— :
made before the people themselves, by our Saviour's
saying-, ' loose him, and let him go.'
That some or other in the company was ready enough,
upon this occasion, to obey our Lord's commands, can
hardly be doubted ; and therefore it is very wonderful,
that, had there been any collusion in the matter, among
so gTeat a multitude, no one should have had sagacity
enough to find it out. But the truth is, they none of
them suspected any such thing. They none of them
thought that, when a man had been four days buried,
there wanted any proof of his being dead. They none
of them thought, that Christ was only a pretended worker
of miracles ; for, how unwilling soever they were to own
him for their Messiah, by long experience they were
convinced that he was a person ' mighty in word and
deed.'
Of all the wonderful deeds that we find recorded of
him, there is none, I think, that is related so fully, and
set off with so many circumstances, to prevent the least
suspicion of fraud, as that of his curing the man who
was born blind. The evangelist has expended a whole
chapter upon it, and therein acquainted us with some
previous questions of his disciples, which led to it ; the
uncommon manner of his performing it ; the surprise and
astonishment of the blind man's neighbours, when they
saw such an alteration wrought in him ; the man's open
and undisguised relation of the matter, and repeated
attestation of the greatness and reality of the cure ; the
great disturbance and perplexity which it gave the Jews ;
their examining, and cross-examining the man, who still
continued firm and uniform in his account ; their tamper-
ing with his parents, who avowed the truth of his being-
born blind ; and at last, (when they saw that they could
prevail nothing, but the more they examined, the more
evidence they found,) their rage and malice,which carried
them to such a degree as to excommunicate the poor
man, and cast him out of their synagogue. These, and
some more circumstances, are told in such a plain, con-
vincing manner, as shows the whole story to be too well
founded, for any cavils or fictions to weaken or impair.
Our Saviour might have had some sanative balsam in
reserve ; but what would all the balsam in the world have
availed towards the cure of the distemper we are now
considering? Physicians and surgeons, who have studied
the texture of the eye, and made the cure of its maladies
their chief employ, may give us indeed something that
will strengthen the optic nerves, when weakened or re-
laxed : or, by some outward operation, may remove such
obstructions as would otherwise impede the sight : ' but,1
since the world began/ as the poor man here excellently
argues, ' was it ever heard, that any man opened the
eyes of one that was born blind ?' And, as he might have
added, by a medicine so incongruous as a plaster of
clay ; because the uncommonness of the application is
so far from diminishing, that it rather raises, the credit
and reputation of the miracle : at least, it must be
allowed to be as great and triumphant a display of a
supernatural power, to work a cure by means that have
no fitness to that end, as it is to do it without any means
at all. In the former case, the person who undertakes
the cure, has only the distemper to contend with ; but
here, he has a double difficulty to conquer, and must not
1 John ix. 32.
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. i.
only control the power of the disease, but change the
repugnant qualities of bodies, and make them productive
of quite contrary effects. 3 The fathers here say, that
Christ, to illustrate his miraculous power, used that to
anoint the blind man's eyes with, which was the greatest
impediment to seeing, and most pernicious to the eyes.
But though all must allow, that the method which he
here made use of, was of no significance as to the cure
of the man's blindness, yet was it, nevertheless, highly
pertinent, in order to convince the spectators, as well
as the patient himself, of his sovereign virtue, which
could produce such a wonderful effect, by no other
application but what was indifferent, if not obstructive
to the cure.
Some of the ancient fathers were so rigid in their
censures against adultery, that they would not admit
any persons convicted thereof into the communion of
the church, even after the longest penance ; and carried
their zeal and resentment to such an height, as to think
it no great harm to kill them. No wonder then, if men
of such severe opinions were unwilling to receive into
the canon of Scripture the history of the woman taken
in this crime, because, as they imagined, it gave per-
mission to lewdness, since our Saviour sent her away
without condemning her; whereas,3 in his present cir-
cumstances, he had no commission to pass sentence upon
her, though, in bidding her 4 go, and for fear of the
divine judgment, repent, 'and sin no more,' he suffi-
ciently declared himself against all such practices.
a Upon a different persuasion however, it was, that this
passage came at first to be marked as dubious, and, in
time, was quite thrown out, as spurious, in many ancient,
especially Greek copies : but, in opposition to this, we
need only observe,5 that this part of history was found in
the sixteen manuscripts, which Stephanus, in all the seven-
teen, save one, which Beza, and in that infinite number,
which our learned Mills has made use of; that Tatian,
who lived in the year 160, that is, sixty years after the
death of St John, and Ammianus of Alexandria, who
flourished about the year 220, and made their several
Harmonies of the Gospel out of the copies then in use, do
both, as appears from the canons of Eusebius, relate it;
that most of the copies of the east, according to Sei-
dell's report, retain it ; and though it be not found in
some manuscripts, as the Greek code, cited by Cotele-
rius, expresses the matter, yet it is entire in the ancient
manuscripts, and all the apostles make mention of it in
the Constitutions which they set forth for the edification
of the church.6
8 Whitby's Annotations on John ix. 6.
3 Whitby's Annotations on John viii. 4 John viii. 11.
5 Calmet's Commentary, and Whitby's Annotations.
a The words of St Austin upon this occcasion are these : — " So
that some of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fear-
ing I suppose that impunity for sinning was given to their
women, would take out of their copies that sentence which our
Lord spoke concerning the pardon of adultery; as if he, who
said, 'now henceforth sin no more,' granted permission to sim"
On Adultery, b. ii. c. 7.
b It is strange that the author should refer to the apochryphal
book entitled the " Constitutions," as a work set forth by the
apostles, when it has been clearly proved to be a spurious produc-
tion, both from external and internal evidence. He seems to
have gone into the absurd and untenable position of Winston, who
endeavoured to prove the evidence of the genuineness of the Apos-
tolical Constitutions, to be equal to that of the New Testament
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
977
A. M. 4035, A. 1) 31. OR, A. M. 5441. A, 1). 30. FROM MAT. xii. I— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— viii. I.
This is enough to vindicate the truth and sincerity of
this part of St John's history from the censures of critics
who suspect it ; a and, to rescue his doctrine from such
false constructions as the adversaries of our Lord's
divinity would put upon it, we need only be mind-
ful to distinguish between his divine and human nature,
and not to apply such words and actions of his as relate
to the one, to the prejudice of the other. Those who
deny the Deity of Christ, do nevertheless acknow-
ledge, that he was a prophet sent from God, and invest-
ed witli a high commission. Now, under this character
he could only appear and act in virtue of his human na-
ture, and must thereupon be deemed subservient to the
orders and commands of his heavenly Father : and there-
fore, as the very office of a prophet requires, that he
should speak nothing of himself, nor deliver his own
mind or doctrine, nor seek his own glory, but speak all
things in the name, and do all things for the glory of
him that sent him : so are we not to wonder that we find
our blessed Lord, though he had in him ' all the fulness
of the Godhead,' yet, in his prophetical capacity,
speaking and acting as if he had no power but
what was given him from above, even as ambassadors
here on earth are obliged to pursue their master's in-
structions, and therefore professing so frequently, that
he delivered no doctrine of his own invention, nor did
any thing but what he had a commission to do.
The Socinians indeed allow, that the commission
wherewith our Saviour was sent into the world, to do and
reveal God's will, was reiison enough to entitle him to
the appellation of ' the Son of God,' and that this is all
that he pretends to when he seems to clear himself to
the Jews from any higher assumption. But now ' it ap-
pears, from a due inspection of the context, that Christ
did not intend to say or prove, that he was the Son of
God, as being only his ambassador, extraordinarily in-
structed, and so sent into the world ; but on a far more
excellent account, namely, that, before he came into the
world, he was with God the Father, and so was his true
and essential Son, as being God of God, and partaking
of the same nature as a son does with his father. From
the 2ath to the 30th verse inclusively, it is manifest that
our Lord discoursed to the Jews in such a manner, that
they still thought he was asserting his Godhead ; and
therefore, 2 ' we stone thee,' say they, ' because thou,
being a man, makest thyself God,' namely, by calling-
God so emphatically, and with such peculiarity, his Fa-
ther, as that he was so to him alone, and so that 3 ' he and
his Father were one.' But to this our Saviour does not
1 Bishop Bull, De judicio eccl. rath. 2 John x. 33.
"Ibid. ver. 30.
itself; but, whatever value may be attached to these and other
wjochryphal writings belonging to the early ages of the church,
as serving to increase the evidences, and corroborate the truth
of the Gospel history; they can never be received as genuine
productions, much less a guide in matters of faith and practice.
Those who wish to see the spmiousness of these apocluyphal
writings, completely proved, may consult Lardner's Credibility
of thu Gospel history, vol. i v. 3vo — Jones on the Canon of Scrip-
ture, and Home's Introduction, vol. i. — Ed.
a For a summary of both the external and internal evidence
f"i' and against this passage, the inquiring reader may consult
Bloomfield's Greek Testament, note on John viii. 1 — 1 1, where
he shows that the evidence i< decidedly in favour of the authen-
ticity of the passage. — Ed.
answer, by denying, either that he was God, or that he
had ever challenged to himself that dignity, which, had
he been only man, had been the most proper thing he
could have said to take off the objection of his blas-
phemy ; but, instead of that, he seems rather to argue,
that he was so the Son of God, as to have the divine na-
ture in him : ' for if judges and magistrates,' says he,
' are called gods, from an imperfect resemblance, and
participation of the divine authority, how much more may
1 be called God, who am both by nature the Son of God,
and, in the most excellent manner, authorized by him ?'
For this he signifies, by saying, that 4 ' his Father had
sanctified him, and sent him into the world ;' wherein he
still declares, that God was his Father, and that he was
first sanctified, and then sent, which plainly implies, that
he was the Son of God in heaven before his mission into
the world ; and therefore, as an additional proof of his di-
vine original, he appeals to the divine operations he per-
formed : 5 ' if I do not the works of my Father, believe
me not ; but if 1 do, though you believe not me, believe
the works ; that ye may know and believe, that the Fa-
ther is in me, and I in him.'
When therefore our blessed Saviour says of himself,
that 6 ' all power was given unto him both in heaven and
earth ;' and that unto his disciples, ' ' he had appointed
a kingdom, even as his Father had appointed unto him ;'
when St Paul styles him the s ' righteous Judge, who
shall give a crown of righteousness to all that love his
appearance ;' and St Matthew, 9 ' that king, who shall
separate the sheep from the goats,' and 10 ' reward every
one according to his works ;' it can hardly be thought,
that to distribute rewards in the kingdom of glory, is a
prerogative peculiar to the Father alone, and such as no
way belongs to the Son ; because our Saviour, in his
reply to Zebedee's children, tells us, u ' that to sit on his
right hand, and on his left, was not his to give, but it
shall be given to them for whom it was prepared of his
Father ;' since the whole and only design of the passage
is to show, that these rewards shall not be distributed,
upon such conditions, and in such a manner, as these
petitioners vainly imagined. J2 To this purpose we may
observe, that the words, ' shall be given to them,' are
only a supplement made by the translators, for they are
not in the original, which is literally thus, ' to sit on my
right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but, or
except to them alone, for whom it is prepared of my
Father :' and this means no more than that the honours
and degrees of happiness in the other world are not the
Son's to give, in the sense that these apostles fancied,
that is, he does not give them absolutely and arbitrarily ;
he is not led by partiality and fondness, and respect of
persons ; he is not carried by humour, or vanquished by
the importunity of friends and suitors, as earthly princes
are, but is limited by the considerations of equity and
strict justice, from which it can never be consistent with
the perfections of his nature to depart : for that the whole
process of the final judgment, and consequently the dis-
pensation of future rewards and punishments, is to
be transacted by our blessed Saviour, we have this
* John x. 36. 5 Ibid. ver. 37, 3S. 6 Mat. xxviii. 18.
7 Luke xxii. 29. s 2 Tim. iv. 8. 9 Mat. xxv. 31, &c.
10 Ibid. xvi. 27. » Ibid. xx. 23.
12 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
(j H
978
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M.5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
express testimony in Scripture, J ' the Father judg-
eth no man ; but hath committed all judgment to the
Son, that all men should honour the Son, even as they
honour the Father.'
Though we are not much acquainted with the condi-
tion of angels, or the ingredients of their happiness, yet
thus much the scripture has informed us concerning them,
that 2 ' they are ministering spirits, sent out to minister
for them that shall be heirs of salvation ;' and therefore
we may reasonably presume, that they are full of tender-
ness for their charge, solicitous for their particular safety,
and extremely glad of any good that befalls them.
3 " How these heavenly hosts were affected with the sal-
vation of mankind in general, is evident from the hymn
with which they attended at the birth of Christ, to wel-
come him into the world ; and though their nature be far
distant from us mortals, and their bliss exquisite beyond
what we are able to conceive ; yet, in regard that both
their nature and their bliss are finite, their joy may
certainly admit of an increase ; and as often as a sin-
ner is converted from the evil of his ways, there may
spring up a fresh object, and a large and literal addition
to it."
But can this properly be said of God too, whose per-
fection of happiness allows no such accumulation ? No,
doubtless ; and therefore with respect to him, we must
interpret this, as reason and religion oblige us to under-
stand many such like passages where human parts and
passions are attributed to him. As therefore the Holy
Ghost, meaning to represent his displeasure and our
baseness, does it, by saying, that we provoke him to
anger, kindle his fury, g-rieve and weary his spirit, and
the like ; so here, by saying, that God rejoiceth over a
repenting sinner, is intended, that such repentance is
highly agreeable to him, and that, were his nature capa-
ble of the same unequal motions with ours, the joy of a
father or a friend, for retrieving the person he loves best,
and had been most in pain for, would be but a feeble
and a very faint image of that satisfaction which this
excites in him, who loves us better than the tenderest
parent, or most affectionate friend upon earth does, or
can do.
But why should the degree of joy be so intense upon
this occasion ? Why should the reformation of one sin-
ner raise it above the safety of many souls, who never
fell from their integrity ? and the ninety-nine sheep
which never strayed, excite less of it than one poor silly
wanderer ? In order to resolve this difficulty, we must
observe, 4 "that, in the parables of the gospel, it is
usual to represent all of the same kind, though they be
sometimes the greater number, by one man." Thus, in
the parable of the marriage supper, the man who had not
on his wedding garment, according to the sense of most
interpreters, represents all wicked men ; and in that of
the several talents, the slothful servant, who hid his in a
napkin, is said to be one ; whereas they who improved
theirs, are three ; and yet it can hardly be doubted, but
that there are fewer who receive the grace of God to any
good purpose, than they who receive it in vain ; and in
like manner, though, in the preceding parables, there is
1 John v. 22, 23. 2 Heb. i. 1 4.
1 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol.
4 Whitby's Annotations on Luke xv. 7.
mention made but of one lost piece of silver, and of one
strayed sheep, yet is that one the representative of the
whole tribe of sinners, which do certainly out-number
the few that are righteous ; and therefore, according to
this acceptation, the joy in heaven may be allowed to be
greater, because the objects that give occasion to it are
more.
But even if this were not, as these words were spoken
of God after the manner of men, so they are to be
understood in a sense agreeable to human passions.
Now, in ourselves we perceive, that, in obtaining what
we passionately desired, in regaining what we looked
upon as lost, and in securing what was in great and
imminent danger, our joy is strong, and our delight
transporting. The surprise of an escape, whicli we did
not expect, and the regaining of a treasure we had
given over as gone, is entertained with rapture, because
it is a kind of new accession to our fortunes, and like a
thing we never enjoyed before. A loving father, no
doubt, finds great comfort in seeing all his children in
a perfect state of health ; but if one of them chance to
fall sick beyond expectation of recovery, to see him
out of danger, administers more present joy than does
the constant health of all the rest ; and, in like manner,
though a continued course of goodness be in itself most
valuable, yet the recovery of a lost sinner, the reviving
one dead in trespasses and sins, the seeing him snatched
as a firebrand out of the fire, when he was just going to
fall into it, gives a more fresh and lively joy ; and
therefore, 5 ' it is meet,' says the father in the parable,
' that upon this occasion we should make merry and be
glad ; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again,
was lost, and is found.'
Some interpreters are of opinion, that the parable of
the Lord of the vineyard paying all his labourers alike,
is to be understood of the gift of grace, or first admis-
sion to the privileges of the gospel, and not of the fru-
ition of glory ; because the wages here mentioned are
given to the envious and unthankful. But allowing this
to be no more than a passage inserted for ornament and
illustration only, or that it may mean a reward so sur-
prisingly great, as among men, would provoke the envy
of others ; yet, if we state the case of the several labour-
ers in the parable, as it includes the Jews and Gentiles
in general, and private Christians in particular, we shall
find no injustice in what the Lord of the vineyard did
mi to them.
6 To the Jews God was pleased to make the first
express discoveries of his will by a written law. In
process of time the like benefit was extended to the
Gentiles. They readily accepted it, and, by so doing,
became partakers of the same grace and precious pro-
mises with those who had long been brought up under
the legal, and from that, removed sooner under the
evangelical dispensation. The apostles left all and
followed Christ. The primitive Christians gave in their
names to his doctrine, and continued stedfast in it, at
the certain peril of their liberties, their fortunes, their
lives: and yet, in any after ages of Christianity, they, who
live and die, though quietly and peaceably, in the sin-
cere profession of this religion, are promised the king-
5 Luke xv. 23, 24.
6 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 . OR A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-
dom of heaven as a reward for their faith and obe-
dience.
In like manner, some have the happiness of a pious
education, and carry on their early virtue through the
several stages of life ; others, who either wanted that
advantage, or have neglected to improve it, run into the
same excess of riot with the unthinking part of the world ;
and yet if these, though late, see their follies, and effec-
tually forsake them, the promise of God standeth sure, *
' that, at what time soever the wicked man turneth away
from the wickedness he hath committed, and doth that
which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.'
This is the whole sense of the parable, and these are
the common cases to which it is applied : but we mis-
take the meaning of it widely, if we think that it denotes
an equality of rewards in the kingdom of heaven, since
we have this assurance given us, that as there 2 ' is one
glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another
glory of the stars, so also is the resurrection of the dead.'
Those that are raised to everlasting life shall indeed be
all glorious ; but still the glory of some shall be greater
than that of others. Every good Christian shall, no
doubt, be admitted to a state of felicity ; but when we
consider these words of our Saviour, 3 ' I have appointed
unto you a kingdom, that ye may eat and drink at my
table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel,' we cannot but infer, that there
are some particular marks and instances of glory, where-
with the apostles of our Lord will be honoured above
other Christians. And, in like manner, though a late peni-
tent, if he be sincere, shall be received to mercy at last,
yet he has not ordinarily any reason to expect a degree
of glory equal to his, who has never swerved from his
duty, or has quickly returned to it. His bliss shall be per-
fect indeed, though it be not the most exalted, and
though he be less happy than some other Christians, yet
he shall be much happier than he deserves.
Though the difference between the Jews and Samari-
tans, in matters of religion, was great, and no small
obstruction to all civil intercourse, yet it was not at all
times carried to such a height as to deny to each other
the common rights of hospitality. Our Saviour himself
was, once upon a time, 4 when he met the Samaritan
woman at Jacob's well, kindly received by the people
of Sychar, for the space of two days; but then he was
returning out of Judea ; whereas he was now going up
to Jerusalem, with a purpose to celebrate the feast of
Tabernacles. The Samaritans had likewise a feast of
the same kind, though not observed at the same time, 5
of as old a date as the first separation under Jeroboam,
and instituted both in imitation of, and in opposition to,
the great festival that our Lord was now going to so-
lemnize ; and therefore 6 this travelling through their
country, with a set purpose to do this, was looked upon
as an affront to their way of worship. For it argued
our Lord's judgment in this case to be, that Jerusalem
was the only place where these feasts could be regularly
celebrated, and consequently that the keeping them
on mount Gerizzim, and the temple there, was a pre-
1 Ezek. xviii. 26.
2 1 Cor. xv. 41, 42. 3 Luke xxii. 29, 30.
4 John iv. 5 1 Kings xii. 32, 33.
0 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
xyii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
sumptuous innovation, directly contrary to the will and
law of God.
" But why was our Saviour alone treated in this rude
manner, when every traveller to Jerusalem, upon the like
occasion, declared against the Samaritan schism as much
as he did, and yet, for any thing we rind, met with better
entertainment?" Now this different sort of treatment
can be resolved into nothing but the different character
of the travellers. The Samaritans might think, that the
opinions and practices of common people were not
worth their regard, but that it would be of mighty con-
sequence if a person so eminent as Jesus should declare
against them ; and therefore, since his going to worship
at Jerusalem, on this solemn occasion, would, in all com-
mon acceptation, bear this meaning, they contrived to
prevent, as much as in them lay, the influence which that
supposed indignity might have, by revenging it with
another, of not receiving him; because such refusal,
they thought, was a constructive disowning of his autho-
rity, and a plain declaration to all people, that whatever
esteem and veneration others might have for this famed
man, they themselves took him for no prophet.
7 In this feast of Tabernacles, it was a custom among
the Jews, derived, as some imagine, from the institution
of their prophets Haggai and Zechariah, on the last
day more especially, to fetch water from the fountain
of Siloam in great pomp and solemnity, with trumpets
and other musical instruments going before them. At
such fountains, it was usual to build receptacles or wells,
and in the middle of them to have pipes and cisterns
laid, through which the water passed, and coming out at
cocks, was received in urns, or large big-bellied vessels,
and so carried to the temple. The water thus carried
was given to the priests, who, mixing it with the wine of
the sacrifices, offered it to God by way of intercession
for the blessing of rain against the approaching seed-
time. And, during the whole festivity, they read the
fifty-fifth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, which begins
with these words, ' Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come
ye to the waters, and he that hath no money,' &c.
Now, whoever looks into the method of our Saviour's
preaching may easily perceive, that it was customary
with him to take occasion, from some obvious thing or
other, to discourse of spiritual blessings, and frequently
to make use of phrases metaphorically taken from the
matter in hand. Pursuant hereunto we find him, in
allusion to the customs of this feast, beginning his invi-
tation with words not unlike what we have cited from
the prophet, 8 ' if any man thirst, let him come unto me
and drink.' Water is, by God himself, represented as no
bad emblem of the dispensation of grace ; for 9 ' I will
pour water,' says he, ' upon him that is thirsty, and
floods upon the dry ground.' Which he explains in this
manner : ' I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my
blessing upon thine offspring ;' and 1U the frequent liba-
tions, in the feast of Tabernacles, were supposed, by the
Jewish doctors themselves, to have had a mystic sense
in them : and therefore the meaning of our Saviour's
words is this, ' That whoever was desirous of the spirit-
ual blessings which were prefigured in this festival rife
■ Whithy's, Hammond's, and Beausohre's Annotations.
8 John vii. 37. 9 Is. xii v. 3.
10 Sureuhusii Coneil. ex V. T. apud Joanuetn.
980
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441 A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 11. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vji. 1.
if he would become his disciple, and believe in him as
the promised Messiah, he would communicate to him
such gifts of the Holy Ghost, and in such a plentiful
measure, as the world was not yet acquainted with ; for
1 ' out of his belly shall flow rivers of running water.'
Whence it is, that our Saviour borrowed this meta-
phorical expression, is a matter not so well agreed by
the learned ; some think from the proverbs of Solomon ; 2
' The words of a man's mouth are as deep waters, and
the well-spring of wisdom a flowing brook.' Others, from
the thirty -second of Isaiah, 3 ' Behold a King shall reign
in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment, and
a man shall be as rivers of waters in a dry place :' and
others, with more probability, from the fifty-eighth of that
prophet ; 4 ' Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like
a spring of water, whose waters fail not.' However this
be, it is certain, 5 that our Saviour, taking the rise of
his discourse from the customary libations at this time,
had under his view and consideration the make and figure
of the water-vessels that were used on this occasion,
which, by reason of their large bellies, being able to
hold a great quantity of water, were therefore proper
emblems of that plentiful effusion of the Holy Ghost,
which he intended to send upon the christian church,
when 6 ' to one should be given, by the Spirit, the word
of wisdom ; to another, the word of knowledge, by the
same Spirit; to another, faith, by the same Spirit; to
another, the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit ; to
another, the working of miracles ; to another, prophecy ;
to another, discerning of spirits ; to another, divers
kinds of tongues : and to another, the interpretation of
them.' a
1 John vii. 3S. 2 Prov. xviii. 4. s Ver. I, 2.
* Ver. 11. 5 Surenhus. ibid. 6 1 Cor. xii. 8, &c.
a This is the account which is usually given of our Lord's
exclamation to the people on the last day of the feast of taberna-
cles; and it is surely a sufficient answer to the preceding ob-
jection. The whole transactions of that day may be placed
however in a light somewhat different, in which the words of
Jesus will appear to have a meaning more obvious, and at the
same time equally important. " The feast of tabernacles," says
Bishop Horsley, " continued eight days. At what precise time I
know not, but in some part of the interval between the prophets
and the birth of Christ, the priests had taken up a practice of
marching daily, during the feast, round the altar of burnt-offer-
ings, waving in their hands branches of the palm, and singing,
as they went, — " Save, we pray, and prosper us!" Tin's was
done but once on each of the first seven days; but on the eighth
and last, it was repeated seven times. VVhen this ceremony
was finished, the people, with extravagant demonstrations of joy
and exultation, fetched buckets of water from the fountain of
Siloam, and presented them to the priests in the temple ; who
mixed the water with the wine of the sacrifices, and poured it
upon the altar, chanting all the while that text of Isaiah, —
" With joy we shall draw water from the fountain, or wells, of
salvation." The fountain of salvation, in the language of a pro-
phet, is the Messiah; the water to be drawn from that fountain
is the water of his Spirit. Of this mystical meaning of the
water, the inventors of those superstitious rites, whoever they
might be, seem to have had some obscure discernment; although
they understood the fountain literally of the fountain of Siloam;
for, to encourage the people to the practice of this laborious
superstition, they had persuaded them that this rite was of singu-
lar efficacy to draw down the prophetic spirit. The multitudes,
zealously busied in this unmeaning ceremony, were they to whom
Jesus addressed that emphatical exclamation— " If any man
thirst, let him come unto me and drink." The first words — " if
snymanttiVrf" — are ironical. "Are ye famished," says he,
" with thirst, that ye fatigue yourselves with fetching all this
CHAP. IV. — Of our blessed Saviour's miracles, and
their excellency.
That the accomplishment of ancient prophecies, in the
person and actions of our blessed Saviour, was one of
the external evidences of his divine mission, and conse-
quently of the truth of our most holy religion, was the
subject of our last chapter ; and how far the evidence
of the miracles which he wrought is available to the
same great end, we shall now endeavour to set before
our reader.
7 To this purpose we must observe, that a true miracle
is properly such an operation as exceeds the ordinary
course of things, and is repugnant to the known laws of
nature, either as to its subject, matter, or the manner of
its performance. For though we readily acknowledge,
that there are beings in the spiritual world, which are able
to perform things far exceeding the power of men, and
therefore apt to beget wonder and amazement in us ;
yet, that any created beings, and, consequently agents of
a limited power, are capable of working such miracles
as our Saviour did ; are capable of controlling the course
of nature, of supplying men's natural defects, of giving
sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, and life to the
dead, which are miracles relating to the subject-matter,
or of doing any of these things in an instant, by a touch,
by a word, at a distance, and without any kind of out-
ward means, which are miracles regarding the manner of
their performance, is a thing impossible ; unless we can
suppose, that limited, inferior, and created beings, have
an equal power of creating, controlling, and restoring,
with Almighty God, which is contradiction enough in all
conscience.
It was upon this persuasion, therefore, namely, ' that
true miracles are the sole operation of God,' that the
world has all along agreed to acknowledge and accept
of miracles as an authentic and indisputable testimony,
7 Bishop Smallbroke's Vindication.
water up the hill ? O ! but ye thirst for the pure waters of Siloam,
the sacred brook that rises in the mountain of God, and is devoted
to the purification of the temple! Are ye indeed athirst for these?
Come, then, unto me and drink. I am the fountain, of which
that which purifies the temple is the type: I am the fountain of
salvation of which your prophet spake ; from me the true believer
shall receive the living water, — not in scanty draughts, fetched
with toil from this penurious rill, but in a well perpetually
springing up within him." The words of Isaiah, which the
priests were chanting, and to which Jesus alludes, are part of a
song of praise and triumph, which the faithful are supposed to
use in that prosperous state of the church, which, according to
the prophet, it shall finally attain under Jesse's root; — " In that
day shalt thou say, behold, God is my salvation: I will trust,
and not. be afraid ; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and song,
he also is become my salvation." Consider these words as they
lie in the context of the prophet: consider the occasion upon
which Jesus, standing in the temple, applies them to himself;
consider the sense in which he applies them; and judge whether
this application was less than an open claim to be the Lord
Jehovah come unto his temple. It is remarkable that it had, at
the time, an immediate and wonderful effect. " Many of the
people, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the
prophet." The light burst at once upon their minds. Jesus no
sooner made the application of this abused prophecy to himself,
than they acknowledged the justness of it, and acknowledged in
him the fountain of salvation." — Bishop Horsley' s Sermons. —
Ed.
Skct. III.]
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that the persons intrusted with such power were certainly
sent and commissioned by God. To this purpose we
find Pharaoh's magicians confessing, ' that the miracles
which Moses and Aaron exhibited were the linger of God ;
and, in the controversy between Elijah and the priests
of Baal, it was readily accepted as a fair proposal, that
he8 ' who answered by lire from heaven' should be unani-
mously served and worshipped as God. The less
reason have we then to wonder, that we hear a learned
ruler of the Jews accosting our Lord in these words, 3
' Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher sent from God ;
for no man can do these miracles that thou dost, except
God be with him :' or that a mean man, who had been
born blind, should confront the whole assembly of the
Pharisees, with this one argument, 4 ' since the world be-
gan, was it not heard, that any man opened the eyes of
the blind : if this man were not of God, he could do
nothing ;' or, that our blessed Saviour himself should so
frequently appeal to the miracles he wrought, as proper
testimonies of his divine mission, 5 ' the works which my
Father hath sent me to finish ; the works Avhich I do in
my Father's name, the same bear witness of me, that my
Father sent me.'
Our Saviour indeed, and his apostles both, do often
appeal to the predictions of the prophets relating to the
promised Messiah, as fulfilled and accomplished in him ;
and the truth is, unless the validity of this appeal can
be supported, miracles alone, or exclusive of this testi-
mony, would not be a sufficient evidence of our Lord's
commission : but then it ought to be considered, that
when, among the particular predictions of a person pro-
mised to the Jews as their Messiah, it was foretold, that
he should 6 ' be like unto Moses ;' that 7 ' the Spirit of the
Lord should rest upon him ;' that 8 ' he should open the
eyes of the blind, and unstop the ears of the deaf; and
that he should make the lame to leap as an hart, and the
tongue of the dumb to sing.' Miracles became then an
essential ingredient of his character, and a sure test of
his being a prophet sent from God.
9 Some modern Jews, indeed, when pressed with the
evidence of our Saviour's miracles, make this their sub-
terfuge, that the Messiah, at his coining, was not to
perform any wonders of this kind, but only to manage
the Lord's battles, and to overcome the people that
were round about him. But that this was not of old the
sense of the Jewish nation, is evident from the words of
the people in our Saviour's time : 10 ' when Christ cometh,
will he do more miracles than these which this man hath
done :' Nay,11 an author of theirs, of no great antiquity,
after his having mentioned the three glorious gifts,
namely, prophecy, miracles, and the knowledge of God,
which the Israelites, in the time of their captivity, had
lost, gives us to understand, that, upon the appearance
of the Messiah, the return of miracles was justly to be
expected, in completion of this prophecy,12 ' I will pour
out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your
daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream
dreams, and your young men shall see visions.'
xvii. 1*. MARK ii. 23-ix. 11. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I.
Since the Messiah then was to work miracles when he
came into the world, if we consider the design of our
blessed Saviour's mission, namely,14 that he was a teacher
sent from God to abolish a form of worship, which had
incontestably been established by the power of miracles
in Moses, and to introduce a new religion, repugnant
to the wisdom of the world, in many mysterious doc-
trines, and abhorrent to the vicious inclinations of men,
in all its righteous laws and precepts ; that he was
appointed, in short, to destroy the kingdom of the devil,
and upon its ruins to erect a kingdom of righteousness,
there was an absolute necessity for him to be invested
with a power of working miracles: otherwise, his pre-
tensions to this high character had been ridiculous, and
the Jews with good reason might have demanded of
him, 15' Master, we would see a sign from thee ; what sign
therefore dost thou do, that we may see, and believe ?'
But this demand is effectually silenced by our Saviour's
being able to make the reply,16 ' if I had not done among
you the works which none other man did, ye had not
had sin ; but now ye have both seen, and hated both me
and my Father.'
John the Baptist, who was born a little before our
Saviour, was his fore-runner. 17 He appeared at the
time, when the Messiah was expected ; and, being much
famed for his virtue and sanctity of life, was followed
by the people, who were prone to take him for the pro-
phet who was to come, as there was not indeed, at that
time, a greater person born among women : and yet the
divine providence so ordered the matter, that, as great
as he was, he wanted this character of the true Messiah,
namely, the working of miracles ; and therefore our
Saviour, comparing himself with the Baptist, a burning
and a shining light indeed, but who himself did no mir-
acles, 1S ' I have a greater witness,' says he, ' than that
of John ; for the works which my Father hath given me
to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me,
that I am the Messiah,' or, which is all one, * that my
Father hath sent me.'
And weli indeed might our Lord be allowed to claim
a pre-eminence, not above the Baptist only, but above
every prophet that went before him ; when, upon so many
occasions, he exercised a power and authority, not in-
ferior to that of God ; when, by the same omnipotence
wherewith he created all things at first, he multiplied a
few loaves, and two fishes, into a sufficiency to feed i\w^
thousand; when, at his command, the wind and the sea
grew still ; and unclean spirits departed from men's
bodies, confessing him to be the Son of God ; when
acute diseases, and chronical griefs,19 such as no length
of time, no skill, no remedies, no expense could assuage,
were equally cured with a touch, nay, with the touch of
his garment, with a word, nay, with a word that operated
effectually upon the absent, and at a distance ; when
persons at death's door, nay, actually dead, and dead
for some time, were commanded back to life and health ;
and himself, when slain by the Jews, and committed to
the grave, was, according to his own prediction, raised
I Exod. viii. 19. a 1 Kings xviii. 24. &o. 3 John iii. 2.
4 John ix. 32, 33. 5 [bid. v. 26. (i Deut. xviii. 15.
7 fs. xi. 2. " Ibid. xxxv. 5, G.
' Maimonides, IT. Melach. et Milch, rap. xi. '"John vii. 31
II Abravenel in Joel. a Joel ii. 2s. ami Acts ii. 17.
H Stillingfleet'sOrigenesSacrae, p. 172.
13 John vi. 30. '"Ib.xv. 24.
17 Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, part i. p. 45.
18 Johu v. 35, 36.
18 Stanhope's Sermon's at Boyle's Lectures.
98^
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M.5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. 14. LUKEvi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v, 1— vi. 1.
from the dead, by the same divine Spirit whereby he
quickeneth and enliveneth all things.
These, and many more actions of the like nature, re-
corded in the gospel, are plain demonstrations of a
divine power residing in our blessed Saviour : but then
there is something farther to be said concerning these
miraculous acts of his, namely, that they were exceed-
ingly well chosen to characterize the Messiah, in regard
of their suitableness to the end and design of his com-
ing.
1 The law was enacted with a very terrible pomp,
such as spoke it to be, what indeed it was, a dispensa-
tion of servitude and great severity. But the gospel is
a covenant of reconciliation and peace, of friendship,
nay, of sonship with God, intended not so much to
strike awe upon men's minds, as to charm and win them
over by all the endearing methods of gentleness and love;
and therefore, the wonders that bore testimony to its
truth were works of mercy and kindness, such as never
wrought any harm, but always brought comfort and
advantage to the needy and distressed ; 2 sustenance to
the hungry, supplies to those in want, safety to them
that were ready to perish, speech to the dumb, hearing
to the deaf, eyes to the blind, understanding to the dis-
turbed, strength to the impotent, limbs to the maimed,
health to the sick, life to the dead, and release to souls
and bodies held in bondage by the devil. These, these are
the wonders by which our Jesus proved his mission, wonders
of gentleness and pity, of beneficence and love, wherein
he manifestly excels, and, as it were, triumphs over all
the prophets that went before him. They proved their
commission by acts of divine vengeance and sore plagues
as well as by cures and corporeal deliverances ; whereas
our blessed Lord 3 went about always doing good ;
healing diseases and infirmities, but inflicting none ; and
releasing from death, but never hastening it ; insomuch
that through the whole course of his ministry we have
not one instance of his power exerted in the suffering or
annoyance even of his bitterest enemies.
When John the Baptist had heard of the works which
4 Christ did, he sent two of his disciples with this mes-
sage to him, ' Art thou he that should come, (that is, the
promised Messiah) or look we for another ?' To whom
our Lord returned this answer, ' Go, and show John
again these things which ye do hear and see ; the blind
receive their sight, and the lame walk ; the lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised
up.' The answer is in a great measure taken from the
prophet 5 Isaiah, describing the great operations of the
Messiah ; and, by remitting the Baptist to them, our
Saviour intended to show that he must of necessity be
the person he sent to inquire after, because he had not
only the power of doing miracles, but even of doing the
self same miracles that the evangelical prophet had pre-
dicted of the Messiah.
6 Now, of all the great attributes of God, there are
none that shine brighter and more amiable in our eyes,
than truth and goodness : the former cannot attest a lie,
nor the latter seduce men into dangerous and destruc-
1 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i.
2 Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures.
3 Acts x. 38. 4 Mat. xi. 2, &c. s Chap. xxxv. 5.
6 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospel-;, vol. ii.
tive mistakes. And yet, if God should communicate any
part of his power to an impostor to enable him to work
miracles, and such miracles in kind as were foretold of
the true Messiah, in confirmation of his pretences, what
would become of these two sacred attributes ? To sus-
pect, .1 say, that Almighty God is capable of employing
his infinite power, with a design to mislead and delude
mankind, in what relates to their eternal concerns, is to
destroy and subvert his very nature, and to leave our-
selves no notion at all of such a being. Nay, for him
to permit the same evidences to be produced for errors as
for truth, is, in effect, to cancel his own credentials, and
to make miracles of no significance at all. And there-
fore, how artfully soever some impostors may contrive
their delusions, yet we are not to doubt, but that, if we
examine, 1st, the works themselves, and their manner
of being done : and, 2dly, the persons themselves, and
the ends for which they do them, we shall be able to
discern the difference between real miracles and lying
wonders.
7 1st. Then, in relation to the works themselves, it is
required, that they be possible, since no power Avhat-
ever can effect that which is strictly impossible ; that they
be probable, since the divine power will hardly concern
itself in what savours of fable and romance; that they be
not below the majesty of God, as he is the ruler and
governor of the world, nor inconsistent with his charac-
ter, as he is a good and gracious being ; that they be
done openly, before a sufficient number of witnesses ;
readily, without any previous forms or ceremonies which
may make them look like incantation ; and upon all pro-
per and important occasions, to denote the permanency
of that divine power by which they are affected.
2dly. In relation to the person pretending a divine
mission, it is required that he be a man of good report
for his unblameable conversation ; and that he be in the
perfect exercise of his reason and senses, and constant
and uniform in the message he delivers ; that the doc-
trine which he endeavours to establish by his miracles be
consistent with the principles of true reason, and natural
religion, consistent with great notions and worship of
God, and consistent with the former revelations he hath
made of his will : of a tendency to destroy the devil's
power in the world, to recover men from their ignorance,
to reform them from their vices, and lead them into the
practice of virtue and true godliness by proper motives
and arguments, and, in short, to advance the general
welfare of societies, as well as every man's particular
happiness in this life, and in his preparation for a better.
And now to observe a little how all these characters
meet in the blessed Jesus.
That Jesus of Nazareth Avas a person of great virtue
and goodness, in full possession of his reason and
senses, and constant and uniform in the message he de-
livered to mankind, not only the whole tenor of his
conduct, as it is recorded by the evangelists, but the
nature of his doctrine and excellency of his precepts,
the manner of his discourses to the people, and the wis-
dom of his replies to the insidious questions of his adver-
saries, are a plain demonstration : and that 8 ' this Jesus
was a man approved of God by miracles, wonders, and
7 Chandler on miracles. 8 Acts ii. 22.
Skct. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
983
A.M. 4135. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14,. MARK ii. 23-ix 14. LUKE vi. 1-xi. 37. JOHN v. I-vii I.
signs, which God did by him in the midst of all the peo-
ple,' is manifest, not only from the testimony of his
friends and disciples, but ' " from the concession of
heathen historians, as well as the traditions of the
Jewish Talmud, wherein the memory of them is pre-
served."
These miracles indeed were above the skill of men or
angels to effect ; but they were not therefore impossible,
because subject to the power of Almighty God ; for the
same agent, who formed the eye, could restore the blind
to sight ; he, who wrought the whole frame of our bodies
could as easily cure the maimed, or heal the diseased ;
and he, who causes the rain to descend, and to water the
earth, that it may minister bread to the eater and seed
to the sower, could be at no loss to change water into
wine, or to multiply the loaves and fishes for the relief of
the hungry.
These miracles again, being acts of mercy as well as
power, were not consistent with the character of an im-
postor, or the agency of any wicked spirit ; but that God
should have compassion on his creatures, and exercise
his tender mercies over ' the works of his own hands ;'
that he should give bread to the hungry, limbs to the
maimed, and release to such as were under the captivity
of Satan, is no improbable thing at all. These were ac-
tions suitable to his majesty, and highly comporting
with his wisdom and goodness, since they naturally tend-
ed both to beget reverence in the minds of men towards
his messenger, and to reconcile them to the belief and
obedience of his heavenly will.
Now these miracles our Saviour did openly, in the tem-
ple, in the synagogues, and on the festivals, when the
concourse of people was greatest, and when the doctors
of the law, who came on purpose to ensnare him, were
sitting by and beholding what was done. These he did
readily, and with a word's speaking : for s ' peace be
still,' quelled the raging of the winds and waves;
3 ' Young man arise,' revived the widow's son ; 4 ' Eph-
phatha, be opened,' gave the deaf man hearing ; and
s ' Lazarus, come forth,' raised him from the grave who
had been four days dead. These he did frequently, and
upon all proper occasions ; for, from the time that he
entered upon his ministry, scarce a day passed without
some fresh instance of his power and goodness, insomuch
that if all his actions of this kind had been particularly
recorded, 6 < the world itself,' as St John, by an ele-
gant hyperbole, declares, * would not contain the books
which should be written :' and, what crowns all, these he
did with a design to establish a religion, whose business
it is to give men the most exalted thoughts of God and
his providence, and the greatest certainty of future re-
wards and punishments ; to oblige them, by the strong-
est motives, to observe and practice whatsoever things
are true and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and
of good report ; to persuade them to mortify every in-
ordinate affection, and to attain these excellent dispo-
sitions of mind, which will make them resemble God,
and best prepare them for future happiness ; in a word,
1 See Bishop Chandler's Defence, where he proves this, as
well as the traditions of the Talmud, by several instances, p.
429.
* Mark iv. 39. 3 Luke v:i. 14. * Mark vii. 34, 35.
* John xi. 43, 44. 6 Ibid. xxi. 25.
to establish the practice of the two great virtues, the
love of God, and the love of our neighbour, upon these
two excellent principles, of faith in God, as the rewarder
of those that seek him, and faith in Jesus Christ, as the
Saviour and Judge of mankind.
And, if such be the end and design of the Christian
religion, there is little reason to suppose, as the Jews
are very willing to object, that the devil could have any
hand in assisting our Saviour to effect such miracles as
gave credit to the first appearance, and strength and
success to the propagation of these doctrines, which
were calculated on purpose to destroy his dominion in
the world, and upon its ruins, to erect the kingdom of
God and his Christ. The devil is not so silly a being
as to join forces with his avowed enemy, in order to
ruin and depose himself : and if our Saviour could hope
for no assistance from that quarter, the pretence of his
doing his miracles, a by virtue of the name Jehovah,
stolen out of the sanctuary, and used as a charm, is a
fiction too gross and palpable to stand in need of any
confutation.
Philostratus indeed, in his history of the life of Apol-
lonius, b sets him up for a great worker of miracles ; and
a The account which some later Jews give us of this transac-
tion, is thus related: — " That, in the time of Helena the queen,
Jesus of Nazareth came into Jerusalem, and in the temple found a
stone, on which the ark of God was wont to rest, whereon was writ-
ten the Tetragrammaton, or more peculiar name of God ; that who-
soever should get the name into his possession, and be skilled in
it, would be able to do what he pleased; that therefore their wise
men, fearing lest any of the Israelites should get that name, and
destroy the world, made two dogs of brass, and placed them at
the door of the sanctuary ; that whenever any had got in, and
learned that name, these dogs were wont at their coming out, to
bark so terribly, that they forgot the name, and the letters they
had newly learned. But when Jesus of Nazareth, say they, went
in, he not only learned the letters of tins name, but wrote them
in a parchment, and hid it, as he came out, in an incision which
he made in his flesh; and though, through the barking of the
dogs, he had forgot the name, yet he learned it afterwards from
his parchment: and it was by virtue of this, say they, that Jesus
restored the lame, healed the leprous, raised the dead, walked
upon the sea, and did all his other miraculous works. — Puff.
Fidei. pt. ii. c. 8, s. 6, as quoted in Kidder's Demonstration,
pt. i. p. 40.
b This Apollonius is, by the enemies of Christianity, set up
as a rival to our blessed Saviour, in point of his life, miracles,
and predictions; and therefore it may not be improper, in this
place, to give our readers a short sketch of some of the principal
incidents of his life and transactions. About three or four years
before the vulgar Christian sera, he was born at Tyana, a town
of Cappadocia, from whence he was named Tyaneus, of an an-
cient family, and rich parents; but to make his birth more re-
semble our Saviour's, it is said, that Proteus, under the form of
a sea-god, acquainted his mother, that he himself was to be born
of her, and that, at the same time, she was surrounded with
swans, which assisted at her labour, and, by their singing and
gaiety, seemed to presage the infant's future glory. However this
may be, while he was a youth, he was observed to have a great
natural genius, an excellent memory, and was in his person so
very beautiful, that he drew the eyes of all men upon him.
When he was fourteen years of age, his father sent him to Tar-
sus in Cilicia, in order to study rhetoric; but he chose rather to
apply himself to philosophy, and, in a few years, professed him-
self of the Pythagoreau sect. Pursuant to this he abstained from
the llesh of all animals, as reputed impure, lived upon nothing
but fruits and vegetables ; and though he did not condemn the
use of wine, yet he chose rather to abstain from it, as being apt
to disturb the serenity of the mind. He was a person of great
mortification and abstinence, renounced marriage, and professed
continence, and affected to live in the temple of ^Bsculapius, to
make it be believed that he was his peculiar favourite, and, by
984
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[Book VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D.31 ; OR, A. M. 5*4-1. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1
some, of late times, have been bold enough to name him
in competition with our blessed Saviour. But, besides
that, this history of Apollonius has no other voucher than
his servant Damis, who was confessedly a weak and
ignorant person, and consequently very capable of being-
imposed upon by the artful juggles of his master, the
very miracles related therein are, for the most part, ri-
diculous, unworthy the character of a prophet, and, as
the learned Photius speaks, full of follies and monstrous
tales. Nay, in the highest instance of his miraculous
power, namely, his raising a dead woman to life again,
1 Philostratus himself suspects, as he says the company
did, that there was some confederacy and collusion in
the matter ; but, if even it were not so, the doctrines
which Apollonius taught, and the zeal he professed for
the Papan idolatry, together with his excessive pride,
ambition, and vain affectation of divine honours, are a
i See Vit. Apoll. b. iv. c. 16.
ln's assistance, was enabled to perform cures. Before he appear-
ed in a public character, he kept silence for the space of five
years; but as he did not totally refrain from company, he usually
spoke by signs, or, when there was a necessity for it, wrote some
words. After this five years' silence he came to Antioch, and
there endeavoured to improve upon the Pagan religion. The
doctrines which he taught were delivered in a plain preceptive
manner, and with a better grace and authority than the philoso-
phers at that time were accustomed to. After some stay at
Antioch, he undertook along journey, in order to converse with
the Brachmans of India, and, in his way to visit the Persian
Magi. At Nineveh he contracted an acquaintance with one
Damis, who attended him ever after, and wrote an account of
his life, sayings, and actions, which have been transmitted to us
in the history of Philostratus the Sophist. Upon his return from
the Indies he went to Ephesus, where he was received with all
the tokens of respect imaginable, was followed and admired by
people of all ranks and conditions, and by making his observations
upon the chirping of a bird, which came to call its companions to
pick up some corn which happened to be spilt, gained himself the
reputation of a very great prophet. From Ephesus he removed
to Athens, where he instructed the people in the ceremonies of
their religion ; in the manner, and time, and place, of their of-
fering up sacrifices, libations, and prayers, with other supersti-
tious rites; and where, by commanding a devil to go out of a
young man, and in token of his being dispossessed, to overturn a
statue which stood by, he obtained the character of a mighty
worker of miracles. In the twelfth year of Nero he came to
Rome, where, having spoken some disrespectful words against
the emperor, he was prosecuted by his favourite, Tigellinus;
but, to his great surprise, when his prosecutor opened the bill
of accusation against him, he found nothing but a fair piece
of paper, without one word written in it; and not long after,
upon his restoring a young woman, who seemed to fall down
dead as she was going to be married, to life again, he was
accounted by all a great magician at least, if not a person sent
from heaven. When Nero ordered all philosophers to depart
from Rome, he left the place, and, to pass by other circumstances
of his itinerant life, he was in Asia Minor, when Domitian
ordered him to be apprehended for speaking with some freedom
against his tyranny, and sent to Rome: where, notwithstanding
the emperor's cruel usage of him, he behaved with incredible
magnanimity, and, upon his trial, being honourably acquitted,
immediately vanished out of the court, and was that very day
sien at Puteoli, which is very near fifty leagues from Rome.
When Domitian was slain, he resided at Ephesus; and, as he
Mas then discoursing to the people, he gave them to understand,
that the fatal stab was that moment given him ; which accord-
ingly proved true ; for not long after an express arrived, that
Domitian was dispatched in the manner he had mentioned, and
Nerva unanimously declared emperor. Nerva, upon his acces-
sion to the throne, is said to have sent Apollonius a letter, de-
siring him to come and assist at his councils, to which he return-
ed an answer by his servant Damis ; but before Damis came back
bis master was dead; though as to the place and manner of his
death, we have no certain account. After his death, however ,
— xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
plain indication that his miracles were false, and his most
surprising performances either the effects of magic, or
downright cheat and imposture.
Tacitus 2 indeed tells us of two cures, one of a blind
and the other of a lame person, which Vespasian pre-
tended to work at Alexandria ; but, whosoever reflects
on the situation of his affairs at that time, will perceive
some reason to suspect a collusion. He was now in a
dispute with himself what to do, whether to assume the
Roman empire, or restore the ancient form of govern-
ment, a commonwealth. The restoration of the latter,
was what Dion and Euphrates, two eminent philosophers,
advised ; but Apollonius, whom he likewise consulted
upon this occasion, with great vehemence persuaded the
contrary, and, being himself accustomed to such artifi-
ces, might not improbably suggest to Vespasian the
necessity of some miracle or other, in order to recom-
2 Hist. b. iv.
he had statues erected, and divine worship paid to him ; but, as
he left few or no disciples behind him, his memory, which for a
little while was greatly honoured, dwindled away by degrees, and,
upon the downfall of idolatry, utterly ceased. This account we
have from Philostratus, who, from the commentaries of Damis.
and a book of one Maximus, which he happened to light upon,
wrote the life of Appollonius, above an hundred and twenty years
after his death : but whoever looks into it will see how much his
fabulous history falls short of the gravity and simplicity of the
gospel. The truth is, Julia, the wife of the emperor Severus,
affected to be thought a learned woman, and therefore she set up
for a wit, which was attended with au immoderate desire and
thirst after novelty. She was continually surrounded with poets,
sophists, grammarians, &c. Philostratus made one of the num-
ber, and from her he had the memoirs of Damis, to which lie
added, either from common fame, or his own fancy, whatever he
thought would hit the taste of the empress, or work himself into
the favour of Caracalla, who had Apollonius in high esteem,
and were both great admirers of the marvellous. So that, where-
ever the subject came not up to the magnificence which the
author desired, he usually added all the ornaments which his
imagination could invent, and, without any regard to truth, or
even probability itself, witness the conversation between Apol-
lonius and the ghost of Achilles, and the long digressions on the
panthers of Armenia, the elephants, the phcenix, the satyrs, the
pygmies, &c, made it not so much an history, as a wild ro-
mance ; in which light all the great men, not only Christians
but Pagans, and ancient as well as modems, that have had occa-
tion to mention it, look upon it. Philostratus, however, might
have a farther design in writing the life of Apollonius: for, as
the Cliristian religion, by the strength of its miracles, had now
made its way in the world, those who endeavoured to oppose it,
and yet could not deny the reality of its facts, were at length re-
duced to this expedient, namely, to produce miracles in Pagan-
ism, and every other argument that they thought Christianity
could boast of, by way of contraposition. As therefore the ac-
tions of Jesus were handed down to us by the four evangelists,
who wrote an account of the principal occurrences of his life, so
they, in like manner, set about writing the lives of their philoso-
phers, iu hopes of finding their account in thus opposing miracles
to miracles, and magic to the power of God: and, for this reason,
they have been more especially careful to accommodate the trans-
actions of their great men to the more remarkable passages in
our Saviour's life, as the learned Huetius shows, in many in-
stances relating to Apollonius, and thereupon concludes in these
words: " Philostratus besides seems to have had for his object,
the depression of the increasing belief on Christ and his doc-
trine, by setting up this fictitious image of every doctrine of
holiness and wonderful virtue. Wherefore he formed this image
in imitation of Christ, and accommodated to Apollonius several
things belonging to the history of our Saviour, that the Gentiles
might envy the Christians in nothing." — See Huet. Bemonst.
Evang. p. 566. — Flcury's Eccles. Hist. — Tcllemont's Hist des
Empereurs, vol. 2; and a Dissert, at the end of the Translat.of
Houteville,s Crit. and Hist. Discourse.
Sect. II.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &<
985
A.M. 4035. A. D.31; OR, A.M. 5440. A. D. 29. FROM M AT. xii. 1-
tnend him to the people as a person highly favoured by
the gods.
And indeed if we consider what an obscure person,
and of what mean original, Vespasian was, there seems
to be the greater reason why Apollonius, and others of
that party should think of some expedient or other to
raise him a reputation in the world, answerable to the
new station of life they had advised him to accept : and,
whoever considers farther, ' what various artifices were
.at that time made use of, to procure an opinion of divi-
nity in the emperors, will not much wonder, that such
report should be spread of them, or that certain persons
should be suborned to feign such distempers, and then
to give it out, that the touch of the emperor's hand had
cured them; though it must be confessed, 2 some are of
opinion, that what is reported of Vespasian to this pur-
pose, cannot fairly be denied, and might perhaps be
providentially intended, to give some dignity and
superior character to a person, who in conjunction
with his son Titus, was appointed by God to be a sig-
nal instrument of the divine vengeance on the Jewish
nation.
Allowing then, that God, for wise ends of his provi-
dence, might, now and then, permit some eminent person
to do a real miracle ; yet what is this to that vast number
and great variety recorded of our Saviour, who, in the
small space of his ministry, did more wonderful works of
this kind, than what Moses and all the prophets put toge-
ther, from the earliest account of time that we read of, are
known to have done.
a The Jews indeed, to swell the account of Moses's
miracles, reckon each of those that he did in Egypt dou-
ble ; one, as a miracle of justice, in punishing Pharaoh
and his people, and the other as a miracle of mercy, in
preserving the Israelites from the like destruction. But,
after all their pains and contrivance, the sum amounts to
very little, in comparison to the many that are recorded
of our blessed Saviour. The miracles of all the pro-
phets put together, by the Jews on computation, do not
equal those of Moses ; and yet we must remember, that
Moses lived an hundred and twenty years, forty of which
were one continued scene of action ; and that the com-
pass of the prophets, from the creation of the world, to
the destruction of the second temple, includes three
thousand and some hundreds. Lay this together, and it
evidently follows that such extraordinary demonstrations
of the divine presence and power were very thin, and
sparingly exhibited, when set against the innumerable
instances of them, in the three, or, at most, four years'
preaching of the blessed Jesus. And, if the wonders re-
lated by the evangelists, as done by himself, in so short
a time, do far exceed what both Moses and all the pro-
phets did, what shall we say to those many more that are
not related ? What to the infinitely more still, that were
done by the apostles and disciples, in confirmation of
the doctrine he had taught ? Doubtless, the miraculous
power which he communicated to them was infinitely
great, when, in order to obtain cures, 4 ' the people
brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on
beds, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might
1 Stillingfleet's Orig. Sac. p. 171.
2 See Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, part i. p. 62.
8 Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures. 4 Acts v. 15, 10.
■xvii. 14. MARKii. 23-ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1-ix. 37. JOHN v. 1-vii.l.
overshadow some of them ;' and when, from 5 ' Paul's
body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs, and
aprons, and the diseases parted from them, andevil spirits
went out of them.'
To sum up what has been said on this subject. Since
a real miracle is such an operation as can be done by
none but God, or such as are appointed by him, and was
therefore, in all ages, acknowledged as an authentic
proof of a divine mission ; since the prophets, in their
predictions of the Messiah, represent him as working
miracles of a kind and merciful nature ; and our Saviour,
when he entered upon his ministry, and assumed that
character, displayed a wonderful power in works of the
same kind ; since that power could proceed from no
other cause but a communication from God, and yet to
imagine, that God would communicate any part of his
power to give sanction to an impostor, is a thing repug-
nant to his sacred attributes ; since, upon examination,
it appears, that all the marks and characters of true mi-
racles concur in the works of Jesus, but violent suspi-
cions of trick and artifice in those that are named in
competition with him ; since besides these characters of
their truth, the number of those which he did, besides
those that were done by persons acting in his name, and
by his authority, was greater than what all the true work-
ers of miracles, namely, Moses, and the prophets, had
done through the whole compass of the Old Testament :
since these things appear to be thus, 1 say, we are under
a necessity to conclude, that our blessed Saviour must
have been the true Messiah promised to the Jews, and
characterized in the writings of their prophets ; that he
was the great messenger of the covenant sent from God ;
for 6 ' if he had not been of God, he could have done
nothing ;' and consequently, that the message which he
delivered to us, containing this covenant, or, what is all
one, that the religion which he hath settled in the world,
and confirmed by so many incontestible proofs, so far
as the testimony of miracles is available, cannot but be
true.
CHAP. IV.— On miracles.
Supplemental by the editor.
The preceding dissertation on miracles is satisfactory,
so far as it goes, but it does not meet all the objections
which the ingenuity of modern infidelity has devised
with regard to this branch of the Christian evidences.
The object of this chapter is to supply the author's
deficiencies, and to present the reader with a comprehen-
sive view of the arguments by which the objections of
the infidel may be refuted, and the truth of Scripture
miracles completely demonstrated.
The advocates of Revealed religion affirm, without
any fear of refutation, that the argument resulting from
the completion of prophecy is one that is continually in-
creasing in force ; while they are often as ready to ad-
mit, that the argument from miracles diminishes in
proportion as we recede farther from the apostolic
times. But we shall endeavour to show, that this is a
Actsxix. 11, 12.
6 i
6 John ix. 33.
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concession which need not be made : but that ne have as
good reason to believe the miraculous facts of Scripture,
as any except eye-witnesses, or those who received
their information immediately from the lips of eye-
witnesses.
The evidence flowing from the performance of mira-
cles is indeed so summary and convincing, that it may
be stated satisfactorily in very few words : for this reason,
however, as it should seem, it has been selected by in-
genious unbelievers to exercise their dexterity and
acumen upon ; and thus it becomes requisite to discuss
this subject with a minuteness and comparative prolixity
which might, otherwise, have been altogether avoided.
By miracles, we do not mean "juggling tricks," but
supernatural events. This genuine notion of miracles
lias been sometimes obscured by definition; yet a candid
inquirer after truth cannot well mistake. Most of the
opinions entertained by men of good sense, apart from
any controversial views as to this topic are correct. No
man would think that curing lameness, by a regular
surgical or medical process, was miraculous : every man
would say that the instantaneous production of a limb,
and " making the maimed whole," was miraculous. And
this exactly reaches the logical scientific notion of mir-
acles : for, when such effects are produced as, cccteris
paribus, are usually produced, God is said to operate
according to the common course of nature : but when
such effects are produced as are, cceteris paribus, con-
trary to, or different from, that common course, they are
said to be miraculous."'
Now no man will presume to affirm that it is impossible
a teacher should be sent from God. It may be necessary
that one should be sent ; and we think that a train of
observation and deduction of facts might readily be
produced to establish that necessity. If one or more
be sent, they must bring credentials to evince that their
mission is divine ; and what can those credentials be but
miracles ? In fact, the very idea of a revelation includes
that of miracles. A revelation cannot be made but by
a miraculous interposition of Deity : so that the proba-
bility of a revelation implies a correspondent probability
of the occurrence of miracles ; and the necessity of a
revelation, a like necessity of miracles. Nay, we may
venture to affirm farther, that there is a mutual and
necessary correlation between the two ; for, as, on the
one hand, miracles, or prophecies, which are in fact
miraculous, being contrary to the course of nature, are
necessary to prove the divine authority of an agent ; so,
on the other hand, the performance of uncontrolled
miracles, or the delivery of true predictions, immedi-
ately suggests to the mind the conviction that they have
been permitted solely for the purpose of proving that
the person, by whom they are performed, is employed
by God to do something, or reveal something, which
mankind would not have known in any other way.
It is, one would suppose, almost an intuitive truth,
that, when a person performs evident and uncontrolled
miracles in proof of any doctrine, those who have suffi-
cient evidence of the reality of such miracles ought to
admit the doctrine to be true, or from God. At all
events, the proposition is easily deduced from a few
steps of obvious reasoning ; limiting it, as we have done,
with Baxter, Barrow, and Chandler, to uncontrolled
miracles, or those the apparent design of which is not
contradicted either by the absurdity of the thing they ar«
intended to prove, or by some equal or greater miracles
opposed to them. We thus exclude every thing like
juggling from the idea of miracles ; and at the same
time free ourselves from all consideration of pretended
miracles, such as those performed by the Egyptian
magicians, with the permission or the performance of
which, as they were controlled, we have nothing to do.
The reasoning from which our proposition flows is simply
this : a genuine miracle cannot be performed without an
extraordinary divine interposition, either mediate or
immediate. If the Supreme Being would confirm the
truth of a proposition to one man, by the testimony of
another to whom it was immediately revealed, we can
conceive no method by which it would be so effectually
accomplished, as by conferring on him power to work a
miracle in confirmation of it. When a miracle is un-
controlled, we can conjecture no particular by which it
can be distinguished from a miracle wrought to confirm
a truth. If God were to suffer an uncontrolled miracle
to be wrought in confirmation of a falsehood, there
would seem to be no criterion by which his testimony
could be distinguished. It is inconsistent with the wis-
dom and goodness of God, to suffer an uncontrolled
miracle to be wrought to establish a falsehood ; since it
would leave his creatures in a perpetual uncertainty, and
an uncertainty that would be most painful to the most
virtuous, who have always most wished for a revelation.
Since, therefore, God is both wise and good, it follows
that a proposition, attested by uncontrolled miracles, is
attested by him, and is of necessity true.
From this reasoning it is natural to expect, that in
the Scripture history there should be recorded many
miracles ; and thus, on examining the sacred volume,,
are our expectations realized. The faith of Moses was
confirmed by the miracle of the burning, yet uncon-
sumed, bush. Moses convinced the children of Israel
that God employed him to lead them out of Egypt, by
performing miracles by means of his rod : he appealed
to similar miracles before Pharaoh for the same pur-
pose : the passage through the Red Sea, which opened
to deliver the Israelites from the Egyptians, who were
afterwards swallowed up in the collapsing waters, was
miraculous : the gushing of waters from a solid rock, on
its being struck by Moses, was miraculous ; the passage
of the river Jordan, under Joshua, the standing still of
the sun and moon at his command, and the falling of the
walls of Jericho, were miraculous : the sacrifice kindled
by fire from heaven ; the raising of the Shunamite's and
of the widow of Sarepta's sons ; the destruction of the
captains and their fifties by fire from heaven ; the divid-
ing of the waters of Jordan by means of the mantle of
Elijah, and the translation of that prophet, are events of
the same class; and so are those recorded in Daniel,
respecting the fiery furnace and the den of lions. From
the numerous New Testament miracles, beginning with
that wrought at the marriage at Cana, we cannot attempt
to make an adequate selection. Though it may be
proper to remark, that those performed by Jesus Christ
differed essentially from others : Moses could not work
miracles without his rod; the apostles performed theirs,
for the most part expressly, and always virtually, ' in
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth:' the Messiah
exerted miraculous power from himself, without any
Sbct. II U
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &(
987
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 54U. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23-ix. U. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— rii. 1.
reference to another. And, farther, the miracles of
Jesus Christ were uniformly benevolent: — he cured the
sick, — he healed the lame, he made the maimed whole,
— he made the deaf to hear, the blind to see, the dumb
to speak, he raised the dead, and finally he raised him-
self; thus evincing- at once the greatest miracle, and the
sublimest act of benevolence ; for, as he ' died for our
sins,' so he ' rose again for our justification.' So
numerous, indeed, and so beneficial were his miracles,
that ' the multitude were astonished, saying, it was never
seen so in Israel ;' and well might their astonishment be
excited, as our Lord wrought more benevolent miracles
in one afternoon, (See Mat. ix. 18 — 34.) than had been
performed by any of the prophets in all their lives.
That one great object, kept in view by Christ and his
apostles in performing miracles, was to furnish awaken-
ing and convincing proofs of their divine mission, is
evident from the uniform tenor of the New Testament
Histories. The language of the Jewish Ruler was the
pure unadulterated language of common sense, the force
of which all the sophistry in the world cannot weaken :
' Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from
God : for no man can do these miracles that thou doest,
except God be with him.' (John iii. 2.) The chief
priests and the Pharisees had the same conviction ; for,
said they, after Lazarus was raised from the dead, ' this
man doeth many miracles : if we let him alone, all will
believe on him.' (John xi. 47, 48.) Jesus Christ him-
self appeals to his miracles : ' I have greater witnesses,
says he, than that of John, for the works which the
Father hath given me to finish, the works that I do,
bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.' (John
v. 36.) And again, when the Jews asked him, if thou be
the Christ tell us plainly. How long dost thou make
us to doubt ? Jesus answered, ' the works that I do,
they bear witness of me. If I do not the works of my
Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe
not me, believe the works ; that ye may know and believe
that the Father is in me, and I in him.' ' If I had not
done among them the works which none other man did,
they had not had sin.' (John x. 24, 25, 37, 38 ; xv. 24.)
And on another occasion, when John sent his disciples
to Christ to ask, ' Art thou He that should come, or do
we look for another ? Jesus answered and said unto
them, go and show John again those things which ye do
hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the
dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel
preached unto them.' (Mat xi. 3, 4, 5.) In like manner,
with regard to the apostles, ' God also bare them wit-
ness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers
miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his
own will.' (Heb. ii. 4. Acts xiv. 9; x. 38, 39, &o^)
Consistently with this, the early Christian writers and
apologists, in all those cases where they do not assume
the history as true, and thence argue that Jesus ought
to be received as the Messiah, appeal in very express
terms to his miracles. Thus Quadrates appeals very
strongly to those miracles. Justin Martyr asserts the
performance of miracles by Jesus in as forcible words as
language will admit, and assigns the reason why he
rather had recourse to the argument from prophecy, than
that from miracles; namely, that his opponents would
ascribe the latter to magic. Iremeus, Lactantius, Ter-
tullian,Origen, Augustin, and Jerome, speak of Christ's
miracles, and often, indeed, of those wrought subse-
quently to the apostolic times, and notice the same
evasion on the part of the adversaries to Christianity.
It is highly worthy of remark, too, that none of the
early opposers of the religion of Jesus, pretend to dis-
pute that he performed miracles. Lucian, Julian, Por-
phyry, Hierocles, Celsus, &c, admit that miracles were
wrought. Julian, it is true, endeavours to make light
of them, and wonders that so much stir should be made
about a person, who merely ' opened the eyes of the
blind, restored limbs to the lame, and delivered persons
possessed.' Celsus, again, ridicules the miracles, but
never disputes that they occurred. " Well, said he,
suppose that you really did those things that ye talk of;
pray must we deem the persons who perform such
wonderful operations to be sons of God ; or must we not
rather deem them vile wretches, well versed in a diaboli-
cal art ?" Now, who can imagine, for a moment, that
so violent an opposer of Christianity would have ad-
mitted the miracles of Christ as real facts, had he not
been compelled to it by the universal consent of all
inquiring men of the age in which he lived? Hence it
may be asked, with Mr F. Cunningham, " whether
modern inridels who have ventured to contradict the
miracles of Christ, a weapon Celsus was afraid to take
up, have estimated the rashness of their enterprise ? Are
they competent to deny what a spectator no less male-
volent than themselves was compelled to admit ? Has the
lapse of eighteen hundred years enabled them to ascertain
a fact of daily occurrence with more accuracy than a by-
stander ? Are objects best seen at the greatest distance ?"
Thus it appears, that we have the most marked and
direct testimony of the friends of Revealed religion,
those, too, who had been converted from heathenism by
the weight of its evidence, and the concessions of its
enemies, in favour of those miracles, which were per-
formed in order to prove that the religion came from
God; and this testimony, and these concessions, were
delivered so near the period in which the miracles were
supposed to have been wrought, that they cannot be
accounted for in any other way than by admitting that
both Christians and unbelievers, in the early ages, were
convinced that something which required more than
human energy had occurred. AVhy, then, should this be
disputed in these remote ages ?
Voltaire and Mr Hume will answer this question, by tell-
ing us in effect, though not in express words, " that since
miracles are not wrought now, they never were wrought
at all."
The substance of Mr Hume's argument, which I de-
scribe, because almost all later Deists have echoed his
sentiments, is this: "experience, which in some things
is variable, in others is uniform, is our only guide in
reasoning concerning- matters of fact. Variable experi-
ence gives rise to probability only ; a uniform experience
amounts to proof. Our belief of any fact, from the
testimony of eye-witnesses, is derived from no other
principle than our experience of the veracity of human
testimony. If the fact attested be miraculous, there
arises a contest of two opposite experiences, or proof
against proof. Now, a miracle is a violation of the laws
of nature ; and as a firm and unalterable experience has
established these laws, the proof against a miracle
988
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[Book VI IT.
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from the very nature of the fact, is as complete as any
argument from experience can possible be imagined ;
and if so, it is an undeniable consequence, that it can-
not be surmounted by any proof whatever derived from
human testimony."
Now, to this reasoning, or the most prominent and
essential parts of it, several decisive answers have been,
or may be given. A few of these may properly find a
place here.
I. Dr Campbell, in his celebrated " Dissertation on
Miracles," shows the fallacy of Mr Hume's argument
thus : " The evidence arising from human testimony is
not solely derived from experience : on the contrary,
testimony has a natural influence on belief, antecedent
to experience. The early and unlimited assent given
to testimony by children, gradually contracts as they
advance in life : it is, therefore, more consonant to truth
to say, that our diffidence in testimony is the result of
experience, than that our faith in it has this foundation.
Besides, the uniformity of experience in favour of any
fact is not a proof against its being reversed in a par-
ticular instance. The evidence arising from the single
testimony of a man of known veracity will go farther to
establish a belief of its being actually reversed. If his
testimony be confirmed by a few others of the same
character, we cannot withhold our assent to the truth of
it. Now, though the operations of nature are governed
by uniform laws, and though we have not the testimony
of our senses in favour of any violation of them ; still if,
in particular instances, we have the testimony of thou-
sands of our fellow-creatures, and those, too, men of
strict integrity, swayed by no motives of ambition or
interest, and governed by the principles of common
sense, that they were actually witnesses of these viola-
tions, the constitution of our nature obliges us to believe
them."
II. Mr Hume's reasoning is founded upon too limited
a view of the laws and course of nature. If we consider
things duly, we shall find that lifeless matter is utterly
incapable of obeying any laws, or of being endued with
any powers: and, therefore, what is usually called the
course of nature can be nothing else than the arbitrary
will and pleasure of God, acting continually upon matter
according to certain rules of uniformity, still bearing a
relation to contingencies. So that it is as easy for the
Supreme Being to alter what men think the course of
nature, as to preserve it. Those effects, which are
produced in the world regularly and indesinently, and
which are usually termed the works of nature, prove the
constant providence of Deity ; those, on the contrary,
which, upon any extraordinary occasion, are produced
in such a manner as it is manifest could not have been
either by human power, or by what is called chance,
prove undeniably the immediate interposition of the Deity
on that especial occasion. God, it must be recollected,
is the governor of the moral as well as of the physical
world ; and since the moral well-being of the universe
is of more consequence than its physical order and
regularity, it follows, obviously, that the laws, conform
ably with which the material world seems generally to
be regulated, are subservient, and may occasionally
yield, to the laws by which the moral world is governed.
Although, therefore, a miracle is contrary to the usual
course of nature, and would indeed lose its beneficial
effect, if it were not so, it cannot thence be inferred
that it is "a violation of the laws of nature," allowing
the term to include a regard to moral tendencies. The
laws by which a wise and holy God governs the world,
cannot, unless he is pleased to reveal them, be learned
in any other way than from testimony ; since, on this
supposition, nothing but testimony can bring us ac-
quainted with the whole series of his dispensations, and
this kind of knowledge is absolutely necessary pre-
viously to our correctly inferring those laws. Testi-
mony, therefore, must be admitted as constituting the
principal means of discovering the real laws by which
the universe has been regulated ; that testimony assures
us, that the apparent course of nature has often been
interrupted to produce important moral effects : and we
must not at random disregard such testimony, because,
in estimating its credibility, we ought to look almost
infinitely more at the moral, than at the physical, cir-
cumstances connected with any particular event.
III. But the defence of miracles against the objec-
tions of infidels need not be thrown wholly upon these
general and abstract reasonings, satisfactory and cogent
as they are. The miracles recorded in Scripture, and
especially those performed by Moses, by Jesus Christ,
and his apostles, are accompanied by evidence such as
you will find it difficult to adduce in support of any
other historic fact, and such as cannot possibly be
brought in support of any pretended fact whatever ;
evidence, such as the pretended miracles of Mahomet-
anism, and those of the Romish church, are totally
destitute of.
The truth of a matter of fact may be positively in-
ferred and known, if it be attended by certain criteria,
such as no pretended fact can possibly have. These
criteria are at least four. It is required, first, that the
fact be a sensible fact, such as men's outward senses
can judge of: secondly, that it be notorious, performed
publicly in the presence of witnesses : thirdly, that there
be memorials of it, or monuments, actions, and customs,
kept up in commemoration of it : fourthly, that such
monuments and actions commence with the fact. There
may be facts in favour of which these four marks cannot
be produced ; but the argument of Leslie, and St Real,
is, that whatever has all these four marks cannot be
false.
For example, could Moses have persuaded six hun-
dred thousand men that he had led them throi«dj the
Red Sea in the manner related in Exodus, or have in-
stituted the passover in commemoration of the destruc-
tion of the Egyptian first-born, if these circumstances
had never occurred "? Could he make the Israelites fancy
that they were fed miraculously with manna forty years
in the wilderness, or that, during all that period, their
'raiment waxed not old, neither did their feet swell,'
(Deut. viii. 4 : xxix. 5.) unless those things, however
extraordinary, were facts ? Here our four criteria apply.
The first two secure from any cheat or imposture, at the
time the facts occurred, and the last two preserve equally
against any imposition in after ages ; because the authors
of the book in which these facts are related, speak of it
as written at that time by the actors or eye-witnesses,
and as commanded by God to be carefully kept and
preserved to all generations, and read publicly to all
the people at stated times. (Deut. xxxi. 10, 11, 12.
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
S89
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31; OR, A. M. 5441. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1— xvii. 14. MARKU.23— ix. 14. LUKEvi. 1—ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I.
Josh. viii. 34, 35. Neh. viii.) And farther, the institu-
tions appointed in this book were to be perpetually
observed from the day of each institution for ever, among
these people, in memory of the miraculous facts. Now,
suppose this book to have been forged a hundred or a
thousand years after the time of Moses ; would not every
one say when it first appeared, " We never heard of this
book before; we know of no such institutions, as of a
passover, or circumcision, or sabbaths, and the many
feasts and fasts therein appointed ; we know nothing of
a tribe of Levi, or of a tabernacle in which they were to
serve in such an order of priesthood : this book must be
an arrant forgery, for it is destitute of all those marks
which it gives of itself, as to its own continuance, and
of those institutions which it relates." No instance can
be shown since the world began of any book so sub-
stantiated that was a forgery, and yet passed oft", as
exhibiting truth, upon any people.
Mr Leslie, however, does not stop here, but adds a
fifth mark as peculiar to our Bible, distinguishing it from
.all other histories, relating facts that formerly occurred :
that is, that the book, in which the facts are related,
contains likewise the law of that people to whom it be-
longs, and is their statute book by which their causes
are determined. This will render it impossible for any
one to coin or forge such a book, so as to make it pass
as authentic among any people. If, for example, a
person should forge a statute-book for England, and
publish it next term, could he make all the judges,
lawyers, and people believe that this was their genuine
and only statute book by which their causes had been
determined for centuries past ? They must forget their
old statute-book, and believe that this new book, which
they never saw or heard of before, was the very book
which had been referred to in the pleadings in West-
minster-hall for so many ages, which had been so often
printed, and of which the originals are now kept in the
Tower, to be consulted, as there is occasion. Thus it
is that the books of Moses contain, not only the history
of the Jews, but also their municipal law, as well civil
as ecclesiastical : and thus, also, it is with respect to the
New Testament, which is the spiritual and ecclesiastical
law to the Christian church in all nations ; and which
cannot, therefore, be corrupted, unless all persons in all
nations whithersoever Christianity is spread, should con-
spire in the corruption of the Gospel.
M* Leslie selects some striking, though familiar,
examples in illustration of his general argument ; among
others, he adverts to the Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain,
and compares it with the stones set up at Gilgal. Every
one, as he observes, knows this Stonehenge, or has
heard of it ; and yet none know the reason why those
great stones were set there, or by whom, or in memory
of what. Now, suppose a person should publish a book
to-morrow, and therein affirm that these stones were set
up by Hercules, Polyphemus, or Garagantua, in memory
of such and such of their actions : if he merely make the
affirmation, some few may perhaps give him credit. But
if, for farther confirmation of his assertion, he should
say in this book, that it was written at the time when
such actions were performed, and by the very actors
themselves, or by eye-witnesses : and that this book had
been received as true, and quoted by authors of the
greatest reputation in all ages since : moreover, that this
book was well known in England, and enjoined by act
of parliament to be taught our children ; and that in
consequence we did teach it our children, and had been
taught it ourselves when we were children ; it would
seem impertinent to ask any Deist whether he thinks
such a delusion could be passed upon the people of
England.
Let us now compare this with the Stonehenge, as we
may call it, or twelve great stones set up at Gilgal, and
erected in order that when the children of the Israelites
in after ages should inquire their meaning, it should be
told them. (Josh. iv. 6, 7.) The occurrence, in comme-
moration of which these stones at Gilgal were set up, is
as wonderful and miraculous as the passage of the
Israelites through the Red Sea, and free from the puerile
carpings which have been raised by unbelievers against
that remarkable event. Notice of this miraculous passage
over the Jordan at Gilgal was given to the people on
the preceding day. (Josh. iii. 5.) It took place at
noonday before the whole nation. And when the waters
of the Jordan were divided, it was not at any low ebb,
but at the time when the river overflowed its banks.
(Josh. iii. 15.) It was effected, too, not by winds, or in
length of time, which winds would require to accomplish
it ; but all on a sudden, as soon as the ' feet of the
priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the
water, then the waters which came from above stood,
and rose up upon an heap : and they that came down
toward the sea of the plain, even the salt-sea, failed,
and were cut off*; and the people passed over right
against Jericho. And the priests that bare the ark of
the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in
the midst of Jordan, until all the people were passed
clean over Jordan. And it came to pass, when the
priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord
were come up out of the midst of Jordan, and the soles
of the priests' feet were lift up unto the dry land, that
the waters of Jordan returned into their place, and
flowed over all his banks, as they did before. And the
people came out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first
month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of
Jericho. And those twelve stones, which the twelve
men, from every tribe a man, took out of the midst of
Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto
the children of Israel, saying, when your children shall
ask their fathers in time to come, saying, what mean
these stones ? then ye shall let your children know, say-
ing, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the
Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from be-
fore you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord your
God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before
us until we were gone over: that all the people of the
earth might know the band of the Lord, that it is mighty:
that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever.' (Josh,
iii. 15—17 ; iv. IS— 24.
Now to frame our argument, let it be supposed that
there never was any such occurrence as that passage
over Jordan ; that these stones at Gilgal were set up on
some other occasion, in some after age ; and then that
some designing man invented this book of Joshua, and
pretended that it was written by Joshua at this time ;
adducing this erection of stones at Gilgal as a testimony
of the truth of it. Would not the Israelites say to him,
" we know the stonage at Gilgal, but we never before
990
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he?rd this reason assigned for it : nor of this book of
Joshua. Where has it been all this while ? and where,
and how came you, after so many ages, to find it?
Besides, we are told in this book, that this same passage
over Jordan was ordained to be taught our children,
from age to age ; and therefore that they were always to
be instructed in the meaning of that stonage at Gilgal,
as a memorial of it. But we were never taught it when
we were children ; nor did we ever teach our children
any such thing. And it is not at all likely that could
have been forgotten, while so remarkable a stonage
continued, which was set up for that and no other pur-
pose."
If, then, for the reasons before assigned, no such im-
position could be practised successfully upon us as to
the Stonehenge upon Salisbury Plain, how much less
could it be with regard to the erection at Gilgal ?
And farther, if, when we know not the reason of an
insulated monument, such a delusive reason cannot be
imposed ; how much more impossible is it to impose on
us in actions and observances which we celebrate in
memory of particular miraculous events ? How im-
possible to make us forget those passages which we
daily commemorate ; and to persuade us that we had
always observed such institutions or ceremonies in me-
mory of what we never before heard of; that is, that we
knew it before we knew it ! And if it be found thus im-
possible to practise an imposition upon us, even in some
things which have not all the four criteria before-men-
tioned, how much more impossible is it that there should
be any deceit with regard to particulars in which all
those criteria actually meet.
Similar reasoning is applied with equal success by
this acute writer to the principal facts, including the
miraculous ones, recorded in the Evangelical history.
The works and the miracles of Jesus Christ are said, by
the Evangelists, to be done publicly in the face of the
world ; and so, indeed, himself affirmed in reasoning
with his accusers : ' I spake openly to the world, and in
secret have I said nothing.' (John xviii. 20. See on
this point, Home on the Study of the Scriptures, vol. i.
p. 541, 1st edit.) We learn also in the Acts of the
Apostles, that three thousand at one time, and more
than two thousand at another, (Acts ii. 41 ; iv. 4.) were
converted, upon conviction of what themselves had seen
and known, what had been done publicly before their
eyes, and in particulars respecting which it was im-
possible to impose upon them. So that here Ave find the
two first of Mr Leslie's criteria.
Then for the two second : — Baptism and the Lord's
Supper were instituted as perpetual memorials of these
things : they were not instituted in after ages, but at the
very time when the circumstances to which they relate
took place ; and they have been observed without in-
terruption, through the whole Christian world, in all
ages down from that time to the present. Besides,
Christ himself ordained apostles, and other ministers of
his Gospel, to preach and administer the sacraments:
and that always ' even unto the end of the world.' (Mat.
xxviii. 20.) Accordingly, they have continued by regular
succession to this day. So that the Christian ministry
is, and always has been, as notorious in poim of fact,
as the tribe of Levi among the Jews. The Gospel also
is as much a law, a rule of conduct to the Christians, as
xvii. 14. MARKii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. 1— ix. 37- JOHN v. I— vii. I,
the books of Moses to the Jews: and it being part of
the matters of fact or truths related in the Gospel that
' pastors and teachers,' (Ephes. iv. 1 1 .) were appointed
by Christ, and to continue till the end of the world ;
consequently if the Gospel history and doctrines were
invented, as they must be, if forged at all, in some ages
after Christ; then, at the time of the invention, there
could be no such order of clergy or ministers as derived
themselves from the institution of Christ ; a circumstance
which must give the lie to the Gospel, and demonstrate
the whole to be false. The miraculous actions of Christ
and his Apostles being affirmed to be true no otherwise
than as there were at that identical time, whenever the
Deist will suppose the Gospel history to be forged, not
only sacraments or ordinances of Christ's institution, but
an order of Christian pastors, &c, to administer them ;
and it being impossible there could be any such things
before they were invented, it is as impossible they should
be received and accredited when invented. Hence it
follows that it was as impossible to have imposed these
miraculous relations upon mankind in after ages, as it
would have been to make persons believe they saw the
miracles, or were parties concerned in the beneficial
effects resulting from them, if they were not.
IV. Notwithstanding all that has been said, however,
by Leslie and others, since there is no making a fence
high enough to keep out extravagant conjectures and
surmises, Ave find unbelievers exclaiming after all, that
still men's senses might be imposed upon. To reason-
ing Ave may ahvays oppose reasoning ; and it is often
perfectly^ legitimate to oppose conjecture to conjecture;
yet, Avith regard to the NeAV Testament miracles, we
cannot have so ill an opinion of the intellects of infidels
as to conjecture that they really believe —
" That persons afflicted with the most excruciating
maladies and diseases should be juggled into perfect
ease and health, and cured, as Celsus pretended, by
legerdemain :
" That blind men should see, the lame walk, the deaf
hear, the dumb speak, lepers be cleansed, and dead men
come to life, merely by the play of fancy, and the force
of imagination :
" That the senses of Avhole multitudes should be im-
posed upon to such a degree that they should all fancy
together, they savv, heard, spake, ate and drank, repeated
these actions many times over, and that in different
places and circumstances, too, and yet, after all, did
nothing of all this ; but Avere either asleep, or in ecstasy,
or under the influence of some strange charm all the
Avhile :
" That five thousand men, for example, at one time
and four thousand at another, besides women and
children, should persuade themselves they fed only upon
a feAv loaves and fishes ; should publish it to all the
country that they did so ; refer to time, place, and per-
sons present; and yet, instead of this, have been in fact
at a splendid and magnificent feast, Avhere plenty and
variety of all provisions, fit to entertain such multitudes,
were set before him."
If these things may be, of Avhat utility are our senses!*
What dependence can be placed upon them ? or what
credit can be due to a Deist Avho attests nothing but
upon experience, and yet admits that thousands together
may be deceived in reference to some of the most
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common and frequent actions and functions in human
life?
In truth, there are but four hypotheses that can be
assumed with respect to the miracles of Jesus Christ,
one or other of which a reasonable being must adopt.
Either, first, the recorded accounts of those miracles
were absolute fictions wickedly invented by some per-
sons who had a wish to impose upon mankind :
Or, secondly, Jesus Christ did not work any true
miracles ; but the senses of the people were in some way
or other deluded, so that they believed he really did
perform miracles, when in fact he did not :
Or, thirdly, that the spectators were not in any way
deluded, but knew very well he wrought no miracles :
yet were all, both enemies and friends, the Jews them-
selves not excepted, though they daily " sought occa-
sion against him," united in a close confederacy to
per.-uade the world that he performed the most surpris-
ing things. So that, while some actively circulated re-
ports of these amazing occurrences, the rest kept their
counsel, never offering to unmask the fraud, but manag-
ing the matter with so much cunning and dexterity, and
such an exact mutual harmony and correspondence, that
the story of Jesus Christ's performing miracles should
become current, should obtain almost imiversal credit,
and not a single person be able to disprove it :
Or, fourthly, that he did actually perforin these aston-
ishing works, and that the accounts given of them by
the Christian writers in the New Testament are authentic
and correct.
He that does not adopt the last of these conclusions
will find it a matter of very small consequence which of
the three others he chooses. For that the stories cannot
be fictions is evident from the reasoning of Leslie al-
ready adduced : and it will be seen farther, from a few
moments' consideration, that the denial of the miracles
of Jesus Christ, in any way, leads necessarily to the
admission of a series of real miracles of another kind.
The progress of the human mind, as may be seen by
all the inquiries into it, is a thing of a determinate
nature : a man's thoughts, words, and actions, are all
generated by something previous ; there is an established
course for these things, as well as for the physical part
of the universe, an analogy, of which every man is a
judge from what he feels in himself, and observes in
others : and to suppose any number of men in deter-
minate circumstances to vary from this general tenour of
human nature in like circumstances is a miracle, and
may, as Dr Hartley remarks, be made a miracle of any
magnitude, that is, incredible to any degree, by augment-
ing the number and magnitude of the deviations. It is
therefore a miracle in the human mind, as great as any
that can possibly be conceived to take place with regard
to the body, to suppose that multitudes of Christians,
Jews, and heathens, in the primitive times, should have
borne such unquestionable testimony, some expressly,
others by indirect circumstances, as we learn from history
the] did, to the miracles said to be performed by our
Lord upon the human body, unless they were really per-
formed. In like manner, the reception which the mir-
acles recorded in the Old Testament met with is a
miracle, unless those miracles were true. These are not
however the only miracles which unbelievers in the
Scripture miracles must admit. The very determination
991
xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23.-ix. 14. LUKE vi. l.-ix. 37. JOHN v. l.-vii. I.
of the apostles to propagate the belief of false miracles,
independent of the additional difficulty arising from the
silent concurrence of the Jews and Gentiles in°the story,
according to the third hypothesis suggested above, in
support of such a religion as that taught in the New
Testament, is as great a miracle as human imagination
can conceive. For when they formed this design,
whether they hoped to succeed, or conjectured that they
should fail, in their undertaking, they chose what they
knew to be moral evil, with the contingency of experi-
encing natural evil; nay, so desirous were they to
obtain nothing but misery, that they made their own
persecution a test of the truth of their doctrines ; — thus
violating the strongest possible of all laws of human
nature, namely, that " no man can choose evil for its
own sake.'
Here, then, an unbeliever must either deny all an-
alogy, association, uniformity of action, operation of
motives, selection of good in preference to evil, &c.,
and become an absolute sceptic in the most extensive
acceptation of the term, or acknowledge that very strong
physical analogies may sometimes be violated ; that is,
he must have recourse to something miraculous in order
that he may get quit of something miraculous. Let him
next inquire which of the two opposite classes of mir-
acles will agree best with his other notions : whether it
be more analogous to the nature of God, the course of
providence, the history of the world, the known progress
of man in this life, &c, to allow that God imparted to
certain select persons, of eminent piety, the power of
working miracles ; or to suppose that he confounded' the
understandings, affections, and whole train of associa-
tions, of thousands of persons, nay, of entire nations, in
such a manner that men, who in all other things seemed
to have acted like other men, should, in respect of the
history of Jesus Christ, the prophets, or the Apostles,
abandon all established rules of thinking and acting,
and conduct themselves in a way miraculously repugnant
to all our ideas and all our experience. In order to
determine this inquiry, let it not be forgotten that the
object of the class of miracles against which the Deists
contend, is worthy of a God of infinite wisdom, power,
and goodness : while the object of the latter is decidedly
and absolutely inconsistent with wisdom and goodness,
attributes which all Theists ascribe to that Great Being
by whom alone miracles can be performed, allowing that
they can be wxought at all.
V. Much of the preceding reasoning is entirely in-
dependent of any minute investigation of the nature of
concurrent or successive testimony ; and the whole dis-
cussion might safely be terminated without any reference
to these abstruser inquiries, were it not that Hume and
his disciples have frequently adverted to them, and that
silence might be construed into inability to break
through their web of sophistry. The argument of Dr
Campbell has already been briefly sketched ; we shall
here add a few distinct considerations. And, first, with
regard to concurrent testimony, it has been demonstrated
upon genuine mathematical principles, that where the
credibility of each witness is great, a very few witnesses
will be sufficient to overcome any contrary probability,
derived from the nature of the fact ; that the evidence
resulting from testimony can not only approach inde-
finitely near to certainty, but can at length exceed the
992
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Bock VIII.
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M. 544V. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xii. 1-
cvidence of any inference, however cogent, which can
possibly be deduced from personal experience, or from
personal and derived experience conjointly; that is,
that the evidence of testimony can overcome any degree
of improbability, however great, which can arise from
the nature of the fact. The reason is, that the evidence
of testimony admitting of an unlimited increase on two
different accounts, namely, that of the veracity of the
witnesses, and that of the number of concurrent wit-
nesses, while the probability of the happening of any
specific event admits only one of them, the former is
capable of indefinitely surpassing the latter.
But, indeed, the force of the evidence resulting from
concurrent testimony, is avowedly so great upon the
minds of all who have not been biassed by the perusal of
deistical speculations, or an indulgence in them, that the
matter scarcely needs the support of mathematical inves-
tigation. Let it be supposed that twelve men of pro-
bity and good sense were circumstantially and seriously
to tell, each independently of the others, on his own
personal conviction, " a round unvarnished tale " of a
miracle performed before their eyes, and respecting
which it was impossible, as they affirm, for them to be
deceived, we believe few persons would wait to receive
a thirteenth concurrent testimony, before they yielded
their assent to the truth of the relation, however extraor-
dinary. Let it be supposed, farther, that the twelve
evidences, on being suspected of " bearing false wit-
ness," subjected themselves to be scourged, tortured,
nay strangled, rather than deny the truth of their attes-
tation ; could any reasonable or reasoning man refuse to
believe their testimony ? According to Mr Hume's
argumentation, we are not to believe them, were we to
witness such a story and such sufferings ; but we are so
persuaded that no person in his senses would disbelieve
them, that we will venture to say even Mr Hume, under
such circumstances, could not have withheld his assent to
the truth of their story.
" But," say his disciples, " whatever might be done
or conceded in such a case, those who live a thousand
years after the event, can have no reason to believe it :
if we admit that concurrent testimony may augment ; still
successive testimony diminishes, and that so rapidly, as
to command no assent after a few centuries at most."
This is specious ; but, as we remarked at the commence-
ment of this letter, far from correct. We do not deny
that there may be cases in which credibility diminishes
with time ; but no testimony is really, in the nature of
things rendered less credible by any other cause, than
the loss or want of some of those conditions which first
made it rationally credible. A testimony continues
equally credible, so long as it is transmitted with
all those circumstances and conditions which first pro-
cured it a certain degree of credit amongst men, pro-
portionate to the intrinsic value of those conditions. Let
it be supposed that the persons who transmit the testi-
mony are able, honest, and diligent, in call the requisite
inquiries as to what they transmit, and how should the
credibility due to their testimony be weakened, but by
the omission of circumstances ? which omission is con-
trary to the hypothesis. No calculation of the decrease
of the credibility of testimony, in which a man bears
witness respecting realities, and not the fictions of his own
brain, can ever proceed upon any other principle than
xyii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE ri. 1 --ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. I.
that of the characters and qualifications of the witnesses :
and therefore, so far as the credibility of any matter of
fact depends upon pure testimony, they who live at the
remotest distances of time, may have the same evidence
of the truth of it, as those persons who lived nearest to
the time in which the thing was said to be done ; that
identical time being, of course, excluded.
In what possible manner, for example, can the evi-
dence on which we believe the facts related in the gos-
pels be less than that on Avhich those facts were credited
by Christians in the second or third centuries ? They
possessed the standard writings of the evangelists ; so do
we : what those books then contained, they now con-
tain ; and the invention of printing seems likely under
the care of Providence, to preserve them genuine to the
end of time. This admirable invention has so far secur-
ed all considerable monuments of antiquity, that no
ordinary calamities of wars, dissolutions of governments,
&c, can destroy any material evidence now in existence,
or render it less probable to those who shall live in a
thousand years' time, than it is to us. With regard to
the facts of the Christian religion, indeed, it is notorious
that our evidence in favour of them has increased instead
of diminished since the era of printing, the reformation of
religion, and the restoration of letters: and as even the re-
cent inquiries of learned men have produced fresh evidence
there is every reason to hope it will continue to increase.
Indeed, it is only with regard to the facts related in
the Bible, that men ever talk of the daily diminution of
credibility. Who complains of a decay of evidence in
relation to the actions of Alexander, Hannibal, Pompey,
or Caesar? Howmany fewer of the events recorded by Plu-
tarch, or Polybius, or Livy, are believed now, on account
of a diminution of the evidence, than were believed by
Mr Addison, or Lord Clarendon, or Geoffrey Chaucer ?
It might be contended with some semblance of probabi-
lity, that we know more of those ancients than the per-
sons now mentioned : but that it is widely different from
accrediting less. We never hear persons wishing that
they had lived ages earlier, that they might have had
better proofs that Cyrus was the conqueror of Babylon,
that Darius was beaten in several battles by Alexander,
that Titus destroyed Jerusalem, that Hannibal Mas en
tirely routed by Scipio, or Pompey by Julius Ciesar :
though Ave sometimes find men of ardent and enterprising
minds exclaiming, " O that I had lived and been present
when such and such splendid events occurred : how live-
ly an interest should I have taken in such scenes, how
much concern in their termination !" And, indeed, it isthe
frequent hearing of like exclamations that causes men to
confound weight of testimony, with warmth or depth of
feeling ; and to lose sight of the essential difference be-
tween real evidence, or the true basis for belief of history,
and the sensible impression or influence which such his-
tory may make upon the mind. We believe as firmly that
Lucretius stabbed himself in the delirium of a fever, as that
Lucretia stabbed herself in consequence of the wrongs she
had received from Tarquin's son ; yet we feel a much more
lively interest in the latter event than in the former.
The fate of Carthage, or the result of the contest between
Antony and Octavius respecting the empire of the world,
would doubtless be much more deeply felt, and much
more warmly conversed about, within two centuries of
the circumstances, than they ever are now : yet those who
Sect. III.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
993
A. M. 4035. A. D. 31 ; OR, A. M 5141. A. D. 30. FROM MAT. xu. l-xvii. 14. MARK ii. 23— ix. 14. LUKE vi. I— ix. 37. JOHN v. 1— vii. 1.
then conversed about them, had just as much reason to
doubt their occurrence as we have ; that is, just none at
all. Similar reasoning will apply to all the circum-
stances recorded in authentic history. So that, having
established the genuineness and authenticity of the books
of Scripture, on evidence far superior to that on which
other historic books are received, it is the most idle and
ridiculous thing imaginable, to affect to disbelieve any
of the facts therein recorded, on account of the remote-
ness of the times in which they occurred.
Let me now attempt to collect the scattered argu-
ments, in this letter, with a few additional sugges-
tions, to one point, and conclude. If, then, we have
found, upon careful examination, that the miraculous
facts proposed for our belief, and on the credit of which
the divine authority of a particular system of doctrines
and precepts depends, are such, — 1. As do not imply a
self-contradiction in them. 2. If they appear to have
been performed publicly, in the view of several people,
and with a professed intention to establish the divine
authority of the person or persons who wrought them.
3. If they were many in number, frequently repeated,
and continued for a series of years together. 4. If they
were of an interesting nature in themselves, likely to
have made strong impressions upon the minds of all who
saw and heard of them ; and for that reason, probably,
much attended to, talked of, and examined at the time
of their performance. 5. If the effects produced by
them were not transient, but lasting, such as, however
instantaneous the change might be, must have existed
for many years, and were capable all the while of being
disproved if they were not real. 6. If the relations
were committed to writing at or very near the time when
the facts are said to have occurred, and by persons of
unimpeachable integrity, who tell us, that ' that which
they have seen and heard, the same declare they unto
us ;' by persons who, having sufficient opportunity of
knowing the whole truth of what they testify, could not
possibly be deceived themselves ; and who, having no
conceivable motive or temptation to falsify their evi-
dence, cannot, with the least shadow of probability, be
suspected of an intention to deceive other people. 7.
If there be no proof, or even well-founded suspicion of
proof, that the testimony of those who bear witness to
these extraordinary facts was ever contradicted, even
by such as professed themselves open enemies to their
persons, character, and views, though the accounts of
the facts were first published upon the spot where they
were affirmed to have been originally performed, and
amongst persons who were engaged by private interest,
and furnished with full authority, inclination, and oppor-
tunity, to have manifested the falsity of them, and to
have detected the imposture, had they been able. 8.
If, on the contrary, the existence of these facts be ex-
pressly allowed by the persons who thought themselves
most concerned to prevent the genuine consequences
which might be deduced from them ; and there were
originally no other disputes about them than to what
sufficient cause they were to be imputed. 9. If again
the witnesses from whom we have these facts were many
in number, all of them unanimous in the substance of
their evidence, and all, as may be collected from their
whole conduct, men of such unquestionable good sense
as secured them against all delusion in themselves ; if
they were men who evinced the sincerity of their own
conviction, by acting under the uniform influence of the
extraordinary works to which they bore witness, in
direct contradiction to all their former prejudices and
most favoured notions ; in direct contradiction also to
every flattering prospect of worldly honour, profit,
or advantage (as was remarkably exemplified in the case
of St Paul); and when they could not but be previously
assured that ' bonds and afflictions waited them ;' (Acts
xx. 23.) that ignominy, persecution, misery, and even
death itself, most probably would attend the constant
and invariable perseverance in their testimony. 10. If
these witnesses, in order that their evidence might have
the greater weight with a doubting world (each nation
being already in possession of an established religion),
were themselves enabled to perform such extraordinary
works as testified the clear and indisputable interposi-
tion of a divine power in favour of their veracity ; and
after having experienced the severest afflictions, vexa-
tions and torments, at length laid down their lives in
confirmation of the truth of the facts asserted by them.
11. If great multitudes of the contemporaries of these
witnesses, men of almost all nations, tempers, profes-
sions, and scales of intellect were persuaded by them that
these facts were really performed in the manner related,
and gave the strongest testimony which it was in their
power to give of the firmness and active tendency of
their belief, by immediately breaking through all their
previous attachments and connections of interest or
friendship, and acting in express contradiction to them.
12. If concurring testimony, carried to a sufficient
extent, and especially of this kind, be in its nature
really irresistible ; and if successive testimony, under
the circumstances of the case before us, rather increase
than diminish in credibility. 13. If ceremonies and
institutions were grounded upon the miraculous facts,
and have been uninterruptedly observed in all the suc-
cessive periods of time, from the date of the facts in
commemoration of which they were established. 14.
If we have all the proof which the severest rules of
criticism can require, that no alterations have been made
in the original writings and records left us by these wit-
nesses in any material article of their evidence since
their first publication, either through accident or design ;
but that they have been transmitted to us in all their
genuine purity, as they were left by their authors. In
such a situation of things, where so great a variety of
circumstances, where indeed all imaginable circum-
stances mutually concur to confirm, strengthen, and
support each other's evidence ; without a single argu-
ment on the other side, but what arises merely from the
extraordinary nature of the facts, and the admission of
which inevitably leads to consequences at least as extra-
ordinary as those our opponents are inclined to reject ;
may not they be justly accused of an unreasonable
incredulity who refuse their assent to them ? And will
not such incredulity be as dangerous as it is ridiculous ?
If facts, attested in so clear, decisive, and unexception-
able a manner, and delivered down to posterity with so
many conspiring signs and monuments of truth, are,
nevertheless, not to be believed ; it is, I think, impos-
sible for the united wisdom of mankind to point out any
evidence of historical events which will justify a wise
and cautious man in accrediting them. AY here there is
6 K
994
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4037. A. D.33.; OR, A.M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHN xii. 19-END.
the strongest assurance of the occurrence of any parti-
cular series of miraculous facts, which we are capable
of acquiring, according to the present frame of our
nature, and the state of things in the world ; to reject
these miracles after all, and the religion in attestation
of which they were wrought, and to pretend to exculpate
ourselves for not believing them, upon the bare suspi-
cion of a possibility that they may be false, is, instead
of being an indication of freedom from shackles, and
erectness and greatness of mind, a monstrous contradic-
tion to the principles of common sense, and the univer-
sal practice of mankind.
SECT. IV.
CHAP. I. — From our Lord's last entry into Jerusalem
to his ascension into heaven ; containing the term of
six weeks and five days.
THE HISTORY.
Upon our Lord's entry into Jerusalem with such a vast
retinue of people, the citizens were alarmed, and began
to inquire who this great person was ? To which the multi-
tude that accompanied him answered aloud, that it was
Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, a town in Galilee.
Having therefore permitted his kingdom and divine
authority to be thus proclaimed by others, he proceeded
in the next place to exert it himself : for going to the
temple, and there looking about him, he found the court
of the Gentiles notoriously profaned and dishonoured
by trading and merchandize. That therefore he might
end, as he had begun his ministry, with the reformation
of his Father's house, he drove out all the buyers and
sellers, as he did three years before, a from the sacred
ground ; he overthrew the tables of the money-changers, b
a It appears from Mark xi. 11. that Jesus did not do this on
the day of his entry into Jerusalem, though it is there said that
he entered into the temple and looked round the whole of it, but
the day after ; spending the night at Bethany, and returning to
Jerusalem in the morning; and in the way thither working the
miracle of the fig-tree. As Mark is so positive and particular
in his account, and as Matthew does not expressly connect our
Lord's driving out the traders with the events of the day, we
ought, it should seem, to adopt Mark's account. To do which
there cannot be a greater inducement than the consideration,
that those who adopt the other hypothesis are compelled to sup-
pose that the circumstances in question happened twice on two
successive days. Nay, thrice; for our Lord had done much the
same thing in the first year of his ministry (John ii. 14.) The
reason why he did not then do it is suggested by the words of
Mark, o^/ia; It yivoftUtis, that is, because it being evening, the
buyers and sellers had most of them retired. That it should
then be evening was likely enough, considering the events of the
day, which must have occupied a considerable time. — Bloom-
field.— Ed.
b These money-changers were not unlike our merchants or
bankers who deal in bills of exchange, and either remit money
to foreign parts, or answer such draughts, as, by their corres-
pondents abroad, are made upon them. And considering that
the Jews, how far soever they lived from it, were obliged to
repair to Jerusalem, there to offer their sacrifices, and pay their
half shekel for the use of the temple, (Ex. xxx. 13.) the institu-
tion of such dealers in money was highly necessary, that the
Jews, in their several dispersions, who were to come up to Jer-
usalem to worship, paying their money to merchants at home,
might have it to answer their occasions, safe from thieves, and
and the stalls of those that sold doves ; telling them
that they had made the temple, which was deservedly
called an ' house of prayer, a den of thieves.' c And to
let the people see that he had both commission and
authority to act as he did, he cured in that instant many
blind and lame persons that were brought to him into
the temple.
The people indeed were filled with admiration at the
sight of these things; but the chief priests and scribes,
when they saw the miracles which he wrought, and heard
from the trouble of carriage when they arrived at Jerusalem.
Whether therefore the business of these money-changers was
only to return money from distant parts, or to change foreign
money into current coin, or larger money into less pieces, or
perhaps to do all this, there was certainly nothing blame-worthy
in the profession, had it not been for some intervening abuse.
In like manner, it may be said of those who bought or sold cattle
for sacrifices, since it would have been highly inconvenient for
every worshipper who lived at a considerable distance to bring
them up with them, such men were necessary in their way, as
were likewise the sellers of doves, because every Israelite did
not keep this kind of birds, and yet no one creature was so often
recruired in sacrifice as they. Our Saviour therefore in this
transaction must not be thought to blame all such traffic in
general, but only to find fault with the people for having taken
up an improper place for the exercise of their respective callings.
And therefore, to let them know that it was not out of passion
or any peevish resentment against them, but purely in obedience
to a divine command that he made this reformation, he told
them, that it was written, ' My house shall be called a house of
prayer.' This is the character which the prophet Isaiah gives
of it, (chap. lvi. 7.) and if it be a house appointed for prayer
and other religious offices, then it is no proper place for ' the
tables of money-changers, and the seats of those that sell doves,'
who have the markets of Jerusalem and their own shops and
houses to trade in. — Hammond's and JFhitby's Annotations, and
Surenhusii Conciliationes, in loca V. T. apud Matthaum.
c This expression is thought by some to be an allusion to
those gangs of robbers which at this time infested Judea, and
used to hide themselves in holes and dens of the mountains, as
appears from the history of Josephus in several places. But our
Lord here plainly refers to that passage in Jeremiah, where the
prophet introduces God complaining, ' Is this house, which is
called by myname, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold,
even I have seen it, saith the Lord,' (chap. vii. 11.) But how
could the house of God become a den of robbers? How could
such violence be committed in so sacred a place? St Jerome,
in his commentary upon Mat. xxi. 12, 13., ascribes all this to
the avarice of the priests, and gives us a lively description of
the several artifices whereby they endeavoured to extort money.
" In the temple of Jerusalem," says he, " the finest and most
spacious of any in the whole world, whither Jews assembled
almost from all countries, sacrifices of different kinds, some for
the rich, and others for the poorer sort, were prescribed by the
law ; but because those who came from afar often wanted such
sacrifices, the priests took the advantage to buy up all those
beasts which were appointed for this purpose, and having sold them
to those that wanted, received them at their hands back again.
Because some who came to worship were so very poor that they
had not money enough to purchase so much as the lesser sacri-
fices, which were birds ; to remedy this iuconveniency, the
priests set up bankers in one of the courts of the temple, to lend
them money upon security. But finding that they could not do
this without transgressing the law, which forbade usury, they
had recourse to another device, which was to appoint a kind of
pawn-brokers, instead of bankers, that is, men who, for the
advance of a small sum, took fruits, herbs, and other consum-
ables, instead of use-money. Our Lord therefore having ob-
served this way of traffic, which the priests had set up in his
Father's house, not only expelled their agents, but arraigned
them likewise for a pack of thieves; 'for he is a robber,' says
the Father, ' who makes lucre of religion, and whose worship is
not so much the veneration he has for God, as the opportunity of
making his own interest and advantage.' " — Beaasobre's Anno-
tations, and CalmeVs Commentary.
Skct. V.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
995
M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15
A. M. 4037. A. D33. OR, A.
the acclamations of the children, who cried out in the
temple, ' Hosanna to the son of David [' were greatly
enraged, and discovered their anger by asking him, ' If
he heard what they said ?' But he silenced their ques-
tion by showing them that what was so displeasing to
them, did really fulfil the scriptures, particularly that
passage in the psalmist where it is said, that a ' out of
the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected
praise.' This answer, however, did but enrage them
the more, and put them upon seeking all occasions to
destroy him, though their dread of the people, who heard
him with the greatest eagerness and attention, was some
check upon their malice.
The Jews were not the only persons who came up to
Jerusalem at the passover ; for many devout Greeks b
used likewise to resort thither at that feast ; and some of
these, being desirous to have a sight of Christ, addressed
themselves c to Philip, one of the apostles, and he, by
the assistance of Andrew, had them introduced. Our
Lord was at that time discoursing to the disciples of
many things relating to his passion, and particularly, of
a These words are cited from Ps. viii. 2., and seem to vary
a little from the original, which is thus rendered, ' Out of the
mouth of the very babes and sucklings thou hast ordained
strength.' But when it is considered that the only strength
which can proceed from the mouth of children must be praise,
or words put in their mouths, to celebrate the praises of the
Messiah, the phrase in the psalmist and in the evangelist must
needs mean the same thing; and our Saviour in the application
of it to the chief priests and scribes seems to insinuate, — that
these acclamations of the children were not fortuitous, but by
divine instinct, and for the fulfilling of an ancient prophecy; and
that therefore their declaring him to be the Messiah, or the son
of David, should be looked upon as a kind of call from heaven,
to inform and instruct others in what they were to do.' — Beau-
sobre's Annotations, and Surenkusii Conciliat. ibid.
b Who these Greeks were, the best of our commentators are
not agreed. Some are of opinion, that they were mere Gentiles,
who, either out of curiosity, namely, to see the magnificence of
the temple, the solemnities of the feast, or the person of Jesus,
of whose fame they had heard so much, or perhaps out of a prin-
ciple of devotion, and to worship the God of Israel, might, at
this time, resort to Jerusalem: for the pagan religion, which ad-
mitted a plurality of gods, restrained none from worshipping the
gods of other nations, so long as they were not thereby tempted
to abandon those of their own. Others imagine, that they were
real Jews who being scattered in Grecian provinces, alter the
conquests which Alexander the Great, and his successors, made
upon the Jews, still continued in these countries, but kept so
close to their ancient religion, as to come in great numbers to
Jerusalem, upon the return of every passover. These were gen-
erally called Hellenists: and, that there was great plenty of them
in several provinces of Asia, is manifest from St Peter's address
of his first epistle to the strangers, as he calls them, who were
scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor, and
Bithynia, (1 Pet. i. 1.) but the most general opinion is, that
these Greeks were proselytes of the gate, who worshipped the
God of heaven and earth, lived among the Jews, and conformed
to their political laws, but would not engage in circumcision, or
the observance of their ceremonies ; and they came to Jerusalem,
at this time, not because they were permitted to celebrate the
feast along with the Jews, but because they were indulged the
privilege to behold their solemnities, and to pay their adorations
to the Creator of the universe, even while the Jews were in the
height of their public worship, in the court of the Gentiles, as
appears from the case of the eunuch of Queen Candace, Acts
viii. 27. — liasnage's History of the Jews, b. v. c. 6; Calmed
Commentary; Poole's and Hammond's Annotations.
c These Greeks, says Grotius, seem to have been Syro-Phos-
nicians, who dwelt perhaps about Tyre and Sydon, and so might
easily be acquainted with the Galileans, with whom they had
commerce, and with Philip of Bethsaida, to whom they made
application for access to Christ.
END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHNxii. 1!»— END,
the efficacy of his death, and what a powerful means it
would prove to convert the world to his religion, more
powerful indeed than his life could possibly be, even as
corn, though it dies in the ground, d when sown, rises
again with a vast abundance and increase. While he
was thus discoursing of his death, he seemed, on a sud-
den, to be seized with a natural horror e of its approach-
ing hour, and was going to request of God a reprieve
from it ; but then recollecting, that for this purpose it
was that he came into the world, he changed his petition,
and, with a resolved acquiescence in his good pleasure,
desired of him, in what method he should think most
proper, to glorify his name ; whereupon he Avas answered
by a voice from heaven, / which some of the company
took for a clap of thunder, and others for an angel's
speaking to him, ' that he had already glorified it, S and
would glorify it again.'
This voice, he told them, was not so much for his in-
formation in the will of heaven, as it was for their con-
viction of his divine mission ; and so he went on dis-
coursing to them of his death, and the beneficial effects of
it, until some of them, perceiving in what he said an in-
consistency, as they thought, with some passages of
scripture, told him, that they could not rightly compre-
hend what he meant by his death, since some prophecies h
d Our Saviour's words upon this occasion are not amiss para-
phrased in this manner, — ' Look, as you see in your ordinary
husbandry, the grains of wheat are first buried in the earth, and
lose their form before they spring, and shoot up again, and bring
forth fruit ; so it must be with me. I must be first lifted up,
before I shall draw men after me ; I must first be crucified, be-
fore my gospel shall be preached to all nations, and all the fulness
of the Gentiles shall come in: but when I am once dead, and
have risen, then shall ye see this abundant fruit.' — Poole's An-
notations.
e The mention of his death, brought before him its approaching
horrors; its pains; its darkness; its unparalleled woes: Jesus
was full of acute sensibility, and his human nature shrunk from
the scenes through which he was to pass, See Luke xxiii. 41 —
44 Barnes on the Gospels. — Ed.
f The only way of revelation which the Jews, since the Baby-
lonish captivity, and the extinction of their prophets, Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malachi, pretend to, is that of Bath-Koll, or the
daughter of a voice, so called, because it has some resemblance,
though, as to distinctness, but an imperfect one, of that voice,
which was uttered from the holy of holies, when the Lord spake
to Moses, and, according to them, it is the will of God revealed
in thunder from heaven ; and therefore, though, upon this occa-
sion, some of the company thought it thundered, and others, that
an angel spake, yet neither of them were mistaken, because in
this Bath-Koll there was always thunder joined with an articulate
voice. — Hammond's Annotations.
g I have glorified it, by causing my glory to be published and
proclaimed in the world, by the preaching, and by the miracles
which I have given in testimony of thy mission; and I will
glorify it again, by thy resurrection and exaltation to the right-
hand of glory, by the mission of the Holy Ghost upon thy apos-
tles, and by their carrying the sound of the gospel even unto the
ends of the earth. — Poole's and JVhitby's Annotations.
h The prophecies, from whence the Jews may be supposed to
have drawn this conclusion, are, (2 Sam. vii. 1G.) where God,
by the mouth of Nathan, promises David, 'Thine house, and
thy kingdom, shall be established for ever before thee ; thy throne
shall he established for ever;' in much the same words wherein
he had sworn unto David himself, (Ps. lxxxix. 29.) ' His seed
will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of
heaven.' To the same purpose they found the prophet Isaiah
promising, (chap. ix. 7.) ' My servant David shall he their king
for ever, and of his government there shall be no end.' But
what seemed to express the matter in the cleared terms, was
this passage in Daniel, (chap. vii. 13, 14.) 'Anil behold one
like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and '-ame
996
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR A. M. 5412. A. D.31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15— END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
had assured them that the Messiah was to live for ever.
But to this objection he made no other reply, than that
it well behoved them to make good use of his instruc-
tions for the short time they were to have them ; and so
he withdrew from them, as well perceiving that neither
his divine discourses nor miraculous cures could gain
the faith of any, except the populace ; for though some
of their rulers might believe in him, yet such was their
timidity, that they durst not declare it openly, for fear
of excommunication, and because ' they loved the praise
of men more than the praise of God.'
Towards the evening, however, he returned again to
the temple, a and exhorted the people to believe in him
as a messenger sent from God to offer salvation to man-
kind ; and in case that they persisted in their infidelity, he
threatened them with divine vengeance in the last day,
when the very gospel which he then preached to them,
would rise up in judgment against them, and condemn
them ; and, with these words, he left the temple, and
taking his apostles with him, returned to Bethany, where
he lodged that night.
The next morning as he returned to Jerusalem, find-
ing himself a little hungry, he went to a fig-tree that was
in the way, in hopes of finding some fruit upon it : but
when he found none, to signify his almighty power, he
cursed the tree, * and so, proceeding to the temple, began
again to clear it of all the traders that were got again
into it ; and there continued all the day long teaching
and instructing the people. While he was doing this,
the chief priests, scribes, and rulers of the people, know-
ing that he had no commission from the sanhedrim, c
came, and demanded of him by what authority he pro-
ceeded in that manner ; but instead of answering their
question directly, he put another to them, namely, ' Whe-
to the ancient of days, &c, and there was given him dominion,
and glory, and a kingdom, &c. : his dominion is an everlasting
dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that
which shall not be destroyed.' Thus the Jews wrongfully ap-
plied to the person of the Messiah, the things which related to
his kingdom ; but then they gave little or no heed to what the
same prophets said of the body, wherein the Messiah was to
sutler, and of his hands and feet which were to be pierced, (Ps.
xxii. 16. — xi. 6. of ' his giving up his life a sacrifice for sin,'
Is. liii. 12. and of his being ' cut off', but not for himself,' Dan.
ix. 2G. All which was not incompatible with his abiding for
ever; seeing that, after his sufferings, he was to rise again, (Ps.
xli. 10.) and enter into glory. (1 Pet. i. 11.) So that by com-
paring these things together they might have easily removed
this scruple, especially when he had told them so often, and they
so well remembered that he had told them, that, ' after three
days, he would rise again.' — Whitby's and Beausohre's Anno-
tations.
a It is very probable that the priests, who had the advantage
of letting these shops, and were therefore not so well pleased
with the reformation which our Saviour had made, ordered the
traders to reassume their places, promising to know of him by
what authority he made these innovations. — Calmet's Commen-
tary.
6 On the curse pronounced on the fig-tree, see answers to
objections next chap. — En.
c It is pretended by some that the person who preached in the
temple was to have a license from the sanhedrim, but that any
might speak publicly in the synagogues without any such faculty;
because we find our Saviour preaching in the latter, almost
i-wry sabbath day, without any molestation. However this be,
it was certainly a vain question for the. chief priests and rulers
to ask our Lord, 'by whose authority he did those things,' after
they had seen his miracles, and knew that he claimed his com-
mission from God — Calmet's Commentary, and Whitby's An-
notations,
ther the baptism of John was of divine or only of human
institution ?' To say that it was of divine institution,
would be to accuse themselves of impiety and incredul-
ity ; and to say that it was purely human, would be to
provoke the people, who all looked upon him as a pro-
phet, to stone them ; and therefore in this dilemma they
concluded that ignorance would be the best answer, and
thereupon declared ' that they could not tell ;' to which
our Saviour rejoined, ' Neither is it necessary for me to
give you an account of my commission and authority,
since you seem to grant that a man may lawfully preach
and baptize, and entertain disciples, as John did, with-
out the appointment and permission of the sanhedrim.'
And so he proceeded in several parables, such as the
parable 1 of the two sons, d that £ of the wicked Jiusbaud-
men, e and that 3 of the guests invited to the marriage
1 Mat. xxi. 2S.
2 Ibid. xxi. 33.
3 Ibid. xxii. 2.
d By the man in the parable is signified God, and by his two
sons, the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews are the second
son: they promised to God a perfect obedience, and yet did
nothing. The Gentiles are the other son, who at first refused
to obey, and gave themselves up to idolatry and all manner of
wickedness, but, upon the preaching of the gospel, repented;
and after their conversion, applied themselves in earnest to do
the will of God. The parable, according to our Lord's own
interpretation of it, (Mat. xxi. 32.) is applicable likewise to two
kinds of Jews — the scribes and Pharisees, who pretended to so
much religion, and such mighty zeal for the performance of the
law, when in reality they observed none of its weightier pre-
cepts ; and the publicans and sinners, who, though at first they
lived in practices quite abhorrent to the precepts of religion,
yet, upon the preaching of John the Baptist, were several of
them converted, and attending to the doctrine of Christ, and
his apostles, in process of time, became obedient to their heav-
enly Father's will (ver. 31.) — Calmet's Commentary. — Scott
and others consider this parable to refer to the profligate Jews,
the publicans, and harlots, who were at length brought to repent-
ance and became disciples of Jesus; and to the Pharisees, scribes,
and priests, who were the greatest enemies of the gospel. — Ed.
e For the explication of this parable we must observe, — that
the householder here (Mat. xxi. 33.) is almighty God, and the
vineyard is the Jewish people, considered in their spiritual
capacity; that his planting and hedging it about, signifies his
peculiar favour and providence, in communicating to them his
will, and, by laws and ordinances peculiar to themselves, distin-
guishing them from all other nations to be his own people ; that
the wine press and tower, and other suitable conveniences, denote
the temple and altar which he built among them, together with
all those advantages and opportunities of serving him acceptably
which he afforded them ; that the husbandmen to whom this
vineyard was let out were the priests and Levites, the doctors
and rulers of that church and people, who are here represented as
wanting in their duty, and negligent in cultivating the vineyard,
or instructing the people committed to their charge ; that the fruits
are no other than returns of duty, proportioned to the advantages of
knowing and performing it; that the servants sent to demand the
fruits were the prophets, whom God from time to time commis-
sioned to reprove, exhort, and quicken to their duty, both priests
and people, by denunciations of vengeance, and promises of
rewards; that the Son, whom he sent at last, was our blessed
Saviour, whom the Jewish priests and rulers treated in no bet-
ter manner than they had done the prophets of old, but, instead
of reverencing him as the Son of God, and as he proved himself
to be by divers manifestations of divine power, put him to a
cruel and ignominious death: and therefore well might the Lord
of the vineyard ' destroy these wicked men,' &c, as we find
from the Jewish historian Josephus, as well as other writers, that
God, for their great impiety, brought the Roman armies upon
that nation, and by them burned their city and temple, destroyed
and dispersed the people, and carried his gospel to the gentiles,
' to other husbandmen, who should render him the fruits in their
seasons.' (ver. 41.) — Calmet's Commentary, Whitby's Annota-
tions, and Stanhope on the Ejristles and Gospels, vol. iv.
Sbct. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
997
A. M. 4037. A. D. 33. OR, A. M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10.-END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xlx. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
feast, a to upbraid them with their hypocrisy, cruelty, and
contempt of religion, and for these to denounce the
severe judgments of God against them.
The Pharisees, who had as great a share in the appli-
cation of these parables as any other, went away much
enraged, and with a firm resolution to find out some oc-
casion against him. To this purpose, therefore, they
sent some of their disciples, together with the Herod-
ians, * to propound this insidious question to him, c
a The king in this parable represents God the Father; the
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is frequently described as the
spouse of his church: and the marriage feast, the dispensation
of the gospel. The guests, that were first invited to the feast,
were the Jews; the servants sent forth to call them, were the
prophets, John the Baptist, and the apostles ; upon their refusal,
the other guests brought in to supply their room, were the Gen-
tiles; and the person who wanted the wedding garment, is an
emblem of all those who profess and receive, but do not live up
to, the principles of Christ's religion. — Calmet's Commentary,
and Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii. — Anciently
kings and princes were accustomed to make presents of changes
of raiment to their friends and favourites, to refuse to receive
which was an expression of highest contempt. (Gen. xlv. 22.
2 Kings x. 22. Esther vi. 8; viii. 15.) It was, of course, ex-
pected that such garments would be worn when they came into
the presence of the benefactor. The garments worn on festival
occasions were chiefly long white robes; and it was the custom
of the person who made the feast to prepare such robes to be worn
by the guests. This renders the conduct of this man more in-
excusable. He came in his common ordinary dress, as he was
taken from the highway ; though he had not a garment of his
own suitable for the occasion, yet one had been provided for him,
if he had applied for it. His not doing it, was expressive of the
highest disrespect for the king. This beautifully represents the
conduct of the hypocrite in the church. A garment of salvation
might be his, wrought by the hands of the Saviour, and dyed in
his blood. But the hypocrite chooses the filthy rags of his own
righteousness, and thus offers the highest contempt for that pro-
vided iu the gospel. He is to blame: not for being invited ; not
for coming, if he would come, for he is freely invited ; but for
offering the highest contempt to the King of Zion, in presenting
himself with all his filth and rags, and in refusing to be saved
in the way provided in the gospel. — Barnes on the Gospels. —
Ed.
b It is not certainly known who these were. It is probable
that they took their name from Herod the Great — perhaps first
a political party, and then distinguished for holding some of his
peculiar opinions. Dr Prideaux thinks that those opinions re-
ferred to two things; the first respecting subjection to a foreign
power. The law of Moses was, that ' a stranger should not be
set over the Jews as a king. (Deut. xvii. 15.) Herod, who
had received the kingdom of Judea by appointment oftheRomans,
held that the law of Moses referred only to a voluntary choice of
a king, and did not refer to a necessary submission, where they
had been overpowered by force. They supposed, therefore, that
it was lawful in such cases to pay tribute to a foreign prince.
This opinion was, however, extensively unpopular among the
Jews, and particularly the Pharisees, who looked upon it as a
violation of their law, and all the acts growing out of it as oppres-
sive. Hence the difficulty of the question proposed by them.
Whatever way he decided, they supposed he would be involved
in difficulty. If he should say it was not lawful, the Herodians
were ready to accuse him as being an enemy of Caesar; if he
said it was lawful, the Pharisees were ready to accuse him to the
people of holding an opinion extremely unpopular among them,
and as being an enemy of their rights. The other opinion of
Herod, which they seem to have followed, was, that when a
people were subjugated by a foreign force, it was right to adopt
the rites and customs of their religion. This was what was
meant by the 'leaven of Herod,' (Mark viii. 15.) The Herod-
ians and Sadducees seem on most questions to have been united.
— Barnes on the Gospels — Ed.
O The state of the question, truly taken, seems to be this,
The government of the Jews had fallen into the hands of the
Maccabees, and, in succession, to one of them named Alexander.
He had two sons, Hyrcanus aud Aristobulus, the younger of
' Whether it was lawful for them to pay tribute to Ccesar,
or not ?' never doubting but that, which way soever he
answered, his business was done : if in the affirmative,
the multitude would detest him, as a betrayer of their
ancient liberties ; if in the negative, the Herodians would
then accuse him as a rebel against the emperor Tiberius :
but he, knowing their treacherous design, demanded a
sight of the tribute-money, and when they acknowledged
that the signature d on it was Caesar's he sent them away
quite confounded with this answer : e ' Render therefore
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God,
the things that are God's.
which made war upon the elder, and assumed to himself the
government. Hyrcanus and his party being not able to resist
him, called in the assistance of the Romans. Pompey, at their
request, besieges Jerusalem, and had the gates surrendered to
him by a faction within, that favoured Hyrcanus; but Aristob-
ulus and his adherents fought it out, till at last they were van-
quished and overpowered. The Romans put Hyrcanus in pos-
session of the government; but, at the same time, obliged him
to hold it by their favour and permission, which laid the founda-
tion of great and lasting dissensions among the Jews, some
submitting to the Roman power, as thinking they had a fair title
both by conquest and surrender ; while others objected, that the
surrender was made by a party only, and not the whole body of
the people: that it was not conquest, but treachery, which
brought Jerusalem to their mercy ; and, consequently, that they
were usurpers, and Hyrcanus and his followers betrayers of their
country. That which contributed not a little to make this con-
troversy still greater, was that Josephus and Eusebius relate
concerning Judas the Gaulonite. He, about the time of the
taxation, in which, as St Luke says, our Saviour was born, dis-
quieted the minds of many, and represented the decree of Augus-
tus for that purpose as a mark of infamy and servitude not to be
borne. This man is said to have instituted a particular sect,
one of whose tenets was, — That no Jew ought to pay tribute, or
to acknowledge any sovereign Lord, but God only: and that they
were his peculiar people, and therefore bound to maintain their
liberty, especially against prophane and uncircumcised pretenders,
such as the Roman emperors were. So that the paying of tribute
to Caesar was not, at this time, a question of mere curiosity, but
a matter of moment with regard to practice; nor was it a point
of bravery only, in the esteem of the Pharisees, and others of
that party, but a scruple of conscience, and a debate of religion,
whether this tribute should be paid or not. — Stanhope on the
Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
d Every one knows, that the Roman emperors were wont to
disperse their money through all the provinces belonging to their
jurisdiction; that this money was stamped with the image or
bust of the emperor on one side, aud on the reverse, with some
figure or other, representing victory, plenty, peace, or the like;
and that this tribute, or capitation tax, which according to Ulpian,
the males from fourteen, and the females from twelve years old,
were obliged to pay, was usually collected in this money, and no
other, as the only current coin at Rome. — Calmet's Commentary,
e Some interpreters are of opinion, that our Saviour's words
do not determine Caesar's right to demand tribute : but since the
Jews had now submitted to the Roman government, as they had
formerly done to the Assyrian, which national submission, with
promise of fidelity, having now obtained about an hundred years,
was a just ground for Caesar's rights; since besides this, Caesar
had indulged them in the exercise of their religion, and the en-
joyment of their civil rights; had fought their battles, and
protected them against the common enemy, the Arabians, and
Parthians, and the like ; since, more especially, it was a received
maxim among the Jews, that wherever the money of any person
was owned as the current coin of the kingdom, there the inhabi-
tants acknowledged that person to be their lord and governor;
and since the Jews accepted, and trafficked with Caesar's money,
and held it current in all their payments, our Saviour's answer,
' Render therefore unto Caesar,' which is founded upon their
own principles, must needs be deemed a positive declaration of
C;esar's right to receive tribute, and such other acknowledge-
ments as belonged to the state and dignity of the post wherein
providence had placed him. It might indeed be objected, says
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Upon the defeat given to these two parties, the Sad-
ducees came to him with a question, and a difficulty,
that they thought insurmountable. For, as they had no
belief of a resurrection, they put a case to him of one
woman, who, according to the direction of their law, had
been married to seven brothers successively, and there-
upon desired to know whose wife she was to be at the
general resurrection ? a In answer to which our Lord
gave them to understand, that though marriage was
necessary in this state, in order to raise up a posterity
to mortal man, yet, that, after the resurrection, men would
be immortal, and live like angels devoid of passions,
and incapable of decay ; and then proved the reality of
the resurrection * from one of God's appellations in a
book which themselves allowed to be canonical.
Grotius on (Mat. xxii. 20.) that the Romans ruled over the Jews,
and Cjesar over the Romans, in fact only, and without any right
to do so; but Christ shows, that this objection signifies nothing
to the matter in hand ; for since peace cannot be secured without
forces, nor forces had without pay, nor pay without taxes or
tribute, it follows, that tribute ought to be paid to the person
actually governing, so long as he continues to govern, in con-
sideration of the common safety and protection, which are secured
by the present possessor of the government, whoever the possessor
be. — Whitby's Annotations, and Stanhope on the Epistles and
Gospels, vol. iv.
a The discourse of the Sadducees was founded upon this mis-
take,— That if there would be a resurrection of bodies, there
would necessarily follow a revival of the same relations likewise,
and that the state of the world to come, would be like the state
of this present world, in which, for the propagation and continu-
ance of mankind, men and women marry, and are given in mar-
riage; which gross notion of theirs our Saviour endeavours to
rectify. — Poole's Annotations. — It would appear that the Phari-
sees though they believed in the resurrection entertained very
erroneous notions respecting the condition of mankind in the
future state. On this point there was much difference of opinion
among the Jewish rabbins. Some maintaining that there is
marrying in heaven; others that there is not. The general
opinion was, that the dead would be raised either in their former
or with other bodies. And it was the common notion, that the
offices of the new bodies would be precisely the same with those
of the former ones. The wiser few, however, were of quite
another opinion. But of these some went into the other ex-
treme— and maintained that the raised would have no bodies,
(So Maimonides de Poenit. viii. 3.) in the future state Bloom-
field's Greek Testament, note to Mat. xxii. 30.— Ed.
b The words which our Saviour produces in proof of the re-
surrection are those which God uses to Moses, ' I am the God
of thy Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob,' (Exod. iii. 6.) And the argument which is im-
plied in them is this — That since to be the God of any one, is a
federal expression, which denotes God to be a kind benefactor,
who either doth or will do good to such persons as are in his
favour, and under his protection; since God is not the God of
the dead, and can have no regard or consideration for such as
are mere nonentities, or so dead as never to return to life again ;
since, in this life, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, received no such
signal kindnesses from the Almighty, as answer the emphatical
expression of his being ' their God,' it must necessarily follow,
that God, in declaring himself to be < their God,' did solemnly
engage himself to make them happy after this life, according to
what the author to the Hebrews observes, ' wherefore God is
not ashamed to be called their God ; for he hath prepared for
them a city,' (Heb. xi. 16.) This way of arguing was of great
force against the Sadducees, who denied the immortality of the
soul, as well as the resurrection of the body; and, at the same
time, it fully proves the resurrection of the body: for since the
souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were not the entire persons
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which consisted of bodies as well
as souls, it would from hence follow, that God could truly be their
God, that is, their rewarder and bounteous benefactor, no other
way than by a resurrection of their bodies, to be reunited to
their proper souls.— Poole's aud Bcausobrc's Annotations, and
Tillotson's Sermons, vol. i.
The Pharisees, hearing that the Sadducees were
silenced, began to rally again ; and one of their doctors c
in hopes to insnare our Saviour, in case he should prefer
one part of the law above another, desired to know his
opinion d ' which was to be accounted the greatest com-
mandment of all ?' Whereupon our Lord reduced the
whole law to two general precepts of equal obligation to
all mankind, ' the love of God above all things,' and
the e ' love of our neighbour as ourselves ;' in the former
of which we obey the first, and in the latter, the second
table of the law ; /and with this answer the doctor was
c The person whom we here render doctor, is, by St Matthew,
(chap. xxii. 35.) called a lawyer, and by St Luke, (chap. xx.
39.) a scribe; but in this diversity of words there is no difference
of sense : for the scribes were of two sorts, or had at least two
offices ; the one was, to sit in the chair of Moses, (Mat. xxiii.
2.) that is, to read and interpret the law of Moses to the people ;
the other, to expound to them the traditions which they pretended
to have received from their forefathers. The name of scribe
they seem to have derived from Ezra, about 500 years before,
who is so frequently styled ' a scribe of the law of the Lord, who
read in the book of the law, and expounded it,' (Ezra vii. 12.
Neh. viii. 1. and xii. 36. &c ) And because the traditions
which they taught, and obliged the people to observe, were called
vofii/u.a, or laws, they thence had the appellation of vapixoi, or
lawyers: and as some of the scribes were the persons appointed
to copy out the Bible for such as had occasion for it, and to take
care of the preservation of the purity of the text ; so others em-
ployed themselves in taking the like pains about the traditions
of the elders, and from thence, very likely, though they were
all of the same order of men,) they might have different denomi-
nations.— Whitby's Annotations, and the Introduction to Eackard's
Ecclesiastical History.
d This was a point that often was disputed by the Jewish
doctors ; some contending for the law of circumcision, others
for that of sacrifices, aud others for that of the phylacteries. And
though it was a rule among them, that the law of the sabbath
was to give place to that of circumcision, yet they were not
agreed as to the rest, which was the principal and most important
precept ; only in general they were inclined to give the preference
to the ceremonial part. — Dr Lightfoot remarks, (in his Hor.
Heb. on Mark xii. 28.) that Christ answers the scribe out of a
sentence which was written in the phylacteries, in which he
avoided all occasion of offence, and plainly showed, as the scribe
afterwards observes, (Mark xii. 33.) that the observance of the
moral law was more acceptable to God than all the sacrifices
they could offer to him. — Doddridge's Family Expositor. — Ed.
e That by our neighbour here, we are to understand every
other person who is capable of kindness from us, or stands iu
need of our help, is evident from our Saviour's determination in
the case of the Jew and the good Samaritan ; from the examples
we are called upon to imitate in this affection, namely, the love
oi God and our blessed Saviour; and from these evangelical pre-
cepts, which extend this duty to all men: but by the 'loving
our neighbour as ourselves, it is not required, either that we
should love him from the same inward principles, which excite
our affections to ourselves, or that we should love him to the
same degree and proportion that we love ourselves; but only that
we should make the affection which we bear to ourselves, the
rule we are to follow in expressing our love to him; or, in other
words, that we should lovo him in all the instances wherein we
express our love to ourselves, though not in an equal measure. —
Whitby's Annotations.
f The words in the text are, — ' On these two commandments
hang all ths law and the prophets' (Mat. xxii. 40.) which are a
metaphor taken from the custom mentioned by Tertullian, of
hanging up their laws in a public place to be seen of all men:
and import, that in them is contained all that the law and the
prophets do require, in reference to our duty to God and man.
For, though there be some precepts of temperance which we
owe to ourselves, yet are they such as we may be moved to per-
form from the true love of God and of our neighbour. For the
love of God will preserve us from all impatieuce, discontent, and
evil tastings, It will make us watchful over ourselves to keep
a good conscience, as being solicitous for our eternal wdiare:
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
999
A. M. 1037. A. D.33; OR, A. M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10-END. MARK xi. 15— END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
well pleased. When our Saviour had thus resolved all
their questions, he, in his turn, at last put this one to
them, namely, in what sense the Messiah could be David's
son, when ' David himself, by divine inspiration, ' called
him his Lord ?' But to this they could give no answer,
because they were ignorant, that the Messiah, as God,
was really the Lord of David ; but as man, and descended
from his family, he was his son : and after these disputes,
which were the last he had with them, he went again, in
the evening, with his disciples, to Bethany.
On the next morning, as our Lord was returning to
Jerusalem the third time, the apostles, observing that the
fig-tree, which he had cursed the day before, a was
withered away, and dead to the very root, took notice
of it to him as a thing very strange and surprising ;
whereupon he exhorted them to have stedfast faith in
God ; fervency and perseverance in their prayers, and °
a. forgiving temper to those that had offended them, in
order to make their prayers accepted, and then they
would not fail, in the course of their ministry, to perform
as great or greater miracles c than this.
When our Lord was come into the temple, he began
to teach the people, as he had done the day before ; and
to raise an aversion in his disciples, and in all that heard
him, to the principles, and practices of the scribes and
Pharisees, he took the freedom to expose their vices
without reserve, their pride, their hypocrisy, their covet-
ousness, their hard heartedness to parents, impiety to
God, and cruelty to his faithful servants ; and, upon his
1 Ps. ex. 1.
and the love of our neighbour will restrain us from all angry
passions, such as er.vy, malice, and other perturbations, which
arise against him ; so that these two commands may be very justly
called an abridgment or compendium of the whole Scripture. —
Whitby's Annotations ; and Calmct's Commentary.
a It is remarked of our blessed Saviour's miracles, that they
were all works of mercy and beneficence; and that if any of
them had a contrary tendency, they were always shown upon
brute and inanimate creatures, and that too, not without a
charitable intent of conveying some symbolical instruction to
the spectators, as this withering of the fig-tree was to represent
to the Jewish nation their approaching doom. — Beausohre's
Annotations.
b The command to forgive those that have offended us, before
we pray, not only shows that no resentments of what our brother
hath done should stick long upon our spirits, because they indis-
pose us for that duty which we ought continually to be prepared
for, but that there is likewise some kind of forgiveness to be exer-
cised, even towards him that does not ask it, nor show any tokens of
his repentance, namely, that we should not only free our minds
from all desires of revenge, and so far forget the injury as not to
upbraid him with it; but be inclined likewise to show him kind-
ness, and ready to do him any good turn: for what the law re-
quired of a Jew to do to his enemy's beast, (Exod. xxiii. 4, 5.)
that, without all controversy, the gospel requires of a Christian
to do to his offending brother.' — Whitby s Annotations.
c It was a common saying among the Jews, when they were
minded to commend any one of their doctors for his great dex-
terity in solving difficult questions, that such an one was a
rooter up of mountains; and, in allusion to this adage, our Savi-
our tells his disciples, that < if they had faith, they might say to
a mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and
jt should be done,' (Mat. xxi. 21.) that is, that, in confirmation
of the christian faith, they should be able to do the most difficult
things. For, besides that our Saviour's words are not to be
taken in a literal sense, they are likewise to be restrained to the
age of miracles, and to the persons to whom they were spoken,
namely, the apostles, and first propagators of the christian relig-
ion, because experience teaches us, that this is no ordinary and
standing gift belonging to the church.— Whitby's Annotations.
mentioning this last particular, he broke out into the
same pathetic exclamation against Jerusalem, for her
murdering the prophets, and other messengers sent from
God, that had been the matter of his frequent lamenta-
tions before.
Before he left the temple, he took notice how the
people threw their money into the treasury, d and among
many, who offered very plentifully, observing a poor
woman cast in her two mites, which amount to no more
than a farthing, he called his apostles, and assured
them, that that poor widow had been more liberal than
any of the rest, because their oblations proceeded from
their superfluity, but she from her indigence had given all
she had.
In the afternoon, as they were returning to Bethany,
his apostles took a view of the several buildings of the
temple, and were making their remarks of the largeness
of its stones, e the richness of its ornaments, / and the
beauty and stateliness of the whole ; when our Saviour
acquainted them, that how glorious soever it might ap-
pear at present, it would not be long before the whole
structure should be so entirely ruined, that there should
S ' not so much as one stone be left upon another.'
d The first institution of this treasury, we find in (2 Kings
xii. 9.) where it is said, that ' Jehoiada the priest took a chest,
and bored an hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar, on
the right side, as one goeth into the house of the Lord, and the
priests that kept the door, put therein all the money that was
brought into the house.' This money was at that time given for
the reparation of the temple, and, in after-ages, the money cast
into the treasury, even in our Saviour's time, was designed, not
only for the relief of the poor, but fur sacred uses, and the adorn-
ing of the temple, which might occasion Josephus (in bello Jud.
b. vi. c. 14.) to say, that the temple was built, not only with
the bounty of Herod, but with the money contained in the holy
treasuiy likewise, and with the tributes which were sent from all
parts of the world.— Whitby's Annotations.
e Josephus, who gives us a description of the temple built by
Herod, tells us, among other things, that the ' whole fabric was
made of durable white stones, some of which were five and
twenty cubits long, eight in height, and twelve in breadth.' —
Antiq. b. xv. c. 14.
f These ornaments were the spoils which their kings had taken
in war; the rich presents which foreign princes, upon certain
occasions, had made, and the costly gifts, which the Jews, from
all parts of the world, used to send to the temple at Jerusalem.
These were called rhvadiftara, because they were hung against
the walls and the pillars of the temple, for the people to behold ;
and when Herod rebuilt it, he not only replaced all the former
ornaments, but added several others, especially the spoils which
he took in his war with the Arabians, and a vine of massy gold,
of prodigious weight and value, which was his own free gift —
Joseph. Antiq. and Calnwt's Commentary.
g This prophecy of our blessed Saviour was, in a great measure,
accomplished about forty years after, when, as several Jewish
authors tell us, Taurus, that is, Terentius Rufus, whom Titus
left chief commander of the army in Judea, did with a plough
share tear up the foundations of the temple, and thereby signally
fulfilled the words of the prophet: ' Therefore shall Zion for your
sakes be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps,
and the mountain of the Lord as the high places of the forest,'
(Micah iii. 12.) It can hardly be thought, however, but that,
notwithstanding this demolishment, there might probably be left one
stone upon another; and therefore something more was wanting
towards the literal completion of our Saviour's prophecy to which
the emperor Julian in some measure contributed : for having
given the Jews license to rebuild their temple at Jerusalem,
they took away every stone of the old foundation to help to build
their new edifice; but heaven prevented their design: for flashes
of lightning, as our best historians tell us, burst out from the
foundation they had dug, and so blasted, and terrified them, that
I they were forced to give over their enterprize, after they had
1000
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A.M. 4037. A. D. 33. OR, A.M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. In— END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19-KND.
The general notion was, that this temple was to last
1 even until the end of the world. And therefore, when
our Saviour had seated himself upon mount Olivet, in
full view and prospect of it, his apostles desired to know,
when this destruction would happen, and what would be
the previous signs of it. The signs of it, he told them,
would be the coming of many impostors, n and false
Christs, the rumours of wars, b and famines, c and pestil-
ences, dreadful earthquakes, d prodigies e and amazing
sights in the air, the persecution /of Christians, and the
1 2 Chron. vi. 2.
pulled up and removed all the remains of the old temple. Whit-
by's Annotations; and Calmet's Commentary; See Ammian.
Marcell. b. xxiii. Socrat. b. iii. c. 2.
a Never were there so many impostors of this kind, as in the
time a little before the destruction of Jerusalem, (Joseph. Antiq.
b. xx. c. 6,) doubtless, because this was the age wherein the Jews,
from the prophecy of Daniel, were taught to expect their Messiah.
— Beausobre's Annotations.
b Besides the war which the Jews waged with the Syrians,
not long before the destruction of their city, (Joseph. Antiq. b. 2,
c. 19,) the contests between Othoand Vitellius, and Vitellius and
Vespasian at Rome, were much about the same time, and the
oppression of the governors of Judea, who minded nothing but to
enrich themselves, had so irritated the minds of the people, that,
for some time before their final calamity, we read of nothing but
rebellions and revolts, parties, and factions, and bands of robbers
harrassing and infesting the country. — Calmet's Commentary, and
Beausobre's Annotations.
c In the fourth year of Claudius, as Eusebius informs us,
there happened a great famine, which oppressed all the Roman
empire, but more especially Palestine where many perished,
according to Josephus, for lack of food. (Antiq. b. xx. c. 3.)
And the same historian informs us, that when one Niger was
slain by the Jews, he imprecated famine and pestilence upon
their cities which God accordingly inflicted. — On the Jewish
War, b. iv.c. 23.
d In the reigns of Claudius and Nero, there happened many
earthquakes in Asia Minor, and the isles of the Archipelago,
where the Jews inhabited, (Euseb. Chron. and Tacit. Annal. b.
ii.) and Josephus acquaints us, that in the night, when the Idu-
macans encamped before Jerusalem, " there blew a dreadful tem-
pest of wind and rain, accompanied with such terrible flashes of
lightning, claps of thunder, and bellowing of earthquakes, as put
all the people to their wits' end to think what these prodigies might
portend." — On the Jewish War, b. iv. c. 7.
e In his preface to the history of the wars of the Jews, Jose-
phus undertakes to record the miseries and calamities which befel
that nation, and the signs and prodigies which preceded their
ruin. To this purpose he tells us, that, for a whole year toge-
ther, a comet, in the figure of a sword, hung over the city, and
pointed, as it were, directly down upon it; that there were seen
in the clouds, armies in battle array, and chariots encompassing
the country, and investing their cities; that, at the feast of the
passover, in the middle of the night, a great light shone upon the
temple and altar, as if it had been noon day ; that, at the same
feast, the great gate of the temple made all of massy brass, and
which twenty men could hardly shut, opened of itself, though fas-
tened with bolts and bars; that, at the feast of Pentecost soon
after, when the priests went into the temple to officiate, they
heard at first a kind of confused noise, and then a voice calling
out earnestly, in articulate words, ' Let us be gone, let us be
gone ;' and that these prodigies were really so, we have the tes-
timony of Tacitus, a Roman historian of that age, who has thus
recounted them, " Prodigies happened, conflicting armies were
seen rushing through the sky, along with the appearance of
gleaming armour; and by a sudden ignition of the clouds, the
temple itself seemed enveloped in flames. The doors of the
most sacred places were dashed open, and a voice more than
human was heard exclaiming, 'That the Gods were departed;'
the voice of the earthquake was loud amid the crash of falling
battlements." — Hist. b. v., and Joseph, on Jewish War, b. vii.
c. 12.
/ This part of our Saviour's prediction was literally fulfilled
before the destruction of Jerusalem. As soon as Christianity
propagation s of the gospel all the world over : but that
they might escape the calamity which would suddenly
come upon their country, and utterly destroy h the Jewish
state and government, he advertised them, that, when-
began to spread, the Jews wrote letters to every part of the world ,
against the professors of it, in order to raise persecutions against
them. St Paul, before his conversion, 'breathing out threaten-
ings and slaughter against the disciples of Christ,' (Acts ix. 1,)
' shut up many of them in prison, both men and women,' (Acts
xxii. 4, — xxvi. 10. Himself, when converted, and Silas, were
not only imprisoned, but beaten in the synagogue, (Acts xvi.
23,) as were likewise Peter and John, (Acts v. 18,) Stephen,
the first martyr, was slain by the council, (Acts vii. 59,) James
the Greater, by Herod, (Acts xii. 1,) and James the Less, by
Ananus the high priest: multitudes of Christians were persecut-
ed to death by Saul, (Acts xxii. 4,) by the Jews, as Justin Mar-
tyr testifies, and by the emperor Nero, as Tacitus relates, (An-
nal. b. xv.) For the professors of our most holy religion, before
the principles of it came to be inquired into, were looked upon
as the common enemies of mankind, insomuch, that whosoever
killed them, thought that he did God service, (John xvi. 2.) —
Whitby's Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
g That before the dissolution of the Jewish state, the Christian
religion had spread itself overall the parts of the then known world,
we may reasonably conclude from the labours of St Paul, who
alone carried the gospel through Judea, Syria, Arabia, Greece,
Macedonia, Achaia, Asia Minor, Italy, &c. And if the other
apostles, whose travels we are not so well acquainted with, did
the like, there is no doubt to be made, but that ' their sound went
into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world,'
(Rom. x. 18,) St Peter addresses his first epistle to the elect
that were in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia;
and Clemens, who was his contemporary, and immediate succes-
sor in the see of Rome, in his epistle to the Corinthians, tells us,
' that the nations beyond the ocean were governed by the pre-
cepts of the Lord.' An event this, which he only could fore-
tell, who, having all power in heaven and earth, was able to
eflect it. — Calmet's Commentary, and Whitby's Annotations.
h The words in the text are, ' Immediately after the tribula-
tion of those days, shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall
not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the
powers of the heaven, shall be shaken,' (Matth. xxiv. 29.) That
these words are not to be taken in a literal sense, is plain; be-
cause, that, after the sackage of Jerusalem by Vespasian's army,
no such thing as here is mentioned happened to the sun, moon,
or stars. The expressions therefore must be metaphorical, and
do here denote, as they frequently do in the writings of the pro-
phets and other authors, that entire destruction and utter desola-
tion which it brought upon any nation. For in this language the
prophet Isaiah speaks of the destruction of Babylon : ' The day
of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to
lay the land desolate; and he shall destroy the sinners thereof
out of it: for the stars of heaven, and the constellations thereof,
shall not give their light ; the sun shall be darkened in his going
forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine,' (chap.
xiii. 9,) which, according to Maimonides, are " proverbial ex-
pressions, importing the destruction and utter ruin of a nation,
and of such persons more especially, who, for their state and dig-
nity, might be compared to the sun, moon, and stars," (More
Nevoch. b. ii.) And, accordingly, the sense of our Saviour's
words must be. ' that, after the taking and destroying of Jerusa-
lem, God's judgments shall still pursue the people, so that those
who survived the ruin of their country, should be dispersed into
different regions, sold for slaves, or reduced to a condition worse
than slavery.' And so the event proved : for those who were
carried to Rome served only to adorn the triumph of their con-
queror: those that fled to Antioch for shelter, were cruelly
massacred there: those that maintained the castle of Massada,
rather than fall into the hands of the enemy, agreed to slay one
another. Those that escaped to Thebes and Alexandria were
brought back and tortured to death ; and those of Cyrene, who
joined a false prophet named Jonathan, were all cut to pieces by
the Roman general. All this happened immediately after the
taking of Jerusalem ; and, without any farther search into their
history, is enough to verify our Saviour's expression, that ' the
sun was darkened, and the moon gave no light ' upon that
wretched people. (Joseph. War, b. vii. c. 24, &c.)
Sbct. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
1001
A.M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR, A M. rjU2 A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10-END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHNxii. 19-
ever they should see the city of Jerusalem invested witli
armies, and the temple polluted with abominations,
they might then conclude that this desolation a was ap-
proaching, and that therefore it was high time for them
to provide for their safety b by a quick retreat.
Of the precise time of its coming, however, no created
being, .as he told them, could certainly know ; c and
therefore it was incumbent upon them to keep themselves
in a state of perpetual watchfulness, in a faithful dis-
charge of their respective duties, and in a constant per-
severance in prayer to God, all which he endeavoured
to enforce with several parables ; such as that of the
faithful servant, whom his master at his return from a
journey found employed in his proper business, when
he of a contrary character was surprised in his riot and
debaucheries, and accordingly punished : rf that of the
a The desolation which the Jews suffered in this last war
with the Romans was so vastly great, that all history can scarce
furnish us with an example of the like nature. The number of
the slain was eleven hundred thousand ; the number of prisoners
was ninety-seven thousand. Those that were above seventeen
were sent into Egypt to work in the mines; those that were
under that age, were sold for slaves into different countries; and
a great number of others were distributed in the Roman pro-
vinces, to be exposed to wild beasts on the theatre, and as
gladiators, to kill one another, for the sport and diversion of the
spectators: • Until the cities were wasted without inhabitants,
and the houses without a man, and the land was utterly deso-
late, and the Lord had removed men far away, and there was a
great forsaking in the midst of the land,' as the prophet ex-
presses it. (Is. vi. 11, 12. Joseph. War, b. vii. c. 17.)
b Which accordingly they did: for when Cestius Gallus had
besieged Jerusalem, and, without any visible cause, on a sudden
raised the siege, the Christians that were in the city took this
opportunity to make their escape to Pella in Parea, a mountain-
ous country, and to other places under the government of king
Agrrppa, where they found safety. Thus punctually were all
the predictions of our blessed Saviour fulfilled ; so that whoever
shall compare them, as Eusebius, in his Eccl. Hist. b. iii. c. 7,
expresses it, with the account of Josephus concerning the war
of the Jews, cannot but admire the wisdom of Christ, and own
his predictions to be divine. — Hammond's and Whitby's Anno-
tations.
c The text in St Matthew (chap. xxiv. 36.) is, • but of that
day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven,
but my Father only,' which Boothroyd renders as follows: * but
that day and hour none maketh known: no, not the angels of
heaven, but the Father only;' and adds in a note, "Whether
we refer this to the time when Jerusalem was to be destroyed,
or to the day in which the heavens and earth shall pass away, it is
attended with difficulties, especially as it is read Mark xiii. 32.
where we have 'nor the Son,' &c. By regarding the rest as
transitive with Macknight, the difficulties are removed, and a
plain and easy sense arises. As to the very day and horn-, it
was granted to no one to make known, neither to the angels of
heaven nor to the Son ; but the Father oidy had reserved this
time and season in his own power, (comp. Zech. xiv. 7.; Acts
i. 7.) — Boothroyd. — Ed.
d The punishment inflicted on the evil servant is said to be
cutting asunder, (Mat. xxiv. 51.) in the same manner as Sam-
uel used Agag, (1 Sam. xv. 33.) and David the Ammonites,
(2 Sam. xii.31.) and Nebuchadnezzar threatened the blasphem-
ers of the true God. (Dan. iii. 29.) This punishment was, in
old times, inflicted on those that were false to their creditors,
rebels to their prince, or betrayers of their country. — JVhitly's
Annotations. — Many instances occur in ancient writers of this
nirthod of executing criminals; and from Dr Shaw and other
modern travellers we learn that it is still in use among some
nations, particularly the western Moors in Barbary (Shaw's
Trav. vol. i. p. 456, 457.) It is thought to have come origin-
ally from Persia or Chaklea; and it certainly corresponds with
the barbarous dispositions which those bitter and hasty nations
too much indulged. Calmet informs us that not many years
ago the Swiss executed this terrible punishment in the plain of
END.
wise and foolish virgins, who were differently prepared
at the coming of the bridegroom : e and that of the
talents intrusted with diligent and slothful servants. S
And as this destruction of Jerusalem was no small
emblem of the final consummation of all things, from
hence he proceeds to describe S the manner of his com-
Grenelles, near Paris, on one of their own countrymen who had
been guilty of a great crime. They put him into a coffin and
sawed him at length, beginning at the head, as a piece of wood
is sawn. Parisates the king of Persia caused Roxana to be sawn
in two alive (Journey to Mcquinez, p. 157.) According to
Windus, the same dreadful punishment is often inflicted in
Morocco, where the criminal is put between two boards, and
sawn from the head downwards till the body fall in two pieces.
The laws of the twelve tables, which the Romans borrowed from
the Greeks, condemned certain malefactors to the punishment of
the saw; but the execution of it was so rare, that, according to
Aulus Gellius, none remembered to have seen it practised. But
in the time of Caligula the emperor, many people of rank and
fortune were condemned to be sawn in two through the middle.
(Suetonius, b. iv. s. 26.) — Paxton's Illustrations, vol. iii. pp.
305, 306.— Ed.
e The better to understand the sense of this parable, we
should do well to observe what the custom at marriages was to
which our Saviour seems to allude. When the bridegroom was
to bring home his bride, which was generally the conclusive
ceremony, and done in the night time, the young women of the
town to which she was to come, in order to do her honour, went
to meet her with lighted lamps; she too, according to her qual-
ity and condition, had her companions and servants attending
her, and some of the most beautiful ladies in the place from
whence she came, going before her. Statius describes a mar-
riage, whereat the nine muses appeared with their lamps:
"The goddesses remove from Helicon, and shake the sacred
fire in their nine lamps for the approaching nuptials." (Sylv. b.
i.) And most of our modern travellers inform us, that among
the eastern people, especially the Persians, this way of conduct-
ing the bride home, with lamps and lighted torches, still pre-
vails. None need be told, that by the bridegroom we are to
understand our Saviour Christ; by the bride his church; by the
virgins, Christians in general ; and by the oil in their lamps,
the necessary qualifications of faith and good works. — Calmefs
Commentary.
f For an explication of this parable we may observe, that the
man travelling into a far country, is our Saviour Christ, who,
by ascending into heaven, has deprived the church of his corpo-
real presence; that his servants are Christians in general, or
more particularly, his apostles and first ministers, who succeeded
him in the propagation of the gospel; and that the talents com-
mitted to their management are the supernatural gifts which he
bestowed upon them, and all the endowments both of body and
mind, all the helps and means and opportunities which he gives
us, in order to serve him, and to work out our own salvation. —
Calmefs Commentary.
g The reason of our Lord's mingling the signs of the particu-
lar destruction of Jerusalem, and of the general dissolution of
the world together, was to engage us, at the approach of particu-
lar judgments upon cities and nations, to be always mindful and
prepared for the general judgment of the last day. There is
one thing, however, peculiar in his expression upon this occasion,
namely, that 'this generation should not pass away, until all
these things were done/ (Mark xiii. 30.) for if his words imme
diately foregoing related to the coming of the day of judgment,
and general dissolution of all things, it will be hard to conceive
how that great event should be said to come to pass before the
extinction of the race of mankind then in being. But in answer
to this, it may be observed, that the Jews were wont to divide the
duration of the world into three grand epochas, which, according
to their style, were called generations, each consisting of 2000
years ; whereof the first was before the law, the second under
the law, and the third under the gospel ; and it is to the last of
these generations, as they called them, that this latter part of
our Lord's prophetic discourse does properly belong. A miscon-
ception of this expression indeed led some primitive Christians
into a mistake concerning the approach of the final judgment;
and as long as that mistake had no other tendency than to make
6 L
1002
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4037. A. D. 33 ; OR, A. M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15
ing to the last .and general judgment, when, surrounded
with the refulgent rays of his majesty, and seated upon
his bright throne of glory, with all the holy angels of
heaven attending him, he should summon all the people
that ever lived in the world, to appear before him;
and having made inquisition into the discharge of the
great duty of charity a should punish or reward mankind
them more fervent, and zealous, and heavenly-minded, more
patient and heroic under sufferings and persecutions, and more
fervent and diligent in preaching the gospel, &c, the generality
of the inspired writers might think this a sufficient reason to
overlook it. But St Peter we find takes particular care to rec-
tify the mistake and to obviate the objection, which a spirit of in-
fidelity had taken occasion to raise from it, as we may see at
large in 2 Pet. iii. — Universal Hist. b. ii. c. 11.
a It may seem strange that in this representation of the judg-
ment, the inquiry should be said to turn not upon the commis-
sion of crimes, but upon the performance of duties. The reason
may be, that, generally speaking, men look upon the neglect of
duties as a trivial anair, but dread the commission of crimes.
And hence it comes to pass, that while they keep themselves
clear of the latter, they are apt to find many excuses for the
former. Wherefore, as there is not a more pernicious error
respecting religion and morality than this, it was highly becom-
ing the wisdom of Jesus to give such au account of the judgment
as should be the most solemn caution possible against it. But
since the inquiry is said to turn wholly upon the performance
of duties, it may seem more strange still, that the offices of
charity only are mentioned, and not a word spoken of any search
made into men's conduct with regard to the duties of piety;
notwithstanding the Judge himself, upon another occasion,
declared such to be of greater importance than the duties of
charity, that are so highly applauded in the parable. Neverthe-
less, to justify this part of the representation, let it be considered
that piety and charity never can subsist separately; piety and
its root, faith, always producing charity; and charity, wherever
it subsists, necessarily presupposing piety. The connection
between piety and charity will clearly appear, provided this
dictate of reason and experience is attended to, namely, that no
man can be truly benevolent and merciful, without loving those
dispositions. If so, he must love benevolence in God, that is,
must love God himself. I speak of those who believe there is a
God, for piety, or the love of God, is nothing else but the regard
we cherish towards Gud on account of his perfections. Piety
and charity being thus essentially connected together, to exam-
ine men's conduct with respect to either of these graces was
sufficient. In the parable the inquiry is represented as turning
upon the duties of charity, perhaps because in this branch of
goodness there is less room for self-deceit than in the other.
Hypocrites, by showing much zeal in the externals of religion,
oftentimes make specious pretensions to extraordinary piety, and
uncommon heights of the love of God, while in the mean time
they are altogether defective in charity; are covetous, unjust,
rapacious, and proud, consequently really void of the love of
God. The case is otherwise with the love of man. None can
assume the appearance of this grace but by feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, relieving the distressed, and performing the
other friendly offices of love. Charity therefore does not easily
admit of self-deceit. It is true works of charity may, in some
particular cases, proceed from other principles than the holy
root of a pious benevolent disposition ; such as from vanity, or
even from views of interest. But then it must be remembered,
that an ordinary hypocrisy will hardly engage men to undertake
them. They are by far too weighty duties to be sustained by
those hollow false principles which support bad men, and by that
means are seldom counterfeited. For which cause, wherever a
genuine, extensive, and permanent charity is found, we may
safely conclude that there the love of God reigns in perfection.
This parable therefore teaches us in the plainest manner, that
pretensions to piety, however loud, will avail a man nothing at
the bar of God, if he be deficient in wo*ks of charity. At the
same time, taken in its true light, it gives no man reason to
hope well either of himself or others, if they be wanting in their
duty to God, and that although they should not only be charit-
able, but grateful also, and just, and temperate, and outwardly
blameless in all their dealings with men. The reason is this,
END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHNxii. 19— END
according as he finds that they have acquitted themselves
in that respect.
As soon as our Lord had finished this prophetic dis-
course, he went in the evening to Bethany, and there
supped at the house of one Simon, whom he had form-
erly cured of a leprosy. At supper, Mary, to testify
her love and respect, came, and, out of an alabaster
cruise, poured a large quantity of such rich ointment
upon his head as filled the whole house with its fragrant
smell. This seeming prodigality raised the indignation
of the rest of the apostles as well as Judas ; and, as they
made the same objection, so our Saviour's defence of
Mary turns upon the same topics ; only he adds, ' that
as she had done a great and generous action, whereso-
ever his gospel should be preached through the whole
world, there should her munificent re«ard to him be
the duty we owe to God is no other than what is due to men in
the like circumstances, and which if we neglected we should be
unjust to them. It consists of dispositions and actions the same
in kind, but different in degree, proportionable to the perfection
of the object. He who loves and admires holiness, justice,
goodness, and truth in men, cannot but love these perfections in
God, that is, must love God. So likewise he that is truly grate-
ful to an earthly benefactor, cannot be ungrateful to one from
whose bounty all the good things he enjoys do flow. And since
ingratitude in men consisteth in this, that the person obliged
forgetteth the benefit he has received, never thinks of his bene-
factor, and is at no pains to make suitable returns; how can he
acquit himself from the charge of ingratitude to God, who never
thinks of God, nor of the favours that he hath received from him,
hath no sense of the obligations he lieth under to him, and is not
at the pains so much as to return him thanks, that is to say,
wholly neglects the external and internal exercises of devotion.
Since therefore the duty we owe to God is the same in kind
with that which men claim from us in like circumstances; it is
unquestionable that true morality never can exist where there
is no piety; and that for one to pretend to morality who is des-
titute of piety, is altogether ridiculous. But if this parable gives
persons no encouragement who are destitute of piety, although
they should make a fair show of many moral virtues, it much
less gives those any ground of hope, who not only are void of
piety, but are faulty almost in bxery respect, unless it be that
they have a lovely kind of tenderness and humanity in their dis-
position, which leads them on some occasions to do excellent
acts of beneficence. For though there be nothing said of any
inquiry made concerning the duties of justice, temperance,
chastity, and fidelity, we are by no means on that account to
fancy these virtues shall not be inquired after at the judgment,
and rewarded wherever they are found. Or, that the contrary
vices of falsehood, and fraud, and debauchery, shall not be taken
notice of, and punished. Charity being the end of the com-
mandment, so far as it respects our duty to men, is the higher
branch, and therefore has for its supports justice, veracity, and
the other social virtues. Moreover, being connected with tem-
perance, chastity, and self-government, it can never be without
these attendant graces, the neglect of which is evidently a direct
and gross breach of charity, oi leadeth thereto. In a word, as
among the vices, so among the virtues, there is a natural affini-
ty and close connection. They are somehow absolutely essen-
tial and necessary to each other, and so can in no case subsist
separately. For which reason, if any of them be wanting, much
more if so capital a virtue as the love of God be wanting, it is
a sure proof that our charity, our justice, our temperance, or
whatever other grace we seem to have, is but the mimicry of
these virtues, and not the virtues themselves. At the same
time it cannot be denied, that the parable is formed so as to
give us the highest idea of works of charity; they are demanded
at the judgment as the fruit and perfection of all the virtues, and
loudly applauded wherever they are found. On the other hand,
hard-heartedness, cruelty, and uncharitableness are branded with
the blackest mark of infamy, being the foundation on which the
sentence of condemnation passed against the wicked is unalter-
ably and eternally fixed. — Macknight's Harmony. — Ed.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
1003
A. M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR, A. M. 5412. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10
likewise published, to her everlasting honour and re-
nown.'
When supper was ended, our Lord repaired to his
usual lodgings at Martha's house : and, on the day fol-
lowing, in all probability, continued at Bethany, with-
out going to Jerusalem, as he had done the days before.
In the mean time the sanhedrim a assembled at the
palace of Caianhas, B the high priest, where the priests,
scribes, and elders of the people had a solemn debate
and consultation how they might take Jesus by some
secret stratagem, and put him to death. This was the
second council that they had held upon this occasion ;
and though therein it was determined that he should die,
yet they thought it not so adviseable to put the thing in
execution in the time of the ensuing solemnity, lest it
should cause a sedition among the people, who had the
highest veneration for him. c
When evening was come, he, with his apostles, supped
very probably, at Martha's house, and while they were
at table, considering with himself that his time was now
short, he was minded to give them a testimony of his
love, and, from his own example, teach them two virtues
which, of all others, were more especially requisite in
their ministry of the gospel, humility and charity. To
this purpose, rising from the table, laying aside his
upper garment, and girding himself with a towel, d as the
manner of servants then was when they waited on their
masters, he poured water into a basin, and began to
wash his apostles' feet, and to wipe them with the towel.
a The consultation which the sanhedrim helil, and the agree-
ment which Judas made with them to betray our Lord, were on
Wednesday ; and therefore the church gives it as a reason why we
ought to fast on Wednesday and Friday, because on the one
Christ was betrayed, and suffered on the other. — Whitby's An-
notations,
b This Caiaphas is called by the Jewish historian Joseph.
The high priesthood he purchased of Valerius Gratus: and after
he had ten years enjoyed that dignity, was deposed by Vitellius,
governor of Syria, and succeeded by Jonathan, the son of Ana-
nus or Anas. — Calmet's Dictionary and Commentary.
c It, however, pleased God to defeat this intention, as it was
proper that Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, should be sacrificed
at that season ; and that his death and resurrection should be
rendered the more extensively known, " Maimonides saith, it
was the custom among the Jews to punish those who rebelled
against the sentence of the judge or the high priest,or were notori-
ously criminal, at one of the three feasts, because then only, by
reason of the public congress of the people, all might hear and
fear. (Deut. xvii. 12, 13.) From this received custom the
fathers of the sanhedrim seem willing to recede, for fear of the
multitude, hut having so fair an oiler made by Judas, they
embrace that season. — Whitby. — God himself and not man ap-
pojnted the time in which Christ should be crucified."' — Beza.
— Scott's Comment. — Ed.
d The towel which was used to wipe the feet after washing
was considered through all the east as a badge of servitude.
Suetonius mentions it as a sure mark of the intolerable pride of
Caligula, the Roman emperor, that when at supper he suffered
senators of the highest rank, sometimes to stand by his couch,
sometimes at his feet, girt with a towel, (chap, xxvi.) Hence
it appears that this honour was a token of the deepest humilia-
tion, which was not, however, absolutely degrading and incon-
sistent with all regard to decency. Vet our blessed Redeemer
did not refuse to give his disciples and Judas Iscariot himself
that wonderful proof of his love and humility. On the very
night in which he was betrayed into the hands of his enemies,
while his thoughts were intensely occupied with the glory which
he had with his Father before the creation of the world, to which
he knew well he was in a few days to return, triumphant over
all his foes, he resolved to neglect no service which might
END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
Amazed at this condescension, St Peter, when he came
to him, refused at first to admit of such a servile office
from his heavenly master ; but when he urged the neces-
sity, and in some measure showed the symbolical
intent of it, he permitted him to do just what he thought
fit.
When our Lord had made an end of washing his apo-
stles' feet, he put on his garment, and sat down at table
again, and began to tell them the meaning of what he
had done, namely, ' that since he, who was justly ac-
knowledged to be their lord and master, had so far de-
based himself as to wash their feet, they, in imitation of
his example, ought to think it no disparagement to them
to perform the meanest offices of kindness and charity
to one another : for though they were exalted to the
dignity of his apostles, yet still they were but his serv-
ants ; and that therefore it would be a high piece of
arrogance in them to assume more state and grandeur
than their master had done before them.' e
Soon after this, reflecting with himself how well he
had loved, and, upon all occasions, how kindly he had
treated these his disciples, he was not a little concerned
that any of them should prove so base and ungrateful as
to betray him ; and when he had declared the thing, and
Peter desirous to know the person, beckoned to John, who
was nearest his master, to ask him the question, he sig-
nified to him that it was Judas Iscariot, to whom he gave
soften the heart of Judas, and confirm and encourage his other
disciples in their duty; he condescended to stoop down and
wash those feet which had followed him in many a long and
fatiguing journey, giving his faithful followers in that significant
action a pledge of the high honour which awaited them, and the
pure and elevated joy which was to cheer their hearts in his
service, and crown their labours after they had finished their
appointed course. The example of humility which he set them
on this occasion was absolutely incomparable: no instance ever
occurred among the Jews of a lord or master washing the feet of
his servants or disciples. Besides, the Son of God was not
ignorant that the Father had committed all things into his
hands; and that a name was soon to be given him, at which
eveiy knee should bow, and every tongue confess. Yet he did
not hesitate to wash the feet of his own servants, proving by this
very act, that he 'came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.'
Nor did he humble himself to the hosts of heaven : but to sinful
and miserable men, and even to his most atrocious betrayer.
'Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his
hands, and that he was come from God and went to God; he
riseth from supper, and laid aside his upper garments; and
took a towel and gilded himself. After that he poureth water
into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe
them with the towel wherewith he was girded.' (John xiii. 3 —
5.) — PaMon's Illustratiotis, vol. iii. pp. 100, 101. — Ed.
e That all this happened at Bethany whilst our Lord was with
his apostles at supper in the house of Martha, seems ta me very
improbable. When he washed his apostles' feet no person ap-
pears to have been present but he and they; and he surely acted
as master of the house, or at least of the supper, himself. Dr
Hales is of opinion that it was after he had eaten with his dis-
ciples the paschal supper in Jerusalem, and immediately before
he instituted his own supper, that he washed their feet, to give
them a lesson of humility; and notwithstanding the powerful
objections urged against that opinion by Whitby, I am strongly
inclined to adopt it. The words ■r^a Be cij; I<jjt5k too -jraiT-^a,
which our translators render, ' Now before the feast of the pass-
over,' do not mean days before it, but rather just before they
were to enter on the celebration ; and though it was not till the
paschal supper, or at least the first course of it, was finished,
($tlit*ou ytysfiivou) that our Lord girt himself with the tcwel,
&c. it seems to have been just before he sat down to supper, that
he resolved to exhibit this proof of his love to his own. See
Parkhurstfs Lexicon on the word ijdtu.— Ed,
1004
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VI1L
142. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10-END. MARK xi. 15— END. LUKExix. 45-END. JOHNxii. 19— END.
A.M. 4037. A. D. 33. OR, A
a sop, as he told John he would, and when he had so
done, a bade him go about what he had to do with all
expedition ; which the rest of the apostles, being ig-
norant of the signal which our Lord had given John,
supposed to be an order to Judas, as he was the purse-
bearer, either to give something to the poor, or to pro-
vide what was necessary for the feast.
As soon as supper was ended, Judas being now con-
firmed in his wicked resolution, left Bethany in haste ;
and understanding that the Sanhedrim was met at the
high priest's house, thither he repaired, and upon their
giving him a sufficient reward offered to betray his mas-
ter, and, in the manner that they desired, to deliver him
privately into their hands. This proposition was higldy
pleasing to the council, who immediately bargained
with him for thirty pieces of silver ; * and when Judas
had received the money, from that moment he sought an
opportunity to betray his Master in the absence of the
multitude.
While Judas was thus bartering for his Master's blood,
his Master was preparing the rest of his apostles for his
departure, and endeavouring to comfort them with this
consideration, — That his death would be a means to dis-
play both his own and his Father's glory, as it was a pre-
liminary to his resurrection and ascension into heaven :
As therefore it was decreed, that he must leave them, the
stronger should their union be with one another ; and
therefore he recommended very earnestly to them the
duty of mutual love, a duty which hitherto had been so
much neglected, that his injoining it then might well be
accounted a new commandment, and what was to be the
common badge and character of his true disciples c for
ever after.
When the day d before the feast of the passover was
a This was not a command to Judas to go on with his wicked
enterprise, but only a declaration made by Christ of his readi-
ness to suffer death; "This is not a voice of commanding, but
obeying; not of fear, but preparation for death," says Leo, on
the Suffering, (ser. vii.) — Calmet's Commentary, and Whitby's
Annotations.
b These pieces were staters or shekels of the sanctuary, thir-
ty of which amounted to three pounds and fifteen shillings of our
money, the usual price that was given for a man or a maid servant,
(Exod. xxi. 32.) It is hardly supposable, that any of those
pieces are, at this time, extant, though both at Rome and Paris
there are pieces shown which are pretended to be the very same
that were part of the price of the purchase of our Saviour's blood •
but persons, well skilled in that art, assure us, that these pieces
are only the ancient medals of Rhodes, on the one side stamped
with a Coloss, which represents the sun, and on the other with a
rose, which was the city arms, as we call it. — Eachard's Eccle-
siastical History, b. i. c. 4, and Calmet's Commentary.
c The disciples of the Baptist were known by the austerity of
their lives, and the disciples of the Pharisees by their habit and
separation from other men; but our blessed Saviour was willing
to have his disciples known by their mutual love and affection to
each other, which, in the primitive ages, was so great, that it
made the heathens, with admiration, cry out, ' See how they love
one another! and even hate and envy them for their mutual affec-
tion.'— Whitby's Annotations.
d The words in St Matthew, xxvi. 17, are, <■ the first
day of the feast;' but it is no uncommon thing to put the word
first for that which properly went before. Thus, in the Old Tes-
tament it is said, < that the hands of the witnesses shall be first
upon him,' that is condemned to die, ' to put him to death, and
afterwards the hands of all the people,' (Deut. xvii. 7.) But if
the hands of the witnesses should first despatch him, there would
be no occasion for the hands of the people ■ and therefore the sense
of the word first in this place must be, that the witnesses should
come, our Lord sent Peter and John to Jerusalem to
prepare all things according to the law ; and lest they
should want a convenient room for the celebration of the
Paschal supper, he had predisposed the heart of a cer-
tain host in the city e to accommodate them with one.
They therefore having provided a lamb, slain it in the
temple, sprinkled its blood on the altar, and done every
thing else that was required of them, returned to their
Master at Bethany ; who perceiving that his late dis-
course about leaving the world and them had blasted all
their hopes of secular greatness, and left them melancholy
and disconsolate, staid a good part of the day with them,
in order to raise their drooping spirits with the assur-
ances of an happy immortality, which, as he told them,
he was going before / to prepare for them in heaven, and
wanted not power to do it, because he and his Father,
as to their divinity, were perfectly the same; and with
the promise of sending them the Holy Spirit from above,
which he took care to represent as a comforter, s to sup-
port them in their afflictions ; as a teacher, to instruct
them in all necessary truths ; and as an advocate, to
plead and defend their cause against their enemies. So
that they had no reason to be dejected, because, in this
sense, he would be always with them ; because, whatever
they asked in his name, his Father would give them ;
and because, when he was gone, they should be enabled
to do miracles, h greater than what they had seen him do:
smite him before he was delivered into the hands of the people.
In the first book of Maccabees, it is twice said of Alexander the
Great that he reigned the first over Greece, (Chap. i. 1, and vi.
2,) but every one knows that before him there were several kings
in Macedonia; and therefore the meaning of the words must be,
that he reigned in Macedonia before he reigned in Asia: and to
the same purpose in the New Testament, we find St Paul styl-
ing our Blessed Lord ' the first born of every creature,' (Col. i.
15,) that is, begotten of the Father before the production of any
creature: and telling us, that 'the husbandman that laboureth
must first partake of the fruits, (2 Tim. ii. ti,) that is, he must
labour, before he can reap the fruits of his travel ; and, in the
like acceptation of the word, ' the first day of the feast' may
be interpreted the day be/ore the feast, as might be prove I
likewise by examples from Heathen authors. — Calmet's Com-
mentary.
e It is to be observed, that the houses in Jerusalem, at this
time of the feast, were of common right to any that would eat the
Passover in them, and yet it is not unlikely that our Lord might
be well known to the master of this house, who, very probably,
took it as an high honour that he had made choice of his rather
than any other, to eat the Paschal supper iu. — Whitby s Annota-
tions, and Calmet's Commentary.
f Our Saviour speaks this in allusion to travellers, who send
generally one of the company before to provide good accommoda-
tion for the rest. — Beausobre's Annotations.
g The word srajaxXjjTss , in this place, signifies both an advocate
and a comforter ; and the Holy Spirit, when he descended upon
the apostles, did the part of an advocate, by confirming their
testimony by signs and miracles, and various gifts imparted to
them, and by pleading their cause before kings and rulers, and
against all their adversaries, (Matth. x. 18, and Luke xxi. 1,)
and he did the part of a comforter likewise, as he was sent for
the consolation of the apostles, and all succeeding Christians, in
all their troubles, filling their hearts with joy and gladness, and
giving them an inward testimony of God's love to them together
with an assurance of their future happiness, (Rom. viii. 15, 16.)
— Whitby's and Beausobre's Annotations.
h What interpreters say of diseases healed by the shadow of
Peter, and by napkins sent from St Paul, of more miracles per-
formed throughout the world, and, for the space of three whole
centuries, devils ejected every where, is not unfitly mentioned
here as answering to our Saviour's words; and yet, we cannot
but think that this should chiefly be referred to the wonderful
Sect. 1V.J
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
1005
A. M. 4037. A.D. 33; OR, A. M. 5142. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45- END. JOHN xii. 19-END.
1 and therefore ' peace I leave with you,' says he, tak-
ing- his farewell, ' my peace I give unto you : not as the
world giveth, give I unto you a ; let not your heart be
troubled, neither let it be afraid.'
As soon as he had ended his discourse, he arose, and,
with his disciples, going towards Jerusalem, arrived at
the place where they were to eat the Paschal lamb. In
the evening when it grew dark, they sat down to
the table in a leaning posture ; b and, as he began to
1 John xiv. 27.
success of the gospel preached by the apostles, after the descent
of the Holy Ghost upon them ; to the gift of tongues, and the in-
terpretation of them ; of prophecy and discerning of spirits; and
the imparting these gifts to others by baptism, and the imposition
of the apostles' hands. For as this was a greater work in our
Blessed Saviour to assist so many with his mighty power, when
absent at so great a distance as the earth is from heaven, than to
do miracles in their presence; so to communicate these gifts to
men, and to enable them to transfer them to others, is, as Amo-
bius expresses it, " belonging to a power raised above all, and
containing within it the cause of all things, and the seed of reason
and philosophy," (b. i. p. 32,) and especially when our Lord suc-
ceeded so little in his three years' preaching here on earth, and
had so few sincere disciples, that he should enable his apostles, at
one sermon, to convert some thousands, and cause his gospel to fly
like lightning through the world, and beat down all the strong holds
of opposition, this is truly wonderful. — fVkitby's Annotations.
a That is, in empty wishes of what they neither do, nor can
give; or that external peace, which is both temporary and un-
certain ; but inward peace of conscience, arising from the par-
don of your sins, (Rom. v. 1,) from the sense of the favour of
God, and of my presence with you by the Blessed Spirit; that
peace, which no man taketh from you, which will keep your
hearts in the faith, (Phil. i. 7,) and free you from all solicitude
and fear of the world. — Whitby's Annotations.
b At the first institution of thePaschal supper the Israelites were
commanded to eat it in a standing posture and in haste, (Exod.
xii. 11,) but here we find our Saviour and his apostles eating
it lying down, or inclining on their left side, as it was then the
manner of the Jews. When, or upon what account, this altera-
tion came to be made, we have no other information than what we
find in the writings of their Rabbins, namely, that they used this
leaning posture as freemen do, in memory of their freedom. The
custom of reclining was introduced from the nations of the east,
and particularly from Persia, where it seems to have been adopted
at a very early period ; the Jews appear to have borrowed this
custom from the Persians and Chaldeans, for we do not find that
it was practised in the early part of their state. At the enter-
tainments, the tables were constructed of three ditlerent parts,
or separate tables, making but one in the whole. One was placed
at the upper end cross ways, and the two others joined to its
ends, one on each side, so as to leave an open space between, by
which the attendants could readily wait atall the three. Round
these tables were placed beds or couches, one to each table ; each
of these beds was called clinium; and three of these being
united, to surround the three tables, made the triclinium. At the
end of each clinium was a footstool, for the convenience of mount-
ing up to it. These beds were formed of mattresses, and sup-
ported on frames of wood, often highly ornamented ; the mattres-
ses were covered with cloth or tapestry, according to the quality
of the entertainer. At the splendid feast which Ahasuerus made
for the nobles of his kingdom, buds of silver and gold were placed
round the tables; according to a custom in the cast of naming
a thing from its principal ornament; these must have been
couches profusely ornamented with the precious metals. To this
day, the cushions in the hall of audience, and also in the room
for receiving guests in private houses, are placed round the car-
pet in cases of gold and silver kincol, or of scarlet cloth embroid-
ered: these are occasionally moved into the courts and gardens
and placed under the canopy for the accommodation of company.
{Kith. i. 5, 6, Forbes's Orient. Mem. vol. iii. p. 192.) Each
guest inclined the superior part of his body upon his left arm,
the lower part being stretched out at length, or a little bent; his
head was raised tip, and his back sometimes supported with pil-
lows. If several persons lay upon the same bed, then the first
lay on the uppermost part, with his legs stretched out behind tin
renew his discourse, ' that one in the company should
certainly betray him, but that better it had been for the
man who did so, if he had never been born,' the concern
and sadness was so general, that every one began to
inquire for himself, ' whether he was the man ?' Until
it came to Judas's turn, who, having the confidence to
ask the same question, received a positive answer, ' that
he was :' whereupon he soon withdrew ■ from his Master,
and adjoined himself to his enemies, who were impa-
tiently expecting the performance of his promise.
When the Paschal supper was ended, our Saviour pro-
ceeded to the institution of another, in commemoration
of his own death and passion. For he took bread, and
when he had blessed it, and broken it, he distributed it to
his apostles, calling it ' his body,' and after he had so
done he took the cup of wine, and having in like man-
ner blessed it, he gave it among them, calling it his d
' blood of the new covenant,' and commanding them to
do the same, that is, to eat bread and drink wine in this
second person's back ; the second person's head lay below the
bosom of the former, his feet being placed behind the third per-
son's back; and the rest in like manner: for though it was ac-
counted mean or sordid at Rome to place more than three or four
upon one bed, yet, as we are informed by Cicero, the Greeks
used to crowd five, and often a greater number, into the same
bed. Persons beloved commonly lay in the bosoms of those that
loved them: the fact is thus attested by Juvenal: — " The sup-
per is waiting, the new-married bride lies in the lap of her hus-
band.'' (Sat. ii. 120.) And for the same reason, according
to the well-known custom, the beloved disciple lay in the bosom
of his Lord, at the celebration of the passover. The head of the
second being opposite to the bosom of the first, if he wanted to
speak to him, especially if the thing was to be secret, he was
obliged to lean upon his bosom: thus the apostle John, wishing
to speak secretly to his Lord, leaned from necessity upon his bo-
som. (John xiii. 23, Potter's Antiq. vol. ii. p. 377, Plin. Epist.
iv. p. 22.) Ir conversation, those who spoke, raised themselves
almost upright, supported by cushions. When they ate, they raised
themselves on their elbow, and made use of the right hand ;
(Horace, Ode i. 27,) which is the reason our Lord mentions
the hand of Judas in the singular number; ' He that dippeth his
hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.' (Mat.
xxvi. 23.) Sometimes the Greeks and Romans used both hands,
to which practice, the mantis unctce of Horace refers; (Epist. i.
16, 23,) but if the custom existed among the Jews, the right
hand was commonly used ; or at the time when our Lord made
that declaration, he and his disciples were using only their right
hands. — Paxtoris Illustrations, vol. iii. p. 92 — 94. — Ed.
C The question whether Judas partook of the Lord's Supper, or
not, must be decided by the interpretation given to the second
verse. If the supper was ended, when Jesus washed the feet of
his disciples, Judas must have been present at the institution of
the Lord's Supper: if the supper was then only prepared or be-
gun, it is probable that Judas retired, before the Lord's Supper
was appointed. Yet even in this supposition, much might be
urged on the other side, and at least it is to us of little conse-
quence. No discipline can exclude plausible hypocrites; and
scriptural discipline would exclude openly immoral and ungodly
persons, and infidels. —Scott's Commentary. — Ed.
d The reason which our Saviour gives for our participating of
the cup, namely, ' because it is the blood of the New Testament,
which is shed for the remission of sins,' concerns the laity, as well
as the priests, because his blood was equally shed for both ; and
therefore the command, ' drink ye all of this,' to which the rea-
son is annexed, concerns them likewise. But there is another
reason why our Lord said to his apostles, ' Eat this bread, and
drink this cup,' namely, that by so doing, they might remember
his death, his body broken, and his blood shed for them, says
St Luke, and show it forth till his second coming, (1 Cor. xi.
20'.) now this, as St Paul demonstrates, concerns all believers,
as well as priests; and therefore the drinking of the cup, by
which this commemoration is made, as well as eating of the
bread, must equally concern them.- IVhltly's Annotations.
1006
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[Book VIII.
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sacramental manner, even unto the end of the world, in
remembrance of him.
After this institution of the form of that memorial,
which his apostles and their posterity were to continue,
he gave them to understand, that this was the last paschal
supper which he should eat, and the last wine that he
should drink with them, until a he drank it new in the
kingdom of God : from which words some of his apostles
inferring-, that though his kingdom was not to be then,
yet it would not fail to commence immediately after his
resurrection, they fell into unseasonable contentions
about priority, or who should have the office of the highest,
trust and honour about their Master ; which our Lord
endeavoured to repress, by the same arguments that he
had employed l upon the like occasion. And then
turning to Peter, he apprised him of the imminent danger
which he and his brethren were in, and what a severe
trial the great enemy of mankind would very speedily
bring upon them ; to whom Peter, in confidence of his
own courage and resolution, answered for himself, that
' he was ready to go with him to prison, and to death :'
but our Saviour, who best knew his weakness, gave him
to understand, that b ' before the crowing of the cock he
should deny him thrice.'
1 Mat. xx. 25.
a Some are of opinion, that by the kingdom of God here, as
in several other places, we are not to understand heaven, or the
happiness we are there to enjoy, but rather the gospel-state, and
the kingdom of Christ, which began at his resurrection, and was
more fully established, when he sat down at the right-hand of
power, and was made heir of all things; and consequently, that
our Lord's drinking of wine may then relate to his eating and
drinking with his disciples after he arose from the dead, (Acts
x. 41.) but because the felicities of heaven are frequently repre-
sented under the metaphors of eating and drinking, (Mat. xxvi.
29. Luke xxii. 18.) others make the sense of our Saviour's words
to be this — ' I will not henceforth drink of the fruit of the vine,
but both you and I, in my Father's glory, shall be satisfied with
rivers of pleasures, far sweeter, and more excellent, than the
richest wines can be.' There is, however, a third way of inter-
preting this passage, which, by comparing it with the words of
St Luke, seems by much the most probable, and that is, by
making the ' fruit of the vine ' signify, in a peculiar manner,
the cup in the passover, or the 'cup of charity,' in the postcoe-
nium of the passover, wherein the sacrament of Christ's body
and blood was founded. For that Christ was now to die, and
neither before, nor after his resurrection, to eat any more pass-
overs with liis apostles, or any mine to drink this cup of charity,
now designed to a christian use, is sufficiently evident. It is
observable, therefore, in St Luke, (chap. xxii. 16.) that the
words are directly applied to the passover: ' I have desired to
eat this passover, for I will no more eat of it;' and by repeating
the cup, (ver. 18.) the evangelist must mean, ' the cup of the
passover,' or the ' sacramental cup of charity,' which succeeded
it; and consequently, our Saviour's meaning must be, — That he
would no more use these typical adumbrations, being himself
now ready to perform what was signified and expressed by them,
that is, to pass suddenly from earth to heaven, through a Red
sea of blood, and there to complete the mystery of the sacrament,
by uniting his disciples one to another, and making them all
partakers of his heavenly riches. — IVhitbys, Poole's, and Ham-
mond's Annotations.
b It is commonly remarked by profane authors, that the cock
usually crows twice in a night; once about midnight, and the
second time at the fourth watch of the night, or much about the
break of day: that this latter as being the louder and more ob-
servable, is that which is properly called aXmro^oipuvia,, or cock-
crowing; and that of this crowing of the cock the evangelists
are to be understood, when they relate Christ's words thus,
* Before the cock crow, that is, before that time of the night
which is emphatically so called, ' thou shalt deny me thrice,'
appears from St Mark's saying, that the cock crew after his first
After this, our Lord, in his final exhortation to his
apostles, reminded them of the choice which he had made
of them, and the kind treatment which he had all along
shown them ; and that therefore it was their duty and
their interest both, to adhere to him, as the branch did
to the vine, in order to bring forth the fruits of righteous-
ness, and to continue immoveable in the profession of
his religion, notwithstanding all the persecutions they
should meet with, which indeed would prove so violent
and outrageous, that some men would think they did
God service in killing them. This however should not
utterly deject them, because his absence from them would
not be long. His death was but to usher in his resurrec-
tion .and ascension ; and the benefits which would accrue
to them from these, namely, in the mission of the Holy
Ghost to be their guide and comforter, in his own inter-
cession for them at God's right hand, and in their prayers
and supplications, which, if offered up in his name, would
not fail of admittance to the throne of grace, would
abundantly compensate the want of his presence : and 2
' therefore I have told you these things,' says he, ' that
in me ye might have peace : In the world ye shall
have tribulation ; but c be of good cheer, I have over-
come the world. d
These comfortable exhortations to his apostles were
attended with a solemn prayer and intercession to Al-
mighty God ; for himself, that as he had executed the
commission for which he came into the world, he might
2 John xi. 33.
denial of Christ, (chap. xiv. 68.) and crew the second time after
his third denial, (ver. 72.) — TFhitby's Annotations. — For a fuller
explanation of the apparent descrepancy here taken notice of, see
Paxton's Illustrations, vol ii. pp. 338. to 344. — Ed.
c Though to be of good cheer under tribulation does by no
means infer that firmness of mind, as some philosophers of old
miscalled it, which preserves a man from being at all afflicted
with calamities, or moved from his usual easiness of temper; yet
thus much it certainly means, — That neither the sharpness of
any affliction we feel, nor the terror of any we fear, should so
far vanquish our reason and religion, as to drive us upon unlaw-
ful methods of declining the one or delivering ourselves from
the other. We are to satisfy ourselves in the justice, the wisdom,
and goodness of him, who orders all the events that befall us; to
entertain them all with meekness, and much patience ; to bring
our will into subjection to the divine will; to rejoice in the testi-
mony of a good conscience, and preserve it at any rate, though
with the hazard, nay certain loss, of all our worldly advantages;
and to set the supports and rewards of persecuted truth, and
afflicted piety, in opposition to all the discouragements and pres-
sures from abroad, and all the frailties of feeble and too yielding
flesh and blood at home. Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospets,
vol. iii.
d By the world, in this passage, we are, no doubt, to under-
stand the evil of the world, the wickedness, the malice, the
temptations, the troubles, all that we have reason to fear, or to
flee from, either in this or the next life. Now the wickedness
of the world Christ has overcome, by expiating the sins of
mankind in the sacrifice of himself upon the cross, and by the
powerful assistance of his grace, enabling all the faithful to con-
quer the passions of corrupt nature. The malice of it he over-
came, by disappointing the designs of the devil, and his wicked
instruments, against himself and his gospel, making his own
sufferings fatal to the contrivers, and saving to all penitent be-
lievers. The temptations of it he overcame, by that severe, but
still social virtue, and heavenly piety, which shone so bright in
all his conversation : and the troubles of it, by submitting to
hunger and thirst, to poverty and grief, to live like the meanest,
and to be treated like the worst of men. Nay, even death itself,
our last and most dreaded enemy, he has overcome; taken from
this strong man, the armour wherein he trusted, and divided his
spoils. — Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii.
Skct. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
1007
the prophecy d of Zechariah, concerning- the Shepherd's
being smitten, and the whole flock dispersed, Avould be
fulfilled in his and their persons, forasmuch as every one
of them upon the distress that was going- to befal him,
would flee away from him and forsake him. This Peter
thought a disparagement to his courage, and therefore
assured our Lord, that « ' though all mankind should
forsake him, yet would not he ;' and being told again,
that he would certainly deny him before the time of cock -
crowiug-, with the utmost vehemence he affirmed, that
' though he should die, he would not deny him ; and the
like profession of undaunted adherence made all the
rest.
When they were come to the garden, our Lord ordered
the rest of his apostles to tarry for him at a certain place,
whilst himself, with the three that were most intimate
with him, namely Peter, James, and John, retired a while
to his private devotions ; and as they were going" along,
he required them to join their prayers with his, that they
might not be delivered over to temptation. But they
were not gone above the distance of a stone's cast, be-
fore he found his spirits depressed, and his soul ' sadly
sorrowful even unto death :' which when he had dis-
covered to the three apostles, and desired them to watch
with him a little in this trying and momentous juncture,
he withdrew from them ; and then throwing himself pro-
strate on the ground, / begged of God, ' that, if it was
possible, as all things were possible to him, he might be
excused from drinking the bitter potion, s whose black
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be reinstated in the same glory which he had with his
Father from all eternity ; for his apostles, that they might
live in brotherly love and unity, be preserved in all
dangers, and sanctified in their minds and conversations ;
and for all succeeding christians, that they might con-
tinue in the communion of the saints here, and be admit-
ted to the sight and participation of his glory and felicity
hereafter: and, having concluded all with an hymn, a
which he and his apostles sung together, he left the city,
and passing over the brook Cedron, * came to a place
called Gethsemane, ° where there was a garden, well
known to Judas, because thither our Lord and his apos-
tles used frequently to repair, both for retirement and
devotion.
As they were going to this place, our Lord, with
mighty concern, began to tell them, that that very night a
1 Zech. xiii. 7.
a This hymn is supposed by most interpreters to be part of
the great Allelujah, which began at the 113th, and ended at the
118th Psalm, and, by the Jewish rituals, was ordered to be sung
constantly at the paschal supper. Others think, that it was a
di fie rent hymn, composed by Christ, and accommodated to the
particular institution of the Eucharist; but Grotius is of opinion,
that it was no other than that thanksgiving of his, which St
John has recorded in the 17th chapter of his gospel. As our
blessed Saviour however, in all his religious conduct, was no
lover of innovations, it seems more probable, that, upon this
occasion, he made use of the psalms that were theai customary
in the Jewish church, in which, as the Jews observe, are men-
tioned the sorrows of the Messiah and the resurrection of the
dead. — Hoioel's History, in the notes, and C'almet's Commen-
tary .
b Which in the Old Testament is called Kidron, and runs
along the bottom of the valley of Jehoshaphat, which lies to the
east between Jerusalem and Mount Olivet. Into this valley
was conveyed the blood, poured out at the foot of the altar, which,
as it discoloured the water, gave it the name of Cedron, as some
think, from the word Keddar, which signifies blackness, though
others rather imagine, that it had that name from the cedar-trees
that were planted on each side of it. — fFell's Geography of the
New Testament, part i. and fFhitby's Alphabetical table.
c Between the foot of the hill and the brook Kedron, proceed-
ing from Jerusalem, is the garden of Gethsemane; an even
piece of ground, according to Mr Maundrell, 57 yards square,
and thickly planted with olive-trees of an ancient growth, and
asserted to be the same which stood there in the time of our
Lord, though of course with little probability; as, if the trees
themselves could have lasted so long, Titus is said to have cut
down all the wood about Jerusalem. Chateaubriand, however,
states, that some of these very trees can unquestionably be traced
to the time of the Eastern empire, and from the following cir-
cumstance: in Turkey, every olive-tree found standing by the
Musselmans when they conquered Asia, pays one medine to the
treasury ; while each of those planted since the conquest, is taxed
half its produce by the grand Seignior, Now eight of these trees,
very large and old, are still charged only eight medines. Dr
Clarke found in this garden a grove of ancient olive-trees, of
most immense size ; which, as a spontaneous produce uninter-
ruptedly resulting from the original growth of this part of the
mountain, it is impossible to view with indifference; and adds,
" It is truly a curious and an interesting fact, that, during a
period of little more than 2000 years, Hebrews, Assyrians,
Romans, Moslems, and Christians, have been successively in
possession of the rocky mountains of Palestine, yet the olive still
vindicates its paternal soil, and is found at this day upon the
same spot which was called by the Hebrew writers ' mount
Olivet,' and the mount of Olives, 11 centuries before the
Christian trra. In this garden is shown the place where our Sa-
viour sweated blood as he pronounced the words, " Father, if it
be possible, let this cup pass from me." A grotto has been erected
i'ii this spot, with the usual appendage of altars, &c. A few
paces from hence is shown the place where Judas betrayed his
Master with a kiss. — Mans/ord's Scripture Gazetteer, p. 346.
— Ed
d The passage to which our Saviour alludes is this, ' Awake,
O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my
fellow, saith the Lord of hosts. Smite the Shepherd, and the
sheep shall be scattered, and I will turn my hand upon the little
ones,' (Zech. xiii. 7.) where we may observe, that our Saviour
only cites the words in the middle of the verse, because indeed
those that both preceded and followed them, were not at all to
his purpose: and in this he imitated the ancient doctors of the
Jewish church, who, in their allegations of Scripture passages,
were wont to make use of no more than what was subservient to
their argument. Some however imagine, because the words of
Zechariah seem primarily to relate to an evil shepherd, to whom
God threatens the sword, that Christ does not mention them as
a prediction concerning him and his apostles, but only as a pro-
verbial expression: but this I think is sufficiently confuted by
our Lord's saying, ' for it is written,' (ver. 31.) Nor is the
change of the person in the evangelist, from what occurs in the
prophet of any moment, because it was very customaiy with
the Jewish doctors, in their citations of Scripture, to make such
alterations. — Surenhusii Condi, in loc. e.v I et. Test, apud Mat.
and IVhitby's Annotations.
e We may be bold to affirm of this resolution, that it was as
honest an one, that is, both as just in the matter, and as sincere
in the intention, as ever was made by man, or ever shall be
made to the end of the world ; and yet this resolution miscarried,
and ended only in the shame of the resolver. St Clnysostom
takes notice of three faults that may be reckoned in it. 1st. The
little consideration Peter had of our Saviour's predictions con-
cerning his fall. 2dly, The preference which he gave himself
above the rest of his brethren. And, 3dly. The presumption he
placed in his own strength, instead of imploring ability of him,
whence all human sufficiency is derived ; and therefore the Son
of God, says he, suffered him to fall, in order to cure his arrogance
and vain confidence in himself. — Young's Sermons, vol. ii. and
Chrysostom on Mat. horn. 83.
f See observations on Christ's agony in the garden, in answer
to objections next chapter. — Ed.
a What we are to understand by the • bitter potion ' which
our Lord lure deprecates, we shall explain at large in our answer
to the following objections, and need only here observe, that the
afflictions which God sends on men or nations, are often in scrip-
ture expressed by the name of a cup, (Ezek. xxiii. 31, 32.
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ingredients filled him with horror and amazement ; nev-
ertheless in this he submitted himself entirely to his
divine pleasure :' and having- prayed to this effect, he
returned to his apostles, but finding them asleep, he
awoke them, and, in a reproof full of love, reminded
Peter more especially of his late promises, and present
neglect of him, when he most of all stood in need of his
comfort and assistance. He advised him therefore to
keep himself awake, for fear of the temptations that were
busy about him, and added this compassionate observa-
tion, that though ' the a spirit was willing,' and ready
enough to make good resolutions, yet ' the fiesh was
weak,' and unable very often to put them in execution.
Thrice did our blessed Lord retire and pray in this
manner ; but, in the last time, his sense of God's indig-
nation against the sins of mankind, and the dismal pro-
spect of what he was to suffer in the expiation of them,
made his prayer more vehement, and his agonies so
violent, that the sweat, which fell from his body, was like
large drops of blood ; b and human nature must have
Matth. xx. 23, Rev. xiv 10,) and that this is a metaphor bor-
rowed from an ancient custom of giving a cup full of poison,
among heathen nations, to those that were condemned to die, and
of gall on such occasions, among the Jews, to lessen the pain of
the person that was to suffer. — Beausobre's Annotations, and
Howell's History, in the notes.
a These words of our Saviour are not intended as an excuse
or mitigation of the apostles' sinful neglect of their master, but
as a motive to their vigilance and prayer, and seem to imply
thus much,. — " You have all made large promises, that if you
should die with me, you would not forsake me, and this you said
really, and with a purpose so to do ; yet let me tell you, when the
temptation actually assaults ; when fear, shame, and pain, the
danger of punishment, and of death, are within view, and pre-
sent to your sense, the weakness of the flesh will certainly pre-
vail over these resolutions, if you use not the greatest vigilance,
and do not pray with fervency for the divine assistance. — Whit-
by's Annotations.
b In Luke xxii. 48, it is said, 'and being in an agony, he
prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops
of blood falling down to the ground.' The word agony is taken
from the anxiety, fear, efl'ort, and strong emotion, of the wres-
tlers in the Greek games, about to engage in a mighty struggle.
Here it denotes the extreme anguish of mind : the strong con-
flict produced between sinking human nature and the prospect of
deep and overwhelming calamities. ' Great drops of blood,'
(Luke xxii. 44.) The word here rendered great drops, does not
mean drops gently falling on the ground, but rather thick and
clammy masses of gore, pressed by inward agony through the
skin, and mixing with the sweat, falling thus to the ground. It
has been doubted, by some, whether the sacred writer meant to
say that there was actually blood in this sweat, or only that the
sweat was in the form of great drops. The natural meaning is,
doubtless, that the blood was mingled with his sweat; that it fell
profusely — falling masses of gore ; that it was pressed out by his
inward anguish; and that this was caused in some way in view
of his approaching death. This effect of extreme suil'erings — of
rental anguish — has been known in several other instances.
Bloody sweats have been mentioned by many writers as caused
by extreme suffering. Dr Doddridge says (note on Luke xxii.
44,) that " Aristotle and Diodorus Siculus both mention bloody
sweats, as attending some extraordinary agony of mind; and I
find Loti, in his life of Pope Sextus V., and Sir John Chardin,
in his history of Persia, mentioning a like phenomenon, to
which Dr Jackson adds another from Thuamee." Various
opinions have been given of the probable causes of these sor-
rows of the Saviour. Some have thought it was a strong
shrinking from the manner of dying on the cross, or from an
apprehension of being forsaken there by the Father; others that
Satan was permitted in a peculiar manner to try him, and to fill
his mind ivith horrors: having departed from him at the begin-
ning of his ministry for a season (Luke iv. 12,) only to renew
his temptations in a more dreadful manner now; and others
END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHN xii.!9-END.
been exhausted under it, had not an angel c from heaven
been immediately sent to strengthen and support him.
With this recruit he returned a third time to his apostles,
but, finding them still in the same sleepy condition, he
told them, that now they might sleep on as long as they
pleased, because he had no further occasion for their as-
sistance ; that, however, it would not be improper for
them to arise, because the traitor, who was to deliver him
up to his enemies, was just at hand. Nor were the words
well out of his mouth, before Judas, accompanied with
d a band of soldiers, and officers, together with some of
the chief priests, Pharisees, and elders of the people,
all armed with swords and staves, e came to apprehend
him.
To prevent all mistakes, the traitor had given them a
sign, that the person whom he should kiss was the man
they were to apprehend ; and therefore approaching our
Lord with an address of seeming civility, he saluted
him, and, in return, received a reproof of his perfidy, /
that these sufferings were sent upon him as the wrath of God
manifested against sin: that God inflicted them directly upon
him by his own hand, to show his abhorrence of the sins of
men, for which he was about to die. Where the scriptures are
silent about the cause, it does not become us confidently to ex-
press an opinion. We may suppose, perhaps, without presump-
tion, that a part or all these things were combined to produce
this awful suffering. There is no need of supposing that there
was a single thing that produced it; but is rather probable that
it was a rush of feeling from every quarter: his situation, his ap-
proaching death, the temptations of the enemy, and the awful
sufferings on account of men's sins, and God's hatred of it about
to be manifested in his own death: all coming upon his soul at
once — sorrow flowing in from every quarter — the concentration
of the sufferings of the atonement pouring together upon him, and
filling him with unspeakable anguish. — Harries. — Ed.
c St Luke is the only evangelist that makes mention of this
angelical attendance upon our Saviour in this time of his agony;
and as there were several, both Latin and Greek copies, that, in
St Jerom's, time wanted this part of history, Epiphanius imagines
that this was a correction of some ignorant, though perhaps well
meaning Christians, who being offended at the supposed weak-
ness that appears in our Saviour upon this occasion, left it out of
their copies, never considering that the divinity which dwelt in
him had at this time subtracted its influence, so that, being left
to his human nature only, he needed the comfort of an angel :
otherwise, as with a word he made the whole band of soldiers
fall to the ground, and with a touch healed the ear of Malchus,
he even now gave sufficient indications of the divinity residing
in him. — Whitby's Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
d At the time of the Passover, it was customary for the Ro-
man president to send a whole band of a thousand men for a
guard to the temple : and it seems to be some of these that came
to apprehend our Saviour; because, by Judas' giving them a
sign, whereby they might know him, it looks as if they were
strangers to his person. — Whitby's Annotations, aud Calmet's
Commentary.
e It is probable, that Judas thought they could not do this, but
that, as Jesus had at other times conveyed himself from the mul-
titude, when they attempted to stone him, (John viii. 59,) and
to cast him down a precipice, (Luke iv. 59,) so he would have
done now; and that when he found he did not rescue himself, he
repented, and went and hanged himself, (Mat. xxvii. 5.) —
Whitby's Annotations.
/The reproof is expressed in these words: 'Judas, betrayest
thou the Son of Man with a kiss?' (Luke xxii. 48.) 1st, To
betray in this case was equivalent to murder. It was to deliver
him into their hands, who, he knew, both from common rumour
and his master's own words (Mat. xvi. 21.) had a design upon
his life; and therefore this could not be done without express
malice; but, 2dly, This betrayer was a servant; one who had
given up his name and faith to our Lord, and done himself the
honour at least, if not the benefit, to preach his gospel, and to
work miracles in the power of his commission ; and therefore,
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OP CHRIST, &c.
1009
A.M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR, A. M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
but in such gentle and easy terms, as spake a mind per-
fectly calm and undisturbed ; and then stepping forward
with an air of majesty, our Lord demanded of the sol-
diers ' Whom they wanted ?' They told him ' Jesus of
Nazareth.' He replied that he was the person : but,
when they were going to lay rude hands upon him, the
impetuous rays of glory which darted from his divine
face struck so fiercely upon their eyes, that they fell to
the ground. However, instead of taking the advantage
of their consternation to make his escape, as he had
done at other times, he again demanded of them ' who
it was they wanted ?' And, when they again made him
the same answer, he told them, ' that, if he was the per-
son, he expected that his disciples should depart unmo-
lested.
When the multitude began to lay hands on Jesus,
some of his apostles, having swords a with them, asked
their master if they might draw in his defence ; but
before they had his answer, Peter had drawn his sword,
and in great fury struck at Malchus, one of the high
priest's servants, with a design to cleave his head, though
he happened only to cut oft' his right ear. Our Saviour
however, rebuking his intemperate zeal, commanded
him to put up his sword, b because he had no occasion
for such an one to betray him, could not be done without great
perfidiousness. 3dly, The person betrayed is called the ' Son
of Man,' which is both the humblest and most obliging of our
Saviour's titles, and implies that even to Judas himself he had
always been a kind and gracious master, had treated him with
the same respect, and given him the same advice and overtures
that he had done to the rest of the twelve ; and therefore to
betray him was high ingratitude. 4thly, and lastly, To betray
him with a kiss, which all the world had been used to interpret
as a constant symbol either of love or homage, (both which his
master had so well merited at his hands) and now to make this
a signal of his treason, was to play a piece of the most gross
hypocrisy. So severe is the accusation which our Lord brings
against his abandoned apostle, though expressed in the mildest
terms! — Young's Sermons, vol. ii.
a Before our Saviour left the house where he supped, he had
said to his apostles, ' He that has no sword, let him sell his gar-
ment and buy one.' (Luke xii. 36.) But that this is no com-
mand to them to buy swords, or to use them in the defence of
their master, when he should be apprehended, is apparent from
his saying that ' two swords were enough,' (ver. 38.) which cer-
tainly could never be sufficient to repel that band of armed men
which he foreknew would come against him; and from his
reprehending Peter for using one in this manner, (Mat. xxvi.
52.) which, if he intended his words to be understood literally,
was no discommendable thing. They therefore are only a
monition to his apostles, that times were now become so peril-
ous, that, if things were to be acted by human power, there
would be more need for swords than ever: for such symbolical
ways of expression were very common among the eastern peo-
ple. Some annotators however have observed, that the reason
why any swords, as we read but of two, were found in our Sav-
iour's family, was, that thereby they might secure themselves
from beasts of prey, which, in those parts, were xery frequent
and dangerous in the night time. — Whitby's Annotations, and
Taylor's Life of Christ, part ii. s. 15.
h Our Saviour's words to Peter are these, ' Put up thy sword
into its place, for all that take the sword shall perish by the
sword, (Mat. xxvi. 52.) This passage is capable of different
significations. 1st, They who resist by the sword the civil
magistrate shall be punished ; and it is dangerous, therefore, to
oppose those who come with the authority of the civil ruler. 2d,
These men, Jews and Romans, who have taken the sword against
the innocent shall perish by the sword. God will take venge-
ance on them. But, 3d, The most satisfactory interpretation is
that which regards it as a caution to Peter. Peter was rash.
Alone, he had attacked the whole band. Jesus told him that
his unseasonable and imprudent defence might be the occasion
for any human aid, who had legions c of angels at his
command ; and then, having cured the man's ear with a
touch, he turned about and expostulated with the soldiery
the indignity of apprehending him in so scandalous a
manner, as if he were a thief or some vile malefactor,
when they had daily an opportunity of taking him in the
temple. But, say what he would, it availed nothing.
They immediately bound him, and led him away.
The apostles now seeing their master thus treated,
lost all their courage, and, as he had foretold them, left
him and betook themselves to flight. For such was the
violence of the soldiers, that, seeing a young man <* fol-
lowing the company, with nothing but a night-gown on,
and supposing him to be one of our Lord's disciples,
they laid hold on hiin ; but he, by quitting his garment,
slipped out of their hands, and fled away naked.
The company, thus carrying away Jesus, brought him
first before Annas, e who was father-in-law to Caiaphas
of his own destruction. In doing it, he would endanger his
life, for they who took the sword perished by it. This was pro-
bably a proverb, denoting that they who engaged in wars com-
monly perished there. — Barnes. — Ed.
c A legion in the Roman militia was a body of men consisting
of six thousand, composed each of ten cohorts, as a cohort was
of fifty maniples, and a maniple of fifteen men ; so that twelve
legiuns would amount to seventy thousand angels; but in this
our Saviour means no more than a great number. — Calmet's
Commentary.
d Who this young man was has been a matter of some dispute
among the ancients. Epiphanes and St Jerome are of opinion
that it was James the brother of our Lord ; but upon our Lord's
being apprehended, he, among the rest, forsook him and fled ;
and we hear nothing of his return. St Chrysostom, Ambrose,
and Gregory have a strong imagination that it was John, the
beloved apostle ; but John, we read, was with Christ in the gar-
den clothed, and cannot therefore easily conceive how he came
to fly away naked. It seems most probable, therefore, that this
youug man might be no wise related to our Saviour, but hearing
a noise in the garden, which might not be far distant from the
house where he lodged in the village of Gethsemane, he arose
and followed the company in his night-gown, as we have rend-
ered it, in pure curiosity to see what was the matter, and that
when the guards were for seizing him, he fled away naked, that
is, with nothing but his shirt on ; for so the expression may be
understood. — Calmet's Commentary, Whitby's and Beausobre's
Annotations. — Pococke observes, describing the dresses of the
people of Egypt, that " it is almost a general custom among the
Arab and Mohammedan natives of the country to wear a large
blanket either white or brown, and in summer a blue and white
cotton sheet, which the Christians constantly use in the country:
putting one corner before, over the left shoulder, they bring it
belu'nd, and under the right arm, and so over their bodies,
throwing it behind over the left shoulder, and so the right arm
is left bare for action. When it is hot, and they are on horse-
back, they let it fall down on the saddle round them : and about
Faiume, I particularly observed, that young people especially,
and the poorer sort, had nothing on whatever but this blanket:
and it is probable the young man was clothed in this manner,
who followed our Saviour when he was taken, having a linen
cloth cast about his naked body ; and when the young men laid
hold on him, he left the linen cloth, and fled naked." — (Truv.
vol. i. p. 190.)— Ed.
e Annas, who by Josephus is called Ananus, had been high-
priest, enjoying that dignity for eleven years; and even after
he was deposed, retained still the title, and had a great share of
the management of all public affairs. When John the Baptist
entered upon the exercise of his ministry, he is called the high-
priest in conjunction with Caiaphas, (Luke iii. 2.) though at this
time, he did not act in this character ; and when our Saviour
was apprehended, he was first brought to his house, according to
St John, (chap, xviii. 13, 14.) though the other evangelists pass
that over in silence, because there was nothing done to him
there, and looks as if he were only there detained until the
fi M
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the high-priest, and had formerly borne the same office :
but Annas sent him to Caiaphas, in whose palace the
Sanhedrim was still sitting, even though it was thus late
at night. Caiaphas examined him a great deal concern-
ing both his doctrine and disciples ; but when our Savi-
our answered, ' That since he had always taught in the
most public manner in the synagogues, and in the tem-
ple, a he should rather inquire of those who had been
his constant hearers, an officer * standing by gave him a
blow on the face, pretending that he had not used the
high-priest with respect enough ; to which our Lord only
replied, that 1 ' if he had said any thing amiss, the law
was open, and he might implead him, but if not, c he
had no cause or authority to strike him.'
The council perceiving that, from his own confession,
they could raise no accusation against him, called over
the false witnesses that they had procured ; but these
either disagreed in their stories, or came not sufficiently
up to the point. Two persons indeed were consistent
in what they deposed, namely, that they had heard him
say, ' that he would pull down the temple of God, and
in three days rebuild it.' But as this accusation 2 was
false in fact, and founded only upon a figurative expres-
sion of our Saviour's, it was not thought to amount to
any thing capital.
All this while our Saviour made no manner of reply
to the evidences that were produced against him ; whereof
when the high -priest asked him the reason, and still he
continued silent, having one question more in reserve,
which, if he answered in the negative, would, according
to his notion, make him an impostor, if in the affirmative,
a blasphemer, he stood up, and, in the name of the living
God, d ' adjured him to declare, whether he was the
1 John xviii. 23.
2 John ii. 19.
council met at the house of Caiaphas, was ready for him. — Cal-
met's Dictionary, and JFhitby's Annotations.
a It is probable, that Caiaphas questioned Jesus concerning
the number and rank of his disciples; but to this he answered
nothing. He also enquired of him, what doctrine he had taught
the people, with reference either to his assuming the character
of the Messiah, or to the contrariety of his doctrine to the tradi-
tions of the elders. To this Jesus replied, that he had taught
the people in the most frequented places, and the most open man-
ner, and had spoken nothing in private different from his public
instructions. It was not therefore proper to require his testimony
in his own cause, as they were not disposed to believe it; but
that regard to due order, or to law and justice, required them to
seek for witnesses among those who had heard him. It is most
likely, that some were then present, who had frequently heard
his instructions. This reply was peculiarly suitable to the
situation, in which Jesus was at this time placed ; for he stood
as a prisoner in his trial, before judges who were determined to
put him to death, and only sought a pretence for their injustice
and murder. — ScoWs Commentary. — Ed.
b This was an outrage to all justice : for a prisoner, before
he is condemned, is ever considered to be under the especial
protection of justice; nor has any one a right to touch him, but
according to the direction of the law. But it has been observed
before that, if justice had been done to Christ, he could neither
have suffered nor died — Dr A. Clarke on John xviii. 22. — Ed.
c From this defence which our Saviour makes for himself, we
may learn, that we are not literally to understand his precept of
tinning the other cheek to him that smites us, since instead of
doing this, we find him endeavouring to vindicate the innocence
of his words ; and from hence we may observe likewise, that to
stand upon the defence of our own innocency, cannot be contrary
to the Christian duties of patience and forgiveness. — Whitby's
Annotations.
d The Jews in general, but especially their judges and magis-
Messiah, the Son of God, or not ?' The reverence which
our Lord paid to that sacred name, made him imme-
diately answer, and that in direct terms, ' That he was ;
and that of this they would be convinced, when they
should see him sitting on the right-hand of the Almighty,
and coming in the clouds of heaven.' Whereupon the
high-priest, in testimony of his abhorrence, rent his
clothes, e as if he had heard the grossest blasphemy,/
and then, addressing himself to the council, told them,
that there was no occasion for any farther witnesses,
because what the prisoner had said was palpable blas-
phemy, and so demanded their opinion, who unani-
mously agreed, that, according to their law, he was guilty
of death.
With this resolution they repaired to their respective
homes, for now it was late, and left our Lord to the mer-
cy of the soldiers, and the high-priest's servants, who
offered all the acts of insolence and effrontery that they
could invent, to his sacred person, whilst some spit on
him, others buffeted him, others blindfolded him, and
others again, smiting him with their fists, called on him
to prophecy S who it was that struck him, with many
more indignities, and abominable blasphemies, which
must have been greater than all patience, had his meek-
ness and patience been less than infinite.
During this melancholy scene, Peter, whose fears had
made him flee from his master in the garden, having a
little recovered his spirits, and hoping to pass undis-
covered in the throng, ventured in among others, to see
the issue of this fatal night, and by the interest of his
fellow-disciple, John, who went with him, was let in by
a maid-servant to the high-priest's palace. * It was now
cold weather ; and the servants and officers having kin-
dled a fire in the common hall, Peter went in, and sat
down among them to warm himself ; when the maid who
let him in, fixing her eyes upon him, was confident she
knew him, and accordingly, told the company that he
was a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, which he positively
trates, had a custom of conjuring by the name of God, or of
exacting an oath of those whose crimes did not sufficiently appear
by the evidence of witnesses, or any other means. The person
thus interrogated was obliged to speak truth, and, in all doubtful
cases, his confession or denial was decisive, either to acquit or
condemn him. — Calmet's Commentary.
e The rending the clothes was a token of indignation, holy
zeal, and piety, among the Jews, expressed on several occasions,
especially of grief in humiliation: and of anger, in hearing any
blasphemous speech. This however was forbidden the high-
priest, not only as to his sacerdotal vestments, but also as to his
other garments, (Lev. xxi. 10.) because he was not to appear
before God in the habit of a mourner; but they, by their tradi-
tions, had so qualified that precept, as to allow him to rend his
clothes at the bottom, though he was not permitted to do it from
the top to the breast.— Beausobre's and Whitby's Annotations.
f From hence we may observe, that the Jews of that age did
not think, that the Messiah was to be God, but only a man, who
could not challenge to himself divinity ; seeing they never con-
cluded our Lord to be a blasphemer, because he said he was the
Christ, but only because he said he was the Son of God, and
thereby made himself equal with God, (John v. 18.) — Whitby's
Annotations.
g By this kind of insult, they tacitly reproached him with
being a false prophet. — Calmet's Commentary.
h The Jews themselves allow, as Dr Lightfoot informs us,
that there might be frost and snow at the time of the passover ;
and a common thing it was for great dews to fall then, which
would make the air cold, until the sun had exhaled them. —
Whitby's Annotations.
Skct. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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of the Roman governor, whose name at that time was
Pontius Pilate,^ desiring of him to ratify their sentence,
and demanding a warrant s for his execution.
Judas in the mean time watching the issue of these
proceedings, and finding that his master was delivered
to the secular power, repented of his perfidy, and, tak-
ing the money which was the reward of his treason, went
to the council h and threw it among them, declaring
openly that he had acted very wickedly in betraying the
innocent blood. But as people that employ such instru-
ments have no regard to what becomes of them, all the
comfort that he had from them was, that since it was
his own act and deed, ' it was his business to look to
A.M.4037. A.D. 33
denied to them all, and, as he withdrew into the porch,
heard the cock crow, a but his troubled thoughts took no
notice of it.
While he was in the porch, another maid charged him
with the same thing ; but he denied it again, not only
with the same confidence, but with the solemnity of an
oath ; and, about an hour after, when another inferred
from his dialect,6 that he must necessarily be a Galilean,
and a relation of the man whose ear he had cut off"
strongly affirmed that he saw him in the garden, this so
intimidated him, that, with horrid oaths c and impreca-
tions upon himself, he denied the matter, till the cock
crew the second time, and our Saviour, who was then in
the hall, turning to Peter, gave him such a glance, as re-
minded him of his prediction, and the foulness of his
own crime ; whereupon, being stung with compunc-
tion, and sadly oppressed with shame and grief, he
went out, and wept ; he wept abundantly, he wept bit-
terly.
Early next morning the sanhedrim d met again in a
full body at their room in the temple, whither they or-
dered Jesus to be brought; and, having again inquired
of him, whether he was the true Messiah, and the Son of
God ? and again received the same answer from him,
they adjudged him guilty of blasphemy ; and according-
ly, having condemned him, carried him to the palace e
a It is reported of St Peter, that, ever after, when he heard
the cock crow, he wept, remembering the old instrument of his
repentance and conversion and his own unworthiness, for which
he never ceased to do acts of sorrow and penance. — HoweWs His-
tory, in the notes.
b The Galileans spake the same language that the rest of the
Jews did; but then they had a certain uncouth accent and man-
ner of expression, which distinguished them from others, and
made them to be contemned, and ridiculed by the natives
of Judea. — Calmet's Commentary, and Beausobre's Annota-
tions.
c Some of the ancients have taken great pains to extenuate
this fault of Peter's. St Ambrose on Luke, and Hillary on
Matthew, both assert, that the apostle did not lie in saying ; ' I
know not the man,' but only disguised the truth, renouncing
Christ in the quality of a man, but not as the Son of God. But
this according to St Jerome, is to defend the servant by accus-
ing the master of a lie ; for if St Peter did not actually deny him,
our Lord must have falsely affirmed, ' Thou shalt deny me
thrice.' The opinion of those therefore is rather to be embraced,
who acknowledge that St Peter, by denying Christ with his
mouth committed a mortal sin, and fell from grace ; and, as it
is certain, that, confirming this denial with an oath, and added
horrid execrations to it, his sin was highly aggravated; instead
of accounting as some do, his denial a sin of infirmity, wherein
his heart was true, though his mouth false, we can hardly think,
that he could do all this without great checks of his con-
science, and that, consequently, for the present he was in a state
of defection, though his bitter weeping, and quick repentance,
after that Christ had looked upon him, might make an atone-
ment for his transgression. — Calmet's Commentary, and Whitby's
Annotations.
d The assembly, which was held the night before, and where-
in our Saviour was declared worthy of death, was neither general
nor judicial, according to the sense of the law, which did not al-
low justice to be administered in private, or in the night time :
and therefore the high priests and rulers met again in the morn-
ing in the council chamber in the temple, which they could not
do the night before, because the temple was then always shut,
there to re-examine our Saviour, and condemn him in form. —
Calmet's Commentary.
e At Jerusalem the people show you, at this time, the palace
of Pilate, or rather the place where they said it stood ; for now
an ordinary Turkish house possesses its room. In this pretend-
ed house, which stands not far from St Stephen's gate, and bor-
ders on the area of the temple, on the north side, they show you
a room, in which Christ was mocked with the ensigns of royalty,
and buffeted by the soldiers; and, on the other side of the street,
which was anciently another part of the palace, is the room,
where they say our Lord was scourged. — Well's Geography of
the New Testament, part i.
/ It is not well known of what family or country this gover-
nor was, though it is generally believed that he was of Rome,
at least of Italy. He succeeded Gratus to the government of
Judea, in which he continued fourteen years, that is, from the
twelfth to the twenty second of Tiberius, and is represented by
Philo, (Be Legatione ad Caium) as a man of an impetuous and
obstinate temper, and a judge who used to sell justice, and for
money pronounce any sentence that was desired. The same
author makes mention of his rapines, his injuries, his murders,
the torments he inflicted upon the innocent, and the persons he
put to death without any form of process. In short, he describes
him as a man that exercised an excessive cruelty during the
whole time of his government, from which he was deposed by
Vitellius, the proconsul of Syria, and sent to Rome, to give an
account of his conduct to the emperor. But though Tiberius
died before Pilate arrived at Rome, yet his successor Caligula
banished him to Vienna in Gaul, where he was reduced to such
extremity, that he killed himself with his own hands. The
evangelists call him the governor, though, properly speaking, he
was no more than the procurator of Judea, not only because go-
vernor was a name of general use, but because Pilate, in effect,
acted as one, by taking upon him to judge in criminal matters,
as his predecessors had done, and other procurators, in the
small provinces of the empire where there was no proconsul,
constantly did. — Calmet's Dictionary, under the word Pilate. —
Eachard's Ecclesiastical History, b. ii. c. 2. and Beausobre's
Annotations.
g Not that the Romans had, at this time, taken from the san-
hedrim the power of life and death; for, about a year after this,
we find the proto-martyr Stephen regularly tried, condemned,
and stoned by their sole authority: but therefore the Jewish
rulers desired the concurrence of the Roman governor, that they
might make our Saviour undergo a more severe and ignominous
punishment than they could have inflicted upon him by their
own power, because crucifixion was a death that their law had
not prescribed. To this purpose we may observe, that to induce
the governor to comply with their demand, the accusation which
they brought against him was of a civil nature, and such as would
consign him to the punishment they desired: ' we found this fel-
low perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to
CaBsar,' Luke xxiii. 2. — Universal History, b. ii. c. 11.
h Such is the purchase of treason and the reward of covetous-
ness. It is cheap in its offers, momentary in the possession,
unsatisfying in its fruition, uncertain in its stay, sudden in
its departure, horrid in the remembrance, and a ruin, a cer-
tain and miserable ruin, in the event. — Taylor's Life of Christ,
s. iii.
i The answer of the chief priests to Judas, when he brought
back to them the thirty pieces of silver, and declared that he
had betrayed the innocent blood, was a perfectly natural one for
men of their character: ' What is that to us? see thou to that.'
Men who had any feeling, any sentiments of common humanity,
or even of common justice, when so convincing a proof ot the
accused person's innocence had been given them, would natur-
ally have relented, would have put an immediate stop to the
proceedings, and released the prisoner. But this was very far
from entering into their plan. With the guilt or innocence u(.
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then called the Potter's field, but afterwards ' the field
of blood, for a place of interment for strangers. d
it, not theirs ; so that being tortured with the agonies of
guilt, and finding no relief any where, he went and
hanged himself; a but in his death there was something
so particular, that it made all the inhabitants of Jerusa-
lem take notice of it. The money, however, which he
threw among the council, the priests thought not proper
to put in the treasury, because it was the price of blood,
* and therefore they purchased with it a spot of ground, c
Jesus they did not concern themselves. This was not their
affair. AH they wanted was the destruction of a man whom
they hated and feared, and whose life and doctrine were a
standing reproach to them. This was their object: and as to
the mercy or the justice of the case, on this head they were at
perfect ease; ' What is that to us? See thou to that.' And yet
to see the astonishing inconsistence of human nature, and the
strange contrivances by which even the most abandoned of men
endeavour to satisfy their minds and quiet their apprehensions ;
these very men, who had no scruple at all in murdering an
innocent person, yet had wonderful qualms of conscience about
putting into the treasury the money which they themselves had
given as the 'price of blood!' — Porteus's Lectures on Mat. —
Ed.
a There are some difficulties concerning the manner in which
Judas died. Matthew says, simply, that he hanged himself;
whereas Luke (Acts i. 18.) says further, that 'falling headlong,
he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.'
This apparent discrepancy has occasioned much controversy, and
various solutions have been offered. Mr Hewlett we think has
hit upon the true one. He considers the narrative of Luke to
be supplemental to that of Matthew's, and to state an additional
fact. Matthew having related that Judas departed, and went
and hanged himself, Luke had not the least doubt respecting the
fact, but knew that all suicides, who hang themselves, are cut
down sooner or later by those who find them. It is at this point
that Mr Hewlett supposes the short supplementary narrative in
the Acts to begin. The rope being cut or untied (-tt^whs yivo-
ftitos), ' falling headlong,' or rather ' falling on his face, he burst
asunder,' &c. It was perfectly natural for Luke on this occa-
sion, if not as an evangelist, yet as a physician, to relate by way
of parenthesis, the pathological fact here recorded ; which is so
far from being incredible, that it is very natural, and not unlikely
to happen. A skilful physician informed Mr Hewlett, that in
cases of violent and painful death there is usually an effusion of
lymph, or lymph mixed with blood, into the cavities of the chest
and abdomen. If the body be kept till putrescence takes place,
a gas is evolved from the fluid in such quantity as to distend
enormously, and sometimes to rupture the peritonaeum and
abdominal muscles: this effect has been observed in bodies hung
on gibbets in England; and it would take place much more
readily in warmer climates. — CalmeVs Dictionary Ed.
b It was a custom among the Jews, which was afterwards
imitated by the first Christians, that it should not be lawful for
executioners to offer any thing, or for any alms to be received
from them ; and so, by analogy, any money with which a life
was bought was not to be put into the treasury Hammond's
Annotations.
c The valley of Jehoshaphat runs cross the mouth of another
valley, called the valley of Hinnom, lying at the bottom of mount
Sion. On the west side of this valley is the place called the
Potter's field, where, not improbably, the people of that trade
were used to dry their pots before they baked them. It was
afterwards called the Field of Blood, for the reason that the
evangelist assigns ; but at present, from that veneration which
it has obtained amongst Christians, it is named Campo Sancto,
or the Holy Field. It is a small plat of ground, not above
thirty yards long, and about half as much broad ; and one moiety
of it is taken up by a square fabric about twelve yards high, built
for a charnel-house, and covered over with a vault, in which are
some openings, to let down the bodies that are to be buried
there. The earth must certainly be impregnated with a very
corrosive salt, if what some tell us be true, namely, that it can
dissolve a body in the space of four and twenty hours. Those,
however, who have looked down through these openings, tell us,
that they could see many bodies under several degrees of decay,
from whence they conjectured, that this grave does not make
such quick dispatch with the corpses committed to it as is com-
When the members of the sanhedrim came to the gover-
nor's palace, they refused to go into the 2 judgment hall
e for fear of contracting some pollution, and therefore
Pilate went out to them ; and as he understood that they
had already passed sentence upon him, he demanded
the grounds of their accusation against him. But being
unwilling that any inquiry should be made into the par-
ticulars of their proceedings, they answered in general,
that /'if he were not a criminal, they would not have
brought hiin to him.' Imagining, therefore, that the
prosecution was about some matters relating to their
religion, the governor desired they would take him, and
judge him according to their own law : but to this they
replied, 8 ' that it was not permitted them to put any
man to death.'
1 Acts i. 19.
2 John xviii. 28.
monly reported. The Armenians have the command of this
burying-place, for which they pay to the Turks the rent of a
zequin a-day: and a little below the Campo Sancto is shown aa
intricate cave, or a sepulchre, consisting of several rooms, one
within another, in which the apostles are said to have hid them-
selves when they forsook their master and fled. — Wells's Geog.
of the New Test., part i.
d The strangers here meant may be either men of other
nations, with whom the Jews would have no commerce, even
when they were dead, and therefore provided a separate burying-
place for them ; or they might be Jews, who coming from far to
Jerusalem to sacrifice, died there before their return home, and
so the priests provided a burying place for them. — Hammond's
Annotations.
e Because in the governor's palace there was a guard of
Roman soldiers, and a great company of servants, and as they
were heathens, they thought that by touching any of them they
should be defiled, and consequently made incapable of eating the
Passover, of which no unclean person was to partake. By the
Passover, however, here in St John, (chap, xviii. 28.) we are
not to understand the Paschal lamb, which the rest of the Jews,
as well as our Saviour, had eaten the night before, but the Cha-
gigah, or peace offering, that is, the sheep and oxen that were
offered all the seven days of the feast, and are expressly called
the Passover, (Luke xxii. 1.) Thus the Jewish doctors remark
upon Deut. xvi. 2. ' Thou shalt sacrifice the Passover to the
Lord, of the flock, and of the herd,' that the flock signifies the
lambs, which were eaten on the 14th, and the herd, the offerings
of the Chagigah, which were consumed on the 15th day of the
mouth Nisan. The Jewish rulers therefore would not go into
the judgment hall, that they might not be unfit to eat the Pass-
over, that is, those paschal-offerings of the herd, which were
holy things, and of which none might eat in their defilement. —
Whitby's Annotations, and Appendix to St Mark. — (See Cal-
met's Commentary upon this passage of St John, where he
opposes this opinion with reasons that seem to have some weight
in them.
f By this answer they seem willing to make Pilate not so
much a judge of the cause, as an executor of their sentence.
But there cannot possibly be a higlier act of injustice, than to
desire that a judge should suppose the accused person guilty of
the crime, without any farther examination- It is no strange
and extraordinary thing to see innocent persons oppressed by
arbitrary proceedings, without any legal process; but for a man
to be brought before a judge, in order to he delivered up directly
to execution, without one proof of his crime, or any examination
concerning it, is a new way of oppression, first invented and
contrived against the Saviour of the world. — Calmet's Corn-
mentury.
g Whether the Jews had at this time the power of life and
death is a point much controverted among the learned. The
answer which the Jewish rulers here give to Pilate, and the
general opinion of their Rabbins, who suppose that their rulers
lost that power about forty years before the destruction of Jeru-
salem, seem to incline to the negative. But those who take
Sect. IV.]
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By these reserved answers, Pilate perceiving that their
intention was to make him the instrument of their malice
against an innocent man, refused to intermeddle in the
affair, unless they would exhibit some articles of accusa-
tion against him. Knowing therefore that Pilate was a
creature of the Roman court, and a slave to its great-
ness, they alleged against our Lord, that, a he was
guilty of seditious practices, of dissuading the payment
of the tribute to Caesar, and of setting himself up for a
king. Pilate, hearing the name of a king, thought him-
self concerned to examine that point; and therefore,
returning to the judgment-hall, and seating himself upon
the tribunal, he asked Jesus, whether he was the king of
the Jews ? AVhich our Lord never pretended to deny ;
but then he informed the governor, that ' his kingdom
the other side of the question argue thus: that the Jews, when
reduced to a Roman province, had still the privilege granted
them, to use the sacred institutions and customs that were
derived to them from their fathers, (Joseph Antiq. b. xiv. c.
17.) that it was granted to Hyrcanus the high-priest, if any
controversy should arise concerning their discipline that the
judgment of it should be referred to him ; that, pursuant to this
graut, we find the high-priest and his council stoning Stephen,
not by the rage of zealots, as some conceive, but according to
the law, which requires, that the blasphemer should be stoned,
(Levit. xxiv. 16;) that Saul, armed with the power of the high-
priest and elders, persecuted the Jewish Christians unto death,
and Jed them bound to Jerusalem to be punished, (Acts xxii. 4.
5,) that the Jews would have judged Paul after their own law,
(Acts xxiv. 6.) and have put him to death, (Acts xxiii. 27.) had
not Lysias, the chief captain, rescued him from their hands,
which, they say, he did by violence, that is, by an invasion of
their rights, but he affirms he did it because he understood that
Paul was a Roman : and from hence they conclude, that they
still retained the power of judging, and condemning these to
death, who were Jews by nature and descent, and by their laws
deserved to die, though as to some persons, and in some cases,
they had not that power. Thus, when Annas, or Ananus, the
high-priest, killed James, the brother, of our Lord, and stoned
many other Christians, as transgressors of the law, the wisest
part of the nation, says Josephus, disliked his proceedings,
because he should not have called a council concerning life and
death, without licence from Albinus, the Roman president.
From whence we may infer, that the power of inflicting capital
punishments, even upon the Jews converted to the Christian
faith, was then so far taken from them, that they could not
regularly do it, without first obtaining leave from the Roman
governor: and in the case of our blessed Saviour, the Jews had
debarred themselves from the power of putting him to death,
alter they had accused him before Pilate, not of crimes com-
mitted against their law, but of sedition, and aspiring at a
kingdom, to the prejudice of Ciesar and the Roman govern-
ment, whereof it belonged to Pilate, and not to them, to judge
and determine. And therefore their saying to him, ' it is not
lawful for us to put any man to death,' (John xviii. 31.) is looked
upon, either as a kind of complaint of the encroachments which
the Romans had made upon their civil constitution, or as a
mere pretence, since Pilate gave them enough, when he bade
them to take him, and judge him according to their law; and
that the true reasons of their bringing him before the Roman
tribunal, were, that he might be condemned for sedition, which
would be a means to secure them from the rage of the people,
and that he might be crucified, which was a Roman death, and
generally inflicted on those that were found tampering against
tlie government. — Calmet's Commentary, and Whitby's and
Beausobre' '*' Annotations,
a When our Lord's accusers came before Pilate, they said
nothing of his pretended blasphemy, his destruction of the tem-
ple or violation of the law of Moses, because they were ques-
tions that the governor, they knew, would not concern himself
with; and therefore tiny forged such accusations against him as
they thought might make him odious and suspected to the
Roman government, and oblige Pilate to be severe against him.
-Calmet's Commentary.
END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix.45— END. JOHN xii. 19-END.
was not of this world,'* and could therefore give no um-
brage to the Romans ; for that, had it been a worldly
kingdom, his subjects and followers would have cer-
tainly fought for him, and saved him from the hands of
the Jews. When Pilate heard that he disclaimed all
right to secular kingdoms, he thought he had nothing to
do to examine him about the nature of his spiritual em-
pire ; and therefore, withdrawing from the court into the
Vestibulum, where his accusers were impatiently expect-
ing the ratification of their sentence, in order to execu-
tion, contrary to their hopes, he plainly told them, that
he found nothing worthy of death in him.
Upon this disappointment, the chief priests, and
elders, grew exceeding fierce and clamorous, represent-
ing our Lord as a turbulent mover of the people, and
charging him with the spreading of seditious principles
through all c Galilee and Judea, even as far as Jerus-
alem. Pilate hearing them name Galilee, and under-
standing that he was a Galilean, and consequently,
belonged to d Herod's jurisdiction ; in order to get rid
of the importunity of the Jews, and withal to free him-
self from this odious and puzzling affair, sent him
immediately to Herod, who was then at Jerusalem,
upon the occasion of the feast. Herod was no less
proud of the honour done him by Pilate, than glad
of having this opportunity to gratify his curiosity. e
b Jesus then intimated, that he was a king; but that 'his
kingdom was not of this world,' it had nothing to do with men's
temporal interests or privileges; it left rulers and subjects in
the same situation as it found them; and it was therefore no
object of jealousy to any government. Had he claimed a king-
dom of an earthly nature, he would of course have armed his
followers, and they would have fought in his cause, but as his
disciples had been few in number, inoffensive in their habits,
and forbidden to fight for him, even when he was apprehended,
it was evident that his kingdom was not of a secular nature, but
related wholly to spiritual and heavenly things, and would be
supported entirely by spiritual sanctions and authority, John
xviii. 33. 36. — Scott's Commentary.
c Here they artfully make mention of Galilee, to incite Pilate
against him as a seditious person, and to confirm their own
suggestion that he was so; for they give him to think, that, as
he was a Galilean, he might probably embrace the opinion of
Judas Gaulonites, who held it was not lawful to pay tribute to
Caesar: a notion which the inhabitants of Galilee had generally
imbibed, and, upon that account, were always prone to sedition
and rebellion, for which some of them, not long before, had been
set upon and slain by Pilate. - Whitby's Annotations.
d Pilate's government did not extend to Galilee; it included
Judea only. Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, was,
at this time, king or tetrach of Galilee; Jesus, consequently,
was his subject; and therefore, according to the Roman laws,
it was Pilate's duty to send him to his proper sovereign, espe-
cially as he was accused of rebellion, and a design to make him-
self a king. — Calmet's Commentary, and Grotius on Luke xxiii.
e Herod was greatly rejoiced to see Jesus, perhaps desiring
to satisfy himself whether he were indeed • John the baptist
risen from the dead ' as he once supposed (notes xiii. 31 — 'SA.
Mat. xiv. 1, 2.) He had, however, long wished to see him,
having heard many reports concerning his doctrine and miracles,
in hopes of having his curiosity gratified, by beholding some
effects of his power in working miracles. But our Lord saw
good not only to disappoint that expectation, but also to keep a
profound silence in his presence, not returning any answer to
his multiplied questions, or to the vehement accusations of his
enemies. Yet Herod, though doubtless vexed and mortified,
did not choose to have any hand in putting him to death, having
probably been greatly terrified in his conscience, on account of his
murder of John the baptist. He therefore contented himself
with treating Jesus as a despicable person, beneath his notice;
except that he joined with his officers and guards in deriding
and insulting him. In token of their contempt of his pretensions
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For, having heard much of our Saviour's fame, he ex-
pected to see some miracle or other done by him ; but
found himself sadly disappointed. For though the
scribes and rulers pursued him with their accusations to
Herod's palace, and Herod, in hearing the cause, asked
him several questions, yet he would not vouchsafe so
much as one answer ; which made the tetrarch look upon
him as an insignificant, despicable person ; and, accord-
ingly, having committed him to the derision and insults
of his guards, who used him with the utmost indignity,
he sent him back again to Pilate, arrayed in a white
robe, "whether it was to make a mock of him, or to in-
dicate his innocence, or both ; but so it was, that, from
that time, Herod and Pilate, b who before were at great
variance, were, upon this occasion, perfectly recon-
ciled.
When our Lord was remanded back in this manner,
Pilate addressed himself to the priests and rulers of the
people, telling them, ' That though they had brought
this man before him as a seditious person, and a seducer
of the people, yet, upon examination, he could not find
him guilty of any of the crimes that were laid to his
charge ; that this was not his own opinion only, but that
Herod who was a more competent judge of the affair,
and to whom he had sent him, on purpose to take cog-
nisance of it, had no wise signified that his crimes were
capital ; and therefore, instead of taking away his life,
he proposed some lesser punishment, if they thought fit,
such as * scourging him a little with whips, and so dis-
missing him.' But this lenity was so disagreeable to
their enraged temper, that they peremptorily demanded
execution, saying, 'Crucify him, crucify him.' Pilate,
still tender of shedding innocent blood, expostulated the
matter with them, desiring to know what evil he had
done ; for, as for his part, he could find no fault in him,
much less any crimes deserving of death ; but this did
but the more exasperate, and make them more clamorous
for a speedy execution.
to lie a king, they clothed him with some splendid garment,
which had perhaps been worn by Herod ; and he was sent back
thus attired to Pilate, that he might dispose of him as he pleased.
Probably, the Roman soldiers took the hint, from this insult of
Herod and his guard, to clothe Jesus with a purple robe, and to
put on him a crown of thorns. — Scott's Commentary, on Luke
xxiii. 6. 12— Ed.
b A white or shining robe, for this is the meaning of the
original. The Roman princes wore purple robes, and Pilate
therefore put such a robe on Jesus. The Jewish kings wore a
white robe, which was often rendered very shining or gorgeous
by much tinsel or silver interwoven. Josephus says that the
robe which Agrippa wore was so bright with silver, that when
the sun shone on it, it so dazzled the eyes that it was difficult to
look on it. The Jews and Romans, therefore, decked him in
the manner appropriate to their own country, for purposes of
mockery. All this was unlawful and malicious, as there was not
the least evidence of his guilt.— Barnes on the Gospels, vol. ii.
— En.
c It is generally thought, that the cause of this difference be-
tween them was the massacre that Pilate made of some Galileans
at Jerusalem, in the time of the Passover, (Luke xiii. 1.) which
Herod resented as an indignity put upon him, and an invasion of
his authority, who was at that time tetrarch of Galilee. — Beau-
sobre's Annotations.
d This chastisement, as Pilate calls it, was not in order to his
crucifixion, and therefore was not that punishment which the
Romans \ised to inflict upon malefactors, as a preparative to their
execution ; for Pilate intended it as a means to procure his re-
lease; and therefore he seemed willing to consent to it as a
I'unishment, which the Jews so commonly inflicted upon those
The governor had one expedient more, which he
thought would not fail him. Every passover « he was
obliged, by a certain custom, to pardon one criminal
whom the Jews should nominate ; and therefore when
the people came, and were urgent with him to grant them
that usual favour, he proposed two persons to them ;
Barabbas, a notorious malefactor, who, in an insurrection
with some other seditious persons, had committed murder ;
and Jesus, who was called ' Christ ;' never doubting but
that the populace, who he knew were better inclined to
our Lord than their rulers, would have preferred an in-
nocent man before a thief and a murderer. But, at the
instigation of their priests, and others in authority, they
required that the favour might be granted to Barabbas.
Hereupon, when the governor desired to know what he
was to do with the person whom they called Christ, they,
one and all, cried out, ' Crucify him, crucify him ;' and
as he still insisted on his innocence, and proposed some
lighter punishment, which was all, to be sure, that he
could deserve, they began to redouble their clamours,
and, in the most tumultuous manner imaginable, demand
that he might be crucified.
The governor, in the mean time, received a message
from his wife, / desiring him by no means to condemn
the innocent person that was then before him, because,
upon his account, she had had that night many frightful
and uneasy dreams ; which made him the more earnest
to release htm, or at least to spare his life ; and there-
fore, in hopes of pacifying the people's rage, he order-
ed him to be scourged. The soldiers who were to do
this, thinking it not enough to execute his orders, took
him into the common hall, where, having stripped him of
his own clothes, they put a loose purple coat about him as
a robe, S a wreath of thorns upon his head for a crown, and
who had acted perversely against their laws and their traditions,
that he might exempt him from that sentence, which they were
so urgent with him to pronounce. But the result of this his
compliance was, that he neither saved our Lord, nor preserved
justice. Instead of one punishment, the innocent was made to
suffer two, being at last both scourged and crucified. — Whitby's
Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary.
e As the feast of the Passover was celebrated by the Jews in
memory of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, it was very
agreeable to the nature of that feast, and therefore customary at
that time, though practised on no other festivals, to make this
release. It is observed, however, that this practice was no
custom of the Jews, even when they had the civil administration
in their hands, but a piece of popularity, or favour of the procur-
ator, first brought in by Pilate, and afterwards continued by some
christian emperors, who, by a general law, commanded the judges,
that, on the first day of the Passover, all Jewish prisoners, except
such as were committed for particular crimes, should be dis-
charged.— Whitby's and Hammond's Annotations.
f From the time of Tiberius, the governors of provinces were
allowed to take their wives along with them, which was a privi-
lege not granted them before. This wife of Pilate's according to
the general tradition, was named Claudia Proscula; and, in re-
lation to her dream, some are of opinion, that as she had intelli-
gence of our Lord's apprehension, and knew, by his character,
that he was a righteous person, her imagination, being struck
with these ideas, did naturally produce the dream we read of.
But, as our Saviour was apprehended about midnight, out of the
city, and without Pilate's privity, and detained in the house of
Annas, until it was day, there was no possibility for her having
any notice of it before she went to sleep ; and therefore we have
the juster reason to believe, that this dream was sent providen-
tially upon her, for the clearer manifestation of our Lord's inno-
cence— Calmet's Commentary.
g It is said, and they put on him a ' scarlet robe.' Mark
Sect. IV.]
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a reed in his hand for a sceptre ; and then, in derision,
saluted him, and bowing- their knees, mocked him with
the sham profession of allegiance. After this they
spit in his face, smote him on the cheek, and to make
his crown of thorns pierce the deeper, struck him on the
head with his phantastic sceptre ; and then leading him
to a pillar, where they tied him fast, they scourged him
with whips, and with such unrelenting cruelty, that his
tender flesh was torn in pieces, and the pavement crim-
soned with his most precious blood.
In this piteous plight, with his head, face, and body
imbrued in blood, and with all his mock ornaments on,
Pilate, in hopes of moving the people's compassion,
ordered him to be brought forth ; and when he appear-
ed, ' See the man !' says he, ' this rueful spectacle of
suffering innocence !' But so far were they from melt-
ing at the sight of so deplorable an object, that they
raised their cries still louder and louder for his cru-
cifixion ; and when the governor still insisted on his
innocence, ' ' We have a law, a said they, and by our
law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son
of God.'
These last words raised some terror in Pilate, and
gave him more uneasiness ; for, taking them in such a
sense as an Heathen might well put upon them, he began
to apprehend, that if he should proceed to sentence
against him, he might destroy not only an innocent per-
son, but possibly some hero, or mighty demi-god, and
so at once commit an act of injustice and impiety both.
He therefore, returning with Jesus to the judgment-seat
again, began to inquire into his original and pedigree.
But as it was no part of our Saviour's intention to
escape death, he thought it not proper to say any thing
in his own justification ; until his silence having given
the governor some offence, insomuch that he put him in
mind, his life or death, his release or crucifixion, de-
pended upon him, he then replied, that such power he
could not have over him, ' were it not permitted him
from above ; and that therefore they who had delivered
him up, had the greater sin * to answer for than he '
D. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHNxii. 19-END.
This reply made Pilate still the more desirous to re-
lease him ; which when the Jews perceived, they found
out at last this expedient to work upon his fears, by
telling him plainly, ' that if he did not punish a man
who set himself up for a king, he was an enemy to the
emperor ;' a menace, which he, c who knew the jealous
temper of his master Tiberius full well, and how easily a
wrong representation of these proceedings might prove
his ruin, had not the courage to withstand : and there-
fore, returning to the hall, he ordered Jesus to be
brought in the same habit to his public tribunal, which
stood in a paved place, called Gabatha, d and, before he
gave sentence, calling for water, and washing his hands
e before all the people, he solemnly declared, that he
1 John xix. 7.
says they clothed him in purple. The scarlet colour was ob-
tained from a species of fruit, purple from shell-fish. The an-
cients gave the name purple to any colour that had a mixture of
red in it, and consequently these different colours might be some-
times called by the same name. The robe here used was the
kind worn by Roman generals, and other distinguished officers
of the Roman army, and also by the Roman governors. It was
made so as to be placed on the shoulders, and was bound around
the body so as to leave the right arm at liberty. As we cannot
suppose that Pilate would array him in a new and splendid robe,
we must suppose that this was one which had been worn and
cast off as useless, and now used to array the Son of God, as an
object of ridicule and scorn ! — Barnes on the Gospels, vol. i.
Ed.
a When the Jews perceived that Pilate looked upon the accu-
sations which they brought against Jesus, of his being a sediti-
ous person, and one who aimed at a kingdom, as idle suggestions,
and what had no shadow of probability in them, they had re-
course to another allegation, namely his being a violator of the laws
of their nation, and guilty of blasphemy, which, as they were al-
lowed to be governed by their own law, they had a right to de-
maud of their governor to see punished, and accordingly did it
with arrogance enough. — Calmefs Commentary.
b Pilate indeed sinned heinously, in abusing his power to the
coudemnation of the innocent; but Judas sinned more, in deliv-
ering up to the chief priests, and the chief priests in delivering
up to Pilate, than Pilate himself, whom they made a tool to
serve their malice and revenge. They had better means of
knowledge than he, and so sinned against more light, and conse-
quently their guilt was greater, and their condemnation heavier
than his. — Beausobre's Annotations.
c Pilate repeatedly endeavoured to deliver our Saviour from
the Jews, knowing that they accused him capitally, only from
malice and envy. His wife also, who had been disturbed with
dreams, sent and desired him not to participate in condemning
that just person. In order to effect his purpose, he adopted
several expedients, 1. He required legal accusation, evidence,
and conviction ; and, in default of these, he proposed to refer his
condemnation to the Jews; who had not, as he well knew, the
power of inflicting a capital punishment, (John xviii. 29, 31.)
2. He attempted to appease the Jews, and to give them some
satisfaction, by whipping our Saviour. 3. He tried to take him
out of their hands, by offering to deliver him, or Barabbas, on
the festival day of the passover. 4. He wanted to discharge
himself from pronouncing judgment against him, by sending him
to Herod, king of Galilee. 5. When he saw all this would not
satisfy the Jews, and that they even threatened him, saying he
could be no friend to the emperor, if he let Jesus go, he caused
water to be brought, washed his hands before all the people, and
publicly declared himself innocent of the blood of that just
person. Yet at the same time he delivered him up to the sol-
diers, that they might crucify him. This was enough to justify
Christ, and to show that Pilate held him to be innocent; but it
was not enough to vindicate the conscience and integrity of a
judge, whose duty it was, as well to assert the cause of op-
pressed innocence, as to punish the guilty criminal. — Calmefs
Dictionary.
d The word Gabatha in the Syriac, for that is the language
which was then commonly spoken, and which the writers of the
New Testament do therefore call the Hebrew, signifies an ele-
vation ; and therefore the place where Pilate had his tribunal
erected, was probably a terrace, a gallery, or balcony, belonging to
his palace, and paved with stone or marble, as the word XiSorT^wros
imports.
e Washing of hands, with a design to denote innocency, was
not peculiar only to the Jews, but customary among other na-
tions, because by the element of water it is natural to signify
purity and cleanness; but then the question is, Whether in con-
formity to the Jews or Gentiles, it was that Pilate made use of
this ceremony ? To expiate an unknown murder, the elders of
the next adjacent city were wont to wash their hands, and say,
' Our hands have not shed this blood,' (Deut. xxi. 6, 7.) And
the Psalmist, having renounced all confederacy with wicked and
mischievous men makes this resolution, ' I will wash my hands
in testimony of my innocency,' (Psal. xxvi. 6.) From which
passages Origen is of opinion, that Pilate did this in compliance
with the manners of the Jews, that by actions, as well as words,
he might declare to them the opinion he had of our Lord's inno-
cence. But as Pilate was a Roman, others are rather inclined
to think, that, in this action, he conformed himself to the man-
ners of the Gentiles. The scholiast upon Sophocles (in Ajace)
informs vis that it was the custom among the ancients, when they
had killed a man or shed blood, to wash their hands in water, where-
by to purify them from their defilement: and to the same purpose
Virgil introduces ^Eneas speaking: " It is wickedness for me,
coming from so great carnage and bloodshed, to touch it till I
have washed myself in the living stream." (^Eneid, ii. ver. 118.)
Nay, Clemens Romanus informs us, (b. ii. c. 52,) that when
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that lie was not able to stand under it any longer ; and
therefore they compelled one Simon, e a Cyrenian, the
father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear it the rest of the
way.
Among the vast throngs that followed to this execu-
tion, there were many people, especially some pious
women, who could not behold this sad spectacle without
the highest grief and lamentation ; which when our
Saviour observed, lifting up his face, all bloody and
disfigured, ' Weep not for me,' said he, ' but weep for
yourselves and your children ; for it will not be long
before those shall be accounted happy, who shall have
no posterity / to inherit the miseries that shall then come
upon this nation : for how dismal must their condition
be, who shall call upon the s hills to cover them, and the
was ' innocent of the blood of that just man, and that
they must answer for it ;' whereupon the whole body of
the people cried out, ' may his blood fall upon us
and our posterity !' An imprecation as black as
hell, and what has been too long (may it please the
Almighty to shorten their punishment !) verified upon
them. "
Barabbas being thus released, and Jesus condemned
to the cross, the soldiers and officers, after they had
acted over again their former insults and indignities, took
oft' the purple coat, and put his own garments on, and
having laid an heavy cross upon his b shoulders, led him
away c to his crucifixion :d but when they came to the
gate of the city, his strength was so entirely exhausted,
judges were going to pronounce sentence of death, they usually
lifted up their hands to heaven, thereby to denote their own
innocency; and it is not improbable that they washed their
hands before they did so, that they might lift them up with
the more purity. — Whitby's Annotations, and Calmefs Com-
mentary.
a This imprecation was most dreadfully fulfilled upon them at
the siege of Jerusalem, when the vengeance of heaven overtook
them with a fury unexampled in the history of the world ; when
they were exposed at once to the horrors of famine, of sedition,
of assassination, and of the swords of the Romans. And it
is very remarkable that a strong correspondence may be traced
between their sin and their punishment. ' They put Jesus to
death when the nation was assembled to celebrate the passover,
and when the nation assembled for the same purpose, Titus shut
them up within the walls of Jerusalem. The rejection of the
true Messiah was their crime: and the following of false Mes-
siahs to their destruction was their punishment. They sold and
bought Jesus as a slave: and they themselves were bought and
sold as slaves at the lowest prices. They preferred a robber and
murderer to Jesus, whom they crucified between two thieves:
and they themselves were afterwards infested with bands of
thieves and robbers. They put Jesus to death, lest the Romans
should come and take away their place and nation: and the
Romans did come and take away their place and nation. They
crucified Jesus before the walls of Jerusalem: and before the
walls of Jerusalem they themselves were crucified in such num-
bers, that it is said room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses
for the bodies.' — Newton on the Prophecies, and Porteus's Lec-
tures on Matt. — Ed.
b It was a custom, that he who was to be crucified, should bear
his own cross to the place of execution: but whereas it is gen-
erally supposed that our Lord bore the whole cross, that is, the
long and transverse part both, this seems to be a thing impossible ;
and therefore Lipsius, in his treatise, (De supplicio crucis) has
set the matter in a true light, when he tells us, that Jesus only
carried the transverse beam, because the long piece of timber,
or body of the cross, was either fixed in the ground before, or
made ready to be set up, as soon as the prisoner came ; and from
hence he observes, that painters are very much mistaken in their
description of our Saviour carrying the whole cross.
c Capital punishments, both among the Jews and Romans,
were inflicted without their cities. This was particularly ob-
served in the crucifixion of malefactors. — Ed.
d A death the most dreadful of all others, both for the shame
and the pain of it. So scandalous, that it was inflicted, as the last
mark of detestation, upon the vilest of people. It was the pun-
ishment of robbers and murderers, provided that they were slaves
too; but otherwise if they were free, and had the privileges of the
city of Rome, this was then thought a prostitution of that honour,
and too infamous a punishment for such an one, let his crimes
have been what they would. The form of a cross was that of
two posts, cutting one another at right angles. On that which
stood upright the body was fastened, by nailing the feet to it, and
on the other transverse piece, by nailing the hands on each side.
Now, because these parts of the body, being the instruments of
action and motion, are provided by nature with a much greater
quantity of nerves than others have occasion for, and because all
sensation is performed by the spirits contained in these nerves,
it will follow, that wherever they abound, the sense of pain must
needs, in proportion, be more quick and tender. But though the
pain of this kind of death was exceedingly sharp, yet as none of
the vitals were immediately affected, the body continued thus
stretched out, and hanging upon the nails that fastened it to the
cross, until excess of anguish had by degrees quite exhausted the
spirits, and driven out the soul; which must needs make the
death which our Saviour submitted to for our sakes, slow and
lingering, as well as painful and ignominous; so lingering, that
St Andrew was two whole days upon the cross, and some other
martyrs have been rather starved, and devoured by birds, than
killed with the torments of the tree. — Stanhope on the Epistles
and Gospel's, vol. ii., and Howell's Hist, in the notes.
e Libya, in its proper acceptation, denotes those parts of the
African continent which lie about the Mediterranean Sea, from
Egypt eastward, to the Greater Syrtis, or Gulph of Sidra, west-
ward. In the western part of this Libya stood Cyrene, a city
of great note, and once of such power, as to contend with Car-
thage for some pre-eminences. But whether this Simon, whom
the soldiers compelled to carry our Saviour's cross, was a Jew or
Pagan, is a question that has been disputed among the ancients.
Several fathers have thought that he was a Gentile, and that
herein he was a type of that idolatrous people, who were after-
wards to be called to the profession of the gospel and to carry the
cross after Christ. But others, from his name, rather imagine
that he was a Jew, and that, as there were great numbers of that
nation in Egypt, and the neighbouring countries, this Simon
might be one, whose habitation was at Cyrene in Libya, but was
now coming up to Jerusalem, at the time of the Passover. He
is called by St Mark, (chap. xv. 21.) the father of Alexander
and Rufus, because these two persons were become famous in
the Christian church, at the time when this evangelist wrote his
gospel; but whether he himself was at this time a disciple of
Christ, and afterwards bishop of Bostres in Arabia, where he
suffered martyrdom, by being burnt alive by the Pagans, is
much to be questioned, though some have asserted it, but not,
I fear, from sufficient authority. — Well's Geography of the New
Testament, part i. and Calmet's Commentary and Dictionary,
under the word Simon.
f This they undoubtedly had occasion to think at the siege of
Jerusalem, and during the war against the Romans, not only on
account of the loss of their children, and the sale of them who
were under seventeen, for bond slaves, but chiefly on the account
of that famine in Jerusalem which forced Mary the daughter of
Eleazar, a woman of some figure and quality, to eat her own
sucking child: 'Upon which,' says Josephus, 'the dread of
famine made men weary of their lives, and the living envied the
dead, that were taken away before the extremity came to this
height Jewish Wars, b. 7. c. 8.
g That this is a proverbial expression, which the prophet
(Hosea, x. 8.), makes use of to denote the utter despair of a people,
when they see unavoidable calamities coming upon them, cannot
be doubted; for so the Targum upon Hosea explains it, "He
will bring such judgments upon them, as will render their con-
dition as miserable as if the mountains should cover them, and
the hills fall upon them." Isaiah speaks of the wicked that
' they should go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of
the earth, for fear of the Lord,' (Isa. ii. 19.) And accordingly
Josephus relates of the Jews, that after the taking of Jerusalem,
many of them hid themselves in vaults and sepulchres, and there
perished, rather than surrender to the Romans. — Ibid.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c
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mountains to fall on them, that by a sudden destruction
they may escape the lingering calamities of famine and
fear, and the horror of a thousand deaths !'
When he came to the place of execution, which was
called Golgotha a or Mount Calvary, the soldiers, be-
fore they nailed him to the cross, offered him a potion *
of wine mixed with gall, which, when he had tasted it,
he refused to drink. They then stripped oft' his clothes,
and having with four great nails fastened his hands and
a Golgotha in the Syriac, vulgarly called the Hebrew tongue,
signifies tlie same that Calvary does in Latin ; and was so called,
either because the form of the mount somewhat resembles a man's
skull, or rather, because it being the common place of execution,
a great number of dead men's skulls was usually to be seen there.
The former conjecture, however, is the more probable, for
reasons stated in another part of this work, (see description of
Jerusalem.) This mount was a small eminence on the western
side of the larger mount of Moriah, and is represented to have
been 200 paces without the ancient walls of Jerusalem. The
ancient summit of Calvary has been much altered, by reducing it
level in some parts, and raising it in others, in order to bring it
within the area of a large and irregular building, called the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which now occupies its site. But
in doing this, care has been taken that none of the parts con-
cerned in the crucifixion should suffer any alteration. The
same building also encloses within its spacious walls several
other places reputed sacred: as 1, the place where Christ was
derided by the soldiers ; 2, where the soldiers divided his gar-
ments; ;i, where he was shut up while the hole was dug to set
the cross in, and the other necessary preparations were made for
his crucifixion ; 4, where he was crowned with thorns; 5, where
lie was nailed to the cross; 6, where the cross was erected, and
the hole in which it was fixed; 7, where the soldiers stood who
pierced his side ; 8, the stone on which his body was anointed
previous to his burial, commonly called the stone of unction,
which stone is about eight feet in length and two in breadth; 9,
where his body was deposited in the sepulchre ; 10, where the
angels appeared to the women after his resurrection; 11, where
Christ himself appeared to Mary Magdalen ; 12, where he
appeared to the Virgin Mary. All those stations are distin-
guished by as many separate chapels or altars. This sacred
place is now, alas! doubly profaned: for besides its being as is
well known, in the possession of the followers of Mahomet, the
most relentless enemies of Christ and his disciples, it is still fur-
ther outraged by the idolatrous rites of the Greek and Latin
churches. A kind of chapel has been made of the sepulchre,
and on the very slab on which the body of our Lord was laid ;
and where an end was made of all sacrifice, the pretended sacri-
fice of the mass continues to be daily offered up. Nor is this all:
for this place, sacred above every other to peace and truth, is
made the scene of one of the most riotous and disgraceful festivals,
as will as one of the most impudent frauds, which superstition
ever gave birth to. Here, on Holy Thursday, it is pretended
that the angel Gabriel brings fire from heaven; and the deluded
multitude flock in nowds, with a dreadful tumult and uproar, to
carry it away with them by means of candles, torches, &c. : the
Original file being presented to them for that purpose by the
priest, who pretends to receive it from the angel. It is a pain.
lul and humiliating reflection, that those very places which wit-
nessed the overthrow of the empire of Satan, and from whence
the pure light of the gospel should issue and spread over the
whole earth, should be consigned to the practice of the most
degrading superstitions. This, in the unsearchable wisdom of
His purpose, is permitted by the Almighty for a time; but he is
pledged to rescue his favourite country, as well as his favourite
people, in 'the last days,' from darkness and oppression; and
the Christian may entertain the pleasing hope, that the scene of
the Saviour's sufferings will bo made the seat of his visible
glory. — Mansford't Gazetteer.
b Interpret* rs and others vary very much about this passage,
taking it two different ways, as St Matthew, (chap. xx\ii. 34.)
and St Mark, (chap. xv. 23.) seem to express it. Some will
have it, that in St Matthew's sense, vinegar mingled with gall
was a hitter, poisonous draught, to stupify the person who drank
it, that by benumbing his senses, he might feel less pain. Those
that cliller from this, say that, by the piefy of some of the dis
feet, with his body stretched out, to the cross, they so
raised it up, and fixed it in the ground. To stain his
innocence, and to put him to the greater shame, they
crucified him between two common malefactors. c But
what might make an amends for that, was the inscription
which Pilate ordered to be fixed on the top of his cross.
Jesus of Nazareth, the king op the Jews, in the three
most general languages, d Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,
then in vogue. This the high-priests would gladly have
had him alter ; but, either out of spite to them, who had
forced him upon an unjust act, or out of honour to our
Lord, whom he knew to be a righteous person, he posi-
tively refused to do it.
As soon as our Lord was fixed on the cross, which
was much about noon, four soldiers, who were his
executioners, went to the dividing the poor spoil of his
garments. His mantle they cut into four parts, and took
each of them one ; but as for his coat, because it was one
entire piece, e wove without seam, and would therefore
ciples, and, not improbably, of some of those good women who
used to minister to Jesus, there was prepared wine mingled with
myrrh, which according to Pliny, was an excellent and pleasant
mixture, and such as the piety and indulgence of these nations
used to administer to condemned persons, to fortify their drooping
spirits against the terrors of approaching death. As the design
of this mixture, however, was in some measure to intoxicate the
sufferer, and to make him less sensible of his pain, our blessed
Lord might therefore refuse to drink it, because it became him,
who was then going to offer himself a free and voluntary sacri-
fice to God, for the sins of men, and was to show them a pattern
how to bear afflictions, with due resignation to the divine will,
to avoid a thing which might too far discompose his thoughts,
and show too ill a precedent to his followers. To reconcile the
difference then between the two evangelists, since the former
affirms, that the potion offered to our Saviour was vinegar
mingled with gall, the latter, wine mingled with myrrh, the easiest
way is, to say, (with our learned Dr Lightfoot) that there were
two cups offered to our Lord at the time of his passion ; one of wine
mixed with myrrh, by some of his friends, before he was nailed
to the cross : and the other with vinegar, by the soldiers, in a
scoffing and insulting manner, after he was nailed to the cross;
which is better than to assert, with some great names, that the
ancient translator of St Matthew from the Hebrew or Syriac,
mistaking the word mara, which properly signifies bitterness,
might put gall, which in Syriac is marar, and derived from the
same root, instead of myrrh. — Howell's History in the notes;
Whitby's Annotations, and Calmet's Commentary .
c The malefactors here mentioned were probably some of
those factious and seditious gangs which Judea, at this time,
was full of. Under pretence of public liberty, they committed
all manner of violence and outrage; and stirring up the people
against the Roman government, drew upon the nation all the
calamity which afterwards befel it. As it was customary to
crucify several malefactors at the same time, especially if con-
victed of the same crimes, our Saviour, who was accused by
the Jews of seditious practices, had two, who were really guilty
of that crime, executed with him, and him they placed in the
midst, as in the most honourable place, purely in derision,
and with the same malevolent spirit that made them array him
in a purple robe, a sceptre, and a crown —Beausobre's Annota-
tions,
d In Hebrew, or the Syriac, which was then the common
language of the country: in Greek, which was the language of
commerce almost all the east over; and Latin, because of the
majesty of the Roman empire, which at that time, had extended
its domininn over the then known world. The whole inscription
however, is said to have been written after the Jewish manner,
that is, from the right hand to the left, that it might be legible
to the Jews, who, by conversing with the Romans, began now
to understand a little Latin. — Calmcfs Commentary and Howell's
History in the notes.
e Some of the fathers are of opinion, that this coat of our
Saviour's was made of two pieces of woollen stutf, wove in a
loom, aud so fine drawn, that the joining could not be perceived.
6 N
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be spoiled if it were divided, for it they cast lots, and
therein fulfilled a famous prophecy.1
While he thus hung upon the cross, in the most exqui-
site torments, several people of different denominations,
the chief-priests, rulers and soldiers, most of the multi-
tude, and almost every common passenger, insulted his
misery ; presuming, that a person, reduced to that low
estate, could never be the promised Messiah. But all
the reply that he made to their bitter and reviling
speeches, was only by way of petition to his heavenly
Father, that in respect of their ignorance, and confirmed
prejudice against him, he would be pleased to overlook
their barbarous treatment of him, and to pardon their
provoking blasphemies.
Nay, of the two malefactors who were crucified with
him, a one of them reviled, and mocked him in the same
gross manner, requiring him to give the company, as
they desired, a demonstration of his being the true Mes-
siah, by rescuing both himself and them from the crosses
whereon they were fixed. But the other malefactor *
reproved his companion for insulting the innocent, and,
while himself was receiving the just reward of his crimes,
for upbraiding a person who suffered undeservedly ; and
1 Psal. xxii. 18.
Others will have it, that it was all needle-work, that is, knit,
not wove from top to bottom. But Braunius, in his treatise
on the tlress of the Hebrew priests, has plainly proved, that the
ancients had the art of weaving any habit, of what make or size
soever, all of one piece, in a loom; that in several eastern coun-
tries, the art is still preserved and practised ; and that himself
made a machine, which Calmet in Iris Dictionary, under the
word Vestments, has given us, wherein such a habit might be
wrought. As it was customary formerly for women to weave
stuffs and cloth, not for their own wearing only, but for their
husbands' and children's use, (for so the character of the virtuous
woman in Solomon, (Prov. xxxi. 13.) and the practice of Pene-
lope, the wife of Ulysses, show,) it was the ancient tradition, that
the blessed Virgin herself wove her son's coat: but that she made
it for him when he was young; that it grew with him as he
increased in stature, and continued always fresh without decay,
is a mere fiction, in order to assimilate to the habits which the
Israelites wore in the wilderness. — Calmefs Commentary and
Dictionary.
a If we compare Mat. xxvii. 44. where it is said, 'that the
thieves, who were crucified with Jesus, cast the same in his
teeth,' with what we find in Luke xxiii. 39. where it is said,
' one of the malefactors that was hanged railed on him,' we may
be apt to fancy some contradiction in the evangelists; but this
the commentators reconcile, by showing, that it is a very com-
mon thing in the Hebrew style, to use the plural number instead
of the singular: As when it is said, that the ark rested on the
mountains of Ararat, (Gen. viii. 4.) that is, on one of the moun-
tains, and ' that God overthrew the cities where Lot dwelt,' (Gen.
xix. '29.) when he could only dwell in one at a time ; with several
other examples both in the Old and New Testament. But I
see no reason why we may not understand this passage, as St
Chrysostom and St Jerom have done, namely, ' That both of the
thieves did at first rail on Jesus, probably thinking by that artifice
to obtain some help towards procuring their pardon ; but being
disappointed of their hopes, arid hearing Jesus pray for his cruci-
fiers, one of them was thereby prevailed upon, and converted: '
especially since, according to this interpretation, the operations
of God's grace upon this man's mind were more sudden and
strong, and his conversion more miraculous. — Whitby's and Ham-
mond's Annotations; and Stanhope on the epistles and gospels,
vol. ii.
b This thief is called by some authors Dimas or Dismus, and,
out of the false gospel of Nicodemus, they produce many fables
concerning him, but too absurd to be here related. Several of
the fathers however give him the title of a martyr, because of the
testimony which he bore to truth even when it seemed to be
utterly deserted by every one else. — Calmefs Commentary.
then looking upon Jesus, with a noble reliance, and most
wonderful faith, he humbly intreated him to retain some
remembrance of him when he came into his kingdom. To
which our Lord returned him this most gracious promise
of speedy felicity, c ' To-day shalt thou be with nie in
paradise.'
In the mean time there stood by our Saviour's cross, sad
spectators of this dismal tragedy, the holy Virgin-mother,
Mary the wife of Alpheus, d Mary Magdalene, and John
his beloved apostle ; to whose care and protection he
recommended his sorrowful mother ; e and from that
c The word paradise comes from the Hebrew, or rather from
the Chaldee pardes; and, according to the force of the original,
it should properly signify an orchard, or plantation of fruit-trees,
as in some passages of the Old Testament, particularly in Neh.
ii. 8. it denotes a forest. The Septuagint make use of the word
Utt^dhtros, when they speak of the garden of Eden, which the
Lord planted, in the beginning of the world, and therein placed
our first parents. The Jews commonly call paradise the garden
of Eden ; and they imagine, that at the coming of the Messiah,
they shall there enjoy an earthly felicity, in the midst of all sorts
of delights ; and, till the resurrection, and the coming of the
Messiah, they think their souls shall abide here in a state of
rest. In the books of the New Testament, the word paradise is
put for a place of delight, where the souls of the blessed
enjoy everlasting happiness ; but where our Lord promises the
penitent thief, that he 'should be with him in paradise,' it
is thought by the generality of the fathers, that he means
heaven itself; though modem commentators make no more of
it, than that state of felicity which God has appointed for
the reception of the pious, until the time of the general resur-
rection. Whether the place of departed souls is above, within,
or beneath, the highest heavens; whether there is one com-
mon receptacle for the souls of the righteous and unrighteous
till the resurrection ; or whether, from their departure out
of their bodies, they dwell in separate mansions, as is more
probable, are speculations we are no ways concerned to be in-
quisitive about, whilst we are satisfied of this main truth, that
the righteous are, in the intermediate time between their death
and resurrection, in a state of happiness, and the wicked in a
state of misery. For, as far as our apprehensions of these mat-
ters go, a material place can no ways contribute either to in-
crease or to diminish the happiness or misery of an immaterial
spirit. Spirits that are divested of flesh and blood, wherever
they are, carry heaven or hell along with him. The good angels
are as happy here upon earth, whilst they are employed in the
execution of God's will, as whilst they are conversant in the
regions above, because they do always behold the face of God,
in whose presence is fulness of joy; and Satan was no more
happy when he came among the sons of God to present himself
before the Lord, (Job i. 6.) than he was when he was going to
and fro in the earth. The happiness and misery of pure spirits
have no relation, that we know of, to the place where they are ;
but the happiness and misery of embodied spirits, or of men,
who are made up of souls and bodies, have a dependence upon
the place of their abode ; and therefore we are sure, that where-
ever separate souls are lodged till the resurrection, after the
resurrection, righteous and wicked men shall have places allotted
to them, suitable to their different states ; the former shall be
carried up to the highest heavens, and the latter shall be thrown
down to the nethermost hell. — Calmefs Commentary, and
Bishop Smalridge's Sermons.
d It is not determined in the original whether she was the
wife, or mother, or daughter, of Cleopas ; but critics generally
suppose she was his wife, and that he was also called Alpheus,
and was the father, as this Mary was the mother, of James, and
Joses, and Simon, and Judas, who are therefore called our Lord's
brethren or kinsmen. (Mat. viii. 55.) Grotius indeed thinks
that Cleopas was her father, and Alpheus her husband. After
all we cannot certainly determine it ; but, like most other unde-
terminable points, it is a matter of no great importance. I know
none who has set it in a plainer and juster light than Dr Edwards,
Exercit. part ii. No. 1, p. 163. et seq. — Doddridge's Expositor.
—Ed.
e The generality of commentators do infer from hence, that
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &«
1019
A. M. 4037. A. D.33; OR, A. M. 5112. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15 END. LUKE xix. 45
-END. JOHN. xii. 19— END.
time forward he took her to his house, and all along paid
her the respect due to a parent
During these melancholy transactions, the whole frame
of nature began to be changed: The sun withdrew its
light ; a the stars appeared ; and the eclipse was the
more remarkable, because the moon, being then at full,
could not be in conjunction. This eclipse began about
twelve, and lasted till three in the afternoon ; when all
things were full of horror and amazement. Men's hearts
began to relent ; and, instead of their former insults,
they stood in silent expectance what would be the issue.
All this while our blessed Lord continued meek and
her husband Joseph was at this time dead ; and therefore our
Lord took care that she should not he destitute, by charging his
beloved disciple to treat her as his mother. As Jesus now
showed the tender concern he had for his mother, in com-
mitting her to the care of John, so this concern that he
expressed for her support, must have affected her no less
than if he had called her, Mother: which some have thought
he might not choose to do, to avoid exposing her to the
abuses of the populace, by a discovery of her near relation to him.
But woman was a title he before had used in speaking to his
motber, where no such caution was necessary; and it was fre-
quently applied in ancient times, even to persons that were the
most respected. Neither her own danger, nor the sadness of
the spectacle, nor the reproaches and insults of the people, could
restrain her from performing the last office of duty and tenderness
to her Divine Son on the cross. Grotius justly observes, that it
was a noble instance of fortitude and zeal. Now a sword, according
to Simeon's prophecy, Luke ii. 35, struck through hertender heart,
and pierced her very soul ; and perhaps the extremity of her sor-
rows might so overwhelm her spirits, as to render her incapable
of attending the sepulchre, which we do not find that she did;
nor do we indeed meet with any thing after this concerning her
in the sacred story, or in early antiquity ; except that she con-
tinued among the disciples after our Lord's ascension, which
Luke observes, Acts i. 14. Andreas Cretensis, a writer of the
seventh century, does indeed tell us, she died with John at
Ephesus, many years after this, in an extreme old age, and it
appears from a letter of the council of Ephesus in the fifth cen-
tury, that it was then believed she was buried there. But they
pretend to show her sepulchre at Jerusalem, and many ridicu-
lous tales are forged concerning her death and assumption, or
being taken up into heaven, of which the best Popish authors
themselves appear heartily ashamed. — See Calmefs Dictionary,
vol. ii. p. 141. — Doddridge s Expositor. — Ed.
a Whether this darkness was confined to the land of Judea,
or extended itself much farther, even over the whole hemisphere
where it happened, is a question wherein the ancients are not so
well agreed. Origan, and some others, are of the former opinion;
but the majority differ from them, and for this they quote
Phlegon, the famous astronomer under the emperor Trajan,
affirming, that, in the fourth year of the CCIId Olympiad, which
is supposed to be that of the death of Christ, there was such
a total eclipse of the sun at noon day, that the stars were plainly
to be seen; and from Suidas they likewise cite Dionysius the
Areopagite, then at Hcliopolis in Egypt, expressing himself to
his friend Apollophanes, upon this surprising phenomenon,
' Either that the author of nature suffered, or that he was sym-
pathizing with some one that did ;' For whereas in common
eclipses the sun's total darkness can continue but twelve, or
fifteen minutes at most, this is recorded to have lasted no less
than three full hours, Matt, xxvii. 45. — U?iirersal History, b. 2.
C 11. It is, however, at best very doubtful if the passage from
Phlegon has any reference to this particular darkness; and
as to the story told of Dionysius the Areopagite, it is en-
titled to still less attention, since Dr Larduer has proved
that all the writings attributed to him are spurious. The pro-
bability is, that the darkness was confined to the land of Judea.
And there was surely, (if we may venture to pronounce on the
(inscrutable purposes of almighty providence), a peculiar propriety
in the darkness being so confined, as indicating the wrath of God
on that country for the enormity then perpetrating; and pre-
senting an apt emblem of the spiritual darkness in which that
benighted region was involved. — En.
silent, though languishing and wasting under the agonies
which his body endured, and the heavy load of the
divine indignation against sin ; till, in the words of the
Psalmist, he complained at last, ' Eli ! Eli ! lama sabacb-
thani,that is, b My God, my (jlod, why hast thou forsaken
me ?'
One of the soldiers, hearing the word Eli, or Elohi,
out of ignorance of the Hebrew tongue, thought, that he
called for Elias to help him in his distress ; and there-
upon dipping a sponge in vinegar, c put it on a reed,
which St John calls a stalk of hyssop, '' and, as he com-
plained of being thirsty, gave it to him to drink. Others
however were for letting him alone, to see whether Elias *
would come and help him. But when he had tasted the
vinegar, and now knew, that all the types and prophecies
h In the Hebrew way of speaking, it is certain, that God is
said to leave or forsake, any person, when he suffers him to fall
into great calamities, and lie under great misfortunes, and does
not help him out of them. To this purpose Zion, having been
long afflicted, is brought in by the prophet complaining, ' The
Lord hath forsaken me, the Lord hath forgotten me,' Isa. xlix. 14.
and as the royal Psalmist is very frequent in such complaints,
so he explains the sense of them, when he addresses himself to
God, ' Why art thou so far from my prayer,' so that, though ' I
cry in the day-time, thou hearest not ?' Psal. xxii. 1, 2. That
David was not fallen into any despondency, is manifest from his
calling God so fidnvially his God ; and that our blessed Saviour
was not, as some think, under any failure of his trust in God, or
any perturbation of spirit from the sense of divine wrath, is
evident from his saying of his suffering condition, ' It is finished,'
and from the very words wherein he breathed his last, ' Father,
into thy hands I commit my spirit.' The truth is, this very
thing shows the great composure of his mind ; that while he was
hanging upon the cross, he was so far master of himself, as to
repeat the 22d Psalm, whereof the title or first words are, Eli,
Eli, &c, a psalm which is allowed by all commentators to re-
late to the Messiah; which contains a most lively description of
all the remarkable particulars of his passion, and for that reason,
was a portion of Scripture which he thought proper to recite
upon this mournful occasion. Upon the supposition, then, that
our Lord was now repeating that noble psalm, which, after a
recapitulation of his sufferings, concludes with very comfortable
promises both to him and his followers ; this shows, that he was
far from being under any doubt or despair; that he kept his
mind indeed all along calm and serene; and under the pressure
of whatever he suffered, supported himself with the comfortable
prospect of what was to follow. — Whitby's Annotations, and
Universal History, b. 2. c. 11.
c The vinegar and sponge, in execution of condemned per-
sons, were set ready, to stop the too violent flux of blcod, that
the malefactor might be the longer in dying; but to the blessed
Jesus they were exhibited in scorn ; for being mingled with
gall, the mixture was more horrid and unpleasant. — Howell's
History, in the notes.
d It may be pretended perhaps, that a branch of hyssop might
not be long enough to reach our Saviour's mouth, as he was
hanging upon the cross; but, besides that crosses were not in
some places erected so high, but that beasts of prey could reach
the bodies that were fastened to them ; and that hyssop in those
countries, as well as mustard seed, was of a much lunger growth
than it is with us; I cannot see, why the person that offered our
Saviour this vinegar, might not make use of a ladder, if the cross
was so high that he could not fairly reach him. Nor is the
difference in St Matthew's calling that a reed, which St John
calls hyssop, of any manner of moment; because the Greek word
KaXaftus, is put to signify a stalk, a shoot, or branch of any
kind ; so that St Matthew speaks of that in general, which St
John specifies in particular. — Calmet's Commentary.
e There was a tradition among the Jews, that it was Elias's
proper office to come and succour such as were in misery; and,
accordingly some of the Jews, either deceived with the resem-
blance of the words, thought that our Lord called Elias to his
help ; or giving a malicious turn to the sense of the words, which
tluy well enough understood, did thereby insult him lor his call-
ing in vain Elias to his help, — Bcausobrc s Annotations.
1020
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concerning him were fulfilled, his Father's wrath appeased,
and the great work of man's redemption accomplished,
he said, • It is finished,' and then, ' bowing down his head,'
recommended his soul into his Father's hands, and so
gave up the ghost. a
Upon his expiration there immediately happened a
terrible earthquake, b which rent the vail c of the temple
from top to bottom, split the rocks, d and opened the
graves and tombs, so that the bodies of several who were
a The original phrase may denote a delivering up, or, as our
Saviour expresses it, (Luke xxiii. 46.) a committing his spirit
into the hands of God, as a sacred trust, to be restored again,
and united to his body, at the time prefixed by his own infinite
wisdom; and plainly implies such a dissolution, and actual se-
paration of soul and body, as every common man undergoes
when he dies. But herein is a remarkable difference, that what
is in other men the effect of necessity, was in Jesus a voluntary
act, and the effect of his own free choice. Hence the gener-
ality of interpreters have thought, that St John takes notice,
that Christ bowed his head before he gave up the ghost; whereas,
in common cases, the falling of the head follows after the breath's
going out of the body; and hence also St Mark observes, that
Jesus crying out with so loud and strong a voice, immediately
before his expiring, was one reason that moved the centurion
to think him an extraordinary person: for this showed that it
was not the excess of pain and sorrow that had tired out nature,
and hastened his death, but that he who (as himself professes,
John x. IS,) had power to lay down his life, and could not have
it taken from him without his own permission and consent, did
freely and voluntarily lay it down, at such a time as himself
saw convenient.' — Stanhope on the epistles and gospels, vol. ii.
b Some are of opinion, that this was the same earthquake
that happened in the reign of Tiberius Ccesar, and was the
greatest that ever was known in the memory of man. Both
Pliny and Macrobius make mention of it ; and the latter in-
forms us, that it destroyed no less than twelve cities in Asia.
But by the sacred text it appears, that the earthquake here
mentioned affected only the temple of Jerusalem, and the parts
which are there specified, the vail, the ground, the rocks, the
tombs, &c. Nor does it seem improbable, that this prodigy was
shown particularly in this place, to foretell the destruction of the
temple, and its worship, upon the people's sad impiety in cruci-
fying the Lord of life. — Hammond's Annotations.
c In the second temple, between the holy place, and the most
holy, says Maimonides, there was no partition wall, though in
the first temple there was one built of the thickness of a cubit.
The division between them was made by two vails, one from
the extremity of the holy place, and the other from the extrem-
ity of the most holy, with the void space of a cubit between.
The like form of separation was observed in the temple which
Herod rebuilt, as Josephus informs us, (Jewish wars, b. vi. c. 14.)
and therefore it must be a mistake in those who think that this
vail was a partition wall of stones. Whether of the two vails,
that which belonged to the holy place, or that which hung in the
most holy, was at this time rent in twain, is a question among
the ancients ; though the words of the author to the Hebrews,
where he tells us, that ' Christ as our high-priest, has conse-
crated for us a new way through the vail, so that we may with
boldness enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, Heb. x. 19,
&c, seems to be a pretty clear determination of it. — Whitby's
Annotations, and Calmct's Commentary.
d In the church of the sepulchre, which stands on mount
Calvary, is still to be seen that memorable cleft in the rock, oc-
casioned, as it is said, by the earthquake which happened at our
Lord's crucifixion. This cleft (as to what now appears of it) is
about a span wide at its upper part, and two deep. After this
it closes ; but then it opens again below, and runs down to an
unknown depth of earth. That this rent was made by the
earthquake which happened at our Lord's passion, there is only
tradition to prove; but that it is a natural and genuine breach,
and not counterfeited by any art, the sense and reason of every
one that sees it may convince him; for the sides of it lit like
two tallies to each other, and yet it runs in such intricate wind-
;ngs, as could not be well counterfeited by art, or performed by
any instrument. — Wells's Geog. of the New Test., part i. and
Mr Maundnll's Journey, &c.
dead e arose, and went into Jerusalem, where they were
seen, and known by many. These prodigies, which at-
tended our Lord's death, struck the spectators with such
amazement, that as they returned home, they smote upon
their breasts, and, with great lamentation, declared that
the person who had suffered that day, was innocent.
Nay, the very centurion, / and other soldiers, who at-
tended the execution, from a conviction of what they had
seen, were not afraid to affirm, that he certainly was
the Son of God.
The day whereon our Saviour suffered, was the eve, or
preparation, to the Paschal festival, which fell that year
on the Jewish sabbath-day, and so was a feast and sab-
bath together. That therefore so great and- solemn a
day might not be profaned s by the suspension of the
e Since St Paul styles our Saviour, ' the first-born from the
dead,' Col. i. 18. 'and the first fruits of them that slept,' I Cor.
xv. 20. most commentators are of opinion that though several
tombs were opened as soon as our Saviour expired, yet none of
the saints arose until he returned from the grave. But then,
who these saints were, it is no easy matter to conjecture.
Some think, that the man after God's own heart, king David,
or some of the ancient patriarchs, might best deserve this pre-
eminence. But, on the day of Pentecost, St Peter tells the
Jews plainly, that the body of David was still in the sepulchre,
and not ascended into heaven, (Acts ii. 29—34.) and St Paul,
in his epistle to the Hebrews, tells us of the patriarchs, that ' they
had not received the promise, God having designed that they with-
out us, should not be made perfect,' Heb. xi. 39, 40. The most
probable conjecture therefore is, that they were some of those who
believed in Jesus, as old Simeon did, and died a little before
his crucifixion; because, of these persons it is said, that they
' went into the holy city, and appeared to many ;' and so, very pro-
bably, were well known to those to whom they appeared, as
having been their cotemporaries. — Cahnet's Commentary, and
Whitby's Annotations.
f 'This was the Son of God.' As the Roman officer and
guard, who were ordered to attend the crucifixion of Jesus, were
heathens, it becomes a difficult question in what sense they used
these expressions. But since it can scarcely admit of doubt that
the centurion, at least, knew on what grounds Jesus was con-
demned by the Jews, it may well be supposed that, on perceiv-
ing the miraculous circumstances accompanying his death, he
exclaimed, ' this man was truly what he represented himself to
be, the Messiah, the Son of God.' He was the ' just one '
whose coming the Jews have looked for with so much anxiety.
It does not follow that he comprehended the full force of these
expressions; he might mean nothing more than that Jesus was
an innocent man favoured by the gods ; that he was merely a
' righteous man,' as St Luke has it, (chap, xxiii. 47.) How-
ever understood, these expressions ill the mouth of a soldier and
heathen, form a strong attestation to the character and innocence
of our Lord. It is worthy of observation that St Matthew men-
tions the centurion, and they that were with him, as using these
words, but St Mark, (xv. 39.) and St Luke, (xxiii. 47.), only the
former, but it is easy to reconcile them. The sacred writers
sometimes use the plural, when only one person is meant,
or both the officer and the soldiers may have made similar
observations, though with some variety of expression; and
it may be more than once; which will account for the dif-
ferences in the narratives of the evangelists. — Holden's Chris-
tian Expositor. — Ed.
g The Jews had a strict injunction in their law, that the dead
bodies of those who were executed should not hang all night, but
by all means be buried that day, (Deut. xxi. 22, 23.) But the
Romans used to do otherwise; they suffered the bodies to hang
upon the cross always until they were dead, and, in some cases, a
considerable time longer. On this occasion, it seems as if the Jews
had left the Romans to follow their own custom, in relation to
the crucified persons, and were in no concern to have them taken
down, had it not been for the near approach of their Passover,
whose joy and festivity they thought might be damped by so
melancholy a sight. Upon this account they petition Pilate to
have them removed: and the reason why Pilate might be rather
induced to grant their request was, that the Romans themselves
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
1021
bodies on the cross, the rulers of the Jews came, arid
requested of Pilate, that their legs might be broken, to
hasten their deaths, and their bodies taken down ; which
accordingly was executed upon the two thieves ; but
when the soldiers came to Jesus, and found him already
dead, instead of breaking his legs, ° one of them pierced
his side with a spear, 4 from which issued out a great
quantity of c blood and water.
Among the disciples of our Lord, there was one named
Joseph, a man of great wealth and honour, d born in
Arimathsea, e and not improbably one of the council of
the Sanhedrim, but who stood in some fear of them, while
A. M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR, A. M. 5-112. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15— END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
our Saviour was alive. After his death / however, he
took courage, and going to Pilate, begged leave of him
to«let him take down the body of Jesus, and bury it.
The governor was surprised to hear that he was dead so
soon ; but being informed, by the centurion, that it actu-
ally was so, he ordered the body to be delivered to
Joseph; who, for the present, wrapped it up in fine linen
clothes, which he had provided for that purpose ; and, at
the same time, Nicodemus, s another private disciple of
our Lord's, brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, with
other spices and perfumes, to embalm his body, accord-
ing to the manner of the Jews.
Not far from the place of execution, there was a gar-
den * belonging to Joseph, where he had lately hewn
commodities produced are corn, olive oil, and cotton, with some
soap, and coarse cloth, the manufacture of the place. According
to the same traveller, Kama bears marks of having been once a
considerable city; for which its position on the high road from
Jerusalem to Joppa, the principal port of the country, eminently
favoured it. There are still to be seen the remains of some
noble subterranean cisterns, not inferior either in extent or exe-
cution to many of those at Alexandria; being intended for the
same purpose, namely, tc serve in the time of war, as reservoirs
of water. At this Rama, which was likewise called Ramathaim
Zophim, as lying in the district of Zuph or Zoph, Samuel was
bom. (1 Sam. i.) — Mansford's Scriptural Gazetteer. — Ed.
f It may well seem strange, that Joseph, who never durst
openly profess a regard to Jesus while living, should now, when
he had suffered all the ignominy of a malefactor, not stick to
interest himself for his honourable interment. But besides that
this might be an instance of the efficacy of those impressions which
God makes upon men's minds, even at the most unlikely seasons
of prevailing; the desire which Pilate had expressed to save our
Lord's life, and avowed unwillingness to condemn him, together
with the prodigies that had accompanied his crucifixion, and made
now every heart relent, might be motive enough for him to go
in boldly to Pilate, as St Mark expresses it, and beg the body
of him, before it was taken from the cross. According to the
Mishna, the nearest relations of those that suffered as criminals
were not permitted to put their bodies into their family tombs, until
their flesh was all consumed in the public sepulchres: and this
might possibly be the reason why Joseph made such haste with
his request to the governor, namely, that he might prevent our
Lord from being cast into one of the public charnel houses, ap-
pointed for the reception of malefactors' bodies. — Stanhope on the
epistles and gospels, vol. ii. and CalmcVs Commentary.
g This is the same ruler of the Jews, and ' master of Israel,'
as the evangelist calls him, (John iii. 1, 10.) who, at our Lord's
first coming to Jerusalem, after he had entered upon his ministry,
held a private conference with him, and for ever after was his dis-
ciple, though he made no open profession of it, till after his pas-
sion. Whether it was before or after this time, that he received
baptism from some of Christ's disciples, is a thing uncertain,
but there is reason to believe, that the Jews, when they came to
be informed of this, deposed him from the dignity of a senator,
excommunicated him, and drove him out of Jerusalem. Nay,
it is farther said, that they would have put him to death, but
that, in consideration of Gamaliel, who was his uncle, or cousin-
german, they contented themselves with beating him almost to
death and plundering his goods. It is added likewise, that
Gamaliel conveyed him to his country-house, where he provided
him with things necessary for his support, and, whin he died,
buried him honourably by St Stephen. — Catmet's Dictionary,
under the name.
h This garden has been long since converted into a church,
called the church of the sepulchre, as being built over the place
where our Lord's sepulchre was. The sepulchre, as it is now
exhibited, presents rather a singular and unexpected appearance to
a stranger; who, for such a place, would naturally expect to find
an excavation in the ground, instead of which, he perceives
it altogether raised, as if artificially above its level. The
truth is, that in the alterations which were made on Calvary,
to bring all the principal places within the projected church,
the earth around the sepulchre was dug away; so that, what was
originally B cave in the earth, has now the appearance of a closet
had such respect for the feasts of their emperors, that on tuose
days they always took down the bodies from the cross, and gave
them to their parents. — Calmefs Commentary.
a The prophecy which foretold, ' that a bone of him should
not be broken,' is usually referred to the command concerning
the Paschal lamb, ' Thou shalt not break a bone of it,' (Exod.
xii. 4G.) But as David was likewise a type of Christ, we can-
not see why it may not refer to these words of his, ' He keepeth
all his bones, so that none of them is broken,' (Ps. xxxiv. 20.)
or why the promise, which respects all righteous persons, might
not more particularly be fulfilled in the just one. — JVlrilbys and
Beausobre 's Annotations.
b The man who did this, was not one of the horse, as he is usually
painted, but of the foot soldiers; because a spear, or short pike,
was one part of the armour belonging to the Roman infantry.
And the reason why this was done, was not only that a predic-
tion concerning him might be fulfilled, (Zech. xii. 10.) which
the Jews apply to the Messiah, but that his death might be put
beyond all dispute, which, had it been doubtful, must have made
his resurrection, upon which the truth of our religion depends,
remain doubtful likewise.— Calmefs Commentary, and Whitby's
Annotations.
c ' Blood and water.' Medical writers differ whether this
was the small quantify of water in the pericardium, or what is
called lymph, or a watery effusion such as sometimes is found in
the cavities of the pleura in cases of violent death. There may,
however, have been something miraculous in the phenomenon,
but there is not a shadow of proof that it was designed to convey a
typical meaning. The soldier who pierced Jesus doubtless in-
tended to dispatch him, if he were not quite dead; and the issu-
ing of blood and water was clear evidence that the wound would
have been mortal had he been then living. — Holden's Christian
Expositor. — Ed.
d His riches and honourable station are mentioned, not out
of any vanity and ostentation, that a person of so considerable a
figure should pay respect to the body of our blessed Lord ; but,
chiefly, to show how strangely God brought about an ancient
prophecy concerning the Messiah, namely, that notwithstanding
the infamous manner of his dying, he should 'make his grave
with the rich at his death,' (Isa. liii. 9.) which in itself was a
most unlikely thing, not only because the bodies of them that
were crucified, did, by the Roman laws, hang upon the gibbet,
sometimes until they were consumed, but because the Jews,
though they did not allow of this severity to the dead, did
nevertheless always bury their malefactors in some public, ne-
glected, and ignominious place; and so, in all probability, must
our Saviour have been treated, had not Joseph applied himself
to the governor, in whose disposal the bodies of executed persons
wire. — Stanhope on the epistles and gospels, vol. ii.
p. Arimathea, or Ramah, now called Ramie, or Ramla, a
pleasant town, beautifully situated on the borders of a fertile and
extensive plain, abounding in gardens, vineyards, olive and date
trees. It stands about thirty miles north-west of Jerusalem, on the
high road to Jaffa. Rama and Lydda were the two first cities that
fell into the hands of the Crusaders. The former being aban-
doned by its inhabitants in the night, was thrown open to the
invaders; who made it their rendezvous, and place of feasting for
three days. Dr Clarke describes Rama as being in a state of
desolation and ruin, although making a considerable figure at a
distance. Mr Buckingham represents it as covering a con-
siderable space over a level plain, and containing about. 5000 in-
habitants who are principally occupied in husbandry, for which
the surrounding country is highly favourable. The principal
1022
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[Book VIII.
A M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR, A. M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10-END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHN xii. 19-END.
out of a a rock a sepulchre for his own proper interment.
Havin" therefore embalmed our Saviour's body, and
wound it up in the linen clothes, here they buried it, and,
with a large stone cut out of the rock for that purpose,
closed the mouth of the sepulchre. But Mary Magdalen,
and the other women who were present at his death,
and assisted at his burial, having taken good notice of
the place where he was laid, went and prepared fresh
spices for his farther embalmment, as soon as the sabbath-
day was over.
On the sabbath-day the rulers of the Jews came to
Pilate, and informing- him, " that our Lord, whom they
called an impostor, having, in his lifetime, made it his
boast, that on the third day he would rise again from
or grotto above ground. The sepulchre itself is about six
feet square and eight high. There is a solid block of the
stone left i" excavating the rock, about two feet and a half from
the floor, and running along the whole of the inner side ;
on which the body of our Lord is said to have been laid. This
as well as the rest of the sepulchre, is now faced with marble :
partly from the false taste which prevailed in the early ages of
Christianity, in disguising with profuse and ill-suited embellish-
ments the spots rendered memorable in the history of its Foun-
der; and partly, perhaps, to preserve it from the depredations of
the visitants. This description of the holy sepulchre will but
ill accord with the notions entertained by some English readers
of a grave: but a cave or grotto, thus excavated in rocky ground,
on the side of a hill, was the common receptacle for the dead
among the Eastern nations. Such was the tomb of Christ ;
such that of Lazarus ; and such are the sepulchres still found in
Judsea and the East. It may be useful further to observe, that
it was customary with Jews of property to provide a sepulchre of
this kind on their own ground, as the place of their interment
after death: and it appears that Calvary itself, or the ground
immediately around it, was occupied with gardens; one of which
belonged to Joseph of Arimathca, who had then recently caused
a new sepulchre to be made for himself. It was this sepulchre,
so close at hand, and so appropriate, which he resigned for the
use of our Lord ; little thinking, perhaps, at the time, how soon
it would again be left vacant for its original purpose — (Alans-
ford's Scripture Gazetteer.) The church of the holy sepulchre, a
splendid edifice, erected by the empress Helena, fourteen hundred
years ago, was destroyed by fire in 1808. It has since been re-
paired, though in a style much inferior to the original edifice.
Dr Clarke, however, is of opinion that another tomb, which he
particularly describes, and not the one enclosed in the church,
is really the place where Jesus was laid. See his disquisition
on the subject in his Travels. — En.
a There are several circumstances in the description of our
Saviour's tomb, which contribute very greatly to the confirma-
tion of the truth of his resurrection. As, 1st, The place of his
interment «as near adjoining to the city, that thereby the mira-
cle of his resurrection might be better known to all the Jews, and
his own apostles more especially. 2dly, 1 1 is tomb was a new one,
wherein never man before was laid; and therefore, when his
body left this sepulchre empty, no suspicion could remain of its
I" ling any other body than that which Joseph had taken down
from the cross, and disposed of in that place. 3dly, It was
hewn out of a rock-, incapable of being undermined, or dug
through; and therefore there was no possible way for the person
deposited iu a place so contrived, to get out again, except only
at the mouth or door of the cave. And yet, 4thly, A large
Btone, which according to Mr Maundrell, who saw it, is two
yards and a quarter lung, one broad, and one thick, closed up
the entrance of it; all which were watched by a strong guard of
sixty soldiers: so that, as the sentry would not sutler the body
to he conveyed out by this way, the nature of the place would
not allow it by any other; and therefore, had not our Lord been
more than man, he could never have forced his passage out. Of
such mighty significance it is to us, that so punctual a descrip-
tion is given the world of our blessed Lord's burial, and all the
circumstances relating to it, since they all contribute great
strength to these two most important articles of the Christian
faith, the death and resurrection of Jesus. — Stanhope on the
rj istlcs and go^pch, vol. ii. and Whitby1* Annotations,
the dead, they therefore requested of him, that he would
order the sepulchre to be kept under a strong guard,
until that day was passed, lest his disciples should steal
him away by night, and then give it out that he was
risen from the dead, which might prove a more danger-
ous seduction to the people than any thing they had yet
fallen into." Whereupon he gave them leave to take a
detachment of the guard b of the temple, and to post
them near the sepulchre : which accordingly they did ;
and to secure it against all private attempts, set a seal c
on the stone that was at the mouth of it.
Early next morning, evert just as the sun was rising,
Mary Magdalen, and the other women, who, on Friday
evening, had prepared spices and perfumes, went to the
sepulchre to embalm again our Saviour's body, ignorant
of the guard that was placed there. Their whole care
and consultation in the way was, how they might get the
large stone that was at the entrance removed. But, be-
fore they arrived at the place, an angel from heaven had
rolled it away, d and sat upon it; at the sight of whom,
for his countenance was like lightning, and at the noise
of the earthquake which accompanied his appearance, the
guards fell down like so many dead men, so that the
women had free entrance into the sepulchre ; but were
not a little astonished to see the body gone, and an angel,
in a refulgent habit, sitting in the place where it had
lain. Frightened at this apparition, they made all the
haste they could out of the sepulchre ; but were met by
another angel, in the like glorious apparel, who not only
acquainted them with our Lord's resurrection, according
to what he had foretold his disciples, but, to give them
a fuller conviction, reconducted them into the sepulchre;
showed them, that the place where he had lain was
empty ; and ordered them to go immediately and carry
the apostles, but more especially e Peter, the news
thereof. The women, accordingly, filled with fear, and
joy, and wonder altogether, hastened to find out the
apostles ; to whom they related what they had heard and
seen ; but, instead of believing them, they looked upon
this as no more than the product of a weak and
frightened imagination.
b It is generally supposed, that this guard of the temple was
a large detachment of Roman soldiers, who, in the time of the
feast, kept sentry in the gates of the temple, to prevent such dis-
orders as might very well happen among such a large concourse
of people : for by the sequel of their story, it appears, (Mat. xxviii.
11.) that they depended upon Pilate, were subject to his correc-
tion, and consequently, were not Levites, as some imagine, but
Roman soldiers. — Calmet's Commentary.
b When Daniel was cast into the lions' den, it is said, 'That
the king sealed the stone that was laid upon the mouth of it,
with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords, that the
pm pose might not be changed concerning Daniel,' (chap. vi. 17.)
And from hence some have supposed, that the stone wherewith
our Lord's sepulchre was closed, was sealed with Pilate's signet,
because it was a matter of public concent ; as others have faneied
that it was further secured by a great chain that went across it,
and that the marks thereof were visible in the venerable Bede's
time. All fables. — Calmet's Commentary.
d For an explanation of the apparent discrepancies in the
accounts given by the evangelists, respecting our Lord's resur-
rection, the reader is referred to the supplementary chapter ou
the subject, chapter iii. of this Section.
e Peter is here named, not as the prince of the apostles, but,
as the lathers say, for his consolation, and to take ofi'the scruple
which might lie upon his spirits, whether after his threefold denial
of his Master, with such horrid aggravations attending it, he had
not forfeited his right to be one of our Lord's disciples. — Whitby '»
Annotations.
Sect. IV.]
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In the mean time some of the guards, in a great fright,
fled into the city, and related all that had happened to
the chief-priests and rulers ; who immediately assembled
themselves to consult upon this important aflair, and
came at length to this resolution, namely, ' to bribe the
soldiers with a large sum of money, and thereby engage
them to give it out among the people, that, while them-
selves were asleep, the disciples of Jesus came, and stole
him away ; promising them withal, that, in case this their
pretended neglect should come to the governor's ears,
they would take care to pacify him.' The soldiers ac-
cordingly took the money, and obeyed their orders ; and
this cl report was current among the Jews for many years
after.
On this same day of Christ's resurrection, as two of
his disciples were taking a walk in the afternoon, to a
town called Emmaus, e and discoursing, as they went
along, of what had lately happened ; Jesus joined him-
self to their company, / but they knew him not : and ob-
serving that they looked melancholy, he asked them the
Out of curiosity, however, Peter and John ran to the
sepulchre, and found the thing true according to the
women's report; the body gone, a the burying-clothes
lying on the ground, and the napkin that was about his
head, very carefully folded, and laid by itself. Notwith-
standing this, such was their incredulity, b that they re-
turned home, never supposing any thing else, but that
somebody had taken him away. Mary Magdalene, who,
by this time, was again returned to the sepulchre, staid
behind the two apostles weeping ; and, as she stooped
down to look in, saw two angels in bright apparel, sit-
ting where the body had lain, one at the head, and the
other at the feet. As the angels were enquiring of her
the occasion of her tears, and she telling them, that it
was the loss of her Lord's body, she happened to turn
herself round, and saw Jesus himself; but supposing
him to be the master of the garden, where the sepulchre
was, she desired of him, that if he had removed the body
any where, he would be so kind as to let her know, that
she might take care of it. Hereupon our Lord calling
her by her name, she immediately knew him, and throw-
ing herself at his feet, was going to embrace him : but
lie forbade her, upon the account that c ' he had not, as
yet ascended to his Father ;' and only required her to
acquaint his apostles with his resurrection, and imme-
diate ascension into heaven ; which she failed not to do ;
but still they gave no credit to her report
a The custom of interment among the Jews, was to roll the
dead body, (as we read our Saviour's was, John xix. 39, 40.)
up in spices ; which though they preserved it in some measure
from corruption, by their gluey nature, could not but make
the clothes that were used with them cling so close to the skin,
as not to be drawn off without a great deal of time and diffi-
culty. When therefore these coverings were found regularly
pulled off, wrapped up, and laid by, this plainly shows, that
the disciples could have no hand in stealing away the Master's
body. For do thieves, after they have rilled an house, use to
spend time in putting things in order again ? Or can it enter
into any sober man's thoughts, that they, who come by stealth,
and in danger of their lives, as the disciples certainly must
have done upon such an adventure, should thus stay to awaken
the guard, and trifle away their time in such hazardous and
unnecessary niceties ? Had they been really engaged in this
affair, they certainly would have taken away the body at once,
without tarrying to unbind arid undress it. And therefore the
condition in which the sepulchre was found, to every consider-
ate man, must be a sufficient confutation of that idle pretence
of the Jews: 'His disciples came, and stole him away.' — The
literal sense of the scripture vindicated, p. 383.
b The remark of one of the ancients upon this subject is very
good, that their doubting is the confirmation of our faith ; and
the more difficulty they showed in believing Clu-ist's resurrec-
tion, the greater reason have we to believe it; because the
testimony of those who themselves believe not till after lull con-
viction, is, upon that account, much more credible. — Whitby s
Annotations,
c Various are the senses which interpreters have been pleased
to affix to the reason which our Lord here assigns for his
rejecting this woman's homage and embraces, ' I am not yet
ascended to my Father.' Some imagine, that Mary, still retain-
ing her notions of a temporal kingdom, concluded that our Lord
was now risen on purpose to assume it, and therefore fell down
to adore him: but that he, willing to raise her mind to spiritual
and celestial thoughts, gave her to understand, that, as yet, it
was not a proper time for her to make her addresses to him,
because he was not yet ascend* d into heaven, from whence he
was to administer his kingdom, and to send down the Holy
Ghost, in order to form a spiritual communion between him
and his true disciples Beansobre's An?iotations. Others sup-
pose that this woman imagined, that our Lord was risen again in
the same maimer that Lazarus did, namely, to live upon earth
as he had done before ; and that therefore to convince her of the
contrary, he bid her not touch him as a mortal man, because ' I
am not yet ascended into heaven,' but in a short time shall, and
that is the place where you are to pay me your homage and
adorations. — Calmet's Commentary . Others again say, that by
a figure, common enough among grammarians, who frequently
change one tense for another, our Saviour's words may denote,
that he was not then about to ascend, but to stay many days
upon earth; so that Mary might have space and opportunity
enough to pay her adorations, and to satisfy herself in the truth
of his resurrection. — Whitby's Annotations. But these, and
several other interpretations of the like kind, are far from being
natural, and seem calculated on purpose to exclude the notion of
our Saviour's frequent ascensions during his stay upon earth after
his resurrection, which, in the course of the subsequent answers,,
we hope to evince to be true.
d Some are of opinion, that the report which the evangelist
speaks of, as current among the Jews, was, not that our Lord's
disciples came and stole him away, but that the soldiers were
corrupted by the high priests to say so. This indeed gives a
quite difierent turn to the thing, and is very favourable to the
Christian cause; but yet, whoever considers the circular letters
mentioned by Justin Martyr, which the rulers in Jerusalem
sent to the principal Jews all the world over, concerning this
fact, and the great pains which, as Tertullian informs us, they
every where took to propagate it, together with the care which
he and the other ancient apologists employed to confute this
senseless, but malicious lie, must needs be of a contrary opinion,
namely, that the report was spread, not against the Jewish
rulers, but the Christian disciples, and was not quite extinct
when St Matthew wrote his gospel, chap, xxviii. 15. which
was much about eight years after Christ's death. — Calmet's
Commentary.
e Emmaus, which was afterwards made a city, and called
Nicopolis, was at this time a small village, about seven miles
distant from Jerusalem to the west, where it is supposed, by
Bede and others, that either Cleophas, or his companion, had
a house, which, by their importuning Jesus to go with them,
seems not improbable, because they could not propose to enter-
tain him so eommodiously or hospitably in an inn. — Well's Geo-
graphy of the New Testament, part i. and Howell's History, in
the notes.
f Whether it was, that after his resurrection, his person was
so considerably changed, that those who knew him before, could
not easily distinguish him; or that he appeared in an habit quite
different from what he used to wear, which, for some time,
might hinder them from recollecting who he was; or that he
suspended the operation of their senses, that he might have a
better opportunity to instruct their understandings; or that by
an extraordinary power, he withheld their eyes from perceiving
him, by which, upon removing of that impediment, they imme-
diately knew him ; any of these causes will answer the purpose
better, than that we should impute, as some do, their uot know
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A. M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR, A. M. 8442. A
subject of their discourse, and what it was that made
them so disconsolate ? To which one of them replied,
« ' That the subject of their discourse was too notorious
even to escape the knowledge of the greatest stranger ;
that it was concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who indeed
was a great prophet ; one whom they expected would
have been the king and redeemer of Israel ; but to their
great disappointment had of late been delivered to death
by their rulers, and crucified. And, what is more as-
tonishing, continued he, this very day, which is the third
since his death, some women of our company, having
been early at the sepulchre, and not finding the body,
surprised us with an account, that they had seen a vision
of angels, who assured them that he was alive ; which,
in part, was confirmed by some of our men too, who
went to the sepulchre, and found it empty, but did not
see him.
Hereupon our Lord took occasion to reprove their
incredulity, and, from the testimony of the prophets, to
convince them, that it was highly necessary the Messiah
should suffer death, and rise again, in order to a glorious
exaltation. As they drew near to the village, where they
intended to spend that night, Jesus * seemed as if he had
farther to go ; but being unwilling to lose his good con-
versation, they, with some entreaty, c prevailed with him
to stay. He did so : and as he was sitting at the table
with them, took bread, blessed it, brake it, and delivered
it to them, as he was wont to do ; whereupon their eyes
were opened, and they knew him ; but immediately he
vanished (1 out of their sight.
As soon as the two disciples had recovered from their
surprise, they hastened to Jerusalem, where the apostles
were met together, who upon their arrival, informed
D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 1£-END.
them that their Lord was certainly risen, and ' had ap-
peared unto Peter ; whilst they, in their turn, related
what had happened to them in the country, how Jesus
had walked, and conversed with them, and how they came
to know him by breaking of bread. But notwithstanding
all these testimonies, several among them remained still
incredulous.
For fear of the Jews, the apostles had shut the door,
and were now set down to supper in a private room, late
in the evening, when our blessed Saviour came in, and
saluted them ; and, that they might not take him for a
spirit, or phantom, but for the very person that was
crucified in their sight, he showed them the wounds in his
hands, his feet and his side. Nay, that he might cure
them of all scruple and doubtfulness, he eat a piece
of broiled fish, e and some honey-comb, before them all,
and then, having a little upbraided them with their un-
belief, he gave them several great and weighty instruc-
tions, an ability to understand the scriptures / more
perfectly, a renovation of their commission to preach to
all nations, S a power and authority to remit or retain
sins, a communication of the blessed Spirit by breathing
on them, and a promise of sending him more plentifully,
to enable them to be witnesses h of his resurrection, be-
in^' their master to their excessive grief and sorrow. — Calmet's
Commentary, aud fFTiitby's Annotations.
a He who was the spokesman upon this occasion, is said to
be Cleophas, Luke xxiv. 18. who was the brother of Joseph,
the husband of the Virgin Mary, and so the reputed uncle of
Christ ; whose son Simeon, (says Eusebius, b. iii. c 10.) by
the joint consent of the apostles then living, was made bishop
of Jerusalem, after St James, as being the nearest of kin to our
Saviour. — HoivcWs History.
b And so very probably he would have done, had not the
disciples pressed him to stay with them. But supposing he had
been resolved to abide with them, and was minded to try the
temper of his fellow-travellers, we cannot from hence charge
him either with dissimulation, or deceit: because, though our
words ought to be the certain interpreters of our thoughts, and
are therefore not to be employed so as to deceive any, yet walk-
ing hath no certain signification, nor was it ever instituted to
be an indication of the m'm&.— Jrhitl.y's Annotations.
c Tin- <iii o jual word in St Luke is "ra«s/Wira»rs, which our
translation has rendered, ' they constrained him.' But how did
I hev constrain him ? Did they lay violent, hands on him, and
cany him in whether he would or not ? The sequel shows
— saying, ' abide with us; for it groweth late, and the day is
far spent.' The expression in such cases, must always be
interpreted according to popular usage. Usages, such as this,
of expressing great urgency of solicitation by terms which, in
BtrictnesB, imply force and compulsion, are common in every
tongue. How little, then, is there of candour, or at least of
common sense, in the exposition which has been given by some,
of a like phrase of the same writer, chap. xiv. 23. ' Compel
them to come in.' — Campbell on the Gospels. — Ed.
d Origen is of opinion, that our blessed Lord for the forty
days that he was upon earth after his resurrection, could make
himself risible or invisible, when and to whom he pleased. It
is not to be doubted, but that he had the same body that was
deposited in the grave ; but then, what the powers of a raised
and glorified body, especially when in conjunction with the
1 1 Cor. xv. 5.
Deity are, we cannot tell; only we may infer, that our Saviour
could, at least with the same facility, disappear to his disciples
now, as he did to the Jews, when they were about to stone
him, John viii. 59. which, it is generally supposed, he did, by
the medium of a cloud cast over his body. — Calmet's Commen-
tary, and WJiitby's Annotations.
e This he did, not to satisfy any hunger that his body could
suiier after its resurrection, but to prove to them that his body
was truly raised, and himself was really present. And, since
it cannot be supposed, that Christ in this action, designed any
illusion, it follows from his very eating, that his body had those
parts by which we chew our meat, and withal a stomach to re-
ceive it. — Whitby's Annotations.
/This, the evangelist tells us, our Saviour did, by opening
their minds, Luke xxiv. 45. for it is one thing, to open the
scriptures themselves, or to explain them, and another to open
their understandings to perceive them; and Christ, very pro-
bably, did the latter, by giving them now some first-fruits of
that spirit of prophecy, which fell more plentifully on them at
the day of Pentecost. — Whitby's Annotations.
g Though the word 'ifani does, in some particular places,
signify the tribes and families of the Jews, exclusive of other
people, and, in veiy many places, the nations of the heathen
world, in opposition to the Jews ; yet this we are to observe,
that wherever mention is made of preaching the gospel, in
oider to gain converts to the Christian faith, the word relates
primarily to the several parts of Judea, and to the Jews, where-
soever they are in their dispersions abroad ; then, secondarily,
to the Gentiles mingled with the Jews ; and finally, to the whole
Gentile world, when, upon the Jews' rejecting the gospel, the
apostles were forced to depart from them ; for such the tenor of
their commission, and such their constant practice was; ' It was
necessary,' says Paul and Barnabas to the Jews, ' that the word
oi God should first have been spoken to you,' which refers, I
suppose, to some precept of Christ, (see Matt. x. 6. and xv. 24.)
which made it necessary, ' but seeing ye have put it from you,
lo, we turn to the Gentiles,' Acts xiii. 46. — Hammond's Anno-
tations.
h As Christ's resurrection was a matter of fact, it must be
proved by the testimony of eye-witnesses, who, if they be honest
men, and sutler the greatest prejudices in their fortunes, re-
putation, and life, for this testimony, give us the greater rea-
son to believe it. For their honesty will not sutler them, upon
any account whatever, to deviate from the truth, their interest
and prudence will not permit them, without any necessity
laid upon them, to testify a falsehood, much more the grossest
falsehood, to their utmost damage, and witl.out any prospect
JftHT. IV.]
FRQM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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fore they were to depart from Jerusalem. And thus
ended the first day of the week, which, in honour of our
blessed Saviour's resurrection, has ever since been kept
as the sabbath a amonj Christians.
At the above mentioned appearance of our blessed
Saviour, all the apostles, except Thomas, n were present ;
and when they recounted to him every particular that
had happened in his absence, so far was he from giving
his assent to them, that he openly declared, that, unless
he had the utmost evidence c of sense, by putting his
of advantage: and then, if they confirm this their testimony
by all kinds of signs, miracles, ami wondrous powers, exercised
by themselves, and others who embraced their testimony, and if
this hi' done in all places, and on all persons, for a whole age, or
ages; this makes it a thing impossible, that they should thus
attest a lie: and therefore our Lord bids his apostles stay at
Jerusalem, till they were thus empowered, by virtue from on
high, to confirm this testimony, (Acts i. 8.) — Whitby 's Annota-
tions.
a The Jewish sabbath was at first instituted, not barely in
commemoration of God's creating the world, but, as there is
another reason subjoined, in memory of their deliverance from
the Egyptian bondage: ' For remember, that thou wast a servant
in the land of Egypt, therefore the Lord thy God commandeth
thee to keep the sabbath-day,' (Dent. v. 15.) Now this bond-
age of theirs was an emblem of our captivity under sin, and their
deliverance a type of our spiritual redemption. When therefore
our redemption was accomplished, it became proper, that the day
of sabbath should be altered ; especially when the wise provi-
dence of God had so ordered matters, that the old Jewish sabbath,
that is the seventh day, should be passed over, and the first made
choice of, to be honoured with two such glorious miracles, as the
resurrection of our blessed Lord from the dead, and the coming
of the Holy Ghost from heaven. After this, indeed, we find the
apostles frequenting the synagogue on the Jewish sabbath, but,
from the time of their Lord's resurrection they never did it, as
they did before, according to the commandment, (Luke xxiii.
56.) hut according to custom, or as the manner was, (Acts xvii.
2.) and therefore we have reason to believe, that, from the very
first, they looked upon the ancient sabbath as superseded by this
other, which from the beginning they called ri Kueiecxv, the
Lord's day, and from the beginning employed in acts of religious
worship. To which purpose we find Ignatius exhorting Chris-
tians, not to " sabbatize with the Jews, but to live according to
the Lord's day, in which our life arose with him ;" Epist. ad Mag.
vol. iii. — Stanhope on the epistles and gospels, and Whitby's
Annotations.
b What might be the occasion of this apostle's absence is
variously conjectured. Some are of opinion, that, as all fled
from their Master, when he was apprehended in the garden,
they did not so soon assemble again, but by degrees dropped in,
one by one, as they recovered from their fright; and that there-
fore, at this time, Thomas was not returned to the company.
But others, from the natural temper of this apostle, as it appears
from the scripture passages where he is concerned, to be very
scrupulous, and hard of belief, do rather think, that taking
offence at the apostles' easy credulity, as he deemed it, and
looking upon all that the women from the sepulchre, and the two
disciples from Kmmaus, had said, as so many idle tales, he left
the company in pure disgust, not long before our Saviour came
in. — Calmct's Commentary, and Young's Sermo7ts, vol. ii.
c The manner by which the apostle might bring himself to
this resolution, might possibly be by some such arguments as
these: — "Jesus of Nazareth was put to death upon the cross;
and, being dead, was laid and sealed up in a sepulchre, which was
strictly watched by a guard of soldiers: but I am told, and re-
quired to believe, that, notwithstanding all this, he is risen, and
indeed alive. Now, surely, things suitable to the stated course
of nature should be believed before such as are quite beside it;
and for a dead man to return to life is preternatural, but that.
those who report it may be mistaken, is very natural and usual.
Dead I saw him; but that he is risen I only hear. In what I
see with mine own eyes, I cannot easily be deceived; but in
what I only hear, I may, and often am. Here being two things
then proposed to my belief, my reason tells me, that I ought to
choose that which is most credible ; but it seems more credible,
finger into the holes in his hands and side, he would not
believe a word of what they told him. On the Sunday
following therefore, when, in the same place, they all
met together, with the doors shut for fear of the Jews,
and Thomas was with them, Jesus came, and standing
in the midst of them, saluted them as formerly, with the
blessing of peace. After that, turning to Thomas, he
offered him the satisfaction which he desired, namely,
the feeling his hands, and his side, where the nails .and
the spear had pierced ; which when the apostle had done,
and upon conviction cried out in transport, ' My God,
and my Lord!' ,l our Saviour gave him to understand,
that his believing, after such a demonstrative evidence,
was neither so praiseworthy, nor rewardable, as was
the faith of those who had not the like conviction.
After this appearance to the apostles in a full body,
they all resolved, pursuant ' to their Lord's directions,
to leave Judea, and return into their own province of
Galilee. They had not been long there, before Peter,
and several others of them, went a fishing e in the lake
or sea of Tiberias, but after much toiling all night, they
caught nothing. In the morning, as they were making
to shore, a person, / unknown to them, being informed
of their ill success, advised them to cast their net on
the right side of the ship, which, when they had done,
they enclosed so great a number of large fishes, as made
John suspect that the person on shore might possibly
be their master. This he no sooner suggested to Peter,
1 Mat. xxvi. 32. — xxviii. 7.
that a small number of witnesses, frightened and disturbed as
they are, should be deceived, or, as honest as once they were,
may conspire to deceive me, than that one should rise from the
dead; and therefore, excepting," &c. — Young's Sermons, vol. ii.
d This is a noble confession of the apostle's faith, wherein he
not only recognises Jesus for the Messiah, the very same Lord
to whom he had been a servant and companion during the space
of his ministry, but owns likewise, and proclaims his divine
nature. For the original here is in terms so strict, and with
such an addition of the Greek article, as the very heretics, and
enemies to truth, confess to be the character of the word of
God, when taken in its proper sense, and intended of the true
God only. Nor can the words, if put for a note of admiration
only, he of force sufficient to express any conviction in Thomas;
because expressions of wonder, though they properly speak
astonishment and surprise, do not always imply belief, and may
therefore import the strangeness, without the truth, of the thing:
whereas our Saviour, in his answer to Thomas, ' Because thou
hast seen, thou hast believed,' (John xx. 29.) accepts this as a ful
and sufficient declaration of this assent ; and therefore, to make
it such, we must admit of that paraphrase, which some ancient
translations supply it with, by reading, 'Thou art my Lord, thou
art my God.' — Stanhope on the epistles and gospels, vol. ii.
e The apostles, as such had nothing to do, until the Holy
Ghost should descend upon them ; and, among the Jews, it was
accounted a disgrace to be idle. Since fishing therefore was the
ordinary occupation of several of them in this intermediate time,
they thought it the best way to betake themselves to it, and that,
not only to keep themselves employed, but to supply their o-vn
want of necessaries likewise, until they should have a proper call
to the ministry, when, in all probability, they gave over the
labours of their secular employs, and devoted themselves entirely
to that work. — Grotius's Annotations.
f By this one would think, that our blessed Lord, after his
resurrection, was not a little changed in his outward appear-
ance, since his apostles, notwithstanding more interviews than
one, could not so readily distinguish him, either by his voice
or looks. Upon this occasion, however, he seems by his
question, John xxi. 5. to personate one who might be come
to buy some fish of them, and under this guise, whilst they were
busy and employed, might more easily pass upon them. — Calmet's
Commentary.
6o
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but Peter, impatient of delay, throws on his coat, ° and
jumps into the sea, and gets to land, while the other
apostles had much ado to haul the vessel, and the net
so loaded with fish, safe to shore. The number of the
fishes was an hundred and fifty ; but, what was more
surprising, at their landing, they found a fire ready made,
fish broiling on it, and bread standing by. This not-
withstanding our Lord ordered them to bring some of
those which they had caught, and having * asked them to
sit down with him, he not only distributed to them, but
eat c some of the bread and fish himself, to give them a
still farther assurance of the reality of his resurrection.
When dinner was ended, he entered into conversation
with Peter ; and having thrice demanded d of him, if he
loved him, and thrice received a declaration that he did;
he, each time, injoined him to take care of the flock
which he had committed to him. After this, in a
figurative speech, he signified to him, by what manner of
death he was to glorify God, even by crucifixion; e but,
a The text tells us, that he was ' naked' before; but what
is called ' naked' signifies only to have part of the body ' un-
covered,' or to be without a gown, or upper garment, according
to the custom of the eastern people, and of the Romans, who,
when they went abroad, or made any public appearance, wore a
long upper garment called in Latin 'Toga.' Of this kind was
what the evangelist calls 'a fisher's coat;' and from hence it
seems pretty plain, that Peter did not swim, as it is usually
thought, but wade to land ; since, if decency was the motive of
putting on his coat, he could not have preserved that decency,
had he come dripping wet, as he must have done, upon the
supposition of his swimming, into his master's presence. —
HoiveWs History, in the notes, and Calmefs Commentary.
b The fire, fish, and bread, on the shore, were all created,
and produced by Christ out of nothing, to evidence, at this
time, his divine power, but, lest there should be thought any
delusion in these, he ordered likewise some of the others, that
were just then taken, to be dressed ; and, that they might not
take him for an apparition only, he invited them to dine with
him. As therefore by the miracle of creating, and miraculously
catching the fishes, he proved himself to be a God; so, by his
present eating of the fish, he evinced himself to be a man, and
consequently teacheth us, that our exalted high priest conti-
nues our kinsman in heaven. — Hammond's and Burkitt's
Annotations.
c It is not indeed said expressly, that at this time he did
eat : but, since St Peter tells us, that ' they did eat and drink
with him, after he rose from the dead,' Acts x. 41. and St Luke
testifies, that, on another occasion, he did eat before them,
chap. xxiv. 42, 43. as he did it then for the confirmation of his
resurrection, it is hardly to be doubted, but that he did it now
for the same end. — JFhitby's Annotations.
d Our Saviour's words to St Peter are, ' Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou me more than these ?' John xxii. 1 5. More than these ?
\\ hat ? Some will tell us, that our Saviour here pointing at the nets
anil fishing boats, demanded of Peter, whether he loved him and his
service better than his ordinary employment and occupation;
but this is a forced and jejune exposition. The apostle, to be
sure, before our Lord's being taken into custody, had been very
libera] in his professions of love to him. He had promised to
go with him to prison and to death; and, to show how much he
surpassed the rest of his brethren, « though all should be oflended
because of thee,' says he, 'yet will not I,' Matt. xxvi. 33. and
yet upon the approach of the first danger, he forgot all his pro-
mises, and behaved more ingloriously than the rest. It is in
allusion, therefore to this, that our Lord begins this discourse
with Peter; that he calls to his mind his former speeches, and
contrary performances: and, by thrice repeating this question,
' Peter, lovest thou me ?' in respect of his three denials, and at
fust adding the words ' more than these,' in regard to his mag-
nifying his love, above all others, he now engages him, by the
sense and consideration of his fall, to a better discharge, and a
more constant expression of his love, in converting men to the
faith of Christ. — fVhitby's and Hammond's Annotations.
Q The occasion of his being put to death is generally reported
when Peter desired to know the fate of his favourite
apostle St John, instead of gratifying his curiosity, he
required him rather to attend to his own concerns, and
as he was to resemble him in the manner of his death, so
to endeavour to imitate him in his deportment under it. l
' If I will that he stay till I come, / what is that to thee ;
Follow thou me.' This answer of our Saviour's, however,
gaveoccasion to a report among the rest of the disciples, S
that John was never to die ; but 2 himself refuted that
opinion in his gospel, and, by surviving the fate of Jeru-
salem, verified what our Saviour meant.
After this, our Lord having appointed a solemn meet-
ing of as many of his disciples as could conveniently be
got together, and named a certain mountain in Galilee ,J
for that purpose, he there appeared, not only to the
eleven apostles, but 3 to five hundred brethren at once.
Here he acquainted his apostles, that all power, both in
heaven and earth, was given unto him ; commanded them
to instruct all nations, and baptize them in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and
to press them to the observation of all his precepts ;
foretold them what mighty signs * and wonders would
John xxi. 22. 2 Ibid. xxi. 23.
1 Cor. xv. G.
to be, — that he, assisted by St Paul, had at Rome confounded
the diabolical illusions of Simon Magus: whereupon Nero, who
was a favourer of magicians, being provoked, or as others think,
to ingratiate himself with the people of Rome, after he had fired
their city, gave orders for his being put to death, which the pre-
fects, in the emperor's absence, took care to see executed upon him
and St Paul at the same time. The latter, as a denizen, was
beheaded with a sword ; but St Peter, who had no such claim
to the like privilege, was sentenced to crucifixion. This, and
the torment preparatory to it, he underwent with marvellous
patience, and, as a mark of his humility, requested, and obtained,
to have his body fastened to the cross, with his head downwards,
as judging it too great an honour to suffer in the same manner
and posture that his Lord had done before him. — Stanhope on
the epistles and gospels, vol. iv.
f That is, come in judgment to take vengeance on the Jews.
For though there are but two personal advents mentioned in
Scripture ; the first, when our Lord came into the world to re-
deem it; and the second when he shall return again to judge;
yet this is no objection against his intermediate advent, which
was not personal by any visible descent of his from heaven, but
virtual, and effected by his sending the Roman army against the
Jews, and giving signs from heaven and in the clouds of their
approaching ruin. So that the sense of our Saviour's words is
— ' If my pleasure is, that he live till the dissolution of the Jew-
ish state:' and accordingly, we find that, though Peter was put
to death under Nero, yet St John continued even to the time of
Trajan's reign, above an hundred years after our Saviour's birth,
and so thirty years after that this coming of his was past. —
Whitby's and Hammond's Annotations.
g Because the Christians, at that time, by the coming of
Christ, understood the last judgment; whereas our Saviour in-
tended it of the destruction of Jerusalem, which, in effect, was
a full emblem of the final dissolution of all things. — Beau-
sobre's Annotations.
h This mountain is generally supposed to be Tabor, the place
where our Lord was transfigured, though some suppose it to be one
that stood nearer the lake of Tiberias. — Calmet's Commentary.
i We are not to suppose, however, that our Lord promised
the gift of miracles, to every Christian convert ; since this would
have made miracles, which should only be employed on impor-
tant occasions, where the glory of God, or the good of mankind
is concerned, too common, and consequently of no validity at all.
So that this promise, though expressed in general terms, must
necessarily be limited to the apostles, and apostolic men. Of
their casting out devils, healing diseases, and speaking with new
tongues, we have instances almost innumerable. Their taking
up serpents seems to be foretold by that Sybil, from whose oracles
Virgil very probably borrowed this verse of his:
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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attend those who were true converts to his religion ; and
promised them his daily protection a and assistance, even
unto the end of the world.
Forty days was the time pre-ordained for our Lord's
continuance upon earth after his resurrection. These days
were now almost expired, when the apostles, according
as they were ordered, with some of their select friends,
returned to Jerusalem, and there assembled themselves in
a private place. Our blessed Saviour came to them ;
and, among other things, l relating to the government of
his church, gave them particularly in charge, that they
should not depart from * Jerusalem, until they had
received that miraculous effusion of the Holy Ghost c
1 Acts i. 3.
" The serpent shall perish, and the deceitful poisonous herb."
And from St Paul it appears, that this promise was literally ful-
filled, who, after a viper had fastened upon his hand for some
time, shook it off into the fire without receiving any hurt, (Acts
xxviii. 5.) And as to the drinking of deadly poisons, we have
it recorded by Papias, of Barsabas, suraamed the just; by Ado,
in his martyrology, of the Ctecilian soldier; and by Gregory of
Tours, of Sabinus, bishop of Cauoso ; that they three did this with-
out any mischief to themselves. But as miracles of this kind were
more liable to exceptions, than such as were performed upon
unbelievers, men being apt to think, that there might be some
antidotes against the venom of these beasts, or the pernicious
effects of these draughts, it must be owned, that providence
thought fit to be more sparing in affording these. — Calmet's Com-
mentary, Hammond's and Whitby's Annotations.
a Our Saviour's words are, — ' Lo, I am with you always to
the end of the world,' (Mat. xxviii. 20.), where we must observe,
that this promise was made, not to all Christians in general, but
only to those whom Christ authorised to teach and baptize in his
name, as the words themselves, and the occasion of speaking
them, plainly show: and it contains a full declaration of our
Lord's intention, that they should always be succeeded by others
in the same office. For since the apostles all died within
the compass of fourscore years, after this extensive promise was
made, it could no ways be fulfilled but by our Lord's being
with their successors in the gospel- ministry until the world's
end. For what some imagine, that the avfriXua. tov uiwvos re-
lates to the end of the Jewish age or economy, which lasted, as
they say, to the destruction of the temple under Vespasian, and
so confine this promise to the persons of the apostles only, is
void of all foundation, unless we can suppose, that all sacred func-
tions were to cease; neither baptism to be administered, nor
the gospel preached after the destruction of Jerusalem, which
is false in fact: and therefore, if we may be allowed to explain
the design and meaning of this promise by the manner of its
completion, we must conclude, that our Lord here engages him-
self to be present with his ministers, both by his special grace,
and his authority, after the end of the Jewish economy, as well
as till that time : and hence we may assure ourselves, that the
ministry of the word, and administration of the sacraments, are a
standing and perpetual ordinance, to continue in the Christian
church throughout all ages; and that all the faithful ministers
of Christ, in what part of the world soever God shall cast their
lot, and what time soever they shall happen to live, may com-
fortably expect Christ's gracious presence with their persons, and
his blessing upon their labours. — Archbishop Potter's Church
government, c. iv. and Burliitt's Annotations.
b Of all places the apostles would least of all have chosen
Jerusalem to tarry in, had not our Lord positively commanded
them to continue there. For Jerusalem was now a place justly
abhorred and detested by them, as reeking fresh with the blood
of the holy and innocent Jesus; and yet Jerusalem is the place
chosen by Christ for the pouring forth of his Holy Spirit upon
his apostles ; because there was the greatest company of specta-
tors to behold it, and to be wrought upon by it ; and because there
had been the scenes of his greatest humiliation, and therefore
he was minded to show forth his power and glory. — JJurkitt's
Annotations.
0 The reasons assignable for this wonderful dispensation, are,
1. To enable them to be powerful witnesses of our Lord's resur-
which he had promised, and would shortly send down
upon them. This effusion of the Spirit the apostles
imagined might possibly be an introduction to his tem-
poral dominion, which still ran in their heads; and
therefore they asked him, whether he intended at that
time, to restore the kingdom to Israel ? But he checked
their inquiry, and gave them to understand, that, after
the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them, they would
have juster notions of these matters, and be sufficiently
enabled to be the authentic witnesses of his life and ac-
tions, d all the world over ; and with these words he led
all the company out of the city, to that part of mount
Olivet, which was nearest to Bethany ; and there, as he
was lifting up his hands, and giving them his benedic-
tion, e while they continued all in an adoring posture
he was parted from them gradually, taken up in a cloud,
and carried triumphantly into heaven, / where he now
rection, (Luke xxiv. 4S.), and consequently that he was the true
Messiah, or the prophet who was to come into the world, and
was to be the Saviour of it: and therefore St Peter speaks thus
to the Jews, ' Ye have killed the prince of life, whom God hath
raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses,' (Acts iii. 15.) 2.
To enable them to give au exact account, as far as divine wisdom
saw it necessary, of what our Saviour did and taught: and there-
fore himself tells them, that ' the Spirit of truth which proceedeth
from the Father, should testify of him, and bring all those things
to their remembrance, which he had said unto them,' (John xv.
26. — xiv. 26.) And 3. To make them able ministers of the
New Testament, that is, able to acquaint Christians with all
saving truths, and to teach them all things that Christ had com-
manded to be observed, throughout all the ages of the church;
and upon the strength of this promise, all Christians, in all ages,
have believed, that the apostles and writers of the New Testa-
ment, both spake and wrote as they were moved or directed by
the Spirit of God, and accordingly have received their doctrines,
'not as the words of men, but as they were in truth, the word
of God,' (1 Thess. ii. 13.) — JVhitby's Annotations.
d Thus the apostles preached in the most considerable cities
of the then known world, as at Antioch, Alexandria, and eveu
at Rome itself, as well as at Jerusalem and Samaria. They
taught at Athens, and Corinth, and throughout all Greece, in
such towns as were most learned, most corrupt, and most idolatrous.
It was in the presence of all nations, of Greeks and barbarians,
of the learned and the ignorant, of Jews and Romans, of princes
and their people, that the disciples of Jesus Christ gave witness
of the wonders they had ' seen with their eyes, heard with their
ears, and touched with their hands,' and particularly of their
Lord's resurrection ; which testimony they supported, without
any interest, and against all the reasons of human prudence,
eveu to their last breath, and sealed it with their blood. Such
was the establishment of Christianity! — Fleury's Church
History.
e The custom among the Jews was, to give the benediction
to a good number or congregation of people, with an eleva-
tion and extension of the hands, as appears from the practice of
Aaron, Lev. ix. 22. But to any particular person, the blessing
was given with the imposition of hands, as the example of Jacob,
with regard to Ephraim and Manasseh, plainly shows, Gen.
xlviii. 14. — Calmet's Commentary.
/ This must be understood of his human nature only, because
the divine nature fills all places, both in heaven and earth, and
is at all times incapable of that which we properly call ' motion.'
The same body of Christ therefore, which was born, and suf-
fered and died, was actually carried up thither; and so our
Saviour's ascension was no imaginary and figurative, but a real,
proper, and corporeal ascent into heaven, and that in the most
elevated part and noblest signification that this word, at any
time does, or can possibly admit ; and therefore he is said to
have entered into the holy place, Heb. ix. 12. and to have ' as-
cended up far above all heavens,' Eph. iv. 10. into the ' presence
of God and where he was before,' John vi. 62. So that, whatever
heaven is higher than all the rest which are called heaven ;
whatever sanctuary is holier than all which are called holies,
whatever place is of greatest dignity in all those courts above,
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sitteth at the a right hand of God,
ever.' Amen. *
CHAP. II.
Objections answered, and difficulties
obviated.
St Paul, in his epistle to the Philippians, argues, from
the majesty of Christ's divine nature, to the greatness of
his condescension in becoming the Son of man, ' who
being in the form of God,' as he expresses it, ' thought it
no robbery to be equal with Cod, but made himself of no
reputation, and look upon him the form of a servant, and
was made in the likeness of men ; and being found in the
fashion of a man, he humbled himself, and became obe-
dient unto death.'8 In this state of humiliation, it was
highly proper and suitable to his character, to speak
modestly of himself, and to make use of the lowest title
that he had, as best becoming his present condition.
But there is another reason which some have assigned
for the frequent use that he makes of this appellation ;
and that is, its being a prophetic name, whereby Daniel
has thought lit to describe the promised Messiah. 3 ' 1
1 Rom. i. 25. 2 Phil. ii. 6, &c. 3 Dan. vii. 13, 14.
into that place did our Saviour ascend, where, in the splendour
of his deity, he was before he took upon him our humanity; as
our learned bishop Pearson fully and elegantly expresses it; art.
4. and Stanhope on the epistles and gospels, vol. iii.
a This is one of those expressions wherein the Holy Ghost
condescends to our capacity, by attributing to God the parts
and gesture of -a human body. The hand is the chief instru-
ment of exerting our strength, and therefore often used to de-
note the power of God. The right-hand is the usual place of
honour and respect, and therefore this denotes the highest dig-
nity. Sitting, in like manner, intimates a state of ease and rest,
and is properly the posture of those that are in power and au-
thority, of kings upon their thrones, and magistrates in courts
of justice; and therefore ' Christ's sitting at God's right hand,'
implies thus much, — "that the same bliss, glory, and power,
which, as the Son of God, he did before his incarnation enjoy
with his Father, from all eternity, his human nature is now
made partaker of in the highest heavens ; that this God- man
is invested with an absolute authority, and boundless domi-
nion, and does now, in both natures, rule, as he shall one day
judge, the whole world; and that till that day come, it
is the duty of us, and all mankind, to reverence and obey,
to trust in, and pray to him, as our only head and king, our
rightful and universal Lord." — Stanhope on the epistles and
gospels, vol. iii.
o In this illustrious manner did the Saviour depart, after hav-
ing finished the grand work which he came down upon earth
lu execute ; a work which God himself, in the remotest eternity,
contemplated with pleasure, which angels anciently, and superior
natures, with joy descried as to happen, and which through all
> trinity to come shall, at periods the most immensely distant
from the time of its execution, be looked back upon with inex-
pressible delight by every inhabitant of heaven. For though the
little ailairs of time may vanish altogether and be lost, when
they are removed far back by the endless progression of dura-
tion, this object is such, that no distance however great can
lessen it. The kingdom of God is erected upon the incarnation
aild sui, Son of God, the kingdom and city of God
comprehending all the virtuous beings that are in the universe,
made happy by g Iness and love: and therefore none of them,
ran ever forget the foundation on which their happiness stands
firmly established. In particular the human species, recovered
by this labour of the Son of God, will view their deliverer, and
look back on his stupendous undertaking with high ravishment,
while they are feasting without interruption on its sweet fruits,
evergrowing mare delicious. The rest of the members like-
wise of the city of God «ill contemplate it with perpetual plea-
God blessed for saw in the night vision,' says he, ' and behold, one like
the Son of man, came with the clouds of heaven,
and came to the ancient of days : and there was given
him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people
nations, and languages, should serve him.' It is in al-
lusion to this therefore, as these men think, and in order
to assert his claim to the office of the Messiah, that our
Saviour so commonly calls himself by that name.
However this be, it is certain, that he is not so fond of
the name of the Son of man, as not to desire to be consid-
ered in the capacity of the Son of God likewise. For,
when he put the question to his disciples, 4 ' Whom say ye
that I am ?' and Peter, in the name of the rest, replied,
' Thou art Christ, the Son of the living- God,' he is far
from being- displeased with the answer, when he returns
the apostle this compliment, ' blessed art thou, Simon
Barjonas, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto
thee, but my Father that is in heaven.'
Our Saviour indeed was so far from making any un-
necessary declarations of himself, that, 5 on some occa-
sions, we find him labouring to conceal his divine char-
acter, and charging his disciples to say nothing of it,
until his resurrection : c but, notwithstanding this, when-
ever he was fairly called upon, and especially by persons
invested with authority, he never concealed it. AVhen 6
the Jews came around him in Solomon's porch, and said
unto him, ' how long dost thou make us doubt ? If thou
be the Christ, tell us plain :" his answer is express: ' I
told you, and you believed not ; the works that I do in
my Father's name, they bear witness of me : for I and
my Father are one.' When he stood before the judg--
ment-seat, and the high priest demanded of him, 7 ' I ad-
jure thee by the living God, that thou tell us, whether
thou be the Christ, the Son of God ;' his reply is, ' Thou
hast said,' or, as St Mark 8 expresses it, ' I am ; and ye
shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' Nay,
there are some instances, wherein, of his own accord,
and without any demand of this kind, he freely discovers
who he was ; for having cured the man that was born
blind, and afterwards meeting him accidentally, n ' dost
4 Mat. xvi. 15, &c. s See Mark viii. 30. and Mat. xvii. 9.
6 Jno. x. 23, 24. 7 Mat.xxvi. 63, 64. 8 Chap, xi v. 62. 9 Jno.ix. 35.
sure, as the happy means of recovering their kindred that were
lost, and it may be as the grand confirmation of the whole
rational system, in their subjection to him who liveth and reign-
eth for ever, and whose favour is better than life. — M^Kniyht's
Harmony. — Ed.
c That Christ was very cautious of acknowledging himself to
be the promised Messiah, in his conversing with the Jews, is \ery
apparent; (compare Mat. xvi. SO. Mark viii. 29, 30; Luke
xxii. 67. and John x. 24.), and the reason was, that the Jews
had such notions of the temporal kingdom of the Messiah, that
they would have construed an open declaration of himself under
that character as a claim to the throne of David ; in consequence
of which, many would have taken up arms in the cause, (John vi.
15.) and others would have accused him to the Roman governor, as
a rebel against Caesar, (Luke XX. 20.) as they afterwards did, (Luke
xxiii. 2.) — This Mr Locke has stated at large in his Reasonable-
ness of Christianity, p. 59 — 77. Yet I think there was a nicety
in Christ's conduct, beyond what is there represented : for our
Lord in effect declared the thing, while he declined that parti-
cular title ; and in a multitude of places, represents himself as
the Son of man, and the Son of God, which were both equivalent
phrases, and generally understood by the Jews, though a Romau
would not so easily have entered into the force of them. Accord-
ingly we find this interpretation was in fact given to them, (John
vii. 31, II. and ix. 22.)
Sect. IV.]
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thou believe on the Son of God r° says he : whereupon
the man asking, ' who is the Son of God, that 1 may
believe on him?' our Saviour replies, 'Thou hast both
seen him, and he it is that talketh with thee.'
Though therefore our blessed Saviour delighted much
in the appellation of the Son of man; yet as he did not,
upon that account, decline the title of the ' Son of God,'
and had consequently two natures united in the fame per-
son, our business must be, to distinguish between these
two natures, and then wc shall soon perceive the reason
of our Saviour's informing his apostles, that his Father
was greater than him, namely, greater with respect to the
Son's humanity, though, as touching their divinity, they
are perfectly equal ; or greater, as he is the Father, and
consequently the fountain and original of the Godhead,
though their nature and essence be one and the same.
1 In the very notion of paternity and filiation, there is
some kind of subordination implied; but then we are to
observe, that this is not a subordination of nature and
substance, no, nor of essential attributes, or natural pro-
perties, but merely a personal subordination, founded
on the personal properties: and, to be satisfied in this,
we need only consider, that the communication of the
essence, upon which this subordination is grounded, is
only a personal action, and not an act or attribute of the
divine essence. To generate, and to be generated, are
not essential attributes of the divine nature, but merely
personal acts of the Father and Son; and, consequently,
the sole foundation of this subordination being merely
in personal properties, the subordination itself, founded
therein, can only relate to the personal, and not at all
to the essential properties ; for, notwithstanding the
Son's personal subordination, he still continues, with
the Father in substance equal, in majesty, co-eternal.
When therefore our Saviour seems to own his inferi-
ority of knowledge, and to profess himself ignorant of
some future events, that the Father had reserved to
himself, the meaning must be, 2 Either that as man,
he did not know beyond the capacities of a human and
finite understanding, and not what he knew as God ; or
that, as a prophet sent from God, he had no commission
to declare it, and what was no part of his prophetic
office, he knew nothing of, that is, had no instructions
to reveal it. For, that in this sense ° the original word
is sometimes taken, we may learn from that passage to
the Corinthians, where St Paul tells his disciples, that3
he had determined not to know any thing among them,
that is, not to teach or instruct them in any point of
doctrine, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
" It is one thing therefore," says the learned 4 Light-
foot, " to understand the Son of God, barely, and ab-
stractly, for the second person in the Holy Trinity, and
another, to understand him for the Messiah, or second
person incarnate. To say, that the second in the
Trinity is ignorant of any thing, is blasphemous : but to
say so of the Messias, though he be that second person
in the Trinity, is not so. For, though the second person,
abstractly considered, according to his mere Deity, be
'Stevens on the eternal generation:
s Kidder's Demonstration of the Messias, part ii. p. GO.
3 1 Cor. ii. 2. « On Mark xiii. 32.
a For an explanation of this passage, (Mat. xiii 32)— Seen
to 1001. p Ed.
co-equal with the Father, co-omnipotent, co-omniscient,
co-eternal with him ; yet the Messias, who is God-man,
considered as the Messias, was a servant and a messen-
ger to the Father, from whom he received commands
and authority, as himself frequently declared, 5 ' that
he spake nothing of himself, but that the Father, who
sent him, gave him commandment what he should say,
and what he should speak.' " Though therefore it plainly
apears, both from the many prognostics which he men-
tions, and the exact description which he gives of the
destruction of Jerusalem, that our Saviour could not but
know the precise day and hour of its happening, yet this
he might call one of 6 ' those times and seasons which
the Father had put in his own power,' because he had
received no order or direction for him to reveal it.
The generality of the ancients however run into
the other notion, which arises from the consideration
of the two natures in Christ; and therefore, with Cyril
of Alexandria, they say, that he sometimes declared him-
self as God, and sometimes as man, thereby to show,
that he was very God, and very man; that as he was
pleased, in respect of his manhood, to surfer hunger and
thirst, and other inconveniencies of that kind, so he con-
descended to take upon him the innocent infirmities of
it, among which ignorance of future events is one, but
this without any disparagement to his 7 ' Godhead, wherein
are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;' and
that, in short, he both knew, and knew not, when the day
and hour here spoken of would come ; the former, with
respect to his divine, and the latter, to his human
nature.
This solution however does not please so well. For,
if we refer the day and hour, as they were primarily
intended, to the destruction of the temple and city of
Jerusalem, what signs and prognostics does our Saviour
give his disciples of this great event? Why he foretels
them, That not one stone of all these glorious build-
ings should be left upon one another: that there
should be wars and rumours of wars, when nation should
rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; that
there should be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes
in divers places ; that false prophets, and false Christs,
should arise, who should amuse them with destructive
hopes of imaginary deliverances ; that Jerusalem should
be encompassed with a foreign enemy, who should at
last make a final destruction of it, and of all that was
therein ; that the abomination of desolation should stand
in the holy place, where, of all places in the world, it
ought not to have stood ; and that all these things
should come to pass, while some of the present gene-
ration were still alive. 8 Now, since all these things
did literally come to pass, as our Lord, forty years be-
fore, had foretold that they should ; since, at the time
of his foretelling them, the Romans were in peaceable
possession of Judea, nor was there any prospect at all
of the troubles and commotions which afterwards ensued;
and since the completion of these prophecies is preserved
to us by a Jewish writer, who himself was concerned in
these very troubles, and did not record them with any
design to gratify us Christians ; can we imagine, that
Jesus Christ, who was this prophet, could possibly be
Col. ii. 3.
i John xii. 40. 6 Artsi. 7.
" U'otton's Omniscience of the Sou of Cut'..
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ignorant of the day and hour when these predictions
should be completed? or rather, ought we not to think, that
all he intended by that expression, was to signify to his
hearers, that it was then an improper time for him to
reveal the particular period when that catastrophe was
to overtake them? But two days after this, his disciples
own his divinity, and acknowledge, that ' he knew all,
and - all things that he had heard from the Father, or
had a commission to declare from the Father, himself
avers, that he had not failed to make known unto them ;
and therefore we may well presume, that the individual
day and hour Avhen Jerusalem was finally to be de-
stroyed, as it was a matter of no concern for them to be
acquainted with, so was it no part of his instructions
from heaven to let them into a minute knowledge of it ;
that in the signs and forerunners which he had discovered
to them, he had said enough to put them, and all con-
sidering men, upon their guard ; that fuller and more
particular indications of the time, as things then stood,
were by no means proper ; for though they might possi-
bly be able to 3 bear his words, yet others might be
tempted to make an ill use of them, contrary to his
original meaning.
It is to be observed, however, that, in regard our
blessed Saviour had the divine and human nature both
united in one person, great caution must be used, in ob-
serving his actions and affections, that we do not mis-
take in assigning any of them to a wrong principle.
4 For as those works of wonder which exceeded or con-
trolled all the powers of created nature, must be at-
tributed to a principle omnipotent and divine ; so in
those others, which relate either to joy or sorrow, sub-
jection or exultation, he must be understood to proceed
upon a principle purely human, and that the faculties of
the divine nature were in such cases, totally suspended.
Now it is certain, that the perfections of the divine
nature will admit of neither any increase nor diminution
of its power and greatness. The author to the Hebrews 5
applies to our Saviour Christ these words of the Psalm-
ist,6 ' Thou, 0 Lord, in the beginning, hast laid the
foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work
of thy hand ;' and surely he who created the world, and
' without him not any thing was made, that was made,'
could not fail of having, from all eternity, a sovereign
power both in heaven and earth. It is not in respect of
his divinity, therefore, that our Lord speaks of his en-
largement of power, but of his human nature ; which, in
reward of his obedience and humiliation, 8 ' was highly
exalted ; and obtained of God a name, which is above
every name ; that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things
under the earth ; and that every tongue should confess,
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.'
It is equally certain, that the divine nature is not cap-
able of any grief or sorrow, or other perturbation of
mind arising from an apprehension of some imminent
clanger, or a sense of some incumbent calamity; and
therefore when our Saviour complains of the vast load of
sorrow that lay heavy upon his spirits, and almost quite
1 John xvi. 30. 2 Ibid. xv. 15. 3 Ibid. xvi. 12.
Stanhope's sermons on several occasions. 6 Heb. i. 10.
6 Psal. tax. 85. ' Juo. i. :;. B Puil. ii. 9.
sunk them down, this he must be supposed to say with
regard to his human nature only, because his divine was
exempt from all such suffering. But then the question
is, from what particular cause it was, that all this sorrow
and fear, and consternation of mind, for a so the orig-
inal words import, could possibly arise ?
3 Those who impute all this to nothing more than a
natural dread of pain and death, have this difficulty to
contend with, that how grievous soever these things may
be, especially to sinful flesh and blood, yet they are
such as have been corrected by reason, and in their most
tremendous shapes, borne with great patience and re-
signation of mind ; and therefore it can hardly be ima-
gined, that the prospect of a crucifixion could have
raised such commotions in a soul which had the testi-
mony of a good conscience to support it, and a glori-
ous reward set before it, to make a full recompense for
what he suffered.
,u Others are of opinion, therefore, that this excessive
sorrow and dejection of mind were occasioned by the
perfect and penetrating light, which then diffused itself
in our Saviour's mind all at once, concerning the guilt
of sin, and the wrath of an incensed God ; that the hor-
ror of these filled and amazed his vast apprehensive
soul ; and that these apprehensions could not but affect
his tender heart, full of the highest zeal for God's glory,
and the most relenting compassion for the souls of men ;
for, if the true contrition of one single sinner, ll say they,
bleeding under the sting of the law, only for his own
iniquities, cannot be performed, without great bitterness
of sorrow and remorse, what bounds can be set to that
grief, what measure to that anguish, which proceeded
from a full apprehension of all the transgressions of so
many millions of sinners ?
12 This is the most common solution : and yet there is
something in the context which has induced others to
think, that on this occasion, the devil and his angels had
collected all their forces, in order to fill our Saviour's
mind mith the most dismal terrifying scenes of horror,
thereby to divert him from his intended enterprize. For,
1st, we may observe that, before he entered the garden,
where this agony seized him, he expected some terrible
assault from these infernal powers, and therefore he tells
his disciples, ' The prince of the world cometh,' 13 that
is is now mustering up his legions to make his last
effort upon me ; but this is my comfort, that he will find
nothing in me, no sinful inclination to take part with
9 See Stillingfleet's sermons; Stanhope on the epistles and
gospels, vol. ii. and his sermons on several occasions.
10 Pearson on the creed; and South's sermons, vol. iii.
11 Ibid. 18 Scott's Mediator. 13 Jno. xiv. 30.
a The words in the original are three, — XviriTaSa.!, ixfap-
fiutrSai, and AptrnTv- The first Xi/5T£iV9ai is of a known and
ordinary signification; but, in this case, it is to be raised to the
highest degree of significancy, as appears by the words which
follow, vriplkvpro; Ijiv h -^v^ri fn.au 'lui S-anarov, Mat. XXvi. 38. So
that it does not only signify the excess of sorrow, surrounding
and encompassing the soul, but also such as brings a consterna-
tion and dejection of mind, bowing the soul under the pressures
and burden of it. The second \x.Qa.p$u<r§*i, in the vulgar Latin,
is pavere, but, according to the Greek idiom, hears a much
stronger sense, and signifies indeed the highest degree of fear,
horror, and amazement. The third a2vp.<ivuv denotes the
consequences of excessive fear and sorrow, that is, anxiety of
mind, disquietude and restlessness. — Pearson on the creed.
Sect. IV.]
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him, no guilty reflection to expose nie to his tyranny.
2dly, That when the disciples entered the garden with
our Lord, he gave them a strict charge, ' ' to watch and
pray, that they might not enter into temptation :' which
plainly implies, that, in that time and place, there was
some occasion for a more than ordinary application to
these duties ; and this cannot so well be imputed to
any thing else, as those numbers of evil spirits, who
were going furiously to assault their Master, and would
not altogether spare them. And, 3dly, that when the
three elect apostles were a little advanced with him
into the garden, he earnestly entreated them to watch
with him ; and yet we find them suddenly asleep, and
no sooner awake, but asleep again, and again : for the
text tells us,2 ' that their eyes were heavy ; which pro-
digious drowsiness of theirs, upon so momentous an oc-
casion, cannot be ascribed to any thing so well as to
a preternatural stupefaction of their senses by some of
these infernal spirits now conflicting with their Master,
and who, perhaps, to deprive him of the solace of their
company, did, by their diabolical arts, produce that ex-
traordinary stupor which oppressed them, that so having
him alone, they might have the greater advantage to
tempt and terrify him.
These observations make it highly probable, that this
his last agony was occasioned by a mighty struggle and
conflict with the powers of darkness, 3 who having, by
God's permission, mustered up all their strength, in-
tended once more to try their fortune against him, and
to this purpose surrounding him, very probably, with a
mighty host, exerted all their power and malice in per-
secuting his innocent soul ; in distracting it with horrid
phantasms ; in afflicting it with dismal suggestions : in
vexing and tormenting it with dire imaginations, and
dreadful spectacles ; and, in short, in practising all the
arts and machinations that their malice and subtilty
could invent, to tempt and deter him if possible from his
gracious design of redeeming mankind.
4 Had our Lord indeed, in this conflict, been assisted
with any succour from his divinity, this would have set
him far above the opposition of any created power ; but,
that the second Adam might make a reparation for the
fall of the first, and, in that very nature, left to itself,
and, unassisted by any foreign aid, vanquish the enemy
that had given it so grievous a foil before, the divine
perfections lay by, as it were, and forbore to engage :
they withdrew their influence for that time, and suspend-
ing their operations, left him to encounter as man, though
much more perfect than any other man.
Putting all these dismal and distracting things together
then, the apprehension of a cruel and ignominous death,
the sense of the guilt and heinous nature of sin, the pro-
spect of God's wrath, the combination of devils, and the
suspension of the divine power and protection, we need
not much wonder that we rind our blessed Saviour in the
garden complaining, that ■ his soul was exceeding sor-
rowful, even unto death;' or on the cross crying out,
' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' That
we find him, in the midst of his agony, sweating out blood
in great abundance ; deprecating death with more vehe-
mence than some heathen sages, and many Christian
1 Mat. xxvi. 41. 2 Mat. xxvi. 43. * Scot's Mediator.
* Stanhope on the Epistles aud Gospels, vol ii.
martyrs did ; and when his spirits were thus depressed, his
human nature quite exhausted, and no relief from the
divine aftbrded him, that an angel should be sent from
heaven to revive and strengthen him. For when the
divinity, which resided in him, had either suspended or
subtracted its influence, he, who, in respect of his man-
hood, 5 was made a little while inferior to the angels,
and, in respect of his sufferings, was now in a more dis-
tressed condition than ever man knew, being left to his
human nature alone, could not but stand in need of the
comfort and consolation of an angel.
All this while the divine nature of Christ, though it
did not think lit to exert itself,6 was inseparably united
to the human. Nor can we conceive why it should not
still continue, even after death, in the same manner
united ; since no power has any force against omnipo-
tence, nor could any finite agent work any alteration in that
union. To understand the nature of this union, Ave must
observe, ? that in the person of Christ, after the assump-
tion of our nature, there were two different substantial
unions ; one, of the two parts of his humanity, his soul
and body, whereby he was truly man : and the other, of
his divine and human nature, whereby he was both God
and man in one person : and that, though at his death
the constituent parts of him as man, that is, his human
soul and body, were parted, and so continued for some
time, yet the union of his two natures still remained ; a
death made no alteration in that, nor were his soul and
body ever separated from the Godhead, but, as the divine
nature still subsisted, they still continued in conjunction
with it : upon which account, as we are taught to believe,
that God redeemed us with his blood, so has it been the
constant language of the church, that ' God died for us,'
which in no sense could be true, unless our blessed
Saviour's soul and body, in the instant of separation, and
until their conjunction again, were united to the Deity.
And therefore, when we hear him crying upon the cross,8
' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' he
means the same thing as when he calls upon us to 9 ' be-
hold and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sor-
row.' For from these words we can infer nothing more
than this, — that he was then bereft of such joys and
comforts as he expected from the Deity, to assuage and
mitigate the acerbity of the torments he was under. The
truth is, what seems to solve all difficulties best, is the
ancient notion of the Godhead's being quiescent, and
not exerting its power and efficacy in such instances,
where the humanity is known to have suffered. In this
manner it confessedly withdrew at his death ; other-
wise we cannot see how he could have died at all ; and
in this maimer, by parity of reason, it might continue its
5 Heb. ii. 7. 6 Pearson on the Creed, ait. iv. 7 Ibid.
8 Mat. xxvii. 46. 9 Lam. i. 12.
a The words of St Austin are very full and excellent to this
purpose. " Wherefore the Word became flesh, that he mijfat
dwell among us, and from the Word was he formed man, namely,
a whole man, soul and body. What did his suffering de, what
did his death do, unless the separating of his body from his soul?
It did not separate his soul from the Word; for though the Lord
died, (undoubtedly his flesh died,) but his soul, I affirm, was not
separated from the Word ; the soul only left the body for a short
time, to rise again with returning animation. To the soul of
the robber he said, ' To-day thou shalt be with me in paradise.'
He did not leave the faithful soul of the robber, and did he leave
his own? Forbid it: as he had such care for the thief's soul, his
own he must inseparably have retained." — Tract on John; 47.
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quiescence during the whole space of his interment, and
until its power and operation were requisite, in order to
effect his resurrection.
As our blessed Saviour then was both God and man
in one person, and the efficacy and mystery of man's
redemption consisted in this union, x it was necessary
that there should be a clear and undoubted demonstra-
tion given of the reality of both these natures. But, since
the distinguishing- marks of human nature lie chiefly in
the soul, there had not been that demonstration given of
our Saviour's perfect humanity, unless he had discovered,
in his conduct, an exact resemblance to us, in all the
natural passions and inclinations of our souls. Now, in
this soul of ours there is a twofold principle, sense and
reason. Sense catches at the present, pursues ease and
safety, and industriously consults the preservation and
advantage of the body; whereas reason enlarges our pros-
pect, takes into consideration distant and future objects,
and persuades the foregoing of some satisfactions, the
running of some hazards, and enduring of some difficul-
ties in the discharge of our duty, and the expectation of
a greater good in reversion. Under the former of these
are comprehended all our natural passions, which are the
secret springs that move us to what we do ; under the lat-
ter are the understanding and judgment, which direct,
and regulate, and bound, and over-rule these passions.
But still both these are constituent parts, and as neces-
sary to make a perfect soul, as the rational soul and
human body are to make one perfect man ; and from
hence it follows, that the weakness and corruption of our
nature, as it stands depraved by sin, does not consist in
our being tenderly touched with the fear of present evil,
or the desire of present good, but only in suffering these
fears and desires to prevail, and take place, against the
dictates of reason and duty.
Aversion to pain and conflict, to sorrow and death,
and whatever is shocking and frightful to human nature,
are affections interwoven with our original frame and
constitution. Adam, in his state of innocence, felt them ;
and therefore it is no just reflection upon the second
Adam, that he, in like manner, felt them too. Infirmities
indeed these aversions may be called, in comparison of
those perfections which belong to God, and unbodied
spirits; but then they are such infirmities as all who
partake of bodies, must have, and which if our Saviour
had been destitute of, he could not have been truly
man.
Now, if Christ, as man, could not be altogether indif-
ferent and unconcerned at such severe trials, as the im-
position of the burden of our sins, the infliction of pain
and torment, his approaching conflict with the powers of
darkness, and the utter subduction of all divine aid and
assistance, must necessarily bring upon him; then surely
it could not misbecome him to use all possible means for
declining them, and consequently to express his concern,
by pra> mg against them, but with this modest reserve and
limitation, 8 'Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be
done.' For it was no disparagement either of his obedi-
ence to God, or love to mankind, that he had an aversion
to death, and pain, and sufferings; but, in truth, an
h.gher commendation to both ; since notwithstanding so
tender a sense of what he was to suffer, he offered him-
1 Stanhope's Sermons on social
Luke xxii. 42-
self to undergo whatever God, for their benefit and
salvation, should think proper to lay upon him. So
that the more passionate his wishes were for a release,
the more meritorious was his submission ; and the
stronger his aversions were, the more was the resigna-
tion of his own will; and, consequently, the more
acceptable was his compliance with that of his heavenly
Father.
His heavenly Father, no doubt, could 3 have ex-
empted mankind from punishment, without an equivalent
compensation for their guilt. As an all-wise being, he
could have invented many methods of salvation, without
the sacrifice of his beloved Son ; and as a supreme law-
giver, he might have extended mercy to whom, and upon
what terms he thought fit; but then, as he was the
supreme lawgiver, and governor of the world, it Avas
consistent with his justice, and his infinite wisdom, we
may say, required it of him, to vindicate the authority
of his laws, and see sin punished in such an exemplary
manner, as to deter, if possible, his subjects from it for
the future.
Now this was the state and condition of mankind,
when God's infinite wisdom contrived the scheme of
their redemption. They had alienated themselves from
him ; were under sin, under condemnation, under the
curse of the law, under the sentence of death. In this
condition, however, they were not to be left to perish ;
God's infinite goodness would not permit that : but then,
how to accomplish their recovery, and preserve his at-
tributes inviolate, this was the difficulty. For how, in
consistence with the glory, and justice, and sanctity of
God, could such enemies be reconciled, and such offend-
ers pardoned? Would omnipotent majesty think of
any treaty, without an advocate and intercessor ? Would
the sovereign ruler of the Avorld suffer his honour to be
slighted, without a proper vindication ? Would the
great patron of justice relax the terms of it, and permit
ivickedness to pass unpunished ? Would the God of
truth reverse his decree, and stop the sentence of death
from falling upon sinners ? Or would the God of right-
eousness omit any opportunity of expressing the love
he bore to innocence, and abhorrence to iniquity? Hoav
then could Ave Avell be cleared from our guilt, Avithout
an expiation ; or reinstated in freedom Avithout a ransom ;
or exempted from condemnation, Avithout some vicarious
punishment? No, God Avas pleased so to prosecute his
designs of goodness and mercy, as not in the least to
impair or obscure it, but rather advance and illustrate
the glories of his sovereign dignity, of his severe justice,
of his immaculate holiness, and immutability both in
Avord and purpose.
He Avas Avilling to listen to a treaty, but from the
mouth of no mediator but such as Avas of equal dignity
Avith himself. He Avas Avilling to remit the punishment
due to our sins, but not Avithout a sacrifice that Avould
make full atonement for them. He was Avilling to give
us back our lives again, but not Avithout a substitution
of another life equivalent to them all. But noAV, how
could these things be done ? Where could Ave find a
mediator, proper and Avorthy to intercede for us, and
to negociate a neAv covenant, Avhereby God might be
satisfied and Ave saved ? Who could offer for us a sacri-
Stanhope:s Sermons on several occasions.
Skct. IV.]
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lice of value sufficient to atone for sins so vastly numer-
ous, ami all committed against infinite majesty ? Or
who could undertake for the everlasting" redemption of
all the souls, since the first creation, and lay down a
competent price for them ? Nothing on earth, nothing
in heaven, was found able to do this.
Man, the most innocent and upright man, could by no
means redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for
him. Angels have obligations enough of their own to
discharge, and cannot be solvent for any more than the
debt of their own gratitude and praise. The brightest
of that heavenly host cannot, over and above this, make
compensation for one human sin ; but, for the sins of
the whole world united, there was no propitiation to be
found, until the Son of God offered himself, and was ac-
cepted by the Father. Our humanity he assumed, to en-
able him to suffer, and interest us in what he did ; but
the divinity, which he had with the Father from the be-
ginning, this he brought with him, to derive an infinite
value upon his sufferings, and to make the ransom and
oblation which he paid down for us a full satisfaction
for sins innumerable, and infinitely heinous.
In the expiation of these sins, we own, that the
punishment which our Saviour submitted to, was but
temporal, whereas that to which sinners are obnoxious,
is eternal ; but for that several good reasons may be al-
leged. The author to the Hebrews, in his comparison
between the Levitical and Christian dispensations, tells
us, that 1 ' such an high priest became us, who is holy,
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and who
needeth not daily, as the high priests under the law, to
offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for
those of the people.' So that what qualified him to
offer a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, was his perfect
innocence ; for had he been, in any degree a sinner
himself, he must have suffered for his own offences :
and consequently, been incapable of effecting an expia-
tion for ours.
2 Now, if our blessed Saviour was entirely innocent
and holy, it was impossible that he should suffer the same
punishments, which by the just decree of God, are due
to wilful and impenitent sinners. 3 He could not do it
in his body ; for that could only die by what he suffered
on the cross ; and he could not do it in his soul ; for how
could that soul, which knew no sin, be under a remorse
of conscience for any thing that he had done ? How
/:ould he, 4 ' who, for the joy that was set before him,
endured the cross,' lie under any sense of God's un-
changeable displeasure? or he, who knew that 5 his soul
should not be left in Hades, nor his body see corruption,'
be seized with an absolute despair of any better state,
or an uneasy apprehension of no release from what he
was to suffer ? The punishments of the damned are with-
out end, and without hope : but everlasting misery and
despair could never be consistent with the condition of
one who had not deserved them, and whose innocence
secured and preserved him from them. These are the
consequences of sin and rebellion against God ; but
the sufferings of Jesus, were the greatest proof of an
entire obedience in the most difficult instance of sub-
' Heb. vii. 26, 27. 2 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels,
vol. ii. 3 Whitby's appendix to Mat. xxvi. * Heb. xii. 2.
•Psal. xvi. 10.
mission, and so far from incurring the divine displeas-
ure, that, from this very cause 6 God hath highly ex-
alted him.
But though, from the nature and reason of the thing,
it appears that our Lord neither did, nor could suffer
such punishments, in kind and measure, as were due to
sinners ; yet it must be observed, that he underwent
such things as bore some analogy to what sinners are to
suffer, and what he would not have suffered had he not
been punished for our transgressions.
7 For whereas sinners lie under the sentence of con-
demnation, and are sure to find a public exemplary
judgment ; so was our Saviour solemnly condemned and
sentenced as a malefactor, a seditious person, a per-
verter of the nation, a rebel against Caesar, and a blas-
phemer against God. AVhereas sinners will be exposed
to shame and ignominy, at the great day of judgment,
before men and angels ; so our Lord suffered a very
shameful and ignominious death, and that attended with
all the mockeries, affronts, and obloquies, that the
malice of his enemies could cast upon him. And where-
as sinners are obnoxious to very grievous torments both
of body and soul, and these inflicted by the hand of an
enraged God ; so, in his person, our Lord suffered death
painful to such a degree, as to make the most exquisite
tortures be called cruciatus. from the cross; and, in his
mind, such a load of grief and anguish, as might well
justify the mournful complaint of the prophet, 8 ' all ye
that pass by, behold, and see, if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted
me, in the day of his fierce anger.'
Now, from this fair resemblance between what our
Lord actually suffered, and what sinners had deserved
to suffer, there seems to be sufficient ground to say, that
he bore the punishment of our iniquities, and suffered in
our stead; though what he underwent was not, in every
point, the same that we, had it not been for his interposi-
tion, must have been obliged to suffer.
9 All that was requisite indeed in his sufferings was,
that the injuries and affronts offered to the divine justice
by the provocation of wicked men, should receive a suffi-
cient compensation ; that the honour of God and his laws
should be vindicated, and sin made as terrible and full
of discouragement, as it could possibly be ; though no
such method of mercy had ever been devised. Now all
these ends were fully satisfied by the Son of God con-
descending to suffer in our stead ; and, if there was any
thing wanting in the duration or extremity of his suffer-
ings, that was abundantly made up by the dignity of the
person, who,' through the eternal spirit, that is, the divine
united to our human nature, '" ' offered himself without
spot to God,' and in virtue of that union, exalted the
value of his oblation to an infinite degree, and paid a
ransom to offended justice of more worth than an
hundred thousand worlds.
But how great soever the benefit was which accrued to
mankind from the death of our Saviour Christ, there is no
apologizing for those that were the bloody instruments
of it, and least of all for Judas. For, besides the ag-
gravation of his being a disciple, a friend, a constant
companion, one that had been taught and sustained by
8 Phil. ii. 9. ; Whitby's appendix to Mat. xvi. 8 Lam. i. 12.
'■' Stanhopi on tne Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii. 10 Heb. ix. 14.
6 p
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lihn,and not only an hearer of his doctrine, and an eye-
witness of his miracles, but, in virtue of the commission
received from him, a preacher of the gospel, and a
worker of miracles himself; besides all this, I say, it is
evident, that his wickedness was not the effect of a sud-
den surprise, or want of recollection, but the work of
deliberation, and long contrivance, and solemn debate.
For he consulted with the high-priests and elders con-
cerning the time, the place, and every circumstance, for
the most convenient execution of his villany. After such
consultation, he continued his attendance upon his mas-
ter, that, under the disguise of friendship, and by much
laboured hypocrisy, he might better carry on his design to
destroy him ; and as his design was advancing to maturity,
he had all along had broad hints and monitions given him,
that his plot was discovered, and many warnings of the
*in and danger he was running into; but none of these
altered his purpose. So that, in this act of his, there is
a complication of ingratitude and perfidy, hypocrisy and
malice, and a settled inflexible resolution to do wickedly,
beyond the power of advice and warning, and the most
awful menaces to control it : and this might be some
reason why his repentance met not with success, as it is
evident it did not, from our Lord's calling him x 'the
son of perdition,' and declaring, that 2 ' it had been bet-
ter for him if he had never been born.'
3 The evangelists indeed tell us, 4 ' that he repented
himself;' but then it is evident, that by repenting is not
every where intended a change of heart and life ; nor
the whole of that which repentance strictly signifies,
when made the condition of pardon and salvation, but
only some part and imperfect degree of it. Judas found
that matters were grown to so desperate an height, that
there was no probable appearances of his Master's
escaping the malice of the Jews; and recollected, very
likely, the predictions of our Lord concerning the dread-
ful vengeance which should overtake the person that be-
trayed him to death. These, and probably many other
dreadful reflections, working together with all that con-
fusion which fear and guilt are known to create in men's
minds, seem to have made up that concern which the
text hath expressed by ' repenting himself ;' a concern
resulting from a principle of self-preservation, in the most
carnal sense of the word. But we find not in him any
due sense of the villany of the fact, nor any condemning
himself, as the basest, most ungrateful, the most aban-
doned wretch alive; one that had violated the laws of God
and society, and nature, and cast all fidelity and grati-
tude, and common humanity behind his back. All which,
and a great deal more, were not only aggravations
due to his crime, but the very properest occasions of
remorse.
He felt indeed some regret for what he had done, as
an awakened conscience cannot fence oft' such reflec-
tions, and he wished perhaps he had never done it; but
the regret which he felt, seems rather to have been the
effect of confusion and rage, than any godly relenting;
the agonies of frenzy, and amazement, and despair ;
which are the most distant tilings in the world from that
sober and regular sorrow,5 ' which worketh repentance
unto salvation, not to be repented of.'
1 John xvii. 12. ' Mat. xxvi.
a Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. i
4 Mat. xxvii. 3. »Cor. vii. 10
24.
END. MARK xi. 15— END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
Herein then lay the defect of Judas's repentance,
that the horror of his sin led him into despair. For re-
pentance, we must know, does not barely consist in
sorrow for sin, but in such a sorrow as is tempered and
supported with hope ; not in a mere confession of our
transgressions, but in such a confession as trusts and
depends on forgiveness; and, as it imports a change of
manners, unless we are first persuaded that our sincere en-
deavours for the future will be kindly received, and our
former transgressions generously passed over, all ground
and encouragement for such a change is utterly taken
away.
Reason indeed cannot lead us to infer, that sorrow
for the past, or amendment for the time to come, can be
any equivalent satisfaction for our offences ; but revela-
tion assures us, that God may be appeased, and it hath
told us withal in what manner he is appeased, even by
the precious blood of his Son, ' who came to give his life
a ransom for many.' In this matter God hath declared
himself so fully, that the very heinousness of our sins is
not a greater provocation, than the distrust of mercy,
which, in effect, is making God a liar, and disparaging
the merits of Christ's sacrifice, after we have committed
them. So that hope of mercy, and faith in the promises,
and satisfaction of Christ, are the very life and spirit of
true repentance, essential and indispensably requisite to
quicken and recommend every part of it: and therefore no
wonder if Judas's repentance proved so ineffectual, which
was plainly destitute of these necessary qualifications.
If it be inquired, how Judas came to be wanting in
this point ? The immediate cause, no question, was,
that God had forsaken him, and withdrawn his grace
from him. But then if we pursue this inquiry still farther,
and drive it up to its true fountain-head, the matter will
fall upon Judas himself, as the proper and original cause
of his own misery and destruction.
For, whatever we may think of the doctrine of predes-
tination, it is certain that the miserable Judas was not
aware of any power in it to sustain his mind, when he
came to reflect on what he had done. He could not inter-
pret, that the foreknowledge of God had any causality or
influence upon his sins, because he found cause enough
for that arising from his own deportment :6 for, having
given way to a covetous desire, and hardened his heart
by a sinful indulgence of it against all impressions of
wholesome counsel, he was convinced that the prophecy
of his treason could not fail of its event ; because, when
the temptation offered he could not choose but do what he
did. He had indeed lost all his power and liberty to
do better, though still the necessity which he then lay
under, was not fatal, but natural ; not of God's decreeing,
but of his own procuring. Under these juster apprehen-
sions of his crime, he is said to have repented, in the worst
sense of the words ; that is, he grieved, he despaired,
and then he hanged himself. And though we allow that
his passions transported him too extravagantly in these
latter violences, yet even from what was rational in his
grief, we may learn this lesson,' — " That when an awak-
ened conscience comes to estimate the nature of its
guilt, there will be found but poor shelter in all these
palliations that can be formed by human subtilty, and
licentious wit"
6 Young's Sermons; vol. ii
Sect. IV.]
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The aggravations of St Peter's offence in denying' our
Lord, are much of the same kind with that of Judas in
betraying him. That a person, who for the space of
three years and more, had the honour of our Lord's con-
versation, the conviction of his miracles, and the instruc-
tion of his doctrine ; who had been let into the knowledge
of those mysteries, which, for wise reasons, were de-
livered in parables, and concealed from others ; admitted
to his transfiguration upon the mount, his converse with
Moses and Elias, and to hear that voice from God's
excellent glory, ' This is my beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased,'1 as himself testifies ; that a person, who
hereupon had made confession of his Master's divinity,
and received his commendations for it ; had been chosen
a companion of his agonies, and forewarned frequently
of the great danger of denying him ; and hereupon grown
so very resolute, that he offered 2 to go with him into pri-
son, and to death, and, to distinguish himself above any of
his brethren,3 ' Though all should be offended, ' says he,
' because of thee, yet will not I be offended ; and though
I were to die with thee, yet would not I deny thee :' that
a person, I say, placed in this rank and elevation, should
fall off in the time of trial, should deny and abjure his
Master, whose greatest honour it was to own, implies a
guilt still more heinous, the more his knowledge and
former conviction, the more his warning and long ex-
perience, the more his professions and boasted firmness
of mind were conspicuous.
This however may be said with relation to the
difference between the crime of Judas and that of St
Peter, that the former proceeded from a spirit of malice,
and fixed resolution to do evil, occasioned by a sordid
and covetous temper : that it was nourished up by long
contrivance and deliberation, was carried on by hypo-
crisy and deep dissimulation, was executed with perfidy
and great violence, and ended, at last, in the agonies of
horror and despair ; whereas St Peter's crime, though a
very great one, was but of short continuance, and never
in his intention at first ; was indeed the effect of fear and
human infirmity, occasioned, in a great measure, by sur-
prise and want of recollection ; not so much the act of
the man, as it was the force of the temptation he was
under ; and therefore when he 4 came to remember the
wordswhich Jesus had said unto him, and thereupon to con-
sider how shamefully he had fallen from his courage and
constancy, how easily he had been betrayed into a crime
he thought himself not capable of, how base he had been to
so kind a Master, how false to his promises, how regard-
less of truth, how peremptory in a most notorious false-
hood, and how profane and profligate in his oaths and
curses ; when he came to consider all this, I say, a
godly sorrow swelled his heart, and tears gushed out of
his eyes ; ' He went out and wept bitterly.'
Judas, in like manner, might weep for his transgres-
sion perhaps ; but his tears must have been ineffectual,
because the season of that grace which he had long re-
sisted and defeated, was departed from him, and God pro-
voked to give him over to his own perverseness ; whereas
our Saviour, who foresaw from what principle St Peter's
offence would arise, and how sudden his conversion
would be,s ' had prayed for him, that his faith might not
» 2 Pet. i. 17, 18. * Luke xxli. 33. * Mat. xxvi. 35.
♦ Mat. xx\i. 15. 5 Luke xxii. 3.?.
fail,' and thence his recovery did proceed. We should
be injurious however to the memory of this apostle, if
we should here neglect to relate how his after behaviour
showed the sincerity of his repentance, and made an
ample amends for the scandal of his offence.
6 It was tin's same St Peter, who, after our Lord's re-
surrection, returned to the fervour of affection for which
he was remarkable before ; that so exerted himself at the
day of "' Pentecost, and proved, by irrefragable argu-
ments, ' that Jesus Christ was the Son of God ;' and
maintained his point against the Jewish rulers,8 despising
their rebukes and angry menaces, and telling them
plainly," that God was to be obeyed rather than man ;
that confirmed his brethren by his resolute behaviour, and IU
made it a matter of rejoicing, that he was accounted
worthy to suffer shame for the once abjured name of
Christ. In a word, it was he who, after a long labour of
preaching, and persecutions of all kinds, at length fin-
ished his course, and glorified God by the same sort of
death that his blessed Son condescended to undergo for
our sakes. So that St Peter was not more different from
himself, when trembling at the voice of a silly damsel,
than the same St Peter afterwards, the glorious and in-
vincible apostle, before the council, in prison, and upon
the cross, was from the cowardly and infamous renegade
in the high-priest's palace. This settled and deliberate
fidelity was a noble compensation for the infirmity and
transports of this fall. This showed what the man was
when perfectly himself, and supported by the grace of
God, as the other did what he was when naked, and
destitute of heavenly succours, depending upon his own
strength, and left in the hand of his own passions.
St Paul u represents our Saviour as ' a merciful
high-priest because he was touched with a feeling of our
infirmities ;' and as it is natural for us to compassionate
those that are in the same state of misery with ourselves,
so might our Lord, from the society of suffering, have been
induced, at this time, to admit the penitent upon the cross
into a participation of bliss, who at another time, would
not have met with so ready a reception. Xi It might
therefore be no small advantage to the penitent thief,
that he happened to die in company with Christ, though
it is certain, that the good disposition which he dis-
covered in his behaviour and confession, was enough to
recommend him to the divine mercy.
It is highly probable, that this man never knew any-
thing of Jesus before, otherwise than by common fame ;
nay, that he was prepossessed against him as an impos-
tor, and joined with his companion in reviling him at first :
and therefore the greater was his virtue in overcoming
these prejudices so soon, and in suffering the meekness
and patience, the charity and piety, of our Lord's mira-
culous death to disabuse him. This is so far from making
him a late penitent, that it gives him the glory of an
early convert ; one whose heart was open to the first im-
pression of grace, and wanted not so much the inclination
as the opportunity, of embracing the truth before.
But admitting that he had seen and heard of Christ
before ; yet, that he should now come in to the acknow-
ledgment of him, and believe him to be the Saviour of
the world, when one of his disciples had betrayed, another
B Stanhope's sermons on several occasions. ' Arts ii. II.
8 Ibid. iv. 19, '20. 9 Ibid v. 29. 10 Ibid. ver. 41.
11 1Kb. iv. 15. n Taylor's Life of Christ.
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had denied, and all of them had forsaken him ; and to
be the Son of God, and Lord of Life, when he was hang-
ing upon the cross, suffering the pangs of death, and
seemingly deserted by his Father: that he should take
sanctuary in a dying and universally despised man, pub-
lish his innocence in the face of triumphant malice, and,
through the thickest cloud of shame and suffering that
ever intercepted the glories of the Son of God, discover
his divine power, acknowledge his celestial kingdom,
throw himself upon his protection, and call upon him, as
the great disposer of rewards and happiness after death ;
this was a confession so resolute, so singular, so illustri-
ous, as never was outdone, as never can in all respects,
be equalled, except the same Jesus were again to be
crucified. For no man's conversion ever had, ever can
have, upon other terms, such disadvantageous and dis-
couraging circumstances, as this man laboured under,
and yet so generously overcame.
Well therefore might ' St Chrysostom, as he does
with great force and eloquence, rebuke the impudence
of those late penitents, who presume to take sanctuary
in this example ; for what affinity, what shadow of re-
semblance is there, between a man submitting to the
first impression, and accepting of offers as soon as made ;
and one who has lived under the ministry of the gospel,
and enjoyed both the outward calls of God's word, and
the inward solicitations of his Spirit, but turned the deaf
ear continually to both ? between a man who to our
Lord paid the highest degree of homage and respect,
even when he had made himself of no reputation, and
appeared in the guise of the vilest malefactor ; and one
who, notwithstanding his resurrection from the dead,
and exaltation to glory, notwithstanding the conquest
made by the gospel, and the infamy of denying him
now, continues still to injure and affront, to despise and
defy him, in his most prosperous and triumphant con-
dition ?
In a word, no Christian, who hath lived under the
dispensation of the gospel, can, at the end of his days,
plead the same ready compliance to the calls of grace,
and no man whatever can have the opportunity of ex-
erting the same vigorous faith, because Christ could
die but once, and it was his shame and suffering alone
that made the confession of this penitent so peculiarly
glorious, and such as the whole series of a pious life in
other men can hardly parallel. So that if we are allowed
to make any use, or to draw any consolation from this
example, it can be no more than this, — that repentance,
when true, is never too late, and therefore the thief
upon the cross, is a sovereign antidote against despair.
Bat men may out-stay the day of grace : they may not
go about the work until it is too late ; until they have
lost both the will and the power to repent; and there-
fore this example, when truly considered, is an excel-
lent preservative likewise against presumption. a
It may be deemed perhaps some mistake in the evan-
1 Tom. 5. orat. 7.
a The account of tin; pardoned criminal is related by one
evangelist only, as if the Holy Spirit foresaw the perversion of
the passage. One instance only, to use the language of a cele-
brated divine, of the acceptance of a dying repentance is re-
corded ; one only that none might despair, and one only that
none might presume.— Tviitsoud, Jim muni/.- Ed.
END. MARK xi. 15— END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
gelist, or rather a disparagement to the Holy Spirit, by
whose direction, we say, it was he wrote, that St Mat-
thew cites Jeremiah for a passage, which no where oc-
curs but in the Prophet Zechariah ; but then it should be
proved that St Matthew does actually cite Jeremiah. 2
In most of the Latin and Greek copies indeed, we have
the word Jeremiah at present, but it is much to be ques-
tioned whether it was in the original, since the Syriac
and Persic versions mention no name, but barely the
prophets, and those copies, in 3 St Austin's opinion, are
most to be relied on, which have not the name of Jere-
miah inserted in them, because this might possibly pro-
ceed from the ignorance or carelessness of some trans-
criber. 4 Some of our modern reconcilers have another
way of accounting for this. They endeavour to prove,
5 from the writings of the Jewish Rabbins, that both be-
fore, under, and after the second temple, the order of
the sacred books were several times transposed, and that,
in the time when St Matthew wrote his gospel, the book
of Jeremiah, as does now that of Isaiah, stood first in
the volume of prophets, and so became the running title
of all the rest. For, that the first book in a volume may
give the name to the rest, is obvious, say they, from the
words of our Saviour's telling his disciples, that 6 ' all
things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concern-
ing him:' where, by the word Psalms, he means all the
Hagiography, consisting of hymns to God, and docu-
ments of life ; and are all so called, because in that part
of the division of the Old Testament, they had obtained
the first place.
But as there are no words cited in the like manner
from any other prophet in the whole New Testament, 7
others have imagined, that the passage which St Matthew
quotes, was originally in the authentic copies of Jere-
miah, but that, by the malice of the Jews, it was erased,
because it was looked upon as too plain a prophecy for
this circumstance of our Saviour's life ; or rather, that
it was recorded in a certain apocryphal book of Jere-
miah's, from whence St Matthew took it. That there
was such a book extant, is evident from the testi-
mony of St Jerome, 8 who expressly tells us, that he
read the very words here quoted in an Hebrew volume
communicated to him by a Jew of the Nazarene sect.
And, that it was no disparagement to cite an apocryphal
book, is manifest from the practice of the apostles,
who made mention 9 of Jarmes and Jainbres, though
they no where occur in the canonical Scripture ; who
quote l0 the prophecy of Enoch, though generally reputed
an apocryphal book ; nay, and produce the sayings of
Aratus, u Epimenides, )3 and Euripides, 13 though these
were profane heathen authors : for though such books,
say they, were not received into the canon, yet they
might nevertheless contain such truths as were worthy of
belief.
Those, however, who have compared the writings of
2 Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, part ii. 3 De con-
tent, evan. torn. 4. b. iii. c. 7- 4 Lightioot in loc. and Suren-
husius, in conciliat. in loc. et Vet. Test, apud Mat. 5 In cod.
Talmud. Bava Batra, fol. 14. col. 2. 6 Luke xxvi. 44.
7 See Calmet's Commentary, Whitby's Annotations, and
Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, part ii. 8 In Mat.
xxvi. 9. 9 2 Tim. iii. 8. w Jude, ver. 14. » Acts xvii. 2(3.
iL Tit. i. 12. 13 1 Cor.xv.yS.
Sect. IV.]
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these two prophets together, have observed, that Zecha-
riali was so close an imitator of Jeremiah, as to give
just occasion for the saying of the Jews, namely, That
the spirit of Jeremy had passed into Zechary, and so
both together made but one prophet : and from hence
others have concluded, that the (Jth, 10th, and 1 1th chapters
of Zechariah were not wrote by him, but by Jeremiah,
though, at present, they go under the other's name. The
book of Psalms, we know, though the whole collection
be called David's, contains many pieces that were not of
his composition. In that of Proverbs, there are several
wise sentences, besides those of Solomon, ascribed to
1 Agar, the son of Jakeh, and to B the mother of King
Lemuel ; and, by parity of reason, these chapters of
Zechariah might originally have been written by the
prophet Jeremiah, though, in process of time, they hap-
pened to creep in among the verses of his great imitator.
And indeed, whoever looks into the contents of these
chapters will soon perceive, that such things are related
in them, are as inconsistent with the time wherein
Zechariah lived, but very well agree with that of Jere-
miah : that what he says, for instance,3 of the pride of
Assyria being brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt
being departed, could not be foretold by him, because
these events were then passed and gone, but might very
well be predicted by Jeremiah ; that what he says * of
Gaza, and Ashkelon, as cities then in being, could not
be recorded of them, forasmuch as these places were de-
stroyed long before his days, but might properly enough
be mentioned by Jeremiah, because in his time they were
subsisting ; and that the earthquake 5 which he alludes
to, in the days of Uzziah, was of too distant a date to
be remembered in his time, though it is not unlikely that
tradition might have transmitted the report of it down as
far as the days of Jeremiah. If then there be found in
Zechariah things inconsistent with his time, but such as
comported very well with the period wherein Jeremiah
lived, it is natural to think, that though the whole book
went under another's name, yet still such parts of it as
contained these things, must have been wrote by a person
with whom they were coincident ; and that therefore St
Matthew is so far from committing any blunder, that he
makes a very valuable discovery, in ascribing the pro-
phecy now before us to its proper author.
Thus, take it which way we will, we cannot justly
accuse the evangelist of any misquotation : and much
less can we charge him with any misrepresentation of a
matter of fact, in his making our blessed Lord able
enough to drive all the buyers and sellers out of the
temple. St Jerom 6 indeed reckons this one of the
greatest miracles that ever our Saviour did ; and imputes
his ability to do it to a certain divine majesty, which, at
that time, appeared in his looks, and struck the company
with such reverential awe and respect to his person, as
restrained them from making any opposition : but, with-
out having any recourse to any thing miraculous in this
transaction, we need only remember, that our Lord was
just now come up from Bethany to Jerusalem in a sort of
royal and triumphant procession ; that he was attended
on the road, and into the city, with 7 a very great multi-
1 Prov. xxx. I.
* Ibid. ix. 5.
2 Ibid; xxx
[bid. xiv. ;>.
f Ibid. ver. 8, 0
I.
;| Zech.x. II.
6 In Mat. x\i. I?.
tude, nay, with multitudes, that went before, and followed
after ; that these all went along with him into the temple,
and proclaimed, as they had done on the road, ' Hos-
anna to the son of David ;' and that the concourse, in
short, was so great, that 8 all the city was moved, and
even the chief priests were afraid of him, and of the
people too, because they took him for a prophet, anda
were attentive to hear him.
Now it is no hard matter to imagine, that the people,
seeing our Saviour proceed to the temple in this trium-
phant manner, might seasonably enough call to mind the
prediction of the prophet Malachi, lu ' The Lord whom
ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple : even the
messenger of the covenant, in whom ye delight : and he
shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer to the
Lord an offering of righteousness ;' and that, from the
remembrance of this prophecy, they might be encour-
aged to abet his reformation of the temple. u Nor is it
to be doubted, that a consciousness of guilt in the pro-
faners themselves might, in some measure, contribute to
their submission and acquiescence, even in the same
manner as his enemies were struck backwards with the
sense of their own guilt, as well as the majesty of his
appearance, and fell to the ground, when they came to
apprehend him in the garden. So that, upon the whole,
we are to consider our Saviour in this action, not in the
form of a despised man, but of a triumphant monarch
rather, at the head of an infinite number of people, all
rejoicing in the completion of an ancient prophecy, all
acknowledging him for their Messiah and king, and
thereupon all ready to support him in any reformation
that he should think proper to attempt.
The like is to be said of the relation which the evange-
lists give us of the darkness which happened at our
Lord's crucifixion ; that it is far from being a misrepre-
sentation of the matter of fact, since we have it confirmed12
by the testimony of Phlegon, who, in the 40th book of his
Chronicles, tells us, that in the 4th year of the CClld
Olympiad, which answers exactly to that of our Lords
death, " there was the greatest eclipse of the sun that
had ever been before, insomuch that at noon-day the
stars were seen in the sky ;" by the authority of Thal-
lus,13 a Greek historian, who, in his third book, speaks
of the darkness that accompanied our Saviour's death,
and which he, in like manner, called an eclipse ; by the
appeal which Tertullian,14 and others make to the Roman
archives, where the account that Pilate sent to Tiberius,
of the miracles which happened at our Lord's passion,
was deposited, for the truth of this prodigious darkness;
and,15 lastly, by the general consent of all Christian
authors, for the space of the first six centuries, who,
in treating this subject, have constantly made men-
tion of this testimony of Phlegon and Thallus, together
with this appeal to the Roman records, without the least
hesitation, or diffidence of their truth : so that the only
difficulty is, to know by what means this strange pheno-
menon was effected.
Phlegon and Thallus indeed, as they are cited 1B by
Christian writers, seem to make this darkness .a common
8 Mat. xxi. 10. <J Luke xix. 48. "Mai. iii. l.&c
11 Bishop Smallbrooke's Vindication, p. 13ti.
,a Vic). Grig. I'ont. Cels. b. ii. 13 African. Chronogr.
11 \ | '"lo;:. c. 21. ls Wlii -I. hi's Testimony of Phlegon vindicated.
'B Calmet's Dissert, sur Les Tenebres.
1038
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
A. M. 4037. A. D. 33; OR, A. M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10— END. MARK xl. 15— END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
eclipse, occasioned as others are, by an interposition of
the moon between the sun and the earth ; and thence
some have inferred, that there was nothing extraordinary
in it. But as it is a thing very well known, that the
passover, when our Lord suffered, was always appointed
at the full of the moon, and a thing naturally impossible,
that an eclipse should happen when the moon is in this
condition, we have reason to think, that this was an hasty
conclusion which these two authors made, without ever
bethinking themselves of the rules of astronomy ; that
finding, in the public records of the time of Tiberius, an
account of a prodigious darkness which at noon-day
made the stars appear in the firmament, this they suppose
could have been effected only by an eclipse of the sun,
and, upon such supposition, affirmed that it was so. But,
for one circumstance unwarily advanced, it were mad-
ness to reject their testimony, which in other respects,
exactly agrees with the account of the sacred writings."
Others, by the manner of their expression, seem to
imply, that the sun, upon this occasion, withheld its
rays, and, as it were, eclipsed itself, by restraining its
lustre from issuing forth ; never considering, that light
in the sun is no accidental thing, nor any quality which
it can suppress, or exert as it thinks proper. To shine
is as necessary to it, as is its being : nor can its rays
meet with any obstruction, but when some opaque body or
other intervenes between us and them; and therefore,
when the fathers in conformity to the style of the Scrip-
ture, say, that the sun or the stars withdrew their shining,
this must be looked upon as a figurative and popular
manner of expression, which seems to give these celes-
tial bodies a kind of free action, thereby to make us more
sensible of the absence or suspension of their effects.
Others therefore, with more probability, think, that as
the sacred history says nothing of the sun, this darkness,
which it takes notice of, was occasioned by a great num-
ber of condensed clouds, which gathering in the air,
intercepted the light of the sun, and, for the space of
three hours, produced the same effect that once happened
in the land of Egypt, a darkness that might be felt.
This hypothesis makes the matter very easy, but placing
the whole miracle in the quick formation of the clouds
at such a point of time, and the speedy dispersion of
them after such a continuance, * only we must suppose,
that ' by the whole earth, which the evangelist tells us
1 'I'.vri Tairav Trjv ytjv, Mat. xxvii. 45.
a See note on this subject, p. 1S9. — Ed.
b This is a very unphilosophical solution of the difficulty, if
indeed there he any difficulty in the case, and such as cannot be
admitted by common sense. If the rays of the sun were inter-
cepted merely by a congeries of dense clouds, how came the
feebler rays of the stars to penetrate those clouds which were im-
pervious to the rays of the sun? The darkness was unquestion-
ably miraculous, of which therefore no other account is to be
given than that it was produced by the immediate interposition
ol God, as all other miracles have been ; but what is now known
of the constitution of the sun, renders it unnecessary to imagine
either that masses of dense clouds, which indeed would not have
answered the purpose, were interposed between the land of Judea
and the sun ; or that the moon was carried out of her course, and
then rendered stationary for three hours in order to cause this
preternatural darkness. If the sun be such a body as some
philosophers seem to have lately ascertained it to be, the dark-
ness might be produced, and produced over all the earth, merely
by an aperture of the luminous atmosphere made much larger
than those which are now known to produce the dtrk spots observed
occasionally in the surface of the sun. — Bishop GUiy. En.
was covered with this darkness, we are to understand the
land of Judea only, in which sense the phrase does not
unfrequently occur in Scripture.
And indeed,2 as the other wonderful things which came
to pass at our Saviour's passion, such as the trembling
of the earth, the rending of the rocks, the opening the
graves, and tearing the vail of the temple, were trans-
acted at Jerusalem, or at most in Judea only ; so have we
reason to believe, that the darkness which accompanied
these miracles was of no greater extent than they ; be-
cause the chief design of this uncommon appearance in
the heavens was, to convince the Jews who blasphemed
our Lord, and his disciples who believed on him, both
then present at his crucifixion, that notwithstanding all
the humiliation to which he voluntarily submitted, he was
in reality the great creator of the universe, and b even
while he was hanging on the cross, the ruler and direc-
tor of all its elements and motions.
God indeed, as he is an omniscient being, cannot but
foreknow all the actions of mankind, and therefore, when
he pleases, may foretell any of them ; but then 3 if his
foreknowledge, or predictions, did so far influerfe^ the
will of men, as to lay them under a necessity of doing
what he foreknew, or has foretold he shall do, all free-
dom in human actions must be destroyed ; consequently
all vice and virtue must be empty names, because none
can be blamed for doing what he could not help ; nor
does any one deserve to be praised, who does only
that which he cannot avoid : and consequently again, all
future rewards and punishments must be discarded ; be-
cause, as it would be unjust to punish one man for that
which was not in his power to avoid, so would it be
unreasonable to reward another for doing such actions
as he found himself constrained and compelled to 'do.
When therefore we find the evangelist declaring, that4
'the Jews could not believe, because Isaiah 5 had said,
God had blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts,'
we must not suppose that this prophecy was either the
cause or motive of their infidelity. It was simply a pre-
diction, and, as such, laid upon them no manner of
necessity or compulsion. Suchjprophecies indeed always
include a tacit condition, which* preserves to man
the liberty of choice ; and if, in their event, they prove
certain and infallible, it is only because God certainly
and infallibly foreknows the future bad dispositions of
the people of whom he speaks, and has a clear prospect
of that blindness and obduration which their perverseness
brings upon them.
In relation to the Jews in particular, it is certain that
2 Origen, in Mat. tract 35.
3 Whitby's Annotations on John xii. 38. * John 3ja*v~3!J, 40.
5 Isa. vi. 9.
b From the astronomical tables, some that are versed in this
kind of knowledge, have informed us, that on the same day, when
our Saviour died, about three in the afternoon, that is, immedi-
ately after the miraculous darkness which began at noon, and
lasted three hours, there was a natural eclipse of the moon, in
which half of its orbit was obscured: so that this day produced
a literal accomplishment of two remarkable prophecies: that of
Joel, ' The earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall
tremble ; the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall
withdraw their shining,' (chap. ii. ]0.) and that of Amos, 'In
that daysaith the Lord, I will cause the sun to go down at noon,
and will darken the earth in the clear day ; and I will turn your
feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation,' (chap,
viii. 9, 10.)— Calmct's Commentary.
Sect. IV.]
PROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
1039
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our blessed Saviour did not think that his heavenly
Father had, by an action or prediction of his, made it
impossible for them to believe on him ; ' for, had he
thought so, he would never have exhorted them, as we
find he does in the verses just going before,2 ' to walk
in the light, and believe in the light whilst they had it ;'
and that to tins good purpose, that they ' might become
the children of light;' because every exhortation to do a
thing which we know to be impossible, must not only be
vain and delusory, but, if we know that impossibility to
proceed from a divine judicial act, repugnant likewise to
the will of God, which to suppose our Lord capable of,
is the height of blasphemy.
Since, therefore, in the eastern phrase, a person is said
to do that which he only permits to be done, God's
blinding the eyes, and hardening the hearts of the Jews,
must mean no more, than his suffering them to blind their
own eyes, and harden their own hearts ; which, upon
the mere subductiortof his grace, without the infusion of
any perverse inclinations from him, they would not fail
to do. And, accordingly, we may observe, that the
same evangelist, in another place, speaks of their obdu-
ration and blindness as their own act and deed : ' For3
this people's heart is waxen gross,' says he, ' and their
ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed,
lest, at any time, they should see with their eyes, and
heaf with their ears, and understand with their hearts,
and should be converted, and I should heal them.'
Whoever considers the series of the sacred history, may
soon convince himself, that the miraclewhich our Saviour
wrought on the barren fig-tree, happened about the
eleventh day of the Jewish month Nisan, on Tuesday,
very probably before the passover ; for the passover, we
know, was kept on the fourteenth day of Nisan, which
answers to the latter end of our March: and that, at this
time, there were figs in Judea ripe and fit for gathering,
we have some authority to believe.
When Moses sent away the spies to search the land
of Canaan, it was, we are told, 4 ' in the time of the
first ripe grapes, 5 and they returned from searching
after forty days,' and brought from thence 6 pomegran-
ates and figs, as well as clusters of grapes. Now, the
Septuagint version says, that it was in the spring when
these spies set forward; and Philo, in his life of Moses,
seems to be of the same opinion. Supposing then that
it was albout the middle of spring, which, in Judea,
began about the middle of January, that the spies set
out, and that they were gone forty days, it will follow,
that they returned some days before the passover ; and
if the figs, which they brought, as well as the grapes,
were ripe and full-grown, then were they ripe in Judea
in the very same time that our Saviour is here said to
look for them.
Solomon, in hi8 book of Canticles, gives us a lively-
description of the spring ; and among other signs of its
being come, makes mention of this, — that 7i the fig-tree
putteth forth her green figs ; « and the vines, with their
» John xii. 35, 36.
4 Numb. xiii. 20.
2 Whitby, ibid.
5 Ibid. ver. -25.
7 Cant. ii. 19.
3 Mat. xiii. 15.
6 Numb. xiii. 24.
a The fig-tree is very common in Palestine and the east, and
it flourishes with the greatest luxuriance in these barren and
stony situations, where little else will grow. Figs are of t«o
tender grapes, give a good smell,' or as it may more
literally be rendered, ' the fig-tree hath begun to give a
flavour to her young figs, and the vines a good smell to
the tender grape.' Now, if, in the middle of our January,
the figs were so forward as then to give a flavour, it is
sorts, the boccore, and the kermouse. The black and white
boccore, or early fig, is produced in June, though the kermouse,
the fig properly so called, which is preserved, and made up into
cakes, is rarely ripe before August. There is also a long dark
coloured kermouse, that sometimes hangs upon the trees all the
winter. For these figs generally hang a long time upon the tree
before they fall on"; whereas the boccores drop as soon as they
are ripe, and according to the beautiful allusion of the prophet
Nahum, ' fall into the mouth of the eater upon being shaken,'
ch. iii. 12. Dr Shaw, to whom we are indebted for this infor-
mation, remarks, that these trees do not properly blossom, or
send out flowers, as we render h*Wi, Hab. iii. 17. They
may rather be said to ' shoot out their fruit,' which they do,
like so many little buttons, with their flowers, small and imper-
fect as they are, enclosed within them. When this intelligent
traveller visited Palestine, in the latter end of March, the boc-
core was far from being in a state of maturity; for in the scrip-
ture expression, ' the time of figs was not yet,' (Mark xi. 13),
or not till the middle or latter end of June. The time here
mentioned, is supposed by some authors, quoted by F. Clusius,
in his Hierobotanicon, to be the third year, in which the fruit
of a particular kind of fig tree is said to come to perfection. But
this species, if there be any such, needs to be further known and
described, before any argument can be founded upon it. Diony-
sius Syrus, as he is translated by Dr Loftus, is more to the pur-
pose: 'it was not the time of figs,' he remarks, because it was
the month Nisan, when trees yielded blossoms, and not fruit.
It frequently happens in Barbary, however, and it need not be
doubted in the warmer climate of Palestine, that, according to
the quality of the preceding season, some of the more forward
and vigorous trees will now and then yield a few ripe figs, six
weeks or more before the full season. Something like this may
be alluded to by the prophet Hosea, when he says he ' saw their
fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at her first time,' (ch. ix.
10); and by Isaiah, who, speaking of the beauty of Samaria,
and her rapid declension, says she ' shall be a fading flower,
and as the hasty fruit before the summer: which, when he that
looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand, he eateth it
up,' ch. xxviii. 4. When the boccore draws near to perfection,
then the kermouse, the summer fig, or caricae, begin to be
formed, though they rarely ripen before August; at which time
there appeals a third crop or the winter fig, as it may be called.
This is usually of a much longer shape, and darker complexion
than the kermouse, hanging and ripening on the tree, even after
the leaves are shed ; and provided the winter proves mild and
temperate, is gathered as a delicious morsel in the spring. We
learn from Pliny, that the fig tree was bifera, or bore two crops
of figs, namely, the boccore, as we may imagine, and the ker-
mouse ; though what he relates afterwards, should intimate that
there was also a winter crop. " Its late fruit remains on the tree
during winter, and grows ripe among the new foliage in the
following summer." " The fig tree produces a second crop," says
Columella, " and protracts its ripeness till late in the winter."
It is well known, that the fruit of these prolific trees always pre-
cedes the leaves ; and consequently, when our Saviour saw
one of them in full vigour having leaves, (Mark xi. 13.), he
might, according to the common course of nature, very justly
look for fruit; and haply find some boccores, if not some
winter figs, likewise upon it. But the difficulties connected
with the narration of this transaction, will not allow of its dis-
mission in this summary manner. We say, in the narration,
for we apprehend that the remark of Dr Shaw is quite satisfac-
tory as to the reasonableness of our Lord's conduct on the oc-
casion, notwithstanding the multiplied objections which ignor-
ance and irreligion have urged against it. It is due to the
late indefatigable editor of Calmet, to notice the conjecture which
he formed, of the tree in question being the sycamore, which bears
fruit several times in the year, without observing any certain
seasons, so that a person cannot determine, without a close in-
spection, whether it has fruit or not. But, to say nothing against
the authority by which the avr.n is here proposed to be ren-
1040
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
M. 4037. A. D. 33 ; OR, A. M. 5442. A. D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 10-END. MARK xi. 15-END. LUKE xix. 45-END. JOHN xii. 19-END.
reasonable to think, that, in so warm and fruitful a
climate as Judea was, there might be ripe ones about
the latter end of March, which is the precise time when
our Saviour sought for them upon this tig-tree.
The truth is, there were in Judea tig-trees of differ-
ent kinds ; and, besides the ordinary sort, which ' ac-
cording to our Saviour, did not put forth its leaves until
the next approach of summer, the Jewish writers make
mention of one early kind in particular, called by them
Banoth-shuaoth, which never wanted leaves, and very
seldom fruit. Nay, Pliny 2 tells us of some sort of
tig-trees in Syria, under which name he frequently com-
prehends Judea, that had always leaves, and when the
fruit of the preceding year was gathered, the new fruit
began immediately, and was growing all the winter long :
and therefore we need less wonder at what the em-
peror Julian asserts, namely, that, at Damascus in
Syria, there was a sort of fig tree, whose fruit, both old
and young, grew together, and lasted beyond a year.
From" all which we may be allowed to conclude, that
there might be figs in Judea fit to eat at the time when
our Saviour went to look for some on this tree ; and
for this reason some have 3 imagined, that without
offering any great violence to the text, the original words
ol yu.Q ijv xui^o; gvkuv for ' where he was,' or, in the
place he then was in, ' the time of figs was come.' And
this, by the way, is enough to vindicate our Saviour in
what he did, since there could be no injustice to
the owner, as some would suggest, in ridding the
ground of a tree which only encumbered it, and
sucked its nourishment from it, without making any
return. "
1 Mark xiii. 28. 2 Natural history, b. 13. c. 8.
3 Universal history, b. 2. c. 11.
dered a sycamore, which has its own proper appellation <rvxo[i-
o>oa.ia. (Luke xix. 4.), the assumption seems inadequate to ac-
count for the malediction which was levelled against it; because
it is plain that such a tree might at that time have been desti-
tute of fruit, and yet by no means barren . Dr Shaw's conjecture,
therefore, seems to be the most satisfactory ; namely, that as the
fig tree always puts forth the fruit before its leaves, and this was
not the season for figs, [rather fig harvest, for so the words,
xaiols trvxuv, import] our Saviour was justified in expecting to
meet with some on the tree. — Carpenter's Scripture Natural
History.
a Tbe alteration here proposed in the common version of
Maikxi. 13, is inadmissible and is besides unnecessary. Kongo;
ovxtov properly signifies, 'the season of gathering figs,' as xai^o;
ran xa^rmv Mat. xxi. 34, signifies ' the season of gathering the
fruits, ' (Macknight). In our translation the passage stands thus,
which is strictly according to the order of the words in the ori-
ginal text: ' And on the morrow, when they were come from
Bethany, Jesus was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off,
having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything there-
on: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for
the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus said unto it, No
man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,' Mark xi. 13 — 14.
Here the whole difficulty results from the connexion of the two
last clauses of the 13th verse*: ' and when he came to it he found
nothing but haves — for the time of figs was not yet;' for the
declaration, that it was not yet fig harvest, cannot be, as the
order of the words seems to import, the reason why there was
nothing but leaves on the tree; because, as we have seen, the
fig is of that tribe of vegetables on which the fruit appears be-
fore the leaf. Certainly fruit, says Mr Weston, might be ex-
pected of a tree whose haves were distinguished afar off, and
whose fruit, if it bore any, preceded the leaves. If the words
had been, ' he found nothing but green figs, for it was not the
time of ripe fruit,' says Campbell, we should have justly con-
Without entering into any other solutions ; if there
were two sorts of fig-trees in Judea, the one much earlier
than the other, and thence two seasons of ripe figs, the
one much later than the other, and as it is natural to
suppose the latter much more common and plentiful than
the former ; the latter was properly called 'the time of
figs,' and the evangelist might very truly say, that, at
the time of the passover, ' it was not yet come,' that is,
the common and ordinary season for figs was not come :
though, admitting this to be one of the early kind, our
Lord might well expect to find something upon it, since,
by the speciousness of its leaves, it looked so promising
at a distance.
He without all doubt, knew perfectly well, before he
went up to it, whether it had any fruit on it or no ; but
as he intended to work a miracle upon it, and, by its
speedy withering away, emblematically to show his dis-
ciples the near approaching ruin of the Jewish nation ;
be it what it would, it answered his main end : but then it
could not have been so fit a type and resemblance of
the Jews, had it not been barren ; nor exhibited their
fate in so lively a manner, had it not been cursed, and
so withered away.
The Jewish nation indeed, at our Saviour's coming,
was, in all degrees and orders of men, sadly corrupted;
but in none so much as in the Scribes and Pharisees,
who, pretending to be the doctors and expounders of the
law, had vacated the obligation to almost all moral
honesty, by the introduction of their false glosses and
comments. Their great show of outward sanctity, how-
ever, much ostentation in their prayers and piety, and
punctual performance of the ceremonial part of their
religion, gave them great authority among the people,
and as high a conceit of themselves ; insomuch that they
expected a blind submission to their injunctions, and all
imaginable tokens of respect and veneration, whenever
they appeared in public ; though all this while, their
pretended sanctity was but a vail to cover their vices,
and inward impurity ; an art to gain a reputation,
by making the best of the shadow, while they wanted
the substance of godliness.
Now, if such was the depravity of the Scribes and
Pharisees when our Saviour lived among them, none
eluded that the latter clause was meant as the reason of what is
affirmed in the former, but, as they stand, they do not admit
this interpretation. All will be clear, however, if we consider
the former of these clauses as parenthetical, and admit such a
sort of trajectio as is not unfrequent in the ancient languages,
though in translating into modern ones a transposition ought to
be adopted, to adapt such passages to the genius of those lan-
guages: and such is here employed by Dr Campbell. The
sense of the passage will then be as follows: ' He came to see
if he might find any thing thereon, for it was not yet the time
to gather figs: but he found leaves only ; and he said,' &c.
Similar inversions and trajections have been pointed out by
commentators in various other parts of the New and Old Testa-
ments, and Campbell particularly notices one in this very gos-
pel (ch. xvi. 3, 4.) : ' They said, who shall roll us away the stone ?
and when they looked the stone was rolled away, for it was very
great,' that is, ' they said, who shall roll us away the stone,
tor it was very great,' &c. The spiritual application of this
transaction to the case of the Jews is sufficiently obvious. We
may, however, observe, with Storr, that the cursing was a
symbolical action; and with Lightfoot, that it injured no one,
since the tree, as we learn from Matthew, grew by the wayside,
and therefore was common property. — Carpenter's Scripture
Natural History.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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rebuke with all authority,' and without violation of that
gTeat law of charity, which is so peculiarly fitted to the
evangelical institution, that, upon sundry accounts, it
may not improperly be called a ' new commandment.'
7 This commandment indeed of loving one another,
is by our Lord and Saviour so much enlarged as to the
object of it, extending to all mankind, and even to our
greatest enemies ; is so greatly advanced and heightened
as to the degree of it, even to the laying down of our
lives for one another ; and is so effectually taught, so
mightly encouraged, and so much urged and insisted
upon, that though it was a precept delivered by Moses,
yet, considering in what manner the scribes and Phari-
sees had perverted the sense, and confined and dis-
couraged the practice of it, it may well enough be said
to have received in our Saviour a republication. And
though it was not altogether unknown to other nations
before, yet it was never so taught, so encouraged ; never
was such an illustrious example given of it, never so much
stress and weight laid upon it, by any philosophy, or re-
ligion, that was ever before in the world.
There are three passages in the prophet Daniel which
mention 8 ' the abomination that maketh desolate ; and
to any of these our Saviour may be supposed to
allude ; for they are all predictions of the dissolution of
the Jewish state, when the sacrifices and oblations should
be made to cease. It is the sense indeed that our
Saviour seems more to attend to, than the words of the
prophecy ; and because it was the custom of the Roman
armies to have an eagle for their ensign, in which they
placed a kind of divinity, and to carry their emperors'
images along with them, to which they paid a religious
adoration, and therein committed such idolatry as was
highly detestable to every Jew ; 9 it is hence supposed,
that the abomination standing in the holy place, means
the Roman army, with these hated objects of their idola-
try, besieging Jerusalem ; and that it is therefore called a
desolation, because it was appointed by Almighty God
to lay the country, city, and temple of Jerusalem, deso-
late and waste ; for so St Luke seems to have explained
it by a parallel place,1" ' When you shall see Jerusalem
compassed with armies, then know, that the desolation
thereof is nigh.'
Jerusalem indeed may perhaps, in some places of
Scripture,11 be called the holy place ;12 but this is a title
so peculiar to the temple, that we cannot but think,
that our Saviour, in the application of the prophecy,
intended it here ; especially 13 since his disciples, by
showing the stateliness of its buildings, gave the whole
rise to his discourse. But now, if we suppose the temple
to be this holy place, we cannot see how the abomination
here spoken of could be the Roman army, and their
ensigns : because neither of these were ever in the tem-
ple, until the taking and sackage of the city, and could
therefore, in this respect, be no presages at all. If we
suppose the city of Jerusalem to be this holy place, it is
certain that this abomination was lodged in it long before
the approach of Titus with his army ; because the Romans
had, all along, a strong garrison over against the teiu-
can doubt, but that, as he was a teacher sent from God,
he had a proper authority to reprove them, since under
the Mosaic law, this was a duty incumbent even in pri-
vate persons, and what they could not, without a manifest
breach of charity, decline : for, l ' thou shalt not hate
thy brother in thy heart ; thou shalt in any wise rebuke
thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him :' where we
may observe, that, in the eye of this law, not to rebuke
our brother is interpretatively to hate him ; and there-
fore our Saviour stands in need of no further apology
for reproving the Scribes and Pharisees, who had such
a number of sins upon them, since there was no omitting
that, without violating this command.
In his rebukes indeed there seems to be a spirit of
severity, something that looks like anger, and several
terms of diminution and disrespect. But then it should
be considered, that as anger is a passion implanted in
human nature, in itself, and upon all occasions, it can-
not be unlawful ; nay, when employed about proper and
deserving matters, such as the honour of God, and reve-
rence due to his laws, the love of virtue, and the correc-
tion of vice, it is not only innocent, but highly necessary
and commendable. For there is a tameness of spirits
which deserves censure; and, in such cases as these, we
even do well when we are angry.
2 In like manner, it may be observed, that terms of
disparagement and reproach are, in some cases, allow-
able ; and more particularly, when men, as St Paul
expresses it,3 ' are rebuked sharply, to render them sound
in the truth.' From the mouth of a superior they are
often of use, sometimes of necessity, to rouse and
awaken stupid men ; to make them more effectually both
sensible and ashamed of their follies; to expose the
horrid absurdity of pernicious opinions, or the flagrant
enormity of wicked practices ; and, in short, are hardly
ever discommendable, where charity is at the bottom;
and an high authority in the reprover gives such lan-
guage countenance.
Now, as none can call in question our Saviour's
authority, if he thought it convenient to make use of
such severity in his reproofs of a set of people, that most
justly deserved it ; so need not any be offended at his
denouncing so many woes against them, when he finds
God giving the prophets of old, sent to his priests, who
were negligent in their duty, and corrupted in their mor-
nls, just as they were now, instructions to address them
in the self-same manner;4 'Thus saith the Lord God,
wo be unto the shepherds of Israel, that do feed them-
selves ; should not the shepherds feed the flocks ? Ye
eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill
them that are fed ; but ye feed not the flocks,' &c. And
again s ' Wo be unto those pastors that destroy and scat-
ter the sheep of my pasture. Thus saith the Lord, ' Ye
have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have
not visited them. And if inferior prophets were com-
missioned to make such denunciations, much more might
this great Messenger of the covenant, who was both
invested with supreme power from the Father, and per-
fectly knew what was in every man's heart, and therefore
could not miscal tilings, be allowed 6 ' to reprove and
1 Lev. xix. 17.
8 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iii. a Tit. i. 1 2, 1 .'•'.
4 Ezek. xxxiv. 2, &c. 5 Jer. xxiii. ], 2. 6 Tit. ii. 15.
7 Tillotson's Sermons, fol. vol. i.
8 Dan. ix. 27.— xi. 31.— xii. 11.
9 Whitby's and Hammond's Annotations. 10 Luke xxi. 20.
11 Mat. iv. 5. ; 1 Mac. x. 31. 12 Calmet's Commentary.
1 Mat. xxi v. 1, 2.
b"Q
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pie, iii Fort Antonia, where their colours and standards
were set up; nor can we readily conceive, why the
military ensigns under Titus should be thought an abomi-
nation to the Jews, more than those under Fompey,
Socius, and Oestius, who had all before him besieged
Jerusalem.
These are some of the difficulties that attend the com-
mon interpretation ; and therefore we should rather
think, that the abomination and desolation here spoken of,
should refer to that gross profanation of the temple which
happened a little before the beginning of the siege of
Jerusalem. While the Roman arms were in Judea, there
were two contending parties in Jerusalem. 1 Some were
for accommodating matters with an enemy so vastly
uperior to them in power, and from whom nothing less
han utter ruin was to be expected at last ; others again
were for making no terms at all, but, in hopes of some
strange deliverance, for standing it out to the last;
and among these was a crew of ruffians and robbers, who,
from their pretended concern for the honour of God,
which they could not bear to see prostituted to Gentile
power, were called Zealots. This gang of men seized
upon the temple, and fortified it ; and having got into
their possession the engines which had been left in the
country by Cestius Gallus, when he besieged the city
about three years before, with these they shot from the
battlements of the temple upon the town, whilst those in
the town shot likewise at them ; by which means great
numbers were killed on both sides, and the temple be-
came thereby polluted with the blood of the slain that
were within it, and by which means the daily service was
intermitted, and the sanctuary, according to the Jewish
notion of the word, became desolate. Here then was a
sign peculiar, and what never had happened at any siege
before, which our Saviour gave his disciples, in order to
provide for their escape. Wars, famines, murders, mas-
sacres, divisions among desperate men, and investing
cities by hostile troops, are no uncommon things in cases
of this nature, and what the Jews, upon this occasion
knew too much of by woeful experience ; but to have
the sanctuary filled with armed men, who were after
killed in the holy place, and who, by being brought into
the courts of the temple, actually defiled it with the car-
casses, and blood of the slain, which were both of them
to the highest degree abominable by the Mosaic law, was
the distinguishing mark of this calamity ; and when this
once began to appear, the disciples were cautioned to
decline the approaching storm, by making the best of
their way out of Jerusalem ; which they could not have
done so well, had they staid till the siege was formed,
and the Roman army had invested the town.
" That it was a custom among the Jews, before our
Saviour's time, and, as they themselves affirm, before the
beginning of the law, to baptize, as well as circumcise,
any proselyte that came over to them from another
nation ; and in case such a person had any infant chil-
dren then born to him, that they, at their father's desire,
were, in like manner, circumcised, baptized, and admit-
ted as proselytes, is manifest from the incontestible
evidence of their writers. The incapacity of the child to
declare or promise for himself, was not looked upon as
l Joseph. Jew. Wars, b. iv. 2 Avaus' His. of Infant-baptism.
a bar against his reception into the covenant; but the
desire of the father to dedicate him to the true God, was
accounted available and sufficient to justify his admis-
sion : and the reason they give for this is, that the things
they were admitted to, were undoubtedly for their good ;
for one may privilege a person, say they, though he be
incapable of knowing it ; but one ought not to disprivilege
any one without his knowledge and consent.
Now this gives great light to our better understanding
the meaning of our Saviour, when he bids his disciples
' go and teach all nations, baptizing them.' Baptism he
took, as the easier rite of the two; and, having con-
verted it into an evangelical precept, made it the federal
form of admission into his religion, as circumcision had
been in the Mosaic dispensation ; and, as he gave his
apostles no directions in their commission concerning-
little children, it may justly be presumed, that, with re-
gard to them, he left them to proceed just in the same
manner as the church wherein they lived had been accus-
tomed to do ; and that was, to make them proselytes to
his religion by baptism.
3 That in the Jewish church infants were part of those
who engaged in covenant with God, is evident from these
words of Moses to all the people : 4 ' Ye stand this day
before the Lord your God ; you, and your little ones, that
thou shouldst enter into covenant with the Lord thy God,
that thou mayest be a people to him, and he unto thee
thy God :' and that, in the Christian church, children, in
like manner, are under the covenant of grace, is more
than intimated in St Peter's exhortation to such persons
as he had converted, that they would receive baptism, in
order to make their children likewise capable of it, be-
cause 5 ' the promise was to them and their children ; '
that is, the promise of remission of sins, and of receiv-
ing the Holy Ghost, mentioned immediately before,
which appertained to the covenant, belonged to them
and their children.' Now, if the promise and covenant
belonged to the children, as well as parents, there is no
question to be made, but that baptism, which is the seal
of the covenant, and the visible confirmation of the pro-
mise, belongs to them likewise ; and if infants have a
covenanted right to baptism, we may safely infer, that
Christ never intended to debar them of it ; and that, con-
sequently, though they are not expressly named, yet are
they most certainly implied in the commission of baptiz-
ing all nations. For, since the universal includes all
particulars, and children make up a considerable part
of all nations, the words of the commission may reason-
ably be supposed to comprise them. Nor can we forbear
thinking, but that, when we read of whole families that were
baptized, there must, of course, have been several chil-
dren in them ; because the word olx.os, which, in this case,
is rendered household, according to the observation of
the learned,1' is of a large signification, and takes in
every individual person in the family, women as well as
men, and children as well as grown persons.
7 The adult, indeed, before they were admitted as pro-
selytes to the Jewish religion, were to be instructed in
the fundamentals of the law, in the weight and burden
3 Hopkin's Doctrine of the two sacraments.
4 Deut. xxix. 10, &c. 5 Acts ii. 39.
6 Edward's Body of Divinity, vol. i.
7 Whitby's dissertation, added to his notes on Mat. xxviii.
Sect. IV.]
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of it, and in the nature of its rewards and penalties, and
so profess their submission to it ; but then it must be
observed, that these pre-requisites in the parent, who
was capable of such instruction, did not exclude the
children, then born, from the rite of baptism : so far
from this, that by the sentence of the Sanhedrim, the
church was obliged to baptize them, as having a right to
the ordinance by their parents' faith. And in like man-
ner, they who are arrived at a competent age and under-
standing, were to be instructed in the principles of the
Christian religion, were to l • confess with their mouth
the Lord Jesus Christ, and to believe in their heart that
God had raised him from the dead,' before they were
admitted to baptism. This was a condition required of
them, because they were able to do it : but why this
condition should exclude their children any more than it
did the children of Jewish proselytes, who were usually
baptized together with their parents, we cannot see.
Our children indeed cannot understand the nature and
end of the ordinance of baptism; but neither were the
Jewish children, at eight days old, able to know what
the purpose of circumcision was. They had no actual
faith of their own, but the faith of those who present
them in the congregation, is imputed, and themselves are
sanctified by being born of believing parents. They
have no manner of room for repentance, but then they
have innocence, which is a much better qualification ; and
though they cannot stipulate for themselves, yet have
they proxies and sureties, of 2 early institution both in
the Jewish and Christian church, to contract in their
names, whose act is looked upon, and accepted by God,
as theirs. In the mean time, that infants, and young
children though insensible of what is done for them,
may have favours conferred upon them, and are capable
of receiving spiritual advantages to their souls, is plain
from that passage in the evangelical history, where,
when 3 young children were brought to Christ, he took
them up in his arms, laid his hands upon them, and blessed
them, namely, by praying for a blessing, by pronounc-
ing a blessing, and by actually conferring a blessing
on them ; and if they are capable of being blessed, why
should they be thought incapable of being baptized, since
baptism in the main is but a solemn benediction, as it
instates us in the privileges and benefits of the gospel,
such as adoption and grace, the pardon of our sins, and
the acceptance of our persons ?
In short, 4 the covenant of grace is a deed of gift,
made to us by Christ, wherein he promises to bestow
upon us eternal life and happiness ; and, as it would be
absurd to say, that a child's name ought not to be pui
in any deed or legacy, until he come of age to under-
stand it ; so it is equally absurd, and far more injurious,
to exclude our children from this heavenly legacy, which
Christ out of the riches of his goodness, has bequeathed
unto them : especially considering 5 that the primitive
church did all along, and G every national church at this
day in the world, does admit their children into the
Christian covenant by this ordinance : that 7 many of
the most ancient writers plead the necessity of it, for
1 Rom. x. 9.
2 See Wall's Infant Baptism, introduction, sect. 34. part i. <•■
4. part ii. c. 9. 3 Luke xviii. 15. 4 Hopkin's Doctrine of
the two Sacraments. 5 Wall's History of Infant Baptism, part i.
passim. ° Ibid, part ii. C. S. ' Ibid, part i. passim.
the expiation of original guilt, and s speak of it as a
great sin in parents, and others, that have opportunity,
to suffer any child of theirs, or any other person under
their care, to die unbaptized.
In relation to the other sacrament, there can be no
great difficulty in our Saviour's words, if we will but
admit that the scripture very frequently makes use of
figurative expressions, and in matters of a sacramental
nature more especially, is apt to put the sign for the
thing signified, 9 ' the three baskets are three days, 10
the seven good kine are seven years, n the ram with the
two horns are the kings of Media and Persia ;'12 Sarah
and Agar are the two covenants, and 13 the seven stars
jire the angels of the seven churches,' are instances of
this kind : and when Moses, speaking of the paschal
Jamb, tells the Israelites, u ' this is the Lord's passover,'
even before the Lord had passed over them, and smitten
the Egyptians : and of the unleavened bread used at the
paschal feast, this is the bread of affliction, which
your fathers did eat in the land of Egypt;' his meaning
can be no other, than that these things were a represen-
tation and memorial of what had befallen their forefathers
in Egypt. And therefore it is no wonder, that our
blessed Saviour, in the institution of this sacrament,
should make choice of the like form of expression as
was in use in the Jewish church upon the like occasion ;
and consequently, that when he says, ' this is my body,
and this is my blood,' his meaning must be, that, 'this
bread in my hand, and the wine in this cup, do signify
and represent to you my body and blood, and that, in
eating and drinking of these, you are made partakers
of my body and blood, that is, of the real benefits of
my death and passion.'
15 And indeed, if we consider, that our blessed Savi-
our celebrated this sacrament before his passion, we shall
soon perceive that his words could not possibly bear
any other construction. For how could he hold himself
in his own hand, or give his disciples his body broken,
and his blood shed, when at this time he was alive, and
no violence had passed upon him ? ie They saw his body
whole before them, and knew that his blood was in his
veins, and therefore could not but conclude, that what
they eat and drank, according to the evidence of their
senses, Avas bread and wine, for had they understood
our Saviour's words in the literal meaning, it is hardly
imaginable, but that they, who, upon all other occasions,
were so full of their questions and objections, would,
upon the first hearing of this paradox, have started some
such scruple as this : — ' We see this to be bread, and
that to be wine, and we see that thy body is distinct from
both ; we see that thy body is not broken, nor is thy
blood shed: how therefore can these things be ?'
The ancient apologists for our holy religion take
notice that this was one of the greatest accusations
which heathens brought against Christiana, that they did
eat human flesh, which they endeavoured to refute, and
constantly rejected as the vilest calumny, and most
abominable thing. Rut now, had they understood our
Saviour's words in a literal sense, and thereupon made
» Ibid. c. 4, 15, 18, &c. 9 Gen. xl. 18. 10 Ibid. xli. 26.
" Dan. viii. '20. J- Gal. iv. 24. 13 Rev. i. 20.
14 Exod. xii. 11. I5 Tillotson's sermons in folio, vol. i.
16 Whitby's Annotations on Mat. xxvi. 26.
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it an article of faith, that they did daily eat the flesh of
the Son of man, with what sincerity could they without
all limitation or distinction not only have denied, but
even detested the doing so. » Nay, nothing is more
obvious, than that primitive writers continually ridicule
the heathens for worshipping such deities as might be
eaten ; an instance particularly in the Egyptians, who
made the same flesh which some of them did consecrate
as a god, the food of others. But how can it possibly
be conceived, that they should thus ridicule and expose
the religion of heathens, for that very thing which made
so great a part in their own; or brand that, as the
very extremity of madness and folly, when done by others,
which their faith taught them was the highest act of
religious worship, when performed by themselves ?
2 These things surely give us sufficient reason with
Scotus, to admire, that such an interpretation should be
put upon this one article, as makes our faith contemp-
tible to all that are guided with reason ; and at the same
time to assert, that, it is apparently against humanity,
and against piety, to break with our hands, to tear with
our teeth, and to devour, as we do common food, the
flesh ami blood of Christ ; and that the scorn of atheists
and infidels will never cease, until the doctrine, which
established these positions, be banished from the Chris-
tian church.
AVe own indeed, that the whole stress of the Christian
cause lies upon the truth of our Lord's resurrection,
and that all proper methods of convincing the world
were necessary upon this occasion ; but then it should
be considered 3 that our Lord being now, after his re-
surrection, to act according to the majesty of the divine
nature, and not according to the infirmities and conde-
scension of the human, it did not so well comport with
the dignity he had assumed, to converse publicly, or
to submit himself to the censures, and fresh affronts
of his enemies. But allowing it had been consistent, 4
yet the unbelieving Jews, especially the chief priests and
rulers, were of all men most unworthy to have so extra-
ordinary a way of conviction afforded them.
They had already despised the evidence that was given
them ; and not only so, but maliciously imputed the
plainest miracles that ever were wrought, to the power
and operation of the devil. Now, if any thing can ren-
der men incapable of the favour of a farther conviction
euch a malicious resistance of the evidence which our
Saviour's miracles carried along with them, Avould pro-
bably do it ; especially if we consider, that the greatest
of all the miracles which he wrought in his lifetime, I
mean the raising Lazarus from the grave, after he had
been dead four days, was so far from convincing them,
that though they could not deny the thing, they took
occasion to resolve to put him to death : and therefore,
what reason was there, that Christ should appear to them
for their conviction, who had conspired to compass
his death, even because they knew that he had raised one
from the dead ?
But supposing, for the present, that our Saviour had
appeared publicly to the Jewish rulers; yet, since
neither the darkness at his death, nor the earthquake at
1 Whitby's Annotations on Mat. xxvi. 26. 2 ij,;^
3 Jenkins's reasonableness of the Christian religion, vol. ii.
4 Tillotson's sermons.
his resurrection ; neither the declaration of the centurion
on the one, nor the confession of the soldiers on the
other occasion, had wrought in them any remorse, we
can hardly suppose, but that, had he so appeared, they
would have offered to lay violent hands upon him, as
they before designed against Lazarus, and for the same
reasons : 5 in which case, had our Saviour vanished out of
their hands, as doubtless he would, what would they
have concluded from thence, but that they had seen a
ghost, a spectre, or apparition ? And what conviction
would that have wrought, but that their senses had been
imposed upon by a magical illusion ? And what effect
would this have had upon their minds towards bringing
them to a belief that Christ was truly risen ? None
at all.
In many of the Jews, especially their chief-priests and
elders, the god of this world had so blinded their eyes,
and hardened their hearts, that they would not have be-
lieved one title of our Saviour's resurrection ; or, in case
they did believe it, such was their malice and perverse-
ness, that they would not have testified that they ever
had seen him after his resurrection. Now they that are
wicked enough to deny what they believe, will, at a pinch,
deny also what they know to be true ; and therefore, sup-
posing that our Lord had shown himself to all his enemies,
and to all the people, and but some of them, especially
of the great men in authority, had denied that ever they
saw him after his resurrection, this would have exceedingly
weakened the testimony of those who vouched and con-
fesed it : for he that appeals to the knowledge of another
for the truth of a matter of fact, is so far from gaining,
that he loses credit by the appeal, if the other person
denies that he knows any thing of it. If therefore our
Lord had appeared to his persecutors, (it being likely
that his disciples would appeal to their knowledge,) they,
by protesting the contrary, would have made a terrible
advantage against the Christians upon that appeal.
Herein therefore, is manifest the wisdom of Christ, that
in making choice of particular witnesses, namely, such
persons only as would be so far from dissembling their
knowledge, that they would always be ready to seal their
testimony with their blood, he hath settled the Christian
faith upon a better foundation than if he had appeared in
the temple, or in the midst of Jerusalem, to the whole
people of the Jews.6
The truth is,7 it is not the number of witnesses, but
the character and qualifications of the persons, together
with the evidence itself, in its full force and circum-
stances, that are chiefly to be regarded in matters of this
nature. If but a few men can, as the apostles did, by
undeniable miracles make it sufficiently appear, that what
they say is true, and that God himself confirms the truth
of it ; they can appeal to every man's own senses, before
whom they work miracles, and make every one that sees
them a witness to the truth of their doctrines. In this
case, God himself bears witness to it ; and what the high-
priest said upon a very different occasion, every stander-
by finds himself constrained to declare in this ; ' What
need have we of any further witnesses ? for we ourselves
have heard of their own mouths,' in the miraculous gift
of tongues,' and seen with our onneyes,'in the many won -
J South's Sermons, vol. v. 6 Clagget's Sermons, vol. i.
' Jenkins's Reasonableness of the Christian religion, vol. ii.
Skct. IV.]
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same laws with other corporeal substances ; if it could
then pass through the doors in the manner of a spirit,
and may at this time be, where our senses can discern
nothing of it, though no other body can be so ; then what
satisfaction could Thomas receive in feeling his hands
and side? or wherein would the strength of St John's
argument lie, when he declares to his proselytes, d ' that
he had seen, and heard, and his hands had handled of
the Word of Life ?'
The indulgence indeed which our Saviour gave his
apostles, to try all their senses upon him, gave them full
satisfaction, both as to the materiality and identity of
his body. But then, as all philosophy informs us, that
no body can penetrate through another, a we may reason-
ably infer, that when our Lord came to his apostles, on
purpose, as it were, to convince them of the reality of
his resurrection body, he did not glide into the room
like a spirit, or phantasm, but, by his sovereign power,
opened the door himself, even as the angel did the
prison-gates to release Peter, secretly, and without the
perception of any in the company, who might then be at
the upper end of the room perhaps, and employed in
some such business as took up their whole attention.
For, 7 unless we can suppose, that our Saviour designed
to invalidate the strength of what he said and did, to
convince his apostles of the truth of his resurrection, we
cannot believe, that at the same time he would do a thing,
derful works which they have publicly wrought, a full
and authentic testimony of Christ's resurrection.
And this possibly may suggest the reason, why God
permitted the apostle St Thomas to be so scrupulous and
doubtful in this great article of our faith. He had been
told, that our Saviour was risen from the dead, and
the truth of it had been attested to him by evidences
beyond exception : ' several companies, who had seen
him and conversed with him several times ; to whom he
had exposed the sight and feeling of his wounds ; to whom
he had expounded the scriptures concerning himself ;
with whom he had broken the sacramental bread, and
conferred on them the benediction of the Holy Ghost ; all
these, with all these convincing tokens, had told Thomas
that Christ was risen: but Thomas's reply was,2 ' Ex-
cept I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and
put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my
hands into his side, I will not believe.' It might indeed
be urged before, that our Lord had not given all the
proofs of his resurrection, that the nature of the thing
was capable of; but 3 now, when nothing is left unasked,
that the most sceptical doubts could pretend to desire ;
when the very apostles themselves had one of their num-
ber that held out a while, and they preached not this
doctrine, until his scruples were removed ; when even
this doubter himself was no less vigorous and positive
afterwards in asserting the truth of a point, which nothing
but demonstration could make him believe ; this takes oft*
all imputation of credulity and easiness. It shows,
that the apostles proceeded with great caution, before
they embarked in the cause of Christianity, which could
not but reap great advantages from this apostle's back-
wardness to believe ; and therefore our church justly
acknowledges, that 4 ' God, in his wisdom, suffered
Thomas to doubt, for the greater confirmation of our
faith,' according to that saying of one of the ancients,
' The unbelief of Thomas has been more profitable for
our faith, than the faith of the disciples has been ; be-
cause while he is brought to believe by the evidence of
the sense of touch, our minds, casting oft' all unbelief,
are confirmed in the faith.' This disciple, in short,
doubted and was satisfied for us all. His former unbelief
adds strength to the cause he pleads, and makes him a
witness so much above exception, that the scruples, which
in him were weaknesses, in those that pretend to follow
him, and know his story, they will be wilfulness, and
resolved infidelity.
His story, indeed, and the means which, as we therein
read, our Saviour made use of to convince him, will
instruct us in this, that, whatever changes our Saviour's
glorified body might undergo after his resurrection, it
was not altered, as to the properties of a body, whereof
our outward senses are competent judges. To these
senses it is that our Lord appealed ; by these he com-
posed the disciples, suspecting him to be a phantom ; by
these he satisfied the doubtful and incredulous ; and by
these the apostles make it their business to persuade the
world, when they so frequently testify, that they5 'had
seen and heard him, had eaten and drank with him.'
But now, if our Saviour's body was not subject to the
1 Young's Sermons, vol. ii. 2 John xx. 25.
3 Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv.
* Collect, on St Thomas's day. a Acts x. 41.
6 1 John i. ' Whitby's Annotations on John xx. 19.
a Philosophy teaches us that all material bodies are impene-
trable, or in other words, that every body possesses the property
of excluding every other body from occupying the same space at
the same time ; but philosophy does not teach us (as the author
asserts,) that no body can penetrate through another, for this
would contradict common experience. Solids penetrate one
another in the sense in which our author seems to use the
term penetrate; fluids penetrate solids and solids fluids. Heat
penetrates all bodies and expands them. Light penetrates
transparent substances, the magnetic and electric fluids also pass
through almost all substances. With regard, however, to the
precise manner in which our Saviour appeared to the disciples
while the doors were shut, it is vain, if not presumptuous, to in-
quire. Of the real nature of a glorified body we know little,
but we may infer, from the reasoning of the apostle Paul, that at
the resurrection bodies of the saints will possess powers and
capabilities which far transcend those of our present gross cor-
poreal bodies; and if this he true in regard to the spiritual bodies
of the saints, it must be so in a far higher sense in regard to
our Lord's glorified body; at all events, we can safely assert that
the divine nature which resided in the glorified body of Christ,
was able to eflect greater miracles than the entering into a shut
apartment by penetrating the substance of the door or wall,
even supposing this to be implied by the Evangelist, (John xx.
19.) In what manner the miracle was ellected (for undoubtedly
the entrance was of a miraculous nature,) we are indeed not
told; but nothing seems so probable in itself, or so agreeable to
the analogy of the divine operation in other cases, or the beautiful
economy which existed in our Saviour's working of miracles, in
which he never employed mure power than was necessary to ac-
complish any point, as to suppose that our Lord caused the doors
to open of themselves. So Acts v. 19. 'the angel of the Lord
by night opened the prison doors,' &c. and 23. ' The prison we
truly found shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without
before the doors: hut when we had opened we found no man
within.' Acts xii. 6', 7, 10. When they were past the first
and second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto
the city, which ' opened to them of its own accord.' The above
would then be as much a miracle as that supposed by the com-
monly received hypothesis, and unquestionably an equal proof ot
Christ's divine omnipotence. The same view of the subject has
also been taken by Calvin. — (See Doddridge.) — Bloomjield's
Crit. Digest. — Ed.
1048
THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE,
[Book VIII.
1 John xvi. 16.
•Eph.iT. 8.
Iliid. ver. If).
b John vii. 39.
Mr Winston's Essays.
6 Acts ii. 33.
ascended to heaven, because, in the evening- of that day,
we find him 7 giving a commission and instructions to
his apostles; promising them the mission of the Holy
Ghost; 8 blessing them in a solemn manner ; 9 sending
them as his Father had sent him ; 1U giving them the power
of remitting and retaining sins ; and afterwards, in
Galilee, n assuring them, that all power was given him
in heaven, as well as earth; and therefore commanding
them to go, and teach, and baptize all nations, and pro-
mising his powerful presence with them, even unto the
end of the world.
Now, if these exercises, both of the sacerdotal office
and regal power, could not properly belong to our
Saviour until his exaltation, then we have reason to sup-
pose, that, in the morning of his resurrection, he privately
ascended into heaven, to receive the reward of his humi-
liation in our flesh ; and that the reason for his forbid-
ding Mary to touch him, Avas, that by her officious
embraces and importunity, she might not hinder him from
ascending that moment, and, what was the crown of all
his labour, carrying our glorified nature, as soon as
possibly he could, into that blessed place where God's
majestic presence appears, and where thrones, domin-
ions, principalities, powers, angels, and archangels have
their abode.
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known and observed by them, which would in effect
evacuate the force of all his proofs.
It is difficult, however, to imagine the reason, why
our Saviour should so far condescend to his apostles, as
to show his hands and his feet, desiring them to handle
them, when, not long before, he forbade Mary Magda-
lene to touch him, because he was not yet ascended ;
unless we may suppose, that, after his resurrection, he
might ascend several times, and that his first ascension
was immediately ensuant upon it.
Now, to make this more obvious, we must remember,
that, a little before his passion, our Saviour foretold to
his apostles his sudden ascent to his Father, and as sud-
den descent to them again: * 'yet a little while,' says
he, 'and ye shall see me, and again a little while, and
ye shall not see me, because I go to my Father ;' and
that afterwards, upon their surprise, and dispute about
the meaning of the expression, 2 'Jesus said unto them,
do you inquire among yourselves of what I said, a little
while, and ye shall see me ; and again, a little while,
and ye shall not see me? Verily, verily, I say unto you,
that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall re-
joice; and ye shall ye sorrowful, but your sorrow shall
be turned into joy,' &c. 3 Now, if we compare this pre-
diction with the event, how sad and disconsolate the
apostles were upon our Saviour's death, and how re-
freshed and joyful they were soon after his resurrection ;
and consider withal, that this sorrow was to last till
Christ had been with his Father, and then their joy to
commence; we shall be inclined to believe, that what
our Lord would be understood to say, is, that he was to
go to his Father immediately after his resurrection, and
then very soon to return to his apostles again, even the
very same day in the evening.
And indeed, considering that Christ was our high-
priest, it was necessary for him to ascend into heaven,
as soon as his sufferings were finished. For, as the
high-priest, under the law, was not only to slay the sacri-
fice, but to carry the blood, that moment, within the
sanctuary, and there present it before God, to complete
fie atonement, and make intercession for the people ; so
Christ, having shed his blood, and offered his body on
the altar of the cross, was immediately to ascend into
the heavenly sanctuary, and there obtain for us the re-
mission of our sins, and all the other benefits of his
passion.
But tin's is not all. In several parts of scripture our
Saviour is invested with a regal, as well as sacerdotal
character; but now, if, according to the testimony of the
same scripture, he could not exercise any supreme
• uthority, until he was exalted to his heavenly kingdom ;
if he could not, 4 give gifts unto men, until he was
a icended upon high ; nor 6 send his Holy Spirit upon his
disciples, until he was glorified, and had, by his inter-
cession, " obtained that great promise of the Father; if
he '""''I not, I say, administer the affairs of his media-
torial kingdom, before he had conquered death by his
resurrection, and had presented himself as a slain sacri-
fice and propitiation f„r the sins of the world, before the
presence of the divine majesty ; this makes it evident,
that, on the very day of his resurrection, he must have
CHAP. III. Of our Blessed Saviour's Doctrine,
and the Excellency of his Religion.
The completion of the prophecies relating to the pro-
mised Messiah, in the person and actions of our Saviour
Christ, and the miracles which he wrought, in testimony
of his divine mission, and in conformity to what the
Messiah was to do, were the subjects of the two preced-
ing chapters, as the great external evidences of the
truth of our holy religion ; and the internal evidence is,
the goodness and perfection of those precepts relating
to practice, which he hath enjoined, and of those doc-
trines relating to faith, which he hath taught us in the
course of his gospel, and which, when duly considered,
will manifest the excellency of the Christian religion
above all others.
Now, the practical parts of our holy religion, or those
precepts which were intended to direct us in our duty
towards God and man, are such as either tend to the
perfection of human nature, or to the peace and hap-
piness of human society. Of those which tend to the
perfection of human nature, some enjoin piety towards
God, and others require the good government of our-
selves with respect to the pleasures of this life ,• and our
business is, to show, that all and every of these are both
conformable to the dictates of right reason in their
practice, and declarative of the wisdom of God in their
appointment.
12 1. That we should inwardly reverence and love God, •
and express that reverence by external worship and
adoration, and by our readiness to receive and obey all
the revelations of his will ; that we should testify our
' Mark xvi. 15, &c. 8 Luke xxiv. 50. » John xx. 21.
10 Ibid. ver. 23. " Mat. xxviii. IS, &c,
la Tillotson's Sermons iu folio, vol. i.
IV.]
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dependence upon him, and our confidence in his good-
ness, by constant prayers and supplications to him for
mercy and help, both for ourselves and others ; that we
should acknowledge our obligation to him for the many
favours and benefits which every day, every moment, we
receive from him, by continual praises and thanksgiv-
ings ; and that, on the contrary, we should not entertain
any unworthy thoughts of God, nor give that honour and
reverence which is due to him to any other ; that we
should not worship him in any manner that is either
unsuitable to the perfections of his nature, or repugnant
to his revealed will ; that we should carefully avoid the
profanation of his name, by customary swearing or curs-
ing ; and take gTeat heed, that we be not guilty of the
neglect or contempt of his worship, or of any other
tiling that belongs to him ; in short, ' that we should
possess our minds with such a due sense of the majesty,
and holiness, and justice, and goodness of God, as may
make us, upon all occasions, thoroughly fearful to
offend him ; of his majesty, lest we affront it by being
irreverent; of his holiness, lest we offend it by being
carnal; of his justice, lest we provoke it by being pre-
sumptuous ; and of his goodness, lest we forfeit it by
being unthankful. These are the general heads of those
duties which every man's reason tells him he owes to
God, and yet these are the very tilings which the Chris-
tian religion expressly requires of us; so that, in this
part of Christianity, there is nothing but what exactly
agrees with the reason of mankind.
In respect to the good government of ourselves,
amidst the pleasures and enjoyments of this life, St
John, when he tells us, that 2 ' all that is in the world, is
the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of
life,' distributes the irregular appetites of men into
three kinds, voluptuousness, covetousness, and ambition,
answerable to the three sorts of tempting objects that are
in the world, pleasures, riches, and honours ; but when
our holy religion requires of us, that 3 ' we should not
walk after the flesh, but after the Spirit ; that we should,
in short, 4 ' walk decently, as in the day ; not in rioting
and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness ;
but 5 being holy in all manner of conversation, 6 abstain
from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul ;' when it
gives us this strict caution, 7 ' to take heed, and beware
of covetousness ; because a man's life,' or the happiness
of his life, ' consisteth not in the things which he possess-
eth ;' and calls upon us so frequently 8 ' to be meek
and lowly in spirit,' and not 9 ' to mind high things; to
1U let nothing be done through vain glory, but, in lowli-
ness of mind, to let each esteem other better than them-
selves ;' it is plain that it lays a prohibition upon all
such irregular appetites and passions as are the bane of
human ease and happiness, and enjoins such virtues and
good dispositions as are not only highly reasonable,
suitable to our nature, and every way for our temporal
convenience and advantage, but such as dispose us like-
wise to the practice of piety and religion, by purifying
our souls from the dross and filth of sensual delights.
2. In relation to the other sorts of precepts, which, as
we said, tend to the peace and happiness of human so-
J Young's Sermons, vol. i.
* Ibid. xiii. 13.
* Luke xii. 15. 8 Mat. xi
2 1 John ii. 16. 3 Rom. yiii. i.
* 1 Pet. i. 15. 6 ibid. ii. 11.
29. 9 Rom. xii. 16. ™ Phil ii. 3.
ciety, they are such as enjoin all those virtues that are
apt to sweeten the spirits, and allay the passions and
animosities which sometimes happen among men. For
when our most holy religion requires us, ' to love our
neighbour,' that is, every man in the world, even our
greatest enemies, ' as ourselves,' and, in pursuance of
this general precept, ' if it be possible, and as much as
in us lies, to live peaceably with all men;' to be kind to
one another, ready to gratify and oblige those that we
converse with ; to be tender-hearted and compassionate
to those that are in want, and misery, and ready, upon
all occasions, to supply and relieve them; to sympa-
thise with one another in our joys and sorrows; 'to
mourn with those that mourn, and to rejoice with them
that rejoice ; to bear one another's burdens, and to for-
bear one another in love; to be easily reconciled to
them' that have offended us, and to be ready to forgive,
from our hearts, the greatest and most reiterated injuries
that can be done us; it discovers itself not only to be
the most innocent and harmless, but the most generous
and best-natured institution that ever was in the world.
In like manner, when our holy religion endeavours to
secure the private interests of men, as well as the public
peace, by confirming and enforcing all the dictates of
nature concerning justice and equity ; by recommending
the great rule of doing to others what we would have
them to do to us, as the sum and substance of the law
and the prophets ; by commanding obedience to human
laws, which decide men's rights, and submission to all
government, under pain of damnation ; and by forbid-
ding whatever is contrary to these, namely, violence and
oppression, fraud and over-reaching, perfidiousness and
treachery, breach of trusts, oaths or promises, unduti ful-
ness to superiors, sedition and rebellion against magis-
tracy and authority ; and if there be any thing else that
is apt to disturb the peace of the world, and to alienate
the affections of men from one another, such a sourness
of disposition, and rudeness of behaviour, censorious-
ness, and sinister interpretation of things; in short, all
cross and distasteful humours, and whatever else may
render conversation uneasy or unsociable : when the
laws of Christianity, I say, forbid these vices and evil
dispositions, and, upon every occasion, command the
contrary virtues, n ' whatsoever things are true, w hatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there
be any praise,' requiring us to ' think of these things ;'
Ave cannot but allow, that nothing can be devised more
proper and effectual, to advance the nature of man to its
highest perfection, to procure the tranquillity of men's
minds, to establish the peace and happiness of the world,
and, if they were duly practised, to make it, as it were,
an heaven upon earth, than the precepts which we find
recorded in the gospel : and, what is no small commen-
dation of them, there is nothing in all these precepts,
but what, if we were to consult our own interest and
happiness, we should think ourselves obliged to do, even
though it were never enjoined us; nothing, in short, but
what is easy to be understood, and as easy to be prac-
tised by every honest and well-meaning mind.
Some, indeed, have represented even the moral part
11 Phil, iv 8.
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of the Christian religion, as an heavy burden and
grievous to be borne ; difficult to be kept, and yet
dangerous to be broken ; that it requires us to govern,
and keep under our passions, to contradict our strongest
inclinations, and many times to deny ourselves even
lawful enjoyments ; that it enjoins us to forgive and love
our enemies, ' to bless them that curse us, to do good to
them that hate and persecute us ;' and, what is more,
that it commands us to part with all the advantages of
this world, and even to lay down life itself, in the cause
of (iod, and the discharge of a good conscience. Hard
savings these, in some men's opinion, and such as our
nature, in its state of degeneracy, is not .able to perform.
But this is for want of duly considering the obligation
and tendency of such duties.
Some of the wisest heathens, even by the strength of
reason, were able to discover the general corruption of
human nature ; but then they were ignorant both of the
rise and progress of it; whereas, by the Christian reve-
lation, we are sufficiently instructed in both. Here we
lintl the baleful venom of our first ancestor's transgression
entailed on their posterity; here the perpetual strugglings
of flesh and spirit, and that violence of passions and de-
sires that so often carries us into excesses, which our
sober and better sense cannot but disapprove ; and here
that general bent to evil and backwardness to good,
which every one, but such as are obdurate and insensi-
ble, is forced both to feel and lament ; and therefore
since the gospel does not only show us our disease, but
the malignity and true original of it, there is good reason
why it should be allowed to press upon us the great
duties of mortification and self-denial, as the best means
within the compass of human power to cure us of it.
1 The heathen sages, in the passage of their Hercules
fighting with Antaeus, seem to insinuate, that the only
way to gain the mastery over our passions, is never to
cease contending with them. Whilst Hercules grasped
his adversary, and held him up in his arms, he could
manage and master him with ease ; but no sooner did he
let Antaeus touch the earth, but he got strength again,
and was able to renew the combat. Antams's touching
the earth is morally no other than an earthly affection
permitted to its element, that is, suffered to have its fill •
at which time it gets strength, and grows masterly, and
becomes less manageable than it was before : whereas
to grapple with our desires, to hold them off from the
reach of their quarry, and to restrain them even from the
lawful measures of enjoyment, is the only way, both to
bring them into subjection, and to confirm our' govern-
ment over them.
The truth is, every time that we indulge our appetites
beyond what is convenient, we give away so much power
out of our own hands, we strengthen the enemy for the
next attack, and disable ourselves still more for resisting
it; and therefore, as the Christian state is deservedly
called a warfare, that is, the necessary and continual
engagement of our rational desires against our sensual
in order to bring them under, and keep them in obe-
dience ; and as in this warfare there must be no league
no truce, no laying down of arms, because the enemy is
perfidious, and will never keep the peace; so are we
never out of danger, but while we are actually fighting.
Young's Sermons, vol. i.
2 The more we gratify our appetites, the more craving
they will be, and the more impatient of denial ; for every
lust is a kind of hydropic distemper, and, in this case
too, the more we drink, the more we shall thirst. If we
give way to our passions, we do but gratify ourselves
for the present, in order to our future disquiet ; but if
we resist and conquer them, we lay the foundation of
perpetual peace and tranquillity in our minds ; so that,
in the whole, by retrenching our desires, especially when
they prove exorbitant, we do not rob ourselves of any
true pleasure, but only prevent the pain and trouble oE
farther dissatisfaction.
3 The ancient moralists, though they sometimes decry
an insensibility of just provocations as a mark of an
abject and little soul ; yet upon no occasion are they so
profuse in their praises, as where they speak of persons
touched with a sense of injuries and indignities, and yet
able, with a generous contempt, to overlook, and show
themselves above them ; for the passing by, and forget-
ting such things, the being very hardly incensed, and
very readily appeased again, is constantly set forth as
one of the brightest virtues that give lustre to a brave and
truly noble mind. And if such were the notions of
heathens, who professed to follow no other guide but
the light of reason, surely the duty of loving and for-
giving those that have injured and offended us, cannot be
a task so very difficult to Christians, who, in matters
capable of any tolerable construction, are required to
put on that charity,4 ' which believeth all things, hopeth
all things, endureth all things ; ' and, in the worst that
can be, such a generous greatness of mind as ' puts away
from us all bitterness, and wrath, and clamour, and
evil-speaking, with all malice ; such as should make
us kind and tender-hearted,5 restoring those that are
overtaken in a fault in the spirit of meekness ; and such
as should prevail with us, 6 to forbear one another, and
to forgive one another, even as God, for Christ's sake,
hath forgiven us.
And indeed, he who considers, that the very founda-
tion of our religion is laid in the belief and profession
of a pardon extended to the highest of all provocations,
of love inconceivable to the worst of all enemies, and
both these expressed and effected by a person the most
highly injured, and in a method the most beneficial, the
most amazingly kind ; insomuch that no instance of gene-
rosity or goodness besides presents us with any thing-
like it, with any thing near it, with any thing fit to be
named with it : he who considers this, I say, cannot but
acknowledge, that the precept of loving and forgiving
our enemies is peculiarly suitable to the condition of
Christians, who owe all their hopes and happiness to it :
and that it would have been absurd not to have obliged
those men to a virtue, which they confess themselves so
infinitely beholden to, and ' which no man can think a
grievous command, who considers the pleasure aud
sweetness of love, the glorious victory of overcoming
evil with good, and then compares these with the rest-
less torments and perpetual tumults of a malicious and
revengeful spirit.
2 Tillotson's Sermons, in folio, vol. i.
Stanhope Sermons at Boyle's Lectures. 4 1 Cor.
5 Gal. vi. i.
xiii. 7.
Tillotson's Sermons, in folio, vol. i
Eph. iv. 31, '62.
Sect. IV ]
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1 3. The Stoics of old represented their wise man, as
no more concerned at the loss of his estate, his liberty,
or life, than if they were the rattles or gewgaws of a
child, which might afford him some little ease, and pre-
sent diversion, indeed, but were by no means essential,
or in any degree necessary, to his real happiness. This
however is a flight too romantic to be credited. To lay
down this life, and all the comforts of it, while men were
so much in the dark about another, and to expose the
body to sufferings, when doubtful, and in distrust about
the soul, is too great an infraction upon self-preserva-
tion, because it is to part with one's all, at least our all in
certainty and opinion : but to do this, when men know
the reality of a future state, and the value of their im-
mortal souls ; 2 to fear him, who, when he hath killed, can
cast both body and soul into hell, rather than them who
can only kill the body, and after that, have no more that
they can do ; to receive, embrace, rejoice in 3 the light
affliction, which is but for a moment, when throughly per-
suaded, that it worketh out for us a far more exceeding
and eternal weight of glory ; this is, not to destroy, but to
save and profit ourselves, and what, in the affairs of this
world, we esteem it our wisdom to do every day.
If by any sad accident our house happens to be set on
fire, no man is to be blamed for doing his best to save his
goods ; but, when that is found impracticable, every
wise man will choose to leave all, and escape naked,
rather than out of foolish fondness for any furniture of
value or curiosity, there stay and perish with it. Now
this is no improper emblem of the case before us. When
the fire of persecution breaks out among us, we have
our Lord's permission, by all prudent and honourable
methods, to decline it ; but when it comes at last to catch
upon these earthly tabernacles, that is, when our circum-
stances admit of no other choice, but either sinning or
suffering, the loss of our lives, or the loss of our virtue,
we owe it then, not only to God, but to ourselves, rather
to quit this house of flesh, than bring the glorious inha-
bitant in it into danger of being buried in its ruins.
Upon the whole, therefore, this taking up our cross,
or suffering upon the account of religion, is not choos-
ing evil as such, but choosing an infinitely less evil,
which, in this respect, is a great good. It is not expos-
ing ourselves, when we might be safe ; but, where we
cannot be safe in our whole persons, redeeming one part,
with another, the better with the worse : it is not sus-
taining a loss, but making an exchange ; an exchange of
fugitive and perishing goods, for lasting and substantial ;
and parting with something of less value, in order to
receive another thing unspeakably better, and more
desirable.
Thus it appears that the three great precepts, which are
commonly objected against, as heavy impositions, are the
necessary result of the state and circumstances wherein
we are placed ; that the duty of denying ourselves arises
from the corruption of the nature we are born with; that
of loving our enemies, from the very genius and founda-
tion of the religion we live under ; and that of taking up
our cross, from such prudential considerations as make
ns always choose the less evil ; and are all so suited to
the reason of mankind, that we find some of the best im-
' Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures. * Luke xii. 4, 5.
3 1 Cor. iv. 17.
provers of it prescribing the same rules to their disciples ;
4 which is enough to convince us, that our Lord, who
has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, ought
not by any means to be accounted an hard Master, when
he imposes no other terms than the heathens thought fit
to engage in, upon the mere spur of private conscience,
or public shame ; and that speechless, and without
apology, a great part of the Christian world must needs
stand in the day of inquiry, when it shall appear that
Pythagoras, and Plato, and Zeno, could have their
scholars run through such discipline, as is necessary to
the character of a virtuous man, which those who profess
Christ are not ashamed to call foolish and needless, only
because it is unpleasing.
4. The other part of the Christian religion is, as, we
said, those doctrines which were designed for the direc-
tion of our faith, in matters that were not sufficiently
revealed before.
5 That there is one supreme, absolute, and indepen-
dent cause, and original of all things, eternal, infinite,
all-powerful, all-sufficient, the maker and Lord of all
things, himself derived from none, made of none,
begotten of none, proceeding from none ; that by
him all creatures, material and immaterial, visible and
invisible, animate and inanimate, rational and irrational,,
mortal and immortal, in heaven and in earth, were made,
or created out of nothing : that having made the world,
at first, he still governs it by his perpetual provi-
dence, insomuch that the most fortuitous accident does
not happen, a sparrow does not fall to the ground,
nor an hair from our heads, without his permission
or direction; that, in the exercise of this his provi-
dence, every thing is submitted to his will ; no strength
can resist his power, no swiftness can flee from his
presence, no secrecy can conceal from his knowledge,
no art can evade his justice, and every creature partici-
pates of his goodness : that this infinite and almighty
being did, from all eternity, and long before any ages
commenced, in an ineffable manner, which the scriptures
call generation, communicate the essence of the God-
head so entirely to his Son, as to make him the same
with himself, very God, of very God : that this eternal
Son of God, having a being in the bosom of his Father,
was partaker of his glory and power in the creation and
government of the world, and, by the divine appoint-
ment, is our Saviour, Mediator, Intercessor, and Judge :
that, having a tender compassion for sinful man, and
willing to procure for him the grace of repentance, he
voluntarily condescended to take our nature, with all its
innocent infirmities, upon him: that, in this nature,
miraculously conceived, and born of a virgin, he lived a
life as Ave do, and was affected as we are, but without
sin, revealed unto us his Father's will, and did many
wonderful works in confirmation of his divine mission :
that, after a life spent in doing good, he submitted, in
his human nature, to a painful and ignominious death,
that thereby he might make an atonement to God, and
reconciliation for our sins : that, after a stay of three
days in the grave, by his almighty power he raised him-
self to life again, conversed upon earth for the space of
forty days, instructed his disciples in matters relating to
his kingdom, and, at length, in the sight of a great
4 Young's Sermons, vol. ii.
5 Clarke's Sermons, vol. ii.
6 R
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number of spectators, ascended visibly into heaven :
that, upon his ascension, he was exalted to the right-
hand of God, where he now makes intercession for us,
and is invested with all power and authority, wherewith
he governs the whole church, and is hereafter to judge
the whole world : that, upon his investiture, he soon sent
down the Holy Ghost, the third person in the ever-bles-
sed Trinity, to be the immediate comforter and director
of his apostles, to lead them into all truth, to inspire
them with the gift of tongues and to impart to their fol-
lowers such other gifts as might best serve the end of
their ministry: that this blessed Spirit still continues
with all good men, and > by illuminating their under-
standings, rectifying their wills and affections, renewing
their natures, uniting their persons to Christ, and help-
ing the infirmities of their prayers with his own inter-
cession, is the great sanctifier of their souls and bodies,
in order to make them acceptable in the sight of God
for ever : these, together with the doctrines of the im-
mortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and,
after their re-union, an eternal state of misery or hap-
piness in the other world, are the great and fundamental
principles of the Christian religion and mysteries, as
the apostle 2 calls them, ' which have been hid from
ages, and from generations, but are now made manifest
to the saints.'
' But how are these things made manifest,' says the
objector presently, ' when, notwithstanding all the pre-
tended light of revelation, they still remain obscure and
unintelligible? Some articles of the Christian faith, such
as the existence of a God, the dispensations of provi-
dence, the spirituality of our souls, a future state, and
future judgment, we readily allow, because these are
founded in the nature of things, and rise in the mind
upon the disquisitions of reason; but, as for the stories
of a trinity in unity, a co-equality in the Son, the incar-
nation of a God, and the propitiation made by the man
Christ Jesus, of these we can frame no manner of con-
ception ; and therefore you must excuse us, if we do not
believe them; for where is the crime of not performing
impossibilities, or of not believing what does not appear
to us to be true.'
It cannot be denied indeed, but that, in the Christian
religion, there are many great mysteries, or doctrines of
too much sublimity for the powers of reason, unassisted
by revelation, to find out, or, when discovered, fully to
comprehend; but this is no more than what we might
reasonably expect, considering the nature and quality of
the tilings it treats of. In its main intendment, it is a
kind of comment upon the divine nature, or an instru-
ment to convey right conceptions to the soul of man, as
far as it is capable of receiving them. But now God,
we know, is an infinite being, without any bounds or
limitations of his essence; wonderful in his actions, in-
conceivable in his purpose, and inexpressible in his
attributes : and how can such vast and mighty things be
crowded in a little finite understanding ? how shall our
poor short faculties be able to measure the length of his
eternity, the breadth and expansions of his immensity,
the heights of his prescience, the depth of his decrees,
and, least of all, the unutterable incomprehensible
mystery of two natures united into one person, and
1 Pearson on the Creed.
2 Col. i. 26.
again, of one and the same nature diffused into a triple
personality ? when a man that is born blind, as a one
expresses it, shall be able, on hear-say, to conceive in
his mind all the varieties and curiosities of colours, or
to draw an exact scheme of some fine city, or map of
some large province, then may we expect, in this de-
generate state of our understanding, to comprehend the
ways of the Almighty, and by searching find out God.
But, to do justice to the argument on the other side, as
it would be extremely foolish and irrational, for a blind
man to affirm, that there is no such thing as colours, or
lines, or pictures, because he finds that he cannot form
in his mind any true perception of them ; so would it be
equally, if not superlatively more unreasonable, for us
to deny the great mysteries of our faith, because the
plummet of our reason will not reach them.
While we continue in this state of imperfection, Ave
must be content 4 to know in part. A full and adequate
perception of these sublime mysteries is reserved, as a
principal ingredient of our felicity and happiness above,
when all the heights and depths, which we now stand
amazed at, shall be made clear and familiar to us ;
when God shall display the hidden glories of his nature,
the wonders of his providence, and the wisdom of his
counsels ; and, withal, fortify the eye of the soul to such a
degree, as to make it able, as far as the capacities of an
human intellect can be able, to behold, and take them in.
To have a right notion of the doctrines of our re-
ligion, however, we are to distinguish between those
things that are above reason, and incomprehensible, and
those that are against reason, and utterly inconceivable.
5 Some things are above reason, because of their tran-
scendent excellency, and distance from us; whereas
those that are against reason involve a contradiction,
and have a natural repugnancy to our understandings,
which cannot conceive any thing that is formally impos-
sible. And from hence it will follow, that though we
neither can, nor should believe those things that are
contrary to our reason, yet Ave both may, and ought to
believe those that are above it: and the reason is, 6
because the only evidence Ave can give of our acknoAV-
ledging the infallible truth of God, is by assenting to
what he affirms upon his OAvn authority.
In assenting to a proposition Avhose truth Ave perceive
from the reason of the thing, Ave do not assent upon any
authority at all. To such a proposition Ave should
assent, though it Avere affirmed by the most fallible man,
nay, though it Avas affirmed by the most notorious liar ;
and, consequently, our assenting to such a proposition is
no manner of proof that Ave acknoAvledge the infallible
veracity of God. This can only appear by our assenting
to a proposition Avhose truth Ave do not perceive by any
evidence from the nature of the thing ; for here Ave assent
upon the simple authority of God's affirmation, and our
assent is an explicit acknowledgment of his absolute
veracity. If then it be reasonable to expect, in a divine
revelation, that God should require our acknoAvledgment
of this attribute, especially, and Avithout such acknow-
ledgment no revelation Avould be of any use ; and if
this acknowledgment can appear only by our assenting,
3 South's Sermons, vol. i. «1 Cor. xiii. 12.
5 Bates's Harmony of the Divine Attributes.
6 Rogers's Necessity of a Divine Revelation.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OP CHRIST, &c.
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upon the authority of God, to such propositions as we
cannot perceive the truth of by an internal evidence ; it
certainly cannot be incongruous, to expect such proposi-
tions in a divine revelation. Nay, much more incongru-
ous would it be, and ' a probable objection against the
divinity of any revelation, if we should not iind some
propositions of this kind in it ; because it is hardly con-
ceivable, why God should make an external revelation
of those things only, which, by a due exercise of our
reason, he has enabled us to find out.
Seeing it is so far from being unreasonable, then, that
it is highly expedient, and in some sort necessary, that
there should be some propositions above the reach of
human understanding-, in every revelation that comes
from God ; if we can but show, that in the Christian
system there are no doctrines, but such as stand clear of
all absurdity and contradiction, the more abstruse and
mysterious they are, the more they deserve our belief;
for this very reason, because, 2 if what is revealed con-
cerning God were every way easy, and adapted to our
comprehension, it could never reach, nor, with any fit-
ness, represent that nature, which we aU allow to be
incomprehensible.
The holy scriptures, for instance, teach us, that in
the divine nature, which can be but one, there are three
distinct persons, to whom we ascribe the same attributes
and perfections, the same worship and adoration. This
indeed is a doctrine above our comprehension, as to
the manner how three should be one, and one three ; 3
but still we affirm, that there is no contradiction in it,
if we will but distinguish between numbers, and the
nature of things. For three to be one indeed, is a con-
tradiction in numbers ; but whether an infinite nature can
communicate itself to three different substances, without
such a division as is among created beings, must not
be determined by bare numbers, but by the absolute
perfections of the divine nature, which must be owned
to be above our comprehension. The holy scriptures
teach us, that the Son of God was made flesh, and dwelt
amongst us ; and that therefore our Redeemer was both
God and man in one person. This, we own, is, in its
nature, one of the great mysteries of godliness, as St
Paul calls it ; but then we must remember that, in real-
ity, it is not much more difficult, than the union of the
soul and body in all mankind, which, however unac-
countable it may be to our reason and imagination, is
too certain, in fact, to be called in question. Once more,
the holy scriptures teach us, that our Saviour Christ, who
was both God and man in one person, became the Re-
deemer of the world, by offering himself a propitiation
to God for sinners. This, in many respects, is a mys-
tery too, and what we could not have known, had it not
been revealed to us ; but now that it is revealed, it is
far from deserving the imputation of being absurd. 4
That all mankind are sinners, and have fallen from
their primitive integrity, not only the scriptures, but the
constant experience of our own irregular appetites, is
but too convincing a demonstration. Now, since this
was our condition, and God was minded to rescue us
from it, but entirely at liberty in what method to effect
it ; since the soul of our Saviour Christ was a free iiu-
1 Law's Case of Reason.
3 StilliiiRlleet's Sermons.
2 Young's Sermons, vol. ii.
Winston's Essays.
maculate being, that might voluntarily suffer for us, if
he pleased, and by the dignity of his nature, inhance
the value of his sufferings to the full pardon of our sins
upon his Father's acceptance of a vicarious sacrifice ;
there jippears nothing in this doctrine of Christ's satis-
faction, now that we have it fully revealed to us, but
what corresponds with common reason, and all judicial
procedings among mankind.
These are some of the principal doctrines that we,
as Christians, profess ; and being free, when rightly
considered, from all appearance of contradiction, 5 we
may appeal to the judgment of any considerate person,
whether it be not for the dignity and advantage of re-
ligion, that some articles of it should exceed the largest
human comprehension ; whether we should entertain the
same awful impressions of the divine Majesty, if the
perfections of his nature and operations were only such
as we could see to the end of; whether it does not raise
the value of man's redemption, to have it brought about
by miracles of mercy, not only without example, but
even beyond our present understanding. Had all these
things been less, we should indeed have known them
better ; but then so much as we abate of their mysteri-
ousness, to bring them down to our capacity, so much
we impair their dignity, and weaken the power of thein
upon our affections. It is therefore the very commen-
dation, as we said before, and excellency of these doc-
trines, that they are so far above us ; and we ought to
esteem it an instance of the divine goodness, no less
than wisdom, so to have tempered his revelations, that
we want not knowledge enough to engage our piety and
holy wonder, and yet have not so much as should des-
troy our humility and godly reverence : and upon the
whole, have reason to believe, that it could not have
been better, nay, probably, not near so well, if either
less had been discovered to us, or less concealed from us.
The other doctrines, which in some measure were
discoverable by the strength of reason, but have been
set in full light, and cleared of all their ambiguity and
doubtfulness, by the revelation of the gospel, such as
that of the being of a God, the inspection of his provi-
dence, the supreme end of man, the immortality of his
soul, the resurrection of his body, a future judgment,
and an eternal state of happiness or misery hereafter,
are so rational in themselves, and have so natural a
tendency to what is the great end of all religion, the
reformation of men's lives and tempers, that a very
small illustration will suffice to recommend them. For,
6 What can be a more necessary and excellent founda-
tion of true piety, than that doctrine which the Chris-
tian religion clearly and distinctly teaches us concern-
in"- the nature and attributes of the only true God, who
inhabits eternity, and yet humbleth himself to behold the
thiiio-s that are in heaven and earth ? What can afford
more comfort and security in all conditions of life, than
the sense of a providence, by which the very 7 hairs of
our head are numbered, concerning itself for our wel-
fare, and, for that reason, bidding us 8 ' to be careful for
nothing, but, in every thing, by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving, to make our requests known unto
God?' What can be a more effectual means to wean us
5 Stanhope's Sermons.
7 Mat. x. 30.
6 Clarke's Evidences.
8 Phil. iv. C.
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[Book VIII.
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from the love of the world, and the allurements of sin,
than to consider, that the proper and ultimate end of
man is the fruition of God ; and that though • it does ' not
yet appear what we shall be, yet this we know, that
when he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall
see him as he is ?' What a greater incitement to purity
and holiness, to love, and hope, and heavenly-minded-
ness, than the assurance given in the gospel, that when
we are 2 dissolved, we shall immediately be with Christ;
that 3 ' this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this
mortal put on immortality ;' that our souls, when they
go hence, return to God that gave them, and our bodies,
when laid in the dust, after a short repose, are to be
raised in power, and 4 ' fashioned like unto Christ's
glorious body?' In fine, what stronger and more power-
ful motive to deter us from vice, and allure us to all
kind of virtue, than the discovery we have of God's
having ' appointed a day, wherein he will judge the world
in righteousness, 5 and render unto every man according
to his works; to them who, by patient continuance in
well-doing, seek for glory and honour, and immortality,
eternal life; but unto them that are contentious, and
obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation
and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of
man that doeth evil.' So that the articles of our Chris-
tian faith, you see, are far from being arbitrary imposi-
tions, 6 calculated for the exercise of our credulity, or
the gratification of our idle curiosity, but have an imme-
diate relation to practice. They are indeed the genuine
principles and foundations of all human and divine
virtues ; and, 7 taken altogether, make a far more
rational and consistent scheme of belief, than what the
wisest ancient philosopher ever thought of, or the most
opinionative modern unbeliever ever yet contrived.
But besides these doctrines, there are two ordinances
peculiar to the Christian religion, which have an equal
tendency to practice, and are so far from being vain and
superstitious, 8 as some are pleased to call them, that
they carry their own plea and justification along with
them. For what reasonable man can pretend to say,
that it is anywise superstitious, for every member of the
.society which Christ has instituted, to be solemnly ad-
mitted into the profession of his religion by a plain and
significant rite, intitling him to all the privileges, and
charging him with all the obligations which belong to the
members of that society as such, which is the design of
one of the sacraments ; or that it is unreasonable, or
superstitious, for men frequently to commemorate, with
all due thankfulness, the love of their greatest benefac-
tor, and humbly and solemnly to renew their obligations
and promises of obedience to him, which is the design of
the other ? But then, if we consider further the manifold
benefits which we receive from these sacramental ordi-
nances ; that, by the former, we are admitted to the par-
don of all our sins, the assistance of divine grace, the
adoption of sons, and a title to a glorious inheritance ;
and that, by the latter, we have the covenant of mercy
renewed, our breaches repaired, and our right to eternal
happiness confirmed; that, in both, in short, we are
made, and recognized to be, the children of God, and if
' 1 John iii. 2. » Phil. i. 23. • 1 Cor. xv. 54
4 niil "'• 21. * Rom. ii. 7, &c.
■ Archbishop Sharpe'a Sermons. ' Clarke's Evidence.
8 See Christianity as old as the Creation.
D. 31. FROM MAT. xx. 1C— END. MARK xi. 15— END. LUKE xix. 45— END. JOHN xii. 19— END.
children, then, according to that happy climax, are we
heirs, heirs with God, and joint heirs with Christ, to the
intent that we may be glorified with him : if we consider
these great privileges, I say, we shall soon perceive the
wisdom and love of our master, and only Saviour, in
thus 9 opening to us a fountain for sin, and for unclean-
ness, and in thus giving us the 10 medicine of immortality,
as the ancients style the eucharist, an antidote to pre-
serve men from dying, and to give them a life that is
everlasting.
But whatever inherent efficacy some may think fit to
ascribe or deny to these sacred ordinances, it can hardly
be thought but that, since, when they are duly observed,
they are productive of many virtues and good disposi-
tions ; u since, in the sacrament of baptism, we profess
our sincere belief in the truth of that doctrine which God
the Father revealed by his blessed Son, and confirmed by
the miraculous operations of the Holy Ghost; in it we de-
clare our humble acceptance of the overtures of mercy
and grace, purchased for us by our Saviour , and in this
sacrament exhibited to us ; in it acknowledge our obli-
gations to all piety, righteousness, and sobriety, as loyal
subjects, faithful servants, and dutiful children to God ;
and in it devote ourselves to the faith and obedience of
God the Father, our great and glorious maker, of God
the Son, our great and gracious redeemer, and of God
the Holy Ghost, our blessed guide and comforter: and,
in like manner, since a devout reception of the supper
of our Lord exercises and excites in us an awful sense
of mind, answerable to the greatness and holiness of him
whom at that time we approach ; an hearty contrition for
our sins, which exposed our Saviour to such pains and
agonies as are therein remembered ; a fervent love and
gratitude to him, for his wonderful goodness and love to
us ; a deep humility, upon the sense of our unworthiness
to receive such testimonies of his favour; a pious joy, in
consideration of the excellent fruits accruing to us from
his performances ; a comfortable hope of obtaining the
benefits of his passion, by the assistance of his grace ;
and, lastly, an enlarged good-will and charity to all our
brethren, as being made heirs of the same hope, and not
only washed in the same baptism, but fed at the same
table with ourselves : since these, I say, are the graces
and benefits which accrue to us by these holy ordinances,
we cannot but applaud the wisdom of their institution,
which affords such mighty helps to our Christian pro-
gress, and, by the blessing of God, are the happy instru-
ments both of our living well, and of our living for ever.
From this brief review of the Christian religion, it ap-
pears, that the purity and practicableness of its precepts,
the truth and sublimity of its doctrines, and the wisdom
and piety of its sacramental institutions, cannot but re-
commend it to every man's conscience, that is neither
bribed with vice, or tinctured with infidelity ; for J2 if our
gospel 'be hid,' if the beauty and excellency of our holy
religion be hid, ' it is hid to them that are lost, in whom
the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them
who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of
Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them.
13 And now, methinks, we may, with some confidence,
challenge any religion in the world, to show us such
8 Zech. xiii. 1. 1" I gnat. Epist. ad Eph.
11 Barrow on the Sacraments. l8 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4.
13 Tillotson's Sermons, in folio, vol. i.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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a complete body and collection of doctrines, both spe-
culative and practical ; of mysteries more sublime, and
rational withal, more agreeable to the divine nature, and
more perfective of human understanding ; and of rules
and precepts that would make men more pious and de-
vout, more holy and sober, more just and fair in their
dealings, better friends and better neighbours, better
magistrates, better subjects, and better in all relations,
than what we find recorded in the gospel.
AVere there no other argument of the divinity of the
Christian religion, but only the excellency of the doc-
trines which it teaches, this would be enough to convince
any considering man, that it came from God. ' For, if
it were nothing else but the result of natural reasoning,
why should not other religions in the world, and other
systems of morality, be as good as this ? How comes the
doctrine of Jesus Christ to excel those of all the famous
legislators and philosophers in the world ? How comes
an obscure person in Judea to draw up such an admir-
able scheme of ethics, that whatever is laid down by the
Lycurguses, and Numas, and Platos, and Aristotles,
should not be comparable to it ? How should he, in
one or two years preaching, nay, in one short sermon,
advance the practical doctrines to a greater height and
perfection than ever they were brought to by any of the
sects of philosophers, who had made it their business to
study them for some ages ? Most certainly unless God
had been assisting in contriving this new model of the
morality of Jesus Christ, it is impossible that it could
ever have equalled, much less so far exceeded that of
the Grecian schools, which had all the human advantages
that he wanted on their side.
It cannot be denied indeed, but that, almost in every
age there have been, in the heathen world, some wise,
brave, and good men, who have carried human reason
to a great height ; and in the study and disquisition of
natural religion, have made no mean discoveries ; but
then there is room to suspect, that their discoveries
of this kind were not so much owing to the strength and
sagacity of their own reason, as to the traditions they
might receive from their ancestors, or the conversation
they might have with the Hebrews, who had all their in-
struction from revelation.
That there were certain principles delivered by God
to Noah, and by him propagated among his posterity,
through all ages and nations, is what we may easily con-
ceive ; and thence we may suppose, that many points
which seem now to be deductions from natural reason,
might have their original from revelation, because things,
once discovered, may seem easy and obvious to men,
which they, notwithstanding, would never of themselves
have been able to find out.
However, this be, it is certain, tha', as the ancient
philosophers might borrow many helps from their know-
ledge of the Jewish religion, which was the only revela-
tion then pretended to ; so, 8 whoever compares the
writings of later philosophers, of Epictetus, Antoninus,
and some others, who lived since the gospel got foot-
ing in the world, with theirs who went before them, will
find so manifest a difference, so much more unaffected
solidity, and so near a resemblance to some of the most
exalted Christian precepts as cannot well be accounted
' Nichols's conference with the Theist, vol. ii. part 1.
8 Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures.
for, without supposing some acquaintance with a set of
principles, which they could not but approve and ad-
mire, and affected to ingraft into their own systems of
morality, though they never expressly avowed the author-
ity on which they stand. These were great helps ; and
it is no wonder, that under the influence of these they
wrote so well. But if we look into the tracts of those
that went before them, and were unassisted by revelation,
we shall find them miserably ignorant of many important
points that are delivered to us with the greatest perspicuity.
They were ignorant, as we had occasion to show 3
before, of the creation of the world, and the origin of
mankind ; ignorant of the rise of evil, or the cause of
human depravation ; ignorant of any form of worship
that might be acceptable to God, and of any way to
appease his displeasure ; and quite ignorant of the
method which he, in his eternal counsel, had ordained
for the recovery of lost man, without any infraction upon
his attributes. They had but confused notions of the
nature of the supreme being, and talked very inconsis-
tently of the summum bonum, or ultimate felicity of man.
They taught but little of God's exceeding love towards
us, and desire of our happiness ; and were entirely silent
as to the divine grace and assistance towards our at-
tainment of virtue, and perseverance in it. The im-
mortality of the soul was to them a moot point ; the cer-
tainty of a future state they were not well agreed in ;
and, as for the resurrection of the body, this, 4 in their
very seats of learning, was thought a doctrine highly ab-
surd and ridiculous. So doubtful, so ignorant were they
in these main and fundamental points, which are the
great restraints of our inordinate appetites ; and there-
fore no wonder, if, 5 having their understanding darkened,
as the apostle describes them, and being alienated from
the life of God through the ignorance that was in them,
they gave themselves up unto lasciviousness, and to work
all uncleanness with greediness.
Nay, well had it been, had they confined their lewd-
ness and debauchery within private walls ; but the mis-
fortune was, that they entered their temples, and made
no small part of their religious worship. a They deified
the worst of men, a drunken Bacchus, an effeminate
Ganymede, a Romulus unnatural to his brother, a Jupiter
as unnatural to his father. 6 They paid adoration, not
only to the ghosts of such as these, but to birds, and beasts,
and creeping things, and even to the devil himself, under
images of such hideous forms and shapes, as were
s See Cave's Apparatus the first, p. 18. et seq.
4 Acts xvii. 5 Eph. iv. 18, 19.
6 Jenkins's Reasonableness of the Christian religion, vol. i.
a Can any thing be so stupid, as to load the divine nature
with so many crimes and imperfections as the heathen theology
does; to make one God, and that the supreme God too, an
adulterer, and another a pimp; one goddess a scold, and another
a whore ; to stock heaven with strumpets and sodomites, and
drunkards, and bastards; to make their deities fighting and
quarrelling, dissembling and lying; to be lame, and blind, and
old, and wounded ? Can any thing be more foolish, than the
stories of their theogony: of their gods, not only begetting
children like men, but eating them like cannibals; their battles
with Titans and giants, and their running out of heaven for
security upon earth ? What wretched silly sturl" is the history
of their demi-gods or heroes, of Perseus, Theseus, Orpheus, and
all the other contradictious tales which we read of in Ovid's
Metamorphoses, which is nothing else but a compendium of
the heatheu divinity. — Nichols's conference with the Theist,
vol. ii. part 4.
1054 THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE, [Book VIII.
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frightful to behold. Nay, and in the worship of him,
they made their altars smoke with the blood of human
sacrifices, of their sons and their daughters, and that in
some places, every day, and upon extraordinary emer-
gencies, even as it is the practice of some Pagan coun-
tries at this very time, in whole hecatombs. So blinded
were the eyes of their understanding, and so hardened
their hearts, against all tender impressions, by the de-
ceitfulnes of sin, and the infatuation of the devil.
Men may talk of the natural light and power of rea-
son as long- as they please ; and the topic perhaps is
well enough for popular eloquence to flourish upon ; but
when we appeal to experience, we shall soon find it
empty boast, and pompous harangue. If ever there was
a time when human reason might be a guide in matters of
religion,1 it was when our Saviour came into the world,
or some time before ; when knowledge of all kinds, and
particularly the study of philosophy, was cultivated and
improved with the greatest application, by the ablest
hands ; and yet it is hardly possible to read the first
chapter of the epistle to the Romans, without amaze-
ment, and many mortifying reflections, to find rational
creatures capable of so wretched a degeneracy, as to
verify the apostle's description of them, when he tells us,
that they2 ' were filled with unrighteousness, fornication,
wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; were full of
envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity ; were whisperers,
backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters,
inventors of evil things; were disobedient to parents,
without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural
affection, implacable, unmerciful, and (what is worse still)
not only did these things themselves, but took pleasure
likewise in those that did them.
In this light it is that the apostle represents the state
of the heathen world, while it was under the guidance
of unassisted reason : and if our reason seems to guide
us any better now; if it rejects those detestable deeds
of darkness, and impious modes of worship, which it
once reverenced and embraced, it is not because its
faculties are in themselves any clearer or stronger than
they were, but because it has submitted its weakness and
ignorance, its pride and passions, to the light and
authority of the Christian revelation.3 Take but away
the direction and restraint of this authority, and it Avill
ad just as it did, and relapse into the same extrava-
gances, the same impiety, the same folly and supersti-
tion, that prevailed on it before.
And if the pagan religion, when supported with the
highest improvements of human understanding, fell so
far short of being a rational service, what shall we say
to the Mahometan, which envelops itself in ignorance
and makes its main foundation the gratification of men's
brutal lusts and appetites? One would really wonder
how so corrupt an institution came to spread so wide in
the world, but that there was a concurrence of circum-
stances, at that time, which did not a little contribute to
its propagation.
4 When Constantine and his followers had made the
profession of the Christian religion not only safe but
honourable, bishops grew ambitious, and minded nothing
so much as their advancement to the best preferments.
1 Bishop of London's second Pastoral Letter. 2 Rom. i. 29, &c.
3 Rogers's Necessity of Divine Revelation.
4 Grotius Do verit. b. 6.
Schisms and heresies over-ran the church ; rites and
ceremonies were more esteemed than purity of heart ;
and a general corruption infected both clergy and laity
alike. This juncture God in his just judgment permitted
Mahomet to lay hold on, to set up a new religion,5 which
being a kind of medley, made up of Judaism, the several
heresies then in the east, and the old Pagan rites of the
Arabs, with an indulgence to all sensual delights, and
the enforcement of secular power and violence, did too
well answer his design in drawing or forcing men of all
sorts to the profession of it ; insomuch that it soon gave
birth to an empire, which, in eighty years' time, extended
its dominions over more kingdoms and countries than
ever the Roman could in eight hundred. And although it
continued in its strength not above three hundred years,
yet out of its ashes have sprung up many other kingdoms
and empires, of which there are three at this day, the
largest and most potent upon the face of the earth,
namely, the empire of Turkey, the empire of Persia, and
the empire of the Mogul in India, which God, in his all-
wise providence, has permitted still to continue, for a
scourge unto us Christians, who, having received so holy
and so excellent a religion through his mercy to us, in
Christ Jesus our Lord, will not yet conform ourselves to
live worthy of it. a
This we must observe, however, that God does not
always approve those actions and designs, which, to de-
monstrate the wisdom of his providence, he is sometimes
pleased to permit and prosper; that a religion propa-
gated by force, and supported by the methods of exter-
nal strength, is so far destitute of any proof, that its
original is from heaven ; and that, when it contains such
doctrines as are repugnant to the dictates of right reason,
or the known properties and attributes of God, it can be
the product of nothing else but human invention.
6 When therefore, we find Mahoment establishing his
religion by the dint of the sword, persecuting with war all
that would not submit to it, and threatening- with no less
than death all that pretended to dispute the least article
of it ; 7 whereas the Christian, quite otherwise, was planted
in weakness and disgrace, in tears, and prayers, and
patience, and watered with the blood of many thousands
of its professors : when we find him allowing of forni-
cation, justifying adultery, and talking of war, rapine,
and slaughter, as things enjoined and commanded by
Almighty God ; whereas what we have learned from
Christ and his apostles is,8 ' possess every one his vessel
in sanctification and honour ; not in the lust of concupi-
scence ; to live peaceably with all men ;' and, instead of
invading- any other's property, 9 ' to take joyfully the
spoiling of our goods, knowing that in heaven we have
a better and enduring substance :' when we find him, the
better to allure his followers, telling them I0 of pleasant
5 Piideaux's Life of Mahomet. 6 Ibid.
7 Stanhope's Sermons at Boyle's Lectures. 9 1 Thes. iv. 4, 5.
9 Heb. x. 34. 10 Piideaux's Life of Mahomet.
a Since the period at which our author wrote, the extent and
power oi these empires have been greatly diminished ; whilst
that of the Mogul has been in fact annihilated. But we lately
saw another power, founded in atheism, spread its dominion, un-
doubtedly for the same purpose, over almost all the Christian states
of Europe. It too hath been overturned ; but whether Christians
have really profited by the severe chastisement which they re-
ceived, can be ascertained only by their conduct during the
peace of the world, which has not yet been of very long duration.
Sect. IV.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
1055
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gardens, curious fountains, delicate beds, and beautilul
women with black eyes and fair complexions, in paradise,
with whom they shall enjoy continual pleasures and
solace themselves with amorous delights to all eternity ;
whereas we are told, that in the resurrection we l neither
' marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels
of God in heaven,' where we shall come to company suit-
aide to our glorified natures, 8 to the general assembly and
church of the ' iirst born, to the spirits of just men made
perfect, to an innumerable company of angels, to God
the judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new
covenant:" when we compare these things together, I
say, we shall bud the one abhorrent to the nature of God,
injurious to the dignity of mankind, and a contradiction
to that eternal law of righteousness which is written in
every one's breast; but the other agreeable to the
notions we have of the supreme being, and consonant to
the rational dictates of our nature.
If we proceed to compare the transactions of Christ's
life with those that are related of Mahomet; how our
blessed 3 Saviour went about doing good, healing all
manner of sickness and of disease among the people,
giving sight to the blind, and feet to the lame, and life
to the dead ; how the miracles which he wrought were
solemn and grave, acts of his love to mankind, and de-
monstrations of his omnipotence ; and * how those who
embraced his religion, in virtue of those miracles, were
men of innocence and simplicity, who lived good lives,
and feared God, and were therefore under the divine pro-
tection, secured from the deceivableness of error ; whereas
the followers of Mahomet were a gang of robbers and
plunderers, void of all piety, and all humanity; himself
a bold ambitious man, greedy of empire, and resolved
to raise himself even at the destruction of his fellow-
creatures ; and the miracles reported of him, such as 5
his cleaving the moon in two, the trees going out to
meet him, the stones saluting him, the camel and the
shoulder of mutton speaking to him, and his wonderful
journey to heaven, with all the strange sights he there
beheld, are, to the highest degree, absurd a and ridicu-
lous : if we compare these things together, I say, we
shall soon perceive in whom the characters of a true
prophet meet, and who is to be deemed the wicked im-
postor ; whose religion was intended to civilize and
sanctify human nature, and consequently is the gift of
God ; and whose calculated to gratify the cruel and
carnal appetites of rude barbarians, and consequently is
the forgery of man.
The Jewish religion indeed derived its origin from
1 Mat. xxii. 30. 2 Heb. xii. 23, 24. s Mat. iv. 24.
4 Grotius de Verit. 5 Prideaux's life of Mahomet.
a What strange stuff do we find in the Alcoran about the an-
gel of death, whose head is so big, that from one eye to another
is a journey of a thousand and seventy days ; of the angels in the
sixth heaven, one of which has seventy thousand heads, and as
many tongues: of the cow supporting the earth, which lias four
hundred horns, and, from one horn to another, is a journey of a
thousand years ; of the angels which support the throne of God,
and have heads so big, that a bird cannot fly from one ear to
another; of the key of the treasury of one of Moses's subjects,
which was so heavy, that it weighed down a camel; and of the
wives and dillerent shapes of angels, some of which are like
men, others like horses, bulls, and cocks, &c. with many more
nonsensical absurdities of the like nature!— Nicholas Conference
with the Theist, vol. ii. part iv.
heaven, and Moses seems to glory in the excellency of
its institutes, when he asks the people, ti ' what nation is
there so great, that has statutes and judgments so
righteous as all this law which I set before you this day ?'
and yet, if we were to descend to an examination, we
should soon perceive, in many great discoveries, the
pre-eminence of the gospel above the law.
7 1. That there is a God, and that there is but one
God; that the only one God is incorporeal, invisible,
immortal, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, of infinite
justice, wisdom, and goodness, the maker of heaven and
earth, the supreme governor of the world, and of all
things therein, and a gracious rewarder of those that
seek him, is absolutely necessary to be known by all
who would attain eternal life; and it cannot be doubted,
but that the faithful, from the beginning, had this know-
ledge of God ; but then, before the coming of Christ,
they had not so certain, so clear, and so distinct a know-
ledge of these things, as we have now under the gospel.
For, over and above the knowledge of these things,
which the pious, before Moses, had either from a serious
contemplation of the works of God, or from the tradition
and instruction of the patriarchs, and which the Jews, in
succeeding ages, had from the writings of Moses and the
prophets ; we, Christians, have a more clear, more dis-
tinct, and evident manifestation thereof from the books
of the evangelists and apostles.
The faithful, under the Jewish dispensation, did,
without doubt, believe God to be an invisible and omni-
present spirit ; and yet his frequent appearances, some-
times under one resemblance, and sometimes under
another, the building of an ark, a tabernacle, and temple,
whither he was pleased to call his people together into
his immediate presence, and to talk with them, as Moses s
expresses it, face to face, must necessarily turn their eyes
and minds towards the mercy seat; make them appre-
hend God shut up, as it were, within the holy of holies,
and consequently perplex and obscure their notions of
his spirituality and omnipresence : whereas there is no
room now, under the gospel, for any gross conceptions
of the Deity, when we are called upon, not to turn our
eyes towards a visible tabernacle, but 9 ' to pray every
where,' in any place, ' lifting up holy hands;' and are
taught by Christ, 1U that ' God is a spirit,' and that ' they
who worship him, worship him in spirit and in truth.'
The believers under the law were persuaded, that all
things were ordered and governed by an all-wise and
all-powerful being ; and yet the most sagacious of them
were not able to account for the justice of divine pro-
vidence, in suffering the wicked to prosper, and the
righteous to be afflicted. But now this difticulty every
common Christian is able to solve, by the help of what
he has learned from the gospel concerning the retribu-
tions of a future state ; and can apply to all such cases
the reflection made by Abraham, on the rich man's de-
sire of some relief from Lazarus, u ' son, remember that
thou, in thy lifetime, receivedst thy good things, and
likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted,
and thou art tormented.'
2. The nature and obliquity of sin is what men, in all
ages, could not but perceive ; but how to account for its
6 Dent. iv. 8.
9 1 Tim. ii. S.
' Smallridgc's Sermon. 8 Deut. v. 4.
10 John iv. 24. « Luke xvi. 25.
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cause and origin, they were at a strange loss : and there-
fore some imagined a pre-existent state, from whence
they brought depravity along with them; while others
devised two contrary principles, equally actuating the
world, the one the author of all the good, and the other
of all the evil they did. ' ' The wickedness of man,' as
Moses tells us, * was great in the earth, and every ima-
gination of the thoughts of his heart was evil continually;'
but whether these expressions are to be extended to the
whole race of mankind, and so are a proof of the general
depravation, has been doubted by some : whereas all
such doubts must now be silenced by the plain assertions
in the New Testament, that 2 ' by one man sin entered
into the world, and death by sin, so that 3 by the offence
of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation ;'
that all who are of the race of mankind, are sinners,
ungodly, enemies of God, children of the devil, and by4
nature the children of wrath ; that 5 when they would do
good, evil is present with them, having a law in their
members warring against the law of their mind, and
bringing them into captivity to the law of sin ; and that
this is the state of depraved nature, wherein men are
born, and wherein those that live and die shall 6 ' be
punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.'
3. And as the gospel gives us a more distinct account
of the origin and demerit of sin, so does it furnish us
with a clearer discovery of the method whereby the guilt
of it is atoned. Those who lived under the Mosaic dis-
pensation, were saved by the same means of redemption,
as we who live under the evangelical ; but the mystery
of our common redemption was not, in any degree, so
fully manifested to them as it is to us : and hence it is,
that the apostle compares the writings of the Old Testa-
ment to a 7 light, or, as the original is, to a candle
shining in a dark place ; but the revelation which was
made by Christ in the gospel, to the day-dawn, and the
day-star arising in our hearts. The revelation made to
the Jews was to them a light, but a faint one ; it shone,
but in a dark place. The nativity, life, and death of
Christ, the several offices of his mediatorship, the re-
mission of our sins through his blood, the sanctification
of our hearts by his Spirit, and the glories of the world
to come, were taught them, not in words at length but
in figures, and a dark veil was over the writings as well
as over 8 the face of Moses, so that the children of Israel
could not stedfastly behold his doctrine, any more than
they could his countenance. In a word, 9 they were
saved, as well as we, by the blood of Christ ; but there
was as great a difference between their knowledge of the
mystery of our redemption by the sacrifice of the death
of Christ, and ours, as there was between that dark
cloud wherewith God led the people at one time, and
that pillar of light wherewith he guided them at another.
4. And as the gospel gives us clearer notions of the
expiation of sin, so does it exhibit a fuller assurance of
our being justified, or having our sins pardoned thereby.
Religious persons, who lived before the coming of Christ,
knew that they were sinners, and that they therefore had
need of the mercy and favour of God, for the remission
1 Gen. vi. 5. 2 Rom. v. 21. 3 Ibid
5 Rom. vii. 21, 23.
• 2 Pe. i. 19. 8 2 Cor. iii. 7.
ver. 18. 4 Eph. ii. 3.
6 2 Thess. i. 9.
9 Smallridge's Sermons.
of their sins ; but then, being not sufficiently instructed
in the method of obtaining God's favour, they could not
but groan sorely under the weight of them. Severe
curses were denounced in the law against all who should,
in any case, transgress it ; these curses were plain, and
easy to be understood ; but the promises of a pardon,
through the merits of a Saviour, were more intricate and
involved. When therefore the danger which threatened
them was so apparent, and the methods of their escape
so obscurely notified to them, it is no wonder if their
fears did very much overbalance their hopes. Hence it
is, that the spirit by which they were governed, is in the
gospel represented as a spirit of bondage ; but the spirit
by which we Christians are influenced, is a spirit of
adoption : 1U ' ye have not now,' says the apOstle, ' re-
ceived the spirit of bondage again to fear ; but ye have
received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
Father ;' that is, whereby we are as well assured of the
love of God, as a child is sure of the affection of an in-
dulgent father ; as surely entitled to the joys of heaven,
as an adopted son is to the inheritance of him who there-
fore adopted him, that he might make him his heir ; for,
as the apostle goes on to display the privileges of the
Christian dispensation, ' the Spirit itself beareth witness
with our spirit, that we are the children of God ; and if
children, then heirs, heirs with God, and joint-heirs with
Christ.'
5. And as the assurances given us of this inheritance
are greater, so, lastly, is the inheritance itself much more
plainly revealed to us in the gospel, than ever it was be-
fore. Whatever could be learned of a future state from
the light of reason, that, and much more, was known to
the Jews ; what, by reason and by revelation, was made
known to the Jews concerning an immortal life, that,
and much more, is manifested to us Christians. The
texts in which a future state is revealed to the Jews, are
few, and here and there thinly scattered in some parti-
cular books of the Old Testament ; but there is no one
book, scarce one chapter, in which this doctrine is not
taught in the New. Those in the Old Testament are not
so clear of ambiguity, but that they are capable of
another interpretation ; those in the New are so plain
and perspicuous, that there is no room for the most ig-
norant to misapprehend, or the most impious to pervert
them: and therefore it is with great justice that the
author of the epistle to the Hebrews, who himself was
excellently versed in the knowledge of the Jewish law,
hath observed, that n ' the law had only the shadow of
good things to come, but not the very image of the
things ;' that is, it did but obscurely and faintly typify
the glories of heaven ; not give us so bright an image,
and so lively a representation of the rewards of another
world, as is pictured out to us, and, in all its full pro-
portion and lineaments, accurately described in the
gospel.
12 Upon the whole, therefore, it appears how incom
parably happy we Christians are under the gospel, above
what the Jews were in the time of the law; God having
placed us under the best of dispensations, under the
clearest discoveries and revelations, and given us the
most noble, rational, and masculine religion ; a religion
10 Rom. viii. 15, &c. ll Heb. x. 1.
12 Cave, in his Apparatus to the Lives of the Apostles.
Sect. V.]
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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the most perfective of our natures, and most conducive
to our happiness. And what indeed can be a nobler
privilege, what a more generous and delightful pleasure,
what a more powerful incentive to obedience, than for a
rational creature clearly to discern the equity, the neces-
sity, the benefit, the decency, and beauty of every action
he is called upon to do : and thence to be duly sensible
how gracious a master he serves ; one who is so far from
loading him with fruitless and arbitrary impositions, that
each command, abstracted from his authority who gives
it, is able to recommend itself, and nothing required but
what every wise man would choose of his own accord,
and cannot, without being his own enemy, so much as
wish to be exempted from? ' ' Blessed are the eyes which
see the things that ye see,' says our Saviour to his dis-
ciples, and in them, to all professors of his religion in
succeeding generations: 'for I tell you, that many
prophets and kings have desired to see those things
which ye see, and have not seen them ; and to hear those
things which ye hear, and have not heard them.' But in
vain were these great privileges conferred on us, unless
we make an answerable improvement of them ; and far
from blessed shall we be, when we come to appear be-
fore the dread tribunal, unless we endeavour 2 ' in all
things to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour, who
gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people,
zealous of eood works.'
SECT. V.
CHAP. I. — From the Ascension of Christ, to the Com-
pletion of the Canon of the New Testament in all
about sixty-four Years.
THE HISTORY.
After that our blessed Saviour was ascended out of
sight, the apostles and other disciples still stood gazing
up to heaven, till two angels in the shape of men, and
gloriously apparelled, came, and informed them, that
their Lord and Master, who was then departed into
heaven, should at the great day of judgment, in the same
visible manner, come again from thence ; whereupon they
all returned to Jerusalem, full of joy and consolation •
and, being about an hundred and twenty in number, be-
sides Mary the mother of our Lord, and some other pious
women, who had attended him in his ministry, they there
spent their time in acts of religious worship assembling
daily in a certain upper room, a which they had made
choice of for that purpose.
1 Luke x. 23, 24. 2 Titus ii. 10, 14.
a Some annotators are of opinion, that the upper room, where
the apostles and other believers so frequently met together,- was
one of the chambers of the temple, which not only served for the
use of the priests, but stood constantly open likewise for any
religious assemblies. It is granted indeed, that in the temple
there were several upper rooms ; but then, that they belonged
to any besides the priests and Levites, is an assertion destitute
of proof; nor is it easy to conceive, how a company of poor fisher-
men and Galileans, who were odious to the priesthood for their
Master's sake, should be permitted to come in such numbers as
the sacred history takes notice of, and to hold their assemblies,
In one of these assemblies, St Peter reminding them,
that the number of the apostles which our Lord had ap-
pointed was originally twelve, but that Judas, by his
transgression, had forfeited that honour, thought proper
to propose the choice of another person h to succeed in
which were thought destructive to the established religion, with-
in the verge of the temple. As, therefore, it was a thing very
common among the Jews, to have their oratories, or private
chapels, on the tops of their houses, where they generally met
to read the law, and to treat of any religious matters; so it is
much more probable, that this was a room belonging to some
private family, that were converts to the Christian faith, where,
consequently, the apostles and other professors might meet to con-
sult about the affairs of the church, and to pay their adorations to
their heavenly Master, without fear of molestation: and, if con-
jectures may be allowed in matters of such uncertainty, it is not
improbable that their customary place of meeting was at the house
of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, because
St Peter, upon his miraculous escape out of prison, is said to
have gone directly thither, and there to have found several of
his brethren gathered together, (Acts xii. 12.)— Eckard's
Ecclesiastical History, Whitby's Annotations and Calmet's
Commentary.
b The words according to our translation, are these, — ' That
he might take part of the ministry and apostleship, from which
Judas, by transgression, fell, that he might go to his own place,
(Acts i. 25.) These words, by different interpreters, have been
referred both to Matthias and Judas. Those who refer them to
Matthias say that they mean, that Judas fell that Matthias might
' go to his own place,' that is, to a place for which he was fitted,
or well qualified. But to this there are many objections. 1.
The apostolic office could with no propriety be called, in refer-
ence to Matthias, his own place, until it was actually conferred
on him. 2. There is no instance in which the expression to go
to his own place, is applied to a successor in office. 3. It is not
true that the design or reason why Judas fell was to make way
for another. He fell by his crimes ; his avarice, his voluntary
and enormous wickedness. 4. The former part of the sentence
contains this sentiment: 'Another must be appointed to this
office which the death of Judas has made vacant.' If this
expression, 'that he might go,' &c, refers to the successor of
Judas, it expresses the same sentiment, but more obscurelj'. 5.
The obvious aud natural meaning of the phrase is to refer it to
Judas. But those who suppose it to refer to Judas difler greatly
about its meaning. Seme suppose it refers to his own house ;
that he left the apostolic office to return to his own house ; and
they appeal to Numbers (xxiv. 25.) But it is not true that
Judas did this; nor is there the least proof that it was his design.
Others refer to the grave, as the place of man, where all must
lie ; and particularly as an ignominious place where Judas should
lie. But there is no example of the word place being used in
this sense: nor is there an instance where a man by being buried
is said to return to his own or proper place. Others have sup-
posed that the manner of his death, by hanging, is referred to, as
his own or his proper place. But this interpretation is evidently
an unnatural and forced one. The word place cannot be applied to
an act of self-murder. It denotes habitation, abode, situation in
which to remain ; not an act. These are the only interpretations
which can be suggested of the passage, except the common and ob-
vious one of referring it to the future abode of Judas in the world of
woe. This might be said to be his own, as it was adapted to him ;
as he had prepared himself for it : and as it was proper that he who
had betrayed his Lord should remain there. This interpretation
may be defended by the following considerations: 1. It is the
obvious and natural meaning of the words. It commends itself
by its simplicity, and its evident connexion with the context.
It has in all ages been the common interpretation ; nor has any
other been adopted unless there was a theory to be defended
about future punishment. Unless men had previously made up
their minds ' not to believe in future punishment,' no one would
ever have thought of any other interpretation. This fact alone
throws strong light on the meaning of the passage. 2. It accords
with the crimes of Judas, and with all that we know of him.
The future doom of Judas was not unknown to the apostles.
Jesus Christ had expressly declared this ; ' it had been good
for that man if he had not been born ;' a declaration which could
not be true if, after any limited period of suffering, he were at
fi s
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his place ; and especially such an one as had been
familiarly conversant with our Saviour from first to last;
that so he might be a competent witness both of his
doctrines and miracles, his life and death, and especially
his resurrection from the dead. This the company
readily assented to ; and having appointed Joseph, "
surnamed Barsabas, and Matthias,4 one of the seventy
disciples, for the two candidates, they solemnly implored
the divine direction in what they were going to do ; and
so drawing lots, elected Matthias, upon whom the lot
fell, into the number of the twelve apostles.
When the vacancy of the sacred college was thus filled
up, the apostles and other disciples were all met to-
gether in their accustomed place, on the day of Pente-
cost : c when on a sudden, a prodigious noise, much
last admitted to eternal happiness. This declaration was made in
the presence of the eleven apostles, at the institution of the Lord's
supper, at a time when their attention was absorbed with deep
interest in what Christ said ; and it was therefore a declaration
which they would not be likely to forget. As they knew the fate of
Judas, nothing was more natural for them than to speak of
it familiarly as a thing which had actually occurred when he be-
trayed his Lord, hung himself, and went to his own place. 3.
The expression ' to go to his own place,' is one which is used
by the ancient writers to denote going to the eternal destiny.
Thus the Jewish Tract, Baal Turim, on Num. xxiv. 25, says,
' Balaam went to his own place, that is, to Gehenna,' to hell.
Thus the Targum, or Chaldee Paraphrase on Eccl. vi. C, says,
' Although the day's of a man's life were two thousand years,
and he did not study the law, and do justice, in the day of his
death his soul shall descend into hell, to the one place where all
sinners go.' Thus Ignatius, in the Epistle to the Magnesians,
says, ' Because all things have an end, the two things death and
1 ite shall lie down together, and each one shall go to his own place.'
The phrase his own place, means the place or abode which is fitted
for him, which is his appropriate home. Judas was not in a place
which befitted his character when he was an apostle ; he was
not in such a place in the church ; he would tiot be in heaven.
Hell was the only place which was fitted to the man of avarice
and of treason. — Barnes on the Acts. — Ed.
a It is not certainly known what the name Barsabas denotes.
The Syriac word Bar means Son, and the word Sabas has been
translated an oath, rest, quiet, or captivity. Why the name
«a> given to Joseph is not known ; but probably it was the
family name — Joseph the son of Sabce. Some have conjectured
tlmt this was the same man who, in ch. vi. 36, is called Barnabas.
But of this there is no proof. Lightfoot supposes that he was
the son of Alpheus, and brother of James the Less, and that he
was chosen on account of his relationship to the family of the
herd Jesus. He was also called Justus. This is a Latin name,
meaning just, and was probably given him on accouut of his dis-
tiuguished integrity. It was not uncommon among the Jews for
a man to have several names. (Mat. x. 3.) — Ibid. — Ed.
b Nothing is known of the family of Matthias or of his charac-
ter, further than that he was numbered with the apostles, and
shared their lot in the toils, and persecutions, and honours of
preaching the gospel to mankind. — Ibid. — Ed.
c This word is derived from the Greek Titrnxixrrri, which sig-
nifiea the fiftieth, because the feast of Pentecost was celebrated
the fiftieth day after the sixteenth of the month Nisan, which
was the second day of the feast of the passover, (Lev. xxiii. 15,
16,) and for the same reason it is called the feast of weeks, be-
cause it was observed seven weeks after the passover, Deut. xvi.
9. It was at first instituted, in order to oblige the Jews to re-
pair to the temple of the Lord, there to acknowledge his domi-
nion and Sovereignty over all their labours, and there to render
I hanks to him for the law which he gave them on the like day,
namely, the fiftieth day after their departure out of Egypt. In
like manner, the Christian church celebrates the feast of Pente-
cost fifty days, or seven weeks after the passover, or the resur-
rection of our blessed Saviour, to put us in remembrance, that
the gifts of the Spirit were then poured out in a plentiful man-
ner, as the first-fruits of our Saviour's ascension into heaven,
and that the gospel began to be published by the apostles on the
D.3I. FROM ACTSi. 10. TO THE END.
like the rushing of a loud impetuous wind, filled all the
house where they were, and a kind of fiery vapour, or
exhalation, formed into the figure of a man's tongue,
but divided a little at the tip, sat on the head of each of
them ; whereupon they were all immediately filled with
the Holy Ghost, d and, by its divine inspiration, began
to speak in several different languages.
At this time, there were Jews of every quarter of the
world sojourning in Jerusalem, besides proselytes, who,
from almost all nations, came thither to the celebration
of the feast : and no sooner did they hear of this mira-
culous event, but they began to wonder, not a little, how
persons illiterate, and all born in the land of Galilee,
should be able, with so much facility, to speak the lan-
guages of the several countries from whence they came ;
but others, who were willing to elude the force of the
miracle, imputed their talking in this wild extravagant
rate, as they called it, to the power and strength of
new wine. e
Hereupon the apostles all stood up, and Peter, as
president of the assembly, took upon him to confute
this injurious calumny, by showing the audience, ' that
then it was early in the morning, not above nine /o'clock,
and consequently no proper time to have eaten or
drunk any thing ; that the present effusion of the Holy
Ghost, was a full completion of that famous prophecy
same day that the ancient law was given to the Hebrews. —
Calmet's Dictionary, Pool's and Beausobre's Annotations.
d It is a question much debated whether the all here men-
tioned relates to the whole hundred and twenty, who are said to
have been present at this time, (Acts i. 15,) or to the twelve
apostles only : and in some measure to solve this, we may ob-
serve, that when the apostles came to appoint the seven deacons,
they ordered the assembly to look out among them men full of
the Holy Ghost, (Acts vi. 3,) which plainly implies, that there
were several persons among them remarkable for such extra-
ordinary gifts; yet we cannot suppose anytime so proper for
their reception of these gifts as this wonderful day of Pentecost.
Nay, if the apostles themselves, by the imposition of their hands,
could communicate the Holy Ghost to those whom they ordained
ministers in particular churches ; it seems unreasonable to think
that such persons as had been constant companions of Christ
and his apostles, and were to be the great preachers of the gos-
pel in several parts of the world, should not, at this time, be en-
dowed with the like gifts. So that from hence we may, with St
Chrysostom, and others, be allowed to infer, that ' the.Holy Ghost
fell, not onlyupon the apostles but also upon the hundred and twenty
that were in company with them.' — Whitby's Annotations.
e As it was not at this time the season for new wine, those
scoffers may be supposed to mean no more than any strong agree-
able liquor, whether natural, or made by art. The ancients we
are told, had a secret how to make a wine, which would pre-
serve its sweetness all the year round, and which they generally
used for a morning draught: 'it is proper to put only what is
mild into empty veins, and it is best to wash the bowels with
light metheglin.' Hor. sat. ii. 4. But it seems incredible, that
any men in their senses should think, that either wine, or
any other liquor, should enable the apostles to speak all lan-
guages, and to declare the wonderful works of God. It is well
conjectured therefore by our learned Lightfoot, that they who skid
this, were men of Judea, who, not understanding what the
apostles spake in other languages, imagined that as drunken men
are wont to do, they babbled some foolish gibberish, which they
could make nothing of. — Calmet's Commentary, and Beausobre's
and Whitby's Annotations.
f This was the ordinary time for their morning sacrifice and
prayer, before which they never used to eat or drink any thing.
Nay, on their festival days, it was customary with them not to
eat or drink until the sixth hour, that is, noon time, that they
might be more fit for, and intent upon the service of the day.
And from this custom the apostle draws an argument, which,
in those sober times, was thought to be conclusive — Pool's An-
notations.
Sect. V.J
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, &c.
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in Joel,1 where God had expressly promised it; that
Jesus of Nazareth was the person who had poured down
these extraordinary gifts upon his church ; that from the
testimony of holy David it plainly appeared, that God
all along- intended to raise him from the dead, and
exalt him to his right hand ; and that the present mission
of the Holy Ghost abundantly declared, that the same
person whom they, by divine permission, had crucified,
God had ordained to be both Lord and Christ.'
This sermon, though the first that St Peter made in
public, was so very moving to the audience, that it con-
verted no less than three thousand souls ; a who there-
upon were received into the profession of the Christian
faith by baptism ; and by their diligent attention to the
apostles' doctrine afterwards, their constant attendance
on public prayers, their frequent celebration of the Lord's
supper, their cheerful intercourse with one another, their
parting with their goods and possessions, and communi-
cating to every one according to their necessities, even
to the love and admiration of all that beheld them, were
daily and hourly confirmed therein.
Not long after this, as Peter and John, about b three
o'clock in the afternoon, were going into the temple to
pray, they saw a poor cripple, who was forty years old,
and had been lame from his mother's womb, lying at the
1 Joelii. 21.
a A quick and plentiful harvest this! But it is highly pro-
bable, that, as Peter preached to the Jews of Judea, in the Syriac
tongue, the other apostles spake, at the same time, and to the same
purpose, to the foreigners, in t